Boats rolled through flooded streets to pick up survivors that were brought to dry ground by Angel Squad. Many were trapped under in the water but Aaliyah’s healing light gave them enough strength to hang on long enough for help to arrive. Those that were too late to be saved emerged from the water, identified and organized for retrieval. With evacuation efforts massively sped up throughout the suburbs, the relief force would soon be able to devote their attention to the urban districts. While Angel squad would continue to be a boon for the evacuation effort, their true purpose in the area took priority. That purpose brought them to a building overlooking the Orleans Parish Prison
“I presume that is what you pulled us all the way here for,” said Aaliyah.
“You say that like there’s a disconnect. You know, my skeletons told me that hundreds of inmates are still trapped there, abandoned in their cells. Shouldn’t it be enough to want to save them, or do only Ms. Vandimion and Mr. Nguyen feel that way?”
“I don’t doubt that part. What I doubt is that your skeletons would reach this far or that you would pick this place for no particular reason. Now tell me why we, why you, are really here.”
“There was… a contact within the prison. Someone working to… inform the inmates of the opportunities available to them when they are released.”
“You’re still recruiting under our noses.”
“If that’s what you wish to call it, yes. We will take anyone willing to pledge themselves, which makes us the prime destination for those with nowhere to go. Fugitives, refugees, prisoners abandoned by society, displaced communities, giving them a place and a purpose is one reason why the Immortals were founded. A disaster like this will see plenty of that, but we’re getting away from the point. We lost contact with this informant. I can’t tell you what’s in there, but this is the only lead we have.”
“Why not use more undead to scout the place?” asked Jeremiel.
“I know my display was impressive, but there are limits to my current ability. Falling from orbit and marching hundreds of bodies around 5000 square kilometers is just about where I tap out.”
“So much for life and death,” said Raguel.
“Orders, Ma’am?” asked Michael.
Aaliyah looked Lovensky in the eyes, past the broken lenses within the frames of his glasses.
“Angel squad, secure the building, move all inmates to the roof and upper floors.”
“Yes ma’am. You heard her, move in.”
Angel squad lept off the rooftop and hovered into the flood waters. The water was chest high, but sentinel armor more than compensated for wading through the muck. The door to prison was gone, seemingly ripped off its hinges whether by tide or something else. The same way their helmets allowed Angel squad to detect Aaliyah’s light, she too could detect their armor even as they left her sight inside the building.
“Mr. Iolcus’ rate of development is impressive,” said Lovensky, “Thanks to the energy efficiency of mana crystals, he has been enabled to reach new heights of potential. Perhaps he will reach the same heights you and Ms. Vandimion reached when you were under the tutelage of Tejieue.”
“Is this the pitch you make to mutants?” said Aaliyah, “I heard he had a ritual to give you guys a jumpstart. Did that die with him?”
“There have been… complications with the ceremony without Tejieue, but the practice was never meant to be sustainable or widespread. Education has always been the premise of progress, and that we will raise that premise for the sake of the next generation.”
“Yes, I can’t wait to see what the first generation of hell-born Immortals looks like,” as those words passed, Aaliyah’s lips curled in familiar disgust at an all too recent memory.
‘Aaliyah, Hippo, this is Lanying and this is Letiche. I wanted to introduce my two new favorite girls to two of the most important women in my life. They’re gifted, just as much as you two were. This time, I won’t fail them..’ was what he said. This thing they called magic was inconsistent at the best of times. Usually, only technology could detect the spike in radiation caused by magic or the changes in the body caused by mutation. The girls he showed them at the time were also just mud clones. Yet, despite all that, or rather, all the worse because of that, when she saw that ‘Letiche’ in the form of a girl, Aaliyah felt a chill in her bones from the kind of immense power she had seen only once before.
“Heh,” chuckled Lovensky, “from the look on your face, I think I know who you have in mind. Yes, that girl has the potential to freeze hell over, which is why that potential must be carefully nurtured.”
“I just told you that I wanted to see it. The only problem is, people who go to your side usually don’t come back out. The rest of us are not allowed in, or even allowed to know anything about what goes on beyond the gateways. Tell me, what part of that sounds like trust and cooperation to you?”
“You are taught all you are capable of learning at this point. Besides, you still have Mr. Deimos to smooth over the transitory period. If you want to learn history, you can ask him. We will show you the present when we have set our course for the future. For now, there is still much groundwork to be laid. All you need to do is protect and develop Earth.”
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Dodgy as ever, he’s lucky to be saved by Gabriel coming on to the comms.
“What is it?” asked Aaliyah into her ear piece.
“Most of the cell doors have held up,” said Gabriel, ”but the visitation room let in water through the barred window. There’s two inmates in there… one of them is a juvenile that the other is holding above water. They must have been stewing here for hours, can you bring down some light for them?”
“Understood,” said Aaliyah. She was truly a divine blessing made flesh. Those two in there looked like they wouldn’t have made it one step, but the light in their eyes returned as Aaliyah’s prayer rejuvenated them. The only one with Gabriel was Sariel. The rest of the squad were collecting the location of other inmates and mapping out the building. The cells had to be opened either from the security booth or by blasting the doors off. Gabriel spoke to reassure to the inmates as Sariel tried to open the visitation door, but the two inside begged them not to.
Sariel got dragged under the water and was being pulled against all the debris that got tossed around in the initial flooding. Their head was smashed against desks, chairs, computers, phones, and columns, and their vision was blocked by wet paper that stuck to their upper body. The rest of the squad took pursuit, but they were spread out and whatever was doing the dragging was doing it fast.
Sariel pulled the paper off their visor and took aim at the black mass that had a hold of their leg. The laser carbine boiled through the water to strike true. Sariel hammered the trigger to lay beam after beam into the mass’s back. Light flashed again and again, suffocated under the brackish muck. Finally, it swung Sariel up out of the water to crater the ceiling that was floors above and darted off before they crashed back down. When Angel squad caught up, Gabriel pulled Sariel onto their shoulders.
“Thanks for all the help,” said Sariel.
“ ‘That thing wasn’t even leaving ripples in the water. Even if the sediment wasn’t so thick, it’d still get the jump on us. What the hell’s in here with us?!’ is what Raguel was asking,” said Aaliyah.
“If it is not leaving ripples to remain undetected in the water, then it is likely a Rougarou,” said Lovensky.
“A what-a-loo?”
“A swamp werewolf that eats misbehaving children. I guess the juveniles locked up here attracted it. It’s not what caused the downpour. Monsters are beasts with little magical affinity and this one specializes in stealth. The daemon responsible was likely testing the waters, as it were.”
“Testing for what?”
“Defenses. Response time and strategy. Social cohesiveness. The limits of our capabilities. Its own ability to project monsters like this one here. For now, just tell your men to shoot it until it dies.”
“Is that all the advice you have?”
“Well, we could wait 101 days. I like the former option better.”
Michael led the squad into the cafeteria. Trays, plastic utensils, milk cartons, and slurry that might have been food littered the surface of the water. The tables were hidden obstacles under the water. One of those tables had a corpse stuck under it, as Jeremiel discovered to their chagrin. The corpse, along with all the other ones they found under tables, was sucked dry of blood. No, rather than getting stuck, the Rougarou must have pulled them under, dead or alive, to store them as food and dispose of them as refuse. The corpses, the shriveled and the bloated dead, were pulled out, for later retrieval, but also as buoys for the now as morbid as that was. Perhaps that exposure inspired them more than they would care to admit; they could say that practical concerns were all that mattered, but practically, there was little difference.
Surrounded by tables under the water and bodies floating on the surface, Angel squad had a maksehift security perimeter. Even if the Rougarou was invisible in the water, it would have to touch one of the obstructions to get them. Unless, of course, it came from above.
Sariel scanned the ceiling. Nothing. The thing might have left already and they wouldn’t know it. As they drifted during their scan, they bumped into one of the plumper corpses they were using as a buoy. No, Sariel knew where he was going, they shouldn’t have bum—the corpse came to life and a claw gripped Sariel’s helmet, at first to try to crush them, then to toss them into the kitchen.
It dove under just as beams from six angles began to burn through the water. The table beside them was pulled to sweep four squad members off their footing, only Raguel and Jeremiel avoided by being out of range. Rougarou used that same table to pin those squad members down, but that moment was seized by Raguel to clamp down on the arms of the elusive beast. It was a mass of dark, drenched, matted fur, dyed in blood, entangled with debris and Jeremiel, armed with two carbines, perforated the mass with an epileptic fussillade. The beast wailed, its breath mising with the steam from the water that was boiled off to make way for its fur to be singed and its flesh to be seared. No matter how the beast thrashed, Raguel’s grip grew no looser. As its fur and flesh grew dryer, the smoldering wounds emblazoned together into an inferno that consumed them both.
As its muscle sloughed away, Rougarou’s thrashes limpened until it could move no more. Jeremiel did not relent their fusillade, the beams continued to strike even as char was blown apart as ash. All that would remain of Rougarou were arms held, and thrown away, by Raguel, and the legs that no longer had the strength to pin down the table. Most of Angel squad resurfaced, and Sariel hobbled out of the kitchen.
“I’m alright, everyone, thanks for your concern,” said Sariel. With the matter settled, Angel squad returned to evacuate the inmates.
“A bit slow and uncoordinated, but even without hardlight this sentinel armor boasts impressive protection,” said Lovensky after receiving the play-by-play.
“I’m sorry, are we not up to your standards?”
“Offensive capabilities could use improvement, but no casualties in battle, on top of an immediate evacuation effort and a rapid deployment of special forces suits what is needed from Iolcus.”
“We had plenty of experience responding to disasters before you all came to drop more on our plate.”
“Ms. Folious, with all due respect: you don’t seem to understand. More disaster was inevitable, far more than you could ever handle. The purpose of the war was not only to establish a foothold, it was also to vaccinate Earth to the threat of daemonic incursion. The Immortals fight on the frontlines in hell, while the heroes of Earth establish resilient infrastructure and responsive forces to resist a calamitous enemy that can appear anywhere, anytime. That is the groundwork for how we win the only war that matters, to stop the only disaster that matters.”
“It sounds like you’ve got it all planned out, without asking us for, or telling us about, the details of this plan. Where I’m from, that is not called cooperation.”
“Then don’t call it cooperation. Let’s call it survival. Because if this ‘plan’ fails,” Lovensky outstretched his arms to the city laid to ruin overnight, “then disaster will be all that’s left.”