15425/Roadside Assistance

Roadside Assistance
Date of Scene:	04 August 2023
Location:	Mission, Fraser Valley
Synopsis:	Trini helps Dinah out in a minor pickle by blinding a Daddy Long-Legs.
Cast of Characters:	Black Canary, Yellow Ranger

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Black Canary has posed:
"Try again!" Paloma's voice, muted by her head's location deep in the van's engine bay, is heard over the sound of Lord Byron's bored tapping of the windows with her sticks. Dinah, at the driver's wheel, tries to start again. The starter whines, trying to get the engine moving, but to no avail. Curse words float out of the engine bay.

"OK, I'm out of ideas," she says, wiping her greasy hands on a rag. "Everything looks fine. It's just ... not starting."

Dinah rubs her hand through her hair in frustration. "How are we going to get to the gig on time if we're stuck in the middle of nowhere?"

A slippery, slimy voice crawls out of the woods.

"Maybe I can help..."

A man dressed in black with red trim, a red spider figure on his otherwise blank, black faceplate steps out. In his regular arms is a large rifle with a grenade launcher. Protruding from his back are four jointed spider-like legs.

"Nice to see you again, Black Canary!"

The band members sigh and back away from Dinah. They know the drill. And now they've been trained in it.

"You know what I want. Give it to me and your friends don't get hurt!"

Yellow Ranger has posed:
Trini Kwan hmmmmms softly as she was picking up garbage - she was rather fond of the big strawberry statue. She just tends to go to the bad parts of town and is picking up garbage, holding a trash bag and a pickup tool. She hmmmms softly, hearing some voices nearby. She heads in that direction and sees a few people around an old van - and then... a menacing voice. That doesn't sound good.

Trini skulks down the alley closeby, to observe the situation. She decides to wait to see what happens, leaving the trash bag and the pickup tool on the ground, watching. That man's armor looks familiar - and NOT in a good way. She holds the morpher in her hand - she's not sure if this is just a regular idiot wearing armor or someone special. So observing is good. Wait... Black Canary? That name rings a bell...

Black Canary has posed:
"OK, girls, you know what to do." Dinah takes charge, stepping forward and away from the van to its rear, facing the threatening man while the rest of the band moves for cover, starting with the van, but moving, then, away from it, in three different directions. One is moving to a bus shelter, one toward a covered stairwell, the final one, the one whose head had been in the van's engine, moving toward Trini's alley.

"Eric. Nice to see you again. You know you're not getting any samples from me. So here's a thought: you walk away now and I won't turn your toys into scrap meta..."

She doesn't get that final word out before the four mechanical arms are snapping toward her at high speed, causing her to have to bounce to the side in a creditable set of cartwheeling flips.

"DAMMIT! Eric, I'm trying to be reasonable. Don't make me hurt you. Again."

Her needling seems to be having an effect, making the arm-augmented freak pay attention to her, not the three women fleeing the scene.

Yellow Ranger has posed:
Trini Kwan nods. This is not something she wants to handle in civilian. She also sees someone heading her way so makes a quick decision and grabs her morpher.

"Sabertooth Tiger!" she cries out as a yellow flare of light comes from that alley, as the armor of the Yellow Ranger forms around her.

The Yellow Ranger emerges from the alley, nodding to the band member as she turns her attention to the one. She says nothing, arms crossed over her chest, her tiger-motif helmet staring at the man in the spider armor.

Black Canary has posed:
It's kind of hard to miss a yellow light, which makes Paloma stop in her tracks, midway to the alley. She moves at an angle away from both it and the Black Spider. The light also attracts the attention of the acrobatic blonde who views Trini with suspicion, adjusting her stance to keep both the Black SPider and the "Sabertooth Tiger" chick in her sight. Her attention is still mostly focused on the threat she knows is threatening...

"If you're helping him, be aware that he's not a good judge of who can whip his ass and who can't," she says, eyes on Eric, but voice directed with weird precision at Trini. "And if you're not, please accept my apologies for thinking you're with this piece of mechanized shit."

And that has the Black Spider firing at her, fancy gun spewing bullets at a rate that makes it sound like it's roaring. All while trying to hem Dinah in by ripping out a street pole with one of the mechanical arms and swatting at her with it. This leaves the blonde in a rather tense situation as she desperately avoids bullets splanging into the ground and buzzing through the air around her while a large metal pole keeps trying to crash into her, ending the repartee.

Yellow Ranger has posed:
Yellow Ranger glances towards the woman she knows as Black Canary. She makes sure to have an emergency audio filter set up just in case. "Apology accepted. I am the Yellow Power Ranger. And I am on the side of justice." She then widens her eyes as suddenly she's fired at, some of the bullet sparking off of her armor, making her stagger. "Ooof - definitely not street-legal weaponry." She then returns fire with her sidearm, laser blasts aiming for those mechanical arms and the weapon. "What is up with this guy?" she calls out, trying to stay on the move.

Black Canary has posed:
Trini taking some of the heat eases off the pressure on Dinah. "If I were mean I'd say he's got small guy syndrome."

Wait, this guy looks pretty normal, perhaps even taller than normal, for a ... oh, wait... THAT!

"But my therapist tells me that my focus on size is misplaced since it's skill that counts."

Yep. She totally did the 'it's not how big, it's how you use it' thing. Which brings the Black Spider's attention back on Dinah.

"I'm going to ENJOY taking that blood sample out of your cooling body!" he shouts, leaping forward at Dinah ...

... which proves a mistake.

If this was planned, how tactical! If this is impromptu, how ... creative? Reflexive? Lucky?

Because Dinah moves in on the approaching Eric and redirects him in flight with a solid pair of airborne kicks, one that oriented him head-down, the other slamming him face-first into the pavement. He actually sparks as his mask runs along the asphalt before coming to a halt. Insult to injury: Dinah is holding one of his spider arms, having sheared it off by sheer force form the impact.

"That's seven to go, Eric. You probably don't want me going past four."

Dinah turns and winks at Trini, waving her trophy arm around, her cockiness coming back to bite her as Black Spider recovers faster than she expected, hitting her from behind, mid-back, with one of the remaining tentacles.

Dinah goes flying with an "OOF!" sound before bouncing off the road a few times and up against a parked car.

Yellow Ranger has posed:
Yellow Ranger laughs softly at Canary's joking - it's obvious that these two know each other - and this isn't the first encounter. She just approaches as the two are getting rather confrontational. She draws the power daggers and moves between the two. "Retreat," she states coldly, as she is in a martial arts stance, daggers at the ready, glinting in the light. "I normally fight against foes much uglier than you. Though I'm sure there's stiff competition." She remains like this - hoping that this bad guy will just retreat when the odds are against him, staying between Canary and Spider.

Black Canary has posed:
Dinah groans from the side of the car and starts to struggle to her feet. "Teach me to mug for the audience..." she can be heard muttering.

Black Spider, seeing Trini standing between him and his intended prey does the first smart thing he's done so far. He stops and takes stock. Two of his remaining arms flash out in a test of Trini's reflexes and abilities while the gun blazes again, though the roar of it is cut short by ammunition ending. A bunch of flechettes and two whip-fast mechanical arms are headed Trini's way now...

Yellow Ranger has posed:
Yellow Ranger sees this man take stock as she does the same, glancing back towards Canary, then returns her gaze to Spider. Then by the time she turns back, he went on the attack!

In a split second, she decided that those arms were the more dangerous throat for those grabbing her could be bad, so uses the daggers to block the arms - maybe slicing through the tips of the arms or not - even as she tanks the gunfire, with a pained sound coming from her as it sparks off of the nanoweave armor. She pulls back a bit, to take a breath, then realizes that he's out of ammo. She takes a step forward. "Is... that all you got?" she asks, realizing that she's probably going to have a lovely bruise - that gunfire packs a punch and she doesn't really want to take anymore. "I suggest still that you retreat," she states - then turns on the highbeams - as powerful beams of light come from the molded eyes of her helmet to shine on his face.

Black Canary has posed:
The high beams make the masked villain flinch momentarily before his own tech takes the glare down a notch or ten.

"I've got more."

The grenade launcher cocks and gets pointed Trini's way when...

"Eric, Eric, Eric. You never learn. Don't split your attacks. It's bad tactics. Take one down, then move on to the other."

The voice--Dinah's--comes first from behind Trini. Then from behind the Black Spider. Then from one side. Then the other. This distracts the Black Spider as he tries to figure out where this is all coming from which gives Dinah a chance to take up position beside Trini.

"You might want to cover your ears..." she says to the yellow-clad girl.

An outside observer with sensitive equipment will know what's going on. Dinah opens her mouth and that special little organ in her throat starts an ultra-high ultrasonic scream, inaudible even to dogs, with stunning power. A second sound starts in a tiny fraction of a second that's identical in all respects: frequency and volume. That second one then starts changing its frequency. Rapidly it falls in frequency, interfering with the 'carrier' scream until it forms an audible sound in its beats. Those beats, in less than a second, centre on a particular frequency that the songbird's sensitive ears pick up the feedback from: the sympathetic frequency of the Black Spider's mask.

Already loud at that frequency, but projecting in a cone in front of her, the sound doesn't really bother Trini ... until, incredibly, it gets LOUDER. Much louder. So loud that even being outside of its active zone makes it nonetheless painful.

The impact on the Black Spider's mask is instant. It shatters, sending a spray of rapidly disintegrating glass and metal circuits away from him, leaving his eyes exposed to Trini's light. He screams in pain, both at the noise and at the light, but this is inaudible over Dinah's assault.

Falling to his knees, arm held over his face, the Black Spider is left deafened, blinded, and largely defenseless.

"Go get 'im, Tiger!" Dinah laughs, nudging Trini in the ribs.

Yellow Ranger has posed:
Yellow Ranger sees the grenade launcher and cocks her arm back to throw a dagger at it to try to disable it when... Canary comes back up. She knows about Black Canary's famous Canary Cry from learning about local heroes and gives a thumbs-up at the warning, activating sound-dampening as she steps back a step, keeping her highbeams trained on that mask.

Well, she THOUGHT she knew about the Canary Cry. It was far FAR more devastating than she ever could have imagined - she grits her teeth under the mask as her ears started throbbing, even though she's not in the blast radius and the audio protection was on point.... as the mask shatters and the man drops. She turns off the highbeams and stands before the Spider. "Thank you. I have heard of you and your Cry - but... wow. So - what do we do with this one? I don't normally fight people so... ummmm...." She gently puts a gloved hand on Spider's head. "Don't try anything stupid." She applies just enough pressure so the dazed mercenary knows that she's there. "So.... ummm.... perhaps we can talk when we... deal with this guy."

Black Canary has posed:
Dinah "deals" by a straight up punch to the face, in a pure lights-out gesture. The Black Spider collapses to the ground.

"OK," she says, crouching down next to him, pulling out a wicked looking knife and jamming it into the armour wherever she can, cutting wires and stabbing things that spark and cause the armour to twitch and flail until it dies.

"OK. Dealt with. I'll call it in to the cops..."

She stands and pulls out a badge with a stylized AF on it, tapping it and talking in a low voice.

"...And ..."

The van starts. Paloma at the wheel waves and shrugs.

"I guess he was suppressing the electrics," Dinah says, kicking the Black Spider in irritation.

"You three, go ahead to the gig and do the sound check. I'll join you for rehearsal."

She turns to face Trini, then. "So, Black Canary at your service."

Yellow Ranger has posed:
Yellow Ranger doesn't say anything as Canary knocks him out, disables the armor, and calls in the authorities. "You are with Alpha Flight... I wanted to ask about joining but...." She sighs softly. "I have to be protective of my identity. I swore an oath to never reveal myself to civilians and never use my powers for personal gain. But I think it'd be good for us to be more wide-spread when our nemesis is not being troublesome." She hesitates. "I think it'd be okay if I was part of another hero team..." she muses, gazing down at the defeated mercenary.

Black Canary has posed:
"Technically the Flight protects identities. I mean technically I have a secret ID." Dinah laughs and shakes her head. "I just suck at hiding it. I don't like masks, see." That last paired with covering her eyes with gapped fingers. "I used to wear one, but they always slip and cover at just the wrong time, so..."

She takes a deep breath and waits for the sound of sirens.

"You'd have to tell the government your ID, but it's a semi-autonomous department that doesn't share it with other departments unless you go rogue or something." She tilts her head. "You don't even have to tell the rest of the team. Like the Justice League that way. Nobody knows who the Batman is."

Yellow Ranger has posed:
Yellow Ranger nods slowly. "I wouldn't have known if this fool didn't blurt out your identity." She nods slowly. "As long as I can be assured that my identity will stay secret... I think my team would be okay with it - expanding our reach can only be beneficial..." She tilts her head. "So - how do we do this?" she finally asks curious. "Or... is this a bad time for you have... a 'gig'? You a singer? Well, makes sense, with that voice."

Black Canary has posed:
Dinah roots around in her leather jacket's pocket, pulling out an astonishing amount of stuff that she juggles in her hands while searching. A pair of weirdly ornate, yet wickedly functional 'brass' knuckles clearly not made of brass. A set of opera glasses. A battered hip flask that makes sloshing noises. A ziploc bag filled with zip ties. Chewing gum. And, finally, a little box which she opens, after replacing all the other items, to reveal several business cards.

"Here you go," she says, handing across one marked with the Alpha Flight logo. "General contact number is there, mine is on the back. Give me a shout sometime tomorrow and we can arrange a time for you to meet the management."

Yellow Ranger has posed:
Yellow Ranger notes all the stuff in that jacket - the brass knuckles are quite interesting as she makes a 'hum' noise, then takes the card. "Thank you. I will be sure to call to set something up. And if things work out - I might suggest it to my teammates as well." She then states, "Watch out for other itsy-bitsy spiders," she states, moving her hands to her belt buckle, touching it, and disappearing with a flash of yellow light.