[i]Normal day in the Northeast Research district, [/i] Psibertooth thought to herself from her invisible perch atop a streetlamp. She focused her attention onto the alley below, but the glittering domes of Edentech looming overhead made it hard to keep her mind on streetwork. She’d always loved the slight iridescence of their shadows, like a soap bubble catching the rays and bending them around its polychromatic curve. Psibertooth would kill for a look at the architectural specs of that place, but academics had to take a back seat to crime-fighting today.
Richter, her contact in Ironport, had clued her in to a meet today near the Skypark in the NE district. The Rooks had obtained a handful of crates from Edentech and were selling them to an anonymous bidder. [i]These checkerboard clowns didn’t get inside that place on their own, [/i] she mused, [i]so either these cases fell off a truck or somebody gave them a key. [/i] Judging by the crowbar marks scoring the surface of the crates and the still-immaculate locks, nobody from the Rooks had so much as looked inside them. Pretty tough to get a good price for merch you haven’t identified, but they were trying anyway.
The buyer hadn’t showed, though, and the quartet of Rooks was getting anxious. A blonde with her hair in pigtails and her face checkerboarded with facepaint shoved her African-American compadre as they argued about how much longer to wait. If they packed up the crates and took off, Psibertooth might miss her chance. Her suit’s camo function operated while she remained still or slowly stalked her prey, but trailing them back to their hideout would reveal her for sure. Psibertooth debated a moment longer, but when the Rooks started heaving crates back into the stolen truck she made up her mind.
The whine of her suit’s armaments keying on startled the Rooks, but not nearly as much as when her black-suited and mirror-helmed form decloaked, lightly dropped from the lamp post and slipped golden psy blades inside the poor blonde Rook’s skull. The thug’s startled yelp cut off mid-scream, and Psibertooth kicked her unconscious body into the side of the truck.
“You guys seem like you’re looking for trouble,” she noted to the stunned gang members. Her monotone voice-distorter had a harsh buzz to it that she quite liked. Made her sound less like the college tech student she was. “Don’t worry – it found you.”
The tall, black Rook at the head of the remaining threesome yelled, “Kill that hero!” and swung his sword at her helmet. Her psy blades phase-shifted to a more solid form and her block of his blade notched that sword. Her return shout hammered at them with psychic energy, staggered the lead two and felling the third.
“That all you got?” Psibertooth mused aloud. With a leap over his outstretched sword she hurdled the leader and plunged both her wrist blades into the second in command. He staggered backward, dropping his chain clattering to the ground and following it a second later, cracking his skull off the pavement with a resounding thud.
“Last one,” she murmured, wondering if the last gangster saw his own saucer-eyed reflection in her visor. “You feel lucky?”
The leader forced her back with long swings, losing ribbons of his blade in the process as it sparked off her solid-state weapons. With a twist of her wrists she shoved his blade into the stack of crates and sliced through it and the top crate both. Now weaponless, he threw the remains of the hilt at her and took off running.
With a short whistle she crumpled the fleeing gangster in his tracks, his hands clamped to his ears as he rolled back and forth in anguish. His cries too were cut short by a golden flash fom Psibertooth, followed by merciful unconsciousness.
The whole thing had taken less than a minute. Three months ago she’d fled a fight with the Rooks, her powersuit and confidence in tatters. Three months can cure a lot of ills.
The clatter of small objects falling from the sliced-through case caught her attention. Psibertooth snagged a package, an oblong bottle about the size of a thumb drive with something rattling around inside it. She held it up to the sun but couldn’t make out what was inside – and she wasn’t in the habit of opening strange packages from Edentech.
[i]A problem for later. [/i] But the hero still pocketed it to assuage her own curiousity even as she zip-tied the unconscious gang members together. [i] Just have to turn over the rest of the supplies to Narcotics and head back to Richter... [/i]
The sound of a police attack chopper heading her way made her wonder if they might be coming here for her cargo, or for the original thief of the product. She caught sight of it a moment later, and it was definitely coming closer, blue and white and looking for trouble. “Well fellas,” she commented idly to the unconscious coterie, “maybe I’ll just put a bow on you then. The cops work hard enough cleaning up messes around here.”
The monotone whirr of the police chopper was drowned out by the distinctive whine of Aether Pirate propellers. Psibertooth glanced up, but the pirates were heading away from her and toward the chopper. The rat-a-tat-tat of their guns couldn’t match the growling aggression of the chopper’s assault weapons. Even the [i]whumpf [/i]of the energy discharge wasn’t close enough to cause the helicopter serious concern.
[i]They’ve got it under control. Pilot probably hasn’t even spilled his cup of coffee yet. [/i]
The metallic glint of a multi-barrelled gatling perched on the rooftop across from her dropped her stomach. With their attention focused on the Aether Pirates in the air, the police would never see the ground assault until it was too late. [i]They’re sitting ducks! [/i] This was exactly why she’d made those movement upgrades in the last few weeks. With a press of a button her boots started to hum, and she sprinted for the side of the building as fast as a speeding car could get there – and then ran up its side. The boots worked better on the plasticrete building framework than on the mirrored glass, which created a zig-zag route up the building as she strove for better footing and weighed it against time lost. Falling back to earth would be worse so she stuck to the plasticrete, but her spine tensed expecting to hear that shot at any time.
An explosion whipped her head around, but it was just the Aether plane smashing into one of the park supports. The electric crackle of the rooftop gun warming up worried her far more than the jetpacks of the Aether that still attacked the chopper.
[i]Run faster, run faster…[/i]
She ran straight up the last bit, feet slipping on the glass as she reached the roof and flew ten feet over the top edge, sommersaulting across its surface and coming to rest near the gun. Its eight barrels had already started turning, with the hand crank spinning the globe of aether set to feed down to the barrels once it was fully in motion. A pile of jetpacks sat next to it, probably for a quick getaway once the deed was done. Aether Pirates gloated from the air, not the ground.
Two pirates, one with an an eye patch, a chain-saber and cock-eyed hat and the other sporting a full pirate coat and a pair of pistols leapt toward her. Psibertooth rolled backward as the blade struck sparks off the roof and the gun tore holes where her head had rested moments earlier.
“You gonna walk the plank for me, Polly?” she asked brightly and breathily, still winded from the run. She swept the leg of the saber pirate and slammed her palm on the roof, blasting cascading waves of gold and green across her two foes. The Saber stayed down, but Pistols got back up and aimed at her faceplate. With the regret only the brave can feel, she blasted him off the roof toward the parking structure 30 floors below. [i]I had no choice, [/i]she told herself, before a whirring clank let her know she’d missed somebody.
Psibertooth spun, startled, and noticed the ‘borg for the first time. He’d been crouched behind the aether, but standing at his full height now and with a hammer in hand he was hard to miss. In place of his lower right leg a revolving 3-strut contraption spiked into the roof and looked sharp enough to cut her in half. The hammer steamed from an internal fire, and each head glowed a dull, angry red.
Problem was, she knew of this Aether Pirate – and it wasn’t good.
“Long John.”
“Psibertooth, right?” He grinned at her, eyes covered by a pair of monacles with multiple lenses layered atop each other. “Ye look a little slighter in person, lass.”
She shrugged and whistled again, looking for an advantage to start the fight, but Long John tilted his head to show the coiled covering that protected his ears. “Yer tricks are no’ gonna work today, missie.” He swung the hammer a couple of times, forcing her back toward the edge. “Jules did no’ deserve that final flight ye gave him. Maybe you’ll jus’ have t’ join ‘im in that leap from the Crow’s Nest now.”
“Flight’s not my thing,” she answered flippantly as she searched for a better approach. “If you feel like jumping though, feel free.”
With a grin and a cackle he did just that – leapt high in the air and brought the steaming hammer down. She could feel its heat through her suit as she dodged, but couldn’t avoid the kick from the cyberleg that tore at her skinsuit. The mesh kept the prosthetic spikes from tearing all the way through her flesh, but the trickle of blood down her ribs let her know she didn’t escape scot-free.
“Not so funny now, are ye?”
“I’m laughing on the inside,” Psibertooth rasped, circling the hammer-wielding pirate and looking for an opening. Her kick to his human thigh nearly got her leg broken by the haft of the hammer. Her dual slashes across his chest barely fazed him, and his return blow chipped her visor as she tumbled back across the rooftop.
“I’m outta yer league, dearie,” he growled as she kipped back to her feet, unable to stifle the grunt of pain from her slashed ribs. Next to her the globe of aether was spinning slowly to a halt at the base of the gatling gun, its cheery glow belying the plasma’s explosive power.
When in Rome. The vigilante leaned her weight on the contraption and held her side, waiting, waiting...
Long John charged her, the inside sphere of his hammer whirling and its angrily-heated heads steaming into the air around. Psibertooth waited one last second, then kicked on her grav boots and summersaulted out of the way as the head of the hammer whistled by her – and straight into the container of aether.
The deafening explosion tossed her to the edge of the roof, her blades slicing gouges out of the plasticrete as she dragged her boots along the surface in a desperate attempt to stop her momentum. She skidded to a stop five feet from the edge – just in time to see Long John’s last look of disbelief as he was tossed over the side.
“Tell your friend Jules I said hi,” she coughed, crawling back to her feet and staring at the smoking crater in the rooftop. Nothing said it was over - Long John was hard to kill – but it was the sort of result she could live with. At least the gun had been destroyed.
The desperate whine of the copter made her glance back to the sky. The Aether Pirates had sheared off the copter’s tail rotor and it careened desperately toward the earth. The chopper pilot was doing his best to put it down in the least crowded area of the park, but none of the occupants would make it out alive at the rate it fell.
Frantically, Psibertooth looked around for the jetpacks. One was slagged from the explosion, one had its shouder straps smouldering, and one looked remarkably instact. She snatched up the intact one and slipped it on, holding the other pack in her hands. [i]Maybe the two jetpacks could hold four people. Maybe. [/i] Without a second thought she fired off the steam-powered contraption and jetted toward the police chopper.
[i]I’m not gonna make it. I’m too far... [/i]The thought of getting to the crash just in time to see the dead bodies drove her onward, wrestling with the pack controls in an attempt to squeeze more speed out of the tech.
She was too late. Luckily for the police, someone else wasn’t. She saw a super in an amber body suit snatch the chopper, stop its careening descent. Limned against the sun with his cape fluttering in the breeze, it was every inch the movie poster she’d enjoyed running her fingers across as a kid while she’d dreamed of being a hero.
Then recognition hit. [i]That’s Topaz. [/i] Just seeing him made her teeth clench. Nothing like being brushed off as an impetuous girl during a mission to make a woman remember you fondly. [i]Hotshot sky jockey with a Buck Rogers blaster shoved up his... [/i]Angrily, Psibertooth shook off her annoyance with the rescuer and chose to be relieved that the situation was under control. She zoomed down to street level and ditched the jetpack for her tech-enhanced running instead. Less obvious approach that way, and fewer things for Topaz to needle her about.
As she jogged closer, though, the look on the female cop’s face made her slow and instinctively turn on her stealth mode. She found its almost imperceptible whine comforting. The college-aged hero tilted her head to examine the scene and keep the cracked part of her visor out of the way. Two of the rescued cops stood over an unconscious body with blaster burns on it and threw glances at the oblivious Topaz.
“...No Black Rose were in that warehouse, right?” said the balding older cop.
The female officer nodded. “None. But Topaz was,” she said quietly. “Do you really think a hero killed Aragon?”
The weaselly-faced one stood up and dusted off his pants reflexively. “What I think is, we’d better have a serious talk with our friend with the fancy ray gun as soon as backup shows up.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’d better call Preszewski Center and tell them to prep the secure suspect interview room.”
Psibertooth sucked in a slow breath. [i]Well. Chalk one up for the real good guys. [/i] She briefly wondered if she should introduce herself, or explain about the smoking crater a few buildings over, but thought better of it. A part of her wanted to go investigate that warehouse right now and see if she could find anything to help, but the cops would take care of it. It was their job. Hers was to find out what was in the vial she’d recovered from the Rooks, and make sure they made it into police custody.
Her legs ached from all the running and fighting, and the stab in her side was letting her know her adrenaline rush had run out and she couldn’t ignore it any longer. Her suit’s power supply was getting awfully warm, and between the rips in her armor and the cracks in her visor, she’d have a lot of work to do before she hit the streets again.
[i]And midterms! Oh God, midterms. [/i] Another night in the shop doing repairs meant another night not studying.
[i]Become a hero, they said. Be one of the good guys, they said. Do your duty, they said. [/i] As police reinforcements arrived on scene and they slowly surrounded Topaz, Psibertooth decided to sit silently and invisibly on the ground and rest a minute. Heroes do their jobs. Villains go to jail.
Seeing it happen right in front of her reminded her of those movie posters too – and why she wore the suit.
[i]Now if only my legs would stop cramping... [/i]