DC: 2011-08-04 - Warehouse Break-In

Chugging around the corner in the sleek Nightbird car, Nightwing glances at Supergirl, "Thanks for coming Supergirl. Arsenal couldn't make it and I'm glad you're here for back-up," he tells her. He stops at a red light and frowns a little confusedly, "I'm not sure I understand all of Arsenal's research. Or what he calls research. I think he just went online and did a Google search," he smirkily tells her and chuckles. "He thinks these are the guys. Here---here we are," he tells her and turns the Nightbird into an empty parking light next to an old, ancient looking warehouse. The building is huge and the Nightbird's headlights glow eerily off the side of the green painted structure.

Supergirl smiles, looking around in the car curiously. She's dressed in her civilian clothes, although not in her Kara Kent disguise. "Oh that's no problem. I'd like to find the guys who ruined my date. Slobo was almost acting normal." She shrugs a bit. "It was just for fun anyway though.... no future in it."

She peers at the warehouse, using her telescopic and x-ray vision as she looks over the building from the car.

The huge, huge warehouse is empty of people, but has tons and tons of crates. Nightwing gets out of the car and peeks back down into the window at Supergirl, "This is not a frontal assault, Supergirl. Let's take it easy. Try to pick up on some clues. Most of them are not always visible," he advises like a learned professor. He straightens up again and walks toward the warehouse, the headlights reflecting the green aura all over him. He motions to a sign that says: The Nakatoma Corporation, Inc., Japan. Written in pencil are the words: KEEP OUT, PUNKS! The sign falls on the concrete with eerie coincidence. Supergirl gets out of the car as well and walks alongside Nightwing. She whispers a bit, "If it's not a frontal assault, shouldnt we not go in through the front?" She looks again at the warehouse, using her X-ray vision to try to see into the crates, then looks at Nightwing. "Um... want to enter from the roof maybe?"

Nightwing glances up the side of the large building, "Good idea," he comments quietly. "There's all kinds of windows and doors to this place. Anybody could come and go easy," he explains, "But it looks oold, doesn't it? Like it's deserted---look, everything is bolted." He fires his zip-line just as quietly up the side of the building and he flings up to the roof in an instant.

The warehouse is stacked floor to ceiling with crates, of various sizes. There's large crates and small crates, each nailed closed tightly. Rows of crates line the warehouse and the rest of the place is frightenly quiet. Only a forklift sits in the middle of the warehouse, lonely without someone to drive it to recover one of the crates from the thousands of shelves. The crates contain parts, some mechanical, some fancy and technical. Robotic parts mostly, and all sorts of other things, categorized as if left over from a factory's leftovers.

The warehouse is stacked floor to ceiling with crates, of various sizes. There's large crates and small crates, each nailed closed tightly. Rows of crates line the warehouse and the rest of the place is frightenly quiet. Only a forklift sits in the middle of the warehouse, lonely without someone to drive it to recover one of the crates from the thousands of shelves. The crates contain parts, some mechanical, some fancy and technical. Robotic parts mostly, and all sorts of other things, categorized as if leftovers from a factory's assembly.

Supergirl flies up to the roof quietly as you zip-line up there as well. She lands lightly on the roof, checking out one of the skylight windows and noticing the alarm wires attached to it. "By the way," she whispers, "There'sa ton of crates in there, mostly filled with robotic parts and some sort of high tech factory surplus." She walks over to the rooftop access door, then looks back at Nightwing. "Window or door?" she asks.

Nightwing nods to the observant Supergirl, "Parts? Hmm," he comments as he thinks it over. He walks to the skylight and croutches down to examine it, "Look! It's open," he frowns, taking note of the broken lock, "Someone busted this with a crowbar. What do you think?" he asks her. He peeks down through the broken skylight, but can't see much with the endless crates blocking sight of everything.

Supergirl shrugs. "It's your show." She looks where Nightwing looks. "Whichever way you'd ilke to enter"

"I'm not sure the alarm even works anymore, Supergirl," Nightwing comments to her, motioning her inside. He drops through the skylight on top of one of the crates.

Supergirl peers at the relays, noticing that there doesnt seem to be any electrical current running through them. "Doesn't look like it." She shrugs and opens the window lightly, since it's already been busted open by a crowbar, and flies in, floating near the ceiling.

Nightwing hops down off the crates and walks down one of the aisles. "This place is huge. Someone could spend all day going through this place and not even scratch the surface," he explains to her. "Look around, where do you think we should start? Did those window breakers disturb anything else?"

Supergirl looks around with all sorts of types of vision - telescopic, x-ray, electromagnetic spectrum... She then looks at the window breakers as well.

A few of the crates are tipped over at the far end of the warehouse and one of the shelves is collapsed upon itself. Robotic parts are everywhere. The window breakers have tagged up parts of the warehouse there, spray painting marks. NINJAZ! SUCKERS! DIE IDIOTS! LOSERS! DIE DIE! Written with weird backwards letters, the tagging is everywhere by the broken crates. Some of the robotic heads stare up at the graffiti blankly, unable to turn their eyes away.

Supergirl pauses, looking at the far side of the warehouse. She floats down to the ground where you are and says quietly, "Other side of the warehouse... some shalves and crates are broken open there. "Lots of painted words there too."

Nightwing starts heading toward the end of the warehouse and picks up the pace as he says, "Words? Painted? What do you mean? What do they say?" he asks her wonderingly. Supergirl reads from across the entire warehouse. "Ninjas... Suckers... die idiots... losers... die die." She frowns a bit. "They didnt even spell some of the words right."

Supergirl floats along by Nightwing. "Meet you there? Or should I just stay by you?" Nightwing takes off running, "Go on!" he lets out. She takes off and, with a burst of speed, she's there a second or two after Nightwing starts running. She starts looking around at the heads and crates some more.

The eyes unwaveringly stare at the words, their unlidded pupils glued to the words: NINJAZ!!! DIE DIE, SUCKERS!! The red tagging is all over the area, with the crates tossed and equipment torn through. There are no assembled robots here, only pieces and parts. Nightwing huffs it to the aisle after a few minutes, "What'd you find, Supergirl?" he asks her. Supergirl looks around. "Same thing as I said before. Bunch of robot parts. Spraypainted words... robot heads, broken crates and shelves." she says, floating there idly.

Nightwing frowns at all the tossed open crates, "So what do you think?" he asks her. Moving slowly, he glances over everything. He picks up a robotic head that was once a prisoner in its reading and examines it. He pokes it curiously and hmms, "There's nothing here. We're not going to find any killers, Supergirl," he tells her. He plops the head back into the crate.

Supergirl shrugs, sitting down cross-legged in midair. "I don't know. Probably someone stole a bunch of parts from here, put them together, bulit those robots?" She pats her hands down on her lap.

Nightwing nods to her, "Yeah, maybe," he comments, looking up at the huge red letters again: NINJAZ!! He glances back at Supergirl, "Why ninjas?" he asks her. He puts his hands on his hips Batmaningly, "Bit of a mystery here. We'll add this to the report."

Supergirl shrugs. "I don't know. Gang maybe? You're the detective, right?" She smiles a bit

Nightwing chuckles, "Obviously there is a connection to ninjas," he concludes detectively, "The words were written on the robots. Now, whether gangers were smart enough to put together complex robots is another story," he comments with a hmmmm. "The robots must have regarded the word ninjas with a Z as real ninjas."

Kara looks at Nightwing and says, "Sorta literal for them, huh?"

Nightwing hmms, "Yes. But I'm not sure if I'm ready to say that robots learned the word ninjas, put together an army for themselves, and made off with some handy swords to kill us with," he tells her, "What kind of robot does that?"

Supergirl shrugs. "And they put themselves together too?

Nightwing frowns again with great pause, "I'm not sure how that's possible, do you?" He looks over the tagging and studies the red words: DIE DIE! SUCKERS! and says, "Place does say something about what can be learned, though."

Supergirl thinks, then says, "um... I suppose if the robots already had a heuristic-based algorithm for self-learning. Seems like some pretty high end stuff and most of this looks more like surplus."

The Girl of Steel looks around. "Maybe there were some parts that werent surplus and were accidentally stored here with the more miscellaneous stuff. You know... like a master unit and its slave units?"

Nightwing shakes his head at the inconclusive mystery, "Well, I'm ready to go. Maybe we can learn something from the ninjaz," he comments with practicality. He puts a hand back on his hip as he looks at Supergirl with surprise, "I guess we'll never know that unless we read a manifest and ---did you say...heuristic alga-rhythms?" he asks.

Supergirl nods. "Heuristic algorythms. It's a robotics term - means a series of rule-based instructions meant to let a program learn based on pre-existing rules. Basically it's how you make a simplified form of AI." She says it casually, as if everyone would know that.

Nightwing hmms, "Well, I'm not sure robotic parts constitute an AI, but you could be right, I guess," he comments, "Those were certainly some smart robots. Whatever happened."

Supergirl looks at Nightwing. "You see... heuristics is a way to the algorithms which would find solutions among all possible solutions available, but they do not guarantee that the best will be found,therefore they may be considered as approximately and not accurate algorithms. From those algorithms, usually the programfind a solution close to the best one and they find it fast and easily.Sometimes these algorithms can be accurate,that is they actually find the best solution, but the algorithm is still called heuristic until this best solution is proven to be the best. So... basically... it approximates 'learning' depending on the rules already set in place."

Supergirl shrugs a bit. "Still doesn't really tell where to look next, does it?"

Nightwing motions her with him as he walks back to the Nightbird, "Come on, Tech Support. We'll think it over. You know, I didn't see any tools. Maybe we can ask a few questions about this Nakatoma Corporation. What do you think?" he asks. Hey---listen, thanks for your help. Guess back-up wasn't necessary."

Supergirl smiles and flies next to you. "Punching's good. Not having to punch is better."

Nightwing nods agreeably, "Well, there's still a little mystery in the...case of the Self-Manifesting Heuristic Robots. Maybe we can ask Arsenal to dig up some more and join us next time. We are a team, after all. Right?" he asks.

Supergirl nods a little. "Sorry about what I did to him. He was ticking me off a bit. Especially with the 'let the men handle this' thing." The Kryptonian crosses her arms. "Let the men handle this. Hrmph."

Nightwing nods, "It's alright. He can make it up to you at Christmas or on your birthday."

Kara nods intently as the two of you leave the warehouse. She floats up. "Yeah. Christmas or my birthday." She flies off and says to herself. "What the heck's Christmas.... better look it up.