[TheFightingSpirit]

Incursion Twenty Eight: United Front Part One

A news reporter stood speaking his piece to camera.

“It has been three weeks since the Cross Rangers fought the gigantic elephant mutant, in a battle that reduced to rubble, nay, destroyed the Casteneda Digital building. And while this reporter is thankful for Strategic Command’s continued presence in Steele City, I’ve begun to wonder. Are the rangers truly qualified to wield such devastating machines? One cannot doubt they are a force for good; yet how much more collateral carnage must we endure from both sides of the conflict?”

The reporter moved swiftly through a series of live street interviews with unsuspecting members of the public, drawing and manipulating as much agreement from them as he could to support the views of the news corporation.

Finally he called forward a woman, whom he introduced as an employee of the now office-lacking Casteneda Digital, Inc.

“Ma’am, you are a victim of one of StratCom’s giant-sized clashes against the monster incursions, are you not?”

“I am.”

“How does it feel to have your life simultaneously destroyed and saved by the Cross Rangers?”

“I…” The office worker frowned. She leaned into the mic and spoke directly to camera. “If it wasn’t for the White Ranger I wouldn’t be speaking to you today. When the lift dropped, my heart leaped from my throat, but she, that wonderful woman, selflessly broke my fall with her own body.”

The reporter pull the microphone away from her. “And yet you wouldn’t have been in that mess had StratCom done their job properly? Or, say, if the rangers had been more careful piloting their robot?”

She locked eyes with him. A ferociousness burned there. “If every ranger is like the White Cross Ranger I met, then you’d do well to drop your campaign of slander against them.” She turned to camera once more to speak her mind, but two unremarkable ‘passers-by’ hauled her away by the arms. She shouted as loud as she could to be heard. “The Cross Rangers are our saviors! They’re good people… the Best!”

As the shot tightened up on him, he cleared his throat and straightened his tie. “Well, there you have it. Are they heroes? Are they far more of a danger to us than a help? Who sanctioned their particular brand of vigilantism? And finally… does this country really need superheroes? You decide.”

o0o

It took those three weeks for it to show, during which Allison had made as full a physical recovery as could expected; something wasn’t right in Steele City's business and finance district.

Not long after the disaster at the Casteneda Digital building, the subway platforms into and out of the district were closed. Workmen erected their signature striped tents around many manhole covers. Every few days the water would be shut off to great uproar from the local businesses.

Two enlisted StratCom personnel were posted at the mouth of one such subway entrance.

“Why do we got to do this job? What’s down there that’s so interesting?” said the first.

“Can’t say,” the other replied keeping vigilant watch. “Don’t know. Wasn’t told.”

“Sure, sure, but you got any thoughts on the matter? You’ve gotta.”

“You wanna know what I think, Buck? I think something’s wrong with the city’s plumbing. Like... seriously wrong.” He leaned in closer so no one else would hear them. “Wrong like… infection wrong.”

The first soldier, Buck, nodded in agreement. “You’re not wrong there.”

After a minute of silence Buck spoke up once more. “And have you seen the Cross Rangers about up here? Captain Austin? ‘Cause I ain’t. This job’s too good for them, that’s why!”

o0o

While the lower ranks talked conspiracy on the surface, the rangers were slogging through underground rivers of Black Water.

“How did we miss this?!” said Green Cross catching himself before he slipped in face first. “All that scanning equipment… for what?”

Cadet Ferris’ voice came at them over the radio patched through to their helmets. She sounded sheepish at best. <Actually the incursion signal system prioritizes full, above ground, manifestations. All other signals are downgraded for our triage analysts to pour over later.>

Green Cross rolled his eyes, though no one could have seen. “This is why the media is talking shit about us. This!”

o0o

Later that day the field reporter once more went live to the country.

“Breaking news in this, the fourth hour of the total shut down of business district. It started with a few civil workers digging around in the sewers. And now…” The camera panned away from him hastily taking shots of hordes of StratCom troops blanketing the area. They appeared to be searching for something. “... as you can see, our city's resident paramilitary has descend upon us like something out of Orwell’s 1984. What are they searching for, and when will trading resum-?”

A group of soldiers, Buck and his comrade included, leaped from somewhere nearby and seized the reporter by the arms. They confiscated the camera and cut the feed.

Outraged, the reporter struggled against them. “This is against my rights. Suppression of the media. Disregard for freedom of speech!”

“You, sonny jim, are in violation of restricted area. No amount of freedom of speech means you get to break into an area like this and get away with it.”

o0o

The five rangers dropped from the sewers, down an access shaft and onto platform one of East Green Lane - one of the city’s seven disused subway stations. They looked around, but darkness proved all encompassing.

“Blinding Advent,” said White Cross, throwing a orb of gently glowing light into the air. “There. I hardly ever get to do that.”

Yellow Cross checked the map they’d requested from city hall. East Green Lane was on the very edge of the business district, and the last of the so-called ‘border stations’ to be checked by either them or another team.

Knowing the others had clocked the same thing as her about their surroundings, she radioed in to Cadet Ferris in the war room. “East Green Lane is clear.”

<Great, just let me…> Typing sounded over the radio. <Yes! There. We were right. The incursion used the main sewer south out of the city to infiltrate this far. I guess it’s possible the Black Water might have slipped the net, so to speak, but it’s looking like the majority the stuff is confined to the business district.>

“What about the three unknowns?”

<Sending teams out to those points as we speak. Even if they have gotten outside the district they couldn’t have gotten far.>

“Excellent. Thank you, Cadet.” Yellow Cross hung up and turned to the others. Yet before she could speak and report anything to them, a rumbling came from the northbound tunnel. “On guard, guys.”

White Cross raised her hand to her ball of light and captured it’s energy once more. She directed it out onto the tracks and a part way to the end of the platform. Though only a fraction of the tunnel beyond was illuminated the source of the sound became painfully obvious.

A wave of Black Water bore down upon them.

“We should get moving…”

“Right again, Red,” the yellow ranger called leading the charge up the stairs to the defunct station’s upper levels.

Reaching the surface from there was an impossibility. In the course of installing newer, high speed, and generally more efficient lines the station had been cut off, reachable only by access shafts, nearby sewer lines, and the subway tunnels themselves.

The wave of Black Water crashed through the station, rising until the platform and the bottom half of the stairs were submerged.

Blue Cross peered down the stairs at what remained of the opposite northbound tunnel arch. “Where … does that line lead exactly, Maria?”

Yellow Cross reeled off the directions as she read them. “It goes right out into the commercial district, through three stations, to a dead end, then loops back into the ... downtown line… Oh shit.”

Red Cross radioed in this time to Captain Moses’ direct line. “Catherine, we have a little problem. The Black Water just spread out onto the downtown line.”

<Are you sure?> came her hurried reply.

“Positive. I’m at East Green Lane looking at a lake of the stuff.”

<Understood.> It sounded to Maria like Catherine was equipping herself for combat. <Get out of there for now, rangers. You’ll be needed in the city centre.>

o0o

“You can’t do this to me. I’m important… I’m famous!”

“You’re just a guy who likes to tell people what to think.” Buck wrestled the news reporter over the boundary line where two more StratCom soldiers took over.

When Buck shot a look at the camera crew, they stuck up their hands and went willingly, finding their own way into the back of a police van.

Before getting in one of them shouted back at over the barricade. “Yeah, we want the scoop… but I’m not a nut job like him. Got a wife and kids. You know?”

“Make sure you keep it that way! Rein the guy in a bit, got it?”

The commotion had caused quite a stir within the gathering crowd of curious onlookers. Didn't they understand the meaning of ‘Danger! Restricted Area’? To Buck it seemed that throwing up signs like that was basically sticking up a giant neon sign saying ‘Really cool things going on here, but we want to keep it to ourselves… so come and get it!’

He sighed and shook his head. “Honestly… Keep things secret for a reason and people think you’re being a jerk"

“Oh I don’t know about that,” said his partner. “The way I see it, people get curious ‘cause they, like... fundamentally, want to help somehow.”

“Or they like a bit of masochism.”

He grinned. “Those are big words for you, Buck.”

“You can shut it an’ all. I read.”

The sergeant spotted them, his beady eyes shining a look of recognition or perhaps sadism. He approached them, pointing as though an idea had just struck him and he needed to exact it upon someone before he forgot.

“You two will do, nicely.” He gathered them together and walked them past the tape, the barriers and the riot cops. “I’m sending you downtown. Got a little situation brewing over there and we need bodies to, uh… just get up there. You’ll be briefed later.”

“Yes, sir.”

About as quickly as he’d founded them, the sergeant disappeared into the mixed crowds of soldiers, support technicians, and the general public.

They signed off with field ops and climbed into the truck on its way to the city centre.

“What have we got now?”

“More of the same.” Buck rolled his eyes.

The rest of the platoon sitting around them shrugged in half agreement. They’d never committed to an opinion before, so why would they now. Not my job, as many of them liked to repeat. Buck often wondered whether that was the right way to go about things, or whether a little initiative could grease the wheels. Then he remembered he was meat. Officers could think. The Cross Rangers could think. Squadies could not.

Turning onto Kaufman Avenue, and coming to a stop just beyond a second cordoned off area, a curious and terrifying sight rose up before them. Central Square, though typically a hive of tourists, camera phones, and taxis, had been transformed into a crime scene out of a nightmare.

The square’s three 19th century fountains ran black, overflowing their splash pools. And where the streams met, joined by others rising from subways and manhole covers, an already five-storey tall, pitch black tower imposed itself on the city.

One of the not-my-job crew jerked a thumb at the growing spike. “That’s different, don’t you think?”