by Chewy Walrus and I'm Not Mister Mxypltk
In the basement of the apartment building headquarters of MBL Consulting, Grissom Montag worked feverishly, attempting to set up a mock shelter. All the workout equipment, plus Blackwulf's boxes, had been moved to the corners to make way for boxes of canned goods and bottled water that had been loaded down. The Olympic-sized swimming pool had been covered with a hard cover and now had rows of cots resting on them.
Dr. Henry Quantos busied himself in the corner sorting through first aid items like gauze, bandages, splints, and antiseptics. Kit Piper and Shirley Francis worked on trying to load any essential equipment into the basement. Grissom, in the meantime, busied himself with setting up his very own personal weather tracking system.
"The GWN..." he said to himself, crossing some wires coming from his laptop computer. "The Grissom Weather Network." Standing to his feet, he flicked a switch on his computer, turning it on. Three televisions he'd smuggled out of the living room, Sam's old room, and Mick and Shirley's place (with her permission, naturally) sat around the monitor. One was hooked up to his laptop to operate as a second monitor. Another set was turned to the Weather Channel, which was feeding constant updates of the storm's motion and trajectory. And the third one was tuned to the local news stations for any sort of coverage or breaking news.
"Hey, Kit!" Griss shouted over his shoulder as the large, African-American man set his ficus tree down in the corner next to the covered workout equipment. "We got any way that we can keep in constant contact with our boys in the field?"
"Not to my knowledge, Mr. Montag," Kit said, shooting a look over at Dr. Quantos, who pulled out his cellular phone.
"I happen to know that the hovercraft has an installed two-way radio," Quantos said, dialing a number into his phone. "We should be able to keep in constant contact with them as long as they remain inside the craft."
"Excellent," Grissom smiled, a cell phone suddenly materializing in his hand. Quantos looked at his hand in surprise as Grissom held a three-fingered hand up in defense. "I'll explain later, Doc."
Plugging the phone into a portable jack connected to his laptop and pulling a headset over his ears, lowering the microphone to his mouth, Grissom waited until a fuzzy signal came through.
Griss recognized the accent: Swedish. "This is the Stormloader on a relief mission for MBL Consulting. Identify yourself..."
"This is Sandcrawler, Chance," Griss said, a smile spreading across his lips. "We're setting up a base and relief shelter in the basement here. All set to take care of any wounded. Over?"
A pause.
"Roger that, Sandcrawler. A few of us making our way back to base to deliver first load while the others continue with relief."
"Good to hear, Chance," Griss said. "Keep this line open in case of emergencies. We'll wanna get to you in a pinch."
"Understood, Sandcrawler."
Griss smiled and gave Quantos a thumbs-up, which the doctor returned. Well, you've set up one thing, Montag, Griss thought to himself. Now, if you can survive this'n, we'll worry about the next...
In no time at all, Grissom Montag and Dr. Henry Quantos were examining the information they were getting on Grissom's weather tracking system, trying to predict the course of the hurricane to suggest to the rest of the team an adequate course of action, while Kit and Shirley were busy trying to plug in the TV set.
"There we go!" Kit said, satisfied when he finally managed to do it.
"Good job, Mr. Piper," Shirley said. "Now let's see how things are up there." Shirley turned on the TV and tuned to the local news station.
"...a miracle! Dozens of lives have been saved by them so far! These truly are heroes!" a female reporter in a raincoat yelled, with the ferocious wind behind her.
"You think... they're talking about them?" Shirley asked.
"I hope so! You can't buy this kind of publicity! Who else could they be talking about?" Kit replied. "Oh, wait... those PSI-Unit kids..."
"Oh... yeah, it's probably them," Shirley said.
"This group of brave men is the best thing that has happened to La Perdita since the PSI-Unit!" the reporter on the screen yelled.
Kit and Shirley gasped.
"For those of you just joining in, a group of mysterious metahumans has been rescuing people from the fury of Hurricane Jason!"
"Please have some footage of the team," Kit begged.
"We have some footage of this team, taken earlier by our cameraman..."
The image on the screen switched to some shaky footage of a boat in the sea in deep trouble. A passenger on the boat fell violently because of the strong wind, but before he reached the water, he was saved by an unclear figure, due to the movement of the camera and the wind. As the passenger was taken to safety, other figures appeared near the boat. The camera zoomed in on one of them, and for the first time a member of the team was clearly seen: A cow in a green suit with a C on its chest.
The camera moved and focused on another member of the team, a cow with a big black cape and a fedora covering its eyes. Then, the wind took another passenger, who was rescued by a cow in a green spandex suit.
"Yes, people of La Perdita," the voice of the reporter said as the images switched from cow to cow, "We are being rescued by a mysterious group of meta-cows. Who are these cows? Where do they come from? Why are they here? We'll be sure to ask them all these questions... when they are not busy saving our lives!"
Kit smacked his hand against his forehead. "I told you M'xy's fixation with cows would cost us eventually..." he muttered.
"Well," Shirley replied, "at least it's not a zoophilia scandal, like you predicted."