Still, I'm hoping not to get into too much trouble tonight. I'm still pretty sore from waking up in near-convulsions, and staring at a damn hologram all day isn't good for stiffness.
So, I walk into the bar, noting a few of the "regulars" and the potential trouble-makers. The bartender actually seems glad to see me. After the way last night ended, he probably wasn't expecting to hear any more "very Earth" tales.
"Ah, Earthman! Very good! My vodka to you! Welcome to me!"
Wince.
"Hello, chicala . And thanks, I think."
I toss down the vodka quickly, and a few internal chemical changes make it possible for the juice to relax me somewhat without triggering alarms. Not too much, though. And as annoying as it is to have those safety mechanisms right now, they've saved my life in the past more than enough times to make up for it.
"How taste vodka, Earthman? My special version from in back."
It tastes like he poured a little water in last night's vodka is how it tastes. And this bar doesn't have a "back".
"It's terrible, squid. That's why I drink it. If I wanted vodka that didn't taste like piss, I'd be somewhere else. How about one more, then?"
As I'm savoring the truly obnoxious swill, the bartender prepares to breach a subject which is apparently causing him some distress. Eventually his curiosity overcomes his apprehension. Good, I thought he was a complete sack of shit there for a minute.
"So, Human, what about story for night?"
A smile crosses my face. He really likes hearing that crap. I wonder why?
"Sure. What do you want to hear tonight?"
"You never say of Gliderboy and Aroni. Aronay?"
"Oh, right. I guess that was next. Okay, I'll tell you a little about my friends, and how we all met..."
"Which is not to say that I spent all of my time researching and going to school. I had made a pretty good friend already, named Ryan Evey. Actually, it turned out that he had a different name, but even he didn't know that yet.
"Well, between us we had a lot of engineering knowledge, and we were both pretty interested in non-conventional science, stuff our government wasn't too supportive of. For instance, one big thing was the presence on our planet of aliens, which no one took seriously..."
*chig chig chig*
"Yeah, yeah. You have to remember, dwarf colonies don't find out that they're colonies until the very end of their development phase. As far as we knew, humans were all there were in the universe, and they only lived on Earth. We suspected more, though. And, by an amazing coincidence, we hit pretty close to the truth.
"Eventually, I learned that the word 'coincidence' usually means 'something which actually has a really good reason for occurring, only you just don't understand yet'. Just as I had the occasional strange dream, Evey had a lot of them. Most of what he told me just sounded like nonsense, but every once in a while, there was something that sounded a little too familiar to me. Between our dreams, our strange interests, and our technical abilities, we were able to see the real pattern, eventually. We saw it in news reports, in attitude trends in the population, and in experimental evidence we gathered ourselves.
"And, before too long, we started to find more people like ourselves. The reality was that Evey was drawing people like himself to him, and setting it up so that the timing was just right for us to come into our powers, but to us it looked like more coincidence. We found another guy named Ryan, who also wasn't really named that. At first he had problems with his memory, but eventually we realized that he was just as weird as the rest of us, in his own way. He was training in this bizarre martial arts style which seemed to let him do some very incredible things. His real name was Aranae, and he was interested in the same stuff that we were.
"And, when we were doing research on what was rapidly becoming more than just a weird hobby, we ran into an amazing guy who called himself 'Glitterboy' - we later convinced him to go by 'Sean' - and a girl, named Erin.
"That was the initial nucleus of the team. After time, more and more of us showed up, for various reasons and with various connections to the rest of us and to our plans, but it was a while before we really realized that we had become a 'team'.
I pause here, considering.
"...In fact, it would make a much more interesting story if I told you about that one time that brought us all together for good, and showed us a hint of what was coming.
"We'd been together for over a year, and already we'd gotten into scraps with the sectoids. That was how we met up with Yato Sar, for instance. And, given our obviously anarchistic tendencies, it was easy for the sectoids to push their control over our government, getting other humans to hunt us down. We had guessed that that sort of thing might happen, but not as quickly as it did.
"We were still celebrating our third victory over the sectoids, and decided to stay where we were - Washington, D.C. if that means anything to you - and attend a conference on Ufology the next day. Looking back on it now, it seems like a stupid thing to do, but it was like no one and nothing could stop us. We'd even beaten Mo Shui back into the water in California, and he was supposed to be a god. Actually he'd just gotten tired of fighting 'pathetic worms' or something, but we still counted it as a victory.
"Now, when I say we were attending a conference, I mean those of us who can sit through a lecture where we already know more than most of the speakers. Glitterboy had split about five minutes into the first guy's speech, and taken Deathbringer with him. Bait - that's what we called Erin - had gone with Yato Sar to see the city. So the only ones who actually stayed for the lecture were Harbinger, Amy, Aranae, and me.
"Sometime during the first speaker's talk, Harbinger and Aranae suddenly sat straight up in their chairs simultaneously, and looked at me. I hadn't seen or heard anything, but then I was paying pretty close attention to this blonde chick about two rows in front of me and trying to listen to the speech about 'how great sectoids will be' at the same time, so I figured they just noticed something I should have.
"I looked around and saw nothing unusual. 'What is it?' I asked, confused. 'Are you dipshits playing footsie or something?'
"Aranae said nothing and Harbinger just shook his head, turning to answer a similar question from Amy.
"Once more I scanned the crowd. Dorky guy with glasses on stage. Blonde chick approximately twenty feet that way. Reporters and UFO freaks interspersed among random people like us. Five guys in black suits and sunglasses surrounding the remaining speakers. Hey, those guys...no, I won't question their right to be here if You don't want me to. Nothing new.
"I blinked at that point. Something seemed wrong with that last train of thought, but what was it?
"Harbinger was shaking his head and muttering, and Aranae seemed somewhat distressed. Amy was almost to that point where she stops talking about asses and actually gets worried...No, there's nothing wrong here if You say there isn't.
"Some serious warning signals were going off in my head at this point, but I couldn't tell why. Everything seemed normal. But I was starting to hear a voice in my head growing louder. It seemed related to those strange dreams I'd been having lately. What was it saying? It fascinated me. I had to hear it. I blocked out the world and concentrated on nothing but the noise in my skull.
Foolish Boy! So Easy To Trick You! You Obey So Well!
"And I was thinking to myself, What the hell is going on here? What is this voice? And what do you mean, I obey so well? I don't 'obey' anyone!
"I didn't realize it, but I was getting somewhat angry. Not really furious or anything, just irritated beyond what I rationally should have been feeling at this point. The voice had a profound effect on me, and it knew which buttons to push.
I Hear You, Boy. I Hear You Giving In. You Do It All The Time. 'There's nothing wrong here if You say there isn't.' Weak Boy! I Never Should Have Taught You!
"Her rendition of my thoughts chilled me. Had I really thought that? Apparently so. The fact that I was listening to some woman's voice in my head seemed perfectly rational, but not that I would listen to anyone else. The difference was all in the tone. The one voice was calm and thoughtful, but the woman's voice seemed to feel nothing but disgust for me. The irritating voice she used to mimic mine was that of a whiny child. And I knew that only the mean voice could be the right one, because Mother always said you can't make a sword strong without beating it.
"I never wondered for a second who 'Mother' was. It was time for important things, and I could be whiny and wishy-washy later. It was time for action.
"One more glance at the stage showed me a different view. For one thing, there were about twice as many guys in suits and glasses as I'd previously thought. Way too many for the crowd size. This oddity was emphasized by the fact that they were all staring directly at us, and some were talking into their personal transceiver sets as they did so.
"The other anomaly which had somehow escaped me was the shadowy, distorted image of a figure behind the Men in Black (because that's what they were) and to the right. Even my new, irritated mindset was not enough to allow me to see through the psionic haze surrounding this one, but it was obviously either a sectoid or something just as bad. I could sense that the calm voice was becoming increasingly confused and disturbed, probably because I had begun staring openly at what I was not supposed to be able to see.
"Details like this fluttered through the back of my mind, but they were largely ignored. That was the part of my mind which had been listening to the dirty little sectoid in the first place, and I wasn't interested in what it had to say.
"The important part of my mind was saying, 'What's the fastest way to take these guys out?'. There was no consideration of the crowd around me, or what would happen if I attacked government agents in the heart of DC. I just wanted to break someone. Consideration of innocents was somebody else's job.
"Luckily, 'somebody else' was there, and had observed my mental changes. So, just as I was about to stand up and hurl my metal chair at full strength into the group of agents (having decided this as the most logical choice of opening moves), I felt a restraining hand on my right forearm. I looked up at Aranae, confused, and saw him shake his head slightly.
"I don't know how he always spreads his calm like that, but it worked. We both turned to Evey, and I asked, 'What should we do?'
"Harbinger whispered, 'We don't want to start a fight in here. Let's get outside and work out a plan.'
"I don't know exactly why we both turned to him for our course of action, but it was a behavior which would persist despite all of our common sense (and Glitterboy's nature). Somehow, Evey was just our leader."
Finally, the squid can't take it any more, and he interrupts.
"Wait, wait! Confuse you! Who Harbinger, and who Evey, and..."
"Sorry, I never said I was good at telling stories. Hold on and I'll explain who everyone is as I'm going.
"Although we had obviously already been 'made', we tried to leave as unobtrusively as possible. I cast one wistful glance at the blonde as we 'excuse me'd and 'sorry'd our way out of the conference hall. I didn't need to look to see that most of the agents were following us, and I could feel that the psionic had stopped trying to influence us directly and was simply keeping his shield up.
"He was going to need more than a Jedi mind trick to get out of the way of Eddie if he followed us, was what I was thinking.
"What I wasn't thinking was that it was a ten minute walk back to the car from the crowded area around the hall, and I'd left Eddie there in an attempt to be less obviously violent. It only took this one time to teach me that leaving your weapon anywhere for any reason is a stupid mistake."
Ah, Eddie! I think to myself. Only a baseball bat, but in a way I do miss him. Well, on with the story.
"Just as we got to the corner of the lecture hall, the area opened up to our right a little, and there was an alcove-sort-of-thingy where the building joined up to a smaller complex. This alcove was pretty well shadowed, even at noon.
"I was just trudging along, thinking about kung-fu fighting and blonde chicks, and Evey goes, 'All right, here's what we should do...'
"I never found out whether his plan was any good. Probably not, he's not our best tactician, even though he puts me to shame.
"Just as I looked over at Evey, interrupted in my musings, a powerful humming sound began on my right, like when a big EM generator starts up. This noise was immediately followed by a loud electrical crackle about a foot from my head, and a spray of wet mist on my cheek.
"I turned my head, expecting to see some sort of automatic sprinkler system, and saw the outstretched form of Aranae's wet towel, glowing faintly with psionic force, and sparks cascading out of the air from the laser pulse he had just intercepted on its way to my right temple.
"Everything in the next few seconds took place so slowly I thought I was Glitterboy. I understand now that that's how your first few battles always are, but at the time this was still pretty new to me.
"So, here's the lineup of your heroes in action:
"First was Ryan Norris, whose real name was Aranae. Always prepared for trouble - as he had just demonstrated - and always interested in avoiding loss of life and conflict in general. He was already executing his second action, which was to block two more laser bolts from striking Amy and Evey, while springing up into some acrobatical abstraction and over my head to stand between Amy and our assailants. In addition to his incredible athleticism and alertness, his psionic powers and strange training system allow him to use his towel to protect people, and occasionally to stun his opponents. He also has unusually dexterous feet, and he had left his shoes on the ground as he leapt over Ryan and I, in order to free up his toes for action."
This is getting a little bit cheesy, but the squid is eating it up.
"The second to move was Ryan Evey, whose real name (we had recently learned) was Harbinger. Even though he hadn't really had any training, his raw potential was already beginning to seem frightening in magnitude. Instinctively positioning himself to guard Amy as well, he held his hands together in front of him as though praying. A blade of fire shot out, mimicking the strange sword he normally carried, having left his weapon in the car as well. Apparently Aranae was the only one of us with enough sense to come prepared, but with Harbinger's ability to use some strange power of sorcery from a time long past, he is never truly weaponless. Even today I still don't understand all the implications of his destiny, and neither does he.
"Even Amy acted before I did, although all she did was throw herself on the ground behind Harbinger and start cursing him for getting her into this mess. She didn't have any unusual powers or training at that point, but she became the most powerful of all of us, except maybe for Harbinger.
"And me, slow stupid me, just blinked a few times, and then started frantically looking for any way to get to the few dozen soldiers without getting my ass shot off, since I had no weapon or cover. Still, I wasn't completely helpless, because my cybernetics research had paid off. I was strong enough to pick up a car, and tough enough to get hit by one without getting hurt. Unfortunately, none of that was going to do me any good unless I figured out how to fly in the next few seconds.
"The unthinking urge to destroy had left me as I had left the conference hall, and now I was my usual self, excited and frightened by the idea of fighting, and thinking way too much for my own good.
"If I dove to the ground or ran for cover, it would leave Aranae and Harbinger with no steel body to hide behind. On the other hand, they had already proven more able to deal with lasers than I was, and had left me with no cover, because they considered me able to take care of myself. Common courtesy would suggest I should assume the same for them.
"Now, staying back here I was useless, having no long-range abilities. And, you can't win a battle without attacking at least occasionally, as Jomini said in his Art of War, so I decided to take the fight to the shooters. Somehow.
"This was enough thought to allow them another shot at me, so my planning was interrupted by a graceless dive to the ground which would have hurt someone with no steel under their skin. Bursts of coherent light streamed over my head, to be intercepted by my friends. If I had any gymnastic ability whatsoever, I ought to have been able to keep dodging them all the way back...at least, that's what a comic book hero would have done. Having none of this aforementioned ability, I needed some other plan.
"'Damn!' I remember thinking, 'I'm used to having Glitterboy and the others around to create distractions and cover for me. What we need are some of those Startrek Communicator pins or something...or maybe a really loud noise.'
"At this point I didn't have any built-in voice amplification, so my 80 decibel battle cry wasn't an option. I decided to forget the noise idea until something presented itself.
"Meanwhile, Aranae was doing pretty well blocking all of the laser blasts, and Harbinger had managed to figure out how to make his own. The soldiers were taking cover behind some sort of personal shielding, like those things riot police carry. A few smoking bodies lay stretched out on the grass, and Harbinger was laughing occasionaly in a less-than-stable way, but he was probably just excited...that's what I thought then, anyway.
"Suddenly an idea occurred to me. My weight had been increased to almost 500 pounds, but my strength had increased by a much larger factor. How far could I jump if I used all I had? A quick calculation gave me a vertical of about twenty-five feet, which ought to be more than enough to get to our attackers, when applied in the horizontal direction.
"'Get ready for some Big Red lovin', I yelled, and pushed off from the ground in a low trajectory, tearing a deep rut in the ground and straining the steel cables in my legs to the point at which my biological muscles were forced to help out.
"The next day, I had Aranae explain to me what had happened. You see, there's a difference between raw lifting power, which I had increased many times, and quick springing power, which I had only increased at a level proportional to my weight gain. The important difference is that when you jump, you're using the quick springing power.
"So, the effect of my Herclean effort and mighty battle cry were somewhat spoiled by the fact that I flew about five feet across the grass, and crashed into the lawn again.
"'Oooff' was the intelligent remark that followed my impact.
"Now I had managed to make myself a much more inviting target, and so about a dozen laser pulses converged on my head in the next instant. Rolling out of the way saved me from what probably would have been the end, but I still caught plenty of fire in my left shoulder, which was going to need some repairs.
"Just as I was preparing to either make that last heroic charge, or else curl up into a fetal ball - I don't remember which suicide method sounded better at the time - Harbinger shouted something and tried to break Washington, D.C. in half.
"I'm not sure what he did, but anyone except him who was standing up wasn't anymore. Neither were a couple of buildings and trees. Dust was flying everywhere, car alarms were going off, glass was spraying out of windows, and people were screaming.
"Whatever it was that the psionic was doing to keep our fight from being noticed wasn't working any more, either. People were staring, confused, and milling around in a sheep-like fashion.
"Well, Harbinger had just given me my distraction, as well as my loud noise. I figured I'd better use it before it was wasted.
"I scrambled clumsily to my feet and charged the pile of rising soldiers. The first guy to get up got clotheslined by a steel arm at full speed. I grabbed a couple of shields and started wading through the swarm, blocking and clubbing as needed. I got about three guys this way, and then somebody I thought was down jumped me from behind and put me in a full nelson.
"Now, I may be seriously disadvantaged in long-range combat, but these guys were in my territory now. And, just as a word of advice, don't put someone who can rip your arms off in a full nelson.
"I was irritated at these guys for trying to kill me and my friends, but I was definitely not raging mad. They were just idiots doing their stupid government job without enough sense to question authority. If I had to, I wouldn't regret taking one out, but otherwise I wanted to avoid death when possible.
"So the dork holding on to me just got thrown over my shoulder and into a few of his buddies (along with my shields), and bonked on the head a few times for good measure. I was having a good time now, and I roared, 'Eat it you bitch!'.
"The next guy raised his shield in a pathetic attempt to defend himself. I mean, he didn't even have a decent stance. 'Don't we rate better than these losers yet?' I wondered aloud as I punched through the shield, breaking a few of his ribs and sending him flying a good ten feet.
"His friend, apparently the brains of the group, had actually recovered a gun and was only a few miliseconds away from using it. I grabbed the nearest object to cover myself with, and the laser blast splintered harmlessly against...Some guy, I realized too late. Too bad for you, chump. At least his body was still good for something, namely removing the guy with the gun from his feet and from the battle simultaneously.
"Where was the next contestant? I saw I would have to clear some ground to catch up to the nearest GI Joe, and started moving.
"Unfortunately, he was saved by the timely interruption of his friend Mr. Psionic. Just as I was about to leap with some new and no doubt wildly inventive battle cry, I was frozen in mid-crouch. Bio-paralyzation is pretty uncomfortable, and it always seems to come at a bad time, too.
"Things were starting to look pretty grim for us there for a second. In the corner of my vision I could see that Harbinger was apparently passed out for some reason, and Aranae seemed to be fighting the psionic control of the mental presence which had zapped me. Meanwhile, the few remaining soldiers with an appetite for violence were recovering their confidence with the help of a few dozen friends who came sprinting in to the alcove.
"'Throw down your weapons and put your hands behind your heads! If you do not immediately comply, you will be fired upon!'
"Idiots with megaphones really irritate me. I was psionically freed from the waist up, presumably to 'comply' as ordered. I didn't seem to have a lot of choice in the matter, aside from getting shot. They seemed to want to arrest us now, so maybe the 'phasers were set on stun' or whatever. I figured buying more time was preferable to being unconscious or dead, so I started to put my hands behind my head, looking everywhere for some trick that would get us out of this. I couldn't see any, though.
"Before my arms were fully in place, I heard a voice in my left ear whisper, 'Who's the world's prettiest super hero, baby?'
"I could distantly sense the mind which had temporarily given me paraplegic status, and it was becoming distressed. This quickly turned to panic and then, with a flash of gold light and a loud psionic
*SQUARRK!*
the presence was gone. Anyone nearby who had previously been unable to see the psionic was now in some pain from the mental shriek, but I was able to shrug it off in time to see Glitterboy in the middle of the field, dressed in full golden glory, standing over a decapitated sectoid which had apparently been the source of our troubles. Glitterboy was wearing his shiny smile for only a second, and then he was streaking over to Aranae and Harbinger.
"Glitterboy, whose real name was unknown, called himself Sean Reiley when it was necessary to go 'undercover'. He might very well have been the world's prettiest super hero, and it's hard to consider someone egotistical when they really are that good at everything. Apparently engineered by the sectoids in some failed attempt at radically altering the genetic course of our species, his immunity to their psionics made his superhuman speed and agility a complete nightmare for the dwarves. Coupled with his arrogance and love of violence against sectoids everywhere, he was one of the few people I knew who was capable of producing near-emotional reactions in dwarves...usually either fear or irritation.
"I was impressed that he had bothered to slow down long enough to make his whisper intelligible to me, which had probably been enough to let the soldiers see him. Maybe he'd wanted to give them a chance to get scared. It didn't seem to be working though, so either they had some plan for reacting to him, or they just hadn't been properly briefed. With the way our government works, I suspected the latter.
"In any case, I was back to dodging laser blasts, although most of them were being spread at my three allies, probably in an attempt to hit Glitterboy. As long as he kept moving, no human eye would have much of a chance to aim properly to hit him, but he wasn't actually fast enough to dodge a laser if it got shot in the right direction. Aranae seemed to be recovering from his struggle with the sectoid, but he was having some trouble blocking all of the fire directed his way. Harbinger still seemed to be out of it.
"I hurled a nearby rock toward the group of riflemen, taking one down pretty hard, but I was still being pinned down. Glitterboy had the best chance of taking these guys right now, but I was worried that a lucky blast would nail him - sexiness isn't invulnerability.
"I still had more friends though, and Glitterboy had brought one of them with him. One of the few remaining 'innocent bystanders' in the nearby streets came running into the alcove, apparently unafraid despite her obvious defenselessness. 'I wanna fight too!' she called out in parody of a japanese Anime we'd watched recently.
"She skipped over in front of Aranae and Harbinger, and stuck out her tounge at the soldiers. 'Mean-os!' she yelled.
"In the next few seconds she recieved about twenty direct hits to the chest and head from the soldiers' energy weapons. I winced, wondering whether these lasers would have more of an effect than the other forms of damage I'd seen her shrug off, but the only result was that her blouse was pretty much destroyed, and believe me when I say that's not a bad thing. There's a reason she was the girlfriend of the world's prettiest super hero, which is that she's damn cute.
"We called her Deathbringer because she's almost completely invulnerable and as much stronger than me as I am stronger than you...or more, probably. Her real name was Joyce Mansisidor, and we didn't know why she was so tough - we suspected mutation, but it's hard to take good cell samples of someone whose skin can't be cut. Despite her name and fearsome potential, she's much more into kitties than violence, and she squeaks a lot.
"'Ha ha ha!' Glitterboy laughed with a bad Mongolian accent - uhm, kind of sounds like yours, actually."
"What you mean?", the squid says. "I no accent. My fluid Human. Like you."
"...Right. Anyway...oh, right.
"'Ha ha ha!' Glitterboy laughed with a...bad accent, 'A winner is you! Welcome to me, soldier-man! You have very good surplize!'
"With this wonderful example of foreign eloquence, Glitterboy grabbed Deathbringer around the waist from behind and charged full speed at the soldiers. The desperate attempt to mow my friends down with an intense barrage of laser pulses was just that - desperate. The soldiers actually took some damage just from the reflected scattering off of Deathbringer's skin. They took a lot more damage from being hit by the toughest human on earth at the speed of one of the fastest humans on earth. That's 200 miles per hour, which to you would be...43.6 Tellomes.
"Basically, any of them that failed to dive out of the way were thrown about sixty feet in various directions, including up. Glitterboy doesn't worry about killing people like I do, but Deathbringer would feel bad about it later. After all, some of those guys probably had kitties at home to feed.
"Right now though, she was just laughing at the fun and trying to cover her breasts at 43.6 Tellomes.
"Glitterboy came to a stop a few feet away from me and deposited Deathbringer on the ground. 'Has the decay of the American Spirit got you down?' he asked with a soothing commercial voice and a concerned expression. 'Try one of our new Joyce units, delivered straight to your door! Shirt is optional!'
"I picked my self up with a hearty laugh and handed Joyce my torn and dirty t-shirt. 'Icky!' she said with a twisted face, but she put it on anyway. My now exposed steel torso and arms shone brightly in the sunny afternoon, and I had to squint a little.
"The soldiers had mostly scattered, and we made short work of those that remained.
"'What's wrong with Evey?' I asked as we came back to the sidewalk, where Amy was holding Harbinger's head in her lap and muttering obscenities about him, while Aranae stared intently, obviously attempting some mental trick.
"'We don't know.' Aranae spoke quietly as he shook himself out of the trance. 'Whatever he did took a lot out of him -'
"'Took a lot out of the whole damn city!', Glitterboy interrupted. 'We saw shit breaking clear over at the Mall!'
"'We came back as soon as we could, but I saw a pair of earrings I thought looked cute, and Sean ended up having to steal them and carry me. Everyone was freaking out,' Deathbringer added. 'You rapscallion!' she directed at Glitterboy with a Victorian accent. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the subsequent giggle.
"While Glitterboy and Deathbringer began to exchange silly words in various foreign voices, Aranae turned to me and asked, 'What about Dave and Erin?'
"'I don't know,' I replied somewhat thoughtfully. 'If they're on their way back, it'll take them ten times as long as these two, and that's if they don't get stuck in some frightened mob.'"
"'It's not that,' Aranae said, shaking his head. 'They probably didn't have time to spring an ambush on these two ' - he indicated the couple behind me, who had degenerated to some game which consisted of Deathbringer trying to climb Glitterboy like a tree - 'but that doesn't mean we're the only ones they attacked. The cerebral development in the central-left section of the brain suggests an extremely rational mind in the sectoids, and everything we've seen supports that theory. It might make sense for them to split us up and attack seperately.'
"'What are you, Yato Sar?' Glitterboy asked from his arboreal pose. 'Those two probably fell asleep on a bus somewhere. After all, it's almost two in the afternoon by now.'
"Glitterboy wasn't being serious. He's actually a pretty good tactician himself when he can pay attention to something long enough to think about it, and make himself care.
"So, I picked up Harbinger, who was muttering and blinking but not really doing anything noteworthy, and we started down the street towards our car.
"'I'll go ahead and look for them', Glitterboy said, stretching into a streak of gold and leaving a cloud of dust. It made sense for him to take off, since otherwise we'd take all day to find them, but it was mainly because he gets irritated trying to walk as slowly as we do.
"'Can you sense their minds or something, Aranae?' I asked, while casting a dubious glance at Harbinger, who had started getting louder. He's pretty bad about talking in his sleep.
"'I don't know', he replied. 'I'm still a little worn out from fighting Kyrrxxxlinnick or whatever his name was.' Aranae made a face which suggested that he was less than thrilled to have contacted the sectoid's mind.
"I asked Deathbringer if she could quit skipping and singing David Bowie songs while Aranae was trying to concentrate. She made a pretend hurt face, then ran up to my ear and whispered, 'Sweet Nothings'. This was followed by a giggle and some more running around.
"It's hard to take anything seriously when Deathbringer's around, but Amy still seemed worried. We'd never seen anything like this happen to Harbinger before.
"By the time we got back to Aranae's Ford Bronco (tm), Harbinger had come around, mostly. He groaned and spit on the ground a few times, then asked me to put him down so that he could sit for a while.
"I thought about the situation for a second, came to a conclusion I didn't like at all, grimaced, and voiced my thoughts. 'Somebody needs to stay here with Amy and Evey. But you can't find them without Aranae, and Joyce may be needed in the fight, so I guess that "Somebody" is me.'
"Aranae nodded. 'That makes sense. Tough luck, man.' He knew that being left out of the battle to protect somebody was more of his kind of thing than it was mine.
"Deathbringer gave me a hug, and the two of them started into the heart of the city at a light jog. I got Eddie out of the car and started working through excercises, trying not to move my left shoulder, and not to pout. After all, this was important too."
At this point, the squid is looking about ready to cry, or whatever it is they do. He's totally hooked.
"However, my desire to help out in the battle, immature as it might have been, was about to be fulfilled."
The bartender's expression lights up again. You'd never know he was depressed five seconds ago. Like a little kid listening to my stories.
Wince.
Bad train of thought. Back to the story.
"Yep, I was about to get all the battle I could handle. You see, before Deathbringer and Aranae had gone more than a few blocks, we started to hear laser blasts and shouting in loud Atlantean, accompanied by high-speed battlecries that could only be from Glitterboy. Joyce and Ryan slowed down, now going catiously as the noise from the fight came closer, closer..."
I'm getting quieter as I repeat "closer", and the squid is leaning over the counter, totally engrossed. People in the back of the bar could be walking out with tables or stripping for all he knows.
In other words, time for the dramatic volume increase, so often employed in campfire stories at this point.
*WHAM!*
The bartop gives a little under my fist, but no permanent damage is done. The bartender jumped pretty high, though.
"And just like that, WHAM! There's the sound of a huge impact, and glass is falling out of windows that were already broken by Harbinger's whatever-it-was, and before anybody can move, something flies out of the cross street about thirty feet in front of Aranae, crashes into the ground, and skids all the way out of the intersection, throwing up broken pavement and dust like a meteor strike.
"A huge psionic voice erupted in my mind at that point, with something like 'IMPUDENT GENE TRASH!'. It was loud enough to stun me for a second or two, and it looked like everyone but Aranae was affected similarly. Evey groaned behind me, and Deathbringer almost fell over.
"The next thing that happened was that Glitterboy flashed around the corner of the street and yelled, 'Ifyouguysdon'tgetoverhereandhelpus,youwon'tgetanykills!' Then he disappeared around the same corner again, and the sounds of laser blasting resumed.
"Deathbringer and Aranae were running toward that corner, and I looked at Harbinger with a hopeful, questioning look. 'Yeah, get out of here, we'll be fine,' he said. He had his sword out of the car now, and was holding it in his lap. 'Just keep the fight from getting over here, and you won't need to worry about us.'
"Of course, that was stupid, but it was exactly what I wanted to hear. Like I said, Evey's not the best tactician, but he's a great leader. So, I took off down the street after my friends at full speed.
"Now, back then, my full speed wasn't all that impressive for a human, with my weight increase and everything. The impressive part is that I can run at a full sprint and not get tired for days, so after a little distance, I can pass anybody. At a distance of only a few blocks, though, it was going to take me a while. Also, I was curious as to the identity of the object which had been flung down the sidestreet, and I was planning on checking this out before jumping into the fray.
"As I approached the intersection in question, I began to see more and more of the battle which was raging around the corner. I think eventually I just stopped and said, 'Whoa.'
"What it looked like to me was about a hundred soldiers in the special gear we'd seen earlier today, some sort of tank, and air support from two all-black, silent helicopters. Plus whatever psionic had been calling us 'impudent genetrash', but he was apparently cloaking himself as the last one had done.
"The city behind the soldiers looked like a military disaster zone. Huge, smoking craters took up more of the street than pavement, several buildings appeared to have collapsed, and the wreckage of another helicopter lay burning a few blocks back. The area was completely deserted, and the sounds of sirens and other random noise were seemingly far away, although it was hard to hear over the shooting.
"The 'firefight' appeared to consist of Glitterboy dodging laser beams and Aranae blocking them, while Deathbringer was under attack by both the tank and the two helicopters, which were firing some sort of nasty explosive rounds at high speeds. She seemed to be taking it okay, but it was knocking her around pretty badly, and she wasn't really getting anywhere.
"I turned my head to the left, simultaneously searching for the 'meteor' and wondering how the hell the government was going to cover this up. I'm not sure what I was expecting to see, but it wasn't Yato Sar, dressed in full Atlantean battle armor with spear, covered with dirt and ash and smeared with blood - presumably his, from the greenish coloring. He looked pissed.
"'Whoa', I said again. 'What the hell threw you like that? Did you get hit by a tank shell?'
"'No. One of the sky-demons threw me with his mind.'
"Atlanteans often refer to sectoids as 'sky-demons'. They usually have cheesy ethnic names for other stuff too, like when they call us 'dry-landers'. When they refer to something with that tone of voice, it means that's a thing you don't want to be.
"His real name was something I've always had trouble pronouncing without a digital reproducer. Nasalmus L'Voleen, or something like that. We usually called him Yato Sar, which was his military title in the Atlantean court, meaning 'General of the whole damn army'. Or, when we needed to pretend he was human, we called him 'David Korus'. Atlanteans are like Omegans, only tougher in some ways. They can adapt to survive anywhere, and they still have access to some of the magical and scientific knowledge of some long-dead alien race, supposedly. Yato was one of the toughest Atlanteans I've ever met, and he's certainly the best strategist. When he's in his royal armor and using that nasty spear, Mako, he's just about unstoppable. He didn't have those at the time of this story, though - he got awarded them by the court a few months later.
"He almost always keeps his cool, but right now he obviously wasn't using all of his tactical knowledge. Basically, instead of the 'you go here and do this, because blah blah blah' which I expected, he just growled and started running back toward the fight.
"I followed him, wondering why he was too pissed to give his usual advice. Then I realized I didn't know where Erin was, and I started to get worried. About the only thing that can make Yato lose his rationality is Bait being in mortal danger.
"'Hey, wait! I mean, is she okay?' I called after him, but I don't think he heard me. Actually, he probably did hear me, considering he's Atlantean, but he didn't seem to.
"Just as we were about to enter the fray, his nature managed to get the better of him, long enough for him to shout, 'Get in close to the soldiers, so they can't use the heavy weapons!' With that, he landed with both feet together, contracted his legs as much as possible, and then sprang forward more or less like I had intended to do earlier. The difference was, he knew what he was doing. Probably how he gets out of the water to ride whales or some shit. Anyway, he shouted something about 'Sky-demon spawn' loud enough to be heard over the tank cannon and shot through the air about thirty feet to pile into a group of riflemen, ignoring the damage they pumped into his armor and slashing around him with his spear, turning their attacks against each other, confusing them, and everything else a real warrior knows how to do. The rest of us were kind of out of our league around Yato at that point, really.
"I figured his idea about getting in close made sense, but first it looked like a good idea to help Deathbringer out, so she could pitch in.
"A bad hit from the tank sent her flying straight across the street towards me. I took a few quick strides and grabbed her around the waist. Her clothes had been pretty much disintegrated, but she had enough soot caking her body to be almost 'decent'.
"'You okay, Joyce?' I asked, running forward with her.
"'I'm...dizzy...' she said weakly. Well, too bad for her, because I needed a shield. At this point I had to brace myself against another blast from the tank. With Joyce taking all of the impact, I was able to dig in to the pavement and keep my footing, barely. Now we were close enough for some real fun.
"I changed my grip, then raised her up over my head.
"'What are you doing?' She yelled.
"'Sorry, Joyce!' was all the answer she got. Then she got thrown through the air into another milling pile of government boys, hard enough to knock them all down. It was pretty mean, but she'd be okay, and at least the tank had to leave her alone now.
"That was what I figured, anyway. At that point the tank was supposed to turn its attention to me, while I figured out something I could do about it - the plan was still pretty unformed at that point. I never had to worry though, because the tank just wheeled its barrel around to point at the confused Deathbringer, struggling to regain her footing among the soldiers. The roar of its cannon was accompanied by the blast from the helicopter chain guns, spewing their explosive rounds into the helpless goons.
"This really pissed me off. For one thing, it not only made me look like an idiot, it made me look like an idiot they weren't worried about at all. And I was tired of them shooting at Joyce, who kind of needed a break. But mostly I was pissed because it's considered bad form to mow down your own eighteen-year-old soldiers to get to the bad guy, where I'm from.
"'Okay, Eddie. Time to play ball.' Yeah, that's the kind of 'snappy banter' I made back then, even when I was pissed enough to have my eyes start glowing, which they did for a second. Eddie came out of his sheath quickly, and the nasty smell of old athletic tape hit my nose like it always does. I picked up a chunk of granite rubble from the street, pointed out the foremost helicopter in my best Babe Ruth imitation - never mind who that is - and showed those punks why I carry a baseball bat even though I hate organized sports.
"Whack! I love that good whack sound you get from a bat. The granite flew through the bullet-proof windshield of the helicopter and probably through most of the pilot, too. He was certainly experiencing difficulty steering his ride at that point. Luckily for him, the tank was below him to cushion his fall.
"'Yeah, baby! That's right! I got more where that came from, too!' I yelled as the helicopter spun lazily down, rotors whining and crunching, to crash into the tank. Luckily for all the action movie fans present, it even burst into flames, sealing the men inside their armored oven. Too bad for them.
"I found another suitable rock for the second helicopter, which was now making a retreat. Guess it must have had leaders inside. They always run when we start to win, and leave their poor sap troops. 'Well, not today', I thought as I sent the rock through the...whatever that thing is that holds the rotors onto the top of the helicopter. The blades were mostly severed and the machine quickly came down as ungracefully as the first. It didn't explode though, which was kind of a let-down.
"The soldiers who were left now weren't too happy. Yato had pretty much mowed through his bunch like an angry weed whacker, and Glitterboy and Deathbringer had ganged up on the rest. Glitterboy seemed to be moving more slowly than usual, and I later learned he'd been clipped by a laser. He wasn't in a very good mood for a while. He was probably also a little bit pissed at how nasty Joyce looked, even though she was okay. Still, he took care of his bad guys quickly enough.
"Just as we were getting ready to celebrate, Yato frowned at us all and said, 'They have Erin. We need to get back to that...structure...where they ambushed us. Follow me.'"
"Normally he would have been a little more polite about it, but he was obviously feeling a little emotional. None of us were too sure what he saw in Erin, but he definitely had it bad. Not that we wanted to leave her in the hands of the bad guys, of course.
"Glitterboy stole Joyce some more clothes as we were going. None of us said much..."
I trail off into silence as a familiar smell reaches my nostrils. I don't need Molecular Compound Identification to tell me what it is. It's an Omegan, and he hasn't taken a bath for a while.
"What wrong, Earth man? Finish story!" The squid has no clue. He probably didn't even notice the guy come in, let alone know that he was an Omegan as opposed to, say, the artist formerly known as Prince.
He'll figure it out soon enough, though.
I turn around slowly, trying not to give away my stiffness, which has become even worse, sitting on this barstool for the last two hours.
"Can I help you?" I ask, but my tone implies that it would be unlikely.
The Omegan sneers. His face is worn and covered with filth. Ancient, dirt-encrusted clothes raggedly cover his body, but they fail to hide the fact that he hasn't exactly been feasting lately. He looks like every ounce of fat has been scraped off of his body with a scalpel. The scars I can see make me wonder if somebody tried.
"You can die, Earth man."
Any small hope that this was one of the few Omegans left who don't hate me disappears. "That so?"
"I've been living in garbage, Earth man. I can't even get a job as a damn janitor. I'm a warrior!"
I nod, trying to appear interested. This one's unusually irrational. Probably lost his family in the war.
***Mangatech: Query***
*Nature of Query?*
***Begin Power Up Sequence, Simultaneous Notify of completion,
Simultaneous Status of Systems feedback***
*Affirmative, Sequence started. Estimated time to finish: 1.472E5 msec.*
The mangatech might attract attention, but that's better than having this guy tear my arms off, and in my current state he could do it. I feel like shit.
"I suppose I'm to blame for your hard luck then, is that it?"
His face twists into a toothy snarl, and the scars and dirt make it even more ugly than it's supposed to be. He doesn't look human.
"You know it's your fault, cretin! I remember you! You led them to us, you set them on us! You think you're good enough to fuck our women? Oh yes, I know about you! I couldn't even bury my wife when they were done with her!"
A lot of my cool leaves at this point. "I couldn't bury Selena, either. And she thought I was good enough to marry."
"She was a stupid whore, and you're gene scum!" A fine mist of spit flies from his mouth.
He's not interested in talking any more, but I'm supposed to stall and wait for my Mangatech to power up. After his last comment though, I forget all about that.
An audible snarl fills the room, a sound no human throat could produce, but it's coming from me. I push off from the bar with enough force to nearly rip the plasticene out of the floor. My right fist moves with the speed and power of a jackhammer.
Too bad for me, because I'm going to need a lot more speed than that to hit this guy. He sidesteps me like I'm standing still, and has enough time to wind up and plant his shin and instep in my guts as I fly by. My anger is enough to overcome my sore muscles, but it can't help them being stiff and slow.
*Whhump* "Uurrgh..." I crash into a table, ripping it out of the floor and landing painfully with the edge in my face. Plasticene is supposed to be "unbreakable", but I happen to know otherwise. I roll to the side, anticipating his follow up...and find that he has anticipated me. He lands on me with both knees, driving the air out of my lungs like no one's done in ages. This guy's not just an athlete Omegan, he knows what he's doing.
"Dirty murdering scum! Filthy...I'll break you! I'll break...kkkkk...aigh! Yaaiigh!" His language skills degenerate as his emotions overpower his intellect. He's also a fan of the "each syllable should be accompanied by a strike" theory, and his punches have already shattered my jaw. I hate broken jaws.
I can't take too much more of this, but he counters my moves before I even decide on them, blocking my counter attacks as they just occur to me, forcing me down on the ground. The room is starting to get blurry...damn it!
*Alert! Critical damage in upper body! Vocal systems at 23%!*
That's not the message I'm looking for, but the next one is.
*Query response: Mangatech systems online.*
***It's about fucking time. Display up.***
| Mangatech System Display(tm) | |
|---|---|
| Hardware | Power Available |
| Grav Rack | 96% |
| Intertia Clamp | 93% |
| Biolectrics | 57% |
| Software | Priority |
| S. Akuma | Primary |
| C. Li | Secondary |
| R. Saotome | Reserve |
| Eiji | Reserve |
Damn! What the hell's wrong with Biolectrics? I haven't been able to get that bug out of the system since...the last time I got beaten like this, back in that shadow dimension where I lost Eddie. Magic damage is always ten times as hard to fix.
Well, it's going to have to do for the time being.
***Query: Mangatech***
*Nature of Query?*
***Vocal activation. Override query system.***
*Affirmative. Awaiting vocals.*
"Furious Flame!" I yell, and my biolectrics kick in. Even at 57%, they're still hot enough to melt steel.
"Hurrrgh!" The Omegan shies back from the sudden light and heat. I can smell his flesh burning. It's enough of an edge to let me strike. My right wrist strikes his head just above the jaw. I'm strong enough for that to hurt even him, but I'm playing dirty now.
"No-shadow palm!" means that my Inertia clamp adds a little extra to the strike. His head snaps back like it got hit by a train, but that would have hurt less. His whole body is lifted off of me to land on the ground, a few feet back.
I manage a toothy grin even with my mangled jaw as I kip up to my feet, and immediately I ready my next attack, bending my knees and pulling my right fist to my waist.
He's back on his feet as quickly as I am, but that means he's slowing down some. Good, I always like reducing cocky jerks to my level, especially when they call me "gene-scum."
He tries to yell something blood-curdling, no doubt, but he's just not in very good condition right now, mentally or physically. Instead, it comes out as a vicious squeaky sound. His flying kick is much more impressive. Unfortunately I anticipated him, this time.
"Shoryu-ken!" This one takes a flying uppercut which would have done some serious damage on its own, and adds force from the Inertia Clamp and a healthy fire halo from Biolectrics. I can tell from the impact that his already cracked jaw is now in the same shape as mine, with some healthy burns on the side. I don't want to be even, though. That's not good enough to win a fight.
Rather than landing, I choose to activate the "Air Jump" using my Gravity Rack system. To anyone watching, I just bounced off of thin air into a graceful, slow backflip that leaves me in just the right position, now near to the front of the establishment.
The nasty sweep kick that was supposed to take me down misses, because I haven't touched down like a good little boy. The Omegan, now completely off-balance and confused, is perfectly set up to recieve my "Ha-douken!" triple fireball shot in his head, chest, and legs. Each of the glowing Biolectric plasma balls is blue-white with heat and carrying more kinetic energy than the wrist-strike did.
Chuckles isn't too happy. In fact, he's not moving from his new position as a smoldering fixture on the floor against the back wall. Maybe it's because of the table support which is protruding from his ribs, or the fact that his neck is bent at an angle which is...uncomfortable to look at. Either way, he's not going to be calling anyone names in the future.
I land lightly on the floor in front of the door, and begin powering off my Mangatech. I got hurt pretty badly. Definitely got to look into those software bugs again, and figure out what the hell's taking it so long to load. Next time I might be facing a real opponent.
"You can come out now, squid." I'm pretty impressed that he stayed here during the fight. All of his customers checked out. Guess this bar must be pretty important to him.
"You...you done? He gone?"
"Hmmm...you could say that. Listen, the police are gonna be here soon, so I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
"Yeah...okay...okay..."
The squid's pretty freaked out, but he'll probably be alright after a night's sleep. Time to leave.
I grunt as the final strip of QuickSplint(tm) goes into place around my swollen jaw. It hurts like hell, but not as bad as setting all of my "bone" fragments back into place with the RoughSet(tm). The box says you need to keep this stuff on for at least four weeks, but my internal systems are already building back the structure as fast as an Omegan's biochemistry can. I'll be fine tomorrow. About the only thing I can't heal from overnight is arcane damage. And death, I suppose.
Great. Now I get to sleep on my back all night. I can't use my painkiller system, because I'm going to need to be alert if the cops show up. I need to lie down though, or my jaw won't heal as quickly as it should, and my stiffness won't be gone tomorrow either.
I'm walking, alone, in a hot, grassy place. I think there's trees nearby, but it's so hard to see...the sun is so bright I have to squint just to keep from tripping over nothing.
"Jenni? Jenni? Where'd you go, shrimp?"
A little girl's laughter is my only reply.
"Jenni? It's a dream, Jenni!" I don't think I realized it until I said it. But now, I know I can control this world, as long as I don't think too hard. And I know what I want to see.
Sometimes, though, it doesn't work for no reason at all. Or maybe, my subconcious doesn't think I should. I can't find her, though. I'm flying through the trees now, literally flying, but I can't get anywhere, and I still can't see.
"Damian! How's it going?"
I'm not sure who this is, or even what their sex is, but it doesn't occur to me. I know they're a friend. Is it supposed to be Seanbaby?
"Great, man. It's a dream, you know."
"Whatever. I'm trying to sell this food, but no one wants any."
Sean seems to be selling some kind of bean dip for corn chips, but I don't see anyone else around to buy any. That doesn't matter, though. "Sure, I'll buy some. Your food kicks ass."
"Thanks, man! I love you!"
Yeah, Seanbaby always says that. Said that. Whatever. I can't seem to find enough money in my pocket, but there sure is a lot of other shit in there.
"Damn, I know there was some in here...why does my jaw itch?"
I blink lazily, then squint at the bright sunlight coming in my window. Guess I forgot to close that curtain last night. Always screws up your dreams to have light on your face.
Been a long time since I dreamed in color. Long time since I had a dream that wasn't about anything...can't remember when the last time was.
Nice to dream about eating, too. And Jenni...
At that, I close my eyes and breathe for a while, trying to empty my mind. I used to be the kind of guy who could cry easily, but my tears are mostly gone now.
Ah, Jenni...where are you now?
Hate to leave the squid hanging, though.