14835/Secrets of the Ooze, Part I

Secrets of the Ooze, Part I
Date of Scene:	16 May 2023
Location:	Alleyways: Brooklyn
Synopsis:	Daredevil, Mona Lisa, Sundance, Kai and Sally Pride thwart a mob meeting with the Utroms. Pizzaface is born when a mob boss is dowsed with mutagen while eating pizza, and they found out that the utroms appear to be trying to acquire earth-made trucks for some reason.
Cast of Characters:	Mona Lisa, Sally Pride, Kainashi, Matthew Murdock, Sundance

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Mona Lisa has posed:
     On the roof of a warehouse frequently used by the mob, the motley crew Mona managed to organize make their entry, slipping off the roof, into a window and down to a catwalk high in the warehouse one by one. There's a few guards patrolling up here with flashlights, but the cover of night and the virtue of being in a dark corner allows them a multitude of approaches, from simply swinging under the catwalk when a guard draws near to jumping to one of the high stacks of shelves and pallets to jumping up to cling to a rafter maybe. New York isn't Gotham, but they still have plenty of folks who sneak about at night disrupting their plans, most famously Daredevil... who is among those present tonight.

     "So you're saying that this Mutagen, this ooze, it can make my boys stronger?" a white-haired, pencil-mustached, overweight gentleman in a suit says as he cuts into a pizza with a knife and fork, sitting across a table complete with tablecloth, silverware and candles from a very... sharp faced thin man in a suit and sunglasses. At night. A glance up, and the guards patrolling the rafters with flashlights look *identical* to the man at the table down below.

     "That phrase which you speak where you say your minions will be made more powerful is factually correct." the thin man says, "Upon delivery of that which you call two-axel trucks which are box-shaped, you shall have enough mutagen to strengthen that which you call muscle enough to deal with any threat present in this sub-sector of the geographical longitude and lattitude of that which you call earth."

     Mona, first inside and taking point on the catwalk, lifts a finger to her mouth as she hops up onto the railing of the catwalk and elects to take the pallet and shelves route closer, leaping to them, clinging to them with her hands and feet before scrambling up the side of a heavy, wrapped pallet. Another identical thin man starts wheeling out a dolly containing a cannister marked TCRI on the side of it. If Daredevil's vision had ever been restored, he might recognize it as the last thing he ever saw.

Sally Pride has posed:
Prowling about at night is what a lot of people do in New York, when they don't want to be seen prowling about. On both sides of the line. Or along the line itself. Sometimes it depends on the night.

This night finds them creeping along a catwalk in a warehouse, so which way it's going to fall may still be as up in the air as they are. Sally pauses to lean against the railing a bit, trying to listen to what's being said. Though her attention is drawn to the man and his meal... Really? Who in their right mind eats pizza with a fork and knife?!

Then Mona jumps off to use being a lizard as much as Mondo does. Sally opts to stay on the catwalk and resumes prowling along it to get a better scope of the situation. She may be a cat and able to climb, but she doesn't really want to risk biffing the initial jump and giving them all away.

Kainashi has posed:
    Kai is following with the group tonight, the mutant pitbull's ears pricked up, her scarred face wrinkling slightly as she joins Sally and MOna on the Cat... Lizard... now dogwalk. She reaches over and taps Sally's arm, giving a little motion to the thin man, her 'brows' rising up as she motions with her hand like a mouth flapping, and turns her fingers -- she heard the guy's manner of talking. It's weird. She's trying to figure out from whence it came.

    She stays close to the feline mechanic in the meantime.

Matthew Murdock has posed:
Matt Murdock had had an argument with Foggy Nelson at the end of the day which has been difficult for him to get out of his mind. With Daisy off on a mission, that just left him with Boxer for company. And much as the cat sleeping in his lap can be a positive thing, Matt really needed to get out and work off some of the stress.

So it is that Daredevil is doing his jumping and flipping thing, going from one building to another as he listens to what is going on down in the streets below. He makes it a dozen blocks before finally slowing down to catch his breath. As the details of the argument with Foggy over one of their cases tries to creep back into his head, Matt instead lets down some of his barriers inside that help him filter out all the sensory input that can otherwise be overwhelming.

A television playing a baseball game in an apartment below. Two people arguing over a birthday present for their sibling. Someone celebrating a scratch-off lottery ticket victory. Not a lot there that is particularly interesting to-

Daredevil's head turns a little bit, focusing in on a voice. "Ooze that can make people stronger?" he repeats with a frown. He listens on, the frowning turning a touch confused at the choice of wording in the reply. "Alright, this is worth looking into," he comments softly to himself. The dark-red costumed hero runs across the roof, jumping to a sign that hangs off the side and launching from there across an alley. Closing in quickly on the warehouse he hears the voices coming from.

Sundance has posed:
There's gotta be something in the water lately. The way New York has been, Sundance has been busy. But this would have to take full priority. Which is why the coyote is up in the catwalks with the group. He had brought several different weapons with him in order to facilitate fighting at whatever range he needs to. For now, however, he has set himself up on the catwalk with a long gun.

Looking through the scope of the rifle, he scopes in on the guy that's talking all weird, "'n to think folks say I falk funny." He mutters, as he slows his breathing, working on getting sure the target is fully in his sights, "I didn't know anybody but Null had access to this stuff."

Mona Lisa has posed:
     "This is where Null gets it from!" Mona stage whispers across the gap back to Sundance.

     The white-haired obese gentleman wipes his lips with a napkin before cutting into the next slice of pizza with a fork and knife, talking with his mouth full and a strong new york accent as he says "In my business, no transaction is ready until the seller can prove their goods are legit. So go on. Gimme a demonstration. Louie, get up there."

     A mobster, one of a half dozen the obese gentleman must have brought with him, smacks his leg as though he just got bit by a bug, and then furrows his brow beneath his pinstriped trilby as he says "But Boss, I-" "You wanna do your papa proud, right Louie? Then you go up there and you get stronger."

     Louis definitely looks hesitant as he walks up to the sunglasses-clad thin man with the cannister on the dolly, and the thin man reaches down to pick up a metal rod that looks not unlike the little spritzers that exterminators use to spray for bugs.

     Kai, Sundance and Sally Pride might all get a distinct, sickening sense of deja vu seeing that device.

Sally Pride has posed:
"What she said," Sally whispers over her shoulder after seeing the canister wheeled in. "Null was experimenting with it, wanting to make mutants as weapons they could sell..." Her tail lashes at the thought. The bad memories. Especially when the device is brought into play. "... If that's the real stuff..." she utters under her breath.

Kainashi has posed:
    Every whisper's a stage whisper when you got Ears for Days.

    Kai shifts her weight uneasily. Her tail tucks down between her legs. She sniffs the air. Her stomach grumbles, looking at the mobster eat the pizza THE WRONG WAY. There's a low growl of aggression forming in her throat, her teeth bared -- and then The Stuff is wheeled out.

    She sniffs. Her ears pin back, and she looks to Sally, and to Sundance. She *vividly* remembers mutation... she'd been hit twice.

    She motions for jump-and-grab, and hops up nearly silently to the railing of the catwalk-dog-lizard-yote-devilwalk.

Matthew Murdock has posed:
Daredevil makes it to the warehouse in question, following the voices, and then reaching it by running over a telephone line like he were a tightrope walker. He pads quietly across the warehouse, hearing other voices whispering now that he's nearer.

The man frowns slightly as he tries to figure out how the voices inside relate to each other. Finding an open window that has already been used as a point of entry tonight, he slips inside and underneath the catwalk, hanging onto it with hands and propping his feet against it to stay there as he slowly begins crawling along the underside of it to get nearer to all the voices.

Sundance has posed:
Sundance doesn't like seeing that device. A big frown crosses his muzzle as he takes aim at the device proper. He wants to pull the trigger so bad, but he's fighting back on the urge to do it. Now's not the right time and he'd blow the whole operation.

"If we're gonna move, now's the time, or we're dealin' with mutated mobsters." He states, as he grips the rifle and squeezes the trigger, firing at the hand holding the device. He figures the round will shatter the device and probably that guy's hand too.

Mona Lisa has posed:
     There's a pig squealing noise as the thin man's hand shatters in a burst of electricity, a Terminator-style mass of electronic components now hanging from where the man's hand once was.

     The device, a pressurized hose leading from the tank, misses its intended target... but begins to spray wildly. First it hits the thin man... which seems to not effect him whatsoever, but immediately after it sprays across the obese gentleman that was just biting into another piece of pizza off his fork, right in the face.

     "Augh!" the man screams, mobsters rushing to his aid, but it's already too late, he begins to mutate, growing grotesquely yellow and bulging into a blob of some kind.

     Both the mobsters and the thin men go on high alert, the guards on the catwalks all rushing towards the source of the gunshot.

     "Shit!" Mona yells out, "Don't touch the mutagen!" She flips off a stack of pallets as she throws an electronic disc at the cannister, soon exploding into a blob that seals the tank and hoze and traps the arm of the thin man Sundance had shot, before landing behind the group of mobsters, drawing her energy sword.

     Outside, Daredevil would hear some very, very, very distinctive and familiar hissing from the cannister, that he, in turn, might recognize...

Sally Pride has posed:
"Nice shot," Sally remarks to Sundance. Then winces a little. Though she doesn't feel too bad, that guy was a big jerkass after all. Still, that's a cruel irony.

More importantly they've got the rest of the gang to worry about as mob men respond to the gunfire and shouting.

NOW is when Sally takes a jump, putting that big cat pouncing power to use to bound from their perch onto one of the other catwalks as the guards are trying to rally onto the site and cut them off. "Sorry boys, this meeting is about to be ajurned." Followed by a spiked glove clad fist flying for the face of the guard in front, likely to send him toppling off if he doesn't dodge it. Not that there is much room to dodge on a catwalk.

Kainashi has posed:
    Kai's ears are still back as she signs 'BAD BAD BAD', watching as the boss who was eating pizza the wrong way ends up getting a dose of the ooze. She feels awful, certainly for him. It's painful to experience -- but there's no telling what he's going to turn into.

    Giant super-strong four armed hulk rhinocerous beetle?

    Giant slithering leech with projectile Alien jaws?

    /Pizza The Hut?!/

    She does pause to appreciate the energy sword, but instead she draws her hooked crowbars, and leaps, using one crowbar to refine her direction off some steel cables, and the dimunitive little pitbull seeks to put herself between The mutating blob and his men, keeping low and below the gunfire!

Matthew Murdock has posed:
The crack of the rifle shot causes Daredevil's head to snap to attention. And then all hell seems to break loose as the guards are running across the catwalks in search of the gunmen. While the screams of the man who got oozed provide a rather horrifying backdrop.

Daredevil still isn't quite sure what the motives of the attackers are. He catches a whiff of... well that smells kind of canine to him. Does the gunmen have a dog with him? And he hears Sally's quip, thinking to himself that sounds more like a hero than a rival gang here to steal the mutagen.

Then the odor of the ooze that was sprayed out finally reaches him. His nose twitches and Daredevil nearly loses hold of his grip on the underside of the catwalk as it triggers a flash of his memories back to when he was a boy, the day he lost his sight. For the next few moments he might as well be reliving the accident.

Sundance has posed:
It would seem maybe Sundance's shot was not the best idea, as the ooze starts spraying all over the place, and mutates the mobster, "Well shit. Guess I misjudged my shot." He mutters, as he quickly hops up. It would seem that his position has been compromised as the guards are already starting to head his way, "Nice shot Mona, we should grab it and get out!"

He slides his rifle into the sling on his back, and then grabs one of his revolvers out of his holster on his side, "Looks like I got company, better get moving!" He fires a wild shot at the first of the thin men that's coming up after him.

Mona Lisa has posed:
     Out of all the things Kai imagined, Pizza the Hutt was pretty close.

     The obese mobster grows, bursting out of his clothes as a yellow blob, before the blob turns around and... seems to have giant pepperoni slices for eyeballs, bell pepper chunks for eyebrows, and a giant olive for a nose. "WHAT'S HAPPENING TO MEEEEEE!!!" the pizza-faced blob yells out, before a giant gooey cheese-tentacle reaches out and stretches until it hits the catwalk most of the party are hanging onto, and with monstrous strength it pulls the catwalk down, sending the metal crashing towards the floor below!

     Mona swiftly takes out the handful of mobsters that were behind the Pizza-faced blob with brutal sword-swings and kicks, but runs for cover when the thin men circle around the blob and their hands transform into high-tech guns, firing like a submachine gun after her. "Not safe to grab it!" she calls out, "Gotta blow it up now, give me an opening!"

     The robotic thin-men are now swarming the area, bursting through the doors with their hands already transformed into guns, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses scanning the area for any potential target they can find.

     Mona appears to be fiddling with some of the high-tech explosive discs she carries, trying to jury rig a bomb probably if nobody else has one on them, as the Pizza-faced blob knocks over the stack of pallets behind her, making her freeze for a moment, slowly turn, once again shout "Shit!" and then dart for more cover to try to get that bomb working as the blob chases after her!

Sally Pride has posed:
Sally Pride is brawling with the guards but that doesn't mean she isn't aware of the others also fighting around her. And what the mobster has become. "Crissakes, where's the Noid when you need him. Someone give her some cover!"

Then more of the thin-men burst in. Great. They don't need MORE.

When one of the mobsters throws a punch at her Sally sidesteps, grabs his arm, and uses a mighty throw to hurtle him in the direction of the thin-men! It's bowling for bad guys time! "Ally oop!"

Kainashi has posed:
    SPACEBALLS the Mutant Menace!

    The mutant canine's ears turn around as she accesses the situation. It's bad. It's really bad. Mutagen stinks. The Mobster with Extra Cheese smells confusing. There are thin men who don't smell right at *all* shooting from their hands.

    And Mona needs cover!

    There's a brief, mute snarl, ears pinning back as the canine spins one wrecking stick over her hand to reverse grip, and then she charges the monster mobster, grabbing at a chunk of the falling catwalk, gripping both of her crowbars tightly and the tiny mighty mutt picks up a good section of it, wires, floatsam, jetsam, gangsters and all, and she SLINGS it towards the thin men who are bursting in!

Sundance has posed:
"How the hell does that even work?!" Sundance yells out as he takes a good look at the pizza-blob, "I thought this stuff could only create animals!" He fires several more rounds from his revolvers as he hops off the catwalk, reloading as he falls, "I've got ya covered, just get those charges set!" He calls out to Mona, running and dropping to his knees, sliding under the guy that Sally hurls through the air as he pops a pair of the robots in the head, "Kai!" He calls out to his fellow canine, "Open us up a new way out!"

He pulls a grenade off of his bandolier, and then arcs it through the air, firing a shot as it reaches the height of the arc and filling the whole ground around the area with smoke to help throw everybody off. Unless you have some kind of crazy ability to fight without seeing or something.

Matthew Murdock has posed:
Matt Murdock comes tumbling down when the catwalk that he was on collapses under the cheesy attack. He bounces off a stack of crates and ends up over by one of the doors through which more gun-handed thin men are entering.

"You gotta be kidding me," he says to himself as they open fire on him, Daredevil running at a crate stack and using his momentum to fun up it a few feet as the wood below him explodes from the shots being aimed his way. He leaps then, overtop of the fire to land in the middle of the guards.

His batons are out and Daredevil becomes a whirling dervish, smacking the short metal staves into heads. He grabs an arm that is firing and turns it on one of the others, not sure that these are people that he needs to be worried about not killing.

Mona Lisa has posed:
    Mona taps her shoulder to pop her space helmet over her head as she runs into the gas, sliding under a row of shelves and coming face to face with Daredevil. Blinking at him once, seeming to recognize him somehow, she then takes off to his right back towards the long side of the warehouse as she jumps, takes cover behind crates, and then works more on her bomb. She briefly wonders if Sundance has a regular grenade on him as she twists a pair of the disks together and they start blinking.

     Kai and Sally successfully knocks over several thin men, but they respond in probably the most horrifying fashion, their robotic joints slide around in ways humans cannot, and their elbows, knees and head twist around to bend completely backwards before crabwalking towards each of them, mouths opening with a tiny laser gun inside to fire in their direction!

     Sundance successfully fills the area with smoke, and it's around the same time that Sundance shoots two in the head that Daredevil forces one of the thin men to fire upon another. At that moment, the robots dealt fatal blows fall to their knees... and their torsos seem to grow and flail, like an octopus is bursting out of their stomachs, before the shirt and suit jacket finally tear open and a pink, brain-like alien squealing like a pig scuttle towards Daredevil and Sundance respectively!

     Mona slings the bomb near the leaking cannister and fires a grappling hook from her arm at the mobster referred to as Louie earlier, pulling him to safety as she says "EVERYBODY OUT! Mutagen is EXTREMELY EXPLOSIVE! We've got half of a minute before this place is history!"

     It's at that moment that a giant, gooey glob of cheese lands near Daredevil, shouting "YOU!" from the pizza-faced blob, "YOU PUT MAH COUSIN IN THE HOOOOOSPITALLLLL..." before the Pizza-faced blob slings another gooey tentacle right at the man without fear!

Sally Pride has posed:
Sally Pride makes a face as the thin-men contort in horrendous ways to assume a different method of locomotion. "Okay yea those are definitely not human."

She looks one way as Mona shouts about exploding mutagen. No kidding. Entire labs have been lost to just a small portion of it detonating.

"You heard the lady." Between the crabwalking robots and the mobsters, she'll take the mobsters. "Time to ditch this joint." Sally grabs one of the toppled pallets, hefting it like a shield... or maybe a plow would be more accurate, as she uses it to charge into the remaining mob men and shove them out the nearest exit.

Calling it a rescue is questionable. She's just making sure they live to face justice instead of being blown up.

Kainashi has posed:
    Kai blinks a moment as the Thin Men just... move into place again. She signs 'Bad' again, and then she turns. Kai's been requested to create a different opening, and hey!

    If there's anyone who knows how to make an exit, she thinks as she reaches into her bag and pulls out a trio of smoke bombs, it's a ninja!

    Ka-POOMFF! The three thrown smoke-bombs create a smoke shield. They also make the air smell vaguely like pepper and irritate noses, but dems the breaks.

    And some people like their pizza spicy, right? That one gets an additional pepper bomb to the face. He's scary.

    And then the mutt grabs another section of the collapsed catwalk, and uses it to urge others away from the pizza man and towards a brand new hole made in the side of the building, curtesy of Kai's Redecoration and COllateral Damage Bazaar, and gives a 'shave and a haircut' beat on the metal to alert others to the opening!

Matthew Murdock has posed:
Daredevil pauses only a moment as the little brain blob aliens charge at him. He swings a baton into one, sending it flying into a crate. That seemed to work well, so he pivots and boots another across the warehouse like he was trying for a game winning field goal.

The incoming cheese causes Daredevil to do a backflip to evade it. "He probably deserved it then. And you should probably go join him. You're not looking... very good," Matt says, though making sense of exactly what the mobster has become is something he'll have to work out later.

The warning from Mona causes him to choose the better part of valor. Retreating backwards, he dodges another blob of cheese, then spins behind a crate to avoid another attack. So many questions, and he isn't going to get the answers tonight. Daredevil retreats out the door, heading for cover.

Sundance has posed:
"What in the goddamn?!" Sundance yells out loud as the robot he just shot in the head suddenly pulls a chest-burster and a big brain alien jumps out and skitters towards him. He jumps on top of it, wrestling it down as its tendrils wrap around him. He scrambles back to his feet, punching the brain a few times as he yells out several curses, fighting with it close to where Sally is at, until he hears the announcement that the place is going to blow.

"Augh!" He breaks into a run and slams into a wall, squishing the brain alien between his heavy form and the brick. It dazes the creature, enough for him to peel it off of him and throw it like a football away from him, "Getting to the exit now!" He calls out to the crew, breaking for the new hole that Kai just opened up.

Mona Lisa has posed:
     Mona heads for the hole in the wall that Kai made, meeting her and Sundance outside. Breathlessly, she says "The good news is it's less likely to mutate anyone after it explodes, it has to be in liquid form to really-"

     And that's when there's an explosion inside the warehouse, the crates inside erupting into flame.

     The surviving thin men and brain aliens swarm out the front, piling into a large truck that reads "TCRI" across the side of it before peeling away quickly.

     Daredevil makes it safely out a side door, as does Sally, on opposite sides... and then out the same side as Sally, a very burnt looking pizza blob crashes through the wall, mobsters chasing after it as it screams into the night.

     "So!" Mona says, catching her breath with a forced smile and looking to Sally and Kai, "Now you've met the Utroms..."