Member
And
And
All was still in the center of the intersection, the University students began to pour out of the building in interest. Curiosity began to overwhelm confusion and fear as the crowd closed in on the two giants, one standing upright and the other buried to the rear in concrete. The entire crowd jumped back as the legs of the buried goliath moved, twisting around each other before unwinding like a rubber band. The gold clad behemoth twisted out of the ground with a corkscrew motion, its body moved unnaturally fast and it was bolt upright as fast as it had arrived.
His crater released all of the pent up smoke from his body, washing the entire intersection with a thin cloud of grey. If you listened carefully you might even have heard Auan’s heavy breathing, though you only need look at him to see it. His colossal shoulders heaved up and down, raising and falling at least three feet with each breath. There was a pregnant silence as the dust and smoke settled, Auan’s masked face trained its dead and empty golden eyes on Terra Firma’s own face. ”They must decide for themselves. None can halt us from giving them the option to walk this path. Please, David, understand..” His body language relaxed and he extended his hands out to his sides, palms forward and fingers open. His head was low and his body read with pleading and desperation. Not that he was afraid, not that he was lying or conniving, but his every motion spoke to a man trying to desperately convince someone of the truth.
No matter how dark said truth was.
David jumped back slightly as Auan twisted himself into the air and back onto the ground again. His own chest was heaving up and down, showing that his own stamina mirrored Auan’s, the fight was exhausting for the both of them, and he’d be a fool to deny it. So David also rested his stance, as he also welcomed this pause in the fight, even hoping that this would be permanent.
”I agree, humanity should be free to make its own choice. But can you guarantee it would be ours? I can’t imagine you came all the way from the ‘future’ to watch.”
”Nothing I do will be distinguishable from your own actions. Our own choices, acting under our own willpower, doing what we see as right. I will give them a choice, accepting or refusing is up to them.” He took a step back and leaned up against the lamppost. ”Won’t simply watch, no, but I’ll act to the sum of my power.”
”As long as it’s their choice, and an informed choice.”
David nodded, and continued.
”Then what will you do, will you return to your craft and simply, wait?”
The golden giant thought for a second, casting his gaze across his surroundings as the crowd began closing in. ”Perhaps not, finding Companions here might be an easy chore.”
”I won’t stop them from believing you if that’s what they want, but all I ask is that you tell them the truth.” Although he said that, David still didn’t believe in what this man was saying, or if he even told him everything. But freedom to choose and believe, that was something he believed in, so he just hoped it was the right choice. Removing Auan’s craft by force wasn’t something he could do today,, so for now, he would leave. David floated off into the air, and then dashed off towards home.
As the trail of flickering energy left behind by David faded into the immaterial, Auan’s previous glance across the intersection had not gone to waste. Though the crowd dissipated and the police began to move in, someone very clearly did not react naturally. A wastrel of unwashed appearance and underwhelming stature had been eyeing his body intently, or at least, it seemed like he was eyeing Auan up.
”You there. With the unwashed hair.” He lazily pointed a finger at Angel. ”You act strangely.”
Angel, at this, frowned, and made to walk away, but then thought better of it. This man was likely incredibly fast, and could stop him if he liked. Better get the ATD ready for deployment, just in case, though he didn’t know what good it would be, if the man right there decided to come at him. Coughing, and clearing his throat, Angel tersely said, ”Was hoping the hippie would take you down. Decided to watch the fight, but you decided to throw words instead of fists.”
The word Hippie didn’t exactly connect meaningfully, but the rest of the statement made enough sense. ”David is not the enemy, friend. Come, speak and regail me.” He stood up away from the post and walked across the road, like a lumbering colossus of golden iconography he shook the ground and drew the attention of every passerby.
The golden-armored giant saying Terra Firma’s actual name did not go unnoticed by Angel; he saved that little snippet of information for later. ‘David’, huh? Well, he’d have to look into that later, as apparently the armored man wanted to speak to him. Eyeing the armored man suspiciously, he muttered, ”Think we’re in a shakespearean play, do we?”
However, he eventually spoke up, studying the man’s armor with both his sight and his technopathy. It was… strange, arcane. Not even alien AI was this strange to his senses, this eldritch. ”So. What, exactly do you want from me?” He figured he might as well get to the point. Despite the danger this man posed, there was no reason to beat around the bush.
”Perhaps.” Auan directed his thumb to the police beginning to close off the area. “We might wish to vacate, and discuss safely elsewhere.”
Shutting down the police cruisers’ radios, and choking their engines, the police cars sputtered, and slowed to a halt, and the police officers, in full Metahuman Response Unit gear, got deafening feedback in their earpieces, causing them to keel over, scrambling to get their helmets off. The few that realized the truth of the situation, and pointed their guns at the duo, found that their guns refused to fire, and even jammed, for good measure.
Hijacking a police cruiser, and forcing it to drive towards the barricade of police officers and civilians, who all scrambled out of the way, Angel nodded towards the opening in the crowd, saying, ”I know a place where we can talk in peace, I just need to retrieve something from my headquarters.”
Auan watched all of this unfold rather coldly, despite his previous engagement and heartfelt words. ”I shall follow.” He began walking forward, though his steps were intentionally slowed to allow Angel to walk at a comfortable pace alongside him.
Furtively walking towards his nearby garage home, well, as furtively as one could, with a ten-foot golden giant plodding alongside him, Angel made sure that no one was following or looking at him, and then ducked into the (formerly) abandoned mechanic’s shop. Pulling a sheet off the ATD, which stood curled up in the middle of the main garage room, (almost touching the ceiling without the hydraulic lift having to do anything,) Angel opened the cockpit, and, controlling the suit’s hand, lifted himself inside, synching with the suit, becoming Equilibrium.
His exit from the building was awkward, ducking under the lip of the roof, cracking the concrete, but by this point, Angel didn’t care. His location was most likely burned already, and anything the authorities found here wouldn’t be of use. STRIKE had the only files on him, DNA samples, everything, and he had made sure of their erasure when STRIKE fell.
Anyways.
Unfolding to his full height, standing taller than the golden-armored metahuman at 12 feet in armor, Angel looked at the man, giving him a small, affirmative nod, and attempted to speak directly into what he assumed was the communications suite of the suit, so no one else would overhear.. ”Follow me, there’s a place on the city outskirts.”
Auan was fortunate he had a mask to conceal his face, his first instinct was that Angel had climbed into the suit believing that Auan was also in a mechanical suit. His grin would have revealed that he thought Angel was trying to compensate for the disparate height.
And with that, he jumped into the air, activating the jump rockets of the ATD, flying through the sky over Lost Haven, occasionally having to land, and jump again, but he made the trip from the French Quarter to his old hideout, (now a ruined, mangled, burnt-out mess of brickwork and steel,) in record time. Looks like the calculations Sherlock did during the Hounds fight paid off.
Behind Angel soared the golden goliath with a trail of blue plasma bursting from his legs and back occasionally, he was kind of lazily flying rather than his previous rocketing. The fight with David had been incredibly tiresome, physically and mentally, so putting effort into flying was not on his list of things to do.
Crashing through a hole in the roof, and crushing a block of old, rusty machinery, he looked up at Auan, asking, finally (over the loudspeakers, just to be sure,), ”So, what do you want?” Auan descended through the hole behind him and touched down slowly, the ground glowed red hot as his plasma vents superheated the floor.
After he planted his feet firmly he stretched his arms upwards and raised the rubble from the floor up to the roof, replacing it from the dynamic entry. In a few moments he’d sealed the gap and lowered his hands to his sides. ”Allies.” He said it very flatly, a matter of fact tone to his voice. One word was all he needed in this situation.
Rolling his eyes within the suit, Angel said, ”I'm going to be honest with you. I probably won't care about whatever ‘cause’ you're fighting for; all I really want is something to enhance my suit, and if talking to you right now can get me some of that bullshit plasma flinging technology, then I'm willing to. However, I'm just as willing to broadcast our location to every metahuman in Lost Haven, if it will get me something, even just a broken fragment of an armor servo.” Pausing, Angel looked over the golden-suited metahuman. ”Give me a reason to join you.”
It was risky, threatening a metahuman that he didn't know the capabilities of, but there were two factors that made him more bold. The first, and most obvious one, was the fact that he was in the ATD. While not invincible, it was tough as hell, and had agility that belied it's size or bipedal nature. The second one was the fact that he had just gone a few rounds with Terra Firma, or “David”, who was reputedly quite powerful.
Auan tilted his head a little bit as he processed the mention of his plasma shunting, he must have thought it was the suit. He also threatened him, a particularly ballsy play for someone who was the squishy center of a crunchy outer shell. This was exactly the kind of person he wanted on his side, courageous and daring, a good and useful friend in these trying times. ”We of the Supersol seek to give Humanity the choice to stand against faceless masters in high ivory towers.” He raised his hand and projected a hologram of The Deadlands, the Earth as it is in his time. ”Certainly you notice the disparity I pose. Difficult as it is believing, we are from your future. Time lost warriors seeking to change Humanity’s future, so that we might not be necessary.”
”If you need compensation, I offer you services in advancing your machinery.” The hologram condensed into a singular point and small trails of particles began to run from the surrounding area to the singular point where the hologram once was. They built slowly into a small electric dynamo, little sparks of electricity arced from the tip to his hand. ”Not an engineer, but educated enough to offer technologies beyond your time.”
Angel watched the display with interest, observing the holographic creation slowly phase into physical being. Was it nanobots? A cloaking device? Angel, even though he watched the item get created through every camera and sensor he had, couldn’t figure it out. ”What kinda sci-fi bullshit do you know to magic a machine into reality? Is it atomic-sized nanobots or something?” Shaking his mech’s “head” (really its main sensor suite,) Angel let out a sigh, and said, ”Damn it if you don’t make a good pitch, though.” Eyeing the machine greedily, and the man who created it cautiously, Angel grimaced. ”I’d like to take you up on that offer, but...” The man was too power-hungry, too ambitious. He’d end up using Angel for some purpose that would spiral out of control, leading him down a chaotic, dark path not of his own choosing. And as soon as he completed that thought, Angel, without a second word, jetted off, through the roof, collapsing the building around him. As he left, he swore that Auan looked… disappointed? Whatever, it’s not his concern anymore.
Flying off into the outskirts of the city, Angel laid low in an abandoned factory for a few hours, before making his way to his garage under the cover of night. Well that was… an experience. Angel sighed, collapsing on a ratty couch, in the corner of his garage. He wished he had gotten something, anything done, but he couldn’t just… magic up technology or materials. If only it was like the old days, where STRIKE was bad, I’m good, and the other heroes are morons who try and keep me in prison. Man, I didn’t really properly thank Trent for that, what happened to him? And thinking of the past fondly, Angel fell asleep, under the watchful gaze of Sherlock.
