Meet Miss Tery

August 15, 2017:

Iron Guard gets ambushed by a new super-villain. Except she is Spoiler new secret ID. It would have been nice if she had told him beforehand, too!

Somewhere in Manhattan

Characters

NPCs: None.

Mentions: Deathstroke

Plot:

Mood Music: None.


Fade In…

Iron Guard’s circuit of patrolling over New York gets adjusted every week according to the latest crime statistic and the predictive algorithms he uses to anticipate criminals. Even so, it is not frequent he interrupts any important crime. Most of the time he just calls the police when he spots stolen vehicles, purse snatchers or drug pushers (taking with high-res pictures, of course).
But the patrol routes are in the mansion data banks, accessible to all Avengers. After all, they can also use them. He has been talking about making the same arrangement for Gotham, but he is finding the crime areas in Gotham is far less clear, the statistics manipulated and maybe someone else already did it and is interfering with the readings. Oh well.


He's so predictable. And just as detailed as her mentor. She memorized the way his algorthms work so that on any given night a new villain in town knows exactly where the Iron Guard would be. In working to get into the gangs in New York, as the daughter of a Gotham based villain, meant proving she had something to offer the gangs here, working to improve her standing to them to get to give her more information.
Part of that 'trust' building was helping them evade the annoying Avenger that's been cutting into their profits. Ms Clue settles at an overlook as Nathaniel moves into the area.
Right on time.


Iron Guard is only predictable if you know the programs he uses to create the routes. Otherwise criminals will find him all too often where he is more annoying, the patrols adjusted every day as if he knows where they were going to go. Still, it is a large city, with many alleys and hideouts to avoid those pesky superheroes.
Knowing the programs, however, one could set the watch at the second with his flight path. Probably because he is on auto-pilot while working in some engineering project or another. Patrols are part of his training, but boring after the second week.


You've got to prove yourself. Clue is nervous. There's a lot riding on this. Worse for Stephanie is the sensation of a ghost haunting her steps. Orange and black dogged her as she worked to get in enough to have this opportunity. As Nathaniel moves into the area, Stephanie hesitates have a moment when she thinks she spots her ghost out of the corner of her eyes, but it's gone when she flicks her glance toward it.
Focus.
Turning back to the task at hand, Clue has no more time to wait. There's a high-tech hero she needs to down… The moment he flies into where she needs him to fly, Clue tosses a simple exploding paintball down so that it impacts his faceplate and covers him in hot neon Barbie pink.


The instant the paintball projectile is shot, it appears in the sensors of the armor and it automatically spins to avoid the impact. A fraction of second later Nathaniel overrides the auto-pilot, takes a glance to the chemscan and tries to intercept it with his right hand. He is very quick, as Steph should remember.
It explodes, covering his gauntlet with pink. But it was harmless. So… some kind of prank?
The armored figure slows down and hovers in the air, slowly rising to try to see who shot him.


You really think that was the ONLY projectile Steph dropped? Alright, for the moment it was. He is just as fasts as she remembers. Nathaniel slows and Stephanie straightens up to be seen on the edge of the rooftop.

She's in olive green, like army drab, skirt that barely brushes mid thigh. Cheerleader pleats that the winds this high up part to reveal bright orange. She's wearing a soft grey-white tank top that match the knee high socks leading to high top converse sneakers. Rich blonde hair is pulled up in a half pony tail to reveal a literal rainbow of colored locks. A mask to match shirt sits over her eyes, hiding the top part of her face. Heavy bangs reach to where her brows would be.
Rich red lips curl into a bright smile, some thing slightly manic about the angle of her lips and the cant of her shoulders. She brings two fingers up to her temple, a Sailor Moon looking salute that comes with a 'come and catch me' wink.


Nathaniel doesn’t recognize right away the woman at the top of the building. In his defense, her mannerisms throw him off, and Spoiler has been hiding herself more and more since he met her for the first time.
“Good evening,” he greets, the voice mechanized to indistinctiveness. “You dropped something,” he mentions, showing his right hand. The paint sliding on the shinny metal without really staining the surface. “So I was wondering, what could I do for you, Miss?”


"Tery Clue," says the rainbow blonde, sketching a bow. One hand behind her back, the other sweeping out to the side, knees straight, legs together. Though she keeps her eyes on Nathaniel, the waist bend reveals a length of pipe. Her voice is a drawling sort of haughty note that's nothing like Steph's usual.
"I was wondering if you could …give me directions to the nearest paint shop. Pink's a great look on you," quips Clue, a laugh in her voice as she straightens, pointing a gloved hand at Nathaniel's pink one.


Iron Guard studies the woman a second. Miss Tery Clue. Yes, he gets it quickly. “You must be from Gotham,” he ventures. Sounding amused. “And no thanks, I am trying to avoid purple or anything even close. Silver and red only, Tery. And a pipe, seriously?” Hovering a couple feet from the edge of the roof He folds his arms over his chest. “What do you want?”


The smile turns to a pout.
"You don't like PURPLE?" she coos, putting a gloved hand over her heart as if it were breaking. And then, just as suddenly as she pouted, Tery laughs. It's high, it's airy, it's unrestrained.
"Me either," she says in a suddenly serious tone that for all the manic tones earlier could be classified as familiar. That ghost appeared again, on the rooftop across the way. That half face of orange int he darkness suddening a shiver down her spine before she forces herself to regain the persona she's in. She puts her hand on her hips.
"Yes, seriously. And can't a gal enjoy a moonlit rooftop conversation?" Tery quips, voice once more light and airy and unconcerned.


"I like purple just fine," retorts Nathaniel. "But not for my armor," the pink is gone from the gauntlet, the paint unable to stick to the neurokinetic metal. He only kept a tiny amount for the possible lab analysis later.
There is a brief pause. Purple. That rings a bell. Out of professional courtesy he has never run a full biometric scan on Spoiler, but he has good memory and a few pictures.
Height. Check. Hair color. Check. Lips shape. Check. "Are you asking for a date?" He deadpans.


"Aw! What about some green highlights? You'd look so festive!" Tery calls out, hands clapping together happily. Nathaniel's got professional courtesy, Spoiler does too in her own batway. So when Nathaniel deadpans, Tery's laugh hitches for a half heartbeat before she's laughing again.
"Ooh…Look at you! Jumping off rooftops AND to conclusions!" Tery retorts. "No, Cute-Pi. I'm working. But I get off shift at three."


“I have not been on any rooftop yet,” points out the armored young man. “And it seems to me either your line of work is rather unique. Maniac laughter and a costume? How is paying you?” He flies up maybe thirty feet and does a wide area scan. If her ‘job’ was to distract him from some crime, he might be able to catch the culprits. But the question now is if he should. Spoiler’s disguise is fine, but what can she do exactly to stop him? Paintball is not going to work.


"Yet," Tery repeats on a wink. She notes him changing angles. Scanning for the break in that already happened and the car is quite calmly driving away with its elicit goods.
"Fame. Fortune. Admiration. Cold hard cash," Tery quips, starting off sounding so star-struck and ending sounding harsh and maniac once more. Like someone on that knife edge of desperation.
"I am from Gotham, like you guessed. And what a great guess that was, Flyboy. Was it the outfit? Too over the top, wasn't it? Well, that's just how things roll across the bay, don't it?" says the girl in Cluemaster's colors, saundering on the ledge, closing the distance between them. The pipe, perhaps an inch thick, swings at her side, as a teen would idly swing a purse.


“Miss-Tery Clue,” points out Iron Guard. Because only a Gothamite -and- Arkham Asylum candidate would use that name. “You have some accent,” he offers, generously.
Then he lands on the roof. Now he can jump off.
A theft in progress just a city block away. But not violent and unlikely to turn violent. He can be ‘distracted’. “Outfit is fine,” he adds. The armor doesn’t smile, but the tone hints it. “So what is your master plan for the evening?”


A lock of gold is tucked behind an ear as Tery smiles that too manic smile. Behind the orange semi-translucent panes of her mask, her eyes are sharp and calculating, watching Iron Guard land down on the roof. She is definitely on an interception course. Her steps are slow, deliberate, not one to underestimate an opponent. Yet her body language is all wrong for a more familiar purple and black batling, no matter how much the rest of her physical seems to match. Spoiler's motions are tight and controlled most of the time, with fits of still teenaged exuberance. This woman, despite the otherwise youthful look, moves like a vixen. Sure, she's in sneakers and not heels, but she's got her weight pitched forward just enough that the swag of her hips is no different than if she had been wearing an ultra mini and six inch hooker heels. Muscular thighs are covered in flesh tone fishnets, visible as she slowly draws closer.
"Glad you like what you see. Master plan? Keep you entertained. Maybe pinch a thing from your suit to take back to my place; a souvenir… Just a little somethingsomething to remember you by, to play with," Tery supplies. The whole expression on her face added to the way she's slinking closer step by tiny step, calculated to read much more adult-orientated than Spoiler or Stephanie Brown ever give off; ever.


“Yes, well,” he is wearing an armor suit from the future that makes him as safe as if he was inside a tank. She has a pipe and some light explosives, assuming she has Spoiler’s gear around. It better be a great master plan. “I am entertained,” he offers. Because seeing Spoiler acting like this is rather amusing, after all. “Not giving you souvenirs, Tery. Neurokinetic constructs cannot be divided in pieces.”


"Awww, and here I was just starting to change my mind about that whole date thing," Tery retorts, stopping just outside arm's reach, smile falling toward a pout. The expression doesn't get there though, for her eyes flick to something over Nathaniel's right shoulder. A tiny crease appears between her brows, lips starting to press together before she returns her focus to Nathaniel again and her lips kick up into a smirk again. She resumes her coy walk, toard the shadow of a rooftop AC unit, pipe resting on her shoulders.
"Thing is, you SAY you're entertained, but… I dunno. It's awful hard to tell. I mean, it's not like you've said anything shocking," muses the Gothamite villain. The pipe pulls up from her shoulders and set down on the rooftop so she can lean on it, using it to press down on the trigger of the electroshock field she set up before hand. All she had to do was intrigue Nathaniel long enough and well enough for him to land down right in the middle of her trap, and then distracted enough not to notice her trigger it.
The thing is, traps like this are all about timing. When to trigger it and when to let the hero know he's stepped into the trap so that he has just long enough to regrets his life choices right before a powerful electrical discharge leap up to seek to overload delicate, yes future-tech, electrical systems.


Click? Oh. That was clever. Nathaniel had not scanned the rooftop, missed the electromagnetic trap. And now his armor is hit by enough power to stop a modern tank.
But it is kind of cute she thinks his armor has electrical systems.
Steam power was the Eighteenth Century
Electrical power was the Twentieth Century.
Hyperdynamic power is all in rage in the 40th Millennium. Drawing pure power from the Bleed. As a matter of fact it has been for two millennia. Technological advance showing signs of stagnation like so many other things in Nathaniel’s native utopic society.
Still, for the gallery, Iron Guard jerks back, sparks fly, the pool of light in his armored form flicker and dull. And slowly, very slowly, he falls down the rooftop, to soundly crash on the alleyway below.
Is he dead? No, looks like he is moving, rolling over. ‘Obviously’ injured. You better run, you Gothamite supervillainess.


Click. It was flashy and loud and for a moment she glances over the edge to watch Nathaniel falling. She was relatively sure he wasn't going to get fired by that. Some light systems damage. Enough to slow him down for a few moments. She wasn't sure how much damage it was going to do to him, how long he'd be down, if he'll stay down or give chase… She hadn't expected him to literally jump off the roof for her.
"Aw! You fell for me," she calls down when he crashes into a heap. A kiss blown his way, Steph knows that there are too many variables. Too many unknowns. Too many barely catching sight of orange and black. She leaps from the far side of the building, hits the fire escapes to leap her way to a waiting Ducati; a modern day version of what her father used to drive. A soft roar of engines, and Miss Tery Clue speeds away into the night.


Those puns hurt more than the fall. Seriously. No, Nathaniel could have ignored the discharge. A few systems in the surface of his armor blinked out for a few seconds, until the neurokinetic machines realigned, little else.
For the sake of Spoiler's new identity, he will file a report to the police. Also, no more patrolling for tonight. Let them think his armor took some damage.

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