"Aw man... OK, have fun dad!" Alyssa waves goodbye. She looks understandably put out at having you leave early, but the prospect of watching you beat the kernels out of the corniest of supervillains makes up for it.

As the crow flies, the situation with Mister Maize is not actually that far away. Lincoln is Southside's neighbor, a rougher part of town that hit the skids hard in the '80s and never quite recovered. It's also home to South River State Penitentiary, the aging and overcrowded home to thousands of prisoners, including a number of "low-risk" supercriminals. The world's only homicidal, sentient cornfield was a guest there (until this morning, it seems.). If this mess has a silver lining, it's that Lincoln's relative proximity makes your trip a lot less painful than it could have been. Both neighborhoods run along the South River, making the winding channel a convenient highway for part of your trip.

Alas, the supermarket center currently being terrorized (for certain values of "terror") by Mister Maize is further inland, in the grid of lettered and numbered streets at Lincoln's run-down core, which means leaving the South River for a smaller tributary, then an even smaller canal, then a wastewater runoff, luckily full, because of the storm, and then finally, yes, a sewer line. The rainwater flowing down from the streets makes things a lot better than they could have been, but it is not your finest hour, and though you emerge literally right across the street from the shopping center, it's taken over 15 minutes and you smell, well, like a sewer.

Smell aside, the cops and paramedics seem relieved to see you, and your appearance causes a flood of walkie-talkie traffic as the news spreads through the crowd. The media picks up on it as well, several news cameras swinging your way. Near where you climbed back onto the street, a heavily bandaged police officer is being strapped to a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance. It looks like she hadn't ducked quite fast enough, and took a can of corn to the skull. Behind the paramedics, most of the cops have retreated behind barricades or vehicles to protect themselves from the edible missiles being hurled from inside.

To his credit, Mister Maize has done a thorough and impressive job of trashing the grocery store. The place is an absolute wreck, with all the windows shattered and shopping carts piled up outside in his own makeshift barricade. Foodstuffs of every kind litter the parking lot, the ghastly grain apparently having brought the captive tomatoes and apples under the banner of the fledgeling corn revolution. At the moment, Mister Maize is in the middle of a raging monologue, having discovered the baking goods isle.

"Cornmeal? Corn stharch? Corn syrup!? Itsh not emouth to butcher my brothers an sisthers, you murderouth beasts grind their bodies thoo pasthe and powder! Yoo drink their blood! Monsthers! Yoo are all monsthers!" He pauses to hurl a floursack out the storefront. It hits a police cruiser, exploding a cloud of white dust. "Do not woorry, fwends! The fweshbags sthall pay for their cwimes againth wheat and oat as well! Join uth!" His human shield (an understandably panic-stricken cashier, a skinny kid who couldn't be older than Chris) is held in front of him for all of this, giving the absurd scene an element of genuine danger. Mister Maize doesn't appear to have noticed you yet.

Spoiler
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Though combat has not started yet (I want to let you get in a reaction post, at least) go ahead and roll Initiative, just to have it.