B005 An Ember of Hope: Little Giants (Part 6)

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He did not burn. Despite its brilliance, the star was not hot, nor was it cold. It didn’t seem to have any temperature at all. Nor did it have any mass, his body moving through it without encountering any resistance. The only thing he saw, the only thing he heard, and tasted, and smelled, and just felt was pure, unspoiled light, strange though that may sound. It entered his body without encountering any resistance, saturated him in a way he had not words to describe, saturated his mind as well as his body, until he himself was light. He saw every painting he had ever made, or even considered, he saw every smile he ever put on his mother’s face, every smile he ever put on anyone’s face, heard laughter and joy. He saw the tears in the lives of those close to him, saw his mother and his grandmother cry together when they thought he wouldn’t see or hear.

And he saw Macian, the first real friend he’d ever made. He saw him, whole and unspoiled by any scars or machinery, a young boy much like himself, with a cute little girl with long black hair and even blacker eyes clinging to his arm. That has to be Amy. She looks so happy. But he also saw another Macian, scarred and crippled, his left arm and eye gone, operating on himself while madly muttering gibberish Henry could not begin to understand, rebuilding his own body with metal and plastic as a naked Amy was curled up in a corner, crying as she nursed a painful burn on the palm of her left hand, smeared with a yellow paste. Henry saw and he understood, as well. He protected her with his own body.

He saw himself, standing on top of a hill, underneath a large oak that was ladden with golden apples hanging from its branches, the scenery around himself right out of one of his paintings, all green fields, blue sky and snow-capped mountains. And he saw himself, alone, older and thin like a skeleton, sitting on the edge of his hometown’s fountain, covered by a threadbare raincoat with a heavy hood.

He saw a large city, with old-fashioned cars moving on its streets, despite the late hour. The stars shone bright over this city, which he recognized as Old Lennston. His gaze swerved around to a building on an elevated cliff over the sea, an old mansion. And he knew what was about to happen. Point Zero.

The mansion came alive with a bright light, golden and white and every colour imaginable – and billions more even he had no name for – as it literally disintegrated before his eyes, a pillar of light spearing towards the sky, clearing the sky from what few clouds there were in a large circle for miles, the night turning as bright as day as the pillar’s top began to give of circular emanations of light that spread towards the horizon. He knew that they would circle the entire world, had read the accounts of that night. Everyone read them.

There was no way to tell how long it took for the pillar to vanish, except that it was still night when it shrank and vanished. For just a moment, the night was dark again, then he saw two figures stand up, just a few feet away from the center of the pillar. One of them, a rather spindly woman with thin blonde hair began to glow in a light not unlike that of the pillar, only hers only showed white and gold, her body coming alight as she rose from the ground, breaking into a laugh that was filled with unrestrained joy, making him wish to join in and laugh with her. The second figure, a hawkish man with dark hair, a hooked nose and a well-muscled, but slender build, screamed in pain and despair, a sound that made his ears hurt, as the shadows gathered around him, forming an abomination of darkness with glowing red eyes.

Again, a different vision. The future; no, countless futures. Some bright, some dark, but all different. He zeroed in on one, a future filled with darkness unlike anything he had ever seen, darker even than the shadows that had enveloped the Dark. But not all was darkness there. He saw light. Five Points of Light. Five people, five hopes.

The Shaper, unbound from anything but imagination.

The Maker, mad and yet sane, rising ever higher.

The Dreamer, a gilded knight that glowed like the sun.

The Defender, another era’s fallen idol, given a second chance.

The Lover, wielding the primordial power.

The vision dissolved and Henry hit the ground running, charging towards the park. But he wasn’t running over the plaza alone anymore. It was as if he had two sets of eyes, two whole sets of senses that worked at the same time. One was in this world, showing him what he already knew. The other was in a whole new world, an even plain of grass with colourful flowers growing in random patches, a bright sun and clear blue sky above. He could hear the wind sing in that other world, could feel it on his skin – the skin that was in that world – his world, he knew, his and his alone – could smell its freshness with his second nose, could see it carry flower petals with his second eyes. He felt the soft earth and grass underneath his feet, even through his shoes, as he ran towards the building in between himself and the park where another explosion lit up the sky of the normal world.

But there was more. The sky in his world, it was a clear blue, but he had a feeling that there was something behind it. Concentrating on it, he made the sun go down in the second world, revealing the gorgeous star-studded sky he had seen earlier – only this time, he could not see his own star anymore. Duh, I’m inside it, I think! All those stars, all those worlds, the were singing. Each of them sang their own, individual song, yet they formed a symphony nonetheless. And there was another sound, as well. A deep, deep thrumming, like the beating of an impossibly huge heart, pounding in the background of this sea of stars, always there, but never quite in the foreground.

There were two stars that were closer to him than any others. Reaching out, he could feel them. From one, he felt a deep, desperate fear and longing, mortal fright – for someone else. Mama…

From the other, he heard a mad gibberish, as if someone were constantly murmuring so loud it spanned the space between that world and his own, a deep pain more intense than anything he had ever imagined and a wholly different kind of fear for another – but there was also a quiet, cold determination, an indomitable will that cut right through the pain and the madness and the fear, a will to move forward. Macian.

He shook his head. There was no time, he had to help the people in the park. He felt them and could single out their worlds. Two of them shone brighter than the others, as bright as his mother, though nowhere near as bright as Macian did. Metahumans. The bright ones are metahumans. Fire Burial and whomever she’s fighting. Fire Burial was mad, angry beyond belief and screaming (at least in her mind) as he could see her world flare every time she used her power to attack. The other one was angry as well, an older man. Frustration, anger, disappointment… he had been retired, a veteran of at least one big conflict, but he was fighting again to protect innocents. His powers… steady, strong, simple… some manner of Earth-related power. Whatever it was, he was getting the feeling that it wasn’t enough. There were also six other worlds close, four children and two adults, none with powers. Their worlds were farther away, more muted. But he still felt their fear. He needed to go help the old warrior, needed to save all of them. But there was still a five-storey building in between him and the park, and running around would cost some time.

I wonder if I can run through it, he thought. There was nothing in his way in his second world, maybe he could just run through it? He charged towards the building, two sets of feet pounding over two different earths as he ran past the tables on the outside and into the glass doors.

Ouch, he thought as he landed with his butt on the ground, rubbing his hurt face. His second self had bounced back even though there was nothing in the second world. Still connected. But my nose only hurt, it isn’t broken. It should be, as fast as I ran into it. Had he become invulnerable, somehow? He pinched his own arm, and it hurt. Slamming into the glass hurt as well. Something different from normal invulnerability?

But he didn’t have time for this now. Another explosion shook the ground, and he decided to try something out. I can control my second world. Maybe… He called the wind in the second world, made strong and steady, blowing upward to lift his second self up.

It worked. The wind caught his second self and pulled it up, which also lifted him in the real world – strange, the second world feels just as real – above the coffee bar. Unfortunately, he hadn’t considered that the wind would grab different parts of his body with different strength, so he was thrown around badly enough that he would have thrown up if there was still anything in his belly. He caught himself as he rose high enough to see the entire park, as well as the location of the battle. It was extraordinarily complicated to keep himself steady with wind – so he instead stopped the wind and nullified the gravity in the second world. For just a moment, it seemed like the gravity of the first world – a better name than ‘real world’ – would pull him down regardless, but he concentrated on pushing more of his second self into his first self – transferring his second self’s weightlessness into his first self. And it worked, again, letting him hover in place. Only he couldn’t move like this.

Now, the wind. He called the second world’s wind again, making it simply push him towards the battle. He shot forward, having far more control now that he was only pushing against his own back. Not the most dignified way to fly, but at least he had control.

Here I come.

* * *

He shot towards the flickering form of Fire Burial as she was hovering above the park, switching forms to fire off fireballs as her enemy hurled rocks and compressed earth at her.

When he thought he was close enough, he aimed with the gun Macian had constructed for him, pulling the trigger while trying to line the barrel up with the pyrokinetic supervillain. Unfortunately, his aim was bad, as he was both unpracticed and flying around in a most unstable manner. So when he pulled the trigger and a blue-white beam shot from the gun – filling his nose with the smell of burned ozone – it shot just past Fire Burial’s shoulder, alerting her to his presence without causing any damage.

“You little fuck, you actually got powers!” she shouted and threw a fireball at him just moments before a mass of rock and soot forced her to disperse into fire.

Time seemed to slow down for a moment as the fireball raced towards him. Push me away, push me away. The air in the second world turned, pushing him violently aside and out of the fireball’s path. But Fire Burial had reformed and guided the fireball around, making it speed up even as it slammed into him.

I won’t burn, I’m made of ice, I won’t burn, I’m made of water, I won’t burn, I’m made of stone. His mind raced, working through every inflammable material he could think off – even if he didn’t know where he got the idea – and, again, it worked. His second self became ice, it became water, it became stone – and his first self did not burn, the fire failing to singe even his patchwork cloak.

Fire Burial just stared at him in surprise as he hovered in place, free from the bounds of gravity. He himself was just as surprised as he looked down at himself. Well, my cloak is dry, at least.

“What the fuck,” she cursed, just to disperse into flame as another projectile slammed into her head.

Right. I don’t have to do this alone, Henry thought as he turned towards the old warrior. He looked truly old, at least eighty years, with a bald, spotted head, a long white beard and thin limbs, though his posture was still proud. His thin face had heavy cheeks, a short, stubby nose and rimless spectacles. He was dressed in a very old-fashioned shirt and pants with suspenders, as well as dirty brown leather shoes. Hovering a few meters above the ground, he was circled by nine spheres made of earth and rock that circled him the way the planets circled the sun – they were even of various sizes, roughly corresponding to the planets of the solar system. There was also a circle of dust and loose dirt around him as well, though it thankfully opened to let Henry through as he carefully approached the man, redirecting the wind in the second world to stop his movement in front of him.

“Hello!” he greeted, quite intimidated now that he was so close. The man had presence, even without all the extra stuff he was picking up from the old warrior’s world. His eyes are like steel.

“Guten Tag, mein Junge. Ich bin ‘Dunstkreis’. Wer bist du?” he asked with a rather thin, scratchy voice.

“Um, sorry, do you speak English? I don’t understand German,” Henry replied, flinching as an explosion rattled him from behind. Turning around, he saw that the sphere that corresponded to Jupiter had absorbed the hit and was currently reforming from soot and rock drawn from the ground.

“I do, young man. Call me ‘Dunstkreis’.”

Henry turned back to him, rubbing the back of his head. “Umm, my name is… my name is Henry, Sir. I don’t have a codename yet, I got my powers just seconds ago,” he explained.

Dunstkreis raised an eyebrow. “Seconds? And you already have a gun like that?”

“Oh, sorry, no, a friend gave that to me. But he had… he had other things to do.” He didn’t want to put any blame on Macian, if he could avoid it.

“I see. Well, I’m glad that you’re at least fireproof, young man.” Another explosion destroyed one of the pseudo-planets just Henry saw the Mercury-sphere fly towards Fire Burial, forcing her to disperse again. “Can you somehow protect the children back there?”

He pointed at the group of adults and children (he probably sees all of them as children). They were huddled together on the ground, with Dunstkreis hovering between them and Fire Burial.

“Sorry Sir, I don’t know if I can. My power doesn’t seem to affect anyone other than myself, I think. I don’t know,” Henry replied, blushing. Then he flinched as another fireball was intercepted by one of the pseudo-planets.

“I see. Could I have that gun, at least? I think I’m a better shot than you, even at my age,” Dunstkreis continued, taking the admission in stride. Henry handed him the gun without a word. “How does it work?”

“Um, it’s only supposed to stun. I don’t know how many shots it has. Don’t shoot at children, he said,” Henry explained. Dunstkreis nodded. “I think that I’m immune to anything she can do to me. So, I distract her and you shoot her?”

The old warrior clearly didn’t like the plan – Henry could feel his concern for him, which touched him more than he would have thought – but he nodded. “We have to be quick. I don’t know how long I can maintain my power nowadays. It’s been two decades since I last used it on this scale.”

“Alright. Godspeed, Sir,” Henry replied and flew straight up out of the orbiting pseudo-planets, then turned to approach Fire Burial.

“Damn, what… kind of… power did you… get, boy? Flight… and invulnerability?” asked Fire Burial, flickering pretty much in place.

“Don’t know, really. But everything looks much prettier now,” Henry said before charging at her. But she just turned into flame, letting him pass through without meeting any resistance.

For a moment, he could see her fire even in his world, but then it was gone. Strange. Something to keep in mind, I guess.

Fire Burial reformed, only to disperse again as she was shot in the back by the stun gun. “Hey! Beat it… old fart!” she screamed as she reformed, only to disperse again as Dunstkreis fired first a stun shot, then his mercury, venus and neptune spheres, each forcing her to disperse before even reforming completely.

“Oh, fuck it. Burn!” screamed Fire Burial as she began to form a gigantic fireball above her head, even as she dropped down. “NO!” she screamed as Henry flew through her again, dispersing her body and the fireball both.

He and Dunstkreis continued this, Dunstkreis using the stun gun to keep up the assault in between throwing his spheres, as it took some time to reform them (and he always kept at least half of them for the sake of defense). The civillians took their chance and fled from the field of battle, as Dunstkreis kept reorienting himself to remain between their group and Fire Burial, who was all but frothing from her mouth as she kept being forced to disperse into flame.

She can’t control it. She automatically disperses upon attack, even if she can turn into flame at will, Henry realized as he flew through her again. And again, for just a moment, he could feel her flames in his world. In fact, he felt their worlds touch for the briefest of moments, as their bodies were in contact. I wonder what I could do if I could touch her.

But then the battle turned, as the stun gun clicked empty, which Fire Burial used to break open their rhythm by throwing a massive fireball into the surprised Dunstkreis. The old man reacted immediately, pulling his four largest spheres in between himself and the fireball, but the explosion was still violent enough to throw him backwards.

“Now let’s… see how much… you can… take, little… boy,” Fire Burial said with menace in her voice as she turned to face him. She landed on the ground and shot a fireball at Henry with one hand, another one at Dunstkreis with the other. Since she didn’t need to turn into flame in order to fly, she could focus on keeping them both contained, evading Henry’s charges on foot while trying to whittle down Dunstkreis before he could recover them.

They were being slowly worn down, or at least Dunstkreis was, being unable to reform his spheres in time. Henry remained untouchable, making himself completely fireproof in his second world, which somehow translated to making his first world body fireproof as well (and his clothes too, thankfully), but her blasts were blinding him, making it impossible for him to make contact with her.

Mr Dunstkreis won’t hold out for much longer, I need to come up with something, he thought desperately.

And just like that, he felt help coming. Macian’s world was suddenly singing louder, which he took to mean that he was approaching quickly. Quicker than Henry had flown earlier.

He didn’t abandon me, he didn’t abandon me, he didn’t abandon me! Henry thought, ebullient, as a giant projectile slammed into where Fire Burial was standing, dispersing her as the shock of its impact caused an explosion of soot and rock.

Henry saw a mass of metal in different colours – he could make out parts from cars, a bus, a firetruck and at least one laundry machine – shaped like some kind of rocket. Three makeshift legs folded out of it as Fire Burial reformed further up, aiming the tip towards her. Macian was inside the contraption, Henry could feel him inside, as he aimed and then activated the weapon – a watergun, probably constructed from the firetruck, shooting balls of water at Fire Burial, forcing her to evade in her flame form.

If he hits her, we might just win, Henry thought as he flew towards the staggered Dunstkreis, who was reassembling his pseudo-planets.

“That your friend, Henry?” the old warrior asked.

“Yes, that’s Macian!” Henry almost screamed, beside himself with joy that his friend had returned. Then he noticed Dunstkreis’ singed clothes and his pained expression. “Oh no, are you hurt?”

“Don’t worry about me. I survived Weisswald, I won’t be killed by a little girl with some fireballs”, he replied, emanating a sense of old pride and self-confidence.

“Alright. Listen, Macian says that Fire Burial’s powers shut down if she’s drenched in water. We need to distract her, so he can hit her. Then we win!”

“Good. You continue as you did before, and I’ll go on the offensive now that the children are safe,” Dunstkreis agreed, then flew upwards.

Henry followed for a second, then broke off to charge at Fire Burial just as Macian geared up for another shot.

“You little fuckers… I’ll burn you all… to ashes!” she screamed as she was forced to abandon another attempt at detonating Macian’s makeshift robot, Henry charging through her again.

“Henry! Come here!” Macian’s voice rang out of the loudspeaker of the former firetruck.

Henry complied, flying down to the contraption as a hatch opened and Macian rose out of it, his left arm connected to countless wires that led down into the machine. There were no control elements Henry could see, so he was probably controlling it through his arm. I wonder how he managed to build that so fast. And how did he make it fly at such speed?

“What can you do? Quick summary!” Macian said, a sense of relief emanating from his world.

“I can fly, I’m invulnerable if I want to be, I can feel people, tell what they feel and whether or not they have powers. I can also get a general feel of their powers.”

Macian’s good eye widened. “Cool. And that has to be Dunstkreis. Read about him once. I think we might be able to win this, if we can just keep her from destroying my little toy here – and hit her before my water reserves run out. Now, go! I’ll try and come up with a way to take her down for good!” He sank back into the robot and Henry charged towards Fire Burial again.

At the same time, Dunstkreis took up attacking the once again flying Fire Burial from above, to keep her from attacking.

This won’t work. Macian can’t hit her if she’s flickering around as a flame, but if we let her stay solid for too long, she’ll blow his gadget up. It won’t work out like this.

He decided to try out an idea he’d just had.

Charging her from behind, he aimed to punch her in between the shots of the other two, while also imagining her to be in his second world – and her second world self was solid, and unable to turn into flame. If it works like it does with me, hitting her in one world, will hit her in both.

She turned around just in time to see his fist fly at her face. For just a moment, his skin and hers came into contact, and once again he could feel their worlds intersect, with her appearing in his world – but she turned into fire and his punch went through her, making him fly on. Her second world body had appeared in his world next to the one he had imagined, but it was separate from it.

No. I need to focus more. I’ll imagine her being powerless when her second body is in my world, and make that one powerless, not a copy of her.

He called the earth in his world up, creating a pillar that caught his charge, turning the tip into rubber to bounce back towards her.

This time, the moment he came into contact with her body, he was ready.

He imagined her second self to be vulnerable, solid and human as he hit her – and he also imagined himself stronger and harder, making his second self’s fist as hard as rock.

His punch caught her in one cheek, making her eyes go wide as he could feel her jaw shatter. Henry flinched as he felt her fear and pain, as well as her confusion. The punch threw her head back; he could feel her world grow dimmer as she passed out, plummeting towards the ground. She’s gonna die if she hits the ground!

With another act of imagination, he made the wind throw him towards her, grabbing her by one ankle so he could have the second world’s wind catch her second self, floating both of them down to the ground.

Putting her down gently, he took off his coat and covered her torso and crotch with it, to finally satisfy his sense of modesty. If only partially.

“Mate, that was mighty awesome. How did you do that?”

Turning around, Henry saw that Macian had climbed out of the robot, disconnecting his arm from the contraption, and now stood right behind him. Dunstkreis was also floating closer, though he kept his nine pseudo-planets in orbit around himself.

“What… what happens now? Does another one take a turn?” asked Henry, suddenly feeling very weary.

“No. If one of them is defeated, it means we get a break until the day is over,” Macian explained.

“Good,” replied Dunstkreis. “What do we do with her?”

They all looked at the defeated villainess, her broken jaw already swollen and turned a purplish-blue.

“She needs a doctor. I broke her jaw,” Henry explained.

“No way, mate!” shouted Macian as his arm shifted into a gun-like configuration. “We finish the crazy firebitch off. Simple as that.”

“No!” shouted Henry, grabbing Macian’s mechanical arm and pulling it away.

As before with Fire Burial, the moment he touched Macian, their worlds intersected. Only the effect was deeper, stronger, now that he had an actual grip on him.

Henry was pulled into Macian’s world, seeing a giant, vast white plain. It was nothing like his own world. Instead of grass and trees and mountains, there were black pictographs so complex Henry could not even begin to decipher them, racing across the endless white expanse. There were several geometric shapes floating within the white void; pyramids, spheres, dice and many, many others, blacker than the night with white pictograms moving over their surfaces. The whole chaotic scene was so complex, so erratic it made his head feel like it was going to explode.

The young artist staggered back, away from his friend, as his mind began to spin. The vision vanished the moment he broke contact, but it had still been enough to stagger him.

“Henry! Mate, what happened?!” asked Macian with worry in his voice and world, taking a step towards him, his attempt to murder Fire Burial forgotten.

“My power… strange…” Henry said while trying to get himself under control again. “Don’t… touch me… please.”

Macian nodded and they both waited for a few seconds until Henry was feeling better. Then, Dunstkreis, who had been observing them silently, spoke up.

“I agree with you, Macian. She needs to die, if only so she can never hurt anyone again. But it shouldn’t be a child who does this,” he said with a calm, cold expression. “I, on the other hand, already have a lot of blood on my hands. I’ll finish this. Please turn around.”

“NO!”, screamed Henry as he took a step forward, but Macian interposed himself between him and the other two, blocking his sight as well as making him hesitate, as he didn’t want to feel Macian’s world again so quickly.

Nonono, this isn’t right, we’re supposed to be heroes, not like them! he thought desperately as he saw the faux-jupiter slam into Fire Burial’s prone form, the force of the impact throwing both him and Macian to the ground.

“Was zum Teufel!?” shouted Dunstkreis in surprise.

Both boys looked around frantically, only for their gazes to fall upon Fire Burial’s body, now floating above them in the air, unharmed. Henry’s coat was still on her, as well.

“Nonono, not you! NOT YOU! It’s not your turn yet!” screamed Macian as Henry saw a large red sphere as big as himself approach, trailing a tail of golden rods of various sizes and several other, smaller red spheres.

The large sphere stopped above the three of them and Dunstkreis opened fire, aiming at Fire Burial.

But his shots were deflected as reality itself seemed to bend and twist, making them miss. The red sphere gathered the other pieces around itself, then reformed.

The largest sphere formed the gut of the contraption, with another, slightly smaller sphere as the chest, with four rotating golden rods in between. More rods formed the arms and legs, with small red spheres for the joints, while the head was formed by the third-largest sphere, which was slightly larger than Henry’s torso, joined by twelve short rods that circled it like some kind of halo. Seven rods, each longer than the whole body and legs, formed some kind of cape, or perhaps wings, behind its back.

The barely humanoid shape moved its “head” to “look” at them.

Macian spat out a single word, though Henry really didn’t need to hear it to guess who he was looking at. “Heretic.”

B005 An Ember of Hope: Little Giants (Part 5)

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Macian stopped in his tracks and turned around, his arm shifting configuration, the fingers turning into stiff rods as the repulsor was replaced by a crystal disk much like the one within Henry’s force-field generator. It lit up just as the fireball closed in on them, creating a hazy field of distorted light in between them. The fireball slammed against the field, some parts of it penetrating deeper into the effect, some dispersing at first contact – but none pierced through.

As the fireball faded, Macian deactivated the field just as he turned around again, grabbing Henry to run further down the alley as Fire Burial gave chase, switching between flight and ranged attacks. Macian stopped to block her any time she fired off a particularly large fireball, but otherwise trusted the force-fields both he and Henry possessed to keep them safe.

“What are we gonna do?! She’s going to keep chasing us until the batteries run out!” he said to the young cyborg running just ahead of him.

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B005 An Ember of Hope: Little Giants (Part 4)

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“Coming from you, that means I was a very good boy, doesn’t it?” Macian replied as his arm shifted form, the fingers folding back onto the arm as the kinetic repulsor slid out of the palm until it extended about five centimeters out of it.

Fire Burial put a hand on her hip and raised the other for a gesture to reply – but she closed her eyes for a moment and Macian reacted immediately, slamming his repulsor into the ground at an angle, discharging it. The floor split and burst, a fountain of concrete, wood and carpet that slammed into Fire Burial. It immediately caught fire as she burst into flame, but it served as a distraction none the less.

Macian fired his repulsor off, striking the ceiling above the pyrokinetic supervillain to collapse it on top of her. Before his hand had even been reeled in, Macian turned around and ran back out of the house, Henry following close on his heels.

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B005 An Ember of Hope: Little Giants (Part 3)

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The door they entered through turned out to be the back door of a supermarket, entering directly into the office of the manager. They walked into the actual supermarket and Macian stopped him, looking around despite the near-complete darkness – probably another upside to having an artificial eye. He activated his glowing cube again and, taking aim, threw it with his robotic arm towards the center of the ceiling, to which it stuck to, brightening up to illuminate most of the rather small supermarket. “The shutters are closed,” he explained, but the young artist was quite distracted.

Henry saw racks of countless goods – mostly food. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten anything for an entire day. He hadn’t even had anything to drink apart from a single small bottle of water Macian had given him. And neither had Macian, judging by the rumble he heard from his direction. “Eat?” Henry asked without taking his eyes off the fruit rack. “Eat,” confirmed Macian and dove towards a box full of peaches, while Henry did the same with some apples. He was so hungry, he had to force himself to first rub the first apple he got his hands on on his clothes before sinking his teeth in the juicy, heavenly flesh of the fruit…

Nearly half an hour later, the two boys were lying on top of several pillows they had taken out of the bargain bin, rubbing their bellies after a truly glorious eating binge. “I. Love. Spicy potato crisps and chocolate ice cream,” moaned Macian as he shoved another handful of said crisps into his mouth, followed by another bite out of a chocolate-flavoured popsicle.

“I hear you. Why did I never think of mixing them?” replied Henry as he did the same. They quietly chewed for a while. “After all, I’m supposed to be the genius artist.”

Macian chuckled before biting down on another handful of crisps. Once he’d swallowed them, he answered: “Well, I’m the genius scientist. Maybe this counts as biology or chemistry or something?”

Henry shook his head, even though Macian wasn’t looking at him (they were both staring up at the ceiling). “Anything this tasty has to be art.”

“Well, maybe your artistic skill is rubbing off on me, mate.”

They spent a few more minutes going through their accumulated crisps and ice cream.

“I have a question again,” said Henry suddenly.

“Ask away.”

“When you used your hand to… you know, to kill those two. Whatever it did, it didn’t rebound the first time. But it did the second time. Why?”

“You actually noticed that? You’re the first to do that!” replied Macian, surprised.

“Well, I do need a good attention for detail, you know?” Henry replied as he took a bite out of a chocolate bar filled with caramel creme.

“True. Well, anyway, to explain that, I need to explain how my KP works. ‘KP’ meaning ‘Kinetic Repulsor’. The hand itself is not actually part of it, but it has a hole in the palm for it.” He turned his hand towards Henry, who could see a barely perceptible circular seam on its palm. “The repulsor uses energy from the generator pack I’ve strapped to my back to charge up, then releases the charge as a kinetic pulse that strikes at whatever is in front of my palm. That’s stage one of the KP.”

“And why doesn’t it bounce back some times? Isn’t there a law about that?”

“You mean the law that says there’s always an equal opposite reaction to any action? Well, that’s where stage two of the KP comes in. You see, it absorbs the kinetic energy of the reaction and uses it to immediately recharge itself, so I can immediately fire it off again, if need be.”

“Wait, isn’t that a, what’s-it-called, a perptum imobile?!”

“The word is perpetuum mobile, literally meaning ‘perpetual motion’. And no, it’s not, which leads me to why it does bounce off some times. You see, there are two flaws to the system, and I haven’t found a way to get rid of them.”

Henry turned to fully face his new friend (anyone who took part in an eating binge with him automatically qualified as a friend), curious to learn more about his fantastic technology.

“First, the absorption is not perfect – a little bit of force, about one-point-zero-three percent is lost upon absorption and has to be compensated for by my generator. Which means it can’t be a perpetuum mobile, since that term describes an object, or rather a phenomenon that goes on infinitely without any more energy being added to it. Second, there is a lot of strain put on the mechanism. It breaks down after ninety-one shots and I can’t keep it charged for more than fifty-three seconds at a time before I need to discharge it, or it breaks down completely within four-point-four seconds. So I usually discharge it completely once I no longer need it. And since it doesn’t recharge, the reaction makes it bounce off.”

“I… see,” Henry commented, awestruck. Even at his age and with his rather limited understanding of science, he could tell that this was the kind of technology that belonged into the most unrealistic science-fiction stories, not the real world, despite its ‘flaws’. “What else do you have on you?”

“Well, I’ve got a fo- that reminds me, I’ve been working on something for you!” Macian pulled out the box he had been working on and shifted his artificial hand into its tool configuration. “Just wait a minute and I’ll be done.”

“What is that going to be?” Henry asked, but got no answer. He tried again, only to be ignored. Which was quite irritating, but he immediately reprimanded himself for that feeling. People usually felt like that when he zoned out while painting. So he just watched in awe as Macian completed the box, which looked like the evil big brother of a remote, only without any buttons. It was obvious that Macian was just as gifted at engineering as he was at painting.

“Done!” Macian suddenly exclaimed, handing him the finished box. It didn’t look finished, to be honest, with much of its wiring being exposed. Still, it looked like one would expect some kind of future-tech to look, all wires and strange chips and all.

“What does it do?” he asked as he felt its weight. It was heavier than it should be, considering its size.

“It’s a force-field generator,” Macian replied nonchalantly as he reached out for another handful of potato crisps, followed by a freshly unpacked popsicle.

Henry almost dropped it, instead pulling it close to hold it safe. Even he knew about force fields and what they meant. “Say, I probably should have asked this sooner… but you’re one of those contrivers, right?”

“Hm? Nope, I’m a real Gadgeteer. Did all the tests and all.”

“You’re… are you sure?”

“Of course I am! I’m a genius, after all! Besides, I thought you didn’t know much about metahumans and all, so why does it freak you out?”

“Just because I’m not interested doesn’t mean I’m stupid! Also, my teacher once explained the thing with force-fields for us, when Elaine asked why the heroes are allowing Sovereign to rule Africa.”

“I see. Well, don’t think too hard about this. It just means I’m better than Sovereign,” Macian replied, apparently not finding anything strange about it.

“Just? Just?“

“Calm down, mate. It doesn’t change anything about our situation here, anyway. Speaking of which, we should get going. Would be stupid to stay in one place for too long.”

Henry nodded and jumped to his feet. He ran to a rack that held lots of knapsacks. Taking one, he filled it with chocolate bars, packed and ready sandwiches, small juice bottles and other stuff. Macian did the same, as they had actually planned this beforehand.

Well, the original plan had been to first pack the knapsacks, then indulge their hungers. But then they’d found the ice cream…

When they were done, they went back out the backdoor, making their way towards the center of the city – Macian had argued that survivors were likely to act stupid and gather there, and Henry’s mother was likely to go there too, hoping to find him among the other survivors.

* * *

“What can you tell me about Fire Burial?” asked Henry, wanting to distract himself somehow as they walked through backalley and apartments in their way. The whole atmosphere was way too gloomy and coupled with their situation and his imagination, it turned the whole affair into a piece out of a horror movie.

“Fire generator and manipulator, can blow up a tank with her shots. Imbues her fire with a kind of explosive effect that lets it blow up even stuff that shouldn’t be able to blow up, like in those Hollywood movies where a simple fire can blow up cars and stuff. Can also turn into fire herself, making her invulnerable. But she can’t manipulate any fire other than the one that comprises her body while she’s transformed, nor generate more, so she has to switch between being solid and being all flame-y. So our best bet, if we run into her, is for me to somehow hit her while she’s distracted firing at at something. Regarding her person, she’s the youngest member of the six – she’s seventeen. Not an original member, she killed her predecessor. Her hair’s red like fire and looks like it’s on fire, as well. Like Pristine, she doesn’t wear any clothes-“

“What is it with these guys and being naked!?” asked Henry, feeling quite exasperated.

“Well, in her case it’s justified. She can’t turn anything other than herself into fire, so she’d burn through any clothes and even if they were fire-resistant, she’d just leave them behind. And well, since flying around in her fire-form is her main form of transportation…”

“I see…,” grumbled Henry, still upset. Girls should wear clothes. Boys too, for that matter. “I hope there’s no one else among them who runs around naked?”

“Well, Hemming technically does. But it’s kind of moot, since he can either shapeshift to make it look like he’s dressed or take a form where it’s meaningless.”

“Well, alright, that makes sense,” Henry conceded as they looked left and right, preparing to cross a larger street. “Anything else I should know about her?”

“Yeah, she’s got a temper to match her powers. We’re talking hulk-level anger management issues. And her powers grow stronger the angrier she gets, to boot. Oh, and she’s Mindfuck and Slowburn’s (that was her predecessor) daughter,” Macian explained as they ran across the street. “Also, don’t ask her for sex and be a guy. She’s strictly into girls and usually burns off the family jewels off any male who even looks at her that way.”

“Umm, what’s sex?”

Macian actually stumbled, almost hitting the door they had been walking towards with his head. “You don’t… but you knew about rape?”

“Umm, I guess it has something to do with hurting people. Rape, I mean. But I don’t know anything else about that. What does it have to do with ‘sex’?”

“Well, I guess I forgot that most people my age wouldn’t know about this kind of stuff… Let’s put this off until we have some free time, ’cause I’m pretty sure we should get into this building and out of the street again.” He opened the door by pushing the lock out of it again and they slipped in.

Henry barely had any time to duck as a golf club was swung at the two boys, but he needn’t have wondered. Macian blocked it lazily and struck out with his artificial arm, which had grabbed on to it, smacking the attacker against the wall.

Someone screamed and charged towards them and Macian raised his hand towards the oncoming attacker, only to hesitate once he – and Henry as well – realized that a little boy younger than them was attacking with a kitchen knife. Still, he blocked the strike and easily overpowered the little child without using his artificial arm, pushing him to the ground.

“Bitte tu ihm nicht weh!” screamed a woman and Henry looked up from where he was crouching on the floor, seeing a woman standing next to the basement door, holding another kitchen knife in both hands and shaking like a leaf in the wind.

Looking to the left, he saw that their initial attacker, who was on the ground holding his belly, was a middle-aged man with a shaved head. He looked so much like the little boy, they had to be father and son.

Macian jumped back from the boy, nearly hitting Henry, who had to scramble back against the door.

“Die haben mich angegriffen!” Macian said defensively.

The man took the chance to grab his son and run towards the woman, putting himself between his family and the two boys.

The five of them stood there, looking at each other, no one daring to talk until Henry finally decided to do something about this.

He walked past Macian, his hands raised palms-out. “Everyone, please calm down!” He hoped desperately that at least one of the three understood English. Probably not the boy, but the parents…

“Are- Aren’t you Henry Appleton?!” asked the woman in sudden awe. Her English was quite heavily accented, but not so much that it was really difficult to understand her.

“I am, Madam. Please, we mean you no harm. My friend is just a bit jumpy,” he replied, hoping to defuse the situation.

She spoke to her husband in German, talking too fast for him to understand any single word, but the man relaxed – a bit. The boy was looking at Macian with fear in his eyes.

“What’s wrong with him?” asked the woman, throwing a wary look at Macian.

“I can speak for myself, you know?” the scarred boy replied with an annoyed look. “And I had a bad run-in with a fire-spewing chicken.”

Everyone in the room goggled at that statement, trying to determine whether or not he was being serious.

Henry capitalized on the confusion, approaching the family. He opened his mouth to say something when, suddenly, an explosion rattled the building, throwing everyone but Macian off their feet.

“Shit, shit, shit! We have to get out, NOW!” he shouted. “Wir müssen hier raus! Sofort! Fire Burial ist in der Nähe!” he added, looking at the family. They immediately went pale as sheets, scrambling down into the basement. “NEIN! Nicht da runter, sie wird-“

Whatever he was trying to say, another explosion cut him off as the back door of the building was blown out of its hinges, bursting into flaming splinters.

A beautiful young girl, looking to be no older than seventeen, lazily walked in on her tip-toes, her hips swinging. Even Henry could see why people would be attracted to her, even though she was completely naked – which was just icky – but he was captivated by her hair. It fell down her back down to her knees, with six thin braids falling down her front, three on each side of her head, barely covering her modestly sized chest. It looked like real fire of all colours, only it flowed and it flowed down instead of up. I gotta try and draw something like that, he thought irrationally.

Before either he or Macian could say anything, the girl walked past the open door to the basement and, looking down, shot a fireball after the screaming family. “NO!” screamed Macian as he fired his hand at her, but she dissolved into fire, dancing around the hall as her fireball exploded and the screams of the small family were abruptly cut off.

As Macian was reeling in his hand, Henry scrambled back to stand behind him, watching as she reformed closer to them in turn, giving them a slow, cruel smile. “Dear little Munchkin, I heard you were a bad boy today…”

B005 An Ember of Hope: Little Giants (Part 2)

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The room he’d woken up in had been part of an apartment building. After he’d felt up to moving again, they’d ascended to the top of the building, since Macian insisted on taking a look around before they went about their way. The way up the stairs had been quite straining and Henry was panting heavily by the time they finally reached the top.

The door at the top of the staircase had proven locked, but Macian had simply pushed one metal finger through the lock, breaking it out of the door. “Gotta love the brute force approach, eh mate?” he commented. Henry didn’t reply, his mind occupied with worrying about his mother, wherever she might be.

Stepping out into the open, they were once again greeted by the stark black sky and it was still bright as a clear day, even though it had to be close to midnight, if not past it.

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B005 An Ember of Hope: Little Giants (Part 1)

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Berlin, 13th June 2006

“An eight-year-old made this?” Alfred asked his companion.

She nodded, her complicated hair-knot bobbing up and down. “All of it. Not just this picture, everything you see here,” she replied seriously. “And all in less than a year, I hear.”

He shook his head, unbelieving. “That can’t be right. He a metahuman?”

“Apparently not. They actually got Lady Light to fly over and test him but she said no,” she explained.

“A hoax, then. No way a little boy did all of this, alone, in less than a year,” he continued, feeling his sensibilities as an artist insulted. It sometimes took him a year or two to make one picture like the piece in front of him – this one portraying Lady Light rising from the ashes of Berlin after the death of Weisswald in the last, final struggle of the Second World War. He had to admit, this was the work of a genius. He just didn’t want to believe that a little kid could do it.

“Look at the rest of his work. It’s all done by the same person, I’m sure of it. And, somehow, you can tell that it was done by a child.” His date grabbed his arm and pulled him into the gallery.

It was filled with nearly a hundred pictures of similiar quality, but with wildly varying themes. He looked at a few of them – a house by river, a knight fighting a dragon, a pirate on a ship – and he couldn’t deny the truth. This was all the same person. And… there was a sense of glee, of childish wonder, in each piece. The dragon and the knight were fighting like they’d jumped right out of a classic knight’s tale, but though the knight’s face was obscured by his helmet and the dragon’s maw was opened, breathing fire, there was just a sense of enjoyment woven into them that felt profoundly childish.

“My God,” he whispered as he realized that this may be it. A true genius, like the great artists of old. “Can I meet him?” he asked her.

She looked at him, understanding his emotions. “I hear he is in a separate room, working on a new picture. Anyone can watch, but you’ve got to be silent.”

He nodded and followed her as she pulled him in the direction of a doorframe with curtains instead of an actual door. On the way she said: “And you told me flying to Berlin would be a waste of time.” She stroked the pink-and-green peacock pin she had pinned on her dress, right over her heart.

* * *

Henry Appleton stood on a high stool, with a brush in each hand and his mother, dressed in her finest evening wear, holding his palette for him. He himself wore his favourite red shirt and blue pants, with an apron over them to keep them clean.

While he loved painting more than anything, he really hated having people watch him. At least, he hated strangers watching him. And right now, he had about a hundred people watching him as stood there, painting the Dark’s eyes. He’d been sketching this painting in his head for weeks and been working on it for two days already – he only had to finish the Dark and it was complete. But now his mother had told him that he had to finish it in front of everyone and he didn’t get why. Oh, he understood that it was good for making people believe that he really did it himself – only he didn’t get why it was anyone’s business.

“You’re doing great, sweetheart,” his mother whispered to him. “Just finish it and you can go to your room and be alone.”

He nodded without taking his eyes off his work, his hands flying over the picture, adding shades of black and red to the Dark’s face. People were whispering behind the red rope that held them back. He hated it when people where whispering around him. He hated crowds, because he hated the whispering, all the time, all around him…

He stopped working for a moment, closing his eyes to calm himself. He didn’t want to get stuck in his own head again. He’d just embarrass mother again and he didn’t want that.

After a few seconds, he continued his work, making the finishing touches to the six glowing red orbs. Then, as his mother had instructed him, he put his brushes onto the palette and turned around with a bow as the spectators began to applaud him.

* * *

“Is that his older sister?” Alfred asked in a whisper, aghast at the speed the boy was working. And with both hands at the same time. He needed to distract himself. The willowy, well-dressed young woman next to the boy was such a distraction. He noticed that the pin holding her bright red hair in a knot was fashioned like a cat. A very, very beautiful cat. Probably the boy’s work.

“Her? No, that’s his mother,” his date replied in kind, watching the boy with amused interest. She didn’t seem to be put off by the display.

“His-!? No. Way. The boy’s eight, right? And she can’t be more than twenty years old!” He almost raised his voice above a whisper and other spectators were giving him annoyed looks.

“Just turned twenty-one, far as I understand.”

“So she got pregnant at age twelve?”

“I hear she was kidnapped by a pedophile. Let’s not linger on this anymore,” she explained.

He visibly deflated. “Oh.” Then he looked for a different subject. Thankfully, he found one as the people began to stream out of the room while the boy was led away by his mother. “Any word on why he focuses so much on heroic imagery?” Nearly all of his pictures displayed some kind of heroism.

His date rolled her eyes. “Well, maybe it’s because he’s eight?”

He almost slapped his own head. “Right. Eight years old.”

“Let’s go and look at some of these beautiful paintings, alright? I think I saw one with a peacock, I’d really like to take a closer look at it.”

She pulled him back to the main hall of the museum.

* * *

“You did great out there, sweetheart,” Lara said as she used a towel to clean of his face in the room the museum had provided for the two of them to prepare.

Henry was squirming under her attention, groaning as she worked at a particularly persistent stain on his left cheek.

“I don’t know how you always manage to cover yourself in your own paint. You’re not doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” she asked with a smile.

He scrunched his nose. “Why would I do that, mama?”

“So you’d get me to clean you up again? I can still remember how you’d run out and jump into the mud, just so I’d give you another bath.”

“Muuuum! I was four! I’m older now!” he whined.

She giggled at his outrage. “Only four years older.” The stain finally admitted defeat and vanished.

“That means I’m twice as old now!”

“Yes, yes you are, my little sunshine. Now, let’s get ba-“

Suddenly, the lights went out. He and his mother froze for a second before they flickered back on.

“W-what was that?” she asked.

“Probably just a blackout, mama. Don’t worry,” he replied, stroking her cheek clumsily. “And the light’s back on any-“

<Achtung! Bitte bewahren Sie Ruhe. Die Wilden Sechs sind über der Stadt aufgetaucht und haben ihren ‘Vorhang’ errichtet. Bitte bewahren Sie Ruhe und begeben Sie sich zu den Luftschutzbunkern unterhalb des nächsten beschilderten Gebäudes.>

“Mama? Mama, what did they say?!” he asked, scared, as his mother turned pale as death.

She stood up so quickly that he almost fell off the stool he was sitting on. “Mama?”

“Grab your jacket, sweetheart, we have to go. Now!”

This time, he did fall of the stool, startled by her shout. He scrambled away, grabbing his patchwork jacket (he’d spent three days working on it, sewing it together out of countless small patches in every colour he could get his hands on. He’d even added a hood to it, which he now pulled over his head, suddenly wishing he could hide somewhere with his mother.

“Mama? What’s going on?” he asked again as he watched her put on her long brown overcoat over her dark green dress and grab her bag.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ll just go down into the air raid shelter. There is one right under the museum, we just need to go down a few-“

They had barely left their room when something hit the building with such force that it threw both of them off their feet. Henry yelped as he hit the ground with his head, hard. Everything went black.

* * *

“…be alright, please be alright, please be al…”

Silence, again. Only warmth remained.

“…please, open your eyes sweetheart, please open your eyes!”

He did, once he realized that it was his mother that was talking, desperately trying to wake him up. No, not right… Mama shouldn’t sound like this…

His eyes fluttered open. “Mama…?” he groaned as he suddenly noticed a dull pain in his head. Then he noticed that they’d been moving and had now stopped. Following that, he finally noticed that his mother was carrying him in a piggyback.

“Oh Henry, I was so worried…” she sighed and stopped, gently putting him down and leaning him against something hard and cold.

His head hurt so much. His eyes were open, but he could only see flecks of light dancing in front of him.

Soft, warm hands touched his cheeks, his lips, his nose. They moved over his head, touching a very tender bump on his head. She touched her lips to his forehead and he could suddenly see again.

His mother was looking at him, covered in dust, with streaks of tears leaving clean paths down her cheeks. Her green eyes (supposedly the same as his own, even though he was sure hers were half a shade brighter) were bright with tears. He had to look up a bit to see her face and so he could see that the sky was black, more black than any colour he had ever used, even when he painted the Dark. And yet it was still bright as day.

“Mama? What’s happened?” he asked in a whisper, his head hurting too much to speak any louder.

She caught on immediately – or maybe she was just so scared she didn’t dare speak any louder – and responded: “The Six. I-It’s the Savage Six,” she stammered. “Pristine hit the museum. She came after you. Said that M-M-Mindfuck wanted you, but that it wasn’t his turn yet. That she wanted to get back at him for some reason, so she was going to kill you before he had the chance to get you.” She was trembling.

He knew he should be scared, he should be terrified. He had heard the stories, what Mindfuck did with children he was after. But he was strangely calm. “How- how did you get away, mama?” He didn’t really know much about metahumans – they just weren’t as interesting as his art – but even he knew that the Six were pretty much unstoppable. His mother should not have been able to get him away.

She smiled without stopping to cry. “I… I think… no, I am a metahuman. I just grabbed you and just jumped into the next shadow. Kind of ironic, that I‘d get shadow powers don’t you think?” She chuckled sadly.

“You dove into the shadows? Cooool…” He blacked out again.

* * *

“Mama…?”

He was lying on something cold and hard. That was wrong. Mama would never put me somewhere this un-un-unnice…

His head hurt, though not as bad as before. He opened his eyes, staring up at the black sky – and parts of a destroyed ceiling and wall.

“Mama? Where are you?”

He looked around. Still inside the city, he was lying in the ruins of what looked like a former restaurant. And he could hear the sound of battle in the distance. Also, while it was still bright as day, the streetlights had been turned on. It’s probably night outside the curtain…

Trying to stand up, he merely flopped back down onto his butt, his head spinning. Lights were dancing in front of his eyes and his legs were numb. He put his hands onto his legs and kneaded them a bit until sensation returned to them. His head cleared as well.

Finally, after what felt like hours, he was able to stand up – though he was swaying a bit. His coat was ruined, stained with dust and torn badly by God knew what. He’d have to fix it, but he’d need some needle and thread.

Shaking his head, he focused his mind back on the here and now. Mama… where is mama? Suddenly, he was gripped by a deep-rooted fear. There was no way she’d leave him behind if she was still- No. Mama is alive. She just lost me, that’s it. She must have put me down to hide me and jumped into a shadow to do something and then forgot which shadow to go back to. Yes, that was good. That made sense.

“Hey! I think I found him!” shouted someone.

Henry whirled around. He saw a stocky man in a black and blue, armored costume with a concealing, featureless helmet. There was a white sextagon on his chest with six dots in different colours in it – black, blue, red, yellow, green and silver. A henchman?

Another person, a woman with a slender build, but the same costume, joined him. “Holy fuckin’ shit, that’s ‘im. Mindfuck is so going to reward us for this. He was afraid Pristine would get him first!” Her voice was grating and nasal, making him think of some cartoon character he had seen on the TV.

They approached him as Henry just stared, rooted on the spot in fear.

“Come’ere sweetie. We’re gonna get you to our boss and aaall will be great,” said the woman reaching out with her hands.

“Though we’ll have to get him to the boss without Pristine finding out about it,” commented the man who was following behind her.

“True dat. Now, come’ere sweetie,” she said again.

No, he thought. “No! I want my mama, not you!” he shouted, charging at her, swinging his fists. One connected with the chin of her armor, only to bounce off with a sharp sting of pain. It didn’t seem to faze her as he fell back onto his butt, tears running down his cheek as he held his hand.

The man chuckled. “Boy’s got guts, don’t h-“

Something shot towards him from outside of Henry’s field of vision, hitting his hand. He saw a black cable that led to what looked like a mechanical hand with spider-like, oversized fingers.

“What’s going on, pal?” the woman asked just as there was a thud.The man’s helmet and face liquified, splattering all over the remains of the wall. His headless corpse flopped to the ground and the hand was reeled back in.

The woman and Henry both turned around to see a young boy around his age stand there, the cable leading to his robotic left arm.

“No, not you, not you, not you please!” begged the woman as the claw shot back out, clamping onto her chest. “NO!!!”

Another thud and her whole torso liquified, splattering away from the claw as her arms, head and lower body dropped to the ground. Straight down without being thrown away from the claw by whatever struck her.

The claw… it bounced off only the second time. The first time, it didn’t even move when it made a thud…

Then he blacked out again, this time simply due to what he’d just seen.

* * *

Henry woke up again in a closed room. There was a warm, steady light in the middle of the room, coming from a cube the size of his fist.

“What happened?” he asked.

“You awake, mate? I’m glad, I was afraid I’d have to operate here,” said a young voice with a slight digital twang. Just from that, Henry could tell that whoever spoke probably wasn’t right in the head.

He sat up, stretching a bit and looking around. As his eyes fell on the boy opposite of the cube, he recoiled in horror.

He was his age, maybe a year older. His black hair was long and shaggy – on the right half of his head. His right eye was black as the night, so black he couldn’t make out a difference between his pupil and his iris. He was dressed in a simple black shirt and black pants, with grey-white sneakers.

The left half of his face had been burned down to an unrecognizable mess, his cheek mostly gone, his ear and eye apparently destroyed. The flesh that remained was warped and twisted, like melted wax that had been formed into a human face’s shape – by a blind monkey. Instead of a cheek, he had a clear plastic sheet that seemed to merge with his burned flesh in a way that was even more disgusting than the actual burned flesh. His teeth on that side were all metallic, as were parts of his jaw. It looked like he had a constant, deranged grin on the left side of his face.

Furthermore, his left eye was a metallic orb with glowing white and golden lines surrounded by bits of metal that protruded from his flesh. Instead of a left ear, he had something like a speaker (or maybe a flat microphone) built into its ruins and there were several pieces of metal, almost like antennae emerging from his head instead of hair.

The left sleeve of his shirt was missing, revealing a shoulder made of dull gray metal set into similarly burned and twisted flesh, with a too-long robotic arm tipped by a spider-like hand with fingers as long as Henry’s forearm.

The boy looked at him with both his organic and mechanical eye, a deranged glimmer in the right one. “Sorry ’bout the freakshow look, mate. I’m afraid I’m not going to win a beauty pageant any time soon.” He didn’t seem to be concerned about his look or his grievous wounds as much as he was concerned about Henry’s reaction. “What’s your name, mate? And why do these assholes want you so bad?”

He finally found his voice again, latching onto the question. “Henry. My name is Henry Appleton. I’m an-“

The boy’s eyes brightened at the name. Both of them, one metaphorically, the other literally. He rose to his feet and said: “Henry Appleton? The boy genius who’s been making Picasso look like a kindergartner with crayons?!” Now that he stood, Henry could see that his throat was burned as well, with some pieces of metal betraying implants of one kind or another, which probably accounted for the slight digital twang to his voice.

“That’s me, um, Mr…?”

The boy looked at him, thinking. “Hm. I’ve never had a name before. How about you call me… I don’t really have a name. Nor do I think I’m going to need one any time soon.”

“That*s strange. Didn’t your mother give you a name? Mine did. Hey, did you see my mother?! She has curly red hair, like me, and green eyes half a shade brighter than mine! She should wear a blue evening dress and a brown overcoat!”

The twisted boy shook his head. “Sorry mate, never saw her. Just saw those pricks try to get you and thought it would be better to have them dead. And no, my mother never gave me a name.”

Henry deflated, but then the statement stirred his memories. Dead. He killed them, just like that. Even though she was begging…

He keeled over, emptying his stomach on the ground. The twisted boy did not approach to help, just waiting for him to calm down as his body shook with heavy, almost spastic sobs. “You… you killed them. Just like that.“

“They deserved it. They were going to give you to Mindfuck. You know, the guy who likes to rape little children to death and broadcast it across entire cities, into the mind of everyone he can reach? I should have done more than just kill them instantly and without pain.”

“I… I…”

“Calm down, mate. You can’t change it, I can’t change it and you need to concentrate. You won’t survive this if you’re not all there, nor will you find your mom. Shelve it all for later, when the seven days are over.”

Henry nodded, feeling strangely calm despite the situation. He looked up at the twisted boy, meeting his eyes directly for the first time. “You need a name. I can’t just call you mate or boy, you know?”

“Hm… I don’t know. A name?”

“Yeah. Even if it’s just your cape-name. Something that has to do with your power?” Henry was absolutely sure this boy was a metahuman.

The twisted boy looked at his robotic arm, making it rotate a bit. “I make stuff, you know? So… why don’t you call me… Macian.“

B004.5 Worlds Away

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 What people knew as the Protectorate was not an area of sixteen square miles. An area of sixteen square miles was the particular range which had to be kept clear of sentient life – so the defensive structures were all outside of the area, so as to keep all personnel outside of the range. Even remotely controlled equipment counted as sentient in this regard (the phenomenon was known as sympathetic empathy and was, like most of The Protege’s powers, completely unique to him) and since the exact limits of his empathy was unknown save for its range, the people in power had decided to simply keep everything that was even fabricated by humans out of his range.

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B004 Introduction to Metahuman Studies (Part 5)

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The young man looked utterly unremarkable – he was the kind of person Basil would never have noticed walking down the street (then again, Basil was not the most observant of people). Neither tall nor short, average weight but soft, untrained. Short, brown hair, muddy brown eyes and a too large nose for his otherwise thin face. His clothing was equally unremarkable, a pair of blue jeans, a black t-shirt and blue loafers. Basil pegged him as a mid-twenty, at most.

And he was standing at the edge of the building, alternating between staring off towards the setting sun and down at the street.

As Basil watched, he took a deep breath and raised one foot to step off the roof.

“Stop please!” Basil shouted while simultaneously activating the speaker function of the raven.

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B004 Introduction to Metahuman Studies (Part 4a)

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Melody had met up with Irene and Aimi after school and Irene had teleported them back to the HQ. There they’d split up. She had walked straight back to her workshop, only pausing to change into her workclothes, while Irene walked off with Aimi to eat.

Now Melody was sitting at her worktable (again) and tried to work out the emergency equipment Brennus had constructed for Prisca Fion (again) and was flabbergasted at his work (again).

Apart from the incredible speed at which he’d constructed them, he’d scavenged his stun gun for parts. With Irene’s help, she’d been able to isolate all the pieces that used to be part of the gun, as opposed to the other parts used. Unfortunately, by the time they’d been done, her time at the workshop was over and she had to go to sleep (stupid workshop rules for teenage gadgeteers and contrivers…).

Now, finally, she’d get to work through it.

Strange that this is what I spend most of my time in the workshop doing since I debuted. Then again, I wouldn’t have been able to upgrade my armor like I have if it wasn’t for his ravens and his anti-emp system…

* * *

“So I get to do whatever I want with the money?”, asked Aimi.

Irene shook her head in frustration. “This is the seventh time you’ve asked this question since you joined. You get to do anything that is not illegal”, she explained over a platter of Rainbow Bomb Salad.

“Sorry, I just don’t get it. They’re just giving us five hundred dollars a month, just to be members?”, Aimi asked back.

“Well, there’s more to it. You have to be available during your designated hours, you have to stay in shape, you have to attend the training programs and you have to keep up a minimal grade point average in school. That’s what the five hundred dollars are for.”

“And we get more if we go out and fight crime?”

“Yes, you get more for fighting mundane criminals, even more for super-villains depending on their class and a huge bonus anytime you go up against an S-class threat. So you’ve already made a nice amount of money for the whole fight down at the Acre. Though this money goes into a trust fund, to finance your education after graduating from high school. Anything that remains is paid out to you”, Irene replied.

“Man, that’s a lot of money!”

“Remember, you get it for risking your life. Supervillain fights are not a laughing matter.”

Aimi thought that over. “That explains the bonus money, but still, five hundred dollars just for being on call and doing some training? Plus, they’re picking up all the fees for me going to Diantha High!”

Irene rolled her eyes. “Well, that last part ain’t so big – remember, my mom owns Diantha High. As for the rest – I’m sure you know the statistics, right? So you should understand why they want to make sure you’re happy here and get an education.”

But she didn’t – Irene didn’t even need her power to tell her that the girl wasn’t following her train of thought. Good God, is she really this dense?

After a minute of Aimi eating quietly and trying to figure out what Irene meant, she relented. “We’ve got a serious imbalance between heroes and villains. The necessity for a traumatic experience to achieve powers, as well as the staggering chance for mental illnesses mean that for every heroic or neutral metahuman out there, there are four supervillains. The good guys are very interested in making sure that you remain on the side of the angels.”

Aimi nodded, finally understanding, and went back to her three plates of food.

Irene herself swallowed two of her pills, then finished her salad. She wasn’t all that hungry, but she’d learned the hard way that neglecting her body’s physical needs would make her power compensate, making it harder to stay in control.

And she needed to stay in control, especially around the junior heroes. Melody may have accepted her despite her lapse in control, but it was unlikely that the others would be as accepting – especially Jared.

So she finished the (gorgeous) salad and ordered another round, just to make sure.

* * *

The hospital had been repaired quickly after the Hemogoblins attacked – Basil could not make out any sign of recent repairs.

Well, if mankind had not figured out how to repair buildings quickly by now, no city in the world would still be standing…

<Father, my scans show a visitor in Ms Fion’s room>, said Eudocia, speaking to him through an earbud he had linked to her box.

<Oh? Who?>, he asked, using a subvocal microphone to answer without even moving his lips. There were only one or two people who could be visiting Prisca. One would be bad, the other would be really bad.

<Facial recognition identifies the visitor as Primrose Tamara Fion>

Yeah, really bad. Prisca’s mother… did not like him.

Still, he had come here to meet Prisca and he would be damned if he did not go through with it just because the scariest woman in the world was there as well.

So he walked to Prisca’s new room – she had been put in a more secure room, pretty much in the center of the hospital and underground. While he was pretty sure that Prisca at least did not like this new arrangement, he was glad for the extra protection.

In front of the room, he found a tall, tall man in a black suit and tie. Sebastian, the Butler of the Fion family and Primrose’s bodyguard. He had done some research – Sebastian was actually a very old metahuman, born back in 1934. He had manifested at age seventeen, when he had taken his father’s place as the Fion family’s butler and the then-head of the family had been assaulted by the Dark. He’d managed to save his master and escape and he had been the families most loyal servant since then.

As he approached, he was struck by how tall the man was. Two and a half meters of lean, iron-hard muscle, with shoulder-length golden-white hair, he was rated as a Physique 10, with Protection 7 for his regeneration, Perception 5 for his enhanced and expanded senses and Damage 4 for his enhanced striking power. He could be a top-class cape, even if you did not factor in his sixty-two years of experience, but he had chosen to remain loyal to the Fions.

The butler took one look at him from behind his black sunglasses, which he wore even at night or in a building – they did not impede his vision in any way, but gave his already intimidating presence a barely needed boost and protected him from being staggered by sudden brightness – and nodded, stepping aside to let him enter. He did not pat him down or anything, as his x-ray vision allowed him to check him for any hidden weapons or similiar things. Of which he carried none. Basil had even made sure to leave Eudocia back in his lair, because her box stood out under x-rays.

I would really like to know what goes through the mind of a man like this. To dedicate himself so fully and completely to a family. I hear he has never taken a vacation in over sixty years of service.

He passed by the man and entered the room.

Inside, he found Prisca on her bed, hooked up to her machines. Next to her, on a stool, sat her mother, Primrose.

Ever since he had first met the woman, Basil had felt… uneasy around her. She made no secret of her disdain for him, though he could not guess why she did not like him.

Primrose looked the way Prisca should look, if it was not for her disabilities. She was as tall as Basil, and since she always wore high heels, she stood even taller than him. Her hair reached down to her waist in carefully styled ringlets, with any grey she might have gained by now well hidden. She was no adonis… well, she was no metahuman and so had no Physique effect, but she could still have modeled. Even at forty-five years, she was still stunning, having aged in as dignified a way as one could hope to. The only trait she did not share with her daughter were her pale blue eyes. Prisca had inherited her father’s eyes. In addition to that, she was dressed in a dark green, knee-length dress, a stylish black jacket and the aforementioned high heels. But above all else, the woman had presence. She could intimidate him better than anyone he had ever met.

When she saw him, a frown appeared on her face, but she did not say anything. She stood up, kissed her daughter on the forehead and left without looking at him again.

He did not relax until he heard the door close behind him and the sound of her pumps walking down the hallway. Then he let out the breath he had been holding.

“Has she ever told you why she does not like me?”, he asked.

Prisca shook her head. “No, she just says that you’re giving her a bad feeling. Also, some stuff about you simply not being good enough for me, but I think she’d say that about any boy I might like.”

He nodded and took Primrose’s seat. Then he took a good look at Prisca.

Her kidnapping and the ensuing operation had taken their toll on her. She was paler than usual, her hair stringy and brittle, her limbs even more drawn-out. And her eyes looked so tired.

“How are you feeling?”, he asked, taking one hand between his two, giving it a light squeeze.

“Awful, really. But I guess that is to be expected”, she replied, squeezing back.

“What is the doctor’s diagnosis?”

She averted her eyes. “More damage to my lungs, though less than it might have been and they should recover – a bit. Same for my stomach. But they’re afraid they’ll have to remove a kidney, though they’re going to wait and see if it might recover.”

He caressed her hand with his fingers. I wish I could have made those assholes suffer. Instead all but the Goblin got away scot-free.

“Well, I have got some good news at least. Something positive about this whole business”, he said.

She turned back at him. “How could any of this be positive?”

“Well, you remember how I said it would be difficult for me to help you with some gadgets? How it would be suspicious if Brennus just turned up and left you some advanced tech?”

She nodded, not understanding what he wanted to say.

“Now that Brennus saved you, it would not be that strange for him to take pity and make an effort to help you – I might even be able to work out some arrangement for me to directly examine you!” He was getting more and more agitated. If he could get a chance to use his own equipment to examine her, he might be able to actually find a cure, small as the chance might be.

Her face brightened up immediately, making his heart flutter. I love it when she looks like that.

“Are you sure? You could help!?”

“I can not promise you a cure – but I should be able to make things easier for you, maybe even create some compact machines so you could go outside in a wheelchair!”

She drew him closer, throwing her arms around his neck.

“Oh, thank you, thank you!”, she sobbed, burying her face in his neck.

“Now, now, why do we not wait until I actually manage to help you?”, he said, softly patting her back.

She let go and he helped her lean back again, her short burst of strength already spent.

“You saved me from those villains, remember? You already helped.”

He shook his head. “First, it was mostly Gloom Glimmer who helped you. Second, they would not have kidnapped you in the first place if it was not for the sake of drawing me out.”

“Not your fault. Besides, did you find out what they wanted from you?”

“Well…”

* * *

“So the Savage Six thought you were some other gadgeteer they’ve been looking for? And they organized a city-wide crime spree, just to test whether or not you might be that person?! What the fuck?!”

“Yeah, it sounds strange. I mean, what kind of person must this Macian have been, to make them do something like this just on the off-chance that it might be him?”

“Probably some kind of uber-gadgeteer. A 13/13, maybe? That would make anyone who knows about him go to any length to get their hands on him.”

He turned that thought around in his head. “You know, I think if there was a gadgeteer out there with that kind of rating, he would not remain an unknown for long. I mean, he would have the most sought after power ever, short of the Protege of course.”

“Yeah, something like that. Still, he’s got to be quite the character.”

“Hmhm. So, you have already read about the new Werdenfeld-Manning-System for power classifications?”

“Not read. I watched Gloom Glimmer’s lecture.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I’m going to be following the lecture by video. I’m already enrolled at Diantha High, though I mostly get private tutoring, but since I can’t get Gloom Glimmer over here, I’ll be following the whole course online.”

He smiled, amused. “So there is something your mother can not buy for you?”

“Are you kidding? We’re talking about the daughter of Lady Light and the Dark. Either of them is probably richer than the entire Fion family!”

“Oh, I know. Just teasing a bit”, he replied, giggling. “So, what did you think of the lecture?”

“It was fun, though I must say, she can make her exposition almost as long-winded as you do”, she said.

“Hrmpf. Just because I like to be thorough with my explanations…”, he snorted.

“Hihi, you’re just too easy to tease, you know. I swear, you could be a hundred years old, and you’d still get riled up whenever someone made fun of that.”

He blew her a raspberry.

“Oooh, how mature. That sure put me in my place.”

He snorted again.

“Well, either way, I have something else I wanted to ask you”, he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh? What could that be? Will it be just as much of a surprise as earlier?”

Shaking his head, he answered: “No, I do not think so. But you will like it nonetheless. You see, I want you to do some testing for me. Something to occupy you.”

“That sounds really interesting. Tell me more!”

He pulled a hand-crafted tablet computer out of his backpack. It was a bit larger than the usual tablets, with a rimless screen the size of the usual printer paper. However, it was so thin and light, even Prisca would not have any problem holding it.

“Here, take this. I have already put in your fingerprints as the key to the lock.”

She took the tablet, curiously, smiling when she noticed the light weight, and pressed her finger on the screen.

It lit up, revealing several pre-installed programs and a white background with two black ravens biting each other’s tail, forming a circle.

“What is that symbol?”

“It is Brennus’ emblem. Do you like it?”

She nodded. “It’s nice, and so very you. But isn’t it dangerous, giving me something with your cape’s emblem on it?”

“First, only you can access this tablet. Second, who is going to check? Your mother is not going to rifle through your computer, right? And even if someone sees this, you can just say that you took the emblem as your background simply because he saved you and you like it.”

She nodded and he started explaining what it could do.

“It has got the usual features – internet access, high-definition graphics, compatibility with pretty much everything I could think off, a four-month battery life assuming two hours of use every day and so on. But the really interesting stuff is this little icon here.”

He pointed to a black icon with a red eye on it, formed like lips holding a circle between them. Eudocia’s emblem.

“What does it do? And what’s that symbol?”

“That is a secret – it would not do to spoil the testing by telling you what is behind it, you know.”

She pouted, which looked cute despite her cracked, thin lips, but he did not relent.

“It can only be activated with your fingerprint and you have to also type in the words ‘the world is vast’ as a password.”

“The world is vast?”

“Something that just came to mind. Feels incomplete, but I can not think of the rest of the phrase. Either way, try it out.”

She did so, tapping the icon and then putting in the password.

A black window appeared in the upper right corner. It was empty.

“If you tap this window, you can write into it, you can speak and you can drop in text, audio or video data. It will give back responses to anything you put in. I want you to challenge the program – give it any question, give it riddles and so on. You can even drop in games and watch it play them – or let it play in the background. You can also play against it, if the game allows for it. The purpose of the whole exercise is to see if you can find any flaws – anything it can not deal with, which causes it to fail.”

This way, you get to have some fun and I can outsource Eudocia’s testing.

“What kind of program is that?”

“As I said, telling you would spoil the testing. Do you think you can do this for me?”

She giggled. “Sure I can. And I can just throw anything at it?”

“Of course. If anything makes it hang up, I will know immediately and it will help me work some stuff out.”

“This sounds like fun!”

“I hope so. Now, I will leave you to it – I have work to do today. Specifically, working on that new equipment for you”, he said.

“Sure, sure, you go do that”, she said absentmindedly, already typing something into Eudocia’s chat window.

He smiled, giving her a light kiss on the cheek. Then he picked up his backpack and left, off to his lair.

Time for some work. Besides, Timothy would be there, together with the girls. He wanted to see whether or not they would like him.

* * *

The man (really more of a boy) that they called Hopscotch for the scars on his back that formed one such, had joined the Hemogoblins because… well, because of the girls. Or rather, one girl. The Goblin Queen. He’d first seen her when she’d robbed a bank he’d been in with his mother – she’d just smiled at him and he’d known that he wanted to work for her.

And at first, it had been awesome. Robbing people, assault, some rape, some other fun and, of course, sex with an awesomely hot woman whenever he did good work.

Then, last weekend had happened. Now, the Red Goblin was dead and Switchbitch and Redder were missing, with no trace to be found of either of them.

The queen had been less than pleased, to say the least. She’d been raging and screaming for two days, then started planning to retaliate againt the United Heroes. And Hopscotch would have been more than happy to help her – he might even get some more time with her, now that she wouldn’t be getting more goblins anymore and had to rely more on her real servants. Even though she’d just gotten a new metahuman, a young Japanese guy, as her right hand man, she’d still be thankful for his loyalty, he just knew it.

One minute ago, all of her and Hopscotch’s plans had been torn apart. Two girls had just appeared in the middle of their gathering, right out of nowhere. They wore identical skintight bodysuits and face masks that lacked even eye-holes, coloured Blue and Yellow, respectively. The suits were quite a bit thicker than usual, designed for efficient protection and movement instead of good looks, but they still did not hide that there were two real beauties beneath.

Before anyone present knew what had happened, the two had dismantled the fifteen baselines and two metahumans in the room, killing the twenty-three goblins they still had left.

Now, the Goblin Queen, herself dressed in what amounted to a barely present, black bra and loincloth, was lying on the ground, her hands nailed to the ground with her own knives. The new guy was unconscious, as was pretty much everyone else.

The girl in the yellow costume was standing over the Goblin Queen (she’d been the one to nail her to the ground – somehow), while the girl in blue was at the edge of the room, keeping a lookout.

Hopscotch had fallen where he’d stood, a single blow to his gut taking him out of the fight – though he was still conscious and able to watch.

Through the pain in his gut he watched and listened as the girl in yellow questioned the Goblin Queen about something, though the pain was just too much to really follow. Something about something called ‘Macian’, that asshole Brennus and the Savage Six. Why would they ask his mistress about the Six? Why would someone as magnificient as his mistress ever associate with the Six?

His mistress, of course, refused to answer – but that only made the girl in yellow take another knife that was lying around and impale his mistress’ foot, nailing it to the ground. He cringed in sympathy as she screamed in pain.

An outrage unlike anything he’d ever felt gripped him at the sight of his mistress being tortured, but his gut wouldn’t let him move.

The bitch in yellow questioned his mistress again, and this time, she answered. Though the bitch didn’t seem pleased by the answers, going by how she twisted the knife in his mistress’ left hand. Another round of questioning, and she seemed satisfied.

The blue bitch approached and held her hand out, which the yellow bitch took – and they vanished, just like that.

A minute later, he could finally move again, just in time for him to hear police sirens and watch as they stormed in.

* * *

The moment they arrived in their apartment, the two of them stripped out of their costumes. Both of them hated being part of the spandex crowd, but it was necessary to keep their identities secret as well as be more inconspicious.

Bluebell had laughed hysterically for ten minutes straight when she realized that wearing bright and flashy colours was less conscpicious than wearing normal stuff.

Glik immediately went to her computer, entering what little they had learned.

“Well, that was a bust”, Bluebell commented to her twin, walking up behind her to gather her long blonde hair in a ponytail.

Glik nodded, then stood up to return the favour.

“Do you think we should approach Brennus directly? If he’s Macian, he should recognize us immediately, right?”

Her sister nodded, but then raised a finger.

“But we have to be careful, I know. If he isn’t Macian, if the Six have him under surveillance, if, if, if.” She threw her head back, groaning. “Dammit, this almost makes me hope for another crime spree. It would be easy to contact him discretely if he were out fighting someone.”

Glik nodded again.

“Maybe we should actually contact the United Heroes?”

She shook her head.

“No, you’re right.” If only we knew how loyal Gloom Glimmer is to the Dark. Can’t have her rat us out to him.

Glik sat back down, typing something into her computer, pulling up a webpage.

Bluebell bent down to look over her shoulder. “Ooh, that might work…”

* * *

“Honey, I’m home! I’m hungry!”, Basil shouted as the elevator reached his actual lair.

He was greeted by confused stares.

“Hmph. No one appreciates the classics anymore”, he snorted.

Looking around, he could see his entire ‘team’ – if you could already describe it as such. Dalia was wearing an atrocious combination of orange hot pants and a purple top he hesitated to call anything other than ‘boobstrap’ while taking up an entire couch. Timothy was sitting at the console together with Vasiliki, who was showing him how everything worked (at least everything she could get to work) and Stephie was sitting on another couch, reading a comic book.

Tim spoke first: “It’s more like no one but you even bothers to watch most of the stuff you get your lines from.”

The girls giggled and Basil rolled his eyes.

“So, I guess you guys hit off with each other?”, he asked into the room while putting his backpack away.

“Well, we didn’t kill each other, at least”, said an irritated Dalia.

Stephie explained: “She’s just pissed that everyone’s been making fun of her outfit.”

“Oh, shut up, Mouse Girl”, replied Dalia, making a rude gesture. Stephie just giggled and turned back to her comic book.

Foreseeing more than enough occasions to ridicule Dalia’s wardrobe, Basil decided to let it rest for now.

“So, did anyone pick anything up?” He was referring to his surveillance systems.

Vasiliki answered: “There’s something going on with the Black Panthers. I think they are preparing to purchase something big, but no details yet.”

“Alright, we should keep an eye on that. Dalia, would you man the console? Maybe your power will help?”

The girl snorted, but stood up and walked over to the other two. Though she sat down as far away from them as possible.

“Anything else?”, he asked.

“No”, replied Stephie.

Dalia said nothing.

“I’ll just give Timothy a complete introduction, unless you want to do that?”, said Vasiliki.

“No, I would rather go down to my workshop. I have got quite a bit of work to do.” She nodded and turned back to the computer console.

He went down to his workshop.

* * *

An hour later, Brennus had made quite a bit of an advancement to his work on Prisca’s equipment. It felt strange, but somehow, his power was working more… cleanly right now. There was no other word to describe it. He was far more focused than usually, with less than five or six distractions every minute. Usually, his mind was working on at least twelve different projects simultaneously, though most were dead ends or forgotten before they could solidify.

If it went on like this, he’d be able to deliver the first package by the end of the week!

He was disrupted by Eudocia speaking up.

<Father, you may want to take care of this personally.>

He turned to the screen to his right, where she pulled up a video feed from one of his ravenbots.

This particular one stood on the edge of a rooftop in the Downtown. It showed a young man, twenty-something from the looks of him, standing on the edge.

<An analysis of his behaviour returns a probability of eighty-nine percent of him committing suicide>, explained Eudocia.

Ah, crap.

B004 Introduction to Metahuman Studies (Part 3)

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“First, I’m sure that you all know the old Cruse-System for classifying metahuman abilities, named so for Franklin Cruse, who organized and directed the convention that created the system back in nineteen-forty-seven, and which has been in use to this day. Whoever knows it also knows how incredibly confusing it can get, using mythological terms for some powers and a jumble of English terminology for some others. Does anyone here want to guess why it got so confusing?”

No one raised their hand. It didn’t surprise her – few knew this particular little factoid.

I’ve wondered about that, myself, but I could never make any sense of the whole thing, said Melody.

“Fun fact: It’s my father’s fault. The Dark’s. He thought it would be funny to make it as confusing as possible,” she said. People looked at her with disbelieving eyes.

Seriously? He thought it would be ‘funny’? And how did he pull it off?!

I asked him. He seriously answered that ‘It amused me’. And he did it mostly by sneaking into the convention led by Cruse and influencing the gathered specialists. He does stuff like that whenever he’s bored.

Good God, and you grew up with that? Explains so much.

Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?!

Melody didn’t respond.

She focused her thoughts back onto the lecture. “So, after sixty-five years, the Werdenfeld-Manning research team has developed a new classification system. The first and most important change is that it no longer bothers to differenciate between source powers and derived powers. What does that mean? Well, let’s take Lady Light as an example.”

Lady Light’s power classification appeared on the whiteboard.

Adonis 10

Generator 7 → Wild Card 10 (Hard-Light Armament)

“This is my mother’s classification under the Cruse-system. Observe how there is a distinction between her source power – Generator, her ability to create her hard light constructs – and the resulting Wild Card classification, a derived power. Her new classification is as follows.”

New words appeared next to the old ones.

Physique 12

Damage/Protection 7

Meta 12

“Notice first how it now lists the effects of her powers, instead of trying to denote a source power. Notice also how the Adonis-trait has been renamed – we will get to that shortly.”

“Now, you may ask yourselves what the big difference is. Simply put, this new system puts more emphasis on summing up what a metahuman can do, not why. It also necessiates more attention to the individual descriptions of the metahuman’s abilities. The main reason for this change is that it is basically impossible to properly determine source powers, or sum up the powers into a few words. So now, we won’t even try any more,” she continued. “Furthermore, all non-English terms have been replaced so as to make the classifications more easily understandable. This is now the comprehensive list of power effects.”

Contriving

Control

Damage

Gadgeteer

Manipulation

Morphing

Movement

Perception

Physique

Protection

Spawning

Meta

At least it’s all in English this time, she said to Melody.

Yeah, I never understood how they came up with some of the names they did.

Dad brought a Thesaurus into the convention and randomly dropped suggestions into the minds of the attendees.

The more I learn about your father, the less I respect him…

Tell me about it.

“Alright, we are going to work through this list from top to bottom, working through the effects. I stress, this will just be a short introduction – we are going to revisit it later on. Please make notes, you will need to remember this for every following session.”

The whiteboard was wiped clean again, then the word Contriving appeared.

“Contriving is, perhaps, the strangest power out there – at its most basic level, it allows the metahuman to create placebos through which various effects can be expressed. At higher levels, Contriving allows a metahuman to create pretty much any tool for any task, making it arguably the most dangerous classification aside from transcendent variable powers. At levels one through three, Contriving allows a metahuman to create fantastic equipment and effects within a narrow field. An example would be Spellgun, who can only create various guns and ammunition, and nothing else – all his gear apart from his arms and ammunition is actually mundane technology, only styled to fit his theme. From four to six, we see the capabilities of contrivances branch out – Doc Feral, for example, can bestow a variety of temporary powers with his Power Juice, both to himself and to others. Levels seven through nine, Apex Tier contrivers, are what everyone thinks of when they speak of Mad Scientists – while they may have a focus, they can apply their ability to nearly any field, giving them, perhaps, the greatest versatility of all metahumans appart from God Tier contrivers. An example of this would be Doctor Despair, while the Archmage is an example of a God Tier contriver at level ten. Speaking of God Tier, there is only one known contriver to ever be assigned a rating of twelve – that would be, of course, Memento. While he still specializes in creating numerous robots, he can give them pretty much any power he can think of, as well as create an incredibly variety of support equipment that goes far beyond robotics. Unfortunately, contrivers are the most endangered metahumans when it comes to mental maladies – you can take any of the chances I’ve named earlier and double them for contrivers, up to 99%, which, of course, means that any contriver from level eight and above is pretty much guaranteed to be deranged in some way. And no, we will not get into Heretic in this course. Yes, he is the most powerful contriver ever. No, he will be discussed in a course specifically dealing with contrivers.”

“Now, the Control classification specifies any metahuman effect that allows for controlling other entities, be they humans, animals or constructs, but does not entail the ability to create them. Exemplars can, at best, control insects, simple animals or influence human emotions. A well-known example would be Buggy, a much-loved superhero operating in China, who can control large quantities of bugs, but only within a limited range; or Racer, who can control any car with his insignia on it remotely. Paragons are capable of controlling human emotions to a greater degree, implant suggestions, control a single human under certain conditions or control large quantities of animals. Bestiality is one such controller, a woman capable of controlling entire herds of animals at a time. Finally, in the Apex Tier, we get the much feared true mind controllers, people who can either completely control one person or take control over more than one to a limited degree. An example would be the late supervillainess Darling, who could use pheromones to control anyone who could smell her for significant amounts of time or Mindstar, who can only completely take over the mind of one person at a time, but can manipulate entire crowds to a lesser degree. Finally, we get to the God Tier of controllers – of which there are only two confirmed cases. The -fortunately – late Mindfuck of the Savage Six, the single most powerful telepath on record, and Polis Megalos, the premier superhero of Greece, who is capable of controlling an entire city.”

She paused for while, giving the students time to write everything down.

“Something simpler, now. The Damage classication describes any inherent ability to cause physical damage. The most common example are energy blasts of one kind or another. The damage classification is rarely applied to powers that have an indirect way of causing damage as part of their abilities – for example, if someone can spawn a superstrong minion, they are only given a Spawning rating, not a damage rating – otherwise nearly every metahuman out there would have a damage rating, so it’s only used for specialized damaging effects. With Exemplars, the damaging ability is restricted to damage that can be duplicated by mundane weaponry, like the ability to accelerate small, bullet-like objects to terminal speeds. Paragons go up to the output of vehicle sized weaponry, like gatling guns or tank guns. Apex Tiers describe powers that reach and eventually surpass the potential of artillery or bombardement. In the God Tier, we get the truly terrifying powers, capable of tearing down a good chunk of a large city with a single use. Desolation-in-Light almost always uses at least this level of destructive capability during her attacks. Theoretically, a transcendent damage effect would equal the destructive effect of a nuclear bomb, but thankfully, there has yet to be a metahuman with such power. Except for Desolation-in-Light, though she only used such abilities a few times until now.”

“We are going to skip the Gadgeteer effect for now. Let’s tackle that at the end of the session.”

Oh, you’re so mean.

Don’t complain.

“Manipulation effects entail all effects that, somehow, affect the physical world and do not fall into another category, making it the most expansive power classification. It can range from simple telekinesis to the stranger powers of time manipulation or probability manipulation (which was formerly a Wild Card power) and it can be either ranged, touch ranged or personal. In the Exemplar Tier, we get almost exclusively low-level elemental manipulation, like pyrokinesis that allows the creation and/or control of limited amounts of fire, geokinesis of less than five hundred kilogram, simple photokinesis and so on. The Paragon Tier includes the first universal telekinetics, limited manipulation of time and gravity, and so on. Most electrokinetics also fall into the Paragon Tier, mainly due to their versatility. In the Apex Tier, we get the specialized kinetics who can move more than ten tons of material, universal telekinetics with up to ten tons of strength and this is also the minimal rating for true probability manipulators. Finally, in the God Tier, we find the manipulators who can move entire buildings, using skyscrapers as thrown weapons for an example. An old, thankfully dead example would be Earthmaster, a geokinetic villain who was capable of causing earthquakes that reached up to an eight on the Richter Scale.”

She let that sink in for a while – no one in this room was old enough to remember that asshole – he’d been one of her mother’s first recurring enemies, nearly ninety years ago.

How did Earthmaster go down, actually? I don’t think your mother killed him?

Nope, the Justicar killed him. With a sniper rifle, while he was sitting on the toilet.

“Morphing describes all effects that change the user’s physical form. At the Exemplar Tier, you can find effects like turning limbs into weapons, the skin into diamond or a single, natural form, like being able to turn into a single animal or into a single other person. The Paragon Tier includes the abilities to change into various forms within a single class – different animals, different humans and so on – shapeshifting your limbs into various forms of the same material – turning your hands into various metallic forms, for example – and the like. Apex Tier morphers are capable of freely adjusting their form, though they are generally held back by a single limit – for example, the new UJH member Bakeneko can freely shift her own form, her only limits being that she cannot adjust her mass and is restricted to organic forms. At the God Tier, we find nearly unlimited shapeshifters who are usually only limited by having to remain within a certain mass range. The best known example would be the leader of the Savage Six, Hemming, who can take on any organic or inorganic form and is only limited by his own imagination and his own mass – he has to remain within one tenth or about fifty times his own mass.”

“Movement denotes all effects that enhance a persons capabilities to, well, move around. Super-Speed, flight and teleportation are the most well-known examples. At levels one through three, you find people with exceptional, though not necessarily inhuman speed, the ability to stick to walls, walk on water or fly while still limited by natural laws. From level four through six, you get real Super-Speed, usually up to seventy miles per hour, short-range personal teleportation, the ability to move slowly through solid matter and true independent flight, often ignoring at least wind resistance. Levels seven through nine include flight that ignores most aeronautical laws and long-range teleportation and/or the ability to take other people along on your jumps. At the God Tier, we get people like the late Switchstep, who could teleport himself and up to six tons of mass from the surface of the Earth to the Moon and flight that completely ignores natural laws, including the laws of inertia.”

“Perception effects are all those power effects that enhance a persons ability to perceive the world, as well as all abilities that manipulate other person’s senses. This is perhaps the second-most variable classification, as it includes all enhanced senses, all supernatural senses, psychometry, precognition, as well as illusions, invisibility and other sensory concealment effects. I’m not going to go through the individual power levels here, as this category is far too complex to be quickly broken down into labels. We’ll get into that during the session where we will get into the specifics of the Perception classification.”

“Physique combines the former Adonis and Chimaera classifications. Some of you might know that there has been an ongoing debate over whether or not the Adonis- and Chimaera-traits should even be classified as powers and not as results of a one-time adjustment of the body, as they cannot be influenced by any effect that influences other powers, like nullification effects – even Dr. Null was never able to nullify the enhanced physique of Lady Light or other metahumans, nor reverse the mutations of the Chimaera trait. Well, now this question is no longer important, as the question doesn’t even figure into classifications anymore – we only classify effects from now on. Either way, Physique effects are all effects that improve and/or permanently change the body, including improvements to the brain, allowing for increased intelligence. They range from simply improving – or twisting – the appearance and performance within the normal human range at the Exemplar Tier to the completely inhuman capabilities of God Tier physique effects like Lady Lights ability to shrug off anything short of armor-piercing rounds and punch through concrete. Physique powers are also the only ones that can be assigned a rating of zero, which means that it merely affects the outward appearance and maybe the overall health of a person.”

“Protection effects are all those effects that protect their wearer in some fashion, from extremely tough skin in excess of the Physique rating to force-fields, the ability to turn insubstantial (which nearly always entails a Movement rating as well) and so on. Exemplar Protection grants the ability to simply resist mundane damage better, up to being nearly bulletproof at level three. From level four through six, we get truly bulletproof metahumans, low levels of insubstantiality and so on. Apex Tier brings us the first ‘invulnerable’ metahumans, like Amazon, who can take anti-tank rounds and keep swinging. In the God Tier, we get those rare few individuals who are almost completely untouchable by anything short of equally rated metahuman damage effects, such as the late Protector, who once survived a nuclear explosion and was only killed – in fact, only ever harmed when he ran up against DiL. Protection effects also include the common Regeneration capability of many metahumans.”

“Now, Spawning is one of the rarest and most versatile effects – the ability to create agents, ranging from simple remote-controlled automatons to fully independent, perhaps even sentient entities. It often also entails an unrated Control and/or Perception effect, allowing the metahuman to completely control their creations or share their senses, respectively. In the Exemplar Tier, we get effects that allow for the creation of small, non-sentient and non-powered entities out of thin air or up to medium-sized automatons out of existing material. An example would be the ability to create ‘insect’ swarms out of nothing or animate a single physical object. Levels four through six entail the ability to either animate several medium-sized constructs, a single larger construct, create medium-sized entities out of thin air or spawn semi-sentient entities of up to animal intelligence. At levels seven through nine we get the effects which allow the creation of several larger constructs out of existing material, large entities out of nothing, single, powered entities, and entities with near-human levels of intelligence. Among God Spawners, we get people like The Dark, who can create several independent, fully sentient and meta-powered entities, in his case ‘Darkwraiths’ or a single, extremely powerful entity. There is also a known level thirteen spawner, Weisswald, who could create self-sustaining, self-replicating entities, nowadays known as ‘Spiteborn’.”

“Finally, the Meta descriptor describes all powers that deal with powers. That means, all means of enhancing, suppressing, bestowing, mimicking, stealing or shifting powers fall under this classification. The breakdown of the individual tiers would take too long at this point. Let’s just say that this is the one rating which every tactician out there absolutely loathes to have on the opposing side.”

She stopped, taking a deep breath and letting her pupils jot down their notes. Leaning back against her podium, she got ready for the final part of this topic.

“Now, I earlier said that I’d explain the Gadgeteer rating at the end. There’s a reason for that, because Gadgeteer’s get a special rating scheme. Because Gadgeteering has the distinction of being the only supernatural effect to operate after natural principles – in fact, it ONLY works within the range of natural laws – it is one of the most interesting effects out there. Many people hope that the appearance of a sufficiently high-rated Gadgeteer might lead humanity into a new Golden Age, perhaps even push us towards a technological singularity. Regardless of that, the Gadgeteer effect gets a double rating, going from one-slash-one to thirteen-slash-thirteen. This is because it is important to both describe how fast a Gadgeteer can work and how far ahead of current scientific theory they are. Let’s take, for example, Polymnia. She was formerly rated as a Gadgeteer three for being able to produce extremely advanced acoustic equipment, though she usually only created advancements of existing technologies instead of new ones – her sonic cage invention being an exception. Now, her new rating would be five-slash-three, because while she seems to be limited to current scientific theory, she works a lot faster than any mundane scientist. At higher levels, we get the vigilante Brennus, who’s estimated to be a seven-slash-five, Atrocity from the Savage Six, a six-slash-five and, of course, Sovereign, a seven-slash-seven, with a current debate among several circles within the Department of Metahuman Affairs to re-rate him as a seven-slash-eight, perhaps even an eight-slash-eight. The highest rated Gadgeteer we know of would be the late Su Ling, who is estimated to have been a Gadgeteer twelve-slash-twelve.”

I wish I could get Brennus into my workshop. The inventions we could come up with…

Please don’t drool. Bad enough the boy next to you is drooling already from looking at me.

“Alright, that’s it for the power classifications. And it also looks like I managed to already talk us through most of today’s session. Now, we are also going to have sessions on the more outlandish forms of manifestations, including the much talked about, yet never quite proven process of inheriting powers, as well as metahuman families. Get ready to take a lot of notes, because I’m going to give you an overview of required and suggested reading, as well as some names among metahuman researchers to keep an eye out for…”

* * *

“Man, this was an interesting lecture. Except for that last part, of course…,” commented Aimi.

“Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t even know about some of those books she recommended. Now I finally have something new to read again!” replied Basil.

Timothy and Aimi rolled their eyes, but didn’t say anything. They left for their next class.

* * *

Later, when they had gotten through their last class for the day, the three friends left to walk home. They were on their way past the statue of Diantha Whitaker when Brennus suddenly had an idea.

He had been thinking quite a while on how to imitate Sovereign’s force-field technology, and while he still was not sure he could create real force-fields, it should be-

“Ack!” Basil shouted, holding his head with one hand as a sharp pain lanced through his head.

“Basil? Did something happen?” asked Tim.

He shook his head. “No, I just remembered – today is my first chance to see Prisca since the incident. I had almost forgotten! Now I need to get home, drop off my school things and get over to the hospital!”

“Well, then you’d better hurry, shouldn’t you?” asked Tim with a grin.

All thoughts of new inventions forgotten for the moment, Basil hurried on, running out of the gates of the school.

* * *

Somewhere, at the same time…

She affixed the last photograph to her pinwall. It showed this new Gadgeteer, Brennus, as he was in the middle of evading an energy attack by a spiteborn while simultaneously jury-rigging the bomb that would end the fight in the acre.

It joined an extensive collection of photographs, newspaper clippings and notes, all concerning various Gadgeteers and suspected Gadgeteers around his age that appearead over the last four years. Pins and threads were forming an intricate net, all centered around a central drawing of a preteen boy with long, shaggy black hair and a mechanical left eye.

“Have I finally found you, Macian?” she asked, softly touching the picture of Brennus with two fingers. “I hope it’s you. I don’t think I can take another disappointment.”

She shook her head. This wasn’t the time for self-pity. Pulling on her heavy mask, she turned around and vanished out of the room with a soft popping sound.