Justin was getting pretty good at directing the Phantom air drone through the early evening streets of Detroit. He was inordinately proud of the fact that he hadn't clipped or crashed into anything for over half-an-hour. The problem was that the drone was so slow he kept getting distracted with other things, and by slow he meant it could only travel at 40 mph, which for him was interminable.
There was actually very little of the off-the-shelf premium quadcoptor that Justin hadn't tinkered with. The battery pack had been replaced with a graphene anode lithium-air battery, the signalling and controls were passed through a highly-encrypted channel designed to hide behind passive urban radiation. He'd given the rotors a wave-suppressing film, and the body some light and radar scattering paint. The on-board camera had been upgraded with an advanced sensor suite including ultra 4k, night-vision, heat-vision, burst lidar, and passive wifi-radar.
All-in-all, it was a smooth, silent, nearly invisible eye in the sky, and some bastard had just shot it.
Justin, who had been paying slightly more attention to his latest research projects than he should have while on patrol, now threw all his attention onto the small drone wavering in the air. He started it on some evasive manoeuvres in case another shot was incoming, and quickly reviewed the last few seconds of footage. He spotted a flash of high temperature compressed air coming from a nearby wall, but strangely there seemed to be nothing there except a dangling rope.
Flicking through a number of filters, Justin was finally able to make out a heat-map of an invisible figure half way up the rope. Zooming in, he cleaned up the image to get a better look at the guy's masked face, and forwarded the still to ERA to see if she could identify him.
Justin sighed in relief as he recognised the guy's weapon as a dart pistol, luckily for him a dart was unlikely to have done any serious damage to Justin's baby.
When ERA responded a couple of seconds later, he was a little surprised at the completeness of the information she sent him, granted she'd been responsible for building up the powered database for nearly a week now, but still.
The file named the invisible climber as Ebon Fox, a sneak thief with Invisibility powers, a love for Renoir, and a penchant for art theft. According to the file, ERA had picked up on dark web chatter that the Fox was after a Renoir painting on show at the Institute of Arts Museum, which come to think of it, Justin was hovering pretty near to.
The thief was known to be a low-violence villain, so Justin was pretty surprised he'd shot at the drone, but then, Justin had probably been hovering in the area for long enough that he thought he'd been made and panicked.
Quest Received!
Fox in the Hen House
Type: Hero
Description: You have discovered Ebon Fox attempting to break into the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum.
Goal: Stop him.
Difficulty: Easy
Rewards: 200xp
Ok, maybe he should have been paying more attention to the data ERA had been collecting. 200 xp was 200 xp after all.
With a quick loop, Justin activated the secondary rotors. They weren't silent like the first set, but they almost doubled the little drone's speed, and he was on the thief before he made it a meter down the rope. A quick application of the Phantom's forward prongs and a small amount of the battery's stored charge, and the now visible Fox hung unconscious in his harness, gently knocking his head against the wall.
New Skill Discovered! Piloting has been added to known skills.
Successful Skill Use +12 xp to Piloting - Beginner Level 1 [12%].
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New Skill Discovered! Tazer has been added to known skills.
Successful Skill Use +14 xp to Tazer - Beginner Level 1 [14%].
He was surprised he hadn't received the Piloting skill before now, but guessed it needed you to do more than putter around empty streets. Smiling in victory, Justin put in a quick call to the DPD, and contacted the Museum's night shift to let them know they had a slumbering villain hanging from their wall. This time he didn't do it anonymously, giving them his codename when asked.
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You have received +2 Fame, the current Fame of Artisan is 2.
Quest Completed!
Fox in the Hen House
Type: Hero
Description: You have incapacitated Ebon Fox.
Difficulty: Easy
Rewards: 200xp
Before now, Justin hadn't been sure that night patrols would actually achieve anything, mostly he'd just wanted to swoop through the empty streets, playing with his new drone. But fame and xp were definitely worth it.
"ERA, forward me any information you've picked up on potential criminal activities." He might as well have a look to see if he'd been missing anything else.
You have received 4 new quests. Please view your Journal for details.
Ok, he opened his Journal. Well shit. He was definitely going to need help to deal with this, and so there went all his carefully laid plans for wooing prospective teammates.
He had ERA pilot the drone back to the workshop, he needed it to deliver some invitations.
The inside of the Underground was in an even worse state than his workshop, there was the smell of damp and mould in the air, and most of the walls were bare brickwork with the occasional splash of graffiti. The bar out front was just a pile of glass, wood and rubble. Abandoned for about thirty years, the old tavern had definitely seen better days.
Justin and the heroes were meeting in the backroom where Justin had had a shiny white, circular conference-room table installed, with a dozen matching white leather chairs. It turned out a dozen had been a bit optimistic since only five heroes had agreed to the meet. There was no electricity yet, so Justin had hung a few battery-powered led lights around the place.
At one seat at the table there was a chair missing, just a laptop turned to face the rest of the table. The screen displaying KIP's smiling head, his skin streaming alien code. Justin had watched through the laptop's camera as the heroes eyed each other with interest on arrival, seeming to give the strange image on the laptop only a cursory glance.
"I am apologising for the state of room." he said as North Wind settled into a chair on his left, the last to arrive, she chose to sit separately from everyone else as if declaring her independence. Either her shift had run over, or she'd dithered on whether to come at all. "I am also apologising for my talking bad. I am learning in progress."
He mentally sighed as he saw Shift blink in recognition, there was just no way to disguise his voice when he only barely spoke the language. The others looked over at the laptop, examining it with greater interest. He examined them back.
Revenant stood to Justin's right, his hands resting on the back of a chair he'd gently tested on arrival before deciding it wouldn't hold his weight. He was dressed in modern black trousers and leather boots, but his top looked more like a tunic than a shirt, and he was wearing shiny chainmail that looked like it had recently been tied back together. His skull face was unconcerned (could it show concern?), probably because he could survive the building falling on him if this turned out to be a trap.
Next was Division, a solid black man in his forties, his closely-shaven hair was just starting to thin and had begun to grey at the sides. He was dressed in urban combat fatigues that looked freshly ironed, and a simple black eye mask. He was leant back in his chair with his hands resting on his stomach, still and watchful, but equally unconcerned. In his case it was probably because the him here was a copy. Justin wasn't sure what his limit was, but he knew at least two others were outside the tavern, one disguised as a vagrant, the other in a sniper nest on the building opposite.
Seated next to him, Shift had been looking bored, playing with his phone until Justin spoke, now he looked a little troubled. He was dressed in sneakers, joggers, and a red hoodie with the hood raised, and a band of red face-paint across his eyes. He wore fingerless gloves with the hoodie's sleeves rolled up his forearms. Justin wondered how he got them to stay there while moving at speed, or his hood up come to think of it. Justin hoped he didn't panic and blurt something out that would give away either of their identities.
To Justin's left was North Wind, dressed all in white, long white leather coat over white jeans, white boots and a light white sweater. Her long black hair was tied back in a pony-tail, and she was sporting a white eye mask that seemed to highlight her epicanthic folds. She obviously didn't mind people knowing she was Asian.
And lastly, Shade was in a pool of shadow in the corner. Justin wasn't sure if the others even realised he was there or not. Revenant kept throwing glances around the room, but he could have just been checking for trouble, or considering the decor.
"Please, Shade is to join us." He said, trying to make clear he was looking at the man, which was pretty difficult to do from a flat screen.
The shadows receded leaving a man dressed in a hooded purple robe over simple black clothes. Blocky black bands and symbols decorated the robe, giving it a distinctly native appearance. His face stayed improbably shadowed within the hood as he moved forward and sat at the table between Shift and North Wind. Wind was giving him a dirty look as if he'd been trying to fool her personally. Or maybe she just didn't like strange men lurking in shadowy corners.
"I am questing," Justin said, emphasizing the word and turning everyone's attention back to him. "There is big battle tomorrow, many gangs. I need all of you help."