WilliamDArand
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Super Sales on Super Heroes 6 -CH 9-
🕑 Added 2023-05-18 01:33:42 +0000 UTCChapter 9 - Clean Sweep -
Gaia clicked her tongue, turned to look at Felix, then shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m sorry Husband,” she said, her full helmet covering her beautiful face. He only knew it was her due to the Tribune upgrade that now supported an IFF, identification friend or foe, type feature. The “Legionnaire Gaia” tag came out of her helmet. “It seems you really do need to be nearby and able to see the item. The rules in this world are very different than my own.”
Felix nodded his head. It was honestly what he expected.
He’d had to be rather close previously to make his powers work. Often having to be within visual range of the change.
That’d changed with the new world, but it didn’t seem that change was carrying over.
“Seems as if the time differential is normalized now to our own world,” Felix remarked, turning to look at Lily and Kit. They were both in their own Legionnaire armor. The former being reinforced by her own magic, the latter having a great of changes to the helmet to empower her telepathic powers. “You’re not sensing any differences in time either, right?”
“None,” reported Kit with a small tip of her helmeted head. “The portal to my temporary home is also stable and running at the same time frame. Everything is now linked as far as time goes.”
“I made a magical ‘universal clock’ and put it in Legion World,” Lily stated while checking her armaments again. She was as ever unused to using an actual firearm it seemed. “I hooked Tribune into it with a cell phone and just plugged it into the wall. It’s a horrible solution that will require Felicia and Jay to make something more permanent. Tribune seemed happy with it for the moment.”
“It is a useful tool that will help coordination across Legion,” Tribune reported over the coms system. “Many systems that are utilized start at a low point and are upgraded by the Legate.”
“Nn. Lots and lots,” Andrea agreed. Everyone other than Gaia was standing in a portal “launch bay”. They’d all armored and armed themselves from the primary Legion garrison and were ready to begin the assault on the Legion HQ. “Speaking of, how many points do you have now?”
Felix frowned and realized it’d been a bit since he last checked. The number had been somewhat staggering last he’d looked at it.
He’d been tempted to use some of it but he was also afraid he’d need a great deal of it for fixing Legion HQ and Legion City. What he was expecting to spend was a question mark that made him paranoid to spend any points at all that he didn’t have to.
He checked his balance.
“A lot,” Felix murmured, his eyes focusing on the two new lines he spotted immediately. Kit and Lily were listed and there’d been a clear increase in his marital bonus and loyalty bonus as well. “Also… did we get more Dragons somewhere, somehow?”
Felix turned and let his eyes flick through those present.
He spotted Goldie standing not far off. She was in a strange suit of what looked to be very odd armor. It actually covered her partially but had a number of pieces to it that look more akin to clothing. Her over-endowed figure, golden eyes, horns covered in golden rings, and bright gold hair made it all look extraordinarily glamorous.
She smiled at him prettily.
“Yes. I spoke with Taylor briefly while I picked this up,” Goldie said and gestured down at the very not armor like armor she was wearing. “It shifts with me apparently. So I can wear it as a Dragon, too.”
“Extra Dragons?” Felix prompted, smiling at the gorgeous woman.
“Oh, yes, sorry. Taylor had a number of male Dragons she needed to move off somewhere else. We actually need male Dragons to increase population count,” Goldie explained. “So I took thirty or so male Dragons and brought them into our world here. In exchange I was allowed to select a number of Dragon Maidens to come over as well. They ended up all pairing except for a few that didn’t like the males. They joined our Wing instead.
“Kris is acting as our liason to Taylor. Making sure the two Wings stay appraised and aware of each other. Especially since we’re more or less the government for Dragons.”
Felix didn’t respond. He didn’t move, twitch, or shift.
This was news to him and he didn’t know if it was good or bad yet.
“You’ll need Bridal-Gold, right?” he asked instead of responding directly to her statement.
Goldie nodded her head, the gold wedding rings adorned about her horns tinkling.
“Right,” he said and then looked back to Gaia who was on the other side of the portal. “Any response from that world’s Gaia?”
“She’s dead,” Gaia report, tilting her head to one side. “Long dead. In fact, most of the gods I’d expect, are dead. The gods that are here, are faith created, rather than world created.
“They’re no match for myself in my current avatar. If they should cause trouble, I will give them trouble in equal measure.”
Thank goodness for that.
It’d be freakishly annoying if they tried to suppress my powers again.
“I hope they try,” whispered Gaia. “I hope they try so I can demonstrate my powers fully. I can show my Felix how glorious I am. How powerful the Gaia that he restored is. How amazing I am. I’m sure he’d praise me. I’d like praise.”
Lily and Kit had been warned already about Gaia’s problem with speaking her thoughts out loud. That if they happened to encounter it, it was best to just pretend they didn’t hear it.
No amount of telling her about it, reminding her, or making her aware, would fix it. She was just that far removed for mortal beings for such a great length of time, that she would be unlikely to ever fully adapt.
“Yes,” Third Myriad remarked quietly then turned to look at Felix. She was dressed in her Centurion armor, had a weapon in her hands, and was the force commander for this expedition.
There were several Andrea’s and Adrianna’s coming as well, but they were logistics and support positions.
“On your lead,” Felix stated clearly.
Myriad nodded, then moved through the portal. Lily went with her. They would be their two point people as they started to clear and retake the HQ.
In the end, Myriad had felt that having a magical weapon as well as a conventional one in front would be ideal. That they’d be able to take on anything that came their way.
Directly behind them would be Gaia and Faith to handle any type of spiritual or religious problem. After that would be Kit and Felix.
Behind them was Goldie and Evie the Red Dragon.
After that were a number of Adriannas and Andreas.
Unfortunately this was the extent of the forces they could afford to send on this. Everything else was tied up in Vince’s campaign. What Felix was trying to do right now was an unexpected mission that realistically they didn’t have the resources for.
As they trooped through the portal everyone got into their positions. Exiting into Felix’s office.
Since they’d already found that it was clear, was nearly at the bottom of the building, and provided a clear route to critical points of the HQ, it’d be an ideal starting point.
Well, with any luck we can find resources here. Lost Legionnaires, living or dead, recruit new ones, or just equipment. We lost a lot in our escape.
Quite a bit.
Still a number of MIA Legionnaires.
Time to get them back.
Though… would they even want to come back?
“I’d want to come back,” Lily inserted, having apparently been listening to his thoughts. “I’m sure everyone here would want to come back. Even if their family members moved on, died, or were lost.
“The afterlife isn’t going anywhere. It’ll be there regardless. No sense in wasting what time you can have amongst the living.”
“Buh?” asked an Andrea.
“Felix was likely wondering about ‘if I was a dead Legionnaire, would I want to come back?’” Adrianna guessed accurately.
“I came back from what was essentially the dead,” Myriad chimed in as she approached the office door. “Tribune, mark this room off and bring up the map on my HUD.”
Myriad reached the door, paused, then looked to Lily at her side.
The sorcerress made a finger wave at the door and it unlocked itself and then opened. At the same time a almost completely translucent blue wall appeared on the other side of it.
Myriad entered the hall and the blue wall moved ahead of her. Lily had her hand out as she moved only a step behind Myriad.
Everyone kept moving as well. They cleared an empty security checkpoint and still nothing had changed.
Glancing over his shoulder as they came up to the elevator and stair well, Felix watched as an Adrianna tied a small GPS tracker to a machine-gun. A group of Andrea’s would be coming along later to collect resources.
“Andrea, bring up a squad and retake this security checkpoint, no sense in not using it what it was for,” Myriad ordered.
“Nn! Yes!” replied Andrea.
Myriad walked right up to the elevator and stuck her Legionnaire’s gauntlet, which acted like a security ring, to the plate there. The panel lit up briefly, then flickered out.
Whatever emergency power might have once worked, worked no longer.
“That answers our first question,” Myriad growled and moved to the stairs instead. The blue wall Lily had in front of her pivoted and kept apace with her. A set distance in front of the Elex woman. “Power plant is our first destination.”
“I’ll prep the generator so I can set it up when we arrive,” an Adrianna stated.
“Calling in Electrician Andrea,” Andrea added.
“I like me,” Myriad confessed with a chuckle. “Having so many of me is wonderful. An Elex for every job. Though to be fair, this is only possible due to a certain someone.”
Myriad’s head turned fractionally and Felix got the impression she was looking at him through the corner of her eye.
“Nn!” replied Adrianna and Andrea at the same time.
Entering the stairwell the team made it’s way upward. They’d only be going one floor technically according to the elevator, but it was more like five floors in reality.
The distance between Felix’s office and the rest of the building had been deliberate.
Andrea had been concerned at the time of a nuclear attack as what’d happened with Skipper. In the end, her paranoid concerns in tandem with Felix’s had created an HQ that’d sheltered the vast majority of Legion safely.
The number of MIA had been very low and the number of KIA didn’t mater since Felix just brought them back.
Reaching the facilities floor, Myriad paused in the stairwell. Looking up she seemed to be peering up into the unlit heights above them.
Given the security concerns, there was no central area to drop things down. Each floor was sectioned off so that nothing could reach the bottom by falling or being thrown.
They were all operating by night-vision through their helmets. All the cameras installed were each providing a view that gave them fairly reasonable vision similar to real life.
Even then, you couldn’t see beyond the floor you were on and partway up the next.
“Goldie, Evie,” Myriad began. “Can you two move to the next floor and hold it? I’m feeling itchy. I don’t like not having someone holding the front while we enter. There’s no other way into the facilities either except through here or the elevator.”
“Not a problem, dear,” Goldie said with a laugh. “I’d be delighted to do that. Should we go further than the next floor and proceed to the next door?”
“That’d be even better if you think you two can handle it,” Myriad answered, moving to the facilities door.
“Not a problem. Evie and I are quite able to handle anything that shows up,” Goldie remarked. The two Dragons trooped up the stairs, walking past Felix.
The Red Dragon did turn her head and stared at Felix for several seconds.
Unable to help himself, Felix watched the implausibly attractive Red Dragon moving up the stairs.
Evie shared a very similar shape with Goldie, though she had a little more and a little less in a few places. In ways that he found he liked looking at.
She had bright fiery red hair and glowing red eyes that gave her a sinister look, but he rather liked it if he was being honest.
Then she looked back to Goldie and continued to follow her.
Felix and the rest of the team entered the door and continued.
They entered a long corridor. Passing by several doors Myriad hesitated with each. He could only imagine how unhappy she was about having to leave all these possible locations containing enemies behind them.
Originally they’d planned to bring in a large number of Andreas, but they’d been requisitioned by Felicity immediately to handle an emergency situation.
“Tribune, minimize the Andrea security forces at all facilities. Send all available Elex forces here on the double,” Felix ordered. He hadn’t wanted to do this and had only considered it briefly. Now he realized it was something they’d need. “Order them as you need, Myriad. I’m sorry for not ordering it sooner.”
“I don’t think that order is a good idea,” countered Myriad even as they continued to move forward. “Just because I’m uncomfortable with the mission, doesn’t mean we should strip our defenses. It’s just taking out a loan to pay a loan.”
Felix hesitated, then realized he actually had a force on hand that could assist. He’d just never considered using them like this before.
“Tribune, order the Dragon Wing into position to supplement the security forces. On top of that, please spin up all the trainee security forces amongst Gaia’s people. Time for them to get on the job experience.
“Distribute everyone to where they’re most needed. Use your best judgement and whatever intelligence you have on hand.”
There was a beep from his comms as a response, but no verbal confirmation. Which was somewhat strange.
Myriad found the door they wanted and once more looked to Lily.
Who flung the door opened once more.
Myriad and her magical shield entered with her assault rifle held up against her shoulder.
There was a sudden flash of weapons fire as she vanished inside. It was several short bursts. Lily entered behind her and there was the crackle and pop of magic being activated.
Gaia and Faith moved in next and there was a green flash of faith magic that came out of the room.
“Clear,” reported Myriad as Kit and Felix entered next. Felix had his weapon up but angled at the ground just in case he couldn’t clear his line of sight.
His HUD rapidly picked up several “Unknown” humanoids that were sprawled out on the ground. They were in strange robes and clothes.
Though they were moth eaten and threadbare. The people themselves looked to be zombies of an undead nature.
“They don’t belong here,” Kit remarked as she held a hand to the side of her head. She was slowly scanning the room. “No other minds I can touch in the immediate area. Nothing living, at least.”
“Don’t belong here at all,” Myriad agreed, nudging one of the now dead zombies with a foot. She’d hit all of them center mass almost instantly.
Except undead don’t typically go down from that.
Lily had made the same mistake, though had targeted their waists. Most of them had been blown in half into two separate parts.
It hadn’t been till Gaia and Faith entered that their lives had been snuffed out.
Or so Felix determined from the wounds on the enemies bodies.
“Invaders?” mused Gaia, walking over to a rather large steel door set in a wall. It looked akin to something you’d see in a movie that held numerous monsters behind it. She tapped at it with a finger. The sound of her gauntlet against the door made a plinking noise.
“Looking for tech, probably,” Lily remarked. “Our power source was unique. Think nuclear, but magical. Or more accurately… me powered.”
“You?” Gaia asked, peering over her shoulder at Lily.
“Felix gave me the ability to make anything become a battery. Was mostly limited by size and density,” explained Lily. “So we got an car sized block of Osmium and I made it a battery. Except the amount of power I put into it was enough to… well… it’d have taken out a fifth of the country if it went off. I didn’t want to leave it behind but we didn’t have a choice.”
“Nnnn, explains the crazies,” Andrea hissed while looking at the corpses. “I’m sure they were here to make it go up in a big kaboom.
“With lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Or sirens.”
“Then why didn’t they?” Felix asked, moving over to stand next to Gaia. He lifted his gauntleted fist up and stuck it to the security panel.
There was a brief flicker of light from the panel, only for it to fail just as the elevator did. There was no power to the emergency system in this area either.
“Tribune, you can’t route what little power there is, to here?” Felix asked.
“It’s currently night time. The solar panels aren’t gathering any power,” Tribune responded.
Oh.
That makes sense.
Now I just feel stupid.
An Adrianna had stepped up to the panel and had torn it off the wall with a flathead screwdriver. She reached in, yanked out a bundle of wires, and tore them off the panel.
She’d apparently removed her gauntlets for the work though she was wearing Legionnaire armor over the rest of her. Not that Felix could blame her. He could barely feel his weapons through the heavy gauntlets at times, let alone wires.
Adrianna’s hand dipped into her pack and she fetched out what looked to be a Legionnaire’s ring. Slipping it over her pinky she pulled up what looked like an odd pair of pliers.
She quickly stripped the plastic covering of the wires. She wound one of the wires around the ring after sliding it down a few inches.
Reaching into her pack she pulled something rather large out. In fact, it probably took up most of the interior of the pack. It was about the size of a lunch-box and had what looked to be multiple electrical terminals across the top of it.
Adrianna slipped the wires into the terminal, then pulled out a screwdriver and tightened them down. Then she reached over and flicked a switch on the side of the device.
With a pop and a clatter similar to a motor spinning up, it started to hum.
The door whined and then buzzed.
A small screen set to the side of the door came to life.
“Danger, charging in process. Access denied,” Gaia recited as the words appeared on it.
“Huh?” Lily asked, looking at the display. “That’s… weird. Only me or my people could charge this. They were all accounted for, though. Maybe someone did manage to get in? Was this world close to having yet another problem?”
Felix walked up to the door and then looked to Adrianna.
“Just put your gauntlet here,” she said and pointed at the ring on the wire. “Yours will over-ride the lockout.”
Felix nodded his head, then stuck his gauntlet up to what was likely a live-wire attached to the ring.
His HUD gave him a red warning about electrical current, then vanished as he pulled his hand away after a second.
There was a clank before the door swung open.
Inside the chamber was the osmium. Dark and unpowered.
Laid out at the base of it was the corpse of a Legionnaire in a work uniform. Curled up in the fetal position with their back to the power source.
“Oh,” Gaia whispered.
“They must have entered and locked the door behind themselves,” Felix offered. “Put it in charging mode so no one could enter and then just… laid down and died. I have no idea who they were, but there’s no way I’d ever leave someone that brave behind.
“And speaking of that, let’s make sure we get to the morgue, sooner rather than later. There should be some samples there of the MIA Legionnaires. Might be able to call them back.”
“Yes, that’ll be high on our priority list. Reinforcements in a way,” Myriad agreed, her helmeted head staring at the corpse. “With power restored, we can turn on the defenses. Clearing the HQ won’t be an issue after this.
“The larger issue, and more dangerous one, is securing Legion City. I feel like it’s rather exposed considering many of the tunnels ran through it at some point. After that… the city surrounding HQ. Though that’s going to be a bloody business.
“More suited to the Elex sisters at that point. We’re our own human wave attack, after all.”
Comments
William D. Arand
Legion First
Jeremy Patrick
Damn. Just laid down to die. Pretty sad.
