superpierce: So just to be clear is Spider-Man going to be in this story or not?
NeoNazo356: That question will be answered this-chapter.
*THE MIGHTY ATOM*
In-Transit
November 10
The moment noon hit, everyone involved with the mission piled into a semi-truck bearing the CELL Motors logo on the side. The trailer was decked out like a small FOB, even had a false cargo back in case any highway cop gets too nosy. As far as transportation goes, it was a helluva lot more-subtle than the APC Drebin was driving around in.
Sure, the thing had Optical Camouflage, but it couldn't use that all the time, and driving an invisible car on the freeway was an apocashitstorm waiting to happen.
For the mission at hand, apart from Night Snake, Carolina had also called in the twins, York, and Connie, with one other Freelancer supposedly meeting them at the pre-mission briefing ground.
Their transport rumbling as they headed for Boston, the attending Freelancers carried out their final weapon and equipment maintenance. Amid them, Virgil worked on his tranquilizer and silenced pistols. When asked why he wasn't bringing along his Predator Bow and "trick arrows", the simple response was since they were likely going to be operating in close-quarters, a bow and arrow would only slow him down. In all likelihood, the only time he'd ever use the Predator Bow was during missions that largely took place outside, since that's where bows and arrows tended to be most-useful.
Also, he wasn't used-enough to closed-quarters combat to even contemplate bringing a bow & arrow with him.
Halfway through their trip, their transport came to a stop, their driver telling them they were receiving one final parcel of equipment before the mission at hand.
A door opening in the false back of their transport, said package was slid into the FOB on rollers, most-noticeably the Nanosuit after its recent mod installation.
Being quick about it, Virgil used a fistful or two of cornstarch and squeezed into the Undersheath before squeezing into the Nanosuit proper. Slipping the helmet over his head and getting used to the HUD, he gave his body a once-over in an attempt to discover what exactly had been added to the suit prior to this mission.
"Huh. That's new," he hummed as he noticed some new armor plating on the underside of each forearm. It wasn't much, maybe as wide as a finger, going between his wrist and his elbow. In the bottom of the box that his gear was put in was a thin stack of documents, the staple holding it together applied to the upper-left corner with laser-fine accuracy, every sheaf of paper perfectly symmetrical. "Alright then, let's see what R&D came up with this time," he said as he began to leaf through it.
A few minutes later and he would receive his answer.
"Hooooly FUCK that's wrong!" Virgil cried as he threw the manual from his hands like one would a dead rat, the teen's retching causing the others to look at him in concern.
"Yeesh, what the hell'd they do this time?" Connie asked, rubbing the teen's back as he fought back vomiting.
For all she knew, he might actually drown in there if he blew chunks.
"Uuuuugh…" Virgil could only groan as he pointed to the discarded manual, York walking over to it and leafing through the contents before his face turned the slightest shade of green.
"Urp! Ugh, yeah… Yeah that's really messed-up," the man groaned.
"Well, don't leave us in suspense, what'd they do?" South asked.
"See for yourself," the man groaned as he tossed the manual her way, South and her brother leafing through it, North looking quite appalled while South was actually nonplussed by what she saw.
"Dammit, stop beating around the bush. Let me see that," Connie said snatching the manual from her hands. "Hooooly FUCK that's wrong!"
"Tell me about it," Virgil groaned as Carolina picked up the manual, wanting to see just what the big deal was.
"Hmmm… Necro-Organic Metabolites plug-in, aka 'NOM'…" Carolina hummed as she gave the document a once-over. "Huh. For a system that lets you convert battlefield carrion into energy, the name's strangely appropriate. I wonder if that was intentional, or just coincidence."
"How can you be totally cool with this? They're trying to turn him into a corpse vampire!" Connie said hugging the mortified teen to her chestplate.
"Well I mean… It isn't pretty, but it makes sense," Carolina conceded. "You can get cut off from an electrical grid or clouds can cut you off from solar power, but the one thing you'll never run out of on a battlefield are dead bodies."
"I think I'm going to be sick," North retched.
"I can't believe they included pictures," York groaned.
"Still though, I had no idea you could get so many kilojoules out of a dead body. Let alone the bomb-cal content of the raw meat," South hummed thoughtfully.
" . . . You have a fucked up sense of humor," York grumbled. "They're basically asking him to desecrate dead bodies!"
"So what? When you die, you're just a pile of rotting meat. Why not turn it into a resource?" South asked.
"Well now you're sounding like those whack jobs who decided to make Soylent Green out of people!" Connie growled. " . . . Oh my god," she said horrified after a few moments. "This is how it all starts, isn't it?"
"Look, we can discuss the ethics of it later. For now, we've got a mission to focus on," Carolina said getting everyone back on track. "No-one's saying you have to use the NOM, it's just an optional attachment, and the Prototype Nanosuit was intended to be a test bed, so of course weird add-ons like this were going to be installed. And besides…" she said putting a hand on the teen's shoulder. "All it said was that the NOM metabolized dead bodies. It never said anything about human bodies."
" . . . It's still fucked up that someone could get a prototype of these things up and running," Virgil grumbled as he drew up his wrists, a six-inch proboscis like on a mosquito sprouting from both armor slats before he drew them back in. "These Hidden Blade lookalikes would be so much cooler if not for that fucking NOM."
"Well, hey, look at it this way," South said patting him on the shoulder. "If you turn that NOM Armor Mod off, you can still shank someone to death with those things."
"Yeah! Like Robocop!" North said trying to brighten up the teen's day.
" . . . Thanks, guys. That really helps," Virgil replied.
*THE MIGHTY ATOM*
Rendezvous Point
November 10, 21:03 EST
'Okay… This is where the instructions told me to go…' Dr. Palmer thought to himself as he pulled his rental behind a defunct gas station. The moment he put the car in Park, a flashlight from the left suddenly shone in his face, causing him to jump. "Eyipe!"
"Shush. Do you want the whole neighborhood to hear you?" a woman's synthesized voice shushed at him. Apart from the thin gold visor of her helmet, the rest of her armor was jet black with digital spatterings of darker and lighter shades of gray acting as camouflage.
"S-Sorry, sorry," the doctor replied, stepping out of the car with briefcase in tow. "So… You're with Foxhound?"
"Do you really expect me to answer that out loud?"
"Fair point," the doctor nodded as he was led around his car to the shadow of the buildings.
The clouds peeling away from the moon, the area brightened enough to reveal a nondescript semi struck and trailer, a dark tarp thrown over the top of it, hiding it from above. The woman leading him to the back of the trailer, the man was helped in by another pair of hands before being led through the false back of the truck into some kind of mobile base. The lighting in the room wasn't all that great, but he saw six adults in near-identical black-camouflage military grade armor and helmets with gold visors, and one in some kind of exoskeleton covered in artificial muscle fibers that looked young enough to be a teenager.
Then again he, or even she, could just be a really short adult.
"So… You'll help get my nephew back?" the scientist asked hopefully.
"First thing's first, do you have the data?" Carolina redirected.
"Yes, I have it right here," Ray said handing it over.
"And you didn't try to sabotage it in any way?" York asked.
"Not with my nephew's life on the line," Ray said with a narrowed gaze.
"You do understand that we might not be able to save him, right?" South hummed matter-of-factly.
"Ignore her. Dr. Palmer, I assure you, we'll do everything we can to save your nephew," North cut in.
"Just saying, they might've already killed him after they gave you proof-of-life," South hummed aloud as she walked off.
"I've… already steeled myself for the possibility," Dr. Palmer said lowly. "Just know that if they have, they've made a powerful enemy."
"What, you?" South asked with a raised brow behind her visor.
"Yes. Me," he said flatly as he pointed to the external hard drive in Carolina's hand.
"Well, vengeance is a pretty fair motivator," North hummed, realizing if anything had happened to Peter, there really wasn't anything stopping Dr. Palmer from handing his tech over to the military to be explicitly weaponized.
Of course, if both sides had Dr. Palmer's tech, it'd just turn into another Cold War, but that was neither here nor there.
"We received the coordinates for the exchange. Can you verify this is where the exchange will go down?" Carlina asked holding up a building blueprint.
"Yeah… Yeah, that's the place," Dr. Palmer said as he glanced at the address on the blueprint, then back to his watch.
"Good. Want to make sure we don't infiltrate the wrong building," Carolina nodded. "Now of course, you do understand you can never talk about this to anyone. The only reason we're even talking with you in-person is because of what a risk your technology poses in the wrong hands," she explained.
"Oh trust me, my old teacher made it abundantly clear just how-dangerous this could be," Dr. Palmer groaned tiredly.
"Good. Then you know how-important it is we keep this data under lock-and-key," Carolina said putting the hard drive into a metal briefcase with foam lining. "Before we begin the operation, there's one last question I need to ask you. When you were on the phone with the Russians, was there any notable background noise you were able to perceive? Anything out-of-the-ordinary that'd hint at what kind of gear they might have nearby?"
"No, not that I recall," Ray said with a shake of his head.
"Boss," the man in the muscular exoskeleton spoke up. "I just got the drone results back. The area around the exchange point is completely devoid of people, and apart from a guy at the front door watching street traffic, there don't seem to be any kind of patrols. I don't think they're aware that anyone outside the police or the League are coming."
"Good. Then that means no-one dropped the ball," Carolina nodded. "Dr. Palmer, listen to me very carefully," she said pushing the briefcase back into his arms. "You're going to go to that meeting, have them take you to your nephew, and if you have to, hand the data over. While you're with the Russians, do not look for us. You are on your own in there. If they think for even a second that you're not, they'll kill you both and take the data anyway. Am I understood?"
"Yes, but…" he trailed off. "Before we go, there's one more thing I think you should know."
*THE MIGHTY ATOM*
Boston Docks
November 10, 21:55 EST
Arriving at the designated warehouse from the final instructions he received, Ray Palmer entered the front of the warehouse, metal briefcase in his hand. Almost-immediately upon entering, the low *click* of a hammer being cocked back met his ears, the man's hair standing on-end as two burly men in all-black wearing balaclavas closed in on him, the door closed unceremoniously behind him.
A flashlight suddenly shining in the man's eyes, causing him to reel back, one of the men held up a picture before grabbing Dr. Palmer's chin with his free hand, turning his face from side to side as he compared the two.
"It's him," the first nodded to the second. "Drop the case, hands at your sides," he ordered, the doctor acquiescing as he put the case down. Spreading out his arms, while the first man frisked him, the second stooped down and tried to open the case, only to discover it was locked.
"You want what's in the case, you take me to my nephew," Dr. Palmer said tensely.
"Or maybe I kill you and take case anyway," the second man said raising a gun to the doctor's head.
"You do that, and the contents of the hard drive will auto-delete themselves, and I highly doubt your employers would let you live once they learn you were the cause," Dr. Palmer said, a small smirk tugging at his face as the other man flinched back.
"Fine. Boss wanted to see you in-person anyway," the first man said taking the case and forcing it into the doctor's hands, the two men grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing him forward.
As the doctor was led through a maze of stacked crates, deeper into the building, a high-frequency blade began to cut into the wall just-adjacent to the door.
*THE MIGHTY ATOM*
"Status report," Carolina muttered into the Codec as she sidled along a stack of crates.
"York in position. Standing by," the man muttered as he entered the building from the rear.
"North Dakota in position. Standing by," the man said from the catwalk as he shouldered a DSG1 Precision Rifle.
"South Dakota in position. Standing by," the woman replied from the opposite catwalk, an MPX8 Submachine Gun in her hands.
"Night Snake following the Trojan. Standing by," the teen replied as he trailed behind Dr. Palmer, transitioning to Cloak whenever he passed underneath an overhead light.
"Good. Soliton Radar is painting a clearer picture of the topography, and the details are being compiled and synced to your HUDs. What's the status on Palmer?"
"He's cooperating. The case being locked and the threat of the data being auto-deleted was enough to get him a face-to-face with the boss," Night Snake answered.
"Anyone have eyes on the hostage?"
"Negative. All I'm seeing are burly Russians," South muttered.
"Or eastern-Europeans."
"Please, we all know the Russians are behind this," South bit back to her twin.
"Focus!" Carolina cut in. "What kind of opposition are we looking at here?"
"Two men on the catwalks with rifles, two escorting Palmer with small arms, and six visible in the center of the building with a mix of sidearms and rifles. No obvious SPBs in sight," North answered as he peered into the center of the crate-maze, a wide-open area with a table and a few chairs scattered about.
"I have eyes on a shipping container. Shielded. Thermals can't pierce it," South added. "Definitely hiding something."
"So we're looking at ten enemy combatants, not including any reinforcements in our blind spot," Carolina hummed.
"South and I can take out the two on the catwalk the moment things go bad, maybe add one or two more on the ground to the kill count before we break for cover," North explained.
"Alright people. Safeties off, weapons hot. As soon as Parker's out in the open, we make our move," Carolina said as Palmer was led into the center of the building, all Russian eyes centering on him as he held the briefcase to his chest, glancing from side to side nervously at the Russians.
"Alright… I'm here!" Palmer called out. "I have the data, so give me back my nephew!"
A moment later, and the doors of the shielded shipping container began to squeal open as large green hands pushed them open from the inside. The whirring of hydraulics sounding through the stale warehouse air, stepping out into the light was a tall man wearing a chromed exoskeleton with dark green armored plating on his feet, hands, knees, around his calves, thighs, and forearms, with extra-thick armor around his torso, groin and shoulders. Situated atop his head was a sleek dark green helmet with a chromed faceplate and a bright red visor.
"Who… Who are you?" Palmer asked in shock as he stared up at the mechanical man's crimson visor.
"You may call me Titanium Man, for whatever good will do you," the man said in a synthesized voice that still managed to sound extremely Russian. "I see no police or Justice League nearby. You are smarter than you look."
"I just want to get my nephew back. That's all I want," Palmer returned, trying not to be cowed by the massive power suit-clad man in front of him.
"Then you know to cooperate, da?" Titanium Man asked holding out his hand.
Palmer gulping audibly as he glanced at the many armed Russians surrounding him, Ray put the briefcase on the ground before undoing the lock and drawing out the external hard drive inside, holding it up for the Titanium Man to take. The man holding it gingerly in mechanically actuated fingers, a mechanical tendril with an adapter on the end rose out of his free hand and plugged into the device. For several seconds, small lights flickered across the man's crimson visor, his head twitching every which way on occasion, staring off into space before he turned his attention back to Dr. Palmer.
" . . . Data is encrypted," Titanium Man hummed aloud.
"You don't get the encryption key until I see my nephew," Dr. Palmer returned flatly.
" . . . Igor. Bring the boy out," Titanium Man said tersely after a few moments.
The sound of footsteps sounding from the shipping container Titanium Man had stepped out of, two figures came out into the light, one the hostage with his arms tied behind his back, the other the hostage taker.
The hostage, Peter Parker, looked pretty much exactly the same as his picture, aside from the fact that his hair and clothes were a complete mess, one of his glasses lenses was cracked, and he had heavy bags under his eyes.
The hostage taker in comparison was incredibly large. His hulking figure accentuated with rippling muscles, "Igor" was a bald-headed man clad in dark green coveralls, gloves, and boots. Synched around his torso was a four-point chromed harness that met at a large circular buckle in the middle.
As the large man stepped out into the open, still in Cloak, Night Snake's eyes squinted as his Nanovision began analyzing the hostage-taker's face in bits and pieces, reconstructing it before running the completed visage through the international database.
"Guys, we have a problem," Night Snake said over Codec as he eyed the results. "The man with the kid. His name's Igor Stancheck, more-commonly known as the Radioactive Man."
"Radioactive Man? You mean that Radioactive Man?" York gawped.
"Pretty sure he is," Night Snake deadpanned. "I'm reading his bio now, and his kill-count… Really high. Carolina, what's our play?"
"Listen up, no-one confront Radioactive Man directly. Your armor offers some protection against radiation, but not enough to save you from a full-on blast," Carolina instructed hastily. "All of you, focus your attention on the thugs and Titanium Man, I'll deal with Igor. Illinois, be ready to move, things are about to get loud," she instructed as the Freelancers moved stealthily into position.
"There. We have shown you boy. Now, encryption key, please," Titanium Man said holding out his hand.
"Fine," Dr. Palmer said gruffly, the man taking a knee and unlacing his left shoe before taking it off, shaking it until a USB drive fell into his waiting hand.
"Hide encryption key from frisking at door. Clever. Very clever," Titanium Man said as he snatched it away before slotting it into his arm-mounted computer, applying the encryption key to the data already in his systems.
"So, it the real deal?" Radioactive Man asked, idly drumming his fingers on Peter's shoulder.
"Data is legit," Titanium Man responded after a few moments, only for an alert to come upon his HUD. "Wait one minute…" he said as he scrutinized the man before him, a chevron encapsulating Dr. Palmer from the neck-up before a Sneaking Tech Detected prompt suddenly came up. "Man is not Ray Palmer!"
"What?"/"WHAT!?" Peter and the Radioactive Man replied, albeit with different inflections.
"Is all set-up!" Titanium Man shouted as he whipped an arm towards the now-exposed impostor.
A laser cannon folding up out of his forearm and leveled squarely at not-Palmer's forehead, the end of the barrel glowing a baleful red, right as the energy weapon had finished priming, the weapon suddenly detonated against his arm, much to the Russians' shock. This shock only continued to mount as a series of explosions pock-marked the Titanium Man suit, the Russian pilot sent staggering every which way as his systems experienced a Cascading Systems Failure according to his HUD.
Moments before the Titanium Man's back could hit the ground, the sound of two silenced weapons firing went off, two bodies sent tumbling from the catwalks before hitting the ground head-first. Brains spattering across the ground and their necks breaking on impact, before the Radioactive Man could do anything to the hostage, a grappling hook suddenly shot out from the rafters, its clawed end sinking into the meat of his ankle before he was suddenly hauled up into the darkness, leaving the hostage completely unsupervised.
"Kid, look out!" the now-ousted impersonator, Freelancer Illinois, shouted out to Peter as one of the thug's laser sights settled on the back of his head.
The teen's eyes going wide, he felt a tingling sensation at the base of his skull as the world began to slow to a crawl around him. Leaping up without even thinking, the brunette witnessed the bullet intended for him passing through the air beneath where he was in mid-air, the teen doing a quadruple backflip before dismounting perfectly on the landing, the gunman and everyone else momentarily stopping as they processed what they just saw.
However, that stunned distraction was brief, and the hired muscle took aim at Peter once again.
Adrenaline pumping through his system, his fight-or-flight response chose the prior action, and the hand-tied teen closed the gap between them with speed comparable to an Olympic sprinter. The now-startled thug firing off rounds, Peter dodged side to side at speeds impossibly-fast for a normal human being, the teen leaping up into a double jump kick that folded the burly man in half at the blow. Once again, Russian eyes in the warehouse went wide as the man was sent flying into a wall of crates, wood splintering as bones broke from both the start and the stop of his flight.
" . . . Holy crap…" Peter gawked as he looked at the carnage he'd sewn. "How the hell did I do that?"
"Get down you idiot!" a synthesized stately-sounding voice shouted to him out of nowhere, a short man in a chromed exoskeleton with onyx-colored muscle fibers materializing out of thing air before tackling him to the ground. The hairs on the backs of Peter's neck standing on end once again, the man threw himself over Peter's head and torso, sparks flying through the air as the armored man tanked several rifle rounds before another two bullets came out of the shadows and gave the gunmen third nostrils.
The Russians' attention diverted to their unknown assailants attacking from the darkness, the armored man harshly picked Peter up before whisking him around the corner from whence he came, displaying superhuman speed of his own as the two left the mounting gunfight altogether.
"You alright? You get hit by any stray rounds?" the man asked.
"N-No, I think I'm fine," Peter responded, the man nodding his head before he turned Peter around and cut the ropes on his arms.
Footsteps sounding around the corner they'd just rounded, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on-end once again, when their pursuer stepped into the aisle of crates, with inhuman speed the man who saved him drew a 10mm from his side and fired a silenced round, the Russian gargling blood as he was shot in the throat.
"Oh god… I'm gonna be sick," Peter groaned as he brought his hands up to his mouth, emptying the contents of his stomach onto the floor a moment later.
"Puke on your own time, we have to move," the armored man said as he dragged Peter down the aisle towards the back entrance, the salty night air greeting him as soon as they stepped out. "Kid, hide in here. It's too hot to extract you right now, so don't make a noise and no-one will find you," he said lifting up the lid of a dumpsters.
"Wait, how will I know when the fighting's stopped?" Peter asked as he was lifted into the dumpster by his armpits.
"When all the gunfire stops," the armored man answered flatly.
"Right, stupid question," Peter admitted as the man pushed down on his head. "Wait!" he yelped before the lid could be closed on his head. "What's your name?"
"Special Agent Washington," the man replied, seemingly without thinking, before he brought the lid down atop Peter's head and rushed back into the building.
*THE MIGHTY ATOM*
For Igor Stancheck, the mission for the motherland had been a simple-enough one.
Kidnap boy, blackmail scientist, obtain superweapon, surpass United States as a world power.
They'd kept an eye on the police and the Justice League both, just in case Palmer decided to be stupid, but as it turned out, nothing on either front hinted they'd been made aware of the night's transaction.
This was why, of course, their band of super-mercenaries had been caught so off-guard. Their attackers had dug themselves into the warehouse like ticks while they were still inside it, and no one had noticed a thing until the bullets started flying and the bodies started dropping.
The rank-and-file were a lost cause, as they always were, and Boris Bullski's "Titanium Man" suit had failed in spectacular fashion; the price for his over-reliance on technology. Palmer, or whoever was pretending to be Palmer, must've snuck a virus into the superweapon data that Boris hadn't been able to detect until it was too late.
That meant the success of this mission fell solely on Igor's shoulders.
With a practiced motion, Radioactive man discarded the harness that kept his power in check, his skin glowing an iridescent green as his body began undergoing nuclear fission. Long shadows stretching across the warehouse, the man curled up and grabbed the cable holding him from the ceiling, the radiation between his palms causing the line to melt until it snapped altogether, the gamma mutant's body dropping like a stone into a wooden crate, sending irradiated splinters in every direction.
*THE MIGHTY ATOM*
"He's loose!" Carolina shouted as the Radioactive Man got to his feet, a menacing smile tugging at his features as gamma rays began to concentrate in the palm of his hand. "SCATTER!"
The Radioactive Man loosing radiation blasts from his hands, the two remaining Russians that were still alive got caught in the crossfire, their blood boiling before their flesh liquefied, their bodies reduced to bubbling green puddles on the ground. Rows upon rows of crates being incinerated as Radioactive Man fired his blasts every which way, the inert form of the now-spasming Titanium Man a mere afterthought as Igor blasted everything around him. An upward sweep of his hand suddenly cutting one of the catwalks in two, the Freelancer running atop it lost her footing before tumbling down the fresh incline to the ground, rolling across the hard concrete floor until she landed squarely at the Radioactive Man's feet.
"Well, you know old saying," Igor said as he eyed the somewhat-visible swell of the woman's chest and hips beneath her armor. "Women and children first."
"South!" North cried as he vaulted down the crates in his wake, attempting to close the gap between them before his sister could get nuked.
"As you Americans say…" Igor hummed as the bullets that flew his way flattened against his irradiated skin, "do you feel lucky?" he asked as the glowing of his hand intensified.
Before he could deep-fry the woman however, a pair of CNT-powered arms wrapped themselves around his midsection, pulling up and throwing off Igor's aim.
"Suplex city, bitch!" Night Snake cried as Nanosuit-enhanced strength allowed him to slam the taller man's head into the ground. The Radioacive Man blasting the ground and scattering irradiated shrapnel in every direction as he tried to extricate himself from his captor, North and South were thrown off their feet. Before Igor could line up a more-complete shot, Carolina swooped in with her Speed Mod, grabbing the two by the scruffs of their necks before hauling ass, a radiation blast clipping the back of her combat harness as she ran.
"Rrrrrgh! Let. Go. NOW!" Igor ordered as he grabbed onto the wrists in front of him, his radioactive suntan steadily growing brighter and brighter, the air around them growing steadily more-irradiated as the warehouse air was dyed green.
"Don't… think… so…!" Night Snake bit out, keeping as much of a grip as the Nanosuit's Strength would allow even as he was utterly blinded behind a wall of [WARNING] chevrons.
Feeling the man's fingers locking around his wrists and slowly pulling them away, in a fit of panic Night Snake curled his right wrist back, the six-inch-long proboscis shooting out before he plunged it through the coveralls into the Radioactive Man's side, the man letting out a bellowing roar as he was stabbed.
Pain shooting through his irradiated body as half a foot of surgical steel was plunged into his side, Igor's left hand went to join his right, his grip around the stabbing arm tightening as he rolled onto his stomach, desperately shaking his attacker off. With added duress, the radiation Igor was putting out continued to climb, and any ordinary person in the immediate vicinity would've keeled over, puking their guts out.
"I won't… let you… hurt my team…!" Night Snake growled even as the epidermis of the Nanosuit began to smoke and flake away like dandruff. The words NOM Activated flashing across his visor, a charging-battery symbol like you'd find in a cellphone suddenly appeared across his vision, the previous notice soon replaced with a large OVERLOAD IMMINENT chevron as multiple fully-charged battery symbols sporadically appeared across his vision.
"Snake! The Nanosuit is nearing capacity! You need to bleed off some of the energy before you get cooked like a microwave burrito!" Otacon cried over codec.
"And how the heck do I do that?"
"Use the Nanosuit's power-consuming applications! Otherwise, the gamma energy has nowhere to go!"
"Which ones?!"
"ALL OF THEM!"
" . . . Right!" Night Snake returned, realizing that his suit's power-guzzling functions were exactly the bleedoff he needed.
The epidermis of his armor "scalifying" just in time to begin deflecting nearby rounds, the energy levels of the suit began to fluctuate, but the gamma-guzzling nature of the suit's present configuration caused the internal power cells to fill back up. Activating Cloak a moment later and flailing around as the Radioactive Man struggled to free himself, the constant refractive shifting guzzled away even more power, but it was still being refilled as it converted the Radioactive Man's radiation into energy. Piling Strength and Speed on top of all that, the world around him slowed and the Radioactive Man grew weaker, the energy loss and gain fluctuating right in the middle.
"That's good, Snake! The energy runoff has been stabilized! You're doing great!"
"Yeah, but how long 'til I get rad poisoning and die anyway!?"
"Don't think about that right now! The last of the grunts are just about cleaned up!" Otacon returned a moment before the remaining two Russians still-standing weren't. "Keep it up! You're almost there!"
"LET… GO… OF… MEEEEE!" Radioactive Man raged as he suddenly bolted backwards, slamming his assailant through rows and rows of wooden crates before slamming his opponent into a concrete wall. Radioactive Man pulling himself free the moment his opponent's grip slackened, the man staggered forward, a hand going to his side as a rivulet of radioactive blood poured out the hole. "You… We will meet again!" the man growled out in Russian as he raised a hand to the nearby wall, a blast of radiation melting it before he ran off, bullets peppering the ground behind him a moment later as he ran away.
"Hey, you alright?" Connie asked dropping to a knee next to him, a hand going to his shoulder as the other Freelancers huddled around the new back door, firing at the Radioactive Man's heels to keep him running.
"Uuuuugh…" the Nanosuit pilot groaned tiredly as a wave of fatigue hit him, and his head lolled to the side.
"Snake…?" Connie said worriedly. "Snake?!" she said a little more firmly as she shook his shoulder, only to get no response. "SNAAAAAKE!"
*THE MIGHTY ATOM*
Elsewhere, as the last sounds of the gunfire died down, the tingling sensation in the back of Peter's neck eventually calmed down. Raising the lid of the dumpster he'd been hiding in, just a little bit, the brunette peeked out only to find no-one there.
The sound of police sirens sounding in the distance, with the general "feeling" of danger being gone now, Peter climbed out of the dumpster before working his way back into the warehouse.
"Hello? Guys?" Peter half-whispered half-shouted as he made his way back into the warehouse, Washington's instructions to him forgotten in the panic as he subconsciously made his way back to where the entire shit-show started.
Passing through ruined aisles and aisles of crates, Peter eventually made his way to the center of the warehouse where the entire mess started. The hairs on the back of his neck were tingling, but not "full-on tingling" like before. More like the kind of tingling you got when you knew a jump-scare was coming up because of the music, but not from which direction.
"Well… There goes your security deposit…" Peter found himself quipping in light of everything that happened as he beheld the ruined form of the Titanium Man, tiny wisps of smoke still rising from melted components out the armor's seams, bits and pieces of wiring short-circuiting.
Suddenly, as if to universe chose to spite him, the crimson visor of the Titanium Man lit up, a boot-up sound echoing into the warm air as hydraulics began to whir, and the Titanium Man started getting back to his feet. The sudden-elevated tingling in the back of Peter's neck further supported the hypothesis that the "tingling sensation" was in response to "near and present danger"; and you didn't get any more "near and present danger" than a suit of weaponized power armor worn by a hostile pilot.
"You… Is all your fault!" Boris growled as he laid eyes on the hostage, the spiteful man taking an angry step towards him.
"Hey! Stay away from my nephew!"
"Uncle Palmer?!" Peter asked confusedly at the second voice from inside the Titanium Man's helmet.
"What? Where are you? How did you get on these comms?!" Titanium Man asked angrily as he looked around.
"Isn't it obvious where I am?" Dr. Palmer asked over the man's speaker. "I'm right here."
"Where?" Boris said strangely-coolly as he set the suit's reactor to go critical.
"Oh, and don't bother reaching for the self-destruct. I already disabled that," Dr. Palmer chuckled, causing Boris' eyes to go wide as a big ERROR placard appeared on his visor in place of a nuclear countdown. "So… Your hired muscle is dead, your partner ditched you, the feds are heading this way, and all your suit's weapon systems are disabled. What're you going to do now?"
"I may not know where you are… But I doubt you're close-enough to save your nephew!" Boris growled as he took another threatening step towards Peter.
"Oh, I wouldn't be too sure about that," Palmer said with a smug tone. "Hydraulics cutting out… now!"
The next moment the Titanium Man suit locked up, making the Russian a prisoner of his own body, completely incapable of moving.
"You… How are you doing this?!" Boris raged, struggling fruitlessly against his prison. Without the hydraulic actuators, no ordinary human was strong-enough to move a powered exoskeleton on their own.
"Why ask the question you already know the answer to? After all… You're the one who let me in," Dr. Palmer said cryptically.
The next moment a mote of light leapt out his helmet's bulletproof visor, the mote rapidly growing in size to that of a grown man in a blue and red costume with red accents, two rings of electrons surrounding him through the interim of his transformation.
"Ray…? Is that you?" Peter asked as he beheld the man's costume-clad body.
The now-revealed real Dr. Palmer was clad head to toe in a skintight red-and-blue bodysuit, padded in such a way that it left some to the imagination, exposing only his eyes and the lower half of his face. The upper part of his costume was blue, the lower part red, the two colors separated at the waist by a belt featuring a six-ringed molecule. The lack of any other decoration showed its nascent, raw state.
"Have no fear, the Atom is here!" Dr. Palmer said in an enthusiastic voice before he leapt back towards the now-immobilized Titanium Man. "This is for everything you put my nephew through!"
Rapidly shrinking in size mid-flight, Boris went cross-eyed as he followed his shrinking adversary, the man then seeing stars as a left punch suddenly snapped his head to the side, the force of the blow a complete juxtaposition to the size of his opponent. Feeling himself suddenly being lifted into the air, he was then thrown harshly into the ground, bouncing upward only to be struck by a sudden uppercut. His vision being filled by blue and red as his opponent suddenly grew to tremendous size, before he could fall to the ground, his opponent beat gravity to the punch by actually punching him into the ground, his exoskeleton protesting under the force of the monstrous blow.
"Whoa…" Peter gawped as the dust settled. "How the heck did you do that?"
"Honestly…? Kinda went with my gut," the scientist admitted as he waved his throbbing hand.
" . . . Well that doesn't sound very scientific," Peter deadpanned after a moment.
"Peter, I just hit a robot man in the face with the force of a truck using a fist the size of an action figure's. Conventional science does not really apply here," he said as he glanced down at the fist-shaped crater he made, the scientist slowly coming off his adrenaline high.
" . . . Yeah, fair point," Peter conceded as lights of red and blue shone through the destroyed parts of the warehouse.
*THE MIGHTY ATOM*
"So… You have powers, huh?" Ray asked his nephew as the police and FBI worked in the background.
Since one had escaped, the other was a prisoner in his own suit, and the rest sans one were all dead, it was a pretty easy for them to secure the area.
Of course, since the warehouse was now heavily irradiated, there weren't really any worries about anyone trying to loot the place.
"I should be asking you that question," Peter said as he took off his glasses. "When'd you become a full-blown superhero?" he asked as his vision cleared. Clearing to the same clarity he'd gained alongside his spectacular, amazing, ultimate abilities.
"Just now I guess," Ray shrugged. " . . . The math was all sound, but shrinking myself… and fighting…? It was a little terrifying."
"Well I'm glad you did. Piggybacking off the electrons of the data transfer into that robot man's suit before sabotaging it from the inside was brilliant!" Peter said with wide eyes.
"To be honest, those guys almost didn't let me do that much," Palmer admitted. "If they didn't already have an infiltration specialist on-hand with tech that could make himself look like me, I might've had to be the one to hand the data over."
"So… What happens now?" Peter asked nervously as he took off his glasses, squinting his eyes as they adjusted.
"First, let's get you back home to Aunt May and Uncle Ben," Ray said putting a hand on the teen's shoulder. "After that, we'll run some bloodwork, find out what the vector for your meta-human abilities are, and then… run some scientific tests," he said, his and his nephew's eyes lighting up. "But before that…" he said looking warily towards a bunch of guys in hazmat suits setting up a showering booth. "We… should probably strip down so they can decontaminate us."
*THE MIGHTY ATOM*
Elsewhere, in an area cordoned off for FOXHOUND operatives, well away from prying eyes but close-enough that official business could still be carried out, the Freelancers had just finished giving their mission debriefing to the higher-ups.
Since Night Snake had put himself at the most-risk for the others, coming to just-now, Carolina decided to let him step up and make the mission report in her stead.
"So the Radioactive Man got away, then?" Colonel asked.
"To be fair, we didn't really have the means to contain him. And if we'd attempted restraining him, the guy would've belted out enough rads to give us all third testicles," Night Snake answered.
"I'm a woman," South interjected over codec.
"Whose testes are on the inside," Night Snake snapped back before turning his attention to the Colonel. "Had I known in advance, I could've taken the kill-shot, but that isn't any guarantee he wouldn't nuke us all anyway. For all we know, Gamma Mutates belt out rads when they die the same way regular people void their bowels."
"Gross," North stated.
"That's… actually a fair conclusion to draw…" Colonel hummed. "Killing him could've potentially caused a nuclear meltdown. In a way, you made the right decision letting him get away."
"So what happens now?" Carolina asked.
"Radioactive Man will likely go to ground as he makes his way back to Russia for his next assignment. He might be a super-criminal, but he's still a genius in nuclear physics. It's likely he's already staunched the bleeding and cut off his body's nuclear fission with a spare inhibitor he'd stored away elsewhere, so we won't be able to detect by his gamma signature until he goes hot again."
"So then it isn't our problem?" she asked.
"Not until we determine how-effective the Nanosuit is at protecting the user from gamma rays," Re-l cut in. "Snake, how are you feeling right now?"
"A little sick… but that might be the post-mission jitters, or something from activating all the Nanosuit's bells and whistles at the same time," Solid's successor replied.
"Well, you'll understand that we want to quarantine you for the necessary screening," the woman replied as the radiation squad pulled up in a large white van with the C.E.L.L. logo on the side. Likely containing showering facilities for washing away radioactive particles.
"I made no promises on when I'd make it back home, so I'm fine with a thorough rad-scrubbing," Night Snake replied as his fellow Freelancers started stripping out of their gear and filing into the back of the truck. "I don't want to bring any radiation sickness home with me, after all."
"That's a good attitude to have. Your health is your most-valuable asset," Colonel replied. "You're dismissed."
"Roger," Virgil returned as he walked over to the van, a CryNet tech in a radiation suit waiting to receive his suit.
*THE MIGHTY ATOM*
AN:
Before anyone starts thinking the NOM was "random", it was not. The Necro-Organic Metabolites plug-in was from the novel adaptation of Crysis 2, Crysis: Legion. Instead of the Nanosuit 2.0 "running on Triple-As" like the game-mechanic, in the books it has a larger power cell it can draw from, but using too many apps (Speed, Strength, Armor, Cloak, etc.) at the same time guzzles suit energy like no tomorrow. The reason Virgil has had so-little energy to work with is so the suit doesn't go inert on him at a critical moment, since the suit itself is significantly heavy.
The same problem that Titanium Man just experienced when Dr. Palmer cut his suit's hydraulics.