Chương 132: Naphtali, Part 2

The day couldn't get any worse. Technofiend's voice in my ear stabbed through like a cold knife, tensing my body and leaving me ready for an almost panic-induced violence.

"I'm gonna tear you apart-""Oh, no you won't. This time I have no physical body! I know fighting you directly wouldn't do anything. That's why I'm instead seizing your systems." The fact he could even access them at all with Clowncar meant they'd been able to access the base for quite some time. Was he-"So you and Clowncar were the mole," I called out, keeping my distance from the crowd so they wouldn't build up any concern or panic. If they knew another supervillain was complicating all of this, it'd be trouble.

This also would mean Technofiend was in with the ADU. Which made sense, given he seemed pretty anti-human with the language he'd used before. They must have been cutting some kind of dea-"Hm? No." My thoughts stopped dead in their tracks.

"What?" I blurted out, unable to keep my thoughts in my head for that.

"I have nothing to do with the ongoing menacing from the Anti-Deforestation Union. I don't like biological life at all, that includes trees. I'm doing this because I hate you all."

"We don't even know you! You just showed up out of nowhere!"

"Most people hate cockroaches, despite not knowing them personally, either. We don't need to know each other for my animosity to be any more real." I let out a shout in frustration.

"Quit it with the bullshit! All this talk is going to waste time on the bombs!"

"Oh no, I've intercepted the radio frequencies used to report their times to the website and am using telemetry to control them. The timers are paused."

"Wha- Why? You just said you hated us!"

"I didn't say I was pausing them permanently, Hercules. I'm doing this to play a game with you and the other one. You will both be hearing my instructions for this game."

"I'm not here to play ga-""If you don't, I set the timers to zero. There are people near over sixty five percent of the bombs, Hercules. And including collateral damage, presently almost every single bomb remaining could cause serious harm. Now listen to my instructions." Groaning, I looked towards the cityscape.

"Fine."

"All bombs will be having their timers set to one, universal, twenty minute timer. The timer resets every time a bomb is destroyed. The easiest way to destroy them is to remove one end and tear the green wire inside." Twenty minutes for me lets me cross the city with time to spare if I need to. Jairo could clear the entire city just fine if that were the case.

"That sounds almost too easy. What's the catch?" I could hear his laughter over the lines.

"Very astute. Quite simple. This is a team sport. My team will also be searching for the bombs." In the sky, I could hear a buzzing and chittering. In the air plumed numerous dark, winged shapes that flew about, some almost rocketing towards the outside of the bus depot, where I was standing.

"I will be endlessly deploying Technoimps who will also be hunting for the bombs. There is an upper limit to how many I will have out at once, but I will not tell you the number. Just know it's high. They will be relying on the same means of searching for the bombs as you: They are told a direction, based off of your clock bearing, assuming you always face twelve o'clock." Several of the Technoimps landed near me. They were like lankier, shorter versions of Technofiend.

Shorter didn't mean much given Technofiend was multiple head and shoulders taller than me. These things were my height. They crouched low, facing multiple different directions.

"They will go in that direction, and will determine distance based off of the frequency of a pinging noise. The more frequent and rapid the pinging, the closer you are. Their method of bomb disposal will simply be pausing the timers, so that I may collect the bombs." One of the Technoimps let out this synthetic hissing noise, exposing a long metallic tongue as it looked towards the crowd of people I had walked away from. They had started to disperse, but paralysis kept several of them bundled.

"But of course, to make things interesting, I added a 'Fun' modifier into their behavior. They might go entertain themselves by trying to kill people instead of disposing bombs… So if you get too focused on the bomb hunting, some of my Technoimps might end up taking a few lives." The Technoimp crouched lower, wings spanning out. My own legs tensed up like springs as I realized what it was aiming to do.

"You're sick in the head."

"I'm the cure for the sickness in everyone's heads, meatbag. That massive tumor covering your entire skeleton. Flesh. That's the sickness. Now, when I say 'Go,' you'll be given your direction and your proximity sensor will start pinging." There felt like lightning in the air as my body braced for violence. I couldn't afford a protracted fight. Twenty minutes didn't seem like a short time, but these things were fast, too. I needed to keep that anger pent up.

Let it out only in bits and pieces to maximize results in the shortest possible time. But I would probably only get that direction for a bomb once. I had to burn my position in my head as twelve o'clock, so that I could reference it after I dealt with this Technoimp. It was just a matter-"Go." 6 O'CLOCK I was no better than an animal, sometimes. My body would just act on instincts I was set on for longer than I had realized.

Like a cat on a mouse, I launched myself with enough speed to shatter asphalt beneath my feet to keep up with the flying Technoimp. Snapping a hand out and digging my fingers into its chest, tearing metal to find grip, I whirled and swung up. The goal was to just throw him into space. I did it to the tree man, and this thing was lighter. It was possible. As I whipped it up to the air- KRASH It actually shattered from the air resistance, stray metal and wires and affixing parts raining down around me.

Didn't realize I was that pent up. A portion of its body still lingered in my hand, seemed to be some piece of its chest. In the corner of my eye, I could see another Technoimp also pouncing toward the now-screaming crowd. No time to pounce, I just threw the piece of chassis I had in my hand with enough force to split the Technoimp in half, leaving it limp. Technofiend normally has regenerating tech. These don't. Must be part of his game, or a physical limitation if he could pump out an endless number.

"Go take cover! Hide in the bus!" I yelled to the crowd, and they didn't hesitate to pool in the bus to stay out of sight from any other Technoimps. Though there were none around. Just those two were tempted. Ultimately, good. That means those ones are on one-track minds. I was told 6 o'clock. So directly behind me. Straight line. I didn't hear any pinging, so it must've been too far for any sort of proximity detection. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Another launch, hard enough that the bus behind me rolled forward a couple feet, sent me hurtling through the air. My first landing prompted me no pings. I wasn't even anywhere close. This was screwed from every direction. I couldn't even talk to Jairo about what was going on, odds were high that Technofiend made any communication with each other impossible. I couldn't head back to base because time spent there was time spent not keeping bombs out of Technoimp hands, or stopping Technoimp attacks.

I couldn't expect May or Chris to do much from their position other than hopefully fend off Technoimps from the base. Everything's gone pear-shaped. Couldn't keep torturing myself over it, however. Had to focus on tracking the sound. The challenge was figuring out the proximity the pinging would start. The city wasn't laid out in a perfect grid, so even if it was just a straight line, it could be anywhere on that line. Lunging further ahead, I got my first taste of a hint after crossing a couple city blocks. PING …

… … PING Okay. Spaced a few seconds apart. Going for a shorter leap that only hopped a few buildings, I waited to track the pinging sounds. PING … … PING Okay. At that point, I was overlooking a store plaza. Giving a leap down there, I waited again to see how it sounded. PING … PING It was in the plaza. There were four stores. A deli, an electronics repair store, some kind of insurance office, and some kind of golf store. Just had to go in order from nearest to furthest.

I started in the golf store, which was carpeted exclusively in astroturf and had bags of golf equipment hanging from the ceilings. PING PING PING Close. Either this store or the next one. I couldn't see the store owner, which I hoped was due to being in hiding. Walking further along, I leaned interchangeably between either wall to see if the pinging would change based on proximity. What I noticed was it slowed down slightly on the exterior wall, but picked up just a bit faster on the interior.

After going a bit further along, it went from a series of pings to one long ringing sound. But that wall was blank, had nothing in it. Rushing back out, I then ran into the insurance office. Same pings on that wall, including the long noise, but all there was on the wall was just a photo of some college degree. Did he get it in the wall? Going for a Hail Mary, I slammed my arm through and ended up immediately grabbing a fistful of loose PVC pipe. He got it into the fucking wall.

Pulling it out, I popped one end off like a cork, fiddling through the array of wires before yanking the lone green one hard enough to snap it off. Technofiend's voice crawled into my ear.

"Congratulations on your first disarmament in the game. You succeeded in disposing of it in ten minutes. The scoreboard, presently, has you at one bomb. Jairo is at thirty. The Technoimps are at one hundred and seventy five. As for your next direction…" 12 O'CLOCK He pointed me in the direction of one the opposite way I came. I could've gotten rid of that bomb on the fucking way. He was chasing me around. Rushing out of the building, I just kept cursing to myself before a familiar woman's voice came on.

"Herc? Hercules!" Sam's voice. I immediately reached up to my earpiece.

"Sam, how'd you get on?"

"Trick I got from a pirate radio book, I'm piggybacking off of a completely different signal than the one Technofiend's overtaken. Spectroma's doing everything she can to keep those robots away from us. I would've contacted you sooner but I was working on seeing if I could try and reverse Technofiend's control. If I can hijack however he's controlling the timers, I can turn all the bombs off."

"Do you have any means for how?"

"Yes, but I need both you, Shivvy, and Teiú. I told him to get to your heartbeat like twenty seconds ago, he should be-" The sound of asphalt grinding down for a split second drew my attention over to the source. Jairo was there. His helmet was gone. He was in that insectoid form again, the one that triggered some kind of primitive, prey response in me. He was panting, saliva falling past his chitinous mandibles and burning holes in the ground.

"You alright, man?" He shook his head, letting out some sort of buzzing noise that almost sounded like a " NO."

"I take that as him being there," Sam noted.

"R-Right, I'll send this communication out to both of you at once. Herc, you're going to be an antenna with Shivvy. You need him to get as tall as possible and wide at the end. Teiú, don't worry about the bombs. You need to just destroy Technoimps. You've been clearing them out as much as you can already, so you know the trick to down them in one go."

"Is he going to have time? Wouldn't they coordinate against him?"

"No," she answered.

"Because we're going to force an opening. Agent Richmond, can you explain?" Richmond's voice broke over the line as well.

"Hi, sorry for not making my presence known on the call until now. I'm not going to mince words. You need to know my power for this, so you're going to find out. I can disconnect things. The greater or more complicated the disconnection, the harder it gets. Disconnecting hundreds of incoming connections at once from complex machines will be hard. But it means they'll be stuck without instructions for what I'm guessing is maybe three minutes. That's Teiú's opening."

"And," Sam followed in, "Teiú is specifically going to be targeting the ones with the weakest connections first. He can see them. When there's a few strong connections left, I'm going to do a reverse traceroute and reverse path forwarding protocol to find where Technofiend is controlling everything from. There, I can take over and disconnect the timers. I'll be using Shivvy as a glorified signal booster for faste r and clearer connection strength. Even with that, I'll need about a minute.

Teiú, do you think you can break hundreds of robots in two minutes?" Jairo let out another buzzing groan in two syllabic pairs. Something like " TRY! ME!"

"Sounds like it. Alright. Go!" I didn't even see Jairo run off. He was there and then he wasn't, some holes in the ground where he stood. It made me realize just how fast that fucking guy was. But I had to stick to my task first.

"Shivvy!" I yelled, as his head slipped back out. Cupping it in my hand, I stated "Long!" and he formed into a rod.

"Long!" I followed up with, saying it nine or ten more times until he was reaching fully into the sky.

"Wide!" I finally yelled, and the end spanned out into a cone-like shape. He was even able to get the right sort of antenna shape. What a good kitty.

"One minute's already passed!" Sam called out, baffling me with how fast time could fly when you're trying to stop a city-wide bombing spree. Sam kept track of the time in our earpieces, after that. While I stood there, holding up the antenna, I was just reminded of the ticking clock. Every second passing. We weren't sure what would happen if Richmond's disconnection stopped earlier. All the while, I could see explosions in the sky. Almost like fireworks.

Blurs in front of me occurred, accompanied by destroyed Technoimps. Likely Jairo as he pounced from point to point with enough speed that the air itself cracked. Alongside the cracking, however, was a noise that stood out far more to me. A yell. A scream. A roar, even. It echoed across the entire city, with such intensity it shook my ribs. The only thing that ever compared to it was the sound of Wallachia in 9/11, from that memory. Though this one didn't seem to be a noise of pain. Instead it was fury.

A wild animal in him either reveling in the violence or seeking more. Boy howdy if I didn't feel that.

"Ten, nine, eight-"" DONE!" Jairo yelled, slamming into the ground next to me on all fours. He was covered in loose scrap metal and scorch marks, his body pulsating with violence. His hand was off his ear, so I tapped my earpiece.

"He just said he finished!"

"Okay!" The next thirty seconds were so tense that I couldn't stop shivering. Technofiend's voice crawled its way back into my ears.

"I don't know what you've done, but I promise you, I will not forget this transgressi-" Fritzed out. Silence.

"…Bombs are off. Technofiend's muzzled," Sam's voice again, best thing I could've heard. I let go of Shivvy, and yanked the monstrous Jairo back to his feet, pulling him into a hug.

"You're a goddamn hero, man," I assured him as I felt his body shift to a human form. I fucking hate bombs.