Henry J. Olin was standing right in front of her, and no matter how hard she tried, Elise felt small. Like she was a kid again, staring up at her father. Still, she showed no signs of feeling this way. She kept herself tall, and when he smiled with a sharp and toothy mouth, Eli didn’t even look at the large incisors. He could probably rip someone’s arm off with those. She felt his laugh deep inside of her chest, as if it shook her bones. It took up the entire room. In her peripherals she saw a few of their colleagues raise their heads and do a double take at the sight. It must have been amusing to see Elise look so small, even though her personality was bigger than all of their own combined.
She noticed him glance at the desks, but she could tell right away that he wasn’t the office type. That was good. It was a relief that her new partner wasn’t going to just sit around like some of her past babysitters had done. Henry turned and opened the door to the office, and Eli only gave the files sitting on her computer a second of thought before she metaphorically threw them out of the window.
"We can get to know each other while saving the world, yeah? Go suit up. There's people dying out there."Eli grinned. His words brought out every ounce of energy she’d wasted within these walls when her old partners decided to sit around and research instead of getting their hands dirty. Of every time she’d been told to stand down when she could have acted and saved lives.
Finally, someone who gets it!”Yes, sir, she said with a nod, and didn’t waste a moment more as she proceeded past the giant man.
”I’ll meet you out front in ten minutes.”It really only took her five minutes to change. The excitement of her first patrol with Agent Olin took over her actions as she quickly suited up in the staff locker room. She even allowed herself a moment to release the excitement in a muffled squeal before she took a deep breath and returned to her usual reserved mannerisms. She normally didn’t like feeling like a happy little girl, but the moments came and went and she allowed her inner child to return behind closed doors. But now wasn’t the time to act in such a way. She wanted to impress her new partner, and she needed to take this seriously. This was the moment she’d been waiting for at FAMA. If she could prove herself to Henry J. Olin, she could prove herself to the entire organization. It wasn’t so much about pride and rewards. It was more about showing that if she was given enough support, she could make a meaningful impact on the lives of deltahumans and humans alike. That was the goal here, really.
She emerged into the light of day with a determined look on her face. While most field agents preferred a heavier approach to their protection, Eli chose to wear lighter gear so that she’d have more mobility and speed in an altercation. She dressed in the usual light green cargo pants, black t-shirt, and light combat boots. On her right thigh she wore a black holster for her gun, and she wore a utility belt with a flashlight, a fixed blade combat knife, and taser gun around her waist. She also sported a midweight bulletproof vest, tied her hair up in a ponytail, and placed a plain black cap over it. The only indication that she was FAMA was the badge displayed on the left breast of her vest. Someone could easily mistake her for a policewoman, if they didn’t look close enough. While she usually preferred her undercover look, today she voted for the formal garb so that she would fit in next to her giant FAMA partner. To be honest, it was going to be hard to blend in with the crowd next to him anyways.
Henry smiled down at her as she approached- he was more heavily armed, albeit that came as a necessity for his stature. He wore a thick, class IV plated ballistic armor vest over his torso, shoulder, and thighs, with thinner class three armor plating over his legs, arms, and tail- all connected to one another by several layers of kevlar. All things considered, no scales were visible beyond the tips of his fingers, toes, tail, and head- which was mostly exposed from upper neck upwards as he had chosen to forego any more unnecessary protection. All things considered he was over-prepared, but a part of him always churned at the thought of stepping out of the safezone and into the city. Never enough to stop him, but enough to bring him back to Verthaven for just a fleeting moment. Enough to remind him of what was lost.
So he had stuck with his preparations- as a creature more suited to heavy assault, he carried a firearm that was representative of such. It was an odd weapon- specially designed for one his size. It appeared to be a scale up P90, too large for easy usage by a standard man but large enough to be comfortably used by one such as himself. Compact- or at least as compact as a gun could be for one his size, lightweight with a mostly polymer and plastic design, ambidextrous in case of emergency usage for someone else, and most importantly it fired the standard 5.56mm ammunition that was standard for most common assault rifles rather than the P90’s specially made 5.7mm. His vest contained most of the standard equipment- a heavy duty flashlight, handcuffs, three spare magazines… but no knives, batons, tasers, or mace that would normally be found in an officer’s possession.
Mostly because, well, he didn’t
need them.
“You’re fast.” Henry said simply, recognizing the woman’s impressive ability to suit up. It had taken him almost a decade to master that art- and that was with ample practice.
“Here, catch.” he continued, not missing a beat as he tossed her a small object- for her that was. It seemed impossibly small in his gigantic hands.
Eli picked up on the toss the moment he began to raise his arm, and effortlessly caught what could only be described as his pitch. Despite its size, with Henry’s bulk behind it, it traveled closer to the speed of a softball player’s underhand than it did an easy toss between friends. He was testing her reflexes. Eli smirked at the challenge. He had tossed her car keys.
”Where to, boss?””Dunno.” Henry said easily.
”I was thinking we would go through downtown.”It was a simple phrase, but the area they were in was a low activity safe zone where order had, for the most part, been established. The way of life that had been around before the earthquake has long since disappeared, but there was safety and security in the area that had forced looting and gang activity to low or nonexistent levels. If the city had any sort of faction system, this was one of the areas where government organization was strongest.
Henry was suggesting they travel to a yellow zone, bordering red. Granted, it suited his narrative of going to help people, but it was dangerous all the same. People died there. Men, women, children, officers, FAMA agents… things happened. There was a constant, ever looming sense of danger (and in Henry’s case, dread) that loomed over those areas. Perhaps this was some other test- he had scales like kevlar so he wanted to see if she had nerves of steel. Perhaps he wanted to see that resolve. Perhaps there was no sense of danger to him- she could believe it, bullets were more like paintballs than anything else to him. He led her over to a convoy truck, large and bulky as it was. Grit and rubber and steel warped in ways far tougher than any civilian vehicle. It was a deep green, not quite urban camouflage but far from an attention grabbing color- although the size alone might turn some heads. Normally these vehicles were used to transport a task force- ten to a dozen men at a time or more.
”Have a truck driving license?” He questioned, looking down at his partner with an easy grin.
”You know, I’ve been meaning to get one of those. It’s just that every time I signed up for the classes, they were full.” She swung open the driver’s side door, and climbed up into the rig.
”It’s never stopped me before.” She gave Henry a cheeky grin.
”I doubt it’s necessary now.”With that said, she shut the door and easily got the engine rumbling before rolling the window down.
”Hop on in, agent! Next stop: downtown LA.” With that said she faced forwards, and began to adjust the mirrors in the rig. The last person to drive it must have been at least half Henry’s size, and it gave her a moment to think about Henry’s destination.
While Eli was happy that one of her partners finally wanted to patrol downtown, Eli couldn’t help but feel a little anxious.
First day on the job, and he’s taking me to the second most dangerous section of LA. He doesn’t have a death wish, does he? She pressed her lips together. No. He just wanted to get to an area where the two of them would make a difference.
We certainly aren’t wasting time to get to the nitty, gritty side of this job.Eventually, Elise felt the weight of the truck shift towards the back as Henry climbed in. She chuckled, and hoped that the rig could still do 60+ mph with such a large load inside, or that Henry was a fast runner. She lifted her right hand towards the back wall and tapped on the sliding panel that could offer Henry a view into the cabin and to the road ahead.
”All set back there?” She shifted the rig into gear, and took an easy start in case Henry was getting comfortable in the back while she waited for his response.
Let’s survey the 110. I want to see the National Guard’s reaction to Henry in the back when we pull through their access gateThere was some rustling around as the giant moved, shifting the truck’s weight towards the front- and then suddenly half of Henry’s enormous head took up the empty space behind the sliding panel. He was, as funny as it was to imagine, quite excited looking- almost like a dog being taken for a car ride and excited to peak its head out the window. He pulled away and gave the woman a thumbs up, signalling that he was all set in the back.
They went north- passing through the access gate and quite literally flooring the poor sap who had to peek under the truck’s covers. The color had drained from his skin seeing a literal juggernaut sitting pretty in the back, but he had laughed it off when the other Guardsmen let him in on the joke. Apparently this wasn’t Henry’s first time scaring a few people at this particular stop and the jolly white giant had earned a bit of a reputation as a pseudo-boogieman of sorts- albeit far less nefarious. They continued onwards, periodically making a stop on the highway so Henry could either take a leak or move obstacles off of the highway to allow their particularly large convoy truck to move through with no issues. It had been
quite a sight to see the lizard dig his talons into the sheet metal of a trailer and, with some struggle, single handedly pull an entire semi truck off the highway and into the median. He had been boarding the transport truck again when he froze.
”I hear gunfire.” he said. His voice was even but it carried an edge to it that she hadn’t heard before. It cut through all the background noise of the world around them- dicing straight through the churning of the diesel engine. His voice carried like he was right in her ear, despite being a dozen feet away at the tail of the truck.
”Do you hear it?”“No. Where is it?””You can tap into my sensory abilities, right?” he said, ignoring her initial question. The truck shifted, as he stepped out and away from the truck and walked over to the window of her door. He was so tall that even with the additional height of the truck she couldn’t see his face. He seemed to know this, either by reading her mind or more likely through experience, and easily dropped to one knee so she could speak to his face. She had never been this close to him before- she could discern every individual black and white scale and his eyes… god, they had to be the size of baseballs. She could see his teeth now too, as he spoke. Three rows, like a shark’s. They had to be over three inches long each. This was a person once, she realized. Warped and twisted into some combination of man and beast, but he had been just a normal human. He didn’t seem to notice her momentary fascination, or if he did, he didn’t care.
”You’ll be doing it a lot. Now’s as good a time as any to get used to it.”Elise nodded in response, and immediately set to focusing on Henry’s mind. While she’d only given using his senses to her advantage once, it was nothing like she’d expected. A second after she stared into his large eyes, she could suddenly hear within a block radius of their location. Her eyes widened, and her brain struggled for a moment to process it before it felt comfortable. Willing to go further, Eli allowed herself to latch onto every sensation in Henry’s body.
”What does it feel like to be a nine foot tall saurosapien?” You might ask? Eli could see colors that she’d never seen before- seeing heat rather than just feeling it. She could see her own red, blue, and yellow form sitting before him. She could even see her legs through the door of the truck, though it was muted by the metal. She could taste the air- the salty breeze that still drifted over LA from the Pacific. She could hear gunfire as if it was happening in the next lane over. If it was nighttime, Eli was sure that she’d be able to see everything around them even on the darkest night. It felt like she was in a world without shadows.
”This is… wow.” She grinned at him.
”You’re fantastic.”Suddenly, the two of them could hear more bullets ricocheting off of walls. Eli’s smile faded, and she gave him a look of determination.
”I know an exit we can take up the road that will bring us right to it. Let’s go.”Henry nodded, a wide grin creeping its way across his face.
”God, it is so nice to have someone around who can finally feel it too. Lead the way.” he said, his voice giving way to his excitement at Elise’s ability to discern the direction like he could. In his joy he raised his hand and smacked the side of the door- leaving a large, knuckle sized dent in the car’s frame. Elise just about jumped out of her skin, and Henry visibly winced at his fuckup.
”I-” he began, but stopped himself.
”Back of the truck. Right. Sorry.”He scampered back in a flurry of scales and military grade protection gear- the only indication that he was ready being the sudden lurches of the truck as the suspension compensated for the sudden weight.
Eli just laughed it off and shook her head as she shifted the rig into gear. For the sake of safe driving, she let go of the ability to see heat. It would prove useful at night, but for now it was too much to handle. The pair continued on, both listening to the far away but seemingly close sounds of a battle between rivals. It was obvious that they were about to be in the midst of a fight between two gangs. What was odd about it was that there only seemed to be gunfire from one side, but as the two neared the point among the streets of South Park they could hear the voices from the opposite. The truck stopped a quarter of a mile away, blocked by a pileup of rusting cars. Elise immediately hopped out of the truck, and walked up to the closest car. She pulled her handgun from it’s holster and turned to look at her partner.
”Lead the way, Olin.”
