"Who loves Orange Soda? Hermod loves Orange Soda, I do, I do, I do-oh." Hermod said to himself as he grabbed a can of the orange bubble beverage and took a seat in his cramped apartment. He looked around for his tv's remote and once again considers sorting they pigsty that was his apartment. It wasn't his fault it was a mess really, when you're a magic hero you find all sorts of freaky stuff and sometimes you just can't trust M.A.G.I. to hold it. So Hermod had amassed quite a collect. At super speeds his hands ran through a pile of magical trinkets ranging from a demon bound to a bracelet to bullets with magic scrolls inside of them. All kinds of junk he should just throw out, but then who knows who might find it. His hands stop as he lifts an old piece of lovingly carved wood. He held it with a kind of reverence.
"How the hell? This should be in Boston! In the RDT vault or on display at a museum." Hermod said shocked as his fingers ran over it carefully feeling the wonderfully complex carvings on the foot long piece of wood. 'Wand's wand, wow... that brings back some memories..." Hermod said as he sat down and looked it as his mind drifted back to his year in Boston as a hero. Long before the whole crey mess and sadly only a year before the Rikti War. Hermod sighed.
He had been a part of a small super group, the Museum Guard they called themselves. It was really just a joke, the three of them were all magic origin and were somehow conected to the RDT (Bostian slang for the local mage guild). As such the three of them found themselves over and over again defending museums and old relics inside the RDT itself. It was Hermod himself with his weak ice control and a rifle full of rubber bullets, Easy Strider a straight up super speeder, far faster than Hermod could ever hope to be, and finally Wand, while his powers were totally dependent on this stick of wood he could preform feats far behind most Heroes ken.
Hermod sighed, those were good times. Running around, fighting villains, saving people, and all in Boston. Boston was so much calmer than Paragon. Then of course the war happened and that all changed. Boston got the crap kicked out of it during the war. Boston was one of the last places for the portals to appear and a such the least organized evacuation. They had all struggled to get people out of the city as quickly as possible. And Boston is not a good place to try to drive out of.
The congestion had been horrible. The roads were ready to turn into a riot. Hermod remembered that Wand eventually decided that the best way to get people going was to simple make the empty car float off the road. Easy Strider was searching for anyone left behind and Hermod, well he had been try to keep some sort of order. And then they came. Hermod shuddered in his chair as he put the seemingly invincible wand down and look out his window. Hermod didn't want to reflect on that day. He hoped something in Paragon's skyline would take his mind off of those days. Hermod very louded cursed fate and it's utter hatred for him as he looked at the Rikti ships outside.
In a second he had his rifle in hand. He pulled out his ammo belt and shook all the rubber bullets out of it. He opened his gun chest and pulled out real bullets and quickly loaded them. He grabbed his cape and lucky cowboy hat and was out the window and down the fire escape in a blink of the eye. "Alright, here we go again..." Hermod looked up at the sky, "IF YOU TWISTED FREAKS THINK YOU'RE GOING TO GET PAST ME TWICE YOU'VE GOT ANOTHER GOD DAMN THING COMING!" And with that Hermod turned his safety off.
The radio crackled, "Boxer six niner check in. Boxer six niner, check in." The Rikti soldier picked up the handle and stared at the radio before leveling his blaster at the base of the unit and melting it.
The low, sandbag wall on the side of the hill marked the observation post's location. Other than that, a few soldiers left their kits when the attack came, and the radio was left behind. Usually one doesn't leave a radio behind, but when you're trying to lure their communications officer into a kill zone, it's handy. Of course, in this case, the communications officer didn't get there before the radio got melted and set off the trap.
There was a bright flash and dust jumped off the ground for meters around the FOP. When it cleared, three Rikti were standing.
"Fire!" Master Sergeant Riley ordered as he cut loose with a sniper round that took down the communications officer. The other four soldiers he had with him were emptying their guns at the Rikti, with little to no effect.
As the communications officer tried to sit up, he was hit by a stream of fire that saturated the area from Riley's gun. The return fire slammed into the small rise they were hiding behind. Riley opted for the less tactically sound position in favor of taking them from an angle they weren't prepared for. When the Rikti set up, they paid attention to the high hill nearby and were watching it.
The communications officer went down and didn't get back up. Riley had to fire several more rounds to drop two of the other three. The last took what cover he could and returned fire, wounded. Even though the communications officer didn't open a portal, the response was quick and numerous. Six more Rikti swarmed up the hill into firing positions and soon fire superiority switched hands.
A beam slammed into the shoulder pad of one of the soldiers, sending him backward and down the tiny hill into a gully, screaming in pain. "Carlson! Young, get Carleson!"
Riley fired off his rocket into the enemy formation, then ducked down into the gully and rolled over onto his back. "We're pulling back!"
The master sergeant pulled a smoke canister and tossed it over the ledge toward the Rikti. Then he grabbed Mathers's OBA and yanked him down behind cover just as a plasma bolt whizzed through the area he was using for a head. Mathers screamed in pain and grabbed his face. "Get the [censored] down you [censored] ing idiots!" He reached across and pulled Hernandez down as well, just as dust and rock started exploding along their cover.
"Sorry sarge, didn't hear you!" Hernandez stared at Mathers as the young soldier screamed in pain and held his face, writhing in the dirt.
Riley grabbed him and pulled out his canteen. "Hold still!" He poured water onto his face. "That's all you get until we're out of here, now we need to MOVE soldier! Can you do that?"
Mathers hissed through his teeth as he made an effort to keep his hands from his face. "Yes sergeant! Ahhhh! Yes sergeant!" He fumbled for his rifle and followed Riley away from the enemy. Young followed behind, with Carlson over his shoulder.
"Move! Move! They're behind us, get into that ravine, keep going until you get to the LZ!" Riley stopped and took aim at a Rikti charging forward with a huge piece of metal. He let loose a round, which penetrated the Rikti shielding and slowed the advancing soldier, but not as much as when he ran over the spiked traps that Riley left for him and the following Rikti. Two more bursts later and the soldier was down, but there were more, and they were running out of ravine.
As was common with landing zones, it was a large, flat open space. That meant a lack of cover. Cover is an infantryman's friend.
Hernandez tossed green smoke onto the LZ and they hunkered down as Young applied a pressure bandage and burn patch to Carlson's shoulder. Soon they could hear the fire of plasma rifles, and Riley began returning fire, his M-41 making a distinctive report that rose above the din of M-16 fire. The ground around them splashed up with energy bolts and occasionally Riley rocked back from a direct hit. He kept directing fire though, through it, and positioning his soldiers behind himself so that he would receive most of the fire.
When the chopper was audible it was only two hundred yards away, the sound of fighting overshadowed its approach. The thing about the Blackhawk is that it doesn't have the downblast of some of the other helicopters its size, which means you can run to it as its landing. This is not advised under fire, but always seems to happen anyway.
The Blackhawk didn't even touch down before it was under intense fire from the Rikti forces. Plasma and energy bolts slammed into the fuselage and tail as the soldiers tried to pile in. Riley was facing away from the chopper when it went up. He skidded to a stop, face first in the dirt and rocks. Riley scrambled to get his weapon out in front of him and fire from a prone position, as flaming debris landed around him and soldiers screamed behind him.
He threw his last smoke canister toward the advancing enemy and rolled over to look down his body to see if he still had legs. One looked broken and the other was on fire, but they were there. Two Apache's curled in over the war wall and engages as close air support, suppressing the Rikti advance as a Blackhawk medical chopper landed near the crash site.
Upon standing, Riley found that his leg was merely perforated by shrapnel not broken, and though painful, he could walk on it. He reached into the flaming remnants of the first chopper and pulled free an extinguisher, to douse the bodies near him.
Two medics rushed out of the medical Blackhawk, under fire and started looking at the fallen soldiers. Mathers, Young and the door gunner were alive, the others didn't make it. Carlson burned to death while Riley was engaging the advancing forces. They simply picked up the wounded and muscled them to the chopper, which sustained four direct hits during the extraction. The pilot never flinched, he just kept the wheels barely touching the Earth, with the smoldering carcass of another bird right in his view the entire time, both pilots dead inside.
The Apaches expended the remainder of their ammunition and rolled out as Riley loaded Mathers. He turned and fired two bursts as the last medic tried to load the door gunner from the other chopper, but was hit in the leg. Riley pulled the medic up, and the other medic got the door gunner. Energy bolts slammed into the side of the chopper, hitting Young, Riley and the other medic as the chopper began to take off. Smoking and making all sorts of alarm type noises, the chopper hopped the war wall and headed for Peregrin Island.
No one said anything except one of the pilots, who was constantly talking over the radio. One of the Apache's flew close on the left side to assess the damage. The pilot only said, "understood". That wasn't good.
Riley pulled his sat phone from inside his armor and called General Hammond. When the general answered he simply said, "this is Master Sergeant Riley, we lost the crash site", then hung up.
Mathers held a bandage to his face and stared at Riley the whole way to the island. He never spoke once, even when Riley fell asleep somewhere over the water in the smoking helicopter.
"Dammit Gordon I don't care if it looks like rain, sleet, snow or the second comming! Take the truck and get over to King's Row, that laundrymat contract is whats keeping me able to PAY you!" Joan Darcy sighed as Gordon Whitcombe hoisted his tool belt and left the shop. Just another mid morning at Atlas Park Appliance Repair she thought herself as she turned back to her own work. On the work bench before her a small older portable TV was cracked open and its electronic guts on display like some macbre vivisection of the inanimate. Ever since the Rebellion of Square Woot and the evil genius's use of appliance disguised robots to assault the residents of the Alliance Arms Apartments, including her, Joan had taken both a peverse pleasure and no small amount of additional caution in her daily work in her shop. That caution was evinced by by the presence of her Voltaic Gaunlets sitting in their charging station within arms reach of her. The presence of the large rounded vivid blue toned armored gloves were conforting to her. She used them to project and direct powerful electric fields in her other capacity as the hero known as The Amazing Arc Wielder.
Skillfully Joan located the fault in the TV, a burnt out transistor. She rummaged thorugh shelves of small parts and bits until she found a replacement. A few moments work with a soldering iron and she was done. Through the front shop windows the sky visibly darkened as she worked. It does look like its about to rain cats and dogs she idly thought to herself as she ran the electric screw driver making the final adjustments to the TV's innards.
"Now to see if that's done it." Joan turned the TV around and plugged it into a socket on the work bench. After a brief warm up the TV screen opened to static and an odd humming noise came from speakers. "What the?" Joan adjusted the antenna ariel and switched through all the channels. All were full of snow and static or badly distorted images. Joan performed 'emergency repair procedure #1' as she called it and gave the TV a sharp rap to its sides and then top. Nothing but snow and static now. Joan's attention was pulled from the static images by the increasingly loud noises from outside the shop. Dull thumps in the distance and now a rising wails of sirens. Joan moved to the window and looked out. Emergency vehicles sped past sirens blaring. Suddenly the clouds parted a moment and she could see that across Atlas Park several large shapes were moving purposefully though the air small dots dropping behind them. At that moment the static cleared on the TV and the Channel 4 news anchor Chuck Daniels was worriedly looking at the camera.
"Reports are coming in from across the city, the country, the planet! The RIKTI ARE BACK!" The transmission was interrupted by the strident tone of the emergency broadcast signal and logo. Then the image dissolved into static again. Joan fought hard to control her shuddering body. She had been a young college student during the last invaison that had cost her the lives of her parents. She looked at the TV on the workbench and then over to her Voltaic Gauntlets. Last time she was a victim unable to defend herself or save anybody. Today that was different. Joan ran over to the work bench. The Amazing Arc Wielder had work to do!
Join the ranks of The Dawn Patrol!
((Hello everyone! I am surprised not to see a thread on the boards, so I am starting one. I should note that I don't actually have time to mind a thread like this (darn real life!) So I don't know if I will be posting much in my own thread (ugh!) Still, I am hoping that the topic will generate enough interest to become self-sustaining. Feel free to begin plots of your own! As usual, the typical rules apply - no god-moding, etc.)
"And I am telling you, they are coming!" Penny thundered - a behavior highly unusual for her. Her cheeks were almost as brilliantly colored as her hair, another unusal thing. "Shred the red tape and notify someone like Statesman or - "
The bureaucrat looked at her with something like the pity one feels for a child rather slow to grasp an important lesson. "Miss McGuire," he said in an annoyingly soothing tone, "Statesman is an extremely important superhero and we cannot waste his time with every unfounded innuendo or wild rumor that some test pilot - "
Penny slammed her hands down on the desk, frustrated past endurance. While she had a respectable security clearance, she had never even considered speaking to such an important personage as Statesman. It wasn't that she hadn't seen him around - once she had attended the dedication ceremony for the new Statesman Children's Hospital, and another time she had had the good fortune to be present in the city square when Statesman was giving a speech - but she had never been closer than several hundred yards away from him, had never spoken to him personally, and was certain that he didn't know she existed. And why would he? In a city brimming with paranormals of all descriptions, one lone test pilot wasn't worth his time.
"The Rikti are coming to re-invade!" She spat. "Don't you think that someone in the Freedom Phalanx might have some interest in that?"
"I am certain that they would, if you had even one iota of evidence."
"I am telling you - "
"Miss McGuire," for the first time, the civil servant showed signs of his own annoyance, "You have told the same thing to the ten people before me. I am telling you the same thing that they were. Your report has been filed as per the standard procedure, where your claims will be investigated as usual. If they are found not to be meritless, it will go to the strategic committee, who will advise on what is best to be done with the data. Until that happens, there is nothing more that you can do. I suggest you return to your testing."
Penny's face was black with fury, and she clutched the receipt in her hand. "Well let's hope the Rikti decide to twiddle their thumbs for the next four to six weeks," she spat, and stormed out of the building, giving it up as hopeless.
Forty-five minutes later, Halon 1301 (that was not Penny's name, but the code name of the suit which she was testing) was working out some of her frustration on petty crime: purse-snatchers, a teenie-mart hold-up, and a batch of stupid kids who had somehow gotten hold of a box of live dynamite sticks.
Her new targets were a group of Tsoo, who were arguing furiously with a group of Crey technicians on a street corner. Penny was surprised to see that the argument seemed to be taking place over vials of blue liquid: with Crey it was usually circuit boards, microchips, or some such thing.
They all turned and looked at her as she stepped fearlessly into their midst. "You know, of course, that you are all busted," she told them with an easy grin. "Don't you know that this is a dry precinct? You can't have the blueberry kool-aid here, I am going to have to confiscate it. And you! Those wooden shoes are a hazard - if you ran too fast they might catch your feet on fire. "
The Crey raised their pistols. The Sorcerer raised his own hands, his elaborate tattoos glowing slightly as he prepared to call down the fury of his magic. Halon grinned as the power-feeds suit came online.
And then they all heard it, and stopped. In the background noise of the city, under the honking of cars and the chatter of voices, there was always a constant, deep humming sound. It wasn't irritating, and in fact the sound had been present for so long that it had been forgotten.
Now, however, it.. caught. Just a brief hiccup, enough to bring the sound into Penny's awareness as she frowned, trying to focus on what she had just heard. It wasn't until the second brief interval of deafening silence that she was able to pinpoint the noise, or the lack of it. The Tsoo and the Crey heard it too, and paused.
"What was that noise...?" Wondered the Crey specialist.
A moment later, the pitch of the constant hum fell two octaves, its volume dropping along with its tone, until it sputtered and died entirely. The silence weighed on Penny's ears like snowdrifts. She looked up, her heart thudding in her throat, already knowing what she would see.
"The force fields just dropped," the voice that spoke sounded strange and hollow, and not like her own at all. Crey and Tsoo looked up and saw it also, and for a moment, they just stared, their quarrel forgotten.
Then the deafening silence was shattered by the shriek of bomb sirens. The sky went green and purple. By now, all activity had stopped as people fearfully craned their necks all around, looking for the source.
Then, on the horizon, Penny saw a flicker of movement. It grew rapidly, becoming larger and triangular, giving the impression of tentacles and eyes, a monster dropping fire on the city. She didn't have to see it clearly to know what it was.
The second Rikti invasion had begun.
Everyone scattered, running. "Get under cover, get under cover!" Penny shouted at the running people, her eyes fixated on the sky, and then she activated her rocket boots, adrenaline pumping through her system, and took off after the massive shapes, determined to do what she could.