Feedback Loop (Verse & obieblu)

[obieblu]

The world had grown accustomed to superhuman conflict. Factions rose and fell, but Vanguard remained a steadfast force. Known globally as elite protectors, they operated out of their high-tech base just north of New York City. With the world's top-tier supervillains having seemingly given up years ago, the public believed the forces of good had won. For now. Superheroing had become mostly capturing and cleaning up after a few discount rascals.

At Vanguard HQ, Solaris and Tempest sat in a secure meeting room, engaged in a quiet call with government authorities. Solaris was calm and focused as she spoke back to an unseen video screen, while Tempest fiddled with the tip of one of his dreadlocks in annoyance. Elsewhere, Vigil was hunched over a work table in his lab, preferring the low hum of his drones to human company. No one ever really knew where Obsidian was. The team joked about her tendency to 'lurk mysteriously'. Though, she always appeared exactly when needed, without warning or explanation.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Nico Flores, also known as Flow, and Amp were in their element. Nico stood over the stove, sporting a snug t-shirt that clung to his sun-kissed, chiseled athletic form and sported a large logo for an ocean preservation organization. He jested with his girlfriend, Amp, in a light-hearted manner while they engaged in a lively debate over the seasoning of their midday meal. They shared a laugh, their chemistry palpable.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

The alarm blared. The team reacted instantly, knowing it signaled something serious. Solaris became a blur as she sped to the locker room, donning her white and gold armor as she readied for battle. Tempest followed, donning his sleek, low-friction bodysuit designed to reduce wind resistance. With his dreadlocks tied back, he was ready for action. In the lab, Vigil grabbed a mass of nano-drones and headed for the hangar. Obsidian was already there, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. Her ultra-black suit, painted with a material that absorbed all light, made her presence unsettlingly quiet. She said nothing, as usual.

Nico pulled on his sleeveless, lightly armored bodysuit. The coal gray and dark aqua panels hugged his form, while the piping glowed electric blue, indicating he was already charging. Tying back his wild hair, he grinned. "Guess lunch will have to wait."

Amp shook her head with a smirk, as she slipped her uniform top over her red hair. "You turned off the stove, right?"

The Harrier jet roared to life, carrying the team through the skies. As the crash scene of a downed satellite came into view, the anticipation was palpable. Solaris stood steady, her focus unshakable as she monitored the landscape below. Vigil activated several crates full of his aerial drones which produced a buzzing sound loud enough to be heard over the jet engines.

The moment for deployment arrived. Solaris led the charge, launching herself from the open hatch, moving as if gravity was nothing but an afterthought. Vigil followed, with drones attached to his nano-suit, stabilizing his descent. Four other flying drones broke away to begin reconnaissance around the crash site.

Flow turned to Amp with a handsome, mischievous grin, leaning in for a quick kiss. "Stay safe, babe."

Amp rolled her eyes, smirking. "You too."

Flow smiled as he jumped out of the open bay door backwards then did a combined twist and summersault, like a diver might. With controlled energy bursts, he leveled out and fell in just behind Solaris, though much less gracefully. Nico would never admit it to the serious Solaris, but he found this fun. He'd joined the team almost a year ago, and while there were some scrapes and bruises and close calls, nothing had counter-balanced his sheer joy in the sensation of rocketing through the air and into opponents, fueled by the confidence of his teammates and awe of bystanders.

Vigil took a more methodical descent, analyzing his drones' feeds as they circled the crash site at a moderate distance. Meanwhile, the jet began its own descent, readying to drop off the non-fliers.

Hovering above the wreckage of the satellite was their enemy—a tall, menacing figure encased in a dark suit with silver protrusions. His black hair and equally dark eyes gave him an air of calm menace.

Flow didn't recognize the figure, or at least their costume. Still, filled with the boundless confidence of his teammates and crew of he jet, he awaited his leader's standard opening. Solaris narrowed her eyes, tempering her first blinding white blast of solar laser, aimed directly at the dark figure below.

 

[Verse]

He looked at the wreckage of the satellite. These things were hideous when they flew, borrowing from Earth's gravity - like unwelcome piercings on a face. It was better now, closer to the ground where the ore had come from. It didn't get in the way of the way things ought to be.

Callyn Kein had grown up with splitting headaches. The toddler had been catatonic and his parents hadn't known what to do. The doctors said there was nothing wrong other than a constant state of high stress hormones. When he was too young to, he'd stolen his fathers motorbike and driven where the call had had come from, when it crystalize among the banshee suffering that wracked through his skull and bones and muscle fibers. An abandoned town, five gas tanks away. He crawled through the dust and found his way through long since decayed security in a facility the town had been built around. He found his peace in rubble. He found his peace was the rubble.

He wore them now, where he'd connected them through his skin, and spilled his own blood. They had quieted the signals, and let him feel and think finally. His senses had waited to tell him the truths about earth, to guide him through its unseen fields, and to ingest them. It was like activating dormant organs. It told him how the oceans worked, and how they extended beyond their liquid, and how the sun charged the earth with more than humans could dream. That's how he knew this satellite had been a bane on the atmosphere. That's how he knew there was nothing alive that could stop him. Not alone. And not in a group like this.

The hovering being turned decidedly human eyes at the people who'd come. This wasn't the first time he'd tried to make the fields of earth symmetric. His work was usually known as natural disasters or great malfunctions in large systems. They'd lost him in the grandness of his destruction. They hadn't thought, even in a world of ultra beings, that one could have been the cause of the events he ushered in. The people who saw his work, and didn't know it was him, only knew him by the alert on their screens

Critical.

He smiled at them. Angular face and bladed eyes atop a body that had filled its flesh with strength after a childhood of physical neglect. But the expression became stale when he sensed flies in his air, the noisy kind, the kind with a buzzing sound loud enough to be heard over the jet engines. The hovering, dark silhouette reached toward them, as though extending peace to Solaris, though she was still at quite the distance, but when he clenched his fist, the drones closes to him collided in the same speed, making fires as they fell to the ground already marred by satellite debris.

One of these visitors resounded with Cal's own ability, though it was infinitely more juvenile and primal in its nature. Fun. The rest were strong in their own, insignificant way, but couldn't hope to compare. Again, he stood without threat.

"You'll get in the way, you think." his words came from everywhere, like they'd been traveling this way for quite a while and only now reached the group's ears. "But you're just going to get pillaged and torn down. I'd tell you to get the fuck out. But you're not going to. So I'll have my fun."