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Spider-Man     The storm's starting to get bad. Every so often, power flickers or browns out just a bit. Nothing too awful, but definitely worth some worry. Civilian cars are starting to become a non-option now, but Paladin vehicles are rated a little better. Homes have been encouraged to get winter survival kits -- nothing too dire, but who knows when the electricity might cut. Even Spider-Man needs to bundle up a little more, though you'd be surprised to know he has the proportional cold resistance of a spider too! Which is surprisingly not bad. Spidey has headed out to the next site of the Paladin raids, having apparently caught up on the issue himself. Now that Stark has given him a bit of a lecture on actually working with the team and asking for help, he gives them some forewarning about problems. He's checking the place out from a rooftop, of course, but he chats with folks via radio too.

    "Alright, so, this next guy is another boss of some other criminals. I run into them sometimes! They're called something like the 'Scorpios'. And, you know, I'm a Leo, so that obviously means we have to fight. Now, actually I think I could deal with these guys myself, except for two weird things. First is, the air in the vent system is dangerous. I can't figure out exactly... how? Because-- uh, it's complicated. But, I know you should be really, really careful about airborn toxins, okay?" He doesn't have a name for his spidey-sense yet, apparently. "I think you guys probably have gas masks, can I get one too? And the second thing is, I found /these/ guys by going after the Shocker guy with the electric hands, so I think they're friends or something. They've probably got weird technology weapons. I still don't know who's /making/ them or where they come from, though."

    The building in question is finally something besides a garage. This one's some kind of warehouse. There's a loading area that leads right into a storage space, presumably large. There's also a proper front entrance likely going to a fore reception area, and some back entrances that likely lead to an office space. The windows are blocked up and insulated, but not exactly boarded up, just made a bit more secure against the chill. If one looks closely, there's lab-grade airtight chemical seals alongside it. Hmmm.

    Some of the many and varied objectives today include but are certainly not limited to finding Mac Gargan's targets for his upcoming attacks, finding out what Mac Gargan knows about the mysterious foreign cartel supplying the Maggias with Scepter magic byproducts, neutralizing as many of the Scorpio gang as possible, and possibly fulfilling Thor's deal with Maggia crime-boss Tombstone for further intel about the Scepter's location.
Reyes     "Stop by near me, I'll set you up with some protection. Only lasts about an hour though. No dilly-dallying." Reyes radios back after thinking through everything Spidey's relayed. He is, once again, deployed in his battle armor. This time, the runes are already aglow, a layer of thin energy shielding projected. Said protective field takes the form of what would APPEAR to be dwarven battle armor, rendered in digital wireframe blue and sizzling at the air.

    If Spider Man goes to Reyes for help, the armored youth will work a little magic, a thirty second bit of spellwork that will effectively form a bubble of purified air around Spider-Man's head, allowing him to breathe safely in any environment. Reyes would also point out it's not ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION. If he runs into an ACID CLOUD, that's trouble. SLEEPING GAS just isn't.

    For the moment though, Reyes is wandering around the building, keeping out of view of any windows. He's using his Telemechanical abilities to scan for anything like cameras or computers within the roughly five feet radius that might give him an idea of what's happening inside... or any kind of advantage. Or information. Won't know what he finds until he finds it!
Thomas Alva Edison     "Hm! Well...I have the solution we need then!" Edison says, standing back. The area around him, even as the Presiking is in his PRESIKING TRENCH COAT OF WARMTH (+3), turns into his lab for a moment. Grabing some snow, some nearby materials, and other DEVICES...

    Edison provides strange little devices that fit over the nose. Once they do, they seem to fade, blending in with your nose and mouth, filting out BAD chemicals, while also being hard to notice that they are there so UNDERHANDED SCHALLIWAGS do not rip them off.

    "There, everyone put this on, it will protect you from the dangerous fumes, be hard to notice, and help trap heat against your nose and mouth, thus making your body heat fifteen percent more efficient!"

    With that, Edison looks down. "Maybe we could also just cut their power and see how they respond. Knowing them, they probably have generators...and that might allow us to split them up."
Steve Rogers      Steve Rogers is not used to magic.

     Well, that's a lie. He's not used to magic being on *his side*. Last time he had to deal with magic was World War II, and the Red Skull was most certainly not casting beneficial spells to heal and buff. No, those were laser beams that disintegrated human beings. That was his last experience with magic.

     Then Edison provides strange little devices, and Steve takes one and straps it over the mouth-and-nose of his Captain America suit.

     "I agree. We should cut the power and go in while they're confused." Steve makes a motion with one hand.
Spider-Man     There's a variety of sensors around. Reyes can find that most of it is decontamination stuff, lab-grade things made to help keep the place sterile and to keep someone from poisoning people on the outside. It doubles as a security system, but like many labs, it makes the assumption of a backup generator -- one that likely will take some time to kick in, if they break the power to the warehouse. Assuming it even exists at all. It's mostly concentrated around the front and loading entrances, but back entrances to management offices have fewer such sensors and suchlike. Not many actual computers though, can't hack into a server or anything. At least, not from here.
Spider-Man     "I'll double-up!" Spider-Man says, swinging low and skidding to a stop near Reyes and Edison. "Dunno if this stuff gets into your skin." As he sets up, he looks around. "Yeah, actually, you're right. With all the power outages, they won't realize it's us. I could try that. It won't be, like... I mean, it won't be offensive to you if I just yank out some power lines, right?" He looks awkwardly at, you know, Electricity Royalty over there. Assuming there's no problem, he slips the device under his mask, and then swings off up to one of the power poles and gives a signal. Once everyone picks a door, Spider-Man fires some of the webbing he has to the connections between the grid and the warehouse, and yanks hard, shutting the power down to the warehouse and letting those who want to breach it with distractions do so.
Zwei     So now there are several people here that would probably rather Zwei not be. It'd almost be wry coincidence, but the Armiger already has interests in this particular world that are largely perpendicular, or even exclusive, with the interests of the people trying to restore the status quote, and so a better word would probably be 'inevitable'.

    Toxic atmosphere isn't usually an issue for physical bodies built to surveill and fight in environments like 'on Venus', so Zwei has pretty high confidence about sending both in. Reconnoitering the place from afar when the hero types start gathering, they pick the opportunity opened up by them cutting the power, just as beneficial for it as it is for the Paladins hoping to creep in unseen.

    The big one finds a spot deep into the warehouse goods, 'hull down', exterior camo pattern, sound canceled, heat muffled; the stationary works. The small one picks an out of the way corner and begins the flowchart process of what it is perfectly equipped for. Step one: passive reception of lifesigns, via acoustic amplification, heat signatures, etc. Step two: sending a gamma scattering wave and doing mass detection to take a peek through all the walls and get the full wallhax 3d layout of the place, matching physical profiles to any picked up energy signatures. Essentially, lifting the fog of war immediately to start picking targets.
Thor Thor lands at the building via flight, not needing a gas mask or any protection. His Asgardian physiology protects him from both the cold and any toxins, so he has nothing to worry about. When the group moves to shut down the power, the Asgardian moves to kick the door down. Waltzing in confidently, the first sign of thugs or guards he sees get a spin of the hammer...

And then Mjolnir lets off a blast of lightning and a loud crack of thunder, straight in their faces. While he's not particularly skilled at debilitating, hopefully this can at least distract any guys long enough for the team to get in and take them out. There's a proud look on Thor's face. This is a neat way to use Mjolnir! Maybe he'll try it again if it works.
Thomas Alva Edison     "It would not be offensive...but for the sake of arguments, lets not do THAT...first of all, downed powerlines are a hazard, and a poential way for them to realize it's an attack too early. Instead..." he says, walking around to the side of the building and looking for the connection there. Edison, with a wave of his hand, uses his BIG DC POWER, to short out the box manually, aiming to freeze up and burn out the boxes on this size, and potentially cause a power surge on the inside.

    He puts a finger over his mouth, because now machines would likely be off, and it'd be easier to ehar them./
Spider-Man     Zwei's already inside. From here, she can see the layout of the area.

    Several small, nonhuman lifesigns are in various states of dying, dead, or chemically controlled decomposition. The reasoning for this is...???? It seems probably irrelevant. There's no major electronics signatures, and weren't even when the power was on, so there's no convenient server to hijack.

    There's a large office space, though. A number of men with obvious guns of varying levels of technology, from modern to clearly advanced alien, are scattered about the warehouse and officespace, as well as the front area. Some are concentrated around one individual near the offices, who is in a room where a high volume of paper and folders can be detected around the walls. The men who aren't guarding that room are busy shutting various valves and doing other management for a chemistry apparatus that just lost power. Tanks of the stuff are already made, and some various devices have been assembled containing smaller tanks of the stuff nearer the office area.
Spider-Man     Thor smashes directly through the front the moment Edison shuts the power down. It crashes through an entry area, leading into a zone of reclaimed decontamination equipment that makes an ad-hoc airlock. Several men in a mix of hazmat gear and urban gangster colors immediately draw their gun, but with the intense darkness inside, they have trouble finding Thor precisely, blasting wildly. "Avengers!!" One calls out. "Mac! They're here!!" Another screams. Some of the shots are standard firearms. Others distinctly are not; there's a few weapons that have the same sort of punch that Chitauri guns did. Luckily, their scattered shots get even more scattered when the flashbang goes off. The group is free to tear through to the back, where the main warehouse can be found.

    Spider-Man is already swinging in to start fighting the stunned gunmen (stunnedmen), as well as get the ad-hoc airlock open while keeping the place from blasting its chemical payload out into the streets.
Steve Rogers      Steve gives Thor some orders over the radio as everything goes down. He'd expected some chaos would be caused by the blackout, so Thor's flashbang hammer would probably disrupt coordination. Then he just waits for Thor to do what he does best.

     Smash through everything.

     Thor does just that. The flashbang goes off, and Captain America surges forward to meet them, his shield positioned in front of the others to soak bullets and send them flying away from the vulnerable members of his party. That's...surprisingly few people this time around, but hey. Cap operates on instinct. It's why he jumped on a grenade that one time.

     ...and that other time.

     ...and...

     Okay, he jumps on a lot of bombs. It's a Cap thing.

     Fortunately, Cap's used to exactly this kind of dark-fighting. Once the bullets even sort of die down, he throws the shield forward, sending it into one of the lights to create another burst of light and sound. As he throws it, he's just running forward to tackle one of the men with all six-and-change feet of muscle.
Reyes     The situation has quickly become hectic. Almost too hectic. But Reyes's sensors have a momentary ping that he can't explain. "... Gamma radiation?" A bit more than he was expecting to find, and it's over as quickly as it appeared. Inside his helmet he's frowning at this suddenn unknown... but for the moment, he can only assume this is maybe related to Thor's antics.

    With the GOD bashing down the door though, Reyes beelines around for the entrance he took and comes in behind, sticking to the 'back row'...

    And the moment the men are disoriented, Reyes reaches out with a hand... and his mind.

    Weapons are yoinked on. A few he might be able to just rip straight out of hands with a display of Telekinesis, and leave them hovering weirdly next to him! Where he can't RIP them LOOSE though, he can at least make it impossible to aim while someone neutralizes the guys.

    "This operation's finished. You can either tell us how to shut it down safely and surrender, or we do this the hard way."
Spider-Man     Spidey keeps hands off the power, letting the powermeister handle it. He takes out the electricity easily. His knowledge of the power engineering involved here can give him a good estimated countdown of the time it'll take for backup power to kick in, based on various signs and conditions. It's just fast enough to rush them a bit, but not fast enough to keep them from taking advantage of the dark.
Spider-Man     Rogers deals handily with the spray of fire; he likely remembers the feel of energy weapons against his shield, mixed with the proper traditional firearms. And gangland soldiers aren't the kind to expect anyone to /tackle/ them into walls. Spider-Man, in fact, calls out: "Captain Rogers! Over here, just a second!" The young hero shouts, needing his cover to safely web-wrench open the first half of the decontamination system to get them through, and to close it behind the breaching group. Obviously it's not that they can't just tear through the biohazard barriers by hand, but Peter Parker knows all too well the dangers of un-neutralized chemistry.
Thomas Alva Edison     Edison nods once, "If you want, Spider-Man, I can give you a better understanding of this another time. Mr. Stark seems to have faith in you, and your actions have been a credit to the people of this city." he says, calmly. "Now, let us help our allies inside. We can cover the other exits, and try and prevent them from scattering. Unless you have a better idea?"
Thor Thor is totally ready to tear through the back. He slams his hammer into disoriented thugs, knocking them down, as he waltzes through towards the back. While his lightning swirling around the hammer helps keep it sort of bright, it's not enough to be a flashlight, and he can't see in the dark. So once they're in the back, Thor waits for the lights to turn back on...and then it's showtime. Which is, hopefully, deal with Mac Gargan.

If Thor can deal with Mac Gargan, he can get information from the Big Man, and be one step closer to finding the scepter. It's a good deal, honestly. Take out a criminal, get information, get fancy stick...like a quest!
Steve Rogers      Steve doesn't need a second prompting. As soon as Peter calls for help, Cap stands up, kicking the downed man into unconsciousness on his way over. He snatches his shield out of the light and comes falling down in front of Peter, placing his shield up in the way of the young man. "I've got you, son."

     Oh god, he called Peter *son*.

     He's turning into the old man Tony thinks he is.
Spider-Man     Reyes disarms some of them. Frequently, these bits of telekinetic interaction even spark unusual super-scientific processes within the guns. He's the one who manages to get guns out of hands faster than most, as winded and stunned people try to get back up. But sadly, their call is on deaf ears. Power is coming back up, slowly but surely. First thing was the PA system, apparently. A man's voice comes over the speaker system, distorted a bit. "Ahhhh, ah ah, here they come. All the king's men. A group of extraordinary people to fight the battles they can't. That's the marketing, isn't it? For the Paladins, for the Avengers-- Doesn't matter."

    "If you're telling my people to surrender, you can stop. They know what you people are up to. We've all seen it with our own eyes. You people ever get tired of the masks?" There's a long pause. "You're gonna get tired soon." He speaks more to his men. "No surrenders. You know that's the worse option." They seem to be disinclined to surrender, unusually so, as if expecting a jail cell to be worse than anything else. Why is that?
Zwei ||Contacts are three analyzed, two known.||
<<It'd be nice to collect some data on that Thor guy, buuuut . . .>>
||Allowing them all to make their mess again would be unwise.||
<<Yeeaaaaah.>>
||That is how it is.||

    Zwei isn't here to beat up crooks and shut down toxic chitauri meth labs or whatever. Brawling with the mooks can be left up to the pros who brawl with mooks for a hobby. 'The small fry can be let go' or whatever. Instead, Weiss teleports directly into the back room with the extremely obvious office, almost definitely where the PA signal is coming from. She does so with one arm around an armed guard's neck and the other hand used for putting a shush finger over his lips, more for the benefit of those who might turn around in alarm, since he's not going to be making noise if she squeezes. Tilting her head, she gestures towards the intercom, suggesting it stay in use.

    Asche remains hunkered down in stealth mode in the warehouse, using only a tiny bit of power to isolate a couple of those decaying biosigns. He suspects vermin; rats that have snuck in and been poisoned, or perhaps simply experiments. The composition of whatever they're producing here is still unknown. At least this time Zwei isn't trying to make a legitimate trade for it before the heroes come busting in.

    Back on Weiss' end: <<"Hi~! So, I'm looking for someone who can answer a few questions of mine. If he can do it adequately, he can walk out of here with me, instead of with the Avengers. Does that sound good to you?">>
Spider-Man     Spider-Man gets the airlock dealt with from the outside, with Steve helping him. "Thanks, Captain Rogers!!" He briefly mutters under his breath, "wow, i just worked with /captain america/ again" before he breaks off to Edison. "Oh! Mister Edison! Right. Uhhh... let's... oh! Let's go to the loading part!" He swings off, shouting over the radio. "You've got that cool electrical power! Can you keep the cars and doors all shut down so they can't get away with whatever's in there?"

    If Edison follows, he'll soon see that there's already at least a couple men in hazmat gear running with big tanks of chemicals under their arms like footballs, towards trucks that have been rigged with ad-hoc snowplows. Who knows how far they'd get, but in this blizzard, any distance is too much distance.
Thomas Alva Edison     Edison looks around him...and then with a nod. "Good call, Spider-man." he says, deciding that the boy's eyes were infact better than expected. That was some good on the fly thinking as well. Taking a breath, he points his hands out. First...the trucks would get them pretty far. He fires a blasts of defused electrical energy towards the trucks first, aiming to try and start shorting out their internals. This might take a bit, based on the number of trucks.

    Once done, Edison would turn his energy onto the doors opening mechanisms next, aiming to short those out as well. Opening a garrage door while already holding something was going to be hard as hell, of course...that is if they even decide to TRY and brave the blizard without the trucks. Because those haz mat suits are not rated for cold exposure.
Spider-Man     Thor and Steve get through the main airlock, as likely does Reyes. No contamination! Looks like New York City's safe from a horrible chemical leak. Inside, though, they find something, uh... Very /weird/. Thor will notice it most particularly, though it'll look crazy and weird to Steve. As the lights flick on, they find the warehouse is host to a number of old, reclaimed Cold War era Russian chemical weapon facilities, which bridge the gap between Steve's understanding of the old wars and the modern times. But alongside that... Thor will see something strange. Many of the vats are cooking things normally, but one of them has, of all things, /snake corpses/ in various stages of decomposition and chemically controlled processing. Some of them are still alive.

    The vat that's currently busy draining them of venom and blood is marked with a number of Asgardian runes. The process within is... strange. The vat itself is partially drained.

    "Yeah, yeah. There you go. Come on in. Take a look. Doesn't it look just like you hoped? Big vats, little men. Like bowling pins in an alley. You capture a bunch of people SHIELD hates and walk out for shawarma." Some of the workers here are less skilled in gunplay, but all of them are career criminals, and the fact that they need chemical hoods doesn't stop them from drawing heavier weapons. Now they're up to shotguns and assault rifles of varying levels of energy, shouting out less-trained tactical advice to their allies like "LIGHT THEM UP!" or "FUCKING SHOOT THEM!"

    There's a noise of something larger and mechanical moving in the back.
Thor As they move through the main airlock, Thor sees something especially strange. Snake corpses being processed...by a vat marked with Asgardian runes. He moves up to try and read the runes, get an idea of what they say and what they might be doing even if he has no idea how Asgardian spellcraft works because he's not Loki or his mother, but if he can translate the words, that's helpful.

And then he's getting shot at. Thor moves out of the way of the vats, trying not to get them burst open with bullets, as he spins his hammer around. "I am Thor Odinson, God of Thunder! If you will not surrender, you will taste my hammer!" Thor suddenly flings the hammer, which flies an incredibly precise arc, smashing into several of the workers' arms with their guns with enough force to send them flying back as they're hopefully disarmed, possibly breaking arms, before Mjolnir moves to boomerang back into Thor's hand. At the same time, though, his armor is a little damaged by sustained bullet fire, the shockwaves through to his skin painful as he tries to not, in fact, be directly in the line of fire anymore.
Spider-Man     There's violence further up-front. Zwei is further near the back. This means she mostly catches someone who's in cover. Weiss approaching this from the criminal side of things, but for obvious reasons they're tense and off-focus, and have a hard time dealing with her when she shows up to take one hostage and use them as a shield.

    "Auuuugh! Fuck!!"
    "Shit! It's Iron Man!"
    "Fuck-- No! They're not an /Avenger/!"
    "Isn't it one of his metal--"
    "That's a /girl/ you fucking moron, why would Iron /Man/ make--"
    "Shit, she was at the deal with Klaw. I saw her--"

    The man at the table is a scraggly fellow with a scorpion tattoo, who looks lean and violent. "Hey chica. Picked a bad time." He says, between intercom discussion. He's sorting something out of a crate to his left, at the table. "You want answers? All you had to do was ask." He locks some hefty piece of machinery into place in a weapon he's operating. "Ask whatever you got. You can look at my walls for the rest. I've got business, senorita, so I'm hoping you'll excuse me." He slings a backpack over his back, full to bursting with devices covered in bare wires and chemical tanks. He straps a harness around his body to secure it dramatically.

    "Look at my walls" is more informative than one would think. He's got clippings, photos, and brainstormed estimates of /something/ going on here. Some conspiracy he clearly believes in, which may fill in the gaps of what Weiss asks. The animals, for their part, don't appear to be poisoned, but rather poisonous. It shouldn't be meaningful to extract poison from those snakes, though, should it? And dead snakes? Why so many dead or dying, specifically? It seems wrong. Well, it's probably not for the robots, at least.
Reyes     Oh man, and now some VOICE is going out across the speakers. Reyes isn't having none of this. "... You know, someone who's talking remotely doesn't have much right to complain about people using masks." It's a pretty simple and pragmatic complaint, and he has absolutely no expectation that this guy's going to suddenly agree with him.

    He's just incredibly irritated at once again a situation becoming a ball of chaos he can just HOPE turns out OK. The stress of this mess is eating at him hard. What if the gas gets out...? WHAT MIGHT IT DO?

    He no sooner starts to lok around the lab, tanking the arrogant monologue while he takes stock of the strange chemical processes going on.

    He's not really familiar with this branch of science. He knows what these are for... but not what their ultimate goal is. Not even close. It makes him fidget uncomfortably back and forth, and lightly thump a tank with an armored finger.

    THEN more thugs come in... with bigger badder weapons. "ARE YOU GUYS CRAZY?! CHEMICAL LAB!"

    Aware of the dangers of STRANGE THINGS being exposed to explosives and bullets, he reacts quickly, a pouch on his belt opening by itself--

    And then he's just BOWLED OVER by a combination of five shotgun blasts at once. Reyes is BLASTED backwards and stumbles into a tank with a WHONK, but...

    About four seconds later, the occult circuitry of his armor flares brilliantly and he ROCKETS ACROSS THE FLOOR away from the tank and back to his feet in a zooming skid that takes him in low for some of the goons, aiming to just CLOTHESLINE them with a raw play of momentum.

    THEN his proper weapon finishes flying out of his pouch and into his hands. The Techno-Wizard SABER of before's lenses whirl, gems locking into place. The combination of IVORY lens atop a BLUE GARNET thrums to life with a surge of energy, and the air above the lenses chills. With a sound like shattering glass moisture condenses out of the air and crystallizes into a MIGHTY ZWEIHANDER that he simply SWINGS WILDLY to the side to catch another dude with a blow that'll not only knock the wind out of him, but a solid chunk of lifeforce and stamina. Victory through sheer exhaustion and depetion of vital energies, without the danger of bleeding out or inflicting crippling injuries. Hopefully.
Steve Rogers      No contamination. That's blissful. Good luck. This could've been a lot worse. Steve visibly relaxes just a bit as he follows behind Thor, letting the bigger man take the fore. He's sticking back enough to protect the less durable, but also, he's sticking back so Thor can do Thor things without having to worry about Steve. Steve can't dodge lightning. He's just a man. A very competent, very powerful, man, but just a man.

     The vats get a stare from him. He's seen that sort of thing before. It felt like HYDRA science, like the mad things the Red Skull had done in the name of his dream of a unified world under his heel.

     Multiple shotgun blasts hit the shield. Steve is forced backwards by the sheer force of it, but Steve is the kind of person who's conscious of others even still - he moves himself so that he can help support Reyes and Edison through the shells, soaking a few of the blasts as Thor runs forward. As soon as the barrage is over, Steve is bolting forward to join Thor, his fist coming forward to clothesline one of the workers into the ground, his shield coming around to bash a second.

     Once the criminals are dispatched, Steve pulls back his mask and runs his fingers through his hair. "This reminds me of the sort of thing the Red Skull had in his factories. My gut tells me to destroy it, but...Thor, Edison, Reyes, Spider-Man? Second opinions?"
Zwei     <<"No no, I think I picked precisely the right time. Fifteen minutes later would have been a bad time.">> Weiss insists. She doesn't draw a gun, even to put to the head of her 'hostage', because she gives off the impression she doesn't need to. <<"You're really going to go out there and fight them all? Far be it from me to think any of those guys are invincible, but forgive me for feeling a little doubtful 'kay?">>

||Especially a leader, even a lieutenant, risking his own head.||
<<Overconfidence happens when street pushers get handed plasma guns.>>
||Regardless, verify.||

    <<"Well, before you go and get your nose broken, answer me these at least. As an associate of Klaue, if you really want to think of it that way. Who knows jack about this blizzard, what do you plan to do about these idiots working for Tombstone, and why do you think chemical weapons are your ticket to getting one over the Maggias?">> The questions are valid, but partially superficial. Weiss patiently hears out any answers he has to give, even terse, token, or sarcastic ones, because she's focused all her attention in on his head --specifically his brain activity, lowering power distribution to other sensors and rerouting it to actively modeling brainwaves, micromuscular movements, pheromones, etc. like a polygraph on steroids, reading into which parts are true, which parts he *believes* are true, which are fake, and what his intentions are.

    Checking out the walls comes after. When he leaves the room, she releases his guard and gives him a merry little push towards the door and a cheery wave. <<"Break a leg out there~">> she says, before scanning and cataloguing the conspiracy theory mess all over the inside of the office.

||What is the word Stark uses? Exoenergy?||
<<Yeah. Why?>>
||I appreciate it. It allows me to define what reaction necessitates venomous animals in arbitrary states of biological integrity as a catalyst.||
<<Soooo, interdimensional VFX heebie jeebie voodoo?>>
||The Vulture's men are not one-sided suppliers. Even their proxies are up to something.||
<<Retrieving a sample would be nice I guess, but does it really matter? It's not what I'm after.>>
||There is no essential harm in it. Excepting the hypothetical case in which complaints have become lethal.||
<<Yeah I guess.>>
Spider-Man     There's a fair number of them, but in the end, vehicles only need to have one or two crucial parts burned out to render them unusable. Take out a few of the batteries or the spark plugs or other things that have resilient names and unresilient forms and the trucks are dealt with. It's a bit hard to do so at a distance in this /goddamn storm/ though, which means Edison will need to get close, both to the cars and then to the doors. Spidey's already at work on webbing up some of the farther doors, so the nearer ones are only a short dash to... But the thick blizzard means it's hard to see it when someone tries to sneak up on Edison and blast him several times in the back with a heavy energy cannon on one arm, trying to make an opening to book it to one of the cars (failing to realize it's stopped). It looks like the local criminals are starting to try to take advantage of the equalizing nature of the blizzard, and the /bright light/ that's so frequent among their Enhanced attackers.
Spider-Man     Elsewhere, Weiss has already concluded the conversation with Gargan. We'll get to her conclusion later. For now, there's something at the far back wall. No, that was just a shadow from one of the thugs heading forward.

    Inside, Thor, Reyes, and Steve all have strange business to deal with. Right now, it means keeping Reyes supported. With Steve acting as a sort of mobile riot unit to support Reyes and his boosted cold-powered drain-saber, they wind up suffering a lot of battering damage but no bullet wounds, which is pretty much as optimal as anything can be for a shield based on a /vibranium/ alloy. "Feels bad, doesn't it tin-can? To be /watched/. To have someone way up there, at the top, and no matter who you fight, you're not fighting the watcher. The one gathering all your data and knowing all about you. They put whatever poison they want in the air, and you just gotta breathe it. It's like how we live our whole lives. Hurts, doesn't it?"

    What was that near the loading bay? Nothing, it seems, if anyone decides to look twice.

    Reyes has a good point, but it seems like they don't mind the explosiveness. These are gangland weirdos helping out someone with probably mismanaged and undiagnosed schizophrenia or something like that -- explosions in the lab are normal for them. Though, really, the bigger risk is a fire, which has already started. Now they're moving into full melee, and Steve's strikes are taking down workers just about as hard as the hammer of a god (which is also taking down workers, though thankfully mostly just their arms). "You people. Not one bit of remorse workin' with SHIELD, huh? Taking down whoever they put out the APB for? Big Brother up there say jump, and even a god asks how high? Or did you just make some deal with that" He breaks into gratuitous spanish that the translation effect makes optional to understand. "Tombstone with his bullshit /collaboration/ with them, huh? You wanna let him /own/ SHIELD that way?"

    There is something near the ceiling. Wait, shit, no, that was just a shadow from the light of the hammer.

    "Nah. Gods and heroes don't care. They don't have to live the consequences. They fight the bad guy and go home, and the men with the real power are free to hurt whoever they want. Well, I think I found a good way around that. If SHIELD's gonna watch, I can watch too. If SHIELD's gonna control, I can control too. If SHIELD's gonna poison... I think I found something. Not as good as the real stuff. Close enough."

    There's something behind Thor. An arching robotic limb lashes out to try to plunge into divine flesh. When it pulls back, the man it was attached to is dashing to one side, heading for the door. Only once the fleeing Gargan makes it nine paces would Thor be able to feel the effect, if there is any. The tail gleams with something terrible and red. Something drained from the suffering of wild snakes of the earth, enhanced by a stolen piece of HYDRA technology.

    It's bootleg home-brewed Eitr; as close as a mortal man can get to crafting the Ymir-spawning poison destined in certain Norse prophecy to kill the God of Thunder.
Steve Rogers      Steve Rogers is the kind of man who jumps on a grenade without a second prompting.

     He doesn't need to know it's poison against the gods. He doesn't need to know it's something that can kill the God of Thunder. The Captain doesn't need to know anything about magic, about mystical arts, about wizardry, or about Mac Gargan's self-imposed inferiority complex. Captain America didn't get to be where he is - didn't become who he is - because he needed to know that stuff. He's just a kid from Brooklyn who tries to do the right thing.

     It's hard, sometimes. Knowing what the right thing is is something that's always hard, even for someone like him. You have to trust in yourself, trust that you know what you're doing, and be willing to forgive yourself when you make mistakes. It was easier said than done; he was still carrying Bucky's shadow on his back, even now. But for all that, there was one thing Captain America always knew was right.

     It was defending his friends.

     He goes forward. He's faster than Thor's reaction speed, faster than Gargan's robotic limbs. Muscles that can push a cab send Captain America flying forward, into Gargan's strike. No time to bring the shield up. He'll just have to trust in himself.

     The weapon sinks in. The poison sinks in. The Captain...

     The Captain flings his shield at Mac Gargan's face.

     It's a hail mary from down the field. It's the last throw of the game. It's two strikes down on the ninth inning, and Steve Rogers is at bat.

     And...

     ...and...

     ...and...

     and he knew
the right thing
was not to let bucky
down
again
Thomas Alva Edison     Edison's frowning...this Blizzard is starting to annoy him. Still...one thing at a time, as they try and take down the biggest offenders. The man walks through the place, disabling trucks and doors as he can...until he gets shot in the back. Edison, falling forward into a wall from the force of the shockwave slowly turns to feel the burned skin...it did have to take more than one shot to hurt Edison meaningfully, and with that power output, the rapid fire, and surprise...Edison took a nice hit. However, Edison was far from incapacitated, thanks Damage Reduction.

    Turning around, Edison, stares at the man who shot him, before clearing the distance between them and grabbing the barrel of the gun. The man attempts to pull it out of his hands, before attempting to club him with his own weapon with enough strength to damage the barrel.

    This is unfortinate...he takes a moment to examine the rifle...he was sure he saw these energy weapons before...
Thor Thor is mostly ignoring the callouts over the radio. He's confident in himself. Mac Gargan is a dangerous man, and he's the target. His downfall will get them information from the Big Man, which will get Thor another step closer to the scepter.

But then he mentions poison. And suddenly, a robotic limb is about to stab into Thor's back. He realizes, but he's not fast enough to get out of the way. He's going to get hit-

Steve intercepts. As Steve intercepts, Thor sees that red gleam, and realizes what was up with the vats. The runes. The snakes. Eitr. A personal attempt to kill Thor, and it had hurt someone he considered a friend. The Asgardian grimaces. He clutches onto Mjolnir tightly, as he turns towards Gargan. "Eitr. You seek to challenge me to the death, Mac Gargan. You seek to personally kill me. Very well. This is a duel to the death, then. You have hurt my friend, and so, I will end this! I will complete my mission!"

Outside, in the blizzard, winds start to pick up. Thunder crackles in the sky, as the weather starts to turn to that of a thunderstorm...and a lightning bolt strikes straight through the roof, slamming into Thor's hammer and exposing the building to the elements. The hammer is positively wreathed in lightning energy, as Thor suddenly charges as Gargan and moves to slam the lightning-empowered hammer straight into his chest.

Thor's not holding back. His immense superhuman strength goes into the blow, even as he gets into range of that tail, as he tries to crack through Gargan's armor in rage. He's going to try and kill the Scorpion.
Spider-Man     "Heheheh. Nah, I'm not gonna fight them, chica. I'm gonna make 'em bleed. That's all they need. Friend of mine I made recently, he has a saying... 'If you can make god bleed, people will cease to believe in him.' Something like that." Gargan had said, fitting some kind of hefty robotic injector limb to his harness. There was a big, ominous hydraulic "whoosh" to the short diagnostic movement. "That's all you gotta do. Put the fear in them. Dogs that jump when powerful men say jump, they think they're immortal. Put some mortality in them and they won't make it much longer."

    He had had enough time to explain. "I know who knows. SHIELD watches everything. Their Project Insight. Someone traveled to Beijing and didn't realize that something was about to travel /north/ right through the Arctic Circle and straight into NYC. You want to know a name? Can't give you one. You want to know /who/ knows a name? One'a Tombstone's new friends in SHIELD." He gestures at the wall. "As long as they end up dead at the end of this, pick from the list." And all of it was things he believed true. Some of them weren't even all that affected by his undiagnosed and mismanaged mental disorders.

    "The List" is a big one. There's dozens of names and photos and locations of secret double-identities and agents and front-men for the cartel living in New York City. Some of them have strikethroughs, and no clear connection to Tombstone. Some are crossed out brutally with harsh Xs. Some are circled or underlined. They're categorized directly. "Messenger", "Supplier", "Watcher", "Diplomat", "Missionary", "Bootlicker", "Bitch". The terms get more vitriolic as they get closer to Tombstone, and there's often photo evidence of them giving magical supermaterials to the man's gangsters. Almost all have locations of residence. Near those locations are places where Scorpion has planted or intends to plant bombs in what appears to be a planned ruthless serial bombing, using chemical attacks. Many of the areas have civilians, which Gargan has only considered in limited ways. Apparently he thinks Tombstone intends to absord this cartel -- and he believes the cartel doing this /is/ SHIELD? That can't be right, though he seemed to believe it quite authentically.

    Many of them connect quite directly to one man, but the name and face of the man aren't available, only a photograph of him masked, and his codename. Zwei can keep that information for later, though it won't be useful.

    A small drone would be the best way for Zwei to drain some samples of the bootleg Eitr. There's some amount of a tank remaining, enough for potentially interesting study into hyrbid human-Asgardian chemistry, even if a traditional energy gun would probably be more strictly effective for Zwei to kill Thor with.
Reyes     "Best not to destroy something when you don't know what it is! Secure everything unless it's trying to bite your face off!" Is Reyes' input to Captain America's issue.

    Of course this is in the middle of a small firefight, and with one actually breaking out Reyes is feeling the mounting pressure. He isn't too worried about fire, nestled in this armor. But the people they're fighting? Oh that's another story.

    Sopme more copious beatings in-between getting knocked around by the sheer kinetic force of bullets spanging into his first layer of defense is what follows, until the thug waves are repulsed... or otherwise down.

    So he rises to address the ranting.

    "Fight the bad guy and go home? Yeah, right. There's always more work to do. Because of monsters. Because of accidents. And sometimes because of one's fellow man. And right now I see an awful lot of skeevy and dangerous engineering happening smack dab in a city. You think I'm here to 'beat up bad guys?' Wrong. It's everyone who'll be caught in the crossfire of this grudge of yours that I'm here for... that WE're here for." Or so he hopes.

    It's probably not the most eloquent speech. But it's heartfelt and honest to a fault, delivered with a clenched voice full of frustration and building anxiety over this mess.

    And then all hell breaks loose. Sudden movement. He turns to look--

    And his composure takes a deathblow. Reyes SHAKES where he stands, seeing that venomous stinger striking into the costumed hero who's principles have so far reminded him of the noble Cyber Knights.

    And Thor just runs off, swearing a duel to the death.

    The Tomorrow Legionnaire makes an awfully worried, strangled noise... then slaps the side of his helmet as if this'll help clear his head.

    His weapons switch off and tuck away, along with some of the gear 'confiscated' from the thugs. Weird, alien, super-tech? Oh he's all over that.

    But there's one much bigger problem here.

    He practically DIVES for the downed Steve Rogers. "Hey... HEY... speak to me here!"

    If he doesn't get any sign that Steve's going to recover and come to his senses within about ten seconds, Reyes will set about hoisting the hero up over a shoulder (something that his enchanted armor can handle like it's nothing, it seems) and RETREAT.

    Whatever's left here isn't worth the life of a hero.
Spider-Man     Steve takes the strike of the Scorpion head-on. His shield lashes out, but even by the time he's releasing it, the poison hits a nerve cluster that commands the muscles of his arms, and it doesn't strike the man's head. It rips across the man's backpack, and several hefty bombs fall out, but Mac Gargan knows better than to stop and try to pick them up.

    Steve Rogers can feel the cold. The unthinkably intense cold of the north. It is Winter. It is Winter so intensely and so profoundly that it's hard to imagine another season in the world. His brain is connecting directly with the Cold in the air as a shock of Asgardian poison slams into him. If Reyes has any detection of psychic phenomena, he'll see it going off.

    He sees a European forest, filled with snow. He is crawling through it with one good arm. A man with a red insignia on his uniform...
    He sees an operating table. There is no anesthesia tank.
    He sees a hand of cold metal.
    He sees glass. Cracks of ice along its surface. Metal at its edges.
    He sees blood, steaming, chilling on the surface of snow.
    He sees Winter.

    His brain will likely shock out of disoriented states, enough to stay conscious but likely not to move very well. Captain America's body temperature plunges like a rock. Corrosive chemical reactions spread through arteries. He experiences hypothermia in fast-forward. The Cold in the air is entering him more than it has ever entered anything in the world. A lesser man would be dead in seconds. An Enhanced man would be dead within just a little more. An Asgardian might be dead within a minute -- or nine paces, if the prophecy held true. A man determined to see things through to the end may yet survive.

    If Reyes can get him warmed up and to medical care fast, that is.
Zwei <<Well that's interesting.>>
||He believes SHIELD is complicit.||
<<How likely is that though?>>
||Moderately plausible. Organizations of SHIELD's scope cannot have oversight so comprehensive to make it impossible. Given the sheer volume of 'Enhanced' activity, it is fertile ground for men to tell themselves of necessary evils and believe they know better than their overworked and inattentive peers and superiors. It is not as if the members of the Avengers see to it themselves.||
<<Yeah that sounds about right. Whether it's gangland or the government, it doesn't really matter. So long as it's not Stark Tower or the Sanctum Sanctorum, the prepwork translates fine. Recording all pertinent data.>>
||What of the chemical bombs?||
<<I mean, what about them?>>
||The targets are not even Enhanced. They make no important decisions. It is irrelevant, petty, intrahuman violence. It does not serve my purposes.||
<<Ugh whatever. Leave that for the heroes to find. They can deal with it. Earn their damn taxpayer cheques.>>

    It takes arbitrarily little time to record all of the info around the office for later, because that's what even basic high-fidelity cameras can do. The mental data from the 'Scorpion' is more interesting, and will wait for some modeling later. Bioweapons aren't particularly useful to Zwei, it's true. Not here anyways. There's no current reason to put Asgard on any kind of hitlist, and urban terrorism doesn't serve any foreseeable purpose. Still, it's stupid not to take a silver bullet for a rainy day when it's outright handed to you, and producing an extremely stripped down, heavily modified, hovering headhunter drone to zip through the snow and the dark along the upper catwalks on quiet gravity suspension and use its syringes to collect a tiny sample is a simple affair.

||Captain Rogers is down, in relation. I am analyzing the efficacy of the poison on his physiologically enhanced anatomy. Likely, he has less than ninety minutes untreated to live.||
<<Well sucks to be him then. That's what doing stupid things and convincing yourself they served a purpose after the fact does.>>
||Ignoring moral introspection, this will require at least one other responder to transport him to safety. The Asgardian is attempting to deal with Gargan in a fit of revenge.||
<<Typical. I could just leave it . . .>>
||But I am not going to.||
Zwei     When Thor goes ham after Scorpion, that's when Asche shifts from his concealed monitoring position, suddenly revealing 15 feet of inexplicably hidden bulk in a single smooth standing motion. In one fluid motion that is not nearly appropriately hefty and slow enough for his size, he turns and fires a single interceptor missile from an under-shoulder mount that is basically invisible; a hypersonic pencil that comes at Thor from the side and explodes into a cone of even higher speed liquid shrapnel.

||The thing about superhumans is that they may be as strong as they wish, but they are only so heavy.||
<<Yeah yeah.>>

    ||"Though I could be convinced either way, the facts are that if this is the time you choose to pursue a blood vendetta, your companion *will* die."|| the giant armoured humanoid reverbs, stirring the snow with the sonic force of it. ||"You have no medical personnel. You have no means of rapid transit aside the Asgardian carrying him out on his hammer. I could leave him to his fate. Leave the Scorpion. Consolidate your gains and cut your losses. Be satisfied with what small victories you deserve, for once. Accept that others may make better use of what you desire than you will."||
Spider-Man     Fucking /brutalized/. The man is clubbed straight into unconsciousness, because hazmat chemical hoods aren't hardened against being beaten with the blunt end of a gun. While it's cracked hard, it isn't broken beyond recognition, just immediate use. It's... one of those guns that the arms dealers were trying to sell to Ulysses Klaue!! A piece of alien blaster tech. These Gargan guys definitely have a lead on who those mysterious arms dealers were. If they can get Gargan, they'll have a good chance of being able to get ahold of that mysterious gun-running supplier, because these guys clearly have /good/ connections.

    It also finally gives Edison a good example of their tech to trace, instead of all the sanitized stuff found at the show-sale with Klaue. It might be possible for him and Reyes to work together and find out exactly /where/ these weapons are being stashed, and possibly get there ahead of time... Before Tombstone makes his move!
Spider-Man     "We don't do things halfway on Earth, Shakespeare." The man says. His harness has expanded down to encase both arms with hefty, painful-looking claws. His face is half obscured by a gasmask, and the other half obscured by a thick heremetically-sealed lens. With a dramatic flick, he gets into combat position the same as Thor. Hydraulics crunch dramatically as his claws snap shut and open again, ready to take the god on directly. The man seems confident. He can't deal with Thor in a stand-up brawl, but his massive poison expertise could demonstrably take down even a god.

    The massive hydraulics screech and crunch as both claws try to block the strike of the hammer. They crunch, and an ablating layer shears clean off of them. Jagged edges are torn in their interior, ripping off manipulator layers like skin being flayed off a sinner. But his tail lashes out, trying to strike at the man despite the frazzling blasts of energy. This is a man with the guts to take on a god, and only his own insanity and intelligence to properly even the score. He's likely to be blasted back before he gets any proper poisoning on Thor at a remotely lethal doseage, if anything at all, tumbling back and sort of skittering along one of the vats using the tail and claws. He wall-crawls like Spider-Man does!

    "Chica's got a point, Shakespeare. You're the best one to get him to Sinai before I finish the job. You care more about your friend, or your honor?" He sneers a bit... He expects the man to hesitate. Long enough for him to leap off the Eitr vat and dash straight towards the exit!
Thor Thor moves for Gargan, and as his hammer impacts, two things happen. The tail comes for him, and despite the blast of energy, nearly manages to hit Thor, when an interceptor missile comes at the Asgardian's side, exploding into him, damaging his armor and actually exploding against his skin, ripping holes in it and sending Thor flying back. He lands on his feet, and if he focused all in on it, he could likely continue to pursue Gargan...

But that'd mean leaving Steve to die. But at the same time, if he doesn't go after Gargan, he's sacrificing his honor, his duty. It's a difficult choice. An intensely difficult one. And Thor hesitates long enough for Gargan to escape. Instead of pursuing him, Thor raises his hammer into the sky, and summons more lightning. The lightning does not threaten Zwei or Gargan, though.

It blasts through the roof into the Eitr containers, blasting them sky high and destroying the dangerous poison mixtures. Thor turns on his heel and moves towards Reyes, running at superhuman speeds. "Where is the nearest medic? Bring it up on your 'computers', I will hastily get him there." Thor's mood seems...down. He's unsure, almost, but regardless, if Reyes gives him Steve, the Asgardian will grab him, whirl his hammer, and move to fly out.

And then fly to the closest medical center there is. Hopefully, his superhuman speed and the fact that the weather doesn't bother him will help him get Steve to safety in time!
Spider-Man     Gargan disappears into the cold and the white, leaving behind annihilated Eitr, lost bombs, and captured men. Spider-Man is going to need to help clean that up, it looks like. Reyes, now not charged with getting Steve to safety, would probably want to work hard on analyzing that recovered gun, and tracing it back to where it came from. Spider-Man himself urgently gets to work on wrenching the roof closed anxiously, shutting it fast and webbing it tight to seal the gap where lightning rushed twice.

    Some of Gargan's men got out the back, graciously allowed to live by Zwei. They press on into the cold, meeting at rendevous points with bugout bags that they arranged for the day when SHIELD, or aliens, or the lizard people finally found them and made them pay for their insolence. The rest, Spider-Man stays behind to try to manage, webbing up to deliver safely to the police, as fits his habits.

    Tombstone shines a pair of brass knuckles as he watches Thor arc through the sky, hiding away in a secret garage. He's leaning against the heavy Stark Industries winter tank, watching men armor up and load magazines full of ammunition into heavy assault rifles. A man with binoculars turns and speaks to him about what was over Thor's shoulder.

    An ICU rushes Steve Rogers into high-intensity care for extensive blood rewarming and dyalitic filtering. His shield is strapped to the bed, as if with the expectation that he'll be right as rain in a moment, ready to pick it back up. People in the hospital are hoping that their prayers can be heard over the gale.

    The blizzard grows stronger. Power goes out for everywhere in New York City without a backup generator. Highly advanced personal flight ceases to be reliable. It becomes hard to navigate any way but a careful, dedicated hike. Emergency services will be unable to answer calls, much less get to the site of disaster as the snow piles higher each moment.

    A white wind howls.