It's a Trap! (Izzy, Invite)

It was Suzuki's usual patrol, and she remained diligent. Her eyes reflected a sharp red, despite the fact that it was nearing midnight in Jump. Things had been quieting down, it seemed. At least for now. The petty crimes had seemed to disappear from the public eye. Suzuki wasn't naive enough to assume that the crime had stopped, but was happy to see that the crime lords seemed to be moving with more caution. That made things more safe for the civilians.

...but that didn't mean that they should get away with their crime. So when there was the sound of glass breaking in an abandoned factory, Suzuki swiftly responded.

She dashed across the rooftops, diving through an opened window and landing with grace inside the huge empty space. This was strange. There were normally security guards to prevent people from scrapping the place and an open window was out of the question.

There was a loud slam, then darkness. Shutters fell over every window, making the entire room black as night. It was a trap. Suzuki drew her blade, adjusting her wrist guards and trying to attune her ears... they'd taken away her biggest advantage. Her sight.

"You always were slow to adjust to the darkness."

That's when Suzuki's feet were taken out below her and she was falling. With a harsh THUD, every noise drowned out as she fell unconscious.

---

When she woke up, she was couldn't see a thing. She was blindfolded, but she could tell there was still some light in the room, though it was dim. What happened to her?

She noticed one thing missing though. Her Titan's pager. It seemed that just before her fall, Suzuki had the whereabouts to throw the pager far into the vacant warehouse. She could only hope that her teammates would find it quickly... only she wasn't due back for hours.

Yang had been in the tower working on Suzuki's genes. She was trying to find a workaround for her sight-impairing super powers. There were a couple of solutions, but they posed their own problems, and Yang had no desire to risk it. She pressed a button on her keyboard to page Suzuki. "Hey babe, what's up?" The Titan didn't respond, and Yang blinked. Suzuki was a bit more militaristic than her other teammates, save for Kuro, and she would never ignore one of her leaders.

"Babe, I have some new findings on your powers, I might be able to fix your eyes." She sat back and waited. Nothing. "If you need me, I'm gonna go have a steamy makeout session with Bow." That would get her attention, right? And...nothing. Now she was worried. She typed in a command and Suzuki's communicator started blinking in the far off corner she'd thrown it to. It was being tracked, and the location was up on Yang's HUD.

After she threw on her Ranger uniform, she jumped on her motorcycle, rocketing into the city and cursing under her breath. That girl had better be safe. As she made her way through crash alley, she abandoned subtlety, most people in Crash Alley slept through drag races, her bike wouldn't awaken anyone. When she reached the factory, she checked her HUD again. "There you are."

Yang did a quick scan of the warehouse with her cowl. "Darla, what am I looking at?" Darla came back with a few alarms, several tripwires, and a few dozen traps. Yang growled softly and prepared her EMP, drilling it into the brick before setting it off, shutting down the traps inside. She pulled back her left arm, punching the wall in with a loud crash. Then she saw Suzuki, tied up and blindfolded. This...was probably a trap.

It had been just over an hour since the attack when Yang tried to contact Suzuki. By now, Suzuki was rather limp looking in the chair, but the only visible injuries were on her face. She had blood running down her cheeks, like tears. When Yang burst in, Suzuki had nearly no response. Behind her stood a man, looking rather bored as he stared at the hole Yang just made. His eyes were bright red, just like Suzuki's. He stood, cold and calculating as his eyes made contact with Yang's.

Spoiler:

"And who might you be?" He mused aloud, his voice sounding just as apathetic as the demeanor he projected. "Only asking as a formality, really. I know you're Yang. You're famous here and back home. The only real question is..."

He looked down to Suzuki with a slight curl of his lip, showing his disgust. "...how do you know my murderous sister?"

Yang stared between the two. Something told her she should be worried about what was under that blindfold. "Oh yeah, we go way back." She chuckled, cracking her fists. "Best friends forever really. Cuddle buddies on the side. Sometimes we watch a movie together. On some occasions we take out the rejected drummer for My Chemical Romance." Her gauntlets knocked back with the distinctive pump of a shotgun. "Day to day basis, but if I had to guess you're probably more Black Veil Brides, really. You have the hair for it." She adjusted her hood to keep her face hidden, the last thing she needed was someone good enough to knock out Suzuki getting near her head.

If the man took offense to Yang's insult, he didn't quite show it. In fact, if anything, he looked even more bored than before. He let out a quick sigh, then ran his hand through his hair. Behind him, the walls parted open to reveal a staircase up. "You seem to think this a game, so I'll have to show you what I mean."

He flicked his wrist and the ropes holding Suzuki to the chair fell as he spun around, heading towards the stairs that just opened. As he started up them, he'd seemingly vanish into thin air.

Suzuki was still for a moment longer, then she quickly jumped to life. She moved faster than a normal human, dashing up the stairs. The blindfold slowly flew down towards Yang. Suzuki was certainly on the loose.

The stairs led to the roof, and Suzuki burst out of the door excitedly. Her sword was drawn, strange that she was allowed to keep it despite being a prisoner. Something was off, though. She ran, jumping agilely to other roofs until she found herself higher up, her red bleeding eyes scanning the city. "Susano'o."

The word was a quiet whisper, followed by the roar of her spirit guardian. It quickly started aiming it's arrow, before letting it rip into nearby apartment buildings for seemingly no reason.

Yang blinked and stepped into the building cautiously. Suzuki had run off again, and so had her apparent brother. And a magical staircase? She didn't like it. "Darla, watch my back." She said to the AI unit, running up the stairs to find Suzuki and her brother. She saw the sword and expected a fight, maybe her brother was trying to prove a point? That'd be nice. All of her hopes were crushed when the guardian took aim, firing through the nearby apartment building and forcing it to crumble.

Yang stared in horror. She had no idea how many people were in there. She had no idea how many people her teammate had just killed. She looked up at the giant creature and cocked her gauntlets. One thing was very clear, she was going to have to take out Susano'o. Again. She sighed and stepped forward, throwing a 2 ton punch with her biotech arm at the bone creature's spine. "This is for your own good big guy...!" She grunted as her gauntlet went off.

Suzuki seemed surprised by the fact that her Susano'o was shattered from behind, the purple giant fading to nothing rather swiftly. She jumped away from Yang, shaking her head and squinting. "W-wha..?"

She started, but then a blank look overcame her. She jumped back, off the roof and landing hard on the pavement below, grunting a bit. Her proclaimed brother stepped towards the edge to stare down at her. "How strange. On this note, I'll take my leave, Yang. You should probably stop her."

He spun on his heel, heading in the other direction, leaving Yang and Suzuki behind him.

Suzuki on her other hand, looked to be on less of a rampage than before. She was in the middle of the road, holding her head as if it was in pain. She noticed the destroyed building, and luckily in front of it there was a sign that said the building was condemned. "Su... sus..."

She wanted to summon it, but it wasn't quite going so well.

Yang didn't have much of a choice here, did she? She made a note to Darla to search the area later, maybe she could track him. Forensics had done her good in the past like that. Dropping down behind Suzuki, she landed on the pavement with a loud thud. Being that tough and hitting the pavement from a good 3 stories high? Yeah, there were a few cracks.

"Hey, uh, babe?" She asked softly, putting a hand on her shoulder. When she saw the sign, she breathed a sigh of relief. "You were totally just playing him and knew you were aiming at an empty building, right? You're still in there?" Her friend's eyes looked almost dead, which only made Yang even more uneasy.

Suzuki was shaking, Yang would be able to tell before she even touched her. It looked like she was frozen there, just having a battle inside her head. Finally, Suzuki seemed to wake up. She shook her head quickly and looked alarmed, pulling away from Yang and her eyes grew wide when she saw Yang. "Yo... you're not... dead."

Her voice was shaky, and she looked around the area as if seeing it for the first time. Something was way too off. Finally she clutched her head and fell to a knee. "It... hurts..."

She was not doing well, that much was clear. Something was wrong with her head, but whatever it was wasn't perfected. Yang must have been too fast.

Yang gave her a look of mixed concern and confusion. "Why would you think I'm dead? Like, seriously, what can realistically kill someone like me?" She tried to give her a smile. "I mean come on, I'm me!" Evidently Yang was trying VERY hard to bring some amount of light to this situation, but she abandoned it rather quickly.

"Hey, hey, come on. We're gonna get you home, alright?" She tried supporting her friend as best she could and start moving toward home. "Do you want me to get us a cab? I don't want you walking like this..."

There was a sound like metal wire being grinded on, before Kuro flipped onto the street, walking over to them. He quickly approached Suzuki and Yang, kneeling down. "Yang-san. What is it that transpired here? I came here as fast as I possibly could." He looked down at Suzuki, looking for vital signs. Something about her...it made him fear for her. He had realized something subconsciously, but hadn't quite come full circle yet. "...Suzuki-san. What is it that happened to you?"

Suzuki was still not completely in it, and when Yang said how indestructible she was it only confused her. Seeing Yang smile helped to ease her a bit though, and she nodded, letting out a long sigh. "I saw it." She mumbled, starting to feel a little more functional, but her eyes still hazy and head still throbbing in pain. Kuro showed up, and Suzuki gave him a strange look,. She had seen him too, in some of her delusions. "What did he do to me..?" Then she looked to the building she destroyed. "I aimed there. It was empty. I was barely... aware of it though. He almost had me.."

Yang gave her friend a very tight hug. "You're fine, bright eyes." She chuckled, giving her a peck on the cheek. "Just tell me what you saw, okay? Tell me what happened from the beginning." She looked up at Kuro with a look of concern. She wasn't sure what was wrong with Suzu, and that was very clear.

Kuro looked at everything that he could read about Suzuki; the state of her condition, her exhaustion. She hadn't been out of contact for more than a few hours. That and her noticeable lack of some of her mental functions...

"Yang-san, has Suzuki-san done anything strange?" It was then that he heard what Suzuki was saying about the experience. That she wasn't aware that she was firing at a building, almost. That he almost had her. That she didn't even know what he had done to her; memory loss. He froze. "Yang-san...she's been a recent victim of brainwashing."

Suzuki's eyes got widen when Yang hugged her,, then even wider when she kissed her cheek. Said cheek quickly turned red, and it felt like she was okay, if only for a moment. Then she remembered how close she was to murdering innocent people for no reason and shuddered again. Suzuki was considering how to explain her visions and jumbled memories when Kuro came to a revelation. Brainwashing. She frowned at the thought, glaring at him. "I am not so easily manipulated..."

She started, fiercely, before realizing that she was, in fact, very close to brainwashed. If Yang hadn't come when she did, it would have been bad. "I... ugh..." She huffed, then her bright red eyes suddenly flickered back to their dark normal color and she tensed. What was that? She tried to reactivate them, but found herself unable. "I.... can't use my eyes?"