Post by Victor Fries on Sept 20, 2020 9:31:46 GMT -7
Nestled among the other warehouses near the commercial dockyards of Gotham was a small warehouse that Victor acquired not that long ago. Most of his work as of late had been in his laboratory and, while it's possible for things to get volatile in a laboratory, the biochemistry that he'd been focused on recently was extremely unlikely to do so. At least to the level that something unexpected would happen that would bring the notice of the neighbors, anyway - it was easy enough to keep strange odors, small acid spills, and other such accidents contained in his small laboratory with nobody outside of it being any wiser. Even beyond accidents, most of the work in his laboratory was quiet and that means it was easy enough to do no matter where the lab was located.
But while it was legal to pull out power tools and use them almost anywhere in the city as long as the sound wasn't too loud at the wrong time of day and thus gets classified as a nuisance, if that location was somewhere near a lot of people then they were likely to get curious about what they were being used for. Even worse, those curious people felt justified enough in their curiosity to get nosy, and the last thing that Victor wanted was to encourage anyone to be nosy about what he does.
So he thought it was prudent to acquire a small bit of warehouse space for when he needed to do mechanical work instead of laboratory work. While the sound of power tools incited curiosity there too, there were enough other 'unusual' sights and sounds in the warehouse district that it was far less noticeable. And putting up forbidding-looking fencing and signage to keep out the curious was a commonplace practice throughout the area - he could even put barbed wire on top of the fence and all the security cameras he wanted and it still blended right in with the neighbors. A lot of valuable cargo was stored in the warehouse district, after all.
And he'd lucked out with that particular warehouse, as it was already set up to be cold. It had belonged to a large ice cream company that was doing such good business that it had needed to expand into an even larger warehouse. It wasn't actually cold enough for Victor's comfort, but then again it could be handy to wear his CryoSuit when he was working with often heavy pieces of metal anyway. The extra cold simply meant that his suit used much less energy while he was working, it was no bother for him to remove his gloves for a while if he needed to so something more delicate, and he could even work in such a hot environment without his suit as long as it wasn't for too long - which was useful when he needed to do some work on his suit itself.
It was also less oppressive to his men, who could more easily work with him - a more common thing to happen when he was working with metal than in the lab because there were far more simple tasks to be done that didn't require an expert. When he was working in his lab it was usually downtime for his men, who didn't have much to do, but in the warehouse there were always things to fetch, metal to cut, and some of his men could even be trusted to make a decent weld. Though he always did the most difficult tasks personally, because he'd found truth in the idea that if you wanted things to be done correctly then he needed to do it himself. Even he wasn't sure if it was because he was more skilled or if it was simply because he was more careful because he had the most to lose if the work wasn't perfect, but it was definitely the case. When he did let his men do something relatively important he was sure to inspect it thoroughly.
On this particular day, he was working on a new CryoSuit. This was hardly a strange activity for him because, in spite of the fact that he'd only needed one for about a year, he'd already gone through several versions of them and was constantly tampering with the one he already had. Of course, most of those versions had been made and quickly discarded in the earlier part of his criminal career - the one he currently had was most satisfactory and seemed to be far less flawed than the earlier versions so he didn't necessarily feel like he was under a lot of pressure to replace it. Still, he was in an arms race of sorts with Batman and it wouldn't pay for him to rest on his laurels - the vigilante could very well be working on some new device that would thwart his current suit even as he was working on the new one.
Besides, he had some new ideas about how to improve the power system, which was the heart of the whole thing because the more power he could get the more he could do with it. But it also needed to be efficient, because his suit wouldn't do him any good at all if it burned right through all the fuel in a short amount of time. It was also one of the more volatile parts of the system because it wasn't enough to simply create energy, the energy needed to be properly directed. Otherwise, it would do exactly what it did on this occasion and end up going everywhere in an uncontrolled manner - in other words, it exploded.
Victor was the first to recover from the blast, as his suit protected him from the worst of the impact on both his body and his eardrums. His men weren't so lucky, but he'd known that the test was possibly hazardous if it went wrong so he'd warned them to get back and that advice proved to be well-advised. He heard many gasps and complaints but saw that everyone's limbs were intact so he ignored them as he went to inspect the damage. It was pretty bad - not only was the test rig probably a total loss, but the building was also now sporting a new crack in the brickwork. While he'd known that such a blast was within the realm of possibility, he'd considered the odds of it to be low so it was still a surprise. Well, back to the drawing board, as they say.
Though a bigger and more immediate problem was that the explosion was definitely big enough for people outside of the warehouse to very much take notice. In fact, he suddenly wondered just how close the nearest geology station was because if it was close enough the new blip on their records would surely provide evidence that something the authorities should know about had occurred and it wasn't simply a loud bang that the witnesses were exaggerating.
Either way, even as his men were still complaining about the ringing in their ears he was quickly trying to assess the situation - how likely was it that the authorities would be notified and take it seriously? How easily would anyone be able to even identify this warehouse as the origin of the explosion? The crack was perhaps telling, but it was an older building and the crack could have easily have been caused by something else, and the crack was near the back of the building where it was unlikely to be seen or remembered as having been there or not. Did they need to immediately abandon the location and all of the important contents therein, did he have time to quickly pack up the most important stuff, or would it all blow over if he simply laid low? All of that was hard to say.
That being the case, he turned and headed for the computer where the warehouses's security systems could be accessed - seeing the reactions of anyone outside of the warehouse was a good clue of just how noted the explosion was from the exterior. As he headed in that direction, he saw that some of his men who had been further away from it didn't seem to be as affected physically by it so he ordered them to check both the local news and the police's frequency for signs that either was alerted to it - that would mean it was a much bigger problem.
But while it was legal to pull out power tools and use them almost anywhere in the city as long as the sound wasn't too loud at the wrong time of day and thus gets classified as a nuisance, if that location was somewhere near a lot of people then they were likely to get curious about what they were being used for. Even worse, those curious people felt justified enough in their curiosity to get nosy, and the last thing that Victor wanted was to encourage anyone to be nosy about what he does.
So he thought it was prudent to acquire a small bit of warehouse space for when he needed to do mechanical work instead of laboratory work. While the sound of power tools incited curiosity there too, there were enough other 'unusual' sights and sounds in the warehouse district that it was far less noticeable. And putting up forbidding-looking fencing and signage to keep out the curious was a commonplace practice throughout the area - he could even put barbed wire on top of the fence and all the security cameras he wanted and it still blended right in with the neighbors. A lot of valuable cargo was stored in the warehouse district, after all.
And he'd lucked out with that particular warehouse, as it was already set up to be cold. It had belonged to a large ice cream company that was doing such good business that it had needed to expand into an even larger warehouse. It wasn't actually cold enough for Victor's comfort, but then again it could be handy to wear his CryoSuit when he was working with often heavy pieces of metal anyway. The extra cold simply meant that his suit used much less energy while he was working, it was no bother for him to remove his gloves for a while if he needed to so something more delicate, and he could even work in such a hot environment without his suit as long as it wasn't for too long - which was useful when he needed to do some work on his suit itself.
It was also less oppressive to his men, who could more easily work with him - a more common thing to happen when he was working with metal than in the lab because there were far more simple tasks to be done that didn't require an expert. When he was working in his lab it was usually downtime for his men, who didn't have much to do, but in the warehouse there were always things to fetch, metal to cut, and some of his men could even be trusted to make a decent weld. Though he always did the most difficult tasks personally, because he'd found truth in the idea that if you wanted things to be done correctly then he needed to do it himself. Even he wasn't sure if it was because he was more skilled or if it was simply because he was more careful because he had the most to lose if the work wasn't perfect, but it was definitely the case. When he did let his men do something relatively important he was sure to inspect it thoroughly.
On this particular day, he was working on a new CryoSuit. This was hardly a strange activity for him because, in spite of the fact that he'd only needed one for about a year, he'd already gone through several versions of them and was constantly tampering with the one he already had. Of course, most of those versions had been made and quickly discarded in the earlier part of his criminal career - the one he currently had was most satisfactory and seemed to be far less flawed than the earlier versions so he didn't necessarily feel like he was under a lot of pressure to replace it. Still, he was in an arms race of sorts with Batman and it wouldn't pay for him to rest on his laurels - the vigilante could very well be working on some new device that would thwart his current suit even as he was working on the new one.
Besides, he had some new ideas about how to improve the power system, which was the heart of the whole thing because the more power he could get the more he could do with it. But it also needed to be efficient, because his suit wouldn't do him any good at all if it burned right through all the fuel in a short amount of time. It was also one of the more volatile parts of the system because it wasn't enough to simply create energy, the energy needed to be properly directed. Otherwise, it would do exactly what it did on this occasion and end up going everywhere in an uncontrolled manner - in other words, it exploded.
Victor was the first to recover from the blast, as his suit protected him from the worst of the impact on both his body and his eardrums. His men weren't so lucky, but he'd known that the test was possibly hazardous if it went wrong so he'd warned them to get back and that advice proved to be well-advised. He heard many gasps and complaints but saw that everyone's limbs were intact so he ignored them as he went to inspect the damage. It was pretty bad - not only was the test rig probably a total loss, but the building was also now sporting a new crack in the brickwork. While he'd known that such a blast was within the realm of possibility, he'd considered the odds of it to be low so it was still a surprise. Well, back to the drawing board, as they say.
Though a bigger and more immediate problem was that the explosion was definitely big enough for people outside of the warehouse to very much take notice. In fact, he suddenly wondered just how close the nearest geology station was because if it was close enough the new blip on their records would surely provide evidence that something the authorities should know about had occurred and it wasn't simply a loud bang that the witnesses were exaggerating.
Either way, even as his men were still complaining about the ringing in their ears he was quickly trying to assess the situation - how likely was it that the authorities would be notified and take it seriously? How easily would anyone be able to even identify this warehouse as the origin of the explosion? The crack was perhaps telling, but it was an older building and the crack could have easily have been caused by something else, and the crack was near the back of the building where it was unlikely to be seen or remembered as having been there or not. Did they need to immediately abandon the location and all of the important contents therein, did he have time to quickly pack up the most important stuff, or would it all blow over if he simply laid low? All of that was hard to say.
That being the case, he turned and headed for the computer where the warehouses's security systems could be accessed - seeing the reactions of anyone outside of the warehouse was a good clue of just how noted the explosion was from the exterior. As he headed in that direction, he saw that some of his men who had been further away from it didn't seem to be as affected physically by it so he ordered them to check both the local news and the police's frequency for signs that either was alerted to it - that would mean it was a much bigger problem.