Chapter 488: A Pappy's Job
"Shit! Run, you fucking idiots!"
Master Sergeant Jose "Tekillya" Cuervo was in a ruined city with the rest of Reaper Team 22. It had started as a nice, quiet little metropolis full of busy little worker bees going about their day, until a supervillain had kidnapped the son of the city's mayor. Reaper Team 22 had been sent in to neutralize the criminal, save the child, and prevent the situation from spiraling out of control and escalating to an absurd level.
Obviously, something had gone wrong.
Tekillya fervently cursed Murphy as he ran at top speed, the shadow of an entire skyscraper surrounding his team. As it turned out, the kidnapper was part of a team of criminals, and one of them had ripped an entire skyscraper off of its foundation and simply thrown it at the hapless reapers.
Naturally, it wouldn't kill them if it hit them. It wouldn't even really cramp their style all that much, much less part their hair on the wrong side, but it would still be embarrassing. After all, who would want to be known for being unable to dodge a building? Tekillya's entire team would get so much shit from the other guys in the barracks once the After Action Review was made public. They already would, having fucked up so spectacularly, but they could at least limit the damage by dodging the building that was rapidly approaching them from the sky.
Then, the entire world froze around them and disintegrated into particles that drifted into the sky and vanished. [Simulation terminated,] the obviously synthesized voice of a VI announced.
Tekillya and the rest of his team looked at each other. "Do you think this means the AAR won't be coming out?" one of them asked.
"Probably not. Supreme Commander Athena will still give us our dressing down," Master Sergeant Cuervo said in a dejected tone.
"Well shit."
The rest of Reaper Team 22 nodded their agreement. Those two words perfectly described the situation they had found themselves in.
The team hit the "big red button" in their AR displays and were transported to a briefing room, where they were met by the last person they wanted to see at that particular moment in time.
"Good afternoon, Supreme Commander!" they shouted in unison.
[At ease, gentlemen. You aren't here to discuss your, frankly, epic fuckup in your last training mission,] she said with a thin-lipped, sadistic grin on her face. [Instead, you were pulled out to assist in testing a new piece of gear. I'll let its creator explain more.]
She stepped aside and a bright light grew from a spark into the shape of a person, then resolved itself into Aron, who was standing with pride etched into every inch of his body.
"Hello, gentlemen. Athena should've just informed you of your next task. You'll be putting the new equipment through its paces in simulated stress testing. Athena assures me that your recent mission results have proven that you're the exact right people for the job," he said with a smile on his face that wasn't a smile.
[Trust me, sir, they absolutely are,] Athena assured him from the side, then cast a baleful gaze over the members of Reaper Team 22 in the briefing room.
Aron nodded and continued, "The equipment you'll be testing is the Psionic, Arcane, and Physical Shielding system, or the PAPS for short. It's designed to protect you against all forms of damage, leaving your NUTS as a backup form of protection. Now that people are being blessed with superpowers, it's become apparent that we need to preemptively develop protection systems that work against all forms of damage, not just the physical...."
Aron spent the next ten minutes giving a brief overview of the PAPS system to the eager Reaper Team members, then threw them a data file containing the detailed spec sheet for the new gear that would be added to their kit and vanished.
[Any questions?] Athena asked.
The team shook their heads and chorused, "No questions, ma'am!"
[Alright then. You have one day to go over the data, then the testing mission cycle will begin. Dismissed!]
"Yes, ma'am!" the reapers shouted with a salute, then left the briefing room and headed back to their team barracks.
"So, first order of business," Tekillya said once they returned to their squad bay. "What should we call this new kit?"
A number of suggestions were thrown out, and one member of the team got thoroughly booed and beaten to a pulp for suggesting "PAP Smear" as the nickname for the new gear. Then the hubbub died down for a few minutes before another member of the team suggested, "Why don't we call it Pappy? My pappy always stood in front of me whenever bad things happened. He shooed away the monster in the closet and the monsters under my bed when I was little, taught me to swim after he saved me from drowning when I fell in the pool... a lot of things, really. My pappy protected me when I was little, and now that we're big, our pappies can't help us anymore. But this one can."
The whole squad bay fell into silence as the men thought back on their lives and their fathers, whether they were present or not, protective or not, decent or not.... Even if their fathers were the most vicious, abusive scum they knew growing up, every single one of them dreamed of having a "pappy" like the one described by their squadmate.
"Well," Tekillya said. "It looks like we have a winner."
The rest of the men nodded, then they all got down to business going through the detailed specs in the file Aron had thrown them earlier.
An hour later, they finished reviewing it, and one of them asked, "So, Master Sergeant... do you think Pappy will protect us from getting skyscrapers thrown at us?"
The squad bay fell into another long silence. This time, though, it was a cold, menacing silence as everyone glared at the person they were about to beat into respawning for bringing up their most recent humiliating shame.