Log:Christmas in July, Scene 1

Christmas in July 2014/07/10 	 Vajra Porter Aoi Anthony Quinn|Quinn Timewarp Marathon Enforcer

1

Built on a long ridge rising slowly to Colonial Heights to the south, this is the oldest part of town. Narrow, often cobbled streets with cast iron streetlights still in the shape of the ancient gas lamps predominate, some residential, some commercial - even down side alleys delightful old shops can be found. Main Street runs its cobbled shop-lined length straight as an arrow from Colonial Heights to City Center, and feels to this day the heart of the city, for all that it plays to the tourists. Many of the buildings are old as the streets but as well maintained; others, like the main library, stand in contrast. The Main Street MagLev line runs the whole length of the road and farther, but parallel a bit to the east, to avoid disrupting its historic beauty.

Tali is in Old Town for the very simple reason that she lives in the district - just. Her mother's apartment is almost in the wrong end of the Artists' Quarter. At the moment she's wasting precious time doing chores at home - and annoyingly at normal speed, so her mother won't find out about her powers.

Yushio steps out of the front doors of the Museum having been discussing with the curator the possibility of her sponsoringan exhibition of Japanese art. She's more or less agreed to go through with it. Stretching as she gets into the open air after sitting for nearly a couple of hours she looks over to make sure her flame red Ferrai is still parked where she left it.

Enforcer stands atop the library roof edge to take a breather from patrol and check his messages. He holds his left forearm in front of him, and a projected screen interface and keyboard hover above it. His right finger pans across the screen, then swipes down a few times to scroll through his alert messages. . o O (Study group, test tomorrow, paper due Monday, Nicole wants to meet up for a laser tag match. Full weekend.)

Vajra, enjoying her freedom from classes in the Summer, bounds along the street, hopping over people and generally being a cheerful, friendly nuisance.

Marathon enters from Colonial Heights.

Mid-afternoon in Old Town and Anthony is in the area for the very simple reason that it is lunchtime. At least it is lunchtime for him as he has been a bit wrapped up in a project and allowed noon to fly right by without notice. Once his stomach finally began to demand attention he decided that he needed to step back and take a breath and so he has driven out to Old Town in order to catch a late lunch (or possibly an early dinner) at the Main Street tavern.

While Nicole /is/ going to campus at the high school in the summer, it's not because she's taking classes... she's doing athletics. This afternoon, however, she's decided to do some different running - as Marathon, out on patrol through the city, zipping from the top of one building to another. Yep, she's out looking for trouble, silly kid.

Porter walks up the street on his way from the park to the south. It was almost as nice as the beach, just with less sand. Until it starting getting too hot, so he left the park behind Why is he walking and not taking the maglev? Because the park wasn't the only thing he left behind back that way, and they don't let people ride for free. Or without identification. Especially when they vaguely resemble people on watch lists.

The summer sky darkens as what appears to be an oncoming storm approaches. Only there is something unnatural about it. The air temperature drops like a rock from mid-90s (F) to about 29 (F). And instead of rain, snow starts to fall from the sky...quite heavily.

Marathon skids to a stop on the roof of the library, a grin on her lips as she says, "You? Again?!", adding a teasing tone of her voice as she addresses Enforcer.... and being careful to say it from well out of arm's reach - just in case. Then the weather shifts and she mutters, "Oh, great..."

Tali happens to be cleaning a window when this happens, and so notices the snow almost immediately? "Huh?" And she goes to investigate - her mother will hardly notice if she goes to investigate. In accelerated time she rushes outside, has second thoughts, goes back inside, digs out a warm coat, gloves and scarf, puts them on, goes back outside, and sees what's up!

Vajra halts her hopping and peers up at the sky, the expression on her face plate changing from (^ ^) to (o o).

Enforcer notes her approach and lowers his left arm, his computer interface projection shutting off. "You. Again," he responds dryly, then blinks and looks up. As the temperature drops, he restrains a shiver. . o O (Insulation shouldn't be needed this early in the summer. What the heck?)

Yushio shivers as the temperature plummets abruptly. "This can't be normal." she says to herself. With a mental command through her neural implant she summons her battlesuit and it appears around her over the next couple of seconds. Yushio has become Aoi.

"Be nice if it wasn't so sunny and hot..." Porter points out the obvious. Mostly to himself. And then... suddenly it's neither of those? Porter blinks and looks around as snow starts to fall. Then looks up. "I didn't really mean it!"

Within a matter of a minute or two, the snow starts to fall more heavily, almost reaching white-out conditions. Traffic on the street has turned into an unsurprising snarl as the folks in their non-winterized cars have trouble getting traction. The hover vehicles are really only impeded by the inability to see well.

With the sudden and unnatural change in the weather Quinn pulls his car over to the side of the road; a sporty two-seat convertible it is absolutely the wrong thing to be driving around in heavy snow. Besides which, this obviously is going to demand some looking into. A nondescript van that has been following at a discreet distance pulls over ahead of him as he exits his own vehicle. As he walks towards the van the side of the vehicle seems to unfold as panels open and arms extend while his own clothing shifts from a business suit to a skin tight body suit. Immediately the arms begin to outfit him in his armor.

"Holy schiz!", Marathon exclaims. "It's not supposed to snow in SUMMER!", she adds, hugging her arms around herself. Then, in a more serious tone of voice, the asks, "... you think this is some rosenanx on the spur?" of Enforcer.

Timewarp decides to have a quick look around the area - to see the extent of the storm and if she can see any cause!

"I have no idea what you're trying to say," Enforcer says in a clipped tone as he steps up onto the roof ledge and looks down at the trouble below. "But this is definitely irregular, if that's what you mean." His right hand lifts to his ear and taps his radio earpiece as he listens for news on police bands.

At least one person is driving far too fast...as a delivery truck starts to lose control and slide through the nearby intersection, in the direction of a couple of pedestrians trying to wade their way across the street in their t-shirts and shorts.

Aoi sees the van heading towards pedestrians. She doubts her ability to get both clear in time and simply stopping the van dead in its track will injure the driver. Activating flight and exoskeleton strength boost she catches the van and lifts it up over the heads of the pedestrians, and then looks for a safe place to put it down when she's gradually brought it to a halt.

Timewarp dashes into a hardware stores, grabs a shovel and starts the improbable task of clearing the city streets - by herself. She focuses especially on the main streets, especially the narrower ones in the older parts of town which can be dangerous even in better conditions.//Ch Env STR 3 TH 32m radius, alternating with 30m half-"Teleport". And repeat, likely a lot.

"Think it's some metahuman making trouble?", Marathon says, translating for herself, as she steps up to the edge of the roof to stand next to Enforcer. "Whoa!", she says, then blurs off the rooftop to the pedestrians, aiming to grab both of them and pull them out of harm's way. Aoi beats her to the actual rescue, but she still gets to the pedestrians and, lickety-split, gets them into a nearby shop and out of the suddenly terrible weather.

Vajra whews as she sees Aoi saves the pedestrians, "Good job, Yushirin!"

Vajra starts looks around, scanning in the visual, infrared, ultraviolet, ultrasonic, active sonar, and monitoring radio and video signals.

Enforcer stares skyward and around the rooftops to try and figure out what the cause of the storm is, but the white-out conditions make it quite difficult. He looks down at the trouble below and disappears in a small cloud of dark smoke. At just a split second afterwards, he's stepping out of an alleyway and onto the snowy sidewalk at street level near commotion with the truck.

Porter looks down from looking up at the snow falling to see it quickly accumulating. As are vehicles. And pedestrians. And people trying to keep vehicles from hitting the pedestrians. "What's going on?" He asks anyone who might know more than him. Which is probably anyone.

There's a ground tremor. The windows rattle on neaby buildings, and a water main breaks, sending water (soon to be sheer ice) spewing into the sky like a geyser.

As he finishes getting suited up Quinn takes to the air, activating his radar to help him navigate in the heavy snow and scanning the sky with thermographics to look for anything that might be causing the snow storm. The speakers on his suit kick on amplifying his voice. "EVERYONE PLEASE BRING YOUR VEHICLES TO A SLOW HALT" his voice booms. "DO NOT JAM ON YOUR BRAKES AS YOU WILL GO INTO A SKID."

Marathon steps out of the shop, where she's just left the two pedestrians and looks up and down the street... then focuses in one direction only as she spots the geyser. "Oh, great, as if it wasn't slippery enough out here!", she mutters to herself. Still, she heads off that way in a blur of motion, to see if there's anyone in immediate need of help.

The driver of the truck that Aoi saved gets out of the truck, "Thank you! Where'd this snow come from?"

Aoi sees the geyser. If only there was something to stop it with. Like a van. Flying over to the site she gently turns the van onto its side and places it down over the spurting watersprout.

Enforcer's head turns to the burst water main. He has a very particular set of skills; skills he have acquired over a very arduous career. Skills that have nothing to do with disaster control. He raises both hands up to his hood and flips it up to keep his head warm from the cold and snow, sighing out a foggy breath of air. His eyes flicker to Aoi as she flies by with a truck in tow. o O (Yushio...)

Vajra lifts off the ground slightly to avoid the water and ponders. Ponder. Ponder. "Now then, if I was a villainous weather controller, where would I be. Besides the set of a sentai show."

A schoolbus transporting some kids from summer school looks to be on a collision course with a van. The van...is apparnetly full of nuns, on their way to help at a local soup kitchen.

Porter doesn't even have the skillset or carrer. Or much footing. Unlike some, he does his best to move very carefully... towards the fountain of possibly soon slush and ice. Because he's never let a lack of ability, knowledge, or situational awareness stop him from trying to help.

The two people Marathon saved look quite appreciative as they head into the building that Marathon dropped them off at, "Thanks! I hope you figure out what's going on!"

Aoi plants the van on top of the geyser. The water is still escaping but at least it's not spraying everything nearby with what would soon be ice. Casting her eyes skywards she searches the clouds and above the clouds with her neutrino scan for a possible source of this weather.

Marathon zips over to Aoi and says, all in a rush, "Crash happening!", pointing back in the direction of the school bus and van-o-nuns. She can't really do anything about it... but Aoi seems to be strong enough to /maybe/ do something.

Quinn immediately takes off after the skidding bus, attempting to stop it from slamming into the Nuns 'R Us van by the simple expediency of diving beneath the bus' undercarriage and lifting the entire vehicle into the air as he flies.

Vajra shoots up into the air, still scanning all frequencies, looking for someone using the odd weather as cover for some nefarious deed. She contacts Q via radio as well, "Kyuu-kun~! This is probably a distraction, could you look around a bit? Domo!" She tries to contact Aoi too, but realizes she doesn't know if Aoi has radio in her suit.

Enforcer starts sprinting as the school bus drives by, running alongside it. Then he jumps up and plants a foot on a light pole and kicks out, diving into a narrowly open window on the bus at a fortunate empty seat, landing in a roll in the bus aisle and springing to his feet before dashing to the driver. "Stop mashing the breaks, shift down a gear and pump them," the out of breath teenager tries to tell the driver how to drive. Where'd he get a license?? He looks for a clear place to steer the bus.

The bus slides...nearly taking out the helpless van, only to be have the bus lifted over the van by Quinn. Several nuns can be seen praying, thanking the maker.

Porter has just enough time to cringe. Van of nuns + sliding schoolbus.. and with a Fireworks store behind them. Yeah. Luckily, it turns out to be one of those magic schoolbuses that flies. Or something. He breathes a sigh of relief and looks around. As much as he can in a snowstorm, anyway.

Marathon glances back to the 'crash'... and sees it's been averted. "Nevermind!", she chirps at Aoi... then zips back over to the van of nuns, pulling open a door. "Sisters! Please file out of the vehicle and go into that shop right there for safety!", she calls out to them, pointing at the nearest open storefront on that side of the street. "It's really not safe to be driving, right now!", she adds, trying not to shiver in the sudden snowstorm. Then, as she shifts her feet, she's surprised by being suddenly sitting on her bottom on the snowy sidewalk. "OW! ... and careful walking, it's slippery!", she adds, using the van's door to get herself back to her feet.

Enforcer breathes a sigh of relief as the school bus gets lifted up, taking a few balancing steps from the shifting of the vehicle being towed by Q. "Looks like you're good here," he comments and throws a smoke pellet on the ground, disappearing. Next, he's at a nearby bus stop on street level. Good thing he's a good contortionist and can slip out of those narrow bus windows. He brushes some snow off of his shoulder as he looks around.

Aoi doesn't notice anything up in the sky...but as she looks around again, something piques her interest. That ground tremor that caused the water main break may have been caused by something at the bank. There appears to be a massive filled-in hole in the floor of the bank, which she can see with her scan.

Quinn sets the bus down as gently as he can. "Everyone off the bus," he says to the children inside. "Single file. Follow the nuns into the nice warm store. They have puppies." Then he is back off, heading to the ruptured water main to weld it shut.

The kids and driver of the bus file off the vehicle into the warmth of the nearby store with the nuns from the van.

Marathon thinks to herself, .o(I'm so getting myself some cold-weather gear!), as she moves to the door of the shop, to pull open the door for nuns and children, to help get them started on getting in there.

Aoi decides to keep her neutrino scan active. It cuts through the sight blanketing effect of the heavy snow fall. As she brings her gaze down back to ground level she spots a filled in hole in the floor of the bank. . o O(Tunneller?) she wonders. "Going in or coming ourt?" she says to herself, and tries to track the path of the suspected tunneller by the trail of disturbed earth underground.

Aoi yells, "There was a tunneller here. It came from the bank. Cut through the water main and is heading east. I'm trying to follow the trail it made with my neutrino scan." she says and points eastwards.

Porter now thinks that he should've picked the beach, instead. On the other hand, the chaos hasn't proven to be immediately harmful or fatal. So that's good. Of course, Porter hasn't done a thing to help make any of that that way. Maybe? Which may or may not be a good thing.

Enforcer fires off a line from his linegun and reels himself up and in the direction Aoi's headed as he hears her yell.

Marathon looks up as the other meta calls out the info, and waves over one of the younger nuns. "Here, ma'am... hold the door, okay? I've gotta go help with that... thanks!", she says, dashing away to the east after the others as soon as the door's taken care of.

Vajra flies eastward, following Aoi.

When it doubt, yelling is a good sign, so Porter heads east. Aoiwardly.

Aoi manages to continue following the trail, despite the general level of chaos all around. It leads her all the way to the coast, where the tunnel apparently opens up into the water, a good fifteen feet under the surface.

Aoi scans the water hopefully but is starting to be afraid she's lost the trail. "The tunnel opens into the ocean. I'm looking for the tunneller but... well there's no trail to follow anymore." she tells anyone close enough to hear her.

Timewarp thinks, during one of her six-secondly rest breaks, "I'll never complain at my chores at home again....."

Quinn spends a few moments with the pipe, welding close the rupture (and they laughed at me when I said I wanted a welding laser in my gauntlets. They said I was mad! Mad, I say! Fools! I'll show them all!). Then he is back into the air, his radar leading him in the direction of Aoi.

Vajra waves to Aoi, "I'll check, Yushirin!" She dives into the water and pings around with her sonar.

Enforcer swings out towards Aoi, releasing his line and flipping in the air before landing in a crouch by Aoi. He's certainly getting his exercise in today. "Where did the trail end?" he asks as he stands, looking around as he lowers his hood.

Aoi points for Enforcer, "About seventy feet off shore and fifteen feet under the water surface, Enforcer." she says.

Marathon comes to a stop, not /skidding/ to a stop as is her usual, near Enforcer and Aoi. "Out thattaway, huh?", she asks, then she blurs and there's a little contrail of water in her wake as she moves out over the water at hyperspeeds, doing a search from topside.

Quinn cuts out over the water, trying to follow Vajra by her radio emissions. "I'm up above you now, Vajra," he says, "Looks like things are pretty well cleaned up back in Old....crap!"

Vajra surfaces and radios back, "I think they had too much of a head start, or they're very sneaky. My sensors can't pick up anything."

Enforcer nods slowly as he taps something along the side of his neck. His cape and hood retract quickly into his costume, revealing the bodysuit beneath the cape. Without the cape, it's easier to see that he wears a utility belt with pockets and weapons attached, including a sword along his left hip. But what he reaches for his his rebreather in a right pocket. "But do you see the people responsible?" he says in a flat, dispassionate voice to Aoi.

Aoi sighs, "I can't see it. Can anyone?" she asks. . o O(I never gave any thought to underwater operations. My flight thrusters won'rt work submerged and the suit is too heavy to swim well in it.)

Vajra heads back to shore and answers Aoi verbally, "Sorry Yushirin~ they were too fast."

"So what is going on, anyways?" Porter heads for anyone not flying, out in the water, or moving at significant fractions of c. "Who was what and did where? Somebody said something about a bank?"

Built on a long ridge rising slowly to Colonial Heights to the south, this is the oldest part of town. Narrow, often cobbled streets with cast iron streetlights still in the shape of the ancient gas lamps predominate, some residential, some commercial - even down side alleys delightful old shops can be found. Main Street runs its cobbled shop-lined length straight as an arrow from Colonial Heights to City Center, and feels to this day the heart of the city, for all that it plays to the tourists. Many of the buildings are old as the streets but as well maintained; others, like the main library, stand in contrast. The Main Street MagLev line runs the whole length of the road and farther, but parallel a bit to the east, to avoid disrupting its historic beauty.

Aoi nods to Vajra, "Yes. For me too. I can't see them either."

Sirens can be heard in the distance, from Old Town. Though with the traffic snarled the way it is, it will still be several minutes before the police arrive at the bank.

Marathon's contrail goes all over and about as she dashes along the water's surface at hypervelocities, then, even as the contrail's forming that indicates she's coming back to shore, she's standing next to the others once again. "I saw jack splat, too", she admits.

Enforcer glances up and down the coast. "Well where would they go from here? An escape boat? Submarine? Go ashore elsewhere?" He then looks skyward. "Aerial escape?"

Quinn returns to the dock with everyone else. "I really need to move some more of my sensor systems over from my exploration suit," he says. "Of course those are really designed around things like seismology so maybe they wouldn't have been that much of a help."

"I can go further out and check on the ocean... but I dunno if I could tell a 'getaway boat' from any other boat... and if it's deep enough, I wouldn't be able to see a sub, anyway", Marathon says.

Quinn shakes his head to Enforcer. "I'd probably have them on radar if they took to the air," he says.

Aoi says, "We can guess fairly accurately when they left by the timing of the water main being ruptured. They must have been moving pretty fast to get so far away in the time they had."

Vajra nods, "Unless they have some sort of stealth system, Kyuu-kun."

Enforcer nods to Marathon and Quinn's responses, frowning only slightly. "I guess they got away if none of you can find a trace of them."

Vajra hmmms, "Might they have entered the water, then burrowed again further out, I wonder?"

"My guess," Quinn adds after a moment of thought, "after they got out to the bay they buried themselves down in the mud. It will be almost impossible to locate them."

Aoi says, "No it won't. If they did that I can find them. I'll go look."

Aoi flys out over the water and probes the sea bed using her neutrino scan in a search pattern.

Marathon zips back out onto the water's surface, staying out of Aoi's way, but staying nearby... just in case there's trouble.

"Huh... So we got no idea what it was, where they went, or really what they were doing..." Porter is thinking. No trail? No leads? No witnesses? No problem.

The bank manager comes out of the building as the police arrive, to greet them and then give a statement.

"Well, at a guess," Quinn says, "They were robbing the bank? Maybe we should see if they took anything more than money."

Enforcer palmspins his rebreather idly as he ponders aloud, "The power signature and MO is similar to the Masters of Disaster villain group. Usually they operate on the West Coast, though. They've come a ways."

Aoi returns from her fruitless search, "Nothing. I found nothing." she says a bit dejectedly.

The manager finishes given a statement to the police, and the officers go on to talk to the few patrons who were inside the bank when the freak snowstorm hit. Outside...the snow has tapered off, and the temperatures are starting to return to normal.

Enforcer is still distracted as he tries to account for possible safehouses and checking them off mentally for unlikely options as Aoi returns. "Good work," he says in his usually flat, unemotional voice while he looks off to the North. It may come off as sarcastic instead of encouraging, but Enforcer isn't known for manners.

Quinn heads back to the bank to talk with the manager. "Do you have any idea what was taken?" he asks.

The manager nods to Quinn, "A couple of things. Some cash...what little we had at the tellers. But also the contents of a couple safety deposit boxes."

Quinn gives a nods. "I thought it might be something like that," he says. "Any chance you can give us a list of the clients who had their safety deposit boxes broken into?" he asks.

Aoi looks over at Enforcer after his flat comment, "Yeah. Well I tried." she tells him a bit more depressed, taking his comment as sarcasm.

The manager nods, thinking about it. "I suppose there's no harm in that." He checks the records, taking a couple of minutes to look things up. "The first is owned by a Tommy Cangelosi. The second is owned by a Dr. Tilbury."

Vajra hugs Aoi, "You were great Ysuhirin~!"

Enforcer continues to idly palmspin his rebreather as he fails to come up with viable options to search, sighing with a bit of frustration. He blinks and stares at Aoi with a sudden catch of his rebreather, sliding it into one of his pocket belts. She seems to have gotten the aloof vigilante's attention. "You did. You got us this far," he says in a quiet, neutral voice.

Enforcer thinks. o O (Oh, Yushio...I'm sorry...I...no, I have to be careful. I can't let her know.)

Quinn nods to the bank manager. "Just those two?" he asks. "None of the other safety deposit boxes were broken into?"

Vajra snaps her fingers, "Hey~! His place was the that got hit a while ago. By some minions led by a teleporting mindcontroller."

The manager nods. "That's correct. Just those two. And they were pretty specific about what they were looking for."

uinn thinks on that for a moment. "Pretty specific in both cases or is it possible they were specific in one case and that's giving a false impression?" he asks.

The manager considers that. "Umm...hmm. I'm pretty sure they asked for both deposit boxes by number."

"Oh," Quinn says, "but they took the whole box? I thought you were saying they only took specific items from one or both boxes."

The manager shakes his head, "The entire contents of both. They left the boxes themselves."

Vajra hmmms, "Do you think that perhaps the security cameras might have caught a glimpse of what was in the boxes when they emptied them?"

The manager considers that. "Perhaps...we can check." One of the policemen, a detective, has been eavesdropping on the conversation, and goes with you to check the security recording.

"It's probably best to get back to the scene of the crime," Enforcer suggests as he turns his back on Aoi, throwing down another smoke pellet at his feet and vanishing from sight.

The first thing which is noticeable in the recording is the four alleged metas. One looks to be what might be considered an earth elemental. He's all rock. Second, is a woman dressed in burgundy leather with a haircut that looks straight out of a Nagel painting from the 1980s. The third is a woman with white hair, wearing a blue and white form fitting costume. There's a blue tiara with it. Lastly, there's a man wearing a white and red costume, with a long trenchcoat and sunglasses. The outfit has a flame motif.

Aoi sighs again and starts returning to the bank.

Timewarp is greatly relieved to see the snow tapering off, but continues her digging efforts for the moment.

"So...we've got Rocky, Heat Meiser and Cold Meiser, and...who is she?" Quinn asks.

And sure enough...the deposit boxes are broken into. The woman with white hair freezes the lock, and it shatters, letting the box be opened with a minimum of fuss. In the first, there are several documents which are taken by the woman in the burgundy outfit. The second, contains a couple of vials of...something. The manager is able to identify that the first was the Cangelosi box, and then second owned by Tilbury. All of the items were placed in a watertight container before hte group tunnelled out of the bank.

"Ah!" Quinn says as understanding dawns. "She must be their water based person. Probably Crimson Tide or something like that."

Enforcer eventually appears in front of the bank in a small cloud of smoke, his cape and hood deployed again with his hood drawn up.

Aoi is still making her way back. Not flying all that fast and blaming herself for not thinking of the bank soon enough to capture the villains, whoever they were.

The driver of the truck that Aoi picked up waves her down. He smiles. "You were too quick. I just wanted to thank you again."

Timewarp has noticed a convergence of heroes on the bank and decides, now the crisis is over, to see if what's up there. She appears inside the bank, shovel in hand.

Aoi lands and dismisses her battlesuit. "I was just glad to be in the right place at the right time." she tells the driver.

The man shakes Aoi's hand, assuming she lets him do so. "You and your friends did a lot of good here."

Quinn looks at the security footage as the Masters of Disaster take the documents out of Cangelosi's box. "Can you zoom in on that," he says, indicating the documents, "and brings us around by about 30 degrees so we can look over her shoulder and see what's written on that?"

Timewarp quickly locates Quinn, appears behind him and tries to see what he's looking at.

The manager grimaces, considering that. He zooms in a bit. It's kind of grainy like that, but potentially readable, with hte current level of technology. He turns the footage so that it's upright for the viewer. It just appears to be a folded over document, with some handwriting on the outside, 'In case of fire'.

There is a stack of them...and the resolution is as such that no other details can really be made out.

Enforcer decides to wait outside of the bank for the other heroes. Given his reputation, he doesn't want to just go walking in. He stands patiently, arms folded over his chest, looking generally displeased.

Timewarp says abruptly, "So what's up, bank robbery?"

"Ah ha!" Quinn says as he points a gauntleted finger toward the scrawled writing on the screen. "Just as I suspected. It means absolutely nothing to me." He glances around. "Anyone else?"

Vajra's faceplate switches to (- -).

Timewarp shakes her head. Studying the image a frame at a time is of little use if the frames themselves are grainy.

Aoi detours on the way to the bank and goes into the store where the kids and Nuns took shelter. She talks to them and if the store has suitable stocks buys the kids candy bars.

The manager looks up the records of the two people who owned the deposit boxes, "Perhaps they might be able to help you all. Thomas V. Cangelosi, and Dr. Ellan Tilbury."

Quinn shakes his head. "They make it look way easier on television," he says. "They're able to do things like 'The handwriting analysis shows that clearly this was written by an albino midget Russian under duress, so we have to go to Norway'. He gives a slight shrug of armored shoulders. "At a guess maybe Cangelosi's robbery was a distraction. They're hoping we will get bogged down with his lawyers trying to find out what was in the safety deposit box."

Built on a long ridge rising slowly to Colonial Heights to the south, this is the oldest part of town. Narrow, often cobbled streets with cast iron streetlights still in the shape of the ancient gas lamps predominate, some residential, some commercial - even down side alleys delightful old shops can be found. Main Street runs its cobbled shop-lined length straight as an arrow from Colonial Heights to City Center, and feels to this day the heart of the city, for all that it plays to the tourists. Many of the buildings are old as the streets but as well maintained; others, like the main library, stand in contrast. The Main Street MagLev line runs the whole length of the road and farther, but parallel a bit to the east, to avoid disrupting its historic beauty.

Vajra hmmms, "Two people to look into isn't much of a distraction, and Cangelosi might be felling helpful if the contents were actually important."

Timewarp says, "Yeah, junk could be globally more distracting than that!"

Quinn shakes his head to Vajra. "Not if there was anything illegal or questionable about them," he says. "For that matter even if there wasn't he might be unhelpful, otherwise when something illegal or questionable got stolen from him we would be able to tell because he would be unhelpful in those cases and helpful in others."

Vajra giggles, "It's not like we don't know he's a crook~!"

Timewarp nods. "Everybody know that!" Well, she has lived in Colonial Bay all her life.

Quinn nods to Vajra. "Knowing and proving are different things," he says. "If that was proof he wouldn't want us to have it, right? And if it wasn't proof he might be difficult anyway, otherwise we would know when we were after proof. Besides, maybe these guys didn't even know what was in their. They just figured there would be something to grab and that would get us looking the wrong way." He shrugs his shoulders. "It's not like I'm a detective or anything. I'm just spitballing here."