MAU: Infinte Crisis Part 2

A few minutes prior to Noel's impromptu fight with the Iron Patriot, now
Iron Hulk buster, he had been chasing a different character who very
much resembled one from "Batman Beyond". In fact he was the striking
image of that Batman himself. While he looked like Terry McGinnis, his
real name was Jeffrey Donald. Not surprisingly, both he and his pursuer
had used the strange alien device. Jeffrey had a sizable lead ahead of
the guy chasing him, but he doubled back and waited for the Iron Patriot
or "Henry" as was his real name, to fly by over and a little further
ahead before jumping back up to follow at a discrete distance. A few
minutes later Jeffrey noticed that Henry abruptly changed his course
heading straight up, he dove for the tree tops in case he noticed him.
It wasn't until he saw weapons fire that he was both relieved and then
worried. Relieved that he hadn't been spotted and worried about what he
was firing on.

"Ah hell!"

Putting aside his own personal concerns, he did his best to catch up and
hopefully stop Henry before he did something really bad. Touch his hand
to his ear, he activated his radio.

"Hey John, You hear me?"

"Loud and clear, were you able to ditch him finally?" His voice had a
tell-tale sign of an English accent. Something he didn't have before he
was changed.

"Yeah, but he's shooting at something. I hope it's just some birds, and
if it's not, I'm going to check it out just in case."

"Bloody hell, does that mean I have to come pick you up when you get
into it?"

"Hmph, funny! But just in case, yeah."

Jeffrey activated his beacon for John to follow, when he saw tracer
rounds striking towards the ground. He could just barely make out a
shake of the tree tops. Clearly something hit the ground. Hard. There
were a few flashes of light and then they were off into the sky again.
Jeffrey had to strain his suits rockets to the limit just to keep up.
All the while, the two kept trading shots, although it was heavily one-
sided as the Iron Man figure was doing most of the shooting. The first
vestige of morning was just poking over the horizon when the chase soon
arrived at a small town.

Jeffrey could see a few streaks of light fall to the town, three of the
four made it back up. Just as he reached the edge of the town he saw a
beam of light erupt from a large object striking the ground. The force
of the impact was enough to cause the surrounding trees to shudder
around the beam.

"Oh God, John! You're going to have to floor it. He just fired his uni-
beam!"

"FUCK!!! I'm still twenty minutes away. Stall him!"

'Fucking radio! All it's good for is telling people stuff when they
can't do anything about it!' Thought Jeffrey.

He landed on the roof of a store behind Henry, now in Hulkbuster mode.
As Jeffrey was getting ready to throw an exploding batarang, his
combatant made a sword come out of her arm and stuck it into the arm he
was holding her by. And judging from his very angry outburst it did some
damage, just not enough to stop him from shooting her point-blank in the
face, much to Jeffrey's horror.

As each shot went, repulsor energy flared out between his fingers like
geysers. Smoke crept out like willowy snakes. It seemed that the last
shot killed her.

"Aw shit! John, step it up! He just killed her and I'll be damned if I'm
gonna let him play with her corpse after what just happened!"

"The bloody prick! 'Kay, I'll be there in ten minutes."

'Well if I'm going to stop him, I'll have to get his attention...'
thought Jeffrey as he jumped and threw some regular batarangs over
Henry's head landing several feet in front.

"Put. Her! Down!" Jeffrey said sternly while readying an explosive
batarang.

Jeffrey heard him chuckle which then turned into a laugh as he swung his
victim around to grab her legs with his other hand while charging his
uni-beam again. As he fired, Jeffrey dove forward to the left to avoid
both the body and the beam as they went by. Jeffrey rolled to a stop in
the kneeling position and fired his batarang into the hole of Henry's
oversized arm. Seconds later the entire hand blew off halfway between
the elbow and wrist leaving sparking wires and a very upset Henry. Bothe
his helmets opened up revealing an insanely mad face.

"You're DAMN lucky I want you alive! Otherwise I would've torn you to
pieces for that!"

With that said he closed up his helmets, grabbed the still twitching
hand on the ground with his other. And flew up into the sky and out of
sight in seconds.

By this time, a few people began poking their heads around corners from
opposite ends of the street. Thankfully, for the moment, they were more
interested in the smashed truck. Taking advantage of this Jeffrey walked
over and picked up the still form.

"John, Henry took off. I got the girl so tell me where you're coming
from and I'll meet you halfway!" He said as he ran down a side-street, a
feat made difficult while carrying about three hundred pounds of an
armored woman.

A GPS map appeared on his HUD with a route overlaid on it.

"Take the directions I just sent you. It's the quickest way out and
there shouldn't be too many people to spot you if anyone is up. Meet you
in two!"

Jeffrey grunted in reply as he ran down back alleys and through side-
streets away from built up sections of the town's main street to the
more rural areas on the edge of town. Sure enough in two minutes Jeffrey
rounded another corner to see a large moving truck pull to a stop.
Jeffrey ran towards the back and jumped in as the doors swung open. John
was already in back waiting for them with a first-aid kit. As Jeffrey
laid her down and stepped back John passed his sonic screwdriver over
and looked at it.

"Well!?" Jeffrey urged as he took his cowl off.

John put on a pair of old style 3-D glasses and redid his scan.
"...Amazing!"

"Don't go 'Doctor' on me, is she alright?"

John removed his 3-D glasses.

"Sorry, it's been easier to slip into character since I regenerated. And
what I found isn't important at the moment."

He then brought his screwdriver around her head. The buzzing seemed to
make Jeffrey angrier by the second.

"Stop playing with your damn screwdriver and get her out of it!!" He
screamed.

"That's what I'm trying to do! Contrary to what I look like, I'm not the
actual Doctor! I barely know how to use this thing and I've been running
on instinct!" He shouted back.

Finally after what seemed like an eternity, they were rewarded with a
soft click. John gingerly lifted the helmet up and set it aside. Jeffrey
leaned over, turning his ear to her face.

"She's not breathing."

He then sits up and places two fingers to her neck while holding his
cowl to his head.

"And I can't get a pulse."

In a sudden renewed fit of anger, Jeffrey flung his cowl to the back of
the truck and rested his back to the wall behind him with his head in
his hands.

"That's FOUR that he's killed now!" Jeffrey screamed.

"Well four we know of." Replied John grimly.

Jeffrey glared back. The two exchanged a salom look before looking down
at the girl. If it wasn't for the blotchy mess between her eyes from
Henry's repulsors she would've been quite pretty. From what they could
see, she was predominantly Asian with a mix of Caucasian to give her a
pixie look. Further adding to the look was her short sandy blond hair
with white frosted tips. As Jeffrey stared, he noticed something about
the girls' armor.

"What the hell?"

John saw it too. Where ever there were cracks in the armor, they started
to rise until they looked like exaggerated veins. They kept getting
bigger till they were a quarter inch above the rest of the armor, at
which point they throbbed and seemed to collapse slightly causing a
ripple effect across the armor. As each ripple passed over, the scorch
marks and burns would disappear as if it never happened. After the
'ripples' subsided the 'veins' sunk down leaving no trace of the cracks
they emerged from. While this was going on, Jeffrey had stood back while
John got into the driver's seat to take them out of town in case
something else happens. Just as Jeffrey was sure that whatever just
happened was finished, tendrils exploded from under her collar which
encompassed her entire head. The tendrils twitched for a minute then
began to dissolve into her head, a few receded back under her collar.
Jeffrey noticed that they healed the injury on her face, kneeling down;
he began to check her pulse and breathing. As he did, the truck ran over
a bump, and suddenly the girls' eyes opened and gasped before sitting
upright. Jeffrey jerked backwards startled and hit the back of his head
on the wall behind him. The girl, breathing hard, gulped and put a hand
to her stomach.

"Ohh, I'm so hungry, should've eaten before I left. Wait... Where am I?"

------------------

At first I didn't even know that I regained consciousness. At first I
felt that I was floating, then I was being suffocated, then I finally
came to the realization that I wasn't breathing. Opening my eyes I
sucked in the much needed air as I sat up. After a few seconds of
hyperventilating, I immediately became aware of the hunger pangs in my
stomach.

"Oh, I'm so hungry, should've eaten before I left."

When I heard myself talk, I sounded like a whiny girl and I was about to
laugh, when I felt the room bounce. It was then I noticed I wasn't
outside anymore.

"Wait... Where am I?"

I looked around me as the room continued to bounce at random intervals
and saw a man dressed in a black suit with a red Batman symbol splade
across his chest.

"Who are you?"

He looked as if he were frozen before shaking his head slightly then
extending his hand before replying.

"Jeffrey Donald... Let me guess, you found a little box which grew as
big as a phone booth and you used it to change yourself, right?"

He had a crooked smile on his face as if he wanted to share an inside
joke.

"...Yeah, a few hours ago I think. My name's Noel by the way."

I shook his hand while I cleared my throat, still not used to my voice.
He stared at me before handing me my helmet. The faceplate had a hole
big enough that I could probably fit the end of my original pinky finger
in it. Cracks radiated out from it. I then felt pins and needles in my
finger tips and became transfixed as the cracks seem to swell into
little mountain ranges towards the hole. When they converged on it, it
seemed to clot or bubble over, covering it completely. After which it
all melted into the helmet making it look brand new.

"That's VERY slightly weird!"

I then remembered the 'fight' I was in and reached up to feel my
forehead and instantly felt stupid for doing so since I was still mostly
in my armour. Jeffrey saw the look on my face and said, "Don't worry,
the rest of you healed up. Both you and your armor."

"Thanks," I replied with a smile.

Feeling more at ease with my surroundings I was kinda surprised when the
colour of my armour changed back from the two-tone olive green to its
original red and white.

"So what brings you to the grand US of A Noel?"

"...Family," I replied.

"Oh..."

"Yeah..."

The sudden question seemed to put a halt to any further casual
conversation, so we ended up just staring awkwardly at each other, till
Jeff suddenly got up.

"Well, I'm going to check on our driver. If you're hungry, we got a
mini-fridge to your right and you're welcome to it," he said hastily
before moving up front.

The truck bounced again causing him to trip. He swore under his breath
before continuing to the cabin.

"Kay thanks." I said after him. I sighed before turning my attention to
the fridge and smiling.

"You're all mine now!" I said with a chuckle.
----------

Jeffrey was still swearing when he sat in the passenger seat.

"Jeez John, are you looking for potholes or something?"

"Just whenever you're walking about. So, how's our girl?"

"She seems fine. Not sure if that's just because it hasn't hit her yet
or if she's absorbed herself into the character she turned herself
into."

"So... She's Canadian?"

"Well she hasn't said anything about where she's from. But if you're
going on the maple leaf design on her armor then yeah."

"Hey, I always wondered if they say 'eh' all the time. Or what about
'aboot'?" John asked with a grin.

Jeffrey let out a groan.

"John, if we're going by stereotypes, then you are a hill billy redneck
engaged to your sister that can play a banjo." He quipped back with a
grin of his own. John laughed.

"So what did you find when you were doing your scans?" Jeffrey asked
looking over.

"Like I said, nothing important. She's fine now so there's no need to go
into it." He said matter of factly.

"Come on, it must've been something to make you lapse." Jeffrey urged.

"I stand by my previous nonsensical statement." He replied flatly.

"Alright fine... So... Where are we gonna meet up with the rest?"
Jeffrey asked changing the subject.

"Well before all this happened..." He waved his hand randomly before
continuing. "..I came across a rest stop for campers an hour out of the
town we were just in. I thought it'd be a good place."

Jeffrey got out of the passenger seat before saying. "Well I'm going to
check up on our guest again and tell her to expect some more joining
us."

John just nodded then started humming the Doctor Who theme.

"Hey Noel, just so you know, we're going to pick up some friends and..."

Jeffrey cut himself short as Noel looked back over her shoulder with a
half eaten mini-sup sandwich sticking out of her mouth. The sight of
this would've looked even more cute if she wasn't in her armor, but
damn!

"Hm?" She 'asked' before taking another bite. Jeffrey stopped for a
moment.

"Okay, I gotta ask. Who did you turn yourself into? Are you a new
person? Or did you just make yourself a suit?"

Noel finished her sandwich before replying.

"No, I'm new all around. You wouldn't even recognize me before now. Not
that you would with this being the first time we met. No, but. I based
the armour off of an anime called 'Bubblegum Crisis'. To be honest, I
was only thinking about how to make the suit. I didn't really think
about how I should look under it. Come to think of it, I haven't looked
at myself since the second time I changed. This would be my third
change." She said, pointing to herself.

"Well the only mirrors we have are the side views on the truck. If you
want to use those, you're going to have to wait till we stop. The only
other thing we have is the laptop we use. It has a built in web cam
so... whichever you want to do." He gestured aimlessly.

Noel stood up with one hand to the side for balance in the still moving
truck.

"Let's go with the web cam then."

Jeffrey pulled out a laptop from a cubby hole beside the mini-fridge and
turned it on and opened up the webcam. Noel could hardly believe it. He
or rather she for awhile now, looks almost exactly like Nene would in
real life. Except for the white tipped hair and teal coloured eyes, she
was a dead ringer. And thanks to the presumably Caucasian mix, it seemed
to widen her almond shaped eyes to look closer to her anime counterpart.
All in all, she was cute.

"Wonder what the rest of me looks." She mumbled to herself.

Leaving Noel to her newfound vanity, Jeffrey made his way back to the
cab and sat down beside John once more.

"You know, getting up and down and walking around a moving vehicle isn't
the best of ideas." stated John. His grin abated the seriousness of it,
showing he was only kidding.

"I'd hate to ask a stereotypical question here, but. Are we there yet?"
Jeffrey asked looking out the side window.

"Actually yes. I'm surprised that you didn't see it."

"What? The turn off, or the truck stop?"

"No, I was referring to the twenty foot tall giant in medieval armor by
the trees over there." He pointed.

Jeffrey looked out the window and groaned inwardly.

"Dammit Andria!..."

As they pulled up and got out, they walked past the picnic tables and
outhouses to the edge of a clearing where they came to meet two
individuals. One just finished unsummoning the giant.

"Dammit Andria, I've told you before! We can't do things like this in
the daytime!"

She just shrugged in response.

---------------

Meanwhile at a currently undisclosed location.

"I'm a busy man, Mike. What's so important to interrupt my video
conference?" Mr. Tonaon asked impatiently.

Mr. Tonaon was the head of the company 'Tonaon Industrials' A company
that mainly sold factory equipment and supplies. Mr. Tonaon was toying
with the idea of branching out.

"Well, one of our transport truck drivers claims he nearly hit a deer."

"That's it?! If this is what you called me down here for, then I'll
charge your pay for the money you lost me. And at your current pay
level, your descendants will have to work it off for generations to
come," Tonaon said coldly.

Mike nervously taped on the keyboard of the computer bringing up several
images.

"This is what the hood cam on his truck shows."

The video was a short two-second clip where something landed then seemed
to fly back up with short streams of light behind it.

"As you can see, the video quality is too poor to make out any definite
details but you CAN see it is a person."

"...While that is unusual, it's hardly something worth my attention."
Tonaon meant to sound annoyed but he had to admit. His curiosity was
piqued. Still, business was business, and he couldn't allow himself to
be affected by something that didn't affect his company.

Mike enlarged a satellite image on the screen.

"The satellite here was currently set for analyzing energy consumption
for environmentalist. These are power lines, these blobs are vehicles,
and here are buildings. Now watch as I advance the photos."

A blob marked as the company truck for reference was just leaving city
limits. Further down and to the right of the map was a small pinprick of
light. If it wasn't so bright, it would have been swallowed up by the
other blobs and lines.

"What is that?" Tonaon asked, pointing at the unusual mark.

"That 'dot' is producing twice the energy produced by a nuclear plant.
But watch these next few frames."

The next image shows the dot at a greater intensity than before. The
next image showed only static.

"What happened on the last one?" asked Tonaon.

"The energy output of whatever that was, caused a conflict in the
satellites programming. The entire system had to be rebooted." Mike
answered before hastily adding. "And when it came back online, it
vanished! Just went back to normal."

Tonaon leaned closer to the screen, cycling back the last three images.

"Keep an eye on this Mike." He then whispered to himself, "I want this!"

The look in his eyes changed from a mild corporate paranoia to absolute
greed.

--------------

Noel stepped out of the back of the truck without any problems aside
from her 'boots' sinking into the ground a little more than the others.
John had already got out and was making his way across a clearing.
Jeffrey did a slight nod to gesture Noel to follow.

As they walked, Noel noticed that there wasn't much snow around and what
was there was melted somewhat. "So that's where they get the idea that
Canada's always winter," she thought to herself. Her attention was then
drawn to a glowing giant that then disappeared in an implosion of light.

"Holy crap!" Noel said looking to Jeff she could see he was more peeved
then awed.

"Dammit Andria! I've told you before, we can't do stuff like that during
the day!" He yelled when we reached them.

She only shrugged before looking over to Noel, "Oooo... Who's the new
guy?" she asked.

Jeffrey sighed and introduced Noel.

"Noel, this is Andria, a constant pain in my neck."

"Ciao," she said with a smile and a wink.

Jeffrey just rolled his eyes. "And.."

John cut him off ".. And this lovely girl's, my girl, Major. A bit of a
prude sometimes but I still love her," he said which earned a playful
slap from 'Major' before they kissed each other. "I'm John by the way,
John Smith! And no, I'm not joking, that is my name. Can't tell you how
many times people thought I was joking."

Noel just nodded seeing as how John was the splitting image of David
Tennant. She then introduced herself, told them about herself and how
she came across the alien machine. She skipped over the part about the
fact that she was originally a male, not sure what they'll think.

The others listened and after she was done they told her about
themselves.

John was born and raised in New Orleans but he and his family moved
shortly after the hurricane flooding to Boston where he moved out a year
later. He spent three years in university and managed to graduate early
with honors. It was the night after graduation when he found the box
embedded in his "new" car his parents bought him. He turned it on that
night but was too freaked out to try until two days later. He changed
himself into various Doctor Who characters and even some from the spin-
offs. He'd just turned himself into the ninth Doctor when the box
stopped working. Thankfully his parents and family accepted and
supported him and his new self. It was a few months later that he met
Jeffrey, and painfully, Henry soon after. Henry and Jeffrey were in a
fight and when Henry was about to finish Jeff off with his uni-beam,
John pushed him out of the way and got hit instead. Fortunately John was
a real Time Lord and regenerated into the tenth Doctor, David Tennant.
From that point on, he joined up with Jeffrey to stop Henry.

Andria Sythe didn't have much of an eventful childhood. She grew up in
Washington DC and could without a doubt be called a gamer chic. Her
parents had her attend a private school where she excelled as the team
captain for the school fencing team. Her parents cut her off when they
found out about her gaming habits. Not being able to afford school
anymore she got a job as a barista for one of the many coffee shops in
the city. It was then that she found the box and changed herself into
Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII, after which she joined an amateur
video game tournament where she eventually won first prize and a job
from Sony to beta test their future games. It was after her picture was
shown in the paper that agents from the agency that tracks the alien
devices contacted her, and gave her a new ID. After some inquiries, she
came across several "teams" that the agency employed for tracking and
containing the more aggressive changees. In the spur of the moment, she
decided to join John and Jeffrey, and has been with them since.

Major was the most mysterious. She had changed into the Ghost in the
Shell character Motoko Kasunagi, otherwise known as "Major". At the time
she had a friend who'd changed into a Tachikoma. For some reason or
another they got into a fight with Henry. About halfway through, Henry
was somehow able to hack Major and found a way to erase her history.
Henry had almost torn her to pieces if her friend hadn't sacrificed
itself by firing a grenade point-blank at Henry forcing him to retreat.
Jeffrey, John, and Andria showed up a few minutes later too late to save
her friend. John was able to save and fix Major's broken body and stayed
by her side till she woke up. When she did, she was distraught when she
couldn't even remember her own name. Her entire past and everything
linking to it was gone, in fact the only thing she could remember about
the Tachikoma was that it was her friend. Her entire life was reduced to
whatever facts and figures they were able to dig up and some vague
memories. Everything she learned about her past self felt as if it were
someone else's life she was looking in on. Needless to say, she fell
into a depression for a long time, and if it wasn't for John staying by
her side, she would have killed herself. John eventually pulled her out
of it and managed to keep her cheerful for the most part. After her
depression John told her about what their group was doing and she
insisted on joining, to see if Henry still had anything from her past
and for revenge for her friend who died.

Jeffrey didn't say much about himself. Only that Henry was his brother
and after they used the device, Henry went insane letting the power of
the box go to his head. They fought for position over it until their
sister got caught in the crossfire. Jeffrey stayed to help his sister
while Henry made off with the box. Jeffrey waited till an ambulance
arrived, told police what he could, and went with his sister to the
hospital. There he found out that she was in what the doctors called a
"light" coma. There was plenty of brain activity but for whatever reason
she wasn't waking up. He cried himself to sleep next to her still form.
It was late in the afternoon when he woke to the sound of knocking on
the door. Jeffrey wiped his eyes (he must have been crying in his sleep)
and opened the door where two men in black suits asked if they could
come in to ask some questions about what really happened. Too tired to
lie he told them about the box, the fight, and that Henry had taken the
box while he did his best to care for his sister till help arrived. The
rest was pretty much self explanatory. Jeffrey was now working for the
government under the condition that his sister receives the best medical
care available. There have been more than a few times when they thought
they finally had Henry, but whenever they managed to corner him, he
takes a life to cover his escape.

The group had moved back to the truck to get out of the cold, Major
didn't seem to notice, it was more to stop Andria from whining about her
legs freezing. It was then that Noel yawned and realized she'd been up
for almost a whole day.

"Hey Jeff, would we be able to pull into a hotel or set up camp or
something?" she asked.

Jeffrey thought for a moment "Well we have a fold out cot on the side,"
he answered pulling one down from the side.

John and Major went up to the cab and started the truck and began
driving again. The occasional giggle could be heard above the not so
quiet whispers. Andria had settled on a chair near the front playing a
PSP GO. Jeffrey was in a chair across the cot typing something into the
laptop. Normally Noel was never able to sleep in a moving vehicle,
usually just settling on sitting with her eyes closed, in any case this
time she drifted off without any fuss to speak of.

-----------

Several hours later Noel woke with a sigh to sunlight shining in her
face and realized she wasn't in the truck anymore. She sat up and looked
around to see that she was now in a large warehouse that was converted
into a semblance of a living space. She was now sitting on a cheap
convertible couch with the back cushions removed. To her left behind her
was Jeff sitting at a table cleaning his batarangs.

"You know Jeff, most would say that it's creepy to spend your time next
to someone while they sleep," Noel joked with another yawn.

Startled, Jeffrey looked over, "..Well, it's about time you woke up.
Come on, we have someone who wants to talk to you," he said getting up.

Jeffrey led Noel past an open kitchen and a dining hall, again
completely open, to a room halfway down a basketball court. If it wasn't
for the incredibly high ceiling and series of large doors along the
front, Noel would've been happy letting herself believe that this was a
hollowed out studio apartment. Although now that she thought about it,
it was pretty much is. As they entered the room Noel saw that it
resembled a board room. There was a large crescent shaped table with
half a dozen chairs lining the side and a huge flat screen TV that took
up two-thirds of the outside wall. Jeffrey gestured for Noel to take a
seat. As she did so, he sat down beside her and pushed a button on a
phone in front of them.

"She's here now. Sorry about the wait," he said letting go of the
button.

Immediately the TV lit up showing a man sitting in a desk wearing a dark
suit, the size of the TV gave the impression that he was sitting there
in front of them.

He took a sip of coffee from his desk before speaking.

"Good morning Mr. Donalds," he checked some notes on his desk, "... And
Noel is it? Is that your first or your last name?"

The man had the look of genuinely caring but Noel still hesitated. "Um,
Noels my first name. And Arthur is my last name."

"All right Miss Arthur.."

"Don't call me miss okay? It sounds kinda freaky to me."

"..Very well then. Noel. I am Agent G, I am the liaisons between the
agency and Mr. Donolds team."

Jeffrey leaned over whispering to Noel, "Congratulations. I've been
trying to get him to call me by my first name for years now, and you
managed to get him doing it for you in two minutes."

Agent G continued seemingly oblivious of Jeffrey's hushed comment.

"First, I'd like to apologize for what happened to you so shortly after
your first encounter with the alien artifact."

"Why are you apologizing for? It's not as if you had anything to do with
that psycho," Noel stated.

"True, but the agency is still at least indirectly at fault. You see,
it's the agency's primary mandate to recover these artifacts before they
end up doing harm to the public well being. Needless to say, we aren't
as successful as we'd like to be on that part."

Jeffrey leaned over again, "He's right. More often than not, we're
handing out new ID's."

"Mr. Donalds is right; we have several stockpiles of the non-functioning
devices that were confiscated from people who are now trapped in another
form. Most that change are human but there are a growing percentage of
people that turn themselves into something more...'unique'. But right
now that's beside the point. Right now we are here to talk about you."

Noel unconsciously sat lower in her chair. " 'Kay. What do you want to
know?"

Agent G brought his pen up ready to write. "Well first off, is that body
armor you're wearing or is that a permanent cybernetic body?"

The way he asked the question was the same as if he asked her about the
weather. Obviously he's done this more than he cared to admit, or at
least enough times to make it boring.

"No, this is just body armour. Although I changed some things about my
body so I'm not completely human." Then she added quickly, "But I'd
still pass for one obvious."

Agent G wrote it down. "Fair enough. Now, what was your original
gender?" He didn't even blink an eye while Noel squirmed in her seat
slightly.

"What kind of question is that?" She looked to Jeffrey for an escape; he
offered none as he looked off pretending to study something on the wall.
He coughed slightly.

Agent G rubbed his eyes before responding. "It's a standard question we
ask because there are a noticeable percentage of transformed individuals
that have changed their genders. We ask this so we can appoint a
suitable councilor or support group to assist in such a fundamental
change. So would you please answer the question?"

Noel looked down, fiddling with her hands nervously.

"um... Can I skip that for now? It's just..." She looked up at Agent G's
face for something, anything that would let her know she wouldn't have
to answer. Answering Agent G's questions was like seeing a doctor, and
with Jeff there, it felt like a stranger was watching your physical.
Thankfully Agent G got her plea and moved on.

"We'll return to that later. There are some things I'd like to ask you
about your encounter that I'm afraid Mr. Donolds will have to sit out
for."

Noel sighed in relief and relaxed a little..

"I'll also need you to tell me where you currently reside. This is just
so we can update your identification papers so you won't be considered
an illegal alien by law. And you won't have to start over from scratch
with your academic achievements."

"Okay, I live up in Canada in a town.."

Agent G cut her off, "Wait, your saying that you're a Canadian citizen?"
Agent G drops his pen and reached for the phone. "Shit, I hate talking
to CSIS!" He dialed and pushed a button on his desk and started talking
before the video cut out and was replaced by the word 'mute'.

"What's going on?" Noel asked, turning to Jeff.

"Jurisdiction," he replied.

--------------

Meanwhile at Tonaon Industrials Headquarters Mr. Tonaon was again called
down to Mike's computer lab, this time, in a far better mood.

"So, how are we progressing Mike?"

His tone implied he was at ease, but Mike knew better and got to the
point rather than begin with chit chat.

"I've sent two teams to the location, a science team and a security
team. I have a transport driver standing by in case we can take whatever
caused the phenomenon. He's been told that he's going to be transporting
defective equipment. And so far, the science team hasn't found anything
that caused it."

"So it's been moved," Tonaon said bluntly, impatience creeping back in
his voice.

"Well the evidence certainly suggests that. It could be that whoever
made this device decided to test it outside first then move it back
after maybe?"

Tonaon gave Mike an impatient glare.

"But we have people on the ground and the satellite is fully dedicated
to searching now. I've told the researchers that were using it that we
had to take it offline because we believe there's a possible flaw in the
software. I'm using the anomaly yesterday as the reason," said Mike,
sweat beading down his back. He was sure that Mr. Tonaon would fire him
for wasting his time.

Tonaon stared at the information on the screens for a moment then turned
to leave. Before closing the door he said, "Keep me apprised Mike." And
then he was gone.

Mike didn't realize he was holding his breath until he let out a long
shuddering hiss. Mike wiped his face with his coat sleeve thankful he
dodged a bullet. He'll get to keep his job awhile yet and if he played
his cards right, he might get a promotion. Or at least a considerable
pay raise.

end part 2

MAU: Infinite Crisis
Chapter 3

When Agent G came back (not in a good mood) he told Noel and Jeffrey that
the 'interview' will be finished by a CSIS agent that will arrive at
Noel's residence in a day or so. Noel gave Agent G her address for him to
pass on to CSIS. He thanked her and asked her to fly safely before saying
goodbye and cutting the connection. After a few moments the TV
automatically turned off.

Jeffrey turned to Noel while getting up. "Well, I don't suppose you have
any time for breakfast before leaving?"

Noel's stomach growled causing her to blush faintly. "That's probably a
good idea."

Upon opening the door, Andria fell forward with a yelp.

"Andria, what are you doing?" Jeffrey asked.

"It's not my fault," she responded dusting herself off. "Major wouldn't
let me see after she hacked into the comm. line. she wouldn't let me see
even though she's letting John."

Over in the kitchen area, John and Major were sitting, both with guilty
expressions on their faces.

"You know you're not supposed to do that," Jeffrey scolded.

"Don't look at me, it was John's idea! He wanted to know how the meeting
was going," Major replied.

Johns face reddened with embarrassment. "I was only curious," he stated
bluntly.

"Well, if you're that concerned, then you can treat her to your infamous
cooking," Jeffrey retorted.

John got up halfway seemingly about to argue then sat back down in
defeat. He got up again and trudged to the fridge to prep for the meal.

--------------

John had made up some strawberry crêpes which everyone enjoyed. Towards
the end of the meal, Andria began telling Noel about the people they've
ran into while searching for both Henry and thee seemingly infinite
number of alien boxes.

"So, anyway, when we got there, this couple had turned themselves into
cartoons!" she said with a laugh. "I'm not talking about people with
weird body shapes, but actual cartoons like you see in the Looney Toons
movies! They were Roger and Jessica Rabbit!" Andria was laughing so hard
that she snorted a few times. "And here's the best part! The husband was
Jessica Rabbit!" At this point, Andria began gasping for air still
laughing.

Everyone around the table chuckled except for Major who only groaned.
"Ugh, I've been trying to forget about that."

Noel looked quizzically at Major and then to Andria for answers. "What's
with Major?"

Andria, still suffering through the giggles replied. "Oh, when we got to
the house, we heard all sorts of crazy noises inside. So Major
volunteered to enter first since she can turn invisible. When she got to
the bedroom..." She descended into another fit of laughter.

Major spoke quickly. "Let's just say there was 'ink' everywhere and leave
it at that, ok?"

Noel was even more confused than before and looked to the others for
clarity but only received rolled eyes and a 'subtle' grin.

Andria recovered enough to answer once more. "They were in the middle of
doing it!"

Noel shook her head, still clueless.

"You know, sex! They're cartoons. All that 'ink' was semen!"

It finally clicked as Noel's eyes widen at the realization.

"When Major came in, they came! Unfortunately for our poor Major, the
rabbit pulled out and all that 'ink' landed right on her face!" At that
last part, Andria was laughing so hard, she fell out of her chair.

Major groaned again. "The stuff smelled like banana bread. And even after
eight showers, my hair still smelled like it for days afterwards."

John wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "Ever since then, she can't
stand the smell of bananas. Which is kinda funny and helpful if I just
want some me time." Major glared at him. "Only joking. Anyways, after
they were brought to a private residence, for obvious reasons, someone
propositioned them to star in a Roger Rabbit sequel and they offered us
seats to the first screenplay."

"I'm not going!" Major said flatly.

The laughter and chuckles had then calmed down somewhat.

Jeffrey then spoke up; his head hung solemnly. "They weren't all funny or
amusingly weird... Back when it was just me, I came to a house where the
couple was listed as missing by their employers. When they found the
box... I guess they were into heavy bondage. The girlfriend at some point
changed herself so she didn't have any arms or legs, while the boyfriend
was just a head with a dick attached to his neck. As it turned out, the
boyfriend was first changed and after some fooling around the girlfriend
got excited and stupidly changed herself into the limbless state I found
her in. They had some fun but when they wanted to change back neither had
the ability to reach the panel. the girlfriend tried her best to reach it
since the boyfriend was completely immobile. It didn't help that they
were in a middle of a heat wave and had a busted air conditioner. So when
I got there, they were two days starved and suffering from heatstroke. I
called the agency for help. The girlfriend recovered relatively quickly,
however the boyfriend had spent a month in critical, probably because he
was just a head more or less."

He let out a short heavy breath and wiped away some water sitting on the
lip of his cup. The rest of the group looked on in regret for laughing
earlier.

"Holy shit," whispered Andria. "Are they ok now?"

Jeffrey looked up slightly startled. "Hmm? Oh yeah, their doing fine.
They're both on a special diet for obvious reasons. The last I heard,
they are married and pregnant." He perked up a little on saying the last
part.

After another moment of silence, Noel cleared her throat. "Well it's been
fun. Thanks for breakfast John, and for rescuing me Jeff, but I should be
going. If Agent G's feelings towards CSIS are any indication, then I
shouldn't be late for the meeting."

And with that, she said her goodbyes to Jeff and his team. they
reciprocated, Andria a little more so, which still seemed odd considering
that she looked every bit as much as Lightning from FFXIII. Waving
goodbye once more, Noel jumped high into the air with her hip and back
thrusters. When she felt she was high enough, she retracted her jump wing
and deployed her flight wings and shot off northward.

Noel, wanting to avoid any more mid-air 'turbulence', flew as close to
the edge of space as possible to the point where her wings were nearly
useless and she was little more than a rocket. The euphoria of flying so
close to space was reluctantly shoved aside for fear that something might
sneak up on her.

The flight back home was quiet and thankfully short. It was later that
afternoon when Noel reached home and fortunate for her, it was after rush
hour, so she didn't have any awkward run ins with neighbors. Noel entered
her apartment that was even smaller thanks to the alien box and the
armour she had on earlier before changing again. however, Noel was well
practiced and navigated around both them and the junk laying about the
floor.

Standing just before the bathroom, she took off her helmet and mentally
commanded her armour to open. Stepping out and down, Noel guessed she was
about a head shorter than she was before first stepping into the box.
Noel put some food down for her cat, but he didn't come out of hiding
until she was in the bathroom getting a better look at herself.

As her cat was chomping away at the dry food, Noel kept looking back and
forth between the mirror and down at her new front. Her breast weren't
large, just a nice healthy size (b-cup maybe?) in proportion to her new
body stature. Noel began to undress. It wasn't until she had her 'plug
suit' down to her waist that she realized that the sensory connectors
remained where they were on her body, instead of coming off with the rest
of the suit.

"What the hell?" she asked taking it all off to get a complete look.

First were the ones on her neck. There was one just below each ear that,
if you weren't looking closely, looked just like earrings. Next were two
at her shoulders, one at each elbow and another just before the wrists.
Looking down, she noticed another on her chest, right where her ribcage
joined at the bottom. When she touched it, she felt a numb tingling in
her fingertips. Shoving that aside for now, she looked at her legs and
discovered four more. one on each calf just below the knee and one more
on each foot just before her toes started.

"Great. This'll make buying shoes a hassle."

She turned around, as she looked at her backside through the mirror and
spied yet another one where her tailbone would be. She then caught sight
of apparently the last one sitting on the nap of her neck. A quick check
confirmed that they were all firmly attached to her body and didn't move.
Tossing her plug suit onto the futon, Noel ran the water for her shower.
She'd been gone for over a day and while she didn't look it, and actually
didn't feel it from running her hands through her short hair and over her
body, the feeling of being dirty persisted.

So to satisfy her need to bath and explore her new self, she hopped into
the shower and began washing. Starting with her hair, she rubbed shampoo
in it, rinsing it out, she marveled at how her hair was blond in contrast
to her original dark brown. Pulling down a lock of hair that was now
barely long enough to be seen without the aid of a mirror, she could see
the frosted tip.

"I wonder," she mused aimlessly flicking her hair to the side.

Forgetting about her thought, her hands roamed to her chest. They felt
just as good as the ones on her last body felt even if they were smaller.
Feeling a warm glow from her nether region below, 'cupping' her vagina
with one hand the warm glow turned into a pleasant tingle. Her curiosity
and need overwhelming her, she was surprised of how easy her finger slid
in and the sensations were so intense that her eyes involuntarily
crossed.

Although it was quite pleasant, very pleasant, she pulled out unable to
come to terms with the sensation of being penetrated. Even if she was
doing it to herself.

"Not to say I wouldn't consider trying again in the future maybe..." She
thought to herself as she finished washing up a little faster than she
would have so not to excite herself further for now.

Drying herself off with a towel, she sighed as she had to put her plug
suit back on. It seemed like a why bother having a shower if you're just
going to put your dirty cloths back on afterwards. Now not so naked
anymore, but still suggestively clad she mentally slapped herself since
she left her armour from the second change, she was still clothed when
she tested her ability to change back the other day. Cold mind you, but
still fully clothed. With yet another sigh she left her plug suit on,
since she went through the trouble of redressing, closed her eyes and
concentrated on turning back.

Instead of a click, she felt a horrible stabbing pain in her chest that
she was only able to utter a sharp yelp before falling over and passing
out. Had anyone been there with her, they would've seen both hardsuits
twitch for a few seconds before once again standing still. Inside the
helmet from her second hardsuit was showing damage to her power core.
Although there wasn't any concern for a containment breach, her ability
to become human again was now nonexistent.

-------------------

Back at Tonoan Industrials Headquarters, Mike was in the middle of
drinking yet another cup of coffee when a notice popped up on his
computer screen causing him to spit some of his coffee onto the screen
and spilling the rest on his hand.

"Shit!" he said as he dropped his cup and shook his hand.

He stared at the data pouring in from the satellite; the output was twice
that of which was recorded previously, but unmistakably the same. For
some reason the power surge is lasting longer, not that Mike was
complaining, it just allowed him to locate it better. He relayed the
information to the nearby team, hung up the phone and sat back in his
chair staring at the coffee on the floor.

"Damn, I need a mop," he thought.

-------------------

"Damn prick!!" security officer Peter Zimerson stated bluntly after
talking to Mike. The fucker gets to sit in an air condition room back at
headquarters while he and his team are freezing our asses babysitting
some geeks who're looking for god knows what. "Well shit. A job's a job,"
he muttered to himself before telling the geeks the news.

They all noticeably stiffened when he told them the new location;
obviously they knew something he didn't. The new location was in a dead
end road, they left the transport truck since it would've been hell
getting it in and out, even more so if they didn't find what they were
looking for. So the security team drove off in a SUV while the science
team followed close behind in a cargo van.

A few blocks and some quick turns and they arrived. Peter got out of the
driver's seat and scoffed at the apparent motel that stood before them.
"Well at least its better then the outhouse."

"And here I thought you liked freezing your ass on the can," Nelly said
getting out of the passenger seat.

"Funny," Peter replied with a sarcastic grin which she returned with a
mocking smile of her own.

Third hopped out the back seat and they all walked over to the van to
meet the science team for further orders. After receiving telemetry from
the satellite, the science team determined that whatever they were
searching for was in one of the two rooms on the left side of the
building. Everyone on the security team smiled to each other, finally,
they were going to get some action. They walked back to the SUV and
opened the back door and donned Kevlar vest and MP5 machine guns loaded
with stun rounds (rubber bullets). Each also grabbed a pistol with live
rounds just in case.

Peter walked to the apartment on the left while Nelly and Third lined up
on the door of the center apartment. As Peter looked through the open
blinds in the window he heard Nelly chuckle, looking over, Nelly pointed
to a set of keys still in the door. Peter raised an eyebrow before
motioning them to breach.

He checked the door to see if it was locked, since a quieter entry would
mean a lesser chance of interruption later, the door gave. Perfect. He
motioned the other two to enter. Peter opened the door slowly and
entered. As he saw from the window, the lights were off with only a faint
glow from the microwave clock.

Toys and books lined the edges of the floor and a tall box stood in the
middle. As he stepped around the box he heard a yelp followed by two
quick coughs from an MP5. Rounding the box he nearly tripped over
something lying on the floor. As he bent down to see what it was, the
lights came on. Startled, Peter gasped and jumped backward into the
fridge behind him. Nelly was laughing at the sight of him.

"Jesus, Nell. Don't do that!" Peter yelled, swearing under his breath as
he got up.

"You should've been with me next door. There were two teenagers in the
middle of fucking. You wouldn't believe the looks on their faces before
we put them out," Nelly said with a sly grin.

Peter just shook his head with a grin of his own. Looking down, he saw
the object on the floor was an unconscious girl. As he checks her pulse,
Nelly called to him referring to the hardsuits. "Whoa, check these out.
And this one on the right has a maple leaf on it. I think someone's a
little obsessed 'EH'?" She said stressing the 'eh' slang.

Peter finished counting the girls heart beats and got up and walked over
to Nelly in front of the hardsuits ignoring he 'joke'.

"Well if we're all secure here; let's tell the geeks so we can get this
over with."

Nelly just shrugged and followed Peter out while he informed the science
team. She and Peter were back in the SUV listening in on the police
channels while Third was left 'babysitting' the science team just in
case. The science team started in the center apartment and while they
didn't find anything in the sparsely decorated room, they did linger on
the teenagers still intertwined forms before moving on. On entering the
other apartment their equipment whirred and beeped as they passed the
hardsuits. Three began examining the hardsuits while the other two
checked out the unconscious girl Peter told them about.

One made a brief note of the leotard she seemed to be wearing while the
other examined the connector points about her clothing and body. Just as
he touched a probe to the connector in her chest, the probe sparked
angrily as the display winked out. He tried restarting it until he
noticed a wisp of smoke rising from the seams of the device.

Surprisingly, none on the science team paid any attention to the alien
box and treated it more as a nuisance than an object of curiosity. By and
by, they finished all their analysis they could outside of lab conditions
and had Peter and Third help them move the hardsuits into the cargo van.
Nelly carried the girl into the SUV and strapped her into the middle of
the backseat since there was no more room in the van.

Peter called the driver of the transport truck and told him to continue
on with his normal route. Driving off to the town's small airport, Peter
kept glancing in his rear view mirror at the girl sitting limply between
his team members, her head bobbing slightly as he drove over bumps in the
road.

Who was this girl? And what did she have to do with those suits that the
science team was so jittery about? The questions were far above his pay
grade judging from how this was all carried out but, he still didn't like
it. Not knowing what was going on made his job of keeping his team safe
harder. The tedium of it didn't help either. That just meant something
was going to break at the worst moment possible. Grumbling under his
breath, he continued on driving. Ten minutes later they arrived at the
small airport and another full hour in chartering a private plane to take
them cross-country to the BC coastline.

The plane ride was long and uneventful. Peter tried sleeping several
times but couldn't quite get comfortable. It had nothing to do with his
seat or that he wasn't the one flying the plane. It was just something
about moving vehicles... Peter shook his head looking to his right at
Nelly sound asleep and snoring, the sill unconscious girl was at the
window seat still out.

Burying his unease of the girl for now, he chuckled slightly at Nell; she
was pretty much dead to the world in terms of noises and such. But if you
were to touch her in the slightest then you can be sure something on your
person was going to end up broken. Settling as far back as his chair
would allow, he closed his eyes and tried for a light doze. Four hours
later they landed at a private airfield safely and began unloading.

---------------------

Back at Noel's apartment, a woman in a car pulled up, got out and knocked
on the door. Waiting a minute she knocked again. Another moment and still
no response, she looked through the open blinds in the window just in
time to see the alien box return to its stand-by mode.

"Shit!"

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed. It only rang once before being
picked up.

"This is Johanna Mars. I'm at the apartment and just watched the 'device'
deactivate. The tenant doesn't seem to be here..." She paused briefly to
look around the driveway. "There are two sets of treads and several
footprints in the driveway... recommend we have a team up here to find
the tenant's whereabouts." She waited for a response.

"...Acknowledged Agent Mars, a team will be sent by air. ETA is two
hours. Recommend you secure the device first, and then determine possible
witnesses."

Johanna exhaled sharply. "Alright," then closed her phone.

She grabbed a small lock picking kit from her car and proceeded to use it
on the deadbolt. As she turned the tumbler, she could feel the lightness
of the turn, swearing, she stuffed her kit in her pocket and turned the
handle to walk inside.
------------------------

After landing, Peter's team, and the geeks with their 'cargo' all filed
into two helicopters that carried them to a coastal harbor where Tonaon
Industrials was waiting. It wasn't a building per say, though it was run
like one, but a boat. Its outward appearance resembled that of an
American WWII aircraft carrier, minus any deck weapons. Its flight deck
was covered with artificial Astroturf. And instead of fighter planes
normally associated with a carrier, it had only three helicopters, two of
which Peter and his team were riding in. While on the outside it looked
like a carrier, inside its hull, it resembled an executive office
building befitting company headquarters.

As the helicopters touched down, a group of people came running out from
the island tower of the ship. Upon exiting the helicopter and clearing
the still turning rotors overhead, Peter and his team were met by a
security detail. Peter could see the rest of the group which was lead by
Mike Givings; meet the science team from the second chopper.

"Why is Mike up here? I thought he was just in charge of the satellite
project."

The security officer just shrugged. "None of my business sir. I was only
told to escort you and your team to debriefing."

He stepped to the side to allow Peter to walk ahead. As he passed, Peter
noticed the strap that held the security mans sidearm in its holster was
undone. When the security officer noticed Peter looking at his sidearm,
he quickly brought his hand to rest on the butt of the pistol. The act
sent shivers running down Peter's spine, and made him even more nervous
To his credit though, he kept it from showing and just gestured for his
team to follow. They were lead below the flight deck and were left alone
in an executive boardroom to wait.

MAU: Infinite Crisis

Part 4

It was well into the afternoon when the team Johanae was waiting for
arrive. While she waited she decided against immediately recovering the
alien machine to keep whatever evidence there may be.

So instead she questioned the neighbors. After knocking on the door of
the center apartment a teenage girl wrapped in a bed sheet opened the
door slightly, "Yes?"

"Hello Miss, my name is Johanae Mars. I work for CSIS and I'm here
investigating a possible abduction," she said while showing her
identification.

"So, you're like a cop or something?" the girl asked, seemingly just
woken up and still in a daze.

"... Yes I suppose so. If it's alright with you, I would like to ask
some questions about the previous day till now."

"...Hmm? Oh I'm sorry, I just woke up with this huge headache so it's
hard to think. But, um, sure just gimme a minute to get dressed ok?"

"Sure, I'll just be waiting out here then."

"Ok," said the girl as she closed the door.

A few minutes later the girl opened the door and invited Johanae in. As
Johanae walked in, she was surprised that the teenagers apartment was
literally just one room with a little alcove in the back for a bathroom.

"Well I'm Trish," she said sitting on the pull out bed. She then pointed
to the still sleeping boy behind her. "And this is my boyfriend Greg."

"Alright Trish. What can you tell me about Noel Arthur?"

Trish was still rubbing her temples wincing periodically, "... Who?"

"The person that lives in the apartment next door."

"Oh him! He introduced himself once after bringing my mail after it was
put in his mailbox by mistake. And another time he let me know I left my
keys in the door and... Oh shit, my keys!" She got up suddenly only to
sit back down, "Ow, my head. I didn't think I drank that much," she said
wincing again as she rubbed the temple on the right side of her head.

As she did that, Johanae noticed where Trish was rubbing that it had the
colour of a bluish, purple.

"Excuse me Trish, but would you mind if I had a look at that?"

"Oh, um, ok I guess,"

Johanae bent down closer for a better look. Pulling Trish's hair back,
she could see a bruise a little bigger than a toonie. Standing back up
she wondered whatever made that didn't come from bedtime flings, "Trish,
what do you remember about last night?"

Trish thought a moment, "Well, me and Greg had a few drinks at a bar,
then we came back here to um, make out."

"Are you sure? You don't remember anyone else being in your apartment
last night?"

"No, we were just making out and then... Oh my god! They shot me!" At
that Trish broke down in a state of shock, weeping about her being shot.

Johanae was about to sit down beside her to console her when her cell
rang. Exhaling sharply, Johanae stood back up and answered it, "What?"

"We've arrived. Where are you?" asked an annoyingly calm male voice.

"I'm in the apartment next door," she said as she walked to the door.
There, at the end of the driveway stood a man in a casual business suit.
Four more people wearing disposable forensic coveralls were busy taping
off the area in front of the converted motel with police tape.

Johanae gave Trish a reassuring pat on the shoulder, telling her she'd
be back and went out to meet the man.

Hello Miss Mars. I'm Lawrence Fault," he said while shaking her hand,
"So what have you found out so far?"

"Well, I was just in the neighbors apartment and according to her, both
she and her boyfriend were assaulted by one or two with guns. Luckily
for them, whoever shot the the two were using nonlethal ammunition. The
girl's pretty shaken up about it."

"And the boyfriend?" he asked.

"Still out cold, possibly from the drinking they had prior to the
attack, or a combination of that and a shot to the head."

"Alright, we'll have someone check them out. In the meantime lets have a
look at the box and see why it decided to shut down. According to the
report we should have had at least a full day to recover it," Fault
said.

"So either Noel had it longer than she said she had or somethings
changed on the device. Excuse me a moment," Johanae said as she
reentered the middle apartment. "Okay Trish, I have to go now but my
colleagues will be in here to make sure you and your boyfriend check out
alright," she said to the girl, her eyes still red and misty.

"T-thank you miss Mars."

Johanae gave her a reassuring smile before pulling out her card from her
coat pocket and handed it to the still sniffling girl, "If you have any
questions or you just want to talk, then give me a call."

Trish nodded, taking the card and looked up at Johanae managing a weak
smile.

Johanae started walking towards the door and before she left she turned
back to give Trish a final wave before walking out.

Taking a quick breath she only needed to walk six steps before entering
Noel's apartment. On entering the apartment she saw that Lawrence was
already crouched over the collapsed alien machine.

"There's puddled footprints around the apartment. Judging from the
partial evaporation, whoever left them was here in an eight-hour time
period. And also from the spacing of the puddles around the box, it was
active at the time as well," Lawrence said without looking up.

Crouching down beside him she poked the claw-like marking on the box
before saying, "It still doesn't explain why it shut down earlier than
the other ones."

"It could be that whoever abducted Noel may have swapped out their own
for Noel's version. But that wouldn't make much sense unless Noel's
wasn't activated yet but it was. Also there's the fact the door frame is
a size too small to move it out of here anyways," Fault said.

"So we're back to square one then," Johanae said standing up as her legs
stated to tire from kneeling.

Lawrence only grunted as he pulled out a small grey box from his pocket
and flipped it open and began running it over the alien box.

"what's that?" Johanae asked.

"A tricorder, confiscated from a Trek fan."

"He must of been sad to hand it over."

"Regardless of wether or not he was "sad" didn't matter. He was using it
to remotely hack into various bank computers in his home town. We also
found a phaser on him that was set to kill after we jumped him."

"My god, if he used it..."

"Then he would have burned a hole through several people or vaporised
them. Either way it would have been an unpleasant way to go."

"I'll say," she replied.

Lawrence continued to scan the device, then stood up, staring at the
tricorder looking perplexed.

"What?" asked Johanae as she looked at the display on the tricorder but
couldn't make heads or tails of what it meant.

"Well to start, it's not a real tricorder. The kid designed it to find
wi-fi signals and hack computers. It's constantly updating itself with
the latest invasive programs. I was hoping that it would be able to
interface with whatever computer the machine uses. So far, every attempt
I made has been unsuccessful. Either these don't have wireless
capability or the operating system is completely alien."

"So you're saying that we have no idea about anything here then."

"Pretty much," Lawrence said slipping the tricorder back into his coat
pocket.

Meanwhile, back at Tonoan Industrials headquarters...

Mike had just finished debriefing Peter and his team. The information
they gave him was more or less the same as what the science team told
him minus Nelly's overt description of the teenagers she incapacitated.
And stopped briefly to check his ID with the guard posted outside the
ships hospital suite before stepping in.

As with the rest of the ship no expense had been spared. Being large
enough to hold two complete examining rooms that could be partitioned
off or opened for emergencies. It even had a full operating theater
including an MRI and X-ray machine. The partition walls of both rooms
were tucked away in the recessed alcoves in the walls. The girl Peter's
team brought back was laying on one of the beds apparently still
unconscious.

Nicolette, the ships doctor in charge, looking over her. Nicolette was a
Russian immigrant that moved to the US to study psychology where she met
her late husband. During her first year she met Clint Trent and the two
instantly fell in love and six months later were married. Because
neither were rich enough the wedding was little more than wearing fancy
cloths and signing a marriage certificate at the court house.
Unfortunately a year later into their marriage Clint was striken with a
stroke and was diagnosed with an inoperaperable brain tumor. He died a
few short months later. Nicolette was understandably devastated by this
and took a year off her studies to grieve. When she came back she
transferred to a medical school and threw herself into her studies and
graduated second in her class. A few weeks later she was scouted by
Tonoan Industrials under the promise for near unlimited resources in her
research of brain cancer. That was nearly seven years ago. And she's
kept almost everyone at a professional distance.

Even though Mike was in a hurry he still took the sight of Nicolette in.
As always she wore the white lab coat normally associated when one
thinks of doctors. And under that he could see the dark brown skirt that
just barely covered her knees. Even with her lab coat on Mike could see
the very feminine curves of her fantastic ass. Looking further down Mike
was a little dismayed that she once again wore flats. "If only she wore
heels now and then," Mike thought, "If only she weren't so cold."

He had stopped beside her as she continued to read from her clipboard at
the foot of the bed the girl was on. Mike was about to clear his throat
to get her attention but she beat him to it.

"What the hell have you brought me Givings?" she asked, her accent had
waned somewhat over the years of living in the states but was still
clearly present.

"What do you mean?" Mike asked sneaking a glance down the front of her
lab coat and was disappointed to see she was wearing a turtleneck
sweater today.

"This girl is a walking contradiction! Do you want to know what I found
out when I examined her?"

Mike exhaled sharply, "Please," he said gesturing for her to continue.

"She has a pulse but no heart beat. I tried several times to find one
but there isn't one! And when I check her pulse, there it is, strong and
healthy!"

"Maybe she has an artificial heart?"

"Nyet, machines make noises when they move. All I heard was her
breathing."

"Well is that it or what?" Mike asked clearly annoyed.

"No. When I put her through the MRI machine it didn't work. Well it did
but it's weird. When I injected her with the dye it didn't move through
her blood stream, it stayed at the site where I injected her. It doesn't
make any sense! I know she has a pulse, I counted them, I got a vein!
How else could I have injected the dye without one?" She then moved to a
wall-mounted light board and clipped two sheets on it before turning it
on. "These are her X-rays, for some reason the head and chest area are
completely opaque."

"And..." Mike urged her on even though he was at a loss when it came to
medical jargon,

"And from what the X-rays ARE showing me she's missing several vital
organs! There's no liver, pancreas," she pointed to a small blob, "This
might be a kidney but it is the wrong size. There isn't even a digestive
track! And finally, she does have a vaginal cavity but no uterus or
ovaries. It's as if someone made a human using a children's book!"
Nicolette said in exasperation.

Mike stared at the X-rays for a few moments, more for effect than
actually trying to understand them, and turned to Nicolette, "And what
about these metal things sticking out of her body?"

Nicolette let out an annoyed sigh before walking back to the foot of the
bed the girl was sleeping on, "I don't know. They weren't surgically
implanted otherwise I would have seen scar tissue in the skin or slight
abrasions to the bones they're attached to. And from what the X-rays
show, there is some sort of wiring running from them through the
skeletal structure to the chest area. Which for some reason we can't see
on the X-rays," Nicolette said. Her accent seemed to thicken the longer
she went on. "The last thing I did was take some blood. It's currently
being analysed and I should have the results in a few hours," she said
as her accent returned to a more understandable level.

"So you won't be open to exploratory surgery then doctor?" Mike asked
moving to the side of the bed and leaning over slightly.

"Not without knowing the general layout of what I'm cutting into. On a
normal person I would if only to find out what's blocking the X-rays,
but from what I am able to see... I'm sorry, there's just too many
changes."

Mike only grunted at that and turned back to the girl.

It was almost scary how innocent she looked. If she was in fact the
source of energy the satellite picked up those few times during the past
couple of days. Who or whatever was obviously brilliant to create an
energy source powerful but small and stable enough to fit in something
so fragile as this little girl. But then again it could be why there
were those exoskeletal suits in the room with her. There were two suits
though, so either one was a prototype version or there's another one out
there.

Mikes inner reverie stopped when he thought he saw the girls eyelids
flutter. Leaning closer for a moment, he was back up when the girl
suddenly bolted upright smashing her forehead into Mikes face uttering
nothing but a deep gasp. Mike, both being surprised and suddenly
receiving a broken bloody nose, fell backwards onto the floor with both
hands cradling his face as he landed on his rear. Blood was seeping from
between his fingers.

0000000000

Peter and Nelly had long since left the boardroom after their debriefing
and were on their way to the ships galley. They had just passed the
doc's office nodding to the armed guard when they suddenly heard a shout
followed by the sound of several objects hitting the floor. As the guard
moved in, his mp5 ready, Peter and Nelly followed him in. When they
entered they saw Nicolette trying to calm down the girl Peter and his
team brought back while trying to hold her down and Mike who was sitting
on the floor holding his bloody face.

Seeing the three come in Nicolette immediately shouted at them, "You
two," referring to Peter and the guard, "Hold her down while I give her
a sedative! And you Nelly, get Givings off the floor before he bleeds
over the rest of it."

Peter and the guard rushed to either side of the screaming girl and held
her down by the arms and legs while Nelly begrudgingly trudged over to
Mike still clutching his face and seemingly without much effort picked
him up and walked him over to a chair. He moaned loudly in protest as
she unceremoniously dropped him onto it.

Nicolette was busy looking through the cabinet for the correct sedative
to use. Finding one she stuck the needle of the syringe in and pulled
back on the stopper filling it with the clear liquid. Once she withdrew
the needle she gave it a few flicks with her finger and push some of the
liquid out to ensure there weren't any air bubbles. Turning back to the
struggling girl she had Peter move so she can inject the girl properly,
"Hold her still!"

Peter and the guard did so putting more force down on the girl to keep
her immobilized. As Nicolette was prepping the girls arm for the
sedative, the girl looked up at Peter with tear-filled eyes, "Please
stop. You're hurting me," she pleaded as her voice broke with a whimper.

Peter hesitated as he looked at her oddly colored scared eyes and
softened his grip slightly. Wether intended or by accident the girl
renewed her struggle just as Nicolette began the injection. The sudden
motion caused the needle that was in her arm to snap off from the rest
of the syringe. Nicolette said something in Russian, the inflections she
used indicated a likely possibility of it being a swear.

"Hold her still! If I don't get the needle out in one piece will damage
something vital."

Peter complied and held the girl down firmly as this time he was willing
to give the girl a few bruises if it meant saving her from deeper
injury. The girl kept struggling as Nicolette checked the injection site
hoping that the needle was still partly out. Seeing nothing she swore
again and felt the immediate area and suddenly became confused. She
couldn't feel it. Her mind racing thinking of what to do she nodded to
herself and looked straight at the girl, "Okay miss, I'm going to need
you to listen to me."

The girl was still tense and still had fear in her eyes but she looked
back at Nicolette and nodded.

"The needle I used to inject you with has broken off in your arm. I
can't find it so I need to take an X-ray to see where it is so I can
remove it safely. Do you understand?"

The girl nodded. With a sigh of relief Nicolette gave the girl a
reassuring smile and gestured to Peter and the guard to let her up.
Getting to her feet they lead her to the X-ray machine. On passing Mike,
he waved to Nicolette with one hand, the other holding a clump of
tissues to his face. "What about me doctor?" he asked with a plugged
nose.

Nicolette knealt down and pulled the tissues back. Looking at Mike's
nose from different angles including up it she then stood back up, "You
are fine. There are no signs that it is broken. If you were in any real
pain then you wouldn't let me touch it. The girl just got a one in a
million hit."

"So, I still have a headache! Couldn't I just take an aspirin at least?"

"There's no signs of a concussion so it's probably just from caffeine
withdrawal. Just relax and take it easy for now and it will go away soon
enough," she said before catching up with the others in the X-ray room.

Since the room was fairly small for four people, Nicolette had the guard
stand outside. Turning around she instructed the girl to lay down on a
bed that was under the machine and ushered Peter into a smaller room
which held the controls for the machine. Since Nicolette was the only
one trained to operate the machine she sat down in the only chair in
front of the computer leaving Peter to stand behind her with his arms
crossed.

She then leaned forward to talk into a microphone which allowed her to
speak to the girl without having to keep the door between them opened,
"Okay, I'm going to turn the machine on now and it will let me know
where the needle is. Are you ready?"

The girl nodded staring up at the machine. Nicolette typed in a few
commands on the keyboard of the computer sending the X-ray machine to
work. When the image came up on the monitor Nicolette was confused and
dismayed that while she could see the outline of the girls body, the
details of her insides were blurry and unfocused.

Nicolette swore in Russian, "This doesn't make any sense!"

"What's wrong?" Peter asked looking over her shoulder at the monitor.

"When I took an X-ray of her earlier, only the head and chest area had
this distortion. Now the entire body is unreadable. I'm going to have to
take another one, maybe it will turn out," she said as she retyped the
commands.

Once again the image came up distorted. Nicolette grumbled and retyped
the command. As she did so Peter looked at the girl through the glass
and saw her visibly wince as the X-ray machine activated trying to take
a picture as if it was causing her pain.

Peter then put his hand on Nicolette's shoulder, "Stop the machine," he
told her still looking at the girl.

"What? Why?" she asked as she turned to look at him.

"She's in pain," he said.

"Of course she's in pain. She has a broken needle in her arm! That is
why we're doing these X-rays, to find it," she said as she turned back
to the computer.

As Peter turned Nicolette around to argue some more, the girl had slunk
off the bed and proceeded to move to the exit while keeping an eye on
the two in the control room. On reaching the door she saw through the
window of the door that the guard was standing right in front of it.
Fortunately he was distracted from talking to the two in the main room.
With little thought, other than escape, the girl crept over to the door,
careful to be low enough so the people the guard was talking to wouldn't
see her. Testing the door slightly she gave a silent thanks that it
moved easily as well as that it swung out into the hallway instead of
inward.

With a deep breath she pushed on the door with all her might catching
the guard off balance, knocking him over. As she began to bolt, the
guard kicked the door back hitting her heel causing her to stumble. This
gave the guard enough time to jump and grab her legs. Trying in vain to
crawl forward on just her arms, she was easily dragged back by the guard
who then trapped her in a bear hug pinning her arms in front of her. She
tried getting loose kicking her legs wildly till the guard wrapped his
legs around hers effectively immobilizing her.

She was still struggling against her captor as Nelly walked up with a
grin on her face from thinking of the innuendoes the two presented for
her.

She stopped just in front of them, "So, this is what you do to get laid.
Can't say I'm impressed or all that surprised," she said to the guard
mockingly.

"Ha ha, very funny. Now go get some handcuffs or something, she keeps
squirming around so much it's hard to hold on," he told Nelly.

"Mmmhmm," she responded with a catty grin once more before bending down
to unclip his mp5. Unfolding the stock of the gun she turned it around
and before the girl could react Nelly gave her two quick solid hits to
the face with the butt of the stock causing the girls head to snap back
suddenly almost hitting the guard in the face. And once again the girl
was a limp doll.

Almost as an afterthought Nelly checked her pulse. Seeing it was fine
she got up and handed the gun back to the guard after he untangled
himself from the girl. Looking past him Nelly saw the shocked doctor as
well as Peter with a grim expression on his face. "What?" Nelly asked
innocently, "She was trying to run off and I stopped her."

"You could have seriously injured her!" Nicolette shouted.

"It's alright. I checked her pulse and she's fine. And the love taps I
gave her didn't break any bones and I'll doubt it'll leave much of a
bruise either," Nelly replied nonchalantly.

"I don't care if you think it's "fine". She is different and I am not
going to have anyone in my ward assaulting my patients, regardless of
circumstance. Now, everybody OUT!"

As everyone marched out Nicolette kept the guard long enough to help her
carry the girl back to the bed before shooing him out as well. Sitting
down at her desk she messaged her temples as she mumbled something in
Russian till she heard the door open.

"I said go away, I'm busy!" she said before turning around to see a shy-
looking nurse at the door holding a clipboard in front of her as if to
hide behind it. "Oh Crystal, please come in. I'm sorry, it hasn't been a
good day," she told her.

Crystal hesitated before stepping in and closing the door. Because of
her shy nature, large rimmed glasses, and some minor dental work in the
form of braces. When asked about her personality many would describe her
as "mousey". And while she was far from being unattractive she always
dressed and acted in an apologetic manner and didn't seem to have much
self-confidence. Even as she walked up to Nicolette's desk her steps
were unsure and tentative.

"Um, I have results oo your research tests you asked for Dr. Flint EEP!"
She winced as she dropped the clipboard before Nicolette was ready to
accept it causing it to clatter on her desk. "I-I am so sorry! I don't
know what I was thinking. I thought you were holding it and when I let
go..."

"Crystal, it's ok. I doubt the clipboard will hold it against you,"
Nicolette reassured her.

"Er, yes ma'am," Crystal said looking at the floor sheepishly, doing all
she could to avoid eye contact.

"So these are the test results then?" Nicolette asked picking up the
clipboard and flipping through the pages.

"Um, yes. They did a full work up like you asked."

Nicolette nodded when the phone on her desk rang. checking the extension
number she saw it was Franks lab. "That's funny. They should still be
working on the girl's blood sample," Nicolette thought to herself as she
picked it up, "Hello."

"Is this some kind of joke!?" an angry voice belonging to Frank shouted
causing Nicolette to pull the phone away from her ear.

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't play dumb with me. You had someone mess with my equipment didn't
you?"

Nicolette's eyes narrowed in confusion, "I don't know what you are
talking about. Is there something wrong with the blood sample I sent
you?"

"Assuming you didn't screw up my stuff the blood you sent me isn't blood
at all!"

Nicolette sat straight up in her chair, "What did you find?"

"Just come over here and see for yourself. If you really didn't do
anything with my equipment then you'll want to see it. You just sent me
the holy grail of medicine and everything else that revolves around
this."

Nicolette hung up and was out the door barely spending enough time to
tell Crystal to watch the sleeping girl before running down the halls to
Franks lab.

0000000000

Jeffrey and his team had the day off and were having a game of two on
two basketball. Jeffrey and Andria were behind five points to John and
Major.

"Face it Jeffrey, there's no way you'll catch up with with us. I've got
two hearts so I won't be getting tired anytime soon," John said as he
dribbled the ball around Jeffrey trying to send it to Major as she
ducked under Andria. As John shot the ball Jeffrey intercepted and ran
down the other side of the court.

"You might have two hearts John, but your girlfriend's the one that's
been carrying you," Jeffrey said as he sunk a basket.

John picked up the ball and walked to the center of the court to start
again, "Maybe, but you're still behind," he said wiping his face on his
t-shirt.

Both teams scoffed the other boasting how the other was going to lose
horribly when the phone in the kitchen area began to ring. Jeffrey made
a time-out sign as he walk to the phone.

"You're only delaying the inevitable Jeffrey," John said jokingly.

Jeffrey waved him off with a smile as he pick up the phone, "Hello?"

"Mr. Donalds? This is Agent G. Noel has been abducted sometime last
night."

Jeffrey lowered the phone, his good mood instantly drained from him.

The others came over as they saw Jeffrey grow somber.

"What's up?" Andria asked with a half smile.

Jeffrey turned to the others, "Noel's been kidnaped."

Major, who had been holding the ball dropped it and fell to the floor
herself as her legs gave out. Holding her hands around herself she began
to shake, "Henry's got her!" she cried as she began sobbing, "He got her
and he's going to come after me!"

MAU: Infinite Crisis, part 5

Mike walked into the lab where the two unusual mechanincal suits were sent. His hastily assembled team had been using various devices to scan the suits. From measuring dimensions to determining metal alloys used in their construction, nothing was missed. Still gingerly touching his throbbing nose, Mike walked over to his colleage, Tom, who was looking at the Linna hardsuit.

"I think this could be a power source," Tom said as he pulled the battery from its housing. "What the hell happened to you?" he asked seeing the sickly colour of Mikes nose.

"Don't ask," growled Mike, "So, what do we have?" he asked as he took the battery Tom offered to look at.

"A battery. Designed in a way I've never seen before," he said thumbing his nose, "I'll need to check the charge but considering the weight of the thing for its size, it's either very powerful or needlessly complex and... Well. An oversized triple-a battery," he said as Mike handed it back to him.

"Well if it turns out it is better than what's out there, then we'll have to check the patents," Mike said to which Tom gave a bemused grunt as he carried the battery to a table with the equipment he'd need.

"Hey Mike, get over here. I got something you might want to see," called another back at the hardsuits. Mike and Tom gave each other an eye as they walked over to him.

"Yes?" asked Mike.

"I've got a radio frequency here. It's cycling between the extreme high and low bands."

Mike grabbed the read-out display, "Are you saying that these things are communicating with each other?"

"Actually no. I think that something else nearby is "talking" to these two exo-suit things"

Mike raised an eyebrow, "Exo-suits? Come on, I'm not calling them that," Mike complained as he handed the display back.

Tom chuckled, "Well what would you call them?"

Mike scratched his head as he thought, "Alright fine, I'll think of something better later."

Tom and the other guy both smirked at Mike's response as they got back to work.

Just then a PA announcement came on, "Mike Givings, call 315. Givings, call 315."

Mike's head jerked up at hearing Nicolette's voice calling for him but instantly grumbled as he recognised the line as Frank's lab number. Still wishing she'd thaw out one day soon he walked over to a desk and picked up the phone before dialing the extension number.

It rang once before it picked up, "Hello Givings?" It was Nicolette.

"What can I help you with Nicolette? I'm kinda busy with something over here."

"Can you come to Franks' lab please? He found something unique in the blood sample I sent him earlier.."

"Look, I'm sure you want to show off whatever it is you two found but that medical stuff is over my head," Mike said with sarcastic disinterest.

"Just get over here Givings," she told him with annoyance before hanging up by slamming the receiver down causing Mike to pull his away from his ear.

"Cold bitch as always," Mike grumbled as he put the phone back on the desk.

As he walked to the door Tom called after him, "The doctor got you running for her again?"

"Shut it Tom," Mike growled as he stepped through the door.

"Ah, you know you like it when she does that," he goaded.

"I wouldn't mind it if she actually used my first name when talking to me. It pisses me off sometimes to know that I'm the only one she does that to."

"At least the boss uses your first name," Tom said with a laugh as Mike shut the door behind him. A scowl was on his face.

"He only does that so he doesn't have to show respect by saying "Mr." first," Mike thought to himself as he trudged the halls to Franks lab.

Several minutes of walking through the ship Mike finally arrive at Franks lab. On entering he could see Nicolette and Frank taking turns looking through a microscope talking about how "fascinating" whatever it was they were looking at. As Frank looked over and noticed Mike he motioned him to take a look.

"So what am I looking at," Mike asked.

"Just look Givings," Nicolette told him flatly.

Mike rolled his eyes skeptically as he peered into the microscope. What he saw was what he assumed to be blood cells surrounding a rectangular object. Mike then leaned back, "Okay, please tell me what I'm looking at." he said completely lost.

"It's the blood sample I had taken from the girl," Nicolette said with a small trace of excitement in her voice.

"And that means?..."

"If you paid attention you would have seen the blood cells consuming the metal object we put in with it," she said as if was pointing out the extremely obvious.

Mike looked back into the microscope and stared at the sample. In the span of thirty seconds he watched in astonishment as the blood sample seemed to be eating the metal fragment. After registering what he saw he jumped back.

"Freaky isn't it?" said Frank.

"...Just what is that stuff feeding on?" Mike asked a little freaked out himself.

"It used to be a syringe needle," Nicolette said, "Its second needle actually. It consumes metallic compounds at a phenomenal rate."

"But what is that?!" Mike asked pointing at the slide in the microscope.

"I would also like to know that," Mr. Tonoan asked finally announcing his presence in the lab.

Everyone stiffened and turned to their boss. He walked to the table and looked in the microscope as Mike got out of the way.

"So, what is this and what does it have to do with the girl Peter's team was told to abduct?" Mr. Tonoan asked still looking through the microscope watching the "blood" consume the rest of the needle.

"How did?..." Mike started to ask. He hadn't even finished writing his report concerning the girl and the technology that was brought back.

"I make it a point to stay informed on things that would affect my company. Like child abduction for instance," he said, his voice laced with underlined threats.

"They're nanites, sir," Frank said.

"That's impossible," Mike stated with disbelief.

"And why is that Mike?" Mr. Tonoan "asked" as he straightened up and gave him an ominous look.

"Um, nanites, while in theory is possible. No one has been able to do any practical work because of the complexity on the microscopic level. It's still out of anyone's capability to construct one let alone program one with specific instructions to do anything useful," Mike explained.

"I trust you are making a point Mike?"

"What he means sir, is that nanites can do almost anything from medical treatments to pretty much anything we could imagine. The holy grail of the modern world," Nicolette said excitedly.

Mr. Tonoan looked around at Mike, Frank, and Nicolette to gauge their beliefs, "And these nanites were extracted from the girl?"

"The sample Nicolette sent over doesn't have any blood in it. Each cell is actually made up of three machine-style nanites surrounded by an organic-type nanite," Frank said, "So we have in our possession both versions of nanites."

"And the girl Nelly head-butted with the guards' weapon?" Mr. Tonoans' tone of voice suggested he wasn't really concerned for the girls well-being but the potential loss of a surprisingly marketable asset.

"She's fine but she's not human," Nicolette said, "Aside from looking like a girl she's not human. And after what Frank has shown us, and the tests I was able to perform on my own, I am forced to believe that her entire body is like the sample."

"So you are saying that the girl is not human?"

"Yes sir."

"...Very well," Mr. Tonoan said as he turned to Mike, "Mike, move all our projects off the ship. I want all teams focused on the technology and equipment your teams have brought back."

"Um, Mr. Tonoan. Most of the projects aren't ready to move and most of the personnel won't be qualified to work on what we've found out about this girl so far.."

"It," Stated Mr. Tonoan.

"Sir?"

"If it is not human as the doctor has just told me then it will not be treated as such understand?"

"... Yes sir."

"And as for the projects on hand, they can be completed at the shore offices," Mr. Tonoan stated bluntly putting an end to Mikes protests. He then turned around and left.

Suddenly the phone rang. Since it was Franks lab, he answered before handing it off to Mike.

"Hello?"

"Hey Mike, it's Tom," he said in a chipper voice. "I was looking over the second suit, the one that doesn't have a battery. Anyways, I was looking through the inside of it and noticed that the connection port in the chest piece is shaped slightly different than the other one. It could be a plug for a power source. If we can get the power source, we can hook it up and see how the thing works all powered up."

"But we don't even..." Mike trailed off as he remembered talking with Nicolette about the unusual connectors on the girl earlier, "Tom, grab an electrical gauge tester to Nicolette's office. Make sure it's the heaviest tester we have. I'll meet you there," he said before hanging up. He then turned to Nicolette, "I think I found the reason for those things on the girl."

"Really, you think so Givings?" she asked sceptically.

"Yeah I have Tom meeting me there with some equipment to test my theory."

"I'll come to. Even if she isn't human she is still my patient. Besides, I have to make sure you don't mess up my office again," she said defensively.

"Fine with me," Mike said as Nicolette walked ahead of him. He stayed a few steps behind to watch her ass sway through her lab coat. "If only she weren't so cold," Mike thought to himself again.

0000000

It had been well over an hour before John and everyone else were able to calm Major down from her nervous breakdown and panic attack. Major was now resting in her room with John watching over her. Major was in her bed with her covers pulled over her head in deep thought. After several minutes she pulled the covers down to see John sitting at the foot of her bed reading a book. "I'm sorry," she whimpered.

John looked over with a puzzled look on his face, "What for?" ha asked as he put his book down.

"For freaking out. For making you all worry. I should be stronger than this," she said sullenly.

John sat there for a moment looking at her before letting out a deep sigh, "You're not a burden to us, especially to me. And none of us are expecting you to be superwoman"

Major let out a short laugh before sitting up, "I'm sure there are a few out there we haven't seen yet."

John laughed himself, "Yeah, but I'm kinda thankful we haven't had to run into any yet."

Major hugged her knees as a sad look crept on her face again, "It's just that ever since Henry stole my memories, I've been trying to figure out who I am. I don't even know if I was a girl before I used that machine. For all I know, I was some shut-in pale fat man that had a sick fetish for robot girls with guns. I hate not knowing who I was but I'm so afraid that I might be some horrible person."

John pursed his lips, "Here's what I know. Who ever was that tachicoma, that person felt you were worth it to sacrifice themself to save you. And even if you have lost all your memories of who you were, I think that the way you've acted so far shows that you are a good person. And if you weren't, then I don't think I would have fallen in love with you."

Tears crept from Major's eyes as she hide her face in her knees trying to hide them, "Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, for the briefest second of clarity, it feels like I know exactly who I am. I could remember my childhood and even my real name. and then just like that, it all vanishes. Do you know what that's like? To be so close to knowing who you really are just to have it all taken away! It scares me," she said hugging her knees tighter.

John put his hand on her knee and gave it a reassuring squeeze and nodded. "I'm not going to insult you by saying that I understand. All I'm saying is that you're not alone in this. Henry's hurt all of us," John said as he felt his chest where it was pierced years ago. He then gave her knee a pat, "Come on, I'm sure Jeffrey and Andria are wanting to talk to you too. Not to mention we're going to have to come up with a plan to find Henry before he does anything to Noel."

Major nodded and grabbed John's offered hand as he pulled her up. As they left her room she silently promised herself that she'd stop Henry once and for all.

00000000

Three days had passed at the floating headquarters of Tonoan Industrials. Mike, now the head of researching the hardsuits, had his teams box up and clear out all the prototype tech and various other chemicals to their shore office/factory building they were docked to. The rear elevator on the ship provided the easy access necessary to move all the equipment from the labs that were located where the hanger would have been if the ship were an actual aircraft carrier.

As Mike walked into the now empty lab he took a moment to marvel at how empty the normally crowded area was. Most of those who were working on their projects were sent off with them since they had no expertise with nanites in the "girl" and none relevant to the advanced technology in the two hardsuits. The results were only two and a have teams of the original standard of twenty which barely had qualifications to work on the suits let alone the "girl".

Just then Mr. Tonoan came up beside him, "What's the status of our new project?"

Mike swallowed, "We've got all the other projects off the ship. Unfortunately most of the staff went with them. With the people we do still have it'll take longer to work on these things than we wanted to."

Mr. Tonoan shifted his stance, to most would be a sign he was tired but Mike knew better, "Anything else?"

"Tom and I found that the girl.."

"The subject," Mr. Tonoan corrected.

"..The subject is the power source that our satellite detected. Tom later found that "the subject" is emitting extreme high and low end radio frequencies. After we cleared out the lab here, we used a mesh we had that's able to block radio waves and made sort of cage that you see he-it in now," Mike said as he pointed to the mesh box in front of them, he hoped Mr. Tonoan hadn't caught his slip up about the girl.

"Any signs that someone responded?" Mr. Tonoan asked seemingly oblivious, but Mike knew better.

"No sir. The signals were too weak. Tom and I have a theory that "it" was trying to send information to the exo-suits to relay somewhere else but we haven't detected any signals from them. So we should be in the clear."

Mr. Tonoan nodded, "Check the patents. If no one has a claim on this technology then I want you to subtly add our own."

"Yes sir."

"Good." And with that Mr. Tonoan left.

When Mr. Tonoan was gone Mike looked at the girl who was being connected to power cables while another team was busy erecting a mesh cage that would block all radio signals from the girl. "Yeah, real subtle."

00000

It was a day later when Noel finally awoken with a start. Even though her head was pounding she shook it to clear the lingering cobwebs, "This is becoming a bad joke," she thought as she tried to bring her hand up, she suddenly realised that her movements were restricted. Looking around herself she saw that she was now suspended by a harness, thick cables were attached to all the connectors on her body in such a way as if she were crucified. Noel began to hyperventilate as she struggled to get free. Looking around she saw that she was suspended inside some kind of mesh cage. Some people were walking around outside the cage, a woman had just entered the cage walking towards her. A second later Noel realised it was the same woman who tried giving her a shot when she was last awake.

As Nicolette walked up, she pulled a syringe out of a small case she was carrying with her. She tried once again to pull up the sleeve of the plug suit Noel had been wearing since she arrived. The material remained unyielding so Nicolette simply pushed the needle through it to draw another sample.

"What are you doing?" Noel asked weakly with a tinge of fear.

Nicolette, startled that the girl before her was suddenly awake, looked up before resuming her work, "I am taking a sample of your "blood". Whoever made you has done a very thorough job making you look human. He must have some very wealthy backers to be able to produce you while everyone else is still in the theoretical stages."

"What are you talking about?" Noel demanded as she tried pulling against the cables attached to her arms.

Nicolette pulled out a small audio recorder from her coat pocket and began to speak into it, "It seems that whoever created the subject has designed the A.I. to be self-aware and assume human-like... consciousness of self. From what interaction I have so far with the subject. I believe that it thinks that it is actually human. Unfortunately, it seems the subject has no knowledge of its creator or creators." she said with a disappointed sigh before sliding the recorder back into her pocket and left the cage.

Noel struggled against the unyielding cables again, "What are you talking about?! Of course I'm hu-" Noel stopped as she realized what she did. When she used the weird machine to transform herself the last time, she remembered that she specifically thought the phrase "Claudia-class boomer". Boomers were machines and she willingly turned herself into one. On some sub-conscious level, Noel began to think of himself as a male again. An act of defiance that reasoned that before he turned himself into this. He was human, a human male and no one was going to tell him otherwise. With that determination firmly in his mind, Noel began to concentrate on turning back to his human self to show everyone around him that they were wrong about him.

As Noel concentrated, he felt the mental switch begin to flip over before a stabbing pain ran through his chest causing him to stiffen and cry out in pain. But this time he didn't fall unconscious. Instead the searing pain only spurred him on to try harder. He was sick of the last few days he could remember. He was chased, shot at and nearly killed by some lunatic. and when he got home he was kidnaped and taken god knows where people are holding him against his will and telling him that he's not human and are now restraining him up to some nightmarish way because of it. Through pained grunts he continued to try.

This hadn't gone unnoticed by Nicolette as she stopped just outside the cage, nor Mike who'd been looking over the readouts from the cables attached to Noel. "What's happening?" Nicolette demanded as she approached Mike.

Mike looked over several screens showing data coming from the cables they attached to Noel, "I don't know! I was still calibrating the monitors," he looked over more data, "Her power output's spiking at higher yields." He paused to type in several commands.

Noel was still trying to turn back despite the pain when suddenly he felt a searing pain start to creep in from his connectors. The pain from her connectors started moving inwards. Straining against his restraints and cables attached to him his body was now fully awash in pain as he stopped trying to turn himself back to grant himself some reprieve from the pain at least in his chest so he could deal with the pain from his connectors.

Mike sighed in relief as he typed in a few more commands and stood back and rubbed his sleeve over his forehead.

Nicolette was standing by Mike at this time looking at the screens but was unable to make sense of the data. "What happened?" she asked again.

Mike took another breath as he turned to her, "It's power levels were spiking at increasingly higher levels. If it didn't stop, I think it would have overloaded and blown us up," he said grimly.

The realisation of this swept over Nicolette's face, "Then how were you able to stop it?"

Mike looked down and let out a low chuckle, "I made a biiiig gamble that I'm really happy paid off. Otherwise..." he let the sentence hang.

Nicolette was becoming very annoyed with Mike, "What did you do Mike?"

Mike looked up at her in the eye, "I plugged her into our power grid. With the way she's... It's been programed, I thought that sending an electric current back would be incentive for it to stop since whatever it was trying to do was causing her pain."

Nicolette stared at him a full minute before letting out a breath that sounded like a scoff and turned around to gather her sample and walked away to the lab to do experiments with her new sample.

Mike stared at her lovely swinging ass as she walked away. Once she was out of sight he turned back to the multiple screens in front of him. "If it did go off, we wouldn't have felt it," he mumbled as he took another drink from his coffee.

0000000

A few days later in the lab, Mike and his team had rigged up a power cable from Noel to the hardsuit with the Canada flag paintjob on it. The Exo-suit-01 as it was now called was in a separate lab on the ship. Mike, Tom, and a few others were going over the suit connecting the power cable to the connector in the chest piece. Peter and Nelly were off to the side arguing.

"Look Nell, let someone else do this. Besides, It's not even in our job description," Peter said trying to convince Nelly as she was adjusting the leotard she was wearing.

"What's the matter Pete? Pissed that you don't have the right figure to do it yourself?" Nelly taunted playfully as she began some stretches as she turned to Mike, "So Mikey-boy, You wanna explain to me why I'm wearing this get-up again? I kinda tuned you out and figured you wanted to jerk off to me when ya handed me the leotard." She then clasped her hands together, keeping her arms straight down which forced her breast to squish together. Her head was tilted like a little girl's as she looked up at him and began speaking in a mock little girl voice, "I put it on because you're just so pathetic, how could I say no?" She then bent over as she began to laugh hard.

Mike let out an annoyed sigh as he finished connecting and checking the power cable, "You're wearing the leotard because even though you're the closest person here to the girls size it's still going to be a tight squeeze. We'd use the green exo-suit but the battery that we found with it is practically dead and we don't have a way of recharging it right now. So if you want to be more uncomfortable than by all means, put your uniform and gear back on."

Nelly gave Mike a pout that was clearly meant to spur him on, "Awww, you know I only like to help. It's not every day you can get your jollies of to a real woman that's not on a computer screen."

Mike just rubbed his temples willing the headache that Nelly was giving him away. He then pointed at the hardsuit, "Just shut up and get in the damn exo-suit," he said in a weary voice.

Nelly smirked as she passed Mike as he joined Tom at some computers nearby.

"Now Nell," Tom said from the computer, "Once you get in, we'll turn the power on and the exo-suit should activate and seal you up. For now, we just want you to walk around and get a feel for the suit. We'll have you doing some strength test another day."

Nelly replied with a curt, "Okay Tom," before sliding a foot in the right leg of the hardsuit.

Mike gave Tom a WTF look to which Tom just shrugged.

"Shit, this fuckers cold!" Nelly exclaimed as she slid her other foot in the left leg.

"Don't worry about it. It'll warm up," Tom said, "Slide your arms in and once you're ready we'll flip the power on."

Nelly nodded and leaned forward. After her arms were in place, she waited for the inner lining to warm up before telling Tom and Mike she was ready. Mike turned on the power and the suit came to life. The thigh's swung up connecting the front and back sections of the hip piece before the front and back half of the torso snapped into place causing Nelly to let out an "Oof."

"Everything ok Nell?" Tom asked.

"Yeah, it's just a little tight in the chest. It's a little hard to breath," She said. Discomfort obvious on her face.

"We'll get you on the other exo-suit once we find a way to recharge the battery," Mike said.

"And here I thought you were into the whole bondage kink," Nelly teased leaving Mike to grumble under his breath.

Peter, who was standing well of to the side this whole time watching his team member, "How're you holding up Nell?"

Nelly rolled her shoulders, "Aside from it being hard to breath I'm doing ok. The suits warmed up finally so it's not freezing anymore. The suit response is sluggish though."

"It's probably because the exo-suits not getting enough power it normally gets when the girl is in it so we'll just have to deal till we get the other one working," Tom said. "For now, try walking around a bit."

Nelly nodded and began to walk around over to Peter, the actuators sounding each time she took a step. "Damn this thing's slow! It feels like I'm walking under water," Nelly said after a series of slow deliberate steps. Suddenly Nelly stiffened, a worried look was on her face.

"What's wrong Nell?" Peter asked with concern.

Nelly shifted and rolled her shoulders again, "Something in the suit's poking me all over."

"It's probably just the connectors in the suit," Mike said, "We think they act like nerve sensors to translate the persons body movements to the exo-suit. On the next test we'll try cutting holes in your leotard to see if that'll reduce the sluggish movement. Otherwise we'll try increasing power and see if that changes anything."

Nelly was about to fire off another insult when she doubled over backwards falling on her back screaming in pain.

Peter ran over to her to try to help, "Nell, what's wrong?" he shouted as he tried to keep her still.

"Something's digging into me, get this thing OFF!" she screamed while Peter shouted at Mike and Tom to shut the power off when Nelly, in a flailing frenzy effortlessly batted Peter off where he hit the wall several feet behind him where he slumped to the floor.

A second later Mike cut the power that caused the hardsuit to open a moment later. Tom ran to Nelly who wasn't moving and pulled her out. After getting her arms and legs out, he noticed bloody splotches at different points on Nelly's body and shouted at Mike to call Nicolette down here now.

As Mike called for Nicolette over the ships emergency PA system Tom asked Nelly if she was okay.

Nelly looked up at Tom with gritted teeth, "I can't move," she cried.

MAU: INFINITE CRISIS, PART 6
By: Set3

Peter was on the warpath. He had since recovered from his impromptu meeting with the wall in Mike's lab shortly after Nelly was moved out. Crystal was there to check him over to see if he had a concussion and as she checked him over she let slip of Nelly's injuries. This had upset Peter immensely; someone on his team was injured on his watch. After a flurry of questions about Nelly's state all Crystal could tell him was that she had been sent to Nicolette's infirmary. With that information Peter was off running through the halls of the ship with Crystal struggling to keep up. On reaching the door to Nicolette's infirmary he was stopped by two guards. "Let me through," he ordered them but they remained steadfast.

"We're sorry sir, but we were told by Nicolette to not let anyone in. That includes you sir," the one on the left told him.
With anger on his face he was in a flurry of motion as he wrested the guards' weapon closest to him. Just as he was about to make use of the gun and force his way in the other guard already had his pointed straight at Peters head. Crystal who'd finally caught up uttered a surprised cry when she saw the three.

"Stand down sir," the guard warned. His finger was on the trigger.

It was at this time that Nicolette had opened the door and was startled to find the standoff transpiring outside her door. Her shock only lasted a second before she let out an exasperated sigh, "Put those down, I already have my hands full and don't need you putting holes in each other," she said as her accent grew. A sign of how stressed she was.

Peter immediately relinquished the SMG to the guard he took it from and stepped past them to Nicolette. "What happened to Nelly? Was this all some kind of test to see what would happen if someone put the exo-suit on?" he shouted. Nicolette put her hand up causing Peter to pause in his accusations.

"I have already been over this with Mike. And he assures me that they had no way of knowing that the suit had this capability. Now, as for Nelly herself, her injuries are... Unusual."

Peter's eyes narrowed, "What do you mean?"

Nicolette dismissed the guards before replying, "She has been paralyzed in a way that I have never seen before. Every point the connectors from the suit had touched her body had injected a foreign substance that has cut the nervous system in such a way that prevents voluntary movement with the exception to breathing. But even though she can't move, she still has full feeling in all her limbs," she said clearly still puzzled by that. "There is one thing though."

"What?"

"If the cord Mike was using hadn't been plugged into the chest piece then it would have caused her rib cage to open. As it stands, the only thing she can move is her head and neck."

Peter thought this over a minute. "Can I see her?"

Nicolette looked back to the door behind her, "She has been under a lot of stress and trauma since the accident. Despite her immobility, she is still as vocal as ever and made it clear that she doesn't want to see anyone right now."

"You know I have to see her. She's a member of my team and that makes her my responsibility," Peter told Nicolette.

Nicolette hesitated before stepping to the side, "Just keep it brief. She has been through a lot and it still takes her awhile to calm down."

"It wouldn't be Nelly if she didn't," Peter said with the faintest of smiles as he opened the door. Almost immediately a very angry voice called out.

"I TOLD YOU TO GET THE FUCK OUT!" Nelly screamed.

Peter entered anyways and closed the door behind him. He looked at Nelly laying on one of the beds looking out the window beside her. "Is that any way to address your commanding officer?" Peter asked trying to sound jovial. Nelly continued looking out the window.

"Get the fuck out, Sir," she said still not turning to look at Peter.

Peter walked over to her bed and sat in the chair beside it. "Nell, look at me." She didn't respond. He repeated himself, "Nell? Look at me."

"I don't know how they do it," Nelly said finally, still not turning to face Peter.

"What do you mean?"

"You've been on tour," she said referring their service in the military.

"Yeah, a lot of good and bad things happened then," Peter said not sure where she was going with it.

"We lost a lot of fellow soldiers while on tour. A lot of us died for reasons no one really knows anymore and when we die, we get shits bitching about how it was god's will that we got what we deserved."

"Yeah well, there's always going to be people like that no matter where you go," Peter said with distaste.

"What I'm getting at is I can't figure out how those who get crippled like me or just loose an arm can go on all happy go lucky."

Peter was starting to worry then she finally turned to face him and was shocked at what he saw. She was crying. In all the years he'd known her, He had never once seen her cry. Even when back in the army she had gotten shot, she was more pissed off than anything. But, here now, she was a totally different person.

"I'm fucking paralyzed and I can still feel everything! I can feel my fingers, I can feel everything but I can't move a fucking thing. You know how hellish this is? I've seen plenty of guys get fucked up on tour but at least they probably don't have to feel their bodies wasting away."

Peter didn't know what to say. He wanted to say something reassuring but he couldn't think of anything. He then noticed that Nelly's blonde hair had fallen on her face. He brushed the strands out of her face and put his hand on hers. "I'll let you get some rest for now," he then got up and walked to the door, "I'll come back later and see how you're doing okay?"

Nelly just gave a dismissive snort before turning back to the window.

Peter left and closed the door behind him and turned to Nicolette who was talking softly to Crystal. "Keep me in the loop please. If there's any change, especially for the better, then let me know right away. I don't care what I'm doing at the time, just let me know," he told Nicolette.

She nodded, "Of course."

Peter took a deep breath sparing a glance in Nelly's direction before walking off down the hall.

Nicolette led Crystal into her office to change Nelly's bandages. Nelly had calmed down considerably and as they drew back her sheets they could see her bandages had just started to bleed through. Starting from the feet both Nicolette and Crystal removed the bandages and cleaned the wounds before replacing the dressings.

When Crystal finished cleaning the wound on Nelly's foot she noticed a small black speck in the middle. Fearing an infection she called Nicolette's attention and pointed to it. Nicolette made a comment about how it was too early for it to start to scab over and asked Nelly if she felt any pain. She shook her head no. Still concerned, Nicolette took a swab and probed the black spec for a sample to test. Crystal, for her part, retrieved some more things to hopefully remove the object. Nicolette put away the swab for later testing then grabbed a scalpel. She tried lightly scraping and cutting the black spec while watching Nelly for discomfort. She was able to get a small scraping before Nelly cried out in excruciating pain, Nicolette let out a swear in Russian and had Crystal put fresh dressings on her wounds with a coating of antibiotics while she checked the other bandages. To Nicolette's dismay there was a solid black spec at the center of every wound on each point on her limbs and the ones at the nap of Nelly's neck and her tail bone. Nicolette tried not to show it for Crystal and Nelly's sake but she was worried. If this was some sort of invasive infection she would have to consider amputation if she can't remove them but that would cause problems for the ones on her torso. Once they were done applying fresh bandages, Nicolette had Crystal run the samples over to Frank's lab for testing. It went without saying that she wanted a rush on it.

It was later in the evening that Frank had shown up at her door with the results. After a long day, Nicolette had looked up to discover that it was well past midnight as she walked to the door sparing a glance to Nelly before opening the door to admit Frank.

"You look like hell," Frank said as he handed Nicolette a clip board.

Nicolette took the clipboard with a soft chuckle and flipped through the results, "Thanks, I feel worse. With having to brush up on medical theory for our little girl down in the main lab, and Nelly's accident I haven't had much time to..." she paused as she read the last page. She then pushed Frank out of her office and closed the door as she continued the conversation in the hall. "These are..."

Frank nodded, "Nanites, the mechanical version."

Even though Nicolette was weary after such a long day, what Frank just told her made her eyes shoot wide open, "Frank, do you know what this means?"

Frank gave a quizzical look, "That this stuff is dangerous?"

Nicolette shook her head, "No. It means that the nanites already have programming to make surgical alterations to the human body with exact precision. Once we can program these nanites to do what we want, we can virtually eliminate the ailments of the modern world, much sooner than I could have hoped to," she said excitedly.

"You hoped for?" Frank asked with a raised eyebrow.

"We could hope for," Nicolette corrected herself fiddling with her hands nervously.

Frank just shrugged and left to return to his lab leaving Nicolette making a silent promise to herself to make sure that no one would have to go through what her and her late husband did.

000000

As the week progressed, the black specks on Nelly's body grew in size closely resembling the connectors on Noel's body. Nicolette was sure to maintain a careful watch over the nanites progression to the final stage. Unfortunately for Nelly, she remained paralyzed.

During this, Mr. Tonaon had given a press conference to address the reasons why the projects were moved off the ship so suddenly by way of giving the small group of selected reporters a partial tour of the ship. He showed them the hanger for the three helicopters and the offices, marketing rooms until finally stopping at the doors to the main labs using this as the point in the tour to answer their questions.

"Mr. Tonaon," a male reporter started, "I'm sure that you've been asked this before, but why make the headquarters of your company a boat? And furthermore, why make it look like a world war two aircraft carrier?"

Mr. Tonaon smiled at the question and replied with an air of suave confidence, "My Company has holdings in many countries around the world and I believe that it is a prudent practice that the main office of a company should be mobile. I like to think that it sends the message that we genuinely care about the places we put our factories and offices in. And to answer your second question, I have always had a fondness for the aircraft carriers of that era and while I can't have the real thing, I would like to think I am keeping a piece of American history alive. Next question please," he said before pointing to a woman in the back of the group.

"Mr. Tonaon. Why has your company off-loaded its industrial projects? According to my sources, none of them were ready for mainstream production at your shore offices."

There was a briefest flicker of anger that ran across Mr. Tonaon's face before it returned to its friendly looking business look. "It is true that a majority of the projects we have been working on were not ready to be put into production for the public consumption," he stated.

"Can you tell us why?" the woman prodded as the others shoved their cameras and microphones closer to him.

Mr. Tonaon looked at the expectant faces a moment before answering, "I can't go into details right now but my team has stumbled on a new way to produce energy more efficiently. I can't make any promises about it yet but the research being done behind these doors behind me will be put to the benefit of everyone everywhere," just before he finished talking the reporters instantly began shouting questions which Mr. Tonaon brushed off and gestured for the security that were keeping the crowd out of the more sensitive areas of the ship to usher them out and back to the dock.

As the press left and were finally out of sight, his pleasant smile fell away to a frown. The apparent news of one of the reporters "sources" is in fact true and he was prepared to give the same answer regardless, the fact she had a source to call upon told him his company had a security breach. He gestured to his personal assistant that was immediately beside him as he instructed him to find the leak and plug it. Once that was out of the way he returned to his office, the tour he conducted may have helped his company's public image but it was still a distraction to business and work was pilling up.

00000

While the past week had come by without notice, Jeffrey's team was frustrated by their progress, or lack thereof, in finding where Henry might have taken Noel. Major continued to look for her searching the net from the computer, John kept her company, while Andria trained on the firing range behind their home base. Jeffrey had gone to the government hospital to see his sister. Every time he came, he was crushed when he asked the doctors if there was any change and shook their head in the negative. After he entered his sister's room he replaced the flowers with the ones he brought with him. He then sat down next to her.

"Hello Hayley," he started, "Sorry I haven't been around much... Work's been keeping me pretty busy and all," Jeffrey then stopped for several long minutes holding back tears threatening to come out. Once he got back under control he continued, "I met someone a week ago, she's really pretty. She kind of reminds me of you in some ways." He paused. "From the moment I met her, she's already had so much trouble fall into her lap, mostly because of Henry, but she made some great friends with me and my friends. I think... I think that Henry might have taken her. I can't let him keep hurting people. I know that he's family and you wouldn't want anything bad to happen to him either but at the rate he's going at... I don't know how I'm going to stop him." He took her hand in his and sat keeping the fourteen year old girl company; the heart rate monitor was the only break in the silence.

00000

Peter had just returned to the lab to start the day shift for guarding the girl. Despite that the staff was told to treat her like and object he couldn't force himself to think like that. He was told she was nothing more than a machine but the way he acted kept him from thinking that. Unfortunately some people, much to his distaste, didn't share his moral fiber. Peter steeled himself as he relieved the guard coming off the night watch.

"Well Peter, I have to tell you, I love the grave shift," said Don Wait, the guard Peter was relieving said.

"And why is that?" Peter asked tiredly as he took his position by the door to the main lab housing Noel's chamber.

"Well, during the grave shift, not too many people are up right?" he asked in a jovial tone.

"Right," Peter acknowledged not sure where Don was going with this.

"Since no one's up at that hour, it means that one could exercise some... Personal freedoms," Don's expressions were dripping with innuendo at this point, a fact that left Peter feeling uneasy.

"Let's just say that it gives one... Opportunities to find out just how life-like that thing we got caged up really is. I mean, I can't get that weird get-up it has out of the way so I can get a the good stuff but it's the small things that keep the grave shift interesting," he said with a smug look on his face.

"Now listen here Wait," Peter said as he took a step forward before Don pushed him back against the wall and got in his personal space putting his face inches from Peter's.

"Oh yeah? And what are you going to do about it huh? You gonna sick Nelly on me? Everybody knows that she's a cripple now because of her usual stupid shit. And Third? The guy's a pussy. You got no friends here. Your team, if you can call it that, is no longer the best now that Nelly's out of the picture. And nobody gives a fuck around here what you did in Afghanistan or Iraq or whatever it was you crawled out of to slink over here to get your high and mighty position here on this boat," He backed up and pointed to the science team working in the lab, "You think any of those people give a fuck what I did to that thing they got strung up? They don't care what anyone does so long as it still works in the end. So fuck off and keep your "moral fiber" for someone who gives a shit, okay?"

And with that, he left Peter to watch over the lab and stew.

Meanwhile Mike had been working with his own team as they continued to work on the hardsuits. They were having better luck with the green Linna hardsuit and were able to remove the transmitter from it. Despite their initial use of Noel's hardsuit they couldn't perform any work due to the incredible interconnectivity of its systems. He had Tom searching for suitable candidates to increase the staff so they could make some headway on the project. They were still working on the battery but they were able to co-op the power supply by hooking it into cables from the ships power grid. After awhile Mike left the lab and walked over to Nicolette's office to run over an idea he had with her.

On entering he saw that Crystal was tending to Nelly by helping her eat. He had to force himself not to smile at Nelly's immobility since he knew what would happen if they went through with his idea. He walked over to Nicolette, once again taking note of her backside as he approached and cleared his throat to announce himself. Nicolette didn't respond as she was too engrossed with whatever she was looking at in the microscope until Mike cleared his throat again which elicited a distracted grunt from her. Taking this as a cue to talk, Mike took a breath, "So, how's work?" he asked mentally groaning to himself.

"What do you want Mike?" she replied, still distracted but less than thrilled to hear him.

"Progress on the Exo-suit 1 has stalled since the accident with Nelly but we've made great strides with the Exo-suit 2 though."

"Uh-huh," she said already dismissing Mike assuming he was trying to flirt again with her.

"The reason I'm here now is that I want to borrow Nelly. I'd like her to wear the Exo-suit 2 so we can gather more data to help us figure out some of the inner working of the machine."

Nicolette was still looking through the microscope until she heard Mike's suggestion. She then sat straight up and turned around to face Mike, her accent thickening slightly, "You can't be serious putting her in that thing again. She has suffered far too much trauma for me to consider entertaining what you're suggesting."

"She won't be wearing the one that paralyzed her," he argued, "The green Exo-suit is far less advance than the first one so we should be able to control what might happen."

"Listen to yourself, "should be able to control what happened", tells me that you don't know what will happen let alone control it. I won't let you risk her again."

"Or what? She's already paralyzed. There's not much more the Exo-suits can do. Besides, if it does work, when we put her in it and turn it on she might regain her independence and be able to move on her own again. She was in the army, you think someone like that is happy to let people spoon feed her and change her diapers for her when she craps herself."

"...I," Nicolette stuttered.

"And who's to say that if we put her in again the thing won't fix what the first Exo-suit did to her. And if it doesn't? Fine then, by all accounts from the data my team and I collected so far, she should be able to move on her own again. Think about it, if we can find a way to miniaturize the Exo-suits, we could give thousands of people who were stuck in a wheel chair mobility and independence again. And considering the properties of the first suit, once we harvest and modify enough nanites, we can start helping people with neural diseases." Mike notice that what he just said struck a chord somewhere deep with Nicolette and smiled inwardly to himself as he continued, "If we succeed here that we can do away with expensive and dangerous surgeries since they won't be needed anymore. A simple injection and however long it takes for the nanites to take effect and you're done. What I'm trying to say is we need a foundation to work with and helping people walk again will give us notice in the medical community not to mention the capital needed so we can do the nanite work. At the rate we're going now with two and a half teams that barely know what they're doing it'll take several decades if not centuries to make this a reality. We need to focus our effort on one thing at a time at least." He saw Nicolette begin to fidget. "Do you really want anyone else to go through what you went through?" he asked her, knowing he was striking a low blow.

"NYET, OKAY!" she shouted with her now strong accent. "But, Nelly is still my patient. We talk to her first and if she says no, then that is the end of it, okay?" she was visibly holding back tears now.

All I ask is a chance," Mike said softly giving Nicolette a moment to collect herself before they confronted Nelly with Mike's proposal. Surprising to both of them Nelly agreed to the proposal, she wasn't enthusiastic about it but she offered no objections. Thanks to the inside of the ship being designed like a five-star hotel they were easily able to move her to the labs by way of wheelchair only a few people they past made any murmurs of Nelly's condition. Once they arrived, Nicolette and Crystal helped Nelly into a sensor suit that would give them more data when she was put into the hardsuit. A day earlier Mike had his team construct a contraption that would help ease Nelly into the suit without having to worry about a limb not mining up with the connector in the suit or a finger not making it into the right slot. The staff had jokingly called the contraption "The shoehorn" which surprisingly didn't get any reaction out of Nelly who'd seemed distant the entire time and only responded as needed when asked or told something.

"Okay Nelly," Mike said from the computer off to the side, "We have made some progress on the Exo-suit 2's battery but we still can't recharge it properly. So, we currently have the suit hooked up to the ships grid. The test we made showed no problems but if you feel any abnormal heat buildup in the exo-suit then please tell me and we'll cut the power and get you out. Both exo-suits seemed to have a failsafe that opens to let the wearer out but just in case I have some people standing by to cut you out. Understand?"

"Just start the damn thing up already," Nelly said flatly.

Mike nodded and turned on the power. The hardsuit seemed to hum as its systems came to life and sealed her inside it. Soon enough Nelly was standing, clad in the Hardsuit minus the helmet with only the stand to hold the suit upright to keep her steady. "How does it feel?" Mike asked.

Nelly took a deep breath, "It's much easier to breath than the last one," she commented.

Mike nodded and typed some things into the computer that caused the stand to drop down leaving physical contact with the suit. "Can you try moving around please?" he instructed.

Nelly hesitated before looking down at her armor clad self and cautiously brought her hands and arms up till they were level with her shoulders. She then straightened her arms out in front of her before bringing her hands in closely and experimented with wiggling her fingers. As she did this she had taken a few steps forward dragging the thick power cables attached to her back behind her. For the first time since the accident she smiled, "I can..." she stopped as she wiggled her fingers some more.

Nicolette, who was happy to see that she was mobile again called out, "What's wrong?"

Nelly dropped her hands to her sides and looked back at them, "I still can't move," she said returning to her previous emotionless state.

Nicolette was confused and looked to Mike who offered no answers, "But you are moving right now." she stated incredulously.

"The suit's moving for me!" Nelly snapped. "Just tell me what you want me to do so we can get this shit over with." she said.

Nicolette was taken aback by her sudden outburst but accepted Nelly's response for now. She then turned to Mike who began to instruct Nelly through basic movements. A few hours later they were done and pulled Nelly out of the hardsuit and wheel her back to the ships infirmary.
As Nicolette and Crystal lowered her back into the bed Nicolette asked her a question, "Why weren't you more excited to stand on your own again?"

Nelly just turned her head so she could look out the window, "Forget it. You wouldn't understand if I told you so just leave me alone until Mike wants me to put the suit on again.":

Nicolette nodded and pushed a button off to the side that activated the hidden wall panels that silently slid into place so Nelly could have some privacy.

A few hours later in the evening Mike was in one of the computer labs with bleary eyes as he looked over the new data scrolling across the screen as Tom came in. Mike looked over at Tom when he noticed a man walking behind him with a large briefcase. The man was tall and had short, dark wavy hair that looked to have a tinge of red to it as well. He was wearing and expensive looking business suit but the man looked as if he wasn't afraid of getting dirty either. Mike sat back in his chair and turned to Tom with a sigh, "Tom, I'm way too busy to talk to one of the suits right now," He turned to the man, "No offense sir." he added.

Tom just let a big smile on his face, "It just so happens that this guy is going to be joining our team."

Mike jerked up in his chair, "What?"

The man extended his hand to shake Mikes, "It's true. I've already signed the necessary paperwork and I'm quite eager to start working on your..." he paused looking for the right word, "Mechanical project."

"Uh-huh," Mike said with a raised eyebrow, "Can you excuse me for a moment please?" he said before turning to Tom. Mike waited till the man was out of the room before he turns to Tom. "How much did you tell him about what we're working on?"

"Just that we are working on advanced robotics, he actually gave me some very apt descriptions about the Exo-suit 1," he said to Mike shocked response.

"I... Is he one of the people that worked on the suits before we recovered it?

Tom shook his head, "No, he just told me that he witnessed a demonstration of the Exo-suit 1's capabilities."

Mike just sat back in his chair laughing, "How much is he asking to keep quiet then?"

Tom just shrugged his shoulders, "He didn't say anything about wanting a bribe. What I got from talking to him is that he's more interested in working on the suits than any hush money."

Mike just rubbed his eyes and flinched slightly, his nose had healed up fine but was still tender in some spots, and nodded to Tom as he got up, "Okay then. If he signed the papers then that means he cleared the background checks right?" Tom nodded. "Alright, let's go show him the suits then." He quickly turned back to save his work and encrypt it on the computer before shutting it down and leaving the computer lab.

Mike and Tom lead the man to the lab wear the hardsuits were kept. As they walked in the man was immediately drawn to Exo-suit 1, "Ah yes, this was the one I saw in Action," he said in admiration as he ran his hand over the smooth armor.

"Tom tells me you saw a demonstration of the exo-suit," Mike queried.

The man nodded, "Admitingly I snuck in, so I'm not privy to the inner workings of the suit but I can give you a fair amount in what it is capable of," he said as he knelt down touching the left gauntlet. "It's capable of sustained flight and in these gauntlets holds two sets of weapons that I noticed. It can fire some form of energy and closer to the knuckles," he said as he felt the silted panel that ran just above the fingers of the gauntlet, "Holds a nasty blade. I assume that each arm holds the same weapons," he said as he stood up brushing the wrinkles out of his slacks. "Have you found what powers it yet?" he asked as he turned to Mike.

Mike, had the look of a deer in the headlights, this guy knew far too much, "Well, I... We have found what powers it but..."

"Say no more," the man said putting up his hands in cheerful resignation, "I was just curious. Before we go any further I just want to reaffirm that I have no interest in profiting off of anything you have here or taking credit for any of it. I'm quite happy in remaining nameless in the history books. I only ask because I like to think outside the box and if I could see the whole picture then I might be able to speed up the process. I'm quite the engineer," he said with somehow no hint of exaggeration. Mike was beginning to become a little afraid of this guy, he already knew too much and he didn't want anything extra. His gut was telling him to ditch the guy but with Mr. Tonaon continually pushing for results. With a heavy sigh he held out a hand and gestured for the man to follow. Tom stayed behind with the hardsuits to work on them some more.

The two remained silent as they walked through the corridors of the ship the man remarking once about the fancy decor to which Mike mumbled an affirmative and they continued on until they finally reached the door to the main lab. Before He opened the door he turned to the man again, "Just so we're clear. You are an independent worker and everything you work on and see is to be considered company secret. If you
breach the contract you signed then you should expect to say good bye to any finances you have and be sent to jail for the rest of your life."

The man nodded again, "If I break the contract I signed then I will accept any punishment the company you work for decides to give me."

With that clear and out of the way Mike took a breath and sighed as he opened the door. They quickly passed through and were a bit surprised when Crystal came up behind them but continued to the second set to reveal Noel still hanging from his harness in his cage. Crystal had gone over to Noel to take another sample of nanites from Noel while Mike and his new employee went off to the side to a bank of monitors that were tied to the connectors on Noels body.

"After we found the Exo-suits, we found that the girl, or rather the subject as we've come to call it, was emitting an energy pulse that shorted out our satellite. That's how we were able to find it in fact," He told him. "Somehow, whoever designed her used technology that hasn't been invented or perfected yet. Inside her is some kind of power generator that rivals any nuclear power station on the planet. What we'd like to do in the long term is duplicate it."

The man looked at Noel as Crystal had just left with her sample. Don had arrived to take over for the night shift. "...Fascinating," the man said finally. "I'm not sure if I'll be able to help you create a duplicate power source that's in that girl but I should be able help you with the "Exo-suits". At least in some fashion," he said as he looked over the readouts on the monitors.

"So, what's your name anyways? I can't believe I completely forgot to ask you," Mike admitted embarrassingly.

The man chuckled as he stuck his hand out to shake Mikes, "No, that's okay. My name is Henry, Henry Donald's.

It was already late into the evening and the scientists working on Noel were beginning to call it a day and were feeling the effects of exhaustion. This was evident with two scientist where one was just entering while the other was leaving forgot to keep one door closed. In the three seconds the doors were opened, Noel suddenly looked up at the opened hallway. Mike and the man were distracted by the sudden data spike pouring through the monitors. Don was already on the move to the scientist shouting at them to close the doors. But the damage had already been done. Noel had already uploaded a program into Crystal's iphone making it buzz causing her to take the cell phone out to check it, letting it take a picture of Noel in his cage. Don had already turned to notice Crystal holding the phone as it took the picture and ran over to her taking it away from her. Once again, the damage had been done and under the direction of the hidden program in Crystal's phone, it sent the picture to every email address in Crystal's phone with the subject line "HELP ME".

00000000000

A day later Jeffries team were all accounted for at their home base save Jeffrey who stayed overnight at the hospital with his sister. Major was still more or less tied to her computer while John and Andria had taken a break and settled down for lunch while they had the TV turned to the news station half-listening to it.

"With a cook like you John, It's a wonder that none of us hasn't gotten fat yet," Andria told John as she shoved a fork full of spaghetti into her mouth, "You can make something as simple as spaghetti taste like it came from one of those exclusive restaurants."

"It's nothing really," John said sheepishly, "All I did was put in a few spices into the sauce. The only thing I did different was added shredded lettuce to the sauce before serving."

"Yeah but it's so good," Andria gushed. "Come on Major, You're missing out on you boyfriends cooking. If you don't come over here, I'm going to steal your boyfriend from you," she teased.

"Okay, I'm coming," Major said quickly as she pulled the plugs from the back of her neck and ran over to the kitchen to help herself to the meal and sat needlessly close to John earning a chuckle from the two already seated.

"So, any luck finding her?" John asked.

Major sighed before taking a bite; she took a moment to savor the flavor, "No... The only thing I was able to dig up so far was the fight she had with Henry in that town way back. The "experts" think it was a small meteorite that vaporized on impact," she said when commenting about people who weren't in the know about the alien machine. The conversation hadn't gone much farther than that when their attention was drawn to the news anchor on TV.

"And in other news, computer experts and police officials are cautioning people about a new email virus that has cropped up yesterday. People are urged not to open any emails they receive that contain the words "Help Me" in the subject header. While there haven't been any reports about any harm caused by this email virus police still urge everyone to not open the email. Once opened the virus forwards the email to everyone in your contact list before displaying an attached photo. We here at the station have obtained the photo in question. What we are about to show may disturb some viewers," the news caster said as his image was replaced with the photo. All three suddenly bolted upright as they recognized the person in the photograph. The news castor continued, "As of yet we haven't been able to identify the person in the picture but it appears to be of a young girl of sixteen years of age hanging by several cables in a mesh cage." two other people were in front of Noel but any identification was impossible due to both having their heads turned away. In the foreground was the blurry outline of a man's face that had a helmet of some kind on that suggested military. "So far, no hacker groups have claimed responsibility for what has been called the "Help me virus". We will keep you updated on or web site." The news castor then went to drown on about recent sports games results but the trio had already moved to their computer. Major was already jacking herself back in.

As she brought up the website and several others, John was already asking Major about what they just saw to which Major only hushed him as she worked. The picture of Noel was brought up on the screen and Both John and Andria were uncomfortably close gazing over Major's shoulders trying to make out details in the picture. Frustrated, Major shoved them both back causing Andria to land on her rear and John to stumble. While Major never touched the keyboard or mouse, she was working furiously through the jacks in her neck as she works to bring the blurry face in the foreground into focus. She had already tried looking for any markings that would leave a clue to Noel's location. As John and Andria watched her work at a more reasonable distance they heard a motorcycle come up signaling the return of Jeffrey.

Jeffrey walked in to see everyone huddled around Major at the computer, "What's going on?" he asked as he rounded the table.

"We might have found Noel," Andria stated with a hint of worry in her voice.

Jeffrey stopped in his tracks before resuming at a quicker pace and saw the image of Noel strung up like a prize of some sort. Jeffrey wasn't sure what to say when he saw the image. He didn't know what to feel. He just wanted to free her. Whatever else would have to wait. "Can we use this to find her?' he finally asked.

"That's what I'm trying to do," Major said suddenly just as she brought the face into focus. Everyone stared at the face of the man and the only thing they could take from it was that he looked Chinese. "Got him!" Major suddenly shouted after a minute of silence as she opened a window that had the man's employee file on it.

"That's my girl," John said as he gave Major a quick kiss.

"You know it," she said with a smile, "His name is Don Wait. And he works as a security guard for the Tonaon industrials company... Unfortunately it doesn't say where he works," she said with disappointment. Everyone swore at that. Jeffrey looked at the picture dejectedly. He was so close to finding her but was still so far off. For ten seconds he looked sullenly at the picture until he noticed something in the reflection of Don's protective goggles on his helmet.

"Can you clear that up?" he asked Major as he pointed at the reflection.

Major stared at the reflection for several seconds, "It's a little distorted but I'll try," she said as she went to work. Five minutes inched slowly by until Major was almost finished. Before she could clear the fuzz from the image on the screen she stiffened and brought up an employee file of Mike. "The guy on the right is some guy named Mike Givings, he works for Tonaon Industrials too. Unfortunately his file doesn't say where he works either. But, according to his facebook page, he works at the Tonaon Industrials headquarters."

Jeffrey breathed a sigh of relief, "Good job Major," he said giving her a pat on the back, "Now where is that?"

"It's currently docked at their industrial offices just south of Victoria on Vancouver Island in BC Canada."

Jeffrey looked at her funny when she mentioned it was docked but decided to drop it as it wasn't important. He then noticed that there was a second person in the reflection to the left of Mike. "Who's that?" Jeffrey asked Major pointing to the still blurred image of the man.

Major hesitated, "I-it doesn't really matter does it? We know where Noel is now so now we can go get her."

"Major!"

Major looked at the determination in Jeffrey's eyes and sighed as she looked down. The image cleared up and Jeffrey only took half a look before he was already running out the door. He barely needed more than one look to recognize Henry. He stopped briefly enough to grab his batsuit and stuff it in a back pack before he was out the door. It was only after he slammed the door shut that John and Andria noticed Henry's face.

Not long after they heard Jeffrey speeding away did the phone ring. Seeing that it was from Agent G they put it on speaker phone. Usually when they got a call from him on just the phone the group would do a Charlie's Angels joke but they never joked when it came to Henry so they skipped the routine this time.

"I found Noel," Agent G stated.

"We know," John replied, "We just saw the news."

"Fine, is everyone there?"

"We were," Andria said, "But as soon as Jeffrey saw Henry in the picture, he bolted."

"Damn, I was afraid of that. In any case this is a joint rescue op," he started, "Noel's still on Canadian soil so it's their call and they graciously let us tag along. So get your stuff together and get ready to move."

"When are we leaving?" Major asked just waiting for the word.

The line cut out when suddenly the door Jeffrey had left through had opened revealing Agent G in the flesh dressed in his dark suit, "As soon as you get your stuff together, we're leaving," he told them bluntly.

MAU: INFINITE CRISIS, part 8

Written by: Set3

Everyone had quickly boarded the helicopter from the Canadian frigate which then took them inland to Vancouver island. As they waited while it continued to the airport in Victoria, Jeffrey turned to Noel who was seated beside him.

"Are you okay?" he asked as he put a hand on Noel's shoulder in concern.

"Yeah I'm..," Noel's voice broke. It was then that the past weeks of imprisonment caught up to him. He pulled his arms around his armored body as he let his head droop. Not wanting anyone to hear him as he began to sob, he turned off his external speakers. Even though no one could hear him anymore the shuddering of his shoulders betrayed his emotional state.

Jeffrey then put an arm around Noel's back and shoulders and did his best to pull Noel into a hug as best he could with being strapped to his seat. Noel leaned into it. He didn't feel very masculine right now and didn't care. Maybe he just tried to think of himself as still being a guy at heart as a way of coping with what he went through, the thought of still being a guy in mind was quickly eroding. She was a girl, a girl that looked 17 or 18, and grabbed hold of Jeff's arm that went around her front for comfort. After what she had gone through, she desperately needed some kindness and Jeffrey was the closest person giving it and she clung to his arm for the rest of the helicopter trip to the airport in silence.

Major, for her part, was lost in herself. What Henry had said to her during their brief encounter stirred something in her. She knew Henry was bad, what he did to her personally was proof enough, but what he hinted about Jeffrey not telling her everything got to her. When she thought about it, Jeffrey really didn't say a lot about himself. Not even what he did when he was working for the Agency before the rest of the team came along. With that in mind, she adjusted herself in her seat to get comfortable and remote hack into the net through her dummy plug. Flying through the vast net she began looking up records of Jeffrey, his bother, sister and family. His parents were unfortunately killed in a car crash forcing Jeffrey and Henry to take care of their sister when she was just 5 years old. It was several years later that the Agency reports showed that they encountered the alien device. According to the report, soon after Jeffrey and Henry used the device and quickly afterwards got into an argument. The report didn't show what it was about but Haley, their sister, was put in a coma due to the altercation and Henry ran off with the box.

Major sighed mentally as she felt dirty looking behind Jeffrey's back like this. There was nothing out of the ordinary, the tragic deaths of their parents aside, that stood out as anything odd. So far, nothing supported Henry's claim of Jeffrey keeping secrets from them. As she was about to close up her search, she looked at a school photo of Hayley and stopped. It was a yearbook photo of Hayley, perfectly ordinary, but what struck her was the style of dress she and several other kids had. Major looked for other pictures of Hayley to double check her suspicion. According to Hayley's birth records, she was 12 years old now but according to the pictures and when she cross-checked the identities of the other children she came to the discovery that the school pictures of Hayley were taken in the early 90's. The 12 year old girl that was Jeffrey and Henry's sister should be just entering her thirty's. Major then began checking both the history of Jeffrey and Henry and was surprised that the two had nearly the same records. And stranger still, there weren't any pictures of them from before the Agency's arrival. As Major delved deeper, she came to the conclusion that the brothers records were forged by the Agency itself.

"Why would they cover this up?" Major thought to herself as she glanced over to Jeffrey who had his cowl off and was comforting Noel as she seemed to be silently crying judging from the periodic shakes. Henry knew what Jeffrey and the Agency were hiding.

Before she could think anymore on this, the helicopter bounce suddenly as they finally landed at the airport. As the combined teams got out of their seats and checked their gear before leaving. Major stayed back making sure that she and Jeffrey were the last to leave so they could have a moment alone to talk.

"Hey," she called out to Jeffrey just as he was about to step out. He turned back to look at her expectantly, "How long do you think it'll be until we finally get Henry?" she asked as she came up and stepped out the door with him.

Jeffrey didn't respond until they cleared the still rotating blades of the helicopter that lifted off once they were far enough away. "Who knows," he said bluntly, "Assuming he doesn't detect it, it won't send out a signal until he stops moving for a time. If all goes well, we should get a signal within a few days or so," he said as he replaced his cowl as they walked on to the Hercules transport they arrived in.

"On another note," Major started, "How was your sister? I was going to ask when you got back, but with us searching for Henry, it slipped my mind," she prodded.

Jeffrey stiffened, "...She's... Still the same. Still in a coma," he answered grimly. His voice shook a little.

Major almost stopped herself right there. She already knew that the subject of Jeffrey's sister was a sore subject, and his reaction to her question nearly convinced her to abandon her query. But with what Henry told her about Jeffrey not telling them everything and what she was able to find out on her own, she had to know and asked one more question.

"How old is she now?" she asked.

Jeffrey started to answer but stopped himself, Major was sure she heard him say "th-" before he stopped himself.

"She's twelve now," he said finally, "She spent four years asleep," he said as he then stared straight forward as his pace quickened as he walked on to the transport.

Major stopped in her tracks before continuing on. She felt like crap, she didn't like the way she made Jeffrey felt just now. Even if she was certain what he said proved her theory and what even Henry hinted at, she still felt dirty. With the doubts firmly seeded in her mind conflicting with her emotions she boarded the plane.

As Noel waited for everyone to board the transport she found herself feeling anxious. She would be tapping her foot impatiently if her lower legs weren't currently encased solid boots. Somehow, the compartment they were sitting in didn't feel right. It just seemed a little too small and she kept looking to the ramp to the outside. It wouldn't be until later that during her counselling sessions that she would discover that she developed a minor case of claustrophobia brought on from when she was held prisoner in the cage at the Tonoan headquarters. She cringed slightly when the ramp finally closed before the plane taxied to the runway and took off in the direction of the military base where they picked up Chris and the CSOR team. Although the CSOR team stayed behind leaving Chris as the only returning resident.

The flight back was incredibly uneventful compared to the excitement they had gone through with the search and rescue. This was further accentuated by Andria's claims of how bored she was as she was once again left with nothing to do compared to everyone else reading or filling out reports on the finished operation.

After touching down at the hidden airbase and on entering the barracks Chris was immediately set upon by the previously shy boy who leapt into her arms with a chorus of giggles and began asking her random questions. He didn't seemed to care about receiving any answers and was more than happy just to talk his head off (not literally of course). Chris answered what she could and just smiled and nodded as she continued to carry him off down the hallway. John watched the whole thing with a huge grin on his face and looked after them as they disappeared down the hall.

"You're not straying away are you?" Major teased as she slipped in beside him and gave him a playful squeeze of his butt.

John jumped a little, much to Major's amusement, and turned to her, "Of course not," he replied returning her gesture, "It's just that I can only imagine how rough that little boy had it until just yesterday. I'm not sure if I completely fixed him but I'm happy to see that he is."

Major smiled at that thinking of that being on of the many reasons she loved him before her mood turned sour, "Listen," she started in a serious tone," You've known Jeffrey the longest out of all of us right?"

"Yeees?" he answered with a cocked eyebrow, not sure where she was going with this.

"Well I was just wondering, with the way he acted storming out on his own when we found out Henry was with Noel," she paused not sure how to word it, "I mean, he just ran off without us, and it occurred to me that we don't know what happened back then between him and Henry." Major looked down at her feet, "I know Henry's bad, no one knows that more than I do. It's just," she paused again looking up into John's eyes, "Back on that ship when we were looking for Noel and I ran into Henry, he told me something."

"What did he say?" John asked, a concerned look in his eyes.

Major looked around, checking to see if Jeffrey was still outside with Noel before turning back to John, "He told me that Jeffrey hasn't told us everything."

John just looked at her while he processed what she said before he let out a scoff, "Well, you can't really expect a guy like Henry to actually tell the truth. He's the guy that stole your memories. He probably couldn't do it this time so he came up with that to buy time to escape," he reasoned.

Major shook her head, "I thought so at first too, but it kept getting at me so I went online and researched Jeffrey's family. Jeffrey's sister is supposed to be twelve and the official records reflect that but all the school pictures I was able to find suggests that they were taken in the 90's. When I asked Jeffrey how old she was I could have sworn that he was about to say thirty. Admittingly, he probably was going to say thirteen, but still, It's just too much of a coincidence to ignore," Major said with a worried look on her face. "It scares me that a man like Henry could be right about something like this."

John drew her into a tight hug, "Shh, shh. It's ok, we'll figure out what he meant by that. We'll catch him and then we'll find out what's going on," he said reassuringly.

Major responded with a kiss and a swat on the shoulder.

Outside, at one end of the runway, Noel was enjoying the sunrise with her helmet off while Jeffrey stood further off keeping her company. As she stood towards the rising sun with her arms outstretched gulping in lung fills of air.

"You know," Noel started, "I can't believe it took me getting kidnapped and caged for weeks to realise how sweet and precious fresh air is," she said as she lowered her arms.

Jeffrey just smiled at her, "I'm sorry I wasn't there to rescue you," he apologised. While his batsuit was thermalized against the cold, he left his cowl on as it was a little too cold for his tastes.

"It's not your fault Jeff. There's no way that you could have known that I'd get kidnapped, let alone that Henry was going to be there," Noel consoled him.

"Did Henry do anything to you?" Jeffrey asked suddenly, taking a few steps over to her.

Noel crossed her arms, "No, he never touched me. I only saw him the once. I think I overheard someone say that he was looking over my hardsuits," she answered.

Even though Noel couldn't see Jeffrey's face under the mask of his cowl, she could see the relief roll over him.

"That's the best news I've ever heard about him in a long time," Jeffrey said finally.

They stood there in silence for several minutes with only the soft wind rolling through to break it.

With a cleansing sigh, Noel turned to Jeffrey, "So, have you thought about what you're going to do after you catch Henry and put him away?" she asked.

Jeffrey was taken aback, "I... I haven't really thought about it to be honest," he looked down at his feet. Some snow had blown over his toes, but thanks to the insulation of his suit, he didn't feel any chill. He kicked his feet to clear the snow off. "I guess I'd do what I can to make sure my sister gets what she needs. I suppose I'll stop in to make sure that Henry is held responsible for everything that he's done," he paused at that staring off down the end of the runway, "And I suppose if I can't continue to work for the Agency then I'll have to find a real job." He let out a short laugh, "Unfortunately, I don't think the pay will be as good this," he said with a thin smile.

Noel laughed, "Yeah, I don't think that there's much call for an actual superhero. Although, you could probably make a lot of little kids dreams come true at their birthday party."

Jeffrey smiled in earnest, "Maybe if I looked like the Christopher Nolen version, I don't think that many kids nowadays know about the Batman Beyond version."

A soft series beeps sounded in Jeffrey's earpiece causing him to jerk. He then put his hand to his cowl activating the comm unit, "Major, I need you to link up with our satellite. The tracker I put on Henry activated and I need you to find out where he is before we lose the signal."

There was a brief pause before the cyber-echoed voice of Major replied, "Will do."

On hearing that, Jeffrey practically ran back inside, only sparing enough time to tell Noel that they found Henry. Noel only taking enough time to grab her helmet before following after him. As Jeffrey entered with Noel right behind, John and Andria were on either side of Major, who herself seemed to be looking off into space.

"Did you get it?" Jeffrey asked her impatiently.

"Almost," Major replied with a dazed look still on her face before she blinked a few times and turned to Jeffrey, "I've got it. He's in Detroit."

"Great," Jeffrey growled as he turned for the door before John stopped him by grabbing his arm.

"Wait. Where do you think you're going on your own?"

"I have to go now," Jeffrey nearly shouted. "If we wait much longer, he'll either move on or find the tracker and get rid of it. Then we'll have lost him again!"

"Going off by yourself isn't going to help any," John told him flatly, "You think you have enough thrust in your Bat boots to make it all the way down to Detroit from here? And even if you do by some long shot miracle get there first before the rest of us, you'll be exhausted when you get there, and you'll be on your own with no one watching your back." John gestured to the rest of the team. "We are all in this together Jeffrey. He's done something to pretty much all of us, so you're not alone in this."

Jeffrey looked as if he were to launch into a tirade. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He then looked to the floor as he balled his fists tightly. After a moment, his fists went slack, and he looked up to John with a half-hearted smile.

"You're right," he said plainly, "Lets go get him," he added as he turned and headed for the door, his team following behind him.

As they were boarding the plane, Jeffrey looked back to see Noel approaching them. "I can't let you come with us," he called out to her.

"And why not?" she asked defiantly only stopping at the ramp in front of Jeffrey.

Jeffrey was aghast, "H-he nearly killed you when you first ran into him," he stammered. "And even though he didn't do anything to you on the ship, who knows what he might've done had time gone on. I'm sorry, but I'm not letting you on this plane," he said with an air of finality.

Noel furrowed her brow, clearly insulted and angry with what Jeffrey had decreed. "Fine!" she answered, "It would've been too cramped in there for me anyways," she said as she put her helmet on. "I'll just fly circles around you until you take off," she said as she back up a few steps before jumping into the air, a flare from her hip-thrusters sending her up high. There, she deployed her flight wings for the first time in awhile, and true to her word, began flying in circles above the base.

Jeffrey could only stare up at her in stark disbelief as John came back out beside him.

John only looked up where Jeffrey was looking once before, with a smirk, turned back to Jeffrey giving him a pat on the back, "Best not to keep her waiting or she'll get impatient and get there before us," he quiped as he walked back to the planes hold.

Jeffrey couldn't form any reply and just walked into the plane where they then sealed the ramp and took off.

It was a five hour flight to the Detroit airport and the team had steeled in anticipation of Andria's string of complaints of boredom but were pleasantly surprised and relieved when she revealed that she had taken a few magazines from the base before they left. There was an instant when an air traffic control officer contacted the pilot to check their starboard side for a ghost radar echo. When they looked off the right wing they saw Noel flying beside them. A quick word from John over the radio to her and she disappeared from radar as the colour of her hardsuit switched from white and red to the two-tone olive green. After that, the flight was quiet aside from Jeffrey discussing with his team how they were going to deal with Henry.

After touching down at the airport they quickly made their way to the outskirts to a previously abandoned car factory. As they gathered in front, they noticed that the ten foot brick wall was recently added along with the thick metal gate in comparison with the rest of the crumbling architecture.

Andria was about to push on the heavy gate when John pulled her back. When she asked why he stopped her he pointed out that there wasn't any snow on the perimeter wall and gate. There was a faint hum in the air near the wall. John quickly made a snowball and tossed is at the gate which then sparked angrily as the snowball hit it causing the team, with the exception of John, to jump in surprise. John pulled out his screwdriver and aimed it at the gate. It sparked as if in defiance to John as he used his screwdriver to melt the lock in the gate. After he finished, he replaced his tool in his pocket while telling them that the electricity was still on though. Noel shrugged as she went ahead and kicked the gate open, strings of electricity danced harmlessly over her boot as the gate swung open, bouncing off the inside of the wall, with a loud clang.

They redied their weapons as they passed through the gate. The worn asphalt of the empty parking lot was peppered by large numerous dull metal rectangles in the ground. Everyone kept a careful eye around them as they approached the factory building, Henry walk out through the main doors of the building still in the armor he wore in his escape.

"Hello everyone, I've been expecting you," he said with a sense of cavalier about him.

In an instant, everyone had their weapons trained on him and fired. Only a few bullets ricochet off his armor before the metal rectangle he was standing behind erupted into an eight foot tall pillar of metal blocking the further onslaught of weapon fire as well as one of Jeffrey's exploding batarangs. Soon after, everyone stopped shooting.

Henry then casually stepped out from behind the pillar and leaned up beside it. "Well, if you all have that much energy left, then I'll have to do something about it," he said as he knocked on the side of the pillar.

As he knocked, the front of the pillar swung down revealing a robot armed with a sawed-off shotgun. Over a dozen more pillars erupted around them and opened, each revealing another robot armed with pistols, machine guns, chains, and aluminum bats. The ones with guns began shooting while the ones with the melee weapons ran towards them.

The team scattered, taking out three of the closest robots while running to the pillars for cover. John, Andria and Major fired behind the pillars while Jeffrey and Noel ran headfirst into the mass of artificial bodies. Jeffrey used his agility to weave in and out between the robots using two batarangs as makeshift knives using them to block the robots armed with bats, chains, and knives themselves and cut at their joints tearing them apart slowly letting the others have a clean shot without being shot back at. Noel on the other hand relied on the armor of her hardsuit as she plowed through the robots straight to Henry who flew up and began firing down with his repulsors.

Soon enough, the robots with firearms were dispatched and Major and Andria left their cover behind the pillars and closed to the robots. Major with her pistol and combat knife and Andria with her gunblade in sword-mode.

As Henry touched down, Noel used the jump jets in her hips and back causing her to shoot through the robot guards Henry standing behind. Just as Noel reached Henry, she swiped at him with her katar blades. Before they connected, Henry used his repulsors to push himself backwards out of her immediate range and adjusted himself before flying up again. Noel took only a second to adjust her own thrusters as she chased after him into the sky.

The rest of the team had quickly mopped up the remaining robots and were waiting for Henry to come back down. Jeffrey cursed himself. While his batsuit was capable of flying, it was little more than powered gliding and he wouldn't be able to move like Henry and Noel does. As much as he hated it, he had to wait on the ground until an opportunity to present itself.

Noel and Henry meanwhile dived and looped around each other. Noel was thankful that Henry wasn't changing his armor like in their fist encounter. As they looped around each other in a death wheel, Noel was getting fed up as she couldn't get an angle to hit him yet. With quick thinking she rotated her hip thrusters at 90 degrees forcing her to spin before cutting across the circle they were flying in hitting Henry in the back. Having a greater thrust, she forced him down into the ground hard.

As Henry started getting up, Noel stomped down on his back leaving a noticeable dent where she put her armored boot down, "That's for what you put me through when we first met!" Noel spat. After that Henry seemed to take the hint and stop moving. That, or Noel damaged something.

Jeffrey rushed over and turned Henry over practically ripping the faceplate off, "Ok Henry, you're coming with-," he stopped as he pulled the faceplate away and was surprised to see that Henry wasn't in the suit. The suit was completely empty with exception for a note at the back of the helmet kept there by the tracker Jeffrey placed on him earlier. Jeffrey reached in and pulled the note, "It's about time you found me Jeffrey. I'll be waiting downstairs for you. I have something to show you," it read. Jeffrey crumpled the note in his hand as he growled. He turned to the rest as he stood up, "Everyone spread out! I'll take the south end, Major take the east end, and Andria can enter from the west end. John, keep the north end here locked down. And Noel," he added as if he just remembered her, "You keep an eye on the roof to make sure Henry doesn't take off while we're looking for him. If he does," he said with a grim look, "Take him out." With that, he flew off into the air flying over the factory landing at the back end while Major and Andria ran to their respective assigned entries.

Once the three were out of sight, the front door exploded outward in a shower of glass, metal, and concrete. Once the debris died down, Noel and John could see a robot three or four times larger than the ones they just fought. The duo could see that it looked somewhat like the Iron Monger from the first Iron Man movie, although much more crude looking. It lumbered towards them like a gorilla using all its limbs to move.

Noel turned to John, "Get out of here, I'll take care of this," she told him as she turned back to the big robot adjusting her stance redying herself.

John gave her a look, "You don't have to tell me twice," he said as he ran back to the gate.

As the gorilla-like robot approached Noel, it pushed over a pillar in front of it which groaned in a sickening metallic screech. After which, it seemed to observe Noel for a moment, staring at her with its six eyes.

"What's a little girl in dress up going to do against me?" It asked revealing that someone was inside it.

Noel tilted her head, slightly dumbfounded, "I've got a lot of pent up anger that says you're going to regret saying that little man," she told him flatly.

The man in the robot laughed, "Girl, I've got a seven plus ton mech of Detroit steel. What do you have?"

"A hardsuit and me, a really pissed off girl," Noel growled as she ran flat out towards the mech.

The mech brought its arms up and swung them in to crush Noel between it massive hands. He was beyond surprised when Noel easily stop his hands with her own.

"How the hell did you stop me?" he asked incredulously.

"With what I based my hardsuit off of," Noel started as she made a show of pushing his arms further apart, "I can take on a guy like you in my sleep!" she cried as she ducked down only to jump up, giving the gorilla mech an uppercut into its torso that was able to lift the whole mecha off the ground where it fell onto its back.

The mecha then seemed to suffer the worst case of turtle plight. Being unable, despite its best efforts, was unable to right itself. Its arms flailed as it tried to gain momentum to get back on its feet. Noel climbed on top of it and pulled her fist back before thrusting it into the mecha's torso, literally punching a hole in it. After pulling her fist out she then ripped the hole wider exposing the pilot inside. As the man brought his arms up in defense, he actually pissed himself. Noel ripped off the pilots harness belts before pulling him out of his torn up mecha.

"Don't kill me, please!" he whimpered.

Noel only tossed him to the ground where John approached again now that the fight was over. "Keep an eye on him," she told John.

He nodded as he produced a pair of handcuffs from his tactical vest and cuffed the man behind his back before escorting him to the back of the van they used to drive from the airport. Before Noel jumped up onto the roof of the factory she thought she heard John making fun of the "man's" masculinity. Once she was on the roof, she made sure she could see the front just in case any more surprises came out. As much as she hated it, she waited. While she didn't have as much experience against Henry as the others it was clear to her that she would be the best person to catch up to him and take him out if he really does try to escape.

Meanwhile Andria was entering the west end of the factory. The section seemed to have originally used as an office area. She walk by empty cubicles with her gunblade in hand, currently in gun-mode as she walked through the aisles. Suddenly, she heard the sound of footsteps. With a smirk, she snapped her fingers causing a ghostly blue aura to form over her.

"About time I get to use this," she muttered to herself as she stepped off the ground and floated up where she stood on the ceiling upside down by a corner and waited.

She watched as a pair of robots came walking down the main aisle, possibly checking a security alarm when she opened the door to enter the building. With her gunblade in rifle-mode she fired at one of the robots, dropping it, as she jumped towards them landing on a wall of a cubicle. Standing sideways, she switched her gunblade to sword-mode as she ran to the remaining robot. Before it could react, she swung her gunblade through its midsection, bisecting it. As the pieces of the robot fell, three more entered from the other end. Andria jumped to the ceiling and began running upside down again towards them shooting at them with her gunblade keeping them behind some fortunate cover. As Andria ran between support columns, when she was close enough, she kicked off a column. As she sailed through the air she twisted around so she could kick one robot in the chest and ran her gunblade through the back of the one behind her. The third one was able to bring its gun on her and fired as Andria pulled her gunblade out. The bullet bounced off the hilt of her gunblade as she kicked the robot getting it off balance as she fired several shots into its chest. As the third one dropped, Andria trained her gunblade on the door they came through waiting just in case any more were going to show up. After a long drawn out minute, she felt that it was safe to move on, and got up and move on.

Major had taken out four robots by surprise after activating her therm-optic camouflage. Practically invisible, it was easy to get behind them as she walked through this section of the factory. The area she walked through seemed to have used for storage. She walked by various half empty shelves, the few materials on the shelves had looked worn and decrepit, none of which interested her in the least. As she looked around, still invisible, she accidentally knocked over a stack of old paint cans which caused a load crash which made her jump. Swearing to herself, she was about to move on when she heard the unmistakable whine of a repulsor charging up. Major instantly dropped to the floor as the white ball of energy flew through where her head had been, having instead hit an object on the shelf behind her sending it flying off.

Major turned to the direction of where she thought it came from, she saw a female type Iron Man suit that flew at her. As they collided, Major's camouflage flashed and she became fully visible again as she was pushed through several shelves until the "Iron Woman" let Major go sending her with a smack into a wall. Not wasting any time, Major got up and checked to make sure her rifle was still clipped to her vest, it was, and she fired HV bullets at her opponent as she advanced on her. Her opponent seemed surprised that the bullets seemed to be doing some damage to it and flew up again and away. Major didn't have to wonder what it was doing when she heard a crashing sound. The Iron Woman had knock over the shelves at the other end creating a domino effect as each shelf in turn knocked the next over. Unfortunately, Even though Major was close to the wall, the shelves were tall enough to catch her and fall on her where she was. As she turned, the last shelf was already falling over, the Iron Woman following close behind. Major ran back to the wall and as she reached it, she jumped off it turning around and aiming for one of its repulsors and let go of her rifle to stab the other one with her combat knife. She was successful in disabling both as they again collided in the air. As the grappled in the air Major was using her combat knife to try and get at the Iron Woman's joints while it was hitting her back in her stomach and kicking at her legs. Eventually they fell to the ground on top of the fallen shelves. Major had landed on top of her opponent and she used the advantage to punch it in the face before pulling her rifle in hand and shooting at its joints where the armor seem to be weakest.

When she was sure that it wasn't able to move anymore Major got up and continued searching for Henry. She hadn't got very far when Andria came rushing in after hearing gunfire and the crashing of the shelves. Major waved at Andria as she walked over to her unaware that the Iron Woman suit was opening up revealing a blond woman with short hair and was wearing a slim body suit who climbed out. Andria, saw this but when she happened to see a halo of light sitting just above the back of her neck and was wearing a thin glove that ran up her entire right arm, she quickly recognised what the woman represented and cried out to Major to get down.

As Andria switched her gunblade to gun-mode to shoot, Major stopped in her tracks and started to turn around but the woman was already behind her and stuck two fingers of her right hand to the ports on the back of Majors neck. Instant, the halo of white light on the back of the woman's neck exploded into a ribbon that traveled down her arm into the back of Majors neck. Major stood there convulsing as her eyes rolled to the back of her head. Andria threw down her gunblade as she ran in a dead sprint, knocking the woman over breaking her connection with Major. As the woman fell to the floor, Andria got on top of her and began hurling punches on either side of the woman's face screaming at her.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MAJOR?!" she demanded.

During this, beating for lack of a better word, Major had slowly stopped shaking and the life returned to her face as she turned to Andria wailing on the woman. Memories flooded her mind. Major knew who she was now. She knew her name was Caleb Brown. And she now knew who the woman was that Andria was pummeling.

"Stop!" she told Andria as she pulled her off and checked on the woman who now had an understandably bruised face and a split lip.

"What are you doing?" Andria cried as she got back to her feet, "She just gave you a seizure and who knows what else!"

Tears were flowing from Major's eyes, "She was fixing me," she told her, "She was giving my memories back to me," she stated as she turned back to the woman and pulled out some gauze from her small med kit. "And she's my sister," she placed the gauze on her split lip to absorb the blood, "It is you isn't it sis?"

The woman winced as she smiled, one hand holding the gauze while the other was on Major's, Caleb's, shoulder reassuringly, "Hey Cay-Cay. Sorry for leaving you on your own all this time."

Caleb sniffed before pulling her sister into a tight hug continuing to sniffle into her shoulder, "Why didn't you find me? I didn't know who I was and..." she trailed off.

The woman, who's name Caleb later told was Lisa, gave Caleb a warm hug, "I'm sorry, but up until recently, I didn't have an actual body. That suit I was in was my body for the last three months. Before that, I was a computer chip stuck in Henry's computers," She explained apologetically.

Caleb wiped the stream of tears from her face, "But I saw you blow up."

"I did... I'm sorry, but at the time, it was all I could think to do to save you. As it turned out, Henry was going to help you," she said with a laugh but quickly stopped as she held the side of her face with her free hand.

Caleb was taken aback, "How can you say that? He stole my memories from me and you say he was going to save me? Do you know how it feels living all this time with a hole in your mind? He stole my soul from me."

Lisa had a sad look on her face as she looked on, "Henry, Is quick to anger I'll give you that. Believe me, I spent the last two years reigning his emotions in and it wasn't easy when you're stuck in a computer," she explained, "He's made a lot of mistakes but he does own up to them and does his best to fix them. Not the best way, but he does. He was able to find one of those boxes and get my body back and he saved your memories to give to me so I can hold on to them until now."

Caleb just stared at her, "Why didn't he tell me or any of us this? If he had my memories the whole time then why didn't he give them back?"

Lisa gave a weak smile, "In a round about way, he's a bit of a romantic. He wanted me to give them back to you. Not him, me, your sister. I know, it doesn't make sense but he's been busy trying to find a way to save his own sister, to help her wake up again," she said as she pushed Caleb back so she can get up, "And now he's finally figured out a way to do that too now. So long as he can convince Jeffrey."

"Wait," Andria interjected, "That's why we were able to track him here? Because he let us find him?"

Lisa gave her a slightly bemused look, "Well, if all it took to track him down was sticking a tag on him then he would have been caught by the Agency you work for years ago. Anyways, we gotta get down to the basement. According to Henry, he and Jeffrey aren't the best of brothers, so we'll need to play referee," she said as she started to walk off.

"Hold on," Andria called out, "How do we know that you just aren't going to lead us into a trap?" she accused.

Lisa just sighed and pointed to the ruined suit, "That's the only thing I could've used against you and Cay-cay wreck it. And Henry isn't a Bond villain, he doesn't have deathtraps, you coming?"

Andria was about to protest some more but Caleb, Major got up and began to follow behind her without question but Andria grabbed her arm to stop her.

"How can you trust someone you just met? For all we know, they really do have a deathtrap waiting for us. You only just met her," she told her.

Caleb shook her arm free, "Because I know that she is my sister," she told her flatly, "My memories are real!" she stated with resolve, "If it makes you feel any better, if she's really luring us into a deathtrap then you have my blessing to kick the crap out of her. So can we go now?"

Andria had a look of defeat about her as she grumbled over to her dropped gunblade and picked it up muttering under her breath as she followed the two down to the basement of the factory.

Jeffrey had snuck past the robots that were patrolling in the actual factory part of the building and sealed the door behind himself. He could've taken them out quite easily but they were just a waste of time to him so he left them behind. Henry was the one he was after. And after four years of chasing him down, he wasn't going to let him slip away. One way or the other, today was the day he was going to take Henry down. As he descended the stairs thoughts of what he might do ran through his mind. He still wasn't sure what he was going to actually do.

When he got to the bottom of the stairs he came to a thick slab of a metal door. He placed two fingers on the door using the built in microphones to see if he can hear anything. As he listened, he could hear something moving around inside. He strained to hear more but the sound of gunfire followed by crashing sounds from up the stairs steeled his resolve. Jeffrey stepped back from the door and with two tries, he kicked the door in and walked into an overly large room that seemed to be set up like a make-shift lab. On the right were several beds with straps and wires strewn about them tied to a machine between them, the left side had several robots that were currently deactivated as well as a work table that had some robot parts on it. And at the very back of the room was an alien box.

In working condition and fully deployed.

This was a secondary to Jeffrey however as standing in the middle of the room was his "brother", Henry looking at him with an expectant look on his face. Seeing that Henry wasn't in his armor, Jeffrey wasted no time an jumped forward, assisted with the jets in his boots, he plowed into Henry till they hit the floor several feet on. Jeffrey kept Henry pinned to the ground by straddling him. He checked to make sure he was pinned and threw a punch into the right side of Henry's ribs. Henry coughed up blood as three of his ribs were broken.

Jeffrey then pulled off his cowl to look Henry in the eyes, "How does that feel?" Jeffrey demanded before smacking him across the face, "How many people have you hurt besides Hayley?" he back handed him again, "And John?" and again, "And Noel?!" He punched him across the face where he felt the satisfying crack of Henry's cheek bone.

Henry coughed and spat up some blood, "You have to stop," he wheezed.

"WHY SHOULD I?!" Jeffrey screamed, "WHY IN THE WORLD SHOULD I STOP?!" he demanded as he pulled back for another swing.

"Cause without me, Hayley will never wake up," he replied.

Jeffrey stopped just before cracking him across the face again, "What?"

" I found a way to bring her back using the device," he explained, "But, you're going to have to bring her here for me to do it."

Jeffrey fell back and pushed himself away, before he could ask anymore a woman came in followed by Major and Andria. The woman ran over to help Henry who shooed her away.

"You're going to have to get her here soon though," Henry told him, "The device will only work for two more hours I think and then it'll shut down. It took me four years to find this."

"But Hayley's hospital is hours away, I'll never make it in time," Jeffrey said, the hope he felt quickly fading.

Henry spat up some more blood before he mumbled something to the woman who then got up and ran to the work table.

"Stop, what are you doing?" Jeffrey called out as he redied a batarang.

Major put a hand on his shoulder, "It's ok Jeffrey, she's my sister Lisa," she told him.

"What?" Jeffrey asked, obviously surprised.

"I remember who I am," Major told him with a small hint of joy, "My name is Caleb," she said enjoying introducing herself by her actual name.

Lisa came back with a remote and pressed a button on it. There was a hum above them up in the factory.

"I made something for you," Henry said, "It should help you get there and back with her safely."

Jeffrey looked at him for a long minute, "I can't leave you," he told him defensively.

Henry just smiled back, "I won't be going anywhere, not after the number you did on me. Besides, I need to be here in order to help Hayley."

Jeffrey looked to, Caleb now, and Andria who both nodded indicating that they'll stay and watch him. Without a second thought, Jeffrey grabbed his cowl before running upstairs. As he ran the stairs, he radioed John and Noel explaining the situation. Reaching the main floor of the factory section, the pair of robots that he passed were standing beside a large mecha like an honour guard. When he approached the mecha it opened up revealing it to be a suit. Jeffrey hesitated before climbing in. As the suit closed around him he called up agent G through his cowl. He had to wait four seconds before Agent G picked up, Jeffrey didn't waste time saying hello.

"Agent G, I need you to go to Hayley's hospital and get her to the helipad on the roof. I'm coming to get her," he told him.

"Wait, what's going on?" Agent G asked, clearly confused.

"I don't have time to explain. Just have her ready for me when I arrive."

"Jeffrey, I just can't take a comatose girl from her room without a reason," Agent G explained.

Jeffrey then took off into the air crashing through a skylight and turned for his sisters hospital, "Henry said he can help Hayley, now get to that damn hospital and get her ready," he shouted.

There was silence on the other end for a moment, "Is Henry secure?"

"My team is watching him now," Jeffrey said quickly.

There was some grumbling on the other end before Agent G replied, "I'll have her ready, just make sure you know what you're doing," he told him flatly.

Jeffrey cut the connection and boosted his speed. He was already breaking multiple Mach speeds. He marveled slightly of how he wasn't feeling any g's but pushed that out of his head as he continued on.

Forty-five minutes later he arrived at Hayley's hospital. Agent G ran up to the helipad with some orderlies behind him pushing a gurney with Hayley on it. Jeffrey turned around and kneeled down, the pack on his back separated lowering a bed. The orderlies lifted the girl onto the bed and Jeffrey closed the pack firmly securing Hayley in the pack.

The orderlies moved away with the now empty gurney while Agent G walked in front of Jeffrey, "Are you sure that Henry can be trusted with her? We both know the reason he ran off in the first place."

"Hayley's the only person neither of us will ever joke about," Jeffrey replied sternly. Agent G nodded then cleared the helipad. Jeffrey blasted off going as fast as he can back to Detroit.

It was another forty-five minutes later when he returned to the factory. As he made his way to the basement. He checked the clock. With the flight out to the hospital and back plus the time it took to load Hayley and talking to Agent G, It was cutting it close. There wasn't much time left till the box deactivated.

On entering the lab Lisa was helping Henry stand by the alien box. He had his hand on the panel redying it. Jeffrey opened the pack, the bed folded down and a robot he hadn't noticed picked Hayley up from the bed and carried her over to the box. Jeffrey quickly opened up the suit and quickly made his way after her.

"You almost didn't make it," Henry said as he stepped aside to let the robot carry the girl into the box, as the doorway of the box disappeared another robot came up and stood there patiently.

As Jeffrey waited he turned to Henry who was still being held up by Lisa, "So, how're you going to fix her?"

"I'm going to put her mind back together," he said simply.

"You can do that without killing us?" Jeffrey asked surprised. The door to the box opened and a thirty-year old woman fell out into the arms of the robot that then carried her to one of the beds. The box collapsed a moment later.

"Why did Henry turn your sister into a woman?" Andria asked, Caleb echoing her curiosity.

As Henry, helped by Lisa still, walked over to another bed and slowly laid down. On hearing Andria's question he gave a short laugh which quickly turned into a series of coughs, there were only a few drops of blood on his hand as he stop, "Jeffrey never did tell you guys did he?" he said as he gestured for Jeffrey to lay down in the last bed.

Jeffrey looked at Andria and Caleb who just looked back expectantly, Caleb a little more so as if she got confirmation on something. Jeffrey just sighed as he began to tell them, "Four years ago, before Hayley found the box, she was a thirty-two year old woman. She was a classic nerd, she liked comic books and sci-fi. However, she developed a psychosis from the trauma of losing her parents in a car crash. Because of that, she developed a split personality. Needless to say it played havoc in her life and nothing seemed to work. So, when she found the box and discovered what it could do she tried to use it to get rid of her other personalities. After some trial and errors she came up with Henry and I. That's why I was wearing a Batman suit while he was wearing an Iron Man one. However, because we were a part of her mind there was nothing left for her. So when we came out of the box she was already unconscious Henry and I were surprised that we had our own bodies. We were so happy for the first bit until we realised what it did to Hayley. We wanted to help her but we didn't want to go back. We argued back and forth until, not used to our powers, blew up half the apartment. Henry ran off with the box and I stayed behind. The rest you know," he finished. He had a shameful look on his face as he laid down on the bed.

Lisa then placed helmets with wire leads on their heads and attached a set of wires to the back of Hayley's neck. Caleb realised that Henry had made Hayley like her. Lisa then went over to the machine all the wires were connected to and turned it on. She explained that the machine was copying Henry and Jeffrey's memories and personalities while downloading it into Hayley's mind. After fifteen minutes the machine stopped and Henry and Jeffrey were dislodged from the wire leads. Lisa then detached most of the wires from Hayley's neck and placed the fingers from her right hand on her neck. The halo from the back of Lisa's neck ran down her arm and into Hayley. After three minutes the light stopped flowing and returned to the floating halo on her neck.

"I was able to fuse her mind back together," Lisa explained, "As well as fix her psychosis so she shouldn't have a personality disorder anymore. The only thing we can do is wait for her to wake up," she check the read outs on the machine, "Her vitals look good, so it shouldn't be too long now."

While they waited, Caleb called for a private ambulance used by the Agency for Henry's injuries.

After what seemed like an eternity to Jeffrey, Hayley's eyes fluttered causing him to gasp as he took her hand in his. Slowly she opened her eyes and looked around, "Where am I?" she asked, her voice was dry. She was able to spy the collapsed box, after which turned to Jeffrey, "I don't hear the voices anymore so did the machine work? Are they out"

Jeffrey let out his breath before he'd been holding and shook his head in the affirmative, "Yes, the voices are out of your head now, no more black outs."

This put her at ease as her head fell back to her pillow. She didn't have much time to rest as Jeffrey pulled her up to get out of the bed. She got up on shaky legs to which she gave an equally shaky laugh to excuse her unsteadiness. Jeffrey lent his support as they began their trek up and out of the basement of the factory. Caleb made sure to retrieve the alien device as she left taking up the rear. Between Henry's injuries and Hayley not use to moving her body in so long, it was slow going as they climbed the stairs. When they exited the front of the building Jeffrey remarked about the gorilla shaped mecha which caused the waiting Noel and John to laugh. Henry was taken to the waiting ambulance. As it drove away, a black SUV from the Agency followed as it drove away.

Once Jeffrey helped Hayley into the van and shut her door he collapsed to the ground. After all that happened over the last four years, it was finally over. Henry was in custody things went even better than he could have hoped for with Hayley having finally woken up after all this time. For the first time since this all started the shadows that hung over him had lifted and he breathed in the air as if it were cleansing his soul. Noel came over to him.

"Are you ok?"

Jeffrey looked up at her and smiled, "I am now."

EPILOGUE:

A week afterwards, Agent G had debriefed Jeffrey and his team, they were relieved of all their equipment such as the batsuit, and weapons the others used. John was allowed to keep his sonic screwdriver for the occasional maintenance of Caleb's body Noel, not being part of Jeffrey's team kept her hardsuit. A short time after that, Jeffrey's team was disbanded having finally captured Henry. A month later John and Caleb had gotten married after a very short engagement, Jeffrey attending as the Best Man while Caleb's sister Lisa served as the Maid of Honour. Jeffrey had began dating Noel and hit it off swimmingly. Hayley had gone back to her life from before it all started.

Meanwhile at an undisclosed detention center, Henry sat in his cell. His ribs were still tender as well as his broken cheekbone but they were on the mend. Looking at the clock in the hall, he stood up and walked to the bars.

"I think I've waited long enough," he said to himself as he flexed his left hand and arm four times a certain way and waited.

An hour later the outside wall to his cell was torn out revealing his armor it stepped in and opened for him to climb in. He wasted no time in flew off into the night sky to parts unknown. He wasn't going to let anyone cage him anymore. He was free, now and forever.

Author's Note: I would like to personally thank Civilmage and Leo Lightstar for their own MAU stories that inspired me to write my own. Their respective stories can be found over on fictionmania and I highly recommend reading them.

MAU: Infinite Crisis, part 7
By: Set3

Earlier in the day, Peter pulled some favours to switch shifts with Wait so now he had the graveyard shift. As he walked in the now empty main laboratory, his sight immediately locked on the girl still suspended in the mesh enclosure. Peter grimaced, it was like they were treating the girl like some animal. No, worse than an animal, animals tended to be fed. Pater had asked around a few times and no one could tell him when the girl last ate. The door closed behind him and he started walking to the cage. He shifted the contents he'd been carrying to one hand as he made his way through the two sets of mesh doors of the cage and stopped in front of the girl.

As he looked at the girl, her head was drooped down, not appearing to notice him when he came in. Peter stood there a moment, trying to keep his anger down, and reached up to wake her up. Just as he touched her she pulled back as much as she could with a whimper before settling back down with a blank look on her face staring at nothing. Peter had pulled back in surprise at her reaction.

"What the hell have they been doing to you?" Peter asked as he looked back behind him imagining he was staring straight at Wait. He again swallowed his anger as he turned back to the girl. He shuffled the contents he had been carrying and opened one of them, a sandwich, and held it up to her, "I hope you don't mind turkey. It was the only kind they had left in the café today."

The girls response was as immediate as the one where she shied away earlier. Her eyes fixated on the sandwich as she tilted her head forward trying to get a bite. Peter held the sandwich closer to her and she practically inhaled it. Peter barely pulled his hand back as the girl only just nicked his finger with her teeth as she finished eating.

"Hungry aren't you?" he joked weakly while shaking his hand. He then opened the bottle of water he was also holding and held it up. She drank the water down greedily and soon the bottle was empty. It was night and day after he offered the girl food and water. She seemed much livelier now but she was still subdued.

After a minute, Peter finally spoke up, "So, what's your name? In all the excitement during the times we've met, I've never had the chance to ask you." She stared at him trying to decide if she should tell him. After all, he was, in a big way responsible for her current predicament.

"Noel," she said finally, "My name's Noel."

"Hello Noel," Peter said with a smile.

"I suppose you think you've earned a feel too," Noel spat out.

Peter's face fell, "I had nothing to do with that," he said. He then went to check her restraints and made a show of tightening them. "But, I'm still ashamed that a man like him could be called a soldier," he said as he left Noel's cage did his rounds around the lab before returning to the main console checking the readouts from the leads attached to Noel's connectors.

John, Major, and Andria had quickly gathered their supplies, mostly modified swat gear, and followed Agent G to his waiting car. They dumped their gear into the trunk and piled in. John, the look-a-like that he is now, had to wear a hat and shades to disguise himself from his unintended fame as they drove through the city from the outskirts to the airport. With Agent G's credentials, they quickly passed through security and walked out to a waiting C-130 Hercules military transport plane. As they boarded, John noticed it had Canadian markings .

As they were stowing their gear, a woman came down from the cockpit who was dressed respectively like Agent G.

"Hello everyone," she said as she began shaking the hands of John, Major, and Andria as they check their gear, "My name is Johanna Mars, I'm a representative of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS for short, Agent G has told me about your team."

John nodded, assuming the role of spokesman for their group, "A pleasure to meet you but, why is the Canadian government letting us come along? Apparently, you guys are well within your rights to take this on your own," he queried.

Johanna gave him a small smile, "It would have been if not for the details that your liaison provided me with. From what I've leafed through, Henry is an extremely dangerous person and your group has had the most experience in dealing with him. Speaking of which," she paused to look the group over again, "I thought there were four in your group."

John looked embarrassed, "Yeah, our leader," he said stretching the word, "decided to go on ahead. He'll meet up with us when we get there."

Johanna just nodded as she made her way to her seat and strapped in. John, Major and Andria followed suit and strapped in beside Agent G who was already seated. As the transport took off, Johanna turned to them.

"We're going to do a quick stop over at a military base in the Alberta Rockies to pick up more personnel we'll need," she explained. "I hope you all brought something to read because we'll be travelling for a few hours."

Andria groaned as she realised she would have nothing to do and stared daggers at both John and Major who'd already pulled out a tablet and began to read. Major noticed Andria's glare and responded by sticking her tongue out at her. Andria just huffed at that before she twisted around to look out the window behind her as the transport began taking off down the runway. Five hours at least with nothing to do.

"Perfect," Andria thought sarcastically.

It was late afternoon now at the main lab in the floating headquarters of Tonoan Industrials and the small number of scientist and researchers went about their assigned tasks taking samples from Noel or studying the materials they were able to gleam from the exo-suit 2 (the Linna suit). Tom and Mike were at the far end of the main lab using the tools and equipment that weren't in available in the lab they kept the exo-suits in. They were currently working on a prototype replication of the exo-suit 2's battery.

"It's a work of art," Tom stated as he placed the battery in a makeshift charger they built specifically for it.

"It really is a triple A battery," Mike countered, "Once the material in the casing is used up, the whole thing becomes useless."

"I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective," Tom started, "This is actually genius if you think about it. During the tests we did, the prototype battery gave out a uniform amount of power before it depleted. If we can refine it, we can make it last longer. There's also the fact that so far, a depleted battery is environmentally friendly, so no toxic chemicals from a tossed battery."

"Yeah, but so far when we tested the prototype to the power needs of exo-suit 2 it lasts only half an hour," Mike said. "When you factor in the cost of making this and charging it, we're actually loosing money. And no one's going to spend the money to cover the cost of one of these let alone buy them one after another."

"So they'll have to buy wholesale for awhile," Tom said with a smile, "And besides, this is just the prototype design. We're limited by the constraints of the casing we have to put the thing in. You forget that the whole purpose of prototypes is to get the bugs out of the way so the end product will be cheaper."

Mike rubbed his eyes, "Have I ever told you that I hate your optimistic view of everything?"

"Not since yesterday," Tom quipped.

Meanwhile on the bridge Mr. Tonoan had told the bridge crew to begin preparations to cast off and set a course to their shore office in Japan. The crew quickly went about their tasks in gathering supplies for the voyage. It wouldn't be until close to sundown when they finally got underway.

The plane ride was long for John and his team but made longer by Andria's childish antics to pass the time by periodically asking if they were there yet. As they were making the final approach the pilot pushed the controls forward causing the transport to dive downwards at a steep angle, causing Andria especially to scream, while dodging a fighter that had flew over them and sped off ahead before turning back and around coming alongside them. The pilots swearing as he leveled the plane was cut short as he responded to a hail from the now escorting fighter. The co-pilot handed a headset to Johanna.

As Johanna pulled the headset in place she heard a female voice, ".. I repeat, to the unknown bogey. You are entering restricted military airspace. State your confirmation code to proceed. If you do not comply you will be fired upon. This is your final warning."

Johanna signaled the co-pilot that she wanted to return the hail, He flicked a switch and nodded to her and Johanna spoke into the receiver, "This is CSIS agent Johanna Mars, confirmation code: "Black 25, they all came home." Repeat: Black 25, they all came home," she said.

There was a pause on the other end, "Confirmation code accepted," the fighter pulled ahead of the transport, "Follow me in and do not deviate your course or you will be shot down. Clear?"

"Affirmative pilot, we'll stick to your course," she quickly relayed the instructions to the pilots. The military transport adjusted it's course and followed the fighter till it hit the landing strip. The fighter did a touch and go and circled around before landing in behind the transport.

Andria was the first off the transport, having a rash of airsickness due to the sudden dip the plane took just minutes earlier. As soon as she reached the bottom of the ramp she threw up.

"What the hell was that?" Andria asked after she had a moment to compose herself.

Behind them, a service crew came out to the fighter and the pilot had stepped down from the ladder and walked over to them. The crew were already moving the fighter into the nearby hanger.

"It's not everyday CSIS comes to visit us on such short notice," the female pilot said as she pulled her helmet off. For some reason, the woman looked familiar to Andria. "So, to what do we owe the pleasure?" she asked as Johanna came down the ramp.

"Search and rescue," Johanna replied as she handed the pilot a thin file folder. "Is the CSOR team still around?"

The pilot flipped through the few pages that were in the folder, "Yeah, I didn't think they were going to take this long, must be because they spent too much time in the desert," she said as she closed the folder and looked at the group. "They'll be back in fifteen minutes and it'll take a few to refuel your transport so you all may as well come inside and warm up," she said as she turned around and lead them back to the barracks.
John looked to Major who only shrugged and to Andria who was beginning to rub her arms to keep warm and nodded and they followed after Johanna who was already on her way to the building. On entering, they quickly passed through the entryway into the common room where two teenage boys were sitting on a couch playing video games. The pilot excused herself so she could change out of her pilot suit. Andria quickly sat down on a chair beside them.

"So, what are a couple of kids doing at a military base?" she asked.

The two boys paused the game and looked at one another before one of them turned to her, "What kind of base do you think we're in?" the dark haired one asked her.

Andria cocked an eyebrow, "Um, the military kind?" she asked, not certain what he was getting at.

The blond one let out a quick laugh, he scratched his nose with his left hand and held out his right, "Touch one of my fingers," he said. Andria gave him a dirty look. The boy sighed, "This isn't a stupid fart joke, just touch a damn finger and you'll see," he said.

Andria moved her hand towards his and hesitated before poking one with one of hers. As soon as she did so, she received a nasty shock that was five times worse than any static shock she ever had in her life. With a curse, she yanked her hand back and stuck her still smarting finger in her mouth, "God DAMN it! What the hell was that?" she shouted as she shook her hand out.

The blond kid smirked as he held his hand out again, daring her to touch his hand again. Seeing that she only responded with a dirty look, he pulled his hand back with a chuckle, "This whole base is dedicated to house the people who were changed by the alien box. From those who'd be a danger to the populace to those who would be in danger from the people. Our own private resort where we can just be ourselves without having to worry about freaking people out."

"It's a place to keep you all safe," said the pilot woman who just came into the room. Hiding behind her was an eight year old boy. The woman was now wearing a pair of tight jeans and a thin long sleeved dark red turtleneck under an equally tight looking dark brown leather jacket. On her hips were a pair of revolvers and a bandolier of bullets over her belt. "I hope he didn't hurt you too badly," she said as she pats the child's head behind her.

"No, I'm ok. My finger's just a little numb right now," Andria said as she shook her hand again as if to prove her point. Andria stared at the woman, there was something familiar about her when she first saw her and the nagging feeling increased as she saw the woman now. Shaking it off for now, she turned to the blond teen, "I've seen some crazy stuff since I joined Jeffrey's team but I can't for the life of me understand why you'd change yourself that way."

The pilot woman looked at the blond coyly, "Why don't you tell her Eddie?" she asked him.

"I'm tired of explaining myself every time some one new comes along Chris," he grumbled as he turned back to the TV.

Chris, the pilot woman's name, gave him a look, "You shock a guest and just leave it at that? Tell them why you're like that or I'll toss your games outside," she threatened.

Eddie paused and turned back to Chris and saw the look on her face, she wasn't bluffing. And the last time she made the same threat, he found his games in a bag tied to the top of the flag pole. It took him days to get them down. He dropped his controller and sat back in the couch. "I used the alien machine to turn myself into a literal human bug zapper," he droned obviously tired of repeating his story.

"You turned yourself into a human bug zapper because...," Chris urged mockingly.

"I was tired of the damn bugs always flying around me," he began as he started to rant, "No matter what I did, there were always bugs flying around my head dive bombing my face," he had a manic look on his face. "I've bathed and showered before going outside wearing just cleaned clothing too. I've tried every different style of clothing too."

"It was funny seeing him in plaid and polka dot phase," the dark haired teen beside him said with a grin.

Eddie ignored his impute, "I've also tried every single type of diet under the sun thinking that was it. I even tried doing the reverse, not bathing at all."

"I was really happy when he got out of that phase. Let me just say that for awhile we bought out the local supply of air fresheners," the teen beside him said.

"Shut it Cole," Eddie told him, "You know how frustrating it is when you get dive bombed by bugs while the guy next to you who stinks like shit and doesn't have a single one buzz near him. So yeah, when Cole and I found the alien box at first we used it to change ourselves in different ways but when I was about to go outside I thought: "If these bugs want to keep flying at me then fine." Then I used the box to make it so I'll fry every single one of those fucking bugs," he said as he held his hands together as if holding an imaginary bug between them. A few static pops could be heard. "It wasn't until we came back after that the box stopped working. Not a bad way to be stuck either," Eddie finished.

"And then he nearly killed our science teacher by giving him a heart attack when he touched him," Cole said.

"He had it coming anyways, you remember how he liked hitting us with that damn strap. Besides, even after I saved him he actually had the balls to try and sue me," he said dismissively with a wave.

The room fell into an awkward silence until Major spoke up.

"So Cole, what did you change about yourself? You look pretty normal to me. Or is it something under the clothes."

Cole just laughed, "No, I'm still all guy here. I sort of have the same problem Eddie had, not to his extreme but anyways. My body now produces a pheromone that attracts dragonflies. Sometimes I get hired to go to outdoor parties during the summer to keep mosquitoes away."

"Yeah and in the meantime I have to stay here in the middle of bug central," Eddie complained.

John stifled a chuckle and turned to Chris, "And what about the little one behind you? Is he your son?"

Chris smiled mournfully as she looked down at the boy still behind her and ruffled his hair, "He's not my kid. But he's a special case. You see, there are dozens of bases like this one around the country so... If anyone recovers a working box, it gets sent to the nearest base and the person with the worst changes uses it. Our little guy here is first on the list for this base if we ever get an active box. The second is Brandon behind you," she said.

The group turned around and were suddenly faced with a horrific monster. Andria screamed and fell back unto her rear while Major put her hand on her gun at her hip. The monster was tall, about six and a half feet. Its arms and legs were long, too long to be normal for any human. With sickly pale skin and the muscles on it body seemed to be both sunken in showing the bones yet still looked incredibly powerful. It had cleft hoofs for feet and its hands ended in long fingers tipped with deadly black talons. The head on its shoulders resembled more a deer scull than a regular human one. Like the rest of the body, the head had the same sickly skin covering it. It's lips not quite able to close leaving sharp teeth on display. It's predatory eyes were sunken into their cavities. Even the points of the antlers that grew from its head seemed deadly sharp as well.

The terrifying image was offset by the fact it was wearing a bright cheery lavender vest and light green slacks.

"Holy fuck!" Andria exclaimed.

"Meet our resident wendigo. Don't worry, he just likes to meet new people, he kinda gets a kick out of seeing people's reaction to his looks,"
Chris said with amusement, "If you're wondering, he used it during Halloween one year," she explained as the "wendigo" walked off giggling with an eerie voice of a five year old.

John and Major looked at each other while Andria swore as she got back to her feet.

"So, what's wrong with the little guy that he gets to be first in line?" Andria asked.

Chris' face turned sour, "He and two other children were kidnapped by a man who had a working box. After a few days that he abused them he used the box to change them. Later after days of abuse the other two children turned feral and killed him then killed each other. Our little one here was found locked in a cage not long after that."

"How was he changed?" Andria asked, "He looks fine to me."

Chris looked down at the child and gave him a sad smile, "Why don't you show her," she coaxed with a small pat on his back gently pushing him out from behind herself. The boy looked at the new people then back up at Chris shyly. "It's ok, I won't let anything bad happen to you," She assured him with a smile.

The boy breath deeply in and out through his nose and timidly stepped forward towards Andria. Andria kneeled down and leaned closer but the boy pushed her back. He looked up at her face and opened his mouth. As he open his mouth, his cheeks split open and his jaw lowered and ten two circular saw blades came out and began spinning while grinding against each other to produce an inhuman metallic scream. Andria, with a cry of surprise bolted upwards taking a few steps back. The boy closed his mouth and ran back to hide behind Chris.

"What kind of monster would do that to a child?" Major demanded.

"You answered your own question," Chris said. "Apparently, his captor liked to beat him, even after his change. I guess one time he hit him hard enough in the head that it knocked something loose so now he can't open his mouth anymore without those saws coming out," she said bitterly.

Major turned to John and whispered in his ear, "Isn't there something you can do to help him? I mean, if you were able to fix my body up, you should bee able to help fix what ever is wrong with him."

"I'll see what I can do," he whispered back and reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his screwdriver. "If you don't mind, I might be able to see what's wrong and if I'm lucky, I be able to fix it."

Chris looked down at the child with a worried expression, but after a minute she let John do what he could.

John knelt down to the boy's level, "Have you ever watched a TV show called Doctor Who?" he asked him. The boy shook his head. "Well," John started, "The hero of the show is called the doctor. And what he does is he goes about the universe in his time machine helping everyone he comes across. He uses a device like this," he held his sonic screw driver in front of the boy for him to see, "Called a sonic screwdriver that helps him help people. It can do all sorts of things. From opening doors, surfing the net, to looking inside of people." John then leaned in closer, "And if he's really bored, he uses it to put furniture together," he said in a mock conspired voice which made the boy smile. "Right now, I'm going to us this to look inside you to see what's going on. I promise it won't hurt," he reassured him. The boy absently turned to Chris who only gave him a reassuring look of her own. The boy then turned back to John and nodded.

The screwdriver buzzed as John ran it over the boy's head and body. Once he was done he stared at the blue lights on its side. He scanned the boy a few more times checking the screwdriver each time. When he check the screwdriver for the last time he just stared at the lights for several minutes after which he adjusted the controls ever so slightly and put a hand on the boys shoulder. "Ok, listen now. I'm going to use this to try and fix you now. You might feel a sharp sting in your head but you're going to have to tough it out ok?"

The boy looked nervous and held a hand out to Chris who came over and took it. They both then walked over to the couch, with a quick look from Chris, Eddie got out of the way and the two sat down with the boy on Chris' lap holding her hand tightly. John was once again in front of the boy and with steady aim, he pointed the sonic device behind the child's right eye. As the buzzing of the device intensified, the boy squeezed his eyes shut and held Chris' hand even tighter. Just as the pain was about to cause him cry out, John had finished and placed the screwdriver back in his pocket.

"Now I may not be a real doctor, I do look like The Doctor, so please open your mouth and say ah," John told him softly.

The child looked up behind him to Chris who gently urged him to try. After several long seconds of hesitation he slowly opened his mouth and quickly uttered a sound before putting a hand over his mouth in surprise. He looked around at everyone in bewilderment and quickly said a small "Hi." before covering his mouth with both hands again which did nothing to hide the smile behind them.

Chris gave him a hug and a pat on the head and told him to go off and show the others. The boy bounded off her lap and ran down the hall with a squeal of delight followed by several giggles. Chris got up and shook John's hand, "Thank you, you have no idea how much what you did means to him and everyone else here."

"It's no problem," John replied, "I was glad that I was able to help him. I do however want to check up on him after our mission just to be sure everything's ok," he added.

Chris became a little somber on hearing that but agreed none the less. Johanna, who had slipped away during the whole thing had returned garbed in in military gear with the helmet slung under one arm she came up to the group.

"The Hercules should be refueled by now and the CSOR team is back from their exercises. So, if anyone still needs to get changed, now's the time to do it," she said as she turned and left.

Chris pulled out the revolvers from each holster one at a time to check them. Major noticed that the barrel of Chris' guns were oddly designed. Instead of the normal barrel that held the bullets, the ones on her guns were open, the bullets being held in place by clips.

"Where'd you get guns like those?" Major asked.

Chris smiled as she put one back in its holster, "Complements of the box and two of a kind," she said holding it up, "With the way these are made, when I run out of ammo, I just pass them over my bandolier and I'm instantly reloaded. All the advantages of a revolver without the jamming of an automatic pistol," she said with a hint of admiration. She put the one she was holding away as well and picked up a combat knife from the chair beside the couch and attached it behind herself to her belt and then slipped on a bullet resistant vest. She gave everything one final check before she was satisfied then took a deep breath, "Ok, here we go."

Andria's eyes widened as she suddenly realised why Chris looked so familiar, "You're Rubi!" she cried recalling the character from an old PS3 game called: Wet. Andria lean to one foot excited to meet a fellow gamer chic, "My name is Andrea. So, is Chris short for Christine? What games do you play?"

Chris just snorted as she headed out to the military transport, "I don't really play that many games. And I'm sure that my mom meant for Chris to be short for Christopher. Just because I look like a girl doesn't mean I was born as one. Believe me, once I'm able to, I'm going to change back. I like being a guy and until then, I'll do my job," she said defiantly as she exited.

Andria groaned in disappointment as she walked after her followed by John and Major. They quickly boarded the Hercules transport, they strapped in next to the CSOR members, Johanna had already gone up to the cockpit.

Andria leaned over to Chris who was sitting beside her, "I'm sorry about earlier," she told her.

Chris pursed her lips in annoyance, "Don't worry about it."

"I was wondering about something," Andria started.

"What?" Chris asked.

"How come you're not taking a sword with you? If I remember correctly, Rubi had a sword on her back not a knife."

Chris sighed, "This isn't some crappy video game Andria. Besides, the sword's a bitch to get back in the scabbard especially when you're under fire. A combat knife is much better for close quarters anyways."

"Oh," was all Andria could say, much to her disappointment. She was really hoping to see a video game character move in the flesh like in the game. And while she taped herself doing some stuff, it eventually got old. "Oh well," she thought. At least she met some else who was like her. She reminded herself to ask Chris later why she turned herself into a female video game character later as the plane took off into the air.

000000

It was a few hours past sunset and the ship that was the headquarters of Tonaon Industrials had left its dock and was on its was to its Japan office to replenish the ranks of the science team to increase the rate of research being done on the exo-suits and the girl's nanites. Noel, of course, was still hanging in her cage having resigned herself to a deep state of depression as the various scientist went about their work. Nicolette had come a few times to draw some blood and make some comments in her recorder then leave. Noel had given up trying to convince anyone here that she was alive if not human. They never listened. Noel tried to pass the time listening in on the various conversations around her. Right now He was listening to two scientist talk about him.

"So, who do you think made it?" the male scientist asked the female one.

"For the last time, I don't know and I don't care. We were told to find out how it works and that's what I'm going to do."

"You got to admit that the AI program is outstanding. The response time is instantaneous and responsive. I haven't been able to trip it up at all yet."

The woman pulled her glasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose, "I'm just tired of doing all this passive analysis. We need to cut it open to make any further progress." The phone rang on the desk they were working at and she picked it up.

Noel couldn't hear what the conversation was about but he could see the woman nod her head a few times before hanging up. She then walked over to Noel's cage holding a syringe filled with something and entered. As she walked up to him she flicked the syringe. Noel didn't like the look of this and even though it had proved futile so far, he struggled against his restraints.

To his, and the woman's surprise, his left arm came free. The woman screamed and dropped the syringe.

"Look out it's loose!" some one else shouted.

Unbeknownst to Noel at the time, Peter had actually loosened his restraints and would have let him escape had he tried to. Peter may have forgotten to put his restraints back on at the end of his shift or may have intended to leave them off. At this point, it didn't matter to Noel why they were loose, he had to act or they would kill him.

Don Wait had been bored to tears all throughout his shift and was glad it was going to end soon when he heard the scream and some one shouting. His attention was drawn towards the doll thing as it was pulling its restraints off.

"Well at least it's a break in the tedium," he mumbled to himself as he brought his MP5 up and aimed down the sights. He fired but the rubber bullets his gun was loaded with only penetrated the first mesh door before being stopped by the second. At this point Noel had finally gotten the harness that was holding him suspended off and was now working on the cables still connected to his legs. Don swore as he dropped his MP5 and pulled out his sidearm he already knew he was going to get in trouble for using live ammo but the way he figured was that since it was really a machine, they could still use it whether or not it was working one hundred percent. And with that going through his head, he fired three bullets. Two bullets hit Noel in the left and right shoulders and the third hit him dead center in the chest throwing him back through the mesh wall behind him tearing it from its frame where he landed on the floor unmoving.

Then all hell broke loose.

Up on the bridge, the crew were busy when suddenly all the system and computer monitors flashed red and blanked. Then every security and emergency alarm began ringing as security doors closed all over the ship. The helmsman informed the captain that he lost steering control. When the captain ordered another of the bridge crew to call up the computer guys in the mainframe room. The crewman did as ordered then but told him the phone line was dead. A person from security tried his radio but quickly pulled his earpiece out as a screeching tone erupted from it. The security system began warning of incoming boarders in random parts of the ship while another warned of fires breaking out in others. The ship suddenly increased speed as well knocking most people on board off their feet.

Meanwhile, in the lab containing the exo-suits, Mike and Tom were working with Nelly again in the exo-suit-2 with Peter supervising. Mike stood by going over the data while Tom was telling Nelly of how next time they wanted to test the suit with the prototype battery when the room suddenly lurched to one side. Fire alarms and automated warnings of intruders sounded in the halls. A man who was placing a sensor inside of exo-suit-1 cried out in pain as the suit, without warning, closed up slicing several of his fingers off that didn't make it in time. The empty suit then swung a hand catching another nearby that went to help the man sending him flying into the wall on the other side of the room with a sickening scrunch as he crumpled to the floor dead. The suit then plodded over to the helmet that matched it and placed it on its shoulders. On doing this the features of the suit began to melt together and less distinct. The maple leaf pattern on its chest now looked like a bloody splotch. Its head shuddered as it split open revealing a gaping maw of a mouth full of long sharp teeth. With a roar its arms grew claws and it smashed through the door and left. Nelly had finally gotten to her feet and started to run after the rampaging suit but was stopped short by the cord that was supplying her suit with power. It was only when the cable was pulled out causing her to fall did she stop.

Mike was in a state of shock while Tom check on his injured colleague while Peter check the dead one, seeing he truly was dead he went out into the hall. Aside from the smashed door the only other sign of the of the run away suit was the sound of bulkheads being smashed as it broke through security doors. Judging from the direction the noise was coming from Peter guessed that it was heading towards the main labs. He then picked up his radio to inform security but the radio only sputtered static. Running back into the lab he picked up the phone but quickly discovered the line was dead. With a growl, Peter dropped the phone down and walked over to Nelly.

He grunted as he turned her over onto her back, "Are you ok?" he asked her.

"Only my pride," she responded, "And if you tell ANYONE about this, I'll do much worse to you. You hear me?"

Peter allowed himself a short laugh, "Believe me, I'm probably the only one who'll never go waltzing over to your bad side." He turned to Mike first but saw he was in no condition to do anything. He then turned to Tom, "What the hell happened?"

Tom had just finished bandaging his colleagues hand and was wiping the blood off on his pants, "I have no idea. Nothing like that ever happened before. I didn't even know it could... Shift like that, let alone move on its own."

"We gotta get that thing back and under control," Peter stated as he looked around trying to think. When his eyes fell to Nelly he looked back to Tom, "How soon can you attach the battery to the Nelly's suit?"

"Yeah, I think so," Tom replied, "I'll still need to calibrate it so it'll take a few minutes."

"Then get started," Peter told him.

Down in the main lab, things weren't getting any better as the fire sprinklers had activated making everyone's day miserable. The problem was only compounded with the fact the doors to the lab had locked. Some were hiding from the sprinklers under desks while a few were trying the door, only one was working on the sprinkler system. Don was at the door with mixed success in communicating with the security personnel on the other side of the door. He found that if they shouted, they could barely make out what the other was saying. They weren't any better then Don in the lab but they were dry. However fortune seemed to be smiling on them as the technician was finally able to stop the sprinklers allowing "clearer" communication between the door. While the guards outside were able to move freely through the halls, every door on the ship they checked seemed to be locked. Don was in the middle of telling them to go to one of the smaller labs to find one of the computer techs and hack the door open when he heard shouting followed by gunfire and ended with two thumps on the door.

Don backed away from the door and motioned the techs and scientist to get behind cover while he swapped out the magazine in his MP5 with live ammo, the other security man did the same as they got behind cover and aimed at the door. None of the security personnel on the ship were strangers to boarders. Being the headquarters for the whole company and a ship on the ocean, they averaged on repelling boarding attempts from pirates and other like at least once a year. This was however the first time any have made it inside the ship let alone this deep into it. A second later there was a load bang on the door followed by several others in rapid succession.

The repeated bangs on the door both worried and confused Don. If it were pirates on the other side of the door then why were they banging on it? Surely they knew it was useless to force their way in like that. If it were him he'd of already had cutting torches on the door or at least some breaching charges to blow the door. He was about to relax until he heard the doors actually begin to creak under the constant physical attacks. The banging stopped for a short moment before renewing, this time slowly but more forcibly than before. The center between the doors actually began to bend inward until two bloody clawed hands burst through and forced the doors to open inwards with an ear-splitting metallic screech and cracks from the doors being ripped from their tracks in the frame. Don and the other guard readied their submachine guns as the berserk hardsuit entered the main lab. It's eyeless head looked around the lab and seemed to settle on Don. With a start is let out a heavy roar and charged straight for him. Don and the other guard opened fire on the rampaging hardsuit as it advanced, with the bullets having no effect it was already upon Don. It grabbed him by the head with one hand and crushed his hands still holding the now mangled weapon. Don screamed out in pain, the monster roared back and grabbed his head with both hands now. The other guard spent his entire magazine on it before rushing in hitting it with the butt of his gun with no effect.

The berserk hardsuit began to squeeze Don's head until a sickening crack indicating that Don was now dead. Don Wait's body fell slack. Not seeming to be content with Don's relatively quick death, the hardsuit back handed the guard still hitting it and pushed down on Don's body sending what's left of his head through his torso to his waist. The people who watched this horror screamed and scrambled for the wrecked door. The hardsuit ignored them and walked over to Noel's body. It reverted back to its original form and picked Noel up, holding him against itself and opening its armor Bringing him inside. Once Noel was inside, the hardsuit shuddered and fell to its knees. The hardsuit began repairing the damage to Noel's body.

Soon enough Noel was whole again and woke up with a start. Seeing that he was back in his hardsuit he looked around and laid eyes on the damn cage that held him for weeks on end. He quickly tore it apart with grim satisfaction. With that sorted Noel then took stock of his surroundings and nearly threw up when he saw the gory mess of Don Wait.

"Ok, I'm free now. I'm still a girl but I'm free," Noel thought to himself. "Now which way is out?"

Out on the ocean, a Canadian Halifax-class frigate was approaching the ship. On the bridge the captain told the radio man to issue a warning to the runaway ship.

"Attention fleeing vessel," the radioman started, "Cut your engines and prepare to be boarded. You are under suspicion of kidnaping a Canadian citizen and harboring a known terrorist." He waited for a response. There wasn't any. He repeated the hail but after another minute there was still no response. "The bogey hasn't responded to hails captain."

The captain nodded, "Try contacting them by signal light. It might be possible their communications are out," he said with a raised eyebrow obviously not believing what he said himself.

Over on the bridge of the company ship the bridge crew watched the light signals having not heard due to the radio still being out. However, they were powerless to respond as they were still locked in the bridge and there wasn't any strong enough lights on the bridge to send a return signal of their plight. They could only watch as the frigate came along their course at a respectable distance.

After waiting several minutes the captain of the frigate told the radioman to signal the go ahead for the boarding team to start their mission that was now flying over them.

On the Hercules transport, John and his team were getting ready along with the CSOR team. Although, John was having a slight argument with Andria over the issue of her not wanting to wear a parachute.

"I'm telling you, I don't need one," Andria stated matter-of-factly, "I have my grav con," she said as she snapped her fingers causing a faint misty blue aura surrounds her.

John raised an eyebrow, "Andria, that only worked once in the game," he told her.

Andria pouted at that, "You know that's just a plot hole for the game. Come on, this is one of the few times I'll ever get a chance to use it like this," she whined.

One of the CSOR members came over, "Trust me kid, you don't want to hit the water from this height. Even if you hit the water, with a chute, it'll feel like hitting concrete."

The statement took the wind out of Andria's petulance as she grumbled and pulled a parachute on muttering of how cool it would have been.

John pulled on a ski mask before pulling his helmet on. Both John and Andria were dressed in modified SWAT gear. The mask John was now wearing was to protect his identity and avoid future headaches since he still looked very much like David Tenant. Major had her own gear from when she was first transformed as well as the weapon that only, until she came upon the box, existed in the anime. She loaded a magazine into her Seburo C26A assault rifle with a silencer and clipped it to her tac vest. Andria herself had her gunblade configured in rifle mode. John was the only one on the their team with a conventional firearm. Another of the CSOR team members handed Major a radio but she held her hand up and shook her head.

"I don't need it," she said, "Just tell me what channel we're on." He did so. "Can you hear me?" she asked over the radio. Her voice had a weird digital echo to it but came through clear.

Johanna came down from the cockpit to the hold and stood in front of them. "We're almost over the target area. Once the signal is given, you'll all be jumping, after thirty seconds pull your chutes. There's a frigate on the surface that will provide a distraction while you land. Needless to say, the priority here is to rescue a kidnapped civilian. Target of opportunity is a Henry Donald. If possible, capture him as there's a possibility that he's kidnapped several people and are holding them at his base of operations but he is considered extremely dangerous and has proven himself to kill when cornered. So don't take any chances."

They all acknowledged while Andria spoke up, "Don't worry about the distraction, I can take care of that."

Johanna nodded, "I'll leave it to you then," she said before she turned and headed back to the cockpit. The lights in the hold dimmed as the back of the plane opened up. Everyone lined up ready for the signal. The light next to the open door turned green and everybody ran out and jumped into the air. After thirty seconds, they opened their chutes and steered for the flat top of the ship as they drifted down. As they floated down, Andria "summoned" a hologram of an eidolon from Final Fantasy XIII. It's glowing body flew off to the bow of the ship easily distracting the few guards that were on deck as well as those who had a window in the island tower of the ship. They quickly touched down on the deck, John and his team made way for the base of the island tower while the CSOR team secured the few people on the deck.

They quickly found the doors they found to be locked. Major pulled the panel off the key pad by the door and attached a device to hack the system. She pulled out the cord from her dummy plug and connected to the system. Reality fell away from her as she was plunged into the digital plane where she was floating in an ethereal void, the security system was identified as a box icon in front of her. As she approached the icons on the box turned red causing her to stop. Major swore as she looked for any holes in the systems firewall.

"What's taking so long?" John asked.

"The security system is top notch. I shouldn't be surprised since this is the head office for the entire company, so wait while I figure this out," she said. As she began to probe the firewall the red icon turned back to white. In the real world, the door opened.

"Good job," John said as the group walked in.

"But I-I didn't even do anything yet," Major sputtered. No one seemed to hear her.

"We're in. So, what now?" Chris asked. "It's not like we were able to get the plans to the ship so how are we going to find Noel?"

John pulled out his sonic screwdriver from a pocket in his tac vest, "It's all right, I can use this to track Noel's power signature. It's almost exactly the same as the alien box," he explained. "It's probably why the machine she had closed up early when Johanna came by her place."

"How do you know about that?" Chris asked as she turned him around by the shoulder.

"III may have glanced through the file Johanna gave you wen you were finished with it," he said as he began pointing the screwdriver around. Only he, and to a lesser extent Major, were able to decipher the subtle pitches of buzzing and barely perceptible changes in light. "This way," he told them as he headed in the general direction of the main lab.

"Wait!" Major called out, "What about Henry? I know he's still here. I can feel that slime ball any where," she said in disgust.

John breathed a sigh in frustration, "Ok, lets split up. Half with me and half go with the Major and search the ship for Henry."

"Looks like I'm with you then," Chris said to John, "My first priority is to rescue Noel."

Two of the CSOR team members went with John Andria and Chris while the other three went with Major. After splitting up John's newly revised team head to the aft of the ship while Major and her team went to the fore of the ship.

Meanwhile in the lab that had held the hardsuits up till now. Tom had finally calibrated the battery prototype and hooked it up into the suit that Nelly was still in.

"'K Nelly, the exo-suit is now being powered by the battery. I don't know how long it'll last but you should have on the outside of half an hour before it's dead," he winced inwardly on saying that last word.

Nelly nodded at that while adjusting the helmet to the hardsuit she was now wearing for the first time. Tom did one final check before giving her the thumbs up.

"One more thing though," Tom warned, "I have no idea how much power the exo-suit will drain from the battery. Since we haven't tested any of the combat capabilities of the suit I'm not sure if you'll even get thirty minutes."

"Don't worry. I'm not the type to play around on the clock," Nelly replied as she headed for the door where Peter was waiting.

He put a hand on her shoulder, "Be careful," he told her grimly.

She told him she would as she pulled the faceplate down on her helmet and ran down the hall. As she rounded a corner, her foot slipped on the polished floor and skidded to a halt against the wall. Picking herself up, she was glad that nobody saw her being so clumsy and was off again following the spent ammo casings and random dead body. Soon she was in the main lab and ran head long into Noel sending him to the far side of the lab.

Noel hit the wall hard and fell to the ground but got up almost immediately. He extended the blades from his hardsuits forearms and readied to attack. "I don't know who you are in that hardsuit lady but I've got a LOT of pent up aggression from being held here against my will," Noel told her.

"You don't know what the fuck you mean by 'pent up'," Nelly countered as she launched herself at Noel.

Noel swung a bladed arm down in front of Nelly but she dodged to the side at the last minute then pushed herself off the wall behind Noel kicking him in the back sending Noel flying forwards this time. Noel growled as he got up and retracted one of his blades and fired several energy bolts at Nelly's previous location. Nelly, had jumped into the air and landed in front of Noel, ducking down Nelly swept a leg knocking Noel's feet out from under him as he fell to the deck. In one fluid motion Nelly rolled over and grabbed hold of Noel's arm and held him down with her legs. Nelly's military training was obviously giving her an edge over Noel but he refused to ever go back to that cage again. He struggled against Nelly's hold but her grip stayed firm. In desperation he extended the kater blade from the arm that Nelly was holding. Sparks flew as the blade grinded against Nelly's hardsuit. In surprise, she let go to avoid being impaled in the face allowing Noel to roll away and get to his feet.

Nelly was growing concerned. She kept glancing at the indicator on her HUD that showed her battery level seeing tat a third was gone already. She ground her teeth trying to think of what to do, she had to hit the girl hard and fast enough to knock her out or knock her helmet off and knock her out that way. She knew from personal experience that it didn't take much to do that. With that in mind she rushed forward making a feint by kicking the girl in the stomach, she reacted by doubling over and grabbing Nelly's leg. Nelly then brought both arms up and struck the back of Noel's head with both elbows slamming Noel almost comically to the ground. Taking advantage of this Nelly got on Noel's back and grabbed him in a headlock and pulled back hoping to either suffocate him into unconsciousness or pull the helmet off by force. Noel countered by deploying his jump wings flipping her over. Noel then jumped up and came down with a punch followed by a kick. He tried kicking her again but she caught his leg and swung him around into one of the few robotic assembly arms still in the lab smashing it to pieces. Nelly continued swinging Noel smashing him into the floor and various other equipment until Noel kicked her away while using the jump jets on his hips to get some distance from her. Nelly was becoming frustrated and activated the ribbons in the helmet of her hardsuit. Noel groaned knowing that thing were going to get a whole lot harder.

Major and the three other CSOR team members were trying the doors and finding each of them locked. On the occasion they heard something on the other side, Major would kick the door in and check the room, often finding terrified employees. After telling them to stay put, they would move on to the next door. They continued this tactic until the hall split off into three directions. This caused Major to decide to split up the team to cover more ground. Two of the CSOR members would go right while Major and the third went down the left side. Major and the soldier walked a short distance before reaching another split in the hallway. This time Major went right while her companion went left. She had reached her fourth door when she heard a noise behind the door. Readying her rifle, she kicked the door in and came face to face with Henry who was busy putting on a suitcase style suit of Ironman armor. Major froze for the briefest of moments but she managed to compose herself quickly enough.

"Freeze!" she shouted as she aimed her rifle at his unprotected head, "Put the palms of your hands on the sides of you head and is I see you charging up any of your weapons to shoot, so help me god, I'll shoot right through that thing you call a face," she spat.

Henry calmly complied and put his armored hands to the sides of his head. He gave her an unpleasant smile, "I see you're still up and about," he said casually, "Tell me, how's your memory been?"

"Shut it!" Major shouted, she was already on the radio telling the other CSOR soldiers that came with her to come to her location. "Fuck you Henry."

Henry only smirked, "Tell you what, if you let me go, I'll tell you what your name is. I mean your real name," he said.

Major hessitated, "H-how can you know what my name is when you deleted my memories," she accused.

Henry only shrugged, "I took a copy of your memories before I erased them from your mind. If you want, I can tell you little about your robotic friend before he blew up," he taunted.

Major lowered her rifle ever so slightly. She wanted, desperately even, wanted to know anything about her past. But to give Henry any slack would be deadly. She righted her rifle in resolve. "How do I know you're not lying just so you can get away?"

Henry quirked his head, "You don't," he said simply, "For all you know I'm probably lying about everything. But can you really take that chance for a small bit of piece of mind I can give?" His smirk changed to a predatory smile, "Tell me. If you're so distrusting of me, what makes you think that Jeffrey deserves any of yours?"

Major narrowed her eyes, "What are you talking about?"

"Hmm? Oh nothing. It's just that I'm not sure Jeffrey told you everything about us,"

"He told me that you put your own sister in the hospital," Major stated.

This caused Henry to chuckle, "Oh, he really didn't tell you anything at all did he?"

Major started to feel more nervous than before, "Just shut up, if you get out of that armor and surrender yourself, you'll have your chance to tell us what you think is real."

"Maybe," Henry replied. His finger twitched.

Out on the bridge of the frigate, the radar man got the XO's attention, "Sir, I'm getting an airborne contact coming off the mainland and it's heading for the bogey."

"A missile?" he asked.

"Unknown sir, but the bogey is now between us and the contact will breach the bogey in twenty seconds."

The XO gritted his teeth, "Very well, deploy what counter measures we can and inform the boarding party of a possible missile impact."
"Ey sir."

At this time the three CSOR team members were right outside the room.

"Either way Henry, you're under arrest for several murders and suspected kidnappings," Major stated as she inched towards him, her rifle still trained on his head.

"Oh, I don't think so," Henry said as slowly turned around.

Just as the radioman was issuing the warning, when the wall exploded inwards and an armored robot climbed in pointing a muzzle on its arm at the direction of Major and the three soldiers with her.

"Run!" Major shouted as she ducked and rolled as the robot fired a shotgun blast that caught one of the fleeing soldiers in the chest. Fortunate for him, his tac vest did it's job and he mostly had the wind knocked out of him though he was going to be sore for days afterwards. When Major recovered to her feet, Henry already had his helmet on and was about to leave when he turned back to her.

"At least trust me when I say this: Jeffrey isn't telling you everything," and then he was gone as he flew off towards the mainland.

"FUCK!" Major screamed as she aimed her rifle at the robot that stayed behind and opened fire. The HV-type bullets that were loaded in the rifle made quick work of the robot as the bullets perforated the robot. the two CSOR members added to the onslaught with their own fire and the robot was quickly downed. After making sure the robot was dead they check on their companion that caught the shotgun blast and found he actually had two cracked ribs but was otherwise ok.

"We lost Henry," Major said bitterly.

John had lead the team down through the decks and hallways when they across the hallway filled with destruction, ammo casings and dead bodies.

"Well," John said grimly, "I don't think I'll be needing my screwdriver to lead us to her by the looks of this."

They all checked their weapons and continued on. As they passed a room with an broken door bullets suddenly spewed forth from the room. They took cover on either side of the door.

This is the Canadian Armed Forces," Chris shouted, "Stand down!"

"Bullshit!" a voice shouted back followed by more bullets.

"We don't have time for this," Chris stated as she took a few steps back before running to the door. Just before reaching the door she fell to her knees and slid through on the floor. Two shots rang out followed by a groan of a man and a thump on the floor. Chris walked out a second later. "He'll be walking funny for awhile but he'll be fine, lets go," she said as she continued down the hall. Andria gave John a look to which he responded with just a shrug as they followed after.

Henry was hugging the shoreline over the water as he left the ship far behind. He wished he had more time to study the girl and the tech she made for herself with the box. But, the risk was too great with Jeffrey's team there and without his usual armor he decided caution was the better part of business. As he considered what else to do, something landed on his back causing him to dip as he flew. Looking over his shoulder he saw Jeffrey in his Batman beyond suit holding on to him.

"Where is she!?" he demanded. as he tried to force him down.

"Try checking the boat," Henry replied as he began spinning so much that Jeffrey eventually lost his grip and fell off where he smacked in some of the four foot waves of the ocean before he was able to activate the rockets in his boots. With a grimace he headed for the ship.

The main lab had been completely destroyed by the ongoing fight between Noel and Nelly. Nelly was able to maintain the upper hand but her battery was nearly dead which she noticed as her hardsuit was slowing down. Nelly knew that her next move was her last chance to subdue the girl. She ran straight at Noel who moved to grab her. As he did so she duck down and to the side batting his arm away with one hand while throwing a jab to his side and slide in behind him and reached under his helmet and started pulling.

"Come on, you piece of shit, get off," Nelly gritted.

Noel grabbed her arms and pulled her over himself, thanks to her training she recovered, but Noel had had enough and shoved a hand through the battery and its casing. Nelly's suit stopped moving.

"Fuckfuckfuck, fucking move you piece of shit," Nelly pleaded to herself. She was once again unable to move. "Please move, I don't want to be a fucking cripple for the rest of my life," she pleaded again coming close to tears.

Noel didn't know what to think. Just seconds ago this woman was literally trying to pull his head off and now she sounded like she was crying. "Was she really paralysed?" he asked himself, "Was she just not able to walk? No, even if the hardsuit had no power, a person could still move it, even if only slightly." So far, the woman was only banging her head around trying to move herself. Noel could see that her fingers weren't moving at all so she must really be completely paralysed then. "How did she get like that?" He wondered. "And why did they put her in a hardsuit? Did they find something out about the hardsuits that I didn't think of?"

Noel continued to wonder these thoughts. He didn't want to leave her like that. While it wasn't the same he felt he could relate, being tied up like he was for weeks on end. Every other day, the same jerk off would touch him in places... Noel shook his head. He didn't want to leave her like this where some one like his molester could take advantage of her but he couldn't leave her with a fully functioning hardsuit either. Noel thought about this until he realised something. He was a Claudia-class Boomer. He intentionally made himself like that so he could repair his own hardsuit if he needed to. "Surely, I can use that to change her hardsuit too right," He thought to himself. He flipped her over and removed what was left of the battery casing and put his armored hand in as he concentrated. She didn't need the armor of the weapons the hardsuit had, she just needed the motors and sensors to move. Soon, his armored hand began to meld with the Linna hardsuit. Once that was done, he began absorbing the material of the hardsuit into himself and his own armor. This caused the Linna hardsuit to look sickly as veins started to grow over it. As the veins pulsed, they seemed to flow back to Noel making the Linna hardsuit somehow dull in color as well as appear thinner. Once he was done Noel pulled away, the veins on her hardsuit remained but looked withered giving the hardsuit a look as if it were dead.

Noel hoped he was doing the right thing as he turned away and headed for the exit. When he came to a corner, he bumped into Chris with John Andria and the two CSOR members. Surprised, Chris brought her revolver up and was about to shoot when John pushed it aside just as she fired sending the bullet harmlessly into the wall behind Noel.

"Stop!" John told her, "She's the one we've been looking for."

Chris looked surprised but put her revolver away and she pulled out a canteen and took a swig of it as she cursed.

"We were going to rescue you," John said as he looked Noel over, "But it seems you were able to take care of yourself."

"Believe me when I say it was pure coincidence. You have no idea how long I wanted to get out of that hell hole," Noel said in relief.

Chris quickly radioed that they found Noel and were heading out. The captain of the frigate told her that they were sending a helicopter to pick them up. The rest of the boarding team acknowledged as they headed for the flat deck. They met up with Major and her team as they got onto the deck outside. As they waited for the helicopter John and Major shared a tender kiss.

"Don't you ever do that again, you hear me?" John told her.

"I can handle myself," Major replied hotly, "I just wished I didn't loose him," she said bitterly.

"You may have lost him but with any luck, the tracking beacon I stuck on him might lead us back to his hide out," a voice said.
Surprised, they all turned around as Jeffrey turned off the cloak on his suit revealing himself.

"Once we know which rock he crawls under, we're going to get him and stop him. Once and for all," he said with a look of determination on his face.