239 NSD Invasion [Tempest/Chad]
239 NSD Invasion [Tempest/Chad]
I yawned and slouched deeper into the sofa. Sundays were sacred. The wife was in the kitchen humming off-key while making lunch, and my daughter was pressed against my side, utterly absorbed in a cartoon about a talking mouse with a ridiculous accent.
I snorted quietly. Who would’ve thought the arrogant rookie speedster with daddy issues—then an SRC agent, then an ex-con—would end up here? Domestic. Stable. Happy.
Definitely not me.
The TV abruptly cut to BREAKING NEWS, the cheerful mouse replaced by a burning street. A lizard-man stood atop a tank, screaming something in a different language, an army of soldiers fanning out behind him with glowing energy weapons. The camera shook violently.
Griffin was on the screen, wings blood-red against smoke and fire. Another woman flashed past on a motorcycle, leather jacket, helmet, impossible speed.
“What—whoa!” my daughter cried, eyes wide. “It’s Griffin!”
I sighed, already feeling it settle into my bones. The location banner scrolled across the bottom. It was way too close for home.
Mindy appeared behind the sofa, apron still on, wooden spoon in hand. She glanced at the screen, then at me.
“So,” she said calmly, “work?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t be late for lunch.”
I smiled. “Sure.”
I stepped behind the sofa, made sure the daughter was looking back at the TV… and vanished.
The basement rushed up around me as I decelerated, concrete blurring into clarity. My gear waited where it always did, sealed, clean, GDF-issued. I pulled on the blue-and-white armor in practiced motions, snapped the mask into place, and fitted the golden researcher-grade lens over my right eye.
Spatial awareness. That was the killer with my powers. Speed and intangibility alone got people killed, usually by themselves. I’d seen it too many times. Eclipse had made it look easy back when he was starting out. It wasn’t. It never was.
The mask covered my eyes and temples, leaving my mouth and hair free. I needed to breathe properly. Speed burned oxygen fast. Too fast. Short bursts. Controlled intervals. Hair exposed so I could feel air resistance, read turbulence, judge obstacles before my eyes ever could.
I ran.
Wind screamed past me as the city collapsed into streaks of color. I surfaced on a rooftop and skidded to a halt, knees bending to bleed off momentum. Below, soldiers were firing indiscriminately into the streets.
“Great,” I muttered. “Sunday.”
I vanished again.
One soldier lifted his rifle. “Too slow.” My foot connected with his chest, and he folded into the curb like wet cardboard. Another charged. I flicked my wrist, aerokinesis snapping outward, and he flew backward into a storefront.
Plasma bolts screamed through the air. I zigzagged between them, phased clean through a car, grabbed a screaming civilian mid-motion, and reappeared in an alley half a block away.
“T-thank you!” the man gasped. “Thank you! You… you’re Tempest!”
“Get inside,” I said, already stepping back. “Stay down.”
My comms crackled to life. “Who’s in the area?” It was Griffin’s voice.
“It’s me,” I answered. “Tempest.”
A brief pause. “Good. What’s your situation? Are we expecting reinforcements?”
“Negative,” I said. “I’m solo on this block.”
“No GDF backup,” she replied. “Spoiler’s team is off-city. Other capes are too far out. Neighboring City-States won’t make it in time.”
I grimaced. “Figures. What about the Shadow kid?”
“Also with Spoiler.”
I exhaled sharply. “Of course he is.”
“Listen,” Griffin continued, “I lost Dullahan. If you find her, apprehend her.”
I blinked. “Dullahan? As in ‘Ten’ Dullahan?”
“Yes.”
I stared down at the chaos below with tanks, soldiers, and civilians running for their lives. I felt the familiar tightening in my chest.
“Oh, come on,” I muttered. “We weren’t short-handed enough already?”
I asked, “How about the rubber lady?”
“She left with Leverage. They are no longer in Markendm so…”
“Oh, shit.”
“How about Gunslinger?”
Griffin didn’t hesitate. “Died a week ago. You were at the funeral.”
I winced. Right. I remembered showing up for maybe five minutes, standing awkwardly at the back. I hadn’t even known we had a Gunslinger until my daughter told me cowboys were cool and he was her favorite hero.
That thought stung more than it should’ve.
A plasma bolt screamed past my head. I snapped my neck back just in time, heat grazing my cheek.
“Okay,” I muttered. “How about the Company fellows?”
Markend’s peacekeeping backbone had always been the Company and whatever villains they kept on a short leash. Spoiler’s team was officially assigned here, but she was almost always off-city doing the ugly, important work.
“They’ve deployed everyone,” Griffin replied. “All capes on their payroll. Seamark’s too. Spoiler left a clone inside the Company,connect with their Command Center. They’re handling strategy.”
A brief pause, then, “I’ve got to go. I’m busy.”
The line cut.
Across the street, a display TV mounted above a shuttered shop showed Griffin on-screen, slamming into a tank that looked like it should’ve been scrap metal ten seconds ago. Sparks, debris, screaming commentators.
Then the screen flickered.
The image shifted to the inside of a tank. A lizard-man filled the frame, scales polished, uniform pristine.
“Niedere Lebensformen, beugt euch der ersten Ordnung!”
I frowned.
A second later, translated subtitles crawled onto the screen.
“We of the National Supreme Directorate have come to save this world from itself. Rejoice. Rejoice. We come from another world so much like yours. With the efforts of the NSD, we have eliminated world hunger, climate change, sickness, and poverty. We come to enlighten you. Rejoice.”
I flicked a bead without looking. The TV exploded in a shower of sparks.
A civilian crouched beside me, pale and shaking. “A-are we going to be fine?”
I forced a smile, keeping my voice light. “Yeah. You’ll be fine. I’m with the Global Defense Force. We exist for things like this. Each of my friends is worth an army.”
I cracked my neck. “Watch.”
This wasn’t a riot. This wasn’t a villain incident.
This was an invasion.
No kids’ gloves.
I phased into the wall and moved.
The city became lines and vectors again. I burst through a window into a room full of NSD soldiers, their weapons only halfway raised. I snapped my fingers and aerokinesis flung them upward, bodies slamming into the ceiling hard enough to pulp organs.
Hard right. Phase. Another wall.
I rolled a bead across my knuckles, launched it with my thumb, brushed it with super-speed for range, aerokinesis for micro-corrections, and delayed intangibility for penetration.
Perfect arc.
I launched three more before the first hit.
They dropped together.
I ran.
Street to street. Rooftop to alley. Phase, strike, vanish. Beads, kicks, pressure bursts of air that liquefied lungs. Energy weapons screamed past me, always too slow, always just behind.
It felt… familiar. Uncomfortably so.
By the time I slowed, the streets were quieter. Smoke hung low. Sirens wailed in the distance.
That’s when I noticed them.
Men and women in suits. They were quite calm and coordinated, using low- to mid-tier powers with surgical precision and in possession of researcher-grade weapons.
Company field operatives.
I slowed to a stop in front of them, boots skidding slightly on cracked asphalt.
One of them turned, eyes widening behind his visor. “Tempest?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Looks like I found the grown-ups.”
I glanced around at the devastation. “So. Who’s in charge, and where do you want me?”
Something latched onto my comms, a calm feminine voice sliding in without friction.
“This is Company Command Center. Tempest, proceed to Addenmay Avenue.”
“Copy.”
I blurred into motion, the city stretching into streaks, and reappeared on the rooftop of a neighboring building. From above, the situation resolved into something uglier than I liked.
Company operatives were pinned down at street level, boxed in by NSD soldiers. Above the infantry chaos loomed the real problem, a cape wreathed in fire, a heavy pyrokinetic, flooding the street with rolling waves of flame. The Company team was good, disciplined, but they were getting cooked alive by sheer output.
Back in my Ward days, or even during my early SRC years, I would’ve disengaged immediately. Pyrokinetics were nightmares for speedsters without hard counters.
But that was then.
I took out a bead, exhaled, and let the world slow.
One flick.
The bead curved cleanly through heat distortion and punched straight through the pyrokinetic’s skull. The flames collapsed mid-roar, guttering out like someone had snuffed a candle.
“Done,” I said into the comms.
“Confirmed,” the voice replied. “Requesting permission to add tactical software to your visual aid.”
“No,” I said immediately. “Use my watch.”
“Confirming.”
A soft vibration pulsed against my wrist as the software installed. A transparent overlay bloomed into my vision, enemy markers, movement vectors, and probability cones.
“Be advised,” the voice continued, “enemy activity is now mapped in real time via satellite observation. Your next objective is the Markend News Network building. NSD forces have occupied it and are using proprietary transmission technology to broadcast the invasion.”
“Copy that.”
I jumped.
The route there was a blur of violence. Most NSD troops were mundanes, well-armed, and well-trained, but completely outmatched. I collapsed lungs with pressure differentials, snapped necks with air bursts, phased through cover to strike from impossible angles.
The beads stayed in reserve. Finite ammo mattered.
Inside the broadcasting building, resistance thickened.
These weren’t line troops.
NSD special forces.
They moved better, reacted faster, coordinated with unnerving efficiency. It slowed me down, but not enough.
I rounded a corner and almost killed the man waiting by the door.
“Hey—hey!” he shouted, hands up. “Friendly! SRC Special Forces!”
I halted a hair’s breadth from liquefying his chest.
“Talk,” I said.
“Two hostile capes,” he answered quickly. “Both rated eight or higher. Lost two operatives already. Sent the rest to secure lower floors. I’ve been holding this position—”
A lightning bolt detonated through the doorway.
I yanked him backward as electricity scorched the wall where his head had been.
A woman’s laughter echoed down the hall.
“Hahahahaha! Fools!”
Blonde. Military uniform. Electricity crawling over her skin.
The SRC operative swore under his breath. “They’re vigilant. Psychic camouflage didn’t work, electrokinetic’s got insane cognitive awareness. The SRC’s stretched thin after the Eclipse incident. Markend branch is paranoid, refusing to move resources.”
He glanced at me. “Any GDF reinforcements coming?”
I straightened. “You’re looking at them. Tell me about the other one.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Technopath. Room’s packed with armed drones. He’s running the broadcast. Going in blind is suicide.”
I frowned. “I thought SRC Special Forces leaned hard on null tech. How did you get psychic camouflage?”
“Times change,” he said grimly. “We’ve got clearance for esoteric tech now. Doesn’t mean it’s enough.”
Another electric crack split the air.
The blonde laughed again. “Come out, heroes! Let’s see how long you last!”
I rolled my shoulders, feeling the air pressure respond instinctively.
“Alright,” I said calmly. “You keep her busy. I’ll handle the technopath.”
He stared at me. “Alone?”
I smiled under my mask. “I’ve done worse with less.”
I stepped forward, phasing into motion as the hallway filled with lightning and screaming metal.
The electrokinetic tracked me almost immediately, lightning snapping through the air with frightening precision. I felt the charge skim my skin as I nudged my speed higher, aerokinesis reinforcing every step, every shift of momentum. The drones opened up in a blanket of fire, overlapping fields of calculated trajectories.
All of it phased straight through me.
That was when I noticed it. The firing angles were perfectly arranged to avoid hitting the electrokinetic woman. Friendly fire mitigation. Smart.
I changed direction mid-step and rushed her.
I flicked several beads in rapid succession. They screamed toward her, but her electrokinetic barrier flared, snapping them aside in a crackling lattice of force. She fired back, a concentrated blast of electricity tearing through the space I’d just occupied.
I dropped a floor, phasing down.
Then I surged upward again, aerokinesis slinging me like a bullet, and phased in just behind her. I feigned a kick.
She bought it.
Her barrier snapped into place in front of her, reflexive. I twisted the airflow instead, flinging her upward into the ceiling. The air ripped from her lungs in the same motion, her power flickering as her concentration shattered.
I rode the air current up, phased above her, then dropped straight down.
My heel connected with her spine as I re-materialized.
There was a sickening crack as I drove her through the floor.
She hit hard, screaming, then groaning as she tried and failed to move.
“F-Fuck… Verdammt, das tut weh, du Arschloch…!”
I didn’t respond. I flicked a bead into the back of her head.
She went still.
I turned my attention outward, collapsing the remaining drones from the inside by compressing the air in their housings. One by one, they popped and fell like dead insects.
The technopath was staring at me, frozen, terror written across his face.
Through the shattered glass behind him, something enormous moved.
A roar rolled across the city as a colossal, scaly, dinosaur-like figure burst into view, easily the size of a skyscraper.
The technopath laughed hysterically. “Ha ha ha~! You are all dead! The general has transformed—”
Something bigger rose behind it.
Twice the height.
A titan of living crimson, her body flowing like blood given form, hair blazing like fire, eyes burning gold as she loomed over the battlefield.
I stared out the window, then back at the technopath.
“Pal,” I said calmly, “I think you invaded the wrong planet.”
The man collapsed to his knees. “M-mercy! Bitte—mercy!”
I glanced at a nearby camera, still intact.
An idea struck me.
I smiled.
“Hey,” I said lightly, “do you want to live?”
He nodded frantically. “Y-yes! Yes!”
“Good,” I said, stepping closer. “Then you’re going to do something for me.”
I pointed at the camera.
“Get my good side.”