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Author Topic: The Fourteen Minute Super-Villain Career of Red Seven
Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
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Ayla had been reading a crime novel, mostly ignoring the monitor board’s endless summary of news events around the globe. If something was flagged a priority by the S.P.s, she’d get an alert anyway, so she focused instead on the gritty urban adventures of her latest fictional obsession, Private Investigator Shay Martel of Rimbor. Violet had first turned her onto the concept of reading, as Ayla had seen no point in serialized fiction that wasn’t in full holo-surround, but something about just reading raw text and having to craft the visuals in her head reminded her of how different the stories of her childhood were, as if different parts of her brain were sparked into action, and the whole process became more actively engaging than having the images displayed around her, making her more of a passive observer of somebody else’s story.

And so it was something of a nuisance when Computo flagged an incident that the S.P.s were designating a Legion priority...

She called up the report, and was treated to the image of a battle-suited figure holding up a scientific conference. The armored thug had allowed civilians to flee, but seemed to be seeking out prototype hardware to abscond with. The first S.P. units on the scene had been repelled by non-lethal sedative grenades, hypersonics and strobes, and the individual, calling himself Red Seven, had broadcast to them that his armor was prepared for anything they could throw at him, that only the Legion could stop him.

Ayla snorted in disbelief. He wasn’t just arrogant, he was actively calling for the Legion to show up, marking this as some sort of crazy ego-case, or, more worryingly, some sort of trap…

“Computo, transfer monitor functions to the Academy, and tell Chuck he’s on hot standby.” She said, willing her Flight Ring to wrap her body in a warm cocoon of anti-gravitons, and accelerating to the roof-exit, en route to the Weyland Science Center, sighing at the ill-timing of this assault, when the rest of the team was off-world, dealing with the Dominator situation.

Ayla flew low, avoiding the traffic lanes, knowing that they’d be a tangle of angry commuters at this hour, and not wanting to have to deal with the barrage of complaints that would be sent her way from traffic control if her Ring’s automatic emergency override functions stopped traffic to clear her way. Easier by far to just circle wide around, over or under the flight-lanes, even if that added a few minutes to her travel time.

The S.P. had already cordoned off the Science Center, and she could see crowds of panicky ex-conferencees, as well as the other crowds of too-curious bystanders, mingling in the plaza. Flashes of light pulsed along the crowd as onlookers noted the presence of a Legionnaire swooping in, and snapped pictures as Ayla passed over them at speed, to land near the S.P. cordon.

“What’s the situation?” she asked quickly of the officer who seemed most likely to be in command, based on how he was shouting and everyone else was doing what he said.

The officer-in-command, whose rank she recognized as Lieutenant, although his species was unknown to her, swiveled his head nearly one hundred and eighty degrees to point his four black compound eyes in her direction, and she resisted jumping back in alarm, as clacking mandibles only served to remind her of her deep dislike of spiders. His mandibles made a complicated chewing motion, and a translator on his chest purred in a deep feminine voice, “Armored humanoid, self-designate, Red Seven, has driven civilians from the Science Center, and repulsed first S.P. incursion with non-lethal force.” The officer’s four-legged body slowly turned to face Ayla, while her head remained oriented as it was, an unsettling sight, while her four arms brought a pair of datapads back into her view. “The Mayor is pushing for an assault team to move in, but I’d rather send in Legionnaires.” The alien looked up to the sky, and added, “When will the others arrive?”

Ayla shrugged, “Yeah, that’s the thing. I’m all you get. But I’ll get it done.”

The alien regarded Ayla for a long moment, and then lifted one of her datapads and said, “Authorizing Legion of Super-Heroes resolution, will update presently.” before decisively cutting the active connection. For a second, Ayla could hear some squawk of protest from the Mayor’s office, but Officer Bug-Lady was having none of it. Putting aside the compound eyes and the mandibles and the eight limbs, Ayla could learn to like this officer…

The S.P. lieutenant nodded to Ayla, “Proceed, and good luck.”

Ayla rose into the air and moved towards the Science Center, S.P. officers looking up as she passed over them, some waving. It’s good to be the hero, she thinks as she enters the building, and proceeds slowly down the hall, her feet hovering a few inches above the polished faux-marble floors. The faint chemical scent of expended gas grenades wafted through the halls, but she trusted her transsuit to protect her from any active threat, scanning the area for other signs of danger.

The central meeting room was in disarray, with chairs knocked over and datapads and carry bags scattered across the floor, dropped by fleeing convention-goers. ‘Glad I’m not the one who has to clean this place up…’ Ayla thinks, as the lights suddenly flare up and a broadcast voice interrupts her thought.

“The Legion arrives! Time to see the Red Seven adaptive battle-armor in action!”

The voice booms from all sides, and Ayla can see that ‘Red Seven’ has tapped into the monitors and speakers of the venue, broadcasting his image behind himself on the rear wall, making himself, by comparison, look absurdly small, beneath the vast image of himself. Still, his ‘adaptive battle-armor’ is seven feet tall, with red and silver armor plating on every surface, and is bristling with what appear to be weapons systems, so she wastes no time on rhetoric, calling up the lightning and sending a mid-strength bolt his way, intending to test his defenses, knowing that, even at half-strength, she could fry most ‘shielded’ systems.

As Ayla’s hands glow with energy, she can hear his voice again, ”Wait, where’s the others?” Red Seven says, clearly perturbed, his previous salesman-like voice breaking as he’s thrown off his pitch. The sound of thunder drowns out anything further he has to say as a crackling display momentarily obscures him from sight, magnified many times by the screen behind him. When it fades, Red Seven is standing unaffected, and he raises an arm and sends her own lightning bolt arcing back towards her!

Lightning Lass hurls herself into the air, attempting to get further from the ground, but the bolt is too fast, and she feels it graze her leg, and arc off of her to the support structures on the ceiling of the auditorium. As she greys out, she can see cameras and lights sparking and exploding, as the current catches them, but it’s all she can do to avoid a nasty fall.

”Designed with the Legion in mind, the Red Seven suit not only uses a photonic relay command and control system, and non-metallic structure, that is impervious to electrical or magnetic intrusion, but has conductive elements that can absorb and redirect electrical discharges, either harmlessly into the ground, or right back at the source, serving as both defensive and offensive measure.” says the amplified voice of Red Seven, regaining his former poise.

’What is this, an advertisement?’ Ayla thinks, as she recovers her bearing. ”Red Seven! Adapt to this!” she shouts, reaching out with her will and severing the effects of gravity on the armored figure.

As he launches uncontrollably into the air, she can hear his panicky voice, broadcast over the loudspeakers in the auditorium, ”You’re not supposed to be able to do that anymore!” Chemical rockets fire from his shoulders and hands, and he pivots in mid-air just in time to avoid a crushing impact with the ceiling, and Ayla reacts by ending the effect, so that he jets down into the ground with brutal force, smashing a hole in the stage. She can’t help but smile as his inchoate cry of rage and frustration broadcast over the speakers. As he pulls himself from the point of impact, she again hurls him into the ceiling, and this time he doesn’t adjust in time, and slams into the stage lights, which provide a colorful series of explosions around him, before allowing him to plummet one more time into the same hole he’d made before.

The last broadcast she hears from the speakers around her is a cry of pain, followed by, ”I give! Cameras off! No more, please!”

Favoring her burned leg, Ayla limps towards the stage, not wanting to provide an easy floating target if Red Seven is feigning injury to draw her closer. She can see his arm flailing up out of the broken staging, but he appears to be unable to lift himself out of the debris.

She can see the armor now, actually somewhat primitive in design, and the featureless red faceplate turns towards her, ”I think I’m stuck. My leg… is broken.” His voice, still a projection, sounds much less confident than it did when he was narrating the battle from a dozen loudspeakers.

"Stop wiggling around, let me see if you’re caught on anything.” Ayla says, yanking a cable away that has wrapped around the broken leg. ”Turn off your weapon systems, if you know what’s good for you,” she adds sharply.

”The second fall did that. Some sort of power systems crash. I thought I had that taken care of…” came the synthesized voice, sounding even less like a supervillain and more like a frustrated engineer.

Ayla lifts the armored figure with her little-used gravitation-negating power, using her arms to steer him unto an undamaged section of stage.

”I would have included anchoring cables and some sort of stabilization thrusters if I knew you could still do that.” Red Seven mutters, "It’s not fair, I planned for everything…”

Ayla can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the comment, ”Life isn’t fair, buster. We don’t advertise what we can and can’t do. Lightning is just more fun.” As she looks over his armor, she’s pretty sure that she’s figured out at least one thing, and she touches the concealed release catches on his helmet, causing it to unseal. His face, once she can see it, is surprisingly young, and she feels a bit embarrassed to have just beaten a ‘supervillain’ who’s no older than she was when she joined the Legion. ”What’s this ‘planned for everything,’ anyway. You really think that this armor could have taken on the whole Legion?”

No, no. I knew the second Element Lad or Mon-El or whoever got a shot at me, I was done, but I had counter-systems to protect me from magnetism, cold, heat, electricity, illusions, darkness fields, even, maybe, telepathy, although I’m not sure how that would have worked out… I just needed to put on a strong showing, so that I could sell my inventions.” Red Seven said, starting out with enthusiasm as he described his preparations, and fading off as he remembered how it ended. ”Now that’s ruined. Only a single Legionnaire shows up, and it’s still over in, like, ten seconds! Nobody’s going to be calling and offering me jobs now…”

”Going to Takron-Galtos might have put a crimp in those plans.” Ayla noted, dryly.

”I would have just gotten community service. None of the tech is restricted, and all of the weapon systems are nonlethal. I made sure that nobody got hurt, and,” he pauses, looking at the damaged stage and the lights that had been blown out overhead, ”I had intended to minimize property damage, so, really, I was looking at vandalism. I even bought a conference pass, so they can’t even book me for trespassing.”

Shaking her head at the teen’s naivette, Ayla gently discourages him, "Do you really think the kind of customers you’d attract with a battle-suit designed to fight Legionnaires would be ordering non-lethal systems? Even if you never used your tech to hurt people, once you sell it to the Taurus Gang or the Star Assassin League or the Sklarans, it *will* be used to hurt people.”

Looking crestfallen, the teen inventor sags in his suit. ”It’s just, that’s all I have. I inherited this suit from my great-great-great-great grandmother, who was in the sixth Rocket Red team, the all-female Deadly Widows Brigade, and fixing it up and selling the designs was supposed to be my ticket out of here. And now the SPs are gonna confiscate it, and I sank everything into making this my prototype…”

Ayla could feel her ring pulsing, and recognized that the SP were getting antsy about what was going on inside the conference center. She held up her hand for ‘Red Seven’ to be quiet, and activated her Flight Ring. ”The situation is contained. We’re going to need a medical team in here. Broken leg, no stasis required.” She quickly ended the transmission, before having to answer a bunch of bothersome questions.

”So, Red Seven, is it?”

”Connol. Connol Dreas.”

”Connol, you messed up, and I don’t think you’ll be getting away with community service.” thoughts racing, Ayla considered options, ”But I think any battle-suit designed specifically to counter the abilities of Legionnaires is something that Brainiac 5 should take a look at. So, once I clear it with the SPs, the Legion will be confiscating your ‘Red Seven adaptive battlesuit.’”

His eyes widened, ”Brainiac 5 is going to look at my work?” The young man looked faint at the prospect, something that even a broken leg had failed to do.

”Probably not, other than to dismiss it as hopelessly primitive.” Ayla conceded, ”But that’s what I’m going to tell the SPs. Once they determine what charges to press, and how long you’ll be serving whatever sentence is passed down, you can start brainstorming more productive uses for your skills, such as producing suits for the SP, designed to counter the specific meta-abilities of members of the Legion of Super-Villains, or League of Super-Assassins. Who knows, maybe that can be part of your rehabilitative service.”

************

Six months later, on Takron-Galtos;

Gravity Kid’s shift had ended, and he ignored protocol and flew down the corridor towards his quarters. Technically, Tel was supposed to walk while in the housing modules, but the extra five minutes seemed an unacceptable delay.

Jed Rikane, aka Power Boy, waited in their quarters, watching a security update on the holo-viewer. A three-dimensional armored figure rotated, as popups detailed various systems of the suit.

”What’s that?” he asked, ”Something for the guards?”

”I think they prefer ‘correctional officiers,’ but yeah, it’s specially designed to handle various inmates, with shielding against Lightning Lord’s electricity and Magno Lad’s magnetism, computer-controlled mirrored surfacing able to refract Lazon’s light discharges, a totally sealed environment to block Mist Master, etc.” Jed replied. ”And, best of all, it was designed by a super-villain.”

[ June 24, 2012, 02:53 AM: Message edited by: Set ]

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Set
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Author's Notes;

It occured to me that there was really no specific reason why Ayla's 'make things lighter' power had to go away, when she regained her lightning powers. She could still have both, just find lightning more 'fun.' So I went with that.

Tel and Jed just happened to be the appropriate POV characters to narrate what happened to Red Seven and his designs (being stationed on Takron-Galtos), I didn't notice until after I'd posted it that I'd somehow managed to write a fic with all gay Legionnaires. [Smile]

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Harbinger
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Another fun story Set, nice to see Alya get the spotlight. As always, you've given us a very clear insight into the personalities of all the characters you write. Loving Vi getting Alya to read and her enjoying it, Alya's confidence in dealing with the situation, the SP officer support and Alya's appreciation of it. the villain wasn't really that villainous and his rehabilitation on Takron-Galtos was a nice ending. Am loving your creativity and consistency Set, more, more, more!

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"Tempus Fugitive" the final part of the Adventures of Dream Boy series, set in the Three-Boot Universe. Read it only in the Bits o' Legionnaire Business Forum.

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Set
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quote:
Originally posted by Harbinger: Another fun story Set, nice to see Ayla get the spotlight. As always, you've given us a very clear insight into the personalities of all the characters you write. Loving Vi getting Alya to read and her enjoying it,
After months in a tank, with her only sensory experiences being whatever holostuff was being used to interrogate her, I decided that Vi would not be much of a fan of holo-interactive novels.

And I'm a huge fan of Ayla. (More so than her brother, really.)

quote:
Alya's confidence in dealing with the situation, the SP officer support and Alya's appreciation of it.
Officer 'bug-lady' hanging up on the micro-managing mayor was fun. Despite it being the exact same thing a human SP officer would have done at that point, for the same reasons, she's totally going to explain it later as some sort of alien/human communication gaffe.

"Oh? Did I hang up on you? I thought our conversation was over and you were addressing someone else in the room with you, because you did not begin that last sentence with my name, as tradition dictates..."

quote:
The villain wasn't really that villainous and his rehabilitation on Takron-Galtos was a nice ending. Am loving your creativity and consistency Set, more, more, more!
Thanks!

The villain sort of wrote himself into being. People are always doing ridiculous things to 'get noticed' even in this century, posting youtube videos of themselves, etc. and it seemed that this sort of thing could be even more drastic in the 31st century, when someone could very plausibly have something like a centuries old suit of Rocket Red armor banging around in the attic...

Coming off watching the Avengers, with the dynamic character of Natasha Romonov, making Red Seven's armor come from an all-female Rocket Red group called the 'Deadly Widows Brigade' just seemed like a fun nod to comic book Russians.

Thanks for the feedback!

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MLLASH
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BUMPING to remind me to read this and to look for more Set stories I may have missed.

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Visit the FULL FRONTAL FANDANGO & laugh along with Lash at http://lashlaugh.wordpress.com/

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