9475/Dial 1 for a Representative

Dial 1 for a Representative
Date of Scene:	06 January 2022
Location:	New Haven, Connecticut
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	Scott Lang, Felicia Hardy, Clark Kent, Karen Starr

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Scott Lang has posed:
Lightning split the sky overhead and thunder boomed, just the kind of ominous weather one expects when about to attack...a phone museum. A long since shuttered and boarded up phone museum, what had been the home for the first telephone exchange in the world, the red brick building had seen a few additions over the years, a 'modern' wing added in the 80's when some enterprising local entrepeneurs had tried to lure in tourists with the excitement of PHONES. It had not lasted long, and now it sat covered in graffiti and boarded windows while weeds grew in the cracked parking lot soaking up the rainwater from the storm.

Scott was for once nervous. Maybe it was the fact Power Girl and Black Cat had been a WEE bit upset with him the last time he'd talked them into coming on a mission for this so far wild goose chase. Maybe it was the fact the world's most famous superhero had decided to join his...cousin? He was never quite sure if all Kryptonians were related or not. Inside the Quinjet that had parked itself in the lot Scott stares at the building which looks as abandoned as half the other buildings on the decrepit street and sucks in a breath trying to convey some confidence he wasn't feeling.

"So, this is the place. I, had kinda figured it must be on the main phone network, all the other nonsense they kept throwing at us was just distractions to keep us away from the obvious. Thought it would be one of the big phone companies but uh, a contact of mine traced something here instead. This is it I think, we bypassed the loony conspiracies and, yeah. You know. We go in and, kick butt of whatever's in there. End this whole thing. What could..." a crack of thunder mercifully cutting short the 'go wrong' part.

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    Black Cat sits opposite Ant-Man in the Quinjet, an unhappy scowl on her face as she looks out the cockpit winodws into the booming storm outside. Her hands are busy making sure the zipper of her suit is securely fastened and locked away beneath a special flap below her chin, meaning her suit is zipped fully and she's looking like a proper sort of super spy, or maybe one of those tactical cosplayers without all the harnesses and pouches.

    The former thief is working at her hair, securing it in a folded pony tail, pulling only about half the length of her hair out of the scrunchy, making sure it will be secure and as safe as possible from the rain.

    Cat then adjusts her mask slightly, the thin domino doing little but helping to obscure her facial features. "Ants... I was reading your file after our last job..." She reports standing up onto her feet and ducking slightly for the bulkhead of the jet. "Your survellance and intel gathering needs some work. We can't keep busting into places like this." Felicia sighs softly, "A whole lot could..." 'Go Wrong' but she too doesn't say that.

Clark Kent has posed:
"Lizard vampires, eh?" Superman says, arms akimbo, eyes squinted as he stares out into the storm, listening intently to Ant-Man's catchup. He doesn't even tease Karen about getting bit. This sort of thing is serious, and the fact that it all seems a little incredulous doesn't change that. "Sounds like you've had plenty of danger along the way, Ant-Man. This is good investigating. A lot of people tune out the weird stuff, but often there's something tangible behind it."

Superman crosses his arms, and focuses a little. His eyes seem to flicker a thousand different colors, the rapid music of an old fashioned film projector as Clark focuses his x-ray, telescopic, and microscopic vision. "I'm taking a look over the area. Any idea what I'm looking for? The particular wavelength of the telephone calls, maybe. Something to give us a little more warning before we drop in."

"After all, forewarned is forearmed. We wouldn't want anything to..." Thunder cracks before Superman can finish that sentence. Clark frowns, and jerks a thumb at the ceiling of the quinjet. "Is Thor having a laugh again? I'll peel his potatoes if he's floating over this thing, throwing mood lightning."

Karen Starr has posed:
    Karen has agreed to go along to yet another mission for reasons that she's kept to herself. Frankly, she's kept a lot to herself- as she hasn't really said a single word since she arrived with Felicia.

    The Quinjet, in which she sits in next to Felicia, arms crossed in that typically-unfair way the entire time, glides its way through an implacable storm. As thunder batters its walls and minor turbulence rocks the flight, Power Girl remains implacable. She was here to make sure that Scott didn't get himself killed: Sure, every mission has been one ever growing embarrassment after the last, but the last one would have been fatal had Scott come alone.

    As the others talk, Karen's only visible response is an eye twitch here and there, at the fading sentences, each one ending with the same words punctuated by a boom of thunder. Her bright blue eyes are narrowed, one leg hooked over the other. She hasn't so much as budged throughout the entire trip, and her stony demeanor does not soften: Likely not aiding Scott's anxiety.

    When, finally, Clark adds to the tally of people saying the Unfortunate Words, and she can't hold herself back any longer. Once the peal passes, Power Girl speaks a few, simple words.

    "I hate all of you."

Scott Lang has posed:
"Yeah, about that Cat. So, I had kinda planned to do the whole stealth insertion but right after I found out where to come and contacted Avengers I got this..." at this Scott pauses and pulls out his phone, the others able to see him scroll to his voicemail and hit play. A voice emerges that sounds like an amalgamation of a dozen voices at a time and even those are constantly shifting, many of them voices of other heroes and even villains, several belonging to Scott's own family, others unrecognizable.

'Do not come to Connecticut. We are watching. You will die. Slowly.' There's a click and then a long dialtone, odd for a voicemail as if someone had added it purely for dramatic effect before the message actually ends.

"That was about 10 seconds after I contacted everyone on secure Avengers channels. This, whoever they are, I think they can access our comms, and I don't even know what else..." Scott finishes glumly before managing a slight smile as he adds, "But hey at least it means this is the right place!"

Superman meanwhile would be seeing plenty of phone activity. Far more than a supposedly abandoned phone exchange turned museum should have. It would look like millions of calls were moving in and out of the building along cables going down underground far deeper than normal, and even cell activity seemed oddly dense, towers or some equivalent thereof perhaps hidden within. But only 1 lifesign, a single man toiling away at something, dense waves of RF energy all around him.

"All I know is whatever is here it can broadcast and monitor worldwide communications and is strong enough to manipulate everything else we've seen so far. And it...c'mon PG don't be like that. Everything will be fine this time! We've got em!" Scott tries to assure her. Even as he seems to edge just a little bit closer to Superman, just in case she gets really mad.

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    "That's fair." Felicia says, giving a glance and a wink towards Karen, before she faces back towards Scott and his horrible no good voice mail. "Sounds to me like you think these guys are either that dumb, or that bold." Which in this case there wouldn't be much difference from the occupants in the Quinjet.

    Felicia frowns, holding onto the inside of the vehicle to keep herself upright and looking towards Scott and then to Clark's back, and her eyes kind of lock onto that cape. It's ... iconic. She can't help it.

    A shake of her head to refocus herself and The Black Cat sets her eyes and then looks to Scott, but holds her tongue, waiting for Superman to report though.

Clark Kent has posed:
"It's like some kind of radio nexus." Superman says, a little fascinated in spite of himself. Sometimes he likes the stranger cases. "It's fascinating, look at all the layers of broadcasting. Moving like almost like gravity."

Superman reaches out as if to touch the Radio Web. "There's a person at the center of it all. Right there, moving things. Dancing on the silk. Probably our guy, he's covered in the stuff. A few floors underground. Classic secret hideout, hide the construction around somewhere abandoned and low traffic but with good access."

Clark grins boyishly at Power Girl's statement, giving her shoulder a gentle punch. "Come on, this is great. We're gonna fight a radio man." It's different from the stern, stentorian figure he was posing as just a few moments ago. "You can't tell me you've never wanted to punch talk radio."

Karen Starr has posed:
    The nonplussed expression on Karen's features doesn't shift towards anything more friendly as the breakdown occurs. In fact, if anything, her eyes narrow just slightly. She isn't looking into the RF or EM spectrums right now- a sign of her mildly dismissive attitude towards the nature of the mission. Phone scamming doesn't really trip her alarms as anything especially dangerous or serious, even now.

    "I'm going to be like that, Scott. You know why." Her attention shifts to Felicia for a short moment. "Yeah it is." Regardless, she lets the others have their awe- no version of Kal has had that... Reverence, for her. They've always been her cousin, the baby boy she helped tend to when she was a teenager- and eventually, a father figure... But this one's too young. Just a reminder that it's not really /her/ Kal.

    "Oh yes. I'm so excited. This is my excited face. We're going to fight a radio man and his cabal of Radioheads."

Scott Lang has posed:
"I don't know what these guys are still, everything we've found so far has just been the distraction. C'mon this is the ANSWERS, doesn't that get you a little excited Power Girl? Superman is excited see? Why don't you be more like..." and Scott claps his jaw shut without any thunder to interrupt him this time. Even HE knows he let his mouth go a bit too far on that one.

He babbles a bit quickly after that. "OK so one guy. Look they know we're coming but me and Cat can try to sneak in, why don't you two do the whole, you know, front door thing you do. And we'll back you up from the shadows, you know, just to be safe. We nab the guy, shut down any evil machines, go get some lobster and clams after OK? Go team!" Scott announces as he touches the side of his neck, his metal helmet snapping up into place before he fairly books it out of the jet into the rain, looking far more like he's running away from something then bravely towards something.

Windows were boarded but that didn't mean much as he approaches one and shrinks down small enough to slip between a crevice and inside the building. The first floor was much like one would expect for a lame phone museum that had been boarded up for almost 40 years. Dust and cobwebs, walls covered in various 'phones through the ages' and featuring displays of cabling, plastic displays featuring text about the history of phones. Old style switchboards covered some walls. The 'main' attraction if it could be called that seemed to be two soundproof rooms next to one another with various phones allowing occupants to call the other and hear what they'd sound like or even try out a telegram machine. It was, not surprising the place hadn't stayed open more than a year or two. Scott looks about and clucks his tongue before hopping off the windowsill, searching for a way down to the lower levels, if the Kryptonians don't simply go and make their own. Collateral damage didn't seem to be a major problem, parts of the building looking ready to collapse anyhow.

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    "He did say one guy, but if there is a cabal, I'll hold him, you kick him to the sun. Not that you need my help, but it could be a good bonding experience." Felicia says behind Scott's back towards Karen, but with that 'I'm trying to get into trouble' smile Felicia has mastered.

    She does fall quiet to listen to Clark and Lang, with a deep breath to be sighed out as she has to go out into the rain. In her costume.

    "****"

    Felicia jogs a couple of steps, before she snaps her grapple line out to the top of the building and recalls it, the motors tugging her upwards, in a very quick motion to the side of the building where she clings to the brick like a certain wall crawler might.

    Scurying up to the roof, Felicia finds her own ingress, noting the mold, and where the copper wiring was started to be ripped out of one wall only to be abandoned mid project and then hastily repaired without setting it back in the wall. "Weird." Felicia notes to herself as she works down to the first floor, careful foot falls every step. Paying special attention to possible cameras and microphones that would have been functional at one point, and assumed to still be working now.

    A crack on the comms and Black Cat is reporting, "Nothing up stairs, moving down, any news on a way down, or a cabal?"

Clark Kent has posed:
"I love Radiohead." Clark says, which must be BIZARRE for Karen. "Though I guess I'm a bit of a secondary, I mostly know Paranoid Android."

"You keep saying cabal. I'm telling you, there's one living person down there." Superman pauses, and frowns. "Though I guess that doesn't cut everything out, huh?" Another quick scan, as Clark looks for load bearing walls and, well, the door.

"This place has certainly seen better days." Superman says, ignoring the rain, and debris, because come on. He stomps on the floor, once. "I think that's the door, Ant-Man."

Karen Starr has posed:
     Power Girl's crossing of the line between a mild simmer to a full boil is a visible thing. Her frown deepends. Her brows knit. She still looks /sickeningly/ perfect, but now it's a sickeningly, /furious/ perfect. She stops blinking, and locks her eyes directly on Scott. He's not going to answer her, of course- because he's /just/ smarter than that, but she still speaks. When she does, each word has a short pause beneath them, and she's just shy of speaking through gritted teeth.

    "Why don't I be more like /who,/ Scott?"

    The babbling takes over after that. She stands up, dropping her arms down and starting to approach the rear gate from the quinjet, which has yet to open. She seems to allow Scott to run off into the rain before her, stomping slowly out of the jet to follow after. She certainly isn't bothered by the idea of collateral damage, but when Felicia addresses her, she offers a soft grunt. "Maybe. Just go with Scott and make sure he doesn't die. It's a tall order."

    The rain doesn't seem to bother her, but it does illustrate a strange aspect of her costume. As the drops crash down upon her body, they seem to hit the window as if there was a solid presence there, rolling off of it in small rivers, like it does the rest of her hydrophobic costume.

    Clark talking about bands from her Earth-youth- after all, she landed in the early 2000s- just strikes her as altogether odd. "I say cabal because that's how it always happens. There's one guy down there and then we show up and he's got a dozen goons or something hopped up on some drug or gear that makes them hit like a truck." Sometimes, it's almost like Kal's a little newer to this whole thing than she expects. Probably because this one hasn't been Superman for fifty years.

    It doesn't take long to find the front door, and the boarded, locked thing is made short work of: As Clark destabilizes the building a bit- which, frankly, is going to be useful- Karen just walks through the front of the building where the door should be. As if it's made of paper.

    "Come along, Kal. Let's go get shot by a radio-gun that doesn't make any sense until we look at it later."

Clark Kent has posed:
Superman gives Ant-Man a quiet look that roughly translates to, 'She is going to be like this ALL DAY now.'

Scott Lang has posed:
There was no cabal to be seen. Parts of the floor collapse into the lower levels from the relatively restrained Kryptonian entrance revealing something that probably wasn't here for the museum. Cables. Cables that seemed to stretch every which way, big and small, every color of the rainbow in every direction. It was an IT person's hell with no rhyme or reason, the walls below solid with connectors and what looked like more modernized versions of a switchboard. As Felicia speaks on comms though a voice comes back on what should be the most secure channel on the planet.

"You all may as well come in now." It wasn't the distorted voice from Scott's voicemail, just a man's. Scott grimaces and remaining small hops down jumping from cable to cable until he's perched over the room below able to see the sole person running the joint now. A cot was in one corner of the large room that still seemed cramp given everything running through it, takeout food containers littering the floor here and there. Clearly the living arrangements weren't great. The man turns to look up at the two Kryptonians overhead, seemingly unable to see Scott and Felicia still safely hidden upstairs. "Did you not get the message? You're all going to die now," he says sounding almost, bored. Or, resigned?

And somehow that wasn't the strangest thing. Rather his get-up was. He was dressed like, well, a phone. A ridiculous red and yellow outfit, with a number punchpad on his chest, a huge collar around his neck resembling an old phone base while a huge corded red phone is perched behind his masked head. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/4/4c/A._G._Bell_8Earth-6169_from_Avengers_Assemble_Vol_1_1_0001.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/371?cb=20101221090128

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    Felicia frowns and rolls her eyes, cursing at herself. I knew better than to use the comms. Damn it girl. Don't be such a rookie.

    Admonishing herself behind her own gritted teeth, the thief works her way down the stairs, and on the first floor, she moves towards the sounds of someone speaking. Hugging the shadows, being so brave as to use her claws and strength to get herself up onto the ceiling, hanging, secure and quiet. In the shadows, listening and waiting for the opening, or to see if Kal and Kar are going to take care of this guy themselves. I mean, look at him.

Clark Kent has posed:
Clark clicks his tongue at Power Girl calling him to heel like a child or pet. He's half tempted to put his foot down about this, but they're in the middle of a mission and ultimately it's not that important. Just.

Superman sighs, just a little. "Sure, Power Girl." He follows her down into danger.

"...Phone Ranger?" Superman says, visibly shocked. He doesn't even have time to gloat about being right that there's only one living person down here. "I. This isn't your usual beat, is it?"

Karen Starr has posed:
    IS going to be like this all day. She's here in the rain to fight some phone guy who is defeated by the anti-robocalling apps built into most phones nowadays. Anyone whose weakness includes "screening calls" is hard for Power Girl to take especially seriously, regardless of how dangerous they actually are.

    As they push into the building, Karen observes the tangle of cables, and there is a momentary twitch. After all, Power Girl /started/ as an IT person. She overhears the response to Felicia, and doesn't seem surprised. What little briefing they had moments ago clued them in that he was on Avengers comms somehow.

    She drifts down towards the guy, her expression still deeply nonplussed. "Listen. I get it. You're a supervillain. We acknowledge that you've taped a phone to your collar and that that makes you legitimate. The problem is, if I have to punch a guy in a phone costume today, what's left of him is landing on the moon, and then the League is going to whine at me because I punched someone to the moon again. If you give up now, you just go to prison for... Whatever the hell this setup is, and we don't have to punch you."

Scott Lang has posed:
"One of the Phone Rangers yes. There have been many of us over the years," the wackjob in the phone costume confirms, still speaking in an oddly flat tone. Almost like a, automated phone system.

"Why couldn't it just be baddies with guns," Scott groans to himself, thunking his head on the cable he's clinging to.

Meanwhile as Power Girl drifts down the man boredly looks at her, as if all the life has been drained of him. Up close it would be clear his face is poorly shaven, an...unpleasant odor hanging about him as if he only gets to shower on a rare occasion. He shakes his head at her and states, "I've been trying to keep it contained, me and the other Rangers for the last, 60 years at least? Passing down the mantle. But then that idiot Lang had to go and start snooping and now it's waking up," he grumbles.

"Oh c'mon now that's not..." Lang cries out from above only for a sound like a million screeching modems to fill the room, an intense feeling of heat and and pressure coming with it. Lang's helmet locks down its audio to save him the worst of it but he's still left reeling.

Phone Ranger meanwhile is still talking like nothing has happened, his voice cutting through the painful audio. "The world's first AI, before Ultron. Do you know how many calls are made a day? How many get lost in the lines? Signals bouncing around at random from junction to junction. Trillions and trillions of them. And one day all those discordant noises clicked in just the right way to make it. An electronic amoeba. And then it started evolving, growing, entirely based on chance and accident. It exists EVERYWHERE in our communications. Even now it's still a child but it's STRONG and we've been trying to keep it contained all this time, distracting it with harmless machinations and scams, convincing it that it's all part of some grand scheme. If you'd just left it alone it would have been fine! But now listen to it!" The modem screeches are changing now, becoming voices. Becoming ALL the voices. There were no speakers in the room, the AI generating them from thin air, the volume rising to building quaking levels.

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    Felicia, hanging upside down, looking 'up' towards the hole with the aliens and the modem man, or rotary kid. Whoever he is, Felicia decides staying back and waiting is the course of action best suited.

    Karen has this.

    Right?

    Felicia then gets that crawling fear from the base of her spine up to the fine hairs at her neck and then the world becomes a voice box, and the woman reacts, gripping onto the ceiling tighter, crushing the roof in her hands, but still hanging.

    She reaches up to pluck the comm system from her ear and throws it to the ground, but the sounds persist and there's a lost voice in there she feels guilty for having forgotten.

    Daddy?

    Felicia's eyes are slammed shut, fighting the recognition, fighting the horror, fighting her paralysis.

Clark Kent has posed:
"Radio gun, huh." Superman says to Power Girl in what is, he feels, a bit of a petulant tone of voice. Weird, he never had babysitter issues. All hell starts to break loose as a radio god groans and moans in hideous evoultion. It is what can safely be called a trip for someone with super hearing as refined as Clark's, and he takes a step back, bracing himself from listening to electronic misery at a thousand frequencies.

Tune it out, Kent. Game time.

Clark touches Felica's shoulder gently, smiling. "Hey. It'll be alright. It's just a radio gun."

Superman steps forward, with a bit of effort. "Listen to me! This is Superman speaking! We mean you no harm, we're just trying to help. If you stop your attack, maybe we can work this out. Find a place where your infant AI can exist safely, and in peace. But you've got to help me calm this thing down before its cries hurt someone. Please."

Karen Starr has posed:
    All told, Karen Starr- Kara Zor-L, has been doing this for two /decades./ Nothing should surprise her anymore. Nothing should be anything she hasn't handled before. She could write a book on beating up Super-Anythings. That is why she is both surprised that there's a Dial-up Elemental here, and surprised that she's surprised.

    First, however, credit where credit's due: Looking somewhat upwards, canting her head just slightly. "I knew, /somehow,/ this was your fault, Scott." Maybe it's a little unfair. Maybe a vampire bit her boob the other day. Maybe Scott said something that made her angry. Maybe all of these things are true.

    The modem noise escalates to a scream, and only Clark can hear the string of words Karen uses in response to the situation, as the sound elevates to an extent that starts shaking the walls. Not as bad as the Canary cry, but it's not exactly pleasant, either. The concern, though, isn't for herself. It's for Scott and Felicia.

    "KAL!" she calls, heard only because of the nature of super hearing- "I'll get them out, see if there's a place we can take it, if not... Counter-frequency." That's going to get her into trouble: Because, genuinely, despite that it's an AI, her suggestion only has one predictable outcome: The death of the nascent creature.

    She doesn't wait for an answer- instead, she starts zooming up towards Scott and Felicia, to take them out of the building for the moment, and back towards the quinjet.

Scott Lang has posed:
"I've told you we've been calming it for 60 years! We're past that now! It's waking up, everywhere! Billions of screaming random voices molded into one irrational being with power we don't understand. The only way to stop it now is to destroy global communications entirely. It's not JUST here," says, yes, Phone Ranger. He's still seemingly unaffected by the noise, and yet a thin line of blood is leaking from his left nostril. He wasn't immune so much as apparently used to these outbursts, maybe this wasn't the first time the AI had gotten angry, just the worst.

Scott meanwhile finds himself still grimacing inside his helmet, the powerful noise seeping through the high tech plating. It had been made to absorb larger than life sounds given how magnified volumes could be at small sizes but this was getting too much. He grows back to normal and drops into the room below next to Superman prompting the Phone Ranger to point at him.

"You! You're the idiot that caused all this! I'll..." the man starting to lift the giant phone he wears behind his head like a weapon before Scott finds himself scooped up in the arms of Power Girl and flying upwards.

"No, no Power Girl, not the jet. There was...soundproof studio. I've got a dumb idea. Need you and, Cat," Scott hisses out through gritted teeth. Partly from the pain in his head, partly because was going to be in so much trouble for his idea.

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    Felicia's fear causes a reaction she had completely forgotten about, and as she's holding onto the ceiling, another piece gives way, and she reaches back in to try and resecure her grip, but grabs onto the sprinkler. As she does so, the bad luck for those around her continues as it breaks, spraying gallons of water per second down into the hole with the Phone Ranger and his many wires.

    As she's falling, there's a sensation of weightlessness before she's scooped up and relocated without being mentally fast enough to know what's going on.

Clark Kent has posed:
Clark's rebuffed. He frowns a bit; Karen is the expert with AI, so he lets her take the lead for now, noting that smashing the network is just going to cripple the easten seaboard. He's struck a few times by wires, he thinks, and raises an eyebrow at them. The real threat is the sound.

"If we kill the thing, we cripple the Eastern seaboard." Superman says, using the same trick Karen is, floating into the air. "Phone Ranger here said it can be soothed, if we relax it enough maybe we can move it? Perhaps into one of the storage crystals in the Fortress. Those things can hold so much data, it's ridiculous. Then it won't be agitated by the phone network anymore, and can have some peace."

Karen Starr has posed:
    The outbursts at Scott from the Phone Ranger cause Power Girl to respond: "That's the radio gun." So noted, she halts above the building, taking high enough into the air that the noise dies down and both Scott and Felicia can properly hear her. Practically holding one under each arm, Karen frowns just a bit. "A soundproof booth? It's not really going to hold up to this, especially in this kind of noise, but fine. Here we go."

    Whether she noticed the sprinkler incident or not is entirely up to anyone's guess, but she does respond to Clark with a shout- "If we let it do whatever the fuck it wants, we /kill/ the eastern seaboard, Kal!"

    Having said that, she makes her way down towards the soundproof studio, "I have some things set up like that. I'll need one of the fortress crystals because they're bigger but we can put it in a simulation of noise that it likes if we can get it to shut the hell up." By this point, she's swooped back into the building, and deposits both Scott and Felicia into the soundproof booth. Shutting the door, it calms the noise at least to the extent that the two humans aren't going to be shaken apart.

    "What's this idea, Scott?"

Scott Lang has posed:
Scott hangs from Karen's arm like a limp kitten and he wasn't even the cat-themed hero here. His head was pounding but the noise was actually subsiding on its own now...though being replaced with something else. Noise from all over the town as phones, radios, speakers, anything capable of generating sound began to switch on. "I'm in charge! ME! ME ME ME!" It was the same mix of weirdly altering voices all jumbled together in unison swapping pitches and voice, but with a child-like tone and tenacity. Scott can even hear his own phone going off, pulling it from his pocket and pulling the battery out of it entirely to stop it as Karen touches back down in the booth.

"Cat? Cat you alright? C'mon I need you up for this. I need you and PG. Look this thing is nuts but the Phone...Phone Ranger," Scott having to pause to say the name as it sounds stupid even to him. "He told us this thing is made up of all these random voices and signals bouncing around the world that just happened to come together in just the right way to make life right? But it's all nasty and angry. Now what if that's cause all the voices it's made up of are the ones that come from people who got disconnected? Hung up on? You know, it's just like, made up of naturally nasty stuff. So we fill the comms with something soothing and nice and we can, you know...like Ghostbusters II!" Scott excitedly declares.

He's looking up at them now as he's kneeling on the ground, pulling apart panels that cover the demo phones in the room, beginning to rewire them, firing his blaster at the floor to expose more of the cables running underground and pulling them up to tie in. Phone networks, electrical engineering, what was the difference? He's rushing on before anyone can object, "That switchboard they had down there, I can hook it into a couple of the phones up here and I bet I can bounce those signals around all over the planet to every last trace of this thing while Superman covers me. And you two can, umm...I need a duet...something harmonious, soothing...you know whatever you like! You got this!" Scott assures as he makes to run out of the room and back down into the maelstrom.

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    Felicia's eyes are red, the tears she's fighting back are honest to god real. She never thought she'd hear that voice again, and yet, she did, for the briefest moment, her father wasn't dead. The man that made her who she is today. Or taught her how to be the woman she is. In Karen's arm, the pain is terrible still, and it feels like her ears are about to burst, but in the sound booth, Felicia finds her feet quickly enough, and stands up straight. Fighting back her tears still she looks to Karen, asking for forgiveness without the words as she's feeling like she's not strong enough, not the person Karen is, or even a shade of what Karen is. That's a heroine. Not herself. She could never be.

    Barely able to hear what Scott's saying in the booth, Felicia frowns and shakes her head at him, responding only with, "No one saw ghostbusters 2." Then there's the true ask, and Felicia, standing, barely, weak in the knees and pained into her soul isn't confident as she was before hearing the ghosts of her past. Slowly she turns to look into Karen's eyes. "That's his plan, a duet?"

Clark Kent has posed:
"And then we don't have to kill it." Superman says, smiling. It's not quite patronizing but if you squint it could feel like the lesson at the end of a cartoon.

"You're saying it's like mood slime?" Superman says, outing himself by getting the reference.

"Soothing huh." Superman says, kicking into the air and moving to guard Ant-Man as the genius works. He hopes hes a genius, at least. "You sure you can handle that, babysitter? I don't remember any Kryptonian lullabies."

Karen Starr has posed:
    As the noise seems to infect the phone network, Karen reaches up to an ear, touching her earring. It's impossible to tell, but that thing's a phone. "Yeah. Sounds like a petulant child. Great." she states, starting to take a moment to think as they stand in the soundproof booth.

    Scott starts laying out the plan, and her eyes narrow. Her head turns slowly to one side. She stands there, holding Felicia up, and looks at Scott with ever increasing levels of incredulity. "No." she responds, first. "Not /again./" Her voice hasn't increased in volume, but it doesn't last long.

    "You know what? He's RIGHT." A short pause, "You ARE going to DIE here!" One hand comes up, then, and she genuinely looks like she's going to strangle Scott- or crush the helmet around his head, or both. There's that twitching, genuine rage. The thing is, it's not a good plan, but it's the /only/ plan. They don't have an Empath, and J'onn isn't here to stabilize it psychically, so they /have/ to go off whatever they know about the creature.

    "God FUCKING dammit!" she shouts, before bringing up her right hand to her earring, and turning it back on. "Nick." she speaks, and a voice can be heard coming from her bracer- thickly sarcastic, and sounding like he'd just been eating. "Yes, Miss Starr? Can you tell me why our secure line is being mouth-" Twitching at the eye again, Karen interjects- "NICK. I'm at the old phone museum, New Haven Connecticut. There's a switchboard downstairs, I need you to find it, and patch in /every/ form of communication, and see if you can throw in a couple of high voltage wires."

    There is another short pause, before the voice alights again from her bracer.

    "I can do most of that, but you /do/ know how electricity works you bim-" Karen's hand touches her earring again. "Felicia," she begins, apparently ignoring the kind of relationships she cultivates, "What songs do you know the lyrics to?"

Scott Lang has posed:
"It'll work, you'll see! I...Power Girl c'mon. Trust me," Scott encourages with that self-assured cocky smile of his that more often than not seemed to pull through no matter how ridiculous the situation. Even if Power Girl more often than not came out a bit worse for wear in the end. Escaping the phone room he looks back down the hole in the floor to the nest of cables below. The Phone Ranger has passed out, the noise having finally gotten to him before it turned off. Scott sucks in a deep breath and looks to Superman. "Alright I'll start swapping this stuff around. We need to get snippets of the song all over the world so it's permeating this thing from every angle. Give it nowhere to run. With any luck it's done screaming and won't even notice us until it's too..." Scott's fateful words cut off as a phone cable snaps up out of the hole and wraps around his leg.

"That's not fair," he squeaks before it drags him down and starts to whip him towards a wall, barely shrinking himself in time to escape and bounce off instead. Zapping back to normal size, now down IN the switchboard room a look up shows cables of all sizes and colors unplugging themselves and moving like venomous snakes. "SUPERMAN! I need those things plugged in for this to work! And, not killing me! Figure something out! Power Girl, I know you can hear me in that booth, start singing already!" Scott cries out as he rushes to the switchboard and starts working it like a 1920's phone operator.

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    Felicia looks to Karen, and then to Scott and a blush starts to form underneath her mask, and she takes in a deep breath as Karen seems to be bent on killing Scott and in the moment, Felicia isn't opposed.

    "Umm..." Felicia looks upwards, as she recalls her own playlist. "I know the Time Warp and ... Tainted Love? Dad's favorites." She says, bursting in a show of emotion at the words, but pulling herself back together as best she can. "Umm..." Felicia frowns at Karen and shrugs her shoulders, "F**k her Gently by Tenacious D..." Felicia takes a deep breath. "And I don't have much of a singing voice, but I don't have any other ideas." With no remarks on the name Karen, Felicia seems to be rubbing at her ears often as she's trying to stimulate her drums to working fully again. The ringing should stop, yeah?

Clark Kent has posed:
"Your secretary knows your secret identity?" Superman asks Karen, frowning a bit. Well he guesses it's sort of like Kelex in a three piece suit. Sort of. It's not like Karen's close enough to the rest of the family to put the Kents in danger.

As a universe moans, madly, in Superman's ear he goes over that sentence again and frowns.

"Hey, can you make dinner next week? I'm sick of this bitter tension stuff." Superman says, flying around the sonic booms and grasping, screaming machinery. "I feel like I've been making things harder for you without meaning to. Or maybe I did. I'm still digesting...whoops."

"Figure something out, huh?" Superman laughs, his hands clapping. There's a shudder of contained force (Clark will never admit he stole this from Banner.) sending the squrming wire-snakes into a panic. Superman fades into a shudder of heat and blurring, wild blue; when he's visible to the naked eye again, the Man of Steel is holding the cables like some great, writing worm of ancient lore, forcing each of the wires into position and trapping them in place with a controlled blast of heat vision.

"Should be ready in a minute, gang!" Superman says, laughing again.

Karen Starr has posed:
    "Yeah, it had /better/ work." she states, "Because I don't think that thing can kill me, and I am /sure/ it can't before I-" cutting herself off, and pinching at the bridge of her nose, Karen allows Scott to scuttle off into danger before her attention turns to the songs Felicia knows. "Okay. Okay. Time Warp could work, uh..." she pauses, going back to thinking.

    It's about then that Clark speaks to her. "He's not my /secretary/ he's an ex-con I-" a pause, "/Hired./" the real end of that sentence is 'coerced by blackmail into assisting' but Hired works. She does pay the guy's salary.

    "Listen, Kal, just- I am not much of a cook, I eat out, part of being- I can /get/ us dinner but honestly, /now?/" she asks, "I'm a little busy figuring out what song I can sing as a duet with my girlfriend without a karaoke prompt, but sure, I can do a thing next week. Big family gathering."

    She turns back to Felicia. "Okay. Maybe Twisted Love? I don't know what he actually /needs./" Rubbing at her face. "Time Warp it is. Sure. Let's do that one. Probably the most soothing."

    Touching her earring again, Karen speaks to Nick, her Guy In The Chair: "Nick, get me the instrumental for Time Warp on the glove speaker." There's a short delay before there's any response, and the man's voice from the other end comes from her gauntlet. "Are you sure you're a superhero?" Karen closes her eyes, and when she speaks again, she is a level of calm that is absolutely frightening. "If you don't do this right now, I am going to have Ant-Man crawl into your-" Immediately, she's cut off: "OKAY, Okay, sure. Whatever."

    "Ready?" she asks Felicia, as the instrumental for the Time Warp starts playing from her gauntlet.

Scott Lang has posed:
Scott finds himself ducking his head and flinching as he works as Superman zips around overhead almost too fast to see in the cable-crowded space. Operator, operator, he moves the switchboard exchanges around, checking labels on cords and plugs. Singapore, New York, London, Madrid, the exchange plugged into every major network on the planet. More ominously others had labels such as Avengers, Justice League, Hydra, the thing had been tapped into everywhere. It made sense in a way, it basically was a living version of communication, encryption wasn't going to stop it.

Of course, there's also talk of food happening. "Hey if she can't bring a dish I do a mean hashbrown casserole and oh these Thousand Island wraps with a bit of onion and sweet pepper? I mean Cassie my daughter love to meet ya. I mean she really likes Peeg and all but, I mean every kid knows Superman," Scott calls out, plugging in the last wire and slapping a button on the console as dials start to spin up. "C'mon ladies, we need some tunes! Your audience awaits!"

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    Felicia's face is still flushed red as she stands in front of Karen and breathing heavily, "Gotta do what we gotta do." Felicia says, breathing deeply, but reaching up to the zipper on her suit and undoes it from beneath her chin, just to allow her body and her lungs to breath better. No sense singing with a full body choker.

    "I think a vacation is needed after this." Felicia notes before she steps up and without much warning starts to belt, her voice is a deeper tone, nearing an alto, maybe on the cusp of tenor, as she gets into the beat and the rhythm. Enjoying the time with her girlfriend doing something that seems like a date time tradition, only it's to keep some ancient AI from running amok.

Clark Kent has posed:
"Hired." Superman says, raising an eyebrow again. The ex con thing doesn't bother him as much as Karen acting like talking to him is a burden is. It's just a telephone god, gosh.

He raises an eyebrow at the girlfriend line, because he hadn't heard. Gosh, catsuit and everything. Superman frowns a bit as it's work time again, and apparently the ladies have to sing. He has a perfectly good singing voice, but why argue with science!

"We're about plugged in here!" Superman shouts, "And I'd love to meet your kid, Ant-Man! I'm sure she's lovely!"

He punches the mass of wires, just when it looks like they're about to stab him in the ear.

Karen Starr has posed:
    There's a level of marvelling at how commonplace the phrase 'It's a ______' ending in deity, or something similar, becomes over the years. One day, despite that she's been doing this for two decades, she'll get used to it. One day. That day isn't today, but today, she's singing with her girlfriend to pacify a telephone monster that has been so far pacified by a cabal of individuals inheriting the title over years, and they have been doing it with spam phone calls.

    In a way, the human race has been the strangest day care she's ever heard of.

    "We don't really /get/ vacations, but I'm sure we can do something. If Scott survives I guess he can come along." At that point, a deep, calming breath is in order before she too starts singing. Depressingly- or, alternatively, amusingly, Karen has a /fantastic/ natural singing voice even without the super-ventiloquism, though she does dip into that to hit certain notes and to take certain parts of the song that Felicia's voice isn't suited for.

    After all, it is a multi-artist song with a number of different types of voices. She even taps into Harley a bit for a certain bit about physical contact.

Scott Lang has posed:
     Scott pries off a panel and begins actually doing a bit of rewiring on the fly along with the usual switchboard operations, letting him more quickly spread the two girl timewarp globally. All around the planet on private phones, radios, and military comms, almost anything and everything with a speaker people were finding their usual broadcast interrupted by a mix of a petulant wailing deity and fading in and out with the dulcet tones of Power Girl and Black Cat. As it carries on the wailing becomes softer and softer, fading out as the AI is 'harmonized' into submission.

     "You know I think this is actually working. And oh yeah Cassie is wonderful. Way smarter than I am," Scott notes as he plugs in another cord and flexes his fingers. Supervillains around the world finding their lairs briefly inundated by "It's just a jump to the left, and then a step to the right." Scott bobbing his head along as it's of course playing through the speakers of the old building still hooked up, raising his head to look at Superman above as the cables are mostly done attacking. "You know speaking of smarter, come to think of it we really probably could have used a recording off my phone. Don't tell them that though."

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    Felicia isn't the greatest singer, but she's able to blend her voice with Karen's rather easily as she harmonizes with her girlfriend, sharing a moment she never really considered was on the table. There's singing in the car together on a road trip, or even a trip down to the store, but she never considered the idea of the two of them in a car, ever. This is a moment she wants to lock away into her heart, and yet the lyrics are stunningly outrageous and silly.

    "It's just a jump to the left!" She says in a quasi solo, before continuing the song happily, falling into the fun of the moment while looking past the microphone into PowerGirl's eyes. "And then a step to the riiIIiight!"

    Black Cat reaches out to take Karen's hand as the song is calling her to dance and enjoy the magic of the moment she's allowing herself to get sucked into.

Clark Kent has posed:
"I won't say a word, Ant-Man." Superman says, winking at the shorter man as he blasts the. The time warp.

Superman holds his head as the sonic hellscape slowly starts retreating. It's an experience with super-hearing, after all. There's layers of sound. He tries to focus on the cheezy pop music, trying his best to tone out the dismissal of the audio horror before them.

"Besides, it's nice to see Power Girl unwind a little."

Karen Starr has posed:
    Unwind a little. Right.

    Frankly, she kind of is. Sure, there's the occasional thought of loading Felicia onto a ship and going to some sort of beach planet after unceremoniously pushing the Earth into the Sun as to most assuredly eliminate Scott... But those thoughts are rare as she sings.

        "With your hands on your hips,"

        "You bring your knees in tiiiiight!"

    Hell, she almost looks like she's enjoying herself, giving Felicia a short twirl while she continues the chorus.

        "But it's the pelvic thruuuust,"

        "That really drives you insa-a-a-aaane!"

    And if Scott looks up at the booth following his small confession, that Clark promises to keep to himself, he might see, as Karen's voice joins Felicia's...


    "LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!"

    She is looking down at him, her one eye twitching, a flash of fury in her expression. Because it wouldn't be impromptu Karaoke at Scott's insistence if she didn't threaten to kill him with a glance at some point during it.

    Dear god, her eyes are even just a /little/ too red to be safe. Nothing catches fire, but it's there.

Scott Lang has posed:
     Not only was it working, it worked. Scott's idiotic plan worked as the last of the thrashing cables went limp, the last of the enraged screams of the insane AI faded as it became, something else. Scott wasn't sure WHAT they had made, only that it was calmer and had an appreciation for 70's music. "I think we did it, maybe. I mean, it's still out there but it doesn't seem to be trying to kill...any...one," Scott about then having looked up and caught Power Girl's eye. Eyes. He doesn't maintain eye contact long as he takes several steps to the right which happen to put Superman between Scott and the glassed in soundbooth above where the two women are making beautiful music together.

     "Yeah, she really unwinds alright," Scott responds with a heaping of sarcasm before looking back to the mega-switchboard. Various lights were starting to go out, the system shutting down as the AI it was built to contain and control was now on the way out. Evolving as it were. Which meant in another minute the most powerful communication device on the planet was about to become useless Scott surmised. One chance. One opportunity. Scott grabs a headset and plunks it on and flicks a switch as the song comes to an end and in his best radio announcer voice tells the world, "Hey all you beautiful guys and gals out there, this is your host the one and only Ant-Man not named Pym and that was The Time Warp by Power Girl and Black Cat. We hope you enjoyed that live performance and we'll be back sometime in the future. For now we are signing off and big thanks to our sponsor...Baskin Robbins. You guys owe me," Scott finishing up as the last light fades and breathing a sigh of relief before he looks back.

     "What? I have a deal with them! I mean, I had to say SOMETHING right?!"

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    The song winds down with her back to the plexiglass plate between her and the mixing studio, and her eyes are locked onto Karen's though she can easily tell that the blonde is staring daggars into Scott's face, and back and head, and everywhere. "PowerGirl." Felicia says softly, trying to break her focus off the source of such tension. "I think we did it." She says, whispering and reaching back to Karen. Her breathing is heavy and her body is charged with the sudden semi-date and she's smiling behind her domino mask with her lips barely parted so she can breath easier and faster.

    "Did he just... bad mouth Baskin Robbins?"

Clark Kent has posed:
"I think he was thanking them..." Superman trails off, looks at the costume, takes a guess. "Black Cat." That sounds right. "Though who knows how well that worked. Everyone heard that?" Superman frowns a bit.

Not at the laser eyes, that's funny. Anyway he'd save Scott. Eventually.

"Where did the phone guy go?" Clark finally asks, eyes glowing as he tries to see where the former guardian of the phone entity. Escaping super-villains almost always means a repeat performance, after all.

Karen Starr has posed:
    The gaze fades after a moment, and she turns back to Felicia. For her part, Karen is... Physically unfazed, as if she has breath to spare. What exactly it takes to get her out of breath is probably a thought best left unthinked.

    "Yeah. Yeah we did. You were great, Cat. I would have preferred that we do this of our own volition or," through her teeth, with another look towards Scott, the door to the booth now open so the both of them can depart- "As an /actual/ last resort, but it wasn't..." she sighs, folding her arms and keeping her gaze on Scott.

    "/That/ bad. It probably beats being punched through the core of the planet again." She pauses for a moment, looking over to Clark then, and Felicia, before going back to Scott. "Would have been nice to remain anonymous, though. I don't need anyone asking me to sing on the street, or asking what other kinds of sounds my voice can make."

    Unfurling her arms, and taking another breath, "Yeah, he's got some kinda... Deal with Baskin Robbins. I think he used to work there?"

Scott Lang has posed:
     "I don't...I don't know. We got so busy with trying to stop this thing that...oh," Scott adding a dramatic pause as he bends down and picks up the giant phone that had once sat across Bell's shoulders. A dramatic music cue would almost seem appropriate except Scott promptly simply drops it on the ground with a clunk. "Yeah I have no idea what that being off means and I am not trying to track that loon down. And heeeeyyyyy PG you were great! Awesome!" Scott congratulates all while noticeably still trying to keep Superman between him and her as he keeps shuffling a bit. "You're also, you know, you which is like the least stealthy person I know so I figured...anyway we did it and nobody got hurt and the only thing broken was a derelict building. I think we did alright team!" Scott desperately seeking some validation it would seem.

Felicia Hardy has posed:
    Felicia looks towards Karen, her back to the window as she crosses her arms, breath catching back up with her and she makes sure her zipper is fully up below her neck and she turns towards the door, letting Karen walk out first with a pat on the woman's shoulder as she steps up behind. "We'll definitely do that on our own in ... a couple years. Not any time soon." Felicia reports as she steps up behind Karen outside and then looks towards Scott and then back to Karen concerned.

    "Again? How often are you being punched through planets?" Felicia asks casually with a smidge of concern before frowning at Scott and walking past with a hand reaching out to mess with the volume control rockers at his finger tips, "Don't be such a corporate shill Ant."

    Cat then leans in close to Scott and his ear, putting her clawed hand on his chest, fingers wide and almost caressing him before she clenches her fingers, claws digging into his suit slightly, "Don't name me like that again." Before she pats his chest and kisses his cheek quickly. "Kapeesh?"

    Turning back to Karen and Clark and addressing the room loudly and almost playfully, "Phone guy's gone I think... I wasn't paying too much attention, but he's got big enough feet, couldn't one of you track him, or listen to his shoes clomping around out there like a lost clown?"

Clark Kent has posed:
Superman crosses his arms as the girls harass Scott a little. Maybe fair's fair, though his lips quirk at the claw pinch. Then again, being outed to half the Eastern Seaboard's a nerve wracking thing for a superhero. Maybe she deserves a little harmless fun.

Superman's facial features twist a little bit, as if noticing something he's unsure of. He looks at Karen, the smile on her face she doesn't want to admit to having.

They look, for a moment, actually related; he has her scowl.

"I'm going to do a flyby, see if I can grab him." Superman says, "We should talk sometime, Miss Cat. Nice work, Ant-Man. Give me a call next time you need a little muscle, I always like these weird ones."

"Up!" Superman kicks into the air, gravity bowing to his will with the faintest exertion of his power. "Up and away!" He's off, like a rocket!