Secret Diary - Keep Out! Game 5

23/01/2022 – Cont
 
Anyway, yet another eventful day … getting to be a bit of a trend. I was feeling pretty shattered this morning so I headed over to the junkyard to have a bit of chill time since it was a Sunday – like it there since it’s so quiet and quite fun to scavenge cool stuff, especially when I find something cool for Saph to use in her art.
 
Velocity sent a message to say he’d heard a bit more about the guy who left the symbol at the mall – apparently he’s called Mirage, bit of a light-fingered thief who tends to be a small time villain, he has illusionary powers and hangs out at the “Hive of Scum and Villainy” – I can’t believe they called it that!
 
Dunno, everyone seemed a bit meh about doing anything about it with Impulse suggesting we just continue to let stuff turn up where we are. I dunno if there’s anything connecting us to it! It is kinda weird that stuff has kicked off a bit but … how would they know we were at the mall? And why would they care? It does seem to keep happening around us though. And I guess I’m feeling a bit nervous about it now – what if it’s because someone is trying to find us so they can get their hands on the Horn of Destructus? Or even worse, is trying to get their hands on us for another reason that we don’t understand…. Gah, it’s probably nothing!
 
We had a chat about super-suits and whether they were tracked – I mentioned that I didn’t wear one, so Doll snarked at me, but offered to help hook me up with some as the guys suggested that if I went unconscious then the illusion would probably fade.. which is definitely not something I want to happen. I guess I’ve been a bit careless not considering that, and if everything starting to kick off around us is in some way connected to us I definitely need to be more careful, I can’t risk anyone else connecting my identity and my powers. I mean, I figure all the rest of the guys actually seem to have superheroes for their parents so at least they can take care of themselves and help if their kids get into too much trouble – if someone goes after them to get to me there’s nothing they can do to protect themselves… that nightmare last night really messed my brain up!
 
Anyways, mid text conversation Velocity mentioned that Alison was suggesting that we meet up at the mall as she had a lead on some robberies? It was still on lockdown but she was out in full princess garb outside… definitely naïve! When we were all there (apart from Sharky) she told us that goods/currency had been nicked over the last few days and there were orcs and unicorns that had appeared in front of the vans, and that they were all from an armoured truck company called “Securicorp”. Alison even suggested that we just go up and ask them what their next deliveries were, but we pointed out to her that we weren’t registered heroes so we’re just a load of costumed kids.
 
Sharky then turned up, apparently he’d been having brunch with his dad! The conversation turned hilarious at this point as apparently Alison thought he was a golem, and apparently he’s naked in his metal suit! There was a lot of fun teasing of him, and I think doll tried something … definitely a bit of a chat about how many unicorns it would take to pick him up!
 
Anyways, Velocity sent one of his duplicates around to find a van and apparently did manage to find one so we all headed over to a roof to chill and wait for something to happen – there was even Atlantean fried Seagull which is one of my favs! Wasn’t too long until the van skidded to a halt with a load of kindergarden kids from fantasy such as goblins and cyclops in front of it!
 
It didn’t take long to descend into chaos – none of the kids reacted to a sweet stall so they were definitely not real – I realised that they were invisible but wasn’t strong enough to get the fire hydrant to spurt water all over them. Velocity grabbed glitter and tossed it into one of the vans, revealing some of the guys in there, grabbing bags of cash and throwing them into the non-descript vans, which Doll used to turn over the heads of the minions in one of the vans and tied them up with them. The other getaway van Impulse went to and grabbed the keys out of it but got shot in the process. Sharky went into the armoured van and found a huge muscly man who he started to wrestle. I made an illusion of setting the other van on fire, leading to the men from that van jumping out.. including someone wearing a mask and with a katana sword, who pretty much immediately locked eyes on me and instructed the others to get me, I guess realising I was the one responsible for the fire.
Adding to the chaos was the sound of police sirens, but the car leading the way was not a normal police car, but instead was a bright orange muscle car, with a massive guy yelling out of it “you’re all under arrest” and brandishing a machine pistol… apparently he looked like Sharky’s dad… sheesh!
 
Just as the guys aiming at me started to fire, the Doll whipped up a few plants and knocked them flying, as one of the other guys gets out of the other van and flees. The guy with a mask looked at us, made a throat slitting action and then started to run away, but I teleported him back into the middle of us so we could capture him, which me managed to do, calming the chaos just as Sharky’s “Dad”, or what appeared to be him, came up and started yelling at us that we were causing trouble, they had been stalking them in order to lead them to bigger fish but we’d ruined that. He got them loaded into a police car which headed off and he asked that we stayed quiet about this so he didn’t have to make us give statements. I mentioned that we thought they were involved in the incident at the mall.
 
At that point the Doll jumped off a nearby roof and said that she had been attacked from behind. I went up there and teleported him down – at which point everything went back to chaos. I guess the others, knowing Sharky’s Dad, realised that it wasn’t him and tried to knock him out, with him reverting into another guy in a minion outfit in front of our eyes. Velocity in the meantime, sent his duplicates after the police cars which when he dragged them back were empty of the enemies and instead had people tied up with duct tape, with blinking red lights like a bomb. At this point Velocity got them out of the car and AJ winched the cars up above the city where they just splatted blue paint across the inside of the cars.
 
That was it. We were left with a load of old cars (as the illusions had dropped), the hostages from the fake police cars, the van driver who looked really dazed and a collection of low level minions… that was it. It sucks, we really screwed that up, and we got completely taken for a ride. Not only that, we gave a pretty clear display of our powers and what we knew. I guess on the upside, I’ve always thought my powers were a little lame, but all he used was illusions and he completely got us so I guess if I can learn to use my powers more maybe I can do more than I thought, though apparently Alison didn’t agree as it wasn’t “real magic” – not that she did much during that fight!
 
We had a big chat then about what to do – check out clinics, go to the police, take the minions to be interrogated separately, call Impulse and Velocitiy’s “Mum” … which I think they’ve mentioned is Mrs Bruiser! Crazy.. though can definitely see her influence in Impulse at least. We even talked about registering as heroes, which I would do only if it doesn’t mean giving up my true identity – I’ve always been told to hide that and stuff seems to be getting more and more dangerous which definitely makes me keen to keep it secret, even if you get badges to help you skip school (like I need that to skip school anyway!) Sounds like I wasn’t the only one trying to keep their superhero activity quiet, though I’m going to guess that Sharky’s been … less effective at that than I have given he’s very very visible.
 
Impulse and velocity ran off, fighting over a phone, leaving us to do clean up – AJ decided to call the police and get his licence afterwards, and Doll said she knew somewhere to go and we headed off, eventually creating an illusion over the unconscious minions as old people, since we started walking into a much nicer neighbourhood, lots of fancy traditional atlantean homes, dry sidewalks but a good amount of underwater accommodation. Doll lead us to a rather nice looking house, but before we headed in I noticed the nameplate was “Orientalis” which meant I knew them, and so did my parents!
 
I fricking panicked I’ll admit, quickly disguised myself as a nice looking human girl with blonde hair (which I’ll have to remember in case I need to do anything with them again, hopefully not!). Doll clearly knew them as well as she just headed to the front door and asked if Servila was home – their daughter. I’d definitely met her at one of those awkward fancy dinners my parents like to host with the well to do, where I’d have to put on a very polite front – totally sucks. Never talked to Servila much apart from polite stilted conversation though, so was pretty shocked at how comfortable the Doll seemed with her- and even more shocked when it turns out that she had been practicing and was capable of reading minds!
 
When I spoke she turned her attention to me, and I just gave a fake name – she started to say that there was something about me, but after a sharp “don’t” she at least seemed to drop it… I hope! I don’t think she read my mind (if she did there was no way she’d not know exactly who I am) but I need to be really careful about her.
 
I guess I was a bit distracted, think they chatted a bit about how bad the costumes were, but keen to get things moving I cleared my throat and she started to read their minds and got a chunk of information
 
1. Mirage (the mask guy) was attached to Edd (the muscle guy) and they had been caught in … interesting circumstances!
2. location of their hideout at a movie theatre (and with an address that’s something we can follow up)
3. The minions might have worked for someone called Dark Otaku but he wasn’t paying enough and was known for being pretty disposable with his minions (maybe something to do with the Anime Expo taking place at the docks?)
4. Mirage was involved in the mall which was a “chemical test run”, I guess checking out the impact of that juice on the guys at the mall. No info on where he might have got the chemicals
5. Not seen with his mask off (but seen other bits of him!)
6. He seems to only use illusions but he’s clearly got those on lock, carries a sword but never seen him fight with it)
 
Big chunk of information but we couldn’t think of anything else to ask, so to my relief we headed back out of their house (renewing the illusions!) - My head is still just churning all the stuff we learnt plus the whole is it related to us or just a coincidence... and the more I think about it the more I don't know :(