Jumper Mafia
Intro
Night One - Welcome to the War
Outside of Nord, Greenland, in the Arctic Circle
Snow hurled by like the angry breath of an ice goddess, and the howling sounds of wind made conversation unthinkable. The temperature was so cold that spit freezes in your mouth if you stand outside for too long.
Out of the roaring darkness came lights, smaller and dim at first, then careening out of the cascade of torrential cold, erupting with a wave of dirty snow. It was a large red tractor-like device; a snow groomer, or a "cat" as they called them up here. Huge treads propelled it across the ground, flattening the snow as it went. In its wake followed three more, flailing out behind it like the V of traveling geese.
Then the head snowcat halted, and the door banged open, sending shards of crusted ice into the night. A heavily furred and booted person stepped out, so covered in arctic coats that it was impossible to discern their gender.
A small group of people trudged from the other snowcats, huddling to preserve heat.
"Why are we stopping?" someone shouted over the wind.
"It's no use!" came the reply, hoarsely yelled over the blizzard gusts. "The Intersect isn't here! Make sure the Crusader proceeds with the kill!"
"Yes-" came the quick reply, although the word "sir" or "ma'am" was snatched up by the wind.
Five Hours Later: Nice, France
Somewhere amid the tangled streets and cobbled boulevards of Nice, a roof stood the test of time, ancient stone withholding centuries of erosion. Next to the building was a modern-looking tram car, which filled with passengers before darting away between the narrow streets.
There was a flicker and someone appeared on the roof, slightly out of breath. They looked down and noticed they had caused a crack to appear in the weathered stone, and groaned.
Quickly forgetting the small bit of damage they had caused, they gazed out at the Mediterranean and sighed pleasantly. The Côte d'Azur town was the perfect place for a European vacation.
The Intersect glanced down at the tram car loading area, making sure it was empty. Then they disappeared.
A moment later, they were strolling down the road, casting a nervous glance at each shop window. The peace of Nice couldn't calm their nerves for long, and the hurried events at their New York apartment had shaken them to the core. They were caught up in a battle that they did not understand... and wanted nothing to do with.
Isalo National Park, Madagascar
The butte rose out of the rugged terrain, topped with a field of grass that would make it the perfect runway, if it wasn't protected by the government of course.
The Geneticist didn't need a runway.
They appeared and ducked into the small bungalow they had built. They had originally made this for wildlife watching, as it was the perfect vantage point to view many of Madagascar's wide array of endemic species.
Now it would serve another purpose. The Geneticist had been culturing a petri dish for almost seven hours now; it was about time. They unwrapped a brand new electron microscope and slotted in a delicate slide.
They stood there, peering into the device in a state of near-hypnosis as they observed the detailed patterns of what they were seeing.
"Yes, yes, exactly," they muttered, wild and excited, scribbling things in a notebook. Everything was coming together now! Finally they sat back, breathing hard, full of thrill. Their research had just paid off, and they had unlocked a deep mystery that had been perplexing them for some time.
"Now for the secondary experiment," the Geneticist muttered, a little apprehensive this time. It was rare for them to meet another Jumper (although it did happen occasionally of course), and not many were willing to offer themselves up as guinea pigs... which meant that the Geneticist had to perform most of his/her experiments on himself/herself. They took a deep breath and injected the small vial, feeling the liquid course into their bloodstream.
They waited. And waited. Gradually, they began to feel slightly different. More aware, in a way. As if their senses had been heightened, but just by a tiny amount. They cast their gaze across the room and almost immediately reappeared over there... the jumping was much more sensitive. A brief thought of their childhood home crossed their mind, and they were gone. A frantic second later, they reappeared back in the Madagascar bungalow.
"I'll just have to fine tune it," the Geneticist mumbled. "No biggie. Hmmmmm... I could use this to my advantage. If Paladins come after me... bam, I'm gone! My chances for escape just went up, probably by about 5%..."
Seattle, Washington
Brandonb sighed. It had been a brutal day at work, and all he wanted to do was take a nap. But of course, his apartment was across the city from the late-night burger joint. "Figures," he muttered.
Without warning, someone appeared in front of him and ran straight at him.
"What the hell?" Brandonb cried, but the Jumper had already grabbed him and they both disappeared, a slip of crusty paper wafting up in the slipstream of the air that rushed to fill the vacuum.
Somewhere Remote in New Zealand
"Where are we?" Brandonb demanded.
"I don't know," gasped the mysterious Jumper. "Somewhere in New Zealand, I think..."
The two were standing on a deserted beach. Nighttime waves lapped up against the secluded shore on one side, and teeming jungle barred the beach from the other. Brandonb saw the looming rock of mountainous terrain through the distant canopy.
"Great," he grumbled, and sat down in the sand. "Who are you, then?"
"They call me the Paramedic," said the Jumper, breathing deeply, crouched over with their hands on their knees. "But I still haven't gotten the hang of this jumping thing. Takes a bit out of me. Not sure if I'll be able to do it again for a while."
"What?" shouted Brandonb. "So were stuck here?"
"Well I just picked a bad place to teleport to, I guess," the Paramedic muttered apologetically. "I'll have to save you tomorrow night too."
"It better be in a different location than here," was Brandonb's reply. "Or you'll have to save me again the next night... and again the next night... et cetera."
"I know, I know, sorry," the Paramedic snapped. "You should be glad, anyway. Protection for the first two nights since the war intensified. And let me tell you... with all that's going on, you're going to need it!"
London, England
"Hear anything lately, Smithers?" the Unknown called, descending into the back room of the art shop.
"Yeah, actually," hissed an old man. "But it's gonna cost you - this is gold, real gold. You're gonna love this. It's nearby, too."
"Nearby?" the Unknown scoffed. "Everywhere is nearby." They teleported to the old man's side. "How much?"
"Nine hundred," Smithers said.
The Unknown counted out the bills.
"Nine hundred thousand," grinned Smithers.
The Unknown hesitated for a second, then muttered "I'll be right back." A second later they were carrying a huge sack of various currency. "There's at least a hundred grand in there."
Smithers' eyes popped with greed. He scooped up the bag of cash and slapped a file into the Unknown's hands.
"Thanks," the Unknown said sarcastically, and slit it open. Pictures fell out. Photographs of a rooftop... before and after a period of a couple seconds. First, nobody. Then, a person was suddenly there.
"Where did you get these?" the Unknown inquired.
"Does that matter?" Smithers retorted. "A buddy of mine, ya know. Some are satellite, some are security camera shots, you know, the works."
"Good thing I came to you," the Unknown whistled through his/her teeth. Smithers was right. This was gold. "Nice?"
"Yeah, Nice, France," Smithers said. "Not that it matters for you, eh?"
The Unknown shrugged and focused on the picture. They were on the rooftop now.
Reaching out, they felt the air. They sensed a jumpscar... someone had jumped from here not too long ago. Finally they found it, slowly disintegrating, but still there. They reached into it and fell through, finding themselves nearby at a tram car loading site. Quickly they glanced around... they could sense that they were only minutes behind the Intersect... there! Down one of the streets, a flutter of chicken feathers caught in a typical vacuum slipstream. The Unknown glanced around, saw nobody watching, and reappeared next to a small chicken coop.
The Intersect's jumpscar was very vivid this time, a semi-visible distorted ripple in the air as the wormhole closed. The Unknown jumped through it, reappearing in an empty, whitewashed room.
Almost instantly, a metal bar was swung at their head.
"Why are you following me?" the Intersect shouted, consumed with fearful rage. The bar swung again, violent and persistent. The Intersect was jumping around so quickly that the Unknown couldn't keep track of where the next strike was coming from. "Go! Uh! Way!"
The Unknown jumped to the corner of the room, causing cracks to spiderweb through the weak plaster. They turned and saw the Intersect at the other side of the room, panting and holding a long metal pipe.
"Calm down," the Unknown said, as softly as possible, a welt already forming on their forehead.
"I'll calm down when you tell me what the hell is going on!"
"Gladly," the Unknown said. "But I can't tell you anything when you're slamming a metal bar in my face."
The pipe clattered to the ground.
"Good," uttered the Unknown, and pulled the familiar electrode device out of their pocket. "After this, I'll have two. Two of five, and the Paladins will have zero. One more after that... ah, if only I didn't have to wait at least 12 hours between each access."
"Why n- what are you talking about?"
"Accessing more than one Neuron Point of your brain within 12 or so hours would overload your mind and kill you, unfortunately," the Unknown explained. "That's what makes it so difficult. The Head Paladin will be after you too, you know. We can't let them win."
"What's going on? What is that thing?" the Intersect was backing away now.
"They can track us, you know," the Unknown said. "They have ridiculous amounts of money, more than we could ever steal. They have satellites, cameras, hit teams, fast travel - it can't rival our fast travel of course, but better than normal people. Undoubtedly, by tomorrow, they'll know we were here. I'll have to explain everything quickly... because they're always on our tail."
??? Somewhere
The Warrior groaned in defeat. Their target was nowhere to be found!
The Sahara Desert
Endless sand dunes. Dark night sky. Large moon, casting a serene glow on the sand.
The Reflex grinned. A perfect place to kill some Paladins.
"There he is!" the Crusader's assistants were just dark silhouettes. They rammed their four-wheelers (three four-wheelers, one driver and one gunner in each) into full gear and screamed toward the Reflex, letting loose endless rounds of machine gun fire as they approached.
The Reflex whipped around to face them, jumping in the air and slowing time. Bullets whizzed past, slow enough to see them travel through the air, leaving behind spiral trails of force.
The Reflex advanced through the hail of gunfire, twisting to avoid the slowly-spinning bullets.
Then s/he clicked back into normal time and landed on one of the four-wheelers, kicking its gunner in the head in the process. The unlucky guy was thrown out of the vehicle and ran over by the next.
The Reflex then turned their attention to the driver, who was fumbling for his pistol. The Reflex grabbed him and was gone.
Pressure pounded at their ears and water threatened to invade their eyes. Being deep under the Pacific wasn't pleasant.
Then the Reflex was back in the Sahara, reappearing amid a splash of water. They found themselves right in the path of a four-wheeler, and ran toward it, yelling angrily as they teleported small distances, closer and closer with blazing pulses that rippled the sand. Finally they hit the four-wheeler head on and jumped it hundreds of yards backwards, stuck halfway through a dune. The backseat was gunner was instantly drowned and crushed by sand, but the driver was safe and rammed a fist toward the Reflex's stomach, catching the Jumper by surprise.
The Reflex grunted and toppled backwards, rolling down the dune, throwing up trails of sand. The third four-wheeler was trying to reverse its direction and head for the dune slope, and far off, noises of a helicopter cut through the air. The Crusader was approaching.
A sudden shock bit into the Reflex's brain and they shouted in agony, tensing up. The Paladin from the four-wheeler was standing over them, holding an electric baton. They jammed it into the sand and grabbed another one (prodding the Reflex to add an extra shock), and brought it down toward the ground -
The Reflex slowed time, and watched as the Paladin's hand descended, holding the shock baton. The Reflex rolled from under the Paladin, grabbed the baton and forced it upwards, relinquishing time and letting the momentum carry the baton into the Paladin's chin. There was a burst of electricity and the Paladin cried out, falling backwards onto the dune.
"How do you like a taste of your own medicine?" the Reflex seethed, and jammed the baton deeper into the Paladin's throat, cutting off his breath and shocking his spinal cord. The Reflex left him there, pinned to the ground, and teleported down the dune, into the final four-wheeler. Before its driver & gunner could react, the Reflex squinted painfully and teleported the whole contraption hundreds of feet into the sky.
They were surrounded by stars... stars that quickly rushed upwards. The Reflex teleported them even higher, where the air was thin and cold. They could look down across the rolling, seemingly infinite desert... and a small black helicopter chopping over the moonlit white sand. The Crusader's helicopter.
"Gotcha," the Reflex grinned. They grabbed the four-wheeler's gunner's arm, twisting it and slamming it upward into the gunner's head, knocking them unconscious. The gunner fell backwards out of the four-wheeler, tumbling toward the ground. The Reflex nodded and turned to kick the driver, slowing time for accuracy. They nailed the driver right in the forehead, sending them careening away into the night. By this time they had reached terminal velocity, and were locked in a free fall. The Reflex grabbed the controls of the ATV ("All terrain," they scoffed. "Does midair count as a terrain?") and jumped it higher, their legs spread out behind the machine, rippling in the wind of air resistance. The Reflex continually jumped the ATV, adjusting it so it was at the right spot in comparison to the helicopter....
Then they let go and jumped higher into the air, watching the ATV's free fall as it sped toward the helicopter - whose pilot was unaware of the massive land vehicle plummeting closer.
WHAM! Perfect shot! The ATV nailed the top of the helicopter, destroying the top-blades with a screeching explosion of flying metal. The helicopter's ceiling dented in and it dropped dangerously, spinning out of control in a whacked-out death spiral on a one way trip for the desert floor. The Reflex jumped downwards to get a better view, coming almost adjacent with the falling chopper.
Then it happened. A spark of intense pain bit into the Reflex's nerves, so intense that it nearly paralyzed them. They tried to jump, or slow time (or both), but the pain persistent, building in agony and reaching a nerve-pulsing crescendo. The Reflex screamed, unaware of their surroundings and unable to concentrate.
"Gotcha," the Crusader's voice hissed. Finally the pain ended, and the Reflex could see - the Crusader had leapt from the helicopter, wearing a parachute pack (which hadn't been deployed yet) and a shock baton was shoved deep into the Reflex's gut. As the two spiraled toward the ground, the helicopter got there first, and drove into the sand like a meteor, erupting in a massive explosion of flame and searing shards of steel. The shockwave hit the Reflex & Crusader like a titanium wall, rebounding them higher into the sky as if they had been shot by a gun. The G-forces ripped at their muscles and tore at their skin, squeezing their heads like nuts that were about to crack.
Finally it ended, and the free-fall that resumed seemed almost normal. Smoke billowed past in great wafts, and there were times when everything was pitch black and the air was unbreathable.
The Reflex and the Crusader fought viciously, their lives hanging in a delicate and violent balance. The Crusader continually blazed the Reflex with shock batons, keeping them to one location and one time. Only one could emerge alive - if the Reflex didn't die before they hit the ground, the Crusader could not open their parachute and survive the fall, and if the Crusader did not die before they hit the ground, the Reflex could not jump to safety. They each had to kill the other before the desert rose to meet them.
"You are an abomination!" the Crusader roared, ramming the shock baton toward the Reflex's throat. "You need to die!"
The Reflex jabbed upward with an elbow, deflecting the Crusader's blow, and struck the Crusader in the face, causing them to reel backwards for a moment. The Reflex tried to regain their composure for a jump, but the baton zapped their side, causing them to cry out in pain and fury.
The ground loomed closer now, smiling in its victory. Neither would survive.
The Reflex was more frantic, punching and kicking and spinning and chopping and headbutting. The Crusader responding in kind, blocking and lashing out. As the sand dunes grew in size beneath them, the Crusader managed to grab their special knife (suffering a punch to the jaw), letting the wind unwrap it and revealing the rusty serrated edge; the very lethal edge that had killed more than a dozen Jumpers.
"Now DIE!!!!" the Crusader roared, and slid the knife into the Reflex's stomach and up, howling in anger. The Reflex tumbled backwards, gasping, blood flying up in free fall. Their face was unfocused and trembling. Then they disappeared with an effortful flicker.
The Crusader grinned and pulled the cord on their parachute pack.
University of Michigan Hospital - Emergency Room
"Man, I've been waiting on the call for like ten hours," the doctor complained, and the surgeon nodded amiably. "Why is it that our ER never sees any action?"
BAM! The operation table split in half as someone landed on it, sending tools flying outwards. Computer monitors toppled over and shattered on the ground, and an intravenous drip machine flew into the door, hit it with a savage velocity and bent into an almost 90-degree angle.
Lying in the center of the destruction was a bloody human, hands dripping scarlet and clutched over a vicious wound in their abdomen. They were drawing ragged breaths, confused and panicking and hyperventilating, their eyes wide with terror.
The main doctor gaped in astonishment for only a second before his MD-trained instincts took over. "Get two anesthesiologists in here!" he shouted to the assistant-surgeon, who immediately darted out of the door. The doctor surveyed the room: what was broken and what was still usable?
"Is that your only wound?" the doctor shouted as they pried the Reflex's hand away. "Who are you? How did you get here?"
The Reflex made no sound, only drew more panicked breaths. Some nurses entered and knelt by the Reflex, bringing a portable isoflurane machine.
The assistant-surgeon approached the doctor warily. "They're doomed... unless they can magically slow the bleeding or something, they're going to lose too much blood before we can-"
The Reflex managed a smile.
End of Night One! Day One will be special and last an extra five hours, thus 29 hours, so that it ends around the time when I'll be able to get on. PM me if you have a suggestion/vote as to WHERE the Day One lynching should take place!
