The Only Winning Move Is Overwhelming Firepower

Chapter 16

Kate Calling

The red phone on my desk rings, rock music blasting out from the deceptively small speaker on the front. It detracted from the image of the red phone, but it allowed me to make the ringtone a song and the phone an actual, well, proper phone instead of an old dialer, so oh well.

Elsa is startled out of her awe of the Cimarron behind me, turning to look at it. Her eyebrows furrow, and she resumes looking at me. This time in full pseudo-assistant supposedly bodyguard mode. "You going to get that?" she asks.

I wave her off and give the Cimarron a directive to travel to LAX and park there until it's flown somewhere else by qualified pilots. The massive aircraft sort of tilts its wings at me as it turns around and rapidly begins accelerating away. "Nah," I reply, returning my attention to the design system. "Just let it go to answering machine."

Speaking of that answering machine, I always loved the way older ones would play their greeting out loud first before playing the caller's message as they were recording it. Mostly because of how entertaining I could make the effective announcement of a semi-autonomous piece of technology, long before I learned how to program those.

Thus, it's my voice that comes from the phone first. "Hello, thank you for contacting Planetcaller. I'm not coming to the phone right now, but leave a message and I'll probably call you back whenever my patience is large enough. Unless you're a telemarketer; then you really, really should hang up this second, because I'm an alien super being who kinda wishes you would all stop breathing. And spread the word. You lot really should know better than to call the head of a sovereign country with this crap. Leave a message after the bass drop if you're not a telemarketer!"

Elsa gives me the most unimpressed look she's capable of while, instead of a beep or other normal sound, a dubstep bass drop bursts from the phone.

Whoever's calling hangs up, because neither of us hear them say anything.

"Really?"

"What?" I defend myself. "I hate telemarketers!"

She sighs and rolls her eyes, beginning to walk towards my desk. "Do you even know who that was?" she asks.

I shake my head while I begin a new project. No title yet, but it's going to be a water purification system that simply strips salt and other harmful substances from ocean water. Salt stripping optional, of course, because I might end up deploying these to clean the oceans. And… I definitely should add a filter for carbon too, just to cover my planet repairing bases. "Not a clue. I don't really pay attention to calls or notifications while I'm in design mode." I send her a smirk and gesture in the direction of the departed Cimarron. "Helps me focus."

Elsa somehow looks even more unimpressed. Must be her body language. She sighs and shakes her head, putting her hands near, but not on, the red phone. "Please tell me this thing has call records."

I nod, pointing to one side. "Small button on the left, click it to toggle the screen." Now let's see… should I make it a half-torus building to evoke the nautilus shell imagery, or a squid, because tentacles?

Elsa presses the button and a hardlight screen pops up above the dialing pad. If it's the right one, it's got a list of contacts (empty except for her, pretty sure), a call log, and a messaging system.

She seems to have no trouble navigating through it, so I return my attention to the building. Nautilus shell is friendlier, and plus I can make it look super cool with shifting blue currents on the surface and stuff… yeah, definitely using that-

"You have thirty seven calls from Washington!" Elsa bursts out, breaking me from my concentration.

I glance at her with the same deadpan, unimpressed look she gave me earlier. "Call them back and tell the governor to stop whining about whatever he's whining about."

Elsa stares at me, aghast, and her mouth drops open a little.

"...What?" I finally get up the nerve to ask.

"WASHINGTON, D.C.!" she yells at me.

…..

"Oh."

I bring my hand away from the amazingly still quite red phone handset in my hand and glance at Elsa, offended in the extreme. "They hung up on me!"

My traitorous bodyguard just sends me another unimpressed look, almost glaring at me with how narrow her eyes are. "Thirty seven calls, Planetcaller! THIRTY SEVEN!"

"That just means they should answer me now instead of hearing my name and hanging up on me!" I fire back, once more glancing at the red phone. "I mean, I didn't even get through to Stacey! It was some flunkie, they know not to hang up on foreign… or not so foreign, leaders, right?"

Elsa scowls at me. "We are going to D.C.," she declares. "Now."

I roll my eyes and sigh. "Fine, mom," I fire back. Due to my irritation, I don't wait for her once I stand up.

Instead I fire my thrusters and activate the escape hatch in the roof, leaving her gaping, surprised to hell and back ice dress clad self behind.

Gods damned spitting image of the Disney character, I swear. Even with her angry face on. Her new ice dress doesn't help. I think she knows about the drone thing, because gods damn that neckline! And what a better spot to get a view than from my escape hatch, right?

"See you in Washington!" I fire back. One little, intentionally cheeky wave later, I'm rocketing away in a vaguely eastward direction.

Her inarticulate scream of frustration is music to my ears.

Elsa hasn't yet figured out she can fly, so she's stuck chasing after me in a private jet.

Or rather… she should be. Why is it off course? The jet should be coming straight here!

I take a split moment to investigate. The nanites I left on board have no trouble patching me into the systems, so- what the fuck is that.

The jet has a subsystem that is very, very much not on its design specs. And is also much higher tech than this world should have access to.

And Elsa is using its quantum entanglement communications array to report on me.

To a dark skinned woman with one eye, an eye patch, and judging by her expression, a stick up her ass the size of a Helicarrier.

Fitting, because I recognize the fucking background.

A single scan of the planet with my sensors is enough to find it. Sure as day, cloaked flying aircraft carrier.

Except it kinda looks like the Valiant and the Helicarrier had a kid that grew up to be twice their combined size.

Right. So. Elsa is a spy.

Who's showing Nicki Fury her fancy new ice powers. And telling her all about me. Including a surprisingly deep and accurate psych profile.

The words 'Unrepentant Semi-Benevolent Troll' may be included.

Good news is, Nicki isn't getting anything bad. Elsa doesn't really have anything bad to report. Cuz you know, I don't actually do bad shit in the first place.

She also jokes about the drone 'mess up' with her dress. The two of them have a giggle about that.

I fucking knew she figured that out!

Also, it's really gods damned strange seeing a Nick Fury expy laugh, much less giggle. I'm gonna be hearing that melodic chortling in my nightmare- wait, I don't sleep anymore. Shit.

Anyways, what am I going to do about this?

...Hmm… I could, but no that'd be against my morals, plus they haven't really threatened me yet. It's just spying after all, and if I knew they existed I'd be doing the same.

Which I am. Now. My Beacon flash fabricates an aerial Engineer and it sets off for their flying aircraft carrier. Suborbital trajectory so as to prevent tracking from the origin, and it has active visual stealth systems similar to what I designed over Japan. ETA: half an hour. Then I'll have direct access to their systems.

...You know what? Beyond counter spying, I'm going to do absolutely nothing.

It's easier to let Elsa keep playing spy than to worry about an organization which is likely equivalent to SHIELD trying (and failing disastrously) to remove me from the planet. And, bonus points, it means I don't have to do any paperwork! I'll just give it all to her, and because she has to do it for her spy job, she'll suffer the finger slices and mind numbing boredom!

Plus, there's not a much better punishment than paperwork. So I can even claim I'm pushing her for her duplicity!

Yep. I love it when a plan comes together.

I'm totally going to yoink some of this SHIELD equivalent's tech, too. Not that they'll know. Their systems are not remotely strong enough to keep me out even without direct hardware access. This is what you lot get by having communications pathways to the outside world, dumbasses.

Also, just in case… a full copy of their personnel files. This is a SHIELD expy, which means there might be a HYDRA expy inside them too. I don't think so, but I'd better check just to be sure.

Time to start a colossal download from servers across the world that won't even remember the transfer. I grin despite myself, dropping out of what most would consider accelerated thinking. Onwards to Washington… DC!

[hr][/hr]

One lawn landing, this time gentler so as to not disturb the freshly repaired grass of the White House, a decent walk, and several greetings of men and women in suits later, I arrive outside the Oval Office.

I'm about to barge in on the President's cabinet meeting with no fanfare, no bodyguards, and no Secret Service trying to stop me. Not even whoever thought it would be a good idea to hang up on me several times shows up.

Guess they got the memo last time.

Well… at least for the Secret Service.

"Planetcaller!" Stacey, and I know she's Stacey due to her voice, calls out to stop me.

Instead of continuing to place my hand on the door like I was going to, I indulge her. The shouting match going on inside doesn't sound like my cup of hot chocolate anyways, so I'll humor her while I wait. "Stacey?" I ask, "is that you?"

She walks up to me and nods. "Yes, sir. Thank you for listening to me," she confirms, assuming I'm actually doing what she thinks I'm doing.

I just smile at her while looking her up and down. Stacey's Mom might have it goin on, but Stacey herself is definitely up there in the hots department.

Honestly I haven't checked yet on the mom thing. Now that I've got a visual reference to search with, and seeing her daughter, I'll definitely be doing so.

She nods again and sighs with relief. "Sorry I couldn't be on call for you when you called," she pleasantly apologizes. She also doesn't seem to care about the glance, which makes sense if she's in diplomacy. "Was my assistant helpful in my place?"

Ah, that's the flunkie who I talked to. "He hung up on me," I inform her, rolling my eyes.

Ah, there's Kate's voice. She's real loud when she wants to be.

Stacey pointedly ignores what's going on on the other side of the door as she frowns. "Oh… he shouldn't have done that," she states, clearly not happy. "I apologize on behalf of the President."

I just sigh and wave her off. "No worries, I needed to fly over here to talk to Kate anyways," I inform her.

Stacey stares at me as she is seemingly surprised by my lack of caring, but gathers herself tremendously quickly. "Well… thank you," she eventually manages. "I'll endeavor to make sure it doesn't happen again."

The argument inside has subsided, so I'm pretty sure it's time to crash the party. "Like I said, no worries," I repeat myself, turning slightly and putting my hand on the door.

"Planetcaller, sir, you can't go in there!" she almost immediately says, repeating her own earlier words. "The President is in a… meeting, right now." Her wince at the word she has to use speaks volumes.

I turn my head back to her and raise a single, solitary eyebrow. "Stacey," I calmly say.

"Yes, sir?"

"Do I look like someone who 'can't' do something I want to do?"

She seems lost on how to respond to that, but sticks to her guns. "Sir, I can't let you-"

I just roll my eyes and push on the door even as I hear someone call me an unstable maniac. A gruff old guy, pretty sure. "Stacey, the entire Secret Service couldn't stop me. Sorry to put it this way, but what can you do that they can't in terms of halting my advance?" I ask her, slowly and purposely pulling open the Oval Office door.

Stacey visibly tries to come up with something, but clearly fails the way her face drops. "Sir, please," she pleads.

I just shake my head and sigh, waving her off. "Don't worry, you've done your job. Just go yell at your flunkie while I talk to Kate." The door opens ever wider as I slowly hammer home that yes, I will be going in there and no, she can't do anything to keep me from doing so.

She seems torn, but she reaches a decision a moment later. She simply puts on a stern face, nods, and spins on her heels to plonk down the hall.

"Thanks Stacey, much love!" I call out to her, snickering when she stumbles.

That girl will go places… if she can put up with me long enough.