My Star Spangled Invisi-Gal [MCU/Dispatch]

[Zetakille]

So question: the original Astral Pulse still is being passed around low-level gangs hands right now, like in canon, yeah?

 

[cliffc999]

That's a spoiler question. It'll turn up eventually.

 

[ChickenZero]

Nit pick here. I don't remember Robert seeing Chase as an Uncle type. I think he saw Chase more as the cool older brother/cousin type in their relationship.

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 47

"Please tell me you haven't entered this into any computers yet." Special Agent in Charge Davis implored her deputy.

"No ma'am." ASAC Washington answered. "I take it that I'm not going to be doing that?"

She looked back down at Steve Rogers' scores from the tactical assault course and back up at him. "Hell no. Hardcopy only, no duplication, single personal file, and no logging. And make sure you delete all the footage. If DoD ever got a sniff of these then we would never get their recruiter to stop camping our office for as long as Rogers was here. They would literally pitch a tent in the lobby." She whistled softly. "Have you ever seen anything else like this?"

"Ma'am, I haven't even heard of anything else like that." Washington acknowledged soberly. "But I'm still not sure that even we'll be able to recruit him. I could spot that they weren't eager to take even the temporary subcontractor position."

"That makes sense. She's the easy one to recruit; if we hook him then we hook her too, and if we don't then she won't. But Rogers…" She whistled out. "Basically his entire life to date has been defined first by his physical limitations and then by a military chain of command. He's barely in his second month of being really free to choose what he wants to do for the first time in his life, and he's just found someone he wants to share that life with. So right now he's emotionally primed to start pulling a Jack Reacher and just wander around enjoying his freedom from everything." Davis shrugged. "Well, if he chooses us then that will be his choice. But if he doesn't, it won't be because we either made him feel unwelcome or spooked him by pushing too hard."

"Understood." Washington nodded. "What did the all-agencies conference decide?"

"Follow me." she said, getting up from her desk. "The 1300 hours briefing is about to start, I'll get into it there."

"Everyone." Davis spoke from the podium in the briefing room a few minutes later. "Per the Attorney General's authorization, backdated to zero-hundred hours this morning the multi-jurisdictional task force 'Operation Duster' officially went active. The Bureau will be the lead agency of this effort, and I will be chief Action Officer for the task force. The primary objective will be the prevention of terrorist mass casualty events that are believed to be imminent in the greater Los Angeles area, and the secondary objective will be the location and apprehension of Elliot Connors, aka "Shroud", and his subordinates and co-conspirators."

"To briefly catch you up on what our sister agencies will be doing, the truck bomb already used and the explosives precursors purchases we've tracked gives ATF secondary jurisdiction." Davis continued. "So their war room and analysis center goes online parallel with ours and their people all get added to the legwork parade. DEA's primary contribution so far will be as a tactical reserve – all of their people with SWAT qualification are on one-hour alert cycle right now and sitting on their packed bags waiting for our call-up if we need them. Border Patrol is right behind them on the call-up list but for right now is primarily focused on increased scrutiny on all Customs frontiers in the district for certain types of shipments and components. In addition, they have three Predator drones assigned to their district for watching the border and I just called dibs on two of them. They're heading up here right now, and as soon as we get them they'll be taking watch-on/watch-off in a loiter over the LA area so that we'll have immediate access to overhead imagery whenever we need it."

"As for the National Guard, we haven't quite hit the threshold yet where they deploy but unless we're very fortunate it will be coming within the next several days. For right now the Adjutant General's office has warning orders out to the unit commanders to start rereading the contingency plans and preparing to execute them. And we mean all of the contingency plans. Multiple mass casualty events, coordinated bombing campaign, key infrastructure attacks, even mass evacuation if need be." She exhaled heavily. "This lunatic not only has all sorts of supervillain tech available and a genuinely frightening cyberwarfare capacity – and that reminds me, we're going to have to all switch to very strict data security protections and go practically back to hardcopy and word of mouth for the duration – but he's already gotten enough ANFO to build at least a dozen Oklahoma City sized bombs, and that's just what we know about. Maybe we're overestimating him greatly… but maybe we're not." she acknowledged professionally.

"When you say all the contingency plans, does that include Empty Quiver?" one agent asked nervously.

"Okay, not that one." Davis shook her head. "There are no even remote indicators at this time that Shroud has had any access to fissile material, so that's at least one blessing."

"Thank God." a nameless mutter floated around the room.

"Next up…" Davis continued. "Jenkins, I've had my head deep in the Shroud mess and nothing but for at least the past day. What's the current status on the SDN probe?"

"Preliminary sweep has turned up no active links to any of the flagged numbers or names relevant to the Shroud case." the other Assistant Special Agent in Charge answered. "On the other hand, our forensic accounting people cannot believe the preliminary results they're getting. Our White Collar Crime people and the Treasury are going to have a field day with all the crap that's churning up."

"Peculation?" she asked. "Embezzling?"

"Nope." He shook his head. "Right now it's looking like violation of mandated reporting requirements and Hollywood studio accounting writ large. You might remember that they had a board of directors shift and a limited buyout a few years ago? Well the new broom apparently decided that the prior profit margin just wasn't big enough, so they've started playing all sorts of games. The privatized hero companies are supposed to maintain a certain ratio of service capacity in reserve for actual superhero stuff as opposed to expending them on the non-emergency for-profit calls in order to keep their government charters, but SDN has been using every imaginable bureaucratic sleight of hand to shave the margins on those requirements for years. So essentially they're double-billing; the state and the county are paying them for a certain amount of service that they're only theoretically and not actually getting, as opposed to the substantially lower fees they'd collect as retainer for what the customer actually is getting. And then they run their people in the field like sled dogs to make up the difference, and then cook how they classify cases in the service logs to hide what they're doing. It's like… fuck, a cross between the Enron scandal and the bad old days before GPS trackers when basically every trucking company in the US was faking mileage logs to DoT, only with superheroes."

"How much of this can we prove in court?" Davis asked.

"After only a day of looking?" Jenkins said sardonically. "None of it, of course. I can't even take what we've got yet to a grand jury, let alone trial phase. I can only tell you what the preliminary sniff test makes me think might be going on. SDN has drawn enough layers of legal bullshit around everything that they're doing that it's the bureaucratic equivalent of the Berlin Wall. We can get through it, especially with the counter-intelligence aspects of the Shroud case giving us a way to get search warrants on some of this in a way that entirely bypasses the financial aspects, but it's going to take an irreducible minimum of time."

"When the press of urgency finally permits I have a young lady who used to work for SDN you need to speak to, as there's also at least one clear-cut case of privacy and labor law violations you can work with." Davis said. "But good job on getting even this much this early, and keep at it. The first priority is figuring out if it's safe for us to tell SDN about the Shroud case at all, though, because I really don't want to have to take on an entire supervillain crime syndicate just with assault rifles and one awkward squad of ex-villains and several independents."

"Understood ma'am." Jenkins nodded to her.

"Next up…" Davis continued.

* * * * *
​

"Is it always this boring?" Courtney pouted as she swung her feet in the air from where she sat perched on the edge of the cubicle desk.

"Every counter-terrorism case is the same." Steve answered her from where he sat nearby in an office chair. "The action phase only comes at the end of a lot of legwork and analysis." He pointed at the tall pile of paper sitting on the desk next to him. "Somewhere in that stack is a fact of genuine relevance to the case. It's almost a statistical certainty. The problem is finding it and picking it out from the million other data points buried in there that are completely irrelevant, figuring out how it hooks in to everything else you know, and doing all of that quickly enough it's actually still delivering useful intel instead of just being some analyst's hindsight memo six months after Shroud's already done."

"I don't really know anything about intel analysis and I have the attention span of a hummingbird." Courtney moaned. "Planting bugs this morning was kinda fun, but is there anything else I can be doing? Seriously, how can you sit still for all this? Are you even finding anything?"

"Just a few scattered references to some weird energy releases that don't seem to fit in with anything else we know, and a whole bunch of mundane stuff that probably doesn't mean anything." Steve acknowledged ruefully. "And I agree, this kind of work's not exactly fun. Still often necessary, though."

"Well, then just call me your angel of deliverance." SSA Sullivan broke in cheerfully as he walked up to their cubicle. "Customs has flagged a suspicious shipment coming through at Port of LA that dead-centers the pattern of Shroud's materiel orders, and the boss lady's authorized us to go do something about it. Time to suit up."

"Finally!" Courtney eagerly leaped to her feet as Cap secured his terminal and started gathering up all the papers he was working on to lock safely away. "What's going on?"

"Customs' computer search flagged a suspicious shipment currently sitting and waiting in a receiver's warehouse waiting for the customer to come pick it up later this afternoon." Sullivan explained as they headed down in the elevator. "So we're going to go sit on it and see who comes for it. There's several possible options from there depending on who shows up, ranging from bagging everybody at the drop to staying quiet and following the birdie all the way home. Idea on this one is you run out of costume and in tactical gear, so even if Shroud knows we're working the case now he hopefully still doesn't know that you're working it with us."

"Visi's powers are uniquely identifying, even if mine aren't so long as I'm not carrying the shield." Cap acknowledged. "Then again, her entire point is that you don't see her coming."

"Exactly." Sullivan agreed as they reached the basement. "Locker rooms are over here, we'll finish briefing on the way."

* * * * *
​

'Federal agents! Hands in the air, hands in the air!" Sullivan cried through his bullhorn.

The components shipment had been called for by just one rented truck and several anonymous Red Ring goons, so the decision had been made to just intercept the shipment and arrest everyone. If Shroud wasn't even risking one of his cell leaders on this pickup then the probability was too high that there would be at least one intervening stop-and-search for security's sake before taking the components to the main base, which ruled out following the truck back there or having Invisigal plant a tracking tag in the shipment.

And so they'd simply waited for the delivery truck to leave the shipper's warehouse and then cut it off in traffic with the armored Suburbans before it had gotten two blocks. Over a dozen agents in full tactical gear – as well as Captain America and Invisigal, both of them dressed in identical body armor and helmets – surrounded the several men in the panel van.

"Don't do anything stupid!" Cap called as he kept his assault rifle trained level on the driver's compartment. "You have nowhere to go!"

"Fuck!" the lead Red Ring goon swore as him and his fellows dismounted the truck slowly, the street lit in the evening twilight. "Okay, okay, don't shoot, we're not armed."

"Kneel down, hands behind your head." Sullivan ordered them.

"Nah, don't think so." One of the goons smirked. "We know your rules, cops. If we don't got guns or knives, you can't shoot us, right?" Their cybernetic implants began to grow red as the lead thug showingly cracked his knuckles. "So how's about we settle this mano-a-mano?"

"Fall back!" Cap ordered as he slung his rifle, and the FBI agents began to open up the distance. The thugs laughed and stepped forward, confident in their cybernetically augmented strength… only for the first one to go flying back into the side of the truck hard enough to dent the paneling, as Cap's kick caught him full in the chest and sent him into the air.

"The fuck?" the second thug marveled as Cap effortlessly parried his superhumanly strong punch and then trapped his arm and KO'ed him with his offhand. The third one barely had a chance to raise his fist before Visi jammed a hand taser into his neck from behind and laid him out, and the remaining two thugs who'd jumped off the back of the truck shrugged off several beanbag rounds from the agents' underbarrel launchers before Sullivan's flashbang grenade sent them staggering and set them up for Cap and Visi to finish their takedowns.

"Okay, this new 'enhanced agent' thing is working out really well for us so far." One of the subordinate agents congratulated the two ride-alongs as matters were efficiently trussed up in metahuman-rated restraints and tossed in the back of the prisoner transport. "We getting you guys permanently or is this just a pilot program?"

"They're still working on that." Cap temporized. "But I'm glad we were here, this would not have gone remotely as smoothly otherwise."

"If even the commonest street busts are turning into enhanced encounters, I'm going to have to talk to the boss lady about new rules of engagement." Sullivan agreed. "If not somehow getting a new issue of gear. But in the meantime, let's head back and get these guys processed… and then we've got another job to suit up for. The wiretaps picked up a cell meeting happening early this evening, and we're going to crash it."

* * * * *
​

"We're in costume for this one?" Cap asked as the approximately fifty Enhanced SWAT tactical agents all met up at the assembly point in the darkness of late evening.

"We're talking at least three superhumans in there plus maybe ten to twenty Red Ring cyber-goons." ASAC Washington agreed as he put on his own tactical helmet. You'll need the shield and Visi will need freedom to use her powers to the fullest extent.

"We've been cleared hot on the cybered-up ones, right?" A burly assault agent asked.

"Yeah." Washington agreed gravely. "The boss lady consulted with the US Attorney's office and DoJ has concurred – for the duration, active use or threat of use of their super-strength augments is now considered lethal force. We keep playing patty-cake like we used to and Shroud's guys will just swamp us and tear us apart."

"Understood." Another agent meaningfully patted his assault rifle.

Cap looked at Visi. "You sure you want to deploy for this one? I've done this before… you haven't."

"I can't sit out. You need me." Visi looked at Cap sadly.

The veteran soldier traded a meaningful look with the senior FBI agent, and they both nodded in acceptance of the inevitable.

"All right." Washington said. "This is the feed we're getting from the drone right now." Every agent there pulled up the relevant stream on their phone's or PDA's Bluetooth. "Infra-red is picking up all their signatures. The ones marked with yellow dots are rank-and-file, red dots are confirmed superhumans. First phase is Captain America and Invisigal takes out their rooftop sentries quick and quiet, then they signal when the rest of us can move in. Once we're in position we stack up here and here. Team One, we breach the doors and enter on this axis. Team Two waits until the noise starts, then takes the ram tank in through this wall and hits them in the flank. Team Three, you're strategic reserve, come in as called. Cap, Visi, you go in at the same time Team One does but you enter here and drop straight on their command element. Team leaders, make sure everybody understands that Invisigal will be running loose in this segment so don't have your axis of fire cross through that space because we won't be able to rely on seeing where she is. Any questions?"

"We leading off with tear gas?" Team One's commander asked.

"No point. We already know one of the augments Shroud can potentially have given his people acts as breathing protection." Washington answered. "So Team One leads off with flashbangs as they breach, everyone else uses them on hardened individual targets as necessary. Outside of that it'll all be our enhanced operators and our weapons."

After briskly answering the next few questions that there were, Washington finished. "All right. We've got the warrants signed, we've got the usage-of-force authorization, and we've got the assets we need. It's time to start making Shroud really feel the heat. Let's roll."

The invisible heroine climbed up over the edge of the roof and took out the first of three Red Ring cyber-thugs walking patrol on the warehouse roof without a hitch, clearing a gap in their coverage to allow Cap to climb up too. Running swiftly yet quietly around the edge of the roof, Cap readily downed the next two guards and then paused to look down through the skylight and check out the situation. Morphus and two costumed villains he didn't recognize were in the center of the warehouse floor, addressing perhaps fifteen more Red Ring cyber-thugs.

"Rooftop secure. The rest are all assembling, not alerted yet." Cap quietly said into his communicator. "Problem is, the cell leader is the one that's living gel – punching or shooting him is not going to do much good, and we don't have any exotic weaponry. Do we abort?"

"No." Washington decided. "If necessary, we'll let him run. These guys are planning a major raid on a bank tonight, we can't let it come off."

"Understood." Cap nodded. "Hold a minute. I'm sending Visi back to pick up some of your heavy breaching charges, I've got an idea for something I can try." He nodded to her and she immediately turned and started climbing back down to where the assembly point was over half a block away.

"Gonna try to blow him up?" she asked Cap as she returned with the charges.

"Something like that." Cap nodded.

"All right, we're in position. Get set… breaching in five… three, two, one-"

Cap was leaping down through the skylight, his shield on one arm and safely carrying Visi in the other, even before the breaching charges tore open the main warehouse door and multiple flashbang grenades landed amongst the assembled cyber-thugs to daze and disorient them. The Captain parried the energy blasts of one villainess with his shield as he absorbed the impact of the twenty-foot fall with his legs and Visi disappeared into nothingness as she leapt to the attack.

"FEDERAL AGENTS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS, DROP YOUR WEAPONS!" the bullhorn-equipped strike team leader blared even as the ram tank breached the warehouse wall and another SWAT team entered. One of the disoriented cyber-thugs pulled the trigger on his laser, sending a wild shot well over the FBI agents' heads, and then that triggered several more of them into firing. The warehouse echoed with the raucous blare of automatic weapons fire as the FBI men returned fire, and men began falling.

As the conventional troops began to bleed each other the cat-themed martial artist Visi had targeted staggered as she materialized just as her furious left hook tagged the side of his head, and she laughed and faded away again before his furious counterpunch could land. The villain staggered as she faded into view again, having dropped down low into a kneeling sidekick to his shin, then fell flat on his back as she leaned back on both hands and brought both heels flashing up into his descending chin.

Cap meanwhile had already downed the energy-controlling villainess by simply shield-charging directly into her and sending her sprawling, then slamming his other hand into the back of the shield and punching her in the face with the shield-flat yet again. He then turned and brought the shield up barely in time to parry a furious blow by Morphus, then leaped up on top of a nearby handrail and did an acrobatic flip over the charging blob-villain's head. In mid-leap he snatched one of the heavy breaching charges off of his belt, flicked the timer on, and jammed his hand wrist-deep into the villain's amorphous body.

The force of the oversized plastique charge was absorbed by Morphus' physiology, but still left the villain howling in agony as a goodly-sized chunk of his mass was explosively separated from him. Cap stepped back and raised his shield for cover as several of the FBI agents took their cue and began tossing more flashbang grenades at Morphus to stun and disorientate him. Wounded, confused, and seeing that most of his forces were already down, the blob-villain turned and fled for his life, shoving aside several hapless FBI agents as he ran for the wall-breach the ram tank had made and fleeing into the night.

"Let him run." Washington ordered. "We barely have anything that can hurt him, and nothing that could contain him if we caught him. Command, tag and track him with the Predator – if we're lucky he'll lead us back to Shroud."

"No such luck." The watch center back at the Federal building answered. "Blob boy was smart enough to think we might have an aerial unit available – he just ripped open a manhole cover and went into the storm drains. God only knows where he'll come up."

"Well, at least we caught this many." Cap sighed. "And stopped Shroud's latest big move in his fundraising drive. Visi, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Visi said soberly, staring down into the warehouse where the assault teams were efficiently handcuffing and restraining the cyber-goons who were still alive… and where the ones who had already fallen in the battle were either being given medical attention or marked for burial as needed.

"Come on." Cap said, leading her gently away. "Is this your first battle where anyone died?"

"Yeah." she said. "And I know that it wasn't just legal here, it was legitimate. They would have killed all of us in a heartbeat if they could. The ones pulling triggers were actually trying to. It's just…"

"It's just this was your first time." Cap agreed. "And that this wasn't what you ever did for a living."

"No it wasn't." she agreed.

"Standard procedure for cops and agents is they talk to the counselor after every incident like this, particularly after their first one." Cap said. "I'll ask Nick to arrange something for you when we get back."

"That isn't-" Visi cut herself off. "You really think I need one?"

Cap's embrace was her only answer, and the only one she needed.

* * * * *
​

Shroud turned away from the multiple-monitor bank in his office and leaned back in his swivel chair, steepling his fingers.

"Unacceptable." he intoned coldly.

"Yeah." Toxic said. "I guess those two didn't blow town after all. And we had fifteen million riding on that lab job, and nothing's gone right for us since."

"The revenue shortfall is serious, but the lack of confidence that the failures are starting to produce in my leadership is even more serious." Shroud intoned coldly. "Worst of all is the cause of these failures."

"From how you're talkin', I'm assuming that 'sheer bad luck' ain't a theory?" Toxic asked.

"No… although the Captain did his best to make it appear as such." Shroud said coolly. "But he tipped his hand regarding the shipment containing the backup mag-bottle components."

"The fucking FBI rolling up on Morphus' team meeting and him barely being able to get his ass out of there while we lost a whole crew in the process isn't the worst part?" Toxic asked incredulously.

"Toxic, precisely how do you imagine a dozen mundane agents overcame five cybernetically-augmented foot soldiers without using lethal force?" Shroud asked impatiently.

"You put it that way, then yeah." Toxic agreed. "Obviously the Captain was there too... but if he wasn't in costume then, then it ain't just him working the police scanner or getting tips from dispatchers, he's back in federal agent mode full-time or something. Boss, what the fuck are we stepping into? And how the hell are we stepping into it?"

"Captain America is responsible for all of our recent reverses somehow. I am certain of that fact." Shroud intoned coldly. "Things only started deviating from the plan after our manipulations released him and Invisigal from their obligations to SDN."

"But WHY?" Toxic said. "Him being here on a mission made no sense! Him only restarting that mission after he got fired makes even less sense-!" Toxic stopped as if he'd hit a wall. "Shit shit shit! There's one way this does make sense, but we'd completely overlooked it!" Toxic turned to look back at Shroud. "What if he was genuinely here trying to retire from whatever the fuck he used to do before… but then we ruined that for him?"

Shroud paused and blinked in furious thought, as multiple previously-unrelated or irrelevant data points suddenly assumed a new shape for him in his brain's analytical augmentation implants. "You… are correct." Shroud reluctantly conceded. "SDN and it's… mundanity, it's domesticity, was providing an escape for the Captain. An escape from a previous life that he had considered at least partly emotionally unsatisfying. Until our own actions voided that possibility for him while simultaneously revealing to him the existence of an enemy that he would perceive as similar to enemies he had fought before."

"So he goes right to the fuckin' FBI, who totally believe him because they have access to whatever classified service record he had that SDN didn't have access to, and now we're a major league counter-terrorism case." Toxic swore. "Boss, this is really not fucking good for us! Do you have any idea of how heavy the heat can come down when the Feds take the brakes off like this?"

"What is the progress on the primary objective?" Shroud ignored Toxic's panicked rant.

"We've almost got enough dominance into the organized crime networks of LA that the information we need will all have to flow through us." Toxic answered worriedly. "It's just a matter of days before we get what we need there. But the trick will be surviving that long."

"Then we must be prepared to ruthlessly triage as necessary." Shroud said. "As well as to repurpose old tools to new plans." Shroud stood up and walked outside his office, looking down into the assembly bay where his giant spider-mech was almost completely assembled. "I will take charge of the efforts to retool that for an entirely new scenario from what we had originally prepared it for. You will lead the probe necessary to determine where the Captain is getting the information to target his strikes against us from."

"Where do I even start looking for something like that?" Toxic asked matter-of-factly.

"There are two primary possibilities." Shroud said coldly. "And I will provide you with the plan for how to test them both simultaneously."

* * * * *
​

Author's Note: I managed to get in the 'Cap's firing range scores' gag that was requested. And 'I haven't even heard of anything like that' is of course a 'Tombstone' reference.

More seriously, the intersection of techno-thriller and superhero genre produces the inevitable result; eventually someone was going to have to shoot someone, and now people have to deal with that. Cap's long since used to it, even if he doesn't prefer it, but Visi – even though she wasn't directly involved with it – is going to have to adjust to it. And decide whether or not she can continue to live like this or not.

The non-Morphus villains here are non-canon nameless throwaways. Shroud's just getting to the 'recruit a lot of the muscle available in LA' stage.

And Shroud finally begins to clue in, even he's still adding two plus… well, to be fair, it actually is two this time. Cap's 'retirement' was not voluntary, and Shroud is still refusing to accept he actually is a dimensional refugee, but Toxic actually got the essential gist of it. The man's crude, but he's not stupid.

 

[Lillie Jones]

thanks for the chapter
Continue on
Cheers!

 

[deathzealotzero]

So. I have a question. Are we going to have anything else from the MCU? As that is why I have gotten into this story when I haven't played Dispatch. Still an interesting story.

 

[cliffc999]

So. I have a question. Are we going to have anything else from the MCU? As that is why I have gotten into this story when I haven't played Dispatch. Still an interesting story.

Click to shrink...

That is a spoiler. The ending will be Steve and Courtney returning to the MCU.

 

[shargle]

Author's Note: My problem in composing the upcoming 'Steve goes full SHIELD on the problem' bit is that since I am not actually an expert in counter-terrorism, I need to take extra care not to write the next part stupidly. Hence the slightly slower update rate while I work that bit out. But I can at least start the setup here, and I do.

Click to shrink...

You gave us this disclaimer two days ago... and have posted 19k words since?? What on earth does your ""normal"" release schedule look like??

Thanks for the (relentless onslaught of) chapters!

 

[cliffc999]

You gave us this disclaimer two days ago... and have posted 19k words since?? What on earth does your ""normal"" release schedule look like??

Click to shrink...

It's already completed on SB, I'm just migrating it over here.

 

[The Unicorn]

"When you say all the contingency plans, does that include Empty Quiver?" one agent asked nervously.

"Okay, not that one." Davis shook her head. "There are no even remote indicators at this time that Shroud has had any access to fissile material, so that's at least one blessing."

Click to shrink...

My first thought? If Shroud is the guy who invented the power source for Mecha-Man, I wouldn't assume he needs any fissile material.

"Nope." He shook his head. "Right now it's looking like violation of mandated reporting requirements and Hollywood studio accounting writ large. You might remember that they had a board of directors shift and a limited buyout a few years ago? Well the new broom apparently decided that the prior profit margin just wasn't big enough, so they've started playing all sorts of games. The privatized hero companies are supposed to maintain a certain ratio of service capacity in reserve for actual superhero stuff as opposed to expending them on the non-emergency for-profit calls in order to keep their government charters, but SDN has been using every imaginable bureaucratic sleight of hand to shave the margins on those requirements for years.

Click to shrink...

That's a good way to make SDN we see actually make sense.

"Nah, don't think so." One of the goons smirked. "We know your rules, cops. If we don't got guns or knives, you can't shoot us, right?" Their cybernetic implants began to grow red as the lead thug showingly cracked his knuckles. "So how's about we settle this mano-a-mano?"

Click to shrink...

This shouldn't have been jarring, but the sudden shift from Clancyesque investigation back to superhero tropes made it feel jarring. There's no way cops in RL would have that sort of rule, fists and feet can very much be lethal weapons even without them having been enhanced.

"Standard procedure for cops and agents is they talk to the counselor after every incident like this, particularly after their first one." Cap said. "I'll ask Nick to arrange something for you when we get back."

"That isn't-" Visi cut herself off. "You really think I need one?"

Cap's embrace was her only answer, and the only one she needed.

Click to shrink...

Very well done, also good battle scene.
Visi definitely needs a therapist, and not just because of recent events.

"Toxic, precisely how do you imagine a dozen mundane agents overcame five cybernetically-augmented foot soldiers without using lethal force?" Shroud asked impatiently.

Click to shrink...

Do you want a list? Because I can think of a bunch of ways for them to do so. The simplest would be a warning shot, but even with an actual fight, if they could arrange to split them up and pile 6 one 1 they could do so without any special equipment, with tasers, batons and similar it could be even easier not to mention sedative darts etc...

Not saying Shroud thinking that is unrealistic, and it does fit the superhero tropes, but...

"There are two primary possibilities." Shroud said coldly. "And I will provide you with the plan for how to test them both simultaneously."

Click to shrink...

I hope they manage to get Coupe out safely

 

[htgriffin]

Toxic stopped as if he'd hit a wall. "Shit shit shit! There's one way this does make sense, but we'd completely overlooked it!" Toxic turned to look back at Shroud. "What if he was genuinely here trying to retire from whatever the fuck he used to do before… but then we ruined that for him?"

Shroud paused and blinked in furious thought, as multiple previously-unrelated or irrelevant data points suddenly assumed a new shape for him in his brain's analytical augmentation implants. "You… are correct."

Click to shrink...

Head Minion seems to have the better WIS score here, he is almost dead on with mere meat for memory retrieval and computation power.

The sad part is that if they had worked things out earlier... they may still be in this mess, but at least Shroud would have made a mental note to have the HR nitwit offed for making things so much harder for them.

 

[Prince Charon]

Head Minion seems to have the better WIS score here, he is almost dead on with mere meat for memory retrieval and computation power.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, Shroud does come off as a 'super-high INT, low WIS' type, which is common for supervillains - but it's also pretty believable, because less extreme forms of it can happen in real life.

 

[shargle]

It's already completed on SB, I'm just migrating it over here.

Click to shrink...

That makes a lot more sense.

 

[deathzealotzero]

It's already completed on SB, I'm just migrating it over here.

Click to shrink...

Duh! I can't be the only one who immediately went to SB to read the entire thing, right? Now I actually want a sequel. Sigh.