The Elite, a team of some of the best heroes that Kadia and its surrounding regions had to offer. Nine strong at peak, though only six were here. The rest more than likely still manning The Hill or out on other assignments. Ranking them was pointless, as each was an expert in their own field. But their leader remained clearly defined, the blazing sword Eschenwald seeing to that.

His name, his hero name at least, was Erdwut and along with an almost annoyingly stoic demeanor he wielded Eschenwald, a sword made seemingly of ever shifting molten lava. Also, if it wasn’t apparent, he preferred the Germanic knight motif and wore modernized and matte black plate mail with a dark green and red embossed tabard. Also he never wore a helmet, allowing his almost concerningly long black hair to flow back behind his head.

On his left was… Aegis. She hadn’t changed much, or at least her hair hadn’t, Seth couldn’t see much from back here. Her suit was similar to the one she wore before at least, but it was recolored white with dark orange bordering. She also seemed annoyed, a noticeably anxious tic waiting for action in her left hand. She also had some kind of arm brace on that arm as well. It looked like an arm blade or something, but it was pointed back and tapered inward rather than out.

Next up was Ziyou, the team’s martial artist, emphasis on the artist. She wore a short sleeve armored red and gold leotard, but her dense sleeve tattoos made it seem tailored otherwise. She had moderately spiked up black hair and was stanced ready to fight, but wasn’t quite as anxious as Aegis.

Starting the right half was Technomancer. Not quite a controller of machines, but naming motifs don’t always have to give everything away. He was unimaginably smart and basically ran the League’s R&D division in Kadia. Decked out fairly heavily, he was wearing something akin to a space suit, but colored sepia brown and black. The big thing was the spider like backpack he used, four mechanical limbs each sporting either a sensor array or some kind of support weapon. He also never wore a helmet, but made up for it with a visor with several different scopes ready to be swapped in. He also has short brown hair, if that matters.

Next was Maglev, though like Techno it was more like he controlled metal rather than magnetic forces, but he liked to keep it ambiguous. He was the only one wearing a cape as well, or more over the only one who could get away with it, but his suit proper was rather plain comparatively. It was navy blue with grey steel highlights down the extremities, and a magnetic force symbol embroidered on the cape. Strangely the cape didn’t flow, it just wrapped widely around him like a menacing cartoon villain. He also has short black hair with lines shaved into the sides.

Lastly was Makani Samurai. As different as the name sounded he was actually an incredible swordsman. His suit was a cut down samurai armor set made from carved driftwood, giving off Polynesian vibes, and accentuated with green baggy robes underneath. Again, no matching helmet, but his dark hair was tied up short in a wolf tail. His sword was hilted but he kept a hand on it, and rest assured he was probably smiling.

Opposite to all this was a villain known as Terrorfirma, and judging from his outfit he just broke out of prison '...again.' If his name didn’t give it away, he could control earth, but that was only half the equation. The product of two villains from the old golden age, Fateseer and Quaker, he was a considerable opponent. Getting devastating ground pounding from his dad, and some long range clairvoyance from his mom. He could predict disasters and major events a good bit ahead of time and capitalize on them, or cause them himself. And judging from the lack of a park, and several periphery buildings, he’d probably predicted up one hell of an earthquake. His uniform was bright orange, but with indicator stripes across the middle chest and arms as was typical of anyone locked up in Omni-Max. ‘The prison for everything.’ One big brown line for ground type powers, with a moderate pink psychic band above it for the limited future sight. The tubes and ancillary pumps on the suit meant they were keeping him sedated, or had tried to. But… the real worrying thing was his expression.

'How the hell is a villain called Terrorfirma scared like this?'

Seth flipped a volume dial down to get the long range microphone up and finally get in the action.

“bzz…you listen to me?! You have to listen to me!! I can’t stop seeing it… I can't stop FEELING IT!! It’s like pure hate… anger! It resents everything! IT HATES EVERYTHING!! It wants to destroy... It wants to eat... IT WANTS-”

“ENOUGH!!!”

Erdwut wasn't enjoying the monologue and leveled his molten blade with quieting intent. It looked dull and more solid though. Speaker borrowed the ear piece to cut in.

“He is holding back again, watch this carefully.”

Aegis stepped up, flicked her arm brace hard. It… it unfurled into a round shield.

“You’re going back to prison Terror! We don’t need to hear another self-perpetuating prophecy from you!”

Her tone was as harsh as her stance. Samurai stepped closer.

“Besides, you really think this is how you get heard and understood? I actually kind of liked this park, you know!”

Terror turned his head down, massive hands barely leaving the sides of his head.

“You don’t believe me… YOU WON’T BELIEVE ME!!!”

He reared and balled those hands up, sending everyone bracing like this wasn’t the first time.

“FINE!!! THEN I’LL MAKE YOU BELIEVE ME!!!”

He slammed his hands down, shattering the already broken ground as a shockwave precipitated from his arms and down into the ground. Seth grabbed the lip of the roof before- *BOOM* the ground around him heaved like a wave. A cracking burst throwing concrete and dirt up under stress, but carrying that wave along at speed.

Yet those heroes all reacted accordingly. Aegis whirled around and took Ziyou by the outstretched hand, swirling up a few feet into the air, Techno activated a jetpack on two of his arms and lifted off, Maglev floated up nonchalantly with Samurai hanging off his cape.

“You’re paying to get this retailored if it rips.”

“Stop being dramatic, we all know it’s metal.”

Erdwut though didn’t move, he just pulled Eschenwald in and pointed it down, prepared to meet the wave head on. With all the stoicism of freaking volcano, he drove that sword down. The ground melted as the wave splattered molten rock around him like a defiant lighthouse over the worst of seas. The wave continued on, rumbling the nearby buildings. Shaking them but not toppling anymore. Scared the shit out of Seth though, he’s tough but falling off a building was still frightening.

Aegis moved first, flinging Ziyou around and releasing her toward Terror like a catapult before looping back around to jet with her. Maglev spun up like a top before releasing Samurai off in Terrors direction, flinging several steel rods out from under the cape in pursuit. Techno stayed back and up. Support arms squirmed robotically, measuring relative velocities and waiting for a chance or need to support. Erdwut… just started walking forward through the melt field he created.

Ziyou hit first, Terror hardly having time to pull his hands out of the ground. He blocked just as she pulled around, slamming a kick against his thick guard before twisting again and again and again, kicking like a combine harvester chopping wheat. Terror was recoiled from the barrage as Samurai slashed in, blade turned around so he won’t just cut him in half. His slash slowed his momentum enough that he just slid past Terror off recoiling from the last combine kick. Suddenly he was pulled to the left like he was just slammed in the gut. Next came a whirling flying sweep in from Aegis on his back right, shield bashing his legs out from under him. Then came the Maglev rods, each bending around his extremities and slamming him back first onto the ground.

Terror’s head rebounded off the shattered earth, but he was never know to go down that easy. He tried to pull himself up, but Maglev power was a heavy force to fight. His situation was hopeless, but he was also incredibly vindictive. A hand started reverberating, massing all the power he had left. He was intent on shaking this place to dust and take as much as he could with him. But as the reverberations rose up his arm, an Erdwut shaped shadow loomed over him with matching Eschenwald held high and flat. Solid molten rock slammed down on Terror’s head like a metric ton of bricks. Bouncing it off the cracked and churned earth like a paddleball, teeth flying loose all around. His head finally falling back, bloodied and out cold.

‘That’s the Elite for you, efficient and badass.’

The action done, and not wanting to get caught behind the police line, Seth packed up the scout suite. Threat interjected before he took off the earbuds.

“Did Aegis seem angrier than usual? She seemed more level during that solo- *brr*

‘Hmm.’ Seth’s phone was ringing. He pulled it out, it was work and- “OH SHIT I’m late!”

He franticly slotted it into the suit while he hurriedly walking to the opposite lip of the roof, Garkah tethering the suite’s earbuds to the phone

“H-hey Mitch, sorry got caught up testing the new frame.” He could feel the skepticism from the other side of the line.

“Then why do I hear a VTOL in the background?”

Seth stopped, took a noise canceling earbud and turned to face the droning League transport making a landing run on the park, the crew inside dead-eyeing him as they passed. He smiled and waved a slight hello before breaking for it and jumping away.

“You went to catch the fight didn’t you?”

Seth bounded down several buildings to a more covered path back out of downtown.

“M-maybe? But hey at least the scout package worked out great.”

Seth could tell his ‘official’ supervisor Mitch had his face in his hand.

“How many times have I…! *sigh* Just get here already, the meeting is in an hour and I don’t trust you to be prepared yet.”

Seth got back down to more even leveled sprawl and continued leaping back to the industrial sector.

“Heh, Jokes on you, I’ve been prepared for this meeting for a while now.”

Mitch sighed again on the other end “Just hurry up.” and hung up.

Seth continued on at speed, only checking behind him to set his mind at ease, he’d been chased off a few times before. Landing back down on the industrial streets, Seth dodged around a cargo semi-truck as it pulled out of one of the yards. A little more asphalt turned to gravel and those metal feet were sliding into the yard of his job before the driver even knew he was there.

United Armors, a once small time maintenance and upgrade house for the sector turned underdog powerhouse of the entire powersuit industry. Seth hadn’t done everything to get it there, but between his powers and the Garkah scientists in his head he had definitely given them their edge. He basically soloed the entire maintenance floor most days, fixing suits faster than the dedicated machines of their competitors ever could. He also designed and created new suits for their design bureau when orders were slow. But he's always been a little at odds with corporate over that. Apparently working there since thirteen was too long, or the new executives just saw him for his thread bare CV. The whole not having a degree thing. But then again there wasn’t much they could do to stop him. He had stocks.

Mitch, United’s COO and Seth’s only real supervisor, was leaning against the main floor’s doorframe. A completely unsurprised look stared back at Seth as he scraped to a halt over the yard’s hardened concrete.

“…Meetings in 50, don’t be late yada yada, I know you’re not listening.”

Mitch turned around, heading inside and back to his office, leaving Seth to walk in behind him and berth his frame into a waiting workstation. Pulling the recon suite out, plugging the exoskeleton into diagnostics, and secreting the suite back to the materials section he borrowed it from, and he was done getting settled in less than two minutes. Not wanting to waste time doing nothing though, he turned to the wall of waiting repair booths.

The maintenance floor had become too crowded with orders over the years, so the floor expanded up the wall to save space. Several recesses were built out from the original wall and repair and maintenance berths were put in. Seth scanned the frames in need of repair, picking and choosing the ones he thought he could get away with fixing one last time.

A personal model in for basic maintenance. ‘Nah too simple.’ A yellow checkered industrial model that got pushed too long without maintenance. ‘Don’t have time for that.’ An old military model with… no arms. ‘Yeah that’s not happening.’ Ah, a security model with some servo malfunctions. ‘That'll do.’ Seth stepped up to the repair wall, calling the service lift down. The unit was three levels up, but the booths were set in the wall deep enough so it was more claustrophobic than acrophobic.

Model S2-10, security series two iteration ten. A shiny chrome body job made it rather distinct from the rest, a blue series of stripes on the chest denoted its purpose along with its model number. Better to have a bright and shiny guard out front than something less conspicuous. Or terrifying. This series though had servo issues constantly. Seth was only allowed to design the frame rather than the full suit for this one. Corporate skimped on the materials and the other designers have been playing catch up ever since. He was also pretty sure this was intentional so the designers were kept busy, but who knows. The fix was easy enough, but needed some serious hardware to get done, or one expert super.

He pulled open the suit’s primary release latch just under the collar, opening the main compartment like a human shaped lotus. Reaching inside, he pressed another button on the inside frame, facing away from the main compartment. The suit closed back up and the outside paneling opened up. The outer joints and hinges all over the suit popped open to reveal concentric circular modules, the servos. It was easy to see some of them were already cracked, the stresses of use wearing down the cheap metals until they started to break up in their housings, causing undo resistance with the bearings and ultimately their destruction.

Seth pulled one of the offending servos out, a hairline crack had started from the outside edge. He pulled the casing apart revealing the bearing motor inside, nothing wrong there at least. He put it back together and set it down on a welding table behind the berth. The only way to fix it without straight up replacing the servo was to reinforce the housing, and that was easy with an arc welder, some special clamps, and proper materials. Seth smirked down, he already had everything right in his hands.

Flicking his right hand into a concentrated form, index and thumb ahead of everything else, he focused his power into his fingertips. Pressing the servo down with his left, he focused power into either side of the crack in the housing. Then increased power in his right, focusing and arcing a small discharge into the crack to melt the metal. The power from his left gripped tight to the relatively conductive metal, repelling and pulling together, keeping it from flowing while it fused. Once together, Seth stopped and wiped his thumb over the cooling line, scraping away the excess. No more fear of burning his hands on hot metal.

All in all this will hold, but it needed a little more. Seth put both hands to it, focusing power on it until it got hot enough to glow slightly. Softening it. Then he pulled all but one finger away, swirling the last one around the housing. A slight focus, an imparted magnetic field in the housing. Meaning even if it cracked to bits it would hold together, he just had to make a repellant field opposite of it so it didn’t stick inside the suit. Each servo received the same treatment, even if they weren’t cracked. The Garkah had taught him a great many things about his power, but some things he learned all on his own. A few too many magnetized cutlery and fried phones certainly taught him to control that.

The blue flashing of Seth’s arc welding lit up the booth as footsteps echoed onto the maintenance floor. Familiar, dismissive steps, it was Mitch come to drag him away. Seth peeked out beside the frame before he could say anything about the flashing.

“It’s time! Get down here!”

He flashed a thumbs up and left the last servo on the table. Mitch turned to leave and spied one of the floor’s arc welders at a workstation and turned back.

“Were… were you just welding up there?”

Seth turned to look at the softly glowing line in the last servo he just welded, then turned back with a false puzzled face.

“No.”

Mitch mirrored his puzzled look, but shook it off and turned away again. Seth released his false posture, ‘That was close.’, and set off to the meeting, grabbing his still rather laden backpack on the way by. ‘Moment of truth.’

The boardroom wasn’t much, though it didn’t really need to be, the company was always pretty small. Little more than a designated projector room off of the United Armors upstairs office space, with a simple oval conference table and chairs spread out and designated for the various departments. The current CEO Terrance, COO Mitch just taking his seat next to him, the Head of Sales David, Head of Procurement Kaysha, the ‘Official’ Design Head Kenneth, and now Seth. He had worked his way up to the design bureau the first few years of his career and was the de facto lead designer while the old CEO was around, but times change and leading positions have standards like degrees and experience… and name recognition. It helped that the old CEO left Seth enough stock to keep him at least nominally on the board, if only so he could maintain his autonomy. The old CEO was nice like that, the line of new corporate ones weren’t. Seth put his pack at his feet, preferring to let the song and dance of business play out before letting everyone know what he had in store.

Terrance straightened up first, preferring an orderly process of events.

“Now that we are all here, we can finally start this meeting. David.”

The mildly balding man stood up and moved to the projector at the end of the table, Mitch flipped a switch against the wall to close the blinds and kill the lights.

“Our current quarterly projections…”

‘Eh…’

The meeting proceeded with little info that Seth didn’t already know just from watching TV, being right in the middle of it all, and having those analysts pulling it all together for him. Sales were down again, some new regulations were looking to cut it some more, the current policy of taking in other brands suits for repairs was covering the current decline but only just, contracts were drying up as super labor became more readily available. There was some kerfuffle about the latest model being bottlenecked but…

“Seth?”

“Hmm”

“The new model?”

“Oh yeah, just finished the preliminary runs. The recon unit as well and…”

“We know.” Terrence interlocked his hands and leered at Seth. “We need that unit to keep this company afloat, if it even lives up to what you say it can do.”

Seth grimaced slightly, but was expecting this.

“The units done, all that’s left is manufacturing the plating and the drive system, all of which is ‘outside’ my purview for this. Though, if you’ll take it, I have the specs and plans for the rest.”

Seth pulled up his pack, unzipping and pulling out a dense folder labeled Series 4. Kenneth leered at this as Terrence turned his nose down.

“We don’t need you doing everything again, just stick to your assignments and stop wasting company time.”

“You say that like I didn’t do this at home.”

Mitch sighed as the rest of the room grumbled.

“Seth, you need to let other people do the work. We can’t run a company of just one employee.”

Seth grimaced again, but relented.

“Fine. Then I guess you don’t want the rest of Series 4 iterations,”

Seth pulled out another folder, slightly more packed than the last.

“Upgrade notes for Series 5,”

Another folder.

“Preliminaries for Series 6,”

More folders.

“And all the iterations in-between.”

The last of the folders, though several stacks were labeled repair and maintenance notes. The room is silent, Kenneth is visibly mortified.

“What the hell!?! Why… why am I even here if you can just crap out all this on a whim!?”

Seth straightened and pulled out one last folder, thinner with a letter on the top.

“Because… I’m not going to be here for very much longer.”

Mitch and Terrence both reeled in shock. Seth slid the folder over to them. The letter on top was of resignation, while the folder was his controlling stocks.

“Wha… You… You’re just leaving like that!? What about two weeks’ notice? What about-”

“Hey, you all always wanted me out, and it’s not like I’m leaving you hanging.”

He put a hand to the stack of folders.

“If you guys use these plans effectively I’d say you can get a good five more years out of the company before the industry collapses.”

David leered over.

“The hell do you mean by that?”

“You JUST finished a presentation on the slow decline in sales, that’s not going away anytime soon. These units will keep you all competitive. Hell, ahead of everything else by far. But the industries on its deathbed. Super labor is flooding the market, the League is churning through recruits and pushing them into work programs. The only future I see is either a graceful severance or falling into the villain markets, and you DO NOT want that.”

The room was dead silent, but visibly irritated.

“I don’t care what you do, what you think, or even if you use the plans I’m leaving you. But I’m out of here. It’s been fun, great even. I couldn’t have done all this without you, but I’ve got my own plans.”

Seth stood up and pulled his expended pack on.

“Here’s hoping you do the smart thing.”

He walked out the door to the shocked faces behind him. Mitch ran up and followed him out into the hall.

“What the hell?! Seth you can’t drop this kind of bomb on us! Do you have any idea…?”

Seth didn’t stop walking out the offices.

“I told you I was prepared. You have everything you need, you just need a few new mechanics and you’re good.”

He only stopped once he reached his station, unlocking his frame from its berth.

“Then where the hell are you going if this isn’t enough for you? You’re still under a non-compete clause.”

“Phh ha you think I’m switching to someone like SynDef or Malachite, they make up most of the crap that I’ve had to repair here.”

Seth loosed his frame from its berth, hitting a latch on the inside back causing it to retract inward, arms and legs folding in like a ball. He didn’t even let the frame hit the ground before he had it hucked over his shoulder, all three hundred pounds of it. Mitch sure as shit wasn’t expecting that.

“Heh… Don’t worry, this is just something I need to do. Debts aren’t going to pay themselves.”

Seth waved back and trudged off the floor, barely encumbered by the frame. He finally had some freedom, now he just needed to get the suit put together.