New Blood
After some downtime following their last run-in with Tarot, Shillelagh and Parker get a cold-call from someone named Andrew Storm. He wants to meet. Says he has a proposal they might be interested in. Since having to lie low for a while, and much of the old gang going their separate ways, the Brick and the Speedster are all that's left of the old guard, a dynamic duo with nothing to do except get outnumbered, hence the laying low.
They meet the quite forward Doctor Storm, who claims to have ties to Zymogen and the augmentations applied to Parker. He broaches the subject of teaming up in order to find some answers. In a more responsible world, the two probably would have shunned him like he was selling salvation door-to-door. These two had already had a taste of the do-gooder bug, though, and were not so disinterested to shut him down immediately.
They hem and haw without coming to a conclusion until Shillelagh and Parker get a second call out of the blue, this time from Detective Milligan, who they thought had gone to do his own thing. He gives them a lead about some Russian Mob activity. This piques Shillelagh's interest, and Parker tags along because she knows better than to let Shillelagh run loose when he's got that certain gleam in his eyes. For lack of anything more pressing on his dance card, Dr. Storm follows the two. At worst, he'll wind up being a fifth wheel on their play date. He also figures he might impress them that he's not just some whack job.
At the address Milligan gave them, they see some energetic doofus in some kind of scrapyard Ironman cosplay get up bandying about with a handful of greasy Russian thugs. He's got the Russians near the side door of his beat-up van, like he's trying to lure them in with free kittens and vodka. He offers one of them a package, which they seem to appreciate enough to give a package in return. Shillelagh grumbles at seeing the Tin Man cutting a deal with the Russkies. His only wish right now is that Vic wasn't so busy at the Gym these days so he could share the venom.
Then all hell breaks loose. A few men on the street near the transaction pull masks from their collars over their heads and begin muttering militaristic terms Shillelagh and Parker have heard before. As soon as they hear "Bogey," they know they are Tarot goons, even if the masks weren't a dead giveaway. The boys from Tarot make a beeline for the payoff in the Russians' hands. Whatever Ironboy handed over, they want with a fierceness. The Russians are no slouches, though, and are not about to get ripped off. They fight back, hard, and give a good account of themselves. Shillelagh, Parker and Dr. Storm--approaching from a distance, engage a group of Tarot henchmen trying to close in on the main fracas, blindsiding the ambushers.
Just about when things look like they are going right, a van screeches in from the south. The door slides open and a Tarot agent within drills the man in the armor suit with a powerful laser gun. Shillelagh manages to jump into the van and yank the energy weapon out of the gunner's hands. Another agent in the van makes eye contact with Shillelagh, and flips a zippo to life, breathing a tongue of flame at him, triggering Shillelagh's pyrophobia, and forcing him to retreat. One of the Agents on the street, still scrabbling for control of the package, manages to cleverly wrest it from the Reds, and tosses it into the van's open door, now that Shillelagh isn't blocking it. The door slams shut, and they peel out of there. Overcome with rage at the fire-breather, Shillelagh manages to jump on the van, and the Rust Bucket picks himself up and gives chase, as well, rockets sputtering to get his armor off the ground and allowing him to fly...not gracefully, but fast enough for this job, at least. Seeing that the armored goofball has some fight in him raises Shillelagh's estimation of him a bit.
The van takes a sharp turn and drives through a storefront in order to scrape off the stowaway and deter pursuit from their tail. They underestimate the power of Shillelagh's grip, though, as he manages to hold on. Shillelagh and the armored galoot both underestimate the toughness of the (evidently) heavily armored van, and they are unable to bust inside it or quickly disable it. The man in the suit clearly decides that discretion is the better part of valor, and ends his part of the pursuit, choosing not to place people in greater danger. Shillelagh, however, is not so high-minded, and is fueled by a different motivation. He gets a good hold on the side of the van and drives his feet down, hoping to bounce-steer the vehicle into an obstacle. This ploy only succeeds in causing the van to swerve against a brick wall, scraping Shillelagh off the side and momentarily stunning him. They make their getaway, and the guy in the armored suit catches up to Shillelagh, offering him a lift back to his friends, and sharing his name, so Shillelagh can stop trying to come up with derisive epithets for the sake of variety.
He calls himself "Hot Rod." Because of course he does. He is full of idealism and zeal and moxie. Most of all, he is full of himself, but in rather harmless kind of way, so it comes off as more groan-worthy rather than repellent. He found an armor suit in a junkyard, and all he wants is to do some superhero shit with it, by God! Slap the piss out of some bad guys and have the masses cheering his name.
Parker, Shillelagh and Hot Rod are invited to Dr. Storm's mansion on Mercer Island to figure out what the hell is going on and make a plan. The four seem drawn together by circumstance toward a common goal. It might be some kind of providence. Whatever the case, they decide to give it a go, to work together for now and see where things take them all. For Shillelagh and Parker, this is like old times again. Maybe this new arrangement will work out, and they can get off the bench. While awkwardly getting to know one another and try to understand each other's goals and motivations, Parker gets a video message that shows some Tarot goons rolling up on a building in a car, loading up several crates and taking off. The team figures out the building's location and decide to take a look-see.
They find a rather ordinary weaponsmithing setup, and a rather ordinary gun nut running it. After some interrogation, it seems that the guy is just the classic "didn't ask any questions" middleman, and he didn't know what was in the crates or where they were taking them. His new employers insisted on beefing up his security, however, and when Parker follows the cable wires and such to see if the cameras are storing the recordings on-site, she winds up climbing to the top of the building and finding a tight-beam microwave transmitter aimed across the water to a marina by Gasworks park. Looks like that waterfront is the newly-formed team's next focus of investigation!
