A Sitting Duck [SCHEME]

Azoth didn’t have much time to pause. It seemed as though she’d lost Anonymous in the fog, but his unknown nature had her glancing over her shoulder every thirty seconds, expecting to see that featureless face staring at her from the mist. She came to a stop before a small security system box. Casting one last look behind her to settle her mind and ignoring the bangs and other loud noises from the seminar room, Azoth closed her eyes and concentrated.

The security box began to vanish, slowly and from the top down. Perhaps a minute passed before she opened her eyes again.

Azoth stepped quickly down the hall. Second floor, third room from the stairs - that was the guest speaker’s room. Fog followed her through her quick ascent up the stairs, and spilled out into the second floor. Lights went out as she passed beneath them. Any precaution she could take she was going to.

But, as she came into the hallway, a second set of footsteps caught her ears.Her mind went first to the worst-case, that Anonymous had found the room as well. She could make out a figure in the fog. If it wasn’t him, well, it was just going to be an unlucky day for them.

Azoth grinned and allowed herself a moment to breath. Enough ice had formed around the doorway that the edges were all but sealed to the doorframe - Azoth would hear anyone trying to get in long before they actually managed to do so.

She cast a glance at the one other occupant of the room, a sad-looking man who seemed the type to own a very expensive car to make himself feel better about himself, who had gone to cower in a corner. “It seems you don’t understand why you shouldn’t mess with supers.” She mused, letting her gaze linger just a moment longer on him like a tiger deciding it wouldn’t hunt a gazelle only because it wasn’t currently hungry, before returning to her work.

The small room was a mix of order and chaos. It had been obviously nicely set up for whoever was to occupy it, decorated with fake plants and a few tables and chairs to practice and prep. The occupant of the room had introduced mess - papers covered nearly all the clean and orderly surfaces and had spilled onto the floor over by where the man currently sat, likely pushed there when she entered.

Azoth was going to return the room to its orderly state. All around her, papers began to vanish. Whole piles disappeared completely in just a few seconds. The man jumped and yelped as papers and a small booklet near him ceased to be so, but Azoth pushed the noise from her mind. She stood stock-still, only occasionally moving her head to make sure she hadn’t missed something on the floor. In hardly any time, the room was clear.

Azoth turned her gaze once more to the man, who tensed at her words. “You don’t know how lucky you are I made it here first. Call a cab. Catch the next plane out. Leave Emerald City and never. Come back.” She had all the written information - all that was left was getting this guy out of here while he was still in too riled a state to properly talk.

With her job done and a map of the place now in her head, Azoth walked over to one of the walls. A thin outline formed in the plaster as a steel cube just over three inches in length formed below one of the tables. The line reached from the floor, over her head, and back down to the floor again and, with a light push, fell down into the next room over. Walking through and to the next wall, she did this twice more, and on the last the “door” opened to stairs. She cast one glance behind her to suggest the man get some common sense and follow her, and thick fog began to form and and fill the stairway.

Azoth simply walked down to the first floor, made a hole in their stairwell wall, and left quietly and without confrontation.

---

Taking option #3!

The speaker was still trying to give his speech despite everything (under Aurora's orders), the crowd was where she wanted it to be, the giant's movement was heavily restricted, this was a good position to be in. When the idiot hero reached out and tried to grab her, she sped up the aurora around him, making its movement even more erratic and more painful. It shouldn't cause any lasting harm, or even make him bleed, but it should be enough to get her point across. More importantly though, the idiot hero should be distracted and should find it difficult to see. With that, Aurora felt safe in going after the crowd directly. Not to hurt them, yet, but to identify them. She started grabbing their wallets, purses, and anything else that might hold what she was looking for. They quickly dissolved into particles, making her aurora swell further. She dissolved everything, the physical wallet, money, credit cards, and most importantly, their IDs. She didn't plan on grabbing the entire audience's identification, only the ones in the most expensive seats, the ones that were clearly invested in all this. Part of her wanted to stick around for the rest of the speech, but the speaker's style was so boring and dry that she wasn't sure if she could stomach it. She had other plans for the man because of that. Without missing a beat, she hopped back onto the stage, rushed towards the speaker and punched him in the gut as hard as she could. With the wind knocked out of him, she hit him on the back of the neck to make him sleep for a little while, and slung him over her shoulder. With that, she had everything she wanted out of this place.

"Good job Bloodbath, we're leaving now!"

He was adequate with what he needed to do, so Aurora figured she could afford to stroke his ego a little bit if only to make him easier to control later. Bloodbath could still find his own way out though. Aurora grabbed parts of the stage and more pieces of the wall, jumping off the stage and later calling her aurora back to her to spawn some debris under her feet to jump off of, until she reached the ceiling. From there, she opened a hole in it and made her way out of the building, unconscious speaker in tow.

Aurora figured this would be another boring trip back to the horde before interrogating the speaker and figuring out just who was in the audience, but before she even left the roof of the building she saw something interesting. One of the Keepers from the museum was making her escape as well. It was obvious it was an escape too as there was a big hole in the wall that most certainly was not a door. Her lips curled into a smile as she jumped off the roof, spawning a few more pieces of rubble to jump off of as she made her way down to the ground, then landed about a foot in front of the fleeing Keeper, her aurora trailing behind her like a massive, glittering cape.

"I can guess why you decided to come here," Aurora straightened and looked the Keeper directly in the eye. "I'm going to interrogate this asshole, and I also collected a few dozen IDs from the people in the most expensive seats at his talk. Come back here this time next week, I'll share what I found out if you share what you found out. Deal?"

It took all of Aurora's self control not to burst out laughing at the Keeper's response to her presence. She wasn't even trying to be scary, she just wanted to get her attention. The Keeper's attempts at trying to hide her fear and look totally calm and in control were almost adorable. It wasn't the kind of reaction she expected from someone from such a shady organization. Even if she managed to avoid laughing, she couldn't, nor did she want to, hide her amusement. Her lips curled into a condescending smile while she waited for the girl to regain her composure enough to respond.

"Good," Aurora started to turn away, then looked back one more time. "Oh, and if you try to screw me over I'll know."

---

Aurora left the horde early enough that she could travel through the city, back to the auditorium, on foot. It was a little bit less convenient to travel this way, but for once, she wanted to avoid drawing too much attention. Her aurora was small; it only held her notes, a couple of things to use as weapons or something to escape with if necessary, and a few miscellaneous supplies that she always brought with her just in case. It trailed behind her head, lighting up the area right around her. Unlike Azoth, Aurora made sure she would arrive right on time, granted she was erring on the side of being a little early than a little late. She didn't feel the need to arrive early to scout out the area. If the Keeper was going to screw her, she was confident in her ability to fight them off. The Keeper would also be unable to steal the info from her as long as it was held in her aurora anyway. There was absolutely nothing to worry about, and her posture and the way she moved showed that confidence.

Between the light from her aurora and the sound of the metal parts of her boots against the pavement, Aurora knew she wasn't going to be even remotely stealthy. She had given up on trying long ago. If the Keeper was here, she would notice Aurora before Aurora noticed her in all likelihood. Assuming she was even here. Given her reaction to Aurora's presence, she wouldn't be surprised if she didn't show at all, but sure enough, when she rounded the corner into the alleyway behind the auditorium she was there. She took a moment to examine the girl closely, just to make sure that it was the same person and not a convincing look alike, before having a folder drop into her hand. A few pages started fluttering into it from her aurora, just to confirm that they were there and she held out her hand.

"You first."

Azoth saw the super’s light before she saw the super herself. The sound of footsteps came next. She listened carefully for the number of footfalls. Just one set - unless someone else was coming from the sky, Aurora had come alone. Had she not, Azoth would’ve left right then. Even so, as the super approached, she kept a wary gaze to the shadows and sky. She felt she could put up a fight against, or at least run from, just Aurora, but she couldn’t be certain had the pandaemonium brought along a friend.

Needless to say, Azoth herself was alone. She had no intention of increasing the threat with another person or having to owe someone a favor over a simple information exchange. Sliding off the milk crates, she straightened her back and turned to face the coming super. Her hands were at her side and the folder under one arm. She was attempting to quell the beginnings of butterflies in her stomach (a fact which annoyed her - she had no problems dealing with unpowered informants, or even a number of keepers). She had a job to take care of, she told herself as Aurora opened with a use of her power (as if she needed to display it more than her aurora already did), and couldn’t afford to be distracted. She had to focus.

Azoth gazed at the folder in Aurora’s hands. How easy it would be to simply take it… But that would undoubtedly result in a fight, and she had no reason to break the deal. She let her eyes linger on the folder for a moment longer, memorizing its location. Just in case.

Pacing slowly towards the pandaemonium, Azoth raised her folder to her chest and flipped through it to confirm its contents until she came to be an arms’ length away. She stood straight and confidently, not at all intimidated by the super not more than a few feet in front of her. Not at all. This was just like any other informant, she told herself. She closed it from the spine set in the palm of her hand and held it out to the super. Now, more than any other time, she needed to be focused. She felt the stiff paper in her hand. She’d need to be ready to react at a moment’s notice.

Extending the open palm of her other hand, she looked Aurora in the eye. “And yours.”

Aurora grabbed the folder with her free hand and started paging through it. She was skimming, not reading through it all thoroughly, just to make sure everything appeared to be in order. Even so, she was skimming more carefully than what was common in these situations. She wasn't inclined to trust a shady organization, and she figured that if they wanted to continue being as shady as they have been in the past, that they could deal with her being suspicious. Regardless, the Keeper had to act on Aurora's pace. Most of the information she brought was still in her aurora. If this girl try to grab what she materialized and run she'd get maybe 2% of what Aurora brought at this point. Once she was satisfied, the folder and all its contents turned into particles migrated back to where the rest of her aurora was.

From there, a controlled rain of paper poured out of her aurora and into the folder she was holding. There must have been more than 100 pages worth of pictures and text. Rather than focus on the results of the research, Aurora was more interested in figuring out who was conducting it, who was funding it, and who was supporting it. Where the funding was coming from was easy enough to beat out of the speaker, but finding the trail of supporters was a little more difficult. Most of what she had was about the people in the audience, and what she believed were some of the scientists working on the project the Keeper's information detailed. She made sure to get their names, where they worked, and what kinds of other projects they were involved in. Information on the address and family were conspicuously absent. Once she rematerialized all the papers, she handed over the folder to the young Keeper, turning to leave once it was firmly in her grasp. After taking a few steps, she paused and looked back one more time.

"If you want to escalate this further...well, I'm not difficult to find."