Jumping on the Legendary 'Fic bandwagon. Morgan, this is all new material, pursuant to my latest email to you - I still wanna do that, just need to make it
Dramatically Correct.
Face rigid around his unlit cigar, the armored figure stepped out of a bricked-in niche, then turned to watch a section of wall as it pivoted silently closed
behind him. The wall sealed up with nary a crack or crevice to show that it opened out, and he nodded once, sharply.
He drew a gauntlet off, clipping it to his suit's belt, and pulled a lighter from a storage pocket. Firing up his cigar, he puffed reflectively on it,
until the orange glow of the cherry stood out solid and true. Re-donning the gauntlet, he smacked himself on the top of the helmet once to settle things, and
made a swift sequence of hand gestures. The suit powered the rest of the way up with a subliminal hum, and the alley was left empty, the solid blue suit
powering towards the sky of King's Row, careless of the frost and ice left behind.
Tales of The Legendary: a Return to the Streets.
The late eighties were not a good time to be a hero. My initial blodlust for the punishment of the Crey corporation had faded, and the moral and ethical
problems cropping up in and around the Heroing culture were in no way a valid replacement. My drive had gone, and in late '87, I put away the suit - I
thought, for good.
2008 saw me depressed, fidgety, and in a slump. I was spending more and more time tinkering and rebuilding my suit, and Mrs. Mag called me on it. I was still
fit and capable at 44 years old, and the suit was better now than it ever had been, thanks to 21 years of experience and further development in the basic
technology. In retrospect, I had never completely abandoned heroing, merely ducked 'behind the scenes' to do R&D for other heroes. According to the
Mrs., I wanted and needed to get back on the streets, and she's almost always right.
So here I was, launching through the night air of King's Row, ice sheeting over the exposed metal, the Helmet Field cold and quiet, everything 100% - and
the redesigned air handler keeping my cigar puffing nicely. I touched down on a rooftop and went vertical, the Superjump module letting the suit do the work. I
scanned my surroundings from hundreds of feet up, noting that my vision wasn't as sharp as when I was 25 anymore. The green glow was new, and probably
something unhealthy. Perfect.
I angled down towards it, aiming for a three point landing just shy of the green glow, and biffed it completely. I landed on some dude in a robe, crushing him
to the pavement. I slapped an 'arrest tag' on him and he was gone before I was back on my feet, staring at four more dudes in robes, and a ghost thing,
all arranged in a semicircle. At the center of this semicircle was a young lady, mid twenties, hovering in midair and.. glowing. Screaming, too. For a second,
noone moved.
I kicked into full combat mode, and as the quivery, "walking on a mattress" feeling of the combat jump module kicked in, I was already on my way,
wading past the poor floating gal before levelling Robe #2 with a rather nice right hook. Robe #3 and #4 jumped in on me with swords, clattering along the ice
like a stick on a fence, and a grin lit my face. I heard a thwack, and paused in my assault to look to the side, where Robe #5 had drawn a crossbow and shot me
in the side of the head. There wasn't even an appreciable change in the field, so I just shot him the bird, and turned back to his buddies, using that
minor momentum to make another right hook into Robe #4's kidneys, sending him down as well. #3 turned to flee, and I grabbed the back of his robe one
handed, and made an intricate hand motion with the other.
Icicles sprang out, neatly skewering robe #3 several times. I changed my grip on the poor dumb jerk, and examined him a little closer. The Icicles had shredded
robe, light body armor, light clothing, and some skin, but they hadn't penetrated much beyond epidermis - or at least not badly enough that a combat
evaluation could find. I grinned around the cigar a little wider, tagged #3 with an open-palmed slap upside his knuckle head, and dropped one on #4.
#5 was still sending crossbow bolts at me as fast as he could, and the ghost-thing had 'vanished', though since the gal was still held in the middle of
the freaking air, I figured it was nearby. #5 dropped his crossbow when I turned to him, and as he spun around to run, I made another 'hand dance', and
kicked on my last trick of the night. He jerked almost to a halt as the supercold air froze on his clothing, and I nearly bit my cigar in half as I stepped
forward, 'donked' him on his melon, and tagged him.
I spun and considered the scene, 5 robed dudes tagged and gone now, one poor lady dangling in midair, and an 'invisible' ghost thing. A hand-dance
later, my armor kicked in it's vision enhancements, and I saw the ghost thing peeking out from behind a chimmney of some sort. A nice one-two combo and it
went down, screaming into true insubstantiality even before I could get a tag on it. I made it back to the center of the rooftop in time to catch the young
lady and lift her gently to the ground as the green glow faded. She panted for a few seconds, then thanked me and ran off.
I was smiling as I shot through the night, afterwards, but puzzled - it had been far too easy. I landed on an unoccupied rooftop and pulled up the packet I had
gotten from City Hall when I re-registered as a Hero. They had assigned me a security level of 44, amusingly enough, and a comment that the registration guy
had made struck me. "have fun in Peregrine", he'd said. I'd never been in Peregrine Island, a major industrial complex, but given the
performance of the new systems, it seemed worth a shot.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
Dramatically Correct.
Face rigid around his unlit cigar, the armored figure stepped out of a bricked-in niche, then turned to watch a section of wall as it pivoted silently closed
behind him. The wall sealed up with nary a crack or crevice to show that it opened out, and he nodded once, sharply.
He drew a gauntlet off, clipping it to his suit's belt, and pulled a lighter from a storage pocket. Firing up his cigar, he puffed reflectively on it,
until the orange glow of the cherry stood out solid and true. Re-donning the gauntlet, he smacked himself on the top of the helmet once to settle things, and
made a swift sequence of hand gestures. The suit powered the rest of the way up with a subliminal hum, and the alley was left empty, the solid blue suit
powering towards the sky of King's Row, careless of the frost and ice left behind.
Tales of The Legendary: a Return to the Streets.
The late eighties were not a good time to be a hero. My initial blodlust for the punishment of the Crey corporation had faded, and the moral and ethical
problems cropping up in and around the Heroing culture were in no way a valid replacement. My drive had gone, and in late '87, I put away the suit - I
thought, for good.
2008 saw me depressed, fidgety, and in a slump. I was spending more and more time tinkering and rebuilding my suit, and Mrs. Mag called me on it. I was still
fit and capable at 44 years old, and the suit was better now than it ever had been, thanks to 21 years of experience and further development in the basic
technology. In retrospect, I had never completely abandoned heroing, merely ducked 'behind the scenes' to do R&D for other heroes. According to the
Mrs., I wanted and needed to get back on the streets, and she's almost always right.
So here I was, launching through the night air of King's Row, ice sheeting over the exposed metal, the Helmet Field cold and quiet, everything 100% - and
the redesigned air handler keeping my cigar puffing nicely. I touched down on a rooftop and went vertical, the Superjump module letting the suit do the work. I
scanned my surroundings from hundreds of feet up, noting that my vision wasn't as sharp as when I was 25 anymore. The green glow was new, and probably
something unhealthy. Perfect.
I angled down towards it, aiming for a three point landing just shy of the green glow, and biffed it completely. I landed on some dude in a robe, crushing him
to the pavement. I slapped an 'arrest tag' on him and he was gone before I was back on my feet, staring at four more dudes in robes, and a ghost thing,
all arranged in a semicircle. At the center of this semicircle was a young lady, mid twenties, hovering in midair and.. glowing. Screaming, too. For a second,
noone moved.
I kicked into full combat mode, and as the quivery, "walking on a mattress" feeling of the combat jump module kicked in, I was already on my way,
wading past the poor floating gal before levelling Robe #2 with a rather nice right hook. Robe #3 and #4 jumped in on me with swords, clattering along the ice
like a stick on a fence, and a grin lit my face. I heard a thwack, and paused in my assault to look to the side, where Robe #5 had drawn a crossbow and shot me
in the side of the head. There wasn't even an appreciable change in the field, so I just shot him the bird, and turned back to his buddies, using that
minor momentum to make another right hook into Robe #4's kidneys, sending him down as well. #3 turned to flee, and I grabbed the back of his robe one
handed, and made an intricate hand motion with the other.
Icicles sprang out, neatly skewering robe #3 several times. I changed my grip on the poor dumb jerk, and examined him a little closer. The Icicles had shredded
robe, light body armor, light clothing, and some skin, but they hadn't penetrated much beyond epidermis - or at least not badly enough that a combat
evaluation could find. I grinned around the cigar a little wider, tagged #3 with an open-palmed slap upside his knuckle head, and dropped one on #4.
#5 was still sending crossbow bolts at me as fast as he could, and the ghost-thing had 'vanished', though since the gal was still held in the middle of
the freaking air, I figured it was nearby. #5 dropped his crossbow when I turned to him, and as he spun around to run, I made another 'hand dance', and
kicked on my last trick of the night. He jerked almost to a halt as the supercold air froze on his clothing, and I nearly bit my cigar in half as I stepped
forward, 'donked' him on his melon, and tagged him.
I spun and considered the scene, 5 robed dudes tagged and gone now, one poor lady dangling in midair, and an 'invisible' ghost thing. A hand-dance
later, my armor kicked in it's vision enhancements, and I saw the ghost thing peeking out from behind a chimmney of some sort. A nice one-two combo and it
went down, screaming into true insubstantiality even before I could get a tag on it. I made it back to the center of the rooftop in time to catch the young
lady and lift her gently to the ground as the green glow faded. She panted for a few seconds, then thanked me and ran off.
I was smiling as I shot through the night, afterwards, but puzzled - it had been far too easy. I landed on an unoccupied rooftop and pulled up the packet I had
gotten from City Hall when I re-registered as a Hero. They had assigned me a security level of 44, amusingly enough, and a comment that the registration guy
had made struck me. "have fun in Peregrine", he'd said. I'd never been in Peregrine Island, a major industrial complex, but given the
performance of the new systems, it seemed worth a shot.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies