Future View
Gadget walked into the room outside her workshop and found all of her friends waiting for her. Gauge was there of course, but he lived with her, Goliath had responded to the call, and Gabriel was there, reluctantly as always. "All right, I'm glad you're all here." She said. "As you know, the city has been plagued with robberies recently that seem to have no explanation. I think I have figured it out." She turned to the large monitor she had put together from an old big-screen TV and some computer parts.
"Here is footage from the bank heist at first international." The footage rolled. Showing a perfectly mundane scene of a bank. There were lines for tellers, and guards sat in their chairs near the doors. Suddenly, three men in black carrying large bags of money burst from the safe, running directly past the stunned guards, and out into a waiting car. "So you can see here that the thieves appear in the vault. The question was how did they get there?"
"And how did they get here?" Asked Gabriel in his belittling tone.
"Well," said Gadget, glaring at the sometimes angel, "If you enhance the footage and zoom in on the vault a few minutes before the thieves appear..." as she talked the screen displayed an enhanced shot, which showed a halo of energy flash in the vault. "Now that halo is only there for a few seconds, so I assume it must be some kind of teleportation device."
"Interesting." Said Gauge, in his slightly monotonous voice," but how did they acquire such an astounding invention?"
"Well I checked in the police files," (a database she had hacked when she was twelve) "And I found reports of an experimental device called the 'Passage Rig' being stolen from Star labs in Metropolis three months ago." She replied with a grin of satisfaction. Gadget always liked it when she felt a part of the team. Gauge always included her of course, but then the android was programmed to (not to his knowledge), but Gabriel, with his superior attitude, and Goliath with his assumption that battle prowess made a person worthy, sometimes made her feel left out. "I couldn't find out much about the project, but the fact that they have it under the heading of the 'Matter relocation project' led me to believe we're on the right track."
"Fine, then how do we find it?" Asked Gauge.
"Easy, actually you're going to help with that." She said. "You know that new sensor suite we installed on your last upgrade?"
"No." said Gauge; "All I know is about these power ports we put in my arm."
"Oh, well I upgraded your sensors too."
"Great, when were you planning on telling me?"
"I was getting around to it." She continued. " Anyway we'll use your new emission sensors to track the side effect radiation from its use."
"I've got emission sensors? Cool!" Said Gauge, feeling his head. "Where?"
"Top of your head. Anyway we'll do a flyby over the city and try to track it down." She grabbed her gear and began to head to the "G-Cave", as Goliath liked to call it. She fired up the hover car before she realized that Gabriel hadn't come out of the meeting room.
Picking up the handset for the CB, she switched it to loudspeaker mode. "HEY GABE, YOU COMIN' ?!?" she asked at high decibel levels, both Gauge and Goliath fell to the ground, clutching their audio receivers and ears, respectively.
Gabriel's head peeked out from around the door. He wore an expression of absolute disgust. " I'll watch the base." He said as if accompanying them was akin to sitting in a tub of cow manure for eight hours.
"FINE." She said slamming the handset down. Not a lot of things could get Gadget upset, but she really hated it when Gabriel acted as if her plans were stupid, she was an accredited genius after all. She angrily punched the buttons to activate the retractable roof to begin their search.
***
Gauge watched Gadget hit the console, opening the roof. He would hear about her frustrations later, he was sure, sometimes being programmed to be a good listener was really annoying. He activated his jet boosters, propelling him out of the opening, nearly before the doors were wide enough for his body. He hovered above the opening, waiting for the car to egress.
As he waited he accessed his sensors menu, bringing up the new emissions sensors. He was glad that Gadget had told him about these, he hated having components he did not know were there. He keyed up his radio "Hey Gadget, what type of emissions am I looking for here?"
"Look for Theta band emissions," she said, "they should be green."
"Got it." Gauge turned on the sensors and watched as a small window appeared in the lower left-hand corner of his vision. He plotted a flight pattern that would cover the city in the least amount of time, and began his flight. The hover car lifted behind him and followed, keeping a respectful distance. He turned to look back and noticed that he was giving off Theta band emissions, he hoped that was normal. As he flew over the industrial sector of the city, he paid special attention, knowing that criminals frequented this area.
"Pay special attention to this sector," came gadgets voice over the radio. "Criminals frequent these parts. Over."
"Uh, okay" Gauge replied consciously not saying "over". Sometimes he hated having some of the same brain engrams as Gadget; coming up with the same idea at the same time was sometimes hard. He usually let Gadget tell everyone while he remained quiet, can't have too many people putting too much faith in his intelligence. As he mused about an artificial life form such as himself having insecurities, an alarm went off in his head. This was not the calm beeping like his normal alarm, but a blaringly loud klaxon that drowned out his thoughts.
His flight wobbled, and he keyed in his radio. "Jesus tap-dancing Christ, Gadget, what settings did you fool with in here!"
"What?" She said innocently. "Did I do something?"
Gauge shut off the alarm and readjusted its volume. "I'm talking about the little, non-intrusive FIREFIGHT going on in my head!"
"Oh the alarm, I was afraid I forgot to tell you to readjust the volume... oops," she said thoughtfully.
"Oops..." Gauge said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, a speech mode he was not originally capable of, learning was one of his strong points. "Anyway, looks like we found our emissions."
"Here?" Asked Goliath, breaking his silence, and peeking over the edge, "In the suburbs?"
Gadget and Gauge looked at each other with shock and then looked down. They were hovering directly above a quaint looking suburban home with a station wagon parked out front.
***
Goliath couldn't quite claim to understand exactly what was going on, but he had been confused ever since he had crash landed his spaceship in Gadget's backyard. He was an infant hen, but his race aged quickly. He was lucky that he looked so much like a human in this stage of his life. In the past two years he had aged quickly, resembling a rather pedestrian, if well built teenager. He was possessed of superhuman strength and toughness, the only traits anyone needed as far as he was concerned.
Goliath believed strongly in the adage, "If you can't fight, get the hell out of the ring." He liked that, he had heard it on one of this planets wrestling pageant shows.
"So Gadget, we going down there or what?" He asked, anxious to get to crackin' heads.
"Yeah, just a second," she said, "let me do a scan...." She set about pressing some buttons and looking at her screens.
Goliath twitched with excitement, barely able to contain his want; his need to fling himself over the side and smash whoever was in that house.
"Ah-ha!" Gadget yelled, causing Goliath to jump in surprise. "Says there's a huge basement to this place. Looks like there's an entrance in the back yard.
"Great!" exclaimed Goliath, flinging himself over the side. He landed with a sickening thud, but picked himself up after the drop of nearly fifty feet, dusting off hiss uniform, which consisted of a green camo pants, an olive green T-shirt, and an old camouflage jacket with the sleeves torn off. He sprinted towards the gate to the backyard, breaking it off with one punch,
"Wait!," yelled Gadget, but she was too late. Goliath was already ripping off the grating to the small manhole-like opening in the backyard. Gadget quickly landed the car. "Are you nuts!?!" she asked incredulously.
Goliath looked up stunned. In his mind this was the only way to go about this. She walked up to him and put her hand on his shoulder. He stopped his actions, looking at her in disbelief. How could she not just want to assault the front! It made no sense.
"Let's take this slow tiger," She said, "we don't know what they've got down there."
"She's right kid," Said Gauge, landing nearby. "Let's you and I scout."
"Right" said Goliath, nodding his head. "We'll be more careful." He waited a Gauge climbed down the small ladder located within the hole. Goliath followed, his keen eyesight penetrating the gloom. His acute hearing detected the sound of Gauge's night vision coming online. Gadget followed them, wearing a pair of light-amplifying goggles, her stun-baton launcher slung on her back. Goliath did not understand the use of weapons, but he knew that Gadget was good with hers.
Gauge led the way, His vision being the best, Goliath knew he also had all sorts of other sensors that would help him detect things in the dark. Goliath was still charged with anticipation as they came around a bend and saw light at the end of the cramped tunnel.
***
Gadget lowered her stun baton launcher as they entered the room, fanning out, a tactic Gabriel had labored to instill in them. Gadget's green uniform was crisscrossed by belts and bandoliers that held various devices, both for combat and sensory purposes. Her multi-optic goggles cover her eyes now, allowing her to see the room clearly, they automatically adjusted for the increase in light, and she knew Gauges eyes did the same, considering she had installed them.
Two years ago, after the alien ship had crashed in her backyard containing the infant Goliath, she and the ships quickly fading artificial intelligence had constructed Gauge to help her protect the baby. Some of Gauge's parts were alien, but many were of her own construction. Gauge had ended up looking like an athletically built man of African-American descent. He was bald, and always wore his green costume. It had black wings on the chest, and ports for his jets. There wasn't much Gauge wasn't capable of.
She was shaken from her admiration of her work by the sudden movement to her left. A man dressed completely in black sped out of the stacks of crates that lined one side of this mammoth underground room. He had a pistol in one hand and he began to aim for the trio. Goliath and Gauge sprung into action nearly at the same instant, Gauge moving to protect Gadget, a goliath rushing towards the man. He turned and fired as Goliath came near, but the bullets bounced harmlessly off of Goliath's tough skin. They ricocheted into some electronic equipment on the other side of the room, sending sparks flying. Goliath grabbed the man by the arm, instantly breaking it with his heightened strength. The man dropped the gun and Goliath moved on, searching the rest of the room.
As Goliath disappeared among the boxes, another man in black came from near the electronic equipment on the far side of the room. He raised his gun towards Goliath's back, but before he could fire Gauge took action. Bolts of electricity shot from Gauge's forearm, striking the man in the chest, their force caused him to fly into the electronics, sparks flying again. Gauge sped over to the body, but before he could reach it a third man leaped from the crates toward his back, he never made it however, as the cross-shaped stun baton fired by Gadgets launcher caught him in mid-air and pasted him to the wall. "Thanks," said Gauge, looking over his shoulder.
Goliath came from the crates, "Nobody left." He said with the ring of dissapointment in his voice. Gadget turned toward the equipment just in time to see a final shower of sparks before a huge explosion filled the cave, creating a sphere of electrically charged air that enveloped the three members of G-force.