Massive Disaster III-12 (Patreon)

The conversation escalated fast and Scot did not hesitate.

Seriously. Zedd wasn’t sure if the guy had ever looked up the definition of intense, but he’d be definitely surprised if his face wasn’t right there next to it.

Either way, the guy wasn’t here to kiss ass or network like 95% of everyone else who had spoken to him today. He wasn’t here for a video or a picture to add to his extranet profile. He was here because he wanted to understand something, and Zedd could respect the hell out of that.

The discussion dropped half the orbiting students in seconds, quickly growing too technical for most of them, and—being entirely honest—Zedd didn’t have it in his head to blame them..

First it was interface algorithms, then quantum processing limitations, then a full deep-dive into V-Shades' hardware architecture, debating the balance between sub-processing cores vs. dynamic heuristic caching.

Somewhere in the background, Scot’s girlfriend was visibly regretting every life decision that had led her to this moment.

She folded her arms. Shifted her weight to one hip. Rolled her eyes with the resigned patience of someone who had witnessed this exact scenario play out one too many times.

Zedd caught the movement, smirking slightly at the slightly chubby redhead. "He always like this?"

She lifted a single eyebrow. "Are you?"

Fair.

“I forgot,” her boyfriend raised his head, and moved his arm around her shoulders before easing her forward, “this is my girlfriend, Maddy."

"Hi!" Maddy interjected, extending her hand with a warm smile. "Maddy Grey. We're both freshmen in the Physics department."

Zedd shook her hand. "Zedd Victors. But you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know that."

"Yeah, everyone knows that," Maddy admitted to him, a small laugh escaping her. "You're our professor’s favorite topic in our Entrepreneurial Innovation seminar this semester."

Scot nodded quickly, raw enthusiasm breaking through his controlled expression as his smile tightened, not from forcing it, but from actual eagerness. "I've been following your work since the first VEST unveiling. But on this… the shades… V-Shades, I mean, with an adaptive algorithm, the applications for exo-spatial dynamics alone..."

Zedd's eyebrow rose slightly above his aviators, head tilted slightly to the side as he mouthed the words before finally repeating them out loud. "Exo-spatial dynamics, huh... You a big trigonometry fan?"

"My favorite subject, actually," Scot confirmed with complete sincerity, the guy seemingly completely iimmune to the concept of sarcasm.

Aaaaalright. A small, genuine smile tugged at Zedd's mouth as he raised both his eyebrows now. "...Little weird, but no hate."

Maddy rolled her eyes his way with the expression of someone who was more than used to this, a sigh escaping her as she did so. "Don't get him started. I mean that, please.” She leveled Zedd with a strong stare that showed how much she meant that. “He spent half our third date explaining reflection modeling to me."

"It was relevant to why the restaurant's acoustics were so perfect," Scot defended himself, but his small smile suggested this conversation was familiar territory.

Zedd opened his mouth but whatever he was going to say was drowned out as the sharp crack of a high-powered rifle shattered the moment.

Something snapped past his ear—razor-thin, moving with raw air-displacing hypervelocity.

Glass exploded inward from the storefront behind Zedd, shards flying as he dropped instinctively, rolling over his shoulder and coming up into a crouch as shattered transparisteel rained onto the pavement.

A crash of metal trays and upturned tables as students dove for cover.

Zedd’s head snapped to the side, eyes wide as his aviators already began analyzing the situation, already processing angles, vectors, impact trajectories.

Sniper. Southwest rooftop. 447 meters. 

His heart froze in his chest for a second. That shot wasn’t meant to scare him.

It was meant to kill.

-------------------------------------------

The screams of students hammered against Zedd’s eardrums like knives as they moved, hormonal bodies scrambling for cover. In seconds, the peaceful academic atmosphere of the plaza had crashed instantly into chaos. Kai Leng was already moving before the sound’s echo faded out, his blade coming to life in his hand as he flicked it out—a flickering, mono-molecular razor. 

His bodyguard didn’t hesitate. 

One second, the man was almost still, the next Kai was a blur of movement as he vaulted over a display table and launched himself bodily towards a figure that burst in the door, armed and armored, rifle raised to fire. Zedd blinked and all of a sudden, was met with nothing but a wall of blood that painted the shattered glass and door behind him was a vivid red, Kai’s movements both too quick and too deadly for the attacker to handle as their lifeless body dropped. Quick as fuck, damn.

The former N7 made a hand sign toward Zedd that told him Kai was heading to take down the sniper. Guy is worth every credit, honestly.

Another shot rang out, piercing through the wall barely a meter away from Zedd as the ice cream girl screamed out, loud and shrill. Another missed kill, he realized, a shaky breath leaving his mouth. 

Zedd clenched his fists, pulse hammering as he fought the urge to peek out to scan for hostiles, for movement, for any fucking tactical advantage. Option A, wait the fighting out till Kai and the security kill them all. So, wait till Kai kills them all, then. He tilted his head. Option B, test out the Mark 7 in live combat and fight my way out a killzone and hope my kinesis shields can stand up to heavy assault and I don’t get blown the fuck up. Decisions, decisions… Right now, all he could do was stare forward from his crouched hiding spot as Scot dragged Maddy behind a planter, his movements too coordinated, too practiced. Not the panic of a physics student. 

Honestly, it was almost like someone who'd been in firefights before. Interesting.  File that away for—

His eye twitched halfway through the thought, Zedd irritated at his own distraction. Focus. Now. Multiple shooters on your ass. The dust hadn't even fully settled from another salvo into the ice cream shop before Zedd's mind assembled the pieces, fed by information from his HUD. 

First shot had come his way from a high southwest vantage point but heat signatures and live fire were converging on this location from multiple angles. God, I wish this was just another goddamn kidnapping. These fucking pricks want to put shards in my skull. 

He rolled his eyes, quiet curses under his breath spilling out one by one as he blamed whatever angry god that made this his life. I can kill myself just fine without help, you kno-

"Boss! Boss Zee, you there? You alive? Speak to me, bossman!" Dev's voice crackled through comms, breath coming in heavy pants and tight with adrenaline. Zedd hissed back, his aviators catching the sound. “Dev, don’t fucking wish me dead or I’ll killl you first, you fucking lunk.”A nervous laugh sounded out from said Lunk, before shifting back to breathy speech. "Security breach, bossman! We got multiple Batarians converging on your position!"

"No shit, Dev!" Zedd hissed back, trying his best to keep his level. “Where the fuck are you right now? Kai’s fighting alone and I’m pinned down!”Before Dev could respond back, what sounded like an explosion erupted from outside, past the line of sight the shop’s brutalized entryway afforded him. Motherf- 

Ten— no, twelve distinct gunfire patterns, each one close enough for his HUD to discern them, which meant… There could be more. On the bright side, there was the hope that some could be campus security firing back but Zedd wasn’t keeping his hopes high enough. No, someone brought professionals to a university.

Caleb appeared beside him, crouched low behind the counter. His eyes had that faint purple glow, psionic energy responding to the adrenaline spike. "What do you want me to do?"Zedd stared. "What?"

Caleb swallowed, face tight with anticipation. "Tell me what to do!"

Zedd blinked at him again as his expression turned down in a frown. "What the fuck do you mean, what to do?!" he snapped. "You’ve never been in a real fucking fight before! Get down and get to the fucking shuttle now!"

He shoved Caleb away harder than necessary, catching the flash of hurt in the young man's eyes, even as he knew the guy barely felt it. Great. Hurt feelings. In the middle of a firefight. Because of course.Zedd didn’t have time for it. "That's a fucking order, Rogers!"

The command hit like a slap.

Caleb’s face flashed with something—anger, disappointment, frustration—as hesitated just long enough to be annoying before nodding and taking off. 

And when he moved, he moved.

Man was a goddamn blur, his enhanced biology kicking in, feet eating up ground at what his readout told him was at least fifty km/h as he tore toward safety, darting between clusters of terrified students scrambling for cover. At least that part of the procedure had worked right.

Zedd gritted his teeth, forcing his focus back to the fight.

More gunfire, this time from multiple directions. Screaming students. Panicked civilians. This was rapidly turning into a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

Best case: PR nightmare. Worst case: dead college kids on the evening news. Victory Innovations CEO in firefight that kills dozens. Valuation drops thirty percent by morning.

Zedd bit back a string of curses. First time off-colony and I’m fucking caught in a killzone. And the worst thing about all this was that there was no ADAM in his ear, and with no ADAM, that meant no backdoor into local systems, no battle synchronization, no predictive modeling. 

Because ADAM was off-world, sitting pretty in the holotable systems back on Arkadia IV.

And off-planet communications for AI?

Yeah, no. Still not a thing he’d cracked yet.

Which meant he was on his own.Just him, his tech, and enemies who clearly came prepared for a kill. 

Fine.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

Let’s change the variables.

Protect the civilians first. Not because he gave a shit about their lives specifically, but because dead students meant investigations, media circuses, and trade deals dropping out due to cold feet. Corporate math made the solution clear.

Scot was herding people toward exits, barking orders like he was military while Maddy was helping an injured girl, applying pressure to a bleeding arm with the steady hands of someone who'd seen worse. ...Hm. Guy has good instincts. Both of them, actually.

A shot ricocheted off the counter, close enough that Zedd felt the displacement of air yet again, way too close for any sort of comfort. Alright, consider my pet peeved.

His fingers found the trigger point on his aviators, triple-tapping the right frame. The pack against his spine hummed to life, metal spreading all over his body as they interlocked elegantly into place. Not like the clunkier commercial models; this was his personal prototype, streamlined and elegant in ways the public versions couldn't match.

The suit enveloped him in seconds —five, to be exact— each one of the plates locking together with barely audible clicks. Chestpiece first, arms, legs, joints, the helmet sealing last. The HUD flared to life, data streaming across his vision as his aviators reconfigured across his face and fully expanded inot a helmet, all the readings go.

Target acquisition. Threat assessment. Kinetic barrier status.

Zedd pivoted as the system calibrated, coming face to face with the first attacker—a Batarian, four eyes narrowed beneath combat armor, weapon already tracking for another shot.

Amateur hour.

The offensive kinesis field generators in his palms thrummed with energy, raw vibration he felt through his bones. He thrust his hand forward, and a crackling blue-white pulse erupted from his palm. Pure force and nothing but caught the Batarian square in the chest like a glowing cannonball, launching the alien backward like a rag doll. Fifteen feet of airtime ended with a crash through a display window, glass raining down in a second explosion.

"I hate Batarians.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

5K Words (100 FP)ROLL: Professor T.O. Morrow's Notes (400 CP) [Young Justice] {Database - Mundane}: "These notes detail the creation of the Red series of androids, including Red Torpedo, Red Inferno, Red Tornado, and Red Volcano, as well as designs for androids that resemble actual people."Forge Points: 200