F@nService Diner Chapter 06 Road Rage

Chapter 06: Road Rage

Hiro put the car in park. They were still a little ways off from their destination but traffic on the highway had come to a complete stop. Adam noticed most of the vehicles blocking their path were empty of their occupants. It reminded him of a zombie film.

“This is as close as we’re gonna get but it’s not too far to walk from here.” Hiro commented as he opened the driver-side door and stepped out onto the asphalt. “Besides, how often do you get to go for a walk on the highway?”

“Actually…” Adam was about answer ‘as a firefighter, more often than I’d like’ but stopped himself.

When most people thought of firefighters they pictured brave men and women running into burning buildings or pulling cats out of trees. Adam would happily run into a burning building when one was available. But truth was that modern building materials and fire suppression systems had made structure fires an increasingly rare occurrence. Most of their call-time was spent directing traffic around accidents and then cleaning up the debris after tow trucks and ambulances had hauled the wrecks and their drivers away.

They also got paged out for the weird stuff that defied categorization.

A swarm of bees decided to make themselves at home in somebody’s truck?

Call the fire department.

Paramedics need help lifting a 500 pound heart-attack victim onto a gurney?

Call the fire department.

A prairie dog bit a child and then holed up in the restroom at the local park?

Call the fire department.

That was probably the weirdest call Adam had ever responded to. When they arrived on scene the child had already been rushed to the hospital but the slasher-film trail of blood made it look like the prairie dog had killed the kid and dragged him into the restroom to eat him.

“Hey Hiro, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever had to do at work?” Adam asked as they started walking between the rows of abandoned vehicles.

“That’s an oddly specific question.”

“The weirdest thing I ever had to deal with at the fire department was a prairie dog attack.” Adam volunteered.

“Prairie dogs attack? — Those cute, little things?”

“And how, the little guys have a nasty bite.”

“Huh, okay that’s weird, but good to know. But I think I might have that beat.”

“I’m listening.” Adam looked up at the sky. A wedge formation of enemy drones reflected the light of the orange sunrise as it flew overhead. For a split second Adam thought he saw something faint, something vaguely human-shaped. He dismissed the thought as soon as it came to him. He blinked and the shape disappeared.

“Honestly I can’t talk about most of the weird stuff that happens at my job. That’s one of the things they take very seriously at Omni.” A mischievous smirk crossed Hiro’s face. “But since you’ll soon be working there anyway…”

“Wait, I never said…”

Hiro held up his hand to interrupt Adam’s objection and continued.

“Since you’ll be working there soon I guess there’s no harm in telling you the weirdest thing I’m doing now, so long as I leave out some of the details.” Hiro paused to compose his thoughts. “You know that shiranaksu nerve-linking thing minkans do?” Hiro asked.

“Yeah, I mean, I’ve never done it, but it sounds fun.”

“It’s fun during a massage. It’s well — a little weird while doing other stuff.”

Adam stopped and raised an eyebrow at Hiro.

“No, not that you ambitious pervert. Although I’m sure that’s fun too. They have me training with this purple minkan; a real hardcore, Amazon warrior-type chick with a Jacinto accent. I think she’s an ex-mercenary or something.”

“You ever ask her about it.”

“No.” Hiro dismissed before stopping in his tracks. “Hey, I just thought of something.”

“What?”

“We should the Giant Kinetic bit?” Hiro asked as he stopped to rummage through his Omnibag.

“Like the Scrubs joke?” Adam thought back to the game they played back at Psi School. The students had each been issued a long blue coat as part of their supply kit. Whoever in the government decided that all students needed this coat was clearly not from a desert planet where it only snowed on the poles and seldom rained. That didn’t stop the students from putting the coats to other uses. Sharing one coat, a student would climb on another student’s shoulders and pretend to be an adult; barking orders and directing foot traffic in impersonation of the faculty.

“It’s a classic bit that goes back further than Scrubs but yes.” Hiro answered as he pulled a white labcoat out of his Omnibag’s extradimensional portal.

“Why do you have a labcoat?” Adam asked.

“All Omni personnel get one.”

“Yeah but — why?”

“Because Leon’s an eccentric trillionaire who wants his employees to be all sciencey — even those of us who aren’t scientists.”

“Fair enough. So what was this weird thing they have you training for with that minkan mercenary?”

“Huh, oh that. Yeah they have us training for this super secret, Project-Star-Gate-type mission. The whole program has a freaky, Stranger Things, upside-down vibe to it.”

“That sounds slightly weirder than a prairie dog attack. What kind of training do they have you doing?”

“Shirnaksu-walking.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s where she attaches the spoon-shaped bit on the end of her tail to the back of your neck in order to tap into your central nervous system. Then she walks you around like her own personal remote-control human.”

“They can do that?” Adam asked.

As if Adam needed another reason to be intimidated by Tevera. Although the longer he thought about it, the more okay-with-it he was. For better or worse, he trusted her — and the idea of Tevy being able to remote control his body definitely had sexy-time potential.

“Only if you relax and don’t fight her. It’s harder than it sounds. It feels really weird, like walking in your sleep but if you wake up you’re gonna fall over.” Hiro answered, snapping Adam out of his sexy daydream. “When we first started there was a lot of twitching and stumbling, hence the training.” Hiro elaborated.

“I see.”

“Weird thing is the way they have it set up we’re not physically going anywhere. They have us hooked up to these special AR headsets. They said it has something to do with quantum physics.”

“Okay sounds like you win the weird job contest.”

“Yeah I do!” Hiro smiled. “Hey, see that?”

Hiro pointed up ahead to a crowd of people gathered around an exit ramp on the right side of the highway.

The sky-ramp was pretty much what you’d expect. The physical highway terminated in a 40 foot long, high-angled, metal ramp which was framed by two 20 foot tall metal brackets bedecked with the rectangular green signs you’d expect to find on an overpass. Each bracket was sandwiched over a crystalline energy emitter that glowed light-blue from the brackets center. The air between the two brackets shimmered lighter than the air around it. The sky-road itself: a flowing sheet of semi-translucent hardlight, started at the edge of the the metal ramp and gently sloped upward, towards the next evenly-spaced repeater bracket 270 feet down the imperceptibly spiraling path.

Adam noticed two red fire trucks of dissimilar size parked in the highway’s breakdown lane. Engine 512 and Rescue 512 were angled in fend-off positions designed to deflect distracted, or murderous, drivers away from emergency personnel.

“Yup that’s them.” Adam informed Hiro.

“Okay if we get any closer they might see us. Better combine our powers now.” Hiro threw on the labcoat. “You be the legs.”

“Crap! Okay fine. Wait — I was the legs last time.” Adam objected.

“Well you’re so sturdy.”

Adam grumbled something in gibberish.

Adam crouched down behind a truck. Hiro then used the truck’s bumper as a stepladder to climb onto Adam’s shoulders. Once Adam stood back up and they managed to close all the coat’s buttons they methodically plodded towards the crowd gathered around the skyramp.

“Have no fear citizens because I, the giant kinetic, am here!” Hiro announced in a comically heroic voice that resembled the Hero All Might from the My Hero Academia myth. “Excuse me! Giant kinetic coming through.” Reluctantly the crowd parted, letting them through. Although they gave the two kinetics, pretending to be one very tall kinetic, some odd looks.

“Alright people, back up. Give me some room to work. Nothing to see here — just a giant kinetic. It’s not like you haven’t seen this like ten times today already.” Hiro chided ironically.

Adam peaked out at the situation from a opening in the labcoat’s buttons. Three five-foot long pointed shapes had embedded themselves halfway through the sky-road 30 feet above the ground. So that’s what a Galactic Union drone looked like up close. They were smaller than he expected. The GU drones looked like two carbon fiber pyramids sitting base to base on opposite poles of a metal sphere. The sphere was a different color and material from the rest of the drone. Adam suspected it was an aftermarket mod and, judging by the way its equator sat flush with the glowing energy field made him conclude that maybe this sphere was what allowed the drones to disrupt the sky-road’s hardlight field. The space between the three drone penetrators was a triangular hole in the sky-road into which the cab of a large semi-truck had wedged itself. The cab sat skewed at an awkward angle, with its windshield below the sky-road staring down at the ground and its trailer resting on the road above. The driver was still inside and he looked pretty terrified, eyes wide as he braced his feet against the dashboard trying to push himself as far back into his seat as possible. Even if the driver had not been too scared to move, exiting the cab would have been a problem. The cab was skewed at such an angle as to have the passenger side door held shut by the hardlight walls that made up the hole in the sky-road. The driver side door was unobstructed but only opened to a 30-foot drop to the ground below.

“Yeesh — that doesn’t look good.” Adam commented before retreating back inside the labcoat.

“Ah you must be the kinetic Omni sent us.” Chief McGraw was a tall grizzled man with a walrus-mustache that tested the limits of what would allow a firefighter’s breathing mask to seal properly.

Adam thought the chief came across like an old western sheriff who had fallen through a hole in time and now had to take up a career in firefighting because his gruff personality was ill suited for modern law enforcement.

Of course Adam thought, that might just be him projecting. When Adam was deciding on a career it had been a toss up between firefighting or the military. Now a normal person would look at those two fields and conclude that the middle ground, police work might be a good choice. But Adam was self-aware enough to know that he lacked the social dimmer-switch that was required for working with people who weren’t your friend but also weren’t your enemy, until they were. Adam disliked social ambiguity. To him it felt dishonest. So in his quest for adventure and a chance to make the world a better place he had opted to use his kinetic powers to fight an enemy without a central nervous system, fire.

“Guilty, Hiro Nishimoto at your service.” Hiro reached down to shake the chief’s hand.

“Well glad you’re here. We have a kinetic of our own but he’s not on call today so there’s no telling whether he’ll show up.”

The labcoat opened and a guilty face poked out.

“Hey chief.”

“My God they’re multiplying!” The chief feigned shock.

“It’s a classic bit!” A firefighter pointed and laughed.

“I know right?” Hiro pointed back.

“Hey Leroy.” Adam waved at the pointing firefighter.

Leroy waved back.

“Glad you could make it but — what’s that you’re wearing?” The chief pointed at the white hazard suit.

“It’s a labcoat.”

“No that. Why are you wearing those shiny, power ranger pajamas.”

In the background Leroy giggled.

“Where are your turnouts? You know better than respond to a scene without the proper gear. Having ketogenic-powers doesn’t exempt you from the rules.” The chief scolded.

“Actually it’s kinet…uh, I think I can explain.” Hiro offered.

“Please do.”

Adam knelt on one knee so Hiro could disembark from his shoulders.

“Mr. Terranova here is testing out Omni’s latest hazard suit.”

“Hazard suit?”

“Yup it’s powered armor designed specifically for first responders. It can do everything your turnouts can do and more, like stop bullets.”

“Huh, sounds handy, but does it have to be so…” The Chief’s eyes slowly looked left then right, trying to read the room. “Dang it, I don’t know what you can say anymore —flamboyant?”

“Oh, it doesn’t have to come in Omni-white. Watch this. It’s really cool.” Hiro swiped the screen on his wrist. After a few seconds Adam’s suit changed in texture from a shiny gloss finish to flat matte, next the white changed to a burnt sand color and finally the blue trim and light-up logos turned hazard-orange. Four matching, horizontal, reflective stripes started at Adam’s center and worked their around his torso like tiny Tron-bikes.

“Whoa. Okay that’s much better. Now he matches the rest of the department.”

Adam was as surprised as the chief and looked himself up and down.

“Too bad we’ll never get the budget for these.” Chief lamented.

“Well I’m not supposed to say anything but there’s talk about donating lots of these to local departments as part of a war grant. We’re all in this together. At least that’s what my boss says.”

“Hey we’ll take whatever we can get, kinda hard for the city council to say no to free.”

“So, what exactly happened here.” Hiro pointed to the precariously dangling semi truck.

“Well as you can see, three Union…” The chief spat after uttering the word ‘Union’. “drones have gone and lodged themselves in the sky-road making this damn hole that the semi fell halfway through.”

“That’s a strange thing for drones to do.” Hiro commented.

“Oh it gets better. Turns out it was no accident. Same thing happened at all the major on-ramps.”

“They must really not want people using the sky-road.” Leroy chimed in.

“More likely they don’t want anyone leaving the planet.” Hiro narrowed his eyes. “Chief, we should unplug the hole and get the driver down. Do you concur?”

“I don’t know I’m not a doctor but this should be much easier now that we have two kinetics. I sent José to get us a ladder. He should be back any second.” Chief replied.

“ I don’t think we’ll need the ladder.” Hiro commented as he eyed the sky-road and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

A stiff desert breeze shimmered like ripples on a lake across the sky-road’s glassy surface as it resonated with an electro-magnetic hum.

“You don’t?” It suddenly dawned on Adam what his kinetic colleague had in mind. “No wait — you’re not thinking…”

“Low-G launchpad maneuver.” Hiro finished his sentence for him.

“I hate that move.” Adam voiced his disapproval.

“What? It’s fun.”

“Yeah, in a thirty by thirty padded room with a seventy foot ceiling and trampoline floors.”

“And it was fun right?”

“Yeah — it was. It was a lot of fun. But I haven’t done that move since Psi School.”

“How come?”

“Because if the person being launched lands outside the low gravity zone they’re going to fall at full gravity.”

“Noted. Now stand over —— here.” Hiro stomped his foot on a spot 10 feet in front of the sky-road. “And make a low-gravity spot for me to jump from.”

“You sure? I mean — José will be back with that ladder any second now.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Okay then, fine. — But you lower the gravity. I’ll jump.” Adam regretted the words even before they finished traveling from his brain to his mouth. Why did he volunteer for this? He volunteered because the only thing that scared him more than heights — was asking Tevera to be his girlfriend. Okay so there were two things that scared him more than heights. There were also giant, spider-clowns that were also John Carpenter’s The Thing. Now would that be Pennywise assuming the form of The Thing because it would know that was one of Adam’s fears or would it be The Thing wearing the demon spider-clown as a disguise? Could The Thing even infect Pennywise? It was a demon from another dimension. Did it even have cells? Okay fine so there were three, or four, things that scared him more than heights. Point is one of those things was letting someone else die because he was too scared to act.

“Nah man, it was my suggestion so I should be the one assuming the risk.”

There, Hiro gave him a way out. He wouldn’t have to jump afterall, unless…

“Yeah well, I was the legs last time so now it’s your turn.” Dammit! Stupid brain.

“I don’t think this counts as the same thing.”

The firefighter’s looked at each other to make sure they had both heard the same thing.

“Oh! He’s talking about the Giant-Dude bit.” Leroy laughed.

“That makes way more sense then what I was thinking.” Muttered the chief.

“What were you thinking?” Leroy asked.

“Yeah no.” The chief wisely refused to answer.

“Like I said, it was my idea. Besides if this goes wrong I can always relax the eye-of-the-storm in my gravity sphere and feather-fall back down. Do you know how to feather-fall?”

“I — know it’s a thing that I could do — if I knew how to do it.” Adam reluctantly admitted.

“There, it’s settled. I’m jumping.”

Adam was both relieved and ashamed. Relieved that he would no longer have to confront his fear of heights but ashamed he hadn’t mastered the feather-fall skill.

He hadn’t practiced because it involved repeatedly falling from high places, something he had no desire to do, even if it was safe. Adam couldn’t bring himself trust bungee cords. Ironically, if he had mastered feather-fall he would have little cause to fear heights. He would be able to jump off a skyscraper without it being a death sentence. How many people would kill for that ability? Adam mentally kicked himself right in the guilt.

“You can still raise and lower the gravity around you though, right?” hiro asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“Show me.”

“Okay Morpheus.” Adam looked around for a test subject. His eyes settled on a half a particle-board book shelf that had been dumped in the breakdown lane by somebody who had failed to read The Social Contract.

“Morphy-who?” Hiro asked.

Adam stopped mid-stride and turned towards his soon-to-be-former friend.

“You’re kidding me right?

Hiro stared blankly.

“Morpheus — from The Matrix.”

“The what now?”

“I thought I knew you.”

Unable to hold it in any longer, Hiro slowly cracked a smile before doubling over laughing.

“You were messing with me just now.”

“Ahaha! Like a boss! Now show me you know kung fu.”

Adam grumbled a resentful laugh and marched over to the half-a-bookshelf. He gave it a light kick to test its weight. The half-shelf wobbled but just barely. It would do. Adam stepped his feet apart and rooted himself into a wide stance. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose as he raised his arms. The shadows around him softened and the space inside his sphere of influence glowed brighter than the environment around it as though lit by an invisible flood light. He breathed out through his mouth and opened his eyes. The whites of his eyes glowed with electric intensity and his irises shone a neon green. He glanced down at the half-shelf and gave it a swift kick. The shelf flew, as if kicked by a superhero, and slammed into a concrete soundwall, exploding in a cloud of particle-board splinters.

“Nice! Just like riding a bike.” Hiro congratulated him.

A few spectators gave a smattering of subdued golf-claps, which was just enough attention to make Adam blush and scratch the back of his neck.

“I guess so.” Adam shrugged.

“You feeling good about this?” Hiro asked as he threw an arm around Adam’s shoulder and directed him back to the spot he wanted to jump from.

“Sure — why not.”

“Great!” Hiro patted him on the back and took off jogging in the opposite direction of the sky-road. “Just stand right there and give me a launching pad that’s as close to zero-g as you can manage.”

“Okay, just one thing.”

“Sure, what?”

“If you can do feather-fall why do you need my help?”

“Because it takes a lot of concentration. Stepping off a ledge is one thing, getting a running start is something else.”

Adam thought Hiro had it backwards but no sense in arguing about something he had no experience with.

“Well alright then.”

Adam eye-balled the sky-road and took a position adjacent to but not too close to the hole. Again Adam rooted himself, closed his eyes, breathed in through his nose and then out through his mouth as he raised his arms. Again the space around him glowed in a half sphere dome of brightened low contrast lighting. He opened his eyes which now shone electric white and neon green. He held his arms up in a T-pose with the palms of his hands facing the ground.

“Whenever you’re ready.” He signaled to Hiro.

“Alright, let’s do this. LEEROOOY JENKINS!”

“Huh what?” Leroy looked up, thinking for a brief second that someone was calling his name and before he remembered the old Warcraft meme.

Hiro got a running start, sprinting towards Adam from behind. Just as he was about to pass Adam he leapt with both feet into the low gravity zone. He hit the ground and kicked off like a missile.

“Oh shiiii…”

Maybe he should have tested it first, just to gauge how much force to put into his jump. Hiro soared roughly ten feet over the sky-road and was about to overshoot it.

“No! No! No!” Hiro shouted.

He pointed an angry fist at the sky-road below him as he scrambled to manifest a high gravity field. To the crowd watching he appeared to darken in contrast. Had they been closer they would have noticed that the whites of his eyes had turned obsidian black and his normally dark-brown irises now glowed a neon reddish-orange. He focused all his attention on relaxing the eye-of-the storm that protected his body from his own gravity field’s influence. He needed to fall and fast or he would overshoot the sky-road and plummet to the ground forty feet below.

Down below Adam watched Hiro’s arc travel halfway over the road before he realized his friend was in trouble.

“Uh oh. — That doesn’t look — Oh shiii…” Adam took off, sprinting towards the spot where he thought Hiro would land. If he got there in time maybe he could lower the gravity to soften the landing. He didn’t need to get close enough to catch him, that would’ve been impossible. He just needed to get within 30 feet for the field to have some effect. But the closer the better.

He looked up, trying to judge the distance. Was he within thirty feet? He wasn’t sure. If he deployed his low gravity field too soon it would be for nothing. If he made it there but didn’t leave himself enough time to lower the gravity it would be for nothing. Just a little further. He glanced at the ground to make sure his path was clear.

Adam looked up again one last time to judge the distance before he skidded to a stop.

“Oh.” Turns out Hiro hit his mark after all. It really looked as though he was going to overshoot but then again Adam always had been bad at judging distance. Adam breathed a sigh of relief as Hiro dusted himself off and did a victory dance.

“That was way too close.” Hiro walked over to the cab of the semi that was halfway submerged through the glowing, translucent road. Hiro had driven on sky-roads pretty much everyday since he started working for Omni but this was the first time he had ever walked on one. It was an interesting sensation — something like walking on a tightly stretched hammock. He felt each footstep sink slightly into the hardlight. This would be absolutely terrifying in a car were it not for the fact that the more weight you put on it the more solid the hardlight became. The springy hammock-sensation was also accompanied by a slight static-electric tingle.

Hiro knelt down to look through the top right corner of the passenger side window that peeked up through the hole in the hardlight. Hiro rapped the window with his knuckles. The driver looked up at him.

“You okay?”

The driver nodded frantically but didn’t say anything.

“Relax man, we’re gonna get you out of there.” Hiro reassured him.

He stood back up and flexed his fingers. He then brought his fists together in a Pacific Rim-style Jaeger handshake. The air reverberated with a low, bass shockwave as two giant, invisible, floating hands manifested about ten feet in front of him. Hiro reached out with his vectors and grabbed the cab, feeling the weight against his physical hands reflected by feedback in his vector gloves. He groped around trying to find the chassis’ lift points before he decided to exert any real force. This appeared to be the trailer / axle thing underneath. Hiro didn’t know truck parts. He just knew he didn’t want to crush the cab like a soda can — especially with the driver still inside. This would complicate things. Grabbing exclusively from the bottom was not the most ergonomic option. If he could brace a vector-hand against the top of the cab he’d have better leverage to keep it from tilting as he lifted, but he wasn’t sure how much stress the roof could take — to say nothing of the windshield.

“Here goes nothing.” Hiro lifted, his physical hands acting as controllers for his titan-sized vectors. The semi truck groaned and shifted as Hiro pulled it back. Inside the driver appeared to be losing his mind. This was more difficult than Hiro had anticipated. The cab tilted as he pulled and it caught on the hardlight sides of the hole. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the trailer also seemed to be resisting; its weight pushing against any progress he made.

Down below Adam turned to see José cutting through the crowd, carrying a ladder that was designed to be carried by two people.

“Hey can ju give me a hand with this?” José asked in his trademark super-thick accent.

“Oh crap, yeah sure thing.” Adam jogged over but Leroy was closer and beat him to it. Leroy stopped José and threaded an arm through one of the ladder’s rungs. The two firefighters then proceeded to carry the ladder as it was meant to be carried. Adam caught up.

“Need a hand?” He asked.

“No, I think we got it.” Leroy replied.

Adam raised his right hand and the world turned a little brighter as he reduced the gravity till the ladder weighed almost nothing.

“That works too.” José smiled.

“Wait —” Leroy looked at Adam in disbelief. “You can make everything lighter? Why don’t you do that all the time?”

“Because I don’t want to get used to it and get all fat and lazy.” Adam answered.

“From now on that’s your new job — making us fat and lazy.” Leroy joked as he and José carried the ladder up to the sky-road with Adam holding up his right hand a couple steps ahead of them.

“Well thanks for the ladder but I don’t think we’re going to need it.” Adam pointed up to Hiro.

“Ju have got to be kidding me!” José looked crestfallen. “How did he get up there?”

“He jumped.” Answered Leroy.

José dropped his end of the ladder.

“Sorry.” Adam apologized.

Meanwhile up top Hiro released the semi truck. He had reached the conclusion that if he kept this up he was only going to break something. He needed a change of tactics. The truck groaned as its weight settled back down. Hiro took a step back, shook his fingers loose and shouted down to Adam.

“Looks like we’re going to need that ladder after all.”

“Oh, nevermind.” Adam shrugged at the other two firefighters.

José smiled like an emoji.

It didn’t take long to get the ladder set up. Soon Adam was standing a few steps below the topmost rung. He was so close he could’ve reached out and touched the truck if he felt so inclined, which he didn’t. The damn thing felt poised to fall on him any second. It reminded him of the scene in Jurassic Park with the car stuck in a tree.

“You ready down there bro?” Hiro asked.

“I was born ready!” Adam stared straight ahead, doing his best to hide his fear and maintain a stone cold poker-face. He mostly succeeded except for a slight trembling in his right eye.

“Aw yeah! It’s kinetic time!” Hiro performed some sort of martial arts hand motion and dropped into a power ranger-esque battle stance. “Utah Raptor!” Hiro shouted and tapped a button on his wrist. In response his jumpsuit changed color from white to green, completing the illusion of a power ranger style transformation. Hiro held the pose for a little longer than was comfortable before he glanced down at Adam.

“Hey don’t leave me hanging.”

“Huh? Oh right.” Adam did a more self-conscious version of Hiro’s power ranger dance while trying not to fall off the ladder. “Dimetrodon!”

Once Adam had finished his power ranger hand motion Hiro swiped some more commands into his wrist computer. Adam’s hazard suit changed from burnt sand to orange while his hazard stripes turned electro-luminescent turquoise.

“So much for matching the rest of the department.” Adam sighed to himself.

“Hey what are you nerds doing up there?” Leroy shouted from below.

“Nothing!” Adam shouted back.

Hiro performed a new set of martial gestures as he monologued.

“With our powers combined!..”

This time he was interrupted by the truck driver.

“What are you two doing? This is serious.”

“So is this.” Hiro replied.

“You’re supposed to be professionals. What are you doing referencing old kid’s shows?”

“You’re an old kid’s show!” Hiro shot back.

“What does that even mean?” The driver raised a confused eyebrow.

“It means watch this!” Hiro announced as he did the Captain Morgan on top of the truck’s hood while pointing a purposeful finger at the sky.

“The time for words has passed! Now is the time for action!” Hiro declared.

“Hell yeah!” Adam threw a up a fist in solidarity.

“Do it now — do it for glory!” Hiro ordered.

“Wait what? Do what?” The driver braced his feet against the console; retreating further into the back of his seat.

Adam shut his eyes and started a low growl as he held his opened right hand in front of him while his left held on to the ladder with a white-knuckle death grip. The shadows cast on him by the semi truck above softened. He opened his glowing eyes and his low throaty growl became a shout.

“Hyahhhh!”

Up above Hiro watched amused as his own hair began to float in the low gravity as though it were underwater.

“His power-level’s over 9,000!” Hiro shouted a Dragon Ball Z meme.

“Now what does that even mean?” The terrified driver asked.

“It means —” Hiro moon-jumped off the hood to a spot on the opposite side of the hole in front of the truck. “— he’s Kakarooot!!!” Hiro screamed the name in the manner of Kakarot’s arch rival Vegeta before he gripped the underside of the semi with his vectors and pushed / lifted it out of the hole.

“Wow, that is way easier.” Hiro observed. “Adam!” He shouted down.

“Yeah!” Adam answered.

“I’m gonna hold the truck up. I need you to get rid of those drones. When the drones are gone the hole should close up on its own.”

“I can’t make vectors and lower the gravity at the same time.” Adam cautioned.

“That’s okay. Now that the truck’s out of the hole I can hold it here pretty easy.” Hiro reassured him.

“You sure?”

“Just hurry!”

“Alright.”

Adam released the low gravity field and manifested his vectors.

Hiro instantly noticed the difference in weight but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. Now that he had a better angle, with his vector-fingers under the truck’s lift points, he didn’t have to worry about crushing the cab or letting the truck tip over. All he had to do was hold it up.

Below him Adam was having a much harder time prying the drones loose. Buried halfway through the sky-road the halves facing Adam resembled upside down carbon fiber pyramids. Their smooth angled surfaces were not the easiest things for his oversized gravity-fingers to grip. The tighter he gripped the drone the more his vectors slid up their slanted surfaces towards the tip allowing the pyramid to slip out of his grasp.

“Come on!” Adam growled in frustration.

He leaned up into it and twisted. There was a loud snap followed by a metallic twang as the bottom half of the drone was sheared off. It slipped out of Adam’s giant, invisible hand and tumbled to the ground below.

“Lookout!” He warned.

Adam watched it fall in the slow motion provided by the sudden rush of adrenaline and was grateful no one had been standing under the ladder. At the same time a ripple of sparks shot through the hardlight where the bottom half had been and the top half of the drone was ejected up into the sky like a rocket.

“Whoa!” Hiro almost flinched.

“Sorry.” Adam apologized.

Having lost one of its three anchor points the triangle-shaped hole shrunk down to a single line segment, the width of one of the drone’s metal spheres, that stretched between the two remaining robots.

“Just get the other two so I can drop this thing.” Hiro goaded.

Realizing there was no elegant way to remove the drones in one piece Adam opted to smash them out. He hit the remaining two with overhead hammer strikes, bludgeoning off their lower halves and launching their top halves into the air. Hiro watched expectantly as the hole below the truck filled back up. He walked backwards, slowly lowering the truck’s front tires onto the road. Electric waves rippled out through the road from beneath the wheels. The semi groaned as its weight settled onto its suspension. The driver breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed into his seat.

Hiro took a step back to admire his handiwork. He made a show of dusting off his hands while he smiled smugly. His self-satisfaction was interrupted when one of the drones’ top halves came crashing back down. It exploded against the hardlight road close enough to pepper his left boot with ineffectual composite shrapnel. Hiro looked up and instinctively raised his vectors into a sky-facing shield even before his eyes acquired the other two drone halves that were falling towards him. The first one missed him entirely. The second smashed into his invisible vector shield, temporarily silhouetting a giant fist in a cloud of smoke, shrapnel and orange plasma.

“Lookout!” Adam warned a split second too late. Fortunately Hiro hadn’t needed the warning.

Hiro patted the side of the cab as he walked up to the driver-side window.

“Is the truck still good to drive?” he asked the driver.

The driver looked down and put the truck in gear. The wheels pulsed with a ring of soft blue light around their rims. This was accompanied by an electro-magnetic hum. The gravity-drive wheels tilted so the bottom portion of the wheel that touched the road angled inward underneath the vehicle while the topmost portion angled out from the side of the truck. The truck rose in sync with the tilt of its wheels until it hovered two feet above the sky-road.

“Looks like everything checks out.” The driver said reluctantly.

“And would you say you were satisfied with your rescue?” Hiro asked.

“Wait what?”

Hiro responded by handing the driver a silver dollar-sized, power symbol-shaped chrome and pearl-white coin. The driver eyed the Omni-coin wallet suspiciously while Hiro typed something into his wrist gauntlet.

“Just take that to any OmniStellar vehicle maintenance facility and they’ll get your truck checked out for you free of charge.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“While you’re there feel free to fill out the quick survey to let us know how we did.”

“Do I get a free donut?” The driver joked.

“I think all our vehicle maintenance facilities have free donuts.” Hiro answered.

“Oh, sweet.”

Hiro made a show of looking around to see if anyone else was listening before leaning into the window.

“If you fill out the survey could you leave out the whole Power Ranger, DBZ thing?”

“Uh, yeah — sure. You know, I should probably get this truck moving before the people behind me lynch us both.” The driver suggested.

“Good thinking. You have yourself an Omni-day.” Hiro suggested in a comically positive tone.

“A what?”

Hiro patted the side of the cab again and stepped back, giving the confused truck driver room to drive off. Hiro turned to walk back down through the breakdown lane. Now that the show was over the spectators frantically returned to their vehicles. At the end of the ramp he saw the firefighters doing their best to direct the traffic that had begun to move again.

Adam was coming down the ladder. Hiro waved to him and was almost run over by a black pickup truck.

“Well that was some nice...woah hey!” Shouted an annoyed Hiro who then used his vector boots to give the truck’s bumper a subtle warning-kick, much to the surprise of its driver.

“Did you see that guy?” Hiro asked Adam as he hopped down the ladder’s last rung.

“I seen him.” Adam replied.

“Seriously, some people’s children. Now where was I? Oh yeah, that was some nice teamwork.” Hiro complimented.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, good job you two.” Chief McGraw walked up. “Looks like you were right about The Union not wanting anyone to leave the planet. I’ve just received word they’ve also punched holes in all the exits that lead to the starport.”

“They’re trying to isolate us.” Hiro said somberly.

“Certainly looks that way.” Agreed the chief.

“ Although I guess The Union wasn’t counting on having two kinetics in the area.” Hiro said gleefully.

“I guess not. We’re going to be heading up to the Copper starport to see if we can’t clear some of those exits. Don’t suppose you’re headed that way? We could use the help.” The chief suggested.

This was news to Adam who tried not to let his fear of heights show.

“Truth is I was already heading that way. My bosses want me on board the Initiative ASAP. If I have to smash some Union hardware out of an exit to get there then that’s an added bonus.” Hiro shook the chief’s hand.

“Speaking of your bosses — does Omni have a plan for dealing with all these Union death bots?”

Hiro straightened his back, attempting his best impression of an OmniStellar PR rep.

“I can neither confirm nor deny…” Hiro started to say before the chief interrupted him.

“Right, need to know. I get it. Keep your corporate secrets.” McGraw said, half serious, before Hiro continued.

“But if I know my sister at all, then I’d be willing to bet my next paycheck she already has a plan in motion for wiping the sky clean of these pesky, Union murder-bots.”

Leroy’s eyes settled on Hiro’s name-tape that read NISHIMOTO before going wide with realization.

“Hold up! Your sister’s Aurora? — Aurora Nishimoto?”

Hiro’s eyes darted left then right, like a Felix the Cat clock.

“Maybe.”

“Should I know that name?” The chief asked.

“Vreck yeah! She’s the chick who figured out how to kill Hastur!”

“Technically it was just Hastur’s avatar.” Hiro corrected him.

“It’s only thanks to her that we were able to win The Crescent War. And get this—” Leroy pulled up an image on his phone. “She’s smokin’ hot! — Oh hey, we’ve got OmniNet again.”

Chief McGraw looked the image up and down.

“Whoa — you weren’t lyin’.” He whistled. “She is a knockout.”

Hiro rolled his eyes.

“Or so I’ve heard.”

“Think you could give her my email?” Leroy asked.

“Yeah no.” Hiro said flatly.

“Crap!”

“I can’t get you a date…”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Yes.”

Hiro blinked and broken halos of white light circled his irises like glowing snakes, chasing their tails. The displays on his augmented reality contact-lenses only covered the pupils and were almost invisible to the outside observer. The iris halos were a strictly cosmetic effect, meant as a courtesy to let others know your attention was partially elsewhere.

“…But at least these drones shouldn’t be bothering us for much longer. The damn things are at least 20 years obsolete and about as stealthy as a passenger shuttle. The only reason they were able to get close enough to inflict any real damage was because our defenses were looking outward. These drone’s launched from the planet’s surface.”

“You’re saying they built them here?” The chief asked in disbelief.

“Or smuggled them in cargo containers. They must’ve been planning this for a while. Makes you wonder what else they have up their sleeve.”

Meanwhile on the rooftop of a backup power station overlooking Highway 02.

The roof of the coolant silo rushed up to meet Tech Sergeant Kale Hill. He felt his feet make contact with the springy, sandpaper-like surface. He started running to gradually slow his momentum without breaking his legs. For a second he was afraid the inertia is going to send him tumbling over the edge but he quickly slowed enough to jog to a stop. For all their faults at least command had the presence of mind to choose a decent dropzone. The large, round and flat roof of the coolant silo made a perfect target and its spongy surface didn’t put too much shock on the knees during landing.

He was grateful the mission hadn’t called for landing on the planet’s rocky, cactus infested surface. Twisting your ankle on a large rock or getting a leg full of cactus stickers would not have been a promising start to the mission.

Fifty feet away the rest of the team had taken up defensive positions around the edge of the roof overlooking the highway. Jenkins was already lying prone on the ground, looking through his rail rifle’s scope at the traffic below.

Freeman and Martinez had already dropped to one knee with their silenced jump rifles aimed at their respective areas of responsibility guarding the team’s flanks. Hill locked his JR-300’s pistol-grip mounted thumbsticks that controlled his jump jets back into the safety position and joined the rest of his team at the roof’s edge.

“Guess I was worried for nothing. The marine’s a damn natural.” Hill complimented Shoeman who had managed to right himself and then accelerated towards the DZ before the other team members could reach him.

“It must have been the wind in my eyes because it looked an awful lot like the marine beat you to the dropzone.” Martinez teased Kilroy as he tapped his goggles.

Kilroy defended his title.

“Doesn’t count.” He objected as he began to shake up a can of spray paint.

“Because he fell out of the ship?”

“Because he got a head start. Doesn’t count.”

“It was an accident.”

“Hey I didn’t write the rules, I just play the game.”

Kilroy began to spray graffiti on the side of what was probably a supply shed. When he was finished, the shed was proudly adorned with the cartoon visage of a long-nosed man peeking over a wall. Next to this long-nosed man was inscribed the words:

KILROY WAS HERE

Dr. Grau tapped a bony button on his face mask and the gigeresque contraption detached itself from his face like two black widow spiders that had suddenly found the act of hugging awkward. The Thaalarian strode towards the rest of the team, stopping briefly to sigh and shake his head disapprovingly at Kilroy’s artwork. He crouched down to look over Jenkins’ shoulder as the trooper peered through his sniper rifle’s scope at the activity below.

“What do you see, eh — corporal?”

“It’s senor spaceman actually.” Jenkins corrected him.

“Well that doesn’t sound right.”

“Sir, we’re in the space force. Assigning cool names to stuff isn’t one of our strengths.”

Grau looked over at the marine who nodded in agreement.

“See? He knows what I’m talking about.” Jenkins said without looking up from his sniper scope.

Grau and Shoeman gave each other puzzled glances glances, as if to ask; ‘How did he just see that?’

“Well I’m going to call you corporal then if that’s alright.”

“Knock yourself out Doc.”

Grau flinched in annoyance.

“Easy there Jenkins.” Hill laughed. “Only I get to call him ‘Doc’.”

“Sorry Sarge. My mistake. — Knock yourself out, doctor.” Jenkins amended.

Grau rolled his eyes.

“So what do you see, corporal?” He asked with barely veiled condescension.

“Looks like the drones were on point. I think I found our Hiro.” Jenkins answered.

“Very good.”

“We barely made it in time.” Hill observed. “Quick! Disable his vehicle before he gets out of range.” Sergeant Hill instructed.

“I don’t think that will be necessary sergeant.” Said Grau.

“Yeah, he’s already out of the vehicle.” Jenkins added.

Kilroy leaned over Jenkins’ shoulder.

“Is his hot sister with him?”

“Nope.” Jenkins replied without looking up from his scope.

“It’s for the best Kilroy.” Hill attempted to comfort the crestfallen spaceman. “She doesn’t need to see this. — And Jenkins still has dibs.” He added.

“Are you two done?” Grau asked.

“For now, I think.” Hill replied.

“Excellent. Corporal, you may fire when ready.”

“Sure thing, doctor.”

“Aim for one the soft points in his armor. If you hit a plate directly the dart will not penetrate.”

Kilroy chuckled but was silenced by an icy glare from the doctor.

“I’ll see what I can do. No guarantees at this range with this wind though.”