Tonnage

The Plunge.

>>

It takes him a few minutes to get to the site of the explosion. Mostly because he puts on the suit first. He can hear the pinging of the heavy rain that is beginning to fall as the last of the sunset fades to darkness, and once he's there his mouth opens wide behind his helm. There was this old-time socialite kinda place called “Fathoms Deep” that used to sit right here on the shoreline, and the whole place just fell into the ocean. He can still see bits of the roof of the building sticking out of the black, sediment-filled water.

He can see Robin in his lights. Down in that mess, trying to haul up on the arm of somebody that is trapped underneath. Nearly underwater himself, and with a face covering that makes Tom think he is currently using a re-breather or something similar.

Tom decides that when they do get around to setting up a suit for him for this kind of thing? He wants a few of those damn grapple guns. That seems like it would be handy as hell right now. He kicks on the PA and the speakers. Then he winces. The lights and cameras are waterproof. The battery that runs it all is sealed up tight. But the speakers are just in a housing that'll keep the rain off, if he has to go down into that they will die like instantly.

“Robin! Grapple the streetlight, I'll give a tug and see what I can do!”

The Boy Wonder looks up at Tom, only his head visible as he reaches down. Seconds later, the tell-tale sound of the gas release heralds the grapple winding itself around the light and locking off. Tom reaches out to it and sees Robin attaching the other end to a large piece of steel beam that most likely once held up the roof. After a few seconds, he gets a thumbs up, and he pulls.

It's heavy. Very heavy. He ends up needing to attach himself to the ground so he doesn't pull himself in, and he can't really get much of it out of the water. But he's able to raise it enough within the water that Red Robin manages to wriggle out from underneath the slowly settling pile of crap.

Then the oddest damn thing happens. His phone that's hooked to the go-pros he's using? It gets chatty.

“Tom, this is Oracle. I help the bats with technical support and I've hacked your phone and cameras. Spoiler and Orphan were below when this happened. I have life signs for both, but they aren't moving and they've only got air enough for maybe an hour of being trapped underwater. Any kind of official search will find corpses after that, and it'll be hours before the city can mobilize anything. This is all made worse by the fact that Batman is out of town on League business along with anyone who could both help and get here in time, the tide is rising, and we're in for a hell of a storm. It's rolling in now and it's going to hit hard within a few minutes.”

Tom grips the line a bit tighter. “What do you need?”

“Red Robin is dealing with a broken leg right now, I have a car on the way. Another friend that you know as Jason will be there soon to get him. But for now, if you could get the boys out of the drink I'll try to come up with a plan. I'm going to bring Robin in on our conversation.”

There is a popping sound, and then they are brought into the middle of an ongoing drama.

“Shut up, you'll be fine. Oracle?”

“Yes. I've brought Tom in so you can coordinate. Spoiler and Orphan are near the edge of the channel, west side. By instruments, they are under fifty-seven feet of water. They are both on secondary air supplies. I can't get decent voice through the water and debris, but they have the ability to type, and they tell me they ended up trapped under the remains of the original dock. So they'll likely be right along the sea wall.”

Tom can see Robin tying off the grapple to his fellow and shortly the extra Robin is making his way up, leg already in some kind of brace that has been stiffened with a hardening foam substance.

Tom helps the wounded man get unhooked from the grapple, and then speaks. “One of these grapple things will hold me if we can find something to tie it off to where the girls are. Maybe I could ride it down and start digging for them?”

Robin looks up from where he has pulled himself mostly out of the choppy waters and is perched on a piece of rebar-covered concrete. “Is your helm set for underwater diving?”

Tom shrugs as he gets done untangling the line and finds the button to recall it. “Theoretically, but none of the rest of it is. I'll probably just run the spare mouthpiece through into the helm to be on the safe side. Run that and some to the helm, just to maybe keep my electronics clear? That'll still give me hours unless something goes horrible wrong.” He sighs, unhooking the helm in a disgruntled kind of way. As Robin stands there with mouth agape, Tom ends up stretching his admittedly ridiculously powerful shoulders while wearing the helm, the monstrous metal pack, the straps to hold it all to his body, and a pair of stretchy shorts. Everything else is removed.

Even past a mask that covers the boy's entire face, that look cannot be hidden. Tom just points at the pile of rubberized cloth. A small mountain of it, maybe forty pounds worth. The massive weighted sandals, and the fingerless gloves that are made of slabs of metal.

“Would you want to swim wearing that crap?”

Tom double-checks the secondary valve. Built into the helm, it can increase the direct flow. Tom isn't sure what the pressure would need to be like in this helm for just that to keep the water out past maybe ten feet, but it isn't like he can hold off on this so he ties off the elastic around his neck extra tight, takes his end of the grapple and hooks it through a strap.

Robin takes the other and checks an area next to the raging torrent of water. The rising tide meeting the outgoing river always makes things a touch crazy here, and the incoming storm is dialing that to eleven. Comparing where he is with a screen he is seeing on a heads-up display causes him to engage the clamps with a snapped-off crossbeam that still juts out of concrete. Calling it 'load bearing' might be a bit much, but it can probably manage this.

“When I have him loaded up in the car and have collected better equipment, I will join you. It should be within minutes.” He points directly down into the tumultuous soup. “They should be seventy feet below me.”
Then he walks back to his wounded... Brother?

Yeah. Brother hangs on these two pretty well.

Tom steps up to the edge and looks down, out into the choppy waters of the channel. Part of his mind knows he needs to do this. These are friends.

But a very large part of him is whispering up nastily from the depths: 'I wonder if it looked like that the night Mom and Dad died.'

That nasty little thought is still whirling around his head as he grips the cable. Not trusting it only being clipped to his equipment he also wraps it around his hand a few times. And then he steps off the side.

>>

He feels like the first thing should have been the cold. Seems as if he was a normal person, diving into the North Atlantic... It is July, so maybe not. But, it isn't for him anyway. No, for him it's visibility. His air tank successfully keeps the helm interior dry, and his own breathing mask means the air he's breathing isn't going stale. But the water is so full of everything that looking out his little porthole just gives him a few inches to feet he can see in the endless, churning waves.

Moving isn't easy. He ends up having to really put thought into and perfect a talent that he was expecting to use for his sword stuff. That would be only gluing one foot to the ground at a time. After all, swordsmen that can't actually move are kinda sad.

In the end, he can only get it to kind of work. He can direct to one side or the other with a lesser amount of force, which allows the opposite leg to be lifted and moved. But it isn't quick, and it's definitely something that he'll be needing practice in. It's mentally exhausting right now. But it keeps the water from throwing him around, so a win so far.

He's slightly amazed that the two screens he set up in the helm are still working, but doesn't really expect them to hold. He makes his way along the rubble, stopping occasionally to beat on something. The old 'shave and a haircut' bit.

It seems like he's been at it a while before he gets a response, and when he does he could almost cry. It takes him a minute to figure out what they had done.

Somehow, in the mess of falling debris and water and explosive shrapnel, the two had ended up under the broken dock, yes. What they hadn't passed along, what they had no way to know, and what is probably stopping the Bat's communicators he's guessing, is that somehow the bulk of the dance floor ended up on them. So they can't see it from where they are, but they are underneath a thousand tons of crap that is slowly falling apart in the waves. Clear, hidden in the water as their lights only see the thin lattice of metal that holds the glass. But it's there, and bearing a combined weight on their assortment of wooden beams that has them trapped against the rocks with a force that is daunting as hell. All he can do is go where he saw a hand poke through the pile of debris, crouch, and try to lift that section of the dock.

It had been smashed to the seafloor by falling crap but theoretically, the dock could be buoyant, so it makes a certain amount of sense to start there?

Maybe? Are there classes for this?

He feels like there should be classes for this.

He gives the precarious mess there another look, at least the best he can. God this is going to be a disaster. Even if he can handle the weight, this stuff is already disintegrating in the surf and his shoving it around could see thousand-pound blocks of glass raining down on them. He squats down and wedges himself under the bit he can get at. Locks himself to the ground. And lifts.

Then he stops immediately, as the wood he is lifting is crumbling, and everything above swayed ominously. He scrunches up tighter, to get under the main beam. He idly wonders if he can get a sore back because by god this should do it. And again, he lifts.

>>

The only light they have is the ones on their masks and gloves. They are waterproof, but the water is so laden with bubbles, and particulates, with so much sound and uncontrollable waves making doing anything a daunting prospect. Here in their little nook, life is fleeting as their air supply dwindles. But what little they can see through the cracks of their watery prison gives the impression of an underwater hurricane, with giant things creaking and falling, landing unseen but felt onto the pile. After what seems like hours of this nightmare, but was really only maybe ten minutes, they feel things shifting around even more.

And they hear the tapping on the metal beam. 'Shave and a haircut. Two bits.' Over and over. Clang. Clang-clang-clang clang. Clang-clang.

So Orphan responds with the same. A few minutes later, their outstretched fingers are rubbing against something rubbery. Something strong. Something they know well from many hours of slamming fists against this same substance. A few moments later there is a massive shifting of everything above, muffled cursing through the water, and a release. The second time seems to be working. But that is when things go wrong again. They can't tell for sure, because the water is already a dark and soupy mess. But something is going very wrong, and based on the struggles?

Tom is fighting something. Or someone.

>>

The amount of pressure this is putting on him is incredible, and he's a touch concerned he might end up needing a rescue after they have left.

When he feels it. Something has grabbed his helm. There is this repeated low-tone rumble that passes through his chest a few times. As though someone is laughing. And then, as he is trying to lift tons upon tons of material, with two of his friends behind him and there to take the hit if he fails, his head is jerked forward and he can see through the porthole the toothy maw of a grinning Croc.

And then the straps on his setup start to creak with the strain, as Croc is attempting to rip his helm off.

Tom can't move. He can't fight. He can get his hands free and leverage this mass up with his back, but he can't let himself get dislodged and his footing isn't the best. He's standing on a shifting pile of things. He isn't sure what using his gravity ability any stronger than he already is will do here.

And that's ignoring that he needs to end it quickly because, with Croc here, there are now two metas there that are completely capable of accidentally killing Orphan and Spoiler.

The housing for the light and camera on his right shoulder give up and are smashed against the dock he's lifting, and Tom can feel the water rising to his chin as the helm is pulled higher. Finally, in desperation. Feeling as though if he doesn't do something, three people here will die, he reaches down and grabs the cutting torch. Thumbing the valves as he does. He stabs Croc in his meaty upper thigh. Towards the back. Just under where the reptile's ass would be if anybody was interested in Croc's butt. And he holds down the lever for the gas. A subcutaneous layer begins to form under the man's skin. Forcing the hide of the creature to strip itself of the connecting tissues thanks to Tom's other hand pressing hard on the site, the gas has nowhere to go.

Holding a now desperate Croc to his face as he continues to skin him from the inside out, Tom finally mutters to the world about not being a hero as he clicks the auto-ignition switch in the setup. He doesn't really expect it to work. Seems like the water could have gotten to it. But miraculously, they can all hear the odd snapping sound of a gas stove trying to light. Muffled, obviously. By flesh and water. Difficult to make out, even. Until the fourth.

The fourth snap is accompanied by an explosion, and then a gurgled scream. Tom is rocked back slightly, and the mass takes a moment to resettle on him as the water around them immediately becomes red. Croc disappears into the darkness, and the two women start slowly making their way out of their liquid prison through the passage between his legs. As soon as they are clear, getting out of the water is as simple as getting to the surface long enough to use a grapple launcher.

By the time he gets back to the surface himself, it's a zoo up top. A dozen police cruisers, a fire truck, and various other emergency vehicles.

Once he has made it back to the cloth for his suit, he takes off the helm and wraps it up in the mass. He's noticing as he does this that most of the Bat's have already skedaddled.

“Tom! You okay?”

Tom looks around to see Jim, and he stops like a deer in the headlights. His mouth opens a few times, and then he slumps.

“I didn't have a choice, sir. I had to do something!”

Jim's mouth clicks shut, and he slowly pulls out a small recording device, hangs it on the front of his jacket, and speaks in a low voice that seems to soothe the boy more than seems reasonable.

“What happened down there, son?”

Tom manages to meander through a five-minute explanation about what he'd been up to, but when he gets to Croc and what he did to the man, Jim just sighs and shuts off his recorder.

“I'm sorry you had to do that, Tom. But we aren't going to be pressing charges for defending yourself while saving lives. You can relax.”

Tom sits on the side of the road for a few minutes. Waiting to see if anybody else needs him for anything. When he's ignored for ten minutes or so, he goes home.

He needs to get all this saltwater off of everything before Lou sees it.