[center][img]http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo63/NMShape/coollogo_com-8436315_zpsd02f9fa5.png[/img][/center] The older man squinted, trying to look at the other man in the darkness on the porch. With only a fairly distant street light to aid visibility he could barely make out his clothes in the darkness. Black tracksuit, balaklava... “I never would have given it to you.” He spat. “I’d never aid and abet a terrorist.” Accusatory. That was new. Isaac thought. But I’d delivered the same line. The same exact way. To the same exact person in the same exact situation. How is that possible? What’d he say last time? “What are you, some kind of terrorist.” Then you said “Maybe in the war on crime...” Cheesy. Yeah. Maybe it’s best we’re not working from script... [b]“I’m not a terrorist.”[/b] Isaac replied, whilst the older man glared. [b]“You know all those heroes you’ve got running around these days, stopping robberies, getting cats down from trees, helping your elderly arse cross the street? I’m one of them.”[/b] “Then how come I’ve never seen you before?” the older man fired back. [b]“’Cos I’m not from around here.”[/b] “I’ll say...” he scoffed in disbelief. The seconds were interminable as the two stared each other off on the porch. Need a different tack, Isaac thought. He held the grenade out again. [b]“This is an M67 casing. Before I met you I didn’t even know what it was. You created this makeshift bomb and designed it in an ingenious way that allows me to remove explosive from the device for the specific situation at hand. It could take out—“[/b] “Half a block. So you said.” [b]“No. Or do little more than take out a wall if I remove enough. You created segmented lines INSIDE of the casing so that I could measure it out in the field and told me what each amount could do. YOU created the fuse device—“[/b] “So you say...” [b]“And I knew you had a Desert Eagle because it was your favourite damn handgun and you tried to put one in my hands every time I saw you. ‘Best dayum handgun in the world!’ you used to say.”[/b] Isaac tried to emulate his accent, failing miserably in the way it came through the voice modulator. [b]“Gas-operated. So it’s a Big boys toy whilst taking the good solid feel of a regular semi-automatic pistol. Felt good in your hands, but could still reel off a .44 Magnum, .357 or .50 AE. Don’t ask me what AE means, I never asked so you never felt the need to tell me...”[/b] “Action Express...” The old man mumbled. [b]“What?”[/b] “Action Express. .50 AE are amongst the most powerful pistol cartridges getting produced in the world. They barely skirt within US law... and a Desert Eagle with a .50 AE mag and suitable barrel falls under BATFE’s definition of a ‘destructive device’ just as if you were carrying a grenade, shotgun, poison gas or an RPG...” The older man continued to look Isaac up and down, as if to evaluate what he’d seen or heard. “But I suppose that wouldn’t be a concern for someone like you, if you are what you claim to be...” Isaac took the clip and threw it into the bushes under the porch. Considering the gun he led in his hand. Big gambit. [b]“In another world. Another life. You and I were friends. I worked with a bunch of metahumans. They included this Icon guy who turned up just last week, you probably saw him on the news. We formed a squad. So that we could start handling some of the bigger problems that this world threw at us in an organised manner. Government jumped on board. They gave us you. In my world I knew you as ‘Colonel Gunny Bracken’, I’m betting that’s not the first time you’ve heard it. You were charged with the role of equipping us, and... well, since I’m the one who couldn’t fly or shoot energy bolts, or wield a flaming sword... you tended to deal most with me.”[/b] Isaac flipped the gun around and handed it to the older man. [b]“All I want to do-- All I ever wanted to do... Is help. And in this world today, your help will allow me to do that.”[/b] The older man stepped back after taking the gun, as if to consider everything laid out before him. Isaac knew exactly what was to come. ‘You’re a good actor old man.’ He thought to himself. “Y’know... for someone who I talk to so much about guns. You don’t seem to understand one of the very basic principles of a semi-automatic weapon...” the gun barrel raised. “...you took the mag. But there’s still one in the chamber.” Isaac held his hands out. Knowing this moment was going to come did very little to ease the tension from the scene. Right now ‘New’ would be bad. Very bad. [b]“Well... there’s a reason you always used to try and put one in my hands—“[/b] Isaac admitted [b]“—it’s because I never carried a gun.”[/b] Small white lie, but generally true... “That’s crazy.” He muttered. “Even police carry one and they have strength in numbers.” [b]“So you’ve been known to say...”[/b] Isaac returned with a laugh in his voice. [b]“I always went in strictly non-lethal. Even this—“[/b] Isaac held the grenade full of semtex out. [b]“—was for tactical use, not lethal intention. It’s the same thing I’m asking now. If you feel uneasy, I don’t want any lethal ordnance.”[/b] “You have a grenade casing full of high explosive!” Hissed the Colonel. “How on earth do you propose to use that in a ‘non-lethal’ capacity.” [b]“Spoken like someone who’s never seen me work...”[/b] Isaac returned with a wry grin spotlighted from within his balaklava, teeth glistening in the moonlight. [b]“You’d be surprised just how often bringing a building down saves lives.”[/b] The older man looked over the barrel sceptically at the man in black. [b]“All I want to do is help.”[/b] “You said that.” [b]“And all I’m asking for is non-lethal ordnance.”[/b] “That too.” The two men stood in silence. Interminable seconds passed. “How?” the old man finally grunted, almost inaudible under his breath, never wavering with his aim. [b]“I have a dropbox behind the Museum of Supers in Sherman Square. Garbage bin, if you bring a duffel or something heavy you can slide it along the ground through the side of the bin and it’ll make its way to a pick-up spot I have.”[/b] “How am I supposed to get there with the funeral going on?” “Funeral?” Isaac thought to himself. Not wanting to give away his ignorance. [b]“I have enough for now. Whenever you are able to make a drop will just have to do. Beggers can’t be choosers.”[/b] “And beggers can get the hell off my porch, before I question my judgement and put a hole in you.” The Colonel grumbled. Isaac took his cue and left. Striding down the front path, out the gate and across the street. He knew the old man would watch him all the way, so he made an exit; walking through a shadowy area and pulling out his grapple line to seemingly disappear. Then he felt it. A sensation like something had just grabbed him around the waist from behind and yanked him. The street disappeared beneath him, then so did the city, then Maine, the Eastern Seaboard, the entire continent, the world, then the sun and new and different stars went whizzing past. Places he couldn’t name because they’d never been given one, even if he could recognize them (which he couldn’t). Twinkling stars became streaking lines of light. Somehow, for the second time in his life, he could breathe whilst in the great expanse of space. But this would be impossible. Tilting his head back, he tried to look around him to see how this could be so but immediately felt sick from the light show of stars blinking into and out of view. No more streaks. Now simply there one second and gone so fast he wasn’t sure he’d ever even seen them. A sense of déjà vu. Then the streaks appeared behind him again. Whatever was happening, he was slowing. Not that that said much, he was still going faster than he ever thought possible. Then suddenly he was inside. How that happened was a mystery. He was in a place. Protected from space suddenly, he could never see it coming because he couldn’t bring himself to look ahead of where he was going due to the motion sickness. He’d slowed to a pace that allowed him to come to a smooth landing. Then his legs gave out underneath him. He dropped to his knees and retched all over the floor, his stomach settling almost instantly in the process. He looked around and saw two... creatures. He thought. He didn’t know what the hell else to call them. Bolbous masses with tendrils, tentacles and a puckered toothless hole which Isaac incorrectly assumed was the mouth. One creature ran away from behind him, Isaac realising he’d just had some kind of device put on his head while he vomited. To control me? Pacify me? [b]“OK. Not to pacify. To translate.”[/b] A device on the other side of the room made a seemingly incomprehensible squeals and grunts. Getting to his feet, Isaac tried to fully comprehend his predicament as he surveyed the room around him. [b]“Well, this is by far the most unlikely thing that’s ever happened to me...”[/b] He wiped the vomit from his mouth with his sleeve. Can’t have an alien race thinking we’re all a bunch of disgusting slobs. [b]“...And that’s saying a lot.”[/b]