Guardian Angel

An Apex Short Story

-by Ninmast Nunyabiz-

Part 1

She had smelled so nice.

In his desperation, at first, the only feature he noticed was the Union Defender icon on the back of her jacket. He had felt like he'd have to run forever to find someone to help, and elated gratitude had filled him at seeing that globe and star crest so quickly. When she turned toward his shouting, his mind only registered the white of her rig against the blue and black of her reinforced bodysuit as a side-note. It was too busy panicking to find anything else about her worth mentioning at all.

When he tried to tell her what had happened, words failed him. He gestured and flailed and made all sorts of sounds, but the longer his tongue and his cerebrum refused to cooperate, the greater his panic became, which only made finding the words that much harder.

There were many responses one could have expected from someone with the mentality necessary to join the Defenders. Agitation, annoyance, frustration, anger. Telling him to get a grip or calling for a paramedic with a tranquilizer. Her response was none of these things.

Instead, to his surprise and in a shock to his fear response, she'd knelt down and embraced him. She held his head against her chest and, restraining his limbs with her own, gently forced him to be still. She ran her fingers through his head feathers and whispered hushing noises into his ear until his breathing began to slow in time to her heart he could feel through her breastplate. Her soothing scent drifted into his nose, forced all the more by their enclosed proximity. It was a touch sweet and a little loamy, almost floral.

She had smelled so nice. Why, out of all of it, that stuck with him so heavily, he couldn't say. Nevertheless, it had embedded itself firmly as her most defining characteristic by the time he had calmed himself enough for her to allow the evening chill to replace her soft warmth. With a smile, she encouraged him to try again.

It worked, and he was able to tell her about the preds that had taken his sister, how she had made him hide so that only she was taken, and how they dragged her back into Border Town, threatening to kill her if she screamed. When recalling the events worked him back into a fuss, the defender ran her fingers through his plumage again and waited until he was able to continue. He was even able to point her exactly to the building they'd holed up in, since he had dared to tail them instead of immediately fleeing. She had assured him he was very brave for that.

Now they were back at her speeder, and while she was relaying the situation to her commander via holo, he finally had a moment to take in more than just her badge.

"... at least a dozen heat signatures ..."

He wasn't really listening to the conversation, though as she would turn one way or another, the movement would draw his attention just enough to catch a few words.

"... for a full strike team, but ..."

She was tall, or at least taller than him by about two heads, and a mammal of some variety. Bipedal, as convergent evolution had driven most sapient life in the galaxy, with fur instead of plumage coming out of the top and back of her head. It was the brown color of a late autumn leaf, and worn long as if to imitate a tail he only at that time noticed she didn't have. That was unusual, most mammals had tails to help them balance on two legs, among other reasons. Was she really clumsy?

"... due respect, they'll take too ..."

She reminded him of the females of his own species, and he found himself wondering if they were more like her before galactic society turned his people inside-out.

His species, the Chisay, were descended from avians, while the vast majority of bipedal galactic species descended from mammals and reptiles. His people were known for being friendly, highly sociable and colorful, but this was a perspective almost entirely shaped by the males. Like most birds, they had evolved for the males to be smaller, more socially outgoing and more visually appealing, with colorful feathers and delicate features.

Females, on the other hand, were larger, as they were the ones that would be there to fight to protect the children from predators. They were plainer, too, with their plumage tending more toward browns and grays, and once upon a time, it helped them blend in with tree limbs or cliffs better than the more colorful males, so as to be less likely to draw a predator's eyes to their nests.

When they took wing to the stars and became a part of the galactic community, however, this proved to be the exact opposite of the norm, and every Chisa old enough to see the world around them knew what that had done to their society. Suddenly, Chisay males were being actively courted by countless exotic aliens, and for the first time, the females had to ... masculinize themselves if they hoped to get a mate. After generations, it had completely destroyed their own culture, and for their females, any sense of what it meant to be such.

As a female, the defender was largely unadorned, sturdily built and of simple, mundane colors. At the same time, she had already shown herself warm and compassionate to some terrified thing smaller than herself. In short, to the Chisa's eyes, she looked like a woman.

"... not saying don't send them, just ..."

It occurred to him that he didn't actually recognize her species at all. Of course, anyone short of an ambassador or xenobiologist could be forgiven for not being able to offhandedly recall all of the Galactic Union's hundred-plus member species, but the number physically suitable for service in the Defender corps was far lower, and those with the psychological profile for it fewer still. Even a young teen like him could recognize most of the corps' races, but he drew a blank on her.

"... Understood, heading out."

He realized she'd ended the call when she started preparing her gear from the speeder's storage compartment. Wow, a pulse shotgun looked way bigger in real life. But it made sense. Who knew how many preds were in that building, and the wide spread of the nonlethal weapon was in the Defender arsenal specifically for these kinds of situations. That and riot control, but would it have enough power to-- Oh, she changed the intensity setting ... Y-yeah, that would probably be a good idea. Y'know, preds.

But then she moved her taser from her holster to the box. Wasn't she going-- wait, was she replacing it with a pistol?!

By the time she closed the cache box, she'd added spare batteries for the shotgun, a pair of metal rectangles he assumed were the same thing for the lethal sidearm, an extra bundle of ties ... and a knife half again as long as his hand!

All of it attached to various magnetic hardpoints on her bodysuit, designed to be both easily accessible and out of her way. By the time she had finished, she looked more as if she were going to war - a nearly foreign concept to the Union, viewed akin to Mutually Assured Destruction - than to a crime scene.

But, again, he reminded himself, they were preds. This was probably a good idea.

"Stay with the speeder," she told him. "Any other preds come around, you hide inside. More defenders will be here soon."

She had nearly turned away when he made himself speak. "W-wait!" If he didn't ask now and something happened to her, he'd never know. "Miss Defender! What are you?" He had wanted to ask her name, but lost the nerve at the last second.

She hesitated to turn back toward him. His stupid question, he realized, had probably interrupted her when she was building herself up mentally to charge into a den of predators. But when she turned back, she gave him a bright, proud smile.

"I'm a human," she answered.

* * *

Part 2

She hated preds.

That wasn't hyperbole. She didn't just strongly dislike them. They didn't irritate her. She truly, genuinely hated them as one does when something's very existence is a blight on one's own.

The slang term was short for predator, but it meant more than that when it was used. There were dozens of predator species in Union space, though to date, none were members. This was solely because of the preds, predators who hunted sapient beings, among countless other violent crimes. They had no civilization of their own and put no value in anyone else's. Only strength mattered, and, they reasoned, the strong were entitled to indulgence.

All Union member species were first civilized species, and as such, evolved from prey species. Civilization, itself, Union scientists and historians agreed, was the natural evolution of the Herd, once a herd species becomes intelligent. The predator equivalent, the Pack, was too exclusionary to become civilized.

Without fail, every attempt the Union had discovered of a predator species attempting Civilization had led to self-annihilation. Competition over resources, or even mere pecking order, would lead to violence and the breakdown of alliances between the packs. Any development of technology would only be turned on solidifying power and ousting rival leaders. Most predator species didn't even try to civilize, loyal only to their family groups or small packs and riding the coat tails of their prey into the larger galaxy.

Oh, it was theoretically possible for a predator species to develop a Herd evolutionary trait that would then be able to lead to a Civilized people, but it would require such an utter Hell World of hyper-competition that even the apex predator of the entire biosystem would need to fear predation for as long as it lived. It was, for all intents and purposes, considered the stuff of holo flicks and bad science fiction.

Yes, in a very literal sense, the Union was racist against predators, but they tried very hard not to be. No predator was allowed to be imprisoned merely for being a predator, and would be allowed to engage in trade, commerce and nearly every other privilege of a Union citizen until they actually committed a crime.

Because predators were designed by nature to kill, however, and because preds were incapable of forming the bonds with others outside their packs necessary to treat others in a civilized manner, there were countless little restrictions on them, from movement to registration, even what work they were allowed to do.

Because of preds, she had been twice over robbed of her chance at a normal, peaceful life, and forced to choose between fighting to protect the Union or forever be a social outcast, because everyone knew only predators took the menial, heavy manual labor of the docks and warehouses.

And all because she was a human, the bad scifi flick come to life in terrifying flesh and blood. Once they realized they'd mistaken a predator for a prey species since she'd not conducted herself like a lunatic barbarian ... well, at least they were genuinely apologetic as they turned around and took back the promise of attending a Union university they'd previously given her.

The worst part was that it only happened because she'd protected her friends and fellow students from pred muggers. No good deed, they say. Damn, she hated preds.

And now a bunch of them had gone and started taking citizens right off the street. They must have built up quite a group to be so bold, but that was about to change. Somewhere in the abandoned storehouse was an innocent girl whose only sin was protecting her brother, and they intended to make KFC out of her. Well, she would kill every last one of them if she had to in order to keep that from happening.

There were two big bruisers at the entrance, wearing old, patchwork rigs. One was armed with an auto-printed smoothbore projectile weapon - the alien hypertech equivalent of a slamgun - while the other rested a piece of construction piping with a hunk of concrete on one end over his shoulders. Neither was relevant to her, as she had no intention of using the front door.

Her own military-grade rig wasn't necessary for the running jump that caught hold of the old emergency ladder along the side of the building, as humans, like most primates, were adept climbers and jumpers. She would have preferred a grapnel to make it all quicker, but aids like that were rare among Union gear. If you needed to get up somewhere high, it was more common practice to either use a craft or send a member of a race capable of flight or skilled in climbing. Most Union species were much too uncomfortable with methods of traversal that weren't natural to them to invest in ways to do it better.

But then, most Union species would have charged right at the front gate, she reflected as she found a hole in the roof and dropped down into the building's rafters. That was why she wasn't surprised to find that those were the only preds on guard. About a dozen others were inside, milling around like a gang. Some were drinking, others were gambling, a few were catching a catnap, and a couple were actually doing something productive with weapon maintenance.

It always struck her as odd that preds didn't do regular patrols. Instead, they preferred places with as few access points as possible, and then placed a token force on what points they couldn't block. Even the bruisers out front were intended more as eyes for Defenders or rival gangs and intimidating walls of meat to keep gawkers moving than anything intended to hold off a sustained assault.

This was the predator mindset on display, she had been told in training. So long as their numbers were too low to stir conflict within the pack, it was not in their nature to fear attack. No prey species, after all, evolved to hunt. Yes, they had members that were walking tanks, but none of them knew how to stalk, pursue, track or ambush. It simply wasn't in their natures.

Go figure, she thought as she made her way silently across beams and girders, mapping the storehouse floor and mentally noting where the preds were generally located. Prey species were bad at hunting. If the Defenders had been based around a large human contingent, this lazy confidence from the preds would see them nearly wiped out within a solar cycle.

But there wasn't a large contingent of humans. They were, in fact, the smallest racial representation in the entire field, numbering exactly one. She was the only human in the entire organization, in the entirety of the Union, in fact. It was why they had so little clue as to what to do with her.

She found the girl toward the back. She'd arrived in time; though bound and stripped of most of her clothes, the Chisa girl was largely unharmed. The preds were preparing to change that, however, as they attempted to jury-rig a large, improvised electric grill to the stripped connections of the warehouse's old power systems. It must have had its own generator; she could feel the rafters under her feet vibrate each time they tried, as if something massive was attempting to turn in the ground beneath the building. Her stomach churned with each drawl of whatever turbines were below at the idea of them kicking fully over and that poor girl getting grilled alive.

She would have preferred to have more time to plan out exactly how to move next, maybe pick out the most dangerous targets or how best to clear the area around the Chisa. Unfortunately, there was a scav in the mix down below. Scavs were smaller, more skittish preds who evolved from scavengers, hence the name. More regular preds held no respect for them, but they lived to be toadies to whatever predator scared them the most, seeking to spare their own lives through sniveling and brown nosing.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The more immediate problem, however, was that scavs had extremely sensitive senses, usually of smell or hearing, to go with their overdeveloped flight response. Damn, the little walking alarm bell was already looking around, too.

"... Uh, guys," he was starting to say in a nasally tone as both his ears and his nose twitched, though the preds closest to him seemed to ignore him, "I think somebody's--"

He said nothing more as her boots came down on either shoulder and the entirety of her body's weight and momentum collapsed his spinal column and crushed the vertebrae, while simultaneously severing the cord within from the brain. It was as instantaneous and total as if she'd beheaded him.

... And that, the preds noticed.

The room filled with shouts ranging from recognizing her as a defender to cluelessly demanding to know what was going on. She was already drawing the pulse shotgun while they were still reeling in surprise, and fired it into the group ahead of her while still crouched, only to immediately pivot as she stood and fire it again behind her. The kinetic waves sent preds and old storage containers rolling and provided an opening to keep her from being dogpiled.

They charged her now, but she barely saw them as individuals. Click, pulse, turn, click, pulse, rotate, click, pulse. Duck. Click, pulse. Reload, repeat. It almost felt like she was on autopilot as their slow charges were replied to in a dervish that she barely needed to direct. The cadence of their footfalls was no match for the beating of her heart as it thundered in her ears above their shouts and cries. Even then, she felt as if she might fire several times between its beats.

She knew what was happening. Distantly, her rational mind, still slurring away on a trickle feed of resources, recognized she had entered combat mode. Her deep breaths were bringing as much oxygen into her lungs as her body could possibly pump while glands dumped combat drug level compounds into her bloodstream. Blood was directed into her core more than her extremities to protect against loss in case of damage, making her limbs feel light and airy. Her brain dimmed pain responses to limit loss of combat effectiveness should she be injured. Muscles that were capable of crushing the stronger-than-concrete bones they were attached to had their limiters removed to maximize performance, even at the risk of self-inflicted damage.

Most spectacular of all, however, was the incomprehensible processing power of the human brain. As powerful as it was at any given time, it was normally a terribly distracted device. Not only was it, like any animal brain, constantly tracking so many things simultaneously, it was the most resource-hungry component of a high-performance machine to enable the advanced thought processes its host enjoyed. In times of great need, however, it was capable of dumping those higher processes to enhance sensory processing by orders of magnitude.

While most predators ran at full power all of the time, humans had so much physical power that they evolved limiters to protect themselves, and so much brain power that they slowed themselves down for musing. All it took, however, was a single switch to turn off all of those restrictions and return them to a state of primal dominance.

The worst part was how good it felt.

She turned and saw a hulking simic reptile grab a rickety, makeshift stool and wind back with it. She crossed her arms in front of her face and braced for the impact of the hurled furniture. Even without the incredibly tough bones and decreased pain, she doubted it have meant much through her bodysuit. Its armor wasn't exactly heavy, but it didn't take much to protect her limbs from the projectile, and her limbs in turn would protect anything more vital. Like her face.

When it broke over her and shattered to either side of her form, however, the real threat was that the killer croc had charged her behind his seat.

He went to crash his mass against her, to push her off balance, to force her to the ground ... and ... she let him. Instead of trying to wrestle with his bulk, after bracing against his arms, she reached for his collar and let herself fall backwards with him. As her center of gravity started to go past the point of no return, she placed first one foot, then as she was nearly on her back, the other into his abdomen. With their shared momentum, she rolled back and shoved with both of her feet, monkey flipping him into the crates behind her.

She wasn't sure when the shotgun left her hands - it must have been when she reached for him with both of hers - but she grabbed for it and snatched it back up.

"STOP!" The male voice shouted over the din just as she was getting back to her feet, and she turned and saw a lanky, pale pred with a flat, slit nose next to the Chisa, sharp talons raised toward her neck. "Put down your weapons, Defender, and--"

She knew what he was going to say. Put down your weapons and surrender or the girl dies. So trite. So boring. And he took so long to say it. Besides, if she did such a stupid thing, she and the girl would both die. So while he was still talking, she pulled the pistol out and shot him in the face.

The crates behind her shifted and she heard the heavy footfalls of the killer croc coming toward her. The pulse shotgun's recoil wasn't meant for one hand, but she held it toward him without looking, anyway. To her ears and her other senses, she knew exactly where he was. She felt, more than heard, him pause inches from the barrel. And she pulled the trigger.

At point blank range, the higher level of the less than lethal riot control weapon became very lethal, indeed, the kinetic energy moving through bones and internal organs faster than the body could be thrown. Against the barrel, the setting she'd put it to before ever coming in would have obliterated a concrete wall.

He stirred after he landed back in the crates, but it was mostly reflex. He was dead before he could do more than raise his head, and his bulk went still.

She took a moment to look around the storeroom, but nothing more raised to challenge her, and she moved toward the girl. As she reached her, she pulled out the knife and began to cut at her bindings.

"Hold on, kiddo, we've almost got you out of here," she said, more to say something at all than anything.

"What the fuck are you?!"

She blinked. That hadn't come from the girl. Instead, she turned and saw the slit-nose pred holding his hand over a bloody hole on his forehead as he scrambled for his feet. Damn, cranial plates. Annoying. She left the girl there a little longer and turned to face him again, placing herself between him and the bird.

"You're no leaf muncher, that's for damn sure," he continued to rant at her. "What are you?!"

"I'm a human," she said again for the second time that night as she raised the knife into a fighting stance. "The apex predator of a Hell World."

"Bullshit!" he replied, but he took his hand from his wound and crouched lower, his opposable talons raised at the end of his stringy arms as they began to circle one another.

"The alternative is that your whole pack just got wiped out by a leaf muncher."

His answering growl turned into a shout as he lunged for her. Her knife fended away the swipe of his claws, but then they were on each other as the struggle turned into a grappling match.

Those lanky limbs held a surprising amount of strength, while remaining agile enough to keep her arms on the move even as she rushed to keep her footing. He slammed her into a wall and she felt something jab into her back. The ground beneath them churned again, and this time the great beast in the basement turned over. Sparks began to fly from the loose assortment of cables and some of them began to twitch and jerk.

She pounded her forehead into his, felt his wet blood against her skin. She did it again, then a third time before he staggered away from her far enough for her to get her boot between the two of them and shove him away.

His foot caught on one of the cords and he fell backwards as he dislodged it. The thick electrical cable began to dance with more vigor. Thinking quickly, he grabbed it behind the live end, as one would a snake behind its head to keep it from biting. As he got to his feet, he pulled the cord behind and around him with his other hand as he kept the business end toward the Defender.

He lunged with it a couple times to evoke a response from her, but she didn't flinch. The third time he did it, she sliced the back of his forearm with her knife, forcing him to release the cable and stumble back again. The cord slapped the ground and sent arcs and sparks into the air with enough force to draw a scream from the Chisa girl, but the two predators were more concerned with each other.

She pulled the pistol and fired it again, the first shot hitting him in his shoulder, then a second, this one glancing off of his cranial plate again.

"DAMN YOU!" he shouted.

But she had taken a card from the killer croc's playbook and used his disorientation to charge and punt his cord back toward him.

This time, his reflexes damned him, and he caught the live wire with his hands. He couldn't shout. All of his muscles tensed and spasmed, but the pain on his face was lit up by the arcs that surged through him and splashed around him searching for ground. He stumbled back, and again, his feet tangled in the cords, and he went down as the live wire landed on top of him.

Smoke was filling the room and a panel in the wall sparked and blew, and still he continued to dance on the floor. She wasn't sure his charred form was even still alive, but the old generator was starting to make a bad sound. It churned harder, dryer and with a growing whine as the vibrations increased in intensity.

She turned back to the girl and, without comment, quickly sliced through the ties. If she nicked the girl with the knife now, they had bigger problems to worry about. Once the girl was free, the defender scooped her up in a princess carry and began running for the front gate.

Perhaps the guards had thought all the ruckus was just a regular fight breaking out among the preds, because the two big bruisers were still there as she came running out. They had only started to look around as the trembling reached them with enough intensity to start shaking dust down from the structure.

They turned at the sight of a Defender and readied their weapons, but she ran right past them. "I'd run if I were you," was all she spared them, and didn't even bother looking back to see if they took her advice.

* * *

Part 3

The human had been right. Not long after she had left, more defenders arrived, more than he'd ever seen in one place. They towered over him and all bristled with the nervous energy typical of expecting danger.

A couple of them had come over and confirmed most of what she had asked him, then opened up one of their speeders so he could sit inside instead of having to stand around. Another contacted his parents, but said they weren't allowed to come out right away because of the danger of the situation.

None of them moved toward the warehouse. Whenever they would be talking about it, he'd overhear things like "heightened bioscans" and "weapon discharges." He gathered the fighting with the preds must have already started, and it was too dangerous, so these officers were more to keep a perimeter and monitor the situation from here.

Had they sent even more defenders to the warehouse, then?

He distracted himself from worrying over his sister and the defender woman by looking humans up on the extranet. It was either that, or fret and worry without being able to do anything about it until he started to molt.

There was precious little information to be had on them, surprisingly. They were a newly discovered species, very new. Holy moley, like within the last solar cycle or two new. Apparently, the only reason the net had anything on them at all was because the species had offered its own databases as part of first contact.

That was unusual. Most species, as he understood it, tended to hold back on sharing so much information about themselves with an alien society they just met. Either humans were immensely friendly or they truly were fearless. He decided he liked the idea of a little bit of both being true.

In either case, the Union was restricting the release of the databases to the net while they worked their way through and verified them. As such, only mostly surface information was available on their species.

Let's see, somewhat high gravity home world, pre FTL species with intrasolar capabilities, mostly standard atmosphere, explained why she didn't need much in the way of support equipment. What did she eat?

Oh, she was an omnivore, that was unusual! Non-predator omnivores, the Chisay actually among them, were exceedingly rare among Union species. Their diets consisted mostly of fruits, starches, greens and small, nonsentient life like insects. While Union markets had a dazzling array of fruits, nuts and vegetables, it was hard to find that last category outside of specialty stores.

He wondered if they and the humans could share snacks. It didn't look like it would be an issue, apparently humans had already been verified compatible with at least 97% of Union foodstuffs, wow! Most species considered themselves lucky if they could hit 60%, what with various things that one species considered toxic and another considered a seasoning. Humans, on the other hand, could pretty much eat whatever they wanted. They really were omnivores!

He had a dirty thought to look up their mating habits. Were their females interested in smaller males? Were they ... compatible? He lost his nerve as he became hyperaware of his surroundings while considering looking this up. Suddenly, he could hear the footsteps of officers milling around and realized one could walk by at any moment, and he reflexively canceled the search.

Turned out that it didn't matter much, though, as a more general search after he'd calmed down revealed that little of that type of information was out yet. The extranet only had that they were sexually dimorphic with two distinct sexes along standard biological lines, and little else. Probably a delicate topic at best, and far too early to have any data outside of their own species.

He tried looking up their home planet, but again, information was sparse. There had apparently been a wide-scale environmental shift in recent planetary history, and the human-provided databases were from before the event. As such, the Union was likely still trying to do a full planetary analysis, or had yet to negotiate such with the humans.

Still, considering how broad the concept of "recent" could be in planetary terms, it must have been a pretty severe climate shift for the most complete native records to predate it. Whatever had happened must have really wrecked havoc on their society. Maybe, with Union aid, they'd be able to recover more quickly. He wondered if they might still need aid volunteers by the time he had finished his education.

The planet was third of eight or nine orbiting a yellow sun, and had a single moon. As for the oddly inconcise planet count, the system apparently had a number of candidates that could be classed as a ninth planet, some that had already been discarded as dwarf planets and others that were only barely in the system at all. The total mass of stellar bodies in the system was frankly absurd, and included two asteroid belts and THREE gas giants. It was no wonder their home planet was so dense as to have such high gravity.

When he learned that the humans named their planets after mythological figures, he started to get curious about that. Mythology was another category that was still drastically underpopulated for them, but he wanted to know how it compared with Chisay mythology. In particular, he had wanted to compare the human Defender to a particular type of divine servant that would descend from the high clouds beyond the sky to defend and comfort those in need.

They did! They did have a parallel! It was--

There was a bright flash of light and the pressure suddenly dropped until his ears nearly popped. Before he could even understand what was happening, the air came back with a vengeance and slammed into the speeder with enough force to rattle it fiercely, and him with it.

An explosion, he realized after it passed and he crawled back out of the vehicle on his knees. Something had exploded.

The speeder's stabilizers might have made it worse, he realized as he got his feet on solid ground again. All of the defenders were still standing and had done little more than raise their arms in front of their faces and brace themselves, save one who might have fallen back in shock.

The heavy smoke cloud was still pluming into the air above where the old storehouse had been and small fires had broken out in spotted locations, clearly visible against the darkening sky. Somewhere in the crowd, a Defender got on comms to send for fire and rescue.

All he could do was shoulder past them and stare toward the crater. The crater that had been where his sister and the human Defender were. The crater where nothing was anymore.

"Movement," somebody shouted. "I see movement!"

It took him a moment of searching before his eyes saw it, too, though the dying light made it hard to make out many details.

That was what spotlights were for, apparently, as several of the speeders promptly turned theirs on and trained them on the approaching figure. The light glinted off of a white and black rig over a dark blue and black bodysuit ... and two brown heads.

"IT'S THEM!" He couldn't keep himself from shouting, jumping and flailing his arms, completely forgetting all of the officers around him. He laughed as his feet threw him down the incline toward the Defender and his sister, the latter still in the human's arms and covered from indecency by the jacket the human had draped over her.

It was a short time later that he again had returned to sitting, this time beside his sister. The human's jacket laid beside them and she had replaced it with a blanket from the paramedics who had given her a clean bill of health. Their parents had been notified again and were on their way to pick them both up, refusing the idea that either should walk home that evening.

"-- had an old reactor in the basement, didn't last long after it actually came on." Nearby, the human was giving a report on what had happened inside the storehouse to a Defender so large that he looked ready to burst out of his suit, and whose badge was more ornate than the others. He had thick gray skin and a conical horn grew from his snout.

The large officer sighed and rubbed at his eyes. "You really tested your luck this time."

"If I hadn't, we wouldn't have gotten there in time to save her."

"I know that!" he snapped back, but withdrew and rubbed at his face again. "One of these days, you're going to rush headlong into something you're not coming back from."

"I'll do my best to get the mission done on the way out, then, sir."

Her superior seethed for a bit, and ranted a bit longer than that, but soon dismissed her with a, "Go home and get some fucking ice on that arm, I'm sick of seeing it."

She saluted and turned to leave.

Remembering what he had been looking up, the boy looked around for a quick excuse and grabbed up her jacket before hurrying after her. "Human! Miss Human!"

She turned back to look at him, a bit surprised at the shout, but he came to a stop in front of her and held the coat up to her. Taking a moment to catch his breath, and putting on the most grateful smile he could manage, he said, "Thank you for being our guardian angel."

The surprise on her face increased tenfold, then came down in the warmest smile he'd seen as she accepted her jacket and slung it over a shoulder. "You're welcome, kid. It's what I'm here for. And thanks, words like that make it all worth it."

As she left, the big Defender chuckled next to the boy. "Angel, eh? Too bad she's already got a callsign, that'd have been a good one."

Realizing he never did get an actual name out of her, the Chisa looked up at the large figure with a tilted head. "What do you call her?"

His face split into a wide grin, showing great, big, flat teeth.

"We call her Apex."