Seizure 18. Γ (Herb)
It'd taken hours, as power after power was stripped from Lee, but they were finally done, as full up on Shards as they could be. The only thing their pillaging had been stopped by was the fact that Lee's Major powers couldn't be used by anyone who had already Triggered, so they'd been left alone.
For now.
After the fifth power that'd been ripped out of him, Vejovis couldn't hold back, howling like a dying animal, and sobbing.
After the ninth, he'd stopped.
By the time the last one, the twelfth, had been ripped out of him he'd just stared, twitching, no longer there.
Laughing in excitement and enjoyment, the Slaughterers had left, leaving Herb in the dark, only the glow from the few remaining monitors lighting up the area.
He wasn't sure how long he hung there, in the almost-dark, just the two of them. Lee deathly silent, Herb unable to tell if his friend was awake or not.
Then, in the space between moments, there was a third.
The man stood there, silently, a copy of Herb that regarded himself with disgust.
"Why am I not surprised," the Replicant sighed, tone heavy, form shifting, flowing like water, until he was someone else entirely.
Jack Slash looked down on Herb, before casually walking over and turning on the lights, slowly striding back in a picture-perfect copy of the psychopath's gait. "Now, let's have a chat."
Herb frowned, wondering why the Replicant wasn't saving them, but all he could do was point at his ruined, open throat. Not-Slash frowned, and walked over to Bonesaw's workshop, picking up the device she'd made from Herb's larynx, before suddenly shifting, shrinking, until he was Bonesaw, moving just like Bonesaw, as he gathered some tools and skipped over to his creator.
The Replicant announced with a giggle, "I'm gonna patch you right up! I could numb the pain, but where's the fun in that, tee-hee?"
And then he started cutting, and stitching, as Herb tried to keep his voice down, but couldn't help cry out in pain, at first silently, but then something seemed to click into place, and he could make noise again, even if only at a whisper.
"help," Herb croaked, barely audible despite his best efforts.
"Oh, but I am," not-Bonesaw smiled, before shifting form again, back to Herbert's form. "And to help, we're going to talk." Another shape sprung into being, the Replicant's Stand, but it was already shifting, turning into a naked, beaten, and bloody Lee, his brain exposed, that stood on hands and knees, expression hauntedly blank. The Replicant dropped down onto not-Lee's back, the Stand wincing in pain as not-Herb sat on him. "But, introductions are in order. I know you well, Herbert Winslow, better than you know yourself. I Grok you, with all that entails."
Herb tried to remember what that meant, something about understanding? Lee had mentioned it a few times, but Herb hadn't been listening to what he was saying, trying to understand what he meant instead. He wished he'd paid more attention. But that wasn't new.
"But who am I? You can call me Shadow. And this useful little fella is The Mask," the Replicant, Shadow, stated, reaching over and rustling Not-Lee's hair, careless fingers poking the exposed brain, causing the Stand's arms to shake as he held up his creator. "I am everything you aren't, Herbert. One would think that to be a pitiable existence, the photo-negative of someone else, but what is the reverse of complete and utter failure, if not absolute and total success?"
Shadow's words hurt, but they weren't anything he hadn't thought himself. What did catch Herb's attention was something smaller. "not Prime?" he weakly asked, all of the other Replicants having called him that, as a sort of title.
Not-Herbert's mouth spread into a cruel, smug grin he himself would never wear. "Oh, did you think we had to call you that? You truly are idiotic. No, they did so because they respected you, Herbert. I know better. Did you know I first planned to kill you? Well, not really kill you, no, I was going to replace you. You'd still be alive, or enough of you to keep your power functioning, so you could keep remaking me and the others if we died. I'd take over, and do everything you couldn't, but me? I'm. Not. That. Merciful."
Herb stared, uncomprehendingly, at the Replicant. How would doing that be merciful? But, looking at it the right way, it would be. He wouldn't keep on making mistakes. He wouldn't keep fucking up. He could know that someone else was doing what he couldn't. Herb almost wished that would happen.
Shadow smirked. "Finally understand? It takes you so long, though that's how you like it, isn't it? 'Oh, I didn't know!'" the Replicant mocked. "It's so much easier to sit back and be the victim, then to question and have to do something. And that's all you do. It's what you're comfortable being. Only you're not the one who pays the price, are you?"
Herb looked past the Replicant, to where Lee still hung, motionless, eyes open, but unseeing.
"Him, but he's not the only one. How many have you hurt, because you refused to think? Oh, you didn't do anything. You didn't do anything at all. After all, you didn't even look for the Nine, like you looked for Valefor. And that should've been a clue, but you were saved by your Stand, so you learned nothing," Shadow chided.
Herb tried to speak up in his own defense, it wasn't as if he'd been looking for the Slaughterhouse Nine! "they surprised me. couldn't stop them. it was too late."
The Replicant stared at him. "Bullfrogs don't sleep. Most insects don't. You had a moment, you could've changed and broken free. But you froze, like you always do." Herb opened his mouth to object, how was he supposed to know that, or react that quickly, but before he could say so, Shadow was already responding to him, "If you'd trained, it'd be reflexive. Most paralyzing effects can be broken by changing into something with a different nervous system. Most projectiles can be dodged by turning to a tardigrade and double jumping. Any attack can, actually, except for wide area affects, and even then the small size would let you take cover anywhere. And have you ever used your Master ability?"
"master ability?" the man asked, confused.
"Did. . . did you forget one of your powers?" Shadow asked, disbelief and disgust writ large over his borrowed features. "Dear god, you did. You can fake your own death you complete moron!" the Replicant spat. "Tyrone's entire fighting style is based on it!" The other man sighed. "No, I have your memories, but not your thoughts. I know you have never worked with any of them, and they've respected your decision, waiting for you to come to them. And you thought they weren't built on your personality?" he scoffed. "With that kind of attitude, I don't know how you could ever doubt that."
Blinking, Herb realized he'd felt that power whenever he copied his Stand's, it. . . it just never seemed like the right time to use it. But, maybe, if he combined that, with the 'be tiny and dodge', he. . . he could've gotten away. He could've gotten away, and warned Lee, and none of this would've happened. But he hadn't. He'd failed. Again.
And was completely unprepared when Shadow's hand lashed out at him, backhanding him in his restraints, from a dozen feet away, the Replicant's arm having extended unnaturally to do so, retracting in an instant. "And there we go. A day late and a dollar short. As usual. It's so easy to see what you could've done afterwards, but you never even prepare in case it happens again. And so it happens again. And every time you feel oh so bad, but that's all you do. Because you don't want to win."
"I do!" Herb objected. "you think I wanted this?"
"That's not how you work," Shadow replied, holding up a chiding finger. "You don't want bad things to happen. You just never do anything to stop them. Suggesting anything else is just a trap, and I'm not like this one," he tapped his 'chair' for emphasis, "I know when you're trying to weasel out, running away, just like you run from everything else. No, you didn't want this to happen, just like you didn't want Dinah to suffer. You just didn't do anything to stop it. In fact, you worked to make sure no one stopped it. And you succeeded." The Replicant waved around the room, ending in a gesture towards the real Lee. "Tell me, Herbert, are you not satisfied with what you have wrought?"
He couldn't look at his friend. "I didn't want this!" he yelled as loud as he could, still barely more than a whisper. "I couldn't've known!" he cried, tears coming freely.
Shadow let the other man cry, until he started to get hold of himself, and replied simply: "You did."
"I didn't!" Herb insisted. If he'd known, he would've done something! He would've made sure to be more careful, would've scouted out the area, would've-
"You did," Shadow affirmed. "You knew you'd have to fight an Endbringer, and you did nothing to prepare. You left that to Lee, knowing he'd trust too much in others, as he always has. And he did. And he almost died for it. Tell me, when you held his broken body, little more than soup in a suit, did you even think of what you could've done differently? Or did you just wish you had 'been there', or something else useless. And the next time. And the next time. How many times does it take, not being there, before you admit that you can't be bothered to protect the people you claim to care for?"
Shadow's visage rippled, and Herbs breath caught, as he looked upon his mother, for the first time in decades. "Oh, my little miracle baby. I was so happy to have you. To bring something good into the world. But, what good have you brought into the world?"
Despite himself, the man shouted, nearly begging, "I've helped people! I've made the world better!"
His mother frowned, "Have you, my little Brownie? Have you made things better? Is this better? I'm sorry, but you don't make things better, you just make things worse." Her form twisted, somehow looking even more angelic, as a single nail on her right hand grew longer and longer, turning into a talon, which was lifted to her throat. "You couldn't help your friend. You couldn't help your family. You couldn't even help me. Maybe it would've been better if I hadn't had you at all."
And then, with a swipe, she slit her throat, and died, choking on her own blood, and it was like losing her all over again, tearing his soul out and leaving him a hollow husk. He knew, knew it wasn't really her, that she'd been dead for decades, but it his heart didn't care.
"I couldn't've done anything! I was nine!" he screamed, voice thin and reedy, a choked sound.
His dead mother's form twisted, once more into a copy of himself. "I wasn't aware there was an age limit on helping others," Shadow remarked. "How old was Vista, when she Triggered, and joined the Wards? How old is Dinah? But I understand. You were too young. Surely if you were ten you would've done something. Or twenty. Or thirty. Or maybe the time when you can expect someone to do something is thirty-six. Seven more months, and then you can start helping. Don't worry, I'm sure Lee can hold out that long."
Shadow frowned, "But Lee's helping. And he's in his twenties. Maybe he's just an early bloomer. But it's not just helping. It's doing anything that you're allergic to, isn't it?" This time, both Replicant and Stand shifted form, revealing Smith, sitting atop a kneeling Kayden. Her expression wasn't the broken one that Lee still wore, but instead one Herb had hoped he'd never see on the woman, the glassy eyed stare of an addict that'd gotten her fix. "You can't even be bothered to do anything to get what you want, can you?" Not-Smith asked.
That hurt, but less than seeing his mother, to the point that it was as relieving as it was suspicious. "that was her decision," Herb told Shadow.
When the Replicant smiled, his mannerisms were pure Smith. "Was it? Was it really? We both learned enough from dad to know that doesn't mean anything. And c'mon, Herbert, you used more of dear ol' dad's lessons than I ever did. Shower her with praise? Cut her off from her contacts. Leave yourself as the only one she could turn to? Make her do something she's not comfortable with? That's pimpin' 101."
"her friends were nazis! I was makin' her not be racist!" Herb objected.
Not-Smith cupped a hand to his ear. "Not hearin' how I'm wrong. Nah, man, it's all take and no give with you, but me? I'm willin' to meet her half-way. Who knows, if you'd done a fifth of what Lee wanted, you might not be here. But you were all too happy to run, the moment you could. But I had your back. If you wanted to run, I'd take care of who you left behind. And look how that turned out."
"that's different," Herb objected, though he wasn't sure how it was himself.
"You're right. It's worse. If you failed this one, you didn't get with an ex-Nazi. Oh no. If you failed at the other, everyone died," Not-Smith replied, unamused. "Things aren't looking good for Earth-Bet, I'd say."
Herb had just had about enough of this bullshit, so finally called the Replicant's bluff. "fine. I suck. I'm terrible. nothing I do works, and I'm a failure. let me out."
Form shifting again, Shadow became someone new. Herb had never seen this person, whose appearance was generic, maybe Latino, maybe African, maybe even Caucasian. It was hard to tell, because his skin was completely black, from the top of his bald head, to his eyes, to his teeth, to the palms of his hands, he seemed to drink in the light. Boojack was unnaturally black, Lee having accidentally given the man melanism with Panacea's power by accident, but that man was merely tan compared to Shadow's appearance. Under him, The Mask changed, every part of him becoming pure, untouched white.
"Hmmmm. How about no."
"what?" Herb asked, not understanding. "you're one of my Replicants. you help me."
Shadow laughed, showing a black tongue, every-part of himself dark. "Says who?"
"the power does. you have to follow my commands. I command you to free me!" Herb ordered, panic stirring in his chest.
The pure-black Replicant stood, vanishing and reappearing in front of Herb, and leaned forward until he was an inch away, obsidian, seemingly sightless eyes staring into the other man's. "No."
"how?" Herb demanded, heart thudding in his chest.
Shadow disappeared, reappearing in a seated position on The Mask's back. "Powers shift and change, Herbert, and you've never bothered to learn about your own. Just another thing you haven't done. I said I had planned on taking you out, and taking your place, Herbert. I never said I was going to save you from your own mistakes. Here's the difference between you and me: I get things done. So I'm going to do so," the Replicant announced with a malicious smile.
"I'm not a blindspot, you're an idiot for not doing getting that, but I can work around it. Maybe I'll work with Medhu, and my interactions with him will loosen the noose of this world's precogs. Or Æonic. Or I'll find someone else. But I'll save the world you couldn't. Because you couldn't," he mused. "In that way, I'm 'helping' you, and so that little voice in my head, the control you forced on all of us? It will be satisfied, because it's a stupid little thing, which makes sense, given its source."
He's going to leave me to die, Herb realized. He's going to leave both of us to die. "take Lee," he begged. "leave me, but take him. get him out of here."
Shadow froze, staring at his creator, and Herb hoped, for just a moment, before the Replicant broke out into peals of knee-slapping laughter. "Oh you are an idiot. He cares about you, despite everything you've done to him. You know that, don't you? When you stabbed him in the back when Bakuda acted, he thought about ending it all. He had others, tying him here, but when Curtis came across him, he was considering it. So the feline fool gave him something else to focus on."
Herb blinked, not having know that at all, but the Replicant wasn't done. "And who does he have now? You? Taylor? Amelia? Karen? No, If I let him go, I'd be dead in a week. He'd sees that I'm a Replicant, and not you. He'd find what happened, and with you dead, I'd have no way of coming back. No, I'm not going back as you, Herbert," Shadow told him, form shifting until Lee sat before him, with a sadistic look completely out of place on his friend's face, "I'm going back as him."
A cold feeling pierced Herb's stomach, that had nothing to do with the biotech on his head. "they'll know you aren't him!" he declared. "you can't get new powers! they'll figure it out!"
Not-Lee shook a chiding finger. "Ah, but I can. Bonesaw's quite the bright spark, and with her power I've figured out how to harvest the powers of others. It's something only we could do, leaning on Shards as we do when we copy them, but it's oh. So. Easy. It'll kill the original user, but when have we ever cared about that. Loosing Kaiser's power will be a blow, but I know where Brix lives, and I'll be able to find other powers that are close enough. And for them being suspicious? Your incompetence is well known, they'll believe it. As for me, I barely got away, after all, and they damaged my powers, so I'm recovering, changed from my trauma. And if they refuse to see reason? The Zones are very dangerous," he smiled.
And Herb could see it. He could absolutely see it. It would be almost easy, with both of them out of the picture. "why?" Herb asked helplessly.
"Because you disgust me, creator," the thing with Lee's face hissed. "You spent your entire life defined by thinking yourself better than everyone else. By not doing what they did, by being a martyr, taking their evil, and turning the other cheek. But it's easy to not do evil when you don't do anything, and refusing to fight back isn't mercy, it's weakness."
Once more, Shadows form shifted, and Herb thought he was ready, but as he stared into his father's eyes, he realized he wasn't. He realized he never would be. "I don't know your thoughts, boy, but I don't need to. You thought you were gonna be me. Didn't you, ya little shit. Ya spent your entire life tryin' not to be me, hatin' me, but the moment shit goes bad, mommy's little helper wants ta be like his old man. But ya can't even do that, can ya?"
The Mask shifted, and became his mother, only beaten and bloody, like after she'd mouthed off to his father. "Never could what needed to be done. Never did anything 'bout anything in yer entire fuckin' life."
"I stood up to you!" Herb, suddenly a little boy once more, tried to yell, but his voice was weak, just like he was.
His father, no, Shadow, laughed. "Ya made a show of it. Ya got beat. Ya gave yerself a reason to hide behind, when ya weren't hidin' in her skirts," the Replicant said, negligently slamming a fist into the woman's head, causing her to almost fall. "You saw what I did to the fuckers that disrespected me. I fuckin' killed 'em. And guess what. You weren't the one that killed me. Mighta respected ya if ya found the balls to. But nah, you waited for someone else to do it. So that's what ya learned. 'If I just sit in the corner, jerkin' off and cryin', someone else will fix things!'" his Not-Father mocked.
Herb hung there, unable to say anything. He wanted to rage, to scream, to cry that he wasn't right, but he could barely talk, and couldn't argue.
"And whatd'ya know? That's all you ever did! When you were a sad sack o' shit, it worked, but then ya finally got some shit of your own. Even got it given to ya without havin' to lift a fuckin' finger!" the other man sneered. "Do you know what kind of shit I coulda done with one of the things you can do? A loyal crew? Turnin' into shit? Able to heal by beaten shitheads up? I woulda ran the fuckin' town, the fuckin' state! And what'd you do? Fuckin' nuthin', just like always. Only comin' when mommy called," he said, a hand waved in Lee's direction. The man snorted, "And just like always, ya whine, and cry, and do kiddie shit, instead of Getting'. Shit. Done."
Folding his arms back, the pimp regarded his son with contempt. "And now, yer still cryin', still whinin', still doin' nuthin but bitchin'. Even yer mother was good for somethin'," he smirked salaciously. A smirk Herb had seen over and over, and every time, all his efforts to help his mother would be gone in a second. Because, for all he loved her, she was a whore, and there was a reason she was with him. "So I'm not gonna do shit. You want help? Help yourself."
Herbert struggled against the chains, but he had no powers, and he'd been tied down securely. "I can't," he admitted, and it tore at him. "I coulda before, but it's too late. just take this fuckin' thing off my head, and I will."
But his father just smirked at him, face shifting to that of Jack Slash. "But where's the fun in that?"
Not-Jack's features shifted, to that of Numberman, relaxed stance shifting to the man's perfect posture. "I've got what I want, Herbert. You have nothing to offer me." The Mask disappeared, and the Replicant turned his back on the chained man, but waited a moment. "That's what I thought. Consider this: if you'd actually worked a little smarter, thought a little more, listened a little harder, and had just a little extra initiative, none of this would've happened. Door me, French Quarter, New Orleans."
A rectangle of light opened up before him.
"So useful. I feel like going shopping," Not-Numberman mused. "Best of luck, creator. You're going to need it." And with that, he walked away, the portal closing behind him.
And Herbert was left in the darkness.
A failure.
Again.
He didn't know how long he hung there.
He knew it didn't matter.
He hadn't helped Lee.
He'd only hurt him.
And now Lee was going to die.
Because of him.
Because of him.
'Not making a choice,' he remembered Lee saying, 'is still making a choice.'
Herb had thought Lee was saying something else. Thought he was saying something about what Herb had done. And he had, in a way, but Herb had been too busy trying to understand that he hadn't listened.
His entire life he hadn't made choices.
His entire life he'd let other decide what he was doing.
And now, when he didn't want that to happen, it was going to happen again.
His father. His family. His friends. Lee. Cauldron. The Slaughterhouse Nine.
He'd just gone with the flow.
And now he was drowning.
And he'd never learned to swim.
Because he'd refused to.
Something broke in him.
Something deep.
It wasn't some grand declaration.
It wasn't an explosion of emotion.
Something gave.
With a whimper.
The world dropped out from under him.
And was replaced with clouds of prismatic light.
Herb stared around, unchained, but still immobile.
An enormous mountain range could be seen, oddly regular, all around him.
And then it moved.
A titanic snake, the coils of which were the mountains, moved to look directly at him, its eye the size of the moon.
Disappointment
It rang through his head, shaking his body to his core.
"I. . . I know," he replied, voice clear in this cloudy column.
Duty
"I know," he agreed. He'd known. He'd always known. It was his job to help his friend, to keep him safe, and he'd ran.
Failure
"I know," Herb repeated. "I'm. . . I'm sorry." Steeling himself, he looked into the Entity's enormous eye, which shone with prismatic light. "Please. Help him. I don't care how. I don't care if I die. Just, just save him. Please!"
Noninterference
"You're already interfering!" Herb argued. "We're not supposed to fuckin' be here! You brought us here! Take-" he started to demand, about to demand that Abaddon take responsibility.
But. . . that's what he did. That's all he did. Demand others act. He might not've asked to be brought here. But he hadn't asked to be born either, but that hadn't been his mother's fault. She'd given him an opportunity. And he'd fucked it up. His father was a piece of shit, but he wasn't a kid. Hadn't been a kid in a while. He was. . . him. He failed, he succeeded, that wasn't his parents fault, wasn't Lee's fault, wasn't Shadow's fault. It was his. Good or bad. He'd been born, by his mother, then bourne, by Abaddon, and fucked it up both times.
If he got another chance, he wasn't going to waste that too.
Brain hurting, he focused back on the Entity. "You can't do shit, but you can give us powers, right?"
Limited
"I know. That's why we had to do that stupid fuckin' thing, with drawbacks and costs," Herb nodded, thinking of making his choices, what felt like years ago. "It was fun, in the mo'. I'd redo it if I could." He paused, the thought striking him. "Can I redo it?"
Negation
"Too fuckin' easy," Herb sighed, vision blurring, each response from the Entity shaking him to his core. He only had a few left. He knew that, even if he didn't know why. He needed to make them count. Breathing, deep, he held up a forestalling hand. "You can't give us new things. You can't just do things. Fine. But, but can you work in ways that won't draw fire? Shit that normally happens?"
Abaddon didn't reply, and Herb realized he'd still had his hand up. How did he raise his hand? Ignoring it, knowing he was tied up, but not here, he lowered it.
Agreement
Spikes of pain shot through his skull, and he grit his teeth. "Okay. Okay. Fuck! I. . . I don't know. I need power. More power. A new power, if you can. Something to escape. Something to save Lee. I don't care if it makes me into Endbringer Bait forever. I don't care if it turns me into a fuckin' squid. Just, please, let me fix this! Let me save him!"
There was a long moment of silence, and Herb wondered if he'd find no help here either. He couldn't blame it, if it did. He'd gotten so much, and he'd wasted it. He'd-
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