After an hour of mostly unremarkable patrolling, the two of you came across a fight in an alley. Well, you say fight, it was a guy beating the everliving fuck out of another behind a restaurant.
"Let's go break that up, yeah?" Justine proposed, and you nodded in agreement. She glide silently down behind the attacker, and when he turned to confront her, her cloak flared open like that cool not-real dinosaur in Jurassic Park, accompanied by a flash that lit the whole alley and a noise like an explosion. The man staggered back as you swung past, grabbing the victim and lifting him bodily away. You reached the fire escape opposite and deposited the victim, trying to prop him up. He was dazed, and blood was running down his face from the cut on his forehead.
"You good?" you asked Justine over the radio.
"Gimme a sec." she responded, and you glanced back to see her knock something from the last of the hands and start backing away. Athena had walked her through the policy she'd come up with you: you usually weren't trying to
defeat bad guys in situations like this, not arrest them or anything, you were trying to prevent them from doing harm. Your powers, the gadgets Arachne and Crimson Cowl had, they were to provide such an overwhelming advantage that, hopefully, you never had to use much force at all even if they did try to hurt you or others. Now that their victim was clear and the immediate violence was over, it was time for de-escalation.
"Hey hey, calm down, and let's talk about this, okay? It's over, big guy, it's over." Justine asked, her voice echoing in your headset. You heard, tinny and distant threats and insults as you turned back to the victim, giving him the best check-over you could.
"Hello, I'm Arachne. Try to focus on me." you said, and the man's eyes eventually focused on your masked face. "Good. You have a head injury. We're going to get you to a hospital, okay?"
"No... I can't afford..." he muttered. You were about to remind him that Medicare meant he didn't have to worry about that anymore, when you realized the implication. He was an undocumented immigrant.
"Okay. Okay, um... there's a friendly free clinic we can take you to, they won't call ICE or anything, okay? You don't mess around with head wounds." you explained. They might still send him to a hospital, but debt was better than death. He nodded, and you glanced back.
"Crimson Cowl, how's our friend?" you asked.
"Being shitty. You will be completely unsurprised to hear this is about a girl." Justine replied, clearly doing her very best to stay calm as the man spat various insults her way. "How's the victim?"
"I'm going to get him help. You think your guy will cool off on his own?" you asked.
"Yeah, he's already losing steam. See you in a bit."
You picked up the man as delicately as you could, and you started off toward the clinic.
---
On the way back, you spotted the little purple van, stuck in traffic near the bridge.
"Huh. Check that out." you said, taking a picture for Justine.
"
That's the one. License plate matches and everything." Athena confirmed. "
Want to take a look?"
"I'm thinking we just follow it and wait. Update Justine, would you?"
"
Already on it."
You followed the van's slow crawl across the bridge into Manhattan and its even slower progress through the streets. It stopped at a corner near a bike lane, and one of the rolling Amazon delivery drones which had taken them over rolled up, unfolded into its spindly humanoid shape, and stepped into the open side door. You tailed it back north a ways, before it pulled into the garage of a duplex in Marble Hill, a somewhat run-down looking building, off white and with a roof that clearly hadn't weathered the last hurricane too well. Thick curtains drawn on every window, but not exactly unusual. The garage door closed, and you decided to make a soft landing on the roof and see if you could get a read on anything technological inside.
Your tech sense
lit up, and what you were seeing was familiar. Banks and banks of industrial processors not unlike the ones that had made up the Stark JARVIS computer. There were drones moving about the halls, delivery machines mostly, modified, almost certainly the stolen Amazon bots used in those robberies. Everything networked together. In basement, at the edge of your perception, was something that was very much like a Stark Suit... except not quite. It was all one system, and it was sophisticated. The only thing not connected was a cell phone and paired watch, moving through the halls.
And the moment you realized that, something in it changed. It knew you were here.
The phone in the house beeped as it got a message.
----
[ ] Fucking run. Get out and regroup.
[ ] Try to talk to the system through your tech sense.
[ ] Knock on the door and say hi.
[ ] Knock down the door and say hi.
[ ] Write In.
