Aberrant RPG - The Day Off

[Matt]

<h1 align="center">The Day Off</h1>

<h2><a href="mailto:bowell@rci.rutgers.edu">Written by Kristopher Faul</a></h2>

<hr>

August 12th 2009

High over the Smokey Mountains of western Tennessee, a figure broke through a cloudbank of a forming thunderstorm. He moved with more grace than any bird could have ever dreamed, yet no wings propelled his flight. The only hint of his propulsion was the occasional flicker of fiery energy trailing behind him. Quinn enjoyed these days the most. When he wasn't hurtling cars with his mind at some idiot who decided to try and kill the president of Paraguay with a fork. Not that he didn't enjoy a good fight either, but today he was just flying to fly and he was even keeping subsonic so he could enjoy the scenery and take in the sites. He had nowhere to be and no plans so he just randomly picked a direction and away he went.

He paused hovering at what he guessed was about twenty two thousand feet. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile sat. phone and did a quick GPS location check. After confirming that indeed he was over the western Tennessee He repocketed the phone and broke into a dive speeding down toward the mountains below. He eased up as he arced over the ridge of a mountain. A long winding ribbon of black road ran through the trees below him, so he followed it until it came to a scenic overlook. Quinn landed behind the parked cars of people admiring the scenery and walked over to a public water fountain. After a few quick drinks he went and observed the scenery with the rest of the crowd. Luckily, no one had noticed his arrival, so no one paid him much heed as he walked up to the small retaining wall of the overlook. He sat down on the rocks and looked out over the hazy Blue Mountains that stretched out into the distance. The view wasn't as good as from in the air but it was a different perspective from here. A little more humbling when you're looking up at the mountains as opposed to down. Thoughts drifted away as the sun shined down. He sat there for an hour just watching the clouds roll past the mountains. Chewing on a candy bar he had brought with him.

As visitors came and left the overlook he watched them. An old couple that came to the mountains in there RV enjoying their retirement. The family who was to busy bickering with each other to enjoy the scenery or the vacation. He smiled as he watched, finding the various events around him amusing. The wind picked up a bit and the breeze felt good in the midsummer heat and humidity.

Quinn stood up and as he finished his people watching and decided it was time to leave. He pondered slipping behind a tree before flying off for a moment but then he decided that giving the folks around him something to talk about when they got back from their vacation would be a nice gift. He stood for a moment looking into the sky and then a flicker of telekinetic fire swirled around him and he rose into the air. The crowd below him broke into various states of excitement. Some oohed and aahed others screamed in fear for no reason. Then some cheered and pleaded for him to return to sign autographs. The whirs and clicks of cameras filled the air. He waved down at the assemblage and then turned and shot upward into the hazy blue sky.

He headed northeast over the mountains staying high in the late afternoon sky. A mile from him he saw a 777 cruising along parallel. He darted beside the plane and up the fuselage staying below the windows "No need to cause a freak out." He thought with a smirk. He moved up and over the plane and sat there on the roof crossing his legs Indian style. He stuck there in place with his TK not letting more than a little breeze pass over him even though the plane was traveling over 400 miles an hour. He sat there for the entire remainder of the flight until. He felt the plane making turns for a final approach and looked out to see where it was landing. He saw the white obelisk of the Washington Monument and Capitol Dome so he decided to play the tourist one more time. Stepping off the side of the airliner Quinn settled quickly to the ground near the Lincoln memorial and started walking. He looked at the scaffolding around the memorial as it was being restored from the Teragen attack a few years ago. It was almost finished and looking like it's old self but it bothered Quinn to think that the Teragen would attack a monument. He disliked them to begin with and doing stuff like this just made him like them less.

Quinn did touristy things just like everyone else. Visiting the Vietnam memorial, Smithsonians and the National Archives. Eventually he ended up in front of the Whitehouse. President Portman was in there; hard to believe a Nova sat in the Oval Office the head of this country. Portman seemed a good guy so more power to him. Quinn just stood at the fence peering at the white house lost in his ponderings. The late afternoon sun continued to beat down on him and he heard a voice say to him. "Is it that fascinating?" He blinked and turned to the voice. Standing beside him was a young woman looking at him with jade green eyes. She was very exotic looking and he immediately assumed she was Nova. Shrugging he smirked and replied "Yeah first time here." He studied her and noticed that her nice black suit and general way she carried herself pegged her as a Secret Service agent. He also noticed the slight bulge under her left arm that betrayed a hidden gun underneath. He gave her a curious look. "Is there a problem?" She was studying him as well as she replied. "No, unless you're here for more malicious intent that sight seeing." The agent flashed a perfect smile that seemed genuine enough. Obviously she knew he was a Nova so there wasn't much sense in really hiding it. "Nope just the sights today." He wasn't looking for trouble and he didn't really want this Nova S.S. agent to cause him one.

"I'm agent Daugherty." She held out her hand. "Nice to meet you Mr. Quinn." He took her hand in his and shook it. Her skin was warm and soft to the touch but the firmness of her grip hinted at a strength she wasn't showing. "Uhm just Quinn will work fine. How do you know my name?" He released her hand but hesitated long enough to betray a mild attraction. Taking a more government agent type posture her voice hardened a bit. "Well when you have a nova wandering around this place we tend to check them out. Especially if he turned out to be a Titan class." Quinn realized he should have known that they would have a reliable way to find Novas so close to the White House.

"I'm not looking for any trouble." He said almost under his breath. "Good because if you where there is very little we could do." She responded with a smile. "Enjoy your time here in D.C." She walked back to the gate she must have come from. The guard opened it and she walked through with one final glance back at him.

He bought some hot dogs from a vendor as he walked away from the White House. Down to the ellipse he stopped and sat down beneath a shade tree and ate his late lunch. He pondered just how many cameras where focused in his direction. How many snipers where aware of his presence and how many Anti-Nova strike teams where on alert because this one guy was sitting near the white house eating some Ball Park franks. The whole idea of fearing a guy that was eating hot dogs made him terribly amused.

So he sat listening to a band playing nearby, enjoying his life. He pondered why Divis Mal and other Novas like him wanted to separate themselves from this. The simpler pleasures in life where what made life worth living. He never felt the urge to say he was better than anyone else. If he jaywalked he deserved a ticket just like anyone else. A few months ago he wondered how many FAA laws he broke while flying until one day he asked a lawyer about it. He told him all the laws applied only to "pilots of aircraft" There where no legal definition of flight under ones own power.

His ponderings where cut short with a loud boom that shook the ground around him. He saw a mushroom of fire swirl up near the base of the Washington Monument. Sighing heavily he popped the last bite of hot dog into his mouth got to his feet. He saw several figures flying near the Monument firing Q bolts at the scattering panicked tourists. "Damn it to hell." He mumbled under his breath as he walked briskly across the street and toward the chaos.

Quinn recognized some of them immediately. One in the air was called Vortex. A weather manipulator according to the reports he saw on N!. She was hurling lightning and micro tornados down on the tourists. The other flyer he recognized by the name Xenon. The big guy on the ground was called Ore. This monster could turn him self into just about any metallic based element. Very tough, went some rounds with Geryon before joining Nova Vigilance himself. Quinn calmly walked up the grass toward the monument as sirens blared. Everyone else was running past him to get away. Gently he encouraged people with his telepathy that would have tried to trample him otherwise to run around him.

When he was about 30 feet from the rampaging Ore he stopped and just stared the metallic giant down. It took a few seconds but giant noticed. He turned his massive frame toward the puny human before him. "Well, well, well," The deep rumbling voice chuckled. "Vortex! Look one of the Monkeys thinks he can take me!" Vortex looked down at Ore and Quinn at the same time Ore brought his compact car sized fist down in a deadly arc to smash the man in front of him. "Ore no!!!" Vortex screamed as she realized whom it was he was about to strike but the fist came down on the man. A crack of thunder and a pulse of reddish light blossomed from the air surrounding Quinn as the huge fist stopped five inches above he young man's head. Fiery energy flowed angrily around the fist. Quinn's eyes narrowed in anger as a red glow emanated from deep within his pupils. Ore was dumbfounded as he looked down the length of his arm to the fist being held in place by the man in front of him. "Bad move sport." Quinn said with a smile as he rose off the ground and hovered over the giant. Fiery talons shot down from him as he blasted the metallic giant with his T.K. hurtling him down into the reflecting pool near the Lincoln memorial. The now enraged monster rose as the water of the pool steamed and hissed off his now glowing metal form. Molten metal shot forth from his arms and engulfed Tangent. It splashed off his T.K. shield doing little to him, but he watched in horror as the metal burned its way through cars and people alike. "Enough!" Tangent's voice boomed across the city physically and telepathically. His eyes flared with energy and Ore lifted off the ground and shot into the blue sky disappearing from sight in a blink of an eye. "Have a nice reentry." Quinn smirked.

Vortex then took him by surprise and rained lighting down upon him. Xenon followed up with rapid fire blasts of neon purple. Forcing Tangent out of the sky with the force of the attacks he landed hard as the ground around Quinn was blasted up. Molten earth and bits of debris shot into the sky and showered everything nearby. Quinn stood up under the onslaught as the blasts hit his telekinetic shields and skittered off.

He lifted off the ground as the air around him ignited from his T.K. In the blink of an eye he surged forward grasping Vortex by the front of her Eufiber suit. "Why do you do this!?" He demanded shaking her roughly. "Because they are our enemy!" She cried as she punched him in the face with a fist encased in electricity. This forced him to release the woman and she moved away quickly. "We are here to make a statement to this government Tangent! We are not slaves or playthings for the amusement of monkeys! If it requires us to write this in the blood of baselines so be it!!" As Quinn recovered he saw both the novas turn and fire at full power into the base of the monument. Masonry and the one hundred and twenty eight thousand ton obelisk began to lean to one side as gravity took hold of it to bring it down. Falling directly toward the busy street and the white house itself.

Quinn reached deep inside himself and let his power flow out in all direction grabbing at the very flow of time with his mind he slowed it down to a crawl. Quickly he soared to the tip of the slowly toppling monolith. A sheath of Psionic fire flowed down over the white stone as he grabbed it with his T.K.. Arms outstretched Quinn gently pulled the building back to its resting spot. Then as he held it in place he felt out all the stone that was blasted free and gathered it up. Painstakingly Slow to him and in the blink of an eye to the rest of the world he replaced the damage. Literally resettling molecule by molecule the haze of dust in the air. The stone resettled back into its proper place within the monument. Finally the base that had a second before evaporated in an act of destruction had coalesced back into its original shape in an act of creation.

Quinn let go of time and it began to move normally around him again. As he regained his composer a purple blast of energy caught him in the back and hurtled him to the ground. He struggled to his feet disoriented by the attack. He heard someone say over the ringing in his ears. "I gave it all I got but he's getting up!!" He looked up as Vortex and the unknown hovered above him. "If both of us hit him at once we might take him down!" Vortex yelled. They both started to focus and Quinn could see the Quantum charge building between them. He stood and started to form his shield around himself but rebuilding the monument had took more out of him than he expected and he was still winded. The two Novas above him let fly with their blasts and they both found their mark. The brilliant flash of light sent him through an abandoned bus and burrowed him into a long trench in the ellipse behind the White House. Xenon arrogantly grinned and turned to Vortex. "That got hi…!" before he had a chance to finish the sentence his head exploded in a mist of red, followed by the crack of a gunshot. "What the hell!?" Vortex screamed as she hovered in place.

Agent Daugherty stood on the roof of the white house holding a sniper rifle that was glowing with Quantum energy. She took aim at Vortex after dropping the other Nova but as she did a thunderous roar like a space shuttle lifting off erupted from the ground. Energy that looked like a solar flare bursting from the sun shot out the hole that Tangent was buried in. It struck Vortex and engulfed her within it. She seemed to be screaming but it couldn't be heard. Quinn lifted like a fiery demon from hell out of the smoking hole and settled on the grass nearby. He was bruised and smoking slightly but appeared relatively intact. Vortex dropped to ground in front of him.

Daugherty quickly jumped down from the white house rooftop and ran inhumanely fast to Quinn's side. "Are you alright?" She asked as she looked over his various burns and bruises. "Yeah fine." he said quietly as he knelt down beside the woman lying at his feet. "Vortex. You have no right to act the way you do. Those people you killed where not your enemy they just wanted to live their life and be happy. You took that away from them." He brushed her hair away from her battered face. "You want to be a god but you act like a child. You didn't deserve the power you had. I say had because your node is gone. I burned it out." His face showed with honest sorrow as he looked down on her. "You're a baseline again. Enjoy your life." He stood and began to walk away. As Vortex was being pulled to her feet and arrested she cried at him with tears streaking her face. "You bastard what gives you the right to do what you've done!!" He turned back to her regarding her. "Well if I use the excuse you use it's…. Because I can." He began to rise off the ground to leave and agent Daugherty approached him. "Wait Quinn. We could really use someone like you to help protect people like you did today." He touched down next to her and smirked. "I protect people in my own way. I don't need the government or the directive to tell me how." He smiled at her. "If you offer me a job I'll say no but if you offer me a date I'll say yes." "Okay fine." She replied shaking her head. "Meet me at 8PM tonight at the front gate when I get off." Quinn hovered for a moment then rose into the sky and just before blazing out of sight he replied. "You got it." Then with a muffled sonic boom he disappeared into the blue sky. Agent Daugherty turned and started to walk back to the gate of the White House then stopped and looked into the sky. "By the way my name is Sarah, thanks for asking." She grinned and walked back inside to begin working on her report.