The plane shook as what I guessed to be an anti-tank rocket or bomb blew up. We all staggered back. “What in God’s name was that?” Charlotte asked.

“Our signal to leave,” I said briskly. To punctuate my statement, a rocket slammed through the side of a plane and landed under the table. Luckily, the chairs caught the blast. “MOVE!” I yelled.

“Right!” Eliza said, and began advancing.

“If those brutes keep this up,” Charlotte said, “there’s a good chance they’ll hit the Rolls. It’s from the Forties! Or worse, they’ll hit the Maybach!”

“Char,” Eliza said testily, “I love you, but there’s more important things worry about!”

“Like the lemon hamentashen,” John said. He was interrupted by three rockets hitting the plane at once, one in the parlor, one in the dining room, and one in the room in front of us, blowing out the door.

“Fuckin’ ‘ell!” Eliza yelled, shocked at the damage. I didn’t blame her. The door right in front of her had just flew past her face. I was actually impressed that she managed to keep moving.

From the front cabin, the remaining pilot ran out of the cockpit. “Get down!” he yelled. The cockpit exploded behind him.

“Get the sniper rifle!” Eliza yelled at him as smoke poured out from the cockpit. “We’re going to need fire support on these bastards!”

The pilot nodded, and got to one of the couches. He pressed a button, and there was a beep as a compartment slid out. I suddenly realized that gun safes had been built into the plane’s furniture. I also noticed a pattering sound, like hail on a tin roof. It must have been gunfire, but we were too busy running to confirm it was until a bullet penetrated the wall and sailed past our heads. Charlotte, understandably, screamed.

“Keep runnin’ ya bloody idijits!” Eliza yelled, standing by the door, and shoving us out. “Move, move, MOVE!”

Looking down at the ground, I saw an SUV with TSA markings that had shredded by assault rifle and SMG fire. It was only cosmetic though, with windows shattered and the doors perforated and the engine block virtually untouched. The captain, his MP-5K slung over his shoulder, was clearing out dead bodies dressed in TSA uniforms from the SUV. Our other pilot was also dead as well as another person dressed in a TSA uniform. Weirdly, the TSA agents who had apparently attacked us were all blond, over-muscled white guys armed with some type of SMG. Uniformed TSA agents are supposed to be ethnically diverse, unarmed, and slightly out of shape, at least according to the stereotype. I couldn’t see the two bodyguards, but I could hear them firing from underneath the plane.

As soon as I reached the bottom, I ran to grab the dropped Uzi. It was probably next to useless in this situation, as it only had an effective range of fifty meters, but it made me feel better. Behind me, I heard John and Charlotte make it down safely and Eliza start down the stairs. Gripping the Uzi, I turned around…

…Just in time to see a rocket hit the parlor. Eliza fell down from the force of the explosion and slid down the rest of the way on her face.

“ELIZA!” I yelled, running towards her.

“I’m fine,” she said, grabbing my hand. As I helped her up, I noticed her nose was bleeding, and the arm she was using to support herself was pretty scratched up. “Just got the wind knocked outta me.”

“Good Lord,” Charlotte said. I turned to look at her briefly. Both she and John looked disturbed. “Eliza, you’re bleeding.”

I turned back to look at Eliza. “She’s fine,” I said, “just some scrapes. It’ll take a lot more than that to slow her down, let alone kill her.”

“Thanks, Nate,” Eliza said, lifting her gun.

“Hopefully Michael is ok,” Charlotte said, cocking her revolver.

There was a crack of a bolt-action rifle from the plane. “That sounds like Mikey, ma’am,” one of the guards from under the plane said happily as he reloaded. The report of the sniper rifle continued, causing the volume of rockets and bullets to decrease.

I used the break to go over to the other pilot’s corpse and root through his pockets for ammo. I was pleased to find that he had four twenty-five round magazines in his ballistic vest. After I put those in my pocket, I removed the current mag. It appeared to be a fifty round magazine, and it was mostly full. Pulling the bolt back slightly after reinserting the magazine revealed that the fiftieth bullet was in the chamber.

Right around the time I had finished that task, I saw that John and the captain had been busy. John had been doing something similar with our attacker’s weapon, and the captain had started the SUV.

“Huh,” John said, “this looks like an MP-40, but they’re using some weird synthetic. Whatever it is, they trust it enough to even make the barrel out of it. Also appears to be internally silenced.” That was weird. If you don’t know a lot about guns, you should know that an MP-40 was a weapon developed for the Nazis in the late thirties. Synthetic materials like carbon fiber and plastic are rarely used in the barrel due to their tendency to melt really quickly or crack from the force of the bullet. They are used a lot in the stuff surrounding the barrel and firing mechanism due to how light they are.

“Can you work it?” Eliza asked. She was under the plane with the bodyguards, firing her rifle at the airport. Speaking of that, we had landed in between two runways and were over three hundred meters away from the terminals.

“Yeah,” John said, “but I doubt this thing’s got the range we need.”

“I’ve got a way of fixing that,” the captain said.

“Yeah,” I said, “the SUV works, but there’s only five seats. Who’s coming with you?”

“Easy,” the captain said. “You, your friend, Miss Eliza and Lady Charlotte. The rest of the retinue shall cover our advance.” He opened one of the passenger doors. “Now, if would please get in, Lady Charlotte, and please lie on the floor, for your own safety.”

“I call shotgun,” John said as we got in.

Charlotte, on the other hand, was more subdued. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?” she asked her guards.

“Aye ma’am,” one of them said. “But I can’t speak for the blighters shooting at us.”

I was the last one in. As soon as I closed the door, the SUV sped off, squealing its tires. We all were flung forward. “Fuck,” I swore, “couldn’t you have at least let me buckle my seat belt?”

“Apologies, sir,” the captain said, “but we haven’t the time for safety.” Ignoring John’s terrified whimper, he continued on. “The plan is to get inside, save any civilians we’re able to, find a defensible location, and contact the local constables. After that, we pray they reach us in time.”

“Sounds like a plan,” John said, “but it relies way too much on luck.”

We screeched to a halt outside the terminal farthest away from the main airport, just under one of those things that docks with the plane. This time I had braced for it. We all exited the vehicle. Once I was sure no one was going to shoot me, I quickly unfolded the Uzi stock.

“You two,” the captain said, indicating me and John, “you’re going to breach with me. I’ll take point. One of you will open the door. Please stay behind me. It is a terrible breach of etiquette to let your guests die.”

“And what about us?” Eliza asked.

“Stay outside until we give the all-clear,” the captain said, “and avoid doing anything rash.”

We moved up the stairs to the boarding ramp, the captain in the lead. When the captain got to the top of the stairs, he paused. “Something’s propped the door open,” he muttered to us. I was third in line, so I couldn’t see what the captain saw. “I think it’s a TSA officer… A real one, this time, judging by the holes in her back.”

The three of us hurried inside, the captain kicking open the door. Once inside, we quickly found that there was no one there. Since there wasn’t a plane docked at the moment, we only had to give a momentary glance behind us. The captain nodded to me, and I leaned out and gave a thumbs up-gesture to Eliza and Charlotte. I only spared a moment to look at the corpse. She had been a young woman with brownish skin and curly hair tied back in a bun. There were about six entrance wounds in her back. I gave her silent thanks. If she hadn’t fallen where she had, we wouldn’t have been able to get in. I know that it was less her choice and more the choice of the person who shot her, but I didn’t want to thank a murderous asshole.

“Poor girl,” Charlotte said. “What kind of monster would do this?”

“Shh…” the captain whispered. He then motioned us to advance. As we moved, we began to hear people murmuring and a child started to cry. We also heard joking and laughing in a language I couldn’t quite place. “Is that German?” I asked, tapping the captain’s shoulder. The captain nodded.

Finally, we were by a corner. Once we turned it, we’d be in view of the airport proper. The captain held up three fingers, then slowly lowered them one by one. We followed him out, forming into a v-shape. In front of us, there was another muscular blond man, this time wearing a trench coat, with his back towards us and his weird MP-40 clone pointing at the ceiling.

The captain sent a two-round burst into the man’s spine. He collapsed. Instantly, the room ahead of us erupted into screaming, with an undercurrent of yelling in German. From my side, another muscular blond man in a suit ran in from my side. I gave him a three-round burst. He pirouetted a bit, then fell down. He never fired his weapon.

I was on the side closest to the end of the wing. There were only two men of the strange blond men dressed like they were from the 1940s. I fired two bursts. They fired one each, but they had deliberately aimed at the floor. I paused for a second to take in my surroundings. We were in a waiting area, but strangely enough there was no one sitting in the chairs.

They were on the floor.

“They’re shooting hostages!” I yelled, turning around. I then saw that our opponent seemed intent on creating a bloodbath. Only a few were shooting at us, just enough to force us into cover. The rest were systematically executing hostages. We ran further into the airport for cover, not really finding that much. I ended up behind a reception desk. John was behind a steel pillar. The captain didn’t make it.

I had just gotten behind the desk when it happened. At first, the hall just had a few enemies, all very homogenous in appearance. There were probably only five or ten, all with SMGs. Then there was a flash of light as suddenly twenty new hostiles teleported in shooting. The three of us quickly focused fire on them.

I ran out of ammo quickly, my magazine had fifty rounds, not infinity and I had been firing a lot. As I turned around to get back into cover, I saw the captain double over out of the corner of my eye. As bullets smashed into the reception desk, I crawled over to see if he was ok. He wasn’t. He had been shot once or twice in the head and multiple times in the gut. The hostages I could see were recoiling. Some were crying and whimpering, some were screaming, some were just in shock.

As I reloaded my Uzi, I noted that my cover was slowly disintegrating. “Welp,” I said to myself as I pulled back the bolt on my Uzi, “at least it’s holding up better than expected.” I then peeked out and fired a few quick bursts, dropping two of the bastards and causing a third to stagger back and clutch his arm. This caused the ones remaining to focus fire on me.

Suddenly, there came the sound of a FAL-based weapon. “Eliza!” I said “That’d better be you!”

“’Course it’s me,” came Eliza’s voice above the gunfire. “Did y’really think I’d let these gits ruck with me mates?”

John laughed. “Well, at least we’ve got a lupine to help us deal with the teleporting assholes?” He then leaned out to fire a few bursts downrange.

“Wait,” Eliza asked, “they’re bloody teleporting? Are they Jumpers?” Jumpers, like lupines, are a breed of parahumans. However, their ability is to teleport or ‘jump’ from one location to another.

“Don’t think so,” I said, coming up for a few more bursts. After I was done, I continued, “Jumpers usually just appear, right? These guys made a flash of light when they entered.”

“So we’re dealing with mad science?” John asked. He leaned out and fired a few bursts, and said something under his breath like “fuck me, right?”

“Hey,” I said, “we’re winning, aren’t we?”

That was when the ceiling blew apart. Both us and our unknown assailants stopped firing and waited. I couldn’t see them due to all the dust. Eventually, it began to clear, revealing both our opponents and a figure dressed in Viking-style dress, including a helmet, shield and a huge axe. The smoke and thick armor may have hid her sexuality and identity, but as she stood up any Massachusetts resident could have identified her. It was Valkyrie.

“Listen up!” Valkyrie yelled. “You have seriously messed up. Just because the Minutemen aren’t located in Rhode Island doesn’t mean we don’t care. You’ve also killed a lot of cops and civilians from the looks of things. Surrender now, and you can go to jail without broken bones. This is your only warning.”

“Ok,” I said, setting my Uzi down carefully, “we aren’t going to give you any trouble.” I looked around. John had dropped his gun, but Eliza was still aiming at something. “Right, Eliza?” I asked.

She grudgingly dropped her gun. As soon she did, there was a burst of gunfire. I turned just in time to see bullets literally bounce off Valkyrie. “That’s it,” she said, “you assholes are going to jail with a headache.” She waved her axe in the direction of the hostiles and a gust of wind sent every single one of them flying back. She turned back towards us, a dangerous expression on her face. “You guys are gonna wait for the cops peacefully, right?” she asked, her voice dripping with menace.

“Yes ma’am,” I said. “No problems for us.” As I said this, I suddenly realized something. The cops were going to ask us some questions, and Nowhere Island University might not want them to learn the answers. This was going to get complicated.