The pillar to Heaven built in Hell

huh, Jeannie wasn't sure what all the yelling was about she fell asleep in the van waiting for Cebra.

When Cebra stormed out, Sam just stood there, motionless. She had wanted him to listen to reason, to change his plan. She really did. Not getting him to justify why sinking to the same level as the people you were after was the best way to handle a situation. She dropped her head. If that’s what he truly believed, Orion had defeated him a long time ago.

She walked towards the window. No, she couldn’t think like that! Nothing positive ever came from that line of thinking. She had to hold on to the believe that people are initially good and capable of changing. No matter what others might think of it.

Her hands moved, pulling her sweater and shirt simultaneously over her head, revealing the black costume with its red cape and yellow tower on the chest underneath. She carelessly tossed the garments aside. Her shoes and pants soon followed. There was no time for neatly folding them up, she had to make sure someone didn’t do something he might regret for the rest of his life. All she did before leaving was closing the door and putting her hair in a bun so it wouldn’t get in the way while flying. She opened a window, and took off while hoping she wouldn’t be too late.

Cebra walked up to the van opening the door and sitting in the drivers seat. He didn't say anything to Jeannie too distracted and distraught to bother with chit chat. He started the van and opened the garage door. Driving onto the main road doubts had started to creep into Cebra's mind, counter intuitive to the task at hand. It was time... time to stop thinking like a human and time to be the soldier he had been trained to be. He forcibly steeled his mind to the task at hand glancing back over his shoulder occasionally thinking about Jeannie and her safety. She was so willing and ready to help Cebra out, maybe he was doing the exact same thing Orion was doing. Maybe he was just using Jeannie like a weapon, could he really call himself her friend after this? What if she did get injured? Cebra knew Sam would really let him have it, but not worse than he'd do to himself.

Maybe he should have just done what he always did and put his own life on the line. Well he'd like it to be that way but this was impossible to do alone. They were nearing the location where the operation would take place, Cebra parked the van in an adjacent alley and parked. Cebra knocked on the wall and called to Jeannie in the back.

"Are you ready back there Jeannie? It's time to begin."

jeannie wakes up when she hears him callinggood morning! huh yeah guess so so what do we do first? think we should get the distraction stuff ready first? cause that way I can start it quicker maybe could time it with the emp part for double distraction!

Flying above the city, Sam was looking for a trace of Cebra and Jeannie. Thus far without success. Cebra had mentioned a garage earlier and they’d be disguised as janitors so it was likely they’d be using some kind of van to get to their destination. Armed with this information Sam had hoped to find them before they got there in the hopes of talking them out of their current plan. Only she hadn’t expected there to this many vans out on the streets. Finding the right one amidst them all had proven to be more difficult than expected.

At first, she had flown close enough to the vans to see who was inside, but this method had been too time consuming. Not to mention drawing too much unwanted attention. Sure, the people around here were probably accustomed to having folks flying though the skies, but even they would sooner or later start to wonder why one of them had such an unusual interest in vans.

As such she had flown away to formulate a different plan. She knew where they were going. Sooner or later they’d have to show up there. If she got there ahead of them, she could try and talk them out of this before things got out of hand. It was risky; the area around the building might be too big for one person to guard effectively, but she trusted her senses would alert her on time.

She took a deep breath before she flew straight towards the Orion base while hoping she wouldn’t be too late.

"Yes Jeannie, go plant your distractions, I'm going to get into position on the roof of the building. After you plant everything you need go inside to place the EM, make sure you're out of there quick after activating it."

Cebra gets out of the van and locks the door. He jumps up some scaffolding leaping onto the roof of an apartment building next to the data facility. Cebra looks over the area spying the security force. He braces himself and takes a deep breath, He runs and makes a gigantic leap through the air eventually landing on top of the roof of the Orion structure with a remarkably quiet landing.

aye aye captian she salutes him then goes to get things ready opening her box in the back of the van.

she goes about planting her firework bombs, then grabs a toolbox with emp hide in it. ok that's ready now sneaky part

she goes to the building she shows the guard her id Hello, I'm here to check generators
they let her in and she goes to the basement. she looks for where Mr. cyborg said to stick the gizmo, let's see I think it goes here and ok flips switch and push button

time to go oh and surprise time! she pulls a controller with a big red button on itsurprise time she pushes it and fireworks start going off outside right time to go before the big bang she sneaks out during the confusion right before the emp went off.

right now for more distractions! back in the van she gets some more toys out the big box she gets out a laptop and plugs a remote control car controller in it.

she pushes some buttons and out of the van rolls some funny little robots that looked like pink cats in army helmets. go my cuddly minions attack! she pushes the controls and sends them toward the building.
engage operation litter box bomber! the kat bots hold up their guns and start shooting stinky bombs at the building.

She pushes another button and the speakers on the kat bots meow loudly. between the emp, the fireworks still going off and the annoying army of cat bots she's pretty sure they were distracted.

she giggles amused watching the mess she made, huh so does she wait for him now, Mr. cyborg didn't say what to do after distraction will she'll keep distracting she guesses. and pushes another button to keep more fireworks going off then checks the video on the screen from the cat bots to control them and keep an eye on things. heh, this was a fun game!

When Sam reached the Orion facility, the circus has already started. Circus being an ample way to describe what was happening. The sky was filled with one colourful explosion of firework after another. Enough to put the average fireworks celebration make take in comparison. It was a shame it was still day; at night the fireworks would have looked even better. The bangs themselves were loud, but that was all there was to be said about them. All of this could be explained as an unfortunate accident with fireworks. The rest however, would be a lot harder to explain.

On the ground an army of what appeared to be pink robot-like cats was trying to take the facility by force. Or rather smell. The projectiles the fired caused everyone caught in their blast radius to immediately run away with their hands covering their nose. Up in the sky, Sam was not troubled by whatever horrible smell the kittens produced. For once she was actually pleased her sense of smell wasn’t sensitive enough to pick this up.

This had Jeannie written all over it. But there was no indication of any actual explosions. Nor any other form of damage. The mission may have been started, but it couldn’t have happened a very long time ago. Otherwise Orion would have mobilised a team to take care of the kitten forces by now. This meant there was still a possibility to prevent this from escalating.

But first things first. She needed to know what else Jeannie had planned. She had to be nearby. Maybe even controlling the kittens directly. There were a couple of vans parked on the premises, and many more outside. Jeannie could be in any one of them. Sam had learned her lesson from last time; checking all those vans one by one was too time consuming. But there were other ways she could find Jeannie. She could simply ask her.

“Jeannie,” she started, letting her voice vibrate on a supernatural frequency only Jeannie could here. “It’s Sam here, where are you?”

jeannie was laughing amused with her game when she hears Sam and looks around confused hello? Sammie, how are you inside my head? what's it like in there? jeannie is in the van aren't my kitty bots cute, will their little stinkers but besides that there cute.

huh, wait if you're in my head shouldn't you know where I am?

“I’m not inside you heard,” Sam told Jeannie. She didn’t know how to explain this ability; her powers didn’t come with a detailed information booklet.  She knew how to use them, not how they worked. Not that it mattered, really. She was able to talk to people when they weren’t present. Something that could also be achieved by using a phone. Phones also had the added bonus that it didn’t look like you were talking to yourself. But in situations like this one, when she didn’t have her phone, it was a nice ability to have. “I’m sort of talking to you from a distance, but I don’t know where you are. Anyway, do you know what Cebra’s up to? Or is he still with you?”

The entire building went dark after a minute, the EM did it's job. Inside the structure staff were all about trying to find out the source of the problem. Cebra crept in through the roof removing a grate from the ventilation shaft. He crept through the dark halls making sure to avoid detection by security guard. Cebra made it inside the elevator shaft and began climbing downwards keeping in mind the likely amount of time he had before the power was restored. There was a problem when he reached the bottom though, two security guards had made their way down via the stairs to investigate the generator. Cebra crept up behind them without so much as a pin drop of sound, his programming would have him simply snap their necks. His better judgement however told him to simply knock them out. Cebra draws the tranquilizer gun putting two darts in their neck, they fall like bricks.

Cebra had the two guards tied up by melting their hand guns into metal bindings. He proceeds to the room where the data storage computer resides. He makes a link between himself and the computer, a small metallic wire comes out of his wrist and inserts itself into a port. He began to download everything he could though it would take some time, he now relied on Jeannie to be a distraction.

“I’ve always been able to do this. I just don’t use it often, that’s all. To other persons it seems like we’re talking to ourselves. It’s a bit embarrassing,” Sam reluctantly told Jeannie.

She looked around. The march of Jeannie’s robot kitten army seemed to have come to a stop. Someone had managed to close and barricaded the front entrance, preventing the pink stinkers from gaining access to the building.  The building itself was covered in darkness. Had it not been for the occasional shade passing a window, Sam would have believed to place to be abandoned.

So the device they were sent to collect was capable of generating EMP’s. And they had set that thing on in a city!?  What were they thinking? It could have easily unleashed chaos in the city. Fortunately, its effectiveness had been limited, for it hadn’t interfered with the robots outside. At least it meant it wouldn’t endanger anyone else, which was a good thing.

“I came along just in case things got out of hand,” she told Jeannie. A partial truth, hardly better than a lie by her standards. She had come to make sure Cebra’s plan wouldn’t endanger innocent people and put of stop to it if it did. Thus far she hadn’t seen anything that seemed to suggest that.

Then something struck her. If the device had left Jeannie’s army alone, it would have left everything else outside unharmed too. Like a security post Orion might have nearby in case something went wrong at their big facility and they needed to act quickly.

Immediately she started to circle around, allowing her to check a bigger area more effectively. As was to be expected civil vehicles were moving away from the Orion building. Which made the column heading towards the building all the easier to spot. It consisted of half a dozen vehicle that looked like a bulkier version of the ones she had met over at the prison accompanied by a single jeep with an open roof. They were hindered in their progress by the flow of cars moving in the opposite direction, but that wouldn’t keep them long. They’d be there in five minutes top.

“Jeannie, you’re getting company!”

“There’s a group of Orion soldiers moving towards the building,” Sam clarified. She was pleased to hear Jeannie wasn’t in the direct vicinity of the building. It would buy her some time to get out if things got sour. Or rather when, the column had almost reach the building.

From high in the sky Sam followed the column closely. All that lay between them and their destination was a long, straight lane they needed to follow. It wouldn’t take them long now. Judging by what Cebra had told her, Sam doubted the kittens would be able to put up much of a fight against a few dozens of armed and trained men. What’s worse, they might use the receivers in the kittens to trace the signal back to Jeannie.

“Jeannie, can you contact Cebra and let him know about this?” Sam asked. After their last conversation she didn’t want to ask him directly. She wasn’t sure he might be willing to listen.

oh dear Mr. cyborg didn't mention they might get reinforcements will good thing Jeannie comes prepared and you decided to show up. I got some stuff that'll slow them down and you can fly ahead then give them a special delivery,

I'll try to reach Mr. cyborg why you get over here and tell him about the uninvited guest. she grabs a walkie-talkie
jeannie calling Mr. cyborg come in do you hear me? we got company coming so you might want to hurry up. me and Sammie well try and keep distracting, oh yeah she came to help.