Esther was furious when she heard the news. Someway, somehow, the Rainbow Shirts always found the single most incompetent way to bungle an operation. In spite of having vastly superior equipment to every other force in the city, they were all holed up at Trump Tower in Chicago. Esther was just glad that Homer had at least managed to remember that Trump Towers were always prioritized in terms of remote operation headquarters because they had the floor plans. Esther still seethed over that one time they invaded the Trump Presidential Library. She was always determined to acquire something of value from any operation, however irrelevant and preposterous.
But today Esther would have to make use of a very different kind of plan- how to gain access to an upper floor of a large building under siege. Just about anything she could do would be easily seen by the angry mob, so the only available option was sky jumping.
The process was simpler than it sounded, although Esther had to make a minor adjustment to her augments to make sure she didn't fall to her horrible death. She requisitioned the Social Justice Army's nearest heavy load drone, and programmed a flight path straight to the sixty-sixth floor of Trump Tower. This, again, by being the specific floor she had instructed to be used as a headquarters in the event of such a bizarre situation.
As Esther was flying above the cityscape, buffeted by light snowfall with a drone struggling to carry her weight, she made note of just how far the chaos extended. She noted that, aside from Trump Tower, there was no apparent action in the city itself. There were perimeters and guards, but it looked like everyone else had already evacuated the city, or been captured in the process. Yet curiously enough, some of the larger police equipment was just lying in the street unused. As Trump Tower came into view, Esther realized that this was a good omen. If the mob had wanted to annihilate the Rainbow Shirts here, they could have easily done so with the electric cannons the police utilized.
Idiots! That was all Esther could think. Electric weaponry was worse than simple bullets by just about any metric imaginable. They were harder to recharge, with worse reload times, and far more difficult to properly aim. About the only situation they were useful was for aggressive demolition, and even then only because the electricity dissipated on contact, leaving slightly less debris. But of course, most of the trouble Chicago was having in the first place came from using an electric cannon for exactly this purpose.
Esther tried to banish such thoughts from her mind and started to take deep breaths. According to both the drone readout as well as her own internal augmented calculations, the jump was imminent. Esther took comfort in how both measurements were identical- had they not been, the jump would have been too risky and she would have needed a second pass. Any margin of error at all was unacceptable.
By sheer dumb luck Esther managed to crash in right into same room where Homer was deliberating. There was a great deal of useless furniture inside the room. Though he had petitioned for help, Homer was nonetheless shocked by her entrance.
"Are you...?"
"Shut up!" snapped Esther. "Another room, now!"
They dashed into the hallway. Esther took off her mask, the freezing chill of the flight already undone by her anger at seeing Homer in person.
"What was it this time?" she said. "What moronic easily foreseen error? Answer, now!"
"Well," said Homer, "there was a parade, and shots, I mean, um, fireworks broke out, and um-"
"No, that's not it," said Esther. "Why are you still in this easily attacked building? Why didn't you escape while you had the chance? Did you bring enough soldiers to subdue a city of a million people?"
"No," said Homer. "But-"
"No buts!" shouted Esther. "Why are you still here!"
"I, um" said Homer, "tried negotiating with the crowd to, um, make them understand that we weren't-"
"You know what?" said Esther. "Forget it. Just forget it. How many people do I need to get out of here?"
"I'm not sure," said Homer. "We started with five hundred, a hundred in support roles, I think."
"And how many do you have now?"
"Maybe four hundred," said Homer. "Not sure how many are combat and support though."
"Well, this is going to get worse before it gets better," said Esther, sighing. "I need everybody who knows how to use a zipline."
By the time an early squad of evacuees had been set up Esther had already installed all three relevant ziplines. The plan was simple. Anyone who could zipline their way out of the building did so. Anyone who wanted to stay behind and give more ignorant comrades-in-arms a crash course as to how to use them was welcome to. Priority was given to those who had white clothing that would make them harder to see, since as soon as anyone in the attacking mob noticed any individual zipline, that zipline was useless. Esther took pleasure in knowing that those few soldiers who had listened to her when she stressed the importance of color-changing clothing would be promptly rewarded for their due diligence with a somewhat better likelihood of not dying.
The ultimate goal was a sewage system entry point. Esther had identified four such sewage system entry points ahead of time. They could, eventually, get out of the city through the sewer system. In practical terms they would likely surface once they were sure that they were not being tailed. They would all need to travel downstream, just because this was their best chance to avoid being separated.
Once the plan was fully explained, Esther and Homer were briefly left alone. The break was a temporary one, as they prepared for action.
"I have to say," said Homer, "it's admirable of you to agree to go last."
"Hardly," said Esther. "As long as I'm up here I can see everything that's going on. Anyone who comes after me is dead if I'm not managing the rear guard."
And this was quite true. Roughly half of the soldiers in the Rainbow Shirts had managed to escape from the first zipline before they were noticed. This was a solid number, but these were also the ones most likely to evade detection. By the time Esther and Homer made their way out the second zipline had also been detected. Fortunately the mob did not, at least any time soon, notice the third zipline. What little remained of the skeleton guard managed to escape with Esther and Homer when the mob abandoned the building entirely upon noticing they were mainly fighting drones and holograms on the twenty-third floor, which was as far as they managed to get.
The main immediate observation Esther made was that quite a few of the Rain Bow Shirts' members had managed to get themselves killed simply by running off in the wrong direction. Esther did not much care for their loss. Imbeciles in any army were useless, at least in the kinds of battle they were fighting. Especially since in a case like this, their stupidity alone worked as misdirection. In truth it was only thanks to their accidental sacrifice that Esther was willing to wait as long to escape as she did. Esther had no qualms about leaving anyone behind in a situation where one person left behind could mean that a dozen would be allowed to live.
The narrow danger of the situation was confirmed when Esther, noticed, to her frustration, that part of the skeleton guard had managed to alert the remaining mob to their presence by panicking and running the wrong direction instead of following with the rest of them. Well, any plan had to make such allowances, Esther thought to herself, as she slid down the manhole, fully aware that they were going to be chased in this putrid muck.
Esther noticed more fallen soldiers of the Social Justice Army in the sewer. This particular brand of stupidity, which she had warned about countless times in the past, was called overly extreme sensory deprivation. Sewers, naturally, smell terrible. So those with the matching augments decided to turn off their ability to smell in such a situation. Rank idiocy, Esther thought, pun intended. A sense of smell provided, among other things, a natural inclination against breathing in overly toxic fumes.
The mob did not have any such problems, their unaugmented bodies having the sense to use cloths to hold over their mouth and keep breathing in what little regurgitated fresh air was available to them. In spite of the danger, Esther could see that they were persistent. So she had no choice but to deploy a rather crude form of dispersion- a good-old fashioned hand grenade.
Esther tried to keep one on her person at all times just for emergencies such as this. That was about all she could safely carry in her bag anyway, especially on a mission like this where so much of her load had to be taken up by zipline equipment. Esther stayed back just slightly, to the point that Homer hung back too, out of that unfortunate mixture of curiosity and confusion that was so much his providence.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Keeping us alive," said Esther dryly.
"No!" said Homer, suddenly realizing what Esther was about to do. "If you-"
But it was too late. Esther released the grenade. Some dozen members of the mob didn't get hit by it, having already advanced too far ahead. As expected, though, the cave-in created enough debris that pursuit became impossible. So, for that matter, was staying in the sewer, since Esther had deliberately aimed the explosion to maximize structural damage.
"Everybody out, now!" Esther screamed into her watch. It was set to an emergency short-wave frequency. Once again, she had no idea how many soldiers had actually listened to her when she gave very specific instructions that it needed to be kept on that frequency at all times during this escape. But also once again, she didn't much care for losing the stupid ones.
The only remaining loose end was the simplest one, requiring the least calibration. Esther had to deal with a dozen individuals, with only improvised weapons, at short range combat, within thirty seconds to guarantee a safe escape from the sewer. They proved such trivial opponents that Esther was able to knock them out with rudimentary moves alone, the kinds that didn't even have proper names. Whether or not Esther actually killed them was besides the point. If the physical injuries didn't get them, the fumes would, and if not the fumes, the inevitable full sewer system collapse absolutely. But Esther wanted a challenge when it came to hand-to-hand combat. It had been a very long time since she had come across a credible opponent in that regard.
All in all, by the time she returned to the surface, Esther was very satisfied with the work she had done. Sure, casualties were massive for all her best efforts. Down from four hundred to two hundred, from an original taskforce of six hundred, while the Social Justice Army writ large was around two thousand. But still. Managing to lose only a fifth of their forces from a loss this catastrophic was really a blessing, in some way.
Yet as Esther was smiling with clear self-satisfaction, she couldn't help but notice that not everyone shared her viewpoint. All the surviving soldiers looked miserable, and Homer was absolutely crestfallen.
"I can't..." he said. "Where did we go wrong?"
"Ugh, don't get me started," said Esther rolling her eyes. "But this is the easy part. We jack some vehicles, get out in the open, and order in a pick-up. The support team is expecting us to ask for a pick-up."
Homer gave her a quizzical, horrified look. Esther gave her own funny look in turn, not really understanding his attitude.
"What?" she said. "At least a fourth of them have to know how to jack vehicles right? It's basic downloadable information anyway and we have Internet, and no one's looking for us now. They got bigger problems."
"Look," said Homer, "I'm grateful you saved all of our lives, it's just..."
"Yeah, I don't want to hear it," said Esther, snorting. "Be glad I came back for your sorry asses at all."