Alyson almost didn't recognise Sandy in all of his SWAT gear. She tugged on her vest and suddenly felt terribly underdressed. As she stepped into the helicopter, she turned back to him and brushed her hair from her face. Then she took a deep breath.
"I'm not worried. There're a lot of guys here, and...uh... I'm not worried..." She quickly took a seat and buckled herself in. Maybe Sandy wouldn't notice that her cheeks were bright red.
I'm not worried. I'm really not. Not worried, not worried, not worried... her thought drifed back to Sandy.
Should she start calling him Doppler now? Officer Christiansen? Or simply Sandy...?
Part of her wanted to leap right out of the helicopter and run home, or to her father's lab. The hum of the vespula vulgaris and the bombus terrestris always had a way of comforting her. But what would Sandy think? He'd think she was a wimp, or a coward, or some kind of...
"Just as I thought," he'd say. "Run back home to your daddy and your bees... Some heroine you turned out to be..." How did Imaginary Sandy know that she worked with wasps, anyway?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm She closed her eyes and focused on the sound of the rotor blades. The sound was similar to vespa mandarinia. The Asian Giant Hornet. The world's largest hornet, native to East Asia where it's colloquially known as the "Yak-killer hornet." Also known for having an incredibly painful sting due to the high concentration of acetylcholine, 5%, the highest concentration known in the bee and wasp world. The sting of the vespa mandarinia causes more deaths in Japan per year than all other venomous and non-venomous wild animal attacks combined...
Vespa Mandarinia. "That's what we are," she said to herself. "We're going to wreck this Unreg!" She pumped her fist.
edited 12th Sep '11 9:06:58 PM by KarlKadaver
Give the world the best you have and you will get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway."Wreck the unreg?" Really? It's not the fact that we're dealing with a unregistered.... Sandy kept his mouth shut on that thought; the girl's bravado was something he had seen often enough to recognize for what it was. She probably needed that facade for her own sake, not just for others'. He knew the feeling well enough himself. "That's the spirit, Yellow Jacket," he said, raising his fist and touching it to hers. "Alyson."
He picked an intercom cable and plugged it into the jack on his helmet; watched as more of the supers filed out of the precinct building. The lack of a tail rotor on the helicopter made it quieter than other types, but it was still noisy enough to preclude normal conversation. He took another headset plugged into the intercom system and gave it to Alyson.
"Be honest," he said, very quietly, looking into her eyes. "How do you feel about this?"
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Alyson smiled when Sandy bumped his fist against hers. At least someone has faith in me.
After putting her headset on, she tried to return his gaze, but found that she couldn't. She looked down and spoke softly into the intercom. "I feel like I wanna puke..." She moved her hand over to grab his but thought better of it, instead placing both her hands on her knees. "Before my dad registered me, I was just an ordinary college student. I'm majoring in Biology. Entomological Studies." She pushed her glasses up. "I've always been the 'Bug Girl.' People always thought I was weird for handling caterpillars and watching ants with a magnifying glass instead to trying to burn them..."
"I'm not afraid of wasps and bees." She shrugged, somewhat forgetting that Sandy was not a therapist, but an officer. A Superhero. "Never have been. I guess it's that I spent so much time around them." She looked into Sandy's eyes for the first time this (albeit one-sided at this point) conversation. "Know what I'm afraid of? Spiders. Especially those little hairy ones that jump. Phidippus audax. Brr!" She shivered; just thinking about those creepy-crawlies made her itchy. She suddenly blushed. The last person she had told about her fear of spiders was...Ugh...Rick...
She once again cast her glance downward. "But this...being on a mission...this is a close second."
Give the world the best you have and you will get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway."So, six legs good, eight legs bad?" Sandy could not resist making the joke. He paused briefly, uncertain. He was used to listening, not used to talking about himself. "For what it's worth—the 'ordinary college student' thing could apply to me, too. Actually I'm still in college. Physics major. Lockheed's paying." Babbling, Sandy boy. Focus—and no, not on the cute glasses. He took a breath, unsure if he had the courage to bump his shoulder against hers, or to hold her hand reassuringly—how might she react? What would she say?
"The point is...most sane people would be scared, too." Pause. "I know I am. But...well, it has to be done. Don't let it control you—the fear, I mean." Another pause. "After all, you did say it's better than the spiders, didn't you?"
edited 13th Sep '11 4:16:19 PM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three."Eight legs, definintely bad," Alyson chuckled.
"Wait, you're still in college?" Lockheed's paying? He's a cop, a college student... Man, what can't this guy do? I'm just the 'Bug Girl'...
She smiled slightly. "It's good to know that I'm sane. And, I won't. Let the fear control me, I mean."
She noticed that he seemed to be fidgeting. Maybe he's just trying to get more comfortable. She sighed inwardly. Is he...interested...? I seem to be the only person that he's talked to for any long length of time. Maybe he thinks I need more help than the others... But on the other hand...
I mean, don't get me wrong. I like the attention. Really.
"This is way better than spiders."
Give the world the best you have and you will get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.Alyson suddenly snapped out of whatever high-school-drama trance she was in at the moment. She suddenly remembered that she had been scared out of her wits not too long ago...
She readjusted her glasses. "Well, Sa- *ahem* Doppler...said that the Super was ninja-themed, right?"
Give the world the best you have and you will get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.Sandy tried to fight down the irritated growl in this throat and the blush finding its way up his cheek. As a result his gesture for Dax to strap himself into the helicopter might have been more brusque than it strictly needed to be. It wouldn't a crowded ride; there were two rows of seats facing each other.
"Ninja-themed, if the police report is right," he said. "The cops have tangled with him before. There are rumors that he can pull a disappearing trick. Other than that, well, it won't be much fun knocking at his door. So...pit traps, poison darts, toxic gas, the whole Tomb of Horrors deal. Oh, and crazy cultists. You remember the reports of masked ninjas holding up convenience stores with katanas...?"
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Emote belted in and shivered. "Does not sound pleasant. I'd be perfectly happy to provide support from behind a few well-placed cams." He pleaded over the headset he had grabbed inside the station.
edited 17th Sep '11 10:58:16 PM by MrGibberringGenius
Your god is a cow. Deal with it. I accept that you are vegan. But there is NO POSSIBILITY that you could have been born a chicken.Sandy scratched his head with a gloved hand. "Noted. I think the officers have optiwand cameras...you can do more for morale boosting, right?"
Both helis lifted idled on the pad briefly as a SWAT squad, outfitted with heavy body armor and portable shields, piled into the second helicopter. Then they lifted into the early-evening air, over the press of traffic, radios chattering. The helicopters did not fly in formation, which would have been a telltale sign that they were not actually traffic birds, and took a dog-leg route to the target to fool any observers.
The co-pilot, Sandy noticed, had a long-barreled marksman's rifle attached by bungee cord to the airframe, not exactly concealed, but not completely visible to the outside. The use of aerial snipers was a rare practice; evidently the situation was serious enough to warrant it. That recalled him to the mission. As usual his thoughts were a nervous, random mess that he had to marshal into place. Possible applications of own power. Likely enemy strength and disposition. Early ambush—what then? Other supers—what role might they play? Dax Dresden, he thought, would fit in fine with the assault party; Harlitz, playing support on the second line with his remote telepathy and probably mental performance boosts. And Alyson...
Sandy stared out to the city passing beneath them. Deep down he knew Alyson was untrained and probably frightened; without going through the grinder of the SWAT assault course or the lessons of the street she didn't have the mental conditioning or the honed reflexes needed to overcome the natural reaction to panic and bolt, to force the body to go forward into the teeth of bullets and blades, to watch the back of the man beside you and listen to that little voice of instinct warning you about danger long before the conscious mind noticed. If anywhere she belonged with the communications and support vans, sitting out the mission and learning what she could from afar.
And yet...
Sandy glanced at her seated form, sitting next to him, noticed her long brown hair drift in an eddy of air, the play of light off her glasses, the faint blush on her cheeks—or did he imagine it?—when they made momentary eye contact. In that moment he knew he could not tell her to hide in the back line on her first proper excursion. More than anything else, she needed the confidence in herself and the trust of those around her. In his mind Sandy saw Alyson's face, full of betrayal and pain and the knowledge that he had hurt her by breaking her self-confidence.
He couldn't do that to her.
And be honest, a small treacherous voice whispered, you want to play the knight in shining armor for her. Dumb, but true. And—yes—just admit it, that is a crush you have on her. Not like you're unfamiliar with it. For all of your analysis on everything else you're rather dense about your own emotions—
Emotions.
Bloody hell. Emote. How much did he...?
Think bland thoughts. Calm emotions down. Back to the mission and bloody focus. Fortunately his sudden flurry of movement could probably be attributed to nervousness. Sandy once again ran through the probable assault scenario while trying to ignore the nervous, quiet panic in his hind brain, focusing on roles and contingencies and hoping to God that the telepath didn't pick up on his thoughts.
Speaking of telepaths...where did Wolf go?
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.When Mal came to his mind was about as clear as the vision of shortsighted man wearing beer goggles in the middle of a London fog. However the fog quickly parted when the Toymaker's leering face entered his mind. The fact that he was currently tongueless also reasserted itself.
The nanomachines!
Mal immediately reached for the phone and dialed the police.
"Police Department here, what is the emergency?"
It took Mal exactly 10 seconds to realize he couldn't speak.
A few hours later Mal had gotten his information to the police. Admittedly, texting wasn't very professional but it did get the point across. He didn't like the fact that one of the police and the health-and-safety-insurance people came to get a "formal statement" from him, especially when they wanted the details of the "accident" for their files. He could hear them laughing even if they didn't actually laugh.
Pulling on a new shirt Mal was rather glad that he hadn't done anything stupid like crying. It'd be embarassing. Besides, he'd done his job now - gotten the information required. And hopefully he'd never see Bryce or the Toymaker again.
He wished he could say the same for this hospital though - he'd be back tomorrow for a check up and again next week for a bionic tongue. The thought made him shudder. He hated hospitals - the emotions and thoughts were more morbid than cemetaries at times.
You sent the Jackal to his death - you think this is enough? A terrible little voice made itself known.
Before the thought could be pursued further, or rather pursue him further, his cellphone rang. The caller ID was cop he knew thankfully. Flipping open the phone he waited for the voice.
"Wolf, you there?" Gruff voice, a trend among cops he'd noticed.
Yes I am.
"... why didn't you just say so instead of-"
Very long and very tedious story - what did you call for? I'm in no mood to poke around.
"Polite as usual. There's some major trouble which needs registered assistance. Doppler and a few others are on the scene. You in?"
... Of course. I'm at Jefferson Hospital.
"What are you doing there?"
Long story, just send the chopper.
After that the officer hung up. Truth be told, Mal actually wanted to curl up in bed and sleep for a week. However, he didn't need that voice coming back.
20 minutes later Mal, Incubus, was in a chopper heading to meet with Doppler and company.
edited 20th Sep '11 1:48:20 AM by StolenByFaeries
"You've got your transmission and your live wire, but your circuit's dead." - MediaEmote sneered. "Not just morale boosting. I can disable the enemy with intense emotions and hallucinations, even send them into sensory overload. Not fatal, but it wouldn't be pleasant. Do these things have private channels?"
edited 20th Sep '11 7:05:05 AM by MrGibberringGenius
Your god is a cow. Deal with it. I accept that you are vegan. But there is NO POSSIBILITY that you could have been born a chicken.Alyson’s eyes were closed during a good part of the helicopter “ride.” One would think that she was sleeping, but she was actually deep in thought. Normally when she was nervous, she’d think about the hum of Bombus terrestris. It’s not the wings that cause the buzzing sound. It’s actually the flight muscles. And, yes, they are more than aeordynamically capable of flight. That’s a stupid myth and people are stupid for believeing it. In fact, their wings are a lot like helicopter blades…
But she wasn’t thinking about Bombus terrestris. Her mind was instead drawn back into her first memories of encountering the Dolichovespula maculata. The Bald-faced Hornet.
“This is the Dolichovespula maculata. Laypeople call it the ‘Bald-faced hornet,’ due to its white markings. It belongs to the same genus as Vespula vulgaris. Do you remember what laypeople call Vespula vulgaris?
“Yellow Jacket?”
“That’s right. The Yellow Jacket.” He gently pushes her a little closer to the nest. Hornets are beginning to investigate the two intruders.
“Daddy, I’m scared…” Alyson has to raise her meek voice slightly to be heard over the buzzing.
Her father gets down on one knee to get closer to her eye level. “There’s no reason to be afraid. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”
“Nuh uh. I’m really scared...”
Her father chuckles. “Do you see that hole there?” He points to the bottom of the nest. Alyson can see a definite hole where the hornets are entering and exiting. She nods a reply.
“Well, inside that hole there is a Queen maculata. All of these maculata that you see are trying to protect her. Without her, they’ll die.”
“But we’re not going to hurt the Queen.”
“I know that, sweetie, but they don’t. That’s what’s important. They don’t know that we’re nice and not mean. So you can’t give them any reason to not trust you. Such as-”
That was when a hornet dive-bombed her face. She instictively swatted at it (“it” was likely a “she,” she later learned), causing the hornet to release a distress pheromone and subsequently causing the entire hive to attack. Her father picked her up and ran with her back to the safety of the jeep. She was stung 14 times, her father was stung 23 times.
She later learned that a wasp won’t sting right away. Dive-bombing is the wasps’ version of a “warning shot.” It means, “Go away, please, or we’ll be forced to defend ourselves.”
She opened her eyes from her reverie. I can’t panic. Only bad things happen when you panic. It was then that she caught Sandy’s glance. She fidgeted, likely blushing as she did so.
He’s really cute. Alyson had never given much thought to the whole “Princess meets her Prince Charming” scenario. But now she was. Really. He found me when I was at my lowest. He’s a cop. I was a rogue super. He could’ve arrested me. He could’ve attacked me. ‘Taken me down.’ But he didn’t… He was…nice. And, honestly, it’s been a while since a guy looked at me the way he does. What did I ever see in Rick anyway?
Give the world the best you have and you will get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.Well, shit. He noticed. Nothing for it. "To some extent. You can switch to another channel, but it's not private. And this helo isn't that noisy, anyway." He paused to project the mental equivalent of a unamused, level glare, just in case Emote was listening, before sinking back into his seat. To his relief a radio message relaying that the second bird in their formation had picked up Wolf from the hospital in somewhat able condition gave him something else to focus on.
Wolf, huh. Sandy had taken to calling him by his surname ever since he noticed the hunter's calm that the man possessed—that, and his eyes, which could be downright predatory at times. They'd worked alongside each other enough times for Incubus to be one of those he respected and trusted implicitly in a combat situation, though he doubted that anyone ever got close enough to qualify as his friend. There was something disconcerting about working next to a telepath who could pluck your thoughts and secrets from the air, and Sandy was not at all sure on the effectiveness of his mental poker face. Don't think of a pink elephant, indeed...
There was going to be a known empath and a known telepath in the vicinity. And Alyson was next to him, fidgeting and blushing—nervousness, from the mission, or from something else? Wonderful. Absolutely bloody wonderful. In case you telepaths are listening, boys, he thought as the helicopters descended on a police station, save the knowing smirks until later.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Dax had no idea what a Ninja was but it sounded weak probably a 21st century thing.
Back home Dax was so used to fighting green frog men and the electron gangs of the lower city that he thought a 'ninja' couldn't be much worse.This is gonna be cake. Cake was also a 21st century thing he didn't know about but apparently it had something to do with easy tasks if his great grandparents' saying was any indication.
edited 21st Sep '11 12:39:44 PM by zam
Incubus wasted no time in getting off the heli once it landed - he wanted to get right on the job. He was also sort of looking forward to working with Doppler again - he was one of the few people who didn't seem to actively object to the idea of working with him. Also very professional, kept his mind on the job most of the time but was still interesting enough to provide amusement.
Incubus even respected Doppler enough not to try and find his civilian name... even if he really really wanted to.
On the other side of the coin, Mal wasn't all that pleased to learn that he'd be working with an empath... mainly because the empath was younger than him. And yes it was petty.
Tapping on the revolvers which had been given to him, the telepath decided to focus on the plus sides of the job... and to work harder in his possession sessions.
There was not enough room for both helicopters to land on the pad, and Incubus' flight had gone first, so when their helo touched down Wolf was already there and waiting. Sandy was more than mildly irritated at Emote. Couldn't he go five minutes without someone poking into his brain and kibbitzing...?
Sandy leapt off the helicopter, sore from sitting in his heavy body armor and not in a completely pleasant mood. He managed a passably-civil good evening for Wolf, double-checked that everyone was off the helicopter. The courtyard was rather crowded—communications vans, armored lorries, marked and unmarked patrol cars, policemen in plainclothes and uniforms and black SWAT armor. Marco was waiting by the helipad perimeter. He gave them the bad news.
"The raid's postponed," he growled around the pipe in his mouth. "Some REMF got the willies about going in daytime thirty minutes before we were supposed to have set off." REMF was an acronym whose first three words were rear, echelon, and mother. "The new go-time is 1AM. Until then, the station's yours. We have food and bunks if you need them; don't stray too far. I'd much prefer the bastard's countersurveillance didn't pick you up." He paused to puff on his pipe before grudgingly admitting the good news. "The delay lets us get in federal assets for the mission, though. Fixed-wing air support, more manpower, the lot. He is not getting away this time."
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Mal didn't have to be a telepath to see that Doppler was unamused and but he wasn't entirely sure that it just the raid that had him off. One thing that he did know was that probing an angry Doppler was a surefire way to have your head ripped off. That and waking him up.
Pulling out a small notepad from his pocket, he scribbled a quick note and held it up.
"Guess who can't talk."
Mal was never above being a bit of a smartass.
"You've got your transmission and your live wire, but your circuit's dead." - MediaEmote paced back and forth. He was nervous, but that most heinous of conditions still set in upon him. "AAAARRRRRGGGHHH SO BORED" He started toggling his powers on & off, trying to figure out if he could cheer up Doppler without being killed. Then he saw Mal. Telepath.
Your god is a cow. Deal with it. I accept that you are vegan. But there is NO POSSIBILITY that you could have been born a chicken.Dopplers didn't appear to have noticed his note - no matter, he would annoy him later. However his attention was drawn by the slight blur in his mental scope. It wasn't static like nulls, more like looking through a foggy window at first.
Turning his eyes towards the blur he saw a young man. Emote, I presume.
"You've got your transmission and your live wire, but your circuit's dead." - Media""Hello."" Emote responded calmly. ""Are you Mal, then?""
I use double quotations to denote telepathy because I can never make the italics work
edited 22nd Sep '11 7:03:21 PM by MrGibberringGenius
Your god is a cow. Deal with it. I accept that you are vegan. But there is NO POSSIBILITY that you could have been born a chicken.Oh good, you've heard of me. All nice things I hope. Mal allowed himself an ironic smile, I'd usually be talking but certain... events have temporarily deprived me of that.
"You've got your transmission and your live wire, but your circuit's dead." - Media

In the locker room Sandy was trying to focus, mainly, on the mission. Not that there weren't enough distractions, of course; his thoughts flickered to the image of Alyson, laughing, smiling...potentially being shot at. He changed out of his street clothes, quickly and quietly, as he had done in several drills past. Unmarked black shirt and trousers, kevlar vest, helmet, balaclava, ceramic strike plates, anti-stab chainmail, tactical gloves, utility belt, web gear: the list went on. He came out of the locker room looking very much like the SWAT officer he wasn't and hoping desperately that he would remember the lessons that the veteran sergeants had bellowed during training. Suddenly those interminable weekends of obstacle courses and assaults into buildings crackling with bellowing instructors and thundering blank gunfire didn't seem quite long enough. There was, after all, a big difference between apprehending a purse-snatcher or even skulking around a hostage-laden bank and attacking into the teeth of prepared defenses.
He paused to give the assembled supers a smile that he hoped didn't betray his nervousness and gave a final briefing based purely on what he knew. When he had finished talking the growl of rotors approached, two egg-shaped little helicopters with an odd tubular tail and no tail rotor. The design was meant to minimize noise; both were painted in the colors of traffic enforcement. As he walked to the entrance to the helipad his hand brushed against Alyson's.
"It's your first mission, right? It can be dangerous," he said softly.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.