The Four Elite

Screech pulled the file out from hammerspace and skimmed through it again while Zel answered Dust's question. "The generator wasn't too big. We built the prototype at a smaller scale than it actually would need to be so it would be easier to run tests on. If we did need to move the device, we would generally use two people to lift it onto a rolling cart. Though theoretically, it could possibly be lifted by one person if they were strong enough." Zel then answered Cortana's question. "Strangely, no. They only took the field generator prototype."

Screech saw a picture of the burn mark on the wall and started thinking. She pulled the other two files out and placed them on a desk in the room. She opened the files and pulled out a picture from each.

"Check this out." Screech said as she held up all three pictures for the rest of the group. "This same burn mark is on walls at the other places too. So whatever is going on here is pretty likely to be the same person at all the locations."

"Ah, I see. Hm..." 
Whike she thought it through, she looked over at what Screech had seen. 

Oh. 
There were already pictures of it. 

Oops. 

Regardless, while they already guessed it was all connected, seeing this was nice confirming that fact. 
It wasn't what she was focused on, though. 
"So... when was this theft again? Also... how would they have found out about the prototype, was it public knowledge?" She asks the room in general as she looks up from the files a moment to look at Zel as she asks.

Cortana processed the information given, keeping it all in mind.

In response to Screech's observation about the marks, Cortana comments.

"Or, more likely, the same group. I find it hard to believe one person had done all this themselves."

Zel continued to answer their questions after looking at the pictures as well.

“It was about two weeks ago that it was stolen. People did know about the prototype. A news station had done a story on it about a month before that, but it was just an interview between me and a news reporter. We didn’t allow anyone into the room where we were keeping the prototype, neither did we tell them what room it was in.”

Screech then heard her radio go off.

> Attention all units, we have a disturbance at the electronics factory downtown. Any free officers please respond ASAP. <


Screech looked to Dust and Cortana. “What do you think girls? Should we go check it out?”

So it really was a while ago... Did two weeks ago proceed the other thefts?
Suddenly she hears the radio in her head go off, and she looks to Dust and Screech, knowing they had heard it as well.
"Seems like a really good idea, personally. Maybe another place is getting hit as we speak."

Two weeks ago? This must have been quite the dedicated plan then. Though, at least they knew how the culprit knew about it.

Their investigation was cut short however, by the radio activating.
Looking to Dust and Screech, Cortana prepares to leave.

"Indeed, if we can catch them in the act, our job would become significantly easier."

Looking to Dr. Zel, she bows.

"My apologies, Dr. Zel, but it seems we have somewhere to be." "Farewell, and I promise to have that discussion with you as soon as I can."

Screech nodded. “Okay then. Again, so sorry Dr. Zel, but we need to go check this out.”

“It is alright. Thank you for your time you three. I just hope that you can find the culprit or culprits responsible. Oh, and Miss Cortana, I would love to catch up with you another time. Perhaps under more casual circumstances.”

Once the three left and made their way to the electronics factory, Screech said to the others, “If it is the same people that caused a disturbance last time, I wonder why they came back to this place? Did they need more items from this factory, but didn’t have time before the police got here?” Screech then noticed that there were workers at the factory standing outside, completely still, and shouting,

“We don’t know what’s going on!… Help!… I can’t move!” Police and paramedics were trying to figure out what was happening, but they weren’t sure.

Screech walked up to one of the officers. “Excuse me, we’re with the Station Square police department, investigating the weird occurrences that have been happening.” The officer turned to look down at the three Mobians. “Oh, yeah, the chief told us he was hiring some help on these cases today. We still don’t know what’s going on in there. Any chance you three could check it out?”

She too said her Fairwells to Dr. Zel, but with nothing more for her to say personally the three girls headed straight to the factory.

At the factory, Screech's theory was likely proven incorrect. After all, if the culprits cared about police presence, the effects of their ability might have been over by now...
Screech goes to talk to an officer, and Dust sticks around to listen, before getting ready to go on the move.
Before leaving though, she asks the officer, "Have you or any other officers talked to the workers or taken a look at them? Just need to know if that's something we should do before heading inside."

Cortana on the other hand, felt something strange about this situation, similarly to Dust, why would they continue to use their ability when the police are already here?
This might've been a trap...

As her partners were already talking to the police, Cortana simply prepares to enter the building when they were done.

The officer responded to the questions. “We’ve tried to get into the factory, but all the entrances have been sealed off somehow. The paramedics are trying to figure out why all the workers can’t move, but the still have not figured it out yet. Maybe you three could try to get in through a skylight or a ventilation shaft?”

Screech gave a salute to the officer. “We can certainly try!” She stared to walk up towards the wall of the factory. As she passed the workers standing still, her ears started to ring faintly. ‘That’s strange… Why would motionless people be setting off my radar sense?” Screech decided to continue on and look around for a vent on the wall.

“I see a vent opening! Ugh, but it’s too high for us to reach. We would need like at least twelve more feet to our height to get to it.” She groaned as she tried to think of how they could reach it.

"Alright officer, we'll see what we can do from here." She responded to them, before following after Screech to the building.

Screech calls attention to the vent, and mentions the height issue, Dust takes a deep breath, as if getting ready to do something, before chuckling confidently.
"It's alright Screech, I got this. Time to show what I'm made of... quite literally." With no extra hesitation, she reaches up toward the vent and kinda just... stretches(?) her body upward, kinda like a cartoon character. The color of her dress fades away into the color of ordinary sand as the center of her stretch, and her abdomen seems to thin out a little as she does, but upon reaching the vent she tries opening it as nicely as possible, and once finally open she shifts into a sandy staircase.
Dust is strong, she could likely handle their weight.
Despite no visible mouth, it could be heard, "Climb on up, I'm alright!"

Cortana quite frankly, cringed seeing Dust deform into a staircase. And considering what a significant part of her was made out of...
Yeah, not happening.

"Ehm, with all due respect, Ms. Dust... No."

Cortana instead turned herself into a spark once again, and climbed up the wall, into the vent.

Screech was still standing next to the wall trying to think of how they could reach it, then turned to watch Dust do her thing as Shreech’s jaw dropped to the floor in confusion.

She stared for a few moments before stuttering, “But… What di- How did… What the heck just happened?”

Screech was still a little confused, but when Dust said to climb up, she didn’t question it. She stepped up to the sandy staircase, and gently placed her foot on the first step. She pressed down slowly a few times to make sure it was secure, before crawling up the steps on her hands and knees.

Once she made it up to the vent, she summoned her energy spear and used it to pry the fan on the opening off so she could climb through.

Dust couldn't help but feel a little silly given their reactions - she figured they knew, so Screech being so surprised and Cortana's cringe made her feel a bit self-conscious.
Regardless, she was there to help her team mates as they needed it - if Cortana didn't need her help, she didn't have to accept it. She'd shrug, but currently she was stairs, so there's a notable lack of shoulders.

Once Screech and Cortana entered the vent, the sandy stairs grew some arms that would grip the sides of the vent as she shifted hack to het normal appearance, now crawling behind them through the vents.
"Heh, sorry guys, figured you knew. Didn't think it'd be a problem." She says, speaking lowly as having now entered the building that presumably a superpowered criminal or two was in, they needed to be quiet and stealthy most likely.

Cortana reformed temporarily, to look back at Dust and respond. Somehow, she seemed uncomfortable.

"Oh no, I knew about you being made out of sand for a while now. No, my reaction came from a more... *ahem* vulgar train of thought."

Cortana then turned back into a spark, and progressed down the vent.

“Eh, it’s okay Dust. I guess I just wasn’t expecting to meet somebody made of sand today.” Screech responded with a soft chuckle. When Cortana zipped down the vent path, Screech said in a semi-loud whisper, “Cortana, wait up! We need to be quiet!” She said this as she completely didn’t think about the louder noises echoing through the vent as she crawled faster to catch up with Cortana.
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Once the group would reach the end of the vent, through the slits of the cover, they could see two Mobians inside. One, a blood red and gray tiger wearing a leather jacket with the sleeves torn at the elbow, and dark jeans with holes in the knees. The other, a solid white cat with a black lightning bolt pattern in his hair. They were wearing white gloves, and sneakers with a blue music note on the sides. The tiger was standing near the main entrance with his arms outstretched towards the door. The cat was looking around the factory, seemingly looking for something.

The tiger then said something to the cat. “You’re lucky that the big man needed more stuff from this place, or you would have had to come find your little drums on your own.”

“They’re bongos. Get it right Ira. And I wouldn’t have lost them if the strap hadn’t gotten caught on the lever of one of these machines.” The cat snapped back as a magenta rhythm wisp flew into view from another side of the factory. “Any luck?” The rhythm wisp shook it’s head. “Well keep looking buddy.” The cat then continued to look around for said bongos, as the wisp resumed their search as well.

Telling the stealthiest of the three, as she was literally made for stealth, to be quiet was as ironic as it was kinda dumb, since Screech only made more noise chasing after them.
Gladly, so far, no one seemed to notice them despite the fairly awkward entrance.

Dust, personally, was trying to be quiet despite being taken back by Cortana's words. 'Vulgar...?", she thought to herself as she kept crawling, "What's that suppose to mean? What could be so 'vulgar' about sand...?"
Seems Cortana didn't like her sand powers much. She was certainly curious as to why, but now wasn't the time to ask.

Once the three reach the end and look through the slits down at two Mobians in the building, she notes that these vents are pretty large for three above-average height, Mobian women to squeeze through. She remains quiet regardless, looking at Screech and Cortana in case they wanted to take action.

Cortana looked down into the room and notices the two mobians inside. One was looking around for his drums, apparently. And the other was putting their arms against the wall?
The same wall where the workers were behind...

Cortana whispers.

"Those must be some of the culprits. I theorize that the red tiger must be the one paralyzing the workers."
"I can attempt to immobilize one of them, but to deal with the other, I need someone to get them to me, or someone handles them themselves."


She noticed the wisp as well, but while they aren't to be underestimated, she could likely take care of that with her chakram if nobody else got to it first.

Screech watched the culprits carefully and then looked to the others.

"We need to be careful. One, if not both of them might have powers. Remember what happened on that security camera footage? One of them might have some kind of telekinesis or something. I think I could take one of them if you can handle the other. It's just that once we get out of this vent, they're gonna know we are here unless we can all three get through this vent cover without it falling to the floor."
_________________________________________________________

The cat looked underneath one more table as he said "Hey Beats! I found them!" The cat pulled a pair of bongos out from under the table as the wisp flew back into view. The leather neck strap was torn. "I'll have to replace that. But for now..." The cat tied the strap together and hung it back over his neck.

"Great bard. Now find what we were here to really get." The tiger said as he continued to stand by the main entrance.

Screech was excited now. They had the chance to stop a crime in progress. She whispered to Cortana and Dust, "Okay, so what's the plan?"

Dust listens into the situation, and after a bit, she whispers, "...If Cortana can immobilize either of them, that would be great. I'd think the tiger might be our target...?"

She looks over to the white cat, then. "I don't know if Cortana's method will bust the vent or draw attention to ourselves, but I've got suspicions it won't. I can slip through the slits without breaking the vent myself, but whether we'll need that or not depends on tbe next few minutes I guess - would sand coming out of the vents be too suspicious...?" She continues, seeming to think as she spoke, waiting for input or action from either of her companions.

Cortana had a plan.

"I'll take the tiger. As a spark, I too can simply move through the vents. So I will zip out and over to them, and immobilize them with an electrostatic field, Dust, you can take the cat."
"And Screech, since you can not exit stealthily like us, we will be counting on you for backup, if anything goes wrong, or you see something that can make it go wrong, come help."


"If you got that, we go on 3."

She felt slightly bad that she couldn't have Screech do more, but this was simply how things ended up.

Screech nodded. “I think that’s a good plan. If you guys need backup, there won’t really be a reason for me to be stealthy, so I could bust out of here if I needed to.”
____________________________________________________________________

The tiger was still holding his hands out towards the door. “Could you hurry up there bard? It’s not easy for me to freeze multiple people for prolonged periods of time.”

 The cat shouted back from the other side of the factory, “Yeah, yeah, I got.” The cat then whistled with two fingers in his mouth, “Hey Beats, come over here and help me with this.” The magenta wisp flew over and plopped himself down on the cat’s bongos.

Screech waited for Cortana and Dust to make their move, but as she did, she thought to herself, ‘I haven’t ever done an ambush on criminals before, but this seems a bit too easy.’

The plan was made and it was time to get ready. Once Cortana counted down, she let herself slip through the cracks, pouring herself through.
Fast enough as to not waste time, slow enough to not raise much suspicion. As she was, she was merely a pile of sand of the floor. Shallow but decently large, like a puddle, she was for the most part aware of her surroundings and was ready to act if need be.
She'd wait for Cortana to use her electrostatic first, assuming either of the cats didn't notice and try to inspect the random pile of sand...

Much like she described, Cortana hopped out of the vent and down the wall, jumping across the floor under shelves and the like before reforming behind the red tiger.

Without a word, she creates the electrostatic field centered between them. Unlike when she used it last, however, this one was building up quite quick.
She wanted to stop them this time.
In fact, due to the nearby outlets, it'd likely be even more effective, at the cost of likely shorting them out.

The wisp chirped as he pointed out the pile of sand. "Huh. Strange..." The cat said as he slowly walked up to the pile of sand, slightly curious about where it came from.

The tiger was not expecting Cortana to appear, so when she did, he turned and went to jump away, but the static field was already super strong, dropping him down to his knees, but he still had one hand held towards the main entrance.

"HEY ZITH! URG, A LITTLE HELP OVER HERE?!"

Screech's ears started ringing a bit, when suddenly, a wide laser sweep seemingly came from one of the security cameras, directed stright towards Cortana.

The cat noticed the commotion, and looked down to his wisp partner who quickly fused with them. The cat now had glowing yellow eyes, a magenta stripe in his hair where the black one was, and glowing, magenta music note shapes on the back of his gloves.