InFamous: The Unusual Conduits

by Blackdrag-rose

Empire: Unauthorized Drones

When the morning of the seventeenth day of the quarantine arrived, and both Cole and the sisters got up to meet it, they immediately found that Zeke wasn't at the apartment building, to which they simply sighed, ate something for breakfast, and made sure that they were ready for whatever was next. They knew that there was a number of things that they could do to help the people of the Warren, such as finding and turning on the next substation, figuring out who the leader of the Dust Men were and put him or her behind bars, or constantly fight the Dust Men until their foes were no longer able to fight back or resist them. In the end, however, Cole was surprised when Adagio, Aria, and Sonata turned towards him and said that what they should be doing was figuring out where the next substation was located so they could help him restore power to another section of the city, as well as give him a new power in the process. Based on what they had said he had figured the sisters were up for a fight and would accept nothing less, but he was pleased to see that all of them were truly putting the people before their own desires.

The moment all four of them were ready, and were dressed to take on the Dust Men, they returned to the roof and Cole tapped his phone a few times, as he planned on telling Moya what they were doing, mostly so he could see whether or not she had something else for them to do.

"Hey Moya, we're making a run on the next substation." Cole said, to which he and the sisters stood near the opening that would allow them to jump down onto the train tracks, where he would grind his way over to the Warren while the sisters likely flew at the same pace as he moved.

"It's location is flagged in your GPS." Moya replied, as if she had been expecting this sort of thing to happen and had prepared herself accordingly, so that when Cole said they were moving to the next one she had it's destination ready for them to use, "I'm also tracking a few new developments: I'll be in touch once the power is back on."

Cole waited for a few seconds, to be sure that Moya had nothing else that she wanted to say, before terminating the call and jumping down towards the tracks, where he actually landed on the second car of the train that was heading towards the drawbridge they had lowered. Sure enough Adagio, Aria, and Sonata engaged their flight abilities and followed after him, keeping pace with the train at all times, before the four of them reached the bridge and Cole jumped off of it, where he landed on the sidewalk near the cars. As he started moving the sisters landed beside him and followed after him, as they were ready to take care of the Dust Men, though as they walked into the Warren Cole's phone went off again, to which he almost sighed as he realized that it was Zeke calling him... and silently hoped, that as he accepted the call, that his friend wasn't asking for another favor so soon after the last one.

"So Dwight's sister just took off." Zeke said, though his tone said more than he likely intended to reveal, as all four of them could tell that something must have happened between the two of them last night, because Zeke sounded sad about something, "Man, it was a disaster."

"What happened?" Cole asked, because while he found it amusing that Zeke's attempt to hit on someone that just lost her brother had backfired, like he thought it might, he still wanted to know what happened and he was interested in seeing if his friend might have learned a lesson from this, "I thought you said that you were golden."

"I wanted to treat her right, you know?" Zeke replied, surprising the sisters for a moment, because based on his previous actions they didn't believe what he was saying, but they said nothing as Zeke continued to speak, "I wanted to show her a good time, let things shimmer down a bit. Any old idgit can land a one-nighter. I wanted something more... something like what you and Trish had. Well anyway, she comes over and says that she can only stay a minute or two. Then she starts talking about, uh, I don't know, how she really digs me, but she sees me as a friend. 'I'll always be your friend Zeke'... she actually said that to me. Women are something else, and I don't think I'll ever understand them."

Cole glanced over at the sisters for a moment, as they had heard the entire conversation and heard Zeke's comments, but he was surprised to find that they weren't annoyed with him, rather they seemed to have the exact same opinion of something else, but what that something was he had no idea. Though he didn't have a lot of time to think about what was going through their minds at the moment, as the Dust Men that were in the area immediately started firing at them, to which they returned fire and blasted the transients so they would stop attacking everything around them. Fortunately the people that happened to be around the area moved out of the way the moment the Dust Men attacked, as they could tell that they weren't the targets and didn't want to be hurt, but they did watch and clap in support of the group as they blasted the Dust Men into submission. Once their foes had been taken care of, and Cole healed anyone that got caught in the crossfire while also restraining the Dust Men, the four of them headed deeper into the Warren and started to make their way towards the powered down section that the substation rested in.

As they carefully made their way towards their destination, and the sisters took point since they didn't have to worry about the lack of a renewable power source like Cole did, the group finally discovered the structure that Cole and Adagio found out about when they were helping Lou earlier; the Dust Men's tower.

"So that's the tower that Lou was talking about," Adagio commented, though while she noticed that the structure was tall, making her wonder how the Dust Men could have built such a thing in the two weeks that had gone by since the Blast had occurred, she also noticed something else, "and it seems that the Dust Men made it entirely out of garbage and other damaged or discarded items."

"Hopefully they put something combustible on it," Aria said, where she gathered her power into her hand and sent a Firebomb out at the Dust Men that happened to be further down the street, where the marbles rolled under the turret truck that hadn't noticed them yet and consumed the entire thing in a fiery explosion, "that way all we have to do is warn everyone to stay away from the structure and simply set the tower on fire."

Cole didn't think it would be that easy to take care of the Dust Men's tower, as he was fairly sure if they had gotten their hands on any explosives since the Blast happened, but at the same time the four of them continued to blast the Dust Men that were in front of them and carefully made their way through the powered down section of the Warren. Of course there were a large number of enemies in front of them, which they expected to encounter based on the last few times they helped Cole reach one of the substations, but that didn't stop the sisters from attacking them more than Cole did. Even the turret trucks couldn't stand up to the three of them, especially when they used their grenade attacks to clear out the area in front of them, but at the same time Cole smiled for a moment as the four of them spotted the entrance to the part of the sewers they needed to head into. When they reached the manhole Sonata and Adagio raised the cover and allowed both Cole and Aria to drop down into the sewer, though once they were through the opening the two of them prepared themselves for a fight with the Dust Men that were coming towards their location.

Cole and Aria landed on the platform below the ladder they had climbed down and paused for a moment, because experience told them that the moment they started moving someone, be it Zeke or Moya, would contact them with information, which was either personal or mission based depending on who was contacting them... and sure enough, not even a few seconds later, Cole's phone went off and he noticed Zeke was calling him again.

"So I was walkin' over to help Trish load up her bus, and I see Dwight's sister hangin' on some guy's arm." Zeke said, though his voice revealed that he wished that he would find the person of his dreams some day, to which the duo remained silent for a moment, "She didn't even look at me."

"I'm sorry she shut you down Zeke." Cole replied, as he did feel sorry for his best friend, especially since he had actually tried to make things great for Dwight's sister, from what he and the sisters heard anyway, but at the same time he wanted to move on with the mission.

"I should have known better... she's always been like that." Zeke stated, revealing to Aria that he had known that his chances with Dwight's sister weren't all that good and he gone through with it anyway, but she said nothing as he continued speaking, "No biggie though. Frees me up to play the field, see what else is out there. Catch ya later."

Once Zeke was done talking, and the connection between them was cut off, Cole and Aria jumped across the ruined bridge that was in front of them and quickly came to the circuit that needed to be restored, to which Aria moved to the side as Cole jumped up and quickly bridged the two parts of the circuit. A few seconds later Cole, after receiving a surge of electricity through his body, landed on the ground and smiled at Aria, revealing that he did have another power that had been added to his arsenal, before he turned towards the tunnel they had to go through to reach the substation. Standing in the entrance of the tunnel was a Dust Man, who didn't seem to know that they were there yet, to which Cole lifted his hand and channeled his power for a few seconds. Aria watched as a sphere of electric energy, at least a few sizes larger than his Shock Grenades, formed in front of his hand and he launched it through the air, where it raced towards the enemy and stuck his back, exploding with enough force to knock him onto his back.

Cole and Aria were surprised by what he had done, but instead of standing there the two of them raced over to the tunnel and climbed up to where the unfortunate man had been standing, to which Cole restrained him against the ground before they continued down the path in front of them. At the end of the tunnel they were in they found a walkway below them with a trio of Dust Men standing guard, to which the two of them simply blasted them into the water and Cole finished them off by shocking the water. From there they used the walkway to reach the edge of the area they were on, before they jumped over to to one of the vertical pipes and moved around to the other side of it, then jumped onto a smaller pipe that allowed them to get over to the area that some Dust Men were gathered in... which made them good targets for Cole's new Megawatt Hammer, as he told Aria that the name was connected to the new move he had gained from the last circuit.

From there they passed through several areas with fortifications that the Dust Men had made, to guard this place from anyone that attempted to turn the power back on, though at the same time Aria noticed that the fortifications were set up in a way that allowed Cole to test his new power out... until they eventually came to the substation and Cole restored the power to this part of the Warren, which then prompted her to grab him and fly back to the entrance so they could see what else they needed to do. Of course when they returned to the surface, and found out what Adagio and Sonata had done while the two of them were in the sewers, they found several destroyed turret trucks and a number of scattered Dust Men that were moaning in pain.

"Seems like the two of you had some fun while we were down there." Cole commented, as while he was glad to have restored the power to this part of the Warren, and picked up a new power along the way, he still found it amusing that the sisters were able to hold off a large group of their enemies, even with only two of them being up on the surface.

"The Dust Men were more than ready to try and get back into the sewer when they saw you two head in there," Adagio replied, to which she flexed her fingers and the ice crystals that were around the area turned into water, which she returned to where she had gotten it from earlier, before turning back towards Cole and Aria, "and, if I'm not mistaken, you picked up a new power while you two were down there."

Cole opened his mouth, so he could make a proper response to that statement, but before he could do so he heard a sound and they all turned to look at the sky above them, where he spotted what appeared to be military drones flying through the air, no doubt looking for something very specific... such as the Ray Sphere.

"Cole, I have been receiving reports of unauthorized drones patrolling the Warren." Moya spoke up, revealing that this was going to be something that the four of them were going to have to take care of, especially since anything she did would actually damage the city in some way, "Since they're not ours, you should take some time and look into them. It also sounds like the Dust Men might actually be planning a quarantine break... and one other thing. Tell your friend Zeke to stop calling me. If he wants to play hero and track down 'leads', that's his business, but I don't want to hear about it."

"Alright, we'll look into the drones and the Dust Men," Cole replied, though once he said that he cut off the connection between them and Moya, since it appeared that she didn't have anything else to tell them, in regards to what she had mentioned to them, before he sighed, "Zeke, what the hell are you doing?"

"He's got four friends that are heroes to the people, and another one that saves lives," Sonata commented, referring to the four of them first, as they were the ones that likely set this chain of events in motion with them taking out the Reapers earlier, before mentioning Trish after them, "You know, I'm actually surprised that it took him this long to try and do something like this... and who knows, maybe he'll actually find out something we can use in the future."

Cole was still a little surprised that Sonata seemed to be thinking positive, especially when Zeke was needlessly risking his life at the moment, but after a few seconds of thought he guessed that as long as Zeke didn't do anything that directly endangered his life, such as confront the Dust Men, then he should be able to continue with whatever he was doing. Of course he still intended on talking with Zeke the next chance they got, as going out on his own like this, without telling them what he was planning, was unnecessary and foolish, though he was hopeful that Zeke would listen to him. A few seconds later, when he was done thinking about Zeke and what Sonata said, he looked at the coordinates that Moya had sent them, two objectives from what he could tell, and raised an eyebrow when he spotted a third one, but decided that they should focus on the drones before anything else. As such they headed through the Warren and made their way over to the shipping cranes, taking out the Dust Men that decided to engage them along the way, while also keeping an eye on the drones that were flying through the air.

When they reached their destination, however, Cole noticed two things; the first being that the shipping containers that were stored in this part of the Warren had been stacked and arranged as some sort of fortress, maybe a second base of operations for their enemies, while the second thing was that he spotted a crashed drone by one of the shipping cranes they were heading towards... though he stopped at the coordinates and the sisters did the same as well, as they were all eager to hear what Moya wanted them to do.

"Okay Moya, we're in position near the cranes." Adagio said, as she was sure that Cole was getting tired of constantly talking to their contact first, so she decided to step in for once and do some talking as well, while at the same time noticing that Cole was staring at the crashed drone, "What's the situation on those drones you mentioned?"

"We actually just caught a big break, as one of the UAVs patrolling the Warren has crashed," Moya informed them, to which all four of them rolled their eyes, as they could see the crashed drone resting near their exact location and had to wonder if she was trying to annoy them by stating things they could see, "I need the lot of you to recover it's flight recorder, that way I can try to figure out who's controlling them."

The group looked at each other for a few moments, knowing that these drones had to belong to the First Sons, as there was no way the Dust Men could have the technology to use these things, though they sighed as they moved towards the cranes and kept their eyes open for any Dust Men that might come to investigate the crash. They were all pleased to find out that the Dust Men either didn't care about the crash or had no idea it had happened, allowing them to approach the downed drone easily, where Moya informed them that one of them would have to use their phone to send her the data. Cole, seeing that it was rather easy to pull out the flight recorder and send the information, carefully extracted the device they needed and slipped it into his phone, sending Moya the contents of the UAV, though even as he did that he and the sisters turned to look at the other drones that were flying through the air, making them all wonder if they needed to take them out as well. He guessed that it would be a reasonable guess, since they couldn't have the First Sons, if they were the ones in control of the drones like they guessed, locate the missing Ray Sphere first and use it for whatever diabolical scheme that their mysterious leader wanted it for.

"It's just as I thought," Moya commented, causing the four of them to remain at attention, as this was likely going to confirm or deny their own thoughts on who sent the drones, "the First Sons are using drones to search for the Ray Sphere, and they've narrowed it down to the Warren."

"Well, now we know that the damned Ray Sphere is somewhere in the Warren," Aria said, as they hadn't seen a sign of the metallic sphere in the Neon District, and she was sure that the First Sons, who likely controlled the Historic District, wouldn't be using these drones if they already had the sphere, meaning it had to be in the same district they were in, "So, do they know anything that we don't know?"

"No, but we can't take any chances." Moya replied, indicating that this was the part where they learned about their main objective and what they needed to do, which likely involved the remaining drones that were flying around the rest of the Warren, "I need the lot of you to track down the rest of the drones, shoot them out of the sky, and collect their flight recorders. And you'll want to be quick about recovering the flight recorders, because those UAVs are programed to self-destruct if they crash and I have no idea why the one you just investigated didn't do so earlier, but the others might be able to do that when you knock them out of the sky."

"Well, we do have one advantage the makers of those drones never expected," Cole said, though at the same time he cut off the line, as Moya told them everything they needed to know and would likely hear the next bit anyway, while also turning towards the sisters, who activated their auras and floated off the ground, "people that can fly and attack the drones at the same time."

Fortunately since there were four more drones flying through the air, and Adagio counted them while they were listening to Moya talk, all of them could take out one drone apiece, that way everyone got to participate in the mission and wouldn't feel left out. At the same time Sonata grabbed onto Cole and pulled him to one of the roofs near the drone he wanted to target, that way he could have a good vantage point so he could target the drone he wanted to take out, leaving the others to fly up to their targets and attack them while he was doing the same thing. Before Cole actually used his Precision Shot ability, to take his drone out, he turned towards the other three drones and found that he could see what the sisters were doing from where he was standing, though it appeared that one or two of the sisters might have developed another technique to keep up with him. Sonata, for example, commanded the wind to gather around her as she flew after the drone that she wanted to knock out of the sky, where she lashed out with her hand, like a cat swiping at a toy, and the wind sliced through the wing that she had been targeting... to which Cole spotted her smiling as she headed towards the ground and claimed the flight recorder from the drone she had grounded, before leaving as the UVA activated it's self-destruct sequence.

Adagio, having control over water, seemed to be able to pull some of the moisture out of the air around her and formed what appeared to be a lance that was made out of ice, though as she hurled it through the air it separated into a cluster of smaller lances that punctured the drone's body and wings, forcing it to land. Aria, on the other hand, didn't seem to try anything funny this time around, as she simply started blasting the drone that was her target with ordinary blasts, which seemed to put puncture marks in the drone's body until she managed to make it crash as well. Cole chuckled for a moment, as sometimes the sisters made things seem a little too easy with their unique abilities, before he focused on the last drone and loosed a few Precision Shots at his target, eventually causing it to spiral out of control before crashing on the street near his location... allowing him to jump down, claim the flight recorder, and get away before it could self-destruct, to which he regrouped with the sisters and smiled as he noticed that they had all the items that Moya requested they get their hands on.

However, the moment they got back together, and started to wonder what Moya wanted them to do with the flight recorders, Cole's phone went off from a new number, to which the sisters remained silent as he accepted the call and let whoever was calling speak to them.

"I want you, and your friends, to listen to something, Cole." an old voice said, one that Cole and the sisters recognized as Kessler's voice, as they had heard some of John's dead drops and some of them had audio recordings of Kessler while he was speaking about something.

"Please, no more." a pained voice spoke up, one that the group immediately recognized as Sasha's, though if her voice as in pain that told them that Kessler had not only sent his men to grab her after their battle, but had also tortured her in some manner since they last saw her, "I'll... I'll do whatever you want!"

"Real tough guy, aren't you?" Cole asked, because while he had no love for Sasha, not after everything she did to the people of the Neon District until they shut her down, she was still a person and didn't deserve to be tortured by the person that was likely responsible for everything that had happened so far, and would happen in the future.

"On the contrary." Kessler replied, sounding serious about whatever he wanted to talk about, which only caused the group to stop as they waited, because there was so much the man could talk about and they wanted to be sure they made sure to let nothing interrupt him, "I'm weak... quite weak, in fact. Which is why you and your 'friends' need to learn this lesson and learn it well: everyone has their breaking point. You, me, even dear, sweet Sasha. What separates the strong from the weak is the ability to take the beating... hell, to love the beating... no matter how great the pain, never wavering from what needs to be done. Think you can remember that?"

"Screw you Kessler." Cole stated, because right now he had the feeling that no matter what he said, and no matter what he did, the sinister leader of the First Sons would continue his plans and strike out at them when he felt that they were ready to 'take the beating', as he put it.

Kessler said nothing as the call was terminated, indicating that he had said what he wanted to, to which Cole and the sisters sighed for a moment, as he was going to be one of the hardest people to find and they had the feeling that it was going to be some time before they dealt with him... and, since none of them wanted to think about what Kessler was doing at the moment, Cole started a new call.

"Okay Moya, we've got all the flight recorders." Cole said, though while he was aware that Moya likely heard Kessler's call, and he'd be disappointed if she didn't catch it, he also knew that she would be happy to hear that he and the sisters had gotten the items that she wanted.

"None of your phones have the bandwidth to transmit that much data," Moya told them, causing Adagio to raise an eyebrow for a moment, because if Cole could send her the flight recorder from the first drone, and there were four of them with one flight recorder apiece, then she didn't see why they couldn't just do the deed themselves, "so you'll need to find a satellite uplink. There should be one on the roof of the old Coleridge Building... hopefully it still works."

The Coleridge Building, as Cole explained, was the only building in the Warren that was surrounded by a circular street, which made it really easy to find, though as they started to move through the streets several groups of Dust Men tired to engage them and take them out. As such the group responded by blasting them into submission or clearing the way using their grenade type attacks, which they reserved for the larger groups, before they came to the building that Moya wanted them to send her the information from. Of course the Coleridge Building was guarded by their enemies, which was to be expected since they hadn't actually cleared much of this district out yet, but that didn't stop the group from engaging their enemies and taking them out, all while dodging the incoming bullets and rockets. Cole spent part of his time climbing up the side of the building while the sisters flew around him, blasting the Dust Men that wanted to stop them from completing their mission, though he did stop every now and then to lend them a hand, which resulted in him blasting several enemies before continuing his climb.

When they reached the top of the building, and the sisters landed beside Cole, they pulled all the information they had gathered from the flight recorders and found the uplink that Moya wanted them to use, to which Cole slipped it into the slot and input the command, sending everything they had gathered over to Moya.

"There, you should have everything those drones had on them." Cole said, though at the same time he hoped that they had some useful information, like where the Ray Sphere was located or where John might be hiding, but he knew that there was a lot of data for someone to go through.

"Its going to take me awhile to sort through all of this." Moya stated, indicating that the First Sons had been gathering all the information they could, on where the sphere was located and whatever else they were interested in, "I'll let you know if I find anything interesting."

Cole nodded and cut the line off once more, though this time around he knew that there were a few optional objectives that he and the sisters could do and, by the looks on Adagio, Aria, and Sonata's faces, they were eager to help the civilians a little before they did anything else.

Comments

[Silent_Knight]

Cant help but think there needs to be an earth element to round out the avatar the last airbender vibe im getting from the sisters three