11:31 PM Hyperia Standard Time
Location: Unknown
It had been a long, uneventful day at the office. A man dressed in a black business suit sat at his desk, sifting through a stack of paperwork, ready to clock out for the night. As he glanced at the last few sheets and envelopes, glanced at the clock on the wall. It was about time he got some rest. He picked up his nearby briefcase, dumped the rest of the stack of papers into a desk drawer, and turned to leave the room.
As he did so, though, he turned around, surprised. A dull 'thunk'ing sound had been omitted when he had dropped his papers back into his desk. Pulling the stack out again, he quickly went through them again, this time looking more closely. After a few seconds, he found what he was seeking: a slim, unmarked envelope, slightly heavier than the rest. Opening it, the agent pulled out a small, handheld device similar to a cellular phone. There was only one button on the exterior of the device, and without hesitation, he pressed it.
The small screen powered on, and the image of another figure appeared.
"The Champions have been reported as MIA. You have clearance to activate phase two of Project Vigilance."
Agent White smiled. The time had finally come.
7:00 AM HST
Location: Hyperia Special Defense Force Training Facility
Three figures stood in front of a large five-story building. One was perched patiently on the stairs, resting her chin gently on her hands. while another was sitting down sucking on a lollipop. The third had its back to the others, looking around the area instead. It seemed casual, as though they were awaiting something. Out of nowhere, each of them perked up, as a voice spoke to them through their earpieces.
"The building is filled with armed hostiles. They have taken three hostages, which are all located on different floors. You have ten minutes to rescue the hostages before they are executed. Minimize collateral damage where possible."
The three looked at each other, nodding knowingly.
"Begin."
The words were heaven to Helen's ears. Codenamed "Overdrive", she was aptly named and did not enjoy wasting time. Then again, based on the mission, she really couldn't. And she wouldn't. Blasting through the doors at a blazing speed, she left her teammates in the dust. A five story building was nothing to Helen and she easily ran through the entire building, barely alerting the guards to her presence. After running what she could only really call "recon", she took a quick breather (not that she needed it) and popped back on the radio.
"Alrighty, we got hostages on floors 2, 4 and 5. Gotta bunch of baddies too with some automatic weapons. No biggie for me, but ya know, you guys can't exactly dodge bullets too easily," Helen said, basically taking the whole situation as barely anything to really worry about. "Your call on what you want me to do."
Harper gently sighed, as she watched her team-mate completely abandon ship.
"Does she think she can tak-" She looked up to see that her other teammate had already began walking off. She let out a second sigh. "Well, guess I better get my job done." Her expression oozed disappointment. She tapped her earpiece, to get a better reading of the situation inside. "Helen, I'm gonna need you to lay low for a sec, you think you can do that?" The patronising nature of her tone, stemmed from the difficulty she found in talking to her eccentric comrade.
After finding herself some leverage in the form of a small building, not far from the one they were supposed to be infiltrating, Harper popped her head up above the ledge to get a decent view. She noticed one of the bots look directly at her, and quickly withdrew to a prone position. She stared down at the roof beneath her with a scathing skepticism. Had her cover been blown? With a deep breath, she again tapped her earpiece in the hope that one of her squad mates had eyes on the bot that had spotted her. "Helen, where are you exactly?" She groaned, again with a sense of condescension in her tone. She took it upon herself to risk it and pop her head back above ledge. Annoying as it was that her blonde hair stood out so much in situations like this, she knew, neither: her parents, her friends, her boyfriend, nor Agent White would appreciate an act as bold as dying it.
Agent white feared civilians would make the connections, if her change in hair colour directly corresponded with that of the emerging hero 'spectrum'. Her parents seemed to have an uncanny pride in their golden blonde hair, which Harper herself identified with up until that very moment. Clearly her target seemed to find it pretty useful; since again, her bright, golden hair was glistening in the sunlight.
In a more panicked manner, she again tapped the earpiece. "Helen?" She repeated, attempting to mask her frustration as she did so.
"I'm hanging tight on the roof still, like you told me to...well basically told me to," she answered quickly. "What do you need?"
Harper clenched her body. The frustration began to build, as she couldn't act upon the news that her partner was on the roof. "There's a guy, I think he's on the third floor. I'm kind of worried he may have seen me. I need you to give me a heads up on how they've reacted." As her breaths shortened, so did her sentences. "Are they sending guys in my direction?" She asked, as she attempted to compose herself at the thought of a combat situation.
Bored of Harper's complaining, Helen rolled her eyes and sprinted through the complex again. To the robots, Helen wasn't a concept, as she bolted through the hallways quickly. She did not want to risk trying to grab the hostages at the moment for a couple reasons. One, she could risk harming them. And two, Harper (maybe Mai) may have been in some precarious situations. Helen seemingly spawned back on the roof after about five seconds of silence. "I don't think they know you are there. You are probably fine. They are centered around choke points and the hostages, so anyone going in not named me should . . . eh, not maybe. Want me to just cause a ruckus and draw their attention?"
Harper breathed a sigh of relief. "Alright slow down, I got an idea, but we need to know where Mai is. Having her wandering around on her own just scares me."She did her best to hide her hair, before, poking her head out for a third time. Then again, Helen in there by herself doesn't exactly fill me with confidence either. She came to the realisation in her head. To be honest, I kinda feel sorry for those robots a little. She chuckled at the thought. On that note, her attention switched to her other teammate. She pressed the button on her earpiece. "Mai . . . where exactly did you go?" She kept her hand on the button. Though she found working with Helen difficult, working with Mai was definitely not a better alternative.
"Well I assumed you would have followed me. It's not like I ran off like someone did." Mai's voice broke through the radio.
She had walked off after Helen ran, muttering to herself about her reckless teammate. It was hard to work as a team when no one would stay together. Of course, when she glanced back to say something to Harper, she'd noticed the girl had not followed her.
That wasn't Mai's fault, so she just kept walking.
Now she was somewhere within the building, hugging the wall as she carefully made her way through.
"So, what's your plan? I assume you have one if you're looking for me."
"We're going to need to split up." Harper suggested, while checking over her shoulder.
Mai frowned. "I think we've already got that covered, dear."
"Let's not get smart." Harper began with a sigh. "I meant at the hostage points." She rolled her eyes. "Right now, I've got eyes on floors two and four. I can block the stairways on each of those, so that means which ever of us get floors four and five will have to share. Think you're capable of that Mai, or do you want floor two?" She taunted with a slight snicker.
"Get smart? I'd like to think I'm already there," Mai retorted. "And I'm on floor three at the moment. I can take whichever. Going down one floor isn't a large trek, and I assume it'd be faster for you to get into the higher floors from where you are."
"Alright, contact me when you get there, and don't attract any attention. I need to pass the word on to Helen." She clicked her earpiece, and switched over to Helen. "I'm gonna make this quick, since you're on the roof I need you to get on floor five, I'll handle the rest." She didn't take the time to listen to any response Helen may have given, before switching to her neutral dial. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to initiate the plan until both floors had been occupied.
Helen sighed at the order, but eventually conceded. All she wanted to do was barge through and finally decided to somewhat rebel on her orders. Bolting off from the roof, Helen barged through the fifth floor, disarming the few robots on her first pass before clubbing them with their own weapons on the second. It was a blitz with the guards not knowing what hit them in the couple seconds of action. A gust of wind was left in the wake of everything and Helen was pleased with her own work. Harper's approach was taking too long and considering the time limit, she was strongly considering knocking out the rest of the building and letting the other two secure the hostages. That probably was the sharpest idea, but Helen didn't really care at this point. Approaching the hostage, Helen patted "her" on the back before radioing in: "Hostage secured, in case you were wondering."
"Helen, what the hell?" Harper began shouting in frustration. "I thought we were doing this as a team." Her voice softened for the statement. It was hopeless now. She tapped her earpiece again. "Mai, Helen's gone rogue, we're gonna have to improvise." It wasn't even worth trying to feign composure-she was annoyed. "You take floor two, I'll try to cover you when I get done with floor four. It could get sticky since one of us will get all the floor three guards and I'm pretty sure you'll get stuck with floor one's as well. Good luck." After explaining how she'd analysed the situation, she looked up, to see a cluster of guards all making their way to the fifth floor. "Thank you, Helen." She groaned to herself sarcastically.
"You're welcome, by the way," Helen said at the rogue remark. "Ain't like planning something out for five minutes is going to pause the clock or anything. But if you really don't want my help and insist on working together in a scenario that I could easily dispatch half of your problems in the blink of an eye, fine! Go be a hero without the speedster~"
With another sigh, something she'd been doing a lot that day, she took to her feet and extended her arms in the stance of an archer drawing a bow. In her left hand formed the arch of a rainbow; she used her right to slide through the spectrum and draw the green strand, which extended backwards akin to the string on a bow. As Harper pulled the green strand out of the rainbow, an arrow of the same colour also stretched with it. She took a short moment to breath in. With the release of her breath, she released the arrow, straight through the open window of the fourth floor.
Harper's body materialised on the spot where the arrow landed. The young hero was greeted by a mob of guards, holding guns.
"I hate Helen." She sighed, as she quickly fired an orange arrow at the ground to block the incoming bullets. She was surrounded by an orange, spherical light shield. Fourteen guards huh. She looked around at the confused mass, who were waiting for her shield to dissipate. A few tried to fire at it in the hope that their bullets could penetrate the force field. With an empathetic sigh, she clicked the button on her earpiece. "Mai, please tell me you're having more luck than me."
Back on the second floor, Mai was working her way through the halls silently. She'd avoided alerting any of the guards so far, but they would no doubt kick into action momentarily due to the disturbance on the higher floors.
She found a door with a small window on it. The door was made of steel, and inside was the hostage.
How cliché.
She tried the handle. Locked, of course. Breaking it down wasn't really an option.
She pressed her finger to her earpiece. "I've about got it. The guards haven't noticed me, but I'm sure your little antics upstairs have them on high alert. Chances are I'll walk into a trap in just a few seconds, but that's okay."
My antics? Harper frowned to herself.
Mai returned her attention to the barrier in front of her.
She'd have to go through it.
She concentrated on her form, clearing her mind of distractions. She wasn't very good at this part yet.
She felt her body soften and evaporate around her. Her arms became smoke-like, followed by the rest of her body.
This still felt weird as all Hell.
She laughed a little at her own joke.
She maneuvered her Nether form to the ground, where she began to seep through the crack under the door. It was slime, practically nonexistent, but she managed to fit through it.
The instant she was on the other side, she returned to her corporeal form. She didn't want to be like that any longer than she needed to. She ran over to the hostage, only to be stopped by two guards that had been standing off to the side.
If two was all she had to face, then this was going to be easy.
She heard the door slam open behind her. Psyduck. She'd gone and jinxed herself. Well, at least that meant she wouldn't have to get the door open in order to get out now.
She slowly glanced around the room, keeping as many of the guards in her field of view as she could. She counted twenty. Okay, a little more difficult than two, but still manageable.
"I was right about that trap thing," she muttered through her earpiece.
"Loud and clear. I'll try to back you up when I can." Harper responded. At this point she was sitting down, while being eagerly watched by the guards on standby. She looked up a them. "So, do you guys talk at all or...?" She received no reply. A few of the hostiles were sent upstairs to deal with the situation on the fifth floor, as they lost patience with the fourth floor situation. "Wait guys." Harper called out, encouraging intrigue from both those who had been ordered upstairs and those who had just arrived from downstairs. "You guys know that light can pass through light, right?" The expressions of the guards resembled that of confusion. She grinned, before again conjuring her colourful bow.
This time, the violet strand was the one to be pulled back. Instead of firing at an enemy, or at a certain spot, Harper fired the arrow at her shield. Everything within the large semi-sphere was no longer visible to everything outside of it. Only down side is that the hostage was outside bubble. A minor inconvenience.
The guard who was holding the hostage felt a sharp pain in his crotch, urging him to clutch on to it in agony. She stuck her tongue out at the squirming guard. Obviously he couldn't see the insulting gesture, but the intent was there.
Realising that the other guards were now acting upon what they'd just seen, Harper grabbed the hostage and dragged him to the window that she'd come in through. He was far too shocked and scared to put up any resistance. The guards didn't seem interested in helping their 'spontaneously' injured friend anymore. They seemed intent on recovering the hostage.
She drew the green strand, upon doing so, her body was once again visible to everyone in the room. The arrow was fired through the man leaning over the windowsill, and landed on the roof Harper had been on earlier, the hostage now reappeared where the arrow landed.
With guns again cocked against her back, and an open window four stories high in front of her, Harper only really had one choice. She quickly dove head first out of the window, with a couple of bullets flying out of the same window behind her.
As she fell, she quickly drew the green strand.
"Gotta get this right." She uttered, while trying to concentrate under the great forces acting upon her as she fell. She let go of her bow as she reached the window of the second floor. Before she even reached the window of the first floor, she re-materialised in what seemed to be some sort of storage room. Of course being upside down didn't exactly help her orientation skills. When she did manage to get a look at her surroundings, she noticed a woman tied to a chair and a woman standing in front of that woman, being harassed by two large men. "Mai!" She shocked herself with her own enthusiasm. It took her standing up, for her to realise she was still in a combat situation. "Soooo, traps. I get it now." She groaned, as she stared down the fifteen plus guards that her comrade was about to face.
"Nice of you to drop by," Mai remarked, noticing Harper out of the corner of her eye.
She returned her full attention to the guards surrounding her. The two that she'd seen when entering the room stood between her and the hostage, and the others dotted the perimeter of the room, slowly closing in around Mai. One hostage, twenty guards. This wouldn't be too difficult.
She lurched forward before sharply turning and getting low to the ground, confusing the guard as he blocked upwards at first. She kicked his feet out from under him, brought her hand up and shot a concentrated blast of celestial energy into the second guard, sending him flying. She pulled out a dagger and, in one swift movement, cut the hostage free from her bindings.
She grabbed the hostage by the hand and pulled her to her feet, running towards the door. The other guards lunged at Mai and hostage. Mai pulled the android woman in close to her, waving her right hand through the air and opening a dark tear in the atmosphere. She ripped it open wider as a handful of guards neared her. The black hole sucked them into the abyss, getting rid of them permanently. She swiped her hand through the air a second time, opening a lighter tear through which a barrage of alien stone poured out, striking three other guards and knocking them out.
By her count, eleven guards remained.
She glanced at Harper, then back at the hostage and the second tear in front of them. She grabbed the edges of the tear and molded it, before throwing it towards Harper. She opened a third tear and pushed the hostage through it, causing the android to reappear through the tear she'd thrown at Harper.
"Take her!" Mai commanded as she closed the second and third tear.
"But..." Harper began to respond in protest.
The final eleven guards circled Mai.
The first tear was still open, however, and she could feel herself being pulled towards it.
Muk.
She looked at the black hole. It was slowly expanding and trying to consume as much of the world around it as it could. Two more guards were suddenly sucked into the void. She needed to close it before it got out of hand.
She ducked under one guard and then launched herself off of the arm and then head of a second, gaining an aerial view. She crossed her arms and let black sparks dance across her frame, loosing three bolts of black lightning that rained down upon the guards. One caught fire and two more were knocked back, with the electricity shorting their circuits.
She landed by the black hole, slamming her hands against its edges as she attempted to close it. It barely budged. She reached her hands into it and tried to pull it closed. She gritted her teeth and dug her heels into the ground, trying to gain a better foothold.
The six remaining guards, the idiots that they were, decided to try and attack her while she was fixing the problem. The effort of closing the hole was a strain, and the stress of that combined with the stimuli of six pairs of arms lashing out at her caused her to unintentionally shake the earth around her. Tremors wracked the room and darkness seeped out of cracks in the ground, congealing into a dark mist that swirled around Mai.
She let out a yell as she quickly turned and caused the ground beneath the guards to erupt in a spray of concrete and shadows, immediately returning her hands to the tear as she hoped the last of the guards had been dispatched.
With one final, strained grunt, she managed to close the rip in the dimensions, practically collapsing afterwards as she tried and catch her breath.
"Note to self," she muttered. "Black holes are annoying as muk to handle."
A small chime sounded in the team's earpieces.
"Simulation Complete. Proceed to debriefing."
---
Agent White stood at the base of the building, not far from where the team had started their mission. As they approached, he scowled.
"That was sloppy. It took you eight minutes to secure the hostages. I know normal agents who could have done it in five."
Helen scoffed at the criticism and turned her head away: "Well, if Harper let me do what I wanted, it would have been done in like three minutes. But noooo, we had to do it all team-like with a slowpoke and someone who goes off the grid for a few minutes."
Harper glared at her teammate in response to the outrageous remark. She daren't be foolish enough to start arguing with her Helen in front of Agent White.
"Sorry, I'll try to be faster next time." She feigned remorse. She didn't need Helen or Mai to buy into the act; as long as Agent White did, it hardly mattered.
"The time for training has come to an end." Agent white continued, in the same matter-of-fact tone. "The Champions, the so-called 'guardians of the city', vanished during a fight with one of their particularly powerful nemeses. I have received clearance to put you three in the field. It's time to show Hyperia that we are just as capable of defending her as these costumed vigilantes."
Mai crossed her arms and cocked her hip, taking on a more interested expression. It seemed like the were actually about to do something interesting.
"I have also received word that Binary, the last remaining Champion, has attempted to assemble his own ragtag team of street mutants. I doubt a team of agents such as yourselves will have any trouble dealing with them."
With that, Agent White turned around, and began to walk towards the training facility exit. Without even so much as looking back, he addressed the three female agents for the final time that night:
"I'll contact you with your orders in eight hours."