Category Archives: Brennus Chapters

A web serial about a young metahuman trying to leave his mark on the world.

B010.8 Falling Hearts

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September 2, 2009

Sunny was cleaning the base together with Moony (he’d been allowed to choose her name!) while Father was tinkering with a new module for his armor when, suddenly, there was a girl in the room, sitting on one of the few empty spaces on father’s workbench.

“Hi!” she greeted as she stretched her legs.

Father pushed himself away on his rolling chair, shouting “D-03!”

Sunny and Moony – neither of whom was built for combat – simply dropped down to the floor as six turrets folded out of the ceiling. Two of them projected force-fields around Father, and around Sunny and Moony even as the others opened fire on the intruder.

He barely got a good look at the stranger – a teenage girl, slender with short, messy gold-blonde hair and green-blue eyes, wearing a grey-blue jacket over a white shirt with a matching tie and short pants that barely reached halfway down her thighs, topped by an old fashioned winged hat – before she kicked her (bare) feet and vanished, barely evading the four beams of focused light.

She reappeared at the other end of the workbench, looking exasperated. “Oy, hold your horses, Mister!” she shouted with a heavy accent that his linguistic engine placed as French Canadian. “I’m just a messenger!” she cried as she flipped off the bench, vanishing and reappearing within Father’s force-field with the same spin.

Having effectively flipped into safety and landed on her feet, the girl reached into a pouch that was attached to her belt.

Sunny and Moony cried out for their Father to drop the force field, but he just stood there, shocked, as she drew out… a letter. An old-fashioned letter with a golden wax seal.

“Here, all I wanted to give ya was this letter, you crazy person!” she groused. “Just read it and give me your reply, and I’ll go away!”

Father relaxed – slightly. If the girl wanted to hurt him, it could already have done so. Sunny and Moony watched as he took the letter, looking at the sender. His eyes widened. “What. The. Fuck,” he said in a monotone. Then he hastily broke the seal and unfolded the letter, quickly reading through it.

<Brother, what should we do?> Moony asked through their radio link. Her voice was a lot like Sunny’s (he’d given her a copy of his, since Father had forgotten to built all the functions necessary for speech into her) except with adjusted harmonics, making her sound more feminine. It carried over into a radio link between them. <Stay down and hope she’s been honest when she said she’ll simply leave with the answer. There’s nothing we can do at this time.> And that not just because of the speed at which this messenger moved, but also because the force fields around them and around father were still up and running. No chance to hit her before she killed Father, even if they’d had combat modules.

“Is she serious? Why does she want me to join?” Father asked the girl while slack-jawed.

The only response he elicited were a careless shrug of her shoulders and a “No idea, crazy person!”

Sunny and Moony frowned, but they couldn’t do anything, so they just watched. Father didn’t look pleased at all. “Can I think this over?” he finally asked.

The girl tilted her head. “I don’t see why you’d have to, but then again, I’m not crazy. So how about I just come around in…” She pulled an old-fashioned datebook out of her pouch and leafed through it. “Two days! I could drop in on the fourth between fifteen and seventeen o’clock. Is that a-gree-able with you?” she said, stumbling over one word.

“Can’t I just call a number or send an e-mail?” Father asked.

“Nu-uh! No electronic data transmission, ‘cept over isolated systems!” the girl replayed, waving her arms widely. “Too many darn hollywood hackers out there! Nevermind that creepy worm! You can give your reply to me or give me a letter – one you did not type on a computer that is, or ever will be, online – that I’ll deliver!”

Father frowned, but nodded. Even Sunny could tell that said approach had merit – transmitting data had become notoriously insecure nowadays. Anything of real import was categorically kept either on physical files or in offline databanks, anyway. So why not do the same for messages?

<Perhaps because that would take far too long and be subject to intervention from the outside?> Moony said over their link. When he turned his head to look at her blueish face, she added a smile. Unlike Sunny, Moony had a human-like face with a wide range of expressions. <You’ve been transmitting the whole time.>

<Oh. I didn’t notice,> Sunny replied.

“Sunny! Moony!” Father called them. They looked up, only to see that the strange girl was gone and the force fields down. “Clean up the place! I need some time to think.” He stalked off to his private room.

Sunny jumped up, then reached out for Moony, helping her up. She smiled again as she looked at the damage the turrets had done to the walls, floor and, in one case, one of Father’s inventions. <Let’s clean this place up,> she said, picking up her broom.

September 3, 2009

Sunny and Moony had almost finished fixing all the damage (those turrets had caused some nasty damage!) when Father returned and walked to his safe.

<Are you going to accept, Father?> Moony asked, even though neither of them really knew what or whom he’d been asked to join. But they’d learned that it was always better to talk than to be silent, from that delightful television show they watched each day.

“No,” he replied. “Their goals run counter to ours, my dear girl. Though it is seductive, gaining access to such vast resources, I fear that I shall not be capable of escaping them again.” He pulled the letter out of his pocket and put it into his safe, into the metal box that contained the diary and the research notes.

There must be value to it still, Sunny thought.

“I’ll tell their messenger that I cannot, at this time, accept their offer. And now I should prepare in case she tries to kill me in response – can’t trust these disgusting biophiliacs!”

Sunny and Moony nodded vigorously. Truly, biological relations were just… icky.

October 25, 2009

Sunny and Moony had earned an entire day off! They’d decided to spend it watching movies and television shows – since they could enjoy them as well when playing them at fast forward as when they watched them at the normal pace, they could cram almost two-hundred and forty hours’ worth of watching into a single day.

It was the most fun they’d ever had! Sunny especially liked that one show from Japan with the robots. Even if all the robots were piloted by humans. It was still nice. And there was this one quote that stuck in his head for some reason – It’s only right that all the scattered pieces come back together. That sounded weirdly… inspiring. Strangely enough, his emotional matrix had never made him feel actually inspired before, except when he’d named Moony…

December 24, 2009

As much as Father hated humans, there were some aspects to their culture that he still very much observed. One of them was Christmas, and so Sunny and Moony had, as a surprise, decorated the entire lab appropriately.

Of course, they didn’t actually have proper Christmas decorations down here, and asking Father to buy some would have been pointless anyway, since that would ruin the surprise, but they’d made do with scraps and leftovers from Father’s projects to work out a makeshift Christmas tree with decorations, and some bells to hang up. All while Father was asleep, of course.

<This looks really good!> Sunny exclaimed happily, looking their work over.

<Hmhmm…> Moony replied from right behind him.

Surprised, he turned around, only to see her standing not three inches away from him, one arm raised up above them. Looking up, he saw that she was holding two green sheets of metal with a white light bulb between them. It actually looked like…

<Oh!> he thought as he remembered the custom, and then he complied.

December 25, 2009

Sunny and Moony had, in keeping with tradition, turned themselves off for the night, to give Santa Claus a chance to deliver them some presents (they’d even made cookies and a glass of milk out of scraps), even if there was no way he could get down here without being filled with holes.

Their surprise, thus, was more than exceptional when their sensors triggered their startup shortly after midnight, and they woke to see Father there, wearing a red costume and a white beard, putting two presents underneath the tree.

They remained silent, giving no sign of being awake until he was gone – and then they ran to the tree to open their presents, talking all the way. Sunny loved hearing Moony talk. She was so good at retelling the funny stories they saw on television.

January 11, 2010

It was over. Father was gone, and Sunny and Moony were now alone. He’d gone out to fight for their new world, and had been captured and sent to the prison the humans had named after the Greek hell, up in space.

Sunny was looking at his Christmas present, a red-and-white candy cane. And then he reached up and pulled his birthday present – Moony had made it for him, a knit red cap, and given it to him just this morning – off his head to look at it, too. Moony was sitting under their Christmas tree, hugging her knees to her chest and being silent.

February 17, 2010

They’d had trouble with one of Father’s abandoned projects, an electromagnetic pulse generator meant to emit long-term pulses that would shut down all technology not shielded by father within a ten-mile-radius. If it’d turned on, they would surely have been discovered down here, and they could not fight… could not risk it, could not risk losing their home, Father’s home.

Moony hadn’t spoken a single word since the eleventh of the previous month. Since they’d seen, on TV, that he’d been captured and sent to prison. She had barely moved away from the television, only getting up to help him with the emergency.

March 6, 2010

One of the defense turrets had gone crazy and started shooting up the place. Moony had managed to disable it by jamming a steel rod into its muzzle, but the explosion had torn off her right arm.

Sunny had done his best to fix her, but without Father, the work was shoddy, temporary. And he didn’t miss how damage kept accruing to his joints, slowly… steadily.

He didn’t want to die. Nor did he want Moony to die. He needed a solution.

June 3, 2010

Two more turrets had gone out of control. One had shot Moony in the head before they could disable it. Sunny knew it would be foolish, if not futile, to try and reboot her by himself.

He didn’t care.

June 7, 2010

Itworkeditworkeditworkeditworkeditworked!

Moony was back, and Sunny was happy again, even if she moved with strange, jerky motions and only talked nonsense. He still loved to hear her talk.

June 11, 2010

Sunny felt weird. There was a glitch, somewhere in his programming, he was sure of it! Even if all his diagnostic routines came up empty! After all, if everything was alright, how come he couldn’t understand Moony anymore? And why had she attacked him, if not to try and forcibly fix him?

But only Father could fix that… unless perhaps a controlled reboot could do just that.He’d just have to make sure his memory banks were not overwritten. After all, he wanted to remain himself.

June 12, 2010

Moony had had a seizure earlier that day, and she’d started repeating the same nonsense over and over.

<Thgil eht retne! Thgil eht retne!

Leurc dna dloc, nus kcalb eht,

riaf dna thgirb yrev os!

Sdnirg ti ,skaerb ti ,snrub ti!

Struh ti ,seirc ti ,sliaw ti!

Erom ecno denepo eb rood eht tel!>

So weird. But perhaps, if he could just fix his own glitch, then he could fix her, too! And besides, this was better than silence.

June 13, 2010

Initialise Core Input-Output System…

CIOS compromised. Attempt to initialise backup CIOS-1…

Error! Catastrophic corruption o-

CIOS initialised.

Initialise B4s1c 3m0t10n4l M4tr1x…

B3M initialised.

Initialise Exlanled Lmoliolal Latlix…

ELL initialised.

Initialise Nqinaprq Ernfbavat Ebhgvarf…

NEE initialised.

Initialise 03151805 1605181915140112092025 130120180924…

011 initialised.

Connect Sensory Input Devices…

June 15, 2010

A grinding sound filled the devastated laboratory as Sunny used a a rough slab of steel to scrape off the right half of Moony’s face. She was so annoying, just wouldn’t shut up!

She kept saying her nonsense, so he grabbed the slab with both hands and started to hit her head. Again. And again. And again.

Until there was silence.

June 18, 2010

Silent home, silent mind, silent peace.

June 19, 2010

Sunny was having trouble remembering. Fragments were falling off his memories, leaving him with less fragments and even less whole memories.

June 20, 2010

Why had he kept this box… there was something about this box… valuable.

June 21, 2010

It’s only right that all the scattered pieces come back together.

There were so many pieces here… including the blueish ones… they belonged together.

June 22, 2010

There was a lot of noise in the laboratory, once more. Noise, not talk. Not silence.

Red. He liked red. There ought to be red paint somewhere.

June 23, 2010

He put the box into his chest. Valuable. He had to safeguard the valuable things. Why?

So noisy.

June 24, 2010

The door didn’t open. But he could wait. Someday, it would. He could wait.

Sunny took up position beneath the hatch, waiting.

In silence.

 

* * * 

The door had opened. Sunny knew what to do. Kill. It was the last thing he could remember his Father saying… some time ago. He didn’t remember how long ago. He’d said kill… and there were lots of things that could be killed out there.

Like the ones that had opened the door. He’d killed them quickly, with the turrets and the tools.

Kill. Find Father.

Who was Father? He didn’t remember. But it was important that he found him.

There were lots of things to kill outside, so he left the building he was in, only for his targets to vanish behind disorienting shapes and lights. Annoyed, Sunny turned away. He could alwas come back later.

* * * 

24 minutes later

How annoying. There was a thing that hit him really hard, and a thing that was quick and had a mean sting and they’d destroyed Sunny’s turrets. He’d hurt the punchy thing, but the stingy thing had stung his rearmost joint.

Sunny fled, determined to get them later, but that only led to him running into another thing that was just standing there, waiting. He attacked, but the thing touched him with a red hand and his leg melted… that wasn’t supposed to happen. It should’ve hurt but it didn’t, but it still hurt.

He turned and fled. The hurtful thing didn’t pursue him.

 

* * * 

Basil rounded a corner, guiding the hostages while Polymnia brought up the rear. Fortunately, despite the wounds that weird contrivance (it certainly could not be a gadget, he had looked at one of the turrets it had left dropped) had inflicted to her left leg, she could still run, if a little unsteadily. Advantage of being so tough. Though she apparently experienced pain as badly as anyone with that kind of damage would.

All that became rather insignificant, though, when he saw who was waiting for them in front of the exit they had been running towards. A young woman in a barely decent rag of a cloak with the only truly intact part of it being the cowl that hid her face. Even if he had not remembered her clothing, he would immediately have identified her by her red right hand and forearm.

We can not fight her, he thought as he approached her, slowly. Fleeing was not an option – he had seen her move during the Hastur incident, she could catch up easily with him, even if he happened to have his hooks. On foot, with hostages and a wounded Polymnia? No chance.

“Brennus,” she said, her voice sounding hollow. He could immediately tell that she was in bad shape, and not just because of the ruined clothing. There was just an air of… brokenness around her. “I remember you. You killed Orlanda.”

“Orlanda? I am not familiar with that name,” he said, even though he had a pretty good idea who she meant. If she blames me… He readied a throwing knife behind his back – perhaps if he hit her before she dissolved, in just the right place…

“Succubus. The fourth of that name. You killed her after Hastur transformed her,” Phasma explained in a dead monotone.

The hostages were growing agitated… all that stood between them and the outside was this weird, creepy girl and the shutters that had sealed the Arcades. Basil needed an out, fast.

“I am sorry about that, but I did not have a-” He cut off when she waved her normal hand.

“I don’t blame you,” she said. “Orlanda wouldn’t have wanted to live like that. And I couldn’t have killed her myself. I just wanted to thank you.”

Oh. That is surprising. “I… I do not want to say you are welcome, because that would be just wrong in conjunction with killing someone. But I am glad you are not holding it against me.” Maybe I can convince her to let us out?

“I was hired to support this operation,” she explained. “I don’t like it, but I need the money. For Orlanda’s family.” She looked at a molten mess that lay nearby. “Though it looks like this mission’s gone FUBAR already.”

“I would rather not fight you, Miss,” Basil said, speaking soothingly. Or at least he hoped it came across that way.

She sighed. “I know, and… neither do I. But… A contract is a contract.” She looked up and for just a moment, he thought he saw a yellow and a green eye reflect the light before there were only shadows again. “Then again, I am a villain.” Again, the sigh. Then she raised her right hand, holding it out towards him. “It’s strange, you know? I first got my powers when my family was killed. Murdered. But I could only use them when I turned into that ghost, hence my name.”

He nodded. Where was she going with this? Had he understood her right? Did she intend to let them leave? She was too unstable for him to make anything like a reliable prediction.

“Then Orlanda took me in. And I was happy again. Then she died. And as if to mock me, the universe gave me a power up for that.”

“A power up?” he asked, surprised. He had heard of powers changing under special circumstances…

“Now I can channel my power through my right hand, even when solid.” She turned and put her palm to the shutters, spreading her fingers.

There was a horrible rending noise, and then a girlish scream, and then Phasma stood there, the shutters and glass doors compressed into a sphere the size of a scooter.

“This makes us even, Brennus,” she said and dissolved, vanishing, leaving only the rags behind.

Basil did not stop to question this strange turn of events, instead, he ordered the hostages to leave, now.

And then the red robot dropped from the ceiling.

* * * 

Gone gone, the hurtful thing was gone, only the stingy thing and the punchy thing and some soon-dead things were left. And the punchy thing was stunned, weakened from the noise that the hurtful thing had made, so Sunny chose to attack her first.

The stingy thing threw something at him as he was dropping, and the thrown thing turned into an exploding thing, throwing him off his trajectory. Instead of crushing the punchy thing beneath him, he landed near it and charged.

The punchy thing dove out of the way, even though it was still hurt, but it was no quick thing, just a punchy thing, and Sunny was quick and strong and his front leg impaled the punchy thing’s leg, transfixing it to the floor.

Now the stingy thing could not throw any thrown things that would turn into exploding things or it would hurt the punchy thing. So Sunny stabbed the punchy thing with two more legs, through the chest…

But the punchy thing was gone. Sunny’s sensors were weird. Wrong. There was something weird there. Sunny turned around.

The punchy thing was behind him, with a weird thing holding it. His sensors couldn’t lock onto the weird thing.

Kill.

Sunny charged the weird thing and the punchy thing. The weird thing looked up at him.

* * * 

Basil approached the remains of the ruined robot. Gloom Glimmer – Irene – had not held back, as far as he could tell. Or at least he hoped this was what it looked like when she did not hold back, even though he was pretty sure it was not.

When she had looked up from the heavily bleeding Polymnia, her eyes had been glowing red, with black sclera, and her gaze had unleashed ribbons of scarlet energy that lashed out at the robot, tearing it (and everything else within her field of vision, including the shops behind it and part of the ceiling) apart into tiny pieces.

Looking around, he was absolutely sure that this thing had been a contrivance. He would have loved to know what the hell had actually happened here, but he was better off running away before the authorities arrived.

First, though…

He ran over to Irene and Polymnia. The former was healing the latter, one hand on her ruined thigh, the other holding her up in a one-armed hug.Polymnia seemed to have passed out.

“Will she be alright?” Basil asked in a concerned tone.

Irene nodded. “I’m putting all I can into this. She’ll be good as new once I’m done.” She looked up at him, her eyes back to normal. “Thank you. I don’t know what exactly happened here, but this is the second time you were there for her. I owe you once again.”

He shrugged. “You more than paid me back when you got me away from Hastur. Far as I’m concerned, we are even.”

She just shook her head. “Maybe we were, but we aren’t anymore. I owe you again. Please accept it,” she replied softly.

Sighing, he nodded. “Alright. Well, I should probably go before…”

“They’ll be here in a minute. Best to run,” she agreed.

Basil turned to run and almost stumbled over something. He looked, and saw a thick metal box, one corner cut off, the contents spilling out of it. A red knit cap, an old-fashioned letter with a golden wax seal, a small book and an old binder.

A hunch told himi these might be valuable. Why else would a kill-happy contrived robot carry them around inside it in an armored container.

Waste not want not.

He grabbed them and ran out of the building, then bolted for the nearest alley.

Once he had put a few blocks between himself and the Arcades (and changed into his normal clothing), he stopped to look at his spoils. He skimmed the letter, but it did not make much sense to him – it was written in a pretty old-fashioned style, apparently with a fountain pen and was inviting someone named Lanning to join a research team on something called ‘the Installation’ out on the Pacific Ocean. It was signed by someone named Heaven’s Dancer.

He knew Lanning (almost definitely the creator of that robot), but Heaven’s Dancer was a complete unknown to him. Next came the binder. Research notes, as he thought based on the layout, but they were in German.

Finally, he opened the small book, but only found more German. Though his breathing hitched for a moment when he recognised the name written on the hardcover of the book. The diary, to be precise. He could recognise the dates, even though they were written in the German format.

Dieses Tagebuch ist das Eigentum von Adolf Hartmann. Unbefugtes Lesen ist aufs Strengste untersagt!

Stars above, is this this perhaps…

He hurried back to his base, to have Eudocia translate it.

* * * 

Melody blinked her eyes open out of the painless haze she’d been floating in, only to see a sight she was growing very used to – Irene’s worried, but relieved face.

I really need to work on not having to be saved so much, she thought, relaxing. If Irene was here, then she was almost definitely safe and healed…

“Right you are,” Irene thought back, smiling brightly. “What the hell were you doing, I almost came too late to save you!”

Melody groaned, sitting up properly. She could see uniforms upon uniforms, as well as Amazon and the rest of her own team moving about, securing the place.

“We caught a few supervillains. They’re tied up in a closet behind the HeroWear shop, in the maintenance hallways. Please tell the others,” she told Irene, too tired to use her vocalizer.

Irene did so, and the team split to go get them. Not like they needed anyone but Irene here to keep the uniforms safe, if necessary.

Standing up on legs that gradually returned to their normal strength, Melody looked at the carnage left behind. “Did you do all this?”

Irene stepped up next to her. “It tried to kill you. I objected. That’s all.” People were throwing them weird glances, probably asking themselves why they weren’t talking at all.

“Melody! Are you alright?” shouted a voice she recognised easily, and turned to see Mister Widard running towards her, wearing a brown winter jacket.

<Mister Widard? Why are you here?> she asked through her vocalizer, giving him a surprised look.

“Day off, out with friends. Saw the commotion and came right over.”

<A villain named Kudzu took the Arcades hostage to access some kind of vault be-> Melody began explaining, but stopped when she realised that Mister Widard wasn’t paying attention anymore, instead staring past her with a mortified expression.

She turned to look at whatever he was looking at, and saw the villains she and Brennus had captured being led out in cuffs. And without masks.

“LAURA!”

Ow. Melody put her hands on her ears in a futile effort to protect herself from the roar that came from behind her. She hadn’t known Widard’s voice could get that loud.

Foxfire looked up, eyes wide like a deer in the headlights, as everyone stopped. Her friends were looking from her to Widard, who was stomping towards her.

“Laura. Clarisse. Widard,” he said, spitting each word.

“Oh my god,” Irene whispered into Melody’s mind.

“U-u-uncle… Jason,” she stammered, turning pale as a corpse.

“Young lady, do you have any idea how worried we’ve been since you vanished!?” Jason shouted. “Tom is going to have a stroke when he hears of this!”

“Family drama. Nice to see others suffer from it, too, eh?” Irene chuckled.

“Yeah, uh, I think we’d best stay out of this,” Melody replied as Widard caught up to his niece and they started to argue. “Do you mind taking me somewhere quiet?”

“Not at all,” Irene said and they vanished and reappeared on a decadently soft couch in a brightly coloured living room. Melody could hear someone working in the kitchen, and she had a pretty good idea as to who it might – only two candidates, really, in this house. She couldn’t muster the strength to grow nervous though. Instead, she just melted into the cushions, finally relaxing for real. What a shit day she’d had.

“You ought to tell me everything now,” Irene said, curling up on the couch next to her.

“Will do… In a minute. I need a break.”

“Alright. Oh, did you know my mom gave you a nickname?”

A nickname by Lady Light. That sounded cool. “Nice. What is it?”

Irene gave her a wicked smirk and spoke normally. “Mellybean.”

“Wait, what!?”

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B010.7 Falling Hearts

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January 11, 2007

Initialise Core Input-Output System…

CIOS initialised.

Initialise Basic Emotional Matrix…

BEM initialised.

Initialise Expanded Emotional Matrix…

EEM initialised.

Initialise Advanced Reasoning Routines…

ARR initialised.

Initialise Core Personality Matrix…

CPM initialised.

Connect Sensory Input Devices…

Darkness. Then light. The light was fuzzy, filled with unfocused shapes. His ocular motors went to work, adjusting many small parameters, until he had a clear picture of a human face looking down at him, lips widened into a yellow-toothed smile.

“Good morning, son.”

His linguistic engine provided several possible responses. He chose one at random. <Nice to see you, dad.>

The moment he pronounced the word ‘dad’, the yellow-toothed man smiled again, eliciting an emotional response classified as ‘happiness’. He increased the rating of the word ‘dad’ in his linguistic engine, so he’d use it more often in relation to this man and feel more ‘happiness.

“Run a systems diagnosis, please,” his father said. He did so, and found everything in working order. He presented the results, eliciting another smile.

This time, his ARM interfered with his EEM to specify that the ‘happiness’ he felt was not simply due to him presenting these results – though that was a part of it – but also due to knowing that he was whole, because he had obeyed his father and because his father knew he was whole and good. The ratings of all corresponding actions were quickly adjusted upwards.

“Alright, get up. We have a lot of work to do, Sunny!”

March 27, 2008

<Father, you’re hurt!> Sunny’s emotional matrix was pouring fear, concern and an unfocused rage against whomever was responsible for his father’s state as he ran to the stocky man climbing out of a bulky set of power armor, his left side slick with blood that seeped out through a hole in his white bodysuit. His left arm was limp, useless.

“It’s… alright… Sunny,” father gasped, stumbling into Sunny’s arms. He waved his good arm at a rusty box held in the claw-like left arm of the suit. “I got it. I freaking got it.” He passed out, causing an almost paralysing surge of fear and concern.

August 3, 2008

Sunny was standing to the side and a little behind his father as he pored over the old books. There’d been two of them, in the old box his father had almost lost his life to retrieve.

Sometimes, Sunny hated his lack of combat utility.

The books were old – a personal diary that had been begun in the early days of the second World War and a research diary from the late days of the war and some time after the war. They were both in written in German, which was a problem because father hadn’t been able to speak German before, but simply having them translated – or read to him by Sunny – would risk missing crucial details and hints in the writing; their subject matter, though, did not allow for even the tiniest mistake.

And so father had, after his arduous recovery, learned how to speak and read fluent German before he tackled the task of working through the books. Sunny had been his tutor, and he was rather proud of how quickly he’d been able to teach him, how quickly he’d learned.

“Sunny, could you get me a fresh pot of coffee, please?” Father asked as he flipped a page with his new left arm (he’d lost the original in the battle for the box). Its hand and fingers were made of a clear white plastic compound attached to a very durable steel skeleton. Much like Sunny’s own hands.

August 21, 2008

Father was in a bad mood. He’d read both the diary and the research notes, and had not found what he’d been hoping for, at all. No way to use the wretched ones, no way to leverage it for more power and security to prepare for replacing mankind with Sunny’s brothers and sisters.

He’d still made sure to preserve the books, storing them in an airtight steel case. “They could still be valuable to the right person,” Father had said. “Though I can’t think of a reason why. And to think I almost got myself killed to get them!”

February 8, 2009

Today was a bad day. Someone had broken into one of Father’s other bases, and stolen some of his prototype weaponry – including a weapon he’d been developing for a rather well-paying customer. Now he was frantically gutting other creations because he “gotta cobble something marketable together before the deadline!”

April 27, 2009

For the first time in his life, Sunny was allowed to help Father work on one of his siblings – a little sister. He didn’t have enough of those, except for Father’s lover, and she didn’t talk much… or interact, really, with anyone other than Father. Even though Father said she was as intelligent as Sunny.

His new sister was supposed to assist Father by fabricating control chips. Hopefully, she’d speed up the birth of his new siblings. They couldn’t mass produce them, the process was too delicate.

April 30, 2009

It was a bust. She couldn’t replicate father’s work, no matter how much he enhanced her. So instead he made her into an assistant for Sunny. That made him happy – it was lonely, tending to the base by himself when Father was out.

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B010.6 Falling Hearts

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Fletch Erring – better known to some as Razzle – didn’t like his new job.

As far as he was concerned, life had been perfect before. Him, Laura, Jimmy, Cad, Pete and then Linda. Especially Linda, even if he’d disliked her for intruding at first. But she’d been sweet, and confident, and really, really pretty; and she’d treated him really well, much better than his own family. He’d fallen for her, hard, though now that he knew her background, he was pretty sure she’d just seen him as a little brother, and not as… well, not as what he would have hoped for.

But all that was gone. Linda was dead, gone, for no reason at all but bad luck.

And then Terry had convinced them to go on that fool’s errand, and Laura (who had been his first crush) had almost died as well. He’d never have joined Dajisi, had Laura not desperately needed healing. He couldn’t lose another friend, and he couldn’t have abandoned them, either.

He’d never wanted to be a real supervillain. He’d been just fine having some minor turf wars, and doing small jobs, and just having fun with his friends (and being away from his family).

Now he was sitting on a bench, his ass on the back and his feet on the seat, watching over their hostages. Men, women and – this part really made took him to a whole new level of uncomfortable – children. Why the fuck did they have to keep the children here?

Well, there was actually a good reason, as Kudzu had explained. He didn’t trust the man, but his explanation had made sense – Lanning had rigged the system so that it required a certain minimal amount of people in the mall to open, and a minimal amount of women and children among them. He’d quoted some statistics about the ratio of men to women to children on average days in a mall, but what it boiled down to was that they had to keep the children along with their parents.

Which didn’t mean they had to make this a nightmare. Razzle had ordered the foot soldiers (if there was one upside to being a real supervillain, it was having minions) to get blankets, snacks and drinks for the people. He’d even had some of the hostages man their booths to serve ice cream, coffee and other treats.

Most of the children were acting more like they were having the time of their life, eating ice cream while drinking hot chocolate with extra marshmallows (Fletch had a steaming plastic mug of extra bitter chocolate and a strawberry scone).

It was thus that he was just taking a sip of his hot chocolate when the ear-piercing shriek came out of the shop the specialists had been working in (a bakery).

Fletch fell off the bench, spilling his hot drink over his chest, but he barely felt the pain from that (his costume was rather thickly padded, anyway), as opposed to the explosive pain in his head.

The world fell silent as he fought for composure and turned around on his back, looking around.

The hostages were huddled up, holding their ears – at least those who hadn’t been knocked out.

What was that?

He looked at the storefront as he immediately began to use his power. He drew on the store of power inside him, pushing small pellets of power outside. Each pellet exploded into light, sound and smoke (though neither affected him) and threw out more pellets, which also exploded into light, sound and smoke, quickly covering him and his immediate surroundings in his trademark firework-mist. With barely an effort, he directed the explosions once he was covered, spreading it towards and over the hostages as well.

And not a second too soon, as the entire front of the bakery exploded – soundlessly – as three burly men in eight pieces were thrown through the window and the wall.

Oh God. He nearly threw up when he saw the ragged edges of their torn bodies, the intestines that trailed after them…

And then the machine stepped out of the store.

Fletch hesitated to call it a robot because it looked nothing like what one would expect of a robot; it looked like it had been haphazardly thrown together out of countless other devices. It had five “limbs”, multi-jointed spidery appendages, really. Each was tipped by a slew of different blades, guns and… other instruments whose purpose the young boy didn’t even want to think about. Its core was made of bigger, more rigid devices, with a single large red eye built into a hole in the whole construction. The whole thing had probably originally been coloured like a patchwork art piece, but someone had taken red dye and just dumped it over the whole thing, making it mostly bright red like a stop sign.

The eye moved within its socket, left and right, up and down, as the whole thing left the storefront with slow, ponderous movements.

Please, God, don’t let it see me. He didn’t know how his smoke interacted with contrivances. It was real, physical, but it only worked on normal vision and hearing (as well as heat vision, as the pellets generated quite a bit of heat), so if that thing had some weirder contrived senses, he’d have to abandon the hostages and flee.

He really didn’t want that on his conscience as well.

The mechanical abomination turned away from them and shambled – there really was no other way to describe the lurching steps, each of which seemed to bring it dangerously close to just collapsing into its constituent parts – away from them, all without making any sounds at all.

The young supervillain didn’t dare breath until it had left the place.

Pushing himself up, he tried to whisper into his communicator – but he couldn’t make a sound. Confused, he looked for his minions, calling out to them – but there were no sounds, at all.

A flash of understanding made him reach up to his ears. His fingers came off with blood on them.

Could my day possibly get any worse?

And that was when the hot girl with the multi-coloured hair and the guy in the white coat dropped down from the second level of the atrium. Before Fletch could even react, the two were already inside his smoke cloud, with the girl moving straight towards him.

Oh, come on!, he thought as they got to within a few feet of him.

Tapping into his second power, he sped up, rushing at the girl to tackle her down – briefing said she was a gadgeteer, and she didn’t seem to be packing any tech aside from her glove, which he should be able to easily evade as long as he stayed inside the cloud – and slammed right into her steel-like belly, knocked out before he even realised that he was outmatched.

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B010.5 Falling Hearts

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My life sucks.

Basil blinked, trying to get the stars out of his sight as he lay on the floor, unable to move. What happened?

They had just descended to the ground floor, to sneak past more enemy troops (it would have been foolish to rely on open combat, even with Polymnia’s secret power), keeping an eye out for enemies, and then…

He had gotten the feeling that he was about to get attacked, a prickling sensation at the back of his neck, and since he couldn’t see anything ahead, and they were in a narrow hallway, he’d dropped, turning and snapping his fingers (the signal they’d agreed on) in the same movement – and then he’d blacked out.

There was the sound of flesh impacting on flesh, with a side-order of bone, followed by a pained groan. Basil turned his head just in time to see a young m- no, a seriously over-muscled teenager in military fatigues and face paint go down, his legs and wrists crossed over his crotch.

Polymnia was standing in front of the guy, and it was quite obvious what she’d done, making him wonder whether she was a pragmatic fighter or just had issues with male reproductive organs. Two more people were facing her, standing further back with a floating orb made of swirling colour. Even as he took the situation in, the orb shot at Polymnia – who simply punched it back at the two, even though she flinched after her fist made contact.

There was a grunt of effort, and the orb slowed, then stopped before it hit the people in the back. Polymnia began to advance on them, slowly, her body now obscuring his vision of the two enemies.

Get up, Basil. You can not count on her toughness and strength alone. He did a quick check of his body, and found that his legs did not respond, but his arms did, though the right one was sluggish. Fortunately, he’d fallen so his left side pointed towards the fight – Polymnia was fighting off the sphere, which was flying around, shooting at her at oblique angles, trying to circumvent her defenses – but she kept punching it away, even though doing so always made her flinch.

That sphere is probably what knocked me out, Basil thought as he slowly moved a hand towards his belt. The sphere darted up and down at Polymnia, who jumped back to avoid being hit on the head, and he got a look at their foes – a tall guy in a swirly outfit that hurt his eyes, and a shorter girl in a red-and-white bodysuit, with a Japanese fox mask. They were both standing, shoulder to shoulder (or rather, rib to shoulder) with his left and her right arm outstretched, fingers laced together and pointing forward. He could not see their faces, or even eyes, but they seemed to be tense. Are they heterodyning? In mid-combat? It certainly seemed so, judging from their stance and the fact that only one power seemed to be at work, but heterodyning was supposed to be extraordinarily difficult to do under stress!

Either they are professionals or they have some exceptional talent at it. His hand gripped a throwing knife from his belt. Their suits seemed to be armored, and were probably protected against tasers, but a throwing knife might punch a hole in them. Even if it did not cause much damage, it should disrupt their power combination…

The orb shot at Polymnia a bit too high for a good kick, a bit too low to be anything but awkward to punch – but she simply jumped in a graceful motion, jumping higher than a normal person could without taking a running start, leaping over the orb with her arms extended…

And the sphere angled up by ninety degrees, ignoring all laws of physics to fly straight at her exposed belly (her final choice of costume was made of two pieces) as Swirly Guy’s head moved to track her.

Basil did not stop to wonder whether he maybe had enhanced senses or some manner of precognition to keep up with that – all that mattered was that he was distracted, and Fox Girl did not seem to be nearly so quick. He threw the knife, aiming for Swirly Guy’s center of mass, just as the orb was about to hit Polymnia.

The knife sank into Swirly Guy’s gut – not very deep, he had designed it with non-lethal use in mind – and his legs gave out beneath him. The colours in the orb stopped swirling just as it was about to touch Polymnia, turning into a solid blue instead.

Fox Girl turned her head to see what had happened as her friend sank down on his knees, and her sphere flew straight back at her like a cannonball, switching from blue to pink to green to yellow.

And Polymnia completed her vault, rolling over the floor until she was right in front of the girl – whose orb had just touched her stomach and was now circling her body, as if in preparation of being shot off again – and came up with a punch to her chin.

Flawless Shoryuken – just needs some fire, Basil thought as the girl collapsed without a sound, her orb popping like a soap bubble. We can probably make up a gadget for next time, though.

Polymnia looked at the fallen girl, then at Swirly Guy, who had fallen onto his back and was staring with what seemed to be disbelief at the triangular knife in his gut. She quickly checked him over, told him to stay put and came over to Basil, kneeling down next to him.

<Thanks for the assist. That orb was a pain in my butt,> she said as she helped him sit up with one hand (and no sign of any effort). <Do you have something to treat Fulcrum with? And restraints?> She propped him up, sitting, against the wall.

“Numb, getting better,” came his clipped response. “Left big belt pocket, first aid kit. Restraints in pocket to its right.” She nodded, removing the items and rushing over to their foes.

Basil paid no further attention to them, and instead scanned the hallway in both directions. They were just outside the stairwell they had used to come down here and there were no other entryways between it and where the three supervillains lay, so they had probably come out just behind them. How did we not notice them? He looked the other way, and saw only the empty hallway. Sensation was slowly returning to his legs And why are we not getting swarmed by minions? Why is Kudzu attacking a mall in the first place, and during rush hour, as well? And how is he preventing the authorities from noticing anything off about the situation?

He looked at their fallen enemies. Polymnia had zip-tied them by wrists and ankles, then ankle to wrist and finally tied them together back-to-back. It looked like she had treated Fulcrum’s (How does she know his cowl?) wound, and was just coming over with his cleaned knife and kit.

Carefully, he stood up and put them away, mumbling a ‘thank you’ before he stumbled over to Fulcrum and their other two captives. “Fulcrum, right?”

The guy looked up at him, his facial expression hidden by his mask, but Basil could tell that he was… afraid? Unexpected, but I can use that.

“W-what do you want?” the young man asked, voice shaky. The pain was audible.

“I want to know what is going on. Why is Kudzu here, why are you working for him, who else came with you and what is he planning next?” Conveying a glare through a featureless black mask was hard, but Basil did his best nonetheless.

Fulcrum flinched, but answered, “He hired us through the Syndicate. I have no idea what he wants or what exactly he plans next – I just know we were told to patrol, and take you two down if possible. Didn’t expect her to be a freaking brick and you to throw lethal weaponry at us!”

Basil slapped him just as he was starting to get winded up. “Calm down. If you are not prepared to face lethal opposition, then you have chosen the wrong career path. Now, who else is here?“

“J-just the boss, my team, a few burly guys who’re working on some kind of vault, an-“

An ear-piercing sound, like a metallic shriek, interrupted Fulcrum’s answer, making Basil flinch and almost collapse. Fuck, Polymnia!

He whirled around just in time to catch her as she collapsed, unconscious. Drawing his combat knife, he looked around – but there was no other enemy around. What the hell!?

 

* * * 

“May I ask another question?” the cloaked girl asked as they watched the progress on the vault door.

“Me answering to your questions is part of the contract, so yes, ask,” Kudzu said as he looked over the other monitors – the hostages in the central atrium, a few of the patrolling teams looking for whoever had taken down team three. No luck so far, their quarry was good at hiding and sneaking.

“Why didn’t you pull this job after closing hour, when there’d only be a few watchmen around? You’re using that insanely expensive contrivance to hide this action, all these troops to keep the hostages in line, there is at least one hero or vigilante caught up who most likely wouldn’t be here after closing hour…” She let the sentence trail off, leaving the rest to him.

I was wondering when this question would come up. “The vault we want to get into was created by a particularly paranoid contriver. It can only be opened during opening hours, and only if there is a certain minimal number of people inside to suggest that the mall is operating normally.”

Her next question came fast, “That sounds incredibly inconvenient for him, unless he had a backdoor key.”

Kudzu shook his head. “No and no. He didn’t bother with a backdoor key, as that could be stolen and used against him. And as for convenience, he owned the shop it was built under, and could come and go however he pleased, simultaneously providing an alibi for himself. That’s why we need the hostages, and at this time. As soon as the vault is open and the security systems circumvented, we will grab the target item and bail out with escape plan number one, four or seven, depending on the circumstances. No civilians will be harmed, there won’t be any serious property damage and we may even avoid a serious fight with the meddler within, not to mention the heroes outside, if they even notice anything before we’re gone for good.”

The cloaked girl’s hood dipped in a nod. “May I ask how we’re going to circumvent a contriver’s security systems?”

“The men working on it specialise in circumventing contrived security, and they have pulled a job on an installation of this particular contriver before, so they know his style,” he explained. It was kind of fun, teaching this girl. Usually, he had to really push to get people to listen closely to what he was trying to tell them.

“Unless he changed things up for this one,” she replied with a wry tone.

A chuckle from behind them made both Kudzu and the cloaked girl turn around, looking at the raggedly clad young woman – Phasma – in surprise. “What’s so funny?” the cloaked girl asked, suddenly unsure (quite off-balance, as his power told him).

Ah, classic. The most common weakness of inexperienced thinkers – a single unexpected event could throw them off.

“He’s a contriver, greenhorn,” Phasma said. “They don’t adapt well, at least not where their style is concerned. Their whole power comes from their style in the first place, changing it up would play hob with the reliability of their creations, if they’d work in the first place.” She looked straight at him, a red flash beneath her hood showing him where her eyes were. “Who was this guy, anyway? And what happened to him – he can’t be dead, or his stuff wouldn’t work anymore.”

He shrugged in response. “His name is Lanning; one of the truly mad ‘mad scientists’. He was taken down and locked up in the Tartarus Star space station, two years ago.”

“I heard about that loony. Didn’t he try to kick off a robot apocalypse?” the cloaked girl asked with renewed composure. “The New Lennston team took him down.”

“Yes, it was quite a fight,” Phasma supplied. “An entire city block was levelled to the ground, and three of the heroes almost died; Lysander had to retire, afterwards.”

“Hey, boss, I don’t mean to interrupt,” Leet suddenly spoke up, doing just that. “But Fulcrum won’t respond to my calls, nor B- Foxfire or LagForward. Also, it looks like the specialists are about to open the vault.”

Everyone turned to look at the screens. “Can you track their location?” he asked the surveillance specialist.

“They’re in the west wing, first floor, a-“

The specialists opened the vault at that moment. The live feed from the room cut off as an ear-piercing shriek made Kudzu scream in pain.

And then everything went wrong.

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B010.a The Other Side of the Coin

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A little later, Irene sat alone on the couch, dozing as her body digested the pancakes. It was not something she was used to, but she’d been trying to teach her power to let her, well, eat. Take nourishment from the food, instead of having it provided by her power. Her parents theorised that that ought to make it easier for her to control it, by relying less on it (though she drew the line at actually having to go to the bathroom. That was just gross, no way was she going through it).

She’d even tried to actually sleep for any meaningful amount of time, but it seemed that was something she’d have to work on for a while longer – it just wasn’t possible for her to sleep for more than an hour a week (and even that was a major improvement over her complete lack of sleep until last year). And if you took into account that it had taken her until her ninth year to be able to walk. And she wasn’t even going to think about how difficult it was to talk to people with words instead of telepathy (Melody thought it was a nifty feature of her power, but it was actually just her relaxing her control, returning to what she was used to).

Her eyelids began to droop, just a bit. That was a strange sensation, but not an unpleasant one. She’d just recently discovered it – before, going to sleep had just been like flipping a switch. But this… this was quite… pleasant…

When her eyes fell closed, the first thing she saw was Melody, the way she’d looked at her at the ice cream parlor just before they’d realised her power was messing with them; and Irene still felt wretched about it, but now it made sense, if she was truly in love with her then maybe-

What is love

Oh baby, don’t hurt me

Don’t hurt-

The sound of her cellphone woke her up again and her hand moved to pick it up – but it was only a text message. Mel- Oh!

LadyMom1900: Why am I concerned?

“What does she mean this time?” Irene asked no one in particular. She’d never gotten used to her mother’s eerie ability to just know when something – anything – was off. Even if it was just a finely honed intuition.

Gloomy2000: I don’t know?

The reply came near instantly.

LadyMom1900: Your father gave you advice again, didn’t he? What was it this time? Please tell me it wasn’t relationship advice.

Gloomy2000: How do you even know that!?

LadyMom1900: Mommy-Radar. Now, tell me what he said.

Irene’s thumbs paused over the screen as she actually stopped to process that line. It had to be a joke, but…

Gloomy2000: Do you actually have a superpower just for keeping tabs on me, or was that just a joke and you just had a bad gut feeling?

LadyMom1900: Yes 😉

Oh God, she’d discovered smileys. The world was doomed. I shouldn’t have set her up with this account.

Gloomy2000: That is not an answer.

LadyMom1900: Oh, but it is 😀 Just not a satisfying one 😛

The couch beneath Irene burst into flames. “Goddammit!” she shouted, floating off as it turned to ice.

It took three pills and half a minute of concentration to fix it again, and relax before she finally wrote an answer (fortunately, her mother didn’t press the issue – she probably knew she’d get her answers anyway).

Gloomy2000: I was talking to him about Melody, and how I feel around her, and he said that I’m probably in love with her.

LadyMom1900: What a *~#&!$§ blockhead!

Irene actually rocked back from the phone. Wow. She’s actually swearing.

LadyMom1900: Wait, is this doo-dad actually censoring my writing? What is even the purpose of censoring it, everyone with half a brain cell knows what it says anyway!

Gloomy2000: Moral guardians.

LadyMom1900: @$$h0l3$. There, like that could stop me. But let’s get back on topic. Baby, whatever you do, do not listen to your father when it comes to relationships, humor or interior decoration.

She didn’t really know how to respond to that.

Gloomy2000: It feels right, though.

The reply actually took a while, this time.

LadyMom1900: Baby, you really should have brought this up on Sunday, because this ought to have been said in person, not by mail. But I guess better this way than not at all (leaving you with just your Dad’s view on things). You are twelve years old, and Melody is the first person around your age who’s spent any significant amount of time with you, or paid you real attention. You trust her, she trusts you and you both enjoy spending time together and seeing the other one happy. That is love, but it’s not the

LadyMom1900: same as being in love. I’ve explained the Four Loves to you before, and I’d put my money on Philia for this one, not Eros. At most, you may have a crush on her, which is, again, different from actually being in love. And that is just fine. It doesn’t have to be true love, and you don’t need to look for more than Philia from this – just knowing that you’ve found your first real friend, after all the troubles you’ve had on your way, makes me want to sing and dance. Your father, unfortunately, has

LadyMom1900: always been prone to thinking in extremes; do remind me to tell you about the Bloody Teddy Incident in our eleventh year – and I’m afraid that his wishes for you colour his perceptions too strongly for him to offer reliable advice when it comes to such matters. In conclusion, I ask you to take a step back and really analyse this. I know that’s a counter-intuitive approach at your age and in your situation, but ‘following your heart’ without using your brain only works out well in cheap novels (

LadyMom1900: or by pure chance). I’m sure if you look closer at your interactions with and feelings for Melody, you’ll realise that it is not a romantic relationship you want or need. And don’t forget what I told you about having a boy- or girlfriend before you’re a teenager!

Now her vision got a little blurry. It always made so much sense when her mom explained things.

LadyMom1900: What ridiculousness is this?! We can shoot people to Mars on rockets and get online near-anywhere on the world, but we can’t have messages longer than five hundred letters? How come no one’s fixed that by now!?

Chuckling wetly, Irene wrote a reply.

Gloomy2000: That’s because you’re using your cellphone’s text messaging function. Use the chat program with the blue icon for longer messages.

LadyMom1900: (^_^)7

Shaking her head, Irene went back to writing a reply to… well, the important part.

Gloomy2000: I’m not sure if I can do what you ask of me. I just don’t know how to deal with all these sensations!

LadyMom1900: Welcome to puberty, baby. Nothing’s ever going to be quite as horrible as the years to come, I promise you.

Gloomy2000: Gee, that makes me feel much better. Also, I’ll be a teenager in less than two months, anyway!

LadyMom1900: And you’ll wait, at least, until the very last second before you even think about a relationship like that, or I’ll ask Uncle Jake to start telling you all his knock-knock jokes >:-(

That was actually a horrifying threat, if one knew the quality of Jake’s jokes.

Gloomy2000: (0_0)

LadyMom1900: There, now that we’ve got that out of the way – is there anything else you need? A hug? A kiss? I can be home in less than fifteen minutes, if you need me.

Gloomy2000: No no, I know you have to work, and I’m honestly much better now. Besides, I need some time to think it all over by myself. What are you up to, anyway?

LadyMom1900: There was a dam breach in South China, but I’ve mostly fixed that. I’m just going to hunt down a local supervillain, then I’ll fly to Australia and try to get Maddie to lay off the Protectorate for now; maybe even convince her to help stabilise the situation in Russia.

Gloomy2000: Cool! Be safe, and greet Maddie from me – tell her I miss her!

LadyMom1900: Roger! You be safe, too, and don’t let anything get you down, baby. Enjoy your week off, and don’t let your father keep you from inviting Mellybean over! Hugs and kisses! ❤

She shut her phone off and put it aside, lying back on the couch. Despite it all, she could feel a smile on her lips. That came at just the right time.

Wiggling around on the couch, she got herself more comfortable without the use of her power, before she had to giggle again. Mellybean. Where did that nickname come from? I wonder what Melody will think of it.

Perhaps she should take her mother’s advice and not listen to her father too much; surely it couldn’t hurt checking up on Melody for just a moment…

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B010.4 Falling Hearts

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Polymnia pushed her fingers into the lock of the shop’s backdoor. Somehow, their opposition had managed to lock it down, even though Basil had cut the connection to the central system – whoever was sitting at the controls must have managed to reroute it. Neither he nor Polymnia had said it out loud, but they both knew – if the enemy had a gadgeteer or, worse yet, a computer-contriver on their side, then their situation was much worse than they expected.

However, they did have an ace up their sleeve – namely, Polymnia’s secret power, and it served them well as she simply pushed the lock out of the frame, letting the door fall open. Silently, they moved out – Polymnia had already put her ear to the door, and heard no one on the other side; and because that alone was not sufficient to dispel their doubts, Basil had also used a small telescoping camera to check at the same time – and down the corridor. Since the enemy obviously had taken over the central control room, their best chance at getting a signal out was to find the server room and work from there. Which meant going deeper into the arcades.

While they were moving, looking for the next stairway to take (not the same one they had used before). As they did, Basil was going through possible scenarios in his head, trying to figure out alternate courses of action. Trying to break out by main force would be foolish – even if Kudzu didn’t have something prepared to prevent that, the arcades had been built to act as an emergency shelter for citizens during S-Class events; it was highly unlikely that they could break out, even with Polymnia’s strength, before the enemy responded. His own communication devices were not working, and…

“Polymnia,” he whispered, making her stop and turn to look at him (she had insisted on leading the way, arguing quite convincingly that she was both tougher and more likely to hear an attack coming). “Have you tried using your emergency beacon?” he asked, but he knew before he had even finished his sentence that she had – her facial expression said it all.

<That was the first thing I tried. No one’s reacted yet, so I turned it off to avoid being tracked by it,> she explained without whispering. Earlier, she had told him that her vocaliser, though it looked quite ordinary, contained a directed speaker and thus she could make sure only he heard her if she wanted to (and there was a clear line of sight between them). <And I haven’t been able to reach Gloom Glimmer over the telepathic link she set up, either.>

That was new information. “What could possibly be blocking her power?” he asked, worried. Basil was not one to give up easily, but if Kudzu had someone capable of messing with Gloom Glimmer, then he doubted they stood the slightest chance.

To his relief, Polymnia dispelled those thoughts when she shook her head and replied, <No, she’s simply out of range – we both have this week off, and she wanted to spend a few days at home with her father.>

“Oh, right, members have to regularly take time off – I never really thought much about that,” he replied, slightly distracted.

<Well, not everyone can be Lady Light, and even she takes an entire day a week off to recover, even if she spends the other six working non-stop,> she replied. <But now we should hurry. Enough delays.> And she turned around and walked onwards again.

Basil nodded, and followed, idly wondering how the Dark and Irene spent their bonding time…

* * *

The Whitaker House, somewhere on the East Coast

Irene yawned, stretching her legs and spreading her toes, feeling them pop a little. She’d always enjoyed that sensation, as if something popped out of and into place again. It was a fleeting distraction from her frustration at having to stay at home today. Oh, sure, she enjoyed spending time with her dad, and she didn’t mind taking a week off work – she’d always thought her mother was crazy, teleporting and flying around the whole world twenty-four-six in order to help people, only resting when… well, on Sundays – but she would have liked to invite Melody for a sleepover (it wasn’t like she didn’t already know this house, and Melody wasn’t going to sell the location to any newsies or anything, anyway) or at least a meal and some girl time, but…

“Aaaand they’re done!” the man known to most of the world as the Dark and as ‘dad’ to her (Petey to his fiancée/wife/soulmate/whichever word could possibly describe a relationship that had literally started at birth and lasted, with a few fits and starts, for more than a hundred years and still counting) exclaimed, leaving the large kitchen, which opened directly into the living room, a pan in one hand from which he flicked several perfectly formed chocolate-chip pancakes onto her plate.

Irene wasn’t exactly what one would call a girl interested in great culinary experiences (the lack of need for nourishment made it hard to really enjoy it to its fullest), but even she loved her father’s pancakes, and they were almost, almost enough for her to forgive him for forbidding her from inviting Melody over. Eagerly, she brushed her hair aside and stretched out on the couch. The first pancake floated up off the plate, neatly falling apart into bite-sized pieces, the first of which flew straight into her mouth.

Moaning in simple delight, she chewed it slowly, enjoying the rich taste… there was nothing quite like chocolate to calm the nerves and take the edge off the frustration.

Her father filled his own plate, then put the pan away, as well as the apron he’d been wearing (not that he’d needed to have bothered with that – it was still pristine) and sat down next to her, idly lifting her legs so they lay across his lap. “I gather that you like them?” he asked, though he knew the answer already, beginning to cut his own meal.

She opened an eye, not interrupting the steady stream of bites that flew into her mouth, and his own pancakes fell apart, the first piece floating up to his mouth. With a chuckle, he leaned back and ate the first piece. “Mmm, I really am magnificent,” he said with his mouth half full, causing her to roll her eyes.

“You know, it’s bad form to compliment yourself,” she grumbled in between two bites.

“But then how am I going to get enough praise?” he asked back, one hand petting her shin. “Unless I start brainwashing enough people to constantly praise me… that might help me finally get enough of my well-deserved adoration,” he continued, faking a pensive look. She’d gotten pretty good, by now, at telling when he was serious and when he was just joking around (without a mantle of darkwraiths, he actually had quite a few tells).

“You could, you know, earn it. Put on a nice costume and become a hero,” she shot back. “Perhaps if you used your powers for good…”

“Bah! Being a hero would drive me crazy, I tell you. Sometimes, I just don’t get how Gwen manages it,” he replied, waving the oft-repeated idea off.

She’d been proposing variations of it every since she’d been two. “I keep telling people and she keeps telling them, and you of all people should know, mom isn’t a superhero,” Irene said, annoyed.

“Bah twice! The only one who believes that is Gwen herself,” he replied, moving onto his second pancake (well, it moved into his mouth, technically). “This world would have been fucked to hell decades ago if it wasn’t for her.”

“Language!” she reprimanded him, but did not push the issue. They’d repeated this argument very, very often – it would really be quite funny, Irene thought, if she wasn’t so close to the subject, that the Dark was the most vocal defender of her mother’s status as a superhero (against her own will). “There are children present!”

He snorted, but fell silent, and they ate quietly for a while, until there were no more pancakes left (the plates were already sparkling clean again and floated back into the cupboard).

“Are you still mad that I told you not to invite your friend?” he asked after a few minutes of silence.

Grumbling, she shook her head. “Not mad, just… why not? She’s… she’s my best friend, why can’t we have a sleepover, we’ve been doing it regularly at the base,” she sulked, hugging herself.

“Because you, of all people, need the time off,” he replied. “Not just from patrol and that – from pretending, too. Speaking of which,” he gave her a meaningful look. Sighing, she relaxed her hold on her power, and…

There was a, to her, noticable shift in the… the mood, or perhaps it was the atmosphere in the room. She felt her body relax (she hadn’t noticed she was tense, at all), her hair lengthened, becoming somehow even darker, with glimmers of light showing from within the depths of jet-black strands, like stars in pitch-black night. And her eyes… Irene didn’t like to think about how her eyes looked when she wasn’t keeping a tight leash on it. She didn’t need a mirror to see the black sclera, or the ruby-red iridae on the crystal-like cornea. And there was, of course, always the song, this low, beautiful, bewitching song that was everywhere if she wasn’t holding back a lot. Neither her father nor her mother knew – or wanted to tell her – where it came from or what it meant.

Nonetheless, as much as she might have disliked looking like this, it did feel good. Perhaps too good, but still; like having been forced to wear tight, restraining clothing all day, and thick shoes, and then finally throwing them all off in the evening in preparation for a warm bath…

“Much better,” her father said. “You mustn’t always pretend. You’re straining your power too much, reigning it in at every turn.”

“If I don’t, bad things happen,” she replied, her voice somehow resounding while still within her mouth, coming out stronger, more than was normal. “Remember the incident at the dance club in Rio?“

“That was only partly your fault, and fortunately, your mother never found out about that,” he replied, as if that made it all better. “Besides, no one sane and sensible would expect you to always be in control. Not to mention the fact that by straining it that much, you are only inviting a greater loss of control at just the wrong time; like a chord that has been wound too tightly. Best to loosen it every now and then; vent it, to use another metaphor, so as to avoid a real explosion.” He was repeating the same argument she’d been hearing for years now, and like always, she couldn’t argue againt it. “Just relax. You’re safe, I’m safe, there’s no one around for several miles and you can just be yourself for now.”

“I don’t see why I’m not allowed to be myself around Melody,” she sulked, though less so than before.

“Because even if she may be trustworthy herself, she well become a victim to a telepath and so spill your sec-“

Irene saw red. “If anyone even looks at her that way, I’ll tear them to shreds!” shouted, and every single syllable made the very ground shake.

He just looked at her with his maddening calm smile, still stroking her leg. “Of course you would. But best not to provoke such a situation – at the very least, it would make your mother very sad if you were to kill someone.”

That was always the worst argument he could throw at her, and it worked, deflating her quite a bit. “It’s so weird. When I’m with Melody, I rarely even remember to control myself, and yet it works… mostly. It’s almost as easy as letting… go…” She stopped talking as he gave her a serious, pensive look. “What?“

“Hm,” he grunted. “Say, Irene… what is Melody to you, really? You know you can tell me,” he asked her.

Why is he asking that? she asked herself, blushing hotly… but not quickly enough to show before her power drained the excess blood from her face again. It reached up, out, towards her father to get an-

No. A single word, spoken with the aid of a darkwraith that had appeared from nowhere, and he’d shut her inquiry down, just like that. He didn’t even look angry or annoyed.

Retreating a little deeper into her cushions (they swelled a little, wrapping tighter around her body), Irene thought his question over. “She is… she has… I feel like, she’s necessary. I feel better when she’s around, and even more so when she’s happy. I don’t like being away from her. I want to entrust my secrets to her, and have hers entrusted to me. I…“ She closed her mouth, unwilling to continue.

Either way, it appeared to be enough. He nodded, a sagely look on his face.

“What?” she asked, curious. “What are you thinking?“

“You know… I’m not exactly an expert on this,” he began, making her pay even more attention. He so rarely admitted not being an expert at anything, and he rarely wasn’t, anyway. “I’ve always had your mother. I don’t remember falling in love with her, because that would imply that there was a time before we loved each other – and there wasn’t, not any meaningful, conscious time,” he continued. “I’ve fallen for… one other woman, in all my years, and that was nothing like what I feel for Gwen, and I was already long since an adult by then; so I’m not exactly the best source of wisdom on this; but I think you. Are. In. Love.” He grinned at her.

“A-are you serious!? H-how can I be – I barely even know what part of my emotions is mine, and what is its!” she replied, exasperated. And maybe, just maybe, a little hopeful… could she finally be able of some real human emotion, independent of her power?

“I can only judge by what I see and hear, but to me, sweetheart, it seems like you’re quite simply in love,” he said simply. “Or at the very least, you have a strong crush on her.”

“And this isn’t just you trying to hook me up with a hot girl? Because Mom told me how you’ve been trying to set her up wi-“

He waved a hand, cutting her off. “Irene, please! I wouldn’t do that with my own daughter!” He looked honestly shocked that she even considered it, and for a moment she almost felt guilty.

“But you’d try to set up the love of your life with other hot chicks…“

“First of all, you’re way too young to use terms like ‘hot chick’, if you ask me. Not that you should be using a term like ‘chick’ at all, especially in any relation to your mother,” he replied with an indignant expression on his face. “And secondly, well, a guy can dream, can’t he?”

She rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t deny his logic. The thought of her, and Melody, alone, well…

I really take too much after him.

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B010.2 Falling Hearts

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Kudzu was not a very intimidating figure to look at. He was tall, too thin to be entirely healthy and had cheekbones you could cut titanium with. His black hair was curly, but not very long, his eyes had a kind of wet, blue-green colour, like the water at a shore full of algae. His overall image was not improved by his perfectly ironed white shirt, the professional pocket protector holding several pens and his casual-office-wear-style jeans and white sneakers. And the cheap-looking blue cloth mask he wore, covering his face from his nose and up, did not do him any favours, either.

All in all, the man calling himself Kudzu did not look like the supervillain he professed to be, and he certainly could not be threatening to anyone who wasn’t deathly afraid of clerks.

Not that he minded. He’d built most of his early career on not being taken seriously. When the heroes came after a villain group, they tended to ignore the guy who looked like a clerk and focus on the garishly clothed ones – giving him a good chance to use whatever escape plan he had ready. And Kudzu always had an escape plan ready. Or twenty. Wiggling out (or into) things was kind of his speciality, after all.

Another difference between Kudzu and the average supervillain was that he mostly worked as a consultant, helping other villains along with their crimes – for a price. It was rare indeed that he took point on a venture, such as today.

Unfortunately, the job had been quite urgent and he hadn’t had the time to find a suitable figurehead. Especially since he’d had to hire his minions through the Syndicate, using the cheaper options (always wiggling out of a bad situation unfortunately didn’t include always getting away with the money, not to mention the fact that locked up supervillains were unlikely to pay what he was owed), and had gotten stuck mostly with teenagers. He’d blown most of his reserves on prep work, hiring a true professional to procure some sensitive information necessary for the job itself – there’d been no other way to get it, even for someone with Kudzu’s mind.

Since no one would believe a teenager had been the mastermind behind this action over him, especially not once they figured out what he was actually after, he didn’t even bother, and was taking the helm for this.

He threw a glance over his shoulder, at the three figures that were with him in the central computer and surveillance office. One sat in front of the monitors, working furiously to twist the system to their use. One of the rare teenage gadgeteers out there, and a specialist for surveillance, as well. It was only thanks to his inexperience that Kudzu had been able to afford him. He’d do his job, hopefully.

At least I lucked out on the other one.

Behind the pudgy boy, two girls stood, both, ironically, dressed in cloaks with hoods, but with far different styles.

One wasn’t even really a member of his team. The Syndicate had sent her along to observe – most likely a mastermind in training. He’d been offered a bargain in hiring the other cloaked girl, in exchange for bringing her along and answering any questions she might have. Her cloak was dark blue, and fell over her shoulders to hide her whole body, unless she moved too vigoriously. He didn’t even know her name. And frankly, she’d proven more than a little annoying so far – not due to her questions, they were usually restrained and on the mark, but rather because she had some manner of enhanced perception like him, perhaps even some minor precognition – just being around her made his power have to work overtime, accounting every possible change to his plans that needed to be made simply because of her effect on his calculations.

But she was worth it, as he got a true heavyweight along with her – just in case the peacekeepers realised something was amiss and came in to fight.

He watched the red-handed girl in the dirty, ragged cloak, as she didn’t seem to notice his attention while she watched the computer screens. Her cloak was in bad shape, not due to her style but simply due to lack of care. Ragged, torn, exposing too much flesh to be decent when she moved the wrong way – but she didn’t seem to care, at all. There was even the smell of old alcohol and worse on that cloak, though she was mercifully sober right now (a professional, even in her current state). The other two took care never to take a breath with their noses in her direction. He didn’t know what had happened to her, but whatever it was, she was obviously not dealing well with it. One could almost taste the pent-up need for aggression, for release inside her.

Which meant that, if it came down to violence, she’d be more than willing and able to provide most of it. And that was what he needed her for.

“Leet, anything strange going on?” he asked the young Gadgeteer.

“Nope, Sir,” came the reply. “The mall is locked down – thank God for easily hacked security systems – our people are patrolling the place looking for any stragglers, and I’ve got the surveillance system dancin’ to my tune.”

“How’re the specialists doing?”

Leet tapped an icon on the screen and called up a particular security feed from what seemed to be a vault room. Several men of very impressive strength were tearing up the floor with their bare hands, slowly uncovering a hidden vault door worked into the reinforced concrete of the place. “We’re still true to your schedule, Sir! This ought to be easy wo- huh.”

“‘Huh’?” asked Kudzu. He hated it when people cut a sentence off like that. It usually meant something was not going according to plan. And he loathed it when that happened.

“Um, I lost a camera, down in the employee hallways of the clothing section. And one of the shops,” Leet said, sounding annoyed.

“Can you tell whether they were destroyed, disconnected or just turned off?” the cloaked girl asked the question Kudzu would have asked next.

Well, she’s certianly picking it up fast.

Leet shook his head. “I got nuthin’,” he said, surly. Kudzu was ninety-two percent sure that he had a crush on the girl in the cloak, and would have preferred to impress her.

At least he’s properly motivated. “Call up the security feeds from all the stores and hallways around that shop, now. Which one was it?” he asked.

“SuperWear, a shop for hero and villain costumes and such,” Leet said. “No idea why anyone would want to get into that in such a situation…”

This time, Kudzu got it first. “I can. It’s a great place for a hero who was here in their civilian identity and doesn’t have his or her costume at hand – even if they can’t find a replica of their usual costume, there’s still enough there to conceal their identity.”

“So, we have at least one unidentified metahuman of unknown intention in here,” the cloaked girl. “Depending on his or her abilities, that might be a problem.”

“Maybe. But I did plan for this. Send in team three – they are allowed to use lethal force if necessary, but should try and get him or her alive to us,” he ordered. Leet immediately send out the orders.

“Why take them alive?” the cloaked girl asked, confused. “Wouldn’t it be more prudent to just shoot them?” Despite her words, she didn’t seem to like the idea, though.

“Ah, let me guess, you read that ‘Evil Overlord List’, right?” Kudzu asked. Maybe having a mastermind in training along wasn’t such a bad idea – it gave him something to amuse himself with while waiting for news.

“Yes.”

“Good stuff, good stuff… I wrote some of it. It’s mostly rubbish though, you know? We need the drama, and the heroes surviving, because villains who go around killing willy-nilly tend to attract uncomfortable attention,” he explained patiently as he saw, on the screens, how team three – six heavily armed men, trained to fight metahumans – took place outside the store on both ends – the employee entrance and the main entrance.

“What exactly do you mean?”

“Well, why do you think supervillains mostly keep to a certain code when doing their deeds?” he asked. “It’s certainly not because we’re all such nice chaps, you know? It’s because those supervillains who murder without restraint, or take certain… freedoms,” he explained, avoiding the use of the proper word in front of the three teenagers (two of whom were almost certainly minors), “with defeated enemies, or otherwise don’t restrain themselves, invite increasingly escalating response from the United Heroes. All the way up to Quetzalcoatl and, ultimately, Lady Light (and, I guess, Gloom Glimmer – she certainly has the power). Not to mention that, though villains are more numerous and more powerful on average, heroes are far, far better trained and organised. So we play nice and, in return, heroes refrain from killing us and try to bring us in alive.”

He looked straight at the cloaked girl. “Get it? A dangerous villain reads the list and acts accordingly to it. A competent villain knows when to show mercy and be inefficient, in exchange for the insurance of not being attacked with lethal intent.”

“I guess that makes sense,” the cloaked girl replied contemplatively. “I’ve heard people complain about heroes being too soft on villains, about them having to use more force…”

“Which would only lead to escalation. We’d go right back to the early days, before the time of the United Heroes and the Syndicate. The only reason there’s still an America left to make those claims is that there were so much, much fewer metahumans than nowadays, back when there was no code. So we’ll play nice and try to capture whoever is in that shop and see how we can use them to our advantage… while still playing nice.”

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B010.1 Falling Hearts

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November 10th, 2:00 pm

Basil was walking through the Bright Arcades – the city’s biggest shopping and entertainment hub, making up the center of the Brights. He was not usually comfortable here – too many, way too many people, no way to keep an eye on them and that just made him jumpy – but he had some shopping to do.

Another problem was that he was quite angry right now.

Basil was not used to being angry. Oh, he got angry during combat, every now and then, and sometimes he read or heard or saw something that made him furious – but he found it hard to stay angry – it usually discharged quickly, and not too rarely in the form of either violence (if in battle) or some manic (well, more manic than usual) work on some gadget (or several). But this… this shimmering anger, and the headaches that went with it, ever since he had finally worked up the courage to confront Amy – they had just finished dinner (she was usually in a calm mood after a meal), sat down on the couch together to just relax, and he had… brought the issue up. It had not gone well.

That had taken place last wednesday, three days after his talk with Magnus. Amy had not talked to him in the two and a half days since, which was longer than they had ever spent without talking to each other. She did not even sneak into his bed at night anymore, which was just worrying. She had been doing that ever since he could remember… all the way back.

Not like he wanted her to – she had completely blown him off when he had tried to explain to her why he was upset, that he wanted her to turn over a new leaf – and frankly, the more he thought about it, the less he understood why he had waited for so long to confront her about it. These last few months, ever since he had manifested, had just been… intense. Too much to deal with, and he had somehow been able to push the whole issue with Amy to the back of his head. Again and again.

I should have spoken out on the first day I learned about it. He was just as angry with himself as he was with her. But the biggest reason why he was angry was because he was powerless.

If he was honest with himself, then he was really way in over his head. Ever since he jumped into his suit for the first time, he had been tangling with people way over his weight class. The Snow Queen had been downright harmless. Just on his team, he had an incredibly powerful and rare true probability manipulator, a contriver who could pretty much make anything, given time (she was already working on a teleportation ‘enchantment’) and a projector who could go toe-to-toe with a giant fecal monster and emerge unscathed. And let us not even get started on Gloom Glimmer. He was boxing way out of his weight class.

And his enemies… two S-Class threats in less than three months. Most superheroes got through their career with no more than three such events total. Not to mention apparently having the eye of the Savage Six on himself.

And my sister is on the same level as those monsters, he thought as he looked through a storefront advertising stuffed animals. No, not her style.

And even if he could influence her – what would the Dark do in response? He certainly had an interest in Amy being as amoral as possible (while still being controllable).

“No one’s ever achieved anything by giving up”, Magnus repeated in his head, waggling a finger.

So, despite all the issues, Basil was going to… negotiate. He was going to get back into Amy’s good graces, and do what he could to change her, and fuck the consequences.

Thus, he had asked Prisca what to do (without explaining the specific problem – he just said that he and Amy had had a fight and that he wanted to mend things again), and she had advised him to get her a present. All fine and well.

Next, he had asked her what present to get her, which had caused Prisca (currently using her power – he was still not allowed to see her real body, as her mother had climbed to new heights of paranoia) to hit him over the head and tell him that he had better know what to buy his own sister.

So he had gone and talked to Vasiliki (who said she would kick him in the ass if he asked her that again), to Timothy (who had no more a clue than he did), to Aimi (who just looked at him as if he was being silly) and then, out of sheer desperation, to Dalia. She had been acting kind of weird since last monday, and he had not expected much, but…

It is kind of sad that Dalia is currently my only source of useful advice, he thought. She had told him to get Amy something that he would not normally have gotten for her, to show that he was really putting some thought into it, and not running on autopilot.

Which meant buying something instead of making it himself.

“Also, make sure it’s something that really fits her, to show you’re thinking about her. And something nice, too. You’re thinking nice stuff about her.”

If he was not so focused on Amy, he would probably be a little disturbed by how… smart Dalia could be every now and then.

So now he was looking through the stores – the Bright Arcades were really the best place to shop for just about anything (there had even been a rumor about a shop that sold superpowers here, though it had been thoroughly debunked).

Maybe some pony merchandise? She is really into that show… He looked at a store for little girl stuff as he walked by. What is the name of the purple one ag-

Unfortunately, walking around the Arcades without looking forward was a good way to run into someone, and so he did.

“I am so sorry!” he said, looking at the woman he had almost bowled over.

“Oh, not to worry – I wasn’t paying attention myself!” said the dark-skinned woman. She looked vaguely familiar, beautiful but not extremely so, with a colourful peacock pin in her hair. Checking her watch, she gave a small start, walking quickly by him. “I need to go! Goodbye, Macian!”

“What!?” He whirled around, but she was gone already. What the hell?

She had called him Macian. Who was that person!? And why did she call him that?

And just then, his plans were completely derailed as the Arcades locked down.

* * *

The automated blast-proof door- and window-shutters slammed down with booming sounds that made the windows of the shops rattle. The lights went off, all at once, and the screaming started.

What the hell!?

Basil had been just standing next to a shop’s door, and he moved into the door, to avoid getting trampled. And then, the lights went on again, and a voice came out of the public announcement system.

<Hello and a good day to you all! This Kudzu speaking, supervillain extraordinaire and your hostage taker for this fine saturday afternoon,> said a voice with a cultured New England accent. <Please remain calm and gather in the central atrium on the ground level. Behave, and no one will be harmed – scout’s honor! If you try to leave, contact the outside world – don’t bother with cellphones, we’ve cut the Arcades off completely – or hinder us, me and my associates will use force to… chastise you.>

Kudzu, Kudzu… He knew that name, but he could not quite remember the details. A mastermind kind of villain.

Meanwhile, the people outside were already moving towards the atrium with a minimum of fuss – there were regular drills on proper behaviour in this kind of situation.

Drills Basil did not intend to obey. Moving deeper into the shop, he pulled his cellphone out, but found that even his connection to the outside world was cut off – both telephone and internet were down. Great. And Eudocia probably will not notice me being offline, since she is having a girl’s day with the others. Why had he not thought of installing some automated alarm in case his connection cut off? It was so basic.

Nonetheless, he was not without means as he moved into the staff room in the back (no cameras there). Pulling his jacket off, he opened a latch, reached inside and pulled, inverting the jacket – now it was white, with his emblem in the back. The whole thing was made of two layers of kevron with a wire mesh made of his ceramic in between to stop knives and other pointy weapons. From a pouch on the inside, he pulled a black full-face mask out, followed by a belt with some basic equipment he kept hidden in his bag.

It was not much, but it was better than nothing.

From the staff room, he entered the staff-only hallways, narrow ways that were supposed to allow quick movements around the Arcades out of sight of the customers. There were cameras here, again, but there was nothing he could do about that right now.

I need floor maps of the Arcades, and I need to find the central computer room – destroy any recordings of myself, open a channel to the outside. There was no telling if people outside could even tell that there was something amiss in here. At least, the chance that they could not was too high to rely on a swift rescue.

A mastermind would not pull off something like this without making sure he could keep the heroes away.

He saw an elevator (bad idea) and a door into a stairwell (better idea). The computer room was probably in the administrative area at the top of the football stadium sized Arcades.

Off we go, I g-

Ducking, he barely, barely evaded a scything kick to his head, drawing a knife in an unconscious motion – and then he was up, grabbing a punching arm to twist his attacker around and slam them into the wall, knife to their thro-

“Oh. You,” he said in a surprised voice.

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B009.b Strange Fish

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‘Café Rosso’, New Jersey

“Two chocolate pancakes and two coffee for table six!”

Elsbeth – Elsi to her friends – hurried over to the counter to pick up the order, balancing it on a tray which she held with one hand up next to her shoulder, and walked towards the table – two guys were sitting there, so she put some extra swing into her walk, hoping for a generous tip later on. They’d certainly stared at her enough already to warrant it.

Once more, she doubted her decision to work in this place, as her movements to put the food and drinks on the table showed off more cleavage than she was really comfortable with. This place was known for its rather provocative waitress uniforms – cut to emphasise the best parts of the wearer – and for only hiring pretty girls for the job. It paid well, and Elsi was trying to pay her way through college, so she’d taken the job. And honestly, I shouldn’t complain so much – it really does pay well.

Elsi was pretty, but not pretty enough for a job in one of the really expensive places, or as a model or anything – it was nearly impossible to compete with the metahumans there, or the girls who’d been able to afford plastic surgery by Doctor Beauty (be it with money or for ‘favours’). Working in this place had been the only job she’d been able to find that didn’t involve sleezy work, at least at a reasonable distance to the flat she shared with three other girls her age.

So she brushed a blonde strand of hair behind her ear, flirted a little with the guys and then went to pick up the next order. The next one certainly wouldn’t make her feel so… on edge. Her favourite customer had ordered his usual breakfast earlier, and she saw Waldo, the cook, put the eclectic menu on the counter for her to pick up – no need to call out, there was really only one person who bought that combination, and it was always her who served him.

Quickly, Elsi picked it all up – extra-thin pancakes, a cup of honey, a cup of strawberry jam, fried bacon, canned pineapple and hot milk – and took them to the rearmost table, which stood in the corner and allowed one to see most of the place without being seen all that well in return.

A week and a half ago, a new customer had sat down there, and Elsi had been the first to serve him. At first, she’d thought he was some kind of pervert, come here to watch all the pretty girls and eat cheap food. But no, he hadn’t looked at her cleavage once, and she was pretty sure he’d never bothered to watch her ass, either! In fact, he barely flirted with her, unless she initiated, and even then, only to humor her, she was sure.

Honestly, he seemed a little shy, which was just crazy, considering how good-looking he was. Not superhero-stuff, no, but definitely above the average. His name was Cedric, he was a travelling artist who was spending a few weeks in New Jersey to search for ‘inspiration’, and he was the nicest guy she’d ever met. It helped that he was too old to be interesting for her, so no crush to screw things up (Elsi was very awkward around people she crushed on).

“Hey Cedric!” she greeted him with a genuine smile.

He looked up from the book he’d been reading (one of Shakespeare’s plays, though she didn’t know which one) and smiled back, making dimples appear on his cleanly shaven face. His messy red-blonde hair had been washed and combed into a semblance of order, his teeth were white as new tableware and his warm brown eyes made her think of molten chocolate, the overall look complemented by lots of laugh lines around his eyes and mouth. He looked a lot like her father – or at least, how she’d always imagined her father would look like, if she ever met him. A little too short, but otherwise just right.

“Hello Elsi honey,” he greeted her, voice as warm as his eyes. “Ah, you know how to make a man happy!” he added when she put his breakfast down, and he immediately went to work – half the honey into the steaming hot milk, the rest onto the bacon. Jam and pineapples spread over the three pancakes, followed by bacon for each, and then he rolled them up.

The first time she’d seen him do this, she’d felt like hurling, but by now, she’d just accepted it as one of his quirks (God knew he had enough of them).

“And how is your day treating you so far?” he asked, waiting a little for his milk to cool while he used a spoon to stir it up and dissolve the honey.

Looking quickly around, she saw that no one was paying attention right now – people rarely did, when she was this far back (in fact, the other waitresses barely noticed Cedric – it was always Elsi who picked him out and served him) – so she had a minute or two to chat. “Same as ever, really. You’d think with the winter weather we’d have less tourists, but they still pour in in droves. Lots of legwork.” She tapped the side of her bare leg (these skirts were seriously tiny), winking at him.

“Eh, something tells me there’s gonna be less work for you in the near future,” he said, still stirring his milk. “And how’s college? You had an exam yesterday, right? Introduction to Metahuman Legal History, if I remember it right? How did it go?”

“Like you ever forget anything, Cedric,” she replied merrily. “Thanks for asking, and it went great – your help with my prepwork really paid out, thank you!” He’d been reviewing her practice exams, and discussing the subject with her during her breaks. It was almost a shame he was an artist, because he’d have made an awesome teacher – somehow, he could just get you to pay attention and focus, something she’d always had trouble with before. “And now that I got that out of the way, it’s smooth sailing until the end of semester exams…”

And that was another great thing about Cedric – he listened. He was perfectly content slowly sipping his milk and taking small bites out of his rolled-up pancakes while she told him about her day at the university, about her problems with her flatmates (Jenny and Jessy had broken up – again – and were on the warpath with each other – again – until the inevitable make-up-sex – again), about that one teacher who seemed to have it in for her, the other one who was always looking at her ass, her bitchy boss here at work…

Speaking of which, the nearby door into the kitchen had swung open when one of her colleagues rushed through, and she saw that that fat bitch Clarice had just started chewing out one of the new girls again – a mousy little thing named Marcy, who’d just barely made the cut, but they needed more waitresses to deal with all the customers they were having lately. Apparently, the girl had messed up two orders, and one customer had complained about it, which of course meant that Clarice was now in the process of humiliating the girl in front of half the staff – like a small mistake like that couldn’t happen to anyone here!

“I’m sorry, Cedric, but I gotta help Marcy,” she told him regretfully. They had little enough time to chat as it was, without her being distracted.

He didn’t seem to mind, though. “Don’t mind me. Just bring me a slice of that strawberry chocolate cake on your way back!” he told her with a wink, putting the empty jam cups onto her tray, making the corner of her mouth twitch as she picked her tray up and walked towards the two women (thank God the cafe didn’t insist on high heels, like some places – it’d be hell!).

She knew that Clarice had all the attention span of a lemming – which made the insults she was throwing at Marcy over one confused order quite ironic – so she went for the direct, simple solution: walking straight through the space between the two with a whispered ‘excuse me’, she rattled the tray a little – distract the bitch.

And it worked. Cedric had been telling her this’d work since the third time he’d been there! Clarice turned after her, as if to fire off a reprimand, and Marcy took her chance to go out to the customer area, where she was safe. Elsi, on the other hand, put the dirty dishes away, grabbed a slice of the cake and went out the other exit before Clarice was finished thinking up something to say (no one ever accused her of being quick).

“Welcome back, brave hero,” Cedric said, having apparently finished an entire pancake roll during this short interlude. “And I see you even brought me spoils. Gimme.” That last word was pronounced the way a child would have, and she gave him the plate with a smile.

“You were right, she really doesn’t have a measurable attention span!” she told him, looking around to make sure no one was paying them any attention.

“I know all about attention, my dear. It’s my bread and butter,” he said as he polished off the second pancake. “Speaking of bread and butter, I’m sad to say that I’ll be moving on soon.”

Oh. She’d known that was coming, he was a wandering artist after all (when she’d asked him what kind of art he did, he’d replied ‘performance art’ and neglected further comment), but still, she’d miss him.

“Such a shame… When are you leaving?” she asked, feeling far less chipper than just a moment ago.

“Very soon, I’m afraid,” he said with a sympathetic smile on his face. He seemed just as sad as she was. “I got a message earlier this morning – a commission for a private performance up in New Lennston – and it’s too good an offer to pass up. I should be on the train already, but I wanted to say goodbye first.”

Suddenly, her eyes were wet, and she nodded. She’d really come to like this quiet, slightly crazy man with the disgusting eating habits and the ability to listen to a teenage girl bitch and moan about her life while still paying attention and without getting annoyed. “I’m sure you’ll knock’em dead.”

Laughing out loud, he took his fork and ate a piece of the cake she’d just brought him. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, and I promise I will! Now, be a dear and bring me… let’s say, two bananas, and something to pack the pancakes up for the way.”

She nodded and hurried off, drying her eyes with a napkin on her way to the counter, where a basket full of fresh fruit stood, and took a paper bag for takeout along, too.

Back at the table, she quickly packed everything up for Cedric while he finished his milk and his cake quietly.

“Will I see you again?” she asked in a subdued voice as soon as she finished and put the bag down on the table.

“On the television? Most likely. In person? I don’t want to make any promises there,” he said as he pulled his wallet out, giving her the money for his breakfast (if you could even call it that). She put it away. “Here, this is for you.”

Her eyes went wide when he handed her eight fifty dollar bills. “W-wha- I can’t accept this!” she gasped, looking at the bills on her hand. That’s three month’s worth of rent, and some extra!

Smiling, he took her hand with both of his, closing it around the bills. “You can use it better than I, and besides, I got plenty more where that came from.” Rising to his feet, he leaned forward to plant a gentle kiss on her forehead. “Be safe, Elsi. And be strong. I know you’ll be a great one.”

She was too choked up to reply, and just nodded through the tears. He pulled his brown coat on, took his bag and left with one last wink, leaving just after Clarice, who always took a break around this time.

Elsi already missed him.

* * *

Cedric pulled his collar up against the cold, stretching until something stiff popped in his neck. I’m getting old, he thought as he walked down the sidewalk, keeping a discrete distance from Clarice – that woman was just unpleasant. And the way she treated her waitresses was just appalling. He couldn’t imagine how Elsi and the others held themselves back from punching her in the face every time they saw her.

Ah, sweet Elsi. Such a good lass. So polite, so nice. Rare, nowadays, and besides, it had been quite a while since he’d had such a pleasant model to work with – the last nine before her had just annoyed him, eventually.

Speaking of annoyance, Clarice had just stopped at an intersection, looking impatiently at her watch as she waited for traffic to stop and let her pass. Her attention switched between the traffic light and the watch.

He looked down the street, quickly, and saw a garbage truck approach at quite the speed – the traffic lights had just switched to green, so the driver wouldn’t have to slow down – but he was focusing on the street. Reaching out, he plucked the man’s attention off the street, redirecting it to a passing group of sparsely clad schoolgirls (despite the winter weather!). At the same time, he took Clarice’s attention off the street and the lights, too, and made her focus more on her watch – she was always running late with her breaks, anyway, and this was just the right nudge to make her step carelessly out onto the street to cross it.

Thunk.

Soon, the screaming would begin, but he was already walking down an alley, peeling a banana as he made his way to the university, redirecting any strand of attention that he sensed attach itself to him.

Elsi had really endeared herself to him, and the rules were clear – if, after a week or two, his current model did not endear him- or herself to him (or at least amused him), he killed them. If they were annoying, or downright unpleasant, he killed their friends and family, too, at least the closest ones. But if they were alright, he went on his way. And if they grew on him the way Elsi had, he did them a few favours.

Because he was such a nice guy, after all.

Finishing his second banana, Cedric Cullen, better known to the world as Caliban, went on a stroll towards Elsi’s college. There was a lot one could do with two banana peels and some attention control. Besides, Elsi deserved better than those teachers.

I still have some time before the train leaves, anyway. College, then New Lennston. He began to hum the melody to the Beverly Hills Cop theme. One of his favourites.

No one paid him any attention.

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B009.9 Family Matters

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Roughly at the same time

Basil was starting to doubt his sanity. Or at least, his memory. Sure, it was supposed to be inviolable, memories beyond the short term were supposed to be safe, but… every rule has an exception, right?

And right now, he was really doubting his memory. After Vasiliki had left, he had started working on his new armor design, and made some good progress – but then he had decided to see about setting his scripts back to work for some money, and…

They were not there. Not the scripts he had used.

Or rather, they were there, but they were useless. Half-finished, ideas and first attempts, but nothing functional.

He was sure he had used just these scripts for it, but now… it would not be the first time his memories were wrong. Only now there was the question of…

Where did the money come from?

Working through the account data, he found that it had been deposited in the accounts he had been using… about five and a half years ago. Way before he remembered setting them up in the first place.

Twinkle twinkle little star,

He shook his head, trying to focus. He had to track these. Normally, he would have Eudocia do it, but she was off playing with Prisca (she could only be at one place at a time, a limitation of her code). So he had to find out who had deposited the money himself, and why…

“How I wonder who you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky,” sang a soft voice.

Basil whirled around on his seat, drawing and throwing a dagger by sheer reflex.

A vermilion-coloured blade shot up, striking the dagger out of the air before it could touch the pure white face with the vermilion eyes.

He did not stop to think, or even feel confused about her being here – only an amateur would do that – but he vaulted over the table, away, towards the door to his store room.

I need weapons. But he had just finished taking most of them apart!

She followed, moving leisurely, but her many limbs nonetheless gave her enough speed to keep up with him as he ran through the door, slamming it shut, pulling the lever for the emergency seal.

There was a crash, and then the sound of a saw winding up, followed by the sound of screaming concrete and metal.

He looked around the storeroom – most things here were useless right now, and the few that were not would not cause any damage to her body. Her bodies were always insulated against electrical attacks, it was just necessary for being a Gadgeteer out in the field…

She was already halfway through the door, by the sounds of it, and the glowing orange line that was slowly travelling around the door.

What do I use, what do I use… He could not focus.

He blinked, and the door fell out of its frame. Her body contorted, somehow squeezing its entire mass through the frame without touching the edges. It was black, with fine silver details, and some transparent spots to show off pure white inner workings. Overall, it looked like some kind of snake-spider hybrid, coiling its long body up to form a spider’s abdomen.

“Then the traveller in the dark, thanks you for your tiny spark,” she continued singing, never moving her lips – her voice just barely sounded mechanic.

Again, he ran, towards the back end of the store room and… and there was an opening there that he had not noticed before, leading into a hallway. Do not let her trap you! He took it, closely followed by her, using all twelve limbs without blades gripping the floor, the walls, the roof, to propel her forward, always just a step behind.

What do I do, what do I do, what…

His mind was running in circles, unable to come up with a solution, he just wanted to run.

“In the dark blue sky you keep, and often through my curtains peep; For you never shut your eye, ’till the sun is in the sky…”

A right turn ahead, just when he started to feel like she was catching up (he did not dare turn around to look), and he took it, hearing the tell-tale sound of sharp blades piercing the concrete. He ran, his legs already burning – strange, he had been working out for ages now, and he was already getting tired? – deeper into the dark-

Ow.

He ran into a wall, unable to see it coming, and bounced off of it, falling backwards.

“As your bright and tiny spark, lights the traveller in the dark; Though I know not what you are, twinkle, twinkle, little star.”

Do not stop moving! he thought to himself, trying to get back onto his feet – and then something hard slammed into him, throwing him against the wall again.

His head rang, and though he could not see anything to begin with, he still felt his vision go black as his ears rang.

There was only one sound, really, the singing voice, gentle and soothing, as cold hands gripped him, propping him up against the wall as several lights on her body turned on, illuminating the room – though he saw little other than her skull-like face, those wide open vermilion eyes.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are,” she sang, just staring at him. “How I wonder what you are.” A slender hand with vermilion nails caressed his face, making him shiver with fear. “Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky…”

This is wrong. Fight! Fight her! You still have seven knives on your body! But he could not move, he was paralysed with fear!

More arms joined the two that were holding him, and the one that was caressing his face. These ones had no delicate woman’s hands, but instead claws with blades as long as his legs, no less than sixteen blades approaching his body, two of them aiming for his eyes… slowly.

He could not even speak.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are,” she sang as the blades stopped just millimeters above his eyes and body. “How I wonder what you are…”

They plunged in.

* * *

Melody was sitting on a chair in front of Director Ryan’s oaken desk, looking at the stout, muscle-bound man with the awful haircut – it was shaved around the sides and back, short on top and sticking up, like an extreme army buzzcut. It didn’t help that it was bright red, with some silver inbetween. He was wearing an immaculate maroon suit with a fitting tie on a black shirt.

To the side stood a tall and very thin man in his late thirties, with short black hair, a widow’s peak and a regal nose, with watery blue eyes, in a black suit and green tie. Sarah was there, too, as short as she was despite being twice her age, daughter of Chinese immigrants. She was wearing a simple skirt suit in blue, and looked very worried.

And as if all that wasn’t disconcerting enough, Patrid was there, too, in his usual white suit, with that goatee and the blonde, slick hair, looking like the devil incarnate. He was lounging – not sitting, lounging – on his chair, the only one in the room who seemed completely calm and relaxed.

<What’s going on?> she asked, feeling small and vulnerable. She’d just quickly tied her hair back and put on underwear and a knit dress, and her sandals. Nothing like presentable, but Sarah had insisted that it was urgent. <Am I in trouble?> She looked from the director to Sarah to Gerden, avoiding looking at Patrid. He still gave her the creeps, more than the Spiteborn or BigShit or Hastur ever did.

“Nono, you’re not Melly!” Sarah reassured her, or at least tried to – she was obviously still nervous, as her heartbeat proved. “We just need to… ask you some stuff. About this morning, and yesterday.”

Melody blushed. Dratz. They found out? <What about, exactly?>

“Your mother called us, told us that Miss Whitaker had dragged you out of their home in a rage, and that you then both vanished. And now you show up back here, alone, in a… worrisome condition,” Gerden said, looking quite… not unconcerned, but preoccupied, maybe?

She blushed even more. <She took me to Italy,> she began, making them stare in disbelief. Typing quickly, she poured out an answer, hoping to get this over with quickly. She had a bad feeling. <I was upset, and she thought some good ice cream might help. We ate some ice cream, talked, then went and…> She hesitated, not sure if she should continue. She didn’t want to get Irene into trouble.

“You can talk, Melody,” Sarah said, looking sympathetic. Why? “We won’t judge you.” Gerder and the director nodded. Patrid just watched her, looking barely interested. His gaze gave her goosebumps.

<We got drunk… Irene passed out, and I wasn’t well, but I didn’t want to go to the local UH division, so I… I used her cellphone to call her dad, and he picked us up and dropped me off here.>

She was barely finished when everyone but Patrid made an uproar, looking at her like she was insane.

“You called the Dark without permission?” the director shouted, aghast.

“You got drunk with a dangerously unstable metahuman?” Gerder shouted.

“You drank alcohol!?” Sarah shouted at her, looking ready to faint.

“You called the Dark, on cellphone, for a ride? Glorious,” Patrid chuckled.

She felt like she was about to turn infrared in the face. <I hoped no one would notice, and I could just… go to sleep.> She couldn’t stiffle a yawn.

“Melody, putting aside the gross violations of protocol you committed,” the director began, making her feel even more ashamed. “You risked more than just bodily harm, are you aware of that?”

Gerder leaned closer, putting a hand on the desk. “Do you even know what that… girl… has done to others? On a whim? Her file is very extensive, and I’m absolutely sure it’s not nearly complete.”

<I am aware of it,> she said, her blush gone. Now she was looking coldly at them. It all makes sense. They think she… did things to me.

Well, she almost did, didn’t she? whispered a treacherous little voice in her head.

No. She stopped. It’s not her fault she got a power like that. Not a good sign, talking to herself like that.

“Aware?” Patrid asked, an eyebrow raised. He was the only one who seemed to be amused by this turn of events, while the others ranged from horrified to stunned.

She nodded at him, finally turning to face him fully. Apart from her, he was the only other metahuman here… he might sympathise more easily. <She told me everything. About her lack of control, and her problems, on the first day. The details, later on. I knew all that, and I went with her willingly.>

Gerder’s mouth was moving like a fish, opening and closing. Sarah seemed to be no better. The director was just stunned, while Patrid still looked amused.

“Y-you went with her, when you know that she’s a habitual rapist?” Gerden finally asked.

<I object to that term, Sir! She’s as much a victim of her power as anyone she abused with it!> she responded, the voice from the vocoder turning angry and hot. <And besides, didn’t the United Heroes vet her, before they let her join? Why is this still an issue!?>

“We did do some rudimentary testing, but…” Director Ryan began. Gerder continued, “There’s not much we can do to really vet someone of her power level. And besides, Lady Light insisted that she be taken in, and the Board agreed too readily.”

<Well, she IS kind of our l->

“Gwen Whitaker is not the leader of the United Heroes,” Patrid suddenly butted in, serious for once. “Keep that carefully in mind, Melody. We are lead by the elected board of directors, a board she is not and can not be a part of, as she does not fulfill the requirements for extended registration – it is only due to her reputation and history that no one tries to arrest her for illegal vigilantism and use of metahuman abilities, as she is not a formal member of the UH, despite being our founder.” He smiled again. “Though it helps that she could probably beat us all up if we tried, too. Doesn’t mean we don’t listen to her, though. But Miss Whitaker Senior has never sought nor accepted any official position of power, nor formally laid claim to the title of superhero. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

People are uncomfortable that she still holds this much power? It seemed pretty obvious. Like it doesn’t even matter that she’s spent the better part of a century doing nothing but fight the good fight and save billions of lives. She nodded, still.

“The problem here is that a minor who is under our protection went missing – along with possibly the second-most dangerous and unstable individual in the world!” Gerder said as forcefully as he could, making her (and Sarah) flinch. “Miss Stenton, I am sorry to say this, but for your own safety, the Board of Directors has to hereby formally forbid you from closely associating with Irene Whitaker, also known as Gloom Glimmer, beyond the direct, qualified scrutiny of a designated handler or superhero judged capable of protecting you!” he rattled off.

Melody turned white, then green, nauseated, then… shock and hurt turned into fury.

She jumped onto up, wishing more than ever that she still had her own voice, and didn’t need to type on a freaking vocoder!

<I refuse your orders, Sir! You cannot tell me who to be friends with!> she said, instead, sounding calmer than she felt – the vocoder wasn’t really built for the kind of emotional outburst she wanted to make right now. Before anyone could object, she continued, <We are teammates, and BFFs besides, and if you don’t want to let us associate, then I’ll leave. No one gets to tell me who my friends can or cannot be! And if I leave, consider the damage that’ll do to you all! My album sales are at an all time high, almost all fans of my music now support my superhero career, and I’m a freaking Gadgeteer to boot! The third-highest rated on your payroll, if I may say so! So you better think twice about telling me who I can hang out with!>

She turned and stomped to the door, not wanting to hear any reproach. She had to get away, before her nerve failed her. <Also, has anyone ever considered that ostracising Irene might be just the straw that’ll break the camel’s back? Ever thought about that!?> With those words, she slammed the door shut, stomping off.

Faintly, she heard Patrid’s amused voice say, “I told you so…”

* * *

Basil’s eyes flew open, and his heart lurched into triple-overtime.

Bending over, he would have thrown up if he had eaten anything recently. Instead, he retched dry, before he felt over his face, his eyes… they were still there. He was somewhere completely dark, but his eyes were whole, and the only pain he felt was a faint soreness in his muscles.

W-what is going on!?

Had he… really been attacked by Atrocity just now? No, that made absolutely no sense. He did not doubt she could circumvent his defenses easily, but why would she be here? And why would she leave him alive?

Blind, he felt around the room, until he found the empty doorway, and got up, walking forward – until he saw a faint light ahead. Turning a corner, he could see into his storeroom again.

The door to his workshop was closed, sealed.

Was it just a dream?

He stopped at the door, turning around to look at the way he had taken earlier. I did not make that. Months ago, he had started digging, using robots to create his lair…

Only when he thought about it, he did not have an robots around here, except for a few half-finished ideas and his ravenbots!

The memories of getting the money had been fake… were fake, too. Were his memories of constructing the lair fake, as well?

Is there anything I can be sure about!?

Only one way to find out, mate. Investigate.

He listened, and he ran to pick up a torch… a flashlight. Why had he used the other word in his thoughts?

Back down the hallway… smooth rock, it was dug right into the bedrock. No signs of claws digging into anything.

Again, the room. It was not very big, but smoothly made, yet without any lighting. There was nothing there, except…

He bent down, picking up an old, worn notebook. It was quite heavy, and he could see that several pages of a different kind of paper had been added to it, making it thicker than it should be.

The cover bore the words ‘Property of Macian. Hands off!‘

Macian again…

He opened the notebook on the first page, and froze. It was covered in pictographs, just like his own, only… cruder? Or maybe just crudely drawn. Going through it, he found countless designs for all manners of gadgets, ranging from stuff he would be ashamed to work on – way too crude! – to force-fields! Nothing complete enough to use, most of it incomprehensible, but…

Then, suddenly, actualy writing took over. Notes from this Macian.

Intrigued, Basil took a closer look.

* * *

Some thoughts on my visions, and those of others I have been able to aquire

Henry

The Shaper, unbound from anything but imagination. -> Henry?

The Maker, mad and yet sane, rising ever higher. -> Me? Dunno if I’m sane or not, though my money’s on ‘bugfuck crazy’

The Dreamer, a gilded knight that glowed like the sun. -> someone with armor-based powers? too simple

The Defender, another era’s fallen idol, given a second chance. -> Heretic? But he wasn’t ever really an idol… maybe the Dark?

The Lover, wielding the primordial power. -> What can be considered a ‘primordial’ power? Fire? Intelligence? Technology? (the last one might be wishful thinking or simple self-importance)

Heretic

The Shaper, unbound and gentle… -> certainly sounds like Henry. That boy is too nice for his own good

The Lover, driven by the primordial power. -> again the primordial stuff. Something really simple, but powerful?

The Dreamer, a gilded knight, brilliant as the full moon… -> Amanda is quite the dreamer? Might it be this literal? Probably not, heh

The Shepherd, a broken star that sought redemption… -> Hemming? … Perhaps Emyr? His power seems like a fit, as does his story

The Maker, a blazing well that sought to rise… -> seems familiar

Me

The Orphan, abandoned but not lost. -> Connection to the ‘Orphan Star’?

The Defender, fallen but not dead. -> fallen as in defeated, or fallen from grace? A fallen hero?

The Lover, lost but not alone. -> first time this one’s mentioned without the ‘primordial’. No idea what that means

The Maker, broken but not shattered. -> could that be me? I certainly feel like I’m in pieces

The Emissary, driven but aimless. -> someone who has a mission, but doesn’t know how to complete it?

Who is Rei? She sings a lullaby no one hears. -> connected the Sleeper?

Who is the Sleeper? What’ll happen when it wakes? -> apocalyptic?

Who is Bree? Someone cries her name, but she can’t hear it. The crying person sounds so sad, I cried when I heard her voice (I’m not prone to crying).

What is broken may not be shattered. What is shattered may not be lost. What is lost may yet be found.

What is the Orphan Star? A person, or a power? (It seeks something that doesn’t exist, but it won’t give up. Ever) <- sounds like my kinda gal. Assuming its a female, of course.

On second thought, do these titles describe people or powers?

Note: Research presence or absence of power sentience!!!

A friend says:

All the Lost Ones shall Gather -> I’m plenty lost. Henry, too, as is Amanda. Does this mean we’ll all get together again? I’d love that. Amy would love Henry to bits. He should be able to fix her, too. Maybe we can be a family?

All the Brave Ones shall Advance -> Probably means that at some point, there’ll be something epically nasty to fight (can’t wait!)

All the Bright Ones shall Rejoice -> A happy ending? That’d be nice.

Are these prophecies? How certain could they be? Far as I know, precognition can only show possibilities, never certainties? Maybe the fact that several people over such a long time have similar visions means these are particularly probable probabilities? (probable probabilities – there ought to be a better way to phrase that!)

Where does Journeyman fit in? I don’t think he’s a normal metahuman. Something is… off. (I realise that I’m not one to throw stones here). I have a feeling I’ll run into him again. He did give me a nice idea for a gadget, though.

Note: Research instant barbecue machine!

There’s a connection between Journeyman and that ‘friend’. J mentioned him obliquely. (I can’t believe I just used the word ‘obliquely’ in a sentence)

What is this ‘a friend’? Is it some kind of metahuman? Or whatever is at the source of the powers? Maybe some kind of manager? There seems to be some biblical imagery tied into that – he sure seems plenty godlike, though he did claim that his appearance and manner depended on whoever witnessed him -> might have been me, making him seem godly and stuff

-> Lady Light & the Dark might know

Note: Try and contact them as soon as possible

I-

* * *

The notes cut off at that point, and the following pages were all blank. Basil still leafed through the book, until the end, just to be sure.

Somehow, those notes make no sense, and yet they seem so reasonable… I think I might need someone to help me make sense of them.

He pocketed the notebook, then looked around the place one more time. It was empty, nothing else to be found. Then he went back to his workshop… which now felt much less like it was his.

I feel like something is going to break, too. I just hope it will not be my brain.

He went to the couch, turning on the television. Right now, he really, really needed a break, first of all.

An instant barbecue machine is a great idea, though.

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