The PulseTeam, Book Two: Evolution

Chapter Twenty-Nine: An Attack On A Friend

Part One: Saving The PulseTeam (Again!)...

Downtown Cleveland | Cleveland, Ohio
Thursday, March 8, 2035 | 16:30 EST

We locate our parents in front of the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library, a couple of blocks away from Tower City, and find them in armored pods made from still-living plants.

Inside these armored plant-pod cells they are being exposed to their greatest physical weaknesses: A sulfur dioxide atmosphere for my father; a nitrogen atmosphere for Mom; exposure to hallucinogenic gases laced with sarin for Aunt Akura, making her fight imaginary enemies until her body begins giving out from the nerve gas; constant, unpredictable, omnidirectional attacks to Uncle John's C7 microchip; sulfur-fuelled fire simulating hellfire being relentlessly and omnidirectionally blasted at Uncle Gabriel; forced activation of Aunt Kaitlyn's Primal Rage Mode and exposure to sarin; an organic hydraulic press that is vibrating at a frequency from which Uncle Ky cannot escape, simulating a sustained blast from a graviton particle emitter that's exponentially growing in power; blinding light so bright, Aunt Lian cannot open her eyes for risk of either her eyes becoming irreparably damaged, her exploding, or both; a concrete cage wrapped in tungsten, in which Aunt Flora's oxygen is almost completely depleted; and Aunt Serenia in pure silver shackles, burning in a sulfur dioxide atmosphere.

So, I turn to Alura and ask, "Alright, how do you want us to handle this?"

"Quickly, now," responds Alura, "those pods cannot be breached by conventional means, so this job requires a more intense touch. David, you're going to need to channel your greatest energies for this. Davida, since you're David's literal other half, in nearly every sense of the term, it is safe to assume that you have an ultimate mode as well?"

"I do, dearie," says my twin.

"Good, then I'm going to need you to join your brother. He's going to need all the help he can get. Jessica, do you have a similar ability?"

"Yeah," she replies, "but right now, I'm not able to hold it past fifteen minutes."

"Then you three siblings should make this a very quick family affair. Breach the pods, get them out, get them back in here, and then we can start formulating a plan to try to calm down Mother Earth."

We nod and walk to the bombay doors, and once we get situated, I drop us out of the Scout toward our parents. As we free-fall, we power ourselves up so that we are already good to go when we hit the ground. And when we land, in the succeeding order of me, then Davida, and finally Jessica, we make three craters in the ground and cause a few brief ground tremors.

Then we get to smashing. One after the other, we keep at them until we make man-sized holes in the very thick pod walls, and we pull our parents out, tossing them up through the open bombay doors of the Scout. The remaining members of my team catch each PulseTeam member, one by one as they get tossed up, careful not to let themselves get yanked down by the weight of each slack body.

But when we get inside Aunt DEELEX's pod, she lies there, what remains of her body mangled and flattened from being crushed by what appears to be an organic hydraulic press. This results in Aunt DEELEX's body having become a mess of flattened synthetic organs, oobleck blood, and a decimated titanium/carbon fiber endoskeleton. When Davida sees this, she turns to me, hugs me and cries, and when Jessica sees this, she regurgitates and starts crying. So I break the press and carry Aunt DEELEX's body back up to the Scout, and set her down as gingerly as I can on the Scout floor.

Then, Aunt DEELEX shouts, "Dammit! That was my favorite body! Ugh! I swear these missions make me waste so much material making more and more bodies. Let me just deploy another one... Wait: Why are you all so sad?"