Metro: Suicide Slum Renamed Hob's Bay in recent years by city planners seeking to bring about a revitalization of this dilapidated section of town, this area retains much of the squalor that made it infamous. Politicians decry Hob's Bay as an eyesore, due mainly to the 19th Century tenement buildings which still stand, albeit just barely, to house the city's indigent poor, the criminal element, and those lost souls who have disappeared through fate or design. The streets of Suicide Slum also teem with the homeless of Metropolis. Evening in the Big Apricot; Metropolis. In the distance the lights of the downtown districts with their majestic skyscrapers and high-tech facades glint away in the twilight. But here, in Hob's Bay, the lights are fewer and farther between. They have not been touched by the strange machines of Apokolips yet. Some would argue that would be an improvement. A large semi with a tractor trailer pulls up by a dock a few blocks from the middle of the slum. Its followed by a single expensive sedan. A dozen or more men in suits, all wearing black skintight masks saunter out of the cab, the trailer, and the sedan. With shifty glances, they start preparing some equipment to unload their cargo. Large yellow cannisters are rolled out of the back of the truck. Biohazard symbols are emblazoned on all of them. Three take a small wheeled dolly with a trio of barrels stacked on it to the edge of the bay. They glance back at another one, apparently their leader. He nods, once. The barrels go end over end into the bay. A greenish hazy murk oozes out from the barrels as they sink into the lapping water. A crumbling tenement provides the perfect perch for Canary. She lowers her binoculars to survey the suspicious scene: one she cannot quite believe. In a low melodic voice she utters, "Jiminy, I don't know how you do that voodoo that you do, but you were right on the money. I owe you a pint..." She describes the scene. "I'm moving in. And I know--I'll be careful." The blonde lowers her leg over the ledge and creeps down the side of the rough hewn brick. Farther out, and safely underwater, a pale form knifes through the ocean. And pauses. How many people can hear a fish scream? The men in the masks continue their dirty work, others guarding the vicinity. They're armed with strange looking weapons; definitely not standard sidearms. "C'mon..." One mutters. "C'mon...we've got a schedule to keep." Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, one of the barrels shoots back out of the water at the men, as if the ocean was spitting it out and rejecting it . . as each barrel that was thrown in gets tossed back out by some unknown force. Well, Bart can't hear them fishies shriek, and that's for sure. But however inefficient his fish-telepathy, the young speedster is fast enough to make up for it, and has played enough videogames to know the biohazard symbol on sight. As the boy breezes through, looking for Supergirl, he notices the truck and skids to a halt about thirty feet away. He scowls, and crosses his arms. He's about to say something LOUD when the barrel gets spit out of the water! Two of the goons let our startled cries of dismay as the barrel hits both of them. They drop onto the ground, unconcious. The other men stand at attention now. "What the hell?" "Keep your eyes open, boys, and your trigger fingers ready!" "Something down there?" "Shaddup and go take a look." Three of the men move to the ledge, peering over it with their weapons at the ready. "Blast anything that moves." The feminine form lopes behind a stack of cargo. Dinah takes a risky chance by peeking out from the side. Her gaze is focused on the leader. Words are whisked away by the offshore breeze as she whispers "I disagree. The leader is too smart. Too focused. You'd have to be here to understand." A second passes. "Look, we discussed this. And there's no tim--Oh no! Can't talk!" Several scenarios run through her mind: finally, Canary chooses one. While the men are distracted by the barrels she ducks low in an attempt to sneak behind the curt man giving silent orders. Impulse, like the act-first-worry-later kid he is, figures that whatever's down there has to be with the good guys if it's working against the bad guys. In a fit of inspiration, the young man hits on a fantastic idea. . o O (It's time to go bowling for lackeys!) True to thought, he backs up to get a good running start, ducks low, and runs at the line of men (who look JUST like tenpins to him!) Suddenly, just inches from where the men peer over the leg, Supergirl appears as if from nowhere. Her arms are crossed over her chest and her expression is grim and serious, obviously not in good spirits. "Trying to dump your trash into the bay." She observes simply. "You should know better than to try that in this city." She continues after a short pause. The leader and two of his cohorts stand back by the sedan. The leader peers up at Supergirl. "Just terrific...okay...kill her, boys!" About four plasma blasts shoot up at the Maid of Might, big fireballs of energy. Almost simultaneously, the blurred form of Impulse crashes through three of the Intergang thugs, knocking them to the ground before they can even fire their own energy guns. The leader looks most vexed by this development. "Aw...great..." Letting out a whoop of triumph, Bart leaves tracks on the other side of the gang members, stopping short (and leaving the smell of burning sole in the air. Gotta get me some new boots.) He grins widely, "Smile when you say that! Gotta /see/ your teeth to /hit/ 'em!) The force of the plasma blasts push Supergirl backwards into the air a moment, as the energy flares out around her. She stops herself several meters farther away, though she seems unharmed by the blasts, at least in appearance. "Get her sidekick!" "...neuro-net!" The Intergangsters start taking defensive positions behind the biohazardous barrels and the parked vehicles. One of them fires a glowing green stun blast at Impulse from his gun. Five continue trying to down Supergirl with their plasma cannons. The leader and his two friends confer behind the sedan. "This ain't no good; we knew the Superjerk was outta the picture, but this is...well..." "We can't retreat, boss!" "Why not? We did our bit. I say we amscray." Beneath the dock, a white head rises from the water. Dolphin takes a lungful of air, choking slightly as she wipes at her gills with one webbed hand. Pale eyes narrow as she takes a moment to figure out what's going on. Rolling his eyes, Impulse shakes his head...from somewhere else. "You guys just don't /get/ it, /do/ you?" He takes a swing at the back of someone's head, then makes like the Picard Manouvre and looks like he's in twelve places at once. "Let's play 'Where's The Impulse'! It's kinda like a cross between whack-a-mole and Where's Waldo, 'cept you /never hit me/!" Whapwhapwhap. These mokes are like cat toys to Selina. Pummeled with love, oh yes. Supergirl crosses her arms over her face as more blasts shoot off, pushing her back, though not as far this time since she's expecting it now. She shakes her head in response and becomes a blue blurr for a moment as she flies directly at them, trying to take away the guns from them. Dolphin watches a moment as a small fish floats by on the surface of the water. Gimmering silvery in the dim starlight - and, unfortunately, also quite dead. She sighs. And dives. Three more of the Intergang gunmen are felled by the speedy kid. Two more lose their weapons to Supergirl, and fall back, shouting "Retreat!" at the top of their lungs. The rest (for the most part) continue firing their weapons. A barrel explodes. A lamppost is melted in half. A ricocheting laser blast takes off the top of a billboard advertising Soder Cola. Its chaos. Only a matter of seconds before the water near the dock veritably explodes, and Dolphin launches herself in a smooth arc onto the wood. Taking in the scene with silent impassivity, she launches a kick at the nearest gunman. Supergirl crushes both guns into useless shrapnel and drops them onto the dock, hoping to scare some of the thugs. "Give up and it'll be a lot easy for you." She offers one last time. "Oh no! Anoth-" The man's words are cut off by the foot of the undersea beauty meeting his jawbone. He stumbles backwards onto a crate, senseless. A man nearby turns, and shouts "Another one! Three of 'em!" He fires off some rather ill-aimed plasma blasts at Dolphin, and backs away towards the truck. One of the Intergang members starts the truck ignition, and shifts gears. The others run for the trailer, in the hopes of escape. Meanwhile, the leader watches, shaking his head. Impulse scowls. "Okay, I'm starting to get annoyed. Why don't you all just /quit/? Like, while you're ahead? Unless you're addicted to gambling? Y'know, there's a phone number out there to help you. It's 1-800-4-GAMBLE. You should call it sometime. Tell them, 'Hey, I'm addicted to gambling. I like to go up against Supergirl and Impulse and..." he pauses and looks over at the figure erupting from the water, "...Dolphin!'" All the while he;'s running off at the mouth, he's hitting these guys. Hard. Really hard. Maybe a little bit /too/ hard. He hears the truck start up, and shakes his head. "I don't /think/ so!" Dolphin strides to the nearest barrel, and picks it up easily, hurling it with controlled but violent power at the retreating gangers. She doesn't take the time to acknowledge Impulse. There are now probably five Intergang members at most still concious. Three by the sedan (including the leader), and two in the cab of the truck. The barrel rebounds off of the end of the sedan, and clips one of the men hiding behind it. He lets out a 'Yeouch!' and starts clambering for the passenger side's door. "Lets get the hell outta here, boss!" Grabbing a sharply splintered two-by-four from a pile of mucked-up lumber pile, the Teen Tornado rushes the truck and slams the wood (at hurricane speed) into the center of the hood, which oughtta mess up the insides a bit. He grins manically at the occupants through the windshield, clambers over the cab, and opens the window in the back. "Hey. You pick up hitchhikers?" The leader looks around, and lets out a fatalistic sigh. He stays crouched, and pats himself down. He fishes out a pack of cigarettes, and lifts the lower half of his mask. His two buddies stare in horror. "Y-you can't smoke at a time like this boss! Supergoons! They're..." "They're winning, smartguy. Sit down and spare yourself a broken collarbone, you idiot." Supergirl flies over to the sedan and stands right in front of it with her arms crossed. "I guess I can thank you for this mess." She says calmly, floating about a foot off the ground. She hovers there for the moment and awaits a reply, preparing herself for an attack that might come. The fanbelt and carbourater of the semi pop out of the hood in a hail of engine parts and smoke as the wood drives into the hood. The two men in the cab look at Impulse, and gulp. They timidly raise their hands. Dolphin heads for the sedan as well, but pauses, glancing at Supergirl before focusing her gaze on the three bad guys . The leader puffs on his cancer stick. As his two friends start to raise their guns, he sighs, and moves out of the way. "'scuse me." The two Intergang goons by the sedan fire off two laser blasts in Supergirl's direction. "Intergang rules the night!" one howls. Impulse grins. "So do I." He vibrates through the back of the cab, grabs their collars, and tugs them outta the truck...and really disgustingly quickly gets them over to where the others are. He plops them down in front of Supergirl and dusts himself off. Prepared for this possibility, Supergirl blurrs and vanishes just before the fully press the triggers to fire, moving behind the car to grip it and lift it into the air. Dolphin looks to the side, picks up another handy barrel, and launches it at the two with guns. Her face is oddly expressionless. The two with the guns start to rear in terror as the shadow of the sedan hangs high above. They don't even notice the barrel that rebounds off of their heads with a CLOING!!! They slide down, cheek to cheek, and quite unconcious. The leader flicks away his cigarette, and raises his hands. "Okay, okay; we give up." He looks at his two dazed associates, and the two that Bart just dropped off. Impulse cheers! "You /go/, girlfrien'! Kick dem buttmunch butts!" He, um, starts dancing. That dance in the Ravioli-O's commercial. Where the kid taked the can of R-O's and does this weird seventies thing with it, which looks like a cross between Tai Chi and the twist? There's around a dozen KO'd Intergang goons lying around. Some destroyed dockside machinery. Broken lampost, billboard, mailbox. And a lot of barrels. Three are tipped over, and oozing out some nasty substance onto the concrete. Supergirl sets the sedan on the ground gently, a smile creeping onto her face at Impulse's excitement and funny dance. She moves to the leader and stops in front of him, "I'm sure the police would love to hear why you were illegally dumping toxins into the bay." Dolphin folds her arms, and stands where she is. Wet hair clings to her form, and she glistens rather like marble in the moonlight. She looks at the oozing barrels, and frowns slightly. The leader shrugs uselessly. "I figure I'll do some time, yeah." He smiles cruelly. "Say; where's your hero? Superman?" Impulse hmms, and looks at Dol. "Do you generally know who to bring this stuff to?" Dolphin says quietly, still watching the sludge, "This 'stuff' should never have been created. No, I don't know. Shouldn't the government do something with it?" Supergirl very brutally rips the fender off the sedan and then binds the leader's entire upper torso and arms with it, "He's recovering from an injury." She states simply and somewhat coldly in response. The leader grunts, and tips over from the weight of his oversized binding material. He grits his teeth and keeps his trap shut. Impulse ums, rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah. Umm...mm, yeah. They should. Dunno if they know what to do with it, either, though. Guess we'd better call them." Supergirl lets the leader sit there, held down by the weight of the fender. "Stay put." She orders, as if she needed to tell him. "I'm going to call the police incase no one has done it already." She says to Impulse and Dolphin, "See what you can do about binding those thugs together so they don't try to escape when they wake up." Dolphin looks around, then walks a few paces to the left and lifts the end of a thick rope from the dock. Impulse nods. "On top of it, SG." He runs around like a nut, looking for binding, then it hits him. Duh. They're at the /docks/. Boats. Lots of rope. He grins at Dolphin, tugging at a monstrous pile of heavy-duty jerk-tying-up material, then pauses. "Oh. You /found/ some." Dolphin turns her head, tilting it slightly as she regards Impulse. Arching a brow, she mutely holds out the rope end. Supergirl searches for a working telephone somewhere on the dock, letting out a soft sigh as she does so. There's a phonebooth nearby. A glass pane was blown out in the battle, but otherwise, its operational. Impulse takes the rope, blinks at Dolphin, and mentally shrugs. He goes over, trailing it behind him, and quickly starts tying up the Bad Guys (tm). Dolphin takes another thick length of rope, and lays it down between the ooze and the direction of the water - trying to contain the mess in some minor fashion. Lacking any money, Supergirl dials the operator and requests to the police, hopefully eventually telling them the basics and their location. Impulse finishes, and peers at Dol. "Anything you want me to do to help? Is there any down there still?" Dolphin straightens, and sighs slightly. "Some got in the water. I'm going to check for barrels - don't go in the water, no. It's dangerous." Dolphin walks to the edge of the dock, and gazes into the water, as if she expects to peruse the murky depths from above. Impulse pauses. "Okay." A bare splash as Dolphin dives, re-entering the water and vanishing into the darkness. Supergirl returns from the call, "The police are on their way. Can you two handle it from here? I have to go visit Superman." Dolphin fails to answer, since she's underwater somewhere.