2.1 - Edited by: Rellawing, AlliterativeArts - 1/25/2021

Leona removed her cell phone from her boob pocket and fiddled with her GPS application. She was soon zooming across the city to the location Kirby mentioned, the warm air holding her aloft, toying with her feathers. 

As she got near, she saw the hole in the police holding facility’s walls from the featured picture in the report he’d handed to her. She touched down immediately, attracting the attention of two uniformed officers who drew their pistols and trained them on her. A third officer, whom she recognized as the one from the rooftop the other day, stepped forward and between them and Leona.

“Whoa, whoa, guys. She’s on our side... I hope.” He waved his hands excitedly. “If you’re here for a visit to those guys you brought in the other day, I’m afraid you just missed them. Or are ya stopping in for something else?”

Aurora smiled. “I was formally introducing myself at a precinct when word of the break came in. Detective Kirby’s on his way. I’m here to scout and investigate any clues left here.” She grinned. She was an amateur to be sure, but that wasn’t going to stop her. “Hm… a power suit, huh… I sure have landed in the thick of things.” Ooops… she chuckled impishly.

The cops gave her a wide berth to look around which was appreciated, but that distance likely also gave them a good perspective to see how much of a rookie hero she was. Unfortunately, she wasn’t even sure what to look for. 

Poking around the area randomly she scanned everything with her eyes. After a few minutes of not finding anything helpful, one of the cops led over a man dressed in janitorial gear who looked very nervous.

“Jacko here says he saw what happened. Do you want to talk to him? I’ll get his statement when he gives it to you.”

At the behest of his escort, Jacko spoke, “My name’s Jack Riley. Yeah, I saw what happened.  Sounded like a jet was gonna crash here in the street. I looked up and there was some guy in a metal suit firin’ off missiles and all kinds of hell at the cops!” he said, waving his arms frantically. 

“He pushed in what were left of da wall and some guys ran out. Their ride pulled up and took off thataway,” he imparted, pointing down the street. 

“I mean, the guys got in, not the guy in the suit. He went all Rocket Ranger and flew off or something.”

The officer took over and asked questions, getting as much information as he could while Aurora listened intently for any further details. Soon after Jacko was allowed to go, Detective Kirby arrived and approached along the sidewalk. “Anything?” he asked.

The officer related what Jack had told Aurora to which Kirby nodded and spoke, “So if he flew in from off-site, there probably isn’t much to see around here. Come on, Aurora, let’s take a look at the footage. Maybe see if we can get any leads,” he gestured for her to follow him into the freshly ventilated station.

She accompanied him and when they arrived at the main reception, the Detective flashed his badge and was granted access along with Aurora into the monitor room. 

It sure was good to have police assistance. She certainly wouldn’t have been given access on her own. With the help of another officer who manned the video playback controls, they watched the event unfold. 

Aurora noticed that one of the guys was noticeably rubbing his hand just a moment before the wall exploded inward. In a few more seconds, the criminals poured out from their cells, shaken by the explosion.

Aurora whistled softly at the power it must have taken to cause such destruction. Detective Kirby had the monitoring officer pull up external cameras where they saw a minivan pull up and the escaping gang members pile in. The man in the exo-suit leveled his arm at something down the street followed by an explosion so thunderous the camera briefly went on the fritz.

“I got the call on the way over here; that was one of our squad cars. This guy destroyed it with some kind of anti-vehicular ordnance like a howitzer round,” Kirby supplied.

“Wow…” Aurora took a deep breath. “Can you track the minivan? I could fly around the area and hope to spot a van of that description, but the odds that I’d locate it are probably low.” Brows furrowing further, “The real problem comes when we do find them. How about the exosuit? What else do we know?”

“Well,” Detective Kirby answered, “the exosuit is a recently-purloined item from the Serendipity Corporation. They called it a ‘Machine-Augmented-Exoskeleton’ or something along those lines. Guy’s being cute and calling himself ‘Blue Max’ after a World-War One flying ace. They stole the dirigible about a week or so ago but it wasn’t reported until we started investigating things.” Both officers had expressions that indicated they were clearly less than pleased with being held back on, even if it was par for the course. 

“Anyway, Serendipity’s suit was mothballed about two years ago, I guess they were keeping it around for a rainy day or something because, as far as we know, it’d been in a local storage facility for some time. They only reported it missing shortly after the first robbery, which is shifty as all get-out so there’s still suspicion that way.”

Kirby tapped the monitoring officer on his shoulder. “There’s a BOLO for that vehicle, right?”

The officer shrugged. “I’d guess so, sir, but that’s not my department.”

“Great.” Kirby looked to Aurora and rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I sent you more details in my email, but basically, the suit was designed to increase the capability of a single man to become a mobile artillery platform. Apparently, it uses some kind of miniaturized turbine technology as the powerplant which they can shunt the exhaust from to create repulsors… Why those eggheads can’t just say it runs on a jet engine that lets that danged tin-can have rocket boosters is beyond me...” Shaking his head again, “Anyway, we believe there were other members of the gang who weren’t present at your bust and were off stealing more fuel. We’re currently tracking the few places where that fuel can be correctly processed.”

“That sounds promising.” Aurora nodded. “How soon do you think we’ll have something? If you can point me to where they are, I can round them up again. The exoskeleton is going to be the most concerning part. If you can get the schematics, we could find a weak point I might be able to exploit when I come up against it. Ideally, I’d want to try to recover it without damaging it, but if we don’t have a plan, the odds are low that we’ll be able to simply disable it.”

“Certainly, if you can disable it that would be best,” Kirby replied, “I’m sure Serendipity would love that, but I won’t cry if we can just get these criminals off the streets, you know?” 

Gesturing to dismiss their assistant, he moved on to the next topic, “Well, if you think you’ve gotten all you can from the tapes, let’s see about that BOLO, hey?”

“Sounds good.” Aurora nodded, grinning. She wondered if her barrier would protect her from the kind of firepower the exo armor had already demonstrated.

They left the room and headed through the department. Noticing many of the officers stationed there were giving her the cold shoulder, Kirby quietly spoke to Leona. “Hey, don’t worry about it. You’re not the first super from San Isidro. They’re all a little bitter over what happened with the last one.”

That’d be El Aguila de Oro (aka The Golden Eagle). He was hispanic and was one of the trainees inducted into the Society of Sentinels. A man who declined to identify where he was from, but the rumor was that he was from the area before he “went pro”. His departure left local law enforcement feeling belittled and betrayed; what did it say when their beloved city wasn’t ‘worthy’ of keeping even a trainee hero?

They arrived at another officer’s desk, who looked up lazilly at Kirby and Aurora. “Got a date, Kirby? Or did you bust her on Cherry Street,” his tone was smug and insulting.

“Show some respect, Frederick. She’s helping us out on the jailbreak case. Now, do you have anything useful on the getaway vehicle or not?” Kirby barked.

“Actually, I do,” Frederick responded, unfazed and unrepentant, “Looks like this license plate was registered to a Mr. Robert Franklin Jr.”

“Was? What do you mean ‘was’?” Kirby shot back.

“Well, turns out the car was apparently totalled and got sent over to Chan’s yard.” Frederick stroked his stubble-covered chin.

Kirby frowned. “Seemed awfully mobile for a so-called totalled car.”

“Yeah.” The rude officer or whatever his rank was nodded. “We’ll be informing Mr. Franklin’s insurance company about this. Anything else?” He clearly was of a lower rank than Kirby, even if he felt at liberty to mouth off.

“Nah, I think that’s enough from you, Fred. Come on, Aurora,” Kirby said, leading her onwards to one of the empty interview rooms. He pulled up his email on his phone.

“Okay, so this is actually… good news. Chan’s Junkyard’s owned by one Mr. Ronnie Chan, who has ties to the Triads. And wouldn’t you know it, Chan’s yard is near a small refinery that would have the equipment they’d need to load the fuel in the MAX’s tanks. If I had to guess, I’d put them somewhere in that area.”

He flicked through a few screens. “Do you have an email or something I can send these specs to?” Kirby inquired. “If not, you may want to set something up, otherwise I can just show you here.”

Aurora nodded, decided it was important to settle the issue now. Fishing her phone out from its pocket, she signed up for a fresh email account, using the name Aurora and slightly falsified information. When she finished, she passed the email address to Kirby. That would do for the moment.

“Anonymous email’s fine for now,” Kirby said, “I’m not going to try and subpoena anything, but just keep in mind that if someone hits the host domain with a suit, they may fold and give transmission records.” He warned Aurora of a potential issue she was aware could be a concern.

After a moment, the files appeared in her inbox and she looked them over. Included was a maps link to the area the detective was referring to. Looking over the battlesuit schematics, she didn't find anything overtly flawed in its design. That is, until she got to the tolerance specs. If she was reading the numbers and did the math right, the flight exhaust area was prone to overheating in an enclosed or hot environment, making it hard to use indoors or in the desert for extended periods. Not to mention the noise; it was definitely not built for stealth.

The weapons specs were impressive, but little Leona couldn’t put together much else of what she read, so she glossed over the rest. Ultimately, the game plan was to ‘punch hard’ and ‘find a way to turn up the heat’ under these criminals.

“You should get going,” Kirby prodded Aurora, “I’m going to call officers over to that area and see if we can make a containment parameter so that the gang won’t be able to flee should they be there, but I’m holding off any assault until I’ve given you the chance to disable the thing, okay?”

Aurora nodded and smiled. “I’ll check the place out then. Thank you. I have some idea of what to do about the exo suit. If they remember me fondly, they’ll throw their arms up the moment they spot me.” She chuckled when she imagined the looks on their faces. 

It was possible her blasts might have an effect on the main target, but nothing was certain. So far they didn’t generate heat, but there may be other ways of weakening or penetrating that armor.

Kirby chuckled and nodded. “Good luck.”

“Thanks for the information, Detective.” She waved and left the building, leaking into the big blue sky. Heading in the direction of the junkyard mentioned, Aurora went over plans to case the place.