Poughkeepsie Attacks!!!: Welcome To The CIA

[gone_byebye]

The Culinary Institute of America, as Flynn so astutely put it, is a former Jesuit seminary. As such it's located more towards the IBM corporate campus than any of the other lcations already under inspection. As such, it's rather more remote than the others; one side of the property is bounded by US Highway 9, and the other side overlooks a steep drop down to the Hudson River. The Highway 9 side is all but hidden from the world thanks to trees galore, most of which are conifers, the rest of which are putting on a stunning display of autumn color.

It's some distance from the highway across campus to the old main building, but it's probably simpler than making the assault from the river side....

Comments

[md_donighal]

"Quite welcome. What were you doing up there, anyway?" he asks, all wide-eyed innocence, dusting the guy down.

(And if his fingers happen to get a little too close to the telescoping baton, that's the breaks, so to speak. And if the baton begins, imperceptibly at first, to warm up... okay, that's probably a little weird.)

[gone_byebye]

"I was supposed to be meeting Chef Rudy out here," says Vulture, grabbing at the first thing to come to mind. "He and I, we're old buddies. Have you see him? I haven't seen anybody on campus tonight."

Huh. That's... odd, right? Is he imagining the heat?

[md_donighal]

"I saw a couple of rough-looking customers back by the gazebo," Michael jerks a thumb in that general direction, "but I decided I'd better stay out of their way."

Yeah, he must be imagining the heat. If it were real, it'd be affecting his nine, right? Or his piercings?* It sure feels like the baton is getting slowly but steadily hotter, though... and this guy in the suit hasn't actually let go yet...

* Michael briefly considered those as additional targets, but decided that heating up the gun and/or its ammo could explode the bullets, and that that would be about as rude as heating the piercings. The piece is still off limits and will remain so, but the piercings are being held in reserve in case Vulture makes himself really obnoxious.

[gone_byebye]

"Oh yeah? Good for you," says Vulture. "Real sensible. Uh... so you haven't seen Rudy, huh?"

He's gotta be imagining the heat. There's nowhere for it to come from. He's just gonna stand back now and see if that doesn't get this guy to let go of him. yeah.

[md_donighal]

"Nobody who looked like him. But we might want to find security — tell them about those guys, get your wrist looked at, make sure you don't have any other injuries, that sort of thing."

Then the baton really heats up, just long enough that Vulture will notice it, just hot enough that it'll turn the nearby skin an angry red... and then it cools back down to that dull heat he thought he was imagining. "Or maybe we should stop dancing around."

[gone_byebye]

"Yowtch!" says Vulture, distracted by the baton; he only looks up in time to hear the last sentence, and has to blink twice to process it.

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," he says, and attempts to throw a punch with the good hand.

[md_donighal]

It's lucky that Michael let go of Vulture's wrist while the other was distracted, or things would've gotten really awkward, at least for Vulture.

Certainly, there's nothing awkward about the way Michael catches the incoming punch just shy of his face, then moves the hand down quickly and firmly. He's squeezing just hard enough to make it clear how much harder he could squeeze if he felt it necessary.

Through it all, the red-haired man's face maintains that same air of unruffled calm. He's not smiling anymore, but he doesn't look particularly angry either, and there's no sign of actual fear.

[gone_byebye]

We're talking about a man who jumped out of a tree instead of waiting in the shadows on the ground like any sensible person. Awkward? What's that?

... okay, the fist catching thing is a little bit beyond his experience, and his other hand isn't up to grabbing the baton just yet, but he has got legs and they work just fine, so he's going for a curb-stomping sort of instep-to-shin contact. The crotch is too easy a target and everyone alive protects it first anyway.

[md_donighal]

Many of Michael's fighting instincts were shaped by his 22 formative years as a baseline human, so he still has an impulse to protect his groinal region. As such, he doesn't notice the foot coming at his shin until it's almost connected.

He locks legs with the other and pushes him to the ground, landing on top of him. "You don't come here for the hunting, do you?" he whispers in Vulture's ear. (It's not that he's actually attracted to him, Quantum Unity knows; it's just a polite way of letting him know how fucked he is and how fucked he could be.)

[gone_byebye]

This was not in the plan. This was SO not in the plan. This was NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS in the plan.

"Peck isn't paying me enough for this," Vulture blurts out and tries to scramble out from underneath somehow.

[md_donighal]

Michael stands up, lifting Vulture up with him in an uncomfortable embrace which, somewhere along the line, shifts into hands on shoulders. "And I don't really have time for it, so we're just about even. Shall we get this over with quickly?"

[gone_byebye]

Some guys just aren't suited for fights they don't win in the first or second round.

"I'm gonna get my ass handed to me on a plate if I say no, right?"

[md_donighal]

He smiles. It's not a friendly smile. "Pretty hard, yes."

[gone_byebye]

"And how bad is it gonna get kicked if I just give up now?"

[md_donighal]

"Oh, I'll just knock you out and leave you for security to find."

[gone_byebye]

"I could use a nap," says Vulture. "Okay, lay it on me."

[md_donighal]

A gentle but firm tap on the noggin, and Vulture collapses. Michael catches him and eases him gently down. "Dream of your freedom... then wake to reality." He aims his aetheric vision at the riverbank, to see if anything's happened down there while he was frittering away perfectly good time on this matter.

[gone_byebye]

When St. Andrews was built on this spot, ages ago, it was built here for a reason. The CIA's overlook of the Hudson River is one of the more etherically powerful locations in the Poughkeepsie area, and you had better believe the Jesuits were wise to that fact. They left in the end, of course, but the inherent power of the spot still remained- and from the look of things, someone's building a circle down by the river that's meant to draw as many of the local currents as possible up and shunt them all northward to a single spot.

[md_donighal]

Sounds like something that needs to be kiboshed at least as soon as humanly possible. Fortunately, Michael isn't limited by humanly possible speeds. With the briefest of running starts, he takes to the skies and swoops his way there, his gray suit changing to the armor and cape of Divis Mal as he flies.

[gone_byebye]

There are four men working on this one, more than at any other location other than the Opera House. The Opera House needed three because one of them had just enough talent of his own to tap off a little extra energy to reanimate the dead. This place needs four because the energy doesn't want to cooperate, and because when you are dealing with cranky flows of telluric energy, you need better than inscribed runic circles being marked out on the landscape by two guys with IKEA-style diagrammatic directions on copier paper.

[md_donighal]

It's probably the burst of light overhead that gets their attention first, even before the thunderous awful boom that accompanies it. When they look up, they see the red-haired man in the gold breastplate and red cape hovering above them, obviously giving off the light. "Congratulations," he says, and there's audible fire in his words. "You just invoked something bigger than your heads."*

[gone_byebye]

The expression in the icon above rather nicely matches that on the faces of the would-be paint-by-numbers sorcerors.

Well, except for the one who starts chanting in bastardized old Palatine German, but he's still pretty close.

[md_donighal]

Let's see how well he chants with a hotfoot, shall we? the Beacon Mal thinks as he fires a brief barrage of dance-monkey-dance flames at the Zauberer's shoes before swooping down to deliver a right cross to the jaw.

[gone_byebye]

That, as they say, is going to sting. And sting a lot. Few sorcerous chants are improved by the introduction of "AAAAUGH!"; it's something of a physical law. He goes down faster than a two-dollar hooker.

The other three? They're backing away as fast as anybody can who's trying desperately not to blur the lines of power they spent so long drawing.

[md_donighal]

Oh, they don't need to worry about blurring those lines. After all, the lines are starting to give off the first gentle wisps of smoke.