Paragon stared at the screen in total and utter disbelief. It couldn’t be right, could it? He had known that the team was sponsored by, and received financial and technical support from a rich, private individual, but he never thought that it would turn out to be a 12-year-old schoolkid. Yet there she stood, in her school uniform, for Christ’s sake! Apparently, she had inherited millions from her deceased mother’s estate after she had emancipated herself from her father, Sir Damien Dalton. Yes, that Dalton, and was now in control of her own life with access to her fortune! A fortune she used to sponsor the team, though he didn’t know why.
He also had to wonder why the team’s lawyer, standing beside their sponsor smartly dressed in an Armani suit, was referred to by the other members of the team as Jimmy the Fish?
He tried to concentrate on the matter at hand. The team had received a call from Bethany that morning asking if they could possibly help out the Challenger-Wildeman family with some problems they were experiencing with their research and development company, CW-Tech.
Paragon had heard of them; supposedly a family of tech geniuses, some of whom were apparently also Metas. The ‘family’ were all kids, or at least young adults in the case of the two who now appeared on the pop-up screen with their ‘uncle’ Jack Wolfe, a friend of the family, he’d apparently raised the children after their parents had died during the Terminus invasion above London.
Akira and Banshee clearly knew them well, calling the boy and girl by their first names, Max and Tess, though they referred to their uncle as Mr Wolfe. Okay, focus on the call.
Max was explaining that they had been working with Daedalus (no, not HIS dad, he knew better now) to build an experimental Jump-4 ship to enable them to breach the quarantine zone and regain access to the Ziru Sirkan Capital.
Okay, this he did know something about. Who on Earth wasn’t aware that in 1990 contact had been made with aliens when a Vilani diplomatic mission had entered the Solar System and broadcast their peaceful intentions to the whole world. What had been surprising had been that many of the aliens were human. In fact there were about 40 other human races spread across the Ziru Sirka or ‘Empire of the Stars’, seemingly seeded by a mysterious race that the Vilani referred to as the ‘Ancients’ or ‘Preservers’. These human races were interrelated and for the most part able to interbreed, apparently all initially taken from a single unknown system – at least until now.
The Ziru Sirkan scientists were only now starting to realise that Earth appeared to be the evolutionary lost homeworld of all humanity, however, this news still hasn’t filtered back to the citizenship of the Interstellar Empire who currently believed that Sol was just another Ancient colonised world on which they had settled humanity.
These Ancients had been a major race whose civilisation apparently ceased to exist, many tens of thousands of years before the Ziru Sirka Empire was established, leaving the colonies with no knowledge as to their origins or the location of their original homeworld.
This mysterious race had apparently removed humans (Homo Sapiens, as well as several other sub-races such as Neanderthals) from Earth for their own reasons, before genetically adapting them to live on other worlds across the galaxy. At least 40 or 50 systems had been seeded by them with humans across known space.
No one knew why they had been so interested in humanity or even why they had seeded humans across the known universe. Terrans however had proof that all the human races had originated here, on this world. We have fossil records that no other human ‘colony’ had and our biology was perfectly adapted to this world. We were the only human race with that heritage in known space.
As for the Jump-4 ship, all the major races used parallel dimensions, called JumpSpace, to travel through space faster than light. It allowed a ship to jump a parsec of normal space (a parsec was equal to 3.14 light-years if he remembered correctly) in about a ‘week’ of normal time though apparently travel time inside that dimension took only a few ‘hours’.
What he hadn’t realised was that in the 1980’s the meta-human, Daedalus had built an experimental starship, capable of generating an interstellar portal that had allowed him to travel up to three parsecs in a single jump. For centuries races travelling through JumpSpace had assumed that two parsecs was the furthest that anyone could travel in a single jump. That was until Daedalus turned up in a superior ship claiming to come from a system outside the Empire, from deep inside a mysterious energy sphere that had only recently vanished.
Daedalus and the Challenger-Wildeman family were now trying to develop a Jump-4 capable ship to enable them to reach the Vilani capital now that the systems between Earth and the Imperium had been conquered by the Star Khan, Warlord of Zultas. These conquered worlds were spread across the Rimward fringes of the Empire, thereby creating a Stellar Khanate for himself and isolating the unaffiliated systems in and around Earth.
The Ziru Sirka had been dealing with an invasion from another race at the time, known as the Unity: a hive mind race capable of metamorphosing into the shape of other species and forms. They’d been previously been kept at bay by the Imperium’s use of Psi’s – the Empire’s equivalent of meta-humans, though they were extremely rare; another difference between our star faring cousins and Terrans.
When the attacks by the Unity had occurred on the Imperial borders, the Star Khan had seen an opportunity and rebelled, instigating a civil war that had resulted in the Star Khan gaining control of hundreds of worlds and numerous other humanoid and alien species that were now— willingly or not — under the Star-Khan’s “protection”. As a result, Earth was now cut off from the Vilani Capital by an interstellar blockade.
That was when Bethany cut in to explain that according to the Vilani there used to be a mysterious barrier (known as the Sphere) present for thousands of years, surrounding space for a distance of 25 parsecs in all directions from the Sol System. This had prevented ships from entering the ‘sphere’ by jump drive, the most common form of interstellar travel, as it had caused ships to suffer severe misjumps and malfunctions before throwing them out into normal space, often severely damaged and exiting over 100’s of parsecs away. This may have been some sort of Ancient artefact, apparently centred somewhere in the solar system. They don’t know what it was, what it did, why it was there in the first place or why it had switched off.
This energy sphere had remained active for millennia right up until the beginning of the 20th century but what was interesting was that it’s powering down might also relate to the appearance of the first meta-humans of the modern era, in 1909.
Its presence had given Earth a fearful reputation that, despite being considered a backwater world, they had an extremely powerful weapon somewhere that could protect them. Add to that that Terra itself was an unknown quantity – it had the greatest concentration of meta-humans in the known universe, extensive knowledge of genetics and biology and massive technological potential.
Apparently, some off-worlders also believed that the planet had a secret fleet of battle cruisers capable of becoming sensor-invisible. Together it made Terra a potentially valuable resource for the Star Khan. Of course denying access to his enemies of these resources was equally imperative, hence the quarantine though it was rumoured that he had already begun to conquer systems on the inner fringes of the Sphere.
Paragon had no idea why the other two and the Challenger-Wildeman family had smiled when Bethany mentioned this ghost fleet of battle cruisers.
Despite these ‘advancements’, Terra was still just a single, unaligned planet – and no real threat to the Star Khan if he decided to try and conquer the world, provided of course that the Sphere never reactivated, which led them back to the Challenger-Wildeman’s request.
CW-Tech was collaborating with a research facility in Scotland known as the Jumpstart Foundation where they were working on their experimental jump drive. Over the last, few weeks several acts of sabotage had occurred there and at an affiliated research facility in Vietnam and the Challenger-Wildeman’s thought industrial terrorists, possibly Metas or aliens, were responsible. Would the team be willing to help investigate?
Tess also mentioned that Alexander Helmes, CEO of SpartaCorp was trying to build jump-capable starships by reverse-engineering Vilani technology and she wondered if he might be behind this.
Banshee used the opportunity to explain to Peter that Alexander Helmes had become the public face behind the recent media campaign to make DNAscendant and Nanite technology publicly acceptable and legal. He was also the uncle of Reni Moriarty, a student Akira had met at Claremont Academy.
Having agreed to help and with the call ending so Bethany could get to class, the team considered their options and decided to travel up incognito using the train, though Akira did threaten to wear tartan as part of his ‘disguise’. A few hours later, they arrived in Edinburgh and swapped trains heading for the town of Rosehearty on the Moray Firth coast, enjoying the scenic views.
No sooner had they arrived in Rosehearty than they heard a massive explosion coming from a few miles north of the town, from the direction of the Jumpstart Foundation facility. This was followed by a second explosion a few seconds later.
They immediately changed into their costumes and flew towards the sound of the explosions with Banshee electing to remain visible but turning insubstantial as a precaution.
Jumpstart was an aerospace start-up working on the next generation of interstellar technology and a major testing facility. They were currently working under exclusive contract to CW-Tech to engineer jump engines designated for deep space exploration operations, with unique access to Daedalus’ jump technology.
The facility was relatively sparse in its layout; consisting of a large tarmacked area that extended out over the North Sea, nearby was a gargantuan hangar, with various smaller buildings, primarily dedicated to engineering and research scattered around the immediate area, as well as living quarters and a commissary further inland. The hangar and research facilities were clearly under attack by armoured marauders.
While Jumpstart had their own security team, it appeared that they had primarily relied on the facility’s remoteness to protect them. Clearly neither had been good enough to even slow down the crimson armoured mercenaries running around below, causing chaos. Looking down, it was clear that Jumpstart’s security forces had already been incapacitated though Banshee was relieved to note that no one appeared to have anything more than minor injuries.
It seems that this group were being very careful about not causing excessive personal injury and she noted that they were not killing anyone, despite being heavily armed. The mercenaries were busy tearing the facility apart, primarily focusing their attention on the hangar and the research buildings, leaving the engineers and administrative folks to run away or hide.
Paragon from on high was able to read the logo on their chest-plates, Totally Metal – hadn’t he read somewhere that they were a mercenary squad affiliated to or working with the Czechians?
Their Crimson armour had the faded imprint of what Banshee assumed were several old alliances. A familiar, faded black jackal-like design on the chest-plate seemed to indicate a previous allegiance to the Seminarium Sinister of Setekh in Carpathia. It had been overlaid with a blue triangular panel with a stylised ‘L’ that was supposedly the symbol for the Labyrinth.
Most of the attackers wore identical battle armour but two individuals stood out. There was a man dressed in heavy green armour that was radiating excessive energy from the suit. He was clearly determined to demolish the hangar doors while a female in personalised multi-coloured armour glided along at extreme speed on a force platform of her own making, chasing a fleeing scientist who looked like they might be trying to get away with some important papers or data.
Paragon noticed that they both had a black rose painted on the left wrist of their armour. In addition, they had name tags written in Cyrillic on their chests – possibly Carpathian, assuming the image on their wrist linked them to the Black Rose Syndicate? A quick Google Translate search over his commdot (using the integrated Internet Over Voice Protocol) revealed that the male’s title, ‘Distrugere’ translated as Destruction while the speedster’s name, ‘Fărâmă’, translated as Shred. He quickly relayed this information to the others.
It was clear that the armoured attackers were focused on demolishing and destroying the facility below and no one else appeared to be capable of stopping them. Going by the sound of destruction from within the shadows of the hangar there were other mercenaries inside as well. Thankfully, they had the element of surprise on their side. They just had to make the most of it. Akira asked Paragon to try to take out the ‘Shreddies’ character and he would focus on the soldiers in the first instance.
Akira attacked the four merc’s clustered near the hangar. His first mystical blast seemed to be partially absorbed by the target’s armour but still left his target dazed. Akira immediately attacked the other three, not waiting to see how successful his first blast had been.
His blasts affected most of those he targeted, but his shot missed the last of them completely. Banshee unleashed a wail on ‘Mr Green’, aka Destruction. The wail washed over the armoured figure causing him to collapse to one knee for a second before he rose again, looking around for the source of the attack.
Paragon used the confusion caused by his teammate’s attacks to plummet towards the flying woman and grab the circular unit on her back, ripping it free. She dropped towards the ground, admittedly under a controlled descent, before she sped off, seemingly on some form of boot skates. Even grounded she was fast, just not as fast as him.
One of the crimson attackers shot at Akira with some form of gravitational beam weapon. He felt the blast hit him on the chest and push him backwards before he finally managed to dodge out of its path.
Akira responded with another series of multiple blasts at the three he’d hit previously, starting with his attacker. His blast hit him and staggered back even as Akira targeted the next and hit him in the chest-plate obviously causing some of his internal circuits to freeze. Akira focused on his last target causing him (or her? It was hard to tell sex when they were all dressed identically) to drop their weapon and collapse to the ground in pain.
As though in response, a blood-red man-mountain of an armoured figure marched out of the hangar, easily three meters tall with a Gatling gun fixed to its arm and a rocket launcher on his back, a massive dome covering its head. “Looks like they’re sending in the big guns,” muttered Akira even as he realised he hadn’t been alone inside the hangar – an even larger shadow could be seen moving around inside.
The man-mountain immediately unleashed a heat seeker missile at Paragon even as he strafed the surrounding ground with his arm-mounting Gatling. Could he outrun the missile? The missile obviously had homing capability as Paragon dodged its first pass before it turned in midair and headed back towards him again. He fired off his eye blast at it. The heat ray was absorbed without it exploding and he was forced to try to dodge again as it exploded. The shockwave of the blast sent him flying through the air, but caused no real injury.
Down below, one of the merc’s unleashed his blaster at Akira but missed. Akira responded with a whispered “nah, nah a nan nah!” Another, seeing Banshee, fired his rifle at her not realising that she was insubstantial. The blast passed through her form, leaving her unharmed.
It did allow ‘Mr Green’, Destruction, to unleash an electrical area-wide burst at his attackers. It hit Paragon but again it failed to do any real damage as the figure in the shadows lumbered out of the hangar. This figure was even larger than the man-mountain and had a shoulder-mounted swivelling energy weapon that unleashed a stream of plasma in their general direction. It just missed a disorientated Paragon, passed through Banshee and forced Akira to dodge out of its lethal path.
Shred used the attack to speed in and unleash an energy ‘shuriken’ straight at Paragon. He dodged and the disc exploded against the door behind him.
Banshee unleashed another wail against the man in green causing him to collapse, partially dazed.
Paragon targeted ‘Shreddies’ again with what he now referred to as his “Hadrian’s Wall” technique. From above, he suddenly dropped in front of her as fast as he could fly and allowed her to hit into him before responding with an uppercut that sent her flying backwards.
Akira was again targeted by one of the injured merc’s but he wasn’t able to focus enough to hit. Again, Akira multi-attacked the three he’d targeted previously – this continued onslaught resulted in him knocking all of them unconscious.
Big Red responded by unleashing another rocket, this time aimed at Akira, who responded using his TK to divert its flight, ‘return to sender’ so to speak. It almost hit. The near explosion staggered the suit’s operator and damaged several parts of the armour. He obviously had been unprepared for his missile to boomerang back on himself. In response, his Gatling gun again began to strafe the ground in front of Akira, though he appeared to be trying to avoid actually targeting anyone.
A couple of the armoured troops targeted Banshee only to discover their weapons were useless against someone who was insubstantial in form. Destruction however used the distraction to target Paragon with a beam emanating from his chest, It missed, just.
Out of the shadows of the hangar stepped a more sophisticated version of Big Red, even bigger and armed with beam weaponry. It immediately targeted Paragon. The beam narrowly missed a direct hit though it left a surface burn on his arm, it got so close. Shred used the distraction though to zoom in close and unleash several of her energy shurikens at the three of them.
Banshee, despite being insubstantial, was still affected by the energy wave when the disk thrown at her exploded while passing through her. Akira was hit and although he managed to raise his shield, it still left him feeling dazed. The last projectile missed a flying Paragon completely.
No time to feel sorry for herself, Banshee unleashed another of her screams at ‘Mr Green’. This time it left its target staggering under the assault.
The merc’s, realising their assaults were having no effect against Banshee, targeted Paragon and Akira instead. Paragon was hit by the energy beam, but the blast did no discernible damage. In response, he targeted the Bigger Red, the heavy armour version. He flew over and grabbed him then flew straight up, smacking him as he did so, before dropping him as soon as he got high enough. To Paragon’s surprise its descent was arrested as jets on the suit came into play even as it swivelled its shoulder-mounted weapon round until it was directed at Paragon’s chest. Paragon sped up his flight so the beam weapon sliced through the air below him, missing him completely.
On the ground, Akira turned his attention to the other big guy who’d tried to hit him with his last missile and fired out a series of mystical blasts. Caught by surprise, most of the attacks hit causing his suit to explode. Metallic fragments of the armour peppered the area even as its operator fell out of the cockpit to the ground, unconscious.
It did mean the remaining soldiers responded by targeting Akira. Akira dodged behind one of the buildings even as Destruction unleashed a series of energy blasts focused on him. It seemed as though everyone was picking on Akira! He was forced to shelter behind the remaining hangar door.
In the air, Paragon found himself again targeted by the other larger mecha, even as it descended towards the ground in a controlled way. Thankfully, he had the speed and the manoeuvrability to not be hit.
On the ground, Banshee again was subject to another attack by Shred’s energy shurikens, having noticed her previous attack had managed to affect Banshee’s ghostlike presence. This time Banshee was ready and avoided the disk, which exploded several metres above her.
Banshee remained focused and again unleashed her hellish scream at Destruction and was rewarded this time with his collapsing unconscious to the ground.
In response, the remaining soldiers tried to target Akira and Paragon but missed even as Paragon focused on hammering down on the descending heavily armoured figure still trying to get a draw on him. He smashed into the armour so fast and so hard the pilot inside had no chance. The suit’s propulsion went off-line and the suit crashed to the ground at terminal velocity, leaving the pilot injured and unconscious and creating a six-metre wide crater in the flight field in front of the hangar. He was most definitely out of it.
That left Shreddie and the remaining merc’s who were now trying to escape. Akira focused on stopping the remaining soldiers as they tried to jet away. The blasts hit them and knocked them all unconscious. A blast from Shred at Akira missed just as Banshee unleashed an icy stare to try to freeze her in place. She began to shake and shudder with the intense cold as she collapsed to her knees even as an explosion behind them rocked the hangar. A powered finger-flick from Paragon put her out of her misery.
Inside it was clear that the attack hadn’t been carried out for espionage purposes, even though this was one of the most advanced testing facilities in the world, but with the intention of destroying as much of the facility as possible. Such an attack seemed weird to say the least. They had destroyed computer systems and burnt research papers but apparently had made no attempt to try to make copies of the valuable data.
Akira and Banshee examined the attackers’ armour and it was clear that they had been recently upgraded – by Labyrinth possibly? They later discovered that Labyrinth had used technical designs taken from Spartacorp databases in their modifications. The question was had they been stolen or purchased? There was no way to tell at this stage but, given the rivalry between CW-Tech and Spartacorp it seemed very suspicious. It wasn’t as though Spartacorp’s armour designs and technology were readily available on the open market.
Banshee interrogated Shred, who was still conscious if initially uncooperative, but Banshee managed to get her to admit that she didn’t usually work with the others but they had been contacted via a job posting on the “Dark Web.” where illegitimate business is done behind the veil of “free thought and enterprise.” They had been advised on this job by a ‘consulting villain’ known only as the Professor.
It was one of the arrested Totally Metal Krewe that confessed that his group had been directly hired by the Professor, who he believed ran Labyrinth, after all the mythical Minotaur Taurus couldn’t be real, could he? He also accidentally dropped a comment about the other team heading for Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, before he realised he’d said too much and clammed up.
Examination of the scene confirmed that they had tried to completely trash the facility. Destruction had been their only goal, not theft, but why?
As they were handing over their prisoners to the local constabulary, another call came in from Max and Tess. They had just received a rather weird call, from the head of operations at Spartacorp. She had stated that they were aware that the Jumpstart’s facilities had been damaged and had offered their services to assist with repairs.
However, the attack had not been made public, so how did they know about it? Did they have someone on the Foundation’s staff reporting to them or was it even more sinister? It was not unusual for big international companies to engage in industrial espionage and even on occasion sabotage.
It was rumoured that Spartacorp was manoeuvring – via various subsidiaries – to swoop in and make a leveraged buyout attempt against the portion of the Foundation under contract to CW-Tech.
The fact that Spartacorp was attempting to manufacture Jump-2 craft themselves, based on reverse-engineering Vilani designs, meant that competition between CW-Tech and Spartacorp existed. If CW-Tech succeeded in building a Jump-4 Drive, who would purchase Spartacorp’s suddenly ‘inferior’ design? Would that be sufficient motive for the attack?
Ho Chi Minh City had to be their next destination, especially as the manufacturing facility there now had a functional test craft nearing completion.
First Akira elected to start casting the Wheel of Weyan to repair the facilities and reverse the destruction rather than rely on outside assistance from a competitor. It would leave him exhausted but hopefully he would be able to get help from Paragon to speed them across the ocean to allow him to recover. ‘Paragon Airlines’ here they come!
Several hours later they reached Saigon (as banshee knew it) now renamed as the city of Ho Chi Minh. From above, they could see that there were clearly a number of unnatural disasters occurring across the inner city. This was Vietnam’s largest and most economically important municipality with over 10 million residents, many of whom were apparently now in terrible danger.
Reports coming in over their commdots confirmed that there were fires raging all around the Bitexco Financial Tower and the surrounding area, seemingly caused by earthquakes, while there was significant flooding and storm damage in District 2 along the Saigon River.
Other earthquakes and tremors in District 4 in and around Saigon Port had resulted in apartment buildings collapsing. Other areas were experiencing micro storms and tornadoes affecting individual streets while riots had broken out in District 7, especially at RMIT University Vietnam, Ton Duc Thang University and throughout the Bình Thạnh District. That amount of simultaneous disasters couldn’t be natural.
As they got closer to the city centre, they could see a muscular and wild-looking European on the ground with a cloak of fur round his shoulders smashing through foundations with his bare hands, knocking down entire buildings close to the port. Paragon could make out the Cyrillic tattoos on his bare chest and could make out his wild unruly hair and beard.
Should they try to prevent any further disasters or head straight to CW-Tech’s Chrysalis facility on the outskirts of the city where construction of the experimental prototype starship was being carried out? No contest, they had to stay in the city, as there were lives to save.
Paragon immediately headed down towards the man attacking the infrastructure then changed his mind and headed towards the people stuck in the buildings because of the earthquakes hoping to stop the collapsing buildings if he could.
Akira started to cast the fifth Wheel of Weyan – a spell that stopped time in a limited area, hoping to prevent any further injury but he could only affect about a mile radius of the city. He altered the casting so that it would only affect non-living objects such as collapsing buildings, allowing the residents to flee to safety. It was a stopgap spell and unlikely to last for long, but one that would hopefully save lives.
He then headed to the flooded areas and began to ‘redirect’ the floodwater using his TK. He moved hundreds of tonnes of the contaminated water at a time to continually put out nearby fires, drenching the area with the repurposed floodwaters. While he was doing so, he saw what appeared to be an ethereal woman in blue on the riverbank seemingly directing the black, murky waters to overflow.
Banshee intended to turn into Mary and use her harp to calm down the rioters in and around the University district. When she got closer though, she felt something, a growing rage ripping at her mind, trying to make her angry. It was a familiar feeling, one she had experienced before, when she’d been in the presence of Disunity Jack – the Irish terrorist. Someone was controlling the rioter’s emotions. Flying low, it wasn’t hard to spot the source – it seemed to be emanating from a young woman in expensive clothes standing calmly in the middle of the riot, obviously unaffected by the spiralling violence surrounding her, despite being in the ‘eye of the emotional storm’.
A European, she had a model’s looks with blonde, shoulder-length hair, an expensive coat open over a short pink dress and black leggings and wearing six inch heels.
Banshee was forced to land and try to focus. She then unleashed an icy stare at the woman who returned her own hate-filled look in her direction. The freezing attack seemed to affect her though as the rioters immediately stopped fighting, clearly confused and disorientated as ice began to appear on her skin. She tried to direct the afflicted crowd against Banshee who responded by turning corporeal before rushing over to unleash a corrupting touch on the woman she had nicknamed Anger. She was clearly not used to being physically touched and to Banshee’s surprise, the attack caused the woman to drop unconscious. Seems her defences against mental attacks wasn’t as strong as Banshee would have expected.
As the woman collapsed, the controlling influence vanished. The now upset and very confused public started to drift away while trying to remember why they had felt so angry and violent. They were helped to calm down by Banshee reverting to Mary and playing a spell on her harp to speed them on their way.
Paragon had seen a male on the street that stood out, as the earthquakes seemed to be emanating out from where he stood. He also stood out partly because of his wearing a stylised costume and by the cocky smile on his face. Paragon headed down and elected to try to take him out. He moved to get out of the way but wasn’t quite fast enough, and Paragon slammed into him. To his surprise he seemed to absorb the physical attack so all Paragon’s powerful punch did was bruise him on the jaw.
He again attacked the man in the funky costume, this time by rushing down grabbing him and throwing him into the air. If nothing else, it should disorient him. The figure was caught by surprise as Paragon sent him flying, heading a long way away. If Paragon was right, he was about to become intercontinental. Hopefully his powers would absorb his re-entry and hard landing. Regardless, he was no longer a factor in the attack and the earthquakes immediately stopped.
Akira noted that his waters had broken or at least dampened the fires, but the elemental female he’d seen earlier seemed to be manifesting a mini tornado which she released in his direction. In fact, she seemed to be the source of all the abnormal weather in the city. Akira responded by calling on the Medallion of Modrossus, using it to unleash a wave of mystical energy on her. A spear of mental energy spun out of the medallion, which she managed to shrug off.
From his advantage point in the air, Akira could spot a number of explosions in the distance. He flew towards the epicentre of the attacks and spotted a young woman apparently throwing some sort of explosive attacks in the streets. He flew as close as he dared as she manifested a ball of explosive energy in her hand. Akira immediately nicknamed her Click-Boom and unleashed a mystical attack on her, after all, any woman wiling to walk around with a tattooed bellybutton on display was fair game and deserved everything she got.
He unleashed a series of attacks at her to stop her from doing any more damage to the surrounding buildings. The first mystical bolt missed but the next series of attacks hit, catching her attention and staggering her back. She unleashed a responding blast back, missing him but completely destroying a nearby shopfront instead.
Paragon looked around. From above, he could see Saigon Port and what appeared to be an artificial island below, in the middle of which stood a massive apartment building which was shuddering from the aftermath of the tremors and looked as though it was about to collapse. Damn that Meta and his earthquake powers! To make things worse the wild-looking European was close by.
With his enhanced sight, he could see Mary trying to calm everyone down in the University district and he assumed that Akira was dealing with whatever or whoever was causing the explosions in the distance, around the Independence Palace and its neighbouring consulates. He could also see the blue ephemeral female by the river as well.
He flew towards the building even as the muscular bear of a man began smashing away at the foundation pillars of the building. Between his assault and the after effects of the earthquake, that apartment building wasn’t going to standing for much longer.
On the ground, Akira unleashed several mystical blasts at Click-Boom. The blasts hit her as she was preparing to throw another of her organic ‘bombs’ and it exploded in her hand. She collapsed to the ground and for a second he thought he’d knocked her unconscious. He turned away as he saw the path of destruction she had caused even as several buildings began to collapse around them.
Despite being on the ground, Click-Boom managed to unleash one last attempt to throw some half-hearted explosions at Akira. The explosions erupted around Akira, but he managed to dodge them.
Over in the university district, Mary could see the explosions and subsequent dust clouds rising into the air. Causing the harp to dematerialise back into wherever it went when she no longer needed it, she again turned into Banshee and flew towards Paragon where she saw the man with tattoos on his chest. As soon as she was close enough, she unleashed an icy stare causing him to shake with the cold but to her disappointment, it had no other apparent effect on him.
Paragon decided to try to save the building rather than confront the rampaging male, especially as the building was starting to tilt as it collapsed. The destruction of the pillar at the front of the building seemed to be the final straw.
Paragon, evaluated the situation using his building expertise, rushed down and tried to prop up the collapsing foundations with large chunks of rubble and metal spars he found nearby. He had to stop the building from collapsing, at least until everyone had been evacuated, despite a strong desire to punish those who had caused this disaster in the first place. As he rushed around looking for suitable material to temporarily repair the damage to the support pillar, he heard a roar and glancing behind him saw the presumably Russian wild man rushing towards him.
He tried to grab hold of Paragon as he slammed into him but was unable to hold onto him. Paragon tried to shrug off the attack as he continued to focus on his attempts to shore the building up until the real heroes, the emergency services, could get there and rescue the remaining residents.
Banshee tried using her freezing breath to help solidify the makeshift repairs, allowing Paragon to move away from the foundations and respond to the attack.
Meanwhile Akira left the now fully unconscious Click-Boom and headed towards the others. As he flew towards them, he used the Medallion to summon a swarm of Faerie sprites to his aid and then used it to impose the suggestion in their minds that they should use their glamour to change into something innocent and trustworthy.
For a second his mind wandered and then, to his surprise, 40 identical little girls with curly blonde hair, cute, infectious smiles and pretty little party dresses appeared in their stead, each the identical image of a certain young Shirley Temple. They giggled in unison as they suddenly swarmed into the building, instinctively heading for those apartments that were still occupied.
They began to lead the residents by the hand, as they pleaded with their audience in perfect Vietnamese to take them to safety. It was only when they reached the stairs that the residents began to wonder why they and their neighbours were being led to safety by identical twins, no triplets, no Quadruplets, no…
The sprite’s innate powers of fae suggestion helped befuddle their minds before they realised how many identical little girls were present, leading them out of the collapsing building. Each little girl giggled as they carried out their ‘orders’.
Thankfully, the Vietnamese tenants had no idea who Shirley Temple was, so that didn’t add to their confusion. None of them apparently noticed that their guides smiles hid mouths filled with too many sharp, shark-like teeth or that their eyes blinked both vertically and horizontally with the second eyelids sweeping across the surface of their eyes when they blinked.
It was only as they gathered together outside, and they had let go of the hand of their identical skipping companions and looked at them gathered en-masse, that they wondered who or what had rescued them.
That was when they realised the need to run away before the now precariously leaning building collapsed completely. They tried to pull the ‘cute little girls’ with them only to find their hands evaporated out of their own even as the giggling horde tap-danced their way back inside, searching for other gullible humans to lead to safety, as they had been commanded.
Paragon realised he could now deal with his attacker as he no longer had to worry about rescuing the people inside. It was time to repay the earlier favour when the tattooed man had laid hands on him. Time to give his opponent a flying lesson, Paragon grabbed hold of him as he took the man into the air and began headbutting him.
Unfortunately it had no real effect, he appeared to be immune to physical attacks. This seemed to be his only real superpower. Paragon continued hitting him despite it having no effect. Paragon held on to him tightly so he was unable to break free and his punches, though powerful, equally had no effect on Paragon. They were seemingly at an impasse.
Seeing them fly into the air, Banshee unleashed an aura of fear at the flying pair. It washed over Paragon who was now immune to its effects but terrified his passenger. He immediately went glassy-eyed and Paragon had to wonder if he was about to vomit on him.
Paragon held onto him in a ‘loving embrace’, at least he was unable to do any further damage. He unleashed an eye blast at him, which resulted in minor burns to his opponent’s face before he managed to twist his head away and unleashed a flurry of powerful punches in response. The blows landed but failed to do much damage even as another of banshee’s aura of fear hit. This time though it failed to have any real impact.
Paragon knew he had to be creative in dealing with the wild man so he threw him high into the air. He went higher and higher into the sky until the air turned thin and unbreathable and he passed out. Below, and now smiling to himself, Paragon knew that he couldn’t do a Tremor and allow him to land on his own as the impact would likely kill him, and he had no desire to kill even if he did deserve it. No, he had to catch him before he hit the ground on re-entry at terminal velocity. He spotted his opponent as he started to fall back to earth. Paragon headed up to catch him before he impacted with the already collapsing building. He succeeded and dropped his now comatose body safely on the ground outside.
Elsewhere, Akira elected to ignore the fight taking place above him and take out the river woman – after all, he hated that type of leg-wagging dancing! He wondered whether he should share the Riverdance joke with Banshee and decided against it. He flew towards the target. This close, he could see she seemed to be both naked and that her attractive form was formed of a blueish liquid. He forced himself to look away, embarrassed.
He tried to hit her with his mystical blast as he flew towards her but missed. She responded with a lightning bolt, which although it failed to hit, dazzled him and gave him a static shock from its closeness. He responded with a second blast. This time he hit her and left her feeling wobbly and struggling to stand. She responded with a powerful blast of wind at Akira – lifting him up and threw him against a nearby building. He managed however to use his TK to soften the impact.
Behind him, Banshee unleashed an icy attack on her opponent, tainting her watery form into icy edges that she was forced to shake off but the assault had left her staggered even as Akira unleashed another mystical blast. This attack caught her off guard and she puddled, even as she was knocked into the river before disappearing, apparently dissipated away into the river water.
Reports began to come in over the local Police channels of attacks still occurring to the North of the city, from the Chrysalis compound.
Paragon looked at the building he’d tried to save. Despite it leaning precariously, it seemed its imminent collapse had been stalled, if not prevented completely by their actions and the Shirley’s had completely evacuated the building to the confusion and amazement of the displaced residents who were being evacuated by the emergency services who had now arrived on the scene. Seemed as though their intervention had prevented a major disaster – there was fire and flood damage as well as buildings damaged by the earthquakes and the rampaging man but nothing that was likely to result in any additional deaths. In fact, the worst thing was the confusion, particularly amongst the Vietnamese elders, at the number of identical European girls giggling and dancing as they proceeded to lift off the ground and swarm around Akira. He smiled back at his summoned minions.
As he and his faerie entourage headed into the air, Akira heard the elderly rescuees muttering that they always thought Europeans looked too much alike to tell them apart. He considered banishing the sprites but in the end decided not to do so yet. They swarmed around him giggling and tap-dancing in the air as they flew after him, despite their apparent lack of wings. Akira smiled; he had to be careful what he thought whilst in their presence.
As they flew North they could now see a series of explosions happening in the distant compound. If the Jumpstart Foundation in Scotland was the testing site, this was where they carried out the manufacturing and construction of the ship.
They headed straight towards the factory on the outskirts of the city. As they got closer they could see a pair of Metas with some form of energy flowing round their hands as they cleared the perimeter of the compound. Close by were more of the now familiar red-armoured mercenaries attacking the workers. Some staff members were badly injured. It appeared that their attackers were clearly less squeamish about causing injuries than their companions had been in Scotland.
From above, they could see the main factory surrounded by various research buildings set in what appeared to be a perfectly manicured campus. Behind the main building was a long strip of tarmac that served as a landing field presumably. There was a hangar next to it. It looked as though the merc’s had already taken out most, if not all, of the security staff, though in this case that had been achieved using more violent means than in the Scottish attack and medical support was needed urgently, though it was unlikely that they would be able to get in to treat their patients at present.
One of the Metas, a female in yellow armour, was clearly a demolisher going by the damage her blasts were doing to nearby buildings. The team nicknamed her BurnDown. The other Meta, the male wearing a harness that might be some sort of power regulator, was clearly some form of telekinetic judging by his gestures and the subsequent resulting damage. They immediately nicknamed him Blowout.
Parked on the tarmac behind the main building was an experimental spaceship, large hoses and various cables were leading from the hangar to the ship. Fuelling? There were several armoured mercenaries moving in and out of the ships’ interior carrying electrical equipment of some sort. Were they planning to try to fly the craft away? The mercenaries were clearly under orders to get the craft prepped ready for lift off. It was the only thing undamaged from the assault.
As they got closer, the Meta they had nicknamed BurnDown aimed at Akira firing off a blast that he dodged. However, as the ray shot passed it hit a cloud, which began to snow flecks of silver or possibly mercury. She was clearly some sort of transmuter, able to change an object’s physical nature, probably at a nuclear level!
Paragon muttered over their commdots, “She’s clearly a danger but has she mastered the highest level of transformation; changing her targeted objects into blancmange?” “Better hope she doesn’t hit you then, unless you’d like to test her abilities personally?” was the solemn reply.
Cables and tubes going into the ship were obviously not a good thing and Akira tried to figure out what they might be for. He thought it likely the tubes were for some sort form of liquid fuel but he wasn’t sure what exactly. He thought it might be ‘useful’ to stop them, so he dispatched his Shirley’s to yank the tubes loose.
The Shirley swarm immediately flew down and began to yank the tubes free allowing the fuel to spill out; which immediately began to evaporate though some of the liquid was already turning into water vapour. That was when they realised that it was likely liquid hydrogen, which was explosive when combined with oxygen. Damn, they needed to avoid any sparks. Some evaporated fuel still managed to react with the air. This caused static discharges in the air causing about a quarter of the sprite’s number to vanish as their physical manifestations dissipated.
Akira had to wonder how heavy the ship was. Given it was the size of a small freighter it was clearly heavier than he could move by his mind. So, no floating it away. He also realised that he’d done a big boo-boo in pulling the fuel pipes free and realised that he might need to reattach them, despite Paragon’s suggestion he could just fly off with the ship. He seemed confident in his abilities until the others pointed out that even he wasn’t strong enough to do more than lift it off the ground.
As Akira flew down, he saw a slim dark-haired youth inside the ship wearing an oversized coat with a yellow scarf wrapped round his neck. The boy gestured towards Akira and he found his thoughts growing fuzzy as he seemed to ‘forget’ how his Theurgical-Kinesis, his TK, worked even as the boy seemed to gain access to the power for himself.
Several objects on the ground suddenly lifted off and headed straight at Paragon. They impacted against his chest but failed to do any serious damage and bounced off, peppering the ground round the ship even as Akira crashed to the ground, no longer able to fly.
Paragon flew into the ship after the boy, who he assumed had to be the techie trying to prep the ship. Inside he could see the skinny malarkey kid standing between him and a strange cylindrical device that one of the mercenaries was attaching to a control panel on the bridge. He gestured and a powerful sparkly shield manifested between him and the boy. Paragon slammed through the TK shield and smashed into the boy apparently knocking him unconscious but, instead of staying down, he stood back up as though someone else was controlling his body and resumed his stance despite his eyes still being closed, the weird angle that his head hung and the stream of blood flowing from his nose.
A merc’ just outside the ship fired at Paragon, hitting him with several shots but doing no physical damage. Then he felt something tug at his mind but he managed to shake it off.
Outside, several other crimson-armoured figures also shot at Banshee who was still substantial. The shots missed and she immediately turned insubstantial, then he targeted a powerful wail of the Banshee at the male Meta, the one they had nicknamed Blow Out who was still trying to target her. The wail hit and he staggered back.
BurnDown used the chaos to attack Paragon, flying towards him while unleashing an atomic blast that hit and caused him to feel the burn against his skin. He shrugged off the attack though he did wonder if he might suffer carcinogenic side effects later. Akira was more worried that the attack might ignite the spilled fuel.
Having had his TK powers stripped from his mind, Akira felt powerless and decided to use the illusions of Idolon to disguise himself so he looked like one of the Shirley Temple’s, then hid amongst the remaining horde so there was no way to realise which one was him. To add to the confusion, the Shirley’s all began to sing ‘On the Good ship Lollypop’.
Inside the ship, the seemingly zombified boy, who apparently was able to tap other people’s Meta abilities, focused on Paragon and tried to strip him of his powers starting with flight. Paragon could feel the tendrils of his powers tickling at his mind, leaving him dazed and confused as he crashed to the ground, no longer able to remember how to fly even as his skinny attacker began to rise off the ground in response. Hoping this power loss was only temporary he heard Akira mutter, “You can do it, just flap your arms, whisper lovely thoughts Peter and you’ll fly again. Now, which one of you sprites is Tinkerbell?”
Paragon reached out and grabbed the boy by the arm as he pulled him down and in for a power strike. The punch connected with the boy’s jaw and knocked him into the wall of the cabin. His head collided with the fuselage and ensured that even if he was under someone else’s control that he wasn’t going to get back up again any time soon. In response, both Akira and Paragon immediately ‘remembered’ how their ‘stolen’ powers worked.
Outside, Paragon felt one of the other Metas try to take control of his mind, but thankfully, he shook off the psychic attack even as the Mercenaries attacked Banshee, only to discover that their shots had no effect on her insubstantial form. She responded with a wail that caused Blow Out to collapse unconscious and a couple of the armoured merc’s to drop their guns and flee.
BurnDown responded by targeting the remaining flying pack of Shirley Temple’s, in the midst of which was a concealed Akira. Paragon interposed himself between the blast and Akira and absorbed the attack, leaving him feeling a bit punch-drunk even as Akira muttered something about needing to learn choreography.
He responded by unleashing a mystical blast in her general direction, as Paragon power attacked BurnDown. To his surprise she dodged the punch. He immediately responded with a back-handed slap and knocked her flying, leaving her sprawled on the tarmac, stunned. The remaining mercenaries, seeing that their bosses were no longer conscious, began to run away.
Before any of the team could respond, they heard the ship begin to power up, but there was no one on board. Worse, the fuel lines were still connected and would be ripped free if the ship took off, likely resulting in a major explosion!
Paragon tried to disable the ship’s grav-plates using a massive slap of his hands to create a shockwave in front of him. It shattered the toughened windows of the ship, damaged several of the forward grav-modules and possibly the cylindrical device that sat in the cockpit however, the ship still tried to take off though no longer in a safe, controlled manner. He was sure his assault had damaged the guidance systems in some way as it wobbled off the ground.
Several shots were unleashed in their direction by the fleeing mercenaries, one of which hit against Paragon’s back, which ‘infuriated’ him slightly. Akira rushed over, laid his hands on the fuselage and began to transmute as much of the front of the craft as he could into tungsten. The transformation caused the ship to flip over as it tried to take off and crash in front of them thankfully without tearing the fuel lines loose.
The ship was still trying to power up, but while Akira was transmuting it, it was unable to fly. Akira smiled as he realised that what everyone else was seeing was a young Shirley Temple, in a party dress and white socks, holding down the front of a large vessel with her bare hands as the grav-modules tried to readjust to the fact it was now lying upside down.
Banshee unleashed a shattering shriek at the ship’s engines, causing them to begin to power-down. The remaining Mercenary Krewe, on seeing the theft had failed, tried to flee by jetting away.
Through the shattered cockpit windows, they could see the cylindrical device, presumably a drone flight controller of some sort, powering down as a result of all the damage done to it.
The battle over, at least for now, Akira tried to banish the sprites, though four remained still hanging around, the rest returned to the faerie realm, reverting to their more natural and inhuman looks as they vanished. Meanwhile, the Chrysalis deactivated the ship before Akira stepped away allowing the hull to revert before Paragon stepped in and righted the ship.
They now had to wait for the authorities to arrive and debrief everyone.
They contacted Max and Tess in the meantime and gave them an update. Tess was convinced that Spartacorp had to have been involved if not the actual instigator. If the attack had been successful, CW-Tech would have had no other option but to remove the Chrysalis Facility from their equation.
Had Helmes assumed that SpartaCorp would be their only option to continue developing the Jump-4 engine if the Vietnamese company could not proceed? They did have the necessary resources to complete the work after all. Was he ruthless enough to attack a city to make that happen though? No one knew for sure.
To their surprise and delight, the team were told that the Vietnamese Government was considering awarding them Civil Medals of Heroism for their actions in helping to save the city of Ho Chi Menh.
As they headed back to the UK, the local investigation team reported that they had confirmed that the device wired into the bridge was an experimental remote control device had been wired into the bridge of the ship. What was astounding was its flight parameters; it showed an intersystem flight setting off from the UK out to the safe jump distance of a 100 diameters, close to the second Lagrange point or L2 (approximately 1,275,000 km from Earth).
From there it was programmed to enter JumpSpace but, instead of heading out of system, it was programmed to perform a micro-jump insystem, to Jupiter, or to be more precise to the moon of Europa, though no one knew why.
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 