The Hunt (Max Tolzen)

Max groaned as he continued attempting to work on task in front of him. "This has to be about the biggest pain in the butt I've had to deal with in a while. Normally, these manufacturing arm motors take far less time to fix... Been at this one most of the day..."

He stretched momentarily, taking his eyes off of the motor to look around his shop. At least with the shop's, and by extension his apartment upstairs, windows facing the north, he usually didn't have to worry about getting blinded in the afternoon on sunny days. "A little unusual on the weather... It's not normally this hot in April."

Max shook his head, then went back to work, finding the major problem after just a while longer. As he worked, he considered the way his personal schedule had been working out recently. "There it is! Annoying little thing... Morning exercises, my repair shop during the day, then the other work later, and sleep... Speaking of that other work..." With the problem found, he fixed it quickly before starting to reassemble everything.

He checked the time. While trying to get the motor fixed, it had gotten on towards late afternoon, and the time he usually closed up. With a sigh, he set the fixed motor over onto the "Completed - Ready for Return" table. After that, he locked the shop door and set his Closed message. "Okay, time to decide... Food first, or get ready for my other job?"

After a moment's thought, Max stopped to grab a heavier-looking bag, and headed for the pub... "Food first. And it's not like anyone at the Broken Shillelagh is going to question my bag too heavily... The staff already knows about it, anyway."

((Story continues in The Broken Shillelagh thread at 19 April 2038 - 1840 hours))

Before Mary could reply to Max, a girl that looked very similar to Lexie came running out of a door just past the curve of the bar.

"Mrs. Stuart! MRS. STUART!" She skidded to a stop, breathing heavily. "Umm, we kinda...well, something sorta...happened..."

Max stopped, looked at the girl running up, shifted his gaze over towards the door, looked back at the Academy's principal, and finally combined a sigh with a facepalm. "I'm going to need to go get changed, aren't I?"

Nikki looked embarrassed. "Probably."

Mary growled. "All right, start explaining. Now."

"Um, well, there was a bit of an...accident...in the lab; some experimental nanites might have kinda got loose sorta around...um...the, uh, LSG armor prototype..."

Max sighed, face-palmed again, and ran back to the table he'd been at and grabbed his bag. When he passed the pair as he headed for the tunnel to towards the theater, he muttered, "Hopefully, the new adhesive formula on the netting is strong enough..."

Once he got into the tunnels, he ducked into the nearest empty room, and pulled the stored pieces of his armor suit out of the bag and began suiting up. Once suited, he 'called out', "ARTEMIS, register Night Hunter active, responding to report of incident in workshop."

The only response was a kind of sizzling crackle. Out in the hall, sounds of frantic banging and clattering came from a room near the tunnel entrance.

"Lovely... Alright, time to see just how bad it really is..."

Max snuck in close to the door to the noisy room, and peeked in as best he could without giving away his location. "This would be so much easier if I hadn't gotten injured in that one fight... Really could have used some of my abilities..."

Max realized when he looked in the room that the door the noise was coming from behind was the door to Kelly Ryan's workshop...

"Oh, boy... This is probably going to hurt a little..."

Max made sure to take a breath, then reached for the door... Then turned the handle to open it. "This is going to suck without my full abilities, probably..."

Kelly was rummaging through junk on her worktable with her good arm. She muttered a stream of unintelligible words under her breath as sparks shot from her other arm.

Max sighed as he stepped into the room, hitting the control to open and collapse his helmet as he did so. "Okay, two things. First, where's the rogue science experiment? Second, when you're done, let Principal Stuart know that there's interference on the ARTEMIS channels. I'm guessing the two are related."

Kelly's artificial shoulder made an odd grinding noise as she jumped.

"I didn't do anything! I don't know what you're talking about! I absolutely did not allow any experimental nanites to infest that armor project!"

She yanked off darkened goggles and seemed to be trying to hide or close something on the forearm of her artificial arm.

Max sighed as he face-palmed. "Right... Where is the armor?"

After a second of facepalm, Max dropped his hand back down to his side so he could give the girl his blank-face stare.

Kelly scratched absently at the thin silvery conduits spread across her bare back.

"What armor? I don't know what you're talking about. I've been here, trying to fix my stupid parts."

Max continued to blank stare. "So. You really expect me to believe that you have no idea about an armor suit that got exposed to nanites. After jumping and immediately denying knowledge the moment I entered. After someone ran in a panic to Mrs. Stuart about the incident. Awfully convenient. Especially since I didn't mention armor when I first walked in."

After a moment, he added, half-under his breath, "This almost sounds like one of the shenanigans I got into while I was there..."

Before Kelly could answer, the room seemed to...change.

Inside, Max could feel himself becoming ever more tenuous, as though being torn in two like a piece of cloth in monstrous hands. At the same time, the air seemed to solidify like amber trapping an insect. It was simultaneously unbearably hot and deadly cold.

It seemed for a time that the entire world...shifted, like things would fall sideways or up instead of down.

Max's expression immediately changed when the weirdness happened... And it was a very clear "NOT GOOD" expression. As soon as it passed, he spoke up again quickly. "Okay, new plan... We've got to get whatever's causing the interference with ARTEMIS cleared up, and quick."

The lights in the room suddenly flickered and then went out.

"Uh..."

Max sighed. "If it's not one thing..."

In the dark, he shook his head. "Can you see well enough to finish fixing your arm?"

There were more crashing and clanging noises in the darkness.

"If I can find my armo...uh...stuff, yeah, I should be able to."

There was an audible sigh. "Okay, we need to get the power back on, plus figure out both what's going on with ARTEMIS and how to deal with whatever just caused the wave."

Max started to turn back towards the door, but stopped and added. "Do yourself a favor... Never try to play poker."

That statement was followed by the sound of his helmet closing up. There was more than enough in his tone to make it clear that he'd not missed her slip-up, but at least for now, he wasn't going to make an issue out of things.

Oddly enough, the emergency lights weren't lit...

Fortunately, Max knew the building well enough to find his way to the breaker room even in the dark.

Max sighed as he made his way over to where the breaker room.

"Hopefully, this won't get too messy... I don't like the fact that a ripple occurred right before the lights failed."

Once he got to the room, he looked in carefully before he moved into the room.