The Legion of Nothing

Flying in the winter is cold.

The full Rocket armor feels warm even in the worst weather, probably because Grandpa spent a lot of time flying during the winter. By contrast, Grandpa's main focus when he created the stealth suit was for it to fit under clothes. Even after pulling the supplementary jacket, pants and gloves over the basic suit, the stealth suit still felt colder.

Adding a guitar to the mix didn't make things any easier.

I'd thought far enough ahead to realize that I couldn't hang it over my back with the jet pack and to arrange a way to hook it into the jacket on my front, but not far enough to stop it from moving around while I flew. The neck knocked against my chest and swung as I turned, hitting the bottom of my helmet.

Annoying.

By the time we managed to get away and get changed, we were fifteen minutes behind them. That would have been an insurmountable lead without the roachbots broadcasting their position.

As it was, I could follow them via the GPS readout in my helmet. Two dots followed the highway south, moving at about sixty miles per hour.

Funny that they'd chosen to take the two lane highway instead of the four lane freeway that ran roughly parallel to it. On the other hand, even without leaves the trees made it harder to see them.

Jaclyn or I could catch them in minutes if we wanted to, me because I could fly straight after them, Jaclyn because she could run at the speed of sound.

As I began to close, I decided to call everybody to find out if the people in the car had come up with a plan. I pressed down on the buttons on my palm until I found them in my address book and called, relieved that I'd managed to plug a cell phone into at least this version of the suit.

I got Jaclyn first and then pulled Travis into the three way call. Hopefully he'd figured out the cars' phone interface. That way everyone could get into the conversation.

"We're here," he said as he picked up.

"Do you guys have any kind of plan? I can almost see them."

"We've been talking about it," Travis said. "I think our best shot is to send Rachel in to deal with the paralysis guns. After that we can probably take them in a straight fight."

"How's she going to catch up to them?" Jaclyn asked. "The last I heard Ghostwoman didn't move very fast in the air."

"That's been a sticking point," Travis said.

I cut in. "I can make them stop."

"How?" Jaclyn said.

"Um... The power of rock and roll?"

Laughter came from the car.

Jaclyn said, "Oh, that'll do it. How much power does rock and roll have these days?"

"Enough to melt a small hole in the side of a battleship."

"Oookay then," Jaclyn said, wind blowing in the background as she spoke. "It's not really nuclear, is it?"

"Everyone keeps asking me that. No, but the battery design I used was really cool. It holds a lot of power. I took a couple of Grandpa's designs and combined them."

I paused, trying to think of the best way to explain the difference between the designs and why combining them had been a good idea.

"Sounds great," Jaclyn said. "So we've got to time this so that Nick gets there first, the car gets there second, and I appear as soon Rachel takes out the paralysis weapons. Is there anything more to the plan than that?"

"No," Travis said, "but if anyone's got an idea, I'm open to suggestions."

We didn't have any.