Tag Archives: Blue Mask

Motor City Intern: Part 3

I’d been at gruesome death scenes before. One of the worst had been the product of a man who’d burned the victims halfway to ash. That one had left me with mixed associations with the smell of smoked pork.

The bright side of this one was that it wouldn’t leave me with mixed associations with pleasant smells. It smelled like rotting meat combined with any biological substance that might leak out of a human body before the body stiffened.

I didn’t throw up, but it was a near thing. My stomach rolled and I did my best to keep everything inside where it belonged. Continue reading Motor City Intern: Part 3

Motor City Intern: Part 2

Mateo pulled on his helmet, letting his hat fall down his back, held on by a blue leather string. He grinned at me. “You always have a choice.”

I put my leg over my motorcycle’s seat and grabbed my own helmet, feeling the electric hum of the engine. “True, but some choices aren’t the kind you can say no to if you want to live with yourself later.” Continue reading Motor City Intern: Part 2

Motor City Intern: Part 1

It was the last two weeks of my internship and not the internship for my engineering degree. That one had ended barely two months in after an investigation and battle that left most of the company’s leadership in prison.

Grand Lake University’s engineering department with help from the FBI had put me into a quiet internship where I learned how to design auto parts for the rest of the year. It wasn’t the most interesting internship, but on the other hand, no one had attempted to kill me, making it much less stressful than my first internship.

This was my post-college internship through the Stapledon program which meant I was interning with another superhero group. Continue reading Motor City Intern: Part 1

Demo: Part 21

I had a bad feeling the creature wouldn’t be on my side, and the fact that it was outside the wards made me suspect it was magic.

I desperately needed to tell people that it was there as soon as the fight was over.

Well, assuming it was real, and not the result of staring at a HUD filled with shades of grey (but not the sexy kind). I zoomed in, and saw nothing in that space.

I checked on Stephanie, finding her still covered with goo. She’d pulled out a knife, and was trying to cut the strands connecting her to the ground. Continue reading Demo: Part 21

Demo: Part 20

Of course they were. I’d tested how the suit worked while exposed to electromagnetic force, figuring that someday I might have to fight Sean in it. Despite the shielding I’d put in, self-repair didn’t work well, so I’d designed it to shut off when exposed to enough electromagnetism that there might be problems.

And here we were.

The suit’s artificial muscles released energy as part of a chemical process however, so there wasn’t anything stopping me from what I did next—rushed them, reaching Blue Mask in one long jump. Continue reading Demo: Part 20

Demo: Part 19

Wind hit me, and a lot of it. It wasn’t a well considered blast either, throwing me toward the bleachers.

I hit the force field hard. Unsurprisingly, I could see it coming at me better with sonar than I would have with my eyes. With my eyes it was almost transparent. With sonar, it was simply a wall.

The field gave a little as I hit it, but not much. I bounced off, and since I was still pointing in the direction of team one’s flag, I kept on going. Continue reading Demo: Part 19

Demo: Part 16

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “What’s going on now?”

Tara crossed her arms. “I noticed you weren’t listening earlier. Is it the same thing we talked about before?”

Rachel took a breath and sighed. Jaclyn pulled her feet out of the holes she’d created when she landed, and shook her head. “I knew that was going to come back to haunt us.”

Remembering how little I could hear during the fight, I said, “I told Hal to update you if he had something that needed action on our part. So far it hasn’t, but I could tell him to update you anyway?”

“Rocket,” Rachel said, looking me directly in the eyes, “this is something that we all need to be kept updated on.” Continue reading Demo: Part 16

Demo: Part 13

The flash worked better on the audience than anyone else. All around me, people were saying things like, “Can you see what’s happening?”

Amy shook her head. Tara, like me, appeared to be unaffected.

She’d probably anticipated the explosion.

Not that that mattered. What mattered was that the blast hadn’t affected Gordon either. Either his hood or something in his mask had blocked the light. Continue reading Demo: Part 13

Demo: Part 12

Standing slightly behind Stephanie, Slugger and Blue Mask stood on either side of their flag pole. Sean and Gordon flew above them—at least at first. Team one had either opted for a defensive strategy or they’d been too slow to go on offense.

The way the wind had blown the broken bits of rock away from Stephanie argued that it was more likely to be intentional than not.

On the whole both teams were playing to their strengths. Team four had three fast moving, practically invulnerable members (Izzy, Akesha, Patriot, Jr) whereas everyone on team one was physically human normal so far as I knew—however fast Gordon or Sean might be.

On the other hand, team one had Stephanie who could immobilize from a distance, and Slugger and Blue Mask. I assumed they had to be useful somehow. Continue reading Demo: Part 12