18 June 2017
The Exalted Alliance (minus The Spirit of Sobek) stand at the top of a flight of stairs leading down into the ruined basement of Dynamic Solutions, having just lifted up a hinged slab of concrete that had been engineered to conceal the stairwell. After a brief discussion, they decide to descend to find out what has been hidden before contacting the police.
In dim light they descend two flights of stairs before finding a door that they can open, a door that opens into a bare well-lit room being guarded by a figure wearing a full suit of advanced combat armour. The surprised guard immediately springs to his feet and opens fire at them with his silenced submachine gun, while the heroes take what cover they can around the doorway. Unfortunately for the Stirling Slugger, he takes the full brunt of the guard’s attack in the chest and is sent reeling backwards across the stairwell and into the opposite wall. While The Herald (who was invisible) rushes over to heal Stirling Slugger, The Inquisitor engages the guard in combat with his blaster pistol. The Herald finds that the Stirling Slugger is in a very bad way, bleeding badly from multiple gunshot wounds, but she is able to use her magic to heal him back to almost full health in a matter of moments. Luckily, The Inquisitor is able to get in a good shot on the guard and the altercation ends before he raises the alarm.
With the guard defeated they removed his armour before reviving him to question him. The guard, Iain MacDonald, was initially reluctant to give them any information, but The Herald was able to sweet talk him (without magic) and he was soon telling them just about everything they wanted to know…
Iain had been member of the Dynamic Solutions security before they had all been laid off and replaced with weirdos from an alternate earth. After the whole invasion thing was dealt with, and when the Dynamic Solutions ruins were just left lying around, Iain was contacted by Dominic Jones, an old work colleague, with an offer for work. They would do some “slightly shady” stuff for people while wearing their old Dynamic Solutions armour. Being out of work, Iain, and a bunch of others, had agreed to this. The whole thing was put together by Eric Iabo, who had been Iain’s manager back in the day and was now trying to get people to call him Dynamo Soldier.
Having heard Iain’s story, The Inquisitor tries to send a summary to Detective Daniels, but finds that he has no phone reception underground. The team decides to return to the surface, taking Iain with them, and to contact the police before proceeding. They do this without incident and Detective Daniels is quite interested to hear about what Iain has had to say (they keep Iain in the dark about who they are talking to over the phone). Daniels advises the heroes to stay where they are while he arranges for SWAT back up and promises to meet up with them as soon as possible.
While they are sitting around waiting for the police to arrive (and making small talk with Iain, who is still quite friendly to them), the heroes suddenly realise that sooner or later Iain’s presence down below will be missed. What, the wonder, will happen if Iain is missed before the police arrive? For a bit of extra safety, the heroes decide to swing the concealing slab of concrete back over the stairwell while they’re waiting. Also while they’re waiting, the heroes learn a little more about the capabilities of their armoured foes. They learn that a couple of people are carrying assault rifles with built in grenade launchers, for example.
Some twenty minutes later the police are pulling up in their armoured vans and Detective Daniels is running across the rubble strewn lot as an unseen group of armoured figures begin climbing the darkened stairwell. As Iain is being led away (feeling betrayed) by a couple of police officers and Detective Daniels is getting further information from The Inquisitor, Stirling Slugger notices the concrete slab “lid” beginning to rise up as it is opened from beneath by the ascending guards. Everyone quickly scrambles into cover (or into an ambush position) as the lid continues to open to reveal three armoured figures nearing the top of the stairwell. Two have their guns at the ready while the third is raising the concrete “lid”.
Having placed himself in a position close enough to the stairwell to act immediately, the Stirling Slugger reacts almost instantly to reach out a grab one of the armoured figures and, before they can react, throw them towards the armoured police vans that are parked on the road. The figure lands with a crunch and begins groaning at the same time that the quick thinking Stirling Slugger has reached for a grabbed a second armoured figure. That one soon goes flying through the air also, to join their comrade groaning on the ground. The third armoured figure, having finished opening the “lid”, reaches for their weapon only to notice the number of SWAT members who have their own weapons aimed already. Raising their hands in the air, this third figure then surrenders and allows Stirling Slugger to approach to disarm them, however as he approaches he can hear the person reporting everything that’s happening into their in-built radio comms. He immediately removes the man’s helmet, but the damage had already been done. Meanwhile The Herald, who is now invisible again, waits nearby to see if anything else happens and The Inquisitor remains lying prone keeping an eye on the stairwell and waiting to see if anyone is carrying one of the grenade launchers that Iain mentioned.
Within moments, two more armoured figures come flying up out of the stairwell utilising the rocket packs built into their armour. The assembled SWAT members immediately open fire and the hail of bullets does indeed send one of the flyers tumbling to the ground, while the other (wearing slightly different armour) seems to just ignore the shots as he returns fire dropping one of the police. The Inquisitor notes that this second figure is holding a different weapon that seems to include a grenade launcher. With the SWAT team continuing to return fire (with no effect) while tending to their wounded comrade and Stirling Slugger throwing baseballs skyward (with no accuracy), The Herald was able to utilise her powers to mind control the flying figure and force him to land and drop his weapon. While this last foe is being arrested, The Inquisitor quickly moves over to grab to dropped assault rifle/grenade launcher before making his way to the attacker who had been shot down to retrieve the man’s helmet (while police slowly move over to see to his injuries). As people scurry back and forth, securing prisoners and tending to the wounded (with The Herald’s assistance with the last bit), The Inquisitor uses his electronics expertise to cause the helmet’s radio comms to emit a loud droning noise to others on the same network, instantly making all other nearby helmets very noisy (and making it so that the helmets could no longer be used to communicate).
With the attackers under control, or in the process of being stripped of their armour and taken to the police vans, The Inquisitor and Stirling Slugger head to the stairwell to check for any stragglers. The Herald, who was still checking on the wounded, soon hurried to catch up but made sure she turned invisible as she entered the stairwell.
Reaching the room that Iain had been guarding The Inquisitor and Stirling Slugger cautiously move down an adjoining corridor, while The Herald crosses the corridor to enter a door opposite which turns out to lead to an armoury. While initially she can just see a long floor to ceiling gun cabinet, she does hear a noise that seems to come from further into the room. Creeping along she almost rounds a corner into a creeping helmet-less guard, but catches herself at the last moment and manages to sidestep out of his way (she is still invisible, after all). Before she can decide how to take care of this solitary guard they are both startled by a loud explosion from somewhere nearby!
Meanwhile, The Inquisitor and Stirling Slugger had cautiously proceeded down the corridor and had rounded the corner to see a group of four helmet-less armoured figures approaching them. Without pausing, The Inquisitor flicked the unfamiliar assault rifle over to grenade fire and launched a projectile at the enemies… causing a loud explosion and knocking out two of the enemy. As the dust began to settle Stirling Slugger then swiftly moved in to deal with the remaining guards.
Recovering from the surprise of the nearby explosion, which sounded like it came from an adjoining room or corridor, The Herald immediately used her abilities to mind control to single guard in front of her and then commanded him to walk up to the surface and surrender. While he headed off to do that (not that he managed to get to the surface, the SWAT team encountered him on the stairs and painfully subdued him), The Herald moved on to find out what was going on with her companions.
Stirling Slugger had managed to quickly drop on of the remaining guards with one swing of his bat, but the remaining armoured woman was tough. However, between The Inquisitor’s carefully aimed shots (and demands to surrender) and the Stirling Slugger’s powerful blows, they were holding their own against her. With the arrival of The Herald (or at least an illusion of The Herald), the villain saw the writing on the wall and finally decided to throw down her weapon and surrender.
With no time to lose, the Stirling Slugger then demanded to know, “Where’s Edward!?!”
“Eric,” The Inquisitor corrected him, as he approached cautiously from further down the corridor.
“Eric!” the Stirling Slugger repeated, as though that was what he’d said in the first place. They were then all very serious and didn’t crack a smile or anything.
As the SWAT team rounded the corner behind the heroes, the last guard indicated that Eric Iabo had been in his office at the end of the corridor the last time she’d seen him. When queried, she confirmed that there was only one exit, the stairwell they’d all been using so far.
Leaving SWAT to tidy up, the heroes then hurried to the office, only to find that Eric Iabo had kept the presence of a concealed escape tunnel in his office a secret from his underlings. However, while Eric Iabo was long gone, he had left behind at least some of the recently stolen cash from the armoured car heist (in satchel’s with the security company’s logo on the side) which Detective Daniels indicated wold be enough to tie this group to the robbery.