Ascent - Cutscene: Lazarus Project
Trickster hated the base.
Barely a week in town, after that mess in Boston, and he was already missing the bright windows of the apartment, the relative peace. He'd been an idiot, naive, too much hope at the call to remember that a massive windfall like this came with a giant fucking asterisk. The others were tired, resigned. Luke was… he was growing distant, and while Cody had made his own bed to lie in, Trickster could admit that the dick had been capable of reaching Luke on a level he couldn't.
They needed space, time to decompress, not the fucking war he'd been forced to throw them into in this godforsaken city, and not this stifling, utilitarian bunker Coil had them staying in.
Noelle, especially, deserved better. Maybe now that the war was over, she'd get those more spacious accommodations he'd asked for; for now, it was up to him to keep her happy, and that he could do.
"If anyone needs me, I'll be right by the door, and your boss has my number," he promised. "Might remind him that she needs more than a cell, if he asks."
"I'll let you take that up with him, sir," the merc said. "Coil's orders are to check in every half hour, for your own safety." Trickster scowled, but before he could reply, she hit a few buttons on the keypad and opened the door to the observation walkway. Instead, he strode inside, pulling the door shut behind him.
A voice hesitantly fumbled for the right volume somewhere behind him, still heartbreakingly sweet as ever. "Hey, Krouse…"
He took off the top hat and mask with his free hand, forced himself to smile, and turned. "Hey, Captain," he said warmly, the frustrations falling to the side. "Thought we could hang out. I brought a laptop, we can watch something maybe?"
"Oh, you didn't have to do that," she said, shifting under the halogen lamps that lit the room.
She was half as tall again as she'd been in Boston, still not quite at level with the walkway he was on, but high enough to lean onto the bottom grating like a mermaid off a dock. She didn't though, keeping her distance even as Krouse sat down and fired the computer up.
"I did, and I would even if I didn't." He waved her over. "It's my prerogative to make you happy, and I know this room isn't doing that right now. C'mon, you can't see the screen from over there!"
A reluctant smile graced her face, and it was like sunshine to him. She shifted, the mass beneath her crawling and clambering over on a dozen limbs and tentacles, and he laid down across from her with the laptop in the middle.
Short Resting…
A few hours into the visit, he got a notification and clicked on it. The videogame-themed guys were going live, stream title was "EMERGENCY MALPRACTICE TRANSPORT MINIGAME!"
"What's that?" Noelle asked, leaning in and mouthing the words.
"Some morons in town with a gaming theme, I followed their channel for the war footage. Guess I forgot to unfollow," he admitted.
She smirked. "So either more gaming stuff, but we can troll the chat, or live parahuman capers? I'm game to check it out?"
"You don't want to watch the rest of this one first?"
"Nah, I was starting to zone out to be honest."
"In that case… aye aye, captain," he said, tapping the link.
"-you thought we were done with Saint's Row, you've never played it! The game's not complete if you just focus on story missions, you gotta do some diversions and challenges!"
A cinematic shot of the inside of a truck cab showed two grown-ass men in garish shades of purple and black clothes, medical masks and goggles on their faces as they weaved through traffic like madmen, a siren in the background.
"That's right, Uber, well said. Why, the Saints are always ready to step in and help the downtrodden while the cops are out for donuts. See a need, fill a need, and right now, the Docks district needs some good emergency services!"
The window to the back of the cab opened, and another masked face popped through, wearing a ridiculous violet ballcap with a half-dozen gold and silver chains affixed around the brim and dangling off the side.
"For those of you just tuning in or out of town, for reasons yet unknown to us, the villain Purity has started strafing runs through the impoverished slums while screaming incoherently! I don't know about you guys, but that sounds like more work than our local star Panacea can handle, so your friendly neighborhood ne'er-do-wells are here to save the day!"
The shot snap-cut to the driver's wheel, Uber pulling a complicated maneuver and drifting the vehicle to a stop. The capes piled out of the vehicle, and the camera panned to a wide shot showing a scene of destruction. A building had been cut in half, the two halves sagging into each other in a way that couldn't be stable. Several people were on the pavement outside, and more were trying to climb out of windows on higher floors.
"Oh," Noelle said softly. "It's that bad out there?"
Krouse considered. "Yeah, it is," he replied, reaching to swap to something more lighthearted.
"No!" She reached out to stop him, then recoiled before contact as if burned. Krouse froze, then slowly pulled his hand back.
"Alright," he said simply, and then, "It's okay, no harm done."
Noelle breathed deep, still holding her hand as if worried it would reach out again and find skin. "I'm sorry, I just… I don't want you to hide the bad things of the world from me, Krouse. I can't stand it."
He agreed, even though he didn't.
"Pay attention, folks," Leet said in voiceover, as the camera zoomed in on Meta by a too-still form with a leg closer to ground meat than anything. "This unfortunate soul would never have made it to the hospital, but we've got a second chance for 'em."
The cape had a foil-wrapped packet in his hands, and tore it open to reveal some kind of compress. It had a simple LCD readout on the outside, and a glimpse of the underside as Meta pulled off a film showed a series of holes and contacts, like a little ECG patch. He slapped it on the civilian's exposed stomach and watched the readout, pressing a button once or twice. It seemed like nothing was happening, but then the corpse - and it had to be a corpse by now, that leg had no tourniquet and it wasn't pouring blood - stiffened, coughed, and began breathing regularly. Meta tied off a tourniquet on the limb as the man revived, color flushing as the compress pulsed like a living thing. By the time Meta was on his feet, the man looked like he was just sleeping normally.
"The Lazarus Patch, everyone. Patent pending, completely reproducible mundane tech, and hopefully this little demo will help us get it fast-tracked for mass production. Looks like we're about done with this location, and I hear sirens. Let's get back on the road and malpractice a few more people back to life, before the fuzz try to make us stop, eh?"
"What the shit," Krouse breathed, rolling back the video as the capes piled into the van again. Again, he and Noelle watched the camera pan in, watched the man's leg trickle to a stop as Meta felt for a pulse and pulled out the packet, watched the little device reverse traumatic blood loss and seal a bleeding limb in seconds. They could mass produce those?
"Krouse, go back a second," Noelle said suddenly. "Stop - a little more. Look at Uber in the background?
The man was crouched next to another injured victim, dabbing some kind of chemical from a vial onto a wound. It was only a handful of seconds of background footage, but Krouse could swear the wound was visibly closing, bits of torn flesh looking less ragged, less raw, skipping the scab phase completely to raw scar-pink skin around the edges.
"They've got to be kidding," he said. "The patch thing, maybe, but if that stuff isn't tinker bullshit, I need to get my eyes checked."
"It might be a start, though," Noelle said. "Maybe they work for Coil, and this is a field test of their, uh, solution?"
Krouse heard the hope in her voice. He didn't say the obvious; that if these guys had already been working for the villain, their team wouldn't have gotten such a good deal. Still, it was something to bring up with the guy after this; maybe they could use some funding, after all. Sure, there was a lot of distance between reviving a few people from the brink of death and fixing his girlfriend, but…
For the second time in as many weeks, Krouse allowed himself to feel a whisper of hope.
Passing Time…
The Undersiders were a strange bunch, as villains went. Or maybe Trickster just wasn't used to dealing with people who didn't want to kill him at the slightest provocation.
He figured it was the trauma. Sure, his team had more than their share of it, he wasn't arguing that, but not everyone got their powers from a sketchy briefcase. You had the worst day of your life, and then you got saddled with godhood; it hadn't worked out well for Perdition, to say nothing of the rest of them, and he had to imagine it was only worse for the natural-grown crop.
The Undersiders were different, in that regard. Maybe cause they were teens, and hadn't really gotten the killer mentality that seemed so common in this world of masks. Maybe it was just that they had all the killer villain energy in Coil, and there was barely any to spare after Bitch took the majority of the rest.
"A coin for your thoughts, Trickster," Coil said as they rode back from the meeting.
He took a deep drag of his cigarette, letting the smoke out the cracked window of the SUV. "Good kids," he said eventually. "Lots of power synergy. Where'd you find them?"
"I must admit, their team has been something of a pleasant distraction of my own," Coil lied, if Trickster had him pegged at all. Pleasant? They had to be anything but, for a mastermind like the man across from him. They had spirit, principles, and Coil struck him as the kind of man who preferred tools.
Trickster took another drag, held it, exhaled out the window.. "Have you given any thought to recruiting those small-timers I mentioned the other day?"
"The gaming group? I have, of course. My pet has been helping me work out possible routes to cooperation, but it seems they would not be very amenable to direct employment. She was able to confirm that they would increase your teammate's chances of a cure, however."
Trickster smiled. "That's really good to hear, boss. I'll pass it along."
He really hoped that exchange was the truth. Hope was so easy to lose, and he was far too used to walking on eggshells in this beautiful, terrible world.