FlashFire #1: Ignition

FlashFire #1: Ignition

“Blaine come on up and wash up for Dinner.” Blaine’s dad said.

“OK dad, be up in a minute.” Blaine replied.

“Last time you said that, I had to drag you up here 30 minutes later.” Blaine’s dad responded.

“Don’t worry dad I was already done just cleaning up.” Blaine said as he closed the last circuits on the chip and set it to the side with the others. He set his tools back in their proper place and made his way up stairs.

“So what is for dinner it smells good.” Blaine said, walking into the kitchen.

“Well it is shrimp risotto, I though you would like it for this special occasion” Blaine’s dad said.

“Dad why didn’t you let me cook it, you know I cook that recipe better.” Blaine replied.

“Well you were busy with those new chips, and I though you should not have to cook on your day.” Blaine’s dad said.

“Day?” Blaine said with a puzzled face, and then sapped his fingers, “Ah yeah, 3 years ago was the first time I saved the city.”

“Hey I told you to go wash your hands!” Blaine’s father said as Blaine went to sit down at the table.
With just a smirk on his face, Blaine raised his hands flames appears covering his hands, after about 30 seconds the flame went out as fast as they ignited.

“Blaine go use water like normal people.” Said Blaine’s dad with his finger pointed towards the kitchen sink.
With the smirk still on his face Blaine walk over to the sink and begun to wash his hands. “It seems like so long ago, how did it start?” he said.

“That army general was at the labs, looking over some of the new stamina enhancement exo suit you had made.” said Blaine’s dad as he started on his dinner.

“Yeah General Grove, I think it was, he was there to look at the external hydraulic power-suit, and the one lab tech was trying to explain how it worked.” Blaine said as he finished washing his hands and turned off the water.

“Yes, Todd was his name and he was doing a very poor job, I was in there just to see how it went.” Said Blaine’s Father

………

“Son, I know you are trying your hardest, but I just can’t make heads or tails of what you are saying.” General Grove said resting his hand on the shivering lab tech’s shoulder.

“I am sorry general, we did not expect you a day early, if we had the inventor would be here explaining the equipment’s functions.” said Blaine’s dad stepping towards the general.

“Well I was unaware as well, I was scheduled to be out in the pacific overseeing another test, but they reassigned me, and sprung this on me two nights ago. Is the inventor here so I can speak to him and go back with at least something to tell my superiors, Mr.….?”

“Daymon, Dr. Keith Daymon, he is here but is in the middle of a training exercise.”

“Oh, he is a soldier well all the better then, how about he go an observe him.”

“Well he is not a soldier, and we tend not to allow anyone other than the lab staff to observe the exercises for security reasons.”

“Well I really need something for my report, and he is the man to give it to me, so can we make an exception.” Said General Grove.

“Well you do need something, and I would not like to waste your time, so we should be able to do something. I am the one that does have
final say on who can observe, being his father and all.” Gesturing General Grove to the door.

“Your son, you must be very proud of how gifted he is with electronics." Exclaimed the General as Dr. Daymon and General Grove walked down a short hallway.

“Yes I am very proud of him, but for more than just that.” Responded Mr. Daymon reaching a door and scanning his security card.

“Well what else can he do?” General Grove said with intrigue in his voice.

Opening the Door Dr. Daymon replied, “See for yourself.”

Dr. Daymon, the General and the general’s assistant walk into the room, there was multitude of computers and screens displaying various video and data. The scientists are busy studying the data on the screens, only a few of them notice the trio enter the room, and those who did quickly go back to the monitors in front of them. The three men walk up to the observation windows that overlook a large open room. On the floor below them there is young man standing in the middle of the room with various mock-up building fronts around him.

One of the Assistants walks up to Dr. Daymon and says: “Dr. we were about to start the last simulation, did you need Blaine for something?”

“No, he is already warmed up, no needs to stop him now, continue.”

“Yes Dr.” the assistant walks away and up to a microphone, and speaks into it. “Ok Blaine, last test for today, all targets are hostile, go when the lights change.”

The general casually stairs out the window. The lights change green and the room below erupts with movement. Targets bots move into the windows of the facades, move out of buildings and take cover behind various objects. While this is happening Blaine just stands silently in the middle of the room, turning his head back and forth looking around the room. Suddenly one of the drones stands up and shoots a projectile at Blaine. He reacts instantly, by spinning on his left foot, as he comes around he stops with his right foot and follows with a right punch towards the drone, as the punch finishes flame erupt from his fist, and are propelled towards the drone. The ball of fire flew at the drone quickly and smacks the drone right is the head. The drone stumbles back and falls onto its back, with slight scorching on its face. Before the first one falls the other drones start to attack. Blaine rips off fire balls from his hands and feet at drones as fast as he can, ducking, spinning and flipping, to avoid the drones’ attacks. The drones fall one after another. As Blaine lands on both feet after a front flip, he breaks into a full sprint flames erupt on the back of his legs; he suddenly takes to the air covering the last few yards in the air. As he flies the flames change direction and Blaine is flipped forward and hits the drone in the head as he flips around. The drone falls back with Blaine coming down over it. He places his hand on the drone’s faceplate and flames scorch the front. As Blaine stands he shoots a fireball at another drone in a window, and then does a turn on his left foot, with a jet of flame on the back of the right leg he slams his foot into the side of a drone that was behind him. The drone starts to fall then a jet of flame shoots from Blaine’s left hand and engulfs the drone in flame. The drone crumples to the ground fully covered in black soot marks. Blaine plants his feet and fires two more fireballs at the remaining drones. As the last drone falls Blaine stops drops his arms to his side, takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. He looks up towards the viewing window to see his dad and the general standing in the window. He raises his hand as waves at them.

Dr. Daymon walks over to the microphone and speaks into it. “Blaine the general has some questions about your exo suit. Cool down and come on up, I’ll have a tech bring it in here.”

Blaine lifts is hand and give a thumbs up, then lowers his arm and starts walking towards the door on the left side of the room.

“Tim can you go and have the exo-suit brought here.” Dr. Daymon said to one of the lab techs, who quickly left the room to retrieve the suit.

“Dr. your son is amazing, why have I not heard of him?” General Grove exclaimed with astonishment on his face.

“His Government handler is General Rosen, from the Pentagon’s super-human advisory board.” Dr. Daymon said as he toyed with the large computer on the back wall bringing up various files.

“How do his powers work, I have heard of other pyrokinetic superpowers but they all work a little different.” General Grove said as he wrote down Rosen’s name and a department.

“They are genetic from me and his mother, he has the ability to decompose the water vapor in the air and by raising his body temperature he can ignite it and direct it with is mind.” Dr. Daymon said still fidgeting with the computer.

“Would it not be great if we could replicate it, imagine the force of our mil…”

“General I suggest to do not continue on this train of thought” said Dr. Daymon who had turned around and taken a very firm stance and glare towards the general, “his powers were a random genetic coincidence, and he is NOT a weapon for your exploitation. General Rosen and I have come to this agreement; don’t make me regret showing you.”

The general stunned at the mild mannered doctors sudden and firm outburst, searched for words that would not upset him more. “Well, yes maybe I should have read General Rosen’s reports before making any assumptions.”

“Yes, maybe you should.” Dr. Daymon said with a scowl still on his face, turning back to the computer.

Just then the exo suit was wheeled into the room, with Blaine following closely behind. He was a strong young man, with blond hair and a lock of deep scarlet above his right eye. He was still sweating be had put on a fresh T-shirt, and was chugging a bottle of water as he walked in.

“Son, I am very impressed, that was an amazing spectacle” General grove said extending his hand for Blaine, and getting a glare from Dr. Daymon. “I’m General Grove.”

Blaine put the bottle of water down on a table and grabbed the Generals hand. Eminently the General pulled back and yelped in Pain.

“Woops, sorry general, I guess I did not cool down my hand enough, are you ok?” Blaine said with distress in his voice.

“Quite alright son, it was not too warm, just surprised me is all.” General Grove said, immediately removing the distress on Blaine’s face,

“how about we take a look at that suit.”

“Yes of course general, I am really happy with this model”, Blaine said walking over to the suit, “I think I final found the right balance between power and weight.”

“Well it looks different than other suits I have seen.” General Grove said, running his hand over the exo suits limbs.

“Good observation general and you would be correct.” Blaine continued, pointing at the animation on the computer screen, “Most suits use electric servos as the “muscle”, I have come up with a new hydraulic system, that uses rotational actuators, instead of the standard cylinders ones, this cut the weight down substantially. This also removed the battery pack altogether, and now has a smaller fluid reservoir. Next I tackled the limbs structure, instead of steel, or aluminum, I used titanium tubes, with a carbon-fiber shell. The tubes cover the hydraulic tubes, so if the carbon fiber gets pierced, the titanium will protect the hydraulics, in most cases.”

“Most cases?” said General Grove.

“Yes,” said Blaine, “anything larger than a 50. Cal or a direct hit from an explosive projectile like an under barrel grenade, or RPG, of course in those cases your soldier will probably be dead after that anyway.”

“Blaine!!” Dr. Daymon said with duress

“What I’m just telling it how it is; it is no good to have equipment that will not survive something the solider will.” Blaine said in a flat tone.

“Very true son,” Said General Grove nodding, “I’ve been around long enough to know, you can’t beat around that bush, everyone knows it, continue please.”

“Yes, well the Carbon fiber shell can withstand multiple hits from small arms fire, and shrapnel. The pump is on the back and integrated into the frame so it does not jut out. There is extra plating on the back to protect the pump, and computer system.” Blain said walking up to the computer terminal.

“Computer system?” said the general examining the video’s contents.
The general’s assistant’s phone rings and he walks to the corner of the room to answer it.

“I believe I was able to nail down the computer control system, most systems tend to over shoot the solder’s movements, but the control system is able to move with the solider, by having a very slight delay in the actuator’s response time allowing it move with the human body’s natural overshoot tendencies.” Blaine said bringing up different animations to show the general what he was talking about.

The general’s assistant walked up to the general, and whispered into his ear.

“What do you mean a situation, give me the phone.” The general said snatching the phone from the assistant. “This is Grove what is the situation… what do you mean you have lost control.”

“Son I’m sorry but I need to cut this short, we have a problem, can I enlist this computer.” Grove said to Blaine clearly trying to control the panic in his voice.

General anything you need, we would be happy to assist. “Blaine said, stepping out of the way for the general to take the computer.

The assistant open the briefcase he was carrying and handed the general a small flash drive. The general then proceeded to plug the flash drive into the computer port. A program automatically ran and two text lines appeared on the screen. General Grove typed on the keyboard and Asterisks appeared on the lines. He hit enter and multiple windows started to jump onto the screen, there was a GPS view of the Pacific Ocean, a tech read out showing speed altitude and different time amounts, a video feed of a military man and a 3D schematic of a strange looking missile.

“Colonel this is Dr. Daymon and his son Blaine, they have offered to lend any assistance they can, update us in on the situation” said the general.

The colonel began “Gentlemen, we were in the process of testing a new extreme long range cruise missile, equip with a nano-particle thermobaric warhead the test was preceding smoothly with vertical launch from a cruiser off of Papua New Guinea and transition to flight. It was supposed to hit a Target at the San Nicolas island naval base but half way through the flight, something happened to the guidance system and is now targeting an area of downtown LA. We have tried to re-target, but when that did not work we activated the kill switch, but it apparently is not operational either.”

“How long until it hits LA, and do you have anything to shoot it down with?” Dr. Daymon chimed in

“Roughly 25 minutes, and no sir there is nothing in range to shoot it down, the missile has an experimental ram jet engine, that gives the missile a cruising speed of Mach 4.3 we have no jets or missiles that can catch it, and our airborne laser system is not in range.” The colonel replied.

Blaine, who had been analyzing the missiles schematics which he has taken to a digital generation projector table, chimed in as well, “this is why you don’t build something without a way to stop it if the fail safes fail.”

“Yes we will take that into note, but we have to stop the problem we have now.” The colonel replied with agitation in his voice.

“Son do you have a suggestion.” Said General Grove

“Yes,” Blaine said walking back over to the computer, and enlarging the map of the Pacific Ocean, “I can fly out from here and loop around and come in above it. I can latch on to it and open it up, then hopefully disarm the warhead or disable the guidance system.”

"Fly out there, how are you going to “fly” out there, we have nothing that can catch it, do you have some secret hyper sonic jet that the military does not know about, that and literally catch a missile in mid-flight.” The colonel sarcastically said.

“Colonel, Blaine is a super human that is how he can fly,” General Grove said resting his hand on Blaine’s shoulder, “you can fly right son?”

“Yes I can General, have not been past Mach 4 but, according to the tests we have run I should have the ability to.” Blaine said proudly.

“Even if you could catch it, you would not even know how to do that.” Said the colonel

“Actually I do colonel; I have already analyzed the missile and know exactly what to do, I cut it open here,” pointing to the schematic “and it will give me access to the warhead and guidance which I should be easy to change, if that fails I can just blow the engine and let the missile fall into the ocean.” Blaine said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Son I think we should try it,” General Grove said

“General we are going to let this… this kid, tamper with experimental military tech.”

“Colonel I don’t see you coming up with anything else useful, and he is the only one who has suggested anything useful. So yes we are going to let him and I will take the fire for anything that happens, but right now we need to save lives and this KID is our best option at the moment.” The general said sternly to the colonel, then turned to Blaine and said “son, go get that missile.”

“Yes Sir,” Blaine said, as he started to walk out he said to one of the techs still in the room, “John go grab my visor and meet me outside.”
At this one of the techs got up and left the room following Blaine.

“Are you sure he can do this Dr. Daymon?” General Grove said is a strong voice

“He has never let me down before, and I don’t expect him to now, his personality won’t allow it.” Dr. Daymon said, looking at the monitor, “I should go meet him outside, and will be back in to hook him into the data feed.”

“Ok, I will wait here for you to get back.” The general said turning back to the screen, with the colonel out view of the video feed.
…
A couple of minutes later outside the lab Blaine walks out the door to the lab facility out with his Superhero outfit on; Loose, long white plants with red trim running down the outside of the legs, and a ribbon of orange at the bottom, the shirt had a similar design, it was a white shirt with sleeves ending just above the elbows, it had a red “X” going across the front and back connecting at the shoulders, and finally an orange and yellow fire emblem on the chest, he also had an orange belt with a tungsten-carbide belt buckle.

“Wow I can’t believe these still fit, still loose though.” Blaine said walking up to his dad who has holding the visor in his hand.

The visor was a single piece of curved transparent plastic, with a white ear piece on each side, the right one being slightly taller than the other which held the microphone.

“I am surprised I thought your mother made them too small to start, no time to chat, you got a missile to stop.” Dr. Daymon said handing the visor to Blaine.

“Yep, this going to be fun,” Replied Blaine putting on the visor.
Blaine then broke into a sprint, as he ran flames erupted on his on the back of his legs, and he was lifted off the ground, as he continued to rise jets of flames ignited on his forearms and he accelerated faster and faster a jet of flames started between his shoulders and the flames on his forearms went out. On his visor it read his altitude and speech, he climbed over 10,000 feet and broke the sound barrier with a loud sonic boom.

…

“Blaine can you hear me?” Dr. Daymon said over the visor’s radio

“Loud and clear, link me into the tracking feed please, how is the static remover working on your end?” Blaine said as a new window popped up onto the visor.

It’s working well, you are very clear.” Dr. Daymon replied, “Do you have the feed?”

Yep, just passed Mach 2 and 20,000 feet, I’m going to climb to 50,000 before I start my turn that should put me right behind the missile.” Blaine said as he pitched up into a zoom climb.

He leveled off at just over 50,000 and began his turn to intercept the missile. “How far out is it?” Blaine said over the radio.

“600 miles out, holding at 30,000 feet” Dr. Daymon replied.

“Ok here we go.” Blaine said to himself. He pulled his legs and arms in close to his body the jet of flame on his back grew bigger covering most of his back. The flames on his legs moved down to his feet, and flames on his forearm ignited again. He was now rocketing though the air super heating the air in front of him and creating an area of least resistance in front of him. On the visor the missile came into view on his GPS screen which the data was coming from the lab. Soon the missile came into view with an indicator on his visor. He dove down and gained even more speed he was now pushing Mach 4.5, he closed on the missile from underneath. Blaine now flipped over and flew on his back and moved closer to the missile.

The missile was almost three times the size of Blaine with a trapezoid like body and a smooth high mounted delta wing swept back at nearly 60°, the engine was ¾ the way back on the underside of the missile, it had two canards on the sides near the nose. Blaine latched onto it by placing his feet on the edge of the engine’s air intake the flames on his feet and arms went out and the jet on his back sifted to shoot slightly downwards to keep Blaine hugging the body of the missile.

“Ok, I am on the missile, going to cut into it now” Blaine said into the radio, “I’m going to turn on the camera so you all can see.” Blaine lifted his arm and hit a button on the side of the visor; he then moved his right hand to an area to the right of him. A fine jet of flame started on the tip of his finger and he used it to cut into the thin metal body making a small rectangular hole in the missile, when he finished the cut, the plate of metal that was left got caught in the wind stream and flew off the missile.

“Blaine its 200 miles out, you got four minutes till impact.” Dr. Daymon said over the radio.

“Got it dad, just let me work,” Blaine replied. He then got to work on the wires in the missile.

He cut a few wires and the light on the panel turned red, “ok I’ve taken out the warhead, now for guidance.” Blaine said to himself knowing it also went through the radio. The missile now started its shallow dive dropping down, to 20,000 ft. then 10,000 ft.
He cut another smaller panel near his head, and used both his hand to rework the wires and computer chips on the guidance computers. When he did the missile flew erratically. Blaine struggled to hang on; he reached up and grabbed onto the control canards. He raised the temperature of his hands and he melted through trailing edge of the canards, with the missile still spinning wildly Blaine struggles to pull himself up, he places his feet on the wings and heated up his feet, melting through the wing to give him a foot hold, in a slightly up-right position, the flame on his back now expands and blows into the engine cutting the power, both the flame and engine go out.

“Blaine Jump off and let it fall,” Blaine’s dad yelled over the radio

“Can’t I’m already over land; I got to bring it down safely”, Blaine responded

He worked the canards with his hand and flipped the missile onto its back, with Blaine now up right. He looked over LA as the beach flew under him.  The missiles spinning had cut its speed to just under 600 mph and dropped its altitude to about 1000 ft., using the canards he flew the missile and lined it up with a long street in downtown, as he guided the missile in-between the building, he thought it was a good thing it was not rush hour, cause there were few cars on the street. The missile continued to drop as a faster and faster rate, because with the engine gone it was nothing more than a high speed glider.

“I’m still coming in too hot.” Blaine said out loud, with this two jets of flame ignited on the sides of his body and blew forward slowing down the missile even faster.

As he reached 20 ft., cars started to stop and swerved in the road. Blain put the missile down on the road and the jet of flame on his back reignited. Blaine swung his weight back and forth to swerve in and out of the cars on the road, with the jet of flame shifting back and forth to aid him in his deadly urban slalom.

He slid almost 10 blocks before he finally stopped in the middle of the intersection. When the missile finally came to rest he held on for a few more seconds just to make sure it had really stopped. He took his hands out of their handholds on the canards and placed them on the body of the missile. Blaine then removed his feet from the holes in the wings and placed them on the ground, which he tested to make sure was solid, he stood and dismounted the missile. This time a crowd had come out of the surrounding builds and cars. Blaine looked around and walked a short way away from the missile.

“Woo, that was a wild ride,” Blaine said, “is everyone ok.”

Just then as he was looking around his dad broke in over the radio, “Blaine the warhead is armed, it’s about to go off.”
Blaine spun around and looked at the open section; the light on the warhead was blinking green. He yelled “Everyone get back!” He ran and slid to the open panel and started checking the wires, all had been cut but it was still armed. He looked up and around at the people moving away was from the scene, a news helicopter was entering the area. “There’s not enough time.” Blaine stands up and thinks, as he does the light turns yellow and then goes out. Blaine mumbles under his breath, raises his arms and the missile goes off.

From the news chopper a bright white light flashes from where the missile and Blaine were, I sphere of white light covers the intersection and then a giant ball of flame starts to grow outwards, it grows to the edge of the intersection, and then it shrinks and dies out. Thick black and gray smoke covered the intersection, as it was blown away by the wind the news chopper got a view of the scene. There was a small crater about 8 ft. wide and 2 ft. deep. The entire intersection was scorched and the asphalt was warped in many places, the windows of buildings had been blown out several blocks away, the few cars that had been left in the intersection were now nothing but melted and burning skeletons of metals. People started too moved slowly back towards the site of the explosion. With police, fire fighters and paramedics moved their way through the crowd. The smoke was by now only coming out of the crater, them a shadowy figure stood up in the smoke, and placed his foot on the edge of the crater and lifted itself out. He stood there brushing off his suit, which had a fine layer of soot on it.

Blaine looked up from dusting himself off and the last melted and charred pieces of the visor fell off and on to the ground. “Well, I’m glad that worked.” He said as he brushed off his hair.

“Is everyone ok?” Blaine spoke to the crowd. His only response was silent nods from the gawking on looks. Blaine put his hands out and said, “come on you people never seen a super hero before!”

A single man on the edge of the crowd started to clap slowly, soon more of the crowd joined in and soon the whole area was hooping, hollering, and cheering for Blaine. Blaine stood there looking triumphant, as he said, “that is more like it.”

Then several news reporters busted through the crowd and ran up to Blaine, and bombarded him with questions. He instantly when from a triumphant look to one of overwhelming confusion and fear, one question finally caught him, “What is your name?”

“My name?” Blaine responded

“Yeah what’s your name?” said a female reporter pushing her microphone into Blaine’s face

“Uh, I’m…,” Blaine hesitated for a second trying to think, “I’m Flashfire.”

“Flashfire can you tell us what happened here?” another reported asked

“Well most of it is classified but I can tell you it was a military weapon test that went awry and the military asked me to stop it, because I was the only one in the area that was capable of doing so.” Blaine said very astutely, “everything is now under control.”

“What about the large explosion?” another reporter standing to the right of the woman

“The missile had a thermobaric fuel-air warhead, I had disarmed the military firing device, but it detonated.” Blaine said worried about how that sentence would be taken. “I was able to contain the blast, and keep the collateral damage to a minimum.”

“Why have we never seen you before this moment, and what is your role in the city now that you are exposed.” The female reporter asked.

“I want to make it very clear to everyone,” Blaine started, “I am not an independent superhero, I am here to aid and assist the authorities, in their duties, I am not here to replace them. As for why this is the first time seeing me, there was no need for my intervention prior to this, and I intend to keep my intervention to a minimum.”

“You said you disarmed the warhead, so why did it still go off?” A reporter asked.

“As I said I had disarmed the firing mechanism that was in the military schematics, I have to discuss with the military why the warhead detonated, I can say no further than that.

There was more clamoring from the reporters, but before they could settle on the next question Blaine interrupted them. “This is all I can say for now, without evaluating more information, therefore I will answer no more questions and see if I can aid the authorizes on getting this area back to working order. If you have any more questions the proper place to find answers would be the military.” Blaine then turned and walked towards one of the police offices, the reporters started clamoring and began to follow Blaine, but as they did a wall of flame rose before them and they were stopped in their tracks.

Blaine walked over to a small group of police officers that were trying to figure how to get traffic moving again, and said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

The officers stopped chatting and looked at Blaine and each other not sure what to say. Then the most senior looking one of the group spoke up, “well the road, if it could be smoothed out, we could possibly get traffic moving again.”

“I think I can handle that.” Blaine said turning around and walking towards one of the warps in the road.

He put his hands together and pointed them at the warped part of the road. Flames then ignited on his hands and then shot down at the road. The stream of flame then shot down to the ground and started to heat the asphalt, after about one minute the flames stopped and Blaine looked at the heated asphalt, which now had a slight orange glow to it. He tested it with his foot, it was very rubber like. Blaine let it cool, and there was just I slight rise on the road, he then went on to do the same to the other warped areas of the road, after about 20 minutes he had finished, and walked back over the officers who had watched him work on the road while discussing what to do about the traffic and also kept the reporters back away from the scene.

“So is there anything else I can do for you all.” Blaine said.

“No, I think we can handle it from here, thanks for all your help.” One of the officers said.

“Ok then, I needs to get back and figure out how this happened.” Blaine said backing up and stepping out into the open.

He took a firm stance on the ground, his flames ignited on his back and legs, and he lifted a few feet off the ground, pointed his head up and took off skyward with a rush, then a boom as he leveled off and went supersonic.

After a few minutes of flight Blaine lands back at the Lab, and runs back to the observation lab. When he enters the room, his dad runs over and embraces him.

“Dad your crushing my back, ouch.” Blaine said struggling to breath under the bear hug.

“Sorry,” Blaine’s dad says as he released his son, “but when that bomb went off, I though you were gone.”

“Yeah I am happy that worked too, but I had to stop the blast.” Blaine said rubbing his sides after the hug.

“Son, so how did you survive?” said the general walking over to them.

I knew I could survive the fire from the blast but it was the pressure wave I had to stop, but I also had to keep the cloud of fuel from expanding. So I ignited the cloud from the outside as the warhead ignited it from the inside, so this way the fuel would be used up quicker and would not have time to expand. The two pressure waves canceled each other out, and the blast wave was minimized, although my ears were ringing like hell for the next few minutes.” Blaine told them.

But it would not have gone off it you had disabled the warhead in the first place, and we would not have a wasted 40 million dollars’ worth of missile.” The Colonel chimed in rudely on the video screen.

"Oh yes colonel happy, I would like to know why there were two firing mechanisms on a missile that was supposed to only have had one?” Blaine replied with a sarcastically distasteful tone.

“Just for you info I did cut the only one in the blue prints.” Blaine said as he walked over to the computer and pulled up a video and the missiles schematics. The video was from Blaine’s visor and showed the missile’s firing mechanism had been disarmed. Then Blaine manipulated the schematics to show the mechanism.

“So, Colonel I am sure you have a second missile there with you, which should also only have one firing mechanism.” Blaine said growing ever more agitated, “Of course if this incident was sabotage and not just a coincidence where the guidance, targeting, and payload all had a critical system fails, plus all the safety systems. Then you should find two mechanisms, and major chances to the guidance, and targeting system. General I think you have security breech that needs investigating.”

“Son this is a strong claim, how do you know?” The general said.

Blaine pulled up more video footage and worked over the schematics. “First the guidance, this is what I found,” Blaine said, “and this is what it should look like. The wires are in the wrong place now unless someone read the instructions wrong and read them really badly; there should not be all this excess soldering around the connections. I bet if we fly out and examine the other missile we would find the same thing cause how would the saboteur know which missile was to be use or if one missile did not launch correctly."

“But this is just one system; you said all of them were tampered with.”  Blaine’s Dad said.

“Yes, just before the warhead detonated,” Blaine started as he moved the video to another part and adjusted the schematics.

“This,” pointing to a device on the missile, “I did not think of it at the time, because I did not think it was important. The reason why is cause it was not in the schematics and now I know why, this was the secondary arming device. This is what caused the warhead to go off even when the actual firing device had been disabled.”

“Ok, son this is enough evidence to suggest an investigation into sabotage. I will take these files to my commanding officer and tell him what you found, and this may get a little more attention now, instead of just a system malfunction.”  The general said.

I think it would be a good idea is we kept a copy of these files here, just in case Blaine is right, these kinds of things usually have evidence “disappearing and never being able to be found again” Said Blaine's Dad said, with his and hand on his chin.

"Well son, I Thank you for your help today and I am sure the city of Los Angles thanks you too I need to get to Washington to get this investigation started." Said General Grove, he then proceeded to log out of the computer and remove the flash drive.

He thanked Blaine and Dr. Daymon, and left with his assistant.

…

“Did we ever get an update on that investigation?” Blaine said getting up from the table for a second plate of food.

“No we never did get a follow up, it was very strange, and I thought they would get in touch with us. I guess they did not need us.” Blaine’s dad said, taking a drink of tea.

“You know I can’t believe all the way back then I still thought the best thing for exo-suits was hydraulics.” Blaine said scooping out some more risotto.

“Speaking of which how have your implants been holding up for the last few months.”

“They have been doing well, the scars are healed, and there is still a little problem with spasms every now and then, but the neural bonding should be working flawlessly in a few weeks, I will check the calibrations tonight.” Blaine said sitting down at the table again.

Just then a news Bulletin come on the TV, “Breaking News; a Fire has started and spread at the Israeli Consulates in San Francisco where the Israeli and Indian ambassadors were meeting with top US officials. The fire department is on scene but we have not seen anyone sent inside, it is believed that the ambassadors and most of the US officials they were meeting with are still inside, and the fire is continuing to grow.” The News anchor said.

“Whelp, I guess that is my queue.” Blaine said standing up, and removing his shirt revealing his white superhero shirt, he when to he room and came out with his white superhero pants on and was fastening his belt back together.

“I will save the rest for when you get back, do good son.” Dr. Daymon said.

“Always dad.” Blaine said and took off out the door.