Blackbird 2.3
I had told myself I was going to put everything on hold except for the new reactor, but it didn't feel right waiting to set up the soup kitchen. People were beginning to depend on me for food, I couldn't let them go hungry long. I ended up choosing to divert enough resources away to start its construction alongside the reactor.
Connected to the school was a small park, for the children to play back when the school was still in operation. In the far corner of the park was where I planned to set up my food based operations. With resources diverted exclusively between the new reactor and the soup kitchen, the two Engineers at Fort Bluff had nothing else to do.
The MKII and four of the six Enforcers that I currently had at Fort Bluff escorted the Engineers out of the school to begin construction. Part of me was a little worried about the PRT, up until now they hadn't actually seen me building anything. Sure they had eyes on the school but they had no way of knowing what was going on inside, only my movements in and out of the building. I was worried exactly how they were going to respond to watching an entire soup kitchen being built, seemingly out of nothing.
They were definitely going to get an up close and personal look at what my Engineers can do now. One of the vans I had identified as one of the PRT's surveillance teams was parked just on the opposite side of the road from where I was setting everything up.
The layout for my soup kitchen wasn't going to be anything grand from the get go. A small building, around the size of a trailer, was going to serve as the kitchen itself. Serving food to anyone that came around looking for a warm meal. In front of the kitchen was going to be a seating area, sitting under a canopy to keep it covered for when it rained.
The two Engineers were set to construct the tables and chairs first before moving onto the kitchen building itself, finally finishing with the canopy. The MKII, unlike its previous iteration, had a full nano-constructor kit in its forearm, rather than just a deconstructor. Despite this, I didn't set it to assist in the construction. Mainly because my mass storage was empty, the reactor and this new project at this point was being completely funded by the income from the mass extractors. The MKII was there for a different reason, namely keeping up the facade of me being inside the suit. It was there so that it seemed like I was personally inspecting and watching the construction take place, which I was, but in reality I was doing it from a comfy chair in a different part of the city. I wanted them to continue to think I was solely based out of the school.
Bottlenecked by mass and now with a second major project also under construction, not only was the reactor now even further delayed, but the kitchen was also going to take longer than I would have liked. I was starting in the early morning and it wouldn't be until the evening the next day before completion. Not that there isn't other stuff I can do in the meantime to occupy myself.
For instance, contemplating what he PRT was up to.
The closest surveillance team I had identified were quite literally parked a stone's throw away. I was honestly surprised it hadn't driven away already, but for whatever reason they remained. I guess they figured I didn't know I was being watched to begin with and so as I didn't seem to notice them they didn't have a reason to move from the up close view. I wondered what was going on inside, oh to be a fly on the wall. I could only imagine what was going through their minds as they watched my Engineers in action.
Alas, I was neither a fly nor given the powers to control them.
Suddenly, I found myself pulled from my thoughts as the van pulled out in somewhat of a hurry. I sat, confused at the sudden exit, at least I did until I realized the way the MKII was facing. I had gotten so used to moving the MKII to mimic what I was looking at when out and about, that I had turned it in their direction, staring at them for… honestly I'm not sure how long.
That is awkward.
I quickly did a quick scan of the school's camera's to check the other vehicles I had marked as surveillance and sure enough all of them, although not in a hurry like the first, were pulling away leaving the area.
Whoops.
Nothing I could do about that now though, so I left two Enforcers with the Engineers and took the MKII and the rest of the Enforcers back inside. I needed to catch up on some sleep, then work on blueprints before my patrol tonight.
Four Enforcers and the MKII made up tonight's patrol, with the Phantom in the air to provide surveillance. I was hoping I'd actually find some crime to stop tonight, since starting my patrols I had only found and stopped two muggings. According to Markus, part of the reason I hadn't been finding anything was my own fault. My sudden appearance and very prominent patrols had sent anyone in this area down to the ground, at least until they had a better idea of what the new kid on the block could do.
Tonight however, I had the Phantom as my eyes in the sky, but that wasn't my only new trick I had up my sleeve. I had put in the work to tap into the BPD radio dispatch, any call the police got I'd hear about. Honestly, I would have done this sooner if I had just thought about it. Hell, I didn't even really need to do it myself, police scanners already existed.
I thought about trying to do the same for the PRT but I didn't want to accidentally piss them off too much before I knew where my stance with them was for certain here in Boston. That and it would have taken me more time and actually committing to making a proper hacking suite due to the encryption that they use being much more sophisticated.
Regardless, I was out in force, at least by my current unit numbers. Everyone split into three groups, two groups of two Enforcers and then the MKII on it's own. Each group patrolled independently but stayed close enough that they could all converge on a single location if needed with relative haste.
The PRT's surveillance was still nowhere to be seen after they had pulled out this morning. I didn't recognize any of the tails I was used to seeing for my patrols, either they were still gone or they had changed it up someway and I was missing them entirely.
As my patrol went on I worked on some new designs on the side, keeping the feeds from my units on the other monitors. Occasionally speaking to the homeless through the MKII as I was known to do along with a few other individuals that felt comfortable approaching it to ask questions, typically about my usual aid or the soup kitchen. Markus seemed to be holding true to his word about letting people know about my plans for it.
Around an hour and some change into the night's usual activities I was roused from my work on a troop transport design by my personalized police scanner sending me an alert. Something was happening on the edge of the area I had designated as my operational range.
I quickly pulled the tab up on my computer to see what it was. A silent alarm for breaking and entering… at a butcher's shop?
Odd. But I'm not going to get picky about the crime, especially after a week of nothing but a couple of muggings.
I diverted all three squads in its direction, the Phantom flying ahead to scout. The MKII would take the longest to get there, with both of the Enforcer squads getting there staggered, but relatively at the same time. The Phantom would be first however, reaching the shop it soared high overhead, I directed its sensors to the ground as I zoomed in with the gimbal camera while it entered a holding pattern above.
At the front of the store I spotted the perpetrators getaway vehicle, or should I say vehicles. A moving van and a sedan. Zooming in I spotted one of the perpetrators loading an entire carcass into the back of the van. A large looking creature with the head of a rhinoceros and the body of a gorilla, a cape, or a cape creation. Shortly after they threw the carcass into the back, a man in a top hat walked out the back carrying a smaller chunk of meat.
Villains, stealing meat? Odd, but now wasn't the time for questions on why, that would come after I had them restrained. My Enforcers were only about a minute out, the MKII a little bit after that, then it was game time.
I continued monitoring the capes while my units closed in. Top Hat and the Gorilla went back inside, two others walked outside after they went in, also carrying meat to load into the van. One man in bulky black armor and a woman in black armor emblazoned with red suns.
The two pairs came in and out. Each time returning with more meat as they threw it haphazardly into the back of their vehicle. Eventually both Enforcer squads had arrived, each sitting out of view on both ends of the street as they waited for the slower MKII to arrive before engaging.
Or at least that was the plan. With the MKII still a little more than a minute out I watched from above as the robbers began climbing into their two vehicles, ready to pull away.
Shit. My Enforcers are fast but they won't keep up with an actual vehicle on the road. It's either I engage now or I watch as they pull away with their spoils, uncontested. Either I engage now, or not at all.
Making my decision all four Enforcers exit their hiding places and begin their advance from opposite ends of the street. I order an Enforcer coming from the East to engage and disable the van with their stolen meat. Machine gun fire erupts on the street as the Enforcer dumps multiple bursts of gunfire into the engine block and front two tires.
Their reaction is instant, Top Hat dives out of the passenger side of the van, taking cover from the direction of the gunfire. The gorilla slams open the back doors of the van, stepping out and also taking cover, looking in the direction of the two Enforcers to the east.
The man and woman in black body armor jump out of their sedan. The woman diving for cover inside the shop. The man takes cover behind the sedan, in the process of doing so he spots my other two Enforcers advancing from the west.
"Two more, other side!" He calls out.
"Me and Genesis get the east, you and Sundancer take the west!" Top Hat yells back.
Two names I'm not familiar with, I'll have to look into them later.
The man in body armor doesn't respond, instead he pulls a metal cylinder from one of the pouches on his chest and aims it in the direction of my Enforcers to the west. A sonic boom cracks out across the street as the metal cylinder suddenly shoots out, faster than sound. It slams into the left arm of an Enforcer, right in the joint of the elbow. Immediately I began getting alerts of critical damage, total loss of its weapons systems in that arm.
"Holy shit." Okay, this guy is most definitely not small fish in terms of firepower.
Both Enforcers to the west begin evasive maneuvers, moving to cover when possible, dodging and weaving when not as they continue their steady advance. All four Enforcers on both sides open up with a salvo of pepper balls as they swap to less lethal ammunition. Another sonic boom cracks out as another cylinder just misses the same Enforcer as before. The man diving down to cover as the Enforcers return fire.
I don't get to give the west much thought however, as suddenly I receive an alert of an unintended spatial displacement as one of the two Enforcers to the east suddenly appears at the back of the van. In its place the Gorilla, Genesis, rears back and throws a punch into the side of the second Enforcer.
The Enforcer is sent flying across the road from the blow, slamming into a parked car setting off its alarm, the armor on its side bent inwards. My control screen is filled with alerts of damage, definitely a brute. Granted, betting the giant rhino gorilla was a brute would be easy money, but it was nice and alarming to have confirmation.
At the same time the displaced Enforcer was taking advantage of its sudden new location. Rounding the corner from behind the van it went after Top Hat, who was already circling around the front of the van to avoid it. Trying to hide, and while he may be able to break line of sight from the Enforcer, my Phantom still had a birds eye view of the battle to direct it. Even better, the Enforcer was now behind the man in armor too.
"Ballistic behind!" Top Hat's voice screamed out as my Enforcer came around.
Almost instantly the man in black armor, who had already been ducking behind cover, rubbing at his eyes due to dust from the pepper balls hitting and exploding around him, pulled a handful of something from a pouch and haphazardly threw them in the Enforcer's direction while still rubbing his eyes with his other arm.
Another series of bangs rang out as a handful of ball bearings slammed into the Enforcer and the side of the van. Like a hypersonic shotgun the ball bearings tore into the sides of both. The Enforcer suffering critical damage, multiple critical systems destroyed, it was done for. In its final moments it underwent anti-theft protocols. Every unit in my arsenal once destroyed, in their last moments would have failsafes kick in to prevent a third party from retrieving anything worthwhile for reverse engineering or in-depth analysis. Systems fried themselves, memory banks sent back to command before being wiped, the hard drives shredding themselves inside the unit, quantum nodes short circuiting, before finally the entire unit would detonate if the damage hadn't been severe enough to already do so.
The shredded Enforcer whined and sparked before its batteries surged and it was engulfed in flames as it detonated, blowing an even larger hole into the side of the van than what was there from the ball bearings a moment before. Pieces of shrapnel flew as Ballistic dived to the ground, managing to avoid injury from flying shrapnel.
"For fuck sakes Trickster, what did we say about swapping people into the back line without saying anything!" Ballistic screamed before wiping his eyes again and throwing another cylinder at the Enforcer he had already damaged to the east.
"And what did we say about throwing multiple things at once! Think about the collateral!" Top Hat, no, Trickster yelled back.
Meanwhile, Genesis and the lone Enforcer were doing the battle equivalent of a dance. The Enforcer was constantly on the back foot, side stepping from punches and swipes, while firing into Genesis with pepper balls to the face. Said pepper balls were working, in impairing her vision at least. But as far as I could tell outside of that impairment it was doing little else. They were seemingly ignoring the pain, like it wasn't even there. I ordered that unit to swap to rubber bullets instead, hoping they would have better effect at slowing them down until the MKII got there.
Despite her vision impairment, the Enforcer wasn't excelling with its evasive maneuvering and was unable to do more than narrowly dodge each strike, unable to create distance. Genesis was strong, and the punch she had landed had fucked up something inside to do with it's sensors. As a result it wasn't detecting the incoming attacks as quickly as it should, not without my personal intervention, taking control of it manually. But I had three- no two other Enforcers to worry about still.
I quickly checked for the arrival time of the MKII, still about forty seconds out, the entire fight hadn't even lasted that long so far despite it feeling otherwise. And I was already down an Enforcer, with two others damaged. Not terribly surprising, the Enforcers were designed to be foot soldiers, to overwhelm enmasse when capes were concerned. Or act as supporting elements to something like the MKII, not acting as the primary fighting force. Especially not with only four, but I was working with what I had.
Once more an alert snagged my attention, the undamaged Enforcer to the west had just been narrowly hit by a ball bearing by Ballistic. Somehow only coming away with damage to the armor of the shoulder. If not for the pepper balls I might have already lost both Enforcers on the western side. While neither had landed a direct shot with a pepper ball to his face, the powder that kicked up from the balls exploding on impact had gotten in his eyes. He was fighting through the pain, and succeeding, but it was messing with his aim. Causing him to miss shots and allow my Enforcers to dodge in instances where it normally wouldn't be possible.
Ballistic prepared for another volley of objects to throw at the same Enforcer. Seeing an opportunity, I ordered the other one with the damaged arm to charge in, close the distance. It began to charge as several more booms filled the air as Ballistic launched another volley focused on the wrong Enforcer, hitting it however in the knee causing the entire lower leg to break off. I thought this might be the tipping point for the western side despite the loss of a limb.
Until all of my monitors blared with alarms.
The girl. The one they called Sundancer, I had forgotten about her.
She had ducked inside the store at the beginning while running for cover. I had ignored her thus far while I dealt with the others. Now, she stepped outside with what I could only describe as a miniature sun in her hands, bigger than a baseball, but smaller than a basketball in size.
"Down!" She yelled. As Trickster and Ballistic hit the floor once more. The sun shot out from her hands in the direction of the two Enforcers on the left. The one missing a leg was far enough away, the other one however…
The light was blinding, as it soared towards the Enforcer, the road cracked before melting under the intense heat. As it got closer the Enforcer's status screamed with warnings of excessive heat, as its armor glowed and eventually began to melt away as it turned into molten slag. Then, just as quickly as it had appeared on the battlefield, the sun blinked out of existence.
Immediately afterwards Ballistic jumped up and sent out another cylinder at the other Enforcer. Hitting it in the eye, destroying it.
As this was happening my last Enforcer finally lost its dance with Genesis. They finally managed to grab it by the arm, picking it up and slamming it to the ground before sitting on top of it and sending several punches into its eye. Realizing it was going to be destroyed with them on top of it, I tried to turn off the failsafes remotely, I had no way of knowing if they were durable enough to survive the Enforcer going up in flames right under them. It's failsafes activated before I had a chance to send the override however, the Enforcer exploding in their face.
Left now with only a birds eye view, I watched from above as Genesis's body collapsed and began to melt.
Did I just accidentally kill someone? Fuck. That was not going to help me with the PRT if I did. I looked at the other three villains and saw a lack of alarm regarding their teammate's sudden dissolving state. Maybe it was fine? That or they really didn't care for them, I had no way of knowing at the moment though.
The MKII was close, quite literally around the corner, but I gave it the order to stop. The MKII was tough, way stronger than an Enforcer, as it was designed to be. But both Sundancer and Ballistic clearly had the means to take it out, especially if it was alone without support.
Didn't matter how strong my shield was if a literal miniature sun was thrown at it.
No point in risking losing another unit when I was strapped for mass to build more until the reactor was complete. It sucked, but I'd have to accept the defeat. At the very least I got some good data to make improvements to the Enforcers' combat AI.
The remaining three villains took off on foot, the back tire of the sedan had melted from the miniature sun passing by it. I didn't bother to follow with the Phantom either, I was worried about the off chance that they would look up to check for fliers and one of them would notice it following them. Ballistic could probably shoot it down if they did, it would be an unnecessary loss.
Once they were far enough away I had the MKII approach the street as I took in the devastation. Part of the street was scorched in a line, an Enforcer at the end of it, now no more than a pile of molten slag. The van they had come in was an absolute mess, and on fire. The entire back ripped apart from Ballistic's attack and the Enforcer's self-destruct. The front of the butchers shop was ruined, mostly from them breaking in, but part of it had also seen the destruction from Sundancer's sun as she had sent it out from within. Various building holes in the street and the surrounding buildings from Ballistic's attacks that had missed and kept going, hitting whatever had been behind the Enforcers at the time.
I sighed, before ordering the MKII to reclaim the Enforcers, putting their mass back into the quantum network, immediately being sucked up from storage and put towards the soup kitchen and reactor construction.
After a few minutes all of the Enforcer remains had been reclaimed. I contemplated reclaiming the ruined truck and van, but I didn't know if they were stolen or not. I'd feel like a dick if they were and someone couldn't claim it on their insurance because the car literally didn't exist anymore, dismantled down the last atom. That and I was sure law enforcement were going to be here soon, maybe they'd find some evidence in one of the two vehicles, I didn't want to tamper with the scene just in case.
Speaking of the devil, I could hear sirens in the distance through the MKII. Looking from the Phantom's camera I could see the green and white lights of the PRT in the distance.
I stopped, wondering if I should stay. Make this my meeting with the local PRT and the Protectorate.
No. Not until I had the reactor finished and I had the spare mass to build units again. I couldn't guarantee that the MKII wouldn't get overwhelmed and taken down with a protracted fight with the Protectorate if it came down to it and they came in force. Not that I wanted it to come to that, but still.
Better to return and lick my wounds. Today was an unfortunate loss, but it was one I could learn from. I definitely needed something other than the Enforcer or the MKII, something to act as muscle when the MKII couldn't be present. That and I really needed to finish my troop transport. All of tonight's issues of having to engage too early, staggered response time and not being able to pursue if they drove away would have all been solved if I had one.
Just more projects to finish on an ever expanding list.
I issued the return order to the Phantom and MKII and began to lose myself in my other work, starting a file on the capes I had just encountered. They hadn't come up in my initial research into Boston. Or at least I was doing that until the audio feed from the MKII dragged me back. The sounds of gusts of wind.
It wasn't a windy day.
I had my answer for the source of the wind a heartbeat later, Aerobat in his blue jumpsuit and fluffy jacket, surrounded by circulating arctic wind, rounded the corner in the air, cutting off the MKII's path.
It seemed the Protectorate was done watching from a distance.