((Finally found some time to write up another one of these.))
Chapter 3: Nothing Like The First Time
Los Angeles, California, 2:00am PST
The AC130 Hercules airplane rumbled high over the City of Angels, hardly even noticed by the city-goers below. The back ramp lowered, revealing a lone figure, black-clad and with a clunky helmet upon his head. Leonardo Rossi was ready for his mission as a SHIELD operative, and his adrenaline was pumping. He had copied the strength of an ant, the reflexes of a fly, and agility of a spider before prepping for a mission, and his DropSuit was calibrated and ready.
The bright red light that had flooded the cargo bay turned green, and Leonardo leapt from the ramp, beginning his HALO jump. His helmet would provide him with sufficient oxygen until he was at the right attitude to where he didn’t need it, along with giving him GPS markers on his HUD to make sure he landed at the right place.
His target area to land was a lavish hotel, where a Chinese national nuclear scientist was apparently residing. Leonardo’s job was to land at the hotel, clandestinely move in to the hotel room, identify the target, and get out. Seemed fairly simple, but then again nothing ever really was. Leonardo fell for a good seven-thousand feet before his helmet told him to activate his DropSuit. Using his neural commands, Leo activated the boosters in his hands and feet, passing by a skyscraper as he did so. The jets in his boots were conveniently placed inside of his heel, and the heel would retract and fold onto the back of his boot when in flight. Now Leo had more control over his fall and he could direct where he wanted to go. He was surprised at how quiet the jets were; they had been modified for stealth landings.
Just when he was about to reach the hotel, Leo flipped his body so his feet were facing the ground. Since his boots packed the most punch, his descent slowed considerably. He slowed to a near halt when he was about ten feet above the hotel. Giving his neural command, the systems shut off, and Leonardo landed on the roof of the hotel with ease. The repulsors on his hands flipped around so they were on the back of his hands, giving him more dexterity. The heels of his boots retracted back to their original shape.
“Renaissance Man to control,” Leo spoke softly through the communicator in his helmet. “Landing successful.”
“Copy that Renaissance,” Portman answered on the other end. “We’ve hacked in to the security feed and looping it, so as of right now you’re the invisible man.”
“Roger,” Leo responded. “I should be out in fifteen. Renaissance Man out.” With that, Leo walked over to the side of the building, taking a brief second to look out over the city. He could see the Hollywood sign in the background. Leonardo always thought that he would be coming to Los Angeles as part of a leisure trip, not for a mission of a secret government agency. Getting back on task, the HUD on Leonardo’s helmet had marked the balcony on the fifteenth floor where he would get in the easiest. Other SHIELD operatives had found out that the front door of the hotel was rigged, but the balcony was safe to get through. Since Leonardo was ten stories higher than the balcony, he cued up his spider agility and leapt over the side of the building, landing on the first balcony. Vaulting over the railing, Leonardo angled his body so that he landed on the next lower balcony. He repeated his process until he reached the fifteenth floor, where he had to go two balconies to the right in order to get to where he needed to be. The balcony door was surprisingly unlocked; this guy had gotten sloppy.
Pulling the door open little by little, Leonardo opened it just enough for him to fit through. Closing the door back, he took a quick look around the living room and kitchen. Luckily his helmet was fitted for night vision, or else he would have had to copy the ability from a cat or owl. By now Portman would have asked if he was in the hotel room or not, but a small camera was placed inside of the helmet, allowing the SHIELD handlers to see what he was doing.
Stepping through the living room, Leonardo tried to scan for anything that would help prove that the man occupying the room was indeed the Chinese national they were looking for. In the kitchen, Leonardo started opening cabinets, seeing if the scientist had temporarily hid anything of importance in there. In the one below the sink, he spotted a briefcase. Handling it carefully, Leonardo pulled it out of the cabinet and placed it on the kitchen floor. Kneeling beside it, Leonardo inspected it carefully.
“Watch out, it’s probably booby-trapped,” Portman warned. It was logical for the man to have sensitive information rigged in case anyone was to stumble upon it, or try to steal it.
Leonardo was suddenly reminded of the James Bond film From Russia With Love, where Bond had a briefcase that was rigged to explode talcum powder into someone’s face if they were to try and open it. The talcum powder part didn’t bother Leonardo much because he had his helmet on, but it would be a clear sign that he had been there, and his job right now was to be a ghost.
“How do you suggest I open it then?” Leo questioned his boss over the radio.
“Let the helmet analyze it. We’ll get our guys here to look at it with the camera to see if there’s any sort of danger,” Portman responded.
Doing just that, Leonardo let the helmet’s computer comb over the briefcase, while getting advice from the SHIELD analysts. After about five minutes of inspection, they and the helmet concluded that there was no danger in opening the case. Unhooking the latches, Leonardo slowly cracked open the case, and then opened it fully. Nothing happened. Breathing a silent sigh of relief, Leonardo began to dig through the briefcase. There were dozens of papers, and Leo’s helmet was taking snapshots of each one and placing it in to its database.
“These don’t look like nuclear plans, Portman,” Leonardo stated, inspecting one of the papers. Leo wasn’t a nuclear scientist, but he wasn’t an idiot either. These looked more like… quiz questions. Did he break in to the wrong room? After taking a snapshot of the last paper, Leonardo closed the briefcase and placed it exactly where it was under the sink. Standing, he asked Portman over the radio, “Now what?”
“We still need to I.D. our man,” Portman said. “Try and see if you can find a DNA sample.”
Nodding, Leonardo looked around the room once again, spotting a wine glass on the coffee table in the living room. Stepping towards it, Leonardo daintily picked up the glass and inspected it. Reaching into his tactical vest, Leonardo retrieved a small, cylindrical glass container with a cotton swab on the inside of it. Taking the cotton swab out, he pressed it gently on the lip marks on the glass, rolling it lightly in order to get a good saliva sample. Placing the swab back in to the container, he set the glass down while putting the DNA sample into his vest.
“Alright, I got the sample,” Leonardo reported.
“Good work. Now get out of there before you cause a ruckus,” Portman ordered.
Facing the balcony door, Leonardo opened it and stepped back through it, closing it once more behind him. He managed to make his way back up to the roof by scaling the balconies with his spider agility. Once on the roof, his helmet pinpointed where his extraction point was: a small parking lot about a mile away that he could glide to using his DropSuit. Just as he was about to jump off of the roof and make his escape however, he noticed what seemed to be a whole convoy of police cars pass below, chasing a lone white van. Men were leaning out of the van and firing automatic rounds at the police cars, some of them even hitting civilian vehicles.
“Leave it Rossi,” Portman warned, knowing his intent from the helmet mounted camera. “It’s not your problem.”
“It is now,” Leonardo muttered before diving off of the roof, falling for a good twenty stories before activating his DropSuit and setting the controls to intercept the white van. The roof of the van had a long handle running along the side, and Leonardo grappled on to that in order to stay on. The men in the van had hardly noticed Leonardo landing on the van, distracted by the pursuing police instead. Leonardo switched to the strength of an ant for now. Grabbing the man leaning out of the passenger window, Leonardo threw him towards the sidewalk. He would gain serious injuries, but he would live. The chase right now wasn’t exactly high-speed; the driver had to stay at around fifty in order to weave in between cars and still evade police.
At this time the driver noticed what was going on, but had no idea how to respond since he was driving. He shouted at the two men who were leaning out of the open side door of the van, telling them that something was on the roof. They raised eyebrows, but nodded in response, hanging by seatbelts in order to get a good visual of the roof. As they raised their submachine guns in the direction of the roof, they were kicked by two strong feet, slamming against the opposite side of the van and falling unconscious. Leonardo landed inside of the van and pulled the driver out of his seat, throwing him in to the back where he hit his head and blacked out.
Clambering in to the driver’s seat, Leonardo slammed on the brake, making the van come to a screeching halt ten feet away from a streetlight. Sighing with relief, he suddenly realized that the cops were stopping too, and getting out of their cars, weapons raised. Kicking out the driver’s door, Leonardo switched to his spider agility and leapt out of the van, springing up onto a lower building.
“Rossi, just what do you think you’re doing?” Portman asked, furious.
“Just stopping by,” Leonardo joked.
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