6:16 AM MDT, Sunday, November 21st, 2010
Rifle, Colorado
It's absolutely pouring as I step out of the Red and into reality, rain dripping off the brim of my hat almost instantly. It's keeping almost all the bugs in the area down, too. Annoying, but not exactly a problem.
Place looks deserted. Probably is, Rifle isn't exactly a boom town. Makes it a good place to stash something...have to wonder what it was that's freaking LaTonya out. Maybe one of her temps got caught up in something?
It takes very little effort to force the lock open and start down the rows of storage units, the roar of the rain and the occasional boom of thunder a background accompaniment to my footsteps.
"LaTonya?"
"Over here!"
Distant, or at least it seems that way with the rest of the noise, but it gives me a direction.
As I trudge over and through the rapidly forming puddles, I turn on my commbead. "Morah?"
"He's not here now," Inferno replies. "What's the problem?"
"Down in Rifle, Ms. Charles called me in. No word on what exactly she's dealing with but it's in my field, apparently."
"Doesn't sound good. You want drone coverage?"
"If you please."
"Sure thing, dear. I'll get them launched and wake up Father. Oh, you want me to put the Swarm on standby?"
"Just in case."
"Then I'll wake up First and the featherclaws, too. Happy hunting."
"Let's hope that's not what we need to do," I mutter as I cut the connection.
Concrete flooring is not helping here- the water's already ankle-deep in places, because clearly drainage was not a concern to whoever built this place. Makes it a pain in the ass to move bugs around- the flyers can't stand the rain and the crawlers will drown. I round the corner, and spy one of the storage units with the door rolled up. "Hey, this-"
I stop, and sniff the air. The rain might damp a lot of it out, but...well, the scent of blood is hard to mask.
Yeah, this is tripping every horror-movie flag in my brain. Does that make me the random cop who investigates and gets killed by the monster?
Stop your useless prattling and investigate. If it is a trap, we will fight through it.
Alright. Start looking. Walking right into the damn thing is just stupid, but I've got a lot more than that.
Most of the storage units are sealed up tight, and the flooding is still a problem, but farther afield there's more than enough insects huddled away from the rain to suit, and they begin to spread out as stealthily as possible, searching. I place a hand on the side of the nearest storage unit, and a wave of spiders and roaches marches out from the soaked sleeve of my coat, clinging to the side of the unit and carefully moving onto the next. And the next, and the next, until they reach the open unit and let me see what's within.
A flash of lightning provides illumination before I think to call up a Firefly's Glow, but it's enough for me to see what's within.
LaTonya, strapped to a chair, gagged and blindfolded. Two bodies on the ground in front of her. Blood spatter.
Trap? Obviously, but I'm already moving. The insects intensify their search, more and more joining in, covering the entire town.
Risk's green outfit is recognizable the moment the light burning at the head of my staff draws closer. I turn him over anyway, close his eyes. Ignore the three close-packed bullet holes over his heart.
In. Out. Breathe.
This will be avenged.
This will be avenged.
The other is harder to identify, but once rolled over it becomes clear it's Victor. A single stab wound, right through the chest, surrounded by raised, blackened veins. How that killed him, unknown. Likely magical or high-tech in nature.
LaTonya's panicking, but despite being less than a foot from me the desperate struggling against her bonds seems distant. Insects are still searching. Who did this?
There's a portable speaker on the ground. A fake. Either a recording or a mimic of her voice. I crush it underfoot as I move to the chair, removing LaTonya's blindfold and gag quickly. She works her jaw for a moment, but her eyes are darting as if she expects attack at any moment.
"Oh thank God. Get-"
That's when the explosives go off.
The world shrinks to practically nothing as I barely put a Shell of the Ironclad around us both in time, a massive swath of insects wiped away letting me trace the extent of the damage.
A chunk of the town...it's gone. How many people did that just kill?
Too much smoke and ash in the air to see beyond the shield. Too few bugs alive to see beyond it, but outside...not many, the rain's keeping a lot inside, but enough to get some rudimentary vision…
Outside looking in. I get a glimpse of the shield, red light shining through the haze in the air, but nothing of whoever just set off those bombs. Outside looking out, nothing again. Where the hell are they?
Space twists, and ash and bugs vanish from my control as a group of humanoids- vision's still too fuzzy to tell anything else- appears from the air.
I let loose a few dozen termites and beetles to deal with LaTonya's bonds, form a second shield around her, and dismiss the first, stepping towards them as the dust is slowly driven down by the pouring rain. A massive chunk of the town is now rubble, a chaotic mess of mud and broken ground.
They assail you from ambush. Perhaps they think their plan successful. Use that surprise to your advantage.
Hundreds dead. Just to kill me. Well, they're going to-
"N̢ò m͟o҉r͘e ̡p͘et҉s ̢for͜ ͜y͏ou."
My vision...flickers...and I fall to my knees, gasping for breath. What…
"Legion? Legion! There was an explosion. Please respond, please-"
Inferno's voice breaks into static before fading away entirely.
They're coming closer. I can hear footsteps. Vision's clouded, can't feel the insects, but I make out body armor in the closest one, a cape on another, armored grey skin on a third. Small details. How many? Eight? Ten?
"Well, that was easy," a familiar voice says. "Guess you got cocky, huh, kid?"
Deathstroke.
A nervous laugh from outside my narrowing field of vision. It's rasping and high-pitched. Don't know who it belongs to. "Everyone thinks themselves so so strong, until you take away their source," whoever-it-is prattles. "See? He weakens without it. Soon he'll be dead, yes, dead!" That's it. The bastards have cut me off from the Red.
No.
No. I can't feel the Red, but…I reach down anyway. I will not die here. Not like this.
And I find the strength to stand after all, as inside me trapped souls begin to burn, and I feel fire rush through my veins. I face the enemy.
Deathstroke, wearing crude powered armor and carrying a massive rifle comfortably. Doctor Destiny, skull-masked, Dream's Ruby in his hands. Some short bastard with a Roman theme, grinning sadistically. And what I'm pretty sure are the Point Men, out, well, on point. Grey Lady, batlike, Blockade with his armored skin and strength, Short Cut the rapid teleporter, Serpenteen the, well, lizard-man. Only Blank Slate and Groundswell are missing.
Insects.
"Fitting. All of you, against all of me," I say with a smile.
For something like this? Masks are worthless.
When hope is gone,
Undo this lock
And send us forth
On a moonlit walk.
I will not be fodder, either for your strength or for your fight. Not unless your need is dire.
We fall away into ourselves, splitting and dividing like amoebal cells, insects covering broken ground and hiding from the pouring rain, countless numbers of them rising in a cloud that ignores the battering droplets. It coalesces and clears.
Three Abrams tanks, crewed and loaded.
Thirty-eight soldiers, armed to the teeth.
A telepathic gorilla, a Burning Martian bred for war, a master of radiation, a boy who thought himself pure, and the shattered and broken remnants of a psychic cloaked in hooded rags. A-
I will not be fodder, either for your strength or for your fight.
We only hold back Greta. She has no place in this fight.
I will protect the child.
And surrounding it all, the endless seething horde of insect life.
We are Legion.
They're falling back as the tanks and soldiers advance, but the Point Men begin to rally around Grey Lady, the batlike woman directing them quickly.
"Ignore him! Kill the girl!"
We will not allow that. Our shield remains strong, though its cost becomes apparent as one soldier burns to nothing, reducing our count of them to thirty-seven.
No matter. Our tanks turn their turrets and fire faster than the human eye can follow, and all save the stone-skinned Blockade are reduced to meat.
Two more soldiers burn. One to the cost of power, the other falls to a silver bullet from Deathstroke. The former is gone, but the latter falls back out of the insect cloud, intact again.
The dream-weaver gestures, and transports himself. Distant explosions sound. Not our task.
Blockade roars a challenge, crushing a further two soldiers underfoot as he plows through the insect cloud, blinded utterly. It does not save him when the Martian impales his heart on molecule-destabilizing claws. Harm engages Deathstroke in hand-to-hand, a ghostly copy of the blade he hoped to wield in life clashing against a metal staff. Soldiers try keeping the Roman at bay, bullets clashing against his riot shield, but he closes the difference, and those cut down by the spear in his hands vanish from us.
The ground shakes, and a spray of earth divides us, the tanks crushed in the uproar as a red-eyed glaring monstrosity forms. Groundswell.
The earth elemental gets only a moment before Atomic Skull unleashes his might, blasting it to smithereens in a burst of deadly light.
The remnants of Psimon and the Ultra-Humanite pool their strength, seeking to crush minds, but none of those still alive have their minds open. The Roman may as well not be there, Destiny is too filled with madness and the tatters of dreams, and Deathstroke...Deathstroke reels, Harm pressing the advantage, but he still holds his ground, his mind still standing strong against the onslaught.
Sixteen soldiers left.
Deathstroke's staff cracks Harm across the temple, and the psychopath dissolves away. The Burning Martian steps in, and where the pale imitation of the Sword of Beowulf was blocked by Deathstroke's armor, the finest polymers and metals melt under the claws of the monster of a future that should never be..
"Stop! Please!"
We know that voice. Greta. How did she...how is unimportant. The Roman and Destiny pause, Psimon's remnants impaled on the former's spearpoint. We halt as she runs across broken ground.
"Please! Don't... don't kill anyone else," she sobs.
We can't feel her. Has she somehow cut herself off from us? Why would she...oh. We tap into the gorilla's talents.
The remaining fourteen soldiers turn as one and riddle the advancing child with bullets. Mid-stride, the ghostly form of Blank Slate replaces her, falling to the ground.
Liars never prosper.
The Roman and the dream-weaver fight on. The Roman's spear burns, even piercing the armor of tanks, while the dream-weaver…
"Die die die die diediedie-"
Every motion, every step they take hurts us, the ruby and the blood I can sense within, tying it to the dream-weaver, warping the world to its masters insane wishes.
Blood.
Heh.
Blood is our domain, and if he will expose it so willingly to us…
As thirteen soldiers - all who remain to us - turn our guns upon the Ruby, they burn at once as we strike not with bullets, but with the power of the unseen and yet real.
Destiny's Ruby opens up to me, and we reach out to the pulsing traces of blood within, eager to subvert the man they're linked to.
We reach out with a hand that isn't there, and-
Ín͢t͏ru̵d͝er, ch͠ilḑ ͏o̵f ̴t̕h͜e ͜R͢e̕d̡.̡ ̢R͘ot ̢and ̴D̕ie͝.͘
Something... something's wrong. Corruption, sickness, ROT, cut it away, burn and burn and burn again.
By the time we regain composure, the Roman is cutting down Harm and the Martian, and Dr. Destiny is cackling. We try to swarm him, crush him under weight of bugs, but at a gesture the insects turn to nightmare creatures that turn on each other in fratricidal fury.
"All power, no strength! No match for truth and old blood! No mage, just. A. Beast!"
The Rot. Fool. Decayed blood bound by a decayed man into the Ruby, it was not living at all. A trap, and it cost us far too much to spring it.
A beast, are we? Then a beast's form we shall take.
Close-layered chitin, gnashing mandibles, razor-sharp claws, wings and bent-twice legs.
"SKREEEEEEEE!"
Destiny screams in surprise which rapidly morphs into maniacal laughter as we charge him in our new body. "Turning into a monster is the last resort of the desperate! No true mage would make that mistake, neophyte! But now I see where you've been getting your power. Siphoning from souls you've captured? Do you even know how little of you is left? I'll cut you off and you'll be no more!"
His magic tears at us, at our connection to our remaining souls. We resist, but too few remain.
What is he doing? Who is he pulling at?
He rips away the vestiges of our mask, and we-
What? Where did you go, boy? What is this thing at your heart?
We only feel rage. Cackling, he dances, the Ruby held over his head. "I have you! You're nothing but-AAAH!"
We cut him off by plowing into him, crushing ribs with our force. This is no longer a fight of magic, but of might. And he is a mere human. A mere mortal man who has stolen our mask from us. Our claws lash out, digging into withered flesh, before we kick him away. Our intent is on the fallen Ruby.
All that power, first that of an Endless, then bound by blood and dark arts to the Rot and the dying wreck bleeding out onto the ground. Power to drive the world mad, power that, we know, is already doing so as its efforts disturb the Dreaming. Power to take from us that which is ours.
And yet, for all that, it's just a rock, one that shatters under our clawed foot.
The rush of power pulls at us, and though we try to resist, it pulls us away-