capeandcowllogs | The Capture of John Cavil [in progress]

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The Capture of John Cavil [in progress]

WHO: Alastair and Tony Stark, then eventually Cavil, Saitou, and Kiryu
WHERE: from Stark Tower to Cavil's current hideout
WHEN: Monday, all day (yes there's forward-dating and backdating and all kinds of time warps here)
WARNINGS: violence, death
SUMMARY: a new challenger! Stark gets on board to track down and smack down Cavil. What will be left of Saitou when they get there?
FORMAT: Para to start, but the fight can be quicklog who cares

Still no sign of Saitou. Even the police themselves were on it, now, but Alastair had little faith in their ability to find the missing swordsman. After all, they hadn't been able to find Cavil all along, had they? But one more night of sitting up late waiting for Saitou to walk through the door, after Kiryu had passed out from sheer exhaustion, was enough for Alastair to know he had to find someone else.

Someone more powerful than the cops. Someone who might have other stakes in this mess, no less.

Armed with his comm and a flash drive containing all the information he had hacked, compiled, and downloaded, the minute he got to Stark Towers on Monday morning, he went straight up to the executive floor. It didn't matter that he didn't have an appointment, he was from R&D - they should let him through. He needed to show this to Tony Stark. There were simply no other options at the moment.

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Tony was sitting in his office, pretty much doing very little of anything. His mind was preoccupied with the myriad of situations going on at the moment, from the fact that his car had been stolen this weekend to the fact that he was tracking the man who'd done so at the moment.

Then there was a knock on the door, and his head snapped out of his extremis-laden stupor, and he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Come in."

Alastair slipped in and closed the door behind him. "Hey, boss," he said, rather submissively. He didn't know how else to address Stark when face to face and not over the network. "You got a minute? I, uh...I need some help. Not work help."

He stepped further into the office, fishing out the flash drive from his pocket. In the past, Stark had given him vague words of promise that if he ever needed a hand, Alastair could come to him. Well, now it was time to cash in.

Tony flashed him a smile, and nodded. "What can I do for you?" he asked, and then looked at the flash drive. Ah, this was going to be complicated, if he was going to want him to look at it. Thankfully, Tony hadn't made much of a show to hide that he was a technopath, just the other parts of his abilities.

"Something on that you want me to look at?" he asked, holding out his hand.

"It's...kinda personal. And urgent." Alastair stopped in front of the desk and handed over the flash drive. "A friend of mine is missing, and might be in some serious trouble."

He considered how much Tony might already know, from the network, or how much to explain right off the bat. Shorter seemed better, in this instance. "It's Saitou Hajime. I know the police are on it, but I don't think they'll get very far and time is running out. He went after the guy who killed Kyosuke Kiryu a few months ago in that tanker-truck explosion, and he hasn't come back in like...three days. I don't know if it's too late to save him or what, but...I need help to do it." Alastair nodded to the little piece of technology. "All the info on what I decrypted and tracked is on there."

Tony's hand wrapped around the device, and his eyes half-closed as he listened. He didn't want the kid to catch the lines crossing his eyes or the information that crossed his field of vision while he communed with the machine.

It didn't take long, and he nodded slowly.

"The explosion, the one where..." he trailed off, and already his mind worked into overdrive, connections and synapses melded with his extremis nanobiology to make the appropriate conclusions. "Do you think he was behind the entire thing?"

Alastair screwed up his lips in a thoughtful sort of pout. "I don't know," he replied after a second. "I mean, I kind of had that thought, too. It's really suspicious for someone to send an encrypted message to his mortal enemy to lure him to a location that just happens to be where a tanker truck explodes around the same time." His voice quieted briefly. "Kiryu was hurt when the overpass collapse, and died from his injuries. It can't just be a coincidence...though I guess it's possible it might have been."

He shook his head quickly, shrugging off the memory. "What I do know is that Saitou went after him, to make him pay for luring Kiryu...and now he's missing. The cops'll never find him in time and..." He might have actually looked his young age for a moment, his gray eyes worried. "...I don't know who else to turn to."

"It can't be, but there's no way to tell for certain," he paused, and handed Alstair back the drive. "Alright, then it's time to take care of it, isn't it?" he asked, and gave him a flash of a reassuring smile.

"Meet me on the roof, and we'll take care of it."

Breathing a quick sigh of relief, Alastair pocketed the flash drive and nodded. "Thanks. I'll be right up."

He dashed out to grab his coat, and on the way, plucked out his cell phone to call Kiryu. He would want to know exactly where they were going, when they got there, and he didn't trust the comm right now. Hopefully, the phone would wake Kiryu up, and if not he'd leave a message...

He just about slammed into the elevator and punched the button for the roof.

As soon as the teen had left, Tony ran through the possibilities in his mind. Could it really be that simple? It didn't explain his unexpected crash, and he had not been hacked, despite that the evidence pointed in such a way. He knew that for certain. But he couldn't figure out what had actually taken him down.

Although this gave him an avenue to investigate. It hadn't taken long for Tony to pull off his clothing, or for his undersheath to deploy, and by the time Alstair's elevator dinged to the top of the building, Tony was already there in the armor, and waiting.

Alastair was ready for this. He had his leather jacket zipped up tight and his leather motorcycle gloves on, expecting that this was going to be every bit as cold and harsh as riding his bike in this weather. At least it was above freezing.

"Ready," he declared as he crossed to where Stark stood. "I appreciate you not sending me to go sit tight at my desk. I want to see this through."

Tony just nodded his metal head slowly. "I understand," he said simply, and swung around in his hover to pick him up from behind, armored hands clasping his armpits, and pulling him upwards.

"Do we have a general area to search? Or are we just going to be wandering aimlessly?"

At least by now Alastair had experienced flying for himself, so he braced himself for the ride - but it still made his heart drop into his toes for a second.

"We could start with the last known location, but he's probably long-gone by now. Kiryu was there, the apartment's empty. Shit," he grumbled to himself. "I should have looked up those posts from the first time Cavil killed him - triangulate it against where his body was found..."

Tony's head tipped midflight, and as they started across the city, Tony had already hacked into the appropriate databases and posts, and paused for a moment in the ascent.

"Easy enough to do," his cold, metallic voice filtered from his helmet, and he made a slow turn, before shooting off in another direction. "There's a relatively large portion of the city to cover, but it's better than the entire place."

"Yeah. It's a start," Alastair agreed, looking around. They never really did find the scene of that first crime, but surely Cavil had a certain area of the city where he operated...Alastair hoped they wouldn't be up there all day, freezing his ass off while searching for the needle in the haystack. He didn't know how the armor worked, at all, but he had experienced enough to trust that it had to be pretty damn awesome - the best superhero he could ask for at a time like this.

Tony was triangulating every view he could get, from the air as well as records for the area and any views he could get from the street level cameras as well as the satellites. It was taxing, mostly on his brain. He wasn't used to concentrating on this much information at one time. Usually it was just in one ear and out the other, stored in his subconcious until later when the necessary pieces had come together and manifested themselves. He had grown used to it, and learned to deal with it in that fashion after the first few times it had happened back home.

Too bad he couldn't do that now, he forced himself to stay alert, and looked. "See anything?"

Alastair grumbled a bit under his breath. "I'm not a cop, I don't know how to profile criminals. Although..."

He had been a criminal, once. He could make some educated guesses, right?

"That first time...it was a couple days before anyone found Kiryu. He doesn't remember what happened, but it wasn't like the bastard just took him out back and shot him. And now with Saitou it's been two or three days. It's gotta be somewhere he can hole up for all that time and not be noticed - no neighbors seeing or hearing."

Tony nodded in his mask. He started to run through cameras logs in his head, looking for the best locations, and then looking for any sign of Cavil. Anything. There had to be something.

"One minute, I'm looking through the satellite feeds."

In the meantime, Alastair cursed Cavil roundly under his breath. "He couldn't make it easy on us and be using his comm right now, oh no. I could track him, then. I unraveled his encryptions. And he was probably smart enough to throw away Saitou's..."

Assuming Saitou was still alive, of course, but he didn't want to think too hard on that. He wanted to hope that they could prevent it from happening again...

Tony made a cursory inspection into the idea. "He did, it's nowhere near here," he mentioned offhand, and continued looking. Video feed after feed was imposed over his vision while they hovered over the city, before he finally caught one, and pushed the data to the forefront.

John Cavil. Alone, but he was entering a building.

Without a word, he shot in the nearby direction of the enclosed space, not even telling Alastair where they were going. He was sure he would figure it out.

Startled, Alastair grabbed onto the arm holding him just to make sure he wasn't about to be dropped. A sudden turn and speed with purpose? Oh yes, he understood. The minute he felt like he didn't need to hang on for dear life, his hand would be going to his cell phone. He needed to let Kiryu know where to join them - for the same reasons he was there. If Saitou was to be rescued, Kiryu deserved to be there.

He didn't bother slowing, but instead continued to rocket down to the pertinent location, before quickly altering his trajectory to feet first, now slowing to a quick landing. "Last video log shows him coming in this building here," he stated with his cold voice, setting the younger man down on the concrete.

Alastair nodded, and had a quick look around before whipping out his cell phone. "Should we make sure he's actually here, first, before we bust in?" he wondered. "Just in case Saitou isn't here, or he's...I don't know. I don't want him to up and kill Saitou, then this will all be for nothing."

He passed along the address to Kiryu on the phone, and then added at the end, "keys to my bike are on my dresser. It's warm enough outside you can take her out - you'll get here in no time." He didn't exactly warn Stark that he was calling in backup, but it was personal. Even if Kiryu got there after they were inside, it was better than leaving him out of it.

Tony shrugged. "We could, but that would also give him time to escape," he said simply. "Or we could go in, and when the police ask, give them the information you have, and ensure that we had reason for coming in," he said, before smirking beneath his metal mask.

"Or," he said with a small shrug of his iron shoulders. "We could knock," he added.

Alastair made a disgruntled face at him. "Well. You're the one with the armor. You go first."

He nodded, and knocked on the door.

Then he paused, for the briefest moment before quickly jerking the door handle open, the strength given to him by his suit allowing him to quickly jerk, and then wrench open the door. His full form filled the door way after he pushed the door open with a low, jarring creak.

He knew this was it. He must have been wrong about how Saitou found him last time. It must not have had anything to do with the communicator he was careful not to use since. Six months, he had hid away. Six months, they had fumbled desperately to track him down and failed at every opportunity. And now, twice in a period of three days, they had found him. Part of him wished he thought ahead and rigged the whole place with explosives. That would have been nice. A spectacular, unexpected finish. Everything, consumed in fire. Gone. Dead. No one would have won.

Or lost.

He still had the automatic tuner on when they arrived (and Saitou was still at his feet, destroyed, it had felt so good), and so he carefully rested it on the chair, not bothering to turn it off. When he opened the door and stepped out of the soundproof room, the sound hummed out, filling the entire apartment. A weapon. Still.

He raised his hands.

"Good evening, gentlemen."

Even from where he hid behind Stark (and his armor), Alastair could see past Cavil to the body on the floor in the next room. Every inner sense, every memory, welled up and filled him with mingled fear and rage. He bristled, looking furtively from their adversary to the iron mask and back. We have to stall him, he thought, almost wishing Tony had telepathic abilities too. We have to give Kiryu time to get here. But what would Cavil do, when confronted by Iron Man? Would this be over in blink, or not?

Alastair glanced back toward where Saitou lay, and cursed that bastard standing there like he did nothing wrong. Still, Stark was good protection, and Alastair remained behind it for the time being, visibly seething.

"Mister Cavil, what a pleasure it is to see you this fine night," his cold tone belying the almost jovial nature of his words. Of course, they were merely for show, but that was essentially unimportant.

What was important was something was...off. He could already tell. Something different from the outside atmosphere to the one inside, and he began running diagnostics, trying to figure out what the environmental change was, precisely. "Mind if we step in?"

Cavil's tone, in contrast, was lacking its usual, almost sing-song sarcasm. He watched the two of them with sharp eyes, taking note of everything. How Alastair hid. How Stark hesitated. Though his hands were still raised, everything about him suggested that no, he hadn't given up. Not yet. The sound from the room behind him made it even more obvious.

"Do I have a choice?"

Alastair twitched a bit at the subtle sound, it was annoying. But he didn't connect it to anything - he didn't know how Cavil's power worked, at all, and at the moment was too rattled to recall anything Kiryu might have hinted about it.

His eyes were on the room behind Cavil, though. He murmured under his breath, so only Stark could hear, "Saitou's in there. I need to see if he's all right."

Tony picked up the sound of Alastair's voice, and nodded.

"Not really," he said to Cavil. "Although if you put up no resistance, then things will go a lot smoother."

He really didn't want to get into a fight.

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The Capture of John Cavil [in progress]

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d'aww sorry Tony

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you are beautiful, Nai

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