"Come on, Brian. We need to be out of the loft here in the next hour," Tattletale (aka Lisa) called out to her teammate. She turned back to the box in front of her as she slid in another piece of electronics.
"You still haven't explained why we have to move," the big, dark skinned teen noted as he carried a box to set it by the door.
"Your boss tried to recruit me at gunpoint. I disagreed and knocked over his base and made him run away. And hopefully outed him to the Feds," Arthur said as he carried the couch to the moving van parked in the warehouse.
"No shit? And who was our boss?" Brian asked Lisa as he stared at her with his dark, intense eyes.
"Coil. And he recruited me at gunpoint too, but he had no idea he had picked up a brute that can control computers with his mind," she explained as she slipped in her notebook into the box.
"Fuck that. What about the unwritten rules?" the young teen with olive-toned skin asked.
"What's that?" Arthur called from down below at the truck.
"Part of the cops and robbers game so people don't attack you in your civilian ID. Something Coil does not respect," Lisa said as she taped the box close.
A loud whistle sounded and then three dogs barked and growled as they charged at the young looking man. Arthur turned in surprise and managed to step into a defensive stance, for all the good it did him.
"Bitch! Stop!" Brian shouted as he put down the box of gaming electronics.
"You're trying to get a new member without asking me," the butch and stocky girl at the entrance to the warehouse shouted.
The dogs started to whine and then cowered away. "Call them off," Arthur shouted as he turned up the supersonic whistle.
Another whistle sounded and the dogs ran back to their owner. Their ears flicked up and they stood up taller, looking around as the sound disappeared.
"Did they hurt their teeth on me?" the sandy-blond young man asked.
"What?"
"He's a brute, you dumb shit," Brian shouted. "He could have killed all of your dogs."
Her pained face looked up and then she crouched down and started to check their teeth. "Shit. Broken tooth," she said with frustration and anger.
"Dammit. Not another shirt." He examined the tatters of his left sleeve of his button up shirt. With a sigh, he walked over as he nudged the cybernetics to create some sort of healing others device. "Another ray?" He held up his hand and it emitted a soft, green glow.
'Bitch' frowned and then bared her teeth like a dog. "Stop!"
"I was just trying to heal him. Or, well, I think regenerate. Man, I wish I understood my cybernetics better," Arthur grumbled as he closed his hand and cut off the beam.
"Not powers. He was created by a Tinker. No, Tinkers. And he's a bullshit Trump. Holy shit." Lisa's open mouth closed and then curled up into a shit eating grin. She shook her head. "But not now. We need to move our base so our old boss doesn't clean up any loose ends."
"And how likely is that?" Alec said in a flippant tone.
"He'll probably torture us all to death," Lisa said in a very serious tone of voice.
"Um, you're kidding. Right?" the youngest person present asked. He was the person that did things like that. Other people being like that to him and his teammates was dangerous.
"Recruited at gunpoint," Arthur reminded as he carefully pet one of the dogs.
"Shit. Crap. Fuck," Alec said.
"Finish moving, then we can panic and then try to figure out how to survive," Lisa ordered.
Alec scowled at her once she turned her back. He then smirked as he pointed his finger like a gun at Arthur's back while he carried two boxes. He made a shoot gesture.
And Arthur walked a few steps, then looked around. "Did someone try to mind control me? My psionic field registered an attack."
The Canadian born villain studied him. "Just me being a jerk and trying to trip you. I guess you are good to go to fight the Simurgh though. Your funeral."
"The who?"
"You know, the Endbringer?"
"What's an Endbringer?" Arthur asked as he clearly looked confused.
"Who the fuck is this idiot?" Alec demanded as he spun to Lisa.
"He's not from Earth Bet," she answered.
Brian watched the kid as he helped carry the last box out of the truck. The door rolled down and they closed up. "You don't exactly act like a kid," he noted.
Arthur looked over. "Oh, right. After I was kidnapped and remade I look younger than I am. About half the age. I'm twenty-three."
"No shit?" he asked.
"Sure, give me a second to fix my 'disguise'." Arthur closed his eyes and grew taller and a little less young looking. A tiny bit pudgy with a long body and not very muscled with sandy hair in a professional men's cut. Neither ugly nor overly handsome. Just kind of generic with a weak chin. "I'm not sure on the height. I was five-ten before."
"Your close. So some Tinker kidnapped you and turned you into super-cyborg?" Brian asked as he walked to get into the moving truck.
"I guess? We didn't have supers... No, you guys call them capes-" he said.
"Parahumans is the technical term," Lisa said as she walked out the front door of the large, older house crammed together on an old neighborhood. "So you didn't have a trigger?"
Arthur tilted his head in confusion.
"Huh. Weird. Maybe you did, but you don't remember. Think worst day of your life and then you break and get super powers. Usually related to what is happening to you."
"That sounds like it sucks," he replied as Brian started the truck and drove away. His own depression sounded pretty minor in comparison. "So you ordered pizza?"
"Should be here in twenty minutes. Could you answer the door and pay for it with cash?" Lisa asked as she held out some ten dollar bills.
"Sure."
Half an hour they sat down to eat. Alex proved what his priorities were already had his first game system hooked up. It looked fairly interesting as he went gunning down enemy soldiers only pausing to grab bites.
"Hmm. I wonder if Wing Commander is still being made?" he asked aloud.
"No, not even on Earth Aleph. It's fifteen years away," Lisa said, then went back to take a bite of her pizza.
"I might try that later. But I had an idea. Let me stabilize your neurons again," Arthur offered to Lisa, holding out his hand as he lost concentration and reverted to the young looking cyborg.
"Not going to argue you with fixing my headaches," she replied with a grin. Her smile faded as she started to pick up too much from him. Pent up and attracted as he tried not to look at her in an inappropriate manner. Inexperienced.
Arthur regenerated and stabilized her brain, then switched to scan it for her power. "So you do the intuition thing, right?" Intuitionpath? Sounded a little dumb, but could be accurate.
"Right, and your are scanning my Corona Pollentia and Gemma to see how my powers work. It won't work, even the best Tinkers and Thinkers haven't found much," she replied with a smirk on her face.
"Hmm. Some sort of dimensional access points? At least that's what my scanner is picking up. Not sure what that means? Is there a dimension where energy beings exist that fight a proxy war through Parahumans on Earth? Oh, right." Arthur pointed the beam at his head. "I don't have that Corona thingie. Just lots of cybernetics."
"So you were rebuilt that way. I wonder why you have mental protection- Oh, wow. That sucks," the girl said.
"What?" Arthur asked as he let his arm lapse back to a normal cyberlimb.
"Someone doesn't want you controlled to block them from controlling you," Lisa said.
"Oh. Shit." Arthur sat there a long moment. "Well, I'm going to be in the garage." He walked through the cluttered kitchen and then opened the inside door the box strewn garage.
He moved over to the workbench and started pulling out random things from some of the boxes.
Could he make Lisa's intuition power help him? Protect him from the people that did this to him? He didn't want to lose control-
Arthur blinked as if coming awake, looking at the 'U' shaped piece of metal and wires that reminded him of some of the cybernetics he saw in the mirror since that night. He sat up and set a strange soldering iron down.
"Huh. I wonder what it does." He flipped it over and then realized it had to be an odd tiara with the two ends that would touch the forehead. And a bit girly, he had to admit.
He stood up from the workbench, noting that more boxes and items lay around as he walked to enter the house. And stopped as he realized the kitchen looked fully set up.
A quiet snore came from the plush couch. He moved over to see that Alec lay sprawled out with a controller on the ground in front of him and several dirty plates and a mostly empty box of takeout. All of the game system showed themselves to be connected and ready to use.
A door opened down the hall and Lisa stepped out.
"I thought I heard you moving around," she said as she finished patting her long hair dry and then flipped it to lay over her back as if she did not care that it would dampen her bathrobe she wore over her large T-shirt and shorts. "So what did you make?"
"I think I made something to help you. You just have to wear it on your head," he said as he held out.
"Two modes, huh? One for healing the brain, the other to lessen some limits? Nice," Lisa said as she set it on her head and touched the glass inset on the one end that sat on her left temple. "Oh, god that feels nice. Instant headache cure. Luckily I haven't really overused my power that much." She tapped the other button on the right temple and it flickered red.
"There's a slider. Just run your hand on the tiara towards that switch and it will dampen you power so it doesn't overload. Turn it up the other way it it will sharpen it for a short time," Arthur explained as the information popped into his head.
Lisa swiped it towards the switch and then looked at him. He looked nervous and tired... and that was it. A smirk appeared on her face and she suddenly stepped up and grabbed his cheeks and then kissed him on the lips. No 'too much information' overload! "Oh, god. If you could see your face. I just wanted to see if I could kiss someone without grossing myself out. You just saved me from a celibate life."
"Um, you're welcome. I'm-" dating, is what he almost said. And he did not know if anyone from his old life even existed. "Um, what would be the best way to try and figure out what happened to the me from this Earth?"
"The Internet, duh. Just Google information. Might not find yourself, but you might. Laptop is on the coffee table. I'm going to get dressed."
Arthur watched her walk away and then pulled his gaze away with a blush that only now started to fade. "She's a tease. How do you deal with someone like that?" he asked himself as he turned on the absurdly thin notebook that popped into a GUI operating system with incredibly high definition color. "Nice. So... Internet?" It took him ten minutes to figure out the browser thing and then to try and start to search. Finally, in a fit of pique, he just took it over mentally and ordered it to find the information about himself.
And just stared at the news article. List of victims of the Slaughterhouse Nine in Hardin, Montana?
There were hundreds of names on that list, including himself, his parents and his two next closest in age siblings. Most of the murders were attributed to their leader, King and two new members, Jack Slash and Harbinger. The screen flickered and then an official Parahuman Response Team (PRT) web page appeared with a list of the current Slaughterhouse Nine. Prominently at the top lay the picture of a smiling Jack Slash, the current and long time leader of the worst mass murderers in the world.
He leaned over the side of the couch and started to throw up.
"What the fuck! What's going on?" Alec shouted as he woke up at the violent noise.
"Sorry. I'm sorry." Arthur fumbled the notebook as he stood up. "I'll- I'll clean it up. In a minute." He dashed to the bathroom to start throwing up again.
Alec wrinkled his nose and picked up the (luckily) undamaged computer and started to go back different pages. "Why the hell is he looking up victims of the Slaughterhouse from back in 1985?" His eyes scanned the names until he stopped on one. Arthur Hansen (13). He clicked on the link to pull up a picture of a very familiar face but with goofy, large glasses. "That's fucked up, man." How to tease him about being a pussy? Alec blinked as he remembered something. How to tease him for being a pussy without being squished like a bug? Man, what a drag.
