Amaranthine

Late that evening, Breastman pulled Honey up to a stone perimeter. Like the AEGIS barrier, it was clearly Geomanced. Unlike the AEGIS barrier, this one showed clear signs of combat damage and repair. A towering mech tracked their approach with it’s cannons, and Cait breathed out a sigh of relief as she made out its callsign, and it wasn't D-VI-L. An ARMOR soldier walked out from a side entrance, approaching the APC cautiously.

He jumped, raising his weapon as Breastman rolled down the window. Cait quickly pushed him down and took his place in case this guy also had an itchy trigger finger.

The soldier, visibly more relaxed talking to a beautiful woman instead of a tentacle monster, decided against shooting first.

“Name, origin, and business?” he asked, voice a little shaky from the initial Breastman jump scare.

“Amaranthine, AEGIS DSM, uh… kicking paper ass?” she wasn’t sure what the official term for their business would be, but that sounded right.

“Can you prove any of that?” the soldier asked, keeping his weapon trained.

“Uh, well, you could just shoot me and that would pretty well prove I am who I say I am.”

“How would we know you aren’t a Character?”

“Are you familiar with my reputation? If Bookkeeper killed me and made me a Character we’re all fucked anyway,” Cait said conversationally. The soldier’s eyes flicked between Cait, his gun, then the mech. Cait sighed. “Yeah, fine…”

A minute later she stood naked in a smoking crater while her costume regenerated around her.

“Satisfied?” she asked the blushing soldier, who nodded quickly, looking anywhere but her. The mech, however, fired another plasma blast into her, undoing her outfits valiant efforts at modesty.

“Captain Schwinn says hello,” blasted over the mech’s PA, before its pilot turned and stomped it away. Cait flipped him off, but stopped short of damaging important assault machinery.

“What about everyone else?” asked the soldier, inclining his head towards the APC, where Qi’s leering head stuck out of the window, elated as Cait’s suit struggled to reform.

“C’mon, man, they were real when we left and I’ve been with them the whole time. Gonna have to be good enough.”

The man’s eyes were twitchy, and his lips nearly chewed through with nerves. Cait realized this must have been hell for them, with no real way to know if any Altered ally was actually a Character wearing a friendly face.

“Hey, don’t worry buddy,” Cait said, feeling a twinge of regret when the man jumped as she brought her hand down on his shoulder. “Why don’t we have Sonder and BREAST MAN do a sweep of the compound? Let y’all rest a little easier. Two of the only folks what can ID characters for certain.”

The man’s eyes widened, then he looked nervous again.

“I’ll ask my superiors,” he said, then waved towards the gate. It seemed to recede directly into the ground, and Cait realized it didn’t actually have any kind of hinge. Opening and closing it was entirely dependent on a Geomancer.

Or being humanoid excavation equipment, she thought, self satisfied as she cracked her knuckles and led Honey through the gate. They were directed into a spot in the motor pool, parking next to a row of similar Honey Badgers. That wasn’t all though.

The camp was geared for war, with light troop vehicles, tanks, and even a line of menacing mechs, currently scaffolded and undergoing servicing. Cait grimaced when she saw the Plasmafucker on one, following its arm up to the familiar call-sign.

Welp, not usual to have landmines inside the camp, but that’s one I’m going to have to take care to not step on.

A well put together young soldier walked up to them, visor raised and wearing a nervous smile.

“Good evening, Dawn Posse,” he greeted them, clasping his hands behind his back and keeping any quaver out of his voice. “Lieutenant Hale. I will be your aide-de-camp while we prepare for the rest of the AEGIS contingents arrival and the assault itself. Please, follow me to the command building and then we can get you settled in.”

The team introduced themselves, but Hale looked taken aback when Kevin spoke up.

“Uh…. Is AEGIS accepting minor guardians now?” he said, looking at the group accusatorily.

Well, can’t fault him for that.

“No,” Kennedy answered, “but these are extraordinary times. Kevin here will be integral to stopping the Bookkeeper due to his unique abilities. He will be remaining with us.”

Cait smiled as Kennedy seemed to channel her mother, not leaving any room for dissent. She flexed a little bit, doing her best to make her body language back the girl up. Lieutenant Hale grimaced, but either he understood there was no point arguing, or knew Guardians were always going to be a little weird. He nodded sharply, and beckoned for them to follow.

As they walked, Cait realized everything here must have been geomanced. Instead of the tents and pre-fab buildings that made up military bases in movies, and, Cait assumed, real life pre-wave, everything here was stone. The only pre-fab pieces were things like doors, windows, or heating and cooling elements. It gave the base an oddly primitive flavor, highly at odds with the high-tech equipment scattered around the stone buildings.

It brought to mind Cait’s dad’s favorite fan-theory, that the Jetsons and Flintstones took place on the same planet at the same time, separated only by elevation.

“How many Geomancers do you have on duty here?” Kennedy asked, looking around in obvious awe at the scale of the earthwork. “If I was linked up to the ones I know, this would take me months.”

“Only three!” Hale said, a measure of pride entering his tone, “ARMOR Altereds tend to be relatively weak, but highly specialized. If you tried to get our guys to make anything but walls or a few well-established building designs, it would take forever, and be a mess. But keep to what they’re used to and they’re a real force of… well, not nature, but you get the idea.”

Kennedy frowned in admiration, nodding at the explanation. On second look, Cait did see that each building was almost exactly the same, and most differences looked like they might have been made post-geomancing, having obvious signs of tooling. They came up on one much larger building, having multiple levels and overall giving the overall impression of a squat castle keep.

Hale nodded to the pair of guards standing at ease next to the doors, and one of them pressed a keycard to a pad behind them, opening the doors.

“War council is waiting for you inside,” he said over his shoulder, “Almost there. Plenty of people in there, but the main one you need to know is General Hale, who is overseeing the whole operation.”

The whole team shared glances at the general’s name, but didn’t feel like there was probably time to dig into that before they made it to the war room.

Lt. Hale led them up the stairs, past more guards and more security doors, into a chamber that looked very similar to AEGIS’ Ready Station. Important looking soldiers were huddled around a holo-table projecting a live image of Winnipeg and the surrounding area, glowing icons indicating suggested troop movements. Lt. Hale approached the table, and a man glanced up, meeting his eyes with almost exact copies.

The decorated Officer had immediate family resemblance to Lt. Hale, like a funhouse mirror that took the young man’s features and exaggerated them. General Hale had the same sharp bone structure, but where his son’s features where fine, his were reminiscent of cliffs over troubled waters, ice blue eyes shadowed under a craggy brow.

The intimidating effect was offset somewhat by the broad, genuine smile that broke his face when he saw his son, and swept his piercing eyes over the Dawn Posse.

“Finally!” he said, speaking normally, but with the force of a shout. He pushed himself back from the table, clapped the Lieutenant on the shoulder, and grabbed Cait’s hand in a firm shake. “You gotta be Amaranthine. Not a lot of folks in AEGIS or otherwise fit your description. Happy to have you.”

“Uh, yeah, happy to be here!” Cait responded, taken a little off guard by the gregariousness of the General, before the man took his cone of attention off of her and greeted the rest of the team in turn. He paused at Kevin, looked at his son, and got a helpless shrug in return. That seemed to be enough, so the General continued on.

When he reached Kennedy, she kept a hold of his hand. His sharp eyes locked onto hers.

“General Hale, our reception here told us a lot about your security situation concerning Characters. With your permission, BREAST MAN and I would like to do a sweep of the base. Each of us has ways of detecting the Bookkeeeper’s pawns.”

Immediately, the General was all business.

“That so? I see why Elizabeth sent y’all down first. Please, start immediately,” he handed each of them a chit emblazoned with his name and rank. “If anyone stops you, just show em these.”

He stepped closer, lowering his voice. A tension that had been well hidden until now became audible without the forced cheer in his tone.

“…not sensing anything in this room, right?”

Cait got a wave of concern from Kennedy, before a myriad of connections echoed across their link. Finally, the concern faded to relief.

“You’re clean.”

The General visibly relaxed, looking just a little more tired as a bit of his mask fell. Kennedy smiled reassuringly, and Lieutenant Hale led her and Breastman out of the room.

“Well, you three can get them up to speed,” the General continued, retaking his place at the table and beckoning them over. He indicated a massive simulated troop detachment moving towards the city. “Given that I understand we’re going for Shock and Awe while a small force takes out the Bookkeeper, as of now we are planning on a concentrated attack to draw forces away from as much of the city as possible.”

Red dots scattered throughout the city began to converge on the army as it approached. A few golden specks flew towards the center of the city from the opposite direction.

“Should let your strike team get in with minimal fuss. That said, grouping up like this with unknown Altered involved is dangerous, and I’m only willing to do it with as much AEGIS support as is being offered.”

He began to request a rundown of abilities on offer, and Qi answered as best she could about those she’d worked with. Cait, being a bit of a Guardian fangirl, was more helpful than she had thought she would be. Slowly, they built up a deployment plan that would make the best use of the Guardians AEGIS was sending, seeding them among the mundane troops.

Damn, almost sad I’m not gonna be a part of this assault. This shit is gonna be epic.

That sentiment, while probably true, didn’t seem to be shared by everyone else in the room. Superpowered warfare wasn’t as exciting when you were going to be wading into it without the benefit of absolute invulnerability.