Volume I: The Lost Boys

There is a sudden movement from one rooftop to another.

A black-clad figure jumps through the air, and lands with a handspring on the new rooftop, to launch up several feet into the air again, somersault over The Ogre and land on her feet at the opposite side. Armed with a modern looking handbow and a quiver.

"Hey. Did I here the name of Dr. Harris being mentioned here? Let's get him," the blonde girl in black clothes says with both a playful and determined voice as is she's on a fun hunt. "I've seen his... ghouls?"

The girl looks at the others on the rooftop. Eyeing them all carefully.

"If you're against him, then you're with me. I'm Night Arrow... for now..."

Blacklight is taken aback for a moment, by both the arrival of Harmonia and then Night Arrow. "Ah.. we were going to try and sneak in and talk him down..." She offered the recently arrived pair. "But odds are somebody just saw... or heard you arriving." She was a bit put out at having just been surprised not once, but twice by the arrivals. That wasn't supposed to happen, that was supposed to be HER thing. She would just silently blame this one on The Ogre for being big and obvious... that was her story and she would stick to it if asked.

She shot a glance over to Ogre before turning back not sure if the two newcomers are together or not. "We'll have to move quickly now either way. Do either of you know where in there the Doctor is?" A gesture towards the building as she starts to regain her mental balance. It is a big structure so they might have a long way to go. For her part now that they are here she does her best to feel through the shadows and locate either the doctor or his zombies. While he's probably in a lab, with luck it won't be well lit and she'll be able to figure out what humanoid forms she feels are him and which his minions. Fighting crime was always so much easier at night or in the basement where there was less light. Especially in buildings without power.

It had taken her awhile to be able to get away. She meant to start staking this place out hours ago! It looked like some other people were already there. Maybe she should change her plans? Things did go wrong the last time she tried to go solo. Mimic ducked back around the corner to double check that her wig and mask were on properly. One of them goes to her school! It would be the absolute worse if he recognized her! With a deep breath, she started walking towards the other people again. "I'm not late, am I? It looks like a party.." It looks like a party? Could she have been any more cliche? Great first impressions there.

"I apologize if my arrival was a bit... conspicuous," she said, glancing with a shy embarrassment at the crater in the middle of the street. "Flying at cosmic speed isn't as easy as it looks."

She shifted her focus back to Ogre and Blacklight. "I don't know exactly where the professor is."

He turns to face the new arrivals.

For anyone who might have come across stories of videos of the mutated kid that they're calling the Ogre, there's no mistaking him. Over two metres tall and almost as wide, a bruttish hulking form with deep red plated skin, a maw with mean looking fangs.

He waves at the new arrivals, the casual gesture at odds with his monstrous form.

"Man, Doctor Harris sure has got some attention." He rumbles in a deep base voice.

"Would like to talk to you all and share Dr Zombie notes, but I think we got to hustle."

"We're here to try and talk sense to him, but one way or the other, we're shutting his operation down. Hope you're all good with that."

"BL, can you make out anything?"

Nigh Arrow glances at Ogre for a bit. She actually knows him from school. Not the type she hangs out with usually. But now would be a good first.

She looks at everyone.

"Huh. Guess we're a team now? Let's stop Doctor Ghoul."

"We are a team, indeed. Yes, let's stop him before disaster strikes the city. Where do we begin? Normally, I'd just go through the front door and fly through the corridors rapidly until i find him," Harmonia said, hovering in front of them. "But I suspect you all have better ideas."

"Oh shit.." Blacklight muttered. Responding to both Ogre and Harmonia she went on in a rush. "I don't think we have time for your usual method, hes got a needle and a girl is strapped down to a table." It might be a mistake to intervene but better to get there first than be too late. Even as she spoke Blacklight was pulling at the shadows, connecting here to there so that a portal opened in the shadowed wall of the building to the ceiling of the room the misguided doctor was working in. "The fall will be another eight or so feet!" she warned everyone as she then fully faced Ogre and tried not to sound too pathetic as she half asked, half begged, "Carry me?"

For those on the roof it would be a roughly ten foot fall to the portal then another 8 from the portal to the floor of the room the doctor was in, Harmonia could apparently fly so wouldn't be a big deal for her, but Mimic would need to jump up at least three feet before falling through the portal into the room coming from street level as she was. It was the best compromise Blacklight could quickly come up with for getting everyone here a chance to get there in one go.

As they started through she called out "Remember she might have been bitten!"

Night Arrow looks down the edge of the building, into the portal. Before she jumps in, she looks at the portal.

Can she see through it? And more importantly, can she see the doctor and his needle?
If so, she will draw an arrow to shoot the needle out of his hand.

Otherwise

, she will take a little run with bow in hand to jump through.

Harmonia shows little hesitation and sweep through the portal flying, ready to punch and kick the creep with the needle on the other side.

Harmonia and Night Arrow found themselves in one very unsanitary operating room. Strapped to a moldy medical reclining chair was a pretty young teen, an IV catheter in her arm. As for the Doctor himself, he was standing right next to her, a syringe in hand - just about to administer the shot when a couple of masked women dropped out of the black spot in his ceiling. He has seen such a 'portal' before - only last night, in fact, when the group of heroes used one to make a quick getaway. The question in his mind was therefore not 'how', but a "What are you doing in here?"

Night Arrow drops to the ground, landing gracefully on her feet. She looks at the room, glances around to assess the situation.

She instantly raises her bow, aiming for the syringe in the doctor's hand, as she steps away from the portal (yeah, she doesn't want to stand there when Ogre makes the jump through...)

"You put that down, doc," she says. "And explain calmly what is going on here. For we are here to stop you."

She holds her arrow, but with one false move of the doctor, she is ready to shoot the syringe.

"I understand. " She takes a deep breath and backs up to take a running jump through the portal.

Once she falls through, Mimic rolls to a landing instead of trying to stick the landing on her feet. It looks like some of the others are confronting the Doctor.. She should look for something that would be useful for her to copy if things escalated into a fight.

Ogre leaps through the portal. He hits the ground on the other side with a heavy thud.

"Doc," he growls, "We can't let you do this."

The girl strapped to the reclining chair was the first to speak. She didn’t know who the people who invaded the room were, but once she heard what they had planned she looked at them with panic in her eyes: "No! You can’t!"

"It’s alright, Zuri" The Doctor did as he was told, putting the syringe away on top of the mayo stand – the one with the sharp knives, cuticle scissors, and towel clamps. A couple of his ‘boys’ were ready to enter the room at the first sign of trouble, but they retreated with one motion of the doctor’s hand, falling back into the musty corridor

"Please – " the doctor turned back to look at them, his voice trembling "You must allow me to complete the procedure. So many people are counting on me..."

Blacklight was the last one through the portal, hanging from the edge of the building to reduce the falling distance and glad the others couldn't see before letting go to fall through after The Ogre and landing adequately if without the grace and style of Night Arrow. She was just in time to hear the end of the doctors speach with her own ears. The rest having reverberated through the shadows to her given her focus on his location. "What procedure Doctor?" She felt she had to ask the question.

"I believe that all our previous attempts have failed because too much time elapsed between necrosis and the Resurrection. 'Paul', the Resurrected that escaped containment, is nearly sapient, and he is the one who spent the least amount of time as a cadaver before I saved him" The doctor looked at Zuri, and gave her a light, reassuring nod "Zuri volunteered to test my hypothesis

He didn't spell it out for them, but his intentions were clear enough; the syringe was nothing but a lethal injection

"A few minutes, then I will bring her back"

"Wait? Zuri? You volunteered for this beast to murder you?" Night Arrow asks, lowering her bow just a second in shock, before raising it again. "Why? Why did you say to us to stop, and why did you volunteer to this? Speak freely. I won't let doc creepy harm you."