Capítulo 624: 63
Date
2011 February 23rd - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time
Taylor followed Dragon and the rest of the parahumans to another meeting room where the only thing present was another table and a drone which just delivered a box.
They filed in silently, then placed themselves around the table, except for Dragon, who headed for the box. She opened it and began to remove things from it. First, several bandoliers of high-tech grenades, which she then threw to her, Alexandria and Cardea, then a rather unusually sized sword, which she handed to Alexandria, then several guns with magnetic holders and Medi-gel dispensers.
As people inspected the items, Dragon explained their purpose.
"So, the grenades contain incendiary, ConFoam, explosion, implosion, and cryo grenades courtesy of Nero." The woman in question was nodding enthusiastically while giving a thumbs up. "Use them when necessary. They are clearly marked. Anybody not familiar with grenades?"
Taylor inspected the marks on the grenades, flame for the incendiary, cloud for the ConFoam, circle for the explosion, dot for the implosion, and a snowflake for the cryo, while Cardea slowly raised her hand.
"Um, I've never really used them," she said a little uncertainly.
Dragon nodded, then continued. "I will give you a quick tutorial after we are finished with the briefing. Any other questions?"
The people were putting on the bandoliers, the magnetic holsters for the guns, and the Medi-Gel dispenser, while Alexandria was slowly inspecting the sword given to her.
"What's this for, Dragon?"
"I thought you would appreciate something that would keep you out of the range of disgusting monsters."
"Hmm," was the only thing the famous woman said in response, and Taylor could hear the frown in her voice. "Can it keep up with my strength?"
"I created it based on the data I gathered over years, so more than likely," answered Dragon proudly.
"We shall see," said Alexandria, then affixed the enormous sword to her back with the provided holder. To Taylor, she looked even cooler than before, and she was sure that soon an entire line of Alexandria figurines with swords would be available in the stores.
Maybe she could use her connection to get one signed?
They spent the next few minutes making sure that everything was working correctly; the armors, where applicable, were fully functional, and the weapons were working.
Taylor was starting to get excited. An entire pseudo-military with one of her best friends and childhood heroes next to her. It was a dream come true. Now only if she wasn't reminded of the fact that she used to have Armsmaster panties every time she looked at the man…
It was Dragon who broke her out of her embarrassing memories, and she was once again thankful for the fact that she was wearing a face-concealing mask.
"Right, now that we are finished with the equipment, let's start with the plan, in a little more detail than the good Director had."
"What plan? We just go in, kick-ass, then bamm!" exclaimed Nero, accenting her words with a slap on the table.
"Yes, but how we do that is important," answered Narwhal with a wry smile.
"Indeed," affirmed Dragon. "So here is it!"
The table, just like in the previous meeting room, came alive and projected a map of the area with the current situation updated every second, though this one also contained several extra marks inside the city. These marks were marked with gold and were placed around the city equidistant from each other, except the last one which marked the last known location of the Ball.
"The marks you see here are the places we have to plant the bombs," explained Dragon, zooming in on the city. "Before this situation the Guild was planning to deliver bombs built by Nero here, to annihilate the city without triggering Nilbog's dead man's switches, and by my and Nero's calculations this is still feasible, though we want to add an extra under the Ball to make sure it gets destroyed."
Nobody said a word, their attention on Dragon. And Taylor had to admit Tess was fantastic at this. Furthermore, while she was doing this with them she was handling communication, logistics, the majority defenses, and even the things that had nothing to do with Ellisburg, like the recycling facility, or her own factories.
The AI was seriously impressive.
"We will proceed through one of the portals and from then after taking stock of the city, towards the first point. I will carry the bombs, Nero will help plant them, Cardea will heal and shield if necessary, the rest of you are there to protect us."
Once again everyone nodded in understanding, but Taylor could see that Cardea was shaking a little.
"Cardea, Nero, and I will be in the middle," continued Tess explaining her plan. "Narwhal will be behind us, Armsmaster at ten, Lux at twelve, and Alexandria and two o'clock. Alexandria will handle the big ones, Armsmaster close combat, and Lux with her clones will be shielding us from the riff-raff."
"Agreed," said Alexandria gruffly. Armsmaster just raised his halberd in agreement, while Nero and Cardea nodded somewhat relieved. Taylor would have also been relieved if she didn't have her powers and would be protected by some of the strongest parahumans in the world.
"Looking forward to it," she said while smiling at her friend.
"Good, then let's synchronize our communication before we head out."
As they walked towards the gate, after Dragon picked up a gigantic backpack that held the bombs that would vaporize the city, she slid up next to Cardea.
"Hey," she greeted her quietly. "You all right?"
"Y-yeah," replied the woman, surprised by her. "I just wasn't expecting that I would end up here, you know?"
"Makes sense." Trying to be comforting, Taylor patted her shoulder. "Where are you from?"
"Melbourne."
"Government or…?"
"Government! I got the training, they make sure everybody gets the same training, but nothing like this was ever discussed!"
"Yeah, besieging a multidimensional abomination wasn't exactly what I expected today," agreed Taylor, while nodding sagely. "But hey, at least you don't have to watch your aim, or worry about collateral!"
The woman next to her snorted in good humor, her anxiousness half-forgotten.
"I suppose that's one way to look at it…"
Date
2011 February 23rd - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time
Assault was practically in heaven. After requesting a weapon from Dragon, he was supplied with a rather big war hammer. At first, he didn't even know what he could use it for. Then his power hiccupped somewhat and the next second the same power field that protected him enveloped the weapon.
It allowed him to use his power to deliver insanely energetic kinetic strikes with the weapon. After only a few minutes on the battlefield, he was sure if he wasn't married he would take the hammer.
The only weird thing was that usually his power was useless in midair. Here, however, while he didn't get more charge no matter what he hit or what hit him, the charge remained. As if his power evolved…
He would have to experiment with it when they got back to Brockton Bay! For now, he would just enjoy the unlimited carnage, and that he didn't need to watch how much force he used.
He smashed a cheetah that was heading for his wife, then with the same movement he slammed the head of the hammer into the ground, creating a small crater and clearing the way to Sherry.
"Hey, Puppy! How is it going?" he yelled over to her, to make she heard him over the continuous roars, explosions, weapon fires, and other exotic noises.
Ethan's beautiful wife (and best wife) smashed the head of a ranged goblin in, then turned towards him. "Would it kill you to take this seriously?" she asked reproachfully, but he could spot a small smile of excitement on her face.
"Probably!" he answered cheerfully. "How about a bet…"
"Everyone, attention! The infiltration team is ready to proceed. Please clear Portal B!" came Dragon's calm voice, interrupting him.
He whipped around just in time to see several people fly towards the aforementioned central portal. Some of them, like Lux, Narwhal, Alexandria, and Dragon were flying under their own power, but Armsmaster was comically held by Dragon, while the two others he didn't know were flying next to Lux, her arms touching them.
The moment they neared the battlefield, an incredible amount of Lux's clones appeared and started clearing a path towards the portal with indiscriminate lightning attacks. In a few seconds, every monster was dead between the team and the portal, and anything that poked its head out was vaporized immediately.
Apparently, when Lux was distracting the monsters before they arrived, she was really just playing around.
Ethan watched as they swept past the clones holding back the abominations, then plunged into the portal. He expected the clones to vanish, but they stayed back and joined the rest of them, gleefully relieving stress on the horde of monsters.
But why did Alexandria have a sword?
Date
2011 February 23rd - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time
The scenery waiting for them on the other side of the portal was the exact opposite of relaxing. The moment they came out of it, they came face to face with the end of one of the tentacles that held some kind of sphincter-like thing that continuously ejected monsters. Taylor had to gag at the view.
She let her two tagalongs fall slowly to the ground while creating her clones. They had no time to waste.
The first one to open fire was Dragon, who shot down one of the new monsters heading for them. It looked like a malformed pterodactyl. Its body was littered with scales and cancerous growths, while its tails ended in the same appendage that adorned the dog's heads. It died after one shot from Dragon's gun, only for several hundreds of them to replace it.
"Lux!" yelled Dragon, and Taylor understanding her friend sent her clones up to deal with them. Four other clones placed them around them and created a cage in the shape of a bowl around them, giving them time to get their bearing. The rest of the clones spread out and engaged the earthbound monsters, coming to deal with the intruders.
They stood under the umbrella of her shield, which was holding up remarkably under the barrage of plasma that the monsters were spewing in their direction. Not that they could do that for long, because as soon as a ranged monster appeared one of her clones pounced, enthusiastically destroying it and the surroundings.
"Dragon? Where to?" spoke Alexandria, holding her new sword with one hand, its tip aimed at the ground.
"Hmm, interesting," said the Tinker, looking at something only she could see.
"Indeed. Simply, fascinating," added Armsmaster as he looked around.
Alexandria said nothing, she just simply cleared her throat. How one could clear their throat threateningly eluded Taylor, but she added it to the list of things she just had to learn.
"Apologies Alexandria. I was taking in the information my scanners provided," explained Dragon. "We are safe here. No airborne particles were detected, and aside from the spatial phenomenon that prevents teleportation, I detected nothing else. The inside of the monster is, however, extremely different."
Alexandria turned towards the nearest wall of pulsating meat and began to scrutinize it.
"It seems inside of it there is some kind of spatial anomaly. My best guess is that it is at least bigger on the inside than on the outside."
"Will that stop us from finding the Ball?"
"No. I got a reading of the energies it emits before the biomaterial enveloped it, and I can use that to find it," replied Dragon calmly. "Aaand, just found it. Those of you who have HUDs, I sent the marker over."
Taylor took a look and then memorized the coordinates, just in case. She also used her own power to try to make sense of the situation. She closed her eyes and extended her senses. The first thing she sensed were her teammates, with all their biological or synthetic functions showing up clear as a day, though Alexandria's body and brain were a little weird, but she attributed that to her Brute power.
The next were the monsters, still as empty of anything but the barest necessities as outside. Then she reached the walls and was almost overwhelmed by the signals.
The wall was so alive she couldn't make out anything in detail. However, when she reached beyond the wall, she hit a snag. The area there was much larger, and the signals were jumbled together. As if they were at the same place at the same time, while also several feet away from each other. It was rather disconcerting, and it neatly supported Tess's theory of space inside the abomination being wonky.
She opened her eyes and turned towards the others. "Ready to go?"
"Let's get a final okay from central command," said Dragon, and the next sentence came from the communication channel. "Director Piggot, we are ready to begin."
There was a moment of silence before the answer came in the gruff voice of the Director. "Everything is green. Monster assault increased, but you're good to go Dragon. Good luck."
"Understood. Dragon out," replied Tess. Then she turned towards them with a small smile, hefted her gun up. "Shall we?"
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