The Albino Telepath Saga

by DBAinsw

Discontinued: I keep this long, long story around as an example of what NOT to do. Once this was my superfantasy played out in a forum others might read it in. Now I see it as typing practice with an embarrasing garystu focus.

14. Gang Wars part 1

This Chapter is Rated R

Intro: This one turned out really great, no doubt about it. I had to pump the rating a little, but really, if you're mature enough to have stuck through the plot so far, nothing here should be all that terribly offensive or shocking. There are strong sexual themes, but this isn't pornography. There are descriptions of gross violence and murder, but not extremely graphic ones. The rating is really only there to hopefully ward off anyone who cares to be warned of such things ahead of time and to cover my ass with the site organizers.

Chapter 14: Gang Wars Part 1

A Dark, Secret Place

Brother Blood came slowly to his senses, his mind clearing from a fog of drug-induced unconsciousness. He immediately noted an acrid taste on his tongue, clearly indicative of whatever he'd been slipped in that last drink he'd had. His most recent memory was of taking a quiet dinner alone in the safehouse he'd been planning his most recent intrigues from, something that could have happened days ago for all he knew at this point. As he opened his eyes, he noted that his hands were bound extremely securely to the chair he sat stooped forward in, and that there was something heavy on his head. Already forming plans for his escape and revenge, he began to take in his surroundings.

The room he sat in was poorly lit, an indeterminate source of harsh white light directly above him mysteriously illuminating only a single circle of blank space around him. Whatever the floors and other surfaces were made of, they sucked the light in and kept it, preventing it from revealing any more of the room. He noted that the chair he was bound to was of high quality metal and plastic construction, managing to be very comfortable and virtually unbreakable at the same time. Unable to see whatever it was that sat so heavily upon his brow, he resigned himself temporarily to waiting until whoever it was that had done this to him revealed him or herself. Escape, for now, was out of the question, better to dwell on the sweet revenge he would take on his captor.

"Ah, Brother Blood, I see you've finally seen it fit to treat me to your consciousness," spoke a low, dignified, supremely threatening voice out of the complete blackness of the room. Tricks of the acoustics made it sound like the voice came from everywhere, and also made it impossible to figure the size of the room from the sound, and thus revealed nothing. Blood's eyes darted deftly around those areas he could turn them to, but no change had occurred anywhere he could perceive. The voice was not particularly familiar to him.

"I apologize for the abrupt and rather forceful nature of my summons, but I thought it best if I removed the inconvenience of your choice in the matters I seek your aid with," the mystery voice continued, and Blood began to form suspicions and plots compulsively, seeking any advantage he might gain to elevate him from his supremely vulnerable position.

"Might I ask whose company I have the pleasure of enjoining?" Blood asked, his oily voice making the words into a kind of audible velvet that slunk through the air. His talent for speech was of great personal pride to him, factoring as it did so closely into his chosen profession. It was his internal boast that he could make a grocery list read as charismatic and seductive.

"Why yes, how rude of me," and the powerfully menacing voice suggested no shred of actual remorse, "I merely assumed that you would recognize the voice of such an old and dear (the voice somehow made these words sound like a kind of joke) business associate." With this latest comment, a metallic clack signaled the illumination of another starkly bright lamp, this one casting a single circle of light on a figure about ten feet from Blood.

This figure was one of a powerful man, huge in a chiseled muscular fashion, but held with a poise that spoke of undeniable grace and sureness of movement, a deadly combination. The man's body was encased in a composite of body armor clearly designed to provide maximum protection and freedom of movement simultaneously, the equipment of a fighter's fighter to be certain. Done in orange, black, and gray, the suit traveled upward in hard-edged rigidity to an oval mask, half-orange, half-black. The orange half had a single eye-slit, the other side as blank as a sheet of obsidian, black as a demon's heart.

"Mr. Slade?" and now Blood's voice was altered by the intrusion of unwanted but unavoidable fear. Being bound and at the 'mercy' of such a terrible specimen of the criminal element, the villain of all villains as far as anyone on this coast was concerned, was something to strike fear into the most confidant of hearts. Fortunately for Blood, he was able to use his skill to cut off the fear and clear his mind, bringing his façade of absolute self-assurance back to the forefront. He may be up against Slade, but Slade was up against Brother Blood, and would soon regret this unforgivable transgression.

"Why, Mr. Slade! I didn't know you were back in town!" he recovered, turning his fearful question into an exuberant greeting, "If you had simply asked, I would have been more than happy to hear about any special contracts of service I might render for you. This was unnecessary to be sure, and I truly wonder why you still keep me bonded, even now?" Blood placed every ounce of grease his silver tongue could muster into his words, in his own mind already able to hear the evil chuckle and quick capitulation of the terribly dangerous adversary/customer before him. He didn't know Slade's game, but he was confident in his ability to play it by his own rules.

"I would place it under the strictest of advisement, Brother Blood," and now the voice fairly echoed with the undercurrents of power and deadly threat they masked, "That you realize it will be your actions that determine your fate from now on, not your words. To this end, I suggest you be quiet and listen to my orders, which you will carry out without question."

Incensed, Blood fumed behind his appeasing mask, wanting desperately to burn the arrogant bastard's mind down to a nub and leave him to vegetate in his dark lair. Deciding that escape had once more become the priority over revenge, he instead grew his smile ever wider and warmed up his power behind his eyes.

"Please now Mr. Slade," and Blood began to press his power into the words, giving them the force of irresistible compulsion, "Clearly the best course of action would be to release me and discuss this matter like two civil men. Surely we can reach a mutually agreeable understanding on this?" and he made his move, energizing his mind control and sending it out to touch his helpless opponent's psyche. Now shouldn't he have known better?

"AAAHAHAHGGGGAHGAAGHAA," his cries of agony were torn continuously from his lips by the soul-burning pain of electrocution. The instant his power had tried to truly reach out of his mind, the crown upon his head had buzzed with electricity, sending jolts of hot agony flashing through his body. The torture was short, but the shock to his brain left him stunned and euphoric for several minutes afterward, Slade standing in perfectly silent observation as he recovered his senses.

"Now do you see the position you're in?" he asked when Blood had recovered enough to focus his eyes again on his captor. "I have you completely under my power, you will not use your abilities, you will not get out of that chair, you will not eat or drink, you will not do anything at all without my permission. If you try to use those impressive abilities of yours while my psychic inhibitor crown graces your head, you will regret the experience. Do I have your full attention now?"

Blood merely nodded, becoming ever more wary of his situation. Without his powers, his options for escape were limited, and he had no desire whatsoever to feel that shock again, so he capitulated with a slight nod. He took solace in the knowledge that the only possible reason Slade had done this to him was to harness his mental powers, so the crown would come off eventually. That would be his time to strike.

"Good, now listen carefully," and Slade's iron voice was aloof and condescending, as though he spoke to one of his brainless lackeys. "There have been several most distressing developments in Jump City, my City, over the past few weeks. These developments threaten my interests here, and you are going to help me secure them again."

Blood silently wondered what could "distress" Slade, much less threaten his interests. He knew with a bitter certainty that his own actions in Jump had been permitted only as a subordinate to Slade's plans, expanding when the dictator of crime had taken his mysterious leave of absence and no sooner. It was a thought that grated.

"Here," and Slade indicated a hand to his right, illuminating a view screen that had been invisible in the darkness. The first image showed a number of gunmetal-gray gears fitted together on an orange background, all overlain with a bladed "S," Slade's own calling card. Blood supposed the gears were supposed to represent the intricate plot, the carefully lain trap, and the ever-working mind that his arrogant host prided himself on.

Before continuing, Slade turned and took a few steps back into the darkness, a new lamp lighting over a Spartan throne carved from a single slab of stone. With a slow dignity, he mounted the throne and leaned over to prop his masked chin on his gauntleted fist, his elbow poised on the armrest. As he waved his free hand again, a new image appeared, this time a high-quality photograph of a blond woman in a business suit just stepping out of a car. The woman was clearly extremely beautiful, easily super-model standard, with her curly hair was done up in a prim ponytail and a set of expensive sunglasses.

"This woman appeared in the city three weeks ago and began a company called Green Construction. The company has experienced unprecedented success, which was why I suspected it immediately when Jump erupted with crime that I neither authorized nor profited from. I've traced a number of...'activities', back to Green Construction—activities that I will not permit to continue unchecked. The disappearance of rare materials, kidnappings, consolidation of the petty criminals that pay tribute to me, the hostile takeover of my drug dealing empire, my night clubs, my gambling operations, everything I've built up here over the past year has been taken over in my absence."

"Oh, certainly the initial losses were to be expected: my lieutenants going rouge when they thought me gone, local toughs muscling in on a business or two, other criminals opening up their own operations in my territory," and Slade gave Blood a slant-eyed glare of malice after this last one, "But that was all predictable and easily remedied with my return. This!" and he waved his hand once more, this time with a wild swing that spoke of barely submerged rage, causing a new screen to light up next to the one with the picture of the woman. The new screen held a map of Jump covered in dozens of orange squares and gear marks, dated a few months back, around the time Slade vanished. As he watched, Blood saw the date advance to two weeks ago, then count up to what must be today, the orange squares becoming green and the gears replaced with white letter "G" marks. The map was completely transformed.

"THIS!" Slade screamed it now, loosing his rage into the room, "THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! NO ONE challenges me! I will not be beaten by these upstarts from nowhere! I WILL punish them for their insolent posturing toward MY domain!" and with this last exclamation, Slade slammed his fist into the arm of his throne. The resonating crash of metal on rock echoed through the blackness around them, then faded away to nothing, the room returning to the blank silence it had held when Blood first awakened. Deciding it was high time to venture another comment, Blood spoke his part.

"Mr. Slade, I can understand that you aren't entirely happy with me, but please, I'm willing to help in any way I can." Blood's voice dripped with appeasement and deference, masking what was, in effect, a demand for the raging crime lord to get to the point.

"Oh don't worry Blood, you will be of most eminent use to me before this is over. You see, my spies, as almost completely useless as they've been against this opponent's counterintelligence forces, have managed to net me indisputable proof that they use mind control to keep their minions in line. Mind control means telepaths, and telepaths mean I need something to fight telepaths with. I obtained that amusing little hat of yours among a number of devices proven effective against such opponents. However, it is well known that the only truly effective weapon against a powerful telepath is..."

"Another telepath," Blood completed the phrase himself. He had known this was a question of his powers, and now he had the proof. "I see why you came to me then. I don't like to brag, but there truly isn't much on this planet that can compete with my mental powers." Blood continued to cooperate, but with dignity now. His mind steadily cranked out plans to make Slade pay, but for now he needed to get out of the chair and this damn inhibitor crown.

"Yes, though that truly isn't the reason I picked you," Slade answered, the cruel smile that his mask concealed expressed in his tone. "One thing I search for in the tools I use is how easily I can control them, how much leverage I can hold over them to bend them to my will. And, well, Brother Blood, I think I'll just say that your counterintelligence forces were nowhere near the level of these new rivals of mine. I have all I'll ever need to make you beg to serve me for the rest of your pathetic life." Slade's tone had altered while he spoke from cruelly amused to deadly serious, then to a mocking lightness. His eye was slanted in true sadistic enjoyment as he watched Blood's composure evaporate into a mask of hate and fear, panic in his eyes while visions of things he'd kill to keep secret danced through his head.

"You—You have nothing on me!" Blood snapped, but it was clearly more of a hopeful whish than a conviction of any kind.

"Ah, but I do Brother, I do!" and Slade was truly beginning to love Blood's obvious pain. "I have pictures, video, audio, from dozens of angles and on multiple occasions—enough evidence to damn you beyond all doubt."

"NO! You can't prove anything! You're bluffing!" and Blood seemed about ready to cry, his suave demeanor and velvety voice a thing of the past, only the fear that Slade was so delighting in now expressed.

"Now, now, Blood, let's not get overly dramatic here," Slade mocked him, "you did bring this upon yourself, after all. I mean, illicit relationships with the students in that school of yours? For Shame!" and the mocking tone melted into a deadly threat. "Sodomizing underage girls and boys while keeping them under the influence of your mind control isn't something those self-righteous fools in the courts are going to look kindly upon should you in any way fail to capitulate to my orders and force me to leave you high and dry with the police. I believe a man of your age and build, especially considering you offense, would quickly become the fuck-bitch of some triple-murderer named T-bone once your consecutive life sentences got underway."

"NO!" Blood's rage had melted into a despairing terror, able to see that he'd already lost even as he railed against the inevitability of his defeat. All this, and Slade hadn't even played his trump card yet. "Those prisons can't hold me!" Blood continued to rail against reality, "My powers can protect me from your blackmail!"

"Oh if only that were true," and Slade feigned sad consideration, "but it simply isn't. Should you be foolish enough to defy me," and he was back to his completely dangerous tone, "I will have no choice but to activate the implant that has just now finished integrating with the part of your nervous system responsible for your powers." As Blood gaped in stunned silence, Slade waved his hand at the screen again, changing it to an image of Blood's head's silhouette, a red blinking spot indicating where the implant was. Blood knew he wasn't bluffing this time, a slow throbbing emanating from the same spot in his head.

Defeated, Blood's arrogance was finally overcome by the severity of his situation, his spirit broken by the thought of being imprisoned with no powers to protect himself. All thought of escape and revenge were driven away, for the time being anyway, as he capitulated truthfully with a murmur and nod.

"Good. I knew you'd see things my way. Now that that little episode is behind us, it's time discuss the first order of business you'll attend to." Slade turned slightly in his throne and waved to an indistinct area of the blackness on the right. A light illuminated an empty circle, causing the stunned villain in the binding chair to look on in confusion and anxiety. "I'm going to need you to do a little work on a weapon I've been cultivating for quite a long time now. It failed me once, but it's still the most powerful tool in my hands—I feel it simply needs some fine tuning to reach its true potential."

As he spoke, a wheelchair was carted slowly into the light, its contents obscured by a white sheet. Without Slade having to say anything more, the generic combat android that had been pushing the chair pulled the shroud down to the waist, revealing a extremely petite young form.

The girl was blond and pale, as though she hadn't seen the light of day in weeks without number, and even as she sat her head lolled limply in the chair's headrest. An IV attached to the back of the chair dripped something or other into her constantly, and Blood assumed from the lack of consciousness that it included dope to keep her under. After taking in these obvious things, he noticed the wires and leads sprouting from her skull, the electrodes stuck all over the jet-black skintight body stocking she wore, as well as the fact that she was spectacularly attractive, in a skin-and bones kind of way (his favorite). He felt himself becoming excited despite the circumstances, his lusts always having more sway over him than anything else.

"This is Terra, potentially the most destructive weapon on the planet. I thought I had her working perfectly, but then her little friends started meddling and turned her heart against me. My efforts to regain control over her these past months have proven... difficult. I can't seem to break her of her loyalty to her friends, not without getting too close to the breaking point of her spirit and risking loss of her fighting ability. The hooks, knives, screws, cattle prods, whips, needles, hot coals, hypnotic conditioning, and direct nervous stimulation of my trade have proven useless in this matter," and it sounded as if it cost him much to admit this, "So I turn it over to you. You are going to erase all memory of her friends from her mind, expunge everything but the skills I've taught her and undying loyalty to me, and you will do it as soon as possible. There is little time before my window of opportunity to strike at Green Construction has closed." With that Slade stood and turned to leave, confident in the supreme that Blood would do nothing to betray him, or at least that he would not be stupid enough to attempt anything so soon. Not to say that he didn't have even that angle covered.

"Wait, Slade, if I might venture a few inquiries, to speed this distasteful process?" wheedled Blood, determined to wring something out of his new 'master.'

"It amuses me that you've suddenly grown enough scruples to call something like this distasteful," Slade responded, without turning, and Blood took that as permission to ask.

"My sources informed me that the girl Terra was petrified within the new volcano outside of Jump's city limits. How exactly was it that she got here, and so obviously not stone as well?" and even as he asked, Blood knew he would get some kind of answer, just because Slade was so much the type to gloat.

"Why yes, an artful piece of deception, that. I find that it is simply good tactics that the only thing more effective than destroying a weapon to keep it away from your enemies, is to make them think it's destroyed and keep it all the while. While defeat is never part of my plans, only a fool fails to leave a back door should things go... 'sour.' You know, "even the best laid plans of mice and men," and that whole line of lyrical garbage. It was a rather magnificent piece of preparation on my part, having that laser-cut statue of the girl made—a moment of inspiration that flared up in one of my little planning sessions. Should the little whore betray me as she betrayed her friends, as Robin betrayed me, I would secret her away, away and out of the minds of her comrades, completely beyond the reach of any rescue, simply because they would not be looking. As they flounder about trying to turn that rock into a girl, I've had the girl all along, and we've had many a wonderful adventure into the house of pain, she and I, as I teach her what it is to betray the one who owns her. Many trips."

The way Slade finished his monologue sent a shiver down Blood's spine, the not so concealed threat to his own person bringing the scope of his dilemma back into focus. Slade continued to slowly walk into the darkness then, and Blood shivered again, this time in excitement at the thought of being left alone with the girl. Such a pretty young thing, so much like a little boy...

"Oh, before I forget," Slade interjected, his voice echoing out of the darkness, the mocking suggestion that he hadn't planned what he was saying showing his mood was back to amused, "Don't even momentarily consider laying a hand on my weapon to do anything but your assigned task. I know she falls within your preferred size and build category, and I will not have you taking your little pleasures among my tools. If you serve me well, you will be allowed to return to your habits of stalk/mind-control/rape, but should one of the many monitoring devices in that room detect you trying it now, with her ...well there are other telepaths in the world," and he let that final threat hang in the air, the continuing silence of his absence pervading the room.

After a moment of being left to stew in his own failure and hate, the shackles on the chair detached of their own accord, and he was allowed to stand and stretch after who knows how many hours of being bound. The first thing he did when he had feeling in his hands was take off the wretched helmet that had hurt him so and fling it to the ground where its electrodes and wires could be scattered on the inky black tiles. That bit of petty vindictiveness cooled his bubbling hate somewhat, so he could look once more at the girl he was about to violate. Slade was right: to Blood, the thought of entering her mind and raping her memories was not detestable, but rather, more exciting than anything he could think of, except perhaps for buggering the delectable little twig as his body so harshly demanded he not hesitate to do.

Advancing silently, he came to within arm's reach, leaning down to examine her more closely. The smoothly curving features of her face were irresistible, and he slowly moved his fingers across them as he felt the burning desire grip his body. Not since he'd first had Jinx and Gizmo in his clutches, freely taking his pleasures without them ever realizing, had he been this excited, and the taboo Slade had placed on her only made him want her that much more. It was intoxicating.

Seeking some more responsiveness in his soon to be victim, he cut off the IV drip, shutting down the supply of whatever dope Slade was using. The drug was very week, intended for long-term use, and had the added effect of a quick recovery time once it was no longer being administered. Slade must have wanted her up and aware quickly for some reason, and Blood couldn't help but assume it was for much the same reason as his own. Slade was a sadist to the core, and got his pleasure out of pain much as Blood got his out of the bodies of the immature and helpless. Blood was willing to bet that Slade "took her to the house of pain," to get his own jollies more than any punishment for betrayal.

He recalled then the tortures Slade had spoken of, things Blood had no taste for at all, and certainly didn't want to be the subject of. He looked closely at what little skin was shown outside the body stocking, but there wasn't a single mark on her, not even a fading bruise. Either Slade had been a long time without his pleasure, or he was such an artist of his trade that he could take the girl to pain's cusp of sanity without leaving lasting damage. Blood was terrified that it was the latter.

She began to stir then as Blood leaned over her, and his pulse quickened as her eyes focused on his face and widened in terror. He had no idea how many times she'd woken from the drug sleep, how many times Slade had been waiting over her to drag her into agony for his own twisted pleasure, but he got a good idea from her lightning quick action.

(Terra)

A clearing of the haze that ruled her life, and she was off. Had to act fast if she wanted a chance to get the drop on him, had to do something new, unexpected, or he would be on her again. As she forced her eyes to work, to get a sense of where he was so she could strike out and penetrate his guard, she was stopped in her tracks by the face that looked down at her. Someone new. It took her only the tiniest fraction of a second to switch to a new tactic, something that would never work on the Devil and his mask.

With a sharp lunge she thrust forward and clamped her teeth onto his face, nipping for purchase and finding it on a flap of skin in his cheek. As she clamped down as hard as her abused muscles would allow, that sweet metallic taste filled her mouth, for once the familiar tang on her tongue belonging to someone else's red life escaping. In that moment, she knew that this new guy couldn't be as bad as the Devil. He couldn't even avoid such an obvious gambit, and her with her head bound to the chair by the neural connectors in her brain.

He hauled her off of him and smacked her hard to the head, so that, as it had many times of late, everything went fuzzy and indistinct, the world swirled around her, then refocused slowly. The feeling of victory was gone with the first blow, the momentary flare dying as dead as it had been since the Devil had taught her there could be no victory. No victory, no rescue, only despair, acquiescence, and the eventual release of death. Such a gift she sometimes believed the Devil would give to her, just because she begged, so very much begging, when he really got into his perversion. A dream, a wonderful delirium of blunt force trauma, she knew. The Devil never let go of what was his, not willingly.

"A spirited little waif," commented the new man, the fool who had gotten so close and left himself so open. Even now, the eyes the Devil had trained looked at him and saw a dozen openings, so very many ways to cause pain and suffering, or death. The Devil preferred to make others suffer, but taught the killing blows out of hand as well, of course. "Such spirit makes it all the more exciting when I take them, the way they squirm is quite delightful," and Terra knew what the man meant and what threat he made instantly. How far he was from actually intimidating her was actually kind of funny. Ha, Ha.

"I don't know who you are, but you'll have to do better than that. I drew blood within the first instants, and all you've done is smack the sleep from my eyes. Thanks for that." Her voice was dead, she knew. It had died when the little light inside that was her had died, so many weeks ago. Or years, or decades, whatever it had been, the eternal night of the Devil's pit made such things meaningless. Her life had been a haze of drugs punctuated by untold horrors, and it had killed her as dead as any corpse, her current pulse not withstanding.

"A mouth on her too," he said, as though she wasn't there. She wondered idly what the Devil's new game was, how he would use this strange molester to derive his twisted pleasures from her now. He persisted that he was punishing her for treason, and that she could accept, it was a punishment she'd earned a billion times over, but they both knew he did it only to satisfy his lust for pain and terror. Such was the price for dealing with the Devil.

"Well little thing, little weapon, I have been ordered by our mutual captor to render you useful to him as a fighter once more. I can guess what purpose you've served since you refused to be his tool of destruction, and I simply can't imagine what would possess you to choose that over killing others—but in truth, I do not care. I will not make your mistake and be that creature's pain whore, and that means that your fate is quite sealed, young Miss." He spoke in a dapper tone that belied the heat behind his eyes. She had learned to spot lust, over this time, the Devil's lust for pain was only slightly different than this man's lust for her body, and both came through in the eyes.

As his words began to sink in, the small part of her still capable of fearing anything other than pain began to pulse with an icy terror. What did he mean by, 'render her useful as a fighter?' The Devil had tried that, at first, before he became more interested in what pitch and treble he could cause her to scream at when the hooks were driven into such and thus internal organ or nerve cluster. No matter what the pain, no matter what the degradation, nothing would make her lift the tiniest dust mote to aid the Devil ever again. She could never fix what she'd done, never repay the damage she'd caused, and never, ever, go back to the way things were, but she could refuse to do it ever again. She owed them that, owed him that, him him him...

NO! I cannot say that name, I cannot think that name, it has passed beyond me now. I am alone, and I chose to be alone, to be the servant of the Devil for his dark pleasures, because I am a traitor, and the deepest darkest pit of hell is where Judas is chewed within the Devil's maw.

"Are you listening whelp? I am about to explain to you exactly what I'm going to do. That way you can feel the terror grip you as you helplessly rail against every new violation. Do you see? I cannot frighten you by threatening your body—I see that clearly now—but what about your mind? I think I know exactly what will draw some delicious terror out of you..." and his smile was the Devil's smile, and Terra knew fear once more.

He came close again, this time wary of her and her surly, empty-eyed stare. She knew what she must look like, neural interfaces jacked into her skull, a body suit so tight that every inch of her not covered in that shroud might as well have been naked, showing through the malnourished wasting her once-toned muscles had become, the ribs where starvation had once again emaciated her, and she wondered if it was such freakish features that excited him so. She had thought herself beyond the reach of hunger when she'd entered the fold of the Devil's pact, but it turned out to be just one more way he had of hurting her. At least that had been a familiar torture.

The molester leaned down and drove his sharp stare into her dulled and empty one, pushing past the outer layers of her mind and establishing a presence deep within her. She could feel the presence there, but suddenly, she didn't care. Not caring had been a defense she'd been relying on to stave off insanity as of late, but this was different, as though she actually welcomed the too-intimate touch of this dangerous pervert. That he was within her mind became secondary to the fact that he was near to her a way that no man should be near to a girl who can't defend herself. It was already scarier that most of what the Devil did.

"I am in you now, as surely as if I had penetrated you in other ways," he said with his velvet voice, and the words echoed and reverberated with thoughts that appeared at the same instant within her head. "Now that I am here, it is time for me to have my fun. Slade said I wasn't to take my pleasure from his tool's flesh, but there are other ways to take pleasure from another, and none of them will be nearly as pleasant for you as what I had originally planned."

The grip of indifference loosened as he finished speaking, and the fear that had been building up behind the steel wall of his power's influence flooded into her mind. As the terror caused her pulse to race and her eyes to dilate, she let out a slight gasp, able to see how her fear excited him. He was practically drooling as he began to talk again, and she couldn't help but squirm in her seat to try and escape as he leaned over her further.

"Good, you should be very afraid little one. Now that I've had a look around your mind, I can tell you that you truly aren't going to enjoy this. But I will. Oh yes, already I can taste your terror like a fine wine on my senses. It's a funny thing about terror, that it is so very pleasing to the senses, better than joy, pain, anger, really just about anything else. But I digress, I was about to explain to you what is about to happen, so listen carefully."

She could feel the pervert rummaging around in her head, a pinch here, a sting there, and she knew she might as well have been naked before him. The thought disgusted her even as she wallowed in crushing terror, the feeling coming so hard now that she knew it to be something he was forcing on her, creating the terror so he could harvest whatever queer delight it gave him. She had been through so much under the Devil's unkind touch that she hadn't believed such capacity to fear still exist within her empty shell, but somehow this creature before her had found it and brought it to life.

"Slade's order was to strip your mind down to the bare minimum, eradicate everything within that beautiful skull of yours but the fighting ability and blind loyalty that he apparently desires even more than that deliciously lithe body. Personally I would consider it a waste, scraping clean that wonderfully tortured psyche of yours and replacing it with the mentality of a robot, but I am not in a position to argue with that beast in man's skin, so I'm afraid you are truly out of luck. I'll just get a little fun out of you while I can, then deliver you to his hands as ordered. Who knows? Maybe if I do a good job, the monster will let me off the hook and I can find some more fresh meat out in the city."

And with that, he was done talking. He leaned in the last few inches, so that his forehead nearly touched her face where she was twisting it away from him, then his eyes turned the deep shining red of his namesake, and the world faded from Terra's view.

Oscillogenerator Construction Site

"What intelligence do we have on Green?" asked White, as he poured over reports and figures on his table. By driving his mind-slaves without rest, he'd managed to clear the debris and get construction back underway, and now he had to reorganize the logistics again. God forbid the other wastrels could get some paperwork done, though he supposed Green and Yellow weren't as bad as Red in that respect. That smooth bastard seemed to have something against keeping up a regular report on how many he was taking from the city. He said it was because the methods he used didn't allow for exact records before he'd actually gotten the harvest of unlucky souls back, but White knew it was because he was eating almost as many as he was delivering for lobotomy and implants. Fucking Neresian carnivores.

"Currently, your spy network in her operation has reported on nothing but entirely ordinary business," spoke the interactive AI in his table computer. The program was nearly brainless, able to track data for him and perform a list of minor tasks that would be too tedious to take upon himself, but it was a far cry from the thinking programs his enemies used. What he wouldn't do to get his hands on one of those. "Once you cracked her encryption codes, her records were audited against our own, and no discrepancy whatsoever was discovered."

"Check them again. I know she's been holding out on me, I plucked the guilt from her mind three hours ago. I don't care how you do it, but get me proof so I can rub her nose in it! I need something solid lest they suspect the holes I left in their mind shields!"

"I will continue to analyze," was the soft female voice's response, emotionless, icy, the way White simultaneously loathed and constantly aspired to. The voice reminded him of someone from his past, someone he'd had various unwanted reasons to think of recently, and he shifted his thoughts quickly to gloating so as to escape the fear. The one thing he truly feared.

"Yes..." he mumbled to himself, as his mind slipped into the familiar glow of his own accomplishments. Tampering with the zappers Yellow had brought in had been a matter of ease, completed in a wink of an eye without anyone the wiser to his subtle alteration. He had gotten the task done much earlier than expected because that puss-pile Yellow had "taken the liberty" of having a stock of mental defense devices on hand. That he'd turned their own treacherous intentions to his own ends tickled him to no end, and filled him with that familiar feeling of invincibility. "Let them plot against me now, I'll know, and that will make them all the easier to manipulate to my own ends," he fairly glowed with his own self-important pride.

White's reverie was interrupted by a horrendous explosion from outside, shaking his office and knocking the lamp right off his desk. Eyes slanted in fury, he silently ordered whoever was responsible to start praying. If it was Blue again, he'd be a brain neuter within the hour.

"PULL!" screamed Red, and yet another of White's mind-slaves was punted into the air, kicking and screaming in agony and brainless terror. As the hapless middle-aged man did his fifth back flip, Red opened up with the disrupter rifle he'd just pulled from Yellow's most recent shipment. The man erupted in a ballooning blossom of Red, blood and guts flaring out in an ever-spreading cloud of gore that proceeded to rain back down to the ground. As the explosive laughter of Red and his skeet-man Blue echoed around the vast subterranean construction sight, Red plucked a falling intestine from the air and held it in one hand like a wet reddish-pink length of rope.

He eyed the bloody guts hungrily for a long moment, then his jaw began to do something funny. The tall, tanned, lanky-looking man in the finely pressed crimson suit with his suave haircut and debonair sunglasses began to gyrate his lower jaw like a cow chewing cut, then the whole thing sort of came loose, distending downward until his mouth was twice as large as any human's has ever been. With his jaw thus expanded, the long rows of sharply serrated teeth inside his mouth stretched into view, the very bones of his jaw pressing out of the skin until his top and bottom rows of teeth were sticking a half-foot out from the rest of his face, white bone glinting where pink gums should have been. The crocodilian mouth he now sported snapped up the entrails greedily, using quick biting motions to pull it down in a flash.

"Do youse have ta eat some of every worka we bust up?" asked Blue as his stomach rebelled somewhat at the sight of Red chowing down on the bloody remains of their latest victim. He didn't have anything against killing a guy, but eating something that could think and talk a while ago? The huge man shifted uncomfortably in his repaired human suit while he waited for Red to finish. Before the much smaller figure could answer, he first retracted the jaw again, a slight crackling sound accompanying their recompression into his regular mouth.

"Well hey big guy, what can I say? I have to get these teeth of mine used to working with this human suit White cooked up for me now don't I? How's a guy supposed to eat with a tiny little human jaw like that?" and he smiled broadly to show off his shining white daggers. The rows of teeth were still disturbingly sharp, a distinct tell that he wasn't at all human, and something White had tried to cover up with a minor holograph. Red would have nothing of it, insisting that he enjoyed the effect it had on humans when he smiled, and arguing that he wouldn't be able to collect slaves as quickly with regular teeth. White, working through the more equalized covenant that routed directly from their zappers (he was much less dominating now that they were guarded from being snuffed by him at any moment) had decided to let the matter lie.

"Aww fine, lets just hurry up and finish with dis bunch o' burn-outs and go gets some mores before White gets on our asses," and the agitation in Blue's voice was unmistakable.

"Whatever White did to him after he got out of stasis," thought Red, "I don't want it to happen to me"—Then, "Okay, okay, just chill big guy," he half-heartedly tried to comfort the big lout, "we can finish the rest in one go. Pick up those three and get ready to throw. PULL!"

This time when Blue pitched the bunch of screaming and flailing workers, Red didn't mess around. Giving the lot a stare, he initiated his powers, and with a flash of red, they disintegrated to a white ash that slowly rained down much as the gore had earlier. It was as he admired the snow of incinerated human then, that White's icy voice boomed out over the loudspeakers. The overbearing fuck hadn't spoken to any of them face-to-face since their zappers arrived. Red loved every second of this newfound power of fear he held over the super-mind.

"RED! BLUE! What the fuck do you two think you're doing? I ordered you to dispose of those workers too tired to be of any further use, NOT blow holes in my staging area with your damn TOYS! You two shit-heads have exactly twenty seconds to get the FUCK out of here before I have you tortured! Do you understand me?"

Despite knowing that their semi-delusional and totally homicidal leader was unable to wink out his life with the slightest breath of power anymore, Red still felt thrills of fear run down his spine at the threats. Something about White's voice made threats stick, so that not even the warm feeling of power he got from knowing that the little shit wouldn't face him anymore lest he get burned could give him the balls to challenge the order. Blue had practically pissed himself, the sociopath idiot cringing at every boom of the voice over the intercom.

"FINE!" shouted Red, knowing the pickups would amplify the sound directly into White's ear, "We just finished anyway!" Not giving their "boss" a chance to shout back after his ear-stinger, Red flipped the teleport quick-control on his wrist and warped himself and his huge new partner to his own staging area, a nondescript office space in some generic building in the city.

"Thanks Red, that Mr. White scares da fuck outta me," admitted Blue as soon as he'd recovered from his cowering.

"What did that screwball do to you anyway?" asked Red, deciding it was more tactful than 'why did he assign your useless ass to my division?'

"I... I..." he tried to answer, but as with every other time Red had pressed him for details, the words stuck in the muscle-man's throat, clearly not of his free will.

"Right, the psychic freak job locked you up about it. Well, don't worry, I'll take care of you, I guess—not like this duty has all that much too it." Red was more or less resigned to having the brute along for his abduction tours now, though he knew the dumb shit would totally cramp his style at the nightclubs and draw unwanted attention in the alleyways and train stations that he hunted.

"Yeah... so what's dat for?" Blue changed the subject without further concern, eager to be on to other things. He had indicated the bloody arm that Red now held in his hand, having snatched it off the crate it had landed on during his target practice.

"Oh, just a light snack," was Red's nonchalant response, "I like to have a snack before I start my rounds every night. Of course, while intestines are fine raw, you have to cook limbs to get the full flavor out of them," he added, changing his jaw and turning his eyes to the "morsel" which he held by the palm as though shaking the hand.

Glaring with his shaded eyes, he heated the lump of human meat to a slow sizzle, the cooked-meat smell wafting off in a simultaneously appetizing and (to Blue, for he knew what it was that was cooking) nauseating aroma. Once the outside had burnt to a crisp, the flesh cracking and bleeding under the intense heat Red was creating around it, Red promptly began to wolf it down at an incredible pace, the huge gulping/tearing bites he ripped away at it with quickly cleaning the flesh from the bones. When there was nothing left but a pallid hand and the three large arm bones, Red proceeded to finish off the meal. Cracking the big bones, he sucked out the marrow with a slobbering sound, then discarded the hand and emptied bones into a black garbage bag sitting in the corner. The smell from the bag told that Red had been a while since taking out the trash.

"Ahh, there's nothing like a little roast meat to start out a long night," said Red calmly when he'd gotten his jaw back to normal. "Though," he continued, smugly and with a slightly bitter edge, "just gobbling down a little meat is never really all that satisfying."

"What d'ya mean by that?" asked Blue, too stupid to know when he was being set up in a conversation.

"Oh, its just that, the real fun isn't in the meat, that's just sustenance. The whole point of being carnivorous, the reason my species has remained so thoroughly meat-eating even this late in our society's development, is the thrill of the hunt. There's something about chasing down prey, tracking them to a dark corner, then watching as they cower in abject terror, or better yet, try to fight against you with their backs to the wall, that is simply wondrous. I've found that I can satisfy my every hunger from the females of this planet's indigenous species." Red's exceedingly smooth voice rolled out the narrative in the tone of a true ladies-man charmer, the toothy smile he wore never leaving his face as he cleaned the blood off with a wet-nap that he pitched into the bone-sack.

After a long moment, Blue got over his mild nausea about Red eating thinking people and had time to be shocked by the stuff that he'd almost completely missed: the innuendo part. His mind could hardly conceive of that kind of perversion, so his shock came out as more confusion than disgust.

"You mean you actually touch dem 'uman things like... sexual?" and the shocked skepticism was palpable presence in his dull tone.

"Oh, well, I find that our species are quite compatible in that respect," and Red's grin changed from charming to satanic as the true thrust of what he was talking about came to light. "One hasn't truly lived until, while taking the purely physical pleasure out of some sweet little squealing ape-girl, you begin to feed on the flesh as well. Those uniquely particular pitches of scream they reach when they see the teeth, when I take the first bite while still violating them, when their still-living eyes see their own intestines trailing from their penetrated bellies, are each so utterly perfect, so completely exquisite, that it has been a terrific pleasure to work here. Not even that mind freak White could ruin such ecstasy." Somewhere in his new line of description, a vicious hunger had entered his voice, particularly when he so deeply described raping and vivisecting/consuming women at the same time.

Blue saw then, as he had many times since throwing his lot in with this bunch, that he was a killer among nut-jobs, and once again regretted his decision to join their prison break. All of them, even the mild-seeming Green, were possessed of a homicidal nature that was so far beyond him that it actually frightened him. He would kill without discretion to reach his goals, and that was fine by his standards, as was the bloodlust that he could vaguely remember overcoming him in his berserker rage. Such was business, getting what you wanted without anyone weaker than you telling you otherwise. These others though, they wanted to kill, reveled in the pain and terror of their victims, and sought out little more than power and blood. Blue had always thought it was money that was what everyone wanted, but his recent experience had opened his dim eyes to new horrors, and made him glad that, whatever else, he was on the same side as these killer freaks. Not that that counted for a whole fucking lot with White on edge and plots in every mind but his own.

"Come on Blue, we need to get started if we want to reach this week's quota. Besides, if we can round up tonight's soon-to-be-mindslaves, I can get out and find me a sweet little lamb to butcher. All that talk got me hot and bothered, Hahahhahhaa!" and his laugh was the laugh of a predator.

Slade's Hideout, Observation Room

Slade sat before a series of monitors, the subject of every one being Blood as he leaned over Terra in the darkened throne room. He considered the scene from a dozen different angles, now and then turning to glare at a readout showing some mysterious lines and bars that fluctuated hypnotically. Finally, he checked another monitor, this one showing unintelligible blurs and blobs that would occasionally focus into a recognizable image. For a moment it was a young green man, then a T-shaped tower, but always pervading was the half-orange half-black mask. It was really quite amusing.

"Blood, I know what you're trying," he said to himself as he continually checked the various monitors, "but I've already taken steps against it all. You can't turn my tool against me as long as I monitor her mind. Honestly, not even asking what the neural connectors were for? I thought better of you my foolish little pedophile."

Blood was finishing then, leaning back and away from the shell of girl he'd just "fixed" for Slade. As he watched the bony telepathic rapist work the kinks out his back, Slade reviewed the recording he'd made of the external and internal workings of Blood's mindwipe job. The screams, crying, begging, and moans of despair had been quite exquisite, and that tape would go into his personal collection. Going over the recording of the brainscanner he'd had her hooked up to all along, he glanced at the areas the alien technician who'd sold it to him had told him to watch for, manipulating the controls on the console to eliminate the betrayal compulsions Blood had tried to plant during his work. The fool thought that just because Slade couldn't do the necessarily surgical mindwipe with his machines that he didn't know how to counter such simplistic psychic treachery. As for the final recording, the brainscanner's secondary readout with images of what Blood had been looking at during his work, Slade sent that immediately back to the monitors to review the highlights.

She had cried bitterly as she slowly lost those precious memories of early childhood, the abusive father, the indifferent mother, and the oh-so vicious children of the neighborhood that tormented her for her freakish powers. The memories of those first victims in the series of accidental catastrophes she caused, just before she ran away from it all. It was nothing to be particularly treasured, but it was the basis of her personality, the initial key to the consciousness that was Terra, and its loss was the first gap in an ever-deepening quicksand of ego-destruction that must have been truly terrifying.

The loss of her years of homeless wandering had been met with suppressed gasps of discomfort and terror, the bittersweet age of her youth disintegrating with the base of her personality. She had little love of those years as well, mostly hunger and cold was all she remembered, but every new loss was another unaccountable gap in her mind, another gaping hole in the core of her being, and each lost memory was another step to the awful "oblivion of that which was her" that she could already feel creeping up on her.

He noted with interest that her most piteous wails, most soul-touching sobs, and most heart-wrenchingly incoherent pleas for mercy had corresponded to the elimination of those memories of her with her friends. Even with the shadow of her own treacherous purpose always with her, those had still been her most valued and dearly guarded memories. Slade had been convinced at the time that he'd had her completely under his thumb, that she would be his perfect successor, immune to the draws of friendship, dedicated without reserve to the path of power, and due nearly every ounce of respect he demanded for himself.

How wrong he'd been, how utterly wrong, Slade thought, as he reviewed the way she'd slowly stopped struggling against Blood's invasion, slowly submitted to his violation with a mind devoid of personality. The sting of his failure with the girl was mollified only by the fact that, when she was no longer his honored apprentice, she was fair game for his... "Other" desires.

He'd been careful with her, held his power over her gently, easing her into the role of betrayer and villain, refusing to rush or lose his grip on her as he'd mistakenly allowed Robin to enrage him into doing. All that, and sill—SILL—those brats had managed to draw her away from him. The little bitch had lost her nerve then had the audacity to come crawling back, seeking "help" and "solace" for her pitiful failure. Of course he'd disciplined her, and it had proven all the impetuous she'd needed to exercise the very treasonous nature he'd brought out of submergence in her dark inner self. The cultivation had been almost perfect, but once again the material he'd started with had proven inherently unsuitable to the position of successor. Maybe he should have himself cloned or something.

In any case, the little blond whore would finally become the mindless killing machine that was the only use he could still make of her. He had tired of toying with her—she was becoming too used to his games—so it was either this or stick a knife in her powder-blue eye and dump her in the base's incinerator. Slade prided himself on never wasting that which could be of use to him still.

"Blood, you took too long on that reprogramming job, my forces have already assembled," Slade spoke irately into the intercom when he'd finished reviewing the tapes. Blood jumped at his sudden voice in the dark room, then recovered and prepared his suave persona for another futile attempt at charm. Apparently he was greatly heartened by his most recent attempt to betray Slade, something Slade was about to remedy without mercy.

"Sir, these things take time to do right. You wanted the girl to be useful in a fight and there simply wasn't any way to make that happen any faster." His voice was full of calm confidence, and had he not known already, Slade wouldn't have been sure whether or not he was lying. But he did know and he was sure.

"I disagree Blood. Had you not taken the time to plant those nasty little compulsions in my tool's mind, you would have been done quite some time ago, if I'm not mistaken." Slade's voice was utterly devoid of emotion, but that didn't stop Blood from turning a particularly pitiful shade of green-white as he tried to sputter out a denial. So sure of himself, but utterly unprepared for failure—a fatal flaw in any man.

"Don't bother denying it, I monitored your work quite closely. The compulsions have already been removed, and should you attempt any such betrayal ever again, you will be stripped of your precious abilities and up on multiple counts of child molestation before you can say 'prison fuck bitch.' This was your one chance—do I make myself clear?" Slade still spoke without any obvious emotion, but the satisfaction he got from the defeated look on Blood's face was quite enjoyable.

"Good, now leave the room and go down the hall to the right. Your quarters are there. Terra, proceed to the staging area." Blood left without further comment, walking the walk of a broken man. Terra stood smoothly, the blankly grim look on her face the very definition of indifference, showing neither intelligence nor emotion, merely a resigned competence. After carefully removing the neural connectors in her skull, she also obeyed without words, and Slade truly wondered if she still had the capacity to speak, not that it really mattered to him either way. In any case, his queen piece was now in play, his bishop was firmly under thumb, and all his pawns were lined up and ready to take the battle to those foolish enough to challenge his authority. Life was good.

Green Construction Company

As night fell on Jump City, Red and Blue were just coming back from what Red called "the slum rounds." Basically they'd drifted discreetly, or at least walked around as discreetly as a well dressed man and a giant could, through various back alleys and dumping grounds haunted by the numberless homeless population of the city. Such people were never missed, and no one ever listened to them, so they had no protection from the numerous raids Red made every so often. The dirty, alcohol and drug-destroyed, and usually insane, half-starved bunch were low-quality labor, so White got pissed if too many per shipment came from this easy stock, but Red still got as many as possible. Once they'd determined that the police didn't care if their numbers were mysteriously disappearing in the night, they'd taken to hiding as their only defense, so the pickings were slimmer every week. Accordingly, the truck Red pulled up to the back door of the Green Construction building contained only three new "recruits."

"Whut we stoppin 'ere for Red?" asked Blue, who'd exhibited uncommon curiosity considering his reputation as a completely brain-dead bruiser.

"I drop off the cargo from the slum rounds before I go out for the more... 'dangerous' pickings to be had in the glitz rounds. I figure the least I can do for that prey I pick up from the nightclubs, strip-joints, and bars is not make them sit next to smelly gutter-trash on the ride to their brain-neutering. Besides, I don't like being around such filth any longer than necessary." Red was subdued after another miserable trip through the stinking back streets. He was in a particularly dour mood after having had to muss his suit in the process of tranquilizing some of the prey that had hidden in a dumpster. The fools thought that just because they smelled overpoweringly of grime and alcohol that he couldn't discriminate the smell of their warm blood pumping through their veins.

Without further comment, Red got out and Blue followed. Proceeding to the back, Red had Blue lug their newest acquisitions out and up to the nondescript building's cargo doors, where a primly made-up woman in business formal waited silently for their approach. The woman was Green's personal secretary, an earth-woman under no form of control that any of the other conspirators could see other than a huge salary and a long tradition of secrecy among her trade. It apparently wasn't any big thing for her to wait out back of a building in the middle of the night for two extremely strange men to drag unconscious bodies into the storage room. Just another duty: make schedule, call partners, set up lunch date, be an accessory to kidnapping, look up records, file weekly reports. It made Red wonder about what the real corporations were up to.

"Is this all for tonight?" she asked curtly when Blue had gotten the three inside and into a locked room for transport to the secret construction site. It sounded as though she disapproved, and Red considered getting ticked at her. It was not her concern whether or not he met his quotas, she was Green's creature.

However, rather than let the little morsel get a rise out of him, he turned the tables, radiating a solid charm that so many earth women had already fallen for. With a joke and a round of meaningless pleasantries and compliments that earthlings were such suckers for, he made a serious dent in the woman's frosting of formality. She tried to pretend disinterest, but he could smell her excitement, hear her pulse race faster, and could nearly taste the blood flushing her body with a blush concealed by her makeup. The predator and the prey, just in a slightly different context.

Deciding it would not improve his chances with Green if he started dating her handpicked secretary—or just had her for dinner—he politely extricated himself from the flirting and signaled Blue to head back to the truck. It was time for him to work out his frustrations on some innocent victims somewhere.

"Wait, there was one more thing," said the secretary as they were leaving. Red turned with a smile, fully expecting it to be some kind of proposition for him, but his arrogance was disappointed when it turned out to be more business. "Ms. Green wishes to meet with you tonight. She'll be waiting at a Café down the block from here, 'The Whicker Basket.'"

Red considered the situation carefully before he answered. He didn't want to see Green right now, such denied desires he had for her would only aggravate him further, maybe even necessitating a needlessly risky amount of hunting for the night to get him over it all. Besides, even with the insulator energy shields under the human suit, keeping his body temperature up in 200-degrees range was a high-metabolism process, and he was getting hungry again.

"Tell her I'll meet up with her some other night. I am behind my quota, after all," and he finished it off with a jaunty smile and a quick turn on his heel.

"She said it was 'Of utmost importance concerning Mr. White,' and required me to have some kind of cranial operation before she'd allow me to even hear that message for relay to you, along with several other confidential items of business. I feel it would be best if you took this seriously."

Her words gave Red serious pause. The cranial operation could only have been the insertion of the cybernetic equipment necessary for zapper installation. The reference to White along with anti-psi tech could only mean that the plotting had begun. He had been wondering if it would be Yellow or Green to get the ball rolling on ousting their megalomaniacal boss. He himself wasn't much for looking past the next meal, and Blue wasn't exactly Mr. Brilliant, but they all wanted the same thing.

"On second thought, I will see her. Blue, let's go," and the clueless brute was left to scramble along the street behind Red. The big guy had really been so much more manageable since White had had that little talk with him, never even complaining about all the bossing around Red had done all night, and yet intended to do. Damn, Red was really glad it hadn't been him.

A Stone Flying Silently Over the City

"Bear left here, then land us on top of that WaneCorp building," Slade instructed Terra as she hefted the two of them through the air on a piece of rock big enough for them and a five Slade-bot entourage to comfortably fit atop. The rock glided through the city sky in a perfectly silent cruise, stealthily navigating the buildings with its gentle yellow glow. As they hovered over the huge WANE sign, Terra set the rock on the building's roof without a sound.

Slade surveyed the headquarters of his opponent with a mild consideration. His "eyes" outside the building had determined that the mysterious female corporate head worked days and nights at random, but that she had been seen leaving the premises not long ago and had not returned. There was nothing he needed from within, not as far as his limitedly successful spies had reported, so he had few scruples about doing what he was about to do, but still he wondered if he should just use this first strike to assassinate their ringleader. There would be no more surprise attacks, this one would tip his hand, so his opportunities would quickly narrow afterward. He might not get another chance for an easy assassination.

On the other hand, now that Terra was useful for something again, he was in need of a new "playmate" for his recreational games. He might even squeeze some valuable information out of her in the process, though he doubted very much that this rival knew anything his spies wouldn't eventually learn for him. No, he didn't anticipate any problem nailing that wench, so might as well leave her as an option for playtime. That settled it.

"Terra, drop that building," he said simply, indicating the Green Construction office complex across the street from their perch. His silent tool of destruction stepped up to the ledge without skipping a beat, then raised her hands to point her palms at the target. Slade was momentarily ecstatic at the extent to which Blood's work had transformed his former apprentice, the way she obeyed as any of his other tools might. Before, even at the height of his control over her, she would always become unruly when mass destruction and murder were on the menu. Now, as her hands began their yellow glow, she truly acted without hesitation or remorse, not the paltry illusion of villainy he'd managed to press over her inherently week "heroic" personality.

Even as Slade admired his most recently acquired weapon, the ground began to shake almost imperceptibly. Beneath their feet, earth was moving and reshaping on a grand scale, deep rock surrounding underground water reservoirs shifting and remolding to counteract the insurgence of stone Terra's power's called irresistibly forth. In a culmination of enormous geodesic stress, a spire of stone suddenly sprouted nail-like from the earth, its twenty-foot diameter impaling the center of the Green Construction office building like a shish kabob of stone and steel fabrication. The explosive lighting-quick burst of rock blew through the structure with obscene force, shattering the entire support superstructure like so much carpenters' glue and toothpicks before a heavy boot. What remained unexploded from the initial blast of rock crumbled around the spire like dirt settling around a post in the sand.

The ungodly rumbling noise of the stone's explosion and the building's subsequent implosion could be heard throughout the city, the shockwaves of force shattering the windows of all the adjacent buildings, and the crumbling stone crushing everything on the streets below. After a long moment of turmoil, the last pebbles of masonry crumbled to a halt, only the whispering clouds of dust and tickling shards of glass to fill the silent void of the night. The silence would eventually be broken by sirens and screams, the wailing of the wounded and tears for those lost in the stones, the twenty-story spire casting the shadow of Slade's revenge.

The Whicker Basket Café, ten minutes earlier

Red and Blue sat across a tiny round table from a radiantly beautiful blond woman. The Café was one of those snooty, well-lit coffee shops that catered to the yuppie elite workaholics twenty-four hours a day. Built into the ground floor of an office building in the commercial district of Jump, it was never empty. The sight of well-dressed business people chatting about nothing in too-loud voices overlay the smell of overpriced "special blend" garbage. Red was in his element among the phonies, and had chatted and charmed his way through other people's conversations like the true chameleon predator he was. Finally though, he'd settled into his seat next to Blue and across from Green.

Green's earthling suit had been initially developed by white to be good looking, but nothing special by earth standards. Always meticulous in her actions, Green had studied human standards of beauty and redesigned her disguise accordingly, until she felt she looked to those around her as beautiful as she knew she looked to her own people. White had waxed mockingly about vanity, but Green had thrown it back in his face with an extremely intelligent lecture on what one source of her influence over others was. White could control people with his powers, but Green could make people want to do things for her on their own, and that was real power. Or at least, that was one of the things that gave her power.

Green was an enigma of a sort, and Red understood this fact even as he salivated over her supermodel looks, his interspecies wandering eye seeing things to appetize in her true and disguised forms. A shameless seductress, she was also a consummate organizer, leader, and unparalleled businesswoman. Though she had been coyly deferential to White during their escape and transport to Earth, rarely questioning and never challenging, they all knew that she was the more logical choice for leader of the syndicate, and they all knew that this fact drove White nuts. Besides and beyond this, however, was her other other side, the warrior. Rumor had it that there wasn't a single bladed weapon she wasn't a grandmaster of, and nothing Red had seen had counteracted this knowledge. Those guards in The Can hadn't filleted themselves.

"Soah boys, ah'm glad you could jhoin me heah," she drawled expansively, her silken voice crawling sultrily across the table. Red noticed at once, as he was no doubt meant to, and got a little annoyed. He really didn't get that part of her too well.

"Green, must you use that obnoxious speech mannerism?" he asked out of his annoyance, never having really understood why she adopted it. They were under the understandable and acceptable order to keep their direct neural translators set to English, but Green had messed with hers to get that awful accent.

"Oh, but ah do declaiah, it is so verah useful when gettin' mah way with people," and there was amusement barely contained between her drawls now. Red wasn't impressed.

"Please Green, this is supposed to be business. You called us, remember?" and Red let anger creep into his voice without realizing it. It was incredible really that such a manipulator couldn't see the way she worked him.

"Oh fine," she said normally, her whole face seeming to change as she altered from sultry to businesslike. "I only use that voice because it makes people underestimate me, and because it drives White insane. The look on his face the first time I used it—Priceless." She was suddenly like a different person, cool and collected, totally serious despite the amusement in her tone, permeated with competence rather than sexuality.

"I remember that, the day before he unveiled the 'grand strategy.' That was back before you got your little operation going here in the city. How times have changed."

"Yes. White is a shrewd one, so I'm sure he saw through my façade, but now that I have a power base independent from his, I can start operations against the maniac whenever I choose. I choose now."

"Are you sure he doesn't suspect a move from you already?" Red asked, still not completely sure he would throw his lot in with green, especially before he heard what Yellow was offering.

"Of course he suspects a strike from me, the paranoid bastard suspects strikes from all of us, all the time... except maybe from blue boy here." She didn't mean it so much as an insult as she did a statement of the plain truth, but Blue still felt a sting of unhappiness that the one co-conspirator he actually kind of liked thought of him thus. He had been much more sensitive to such subtleties since that chat White had had with him.

"I've been very careful however, and all operations that could possibly be considered counter to his power position have been masked by multiple blinds. To be absolutely sure, I even managed to sabotage his AI assistant so it wouldn't be able to correctly process intelligence from the spies White riddled my organization with. Now that he can't read our minds and he can't spy on my operations, the time has come to orchestrate his downfall."

"And about these zappers," Red continued, as though Green's assurances meant nothing to him, "Doesn't it seem a little odd that Mr. Paranoid Freak would let us have these? The little bastard held out on us for weeks, lording that mind-blast of his over me every chance he got. There were times I figured the twerp would really pop my skull, just for the satisfaction of seeing my brains all over the place. The bastard."

"This from a being who likes to chew on women's intestines as he mates with them?" Green said, amusement once more tingeing her words. It was very much as though Red's personal perversions were not only acceptable, but not all that terribly out of the ordinary either. It was known that she had been in The Can for things the IDP didn't agree with, but before they'd caught her, she'd been wanted for "Crimes Against the Integrity of Sentient Beings" across half the galaxy. She was one of those ultimate cases of looks being deceiving, they were all sure of this, though none of them knew what exactly she'd done to earn her that heading on her "wanted" postings.

"That's totally different!" Red protested, though he sported a grin that belied any sincerity he might have feigned. He was more proud of his notorious actions than anything else, and wanted little more than to do exactly what Green had accused him of to her, and she knew it. It was why she'd never be alone in the same room as him without some of her blades.

"Whatever," Green dismissed him, matching his ruthless grin with one of her own, their unspoken volley of threats going completely over Blue's head. "As for these zappers, I was suspicious too, so I checked them out. I had my AI's technical diagnostic program examine mine for tampering, and it found nothing. Just to be sure, I ran my suspicions by Yellow, who assured me that nothing had been done to them because they'd been secure in our ship's hold since the moment he picked them up from his black market suppliers. He took a look himself and confirmed that they were fully functional. As unlikely as it seems, White didn't do anything to these zappers that any of us can detect, which more than likely means he hasn't done anything to them at all. I have taken certain... 'precautions' however, just in case that bastard is evern craftier than we all suspect."

"Alright, fine, you have my backing in this," Red acceded at last, able to think of no obvious gap in Green's planning. "And Blue's too, right big guy?"

The solemn giant, so huge he barely fit in the café's tiny chair, simply nodded in silence. He knew nothing of plots or plans, merely that he owed White big time for what the telepath'd done to him.

"Great. I guess I'll begin then by describing our assets," Green began, her voice lowering imperceptibly, just enough to avoid eavesdroppers that might even now surround them. Her jamming chip would fill electronic surveillance with polite conversation, but actual ears could still be a danger.

"So far I've amassed a full-spectrum crime syndicate of my own here in Jump City. Drugs, prostitution, gambling, protection, racketeering, nightclubs, everything I'll ever need to generate a very comfortable Terran income. With the capital from that, Green Construction has quickly become the city's premier contracting agency. I actually owe Blue somewhat here, our stock tripled in value after that 'urban renewal' demolition you pulled downtown." Blue flushed somewhat at the compliment, but Red found a moment to insert inquiry.

"Green, I know you're good, but we've been here a little under a month. How the hell did you get such a big crime empire going so quick? That kind of thing takes months or years—unless, of course, you want the local authorities to come nosing around more closely than a bribe can deflect."

"My dear Red, it was quite simple—an instance of fate favoring the prepared mind. You see, it just so happens that before we arrived, a local crime lord went missing in an explosive way, leaving behind a ready-made crime empire ripe for the picking. The wonderfully well-organized and intensely profitable enterprise was child's play to take control of, with its previous owner out of the way."

"So, whoah, if this guy was good enough to get such a great gig going, what the hell happened to him? Bosses like that don't just 'go missing,' even on backwater holes like Earth." Red had clearly found something else he was intent on worrying about, and Green almost sighed in exasperation at his cowardice. He was still terrified of White, even if his bravado wouldn't let his forebrain in on that fact.

"Don't worry, whoever he was, he's long gone now. Those local 'heroes' the Teen Titans, or whatever they call themselves, trapped him inside of a volcano after he made a bid to take military control of the western seaboard. Apparently the guy had a case of megalomania to rival our own 'boss,' and paid for it. It's the same reason we have to off White if we want our life spans to extend longer than our jail-terms did."

"Right—going big time is all good, but going up against the whole damn universe is suicide, and I don't care what kind of fancy gadget you've got on your side." Red said it like it was a toast, words to live by, then looked to the side in solemn silence. "Are you sure this old crime lord is out of the picture?" he asked at last.

"Trust me, we don't have anything to worry abo—"was as far as she got before the world exploded.

When the broken glass and dust had settled, the coffee shop was completely black. Red, as soon as his head had cleared enough to tell up from down, used his powers to create a soft glow around his body. By the dim orange light, he got a look at the destruction.

Green was already up, and had been groping around in the dark for something or other when he lit the room. Blue stood in the same spot he'd occupied before the explosion, looking none the worse for wear considering that he currently supported the ceiling, and probably this whole side of the building, on his shoulders, his body barely straining under the load. While it didn't look like he would give out, his feet did dig ominously into the floor, and Red decided it would be best to be elsewhere very soon. A final glance around the room told him that everyone else had been cut to ribbons when the windows blew in, only the indestructible girth of Blue between them and the window saving Red and Green from a similar fate.

"Found it!" Green exclaimed, then stood calmly to her feet. Other than the fact that she was covered in gray dust, as he must also be, she looked totally fine. As they all were, she was incredibly pissed, but otherwise okay. Before Red could ask what she was doing, she'd gone over to one of the crumbled stone walls of their new mausoleum brandishing something in her hand. With a few quick flashes that Red's eyes couldn't follow, glowing-hot lines appeared in the rubble. The angles of the cuttings were perfect, and the wall of rubble fell inward, fantastically flat sides along those stones Green had actually sliced through. Red followed her out without comment, and Blue followed right after, the sound of the ceiling collapsing behind him quick on his heels.

"What the Fuck just happened?" asked Red when he could finally breath through the miasma of masonry dust wafting through the air. The landscape around them was almost as bad as the war-zone Blue had made out of downtown, the shattered sides of buildings all pointing toward one central location, the epicenter of the catastrophe. Red took a closer look, but Green beat him to it.

"SHIT! That was my headquarters!" She screamed, eyes nearly bulging at the sight of what was left of her base of operations. The single mountainous crag of brown stone that remained amid the heap of rubble that now blocked the streets was a sad monument to the destruction of the center of her power. There were not words to describe the anger that radiated from her then, even Blue, a past master at berserk rage, cringing away from the undiluted fury in her form. "When I find out who is responsible for this..."

"I might have a clue on that one," broke in Red, slicing through her fury with a far too cheerful observational tone. Without saying another word, and sporting a serrated grin, he cast his red glow across the vast span of dusty broken air at the rock spire. When the illumination fell on the pillar's sides, lighting it like some kind of great statue, an enormous stylized symbol came into view. It was a bladed "S."

"Slade," Green hissed, anger failing in the face of bitter irony. As she ate her words internally, she explained the origin of the symbol to the other two. Even as she listened to Red gibe her with half her mind, she thanked her own foresight in keeping backups of everything at her secondary base. Because of those, coordinating a defense for the rest of her operation would be difficult rather than impossible. Slade may have managed to get the drop on her, but they'd soon see who the better crime lord was.

Preview: Okay, now that I've built up the evil, it's high time to get back to knocking it down. Skye can't rightly avoid the curiosities of his new allies any longer, so he's going to have to make some tough decisions and answer some difficult questions. After that, he's going to nip a potential problem or five in the bud, just in time for Slade's all out war against the color syndicate to get started in its big way. It's going to be some kind of crazy, multi-army battle, but first things first. Next up: Questions & Answers.