Retrofit

I was trying to boot up N64 games on the Wii Virtual Console on the Wii U, and was greeted with the message I would need to attach a Wii Classic Controller to the Wiimote. I have two Wii controllers, the Wiimote with nunchuks and the Wii Pad, or whatever ridiculous name they’re called. They all have the requisite number of buttons, but it won’t let me use them. I have to physically go to a store and buy a Wii Classic Controller. This raises the number of controllers you’re expected to own to fully use your Wii U to five, at a bare minimum. Games like Nintendoland expect you to use the Wii pad and up to four Wiimotes for up to five players. Super Mari Bros. U makes you play multiplayer with the Wii Pad and up to four Wiimotes. Games like Assassain’s Creed makes you use the Pro Controller. Retro games in the Virtual Console make you use the Classic Controller. Make no mistake that the Wii U Game Pad is all you need to play any of these games, but it won’t let you use it in some cases, or else use more than one. It has every button, a touch screen, infrared, and motion controls. There’s little reason for the console itself to exist. Basically, with a Wiimote, a Pro Controller, and a Classic Controller you’re looking at about $100 in extra expenses you don’t need because someone can’t be bothered to figure out how to map buttons onto the Wii Pad. I remember back in the old days when the original Nintendo came with two controllers and a completely useless light gun, and the special edition came with a fucking robot. Nowadays, you have to buy a special edition or a deluxe edition just to get a game and a larger hard drive (which could be replaced by a $9 SD card for $90 in savings).  You only get one controller and a fuck you with the basic editions, or even the mid-tier editions with the slightly larger hard drive.

Seriously though, the Wii Virtual Console requires you to have a Wiimote just to access it, which means either buying one or owning one from an underused or traded-in Wii. The Wii Virtual Console negates the need for a Wii completely, which means you’d obviously want to sell your old one off, or junk it, or maybe keep it around for low-def use of Netflix, but you’re expected to keep the Wiimote.

With the new generation of consoles coming out, the expectation is that the new PS4 or Xbox 720 (or whatever they’ll be called) are going to have integrated motion controls. That means the new Xbox will have built-in, non-negotiable Kinetic 2.0. With the path that the Wii U carves, the next Nintendo console will probably have an even newer requisite controller, but also require every controller you ever owned, or found in a garage sale.

The other big push with the Virtual Console update is playing old-school Nintendo games on the Game Pad. That’s isn’t that big of a draw. The license for the original Nintendo expired last year and there was a rush of portable game emulators you could pop a cartridge in and play (assuming the old cartridge batteries weren’t dead, which is expected to affect games like Zelda soon). Plus, if you look at the Android Play store, the SNES emulator is around #7 on their top-selling apps. That means anyone with an Android device and $2 can play any goddamn SNES game anywhere they want, with a longer battery life and more portability than the Game Pad. Those Roms are free, too. After all, a person can only be expected to pay for the original Super Mario Bros. so many times. They’re only releasing a handful of games to begin with as well, which is ridiculous. To think they’re keeping hundreds of games in their catalogue at bay and releasing them one-at-a-time once-a-week is a money losing idea. Most of those games themselves are only a few KB, and the rest is all emulator. How hard could it be? I could probably torrent their entire back-catalogue in an hour.

Wii in a Wii U

Nintendo finally got it’s ass around to delivering on pre-launch promises of being able to play Wii titles on the Wii U with the Wii Virtual Console. It effectively eliminates the need for buying a new and now extinct Wii ($99). Nintendo’s mainstay has been cannibalizing it’s old tittles while releasing slightly updated clones. That’s essentially what this update is. You can transfer your Wii titles to the Wii U and them update them for a fee to have TV-free on-Pad play, or else play them in the Virtual Console and a Wiimote. I’d previously been confused by this, thinking you could just enter the codes in the Nintendo eShop (The Nintendo eShop is pitiful on the Wii U. There’s only three pages of item and two-and-a-half of them are shelf titles at full retail price. The only downloadable games that aren’t old Nintendo games is The Cave and Bitrunner 2, and Tribes 2 I think, which you can play on virtually every other console system and computer. That’s months and months after the Wii U launched. The tiny section the Wii U takes up in retail stores and gaming boutiques is sad too. The only thing sadder than the Wii U’s lineup is the 360’s Kinetic section of the store.)

I’d previously been stockpiling Wii game download codes using coins earned on Club Nintendo, but couldn’t use them. Now I have three N64 games for free in my Wii Virtual Console, on the Wii U. To recap, I’m playing N64 games on a Wii on a Wii U.

Yo dawg…

I’d been playing my son’s Lego City Undercover game up to Chapter 12 and only discovered where to buy unlocks. As you play, you find hundreds of unlocks for costumer and cars, but I had no idea how to purchase them and use them. I assumed it was at the Police Station, but all I could find in there was a place to enter cheat codes (which you get from buying real-life Lego products). Then after about my fifth trip, I noticed an elevator door that was opening and closing, which took me down to the basement where I could buy what I’d unlocked. The whole system is kind of doing that is kind of bullshit. I assume there was one point in the game that explained it, but my son must have played that part. Every time you want to use an item you pick up, you’re expect to first drive across the huge world map back to the Police Station, and enter. The load times for getting into the Police Station are almost as long as it takes to load up the game, which is a ridiculous amount of time. The Wii U update didn’t make it any faster, either. It’s pretty discouraging. It’s not like other Lego games like Star Wars or Batman where the area where you buy items is part of a menu hub between levels. No, you have to go the entire distance after finishing a level.

Lego City Undercover

I know a lot of people might not have a Wii U, or really understand what it’s about. My step-son has one and four different games for it. Right now, the best integrated game he has with the system is Lego City Undercover. People say this game is basically an open-world sandbox like GTA, and it is, but it borrows heavily from previous Lego Games like Lego Batman and Lego Harry Potter, etc. We own three Lego games for the 360 and the play style is very similar. You play and unlock “costumes” that the character Chase McCain used to access new abilities. For instance, the criminal can use his crowbar to pry open doors and the fireman can use his extinguisher to put out fires. You have to switch costumes in their wheel to access each new power. The farmer seems like Poison Ivy from Lego Batman. He uses his watering can to grow plant that you can then climb up to get to higher areas, just like Poison Ivy.

Lego City looks an awful lot like Liberty City (which itself is New York City). There’s two main islands connected by bridges, and you have to keep playing to unlock more areas. You have to travel over land by “borrowing” other people’s cars. You simply press X to hop in, like a toned-down Saints Row instead of going through the long, “I need this!” animations that GTA uses where the driver gets punched in the head. Chase politely says, “Police emergency!” and the driver will switch places with you. As your car gets damaged, you lose bricks until it’s destroyed. Cars have their own health bars as well, and car damage isn’t tied in with your own health. Pedestrians will jump out of the way as you try to mow them down. If for some reason they don’t, they don’t receive any damage. You can’t “kill” ordinary citizens. You can only combat criminals and you defeat them by beating them up with your hands then putting handcuffs on them. The last bad guy in a group will always be taken down in an animation sequence.

Entrances to mission areas are found on the world map, which is displayed on the tablet portion of the Wii U. The Wii U pad, or whatever it’s called, it basically your GPS and phone. You receive calls from Lego characters where the audio comes out of the pad instead of the monitor. You can also use the pad as an audio scanner and camera, which forces you to stand up and rotate your whole body to use it, like an AR game. When you access car menus, you pick the car you want on the pad screen.

That’s better and different from other games like Super Mario Wii U and Scribblenauts. Those games give you the option of playing on your TV or pad, without giving you a lot of reason to have the pad at all. In multiplayer in Super Mario Bros., the player with the pad can touch the screen to create temporary blocks, which isn’t as useful as being able to play as Player 2. The same goes for Nintendoland, where in multiplayer, the person with the tablet is king.

Lego City Undercover, unlike the console games on the 360 that encourages you to have two players, is single-player. It’s like the inverse of the 360/Nintendo dynamic. 360 games are mostly single-player affairs when not connected to the internet, and Nintendo games are mostly about local multiplayer.

There’s some serious problems with the game, though. I only noticed one glitch where a car got stuck in the ground, but the big problem is load times. It takes a long time to load up the game. Probably around three minutes. Then, saving the game is another problem. The whole game involves going between missions in an open world, but if you quit in the middle of a mission, you have to restart the mission. Saving in the open world is only possible by going to the police headquarters (which also takes time) or collecting certain blocks.

Puzzles are ridiculously easy to solve, but also frustrating. You’re constantly running into areas where you’ll need a new costume to solve, which is only possible by playing through the missions then coming back. You’re better off, then, by leaving everything to the very end of the game, which defeats the purpose of having the open world. It’s like the opposite of Saints Row 3 that gives you everything you could want right off the bat.

Gotta Catch ‘Em All

I took my step-son to a Pokemon Regional Championship in Vancouver on Sunday, after reading about it in the paper. Later in the year, we’re getting the World Championships, which I had misread and assumed it was set for Sunday. Like Michael Bluth, I didn’t know what to expect. It was a crowded room with probably over two hundred people in attendance of all ages. They were holding a Video Game and Trading Card competition simultaneously, with three age groups apiece. We’d gotten there a little late and couldn’t get in to the First Round of the Video Game competition. I wasn’t even expecting to enter my son in the games, as I thought we could just hang out and watch. In the Second Round, he was ready and won his first battle against a girl sporting a Victini hat that could only be won as a prize at the games. He also won a door prize, along with his opponent, which was a pencil and stickers. Door prizes got better each Round, and everyone got a trading card each Round. The first card was a rare one with a special foil graphic for competitive games. He lost the next Round, won the Fourth, and lost the Final, placing him in 20th out of 25th, with an automatic First Round lost. Still, 2 out of 5 games wasn’t bad for someone showing up out of the blue. I looked at his team and saw he was battling with monsters I’d raised in White and traded over to Black 2.

As for the others in attendance, it was a cornicopia. For some reason there was a group of four girls in weird cosplay. They were dressed like half-steam punk/half-furries with tails and top hats. I couldn’t tell if they were original costume ideas or some obscure characters from an anime I’ve never seen. Nervous teenaged boys hovered around them. I also swear I saw a blind kid playing the Pokemon video game. I didn’t even know how that was possible. He had a cane with him and glasses, and he had to be led around, but I saw him playing it. A lot of other players had the Victini hat, and I wanted one. I was hoping there would be booths where I could buy merch. I need a new hat for my bald head.

Kids kept coming up to me because they saw me playing my old DS Lite and White while I was waiting between Rounds. My hearing’s shot so I couldn’t really understand what they were asking, plus I haven’t played Pokemon properly in over two years. I haven’t even touched the 2’s.

My son, for some reason, had his friend’s version of Pokemon Black, and I brought it with me. I was able to download a new Pokemon as a Mystery Gift on both my game and his and my son’s game. I was worried the games were going to strecth on late but we were done around 2 p.m. for the Video Game competition with a lunch break.

Injustice: A Fungus Among Us

I tried playing the Inuustice: Gods Among us demo for the 360. In local multiplayer, you were given the choice of Batman, Wonder Woman and Lex Luthor as your character, and got Gotham as your map with two variants. This is DC’s second venture into fighting games after their last Mortal Kombat crossover that destroyed the multi-million selling Mortal Kombat franchise and left DC unscathed.

Like all fighting games you don’t have the instruction manual for and list of combos, all anyone playing can do is madly hit buttons and hope for the best. I quickly figured out the RB button triggered environmental attacks. My son was quite effectively killing me by jumping and hitting a single button every time I came near. By dicking around with movement joystick I was able to launch a few attacks like Batman’s grappling line. Every so often a weird gambling system would go off where each player had to bet their attack points in a standoff. Attack points could then be used for super moves. At the end of my bout, I pulled off Batman’s finisher.

I’ve never had a laughing fit from someone’s finisher before, and I’ve used Liu Kang’s Friendship finishing move where he dances to the disco ball. Batman first tasers you in the neck, knees you in the face, then throws a Batarang at you before doing a backflip and hitting you with a runaway Batmobile.

Entry Four:

Entry Four:

            Gavin found himself roughly tossed into the back of the waiting stretch van. More of what he assumed were police were arriving on the scene as the doors shut behind him. Gavin picked himself up off the cold floor and struggled a bit with the cuffs behind his back before settling into a seating position. “I guess this isn’t going well,” he said.

            “This isn’t as bad as it looks,” Kylie told him. “Like I told you, just keep your mouth shut and we’ll make it though this.” He could barely make her out in the cabin’s dark interior.

            “They already took all of our gear,” Video grumbled.

            “We’ll see it again. Its got tracking chips in it,” Kylie assured him. “These monkeys will be lucky if they figure out how to even open it. I bet their best minds couldn’t even fathom our kind of tech.”

            “It would help if you didn’t call them monkeys,” Fredriks mentioned.

            “I’m still covered in blood,” Gavin said as he looked down at his shirt. “They won’t think I murdered someone, will they?”

            “I’m sure they won’t, seeing how we met them. How’s your ankle?” she asked inching closer on her backside. There were no seats in the cabin, and there was barely enough room for them all.

            “Its kind of creepy how they didn’t talk at all,” Goldie was sandwiched between Lance’s hulking figure and Video comparatively skinny one. They had been extra cautious cuffing Lance, but he offered them no resistance.

            “They probably all have mics in their helmet they chat with,” Video suggested. Fredriks had tried to talk with them, but they were mute the whole time.

            “Some planets have a strict policy when speaking with off-worlders,” Fredriks explained. “The first people permitted to speak to them are usually designated officials.”

            “At least they didn’t rough us up,” Video shrugged.

            “They handled Gavin a little rough,” Deborah claimed.

            “Well he can barely walk on his own, they probably thought he was resisting. Plus he’s got that blood on him. He’s lucky he didn’t get shot,” Video said dismissively.

            “You think this is my fault?” Gavin asked him.

            “We were going to get caught anyway,” Video said. “This was all pretty dumb of us. Or Kylie. Or Corporate. Of pretty much everyone.”

            “Would all of you babies hush up,” Kylie said as she looped her cuffs under her tucked feet and brought her hands out from behind her back.

            “Please don’t do anything rash,” Fredriks saw what she was doing.

            “I’m only trying to get comfortable,” Kylie said. “Plus it’ll help if I have jump them.” Somehow, they had overlooked the knife in her boot. It fitted in perfectly with the seams, so as to be invisible. To the untrained eye, her boots merely looked bulky. Gavin looked at his own boots and wondered if he had one as well. They had tried to take off his wrist unit, but it was firmly attached. Even he didn’t know how to take it off, which would prove difficult when he needed to change. One of the cuffs had to be widened to fit around it at the wrist. They had also attempted to pull out the node on his neck, but his screams of agony convinced them that it was physically a part of him. They were rather rushed about their business.

            Soon enough, the vehicle began to move and they saw the flashing lights out the narrow back window.

            “They’re taking us to the city, right?” Goldie asked.

            “They have to,” Kylie said, but she didn’t sound too sure of herself.

            “I think your ankle may need so medical attention,” Deborah told Gavin.

            “I’ll be fine. It hurts less now that I’m sitting,” he told her. He could feel it swelling in his boot. He noticed how the boot was muddy, but it hadn’t been scuffed in the confrontation. The fabric his clothes was made of was surprisingly resilient. His chest beneath his shirt, however, felt bruised, but he had no way of checking at the moment.

            “Everyone should have had a First Aid kit in their packs, which isn’t exactly going to do you any good right now,” Kylie told them. She had gone to the back window, their only source of light, and peered out at the streets passing. They had gone from dirt roads to a type of pavement. Their gear had gone into another truck, which was following behind them. “Worst comes to worst, I’ll just remote detonate the bomb you were carrying.”

            “What?” Gavin exclaimed loudly.

            “Oh, that was too easy,” Kylie laughed at him, then turned back to watching the street. Gavin scowled at her as she said, “I wouldn’t trust you to carry matchsticks.” The van swerved and Kylie had to prop herself against the door to keep from falling over.

            “Thank you for earlier,” Gavin said to her once she had righted herself.

            “No sweat. Are you going to pull through? I’m not sure how much of that blood is yours,” Kylie looked concerned.

            “None of it,” Gavin assured her. “Thank you too, Deborah. You’ve been a good friend to me.”

            Deborah smiled at him. “What do you think is going to happen to us?”

            “They’ll probably throw us into a holding cell. They’ll treat us like illegal aliens, because we are. They’ll interrogate us, but their form of government doesn’t use torture,” Kylie explained. “We have rights like everyone else. We might need lawyers, but hopefully we should able to sort everything out quickly. Aliens attract a lot of attention, and we should be able to meet with higher ups quickly instead of dealing with low level police officers like the pair that put us in this paddy wagon.” The van was slowing down, and there was more traffic. The cars parted for them to pass through. Passer-bys on the street craned their necks to look at the van race along. Kylie waved to them and gave a wink before laughing and sitting back down. “Either way, we’re still alive.”

            “Why are you in such a good mood?” Deborah asked. “We were nearly gored by wild animals, we’re under arrest, and when we get back home you’re probably going to be demoted.”

            “Please,” Kylie rolled her eyes. “You act like everyone gets demoted all the time. I haven’t seen it happen in the longest time. If anything, people are getting promoted more often than not, especially now. Just ask our new Chairman, if you like.”

            “So our careers aren’t in jeopardy?” Kylie asked.

            “You could put anything in the report you file for this,” Kylie claimed. “You could say you killed a dragon, if you like. Look at our staffing shortages. Do you think anyone is going to read your file? It’ll get dumped somewhere while you’re sent off on your next assignment. They’re going to keep running you ragged. They’ll promote you just so they can give you a heavier workload, while keeping your allowance the same.”

            “We’re getting paid?” Gavin asked.

            “Virtually nothing, of course,” Kylie told him. “Not enough to buy those new shoes and purse you’ve been eyeing. It’s just a little spending credit. The higher your rank, the more you get. Why’d you think they’d still you rookies in the bottom rank? You’re making the least of anyone.”

            Gavin found he suddenly had an opinion about his rank and job, but the suddenly squealing of the tires made him paused. They head the clanking of a gate being raised, and then slammed shut behind them as the van went on an incline. It got darker outside as they went into and underground parking area. The van stopped completely and the back doors burst open. A large group of guards in black were standing outside, all wearing the same type of helmets with dark visors. They proceeded to enter the van and drag them out into the long, white corridor connected to the loading bay. The lights above were made of glass balls filled with a glowing liquid substance. As they passed an open door that led into an office, he heard Kylie laugh and say, “You still use paper?”

            As they reached the end of the hall, it divided into two separate corridors. A grim looking man in uniform stood there without a helmet. He looked them over once and then proceeded to point in opposite directions for the boys and the girls. When Gavin was presented to him, he looked him over carefully and then said, “Take him down to Room B and get him cleaned up.”

            Room B itself was not far away. The two guards dragging him unlocked the door with a key card and then forced him inside. They brought him over to a metal bench built into the wall and set him down. The room was all white with a table screwed to the floor and no chairs. There were mirrors on opposite ends of the room and no windows. The one guard left while the other stood posted by the door, watching him silently. His one hand was on his gun holstered to his chest.

            Gavin, not knowing what to do or if he should say anything, simply sat and watched the man, who barely seemed to breathe. In a minute or two, the door opened again and the second guard brought in towels. He threw them at Gavin from across the room and ordered him,  “Get that blood off of you.” Gavin couldn’t help but notice there was a strange tinge to his accent. It sounded like and American doing a British accent, and he wondered if it was the node translating for him.

            “Did he kill someone?” the first guard by the door asked through his helmet.

            “They didn’t say anything about that,” the second guard said as he posted himself by the opposite side of the door. “They said they found them in the woods being chased by some boars.”

The first guard snickered at that. “Well what are you waiting for?” he asked afterwards, noticing that Gavin hadn’t moved to touch the towels. “Oh,” he realized that Gavin was still cuffed. “Who’s got the keys?”

The second guard simply shrugged and the first left the room to go and check.

When the door opened again after a minute, the guard looked over and who entered and immediately snapped to attention, placing their fist beside their helmet in a salute. The new person was a woman with steely grey eyes and hair to match., It was short-cropped and whipped up to a point at the front. A pale scar ran down the one side of her cheek, which was tan by contrast. She wore a grey uniform with shoulder pads and numerous pockets under her breasts and at her hips. She wore a gun in a holster over her breast like the guards did, with what appeared to be a truncheon at her belt. By the gun on her opposite breast was a row of gold medals. She barely glanced over at the guard as she made her way into the room. Her thick-soled boots clunked heavily on the bare stone floor. She walked halfway across the room and then stopped, standing with her arms crossed behind her back.

A second woman followed, and at seeing her, the guard immediately went down on one knee and bowed with his fist over his heart. Strangely enough, she had blue hair, but here eyebrows were black. She looked scarcely older than he himself, while the woman in uniform looked about forty or more. She wore a tank top with a black vest overtop with numerous pouches, and baggy pants held to her waist by a length of thick chain. Her bare arms showed various nicks and cuts, and she wore fingerless gloves on each hand. At first he thought here fingernails were painted black, but then he realized it was simply grime. In one hand she held a pair of goggles that she tapped into her other palm rhythmically. She was chewing on something with great vigour.

“I like this one,” she said to the older woman with a thick accent, “he looks dangerous.”

“He is dangerous,” the woman responded with a disappointed look. “He’s an outsider.”

“He’s a Generate,” she marvelled at him and came closer. Leaning in close and quickly, she grabbed him by the chin and tilted his head up. “A cute one.”

“My lady,” the woman growled her disapproval. “If your mother knew you were down here…”

“She’d what?” she looked backing, tossing her hair a little as she did. She didn’t bother waiting for an answer, and instead focused her attention on him. “What’s your name, Red?”

“Gavin Dales,” he smiled at her as best he could. She was still holding his chin.

“Gavin,” she let go of his chin and tapped him on the nose with her blackened finger. “What are you doing in here, Gavin? You kill someone?”

“No, I was attacked by a boar,” he admitted.

“You’re a hunter?” she asked, crossing her arms and stepping back a little.

“Not at all, we were in the woods and we came across some wild boars,” he explained.

“And what were you doing in the woods?” she pondered, pacing back and forth. The other woman was caressing the hilt of her truncheon as she glared at him.

“We were walking to the city,” Gavin admitted and shifted on the bench to make his hands more comfortable.

“And why were you coming to the city?” she waved her hand around in the air as she looked over at the mirror. The guard was still kneeling, and was completely ignored by both women.

Gavin swallowed. “Look, if you want to know, I’ll tell you, but it should all sound strange to you. It’s strange to me too. I’m from another dimension, and we came looking for some people we work with that are stranded here.”

The woman looked at the mirror for a moment longer, then looked back at him. “So you’re the rescue party?” she sounded doubtful.

“I know that whole part about being from another dimension sounds a little odd, but it’s true. We have some travellers here that were supposed to make First Contact with your world and it’s government, but there was an incident back home. Now everything’s in chaos and we need to bring them home right away,” Gavin shrugged helplessly and looked down at his feet. “Only it’s not going so well. Please, if you can, I need to find a man named Victor. He should be a Generate like me, probably wearing the same uniform.”

The older woman looked alarmed at the mention of Victor’s name, and gripped her truncheon more tightly.

The younger woman strode up to him and grabbed his collar. For a moment, he thought she was going to hoist him up by his collar, but she merely looked at it. “Where’s your pin?” she asked.

“Pin?” Gavin was confused. He tried to think of why she would look at his collar and expect to see a pin when he remembered Kylie wearing one. “I haven’t got one yet. I only started yesterday.”

The woman scrunched up her nose at that. Now she hoisted him up by his collar. She brought him to his feet, spun him around, and then slammed his face against the wall. Next, he felt her hands and his wrists. She did something, and he felt his wrist unit slip off and scrape away from the cuff surrounding it. She wasn’t gentle about it.

The woman put the unit around her own wrist and proceeded to play with the screen. She saw something that surprised her, but then she looked at him and noticed something. She reached out and ran her fingers through his hair and touched the node on his neck. “Captain Gavin Dales of X-77,” she recited as she read from the wrist unit. She tapped at the screen a few more time and then said, in an odd voice, “Happy birthday? You weren’t kidding.”

“Anything on that device could be easily faked,” the older woman warned. “We need to get it to R&D to see if they can retrieve any useful information from it.”

“Pish-posh,” the woman said dismissively. “I’m not giving up my new piece of jewellery. Guard,” she snapped her fingers at the man across the room. “Guard?” she said a little more loudly as he did not immediately respond. She stormed across the room, snapping her fingers in the man’s face.

“Yes, my lady?” the man looked up.

“Where are the keys?” she asked him.

“Steve went to get them,” he said, pointing out the door.

“Steve went to get them,” she repeated mockingly in a high-pitched voice. “Who is Steve? Am I supposed to go looking for Steve? Is that my job now? Go get the keys!” she kicked at him, and he ran scurrying from the room.

“That’s rather unlady-like, my lady,” the older woman frowned deeply at her.

“Like you would know anything about being a lady,” the woman laughed and played with the wrist unit. “After all these years I’m not entirely certain what you’re packing. I’m inclined to believe the rumours I hear. You should hear what Commander Sedin says about you behind your flat-buttocks.” She flipped through a few more images on the wrist unit, then looked up with an exasperated expression. “Really this is taking forever. Moriss, demote that man, and whoever Steve is. I dislike them both.”

“I don’t have authority over the police, my lady. Checks and balances, and so forth,” the other woman explained, still fuming.

“Then tell me what we’re doing in here, free-as-you-please? Who runs this country, after all?” she complained.

“The President, my lady,” the woman retorted with a triumphant smile.

“Oh, the President,” she mimicked her voice. “Please tell me what to do, Mr. President. We love you Mr. President. I’ve got your President right here!” she reached into her vest and produced a pistol. As the older woman in uniform drew back, shocked, she opened fire. A hot flash spread across the room.

Gavin had instinctively shut his eyes against the light. When he opened them her looked down at his wrists. All that was left of his cuffs were glowing hot metal, which soon fell to the floor. Gavin held them up to his face in disbelief as armed police officers crowded near the door in response to the shot they heard. Their hands were on their weapons, but the were reluctant to come into the room itself. “You there,” she waved the gun at the police standing in the door. “You let a lady walk into the precinct with a loaded weapon. Demotion, demotion, demotion,” she pointed at three of them. “Are you Steve?” she asked curious as she held the gun at one of the guards holding a pair of keys. “Too slow, Steve. Demotion!”

“My lady, I swear this is unacceptable behaviour!” the woman roared. “You could have killed this man before we can even interrogate him.”

“Relax, I’ll interrogate him back in my bedroom. Come along, Gavin,” she said in a sing-song voice and went out into the hall.

“You can’t take this prisoner with you!” the woman in uniform protested.

“I can’t?” the younger woman feigned shock and put one hand to her mouth. “Then who’s going to stop me? You?” she asked the woman. “You?” she pointed her gun at one of the police officers. “You, Steve? No, I didn’t think so. Come on, it’s a jailbreak. Oh, and I want the rest of them at the palace. See what you can do, Steve. I can’t have just one.”

Not knowing what else to do, Gavin slipped out into the hall after her, awkwardly nodding to the police as he went by and smiling as best he could. The woman was getting far ahead of him, and so he rushed after her.

The other woman put her head out into the hall and waved her fist at them. “You’re not getting away with this, do you hear me?”

“Do you hear me, my lady?” the younger woman corrected her as she threw open a pair of door. People in plain suits and uniforms turned from their work at their desks to gawk at them. When they saw who it was, they immediately went down to one knee. One person was a little too slow, and the woman standing next to him pulled on his pantleg. He shook himself and dropped the bundle of papers he was carrying to bow. The young woman laughed at him as she kicked open the front door and went down to the street.

Traffic was back up half-a-block, as there was a large bike parked across both lanes. Two police officers stood beside it, scratching their heads while a third tried to console the drivers and get them to turn back. They honked their horn and swore at them

When the two officers saw her come out, though, they went down to her knee. One was beside the bike, and the woman stepped up onto his back and onto the vehicle. It had no wheels he could see, but it had a pair of jets sticking out the sides. The woman pressed her feet down onto the pedals and reached up to put her hair into a ponytail and donned her green goggles. The bike roared to life and hovered up off the ground. “Well?” she asked him as if he were stupid.

Gavin scrambled up on the bike behind her. It was longer than the cars in the street by half. The noise was practically deafening. She tapped on the main console a few times then looked back at him. She reached out, and put his one hand on her hip quite deliberately. He followed her lead and put the other hand as well. “Come on, let’s go celebrate your birthday,” she told him as the pulled away from the street. They hovered up slowly, and then she kicked in with the speed. Gavin had to hold on for dear life as they tore away.

She titled heavily and flew at and angle, until Gavin was practically falling. “You fly?” she shouted back at him. He noticed she was still holding on to the pistol in one hand.

“Not really, no,” he shouted.

“But you’re a pilot, it says,” she shouted at him. She slowed down before a tall building then darted around it.

“I haven’t really had the chance,” Gavin explained as loud as he could.

“Oh yeah, that makes sense,” she was steadily gaining altitude. They were as high as the tallest building there and he could barely make out the people in the streets. His eyes were watering and he had to squint. She kicked out both of her feet away from the bike as she cut the engines. They began to plummet into a free fall. Gavin tried as best as he could not to scream as the ground came closer, while the woman herself gave a yelp of joy. When they were close enough to practically touch the pavement, she turned the jets back on and took off down the street, careening in and out of traffic. They approached a tall wall that seemed to stretch for blocks and she jumped over it and skidded towards an open garage. Gavin had barely enough time to make out the image of a sprawling white palace surrounded by a green garden inside of a walled area before they were deep inside the garage itself. She finally touched down and took off her goggles. “You like that?” she winked at him as she fixed her hair. “You can let go now,” she told him, indicating his hands at her waist. “Better yet, don’t.”

A man was striding towards them, hunched over with his fists balled. “Explain yourself!” he bellowed as he crossed the garage. There were other bikes like one she had lining the walls.

“I’ve caught the prisoner trying to escape!” she waved to the man as she stepped down off the bike.

“This has gone far enough, Jackie! Moriss called me to tell me you shot up a police station,” he towered over her, wagging his finger.

“She’s being dramatic,” the woman named Jackie said flippantly. “But look, I got you a present! Ta-da!” she presented Gavin as she changed the subject.

The man looked back and forth between the two, debating if he should continue with Jackie. “I’m sorry about all this,” he ran his hand through his thick hair and extended the other to shake with Gavin. “My name’s Victor. I’ll assume Coporate sent you.”