Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 41: Just because you can see it coming …

‘Lightning Elemental spotted in Los Angeles Wholesale District’

That was the horrific message at the bottom of the screen, accompanied by grainy footage of LA at 3 in the morning, street lights having gone out in large sections of the city. Instead, flickering arcs of lighting illuminated those sections.

What he’d been expecting was a Wildfire Gestalt, a living flame that could split apart and recombine at will, drawing any natural flames it ignited into itself to be used later. There was nothing quite like it to scorch an area clean of all life. The only reason this replication didn’t allow it to turn into a city sized monster unstoppable by any kind of force was that there was an upper limit to how strong a single Gestalt could become. The regenerative aspect of that ability was bad enough.

The individual parts were quite weak however, making it easy to attack and wound while it was dispersed.

But the instant it decided the threat was large enough to pull itself back together … the fact that ‘gestalt’ was defined as ‘a whole greater than the sum of its constituent parts’ really said it all.

Fighting a swarm of lesser Elementals was bad enough, but the combined form could vaporize APCs with ease and obliterate anyone that wasn’t at least Level 25 or specialized in defense. Coupled with it being comprised solely of magic and fire and therefore being almost immune to most physical attacks, it had powered through anything the LAPD and later National Guard had thrown at it.

In the end, its death had come from an entirely different place, though perhaps one that was rather obvious.

Firefighters. More specifically, firefighters using the equipment designed for the mess that were California wildfires, dumping hundreds of tons of water straight on top of its head in a well-coordinated strike, extinguishing enough of it that the rest could be finished off by people using either spells, powerful mana-based [Skills] or simple firehoses.

After an entire day of raging fires, the great beast had finally been brought down, seeing several square kilometers of the city burned completely to the ground, large chunks taken out of the rest, and hundreds of thousands dead.

And to top it all off, no one had known who was behind it, or what it had been meant to achieve?

Some kind of terrorist attack intending to dump a nasty monster in the lap of the American people, which, for some unknown reason, no one had taken credit for.

A summon by some random person who underestimated its power and burned up

Another drunken mistake, someone who’d decided getting drunk of their ass was a good idea and that making major life decisions in that state was an even better one and died for it.

A top-secret levelling operation conducted by the CIA, NSA, or any other alphabet soup agency.

A leveling operation conducted by some other part of the government, then gotten covered up when it went pear-shaped.

Countless theories had been created, each worse than the last, filling the void left by a lack of an official statement even on the news. Even if the truth had been discovered at a later date, Isaac had never heard about it, probably because the world had already gone to shit by then.

If he’d known about his trip to the past ahead of time, he’d have spent considerable time tracking down whoever was responsible for all the early catastrophes and making sure he could stop them.

And anyone willing to do something like this was someone he’d have gladly handed over to the NSA without a care of what happened to them. Because quite frankly, someone willing to cause that much damage, cause so many deaths, was unlikely to change in the course of less than a month, the amount of time he’d have to fix or prevent this situation.

As far as the person responsible for the current crisis, Isaac was damn certain that it was the same one. Same date, same category of monster, even if it had a different element, that couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, could it?

Glaring at the Stormheart Gestalt on the screen, Isaac felt a deep seated impulse to run to the airport at full tilt, get on the first flight to LA and try to take that thing down himself.

A mere moment later, he ruthlessly quashed that impulse. The fight would be over by then, especially if other people had been closer. After all, he was hardly the only high Level person in the world.

No, the right choice was to stay here and try to help in the same way he’d wanted to from the very start. Knowledge and advice.

“Hard to believe anyone could be that stupid.” someone loudly muttered.

“You don’t end up on TV for not doing the stupid thing.” someone else argued “This is a one in eight billion idiot.”

“That’s a high tier monster, a minimum of Tier 4. No normal person has that much mana right from the get go. So, more like a one in a few million idiot?”

“Actually, that makes it worse.” Karl cut in “The idea that someone who’d already been summoning and levelled up a bit could still be that stupid is horrific.”

As the discussion ramped up, other people began shushing them to watch the tragedy unfolding before them.

“Alright, I’ll try to see if I can figure out what that thing is.” Isaac announced loudly “Could someone else see if there’s a way to contact someone involved in that mess so we can get any information we get directly to where it’s needed. Also, I need a list of all [Skills] that any variation on [Policeofficer] gets which use mana in any way that could be considered offensive. Despite any cultural differences, the LAPD should have access to similar [Skills].”

“Why mana [Skills]?” Eisenberg asked, having just arrived in the room.

“That thing, whatever it is, looks intangible. The way to fight those is to put as much mana into ones attacks and whack anything that looks remotely important.” Isaac loudly stated.

“Right, I’ll call the Professor, he should be able to get us in.” Amy nodded thoughtfully “He should have the necessary star power for that.”

“In that case, I’ll get started on cataloging [Skills].” Karl volunteered, immediately pulled out a sketchpad and began to start questioning everyone present.

Meanwhile, Isaac flashed open the summoning screen, visible to all so it made for a highly effective ‘I’m busy so leave me the fuck alone’ sign.

Summoning List (Elemental)

…

Summoning List (Elemental, Lightning Subtype)

Name

Material Cost

Mana Cost

Sparkplug

Tier 1 Circle, Copper Shavings, Battery

10

Jolter

Tier 2 Circle, Copper Wire, Battery

50

Lightning Elemental

Tier 3 Circle, Copper Wire, Water, Iron Shavings, Battery

100

Thundercloud

Tier 4 Circle, Water, Coal, Kite, Car Battery

150

Stormheart Gestalt

Tier 5 Circle, Car Battery, Fractal Diagramm, Copper Wire

450

…

The real challenge here wasn’t identifying the monster, he’d done that at a single glance. Well, in theory at least. A well timed wave of Lightning Elementals would look a hell of a lot like a Stormheart Gestalt in its disassembled form, but the kind of coordinated effort that would require to pull off was, well, significant, so he doubted that was what he was facing.

Instead, the issue was making it look good, taking a convincing amount of time and also coming up with proper arguments using only the knowledge he was supposed to have.

Besides, there wasn’t much he could do until Amy got a hold of Bailey.

So he just sat there, swiping away parts of the summoning section to indicate he didn’t believe that particular monster was the one at hand. All the while, he softly muttered to himself, voicing his thoughts out loud without really giving anyone the chance to properly catch on to what he was saying, not even if they had a very strong Perception.

“Hey, I got through to Bailey, apparently he’s already a part of the conference to deal with this.” Amy called, then turned to the gathered group of police officers “Can we please get a hookup to a conference call using a laptop or something?”

“Gimme a second.” a middle aged man jumped and hurried towards the door, then turned “Do you want to take it in private, or here?”

“Here.” Amy said “We won’t have speaking privileges anyway. I just need all you people to pipe down, if that won’t work, then please get us an office.”

The already low thrum of conversation stopped as people shut up so they could view another part in this historic event.

Because as horrific a situation as this was, it was also a historic moment. There had been messes like this before, right in the beginning where Tier 1 monsters had rampaged because no one had really known how to fight them.

Then, there had been a smattering of incidents involving stronger beasts, but with the novelty of monsters rampaging in the streets having worn off, those had usually been relegated to the local news, only mentioned on larger scale reports if they had been significant in some way.

Hell, there had also been a couple of Tier 5 monsters that had gotten summoned and trashed the place they emerged in but ended up stopped in the end. The news had assumed it was something weaker and no one had bothered to correct them.

But Isaac knew, he’d looked the pictures up online.

The shattered and twisted remnants of a The Crusher Tier 5 Earth summon beneath the wreckage of a skyscraper in Caracas.

The burned remains of a five headed hydra amidst a fire ravaged slum in India.

And a few others that had either not made it into the news, or barely been mentioned. Perhaps if people had known from the beginning that the monster was Tier 5 it would have gotten more attention, but a few days or weeks after the fact?

There were more important news to be spread, be those more current monster troubles or the latest celebrity pregnancy.

This mess, on the other hand, was not only happening in the west, it was also happening live.

While some people, like Isaac and the policemen, were watching this to figure out what was happening and maybe offer advice, others were watching it purely for the spectacle. A real-life disaster movie, modern gladiatorial combat, the ultimate entertainment. And perhaps it would have been a nice form of entertainment … if it hadn’t been so damn serious and gotten so many people killed.

On the TV, the scene suddenly changed, showing a live stream from some poor sap’s bodycam, prompting Isaac to glare at it. This was far closer to pure spectacle than the previous view, and he didn’t like it.

But at least, this perspective gave him a better way to see some things he could later reference when arguing his case.

An arc of lightning flashed across the screen, narrowly avoiding smashing someone flat as it hammered into a lightning rod and was sucked into the ground. The next one blew apart a nearby parked car, causing fuel to ignite and leak out all over the ground. Thankfully, cars couldn’t explode like they did in the movies.

Almost immediately, the camera cut away again, showing a more distant view of the situation. Clearly, this particular news organization wasn’t eager to show someone die in a closeup shot.

The view from the sky, broadcasted from either a helicopter or drone, showed the lesser parts of the Stormheart Gestalt having spread out even more, though their number seemed to have stopped increasing.

“Hey Isaac, we got things setup.” Amy called, waving him over.

She and the guy who’d volunteered to help with hooking them into the conference call were wheeling in a large screen on wheels, showing a call with about a dozen experts and government officials arguing with each other.

One of the people with ‘Director, Office of Operations’ had a clearly artificial background and was looking rather irritated. Clearly, he was in the middle of trying to direct the police to deal with the situation while also having to babysit a bunch of scientist who weren’t contributing anything useful. Or at least, Isaac assumed that if they’d been helpful, the man wouldn’t be looking so damn pissed.

“Basically, whenever we activate our mike, we can talk directly to Bailey, then he can unlock the conference so we can talk to the rest, which would include showing them the video from our webcam.” she explained.

“Alright, thanks.” Isaac said, immediately leaning forward and clicking on the crossed microphone icon to let him talk directly to the professor.

“Adam, I think I know what this is. It’s too powerful to still be a mere Tier 4. Then, there’s the fact that it’s clearly some kind of electric or lightning Elemental, which puts it solidly into the Elemental category. In the electric Subtype, we’ve got the Stormheart Gestalt, and going by the English definition of the word, ‘a whole greater than the sum of its parts’, I think that means it can split apart and then recombine to create an incredibly powerful form. Also, I’m pretty sure that they’re absorbing electricity from the grid and that might be why it split up, so it can come back far stronger when it recombines.”

It was a testament to how good their working relationship was that the reply wasn’t ‘are you sure’ or a confused ‘wait, what’, but a far simpler and encouraging answer.

“Alright, I believe you. How certain are you?”

“Ninety-five percent.” Isaac nodded.

Bailey immediately relayed that to the rest of the group, and the conference exploded into noise.