Super Sales on Super Heroes

Chapter 24 - Escalation -

The smell of pancakes cooking filled the room as everyone watched the screens.

His people held the security hall as it was intended to be used. A narrow choke point with overlapping fields of fire.

The enemy had taken the lobby and were attempting to do the same thing further in. Except that there was no cover, and there were murder holes from reinforced security boxes that lined the lobby.

It left their would-be attackers just barely inside the lobby, and his own people at the end of the security hall, and in the kill rooms.

Occasionally, one side or the other would put some lead down the security hallway or through the lobby.

“They’ve already lost twenty or so people. Most of those were in the initial push,” said one of the techs at a terminal. “We’ve got about forty wounded.

“All satellite locations have reported in and are in their bunkers. Everyone is accounted for.”

“Outstanding,” Felix said around a grin. Leaning forward over his display, he pulled up the overhead map and centered it over the security hall.

“They’ve disabled all the cameras they can reach, so we’ve got nothing on the outside. Initial reports are that there is only minor damage outside of the lobby, though.” The tech who was speaking fed an overlay to the map Felix was looking at, marking off broken cameras, problems, and assumed positions.

“That was where the bombs went off? The lobby?” Felix looked up to the monitors on the wall. The lobby was charred, smoking, and full of fragments of people and objects.

“Both of them. Yes, sir.” The tech dropped the conversation and turned to the tech closest to him and started up a different conversation.

Something blurred across the video feed in the lobby. That same blur burst down the security hall.

Then stopped dead in its tracks in the center of the staging area at the end of the security hall.

It was a man in a dark spandex suit. He’d been picked up off the ground and was suspended in midair.

He rotated slowly in one direction as his legs pumped furiously at the air.

One of Felicia’s tricks, he guessed. He wasn’t sure what it was set up for, but it seemed as if its goal was to take whoever stepped on it and hold them in the air for a time.

One of the ceiling tiles shifted and a two-inch-long rod stuck out from the crack. It segmented itself and then extended rapidly, plunging a circular tip into the man’s back.

Electricity crackled from the end of it, discharging straight into the man.

His mouth sprang open soundlessly as the room flickered and flashed.

“Do you want the audio feed, sir?” asked one of the techs.

“To what, hear him scream? No thanks, I’m not that twisted.”

The electrical current cut off as abruptly as it started. The man hung limply, the only sign of life his eyes rolling around wildly in his head.

Retracting into itself, the segmented electric rod disappeared.

The floor rippled now, a number of floor plates sliding around. Then the man fell. He vanished into the open ground and was no more.

“I kinda feel like a Bond villain. I just need a cat sitting in my lap. I could scratch their ears while I chuckle at the fact that a superhero just fell into a damn pit trap.

“This is so cliché, it hurts,” Felix said, shaking his head.

“Clichés tend to be founded in reality.” Kit sighed and opened up a different screen on one of the unused monitors. “I believe Miu told you this previously, did she not?”

On that monitor was the appropriately named sausage room. It was only accessible by the main elevator, and it was rather deep down. If he had to guess, Felicia had put it roughly a hundred floors below.

Surprised he didn’t go splat when he reached the bottom.

The man who had fallen through the floor was being strung up by his arms and legs by darkly dressed Andreas.

The Death Others.

They worked efficiently, coldly. A man in a chair was being questioned, while a different woman was sitting in front of a desk with what could only be an Indentured contract in front of her.

A cart was brought in by a normal Other, dressed in the standard Legion uniform the Others had adopted.

Moving quickly to the sausage machine, she started pulling down the long ropes of what used to be a human.

Once the cart was loaded up, she happily waved at the Death Others, and left.

The woman at the table signed the form and then laid her head down on the desk and started crying.

“Lovely. Yep, Bond villain.”

Andrea happily dropped a plate of pancakes into his lap and handed him a fork. “Pancakes!”

Tanker appeared in the lobby, running dreadfully slow.

“Looks like the speedster was the one who was supposed to soften things up.” Kit tapped at her tablet and focused one of the cameras on Tanker.

He trundled along as bullets slammed into him continuously. Even Tanker couldn’t take that kind of punishment without injury. His arms came up to protect his face as he stomped along.

Bouncing off a wall, he stumbled into the security hall and kept moving. When he came out into the open area that the speedster had been trapped in, Tanker veered off to the left blindly.

“Oh, he missed the pit trap.” Felix took a mouthful of pancakes and watched as Tanker closed in on a barricade full of his people.

A squad of supers stepped out of the barricade and surrounded Tanker.

Off to one side of the camera, Felix could see Lily and Ioana supervising.

Must be trying to give the newbies a taste of actual combat. Considering the Telemedics, it’s not a terrible idea.

A woman with a thin sword stepped forward and blasted a lightning-fast thrust into Tanker’s side.

The sword skittered across his skin, drawing a line of blood but nothing else. The swordswoman danced away as Tanker’s arms came out, trying to grab her.

One of her partners stepped in and unleashed a flurry of kicks into Tanker’s knees and thighs.

As soon as the big, nigh invulnerable hero turned, Eva’s brother Evan stepped up and laid his hands on Tanker’s back.

Lightning coursed through the hero at a level that could probably power an entire city.

Tanker arched his back, his body stiffening under the onslaught.

Evan kept using the man as a grounding wire before he finally took two steps back, falling to one knee.

Lily waved a hand at the young man and he was dragged backward out of the combat area by a burst of rune script.

Tanker started to fall over, his body still locked in an upright position from the shock. Then he somehow managed to take a few stumbling steps backwards.

The swordswoman stepped in again, her blade dancing out into Tanker’s face. Once, twice, thrice.

Then she was gone again before Tanker could react.

Turning, Tanker started to flee towards the security hall.

Apparently, that was a signal, as Ioana and Lily stepped in at that point.

Lily smashed Tanker to the ground with an explosive concussion. Ioana casually walked up to the man and started kicking him in the head repeatedly.

Ten kicks in and Tanker’s arms fell to his sides, unmoving.

Ioana visibly sighed and then looked off camera and gestured at someone. As she walked away from the unconscious man, Felix waited to see what would happen next.

“It’s like watching a movie.” Felix happily finished off one of his pancakes and dug into the next.

The floor around Tanker flowed, and carried him to the center of the room. Much like the previous attacker, Tanker fell down the hole and vanished.

Looking to the other screen, Felix waited. He really wanted to see what happened when they arrived.

After several seconds, Tanker was there, suspended in midair. Felix couldn’t see how he’d arrived, but he assumed there was a hole in the ceiling.

Huh. So, the same way in which the first was caught is the way they don’t go splat.

Two Death Others walked up and began discussing the man. Even now, he was waking up. On top of being as strong as he was, he apparently had a rapid healing factor.

Kit sucked in a sudden breath.

Felix’s eyes jumped back to the main screen.

The swordswoman was down on the ground writhing. Lightning arced from one limb to the other. Blood poured from her eyes, ears, and nose. Her teeth were locked together as she convulsed.

Smoke even wafted up from her body as if she were being cooked.

Lily and Ioana were both nearby but could do nothing, and looked on as she shook.

Focusing on the woman, Felix called up her ownership window and the idea of fixing her.

Name:

Victoria Volante

Power: Sword Mastery

Alias: Vicky, Swift Blade

Secondary Power: Expanded Senses

Physical Status:

Fatal Heart Attack, Electrocution, third degree burns

Mental Status:

Shock

Positive Statuses:

None

Negative Statuses:

Dying

Strength:

56

Upgrade?(560)

Dexterity:

88

Upgrade?(880)

Agility:

79

Upgrade?(790)

Stamina:

47

Upgrade?(470)

Wisdom:

58

Upgrade?(580)

Intelligence:

51

Upgrade?(510)

Luck:

45

Upgrade?(450)

Primary Power:

61

Upgrade?(6,100)

Secondary Power:

33

Upgrade?(3,300)

Status Correction: Fatal Heart Attack -> Healed

Correct Status? (15,000 points)

Seems cheap. Is it because a heart attack could be treated by a defibrillator?

Felix shrugged and waited for the lightning to dissipate. The moment it did, he hit the accept button to correct her status, then thumbed the communications button for the security hall.

“Get her up and moving. I don’t want to fix her again if I don’t have to.” Felix let go of the button.

Everyone in the security hall jumped at the sudden use of the communication system.

The martial artist snagged Victoria and dragged her off into cover. The swordswoman, for her part, was still in shock, or so Felix guessed.

Not every day your heart explodes and gets instantly repaired.

As soon as she was behind cover, everyone refocused their efforts on the hallway.

Victoria lay there behind the shielding, staring up at the ceiling.

Not being able to spare her any more of his time, Felix turned back to the other displays.

His people waited calmly. Patiently. There was no reason to go charging out of the lobby and into whatever they’d prepared on the street. Everything they needed had been placed underground. Only the security hall and lobby were above.

The rest of the building was shipping, receiving, and an elaborate fake of a headquarters building.

Leaning back in his chair, Felix set the fork down on his plate. “Fantastic as always, Andrea.”

The mercenary clapped her hands together happily. “Thank you, dear!”

Snatching the plate from his lap, she skipped away gleefully.

“I guess now we wait for their next move. They’ve lost two elite agents, a group of lesser agents, and gained nothing. I can’t imagine the police can ignore this forever. We don’t have to go out there, but they do have to get in here if they want whatever they came for.

“Probably my head.” Felix folded his hands in his lap.

Curiously, Victoria remained lying where she’d been dragged, staring up at the ceiling.

An hour passed, with the occasional burst of gunfire from the lobby, but nothing changed. At some point, there would be a push or a retreat. It all came down to the opponent’s belief in themselves.

“This is boring,” Andrea said plaintively. “Can we play a game?”

“What game did you have in mind?” Felix asked. He was only barely paying attention to the screens. His people were unlikely to be hurt in any way, shape, or form.

The Wardens were hanging off to the side in a neutral, non-powered state, waiting for the call to be used.

“I dunno. What about a card game? That’d be fun.

“Lily wanted me to ask you to play a game the other day, but I think she was trying to trick me,” Andrea grumped, her fingers playing with a button on her jacket.

Said sorceress was still down in the security hall defending.

“I wouldn’t be surprised. She likes making you do things that she knows put me on edge.” Felix looked around himself. Kit had left to go work on their guests in the sausage room.

Miu had shown up shortly after that, making herself part of a corner.

Everyone else had a job to do.

“On edge?” Andrea whispered, leaning in towards him. Felix felt his skin prickle and his stomach flop over at the nearness of her.

“Your scent changed.” Andrea moved in even closer and took a deep whiff from his shoulder. “It smells like y—oh. Oh! On edge.”

Andrea turned a bright shade of red and sat back into her chair. “On edge. I get it now. Yes, she was trying to make me put you on edge, then.”

“Honestly, originally, I thought she was playing power games for the sake of playing power games. Now I’m not so sure.”

“That’d make sense. Her scent changed recently, too. She kinda—”

Andrea broke off as every pair of eyes was drawn to the lobby on the main screen, where a flurry of activity was taking place.

Out of nowhere, people dressed in dark fatigues came in with sledgehammers. Walking alongside them and protecting them were others with portable ballistic shields.

Those shields were pressed to the kill slits. The men and women inside those reinforced security bunkers had been a primary point defense for keeping people out of the lobby.

With the shields so close, it made it a problem to fire, as bullets were unpredictable and could easily come back at them.

“Need energy weapons,” Felix said, watching the feed.

“That’d help. Though they would send in energy reflective shields instead. Should get an over/under weapon. Energy weapon with a rifle under-barrel.” Andrea’s voice had taken on the professionalism of Myriad.

A few minutes passed in relative peace as the people with sledgehammers did… something. They were off screen and couldn’t be seen.

He was lucky the camera left up in the lobby had been disguised as a water sprinkler. No one had paid it any attention, and it was their only means of seeing in right now.

Unbelievably, an armored car rolled into frame. Then a second. Before Felix could hit the PA and warn his people properly, both vehicles were off at full speed down the security hall, one after the other.

Slapping his hand down on the button, he shouted into the microphone, “Incoming! Take cover!”

Everyone on the exit point of the security hall took their positions.

On each side, the Wardens came to life.

They were, by all accounts, what people would call a mech. Something out of fantasy stories and fictional worlds. They were big enough for a person to be inside and pilot, similar to an exo-suit or exo-frame. Except that they were completely covered from head to toe.

They weren’t the huge versions in movies.

Yet.

Felicia had come up with the idea when Felix had asked for the ability to have an entire section locked down by a single team of heavily armed and armored people.

Coming in at eight feet tall and humanoid, they were intimidating. Built out of an alloy the Dwarven inventor refused to explain, they were incredibly tough. The power source she’d created for them, once again stolen from Lily’s power, was built for the Wardens specifically.

Each pair of Wardens worked as a team and had been built to assist its partner.

The far scarier-looking one was outfitted with a sword with a plasma edge, of all things, and a tower shield. That sword could eat through most metals and polymers with a frightening degree of ease. Thicker metals took longer but eventually could be gotten through.

The second Warden’s armament was a giant railgun. The power needed to discharge the weapon was one of the reasons the power source was built into the Warden.

Its secondary purpose was that of medic. It had a small pod attached on its side that contained electrical repair tools, self-heating lower-grade alloy of the same type that the Warden was made of, and a diagnostic tool. The idea was that it could make spot repairs and keep them in the fight longer if they had a moment to take a step back.

The armor on the ranged Warden was slimmer and less thickly made. The idea was for it to be agile, and keep itself on target with its weapon.

All four Wardens went “heads up” at the call. Both Shield Wardens trundled forward, their swords held out at their sides as their counterparts brought their railguns to bear.

The armored cars screeched into the area and the back hatch dropped down.

“Shit.”

Supers flooded out of the dropped gate, the cannons on the armored cars opened up, and the security hall was filled with enemy troops.

“Andrea, send the Others.”

“On it.” Andrea pressed a hand to her ear and turned her head to one side.

His people lit those armored cars up like they were range targets. The camera started to fritz as the armored cars continued to boom out round after heavy-caliber round.

The supers took cover behind the armored cars and began organizing themselves quickly.

His Shield Wardens got into place and neatly snipped the tips off the barrels from each of the armored cars. The barrels melted from where they were struck, the red-hot glow deforming them.

The next round from one of them exploded in the damaged barrel, while the other one failed to fire at all.

A gauss round tore through a super who tried to get a peek around the armored car, his head disappearing in a splatter of gore.

Then everything went to shit as the Others flooded in from the sides.

Felix simply couldn’t keep up with what was going on as the whole thing devolved into chaos.

Hitting the comm button, he dialed into the Shield Wardens. “More coming down the security hall. Hold them there and keep them out. We need time to deal with the supers.”

He got two acknowledgments in return as the Shield Wardens turned off to face the tunnel.

Lightning crackled one way, then fire in the opposite direction. Explosions detonated throughout the room as the battle raged.

Telemedics popped up here and there as they were able to, vanishing with a wounded comrade.

Feeling the weight of his lack of combat experience again, Felix had to turn to Andrea for help. “How’s it looking? I’m no strategist, Andrea. I’m just a pencil pusher.”

Andrea’s glanced over at him, her mismatched eyes piercing through him. She gave him a warm smile, then looked back to the monitors. “We’re winning. But not without losses. It shouldn’t be much longer. It just looks like this because everyone is unleashing all their trump cards.

“Lily is scary as shit. I genuinely underestimated her.”

Felix couldn’t tell what she was talking about, but if he had to guess, it was the mass of lightning that was dominating one side of the room.

“Yeah, she hides the monster well.”

“As to being a pencil pusher, that’s okay, dear. You be you, you do you. You’re not here to fight, you’re here to help us fight. I enjoy the idea that you depend on us for your safety.

“It’s not every day we get to rescue the damsel in distress. You’d look terrible in a dress, though.”

“Yes, yes I would. I’ll leave that to you and Lily. You two have certainly set a new standard for attractive and professional.”

“You flatter me. Do it some more.”

Felix frowned for a moment as he watched the mess that was the screen.

Andrea changed whenever she flipped her Myriad switch. Almost to another person. The intelligence boost only made it more obvious.

Might as well ask, I guess.

“You’re like a different person.”

Andrea blinked twice, her eyes unfocusing. She gave herself a tiny shake of her head, her eyes flicking back to the monitors.

“That’s because I am. I’m me, of course, but, the one you call Andrea Prime isn’t Andrea Prime. I died and we absorbed ourself through our oldest Other. We are Andrea, yet we are—I am—not.”

Andrea’s eyes scrunched up and she looked pained.

“This isn’t easy to explain, and I’m making a mess of it.”

“No, no I get it. I get it. It also makes a bit more sense. We’ll talk more after this. I’d like to ask some questions about your Others and Death Others, too.”

“Good, because this thing is over and we need to get down there to start picking up the dead and wounded.”

Felix looked up to the screens and found she was right. The Wardens were holding the hallway, while the center of the screen was a bloody mess.

“Not quite. We still have to clear the lobby, and whatever they’ve laid in wait for us outside.

“This isn’t over, I’m afraid,” Felix said morosely.