Earlier...
“So here’s the layout. K.O.R.D’s part of the display floor is over here.”All of the future senior partners of the Farley Fleeter Advertising Agency leaned forward to study the schematics of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
“Where’s the suit?” Asked the copyboy.
“Well if all things go according to plan, then it will likely be either here, in the trunk of this car K.O.R.D’s setting up on the showroom. Or here.” Fleeter pointed at different spots on the map, and then stood up and walked away whilst everyone else looked closer at where he had been pointing.
“What if it’s none of these? What if someone’s wearing it? You know, for a demonstration?”
“Good point. I’ve organized a pulse rifle, stowed off in the fire hose segment that’s marked with an ‘X’. So just to make things clear. Five on the floor, or four of you and myself. Sixth is the wheelman. And then we have one here watching the main door, floating in case cops or capes have a faster response time than we’ve planned. The name of the game is efficiency and speed. The five enter in costume disguise at the marked egress points, re-group on the pulse rifle ‘X’. We then move quickly to the K.O.R.D segment of the floor. We fire once to cause disruption and a show of force. Then we only use the threat of the pulse rifle to get the location of the B.E.E.T.L.E suit out of them. If they give up the suit, we take it, nobody gets hurt. The five exit here to the car. The pulse rifle then is used only as a deterrent to prevent anyone following. The floater gets the door. The six get in the van. We leave. Speed and efficiency.” Farley Fleeter said as he swirled his rye, standing off to the side and talking through the plan.
“Alternatively, the B.E.E.T.L.E suit is being worn in a demonstration. This gets more messy and we have to be ready for it. The five with the pulse rifle enter. We blast the suit. The five create multiple targets. Our keys to success here are speed, agility and creating confusion. We blast a hole in the suit. We carry the suit out with the body still in it between four of us, with the fifth using the pulse rifle to maintain the deterrent. The floater gets the door. We put the armour in the van and go.”Fleeter drained his glass, before he continued.
“Messy. Undesirable. But we have to be ready for the possibility.”The Ad men looked at each other.
“We’re going to have to shoot someone?” One of the two phone bank workers asked.
“Well, we’re certainly going to be firing the pulse rifle. I want that understood by all of you right now. If only because the initial show of force will keep bystanders from doing anything stupid. I’ve got a place out past Albany where we can practise fire it. Get everyone here used to the kick and the sound. But if someone’s in the suit, yes. I can’t see anyway around shooting them to take the suit. It’s supposed to be extremely durable though. So just because we down the suit doesn’t mean we’ve killed whoever’s wearing it. Who knows, maybe we can strip them out of the suit in the van and dump them on the way.”Farley Fleeter dropped in more ice and poured himself another. He turned and addressed the elephant in the room, which made everyone uncomfortable.
“But yes. We don’t stop shooting until the suit stops moving. There’s no way around that.”N E W Y O R K S C I E N C E E X P O
Present Day, Earlier Tonight | Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, Manhattan, New YorkTed lifted his head gingerly. He could hear screaming, a firefight and the din of a fleeing crowd. Everything happens so fast. He pushed himself up onto his forearms. So much happens you can barely understand how you act or why. That’s why Ted strangely peered out across the showroom floor, he saw colourful crazies bouncing around trying to take down the B.E.E.T.L.E suit. He saw the huge clock across the other side of the showroom. He saw wafting heat rise off of their weapon’s blast, and from the suit’s rocket boots.
Ted looked to the left and right of him. The Stark model who had been on the car had sensibly fled. He grunted, took his tuxedo and shirt off and tore the white undergarment clear off. He put his gloves on with some care and peeked over the platform again to survey the fight. He pulled his cowl on and snapped his B.B. gun back together. Ready for action.
With armoured suits and pulse rifle fire? Maybe not.
Ted inhaled and exhaled deeply. His side hurt from being slammed into the wall, but there was no time to dwell on that. He hurdled the platform, and felt another blast of heat coming from his left. For a second Ted thought his goose was cooked and he’d lost track of the number of coloured costumed fighters, but this was something else again. The green haired woman who had been with Stark was now completely ablaze with emerald coloured flame. She sent a blast after the pulse rifle, whilst Ted sprinted for cover.
Ted dived and rolled behind a partition. He turned and found himself looking at two of the colourful costumed fighters. Ted let out a bright flash from his B.B. gun, stunning both. He fired out a tazer line into one, dropping a purple and yellow faced goon, whilst kicking the other green and red one in the chest. The Blue Beetle dropped the tazer unit as the purple and yellow one still convulsed, and loaded another fresh electrical cartridge into his B.B. gun.
The fight started to sweep back across the showroom, and Ted took cover as it came back towards him, readying himself for his next move. He let them pass before stepping out and firing a sonic blast from his B.B. gun, knocking another two off balance, following up with an acrobatic combination of kicks and punches. Pain seized up his arm. The green flamed metahuman looked at him and he waved her through to the final leader of these colourful crooks and the B.E.E.T.L.E suit, where they were blasting at one another with powerful weapons by the platform with the two cars. She laid down covering fire as the Blue Beetle rushed up. He fired another Sonic burst at the solid metal suit to no effect, before turning his B.B. gun back on the Madmen’s leader.
...but it had no juice left. Ted threw the B.B. gun in desperation and scrambling, he dove for the platform. The pulse rifle was swung in his direction. The Blue Beetle found the key fob and turned. Letting out a sonic blast that launched the Ad man a solid dozen feet, where he fell in a crumpled heap.
Ted rocked his head back and breathed a sigh of relief. He saw the clock once more.
“Hey! Aaa--aaay you!” Ted yelled to the man in the B.E.E.T.L.E armour. Covering poorly for his knowledge of the man in the armoured outfit.
The B.E.E.T.L.E’s rocket boots fired up as he went to make his hasty getaway through the ceiling once more.
“Nope… not going to happen.” Ted looped a length of cable around the armour and ducked away from the jet boots’ blast, clinging to the cable. He’d turned away too slowly, however, as the jet blast scorched part of his cowl. The B.E.E.T.L.E soared up through the hole in the roof, with Kord in tow by cord. Once the pair burst through the roof, Ted let go, not wanting to be dropped at high altitude. He performed a gymnastic tuck and roll on top of the roof, finding his way back to his feet and glared at the flying suit.
“ABE!” He yelled. Not caring who knew anymore. Far above the Convention Center and unable to be heard over the din of the city below.
The suit stopped and hovered.
“AAAAAAABE!”
The helmet of the B.E.E.T.L.E looked back over its shoulder. It was a truly terrifying sight.
Ted hurt. His left lens was covered with black soot. He was starting to think he’d probably broken a rib or two when he was slammed against the wall by the armour, and he’d hurt his arm punching one of the colourful Madmen in the face. He cradled his sore arm to take the pressure off, as if it were in a sling.
The B.E.E.T.L.E floated back towards him.
“Your father.” Abner said, as the helmet opened up.
“Respect for your father is the only reason I let you walk away. He was a great man. He built something brilliant. And you’re destroying it by inches.”Ted tilted his head back and opened his mouth to say something, and stopped and sighed instead. Apparently either too sore or too tired to respond.
“You thought I didn’t know who you were? Even if you weren’t using THAT tech, even if you didn’t go diving for the keys knowing exactly how they worked, EVEN if this wasn’t the EXACT kind of immature reaction to an imperfect world that anyone who knows you would expect from you… You came up from behind me after I knocked you against the wall in the corner. You were the only one there.” Jenkins’ voice smacked with the contempt of a man dealing with an unruly child.
Ted willed himself to respond.
“Wow. That’s really smart, Abe. So what’s the play? Suddenly the world sees how effective your suit can be. The demand tilts for your suit? Suddenly you’re pressuring me with the shareholders response?”“They’ve seen it, Ted. It worked with Stark and his Iron Man. It’ll work with us. That’s what you never understood. Fortune favours the bold, Kord. You never learned that. You’re a lousy executive.” Abner Jenkins felt better, larger as he said all of the things he’d felt and wanted to say, but had bottled up for so long.
Ted looked off to the distance, his head rolling. He looked exhausted. Cooked.
“You’re right.” He mumbled.
“What was that?” Jenkins called back, holding a metal glove to his ear, he would relish this moment.
“Just trying to make sure I heard you right.”“7 minutes, 37.4 seconds. 42,200 Newton force.” Ted muttered.
“What?!” Jenkins yelled back across the rooftop, now really not having heard what Kord was saying.
“You’re right. I’m a lousy executive. I’ve been scrapping and hustling and trying to learn on the run.”“...but I’m one Hell of an engineer. And I remember things I see. Like the early schematics for your B.E.E.T.L.E armour. Capable of generating 42,200 Newton force. Designed for dealing with different gravity and pressure levels than we would normally experience. For interplanetary travel.”“What are you--”“And a vehicle travelling at Mach 3, from Boston to New York, as the crow flies, allowing for getting to safe altitude for supersonic travel, take-off included. My math has that at 7 minutes 34, 35, 36…”“Wait-- what have you-- HNNNNN!” Abner was suddenly slapped from behind by a large metal disc and jerked upwards.
“What you’re experiencing now is an industrial electromagnet which I juiced up a bit. Regular junkyard crane can generate 1 Tesla, or about 13,000 to 13,340 Newton force. This one here? 5 Tesla. You may not like what I say, but you can’t fight physics and raw mathematics.” Ted started to walk gingerly across the rooftop towards the man in the metal suit.
“The reason I let you talk so much Abner, is because this is your exit interview. I’m extremely disappointed with you. I can’t stress that enough.”Struggling in vain with no success whatsoever, Abner Jenkins completely lost his cool.
“Errraargh! Forget what I said about your father! I’m going to kill you! I’m going to make it my--”“No, you’re not, Abner. You’re going to drop this, like you should have when it first came up. Do you know why?” Ted walked right up next to his spread eagle former CFO.
“Because at the moment, I’m going to make sure Mim’s still gets access to your 401k. You know I don’t have to. You know that… all of this... Certainly justifies pulling that away from you. But I’m not going to. You put in decades of good work. Work for your family. You’ve already made me do more than I wanted to, Jenkins. Please. Let it end here.”Abner Jenkins scowled, his anger was palpable.
“It’s been a long day, and I’m tired.” Ted said.
“But if I so much as get an inkling that you’re not done with this, I will pull it. I'm not a vindictive man, but that's my leverage here. I need you to convince me.”There was a few seconds of hesitation, but that was just ego. Abner didn’t have a play here and he knew it.
“Alright.” He relented with a grizzled tone.
“You won’t get any moves made against you from me.”Ted put his head back and sighed.
“I don’t like how you phrased that, but I guess if nobody leaves happy then we’ve probably got a good deal.”“So you’re going to let me down now?” He asked.
“What? No.” Ted chuckled.
“No, I’m not letting you go now. I’m letting you go down there, where the police are interested in knowing all parties who opened fire in a crowded convention hall. But you will have access to the best lawyers K.O.R.D can buy. We’ll do what we can do for you, but then you’re going to serve whatever time you’re due, and then you’re going to resign.”“None of these points are negotiable. But you do all that, you keep your pension and stock options. I’ll see to it.”Abner Jenkins looked at him with skepticism. Upside down skepticism. Whilst being stuck to a disc.
“What? What are you looking at me like that for?” Ted asked.
“Are you really going to suggest that the board wouldn’t see it as in character for me to make a soft move like let you keep your pension and portfolio? That’s what got us in this mess in the first place.”Jenkins snorted. Then chuckled. Then broke down and outright laughed.
Ted stepped back and started to remote control the Bug and it’s electromagnet, lowering it to the street far below.
“Hello.” A soft feminine voice came from behind him.
The Blue Beetle jerked around with a start and clutched his heart, before feeling relieved when he saw who it was. It was the woman in the blue cocktail dress from earlier.
“Geez-- Don’t do that! You nearly gave me a heart attack.”“You did well.” She said in a Scandinavian accent.
“Uhh, thanks?” Ted replied, going back to lowering the electromagnet.
“I guess?”“This is going to sound like a strange request. But I’m going to have to ask you to strip down.”“Umm, I’m flattered I guess. But no.”“Ah. You don’t understand. You see. I froze the doors down there, but eventually they are going to get through. The police and paramedics. And when they do, they are going to expect to see Mr Ted Kord down there, behind that car, wearing his tuxedo. And when they do, they’re going to take him away and put him in an ambulance for precautionary reasons. And then they will find… well.” She gestured to his costume.
“Ah, I see. Well, even then, I still can’t just GIVE you my outfit. You must think I’m pretty dumb to just hand over my gear to one of Tony Stark’s girls.”“Ugh.” She winced.
“I am NOT one of Tony Stark’s girls. I’m a member of the Global Guardians, a section of the international taskfor-- you know what, you don’t need to know that. In short, I work for a group who protect key private citizens and diplomatic figures of importance. Mr Stark was involved in some… complications with the nation of Trasnia. But, if you know anything about Mr Stark, he can be a most difficult man. He was refusing the services of the Global Guardians unless he got to hand-pick his protectors.” The young woman explained.
“So he picked two based on how good you both look in--”“Ugh. Yes. He is a pig. My partner Bea seems to be a lot more willing to play along, you saw her earlier.”“Green flame girl.” Ted described.
“Yes. That’s her. She was resolving the situation whilst I made sure Mr Stark safely got to his car and away.”Ted made sure the police had Abner Jenkins secured safely on the ground below, before turning off the electromagnet, and raising its line back up into the Bug far above him.
“That may well even be the case, but I still don’t know anything about you. You come here with Tony Stark, and now you’re trying to take my suit.” He further explained his reservations.
“My name is Tora Olafsdotter, and when I work they call me Ice Maiden.”She walked over to the hole in the roof and created an ice slide down to the showroom below.
“Ted Kord, I promise you I’ll return your outfit as soon as all of this calms down.” She looked at him and seemed sincere, but Ted looked back at her with no small amount of skepticism. He sent the Bug home on autopilot and logged his glove command out. The only way to remote control the Bug now would be to reconnect the glove’s circuitry to the system by reinstating the signal. Which should be too difficult to crack, if anyone was interested in doing so in the first place.
Ted removed his cowl, he removed the rest of his Blue Beetle suit, leaving it at her feet on the roof as he stood in his boxer shorts in the night time chill, more than a little self conscious.
“My B.B. gun should be down there too.” Ted said, pointing down to roughly where he dropped it.
Tora and Ted slid down to the showroom floor, where Ted began to get dressed again.
“I can’t see it.” Tora said.
“It should be near the unconscious guy with the red face and the yellow wig. In the techni-colour dream shirt.” He said, not looking as he pulled up his pants.
“There’s no one here like that. In fact. None of those multi-coloured people are here.”Ted sighed, of course they got away.
“Yeah, your friend’s not here either.”“Bea? She's probably just checked in on Stark.”“You don’t have comms?” Ted asked, tapping his ear.
“We did, but when she flames… Pffft!” Tora made a sound effect simulating the ear piece going up in flames.
“Well, that should be easy enough to counter just by using-- Sorry. Not the time.” Ted censored the engineering side of his brain.
Tora was turning over fallen objects and debris.
“You’re taking having your tech stolen very well for someone who just a few minutes ago wouldn’t trust me with his outfit.”“It’s no biggie. I can whip up another one pretty quickly, and the B.B. gun’s no good without me anyway. It’s just an expensive paperweight to anybody else.” He said, buttoning up his shirt.
“The ‘B.B. gun’?” Tora asked, smiling at him.
“Yeah.” Ted’s cheeks flushed.
“You were around Stark long enough. Boys and our toys. Overcompensating. Giving them names.”“Well from what I can tell, you are nothing like Tony Stark. And whether you believe it or not, that’s a good thing.”Ted’s face turned a darker shade of red. And not just because the top button on his tailored shirt was a little tighter than comfortable as he re-tied his tie.
“I think you’re right. It’s gone. You’re going to have to back up your talk now and make yourself another one.” “That’s alright. It’ll give me something to do in my hotel room. It’s good to have a hobby.”Tora nodded, and straightened up, hands on her hips.
“I should get out of here. Make sure we get your B.B. Suit clear from when the police get here and do their sweep. Did I say that right?”“No, it doesn’t work like that. B.B. gun is a play on words. You know ‘Pew! Pew!’ like the kid’s toy?” Ted said, making finger-guns.
“Wow. You really weren’t joking. Boys and their toys.” She replied with a smile, forming another layer on her ice slide to carry her back up through the roof. Ted sat on the cars’ platform and watched her go. He gave a smile and a feeble wave as she slid through the roof and away.
A few minutes later, the police and medical emergency services breached the frozen door.
H O M E W O O D S U I T E S B Y H I L T O N N Y / M I D T O W N
Later That Night | Manhattan, New YorkTed was sitting at a small table in his hotel room, working out the rudimentary circuitry for a new B.B. gun. A lamp lit his work. He’d answered a battery of questions first from paramedics, then from police and finally from Murray Takamoto. One of which was “I saw you dive over to save that car model, did you get her number?” Followed by several more tips and suggestions along the lines of “OK, but you should have got her number.” completely oblivious or insensitive to the mayhem that had been unfolding around them at the time.
Abner Jenkins was being held at the local precinct. The B.E.E.T.L.E suit taken as evidence. Ted had kept his word, he’d made the calls and organized a legal team for him and handled early media obligations well.
“Well, Abner Jenkins has been a hard worker and a good man known to my company, and furthermore my family, for 4 decades. Can we even be certain that he was the one responsible for this? At this point we’re doing all we can to get to the bottom of what exactly happened tonight, and until we have more information it just doesn’t make sense to comment at this time.” Using his minor injuries as an excuse for not talking further.
It was a late night, and had been a long day, but with how it ended he still had an adrenaline spike. Which is why he was still tinkering away, despite medical advice that he get a good night’s sleep. His phone had been blowing up with well wishes and friends checking on him, but short of a form reply that explained his few injuries and wish to get some rest he’d largely been leaving it unattended.
Suddenly a crisp wrapping on his door broke the stark silence and smell of hot metal. Ted got to his feet and looked through his peephole and saw nobody there. He stepped away from the door and thought for a second. He went back to the table and grabbed the hot soldering iron, unplugging the cord and wrapping it around his arm. It was a poor weapon, but here he was starved for choice. He grabbed the door handle and yanked the heavy door open part of the way...
And came face to face with Tora. She was off duty now and wearing plain clothes.
“Hi?” He stammered out.
“I was tossing up whether I should just leave the paper bag here and just knock and walk away, but then Bea said I wouldn’t have the guts to come up here and see you again, so…” Tora wrestled with her explanation.
Ted looked down both lengths of the hallway and finished what he hoped was her sentence for her.
“Also it’s a paper bag containing… that… and if I didn’t hear you knock it would probably be best if it weren’t just left sitting there for some employee or someone else staying at the hotel to find?”“We got fired.”“What?”“Well, I got fired. Bea kind of just blew up and quit afterwards.”Ted opened the door to his room and gestured for Tora to come in. She obliged and stepped inside.
“What were you going to do with that?” She laughed, pointing at the soldering iron he was gripping, with it’s cord wrapped around his arm.
“I don’t know. I got a knock I wasn’t expecting. No one was there when I looked through the peephole. I’ve had enough people today trying to kill me. So how’d you lose your job?”“Oh. I put Stark in his car, it was already full of Stark Industries private security so I left him with them to get him safe and clear.”“And that didn’t work? One of them was a kidnapper?”“What? Oh no. He’s fine. It’s the Global Guardians. Standards say I should have kicked one of his security workers out and taken their place so they still had representation to ensure his safety. It was never going to happen. Not quickly anyway. Like I said Stark has a tendency to be difficult. Ugh. This job has suuuuuuuucked.”“You explained all this to them?”“No. Well, Bea did. Loudly. And with a lot of Portugese words that don’t bear translating. She can get pretty protective.”“I’d hope so. Otherwise you two were in the wrong business.” Tora laughed.
“So what are you going to do?”“Well, I don’t know. Any openings in your security detail?” Tora asked in jest, but her unfamiliar Norwegian accent failing to sell the joke to Ted.
“No. We contract out.” Ted said, before an idea sprang into his mind.
“But what if I could find something better? Something where you can see the positive tangible difference you’re making on the world everyday?”“Flying around with you and your little B.B. gun and suit. ‘Pew!’ ‘Pew!’ I don’t know. That’s not really a job, and Bea can have some expensive tastes.”“I might not be Tony Stark, but I should be able to set something up. Steady wage. I’ve already had some thoughts about Headquarters/Accommodation…”“Well, what would we call ourselves?”Ted thought back over the whole night. The ordeal with his company’s flagship product.
“I don’t know, but please don’t make me name it…” He said, rubbing his head at the thought.
“You’re serious about this?”“Well… yeah.”“I don’t know what to say.”“Well, you probably shouldn’t say anything yet anyway. Go talk it over with Bea, I’ll set some things in motion, and we’ll see.”An uncomfortable silence filled the room as the pair both realized they were alone in his room. Tora had a look around the Hotel room looking for something to distract from the silence, her eyes falling on the table set-up with the circuitry.
“Is that--?”“Yep. Just got started. I told you it wouldn’t take me long.”“Wow. You’re really in on all of this. OK. I guess I’ll talk to Bea about it.” She quickly said, flustered and walking to the door.
“OK. Well, I hope I hear from you soon.” Ted said earnestly, opening the door for her.
“You will.” She replied. The pair were standing awkwardly close to one another in the door frame, Ted with a goofy grin on his face. Tora went up on her tiptoes and gently pecked a quick kiss on his cheek, after which she smiled awkwardly before rushing off.
“See you soon! We’ll talk soon! When I see you next, we’ll talk!” Ted watched her hurry down the hallway to the elevator, wondering what just happened.
He went back inside and closed the door, his head bowed in introspection trying to figure things out.
“Did I-- Did I just get a super secret-- a secret super girlfriend?” He beamed, chuckling to himself. Before a thought jumped into his brain and made him stop.
“Oh God… If I ever screw this up she’s going to turn me into an ice cube!”
Phase
Melissa
PatientBean
Qia
webboysurf
Festive
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Dark Cloud
