2013.05.11 - Too Hot to Handle?

For the past two days the Jacob Javitz Center has been filled with something that makes little kids and dentists jump for joy. MASSIVE amounts of candy. There's a nice little convention going on. One for all things candy, chocolate, cake, and sweets. And while it's been closed for industry professionals for the first two days, today on the final day of the convention, things are open to the public. Bright colors, sweet scents, cheerful people, and free samples abound.

Bobby Drake is among the guests today. He's taken a few students into the city and wandered into the convention while they're mostly out doing teenager things until it's time for the meetup to head home. Checking out some new candy-themed ice cream pops, Bobby's in a decent mood. "Mm...bubblegum. Pretty good," Bobby murmurs, trying a frozen free sample.

Josie is one of those students who came with Bobby. However, she's curious, and tagged along behind the teacher when he wandered off. And, of course, on seeing just what he's heading into, there's no resisting. To her, candy *is* a teenager thing! She doesn't bother searching out Bobby immediately, though, wandering instead more towards the chocolate section when she 's through the door.

This kind of event doesn't just make kids and dentists jump for joy. A fair share of adults do so as well... Gabriel himself is barely at the point of being called an adult but he's there. And he's also at the convention. And dressed kind of strangely at that. He's wearing a t-shirt and jeans, nothing out of the ordinary there, but he's also wearing an apron that reads, "Chocolate is the fifth food group!" The apron itself has large pockets at the front of it that are showing some clear bulges. Someone has definitely been doing the rounds of the booths handing out free samples. As he walks from booth to booth he's licking a megasized pinwheel lollipop that's almost as big as his face.

There's all kinds of big booths and displays in the chocolate section including a booth for dipping fruit cubes into liquid chocolate. There's even mascots for a certain candy that melts in your mouth but not in your hand giving out sample bags of a new 'Mint' version of their candy treat. Hopefully Gabriel's pockets are extra deep because there's a lot of samples to be given out of all kinds of candy. A few feet in front of him there's a booth giving out samples of a brand new 'SUPER RED HOT DROP POP!' advertised as 'Only for the extremely brave'.

It's not a quiet convention but it's loud enough that few people hear it at first. Something that sounds almost like heavy footsteps. Footsteps getting gradually louder and louder until screams are heard coming from outside. This is followed seconds later by something big and mean crashing through one of the convention center's walls. A rather large humanoid robot decorated with what seems to be oversized novelty ketchup and mustard bottles as well as salt and pepper shakers. It poses a few times before a loud speaker crackles to life. "All make way for the Mecha Condiment King!"

Josie grins as she takes the sample bag of mint candies, "Thanks." She's starting to move on to the next stall when she pauses, looking around curiously at the feeling of the footsteps. She jumps as the wall comes crashing in, but where others might be screaming she can't help but giggle, "Mecha Condment King? That's gotta be a joke."

His booth or two away from where Josie is getting her minty treat Gabriel was collecting a bar of sweet-cream filled milk chocolate made by a Mexican company. Except that just as it was about to be his turn the convention center is sent into a tizzy thanks to the big robot crashing through the door. Much like Josie, Gabriel doesn't react the way most of the convention atenedees that have noticed the robot have. Instead of running away or yelling in surprise Gabriel sighs then cups his hands around his mouth to yell out at the robot, "Hey Condibot! The Spice Girls convention is two buildings over. And they have a bi door around the back, so you don't have to go crashing down the walls there." As he speaks his hand snakes out and snags two or three of the candy bars he was about to get for free. Just because they're there.

"Oh you have gotta be kidding me..." Bobby trails off, sunglasses tipping slightly as he watches the mech stepping on the ADA booth giving out toothpaste and toothbrushes. Security guards rush forward and open fire only for bullets to ping harmlessly off the mech. Condiment King laughs, pointing an arm at the guards. The guns on the arm spin a moment before firing a thick red liquid at the guards...who immediately collapse, coughing and yelling in pain. Hot sauce. The laughter continues as the mech stomps past them. Booths crumble and when Gabriel gets the mech's attention it turns his way. "Silence!" Condiment King demands, firing a stream of spicy mustard at Gabriel with the force of a firehose.

Ok, not a joke. Josie stops laughing as that booth gets crushed and the bullets start flying. She ducks as the mustard flies over her at Gabriel, looking around quickly. She starts to make her way closer to the big mech, rather than away, but she's looking for Bobby as she looks through the crowd.

Gabriel's eyes go a little wide as the mustard come flying at him but instead of dodging out of the way he puts his forearms infront of his face, keeping the wustard away from his eyes, mouth, and nose. And in the process throughouhly ruining his lollipop. As the jet of yellow goop hits him he rides it back and over the booth's table, tumbling in a controlled way so that now the table is serving as a shield. Once he's out of the direct line of fire he uncovers his face, frowns at his ruined candy and blindly throws it at the robot, "Oh, now its /on/, Saucybot!" He does not sound at all happy...

Where's Bobby? Well plain old Bobby Drake is gone. In his place, the Iceman! Sure he's not in his usual 'uniform', but he's armored up and rising into the air on an ice slide. As the Condiment Bot tries to blast a crowd of helpless bystanders with some horrrible red goop, it finds it's barrel clogged with snow. "Dude! Unless you got a caramel or chocolate sauce setting on that thing, you're in the wrong place!" Iceman calls, focusing on protecting people from the mech so they can get away. "So how about stepping off before I have to put you on ice?"

The mech seems unimpressed with Bobby and Gabriel. Not yet noticing Josie, the mech swats at Bobby and keeps heading for that 'Super Red Hot Drop Pop!' booth. "You'll pay for stealing my formula!"

Josie blinks as she sees Iceman rise up, and grins, saying under her breath, "So cool... literally." But then she's looking to where the Mech is going. She ducks under a table and a moment later there's a puddle of water spreading out on the floor right in the mech's path.

Everything's gone quiet behind the table Gabriel is using as a shield. 5 or 6 seconds after Gabriel yelled out his challenge the spot where he was undercover is now occupied by a small mound of varied candies and a somewhat pissed off looking pigeon. After fluffing its feathers out with a shake to get the worst of the mustard covering it the pigeon takes off and flies as high up as the ceiling allows, heading in the general direction of the robot...

"Keep moving, people! Stay cool and calm and you'll get out just fine!" Iceman calls to fleeing people. When he sees the mech going to stomp on the new booth, he fires off an icy blast at it, disabling one arm. The mech responds by the shoulder-mounted cannon turning to aim his way. "Didn't you hear? Winter is over!" Condiment King almost screeches, blasting Iceman with salt. It's far from normal salt, already starting to melt his slide and armor. "Woah!" Bobby yelps, working to get the salt off. He's not keen on seeing what it does to flesh and blood.

That done, the mech keeps stomping forward. It steps right in the Josie-puddle and doesn't even seem to notice the mustardy pigeon.

As soon as the mech steps in the puddle, Josie (who actually is the puddle) starts streaming up the outside of the Mech. She's looking for any cracks in the machinery, a way into he inner workings, or even better, into the cockpit.

The pigeon makes its way to a point where its right over the robot, as high as it can possibly be. And after doing what pigeons do with statues, even moving ones that shoot condiments, it folds it wings and starts to drop like a rock. As it drops it turns into a mass of protoplasm, looking a lot like an amoeba that grows from pigeon sized to human sized in the span of a few second and then turns into Gabriel, apron and all, a second or two after splatting onto the top of the robot. Grabbing onto the nearest protrusion of the robot so he doesn't go sliding off then Gabriel looks around and grabs the first hose he see with his free hand. As soon as he has a good grip on it he starts to tug on it in hard solid yanks, clerly looking to disconnect or break it. "Knock,knock! Anyone home? Who designed this thing for you anyway? Tim Allen?"

It's not too hard for that hose to come loose but Gabriel might not be happy about the results because breaking the hose results in wasabi going everywhere. There's an emergency release pull on the hatch nearby if Gabe isn't blinded by spicy doom.

There's plenty of spaces in the legs and waist of the robot to get into the machinery but the goldmine is on the robot's torso...slipping under the relfective glass covering will provide a way into the cockpit where a rather colorfully costumed man is at the controls...

Aha! Finding her way into the cockpit, Josie flows entirely into it, flowing around the Condiment King and up. An 'arm' of water punches out of her mass up at the guy's chin while other streams of water reach out for the controls, trying to find a shutdown switch or at least mess up his control. Of course, she avoids anything that looks like it might shock her.

Gabriel's reaction times are much better than a normal person's but this wasabi spray comes almost out of nowhere and under quite a bit of pressure. He manages to shut his eyes in time to avoid being blinded but he also jerks off to the side to try and dodge. Jerking like that while you're riding a moving, hostile robot that wasn't designed to be riden piggyback is usually a bad idea. And this time is no different. Off he goes, blinfly flailing his arms to try and grab onto one of the multiple hoses sticking out of the robot to stop his fall. Or at least cause some more damage before he's completely off the bot. HIs eyes he keeps scrunched tightly shut, clearly intending on not opening them again until his been able to wipe the wasabi off his face. But that doesn't shut him up, "You know? The least you can do if you're going to call yourself the Condiment King is use top notch condiments. They wouldn't even use this wasabi in a Japanese Mickey D's!"

And down goes the Gabriel. Hoses snap and break as he grabs them, adding all manners of sauces, peppers, salts, mustards, and ketchups to the mess coating him. Thankfully it's not hard floor waiting for Gabriel. Nope, he lands in a pile of nice and fluffy snow created by the Iceman. The icy mutant is back on his feet and sliding around to encase the mech's legs in ice. "You alright down there, Blobby Boy?" he calls, not sure what else to call Gabriel.

Inside the mech, Condiment King looks down in surprise as things start getting wet. He'd respond to Gabriel but he's too busy trying to swat at the water. He's about to make a bad pun when Josie's fist connects with his glass jaw...and even knocks out a tooth! The shut down isn't easy to find but there is a button to open the cockpit. Ooh, shiny red button!

Big red buttons work! Josie reaches out to push that while doing her best to push the condiment king's hands away from any controls, if he's even still conscious.

POOF

Snow goes flying everywhere as Gabriel lands in the middle of the pile of snow Iceman has provided. And bonus? Now he has something to wash his face off with. Taking two handfuls of snow he scrubs his face clean as quick as he can then cracks his eyes open just a tiny little bit to make sure all the stuff on and around his eyelids is gone. "Thank you much, Mr. Iceman. And Gabriel is good enough. The funny names go to the bad guys, right?" Once he can open his eyes he looks up at the robot, now with two people in the open cockpit and points at Josie and asks Iceman, "One of your?"

WHOOSH

The cockpit opens as the mech is stuck in the ice. Condiment King is still away and reaching for his weapon. "Get off you freaky fish habitat!" he demands, batting at the water.

Iceman meanwhile laughs. "Everyone gets one, dude," he calls to Gabriel. Coming around in front of the mech, he blinks a few times when he sees the water and smiles. "Yeah...hey! Undine! Time to bail outta there!" he calls, not wanting to freeze his student.

As soon as she hears Bobby's call, Josie is flowing out of the cockpit and dropping to the ground, and then flowing away from the Mech's feet before that icethere freezes her too. The water flows up into a human form again and then Josie, aka Undine, is there, stepping quickly away from the Mech wearing her training uniform, which she must have had on under her clothes.

Gabriel gets out of the pile of snow and looks up at the Condiment King while still talking with Iceman, "Yeah, but Blobby Boy? Not even Blobby Man?" And then he switched to the person he's actually looking at. Waggling a finger at Condiment King he says, "Naughty, naughty, Condi. Now why don't you get out of there, nice and quiet like before you're turned into a well seasoned popsicle? Your bot there is half taken apart already and its three against one..." He arches a yellow, green, and red tinted eyebrow at the man in the bot, "And at least one of the three is /craAanky/!"

"Because that's already taken and you're young," Iceman comments. He doesn't give Condiment King a chance to respond or use that weird gun of his, trapping the guy in icy restraints in the mech. At least he has something for his sore jaw. Sliding down to the floor near Gabe and Josie, Iceman looks at them both and grins. "You guys okay?"

Josie grins back at Iceman and nods quickly, "I'm fine." Then she glances around and asks, "Is everybody else ok, did everybody get out of the way and stuff? I tried to stop him as fast as I could."

Looking down at himself and taking in his multicolored appearance Gabriel then looks back at Iceman and Josie. "Well, you can put a fork in me since I'm done and well seasoned at that." Squinting back up at Condiment King he sighs a bit and says in a whistful voice, "I wouldn't imagine there would be a way to send you the cleaning bill for this, would there, Condi?"

Iceman gives Josie a little 'did good, kiddo' nod. "I think most people are okay. I told 'em to call 911 so hopefully it'll work out..." he trails off. Shaking off the ice armor, Bobby takes his wallet out and pulls out a small card with a phone number on it. The wallet goes back into his pocket and he holds the card out to Gabriel. "Me and the little squirt here have to get going and you should probably hit the road too before the cops show but feel free to give me a call. We should talk," he says, the sound of sirens getting louder. Condiment King meanwhile is struggling in his ice-bindings, yelling muffled curses and bad food puns.

Josie quickly steps over to the table she first disappeared under, ducking under and coming back out with a rolled-up bundle of her clothes. She then quickly walks back over to Bobby, and adds to Gabriel, "Nice to meet you."

Gabriel bow slightly to Josie before taking the card Iceman is offering, "Nice to meet you both. And I think leaving before the police get is, indeed, a good idea." With a little dash he goes over to the booth he knocked over when he was plastered with the mustard cannon on quickly gathers up all the candy samples that were in his pockets originally before starting to jog out with the last remnants of the crowd, matching their pace with practiced easy to not draw attention to himself, except for when he looks back and waves on last, quick time.