I think in one of the new Star Wars movies an Imperial guy (I thought they beat the Empire in the first trilogy but I guess not) was whining about how if they had built more ships instead of wasting money on Death Stars they’d have won the war. I don’t know what SHIELD’s annual budget is but it has to be the same type of scenario for helicarriers. It’s an obscene cost for a questionable benefit. I’m sure for that same budget line item they could find, recruit, train, and slap metal wrist-things on dozens of daughters of various D-list supervillains. There’s plenty because those guys get around.
But they don’t do that, instead they build helicarriers because flying fortresses are cool as fuck. Very easily damaged turbines that create the ever-present threat of dying in a horrible crash, legions of armed agents to secretly be HYDRA foot soldiers or Ultron-Bots, and a fleet of those super-awesome very stealable planes that can turn invisible and go to space and shit? What’s not to love?
I’ve been trying to tell this story as it happened without jumping ahead but I’m tired of that. It Girl was the traitor. Actually It Girl wasn’t It Girl at all but we’ll get to that.
Maybe I should have figured that out the 10th time “she” came to me asking how to flirt with men to complete her assignment but I thought she was just a useless social media person who doesn’t know how to do anything so it didn’t raise any red flags. Having 7.6 million followers doesn’t mean you have any charisma in the real world. Usually the opposite.
She got the job done eventually but teaching her how to seduce information by proxy was annoying. It was nice to have Benny hanging around at that time so I could complain to him about her. He’s a dork but he’s kind of fun to be around with and when it comes to sex he really tries.
Once Not It Girl had the information on where the helicarrier was going to land for supplies, namely deep in the Chihuahuan Desert, because that’s the kind of place covert people love to do stuff, it was time to put the plan into action.
Jammer and Magnum Master had stripped the suits down so they were generic looking but I know that I had Pom-Poms (who may or may not have named herself after a Super Mario character) because that was the only lady powersuit out the five we had stolen. Obviously it wouldn’t have fit me otherwise. That’s why there’s so few female tech villains, our dang boobs get in the way. It has nothing to do with women being discouraged from pursuing STEM education.
The worst part was waiting while the helicarrier was on the ground loading supplies. It took them forever. It was so boring we almost died. I was expecting a little more military precision out of an organization like SHIELD. They are part of the military right?
Once the helicarrier finally took off we made our move. At first everything went exactly as planned, we breached and were detected in the way I wanted, we waited for the security protocols to engage, we took control of the security protocols. I wasn’t even worried when I saw that “It Girl” was not following the plan. I had slaved the other four suits to mine for just such a betrayal.
The problems began when I realized that someone else had already stolen the helicarrier.
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My job was to head to section 6 – engineering/reactor – and install a device on the computers there controlling the engines. I was on my way and everything seemed to be going fine until Helen contacted me and said that It Girl had betrayed us and there were unknown enemies in control of the helicarrier already.
Helen instructed me to divert to the secure lab and await further instructions and not to contact Jammer or Magnum Master until she could confirm whose side they were on. I won’t lie, I got a little choked up when I realized that meant that I was the only one she trusted. “Maybe she does love me back!” I thought to myself.
Two seconds later I went around the corner and coming the other way was a Superman looking dude in a black outfit holding a thing that looked like a PlayStation Move Motion wand. He seemed like one of those guys from an alternate reality where the Nazis won WW2. The look on his face was “WTF you’re not a SHIELD guy” so I gave him a “yep, we’re both doing our evil jobs on the same side” nod and tried to walk on by him.
I wonder if it would have worked if I didn’t have a powersuit on and he could have seen my face. I also wonder if without the suit I would have died when he blasted me with lightning from his PlayStation princess wand. The suit locked up on me and a lot of it melted where the bolt hit. I crashed to the ground with a clatter.
He may have looked like Superman but Captain Axis was no superman, he couldn’t even rip the faceplate off the suit I was wearing. That was a little funny. The look on his face when I punched him in the ribs was very funny. You have to be very strong to move in an un-powered powersuit and I just so happens that I am very strong.
While he was wheezing on the ground I thought about breaking his wand but I worried that it might explode if I did that so I just tucked it in my suit-hole. It was fried but Helen had given us back-up comms so I asked her what to do with the dude. She said that I was right by the brig and I should toss him in there. She’s so smart.
When I tossed broken ribs Captain Axis into a cell, I noticed Red Warrior in one of the other pods. While I was trying to remember if Red Warrior was the Soviet Super-Soldier who became a good guy after watching Rocky 4 or the American guy who pretended to a Soviet Super-Soldier to rob banks and then became a good guy, I was also trying to remember which one of them went back to being a villain (it was both FYI). Before I could remember either thing I was backstabbed by a sword that went through the suit like it wasn’t there.
Getting stabbed is never fun but I saw that the stabber was a lady ninja. How cool is that? Getting stabbed by a ninja is already pretty damn cool, but a lady ninja? Come on.
“Is that a void sword?” I asked her “That is awesome.”
“I should have aimed for the head” she muttered.
Rocket Cat 