Summary:The Wrecking Crew decide they should rob a bank. Unfortunately for them, Jennifer Walters was there at the time and Thor shows up to help save the day. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Middle of the day in Brooklyn and every day it feels as if the people of the city are getting a better grip on the world and its environs, retaking the lost real estate that had been damaged in the no man's zone with ambitious individuals bearing the risk to encroach on the chaotic land… only for those entrepreneurs to be pushed back.
Sometimes it's because of some bit of bad luck, or an incursion of creatures, or the efforts of local politics fearful of tempting fate once again. Other times it is something more down to earth in comparison. And then others… it's a mix of the two.
For on the main street that wends its way through Brooklyn, there has been an attempt at gentrification to try and get the area moving forward once again. A new length of shops, some utilities, and a new branch of the 1st National…
In the line at the bank was one Jennifer Walters. She was even dressed down, not in her usual giant green form. She would've preferred to be but this particular task was for her boss. The boss that hired Jennifer Walters and very bluntly said he was not hiring She-Hulk. Thus, when she was at work, she was her mousy drab human self.
She was dressed in a black business suit, three-quarters length skirt, white button up blouse, jacket over the top. There was a briefcase in her right hand, which contained the paperwork she was supposed to be getting taken care of for her boss.
At the moment, she was seated in one of the comfortable chairs they had set up in the lobby, awaiting her turn to go in and speak with an accounts specialist. She had a brief from a case she was working on open, reading through the details.
Inside the bank it is deceptively peaceful. Quiet in the way that only a new branch can be where there's little established clientele, the co-workers barely know each other. Just a subtle tension in the air that one can't quite put their finger on it. The security guard stands looking the place over, hands on his belt, gaze distanced though he's old enough to likely be thinking about Tahiti and retirement.
The manager is settled in his office, looking out now and then, and perhaps his gaze strays sometimes towards Jen despite her low opinion of herself. And in the moment when everything goes to hell he might even be trying to think up some reason to step out of his office and offer his assitance…
But that is when the wall shatters apart beside him, a great silver helmet breaking through with no warning as a great figure barrels in and straightens up from a running crouch, spreading wide arms and smashing over cubicle walls, knocking that branch manager out of his chair heavily.
"Stay down, spinach chin!" The burly man in silver and orange growls even as three other individuals start to rush through the newly created opening, all of them tall and muscular, all of them brightly garbed, and one of them snapping. "A'right, get the vault. Move it Wreckers, move it!"
As soon as the explosion happens, the screaming starts. As does the running. People in every direction, as though they don't remember where the big double doors are at the front of the building.
Jennifer was among those who practically jumped out of their skin at the boom. She quickly shoved the paperwork from her hand into her briefcase. It wouldn't do for that to end up lost in the mess going on.
It had been such a nice new bank too. She frowned as she rose to her feet, moving toward the noise instead of away from it. She was rather petite so when she was approaching, visions of David and Goliath might be going through people's heads.
"Excuse me? Gentleman? May I make a suggestion that you leave before you make a decision that will likely be a regret later in life? Particularly since your choice of robbery technique is already a Second Degree, which is a Class C Felony and carries up to 15 years in prison. Do you really want to be in prison that long?"
One of the tall muscular men brandishes what looks like an over-sized crowbar as he stomps not 'over' the counter and the cubicles, but just stomps right on through them as he makes a beeline for the large metal vault. Another of them is hefting a heavy wrecking ball on a length of chain that he brandishes in the direction of the security guard, just enough to cause the older man to turn around and join the rest of the crowd that's running as well, clearly not getting paid enough to risk it.
But it's the man in the silver armor and the orange undersuit that scowls toward Jen, his flat-headed helmet swiveling like some sort of screw top as he snaps at her, "Back off, girly girl, or we'll splat ya." And as if to make the words into action he simply extends a hand with finger curled back to /flick/ at her, hoping to send her sprawling. And if her head pops off, so be it.
As for the Wrecker himself, he's stabbing that crowbar into the vault door. And crazily enough it seems to crush part of the metal as it wedges into place and he starts to /puuulllll/.
That flick sends Jennifer flying, like a person flicking a pea across a table. She flies back to land in a heap of the chairs, everything crashing down around her.
"Dammit! And I liked this suit," comes a voice from the heap. It's the same voice of a moment ago but different somehow. Then the furniture is shoved away forcefully to reveal a giant green skinned woman in a very shredded black suit. The shirt is pushed to the limits, a few buttons having popped off and showing her midriff now. Thankfully the ones at chest level have remained intact although they may be screaming for mercy. The jacket has torn through the shoulders so it is simply tossed aside. The skirt is now a mini and slit up the outer seams, showing off muscular legs. Her feet are bare, the pumps just gone.
"I will try to reason with you one more time. You just turned this into a First Degree Robbery, Class B Felony, 25 years in prison when convicted. And you will be convicted. I will agree to be a witness and everything is on camera. You really should try to plan these things better. So, stand down before you actually take something and you will only have some battery, assault and vandalism charges. Much easier to deal with, much shorter sentences. So whaddaya say?"
"Ah crap…" Says the Bulldozer-like man with the silver helmet. He scowls and calls over to the side, "Looks like we got a kinda mini-hulk, guys."
"What?" The man with the wrecking ball, dark skinned and with a yellow and green costume starts to swing that ball on the end of its chain, scowling as he rounds on the woman though there are still some desks and cubicles in the way. "This does not fit into the plan, Wrecker."
But Wrecker, he just keeps tugging on that crow bar and the bank vault /creeeeaks/ as it squeals in its moorings. "No, the plan was fer you guys ta cover my back insteada yappin' all day. Get 'er!" He puts his back into it and one of the hinges on the vault door comes undone with a /BANG!/
Yet perhaps now motivated by Wrecker's words, one of them at least rushes toward She-Hulk, a blond man in red white and blue, but no Captain America. Mutated overly large hands extend outward as he tries to grab her as he charges at her!
"Why does no one ever listen to reason?" She-Hulk asks no one in particular. Not like the bank manager or any of the screaming people are paying enough attention to answer. It was mostly rhetorical anyway.
As the man charges her, she quickly blocks his reach by bringing up an arm and forcing his upwards. Then she just does what she does best. She tries to slug him in the stomach, pulling her punch a bit because she wasnt sure how fragile they might be. She didn't want to kill anyone, just stop them from robbing the bank.
Piledriver, if she knew that was his name she likely would have mocked him for it, but Piledriver wasn't pulling any punches on his part. She threw hers and she /crumped/ hard into the side of his face, causing him to reel and rock to the side, making him rub at his jaw for a second as he recovers and then comments to her. "You got a nice swing, lady."
Apparently he can take a punch pretty well himself.
But then he swings back and tries to clean Jen's clock powerfully, his oversized hands closing into giant fists that he tries to bring around like some giant battering ram and crashing it toward her.
Yet behind them, Thunderball (yes that's his name), swings his wrecking ball on its chain over and over as he scowls, "Get clear you gigantic oaf, I'm clearly the best one here to crush her!" His calm refined voice does nothing to hide the malice in the words as he waits for his opening. All while Wrecker keeps pulling and yanking on his crowbar to try and pop the vault open.
It's probably for the best she never learns their names. For everyone involved and in hearing range.
When the punch is just taken without much of a reaction, Shulkie learns she is going to be able to use more of her strength in the fight. She also learns that this guy is no lightweight in the giving his own hits.
While she doesn't go falling over, Shulkie's head does snap to the side. She frowns a bit as her annoyance grows. "You wait your turn!" She yells over at Thunderball. Although perhaps she can do something else here. "Although you probably are right. You are better qualified to do this. Maybe you should get him out of the way yourself. I mean just hit him with your big…ball."
She is not twelve. She will not giggle.
A grimace flickers into place on that blond villain's face as he growls at her and then draws back for a monster of a haymaker, going to let her have it and let her have it good! But her comment definitely does sit in Thunderball's craw as he brings that wrecking ball up and over, waiting for Piledriver to throw his punch…
And then briging that wrecking ball down once it either lands or misses, trying to give Jen something else to think about while she mixes it up with his teammate.
The other two men, however, _yank_ that vault door off its hinges now and then they both disappear into the depths of it, rushing in and causing a loud clatter and clang of metal upon metal as they begin the process of looting. She might even hear their voices as they shout, 'Haha, jackpot!' 'Fuck yeah!'
Not an easy way and not the easier than the hard way. They prefered the hard way.
As the punch comes in, she is about to block but she sees that spinning wrecking ball. It is coming her direction too. So she does what a Hulk generally wouldn't. She dodges. A rolling dive to the side, coming up on her feet and clearing the line for that wrecking ball to hit where she was standing—or the arm of his teammate since he was swinging for her at the same time.
She makes a run for the vault, making a grab for the door and throwing it like a frisbee in the direction of Piledriver and Thunderball. "You boys need to take a load off for a bit!" Because she has two more to deal with already inside the vault.
She rushes past even as she's diving for that vault door, broken and in three parts upon the ground. But she hefts the largest circular part, even as Piledriver's arm is caught by the thundering rush of that wrecking ball, smacking hard into him and sending him sprawwwwling onto the ground.
Yet Thunderball is pulling it back with a snap of the chain, bringing it crashing down onto a nearby cubicle where it shatters the foam and fabric structure, sending a banker's Dilbert comics all fluttering into the air like leaves on the wind. He starts to spin around as she /throws/ that vault door and it almost entirely engulfs Thunderball as it's hurled, the massive thing almost as big as him. It lands on him with a /clang/.
She might have a moment or two to feel satisfied with that, maybe even smug.
But that's when the crow bar comes out of the vault straight at her side.
That's two down for the moment, though she isn't counting them as out. Just hopefully delayed enough for her to focus on the two in the vault.
She hadn't turned her back which is the only reason she sees that crowbar coming in. As Shulkie, she knows a crowbar isn't going to hurt her. It likely would break in half, leaving the guy wielding it without a weapon. However, Shulkie retained her intelligence in this form and she just saw that crowbar tear off a bank vault door, with some effort on the part of the man holding it.
Deduction: This was not an ordinary crowbar. But how strong was it?
She moved to dodge but the weapon was already very close. It slammed into her side hard, making her wince in pain as she felt something in there crack. A rib. Fractured or broken, she wasn't really sure. She just knew it hurt like a bitch.
That made her angry. Like her cousin, the more angry she got, the stronger she got. She made a grab for the crowbar that was against her side, trying to yank it out of his hands. "Now you are just pissing me off!"
"Hah, felt that didn't ya, greenie?" Wrecker leers as he pulls the crowbar back as she makes that grab, trying to steal the weapon from him. But the way he handles it, the way it snaps around quickly in a blur of motion, it is definitely no ordinary crowbar. Even if it was wielded by a somewhat ordinary man despite the enhanced strength.
Distantly, behind her, there was a groan as the vault door scraped over the floor as Thunderball tried to push it off slowly, sloooowly. Piledriver starts to pull himself upright, groaning as he rubs at his head only to hear Thunderball's voice, "Get this shit off of me, you idiot!" And, despite being told to do so… so rudely, Piledriver starts to shuffle in that direction…
Only for the ceiling to crackle and abruptly burst inwards, a figure in jeans and a hoodie dropping in through the roof and landing /heavily/ upon that vault door and /crunching/ Thunderball to the ground.
Over his shoulder, Thor says, "Stay." As he then drops Mjolnir square onto Thunderball's chest, pinning him to the ground.
As Wrecker yanks the crowbar away before she can get a grip, Shulkie is reaching over for another piece of that vault door. If he's going to be hitting her, she's going to have a shield because that actually hurt! She wasn't used to being hurt in this form. It was such a rarity anymore.
She was about to go on the offensive when she heard the crashing noise from behind. She snapped her head that direction, not fully away from Wrecker though cause bad guy!
Despite the civilian attire, she certainly knew who was arriving. He'd been on TV often enough. Thor. Norse god of Thunder and Avenger. As he left the hammer on top of Piledriver, she smirked a bit. "It's like a bug stuck in a windshield. I approve."
Like he cared. "There's four of them. Two inside the vault still." She called out helpfully as she took a couple of steps back to get some room between her and Wrecker.
One strong difference between Jennifer Walters and She-Hulk, is that She-Hulk's voice is strong and it carries well, dominating the conversation at times allowing her to quip with what is called 'authority'. And so when she makes her comment she might notice the smirk on Thor's features even as he fields Piledriver coming at him.
"Ware, fair warrior. Roderick's iron bar is forged of Uru metal." Piledriver steps in and tries to clock Thor with a right-handed haymaker that he might as well have sent a telegram it was coming it's so telegraphed far ahead. He twists his shoulders slipping out of the way and then /WHAMS!/ a punch upside the man's head sending him flying out the front window with a crash as he bounces off the hood of a car into the windshield of another.
"It's not Roderick, damn you! It's Dirk! I told you before it's Dirk!" The Wrecker roars angrily as he rears back and tries to take another swing at She-Hulk, only instead of following through he's running past her trying to get at Thor.
"OooHoowhatsIts?" The response from Shulkie may not be what he was expecting but Uru metal is something she's never heard of. "I feel like I didn't hear that correctly."
This time when RoderickDirkwhatever swings, she's ready for it. Shulkie brings up that vault-shield and the crowbar slams into it hard. She feels the vibration from the impact all the way up her arm and into her shoulders and back. It makes her grit her teeth. The metallic shield crumples badly and won't survive many more of those blows. Then Roderick-Dirk-Whatever is running past her on his way toward Thor.
This has a dual response. First, she's a bit offended that he's not taking her seriously. Instead, he'd rather go after the Avenger who just arrived. For that reason, she considers engaging him again. Instead, she sticks out a leg and tries to trip him as he runs past. Because that second thought is Thor can take care of himself and doesn't really need her help.
Besides, there is someone else inside the vault. Shulkie heads that direction. "Hey Chromedome! You still in here?"
"RRRRRAAAAAAARGH!" Is the scream that comes from Wrecker, incomprehensible and powerful, only for it to lose much of its weight of presence when She-Hulk kicks his shins out from under him and he clatters to the ground heavily straight on his face with his chin hitting the other piece of that metal vault door with a /CLANG!/ Yet he manages to hold onto that crowbar, perhaps part of the enchantment the thing is infused with.
Inside the vault, Jen will see the bulldozer looking man with a metal cart at his side, a myriad of safety metal containers are torn open and he's piling in stacks of hundred dollar bills into that cart, tossing them one after another and clearly counting in his head and on his hands.
As her shadow falls across him, deep in that vault, he says over his shoulder. "You got everything under control outside?" His place loading the loot he has no clear line of sight to the outside.
For a moment, Shulkie stares at him as she fights the urge to giggle. It shouldn't be amusing but honestly? He was so far inside the vault, he had no idea that his buddies were down. Or going to be soon. With Thor out there? She figured it was over before it started.
"All under control," she says in a pseudo voice, deepening it a bit as she takes another step then swings that vault door piece hard at the head of the man. One thing with her, she does know how to gauge her strength so she wont' be killing him. However with that contraption on his head to allow for him to bust through walls, she needed some oomph behind the swing to be sure he went down.
Even if he wasn't knocked out, he did fall over which gave her the opening to grab him by the front of the costume and just fling him out the door of the vault.
Outside the vault, the body came flying into the room and crashed to the ground outside it. A moment later, Shulkie was stepping back out as she eyed her piece of vault door for more damage. "I see why Captain America likes his shield thing. Works well for double duty."
Once she reemberges from the shattered door and amidst all the wreckage that that new branch has now become, she'll see the Wrecker down on the floor, the crowbar no longer in his hand but instead in Thor's for the moment. Thunderball is still trapped under the hammer, scowling as he had to sit there and watch his comrades get taken down.
Outside, still unmoving in the windshield of someone's Jetta, Piledriver reclines unconscious and looking almost like a large baby in its carriage with the way the car is wrapped around him. The Asgardian is the only one left standing. That is, until he's joined by Jen who brings him a gift.
"Aye," He says to her, catching her words. "The shield is a worthy weapon and the proper knowledge of its use can take many years to gain mastery." He then turns his head to fully look at her, giving her a once over as his lip twists upwards. "Though I have my own preferences."
And as he says this he extends his hand to the side and Mjolnir leaps up into the air with a faint /whom/ and slices across the distance to _thwap_ into his palm where he holds it there lightly. But he then points again at Thunderball and tells him, "Do not move."
"I give up." The last conscious member of the wreckers says.
As Mjolnir returns to his hand, Shulkie tosses the piece of door to the side where it lands with a loud clatter. She manages not to wince, which means she gets bonus points for not showing her ribs still hurt from that blow. It will heal in a bit but she needs to go home and sit for a while.
"I can see the appeal." Her eyes are on the hammer then flick back to the man holding it. "I haven't quite found something that screams 'me' yet. You have that. Cap has his shield. Iron Man's suit. Suit!"
She looked down at what remained of hers and heaved a sigh then walked through the rubble to where her seat had been. It took a little digging through but she came up with a triumphant "A-Ha!"
Her briefcase survived. She dusted at it with her hands then looked at him again. "Thank you for the help. I'm guessing you know these guys since you knew his," she motions at the still Wrecker. "Guy's name. You should fill me in on the information over a beer or six."
"Certainly," Thor says as he looks over the fallen Wreckers, making sure they are settled and then likely intending to wait until a sufficiently powerful force of agents arrive to take the away. He then looks back to her and can't help but hide a small smile as he notes her current state of dress then he says. "But by what name should I call you when we decide to share a flagon together?"
He steps toward her, footsteps heavy even as he avoids most of the broken debris, stepping over a shattered coffee pot, even around a twisted cubicle wall. "And perhaps it is then that you will return my sweatshirt to me."
For as he says this he is drawing it off, leaving his broad chest just covered with that tight black t-shirt that hugs the contours of his muscular form, one arm at a time and then gently setting the hoodie over her shoulders, for aid to what one might consider modesty. Then, almost conspiratorially he tells her, "I would tell you to keep it but it's my favorite."
That said he turns away, smiling as he folds his arms over his chest, the hammer tucked under one arm as he looks over the wreckage. "Hopefully SHIELD shall be here shortly."