Public School 78 - Sacramento, California
A child's computer? Xyber thought confused. Easily enough remedied...
Suddenly, the child sitting at the computer found himself staring at the Blue Screen of Death and, confused about what to do, simply sat and stared at the console. Meanwhile, inside the inner workings, Xyber went to work.
Alright, she thought, making her way towards the network cable. A public school computer should be hooked up to the Internet, so making my way through the network cable, I should be able to find my way into any computer in the world with Internet access... the trick is finding a computer that can give me access to the blueprints for that reprehensible armor...
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Brazil
Crasher's eyes widened in horror as the ground below her began to get closer and closer. She yelled for Xyber, but the voice didn't answer. What the hell was wrong? Why was the suit suddenly plummeting toward the ground?
...the last thing on Crasher's mind as she collided with the Earth was her profound hope that Xyber had not disengaged the shock absorbers...
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The World Wide Web
Xyber's web searches were coming up short. Most of the sites she found had something to do with nerdy medieval armor collectors and nothing to do with the piece of machinery she'd been thrown out of twice.
Then, it dawned on her: the Gaia Unit. Having managed to catch a piece of data on this odd item, Xyber decided it in her best interests to do a quick web search for this item that she'd never before heard of...
And, sure enough, moments later, a website came up with information on just what a Gaia Unit was. The only problem was that the information was heavily encrypted and stored on one nigh-inpenetrable hard drive.
If I can hack spy satellites and the CIA mainframe, Xyber thought, rubbing her hands together, then I sure as hell can beat this thing...
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Chicago
Federal agent Allison Martinson sat in her room, holding in her hands a letter of declination from the Federal Bureau of Investigation for admittance into the new MAW branch. Sighing, she sank into her easy chair and took a swig of her beer.
She had been invaluable to the Bureau during the Chicago riots and now the only thing she had to show for it was a scar on her cheek and a year of her life wasted in spending tiem with metahumans under the ground. A year that she could never get back.
And now, those bureaucrats wanted to keep her out of a branch that she should've been heading up! And who got the position? Fisher... that punk-faced, brown-nosed little weasel! After all that she had sacrificed in that name of doing the right thing. In the name of her country.
Her fiancee had abandoned her earlier that year. Her mission was so secret that she couldn't risk him knowing the truth. So, he thought she was a meta... and married her friend Suzanne two months later. Her parents had been killed in the Chicago massacre. Her older brother Jay was currently employed as a detective on the Stanley, Illinois police force... and hadn't so much as attempted to contact his family for months.
She was alone. Truly alone.
And had nothing else to live for.
She sighed again and took another swig of beer, unaware of a change occuring within her at the genetic level...
One of these days, she sighed, things are gonna start looking up...
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The 'Net
Things are starting to look up, Xyber thought with glee as she decrypted the final code and found herself staring at the blueprints to the armor that she had just battled. Detailed drawings and descriptions of every part of the armor were being downloaded directly into her mind as she scanned each one of them.
Then, she saw something familiar. That crystal. Some kind of power source for the thing called the Gaia Unit.
Xyber slowed her search as she took this information in, wanting to catch as much of it as possible.
It's not a real crystal... Xyber thought as she stared pensively at the data before her. It's a sentient biological, magical... thing. ... I've never seen anything like this before...
Downloading those specs into her repository of knowledge, she finished her readout of the data and exited the computer system... all before anyone was alerted to her presence.
Oh, Xyber was that good, alright. She was the best there was at what she did... and no little sentient crystal was going to make her compromise what she knew to be true of herself.
It kicked me out of the system twice, Xyber thought, her digital form travelling through the Web at cyberspeed. Never again. I'll be ready for that prickish little crystal this time. Only one way I know to work around biological components... and that's by making them sick...
If Xyber had a face, you can bet there'd be a smile spread across it from ear-to-ear. She was coming back... and this time, nothing was going to be able to stop her.
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Brazil
Arges swung his hammer hard at the dragon before him, nearly ramming the beast in the ribs as he swung. Saliva ran from his mouth as he grunted at the dragon.
"I've fought such as you before, dragon," Arges said, gritting his teeth. "You are nowhere near as agile and nimble as the great Babylonian, Bahamut!"
"Listen, Polyphemus..." Drax began.
"ARGES!" the Cyclops roared as Drax dodged his axe and hammer.
"Whatever," Drax said, taking off the ground a little ways. "I just wanna know why you were attacking my friend over there?"
"Business," Arges said, wiping the saliva from his lip. "Nothing more than business..."
And, with that, the Cyclops leapt onto the dragon's back, pulling at his long hair...
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Elsewhere...
"If you know what'd good for you," the Luckiest Man in the World said, holding up his hand, "you'll put those guns away and let me go."
"Fat chance, nudist," X-Acute sneered. "Now I suggest you slide the map over my way, unless you want a face full of lead..."
"Don't push me to any extremes," Chance said, looking askance at Pete as he spoke. "I already don't like your attitude... and you really don't know what you're dealing with when you deal with me..."
"What am I? Oprah?!" X-Acute asked, rolling his eyes. "All I care about is that map. Now... hand it over!"
Chance heard the gun cock as Pete muttered something unintelligible beside him.
"Alright," Chance said, clenching his jaw. "You asked for it..."
BLAM!
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Outside...
Johnny Omicron's eyes narrowed.
Edulcore Cicciotto's eyes did the same.
Johnny quickly flicked his wrist to the side, causing a long titanium sword to emerge from a gauntlet on his arm and fall into his hand. Being a self-made millionaire had made Jonathon Wilkes a very skilled swordsman, and he was betting that an Olympic runner and short-order cook like Cicciotto had never had his training with a sword... despite the impressive blade he carried in his hand.
"You have a sword, too?" the Italian spat, his voice dripping with malcontent.
"I do," Omicron nodded, his armor already tabulating the various ways this battle could play out.
"To the death, then?" Raptor said, grinning.
"I have no interest in killing you, Cicciotto," Omicron said. "Just in doing whatever it takes to get that map before you do..."
"You... you know who I am?"
Omicron smiled. "My team recognized you from footage taken at the museum," Omicron got into a standard fencing stance, preparing to fight. "That gave us the information we need to find all the information we could on your little group... making us one hundred percent prepared to take you on."
"We'll see about that," Euro said, taking his stance and pulling Ladnikia from her scabbard. "And you shouldn't be so slow to kill me, Omicron... because I certainly won't be slow to kill you..."
"So, it begins," Jonathon quipped, raising his blade to his head in salute.
"It does," the winged swordsman answered...
