2014.01.02 - A Bunch of Kids Beat-Up The Shocker

New Years Day in Brooklyn, New York. It was a surprisingly sunny, Winter afternoon--normally it would be quiet, but the weather brought out a larger crowd than usual. In the middle of one particular busy, commercial street the scene was action-packed. The birds (that hadn't gone South) were peepin', the laughs of small children could be heard echoing from some place out of sight. And even the squirrels were bustling. Come to think of it... the squirrels were especially active, encircling this one particular street corner with fervor. Nobody really seemed to notice, however. From above, perched on a roof of a deli shop, mostly out of sight, the unflappable Squirrel Girl watched across the street, stuck on high alert. She was up to something, that's for sure.

After a good ten minutes of eagle-eyeing the intersection, she began chittering rather obtuse squirrely noises to the few squirrels gathered around her. She sounded excited, at least, like she'd discovered something. It was just then that her eyes locked upon a rather creepily-dressed, trench-and-hat man lurkishly shuffling down the way. He stopped in front of a diamond ring store that was closed for the holiday, and cocked his head to the side. He spent some time observing the crowd, and with a sudden, loud blurt, he shouted to himself, "Ahh, screw it!"

The man's hands became more visible--they were strange, yellowish metallic gauntlets, and an ungodly squeal of electricity ripped out of them, shattering the door, the glass of the shop, and rattling many stores in the area. Alarms of the shop rang out instantly, echoing down the street, and a dozen random citizens nearby began shouting in panic.

He probably should have slept or gone back to the Terminal at least, but Axiom's in no mood for that. After the trouble last night with Loki and Times Square, he's been searching for any sighs of the missing people or Norse gods in need of kicking. Traveling via sewers and the tunnels hidden under the city today, the armored and costumed teen hero is just coming out of a grating in an alley for a little fresh air when he heard that noise and all the chaos. Frowning, Axiom takes off towards the sounds of the panic to see what help he can provide.

A new year and another adventure! Or at least that was Molly's plan when she snuck out to wander the streets of New York. And hey it's a great opportunity to buy discounted cakes which stores couldn't sell in time for New years eve! Which is why Princess Powerful is nomming on a giant wedge of black forest gateau when the alarms start. She glances around and, while trying to figure out what's going on, crams the rest of the cake into her mouth.

Dressed in a black t-shirt under a white hoody, Zack has been quite busy. However, the cold doesn't really particularly bother him since he's cheating about that. Currently he's got his phone to his ear as he says,"Yes mother, I will be home for dinner tonight. Don't worry. I promise I won't do anything that you would disapprove of right now." He's not PLANNING on doing anything that would get him in trouble,"I know I said that last week but it really wasn't planned!"

With a stumbled, ungraceful, wild leap, Doreen Green sprung into action, twirling in a leap from the rooftop to the ground below, confused murmurs bleeping from her little friends overhead. *Thump!*

"Okay, mister masky-guy. Patty Petunia and Sassypants have been casing your suspicious shenanigans for *days* and now we've caught you. Um... red... handed..." Doreen's voice trailed off as she spoke, realizing that what she thought would be an intimidating speech to a criminal hadn't even caught his notice. With a forceful punch, the remaining glass-and-metal door of the jewelry shop went flying off its hinges, and the intruder quickly made his way inside.

Doreen stood there for a moment, and then turned to her shoulder. There sat Tippy-Toe, her faithful sidekick, a lovely pink bow adorning its fuzzy neck. "I'm sorry the alarms are hurting your ears," she said compromisingly, "But this is what we do! We stop guys like this!" After a moments pause, she shouted into the store once again, "Hey! Stop that... you!" Her shout was once again met with complete indifference.

Axiom's eyes widened behind his mask when he saw the criminal in question. "Him -again-?" Axiom murmured. Third encounter with Shocker for this hero. Before he can cross the street to go after the bad guy, there's Doreen. Axiom skids to a halt and blinks. Not a sight he was expecting to see outside the park. He shakes it off though when he sees that Doreen's getting ignored by the bad guy. Hopping up and over cars, the power-boosting member of the Young Allies lands next to Doreen. "H-hi. Mind a team up?" he offers, glancing the villain's way to make sure they're not about to get blasted.

"Woohoo! A /crime/ to stop!" Molly shouts with glee, dashing down the street towards the sound of the alarms. A big smear of cream from the cake still on the side of her face. Before she can charge into the store she skids to a halt and points at Tippy-Toe. "/OMG/. That squirrel is wearing a bow! That's the cutest thing EVER." She claps with glee, then ducks down to wave. "I'm Princess Powerful. Who're you little guy?"

"Oh for the love of..." Zack doesn't have his costume with but he does have his sonic screwdriver with him. He sort of pops in next to Molly and the rest of them,"Really? What is going on here?" He asks curiously as he stands there with his sonic screwdriver out and twirling it a little bit. It's obviously a toy version but since Day of the Doctor he's just been having so much fun using it for spells. "So really what are you thinking you'll do?" He asks in a polite upper-class London accent.

Doreen's eyes got really big with the sudden appearance of the three. She wasn't sure if they were all heroes, but their bravery touched her. But she turned back to the shop, undeterred.

The criminal was indeed the dastardly Shocker, having tossed his creeper-fedora to the side and more or less revealing his classic costume underneath. He had metallic-looking bags strapped to his sides, and was making short work of punching through glass cases and scooping the glittery contents. After getting about fifty percent through looting the store, the idea occurred to him that he should take a glance behind him. He didn't expect anything--after all, he'd been working especially fast, but rage swelled up in his instantly when he saw four people standing right outside the door... what would've been mere confusion was interrupted by the sight of Axiom. Didn't he know him? *These were hero-types!*

Something snapped in The Shocker's mind. "No," he mumbled sharply, in a desperate whisper to himself, and proceeded to raise his volume into a tantrum-esque shouting tirade! "No! NO. *NO!*" He bellowed, as the newly-revamped electric-system powering his electric gauntlets fired up. Within three or four seconds, an intense, blue-colored blast of pure electric energy erupted mightily out of his hands, making an incredible amount of noise, and pummeling the doorway where Doreen and Axiom stood. "NOT THIS TIME!!" he shouted, his voice cracking slightly with fury. These beams tore through the wall like it were cardboard, and Doreen quickly tumbled away for safety, using her squirrel-agility. "Get away from that beam!" she shouted.

The appearances of Molly and Zack just gets Axiom staring a moment. He's not sure who they are but he's positive it isn't safe for them. He looked back in time to see that Shocker had noticed them all and tensed. "Oh b-boy..." he trailed off. He tumbles out of the way too, no extra agility but his own helping him evade. Stopping in a crouch, he takes his staff off his belt but keeps it attached. "Listen t-t-to her, getting hit by those beams really hurts!"

If Molly hadn't already been ducking down to wave at Tippy-Toe then she might have been in serious trouble as the energy beam scythes through the air above her, slightly scorching the tip of one of the ears on her hat and shearing a street light in two. "Oi! Mr Jerkface you better surrender or you'll be sorry," she shouts, her eyes glowing violet she reaches back and grabs for something to throw. In this case? It's the base of the street lamp which she tears free from the ground (complete with a sizable chunk of sidewalk and concrete foundation) as if she was picking a flower.

"Really you don't want to be doing that." Zack says as he makes a circle around himself with the sonic screwdriver and then whispers softly to himself for a moment before a dome of pure energy surrounds him. "Now... Can we discuss your surrender or are is she going to have to engage in unpleasant activities with the chunk of cement that's she holding? It looks like it would hurt quite a lot." He says as he takes off his glasses and slides them into a pocket, squinting as if he were dealing with a particularly bright light."Which shall it be?"

After finding a not-so-safe position behind a steel mailbox on the street corner about 20-feet from the store, Doreen took a quick moment to watch the three young heroes move away from Shocker's initial, blind attack, which was moving into 'unrelenting' territory, as he rained destruction across the street corner. It was as if The Shocker were trying to erase the store from existence... with an evil fire hose... had he lost his mind?

"Omigosh!" Doreen quickly said, watching Molly pluck the metal base of the street lamp from its concrete home. The Shocker, with one hand, continued his assault, while trying to clumsily dump a few more random diamond trinkets into his bag. After seeing Molly's threat, The Shocker decided it was once again time to cut his losses, and he gave up this futile act of trying to collect every last item in the store. And decided it was probably time to make a break for it. Thankfully, he thought, he'd made quite a few exit holes in his assault.

All the while, Squirrel Girl had been chittering away a stream of instructions to Tippy-Toe, who leap onto the side of a neighboring building and began to climb above. Continuing to look on, she was really impressed with the sight of these three recent arrivals. "Wowee! Be careful!" she called out, taking a moment to consider her next tactic.

Axiom keeps moving once he's got his feet under him. Staying low to avoid beam strikes, he stops occasionally to peek out and plan the next move. Molly's concrete threat gets a moment of staring before he gets moving again. When he sees Shocker heading for one of those improvised exits, Axiom jumps and puts himself between the villain and escape. His staff is extended with a quick spin and Axiom settles into a defensive stance. "R-really, Shocker. Put down the jewels and surrender we w-won't have to do the thing where you get punched a lot again."

Molly Hayes grins, then charges waving the street lamp and the attached lump of concrete & sidewalk like a giant club. "Face the wrath of Princess Powerful, you fiend!" She doesn't seem to notice that her club is catching the ceiling and ripping a path through the roof panels.

"Well I did warn him." Zack says as he sits down on the ground,"Spirits of Earth and Air, I call upon you to inhabit these forms and become as I decree." He says pulling two little cutouts from his pocket and tosses them into the air. The energy flares into them as they expand leaving behind a large griffin and a huge typical grey golem. Undoing his barrier magic, Zack climbs upon the griffin's back and takes to the air. The golem though places a hand upon the ground causing the ground to flex around Shocker's feet. "Should I have warned him about that..." He asks of no one in particular.

Feeling the rumble from the sudden appearance of a griffin, The Shocker calmed himself with a lie. The lie was that that griffin wasn't really there and some kind of crazy illusion. Feeling the rumble, he acted fast, and with a nervous, almost sarcastic laugh, The Shocker (aka Herman Schultz) flung his arms up into the air, as if the cops had asked him to put his arms up for arrest. In truth, poor ol' Herman was pretty familiar with this experience and his mimicry was reasonable... though one of his arms was cocked slightly at an angle. "Alright, I'll go in peace," he started, with a transparent sort of confidence in his tone.

Suddenly! Both his gauntlets shot out a quick blast, erupting into the ceiling above.... he was targeting over the heads of both Molly and Axiom, and large chunks of building materials came tumbling down. "And you'll go in pieces!" he cackled, proud of himself thinking the two brats were about to go ker-splat under the falling rubble. Secretly, he was embarrassed by the use of this tired pun, but he still took pride in this time-tested tactic of escape. ("Well, okay, it did work that one time," he corrected himself. Herman had an inner-dialogue going.)

Darting sharply to an alternate escape route with a zap-crackle-pop sound, he turned around only to meet the horrifying, sudden, close-up image of squirrel claws. It was Tippy-Toe the squirrel, who had lept onto an oncoming Shocker, and began scratching and biting feverishly at his eyes, tearing through his mask.

"AHHHHH!!" he recoiled backwards, squealing more out of freaked-out surprise than actual pain, still managing to stay on his feet.

A Griffin, a scary-strong little girl, and a sort of surrendering villain. Out of all of them, only the last one is really strange to Axiom. He's not used to the bad guys actually giving up. And when he notices how cocked that arm is, he realizes that it's probably not giving up time. "Look out!" he calls to Molly before throwing himself to the side. It's not anywhere near as graceful as the earlier tumbling...which wasn't all that graceful to begin with. He hits the floor with a thud, the armor on his arm the only thing keeping him from serious injury. He may not have got splat but he'll need a few moments to recover.

Molly actually stops her charge when the Shocker starts to surrender. Then as Axiom shouts she turns her head and manages an elegant "Huh?" before a ton of masonry drops on her head. Through the dust there is a moment where it looks like perhaps Princess Powerful has met her untimely end! And then the pile of rubble shifts as Molly simply shrugs it off, although she's lost her club in the mess. "Neener-neener Dorkface!"

"You know what to do." Zack says simply looking to his golem on the ground that rushes towards shocker like a football player. It's huge form turning a shade of grey like steel. While not the most agile of creatures it is pretty fast. "Look out down there. It isn't very smart but it is quite hard." he says plainly as he shifts his weight a little bit on the griffin, as it begins going down to the ground again so that he can check out Axiom, make sure he's ok.

Poor Herman. Amist seemingly indestructible children, unfathomable, unearthly creatures, a rodent apparently trying to have lunch with his eyes, and a giant Golem barreling towards him.... time just slowed to a crawl for a moment in his head. In the haze, Herman remembered back to working in his garage, only a few months after he dropped out of high school, the very first time he dawned his gauntlets and gear that he'd invented himself. He felt like such a bad-ass. He was going to to take over the world. He'd show them nay-sayers!

The flashback was interrupted by a swift boot to the head accompanied by Doreen Green's signature pep: "Squirrel-CHOP!" she shouted, even though it was a kick. Landing on her feet, she couldn't hide her excitement, as she twitched her feet happily like a toddler who found some hidden candy. The attack sent Shocker jerking directly into the incoming Golem's grasp.

"Nice work, Tippy-Toe!" Doreen said merrily, quickly turning over to Molly, to find out if she was injured.

Axiom's in the middle of pushing himself back to his feet by the time Zack comes to check on him. He's bruised and a little scratched up but none of it seems to be bothering him much. He just ends up blinking a little though. "She does know that w-w-was a kick, right?" he asks no one in particular, collapsing his staff down again and waiting to see if he'll need to jump in again or if the golem will be taking care of things.

Molly Hayes dusts herself down, not even flinching when a final piece of rubble the size of a bowling ball bounces off the top of her head. "Is that a /magic squirrel/?" she asks earnestly. "Because it's probably the cutest thing /ever/. Can... can I pet him? Pleeeaase."

The golem catches Shocker and in a single movement slams him upon the floor hard enough to render most humans and even a lot of non-humans utterly unconscious from the force of the blow. Hopping off of his golem's back Zack takes out his sonic screw driver and waves it over Axioms and pretends to check it like he was reading it,"I think you could do with a bit of healing."He says casually as he begins chanting softly as he waves the sonic over Axiom, working to heal the worst of his injuries.

Expectantly, The Shocker is sent to the ground by the summoned Golem with a conclusive, quick thud. Tippy-Toe makes a grand, arching leap back onto it's most familiar spot, Doreen's shoulder, before gazing forward. The rodent certainly knows its own name, as it's a rather clever squirrel. It twitches its nose, studying Molly. "Sure can," Doreen says, with only a hint of disbelief in her tone, noticing that Molly quickly walking away from part ceiling falling on her. Moving in closer, Doreen tilts forward slightly, letting Tippy-Toe hop onto Molly's shoulder. The squirrel begins sniffing, inspecting Molly, and looking up with its beady little eyes.

Addressing the group, Doreen busts out, "Heeeeey, are you kids mutants?! 'Cause I'm a mutant! I'm Squirrel Girl!" she says with a slightly unsettling wave of pride, "Nice ta meetcha!"

Herman, meanwhile, barely conscious, lets out a pathetic, grumbly moan, realizing that a buncha of kid heroes just foiled his plans.

Axiom jumps slightly when he notices Zack. "I guess I c-could bu-" he pauses, gasping softly when the healing begins. He blinks again when he notices the toy Zack has. he recognizes it as from that show Billy tried to get him to watch even if he doesn't quite remember what it was exactly. Shocker's smashing gets a wince before Axiom nods to Squirrel Girl. "I'm a m-mutant. I'm Axiom," he chimes in, still having no idea he isn't a mutant.

"Not in the slightest." Zack says as he closes his eyes for a moment and both of the golems vanish in a flash of light. "Sorry. It takes a bit more concentration and since they weren't needed..." He shrugs helplessly,"I'm Zack. Sorry. I don't have a codename. Really should probably develop one but I pity anyone who tries to go after my family. They'd probably wish they had never thought of it if they did." He says casually as he continues waving the toy over Axiom. "And no. The device isn't necessary but it is really cool." He says grinning a bit.

Molly Hayes pets Tippy-Toe, a gigantic grin on her face. "Wow he's adorable," she proclaims. "Is that your special mutant power? You have kick-ass squirrel warrior-companions? I totes am a mutant too. It's nice meeting some fellow mutants and... hey you're the kid from the park!" She points at Zack. "So /that's/ what you meant when you said you get upto stuff. You're a wizard... Oh! Do you know Harry Potter? And does that mean Hogwarts is a real place?"

"Wowee!" Doreen chirps, "Other mutants!" smiling brightly at Axiom and Molly, feeling a sense of kinship. It was just at that moment that she remembered that she had an appointment for her part-time job--and there was a stinky four-month old that she needed to watch. Rar! Not even sure where to begin, or what to say, Doreen flung her hand into one of her pockets and began awkwardly searching for something. The building's rather frantic alarm system finally stopped it's sonic assault, and the room was suddenly much more quiet. The peace only lasted five or six seconds, however, since in the distance the wail of police sirens began its approach. Doreen was still digging in her pockets, looking a bit frazzled. Zack's gadgetry caught her eye, along with the talk of wizards, and she remarked, "That's awesomecoolgreat!" while tracking the device's movements with her eyes.

The sound of police sirens catches Axiom's attention and he frowns. Reaching into his belt, he takes out some zip ties and moves over to Shocker to bind his hands. "Thanks for the h-healing, Zack. We should all probably get going before the cops show up though," he says, standing once the villain's been cuffed.

"Honestly no. Hogwarts isn't real unfortunately. Magic is infinitely more complex than Harry Potter magic usually is. I have a lot of training but yes, this is the sort of thing I tend to get up to when I go out." Zack says nodding his head a bit,"Well if anyone would like a lift somewhere... I am happy to oblige. I might not have the griffin at the moment but I do have this..." He says as he points the screwdriver behind him and a vortex of blue light appears,"If anyone would like a lift somewhere, just go through." He says as he stands by the vortex.

Molly Hayes stifles a yawn, then hands Tippy-Toe back to Doreen. "The police? Oh no! I better dash," she declares. "It was neato meeting you all... And I totally should get some of those thingies. They seem waaaaaaaaaaay more practical than bending metal bars into restraints." And thus, with a wave, Princess Powerful makes a break for it. Skipping...

With a peppy, momentary sense of relief, Doreen finally found what she wanted, and pulled some slips of cardboard from her pockets. "I gotta go," she said with a hint of shame, thinking she didn't have time for neither a police encounter nor much conversation. "But take this," she said excitedly, and within two seconds, had handed off business cards to Zack and Axiom. On it was a picture of two squirrels: one with a happy expression, the other with a serious, fierce expression, claws extended. 'SQUIRREL GIRL: Here To Save Your Day' it read, with a telephone number below. Almost instantly, Doreen had begun her departure and was quickly out of site.... "Sooo niiiice to meeeeet yoooooou!" she called out, scampering away with a shocking speed.

Tippy-Toe followed close behind. "Chrt!" it squeaked.