Ottawa, Canada

Pierre drove south on Woodroffe, past the Algonquin college main campus. "It's so dark." Paul had been to the campus when he was younger. During the open house. They had a lot of cool activities. He even scored some swag.

"Sun's down and Ontario hydro is still down," Pierre explained. Rene was quiet, distracted but still conscious.

Rene was planning. He knew the cat was out of the bag. Telling everyone about his real aces was a no-no.

'Are you sure you can do this and not screw it up?' that was mainly for the uppity avatar.

[[Screw you bio-brother. I'm sorry, it was a mistake and I admit it and take full responsibility. Move on.]] Rene let it go. The avatar was his ego. He would have done the same thing. A fight would hinder, not help.

[Making you a sys-admin of the original Xerys System is not hard. With AI-Rene's help it would take little effort.] Scarlett explained.

'Do it. Make sure this status only appears to private party members, also make sure it's on a separate tab that's encrypted. I can grant access to see the information, and no one can force access. Not even another sys-admin. If a sys-admin exists and I am somehow fooled into giving access, show them a fake tab. Above all else...Stay hidden. Okay, go ahead.'

Rene let them get to it while he guided Pierre to Bertona park.

 Bertona Park.

Ottawa, Canada. 

As was his habit Rene checked the side mirrors. He saw that there were two RCMP cruisers pulling up behind them.

Special Constable Jack Stewart exited the driver side and another constable joined him from the other vehicle.

"Mahoney." Jack motioned with his chin to join up with Pierre. "Hey, Pete. This the place?"

"Yeah. Rene was telling me that he was standing across the street. This is his route, and when the first flash went off he fell into the snowbank there." Pierre pointed at the snowbank. The indentation was already covered by the snowfall that has yet to stop for the last twenty-six hours.

"Rene, can you set us up into a quick party?" Pierre requested as the group walked over to the other side of the street. As they neared the snowbank, a party invitation flashed on the HUDs.

"You can still see the smoke still rising over there." Rene pointed out the spot where the meteorite fragment crashed.

"What were you doing out there?" Jack asked, "that's like in the middle of the park.

Rene was embarrassed and didn't want to talk about it, but sticking as close as possible to the truth was his best option. "Squirrels."

"What do you mean squirrels?" Constable Kieran Mahoney asked.

"After the second flash, I noticed that the two squirrels that I usually see on my walk were acting strange. I mean they were zipping around like the flash. It was so crazy that I was drawn in. I was full of all this new energy that I didn't think about it. So I walked into the park to see what drove them to act this way. When I got close they stopped running around and came right at me. They were really aggressive. So I got my mace out and was about to spray them. That's when the world exploded. When I woke up I was in a daze. I walked out of the park and got into my transit." 

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While the party was looking at the hole filled with steaming water, Rene looked around. Something was nagging at the back of his head. His  Spacial Awareness kicked in. Something or someone was watching them.

Rene used the party chat to ask, "Can you guys feel that?"

Pierre kept looking at the small lake while he walked around the perimeter. "You mean like we're being watched?" He replied.

"Yeah I was about to say that I felt something out of wack, but it just could be whatever is under the water."

Now that everyone was alert they began to look around. 

"Hey, dad, what's that?" Paul pointed at the outline of missing stars. 

"It's like there's something blocking the light." Kieran Mahoney said as he drew the outline made by the missing star dots.

"That's definitely not squirrels." Jack drew his automatic out of its holster and the other officers did the same. 

Paul lit up the park as he burst into the sky, an electric field covering his body.

"J.P. GET BACK!" yelled Pierre.

Paul heard his uncle and turned around as a beam of energy clipped his side.

Pierre flew as fast as he can to catch his nephew before he crashed. 

Rene activated the Telekinetic Combat skin and ran towards his son.

The two officers began to fire at the sky with their automatic side arms. 

That's when five silhouettes tried to ambush the party. 

Three converged on the Wilder's while each constable had to deal with a silhouette of their own. 

All the while energy beams blasted the park all around them.

Pierre caught Paul in mid-air. "I'm okay. My force field protected me. Let go."

Pierre let JP fly on his own. The kid was fine. "Follow my lead."

Pierre and JP flew at the silhouettes. Pierre fired his Glock 17 at the dark shadows. While JP hurled lighting from his hands.

The shadows scattered as the lightning hit one of them. A serpentine form in a metallic power armor crashed in front of Rene.

Rene jumped at the armored snake and stabbed it with a Telekinetic spike formed by his combat skin. The spike broke off a piece of armor, and the snake tried to twist around Rene. To Rene it's movements were in slow motion. He could predict where the next attack was coming from with his awareness. 

[[RENE grab the tail and use Telemechanics to jam this AI packet into the firmware.]] Following his avatar's advice Rene grabbed the data packet a forced a connection with the power armor. The reaction was immediate. The snake tightened around Rene and began to constrict. The snake was trying to crush him through the Telekinetic armor.

Lightning blazed in the sky as JP hurled his lightning bolts at any dark shape that moved.

Pierre went for the high ground and began to fire at the other silhouettes attacking the officers on the ground.

As for Jack Stewart and Kieran Maloney, the only thing they could do was try and anticipate where the energy beam was coming from and try not to get hit. Every time a silhouette fired a light flashed to indicate where the follow-up beam would hit. 

Jack could see that his return fire wasn't doing anything, even if it hit. So he concentrated on staying alive. His Telekinesis was able to give him a boost when he jumped around. Kieran was running around at super speed and shooting the big black outline in the sky. He dodged every time he saw a flash.

Pierre noticed that the Glock wasn't cutting it. He reholstered the sidearm and went to max ramming speed. The mid-air tackle worked. He was much faster than his power armored opponent. The slim silhouette hit the ground hard. So much force was delivered by what was essentially an aerial hockey body check. The reason a body check is used so often in hockey is that it works. Pierre was a flying battering ram. 'Whatever works.' 

He left the power armor pilot embedded in the snow. He went after another target. Jack Stewart was having a lot more trouble than Maloney. He lined up his second target and charged. On the way he contacted Rene. "Hey, Rene!"

"What? I'm kinda busy here bro." The snake around Rene collapsed. The power armor began to melt off the Alien as the AI attack went to work on the molecular bots that made up the armor.

"Can you do anything with your sys-admin privilege to help out Jack?" Pierre missed the body check. The split concentration didn't help. It did buy Jack some breathing room. 

He looped around and went again. He saw that JP went to help out Kieran Maloney. 

He charged the target again. And crashed into a high-density force field. He bounced off and performed a side loop this time.

On the way back he saw that the power armor pilot get a shot off and hit Jack. 

There was an energy flare around Jack and the energy dissipated.

'I guess Rene was able to help.'

Rene was able to help. He asked if Scarlett can develop a Telekinetic force field given that he had a level 3 Telekinesis.

Scarlett said she can spoof the system. [He should have come up with a way to develop it himself.]

While Jack was jumping around like a jackrabbit the Xerys System sent him an alert, {You have unlocked the skill Telekinetic Force Field.}

{Level 1 Force Field available. Do you wish to deploy?}

"Hell Yes!" Jack begged.

{Level 1 Force Field active.}

{Level Force Field has taken damage. Field Integrity down by 25%}

He got hit again and gritted his teeth. The shock was jarring, to say the least. 

{Force Field Integrity at 50%}

Jack continues to juke left and right. He saw Pete take another shot at the guy shooting at him and this time Petersen nailed the bastard. But he also got hit a 3rd time.

{Force Field Integrity at 25%. Telekinetic Force Field skill is now at level 2.}

'Not worth it.' he sprinted towards the silhouette on the ground and did a jump kick to where the head should be. This time the invisible whatever it was stayed down.

Pierre saw that three power armor aliens were down, the one chasing Maloney retreated when JP went after it. Somehow he was able to track these things even when they were invisible. That left at least one more. The smart bet would be if that one made a break for it as well.

Three big light flashed once and Pierre knew he was the ship's next target.

"SHIT! RENE TAKE HIM OUT!" he hopped his big brother knew what to do.

Rene did. He saw Pierre take a full spread of energy fire, and hold. He didn't know if he Pierre would survive another blast from all the ship's weapons a second time.

"FIRE!"

AI-Rene did just that. He fired the Planetary Plasma Projector straight up.

Nothing was left of the ship.