“Okay, I got this,” Kaleb said to himself.

  Without thought and with little preamble, he stepped off the back of the transport truck. He whirled in the air as the wind whipped at his face. He was sure his plan would work, and he’d look awesome doing it. Kaleb heard Farrah screaming in his ear, her voice like a hammer to his skull. But he ignored her as he quickly pulled his Magic Gun from its holster.

  “I don’t know what you said!” Kaleb shouted over the wind. “But this is going to be awesome!”

  Kaleb passed through the normal skylanes used for standard airborne traffic. He had to zig and juke his way around a few cars and he came close to clipping a couple. But he was quickly through the traffic and pointed straight at the ground below. He pointed his Magic Gun at the ground and waited as he gathered his mana. The pounding in his ears grew louder and louder, but he was focused on making this next part look epic. He had already reached terminal velocity, and the ground was rushing up to smack him in the face.

  At the last second, Kaleb pulled the trigger on his magic gun and he felt a rush of excitement as a literal tornado exploded from the gun. It took all his strength not to rotate with the gun as the spinning vortex rushed toward the ground. His elbows jammed, and he bit his lip, but he managed to hang on and soon he was riding on top of the tornado. The gray and green whirlwind held him aloft, and he held onto his gun, that was still spewing the vortex out.

  “It worked! It fucking worked!” Kaleb screamed as the thudding echoed in his head.

  THUD

  THUD

  THUD

  Kaleb snapped his head up hurriedly as the noise got louder. For a split second, he was afraid of falling off the tornado. So he kicked his legs to balance himself. But all he managed to do was get his legs cot in the itchy grey blanket that covered him. Further unbalanced, Kaleb fell off the thin metal bench he had been sleeping on and hit the cement floor of his cell. Blinking blearily, he looked around, confused, and caught sight of a red man in military fatigues, trying not to laugh at him.

  The soldier was on the other side of the bars of his cell and his metal truncheon was between said bars. He clearly had been banging his weapon on the bars near Kaleb’s head to wake him up. The mirth in his eyes made Kaleb even more confused and his thoughts leaked out of his mouth.

  “Where’s the tornado?”

  The question seemed to crack the soldier's easily visible mask of stoicism and the alien burst out laughing.

  “Hahahaha!” the alien sputtered a few times before turning to his right and shouting. “Hey, guys! The trespasser was dreaming about his stupid tornado idea!”

  Kaleb rubbed his head as he felt a throbbing behind his eyes and now that he noticed it, his mouth was really dry. The soldier’s words drew more laughter from beyond Kaleb’s cell, and his tormentor turned back to him.

  “We told you last night, Professor. That would never have worked.”

  Kaleb smacked his dry tongue in his mouth as he tried to remember last night. It came in flashes, though, as his head throbbed in pain. His truck had landed, he surrendered himself, and then went on to identify himself as a freelance super. After that, he was questioned by the base commander and the head of the Military Police and then brought to the holding cells. After that was sort of fuzzy, he remembered chatting over his array of weapons and gadgets he had created with the privates on duty. Then something about… cards… and alien whiskey?

  “You’re the card shark.” Kaleb said, pointing an unsteady finger at the guard.

  The alien smirked as he opened Kaleb’s cell. “Please, you are just shit at poker, Doc. Best you stick to building your fancy gadgets.”

  Kaleb rubbed a hand down his face as he stopped trying to recall all of last night. “Please tell me I didn’t bet any of my equipment.”

  “Just those taser egg things. But no one was buying. Seriously, what’s the point of a throwable taser? I already have a stun gun?”

  Kaleb stood as a memory of himself and a group of guards testing the eggs and stun gun back to back came to him. Sometimes it was on a handstand, but later they were testing shit on each other. A bruise on Kaleb’s chest made itself known as he shuffled out of the gate. His alien guard continued to grin at him and Kaleb saw the last name DuComb printed on his uniform. The man’s first name bubbled up in Kaleb’s mind as he closed the cell door.

  “What’s the news Andy?”

  The private’s face went stern, and he sighed. “I told you, it’s Andoroitus. And words just come down. We have to write up an incident report, but the bots have been cleared, and it looks like you’re being let go.”

  “Just like that?”

  Andy shrugged. “What can I say? The higher-ups don’t want too many eyes out here. They just want you gone, and fast. Hero business is one thing, but we defend the country, you know.”

  “Then what are the robots for?” Kaleb asked casually as Andy walked him down a hallway away from his cell.

  “Training purposes. Not as good as the real thing or a simulation room. But the military budget being what it is…”

  The private trailed off and Kaleb nodded along understandingly. “So you think the HLO would use them for the same purpose?”

  Andy stopped in the hallway and spun on Kaleb. The alien looked over his face. A bushy eyebrow raised. “That’s the second time you’ve asked that. It was one of your questions last night, too. Why do you want to know?”

  “Hey, like I said last night. It just seems odd to me that the second largest purchasers of robots is the HLO.”

  “It isn’t. K-Tech buys almost as many as us. The HLO is third, but so what? It’s not illegal to buy assistant bots in bulk.”

  “But they ain’t assistant bots. They were buying hardcore military robots.”

  Andy shrugged and started walking again. “So? Maybe they want to protect their businesses?”

  “Isn’t that what the registered Supes are for? Why have a legion of super-powered individuals and not use them?”

  Andy spun to face him, but kept walking. “Hey, increasingly more Supes are dropping the HLO flag and going solo. It’s become an odd trend in the last few weeks. Maybe they want something to as a backup.”

  “Hmph!” Kaleb said, not wishing to argue further.

  They exited the hallway into an open white room. On one side were a row of beige lockers, and on the other was a small kitchenette area. It had a few tables and chairs, along with a refrigerator, stove, and sink. Four people were at one of the tables, looking over a pile of stuff that Kaleb quickly realized was his equipment. A female alien with long purple fingers was weighing his Cybar in her hand when she noticed them. She smiled, revealing a mouthful of sharp teeth as the others at the table turned their way.

  “DOC!”

  They all screamed at the same time, making Kaleb’s headache worse. He squinted as they all smiled at him. The two male aliens and the other human woman were all grinning at him as he approached the table with his gear. His armor, weapons, and comm unit were laid out on the table as all the guards crowded around. They even left his new rifle from TekNik alone. Which was good. Kaleb had been afraid that the military would confiscate that. But instead, it was led out on top of his armor and lab coat.

  “Hey, Doc. Ride any tornadoes last night?” asked one of the soldiers.

  The other three all grinned, and the green alien produced a tiny tornado in his hand and smiled at Kaleb. Not responding to the jibe, Kaleb reached out for his equipment. But as he did, the entire table went still and suddenly a strange tenseness filled everyone. Kaleb’s hand froze over his metal armadillo armor and he glanced around at the soldiers. They weren’t being outwardly hostile, but each of them was now watching him for sudden moves. Kaleb snorted and brushed it off as he grabbed his lab coat and hurriedly put it on.

  “Are the big bad soldiers scared of the little lizard scientist?”

  “Bah!” said as soldier standing at the table. He looked like a mix between a dwarf and an orc. “Some of this stuff has been rated up to grade B-. So excuse us if we get a little jumpy when a Mad Scientist tries to collect.”

  “Pfft! I’m not a Mad Scientist!”

  The purple-skinned woman put down his Cybar and picked up his Magic Gun. Waving it at him. “Last night you tried to prove that with this you could survive a fall from the Military Skylane. If that’s not mad, I don’t know what is.”

  Kaleb got another flash of memory of the five of them sitting around a table and dropping peanuts in the green alien’s mini-tornado. He had tried to prove that creating a tornado at terminal velocity would have saved him from the jump. Unfortunately, the peanuts weren’t reacting right. Instead of floating safely above the tornado, like they should’ve, they crashed to the floor or were flung off into the room.

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  He shook the memory off as the others all smiled at him. “Bah! That doesn’t make me mad.”

  “It makes you stupid is what it makes you.”

  “Yeah, well, I needed an escape route, so I got in the truck. How was I supposed to know it was a flying model?”

  “Check.”

  “Read the label on the cargo?”

  “Leave through the loading dock where the truck was located?”

  Kaleb clapped his hands at the last one. “Ha! I couldn’t do that because the cargo wasn’t loaded near the trucks.”

  All five soldiers gave him dubious looks, but Kaleb simply brushed them all off. They didn’t know what he had to work with or what he had been through. So instead, he started holstering his weapons and putting on his armor. The soldiers tensed again as he did, but Kaleb made a point of buttoning down each holster as he put a weapon in. All eyes were on his hands as he finally put his Cybar away and closed his lab coat.

  “Haaaa.” sighed the purple alien. “I miss the old Cybar models. They were bulkier sure, but you can’t beat their raw power.”

  Kaleb tapped the holster weapon over his lab coat. “Yeah, this old thing has seen me through a lot.”

  “You’ve upgraded it a few times.” Said the dwarf/orc.

  “Yeah, increased the power outage and added my own battery supply.”

  “That little thing had a few of our scientist asking questions, y’know? Something about the power supply, in fact.” Andy said.

  Kaleb kept a straight face as he shrugged. “It’s a proprietary model. Developed by my assistants.”

  “The eggheads had some questions for you about it.”

  Kaleb winced. “Thanks, but no thanks. Unless it’s mandatory, I have to get back and debrief with my team. Last night was only slightly a bust. So I have to get back and tell them what I found.”

  He put his comm unit in and began putting the rest of his things in his pockets. The TekNik Loadmaster’s notes, the datapad, his taser eggs, and everything else he stashed in his pockets. The soldiers all watched him as he put everything away, slung his new rifle over his shoulder, and got his armor on. Once finished, Kaleb looked around the table at the soldiers and gave them a jaunty salute.

  “It’s been fun. But I gotta go be a superhero.” Kaleb winked at them as he tried to move around Andy.

  The others behind him all scoffed as Andy cleared a path for him and joined him. As they left the locker-room/kitchenette area, Kaleb could hear the soldiers behind him muttering.

  “Most fun I’ve had since being stationed here.”

  “True. Now it’s back to guarding a shack full of robots and a bunch of eggheads.”

  “Shhh!”

  “He can’t hear us.”

  Kaleb bit his cheek as he tried not to laugh at the soldiers. Andy gave him an odd look, but continued to lead him through the white hallways. The MP station wasn’t that big and soon Kaleb was led out of the building and the rays of early sunrise. The base was quiet, with only a few soldiers out walking from one building to another. A landing pad off to his left was the busiest part of the base, as more supplies and robots were flown in from the city. Andy’s hand on his back was Kaleb’s first clue that this was going to be a guided tour straight to the base gate.

  He wasn’t being pushed, but the pressure on his back was enough to let him know that the red alien would force the issue if needed. Kaleb gave the private a grin over his shoulder and happily let himself be led off the base. As they walked, Kaleb kept his eyes open for any interesting details. But the base was fairly nondescript. A few buildings dotted the landscape: a barracks, a command center, a cafeteria, along with a much larger building for the officers on the base. Kaleb opened his mouth to make a joke about the grunts have to live in one building while the officers probably got their own rooms, but Andy coughed loudly.

  “Ahem… Not now.” Andy said, surprising Kaleb.

  Keeping his mouth shut, Kaleb gave the soldier a questioning look, but Andy kept quiet all the way to the front gate. A few hand gestures were all it took to bring the red shield barrier down and once it was Andy, spun Kaleb around. The alien soldier reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a piece of paper before reading from it mechanically.

  “Dear individual, you are being remanded into the custody of your commanding authority. You will not discuss anything you have seen or heard while on the base. Doing so will see you punished to the full extent of the law. As part of your release agreement, your commanding authority has agreed to keep your contractual super work contained within the scope of your current contracts. That is to include any extra-planar travel, accidental or otherwise. Deviating from this will see you and your organization fined no less than two-hundred thousand credits. Please keep this in mind while you are out keeping Texas’ streets safe and have a good day.”

  Andy sighed as he finally finished reading while Kaleb pursed in his lips in annoyance. “Translation?”

  “You and your SG are to keep within contracted area in Austin unless you have another contract outside of it. Also, don’t go blabbing about anything you might have heard while here.”

  “Uh-huh!” Kaleb said as he crossed his arms.

  “Hey, I don’t make the rules, Doc. I just read them. Although this is pretty standard for people who find themselves out here.”

  “Happen a lot, does it?”

  “I can’t really say.”

  Kaleb chuckled as he looked around for a bit. The parking lot outside the base was full of cars, but none he recognized. He didn’t know if someone was coming to pick him up or if he had a long walk ahead of him. But after the news he just got, a long walk might calm him down. True, his group probably didn’t have anything pressing going on outside of Austin. But no one enjoyed being caged. He bit back a few angry retorts that he wanted to say and turned to walk off the base.

  “Professor! One last thing.”

  Kaleb spun around, trying not to huff in anger. Andy either didn’t care about his state of mind or didn’t notice. Either way, the soldier pulled a thin white card from his breast pocket and passed it over. Kaleb didn’t even look at it as he shoved the thing in his pocket. Andy sighed and said.

  “It’s the head of R&D’s comm number. He wants us to talk to you about some things. Said he might be able to help you.”

  Kaleb spun on his heel and waved goodbye to the alien soldier. “See ya around Andy.”

  “I hope not.”

  Kaleb heard the barrier go live again, and he spun to see the red screen blocking his view of the base. The barrier didn’t cover the entire base, but it reached fairly high. The two gate guards watched him from their booth as he walked away. A long stretch of road could be seen off to his left, and Kaleb was sure no one was here to pick him up. It was probably too early in the day for his friends to be logged in. But he could see the city way off in the distance. The heat haze made the steel office buildings of the downtown skyline look like a mirage. But Kaleb was sure that was his destination.

  With a glance toward the raising sun, Kaleb started walking, his gear and heavy pockets making noise as he moved. Already he could tell he had a long walk ahead of him.

  “Everything done, Professor?”

  Kaleb started as Farrah’s voice went off in his ear. Once he collected himself, he smirked. “Yeah. I assume I have you to thank for the early release?”

  “It took over eight hours, Professor. I don’t think that’s early.”

  “Earlier than I expected. You hear about their fucking deal?”

  Farrah snorted. “Pfft! Hear about it? I had to fight just to get that deal. The HLO went hard on your supposed trespass. Thankfully, the final decision was up to the military liaison in city hall. But the HLO did not paint you in a pretty light.”

  “What does any of this have to do with them?”

  “Nothing. But as the local authority on Supers, they were called in to consult. When they found out it was you, they brought in the advanced team. They wanted you tagged with a tracker and confined to our district. That was immediately thrown out.”

  “At least some people have good sense.”

  “Barely. The HLO’s concerns were enough to get us the deal that we got. And for some reason, they went extra hard on the Extra-planar stuff. As if we have that capability right now.”

  “How long is this nonsense for?”

  “Four weeks, at which point there will be a third party review. One with no ties to the HLO. Smug lawyer’s face went purple when the military liaison agreed.”

  “That’s just great. We’ve got a month of confinement for the whole SG.”

  “It’s not so bad. We have plenty to keep us busy and emergency contracts are still a thing. We’ll be fine.”

  “You’ll be fine. I’m going to be a fried lizard before I reach the city.”

  Farrah didn’t respond. Instead, a loud car horn blared from behind him. Kaleb spun around on the side of the road. His car was slowly making its way up the street toward him. As it pulled even with him, the driver-side door opened and Farrah stuck her head out of the car.

  “This thing is slow as shit.”

  Kaleb grinned as he dashed over. “Then get out of the driver's seat and let me drive.”

  “Fuck that. I rarely get to drive your car.”

  Kaleb rolled his eyes and opened the back door. He threw his stuff inside and then got into the passenger seat. The air condition was going full blast and Farrah even had the radio blaring. He raised an eyebrow at the woman and her cheeks grew red.

  “I couldn’t find the right knobs or whatever.”

  Kaleb rolled his eyes and switched everything off. Farrah revved the engine and took off like a shot. Kaleb sighed as he made sure his seat belt was tight. He was absolutely not going to die after surviving a night in a military brig. Especially not in his own car driven by a mad rabbit-woman.

  “This is so fun! Even if it is slow.”

  Kaleb rubbed his throbbing forehead as they headed back to the city.