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!?”

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B010.5 Falling Hearts

Posted on October 6, 2014 by tieshaunn

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My life sucks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then everything went wrong.

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B010.2 Falling Hearts

Posted on August 19, 2014 by tieshaunn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least I lucked out on the other one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’re the specialists doing?”

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

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

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

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

Well, she’s certianly picking it up fast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

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

“What exactly do you mean?”

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

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

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

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

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B007.7 Hastur, Shrouded in Dread

Posted on January 20, 2014 by tieshaunn

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The dragonette stopped the recording after they’d watched it twice. It was quite… illuminating, really. And they finally had a clue as to how to take Hastur down, which was a plus…

But right now, he was more concerned with the dog-sized dragonette in front of him. He stared down at the gorgeous drone. It stared back up at him. Its creator had gone through the trouble of adding filigree ornamentations to its shell – the dull, dark silver had been engraved in artistic swirls and other such patterns, all perfectly balanced against each other and whichever part of its body they were worked onto.

The girls started to discuss their next step, while he just sank down to squat on his heels. He was too tired, too worn out to help much, anyway. Besides, dragon robot. Either was reason enough for him to pay attention and now he had both in front of him.

Gloom Glimmer turned to look at the other two girls, still weary from the exertion of the last hours. “So, now we know how to stop her. Whether or not we can use it is another matter entirely,” she said.

“I’m still not quite sure what we saw, to be honest,” Prisca replied. “As far as I get it, she can only be hurt by her victims?” She shuddered as she remembered the recording of the grissly attack on the shelter. “Unless you use mind control on one of them, I don’t see how it’s going to help us.”

Brennus drew out a stack of pictograph cards and started flashing them in front of the dragonette. It chirped in response, adjusting the responses to the cards he flashed. Could it be an Artificial General Intelligence like Eudocia? Or an Artificial Specialized Intelligence?

“Not quite. I’ll explain it later on, but we need to meet the group again,” Gloom Glimmer replied. “We don’t stand a chance as we are – I’m almost out of juice, Brennus could be knocked out by a stiff wind and you… no offense, but you are completely new, even if you held yourself wonderfully against BigShit.”

His power surged up, the light blazing brighter than usual, as it began to analyze the responses of the dragonette, trying to analyze it through them. He soon went to flashing three or four cards at a time in patterns based on astrophysical calculations, then went over to quantum theory…

Prisca shrugged, her face hidden behind her helmet. “No offense taken. Honestly, without Phasma here, I’d probably have gotten crushed like a bug sooner or later.”

He shelved those tests – it at least wasn’t as intelligent as Eudocia, even if it was an AGI. Or perhaps it was smart enough to recognize what he was doing? He started testing its behaviour with simple prompts and questions, speaking quietly.

The young villain just shrugged herself, but said nothing. She’d been quite silent the whole while, and Brennus was getting the impression that she wasn’t overly concerned about what was happening… though that might just have been due to her power making her pretty much immune to most anything that might harm her.

“Let’s cut the chatter and go – I think I still have enough juice to locate the others,” Gloom Glimmer continued. She’d drawn her hood up, hiding her face from view and drawn her white cloak around herself, looking more like a ghost than Phasma did right now. “Wait for it… yes, I’ve got Tartsche and Tyche… and Outstep. Polymnia is… nearby, with Hecate… Amazon is tied down at the Diantha High, Bakeneko and Osore are with her… oh, the Feral Family has deployed, they’re coming here.” She mumbled a few incoherent words, then continued: “That’s all I can get right now. Too weak to try and locate Hastur, if I even could – meta’s of her level tend to mess up perception powers around themselves.”

Some of this stuff was interesting… he was largely convinced he was facing an ASI instead of an AGI, and it seemed to have quite a few quirks… but they, as far as he could tell, hadn’t been programmed in deliberately, but had “grown” organically as the ASI expanded. Maybe if he called in Eudocia and linked them up somehow… but he would need to somehow shield Eudocia from being corrupted, and the threat of having her be revealed to the Dark or other interested part-

“BRENNUS!”

“Huh?” He looked up. All three girls were looking at him – funnily enough, since all of them had their faces hidden, they did little to convey emotion. Whoever had called out to him had sounded annoyed, though. “What is it?”

Gloom Glimmer sighed a long-suffering sigh. “Oh, Stars above, he’s almost as bad as Polymnia,” she groaned.

Prisca stepped forward and simply grabbed him by the back of his cloak, pulling him up to his feet. “We’re going to fly to meet up with the others. Gloom Glimmer already sent a message ahead. I’ll carry you.”

“Okay. And why does that require interrupting my work here?”

She just threw him over her shoulder and lifted off, grabbing Phasma’s discarded robe as the girl dematerialized. The dragonett followed after them with a low chirping sound to accompany its flight.

* * *

They flew towards the headquarters of the United Heroes, and Brennus was once more struck by the unfairness of being unable to fly himself. Even if being carried by Prisca gave him the most interesting… ideas. And not technical ones, for once…

He shook his head and focused again on the dragonette, which was following after them. Ma-

But again, his thought process was interrupted by less interesting stuff. Namely, their landing on top of the large building that housed the headquarters of the local heroes. Tartsche, Hecate, Tyche, Polymnia, Outstep, Bakeneko, Osore, Amazon, Succubus and Rising Tide already awaited them, the latter looking rather… ruffed up. His formerly immaculate white suit was quite torn and ragged now.

Prisca put him down as they landed and held out the robe for Phasma, which filled out as her ghost-body flew in and rematerialized into its normal (hidden) physical form.

Amazon cut right to the chase: “Gloom Glimmer says you found someth-“

“Stop. No talking,” said Brennus. He looked at Tartsche. “How far can you spread your power?”

The other boy answered calmly, without a break: “Anyone and anything I directly touch. Why?”

“Everyone, touch Tartsche then. No talking until we’re all under the aegis of his power,” he continued and suited actions to words, reaching out to grab Tartsche’s forearm.

The others, rather befuddled, followed suit and touched the stalwart teenager.

And then the world went calm. There was no easy way to describe it, Brennus found, but to say that he knew the world couldn’t touch him anymore. It felt oddly… familiar.

Been there, done that, mate. Got the t-shirt.

Someday, you will have to explain all that.

Eh, not today, though.

What kind of accent are you talking in, anyway? You sound British most of the time, kind of Cockney, but that was definitely Canadian just now.

Imma nasty bugger of all kinds.

Now you are just making fun of me.

Geez, whatever gave you that idea?

He shook his head, focusing back on the others. It didn’t seem like they noticed him spacing out a little.

Amazon was quite focused on the dragonette, anyway, which was perched on Gloom Glimmer’s back right now, its head hanging over her shoulder. “What is that?”

Gloom Glimmer, still hiding beneath her cowl and cloak, spoke up, her voice quite a bit… duller than usual. “Her name’s Silver. She’s Wyrm’s spy drone,” she explained.

“Who is this Wyrm?” asked the Forester, his voice having somehow dropped a few octaves since the last time they spoke.

The shrouded girl gave a sensation of… apprehension off, but answered: “She works for my father and apparently decided to intervene directly here. She might have given us the key to defeating Hastur.”

“And what might that key be? And why did you,” Amazon looked at Brennus, “Insist that we all huddle up like this?”

“Is everyone here aware of the observations I made during my stay with Hastur?” he asked.

“You mean her mind reading and regeneration?” asked Tyche.

“Not mind reading, at least not true mind reading, but a more… specialized form. Anyway, she seems capable of dropping in on communication between people.”

“And however did you come to that conclusion?” asked Succubus with a drawl. For some reason, Prisca turned her head to look at her and he got the feeling she was glaring.

“Not important right now. Anyway, I have a theory that Tartsche is using a variant of the same ability which protects Desolation-in-Light, a-“

“Wait, what?” Tyche shouted in surprise, closely echoed by Outstep.

Brennus grunted, annoyed at the interruption. “Focus, people. We can discuss power theory later on.”

Oh, the irony me matey.

Shut. Up.

“Anyway, as I was saying, Desolation-in-Light is immune to all perception-powers – even indirect ones fail around her – so it is possible, if not even likely, that Hastur will be unable to eavesdrop on us if we’re under the protection of his power. Now, to get to the matter at hand – Silver, would you please replay the video you showed us before?”

Silver gave a chirping sound and aimed its – her? – head towards the floor in front of the group, projecting the video.

They saw the security camera feed from the Menstall shelter – over a hundred people were gathered together.

A flickering, then three shadows appeared in one corner of the place, in plain sight of everyone, along with Hastur – who proceeded to pull down her hood without much further ado. The recording only showed a flickering shadow where her face should be, just like with her victims – and immediately the shelter turned into a madhouse.

One of the refugees, a young woman huddled together with her family, burst into fire, growing into a flaming bird even as her body began to twist and break – and she threw a fireball towards the assembled group, much to Hastur’s apparent surprise. The young girl threw her arms up to shield her face, but not fast enough – only the intervention of one of the shadows shoving her aside saved her from having her whole body incinerated. Instead, the side of her leg was burned, as was one of the shadows standing behind her.

Hastur screamed and fell to the floor, clutching her burned leg and rolling over, as the phoenix threw another fireball – and hit her straight in the back, incinerating her whole body, reducing her to ashes. Then she screamed again (the Phoenix) as she bent over… backwards, audibly breaking her back as a new, white feline head burst out of her belly and her left leg exploded only to reform into the head of a black turtle. Then, the same flickering discordance covered her in the recording.

Before their eyes, the ashes that were left of Hastur reformed into the same girl… including her burned leg.

“What. The. Fuck,” said Tyche.

“Agreed. This is most… unusual,” said Rising Tide, his voice now an octave or so higher.

<I’ve never heard of regeneration that worked like that,> Polymnia threw in, her face twisted in horror as she mostly looked at what could be seen of the victims of the attack.

“Wait for the next part,” said Brennus. “Silver, please proceed.”

The dragonette did so, showing the video from a hospital surveillance camera. It showed a hallway, and soon enough, Hastur limped through the window, now in a different pair of pants. The time stamp showed this scene to take place about an hour after her attack on the Menstall shelter.

“Soooo… she can’t regenerate from some stuff? Where’s the logic?”, Hecate asked.

Gloom Glimmer swayed a little and said: “The next part is also important. Silver, please show the final video.”

It was a traffic camera recording of the Chinese cape’s rampage through New Lennston’s entertainment district (also known as The Brights). While Huang Long herself was hidden beneath the shroud of flickering distortion, they saw Hastur show up with some of her attending victims and cross a nearby street – only for Huang Long to lash out and throw another fireball at her, incinerating her once more. Hastur recovered – though she retained her limp and her pants were still burned, not yet replaced – and cursed towards her victim, then vanished along with her group in a flicker.

Silver cut off the video feed.

“Gilgul here,” Brennus said, nodding towards Prisca, “Thought that Hastur might be vulnerable against her own victim’s attacks.” Prisca, Phasma and Gloom Glimmer all turned to look at him, surprised that he had even noticed that. He would have smirked at them if they could have seen it. “Them is not so. I theorize, instead, that she is vulnerable to those whom her power is affecting at the time… or, in other words, the only way to harm her is to look at her face while you do it.”

That made everyone hold their breath and think.

Polymnia was the first to say something: <So we just use a time-delayed camera or thermal vision or something and we can take her down?>

Hecate shook her head. “No. Brennus was doing that when she kidnapped him, and he couldn’t hurt her, right?”

He nodded. Obviously, Hecate must have read all his reports. “Quite so. I think one must expose themselves to her power in order to be able to hurt her. In that moment of her power affecting one directly, her defensive power probably does not recognize one as a threat. Allowing permanent harm to be done to her.”

Rising Tide tapped his chin, scowling. “I notice everyone is thinking towards the end goal of killing her – we should instead detain her, after all, her power is rather harmless when she’s locked away and-“

“No,” said Amazon. “Even if there wasn’t the issue of you Foresters potentially getting your hands on an S-Class threat, it wouldn’t work.”

“How do you know that?”, the Forester sneered.

Amazon sneered right back – and she had one hell of a sneer. “We know that because one of the Black Panthers survived and turned himself over to us. According to his information, they had Hastur in their custody for two weeks, but he observed the others growing more and more obsessed with her – upon closer inspection by our specialists, we found traces of subtle mental manipulation in his mind. It is very likely that Hastur subconsciously manipulates people to become obsessed with her, which would eventually lead to her escape.”

Rising Tide started to say something, but Gloom Glimmer cut him off: “Shut. Up.” She turned to Succubus, who had just opened her mouth. “You. Too.” Brennus was sure he saw something red flicker in the darkness of her hood for a moment. “Amazon, is there anything else we should know? Any information you got out of him?”

“Yes. Apparently, the person who set up the deal that got them Hastur was a Quinzen Walmers – a local ‘contract negotiator’… and their sponsor was a group calling themselves ‘the Companions of the Future’. They’re the ones who provided the funds necessary to buy a metahuman like Hastur.”

“Have you tried to detain Walmers already?” Brennus asked.

She nodded, but did not look pleased. “Yes, but he’s cut and run – there’s no sign of him.”

“We shouldn’t worry about him, anyway,” said Prisca. “We need to track down Hastur, and find a way to off her without having to sacrifice so-“

“And who in darnation are you, anyway!?” Outstep spoke up for the first time. He was looking rather ragged, himself, and quite tired.

“Her name is Gilgul. Newly manifested, high apex to god tier flying brick with a few twists,” Gloom Glimmer summed up. “Now quiet – she’s already proven herself by taking down BigShit along with Phasma here.”

That shut him up.

Brennus threw him a glare he could not see, then turned to the group as a whole: “I have a few ideas on how to take her down, but we need to find her. I don’t believe that she is just wildly teleporting around causing chaos – she is more likely to have a plan, even if it is a half-cooked one.” Especially if she has found an intelligent planer, or worse yet, a superbrain-type.

“I can find her,” Gloom Glimmer threw in. “It will disable me for a while – I’m already quite drained,” Her voice sounded almost normal now – though Brennus could only tell that it was usually strange by the lack of her usual inhuman harmonics – and she was slumping, which just did not fit her, at all. “But I should be able to locate her, maybe even get a glimpse of her goals.”

“Do that, then. We’ll take everything from there,” ordered Amazon.

Gloom Glimmer nodded and broke contact with Tartsche, stepping away and taking a deep breath as Silver jumped off her back, gliding a short distance away to land and watch her.

* * *

Gloom Glimmer took a deep breath, concentrated – once more, Brennus was sure he saw red flicker underneath her hood – and then collapsed onto her knees. “Ugh.”

Polymnia immediately went to her side, helping her back up and taking her back into the group huddle, holding her hand to Tartsche’s outstretched hand to spread his power over them. <What did you see?>

The weakened girl shook her head, then whispered: “She’s… she’s got a plan… She wants to use TeleCat’s instant broadcasting contrivances to broadcast her face.”

“Ah crap,” whispered Brennus.

“TeleCat? Who the hell is that? And what’s with that name?” asked Bakeneko. Brennus had almost forgotten she was there, even though she had a particularly provocative form right now… not that he would notice it next to Prisca’s new curv- Focus, damn it!

“A supervillain from the late eighties, he tried to take over the world by way of television. Built contrivances that transmitted images and sound across the planet with no lag at all, wanted to hypnotize the whole world,” explained Brennus. He had studied up on all tech-based heroes and villains he could find – or at least the most famous ones – and even contrivers. “But it makes no sense – TeleCat is locked up in the Tartarus Star; as powerful as she is, there is no way she is breaking him out of there to build her another contrivance. And all his old ones were destroyed.”

Rising Tide fiddled with the neck of his suit, apparently uncomfortable.

Gloom Glimmer looked at Rising Tide. “She’s going for your base under the Brights,” she said. “You have TeleCat’s Super Tele-Throne in storage – and since he’s still alive, it would still work.” She paused, taking a weak breath. “She sits on that thing and she’ll be able to throw her face on every active screen that is linked to the internet in the entire Northern Hemisphere at the same time, with no lag. It might suffice to let her power propagate through it – instant apocalypse.”

Brennus sighed. “Ah crap to the highest power.”

And then something strange happened. Gloom Glimmer just… slumped in Polymnia’s arms, the colour washing out of her, until… until she looked like someone had taken a scissor and cut a Gloom Glimmer-like shape into reality.

“What happened to Miss Perfect?” asked Bakeneko, only to earn a slap over the head by Amazon.

Polymnia answered the question everyone had: <It’s a kind of defense mechanism. If she’s knocked out or otherwise unable to defend herself anymore, her power uses its last reserves to kind of put her into a pocket dimension to protect her until she recovers. Right now, she’s just as untouchable as Desolation-in-Light. But she’s completely out of this world, save for this tether.> She nodded towards the featureless, three-dimensional void in her arms.

“Well, at least she’ll be safe,” sneered Rising Tide with a mocking tone.

Amazon threw Rising Tide a poisonous look, but did not rebuke him. “So, what do we do?” she asked into the round. Apparently, she was just as stunned as the others were. This was… quite a bit over their usual weight class.

Prisca turned to her: “How long until the Feral Family arrives?”

“How do y- nevermind, they’ll need at least another forty-five minutes.”

“Too long,” said Brennus. “But I have a different plan.” He looked all his erstwhile comrades over. “I will need all of your cooperation for it, just to make sure. And it will be really dangerous.”

“Not as dangerous as the end of the world,” said Prisca in support, gently bumping his shoulder with her fist.

He nodded, then turned to Polymnia: <Charge the S.M.O.G. up. We will need it for this.>

<Yes!>

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B007 Hastur, Shrouded in Dread (Part 6)

Posted on January 17, 2014 by tieshaunn

Previous | Next

I died. I died and went to hell. Why else would my first real enemy be a giant monster made of shit?

Prisca flew to the side, evading the… dripping strike. Unfortunately, she was not fast enough to evade the splash of fecal matter that splattered her all over.

Eww.

Running on a strange kind of instinct, Prisca rose up into the air and above the towering enemy (he – she, it? – was at least sixty feet tall) and then higher still, out of reach of its disproportionally long arms – they were each longer than it was tall.

I can fly, she thought with a start, feeling her heart speed up in excitement. For a moment, she forgot even the monster beneath as an unrestrained laugh bubbled out of her throat.

I can fly!

She spun on the spot, like a ballerina, her scarlet half-skirt whirling up around her.

I can’t wait to show this to mom! And Rosalind! Their eyes will drop out of their sockets!

Just then, a huge glob of fecal matter slammed into her.

Ewwww.

She was knocked out of the air, but caught herself quickly, as the brown stuff just slid off her armor without leaving so much as a stain.

Perma-Clean armor. Awesome.

Catching herself – it was incredible how easily she could control this body and its power, like it had always been there, just waiting to be used – she looked down at her quarry, evading another lobbed mass of fecal matter.

How do I fight that thing?

She wasn’t sure what to do – it was bigger than her, it was most probably stronger than her and she didn’t know how much punishment she could take. Or how it could backlash into her real body – any trauma, no matter how small, was quite likely to kill her.

Drifting to her right, she evaded another shot. The monster seemed to mostly focus on her now, hopefully allowing Gloom Glimmer to get the survivors to safety.

Should I attack it? Or just keep distracting it? Just float up here, evading its shots…

There was something… something Basil had said, once.

When you don’t know how to proceed, choose the option that involves doing something.

She aimed her spear at where she believed the center of the beast to be. Stretching her body out to aim directly at it like a missile, she flew towards it, the silver edge of her golden spear gleaming in the sun.

It looks more like a sword on a spear than a real spear, really.

BigShit threw another glob of shit at her, but she flew through without losing a beat and plunged into its chest.

Her spear pierced through the shit, of course, then bit into flesh and bone and tendons, parting them as she pushed inside. Only when her armored body hit its actual flesh did she slow down, but she swung the spear, parting flesh and bone and sinew, cutting a way through BigShit’s body until she emerged on the other side.

She wasn’t even tired, and her spear had cut through it like through warm butter.

This body is freaking awesome. This power is freaking awesome!

She was so lost in revering her own power that she didn’t evade BigShit’s elbow strike, and he smacked her into the ground several hundred feet away.

Landing with a crash, she tore a fissure into the ground and broke through a tree before coming to a stop.

Ow. That hurt. A lot.

But she was, as far as she could tell, unharmed. Weird. Felt like I broke something, only I… didn’t.

“Are you alright?”

“Eeep!” She jumped up from the ground as a soft voice spoke to her from outside her field of vision.

Whirling around, she levelled her spear at… a young woman in a black cowl and robe, with a blood-red right hand.

“Who’re you!?” she asked the newcomer.

The woman giggled, and Prisca adjusted her estimate of her age down to teenager – maybe around her own age.

“I’m Phasma, and I’m here to help. Who’re you?” she said, her voice throaty and soft. She talked like she was just taking a stroll on a sunny day, and not standing just a hundred feet away from the giant monster that was coming closer with every moment.

“Uhh, I’m…” She didn’t have a cape yet. She so needed a name for her… well, herself really. “Call me… Gilgul. Yes, that fits.”

The other girl nodded. “Nice to meet you, Gilgul.” She turned to look towards the enemy, her face still hidden by her cowl. “You can cut that thing apart?”

“Uh, yes. But it doesn’t seem to really hurt it.” BigShit had shown now sign of being bothered by having been pierced through.

“We’ve fought a few others who seemed to be able to just absorb damage to no end. Most of them had some manner of core which, once destroyed, caused their death – or at least caused their regeneration to stop working, allowing for them to be taken down,” said Phasma. “I can blast away the shit and the outer layer of its body. If you’re fast enough, you should be able to locate and destroy the core.”

She looked at the beast with a doubtful expression on her face (not that Phasma could see that behind the helmet). “What if it doesn’t have a core?”

Phasma shrugged carelessly. “Then we do it the hard way. You keep cutting it to pieces, I get rid of the pieces. Until there’s nothing left.”

“What’s your power, anyway?”

The other girl turned to look at her, and somehow Prisca got the feeling that she was smirking. “Let me demonstrate. Stand ready.”

And with that, her robe dropped to the ground, suddenly empty.

Prisca saw a distortion in the air, roughly the size of a person, fly towards the fecal monster. As it did so, it grew and grew, until it was an amorphous shape of distorted air the size of a truck. And then it touched their enemy.

Wherever it came into contact with it, the fecal matter exploded, going up in flames and sound and force. Phasma pushed on, drawing her ‘body’ over the outer layer of the beast, literally blowing the shit and other bits off of it.

Holy Sh- Holy Hell’s Freakin’ Bells.

Within seconds, Phasma had literally blown the shit out (or rather, off) the monster, revealing it in all its twisted glory – it looked like a gaunt human, only it was all crooked bones, oozing and infected muscles, sinews and incomprehensible organs.

But nothing that looked like a core of some sort.

“Phasma! Can you blow more off?” she shouted, readying her spear and ready to fly away – BigShit was staggered, but it was still advancing with single-minded determination.

Until Phasma wrapped around its right knee, her ghost-body blowing muscle, sinew and ‘fresh’ shit off the bones with dozens upon dozens of explosions, until the lower leg came free and BigShit dropped to land on its left knee and right stump.

I hope I never have to fight her. Wouldn’t know how, for one.

Phasma went back to blowing the outer layers off of its body, as well as the fecal matter it kept oozing out of countless orifices (as well as any wounds she created), searching for the theoretical core.

Should I join in and cut it up, or wait for her to reveal the core?

She thought about it for all of maybe three seconds, before she heeded Basil’s advice and charged in, aiming her spear at the twisted, oozing mass that was probably its head.

* * *

*Smack*

*Smack* *Smack* *Smack*

She danced through the lines, her staff swinging left and right, shattering bones and bursting flesh.

*Smacksmackmsack*

A three-fer, downing three of the strange spawns they were fighting, each looking like some kind of greasy pig-man. They could see their spawner, an incredibly obese woman with no hair on her body and blue-black veins running visibly under her swollen, greasy skin. She was literally pushing out another three or four or five of these every few seconds and her ‘children’ went immediately to work, attacking everything that was not one of them or their mother.

Tyche ducked underneath their swiping claws and swung her staff left and right, shattering two knees. They fell into their siblings, getting entangled in their feet, tripping the next two waves of foes.

Finally, it’s working as it should!

The big meatshield was standing behind her, firing his heavy machine guns akimbo into the mass of enemies, trying to shoot through to their ‘mother’. Unfortunately, the kids were defending her with their own bodies, while some others were moving cars and the bodies of their fallen siblings to shield her off.

Just when we’d need Outie, he’s off hunting that weird hedgehog thing.

She flipped over the next wave of pig-men just in time for them to stumble over the bodies of those who had already fallen.

Time to see how far I can take this.

Fortunately, B-Six had given her a belt full of grenades to play with (old-school, really secure triggers, nothing electronic). Pulling one off, she checked the colour – red, so incendiary fun.

Goodie goodie.

She pulled the trigger and threw the grenade up and towards the ‘mother’ without even aiming. Then she watched, while spinning around and letting the enemies all hit each other instead of her.

The grenade bounced off a nearby window sill, off a car hood and dropped right into the gullet of the ‘mother’.

“I hope you like roasted meat for dinner, little piggies!” she shouted. How’s that for a one-liner.

The mother died almost instantly, as the grenade burned her up in seconds.

And the pig-men all dissolved into goo.

Ewwww.

She turned to look at the Big Guy, who was walking slowly towards her.

“How’s that for a one-liner, big guy?” she asked with a grin.

Tartsche replied: “That was needlessly risky – you had no idea the grenade would hit your target.”

Tyche just grinned mysteriously. “Oh, I do have my means, big guy.”

Just then, Outstep appeared out of nowhere. “FreakoSpeedsterhasbeendispatchedbosswhatsnext?” he asked before even completely dropping out of super-speed completely.

“We just got reports of three new of Hastur’s victims rampaging around the harbor. Outstep, take us onto your bike,” Tartsche answered.

“Okie-dokie!” they both replied in tune.

* * *

“Why. Won’t. You. DIE!?”

Screaming at the top of her lungs, Prisca kept cutting off pieces from the giant monster, trying to get deeper into its body to find some kind of core. But it only flailed and wriggled and thrashed around, throwing her off again and again.

At the same time, Phasma had contracted her ghost-form back into a human-sized and human-like shape and was gliding all over its body wherever Prisca wasn’t currently cutting into it. The explosions she caused were bigger and more violent now, tearing more and more off the beast.

Prisca ducked to evade a swipe of its one remaining arm, then struck out with her spear-blade to cut into it, nearly severing the appendage from the body (but only nearly). Its other wounds were already closing again, shit oozing over them as they knit themselves.

“Phasma! This ain’t working, its regenerating faster than we’re cutting it down!” she shouted, flying up over the prone enemy to cut into its shoulder. “We gotta focus on one spot and try to dig into it! Don’t worry about me, just blast away!”

She dove into the center of its chest and started cutting, her golden armor repelling a weak strike of its still regenerating arm even as her blade cut into it. Once more, she was glad that her armor seemed to repel dirt.

The ghost girl seemed to have heard her – How the hack can she sense anything, anyway? ESP? – because her nigh-invisible form, still focused into the shape of a nude, featureless woman, slammed into BigShit right where she had already cut into it.

What resulted was a series of explosions that almost threw her off of it, but she used her flight to push on with her spear, cutting deeper into its body where the explosions did not suffice.

Ow. Ow. Ouch.

She got hurt, over and over, but she never seemed to actually take any damage. It hurt just as much as she’d imagine being blown around and burned by explosions would, but there was no actual damage she could make out.

Nor did it impede her from cutting deeper into BigShit, until Phasma focused her entire form into a needle-thin form and stabbed into it.

What resulted was an explosion that hurt like hell and threw Prisca off BigShit, slamming her into the wall of the hospital.

The wall cracked, but held (hospitals were built very sturdy) even as her head rang for just a second, before her senses were clear again as if nothing happened. And for just a moment, she felt like her body had been shattered, but she was fine again.

Huh. Maybe I just recover really damn fast?

But no time for that – Phasma had blown BigShit’s chest wide open, and now, finally, she could see a glowing, crystalline heart, glowing a dark, stained red.

Well, if that ain’t a core, then I’m not wearing knight armor, either.

She flew towards her quarry even as he started to regenerate while rising up on his regenerated legs… which only served to give her an easy target. Plowing into the open wound, she stabbed her spear at the he-

* * *

Ouch.

Perhaps she should have tried throwing her spear, instead of doing the deed in person. Because BigShit exploded, big-time.

It took the entire front of the Petal Memorial Hospital down.

Prisca found herself half-buried by rubble, everything but her stained with fecal matter.

And she was completely, utterly fine.

Still hurts like hell, though.

Hearing steps, she soon saw Phasma, back in her robe and cowl, enter her field of vision and stand over her.

“Need a hand?” she asked, offering her right hand.

“Gladly, thank you,” Prisca replied and grabbed it, letting her help pull her up to her feet. Dust and debries fell off of her still spotless armor. “Good work out there.”

“You too. I hope we can work together again sometime,” replied the ghost-girl. Prisca couldn’t see her face, but she got the feeling that she was smiling.

“Really great work, both of you,” said Irene, appearing right next to them.

“Eeeek!” they both shouted in unison, jumping up. In Prisca’s case, she flew up nearly through the half-collapsed ceiling before she stopped herself.

“Don’t do that!” she said as she floated back down. And then she saw Basil – Brennus – stand behind Gloom Glimmer, supporting himself on a wooden staff.

She fought down the urge to go and hug him (and do other things) in front of Phasma (and Gloom Glimmer, for that matter). Instead, she asked: “Are you alright, Brennus?”

He nodded. “Just a little winded, but nothing too bad. Congratulations on the battle, both of you. That was one hell of a finisher,” he replied.

Blushing beneath her helmet, Prisca nodded happily, while Phasma made a shallow little bow.

“So, what are we going to do now?” the newly manifested girl asked. And where’s my body?

“We need to find a way to deal with Hastur for good,” replied Brennus. “And for that, we need to figure out how to get past her regeneration.”

“Agreed. And we need to get the survivors somewhere safe, too,” Gloom Glimmer included, taking a step back and to the side, so they were all standing in a rough circle. “I’ve already called for backup, but we need to cover them until it arrives.”

The other three all nodded, and then Brennus spoke up again: “Good, let us use the time to plan. Phasma, are you willing to work with us for the time being?”

“I wouldn’t be here otherwise. The Morning’s Children are more than willing to cooperate against this enemy,” she replied in her soft voice.

“Very good. May I ask what your power actually does? I saw most of what you did out there, but I would like to hear it from you.”

She shrugged. “I can turn into an incorporeal form, then apply various effects – though only one at a time – to any physical object that I come into contact with. The more I focus my form, the stronger the effect, while it becomes weaker as I spread myself. I can detonate, incinerate, petrify, melt, shatter and do some other things which are not relevant to the situation at hand. I am completely immune to all mental and most physical powers while doing so and can recover even if my incorporeal form is somehow torn apart,” she explained in two breaths.

Wow. That’s one hell of a power, Prisca thought. I wonder what her trigger was.

Brennus just nodded, showing no reaction. Then again, his face was still hidden by his mask. “That’s very useful, and it might prove instrumental in de- Do you all hear that?” He looked up at the hole in the ceiling.

Now that he mentioned it, Prisca could pick up an odd, mechanical chirping approaching them.

“Oh. I know that one,” said Gloom Glimmer, looking up herself.

“What is i-” Prisca began but didn’t finish as a vaguely draconic robot flew into the blasted room, landing in the middle of the circle.

It was about the size of a medium-sized dog and painted a gleaming black. Its head looked more avian than draconic and it had wings, a tail and four clawed legs.

Even Prisca could tell that it was one hell of a finely crafted machine.

“What in Tesla’s name is that?” asked Brennus, staring at the new arrival.

“That’s one of Wyrm’s drones. She’s dad’s personal gadgeteer and communications officer (also, his spymaster),” replied Gloom Glimmer as she squatted down in front of the drone. “Hey Wyrm, what’s possessed you to take a hand in this?”

Wyrm’s drone turned to look towards the only clean, still standing wall of the room. Its eyes lit up, and it started projecting onto it, like a home cinema.

They watched in silence.

Then Gloom Glimmer said: “Holy shit. That’s it.”

Brennus said: “Amen.”

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B006 Big Game Hunt (Part 7)

Posted on November 8, 2013 by tieshaunn

Brennus sat down at the circular war table, flanked by Hecate and Tyche. Somehow, without ever talking about it, they had elected him to be the leader, or at least the face of the group to the outside. Or maybe he had just fallen into the mold by necessity. Hecate was too pedantic, too slow to react in favour of thinking everything through twice and thrice over, while Tyche was just… Tyche.

Opposite of him sat Rising Tide, in between the delegations from the Triads and the mob. The Dark sat in between them, opposite of the heroes and completely alone.

Brennus was quite sure he did that intentionally, setting himself apart. A show of strength, of security even alone among so many metahumans. He had no illusions about what would happen if a fight broke out, even if everyone else present would team up against him.

Gloom Glimmer was the only one who could hope to match him, and she was the one most likely to side with him.

I need to study this guy. He is just sitting there, not even remotely the focus of the meeting, and he still gets all the attention. There is something to learn there.

Once everyone was seated, Amazon looked around. She threw Rising Tide a suspicious glance – the Foresters were never reliable when dealing with S-Class threats – he was not particularly bothered by. The Dark got some spillover from what she probably felt for Mindstar – he had recruited Amazon’s tormentor in response to said torments – and Brennus actually got half a smile.

For some reason, that bothered him. Not some reason, really. He was profiting from that recruitment, and his sister’s crimes, even if he was trying to put some distance between her and his cape.

Also, he’d got her real identity and what might be her greatest weakness out of it. And she probably did not realize that.

“Thank you all for coming here,” she began. “I’ve called this council into session due to-“

She was interrupted by a call. With a hastily murmured excuse, she took it, then said: “It appears that another party is going to join us, surprisingly enough.” There was a hint of distaste in her voice.

Within seconds, it became clear why as the doors to the elevator opened and six persons entered, all dressed in rather diverse clothing with a few commonalities – they all (except for one) wore black leather longcoats, they all had their chests bared underneath – even the women – and they all had a leering demon’s face tattooed over their hearts.

At least the women had their coats arranged so they just barely preserved their modesty. At least one of them had to be using double-sided tape or something, he was sure, because there was no way the coat stayed in place like that despite the excessive movement of certain parts of her anatomy.

One of the women, sporting fire-red long locks of hair and a pair of ram-like horns sprouting out of her head, sat at the table while the other five – three men and two women – took up position behind her in a row.

The other five were all superhumanly beautiful, and showing it off, especially the men. The only one who was dressed with any amount of decency was a girl who could not be legal yet, judging by her height and what little could be seen of her slender frame, her face half-hidden underneath a dirty, ragged red cowl. The rest of her body was hidden by robes of the same colour, only even dirtier.

Tyche leaned over to Brennus. <Who’re those?> she asked over their subvocal coms.

<Morning’s Children. Satanists who believe our powers come from hell and are meant as a prelude to the arrival of the Devil here on Earth. Their leader – the guy whose face they all have on their chests – paints himself as the Devil’s Herald. They’re villains, though they mostly just stay within their territory and celebrate orgy after orgy. Big on the drug trade, but otherwise tame. The girl with the red right hand is new, the others are paragon or exemplar tier metahumans. The woman with the horns is the current Succubus, a legacy villain. Can induce lust and influence anyone she’s had intimate contact with. Can morph into a more demonic form, too, for enhanced strength, toughness and flight. Don’t know the girl in the robe and cowl, though.>

While he had been explaining this, the new arrivals had settled down – Succubus was sitting between Elrik France and the Dark – and Amazon had greeted them.

“As I was saying, I called this council into session because of-“

“A little boy’s supposed information on a S-Class no one heard about before,” France cut in with distaste in his rich, slightly accented voice. He cut an impressive figure, despite his mundane clothing. He had no Physique power, but was powerfully built and very tall.

“Brennus provided some valid ev-” began Amazon, but she was cut off by the DDT men, who spoke in perfect synchronization.

“We are inclined to agree with Mister France – we came here simply due to the severity of the claim made, but we are disinclined to believe him simply because he has a few e-mails he may as well have faked.”

This looks suspiciously like they only came here to cause a stink, he thought.

“Brennus has yet to give us reason to doubt him. Considering the severity of his claims, I am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. We should proceed under the assumption that his information is valid until dis-“

“He has not given us any reason to doubt him because he is a complete greenhorn with little to no experience,” France continued.

“We are inclined to agree. Do you have any concrete proof regarding this supposed S-Class threat?” the DDT delegates chorused.

“We ran it by our precogs, and came up with a sixty-five percent chance of it being valid,” Amazon replied.

The DDT snorted (which sounded quite strange in a chorus) and France looked like he was going to say something more, but instead Rising Tide opened his mouth.

“A sixty-five perchent chance ot his information being valid is not quite enough for us to act on, considering the general unre-” Succubus spoke up in a rich, sultry voice.

Gloom Glimmer, who had been quietly sitting on her chair right next to Amazon – the most powerful person in the room, and the one most likely to get the Dark to cooperate – cut her off.

“I double-checked the numbers and came up with a positive result by myself. Considering the devastation any S-Class metahuman can cause, that’s more than enough reason for a serious meeting and decisive action,” she explained.

Succubus opened her mouth to retort, as did France and Rising Tide, but the Dark shifted on his seat, raising one hand to rest his chin on it.

Everyone went quiet and looked at him.

“I am ‘inclined’ to agree with both Amazon and my daughter”, he said in his usual inhuman voice, putting gentle emphasis on the word ‘daughter’. “Since I was notified in advance through an independent channel, I did what I could to verify the information – and my inquiries support young Brennus’ claim.”

The present villains all calmed down, after a fashion. Better to say, they did not dare contradict him.

I really need to get some lessons from that guy. Ah well, you can not have everything.

“Are you willing to share what information you found?” Amazon asked.

He looked directly at her, his glowing eyes somehow conveying amusement. “Would I be here if I were not?”

She just looked him straight in the eyes, showing no sign of intimidation.

<That woman’s got balls of steel,> Tyche said.

<Agreed. Not the wording, but the sentiment,> Hecate agreed.

<Ditto.>

“Somehow, I still don’t know how, the Black Panthers managed to scrounge up two hundred and ninety-five million dollars and bought a verified S-Class metahuman from a South European slaver who somehow managed to restrain her and transport her across the Atlantic. Before he did so, however, she wiped out an entire Italian village within minutes. No survivors.”

He paused to let that sink in.

“She is supposed to be used as a deterrent against the other groups in the city, and they apparently believe her power – whatever it might be – to be capable of intimidating even the United Heroes… and even me.”

“How the fuck do you restrain an S-Class threat like that?” Outstep asked, only to get shushed by Tartsche.

“Not all S-Class threats are moving engines of physical destruction,” Brennus said. He was so tired of having to stay silent. “I have been thinking about this for a while, and it actually tells us something about her – if she can be restrained in a manner safe enough to transport her across half the world, then it means that her power probably is not physical, or perhaps requires some manner of fuel to work.”

“Agreed. Her power may be limited to affecting people within a certain range, or requires organic fuel, or… actually, it doesn’t tell us all that much, seeing how… interesting powers can get. However, the codename they gave her does tell us something. She is called ‘Hastur’.”

“Hastur? That name means nothing to us,” chorused the DDT.

“Hastur, also known as the King in Yellow, though sometimes the latter is merely an avatar of the former. Either a Great Old One or an Outer God, or the Avatar of an Outer God. Part of the collection of works known as the Cthulhu Mythos,” Brennus threw in.

The Dark nodded, seeming somehow pleased, while Gloom Glimmer just groaned.

“What are you talking about, boy?” asked France.

“A classic work of horror literature. Most of it is not important right now, but the overall themes revolve around insanity and apathy in the face of the utter insignificance of humanity. Hastur in particular is attributed with three specific abilities – it can create a yellow sign that drives people looking upon it insane, it drives people who look directly beneath its cowl insane and it has written, or somehow generated a play in written form that does the same to anyone who reads it,” Brennus continued.

The robed girl leaned forward to whisper something into Succubus’ ear, and then the older villainess said: “He, or it, is also connected to Decadence, it seems.”

“Finally, people who appreciate the classics!” the Dark exclaimed. He threw a glance at Gloom Glimmer. “You should take a leaf out of their books, dear.”

She just ignored him and instead looked at Amazon. “I believe it is safe to assume that she has some manner of mind control or involuntary transformation of others. Or both.”

Before Amazon could say anything, however, Rising Tide said: “I believe this meeting has gone off track. If the poor girl’s restrained in a way that would allow transatlantic travel, then we should concern ourselves more with the Black Panthers, since they presumably have the key.”

Sensible advice from the wannabe-genocidal treehugger. The world gets weirder every day, was all Brennus could think in response.

“Agreed.”

The others all nodded.

“So, what do we do? Introducing an S-Class into the city with the express purpose of using her as a weapon for what sounds like a takeover of the local underworld breaks the rules, I think,” Succubus commented, shifting around on her seat. She seemed… uncomfortable, for some reason.

“I agree. This goes above and beyond anything any of us can tolerate. The risk of her breaking loose and repeating whatever she did in that village is too great,” Widard said, speaking for the first time in this meeting. “We need to track this Hastur down and take her into protective custody. She may be but a victim of her power, and-“

“You want to restrain her, turn her into one of your safe little drones,” Rising Tide said. “We should see about setting that girl free in a safe environment, teach her to control her powers and let her-“

“We all know your party line, Rising Tide. And we are not interested. It would be preferably to lock her away, or neutralize her in a more permanent-“

Brennus slammed his open hand onto the table, restraining himself just enough not to damage it. “Could we please focus on the matter at hand, that being the fact that the Black Panthers appear to be completely out of control? Even discounting the recent loss of their local leader – which only makes the situation worse – they have apparently been working on this for a long time, somehow conjured up a ridiculous amount of money and bought what is more like a bomb than a subordinate, as I doubt they will be able to restrain her once she is let loose. They have never been the most restrained villain group, but this is just completely out of character for the organization as a whole!”

The others all looked at him with surprise, except for Gloom Glimmer (who just looked amused), the robed girl (whose face and body were concealed) and the Dark (who had no body language or facial expression to begin with).

“Could we please focus on dealing with them?” he continued.

“He’s right. We need to organize a fast and decisive response, track down their current leadership, take them into custody and secure Hastur,” Widard agreed. “Are all agreed?”

Everyone but Rising Tide nodded, and the others all looked at him.

“I agree that the Black Panthers have gone too far, and that they need to be put down. But I disagree on what you probably mean with ‘securing’ her. But we will cooperate.”

Only to stab us in the back and get your hands on her. But they needed the manpower the Foresters could provide.

“We will deploy everyone we have,” Patrid chimed in, leaning forward from his relaxed position to rest his elbows on the table and staple his fingers in front of his face.

<That guy so gives me the supervillain-creeps,> Tyche commented.

Gloom Glimmer raised a hand and pointed at the Dark. “Don’t say it,” she told him.

He looked at her, then at Amazon. “Deploying these children in an unforeseen emergency like the Spiteborn attack is one thing. Deploying them into a war against an established villain group, especially with the threat of an unkown S-Class threat, is unacceptable.” He was almost growling at the end, and almost everyone edged away from him.

Only Amazon, Gloom Glimmer and Brennus remained calm, and the former both stared the villain down.

“We do not respond well to threats. Either way, we were not going to deploy the Junior Heroes. Nor are we going to allow you to deploy,” replied Amazon, looking at Brennus and his friends.

“What the fuck?” shouted Tyche, rising from her seat. Tartsche reacted the same way (though without swearing), and started protesting.

“This is non-negotiable. The children stay-“

“You don’t get a say in this, Sir! May I remind you that you’re a villain and that, even if you had a say in this, you have employed teenagers before, which calls your motives into question!?” Tartsche all but shouted at him.

“Young man, I admire your conviction, but I would advise you to guard y-“

A flash of light, followed by a pulsing airwave shook the room. Gloom Glimmer had slammed her hands both onto the table, her eyes aglow. “You don’t get to threaten my teammates!” she shouted at her father.

He did not shout back. Instead, his body – well, his darkwraith – erupted in an expanding cloud of darkness that reached over the table and enveloped him and his daughter.

“What the fuck!? He’s attacking his own daughter?”, Tyche shouted as she, along with most everyone, fled from the darkness.

“Calm down,” Brennus replied, who had remained seated (when you wear full power armour with a limited power source, you do not move unless necessary). “I would say he wants a private eye-to-eye chat.”

The darkness vanished after about a minute. The Dark was still in his seat, and Gloom Glimmer was sitting to his right, now noticably subdued (if still looking like she wanted to rip a few heads off).

And the robed girl was still standing unmoved, apparently unconcerned.

Amazon is not the only girl with balls around here, it seems. That, or she is simply powerful enough to feel secure.

Brennus honestly did not know which possibility was scarier.

“I apologize for the disturbance,” the Dark said to everyone.

Amazon looked at him suspiciously, then at Gloom Glimmer, who nodded at her.

“We were not going to deploy the Juniors, nor allow for Brennus, Hecate and Tyche to participate in the action,” she said.

Figures, Brennus thought. He did not say anything, as Hecate and Tyche both voiced their protests.

He waited for a few moments until everyone had calmed down, then he said: “I agree.”

Everyone – even the Dark – looked at him with surprise. He looked at his teammates, then at the others as a whole. “We are not ready for this. The three of us would have died fighting Panthera Rex, were it not for the intervention of an unknown third party. I will agree to stay out of this, and my teammates will, as well.”

<Brennus, what are you saying?> asked Hecate over the comms.

He ignored the question and looked at Amazon.

“I would agree that we remain here, in the headquarters, along with the junior heroes, for the duration of the crisis,” he continued.

“That is very reasonable of you,” the Dark said with a hint of admiration.

“I agree to your terms,” Amazon said.

“Then, may I suggest that we and the juniors be allowed to leave?” he continued. “There is no point to us taking part in this meeting. I have already provided all the information I have.”

Amazon nodded, then looked at the Morning’s Children. “That girl.” She looked at the robed girl. “She is clearly a minor. I demand that-“

Succubus cut her off. “Phasma does not concern you. Her power makes her all but untouchable, and she is completely immune to all mental powers while using it. We will not agree to any restraints on her deployment.”

They stared at each other, while Brennus rose from his seat. “Hecate, Tyche.” They fell in step behind him as he walked towards the junior heroes. Gloom Glimmer rose from her seat and followed them, too.

The entire group left the war room.

* * *

They walked down a pristine hallway.

<What’s with the new cloak?> Polymnia had fallen in step next to him, clad in an unflattering overall covered in hooks. She was looking at his new white cloak and cowl.

“Black-on-black does not work on everyone. I thought the contrast would look good.”

<And that symbol on your back?>

He turned to look at her while he walked. “The ravens? Do you like them? Flash of inspiration of mine, and I liked it so much I thought I’d make it my emblem.”

“Is that an… uroboros? Made of ravens?” asked Spellgun with a curious tone.

“H and M, the divine ravens of memory and thought that perched upon Odin’s shoulder and provided him with advice,” Gloom Glimmer chimed in, sounding quite sullen.

“Correct,” Brennus replied. “Now, on to other topics. Since I believe that this situation will go down the slammer, so to speak, I would appreciate a chance to coordinate our groups.”

“You planned this,” Gloom Glimmer said.

They all stopped walking and looked at her.

“You knew they were not going to allow you to take part in the battle and you came here anyway – for what?” she continued.

“Coordination. Preparation. I have a very bad feeling about this situation,” Brennus replied calmly. “And I would also very much like to compare notes with another Gadgeteer – this was the easiest way of facilitating that without outright joining the group,” he continued while looking at Polymnia.

<Sweet.>

He looked at Tartsche. “You are the leader of this team. Do you agree?”

The older boy just stared at him.

Tyche snorted. “So you just wanted to geek out with her. You could have said something.”

“There are other concerns. We do need to prepare,” he insisted.

“True. But, I insist on one thing,” Tartsche said.

“What would that be?”

“Gloom Glimmer will stand guard, and you will take off your power armor. I’m sorry, but I don’t trust you enough to leave you with her, in her laboratory, while fully armed and unsupervised.”

Brennus nodded. “I take no offense, and I agree to your conditions. Though I, of course, will keep my mask on.”

Tartsche nodded, and Polymnia just clapped her hands together in glee.

Things are going to get interesting, he thought. And maybe I’ll even find out why you insisted on this.

All will be made clear in time, replied the man in the moon.

* * *

…in time, mate, replied the man in the moon.

She flinched, then drew her legs up underneath the shroud that was covering her body. With a painful act of will, she gathered her senses, pulling them back from the outside so she could focus on her immediate surroundings again.

The container was dark, but that did not concern her. She could see in the darkness, without trouble.

Crawling on all fours, she bit into her fingertip, then put it to one of the few free spaces left, drawing a pair of ravens, biting each other’s tail.

The picture did look good, just as the boy in the armor had said. Only his version was black on white, not blood on rust.

She sat back down and let her senses spread, splitting in two, looking into this ‘war room’, observing the meeting, while also following the younger heroes and vigilantes. It was difficult, her senses were so big now, so all-encompassing, and she had to fight to focus them on one or two places in one time, in one possibility.

But she had to watch, to listen.

Maybe these people would be the ones to set her free?

Tieshaunn

The World is vast, and full of Wonders

Tag Archives: Phasma

B010.8 Falling Hearts

B010.5 Falling Hearts

B010.2 Falling Hearts

B007.7 Hastur, Shrouded in Dread

B007 Hastur, Shrouded in Dread (Part 6)

B006 Big Game Hunt (Part 7)