"And that is how the crookie crumbles!" Jade proudly proclaimed in a loud whisper through her voice-modifier, earning a faint but audible groan from her three prisoners that sat below the street light she now perched on. The pilferers that tried to stick their hands in the literal and metaphorical cookie jar were a skinny Caucasian man with a frosted Jheri curl, a rather portly Chinese fellow with a dreaded mullet , and a stout woman with rubber duck floaty around her waist. Each wore dark grey sweats, black eyes, and defeated grimaces.
The trio of thugs had just attempted to rob Táng Jīng-les , a cat themed sweet shop that sat unopposed and unprotected in the near abandoned San Franciscan street. Since the place was being rebuilt, it and every other building that could house a business were constantly picked off by local opportunists that wanted to pilfer more than the occasional puff pastry.
Tonight, however, the shop itself even seemed to get the last laugh as the chubby, orange and red cartoon, calico, cat mascot grinned sardonically from above the shops entrance. Jade jumped off of the top of the lamp post into the darkness surrounding the streetlight, landing with a graceful, dusty thud.
One clunky black boot went over the other as she ambled lazily around the edge of the orange street light, her backpack jingling like the bell around a cat's neck. "I would be inclined to let you go, on the account of me being a rather sweet individual" Jade Tsked the burglars, closing her eyes and shook her head. "Unfortunately for you, this is my favorite dessert shop and I don't remember thievery ever being on the menu".
Granted it was one of the only dessert shops around, but she was too pleased with her wittiness to care . "Now" She pressed a button on her gloved wrist and flipped backwards onto the seat of a jet-black hoverbike that rode rider less to where she stood " if you excuse me, I've got to make like a banana on a sundae-" With a smile and a snap of both her fingers into guns she finished: "and split."
The young agent rushed off into the night with a distorted cackle, weaving through alleyways as the night air washed over her, cool and fresh. Black gloved fingers set to make another anonymous alert to the local authorities of the 'crookies' she left for thought back to her parting comment to her captive audience and bemone to herself: 'Does Táng Jīng-les even serve sundaes anymore?', Jade thought. 'If not then that joke back there really fell flat-' a chilly drop of rain plopped on her head.
Jade halted her bike to an four way intersection, surrounded by dilapidated and broken buildings. 'Funny', she thought ,'Whatever happened to it never raining in southern california?' Jade looked around her and saw no clouds, just a starry sky with only a few tufts of clouds. It wasn't until she looked up past the dull orange of the street lights directly above her that she paused and saw one large and lonely cloud formation with a suspiciously metallic shine in it. She immediately pulled on her big, round scanning goggles from where they hung on her neck and sent direct feed to Kepler back at Section 13.
For now it didn't matter that she was out past curfew and operating (hopefully) outside of Section knowledge without a lick of clearance. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't some civilian cruise liner and definitely not a friendly military grade ship out for a leisurely night time jaunt without so much as a 'could we trouble you for some sugar or maybe some airspace clearance?' over the communication lines. The night was way too quiet for that to be the case.
She clicked at the side of her goggles once more to the density scanners, and there it was! She was able to make out the ship floating beneath the cloud cover, its pace sluggish over the city. She smiled awkwardly beneath her bandana, as this was quite literally up her alley. "You seeing this doc? " She pressed her body close to her hoverbike that was parked in the dark alley hoping the night would cloak her well enough from whoever may be up there. A click followed a buzz in her ear, Kepler's tired nasally voice affirming "Sure am kiddo, got the rest of Surveillance on it. No pulse Id, no plates to speak of, nothing." he sighed into her comm "Can't even catch a heat sig on that thing, probably best not to engage it quite yet"
Some loose strands of hair still flitted from beneath her hood thanks to her rushing directly into the sky, the strong familiarity of the streetlights fading away as she made her ascent. "Jade please tell me you are not doing-" Kepler interrupted "I just want a closer look, don't worry, getting close will be a piece of cake.". She didn't mention that it was because she was riding on an unregistered hoverbike, but the communication lines are recorded full time, and it's best not to incriminate herself more than what she had.
Kepler yawned quickly, typing furiously as he said "As much as I want to know how that thing is evading our primary scanners, Do not engage that thing directly. Anybody with that kind of weather simulation and heat obscurity must not be here for-" "tea and cookies? "Jade interrupted. "Exactly" Kepler agreed. "Your puns are more dessert oriented today" He added as an afterthought. Jade could only laugh nervously "Just feeling a bit sweet, I guess." She could almost hear Kepler shrug with indifference on the other side. Thankfully his obsessively tinkering nature never afforded him to probe to deeply into the psychology of Jades punnery; a fact that she appreciated greatly in both her lines of work.
Strand by strand, her hair became obscured by the inky blue night above. The higher she climbed into the air, the harder the rain splattered and rolled off her unofficial body armor. She shot through like a bullet up to the peripheral clouds near the was a pretty huge airship, about the same size and look of a frigate, but streamlined so that the hull shone weakly against the aether and clouds that clung to it."We're sending up some heavily armored backup up there, as a well as few drones. Sit tight kid". While his voice remained its same patronizing monotone, she couldn't help but hear the worry fizzle into it. Like he would actually be in trouble. She can handle herself.
A breeze washed over her from a break in the cloudbank, and she could feel the chill of it in the joints of her improvised armor. And the young agent started to feel a little bit on the exposed side. Jade banked into a stray cloud that drifted alongside the ship. She pressed her goggles and tried to peek into the ship with the infrared and the x-ray. Nothing. Colder than a section 15 night. Untraceable by heat seeking, even up close. This is bad, she thought. But a shiver of excitement prickled her neck. No big players for what felt like years and now…Another thrill perked until she had to actively turn it into dread .
"No", she immediately shook that line of thought away. San Francisco can't handle another disaster, let alone stray fire from whatever this ship had. She would have to get closer, even without her standard section bike. The support drones arrived within seconds, and tentatively tried to attach themselves to the ship before it unceremoniously blasted deeper into the city, taking its cloak of clouds with it. She whistled long and low. She half hoped that it wasn't going where she thought it was going. She just got through with him, everyone was just through fighting him, and knocking his scaly butt back into the past.
Her half hope turned into full dread when an eerie glow flickered alive above the Giants stadium. She sped through the night air, the order Kepler yelled in her ear only dimly registering , the worry over an impending "resurrection" didn't exactly make for a waiting mood. When she reached the baseball field, the ship had lowered into the stadiums newly refurbished frame. Jade obscured her bike beneath its clouded aft in the now rain pelted seats. amidst the otherworldly bright orange glow that shone fifty feet below the hovering ship and its bluish clouds. Like an old scar reopening, a fissure below glowed in pulses of red, orange, and yellow. "Just like old times" She thought back. She looked below and saw about twenty individuals all dressed in what looked like army style combat gear, though what army was unclear.
But none of that mattered as much as what , or rather who, was being dragged out of the fissure via a glowing grappling hook. Drago. Or at least, she thought it was Drago. He was being pulled out of the gap, but not in the form he was sent in the netherworld with. He was normal, not the eldritch monstrosity they had defeated years ago , but humanoid and limp in the grapples grasp as rain from the cloud cover pelted him.
They pulled him out quickly , wrapping him in some kind of glowing hammock and hauled him into the ship. And there he went. There they went. The whole dang ship, lifted quickly, and sped off into the night sky. One of her biggest home runs was flying right out of the ballpark. She huffed angrily, now surrounded by other field agents. She's got a lot more than desk work ahead of her from now on.