2014.08.31 - Sproing Went A Spider

It's a quiet evening in Lower Metropolis. People are going home from work and school, carrying bag and backpack. It's clean and bright, as is much of Lower Metropolis. People in suits exchange greetings, buy warm, fresh food from places and do their thing. All seems quiet and well as the sun begins to set. As darkness trickles over the land, street lights coming on and the world giving a soft sigh as night comes on here.

It's when it gets dark that they come out. It's ninja. An entire squad of them, in navy blue to black outfits start repelling down the side of a building. A sushi restaurant? Who attacks those? They are quiet, but that soon shatters once a glass wall goes out.

Jimmy is passing by the restaurant, on his way to his favorite Korean place, when he spots the rappelling rapscallions descending. Ninjas? In Metropolis? He thought they were a New York thing, but apparently not. A duck into an alley, a quick costume change, and the young reporter bounces out of the darkness as he attempts to get a twist in the left foot of his costume to work itself out.

'Too bad', he thinks, as the wardrobe malfunction corrects itself, 'I didn't bring the nightvision camera'. The redheaded hero springs to a lampost, elastic limbs contracting as he balances there. 'What in the world could they want /here/?'

Miles' parents think he gets a cab when he makes visits home on weekends. But, instead, that money goes into his webfluid fund as he takes the much faster, and a lot more /fun/, route home. Swinging along on webs, occasionally running along the side of a building, The Spider's high-speed path takes him right to the building the ninjas are rappelling down as he almost trips over one of their ropes. After a quick twisting maneuver to grip the wall and stop himself, he settles on the wall of that building, looking down at the ninja just as the glass breaks, "What the..."

Whatever floats a spider's boat. The ninja could only hope to websling around as he does. But they can't. Spider-envy.

They don't notice Miles just yet, because the ninjas are bent on their mission. They seem like they're - breaking the restaurant to bits? Looking for something? Could it be a business sabatoge? Hard to say. Furniture is being smashed and overturned, vases thrown out the window. They don't notice Jimmy, er- Elastic Lad, either. They are focused on their mission. Quietly as smashing a place up can be.

Well, time to do something about this, Jimmy thinks, as he leaps, bounces, and shoots into sushi shop through an already-ruined window. He's hoping the element of surprise will work in his favor, as he elongates his limbs and starts punching, grabbing, and tripping ninja as best be can with his hyper-elongategd physiology.

"You can't bust up the place without ordering. At least then you could complain," the red-headed youth says. OK, not Spider-Man material, but he's never had time to work on Snappy Banter.

The Spider watches as the other hero he doesn't recognize bounds in, then lets go of the building and just drops towards the ground. A last-minute web suddenly changes his direction 90 degrees and he swings right into the restaurant, feet first towards the nearest standing ninja. "Naw, they're not smart enough to come up with valid complaints. I mean, come on, breaking windows in the middle of Metropolis? Only the really stupid do that."

The ninja are very focused, and are causing an immense amount of property damage. Katanas, small explosives wrapped in paper and other means including martial arts. While they are powerful, and some may even have limited chi abilities, none quite expected an Elastic Lad. Clearly they figured they would be too small fry for anyone to notice right off. But they underestimated Metropolis. Several trip, and go flailing around, punched and grabbed by elastic limbs. "Wha-" Some of them speak English, it seems!

The ninja nearest the window wall where the Spider swings in gets a total Spider-Kick and goes flying over a table, to skid across the floor and slump against a wall. He's stunned and seeing stars. A lot of stars. The few remaining ninja kind of turn to the two. Elastic lad gets some ninja stars and a small paper bomb lobbed at him, similarly the Spider. They have the ninja's attention.

Elastic Lad's limbs stretch out and snatch up a mostly-intact table to block the throwing stars; the small bomb, being blunt trauma damage, does little to him but it does fling him against a nearby wall. 'Wow, I'm fighting alongside Spider-Man!' the young reporter thinks, most of his attention on the ninja and not on how small the newly-recostumed Spider-Man looks. His reporter's observation skills don't fail him when one of the ninja speaks English, though - he takes the seconds to send out two pairs of tentacle-like fingers to pluck the masks from a couple of the downed ninja, just to see what we have here...

Luckily, getting a bunch of stuff thrown at him and having to react is exactly the kind of training Tommy's been putting Miles through. He shoots out a couple web-blobs to try to deflect the bomb and a couple of throwing stars, and then twists into a spin to catch the remaining stars thrown his way. "Oh, awesome! I've always wanted some of these! You shouldn't have. Here, let me give you something," and he uses a foot to send an already-damaged chair flying at a concentration of ninjas before shimmering into his camouflaged near-invisibility.

The table takes the throwing stars handily. And as the masks are removed, they look like ordinary Japanese guys. Could throw 'em in as extras in some sort of samurai movie, even (owch!). Just dudes, really. Well trained dudes. Some look more at home as thugs, though. Which might make an odd sense.

Bombs are caught in web fluid and detective, as the stars are deflected and caught. The ninja look a little horrified as a chair comes at them. Two scramble, one gets nailed. Their numbers are thin. One's even bailing out.

"Dammit, Jiro!" One hisses after him. Not worth it! Not worth it! And then the guy throwing things goes semi-invisible. Wonderful. One of the last few (maybe about 5 or so?) ninja takes a potshot at Elastic Lad with a vase, and one tries his luck with a bomb towards - wherever that spider guy was. But for their part, they're just desperately scrambling.

Elastic Lad slaps his forhead. 'Let me get you something!' Exactly the sort of thing he should have said! Olsen drops the table and manages to get beaned with the vase, the water blinding him for crucial seconds as he wipes at his eyes and splutters. "Man!" he grouses as he sees the ninja retreating. "That was a rush.." he says as he looks around the wrecked restaurant, shaking his head. "Spidey, what do you think these guys wanted here?" he says as he starts to pick up unconscious or stunned ninja, tying them up temporarily in his own hyper-elastic arm.

The Spider appears on the ceiling, shooting a series of webs out over the broken window to try to catch the last of the ninja trying to flee. Then he joins Elastic Lad in webbing up the downed ninja. "My guess is protection racket and this restaurant didn't pay. Which goes into their stupidity again. In this city, people are already protected without having to pay a thing."

Dialogue is a tough art to master. But the ninja are defeated. They seemed surprised heroes had the time to bother, really. And they are easy to tie up or pin down. One chuckles at the protection racket. "Not so much protection... order due to internal politics," He offers cryptically before passing out. But definitely, definitely assaulting something in Metropolis was not one of their wiser choices.

And it's not too hard for the Spider to web poor Jiro. Jiro's a well trained human, and never really dealt with any Spider-people(TM). And it seems perhaps the owner had some sort of misdealings with the ninja's master. Ah, funny how that all works.

Elastic Lad tries to set as much right in the busted-up restaurant as he can, while they wait for the cops to show up to take these guys away. The Owner's explanation just gets a head-shake from the young reporter.

Now that he can see the small figure, he's... vaguely sure it might not be Spider-Man, so he offers a hand. "Elastic Lad," he smiles, as if that wasn't obvious from his chest emblems.

The Spider drops back to the floor, and then looks to Elastic Lad, shaking the offered hand, "I'm The Spider. Cool to meet you. You did fantastic." Then he hears a siren and says, "I better go. I'm not registered yet and the cops in this town are... kind of arachnophobic."

The ninja are thoroughly beaten down. The owner will help clean up, call the cops and it might take a few minutes, but the police response is swift compared to say, Gotham or New York. The Spider will have time for his introduction and departure, at least.

Elastic Lad doesn't wear a mask but it's not surprising some might still not recognize him. "You did good as well; that's quite an homage you're pulling off, there," Jimmy says as he takes a look outside to make sure the younger hero isn't about to be corralled, here. "And yeah, you better take off in a minute or two. MPD is OK about a lot of things, but they get twitchy when New York heroes start to show up, for some reason."

The Spider grins, not that it's apparent through his mask, "Well, not quite meant as an homage. Long story." Then he nods and says, "Well, yeah, I can get it. There's people in masks on both sides of things. Still, you'd think they'd relax a bit more with some of us." He starts to step outside and says, "Again, cool to meet you."

Elastic Lad waves to The Spider. "I'll take care of the cops, then, and good luck. Good night!" he calls after the boy. He takes a small digital camera from his belt, and takes several photos of the scene, and - if he allows it - The Spider as well. "Might as well get some positive press for you, at least..."

The cops will come a little after Spider departs. Ninjas are carted off in handcuffs, read their rights and so on. They will thank Elastic lad (the cops, not the ninjas) and the night in Metropolis will resume. Police tape goes up over the restaurant's shattered glass window/wall thinger.

The Spider does allow the photos, a bit exaggerated in his posing perhaps. But then the cops get near and he says, "See you later!" He steps outside, leaps, and swings away.