ic Crash and Burn

[Poncho]

Mid October, 2024, Emerald City

 

There had been a rash of car crashes and accidents on the road lately.

 

Over the last week, it had happened enough that news was reporting on the sudden surge of automobile accidents.

 

The police were repeatedly reminding people to be careful when driving, basically every news program included a five minute speech from the police chief. Look both ways, don't look at your phone, keep the radio turned down, always be aware of others.

 

It didn't really seem to be helping though. Crashes were still constantly occurring, hourly or even faster. Heroes around the city were going almost from accident to accident, as much as EMTs, trading shifts to constantly make sure none of the crashes got out of hand.

 

It had been almost 8 days of this; exhaustion was nearing it's peek.

 

And then the Kessler Industrial Technology Building that the Emerald Spider had been in a few weeks ago, repaired and functioning, replaced all it's adds for a few seconds with a blinking green spider symbol. It went back to adds for a moment, then flashed with the spider again.

 

Someone was requesting a meeting with the Emerald Spider on top of the skyscraper.

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

 

Other people took vacation time to go somewhere nice, maybe visit friends or family, Peri was using it to rescue people from car accidents. She'd gotten pretty good at balancing work and patrolling, with naps and snacks as needed. Every noodle and hotdog stand in the city had been visited, with her taking a few seconds to chat and always paying before moving on with her work. In fact the few chances she'd had to check social media were her rescuing people from cars or at various stands buying food.

 

She'd almost missed the "Spider" Signal, the small child she'd just scooped off the road helpfully pointed out for her (between going whee! and enjoying the ride). After setting them down and making sure everyone was safe, she took to the air on a quantum thread swinging towards the building. She made good time to the roof, despite having to quickly stop for a few more accidents on the way!

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

It was not particularly surprising that it was Joseph on the top of the building. He looked much more like a Silicon Valley tech CEO now, even though he wasn't the CEO of KessKorp obviously. A long sleeve turtleneck in black under a tan blazer and slacks, he had a Bluetooth headset in one of his ears that he was talking into, but when he realized the Spider was approaching, he changed his talk of whoever he was talking to.

 

"Look, I'll call you back, okay. I've got someone here who can handle it. Don't worry about it." then he turned off the headset.

 

"Emerald Spider! Quite a...not so lovely day, in our fair twin cities, yes? Can't say I'm a fan of having to play Twisted Metal on my way to and from work." he always had a calm, cheerful attitude about him, even when he was clearly stressed, though he could be pushed. The information folder was expanded. "I know you and all the other Emerald City heroes have been working quite hard on this little situation. And it just so happens that after the last week of investigation, I've figured out exactly what's going on here...kind of." That was a little vague there. "Suffice to say, KessKorp may have a significant...let's say responsibility. To assist in clearing up this issue. I am more than willing to explain what is going on, if you're willing to help." He specifically hadn't asked for secrecy on the matter. Was that because he didn't think he could get her to promise that, or because he didn't care?

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

 

Joseph might have been one of the better ones, but he was still a corporate type and hence everything had to be filtered through an annoying level of corporate speak. Having worked for a literal evil corporation Peri had a fight her instinct to just shut this all down. But if this was going to stop the madness going on in Emerald City then it was worth biting her tongue, to a point at least...

 

"Not to be rude..." she said, being slightly rude "But it's been a long day... long week really! So if you could cut to the part where you explain how we stop this, then after stopping it, and maybe naps we can talk about corporate responsibility and mutual back-scratching."

 

Superheroes, like Engineers (Peri having been both) could get away with a lot if people thought they were useful, but she was aware that there were limits and she was probably straddling the line here!

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

"Fine fine, don't worry." he raised his hands in mock surrender. "I didn't mean anything bad by it. Sometimes a little humor can go a long way, right? Just trying to be cheerful."  he smiled again. 

 

"So, here's what I know. Around the time that the wrecks started happening, I was running inventory on some of our projects. And one came up empty, so I have been investigating since then, figuring out if it was connected. And it just so happened it was. I had my suspicions but given my status and how I like my job, I didn't want to move rashly."

 

"That's a long winded explanation to what I know. The actual process is this; Kessler Industrial Technologies has a government contract to develop a new armor and camaflouge plating. They wanted the next generation of spy planes and drones, a successor to the SR-71 Blackbird, basically. We had a few different prototypes, and since it's supposed to work at sea level as well, we coated several cars in the paint and would take them out to drive. Only at night, of course, and always with very careful consideration to avoid accidents. Just some general testing to make sure the camo and radar invisibility and all the fancy bells and whistles worked. And they did. We had a high model electric sports car completely kitted out. Invisible, basically silent, tough enough to take any collision head on and keep driving..." Where this was going seemed pretty obvious.

 

"A week ago, a different project- a military co-pilot and drone management system- started a cascade failure due to a programming error. The programmer attempted to dump the failure before it got fully into the system, but it just shunted into the fleet of cars instead. At which point the system activated and the cars fled, invisibly, into the city proper. So now there's a fleet of invisible, armored cars that are immune to radar detection being driven by a wide ranging drone management system racing around the city. With the camera systems installed on current cars and their own programming, the wrecks are being caused partially by the safety features in cars being aware of something approaching but not being able to confirm what it is, and the cars themselves bashing into things and sending them off track. They were hoping the failure state would eventually lock the cars, but obviously it's been a week and they haven't stopped yet, so I think they're going to be going for awhile yet. And since they were hoping that would happen, they wanted to not tell me so they could retrieve the cars without me knowing. But now I know. So now I'm telling you."

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

 

"And I'm sure some senior engineer called it the KIT 2000, so they could call it KITT!" obviously she was self-aware enough that her set-up was called the SPDR Rig to get Spider, though in her defence she hadn't named it only inherited the term

 

If it hadn't already caused injuries and several sleepless days, she would have laughed at the ridiculousness of the thing. And it had to be serious for the guy to swallow his pride and tell her about the whole situation. The whole thing was probably classified well above the level that even her mother would have earned.

 

"Tell me at least that you have a shutdown signal..." she was sure she'd played a mission like that on one of the few days she had time to play video games "... and a way to track them down?"

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

"Haha, well...I didn't ask for a name, because I'm going to try and decommission this entire drone AI as soon as it gets back under wraps...but as for a tracker, well...let's say the people making the camouflage probably did their job a bit too well. You're going to have to get real close before any of the technology we have will catch them... which probably works for the best, because you're going to have to get even closer to actually shut them down."

 

He produced a flash drive and a handful of small mechanical devices, about the size of a lighter.

 

"The drive has the scanning program. Once you're in...I dunno, maybe a hundred feet? maybe 50. You'll be able to at least hear them, hopefully see them too if you can get it set up right with your suit. Once you're there, you just need to hook one of these devices onto the hood. It should shut down the engine. You don't have to leave it on, thankfully; once the car shuts down, pick it up and you can use it on the next one. But these three are the only ones I have, so if you lose them all...I don't know how long it'll take me to make new ones. We have serial and scan codes on all the cars, so we'll be able to track how man you've taken down. If we stay in contact, I can give you a running tally." he explained, frowning.

 

"Though, I have to also note...Some of these cars might be more built up then just a regular car, so be careful. Weapon systems, high top speeds, defensive-counter measures...I can't tell you what you might run into since we don't know which cars you're running into until you've already shut them down."

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

 

Peri had some doubt about all this, her previous experience showed that somehow they'd come up on top of all this. But time was a pressin' so she held out her hand to take the flash drives.

 

"Anything nasty on these that I need to know? I might need to tweak these to help find the drone, especially if they have some kind of learning algorithms!" she sighed and added, "Please tell me that they don't have advanced learning algorithms?"

 

Considering her week these drones were probably packing much, much worse than she imagined!

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

"Well, to be honest. Each of the machines is a state of the arc tech system. Like I said, I'd expect automated turrets, electro webbing, smoke screens, maybe even missiles." Jacob said, frowning.

 

"Though there's one I'd be the most scared about. You know Transformers right? Well...let's say Nemesis Prime happens to be out there causing some issues...So if you start getting punched by a giant invisible transformer, uh...good luck." he smiled a little.

 

"As for those things; you can do whatever you want with them. They should only be tuned to shut down the Drone AI, so as long as you leave that function alone, you'll not have to worry about them coming alive and shorting out your suit or anything, if that helps at all. They aren't 'smart' devices or anything; I'm the kind of programmer that keeps no technology except a printer in my house and a gun to shoot the printer if it makes a weird sound."

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

 

"Was more a GI Joe kind of girl, but the point stands! I'd ask for danger money, but it seems for some reason I'm not on the payroll! So wish me luck instead...!"

 

She ran and leapt off the building, dropping out of sight for a minute before swinging up and away on a Quantum thread. She'd been formulating a rough plan and time spent swinging through the air only helped, it might not work but it was worth a pop at least. She was making for one of the big broadcast towers, by borrowing just a tiny bit of their bandwidth she should be able to track the drone in (almost) real-time. Then she could work out what order to carry out this quest!

 

Then again what was that saying about plans and reality? 

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

Hanging off the broadcast tower, the scanner and the drone slowly started to synchronize. It expanded with each bounce; the range expanding each time it landed back at the tower the Emerald Spider was on and bouncing back off.

 

One signal.

 

Three signals.

 

Six signals.

 

Six different machines? That's what it seemed to indicate. After a moment, names started to appear underneath them.

 

Nemesis was obvious, Jacob had said that one would be there. The others...

 

Warthog, Speed Racer, Speed Buggy, Mystery Machine, KITT.

 

Each driving wildly about the city, causing mayhem and havoc. Would they be aware of each other when the Spider began taking them out? It was a possibility, but right now, Speed Racer was about to- by the Spider's check, about to start careening through the Emerald City University Campus. Which was almost certainly not a good place for an invisible, super fast car.

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

 

As the scanner did its stuff she got her Spider Phone and sent a quick update to those heroes she knew. Unlike the bigger cities, superheroes were rare enough that everyone more or less knew each other. And that meant they could share information relatively painlessly.

 

She gave a quick version of events, leaving Kessler out for now, including where the car was right now! With some luck, one or two might be sorted out before she had to worry about them, but right now, it was triage—deal with the biggest threat first!

 

Leaping into the air and firing off a quantum thread she quickly made her way to the University district and a showdown with this Speed Racer!

 

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

Beleaguered, tired superheroes responded to the call by Emerald Spider. It was nice to at least have an explanation for what was going on, even if it raised more questions. It gave a renewed source of momentum to know it wasn't people willingly disregarding the safety of their fellow man for no reason. So when Spider ended her warnings, it seemed that morale was up, at the least. 

 

But solving the issue would be on her.

 

Emerald City University was packed with students. It was a walkable campus, which meant cars were rarer, and on school dorms meant no risk of accidents coming and going to school. At least in theory. But putting theory into practice was a premise of many colleges, and Speed Racer was about to put that theory to the test!

 

As the Spider got there, she could already see several cars knocked over, the shell shocked inhabitants slowly crawling out, some yelling at each other in confusion. Who would think an invisible car had sideswiped someone, causing them to careen into you? No one reasonably sane. 

 

The little tracker continued to beep, now that the Spider was getting closer to the car. She couldn't see it, but she could see the beeps. 

 

And she coule see the path. The innocent pedestrian in the crosswalk, about to be flattened by a speeding, invisible car. 

 

What's a Spider to do?

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

 

With traffic incidents being such a common thing, especially in the last few days, it was so ingrained in what to do Peri didn't even have to think too hard about what to do! Especially as she many a time looked at her first act of heroics and tried to figure out if she could have done anything different.

 

With a few esoteric hand signals, she caused the inherent sponginess of the quantum realm to manifest on the macro scale, which looked to the observer like she released a large foamy area of web-like material across the road. It should trap or at least slow down the vehicle, if not if she was lucky trap the vehicle in the quantum gunk.

 

But she wasn't going to leave things to change, she swung down to grab the pedestrians off the road and onto the sidewalk well away from the dangerous drone.

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

"Wha-" then the Pedestrian was being pulled away as the invisible car hit the foamy gunk. 

 

It didn't make the car visible, but it cut the image of a race car inside the foam. Invisible and quiet or not, the sound of it's wheels spinning against the pavement and sending up thick clouds of smoke were not at all quiet, and the reusults were not at all invisible..

 

"What the heck is that thing?" One of the pedestrians asked as the crowd gathered to the stare at the machine trapped in the snare of foam. 

 

Then there was a twisting tear as part of the foam tore; The machine might have been invisible, but it was covered with foam and smoking furiously, so it wasn't too hard to tell exactly where it was going.

 

And where it was going was straight at the Emerald Spider, laying on the horn in a loud screech! At least it wasn't going to be hard to get close enough to shut it down!

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

 

"I'll explain it a bit, just stand well back for now!"

 

She had an idea—it was risky, but it was worth a shot! As the car barreled towards her, she timed it at the last second. Placing a hand on the bonnet, she flipped into the air, hand standing as she applied the shutdown before carrying on to land on her feet behind the car. It was slightly spoiled by her clutching her side and wincing a little, her timing had been a smidge of!

 

With a lack of a reversing death machine, she quickly put another idea into action.

 

"Hey, do you know Professor Wallace down in engineering?" Having been here once, she knew how to pick out a student and had often helped out the Engineering staff in the past. "Quickly go tell her about this drone car here. I'm sure they'll want to poke at the car whilst they can!"

 

She'd learnt back when getting the SPIDR Rig never to trust a corporation completely, and a second opinion was worth a try. Having worked with the University before they knew how to contact her and tell her if they found anything interesting...

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

"You uh...You got it!?" The student said. The car was becoming visible now that it wasn't active anymore.

 

It looked like a sports car that was two years into the future; a 2027 model pulled fresh from the secret design documents of the most advanced car designers. Without the invisibility, it was painted a sheen of crystal white, and it was clearly tricked out; gatlings behind the headlights, missiles hidden in the sides, even boosters and glide wings. This was the car of a superspy, fit for world travel. It was probably worth more money than Peri would make in a year.

 

"I'll...I'll go get her!" The student yelled, taking off. She had no idea what was going on, but people didn't often question Superheroes, especially not after they had just gotten sideswiped by a car trying to rescue them. There were more pings on her headset; the other machines still moving. Was Peri going to wait here, put her faith in the other Heroes in Emerald City that they could try and contain the invisible cars and wait for Professor Wallace, to see if the two working together could figure something out, or was the Emerald Spider going to head off again; towards one of the next cars, to try and put an end to this as soon as possible?

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

 

Peri had expected time to be tight so had this all in mind

 

"Hi I know a lot going on right now but can I just borrow these for a second?" she quickly plucked some paper and pen from a bystander. Maybe she should consider some pouches or something on the costume.

 

Connie,

 

Sorry have to run, but take a look at this and tell me what you think. Someone is going to pick it up pretty quickly, don't get in their way! I'll explain when I can, I know this great little nearby Kimchi place that does takeout!

 

Emerald Spider

 

Putting the note on the windshield, she did a signature and a little sketch of Emerald Spider before giving the supplies back to their owner. then with a little wave, she took to the air looking for the next vehicle in her hunt.

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

That finished, The Emerald Spider was out and about once more, heading towards the next issues, the next cars, the next terrified pedestrians. Some of the heroes were calling her back now, as she could check on her scanner.

 

"Emerald Spider, can you give u s a location on one of these cars. We're going to try and stop one even if we can't see it; we're hoping to box it in and break it down. Since we can't see them or shut them down easily, we're just going to have to brute force it."  The Hero offering assistance explained. "So just let us know."

 

Right now, there were two cars that seemed to be the biggest issues; Warthog was currently rampaging through the Financial District, while KITT had it's headlights clearly set towards Jadetown, the Chinatown of Emerald City. 

 

Danger was rampant as always.

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

 

Working quickly with the information she'd got Peri updated the tracking and sent what information she could to the Little Hero network. She was sure they were more than capable of working things out on their own, besides even with her (admittedly rusty) coding skill she couldn't get a transmittable shutdown code to them in time!

 

As to where to go next she had to go with the sensible choice and pick the car closest to her, that being the one in Jadetown. Any criticism, which to be fair she rarely received, was mute when faced with just the basic practicalities.

 

Still, as she swung through the city she couldn't help but wonder if it was the right choice...

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

Jadetown.

Jadetown was not a Hong Kong Action movie, really. That was the point; it was an actual Chinatown, a pretty, densely packed area where those with Chinese heritage could intermingle and live in something closer to their own culture. While there was an undercurrent of crime in the area, for most of the people in the city and most of the people who lived in Jadetown had no inclination- and no involvement- with the criminal element of the area.

 

Which meant they were not expecting the mess the invisible car codenamed K.I.T.T. was causing, as it rampaged through market stalls and crashed through buildings. 

It was slightly easier to see the car than the others. This wasn't because the invisibility wasn't working, but rather because it's frame was covered with detritus from it's crashes and rampage. This also meant it was easier to see, specifically, where it was going; that it was intentionally avoiding some people while purposely trying to crush others underfoot, like it was targeting something speciifc.

 

But what? 

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

 

Peri couldn't blame the car really, she'd had a few run-ins with the triads over the year. The problem was, in addition to her not being a fan of indiscriminate killing (for the guilty or otherwise), a car couldn't pinpoint a target without some innocent getting hurt.

 

Picking up some speed so tried to place herself above KITT, both looking for an opportunity to land on top of the vehicle and a visual aid to get people to move out of its way.

 

"Everyone get out of the way! That it, move it!" she waved whatever hand was free to emphasise where exactly to move

 

Today she'd save them from a car, tomorrow she'd worry about stopping any of their crimes.

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

The First instinct of a Triad member being attacked by an invisible thing- especially something invisible being ridden by a Superhero- was to pull guns and fire. That made sense when you know you're a criminal and you know you are probably wanted for questioning for at least one crime, if not more than one, of various severity. But Emerald Spider had yelled at them to move, and the danger had been occurring well before she had appeared. So It only took a second for the plans to change and the Triad members to helpfully jump and duck out of the way, with only a few bullets whizzing past Peri's head without being in danger of hitting her. Meanwhile the car moved like a bucking bronco now that she was on top of it, twisting and spinning out to try and unseat her from the roof. It wasn't working, and it even hit a half ramp, going spinning through the air but unable to dislodge the Spider. If Peri ever wanted to join a rodeo after this, she'd have plenty of experience as K.I.T.T. righted itself. A quick application of the kill signal from one of the little bugs and K.I.T.T. had returned to visibility, a high speed sports car. And then Peri got a text with information from Professor Wallace.

 

These Cars are programmed to run off the AI, but that's not the only thing powering them. They seem to be using two colors of Viridian as power;  A Violet one to power their engines, and a Red one that keeps them running on their programming. Essentially, they're not just technological, they're semi-mystical. Not a lot of people know who or where Viridian comes from, and even less know it actually has powers or what the distinct colors mean. Whoever built these things has a lot of knowledge not just of tech engineering, but also geological and semi-mystical phenomena, and how to combine those two resources.

[Tiffany Korta]

Emerald Spider

That was troubling, magic and technology always acted weird around each other, at least in her engineering brain. It also probably meant she was dealing with a company (probably) dealing with some very shady people. Still a problem for future Peri to worry about!

 

Through hook or crook, she popped the hood of the latest deactivated drone, snapping a quick picture of the layout to send to the good doctor.

 

Same setup as this one?

 

She was well aware she'd need to get moving again, still too many of these cars needed taking down. Deside the gangster would rapidly decide if they were upset or not about her saving them from almost being mowed down by a crazy drone car...

 

[Poncho]

(GM Post)

 

The engine did look...somewhat. Like a regular engine; it had an engine block so to speak, but instead of a singular focus, it was two distinct, smaller engine like structures, based around two pylons; one had a cut, crystal gem of Violet, and the other a cut, crystal gem of Red. They weren't spinning at this moment, but they were clearly meant to, feeding energy through the gel filled the pylons and the tubes connected to it to reach the central centrifuge. It would certainly be a sight while it was running, but for now it just looked like a stalled turbine.

 

Correct, same set up. was the reply.

 

Meanwhile, the Triad members were not necessarily crowding around The Spider, but were clearly there; they were hanging back, waiting. They wanted to claim this car for themselves; either to add it to their own fleets, or they wanted to figure out who was trying to kill them so gratuitously in the middle of the day. They were going to be a problem, almost certainly, but the Spider wasn't done stalling out these cars either; there were still more, at least 3, possibly 4 cars depending on how well her associates in the hero community were doing, to try and collect and stop from continuing anymore rampages. But the Triad wasn't likely to care about anything like that; they could see the good deal of a no longer invisible car that was clearly tricked out to the gills being dropped into their lap.