"Please could you gather at the firing range?" was porbably the most polite way anyone has ever woke me up. It was about half past six in the morning, and for some reason Caleb thought it was too late for all of us to stay asleep, even though we stayed up late into the night, training, as usual.
I put on some random clothes I had lying around in my room, and rushed out of the door, just to promptly bump into literally everyone. I guess it was everyone he woke up through the speakers. We exchanged some confused looks, and decided it was better to do our usual five minute walk to the training grounds.
Once we finally arrived, we saw Caleb already there, with a prepared table, for some reason. Quite a big one at that, and also a whiteboard behind him. He urged us to sit down in the chairs he placed around the table, assumedly with the help of those robots that are running around.
"I am terribly sorry to have woken you, but I have very important news regarding your 'friend' Claire's whereabouts," he mimicked quotation marks when saying the word 'friend', "As we have thought, she has indeed become a hero by this date, and we also have managed to find her current alias, [Medusa]. Let me explain her abilities to those who have not met her yet," he turned around to the board, where he already had some details written down, as well as one of those usual detective story like red strings, connecting a bunch of sightings, agency names, newspaper cutouts, as well as some pictures of her current costume.
She seemed to wear a sort of hazmat suit, covering most of her body, with a headpiece that had multiple pipes coming out of it. I guess that's the reason for the name, then. Her wweird getup made me think. I thought she was a usual flashy girl, so I assumed she'd go with a more super-girl looking bodytight catsuit, or something. But for some reason a hazmat suit...
"Caleb, do you have any info on her [Power] affecting her body?" I asked, after he finished his explanation.
"I'm sorry sir, but I don't quite understand-" he started.
"The hazmat suit. Could her acid poison burn her own body, is what I'm asking," I explained.
Everyone looked at me with suspicious eyes. Like as if I said something wrong, then finally Francis opened his mouth.
"Just because she's a girl, she doesn't have to be as indecent, as other girls, you might know," he said that with a stern expression, while also glancing over to Meda.
"You want a beating, punk?" she hissed back.
"You wanna go?" Franco replied.
I unleashed just a surge of my Binders, tying them to their chairs. They looked at me with some serious killing intent.
"We're in the middle of briefing. Don't start anything," I commanded. They relaxed themselves a bit, so I let them go, "I knew her for quite a bit of time. She was always showing her body off. Afterall, she was the definition of a slut. The reason I thought it might have an affect, is literally that," I explained myself.
Caleb covered his mouth, while looking towards the ground, turned around, and started to examine all the evidence he had gathered, but soon he shook his head, and turned back.
"I am very sorry My Lord, but I cannot show any evidence for that claim," he said while bowing down his head.
"It's alright. We can try something either way," I responded.
"Onto our main objective," Caleb got back into his military-esque state of mind, "We'll be going to the D.U.A, specifically to Los Angeles," he stated.
The Despotic Union of the Americas was a newly founded country, built on the ruins of the old United States, which fell in the Third World War, just about twenty years ago, in the 2030s. Coincidentally, I was actually from a nearby town, just to the north of it.
Contrary to what the city was supposedly like before the war, it was heavily nuked by Russia, and now was an almost total wasteland, with only a few hundred residents, most of whom are either criminals, or social outcasts. It makes a lot of sense for a hero to go there. Especially, if she went to the most famous school, just a hundred miles from it.
Heracleon had a sort of tradition of sending graduates to LA just to test their mettle. I even had to go there, but I decided to hide in an old hangar for most of the time spent there. Think of it as a graduation requirement, to come back alive. Not that it was official, but if you didn't go, you had a lower chance of graduating properly.
"I know a place we could use as a temporary hideout, if you're interested," I offered up that experience.
"Very well Sir, let's hear about it," Caleb replied.
I then described the place. I spent a week there afterall, so I knew a lot about it. I went into details, about the surroundings, as well as the inner structures, the parcels the buildings are devided into, and the potential pre-war weaponry that might be there.
"And, may I ask My Lord, do you think this is entirely safe?" Caleb asked the obvious question.
"Of course I don't. Is this island safe? And before you answer, just think of what happened a few days ago," I replied as cunningly as I could.
"You are right Sir, I apologize," he kneeled down, waiting some sort of heavenly punishment.
"What are you doing?" I asked without regard.
"Awaiting punishment," he replied, not moving an inch.
"Get up already. We have more to discuss," I said with a stern voice.
His attitude was making me happy of course, but I just didn't know how to deal with it, and him being my direct subordinate, I didn't really have any space to tell him how I want him to act. He'd probably take that as an order, or something. I'll have to tell him some other way in the future, but it's not like I've known him for ages.
With that, we started discussing necessities, such as supplies, fallback routes, and the sort. We decided to depart later on that day, and so we went back to our rooms to pack up.
Obviously, one of the main things to do, was to prepare our weapons, gear, and rations. After that came all the extras, that weren't necessary, but were more advised to bring along than not. That included extra clothes, bathroom accessories, et cetera. Logically speaking, and strictly sticking to the mission itself, these weren't important.
In only a few hours, we were packed, and ready to go. We brought all of our stuff, and had the robots pack them into a plane, that was prepared for us. We decided to go with a model that had camouflage, just in case the air defences in the area were active, but one that accomodated for a few hours of flight.
With our modern tech, this thousand mile journey wouldn't take too long, but we might have to stay above the city for some time before landing. If anything goes up in fire, we might even have to evacuate immediately, so we opted for a more luxurious ride. Also Meda was throwing a fit over not wanting to sit in an uncomfortable chair for more than a minute.
We finally left at around 6 p.m. UTC. The ride was nice, as we thought. We even had some cold drinks for the hot weather, and even some snacks. Now that's what I call high-tech villainy.
Sadly, or well maybe luckily, we didn't have time to experience this ride at it's fullest, as we arrived in less than an hour, landed and everything. There was no problem whatsoever, and we parked in one of the side hangars of the airport, just as planned. We quickly scouted the area, fully ready for a potential fight with some locals, who made this their base of operations, but no one really came this far out of the center of the town. That's where all the supposed pre-war resources were left behind.
By the time night fell, we already set up everything, and we used the opened up jet as our mainframe. We collected all our weapons there, all the information we could use, and Caleb.
Well, I said we collected all our stuff there, but really, our weapons and gear would actually just come with us into the city straight away. It was time for information gathering. We decided to leave Baulder behind with Caleb, as he wasn't really all that much of a talker, and he really was good at defence. And just like that, the three of us geared up, and left.
We knew this would become a long walk, but for better or worse, we didn't bring any land vehicles.
Now that's what I call an oversight.