| House of Cards | |||||
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| What: The Royal Flush Gang is Back | |||||
Spiffany's Jewelers. Night had overtaken the skies. Pitch black had overtaken the sights overhead, clouds snuffed out the twinkling stars and part of the Moon's glow. Everything was quiet until five figures moved through the cover of darkness aboard flying cards. Each person wore white mixed with combinations of Red and Black as accents along with bits of a goldish yellow. The Royal Flush Gang was on the move.
Closed circuit cameras on their route suddenly turned black. Red flashes flew from Queen's small staff silenced them. When they stopped at the back of Spiffany King gave the group a nod. Red illuminated the darkness. All of the brick and concrete to the back wall starts to go inward then glowed yellow as it melted becoming indescribably hot. Once the red lights ended the concrete started to cool immediately. As the group waited King said, "Precision my Queen. Everybody remember the plan. Deviation comes only if a complication arises, understood?" A series of nods went out from the group. Every member moved with intention and set aside their cards on the far wall inside the building.
King was overseeing every bit. Jack was working on display cases cutting holes into them to see the product, and to see if Spiffany's displayed the real thing or not. Queen was working on locks behind the display counters around the place. Ten was disabling the alarm. Ace loomed near the front door as security. Once the alarm was disabled Ten went to work on other locks behind display cases. One by one they started to open up. Sometimes they held credit card info, other times the real jewelry and other manner of goods. "Ten. The safe," Queen said in a firm tone. Ten was dressed in a black and white body suit that revealed nothing except a mouth. Ten was moving quickly trying to find a safe. This group was good and clearly didn't care too much about security cameras at the moment.
"King to the House," King pressed his hear and began communicating as he watched everything unfold. He waited a moment before a response came to him from the other end, "We have entry. Usual routine. Alarms are down. No complications. King out."
Heroes would have been notified that a silent alarm was triggered at Tiffany's once the backwall was disposed of. Security would have repeated a very large breach.
Shazam was just cruising the skies around Metropolis when he felt a tug leading him towards Times Square and the Jewelery store in it. He might not have Superman's super hearing, or X-Ray vision, but it doesn't take that kind of stuff to figure out that something's going on inside. It's late at night and there's too much movement for it to be anything but a robbery (not to mention the melted hole in the wall).
Shazam whitles and then says, "Holy Moley! This looks like a job for me!" He flies through the hole and floats in front of the closest thief and says, "A little late night shopping?" He tries to look impressive, crossing his arms, so that his muscles bulge a bit and the magic lightning sparks from the lightning bolt symbol on his chest over his gauntlets.
Superboy had been on his way back to the Hall of Justice when he got the alert over the League comms about the alarm. He rolled his eyes slightly before taking off towards Times Square and its jewelery shop. He arrives a few moments after Shazam, surprised to see him but nodding his way. Arms crossed over his chest, the teen of steel looked around at the gang and shook his head. "Hey, the midnight madness sale is next week."
As the heroes were moving in close Batman chimed in on the radio, "Robbery at Spiffany's. I'm on Monitor Duty," Batman said over the League communication. He was waiting for someone to chime in.
Ace suddenly lunged at Shazam. The figure wore nothing except a white suit that only had one discerning bit of detail on it. His chest bore a giant black spade. Running toward Shazam he tried to tackle the hero. If he was able to get a grip on Shazam it was clear ace was a meta. The strenght was beyond human.
Superboy rolled through and Queen pointed her small staff toward him. Red energy lanced from it. Everyone was wearing white suits with black accents and symbols along with the occassional gold, or red tritiary accent. Energy lanced toward the teen of steel by Queen. Jack and Ten were loading up on what they could before rapdily approaching the exit.
King had a sword slung over his shoulder. Unsheathing it he moved into the bank with the sword at the ready. It seemed King, Queen and Ace were providing cover for the lower cards. King started to speak into his headset, "We have a complication."
Shazam blinks and raises an eyebrow at Ace, "Like... real...?" His words are cut off as he didn't think that Ace was much of a threat. That assumption is changed fairly quickly as Billy gives off an OOMPH as he's slammed into the wall, causing a small crater. He blinks and shakes his head and mutters, "Ow... note to self... let's not do that again."
With that, he pushes off from the wall and flies into Ace, smashing him with a fist.
"Yeah, Superboy respondin'. Shazam's here too. We've got Royal Flush Gang down here," Superboy replies over the comm to Batman. The incomming beam gets him smirking a bit though. Lowering his arms, he focuses his TTK into a defensive shield around himself to disperse the beam against his chest. "Drop the loot before this turns into a game of 52-Pickup," he demands.
Ace got hit and started to stagger from the fist. For Shazam it was like hitting concrete or brick. It wasn't something that would ahve harmed him if he were ar egular human, but Ace didn't give like normal people. Even after getting staggered back Ace moved with decent quickness before taking more swings at the man in red and gold. No words were said not even words, or noises of anger. It was just move and respond. The motions were strange.
"Keep an eye on how he does. Shazam is a potential recruit. Power Girl speaks highly of him," Batman chimed back. The beams deflected off of the shield. Queen kept firing so that Jack and Ten could slip away. As the two were getting away King went charnging in taking slashes upon Superboy. His sword was razor sharp akin to Deathstrokes, but lacked the vibranium it was made out of. While deep down King knew hit was a big risk the destraction was necessary.
Shazam blinks and has to dodge the swings and says, "Wow big man, you're a lot tougher than you look!" Billy considers and then as Ace swings, he grabs his arm and starts to spin, swinging Ace around, faster and faster until he almost kicks up a mini-tornado before he let's Ace go at the last second to hopefully send him through a few display cases and into the heavy cement wall with enough force to hopefully knock him out, or at least put him out of the fight.
He turns quickly to see if Superboy needs help and seeing Jack and Ten trying to slip away, says, "Oh no, it's too early for you guys to be leaving the party... we haven't even gotten to the cake yet!" With that he punches his hands into the floor and tries to use it like a carpet to toss Jack and Ten up into the air and land on the ground. He leaves King to Superboy, it's not right to get involved in other heroes fights unless they need help.
"And are we sure Power Girl hasn't gone nuts?" Superboy asks. "I'll keep an eye on him though," he adds. His jaw sets as the beam hits, pushed back a couple inches due to floating in the air still. When Queen fires again, Superboy dodges and lets a little heat vision lance out at her staff with the intention of making it too hot for her to hold onto. King's approach is initially met with an arched brow and Kon ducks back. "Dude, put that away before you hurt yourself," he says, reaching out to grab King so he can throw him at Queen.
Display cases crumble beneath Ace as he was flung at high speeds. A sea of glass shards go everwyhere lightly illuminating the area. Ace was down for a moment as he was breaking everything. Yet again, noises came from the big guy as he was caused things to bring about pain.
Jack tossed his bag to Ten. With his hands free Jack flicked his wrists. Two blades emerged from underneath not unlike a popular video game franchise's everchanging title character.
Lunging at Shazam, Jack was trying to slash and stab the heroic magical user. Motion after motion came as he was trying to just cut the hero someone. It was a dying effort, but he was going to try.
Holding out her arm suddenly Queen screamed. The staff touched the ground. Queen from there tried to make a run for it. King was caught by Superboy and tossed aside with ease. Queen wasnt' there as she was trying to book it too. It seemed there was no honor amongst thieves, even those of the same suit.
Shazam just shakes his head and says, "Man, you guys really need to find another job, you suck at this..." He simply blocks the blades with his gauntlets, and calls forth the magic lightning, careful with the amperage, letting the metal do the work of conducting it to shock and disable Jack. He calls over to Superboy, "Need any help?"
"Naw, man, I got this," Superboy calls back, frowning when he sees that Queen wasn't there to be King-smacked. "Two of 'em ran for it though. I'll go after one, you get the other?" he suggests. Not waiting for a reply, he takes off after Queen. "Hey, ya know runnin' is not a good idea, right?" he calls after the criminal.
Ace rose up from behind Shazam and suddenly wrapped his arms around the red and yellow clad hero. Suddenly Ace tried to toss the hero over his head. Ace stood at the ready for Shazam. Everything was going strangely for the group.
Queen stopped in front of Superboy and she stared murderous daggers at him. She spat at him knowing it was a wash. Then she went to kick the woman. Her eyes were focused on the hero. At least by now Ten had made it underground.
Billy blinks and says, "Woah!" He's thrown and crashes through some display cases that weren't destroyed already and huffs, "Geez... persistant aren't you... Ok... let's see how you deal with this!" He flies and grabs hold of Ace and holds him up in a bear hug, turns him around and shouts, "SHAZAM!!!" He hits Ace with a blast of full power magic lightning. He shouts again, "SHAZAM!!" Hitting the man once more with full power lightning and finally, "/SHAZAM/!!!!!!!!" The strongest bolt hitting Ace before Billy drops him to the ground. If Ace can still get up after that, then hat's off to him.
Superboy scowls when he ends up spit on, TTK brushing what he can off his costume. The kick gets him frowning more deeply and he holds his ground, knowing Queen is more likely to hurt herself than him. His hand shoots out at high speed to grab Queen's arm. "Okay, now that we're done with that...how about we go found the rest of your little gang then get ya a nice set of cells somewhere?"
Ace suddenly was up and instead of just falling Ace smoked, and shattered it was clear he was a robot. The remaining bits of metal that was Ace was in Shazam's arms. He was clearly down.
Queen was grabbed unceremonously and gathered with the other. Four out of the five cards were there for the two of them. Everything was quiet and sirens could have been heard in the distance. It was just the two of them in terms of heroes a tthe moment. Only a few moments had passed from begining to end.
Shazam blinks and looks at the parts in his hands, "A robot? No WONDER he was so strong... that's WAY COOL!" He grins, "I never knew someone could build a robot like that." He looks around and locates Jack and grabs a pipe that's been exposed by the fighting and wraps it around him to await the police.
Using some zip-ties from one of his belt pouches to bind Queen and King's wrists, Kon makes a quiet mental note to thank Red Robin for telling him to start doing that. He makes sure to bring them all into one pile as Shazam binds Jack. "Nice job, dude," he offers to Shazam, giving him a little friendly punch to the shoulder.
Shazam oofs and rubs his shoulder and says, "Yeah! Thanks Superboy! Nice job with the old lady and mastermind. Who ARE these guys anyways? They look like something out of a Alice in Wonderland tale?" He points to the remains of Ace, "This guy was a WAY COOL robot too by the way, I've never seen anything like it!" He grins, his enthusiasm infectious.
Superboy smirks a little at the 'old lady' comment. "Royal Flush Gang. Card-themed bag guys. We should try to find the one that ran," he lets out a breath and taps his comm. "Superboy to Watchtower. We got four of them but one got away," he says. A quick glance at the badguys and a little headcount and he nods. "Ten is the one that got away. We got the rest of 'em."
Batman came in shortly, "Assessment on Shazam?" at the monitor station Batman started to work on security camears to see who was around, to see if Ten had showed up anywhere or not. He was doing his best, but it was apparent she went underground.
Shazam nods and says, "We just going to leave them here for the police?" There wasn't much else he could do at this point, not having Superman's X-ray vision to scout the sewers and subway.
Superboy glances at Shazam thoughtfully. "He seems cool. Takin' him with me to look for Ten. How far out are the cops from here?" he asks Batman. "I'm seein' how far away they are," he explains to Shazam.
"Cops are in bound. Make your escapes," Batman warnedthem as the sirens were becoming louder. He was watching everything unfold on the screens. His gaze went over everything as he sat back watching.
Shazam blinks and says, "Holy Moley! You're right! We better split up! I'll take the south and see if she's headed towards the Bronx." He floats in the air and says, "Who're you talking to anyways?"
"H-hey! We don't have to split up. Stick with me, man," Superboy chuckles, leading the way outside and up into the air. "Batman. He's up on the Watchtower."
Shazam blinks, "Batman? Don't you think he's... creepy? Like, SUPER CREEPY? I used to idolize him, but when I met him, all I could think was... That dude's a super stalker... He KNEW things that I didn't know he could find out about me!"
The Sirens were getting extremely close if they didn't run now there was going to be some explaining that had to do. Even now they could see the colors of the sirens in the distance. It was do or die when it came to gettering out of there.