"That's the place," Hit-Girl said with a grin as they examined the building from the shadows of the alley. "I see three guards, they've got handguns, probably a knife or two. Look at 'em, they're users, not professionals."
"Let's circle around and see if they have anyone around back anyway," Kick-Ass said, "we don't want to get caught in between two groups."
"What's the plan?" Karen asked, as they crept back down the alley.
"Go in the back, bust up the place, ambush the guards as they come in the front," Hit-Girl replied, "it's our standard procedure for drug dens."
"It also gives us a way out in case the place goes up," Kick-Ass added.
"Which also happens a lot when you break up a meth lab," Hit-Girl said.
"Maybe we'll get lucky and the place won't catch fire this time," he said hopefully.
"Good luck with that," Hit-Girl said with a snort, "it looks like a tinderbox; cheap ass construction, easily replaced. They don't bother making shit that lasts in the slums cause people are just going to fuck it up anyway. Besides, most of the places around here are condemned, that's why they set up shop here."
Circling around to the back, they found the house on the other side just as dilapidated and boarded up, covered in spray paint and trash, but empty.
"Cut through the house," Hit-Girl ordered as they walked up the driveway, weeds growing through cracks in the pavement.
Karen wrinkled her nose at the smell of urine and rotting trash as they reached the front door.
Hit-Girl grabbed the knob and twisted, causing a loud crack as the metal came apart in her hand. She tossed the broken doorknob to the side and pushed on the door, easily forcing it open. "Have I said how much I love having super strength? Cause I fucking love having super strength!"
Kick-Ass laughed.
The interior of the place was unfinished, the floors bare of carpeting and the interior walls simply two by fours hanging in place.
"This entire area could use a good fire," Hit-Girl said as they walked through the house, stepping through where walls should be.
"Yeah well, let's try not to cause one," Kick-Ass said, "I'd like to hit a crack house for once and not end up covered in soot. It's hard to get the smell out of my suit."
"You're wearing a superfabric from a superhero world, I doubt that'll be a problem," Merlin assured him.
"Really? Cool!"
Hit-Girl unlocked the backdoor and eased it part way open so she could look out the back door. The backyard was overgrown and the fence between the two houses was knocked down as she had a clean view of the crackhouse. "All clear, no guards," she said with a grin.
"Must be our lucky day," Kick-Ass said cheerfully.
"Weapons check," Karen said, causing the two superheroes to automatically check their gear as she did the same.
"You really are like Mindy," Kick-Ass said before frowning in thought. "Remember, minimal damage, we aren't trying to rack up a body count."
"Avoid unnecessary civilian casualties," Karen said with a nod, "I got it."
"Don't be afraid to break some bones," Hit-Girl said, "just not necks. Let's do this!"
The group quickly crossed the yard.
Kick-Ass drew his batons as Hit-Girl grabbed the doorknob and slowly twisted it, grinning as she found it unlocked. Hit-Girl yanked the door open and the two rushed inside, Merlin and Karen having to hurry to keep up with them.
A thin man in stained clothes stared at them in disbelief as he stood in the destroyed kitchen, but before he could even say anything Hit-Girl grabbed him by his belt and flung him through the boards covering the back window, the boards snapping loudly. Kick-Ass slid past her, not even pausing as he ran into the hall.
"Don't hog 'em all!" Karen exclaimed as she followed him.
'Maybe I should have given them some powers that would allow them to take people down non-violently,' Merlin thought as he entered the hall and had to duck a flying body.
Ten Minutes Later…
"Well that went well," Kick-Ass said as they walked through a back alley, covered in soot and smelling of smoke, the sound of fire engines echoing through the streets.
"Plasma grenades are awesome," Hit-Girl told Karen with a huge smile.
Karen grinned. "It's a good way to sterilize a site."
"Or a city block," Merlin added, reaching through shadow for a wet wash rag to wipe his face with.
"It was condemned and scheduled for demolition anyway," Hit-Girl said unconcerned.
"Crack houses are really flammable," Karen noted, accepting a wash rag from Merlin.
"I think plasma makes everything flammable, including stone," Kick-Ass offered dryly.
"It also works really well on polychrome alloys," Karen said proudly, passing the rag to Hit-Girl.
"I think we should call it a night," Kick-Ass said.
"It's still early," Hit-Girl pointed out.
"And we've already burned down a city block and are covered in ash," Kick-Ass said, "I think we've done enough damage for one day."
"Fine, we probably need a shower anyway," Hit-Girl replied, amused.
"And dinner," Merlin added.
"It's so nice to be able to get regular meals," Karen said happily, grabbing Merlin's hand.
"Homeless?" Kick-Ass asked sympathetically.
"Machines took over and were hunting us all down," Karen said, giving Merlin's hand a squeeze, "so it was hard to find enough to keep us fed."
"How'd that happen when you've got all these powers?" Mindy asked Merlin.
"Karen is from a different world," Merlin replied, "I ran into her group while I was travelling from one world to another."
"So… you just wander from world to world?" Kick-Ass asked.
"Basically," Merlin agreed. "I wander around and I help people out."
"Got any family?" Hit-Girl asked curiously.
"None, just a number of friends of questionable sanity."
"Questionable sanity?" Kick-Ass asked, pausing before deciding to lead them down another alley.
"Heroes always have questionable sanity because if you asked sane people if they'd like to help you fight demons and walk across half the continent to throw a ring in a volcano, they'd tell you to fuck off," Merlin explained.
"Yeah, that sounds about right," Hit-Girl agreed.
"Seems more sane to fight the darkness than hope someone else does it for you," Kick-Ass said.
"Of course you'd say that, you're a hero," Merlin pointed out. "No, the sensible thing is to get the community involved and take care of the root of the problem."
"That would require the people in charge not being lazy and corrupt pieces of shit," Hit-Girl said. "If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself."
"Hold on, Kenny's calling," Karen said, stopping in the middle of the alley, her eyes losing focus.
Everyone stopped and listened to her talk to the air.
"Hey Kenny," she said cheerfully. "Playing Superhero with Merlin… No, this world just has regular people… Well, did you remember to feed Pudge?... Give him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and it'll stop raining… Murphy told me. Pudge controls the weather and if he gets hungry he causes storms… Is it really stranger than everything else we've gone through?... Love you too, bye."
"That's a really awesome power," Kick-Ass said. "Can you read minds?"
Karen shrugged. "Don't know, never tried. Everyone I hang out with I know so well I don't need to."
"Telepathy is more trouble than it's worth," Merlin said, drawing on his memories of Amber, "humans are usually thinking of a bunch of things at once so trying to read someone's mind is like trying to listen to a single song playing on a radio with a dozen radios, all on different channels, blaring away."
"Seriously?" Hit-Girl asked curiously.
"Seriously," Merlin said, "and everyone is continually thinking about sex, food, and fighting in bizarrely random ways."
"Bizarrely?"
"Oh yeah," Merlin assured her. "The part of the brain dealing with survival isn't filtered through the sections dealing with logic and reason, so it's continually coming up with things like 'Can we beat up that car?' or 'Can we fuck that telephone pole?"
Mindy burst out laughing. "Now I know you're just fucking with me."
"I'm really not," Merlin said, "the reptilian hindbrain is continually evaluating everything as threat, food, or a mate."
"And suddenly I'm glad I'm not a telepath," Kick-Ass decided.
"True telepathy is a pain to train," Merlin agreed. "What we're using is something completely different and only contacts the conscious mind, which makes it easier to handle."
"Is that why you gave us powers specifically to use the trumps?" Karen asked.
Merlin nodded. "I didn't want to have to spend a decade teaching you guys, so I cheated and this way when you guys use the trumps you don't have to worry about saying more than you mean to."
"We should be far enough away to catch a cab now," Kick-Ass decided, pulling out his cellphone as they stepped out onto a main street.
"Can't people track you by your cab usage?" Karen asked as Kick-Ass made the call.
"Nah, we always pick a place a couple of blocks away and change it every couple of weeks so they can't find a pattern," Hit-Girl said. "Also, most of the cabbies owe us, since we've made sure to put some effort into keeping them safe."
"Cab's on the way," Kick-Ass said. "Where should we go for dinner?"
"I'll shift shadow and grab us something," Karen said, "it'll save time and I need the practice."
"That is an awesome ability," Hit-Girl said, as they waited for the cab.
"What is your powerset, if you don't mind me asking," Kick-Ass asked.
"Superhuman everything, shapeshifter, able to shadow shift, and we all have these cards with our faces on them that allow us to talk to each other and teleport to each other, plus I have a magical necklace that lets me, once per day, heal everyone present," Karen listed off.
"Superhuman everything?" Kick-Ass asked.
"All physical stats beyond human maximum, including healing and longevity," Merlin explained.
"Awesome powerset," Hit-Girl told her.
"Thanks," Karen said with a smile. "It'd come in handy fighting the Terminators, except Merlin," she gave his hand a squeeze, "lead us to a world without people, so we don't have to worry about them."
"Terminators? As in Skynet and killer cyborgs?" Kick-Ass asked.
"And nuclear war and the red plague," Karen agreed.
"Red plague?" Hit-Girl asked.
"Skynet released a plague that sterilized most everyone," Karen explained. "My locket healed us, so that's no longer a problem."
"Karen is from a Terminator timeline?" Kick-Ass asked Merlin.
"Yeah, though I can't find the place they came from anymore, it vanished when we left," he replied, "no idea why."
"Sarah Conner stopped Skynet from forming," Hit-Girl said with a grin. "We can stop by a video store and pick up the movies."
"Movies?" Karen asked.
"Your world is a movie here," Merlin told her.
"Really?" Karen asked, wondering how that happened.
"Really," Merlin told her. "Every story you know is a world somewhere and I can walk to them."
"That is the most awesome power ever," Kick-Ass said.
"I'm not going to argue," Merlin said with a grin, "it really is."
A black and white checkered cab pulled up in front of them and Hit-Girl opened the door and climbed in. "Take us to the mall on fifth," she told the cabby, digging out a couple of twenties.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
"Kyle Reese?" Karen asked after the character was introduced as they watched the first Terminator movie in Mindy and Dave's lair.
"You know him?" Mindy asked, as she paused the movie. Everyone had ditched their costumes and cleaned up, so she was just wearing a pair of gray sweats the same as Dave; Karen and Merlin has shifted shadow to grab their own pair as well.
"Well, he used to be named Kyle Broflovski before his parents turned on us," Karen said. "Eric convinced him to change his last name to Reese, probably thinking about Reese's Pieces. Eric loves junkfood. I once saw him knock someone out for stealing his last Snicker's Bar."
"And since Kyle didn't go back in time, Skynet was never made," Merlin realized, "so we negated the entire timeline."
"What?" Karen stared at Merlin, confused.
"The Terminator going back in time was killed, but the military got ahold of his pieces and used it to develop the technology to create Skynet," Merlin explained. "It's a timeloop. Pulling Kyle out of your world interrupted the loop so it never happened."
"So all our friends and family are alive?!" Karen asked excitedly.
"And there's a version of all of you living a perfectly normal life there," Merlin told her.
"Can we go there?"
"Yeah, but like with Murphy, I need a couple of years practice walking before I can find it," Merlin explained.
"The guys are going to be happy to hear that," Karen said with a huge smile. "Okay, back to the movie."
After The Movie…
"Kyle was really off his game," Karen said, shaking her head, "he should have been able to take out a single infiltrator easy."
"He was pretty fucked in the head," Merlin pointed out. "Pretty sure he lost you guys or he wouldn't have gone."
"How would you have taken out the Terminator?" Dave asked curiously.
"Emp and thermite," Karen replied instantly. "Overload a powerpole with it nearby and cover its neck in thermite. The metal they're made of is tough but thermite will still fuck it up."
"I'd go for the eyesockets," Mindy said, "burn out the hardware and its sensors."
"Also good," Karen agreed, "but the neck requires less thermite so you can neutralize it quicker."
"I don't get why they didn't make a living bag to send weapons back with it," Dave said. "It'd be easy to wrap cloned tissue around some futuristic weapons."
"Because they aren't creative," Karen explained, "Skynet could only develop weapons and plan strategies from things it already knew."
"So all the improvements it made to the Terminators was either projects that were already planned when Judgment Day happened or were logical progressions of what it already had," Dave said.
"Pretty much," Karen agreed. "Anything creative was the result of turncoats or its attempts to make things based on books or movies."
"Can't imagine that working all that well," Mindy said.
"It didn't," Karen agreed. "It once tried to lure us in with Disney mascots."
"You're kidding," Mindy said.
"I personally shoved a plasma grenade into the mouth of Goofy," Karen said. "Fucker didn't see it coming."
Mindy burst out laughing. "That must have been fun."
"It was something," Karen said. "Anyway, it meant we could uncover infiltrators pretty easy and Skynet never guessed our pass-codes. Mainly cause we didn't use pass-codes, just a series of jokes."
"You used jokes as pass-codes?" Kick-Ass asked.
"Oh yeah," Karen said, "the more illogical the joke the better. I think the guys actually blue screened a couple of units just using dead baby jokes."
"What if someone didn't have a sense of humor?" Dave asked.
"They tended not to live long anyway," Karen replied with a shrug.
"Man, the future was fucked up in your world," Mindy said.
"Yeah, but not anymore," Karen said as she pulled a pizza from a nearby shadow. "Start the next movie, I want to see how Kyle's son turned out."
Typing By: Abyssal Angel
TN: You know, I'm kinda surprised Karen didn't flip at the FNAF crew downstairs, considering they're animatronics, and I can't imagine any of them are all that well adjusted when it comes to dealing with anything involving bipedal robots…
AN: They didn't go in the restaurant, just headed straight to the lair via fire escape.
