'Mere' Mortals (Stryker)

New York, a playground for the strong, a nightmare for the weak. Fortunately Lucius was among the few who had created a foothold in this city. He had it even before Ultra Gang moved in, but when they did, well, he was pretty much forced to ally himself with them or he would end up risking all the progress he had made. He would rather not have war within his race, not when the real enemy was looming and lurking, ready to stomp them into oblivion. The Agency had taken an interest in Lucius, well, they had before, but now more so. It was likely because of his dealings with the metahuman ringleader Gravitas, but that wasn't to say it was a burden. In fact, Lucius wanted the Agency to know of him. It allowed him to play with them a bit more, it allowed him to mock their pathetic attempts at metahuman regulation. Sure they had done so to many, but those under Lucius' tutelage knew how to fly under the radar and use their gifts to their advantage.

Lucius and his following were ghosts, and he only showed up when he wanted to be seen. Of course, people could find him, but that would be like finding a dragon and saying you beat it just because you knew where it was. There was more to it then that. Lucius' resources, intellect, and large numbers had gotten him to where he was, and that was standing side by side with his follow inhumans against something intent on eradicating them. Everything was set, and it was about to blow up into an all out civil war, but if Lucius got his way, it would be extremely one sided in favor of the superior race.

He couldn't risk making open appearances anymore, instead allowing his posse to take care of most everything. After all, if you have a small army, why not use it? This operation, however, required his oversight. They were going to kidnap the ever elusive Agent Michael Daniels, who had been a true thorn in his side for months on end. Through some bit of luck Hector located the agents personal residence, and they were marching on it, a skirmish before the storm really.

What the group didn't know, though, was that Agent Daniels knew they were coming, and had set up his home to keep the fight in his favor. He was a human, going up against several metahumans. Balls of steel right there. He alerted the Agency, but there weren't any extra Agents on hand to help, so he was for the most part on his own except for the local 'heroes'. The Agency had opened up a hotline for human vigilantes to use to find crimes and help agents in need, so Michael simply activated that and hoped help would come.

Last night New York.. Making a cup of coffee was supposed to be easy for most people, but not for Miles, he usually has so much work and designing to do that he neglects to fix. Once he had finished his cup of coffee, he walked back over to his workshop and went to take a sip of his coffee, not paying attention to the fact it's hot. After taking the scolding sip he exclaims, "Ah, fuck shit.". Spitting out the mouth full he set the cup aside and reached for his water bottle taking a sip to help relieve the pain.  After taking his sip he set the bottle aside and looked at his craftsmanship on the suit, missile upgrades and twin titanium and graphene composite blades, improvements to the mark two Hellfire.

This is about to be painful, Miles stepped infront of the suit on the specialized display and the suits technology began to merge with Miles body, first implanting it's self into him and forming over his body to form the full suit. After feeling it dig into his skin and pierce it's way into his spine and brain stem. The suit immediately at the same time administered nanites that cut off the nerve signals for pain during the process, reconnecting them after healing the wounds in seconds. Pain is gone. Miles then stepped onto the balcony and looked towards the sky, leaping over the railing and activating the thrusters on his boots, sending him into the sky and flying at very quick speeds, reaching mach 3 even.

Miles sighed in flight and said, "Gideon, scan for unusual activity below and let me know if you calculated chances of conflict.", so, as he was flying Gideon actively scanned below for any meta human signatures and unusual activities, suddenly Gideon, his AI responds within' 10 minutes saying, "Sir, I interrupted a signal of some sort of hotline from an unknown source, caution is advised.", Miles responded, "Let's check it out, and don't worry, I'm always careful."

Getting to the neighbor hood didn't take too long, so immediately he scanned for heat signatures and located the house in question with a person inside. Miles then said, "Gideon, check for anomalies on the target selected, if this guy is a meta we need to know what we're getting into to.", after a short moment later Gideon replied,"No anomalies detected.", Miles then began to land on the road in front of the house, Miles looked around him to make sure his surroundings were clear first of course.

This was about to get brutal. Daniels rushed back and forth from his personal armory, grabbing all manner of high tech weapons to help him take on these metahumans coming after him. He was at a disadvantage, he didn't know who he was facing and didn't know any weaknesses any of them may have had. He knew Lucius couldn't properly generate energy in large amounts in the cold, so he turned on his high tech temperature regulation system made just for times like this. Next the entire building sparked with cyan light, covering itself in a translucent reflector shield. It would buy him time if anything, but if it failed quickly the titanium walls and doors would get him another few seconds.

The inside of the home looked a lot like a bank vault really, combined with a prison cell, just with more glowing tech. Though, the outside looked like a normal white house. Miniguns rose up from the lawn, locking onto Miles before they found no metagene present in his body. It was likely someone answering the distress call, but he remained a level one threat for the time being. Michael charged his teleporter watch and sat down in front of the door, gun drawn and traps armed. He was ready.

"Come on, try me you motherfucker, try me." He said to himself. He hadn't been so nervous in his life. He was put in a situation where he had a disadvantage, but this is what he trained for, this is what he was, a champion of humanity, diving into a fight with gods head first.

Suddenly, he heard it, the sound of a teleportation device outside, Lucius had arrived. Standing next to him was the girl from the event in central park, they didn't know much about her but she seemed to be Lucius' daughter. And on the other side of him stood a man with dog tags, in an army green shirt, Falcon they called him. He had a large mini-gun in his hands and a bulging pack, likely filled with more weapons. The last person here was that damn robot, he was always difficult to deal with. Daniels didn't like Lucius at all, but the guy knew how to make technology. Lucius immediately noticed they had ported next to an exosuited man, assuming him to be Agency support.

"Isalia, if you would." Lucius said with a smirk from under his mask as he lead the group straight at the house, not running, just walking. The only one that stayed behind was Isalia, who looked to her opponent with no words. She was looking over his tech, trying to figure out exactly what he had in store for her. She could see he had heavy weaponry, thrusters on Hectors level, and scanning capabilities. She was quite impressed really, only her dad and a few others she knew of made that quality technology.

"Hope you don't mind fighting a little girl." Isalia said, her voice slightly altered by her mask. She pulled out her sword, then infused it with that mysterious red energy she inherited from her father. She wasn't going to mess around with this one.

Teleportation, the exact tech that Miles had been tampering around with for the last two weeks, still trying to get it quite right. After seeing the two figures appear before him, Gideon did an automated scan and found not only anomalies, but the metagene in their scan. As he got the information, it displayed all displayed on his HUD. Each of them were targeted and evaluated for a threat analysis. After concluding that they were quite hostile, they were categorized in mild severity. The tech was also interesting, so in order to try and keep an edge on his supposed opponet he said, "I'm not too keen on fighting the female gender as a whole as it is, I didn't want trouble, but it seems you leave me no choice..", after scanning her gear, as well as the other fellows. Quickly Gideon found an access point to specifically their mask and remotely sent a virus to each mask, causing the mask to most likely freeze up and crash, interrupting any visuals to display. And with that he went ahead to hope for the best that the hack worked and went ahead to fall back to form a small plan of defense.

Miles ran to the house and stayed behind the turrets saying, "If you give me a good enough reason to stop fighting and let you pass, I'll let you, only a good reason. Not for example, if you let us pass I wont kill you bullshit, who is this guy to you?"

Lucius and Isalia's masks shorted out for a moment, blurring the HUD and causing the mask to crash. Immediately Lucius was surprised, nothing had done that to his tech before, not even Agency tech. Though, this particular virus could have been better suited for damaging his masks software, rather then it just being a superior person behind it. Lucius pulled off the mask and laughed, then turned to the Hector exosuit who was next to him.

"Purge the system and reboot the masks, then create a defense for whatever was sent at us. Give me an ETA as well." Lucius said.

"Yes sir.......estimated time until mask reboot is one minute and thirty seven seconds." Lucius just groaned at that, slipping the mask into a compartment on his armor made just for that purpose. Isalia just ripped it from her head and used her telekinesis to float it far above her, when it reactivated she would put it back on. The momentary distraction of the hack seemed to give this exosuit person a second to run behind the houses turrets, which were now spinning and ready to fire. Daniels was waiting to do so really, logically he should have been unloading everything he had into this group but the man in the suit interested him. He showed a few qualities he always looked for in recruits. Lucius pulled his hood down, revealing his unshaven face and pale grey eyes. He had a smug smirk on his face, this guy really had the nerve, didn't he?

"I'm not some Saturday morning cartoon villain who will explain his master plan to anyone who asks. Why would i tell you anything? It's none of you're business." Lucius said, saying so in a polite gentlemanly manner but his voice was still snide and dripping with sarcasm. He would have sent Hector to try to hack some of the mans equipment, but he was currently fixing the network and their masks and he didn't want to slow that down. As far as he could tell, this guy wasn't anything special.

Isalia then walked forward, using her telekinesis to rip the turrets apart. Her long black hair was now all over the place, but she didn't care. She then sent her sword flying at high speeds, giving no warning of doing so. She used as much telekinetic power as she could to send the now infused sword at her enemies chest, which would likely cut right through it even if it were some of the strongest material on the planet. Whether it hit or not, it would loop around and return to her side in a few seconds after the attack. Lucius waited for this to resolve, then sent a wide wave of sizzling crimson energy at the man. He looked like he was holding back, that attack was powerful but it looked like more just wanted to burst from his body and envelop the area, and Lucius was the only thing keeping it in check.

Isalia was surprised her sword didn't go through the armor, its alien metal combined with her red energy should have cut it open like paper, it seemed they were dealing with someone they could go all out on without totally obliterating in a few seconds, how fun. It also seemed this person was capable of great speed, as he came flying at Isalia and fired EIGHT missiles. She of course saw this coming and reacted, sensing his movements and antispating where each of the rockets would go. They were heavy duty and too many to evade, so she decided to get out of dodge. She tapped a button on her belt and manually activated her teleporter, which took her about twenty feet out of the blast area of the bombs and even further from the exosuit guy and Lucius.

Lucius himself didn't have the luxury of a teleport as his was still cooling from the long ass jump there, so he just decided to take the blast. It hurt a lot more then expected, burning and denting his armor and burning some of his flesh. That would take a little while longer to heal, but for the most part other then a few third degree burns on his chest, legs, and face, he was fine. Lucius skidded backwards as well, then quickly stood up and waved for Hector and Falcon to approach the door to the house. They did so, Hector flying at mach three and using his tremendous strength to try and burst through the shield. As soon as it hit it sounded like a atom bomb went off, at least to the people in the area, the entire shield faded away, and Hector got to work prying the metal door down while Falcon waited at the door with his far lighter pistols. This was happening just as Lucius got up and brushed himself off, he didn't like getting burnt, not at all.

"Impressive technology.....but what kind of monster sends missiles at a 15 year old girl? And they say i'm the bad guy." Lucius said with a chuckle, his face slowly yet visibly healing. He saw that Isalia had teleported away, so that was good. Now it was only a matter of getting rid of this guy before they could go in and get Daniels. Unclasping two high powered bombs from his belt Lucius wrapped energy constructs around them, then used his manipulation to launch the encapsulated explosives at his enemy. As soon as they got near him, the constucts dispersed and the bombs exploded, each with enough power to level a small 7-11 size building. Lucius himself had backed away, and so did Isalia, there was no need to take extra damage, even if they could take it.

Ok, Lucius couldn't play around with this guy, there was way to much firepower on that suit. But what the male hadn't realized was he had seen nothing yet, the previous attacks were just to test him, to see if they needed to overexert themselves. Lucius let a massive amount of energy flow from his body just as the man started his barrage. The energy spat at the very air itself, looking for matter to consume but finding none. In an instant the pulse of energy Lucius sent outward solidified, shielding Lucius and his allies for the most part as the enemy rained down on them. The 50 cals were more easy to contain for Lucius, but each time the repulser hit it shook and cracked the red energy construct. Finally, at the forth shot it broke and dispersed, and Lucius rolled out of the way of the rest of the attack that had done it.

It was strong enough to eventually break through his constructs, great. Lucius wondered how much ammo and power it was packing, like, really, this back and forth crap had blown up the entire street at this point and it was only gonna get worse. They needed to hit this thing hard, it could take explosions pretty easily and protect itself from the beyond plasma level cutting power of Isalia's sword, so it wasn't fooling around. Lucius had to catch his breath, if only for a moment after he put that shield up. Though, in just a few seconds he was back up. So what would he do? Send Hector at him to take the fight someplace else? Or just have the whole group gang up on him then get to Daniels after? No, Lucius couldn't give Daniels time, he was too crafty. Hector was the best option, and if anyone had the power to bring the suit down it was Lucius' own robotics.

"Hector!" Lucius yelled. And that was all it took. The exoed AI turned from the house and sped straight at the man who had been causing all this trouble, he was flying at three times the speed of sound hoping to foot ball tackle the man at his torso with enough force to shatter bank vaults like butter. If he was successful in grappling the man, he would speed away as far and as fast as he possibly could, only stopping once the man wiggled from his grip. If he wasn't, he would simply hover above the man and arm his Game Changer cannons, preparing it to fire. Back at the door, Lucius had made his way toward it, then simply utilized his energy to burst through the titanium with ease. He saw Daniels in his chair, then looked to the gun. If he knew agents, that gun was nothing to laugh at, but it still was just a gun.

"Get out of my house you son of a bitch." Daniels said, firing a couple rounds at Lucius. In that instant Lucius' mind went into a state of hyper cognition, predicting the trajectory of the rounds before literally catching them with his wicked fast speed assisted limbs.

"Now that's not a very nice thing to say about someones mother, is it?" Lucius said with a chuckle. That chuckle though quickly faded as the bullets he caught exploded. Tricky bastard. Lucius was sent flying back onto the lawn, several bones in his hand broken and his armor charred. Again with the burns. He just waved for Falcon to go in and Isalia soon after, he would take the time to heal his minor injuries while the others worked.

Falcon flipped from around the corner of the entrance and shot two expertly placed rounds aimed directly for Michael's eyes. Falcon, you see, had superhuman accuracy. Thankfully Daniels had charged his watch and was already teleported before the rounds hit him, appearing behind Falcon and delivering a swift double kick to the back which pushed the ex-soldier forward and cut him badly on Daniels' plasma bladed boots.

Well, that didn't go as expected. Miles heard the man yell for someone named Hector, Miles then smiled, "Can't fight your own battles big guy?", after that he heard a faint boom and immediately Gideon spoke up saying, "Unknown contact inbound.", Miles then boosted his reactor to 100% and started his thrusters, taking off with quick acceleration heading backwards, he knew he wouldn't be able to outrun the already speeding... Thing.

But he could sure get some momentum so that the impact wasn't so bad. Once Hector crashed into him, Miles was gripped around his torso, being propelled backwards. In response Miles just raised his arm during the flight where Miles was being taken in mid air and aimed his repulsors at the robots head and began unloading relentlessly, as well as his 50.cal lead bullets with a plasma core unloading into it almost a point blank aimed at its lower back.

The goal was to take it out on the way to where ever they were going... Miles wouldn't let up his fire until they stopped either. As he did all that Miles said, "Gideon, use your full attention and resources to hack this thing and make sure you can either shut it down permanently, or use it to our own advantage."

So they launched all the way down to a nearby park that was about a block from Michael's home before they finally hit, tearing up grass as they did. On the way the man had sent several attacks into Hector's head, which he just took until he realized it was doing noticeable damage on the alien metal. So he activated his shields, which took the rest for the most part until it finally shorted out on landing. The damages to his head were major, so he took the time they both used recuperating from the fall to produce a mysterious liquid metal that shaped itself into a new chuck of head, then resolidifed, repairing pretty much all the damages. He stood up, and was about to attack again but realized something was trying its hand at his systems. A problem yes, but he had dealt with some of the most advanced AI's in the world and the best hackers as well, this would be a cake walk. He used a simple yet extremely effective tactic, all he did was make a little program, one coded in a way that told it to replicate itself while making its home in nearby signals. It would rapidly reproduce, over and over again until all the signals and potential signals in the area were bombarded with so much data it would be impossible to sort through. It would take a supercomputer a day to look over all of it to find Hector and try to reconnect to him. And all this was done with nothing but a text file told to rapidly copy itself over and over again, the entire area was essentially scrambled.

"Please. I am a highly advanced sentient AI created by one of the most brilliant minds in the world, your little science project cannot hope to breach my systems." Hector noted with a bit of pride in his words, for a robot. Even though he knew it would compromise his regeneration, Hector formed his duplicates, which spread out in a row of four from his body after solidifying. They then armed ALL their weapons. Game Changer cannons, mini guns, telekinetic repulsers and missiles. But before firing, they used their speed to run around in a circle, or fly around if the man took flight, too try to confuse him. In the next moment Miles would have four exosuits moving around him at mach speeds unleashing literally everything they had into at him. Really, all this firepower was likely enough to take on an army, but it was all being used on one guy. First the cannons would fire, eight beams total, then the missiles, also eight, then the miniguns and repulers. And if all of this didn't damage the guy, Hector still had plenty of weapons and that good old self destruct switch on all four of the EXOs.

Falcon had scurried too his feet, turning around only to get a snap kick to the face which sent Michael's plasma blade through his jaw. The man went falling back, how could he have been beat so easy? Daniels was about to fire an explosive round at the guys head to finish the job but Isalia arrived, sending a pulse that made Daniels fly through the hallway and into his kitchen. He hit the fridge, then fell to the floor with a grunt. That hurt like hell. But he had to go on. Hitting a button that was conveniently placed under the fridge Daniels fell through the floor, it was a trap door that quickly opened then sealed again, and now Daniels was safe in the basement, until they barged their way into there of course. But he had all his toys down there, and he was ready to use them. Meanwhile Lucius was still healing, almost fully at this point and ready for whatever Daniels was about to unleash.

Miles crashed into solid ground with the robot thing, it stated something that was classic, replication. But Gideon was a complex AI, even emotions were coded into her. Gideon was using another technique, the type of technique that was similar to something called, "Slowloris". The entire idea is that Gideon would send a connection to the target and leave it hanging, flooding every active port to the single target, no many how many open connections there were. It required little resources too and was effective. The source sends half a packet and waits to send the other half, leaving the receiver hanging and constantly keep the connection over. Eventually filling in every connection. Once Gideon received any type of response, she'd lock onto the target connection and send the complete virus.

Meanwhile Miles had another problem. He was surrounded by several robots. To fend them off he had to do some tweaks to his suit. To try and bid him some time he rerouted all weapon power to defensive measures, then he said, "Wait, before you shoot, can you explain to me the theory of relativity?" , And with that he activated full power to his force field as soon as Hector said anything he created a shield construct around himself as well. His thrusters were at full power, probably reaching mach 3 in seconds. Miles's goal was to fly straight up reaching 3000 feet in 3 seconds and climbing steadily straight upwards in a spiral for added evasive maneuvering until he got to 10000 feet.

The technique the AI was using was an effective one. Honestly Hector had expected this. If it couldn't get past such a simple defense then it wasn't even worth bothering with. But it was, as it did manage to reinstate it's connection to Hector's systems. So, he proxied his systems using a highly advanced version of what we all use. It worked the same way, it would bounce his connection off hundreds of computers across the globe, which the enemy AI would have to follow before finally getting to Hector once again. Considering all of the connections, it would take awhile to do this, and all other ports but that one had been closed and stuffed to the gills with data just to be sure. Next, Hector created a partition of his consciousness which would act as the active one, hiding the other in the background until a virus entered and infected it. As soon as that happened though, the partition would be deleted, leaving only the healthy, non infected one. Of course, Hector would only do this if the enemy AI managed to sort through his advanced proxy.

Meanwhile, in a less cybery plane, Miles asked an odd question, which distracted Hector for a moment. He was programmed to answer all questions no matter how ridiculous. Though, it was unknown if Miles knew of this. Really it would be impossible to know that, but he could have just been trying it to see if it would actually distract him.

"The theory of relativi..." Hector began before realizing Miles had burst off into the air, forming a shield and a constructed barrier that managed to shrug off a few beams from the Game Changer cannons and evaded the others. Rather then waste ammo the EXO suits held their fire until Miles stopped. T

All the Hectors would then charge at full flight speed at Miles. The first would swing a punch with 200 tons of power behind it at Miles head, then burst off to get some distance. The next would do the same, and the two after that would both try to grab Miles arms, if they were successful, they would yank them in opposite directions in hopes of using their immense strength to rip them off. If not, they would just get very close and try to fire their missiles at point blank range. This was all happening at speeds humans wouldn't even be able to see, and even metahumans would have trouble. With all these attacks at these speeds, it was difficult to see a way Miles could evade all of them. Lucius was now quite healed, so he sat up and walked into the house to find his two allies there and Daniels gone. Falcon had a wound on his jaw, but he was still up and walking. How could a little human even last a few seconds against these two?

"Where is he?" Lucius asked sternly. As if answering that question, the lawn itself opened up, revealing some kind of hidden garage. From that garage came a tank, one that spun around and armed its weapons with surprising speed. Lucius' eyes widened, and he instantly threw up a constructed shield at the house's entrance. From there Daniels started unleashing machine gun fire, but the thing about these rounds was they each had the power of your standard missile. So he was essentially firing missiles at full auto. Lucius grunted as they hit his shield, he couldn't take much more so he had to come up with a plan of action.

Well, that somewhat worked. Miles thrusters were top of the line and the suit was made out of the alien metal that was light weight too. How they caught up to him? He didn't know, and he wasn't about to find out. As he made it into the sky he had Gideon target each of them individually and send one of his sonic speeding missiles to each one, soon after using all these missiles, he would surely run out. Gideon then warned Miles after firing the missiles saying, "Please take caut-." and Miles saw the wave of Hectors approaching him and activated his nanite based EMP, that sucked all the power out of anything in it's general area. At the same time he deactivated his suit and engaged the solid rocket boosters that were implanted with the thrusters for emergency's and began to drop in altitude quickly.

The goal was to allow them to all charge forward and crash into each other after engaging the EMP at the same time as deactivating his suit, as well as engage the emergency boosters to get away (they are located on his back, able to be orientated anyway he wanted) Allowing the Hectors to crash into each other at sonic speeds. The solid rocket boosters were implemented to create incredible acceleration and speed in a short burst. Deactivating was a attempt at trying to avoid the EMP effects, hopefully he did.

The whole hacking defense seemed to work for Hector, but now he had another problem. A missile hit one of the Hectors in the chest, which exploded and sent it falling out of the sky. Critially damaged, but not destroyed. It landed in the trees below, but in all honesty it was a good thing because this single suit avoided what happened next. The other Hector's had used their immense speed and reaction time to move out of the way of the other missiles, but an EMP was activated soon after, just as the Hector's charged in. This caused the too that came to grab Miles arms to shut down. They crashed into each other, not being able to stop, then started falling down to the earth. The final Hector was also falling now, though toward a totally different area. This wasn't good for the AI, he knew he should have upgraded the EMP shielding, everyone and their dogs seemed to have that tech nowadays.

They all hit, and were in various stages of damage, and three were shut down, attempting to reboot themselves. Immediately the one that got hit with the missile stumbled to it's feet, then used it's now limited but still superhuman speed to rush over to the two EXOs that ran into each other. Suddenly they turned back into liquid and were absorbed by the third, which allowed Hectors repair systems to kick into gear but it wasn't as fast as before. It would take just under a minute without the last duplicate, which was still out there somewhere, shut down. Hector was beginning to wonder what Lucius was doing, and if he was having as much trouble as him. Hector would look around for his opponent, who he didn't see land.

Lucius was having a different problem, though it was pretty easily fixed. He made sure Isalia put up a barrier around herself and Falcon before putting his now rebooted mask on and teleporting on top of the tank. Without Lucius there to put up a shield the machine gun fire entered the house and hit Isalia' barrier, causing her to grunt from the effort. Literally, she was containing dozens of grenades. Luckily Lucius was about to put an end to that. He used his energy to cut right through the cockpits door, but he didn't find Daniels, instead he found one of those toy monkeys with the things it smashes together. It was an obvious bomb, and it exploded. It was a good thing Lucius had his mask on as it allowed him to instantly put up his repulsive field to shield himself as the whole tank exploded. Daniels had tricked him, using the confusion to speed away on a high tech motorcycle. As Michael did this he used his helmet to open communications with Miles.

"I admire your endurance, but even if you beat that thing you have others even more powerful then it to deal with. I have extracted myself from the situation, so it's over. However, i want you to meet me at this address. I need to discuss a few things if you could take a few moments." Michael said as he sped at nearly 500 mph on the computer guided bike. It was true really, even if through some huge amount of luck they defeated everyone there, Lucius could still call upon more of his metahuman lackeys. There was no shame in this, Michael was taken off guard and was making the most tactical move.