Marvel: Good Ol' Fashioned Bank Robbery

After nearly a month, here we are back in supers-land! 

Recall that last time, the heroes had left New York for Kamar-Taj, and then left Kamar-Taj for Malibu. They emerge from the portal into an alley in Malibu, and can smell sea air and hear people. Maria pokes her head out of the alley and sees they are between a bank and a candy shop. Ahead of her, a street and then a concrete divider, and beyond that, beach.

The rest of them step out onto the sidewalk, and Maria starts thinking about how to get everyone to the decommissioned Stark/SHIELD facility she knows about. Bucky glances down the road to the bank. "I think I shot someone there once."

Magnus just nods. Peter gets kind of wide-eyed, but then something else catches his attention - a sedan rolling down the street towards the bank with four people in it. Nothing overtly suspicious, but it's making his spidey-senses tingle...

He points this out, and the heroes see the people in the car pull masks down over their faces (Bucky: "Are you kidding me? Now?"). They pull around a corner and jump out, guns drawn, ordering the security guards from the armored car outside the bank to "GET ON THE GROUND!"

Maria, still hoping to avoid this exposing them, runs into the candy shop and tells them to call 911. Peter ducks back into the alley and changes into his costume, while Magnus kind of looks at the others ("Are we hero-ing?"). 

Bucky runs up and kicks the back tire of the getaway car, folding it in on itself and disabling the vehicle. He kicks it harder than he means, though, and the whole car shifts, and the thieves turn. Bucky realizes how easy it would be to kill these dummies, and he winds up Pulling Punches d8. 

Magnus comes up behind him and pulls a Whompin' Big Hammer d10 out of his jacket, and brandishes it menacingly at the thieves. The thieves respond by shooting at both of them, but Bucky easily deflects with his arm and Magnus' Runed Suit absorbs the bullets. 

At this point, Spider-Man lands on the roof of the bank and webs one of the thieves, yanking him up and immobilizing him ("No withdrawals for you today!"). Maria, back in the alley, uses her taser rod and a bit of technical know-how to set off the alarm in the bank, adding Alarmed d8 to the proceedings. 

Spidey jumps down onto the armored truck and tries to get the security guards to get up, but they stick to their training. He webs another of the thieves the floor, though. Bucky holds out his hand to a third thief and tells her to hand over the gun and get out of here, and, clearly the mastermind of the group, she does. Magnus says "say goodbye to your kneecaps!" and swings the hammer, but misjudges how big it is and hits the wall. The thief backs up and points his gun at a guard, yelling for the heroes to back off...but Maria, by now across the street over the divider, shoots him in the leg and he falls over.

The police arrive and start rounding up the thieves. Bucky gets the hell out of the way before someone recognizes him, and Spidey, not wanting to answer questions, swings across the street to land with Maria and Bucky near the beach. Magnus just starts walking away, but the police tell him to stay put - they need a statement. Magnus nods, probably planning on just leaving, but then things get weird.

Peter's senses tingle again. Turning around, he sees three humanoid creatures, glass skeletons with sand swirling around them, rise up out of the beach. Three more, these made of driftwood and seaweed, lurch out of the ocean. Magnus glances up and sees three more, these made of tar and roof shingles, drop off the bank roof and attack him!

They paw at him, maybe trying to immobilize him? He's not sure. All he knows is that when they touch him, he feels something watching him, and that feeling only half goes away. He thinks he hears a voice whisper "Magnus"...

The driftwood-creatures lurch over the beach, fall over the concrete divider into heaps, and then reform and keep lurching toward Magnus. Spidey leaps across the street to help, while Maria kicks one of the sand-creatures in the chest and shatters it. Bucky smashes the other two with his metal arm, and they obligingly fall apart.

Spidey grabs Magnus and leaps to the candy shop roof. Magnus pulls a vial of green liquid out of his coat and says "Can you throw this on target?" He tosses it up into the air, Spidey webs it and smashes it into the constructs, and the whole area burst into Greek Fire d10!

The driftwood-creatures are burned almost immediately. Bucky charges in, picks up a tar-creature, and uses it to push the other two into the fire, where they melt. But the fire is burning out of control! Magnus, figuring his work is about done here, pulls a doorknob out of his pocket and opens a trap door in the roof. "Come on, Spidey."

But Spider-Man can't ignore the fire burning out of control, and doesn't follow Magnus down. He leaps off the roof and webs a fire hydrant, pulling it open and spreading water everywhere. Unfortunately, he remembers too late that Greek Fire is basically napalm and it doesn't get extinguished by water. The fire spreads and the candy store starts to burn.

Maria grabs a fire extinguisher and puts some of it out, enough for anyone left in the store to run, while Bucky makes short work of the last construct. The heroes flee, all in separate directions. Magnus winds up eating a shaved ice a few blocks away. Maria gets on a bus and heads toward the SHIELD facility. Bucky ducks out of sight, avoids cameras, grabs a hat from a thrift store, and emerges to find Spider-Man sitting on a light post. 

Spidey changes back into his street clothes and the two of them head out. Bucky brings them to a HYDRA Cache he knows about - it's all covered in dust and grime, but there's some cash and a change of clothes, and it's a safe place to rest. 

Maria gets off the bus and finds the facility, easily bypassing the security at the front. She walks in as the system boots up ("welc - WELCOME - welcome"), and then tries to get a sense of how the land lays. 

It's not great. Whatever remains of SHIELD has been told by the Avengers that Maria Hill, with the help of Spider-Man and an unknown individual in a tuxedo, broke the Winter Soldier out of containment and went on the run and have been implicated in the death of Stephen Strange. Strange's death hasn't been reported by the mainstream media, so Maria is hopeful that he's not actually dead, but she's out in the cold and the most powerful people she knows are compromised. She notes, too, that the weirdo with the mustache "news" site dailybugle.net is screaming about Spider-Man, as usual ("just moments after Spider-Man helped to free notorious terrorist James "the Winter Soldier" Barnes, another Spider-Freak, this time in sunny Malibu, assisted gun-toting criminals in attacking and burning a city block! This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Spider-Cult that I have been warning about!"). 

"DON'T FORGET TO LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE!"

Maria sighs, and decides it's not safe to stay connected to SHIELD in any way. She smashes her watch, severs all ties, and goes rogue (which, coincidentally, completes her Coming in from the Cold milestone). She then takes stock of what they have available here.

The answer is "not much;" this place was decommissioned after Stark vanished. But there's a gen-1 quinjet in the motor pool, though it'll need some love before it's ready to fly. She goes out to a nearby taco truck and buys a lot of food, and then goes back and gets to work.

Magnus, meanwhile, finishes his shaved ice and makes his way across town to the facility. The door is locked, of course, but he just teleports to the other side of the wall into a nondescript-looking waiting room. The desk in the room sinks into the floor and two humanoid robots slide up into the room. 

"Attention! You are an unauthorized visitor! We are the Iron Legion! Do not be alarmed! Please state your name!"

"Um...Magnus the Magnificent?"

"'Magnus the Magnificent?' is not an authorized visitor!" The robots raise their fists. "We are the Iron Legion! Do not be alarmed! Please place your hands on your-"

At this point the Maria cancels the alarm and the robots slip back into the floor. "Why didn't you just use the doorbell?"

"There's a doorbell?"

BING-BONG. 

Maria lets Peter and Bucky in, and everyone has tacos (Pete: "Oh, tacos. Is there a more perfect food?" Magnus: "Well, if you want to be pedantic..." Bucky: "We don't.").

Everyone is beat, so they decide to get some sleep. Bucky takes first watch. He's got tar in his arm anyway, so he takes it off to clean it.

A few hours later, Peter wakes up. He's back in high school. The halls are dark, but familiar, and he hears glass breaking, kids yelling...and MJ scream. He runs down the hall, turns a corner, and sees Adrian Toomes, the Vulture, holding MJ up by the neck. "Hey, Pete. Told you I'd see you again."

Bucky, still cleaning his arm, see Pete come around the corner, looking terrified. "Hey, kid. What's up?"

Pete screams "MJ! No!" and fires webs. Toomes ducks out of the way, and then swings his bladed wing at his face. Pete dodges easily, but then feels a tingle from behind him! He leaps out of the way, just in time to avoid the powered gauntlet of the Shocker!

Bucky swings his arm like a club, but it's like trying to hit wind. Maria appears in the doorway behind them and tries to tase Spidey to stun him, but he leaps out of the way. Bucky throws his arm and bonks Spidey in the head, and Maria manages to land the taser, shocking Spidey out of it.

"Guys, what happened?" 

"You tell me!" says Bucky. "And I just cleaned my arm, and now there's all this web stuff in it!" 

"Sorry!" Spidey grabs the arm and starts pulling webs out of the joints. Maria goes to make some tea so they can figure out what the hell just happened.