Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 43: Interlude LAPD

Assistant Chief Elliot Allen was not having a good night. Well, in all honesty, his entire month had been shit after that god-damn [System] had been initialized.

Initially, it hadn’t been all that bad. Sure, people had freaked out a bit, but that was perfectly understandable.

Then, the monsters had shown up. Unlike some other cities, LA had ended up with a surprisingly normal and beatable spread of beasties. Sure, the three meter tall mass of moving rock had been a pain to beat, but it had also been very slow, allowing them to take it apart with several anti-materiel rifles found in the LAPD’s armory.

The next few weeks had been a constant deluge of [System] related messes on top of ordinary crime, from small monsters showing up on the street and attacking people to criminals levelling up a little and thinking they could utterly obliterate the police force, only to find out that being twice as hard to kill as an ordinary human wasn’t nearly enough to survive a bullet to the face.

The most alarming of empowered criminals however, had been the [Thief]. A young man who’d gained the ability to steal objects at a distance, causing them no end of trouble as valuables seemed to simply vanish into thin air.

When they’d finally spotted him on camera and confronted him, he’d first snatched the cartridges out of the would be arresting officer’s taser. Then, when guns had been drawn, he’d repeated the same trick with the bullets, only to find out afterwards that using this same trick on the can of pepperspray that had then been produced … was a truly terrible idea.

Once the cloud of irritant had dispersed enough for other people to approach, the man had been arrested, booked, and locked in a cell that had literally been welded shut to make escape harder.

After all was said and done, Allen wasn’t entirely sure what was worse. The fact that such power had been acquired in so short a time, or the fact that it had been achieved by such a dumbass. Stupid people were bad enough, God only knew how many idiots he’d dealt with during his days as a patrol officer, but stupid people with superpowers? Sheesh.

But tonight, tonight was especially bad and would forever live in his memory, though it wasn’t clear yet whether it would just be ‘one of those days’ or something that would haunt his nightmares for years to come.

Which brought him to the current clusterfuck. Someone had not only unleashed an extremely powerful monster on this city, they’d also picked one that was practically immune to conventional weapons, making the normal methods of dealing with strong monsters, which mostly consisted of using increasingly heavy weapons against them, utterly useless.

To top off the pile of shit already on his plate, when the power had failed and the precinct’s backup generator had kicked in, one of the Gestalt’s subunits had gone straight for the renewed source of power, just like everything else that still contained electricity.

Thankfully, cars were themselves Faraday cages and while he’d just learned the Elementals could burn through those, it was clearly too much work for a dinky car battery, at least judging by the fact that their squad cars were largely left alone so long as there was no one actually inside them.

Now, he stood here in the middle of the precinct’s parking lot with a barely working generator powering a laptop and some doodad a technician had dug out from some backroom that connected him to the rest of the world via a direct satellite link. Apparently, it had been designed for just such a situation where the regular cell lines weren’t available.

At least it wasn’t raining and they’d see the next creature to approach before it crawled out of the nearest electrical socket. After all, the asphalt street was a piss poor conductor, as confirmed by the surprisingly helpful lab coat wearing peanut gallery.

The young man with the rifle slung on his back had just finished explaining about how many people should have had access to [Enhanced Impact] when something flashed nearby. His head snapped around to look at it and when he saw what it was, he swore loudly.

Another damn Elemental was approaching, heading straight for the generator. This was the third of its kind that had decided that the generator powering his video conference looked tasty, but it was the first one that had gotten close enough for him to see.

There might be the entirety of the LAPD, LAFD, and a lot of people from the local air force base out here, but there were a lot of these things and they were far too hard to put down.

Or at least, they had been. Hemming them in with batons turned lightning rods, using something as simple as a restraining [Skill] meant to at least weaken the magic powers of people they arrested on the rampaging beasts and slightly draining their mana and everyone grabbing any mana [Skills] they could had given them the advantage. It was rather unfortunate that too few people had chosen them beforehand, instead going with defensive [Skills] or ones that helped with investigations, but that was something they were currently working on changing.

In this case, however, there was a simple fix. Allen took a couple of steps closer to the Elemental to give him a clear line of fire without anyone who might end up in the way by taking a couple of steps in the wrong direction, tore out his gun and fired.

The .500 Smith &Wesson Magnum revolver that appeared in hand was the most powerful handgun on the market, with a kickback well beyond what most people could be expected to handle in a combat situation, but it would do one hell of a number on anything it hit.

It roared in his hands, the massive projectiles further enhanced by his [Skills] leaving the barrel as harbingers of the monster’s destruction even as people did everything they could to not get fried.

The bullets tore through the air, wreathed in a dark brown energy and leaving behind a shining trail, them hammered into the Elemental, leaving behind massive gaping holes. It recoiled and tried to retreat, but it was a great deal slower now that it was also struggling to pull itself back together. Before it could get anywhere, however, three more rounds empowered by the last of his mana smashed it’s remains apart. And that was that.

Allen reloaded his revolver yet again and holstered it, getting pained looks from the people around him. Powerful as it was, the Magnum was loud. If anyone had actually taken damage to their hearing, that was just one more thing he’d have to answer for after this, he supposed.

After the incident with the [Thief], he and a few colleagues had begun to level in secret. They very much weren’t supposed to, summoning having been very much verboten, but if they were forced to use the [Skills] they gained, things were bad enough that it wouldn’t really matter what they’d done to get there.

Keeping that in mind, he’d slapped his [Skill] points into powerful offensive and defensive [Skills], perfect for a fight, and upgraded to this truly insane handgun now that he could easily handle the recoil.

“Alright, is anyone hurt other than having ringing ears?” Allen asked, looking around.

He got plenty of stares at the nonchalant question, but no one spoke up. A few people were still rubbing at their ears, but it looked like they’d truly made it through that skirmish just fine.

“This is Chief Allen at temporary HQ, we just got attacked by an Elemental after our generator. Does anyone have eyes on Elementals near our position?” he asked, returning to his table and snatching up.

“This is Lieutenant Nieves from LAFD, I’ve got two here, four blocks west of your position.” a voice crackled out in return “I’ll take care of it.”

“Chief, we got some more drones out of the storage.” Officer Bradford ran over, waving one box in the air while carrying two more under his arm.

“Good, get them in the air and hook them up to the laptops, quickly.” Allen ordered, then returned to the teleconference.

“It seems the battle has come closer to my position. The Elemental has been taken care off, but I won’t be constantly available anymore. If you have anything else to tell me, do so now.” he said.

His reply was nothing but silence. He’d learned some tricks and the battle was going better than before, but it was still a gigantic mess.

“Chief, the feed’s up.” Bradford suddenly appeared at his side and gestured to a laptop set up on another table.

On the screen, a man in full turnout gear with a halligan confidently grasped in his hands approached two Elementals, seemingly without worry. Lighting flashed and wreathed him, but he casually shrugged it off and swung the massive, crowbar like tool and cut one of the monsters in half, straight down the middle, then stepped into the middle of the lighting as it wreathed him and thrust his hands off to the side. It flickered and sputtered, then came apart in shower of sparks.

The second Elemental threw itself forward, flinging energy bolts ahead of it, but they were almost harmlessly deflected by the turnout gear. The man simply rammed the halligan’s pointy end into the ground, asphalt bursting apart, and then pushed it over in the direction of the monster.

As it fell, the halligan expanded, erupting to a length of almost five meters. The mana Allen knew to be infusing the weapon pinned the Elemental to the ground. It tried to worm out from underneath in, but the firefighter simply walked across it, stomping down with every step and blasting away the Elemental’s body with every single one.

That was Lieutenant Nieves of the Los Angeles Fire Department, one of the strongest people in the city. The strongest one actually known to the public. His Level was very low, but the real source of his strength was his [Class] and the fact that he’d massively levelled the [Skills] it provided.

Callum Nieves was a [Gearmaster], someone who’d spent over a decade trusting his life to a basic set of heat resistant fabric, air tank and mask, and that halligan in his hand. In turn, he’d taken good care of said gear, religiously repairing even the slightest rip.

And when the [System] had arrived, he’d been offered that [Class], based on his efforts.

Nieves had actually been surprisingly open about all of that, hoping to allow others to gain similarly powerful [Classes].

[Gearmaster] was ranked as rare, and had a [Skill] called [Equipment of the Soul]. Both the turnout gear and halligan were now practically a part of his very being, infused with mana strengthened beyond all reason. That meant walking around in full, heavy turnout gear in the LA summer heat without pause or ever being in danger of heatstroke, shrugging off literal lightning and obliterating Elementals with a simple metal rod.

And given that Nieves had been using the gear near constantly, that [Skill] was now at a very high level.

A fighter jet screamed past overhead, Allen’s own [Weapon Sense] highlighting the guns as having been infused with mana, be that by a [Skill] from the [Pilot], the [Engineer] who’d done maintenance or someone with more inventor’s spirit than common sense having jammed monster bits into bullets or something.

[Weapon Sense] was a very good [Skill], but it also had its flaws. For one, the old adage about assuming that something wasn’t a weapon usually meant one was lacking in imagination played merry hell with what it highlighted, meaning he had to filter it through his own perception of what he thought constituted a threat. Secondly, it didn’t give him an in-depth breakdown of how a weapon worked. Basically, it told him the gun was loaded with very basic bullets, interspersed with tracer rounds, given that the main damage dealer would be the mana they were infused with. Though the [Skill] wouldn’t tell him where the mana actually came from.

His sensitive ears allowed him to pick up the roar of the plane’s cannons in the distance, followed by a flash below as an Elemental died. Another staccato of fire, another dead Elemental. And again. Three monsters destroyed in a single strafing run, clearly, that was a pilot of not insignificant skill.

Allen shook his head. Fighter jets firing into LA, what had the world come to? Sure, they were being incredibly helpful, but it was also a sign of how bad things had gotten.

The plane banked sharply, coming back around and blasting apart another couple of Elementals, but Allen could tell that its mana had almost been used up.

As the last dregs of magical energy disappeared, the pilot clearly decided that there was very little they could do and return to base.

Before it could get anywhere, a massive bolt of lightning split the sky and hammered into the jet. The fact that planes were also, in fact, Faraday cages was something he’d known ahead of time, but that wasn’t a perfect defense, especially for the sensitive electronics that kept it up there.

The plane seemed to stutter for a moment, and then the next bolt hit it. And another one. Two more hit home near simultaneously and then, the plane began to fall out of the sky, trailing sparks. Allen could see the parachute that showed the pilot was almost certainly safe, but that still left the multi-ton plane to come down on top of a goddamn city.

Under normal circumstances, that would have been an all hands on deck emergency, but right now?

A mere footnote in the clusterfuck that was today.

“Chief, I’ve got an Elemental retreating here.” a report crackled from the radio, but it was only the first of many.

“Is it retreating towards the place these thing’s originated?” Allen asked, suspicious.

When the affirmatives came rolling in, he put down his radio and let lose a blistering barrage of swearwords in both English and Spanish, likely managing to offend anyone within earshot who spoke either language, but right now, quite frankly, fuck decorum.

Picking the radio back up a moment later, he spoke into it in a far calmer tone.

“The Elementals are re-merging and turning into something we only know to be ‘greater than the sum of its parts’. Anyone with a few Levels under their belt and has defensive [Skills] that can protect groups or attacks that can hurt it, meet me at …”

Allen paused for a moment, picked a good spot on the map and passed along the address, then continued snapping off orders.

“If there is anyone else who’s willing and able to help, come as well. Those who aren’t, evacuate the civilians.”

Then, he switched radio channels to the one used by the higher level officials to coordinate between departments.

“The Elementals are pulling back to the site where they originated. According to the think tank, we’re dealing with a Stormheart Gestalt, which can re-fuse and become far stronger. I’m heading there now with anyone who’s got the right [Skills] to try and take it down. If we fail, take advantage of them all being clumped together and blast them to pieces. At this point, there’s almost certainly one left alive in that area.”

The real question was if the Air Force had anything that could hurt that thing after the plane with the mana guns had ended up getting shot down. After all, bombing the summoning site down to bedrock would barely hurt the monster … if it did anything at all, that was.

“Chief, Lieutenant Nieven is on the radio, he’s coming over here.” a nearby officer, whose radio was on a wavelength that she could talk to the fire department on, called out.

“Thanks.”

With that, Allen took the car keys from a random nearby officer, unlocked the matching car and waited for a few moments until Nieven showed up.

“Chief Allen, are you really going to go there yourself?” Nieven asked, shooting him a quizzical look.

“I’ve got a handful of useful abilities. We don’t have nearly enough people who can say the same, so each and every one counts.”

And with that, Allen floored the gas pedal, shooting off in the direction of the gigantic mess that was the summoned monster.

The streets heading in that direction were completely deserted, people having already fled past the precinct. There, the gridlock of the century could be seen. Another ‘would normally be a problem, but right now, no one cares’ situation.

People were gathering in the spot he’d indicated. Some policemen, firefighters, soldiers, civilians with rifles, all the people you’d expect to be here. But then, there were also the people in their civvies, and if they were armed at all, it was with things like kitchen knives, bows, or other things that looked like they belonged in a cosplay shop. The exact kind of person who was likely responsible for this mess.

Allen gritted his teeth. He needed them.

And, of course, he was guilty of the exact same thing, but he’d done so so he could deal with irresponsible summoners, damnit, not to become one himself.

“Alright, we should go with basic monster fighting rules. Tanks draw aggro, healers make sure they survive the experience, everyone el- …”

“Anyone who can heal injuries, raise your hands.” Allen ordered … through the megaphone he’d gotten from the squad car.

A few people raised their hands.

“You need to stay back and out of the line of fire, we’ll bring the wounded to you.”

This time, he didn’t use the megaphone.

“I need a few volunteers with first aid training who can also survive at least the corona of one of those blasts to retrieve the wounded and get them to the healers. If you match those criteria, join the healers.”

A few people, all of them in varying uniforms, stepped off to the side after he’d said that.

“General tactics, if you spot a weakpoint, call it out. If you can take a hit others can’t, try to protect them. If you’re using a [Skill] that can damage an area, call it out. Also, plant lightning rods if you see an opportunity.

“Pay attention to your comrades, avoid friendly fire, and if you run out of mana, retreat while it regenerates. Now, let’s go.”

Allen marched forward, projecting an aura of confidence even while he was swearing up a storm in his mind. They really should have practiced it, but the powers that be had clutched their pearls and decided to hem and haw in an attempt to create a ‘safe’ way to deal with the situation … and then this had happened.

Suddenly, there was a shift in his surroundings. The air began to smell ozone, a pale blue aurora illuminated the surrounding area and, in the distance, a glowing figure wreathed in arcs of power rose.

It had fused. Shit!

“Get ready!” Allen roared over the noise the Elemental was generating as it charged “Healers, take cover!”

A little over a hundred people against that thing, what could possibly go wrong?

The fully fused Gestalt had taken a basic humanoid form, five meters tall and blazing with power, five orbs of energy connected by even more energy orbited it, each of them lashing out at them with arcs of energy.

Nieves threw out his arm and barely caught the first blast, the second causing his ludicrously durable sleeve to actually start smoking, and then it reached his position and kicked him. The fireman went flying and slammed into a wall with a crunch audible even over the noise of crackling lightning.

A young man in military fatigues darted out and began to hurriedly drag him away and to where the healers where to ensure he lived.

“It uses the orbs to shoot and the body to hit!” one of the people with a bow yelled, clearly very proud of himself for having made that very basic observation.

“Destroy the orbs!” Allen ordered, [Dangersense] providing a warning that just barely let him throw himself to the side and avoid getting charbroiled. Even so, the energy that boiled off the impact site burned and blistered his exposed skin and his muscles spasmed from the electric shock.

The Magnum barked in his hand, smashing apart the nearest orbs with six heavy and [Skill]-empowered bullets as he emptied the cylinder.

Allen swore under his breath, realizing that that had been utter overkill. He’d spent almost two thirds of his mana and a fifth of his dwindling bullet reserves on that attack.

The Elemental took a rapid step towards him but he dodged to the side and rolled past him, forcing it to turn. No, turn was the wrong word, this thing wasn’t limited by normal human physical, well, limitation. It … loomedin his direction and he could feel its attention land on him even as the orbs continued to rain hell on the brave people facing it.

His little maneuver had unfortunately put that thing between him and the others, putting him in danger of physical projectiles flying through it, but the others were actually focusing on the orbs, which put them in danger at range.

Yet even as he watched, two orbs reformed. It did dim a little, but it still looked powerful as hell.

“[Arctic Domain].” someone called out, warning everyone else that something was about to happen, and the world itself seemed to freeze. The moisture in the air crystalized, falling to the ground as tiny ice crystals.

He could barely feel it and judging by the other’s faces, neither could they, but the Elemental. Went. Apeshit.

It began to flicker slightly, clearly weakening, and then all its orbs unleashed a single, concentrated beam at the young man who’d managed to hurt it, only to be stopped by a shield of absolute darkness. For all of five seconds.

From this moment on, that image would be burned into Allen’s memory. He wasn’t even sure what he’d seen, but he’d still swear up and down that for a brief moment, he’d seen the teenage girl who’d cast it, the same one shown on TV half an hour or so ago. Her eyes flying open in terror, her face shifting from a furious snarl into a mask of fear as she realized what was happening …

… and then she keeled over, a dinnerplate sized hole burned through her chest. Another beam lashed out, obliterating the ice-caster and sweeping across the crowd, taking down another dozen or so people.

Allen emptied the Magnum into the closest orb, only having the mana for the first four bullets, but it was enough to reduce it to faint whisps of energy.

Then, a piece of metal came flying through the air, [Weapon Sense] highlighting that it was utterly drenched in mana, and blew apart another orb, then boomeranged back through the chest of the Elemental to smack into the hand of a scorched but healthy looking man in turnout gear.

The Gestalt lunged straight at Nieven and everyone scattered, opening up the area around him and began to bombard the monster from all sides. It unleashed its energy upon him until it was satisfied he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon, if ever, and then attacked the surrounding people.

Magic, batons hammered into the ground, even riot shields were thrown into its way, but they barely slowed it down.

The instant he could, Allen fired another empowered bullet into the monster, then kept closing the distance, the report of the gun echoing periodically as he advanced.

Reduced to the size of an ordinary human, the Stormheart Gestalt whirled around and tried to lunge past him to flee, but the motion lined it up almost perfectly with the barrel of his gun, allowing the next empowered bullet to tear all the way down its body, reducing it a collection of weak sparks on the ground. A hail of attacks from the handful of survivors later, it was dead.

Stormheart Gestalt (Lv. 24) has been slain. 200 XP gained (360 XP base distributed across 17 people as per their contributions, XP increased by 1.95 % due to Level difference, additional modifier triples XP due to excessive difference)

Heroic Deed has been noted and will increase future Class Quality

Several more notifications announcing truly insane increases in [Skill] Level flashed into his vision, including one that turned his [Dangersense] into a precognition power that let him see up to a second into the future, but he removed them all with a wave of his hand as he quickly headed towards the rest, doing a quick headcount. Eleven people were still clearly alive, so those accounted for some of the people in the Kill Notification, but the rest? The medical team had had quite a few more than just six people, even not counting the ‘paramedics’.

Allen took off at a dead sprint, ignoring his body screaming at him as he moved at top speed, coming to an equally sudden stop as he rounded a corner and saw them all, perfectly fine.

“Did anything else happen?” the woman closest to him stood up sharply, alarmed. Allen recognized her as Doctor Grant, an ER doc he’d dealt with a few times while he’d been a patrol officer. He hadn’t really expected her to show up to a thing like this … on second thought, he should have. She was a consummate medical professional willing to go to great lengths for people’s health, he just never would have thought she’d be involved in magic.

“No.” Allen sagged in relief “The Kill Notification said the XP got split between fewer people than I thought were still alive and I was afraid something had happened to you.”

“Nah, we’re fine.” Grant shook her head “We didn’t get any XP for the kill, we got a truly insane amount for doing our jobs in a situation like this.”

“Huh.” It was hardly the most intelligent of responses, but right now, he was mentally and physically exhausted. Come to think of it, he should probably give the all clear. He reached down to his belt to grab his radio, but when he tried to use it, all he got was an electric shock and a face full of smoke.

“Does anyone have a working radio?” he called around and got one a moment later.

“All units, this is Assistant Chief Allen. We’ve taken down the monster, confirmed to be a Stormheart Gestalt. Send ambulances and hearses, I need transportation for …”

He rattled off a list of orders, then asked everyone who heard him to call in to get a rough overview of who was still there. The number of responses accounted for most of the LAPD, but still indicated immense casualties. Sure, some of those that failed to call in likely simply had broken radios, just like him, but he sincerely doubted that accounted for all of them.

Slowly, he walked back towards the scene of the battle. The last few sparks were dying down, forcing him to pull out a small flashlight that had miraculously survived the fight intact.

If someone didn’t get the power back on, there would be a lot of cranky people, come morning. No AC in the LA summer heat, yikes.

Allen shook his head as if that could shake out the inane thoughts.

Looking around, he spotted the body of the teenager who’d blocked that electric beam, face still frozen in the shocked expression she’d worn when she’d died. He reached down and closed her eyes, holding back tears. He hadn’t even known her name.

But he’d make sure to find out, to talk to her parents and tell them that their daughter had saved everyone’s lives.

Looking around for the body of the [Ice Mage] to do the same, all he could find was a body completely reduced to charcoal. The shadow girl had caught a highly concentrated beam meant to punch through something and ended up looking mostly intact. This … wasn’t that. This was someone wrapped in lightning and held there until they were nothing but, well, charcoal.

There was going to be hell to pay for this. A lot of the bill would be his to pay, given that not only had he levelled a little despite official disapproval of the process, he’d also been in charge of a large part of this mess. Granted, he literally hadn’t had any of the tools needed to fight a being like that, but that would only soften the blow a little.

Other people who needed to get ready for an ass-chewing was anyone who’d spoken out against summoning and prevented him from preparing for a mess like this.

And that was the truly insane part of this situation. You could fight physical monsters with regular ordinance, even if things could eventually escalate to the point where what was required to kill one was a Tomahawk Missile, but that was still something they already had available. But these things, those could only be fought using mana, things the [System] provided. To fight the [System], you needed to use the [System]. And if you managed to fuck up any part of that, you became a part of the problem.

To top it all off, there was the situation of the gains from the fight. Sure, the XP gains being spread out across seventeen people meant they were rather anemic for any one individual, even with all the bonuses and the fact that several major contributors had died in the fight, but the [Skill] gains had been amazing. And then there’d been that ominous message ‘Heroic Deed has been noted’ … what the actual fuck?

He'd do his best to burry all of that before some absolute lunatic decided to try and replicate this situation for some great gains.

Fuck this. Fuck it all.