4209/Do You Know What Happens When You Burn a Toad

Do You Know What Happens When You Burn a Toad
Date of Scene:	23 November 2020
Location:	Alleyways: Brooklyn
Synopsis:	Toad's tonic transaction terminated thanks to Torch, terribly traumatizes typical tenant.
Cast of Characters:	Mortimer Toynbee, Johnny Storm

---

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
     "No, we're making the deal I said now mate, you give me all the money, I keep the stuff, and if you're lucky I don't go and carve me initials in your tubby lil gut now. How's that for business then, eh?" drawls out a rather ugly little man in a rather ugly little alley. Holding a rather large knife in one hand and a small duffel in the other, things have apparently gone rather badly for the two men in front of him. One is about a dozen feet down the alley, a rather large fellow who is currently unconscious in a heap of trashcans. The other looks almost as slimy as the one with the knife, but dressed a fair bit better at least with his hands held up.
     "Alright! Alright Mort! Yeah I get it! I got it! I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking! Here, you got it!" stammers the other man, sweat beading on his forehead, his gaze flicking frequently to the knife being brandished at him. He moves slowly reaching into his expensive but garish purple jacket, pulling out a thick wad of cash that he starts to hold out.

Johnny Storm has posed:
Why is Johnny Storm, playboy astronaut superhero, in some filthy alley in Brooklyn, a place so far from civilization it might as well be Queens, or the Negative Zone or something? Well it's a funny story.

"Lousy roomate." Johnny mutters, a shudder of heat around his body keeping him warm on this chilly night. Coats are for normals. "Lousy robot. Lousy turning the robot into a cat. HERBIE?! Come on man I know you can still think people thoughts, Valeria is gonna kill me if Reed finds out about this!"

"And that's somehow my problem." Johnny mutters to himself, using his powers to try and find the altered machine's heat signature. Instead...

...he nearly walks right into the mugging, honestly, he's so focused on reading for body heat and, frankly, the terrible Toad's...whatever makes him hard to sense in infrared. "Woah, woah." Johnny holds his hands up as he realizes, gosh, knives.

Then he does a double take. "Wait don't I know you? Aren't you Magneto's hype man? Like his DJ or something? I know I've seen you on one of those ominous broadcasts to the U.N. Bobby the Braining it up."

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
     Most people when their hands are full would first put something down before grabbing something else. Toad is a mighty mutant however, no mere people. His tongue lashes out snatching the cash and then with surprisingly controlled motion tucks it away in an inside pocket of his jacket. The drug buyer meanwhile recoils with a yelp both disgusted and surprised, wiping at his now slightly slimy hand as Johnny barges in from behind. Toad looks around the dealer, the other unconscious man in the trash near Johnny beginning to stir, more than likely an ineffectual thug of the drug buyer.
     "Oh, and I've seen you too. The skoi-writer," Toad understates while flashing a nasty smile that shows off a few teeth that are truly amphibious green. "Hey mate, me hands are full though, since you're here, you mind holding something for me? Thanks!" Toad not waiting for Johnny to accept his request. Instead he takes a step forward and lifts a leg, booting the drug buyer in the chest with one colossal foot. The man hollers again this time in pain as more than one rib cracks and he's sent flying at high speeds back towards Johnny Storm. In the same moment Toad is making a hop towards the other end of the alley looking to make his escape!

Johnny Storm has posed:
"Oh hey it's any given Englishman." Johnny says, sneering a little at the teeth. "Look, buddy, clearly you're having some hard times here, so why don't we just walk down to the local jail and you can get a hot mean and a bed. Maybe a show-oof!"
Johnny's hit with a drug dealer. This is embarrassing. He's fighting a mutant terrorist over a couple hundred bucks and what is probably some chalk dust in a bag. "Come on man this suit is vintage." Johnny complains, shoving the man off of him and igniting.

He rockets into the air, trying to catch up with Toad, who is surprisingly fast. "This gets worse the more you make me run, Toad! This is Spider-Man work! I normally don't get out of bed for anything less than the Mole Man you know!" Johnny's abilities are limited in the city because he does not actually want to set anyone on fire, but he hurls a few weak fireballs in front of Toad, hoping to catch a few trash cans on fire and force the evil mutant further down the alleys.

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
     THIS is why Toad had gone back to London all those months ago. Crime was so much easier there, Captain Britain was never out just wandering the streets. "Well why don't you go get the pajama-wearer instead! I'll wait!" Toad calls back, still hanging onto his duffel, and the knife. He winces as a few trash cans and bits of debris light up in his path. The Human Torch wasn't known to incinerate his enemies but getting burned still wasn't out of the equation.
     As one trashcan in particular pops though a lid flies up in the air and Toad gets a brilliant idea as his tongue flashes out and grabs it, then whirls around flinging it like a discus at Johnny. Soon the Human Torch finds himself under a deluge of debris as Toad's tongue goes into overdrive whipping whole trashcans, pallets, and other alleyway debris blindly behind him over his shoulder using his tongue. It's not like much aim was required in the narrow space as he showers the hero in garbage. "Hey Human Matchstick, all this trash kinda reminds me of your movie career!" cackles Toad who bounds up onto the walls now, zipping back and forth between them as he both picks up speed and looks to make himself a slightly harder target.

Johnny Storm has posed:
Toad literally starts throwing trash at Johnny.

"Okay, okay, seriously, you HAVE to taste that right?" Johnny says, wigging out a little at all that dirt. He's about to extend a heat field to melt it and then thinks of just what a bunch of half melted glass, metal, and whatever else is hiding in the garbage heaps of Brooklyn will do to the street. "Aw dude it's in my mouth!" Johnny tries to rise above the filth but Toad's aim is weirdly accurate considering he's using his tongue. Gross gross gross!

Then it gets personal. "Hey! At least I had lines stunt double!" Johnny puts on the speed, rocketing forward to try and get ahead of Toad; he aims a concentrated blast of heat at, of all things, an old fashioned laundry line, trying to send the bundled up soapy, bleached, wet clothes directly into Toad's face. "Turnabout's fair play pollywog!"

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
    "Some of it's delicious!" Toad rather proudly confirms which probably wasn't going to do Johnny's stomach any favors. In fact his pride is rather getting the better of him now, the Human Torch was despite his mockery a rather famous hero, and here Toad was absolutely besting him! Why he'd be..."MMMPH!" his thoughts of future fame brought to a sudden halt by a heap of soggy clothes as they wrap around his head and body and throw him off his leaping game. He crashes to the ground and drops his duffel which spills open, vials of lightly colored fluids rolling across the ground. With a tearing noise and a holler Toad stands, slicing wildly at the clothes before he stands up glowering at the Torch hovering overhead.
     His smile is gone and replaced by a nasty sneer instead, the knife twitching in his hand. They both knew it was next to useless against Johnny of course. "'Fore you go makin some joke about me needing the wash, hope you thought of something else. Wet laundry means someone is home," Toad hisses before he flashes at high speed not at or away from Johnny, but rather through the window the laundry line was attached to with the sound of shattering glass...and soon thereafter the sound of a woman's scream.

Johnny Storm has posed:
"Oh no you don't." Johnny's fought some real scumbags before, and that is an absolute Hydro-Man of an expression on Toad's face. "Don't you-Toad don't you dare! I am not build for enclosed spaces!"

Johnny rockets in anyway, furious with himself for endangering a civilian. He looks rather terrifying, honestly; a flaming man blasting through a window, glass melting around him, a terrible Human Torch!

Johnny makes a quick look at the apartment. Is there a gas stove? "Put her down, Toad." Johnny says, all the mirth out of his voice as he tries to figure out a trick to resolve this that doesn't get anyone killed.

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
     "Heeeeeeere's Johnny!" Mortimer absolutely unable to resist the urge to say the line, his creepy voice echoing through the small apartment and breaking into an even creepier cackle. One accompanied by the much quieter whimpering of a scared woman. And that wasn't the worst of it. Because after all that there's a very young voice crying out, "Mommy!" before breaking into frightened wails. The kitchen is a minor wreck even before Johnny flies in and melts the frame, a small table smashed to pieces where Toad landed, down a short hallway a huge dent in one wall where he sprung off of, a picture frame of a smiling family left on the ground. A light in the hall flickers and goes out where Toad had smashed it, his destructive path taking him it seems into a bedroom. As Johnny inevitably makes his way to the bedroom door and looks in he'll find Toad holding the woman with an arm around her chest, the knife held perilously close to her neck. Meanwhile a 5 year old boy cries in one corner, a few toys strewn around him where he'd been playing.
     "Hullo Torch. Welcome to me lovely home. You met the Missus? Say hi to our guest Missus," Toad demands with a wiggle of the knife.
     "H-h-hello," the woman sobs out terrified out of her wits. Clearly this wasn't how she expected her day to go.

Johnny Storm has posed:
Bedroom, away from any gas veins or anything Johnny could manipulate. Why, he thinks, did Kitty never tell him Toad was smart?! He could maybe manipulate the heater but that could just as easily end up blowing the place up, and it was already smashed to hell. Johnny narrows his eyes.

And douses himself, holding his hands up. "Hey." He says to the woman, in his best 'it's all going to be alright' voice. He's had some time to perfect it. "Just relax, alright? You know how many supervillain repair companies are in New York?"

"Toad." Johnny says, "You don't want murder added to your rap for, what, five hundred bucks and a gym bag of drugs?" Johnny's eyes gleam a bit as he starts, slowly, manipulating the temperature in the room. His goal is to slowly heat up Toad's knife and the air around him, drying Toad's mucus membrane out to make him uncomfortable enough to not notice the knife slowly heating up until Johnny's ready to turn it white hot. "Let's talk."

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
     Toad was in a hurry. Johnny didn't have anything he wanted, well other than looking uncomfortable. It was always good to see a hero squirm and Toad's far, FAR too wide smile showed how much he was liking that. "I've done murders for less me boy. But we ain't got nothing to talk about 'ave we?" Oh gods, Toad's tongue was back, the serpentine thing creeping out of his mouth like a snake, the woman letting out a scream as it briefly licks her cheek before retracting. He was sweating, he presumed from the excitement, not yet enough to dry him, not that quickly.
     "You want the broad? You can have take her, and something else besides." The tongue most people knew about. The slimy spit? Nobody liked to remember the slimy spit as Toad hocks a gallon sized loogie at Johnny's torso. The slimeball wasn't just gross but strong, enough to stick a grown man to a wall. Or two people very close together as for the second time Toad launches a pedestrian at Johnny. The woman at least doesn't receive a superpowered kick but just a forceful shove, looking to adhere the two together so Johnny couldn't dare turn on his full flames, and give him something to deal with as Toad makes to leap past them both, looking to crash through the apartment's door and make his proper escape this time.

Johnny Storm has posed:
"You have SPIT?!" Johnny shouts, as he's glued to the wall and, worse, the civilan, who is now sobbing about her ruined home and brush with death. "You think this is gonna hold me, Toad?! I fight Paste Pot Pete every Saturday!"

MILES AWAY,

"It's TRAPSTER!" Paste-Pot Pete screams at the heavens. "Trapster!"

He returns to pulling back the bar of a mouse trap large enough to hold the Thing. "I'll show them all..."

BACK HERE,

Furious with 'you didn't win!' energy, Johnny does his own cheap trick. His eyes burn, literally, as he turns to look at Toad and breathes into the air, his breath catching fire and turning into a tiny, personalized fireball aimed right at Toad's bag! He then gets back to, much more gently, melting the slime brace so he doesn't traumatize this poor woman any more. "It's okay, miss. My brother-in-law is, like, super rich."

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
     Bag? Toad had already lost his drugs thanks to the meddling do gooder when he'd crashed into the laundry. The only thing Toad had on him now was his lucky jacket. "AARGH! You goddamn firebug!" Toad screeches as he's almost at the door when he feels a heat at the small of his back. He does a surprisingly logical roll on the ground...searing the woman's carpet in the process as he puts out the flames and stands while the impromptu couple continue to struggle to free themselves. If Johnny could be petty, well so could Toad. He might not be able to destroy any of Johnny's stuff but...
     "Hey Blondie Boy! Don't forget to pay for the couch!" Couch? No couch had been destroy-oh there it is as Toad while certainly no match for the Thing or other beings known for their superstrength was still far beyond what a normal man of his size could do. It was all in the legs really as he lifts up the woman's couch and lobs it down the hall at Johnny and her both, one more thing for the bill. And don't forget the door as Toad smashes it open with a kick and capers down the hall with another cackle.

Johnny Storm has posed:
Johnny's out of the goop! Toad stuck around! Toad...

Johnny's hand flashes, and the couch incinerates. It was a split second reaction. Wow he has trashed this poor woman's apartment and terrified her infant son. He could rocket after Toad and give him the righteous asskicking he deserves or...

"Hey!" Johnny sticks his head out of the window, "You might be getting away, but you've still gotta wake up tomrrow and be YOU!"

Feeling better, Johnny calls Reed and gets ready to sell Valeria out to avoid too much of a tongue lashing. "We'll get this place fixed up in a few minutes, ma'am. Sorry about all this."