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I rubbed my eyes, taking a minute to get my bearings in my devastated room. I hadn't had the lights replaced yet, so I used the flashing lights of the VTOL outside to orient myself and put on something moderately civilized.
"You fucking UN poof, some of us need to sleep!", someone screamed, hardly audible over the sound of the rotors, as I ran aboard.
Someone threw a shoe at me, another a potted plant at the VTOL, it shattered ineffectually on the metal surface, but I was showered with dirt from the rotor wash.
Jesus. This was the third time this week, and my neighbors had had enough of being woken up at the most ungodly hours. I authorized my assistant to buy chocolates and other gifts for them, as a minor apology. The last thing I needed was to tussle with the HOA, though given the state of my apartment I doubt vandalism was a real concern.
And this was a relatively quiet VTOL, a distant descendant of the old Blackhawk so popular around the world. A Ghosthawk model, so quiet it merely woke up my apartment complex instead of the whole block.
I found my team already aboard and strapped in. Emily, Alia, Alan, and who was that man at the back, he looked kinda familiar?
Ah. Grim. He was having a good day, because after squinting for a few moments I was actually able to identify him.
Everybody was too drowsy for smalltalk, so I disconnected my ears again and managed to nap for half an hour as we flew towards Panama, for me it was the second time this week.
Now that I wasn't half deafened, I pulled open our brief.
OPERATION MILITANT MONAD
THREAT LEVEL: YELLOW
NATURE:
HOSTILE PROBABILITY MANIPULATOR x1 Class 4
HOSTILE AEROKINETIC x1 Class 3
HOSTILE MISCELLANEOUS THREATS
The use of lethal force has been authorized.
Probability of unqualified success: 32% (Precog validated)
Probability of qualified success*: 75% (Validation in progress, error bars are +- 20%)
BEGIN BRIEF:
As of T-35 minutes, ESA climate satellites detected unexpected divergence from simulations in Hurricane Monalisa, off the coast of Cuba.
Coarse structure analysis was performed by a Lithium class AGI, elevating the odds of metahuman involvement to 82%. Further validation via fine structure analysis by NSA and EU precogs has pegged the probability of metahuman involvement at 99% at T-26 minutes.
Weather satellites confirmed a change in the direction and intensity of Monalisa entirely inconsistent with known energy inputs. As of the time of writing, Monalisa has gone from Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson scale to a Category 5, and has had its trajectory diverted to make expected landfall in Panama in T+2 hours.
Clairvoyant input from the UNSEEN rotating contingent has confirmed the involvement of known non-state metahuman actors, namely the prototypical Butterfly class metahuman known as Monarch, and the Aerokinetic known as Little Jupiter.
Both are known to hold leadership positions in the Penance movement/memeplex, with several thousand confirmed worshippers.
As of T-10 minutes, dissipation of the storm by the US Aerokinetics Corps has proved ineffective, Monarch's powers circumvent the function of other aerokinetics, combined with a strongly synergistic effect with Little Jupiter. Per the opinion of the Ops team, coarse intervention by the following means is projected to increase the probability of negative outcomes, with an OOM increase in property damage and lives lost:
1) Kinetic orbital bombardment (Rods from God)
2) Tactical nuclear weapons* (<50kT yields. Deployment authorization for strategic warheads is still pending, but is expected to be vetoed by the USA and Brazil)
3) Orbital MASER bombardment (Atmospheric conditions make target acquisition too difficult, leaving aside that additional injections of energy into chaotic systems increases the effectiveness of Monarch's powers.)
We regretfully inform you that the situation is unlikely to escalate to ORANGE severity, and thus metahuman teams ALPHA, OMEGA and GAMMA are unavailable for tasking.
On the basis of optimal target prioritization, Team KAPPA has been tasked with this operation, and Team RHO has will remain on standby in French Guiana.
Further details will be compiled on arrival, expected to be in T+1 hours.
END BRIEF
I was wide awake at this point, because it was either us being on our A-game, or likely ending up dead. I noticed how studiously the probabilities didn't mention P(some of us dying), which I think would have been nice to know.
Still, I had an inkling of what the suits were thinking. Monarch was, as the brief said, a Butterfly class, one of the strongest left on Earth after the drafts. Her whole shtick was manipulation of complex chaotic systems, a flick here, a touch there, an unexpected phonecall, and she could move mountains.
Thankfully, she had her limits. Even if she could quite reliably enact her will through such maneuvers, it took her time to buildup such effects. Something as powerful as a Cat 5 hurricane would have taken her weeks normally, but that's where the synergy with Little Jupiter kicked in.
She also didn't have any real precog power, while she had an inkling of what particular actions might produce good outcomes, she didn't see the precise manner in which they came to pass. Not to mention that she was physically baseline.
In contrast, Little Jupiter was a case of a good supe gone bad. He'd served two tours in AC, but had gone rogue after being served his third draft notice, eventually falling in with the Penitents.
I despised those kooks, with their zealous belief that the proliferation of superpowers was a sign of the imminent eschaton, and they held positions ranging from worshipping supes as angelic harbingers of the Apocalypse to outright gods in themselves.
As a largely amorphous movement, they ranged from relatively sober political organizations to terrorists, cultists and everything in between.
It had been the ban of one of the prior by the sea-steading micronation of Flotsam that likely provoked this whole mess. As I'd glimpsed last week, they were currently halfway done with their transit through the canal, but even right now, there were at least 300k people stuck out at sea, and that's completely ignoring the people of Panama stuck in the crossfire.
While I was under orders to capture rather than kill whenever possible, the pre-emptive authorization indicated that the suits knew that that was easier said than done. Either way, we'd make them pay.
I forwarded a request for details on assets we had available, and on receiving it, bemoaned the obvious way in which humanity was its own worst nemesis.
The US has always had a bone to pick with breakaway states, especially after the Californian and Texan secessions. A sharp pivot away from the libertarian policies of the second Winters administration by the current Chang admin had come with a hardening of their attitude towards micronations, especially those, like Floatsam, that had publicly advertised themselves as a refuge for Americans fleeing the exorbitant taxation rates that were still being ratcheted up.
The US Navy was sitting this one out, and their Aerokinetics had only done the bare minimum to ensure that the storm wouldn't make it to Florida, and then were sitting on their hands blowing massive smoke clouds out of their collective asses.
Brazil was pissed at Panama itself, and besides, they had deployed the bulk of their forces to Africa to assist with putting down the Zulus, any heavy hitters would likely be sticking around French Guiana anyway, they were posed to make an absolute killing once the Space Elevator went live.
The less I say about Mexico the better, but even their tattered forces were too busy with the clusterfuck in Haiti to spare anything.
As for the UN, we're it. I doubt Rho would make a move unless all of us in Kappa were bleeding out in a ditch somewhere.
I did what I could, and with some strings pulled, followed by what might be charitably called begging, borrowing and stealing, I got ahold of a dozen superannuated drones, a platoon of mechanized infantry and a rickety gunboat that had sunk once before and gave every indication it would do so once again given the slimmest excuse. And I was sending it into a hurricane, one of the strongest of the decade since we'd fixed global warming.
I branched out to the Panamanians, and while they were claiming to be only concerned with defending their territorial integrity, I doubt they wanted the disaster of a thousand vessels run aground near the canal, not to mention the damage they'd incur.
However, it was through my liason in Flotsam that I struck gold. Tiny, barely worth sieving flakes of gold, but gold nonetheless.
Having quickly come to the conclusion that the UN wasn't doing a particularly good job of ensuring their safety, they'd rustled up a militia of their own odd dozen or so supes, and then, making my life significantly easier, a PMC known as Rainwater.
I'd forgive them their lengthy list of war crimes if they'd pull their weight in the fight, because for all their brutality, at least they were effective.
Huh, so their attempts to poach away wealthy Americans and Canadians had borne some fruit, if they could afford their services.
I quickly skimmed through the dossier of people I could count on not to shoot at me, or at least shoot at me less than they did at the enemy.
Hablo. A Class 3 charismatic, capable of feats of convincing that had, in one particularly funny instance, made an Eskimo tribal micronation buy liquid nitrogen for their old superconductor cables. He only worked on people who could hear him in person, no broadcasts, and while he had the usual shackles installed for those who had such powers, I quickly got a temporary waiver, and set him to task on rooting out Penitent sympathizers in their ranks.
Piñata. He was a Class 3 Reactive, the category belonging to people who demonstrated powers only after being attacked or feeling under threat.
He had the ability to cause sympathetic damage to anyone who directly tried to hurt him. Shoot him, and you'd be the one with a hole in your chest. I really didn't envy the doctors who had to cannulate him that one time he'd gone down with cholera.
I wasn't sure if the storm surge would meet whatever threshold his powers held for 'direct damage', and Monarch's effects would certainly be too subtle. Still, for anything that was reasonably likely to happen today, he'd be able to survive it and maybe hit back with the power boost.
I knew a favorite technique of his was to implant plastic explosives in his body, put pressure triggers all over his body, and have his enemies accidentally shoot him resulting in them being blown to kingdom come. There almost certainly were Penitent militants around, so he'd be handy there.
Rainwater, on being contacted, informed me in no uncertain terms that they didn't take orders from me. But on a bit of cajoling, they consented to at least taking strong suggestions, and agreed to their intel streams.
They had two 3s themselves:
Brass Balls. A bruiser, capable of imbuing themselves with any material in the periodic table that could loosely be called a 'metal'. I knew he'd been dropped from orbit while in his uranium form, and made quite a mess on impact. But the precogs had ruled that kinetic bombardment wouldn't work, and that application certainly counted.
With effort, he could also manifest as arbitrary alloys, and some of them were exceptionally sturdy. I rejected the option of turning him into lanthanides or actinides, because I'd end up fired if South America ended up irradiated. He'd be useful as a heavy hitter, assuming we could move him around on time.
Aimbot. With automatic aim assists being standard issue on guns today, supes with super accuracy had a hard time making it past Class 1. He was still a cut above the norm, and was capable of making the guidance system of any projectile become pinpoint accurate. Give him a target, and he could fire the most rickety cannon leftover from the Conquistador days, and hit a fly in stormy weather.
He was already manning the controls of a whole swarm of gun drones, several nominally unguided rockets with massive payloads could still strike with the accuracy of a smart missile.
I left him to his own devices, though I intended to send a urgent message over via Rainwater as soon as we got a bead on the targets.
There were a smattering of weaker supes, with Rainwater's contingent being the typical military superhumans, the kind with unremarkable super strength, speed or reflexes. Still, they'd put up a decent showing as force multipliers.
It was already raining (metaphorical this time) cats and dogs when we touched down, the Ghosthawk's rotor sending sand flying on the secluded Panamanian beach.
Soldiers in reactive camo gradually emerged from the beaches, and separated into two groups, one Panamanian, and the other Floatsams's militia forces. After searching us over, they radioed ahead, and another chopper dropped off Hablo and Piñata, both shivering in the sudden rush of cold, moist air.
My lace flashed, and a tacmap appeared at the corner of my vision. I was pleased to see that Rainwater was sharing their stuff as promised.
"We need to get out to sea, I yelled at a rep from Flotsam, trusting his lace to translate if he wasn't an anglophone.
"Si. We've got boats patrolling, I'll have them come pick you up." He called back, words almost blown away by the wind.
I cursed under my breath as I donned a combat exoskeleton. Assembling and putting one on was a chore on a good day, and in the gale that one awkward part where I had to balance on one leg like a flamingo was even tougher than usual.
I thanked a strangely familiar man in UN combat gear as he helped me balance, and he looked at awkwardly, sighed and strode off to do something else.
Time to view the battlefield.
There were a lot of vessels in Flotsam, everything from luxury yachts to converted cargo ships. I thought I spotted a genuine Chinese junk somewhere to boot. There were larger residential vessels, so large that you could walk end to end and never know you were out on the ocean, but they were of modular design, made to be taken apart if needed, and most had done so, prior to the crossing at the canal, which even after extensive renovation, couldn't handle their width.
Had the Panama canal still held its old prominence, we wouldn't have been in this mess, but with half a dozen competitors active, the old players had stopped caring much about any disruptions, whereas they'd have been paralysing for the global economy at one point.
I looked at the defensive lines, the few military craft that both Panama and Flotsam had were lined up within sight of shore, struggling to hold their place against the wind, which had intensified to the extent that the rain was practically horizontal.
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As we waited for our ride, I checked the prediction markets.
96% odds of at least a hundred casualties, 70% of a thousand, and 23% odds of at least ten thousand people dying today.
Internal UN markets with precogs were even grimmer, it was too late to hope this was bloodless.
I heard the distant booms over the horizon. Thunder? No, those were AA guns, engaging Penitent drones, likely precursors to a mass suicide swarm.
I cursed the brilliance of using the hurricane to cover their advance. Normally, an unshielded swarm was highly vulnerable to laser point defense, but the sheer volume of water in the air made lasers largely ineffective. It was dark, almost black, with the sun being drowned by angry clouds. I saw the flash of the few lasers with good angles to fire, and exploding drones vied with lightning as illumination.
Little Jupiter's aerokinesis was allowing them to use microdrones despite the horrible weather, whereas anything we were sending up had to be quite hefty not to get slammed down again.
Our boat arrived, and we boarded, heading below deck to get out of the torrent. We whizzed across the bay, outright skipping across waves at points, which prompted poor Alia to hurl, so I handed her some antiemetics to help keep it down. She was quite literally paper thin without accidental encouragement of bulimia.
The ships that were gearing up for combat were largely anchored nearby, and as we passed them, a gigantic explosion lit up the sea as bright as day, producing a mushroom cloud that barely lasted a few seconds before the hurricane blew it away.
I saw the smoldering ruin of a retrofitted civilian vessel sinking beneath the waves, slick oil fires holding their own against the rain.
"Suspected suicide bomber! Hablo is down, I repeat, Hablo is down!". Idiots. What had they been doing, taking him into such cramped confines? And announcing his incapacitation over the clearnet?
I switched to the encrypted channels belonging to Rainwater instead, and was glad to see that they were being far more competent. They had just dispatched a detachment of submersible bots and divers to help with the recovery of potential survivors, including several with the genetic and cybernetic modifications needed to breathe underwater.
I refocused my attention, my team was of little use over here with the rest of the fleet, we just didn't have the raw firepower to help, so we were best served tracking down and neutralizing the ring leaders.
To that end, I called upon the last thing that UNSEEN had seen fit to provide me, and that was precog time.
I sighed as a spinning map of the globe appeared in my visual field, gradually slowing down and zooming into the Central American region. A whole bunch of arcane figures and fanciful models were on display, as well as a countdown to when my query would be resolved.
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I knew all of it was bullshit, given that the UX team had me rustle up a few papers on keeping users happy, and all this amounted to was a fancy loading screen. What was actually happening was some poor precog bastard being dragged out of bed, booting up his terminal (because precogs couldn't make use of most laces), drinking coffee and then answering my question while being paid a few thousand USDE per hour for their retainer.
Whatever they did end up saying, the loading screen dissolved, to be replaced with a heat map of my surroundings. There, in red, was the most likely position of our targets. Sailing right there, in the eye of the storm, the two of them were in a sub of some kind with at least 80% probability.
I uploaded a list of my assets so that the precog could get make a better ass-pull, and was relieved to see that we had good odds with the plan I had in mind. Well, if not good, it was better than even.
Of the drones that were currently flying overhead, a couple had SQUID magnetometers, and I set them to patrolling the area. Tons of false positives flashed on the screen, centuries of maritime trade had littered the seabed in the Caribbean with wrecks, though I had AI rule out anything that was at the wrong altitude or not moving.
Bingo.
I packaged my findings and sent them off to my allies, and decided to check back on my team.
Noticing that I wasn't engaged, Alan took the opportunity to start complaining.
"Doc, I'm going absolutely crazy, this is getting unbearable." He said, scratching at his arms, which at first glance appeared to be flesh-and-meat instead of his prior bionics.
This was something I'd come up with, inspired by another binge of those old Terminator films. Alan's teleportation worked through his skin, with the sensitivity of mechanoreceptors being directly proportional to his ability to TP things with him. Since he'd been deprived of his arms, quite violently I might add, his new bionics had been hampering his ability to manipulate things.
However, some rather painful experimentation had discovered that his power extended to genetically identical skin grafts, and I'd had a whole batch printed and attached over the surface of the bionics, mimicking the appearance of a normal limb. After a period of adjustment, the graft had taken, been integrated with his nervous system, and by extension, his powers.
That wasn't at the root of his discomfort, no, it was the fact that I'd signed him up for further gene therapy, using a derivative of previous work originally developed to heal those who had congenital deficits of touch receptors.
His new skin was absolutely packed with Pacinian, Meissner and Merkel complexes, Ruffini corpuscles, and C-fiber LTMs, such that he could practically feel the otherwise innocuous skin mites we all had crawling all over him. This boosted his power significantly, and if this method had been sustainable or permanent, he'd have ended up being bumped a class altogether.
Unfortunately, he'd strenuously vetoed that suggestion, as the necessity of keeping his CNS integrated with his powers meant that he couldn't dampen his enhanced sense of touch. I handed him a ultra-short acting topical numbing cream, and he rubbed it in with relish.
While he reveled in the relief and wasn't in the mood to bitch, I handed him a copy of the plan.
I was just about to resume my work, when he tapped me on the shoulder, pointing to a bulky man in another exo.
Oh, Grim.
I sheepishly sent him a new set of marching orders updated to account for the Incog.
A face appeared in my uplink, the glowing eyes helping reinforce the fact that I was speaking to an AI, as mandated by law. Rainwater's hunting hound.
"Dr. Sen. My name is Kaplan. CO White has authorized me to liase with you."
"Do you have something to report? I'm a little busy at the moment." I told it, and I indeed was.
"You'll want to look at this." It said and drew up another drone feed.
I could almost cry. Look at the subtle off-white color used for white-hot, the tasteful sensor fusion. It even had a Rainwater watermark.
I'd have to sign up my shitty drones for new glasses in comparison.
Ahem. The display showed an old oil rig, seemingly left to the elements for decades. It was facing the brunt of the storm, battered by winds that didn't so much as skim over the waves but rather dragged the water up with them, such that the delineation between sea and sky seemed more theoretical than crisp.
For all the fury being unleashed before us, there were still people on the rig, patrolling around the decaying deck. I could see mag-boots clamping them down on the otherwise treacherous deck.
A glimpse of several shaven heads revealed their affiliation. Penitents.
"They've got hostages." Kaplan informed me, showing me heat signatures sporadically visible through gaps in the deck.
"Rainwater worrying about collateral damage?" I asked it quizzically. If it was annoyed by my ribbing, it didn't show.
"I am programmed to hold human life in high regard, and it seems that these individuals are Rainwater clients."
"You're telling me the Penitents hired you?"
I expected it to deny that claim, but instead it said, "Yes. But fortunately the contract has long lapsed, and we hold no responsibility, fiduciary or otherwise, for their well-being.
What I did want to point out is that the hostages are Flotsam citizens, and thus by extension, our clients."
"We're not equipped for hostage rescue." I told it bluntly. Besides, the best way to prevent future blackmail was to categorically refuse to give in to terrorism.
"Rainwater is. Our powered contractors are on standby, but currently lack transport to the site, as a consequence of AA risks. If you could provide transportation to the rig, we expect to be able to handle the rest."
Ah. They were now aware that I had a teleporter on my team, and wanted to get Brass and Crackshot in on the action without risking them being shot down.
"My teleporter is severely mass and volume limited. Getting them to the rig might prove difficult." I told it.
"Make multiple trips. Operator Balls-" I snickered- "is capable of transmuting himself into lithium, making mass unlikely to be a limiting factor."
"This might be me remembering high school chemistry wrong, but isn't it extremely flammable, especially on contact with water? " I pointed out, though I was already thinking of ways around that problem.
External waterproof suit? A protective layer of something that isn't flammable?
"Consider it a non-issue."
"I hope you'll count this as a favor. But yes, we'll oblige." I told it, and after hashing out some more details regarding a rendezvous, hung up.
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"This fucking hurts. And you want me to do how many trips?" Alan moaned, trying to hide himself from the stinging rain.
"Don't be a baby, look, a teenage girl is handling it better than you." Emily pointed out, personally unbothered.
"She's gone flat and is standing parallel to the wind. She barely feels it!" He complained.
I turned to Grim. "Would you be comfortable working with Rainwater for the raid?".
He shook his head. "Last time you had me go with Alan, he forget about me a dozen jumps in, and left me stranded in the jungle. There's no guarantee the Rainwater operatives will fare better, and I don't want to end up tagged in the crossfire."
I conceded, and gave the go-ahead for Alan to start.
He fastened his rebreather, sighing with relief as he started going intangible with the activation of his power.
He appeared in the distance, half a kilometer away but quite high up, so that he could go intangible and repeat his teleport before striking the water. The rebreather mask was just in case he ended up underwater anyway.
I reviewed the footage we had from the Rainwater drones, showing AA emplacements on the roof. Antiquated models, but effective if they could get a bead on us. There was a man talking to an operator on the roof, he was seemingly unbothered by the rain and wind, and was pointing at something in the sky. Then he pointed at the drone, straight into the camera. Oops.
The drone had just a few frames to capture a missile launch before the missile smacked it out of the sky, trailing burning debris into the ocean.
Shit, if they managed to track a stealthed drone, the rickety old junk I was flying wasn't likely to do very well.
Thankfully, the sub they were tracking wasn't near the AA umbrella, but it seemed that at one point, Little Jupiter must have disembarked and headed over.
He'd worked for the UN at one point, so I had a comprehensive understanding of his powers. In all likelihood, he'd detected the drone by the disturbance it made in the air, but he was unlikely to catch something merely human sized unless it was moving at high speeds.
I let Alan know that he needed to skim the waves, and examined the few good frames of Jupiter that I had. He was barefaced, unconcerned about the wind affecting his neatly combed hair or beard, itself dyed with a stylized lightning bolt. He was going to be a problem, but we had some tools to take care of him, I wouldn't have approved the deployment if we didn't.
Time to start with a bang.
An AA turret swiveled in alarm as two figures appeared in the sky right above it. Alan flickered, becoming intangible just in time for the missile impact to do little more than tickle him, and he was gone before he could hit the ground.
What very much didn't disappear was a humanoid shape that cut through the air like a rod from God himself.
Brass Balls was one of the lucky supes who didn't have their power disrupted by gene therapy, and he had gone from being a relatively hefty individual to being an absolute chonker, with the addition of human growth hormone. He stood at over seven feet tall, and weighed almost 200 kilos in meat form.
And that was before he transformed himself into tungsten, with a density of 19.3 grams per cubic centimeter.
A hapless Penitent opened his mouth, likely to utter some prayer to his metahuman gods before he was turned into paste.
The impact shook the oil rig, sending a spray of water off it like a startled wet dog. Part of the structure crumbled, with whatever support it had crushed, to tumble into the surging waves.
Alan reappeared in quick succession, his powers boosted, transferring others as the Penitents were in disarray. A militant rushed forward, staggering, his eardrums probably ruptured, and was summarily perforated by a round from Aimbot, who swaggered and unshouldered the antimateriel rifle next to me on our boat. His corpse fell off the remains of the roof, now significantly slanted, and the team prepped up on top, ready to breach into the structure. Rainwater operatives fired methodical bursts mowing hostiles down as they made it up.
I switched to helmet cams as our combined forces breached into the structure, watching their footing around the gaping hole Brass had made. Emily took point, her body immune to the hail of bullets that struck it, providing cover to the soldiers advancing behind her.
An unusually stupid Penitent bullrushed her, trusting in his augmented physique, but she stopped the monomolecular sword he swung at her with the palm of her hand, he grunted in dismay as he strained his bionics against her in disbelief, until she grabbed his wrist and swung him into the side of the building to smash right through the corrugated metal and out into the churning sea. If he wasn't dead by then, he'd have plenty of time to regret his poor choices as he sank like a stone.
The narrow corridor forked, and Emily took the right, while Piñata took the left.
Another meathead swung a machete at his neck, only to stop with a confused expression on his face before it slid off his shoulders.
Another fired an antiquated shotgun at him, only to explode as the bullet hit the pressure pads that covered Piñata and were rigged to his internal plastic explosives. The best part was it didn't even set off the real bombs, making it a renewable weapon.
Emily turned the corner to discover that Brass Balls was finishing up. As simulated, his tungsten form hadn't breached through the entire structure, and he'd managed to climb his way back up in a less dense form. Right now, he was doing his best T-1000 impression, liquid mercury rippling as bullets hit ineffectually. He flowed over foe after foe, consuming and suffocating them. A bitch slap caved in the jaw of another grunt, and he hardened a limb into a steel spike before impaling another through and through.
They were over the center of the rig, where the hostages had been moved, and with a nod of acknowledgement, he and Em both jabbed down, poking holes in the floor.
Rainwater operatives moved in, chucking stun grenades down.
This, in hindsight, was a mistake when a potent Aerokinetic was lurking just below.
Instead of falling down, the grenades reversed course, blown by a strong burst of wind, and smacked into the roof, setting off their impact fuses. Anyone not properly sealed in was staggered, and a hail of armor piercing bullets cut through the floor, killing several troopers, and both Emily and Brass were disoriented, she had no resistance to concussive force, and he wasn't in a form prepared for such.
I turned around and tapped Alan, and he grabbed a hold of Aimbot, both fading out of existence and TPing over to help.
Thankfully, the confined structure of the rig stopped Jupiter from bring his full force to bear, and Emily threw herself down on the floor as men clambered over her, letting them find shelter from the bullets.
Brass slammed down again, tearing through the structure and dropped into the midst of the firing squad, laying about him with extremities turned into bludgeoning and cutting weapons.
"Hold your fucking fire!" a voice yelled out, and Emily's shoulder cam turned to display Little Jupiter backing up into the midst of a huddle of hostages.
He held up something, and the camera focused, picking out an old-fashioned detonator.
"One step closer, and I take this whole place down with me!" He screamed, voice quavering with abject terror.
He pointed with his other hand at the hostages, revealing multiple bombs in their midst.
"I've got a wingsuit. Unless I'm at least two hundred meters away from here with the detonator, verified by a GPS signal, in less than a minute, it'll go off and take out everyone. I'm not going back in again."
He was just a kid, barely sixteen. I knew his beard wasn't all natural, I'd been the one who suggested minoxidil when he complained it was coming out patchy.
"Back off!" I ordered over the comms, trusting that the Rainwater personnel would listen to reason.
"You-" He pointed at Piñata "-Don't get any ideas. Even if the bomb doesn't kill you, you're going to end up in the ocean."
Piñata raised his hands in a mollifying gesture, and slowly backed away.
"Don't think for a moment you can take me alive. I'm fucking done. I'm tired of hiding from alien death beams, tired of fighting killer robots and fuck knows what else out there." He said, a gust of wind wiping away the tears that threatened to drip down his eyes.
I activated the speaker mounted on Emily's camera.
"Jupiter. Surrender now, and by my authority as an UNSEEN officer, I promise you that you won't be drafted again. I'll ensure leniency, you won't be sent off world. You'll even be tried as a juvenile." I told him, hoping he'd see reason.
"No. I'm done, you haven't seen the shit I have, blue man. I know what you bastards do to supes who don't cooperate, I'm not going to let you lobotomize me and hook me up to a weather station. Just let me go, and you won't see me again." He promised, shaking the detonator, prompting wailing from the civilians.
"Besides, time's up, I've got thirty seconds and there's only so fast I can fly. Just let me walk away, and nobody needs to die." He declared, stumbling towards an open window.
I noticed Alan at the back of the crowd. It wouldn't be any good if he grabbed Jupiter right now, in the time it took to make him intangible, he could easily manually detonate the bombs. They themselves were too far away to take.
I'm fucking glad I planned ahead.
"I don't give a shit about these idiots-" He declared, pointing at the Penitents, who only looked disappointed. "-Do whatever the hell you like with them, they were just paying me. And don't let the woman with super strength get any ideas, it's tied to an implant in my heart. If I die, it goes off."
He shook the detonator again for emphasis and unfurled his wingsuit, which flared up in the breeze.
"Aimbot. Go." I ordered, clutching my radio.
Aimbot stood a distance from the scene, without any line of sight on the target. But for his current payload, it wouldn't matter.
He gently tossed a paper plane into the wind, where it flew with unerring accuracy at a surprisingly high speed, passing through wall next to Jupiter, or rather cutting through it with practically no resistance.
He caught the motion through the corner of his eye, turned to yell something, but the paper plane flew sedately right for him.
He tried to slap it out of the air, and did so successfully, sending it bouncing off the ground to a stop, the edges cutting thin gashes.
He didn't have time to yell out in pain as his forearm detached at the elbow, dropping to the ground in a spray of blood, detonator still in its clutches.
He screamed, summoning a massive blast of wind that collapsed the ruined wall, knocking people away flying, but Emily and Brass surged forth, grabbing him.
On cue, Alan grabbed the ruined arm, and apparated away, tossing it safely into the sea well outside the danger zone.
Jupiter struggled in their restraint, drawing on his power. A waterspout surged out of the ocean, careening towards the rig, and a bolt of lightning slammed into the structure, but thankfully was harmlessly grounded by Brass.
He screamed obscenities right up till the point where Alia, now unrolled, stepped behind him and stabbed him in the neck with a sedative.
The unnatural waterspout dissipated, and I sagged back into my seat, wiping sweat away from my brow.