Players: Corrin, Mike and the Texas Twister
Summary: Agent Kozlowski wants to prove his worth for promotion to field agent status, so he defensively traps Mutant Town in preparation for Friday night's block party. Corrin and Mike end up being the targets of the traps, instead of the bad guys.
Date: Dec 12, 2010
Log Title: Koz To The Defense!
Rating: PG-13
Mutant Town
Mutant Town, also known as District X, has become a haven for mutants. This section of town doesn't care what you look like, accepting all mutants no matter what their appearance. Most of the businesses in this section of town are mutant run ranging from small convenience stores to clothing shops to restaurants to night clubs. The buildings here aren't the high rise buildings you might find in mid-town but most are about 5-6 stories high. Mutant Town might not be the most luxurious section of town, in fact it's fairly run down, but this section of where mutants are safe and welcomed regardless of race, religion and culture..
Corrin is hanging upside-down and listening to his office mate laugh at him. SIGH. He pulls out his cell phone and dials.
Boop-boop boop-de-boop. Nice having a phone to remember things he finds difficult to remember himself. "Koz! I'm calling Mike on you!" Send. Ring. Ring… "You better pick up, Drakos. This is getting ridiculous…"
Mike's not often found in Mutant Town, in part because his image is just a little too human, and in part because he's promised not to get in any more trouble, as if that would work in the real world. But, this was a Koz emergency, and he was already in town. At a museum, even. Scouting out a car museum for Rashmi. He answers his phone, "What can I do for you, Agent?" Look, he can talk on the phone in private and nobody else hears it! Well, Theo might but he's special.
"Mike! Oh, thank god. You've got to come rescue me. Koz has gone crazy." Corrin watches the walls of Mutant Town spin slowly around as he goes up… up…. "He heard about this damn block party the locals are putting on and had to come out to set traps for possible gate-crashers. I TOLD him not to." There's a sudden sound of effort over the phone as he makes a grab for a fire escape and misses. "When I came out to pour oil on the waters — the locals aren't fond of uniforms — one of his traps caught ME." He watches the fire escape rail sail out of reach. "Help!"
"Be right there. Got the GPS off your signal." Mike shakes his head. It will take him almost four minutes to get there if he cheats - and cheating in this case means finding a vehicle going the right way, or a long string of parked cars that he can jump along. Otherwise … well, busses still run, but Mutant Town is not graced with frequent stops. Hopefully in that time, Koz will still be in the same number of pieces he arrived in, and Corrin will be able to prove he's not an interloper. Surely someone there knows him from when he had lost his memory, right?
Of course with that bartender who has fewer brains than he has showers in a year, the risk is that SHIELD has been given a bad rap. "Corrin," Mike says while the channel is still open,"Try to keep them from hurting you, it'll take me a few minutes to get there. I'm …" and the connection vanishes as he disappears into a car that's stopped at the intersection.
"Hurting me is not in my immediate future, Mike, but thanks for the kind thought." Corrin sighs. "They might use me for target practice. As for Koz, I think he's managed to fascinate enough of the kids that they're actually helping him, god save us all."
Drift up, up… he ponders cutting himself loose from the giant balloon he's attached to, but that brings up the problem of landing without killing himself. "Koz, you are so dead. I swear, I'll strangle you with your own bungee cords."
Balloon. That's … so not safe. Mike spots it as he hops out of the car (where the hell did that kid come from!?) as it stops to make a left turn, and pauses just a moment. Oh lovely. That has to be Koz's work. Uh, is there anything even remotely like a flying vehicle here? Because Corrin's GPS signal is moving. Nothing of course. Magnetic sidecars are all Dick Tracy, and that comic is even out of print now.
"How did he get a weather balloon? There wasn't anything like that in stores when we looked last week." Mike's voice is back on the communicator. Hope it has a tether or two, as the robot kid takes off in a sprint, up to 50mph in less than a quarter mile, then makes a ridiculous jump to grab a fire escape and scrabbles up the side of a building to the roof … only three buildings away, hoping it stays close enough that he can reach it. It has a passenger, however unwilling; if he's lucky it has something with an engine, or a control of some kind, so he can connect with it, otherwise he'll have to try something else, and that's just going to be risky.
"I think he's been raiding SHIELD storage. Or maybe he found one in the recycle room and fixed it." Corrin is so unhappy. He wiggles a bit to look around. "Your signal is stronger. Where are you?" More wiggling, which pauses when he spots Mike on that roof. "Hey! You're here! Watch out for…" A sudden rattle, like tin hail, announces an attack on Mike's person. "… the bottle cap machine guns." And no, no tether. And no obvious engines, either. Looks like Corrin is doomed to float up and up and up….
Something is moving and aiming at him. He can feel it. Mike does a quick dodge left, dodge right, and jump, and the closest two machine guns freeze on their gimbals. Just like they did during testing. Mike would grin but he's taking all his focus to manage the movement and stuff. He yanks one of the machine guns out of its mount, aims it at the weather ballon, and fires, capcapcapcapcapcapcapcapcap! capcapcapcapcapcapcapcap! And hopes that they're sharp enough to cut the mylar weather ballon, let the helium leak out, because he's close enough now to feel that the balloon doesn't actually count as a vehicle, so he can't jump into it. The other two machines spray him with the vicious edged disks, but with his uniform on under his illusion of clothing, they don't even scratch the paint. Luckily for Koz.
"What are you… HEY!" Corrin realizes that his lift is disappearing as bottle caps cut into the weather balloon. The hole is off-center, which means that the contraption starts spiralling. "Mike! I called you for help, not to make me a worse casualty!" His force field pings on and now he's a bright gold firefly spinning crazy circles in the sky. "Next time, I'm gonna call the Avengers… OOF!" As he slams into the side of a building. No handholds, so he bounces right off again. "Damn it…"
On the comm, Mike says, "You're lucky, he could've made it out of something fragile and it would've just popped. Besdes, you have a forcefield." Not that Mike knows the forcefield isn't quite safe to use. At any rate he's grabbing for the cable on the other end of which Corrin is depending, and testing it to see if it can withstand a bit over a ton of suddenly exerted shear force, that being what Mike can exert by trying to snap it between two hands; that's the most he can do without damaging his linkages. Note to self, V2.5 body needs to be a lot stronger in emergencies. If he can't snap it, he'll have to let go, because it'll drag him all over the roof and off the side himself, a totally not-helpful thing. Second note to self: V2.5 body may need to be able to extrude a cutting torch, but figure out how to deploy it without saying 'go go gadget cutting torch'.
"The force field won't save me from falling!" protests Corrin, as another wall looms. SLAM. "Ow… or from bruises." The force field is more like Kevlar than it is like other kinds of armor. Light, flexible… saves him from piercing damage, but blunt trauma? Not so much. "Cripes. And nothing nearby to grab… you can sure pick 'em, Mech boy." Mutter.
When Mike grabs the cable, he quickly finds that Koz has done his typical over-engineering on it — it will see that ton of sudden shear force and raise another half-dozen or so. Corrin gives him a betrayed look when Mike lets go, even as he's dragged over the side of the building into the alley between it and the next.
"SORRY! I didn't know the idiot had used the braided monowire cable." Mike's announcement, voice showing no sign of strain because that would be extra work to synthesize, is still on the communicator; if Koz hears it, well, he'll doubtless hear the same thing from his bosses when the fallout from this little excursion is made known. Mike looks frantically for anything resembling a solid anchor point on the roof, but nothing here looks good with a long 3.1 seconds consideration, so he runs up to the cable again and grabs it, hand-over-hand to reach the balloon part, and then he'll carefully start ripping at the mylar to see if he can get it to deflate fast enough… with Mike on one side of the thing, it shouldn't drag Corrin up and down the wall that much. Hopes. This is probably causing great amusement for the kids, but maybe not so much for adults who might know that it's dangerous.
Corrin yelps as Mike lands on the cable. The sudden additional weight makes the balloon take a dive pavement-ward, and since Corrin is head-down, that's worrisome. They'll swing out of the alley at about the level of the third story on most of the buildings here, and faces cram windows — it isn't every day that they see someone wearing SHIELD colors flying upside-down through their neighborhood, balloon attached or no. And now there's two balloon flyers! Windows go up and catcalls come out — as well as ridiculously well-aimed rotten vegetables. "Ack!" says Corrin. "Watch out!"
It's the uniform, is it? Mike's apparently wearing street clothes but he's not moving around like a normal kid, so he's clearly something not-normal. Desperation gamble: Mike shouts, "HELP US! He's a mutant too!" at the nearest open window, then when he's two stories up, lets go for a tuck-roll-wheel maneuver, if he can pull it off. Huzzay for aikido and the ability to redirect kinetic energy without being too badly damaged, but he's also got to try to reach Corrin before he goes thwack, and he only hopes he can do that. The ground where Mike is going to hit isn't soft. An emergency alarm is also in the works - a second thread in the robot boy's computer brain is sending an "agent in trouble, probable medical emergency" signal back to Barnes, along with the location. Perhaps SHIELD's preparations for the upcoming block party will be tested early?
Mike and Koz have collaborated on several devices, like the Flying Bungees (rubberized, glue-coated cords which wrap around the target to immobilize him) and the Flour Power Gun (fires pellets of pressed material — such as flour — which disintegrate into floating clouds of vision-obscuring mess upon impact), but Koz didn't consult Mike on the Instant Ice Slick (wet pavement freezes when a high-velocity windstream passes over it.) Speaking of which… that's what Mike landed on. Whee!
The balloon is running out of gas — literally — which means it is slowing down. Enough so that the next time Corrin gets dragged by a building facade he can grab and hang on. This means letting his force field drop, though — can't hold on too well with super-slick energy between you and the grip… "Yes," he tells the belligerent woman leaning out the nearest window. "I am a mutant. Please help."
There are a handful of ways to totally ruin someone's day, and one of them is to change the laws of physics suddenly. In this case, while Mike's mostly downward movement and machine-perfect form means he'll wheel correctly, the lack of friction means he won't be able to control the direction of his movement at all. This results in him slamming into a stoup 2.1 seconds later, with a loud metal CRUNCH — and the immediate failure of his sensory pod, voice emitter, and image inducer, not to mention the broadcast part of his radio system — as the equivalent of a 40-mph head-to-wall collision caves in his faceplate and shatters the internal parts. Conscious thought ceases; his emergency damage protocol activates and he's drawn up into a fetal ball. Except for the right arm, which has broken at the elbow joint and is leaking oil, as the rebound takes him in a second slide across to slam into someone's old but beloved Buick. Long seconds pass as damage-control shuts off the oil feed, a clutch disengages so that he's locked into this configuration, and the pain-signal process determines which damage locations to signal to the rest of his systems.
"Yoosh oodn't fly lie-ka dat! Ees dangeroos!" says the woman, in English mangled partly by a non-English accent and partly by the six-inch tusks she bears in her mouth. "Es chillen… dey gets da thinking!" A firm nod, and she reaches for Corrin, dragging him and the balloon toward her with impressive strength. She then tries to break the cable — but braided monowire defeats her efforts, too. "Bah."
"Here," says Corrin. "Let me." He'll set the cable against the outside brick, then manifest the sword and chop at the tough stuff. It takes several hits (and several chips out of the brick) but he's free at last. "Thank you, ma'am. —May I use your front door, and the stairs to the street?"
He'll reach the front steps just in time to see a crowd of kids making off with Mike's fetal ball body. "HEY!"
Mike's consciousness begins rebooting, as damage systems return control to the main computer brain. The subconscious comes first: pain signals are routed to a null receptor for the moment, while sensory systems are identified as offline, which leaves only the mutant psychomagnetic sense that ties directly to his energy-self. That sense reaches the flatlander world through all the control points he has inserted into his robot-self; it pings out and 'feels' that there are kids 'stealing' him. Given he weighs about 350 pounds, there's a good chance one of more of them is super-strong, and that means he can't just 'wake up' — and they've moved him away from the car. Subconscious decides that any of the obvious actions is likely to break one of Mike's conscious-mind rules, silly things that they are, and restarts his conscious awareness, with a quick burst of odd-dreamlike-awareness.
Mike wakes to 'feel' himself being carried by children. Mutant children, some of them have non-human features. He can't hear directly, just through sensing sound-waves as density fluctuations in his perception, and his voicebox has been damaged, though the mechanism should still work, just with no amplification. So, just about like when Magneto blew him up.
He makes a noise, a faint voice. "hello?" All metallic and such.
Corrin steps out on the Instant Ice Slick, and he promptly loses his footing. "Yipe!" Crash. Ow… He sits up, careful, and touches the surface of the street. Yes, ice. Obviously, Koz has studied the uses of Corrin's force field. Except… he's not entirely certain he knows who 'Koz' is. Is he supposed to…?
The laughter of children echoes down the street and he frowns. Kids. Mike. Mike? Mike… yes. He gets up, taking proper care, now that he knows the footing is slippery, and takes off after them. "Stop! Stop in the name of…" uh. "Me!"
The kids respond to Mike's hello by banging on his chassis. "Hi!" "Hello!" "Hey!" "Who is that?" "I can make music!"
The voice continues from the metal lump inside the "not quite SHIELD" uniform, subdued but it's there. "Me. I'm the shiny white guy with the silly uniform and the white paint. You're carrying me. I'm a mutant too. My name is Mike, who are you guys?"
He senses the approach of the other mutant from SHIELD and hears an echo of his voice but it's too far to hear clearly. He scans the kids, trying to figure out ways to identify them and tell what voice is coming from which. Making music? They don't feel like they're that old - isn't it too early for them to be manifesting mutant powers? Maybe not.
Thumping on Mike isn't making music? That would be news to the kid who is called Thumper — mostly for the long, gray, rabbit-like ears he has. (No, kids don't have to be teen-aged to manifest obvious mutant characteristics. Especially if they're unlucky in the genetic lottery.) Thumper plays a (somewhat ragged) rhythm on Mike's ribs. "How can you be a mutant? You're more like a car!" "Or a Dumpster." "No! A TV set! That talks back!" "Or your dollie!" Mike is set down on something giving and the voices retreat. "Should we be doing this to a talking TV…?"
Corrin, meanwhile, has closed the distance between himself and the kids. "Hey, kids! Put that down… oh. You did." Puzzled tone. "What is the ground doing…?"
"That's my mutant power, I turned into a car," Mike explains. After the rhythm, "That's a good beat, Thumper. I can't see you guys very well, I'm sorry my face is all broken, I kinda crashed into the wall." He hears Corrin having problems, and tries to find the "release" for the emergency lock-up but then realizes that he has a main oil line severed, which means his oil pump is off, so if he moves too much he's likely to damage himself. So, better to stay locked up for the moment… well, loosen up first. He shifts carefully into a sitting position, so as not to hurt any of the kids, and then locks again. Signal strength on his radio isn't strong with the boost unit smashed. He tries to see if he can get 'skip' for a cell signal, but the one he gets doesn't play well with others - with his luck, it's the Latverian embassy, or something. He calls out, "Corrin, hi, over here, are you OK?" He doesn't know what the ground is doing, other than being flat… he can't feel it doing anything different from here. Has the ice thing spread here too? Or is the man accidentally running his slip-field?
Actually, the ground seems to be sinking. Slowly, but sinking. "Er, Mike? I think you're in the sling for a giant trebuchet…!" And Corrin isn't at all sure what to do about it. "I'll see about cutting the sling's lines…" Because then the trebuchet can throw, but Mike would go nowhere. "Hang on… yipe!" As he's dogpiled by kids. "NO!" "You'll wreck it!" "This is so cool!" "He'll land in the Hudson!" And from Corrin, "…oof…"
Mike's quiet voice shows some panic then. "Thumper? I'll die if I land in the Hudson. I can't swim right now, I'm busted." He's not sure when this turned into 'kill the robot' but he's going to have a few choice words with Kozlowski if he survives. And maybe provide the man with a hands-on demonstration of what 'consequences' feel like. He tries to signal Koz short-range. ''Kozlowski, you know if you don't do something you're an accessory to manslaughter, right? Don't think you'll get field agent very soon if that happens.''
Corrin shoves free of the kids and finds one of the straps to the sling. He slices through it. Then the second… slash! Unfortunately, he doesn't make it to the third line, because the trebuchet releases. TH-TWUNK! Mike, however, is not launched toward the Hudson. With two lines cut, the sling whips out from under him… and this rolls him. At Corrin. Who takes one look and PING! goes his force field and SLAM! goes Mike into Corrin, which stops them both.
Corrin says, "Ow." Meaningfully.
It's probably not a good sign that something *clicks* nearby, and both can hear gears grinding….
Panic! Mike can't hear that well, but he can "feel surfaces" and something's moving. This is probably as dangerous to the kids as it is to him. But with Corrin RIGHT THERE, he can use the man's comm as a relay, and he does, sending a blinking red-hot "Agent down, agent in trouble, now dammit" that should light things up at Barnes and (since Corrin's comm probably isn't hardware limited from sending to the main SHIELD relay) quite possibly at two or three other nearby locations.
Meanwhile the robot frantically sets an internal clamp to shut off the oil flow to his damaged right arm and re-engages his drive unit so the rest of him can move; he tries to orient on that sound so he can 'feel out' what it is and get Corrin, any kids, and himself OUT of the kill zone.
Lights do, indeed, light up at Barnes. And at SHIELD. Life could become rather interesting Real Soon Now. But since even the premiere police force for the world will take a couple of minutes to arrive… Corrin wraps his force field around both himself and Mike. That's the first thing. Is it enough? "I don't know what Koz has planned next," he says, breathing unevenly (Mike is heavy. If Corrin's ribs aren't broken, they're cracked. And if not cracked, they're badly bruised.) "I think it would be good to Not-Be-Here for it…"
It's only because he's desperately feeling around himself, rather than just trying to sense the "surface of the road" that Mike realizes he can feel the movement ABOVE them. "OH crap, he provided a loader for the trebuchet, it's gonna dump a ton of projectile material on us. Kids, get back, falling rocks!!"
And Mike is being grabbed onto hard by Corrin, which he can't help and which may be a good thing, but the glowing gold shield around them is not a good thing because he can't run. "Shield off, Corrin!" Mike says, as he tries to get his footing so he can sprint them the hell out of there. He'll grab for any kids that he can with a his working arm on the way, if they're in danger.
The kids helped set the thing up. They're already well out of the way. Corrin drops his field when Mike asks for that, no questions, but he's really not moving well. He'll get a shoulder under Mike and shove up, to help the other stand, and do his best to help get out. Or at least not get in the way too much to Mike's attempts to get them out.
KLATCH. The trash falls!
Having heard the SHIELD summons regarding Mike, Agent Drew Daniels was getting ready to head to bed and had just been in his favorite footy pajamas. He sighs and in an instant surrounding himself with winds at nearly tornado speed. He dresses himself into his SHIELD uniform and is out of the Barnes Academy in two shakes of a lamb's tail. Into the air, he rides his winds towards Mutant Town. Arriving in nearly record time, the SHIELD agent hovers high in the air and looking down spotting Mike, Corrin, and whatever trouble they are in. The Texas Twister has arrived!
It's not so much that it's garbage being dumped on the spot where Mike and Corrin fell. It's not so much the bloodthirsty, and really rather overzealous mutant kids being far too eager to help out by killing strangers, even if they don't know, because nobody has TOLD them, and the ones that do know? That's another thing that goes on the list of sins that the organizers of the "hunt" will burn for, one way or another.
It's that the garbage contains old roach-laden couches too nasty to sleep on, not that there are chunks of concrete from some demolition that wasn't cleaned up, not that there is a good deal of 'biological grist' …it's that about half the garbage is small bits of paper, basically newspaper and other chaff that's in the mix as a sort of visual smokescreen for the fight. Nevermind that it would impede the defenders as much or more than the attackers; Kozlowski's designs don't always (ever) consider the possibility of unexpected consequences.
So while Mike and Corrin scramble out from under the heaviest parts, and only get drenched in some of the wet part, there's a FLURRY of shredded paper to be caught up by any stray winds.
And flurry it does. Corrin gets hit with enough wet stuff to stagger him, but the flying paper is what does him in. Something small ends up getting breathed in, and Corrin starts coughing hard. He doesn't even want to know what he just inhaled, just so long as he gets it OUT. He's vaguely aware of Tex's arrival, the way he's aware of the buildings around him. Let him survive trying to choke to death, first.
Meanwhile, Tex's arrival has been noticed by other devices. Flying Bungees, away! Tex is targeted by several dozen gummy ropes from several different rooftop launchers.
Having taken a second to survey the situation, Texas Twister has too many things to address, but the first is himself. He can't help anyway, if he too is caught in a trap. So the winds he has been riding on suddenly increase in speed and strength, spinning around him fast enough to hopefully repel the bungees and ropes that are coming towards him. Diving down within his little cyclone Drew summons smaller more manageable and less dangerous winds to attempt to pick up any of the refuse and trash away from Mike and Corrin and to make it difficult for some of the mutants attacking them.
It will be immediately obvious by the howls of outrage from the surrounding windows — it's still early enough in the afternoon, not late night, despite Tex's screwy sleep schedule and jet-lag — that these mutant kids have the support of the adults in Mutant Town, and attacking the kids is Not Good Press for SHIELD, buying right into the poisonous half-truths that Bruce and his terrorist crew have been spreading about the agency. Mike's unable to 'see' clearly for all the garbage to tell what's happening, and it's muffling his hearing as well, so he says on the comm, plaintively relayed through Corrin's system on the local tactic band, "What's going on, I can't see anything. Where did this wind come from?" He's trying to help Corrin but there's really nothing he can do with his face mashed, and the breath of life is not his strongest suit even when he isn't damaged.
Corrin hacks, "If… we can… get them… to TALK… TO KOZ…" If they can get Koz' attention, they can stop this madness. Koz may be a mad scientist wannabe (or maybe not so wannabe) but he's not actually sadistic. (Mostly.) He will stop.
Corrin is feeling more than a little lost. The only solid things for him right now are the ground beneath him and Mike… who smells like burning oil. "M-Mike. All right?" He does hope so. If Koz hurt him…. oh. He is SO busted. Corrin doesn't know if KP duty exists in SHIELD, but if it does? He is recommending Koz be put on it for the next year.
Getting a better sense at the gravity of the situation, but still not truly clear on what is happening, Agent Drew Daniels decides to get a closer look. Riding his winds below while safely surrounded by cyclonic winds for protection. He flies down directly by Mike and Corrin, "I don't know what happened, but let's get you out of here and back to school pronto." With winds separating the crowd of kids from himself, he summons strong gusts of winds to attempt to lift the two SHIELD persons off the ground and next to him.
Mike can't tell what he's saying because the chaff and the winds are blurring his sense of perception, and with his face caved in like he ran into a solid wall at 40mph (which he did, terrible, robot parts showing in places where his faceplate broke off and his head is at a NASTY angle, and his right arm isn't supposed to bend that way at the elbow, and oil is slowly leaking through his uniform) so when he's lifted from the ground, he says on the tactical channel, "What's happening? Is that you, Agent Daniels? We have to find Operative Kozlowski, he's still here, the traps are all his work, they're a danger to everyone here. Corrin's injured, I think he hit his head, he acts like he has a broken rib and he's not thinking clearly."
Robot kid is not joking; the roof-mounted bottle-cap machine guns could tear right into a kid who happened to be wandering by as kids will, and let's just hope there was only one weather-balloon with attendant surprise foot snare. Especially since it could easily have gotten something higher than an ankle in the process of going off.
Not to mention the Flour Power Guns, which zero in on the Texas Twister (and friends) and let fly. Pellets of flour hit the cyclonic winds and burst, rendering the immediate atmosphere all but unbreathable. (The addition of a couple of cement dust rounds doesn't help at all, either. And for those with allergies? Dryer lint rounds. Koz has been 'creative'.) Corrin yelps as his feet are knocked out from under him and the winds try to drag him away from Mike. Nothing doing… Mike is now his ONLY solid reference point, and he is hanging on for dear life. If Mike were human, Corrin's grip might hurt, it's that desperate.
And as for Koz? He was a block away, tinkering with a new toy, when he heard the trebuchet go off. He looks around in surprise. "Bad guys showing up early for the party? Not fair!" He grins and picks up one of the bottle cap machine guns… and his new toy. Koz to save the day!
With Mike and Corrin in the air with him, the winds protect them from flour, dust, and any other creative Koz-nian traps. Drew speaks into the tactical channel, "Yes, it's Tex. I have you both in my winds. We're protected from any outside stuff, but all this flour and dust are making it hard for me to see outside the cyclone. Mike, can you use any scanners to find Koz?" His winds have managed to keep everything attacking them from entering onto their persons, but unsure for how long. Texas Twister lifts them up higher past anymore traps and past the roofs of some of the buildings. Any extraneous winds have been dispelled to keep from harming the innocents, but it is taxing for the Texan to keep focus on maintain strong near impenetrable winds around the SHIELD agents while keeping damage to the outside minimal.
"Not before I did a header into a wall," Mike says, still on the tactical channel. "My hearing and eyesight are both busted, I'm faking it with my mutant power, which is strictly short range, and I can't sense past the wind. My radio relay is busted too so I can't use anything without a relay, my range is down to yards." And with his voicebox, sans amplification, he says in what would be not much louder than a low conversational tone, "And I can't shout at the moment."
He makes sure his left-hand grip on Corrin isn't hurting the man, but he's not letting go of him either. Reference point goes two ways at a time like this.
Corrin is wondering who 'Tex' is. His head is hurting, in that 'internal' way that causes so much trouble. He seems friendly, though, so, "It's okay, Mike. I've got you." Because holding onto Mike helps with that internal hurt. "Mr. … I mean, Agent Tex…" Pause. There's something not quite right about that. Never mind, though. "This is all Koz." Who is Koz, again? Corrin knows he should know, but it's all fuzzy. "I… we really need to talk to Koz. He'll be the one walking amid all the mess like he owns it." That, at least, feels 'right'.
All the flour, cement dust, and overall mess in the area made worse by the Twister's earlier winds have obscured his field of vision outside his mini-cyclone keeping the SHIELD trio out of harm's way. "Well, his little traps have made it hard to see and I am not about to put you guys down to get anymore damaged." Drew decides, "Ok, let's pray I don't get hurt. And this may hurt me, but a cowboy's gotta do what he's gotta do." Drew squints as he leaps out from the winds carrying him while keeping Mike and Corrin aloft. He creates a small updraft to lessen the speed of his fall and he gracelessly lands on the concrete to find the mastermind behind these traps. Catching sight of the man with the bottle cap gun, Drew takes off his white cowboy hat as if waving a white flag to get Koz's attention. Should Koz catch sight of Tex's face, he will know how mad this SHIELD agent really is.
That remark about a cowboy would get a laugh from Mike at another time, but he's busy arguing with the part of him which has decided that he's safe enough now to process pain signals, and he's working on that instead. The absence of Tex means he's no longer got any reference other than Corrin, so he's listening on the SHIELD comm band for further 'incoming' traffic. A clean-up team maybe? Or maybe not - some of the mutants seem quite happy with the defenses, and it may turn out that someone with more experience decides to keep some of them here for the Mutants to use; SHIELD isn't populated by total idiots. Perhaps a few more military thinkers but even those are smarter than the average… a signal on the comm interrupts his distracting thoughts.
"Corrin? I just heard a message, they've got medical waiting at Barnes." Pause. "You suppose this is why Koz never made field agent?"
"I'd say this is exactly why Koz never made field agent." Corrin sighs. Field agent. Field agent? There's something rattling around his head about agents… "Koz is an agent." C'mon, Corrin. Think. You know it's harder when… "Mike. Listen. I'm using my powers, and they mess with my memory. I don't know what I'm telling you that can be trusted." Except, of course, that he can't be trusted. That's the reason Corrin is no longer a field agent.
Koz spots the Twister coming in. "Bad Guy at four o'clock! Incoming!" (And never mind the Twister is actually at one o'clock.) Koz sights along the bottle cap gun, lines up the cross hairs on that badge on the Twister's chest, tightens his finger on the trigger… and realizes the badge is SHIELD. "Oh… oh no. Oops…."
"Oops is right." Agent Daniels extends his hand and summons a rather strong gust of wind to knock Koz off his feet and fling him directly into Drew's hand, "You are so in trouble. And turn your com badge on!" Lifting himself and Koz into the spinning cyclone above their heads, Tex creates an opening for himself and Koz to go through. Nearing where Mike and Corrin are, the cyclone is sealed off from the outside allowing the four SHIELD agents a semblance of privacy and safety from anymore traps. "Corrin, Mike. I have Koz and he is with us in the cyclone now!"
That explains some things. Mike answers, "Gotcha. So in case you've forgotten, you're Michael Corrin Kelly, you're a SHIELD agent, but you don't work in the field. You work at a SHIELD school called Barnes Academy, and I am a student there. We'll get you back to the base soon, and you can get medical help for your ribs, and I can wreck someone's fancy car to fix my own problems."
It'll have to be a pretty nice car, too, or maybe a tank, they've got the fancy cameras and mikes and sensory stuff that he can "trash". But all that comes out when he tries to say that is "owww." The filters are shutting down more. If they weren't, Mike would SO be yelling at Koz.
Oh! Michael Corrin Kelly. Right. (It's amazing how just knowing your own full name can ground you.) "I'll put in a request for you to get access to good equipment."
Koz leaps into the conversation… of which he can only hear Corrin's half, due to Mike's ongoing problems post-crash. "Corrin! Hey! You're here! Did you see the stuff I built? When the bad guys show up on Friday… I mean, if they show up… they're so going to get it! I've got bottle cap machine guns and a trebuchet and even a weather balloon snare trap and… hey, Mike. You don't look so good, like you crashed into a wall. Are you hurt?" Oblivious is Koz' middle name.
"I'm only going to say this once! Deactivate all the traps NOW!" Tex's voice can be heard over the powerful winds carrying the SHIELD quartet, "Mike and Corrin are hurt because of these traps and innocent can be hurt too. We will discuss punishment back at Barnes!" Drew is very mad at having been stopped from taking an afternoon nap. "Corrin, Mike, how're you holding up? I'll have you back at Barnes in no time."
Mike would glare at Koz if he could. But fortunately there's two Agents who can do it for him. He can't really answer Koz but when he gets his voice back, he'll find a way to explain that having your face smashed in is, in fact, painful, even though he's a robot. At this point Mike has a great deal of sympathy for the two LMD's he's met at Barnes, working in the vehicle pool. Even though they claim not to have the same form of sensation that Mike has, since they have to be willing to die without any qualms, he's pretty sure they have a capacity for experiencing pain.
"I'm starting to feel the injury now that the emergency is past," Mike answers on the tactical channel, "I'll need to merge with a vehicle as soon as I can, and when I get out I'm going to leave the damage behind." How that works? Well, that's a long and complicated and somewhat confusing thing that only one of the psi-agents has had a clue about. Everyone else passes it off as "wierd mutie thing".
"Koz…? You built that stuff? No, of course you did. That's why you're here and that's why we're here. And no, I don't recall seeing much of it, but I do recall being the target of a lot of it." Sort of. Corrin is exaggerating the amount that he is recalling, but something tells him Koz isn't going to want that many details. "And so did Mike. He can't talk, because of what your stuff did to him." He thinks. He doesn't really know why Mike crashed, but blaming it on Koz seems safe enough. "Agent Tex? Thank you for your help. I think we both would have been much worse off if you hadn't answered the call for help."
Koz is having one of his too-frequent mortified moments, as it sinks in that he's responsible for all the damage done to Corrin and Mike. "Oh," he says, and he looks at the Twister. "You want all the traps disarmed, then? I thought the locals liked them…."
"Do as I said, Operative Kozlowski. It will be determined later, but before Friday if the traps will remain or not, but for now. They are too dangerous to be up." Texas Twister orders Koz and then speaking to Corrin and Mike through the channel, "Not a problem, pardners. You would've done the same for me." Drew mentally commands the winds to lift them higher in the sky, "I am bringing them to Barnes, but I will return. And when I do, this mess and the traps had best be gone, Koz!" He contemplates launching Koz out of the cyclone and hard to the ground, but does not.
Mike doesn't answer Koz, but not because of any desire to make him feel worse; he simply can't at the moment. He's almost swamped by the "!DAMAGE!" signals coming in, each of which requires its own moment of attention to accept and dismiss. Fortunately the stack isn't growing any deeper, now that he's once again locked his clutch so that nothing is moving. "Thank you, Agent," the robot finally says on the tactical band, once they're moving back towards Barnes.
Koz hunches his shoulders. "Yes, sir," he says to the Texas Twister, and when the agent puts him down, he goes about disarming his traps. There aren't that many left that Mike and Corrin hadn't triggered, a fact which both surprises Koz and makes him want to write copious notes. One of those notes is to interview both other agents about improvements! (No, he never stays down for long.)
Medical teams are available at Barnes, when the Twister arrives with his passengers. They take Corrin in hand — make that one broken rib and two cracked ones, and enough over-all bruising that he's actually anaemic. Mike… is an odder problem. Someone finally understands 'car' and puts him next to one of the special Hummers. That's a start….
