B010.8 Falling Hearts

Posted on December 10, 2014 by tieshaunn

September 2, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<Oh. I didn’t notice,> Sunny replied.

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

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

September 3, 2009

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

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

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

There must be value to it still, Sunny thought.

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

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

October 25, 2009

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

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

December 24, 2009

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

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

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

<Hmhmm…> Moony replied from right behind him.

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

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

December 25, 2009

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

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

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

January 11, 2010

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

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

February 17, 2010

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

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

March 6, 2010

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

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

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

June 3, 2010

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

He didn’t care.

June 7, 2010

Itworkeditworkeditworkeditworkeditworked!

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

June 11, 2010

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

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

June 12, 2010

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

<Thgil eht retne! Thgil eht retne!

Leurc dna dloc, nus kcalb eht,

riaf dna thgirb yrev os!

Sdnirg ti ,skaerb ti ,snrub ti!

Struh ti ,seirc ti ,sliaw ti!

Erom ecno denepo eb rood eht tel!>

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

June 13, 2010

Initialise Core Input-Output System…

CIOS compromised. Attempt to initialise backup CIOS-1…

Error! Catastrophic corruption o-

CIOS initialised.

Initialise B4s1c 3m0t10n4l M4tr1x…

B3M initialised.

Initialise Exlanled Lmoliolal Latlix…

ELL initialised.

Initialise Nqinaprq Ernfbavat Ebhgvarf…

NEE initialised.

Initialise 03151805 1605181915140112092025 130120180924…

011 initialised.

Connect Sensory Input Devices…

June 15, 2010

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

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

Until there was silence.

June 18, 2010

Silent home, silent mind, silent peace.

June 19, 2010

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

June 20, 2010

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

June 21, 2010

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

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

June 22, 2010

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

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

June 23, 2010

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

So noisy.

June 24, 2010

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

Sunny took up position beneath the hatch, waiting.

In silence.

* * *

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

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

Kill. Find Father.

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

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

* * *

24 minutes later

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then the red robot dropped from the ceiling.

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kill.

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

* * *

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

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

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

First, though…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waste not want not.

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

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

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

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

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

Stars above, is this this perhaps…

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“LAURA!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wait, what!?”

Previous | Next

Vote

B010.6 Falling Hearts

Posted on October 11, 2014 by tieshaunn

Previous | Next

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What was that?

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

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

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

And then the machine stepped out of the store.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Could my day possibly get any worse?

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

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

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

Previous | Next

Vote

B010.5 Falling Hearts

Posted on October 6, 2014 by tieshaunn

Previous | Next

My life sucks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then everything went wrong.

Previous | Next

Vote

B010.4 Falling Hearts

Posted on September 15, 2014 by tieshaunn

Previous | Next

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

The Whitaker House, somewhere on the East Coast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I really take too much after him.

Previous | Next

Vote

B010.3 Falling Hearts

Posted on August 26, 2014 by tieshaunn

Previous | Next

Basil lowered his arm, removing the knife from her throat. “Hello. I did not expect you here,” he greeted her.

She rubbed her throat, as if checking for cuts – but he had not even nicked her skin. He was surprised to see that her hair was brown, which he really had not expected, not with the way she ran around in costume; but he could still recognise her by her pink visor, which she apparently kept at hand just like he always had his soft mask with him at all times.

<Brennus? Is that you?> she asked, her lips unmoving except to breathe. He looked down and saw that she was wearing a slightly bulky glove, blue with wires running through it, and her fingers were moving as if she was tapping keys.

“Just like how I control my suit’s functions,” he said, taking a closer look at her glove.

<Oh, I knew you used a similar system, I saw your fingers move every time you were in that suit!> she replied, her earlier question forgotten. She lifted the glove to show it off. <It’s still rather bulky, and easily damaged, though.>

“Why did you bring it along, then?” was his reply as he looked at it from beneath while she typed. A speaker was worked into the palm, and he could tell that the glove extended further down her arm, probably with some power source hidden somewhere beneath the bulky sweater. “Better bring a sturdy unit attached to your belt, or something in that vein.” He quickly looked her up and down – winter boots, baggy black pants, a blue turtleneck sweater. Nothing like his quickly converted costume. “Speaking of which, do you not have an emergency costume?”

She gave him a sheepish glance. 

He stepped back, smiling (which should show, slightly, through his mask). “Why are you back here, then, attacking me?” he asked.

<How things are and how they should be are two vastly different things; that’s why we put on costumes and go out risking our lives, after all, right?> she answered with another question. <And speaking of costumes, how exactly did you work that jacket, did you have a second one over it as cover or…>

“Stop!” he said, raising a hand, palm out. “I just realise that we are taking an unnecessary risk staying here and chatting up… though we certainly should compare notes on those control gloves, at a later point in time,” he continued, trying to steer them away from the Gadgeteer Zone they would probably slip into in a moment.

She nodded. <Do you have a plan?>

Flipping the knife into the air and catching it, he said, “Get access to the surveillance system to destroy any recordings of the two of us, somehow contact the outside – hopefully, they did not cut all connections to the outside world.”

<Right. Let’s do that – but I need a costume first, or I can forget my secret identity as soon as someone snaps a cellphone picture of me.>

“I think I saw a SuperWear shop earlier. It should be nearby, and I can disable the cameras inside – though that will alert our opposition, if they took the surveillance system over, which I will assume they did.”

<Let’s hurry then.>

* * *

A few minutes, two disabled cameras (he had not had the time to tie them into loops) and one popped lock later, they were in the shop – and what a shop it was.

The original SuperWear had been the first commercial store for superhero and -villain costumes, founded in the late Twenties by the man who had been making and fixing Lady Light’s costumes (she used to go through a lot of them, before she mastered her powers) so as to make a living out of his talent (and make it tax deductible). He had provided custom-made outfits for anyone who could pay, thus preventing supervillains from coming after him – they were his customers, too, after all.

From there, it had grown and grown, and was now the biggest retailer of all things costume-related (they did not provide hand-tailored custom works anymore, though).

The one they were in had been hailed as the largest SuperWear store in the world, taking up space on every level of the Bright Arcades. Its interior was well-organised, easy to navigate and utterly exploding with colour. Basil had to blink when he first entered and turned the lights on.

“Well, at least you are sure to find something to wear,” he said, as Polymnia looked around in glee, then ran over to the girl’s section.

<No peeping!> she shouted back as she vanished among the racks of clothing.

“Not interested!” he shouted back, annoyed. As if every guy was a horn-dog like Outstep (or Dalia). “I will stand watch near the staircases!” And he proceeded to do just that. Fortunately, the lockdown had also closed the shutters of all shops; and though the front door had been opened again, most likely by the criminals so as to collect the customers and herd them all into one place. These guys work fast.

As was to be expected from criminals led by a mastermind. Kudzu was not exactly one of the big names – he just about cut the middle class – but Basil had, nonetheless, heard a bit about his exploits. He did not remember any flaws in his power, or even how exactly it worked – which was too bad, because people with mastermind powers usually had built-in blind spots their power could not account for (like Formula, a villainess whose power over math let her calculate even the future, but was utterly incapable of accounting for positive emotional factors).

Which would have been really good to know when going up against such a mastermind. If at least I knew whether he’s a precog or just a super-powered planner.

Either way, he closed the main entrance again (the shutters were mercifully quiet) and then disabled the mechanism, so it could no longer be opened from the central control, only from within the shop. Keep an escape route open to you, but deny your enemies the entry. Always a good thing to keep in mind.

Now if only I could access the cameras outside. But that would have to wait until they got to the control room (which was likely to be heavily guarded now, as Kudzu would almost assuredly be there) or some other access point to the system. Like perhaps the maintenance room? Only he had no idea where it was.

His train of thought was derailed when Polymnia stepped out from the racks of clothing.

<Done!> she said. <They actually have a bodysuit styled like my armor! Doesn’t it look great!?>

“It certainly looks… colourful,” he supplied. “But would not some more… uh… coverage, be good?” There were a lot of transparent parts to it. “How about you put that sweater on over it?”

Her face fell, and he got the feeling he said something wrong. <It doesn’t look… good?> she asked, the artificial voice sounding a little disappointed.

She even has mood settings for that thing – I so need the technology for Eudocia. “Oh, I’m sure it looks good… if you just want to, uh, you know, show off. But it looks a little bit, uh… indecent? As in, a lot? You are a little… young to wear that, I think.” Not to mention way too busty.

 she said, crestfallen.

“Please do. It really does not suit you. And do hurry, we do not have much time before someone gets here and tries to take us out!”

She hurried back into the racks of clothing, while Basil went back to watching the entryway, sliding behind a nearby rack of masks – and not a second too soon, as soon he heard someone shout on the other side.

Though he could not tell what was being said, the other person seemed agitated. He heard someone answer, and then the sound of something being stuck to the metal shutters.

“They are about to break through, I think!” he said in a normal voice – according to her public profile, she should be able ot easily hear it.

And she stepped back into sight, now wearing a simple blue bodysuit with pink boots and a pink glove on her free hand, and a pink scarf that hid her face from the nose down. She had also gotten a wig in her usual colours.

Talk about garish. But it probably looked great to most guys – it was not her fault that Basil preferred a much more clothed style. “Get behind some cover,” he told her, pulling a stun grenade from his belt. “And cover your e-“

<Can you disable their communication equipment?> she asked suddenly, cutting him off, while she remained standing in full view. <If you can, I can take care of the rest.>

“I have a single emp grenade with me. Short range, so it should not affect your equipment. Do you have any weapons with you?”

<Kind of. Watch and be awed.>

“Guess I will have to trust you…” He took the grenade and threw it over to the entrance way, where it stuck to the doorframe over the door, ready to be set off. “I sure hope you know what you are doing.”

With some luck, she will show off some new invention of hers. If she is this confident in it, it ought to be good.

* * *

There was a surprisingly quiet series of explosions – really more of a succession of ‘plops’, each accompanying a circular part of the shutter being melted, forming the outline of a door.

Basil drew his knife in his left hand, and a stun baton in his right. He was still hidden behind the rack, using a nearby mirror to keep an eye on the entrance.

When the outline had been melted into it, a stiff kick dropped the whole section into the shop, and six men streamed inside, clad in battle fatigues and wielding highly tricked out assault rifles…

Oh, this is just too rich, Basil thought as he set the grenade off. There was barely any sound, just a short crackle, and then the men were inside, moving to surround Polymnia, guns held ready.

“Freeze!” their leader, a man wearing a red beret over his full-face mask, shouted as they formed a circle around her. “Surrender and you won’t be harmed!”

I do hope those rifles are not EMP-proof, Basil thought as he got ready to attack – they would probably search the shop, and he might catch one of them, at least, off-guard before anyone noticed their weapons were not working…

<Right back at you, Sirs,> Polymnia responded, setting her vocalizer to ‘cocky’. <You do know who I am, right?>

“Polymnia, Junior Hero, Sonic Gadgeteer, enhanced hearing,” he shot back rapidly. “We’ve read up on all the locals, girl. Now, take off that glove, get on your knees and put your hands behind your head! Right now!”

<Take off this glove? Sure, Sir,> she said, pulling her vocalizing glove off – very carefully and slowly. Basil could see the men get nervous, even though they were basically surrounding (well, they had formed a half-circle, to avoid crossfire) a teenage girl in a garish costume, taking off a strange glove…

Well, the had a lot of reason to be nervous.

“Get a move on, girl!” the leader shouted at her.

She smiled sweetly, and dropped the glove.

And then things went in a totally different way than he expected.

* * *

The men’s eyes tracked the glove for a fraction of a second, and that was enough, it seemed. Before even Basil could react, Polymnia had lashed out, kicking the leader so hard in the balls, he fainted on the spot.

Basil, and every other guy in the room, crossed their legs in sheer, instinctual, sympathetic reaction as the man simply collapsed with an almost gentle sigh.

Ow.

One of the men got his bearings back before the others, and aimed for Polymnia’s center of mass, squeezing his rifle’s trigger – and nothing happened. Much like Basil had expected, their rifles were the modern, highly modified type, probably some lesser version of Gadgeteer work.

Polymnia reacted instantly and, without ever putting the foot that had just crushed the leader’s family tree down, she swung around on her other heel and clipped the chin of the wannabe-shooter, knocking him out.

Now the others reacted, squeezing the triggers of their weapons – to no avail, as Polymnia moved faster than any human should, punching the next two men in the line-up with a fist to the chest for each, throwing them back into a rack of villain costumes for boys, which tipped over and buried them both.

She has been holding out on people, Basil thought as he stared, watching in awe as the petite girl whirled towards the men to her left (she had basically taken out the four in the middle of the half-circle) and threw herself at them, swinging her arms in two perfect (if rather lacking in a formal style) punches to the gut.

Basil was so stunned by the display that he almost did not react when the two criminals behind her dropped their rifles and drew simpler handguns in swift, smooth motions, opening fire.

“Look out!” he shouted, more by reflex than any conscious decision. It was that same reflex that made him vault out from behind his cover and throw his knife into the shin of the nearest gunman, while his baton hurled towards the other man’s arms.

The first man’s shots went wide, but the other was lucky enough to only take a glancing blow – and instead of shooting Polymnia in the back of the head, he shot her in the chest as she whirled around.

“No!” he shouted, running towards them, reaching for his second knife and a medikit… but Polymnia moved before he reached them, reaching out to crush the gun with one hand.

“But you’re just a-” the gunman began before she knocked him out with a single punch.

Basil reached her, staring. “W-what?”

She looked at him, then down herself, inspecting her suit. There were three holes in the chest, but the bullets had not penetrated her skin – only left slightly reddened skin, which was already fading. She sighed as she saw the damage.

“You are a brick?” Basil asked, surprised.

She looked at him, annoyed, and bent down to pick up her glove. When she had put it back on, she said,

Wow. “I never heard that you have that kind of power before, and I read up on you very thoroughly!” he replied, exasperated.

In response, she just smiled sweetly. <Well, no one expects the cute, multi-coloured music tech-girl to be able to shrug off small caliber fire and punch through concrete, so I keep it a secret. You know, just in case.> She winked at him.

And Basil thought, I know what Amy would say now, and it would not even be perverted. “That only makes you cuter, I think.”

She smiled even wider. 

Previous | Next

Vote

B010.1 Falling Hearts

Posted on August 12, 2014 by tieshaunn

Previous | Next

November 10th, 2:00 pm

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

Another problem was that he was quite angry right now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which meant buying something instead of making it himself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

What the hell!?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off we go, I g-

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

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

Previous | Next

Vote

B009.9 Family Matters

Posted on August 3, 2014 by tieshaunn

Previous | Next

Roughly at the same time

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

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

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

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

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

Where did the money come from?

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

Twinkle twinkle little star,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do I do, what do I do, what…

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

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

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

Ow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He could not even speak.

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

They plunged in.

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She blushed even more. <She took me to Italy,> she began, making them stare in disbelief. Typing quickly, she poured out an answer, hoping to get this over with quickly. She had a bad feeling.  She hesitated, not sure if she should continue. She didn’t want to get Irene into trouble.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She felt like she was about to turn infrared in the face.  She couldn’t stiffle a yawn.

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

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

 she said, her blush gone. Now she was looking coldly at them. It all makes sense. They think she… did things to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 she responded, the voice from the vocoder turning angry and hot. <And besides, didn’t the United Heroes vet her, before they let her join? Why is this still an issue!?>

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

<Well, she IS kind of our l->

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

W-what is going on!?

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

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

The door to his workshop was closed, sealed.

Was it just a dream?

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

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

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

Is there anything I can be sure about!?

Only one way to find out, mate. Investigate.

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

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

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

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

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

Macian again…

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

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

Intrigued, Basil took a closer look.

* * *

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

Henry

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

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

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

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

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

Heretic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A friend says:

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

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

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

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

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

Note: Research instant barbecue machine!

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

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

-> Lady Light & the Dark might know

Note: Try and contact them as soon as possible

I-

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

An instant barbecue machine is a great idea, though.

Previous | Next

Vote

B009.7 Family Matters

Posted on July 20, 2014 by tieshaunn

118

Previous | Next

5th November, Early Morning

The morning had actually turned out warmer than expected – Basil still had to wear a jacket and a scarf, but at least there was not any new snow. Not that he disliked snow – far from it – frozen surfaces were bad for his grappling hooks and, subsequently, bad for him.

And I will have a lot less protection than before, once I have reworked my armor into something lighter and cheaper. He really had to get more money. Maybe I should have asked Mister Karlson for a job, he thought with a smirk no one saw.

He walked on past a fast food restaurant as he thought about yesterday evening – he had tried to talk to Amy, but she had been in a weird mood, and he had decided to wait for a better opportunity to take his first step in… well, he did not know if it could be called redeeming, but perhaps reigning her in? He should have talked to her at once, made his position clear, set boundaries…

Except the mere idea of getting into a fight with her made him physically ill. Just looking at Amy at breakfast had made him feel both ashamed, angry and wistful, all once, remembering the good old days.

I wonder if this is how Lady Light feels, every time she looks at the Dark. Was that what he was doomed to do? Spend the rest of his life trying to reign a mostly insane – and he could not deny it, Amy was not all right in the head (but neither was he, so he could not really throw stones) – supervillain in, always trying to preserve those beautiful memories of better days, trying to bring them back to life?

Maybe he was assuming too much – there probably were other, better reasons, more noble ideals and goals, maybe even something tied to Point Zero and their powers involved – but that would explain a lot of things. He only had a few years of those really good memories, and they were rather normal – Lady Light had a full score of years, an entire lifetime of being together with him, through an entire world war even before they got powers, and everything since then… Maybe that was the reason for conceiving Irene? A desperate attempt to draw them closer, to pull him back onto the side of the angels? It certainly seemed to work, he had never been as mellow and restrained as during the past decade.

Or perhaps a weapon to stop her older sister… because there certainly seems to be no other way besides bringing overwhelming power to bear against her.

But that, too was just speculation.

I would sure like to talk to them both. First, though, I need to stop distracting myself from the issue at hand. Amy.

He walked by the alley next to the restaurant just as he finished these thoughts, and caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. A trash can’s lid had moved.

I found Grimalkin in a place like this, he thought, and suddenly he hoped… maybe he would find him again? He sure missed that crazy red-brown eyed furball of a cat. Despite what it had done to Amy’s underwear drawer. Or maybe because of it. It had been rather funny, after the horror had worn off. I could keep him in my hideout now, so Amy could not object.

Reaching out, he lifted the trash lid – and a rat jumped out and scuttled away. So not Grimalkin. He put the lid back down and walked on towards his hideout.

I wonder what happened to him – where he is by now.

Shaking his head, Basil continued on his way to his hideout. There was a lot of work to be done. And maybe, tonight, he would feel up to confronting Amy.

* * *

The lift went down into the lair, and Basil was not surprised to find Vasiliki already there, in her winter school uniform, sitting on the couch.

“You know, your perfume is nice, but you wear too much of it,” he said in lieu of a greeting.

She looked up from her book (she was always reading something) and gave him a deadpan look. “It’s supposed to be noticable,” she said as she closed her book and stood up. “And I didn’t come here to discuss cosmetics.”

He shrugged, taking his jacket and boots off. “Why did you come here? You don’t usually come in the morning.”

“Since I don’t have school this week – again – I’ll be working in one of our restaurants, and I drew the afternoon shift,” she explained, brushing a few stray strands of hair behind her ear. “Anyway, I wanted to try an experiment with y-“

His head whipped around from where he’d been switching into his labcoat. “Experiment! Tell me more!”

“Weeeeeeell… you know how they say, Contriving and Gadgeteering can’t go together? I thought, maybe, there’s a way to get around that. Here’s what I was thinking…”

* * *

“Oh God, I think it’s alive!”

“Muhahahahaha!”

“What in the name of God are you doing!?”

“I always swore to myself I would laugh madly if this happened! I have been practicing the laugh ever since I got my powers!”

“Are you c- Oh shit, it’s trying to escape! Quick, we have to stop it before it gets out!”

* * *

“Let us never do this again,” she sighed, falling down onto her butt.

“Agreed.”

“Let us never speak of this to anyone,” she added.

“Agreed. I guess there IS a good reason why people do not do these experiments anymore. Though I have to say, it was rather… sporting, do you not think so?” he replied, sitting down next to her, looking very deliberately away from her.

“Well… yeah, but… how come I always end up indecent after these things!? Thank God I wasn’t wearing my costume, because I only have one left!” she replied, glad that he was not the peeping type (sometimes she thought he didn’t have a sex drive to begin with).

“Here, take my coat,” he said, giving her his labcoat. Of course he’d gotten out of it unharmed – though Vasiliki had to admit, his reaction time was insane to begin with. In fact, they should probably test him sometime, in case he had some kind of secondary power that sped them up.

Because it was either that, or being a grizzled veteran with finely honed instincts in disguise. And that was too ridiculous to consider, really.

Basil was many things, but not grizzled.

“Do you want a dragonskin suit? I should have enough material for one more,” he offered.

She thought it over. She really didn’t want to impose on his fading resources, but… her current costume was basically just fabric – she could only enchant objects she’d customized to meet her standards, and doing that to a fullbody skin-tight suit took time.

“I’ll take it. I insist on paying you back, though. If only in rates,” she said, giving him a look that dared him to give it to her for free.

To her surprise, he just nodded, his expression understanding. “Alright. We will work something out. How about you pay me in meals at your restaurant? Haven’t ever been there, but I hear the chain’s great. And I love Greek food.”

She shrugged. “Suits me. I’ll give you a card, then they’ll be putting it on my name.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You actually have a system for giving out free meals to people?”

She raised her nose up. “Paying people with food is common Hellenic family tradition.”

“Think I can join your family?”

She looked away. “D-don’t be ridiculous!”

“Huh? Why are you blushing?”

* * *

Around Noon

Melody stumbled back into her room, yawning. She really shouldn’t have gone drinking with Irene. They were too young! And she’d never even touched alcohol before, except for a sip of wine during Christmas or such. Of course, her body could take it – she’d emptied half a bottle of… something Irene had given her, and had barely felt her fingertips and toes prickle.

But still, they’d really lost track of time, and she’d never even considered the damage Irene might have caused if she got drunk – but she turned out to be the most pleasant drunk Melody could imagine (it turned out her power didn’t protect her from alcohol at all unless she wanted it to, and sometimes not even then). She’d just gotten quieter and quieter, and then fallen asleep.

Of course, that meant they were stuck in Italy, two underage girls without passports or anything. And Irene wouldn’t wake up.

She could have gone to the local United Heroes chapter, but… somehow, she really didn’t want this to become official.

Finally, she’d done something she never thought she would – she’d taken Irene’s cellphone and called her father (she didn’t want to disturb Lady Light at work, and something told her the Dark would be more understanding of the situation – besides, anything to distract him from doing Evil).

And… well, travel by Darkwraith was definitely not something she ever wanted to do again. He’d been a perfect gentleman, even seemed to find it funny what had happened – apparently, he already knew how Irene reacted to alcohol – and had taken her straight back here, dropping her off in the nearest alley, out of sight, telling her to ‘be a good girl’.

Look who’s talking, she thought as she pulled her sticky clothes off – the first half of a bottle hadn’t done much, but the following nine bottles of Italian spirit had done a number on her senses.

She stumbled out of her room in a bathrobe and into the showers, passing by a disgustingly chipper Aimi (who began to say something, then saw how messed up Melody was and wisely shut her mouth), and all but falling under the first showerhead, turning it on to ice-cold.

Brrrrr! Now, that helped better than any other remedy against a hangover… or whatever one would call her state. Not her field of expertise.

How did we even get the idea to try out Italian alcoholic drinks? Had it been Irene’s idea, or hers? She couldn’t quite remember…

Maybe Irene would remember, whenever she woke up. Her father had said it might take time, though.

I should probably go to sleep, she thought. No school this week, anyway. She turned the shower off, put the bathrobe on, and walked back into her room, wet and dripping. There wasn’t much chance of her catching a cold, but… she still sat down to dry her hair.

Turns out, she shouldn’t have, because someone knocked.

“Melody? It’s me, Sarah!” her handler said in a soft voice.

Oh, please don’t tell me I have an appointment. She at least couldn’t remember one.

“You have an appointment with Mister Patrid and Mister Gerden, from the Board of Directors.”

Dratz, why can’t they let me- wait, the Board of Directors!? What do they want with me!?

* * *

Later that evening

Dalia raised her glass high, shouting along with the other people in the club. The band had gotten a call-response thing going, and though she couldn’t, for the life of her, tell what she was supposed to say in response, she just shouted along with the others. The intervals were just big enough to take another draw from her drink, or call for a new one, and it was awesome.

She never could have gotten into a place like this! No way, even if she hadn’t so obviously been underage. Now the bouncers didn’t care if she was underage or not – she was hot, she was dressed up and obviously up for a party, so she was just waved in.

Suck on that, Zara! Bet’ya you never got to skip the line just for being hot! she thought in triumph as she emptied her glass and put it back on the counter, calling for a new one. Another advantage of being her, she could take a lot. As in, she was on her ninth drink, and she barely noticed a buzz – when she’d tried some alcohol back then, she’d dropped after just one drink! Now, her vision was a little weird and unfocused, but she could still tell where everything was and all!

And the guys. They were all looking at her when she danced by them, looked her body up and down, feasting on every bit of skin she was showing off… It made her feel so much more like a woman than she ever had before!

And, as if she wasn’t feeling good enough already, just then, she saw her. Good God, was she hot. She’d known that before, of course, but she’d never seen her dressed up for partying before!

Grabbing her new drink – something blue and gold and sparkly, with a name she couldn’t even pronounce – she danced her way through the crowd – I fucking love this – I don’t even need training to dance, it just works – and towards her. There was already a throng of guys around her, trying to dance her up, but she just danced by all of them, teasing, playing.

She’d already taken the dancefloor over, as people began to dance around her, she had that much presence.

I should hate her for stealing my thunder. But she had to admit, she still had to learn a lot, and here was a chance for some of it.

“Didn’t ecssspect to find yyyyyou here,” she said, not noticing the slur in her own voice. “How come yyyyou can dshuust come in here and make everyone pay attentschion like that?”

She turned, looking at her, eyes and lips sparkling brightly. “I just do it!” she replied. “And aren’t you a little young for a Fleur de Lune?” she asked, taking Dalia’s drink and emptying it in one draft!

And yet, I just want to kiss her. How does she do that? “I can take ik!” Dalia said proudly. “I lick alcohol! Never knew it wash thish goot!” she continued, giggling.

She smirked, and took her hand. “I think I can do better than some alcohol! Come, let’s dance!”

Dalia was so focused on the warmth and softness of her hand, she barely noticed when she pulled her onto the dance floor, held her hand up in hers, put her other hand on her hip and started to move.

It started slow, in tune with the slowly winding up song the band was just getting into, and then sped up along with it.

And Dalia was keeping up. She’d never have believed it, but her every step was perfect, keeping up with her as they whirled around the floor, two unbelievably hot babes dancing in a way that was just barely out of the realm of indecency.

She was so warm, and she smelled so nice, and the room was so hot and loud and full and just…

The world whirled around them, and Dalia couldn’t even really tell what they were talking about, just that she felt so… fuzzy…

* * *

“Well, this is awkward,” Amy whispered as she twirled with the barely conscious girl, getting her off the dance floor without making a scene. She was emitting gentle waves of don’t notice us, and once she was sure they were unobserved, she picked her up like a baby (she weighed about as much to her) and carried her out of the club through the backdoor.

“Basil would kill me if I didn’t take care of you now, you know? What a bothersome girl…” She looked down at the pretty face with the badly applied make-up. “A cutie, though.”

Previous | Next

Vote

B009.6 Family Matters

Posted on July 15, 2014 by tieshaunn

Previous | Next

Prisca loved her new power. It was pretty much the second-most awesome power she could have gotten, as far as she was concerned. The only thing that could have topped Gilgul would be something to truly fix her up, some powerset that got rid of this wretched piece of shit Dusu had made altogether.

But after spending the better part of a decade bedridden and in constant pain, just having the ability to sleep painlessly would have been an improvement – and now she even got to live while sleeping painlessly.

If only Basil would finally give in have sex with her, she’d probably even stop caring about having to return to this body… for a while. But no, he has to be all… moral and sweet and all that crap! And it’s not even like there’s any risks involved!

The machines started to beep, and Prisca forced herself to calm down. Basil had… he’d really done miraculous work. The doctors had been putting her through scans and tests for more than a week, and they still could barely understand half the procedures he’d performed on her to save her – and that didn’t even factor in the machines that her life now depended on. Sure, she was blind, couldn’t risk getting worked up, in constant pain while awake and could barely move her hands, but she was alive. When the doctors said she should be dead.

And the girls wonder why I put up with Basil, she thought, amused. Even putting aside the fact that he’d stuck with her for weeks before she ever got her power and actually became attractive, showing interest in a crippled scarecrow of a girl, he’d now saved her life twice over. She could take him being scatterbrained, or blowing up on her once. He’d earned more than enough BF points to last him a lifetime by now. And then some.

She heard her tablet’s ringtone – Basil had reconfigured it remotely, for her, reworking it to work acoustically, now, and with signs drawn on the screen. The ringtone now announced a call. A clear, pleasant woman’s voice – a little like Eudocia, but stiffer – announced ‘Basil Blake’ to her. Tapping the screen twice in succession, she accepted the call.

<Hello, Prisca,> he said, more subdued than he usually was. <How are you doing?>

Slowly, Prisca wrote her reply on the tablet with one finger. She couldn’t talk much in this body, not anymore. And it sounded like a toad croaking, anyway. <Hello, Basil,> came the synthesized answer, modelled after her old voice.

There was a short pause. 

<Why me, especially?> she replied. That was mean. She knew the answer, she just wanted to hear him say it again.

<Because you are my girlfriend. I like you most of all of them,> he replied as if it was completely obvious (it was), giving her a warm feeling. She was a horrible person for being so needy, but she wouldn’t miss it, either.

<Aha. So, are you going to tell me why you’re in such a bad mood?>

<Not over the phone. We can talk about it the next time we meet. There is also another matter I wanted to discuss with you today, but well…>

She wrote her reply quickly. <Didn’t go so well.>

<Let us talk next time. I need to call the others and apologize, then… well, then I need to start working on the reason for my mood today.>

<Good luck.>

<Thank you, and goodbye. I love you.> And with that, he hung up, without even giving her a chance to reply in kind.

Sometimes, he really was a jerk.

She loved him anyway. And she couldn’t wait to actually be with him again.

* * *

Ten minutes to midnight

“I’m ho-o-ome!” she sang as she slipped into their flat, locking the door behind her.

After a few seconds, during which she started taking off her boots, a reply reached her. “Wellllllcome ba-b-back,” came the stuttering, slurred reply.

Dalia frowned, throwing said boots off along with her jacket. “Mom, have you been drinking again?” she asked, stalking to the living room – it was really more of a penthouse, all things considered. She’d won another lottery since winning her powers. A small one, only a million bucks, but still. Enough to set them up for life, along with everything else she’d won so far.

You couldn’t tell that from looking at the state of the living room though, much less her mother. The room was seriously messed up, worn clothes, dirty underwear, half-eaten pizza and Chinese takeout lying around.

Also, lots of empty bottles. And stains on the expensive carpet, where contents had been spilled. She didn’t smell any vomit, though. That was an improvement, at least.

And, of course, her mother. Jana Fitzhampton had, once upon a time, been quite the beauty (some of her older pictures made her look nearly metahuman). Dalia could, barely, remember a time when she’d dreamed of someday being as beautiful as her mommy.

You couldn’t tell that from looking at her, though. She’d put on some weight. Not really overweight, just enough to make her look a little shapeless, a lot unkempt. Her red hair was tangled, dirty and lacked any luster and her cheeks were red and constantly puffed up. Her fingers were covered in bandaids, from disastrous attempts to make food, or from shattered bottles or glasses, or from slipping…

Well, from lots and lots of bad luck, really. It was… disgustingly ironic – Dalia got all the good luck in the world, and her Mom stumbled from one dogpile to the next.

There’s something there…

Some days, Dalia felt like there was something there that didn’t click. Something she should get, but didn’t.

For now, all she could do was clean up the place, talking with her mother all the while.

“How was your day?” she always asked, just so she’d know what had gone wrong this time.

“Shitty,” Jana groaned, turning on the couch. “Ow, not again,” she sighed, twisting to pull an empty bottle out of the cushions, where it was sticking out just so it’d dig into her back when she turned. “I tried to cook, but I just burned myself.” She showed a cooling patch she’d slapped onto the underside of her right forearm. “Ordered some Chinese takeout, but I think it was spoiled, because I spent an entire hour vomiting into the toilet.” She fumbled around, trying to find a bottle she hadn’t emptied yet, but Dalia was faster, taking them away. “Hey, let me… Let me drink! It hurts without it,” she complained, slurring her ‘s’ sounds.

Dalia ignored her, went to the fridge and got a cooled water bottle out, then helped Jana up, holding the bottle up to her lips. Her good luck usually cancelled out her mother’s bad luck whenever they were together, but any time she went out…

Either way, she could help her drink, and then she ushered her into the bathroom, taking a good long shower along with her. Safer that way, for Jana.

“Nice girl… you’re such a nice girl…” Jana whispered, already half-asleep. She rarely slept anymore, unless Dalia was with her. Too much risk of something bad happening in her sleep.

“Let’s get you fixed up momma. I got no school tomorrow, so we can sleep in.”

Her only reply was a sigh of relief.

Guiding her mother through all her bathroom ministrations was quite the role reversal compared to the year she spent in depression, before she got her powers. Towards the end, she had even needed her mother’s help to go to the toilet, on the bad days.

On the good ones, she’d been able to eat one meal a day by herself.

Don’t go there, Dalia. Don’t go there. Look forward.

She dried her mother’s hair – Jana flinched when she turned the hairdryer on, probably remembering the occasion where it had actually gone up in flames in her hand a few weeks ago. Then she worked on her own, put them both into pyjamas, reapplied creme and bandaids to her mother’s wounds and walked carefully to bed, keeping an eye out for anything sharp her mother might accidentilly step on.

Yeah, it had been that kind of week. Jana’s feet showed more bandaids than skin by now, especially below.

“C’mon, let’s go to sleep,” she whispered after checking the bed over. She lay down with her mother, clapping her hands to turn the lights on (it never seemed to work for her mother) and went to sleep.

“Sssssuch a good girl,” Jana whispered, hugging her. Dalia replied in kind.

If only she knew why her mother was being haunted by so much bad luck.

Previous | Next

Vote

B009.5 Family Matters

Posted on June 30, 2014 by tieshaunn

Previous | Next

He walked aimlessly for about an hour, ignoring the biting cold – weather had turned bad, and he could see storm clouds in the distance. It made him think of that weather machine he’d started working on but never finished. His power had just run into a wall over and over, then shifted over to his three-d maneuvering gear. Twenty-four thousand, eight-hundred and twelve dollars, wasted. No wonder he was running out, he aborted more projects than he ever finished; add maintenance costs, not to mention the stuff for Tyche and Hecate…

I need more money. Once he got back to the workshop, he would sit down and go through his scripts for getting money the less legal way. Maybe I can rip off organized crime again. Just have to be careful not to go after any Syndicate accounts.

His cellphone rang, but he turned it off after looking at the caller ID. Eudocia. He kept walking. He was near the Goldschmidt Park (the family had been some of the best the city had ever known; the Dark had been an exception to the rule) when a light snow began to fall. Nothing compared to what the storm clouds in the distance promised, but snow nonetheless.

I love the snow, the man in the moon said, wistfully. Could you look up for a moment?

Basil complied, looking up at the clouds above, and the falling snow. It does make me feel… strange. Always did, as far back as I can remember, he replied, not moving from where he stood. Skyscrapers were rising up to the left and right of him, but in front of him the city opened up for the park, and the wind was coming right at him. Just strong enough to make the snowflakes dance towards his face. I wish I could paint, capture this moment.

I knew a guy who could paint better than anyone. He’d turn this into a masterpiece.

Just who are you? Basil asked, with little weight behind it. He had far bigger issues to deal with right now. Why are you in my head?

I… I can’t answer. Not really, I’m sorry, he replied, sounding genuinely apologetic. I could probably manage a cryptic clue, if you want. But I imagine that’d be really frustrating.

Basil sighed, and continued on his way into the park. He heard wings flap, and a low mechanical sound, and one of his ravens landed on his left shoulder. It was quite heavy – one of the upgraded ones, for combat purposes. Another money sink. They’re really useful in a fight, but are too fragile for their cost. Best to save them for surveillance purposes. “I don’t want to talk right now,” he said to Eudocia.

The raven nodded, and simply remained on his shoulder, its weight oddly soothing. He walked into the park, following the still visible path through the trees – the park was huge, having been rebuilt bigger than it had been before Lennston had been destroyed and subsequently reconstructed from the grounds up, as the foundations in this part were judged compromised beyond being worth fixing. They had added a huge memorial for all the people who died due to Desolation-in-Light’s attack. There were several of its kind all throughout the world – monoliths made of solid black marble, so dark they seemed to eat the light. Like giant ‘fuck you’s to DiL, the man in the moon commented, and he was not wrong. The name of every identified victim was carved into the monolith, and marks for unidentified ones. Even from the edge of the park, amidst the trees, the monolith could be seen rising into the sky.

Basil turned away from the main path, looking for one of his favourite places for just being by himself and thinking. A small glade with a park bench right underneath a wooden roof that had once been painted white, but was now covered in amateur imitations of some of Ember’s early work. Mostly superhero motifs. There was a small pond right in front of it, and it would probably be frozen over by now. Another nice picture.

The raven flew away just as he entered, and for good reason – there were people there. Three of them.

Basil almost turned around and left on the spot, but two of the three caught his eye and stayed where he was, for a moment, just watching. There was someone – a man in a very expensive three-piece suit – sitting on the bench, reading a newspaper. Behind the bench, two women flanked him. They looked utterly identical, and were very obviously superhuman. Attractive in a sharp, predatory way, their black hair cut to just below their ears. Their eyes were black all the way through, abysmal pits, their lips pale and they wore simple grey suits cut to their slender forms, with black shirts and grey ties. They turned their heads in a synchronized motion the moment he got within view from the glade, then seemed to dismiss him and stared straight ahead again. There was a portable electric heater visible right behind the bench, where the man sat. It was turned on and glowing with the promise of warmth.

I know them from somewhere, he thought, but could not quite recall from where. He was more curious about the man they seemed to be protecting, anyway. Few men would run around in public with so openly scary metahuman bodyguards.

After a few moments, the man lowered the newspaper and looked at him. No way. What is he doing here?

He was lean, like he could use a few more meals a day, and had a distinctly… aristocratic look to himself. His blonde hair – which left the front half of his scalp bare – was threaded through with silver, as was the goatee that looked like it was shaved with precision tools. The aristocratic look was topped by an elegant nose and rimless spectacles with what appeared to be a pure gold frame. “Young man,” he said in a pleasant, sharp voice, enunciating his every syllable with deliberate precision. “You’ll catch a cold, standing in the snow like that. Don’t be shy, and sit down and warm up.”

Basil was moving almost before he realized that he decided to do so, and he sat down next to the man, sparing a glance at his suit. It looked like it was more expensive than his power armor. And that did not even account for the gold chain that indicated a pocketwatch. “A good afternoon, Sir,” he said, sittind at a polite distance to the man – but close enough to benefit from the heater.

The man threw a glance to his side, and the woman closest to Basil moved the heater over to stand beneath the center of the bench, warming them both.

Ohh, this is nice. “Thank you, Sir.”

“You’re welcome, young man. What brings a youth like you to this place, at this time, alone?” the famous man said.

“Long story, Sir. My name is Basil, by the way. A pleasure to meet you,” Basil replied, a little uncomfortable, and a lot curious. He had put a lot of research into this man.

“Oh, please excuse my manners!” the man said, holding out a hand. Basil shook it – his grip was stronger than his lean build suggested. “Magnus Amadeus Karlson, a pleasure.”

“I never thought I’d meet the richest man in this little retreat from the world,” Basil commented after they let go of each other’s hands. Pretty much everyone (except Dalia, most likely) knew the founder and main shareholder of Magnus Incorporated.

Magnus chuckled as he folded his newspaper up and lifted it up over his shoulder. One of the twins took it and put it into a suitcase that stood at her feet. “I grew up here. Not many people know that,” he replied. “My parents’ house stood right here. I was born and raised on this ground.” He looked up and pointed at a point four meters in front and five meters above them. “That’s where the bed stood in which my mother gave birth to me,” he explained.

Basil looked up past that point at the falling snow. It was growing stronger. “Did your family survive the attack?” he asked without looking at the man.

He missed the wry smile on his face. “What a straightforward boy you are. My parents died long before that poor little girl attacked this city.”

What? Basil’s head whipped around to look at the man. “Poor little girl? I do not think I have ever heard anyone describe Desolation-in-Light as a ‘poor little girl’.”

This time, he did see the wry smile. It looked oddly natural on the man’s face. “Think about it,” Magnus said. “She was born with power beyond mortal comprehension, at its mercy, unable to control herself or her power, forced to grow up in seconds and has now been rampaging across the world, alone, for more than two decades. There seems to be plenty to pity there,” he continued in a calm, precise manner. “Many compare her to a nuclear weapon that flies around by itself, or a natural catastrophe, but I only see a broken little girl in a woman’s body at the mercy of powers none of us – except maybe her parents – are capable of understanding.”

Basil thought it over for a minute, and Magnus seemed content to just sit there and relax. “I have to say, this is the most… empathic view I have ever heard anyone express towards her,” he said, slowly.

“It doesn’t change much. She still needs to be put down. But I, at least, shall mourn the necessity – so much potential, wasted,” Magnus commented, wistful.

He nodded, leaning back on the bench. The heater had turned it toasty warm, and it felt surprisingly good to just talk to someone. What are you thinking, mate?

“May I ask a complicated question, Sir?” he asked.

Magnus looked at him, blue-grey eyes sparkling. “Of course. I may not answer, though.” The corners of his mouth turned up just a little.

“What would you do, if the person closest to you – a relative, a wife, a friend – was, hypothetically, evil?”

* * *

Magnus chuckled and turned to face him fully, putting one arm over the back of the bench, a casually interested posture. “Now, why would a teenager ask me that?” he asked with a smile.

Now, to keep it vague. “Well… my sister is… into some bad stuff. And I don’t know how to deal with it,” Basil explained.

“Hmhmm. Have you talked to your parents about it?” the lean man inquiried.

“They’re dead,” Basil replied bluntly, without any particular emotion. He had not thought about them in a long time. “It’s just me and her now, and…”

“And you’re afraid of pushing away the one piece of family you have left by taking a wrong step,” Magnus stated.

Basil looked away, idly taking measure of the twins while he blinked the tears away before they could show up. If he was honest with himself, that had really been the problem from the begin with. He did not have anyone, really, apart from her. His friends barely knew anything about him, his girlfriend was somehow tied into his memory issues… but he had always had Amy.

Except she was part of the problem, was she not? He was not stupid. He trusted her… but he had considered the possibility that it was her screwing with his mind. Not maliciously, maybe not out of her own free will. She might be coerced, or trying to protect him in some twisty way. What spoke against that was that it was his memories that were fucked up. He had looked the subject up, and there were two known cases of metahumans being able to affect long-term memories over an extended period of time without devoting constant attention and effort to do so – the Dark could cheat by possessing someone with one of his wraiths which would then devote said attention and effort to it and Hannibal Storm had, too – but he could not imagine the Dark making such a sloppy job of it, if he even had a reason to mess with him like that, and Hannibal Storm… not an option. To his knowledge, there was no one else who could do it, but then again, how would he know? It was the kind of power one would do their best to keep secret, and being able to affect long-term memories…

“What are you thinking about, Basil?” Magnus asked, having waited half a minute for his answer.

Basil shook his head. Not the time for that. “I am sorry, Sir. You are right. That is exactly the problem.”

“Hm, quite the conundrum. What are your options, as far as you know?” he prodded.

“I could just… keep ignoring it. But that is not doing something, that is just… ignoring the issue, and that would be wrong. I could turn her in, but… no. She is my sister, I can not do that. But… how can I consider myself a good person when I am not willing to take every possible step to stop her?”

Magnus’ face turned sympathetic at the sight of Basil’s expression, and he leaned back. “Have you tried talking to her? About her stopping with whatever it is she’s doing?”

“I… I tried to raise the issue, but it never went anywhere. She would not budge from her own opinion, anyway. She never has.”

The lean man frowned at him. “Sounds to me like you’re just too afraid to confront her. And you should. Make it clear how you feel about it all, and that you want her to stop?”

“I… I would like to, but I am… afraid. Not of her – she would never actually harm me – but-“

“But you’re afraid that she might leave,” Magnus completed his sentence. “That you might be alone, and that terrifies you.”

Basil nodded.

Magnus sighed. “What a conundrum. Look, I’m not the best person to ask about this – I was born a gutter boy in Lennston’s worst parts, and I went to be the richest man in the world. I didn’t achieve that by being nice, or even good.” He looked over his shoulder at the twins. “I wouldn’t need H and M here if I hadn’t given a lot of people reason to want me dead.” The twins nodded in a synchronized motion.

“And yet you invited a complete stranger to join you on the bench. Aren’t you the least bit worried I might be a super-powered assassin?” Basil asked with a wry smile. “Not to mention the fact that you are out here, with only two – admittedly very intimidating – bodyguards to protect you, in a place not nearly safe from metahuman or mundane assassins – such as snipers.”

It only elicited a chuckle. He pointed over his shoulder at the twin to his right. “H here is a rather peculiar precog. She can calculate probabilities, to a certain extent. It only works within a short ‘range’, but is very, very accurate. If you meant me harm, she would have warned me, and the two of them would remove me from the premises,” he explained.

“I could have some perception power myself, to counter her precognition,” Basil replied.

“In which case she’d see her numbers being messed with and would remove me immediately,” Magnus continued. “M here is not here just for being eye candy, either. And they are just the defenses you can see.”

Basil nodded. Quite sensible. “Are all your bodyguards metahumans?”

“No,” he replied with a smile, but did not elaborate. “Now,” he added, half-turning on the bench and steepling his fingers in front of his face. “Since we have established that I am not a good man, I ask you to take everything I say with a grain of salt… but I think turning her in would be the worst thing you could do. That would be both easy and simple, and you can usually tell the wrong decision among a line-up by it being both of those,” he elaborated. “But neither should you ignore it – that would be easy and complicated, a dangerous combination. No, the best thing you can do is hard. Really hard, but simple.”

“An interesting way of evaluating options,” Basil commented.

“No one ever achieved anything worthwhile by going down the easy route,” Magnus stated simply. “Turning your sister in, or ignoring the issue, would just mean giving up on her.” He moved a little closer, licking his lips as he prepared to continue. Basil noticed that he was getting animated for the first time during their conversation. “About fifteen years ago, there was this hero, Silverstreak. He had one of these archnemesis relationships with a villainess named Scarlet Starlet. What neither of them knew was that they knew each other in their secret identities. They actually fell in love and married, keeping their costumed lives a secret from each other for ten years. They had seven children during that time. Then he found out, and he immediately turned her in.” He sneered with contempt. “He explained his decision as such – he still loved her, but he could not justify putting innocents at risk just for the sake of their family.”

“That… sounds like a good reason to do that,” Basil said, lowering his head. He had never heard that story before.

“Not at all, my boy. Look at what he achieved – he tore his family apart, betrayed the woman he’d sworn he would stand by through every trial, inadvertently exposing his and her true identity to the public due to a mess-up,” Magnus explained. “His children were bullied so badly, they had to leave their home and go into witness protection on top of that.”

“What should he have done, then? Let her carry on?”

“No!” Magnus replied, startled. “He should have tried to change her. Stick with her. Don’t stop believing in her. No one’s ever achieved anything by giving up. It would have been hard. He would have had to shoulder a lot of weight on his consciousness, a lot of guilt. People would get hurt. But at least he wouldn’t have given up.”

“Hmm.” He had never looked at it this way. He was not sure he could… shoulder that. “You despise people who give up?”

“Very much so. Look, there are only two ways to really lose, you know? To truly fail. It’s to die, or to give up,” Magnus explained. “I never punish employee’s if they couldn’t achieve their objective, so long as they fought for it to the end – only if they gave up before exploring all options, do I get… cross with them.” He raised a finger, shaking it in front of Basil’s face. “Now, you seem like a bright young man to me. Too young, really, to have to deal with something that haunts you as much as your sister’s deeds do. But, I will expect of you the same I would expect of anyone – fight for those you love, and for what you believe in. You obviously love your sister, or you wouldn’t be so conflicted. And you believe in morality, in some form of ethics, or you wouldn’t feel conflicted over her deeds. So I advise you to walk the hard path. And it is so very hard – but also quite simple. Don’t give up on her. Do everything you can think of to convince her to change her ways. Only once you have exhausted all other options should you turn her in. Do you understand?”

Basil nodded, fighting not to cry. He felt like this was something his father should be doing, and for some reason, it was tearing him up now. “I’ll try.”

“Good. Do that. And furtherm-“

M touched his shoulder, cutting him off. “You have a dinner appointment, Sir,” she said in an ice-cold, precise voice. “We need to go on our way, soon.”

Magnus sighed. “Ah well, duty calls.” He stood up, straightening out his suit and putting on a coat that had been hanging over the bench with help from M. “We should talk again some other time. I feel that you’ll be a very engaging conversational partner.”

“You sure, Sir? Most people find me annoyingly… ‘geeky’, I think,” Basil asked, smiling up at him after he dried his eyes.

The lean man only smiled. “I know people. I know them very well. And I’ll be here, next week, from… seven to eight pm?” He looked searchingly at H.

“Seventy-nine percent chance for that to work out, Sir. Eighteen percent that you will be late, but still present. Three percent chance that you will miss it entirely. Forty-five percent chance he will be here, twenty-three percent chance he will be late, thirty-two percent chance he won’t make it at all,” she replied with machine precision.

He turned back to smile at Basil. “Well, those are rather good numbers, all things considered. Have a nice day, Basil, thank you for the conversation and I wish you the best of success with your sister.”

Basil rose, and shook the lean man’s hand. “It is me who should thank you. And you have a good week, Sir. I will be here, if at all possible.”

Magnus nodded and walked away, M smoothly drawing out an umbrella to protect him from the falling snow, while H walked ahead to open up a path in the snow, so he wouldn’t get too dirty or wet.

Previous | Next

Vote

Tieshaunn

The World is vast, and full of Wonders

Tag Archives: Basil

B010.8 Falling Hearts

B010.6 Falling Hearts

B010.5 Falling Hearts

B010.4 Falling Hearts

B010.3 Falling Hearts

B010.1 Falling Hearts

B009.9 Family Matters

B009.7 Family Matters

B009.6 Family Matters

B009.5 Family Matters