Let’s get dangerous
Grand Central Terminal, New York
Two thousand pounds of alien metal crash through the ceiling, and the Talos falls to the ground with the sound of a bomb.
Most of the windows are already in pieces, thanks to the recent near miss of a meteor, otherwise they would've exploded by now. Still, people are understandably freaking out and fleeing the scene.
Vesta flies in, passing through the hole left by the robot, saying nervously:
Vesta hesitates, as the Talos walks towards her. The black and white robot is significantly heavier and taller than her.
The robot punches Vesta in the stomach, with enough force to be louder than an explosion. Vesta had braced for the impact, which is the only reason why she isn't flying over to the next state.
Instead she kneels in pain, unable to do anything except attempting to breathe. It's quite hard to do, even for a goddess, when your internal organs have been subject to a shockwave the size of a tsunami.
The Talos grabs Vesta by the hair, holding her steady for a second punch. This time even the ground shakes for the sheer force of the impact.
Another punch, this time right on the nose. And another one. And another one. When the robot stops, it leaves Vesta lying on the floor, curled up in pain.
G,o to Hades> Vesta answers, her body suddenly wreathed in flames.
The Talos takes a step back.
Vesta stands up, slowly and painfully, grinning her teeth. She's hurt, but she doesn't have a scratch.
Once again, Vesta shoots fire at the robot, but this is no ordinary fire. It burns so hot that the air turns into white hot plasma just by touching it. The floor melts, and it's a good thing that civilians have already fled the scene, since anybody standing within ten feet of her would be burned alive.
Luckily for him, Quantum appears in holographic form.
Quantum turns back to flesh and blood, giving her a puzzled look.
Vesta is even more puzzled than him, looking at herself. Her orange tube top and jeans are still perfectly in shape.
The sphere of fire is still burning. Vesta simply wills it to vanish, and the fire disappears leaving only a trail of black smoke rising to the roof.
And a Talos.
Quantum smiles, cracking his knuckles.
He turns his body into a laser, shooting right at the Talos' visor. It's a sound strategy, since it's the only spot not protected by its indestructible shell, but Vesta whishes she had the time to discourage him.
Max Black alias Quantum doesn't really have much experience with his energy transformations; in fact, he's only been able to do it for a few days.
His senses take a completely different form once he's no longer composed of matter. He just feels other things, some sort of instinct; he's already learned to associate certain feels to certain types of energy, but the robot's power core is completely alien to him.
There's something inside its core that defies his senses. It's placed in his chest, where a human heart would be, and it's constantly generating new power.
Max tries to overload it, merging with the energy which is already there. He finds himself absorbed by the veins of power that run through the robot's body, then sucked back into his visor, until he's finally released.
All of this takes a microscopic fraction of a second. From Vesta's perspective, the Talos simply looks up and releases a massive energy blast towards the roof.
"That's a cheapshot!!!" Max protests, without a voice to shout. Right now he's just a stream of photons, a living laser running straight towards the vacuum of space.
"Well this sucks. I can't slow down, at all. Why can't I slow down? Maybe that's because I'm in space…I think. I can't see anything when I'm made of light. I don't even know how I'm able to think! Okay Max, calm down. You just need to change into something else".
He tries to turn himself into a different wavelength, with no success. Then he tries electricity, then radio waves, but without success: he's stuck in light form.
"Don't panic. Once I reach the Moon or some planet I'll be able to bounce back. Unless there's nothing in my path, in which case I can go on forever. Right. This may be the best time to panic after all, now, wouldn't it? No! I have to keep thinking! Why can't I change? What's different from before? I'm in space, and most of this energy isn't mine. It's from the robot! As long as I'm in the middle of this light stream, I can't turn into anything but light! Which means…"
Time passes. Not much, but even in a second light can shoot past the Moon.
"Which means I'm screwed. I can't move, I can't turn into energy, what can I do?"
Then he understands. In the blink of an eye Max Black is in space, flesh and blood.
The light that came from the robot continues its flight into infinity. Max doesn't stay in human form for long, for obvious reasons, but he's now free to come back to Earth.
Ten seconds later, he lands on the collapsed roof of Grand Central Terminal, where Vesta is rising the ruins shaking pieces of bricks from her hair and giving him a dirty look.
he admits.
While all this is going on, Noriko Null is busy dismantling the radio inside one of the police cars wrecked by the Talos. Not an easy task, since she didn't bother to take any instruments with her.
A man in his early forties is looking at her expertly fidgeting with wires.
O'Malley puts an hand on her shoulder, causing her to look him in the eye for the first time.
Noriko sighs.
When she talks, her voice is amplified a thousand times by every single radio in the city, talking at the same time as loud as possible.
His ears still ringing, O'Malley looks at Noriko. Her silver eyes are shining, meaning she's devoting a significant part of humanity's knowledge to fixing the problem.