1253/The Pummeling of the Pin Pals

The Pummeling of the Pin Pals
Date of Scene:	02 July 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Dragonfly (Arazello), Booster Gold, Vector

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Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:

Several Months Ago
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    "You know," Larry said to his friends Darryl, Jesus, and Daryll, "this bowling for cash thing is really stupid. We're the greatest bowlers who ever lived ... but nobody gives a damn about bowling anymore. We're bowling for peanuts!"
    "Yeah," Darryl agreed, looking up briefly before focusing his attention on the lane before them. Jesus did his little superstitious dance before rolling another strike. "But what're we gonna do?" Daryll asked, looking up from his cheese nachos, missing the droplet that fell from the corn crisp and joined its brethren on his shirt. "All we can do is bowl. We've all tried jobs."
    "Well I got a plan!" Larry said, eyes narrowed as a mirthless, evil, supervillain-in-training laugh bubbled out of him.

Today
=====

    "Crime in progress, 1024 Dalhousie Ave." the police radio in Booster's van blares. "Strip mall grocery store being robbed. By guys with bowling bal... OH COME ON! I know it's 'haze the newbie' time, but c'mon! No, wait. This is real. Bowling balls. Bowlers are robbing the Veggies'n'Meat Market. All available units converge."
    "So, Liz," Nancy says, as they walk along Dalhousie Ave., "was I right? Is this not the best off-Manhattan shopping street ever?" She points to a strip mall. "For example, that place in there has probably the best place for DIY quilting and sewing you've ever seen -- and nobody's heard of it!" She heads over to 1022 Dalhousie, dragging her friend along.

Booster Gold has posed:
The Mighty Blue Van screeches to a halt, scraping across two lanes of traffic to sweep around so the passenger door is facing Nancy and Liz. The van is painted blue with black motifs; 'Kord Janitorial Services' is still barely visible where someone did a bad job scraping off the original decal.

It'd be impressive driving except that the street's one-lane, one-way, and the driver's going the wrong direction and has to do a little back-and-forth on the sidewalk to get oriented properly.

The door slides open.

"Dragonfly! Didn't you hear the emergency beacon?!" Booster demands of Nancy, sitting behind the wheel. The van starts rolling backwards and he slams on the brakes with a lurch. "We're needed! Ballers are attacking meat market over on Dalhousie! The cops signalled us to come help!" A white lie, really.

"Get--" he lifts his foot off the clutch and the van lurches again, and Booster hastily has to restart it. "Get in the van! Quickly! You and your ... surprisingly attractive friend. Hey babe-- Booster Gold," Booster tells Liz, flashing a Colgate smile and jerking a thumb at his armored chest.

He bumps into a parked car and sets off the alarm, and lets off the clutch-- again. The van stalls and starts rolling backwards. Braking again!

"C'mon! We have to get moving, right-hop-now!" he says, drumming on the wheel and surprising himself when he hits the horn accidentally.

Vector has posed:
    "Just getting away rom all the chaos for a night makes it worth it," Liz replies s somewhat laconically.. She spares a moment to look back over her shoulder at the little gyro shop the pair had passed only be dragged along the sidewalk by Nancy, the soles of her shoes clicking every time they scrap against a gap in the pavement.
    "You like to go quilting?" Liz asks then, an eyebrow lofting as she tries to accelerate her steps sufficiently to be able to catch up with her taller friend. "I guess that makes sense for you, actually. You know, I tried to take up sewing once but I was always having to redo stitches so it never seemed to quite work out for me. Liz is mellow, for once. In control. Slow.
    Then the van slams into place in front of them. Liz starts all at once, grey eyes going wide as she absolutely stands up and takes notice of Booster's sudden present in front of them. She swallows hard, her gaze snapping between the two superheroes beside her like she is in the middle of watching a ping pong math. Liz is attractive, yes- if you don't mind that she's a tiny thing, and very thing. Pretty face, though, round cheeks and a bright smile that would- to some- suggest innocence. She offers it uncertainly when booster introduces himself.
    "Nancy, you didn't mention you were friends with this guy," Liz starts slowly, blinking. A deep breath is taken, then a second. "Okay. Should probably take care of this." Eliza doesn't let go of Nancy's hand- or get into the van.
    "But... You know. It's right over there. Three buildings away." Liz points. "In fact... One of them has a thirty pound Thanksgiving turkey out right now."

Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:
    "How...?" Nancy asks, gaping at Booster. "We're going to talk later," she mutters, "about secret identities and blabbing them out in the street." At Liz's comment about the turkey, she looks Booster over and says, "I'd guess more 220 pounds, personally." Then an evil thought crosses her mind. Perceptive people will see the narrowed eyes and the rather unpleasant smile. Which means Liz sees it.
    "Good that you came, Booster Gold," she says, artificial good cheer in her voice. "I need a place to change to my proper outfit. Your van is perfect. Li... Uh, Trajectory, why don't you scout out what's going on while I change?"
    She steps into Booster's van. "Now do not ogle me while I'm changing, Booster!" she says, a hint of licentiousness in her voice. "That would be very bad."
    Knowing that Booster will be watching helps make what happens next satisfying.
    A flash of brilliant light, like lightning. A clap of noise like thunder. The smell of ozone. In an instant Nancy Arazello vanishes and in her place is the statuesque form of Dragonfly, sitting in the skeletal remains of the van's seat that's been blasted away by her transition. Along with the badly-burned carpeting and fixtures.
    "Let's get them, Booster!" she cries.

Booster Gold has posed:
"AUGH MY EYES!" Booster screams-- because of course, he'd flipped his visor up to wink at Liz.

He slams on the accelerator and the van lurches forward, engine revving with a mighty hundred horsepower; he lurches wildly down the street, going /away/ from the scene of the crime.

<<Don't worry, sir! I'll help you!>> Skeets says, hovering near Booster's ear. <<We need to take three lefts, according to Google Maps. Turn left, sir! LEFT SIR!>>

Still blind, Booster whips the wheel to the left hard and the car sings into traffic-- Skeets apparently doesn't quite understand how yield signs works, and a traffic accident is narrowly avoided.

To his credit, Booster's not much worse than most New York cabbies.

"Good job, little buddy! We'll get there yet!" Booster booms, trying to blink the stars from his eyes.

Vector has posed:
    "...Dragonfly, is he okay? He's driving like he's blind," Liz murmurs, blinking as she looks bck over her shoulder. "Still better than Rio." With that observation made she takes a deep breath. "I'll go try to figure out what's going on- with the, um. Bowlers. You go stop that van before he gets himself killed!"
    Liz takes a deep breath, gesticulating wildly with her left hand as if to emphasize her words. Then she reaches into her pocket and modrately discretely pops a coupel pills out of a bottle that is, for the truly observant, labeled 'Dextroamphetamine'. She takes a deep breath, hops up and down a couple times, and then explodes into motion down the sidwalk. She trips on another of those cracks in the pavement, skitters a few too many steps, ends up sliding through momentum past the meat market and hops to her feet in front of... The Gyro place.
    "Sorry! Don't worry! I paid for the food, check the registeeeer!" This is what Eliza Harmon is screaming to the bewildered Greek man who just had the sandwich he was preparing snatched out of his hands and his napkins sent akimbo by the wind of Liz's passage, so fast that he hardly saw her enter or leave, just a blur of white, brown, and blue. Now clutching a gyro larger than her face Liz is munching on it and moving at a more leisurely thirty-five to forty miles per hour as she approaches.
    "Gawk-hoooot..." The woman whines, tears springing to her eyes. She chokes briefly and staggers, face turning red.

Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:
    "Oh God!" Dragonfly moans, pinching the bridge of her nose. The van raises from the ground, narrowly avoiding a collision with a responding cop car trapped by the snarled traffic generated by Booster's pinball-like driving skills. She steers the van back toward the strip mall, setting it down gently in front.
    Oops.
    Forgetting that Booster still had the gas going.

Booster Gold has posed:
With the accelerator pinned to the ground and the navigator unlicensed AND blinded, it really couldn't be a worse situation. "Skeets! Help!"

<<Brake, sir! ... No, that's the horn! Turn signal! THE THING ON THE FLOOR, SIR! THE MIDDLE ONE!">>

Booster stamps stomps and clomps and FINALLY hits the brakes, and leans both feet into it. The van squeals to a halt, mere inches away from crashing right through a booth where some nice old Chinese man supplementing his social security with fresh produce.

"There! Got it stopped," Booster sighs. He lets his foot off the brake-- and forgetting that the van is still in gear, it lurches forward and knocks everything off the shelves.

"MY CABBAGES!" the fellow shrieks, from his cover with the other huddling civilians.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Booster says, clambering out of the van. Still mostly blind, he starts trying to run towards the enemies, and instead runs towards the exit at a dead sprint.

Fortunately, he runs right into Liz, and checks her in the stomach with a stiffarm worthy of a pro athlete.

"Hah! Take THAT, evildoer!" Booster says-- and then a bowling ball is whipped at him from nowhere, and it's only by grace of his inertial barrier that he's not instantly brained by the projectile.

He still grunts and falls on his face, though.

Vector has posed:
    Liz is in the process of choking to death on hot lamb when a blind Booster armchecks her to the gut. Normally she'd dodge. In fact she does- but only half of her. Yelping loudly, Liz's reflexes try to continue to gag on roasted meat while her mind is trying to get out of the way of the man literally twice her size now bearing down on her. He makes contact and half-chewed bits of gyro are summarily expelled with force by the woman's diaphragm and sprayed across the front of his suit. At the same time, the amphetamines hit her system.
    Booster continues forward and- THROUGH Eliza, as she starts to vibrate from confusion and shock. The now more or less corporeal speedsters tumbles forward through him and the bowling ball both. She whirl, stumbles through a field of cabbages, falls through a shelf, and ends up sprawled on the ground on the far side as she becomes material again in front of one of the bowlers.
    Fortunately for Liz Daddy Bowler didn't see her until it was too late. He trips and goes sprawling directly into the cheerios. Cereal boxes explode everywhere. Unfortunately for everyone else he lets go of his bowling ball in the midst of his fall, launching it with force through the shelf and toward the front of the store.
    This is what they call a 'strike'.

Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:
    "I'm not with him," Dragonfly protests as she clearly exits Booster's van. "I have nothing to do with him." She looks around, hands on hip in a heroic pose. "Now where is this robbery? Where are these robbers?"
    The stray bowling ball hits the glass at the front of the store and activates. Rockets fire sending the ball whirling randomly through the air, bouncing off of windshields, signs, and other such obstacles until it hits Dragonfly in the side of the head.
    "That way," she mutters, turning her head to look in the direction of the store, unfazed by the ball, but blushing from the humiliation of its blind-siding her. "Someone's gonna die. And for a change it isn't Booster Gold."
    She stalks off toward the market, looking for someone to pound.

Booster Gold has posed:
"Gah! Skeets, I still can't SEE!" Booster complains, rubbing under his visor at his eyes. "It's all.. blurry, and there are big parts of my vision that are just missing!"

<<That's because a nice looking blur threw up a gyro on your face, sir!>>

Booster blinks and removes his visor, then 'eeeughs' and wipes it clean. "Ugh!" He taps on his visor and his personal force field *pops* twice, flinging dirt and debris away.

Yes, Booster's armor is self-cleaning.

"Okay! I'm back in the game-- oh, Dragonfly! There you are!" Booster says, shooting past her in full flight. Just then-- three of the bowling villains jump out.

And yes, they're all wearing matching jumpsuits in different, eye-searing colors; and if that crime against fashion doesn't scream 'villain', then WHAT DOES?!

"Hah! Time for me to show YOU guys how to handle balls!" Booster crows, scooping up one of the spares off the ground. He tucks it under his arm and breaks into a run, putting his left arm up across his face, elbow out.

"Carpenter goes for the goal, the opposition puts up a wall-- he jukes!" He jukes. "He dodges!" he shuffles sideways, avoiding a second bowling ball. The third bowler, pale and licking his lips, grunts and flings a bowling ball at Booster's feet.

Booster leaps skywards and flips spectacularly (and it's radical as hell, being honest), and lands on the ground.

"Booster shoots--" He flings the bowling ball at the lead Pin Pal, and catches him right in the solar plexus with five pounds of reinforced ceramic and fiberglass. The man goes down with bulging eyes and a croak of total agony.

"AND IT IS GOOD, THE CROWD GOES WILD!" Booster says, dancing away from the Pin Pals as they scramble for cover.

He cups a hand to his ear, and in the distance-- "boo-ster! Boo-ster!"

Except it's Skeets. <<BOO-STER! BOO-STER!>> he cheers, adding in a sound effect of a stadium full of adoring fans.

Vector has posed:
    It takes a moment for Liz to pick herself up off the ground. By this time Daddy Bowler has made it to his feet. He is mvoing in slow motion, like his feet are stuck in molasses. She advances on him slowly and he screams, "N-n-n-n-n-n-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-, d-d-doooooonnnnn't..."
    "You're like that guy who stood there while Deadpool ran him over with a zamboni," Lizzy mutters, shaking her head in a flash of burnette hair. She continues toward the man at a leisurely pace while items are epxloding off the shelves on either side of her. These aren't paid any heed. She casually strolls over to the man as he slowly gibbers at her and reaches down to punch him in the face.
    Daddy Bowler is unconscious, his face bloody, and possibly missing some teeth, having been hit with the force of an oncoming car. Liz is staring at her hand for a second, apparently confused. There's blood in the air...
    To anyone else watching a blue and brown blur streaks up to Daddy Bowler, beats him in the face, her passage causing the shelves around her to basically explode. The person in question is basically buried in falling boxes of cereal. Kix rolling everywhere.
    That same Brazilian Blur then dashes down the next aisle, flails wildly, shoves over a rack of juice, flooding an entire section of the store in mango-pineapple-apple-grape punch as the bottles burst, a deluge falling toward one of the bowlers.

Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:
    "Two down, two to go. Dragonfly to bat." The bewitching bottle-blonde aerially accelerates to the remaining Pin Pals. "This is a strike!" she yells as she punches one of them straight in the jaw, letting out her frustration in a carnival of conflict and carnage. Even pulling her fist back rapidly to prevent this from being a full-strength punch leaves the poor wannabe criminal flying backward against the wall--or from Liz's perspective floating gently through the air head-first at the wall at an angle that could lead to something very dangerous.
    "And this is a split!"
    Her thigh rises, knee bent, lower leg tucked underneath. Powerful muscles then send that lower leg flying forward toward the other standing Pin Pal. Starting low, ending high. Stopped slightly below waist height by the meeting of his legs.
    Every male onlooker winces in sympathetic agony. Every male within a five block radius suddenly feels sympathy pains "down there".
    Dragonfly lowers her leg and Jesus, eyes crossed, face wracked with pain, hands moving to clutch at his selfhood (sadly one hand with a bowling ball still in it) sinks to his knees with a high-pitched moan.
    "Well," Dragonfly says cheerily. "It may have started off a bit rough, but I think that's that. And that was an amazing throw, Booster!"
    The sudden change in Dragonfly's demeanour is almost as jarring as her earlier raw anger.

Booster Gold has posed:
"WooYEAAAH!" Booster shouts, leaping into the air with youthful energism. He's not even using his flight ring-- he's got a standing thirty-inch vertical leap, feet fluttering in the air as he swings a fist overhead. 100% youthful exuberance as he surveys the carnage. Landing, he takes two big steps towards Dragonfly with a hand up-- time for a celebratory high-five, and Booster swings from the hip, grinning like the fool Dragonfly thinks he is.

"Wow! Go team! This was solid, this was REAL solid! Hey, did you see that weird blur?" Booster asks, looking around. "I think it threw up on me before it punched that dude in the face," he remarks.

The shopping center is a disaster zone. Once again, the SUPERBUDDIES have had a net success in stopping a crime-- even if it's a very fractional number over having not been there, at all!

Vector has posed:
    Liz, being not especially heartless, walks over and catches the poor man flying toward the cinder block wall and lowers him to the ground before she begins to all too gently tie him up with a couple of grocery bags from one of the registers. One might be suqrprised to find that a couple of twined grocery bags will be all but impossible to escape from simply using raw strength.
    The blue zips by, tying up each of the bowlers and then screaming to a halt beside Booster Gold, staring at both of the Super Buddies present with wide brown eyes. She blinks a few times, taking deep breaths in her attempt to make sense of whatthey are saying or doing.
    "We did it," Liz observes in a voice similar to that of a chipmunk on helium played at double speed. A beat. "I-I'm not so sure... Whoa." She wobbles on her feet but manages to stay standing, looking quite pale. To an observer Liz is alternating between being eerily still and small gestures made so fast that she seems to stutter in and out of visibility.

Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:
    Dragonfly actually returns the high five, flushed with success, almost giddy with the enjoyment of it. Her hand hits Booster's at full strength. "Woo!" she shouts, using the (rather impressively high) impact with Booster to trigger a backward loop in the air. "We actually *did* it!"
    She hugs Liz when the tweaker arrives, showing a lot more care and attention to possible breakage. "And we didn't take a building down in the process!"
    A cabbage flies through the air and hits Booster. "YOU BROKE MY BOOTH!" the elderly Chinese man shouts in heavily-accented outrage. "WHO'S GOING TO PAY FOR THAT!?"

Booster Gold has posed:
Other merchants, customers, and vendors start emerging from cover. Some are swearing. A few are stunned. The manager, a nice older lady well into her sixties, covers her mouth at the wholesale devastation.

"They were robbing us for all of a thousand bucks!" one of the employees snaps. "We're a CO-OP. You think we have that much on hand?"

"Oh my god! The organic olive oil!" someone wails. "It's all ruined! Twenty dollars a bottle!"

"The imported almonds!" comes another cry.

"Our milk refridgerator! Ruined! This is all going bad!"

Dragonfly, Booster, and Liz are back into a three-point circle, shoulder to shoulder. Just to round it all off, the guy with the broken jaw starts weeping and blubbering about losing his old health insurance, and the one Dragonfly nuttapped pukes all over someone's handmade hemp fiber clothing that probably cost more than most people spend on shoes in a year.

"...CHEESE IT, GUYS!" Booster shouts. He grabs Liz around the waist, grabs Dragonfly's wrist (knowing she can fly), and the three of them launch skywards before the angry crowd of vengeful veganites can thrash them!

Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:
    Dragonfly, thinking quickly, floats the van up after the trio as they fly away. She laughs, almost maniacally as three people fly through the skies, internally-devastated, scuffed-up van in tow. "We are the greatest heroes ever!" she shouts out, irony dripping from her voice. "NOBODY does it better than we do!"

Vector has posed:
    Liz is actually solid this time and rockets into the air with the other two heroes, her brown eyes wide while she watches what is going on from a place that is tremendously removed from what most people woudld call reality. At least it means the speedster makes for a docile flight companion for the moment. Finally she asks seriously, "So we stopped the robbery?" It might sound stupid but in Liz's case she simply sounds a bit confused.
    "I didn't see it happen," the woman continues distantly. "I think. Why are we flying so slowly?" She works her jaw a couple of times, as if testign something. "You can hear me, right? Understand. Computer. Follow the words that i am pretty sure I am speaking." as she continues to speak Liz's words are accelerating.
    "I'm pretty sure you kicked that guy in the nuts so hard *I* felt it. And Brazil nuts are expensive."