Trailblazer - Dream of Eden
She padded along on soft soles, silent in her approach. It was old habit now. She did it even without thinking. Some people were creeped out by it but that was a hazard of having creepy bug powers anyway. So, whatever.
"Suit up," the Sergeant snapped. "Everyone in gear now! We don't know what they're doing in there and we're not waiting to find out!"
Sweeping her swarm forward, Weaver began infiltrating the buildings ahead. She checked her phone at the same time, scowling at the message.
M: sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry
She could find the time to type sorry a bajillion times but she couldn't just be on time. This girl.
With a shake of her head, Emma pocketed the phone and pulled the top half of her mask down over her face.
She'd updated her costume over the years. No more of that skin-tight outfit that showed off her butt for the whole world. Her leggings were baggy above the knee now, better for running and moving. She'd replaced her hood with a hooded jacket, armored panels fitted inside to better protect her vitals. Without the PRT's PR regime, she'd been freely allowed to start carrying a baton and knife openly.
And in the past ten years, Weaver had somehow become one of the faces of the Wardens.
She wasn't sure she'd ever wrap her head around that. She didn't really do anything special other than her job.
Emerging through the crowd, the police manning the police line instantly spotted her.
Emma was directed across the no-man's land toward the large truck occupying the center of the road.
"Sergeant!" one of the officers called. "Cape's here!"
"Good." The SWAT team leader swung out from the back of the truck and looked down at Emma. "Weaver right?"
"With the Wardens," she answered. "Londo Bell directed the call our way. What's happened?"
She was already getting an idea from her power, but more information was always better.
The man jumped down, his boots clapping the ground as he landed. He pointed down the street toward a fenced-in warehouse. "It's one of the old PRT vaults."
Oh. Great. "Where they stored captured tinker tech?"
"Yeah. DPA's slated them all to be cleared out and everything taken apart, but there's dozens of them and they haven't gotten to this one yet."
"Speed of government," Emma commented.
To be fair, no one could clean out twenty years of confiscated and dangerous devices quickly.
"More or less. Seven minutes ago, an alarm went out. Break-in. Don't know who. Don't know how many. You do that bug thing right?"
"That's me."
Emma swept her swarm outward, looking over the surrounding buildings and streets. Getaway cars. Snipers. Backup. Always best to check. Smart criminals usually staged the areas near their crimes before committing them.
"Do we need to get you closer?" the sergeant asked.
"No." Emma nodded. "About a dozen men. They're all armed and armored. Look like street thugs though from what I can tell…" Emma cocked her head slightly, listening. "They have accents. Thick ones too. Not sure from where."
"I do love good intel," the man beside her said with a grin. "Any idea what they're doing?"
The interior was what Emma expected. A big open space, sectioned off in a few areas by security and blast doors. Items were arranged on shelves, spaced out rather than packed in. There were tags and clipboards no doubt explaining most of the tech. Those were curiously being ignored by the men inside.
"They're ransacking the place, though I'd guess that's a false flag. Gear like that implies preparation and a plan. They wouldn't just break in without a specific idea what they were looking for." She checked again. "No one in a costume I can make out, but that doesn't mean they don't have a cape."
"Well, we'll find out."
The man banged his fist against the side of the truck and stepped back. Emma did the same, crossing her arms over her chest as the side pulled up onto the roof. From inside yellow eyes flashed and metal arms and legs began moving. The suits grabbed weapons from racks and jumped down to the street. The ground shock, and a few people began snapping pictures as the mobile suits unloaded.
Each was black and blue, marked with police icons and the letters 'SWAT' on their shoulders.
Oddly, working with them wasn't much different from working with PRT Troopers. Not to Emma at least. If anything, it was better. She appreciated an armored titan that could stand between her and a machine gun while she swarmed the bad guys with wasps.
The suits were the newest model to come out of Celestial Being. The Graze, a much sleeker and advanced-looking machine than the Tierens first introduced. Faster too, more fluid in how they moved. There were six in total, two armed with rifles and shields, two with rifles, and two with grenade launchers loaded with containment foam.
"Ready to go, Sarge," one of the suits called. The head turned, the eye looking at Emma. "You the cape?"
"Yup."
"Weren't there supposed to be two of you?"
"She's running late," Emma lamented. "It's fine. She'll be here."
"You say so. Coming or going?"
Her ear clicked and she tapped the bud under her mask to accept the connecting line. "Coming."
"Alright," he said over the com.
"Get to the starting line," the Sergeant ordered. "Monitors are up. Weaver says we've got a dozen hostiles armed with weapons and ransacking the place. It's full of old tinker-tech so watch your fire. Unknown if they have any capes. On your toes!"
"Aye, sir."
"I'm looking at the surrounding area," Emma revealed. "So far, no sign of any backup or staged vehicles or equipment."
"Good to know. Thanks."
The suits turned and started a quick sprint down the road. From a pair of armored vans a dozen more men in SWAT armor unloaded in conventional gear with rifles. Emma fell in with them, drawing a baton from her hip and checking her knife. The column of armed men and women proceeded a short way down the street, staging themselves right at the front gate where a pair of security guards started waving them through.
"Weaver," the mobile suit leader called. "Any sign they know we're here?"
"Not yet," she answered, her bugs watching the culprits closely.
The suits went in first, forming an armored wall for the rest of the team to follow behind.
"Weaver?" one of the SWAT members at her side asked.
"That's me."
"My daughter has a poster of you. She wants to be an Endomolist."
"Entomologist," Emma corrected. The study of bugs.
"Right. That. You're her favorite."
Emma always had a hard time reacting to being anyone's favorite. Mostly because at one point in her life being everyone's favorite was all she wanted. Then she wasn't and she didn't really blame anyone for that. It was her own fault. Weaver had been a low-profile cape for most of her early career. It was only after that whole mess in Boise that she started becoming famous.
It was weird. As time went on and Tay—Newtype became more of a name for cape history lessons, Emma Barnes' role in that story had slowly been forgotten. She got calls from biographers and reporters every now and then. Most people didn't really talk about it though, and they didn't know Weaver and Emma Barnes were the same person.
Just weird.
"We're approaching the door," the team leader warned. "Eyes open. Guns up." Weapons rose and the mobile suits came to a stop at a pair of large doors. "Assume that once these are open, they know we're here."
"They already do," Emma warned. She raised her head and looked at the surroundings again. "Someone is outside and watching. Outside my range. Possible sniper."
"What's your range?"
"Two blocks each direction. I have a swarm gathered that I can drop on the culprits as soon as we go in. Any capes will reveal themselves once bugs are swarming them, and anyone short a good brute or shaker power will just need rounding up."
The lead suit nodded. "No hero shit except for the hero."
The old joke got some chuckles. Emma had been insulted the first few times she heard it, but she'd made her peace. It was just their way of reminding each other they weren't bulletproof. Even a mobile suit wasn't perfect protection.
"Ready to breach. Three. Two. One go!"
Emma dropped the swarm. A veritable tidal wave of insects came crashing down atop the men inside, sending some of them into fits rolling on the ground or shooting wildly in any direction.
"Shields up!"
The shield suits went in first as the garage door rolled up. The others followed, then Emma went in with the rest of the team. The first few shots were spread out. One of the men on his feet hit the ground and Emma pulled her bugs back. Another was hit in the leg and screamed. The third was already on the ground. Two of the regular SWAT members hit him with bag rounds to stun him and Emma drew her insects away so they could cuff him.
A quick exchange of gunfire followed as the remaining thieves got their wits about them. Their shots were poorly aimed, seeing as they all had bugs in their faces, ears, and noses. The SWAT team members fired in quick bursts with rubber and bean rounds. The mobile suits took most of the shots that were on target and just kept walking. They held their fire save the two units that foamed some of the men on the ground.
With that, two of the culprits surrendered, and a third knocked himself out running into a wall. Emma saw that a lot.
One guy—no, a woman—ran through a wall. Emma saw that a lot too.
"Cape," she warned. "Brute. Northeast."
Two of the mobile suits turned and opened fire.
The rifles clapped the air loudly, shaking as large rounds shot across the storage house. The rounds struck the brute in the chest, slowing but not stopping her. One of the shield suits leaned forward, thrusters firing and propelling it through the bug-filled room.
The cape reacted too slow and took the suit in her side.
The machine slammed her into the ground and the other two suits quickly stepped on her arms and legs to pin her.
The pilot of the shield suit pressed the barrel of his gun to the side of her head, warning, "My experience, no amount of brute makes 60mm AP rounds to the temple any less fucked. Surrender."
The cape hesitated and still hadn't made up her mind by the time the suits jumped back and she was sprayed in containment foam.
"Secure?" the mobile suit leader asked without taking his eyes off the brute.
"It's secure," Emma informed him. All the culprits were disabled or detained, or both. Now, what were they—
Emma's head snapped around as a vehicle came speeding into her range. So quickly? Had it been waiting just beyond the limit of her power.
"Incoming," she warned. "West. Large truck driving sixty right at us."
The mobile suits turned and the regular SWAT members quickly collected the thieves they could and tried to pull them aside.
"They're not stopping," Emma warned.
Emma braced, bringing her swarm back and regathering it in the ceiling. Wasps picked up spiders and other insects. Those that couldn't be carried or flown crawled for cover.
The wall exploded inward. Chunks of concrete flew through the air and the truck kept going without so much as a scratch.
"Tinker-tech," someone warned as the vehicle kept coming.
Emma threw herself to the side and pushed one of the SWAT team out of the way with her.
"Thanks."
"No problem."
Emma wheeled about and rolled back to her feet quickly. Brandishing her baton, she ran up behind one of the mobile suits as the truck stopped and the back door opened.
Her eyes widened.
The shock was enough that no one responded until a spray of bullets tore one of the mobile suit's arms off. One of their mobile suits that is.
"They've got mobile suits!" someone shouted in shock.
"Open fire!" the team leader ordered.
The mobile suits erupted, firing their rifles as the two hostile suits stepped out of the back of the truck. They weren't Grazes or Tierens. Emma only vaguely recognized them from the news. Those new suits the AEU had been developing. She couldn't recall the name.
They were crude though. Big ball joints for the arms and legs, with a bucket helmet and a big yellow square visor.
From behind the cover of the suits more armed men began piling out. The Grazes focused on the suits while the SWAT team opened fire on the regular guys. Emma brought her bugs crashing down again. The men in body armor she stung and harassed. She couldn't get through the mobile suit's armor, but she could blind them.
Then her swarm started vanishing.
Emma blinked, retreating back a few steps into her swarm for cover.
Someone had dropped something on the ground and her bugs were just dying. That was—
A window shattered and silver flooded into the warehouse.
"Anoth—"
"She's with me," Emma interrupted. "It's fine."
The silver wave crashed into the ground, rapidly congealing into a solid girlish shape.
"I'm so sorry!" Mercury shouted. "There was a fire and some kid forget his dog inside so I ran to go get it but then there was this old lady who was missed when the firefighters were getting everyone out and—"
"Everyone back," Emma called. She pointed at the same time.
Technically speaking, Mercury was the exact kind of cape mobile suit teams were warned about. She simply wasn't someone anyone but the right cape could do anything about.
The silver girl blinked and turned her head, then raised her silver eyes as one of the mobile suits turned to face her.
"Huh. They have mobile suits. That's a new one."
The suit fired, but Mercury simply stood in place and looked around. The bullet ran through her body into the ground, blowing dust into the air and obscuring her. The cloud broke as a silver arm extended. It latched onto one of the rifles the armed men carried, and then snapped outward, spreading around him and pulling him into the cloud.
Mercury stepped out, punching the guy in his jaw and then throwing him into another.
She launched herself forward, legs extending behind her as she sent a sweeping kick around the room. The men toppled down one after the other, their guns firing into the air as they fell. The few bullets that actually hit Mercury just kept going, harmlessly passing through her body.
The SWAT team took cover as the bullets flew, save the mobile suits. Emma drove bugs into the opposing suits' field of vision, blinding them just as Mercury's kick came around and collided with one.
She pulled herself in, crashing into the suit and spreading her body out. Silver coiled around the leg then traveled up the suit's torso. Mercury's head reformed over the shoulder as her arms splashed out and engulfed the arms.
"Always wondered if this would work!" she shouted. Then her face scrunched up, and the silver constricted.
The suit struggled against her, stumbling once before becoming locked in place. The other reached out to grab Mercury—which wouldn't work—when AP rounds slammed into its knees and shoulder. Metal scoured and flashed, exploding outward and cracking as the armor took the beating from the heavy caliber bullets. The SWAT team's Grazes charged the suit, blowing one of the arms off and then tackling the shredded machine to the ground.
They turned to surround the other suit, but Mercury kept squeezing until its legs and arms snapped the wrong direction. There was a scream from inside the machine, and Mercury's head leaned in.
"Say that again?"
"Give up!" the voice cried.
Mercury frowned. "Promise?"
"YES!"
With that, her body snapped back, reassuming its girl shape as she dropped to the ground.
The mobile suit collapsed to the ground, armor bent inward and limbs crushed.
And Chloe turned to Emma and just continued talking like none of that had happened.
"—and then I found some lady who thought a burning building was a great place to get high and what was I supposed to do? Leave her there? What kind of hero does that?! So I had to drag her down three flights of stairs and—"
"If that's what it was then you made a judgment call," Emma interrupted. "Can you live with it? If yes, then you did everything you could. If not, think about it and figure out what you did wrong and do better."
It just wasn't much more complicated than that.
Chloe blinked and looked around the warehouse. SWAT was rounding up the armed men and lining them up. The SWAT mobile suits were prying the two hostile suits open and dragging the pilots out. One looked pretty roughed up after all the bullets his suit took, but he'd live. One of the assailants was apparently dead from the sheet SWAT was putting over him. Bullet to the neck it seemed. Probably friendly fire given all the blood.
The SWAT team had two injuries, but armor for tactical teams had gotten pretty good over the years. Both of the injured would be okay. Their wounds were minor.
Chloe focused on the corpse being covered, a frown crossing her face.
"That's not your fault," Emma encouraged. "This sort of thing is dangerous. People get hurt."
"I know." She looked away. "Still sad though."
"Yeah." Emma looked over from behind her mask. She didn't feel that bad, but she understood the sentiment. "It is."
"What were they after?"
A very good question and one Emma didn't have the answer to.
That came later.
The SWAT team walked the perpetrators of the break-in out of the building and loaded them in a van. None of them were talking, not even when Emma did the 'I can bury you in black widows' routine. As near as she could tell nothing from the warehouse was actually missing, which was the least of the ways the robbery failed to add up.
"They had mobile suits?" Veda asked.
"Yeah," Emma answered. She had her phone out and was scrolling through images. "Those new ones being made in Europe too."
"Leos? That is concerning."
"How'd they get them?" Chloe asked.
"There's a bigger problem than that," Emma continued. "They had the vehicle carrying them parked right at the edge of my range, just past where I'd be able to see it. It came in too fast to be any further out."
"Couldn't any thinker with Internet figure that out?" Chloe inquired.
"Except it meant they planned ahead for me," Emma noted. "We're just visiting, remember?"
"Oh." Chloe blinked. "Oooooooh!"
"How did they know to plan for you to be there," Veda concurred. "That would suggest some form of precognition."
"And I can't figure out what they wanted," Emma elaborated. "I looked the whole place over while SWAT was cleaning up and before the DPA asked us to leave."
Chloe scoffed. "More like kicked us out."
"The place was ransacked." Emma went over it in her head again, but she was sure. "Random."
"A great deal of that technology is old, and likely broke down years ago," Veda pointed out. "Even if they took it, it would be useless without a tinker to repair the items."
Chloe nodded. "Probably best to assume whoever was behind this has a tinker then, right?"
"Probably," Emma agreed. "But what did they want? Something specific, or anything?"
"It would help to have an inventory of the building's contents," Veda said. "One moment pleas—"
Emma cocked her head.
Behind her, the police were finishing cleaning up and SWAT was packing it in. She and Chloe were left alone, off to the side. Emma checked to be absolutely sure no one was listening.
"What just happened?" Emma asked.
"There are other storehouses in Portland," Veda explained. "I've just flagged what appears to be an erroneous request for an item to be transferred. It is… shockingly well-made. None of the automated systems flagged it."
Emma stiffened. "When?"
"Fifteen minutes ago, and I am already not finding the transport."
"Then this was…" No that didn't make sense.
If they'd managed to slip past security until after managing to steal something, why do this at all and tip them off? Would Veda have even found the erroneous request if she hadn't explicitly gone looking for it.
"Isn't it a bad thing when the bad guys taunt the heroes?" Chloe asked, seemingly reaching the same conclusion as Emma. "That seems like a bad thing."
"It is," Veda agreed. "I'll look into this."
"What was the request for?" Emma asked.
Veda didn't answer at first, which sounded bad.
"This requires an immediate response," she eventually said. "I need to inform the DPA and Londo Bell's leadership."
Bad enough she couldn't just say it. That was bad.
"We're still here if there's anything to be done in Portland," Emma noted.
"Thank you. I will keep you updated."
After Veda 'left' Chloe turned to Emma and asked, "That was bad right? It sounded bad."
"Yeah. It did. Not that we can do anything about it right now."
Emma raised her head.
It was up there, hanging in the sky.
A perfectly crystalline-looking white sphere with glimmers of light along its rim.
"Weaver?" Chloe leaned over. She was short for her age, though in her case that was by choice since she could change her body to look however she wanted. "You okay?"
"Fine," Emma said. She glanced down. "Ready?"
Chloe glanced around. "Ready for—"
"Chloe."
The girl slumped. "Just nervous."
"They said they wanted to see you," Emma recalled. "Do you want to see them?"
Chloe didn't give an immediate answer, and Emma didn't press. Veda had filled her in years ago when Mercury became part of Weaver and Orbit's team. After the incident in Hartford, no one from Chloe's family wanted her. They were all Blue Cosmos die-hards. A cape, and one who couldn't hide in plain sight, wouldn't fit with the family photos. Even after Blue Cosmos collapsed, that apparently didn't change.
Until a few months ago when Chloe's mother's parents started asking about her. Thinkers had checked it out and no one thought it was a trick or plot for anything.
Still though.
"You don't have to if you don't want to," Emma told her. "Anyone who'd blame you for not wanting to see them after what they did isn't worth concerning yourself with. Sometimes, things fall apart and it's best for you to accept it and move on. But that's your decision. No one else's."
"I don't really remember them," she admitted.
Emma nodded. "We can just patrol a bit longer. We're here for the whole week anyway."
"Feels too stupid for how old I am."
Emma nodded again and turned to start walking. She was only seventeen. "Not nearly as stupid as I was at your age." Raising her head to the sky once more, Emma added, "Life's a journey, not a race."
Chloe followed along beside her.
"Thanks, Weaver."