Toy Story

April 26, 2015:

The Toyman attempts to rob a Metropolis bank. It doesn't go well for him.

Metropolis

The Big Apricot

Characters

NPCs: Toyman

Mentions:

Mood Music: [*\# None.]


Fade In…

Note: Superman did the emits for this scene (and doesn't show up until the final round. He's not like, just adding his name on this for logreq purposes, or something).

Del-Pargo Savings and Loan is a super big deal in Metropolis. Not only is it a big time bank with investors who frequent the gleaming skyscrapers that were built by economics, Uncle Sam, and the almighty dollar, but it is also a popular bank for everyday citizens to boot.

One can see why on any given day, especially Friday, which this is.

Friday afternoon, quitting time, in that little window of time where people get their checks and need them cashed before the weekend.

Oddly, a trio of black remote control cars begin buzzing around the historic bank with reckless abandon. Their small motors whine as they slide their rubber tires around the well polished floor. A woman in line for a teller chuckles a bit to herself, but doesn't notice until too late the smoke that causes her to fall unconscious. Soon, people are falling down all over and the thick, dark smoke is beginning to fill the room.

One of the really nifty perks of being a nigh-immortal wizard in possession of one House of Mystery is that one can screw with casuality. Whereas some people would do so in order to preserve moments in history or undo wrongs that needed righting, Constantine frequently uses his access to the warp and weft of time itself to age his collection of scotch and to take advantage of good compound interest rates. As Del-Pargo has been in New York for several hundred years, it makes a handy place to make his money work for him.

So he's sitting in the floor manager's office, smoking a cigarette with slouched non-chalance, and waiting with nicotine-buffered patience for the manager and a clerk to return. Hearing the thump of bodies hitting the floor gives John just enough time to peek out through a glass partition at the thick, bilious smoke filling the room. He pulls a thin kerchief from one pocket and wraps it around his mouth and nose, moving to stand behind a potted plant and get the lay of the land before recklessly charging into the situation.

Kitty's not normally in Metropolis, however she's recently gotten quite an interest in the area. It's a complete and utter happenstance that she happens to be inside the bank when the motorized cars start to spew their toxic smoke.

Reaching into her purse, she's quick to pull out a scarf, which she wraps about her face to help combat against the poison. Taking a breath, she ducks toward the ground where the cleaner are will be and moves toward the wall. Then, her hand is in her purse again, retrieving a katana sword which she pulls out much like a more deadly Mary Poppins. Eyeing the cars, she starts to stalk them, slicing the closest one in attempt to get it to stop. And to possibly get a look at its insides.

Kara had been flying on patrol over the streets of Metropolis, one of her favourite things to do. Despite recent events, she knew not everyone thought she was a monster and she had been trying hard to make up for her mistakes however she could; one of the best ways to do that was to be out here doing good as far as she was concerned.

Her super-hearing picked up on the people hitting the floor in the Del-Pargo Savings and Loan, which was definitely an oddity. Given how big of a deal the place was, she had been keeping an eye on it for trouble anyways.

Kara's hair was waving in the breeze behind her she raced down towards the bank and opened the doors. Noticing the smoke filling the building she opens another door and uses her superbreath to create an air current to help get it out of the building where it should dissipate harmless into the air.

When she is finished she calls out with concern, "Is everyone alright in there?"

Interagency politics are enough to annoy the hell out of Detective Joe West. It's not as if he minds being in Metropolis, but the work could have been done electronically.

"You ever heard of email?" he's asking Detective Francis of the Metro-PD, as they depart from a store nearby. "They even have this thing called Skype. My adopted son showed it to me when he went overseas."

"Yeah, well," grunts the MPD detective, "I like to do things old school. Put your nose to the dirt. Get a lay of the land, sniff out these crooks like -"

"Do you smell that?" Joe looks around, frowning, before coughing a bit and pointing toward the bank. "What the hell?"

The last Friday of the month, the day to deposit all the receipts for the month. Simeon actually traveled all the way from NYC, just because his family prefers to have all their businesses receipts in one city, despite having companies across the country. Well, at least it is a reason to ride his motorcycle, get out and meet people, and relax. He was meandering in line, his taill wrapped around his waist to conceal itself, the duffle bag with the bundles of receipts slung over one shoulder, while he is playing 'Sims' on his cell phone in one hand and Simpsons: Tapped Out on his tablet in the other hand. Sure, still wearing his motorcycle helmet might look a bit conspicuous, but it hides his face from gawking people and he lucks out that it keeps the smoke out the same way it protects him from exhaust fumes.

As the cars race by him, with their smoke is spewing, and people dropping, he reacts with an odd fluidity, his mobile devices being pocketed in his leather jacket and zipped in safely in one smooth motion… his tail unfurling and his shoes seeming to pop open to free his lower set of hands, he drops partly limp near some cushy chairs to blend in with the passed out folks, waiting to see how things play out.

Tre was doing what he calls traininig, he didn't have a place to go to use his speed on, so he just started running thorugh different cities and utlizing his ability to control how fast he is going. So it's not until he's run through Metroplis his second time, that he slows up a bit, having cris crossed through the city that he remembered he needed to take out money for groceries. It is his turn to do the shopping at the dojo. So he just happens to be coming to the bank after the cars go inside. He uses the atm, but after getting his money he shakes his head at the whine of remote control cars and he opens the door to look inside.
Tre looks around and notices that people are starting to drop by the way side as the cars go about driving around spitting out the noxious fumes from their engines. Tre opens the doors wide and pushes the door stops down so that there can be some ventalation for the smoke so that ti's not all centered in the mian lobby of the bank.

Constantine sees a group of downed people, passed outsurely not deadfrom the knockout gas. Their bodies and dark clothing litter the room, looking like caterpillars, slumped and curled on the ground.

How Kitty keeps a katana in her purse we may never know, but we do know that when she slices through one of the remote control cars, she sends it flying against two separate walls. How it works seems pretty standard; it's just a regular remote control car with some sort of aerosol tank on it.

Joe West will see Supergirl fly into the bank even as people are coughing and trying to get out. Some of the lucky ones did not pass out. Kara clears the area, but just as she does she'll notice four drones with cameras upon the ends circling near the high ceilings.

Down below, resting comfortably in a chair, sits Simeon who seems to be gathering no notice thus far.

In other news, several pink bouncy balls begin to bounce around the room which doesn't seem like that big of a deal until two of them hit together and cause a large explosion! Luckily it's away from where the would be customers are dozing, but it's clear they're small explosives of some sort.

And then, from the side entrance, a short figure, perhaps a child, enters. His cherubic face looks far too plasticy to be real. Surely it must be some sort of mask. But it looks wooden. Old timey, even. Like one of those puppets from the beginning days of television. Just as he enters, so does Tre, so it looks as if they're in cahoots. We, dear reader, both know that, in fact, they are not.

John hrms quietly, backing up a slow pace until he's peering around the concealment offered by the heavy office door. The mage considers his options with a frown. Being a wizard and inherently somewhat more squishy than, say, Kara, he opts for the smart play- to do absolutely nothing at the moment. He does fish in his pocket for a charm to loop around the knuckles of his left hand, and a little notebook filled with Daoist charms and a ink brush is produced from his jacket pocket, upon which he starts scrawling quickly.

As the air is cleared by Kara, Kitty allows the scarf tied about her face to drop a bit. It's been a bit stifling. Taking a glance around to get the lay of the land, the mutant recognizes Constantine as he peeks around. "Constantine?" It's clearly a confused and surprised question to see him there.

But, then, there's an explosion and her attention is pulled away. As is her automatic response to such a thing, she phases. There's no real physical difference to be seen, but she stays that way in a hope that the bouncy balls will move through her without exploding. Her eyes narrow at Tre and the man in the wooden mask as they enter.

Kara's eyes go wide as the bouncy balls hit each other and explode, that seemed to be a bigger and clearer threat than the drones whatever purpose they served. Giving a quick inventory of the others around she tries her best to come up with a plan very quickly.

Calling out to the speedster Nitro, "Nitro, think you can start getting the unconscious people out of here quickly? I know you're fast enough to do it. I'll take care of the pink balls as quickly as I can!"

Her eyes open wide when she sees Constantine just standing there when she gets the literal chills, "John, um, could you do something? Please. Maybe see what's up with that kid, he doesn't seem normal.."

She figured Kitty and Joe West had things figured out and she had no clue what Simeon was up to so she flew after the first pink ball attempting to freeze it with her super-breath and catch it before going after a second one when she notices Kitty taking care of the rest.

Supergirl's attention was turned to the drones as she began to scan them, too bad she didn't know Kitty was a /Superhacker/.

The two detectives look at each other when Supergirl whooshes in. Then, their heads dart back to the bank when an explosion goes off.

"Call it in!" Joe is already rushing toward the bank.

"Wait, wait, West!!" Detective Francis sighs and withdraws a cell phone, calling dispatch.

Joe pulls his standard issue pistol from a vest bolster beneath his blazer and approaches the bank. "NYPD!" he calls out to those leaving, withdrawing his wallet and flipping it open so the people can see his badge. "I need everyone to stay calm. Let's all move away from the building, okay?" He gestures toward a series of benches a fair distance away from the entrance to the bank, while keeping his pistol aimed downward at a non-threatening angle. Whomever is behind this, they could be amongst these 'survivors'.

Knockout smoke cars are one thing, it is non-lethal, and while evil, it is a smart plan that allows for making robbing a bank fairly resistance free and likely without any silent alarm button pressing. Simeon can appreciate the misguided effort and the slanted ethics of such behavior. Exploding balls are far from non-lethal, not remotely ethical, and frankly, not something Simeon wants to get too up close and personal with. Laying low stops being an option if there is a chance the balls will blow people up, himself included, and so he reacts and changes tactics. His tail and three of his hands grab onto people, and he propels himself and his cargo away from the bouncy balls' trajectories, placing the unconscious patrons behind a counter for shelter. He then hears the Girl of Steel directing everyone, "Anything a handy mechanic with a tail to tell can do to help?" scaling a pillar so he is more on Supergirl's eye height, but keeping watch for stray drones and ball-istic bombs

Tre looks up when he sees Kara and he nods his head, it does look odd that he's openign the doors, but hey he's trying to asses the situation. But with the unconcious civvies being a main priority, a blue and silver lighting flickers around him as he runs, collecting as many of the unconcious people as he can, and in a matter of seconds, or less than that majority of the unconcious are out of the bank, so that false sense of him possibly being with the bad guys have been quashed.

The little pink balls that would otherwise go splodey all over the place are frozen into small chunks of ice, bringing their hearty travel to a clunky end.

Those still awake make their way out at Joe West's recommendation. One old lady stops and pats him on the wrist, "That's one heck of a jurisdiction, sonny."

Those stray drones that hang high above Simeon's head are left to their own devices and begins to rain literal fire down upon the heads of the heroes, forcing those susceptible to such terrible things to consider evasive maneuvering. Whatever this was supposed to be has turned into a mess.

The man in the mask, upon closer inspection isn't that at all. He's a childsized toy dressed in a small trench and a fedora. He walks up toward the heroes, even as fire is all around them.

"You should have let this one go, heroes!" the toy says, his expression always sort of smiley-meets shocked. "Now you're going to ru—-" And then he just stops. He stands there. Motionless. Lookin' creepy. As dummies are wont to do.

John tries to wave his palms at Kara and Kitty as the girls out his location, then drops his hands to his side with a haggard wave. He hauls open the door to the manager's office and stares daggers at the women. "Bloody hell, didn't anyone teach you about not outing your comrades who are hiding?" he snaps at the two, before flinching back from the calvacade of fire falling upon them all.

John dips a hand into his pocket and throws it into the air, a cascade of glittering snow flying from his palm as if he'd just unleashed a short blizzard inside the building. The little snowflakes dance like a Christmas night's promise, but where they find flame they swarm to it like little icy moths, squelching out the fire before it can even get started. Where they find bare skin, a shock of cold quickly stings and numbs the skin. "Is someone going to punch that little git in the face or is the wizard going to have to fix things again?" he asks in an irritated tone of voice.

Constantine's grumpy yelling is met with a roll of her eyes. "Hey, I was just surprised to see you in Metropolis," Kitty tells him. She adds, with a smirk, "Didn't mean to interrupt your brilliant 'Don't mind me, I'm a potted plant frond' disguise. And, well, you're the one that's offering to do the punching."

In the meantime, there are other things to take care of. While remaining insubstantial, the drones above them don't phase Kitty - literally. However, with her attention on them now, she starts jumping upward. Able to use her ability to remain in the air, she slashes at the drones. Each time she becomes solid, she starts to fall toward the ground, using the momentum to add to her swing. Then, she phases again, climbing into the air to repeat the same gesture.

At Joe's call, she blinks, suddenly wishing she was wearing a mask, as she certainly remembers meeting Barry's foster father over drinks a few months ago. "Crap," she mutters, attempting to ignore him and hoping that he won't remember her.

"Yeah, well, I got a buddy over there," says Joe, motioning the old lady toward Detective Francis. "He's calling in the police. EMT's, the whole nine." He smiles to the old lady, "But you, like everyone else, are witnesses, and I'm sure Metro-PD are going to want to ask questions."

Fortunately for Kitty, Detective West has his hands full.

Kara looked at Simeon who had made himself known and smiled, "Oh! Hey there." She raised her hand to block some of the fire being shot by the drones and aimed her lase eyes up at it only for Kitty to katana it all awesome-like.

She grinned and left the other woman to take care of the drones and said to Simeon, "I'll watch her back, you deal with the creepy dummy robot thing."

Nodding, Simeon leaps and flips between a few spurts of flame before the drones are silenced by the Intangible ninja-girl. He lands and wraps his tail around the automaton, just in case it reboots, "I have a feeling ti was intending to say something like, we will all rue the day we were born on this lowly mudball, and that we should quake in terror of its massive monsterous mechanical menacing might… maybe?" even as he speaks, his hands seem to move independently, pulling tools from pockets and attempting to find a panel to open. He allows his other ability to kick in, trying to get to 'know' the robot, "Tell me little fellow, were you just here to terroize, or does your maker intend to empty everyones wallets, accounts, and safety deposit boxes?"

Tre having took each of the civvies out and across the street allowing them to be out of harms way, he runs back to the entrance of the bank and seeing that there is a bit more smoke still left inside. Spinning his arms rapidly Tre begins using one arm to pull the noxious smoke towards him and spinning his other arm the opposite direction to move it outside teh building. There isn't a lot of smoke left due to Kara having helped with a large portion, he just wanted to make sure he got what little was left out so that none of the others would be effected. "So what the hell…." he trails off as he sees the dummy and grins. He seems Simeon going after it and well Kitty is floating in the air using a bad ass katana to cut down drones with Kara as her backup. Upon seeing what Simeon is able to do, Tre continues helping get teh rest of those who are unconcious out of the bank and putting them with the others across teh street. Upon finishing that, he looks around, "We clear?"

Abruptly, the side door that the dummy opened earlier smashes open again amid the smoke and dissipating flames. A rotund man with stringy brown hair, glasses, and large mutton chops comes bounding into the room wearing a hawaiian t-shirt. He bounces hard upon his chest and winces in pain.

Behind him, a familiar looking 'S' can be seen through the haze as Superman steps forward through some of the remaining flame.

"Meet Toyman. Or should I say Winslow Schott. He just got out on parole," Superman says as he looks to the others. "And it looks like he's going back."

Superman smiles towards the other heroes, giving nods as he makes eye contact. "Luckily, all of you were here."

His eyes stop on Constantine and a tense look comes upon the Man of Steel's face. "You know, quitting smoking now really decreases your chance of cancer and other harmful health problems."

Constantine finishes ambling through the lobby in time to see the heroes doing a number on Toyman's little gadgetry. With the smoke clearing out too, he takes the rag from his mouth and tucks it back into his jacket pocket, only to be brought up short at Superman's remonstration. "Nutters running around in their knickers shouldn't be handing out life advice, mate. Sod off," he tells Superman with a derisive snort. He fishes around for the cigarette he'd been smoking until Toyman's interjection. Finding it abandoned, John fishes in his pocket for his cigarette wallet and lighter, feeling the need to feed his habit as if spurred by Superman's remonstration.

As the last of the drones are sliced through and Superman bursts out of the side door, Kitty drops to the floor: substantial once again. Sheathing her katana, she keeps a hold on it for now. Either she has no desire to shove it back into her purse with quite so many eyes on her, or she just wishes to keep a hold on it for now. Of course, she'll hold it behind her back just so it doesn't get confiscated by the police or anything. At least - as far as she knows - Joe didn't see her aerial display.

"Thanks," she tells Kara with a nod as she moves back toward Constantine. Simeon's quick work with the tools to open the large toy is met with a grin, though it fades somewhat as she studies Tre. He came in with the clockwork thing, but also doesn't seem to be involved with it truly. Then, she turns her attention back to Constantine, her eyebrow raised. "Man, you are cranky today," she tells him with a bit of a grin. Because, really, when isn't Constantine cranky?

Kara winked at Kitty when all was dealt with, "Any time! Great work with that sword, you're like a ninja or something." She nodded to Simeon and Tre as well, "Nice work Nitro and New guy whose name I didn't catch. You're pretty handy with machines, as handy as Nitro is speedy."

Superman gets a big smile from her, even if he might not have been the happiest to see her, "Aww come on John, be nice to my /cousin/." She smiled at the older cranky magician, " You really should quit smoking anyways!"

It is not visible (unlessy ou have X-Ray Vision or something) due to the Motorcycle helmet, but the shift in Simeon's voice does imply he is smiling, "So, Mister Dummy, do you have anything to say to your maker?" his fingers seeming to blur as he taps a few spots on the creepy automaton, and then it seems to whir back to life.

The Dummy look directly at Toyman, and then speaks, same voice, but different attitude, "Hey, pops, you shouldn't toy with Superheroes. By the way, I'm eloping with a Real Doll. You should Lego of your anger, maybe workout some… you can makes the most of what you HasBro. Just say, eff a ole Shwartz… and Tonka your medicine like a big boy." Then its head spins around a few times and it starts cackling and pointing at Schott since Simeon's tail has released to oversized toy.

Looking down at the toy, Simeon shakes his head, "That wasn't very nice to say. After all, his odss of Wins were low, but he took his best Schott. Why don't you go pick up all the evidence and turn yourself and them in to the nice Policemen outside?" making a few more taps before letting to Doll go off and do just that, grabbing the broken drones and cars up and carrying them to the cops for impounding.

Well. There wasn't much that Detective West could have done inside that place. He'd managed the witnesses until the local police begin to arrive, but as he's turning things over to those within jurisdiction, he catches sight of the Man of Steel from the other side of the glass.

"Well. That's something you don't see every day."

Out comes a cell phone, a photo taken, and an SMS sent to Barry with the message: 'Hey, from Metropolis' attached.

He'll stick around to help with the cleanup, because that's what good cops do. To Protect and Serve.

Tre sees that things are alrigth, but when Superman comes out holding Toyman, he grins. "Ah, this is too damn cool." he says as he looks over to Superman. And here he is with quite a few cool people, granted he's met Kara and Constantine for teh second time now. He grins as he leans against the door and as he looks around, he sees Kitty looking to him, "Hello." he says to her as he watches her for a moment, seeing teh look on her face. He didn't know what was up with her, but it wasn't worth commenting on. Looking bavk towards Simeon, he's doing alright at least he thinks and once he sees that things are alright, he stretches and takes out a candy bar and starts to eat it, whene h got it is unknown. Still though Tre looks around trying to make sure that htey got everything before relaxing too much.

"And I thought English people were supposed to be polite," Superman mutters under his breath as he can't help but snicker. "The police have been notified and are almost hear to clean up the mess. Thank you all again for your help."

Almost as he says so, the police bust in and there's a lot of that rabbarabbarabba and commotion. Schott heads his way back to jail and that old lady who patted Joe West on the arm got home safely.

The end.

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