Rider Five, paired with an Angel

"Let's review the footage again, hm? Tell me where you think I docked points."

You squirmed uneasily in your chair, your eyes never wavering from the monitor on Sargeant McPhearson's desk. Next to you, a woman with short dirty-blonde hair did the same, the creaks of her chair the only other sound in the room as McPhearson replayed a video recorded earlier in the day.

On the screen, multiple security cameras pointed to various angles around a warehouse set up to simulate the kind of dangerous locations members of the Spiral City Police Department are sometimes dispatched to investigate. You watched as a sportbike with "SCPD - Angel 5" painted on the side sped quickly to the warehouse door, screeching to a halt as the rider glanced around.

Most people would be surprised to learn that there are two people in that recording instead of just the one, but it doesn't take long before the video revealed the truth. The slim but masculine armored rider stepped off the sportbike, and in mere moments, the sportbike began to unfurl! The fully-faired sides of the bike spread upward and outward, stretching out from a woman's back like angel wings. Her hands let go of the front wheel axle, and her feet moved off from the back tire, as both wheels were pulled into the floating cowlings that hovered behind the woman as she stood up.

You finally glanced uneasily at the woman next to you--Angel Five, the same woman as seen in the video. You were her Rider, serving as a two-person task **** in the trial run of the Angel 800 deployment to the SCPD. Other than the fact that neither of you were wearing helmets and the more motorcycle-like components of the Angel unit were stowed in the police department's garage, your sleek armored bodies matched those in the video.

"I guess we could have come to a stop further back and approached from an angle with better cover?" you said, trying to offer up some criticism of yourself. As Rider Five, you usually had full control over where your unit went, since you had the handlebars and foot controls available, as well as an easier view of the road--the Angel typically used a HUD to talk to dispatch and track surroundings via a virtual map, and wasn't focused on the road. "I'll own that part, that's all on me."

"It's not the damn parking job, son," the Sargeant said with a sigh. "This is all fine. The Angel Endo is electric, there's not a lot of noise at that speed, you didn't skid any wheels, you didn't have the siren on. I don't take issue with any of that, nobody would've heard you approach."

You grimaced, glancing again to Angel Five next to you, who was now analyzing every pixel on that screen to see if the Sarge might have criticism of her performance as the video showed the two of you prepping to enter the building. The third time through the video hadn't helped either of you figure out what was wrong, it was unlikely that the fourth pass would spawn any new revelations. You thought you two had done a pretty good job all around, all things considered. The video showed Angel Five taking two weapons out of her wing-like cowlings, handing a pistol to you and keeping a shotgun for herself. You weren't lacking any gear, both of you were still wearing armor and helmets... and the Angel took point, stepping sideways through the open warehouse door with the armored sportbike coverings brought down like a shield.

"Here, maybe," Angel Five said, pointing to the middle camera. "We cleared the entryway and got around the stack of crates blocking our view, and we should've maybe gone to the right instead of--"

"No, your approach was fine," McPhearson said. He scratched his graying mustache and paused the video briefly. "All the typical police work is good, that's why you two were even picked for the Angel program in the first place, you're some of my best young officers who can handle all this new tech. But when it comes to this stuff, and the kind of work it enables us to do, these jobs are going to require a new threshold of talent from you."

McPhearson scrolled the video forward a couple minutes before playing again, to get to the heart of the problem.

The cameras all showed multiple Yabusa droids, typical Y-model bipedal drones, holding guns. They may have been firing blanks, but on the cameras it looked very real. In the heat of the action, you and Angel Five moved around cover, kept safe behind her armored wing-like cowlings, and picked your targets strategically--your pistol accurately disabled drones on an upper balcony while the Angel cleared the way with her shotgun. The drones fell quickly, right up until...

At one point in the video, a flanking drone had approached from the side with a knife, past where the Angel's cowlings shielded her. You saw yourself turn and shoot at the drone in the recording, disabling it, but then you and Angel Five took two shots from another drone at range before you returned fire. Once the firefight ended, you'd sustained a simulated shot to the hip, while Angel Five took an impact to the shoulder.

"...I mean, we got hit," you said, shrugging, "but what else were we going to do? Angel was focused on clearing the next doorway, I had to react, she couldn't see it. We reacted as best as humanly possible." Angel Five nodded in agreement.

McPhearson shook his head. "That's the problem, your augmented bodies make you more than human! As Rider Five, you are her second set of eyes, and you are in charge of every situation. Angel Five is not just following your lead through audibles, you still have override control of her Endo, even in biped mode. You can make her walk, turn, jump, whatever. And in this instance, you should have turned her to take care of the knife drone while you kept taking care of your share of things."

You slumped in your seat, as Angel Five bit her lip. "Sir," she started, "we're just not at that comfort level to do that sort of thing yet. It's still weird to think I'd no longer be in charge of my own movements in moments like that, and Rider hasn't even tried anything outside of putting me in vehicle mode."

"If this was a year ago, I'd agree with you that it's weird as hell. But this is a new era for the SCPD." Ending the video, the Sargeant leaned back in his leather office chair, one far more comfortable than the old wooden ones he kept around for his visitors to use. "Go on a long ride together, do some trust falls or something, I dunno. Find a way to become a symbiotic unit like Unit Three where you can allow Rider to be an extra set of senses, and fast. ...Because I don't want to regret giving you this high-priority case that comes straight from Yabusa Robotics, they're requesting an Angel unit to handle the investigation."

Both you and Angel Five shot up in your seat, almost like you'd just won a contest. Angel Five leaned closer to the case file that McPhearson pulled from his desk and set before you. "You're serious, a Yabusa case? You usually save something from the big corporations for your lead detectives..."

"Well, like I said, Yabusa requested an Angel unit, probably hoping for some free publicity. I figured of the Angel units, the two of you together could do as good a job as maybe Lonny or Rick, they're busy investigating whatever new trouble Shaw's been cooking up anyway."

Angel Five opened the folder, and both you and her peered at the contents--particularly the images of a very silvery, glittery substance, since there wasn't much else contained within it.

"That's confidential, by the way, need-to-know stuff that doesn't leave the office," the Sargeant said, pulling up more photos and records on his computer screen. "This is Yabusa tech they hadn't announced publicly yet, and it was like pulling teeth to get even this much, but they don't want info about their R&D work getting out to others. And that complicates things, because publicly Yabusa will not affirm that this stuff was stolen from them."

"What is it?" You asked.

"Some sort of lithium-based nanotechnology. They can link up and move as a singular unit, I guess. That's all I got on them. You two are going to become the experts in nanotech in order to track this stuff down. Problem is, that thin folder and these images are all we've got, so I'm lean on facts and leaner on leads." The Sargeant clicked over to a window with faces and names, one of whom you recognized. "We've got a few contacts at Yabusa who might be willing to talk, including Mr. Grisham, the phase-binder guy who installed your Angel and Meteor tech. Yabusa Robotics has assured me the nanobots aren't dangerous, but I've seen enough sci-fi to know that if someone reverse-engineers this stuff, they certainly could become a problem. And they've got money on the line, so if you want nice new upgrades to your Angel tech when the time comes, find those nanobots quick and make Yabusa happy."

After the McPhearson dismissed you and Angel Five for the day, the two of you hurried out of his office, glancing around at the rest of the SCPD desks. Most of the other officers were dressed in typical dark blue uniforms, with the other Angel units, like Units Two and Seven in addition to yourself, wearing the same armored motorcycle gear that had essentially replaced your uniform. Fortunately, the armor wasn't permanently phasebound to the Angel or Rider units, just the internal mechanisms that held them to the body, so once you and Angel Five entered the storeroom where all the Yabusa parts and the Angel Endo frames were kept, you both disengaged the magnetic couplers and began to pull off what remained of the armored exteriors.

"This could be a huge case for us," Angel Five said, grinning as she brushed some of her hair back from her face, disengaging the chestplate armor to reveal the black tanktop underneath. Something about seeing Angel Five's skin from the waist up, but still seeing her encased in Yabusa armor from the waist down... it definitely piqued your interest. Angel Five didn't always have such generous curves, but Yabusa insisted on a 'standard size' for Angels and Riders. Their excuse was that Yabusa wanted to mass-produce the cowlings and other parts for Angel and Rider units so all the Angel bodies needed to be restructured to the same overall shape, but the way they resized Angel Five's hips and chest while also slimming her belly definitely made it seem like the designers had only one thought on their mind while shaping the Angel 800... after all, the strength of all Yabusa phasebound clients was more determined by the machines they put inside the bodies, rather than any amount of time you spent in the gym, so users of Yabusa tech could look pretty much however they--or the company--wanted and still get results.

When you didn't respond for a while, Angel Five glanced over, and caught you looking at her. With a slight smirk and a wink, she turned around to remove the armored leggings. "Glad you enjoy the show, Rider, but I think we still have some after-hours work to do. Either we need to work on the trust-building stuff Sarge said, or we should get home and start reading up on nanotech. What's your vote?"

That was a tough question. You didn't even really know where to start with either of those activities... but you knew that Angel wouldn't let you just sit around and watch TV at your shared apartment while she wanted to find ways to make progress between you two on something work-related. Maybe you could find a way to make your team-building exercises a little more fun, albeit not at all very work-safe... or maybe you could talk to another Angel unit to see if they had any suggestions.