Massive Disaster 4-2

The Z-Coupe fell out of the sky with all the grace of a powerline going down in a thunderstorm, except the lightning was coming from inside the frame.

Or at the very least threatening too.

Broken kinesis emmitters flared with blue-white crackling bleed-off and battered against the structure of the skycar and flickered against the windshields.

Fuck meeee! Zedd’s vision fractured into telemetry shards and redline diagnostics, and somewhere under the static, his brain split on instinct: trajectory correction, secondary reroute, and—buried under it all—the quiet, reflexive dread that if this was the end, it was going to be both stupid and ironic. Probably headline-grabbable. Local tech magnate dies testing unregistered vehicle. Sources call it ‘on brand.’

The stabilizers were toast, even if the kinesis emmiters weren’t completely shot to hell alongside them. He could feel it in the chassis drift too, the right side wobbling like a popped knee. Three failsafes tripped that shouldn’t have even been capable of tripping together as he’d built the redundancy himself. Triple-isolated load balancers, decoupled circuits, physical overrides. The kind of overengineering that only made sense when you were paranoid about sabotage and still assumed your own tech might betray you. Apparently not paranoid enough.

His hands never stopped, potential panic not overriding his instinctive movement and practice over the last couple years at testing his own aeronautic tech. Flight control toggles flicked between gestures, calibration subroutines firing blind, power reroutes hardwired across the dash. The Z-Coupe’s diagnostics screamed feedback like a cornered animal, heat mapping blooming across the front panel like blood under skin.

In the background, his hindbrain dumped probabilities into awareness. 88% chance of survival if he did nothing at all, 98% survival if he at least held the wheel. Same if he rerouted. 99.9% if he executed a maneuver he’d never actually had to do outside simulations.

Simple choice.

“ADAM, what the hell was that?!” The question went nowhere. Comms were dead, obviously. The emitter mount to enhance ADAM’s signal from the lakehouse had fried with the stabilizer. He’d designed it that way for isolation. Dumb.

Dev shouted something sharp but Zedd didn’t – couldn’t – catch it. Adele had already braced, which was smart of her. Kai—steady as stone—adjusted his posture just enough to absorb impact, the way you did when you didn’t bother pretending to flinch anymore.

His boot slammed against the undercarriage as he yanked hard on the wheel, the spiral control engaged just enough; not to get them level, but enough to bleed momentum. A controlled crash was still a crash. Fuck it, better to hit dirt than drag concrete.

The Z-Coupe hit the ground like a dropped server rack; not clean. Not centered, but enough either way. The entire cabin groaned as kinesis barriers strained to stay coherent. Blue-white flares arced over the windshield as roots and loam tore under the car’s weight. The stench of flash-burned insulation hit first, followed by the unmistakable scent of shredded biofoam from the seat insulation rupturing on impact.

The car skidded, spun and finally stopped as Zedd exhaled once through his nose. Internal diagnostics came up clean, minus the fucking obvious: stabilizers dead, power grid blown, rear coupling toast. 

But no blood, no bruising, and nothing broken. At least if you didn’t count his pride taking the brunt of it.

The cockpit release popped free with a hard rap of his knuckle, canopy hissing and cracking open to night air sharp with the sound of open electricity, burnt composite materials and scorched dirt. 

“Out,” he said, his voice not loud at all. It helped that he didn’t need to be. No one was talking and in a second, he had already jumped out.

The Mark 10 engaged around him before his boots so much as touched dirt, plates folding out from atop the metal pack attached to the back of his jacket. In a full second, he’d been sealed in, the thing extending in a smooth crawl across his frame. Lightweight, streamlined, combat-rated; he’d built it for short engagements and fast escapes.

Tonight, though, it was just armor as the helmet clicked into place last, HUD flaring to life across his retinas.

The forest lit up in color-coded data overlays. Heat signature sweeps, terrain analysis, structural integrity mapping. The Coupe was limping in twelve different ways and already writing its own damage report. Nearby, nine… no, ten heat signatures approaching. Some sprinting, others walking.

All of them human, and no weapons visible on a single one of them.

No immediate threat. But that didn’t mean safe.

Zedd’s mind started replaying the telemetry. Angle of attack, intensity of the hit, dispersal pattern. It hadn’t been a random strike. Something wanted to warn him without killing him. Probably. Which meant they were talking. Or testing. Or— 

Wait a fucking minu… He felt his eye twitch behind his visor, the ghost of a migraine he wasn’t sure he could even get anymore trying to push its way into reality. This better be a goddamn joke, man.

“Eyes up,” Dev barked as he dropped from the opposite hatch, his own VEST humming to life with its usual intimidation factor dialed to eleven. The armor expanded around him like a threat given form, full Mark 7 spec. 

Tommy staggered out a second later, his older VEST coughing to life with an audible whirr-click-ping. It sounded like it had arthritis.

“Seriously?” he muttered, slapping the shoulder plate with an open palm. “Piece of shit. Work!”

Zedd didn’t even need to look at Tommy to clock the flinch in his voice, especially not with VEST hissing in protest. The shoulder actuator had been hit hard by the fall, the thing stuck mid-deploy like it was debating whether it actually wanted to be useful today. Zedd logged it without comment. Upgrade his rig. Or just give him a newer model. That was a priority he needed to bump higher, soon as he could get to it. It was a bad look to have one of his oldest field assets looking like discount cosplay in front of anyone, but especially the recruits.

Adele’s Mark 7 shimmered into place next, sleeker than the standard models. Her Model 3 was actually something she had inspired, different from the Standard Model 1 Caleb had needed and the bulky Model 3’s Dev and the entire Iron Legion used. It was primarily a thin recon shell, search-and-rescue alignmentm as all the Model 3’s were, built for assistance and medical evac, even down to the passive sensors where most had hardpoints. Lightweight, adaptable, elegant in motion, like everything Zedd made, it wasn’t made to just look cool—it was made to survive.

Kai moved like mist, tac-ed out in black synthweave that didn’t reflect light, along with a ghost-pattern rig that would probably cost more than the Coupe on the open market. Sword in one hand, rifle in the other, neither drawn so much as acknowledged. 

Kai didn’t need commentary. Kai just was.

A heavy impact rattled the downed vehicle as Caleb jumped out of it—no subtlety, just the full promotional hero entrance. Blue-and-silver Major Victory armor flared with power as he landed hard enough for his fist to pound the dirt. His shield flicked up automatically, pistol out and tracking; stance pure textbook, PR-ready and billboard-perfect.

And entirely unnecessary.

Zedd already recognized the psionic residue bleeding through the trees, thermal trail distinctive even before the body signatures got close. Subtle hints of null-space bending the heat signature, the kind of thing only someone who’d watched psionics rewire matter at the molecular level would even know to look for. He’d built counters for that. Catalogued every nuance.

This wasn’t an attack.

“Stand down,” Zedd said, flat, already turning his HUD to filter threat level. “Unless you feel like gunning down our own.”

The voice that came stumbling out of the tree line confirmed it. Beacon. Scot. Barely holding his composure, eyes still rimmed in faint purple from psionic discharge.

“Mr. Victors!” he called, hands raised halfway in what was probably meant to be surrender but came off more like panic-posing. “I-I’m so sorry, sir. I was just demoing my Null Lance; a training exercise. I-I had no idea the airspace—”

Zedd didn’t answer as Scot rambled, just let the silence chew at the kid a little. Beacon’s face cycled through the trifecta: panic, guilt, shame. It was a rather fast slideshow. Zedd almost admired the efficiency.

Almost.

More shadows emerged from the treeline behind him. Hesitantly, uncertainly, but finally flesh and blood began filling out the files Zedd had memorized like test answers before a fire drill.

Pedro O’Hara stood jittery but focused, every move overcalculated like he was waiting for someone to call his bluff. High neuroflex score, and weaponized curiosity buried under layers of practiced bravado.

Patrick Rostow. The man was as large as he was quiet, the kind of mass you didn’t argue with. Recent mercenary background meant his combat reflexes intact and his mining-calloused hands still looked like they knew how to crush a skull without cracking a sweat.

Ana and Mateo Eisenhardt stood close to each other as usual, the twins moving like a single unit with two sets of lungs. Her expression unreadable, though Zedd caught the flicker of pride in the way her stance never wavered. Him? Less restrained but protective in a way that wasn’t loud.

Madelyn Ronan stood near Scot, concern obvious even through the helmet’s tint. Zedd clocked the subtle shifts in weight distribution—she was ready to throw herself between him and any perceived threat, but hesitant to get in front of Zedd. Clearly still running on gratitude for her boyfriend begging for him to save her.

Hector Castiglione. Older. Smarter. Dangerous. The man was clearly haunted, from his eyes alone, hard-boiled and hard-coded. The type who’d eat a shot to prove a point, then make you pay for wasting the shard.

Marilyn Uzuri, the civil defense strategist, moved forward slowly, eyes already dissecting the crash. The woman was, above all else, good with numbers, and better with pressure.

Charles Bartlett stayed furthest back, but his eyes moved like a sniper’s; always on the hands, not the faces. The Alliance vet had been kicked out for reasons no one ever clarified in his file. It didn’t take that much digging to figure it out.

Toni Cho stood off to the side, the eighteen-year old girl with the dyed pink hair smiling his way. Well, half at him and half at the skycar like she was trying to reverse-engineer it from scratches and heat burns. Which, if he bothered to teach her the principles of his tech, she probably could. She had turned down offers from three elite research colonies to work for Zedd personally. The girl couldn’t hold hold eye contact for more than a second but could deconstruct a VEST’s neural latency in four. Absolute nightmare socially, but an asset.

Nine weapons. Each with a hairline fracture. Each calibrated for war Zedd hadn’t even declared yet. He watched them move, cataloged stances, posture, rhythm. He wasn’t impressed.

He was invested.

Dev’s voice snapped through the moment like a thrown blade. His helmet retracted mid-stride, face twisted with sharp, precise rage. The kind that didn’t yell unless it had to.

“You could’ve killed us!” he barked, tone cutting through the gathering noise. “What part of ‘controlled environment’ only didn’t register? Bossman designed the protocols for a reason!”

“I—” Scot started, but it didn’t matter. Caleb stepped forward and locked eyes with Scot as his helmet retreated backwards, voice calm but laced with the kind of edge that came from practice and pressure and knowing when people listened best.

“This is a restricted zone, Beacon.” The name landed heavy coming from him. Caleb didn’t raise his voice but he did shift it, sounding less like a kid from New York and more like the hero Zedd had built him to be. “You know the protocols. Psionic training is conducted under supervision. Containment seals, perimeter notifications, psionic dampeners. I just counted three violations without breaking stride.”

Scot froze, body still and eyes wide, flicking between Dev and Caleb and finally toward Zedd like maybe, just maybe, he could talk his way out of this one.

Zedd didn’t speak and he didn’t break eye contact, even to blink. Not as the helmet deformed back into the collar with a quiet hiss, nanofilament sliding down into inert storage as the glasses snapped into place. And not as he let Scot stare at his own reflection in the cobalt blue mirrored lenses, the stammer on his lips drying up under the weight of his own panic. Zedd had learned a long time ago that silence did more damage than yelling ever could.

He turned instead, his back to all of them and walked over to the Coupe. His eyes took in the scorched panels and the stress-warped frame with a loud click of the tongue. The left-side emitter assembly was a melted shell and the kinesis dampers were completely slagged. Zedd crouched, fingers brushing carbon scarring like he was reading braille off a corpse.

He wasn’t exactly sad to see the thing scrapped, honestly. It was bound to happen anyway, as he had kept it in his garage untouched, well aware that it was more out of date than anything he would personally be using, even if it far outdid the ones he was selling for the public. No matter it’s specs, that car had been built on an old memory of a better lie. A gift that never got given, for a future that never arrived. Nina would’ve loved it. Two years ago, she would have at least. Back when they were still in the middle of being wrong for each other.

Now it was just another artifact. Useless, obsolete. Good.

He tapped the omni-tool and started running damage control. Half the diagnostics were fried and the structural matrix had gone static, but that was fine. He could build something better. Something that didn’t smell like the past every time it idled.

“If a glancing hit from Beacon here was enough to take out one of my skycars,” Zedd said, still crouched, voice casual in the way that meant he wasn’t, “then I shouldn’t be building skycars.”

He heard Scot exhale, tension bleeding out of his posture. The kind of relief that came when someone thought they’d been forgiven.

Zedd stood slowly and turned around. The shift in temperature wasn’t real, but it was felt. “Don’t ever do that again.”

Scot flinched like he’d been slapped.

“I made you a living weapon. Not a prop for fireworks. You want to show off to the others, you do it in the facility I built, under the system I designed, where I can make sure it doesn’t kill anybody important.”

There was more silence, before he tilted his head Scot’s way, clearly waiting for him.

“Yes, sir. I…” Scot swallowed whatever else he was going to say in place of a sharp nod and a salute he hadn’t been taught. “It won’t happen again.”

Zedd’s eye twitched as he held back a sigh with all his willpower.

His VEST fully powered down, folding into the edges of his coat, and he approached the circle of recruits that had half-formed like they didn’t know whether to stand at attention or run diagnostics on their own posture. They straightened anyway. Muscle memory they hadn’t developed yet reacting to pressure they didn’t know how to name.

Zedd didn’t necessarily want it. At the very least, he definitely didn’t ask for the reflexive obedience. Either way, it was there.

“Relax,” he said. The words didn’t hold softness, but they weren’t harsh either. “If I wanted you afraid, I wouldn’t be out of armor.”

That got a few nervous chuckles. Pedro grinned, the real kind. It was the first time Zedd had seen that kid drop the mask since he showed up. That was a good sign, curiosity over fear.

He swept his eyes across the group, voice staying low and even; as comforting as he could sound given the bullshit he’d just been put through.

“Nice to finally meet you all in person. I probably look better when I’m not a hologram, don’t I?” he joked, letting the opener ease the mood a little. “I’ve had ADAM monitoring your sessions since onboarding. Good work so far. Three months have gone by rather quickly huh?”

He didn’t blink when Patrick’s hands curled slightly. Noticed the shift in Ana’s weight when she felt eyes on her. Watched Charles scan the treeline even now, checking for movement instead of words. They were all telling him things without speaking.

“You know me. I know you.” He let the weight sit, not bothering to explain further.

He’d read their files, dissected their psych evals, tracked reflex calibration deltas and combat sim footage frame by frame. He knew what pressure made Madelyn flinch and what tone made Hector sharpen. He knew which ones would break first and which ones were hiding fractures they didn’t know they had.

Zedd smiled, the kind that looked real but wasn’t supposed to be.

“Gotta say,” he said, gesturing toward the wreckage, “this wasn’t the welcome party I planned, but at least we know the gear still works.”

Ana rolled her eyes. Mateo smirked beside her.

“Now,” Zedd said, sunglasses catching the faint light off the treeline as he turned toward the entrance, “let’s head inside, and I’ll explain why I’ve been paying you to do pullups and sparring drills for the last few months.”

He paused, bright eyes scanning the group behind his blue lens. He didn’t need analysis software to tell him that they were listening. “Sound good?”

The group scattered into motion with a ripple of nods and muttered agreement, some too eager, some not nearly enough. It was fine. He didn’t need enthusiasm. Just compliance.

“Fantastic,” Zedd said, tone bone-dry, clipped and unbothered. “Dev, babysit the wreck. If it starts sparking again, put it out before it kills the resale value. I’m sure someone would buy one of my wrecks. Citadel scalpers go crazy for my old VESTs anyway.” 

He flicked up a hand and gestured behind him. “Tommy, Addy; walk our guests to the conference room and try not to put the fear of… well, me, into them too much. They still think this is an internship.”

He didn’t miss Pedro’s flinch and Toni’s eyes widening as he tapped his comm, but pretended he did anyway. “ADAM, tell the kitchen VI we need coffee and snacks. Bulk order. Stronger stuff on standby.”

“I got ya. Don’t worry about it. Already got her prepping, boss,” ADAM’s voice came back to him smooth over the crackling line. “And might I say, it’s deeply healthy to see you interacting with people not named Dev, Adele, or Kai. I was starting to think you forgot what non-professional socialization looked li—”

“Mute,” Zedd said, without raising his voice. The AI shut up. For now.

He turned toward the recruits, sunglasses back in place. “Ignore the mouthy VI. I upgraded his personality matrix last year and now he thinks he’s qualified to comment on mine.”

The procession toward the lakehouse began, boots crunching over dried needles and gravel. It felt a little too rehearsed, like they were filing into a graduation they hadn’t earned. Caleb lingered behind, gaze fixed on the Z-Coupe. Still smoldering a bit from the impact. Mostly cosmetic. Mostly.

“You weren’t worried about the car,” Caleb said low, just for Zedd. Not a question.

Zedd let the corner of his mouth tick up. “Of course not. Beacon just needed to be slapped down a little. So did the rest of them. Better here than mid-op.”

“They’re green.”

“So were you. Difference is, you had better branding.”

“And if they’re not ready?”

Zedd glanced sideways at him, smile staying where it was but never touching his eyes. “Then I hope they die in a way that teaches the others something useful.”

He left it at that, walking toward the house without waiting for a retort even as Caleb froze. Sure, he was mostly joking, but then again, this was a life or death situation he was working towards. The sun was almost down now, throwing fractured orange light across the water. 

“ADAM,” he subvocalized, reestablishing the link. “Run the Enhancement Protocols. I want all nine cross-referenced against current MELD and baseline criteria. Full suite. Use the scans we just got.”

“Boss, no need to ask me twice. I know what you want before you want it,” ADAM responded with as much cheek as an AI could have. “Initial data looks promising. Not sure exactly why you’re so focused on him but Pedro O’Hara’s bio-readings suggest highly exceptional MELD stability and on top of that, his neural conductivity is borderline optimal, neuro-flex rating of A+.”

Zedd smirked to himself. “I usually have good taste.”

The numbers were clicking into place; not perfect. 

Never perfect.

But close enough to be actionable. Seven months of iteration, of tweaking systems in the dark while the power structures in the part of the galaxy belonging to the Citadel kept pretending he was a “hoax”. He’d built the scaffolding under their noses, masked it with satellite projects and shell companies and ‘research grants’ that wouldn’t survive a real audit.

Now he had nine imperfect candidates. Nine weapons. Nine futures, if he played it right.

If they held.

The door slid open on approach and Zedd walked through with a smile on his face, temperature and lighting auto-adjusting to his idealized biometric preference. A second later, Caleb strolled in and the door sealed shut with a hiss of air behind him, quiet, precise, as he clapped his hands together and everyone in his living room turned to face him.

Time to get to work.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

5K Words x 4 (400 FP)

Me Billionth Dollar! (150 FP)

Me Trillionth Dollar! (300 FP)

Beyond Mass Effect (400 FP)

Project Rebirth (50 FP)

To Boldly Go (250 FP)


ROLL: Hull Architect (100 FP) [Endless Space] {Quality – Design}: “You know how to design ships. From nose to engine, you could draft up a functional space-worthy ship. On paper. Putting all the pieces together may be beyond you, but anyone who puts it together will agree, it’s a mighty fine ship.”

ROLL: Coding Station (200 CP) [The Irregular at The Magic Highschool] {Skills – Magitech}: “This is the workhorse of a Magic Engineer, being their main ‘battle station,’ so to speak. This large desk comes equipped with an integrated computer and CAD connection system to code Sequences into CADs and tune them to their user. It also possesses a simple VI system to make coding easier and more efficient. Includes a CAD that can take almost any form you want, from a bracelet to a pendant to a stick, and store up to 99 different Activation Sequences though it’s usually less precise than a specialized CAD.”

ROLL: Murphy’s Law (100 CP) [SCP Foundation] {Protection}: “You’ve been around so many experiments, so much weird shit, that you notice things other people don’t and instinctively position yourself, as a subconscious reaction to anything that can go wrong, and avoid the eventual backfire. The knowledge that a few errant bubbles in a flask can quickly turn into boiling so violently that even the open end of it isn’t enough to let all of its energy out, turning it into a chemical explosive, is not lost on you. Neither is the fact that that open flask over there just bubbled when a piece of dust fell into it. If you’re running the experiments, you know how to avoid those circumstances, and how to extinguish the fires if and when they break out.”

ROLL: Nanite Sciences (100 CP) [Generator Rex] {Quality – Size}: “You possess in-depth knowledge of nanite technologies. With sufficient equipment and resources, you could produce and control nanite machines, possibly even recreate the nanite event or maybe figure out how to reverse its effects. But that would take a long time of additional study of nanites out in the world. Still, you might be one of the few who could attempt this endeavor. You possess no knowledge of the meta-nanites, and understanding how they work is beyond your grasp.”

ROLL: Magical Coding (100 CP) [The Irregular at The Magic Highschool] {Skills – Magitech}: “The Activation Sequences used to enact Modern magic are made up of large blocks of code translated into Magic Sequences by the Magician’s Magic Calculation Area. You know the basics of this world’s coding methods, allowing you to program simple Activation Sequences into a CAD and create simple hacking programs.”

ROLL: Spell Compendium (100 CP) [The Irregular at The Magic Highschool] {Skills – Magitech}: “This small PDA-like device contains a large selection of Activation and Magic Sequences for your personal use. Secret or unique Sequences cannot be included in this selection.”

ROLL: Techy (250 CP) [Code Geass] {Vehicles}: “From Knightmares to guns, you know how to build and improve Geass tech.”

ROLL: Extremis Formula (200 CP) [Marvel Cinematic Universe Vol. 1] {Database – Mundane}: “Another attempt at creating super soldiers, this formula creates a virus that can enhance a person to superhuman strength, reflexes, and endurance. Additionally, normal Extremis users gain the ability to generate extreme amounts of heat through a complex metabolic process, generating heat from their bodies up to several thousand degrees Celsius on any part of the body they desire.

When regenerating body parts, the wounds take on the appearance of burning ashes while growing back the lost body part, in a matter of minutes, and cooling into regular skin, flesh, and bone. Be wary however, as this makes you light up on thermal sensors, and should your body heat up too much, you may end up exploding. Keep this in mind.”

ROLL: The Seed (400 CP) [Sword Art Online SB] {Toolkit – Mundane}: “You’ve come across something quite impressive here, Jumper—the culmination of Akihiko Kayaba’s work and something that can revolutionize the world if properly applied. The most basic and obvious use of this is as a development kit, a preset series of program packages and media resources that can be used for creating Virtual Reality worlds, as well as control the input and output of the five senses of players, provided they’re wearing the NerveGear or a device based off it.

The second element contained within is the famed Cardinal System, an AI developed to manage the entire system of Sword Art Online, providing balancing to enemy encounters and patching bugs based off what the players encounter and do during play. Why, it can even provide mental care through the Mental Health Counseling Programs it has as part of its sub-system, helping to ensure players are happy and mentally healthy as they play through the game. Cardinal was also famed for creating content whole-cloth without any human input, scouring the internet to craft quests or enemies based off mythology; if you wanted to, you could be a one-man game developer for something rivaling a AAA title in content and quality.

With study and effort, it’s possible to replicate Cardinal and the mental health programs, crafting new AI on the same level as the Mental Health Counseling Program within the Companions section.”

Forge Points: 200