H.E.R.O. - Horde (14 page)

Late in the afternoon, we neared the source of our readings.  The facility was huge, with walls twenty feet tall and covered with some type of wire on top.  We came at it from the southern side, turned right to walk around it and search for the entrance, and ended up walking nearly a full circle around the building as the entrance was on the west side.

We neared the large gate when a human in a tight fitting blue and white uniform flew down from the sky and landed directly between the two of us and the gate.

I looked at Qarath.  He pointed to his device; the human was gifted with Dark energy.  He had to be a city defender.

The human said, "What are you doing here, mutant?"

Using my power to communicate with my device mentally, I swept through the list of city defenders I'd copied from Diva's communication device a few days prior.  This city defender - a member of the H.E.R.O. organization was called Psycom.

I said, "Hello, Psycom.  I am Tiriffa, this is Qarath.  We are scientists hoping to perform some research here if the individuals are willing."

Qarath said, "Indeed.  Our hope is to gain information on how the Dark has affected the gifted here."

Qarath held up his scanner to highlight the point.  The city defender held up his hand and the device was yanked by an invisible force from the scientist's hand.  It flew through the air to Psycom's hand.

The blue and white clad defender said, "Sure, you're doing 'research' at the Jail.  I believe that."

His eyes glowed behind the reflective blue visor as he spoke.

The city defender continued, "What kind of mutant has mind blocking powers?  What's your real purpose here, mutant?"

He looked at Qarath's device as a pair of individuals in matching uniforms leaped down from the high wall and landed with heavy thumps on the concrete ground.  One of the humans was male and extremely wide - he was a titan.  The other was a female, shorter than the male and of normal width for a human female, but her skin was a reflective metallic silver color.

The first one - the one I assumed was a city defender - looked up from Qarath's device and asked, "What language is this?  For that matter, what the hell is this?"

The large male said, "Afternoon, Psycom.  What have you got?"

"We've got a mutant that has no mind to read, and it looks like they are from the Far East, I'm not familiar with these symbols."

This Psycom person must have telepathic powers if he attempted to read Qarath's mind.
  My fellow scientist's mind was shielded by his gift; it made it impossible to use mental powers on him.

I said, "We are not from this place you mention.  We are Gahranii scientists.  We are not human mutants."

It was frustrating - we'd already dealt with being aliens to this planet.  I used my power to use the communication technology I'd copied from Diva's device to contact the city defender.

The systems connected after a moment.

Diva's voice came from my device, "Hello?"

I said, "Hello Diva, this is Tiriffa...."

Before I had a chance to speak further, my system was yanked from my hand and flew over to Pyscom's hand.

He said, "What's this?"

I said, "That is my computer, for lack of a better name.  I just contacted your city defender named Diva on it."

Diva's voice said, "Hello?  What's what?"

Psycom spoke toward the device, "Who is this?"

"You called me, who is this?"

"It's Psycom from H.E.R.O., now who are you?"

"Why doesn't it say your name on my phone?  This is Diva."

"Hang up, Diva, I'm going to call you on my H.E.R.O. phone."

He pulled out his communication device that looked like the one Diva had given me for a short time.  The other two moved to either side of the city defender.  I hoped that Diva would reply to this one, obviously there was some confusion about who we were.

He held the device to his small, round ear and said, "Hi Diva, this is Psycom.  Do you know a pair of blue skinned mutants?"

"..."

"What do you mean, aliens?"

"..."

"That's what that fire was the other day?"

"..."

"You didn't tell them it was fine to come to the Metrocity Jail, did you?"

"..."

"They claim they are here to do some research on Dark and gifted."

"..."

"You're a fast flier, right?  Why don't you just fly here and verify that these are who you met?"

"..."

“Oh, just do it and quit bitching.”

He put his communicator back in his sleeve and glanced at the metal female to his left.

"I swear she's retarded."

The female nodded.

"Wait a second; I thought you were arrested after you attacked me in the hospital?"

"I was.  Now I'm a guard at the Jail."

"Seriously?"

The male to his right said, "She is, it happened this morning."

"Are you guys that hard up for guards?"

"You haven't seen how she acts."

"Apart from destroying her house, some of the hospital, kicking her husband's ass and attacking me?"

The metal female said, "Technically, you attacked me.  I was just going into the hospital to see how my husband was doing."

"You threw some construction vehicles into a building, too.  That's why I went after you in the hospital."

The titan said, "Chrome, you did that?"

"Yeah.  Remind me not to drink if I ever get the urge.  I was really angry, and being drunk, well, it wasn't a good combo.  Shrinker had been egging me on about how the law was against everyone that looked different.  Speaking of, let's not judge these blue people too harshly right off the bat.  That's part of what happened to me at first."

She looked at me, "Did you just change?"

I replied, "Change into what?"

She waved her hand up and down toward me.  "Into that - what you are now."

"I've been this way for decades in your time.  Qarath and I are fairly normal Gahranii."

"Everyone is blue?"

"For the most part.  We have mutants as well; they sometimes have different colors of hair or skin."

The titan's eyes were drawn to something above and behind me.  I turned to see what attracted his attention.  Something flying in the sky approached our position at high speed.  It was a female city defender, although the clothing was different than I'd seen to this point.

Her speed was so great as she approached that I shifted a few steps toward Qarath to make sure I wasn't in her direct path.  She shifted as she flew so that the last mile or so she flew while standing straight up.  It didn't appear that she had footwear on.

Her speed decreased slightly - she approached so quickly that when she hit the ground the cement cracked and she bounced.  She skipped a few times and slid to a stop thirty feet away, leaving some damage to several spots on the ground.

She stood up straight, turned and walked toward us.  It was the city defender named Diva.  Her clothing was completely different from our prior meeting - I recalled her torso covering had been nearly destroyed by the laser cannons on the K'Vor's shuttle.

This time she wore leggings that came down just below the knees and were loose at that point, but tight at the upper thighs and the waist.  The top looked like an overly loose half shirt with sides that went up over the shoulders, but was loose enough to hang down on one.  It was apparent that she had been off-duty.

She wasn't happy - in fact, if human reactions were similar to Gahranii I'd have said that she was quite irate.  She walked over to our group with one fist clenched.

She glanced at us and the metal female, but for the most part she stared at Psycom.

"What do you want?  You couldn't have just taken a picture and texted it to me that I had to come here?"

The other city defender said, "Whoa, calm down, miss grumpy pants."

"I'll calm down when I want to, you jerk.  What the hell is your problem here?  You demanding that Chrome hold down Tiriffa so you can take provocative pictures of her too?"

"Oh, Jesus, calm down, noobie."

She walked right up to him, looked at Qarath's device and held out her hand.

"Give it to me.  Now."

"Until we can determine...."

She grabbed forward surprisingly fast for even a small titan, catching hold of the thick material of his shirt.  He apparently didn't expect it, for he didn't react until she pulled him up against her and her face was inches from his own.  Her eyes stared into his blue glasses.

"I didn't ask.  Damn, I hate you."

She pulled the machine from his hand, turned toward Qarath and me and shoved the other city defender away from her.  He would have flown back a dozen or two feet had he not used his telekinesis to stop his movement.

She walked over to me, opened her arms as though to hug me, shifted to hold out her hand and stopped mid-way with a confused look on her face.  Then she appeared to decide and stepped forward to hug me lightly.  I tensed up, titans of any size were worrisome for their massive strength, but she had a gentle touch, if unstoppable to me.

When she stepped back a foot, she held out Qarath's device to me.  I took it and smiled.  She made an odd expression when she saw my sharp teeth.

"Sorry about that.  Oh, and nice to see you again, Tiriffa."

She looked back at the others and continued, "Guys, this is Tiriffa, she's an alien that came here in the burning plane on Monday.  This is her buddy, Qarath.  I said that right - right?"

He nodded, "Yes, you did."

"Hey!  You speak English now?"

"Yes, I took the time yesterday."

She shook her head a moment before looking back to the others.  "Anyway, most of H.E.R.O. worked with them on Monday, they've even been down to see the military and General ... hmm, General Angelich.  They look funny, but they aren't even mutants."

The male titan said, "So ... you two are aliens?  Truly?"

I stepped to Diva's side, "Yes, although to us you are aliens.  We are from the planet Gahran.  It is quite some distance from this system.  We came to study the meteor that has infused some of your people with the Dark gifts.  A larger piece struck our system hundreds of years ago, causing us to change into what you see before you.  We looked different before that time."

"So why are you at the Jail?"

"Our ship is damaged, and thus we cannot properly study the meteor broken up around the planet.  We decided to try to find gifted individuals and scan them should they not mind.  You four would be a wonderful beginning...."

Psycom said, "You said the military, Monday night?  So that's what that message from Captain McCain was about."

Diva said, "Crap, I threw down my phone when I left the house.  Dick, call Captain McCain and just ask him if they can go do their thingie in the Jail."

Garrick said, "Don't bother.  The warden needs to authorize something like that, not H.E.R.O.  Chrome, would you stay here with them, I'm going to see what the Warden wants to do, this is pretty unusual."

The titan walked to the entrance, it opened as he approached and entered.  It closed again behind him.

I asked, "Diva, would you allow me to scan you?"

"How long does it take, and will it hurt?"

"It will take perhaps a minute.  It will not hurt; at most you may feel slightly warm from it."

"Sure, I don't care."

I took my detailed scanner out, quickly configured it and performed the scan on her.

The other city defender stepped off a short distance and used his communicator to contact someone while I worked with Diva.  Once complete with her I looked at the metal-clad woman.

She looked at Diva, "What if there are other reasons for doing the scans?"

Diva replied, "I've been on their plane, these guys were shot down by other alien pirates, they got beat up by some H.E.R.O. people who thought they were mutants.  I don't think they are bad."

The metal female sighed, "It seems like we all pick on people who are different to some degree, don't we?  Yeah, you can scan me."

I began scanning her when Diva practically jumped, "Hey!  I just remembered - Black Tiger wanted to find you people for something.  I don't remember what it was, but there's something.  Should I, damn, don't have my phone."

As I scanned, I pulled out my other tablet computer and ran through the systems mentally to contact Black Tiger from the contact list I'd obtained from Diva's communicator.

I handed my device to her as I heard a male voice say, "Black Tiger here."

Diva held it up to her face and said, "Hello?  Black Tiger, can you hear me?"

"Sure ... Diva, is that you?"

"Yup.  Hey, you needed to talk to Tiriffa and her people?  I'm outside the Jail with two of them right now."

"Really?  Can you keep them there, I'll drive down."

"Sure.  We'll see you soon."

"Cool.  Be right there."

She handed the device back to me as I finished the scan on the metal female.

I said, "Thank you, metal human."

She replied, "Chrome - people call me Chrome."

"As Diva mentioned, I am Tiriffa."

My fellow scientist said, "And I am Qarath Grishii.  Do most of your people have but one name?"

Diva stared at him for a moment.  "I have three names on my real name.  But my super hero name is just Diva."

Chrome nodded, "Same here - I think most people have three names, some have four, and very few have only two or one for their real name."

Psycom stuffed his communication device back into his glove and said, "If these people aren't a proper event then I'll be leaving."

A glow formed around him and he floated into the air.

I frowned and said, "I didn't have time to ask to scan him."

Diva looked at me, "I doubt he'd do it, he's a jerk."

Chrome nodded.  "Yeah."

Diva looked at her for a moment, "You're Jail security now?"

"Yes, as of this morning."

"Nice.  Helping out in the fight against Shrinker get you the job?"

"I think it helped."

"Congrats.  You should be good it with how strong and hard you are."

"Thanks, and I hope so."

Diva appeared to be uncomfortable looking at Chrome's face.  Her metallic skin made expressions very difficult to make out.