3236/Videogame Villains in the Village

Videogame Villains in the Village
Date of Scene:	25 November 2017
Location:	New York City
Synopsis:	Wolfenstein in New York City! Video games come to life. Drake, Caroline, Stardust and Kaydin punch digital Nazis in the face. VICTORY! ALLIES WIN.
Cast of Characters:	Stardust, Slipstream, Shatterpoint, Kaydin LeGraize

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Stardust has posed:
In a darkened room, a young man lies, bed-ridden these past fourteen months since a near fatal accident. Unable to move, unable to talk, locked inside a mind filled with growing resentment at the world he can no longer touch, no longer communicate with. Dark, bitter thoughts have thickened and coalesced in his mind, shaping his nascent mutant powers. Shackled to his crippled body, his mind probes the world around him, and beyond.

    Not far away, in a trendy net-centric cafe, e-sports enthusiasts gather for a local get-together. No formal tournament, just a weekly meet to sharpen skills and show off the latest games. This week has seen the release of the latest installment in the long-lived Wolfenstein franchise, and within the cafe, digital Nazis are being destroyed by the horde, mown down with an assortment of equally digital World War 2 weaponry.

    From his bed, the villain of the piece senses the excitement and the adrenaline of the participants. His mind sifts through the confusion of thoughts filling the crowd; two realities overlaid, the reality of the Cafe and the reality of a mountaintop stronghold, all smoke, razor-wire, machine gun fire and circling crows. The contrast amuses him; images of pain and fear, yet the thoughts are all of the fun of the contest. Perhaps, he thinks, he can do something about that. Merge the realities in some way. To him, unable to experience either reality directly, what difference does it make, except perhaps that some people might get to feel the suffering he feels? His mind reaches out, seeks a grip on the fabric of reality, something he can twist...

Slipstream has posed:
Tucked away in the cafe is world famous eSport gamer, Drake Winters, better known as Dynamite in the FPS world. He has a crowd around him as his character moves through the maps, expertly mowing down Nazi's here and there as he bobs about past projectiles, explosions and bullets. He is wearing his Team Static jacket over his shiny blue and white jersey with a large pair of Razer headphones with glowing green symbols on the side. His fingers mash along the keys with his left hand, while his right whips the mouse about in muscle memory. As he lands a well executed sniper shot, the crowd around him roars. He has a determined look upon his face, one filled with intensity.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline is neither a gamer, nor any sort of modern individual. In fact, she has never been and, for better or worse, should probably never be introduced to the concept of video games. As a result, she is walking along the sidewalk in silence, the cold air of approaching-winter doing nothing to her already chilled flesh. In said silence, there is only one cause for her to pause- one of the people in the cafe has the speakers of their rented terminal on, as opposed to using a headset... Which means that the realistic noises of a gun firing catch Caroline's ear, and for a moment, she is ready to act.

    Once she realizes that it is some digital charade, she seems momentarily confused- not necessarily heartbroken, but mildly boggled.

Kaydin LeGraize has posed:
    Kaydin was in the place, watching the games being played. Though with how he percieves time differently then anyone else. With everything being slow he manages to order a soda and watch the games going on. When Caroline comes along he nods to her and sips his soda as he watches the goings on.

Stardust has posed:
Sitting perched on the top of a nearby roof, a slightly depressed sometime superheroine drinks from a can of cola and watches the streets below. As with so many in the cape business lately, she's been spending much of her cape-time trying to deal with the aftermath of the Apokalyptian invasion. Way too much high-tech alien hardware got left behind, and trying to get it out of the wrong hands has been a time-consuming business.

  Stardust, as she is known when she's not being Colette, has been pursuing a particular criminal gang who've been selling off alien weaponry. She tracked them down a few days ago, but has yet to go in and bust heads. That, she feels, is not getting anyone very far. Instead she's been tracking their movements as carefully as she can to try to answer the rather more interesting question of who they are selling these weapons to. A Parademon blaster may be dangerous in the hands of a street gang, but it's even more dangerous in the hands of someone with the resources to be buying them up by the ton, and more than one group seems to have been doing just that. Which explains why she's followed a van half way across the city and is currently watching it, bored out of her mind, as the occupants enjoy a coffee break.

The problem is, it's boring. B-O-R-I-N-G. Stardust doesn't handle boring well. As a member of the Titans she could call in help, but she has a suspicion that if she brings them in, there will be explosions, chaos, captured bad guys, and no useful leads as to the identity of buyer. Torn between a desire to solve the big crimes rather than the little ones, and a desire to go off and do something more interesting, "more interesting" is slowly winning. If it wasn't for the fact that she has an annoying voice in her head that preaches endlessly whenever the idea of wandering off enters her mind, she'd already have left.

Stardust finishes the last of her cola and puts the can down. She peers over the edge to check the van hasn't moved, then settles back down. Overhead, a flight of crows catches her eye, and she watches them wheeling through the air, calling out their haunting cries. Her nose wrinkles at a sudden smell of cordite and burning wood, but the scent has already vanished. Out of the corner of her eyes, she catches sight of momentary flickering as a building seems to vanish and reappear in the space between two thoughts.

  "Heads up." The voice in her head, the preserved intellect of a former superhero, once a veteran of the World War 2 himself, is sharper on the uptake. "Something's happening."

Stardust leans over the edge of the building, scanning the streets below. All appears normal, but then the sound of gunfire is heard. Not a digital simulation to confuse Caroline this time, but the real thing. Rapid, loud, the firing of a heavy machine gun. The noise penetrates even the loud interior of the cafe, and some who aren't wearing headphones look around in momentary confusion. The building across the street from the cafe is suddenly transformed. The windows are all gone, as if long blown out, and the walls are broken, half rubble. In the street, people stop and stare.

Stardust blinks twice, then drops off the edge of the building, drifting down to street level. More building start to shimmer, and the air fills again with the smell of smoke and cordite, visible this time as plumes of darkness spreading across the sky. A murmur of voices fills the street, as the crowds start to panic.

Slipstream has posed:
As the world starts to transform on the outside, Drake is still stuck in the 'inside' of the game he is currently playing. He narrows his eyes tighter as the sound of gunfire and rumbling explosions surge through his ears through the headphones. Even when the cheering stops and turns to panic, he doesn't seem too detered as his mouse whips left, right, then left again as he taps along the buttons. He is on a killing streak and nothing short of killing the power is going to yank his attention away. That is until he sees a couple of people run down the aisles just within his line of sight. He leans back in the bright green gamer chair and gives a quick glance about, then shifts himself upwards to stand as one hand slides the headphones back to rest on his shoulders. "The hell is going on out there?" He asks outloud, hoping someone will answer.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    There is an immediate response from Caroline. She reaches up to the turtleneck of the sweater she's wearing, and unrolls it, pulling it up around the lower half of her face. Following that, she leaps into the air, whipping around and putting together an icy construct.

    It's pretty simple, an arch large enough for a group of people to move through three wide, turns into a tunnel that can be entered- it's shelter, and a mode of travel, nothing more, and Caroline is running along the roof of it, furthering its distance while making openings for groups of civilians. She has no idea what's going on- but priority one is to make sure that anyone who isn't doing the shooting has a route to safety.

Kaydin LeGraize has posed:
    Once again everything moved in slow motion. When the gunshots came from next door, Kaydin downs the rest of his soda, belching before beginning to go outside and try and get people away. He looked around for bullets to grab, his speed seen as a blur of lightning and movement.

Stardust has posed:
The walls of the cafe shake, dust falling from the ceiling onto keyboards below. The lights go out suddenly, the screens all fall dark. Game over? It's only just beginning...

The slow transformation accelerates. For a moment two realities can be seen at once, the everyday, and the everyday transformed. The buildings, and the skeletons of those buildings, bomb-damaged and broken. To those in the cafe, the look is unmistakable. They've just been playing it. The video game reality asserts itself, the normal cityscape vanishing for the best part of a block. A loud burst of machine-gun fire is heard again, and this time it's rapidly followed by screaming.

Outside the Cafe, Caroline sees the results a row of bullets rip across the street, mowing down several panicking bystanders. It could have been far worse, but barely has the gun started firing than Kaydin is there, shielding the civilians. The tunnel of ice she Caroline has created offers a safe haven The crowd flees underneath it and away from the source of the gunfire, herded by Kaydin.

Swooping through the air, Stardust zooms towards the building the gunfire seemed to be coming from. As she closes in on it, her flight is rocked back, the gunner targeting her with a rapid fire blast. Pausing only a moment, she hurls herself back at him, crashing through the window and silencing the gun.

Inside the cafe, now barely a shell, the gamers who'd been playing find it's not just the world around them that is changed. Drake, and his fellow players, are now all dressed just as their characters had been, in World War 2 American army uniforms, and each finds themselves holding a gun.

    There's a cry in the emptying streets: "Schnel! Amerikaners!" Oddly flickering, a dozen or so figures in Nazi uniform run through the street, taking cover. The cry is taken up from the another direction - there are more coming.

Slipstream has posed:
".. The fuck.." Drake trails off a bit as he finds himself armed with a 1911 pistol on his hip and a Winchester 70 in his hands, complete with a long scope. He gives a glance down at himself in his uniform, then starts for the door slowly and cautiously. He peeks his head out the door at the sign of chaos, then glances about the buildings. ".. holy shit I'm in the game .. like The Last Starfighter .." He trails off as he recalls one of his father's favorite movies from his time as a kid. As a bullet whizzes past him, he reflexively moves to the side, whipping the pistol up with a quick one-two-three burst of the gun as he falls a Nazi that was storming from behind a building. He glances down at his hand for a moment, blinking his eyes bewildered before he straightens up again. "Hey!" He calls out to the heroes as he spies the super powers in effect. "We're in the game Wolfenstein!" He waves his hand to them to try and get their attention. " I.. I think I know how to fix this ... "

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline very quickly understands so little of what's going on, that she knows exactly what she needs to do. Keep people safe. The nazis are of little concern- what is worrying is what they can do to the people under her care. As a result, Caroline quickly scopes out where this reality-warping influence ends, and starts running along the roof of the expanding tunnel towards it. Once that tunnel reaches just past the end of the influence, she is running back, scanning the sides for people in need. Her control over the ice is so acute that she can force a hole in the tunnel just large enough for the people to enter, just long enough for them to do so- funneling them to safety, while others work to figure out the nature of it all.

    Her attention turns to Drake, and she stops at him after a moment, allowing the people of the cafe to enter the tunnel. Her brow raises- she's listening, but he's speaking Ancient Sumerian, as far as she's concerned.

    That's what she gets for being from the sixties. At least she doesn't seem worried, standing on the roof of the tunnel like that, in the open.

Kaydin LeGraize has posed:
    Kaydin had a handful of bullet slugs and was moving along the nazis, taking apart their guns in their arms and reducing them to base components. He moves to where Drake is and slows enough to be seen. "Well you got a plan?" He says as he looks for nazis to disarm. he drops the bullets he been collecting at the kid's feet.

Stardust has posed:
Of the gamers, there's an about even split. Half of them run for the safety of the tunnel of ice and, more importantly, AWAY. The other half drop straight into the game. They've been playing it for a few hours straight now, it's almost automatic. Taking up positions behind shelter, they start returning fire on the digital Nazis. A pair with sniper rifles make a break for it, looking for somewhere higher to position themselves.

Caroline's control of the ice tunnel make sit easy for her to herd the fleeing crowd to safety. The digital Nazis obviously aren't programmed to deal with ice tunnels, and seem to be ignoring everyone who enters it as soon as they are out of sight. Before long, she has shepherded everyone to safety who isn't fighting the Nazi menace. From time to time the ice bursts up around her as one of the Nazis takes a pot-shot in her direction, but so far she hasn't seemed like a direct threat and they aren't prioritizing her.

Kaydin's approach is another thing that the digital Nazis aren't programmed for. Easily able to tear weapons from their grasp, he makes quick work of them, and before long most of them are weaponless. However they're soon off to find new weapons, which might be randomly left about the place....

Stardust reappears from inside the building to meet with a small group of Nazis, taking a far more direct approach than Kaydin. She just punches them until they fall down and stop moving. Oddly enough, thirty seconds after she floors each one, the bodies vanish. In the distance, the same cry of "Schnel! Amerikaners!" can be heard, as more and more digital Nazis start to arrive in the area, but there's a moment's peace.

  Stardust flies down to join the gathering group at the cafe. "There's more coming," she says. "Lots more. Did someone mention 'Plan'? 'Cos these guys aren't hard to beat up, but they keep coming. Oh... Hi! I'm Stardust."

Slipstream has posed:
Taking in a deep breath as Drake's eyes glance left to right quickly as he studies the buildings, proximities and how the Nazi's are 'spawning' from their locations. "Yeah, I know this level like the back of my hand. There's a bomb five blocks down the street and it's protected by two tanks and a team of ten. If the bomb is deployed, it will blow up a bank that has a bunch of people inside, one of which is a Captain for the US Army. If he dies, it will demotivate the troops and the game ends. We gotta make a push through their forces to take the point. I can disarm the bomb .. I ... I think I can .." He gives a glance over to the trio, offering a quick smile. ".. I'm uh ... I'm Dynamite Rave." His lips twitch upwards for a moment, almost as if he can't believe he just said that. He tilts on his feet for a moment before he pushes off it. "... Welp .. let's go save democracy and freedom." With a loud click-clack, he shoulders his sniper rifle and takes a quick lightning fast jerk to the left, firing through a window as a spray of blood washes the window, then off he goes.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline nods along. And, really, she's very intelligent. She just... She just doesn't know what video games are. She has no idea. As a result, when he explains the point of the game, she just raises a brow, not quite lost, but not quite following. It's a mission briefing in semi-plain terms, so she follows enough.

    Specifically, she follows enough to hear that there are tanks, and that they will need to be dealt with. As a result, she offers a final nod, stands up, and after confirming the direction with Drake... She starts booking it right towards where their line will be.

    This ought to be interesting to watch, if nothing else, but she's leaving the rest up to the others.

Stardust has posed:
Drake eagerly heads down the route already ingrained in his mind from the previous few hour's play. He already knows where the best cover can be found, and the best places to stop and scope the next part of the journey from. This is going to be easy.

As he runs, a thought nags at the back of Drake's mind. He has lost a life to snipers on this route a few times. It may be the best route, but it's not exactly safe.

Stardust gives a shrug of her shoulders points after Drake, and announces "He's in charge," to whoever will listen. She's got a much better idea of what Drake's talking about that Caroline does, but this is perhaps not a good thing, as she doesn't seem to be taking this very seriously either. "Cool," she says as she paces alongside Drake, not bothering with cover. "You do the bomb thing, we'll punch Nazis. Punching Nazis is good."

There's a loud BLAM as a building just ahead erupts into a shower of rubble. "Uh. I guess that's the tanks?" Stardust asks, just before a spray of bullets hits her to her obvious annoyance. She flies up and then swoops down on the onrushing trio of digital Nazis that fired at her, punching as promised, and leaving Drake to his own devices.

There's a loud rumbling as the first of the two tanks crawls around the corner, lining up its heavy gun for another shot. This time it's not going to miss. It's a BIG tank.

Slipstream has posed:
As he makes his way down the street, ducking down between cars and mail boxes, Drake keeps himself positioned at all times so he can at least see two line of sight angles. With that nagging thought in his head, he calls out to the two heroes. "Hey! Be careful! This is sniper alley. There is going to be shooters up high in a few spots. I can try and take them out as quick as I can, but be on your toes." As he moves to another car, he hauls the weapon up and fires again, watching a body fall from a window to the street below. The sight of the tanks coming into view causes his eyes to widen. "Shit! They will one-shot you if they connect. You gotta get out of the way. Try to find cover. They won't fire if they can't see you. You gotta move behind them." He pats himself about until he finds a grenade, then lobs it across the street in a high arc, meant to explode to one side and distract the tank's attentions so that he can move forward and push.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    There is indeed a single person present that is unlikely to be one-shot by the tanks incoming. As a result, she feels that it's her duty to draw their attention. Not its attention, but -their- attention. Two tanks, one Caroline.

    Sounds like fun, right?

    The burst in the air of the grenade gets her attention and she knows enough about strategy to tell what he's doing with it, and as a result, she leaps up, and through the smoke of the grenade erupts Caroline, doubling up on Drake's effort to take their attention by dropping herself out of his attention-grabbing measure.

    She hits the ground afterwards, and charges, on foot, right at the front of the tank. When she -gets- there, it'll be a matter of figuring out what to do about the armored hulk itself, but up until that point, she's going to draw a lot of attention.

    That's the point, though, of being nigh-invulnerable. All eyes on her.

Stardust has posed:
The tank's barrel lowers slightly, the turret swivels, and huge vehicle shudders to a halt. The distinctive >CLANK< of the gun being loaded, familiar warning to Drake of pain to come, echoes through the streets. Behind it, the second tank rounds the corner, closing in on its fellow.

Digital Nazis were never programmed to deal with bullet-proof superheroes, and Stardust makes short work of her trio of foes. Drake's shouted warning about snipers is her next focus, and she soars up into the air. Taking her lead from the places Drake is scoping, she swoops into the nests he knows about, plucking the snipers up giving each one a single punch to the face (she promised) and then letting them drop.

The blast of Drake's grenade gives Caroline cover to close in on the tank, and as she emerges from the smoke, the gunners turn the turret again, targeting her directly rather than the building Drake is hiding in. There is a loud BLAM as the tank fires, the shell bursting into the ground at Caroline's feet.

Spared the tank round, Drake has just a moment to celebrate his survival when his world is suddenly filled with pain. It takes him a moment to realize what has happened. A sniper post he hadn't seen used before, didn't even know there was a way to climb up to. Blood runs down his arm. He's been hit. As the shock wears off, he finds himself lying on the ground. Blinking through the pain, he notices something in front of him. A small wooden crate, with a red cross stamped on every side. Just what he needs right now...

Slipstream has posed:
As he starts to move forward to attempt to lob a grenade into one of the tanks, Drake finds himself yanked off his feet by the sniper round entering and exiting through his shoulder. He lets out a loud cry, clutching at his arm as blood squeezes out between his fingers. This is real. This is not fake. Panic and anxiety suddenly flares up into his gut as he backs up against a wall, biting on his bottom lip. Don't cry. Not in front of these super hot superhero girls. That will probably make it on YouTube. He couldn't take the public embarrassment. That is of course he survives. As he crawls along the wall, he notices the crate and reaches for it, slamming it open with the butt of his gun in his good hand. Inside is a large wrap of bandages. As he starts to wrap his arm wtih it, he feels the wound closing immediately and the pain start to subside. Video game logic. Pills and bandaids fix bullet holes. With a soft sigh of relief, he wipes the tears from his face, yanks the grenade off his belt loop and starts for the tanks. With them distracted by Caroline, he opens a back hatch and lobs it in, then starts booking for the alley across the street. "It's going to blow!"

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline is not entirely used to the way her ears don't hum and throb after an explosion like that. Right at her feet, the tank round's burst should literally have reduced her to component scraps of person smeared around the street, and yet there she is, uninjured.

    As Drake drops a grenade into the shell of the tank- a classic tactic, to be sure- Caroline sets her sights on the other tank. She goes up and over, unworried about the tank about to be rendered immobile, instead running right at the other one- this time without a covering smog of grenade.

    When she gets there- whether or not she's been shot by this tank head on, which considering that the game seems to have a morale system of some kind, might be startling- she'll draw an arm back and put together a whip.

    Versus the tank.

    Thing is, this whip is a single molecule wide strip of impossibly hard ice- capable of parting the molecules at their bonds. She'll shred it like paper, once she's within range.

Stardust has posed:
With both tanks attempting to target Caroline, Drake is able to dodge past the first, and drops his grenade into the rear hatch of the first tank. As always happens in this game, the top hatch opens and three Nazis leap free of the tank just before it blows.

Finished with the immediate sniper threat, Stardust dives down onto the fleeing tank crew with a loud "Wheeeee!" before dishing out more punches to Nazi faces. She's enjoying this. In fact, she's enjoying it too much, and despite Drake's warning, is caught up in the explosion while holding a Nazi up in the air by the collar to give him a few extra punches. The tank erupts into flames and wreckage, and Stardust is caught in the fireball.

The second tank starts to back away from the first, trying to avoid being caught in the explosion. This gives Caroline plenty of time to catch up with it without being shot at, and before it's able to re-train the turret on her, she flicks her ice-whip and the front half of the barrel simply falls away. She pulls her arm back and lashes out again, severing half the track from one side. Belatedly one of the tanks small machine guns opens up on her, but only for a moment before the third strike of the whip slices the tank down the middle. The tank shudders, three more Nazis leap from the top hatch, and the two halves fall away.

As the smoke clears, Stardust steps out of the ruined tank, spitting dust. "Yuck. Okay, what next? Something about a bank?" she asks.

  Drake knows there's just a short distance to go now before reaching the targets, and right behind the next wall, he knows there's a hypodermic needle. If he steps on it, he'll have thirty seconds of being able to run fast. Not quite being a classic Speedster, but it's kind of a super-power, right? And just perfect for that last approach to the site of the bomb.

Slipstream has posed:
Pushing forward down the street, Drake takes cover again to avoid a barrage of bullets. From his crouched position, he looks over at Stardust and Caroline, watching them survive impossible odds from mortar blasts to fireballs. ".. Wow." He breathes out as he steadies his nerves again, clutching his sniper rifle. He inches forward and props the gun on the hood of the car in front of him, then fires off two bolts as he takes out a pair of Nazi's from two high points, thus removing their cross fire into the street. With that, he calls out, "We got the opening! The bank is right down the street. We can do this!" He slides around the wall to spy the glowing needle on the ground, then reaches out with his heavy boot and stomps on it. He can feel a surge of adrenaline rip through his body, eyes going wide and pupils dilating. It feels like the world is in slow motion as he blurs forward, jerking his pistol out as he sidewinds left to right, firing one round after the other into perfect, clean head shots. He moves with uncanny accuracy and gamesense, having memorized every inch of this map in the past. "Letsgothroughthesedoors!" He is heard right before he drops his shoulder to ram through the double doors of the bank.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline charges forward- and unlike Drake, she already moves at the pace of an automobile. It's a good thing, though, because he's at risk, and she isn't. They enter together, and Caroline is kind of a whirlwind- she hits with force enough to punch through the German soldiers, leaping around the bank's lobby and helping Drake move forward.

    She is at his side when they go through the doors, and behind them, she freezes the whole of the doorway. This is to ensure that as he disarms the bomb, they have nobody following them- with the exception of Colette, who will almost certainly be there with them. It needn't be said- in close quarters, they just have no chance against two bulletproof superheroines and a gamer whose memorization is so complete that it is as if he has foreknowledge.

    Once the room is clear, Caroline prepares for one possibility- if Drake cannot defuse the bomb, she has the reactions to keep everyone safe.

Stardust has posed:
The gunfire is coming thick and fast, but Drake has practiced this exact run a dozen times already today and is very hard to hit at this speed. As far as Caroline and Stardust are concerned, World War 2 era bullets aren't much of a threat. Progress is rapid and the ranks of the defenders are thinning.

As Drake makes his final dash for the doors, he's overtaken, at just over head height, by Stardust. She flies over him, waggling her finger in his direction, and has just enough time to say "You're tactics guy! We're the battering rams" before using herself as exactly that. The door comes down and Stardust plows bodily into the massed Nazis beyond. It's the perfect distraction for Drake and Caroline to make their entry a fraction of a second behind. By the time Stardust has untangled herself from a pile of Nazis and got to her feet, Drake and Caroline have moved through the room beyond like a whirlwind, mowing down the defenders and emptying the place out.

In the middle of the floor, a large explosive device stands, waiting to be defused. It's not quite that simple though. As Drake knows full well, the moment he touches it, there will be a flood of Nazis trying to break in through every door!

Slipstream has posed:
"I have two minutes to diffuse the bomb once I get ahold of it. I can sit here for an hour and stare at it, but the moment I touch it, it will seem that there is only two minutes left." Drake says once the room is cleared. "There will be numerous combatants coming from those two doors. On single player it's not a big deal, but this is multiplayer and there will be a lot. As long as you two can handle the entrances, I can take this out in under thirty seconds. It's just a combination of wires to cut in a pattern." He says as he kneels next to the bomb, reaching into his vest to pull out wire cutters. "Soon as the bomb is disabled .. the game is over ... and um... we fly back to rebel base and ... that's it .. for this chapter." He gives a nod of his head towards them, holding his pistol out with one hand towards a door, followed by a snip of the yellow wire, soon moving to the green, then blue if he is allowed to disarm uninterrupted.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline picks a door seemingly at random of the ones they'd been told. She sweeps her arm at it, and freezes it over. Maintaining the ice isn't necessarily difficult, but it presents a logistical issue. Explosives can rattle the ice and possibly break it down- so she only feels comfortable keeping the two doors frozen over.

    This will let both her and Stardust pick a door each and just hold the line there. Caroline is very good at that- being strong enough to lift a truck, a punch from her is an elimination, if she goes all out. She'll take position in the hallway itself, quite deep- so as to ensure that they never get anywhere near the person defusing the bomb.

Stardust has posed:
Just as promised, as soon as Drake starts defusing the bomb, all hell breaks loose. There are two bullet-proof superheroines, but more than two entrances to the room. The digital Nazis are no match for Stardust or Caroline, let alone the pair of them together, but trying to stop anyone shooting Drake as he cuts wires will be no easy task. Drake wracks his brain to remember the exact sequence of wires, the nervousness of being in the middle of the oncoming hail of bullets requiring his utmost attention.

Stardust hurls herself through the air rather like a pinball, bouncing from doorway to doorway in a desperate attempt to keep the onrushing hordes back. As soon as one doorway is momentarily cleared, she rushes to another to try to hold back the tide. Caroline holds the line deep, shielding Drake with her body when necessary, and mopping up the assaults when they get through. Without two of the doorways being frozen, it would surely just be a matter of time.

  Sure enough, the two frozen doorways are rocked with small explosions every few seconds, as Nazi rocket men fire their rockets at the ice shields. Slowly, the ice barricades chip, shatter and melt away. Eventually one gives, and the barrel of a gun is thrust through the hole made in the ice. There's another cry of "Schnel! Amerikaners!" and machine gun fire bursts in the direction of Drake. Caroline sees the breakthrough and tries to interpose herself, but can she outrun bullets?

SNIP. With a bullet just inches from Drake's head, he cuts the last wire.

Everything just stops. Smoke stops swirling, birds are still, even bullets stand frozen in the air. For a moment there is absolute silence, and then a great, echoing voice calls out.

"VICTORY. ALLIES WIN."

    he video game reality starts to fade. Color, and time, return to the world, as reality reasserts itself. The streets are still empty, but back to normal. There's no sign of damage, and even Drake's clothes have changed back to how they were. Stardust blinks and stretches. "That was... fun? But weird. We better not have to play again on opposite teams, 'cos I've decided I like punching Nazisand I don't wanna have to punch my own team. Everyone okay?"

A few streets away, in a darkened room, the man responsible for the digitized chaos lies motionless, but filled with a great sense of satisfaction. Not /quite/ right. Not enough lasting effect. Maybe using a game for the model of his manipulations wasn't the right approach, but he's learned a lot, and there will be other times. His body may be a prison, but his mind is free once more. Free to make other people suffer. Today, he thinks to himself, a villain is born. "Hmm. Mind Murderer. The Mentalist. Hmm. Mister Merciless. The Psychic Revenger. Ah! Awful. Hmm. I need a good villain name. Hmm hmm. I wonder if 'Game Over' is taken"?

Slipstream has posed:
Jerking his head to the side as the bullet whips past him, Drake's scissors snip the last red wire, then breathes out a sigh of relief as he hears the familiar declaration of victory. When the world becomes normal again, he brushes himself off, his hands trembling a bit now that there is no longer a gun within them. Breathing heavily, he runs a hand back through his hair, feeling it soaked with sweat from the rush of adrenaline and anxiety. ".... Shit... I think I'm going back to Overwatch." He mutters under his breath before he looks up to Star Dust and Caroline. He offers them both a lopsided grin, then rubs the back of his neck. "Um... thanks guys .. for ... helping save America. I'm okay. Just a bit confused."

Shatterpoint has posed:
    There's a lot of back patting to do. Conversation to be had. Worries to deflect and lauding to laud- it's such a shame because as soon as the game is done, Caroline backs away a bit, and without a word, she is simply -gone.-

    She's difficult to detect in most normal ways, and the exact method of her disappearance is strange... But much like other Gotham-born vigilantes, when it's all said and done, everyone else talks, they just disappear.