Super Sales on Super Heroes: Book 2

Chapter 11 - Mobilized -

Felix stepped out of the elevator and found himself in the middle of a fantastic mess.

Felicia and White’s people were scurrying around in every direction. Loading crates, packing boxes, and generally making ready as if they were going into the field.

Everything was being shifted to a gigantic freight elevator in the back. It required both White and Felicia to unlock it to actually be used.

“Over here!” called the voice of Felicia from a corner.

Felix ducked his head at the shout and followed it.

He’d lost Lily somewhere along the way. He imagined she probably went to talk to her department for one reason or another.

Probably to get ready for the camera and prep anything legal-wise.

“Felicia, I’m not sure how many more times you can upgrade the suit before it hits a plateau,” he called out over the hubbub.

“Obviously there was at least one more, idiot. Get your scrawny ass over—oh, there you are. Stand in the bay,” Felicia said, stomping over to a large pod.

It was reminiscent to the medical pods she’d been building for the hospital ward.

“Uh, alright? And what is this going to do exactly?” Felix asked, stepping into the indicated position.

“Put your armor on, what else? You ask the stupidest questions sometimes. It’s a wonder we’re doing as well as we are,” Felicia grumped.

“You know what? I’m going to cut funding to your department one of these days. Just to see what you can do with a shoe-string and some gum,” Felix said, looking up into the darkness of the machine above him.

“No. You won’t. You like the toys I build you too much. Stop whining and put your arms down or you’ll lose them,” Felicia said, slapping a button he only noticed as she hit it.

“I’ll what!?” he shouted and pressed his arms down to his sides. “Swear to god, Felicia.”

The Dwarven woman snorted and moved to the other side, holding up a tablet.

“It’s more or less the same as your last one. Just better firmware and some onboard hardware. Nothing out of the ordinary. You’re so damn hard on everything though, I decided to shield it a bit more. That’s a bit more power draw than I thought it would be,” she said absentmindedly, staring at the tablet.

“What is? Wait, if this is the same suit, why this alcove thing?” Felix asked, still holding still.

Before she could answer, or choose to, the whole thing roared to life around him.

Metal doors slammed closed in front of him and shut him in the darkness. Felix felt his body being pressed in tight by padding, and then become rather chilly as his clothes simply ripped away. Unable to prevent a shriek from escaping, Felix wanted the ride to be over.

He also suddenly wondered if this was anything like the corpse-o-matic sausage machine.

Before he could finish that thought, the padding was pressing down on him again.

A series of rapid clicks and a hiss was the only warning he had before the entire thing opened up again and he was staring through his helmet at Felicia.

“Going to hurt you,” Felix said, his voice coming out at a natural volume through the helmet.

“No. You’re not,” Felicia said, looking up from her tablet. “Everything is fine. Your gear was already packed up. Sorry. I’ll have it shipped to the operational base. Get the fuck out of my lab.”

Waving her hand at him, Felicia wandered off, going about whatever it was she had been doing.

Mr. White stepped up and gave him a grin. “She must like you. Always takes the time to actually talk to you. Other than me, that’s rare.”

“Hm. Anything I need to know?” Felix asked, looking at White.

“No. It really is the same as the previous, just some upgrades in it. Anything you need?” White asked, holding up a tablet.

“No?” Felix replied without any confidence.

“Great. Use the elevator in the back, it’ll take you to the staging area.” White left as quickly as Felicia had.

I think I need to hire someone with a bit more of a social personality down here. Like an assistant or something.

Heh… or an Andrea.

Plotting his own version of revenge, Felix trod over to the elevator and waited with the crates.

He synced his system up with his phone and then dialed into Lily’s.

“Felix? What is it. I’m trying to get ready with my department,” came Lily’s voice

“I need to get a hold of the governor. Make sure he’s on board with us actually moving in to assist.”

“No one can find him. His lieutenant-governor has taken over for now but he’s not being proactive in the least. He’s honoring the deal we made with him, but he’s useless.”

“Damn. Get him to agree, just a yes in a written format, preferably with a signature. I’ll get everyone moving as if he had already done so. I’m going to go set up a forward operating base in the city. Probably a library or something mildly government based. Better sense of authority.”

“Alright, I’ll get on that. Are you heading back to your room or—”

“No, heading down to the staging area. You use the portal in my room. Signing off,” Felix said and promptly disconnected the call.

Pulling up the war-net, he activated the mobilization process formally.

All the lights immediately dimmed. Blue running lights came to life along the sides of the walls. On every display a single word showed up: “Mobilization”.

Five seconds later and the monitors returned to normal.

The freight elevator turned on, and took its load down to the staging area.

During that ride down, Felix began to contemplate a run for governor. It’d solve a number of problems, put him charge, and give him more than enough leeway to leverage Legion desires.

Felix for governor. Governor Campbell?

Governor.

Felix stared out at the streets below from the top of the library steps.

The early morning sun was providing them with some light to see by. A lot of their arrival and setup had all been done in the darkness with limited visibility.

This location wasn’t where the reporters were, though. That was elsewhere.

Far, far from here, the reporters were trying to interview refugees from the safety of the police barricades.

Where Lily was. Doing her job.

Being the face of Legion and putting on a show for the entire country to watch.

Watch a company take control of a city, quell a riot, return order to the city, and establish peace.

No, where Felix was was where the operation was actually being run from.

All along the perimeter of the library were his security forces. They were dressed in full gear for an assault or defense.

Kevlar enforced armor and helmets with automatic rifles in hand. The entire area was on lock-down. It was also where refugees were being directed, and funneled through manned barricades.

His people were screening the refugees for weapons, then sending them into the library to be processed.

Fixers were actively screening the refugees as they went by and were processed. Working alongside their armed counterparts in similar gear. They were discreetly tagging anyone of interest for one reason or another to be picked up. Those special people were grabbed by Telemedics and dropped at SC:HQ to the tender mercies of the rehabilitated Death Others.

Those survival-driven Andreas had taken it up as their personal duty after returning to Prime. They seemed ideal to be guards and interrogators. Loners who preferred to work in the dark and quiet with situations that seemed unpleasant. Felix could only imagine their personalities were skewed from being Death Others.

Not that they acted any different around him, but he didn’t doubt they were probably different.

When Legion arrived, Felix and his crew had quickly broken into the library. The basement was promptly cleared and pulled apart. It was now a fully functioning medical ward, and the entire building was a refugee center.

There was also a steady stream of Legion vehicles making runs from the library’s enclosed parking lot to the front line of the police barricades.

For the wounded who couldn’t wait, the Telemedic squads were making the leap from site to site.

Legion as a whole had gotten their formal approval from the lieutenant-governor in the form of a signed letter to act within the confines of the law to bring order to Tilen. Which meant Legion was free to act with impunity.

And illegally, provided there were no witnesses.

The sound of gunfire, distant shouting, and muffled thuds that were probably explosions could be heard. It was all coming from deeper in the city.

Once the power went out, and there wasn’t any possibility of getting it back on any time soon, sections of the city had broken down to rioting and looting.

“What a mess,” Felix muttered to himself, staring down the street.

“It really is,” Victoria said at his side. “Security teams are actively expanding the perimeter. Ioana is leading the way down the center towards the prison. They’re working with standard Rules of Engagement.”

“Remind me to put in weapon, armor, and supply caches throughout the city in our buildings. In fact, let’s buy buildings just to do that. If we had people stranded out here, this would have been the time it could have helped them,” Felix said.

“I’ll coordinate it with Kit and Lily,” Victoria said immediately.

Mentally Felix called up the war-net map and then reviewed it. The map was filled with dots. Blue, Red, and Green.

Blue was obviously their own people. Red were known locations of combatants. Green were noted refugees or holdouts operating in areas.

The Legion security dots were gradually, slowly, expanding through the city. They were taking the city back block by block.

Armored cars and Wardens were acting as the mechanized backbone, providing the hardened center that could soak up attention.

Suddenly Felix was quite happy he’d had the number of Wardens and Armored cars increased dramatically.

“Mm. Everything seems like it’s going in the right direction. I want to step off to the side for a second and check up on the other operation. Think you can play goalie here for a bit and keep people busy? Or at least out of my way?” Felix asked, turning to look at Victoria.

She nodded her head and rapped her knuckles against his breastplate. “I can do that, Felix. Just keep an ear out if I start calling for you.”

“Right, right,” Felix said. Waving his hand at her he took several steps towards a planter that put him out of line of sight from the street.

Felix then focused in on his war-net map, filtering out everything else from his mind. Multiple windows popped up in front of him as he opened up a number of items with a thought. Flipping through several maps, he found the one he wanted.

It was on a secure channel on the war-net, and buried under a clearance wall that only allowed him, Kit, and Lily to see it.

Eva, Miu, and a Fixer Kit sent along were in the process of infiltrating the guild of Heroes in Tilen. They’d been dropped into location from a portal. It opened up directly onto the roof of the guild.

Kit had dropped them there behind a screen of illusionary empty space. Kit literally was shielding them from being spotted while holding open a portal at the same time in case they needed to get out immediately.

Need to reward her. She’s putting in the work lately. Pavlov would be proud of me.

Clicking into the cameras that each of the three were wearing he checked each one. He wanted to get a better view of the situation.

Settling on Eva’s viewing frame, he found he could see most of what was going on.

Miu was holding what looked like a penlight and was drawing circles on the roof over and over. The same circle repeatedly and endlessly.

Felix watched for a moment before pinging Lily with a screen-capped image of the action. The attached was only “What?”

He figured it’d get his point across enough. If she saw it in time.

Chances were she’d probably see it much later since she was working the PR angle right now.

Switching back to the live view from Eva he couldn’t really tell if there was any change. Deciding not to sit there and wait, he flipped to the camera for Ioana.

He got a view of a street, with manned barricades at the end of it. Ioana was storming down towards them at a dead sprint. Behind the barricade were men and women in colored jumpsuits on the other side. They’d armed themselves and were clearly resistant to surrendering and being taken into custody.

In fact, one of them threw a Molotov cocktail that burst into liquid fire out in front of Ioana.

She simply ran through it and burst out the other side.

Felix waited for a few seconds more as Ioana leapt over the barricade.

It was long enough to watch a sword swing into view from the side and cleave someone’s head from their shoulders, before he switched again.

Don’t need to watch a snuff movie right now. Enough of that on Reddit.

Grunting, Felix disconnected from the war-net. He closed almost everything down to a base desktop level and then opened up a web connection.

He tapped into the live broadcasts on the internet and flipped to the news. He wanted to know how the coverage of the event was being handled, and if he needed to do anything more. He trusted Lily implicitly, but he would never be anything if not paranoid.

The player paused for a moment and buffered the feed.

“—ing to help everyone in the city,” said Lily as the screen popped open in front of him. “I know our CEO is on the scene himself and working to bring order to the situation. Our entire goal is to bring peace and order to the city.”

She looked amazing. She normally didn’t go all in on the makeup and dressing to accentuate her looks, she was a bit of a natural beauty, but she’d clearly put in the time for this one.

“Ah. That’s a relief to hear, though I wonder, is it really Legion’s place to do this? This almost seems like something more suited to the national guard. In fact, most would say you’re acting the part of a private military company,” said the newscaster, then pointed the microphone back at Lily.

“It isn’t our place to be here. We don’t deny that and regret our involvement. The moment the government, national guard, or a federal agency shows up, we’ll be happy to turn over everything to them. We’re a company with a security team, not a military force.

“Right now we’re acting as an emergency stop-gap measure. A relief group to provide aid and safety. The governor could not be found when we started to ask around to find out what was going on. The rest of his people were sitting on their hands waiting for help to come to them rather than seeking it when we finally got a hold of someone,” Lily said. Her tone was pleasant, even if her words were acidic.

There was no mistaking that as Legion’s spokesperson, she was laying the blame squarely at the feet of the local government.

“We stepped in because no one was doing anything, though we did get permission first from the lieutenant-governor. We’re acting well within the limits that were given to us, and are holding to the very letter of the law,” Lily concluded.

“Of course. That makes sense,” the newscaster said, looking into the camera. “We’ve also received word that the Heroes guild won’t be able to assist as they’re currently combating the Villains who caused this situation.”

Lily laughed with a silken voice at that, drawing the attention of the newscaster and the camera back to her.

“The Villains didn’t cause the situation. The situation was caused when the guild decided to put a prison in the middle of Tilen. Right next to a power plant no less. One need look no further than who made that zoning happen to find responsibility,” Lily said, and left it at that.

The question that everyone would ask who saw this broadcast would be the same.

Who was responsible for this situation then? Who approved that jail?

Most would find fault with either the local government, or the heroes guild, or both. No one else could have allowed the prison.

Perfect. There’s no reason she would bring that up unless she could implicate the governor and lieutenant-governor.

Felix grinned and then turned off the monitor. That was more than enough already.

Half of taking power was eliminating whatever power base would support the official. The other half was the speed with which you could do it and hold the purse strings.

There was no second place in politics after all.

In this case, support was the constituents. A governor was of course an elected position, whose power base was built off of voting blocks.

Next will be attacking the group of essential backers that are holding the governor and lieutenant-governor in place. That’d be whoever is funding them, and whatever business is gaining. Leaders of voting blocks, businesses, or religious leaders.

I’ll pin that one back to Lily for later. For now… I’ll just send an email to the marketing team to get them working on a ‘Felix for governor’ build up.

Start framing this whole thing as a failure to protect the citizens and how Legion could do better, and already has.

I imagine Lily already knows exactly how this came to be and whatever measure was passed for it to happen. They’ll need to sync up to get the right ads out.

Elections are only a few months away and this’ll be a firebrand to burn them with, and set myself up as governor.

Finishing up that email, Felix flipped back to the war-net map of Tilen to review what had changed in the last few minutes.

His forces had expanded out to the police cordon on each side. The rear had already been secured.

The rest of the push would be straight into where the prison break occurred. Re-establish peace and allow work crews to get in and start restoring power to the people.

Everything really was on track and going according to the plan.

Which means this is where it goes wrong, isn’t it?

Cycling to Eva on the war-net, he opened up her camera.

Miu was still using the pen-light on the roof, but there was now a clear difference. A thin line of blue energy was spiraling round and round in the same spot Miu was working. The energy was cycling downward at the same time, slowly sinking into the roof itself.

Then all of a sudden, the section of the roof that she’d been working on fell inward. Light flooded up from the hole and bathed Miu’s face.

She had an evil grin spread from cheek to cheek.

Miu dove into the hole headfirst. The Fixer followed behind, then Eva.

Turning off the camera, he found he couldn’t watch. His stomach had flipped over and twisted in on itself.

Felix wasn’t a brave man, he wouldn’t watch what could be his people diving into a trap or worse.

Changing the screen back to the news, he did his best to not think on it. For now, there wasn’t much to do but wait.