ic An Assimian & You & Me

[The Sailor]

Sakurako had an idea.

 

"Okay, come with me, first I'm heading to operations. I remember where that is... I'm gonna ruin all their work in one go. Just need to set up a EMP to blow their computers' minds real good."

 

She signals for Volt to follow her as she starts making her way. EM Wand deployed in it's projector mode, sparking in anticipation for a firefight. Once she enters Operations, she looks around, to look at her options to see what will cause the biggest effect with some good old-fashioned sabotage. It worked a little in the cells, might work better if she could just get to something that would generate a bigger pulse.

[Ari]

GM

 

Endeavor

 

The trip to Operations was a breeze, what with everyone running to keep away from the man made of napalm and everything. Volt kept up a steady pace, despite darting off to drain eletricity from various objects they passed."StraaostoldmekzzZzz TAKE THE DATA, ddothejobuuuuuuubutfor..." the strange crackling monster looked adoringly at Endeavor "...VvvvvVolszzz new friend."

 

At Operations, the air was thick with frantic cries

 

"More power! We have to break through the Silence Shroud!"

"No good! The cells can't take it!"

"Take from the defense grid! Rerouting from life support on subjects 13504 through 12002!"

"Pleaseworkpleaseworkpleasework Oh god I don't wanna die..."

 

They were so engrossed in their wrestling with obsolete control boards and more advanced gear stapled to old, busted tech that they didn't even notice Endeavor and Volt. The lightning thief grinned and tensed.

 

Within about twenty seconds the room was all theirs, bootsteps hammering into the distance.

 

Facsimile

 

While those two had snuck around, Alex found his flight very suddenly interrupted as he turned a corner and found himself face to face with a small group of people in what looked like armored variants of this "Ghostworks" normal uniform.

 

The guards barely flinched, one slamming a bulky disk onto the ground, yelling "Try'n melt outta this, assimian!" The walls thrummed and shuddered as they were sheathed in orange energy, just before the barrage. As one, the guards stepped back, aimed squat, weirdly gaudy guns at the transitive teen and opened up with a hail of ice, thick streams splashing and hardening around him into a crystal prison!

Edited August 20, 2016 by Ari

[Exaccus]

Facsimile couldn't help but smile even as he shivered briefly in the bonds of dense ice "Why would i try that when i can just do this!" he says as he takes on the properties of his prison, replacing flesh and sinew with dense but fragile crystaline Ice "Quite an Ice Breaker huh?" he says before with a mighty fling of his arms he shatters his prison and flings chunks of ice in all directions "Though it might be leaving you Cold!".

[The Sailor]

As Sakurako looked around she spotted the fight happening with Facsimile and the guards, and it wasn't going well.

 

"N... nice on getting those scientists to skeedaddle, but it seems my friend could use some help." She says, pointing to the screen. "Can you assist my friend trapped in the ice, and after clearing out those guards get them back here? I think I got a plan."

 

She adjusted her suit, starting to type on the computers in the room. "First thing's first. SAFETY FIRST!" She says, pressing a red button after changing a menu selection for a hallway the scientists that were running were heading into, triggering it's fire suppression system, causing the hallway to flood with a slippery, messy foam! "HAH! GODDEM!"

 

She cleared her throat. "Ahem, sorry."

 

She touched the computer, getting as much data as she could. "Might as well see what these fools were researching before I destroy every bit of technology they got."

 

"Just hoping the VTOL is hardened."

 

She then makes a few key strokes. "The Hydrogen Fuel cells aren't a good way to bring this place down, even if that is Bedlam, Wisconsin above us... no reason to risk the lives of anyone above. But there's another way I can set this operation back big time." She grins. "The coils that handle the voltage regulation are a typical transformer only designed for input from a diesel engine. Cold war relic, and the neighboring town didn't want a nuclear reactor on their doorstep I wager. But the thing about those coils is that there's now a voltage regulator between the very modern power supply of the complex and the thing that keeps the voltage at a more survivable amount."

 

She completes her download of the data from the scientist's computer. "Now what would happen if I just mess a little with the electricity flow, while disengaging the electricity flow regulator by removing it's safeguards and discharging all the capacitors at once in the transformer..."

 

"That'll be one heckuva zap!"

 

She hovered her hand over a button to unleash hell. "Volt... I'll turn out the lights when I see you getting close to give you an edge. Good luck."

[Ari]

GM

 

Endeavor

 

Without needing any more encouragement, Volt bolted off to fight some of the people had kept it locked up, leaving a stink of ozone and a strong light impression on the back of the girl genius' eyes.

 

From her vantage point, it was simplicity itself to set up the cataclysm that would unseat this place of warped science and find out what they had been doing. From the looks of things, this was some kind of stop-over facility for preliminary examinations and temporary holding, most 'subjects' moving on to EC-OR or SALO-CA. She and Alex had been the only human captives, but there were a number of sentient life-forms(including a contingent of augmented dogs and super-smart rats) and none of them had been treated better than negligently. 

 

The whole thing was thoroughly inside-baseball, with no kind of context besides a single mention of just who these people were: the isolated name "Ghostworks". What they were after, who they worked for(if anyone), all of that was entirely absent. The place had started operation sometime in 2005 and held exabytes of information. Bafflingly, nothing was password-protected or encrypted. 

 

Facsimile

 

"My God. That quip was...You're goin' down just for THAT!" The squad hurried to put more distance between themselves and the lumbering iced teen. None of them seemed that put out that the easy way hadn't worked. At least now they wouldn't be in danger of being burned alive.

 

With practiced speed they discarded the now-useless icers and drew more standard blaster pistols, letting loose a barrage of (mostly) well-aimed shots that slammed into Alex like burning hail.

 

From up ahead, a faint humming, crackling noise was quickly resolving itself into a voice.

 

"...zzzxkkkKRAAASHGHOSTSSZZK!"

Edited August 20, 2016 by Ari

[Ari]

GM

 

The battle was very short.

 

Although the memory-foreshortened guards briefly overwhelmed the solo iced teen, they were in turn floored by the electric arrival who darted through them in lances of high voltage that left them stunned and twitching on the floor.

 

The monster crouched in front of Alex as the fractured and melting ice slid and resolved into his old form, the deadly barrage of energy just moments ago already a fading memory.

 

"Kzzkkcomennnf'loww VOLT!" Barked the strange creature, dancing around Alex "Ssssss--KreandeavOUR tolmegetyou! Oprations!" Like a bipedal puppy, Volt shepherded the changing boy back to the genius girl, bursting back into the facility's bridge literally bouncing off the walls with crackles of power and howls of glee.

 

Now reunited, the duo could more easily plan their escape, but first...

 

Richard, as it turned out, was a prisoner, or close to one. He was in a cell in the branch closer to the hanger than Endeavor's had been, more comfortably appointed but still behind bars. His file was marked "Alter for Brute Sqd".

[The Sailor]

Volt's speed in dealing with the crisis was a surprise, but seeing Facsimile hurt distracted Endeavor for a moment. "I got this." She said, switching her wand to it's healing mode and starting to send a beam of light that seemed to warm the areas he was injured in. "This'll take a minute but I think I can patch you up rather quickly, then we should blow this popcicle stand."

 

She looked over at the control panel with the key she set up to trigger the EMP waiting to be pressed. "There is that matter of Richard... I looked at the files. He's scheduled to be altered for the "Brute Squad" as far as the file said."

 

"To be honest I'd rather deprive these people of any assets I can without threatening the city above. If this was the middle of nowhere I'd set this place up to blow... that's how much I hate it."

 

She winced out of anger. "This whole place angers me... if it all burned down I wouldn't care, but there's people up a the surface that aren't a part of this whole fiasco."

 

"Thing is I gotta ask if any of you can fly, or reduce your density to fall slowly... I'm thinkin' of using the VTOL they got stored here for our escape, but I'm not the best of pilots... So once we're clear and over Freedom I'm gonna ditch it in the bay while we fly or float back to Claremont. Unless the controls are intuitive enough where I can park somewhere..."

[Exaccus]

Alex found himself a bit dazed by the speed of everything that had happened over the last few seconds, though as his wounds began to close and his wits gather he firmly gripped a nearby guard rail and his shimmering crystaline ice form disappeared in a wave of light and head to be replaced by metal.

 

"Richard...we can't leave without Richard..." he says, to himself as much as sakuro and her intresting new friend, "'s not his fault...." he adds in almost a whisper.

 

"We gotta grab him before we get out of here...im certain i can do something if the worst should happen and we start getting a little to well aquainted with the ground." he says a lot more confidently than he feels...maybe he could mimic a motor engine and create enough thrust to slow their descent....or mimic some fabric and act as a parachute.

 

 

[The Sailor]

"Right... Richard."

 

"What I can do is once I set this EMP off it'll buy us more time so we can give this security and what-not even more problems to deal with so we can move unimpeded."

 

She walks over to the console, grinning. "And now that I got this info Volt needed too, we can blow this popsicle stand. I think I saw where Richard is, we can snag him then steal the VTOL."

 

"Also there might be parachutes on the VTOL... although jumping untrained isn't the best, I can play spotter and pull your chute for you if necessary, and Volt looks like flying is too pedestrian for what he can do."

 

"Anyways, Justice... right." She says, looking even more angry.

 

She turns on the loudspeaker intercomms... at this point Sakurako was whipped up into a rant. "Well well well. Ghostworks is it? Funny, you seem to be playing the role of kidnappers and terrorists. At this point all I have to say, is now I will play mine. Your abuse of science for this day is at an end. This experiment is terminated. Science Leads."

 

She presses the button setting her cascade-failure of the voltage regulators at the power station of the complex into motion, setting off a massive EMP throughout the underground complex. "Or in this case... runs." She whispers to the group. "Let's get Richie and go."

Edited September 5, 2016 by The Sailor

[Ari]

GM

 

The walls creaked under the sudden competing floods of electrons. The lights blazed pure white, then went out, leaving the whole facility in darkness and sudden silence. As one the monitors winked out.

 

Even Volt, crouched and staring up at Endeavor like an adoring and hazardous-to-touch dog, started violently as the EMP swept through the underground center. It was a little like an electric shock, but spread out and driving deep into the nervous system. 

 

Shaking their head so fast that they left a burnt-in afterimage of a green smear on the retinas of Alex and Rako, Volt jolted to their crackling legs and gaped up at thw teens "ZshkzzzzVOLTleddout! TaktaktoRicheeee! Zxkkkkkflowme!" In a flash Volt charged out of the room, pausing at a bend to bounce off the walls and wait for the duo to catch up. When they did Volt gleefully repeated the process all the way to their destination, providing both a highly-visible beacon and an excellent guard dog against the few organized Ghostworkers. Every now and then their yellow visors would gleam out of a shadowed hallway, take one look at the crouched lightning-blue creature, and vanish.

 

The floor melting under its blue-hot claws, Volt skittered and hissed to a stop beside the cell Richard was inside. Still inside and crouched on the bed despite the open doors and dropped force field. At the sight of Volt the boy jerked against the wall, but the scream of surprise died in his throat as he saw Alex.

 

His head dropped and he refused to look at the two young heroes or their bizarre and beaming comrade. "I...you shoudn't have come for me," Richard muttered "Should leave me here. It's all I deserve for doing this to you." He shuddered "I wanted to be special like you, Al...but they didn't listen after they had you and her, they just talked about how much money they could make selling your powers. Threw me in here when I started pushing."

 

Richard snickered bitterly "Just leave me alone, then I'll get something I want for once."

[Exaccus]

If Alexander Lloydd had any Anger at his brother it quickly left him after seeing and hearing this "That ain't how it works Ricky...We're brothers, always will be, no matter what and inspite of whatever dumb shit we do to each other we're still in this together." he says solemnly as he puts his hand on his brothers shoulder "Now lets get outta this dump before they release the security chimps or whatever they got hidden up their butts." he says "because believe me bro, you don't want any of what they're peddling."

[The Sailor]

"Actually there is something to consider." Sakurako said, pulling up the file on Richard and his scheduled treatment to be brought into the "Brute Squad".

"Were you aware of where they would put you and what they would do if you stayed with them, Richard?" She said, making the file appear on a wall using a light on her helmet as a projector. "I got a feeling "Brute Squad" isn't the Varsity team, Richard..."

 

She looked over to Facsimile. "You're better off with your brother. You should be lucky you have one that cares for you."

 

Suddenly she remembered what happened with her sister, Hannah. "Because trust me I've seen the other way this can go and I don't wanna see that again. Not in my lifetime"

Edited September 10, 2016 by The Sailor

[Ari]

GM

 

Richard had been silent and studiously avoiding Alex's gaze until Endeavor spoke up.

 

Richard stared at the projection, face paling even in the stark light of the helmet lamp "Those...those big...those troll things." He was almost whispering as realization sunk in "They called them the Brute Squad. Like animals on leashes."

Alex's brother seemed to sink even further into himself. "So that's all I had to look forward to."

 

Smiling wanly at Facsimile, the other boy got up off the bed, paused, then pulled Alex into a tight hug. "I'm sorry, Al...for everything." Stepping away and wiping his eyes, Richard sniffed and glanced outside "So, uh, how we getting out?"

 

Later...

 

Getting around the glooped Ghostworkers was pretty easy, and without much incident the quartet stepped into the Garage & Hanger, Volt's sizzling blue body and Endeavor's suit illuminating fearsome racks of armored vehicles, vast stacks of crates surrounded by forklifts, and a customized CV-22B Osprey in matte black without propellers. The aircraft was sitting under a square gate almost lost in the gloom of the ceiling. Volt dashed into a distant passage, there was a crash of lightning, and the gate lumbered slowly open, letting down a gentle fall of dirt and small stones.

 

Up above was a square of night sky and freedom.

[The Sailor]

"Well that's one way to open the doors... check around for parachutes, guys, at least enough for the non-fliers among us. Grabbing some life preservers would be smart too if we end up hitting water early, if I remember our location the Great Lakes would be a probably flight path for us... not gonna make our escape and end up drowning. Not that I could with this suit, but I could always crack this helmet of mine or something... outside of that, let's get outta here. I'll start warming up the engines."

 

What was she saying, she didn't know word one about being a pilot... yet... and this was a jet turbine VTOL, pretty unique... which would make it double-deadly. But depriving the enemy of another asset... sort of amused her.

 

"Well... no time like the present to get my first taste of this..." She thought. This wasn't gonna be fun. So she resigned herself to the cockpit, looking it over to at least start the engines properly. The rest would be guess-work.

Edited September 18, 2016 by The Sailor

[Exaccus]

With a nod to Richard he leads the way through the hanger, heavy footfalls of his steel body booming softly as he heads for the closest equipment storage containers and lockers, putting his metallic muscle mass to good use ripping the locked doors and lids from their hinges.

[Ari]

GM

 

Nothing was in the right size but a little trimming with metal fingers fixed the more egregious discrepancies, several pounds heavier than they had arrived the oddball quartet strapped into the stealth Osprey. Even Volt was coaxed into cuddling up into the electrical systems nearest its savior, though Endeavor could still feel its enormous puppy-dog eyes boring into her head. Thanks both to a refit some time in the past and the relatively small size of the occupants, nobody was cramped in the sleek and glossy interior of the aircraft. Though its controls, designed for use by adult men roughly six feet tall, were a little trickier.

 

Blessedly, a manual had been carelessly left under one of the seats. From the slight yellowing of the paper and a dark smear it had probably been there since the craft was stolen. After a quick skim through its most relevant sections the NightEagle's engines murmured to life, its ultraviolets lit up, its electronic eyes opened and with a hissing shriek it darted into the sky.

 

(Its actual moniker was a brilliant play on the common serial designations for Boeing projects, but none of the teenagers or the charged-up lightning thief would have gotten it)

 

Dismal Bedlam quickly lay below them. They'd emerged from under one of Wolverton's many discarded factories along Industrial Avenue, a secluded spot that within seconds had shrunk to invisibility among the unlit streets.

 

Turning on its wing, the NightEagle flew away towards the east and the faint purple-orange of the dawn.

 

The actual flight took hours. The craft was quick, quiet and a dream to pilot but it was still bound by the laws of physics. They crossed over the great blue patchwork of the Great Lakes, over New York and Pennsylvania until at last the bluey-grey of the Atlantic stretched before them and the familiar skyline of Freedom City shone in golden light. A vertical landing wasn't advisable even for the smartest novices, so the NightEagle was soon sweeping low over Greenbank and the Fens on its approach to Jordan International Airport.

 

Which was when the voice began speaking through the Osprey's intercom.

 

"Captives and Subjects. You have stolen our property and destroyed our work. You will not escape the consequences.This craft will self-destruct in twenty-five seconds. Farewell."

 

On the dashboard a red light began to blink rapidly...

Edited September 27, 2016 by Ari

[The Sailor]

Sakurako sighed, closing the helmet on her suit.

 

"No doubt you heard that... I'll get this to safety, but I think you guys better skee-daddle now. I'm gonna aim this at the bay and make an escape of my own."

 

She looks at the windscreen of the aircraft and decides to look for any explosive bolts or preferably an ejection seat. Considering the engines weren't helicopter blades that would work out better... but she couldn't get out until the very last second. It was gonna be close. In any case she starts to defeat the windscreen using her EM-wand and prepares herself to get out of her seat if ejecting wasn't possible.

 

She just had to get this flying bomb away from civilians. That's all that mattered at this point. "And don't think of any heroics... I got a plan... a totally reckless one, but a plan. And it includes the rest of ya getting out!"

Edited September 27, 2016 by The Sailor

[Ari]

GM

 

Facsimile, with Richard holding tight to his back, was soon hurtling to earth as gracefully as anyone made of Dacron possibly could. Volt, spat out from the NightEagle's systems after another failed attempt at deactivating the bomb, cowered at the door before jumping. Looking between the city sprawling below and its rescuer as precious seconds dribbled away, its jittering, crackling body as meek as could be imagined, the electrical entity at last jolted into the sky and thundered out of sight.

 

Whatever it was that was going to destroy the aircraft was probably also intended to be destructive on a large scale, forcing a sharp descent and the question of what kind of mind put a bomb on a cargo transport craft. And what secrets it might have that made the bomb seem so necessary.

 

But that didn't matter. Because even as Endeavor flew towards the vast North Bay, time ran out,

 

"Eleven. Ten. Nine..."

 

It was the work of a second to eject. Another to free herself from the cockpit chair. Another to activate the X1's jet propulsion system and rocket to safety.

 

Which lay outside the distance she could go in six seconds.

 

Flaming wreckage smashed into the Atlantic, following a shockwave that registered as a cracking *BOOM* for miles around and made the windows of Pyramid Plaza shudder.

 

The blessed cold of the ocean took away the searing pain as Endeavor plunged underwater, half-conscious and the suit which had saved her life almost in pieces. It felt like she had been sinking forever. Before the black swallowed her up fragments of a voice drifted through -earch team stan- -located...retrie-

 

A searing light burned her eyes, then nothing.

 

END

Edited October 2, 2016 by Ari