"Etienne. Here," Gabe held out a small black earpiece in the palm of his hand.
Etienne rubbed his eyes and sat up on the couch. He looked at the earpiece, then up at Gabe, then back at the earpiece. Etienne grabbed the earpiece and placed it in his ear. Gabe walked away swiftly.
"Petey, is that you?" Etienne asked, unable to hide his drowsiness.
"You know it. I made a couple of modifications to the earpiece you gave me. You gotta bring me that other one so I can upgrade yours."
Etienne shook off sleep. "What's going on? Are the drives done?"
Petey laughed,"That's gonna take at least 3 days, dude, at the very least. I reached out because the INHO just issued an all-hands-on-deck alert. There's something going on at the Rendale Office Park in Portland. Cars on fire, people passed out all around, it's chaos!"
Eienne stood up and walked toward a hallway closet, "Are there any other heroes for hire on the scene yet? I met one in the area named Hardware…"
Petey was silent for a minute, "Oh yeah, I've read her file. I thought she seemed a little overqualified to be a contract hero," Petey's voice was momentarily drowned out by loud typing, "It says she's currently unavailable. No extra details listed. And of course, our 'amazing' ranked heroes are nowhere to be found. Looks like you're going at it alone."
Etienne sighed and swung the closet open.
"Of course I am," He thought to himself. He looked at the boxes haphazardly stacked on top of each other and sifted through them. He grabbed caltrops, chains, and a large number of shurikens.
"Any info on the attacker? Is it Dirty Bomb?"
"Dirty Bomb?" Petey questioned, "Is that the name of that exploding meta? From what I'm reading, there's been no reported explosions, so most likely not. The only other info I'm seeing is reports of people shambling around like zombies. These zombies attack on sight, and they don't respond or react to any sort of verbal communication."
Etienne lifted his meteor hammer out of a box and twirled it around, "So are they zombie or are they like zombies?"
"They are like zombies! They are not actually zombies. It's brainwashing or something similar. The number one thing the INHO stressed for this mission, it's written at big bold letters at the top, is to not harm any civilans, even if they are trying to harm you! Subdue them as peacefully as possible."
Etienne tightened his grip on the meteor hammer and thought to himself, "This is definitely the best choice."
Etienne grabbed his outfit out of one of the boxes, "Okay, I'm about to head out now. One more question, Petey, why did you call on me on the headset? You have my number. Why didn't you call my phone?"
"I did call your phone, dude!" The exasperation in his voice was obvious, "I called you like five times! It kept going straight to voicemail. I was just about to dismantle and dispose of this thing like you asked, but I thought it was worth a shot to try to reach out to you with this."
Etienne looked around for Gabe. He went into the kitchen, peeked up the stairs, and looked out the windows. He was nowhere to be found. Etienne walked toward the door.
"This is the first mission I'm going on without Gabe in my ear. It feels…strange."
____________________________________________________________
Etienne parked his car right outside the office park, far away from the towering main buildings. Even from a distance away, he spotted the burning cars parked neatly in front of the building. Etienne walked up slowly and noticed a woman face down on a bench near him.
Etienne ran over and pressed two fingers on her throat, right under her jaw. After a few seconds, he breathed a sigh of relief.
"She has a pulse," Etienne thought to himself, "Good, so this wasn't just a massacre. Let me check a few other people."
Etienne moved closer to the building and checked on several passed out office workers strewn across the large parking lot. After checking a young man laid out close to the entrance, Etienne pulled the small black earpiece out of his pocket.
He placed it in his ear and asked, "Petey, you there?"
Petey replied immediately, "I'm here. I've been making some tweaks to this earpiece, adding a few upgrades. You're going to have to bring me the one you have so I can upgrade that one."
Etienne stared at the rows of burning cars near the front of the office building. All of the burning cars were parked in spots marked "Executive".
Etienne cleared his throat and spoke, "I checked on eight of the unconscious people in the parking lot of Rendale. All of them are alive and breathing. I haven't spotted any fatalities or major injuries yet."
"You've done all that? Has it even been five minutes since you got there?"
Etienne chuckled as he continued walking toward the building, "We gotta move fast if we want to save the day."
Etienne stopped walking and crouched down behind a polished brown bench. The front entrance, missing its glass doors, was clearly visible. Several security guards shambled around the front hallway aimlessly.
"They really do look like zombies…" Etienne thought to himself.
He spoke into the earpiece, "It seems like you know a lot about metahumans, Petey. Do you think if I subdue the person responsible, everybody else will just go back to normal?"
Petey sighed, "The INHO doesn't have much info on people with this power type…"
Etienne shook his head and continued walking toward the front entrance, "Man, the INHO really aren't good for anything, huh? I got this, just make sure some medical assistance is on the way."
Petey went to say something, but Etienne cut him off immediately, "And before you say anything, don't worry. I'm not going to hurt anybody."
Etienne snatched out the earpiece and shoved it into his pocket.
"I've been taking the wrong approach since I've come back to Oregon. I've been trying to compromise the things I learned there to fit in here. The whole time, I should be using the skills I learned there to change things here."
He pulled up the crossover on the front of the hoodie over his nose, and he threw the hood over his head.
"I'm a jonin of the Iga clan shinobi. If my mission is to subdue one target and not be detected by anyone else, then that's exactly what I'll do."