My Super Secret Life…Diamond-12.

Chapter 12

*Before…

We actually just sort of gather together around all the unconscious meta-animals and sort of wait a few minutes for the aero-cruisers and armored aero-transport get here and are landing and the prisoners are getting put away and Mrs. Champion looks at me. “C’mon we’re going with that ride.”
“Really? Me?”
“Yeah you you’re one of our heavies and it’ll look good too. The public likes it when we reassure them that we’ll keep an eye on people like them.”
“Okay…uhm…cool.”
She nods. “Now armor up as we’re getting in and give the press a little wave as we get in.”
“Really?”
“Yup, image helps, when they see Diamond on the streets and in action they’ll think of this stuff, they’ll think of you as a police officer and hopefully enough to listen to you when you need to get something done or give orders.”
I armor up and there’s more flashes from the cameras and I climb on board in the back and I wave just the once so friendly but not like I’m waving like some newb…okay yes I am a newb but still.
Mrs. Champion gets in with me and we lift off headed for where ever we actually take people like them.
And now I think I get to see the other side of the hero work thing.

*And Now…

It’s sort of surreal in the extreme there’s people that are waving at us and then camera flashes and there’s even a few cheers as we’re lifting off and then we’re headed to The Tower in a convoy together and it’s still pretty damned neat to be in an aero-vehicle in the first place but now we’re in like a group of them and they’re police styled and all tricked out and we’re flying in formation.

As a hero geek…well geekette and a comic book fan myself to be doing this is seriously cool.

We’re in a short flight even and there’s something that happened further back with Titan and his capture and I see him sprayed with something that is reddish and it smells seriously spicy like some kind of like pepper juice or something and the woman that’s with him looks decidedly non-plussed as he’s getting her into the system.

I’m watching Mrs. Champion doing her thing and I’m trying to pick up the things she’s doing like arrest wise but there’s really a lot to it and it’s a lot more legalese than anything I’ve read about.

Then I see Shroud there and I thought that he was up in Ark City with things that were going on there?

Oh and then the girl that Titan was bringing in for processing actually pipes up to Shroud and calls him her brother.

I swear I can feel the tension suddenly there between them and he moved so fast that he was right up on her and I heard something said but I have no clue what it was and then Titan’s in between them.

“Back off Shroud.”
“Not your business boy.”
“She’s my business as she’s my collar, you’re Not a vigilante.”

They have a standoff this whole sort of Golden blonde Hercules type facing off against Batman and like no offense Titan but there’s a reason why there’s still a version of the Batman Universe in comics still.

Shroud’s basically Batman with meta-powers.

Shroud turns first but he turns on Mrs. Champion. “Get her secured as secured as we have she’s not going anywhere understand me, nowhere!”

He seems really, really pissed off and upset because he actually yelled that at Mrs. Champion and he’s walking out shooting Titian a look and her a look and well her, this girl in question is sort of just there weaving from foot to foot her hands bound and her mouth with this stain of the red stuff she spit out at Titan and she has these odd not normal green eyes and blonde hair but she has this feral grin on her face and she really, really looks like she just enjoyed that.

We get put through processing and that’s seriously rough stuff as when some of our arrests get frisky as they wake up and struggle and then there’s the demands for the lawyers and then the cells and they bring in Exo-SWAT to take over for us.

Exo-SWAT is just that you have officers in exo-robotic frames and that’s in two stages one a riot suit of armor with heavy power assist and then there’s the big guys that are called Sluggers because they’re big and armored with like serious robotics they’re like fourteen hundred pound eight foot tall power armors. One Slugger can flip cars over two can do a big utility van and four can flip a bus.

Why don’t we use them all the time? They cost millions each and when you have The Champions and Meta’s like us them it’s sort of better to have them as back up if we need them or to pinch hit in case we’re doing something else.

And as good as those power armor and suits are they’d take a huge beating from someone like the big rhino guy and one on one he might have one easily he was that strong.

So people like us. Like me handle these things once we’re like sanctioned to do it.

I make my way over to Kai who’s drinking something hot and she looks decidedly uncomfortable and so does Kyle her boyfriend with that black winged dark elf thing he has going on and he’s making people around him pretty uncomfortable too.

People are people I guess and most of them are used to Meta’s that look pretty close to baseline. Especially down here in Paradise City we have our different people but really, really we prefer our not-normals to look as normal as possible.

And this isn’t Ark City with the fabled and storied things we’ve all heard about in that place called Freaktown and where the real heavy duty freaks tend to come out at.

I get myself a coffee from the table that they have there and it smells waaay too old for me or strong or both so it’s three sugars and two creamers and I stand with my team mates and I look over and down at Kai.

“You okay?”

“Maybe, this is disturbing for me.”

“Why?” I’m actually interested since her life’s still sort of a mystery yet really.

“I don’t like cops.”

“We are cops.”

“No…..we’re supers, we’re either lucky or cursed to protect people. The cops, the cops they protect the status quo.”

“But we work with the cops.”

She’s sipping what smells like tea and she looks like she’s chewing on it all.

“I’m all for protecting people it’s just I’ve had bad experiences with the police.”

“Oh...well okay I guess so are you going to be okay?”

Kai looks at me and then at Kyle who is drinking a coffee and he has this look like he’s decidedly trying to act like none of the stares and looks from the regular people are getting to him only it is.

I know that look.

I used to wear it all the time when I was the old me and people would be like making fun of me and everything. That determined to not let the shitty things they’re doing or thinking show.

She took another drink. “Yeah but I would like to get out of here and maybe back to our quarters over at The Tower itself instead of here.”

I nod.

Kai’s such a puzzle, sometimes she seems so street and other times it’s like she’s all Japanese and Zen and reserved. I can’t really get a bead on her since it seems to like come and go at will too. I mean the way she’s talking right now and the tea she’s drinking it’s all her but at the same time it’s oddly not like matching.

“I’ll go ask Mrs. Champion if we’re clear to bail for home and get cleaned up.”

I head over and she’s talking with some of the officers and she’s going over things and I wait since it seems important and I think that one of the people that’s there is someone in the district attorney’s office and there’s two cloned fellas in men-in-black suits…my guess is homeworld security.

There’s big time charges going down here with the property damage and then there’s the actual crime and the injuries and there’s a man dead over this, over a robbery.

And then there’s Mongo who Champion has brought in but with this whole huge sort of cage sort of containment unit I’ve never seen before until this and it’s like a huge thick metal cylinder that is actually hovering inside an anti-gravity frame.

I guess it bleeds off some of the force from the big gorilla or something.

I can see him on the screen too… in that cage thing and he’s very much like the story of Mighty Joe Young combined with the very worst of the worst from Planet of The Apes.

I’m waiting for her to have time for me so I put on the sound on the screens for his cage and hear him talking in this deep, deep thick voice, not angry or snarling but almost calm.

“Humans and cages, humans and cages you all think that’s the solution…take and rape and twist and bend and turn us into instruments of your will. This battle was just a skirmish you bald creatures, you pathetic little creature…you’ll soon see what the power of nature will be when it’s awakened…oh you’ll all see.”

The few of us that are watching him see him lean and glare directly into the camera like he knows where it is and that’s a little disturbing and his calm is very disturbing and I can’t keep the feed going because he’s like creeping me out and things.

When I power off the screen Mrs. Champion’s looking at me and I ask… “Are we done here, because Bonsai and Lazerus and I were wondering if we could go back to The main part of The Tower.”

It’s a little weird to even be doing this actually. Like asking her like she’s a parent or something when she’s one of the mightiest heroines on New Haven.

“Sure go ahead you need to right reports ASAP but you might as well do that with a fresh change of clothes and being showered and everything, you’ll find the reports there on your account in the system labeled under the file folder for police reports there’s another one for our own files too.”

I nod and try a smile in my armored for. “Homework cool beans.”

She grins. “Take Titan with you and make sure he gets checked out by medical.”

“Will do Boss Lady.”

“Thanks Diamond.”

I’m sort of smiling as I head off to the others and Ty’s the hardest to find because he’s still sort of stewing about Shroud I think and about ‘the girl’ and about mongo who he’s watching on a tablet and glaring at.

I go over to him and slide closer. “You got to breathe, you’re getting way too worked up and into angry guy mode.”

He stares at me and I stare back. “Ty I’ve been there remember, I might not have been able to be like that like angry to the assholes that made my life a living hell like most of the time but I know the anger and how it can grab you…hell it might be even worse with the power up you got…just chill out.”

We keep staring and I stop and I step up and I give him a hug.

He tenses and then he slowly shakes. “They murdered a guy Diamond, they murdered a guy and she fired into a crowd of people like it didn’t matter and then there was just so much blood and people hurt and screaming and…”

I unarmor and hug him pretty tight and he can take it actually because he’s like boosted tough so maybe he feels it like more or something.

“Come on with the rest of us and we can all go and hang out and do these reports together and we can cry and stuff and talk about stuff…and there’s chocolate back at quarters and stuff.”

He says it but it’s pretty much Sunny. “Chocolate…yeah I could use some serious chocolate therapy right now.”

He turns off the tablet and leaves it at the counter he was closest to and we meet up with the others and we walk out and there’s reporters there with cameras still and photogs and Kyle snaps out his wings and takes off with Kai and Ty looks at me and we jump well he jumps and I’m like strong enough the force of it doesn’t like hurt me and he’s sort of able to do these hulk like jumps and stuff though like not quite as far as the stuff in the comics but we’re out of there and it’s kind of cool.

Actually it’s very cool as I shift myself around to his back at like jump three and he sort of is like piggy backing me in this really amazing way.

I can’t help but laugh some. “Okay this, this is pretty effing cool.”

“Really, let me try this…”

I’m not sure what he did and there was this entirely odd sensation when we landed like that feeling of sorta drop as like an elevator goes up and then there’s this spring back and we blast off and we go full hulk bounce this time like twenty or thirty stories high and lots of horizontal space too and we pass Kyle and Kai and I let out a “Whoo-hoo!”

Okay life’s really complicated but right now it’s not so bad, and we’re together and with friends.