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A Geeky Gryphon's Origins

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Cloak:
Wow, foreshadowing to a Memoirs book I haven't even outlined yet. Nor have told you about. Talk about serendipity.

NickDaGriff:

--- Quote from: Cloak on January 28, 2017, 08:37:22 PM ---Wow, foreshadowing to a Memoirs book I haven't even outlined yet. Nor have told you about. Talk about serendipity.

--- End quote ---

I may have perhaps taken a couple hints and inferences...  :3  (also luck)

NickDaGriff:
Another.  Feel free to offer critique.

CHAPTER FOUR

[spoiler]It was getting fairly dark by this point.  Nick’s feline eyes didn’t have much trouble adjusting to it, even with the streetlamps and bright flames licking around the crashed hoverbike.  The entire area was now wreathed in shadows, with stark contrast between the lit and darkened areas. 

This man/mantis shrimp, Jerry, had just taken notice of the gryphon behind him for seemingly the first time.  His bulbous stalk eyes were now darting angrily between the two fronts as he realized he was pincered.  To his credit, it didn’t take him long to figure out what to do.  He turned and barreled straight at Nick, fists ****ed and ready. 

Fur and feathers bristled down the length of Nick’s spine at the sight.  “Umm…”  He took a tentative step back.  The crustacean juggernaut wasn't slowing.  Nick turned and bolted. 

He could hear the pounding footfalls behind him as he scrambled up a square column and over the iron railing to the second floor walkway.  There was a loud smashing noise as Jerry pulverized part of the plaster pillar with another preposterously powerful punch.  Nick shook his head to get the alliteration out and peeked over the edge. 

Jerry was there, glaring up at Nick with his bulbous blue eyes.  He glanced around for another way up, but the main staircase currently had a pile of flaming wreckage blocking it off.  Grunting in annoyance, Jerry shielded his eyes from the blaze and turned back toward Cooper. 

Nick’s mind raced for a new solution as he paced along the upper walkway.  “Okay, um…”  Inspiration struck.  “Hey, Psy-kyo,” he said over the commlink.  “Are you able to--  Wait, are you texting right now?!”

“No,” she said in a tone that suggested it was obvious from the back of her phone, “I’m on Instagram.  My friends don’t believe I’m actually here.”

“Ugh, look, never mind that!  I just need to know if you can handle mind-linking with him again.”

Sabrina sighed, massaging her scalp as she slid her phone back into her pocket.  “I guess?  It took a lot out of me when he broke free.  Like, it really hurt.”

“I saw, but… maybe that’s because you were trying to fight him too directly.  You were trying to suppress his emotions and force him to calm down, right?”

“What, are you some kind of psychic guru or something now?”

“No, I…”  Nick smoothed over an ear with his paw, watching Cooper and Jerry start circling each other again.  “I’m just saying we should use his strength against him.  His emotions are pretty clearly boiling over, which means you read them more easily, right?”

“Yeah…  So you want me to link with him, and then what?”

“Then, you watch what he’s thinking, and relay it to Samurai.  Let him know what Jerry’s going to do before he does it.”

“Two links?  I don’t…”  She grimaced and flicked her hair back over her shoulder.  “Fine.  I’ll try.”

“You’ve got this,” Nick said. 

Sabrina took a deep breath in and out through her mouth, closed her eyes, and raised both hands towards Cooper and Jerry.  She snorted, spat a glob of blood to the side, and readjusted her stance.  There wasn't any immediately visible effect, but the twitches across her face made it seem like she was doing something. 

Nick, meanwhile, wracked his brain as he paced, trying to search for some kind of weakness.  He’d heard of mantis shrimps before, and was trying to recall everything he knew about them.  Mulling it over, he began rummaging through his pack for spare electronic components.  There was something that might work. 

Jerry and Cooper were circling closer together now, making small steps forward and back, feinting, testing the others’ range.  Ultimately, it was Cooper who threw the first real strike.  He took a swing with his kanabo-bat at the armored midsection in front of him, clacking off the surface with the wooden tip. 

Jerry grunted, and retaliated.  It was a blur of motion, an impossibly fast one-two combo.  All it hit was air.

Cooper blinked, seemingly surprised at himself for having sidestepped it.  He swung his weapon again, striking Jerry’s chest with a resounding thwhack! 

Jerry recoiled, doubled over and gasping.  Watching from above, Nick expected him to go on the defensive, but he clearly had things on his mind.  Jerry let loose a primal scream and charged forward, fists flying furiously. 

“Oh crap,” said Cooper, backpedaling hard.  Knobby, club-like fists the size of softballs literally whistled through the air in a flurry of blows.  Cooper was driven back, retreating across the courtyard while trying to stay close enough to find an opening.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Nick muttered, pulling a panel off his bracers.  With the internal working laying bare before him, he reached in and plucked a red laser diode free from its mounting.  No soldering required, he liked to keep things modular.  Very carefully, Nick opened the casing and removed the red led, replacing it with a spare infrared led he’d scavenged from a TV remote control.  It was a slightly tighter fit getting it back in, but it worked.  Always good to keep spare electronics on hand.  Although, he felt that he should probably integrate that particular feature better.

He put it on the to-do list.  It was tomorrow’s problem.

Nick slapped the panel back in place, and began rerouting power using the touchpad.  About five milliwatts was typically considered the safe limit for these things, so… maybe six?  Seven?  Nick shrugged.  He set it to twenty.

That done, he sprinted along the walkway and around the corner, now opposite the flaming ruin of the bike.  The gryphon stood up against the railing, switched his goggles to infrared mode, and took aim. 

Cooper barely had a chance to get a single attack in.  He was kept busy dodging, ducking, and weaving around the fusillade of punches with preternatural reflexes.  There was no way he could keep it up forever, though. 

As soon as Jerry was facing away from the fire and toward him, Nick activated the laser.  Through his goggles he watched it blaze across the courtyard, otherwise invisible to the naked eye, straight into the face of Jerry.  Who, being part mantis shrimp, actually could see infrared light. 

“Augh!” he shrieked, trying to shield with his fists.  “My eye!  I can't close it!  Sto--”

Thwack!

Cooper drove his bat straight into Jerry’s armor-plated gut.  The crustacean hybrid doubled over with a pained oof, clutching his midsection.  Cooper didn’t let up, just kept swinging.

Jerry hit the ground hard after two hits and curled up as more kept coming.  “Stop, stop!” he cried.  “I give, I give!”

Cooper didn’t seem to hear.  Just kept swinging.

“I-- I think he’s down now,” said Xeno.  “Maybe you should--”

“Cooper!” Sabrina shouted.  She was holding her nose, trying to stem the flow of blood.  “Lay off him, okay?  He’s giving up already.  God.”

“Alright, babe, alright,” said Cooper.  “I got it, just chill.”

Jerry was openly weeping at this point.  No tears, as his stalk eyes didn’t seem capable of that, but his body was wracked with the all-out sobbing. 

“I want to--*gasp*--go hooome,” he moaned. 

“Yeah yeah,” said Cooper.  “First, you're going straight to the police to face what you did here.”  He pulled out his phone to call for a pickup along with several pairs of zip cuffs.  “Justice is served, a-hole.”

Jerry doubled down on the crying, which started making it hard for Nick to watch.  He turned away from the sad spectacle only to realize that none other than Monsieur Étranger was leaning against the railing beside him, casual as ever.  Nick involuntarily sprung three feet in the air out of shock. 

“Most excellent,” said Mr. E.  “I knew you could handle this.”

“Jeez dude, don't sneak up on people when they're still on edge,” Nick said, clutching his pounding heart.  “Where even were you during that whole fight?”

“Apologies, I thought my intentions and whereabouts were obvious.  You see, the Knights of Humanity sadly could not be joining us tonight as they encountered some… vehicular difficulties on the way here.  Fortunately, this means that we will not be having to share credit for our accomplishment with any uninvited guests.  I was simply assisting in the way I thought best.”

“Okay.  Alright then.”  Nick took a second to steady his breathing.  He looked down again at Cooper, who was putting away his phone.  At Sabrina, who was leaning against the wall and working her way through a pack of tissues.  At Mr. E., who was suddenly no longer next to him but down with the others and surveying the scene. 

“You know, I think we pulled together pretty well here,” Nick said over the open commlink, a smile creeping into his voice.

“Hell yeah, little brah,” said Cooper.  “Just wait ‘til we get our ratings for this, we’re qualified badasses now.  We did awesome.“

The distant rotors of the Association pickup chopper thudded over the surrounding cityscape, signaling a wrap on the current job.

“Yeah,” Nick echoed to himself, “We did awesome.”[/spoiler]

Cloak:
Excellent chapter, Xeno.

Although, Jerry is practically begging for a "Ben and Jerry's" joke somewhere. . . . ;)

NickDaGriff:
CHAPTER FIVE

[spoiler]
About an hour later, the gang had reconvened at the warehouse, awaiting their after-action review.  The Association had been monitoring the entire affair through satellite and local CCTV cameras, so a preliminary report could be expected fairly soon.  Full debriefings would generally take place later, if the situation demanded it.

The warehouse roof was slid part way open from the middle so that they could get a signal inside through the faraday cage, a sometimes inconvenient leftover from the previous occupants.  Nick was perched on a crossbeam in the warehouse rafters when they received the unfortunate news.

“Six out of ten?!  How in the hell did we rate six out of ten?!”

“Ugh, keep it down Cooper,”said Sabrina, nursing her forehead with an icepack.  “My head is still killing me.”

Nick groaned in annoyance as he skimmed through the actual text on his bracer’s display.  ...Debatably excessive uses of force, it said.  Abandoning teammates...  ...Willful and accidental damage to civilian and private organization property.

Nick had to reread that last bit several times with context to make sure it meant what he thought it did.  Yup.  They were deducting points for interfering with the Knights.

To be fair, the Knights were authorized to operate here.  Specist ****s that they were, they were still specist ****s with a government paramilitary contract in this area.  Some old sympathetic military contacts of Louis Cannon's had pulled strings to make the arrangements.  So long as the Knights played by the rules, everyone else had to play nice as well.  Not an ideal setup, if you weren't human.

He could still argue self-defense, Nick figured.  It was perfectly valid.  The thought of how close that Knight had come to impaling him still gave him chills.  Hence, why he was perched up on this I-beam about thirty feet up off the ground.  The height gave a certain sense of security.  Distance from the arguing below helped too.

A loud smash echoed off the walls, giving the gryphon a start.  Looking down, he saw Cooper’s beer bottle shattered on the ground near his workbench, lying in a puddle of about half of its original contents. 

“Oh, come on,” Nick growled.  He hopped off the beam and swooped down to face Cooper, hackles raised.

“Cooper!” he yelled.  “You do not throw things in here!”  He waved a paw towards the towering construction he’d been laboring in earlier at the back of the warehouse.  “I’m working on delicate stuff here that doesn’t need to be smashed or soaked in beer.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Cooper.  “If you put half the effort into the fight that you did on that… that whatever, then maybe we’d have a decent rating.”

This took Nick aback.  He wasn’t expecting a backlash in that direction, and it stole the words from his beak.  “Wha-- I… I did…”

“Then how come I was the only one fighting that big ugly, huh?  Where was everyone else?”

“S-supporting you!  Everything anyone did back there was to give you the best possible shot!”

“Yeah, and you did such a good job, didn’tcha?”

“We did fine, even though you rushed us in there without any prep time!”

“So this is my fault now?  I don't remember being the one running away with his tail between his legs!”

Nick mostly bit back a snarl, suddenly aware that his claws were scraping the smooth concrete floor. 

“You wanna go?”  Cooper unhooked his breastplate and tossed it aside, revealing just the black turtleneck underneath.  He thumped his muscular chest twice with a fist and spread his arms wide.  “You, me, right here, right now.  Bring it.”

Nick winced, looking away sheepishly.  He did his best to relax his paws, and his claws slid back into their concealed position. 

“Knew it,” Cooper muttered.  “Pussy.”

Nick stared into the distance, feeling utterly paralyzed.  He didn't want to hurt Cooper.  He really didn't.  But Cooper was making it really hard, and had no idea what to say anymore.

“I feel I must agree with our feline companion,” said Monsieur Étranger, apparently relaxing against Nick’s workbench, arms folded across his chest.  “You are quite out of line here, Monsieur Caldwell.”

“You stay out of this, bro.”

“Should I?  I was under the impression that I was part of the team that you were just making accusations towards.”

“That's not--”

“Shut up!” Sabrina called out, loudly enough for everyone to pause and look at her.  She exhaled a long, shuddering breath in the following silence, pressing the ice pack against her temple.  “I am going to go lay down on the couch up front, and if I hear one more word about this I swear to god I will liquefy every brain in range.  Got it?  Got it?  Okay.”

With that, she strode to the door leading to an outcropping of offices attached to the front of the building, opened it, and slammed it shut behind her.  Nick could just make out a muffled, pained, “Owww” from the other side immediately after.   

Cooper shot a contemptuous glare at Nick.  With a rude hand gesture, he turned and stalked toward the front entrance.  He only made it about two steps before walking into Mr. E.’s outstretched hand, holding Cooper’s discarded breastplate.

“I believe you dropped this,” said Mr. E.

Cooper ripped it from his grasp without a word and continued out the door.  Seconds later, four tires screeched their displeasure against the asphalt.

Nick continued staring into space for several minutes, just trying to comprehend how it had gone so bad so quickly.  When he finally came back to the present, he was alone.

Cooper’s bottle was still lying in pieces in front of his workbench.  Nick sighed, and glided across the warehouse to fetch a broom and dustpan.

As he swept up the clinking glass shards, he began humming to himself, which eventually turned into singing.

I look around here and I want to cry
I feel like the world is passing me by
And I just can't help but wonder
Will my talents ever shine?
And is it a curse I'm under
To fail every try?
The gryphon set down the broom and dustpan, and hopped up on his workbench.  He continued:

I signed up to be a hero
Helping every citizen
All I’ve ever wanted in my life
Is to aid the innocent
But my future’s going nowhere at this rate of speed
There's gotta be something better
Something better
There's gotta be something better than this for me
 He picked up a crescent wrench and tossed it back and forth from paw to paw, singing:

There's gotta be something better than this
I know there's so much more that I can be
And I know this life I'm living can’t be my destiny
There's gotta be something better
Something better
There's gotta be something better than this for me
Nick set down the wrench and jumped down to finish sweeping the last bit of glass, and sang:

There's something better than this out there for me...
“There is always a future in music,” came a French-accented voice, causing Nick to nearly stumble over his own paws. 

The gryphon froze in embarrassment at being caught; he’d been sure no one was there.  The self-consciousness began immediately eating away at him inside.  Couldn't even bring himself to make eye contact.

“Apologies, was I interrupting?  I will see myself out.”

Nick waited until he heard the door open and shut, then collapsed with a groan. 

<Well, it's not like you were totally quiet about it,> said Sabrina through a thoughtspeak channel.

Nick buried his face in his paws.  “How do they do that?” he mumbled. 

<I’m literally psychic, remember?  No idea what his deal is though.>

“Right.”  Nick got up and paced his way over to the rack that held his bags.  He pressed the button to close the warehouse roof and hit the air before it shut.  The night was still young, and he needed to get away from here and blow off some steam.  Undercity was just the place to do it.



*      *      *


“Hey Viktor, we're going out for drinks tonight, want to come with?”

No, of course I wouldn't, thought Viktor O’Dennis.  I would rather drink bleach than be forced to socialize with you shallow, simple excuses for colleagues.  Out loud, however, he responded, “M-maybe later.”  He attempted a friendly smile, warping his face into something nervous and slightly off-putting.  “I-I-I'm closing the lab tonight, and I just wanted to look over a few last results.”

Viktor’s colleague--was it Mike?  Brian?  Daryl?  He could never keep their names straight--nodded understandingly.  “Okay, umm…  Sure thing.  Just don’t be a stranger, okay?  Seeya.”

The other scientist, whatever his name was, left the room through the lab’s sliding glass door.  Viktor let out a sigh of relief and let his clenched left fist relax around the copy of the key he was holding.

Fifteen minutes later, when he was sure everyone else had left, he bolted up from his seat and headed for the interior lab.  There, the containment vault sat in the middle of a stainless-steel room, a vertical chrome cylinder surrounded by inches of bulletproof glass. 

Viktor unlatched the glass case, inserted his personal key along with the copied key into the cylinder and turned both at the same time.  It was quiet for a tense moment.  However, Viktor was confident that the alarm would not go off.  He'd done an impeccable job temporarily shutting down the security measures.  Several seconds passed, and there was a quiet whirring noise accompanied by the clicks of internal tumblers sliding open.  Viktor grinned, genuinely this time, but still no less off-putting. 

The cylinder split along four lengthwise seams, unsealing with a hiss.  Pale mist billowed forth, pooling at the bottom of the case.  Rays of the palest blue light peeked through as the four sections separated, blossoming open to reveal a gently incandescent orb on a pedestal at its center.  It was powder blue, whole sections lit from within, and not much bigger than a baseball.  Relatively unassuming, but oh, so powerful.  If only those fools would recognize it.

No matter.  Viktor recognized it, and he was going to take his creation for the test run it deserved.  Maybe even make some money along the way.  This access wasn’t being logged, and no one was scheduled to use it for over a week, so no one was going to miss it for a short time.  Viktor had thought this through.  He was a genius, after all.   

He unceremoniously snatched the orb from its resting place, stuffing it and a foot of ribbon cable that trailed from it into his coat pocket.  There was a newfound sense of purpose in his stride as he closed up and hastily exited the labs.  He would show them. 

They would all see.



---

Source song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMgclhlpwb0
[/spoiler]

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