The communications room is an impressive showing of top of the line monitors and listening devices. Sitting at one of the chairs of the main monitor, is The Armadillo. His claws are frantically punching at the keyboard in front of him, leaving new scratch marks on the keys. Hightower and Roadblock are sitting on either side of him, working away at their own keyboards. Several monitors, labeled as “guard orb” by number, are showing nothing but static.

Play it cool, Zach, I think to myself. You’ll get your chance to shine. Just give these guys some room and let the professionals do their thing. They’ll fix it right away, I bet.

“Back up anti-gravity systems aren’t responding,” The Armadillo grumbles.

“The guard units are offline, too! No response from them at all!” Roadblock shouts.

“Whoever did this, they’re good. Check this out,” Hightower taps at his keyboard.

Then again, maybe they won’t, I can’t help but think.

On one of the monitors, a camera shot shows the underbelly of the Fortress. A fiery smoke billows out of all four anti-gravity pylons…or what’s left of them. Clinging onto the wreckage of one of the pylons looks to be what’s left of one of the security orbs.

“Are you kidding me? How did we not notice an explosion like that?” I finally manage to get the courage to ask in front of these guys.

“The conference room doubles as an escape pod in case we’re attacked during a meeting. So it’s the most secure room in the Fortress,” The Armadillo grumbles to me, over his shoulder.

“And by secure, he means it’s also very solid, so a rumbling from a little explosion like that wouldn’t get noticed,” Roadblock chimes in.

“Knew I should’ve stayed on monitor duty,” The Armadillo grumbles to himself. “Damn initiations. Stupid kid.” He taps on the keys in front of him and rewinds the security camera’s time index back to a few minutes ago. I watch myself in fast-rewind floating underneath the Fortress for a second, marveling at its view before making my way to the roof.

“Nice flyin’ there, kiddo,” Hightower nods.

“Thanks,” I blush.

“Quiet,” The Armadillo grumbles and slows the tape back to just before the explosions. They go off in a seemingly well-timed sequence, one right after the other. The Armadillo rewinds back slowly to a point just before they blow up and pauses the security tape. “There,” he taps a digging claw on the monitor in front of him. “Timed charges; could’ve been there for minutes, hours, days even. I’ll have to look over the tapes to find out when, exactly.” He leans back in his chair, studying the frozen picture, scratching the underside of his snout with his mutated, opposable thumb claw.

The monitor room shudders and my knees buckle as what was left for power in the anti-gravity pylons finally gives out. I look at the monitor showing the underbelly of the Fortress as some clouds brush by in its fall.

The Armadillo points a claw at Roadblock, “Get one of the hover bikes and check out the damage. Whatever Susie’s got up her sleeve isn’t going to keep this oval afloat forever.”

“Let’s get to the hanger,” the portly man dressed as a construction worker sighs, like this is an ordinary thing. He whirls around in his chair and heads towards the door. Hightower quickly follows behind him.

Just as the two of them are out the door, my knees buckle again as the falling suddenly jerks to a stop. I look on the monitors and notice hundreds upon hundreds of little clay floor tiles, floating in the air and holding up the Sky Fortress. Looks like Humanity Man’s attempt at wooing Susan back didn’t stop her from saving the day, after all. It also looks like she had to pull apart the conference room flooring to do it.

Without another word, the duo leaves me and The Armadillo all by our lonesome. He turns around in his chair, looks up at me, his digging claws laced together. His snout is pointed down, his eyes can barely be seen from under his fedora but they’re heavily focused on me. If I didn’t know any better, he was sizing me up. Again.

“So, how’d you get the access codes to the security bots so quick there, kid?” he asks me with a low grumble.

I stand there confused for a second before I clue in. “Now wait just a---”

“You probably had time while you were doing that fancy flying up here, huh?” He leans forward, “Don’t think I wasn’t watching you flying around, making it look like you were trying to find the entrance just now. How long you been scoping the place out, hm?”

“Look, I just got the invitation from Susan today and---” I tried, but was cut off.

“Yeah, how convenient is that, hrm? Probably working at the day care as a cover to get in good with a Shatterpack member?” He stands up, his clawed feet clicking on the floor. The city is full of little marks on its buildings from The Armadillo climbing them. “And hiding behind kids to do it, for dirt’s sake. You’re worse than her ex-husband.”

“Yeah, because he saved that bar last night---”

“And none of the witnesses there even claim to have seen you fight with this…what was it? Weapon of Masked Destruction? Only some stupid college kid would come up with a name like that.”

“Now, hold on just a damn minute!” I point a gloved finger at him.

“Yeah, I did some digging around, too. How Red Brick used to be part of a smuggling operation for the Russians? He was part of a smuggling operation that sent some rather dangerous ordinance to a country in Europe. Estonia. Sound familiar?”

It sure did. Estonia was rumoured to be where Lord Powerhouse was holed up. Unfortunately, due to international rights or some other B.S., no one in the UN could enter the country. Lord Powerhouse, with his fancy Greek armour, is always saying that SPECs were false idols worshipped by the common people. His official stance is that they should be properly eliminated to give room to the true gods.

“Well, what does that have to do with me, huh?” I shout. I’m face to snout with The Armadillo now. He can probably smell what I had for breakfast this morning.

“Maybe that you killed the one person who probably had any knowledge of the smuggling. I’m sure you’ve got some fancy powers that can fake a heart attack, hm? Killing a legend like Doc Crimson, trying to hide some great goal or something? That it? Am I getting warming, hrm?” I could hear the low snarling in his voice as he chastised me.

“No, I went to investigate! Look,” I start, trying to calm down, “me and Susan—”

“Who conveniently didn’t show up that night—” He interrupts me but I keep going.

“And I got my butt handed to me good by this guy that—” I notice all but one of the monitors have turned to static. The remaining monitor, directly in front of The Armadillo, is showing a hooded figure that I knew all too well. “—actually, he looks a lot like that.” I say to The Armadillo.

The trench-coat wearing mutant spins around to face the monitors. He’s still snarling slightly under his breath, but I can tell that he’s feeling like an idiot, already.

“Hm. Looks like Plan A didn’t work.” The Weapon of Masked Destruction speaks through a garbled voice box. “Plan B it is, then.”

“Hrm, won’t take me long to find out your location there, freak,” The Armadillo growls. He looks over his shoulder, “By the way kid, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I would’ve made the same assumption,” I shrug.

“How touching,” The Weapon says, “Now fry.”

The monitors simultaneously turn off together. A small spark sprung from each of them. I watched in frozen horror as The Armadillo leapt for the computer system in hopes of stopping whatever was coming. It was then that strings of electricity leapt from every single wire, monitor and keyboard. It was frying the entire Sky Fortress communication system

The Armadillo is in the direct center of it all. His trench-coat and fedora are the first to quickly burn up like toilet paper. Once they burn away, I see the large, humanoid armadillo, complete with his rock hard carapace. But even that doesn’t stop the amount of electricity that was frying his shell. It was cooking him like a lobster in bowling water. I’m frozen in fear. I want to reach out and pull him away but something gave me the feeling that it was already too late.

I never knew that a burning carapace would smell like roasting chestnuts.

Finally coming to my senses, I instinctively pull my cape in front of me just as the glass on all the monitors shatter. Several shards stick into the now soft, cooked carapace of The Armadillo. I remember hearing that his carapace could stop bullets. His clawed feet leave long scratches in the metal flooring. I see now that he was killed instantly, still standing proud like a good hero should have.

I slowly back away, only to be surprised by the automatic door not whizzing open. I dig my fingers hard into the metal with my strength and manually slide the door open. I manage to force the door closed, seeing sparks and smoke still spewing from nearly every part of the communications room.

“I’m sorry, too” I say to the standing corpse of The Armadillo before I slide the door shut.

In a panic, I punch through the glass casing to the emergency button. Nothing; the alarm must’ve been cut by the Weapon of Masked Destruction. In all of the electricity in the communications room, I guess I didn’t notice that the alarm from the anti-gravity pylons had already been turned off.

Finally, I hit the intercom, hoping that it not only works, but someone hears me, “Um, emergency!” I stutter a little, “the communication room has been fried, The Armadillo is dead and the alarm isn’t working anymore! Is anyone out there?”

A voice comes through the intercom. At least the Sky Fortress’ inner communications are still working. We just can’t contact anyone outside of it.

“Kid, are you okay?” Humanity Man asks through the intercom.

“Y-yeah, but The Armadillo’s dead!”

“Dammit,” he says with a hushed voice, “All right, get down to street level. Make sure the area is evacuated. If this thing drops, we don’t want anyone hurt.”

“Yeah, but—” I try to say.

“Susan and I have everything covered. Where are Roadblock and Hightower?” he asks.

“Trying to fix the anti-gravity pylons,” I tell him, “I think they took one of the hover bikes.”

“Good, good. Okay, we’re doing everything we can up here. Get down to the streets and clear those people!” he barks his order with a hint of immediacy.

“Yes, sir!” I proudly say back.

My first official orders as a member of the Shatterpack. I’d be excited if I wasn’t scared for my life at the moment.