Log:Superanimals!, Scene 1

Superanimals! 2007/07/10 	 Rebound Dark Horse Jennifer Bonker Shoro 1

The summer has brough more tourists, and with it this end of Ming Street is busier than ever with people trying to soak in the local colour, or to get a bargain in the market.

Dark Horse is currently perched on top of a restaurant, staying in the minimal shade of an outcropping of the building. This is one of his regular haunts, especially after his prior run-ins with Pride.

Jennifer is out browsing through the market in Ming Street, ambling around with a casual relaxed absence of hurry. She's got a bowl of soy-rice and bamboo shoots in hand, leaning up against a streetlight as she eats.

Alex walks up the stairs of a tiny basement-level electronics shop. He smiles as he looks down at his latest purchase, wrapped in a brown plastic bag.

Jennifer waves when she sees Alex come into view.

Alex smiles and walks over to Jennifer. "Hey. How are you doing?"

Various street entertainers take advantage of the tourist trade, even if they don't really fit the 'theme' of the street. A fire-breather shoots a jet of flame near (but not too near) Alex.

Jennifer smiles and lifts the bowl of rice, "I'm doing great. Just relaxing. It's busy today in the market isn't it? Were you around about fifteen minutes ago? There was a street juggler who was pretty amazing."

Dark Horse just continues to look out over the crowd...mostly trying to keep an eye out for any known criminals...especially mob or tong-related people.

The noise of chatter and hawkers crying out their wares overwhelms that of such vehicular traffic that still makes it down the road, but for all that some high-pitched shrieks manage to carry over the top of it, from the very restaurant Dark Horse is perched on.

Jennifer straightens up and looks in the direction of the shrieks. . o O(It's not my business. I'm retired.) she tells herself, even as her feet are moving her towards the restaurant.

Dark Horse furrows his brow, and leans over the edge of the building, gripping it with one hand as he does to hopefully not fall. He then peers, trying to figure out what's going on.

Despite the scream, no one has actually exited the restaurant.

Dark Horse grumbles to himself, "Figures I'd need a damn mirror to see what's going on." He unhooks his swingline, and swiftly rappells down to street level, letting his gloves take the beating as he slides down.

Jennifer thinks. o O (Alex, that's one. Dark Horse makes two. I suppose you can count me, so that's three. Three capes in one place. Yeah, trouble brewing!)

Dark Horse pulls open the door to the restaurant, and steps inside to see what the trouble is.

Jennifer follows Dark Horse a couple of steps behind, far enough back that the first burst of automatic weapon fire won't hit her while cutting down DH.

The waiter, who's running this way and that, almost collides with a wall, in an area it looks like a number of customers have cleared.

Dark Horse stops in his tracks. "That's it? Please...this was a waste of time." He shakes his head, and looks around again, to make sure he didn't miss something that might be important...like someone with an automatic weapons that might gun him down, yet leave Jennifer unhurt.

The waiter picks up a wok hanging decoratively on the wall and suddenly brings it down, upside down, onto a table, with a loud clang. "Gotcha!" he says, forgetting the accent affected for the tourists.

Alex relaxes a bit. "Is that what the screaming is about? They need us, Jen. They need an exterminator."

Dark House is just deciding it *is* a waste of time when the wok (the surprised waiter hanging on to it) suddenly flies off and flies back at the wall, colliding with another clang.

Dark Horse raises a brow, "A rat did that? Doubtful. There's someone else here, most likely."

The rats go back to nibbling on the food, surprisingly unmoved by their near-capture. The main reaction of the room is laughter at the waiter, who runs back into the kitchen.

Dark Horse slowly moves up on the rats, trying to not disturb them...yet.

Alex blinks at the sight of the waiter being dragging by his wok. He heads over to check on him.

Jennifer shakes her head as she walks across to the table. "This is not good." She seems to be speaking to the rats, "Any of you speak American?"

Alex says, "I've never seen rats this bold before."

Dark Horse approaches with stealth worthy of a mouse. Jennifer not so much. The waiter doesn't seem to have the idea at all, reemerging from the kitchen red-faced and wielding a large knife and charging for the table.

Jennifer glances at Alex, "I have. When I was hanging with Eleven."

Alex pauses and looks over at Jennifer. "Oh?"

The larger rat (of hooded coloration) stands up on its hind legs and sniffs in Jennifer's direction. The smaller white one watches the waiter.

Dark Horse waits to see what happens with the waiter...wishing he had some kind of tranquilizer darts on him or something.

Jennifer nods, side stepping to get into position to intercept the waiter. "Yeah. Sentient rats. Well mostly sentient. They worship Jack as their God."

Dark Horse. o O (Doesn't sound too sentient to me, if they worship that guy. Heh.)

Alex chuckles, "Jack is their god? Well having the rats be sentient /and/ intelligent... that would be asking too much."

"Hey!" says the waiter, sounding more Brooklyn than Chinese, "whaddya think you're doing?"

Dark Horse slowly reaches out toward the rats now that the waiter is distracted, trying to get them to sniff his hand, palm up. "C'mon...let's get you out of here before this get violent, eh?"

Jennifer says, "Not saying these are from the same bunch." Somehow as the waiter rushes past her the knife transfers from his hand to hers. "But it's possible. In which case cutting them up, even if it was possible, ain't going to happen while I'm around."

Jenn gets the knife easily, though the sudden movement seems to be too much for the rats, who jump of the table, ignoring Dark Horse's hand, and dash toward the more populated side of the restaurant (and a few more screams).

Dark Horse sighs. "I swear...this is just to make me look stupid or something. There's a camera nearby."

"Just - get them out of the restaurant!" the waiter says, recovering his temper and his Chinese accent.

Dark Horse says in fluent Mandarin to the waiter, ""

Alex says, thinking aloud, "Maybe if we had an ultrasound generator..."

Jennifer watches the rats scamper across the floor. "I'm not seeing a lot of intelligence here. The rats I saw with Jack were much smarter than this."

There are certainly a couple of people taking pictures on their PDAs by now.

The rats stop to nibble at a plate of food knocked to the floor by a rapidly-departing customer.

Alex blinks. "Wait a minute..."

Alex tries to creep closer towards the rats to observe how much they are eating.

Dark Horse doesn't want to disturb the rats more than necessary, so he just waits, and watches.

Jennifer waits to see what Alex is up to.

Alex sneaks up so quietly you might think he feet were soft as rubber.

Alex breathes a giant sigh. "It doesn't seem as if they are suffering from the wasting disease from Kihzra's world."

Jennifer flinches, "Iuch. I hadn't thought of that. Smart thinking, Alex. That's good to hear."

Alex looks back to the waiter. "How do you think thay got into the restaurant. I wonder if they were flushed out of there normal habitat by something else?"

The rats notice Alex as soon as he talks and dash under another table.

Dark Horse tries again to get the rats to peacefully sniff his hand, moving up on them slowly. . o O (Patience is a virtue...they'll eventually relax enough to pull this off.)

Alex says, "Wait... these are domestic rats..."

The white rat is spooked, but the larger hooded rat is at least staying where it is and sniffing in Dark Horse's direction.

The hooded rat sniffs at Dark Horse's fingers.

Dark Horse smiles to himself. He waits until the rat relaxes a bit, and then tries to pick it up gently.

The white rat runs to the next table and up the trouser leg of the man sitting there. He lets out something embarrassingly shrieklike himself before setting into swearing and trying to wriggle it out of there.

The rat lets itself be picked up, sniffing in the direction of Dark Horse's face.

Alex waits quietly, hoping not to disturbed Dark House's efforts.

Jennifer struggles hard and mightily, and succeeds in reducing her reaction to the comical sight of the man trying to get a rat out of his trousers to just a slight smirk.

Dark Horse smiles, whispering to the rat, "Let's hope that your friend follows, eh?" He then slowly moves toward the door with the rat, hoping to not disturb it too badly...in case it IS super strong and can break his hand.

The man jumps to his feet as the rat gets disturbingly far up, and tries to push the lump which is the rat back down again.

The rat sniffs at the air questioning as it's carried.

There's a crackling man and the man outright screams. Followed by a smell of ozone.

Jennifer darts over to the man who screamed. She already has a sharp chef's knife in hand, which she uses to try and cut open the leg of the man's trousers so the rat will tumble out.

The hooded rat makes no response to Dark Horse.

Jennifer makes a rough gash in the trousers and the white rat drops out to the ground.

Dark Horse whispers, "You'll be safe...but I have to get you outside the restaurant." He continues to the door, pushing it open with his back, since it should open outward, by law.

So far the rat seems content to be carried.....

Dark Horse steps outside, and briefly thinks about sending the rat into the Dragon Palace out of spite, but decides against it.

The moment the rat is in the sunlight, it squirms and tries to get free.

The rat breaks free effortlessly and dashes back into the restaurant!

Dark Horse blinks. "Great...it's stronger than I am. By a lot." He comes back inside. "Time to call Starguard, probably."

Dark Horse says, "They'll at least have the tools for the situation."

Bonker whirrs along down the street in front of the restaurant. Clank clank clank.

The white rat dashes to yet another table, this one unoccupied.

Jennifer figures the time for games is over after the rat injured a customer. As it starts to move away she grabs at it.

Jennifer grabs for the rat, "If you're smart enough to understand, you don't hurt me and I don't hurt you, got it?" she warns the white rat.

The trouble with rats is they're really small. Makes them hard to hit.

Jennifer misses her grab.

Dark Horse steps back inside the restaurant, grumbling to himself, and using his radio at the same time to try to contact the police...who can contact Starguard if they deem necessary. "There's a situation here on Ming Street. Umm...superpowered rats. Best get someone down here. "

Dark Horse sees the big rat heading under a table.

Yutaka comes out of china nights after a short and light lunch of Dim Sum. Noticing something is awry at the restaruant down the street, he ducks into an alley, his nanites already swimming changing into an outfit a bit more suited for this kind of activity.

Bonker moves up to the door of the restaurant and steps just inside, whirring. "What's going on here?" he buzzes.

Dark Horse glances to Bonker, and points to where the two rats appear to be. "Two superpowered rats are creating a disturbance."

One rat is under a table; the other more out in the open where Jennifer has just made an attempt to grab it.

The big rat just heads for cover behind the counter with the till, while the smaller one looks back at Jennifer....

Jennifer feels the knife she's holding twitch, but it's not going anywhere.

Bonker begins moving about, stamping his feet to keep the rats out of the way. "Please exit the building immediately!" he says to all the non-supers in the restaurant.

People starting moving for the exits, afraid of the robot if not of the rats!

Jennifer tries once again to grab the smaller rat.

But once again she fails to grab the small rat - who starts flying to dodge her hand!

Alex sees about helping the bystanders out.

The big rat seems content to hide while the smaller one flies toward the door.

Shoro enters the Restaurant and sees one of the large rats, "Looks like the mushu pork got out of its cage..." these are big rats...almost of ROUS levels, and as comedic as this seems, rats that size could probably do a bit of damage.

Shoro pulls back his fist as he teleports, but during the teleportation, he loses focus and instead of releasing his chi energy with the strike its just a normal strike, no power behind it other than muscle power.

Shoro doesn't seem to hurt the rat much, but it still flies back against the wall and drops to ground.

Shoro sighs internally and tries it again..steeling his will..

Shoro watches as his second strike finds its mark, his leg glows with power as he lays one into the rats side, a low strike sends it skidding across the floor and back into the wall again..

Bonker continues shuffling people out of the restaurant while he lets the supers deal with the problems. He follows the NPCs out the door, and stands there letting the supers inside deal with the rats.

The other rat is behind the counter and not to be seen.

Shoro looks around..seems everyone is gone, he picks up his rat and looks for something to tie it up with..

Shoro looks to see if any of that string they use to string the ducks up is available..

Shoro can find string.

Shoro ties the rats feet up tightly close to its body to keep it from having much leverage. He then ties the snout tight like a muzzle on a dog leaving only its nose to breath out of. He doesn't see much else so he decides its time to leave and bring it to starguard.