“Anything?” asked Lyle into his cell phone, to which there was no answer.
Finally: “no. Nothing…”
“Damn,” said Lyle. “Looks like this Silver Slasher has gotten away with murder—again.”
“I think you’re right, Lyle,” replied Condo. “We better get back before someone notices we’re gone.” With that, Catalyst, Shifter and Shrinking Violet began to return to Legion HQ, and would indeed return before anyone realized they were gone. Once more they had left the premises without authorization, once more quietly protesting any structure of having to sign in or out of Legion HQ.
The Silver Slasher had struck again, and the body had only been found less than two hours earlier in Central Park. They hoped they could arrive in time to find a clue, or trail, or something. No luck at all.
“I still say it’s a woman,” said Shifter over his cell phone.
----------------------------
The Bowery, Manhattan
“’Ello, Jenn,” said the old man whom she saw every day in the hallway, and she greeted him in kind, adding a smile of her own. Her obvious happiness was more transparent than she even though. “Good day then, eh?” he added.
“Yes,” she said, blushing. She was so excited she couldn’t contain herself.
“Must be a man, I suppose,” he added again, as she moved up the stairs to her studio apartment. “Yer practically glowing,” he said at last, as she reached her door and let herself in.
She was practically glowing. Excitement consumed every part of her body and she felt a fire in her heart. Her hair, pulled up in a conservative pony-tail, she let loose instantly, hurling the ribbon holding it up to the ground. She took of her glasses in excitement and removed her demure and fashionable winter coat as well. Her heart was pounding. Immediately, she began to remove her blouse and her dress pants, pulling off her stiletto heels first and throwing them aside, not caring where they landed.
Quietly, she noticed her blinds were open and quickly shut them. Soon she was completely naked, the fiery passion consuming her outright. She wanted to pleasure herself so badly, but had to wait.
The kill was still fresh and she could smell the blood on her hands still even though she’d washed it off.
Jenn Carpenter, formerly of Laromie, Wisconsin, insurance agent, 29 years old and described by her friends as ‘intellectual’ and ‘sweet’ but a bit boring, was shaking with excitement. Jenn Carpenter was the Silver Slasher, and she had just killed her 8th victim since arriving in Manhattan. Since feeling the call to come to Manhattan.
Now she prayed to her Deity, the one who assuredly summoned her here.
She prayed to Mordru first and foremost and then would celebrate afterwards by enjoying her pleasures. And then in a few days, she would do it again.
-----------------------------
“Who are the Legion really?” said Jack Ryder on his Fox New Show. “A bunch of kids with enormous power, immediately given unlimited money and celebrity? Does my even saying that aloud not cause alarm by how dangerous this potentially is?” Jack had been on a roll now for three minutes, and because he was having such a good time, had extended his bit by over thirty seconds with no end in sight.
“We have a former marine, American hero at the helm, and that gives us some comfort. But he’s just a young man too, and now he isn’t answering to the United States military any longer, but rather than United Nations…and we all know how effective that is,” he added sarcastically. “Who does that leave as the big decision maker? RJ Brande? The billionaire, corporate tycoon? Sure Brande has done a great deal for the world—maybe even too much, as his enormous billion dollar donations to third world countries seem to have produced little change or result. Brande is an obviously gifted investor and businessman. But do we really want him in control of twenty super-powered teenagers? Do we really want someone who shorted the mortgage lender stocks to be managing atomic powered emo kids?” He was doing his best now not to smile but to feign outrage.
“We know Brande has stated he supports the U.N. and the spirit of debate within the U.N. I’ve been on record for years saying if it was up to Brande, there’d be no U.N. The man practically hates political unity. He’s always encouraging ‘more dialogue’,” he continued with more sarcasm, “when it seems all this debate he’s encouraging accomplishes nothing. I don’t know…it feels like a private army that Brande is creating. And that’s tonight’s ‘bottom line’.”
Fade to commercial. As the camera came off Ryder, he turned to his assistant. “Ha! I liked that bit! Okay, I’ll need a Gatorade—the purple one or the orange one, but nothing else, and I need it in thirty seconds before we get back…”
-----------------------------
Marella Tao couldn’t help but cringe. “I don’t think people will like this,” she said at last. “People love Brande, both conservatives and liberals alike. He’s the ultimate investor to admire and the ultimate philanthropist.”
“I tried Marella,” said Celeste Rockfish, who was beside her. “I couldn’t find anything. And its impossible to interview one of these Legionnaires. Impossible.”
“How does someone keep their past so mysterious in this age?” said Marella. “If you go online, you basically have everything you ever wanted to know about…well, Jack Ryder, for one thing. Brande is even higher profile than Jack, and yet there’s almost nothing on him before his first big deals in the 1950’s. He’s fascinating.”
“Well, I’m going to keep looking,” said Celeste. “Because my interest is piqued. Call it professional curiosity.”
“I’m not sure Jack will want to keep paying you…” said Marella, feeling bad.
“I’m not sure Jack hired me for that reason anymore, really,” replied Celeste with an eyebrow raised. “You never know what’s really on his mind…”
Marella laughed. “No, you never do.” They both watched as Jack Ryder again went live and moved on to the next topic of his show. “Actually, now I’m interested in interviewing one of these Legionnaires. That could be a great story.”
“Let me know and I’ll try to arrange it,” said Celeste. “We’d have to go through their publicists.”
“That’s what I don’t want,” said Marella, “no more Leviathan is an American hero, or three romantic things Rex Kline does on a date articles. I want something juicy. Some dirt maybe. Or something heart-breaking. Something with a bit more depth. They can’t all be as clean as a whistle,” she smiled.
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Ian Lad: Suicide Slum, Metropolis
“Going somewhere?” said a voice behind him. Len turned around and saw that it belonged to some punk kid in a leather jacket, who was accompanied by two identical looking rejects from an Alexander Dumas novel wearing hoodies. “Hey, is that Intergang money in the bag?” continued the punk. Len Snart reached for gun in its holster. Those punks didn't stand a chance, he thought. But, before he could shoot, or even fully draw his gun, he was knocked out by the kid in the jacket, who had somehow managed to get behind him in seconds. The kid kneeled down beside the unconscious Snart. “Well, now, lesee, what you were trying to shoot us with,” he said, as he picked up the fallen man’s ice gun. “Whoa, will you look at this. Doug, Andy, have you ever seen a gun like this?” He exclaimed, as he threw the gun to one of his companions, the one called Doug. “Hey, Kon, check the money,” Said Andy to the teen in the jacket. “How much does he have in there?”
quote:Originally posted by Ian Lad: Andy walked home, as always trying not to draw much attention to himself, and after twenty minutes arrive at the apartment building he shared with Conal (or Kon, the nickname he gave himself for some reason unknown to Andy) and Douglas. Before he entered, he noticed a black sports car, which no one in the apartment could possibly afford, parked in the lot. With a watchful eye out for everything out of the ordinary, he began climbing the stairs to the fifth floor, where their apartment was located. As he did so, his body began to change. His skin began to change, turning a dullish gray. His steps became heavier, and were now impossibly (for human feet, anyway) loud. Once at his apartment door, he began hearing unknown voices emanating from the other side. Expecting the worst, Andrew entered. Inside, he found his two roommates, along with two men in black carrying guns and a black woman.
“Hello, Andrew”, said the short female, who could only be described as heavy. “We’ve been expecting you. Amanda Waller, Department of Extranormal Operations.”
quote:Originally posted by Ian Lad: “So, what do you think?” asked Kon, once the three were all settled in Andrew’s room. “Think she’s for real?”
“I don’t know,” said Andrew. “I’ve heard of the D.E.O, but nothing about any Amanda Waller. Could go either way, really.”
“I agree. I think we should do it, though. Potential high reward for little potential risk.”
“Yeah, I agree. Wish we knew if they’re telling the truth. What do you think, Doug?”
“I think,” Douglas said, with some hesitation. “I think I may have a plan.”
It had been ten minutes since the three teens had disappeared to discuss their plans, and Amanda was getting impatient. She was just about to go check on them when they returned.
“Okay, Waller, here’s the deal,” started Kon, with an air of authority in his voice. “Me and Douglas are interested. Andrew, not so much, so he’ll be staying here. You have a problem with that?”
“None at all,” responded Amanda, not at all surprised at their demands. “I expected that much.” She then sat up and began to leave. “Well, boys, I’ll come by and pick you up tomorrow for your briefing. Do not even think of moving someplace else, because I will find you, and, make no mistake, there will be consequences. Oh, and welcome to the Suicide Squad.”
The Lost One
Arnett, Texas
Andy Nolan walked the long road leading into Arnett slow and steady, feeling the hot heat on his back and the steam coming off the pavement on his legs. Like always, he had his hoodie up so that his face was covered. Though he caused a sweltering sensation, it also kept his face from directly touching the sun. Upon Andy walking past a nice suburban home on the way into town, a man getting his morning paper noticed Andy and thought he looked like an apparition, or some grudge version of death himself, strolling into town so mysteriously at this hour in the morning.
For Andy, the stretch of the legs felt good, and the pain in his legs kept his mind off other things. Like where he was going to go to next. He really didn’t have anywhere to go, but well, he didn’t have anywhere to go before and somehow he ended up here in Arnett, Texas, a hell of a long way from Metropolis.
He saw a soda machine and walked over to it, getting himself a Dr. Pepper. Both Doug and Conner were big water drinkers, always telling him soda was bad for him, that it was all made of sugar and other garbage. Naturally, Andy made sure to drink soda at every chance, even as his breakfast drink.
It’d been a long while since he talked to just about anyone, let alone Conner and Doug. “Why didn’t you let me come along?” he said out loud to himself, the sound of his own voice scaring him a little. “Because you were protecting me. Both of you. Like you always did.” He kept walking, not seeing anywhere he thought he could stop. They certainly weren’t protecting him anymore. Not when those kids in Alabama gave him the beating of his life because of the way his face looked. They sure stopped kicking him when he became metallic though. One of those kids broke his ankle kicking him in the ribs and Andy was glad for it. Kicking solid iron that hard can permanently damage an ankle. Too bad he was too scared to turn to his dullish gray form before they had gotten their first licks in. But hey, that was life when you were Andy Nolan. He was used to it by now.
He guzzled his soda and fished in his pockets to see how much money he had. Not much. Not really enough to get breakfast that was for sure. Maybe Arnett was his last stop after all. He was sure Texans, given their stereotypical reputation, would string him up by the neck because of his features, but he was surprised at how kind most the people were when they met him. Maybe he was destined to come here after all. Not like he had much of anything to go to now, since Doug and Conner were gone.
“Well Goddam,” he heard a gas station attendant say as he walked by. “There goes another one of those kids. More coming in here everyday…all kinds of oriental kinds and now one of them Cal-if-orna rockstar types,” the attendant continued. Andy obviously knew he was talking about his hoodie, which he wore over his face still, despite that hot morning sun. Andy looked at the man, who was actually just a teenager like him, but made sure his face wasn’t visible throw the hoodie.
“What’cha lookin’ at boy?” said the gas station attendant, whose name tag revealed him to be ‘Ned’.
“Shut up Ned and leave ‘em alone,” said an older man, perhaps the owner of the gas station. “Do your work ‘en that’s it.”
Andy kept on going, walking at a steady pace. His legs were really killing him now.
----------------------------
He didn’t realize he was in a fight until he was already falling towards the ground, the blood running down both sides of his head, an echo from the bottle breaking still ringing in his ears. Andy knew the gas station attendant named Ned would be gunning for him. He could see it in his eyes—because he’d seen it a dozen times before. Some people just don’t like you, because you’re different, and so they want to hurt you.
Falling to the ground, he knew he had to change to his iron, metallic form before Ned kicked him in the face or ribs, or otherwise, he’d really be in trouble. Fighting the dazed feeling of the blow to the head, he tried to concentrate on turning to his form, but could not. He waited for the kick to follow. It didn’t.
“That’s enough,” he heard a voice say.
“Aw, okay Jap, you want to make this your fight—“
Ned’s voice was cut off with the sound of one very hard blow, and then the sound of Ned’s body hitting the ground next to Andy. Still dazed, Andy at last turned to his dullish gray iron form, and lifted himself up.
A hand was extended to help him up, though the eyes widened at this sudden display of powers. “You could have used that ten seconds earlier,” said the voice. “Whatever that may be.”
Andy coughed, turning back and putting a finger to the blood on his head and looking at it. “Story of my life,” he said. “Thanks,” he began, then stumbled a little.
The teenage Japanese boy (Ned had been right after all) grabbed him instantly, steadying him. “Whoa. I have you. That was a serious blow to the head.”
“You’re telling me,” said Andy with a half-laugh. Then putting a hand against the brick wall nearby, held himself up. “At least it was just one this time…”
The teenager eyed Andy for a moment. “Is it iron? That form you take? It looked like iron.” He had a distinct accent and wasn’t American.
“I think so,” he said, now turning to look him in the eye. “Was that kung-fu or something?”
“Or something. Val Armor. Pleased to meet your acquaintance.”
Andy smiled at last, realizing his hoodie had been knocked off for over a minute now and Val hadn’t flinched once upon seeing his hideous face. “You’ve got a strong stomach then Val,” he said bemusingly. “Andy Nolan. And now I owe you one.”
------------------------------
“You people really picked an odd place to hang low for a few days,” said Andy, as he sipped another soda Val bought for him. Val drank iced tea. “Arnett, Texas doesn’t seem like the place to get many visitors. Where’d you come from, the West Coast?”
Val smiled. “The South.”
Andy looked puzzled. “Mexico?”
“More south than that,” said Hasim, who appeared annoyed by Andy’s presence. “I should have known it was too good to be true,” he said to Val. “We made great progress all the way from Brazil. The minute we get to the United States, you’re already picking up strays.”
“Don’t mind him,” said Val to Andy. “He’s always like this. Always.”
Andy laughed. “That’s okay,” said Andy, more to Hasim. “Is it my face that’s bothering you?” he said, putting his hoodie back up so it covered his face.
“You don’t have to do that,” said Jacquie, suddenly entering the room. Andy looked up and his jaw dropped at how stunning she looked. Her regality and beauty shined through immediately, though she had on no make-up, looked tired and hot, and wore simply a tank-top shirt, a pair of jeans and sneakers. They had been on the road for some time. “Scars come in many forms,” she continued, “and there isn’t one of us here in the room without them,” she walked over, sat next to Val and Andy, and put her hand on Andy’s. “You don’t have to hide your face from us.”
Hasim snickered in the corner, got up, and walked out of the room.
“Thanks,” said Andy shyly but with a smile.
Jacquie looked at Val, who smiled at her, impressed with Jacquie just being Jacquie. She smiled back sheepishly then looked away.
“I’ve got to say, you are people are some of the oddest I’ve ever met,” said Andy, “and I’ve met some odd people and seen some odd things lately. Coming from Brazil? On foot?”
“We had a car for most of the time,” replied Val.
“Where are you going now?” he asked, looking from Val to Jacquie, then pausing at Jacquie. “You’re really beautiful, you know that?”
She blushed a little and looked down. “Thank you,”
“She is,” said Val firmly, “and we’re going to New York, eventually, to answer your question. We’re hoping things get easier now that we are in the United States.”
“Good luck with that,” said Andy, his words summarizing his entire travels since the last day he saw Doug and Conner.
“If you knew where we had come from and what we’ve seen,” said Val, “I think you might think otherwise.”
“Try me,” said Andy.
So Val did.
----------------------------------------
“There’s no way in hell we should be bringing him with us,” said Hasim. “He’s some freak in Texas with a face that could scare Mordru himself. Obviously he’s messed up in the head.”
“Hasim…” started Jacquie, but Val cut her off.
“Kettle and pot, Hasim,” he said sternly. “He needs us, that’s obvious, and I’ve seen what he can do. He’s like the rest of us. He has abilities. It can’t be any coincidence we met him here of all places.”
“So now you believe in fate, Valor?” replied Hasim. “I think maybe you have this image of the perfect family in your head, with your loving wife,” he continued nodding at Jacquie, “you being dear old dad, and here comes along a stray puppy you can adopt.”
“Be careful Hasim,” said Val as his usual calm demeanor began to change slightly, “you’re revealing how little you actually know about family and friendship.”
“Val, that’s enough,” said Jacquie, sternly. “Hasim, you’re being completely unreasonable. We’ve been traveling for months. We met you in Rome of all places, Tenz in Seoul, the Legionnaires in Siberia. All along the way, these things have helped us. Allies and friends arriving whenever we began to feel lost or alone. I think Andy is a good person. He’s scared, he’s been kicked around, and he’s pessimistic, but despite all that, he’s a good person. That’s what we need more than anything now in our mission. What we’ll need against Mordru.”
“Ha,” said Hasim to Jacquie, and for the first time, his normal ‘go to hell’ attitude which he reserved for everyone except the Princess, was being used on her. “I’m sure he’ll be extremely useful in the fight against Mordru.”
“What happened to you?” she said at last to him, feeling both hurt and angry. Hasim looked at her, and she stared back in his eyes. It was like Val suddenly wasn’t in the room. He could feel her fury, and he suddenly wondered if she was using her power on him to try and see into his past if that was possible. “What happened to you in your life to make you this way?”
He looked away finally, hating himself for breaking eye contact before she did. “Forget it,” he said, walking towards the door. “You want the little freak to come with us, so be it.” He left the room.
As he left, Jacquie’s shoulders slumped slightly and Val could see Hasim’s words stung her and she felt the exhaustion of being on the road hit her all at once. He walked over to her. “You’ve given him a chance every possible time,” he said softly. “What more can you do?” She looked up at Val now, as he was less than a foot away from her. Suddenly, both of them could feel the heat between them. Not the afternoon heat of the hot Arnett sun, but a different kind of heat. One you feel in your body when your breath speeds up. “Its his fault, Jacqueline, not yours.”
He felt her breath on his chest, as she became even closer to him. “All this time,” she whispered, “I’ve been trying to focus on the mission at hand, trying to push these feelings out of my mind,” she said. He began to speak, but she put her finger to his lips softly to stop him. “Because I didn’t want to upset him. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I thought it could really hurt our mission to lose him.” They were now inches away. “When all I really wanted was something else,” she said at last.
“What?” said Val softly, uncharacteristically letting his guard down completely.
“You.”
Their kiss began with the fury of young passion, feeling like time might suddenly slip away from them and they should put all of their passion into one furious moment now. Her hands went around his neck and the back of his head, as he put his arms around her waist and lifted her slightly. At last it began to slow and grow softer, and both of them felt each other’s face smiling as they continued.
----------------------------------
Andy Nolan bid farewell to Arnett, Texas without feeling any remorse. Over the course of the rest of his life, he’d often look back on his stay there much more fondly with rose-colored hindsight blurring his memories. It was here, after all, that he first met Valor, Sensor and Nemesis and completed the quadrangle.
The four of them walked to a bus station, Jacquie and Val in the front, an obvious mutual affection emanating between the two of them like a furnace gives off heat. He smiled at that, and when Val looked back at him, he gave Val a thumbs-up. There was something about Val he admired. He didn’t realize who Val reminded him of. He also didn’t realize he was exactly what Val needed, and from this day forward, Val would look out for him more—even more than any of the others.
Andy realized Hasim resented him—maybe even hated him as much as he hated Val. Hasim became more distant and quiet, and hardly ever spoke to Andy, not even giving his normal insults over time. Andy didn’t care. As he told them many times, he was used to it.
He’d need a codename, and well, he wasn’t feeling all too imaginative, so he took the same one his brother had used. Ferro. When he ran across Doug the next time, he’d ask Doug for some other ideas. Valor, Sensor, Nemesis and Ferro. Four new Legionnaires. Well, Val was already a Legionnaire, but well, you get the picture, he thought. Should be an interesting introduction when they met the Legion.
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
"Hey, corn-for-brains! You're going to miss the start!"
Lorna Durgo, in civvies like her friends and compatriots Rex, Irma and Tina, yelled back at the fifth member of their group, Garth Raines, who was seemingly taking forever to return from a trip to get hotdogs. Their fledgling Legion had just gained a flurry of new members in the wake of their first mission, but the five of them were still a tight-knit group, and it was as a group they had secured prime places for the fireworks display.
"You know, I could have done that without drawing attention," Irma said with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah, but a bit of embarrassment's good for the farmboy's soul, no?" Lorna smiled broadly, "Besides, don't you get a headache teeping in crowds?"
"It's getting better the more time I spend around people," Irma replied, as Garth finally arrived, out of breath, as the first explosion showered the sky in a sea of red, white and blue sparks.
"You remembered 'no mustard' on mine, right?" Rex said as he took one.
"And extra ketchup on mine?" Lorna added.
"And some extra onions for my hot dog?" Tina smiled.
"I... got it... all..." Garth panted.
"You sure did," smirked Lorna.
After that, they stood in relative silence for a few minutes, eating and watching the display in the skies above them in anonymity, until Tina broke in.
"I love fireworks."
"Really...?" one of the others said almost absent-mindedly.
"I have always done, since my third birthday, when my mother had a display for me. I believed the sparks were made of magic."
"This would be the same mother you're always complaining about?" Lorna asked.
"I was young. And my nannies spent most time with me, so she did not have the chance to find faults in me yet."
"Ahhh..."
"When is the next firework display after this?"
The four Americans looked at each other for a moment. None of them were from New York.
"Don't know." Rex said finally. "New Year?"
"If there is one here, then, we should go again - together, just the five of us."
The others concurred happily as the fireworks continued to shower sparks above them. _______________
Thirty-First of December, nearing midnight EST Atop Legion Tower
"Fireworks..." Lorna muttered to herself at the memory. As it turned out, fireworks were at best peripheral in NYC at New Year. It seemed apt in light of what had happened since.
She ticked a few of the bigger things off on her hands:
Tina was gone, off on a private crusade. What McCauley had done to her. Cos getting hit from the feedback of that over her & Paul. Garth's problems with his sister, including that same 'feedback'. Irma having to unpick the damage to umpteen minds from that, for weeks. Cos' battles with Gene and the higher-ups. The stressball thing just as she got back.
"Ha." She loudly pronounced the syllable into the canyon below her-. Growing up, she'd been shy. Back in July, she'd felt like she was getting over that. Now she couldn't face the party with her friends downstairs. It brought up memories of how Hallowe'en had ended.
So she stood atop Legion Tower, hands braced on the railing, the white overcoat from her new costume her only protection from the chill wind. Since the other three coats, with the trim for her 'shards', hadn't arrived yet she didn't dare split and risk freezing to death.
"Lu?" She heard the familiar voice and spun to face her boyfriend, exiting the stairwell. "What are you doing up here? It's freezing."
"Thinking. Remember Fourth of July?"
"The fireworks?"
"Yeah. Remember how happy we were? Before Gene, before McCauley, all that?"
"Before I had to spend half my time arguing we don't pose a threat to the UN's integrity, fighting you-know-who off over you, over Nura & Lyle, over Tina & co.? And the rest sitting around because they're not trusting us with anything? Yeah..."
They sighed together, and stood in silence for a few moments, leaning, facing the abyss between the buildings.
Eventually Lorna broke the silence, "We still haven't talked about what happened my first day back."
Cos turned to face her. As he said, "What's there to say?", a look of pain crept across his face.
"Cos, I'm not the strongest I've ever been but I'm not made of gossamer. We can't just ignore it."
Cos had collected his face, but if you know where to look you would have seen his lip tremble, just a little. Trinity knew where to look. "I felt you die in my arms. I don't remember much else, just your skin going cold and white, the blood gushing over my hand, your eyes rolling back. It-it terrifies me to think about it. But you're here, you're alive. So I don't have to."
Lorna pulled her woollen glove off and held his cheek in her hand. Wordlessly, they stared into each others' eyes for a moment, until...
"Hey monkey-brain?" Garth's voice rang up the stairs. "Cos up there with you?"
They sighed again. "Yeah," she yelled back, dropping her hand and putting the glove back on. A few moments afterward, Garth and Irma emerged onto the rooftop. Like the other two, they were wearing their costumes - and Irma's satin costume, a concession to her allergies, was ill-suited to the cold and often needed a matching coat to supplement it on missions. Shivering, she said "It's five to midnight. What are you guys doing up here?"
"Yeah, the party's going and you're going to miss the gong!" Garth added.
"We were just thinking about..." Cos paused, "...wait, what gong?"
"Zoë made it, with a bit of help from Jan. It's HUGE, and we're going to set it off at midnight!"
"What were you thinking about?" Notably, Irma looked straight at Lorna as she said this.
"Stuff... remember what Tina said on the Fourth, and we all agreed to?"
Irma's face dropped a bit. "Tina's not here, and there's no fireworks. Come on, don't wallow. This is the first year we've had friends to actually be around at the turn of the year, and I want to be with as many as possible. Look ahead to the New Year, not at the bad bits of the one just gone."
Lorna served Irma her 'It's not as easy as all that' stare in reply
Irma returned with a 'If you want it to be hard, it'll be hard' raised eyebrow
Lorna volleyed back a 'It's not what I want, it's what is' sigh.
Irma let her have a 'Suuuure' pout,
Lorna just lobbed a 'Some telepath' roll of her eyes back at her.
Before Irma could smash in another reply, however, the boys were left on the sidelines, not understanding the nature of the argument. As a result, Garth butted in with "Could you stop teeping and start talking?" at them, followed by "Are you two coming down or not?" at Trinity & Cos.
The two looked at each other a moment, and a tiny shake of the head from Trinity was confirmation from Cos of what he already expected. Turning to face the other two, he simply said, "No, we'll stick here."
"Suit yourselves," muttered Garth, while Irma asked "You're sure" for final confirmation.
Lorna inhaled deeply, and let a "Yeah" go as she exhaled.
"Okaay..." Irma headed for the stairs - and the warm party room below - with Garth.
By the time they reached the party, however, Lorna was back at the edge, looking out for a moment, then letting her head fall to look at the canyon below.
Cos looked at her, unsure. "Do you want me to go back down too?"
Without looking up, she began to say, "No, I-" before thinking better of explaining and repeating the "No."
He walked over to join her, and put his arm over her shoulder. She reciprocated, and they pulled each other tight, staring down into the abyss.
The sound of a gong filtered up from below.
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
quote:Originally posted by Cobalt Kid: “Dirk, Bruce came all the way to Austria to see you. He’s worried about you,” said Gigi. Dirk turned to look at her, and he could see it was she that was worried about him. “You’ve been out of touch for awhile.”
Dirk knew these people cared about him, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that he was being ganged up on. Bruce caught that immediately. “The Countess contacted me, Dirk,” said Bruce, now walking over to Dirk so he’d be right next to him. “She contacted your father and he contacted me. You’ve basically been impossible to find in the last few months. You’re a teenager traveling in foreign countries, which is worrisome enough, and now the Countess is telling me all kinds of things which seem completely outrageous.” As Bruce Wayne was saying this, Dirk felt as if the calmness in his voice made it seem that Bruce didn’t exactly think these things the Countess was telling him really were all that outrageous. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Dirk looked at Bruce who was in front of him now, and realized it had been at least two, if not more, years since he had last seen him. Bruce had to be about twenty-four now, possibly twenty-five, although being in his presence you felt like he was thirty. He was extremely handsome, but had a very conservative, reserved air about him in person (which you would never know by his portrayal in the media as a billionaire playboy). He dressed in the finest business suits, and they were usually darker colors. Dirk believed this was because Bruce was still in morning and always would be. Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed when hew as just a boy.
It had made him a very hard man sometimes, and Dirk couldn’t help but feel Bruce was always calculating his thoughts as they came in. But Dirk did know that Bruce Wayne intervened when no one else would—when his father had all but stopped caring, and made sure he could provide Dirk with some semblance of a normal and fulfilling childhood. As Dirk looked back at Bruce Wayne, who knew all about Dirk’s accident and abilities, he honestly believed he was looking at a friend. “What do you plan to do next then, Dirk?” asked Gigi surprised.
“Dirk,” said Bruce, looking at him directly in the eyes. “I know everything. And I want you to retell it to me from your point of view. Including what comes next.”
quote:Originally posted by Cobalt Kid: The White Witch, now with her composure regained, hovered before it, still floating magically, as the Dragon decreased the speed at which it traveled at. “Dragon Lord, you know who I am!” she yelled. “I command you to heal!”
The dragon laughed loudly. “No,” he said in its deep throaty voice, as it suddenly grabbed Maziah with a hand, and pulled it close. “You have made a dreadful error, daughter of Mordru,” it said to her, “for I heal to no one.”
“To deliver a message,” she said at last, and for the first time this battle, she felt her confidence renewing. She held her arms out, locking her hands together and thought of the many spells her father had taught her in her youth, when she first showed an apt for magic. “My father kidnapped my friends, and assaulted us with his many agents! He has vampires, and warriors, and human beings too. But you are his strongest agent, and I am here to deliver a message,” she continued.
“My father,” she said at last, “does not have me. And that will be enough.” With that, she unleashed a bolt of white light, white enough to have the absence of any color, blasting Glaurung. Except it did not blast him as an aggressive projectile, but instead, split in two and wrapped around him, first horizontally and once more when both ends appeared to touch, splitting again vertically, as if to bind the dragon. “Go now, back to Zerox, and know that your journey there is done via the White Witch,” she said. “I announce myself to my father at last. I, Maziah bint Mordru bin Ahmad Al-Nayal, will be what they called me in my youth—the White Witch of Zerox. And I now reveal my opposition to my father in his coming war, and I shall see him on the battlefield.
The binding white beams around Glaurung began to expand at these words and Glaurung looked at her eyes. “I shall have vengeance on you for this insult,” he said, “but I know Mordru will be forced to take that vengeance himself for this formal proclamation. You have started an avalanche child. It pleases me to know you will suffer…”
Mon understand, while Joe and Dawny did not. Maziah formally proclaimed her stance against her father. Mordru may have declared war on humanity, but Maziah just declared war back on Mordru. Such proclamations held immense power, and to do so against the Father of the Dragons only made it more so.
It wouldn’t be long now.
quote:Originally posted by Reboot: Sally was nervously trying to get a dance with someone, and finally plucked up the courage... "Hi... José, isn't it? Do you wa..."
She'd made a bad choice. "No," Ultraboy said as he walked straight past her, heading for Spirit.
"Y'wanna dance doll?"
Spirit looked him over for a moment. "Yes, I love to dance. To walk on air, to feel the rhythm of the music," she glanced over at Vi as Ultraboy reached for her, "but you could not keep up with me," and Ultraboy stumbled and fell as she suddenly wasn't solid for Ultraboy to grab. Leaving Jose sprawled on the floor, she walked over to Vi and Kinetix.
quote:Originally posted by Cobalt Kid: “I’ve got you,” said the voice, and Mon-El realized this was a man—no, a boy—who was flying and now had him in his arms. He was strong, at least enough to hold on to him. “I can’t use my strength while I’m flying, so you need to get your bearings,” said the voice.
“My name’s Joe,” he said, “and I’ve been following this thing for days, finally catching up to it. If I told you how I know about it, you’d never believe me—but that thing once swallowed me whole.” He looked up to see Maziah firing some ball of lightning at the dragon, while Dawnstar flew around it at amazing speed, her wings plain to see from where they were. “Just when I thought I was done with super-heroes forever…” he smiled.
“Thanks for the save Joe,” said Mon, turning to fly back after the dragon. Joe followed him.
“I guess if we’re going to be friends, you better call me Ultraboy.”
The Batman: Part 1
Vienna, Austria
“So can I meet him?” said Tina to Dirk, who was distracted, looking out the window.
“Hm?”
“Bruce Wayne! Could we meet him? You may not realize this, but I don’t know all celebrities and rich people around the world…”
Shady sighed. “Be glad you don’t know rich people.” She was still annoyed at her father’s arrival. Even more, all four of them were extremely annoyed at the fact that Maziah and Mon took off somewhere with Blok and Dawnstar, leaving them all behind. “I just want to know why he’s talking to my father,” she followed up.
“I don’t know,” said Dirk. He looked up at them gravely. “I told him everything.”
They looked back at him surprised. Finally Tina spoke. “Told him…everything?”
“Yes,” said Dirk, but then put his hands up to stop any questions. “I know he’s not my dad, but well…he’s always kind of been like an…old brother to me. I trust him. And you know what? He didn’t call me crazy or start asking a million questions. He just kind of…accepted it.”
“That is crazy,” said Tatiana. “I hope he’s not trying to explain it all to my father,” she said suddenly worried.
“No,” said Dirk. “I don’t think he is. I think he’s going to help us.”
“Why?” asked Tenz.
“Because…because Bruce is different. He’s really different. I’m not sure what it is, but he just knows about things. He just seems to get stuff sometimes. Or at least he makes me think he does. He’s here in Austria for another reason too, but he didn’t tell me what it was.”
“So?” said Tenz.
“So,” said Dirk smiling, “I want to find out what it is. You in? We did get left behind for some reason. Don’t you feel like doing something?”
“Hell yes,” said Tatiana in her posh accent which made them smile.
“I can’t,” said Tina, thinking of her mother and her worries about her mother’s loyalty. “I’ve…got to be somewhere…”
“Everything alright, Tina?” asked Shady, suddenly worried about her friend.
“Yes,” said Tina, “nothing I can’t handle. You three have fun doing…what are you planning to do?”
“Follow Bruce Wayne,” smiled Dirk, “and find out why he doesn’t think I’m crazy for telling him the truth about Blok, Maziah and the upcoming war.”
---------------------------
Later that night, Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth left Castle Wazzo quietly but not altogether secretively, and Dirk noticed it odd that Gigi remained in her room and did not go to him. The part of Dirk that thought about girls one hundred percent of the time quickly had him consider ditching this idea and going to Gigi’s room, as he did Veilmist in Khundia. He quickly forgot the idea.
He, Tenz and Tatiana moved into the main hallway, considering following him.
“Tatiana,” they heard a voice suddenly. They turned to see Michael Mallor walking over to them, and instantly Dirk and Tenz wanted to get out of there. “A word please,” he added.
Tatiana went over to her father and spoke to him privately, as Dirk and Tenz pretended not to watch, though they wondered what he had to say after talking to Bruce Wayne for a time. They appeared to be in a deep discussion, until at last, they saw Shady embrace her father in a hug, and a tear go down his cheek. He kissed her lightly on the forehead, and soon it looked like they were saying goodbye.
At last, they parted ways. Shady returned to Dirk and Tenz.
“What was that all about?”
“He’s leaving,” said Tatiana in disbelief. “And he’s not making me go with him. He’s letting me stay. I…I can’t believe it.” What she didn’t say out loud was that she couldn’t believe the tenderness he had just shown her—and in front of her two friends too. Usually he seemed so indifferent to her in public. Usually he only cared she did what was proper, and then didn’t seem to care much about what she did at all.
“He’s letting you stay?” said Tenz, very relieved. Both he and Dirk had become very close with Tatiana these last few months. “But why?”
“I…I don’t know,” she said at last. “But I’ll tell you what. Now I want to find Bruce Wayne. Because whatever he said my father was enough for him to let me be.”
--------------------
Dawnstar flew down into the courtyard, noticing the people on the streets of Vienna looking up at her as she did. She barely knew Tina Wazzo, the Legionnaire known as Spirit, but she couldn’t help but feel Tina would find it amusing that people were taking further notice of strange teenagers arriving at her mother’s castle—yet again. Behind them, she noticed Mon-El and this other newcomer (in addition to herself), ‘Joe’ talking to one another, as Maziah slept in Mon-El’s arms.
They had talked to the whole way back, and from what Maziah had told her, Mon was usually a very quiet person. Odd, she thought, how some people seem to find friends when they least expect it and are able to open up.
Below, waiting for them was Blok, who had reappeared. “How is she?” he asked, and he truly did sound concerned.
“She’s okay,” said Dawnstar, “but you took a big risk having her do that,” she added, showing her concern for her friend. “Did you know it would lead us to the dragon? Because I honestly didn’t think we were going to make it.” Dawny was angry, she realized, angry because of how unprepared they had been.
“I knew she would make it, and I knew it was time for her to stand revealed to Mordru.” Apparently, this was all Dawny was getting. Mon and Joe flew down next, Mon carrying Mazziah, who was waking as they landed. “I will take her,” said Blok, and although Dawnstar was hesitant to let Blok take her, Mon-El had a firm trust in Blok, so gladly handed her over.
Mon seemed to notice. “You’ll learn to trust him,” said Mon to her.
Jo smiled. “Trust’s a hard thing to earn,” he added, speaking plainly to Mon-El, who he clearly felt comfortable with after their long conversation.
“Yet without it, your solidarity leaves you vulnerable too.” Mon smiled at him. “I know that better than anyone,” he added, thinking of Dev-Em.
As Blok carried Maziah away, Dawny looked to see Tina coming outside to join them. She was in a beautiful white dress with a black sequence and a high black belt. Dawny admired her fashion sense if not her ability to annoy her mother by dressing as if all these guests meant it was a party. “You left us!” she said, feigning annoyance. Then seeing Maziah, she suddenly looked concerned. “Maziah? Is she--?”
“She alright, Tina,” said Mon, “just tired. Where are Tatiana and the boys?”
“Annoyed with you all,” Tina smiled slyly, “for ditching us like that to no doubt have some grand adventure.” She turned to Dawny. “We expect that from Blok, Mon and Maziah, but you need to be on our side,” she added, an extension of the private joke they all shared about how mysterious Mon, Blok and Maziah could all still be after all this time. It was also an effort to make Dawnstar feel like one of the group.
Dawnstar, ever the loner, did not read it that way. “I go where I’m needed,” she replied nice enough, but not in the way Tina would have wished.
Tina turned to Joe at last, who looked at her plainly, hiding what he was thinking. One of Joe’s mantra’s rang in his head: “Never let them know what you’re thinking.” He made that mistake with Tina before. To Joe, Tina looked absolutely beautiful. Stunning enough, to make him stand there idly with his jaw dropped. But Joe would not let on even a hint of this—instead, standing there, leaning against a tree, a rebel without a cause, even if this raven-haired regal beauty had his heart racing.
She didn’t recognize him at first. They’d met before, at the Legion’s Headquarters during the combined Hallowe’en Party between the Legion (when Tina was still a member) and the Work Force (when Joe was still a member). Joe had a different face then, and a different outlook. He’d lost his way, and acted like a fool in front of her, and when she thought he had insulted Violet, her friend, she threw it back in his face. After rethinking much of his life lately, he realized he had been a jerk on many occasions, but had completely forgotten about that little exchange. Now he had yet one more regret to add to the list. After the briefest silence, he spoke: “Hello, Spirit,” he said, addressing her by her Legion codename. “I’m Joe,” he added.
“Hello,” she said hesitantly, wondering why he called her Spirit. There was no getting around that basically anyone ages 9-25 knew who she was throughout the entire world, let alone just about anyone any age, since she was one of the original five Legionnaires. “Do we know each other…?”
“Joe helped us out back there,” said Mon, either missing this exchange completely or choosing to simply not care about it. “He basically saved me from a long swim in the Mediterranean. I told him he could come back with us, as he really has no other place to go.”
“I hope that’s alright,” Joe said to Tina.
“I—“ Tina began, then realizing that Jacquie usually had the final say on these matters, but wasn’t with them any longer. “Of course,” she said at last. There was something about him. Not that she recognized him somehow (which she did), but something else. He had a confidence about him that Mon had, but something different. She thought he seemed to be nice enough, but he was…dangerous. Not life-threatening dangerous, but dangerous nonetheless. His rebel posture, whether intentional or not, gave that off immediately.
“Thanks,” he smiled, still amused she didn’t recognize him.
She smiled back shyly, before realizing she never acted shy.
-----------------------
Flare, Matter-Eater Lad and Umbra moved through the streets of Vienna, hoping to catch up to Bruce Wayne, now that Tatiana’s father had delayed them more than a few minutes. They were having zero luck.
“He must have been picked up by a towncar or limo,” said Dirk, feeling beaten.
The three of them began to slow down. Suddenly Tenz yelled out: “Look!” and pointed down the street where a man was walking into a park. It was Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne’s butler.
“Should I use my shadows…?” asked Shady as all three moved down the street after him.
“You’re right,” said Dirk, as they stopped near the entrance of the park. “We need to be a little more sneaky as we do this.” The three began to walk into the park, sticking to the shadows, Umbra using her powers to increase the shadows let on by the various trees and bushes within the park. Up ahead, they saw Alfred Pennyworth wandering through the park slowly.
“It looks like he’s looking for someone,” said Tenz. “Like he’s meeting someone here. He doesn’t realize we’re following him.”
“Why are you following him? they heard a strong voice suddenly say. The voice sounded like that of a man, but it was booming and loud. They looked up immediately, and suddenly felt a metal wire wrapping around them, hitting them in the stomach so they lost their wind and were forced back to back with one another, the three of them caught in this metal rope. It began to pull them upwards, and they could see they were going up the side of a medium sized building.
Dirk looked up and couldn’t believe his eyes. Up ahead was a man in the shadows, looming over them. Only it wasn’t really a man. It was…some kind of bat?
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
Tenz gulped loudly, as Shady struggled to get free, to no avail. Dirk looked stunned for a minute, before realizing the three of them should be able to get free with their powers. Still, they were hanging at least five stories up—they’d just fall back to the ground.
Above them, the Bat had an arm outstretched, seeming to hold the weight of all three of them up with his metal wire. “Why are you following him, I repeat,” it said in a voice that was like a growl.
“Th-that’s…that’s Alfred Pennyworth,” said Dirk, “I know him!”
“You normally follow people you know?”
“We’re looking for Bruce Wayne,” said Tatiana suddenly, deciding to simply tell the truth. “We need to talk to him.”
The Bat quickly moved backwards out of their view, so they could only see the edge of the rooftop. Suddenly they felt the metal wire pulling them upwards even further, until at last they came on the top of the roof.
Before them stood not a Bat after all, but a man, as their first instincts led them to believe. More like a man-bat, or bat-man? It was a man in a cape and cowl, dressed in all black except for where his chin came out. He looked like the devil himself on top of this building and all three felt very nervous. “Why?” he asked them. None of the three answered. “WHY?!” he yelled.
“Because…because…” said Dirk, struggling with his words, then at last: “…Bruce…?”
-------------------
“I’m going to dine with my mother and the other Ambassadors,” said Tina to Mon, Joe and Dawnstar, “and you’re all welcome to join me.”
Mon looked at her oddly. “That doesn’t sound like something you’d want to do,” he said.
“No,” said Tina, “but Jacquie would have. We need to know what’s going on here.”
Mon nodded. “You’re right. I think Jacquie was on to something too. But I’d be no help to you,” he added. “I can hardly stand all their posturing when I’m around them. I’ll have to pass.”
“Me too,” said Dawnstar, not preferring any new company of adults and important dignitaries.
She looked at Joe, unsure if she should even ask him. He smiled slightly. “I’ll go,” he said. “I have only the faintest idea what any of this is about,” he continued, “but I could use the hot meal.”
“Uh, thanks,” said Tina, rolling her eyes slightly when she didn’t think he was looking.
He, of course, had already been told by Mon a great deal of what this was all about.
--------------------
The Batman released the metal wire holding the three of them and they began breathing easier again. Suddenly Umbra stepped forward aggressively, angry. “What do you think—“
Before she could finish, he was on top of her, spinning her around, so her back was to his chest. “Be careful on this rooftop Tatiana Mallor,” he said sharply, “one false move and someone could get hurt.” He let go.
They were all quiet. “Only Alfred is privy to my identity,” he said to Dirk, for reasons I’m sure you can understand.”
Suddenly it hit Dirk all at once. “Wait a minute!” he said. “Those rumors about a ‘Batman’ in Gotham City? Those are you? They’re more than just rumors?”
The Batman smiled. “No doubt you’ve been wondering why I didn’t think you were fit for a strait jacket when you told me your story. Now you know. I’m more apt to accept things in your world after some of the things I’ve seen.”
“Holy shit,” said Dirk at last. Shady and Tenz just looked on.
“Can you be trusted?” he asked the three. Unknown to them, he already knew they could be, or otherwise would never have allowed this meeting to take place. He intended for this—but wanted it to be on his terms.
“Yes,” said Tenz in response.
“I need you to promise not to tell anyone else,” added Batman. “Not even your other friends. If you promise me this, we can talk.”
They were quiet for a moment. At last Dirk said, “sure.”
--------------------------------
“Tina,” said Maya, the Ambassador from Sri Lanka,” how nice to see you again. Tina greeted her in kind, as Maya was perhaps the only nice one of the entire bunch.
“This is my friend Joe,” she continued. “He’s an American.” She had provided Joe with black dress pants, a red dress shirt and a tie, but Joe opted not to wear the tie, and wore his top button open. He seemed at ease among all these people.
Tina couldn’t help but smile at that. Obviously, he wasn’t used to this type of fancy society dinner, but he really did seem comfortable among the various people. There was something charming about that.
“Ambassador Relnic,” said Tina, bowing to him, and he kissed her hand.
“My dear,” said Relnic, distracted and obviously thinking of more important matters. He hardly took any notice of Joe at all.
“You brought a friend,” said Winema Wazzo in a voice slightly louder than normal, “how cute,” she added.
Joe took her hand and kissed it. “The pleasure’s all mine,” he said, but he did not smile at all, and his words had a definite sarcastic twinge. Joe read the situation immediately between Winema and Tina, and couldn’t help but find it amusing. He also knew Winema was destined to hate him. So why not give her some of her own medicine? The Countess immediately had a scowl, but then quickly made sure to not let on her annoyance for more than the briefest of moments. Tina caught it too, and couldn’t help but find it highly amusing.
“This is going to be torture,” she whispered to Joe.
“I’ll find someway to deal with it,” he replied, noting how nice Tina smelled when she leaned into whisper to him.
--------------------------------
“The Legion of Super-Heroes is a new concept and one that is changing everything,” said the Batman. “Its also dangerous, and especially dangerous if being used by the wrong people. The current President, Lex Luthor, is one of those wrong people. Do not think for one moment that control of the Legion is not a major topic of debate in all factions of the government and beyond.”
“Okay…” said Shady, not sure where this was going.
“I’ve already learned as much as I need to on this Legion. Now I wanted to turn my attention towards your group.”
“But, how could you know about our group?” said Dirk, unsure of how anyone other than Countess Wazzo really knew about them.
“I have connections, and you’re not as secret as you think,” he said. “Marla Latham. The Dark Circle. Countess Wazzo. Relnic. There are many others, and some with looser tongues. I know because I’ve made it a point to know. That means others do too.”
“Great…” said Tenz.
“I’ve come to Austria because I’ve been chasing a man called the Spook. He sees himself as a new style criminal in this age in response to the Legion. What he really is, is a rogue CIA agent with enormous information on various deep secrets, like Cadmus, Checkmate and yes, the Legion. Some of that information on the Legion concerns you all—or mainly, your friend Maziah. I’ve been tracking him from Gotham, as I learned he planned to sell some information to another person or agency here in Vienna.”
“Here?” asked Dirk. “But that couldn’t be—“
“Coincidence? Of course not,” said Batman. “Whoever is buying this information is buying it to use it for purposes involving your group. I’ve disposed of the Spook., and am returning him to the United States. But his meeting was supposed to be tonight, so Alfred is going in his place.”
“But shouldn’t you be watching Alfred,” said Tatiana suddenly. “He’s out there alone-“
“I’m watching.”
“You really like to cut people off when they’re talking,” said Tenz.
The Batman looked at him coldly. “In Gotham I’m a myth. No one believes there really is a Batman other than a select few cops and perhaps even more criminals. I risked quite a lot to meet you in person, and even more—make plain who I am. That is because the danger being presented here is immense. The war set out before you—the war inevitably coming, is going to be major, and will effect the entire world. You need to be prepared for it and that includes being aware of your enemies.”
“We know,” said Tenz.
“Do you?” asked Batman. “A rogue agent is in Vienna learning everything he can about you for some reason. And at this point in time, he’s not showing up for his meeting. Which means he knows the Spook is taken care of. There’s more,” he continued cutting them off again. “Where do you think there are other agents of your enemy?”
“Well,” said Tatiana, “we think…” she continued, almost embarrassed to say it, “… maybe one of the ambassadors in the United Nations.”
“Then you think right,” said Batman, “because I think so too. You’ll need to figure that out and do it immediately. I’m sure there is an agent of your enemy at the Legion’s headquarters as well. And I’m sure Luthor has his own agents everywhere. These are things you need to figure out as soon as possible.”
“Will you help us?” asked Dirk. “Bruce?”
Batman did not smile. “No,” he said. “I have to go back to Gotham City. Believe me or not, but Gotham has its own problems that cross over to yours. Most of the world does. You are the ones on the front lines, and you’ve placed yourselves there. I’m helping you now, because you need it.”
“What did you say to my father?” said Tatiana at last.
“I told him you were needed by Wayne Industries. That we were offering a scholarship to travel across the world as part of this program. I told him we needed you. In that regard, I did not lie to him.”
“Bruce, my father,” said Dirk.
“You can’t call me Bruce, Dirk,” said Batman, “and I’m sorry about your father. I truly am. But I cannot lie for him, not to you. I only wish you the best, and you can always come to me when you need me most. Know that when things really explode into war, I’ll be doing what I can where I’m needed most.”
They were quiet for a few minutes, as Batman listened in on some transmitter in his cowl. “I’ll be there in a second Alfred,” he said into it. “Look to the snakes in our midst,” he said to them. They all nodded quietly.
Down on the street they heard honking and a loud noise and turned to see what it was. When they turned back, the Batman was gone.
---------------------
Not far off, Agent Ontirr of Interpol watched as Dirk Morgna, Tatiana Mallor and Ten Zil Kem had run up the street after someone, though he couldn’t see who.
How in the world did they know about his meeting with the Spook? It didn’t matter. The meeting was cancelled as far as he was concerned.
[ May 05, 2008, 10:16 AM: Message edited by: Cobalt Kid ]
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
“Thank you for that,” said Tina, as she and Joe walked away from dinner. “I know it could not have been that fun for you.” They had dined with Countess Winema Wazzo, Ambassador Anton Relnic, Maya Dahanayake the UN Ambassador from Sri Lanka and Gil’ Deshi, another ambassador. Winema and Gil’ Deshi were strictly anti-Legion, while Maya was not, Tina recalled, while Deshi and Maya both were pro-war in regards to Khundia, when her mother was not. So they were all spilt on various topics.
“That wasn’t so bad,” said Joe with a smile. “You needed some back-up, and I figured what the hell. Mon-El was nice enough to invite me over and since this is well, your home, I figured I’d owed you one.” He was rolling the cuffs of his shirt up now, to get comfortable.
“Mother hates you, of course,” said Tina, “but don’t feel too bad. I’m quite sure she hates all of the friends I’ve brought home recently,” she finished with a smile.
“She’s a doll,” said Joe semi-sarcastically and they both laughed.
Suddenly, it clicked. Tina stopped laughing as she at last realized who Joe was. She stopped, held out an arm and put her hand on Joe’s chest as if to push him away softly. “You’re…you’re that boy from the Work Force,” she said, as realization came to her face. “We’ve met before,” she continued, and she recalled their meeting at the Hallowe’en Dance a few months earlier, when Joe pushed Violet to the side to dance with Tina and Tina became annoyed enough to push him away herself. She remembered thinking he was a huge jerk because of it.
The color drained out of Joe’s face for a moment, but he soon regained his composure. “You remember that, eh?” he said obviously embarrassed by it, and meaning to keep walking.
Tina wasn’t having it. She looked annoyed, recalling Violet’s hurt, which made her miss her friend even more. “You’re Ultraboy,”
“That’s what they called me.”
“Weren’t you shot in the face or something?” she said annoyed at him.
“Or something. Is this going to be a problem, Princess?” he added, now annoyed himself.
“Well maybe,” she said. “Are you going to be a jerk to anymore of my friends while you’re staying with us? Or do you think because you and Mon-El got along so well that you can give the rest of us attitude too?” Tina was growing red in the face, and realized maybe she was being unfair, but thinking of Violet like that made her suddenly miss her friends a lot.
Joe, however, hid his anger well. “I’m you want me to go, I’ll just go,” he said. “I had no idea I was heading to your fancy castle here. If I did, I probably wouldn’t have come. As it is, you haven’t even given me the slightest idea why we were having dinner with, oh, the United Nations, so if you want me to be fair with you, perhaps you should be fair with me?”
“I’m not sure what that has to do with anything—“
“Well, I’m not sure what that dance has to do with anything either,” he said, “and if you want the truth, I wish I’d never even been to that dance or heard of the Work Force or Legion in the first place. Glad to know I can’t escape it. But don’t think you can sit on your high horse and preach to me when you bring me to some sort of information gathering espionage dinner and don’t tell me what information we’re gathering.”
“Well, since we just met you, you can’t expect us to trust you right away, can you?”
“No, I guess not,” said Joe, turning. “Looks like this little friendship we were on the verge of just ain’t gonna happen,” he added, starting to walk away.
“I guess not,” she said, suddenly feeling a little guilty.
“Oh, one more thing,” said Joe. “I know you think your mother is the traitor to Mordru,” he added and her face went wide at how he knew that information. “But guess what? I’m almost positive she’s not.”
“How could you--?”
“So you can either feel justified in your teenage anger at her, or you can feel relief. Either way, I don’t care.”
-------------------------
That night they all slept well, Dirk, Tenz and Shady joining them much later than the rest. Most were spread out in Tina’s quarters, some on her couches, some on the floor and Maziah on her bed. If her mother had known they were sleeping this way, she’d have burst into a rage. Blok did not sleep with them, but remained in his own places outside, standing guard. Maziah slept on the bed, as she had since the afternoon.
The other three at last snuck in, and Tatiana crawled in beside Mon, putting her arms around him. He smiled and she knew he was awake, waiting for them.
Dirk and Tenz lay down, noticing Dawnstar’s outstretched wings on the floor and making sure not to hit them. Tenz nodded towards Joe, who was also awake, wondering who it was. Dirk shook his head and they both lay down. Joe was also wide awake, watching to see who it was.
“Cut it out Shady,” said Tenz, causing Dirk to start laughing, as they heard Tatiana kissing Mon.
Soon they all fell asleep.
-------------------------
The next morning, Dirk rushed downstairs to have breakfast with the still present Gigi Cusimano, and explain why Bruce Wayne was no longer with them, and Tenz and Dawnstar joined him. Maziah continued to sleep, and Tatiana looked down at her.
“I worry about her,” she said at last.
“I know,” said Mon. “We all do. But she once more proved her strength against the Dragon. Come on now, let’s break our fast.”
Shady smiled at this old way of saying ‘let’s eat breakfast’. She began to walk out the door. Mon turned to once more, and then added, “I’ll be right down.” He walked back in to the room, to see Joe in one of the adjoining rooms still in Tina’s quarters, packing his things, which were not numerous.
“Are you leaving us?” he asked, after using his vision to see into the room.
Joe smiled, as both he and Mon had discussed their similar abilities the day before, with the one big difference that Joe could only use one at a time. “’Think so,” replied Joe. “Thanks for the invite back here,” he added, “but I think I’m going to move on.”
Mon nodded his head. Mon wasn’t big on heart to hearts. “Good luck, then. You won’t need to chase that dragon down now,” he added.
Joe laughed. “I’m not really sure why I was doing that…guess I just wanted to tie up a loose end. Now that I saw it for what it was, I think I’m satisfied. Good luck, Mon.”
“You too, Joe.” Mon left the room, to rejoin Shady and the others downstairs.
Joe finished packing his stuff up, when Tina suddenly phased into the room with powers. She must have overheard them, Joe thought. “Come to say goodbye,” he said, semi-sarcastically, but in a tone that said he had no desire for them to continue their argument.
“You don’t have to leave,” she replied. “That was not my intention.”
“I know it wasn’t,” said Joe in a forgiving voice. “But sometimes you just need a fresh start, and I’m not sure I have one here.”
She walked over to him now, not using her phasing power as she came closer, Joe stopped packing his stuff. He could feel her right there, as if his senses were on end. “I…I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t want you to go.”
“Why not?” he said, with an eyebrow raised.
She half-smiled at him, seeming to catch what he was implying. Choosing to ignore it, she added “because I need your help. You say my mother isn’t the mole in the UN. How do you know? Obviously, its important to me.” Before Joe could add anything, she continued “and then I need you to help me found out which one of them it is, and if its one of the Ambassadors here.”
They were quiet for a moment. Joe considered it, and realized half of him was screaming at him to leave and the other half was screaming at him to stay. These were teenagers just like him, most with nowhere to go, and there was no denying he was becoming quick friends with Mon-El, who apparently didn’t have many friends quick or even slow. And then there was her. She was now inches away from his face, and though he was at least six inches taller than her, she looked him right in the eyes. She still smelled really good.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll help you. I’ll stick around for a bit.” He threw down his bag of belongings.
Tina smiled widely. “I’m glad,” she said, feeling relieved of her guilty conscious.
“But no more shirts or ties,” he said with a smile. “I’m a jeans and t-shirt guy.”
“Deal,” she said. “Let me introduce you to everyone over breakfast.”
“Fair enough,” he smiled again, and they began walking to the door.
“I don’t get this rebel without a cause thing,” she said at last. “What are you rebelling against?”
“What have you got?
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Ella flopped onto the chair in her room, let out a loud sigh and ran her hands backward through her short red hair before clasping them behind her head, pulling her head to look upward. A few moments later, she sighed again, got up and walked over to the window; before leaning against it, staring down at the ground below. She then turned and fired a blast at the target set up to let her do so safely. Then she punched the window and flopped down on the chair again, staring at the ceiling.
Seven weeks since she'd been offered a Legion place (albeit including the holidays). No sign of that translating into reality any time soon. She'd seen Dr Ryker's provisional report, discussed it with her, and it hadn't included anything to say she wasn't suitable, Workforce thing or no.
She bet no-one in authority had even glanced at it.
Paul was in the same boat, she knew, so it wasn't a personal slight, but she was practically climbing the walls by now. Training to no end got really old, really fast - and it was the weekend, so she didn't even have that to let off steam.
She let out a sigh/scream that almost sounded like a growl and violently grabbed her jacket off the hook; deciding that getting some polluted, stinky air was better than sitting around like a caged animal.
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Andromeda, caught off-guard by the presence of another, looked around; "Why should I?" she yelled at him, keeping a tight grip on McCauley's throat even as her tears flowed yet more freely. "He played with my head, treated me like a toy, made me do... things I didn't want to do. I even KILLED because of him. Because of him I'm a murderer." _____
In the pink light of early morning, Andromeda lifted off, leaving Legions, Workforces... and perhaps Earth for a while... behind. She didn't regret it, and didn't expect to.
More fighting was the last thing she wanted or needed now, or ever again. ______
Lydia sat back and sighed loudly before checking her watch... Her secret ID had been compromised, and while she thought she could trust Reed, it was far from out of the question that they could try again, sending someone who could cause her real problems... Of course, with that in mind, she'd already been searching for help, and...
There was a buzz, and her secretary's voice broke her reverie. "Your three o'clock is here." She sighed before pressing the intercom's reply button. "Ask her to step in then, please."
A moment later, the door opened, and the interviewee came in, asking "Lady Grath?" While tall, clearly strong and dressed in a smart trouser suit, her whole body language radiated nerves as she flicked at her long braid, and Lydia wondered for a moment how deep rooted they were, with what she knew of her history. Still, one reason to do interviews..."
"It's just 'Ms. Grath' if you have to be so formal, but 'Lydia' would be fine," she said with a broad grin, "I never use the title." She stretched out her hand, and they shook hands firmly. "Please, have a seat Ms. Gander."
Laurel yawned loudly, untangled herself from the sheets and lowered her feet to the floor. She couldn't wait for her new bed to arrive - "lying down" floating was one thing, but sleeping in mid-air didn't let you wake up feeling fully refreshed. After checking Toni was still asleep, as expected, she glanced at the clock and headed for the shower. She didn't want to end up flying to work. ________
While she'd had to run faster than she'd wanted to make the bus, she reached her destination on time and by essentially human means. Fussing with her braid again, she knocked on the door of her employer's private office, and entered when she heard a response.
Even in the slight dullness of the room, Lydia Grath's paleness stood out - but Laurel reflected that that was bound to happen to someone who couldn't go out in the sun, and shrugged it to the back of her mind. "Ms Grath?"
"I told you at the interview - call me Lydia, please. Did you have any trouble with public transport?" She raised an eyebrow, as if to check whether she had actually used it, and directed her to a seat.
"No, I made the bus on time," Laurel replied, before adding as an afterthought, "I didn't fly." She had fully explained about her time as "Andromeda" in the interview, and how she was aiming for a far less... public... job. "So... what do you want me to do?"
"Well, as I explained at the interview, the title of your job is Personal Assistant - but what I really need a personal batwoman."
Deadpan, Laurel asked "Batwoman?"
Lydia smiled. "I mean that you're employed by me - personally, rather than through my company or any of my charities - to undertake any reasonable request I might make. And, yes, much of it will be boring, tedious or both.
Given that leaving my house in the daytime is a major undertaking for me, and that I am frequently busy with various matters at the same time, at least some of that will involve you attending events where I have a lesser interest - doing things such as making notes, or even recording situations on my behalf. I've provisionally made arrangements for you to train with cameras and audio equipment next week to that end.
At the other end of the scale, however; if I decide that what I want most of all is to have my bedroom rearranged, then considering that you could easily lift a forklifts, I think moving my bed from one end of the room to the other would also be reasonable. Agreed?"
Laurel's eyes had briefly bulged at the camera course, but settled down at the latter part. "Fine. We talked at the interview how my main priority is avoiding the sort of stunts I had to pull with the Workforce. I can handle moving furniture around. I was just confused for a moment about the 'Batwoman' thing." She forced a smile.
"Excellent. First, I need you to..." ________
A long day later, Laurel pushed her key into the lock of her apartment and turned, sighing loudly as she walked into the hall.
In response, Toni's voice echoed from the front room. "Hi. How went your first day?"
Walking in, she saw Toni lying in one of her energy hammocks in a cropped T-shirt and shorts, watching some tripe on TV. She positioned herself where she couldn't see the screen before she lay back onto the air and answered.
"It went, I didn't make any major mistakes, I got everything done, I feel like I didn't wake up properly all day."
"That boring?"
"It wasn't that bad. I still haven't been sleeping right without a bed."
"You COULD have picked it up yourself, if you know what I mean..."
"Yes, because I want to see everyone in the building - if not the whole street - watching me fly down carrying a bed."
"Point. I'm sure you could have worked something out though-" she let out a huge yawn and continued "-if you'd really tried. Blending's overrated."
"Well, you WOULD say that."
"I know, I know - I mostly get booked because of the skin, not despite it...," Toni said, stretching out arms that - like the rest of her skin - were chalk-white, contrasting harshly with her black hair, "-hey, did I tell you I got booked for two days time?"
"Where?"
"Your very own employer, funnily enough - or one of her charities, anyway. If it goes well, I might get a whole ad campaign out of it."
"Good for you. Isn't two days kind of quick though?"
"Well, three - I forgot to mention it yesterday. But it happens, and you take the work when you get it." She yawned again. "So, did you call today?"
"Toni..."
"If you're ever planning on doing it, you have to face it sometime."
"Toni..."
"And you were talking about it the day you moved in. That was three weeks ago."
"Toni..."
"And I've not really seen any movement..."
"Toni, it's easier to say than do."
"Pick up phone, dial number. You have the number. Doesn't seem hard."
"Yeah, but what do I say? 'Hi, I'm your long-lost half-sister?' She'll either crack up laughing or run away screaming."
Toni snorted. "Or neither. And never-try, never-gain."
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
"Olympic archery champion Charlotte King-Jones today announced she was moving to the controversial 'nation state' of Providence. King-Jones, who recently secured a high-profile 'divorce' from her mother, claimed that she could 'no longer bear to live in a country ruled by a man like Lex Luthor.' Providence, led by-"
"Sofia, did you see where the timetable for today went? I keep forgetting to look at it."
"It is over there, beside the window, I think."
"Thanks." As Sul walked over to grab it, she continued, "You know, I'm fairly sure there's at least one Spanish-language news channel on that thing. I wouldn't mind - I'm not listening to it."
"No, I need to keep practising my English. It is not your or Noriko's own language, yet you are far more fluent than I."
"Don't be so hard on yourself. We learned it as kids. You were practically 16 before you had to learn a word of it, and you've picked it up a lot quicker than I did."
"Perhaps. I still need to improve."
Sul picked up the timetable, ran her eyes over it and groaned when she saw fifteen names on the sheet. "I take it you've seen this, by the way?"
"Yes. Having all those world leaders come to speak to us is exciting, do you not think?"
"You won't be saying that if you need the toilet halfway through. According to Tik, they'll have more guns trained on us than there are at a gun convention."
"Did he say that?"
"Not in those exact words, but they're panicking in case someone flies up and incinerates President Luthor, Secretary-General Chu, or anyone else people out there have heard of, since they can't exactly search us for weapons. So we're going to be stuck in our seats for at least four hours straight, as if it wasn't going to be boring enough to start with. And since most of them are policitans, they'll talk beyond the time they're given, and we'll be meant to clap every time they pause."
"You are too cynical." As she spoke, Sofia stood up, turned the television off and stetched.
"Wait and see. I've heard some of them speak before - you should hear what Leviathan, the Legion leader, sounds like in person. At least if it was Cosmic Boy doing the Legion's speech, that one might be listenable."
"Regardless, do we not have to hurry up? We are supposed to be in the auditorium in fifteen minutes."
Sul glanced at her wrist. "Yeah. Give me a minute and we'll head down to meet Nori."
She headed for the bathroom. ______________
They found Nori in the canteen, picking over a bowl of soggy cornflakes.
Sofia broke into her obvious reverie, "Are you not looking forward to the speeches either?" she said, a slightly incredulous tone in her voice.
Nori glanced up at her as if she'd gone mad, "Why would I be? Four hours of sitting still in a rubber suit - when I'll be charged fit to burst by the end and won't be able to get rid of it - isn't exactly my idea of fun."
Sul added glumly, "I'd bet that it'll be more like five hours before we can move, with speech overruns and all those camera crews. They won't have allowed enough time.
Didn't you try and get exempted because of your power problems?"
"Ha! Tik took it to Moonstar, and she tried. I think she even took it to the head - but apparently I'm the only Japanese student here, and someone made a special request that I be in the crowd."
"I am sure it will not be as bad as either of you expect." Sofia added firmly. "And we should go now, before we are late." ______________
Extract from the diary of Ming Sul:
By the time we got to the hall, there weren't many seats left. We managed to get three in a row, but all of them had problems - the left-hand one, furthest from the aisle, had the holographic wing of a girl called Akasha through it, and it thus went through Sofia when she sat down there. She was kinda apologetic about it, but apparently couldn't turn it off.
Probably worse though was the girl in front of me and Nori, with a pointy orange head that kept spitting out crackly orange bubbles non-stop like a demented bowl of Rice Krispies. And when we asked - politely - if she could turn it down, we were told to sod off (not her exact words), and she then spent the next ten minutes complaining about us to the green girl in the next seat, who at least had the decency to look embarrassed by her friend. I didn't bother asking for either of their names.
It didn't take long for Nori to start looking uncomfortable, as she'd expected. With the help of Igor's collar, she's got used to the electrical field being within a certain level - but with all the TV lights, cameras, broadcasting units and so on, in addition to all the usual stuff, she was beginning to struggle to focus even with the screened suit. I don't think the way the suit makes her sweat was helping any.
What resolved that for the duration - and helped shut up the orange witch in front of us as an added bonus - was a sudden appearance of Tik, in a portal right over TOB's head. Her look when, as she started to object, he just leaned down and told her to shut up was priceless! Anyway, he was trailing a length of cable that had been grounded outside, which Nori could discharge into, and he left the portal open a crack when he went to keep it available for her.
Not long after that, the speeches started. It was as tedious as I expected, with lots of bigwigs talking at the cameras rather than us. Near the end, Leviathan got up to speak, which was just cruel. To him AND us. (Note: Ask Tom or Igor why it HAD to be him next time I talk to them - I'm sure Cos could have made it a bit less... wrist-slitting...). Then a few words from the headmaster that were actually, in an original concept, directed at us - telling us to be back in an hour, since the schedule had overrun so badly that we should technically have been back before we left - before the VIPs filed out. Once they were gone we got finally got sent off so the newscrews could pack up.
Sofia spent the last half-hour with her legs crossed, desperate for the toilet. I warned her...
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Just over an hour later, the students filed back into the auditorium, where the TV crews and equipment had gone with the VIPs.
As Dani stepped up to the podium, she felt a brief - easily-suppressed - stab of nerves at the size of the crowd. She was too much of a pragmatist to get really nervous at that sort of thing.
She took a moment to glance around the crowd, looking for Sofia - most of the students (her students, she reminded herself) hadn't even noticed that she'd stood up yet and were busily engaged in talking to the person or people beside them - and found her beside Sul, talking animatedly.
She smiled briefly, then hurried through the other checks - the laptop had the right presentation loaded and had been connected up, Shikari and Tikhik were present in the right seats, the lighting panel appeared to be working, but testing it would be too much of a distraction - as with the roll-up whiteboard and, by extension, the projector. She gathered up her backup cards, flicked a switch, and coughed pointedly into the microphone.
The crowd noise died away.
"Hi, I'm Danielle Moonstar, and I'm the head of the Metahuman Training department here at Legion Academy. These are the other two members of my department - Tikhik Miraz, and Shikari Lonestar." There were some murmurs in the crowd as a result of this announcement, but they stopped as she continued, "Obviously, you're all here because you have at least one power, ability or talent which is beyond human, and this department is here to help you master that ability safely."
She continued, outlining not only the need for safety and the dangers of overconfidence, but also the penalties of misuse. In particular, she pointed out that the US had just passed a law specifically banning the use of telepathy or any other means to alter the mind of a subject, or to force them to act against their will - and that other countries were passing similar laws, or were planning to do so - with anyone convicted of doing so without authorisation facing years in prison; as an example of how people were afraid of what they could do.
"The world is changing. 'Super-powers' are out in the open now, and people are scared. We have to show them there's no reason for them to be. If we don't, the consequences could be terrible, for all of us." She glanced at the clock. "Okay, time for a quick break. Be back here in fifteen minutes." ______________
In the room behind the stage, Dani pulled one of the wooden chairs out from the table, turned it around, and leaned heavily on the back. She felt exhausted, and had one question for her colleagues. "Did I go too far?"
"No." Tik answered first. "It had to be said. Some of them will not believe you, but they would not have believed you even if you had been less severe."
Shikari concurred, "I agree. This world is not used to post-humans, and it will take time for the path to become clear. It would take very little for it to go wrong."
"Thanks, I think." Dani looked at the cards for the second half of the speech. Grading, passes, analysis. She got up to make herself a strong cup of coffee. ______________
"...and the first thing to point out, is that Legion membership is not, and will not, be compulsory - and nor is it a right. They want to expand, and if you want to join, you have every chance - but you must obtain an 'A' from this department, which I'll get into in a moment, and not have any major blemishes on your record.
Otherwise, to be eligible for graduation, you must get at least a 'C' from this department, which means you've been rated as safe to be around other people, basically. I don't want anyone here to be held here for another year of training.
In all other ways, graduation will be much like any other graduation from high school. You'll get the qualifications you've earned, and the teachers from the other departments will no doubt explain their own courses to you when you see them. Here..." she went on to explain how they would be placed in small groups with like-powers for training, and where the training rooms were.
"For 'standard' and 'advanced' power levels, an 'A' grade means you've achieved the limit of your current power levels. A 'B' means you've done very well, but we feel there are areas that need work. A 'C' means you've passed, and we feel that we won't hear about you on the news because you accidentally lost control and injured or killed people. Anything less than that is a fail, and you'll be held back here until you can achieve at least a 'C'. Technological help, if it exists and you can prove that it is reliable, can be used to help you raise your grade to a 'C', but to get an 'A' or a 'B', you need to be able to demonstrate your power without external aid. For 'basic' power levels, different criteria apply, and I'll speak to those students separately."
While she didn't think that humiliating the students in public would be helpful, she'd argued about admitting students with 'basic' power levels - students whose powers neither impinged on their quality of life, nor were powerful enough to cause danger to the people around them - on the basis that they'd take up places that might be needed for those who did need the training. She'd been overruled mostly for PR reasons; since the powers that be had decreed that it would be helpful to show that not everyone with a "power" was capable of causing massive damage.
They had the germ of a point, she'd admitted in the end, but she doubted it would make any serious difference. She glanced round at Shikari - who took the signal, picked up a folder & bag, and flew down toward the crowd.
"Finally, starting tomorrow, we'll be giving you all individual Entry Assessments in Training Room 1. This will last around twenty minutes, and we'll talk with everyone about what you feel your capabilities are, and ask most of you for a demonstration - there will probably be a few cases where we will need additional equipment or more preparation to have a safe demonstration. This is so we know what level everyone is starting from and thus what sort of training will apply." She glanced at the clock. Nearly done.
"To help, I'd like everyone to fill out the questionnaire that Ms. Lonestar is distributing right now, and leave it on the table at the exit when you leave." The student record was mostly complete, but with one rather shocking omission - powers. Not a single student had their powers filled in, because whoever had filled out the database had used a standard template which, of course, didn't have a field for metahuman abilities. She'd added such a field, but had only managed to fill ten out of slightly more than a hundred records from her and Tikhik's knowledge of a few students. The questionnaire - which simply asked for the students' names, a few more identifying details, their own description of their powers and how they would rate themselves on the scale Dani had described - was an attempt to get that crucial information quickly and simply without having to go into the assessments blind.
She took in air sharply, then let it out more slowly. "That's all. Any questions?" She knew this could go either way - no kid liked asking the first question in front of all their peers, but once the ice was broken questions could keep coming and coming. She waited sixty seconds, and when no hands went up, she tried to keep her sigh of relief as inconspicuous as possible. "Right. The assessments timetable will be posted on the intranet later tonight and - since we know not all of the computers have been installed yet - we'll also post a hard copy on the noticeboard in the canteen. Once you've filled out the questionnaire, you can go. Remember to leave it with Ms. Lonestar at the door" ______________
This time, she went straight for the coffee machine. Then she went to the sink and splashed some cold water in her face, before picking up the just-filled cup and leaning against the counter, blinking heavily to try and make her eyes focus.
"Long day, huh?" Recognising the voice, she looked up with a start at the figure of John Jones, who she hadn't heard enter the room. She had to be even more tired than she thought. "Must have been your first speech to a crowd."
She nodded with a low chuckle. "I've run marathons that left me less tired than this. Literally."
"Different sort of energy. Bet you weren't nervous beforehand."
She shrugged and took a sip of coffee, "Not really, no."
"Then you're the sort it hits hardest the first few times - go in wound too tight, and just the effort of keeping a lid on it all tires you out too quick. Like any other sort of training though, you learn how to balance it all out, build up your stamina."
"I'll keep that in mind." She took another sip of coffee and smiled. "Today, I'll settle for not boring the kids to death."
"Bit of boredom's good for the soul, really. Have to tell myself that after this afternoon, any rate. Holding court for a bunch of 'Vips' isn't much fun."
"I take it none of them are going to shut us down?"
"Not today, any rate." He grinned. "Anyhow, you should get some rest."
"I can't just yet - remember the missing data I mentioned? We handed out some questionnaires at the end there so we'd know what we were dealing with. Shikari and Tik should be on their way to the department to enter that right now. I'll probably need to help with that, then we need to schedule the assessments that start tomorrow."
"Okay. Just don't push yourself too hard. It's only Day One." He looked her in the eye, and she seemed to feel her tiredness lift.
"I'll be fine - I think the caffeine is starting to kick in, anyway. I should get moving." She downed the rest of the coffee, and dropped the polystyrene cup in the bin.
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I'm floating in the air, in the middle of a room. I try and grab for something, anything to pull myself down... but every time I touch anything it turns to gossamer and floats away. Nothing's got any weight, and the frustration gets to me and I scream and I...
...wake up. Ye olde nightmare again, I realise as I look at the clock. 04:20. My head lands heavily on the pillow as I shake it, trying to clear the dream. Every part of me is screaming to shut my eyes - but if I do, I realise I'll go straight back to That Dream again.
Sighing, I turn the light on and head to the bathroom for a drink of water.
*********************
07:30 - Wake-up call
The alarm goes off punctually at half-seven, as usual, and I stretch over to punch it into silence. Nothing wants to work - I never got back to sleep, my head hurts and everything feels like it's made of lead.
I have a silent argument with myself for eight minutes, telling myself that nothing was going to happen (Washington could be levelled and they'd still leave me behind as it stood) and that no-one would notice if I spent the day in bed (only half-true).
At the nine-minute mark, the snooze on the alarm expires and I just let it run. I tell myself I won't turn it off until I'm at least sitting up, as I try to move limbs that don't want to obey.
Ninety seconds later, though, I finally make it to my feet, and stretch to see if it'll help. It doesn't. I hope the shower will.
*********************
13:20 - Lunch
I might be last to the cafeteria, after Leviathan decides to bawl me out for ten minutes for "not trying" (bowdlerized) in the training session, without so much as a trace of irony - everyone except me and Paul are working on teamwork, and we're shunted to the side because we're not part of the team (yet), doing stuff I could do in my sleep. What's to try?
After I get the plate of stodgy macaroni, I flop down on the nearest seat, at an empty table. The place is half-empty - most of the team have eaten & ran, and everyone else is bound up in conversation anyway. Garth tries to catch my eye for a minute when he sees me eating alone, but I'm not much in the mood for chatting - and anyway, it's a pity-offer. He'd rather I didn't interrupt him and Irma.
I'm not alone the whole lunch, though - Quentin, being Quentin, rushes in at the last possible moment, just as the room is emptying. He crashes down at my table, across from me, and asks if I'm still going to be there at the Pier (his private workshop) at three-thirty. I've got bad news: "I probably won't make it before five. Leviathan was a complete Gene, and followed up sticking me in the corner at training with giving me phone PD after therapy for 'insubordination'.
"What did you call him...?"
"Nothing, really." I try to sound sincere... "He was just in one of his better moods."
"I'm sure." I think I see the ghost of a smile, just a little curl at the edge of his mouth, just before he throws the last of his food down. It's gone by the time he swallows. "I'll see you at half-past five then."
"I said five."
"I'm allowing for the fact you're always late."
I've already started to object by the point I realise he's winding me up. Great...
*********************
14:15 - Therapy
"...I mean, it's getting to the point that I'm wondering - when is it that I actually count as 'well'?" I realise my voice has raised itself and dial it back a notch. "It's getting me down - correction, it's got me down. I'm having nightmares where everything I try to hold onto floats away..." I continue into a description of my day that turns into a bit of a tirade, while Dr Ryker just sits and listens the whole time, taking the occasional note, until I finish off by complaining about the idiots who think a cape is a superpower who want to be Legionnaires and form most of the Legion's telephone traffic, which I'll have to deal with after I leave, and my lungs finally, implosively get to take a breath.
She just sits there thoughtfully for a minute, as if considering how to react. "You called yourself and Paul 'pariahs' there when you were talking about the training session. Did you mean it?"
I purse my mouth and sigh deeply. That word was a slip. "Kind of, I suppose..." I pause, trying to find the words, "Everyone's polite enough, but they've all been together for months and bunched up into little cliques, and they ain't looking for new members. Plus, they all seem to want to see me as 'the She-Garth' and I'm not. I'm really not. And it's like they don't want to deal with the complication."
"And Paul?"
"He..." something hit me. "--wait, you're his therapist too. Wouldn't me talking about him be some sort of conflict of interest for you?"
"Only if you want it to be. Nothing you say about him gets back to him, the same way nothing else you say is disclosed without you seeing it first. And I'm spoken to him enough that whatever you say isn't likely to change my report on him."
I still hesitate. Paul was something else I hadn't meant to bring up. Over the weeks, I'd got used to talking to Dr Ryker, but I'd deliberately avoided talking about Paul, because I didn't want to mess anything up for him, even if we're not as close as we once were - but now that I'd slipped and left the door open, surely avoiding the subject would be as bad or worse... After all, she might decide I was hiding something big, which I'm not.
"He... you know how I said I didn't want to be seen as a 'She-Garth'? It's like he's happy here just to be seen as a 'mini-Cos'."
"And that makes you feel... angry?"
"Yeah. He just hangs around with Cos as much as he can, and plays at being Cos when he's can't. And yet, he fits in better than me because of it."
"So, not being seen as a 'She-Garth' is really important to you?"
"It's not--" I feel myself getting annoyed again, and stop for a moment. "You make it sound like it's an act. Like I really AM some sort of 'She-Garth', nothing more to see here. I'm not, plain and simple. We're twins, not clones."
"And yet, you've said before about how close you and Garth once were, and how you wanted to be 'a twin again'."
I opened my mouth to speak, but a bubble of emotion inside me had been popped by that, and I only got an "I..." out before my voice choked off. I closed my eyes for a minute, trying to sort it all out.
"It's not as if I've ever been just a female him. We're not even identical twins - when we were kids, we were like two different Tetris bits that fitted together, not the same bit twice. After the Workforce, and the brainwashing, and the deprogramming and all of that... I was groping for some sort of sense of 'me' and I grabbed for that. But we're not the kids we were. He's got a girlfriend, is a core part of the Legion, while I'm..."
"You're...?" The doctor had a concerned look on her face - I wondered if she expected some grand revelation I didn't have. I'd stopped because I'd had absolutely no idea how to put it, and still nothing specific came to me.
"...different. Just different, that's all. And I should never have pretended otherwise with that stupid matching costume." That one hurt to admit, since it was one of my stupider ideas - in my search for 'twinness', I'd copied the layout of Garth's costume for all of five minutes. Being honest, even though I used slightly different colours, it probably had a lot to do with the 'She-Garth' thing. Fortunately, it was three o'clock and she had another appointment, so couldn't follow up just then. Saved by the bell.
*********************
16:25 - Walking
First off, the telephone session was every bit as enraging as I'd expected. If I'd had to deal with those brain-donors in person, I would have fried at least one of them. I'm amazed I never zapped the phone itself. Fortunately, the walk out to 'the Pier', Q's private workshop - basically just a warehouse on the riverfront, but I never argued the name - gave me a chance to work some of it off non-lethally. (Say what you will about New Yorkers - at least they don't tell people to "cheer up, it's a wonderful day" like back home. Always hated that.)
As I approach the Pier, anyway, I notice a loud buzzing noise, and look up to see an unmistakably humanoid shape taking flight through one of the back windows, a pair of insect-wings strobing almost faster than my eyes could follow providing the sound effects. I know I've seen her before, but not where - I resolve to ask Q about her when I see him.
*********************
16:35 - The Pier
After typing the entry code and heading in, I quickly discover he's not on the main level. Surprising, considering that's where he's always been before when I walk in. Since one of the windows near the roof was open, unusually; I have a moment where I wonder if the flier grabbed him and I missed it, before dismissing the idea - I got a better look than *that*. Obviously, me being here twenty-five minutes earlier than I said never occurred him. With, I admit, a smirk on my face at Mr Brainiac being thrown by something so simple, I head towards the spiral basement stairs and shout "Q, you down here?" as I descend.
There's a quiet crash as I come round the final stair and get a first look at his basement workshop. Now, there's a running joke amongst certain Legionnairesses (who shall remain nameless), that all Q does in his spare time is blow stuff up in some private lab. And while I know him better than that by now, I still wasn't quite ready for seeing him in a pair of shorts, having fallen off a bench press machine while attempting to pretend he hadn't been using it.
I pull my eyes away from his clear embarrassment, and take a look around. Every part of the walls, surfaces and floors not taken up by equipment is filled with papers and other objects. Just how much stuff can he be interested in? How long does he need to spend learning this stuff?
"Fifteen hours."
I turn back to face him. He'd pulled on a robe, and had obviously taken the minute or two I'd given him to pull himself together, although his cheeks still have a trace of the darker green he blushes.
"That's the most it takes me for any given subject to degree level - given a decent set of texts, of course. I haven't had to recreate any fields from scratch, yet."
"Show off."
"Basic learning's the easy pa--"
"No, I mean the 'guessing what I was thinking' routine."
"Oh," he flicks his hand in an 'idle' gesture, "that's not hard. Mostly. People tend to be pretty transparent. I was right then?"
"Close enough. You seemed pretty surprised when I got here, though."
"Hey, it's the first time you've ever been early. You won't catch me so off-guard next time." He gave a little smirk that said that was a challenge.
"We'll see. Who was it that was flying out when I was walking up? They left a window open."
"Oh, just one of the Academy instructors asking for a hand with something. Could you give me five minutes to get sorted, then I'll come up and get started?"
"Sure..." I headed up. ________
16:45 - Mechatopia
I'm staring at it when I finally hear him make it back upstairs (One to complain about being late, he is!). "Looks like you've done some more work on it," I yell in his direction as he grabs his "input device" and laptop and carts them across the room.
"Not much, just some final checks before Lonestar turned up. Since there wasn't anything more to do before you got here, I just headed downstairs for a while."
"So it's ready for me to have a go?" I grin widely.
"Yes and no. Powering and controlling it are two different things, and I'd like to know you can keep the supply steady enough for the regulators to hold before we start debugging the onboard control systems."
'It' was an eight-feet tall battlesuit, scaffolding joined by universal joints and moved by hydraulic rams, made mostly from scrap. Weeks before, not long after I'd started my 'provisional membership', Q had had the idea for it, explaining that he'd wanted to try it for years - but inventing a power source to fit it would breach his 'parole conditions', as he'd put it, that put strict limits on what he was allowed to invent. If I was the power source, then it'd be useless to anyone but me & Garth - so he could work on everything else without too much fear. I'd leapt at the chance.
Now, with it standing before me, basically finished and ready to climb in, I'm excited and more than a bit nervous. Rather than asking if it's safe, though, I just jump up and in. After the day I've had, I hardly mind if the whole thing explodes as long as it takes my mind off what's been going on.
________
17:25 - Mecha Mania
Of course, it's not quite "get in and go". Besides getting strapped in, there were a lot of wires to get stuck to me - both for power, and for the control systems that wouldn't be used at first. Frustrating, but the hope I'd drive the thing before the day was done kept me going in a way that hadn't worked earlier.
Finally now, we're ready for the first test run, Q using his all-purpose "input device" - a pair of theramins, which I've long got over sniggering at, especially after he showed me how quick he could "type" with them - to do the control. I hear him ask if I'm ready. I nod, and start to feed the thing power. Lights come on, but for now, I'm meant to focus on one particular light - a large white one right in front of me - and keep it at a constant brightness.
Then, of course, the whole thing just collapses around me. I'm plummeting down, face heading toward the floor, and I'm too busy screaming to figure out whether to cut the power or not.
Then everything stops moving. It takes a moment for my brain to wake up and realise I haven't hit anything.
And Quentin's laughing.
"You absolute--" I verbally let loose for a minute before it even hits me what I'm saying. Once I stop, my position shifts, pulling me forward and up a bit - I'm still lying down, but now I'm facing forward through a clear gap, and Q's kneeling right in front of me, still with a smile on his face.
"Like the party piece?"
"What the hell just happened? You're lucky I didn't fry this stupid thing!"
"Watch." He stands up and moves out of sight. It's not as if I can do much BUT watch - either I see what he'd planned, or cut the power and wait for him to help me out.
Then it rolls forward, and I clock the wheels at each corner in front of me for the first time. "You built a ^&^&ing TRANSFORMER?"
"Yup." It stopped moving, and started shifting about, getting back into the mode where I'd first seen it.
"Whew." My relief alone could have powered a small village for a month. "Don't EVER, EVER pull a stunt like that without warning me ever again!"
"Don't tell me you didn't enjoy it," he said, a mock-innocent look on his face. It *had* been a rush, I admit to myself, but not to him. "Besides, there was a point - if you didn't blow all the electrics in the middle of that, chances are you're going to keep it together wherever you use it."
"So now I can drive?"
"So now we can test your control systems, anyway."
I breathe for a minute, put visions of crushing him out of my head, then nod. Still going to be fun.
*********************
22:00 - Bedtime
The test went well, thank grife. The thing is fiddly to operate, but another few goes and I'll be practically ready for the ballet.
Now, I'm tired, sore, but there's still a bit of satisfaction at the progress we made on the battlesuit.
As long as I don't think about Gene, I can almost call it a good day.
*********************
07:30 - Wake-up call
The alarm goes off punctually at half-seven, as usual, and I stretch over to punch it into silence. For once, I slept through the night, and it only takes a couple of minutes to wrestle my body into moving. It's not until I've been for a shower, though, that I've woken up enough to see that someone's been in my room during the night. Things have been moved around, almost deliberately, and nothing seems like it's in the right place. And to top that off, there's a note pinned to my wardrobe door:
Dear Sis,
Notice anyone missing? If you want to see him again, don't mention this to anyone. Especially not blonde telepath "anyones".
If you're a good girl, you'll get another note telling you where to come.
Love, M.
Oh ####.
To be continued in 21CL: Lords & Masters!
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
posted
Academy L: Emerging A Lords & Masters prelude
"Nori, come in." In a break from the norm, it was Tikhik Miraz who appeared at the door to invite Noriko Ashida into the training room for her emergent assessment.
"You running the test, Tik?" she asked her bug-like friend and teacher.
"No, Moonstar does that. She just thought it'd help if I 'got you settled' first."
"Tch." Air rushed through Nori's clenched teeth. As usual, she didn't bother to hide her annoyance if something wasn't right, and the couple of times she'd met Danielle Moonstar had left her with the impression of someone who put on a good 'face' for the students without showing what she was really thinking - a cardinal sin in Nori's book. She fiddled with the baggy robe that was meant to help control her power, but which just seemed to make her sweat - only the collar Gear had given her helped, and that had a limited lifespan. "I take it I have to wear this?"
"I don't know - she might want you to test both with and without the robe. Do you want me to run down the tests, or would you rather she did?"
"If she's doing the test, might as well let her do it."
"Okay. Good luck..." Tik smiled as best as his beak was able, and went through the other door, which creaked as it opened and shut.
While waiting for Dani, Nori took a look at the room she was to be assessed in. It was a large hall, fairly bare except for a desk and blackboard at one end, and a larger table, holding an old-fashioned pair of meters attached to a couple of metal handles, off to the side. The door creaked again, and Nori turned to see Moonstar entering with a smile.
--------------------------
Dox was doing some fiddling with the mechasuit - with Spark delayed, it was worthwhile to give it a final checkover and improve what he could - when he heard a loud buzzing above, which got louder until it suddenly stopped. When this was followed by the sound of a window opening at ceiling level, he began to get nervous and looked around for anything he could use if the flying intruder proved hostile. There was nothing bar a few spanners which could make serviceable clubs, and he cursed his carelessness - wielding a club, when you had only human strength, against a superhuman intruder was like expecting a feather to be a useful weapon. He picked the largest one up anyway for want of a better option, but continued with the fiddling since a confrontation wasn't likely to go well. He heard them drop to the floor.
"Smart Legion... Dox?"
The thoughts ran instantly through Quentin's head: Female voice. Sounded inquisitive rather than threatening - a good sign, especially since they weren't trying to sneak up. Unfamiliar, but the buzzing flight combined with a female voice... there were only... three insect-winged fliers in the records, and one of those was male. And addressing a Legionnaire as "* Legion" before correcting herself narrowed it down to one. And since that one worked for the Legion Academy, that practically confirmed the 'no threat'. He put down the spanner, stood up and walked out, careful to wipe his hand on a rag for show as if her turning up was the most natural thing in the world.
"Ms. Lonestar, isn't it? What can I do for you?"
"I need to ask you about interdimensional travel."
Dox's eyebrows almost hit his hairline.
--------------------------
For Nori, the test part of the assessment was simple and boring - Dani explained that they'd already got most of the data they needed on her from the tests the Legion had already done. So she just had to run around in a circle for a bit to let Moonstar gauge her super-speed, and show how precisely she could hit marks both physically at speed and electrically with the meters. None of which was especially hard.
Then came the interview part of the assessment...
"I understand you had no control over your powers until you got that collar, is that right?"
"Right, I'm stupid." Nori wanted to pull the words back as soon as they made their way out, but instead she just sat back and folded her arms.
"It doesn't make you stupid. You had a bad emergence, didn't get the help you needed, and that stuck you in a vicious circle where you couldn't even communicate properly. Blaming yourself for what happened is like blaming someone with epilepsy for having fits."
"Yeah, like you'd know." Stupid stupid stupid. She's going to make your life hell for this... Nori screamed at herself internally, while staying still externally.
Dani stopped for a moment and sat back. Clearly Nori wasn't going to co-operate like this, and she had to take a different angle if she wanted Nori to open up. Sometimes opening up herself had helped with difficult pupils, and Tikhik had warned her that Nori prized openness - perhaps because of her closed upbringing and what it lead her to. "I know that I could easily have ended up like you, but for a piece of luck. My emergence went badly - and I was only the... I think third... one we have record of happening in the world, so almost no-one had ever seen anything like it, ever. The luck was that a friend of my grandfather was visiting, somehow realised what was going on, and managed to pull me out of the fantasy world I'd zapped myself into. If he hadn't been there, I'd probably have ended up locked away from the real world."
Nori's set face cracked a bit, betraying some curiosity, but she found herself saying "But you got this help just in time, and then you were okay."
"Oh no, it gets better. I moved here so he could help me more - I'm being literal, this was his house - and just as I was beginning to get a hang of things, my powers changed completely on me. For no apparent reason. It took me three years to get a power set to stick AND learn how to control it, and they still wax and wane somewhat. The guy was a saint to put up with it all. It's what set me on the path to doing this for a living - I was a private tutor for a few years until this place came along."
"So what happened to him?"
"He died, about eight months ago. He left this building to be used to help kids like you and me, but no-one bit until the Workforce fiasco finally got the attention of the right people."
--------------------------
While Dox hadn't had any expectations as such on what Shikari would say, somehow the idea that someone would just fly in and ask him about interdimensional travel had never occurred to him.
Quickly, he ran through what little he knew about her. Physically, she was an insect/human hybrid, but biased toward the human in form - with short green hair on her head, grey human features and shape (including breasts) and yellow eyes that showed no sign of facets. The insect side supplied colours, and her retractable dragonfly-esque wings and exoskeleton. Odd hybrid, but less so than some of McCauley's subjects. She also had a superhuman tracking ability. He knew nothing of her background or prior history, though, which meant she could... hmm... "You're from another dimension?"
"Yes." Quickly, she laid out her history to him - coming from an alien people called the Kwai, she'd met a future version of himself and others, and ended up joining their Legion of Super-Heroes before being lost in the timestream, ultimately coming to this world and their Legion Academy - along with her powers.
"Fascinating." Dox murmured when she was done. "And your tracking power works or doesn't work in that situation?"
"I can pathfind even in the timestream, yes, but I cannot move in the direction I aim at. And here, I have no way to leave this dimension at all."
"Here's my guess - when you 'pathfind' for a moment you 'see' all the possibilities available to you from your situation, and collapse it down to the best one. Ergo, you turn left and find the bomb, not right and get delayed so it goes off, and so on. Quantum mechanics, skewed in your favour."
"That's similar to what the other Smart Le- sorry, an old habit - Brainiacs have said. So, then why cannot I just find a way home, or at least from this dimension?"
"It's that word - possibilities. You can only use the knowledge and tools you have available or can obtain with what you have available, rather than an infinite nest. Anyone could happen down the right corridor and find the bomb, you just get all the benefits of that sort of trial and error without having to actually having to go through the trial and error. Given a gun, you could have pinpoint accuracy, even at ridiculous odds... as long as the bullet is capable of reaching the target under the conditions which exist and you can't alter. Or, for another example - you can know the train you're due to catch won't reach the station in time, but if there isn't an earlier train you can't create one."
"So--" she started to speak, but he wasn't finished and cut her off.
"So in other words, an exit ultimately needs to exist for you to find it. And making a time machine, or one of the interdimensional "Threshold" doorways you were telling me about - that's not only beyond what you personally know, it's beyond the collective knowledge of everyone on this planet. There'll be parts you need which not only haven't been invented yet, the processes to make the machines to make the parts to make the machine to make the parts you need won't have been invented yet."
Shikari's head went down. It was what she'd guessed, but hearing him say it made it all the more real. "So you are saying I may be trapped here? For the rest of my life?"
"Not necessarily. You say you were drawn to the Academy. Someone there, or who will go there, could well have the power to send you either home, or to somewhere or somewhen that will have the means to get you closer to home. Perhaps you became a teacher because you'll be instrumental in them developing their power to the point they could do it."
"A point."
--------------------------
"So, what, we're all sweetness and light, and no-one ever does anything wrong as long as they've been trained?"
"Obviously not. Some people are born bad, some achieve badness, and some need a shock to the system to knock the badness out of them."
"Like?"
Dani nearly rolled her eyes at this point - on the one hand, Nori was getting very nosy. On the other, she needed to get her trust if she was going to get anywhere with her... "Remember the speech I gave at the opening? About telepaths?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, someone wasn't listening or didn't care, because when I had a room full of telepaths in here earlier on, one of them tried to make me strip."
"Seriously? What happened?"
"Oh, I let him get a couple of buttons on my blouse just so I could show he tried - the CCTV cameras all around the school aren't just visible light, there's also secondary cameras that pick up the wavelengths telepathy works in for just that sort of event - before I stunned him, but I can deal with that sort of thing. What makes me worried is if he tried it on someone who COULDN'T, who didn't have the right sort of powerset or training to override it. Right now he's down in the cell cooling his heels while I decide whether to press charges."
"There's a prison?"
"Obviously. Power dampers are big, bulky and expensive - so we've only got the one, and the room it's installed in has been turned into a makeshift cell - which is another reason for you to master your powers enough that you don't need one to live..."
--------------------------
Her question answered as best he could, Shikari thanked Dox for his time, and flew back through the window, on a loose bearing for the Academy - she wanted to fly for a while, rather than take the most direct route. It seemed appropriate. She sighed.
Two years, eight months, thirty days, five hours, eighteen minutes and twenty-two seconds.
That wasn't quite the way Shikari naturally broke down time, but she knew the exact time in her own units since she'd been cast adrift into the Void, the space between universes. Soon, she'd fallen randomly out of that Void into an unfamiliar universe, and when she'd managed to find a way out of that within days, getting home had seemed easy for someone who could always identify the path to success.
As this universe's counterpart of Brainiac 5 had observed though, that assumed there WAS a path to success. Getting back into the Void had been easy. Not being swept away on the intertemporal currents therein hadn't - even as she'd wanted to go one way, she'd been pushed another, into another random universe. An occurrence which had repeated all-to-often-since. This universe was the thirty-ninth she'd landed in - by various means, and with varying attempts to beat the currents and steer a course, all to no avail - but the first primitive enough to actively stymie her attempts to at least move on to somewhen better-equipped.
Over time, some clear patterns had emerged in her direction of travel - firstly, and without fail, whether she landed in the twenty-first or ninety-ninth centuries or anywhere in-between, there was ALWAYS a Legion of Super-Heroes of some sort, some recognisable, some bearing no resemblance to the one she knew. Secondly, her temporal arc of travel was getting wider - the previous earliest stop she'd made was in a twenty-third century. And thirdly, she would never find any record of a counterpart to herself; even in a universe like this, where seemingly all the Legionnaires she'd known in her own timeline were native to one planet. This last point had begun to disturb her - she'd met or heard tell of thirty-three Cosmic Boys (whether they called themselves that or not), thirty-one Brainiac 5s... even six Gears and four Infectious Lasses; but not one other Shikari. Was she so alone in the omniverse?
Her sense of hopelessness and loneliness had combined, after a month of fruitless searching for a way to move on, to take her to the point that she even missed the quietness of the township she'd once been so desperate to leave. She'd stopped scrabbling, and become a nursery assistant in a quiet corner of Europe, tired of fighting and losing, tired of meeting false versions of her true friends. Then, suddenly, a path had lit, a way onward, giving her hope. It had taken her to the new Legion Academy of this world, only for her to find there... nothing. And so she'd visited this world's Brainiac 5 on one last errand of desperation, hoping for some new insight she'd missed. To little avail.
Shikari hoped her senses weren't failing her now as everything else had. A lost pathfinder was tragic. One blind to the path before her was unforgivable.
--------------------------
With the power dampers answer, Dani had managed to turn Nori's interview back to the latter's history, and it had progressed without further incident. Now it was time to sum up.
"So, right now you're a C with the assistive-collar, and a fail without - but that's no news to you, I expect."
"Obviously not."
"I'll give some more thought to a specific program for you then, and in the meantime..." Dani's cellphone went off. "Sorry, text, give me a second." She sighed on reading it. "In the meantime, I want you to keep your charge level low insofar as you can, okay?"
"Fine." Nori was still surly, but less so, Dani thought.
"I'll see you for classes on Monday then," Dani eased her pupil towards the door. "Bye."
Once the door was closed, she took another look at her phone screen. "Check requested on young schoolchild in outer NYC area. Details sent to your email." Nori had been her last student of the day, and at quarter to five it was too late to visit a school. It would need to be done early the following day - not to mention that she'd probably need to bring Shikari - which would screw up the assessment timetable for the day even if, as was likely, there was nothing to it... "Great", she muttered, and headed off to get coffee.
To be continued in 21CL: Lords & Masters!
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
At a nondescript student party at New York's Empire State University, a redhead suddenly clutched her temple in surprise. She looked around for the source of the surprise, and aimed at a man sitting in a corner, nursing a drink. He looked surprised himself to have been picked out. They talk for a minute, and then leave the room to discuss matters further.
Unseen by her, though, as they walked away, black goo began to ooze over his hand...
Lords & Masters Part 1: Master-Bound
It wasn't even light yet as Dani pulled the minibus out of the Academy grounds. With blacked-out windows to prevent prying eyes staring at any kids who looked "inhuman", it was meant mostly for the occasional trip out; but they had to use it for "scouting missions" within a five-hour drive so that the Academy got value for money.
She didn't much like it, but she liked less losing at least the whole morning from her & Shikari's timetables (two hour drive there, two hours back, plus the time at their destination school meant there was no chance of getting back before noon) to what was virtually certain to be a wild-goose chase. Especially not when there were a load of kids whose emergent assessments really had to get done before Monday - they were running late enough as it was.
Not for the first time, nor the last, she wished she'd stayed a private tutor. Much, much simpler life. ___________
In a school not far from New York City, a six-year old girl wakes up and stretches her arms. Her name is Gemma. She enjoys hopscotch and colouring-in. She goes to boarding school, and never sees her parents, but she doesn't let it get her down - she's a smart girl, and she knows she'll go far.
Meanwhile, all Rachel wants is for Gemma to go away - she gets on her nerves all the time, but she can't escape her. Not even for a second.
Because "Gemma" isn't real.
She's a shell personality forced over Rachel's own, and all Rachel can do is watch as her powers keep up the illusion of being a six-year old girl, when all she wants to do is be herself - go back to college and live her twenty-one year old life as she should be doing....
*********************
Spark, of course, was already awake, and looked at the note in her hand with shock. "M." "Sis." The handwriting. Obviously, her elder brother Mark had been the one to pay her the visit in the night. That made the odds on the missing "him" twenty-to-one that it was Garth, still moreso with the specific warning against telling Irma.
First things first - was Garth actually missing? And if he was, what did everyone else think had happened to him? And how had Mark got in, abducted Garth and left a threatening message in her room in the first place?!
She threw on her costume quickly, and headed to the canteen for breakfast. Most of the team would be there, and any info on what was perceived to have happened (if anything) wouldn't be hard to come by.
--------------------------
"Oh, thank heavens you've come! You see, I've always been sure there's something... odd... about the boy, but now..."
"It's all right Mrs. Hargreaves. Could you show us the class in question? We should be able to sort this out quickly one way or the other."
"Of course, this way please..." _____
"Good morning class."
"Good morn-ing Miss-es Har-Greaves"
"Now, this is Miss Moonstar..." Dani entered the room, "...and Miss Lonestar..." Shikari's entrance produced minor rumbles and a few "Cool!"s from the children on seeing her grey skin and short blue-green hair. "They are looking for a few specific children for something special and they think there may be one of them in this room. They should only be a moment, so continue with your work," she finished before going to speak to the class teacher.
When most of the children had at least mostly settled down, Dani prompted, "Well 'Kari?"
"One moment," Shikari said before armouring-up, a light-effect appearing from a red spot in the middle of her forehead. "None of the boys are metahuman, but there is something very odd..." _____
Rachel felt something odd and looked up from "Gemma's" colouring-in. For the first time in months, she had hope, as she thought she felt something one of the two women did prick the illusion she was forced to maintain. She wanted to jump up and wave her hands - her real hands - in the hope that one of them might see them. _____
"There," Shikari whispered to Dani, "she is far older than the others in the room. An illusion makes her look of the same age, but I see the true woman beneath."
"Woman?" Dani whispered back with a raised eyebrow. "All right, lead the way..." _____
Rachel wished she could explode with joy as Shikari took "Gemma's" hand to lead her out of the room, while Dani stopped to have a word with the teachers to explain that they were taking her, if not exactly why. Mrs. Hargreaves looked very disappointed that they were taking a "quiet, shy" girl rather than the "little monster" she'd hoped for.
*********************
Info wasn't hard to come by for Ella, but nor was it helpful - everyone seemed to think Garth had gone home for a visit. He'd even supposedly cleared it with Gene and Cos. And no-one was volunteering anything about a break-in, which - given the Legion propensity for gossip - meant no-one thought there had been one.
A phone call to her parents more or less confirmed that the "home" story was bunk - she hadn't mentioned Garth once, not to set them on edge, but they indubitably would have mentioned his visit or anticipated visit if there was one. She knew her parents, and they wouldn't pass up a chance to pressure her into a visit home.
Okay, she reflected, so the letter seemed real. Garth had vanished, and somehow Mark had snuck in... how? There were all sorts of security precautions against someone just... walking in. Teleporter? Intangible?
The note had promised a follow-up if she didn't say anything. She hadn't yet, so it was worth going back and checking for another one before she decided what to do next.
--------------------------
Back on the minibus, Dani and Shikari sat and looked at their subject.
"You can drop the illusion now - we know you're not really a young girl," Dani said.
While her 'Gemma' avatar looked down at her feet, Rachel tried to scream, to explain what had happened, but Dani couldn't hear or see a word of the whisper that actually made it out.
"Dani, I believe she is saying she cannot."
At that, Dani thought for a moment, before realising what the most fervent desire of someone trapped as a six-year old would probably be, kicking herself for not thinking of it straight away.
At that, Rachel's world dissolved and appeared to reform atop a lighthouse, with her sitting on a deckchair in a bikini - as herself, no 'Gemma' in sight.
Before she could celebrate, however, she looked up and saw Danielle and Shikari standing there. "It's just an illusion," Dani explained, "so could you explain what's going on, Gemma?"
"Rachel. My real name's Rachel. And makes sense that an illusion's more real than reality for me right now," murmured Rachel. "You must be in my head to do this, can't you just find out directly?"
"I'm not a full telepath. I can make illusions like this - of desires, like this, or fears - and go into them, or make telepathic weapons, but I can't read human minds. I need you to explain."
"I don't remember much about it - there are gaps in my memory, big ones, where I think I've been mindwiped on top of everything else.
What I do remember is that a year ago I met someone... or maybe even something, I can't remember anything about who did this to me... at a party at college. I could feel that it was another telepath - the first one I'd met, ever. I left the party with them... and then it's mostly a blank until three days later. I woke up, and I was meant to be 'Gemma,' a five-year old enrolled at this school, and I was projecting an image of her without trying, and couldn't stop it, or go away, and no-one could see me, only 'Gemma,' and I was trapped into playing the role and couldn't break free..." she began to cry, and Dani put her hand on her shoulder.
"You remember nothing of that person or those three days?" Shikari asked.
Rachel shook her head in response, and forced out "No." She forced herself to stop for a moment, and added "One other thing - there's a red skinsuit-thing sealed all over my real body from the neck down. I can't take it off..." her voice broke, and she started sobbing again, louder than before.
When Rachel had calmed down a bit, Dani excused herself and Shikari, and took them out of Rachel's illusion.
"We're going to need to bring the Legion in on this," Dani said as soon as she and Shikari were back in reality, looking at the sleeping 'Gemma.' "Rachel must be powerful to be able to keep this illusion up 24/7 for a year, voluntarily or not, and that means anyone powerful enough to play with her mind like this is scary. Can you call Tikhik to pick us up? I don't want to waste time with driving."
"Of course." _____
"So you expect me to drop everything and jump off to teleport after you, correct?"
Shikari counted down from eight. This Gates could be as... testing... as her own at times. "Small Le... Tikhik..., we believed we were going to find a young child for recruitment. We found a woman forced to act as a child for a year, who needs Fair L... Tela's help. Given your known feelings of brainwashing..."
"Fine, fine..." Tikhik tried to keep the façade up, but shuddered inwardly. Even with McCauley down, there would have to be others... "How do you expect me to find you? Unlike you, I can't blink and know where you are."
"There is a..." Shikari struggled momentarily to find the word. Even after months of practice, guided by her power, her use of English was not perfect... "a tracer in this vehicle. Use the screen to find us."
"The screen? Oh, perfect..." Tikhik had a stressful relationship with computers, given his claw "hands". He swore inwardly as he tried to find their location, and use it to calculate the distance and direction he needed for the gate... _____
Meanwhile, Dani had just finished explaining their plan, such as it was, to Rachel.
"And you think 'Tela' will be able to help?"
"Well, she managed to deprogram quite a few people - including some of my students - after they'd been brainwashed a few months ago, so she has experience."
"That's not an answer."
"I think she has the best chance outside of whoever originally did this to you, alright."
"Sorry, I'm just..."
"...tense, I know. That's understandable."
"You said you could make 'telepathic weapons' - couldn't you just...?"
"No! No - not, at any rate, unless there were no other options. They're fairly crude - I don't have the fine control for it."
Rachel noticed an odd edge to Dani's voice when she said this, conveyed even in the illusory setting, and Dani in turn caught her reaction. "My powers have waxed and waned quite a bit over the piece," she said with a wry grin on her face. "It drives me nuts sometimes."
*********************
Spark saw the next note as soon as she entered her room. All it gave, though, was a location and a few directions to get there - not even any more taunting. Another warehouse on the docks, quite a long way away from Q's.
She sat on the edge of her bed, thinking. If she told anyone, Mark might follow through on his threat to kill Garth - if he, or someone working with him, could get in with impunity, they could be watching her right now. Not to mention that she would play no role in any rescue attempt.
On the other hand, it was an obvious trap. If they captured Garth, they logically had a way to capture her. But if it was such a trap, why not grab her when they left the notes? Either they couldn't, or Mark wanted her there conscious and free to discuss something.
She looked up at the clock. Nearly ten am. She had to decide what to do, and quickly.
--------------------------
The receptionist tried not to jump when she saw a green hole appear in mid-air and a giant bug, a grey-skinned woman with dragonfly wings, a Native American woman and a six-year old girl stepped from it. And failed.
Even working for the Legion didn't mean you were inured to anything and everything.
"Hi, is Tela around?" Dani asked, flashing her Legion Associate card. Shikari could have found her instantly and guided Tikhik directly to her, of course, but there was something to be said for politeness. Sometimes.
The receptionist inwardly counted to ten and looked, firstly to see if the Legion were out on a mission, and, after finding they were not, asked for details before she would contact Tela via "personal communicator" (i.e. cellphone) to arrange for them to see her.
*********************
Meanwhile, Spark had taken advantage of the commotion created by the Academy group teleporting into the foyer to slip out quietly, civilian clothes over her costume. It was her brother's life at stake, and her other brother to deal with. She couldn't leave that to just anyone, trap or no trap...
--------------------------
Five minutes after the group's arrival, there was no sign of anyone paying attention to them. Tikhik spotted Starboy through a window to the Legion's rec room and headed off to talk to him. Meanwhile, Dani & co got more and more frustrated.
Fifteen minutes after that, Dani, Shikari and Rachel were still waiting when Tela, bored, ignorant of what was going on and wondering if Garth would call, entered the foyer on her way to the roof for some air. After a brief explanation, she eagerly agreed to help, and the four of them headed to the Legion's medical room to set things up, with Dani making a few notes of what to say once she found the receptionist's bosses... _____
Irma concentrated slightly, establishing a superficial mental link with Rachel - more so she could talk directly to the real person behind the child than anything else - and immediately felt an inrush of combined fear, anticipation and relief wash over her.
«Hi»
«Hi...,» she could hear the nerves in Rachel's "voice", which was only to be expected
«One stupid thing before we start - could you sign this?»
«What is it?» Rachel asked as she looked it over.
«Legal stuff,» Irma grimaced.
«If I was of "sound mind", I wouldn't need this,» Rachel protested.
«It's not my choice; if I do this these days without going through this farce first, I get taken off active duty. Use that line as a loophole if you need to.»
Rachel reluctantly signed after feeling Irma's genuine disgust for the "farce." She needed what had been done to her reversed, and she couldn't do it herself.
«Okay, have you ever met another telepath before?»
«Only once...»
«Right...» Dani had repeated in full what Rachel had told her, so she didn't need details. «Have you ever gone deep into someone else's mind under your own power?»
«No, why?»
«It's just that I'm going to have to go pretty deep to see about this, and it would help if you'd known what it was like. Physicians may not be able to heal themselves, but it sometimes helps them if they need surgery to know what's going on», she smiled.
«What's it like?»
«Well, every person's mindscape is different, so it's hard to describe, and I've never tried entering another telepath's mind to start with. Have you been able to use your power this past year or so?»
«Yes and no», Rachel grimaced, «It's been on constantly to keep up the "Gemma" illusion, but I've not been able to consciously use it.»
«Okay. First I'm going to put you into a light sleep, but I need your mind fairly active though to do this, so you'll probably have some odd dreams while this is going on - images of what I'm doing, memories I trigger - some accidentally, but some I might need to look at to try and reverse the damage - or just plain weird stuff if I hit the wrong synapses.»
«Right...»
«Ready?»
«I guess...»
Irma's own eyes shut as she fully entered Rachel's mind, laying a black curtain over it as she went.
At first "glance," there was nothing particularly special about it to Irma's view. All minds were unique - different metaphors for the underlying mental processes, different priorities - although there were some commonalities to latch onto. This first chamber was represented as a mine cavern, with what looked like electric blue jelly babies taking data from Rachel's senses - telepathy included - in the form of small red blobs and tipping them down a mineshaft to processing. The time dilation deep in a mind, where a minute could last anything from a second to an hour, always threw her initially and she stopped to get her bearings.
Looking around, the only inherent difference she could see was that Rachel's mind seemed slightly busier than normal, as her subconscious processed data from other minds to maintain "Gemma". Clearly, the first task was to shut down the telepathy "line" in case it interfered with her own when she reached the next level. She set to work...
*********************
The place had been easy enough for Spark to find from the note. It seemed, to her at least, to show every sign of having been abandoned for a long time, with the high-up windows broken and plants growing in the gutters, although some of the other warehouses around looked busy enough. Most of their workers didn't give her a second glance though - "if some girl is dumb enough to come wandering down there, let her, we've got work to do", she guessed.
The note said to go round the back, where there'd be a basement door "lying open". She found it, in the narrow gap between the back and a large metal fence, and jumped down with no hesitation, landing lightly in the dark. As she prepared to create a flare, the lights suddenly came on, revealing a huge solid concrete structure built within the crumbling warehouse.
"Ella." The voice echoed in the huge space.
She turned, very deliberately to show no weakness, to face the source of the sound. "Mark".
His hair, once similar to Garth, had been allowed to grow to his shoulders, and there was a prominent white patch in the centre. Other than that, he looked well kempt, dressed mostly in black leather.
"How did you get into my room?"
"What, no proper greeting? Not even a 'Where's Garth'? Touché. Since you ask, a couple of friends helped me out. They're not here, though. Just Mark, Ella and..." he tugged at a thin black cord Spark hadn't noticed, "...Garth. Together again."
Spark set her jaw as the black drape fluttered to the ground, revealing Garth. He was hanging in the air, but via a body harness rather than by his neck, at least. Her relief was short-lived, though, as she saw that he was unmoving, his eyes open and glassy. "You've killed him, haven't you?" Small sparks began to fly from her clenched fists."
"Oh no, I promise he's alive for now. I just wanted him to be here when I made you the offer, and, well, he started complaining - you know what he's like. He's basically asleep."
"Wake him up then."
"If you'll hear me out."
She gritted her teeth for a moment, and forced herself to relax. "What offer?"
"Simple - join me and my friends. I know the LSH hasn't been treating you right. Lots of potato peeling, yes? Join us and show them what you're made of."
--------------------------
Subjectively, it took just over an hour before Irma found the first direct line to the cause of it all - a black wire, standing out from the flesh-like surroundings, which was thin and turned to goo as she tried to touch it. She quickly followed it through four levels, trying not to damage anything as she went, as it got thicker and other lines branched out from it, until it itself joined a larger trunk. Then she saw it.
To her mind's eye, it looked like a plasma ball in the negative, black bolts reaching out, then firming into huge trunklines, carrying signals to and from every part of Rachel's mind, forcing her to act against her will. A cancer that had to be cut out.
Irma formed "armour" around herself, and reached out with a sword of light, aiming to cut one of the trunk lines near the source and isolate the core, when a black bolt suddenly reached out and enveloped her. She wrestled with it, trying to hurt it, trying to break free; but it grew over her, enclosing her, isolating her...
As it closed in, her armour evaporated just before the blackness became total, she heard four words whisper in her head: "I am your Master."
Then all was silence.
*********************
"Join you?" Just one rope holding Garth up "Who's this 'us'?" Could zap it, but he'd fall and I couldn't carry him out "And what do you do?" Fifty-fifty at best in a straight fight with Mark, don't know what he's been up to, or what he's done to Garth.
"See, I'm not allowed to tell you most of that just now, not with twinny here. I got permission to make the offer, just to you, 'cause we know you don't like the Legion much. You got used to the nicer things while with the Workforce, didnya. You can have whatever you want, and no posing for the cameras to wreck it all."
Ella thought she heard something move in the background, but didn't dare take her eyes off Mark. Is he serious? He really thinks I'd run off with him like this? "And what happens to Garth?"
"Oh, he gets mailed back to the Legion, fully intact and breathing, to tell him you said bye-bye."
"And if I said no?" He really IS serious, isn't he? What the hell's happened to him - he was never quite right, but not like this.
"Dunno. Why, is that the sort of thing you're likely to say?"
Spark looked into her older brother's eyes. Her older brother's increasingly deranged eyes. I say yes, I can't trust him to return Garth safely and I drop myself in a world of crap. I say no, I have to fight my way out of here, with Garth. I gave the latter fifty-fifty, I don't give the former odds THAT good. I'm an idiot to come without backup. "Probably."
"Oh well." He turned to face Garth. Showing his back to her.
What the..., she wondered, until she felt something touch the back of her neck, putting a huge jolt of electricity through her. Enough to overload even her nervous system.
She fell forward, flat on her face. That was less worrying for her, though, than the fact that she couldn't move. She could feel the ground where she'd landed, she could see the floor underneath her, could hear footsteps and her lungs kept sucking air - but as for conscious movement, she couldn't even blink.
--------------------------
Groggily, Irma's eyes opened and she blinked at the light. Suddenly, she blinked even more as a small, bright light was shone in each eye in turn.
"Quickly, what's your name?"
"Irma Ardeen. Tela."
"Who's president?"
"Lex Luthor."
"What's your favourite colour?"
"Pink."
"She seems fine for now. I'll tell Dr. Llewellyn she's awake." The nurse walked off.
"How do you feel?" Trinity's voice came over and she saw her (one of her) and Nura standing to the right of her bed, looking worried.
"Dizzy. How long since I went in?"
"Less than five minutes, and you've been out for most of that."
"That all? It felt like..." She shook her head, and realised something. "My head feels really quiet."
"My fault." She turned her head and saw Moonstar standing at the foot of the bed with Shikari. "Dreamer came rushing in screaming about the link going wrong a few seconds before I felt the feedback, and I stunned you both with a couple of arrows before it got any worse. Your powers should come back in a few hours."
"There's something else too. My shoulder feels itchy."
Irma pulled her costume down over her right shoulder. Dani gasped as she realised what it meant, while the others looked on in shock.
A pink skinsuit was growing over the shoulder.
To be continued
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
"Back in our first session, you were talking about Mark, your older brother, calling him a 'bad apple', a 'black sheep' and nearly something stronger. What makes him that way to you - is it personal, the fact that he stole from you? That he caused problems in your family? Shame on your family?"
Ella frowned and leaned back. "All of them, I suppose. I think the thing that comes to mind the most is how... self-centred he was. He didn't care what he did, or who he hurt, as long as it helped him." She sighed, then came back in a strong voice, "The only person Mark could ever care about... is Mark."
Lords & Masters Part 2: Lightning Lords
Now:
Spark was wheeled through the ER on a trolley, having been dumped outside in a bag by Mark and his accomplice, medical people barking things above her and asking her questions she couldn't respond to. Fully conscious, she couldn't make even the slightest movement - not the blink of an eye, nor the twitch of a finger.
She wanted to panic, but her heart rate wouldn't co-operate and speed up.
--------------------------
On seeing her shoulder, Irma began to panic, and Dreamer and Trinity rushed forward to comfort her. Dani and Shikari, meanwhile, looked at each other, then backed away to let Tela's friends calm her.
"What now?" Shikari asked, once they were out of sight.
Dani thought for a moment. "There's nothing we can do for Tela right now. The doctor should be finished with Rachel, so let's check on her."
*********************
Spark had lain on a trolley, left mostly alone in a side-room bar a heart monitor and the occasional check on her vital signs, for an hour. She wondered if anyone would even notice she was alive - meaning conscious - or would they just think she was a vegetable and leave her to rot. Also, how long bed sores took to form.
Eventually, raised voices came through the corridor toward her, one of which she recognised even before the door opened and she could discern the words...
"...and she should hear this anyway," Quentin's voice said loud and clear.
"How can you know she's even able to hear you at all?" A female voice, deep but fairly young. "She didn't respond even to simple things like the pupil dilation test at her observations. That means she's--"
"I know what you're going to say Dr. Reyes, and no it doesn't. Her medical records for the past five years are very spotty, yes? It's because her biology is highly classified."
"Why the HELL would they classify someone's medical records?! That makes no sense - she's a human being, she deserves the right to medical treatment!"
"Two reasons - the first of which would get me locked in a small room for a very long time for mentioning. The other is that while she's a human being, she's very arguably not human. Her nervous system is almost entirely different from a standard human nervous system to carry on functioning despite the huge electrical loads her body carries. And it's been sent into an infinite feedback loop, which is why she's paralysed like this."
"Wait, why--"
"Again, I'm not allowed to go into details, but suffice to say her biology is more different from the average human being than that average human's is from a chimpanzee. Her whole body is now built around generating and directing electricity, and the upshot is that Ella Raines is no more a 'normal' human than me. Or you."
To that, the doctor said something very low and angry-sounding that Ella couldn't catch.
"I've seen a list of every identified metahuman in the USA, and I have an excellent memory. You're on it."
"So you're intending to blackmail me then."
He sighed, loudly, "No, I have no intention of blackmailing you in ANY sense of the word. We're on the clock, I need your help, and I felt it would save a lot of tedious denials - I don't know exactly how long she's been in this state, but she has just short of 19 hours from when this started until her biology breaks down and she either turns into a bomb or quietly twitches and expires, and lesser damage may happen before that point."
"But--"
"If it helps, I swear that whatever happens, I won't breathe a word about your forcefield to any of your colleagues. And unless I've been fed complete nonsense, there won't be any danger to you..."
Ella began to tune out as the doctor replied again, and it went back and forth. Even hearing that what Dox had planned was going to burn her and hurt more didn't stop her wanting to yell "I DON'T CARE, JUST DO IT ALREADY". And then Dox tacked on to the end of one reply...
"...and Ella, I'm ready to do this whenever the doctor here is - I need her approval for this, not to mention her active help."
"And *I* need to be sure this won't kill her first. Why are you addressing her all of a sudden?"
"I told you, she can hear every word we say. And, knowing her, she hit the 'I don't care, just do it already' stage within the last minute."
B'stard, Ella thought.
--------------------------
As it turned out, Dr. Llewellyn wasn't quite finished with Rachel when Moonstar & Shikari reached the small examination room, so they had to wait several minutes before he emerged.
"Well?", Dani demanded.
"Physically, she's in perfect health as far as I can tell. I'm not equipped to examine the 'psychic' side of things."
"What about the 'skinsuit' she mentioned?"
"It doesn't seem to impede her in any way - it's even porous to sweat. One odd thing though, when I tried to cut through it--"
"You couldn't?"
"No, the scalpel went through it easily enough, for all the difference it made - it was like trying to cut water; I couldn't even prise it open enough for a proper look underneath, let alone take a sample."
"Can we see her?"
"Only if you promise not to make mental contact. After this business with Ardeen, a strict 'psychic' quarantine seems to be called for, and I'll enforce a physical quarantine if need be."
Shikari cut in - "But once her power returns from Danielle's arrow, she will not be able to--"
"Regardless, I don't need any more patients! Has Ardeen manifested any signs of this girl's illness?"
Reluctantly, they admitted it was so.
"Then the order stands, and after I see Ardeen, I may decide a physical quarantine is called for after all. For now, I'll allow you to see her for a short time."
"Fine." Dani said. "Then if you'll excuse us..." she squeezed past the doctor pointedly, and he quickly stepped out of the way as Shikari followed.
*********************
"Look," Dox, visibly annoyed, pulled a pair of the most ridiculous-looking glasses either Ella or the Doctor had ever seen out of his bag. With bits bolted on at random all over the place, they looked like a bad B-movie prop. He held them up to his face for a moment to glance at Ella, as if to check something, then turned around to Dr Reyes, beginning to pull them off - only to suddenly clasp them back up as he caught sight of the doctor through them. "Wow." He mused quietly, then said something that sounded like "Iceilahcoyaimtix hlissesobaqatmsuo Rcadprilsapeitd bterdsoee. Iueacmltlrdcospecoehoabl Imgtbalto-"
"Uh..." Dr. Reyes was beginning to get uncomfortable with being stared at.
Quentin shook his head and took the glasses away from his eyes. "Sorry, got distracted. Your forcefield is-- anyway, take a look at Spark through these."
Dr Reyes, visibly sceptical, put them on her face and immediately went "woah".
"Don't get distracted by your forcefield - and yes, I know it's easy - look past it onto Spark. All that white should be a dull blue when she's just lying down, and her electrocore shouldn't be anywhere near that obvious. In simple terms, she's overloading, and we need to deliver a short, sharp shock to break her out of it."
"Uh..." the doctor pulled the glasses from her face, "why didn't you just show me that to start with?"
"Technically, they don't exist," he took them from her hand and stowed them back in his bag. "It's a long story,"
"Let me guess, classified?"
"Not exactl- anyway, no more distractions. We need to move her to a bare room - preferably in a basement or sub-basement."
--------------------------
Dreamer came back in and shoved a cup of soup into Irma's hands. "You have to keep your strength up if you want to beat this."
Although Tela had calmed down somewhat - compared to when she had first seen her shoulder, at least - eating was still the last thing she wanted to do. Rather than offend her best friend though, who as a precognitive might even Have Meant Something by it, she sipped reluctantly at the lentil broth while Nura, frowning, sat down beside Trinity once more.
They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, both staring at Irma on her sickbay bed as she continued to half-heartedly take some soup, while the pink kept slowly spreading down onto her hand.
"Come on Irma--" Trinity said, plaintively "--at least finish the soup. You have to keep fighting."
In response, Tela boggled at Lorna and unconsciously put the soup down.
"You can't give into despair."
Irma kept boggling at Lorna, and found her voice "I've been inside your head, remember? You're not really one to talk about 'not despairing'."
Trinity blushed and split into three, but T-Purple kept up the attack, "So? When'd you ever give up? Did you give up after that thing with Brainy?"
"SISTER!" T-Orange's volume was just that bit too loud and everyone in the room looked at them for a moment, before resuming their business.
Dreamer was intrigued, "What thing with Dox?"
"I don't know if I want to tell..."
"You tell her or I will," T-Purple folded her arms and looked Tela square in the eye. Even without access to her powers, Irma realised she wasn't bluffing.
"There's not much to tell... honestly..."
Dreamer cocked an eyebrow. "Spill."
Tela looked at her friends. T-Purple was looking at her with a determined expression, Dreamer with a curious look, and T-Neutral had taken her orange self out of the room after she shouted at Purple, depriving her of any allies. She was cornered. "I got stuck in Quentin's head for a few hours one day, that's all."
"That's all? I didn't even know it was possible."
Irma started going red, "I got lost. He wanted me to look for any booby-traps STAR might have left behind, but his brain is... different. Before I knew what was happening, I didn't know where to turn, and eventually he had to push me out. And that really. Is. All."
"You must surely have seen something interesting in there?"
"It's big - I was in an empty bit..." Irma decided to change the subject quickly, "Where IS he anyway?" She shivered - unconsciously scratching at the skinsuited area, which had finished with her left arm and was now encroaching onto her torso, and was speeding up in the process. "Surely if there's anyone here who can do anything..."
Trinity-Purple scoffed. "I don't know. My sisters just checked a few minutes ago - he went out a couple of hours ago, saying something about an emergency. Didn't leave a message saying what or where he'd be, and his phone's switched off. Typical Brainy, putting his experiments over people."
*********************
With Dr. Reyes finally on-side, things moved relatively quickly in the hospital, and an old, small storeroom, with a concrete floor and metal door, was found and cleared in the basement relatively quickly, and the electrical sockets covered up at Dox's insistence.
"What now?" Ella heard Dr. Reyes' voice ask as her trolley was wheeled in.
"We need to get her onto the floor - the trolley has to go too. Give me a hand." Ella didn't care about anything except moving again any more - she'd have quite happy been laid over hot coals if it meant she could jump up from it.
"And now? How do you plan to give her this 'short, sharp shock'? Plug her into the mains?"
"Obviously not - 110 volts isn't nearly enough p.d., and the current would be too high. This should basically do the trick, though." He pulled a taser out of his bag.
"Seriously?"
"Absolutely - it isn't quite ideal, but there wasn't any time to build something, so I grabbed this. Anyway, once you ac-"
"Wait, you want ME to-"
"Of course. I said I needed your help. Why do you think I requested a junior doctor I'd never met by name? There's a good chance this could get dangerous - not to Ella, anything that gets near her won't get to touch her before its vaporised - but to anything else in the room. That's why I wanted a room that could be cleared."
"And if I'm holding that thing, won't it be INSIDE my forcefield if it explodes?"
"Chances are the wires will melt-" he cut off her objections "-before it gets to that point, but just in case, use these to press the button." He pulled a pair of long tongs, the handles wrapped crudely but completely in electrical insulating tape, from his bag and held them out to her.
"Now I know you're taking the piss." She sighed and muttered something under her breath before taking the tongs and taser. "Fine, let's do this before I see sense. What, do I just fire it at her? Using these?"
"No, the wires need to be placed fairly precisely. I'll take care of that." Ella felt him poke a wire through her costume near her right collarbone, and the other near her right hipbone. "Now good luck." He vanished from Ella's site, and the door closed seconds later.
Doctor Reyes sighed, placed the taser on the floor, and clamped the trigger with the tongs. She whispered, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. Amen." and squeezed tight.
--------------------------
A nurse was taking notes on a sheet at the foot of the trolley Rachel was lying on as they entered, but backed off into a corner upon seeing them, without leaving the room.
"How are you?" Dani asked as Rachel listlessly rolled her head in their direction.
"Weak. And the doctor didn't tell me anything - obviously you can see the real me, but my powers don't seem to be working for OR against me right now, so that doesn't tell me much. What happened?"
They quickly explained what had happened.
"Great. So not only am I going back to school tomorrow, I'm going to have a new classmate in the person I thought could help me. Any good news?"
"No other news at all. Which is why we need you to tell us anything while you still can - the thing must be dormant as long as your powers are out, does that let you remember anything?"
Rachel almost protested, but instead just sighed and shut her eyes, trying to think back to that blasted night a year before. What had happened? She'd been at that part, when... what, she'd seen or heard something...? "Fire..."
"What about fire?"
"I got a really strong telepathic flash of a fire, or of fire, or something like that. It distracted me, and I just knew I couldn't do anything else until I knew what it was."
"And it was...?"
She screwed her eyes tighter. "I don't know - I remember the flash so clearly now, but it was just images. Fire, and plummeting towards water, and coming up for air. But it wasn't the flash itself that pulled me, it was the thought that there was someone else like me out there, someone SENDING this, and I knew I was the only one anywhere close to me receiving it. So I had to find out..."
"Then?"
Rachel was silent for nearly a full minute. "Nothing new. I found the guy who'd sent the flash. I can't remember anything about him though, and I can't remember anything at all beyond leaving the party with him. I must have been mindwiped."
Dani looked at Shikari, who spoke, "Do you remember where the party was where you felt this... flash?"
"Just the ESU Student Union. Can you find it?"
Shikari smiled, "I can find any path."
*********************
Even through the metal door, the flash was blinding. Dox, fearful he'd miscalculated, rushed in - but gave a sigh of relief when there were no charred corpses there. Dr. Reyes looked dazed, true, and Spark was still lying down, but they were both breathing.
He knelt down beside Spark and grabbed her hand. "Ella, can you hear me?" Dox asked loudly. ("I'm fine, thanks for asking", the doctor muttered in the background)
"...Mark..." she whispered. He breathed another sigh of relief at her movement, however slight.
"No, not Mark, Quentin, do y--"
Her voice got a bit louder "...no, not that... Mark did this... has Garth same way... threatened to kill him if I didn't come alone..."
"Tell me where, and I'll get help to save Livewire. You're going to be too weak to do anything for a while after that."
Ella's eyes flashed open with a start, and she struggled to get up. Dox backed off, but Dr. Reyes came over and held her down. "You heard him. You're going to need to stay in medical care at least overnight for observation."
Ella tried to push herself up one more time, but gave up and relaxed. Her eyes shut for a moment, then opened again. "Fine, fine," she said in a low but clear voice. "I'd better transfer to the Legion's medical bay then."
Dr. Reyes put on a 'bedside manner' smile and stood up. "Understandable. I'll go and arrange the paperwork, and get you back on a trolley in the meantime." She left the room, and moments later two orderlies came in with a trolley-bed and lifted her back up onto it. As it was wheeled out of the room, she stared very hard at Dox, who looked away. He knew exactly what she was thinking. And that there was no way in hell he would agree to it.
--------------------------
After they left Rachel's room, Dani & Shikari checked on Tela and found she'd been sedated. Going outside, things seemed to be in some disarray - besides the troubles they'd brought with them, there was talk about a couple of Legionnaires disappearing. Deciding they weren't going to get anywhere talking to anyone on the team, they headed to the rec room to find Tikhik.
*********************
"How the hell did you talk me into agreeing to this..." Dox muttered as his & Ella's cab pulled up outside "The Pier". He paid, and helped her out - she could walk, but was still unsteady on her feet.
"Because you know I'm right. Send cops in, and they'll be probably be dead in minutes, and Garth won't get saved. And Garth would be dead by the time the Legion gets the okay, if they even do."
"And there's almost a two-in-five chance that trying to use the barely tested suit in your condition will kill YOU. You should be in bed, resting."
"You agreed to let me, so stop trying to welch out now Q."
"I was already breaking ranks by intercepting the call that you were in hospital to start with." He punched in the eight-digit door code to the door.
"And the last thing you like to do is follow orders, so quit complaining!"
--------------------------
"Why?"
Dani shifted slightly uncomfortably in her seat at Tikhik's blunt question, so it was Shikari who replied, "Because if we don't, Rachel and Tela will never live normally. There has to be someone to work to free them."
"And there's a whole Legion here to do the job. Shouldn't we be getting back and doing OUR job, to teach the emergents NOT to be brainwashing monsters?"
Dani found her voice, "Rachel's technically an emergent, and it's in our job description to locate and, if necessary, free emergents when it comes down to it. The Legion's mandate is a lot more limited--"
"And in the meantime, what about our existing students? Weren't you complaining about all of this this morning being a distraction that'll mean the initial assessments have to run on beyond Monday?"
"I thought it'd be a waste of time--"
"And now it's fun? A Legionnaire and a technical emergent in trouble, and only you to save them?"
Dani didn't like the way this conversation was heading, and decided to cut him off, "Look, if you don't want to do this, I won't try to force you. Indeed, you can complain to Mr. Jones if you think we're so far outside our remit." Shikari stifled a giggle at this point, but, staring each other down, neither of the other two noticed. "But me & Shikari are going to at least locate the source of the problem, and with all the time you apparently spent trying to rehabilitate Nori, even taking time away from your big Mission of Vengeance, I'd think you wouldn't want something like this going on. But while, ultimately, it would speed things up to teleport around, we can manage if you won't help." She started walking away, and Shikari followed.
Tikhik gritted his beak for a minute. This was ridiculous. Of course he didn't like this sort of thing going on, but if he wanted to jump into quixotic "missions" he'd have joined the Legion. If his fellow teachers wanted to be Legionnaire-wannabes, he couldn't stop them. And it's not as if he'd try anyway - what had apparently been done was disgusting. Forcing people to live out lives they never wanted, in the appearance of forms they hated...
He looked down at himself.
He muttered a word in Russian.
He looked over his shoulder. Moonstar & Lonestar were both still walking, but still in sight.
He muttered another word in Russian.
"Fine," he yelled. "Wait a minute." He opened a gate to catch up.
*********************
Ella relaxed into the harness as Quentin wired her up again. Her powers were working fine - barring maybe some very fine control issues she wouldn't have admitted to - but moving around was a strain. The suit took care of that - all the control functions were based on small twitches and a basic EEG, and she'd already proven she could work that.
"Weak"? Hah - she'd show Mark, Dox, Garth and anyone else who called her 'weak'.
Quentin climbed down, pulled the ladder away and nodded reluctantly. She threw a mental switch in return, and the bulb in front of her started to glow...
--------------------------
Dani, Shikari and Tikhik looked through a skylight at their target, apparently calmly living in a penthouse. Between Kari and Tik's powers, finding their quarry hadn't taken long.
"Danielle, there are spores coming off of him." Shikari observed.
"Those are what he's using to control people?"
"I think so, in part. We must not allow them to flow toward us. We need control of the air."
"No."
"I had not expla--"
"You were going to suggest getting Sofia. No. I'm not putting her at risk for this."
"What then?"
"We just have to stay well away. You pick a spot upwind that gives me a clear shot, Tikhik drops me there, and I put an arrow in his head. He shuts down, we get him."
"Wait," Tikhik objected, "Are you planning to take him on by yourself?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
This time, Dani didn't even blink at the blunt question. "If he gets me, you're free to go and bring every Legionnaire you can cajole, coerce and conscript down on him." She paused for effect. "IF. He won't. I'm ready for him."
*********************
THIS time, Ella got more than the odd sideways glance on approaching the warehouse. Driving up in a skeletal sledge-car-thing will do that, she supposed, as she transformed it to robot mode. Despite staring, no-one approached.
"Q, can you hear me?" she whispered into the battlesuit's radio.
"Just about - there's a lot of interference. I'm in position." He still sounds scared. Spark knew that he was worried about her, not himself - he'd given her a 38% chance of outright death for trying to use the suit in anger in her "weakened condition", after all. She wasn't worried. She'd just experienced something that HAD to be worse than dying, after all, and her twin brother was still presumably in that same "locked-in" state. Mark was going to have to pay.
First, though, she had to get in. With the suit, she couldn't fit through the hole she originally entered by.
Shortest distance between two points is a straight line. With that thought, she walked up to the main door, rusted and rotted as it was, and tore it down to reveal the concrete inner structure.
The door of which was open.
--------------------------
Really, for all the trouble the bastard had caused, defeating him could hardly have been simpler in the end. As Moonstar had planned, Shikari and Tikhik guided & moved her so that he had his back to her, and from there only one psi-arrow to his head knocked him stone cold. Game over for him.
As he fell from Dani's arrow, however, suddenly a pile of black goo rose from his body and launched itself straight at her.
That was the last thing Dani saw before it engulfed her.
*********************
Very carefully, Spark moved forward, looking out for any ambush as she walked the suit slowly down the corridor, until she reached the room where Mark sat, watching the immobile Garth, a smirk on his face.
She coughed.
"Ella?" His face was suddenly a mask of shock.
"Why so surprised - you left the door open. Didn't you want visitors?"
"Wha--? I didn't..."
"I did." Behind her.
She spun around to see another Mark, with a colder, more controlled expression on his face. His hair was white with a red streak rather than the other way around, but in every other way he was the twin of the man standing near Garth.
Her mouth must have been hanging open, and a cold grin came onto his face. "I saw you coming. I always thought we were making a big mistake trying to recruit you, let alone sending you to the hospital when you said 'no', but I gave in. This time, we play by MY rules."
posted
Okay, firstly, sorry for the delay. As for the Spark plot, I had to split part 3 after it ran too far over-length, and splitting by plot-thread was easier for several reasons than trying to find a break point. Part 3.2 will be coming along relatively soon, and shouldn't be quite as long as this
Sofia Mantega was sitting in the cafeteria, quietly talking to her roommate Ming Sul, when a loud female voice came rumbling in, followed by the sound of popping.
"...and it's ridiculous. I was sat there for THREE HOURS waiting for Moonstar, only to get told she was off gallivanting on some excuse for a day off. Of all the stupid..."
"Sofia, don't." Sofia had begun to leap up at the insult to her adoptive mother, but Sul's grip on her arm was too tight for her to wiggle out of, and she reluctantly fell back into her chair.
"Why should I just let her speak of Dani that way? She--"
"We know. Just ignore her - most people do anyway outside her little clique. Calling attention to her won't stop her making an idiot of herself. Look - even her pals realise it." A green girl was, indeed, plaintively asking 'Serena' to calm down a bit to little effect.
"Why does Tanya spend time with her?"
"Who knows? It isn't any of our business. Where is Dani, anyway?"
"She was meant to be investigating a possible student earlier today. Since she was meant to be back by this afternoon, I'm a little worried." There was a crash in the background, followed by a shriek and the popping sound escalating to sound like a parade of drummers. Sul looked around to see that the self-styled 'Comet Queen's' drink had spilled all over her. Sofia didn't even try to suppress her broad grin as the cleanup started, but turned back to Sul after a minute as her face began to lengthen, her air-manipulating powers damping the sound. "After all, she was complaining that it would be a waste of time and effort."
"Don't worry; I'm sure she'll be fine. Dani can handle herself."
Lords & Masters Part 3.1: Symbiotically Assured Destruction
Danielle Moonstar woke up, and wasn't sure she had. She couldn't feel anything - not like she was floating, but like she wasn't anything, just consciousness without a shell. Astral plane, she realised, before wondering what the black stuff was, and how it knocked her out her body.
--------------------------
Back in the physical world, Shikari and Tikhik Miraz rushed to her side after she had been enveloped by the ink-like... gloop... that had come out of the man she zapped (he still lay unmoving and unmoved, but neither was especially concerned about him at that moment). The ink itself had vanished as it touched her, but as Shikari reached out to check her breathing, Tik stopped her with an outstretched claw. "Don't touch her - that's probably got everything to do with the 'skinsuits' on Rachel and Ardeen. You won't help her by ending up like them."
"Then what do you propos-" Shikari wasn't cut off, voice just became unimportant as every sense and instinct she had suddenly screamed at her to MOVE. Instead, she had armoured, grabbed Tikhik and taken off in the space of one fluid, infinite second.
"I hate to say 'I told you so'..."
"Not true. And that was not what you warned of."
"That" was a... limb..., of darkest black, which had outstretched from Dani's body and nearly crushed the two insectoid Academy instructors, and now retreated to cover her body in a sheath, momentarily tight-fitting but growing every second. Within moments, the shape of Dani's body was lost completely. A few moments later, and it didn't even resemble a human.
A few more moments later, and it began to attack.
Shikari dove and weaved to avoid the possessed Dani, cursing the time she'd spent living 'quietly' that meant her wing muscles were starting to burn from the sudden exertion. She'd already had to drop Tikhik to stay ahead, knowing he could teleport to safety, but even at that the thing was closing in. She focused herself, looking for the way to a solution, when one suddenly occurred to her. She took a moment to stare at Tikhik and made several gestures, trying to convey the need for some specific teleporting.
====
Meanwhile, as it exerted, Dani was beginning to get glimpses of the real world again...
-------
"Hold fast, small legion" Shikari shouted, diving toward Tikhik. Tik looked at her like she was nuts, but tried to follow the advice.
====
Dani's thoughts raced - Puppeteering my body, but can't control my thoughts. Trying to keep me dormant, or at least cut off as a result. Struggling. Not talking to me. Did the other guy manage to hold it back, control it? How?
-------
"NOW," Shikari yelled. Tikhik opened a portal, but Shikari swooped away from it at the last moment, and it fell though the portal... and then fell through it again, and again, and again - a matching portal had opened immediately above the first, and it was now falling through what might as well have been infinity, accelerating to terminal velocity, trapped.
"What now?" Tikhik asked. "Won't this kill Moonstar as well?"
The red dot flared brightly on Shikari's armoured mask. "Wait."
====
'Inside,' Dani was closed off to what was happening in the real world once again, but her mind was still racing. Telepathy. He sent some sort of warning, which Rachel received but misinterpreted. So he was a telepath. I'm not, but my brain generates similar energies to make my arrows. If I can just access my powers for a moment...
-------
One word passed Shikari's lips - "Now."
Tikhik shut the portal. There was a huge squelching noise, mixed with the wood from the floor splintering as the "ink" hit hard, taking the blow, but revealing Dani inside briefly.
====
Dani didn't know what caused it, but the blackness around her receded with its' shock and injury, and she could suddenly 'reach' her powers. Not asking why, she started to form an arrow before realising there was nowhere to aim it. Okay, not an arrow, Bomb, think bomb.
"Outside," the "ink" started to recover from the impact, to reenvelop Dani...
"Inside," a glowing sphere was growing "in front of" Dani, even as she felt the thing's grip tighten around her again. Maximum effect... got to build power, wait until the last second...
Shikari saw Dani's increasingly-hidden body start to glow dully, and began to walk over to her, when a "limb" suddenly shot out at her - but just as it curled around Shikari's waist, suddenly Dani's eyes flashed bright purple, and all the black goo retracted back into her body, leaving her lying there on the ground, herself again.
"Danielle?"
"Yeah, it's me. I think I knocked it out for now." She sat for a moment, then looked up. "Where'd you put the guy?"
--------------------------
Dani gritted her teeth slightly as she walked over to the man on the floor, still lying where he was felled by her arrow. "Wake him", she said, her eyes flicking slightly toward Tikhik as she spoke.
For once Tik didn't retort, and the man fell through a green portal which swiftly appeared beneath him; only to return a moment later through a separate portal from waist height, soaking wet and accompanied by a torrent of water. As the portals vanished, he sat up and coughed.
"How did you control it?" Moonstar's voice cut low and sharp, with urgency behind it.
Still dazed, he looked at her a moment, then felt around himself, as if checking that his pockets hadn't been picked. "It's gone," he whispered, before crying out loudly in joy, "IT'S GONE!!!!"
A scowl came across Dani's face, and she reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, lifting him clean off the ground one-handed without even realising the strength needed to do so. "How. Did You. Control. It?" Her companions shot worried glances at each other, knowing she shouldn't be so strong, but decided not to intervene yet.
The man stared into her eyes, a crazed look about him still. "You don't." His voice was low, but gasping and hollow rather than sharp and urgent. "The symbiote will take you over, and it will destroy you." He made a visible effort to pull himself together, staring with new purpose down Danielle's arm. "And You Will Put Me Down."
This just made Dani laugh - a deep, mirthless, gurgling sound from the back of her throat - and she lifted him slightly higher as her eyes began to glow. "I turned your power off. That isn't going to work. Now TELL ME." At that, she shook him slightly, droplets of water flying from him in all directions.
Any sense of purpose was gone from his eyes as he answered in a choking voice. "You don't. I meant what I said."
Shikari came over, and put light pressure on Moonstar's arm. "Danielle, he tells the truth."
The glow in Dani's eyes faded, and she roughly slung the man back to the ground. "Fine." She shook her head for a moment before looking up. "Tikhik, can you make it to Ryker's and back? They've got the nearest super-cells I can think of."
"I can, but shouldn't--"
"There aren't any police stations with power dampers. Ryker's have a few cops on duty just in case someone needs dropped off."
"Won't they need a statement, at least?"
"Tell them quickly what happened, that it's a code L101 - again, Ell-One-Oh-One - and that I'll be along later to give my statement." Unconsciously, she put her hand to the right side of her head. "And hurry back."
--------------------------
"I'm sorry, but you're going to have to leave her for now."
The nurse's voice cut into Trinity-Purple and Dreamer's thoughts as they looked at Tela, the pink suit covering ever more of her body as she visibly struggled to stay awake. T-Purple opened her mouth to object, but the nurse cut her off - "No arguments, she needs her rest."
"But if she falls asleep--"
"She's not going to be any better staying awake right now. Come on, leave her be."
T-Purple was going to argue, but Dreamer tugged her sleeve to avoid a loud scene at Irma's bedside, and she sighed. "All right, just give me a moment then."
The nurse stepped back a bit, but stayed watching to make sure they went. T-Purple wanted to say something about how things were reversed from when she'd needed Irma's help, but she couldn't do anything - but her other selves were calling in her head to let Irma rest, and she just sighed and vanished, merging with them elsewhere.
As Dreamer quietly left as well, Irma's thoughts were turned inward; trying to fight off a "foe" that wasn't sentient, that she couldn't get a grip of; while any stray thoughts ran to Garth, wishing he could be there...
--------------------------
As soon as Tikhik vanished with the symbiote's former host, Dani collapsed to the floor, clutching her head.
"Danielle?" Shikari crouched down beside her, a worried look on her face.
Again, Dani's eyes flashed, and she sat down to face Shikari, breathless, her head downcast. "I keep pushing it back - but every time it comes back stronger, and it takes more effort to quieten it back down again." She paused for a moment and looked up, "I was worried I wouldn't be able to keep it contained when I slept - at this rate, I won't make it THAT long."
"What can you do?"
"I don't know... maybe if I put everything I have into one burst, I could drive it out like I did with the guy - but then it'd just grab someone use someone else as a host. If I was going to try that, I'd need someone who could contain it properly."
The red spot appeared over Shikari's face, glowing brightly for a moment. Then she powered down again, and thought for a moment. "Telepathy."
Dani made a querying noise.
"The symbiote is vulnerable to telepathic energies - that's why you can 'quieten it down' with your bursts of power, but not truly prevent it from taking control, correct?"
"Yes, but being full telepaths didn't stop Rachel or Irma being overtaken..."
"Rachel said she did not realise what she was dealing with. And neither Irma nor she currently has a full symbiote, do they?"
"Well, no, but..."
"And could you shut down a computer with one of your arrows?"
"No..."
"Well, their skinsuits are more like one of your computers than a living mind."
"That's a lot of assumptions, Kari."
"For you. I just know we have to go to the Legion's sickbay immediately, and knowing the rest of what we know, I expect to see The Path leading straight to one or the other."
Dani stayed quiet a moment, until a bolt of pain shot through her head. Another burst of power managed to force the symbiote back into retreat once more, but she knew she was losing the war for control.
With the first signs of a green portal appeared in mid-air, she made her decision. "Fine, if you're sure. When you are, I haven't known you to be wrong yet. But don't tell Tikhik. And don't make this the first time."
--------------------------
Tikhik landed them in the corridor outside the Legion's sickbay. "Are you going to need me to jump around again in the near future, or can I take a break? It's too late for us to any sort of assessments done today now."
Shikari and Dani glanced at each other, their real job almost forgotten in the stress of the day which had seemed so pointless at first. It was Kari who replied "Stay on-site, please. If we need you, we'll call."
He ground his beak for a moment, muttered "fine, I'll be in the rec room" and headed through a portal, while the other two walked into the small ward.
"Well?" Dani asked, beginning to grow pale.
Shikari powered up and looked at Irma shivering on her bed, then in the other direction. "Rachel."
"You're sure this is the right thing to do?"
"Yes."
Dani looked at Kari, then at Irma; who seemed entirely oblivious to their presence as the pink spread further and further across her body, her friends sent away to give her some rest. "Just... just keep everyone out the room, okay?"
"All right," was Shikari's gentle reply, as Dani walked, slowly for the first three steps before forcing herself into a purposeful stride towards Rachel's room.
When she entered, there was someone else in there. She tried to keep her voice steady as she told the nurse to close the door and seal it up as best she could." The nurse didn't move fast enough, and a bolt of pain through Dani's head reminded her of the urgency of matters. "NOW!" she yelled.
Nervously, the nurse backed out and shut the door, followed by the sound of a key turning in the lock.
As soon as the door was sealed, Dani clutched at her head. The symbiote was rising up and trying to take control once more, more powerfully than ever. She'd hoped to try and explain things to Rachel, but now there was no time - if she waited another round, she didn't know if she'd have enough strength to drive it out.
She muttered "I'm sorry" in the direction of the child she saw on the bed, and turned her power inward. Her eyes immediately started glowing again, and soon her skin began to glow as she generated as much telepathic energy as she could, suffusing her whole body with it, mustering more in one go than she ever had. The symbiote felt the increasing power, and - as Dani had hoped - fled from it in fear of it's life, leaving Danielle's body and heading toward the only other potential host in the room. "Gemma."
Dani stopped glowing and dropped to the floor, exhausted. She hoped she'd done the right thing as she forced her head up to look at Rachel, her "Gemma" avatar dissolving as she was enveloped by the blackness. It was all up to her now...
===============
Rachel fought back the urge to panic as a horribly... familiar...? sensation enveloped her. Dimly, she felt the red skinsuit dissolve, overtaken by the blackness; but just as she registered that her power was hers again, she felt something try to close it off once more and "shoved" to stop that happening.
There was a wince of pain in her head, but not from her, and suddenly her memory block broke, and she remembered the symbiote. Remembered how it had tried to destroy her when it felt a threat from her, and settled ultimately for incapacitating her after a long struggle. Thirteen months of rage boiled up in her soul, and she lashed out at it. In return, it screamed in pain at her, realising how it had been tricked, and wrapped its astral self around hers like a boa constrictor, squeezing tightly. Rachel knew this wasn't like the skinsuit - where the skinsuit had been simple, intractable; this had a mind, a sense of self. Something for her to push against.
--------------------------
"Outside," in the real world, nothing was visible, as not only had the symbiote wrapped itself around Rachel, but Rachel had wrapped a telepathic cocoon around it - locking the two into a deadly, and perhaps fatal embrace - while all the exhausted Dani could do was slump into the seat beside Rachel's bed, praying for the best...
===============
On the astral plane, Rachel and the symbiote screamed and twisted around one another; Rachel matching the symbiote's snake like-form, squeezing it as it was squashing her, determined not to let it beat her a second time.
It responded by turning into a dragonfly and escaping, before turning as a hornet, sting pointed toward her.
She became a turtle in return - the sting breaking on her shell - then went on the offensive as a hunter, firing missiles at it.
Dodging, it dove "underground", popping up beneath her and trying to bite her "legs" off with raptor's teeth.
As a response, Rachel took to the air as a falcon, and dove at it, claws outstretched.
The symbiote replied by becoming a simple spike, which she was forced up to dodge, and then changed to a giant salamander, grabbing her with a long sticky tongue and pulling her toward its' waiting "mouth."
A huge boulder was what it landed, far larger than its mouth, but Rachel's victory was short-lived as it became a giant sheet of paper, trying to envelope her once again, and she was forced to cut her way out as scissors.
And so it continued until Rachel, now in the astral form of a flea, bit at the symbiote's nanny goat and realised they weren't getting anywhere. Neither was landing any meaningful blows (as the symbiote became a fly-swatter and she a razor blade), because they weren't making any meaningful attacks. Astral combat wasn't an equivalent to physical combat, shapeshifting or otherwise (now she was a robot battling a dinosaur), unless one party was hopelessly weaker than the other. It was about undermining the opponent's confidence, weakening their will, and this pseudo-fight (tarantula/pterodactyl) wasn't getting anywhere in that.
Think, she told herself, as her sabre-toothed jaw bit at a triceratops which suddenly became a kangaroo and jumped over her. What would make this thing wince?
And then she remembered the telepathic 'flash' which had stirred her curiosity and started her in this whole mess. "Fire, and plummeting towards water, and coming up for air." was how she'd described it. Now why would that have been sent, she wondered as she formed a giant boot to jump over a shell hurtling toward her. Something by the host, trying to get out?
The thought lodged in her mind through the next series of changes, until it became a lion and she managed to grab it from above as a grizzly bear. In the split second she had while its paws and mouth uselessly pointed away from her, before it became something else, she changed not herself but the scenery, pushing them down a sudden deep, dark tunnel.
It wriggled in her arms, becoming spiked and trying to get out, but she hardened herself and sped their journey. Soon, they were on fire, and the Earth suddenly appeared beneath them, the sea approaching fast.
She felt the waves of panic radiating from the thing, and knew she had her opening. As they sped, it... withered, the flame increasing. She no longer bothered to hold an unusual form, becoming herself again, the flames growing around her causing her no pain. The symbiote, on the other hand, shrank further and further even as it lost any semblance of shape and became merely a pile of dried goo in her hand.
Rachel looked at it, raised her hand to her mouth, and swallowed it whole just before they "hit the water".
Next: She's Electric!
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
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