The black-hulled giant looming over the much smaller civilian aircraft in the LaGuardia airport seemed too vast to use New York City's smallest primary airport. At first glance, someone knowledgeable on the subject might recognize it as a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, one of the largest military cargo planes ever built. But on a closer look, discrepancies would begin to pile up.
First was how it dwarfed every other aircraft present, because it was much larger than a normal Globemaster should have been. Secondly, what at first might have appeared to be four engines hanging from its wings proved to be ovoid metal masses devoid of openings. Whether external fuel tanks or ordnance pods, they begged the question of where the plane's actual engines were. And third, the entire plane was devoid of identifying markers of any kind, something simply not done in either civilian or military aviation.
All those peculiarities drew the attentions of civilians, especially the few tourists that had not been scared away by all the superpowered events over the past six months. The airport workers and officials on the other hand knew not to even approach the winged Goliath. Nobody came near to perform refueling and cleanup. No engineers performed inspections or maintenance most aircraft would have needed after every trip in order to fly safely. No protests were made of the strange plane occupying more than its fair share of space for hours.
Just as several civilians urged by curiosity and a complete lack of information were finally braving an approach on foot, a line of three military personnel carriers drove up to the massive craft. They drew just as many eyes as the plane had in their brief approach, due to their... unconventional use of the three APCs. Four soldiers stood on top of each vehicle, each of them armed with improbably large weapons almost the size of the M61 Vulcan rotary cannons carried by the APCs. Even more unconventional was the squad of soldiers surrounding each APC and keeping up on foot... despite the small convoy exceeding 50 miles per hour upon its entry.
It took the confused observers about a minute to realize each and every one of the military personnel had to be supers like the ones on the news. Their military discipline, uniformity and lack of flashy powers such as flight or blasting everything in sight with exotic energies clashed with how supers had been presented on said news so far. Maybe the differences were precisely the point? Maybe these people were not like those supers but something else? Or maybe the news had intentionally misinterpreted the nature of superpowers in more ways than one - not that the civilians realized that, or the newscasters should be blamed. It was not in the former's skill set to pick up on such fabrications or in the latter's purpose to fabricate the news to begin with. That was the government's job.
Before the two approaching groups could meet, the enormous cargo door on the rear of the plane dropped to the ground with a dull thud, forming a ramp leading to a cavernous hold as large as the typical cargo ship's. The military convoy drove up the ramp, barely slowing down, and disappeared without fanfare. Then the ramp and cargo door closed up, much faster than they should have given their size. Two long slits opened at the base of the enormous plane's tail and torrents of air howled out of them with the force of a tornado. The enormous aircraft quickly sped up down the runway, much faster than any civilian aircraft could have. In less than ten seconds it had exceeded a hundred miles an hour; in twenty it was already taking off, having crossed a mere two thirds of a mile and using less than half the runway length much smaller civilian craft would have.
Those civilians that had approached closer than a thousand feet were blown back by the backblast, hurled several yards away only to land hard on the tarmac or on top of other people. Many would be carried to the hospital for treatment, only for their insurance to fail to cover the expenses. Attempts to sue would be made but would be thrown out due to lack of evidence as not one of the airport's thousands of cameras and other sensors held any records of the black plane's existence and every official from air traffic controllers down to janitors would swear no such plane had ever existed. The incident was declared a freak accident, all the civilians charged with trespassing and airport security violations.
All protests and complaints from that incident and countless others would not even be a side note in the thunderous birth of the New Age.
xxxx
"General on the bridge!" an Ensign announced and everyone in military uniform saluted. The civilians taking up most important positions on the bridge did not, but then they weren't members of the US military.
"As you were, ladies and gentlemen," the thin, tall, silver-haired General with the piercing eyes commanded as he carefully surveyed the command center of the new craft. Normally, no military operation would have even imagined handing over control of anything to civilians, let alone worked with a mixed civilian-military crew on one of the most important operations of the century, but it could not be helped. Powers were already rare enough and random enough that they appeared more often in the civilian population than not. Powers that complemented specific duties on what was essentially a flying fortress? They'd been searching for months and only just covered the bare essentials; nobody could afford to be picky, least of all the government force trying to ride herd on the rapidly spreading chaos.
"General Rinaker, welcome onboard Forge One," the often most annoying but also the most cooperative and critically useful of said civilians greeted him.
"Neither of us have time for pleasantries, Warden," General James Rinaker reminded the young woman who sometimes behaved like a new recruit and others showed the level of maturity expected of a high-rank peer. "There's a new crisis on the West Coast that the President wants us to handle as soon as possible." Unfortunately, not informing anyone of this had been part of his orders and, in light of the enemy's nature, common sense. "What's our ETA for Seattle?"
"One hour, at our nominal cruise speed," the strongest metal manipulator on record replied. Beneath them the massive aircraft was already moving, the instruments on the pilot's position seemingly moving of their own accord. James Rinaker knew different. "We could fly faster, but the National Missile Defense would get annoying again. They've already sent several complaints about how the new stealth system makes Forge One look like a missile on their new satellites."
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
"An hour will suffice," the General decided. "Everyone has an itchy trigger finger nowadays, let's not invite any ABMs." He made a gesture for Liz - the Warden when in costume - to follow him then walked off the bridge and towards his new office aboard the craft. On the short walk across the enormous plane, the General thought of how much like military uniforms the costumes heroes and villains tended to wear were. For all they were flashy and obvious - Liz wore form-fitting black plating as the Warden for example - he actually preferred them over the alternatives. Combatants without easily identifiable uniforms that also basically were weapons of mass destruction? No, thank you. The impact of superpowers on international law were already bad enough. Speaking of...
"Do we have a flight plan this time?" he asked.
"What would be the point? All but the most advanced detection systems can't see through the stealth enchantments anyway." The young super shrugged. "Do we need air traffic controllers halfway across the nation scrambling to find the 'lost' plane? Plus we're already violating over a hundred laws and regulations flying a customized, officially untested, completely black project. What is one more?"
"As long as we avoid mid-flight collisions, that is fine," the General told her while keeping back a smile. In the current situation, one had to find humor where they could.
xxxx
"Tell me of our latest headache," Rinaker ordered as soon as they were both sealed into the privacy of his office and Liz's superhuman senses had confirmed said privacy as much as it was possible to do without being a mile underground and under fifty feet of enchanted metal.
"She hit Tier Four," the Warden said without preamble.
"Shit," the General voiced what they were both thinking. Superpowers were as complex as human imagination and just as varied in scale. Just about any proposed system of categorization had failed to adequately represent every known super and their powers. The "tier" system was a very simplistic and often misleading ballpark estimate of Supers' overall impact. Powers that were no better than civilian capabilities and personal equipment were not given a tier at all; the government did not need to be concerned with someone that could change hair colors or could create small, temporary lights after all. Tier One were supers that could be as powerful as soldiers, with a numerical rank indicating how many soldiers they could match. Tier Two were supers that could contend with military vehicles such as tanks or jet fighters. Tier Three were supers equivalent to capital ships or army formations of comparable value. Tier Four were supers equivalent to strategic arsenals - not individual strategic weapons - those that could prove a threat to entire countries by themselves if they wanted to.
"Did you at least manage a workable scan and do we have her..." the General sighed "character sheet?"
"That's the one piece of good news," Liz said and handed him over an actual printed sheet. In the age of super-hackers and technokinetics that was far more secure than any electronic storage. The General found the physical sheets comforting. When he'd first joined the military, electronic storage and digital communication were in their infancy and had seemed almost as maddening back then as superpowers did now. One disliked field invalidating the other felt like a very thin silver lining, but he'd take what he could get. "The numbers are, of course, in her personal scale that we'd need to translate into something usable but we can track relative values as well as progress."
"And it's one more success for Project Gamer," he agreed with a nod. When it had first been proposed to him, the very idea had seemed absurd. Limit the variety and scope of superpowers by tricking supers into using a common interface? Ridiculous. Or so it had seemed until trusted subordinates who knew a few things about fantasy literature explained to him the concept of LitRPGs and their impact on that market. If the introduction of numerical representation had led to fictional supers being, on average, more about big numbers than weirdly unpredictable powers, what would such systems do to actual supers that subconsciously formed their own powers?
If the choice was between a potential enemy faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive, and a ghost that could completely ignore physics and turn people into more ghosts, every sane military commander would choose the former. Thus James Rinaker had green-lit 'Project Gamer', the government's attempt to subtly influence supers into having both easily categorized and less exotic powers. So far, results had been mixed but hopeful. Unfortunately even simple, mundane force could prove beyond their ability to control if present in sufficient quantities.
"What do we have about how she uses her powers when pressed?" he asked. "Theoretical specifications and practical application can be very far apart." That was also something any successful military commander came to know sooner or later.
"I fabricated an argument close to the sensors," the brunette said with that self-satisfied smirk she often had when manipulating those she considered less intelligent. It was, in Rinaker's opinion, the young woman's most obvious tell as well as a serious character flaw and one he'd been trying to wean her of during the past few months... but he'd allow it just this once. "We argued, we threw around insinuations, cursed each other, typical teenage girl interaction until it escalated into a fight." She frowned. "I'd prepared my two best golems for the occasion, used the best materials I could get, enchanted them to within an inch of overload. She dismantled them in only a couple of minutes."
"How tough golems are we talking about?" And wasn't it weird that an ancient Hebrew myth was now part of the forces under his command?
"Two thousand tons of Tungsten alloy each, enchanted with enough strength to move their own mass with some agility, enough extra durability and inertia that any conventional weapon would do no more than scratches, slow self-repair, the usual beam weapon scaled up to their size." Liz's smugness gave way to frustration. "Any other super on record would have been forced into retreat at best, reduced to a charred husk at worst. She used one to beat the other into a scrap heap."
"At least now we know," the General cut off what might have been several minutes of childish whining. Or maybe not so childish, compared to his recent discussions with political oversight. "How soon would Project Tartarus be able to contain her, even theoretically?"
"Unfortunately, I have no idea," the Warden said grimly. "Using my powers as much as I do leads to slow but noticeable growth. Can we afford to assume the same is not the case about any potential target? As is, the nullification aspect of Project Tartarus is not going to work."
"Keep working on it and ma-"
Whatever the General was about to say was interrupted by the overhead lights flashing red and a very loud alarm echoing around the airplane.
"General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands man your battle stations. The route of travel is forward and up to starboard, down and aft to port. Set material condition 'Zebra' throughout the craft. Analog-Arcane system substitution engaged. Switch to planar magnetic propulsion underway."