Back in the day, buying a high-powered weapon meant buying a seat at the high-stakes table. Fancy Pants’ weapons put some countries on the map; and took some of them off it.
Occasionally, his tech wound up in the wrong hands; but nothing like this.
The sun was just setting as Iron Heart landed on a roof that could overlook the entire city; from there, she could see the building she was after. As she looked down at the streets, Rarity couldn’t help but notice they were missing something, people.
“The streets are deserted.” The hero stated.
Coco’s systems came online in the suit, the AI replied, “The city’s under curfew, Miss Rarity. It appears word about the jet spread to the news pretty fast; the police issued that no one should go out after dark with the attacker on the loose.” The Iron Heart armour then ran a scan of the office building Rarity was going to, “Not only that, but the office building is in lockdown mode.”
Rarity then said, “Let’s try and get inside, we need to find out how the attacker got the drone designs.” Iron Heart launched herself off the building and flew towards the office tower; she could see the entire city from the sky.
Suddenly, without warning; something came up on Coco’s scanners, something she’d not seen before. “Miss Rarity, I have a new signal; incoming.”
“Combat drones?” Rarity asked.
“Maybe, keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.”
That’s when Iron Heart saw what Coco was talking about; it was a drone, but not one Rarity had seen before. This drone was circular shaped; with a large dome on the front and thrusters on the back. The machine generated a green shield around its front, the drone then rushed towards Rarity and bashed her out of the sky.
The hero fell to the streets, creating a hole as she crashed into the road.
When she got up again, Rarity said to Coco, “What is that thing?” The AI ran a scan on the drone, it was in her data banks.
“It’s a Mark 3 Battering Ram Drone, Miss Rarity.” Coco explained. “It was designed to act as a shield in combat, and it can break down barricades with is charging-attack.”
Rarity jumped into the air and shot up to the sky with her jets, by the time she’d reached the top of the buildings, three more of those drones had flown in. So with four of the Battering Ram Drones to deal with, Rarity had to use all of her suits power.
The four drones began to power up their shields, one of them charged; but Rarity saw this coming and moved out of the way. The drone only a had a shield on its front, meaning Iron Heart could fire a repulser blast at the thrusters; once the blast hit the back of the drone, the power core over loaded and the drone exploded.
When that drone went down, the other three began chasing Rarity through the sky; she flew as fast as she could, to get away from them. As she flew, Coco explained to her, “Although I don’t applaud mister Capper’s tactics; now might be the time to try out his new smart missiles.”
Iron Heart agreed with her idea, she quickly turned around and pointed her fist at one of the drones; the smart missiles activated and fired. The five rockets all hit the same drone, causing it explode; while the other two flew through the smoke, one of them managed to hit Rarity away.
As the hero spun through the air, she caught herself before it was too late; she then turned to the drones and saw something new. The two machines opened up three compartments on themselves, equipping laser turrets.
Coco stated, “It seems our mystery friend has made some upgrades.”
“No kidding, darling.” Rarity replied.
The drones fired their blasters, Iron Heart dodged the blast; this time, instead of flying away, she flew right towards them. Channelling the power in her suit, her fists began to glow with energy; once Rarity got close enough, she punched both the drones with powerful hits.
She watched as both the drones were thrown away into the night, before they exploded out of existence.
With that out of the way, Iron Heart flew to the balcony entrance to the building; using her repulsers, Rarity was able to cut the door off. Once the entrance was made, she walked inside; but what she was going to find, wasn’t what she’d expect.
Iron Heart wandered into Fancy Pants’ office, she figured that would be the best place to find the plans; Capper had told her that his computer connected to every server in the entire building. However, when she walked in, the room was pitch-black; it was almost like something out of a horror movie.
“Coco, run a scan” Rarity requested.
The armour then shined light from the eye-lenses; now Rarity could see, and the suit was scanning the area. “Aside from you, Miss Rarity; I am picking up one other life signal. You’re not alone in there.”
Rarity knew this person wasn’t going to show themselves, so she decided to look around the room; starting with the monitors on the desks. She walked over to the computers, when she clicked the mouse, it came online; the computer required a password to get in.
The hero asked, “Coco, do you have Fancy Pants’ passwords?”
“Yep, I’m sending them to you n…”
Suddenly, the computers all shut down in an instant; all was quiet.
One of the computers then turned back on, the one in the middle of the set; on the screen, were written some words. Rarity read the words out loud, “Justice 4 the dead.” After she read that, the monitor turned off again.
Iron Heart decided to go back to looking around the room; where she found some interesting things.
On a book shelf on the wall, there was a small picture of Fancy Pants; Rarity picked up the picture and had a look, she was thinking about how he was doing in the hospital. Suddenly, the glass in the frame started cracking; Rarity put the picture, but the glass kept breaking.
Leaving that alone, Iron Heart walked over to the corner of the room, where Fancy Pants had set up a weight lifting set; Rarity thought it was nice that he liked to stay in shape. But then, the unthinkable happened; one of the weights was pulled off the handle, it hovered in the air, before being thrown at Rarity’s head.
Her helmet protected her from the hit, but it still kind of hurt, “Ow, how dare you! Whoever you are.”
Rarity let that slide and kept looking; the last thing to be found was a cell phone on the coffee table by the window. When Iron Heart walked over to it, the phone started ringing; curious to know what’s going on, Rarity answered it.
“Hello.” She greeted.
“FancyPantsmustpayFancyPantsmustpayFancyPantsmustpayFancyPantsmustpay!!!!”
The hero then hanged up the phone before stating, “Wrong number, darling.”
A noise was then heard from behind the desk, the large monitor on the back was covered in static; Iron Heart walked over to investigate.
“Is anyone in there.” She then thought about what she’d just asked. Rarity then said to herself, “Come on, girl; be serious, surely no one could be in the mo….”
Before she could finish, a figure that was glowing bright green, jumped out of the screen and picked up the hero by her neck; the glowing person then threw Rarity over the desk and into the centre of the room.
When Rarity recovered from the throw, she stood back up; only to be greeted by something new. The hero was surrounded by holographic video screens, each of them was playing a news report about Fancy Pants, or his weapons, or the destruction they’ve caused.
“Hundreds are now homeless due to a large explosion here in Saddle Arabia.”
“Yeah, my car blew up with all my life savings in it; the guy who did it claimed he bought one of those Fancy Pants explosives.”
“This leaves us all wondering; will Fancy Pants ever face the music for his actions?”
The holograms then disappeared, the glowing figure returned and appeared in front of Rarity; the hero was able to get a good look at this one.
She asked, “So darling, do you have a name; or should I just call you ‘Ghost’?”
The ‘Ghost’ replied, “I’m the one that’s going to see that all those people Fancy Pants has killed, get the justice they deserve.” Without warning, Rarity was then surrounded by multiple Ghost’s. “And believe me, the dead can be very restless.”
All the Ghosts then joined together again; before Rarity could react, Ghost delivered a powerful uppercut, knocking her to the ground. While Iron Heart was knocked to the ground, Ghost stated, “If you want to attempt to stop me, meet me outside.” Ghost then disappeared out of site.
All Rarity could say was, “That’s why Adam has his spider-sense.”
The hero flew out into the streets again, this time, there was more than just flying Battering Ram Drones; the sky was filled with Mark 4 Combat Drones. And flying in the middle of them was their leader, Ghost.
When Rarity flew towards her, she was stopped in her tracks; the Ghost was using her ‘power’ to wrap Iron Heart in glowing metal chains. The villain flew closer to her and stated, “If you were truly a hero, you’d be helping me expose Fancy Pants for the criminal he is.”
“Darling, you’re not well; let me help you.” Iron Heart explained.
Ghost replied, “What, by throwing me in jail; making me spend the rest of the good years of my life, behind the bars of a prison cell. No thank you.” Ghost made the chains disappear, allowing Rarity to break free; the villain then said, “Let’s just fight!”
The battle began with Ghost ordering her drones to attack; the flying machines charged forward towards the super-hero. Rarity flew out of the way and fired her smart missiles at the drones; one by one, they were destroyed by the rockets.
Once the drones were dealt with, Iron Heart charged up her fists and flew towards Ghost; catching the villain off guard, Rarity hit her with three powerful rocket punches. Ghost was thrown across the sky; but now Rarity had made her angry, so she activated even more drones.
A Mark 6 Combat Drone flew onto the scene, followed by two Battering Ram Drones; the three of them charged for the hero, but they weren’t much of a challenge for Iron Heart. Rarity charged her fists again and punched the Mark 6 Drone away; the other two began chasing her around the air.
But when the combat drone recovered, it charged up its laser blast; the drone aimed the blast right for Rarity, but this was part of her plan. The hero moved out of the way at the very last minute, causing the combat drone to blast the battering ram drones; the two of them exploded into nothing, allowing Rarity to freely fire a repulser at the last one.
Now that the drones had been destroyed, Rarity could turn her attention back to Ghost; who had disappeared from the scene, until something unexpected happened. Out of nowhere, a holographic spear was thrown at the hero; but it pierced her armour and hurt like a real spear. Once it hit her, it disappeared; Iron Heart saw the Ghost standing on the roof a building, she flew over to meet with her.
When Iron Heart landed, Ghost ran towards her and began to glowing green again; before Rarity could attack, the Ghost ran right through her, like an actual ghost. She then conjured one of her holo-spears again, and threw it at a fuse box.
The box began sparking, and noises could be heard from inside the building below them.
Coco suddenly came onto the line, “Miss Rarity, that fuse box was what was powering the elevator systems. We must get that back online before the lift shuts down completely and drops with people inside.” Coco ran a scan of the elevator, she counted at least five people in that lift.
“I’ll take care of it.” Rarity replied.
She grabbed the panel of the fuse box and tore it away, she grabbed two of the wires and pushed them together; like magic the elevator came back online and was moving safely.
“Miss Rarity, that was incredible; how did you know to do that?”
Rarity replied, “I just did what I do when my hair dryer stops working.” She chuckled at her own joke before flying over to the office building from before.
Ghost was waiting for her on the balcony, she didn’t look like she was going to run; she was just standing there. Iron Heart landed in front of them and aimed her repulsers at her, Rarity was prepared to give no warnings.
Suddenly, out of nowhere; a blast from somewhere else hit Rarity and threw her to the wall. “What was that?!” the fashion girl demanded to know. There was a flash of purple in the sky, the new figure floated down to greet the hero and the villain.
“I believe you two have already met.” Ghost explained. “Allow me to reintroduce….”
Ghost was cut off when the new guy wanted to announce himself; he cried out, “THE LIVING LASER!!!”