The eye watching the red-scarfed woman focused it's pupil. It's target bore a similarity to several other people in 'it's' vision; Strangers at the pier, and at mister Jameson's press conference were also visible wearing the same uniform. Oculus made up her mind, decided to take a risk, and dispatched her messenger...

Minutes later one of her Sentry's would approach the park and risk addressing the redscarved woman directly. This one was obviously one of her 'special' types, and a seam along it's midsection would allow it to split in half- which revealed a small microphone and speaker reminiscent of an older 'clamshell' phone. From the way that the woman had been returning the birdnest-drone's gaze Oculus had already realised that she'd been spotted, and so decided not to waste any time; her messenger flew into the redscarves field of view, clicked open, and clattered at the woman's feet without any pomp or ceremony.

"How did you find my email?"

Oculus's voice buzzed through the improvised device with a hoarse crackle, and got right to business. Oculus wasn't above a little playful discussion, but nowadays she made a point of staying off the grid- and the fact that someone had a way to contact her had piqued her interest.

"-and what the hell's with the scarves? I don't think we've done business before."

"Oh please." The lady chuckled. "I can't just tell you! Mainly because I wasn't told either. Our leader was the one who discovered how to contact you. And as he does, he withheld that information from even me." She put on a pout and drew a line down her face with her finger, like a tear."Oh well. I suppose you can't put all your eggs in one basket, especially while you're behind bars."

She yawned. "My accomplices will be here any minute. Then we can talk somewhere more private, or at least I hope."

The three heroes took a moment to sign their contracts, then followed Meta downstairs and outside. The hour was growing late and we full of delicious food, but they put off the thought of relaxing in order to stand behind their new boss while giving the assembled crowd a smile and wave. Peter was tempted to do more, yet he refrained from any tricks or such lest he take the spotlight away from the man whom for the moment rightly deserved it.

Mr. Green stepped off the VTOL still wearing hisprison jumper but nowfree of the restraints and security devices of his incarceration. He looked slowly around the bright landing pad and squinted against the harsh natural light. That had been foreign to him for a couple months now and wasn't his most recurrent friend beforehand. He raised a hand to shade his eyes and looked back at the man in the pilot's seat. It had been a quiet flight sitting between security personel. He had only been considering his upcoming situation as wellas the identity of the chemicals now in his system. He had not yet turned his ability on them, but he would.

He turned and walked off the pad then stood casually and waited for someone to meet him. He would be spending another month more or less under house arrest and be watched carefully for... Well, forever. Well, not exatly forever. He grinned as he considered what was next. He would need to make phone calls, send e-mail, etc and they would need to be monitored. He aslo, idly wondered who else had been recruited from the world's gifted population.

The next space of time was going to be very interesting.

Early morning rooftop pad

 The young woman from the press briefing appeared and climbed the steps to access the landing from a corner of the pad. There she smirked a bit sheepishly and waved a hello as she crossed the landing and nodded to the two accompanying ITSDA escort who began to embark on the plane. "Hello, I'm Lucy. I'm one of Mr.Jameson's assistants and his daughter," her cheeks redden noticeably and she avoids his eyes for a moment, "I've been briefed on your abilities and I have to say, I'm rather impressed by what you can do. We'll talk again after you meet him."

 She leads the way inside and through a security screen. On the inside it looked nearly abandon so far, but well furnished and practically new. A few small robots scurried through the halls as if they were fleeing from a wookie inside the death star. After a few moments, the hall leads into a gym-like space with various sporting equipment stored along the walls. it's quiet and one entire side of the room faced the rising sun between the silhouette of the Cascade Mountains in the distance while clouds hovered to the north, all seen through the walls.

 In the center of the gym on the mat, Brian Jameson quietly breaths as he faces that scene, his back to the door in a lotus position.

 Just behind his eyelids myriad things were happening in addition to another quick conversation with JOHNNY and Faye. He had also been watching Mr.Green's entrance as seen from various camera equipment found across the complex. He began to clear his thoughts and refocus on the matters of flesh and bone.

 He currently monitored Jake's vitals and listened briefly to his heart beat. He saw that his nanite transform-virus had begun to do it's job, as it created biological machine from Mr.Green's own cells. The golden liquid had begun to lay a lattice through Mr.Green's body, suffusing it with enhanced strength and agility, his body becoming more dense, his reflexes quicker and the blue liquid, a cognitive computer began to interact with his brain stem and gave him a new sense with some fine motor styled control on it: it was growing a Radio-packet transmitter within his skull. Right about now much of this was becoming apparent to Mr.Green's own consideration of the injections and what it was doing as it was beginning to swarm near it's target locations throughout his body.

 Lucy smiled at Jake and left the room.

 Brian spoke, "thank you for coming. I wasn't sure you would after what I did. I'm sorry if this will hurt you personally. I did it to show the SA that I don't play games, but nothing will come of it if they play ball. The injections will enhance you, it will let me know where you are at, and it will allow you to contact people without using a phone. It takes a bit of practice," Brian's eyes opened, "either way, I hope you find it pleasurable. It certainly can be fun to have a computer implant and a physical upgrade. I'll send you the details to your enhancements today. Think of it all as my way of saying sorry for the press release. So, my Security Consultant, I have something for you today if you want to get started right away. I need you to convince the SA to protect a convoy as a show of good faith, there can be no casualties of any of my people...there's a 382 to 1 chance that a Namidian force will order his troops to take it. That can't happen."
This message was last edited by the player at 07:08, Mon 20 June 2016.

At her opening comment, he performed his characteristic chuckle, "An ability is not, of itself, impressive miss Lucy. It is the way you learn to use it and wield it. My power is potent but becomes terrifying when wielded by a man who has experience with it. But, I think that your familiarity with Mr. Jameson will teach you that lesson."

As he had walked, following the shy young lady, he made two discoveries. The first was expected and the result of his ability to categorize and analyze the elemental makeup of his own form. While knowing other bodies was an extended and complicated matter, he had spent years of his life studying his own body. It had, one, made him much better at understanding how to harm others or influence them, but also, two, gave him an ability to rapidly recover if he chose. Changing the composition of his form was always a very, very risky business as his ability was not a scalpel but more a broadsword, but he had done it a few times. This was what he meant by experience being more important. A gifted juch as the terrifying Kaine might take his ability and have a powerful new tool, but his use of it would always pale in comparison to Jake's as Jake had made an extensive study of biochemistry, chemistry, and physics to support his ability as well as practiced using it in certain imaginative ways. These had been lesson learned sparring with Dieter. That man's capacity to push his gift to its furthest extent was truly inhuman.

He had also discovered to his surprise that the young woman did not exist materially in this location. He could not discount her being prone somewhere else and projecting here to avoid his danger, but he suspected that Meta had another bit of technology behind this young woman. "Very interesting. You appear to be a mass of some type of particle that I am incapable of interacting with. I assume it is light as I know that it is beyond my control along with subatomic things."

As she was leaving the room, he asked Brian quite pointedly a question he wanted her to overhear, "tell me, was there a way to make such a perfectly formed bottom more squeezable? I'd love to interact with Lucy a bit more, with all pure intentions for your daughter of course."

Afterwards, he chuckled and approached the man as he spoke about the changes in Jake's form. M"I really wish you had asked. It took me years to meticulously assess and catalog my bodies chemical composition. It's going to take me months or more to register these changes. But, an on-board computer does seem quite useful."

He pondered the convoy request and groaned. "I told you... Namidians work in a cell structure. "The Wave" as you are all fond of calling it makes it sound like a monolith, but it isn't. So, I could probably guarantee SA to not attack the convoy, I might even be able to arrange protection, but I will have to warn them of your suspicions and that... that could complicate things. Dieter prefers to avoid pissing off his confederates as a politically expedient philosophy. Still," He shrugged. "I can try. I can be seen to try in earnest, but I am trying to warn you about my imminent failures."

He concentrated a second but then sighed and shrugged, "Got a real phone. the one in my head needs a bit of time with the manual." He grinned cheekily. "Just the newest iPhone. I need something familiar."

When one was brought, he quickly moved his fingers over the screen adding in settings and downloading Apps. One of the first Apps was a dark web browser from which he retrieved several more Apps then he finally added in a piece of contact information to one of these dark Apps. He held the phone up to his ear, "Mr. Green. I am a very pretty girl." The line was spoken carefully like a coded phrase. "Confirmed. Third Terrace. Ochre protocols. Bengal Tiger. Yup, you saw the news? Yup. He wants something already. Okay. A convoy not attacked and protected. Potential Namidian overlap."

Mr. Green casually tossed the phone toward Brian, "Details." The man's entire jovial demeanor was absent. He operated in a brisk, mechanical fashion characteristic of SA operatives. A feminine voice came over the line, "Mr. Jameson?" Brian would be able to detect several hardware changes in the phone as well such that certain surges in use would cause the phone to die. The phone was also communicating through satellites used by criminals all over the world now.

"Well. It was worth a try!"

Oculus's voice sighed, although it seemed to carry a faint trace of amusement. She'd hoped that whoever these 'Redscarves' were they'd be amateurish and let information slip for free- but they at least seemed to know the basic rules of the game.
She noted that they'd revealed their employer was a convict, although that information was not terribly useful- and she suspected that the woman'd only mentioned it to hook her interest. The attempt had worked.

"The device in front of you will have to be our line of communication for the time being. It links directly to my Sentry's hivemind, so we should be able to talk anywhere without being intercepted- so long as you use the appropriate discretion. It's lifespan should last for about a month, so long as it's only used as a phone from now on. As of this moment I'm not even near Seattle, so speaking face-to-face won't be possible unless the contract requires it."

The eye watching them from the birds-nest above was still monitoring them. A close examination of the skyline would reveal that it'd been joined by several more of it's kind, who had taken up concealed viewpoints around the rest of the park.

"This place is rather exposed. If it suits you there's a maintenance room off the 2nd avenue rail track- near enough to walk, remote enough that I can guarantee it's security, and easy to break into."

 Brian was also in business mode. Tactical advantage was his currently, but this had the possibility to tip that scale elsewhere should something happen to the project, and quick analysis yielded this simple coordination should offer a first beneficial tie to the SA and possibly be of great benefit to both parties.

 He watched Green for a moment considering the man's intellectual crassness. He didn't seem to care for niceties, which was fine, but Meta disliked the sarcastic dripping from his every word. He supposed the man would soften up in his time here.

 Brian picked up the phone, still sitting in his lotus position. He detected, but wasn't significantly interested in the hardware changes on the phone, except to check that they had no dangerous implications, either to himself, his networks, and the security of the mission. It seemed sound to his topical analysis. "Yes," he responded to the woman on the other end, "details are thus: a train will be carrying a rather large project. It will be guarded by three of my gifted employees and possibly at least two more who will accompany it from the lab in Berkeley, CA. My simulations have suggested that several other Namidian cells have a high probability of coordinating to steal the device, in whole or part. There can be no loss of life nor any attempt to turn the machine on. In fact, the less SA is seen, the better this relationship will work, since I'm well aware of your ability to be effective and operate from behind the curtain 'so to speak'. This is entirely scheduled to be moved tomorrow starting on a six a.m. train heading to Seattle's Burlington Northern shipping yard."


 He tossed the phone back to Green at that point. "Lucy, please see Mr.Green to his new domicile and give him an outline of his schedule and the security detail regiment which will be created to prevent his escape and assign him a 'Eagle' drone. Thank you Mr.Green, I think we will have much to talk about, you seem an intelligent man. I always have uses for intelligent people."

On an isolated rooftop, a third man sat with a device that looked like a gutted radio in his lap. The headphones he was wearing picked up the dialogue of multiple phone calls in the area, including...

"At least 5 guards, three definitely Gifted. Large, mechanical payload being transported by train. Schwartze Augen is involved directly, it would seem. Delivery is tomorrow, on a six a.m. train heading to Seattle's Burlington Northern shipping yard." He muttered.

***

The woman cocks her head and smiles, as though she heard someone talking as clear as day. "I've just received word on our target." Glancing to her side, she saw the two other Red Scarves approaching. "How about that maintenance room, eh?"

***

A few minutes later, the three of them were assembled in the little room, and the woman was talking into the phone-device. "So, we have a particular target in mind. This new Gifted think-tank has been set up here. Run by a Brian Jameson. He's delivering some kind of machine somewhere, by train. There'll be at least 5 guards, and three of them are guaranteed to be the Gifted Vandal, Frank Jackson, and Black Magic. Schwartze Augen is also involved. Here's the basic gist of it: They have our boss in prison. They think they're safe. We want to make them think again. We want the DA, and every other Gifted in America scared shitless of us. And a good start is showing them that nobody can stop us from taking what we want. We're well-equipped to just decimate the train, but we want to steal whatever it is Jameson has on that train. Our boss has a long-term use for it, we just want to send a message for now... "


One of the male Red Scarves sits down against a wall. "Of course, this doesn't exactly require your direct involvement. We just want you to know what we're capable of so you'll consider our offer of working together. After that, I'm sure we can come to an agreement."

The maintenance room that Oculus had assigned was indeed easy to break into- especially since it's lock appeared to have been recently battered open. The railroad building was open on all sides which made it easy for the Gifted spectator to ensure no-one would easily overhear their conversation. Inside the room the air was thick with more spheres, who were apparently waiting for the Redscarve's arrival. One of them projected Oculus's image onto the buildings interior wall, although the actual speech was still handled by the woman's 'Phone-Drone'.

"So you have an interest in the rumoured 'Ring' machine? A lot of attention has been thrown that way, lately. It's been good for business."

Oculus took particular attention when the Redscarves shared what information they knew. It would need to be corroborated, of course, but it was a lot more than she'd been able to go on up until now.
The assertion that S.A had gotten involved with Brian's organisation was confusing. Oculus knew that one of Dieters lieutenants had stuck a limited release deal with the GTF, yet she still doubted that the Namidian organisation would be willing to collaborate on any significant level; Namidian's hardly even co-operated with each other, and suggesting that one of the Survivors of Gaultown was now in league with their aggressor was almost laughable. Oculus wondered if the remaining members of Schwartze Augen were making a desperate bid to secure Dieter's freedom in the same way that had been done with Mister Green.
Likewise, the male Red Scarves's offer wasn't what she'd expected, but was anything but bad news...

"Let me see if I understand the situation: You plan to carry out an attack tomorrow, without asking for my involvement in any way whatsoever. You're only telling me your intentions so that I can... what?... watch the fireworks?"
The hologram of Oculus smiled fiercely, and removed the glasses from her face.
"...Interesting. I hope you realise what how risky it is to pass that kind of information to a professional broker for free, though. You must be confident in your chances."

In reply to Meta (msg # 26):

Jake held the phone to his ear and walked mechanically behind the hologram. There was no overt flirting or ogling now, but that would happen again later. Neither was there any noise from over the phone. He checked the signal and saw it was open so kept it to his ear.

At his quarters/cell, he thanked Lucy for the information and schedules then closed the door and walked to a chair where he sat down, places the phone on the counter, and focused inward as he waited for a response.

---

Dieter sat silently and deadly still in his chair. His mind was processing at its fastest and he was playing out scenario after scenario in his head. One of his agents had brought him the verbatim recording of Meta's request. A quick reference gave a very, very short list of possible targets. A momentary consideration narrowed it to one. He grimaced; it was a fat prize. It was no surprise that Namidian would target it. Calculations: Meta made it sound hard to figure. If that was moving, it was in play. The man's reauest was beyond difficult though. Tight security and five gifted guards were formidable defenses but he knew several Namidians for whom that would be no potent hurdle.

He pulled up an image of a certain three gifted people entering the building and guessed the three. The other two were a mystery.

He stopped suddenly and grinned. The decision had already been made.

---

Mr. Green had been silently meditating and recalibrating his own sense of himself when the phone chimed. He answered the phone and listened for a long time. He pursed his lips as the plan was revealed to him. When he set the phone down, he seemed less than happy. He touched it and the phone turned to clay then crumbled into dust. Of course, all apps and contacts routes used for this instance were being burned as he spoke. Dieter did not trust Meta even in the slightest.

Mr. Green considered the angles himself for some time before thinking about a way to communicate. He considered it for a long second then shrugged and spoke aloud, "Lucy? Do be a dear and pass along a message to Mr. Jameson. The leadership of SA has decided to accept terms as they were relayed in the phone call, excepting one condition. Neither SA nor, obviously, Dieter can be implicated in this though. Any action that would result in our exposure as directly involved, including my presence, is considered deal breaking. SA will be monitoring the caravan and providing security."

---

Back on Curacao, Dieter was pulling up images, dark web searches, and tactical spreadsheets on the area surrounding the expected starting point. He had teams scraping together all the dark web leaks on the subject and personnel at Berkley were being analyzed. He was grinning as he planned what resources to allocate and how to use them to achieve the desired goal.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:50, Wed 22 June 2016.

The man who was talking laughs. "But that's the point, see? We want people to know what we're doing. Once this little shindig is over, you can choose to work with us, or you can decline! Free country."

The woman speaks again. "We've got another, more important mission we could use your talents with. But first we want to show you what we can do for you. You could use some muscle in your own jobs, and someone else to pin it on doesn't hurt. Your little heist in New York didn't go so well with you running solo, now did it?"

"To set the rumours straight, New York wasn't that bad. It was three versus one, and my only objective at that point was to escape unscathed- which I did- _mostly."
Oculus's eyebrows chevroned as she remembered the event, although only her holographic eyes were able to express the emotion significantly.
"Unlike my opponents I was still pretty green back then. Even so, i'd have done better if they hadn't set 'Greece Lightning' loose."

She realised that she was agreeing with them. She ran two hands to flatten her spiked hair against her scalp in a gesture of indecision before it bounced back. Oculus's grin turned a touch mischievous.

"You'll have my attention tomorrow. I'm rather used to working alone, but it isn't often that someone has the boldness to offer up a demonstration, that's for damned sure."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:07, Wed 22 June 2016.

 By noon Meta had finished fully half of his own work for the day, putting together twenty square meters of heavy machinery. He wore his suit to help with the lifting and supporting of the frame's pieces. Each also needed a rather large swath of cable, power and several hundred pounds of circuit boards. He was aided by his drones, constructicons and Lucy; and able to finish in time for noon-coffee. He borrowed two things from his second and fourth floor startups: the next-gen diehard cold fusion power cell dubbed Sol2 which had achieved critical success after implementing a Brian-designed magnetic field capacitor. The next was an amazing little device which used a mesonic gift-box field, to knock out 'gift-box particles' in any area within the field, or rather it collected them. Any gifted unlucky enough to be caught within it's radius at the time of a field initializing, would be for lack of a better phrase, permanently powerless and probably debilitated. Or at least until someone figured out how to return the 'gift-boxes' to their rightful owners.


 The device he was constructing of these two parts would create a field slightly larger around than the distance between the pieces, creating a field that was potentially very large circumference-wise. It had a range of course, but with enough power it's maximum would  be almost as big as a county. As a consequence his device was massive enough that it had to be broken up into two primary modules, the smaller scaled working models he had taken to incorporate were after all, prototypes. Which led him to the final point of his machine. It was to record data on how successful it was at it's job, he suspected it would prove 98% effective with a margin of error of perhaps, 1.8% +/-. JOHNNY had already proofed nearly every part of the structure and mathematics involved.

 Now completed, Brian sat back on his haunches to study his workmanship. Already the bots were scurrying back to preassigned tasks leaving him alone to consider what was next on his prioritized list of tasks.

 Ok, he murmured into his inner-self as his thoughts interacted with the digital stream, Mr.Green still has his new gifts and drone feed. Check. Itinerary and reservations sent to Forward team and support team. Check. Taxis, trucks, forklifts, Burlington Northern Security Chief, SPD, ITDSA, JAWS-the-new-guy and his sidekick Mac, Mork and Mindy and Froggy. All set. All Fuzzmail sent, ego encrypted...

 He nodded to himself and began rolling the device into the cargo elevator. He instructed the forklift bots at the bottom of the building to retrieve it and load it into place.

 As the doors closed, he walked around to the Cook-o-tron kitchen and ordered an Italian BMT, and after he described the sandwich, it added it to the list of menu items. He munched the sandwich coffee as he considered his next steps. Lucy was already upgrading her security protocols and making sure to filter every ISP and Telecom signal that connected in the building, jammers were working. There would be no intercepted communications coming into the building without her knowing about it and letting it happen.

 Constructicons and drones were also being scheduled to be not only maintained but also printing more of them to complete all the refurbishments needed. The building was in engineering mode, foot traffic would be monitored by Lucy and JOHNNY in 2-second rotations. Those caught trespassing would first receive a locked door, and failing that, countermeasures were being implemented. He filed the last part away under code name: "CONSTRUCTOMON", as he monitored it's progress momentarily - 45% complete.

 Only one thing seemed to be problematic so far. The start of the day. Faye didn't have the resources to see things tightened up on her end.

 Brian was mid sip on his coffee as he chanced on a masterful idea. He was so struck by the idea that his coffee shot out of his pursed lips in a spray against the cook-o-tron's huge face plate. He was going to have to hack the biggest publicly traded competition that rivaled his own resources. It would be a fierce battle, since Googolplex Inc had at least one of their very own AI, very likely two or three that could work in tandem. For the work he needed, he required a very specific satellite, owned by a Googolplex Inc subidiary called Maptronic Traffic Guidance Systems or MTGS-1 for short...

 "JOHNNY," Brian said as he set his dripping mug down and left his plate, walking at a brisk pace towards his office, "battle-stations JOHNNY, let's get us a satellite."

The woman laughed. "Good to know. We await your decision eagerly." she closed the little sphere and stashed it into a little metal case.

The three of them left the room without a spoken word. However, every thought they had was shared among them, the other Red Scarves, and their leader...

Jake raised his head form his cot as his newest phone chimed. He picked it up and looked at a map. He frowned and zoomed in. Anyone with access to google maps was going to be able to follow that fucking convoy. He sighed and read the message, "Right boss."

he got up, "Lucy, can you get a message to Mr. Jameson, please. Dieter is wondering "A tank, really?" I think that he thinks that you are voiding the terms of your own agreement. I think you are challenging known, gifted terrorists to a tank fight. That might involve casualties..."

Jake chuckled then and shrugged. This was going to be an interesting fight to say the least. Ramping up the arms race was hardly ever the right tactic to him, but he was a crazed villain in rehab or some shit.

 Lucy appeared a moment later to answer Jake, "Mr.Jameson is unavoidably detained at the moment, but the agreement is not null and void. The armored vehicle is simply deterrent against any mundane forms of attack. The fleet are not intended to cover the entire western seaboard, simply provide assurance that the convoy reach it's train-yard destination. Then your bosses will be taking it from there I believe. Are there any other details you wish to understand that I am authorized to convey the answers to?"
This message was last edited by the player at 18:43, Sat 25 June 2016.

 Meta tossed his linked-sunglasses to his desktop and rubbed his eyes and the bridge of his nose. One of his constructicons had brought up a fresh mug of coffee with tiny whirring of servos and a hiss of hydraulic action. He plucked the coffee mug from the bots arm. All the constructicons were designed to have two such robotic arms and rode on a tracked chassis. They were essentially arms on a mobile platform.

 He was too exhausted to give the little droid a second thought, but he knew his day was getting longer before it would be time to sleep again. His body was exhausted, but his mind continued to work overtime, still half free of the constraints of his meaty body. He gulped took a huge gulp of coffee and intoned into his interface, ~keep it coming. Adjust the schedule, coffee rotations every fifteen minutes, every other cup should have a shot of espresso and chocolate.~

 The Googlplex AI battle had been nothing short of a digital scorched earth scenario. His own meaty shortcomings aside, the AI had been bested in most ways that mattered, but in the end, JOHNNY and Meta felt the twin AI's had not deserved to die. Instead they traded some info, and promised to return the cars intact if possible--which they had.

 He stretched his arms and did a quick jog in place to get his blood flowing again. This would be no time to quit.

 He picked up his sunnies again and set it on his face once more, felt the electric pull of cyberspace as he sank into it...

 First he checked all the feeds from the building that Lucy was monitoring, just to make sure she wasn't missing anything. Then he flipped his monitor onto the work happening in the sub-basement. It was progressing as anticipated, he'd finished four more constructicons overnight which was helping to speed up the process of finishing the resting place of the Ring. It would need very special accommodations so he had to make sure they weren't falling behind. LUCY had been issuing orders every five minutes(hardly a distraction for the AI intellect) all night and yesterday afternoon so they would achieve the goal by the time Faye arrived. It looked like they were ahead of schedule slightly. So it was time to divert some of the constructicons to help with the languishing task of securing the underground entrance. The first thing that had happened there was several remote sensor packages were distributed across the dark recesses of the underground waterfront using a couple drones. Second on that list was camoflaging the entrance with some of his nanomaterials. For most intents and purposes, it would appear as a concrete wall, not unlike many others down here. Though there would be some signs of the construction for a small while after it's completion.

 When Faye arrived, she would come through under one of the piers, lift the device into the Underground cave, pack concrete materials in behind her, and then head for the underground entrance where she and the Ring could finally be safe. So far everything was going off without a hitch...he knew that would soon change.

 As an aside, he began to compile a list of potential recruits while monitoring the twin convoy's progress. Tips had been pouring in on dangerous activity or breakout activity from the GTUnited initiative tip-line. Displayed on a map, the entire thing looked random, but that was only over the course of days and weeks. When they had enough info, they could begin to assemble a general histogram of trending locations for power uses and breakouts of newly Gifted individuals.

 Here was one, a young Frank Jackson, by the look of it; and another, looked to be akin to that poor Cyclops kid from the comics, except his power erupted not from the boy's eyes but rather his mouth. He called the hospital he was currently at, he'd inadvertently collapsed part of his house on him and his family. Poor kid... "Yes, this is the GTF, I've heard that you are treating a dangerous Gifted in police custody..."

 "Boss, you OK?

 Brian slammed his phone onto the table with a crack. His brain flooded with too much flashing red indicators. Froggy was dead at the bottom of the friggin' ocean, along with Faye and the Ring. JOHNNY was here and that gave him some comfort, but he had lost contact with GIPS, couldn't find her. Faye, one of the few people he could call a colleague in a very true sense of the word, was missing at the bottom of the Atlantic.

 The Chief of Naval Operations had been on the other end of that call, in it Brian had apologized for the Namidian damage to the vessels, even as he strong-armed the man proverbially. His rudimentary hack of the Chief's personal accounts had indicated that he and his wife were planning to leave for Cuba, where he could drug her and go out to the local brothels, all this he gleaned from emails, purchases, text messages, phone calls and facetimebook comments.

 The man agreed, voice trembling, that this was indeed an unfortunate accident, that he should send the Coast Guard to the Atlantic Coordinates and expect a GTF specialist team sometime soon. Brian wondered silently if he should get the man indicted, he decided against it for now. He wondered if the tremble in the Chief's voice was fear or anger...

 He also wondered if Namidians liked to be fed their own liver's raw or cooked, he thought as he buried his head in his hands. He hadn't asked for this, it had been an unprecedented opportunity, now probably gone, maybe forever if they couldn't get to Faye, it hadn't been just Faye's vision, it was something shared.

 It's too much..., came the nagging pessimistic subconscious voice that only he was privy to.

 "Father, it's ok, let me help you..." came Lucy's voice from seemingly no-where, it startled Brian. She seemed to know his feelings in a way he had not anticipated, was it feedback from his connection to the building, or was she growing so fast?

 "Thank you Lucy, Johnny, I'm fine...you know," he replied mid-stride and then turned back to his desk and again struck the surface, "on second thought. Activate Code 11, lock Mr.Green's doors and knock him out via the his computer neural implant. Give it instructions to shut down his body, a coma is probably the best he deserves. Then we are going to extract every nuance of every neuron in his head. Copy it all onto our black box drives. Then we can sort out everything he knows. We're going to keep him on ice indefinitely, so we'll need to get a IVdrip on him soon. Yes, activate Nurse Jackie for that."

 Brian put his sunglasses back on and a layer of AR rose to great him on the HUD.

 "I never told anyone I was a hero, and they just burned down their only legitimate, functional and operable way of seeing that Ring ever, I mean ever. I thought Deiter would jump at the chance. Seems he's not as smart as he thought, eh JOHNNY? Lets get ahold of the Forward Team. We have to get to Faye."

 "He got too hungry, they all did. Patching you through Boss..."

 "Gwen? Good to hear that things are okay at your end. Yes, I know, uhuh, yep. I've got a truck steering to your location now. The jig is up, they somehow figured it out. I want you to sit things out and get your ribs looked at and get up here safe, I'll send the rest of the crew to the Atlantic, tell them to check their armor-comms for details...What?"

 "Yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, I know you can read minds, Meta out," he cut the line with an irritated flick motion, "Why does everyone keep asking me that?!"
This message was last edited by the player at 08:15, Fri 29 July 2016.

Non-Canon Battle Post - Only a Small Part of Things..

Mr. Green was pacing his room and wondering how this would all work for him. Dieter's goals for sending him here were beyond his ken. That man worked at levels ahead of everything. Sometimes, Mr. Green wondered if Dieter wasn't three steps ahead of his own walking. It was unnerving to watch; it was nerve-wracking to be a fly hovering near the spider's web.

"Huh? And just how is the Spider in this scenario?"

Suddenly, an audible click was heard from the door. Green spun and his eyes opened in shock. He was a prisoner, a hostage, basically but he had never been locked in.

<green<"You should have known that a man as pessimistic as Dieter would never let a technology like that exist."</green> It was hard to know if he was chastising himself or Meta at this point. He turned to look out the windows and his eyes narrowed then snapped shut as his flared his gift to full force. He had seconds to act.

Luckily, he had not been idle the last few days as he used his gift to slowly analyze his own material makeup. The process had been sped up by being able to compare the current scan to the old scans as well as having little else to do, but he was 90% complete at most.

"Teach me to procrastinate. Should have been done yesterday after all."

He mumbled even as he started the a process a bit earlier than intended. Inside his system, the vast network of artificial relays and systems that had woven into his system began to change. Even as he activated the changes though and focused on them, he felt other areas of the network begin to change in ways he was not initiating. He felt bioelectric currents racing through his body even as other areas of the network went inert.

He struggled but fell to a knee as several pounds of titanium manifested in his body. His muscles screamed and his bones cracked. It was pain beyond imagining, but he knew it was nothing compared to what both Meta and Dieter would do to him. Key frantically targeted key systems of his physiology to remove the threat, but adding titanium to those systems was no benefit. Where his muscles and bones were concerned, he would worry about them later. Here, in his heart, brain, and lungs he worked as frantically and as carefully as possible.

Finally, Mr. Green collapsed to the floor gasping like a fish. His right lung was paralyzed as well as 30% of his body. His heart still beat slowly and his brain was clean, but he was all but incapacitated. He fell to the floor and grunted what should have been a scream of pain and frustration. He had, at most, a few minutes before he was done. He had, at least, managed to kill himself. He prepped a last use of his powers and mentally put his finger on the trigger that would turn his brain into pudding, literally.

Analyze Pudding you miscreant billionaire fuck.

CANON BATTLE POST

"Boss, you OK?

Brian slammed his phone onto the table with a crack. His vision, no, his entire brain flooded with flashing red indicators. Froggy was dead at the bottom of the friggin' ocean, along with Faye and The Ring. JOHNNY was here and that offered some comfort, but he lost contact with GIPS; she just wasn't anywhere! Faye, one of the few people he could truly call a colleague, was missing at the bottom of the Atlantic.

The Chief of Naval Operations had been on the other end of that call. And in that "top-level" call, Brian had apologized for the Namidian damage to the vessels before strong-arming the man into letting the GTF take control of the recovery operation. His rudimentary hack of the Chief's personal accounts had indicated that he and his wife were planning to leave for Cuba, where he could drug her and go out to the local brothels. Since he gleaned all this from emails, purchases, text messages, phone calls, and FaceTimeBook comments - it really was a simple sleight-of-hand to uncover all his debauchery.

The man agreed, voice trembling, that it was indeed an unfortunate accident and that he should send the Coast Guard to the Atlantic Coordinates and expect a GTF specialist team sometime soon. Brian wondered silently if he should get the man indicted, but decided against it for now. Idly, he wondered if the tremble in the Chief's voice was fear or anger...

He also wondered if Namidians liked to be fed their own liver's raw or cooked as he buried his head in his hands. He hadn't asked for this: it had been an unprecedented opportunity now probably gone, maybe forever. If they couldn't get to Faye, it was over. It hadn't been just Faye's vision, it was his as well, but now she was the only one who could save it - if she was even still alive.

It's too much..., came the pessimistic subconscious voice that only he was privy to.

"Father, it's ok, let me help you..." came Lucy's voice from seemingly no-where, startling Brian. She seemed to know his feelings in a way he had not anticipated; was this empathy the product of his physiological connection to the building, or was his creation's mind really growing so fast?

"Thank you Lucy, Johnny, I'm fine...you know," he replied mid-stride and then turned back to his desk and again struck the surface. "On second thought, activate Code 11, lock Mr.Green's doors and knock him out via the his computer neural implant. Give it instructions to shut down his body, a coma is probably the best he deserves. Then we are going to extract every nuance of every neuron in his head. Copy it all onto our black box drives. Then we can sort out everything he knows. We're going to keep him on ice indefinitely, so we'll need to get a IV drip on him soon. Yes, activate Nurse Jackie for that."

Brian put his sunglasses back on and a thick layer of AR arose to greet him on the HUD.

"I never told anyone I was a hero, and they just burned down their only legitimate, functional and operable way of ever, ever seeing that Ring. I thought Dieter would jump at the chance to take it. Seems he's not as smart as he thought, eh JOHNNY? Lets get a hold of the Forward Team. We have to get to Faye."

"He got too hungry, they all did. Patching you through, Boss..."

"Gwen? Good to hear that things are okay at your end. Yes, I know, uhuh, yep. I've got a truck steering to your location now. The jig is up, they somehow figured it out. I want you to sit things out and get your ribs looked at and get up here safe. I'll send the rest of the crew to the Atlantic, tell them to check their armor-comms for details...What?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, I know you can read minds, Meta out," he cut the line with an irritated flick motion. "Why does everyone keep asking me that?!"

---

Elsewhere within the living compound, Mr. Green was pacing his room and wondering how this would all work out for him. Dieter's goals for sending him here were beyond his ken. That man worked at levels ahead of everything. Sometimes, Mr. Green wondered if Dieter wasn't three steps ahead of his own walking. It was unnerving to watch; it was even more nerve-wracking to be a fly hovering near the spider's web.

"Huh? And just who is the spider in this scenario?"

Suddenly, an audible click was heard from the door. Green spun and his eyes opened in shock. He was a prisoner, a hostage, basically, but he had never been locked in.

"You should have known that a man as pessimistic as Dieter would never let a technology like that exist!" screamed Green.

It was hard to know if he was chastising himself or Meta at this point. He turned to look out the windows. His eyes narrowed, then snapped shut as his Gift flared to full force. He had seconds to act.

Luckily, he had not been idle the last few days; he had been using his gift to slowly analyze his own material makeup. The process had been sped up by being able to compare the current scan to the old scans as well as having little else to do, but he was only 90% complete at most.

"Teach me to procrastinate. Should have been done yesterday."

He mumbled even as he started the a process a bit earlier than he had intended. Inside his body, the vast network of artificial relays and systems that Meta had woven into him began to warp and change. Even as he activated the changes and focused on them, he felt other areas of the network begin to change in ways he had not predicted. He felt bio-electric currents racing through his body even as various areas of his internal network went inert.

He struggled, but soon fell to one knee as several pounds of titanium manifested in his body. His muscles screamed and his bones cracked, but he'd worry about them later. It was pain beyond imagining, but it was nothing compared to what either Meta or Dieter would do to him. He frantically targeted key points in order to shut down Meta's invasion, but adding titanium to those systems was of little benefit. His heart, brain, and lungs were holding on even though their outer layers were being transformed; they clung to life as if something was willing them to live on for just a second more!

Finally, Mr. Green collapsed to the floor, gasping like a fish. His right lung was paralyzed as well as 30% of his body. His heart still beat slowly and his brain was clean, but he was all but incapacitated. He fell to the floor and grunted out what should have been a scream of pain and frustration. He had, at most, a few minutes before he was done. He prepped a last use of his powers and mentally put his finger on the trigger that would turn his brain into pudding, literally.

Analyze pudd-pudding, you miscreant billionaire fuuuuc-k.

For an instant, Mr. Green felt an incredible calm envelop him. Then he felt nothing as the whole world just turned off and his eyes rolled back into his head. Mr. Green's mangled body began to breathe struggled, belabored breaths once more. At the very zenith of his defiance, Meta had conquered him.

---

Brian let out a bitter, hoarse scoff of a laugh.

"Neither of them's as smart as they thought, JOHNNY."

A relatively detailed ITSDA file on Mr. Green sat on the computer screen in front of him; he had scrolled down to the "Personality Profile" section. Meanwhile, an X-Ray map of Green's internal network took up most of his HUD's real estate. Red areas on and near his most physiologically critical points, including his brain and the base of his spinal column, denoted targets Mr. Green was most likely to hit. Blue spots, including one hidden in a lymph node behind his ear, indicated "safe zones." And it was from the lymph node zone that his nano-machine minions had struck, rapidly disabling Mr. Green's consciousness the moment his neural implant's signal was interrupted.

It was not pretty, being truly prepared for the worst. But Meta had found that, when dealing with Namidians, it was necessary.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:00, Thu 08 Sept 2016.

The moment the chopper's wheels touched the helipad atop GTFUnited, Gwen knew things were far from well. The entire building radiated an aura of caution surrounding a tight nucleus of frustration and seething anger. It was as if the building and its master reflected her own soul at the moment. Despite Brian's insistence she sit this out, she wasn't about to be stopped by a small amount of physical pain... not when she knew she could help find Faye. It was yesterday that she had discovered what she was willing to cross lines for; the moment she realized that her connection with her partner was truly and absolutely silent.

That morning as the sun rose she left her hospital room, turning all eyes away from her as she made her way to the roof and the helipad that sat atop it. Without hesitation, she used her Gift to convince the crew of one med chopper that there was an emergency further into the city. As the chopper flew without a flight plan further into the city, it was quickly joined by police and news choppers; an escort that, after a moment of insisting they desist, quickly silenced and fell into a defensive formation. She knew as they approached the building that Brian's defenses would ID her, and wouldn't stop her from landing.

As she made her way to the opening door, she released the mass of people from her control. They would return to where they were supposed to be in an organized fashion, destroy all video recording devices and memory, then forget the entire incident. Shaking her head as she continued walking, she fully realized that she had been irrevocably changed. The memory of the encounter with the Bodhisattva was burned into her soul; the same place she could feel its tentacle of malice and ego writhing within her. She knew it had already corrupted her, the evidence was clear in the way her previous limitation of line-of-sight seemed to no longer be applicable, as well as in the way she had used it for personal gain at the expense of others without batting an eye. Making a note in her phone's journal, reminding her future self to meditate and seek acceptance of self through all change, she stepped into the elevator.

The door to Brian's office opened, and Vandal took the time to rap her knuckles a few times against the solid surface to let her boss know she was there. She seemed more reserved than usual, not her usual more carefree self; it was as though something heavy weighed on her mind, and for sure the burden she felt must have been great indeed if she were willing to interrupt Meta at such a delicate time.

 Brian had been deeply intent on finding out the whereabouts of Faye and he had spent who knew how long working on the issue. So far, to no avail. As far as he could tell there was no trace of her except the momentary signature of her location deep within the Atlantic Ocean half a world away. Satellite GPS seemed to be completely useless, likewise wifi traffic polling, facial recognition in the world wide surveillance networks and his latest, perhaps his most desperate attempts via googleplex-tubes uploaded videos. So he was disturbed already when Vandal knocked on the door to his workroom.

 He looked up from his work and peeled his glasses off and blinked away crusty sleep around his eyes. He was irritated already but he put that away in lieu of the proverbial weight that Sarah was carrying in her expression, "Sarah, hey, what's going on? Sorry I've been slightly incommunicado over the last few days."

Vandal took a deep breath, then walked into the office and up to Brian's desk allowing the door to shut behind her. She knew her boss wasn't in the best place emotionally, but if anything she hoped that would make him all the better to help her with her own problem.

"I know you've got a lot on your plate right now, but I needed to ask you something; what do you think of Frank?"