Realpolitik:
Drop The Ball
* * *
Location: Paragon City
Date: December 31 2010
Time: 23:44:19
* * *
Pain is never a fun way to wake up. Especially when you ache in places you don't even have names for. And that's quite an achievement when you're a qualified medic, fully trained to cut people down and sew them up again. Some people say pain needs to be approached philosophically. It's a sign you're still alive, still breathing, and all that. Just your body's way of keeping you alert and informed.
Maybe that's true. But I still had a huge pain in my ass. And other parts of my anatomy.
I got to my feet. Or at least I tried to. All I managed was to rise on my knees before my legs gave way. It took leaning against the alley wall to get myself upright, and even that was a slow and laborious process.
With unsteady fingers, I fumbled for the autoinjectors in my belt webbing. Finding the right one, I stabbed the spring-loaded syringe into my thigh. Within a few seconds, my head started to clear, the sensation of pain retreating. I still didn't feel right, but it was the best I could hope for without rest and proper attention. The little syringe was about as strong as you could get for a combat drug without turning green and growing horns.
I did have a few doses of actual superadine in my kit. Not off the street, but direct from the Family. According to my contacts, the pure drug didn't have the same side-effects. But I wasn't keen to test the theory. I wasn't quite that desperate. Not yet.
Still, I was worried. I wasn't desperate enough to shoot myself up with dubious supersoldier serums, but I wasn't exactly calm. For good reason.
I recognised the pain shooting through my body. I shouldn't have, but I did. It felt almost exactly like when I'd taken a trip through that old Nazi time machine. Some kind of temporal shock. The trouble was, that should have been impossible. The method of time travel I'd used for this excursion was supposed to be much safer. It was supposed to buffer against this kind of thing.
Not a good sign.
My forearm felt hot. It wasn't hot enough to burn me, but it was distinctly uncomfortable. With proper feeling slowly returning to my extremities, I could separate the sensation of heat from all the other screaming my nerves were doing.
I brought my arm up and stared at it.
A serpent stared back at me. The bracer clasped round my arm consisted of two interlocking diamonds, a snake devouring its own tail. Embedded into the snake's skin like so many scales, a series of brass dials spun and clicked.
I glared at the device accusingly.
One by one, the dials slowed, then halted. Their final position spelt out a precise date and time. It took me a moment to translate the symbols into a calendar and clock I was familiar with.
When I was done with the arithmetic, I cursed.
Loudly.
I wasn't in the right time. Or the right place. I'd aimed for one of my backup bases, not a filthy alley. And I'd allowed myself a healthy amount of leeway when setting the temporal coordinates for this mission.
According to the portal device, I had about twelve minutes. I'd arrived with over sixteen, but I'd spent the first couple getting my brain back in gear.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
My fingers brushed against the bracer again. Then I let my hand drop away from the dials. It had already failed once. I had no idea what would happen if I tried using it again, especially just after this disaster.
Still cursing, I stumbled out of the alley, and looked around. Thankfully, I recognised the location: Kings Row, several blocks south of where I needed to be. Considerably closer than my planned arrival point. I could still make it, but I had to hurry.
Rushing into an unknown situation didn't sit well with me, but I had no choice. My original plan had been to come back sooner so I could gather intelligence. That little idea was obviously down the tubes. All I had was my briefing from Lazarus, and it wasn't a lot to go on. Especially given the man's usual incoherence.
"Shit," I said, out loud.
Then I started to run.
My destination was a nightclub. A converted warehouse. Not exactly unusual in this district, but this was one of the nicer ones. A lot of those were springing up. Parts of Kings Row were starting to shake off the grimy industrial image. After all, it was cheap to operate out of the Row. Property prices were rock bottom. That counted for a lot in a city as expensive as Paragon. And for some, the remaining patina of urban decay was attractive. Artistic and bohemian, even.
So the Row was changing. Slowly.
Not fast enough.
My boots slammed against the pavement as I ran, gasping breaths of air into my lungs. My breathing was all wrong. Inefficient. I knew that, but my body's performance was still completely off. This was the best I could manage. Still, even like this, I was quick enough to make an Olympic athlete go red with righteous indignation.
It was enough. It had to be enough.
One block, then another. As I tore down the last street, I could make out the Skulls outside. Hell, I heard them before I saw them, gleefully terrorising the crowd around the club.
It was a big crowd. Apparently the place was one of the 'in' nightspots to pass the New Year. Or at least that was what I'd gathered from Lazarus. Listening to the scatterbrained twit trying to describe contemporary holiday traditions had been an...interesting experience.
At the moment, most of these people were probably wishing they'd gone for a more traditional New Year's, like joining the countdown at Atlas Park or watching fireworks at the bay. Or just getting nicely lubricated in the comfort and safety of their own homes.
Anything would probably be an improvement over Skull-related violence.
For me, though...it would be easy to break this up. I knew that. But I didn't have the time. So I went for the mask, securing it over my mouth and eyes. Then I yanked a the cylinders from my webbing, squeezing the lever and pulling the ring in one practised motion.
The grenade exploded in a dense acrid cloud, blanketing the street with noxious fumes. It was hard on the revellers, but I was in a hurry. Gas was indiscriminate. It choked Skulls and innocent people alike. But they'd live.
Good enough.
I dove through the smoke, through the open door of the nightclub. I stumbled as I took the steps leading down to the club floor, but I had the presence of mind to turn my fall into a controlled roll rather than ending up sprawled at the bottom of the staircase. My rifle dug painfully into my back, but I ignored it, instead focusing on bringing the weapon up and ready for use.
The light amplification in my mask turned the interior into a disorientating riot of colour, but I didn't have the leisure to fine-tune the settings.
Looking through the mask's goggles gave me a headache, but I could distinguish shapes, outlines, and the bare minimum of fine detail. I could separate the gang members from the party-goers. That would suffice.
Problem was, the picture wasn't what I'd anticipated. I'd expected to see some kind of grand Satanic ritual, some kind of mass sacrifice by the Skulls to ring in the New Year. A summoning, a binding, whatever. Something that would tear down the fabric of reality and piss all over the remains.
When I'd taken my trip back, things were going all the way to hell in hand luggage, plus maximum allowance of check-in baggage.
I knew this was ground zero. Lazarus had confirmed it. Yet there didn't seem to be anything here that could trigger an apocalypse event. The Skulls were having a good time. The unfortunate legitimate patrons of the club were having a very bad time.
But a group of gang members getting stone drunk and imposing on the women? That didn't qualify as the end of the world.
I'd been to worse parties than this.
Something was wrong.
They hadn't noticed me yet. I had an estimated three to five seconds before they reacted to my presence. My head was still fuzzy, but even with my reflexes impaired I was still worlds swifter than these gothic necromancer rejects. One of those speedster freaks like Synapse or Neuron could possibly get the drop on me, but short of that I was the apex predator here.
My hand closed around the grip of my rifle. A round was already chambered. The safety was off. Yet I held my fire, instead visually surveying the club. There had to be something here.
The dance floor and bar area looked clear. Maybe further back in the building, in the offices or toilets? Was there a private party area?
Wait.
There.
It didn't really stand out among the scenes of debauchery scattered around the club. But somehow....I knew what I was looking at was important.
Clinically, I paid closer attention. It seemed like a textbook rape or molestation in progress, not at all sexy or arousing. Just petty and banal, evil in its most basic form. Across the dance floor, I could make out a Bone Daddy and his buddies surrounding a woman. Maybe a girl. Hard to tell. I gave it a fifty-fifty chance she wasn't even in here legally. But it wasn't my place to judge. One way or another, she was paying for her choice in seasonal entertainment.
I couldn't tell much about her dress. But her tights, presumably flesh-coloured outside the distorting effect of my goggles. were ripped and torn.
My rifle moved, stock digging securely into my shoulder. I held my breath, pulling back the trigger...before I hesitated, allowing my finger to go loose and releasing the pressure. Too close. The girl and her assailants were just too close. I couldn't risk the shot.
Yet I had to do something. This little scene didn't seem all that significant, but I had an inexplicable sense that this was what I was here to prevent. Nothing concrete or logical, just a cold feeling in my gut.
Maybe another gas grenade? A flashbang? Either would be dangerous in this kind of enclosed space. But I didn't have a huge array of non-lethal options. Most of the time that kind of thing wasn't a terribly high priority. Now, I regretted it.
I rose from my crouch, but before I could do anything, the girl took matters into her own hands.
Typically, I'd applaud such initiative.
Right there, right then, it filled me with a sickening sense of dread.
Not because the sight was stomach-turning. It was, of course. But although the next few moments looked like something out of a high-budget horror movie, the sight itself wasn't what concerned me.
No. Rather, it was this: in one leap of intuition, I knew what it meant.
The Bone Daddy rotted. No other way to put it. He stumbled back, the flesh melting off his form, even his clothes starting to decay. He screamed, or at least I assume he screamed. The sound was hard to make out, all sped up into a high-pitched whine. By the time he crashed into the dance floor, his body wasn't even holding together. When it was all over, his own skull was nearly as bare as the one strapped to what had been his head.
It happened so quickly there wasn't a stench, at least not yet. But from the look of things, I was glad my mask filters were firmly in place.
Gruesome? Yes.
I'd seen worse.
The implications, however, were troubling.
The girl wasn't wearing a medical communicator, at least not one that registered on my equipment. If she'd had an emergency teleport beacon, I'd have noticed. The display on my goggles would have tagged it. So she wasn't a registered hero, meaning she probably wasn't a trained superhuman.
Judging by the look of absolute terror on her pretty face, maybe this was the first time she'd used her powers.
Mutant. Had to be. A powerful one, too. And given what she'd done to the Bone Daddy, added to how my Ouroboros device was acting, I had a fair guess as to what her powers involved.
One of the other gang members reacted, shouting incoherently and pulling a knife. He lunged for the girl, but he never made it. His movement ceased halfway, momentum completely vanishing as he went still in mid-stride. Then he too started to die, like some kind of time-elapsed video of starvation and dehydration.
The other people in the club, both party-goers and Skulls alike would probably have reacted to that. Except they couldn't, since they were frozen too. And they too were starting to die. If they weren't already gone.
By now the Ouroboros bracer on my arm was starting to smoulder, a renewed wave of heat from the device eating through my sleeve. The intricate clockwork dials on the snake symbol were clicking and spinning in seemingly random directions. Without an impressive-sounding doctorate or three in exotic physics, I couldn't say what the thing was doing.
But it let me move, apparently shielding me from the effects of the girl's powers. Partially, anyway. It felt like I was in slow motion, or maybe like the girl was sped up. I could see her reacting. I could even hear her scream, the sound coming like some kind of distant Doppler distortion.
"CALM DOWN," I yelled, hoping that she could hear me in turn. It was an absurd thing for me to say, considering how my own heart was pounding like a drum in my chest.
Somehow, my perceptions were still ahead of the speed my body was moving at, an effect I didn't care to examine in more detail. All it meant was that the girl was just a few feet away, but it might as well have been a mile.
If she heard me, she didn't react. That was bad, considering we were the only two people still ambulatory in the club. Maybe in all of Paragon City. Hell, maybe all of creation. I had no idea how far this effect extended. I'd only seen the results after the fact, in the future...present?
I had to do something. It was...
Wait.
By now my vision was starting to blur, but I was pretty sure I wasn't seeing double.
Especially since the girl, even slumped on the floor, couldn't be mistaken for the much larger shape now standing over her. The second figure was bending down, extending a hand, and he was saying something. I was sure it was a he. A man. I couldn't make out details or colour through the haze, but I could tell the interloper was about my height, carrying an assault weapon...
...and was that the glint of Ouroboros brass on his arm?
Yes.
The heat radiating from my own arm was becoming unbearable. But if I was seeing things right, maybe I still had a chance.
I released my grip on the rifle, trusting the sling to keep it on me...
...and slapped my palm against the snake emblem.
-- Acyl
Drop The Ball
* * *
Location: Paragon City
Date: December 31 2010
Time: 23:44:19
* * *
Pain is never a fun way to wake up. Especially when you ache in places you don't even have names for. And that's quite an achievement when you're a qualified medic, fully trained to cut people down and sew them up again. Some people say pain needs to be approached philosophically. It's a sign you're still alive, still breathing, and all that. Just your body's way of keeping you alert and informed.
Maybe that's true. But I still had a huge pain in my ass. And other parts of my anatomy.
I got to my feet. Or at least I tried to. All I managed was to rise on my knees before my legs gave way. It took leaning against the alley wall to get myself upright, and even that was a slow and laborious process.
With unsteady fingers, I fumbled for the autoinjectors in my belt webbing. Finding the right one, I stabbed the spring-loaded syringe into my thigh. Within a few seconds, my head started to clear, the sensation of pain retreating. I still didn't feel right, but it was the best I could hope for without rest and proper attention. The little syringe was about as strong as you could get for a combat drug without turning green and growing horns.
I did have a few doses of actual superadine in my kit. Not off the street, but direct from the Family. According to my contacts, the pure drug didn't have the same side-effects. But I wasn't keen to test the theory. I wasn't quite that desperate. Not yet.
Still, I was worried. I wasn't desperate enough to shoot myself up with dubious supersoldier serums, but I wasn't exactly calm. For good reason.
I recognised the pain shooting through my body. I shouldn't have, but I did. It felt almost exactly like when I'd taken a trip through that old Nazi time machine. Some kind of temporal shock. The trouble was, that should have been impossible. The method of time travel I'd used for this excursion was supposed to be much safer. It was supposed to buffer against this kind of thing.
Not a good sign.
My forearm felt hot. It wasn't hot enough to burn me, but it was distinctly uncomfortable. With proper feeling slowly returning to my extremities, I could separate the sensation of heat from all the other screaming my nerves were doing.
I brought my arm up and stared at it.
A serpent stared back at me. The bracer clasped round my arm consisted of two interlocking diamonds, a snake devouring its own tail. Embedded into the snake's skin like so many scales, a series of brass dials spun and clicked.
I glared at the device accusingly.
One by one, the dials slowed, then halted. Their final position spelt out a precise date and time. It took me a moment to translate the symbols into a calendar and clock I was familiar with.
When I was done with the arithmetic, I cursed.
Loudly.
I wasn't in the right time. Or the right place. I'd aimed for one of my backup bases, not a filthy alley. And I'd allowed myself a healthy amount of leeway when setting the temporal coordinates for this mission.
According to the portal device, I had about twelve minutes. I'd arrived with over sixteen, but I'd spent the first couple getting my brain back in gear.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
My fingers brushed against the bracer again. Then I let my hand drop away from the dials. It had already failed once. I had no idea what would happen if I tried using it again, especially just after this disaster.
Still cursing, I stumbled out of the alley, and looked around. Thankfully, I recognised the location: Kings Row, several blocks south of where I needed to be. Considerably closer than my planned arrival point. I could still make it, but I had to hurry.
Rushing into an unknown situation didn't sit well with me, but I had no choice. My original plan had been to come back sooner so I could gather intelligence. That little idea was obviously down the tubes. All I had was my briefing from Lazarus, and it wasn't a lot to go on. Especially given the man's usual incoherence.
"Shit," I said, out loud.
Then I started to run.
My destination was a nightclub. A converted warehouse. Not exactly unusual in this district, but this was one of the nicer ones. A lot of those were springing up. Parts of Kings Row were starting to shake off the grimy industrial image. After all, it was cheap to operate out of the Row. Property prices were rock bottom. That counted for a lot in a city as expensive as Paragon. And for some, the remaining patina of urban decay was attractive. Artistic and bohemian, even.
So the Row was changing. Slowly.
Not fast enough.
My boots slammed against the pavement as I ran, gasping breaths of air into my lungs. My breathing was all wrong. Inefficient. I knew that, but my body's performance was still completely off. This was the best I could manage. Still, even like this, I was quick enough to make an Olympic athlete go red with righteous indignation.
It was enough. It had to be enough.
One block, then another. As I tore down the last street, I could make out the Skulls outside. Hell, I heard them before I saw them, gleefully terrorising the crowd around the club.
It was a big crowd. Apparently the place was one of the 'in' nightspots to pass the New Year. Or at least that was what I'd gathered from Lazarus. Listening to the scatterbrained twit trying to describe contemporary holiday traditions had been an...interesting experience.
At the moment, most of these people were probably wishing they'd gone for a more traditional New Year's, like joining the countdown at Atlas Park or watching fireworks at the bay. Or just getting nicely lubricated in the comfort and safety of their own homes.
Anything would probably be an improvement over Skull-related violence.
For me, though...it would be easy to break this up. I knew that. But I didn't have the time. So I went for the mask, securing it over my mouth and eyes. Then I yanked a the cylinders from my webbing, squeezing the lever and pulling the ring in one practised motion.
The grenade exploded in a dense acrid cloud, blanketing the street with noxious fumes. It was hard on the revellers, but I was in a hurry. Gas was indiscriminate. It choked Skulls and innocent people alike. But they'd live.
Good enough.
I dove through the smoke, through the open door of the nightclub. I stumbled as I took the steps leading down to the club floor, but I had the presence of mind to turn my fall into a controlled roll rather than ending up sprawled at the bottom of the staircase. My rifle dug painfully into my back, but I ignored it, instead focusing on bringing the weapon up and ready for use.
The light amplification in my mask turned the interior into a disorientating riot of colour, but I didn't have the leisure to fine-tune the settings.
Looking through the mask's goggles gave me a headache, but I could distinguish shapes, outlines, and the bare minimum of fine detail. I could separate the gang members from the party-goers. That would suffice.
Problem was, the picture wasn't what I'd anticipated. I'd expected to see some kind of grand Satanic ritual, some kind of mass sacrifice by the Skulls to ring in the New Year. A summoning, a binding, whatever. Something that would tear down the fabric of reality and piss all over the remains.
When I'd taken my trip back, things were going all the way to hell in hand luggage, plus maximum allowance of check-in baggage.
I knew this was ground zero. Lazarus had confirmed it. Yet there didn't seem to be anything here that could trigger an apocalypse event. The Skulls were having a good time. The unfortunate legitimate patrons of the club were having a very bad time.
But a group of gang members getting stone drunk and imposing on the women? That didn't qualify as the end of the world.
I'd been to worse parties than this.
Something was wrong.
They hadn't noticed me yet. I had an estimated three to five seconds before they reacted to my presence. My head was still fuzzy, but even with my reflexes impaired I was still worlds swifter than these gothic necromancer rejects. One of those speedster freaks like Synapse or Neuron could possibly get the drop on me, but short of that I was the apex predator here.
My hand closed around the grip of my rifle. A round was already chambered. The safety was off. Yet I held my fire, instead visually surveying the club. There had to be something here.
The dance floor and bar area looked clear. Maybe further back in the building, in the offices or toilets? Was there a private party area?
Wait.
There.
It didn't really stand out among the scenes of debauchery scattered around the club. But somehow....I knew what I was looking at was important.
Clinically, I paid closer attention. It seemed like a textbook rape or molestation in progress, not at all sexy or arousing. Just petty and banal, evil in its most basic form. Across the dance floor, I could make out a Bone Daddy and his buddies surrounding a woman. Maybe a girl. Hard to tell. I gave it a fifty-fifty chance she wasn't even in here legally. But it wasn't my place to judge. One way or another, she was paying for her choice in seasonal entertainment.
I couldn't tell much about her dress. But her tights, presumably flesh-coloured outside the distorting effect of my goggles. were ripped and torn.
My rifle moved, stock digging securely into my shoulder. I held my breath, pulling back the trigger...before I hesitated, allowing my finger to go loose and releasing the pressure. Too close. The girl and her assailants were just too close. I couldn't risk the shot.
Yet I had to do something. This little scene didn't seem all that significant, but I had an inexplicable sense that this was what I was here to prevent. Nothing concrete or logical, just a cold feeling in my gut.
Maybe another gas grenade? A flashbang? Either would be dangerous in this kind of enclosed space. But I didn't have a huge array of non-lethal options. Most of the time that kind of thing wasn't a terribly high priority. Now, I regretted it.
I rose from my crouch, but before I could do anything, the girl took matters into her own hands.
Typically, I'd applaud such initiative.
Right there, right then, it filled me with a sickening sense of dread.
Not because the sight was stomach-turning. It was, of course. But although the next few moments looked like something out of a high-budget horror movie, the sight itself wasn't what concerned me.
No. Rather, it was this: in one leap of intuition, I knew what it meant.
The Bone Daddy rotted. No other way to put it. He stumbled back, the flesh melting off his form, even his clothes starting to decay. He screamed, or at least I assume he screamed. The sound was hard to make out, all sped up into a high-pitched whine. By the time he crashed into the dance floor, his body wasn't even holding together. When it was all over, his own skull was nearly as bare as the one strapped to what had been his head.
It happened so quickly there wasn't a stench, at least not yet. But from the look of things, I was glad my mask filters were firmly in place.
Gruesome? Yes.
I'd seen worse.
The implications, however, were troubling.
The girl wasn't wearing a medical communicator, at least not one that registered on my equipment. If she'd had an emergency teleport beacon, I'd have noticed. The display on my goggles would have tagged it. So she wasn't a registered hero, meaning she probably wasn't a trained superhuman.
Judging by the look of absolute terror on her pretty face, maybe this was the first time she'd used her powers.
Mutant. Had to be. A powerful one, too. And given what she'd done to the Bone Daddy, added to how my Ouroboros device was acting, I had a fair guess as to what her powers involved.
One of the other gang members reacted, shouting incoherently and pulling a knife. He lunged for the girl, but he never made it. His movement ceased halfway, momentum completely vanishing as he went still in mid-stride. Then he too started to die, like some kind of time-elapsed video of starvation and dehydration.
The other people in the club, both party-goers and Skulls alike would probably have reacted to that. Except they couldn't, since they were frozen too. And they too were starting to die. If they weren't already gone.
By now the Ouroboros bracer on my arm was starting to smoulder, a renewed wave of heat from the device eating through my sleeve. The intricate clockwork dials on the snake symbol were clicking and spinning in seemingly random directions. Without an impressive-sounding doctorate or three in exotic physics, I couldn't say what the thing was doing.
But it let me move, apparently shielding me from the effects of the girl's powers. Partially, anyway. It felt like I was in slow motion, or maybe like the girl was sped up. I could see her reacting. I could even hear her scream, the sound coming like some kind of distant Doppler distortion.
"CALM DOWN," I yelled, hoping that she could hear me in turn. It was an absurd thing for me to say, considering how my own heart was pounding like a drum in my chest.
Somehow, my perceptions were still ahead of the speed my body was moving at, an effect I didn't care to examine in more detail. All it meant was that the girl was just a few feet away, but it might as well have been a mile.
If she heard me, she didn't react. That was bad, considering we were the only two people still ambulatory in the club. Maybe in all of Paragon City. Hell, maybe all of creation. I had no idea how far this effect extended. I'd only seen the results after the fact, in the future...present?
I had to do something. It was...
Wait.
By now my vision was starting to blur, but I was pretty sure I wasn't seeing double.
Especially since the girl, even slumped on the floor, couldn't be mistaken for the much larger shape now standing over her. The second figure was bending down, extending a hand, and he was saying something. I was sure it was a he. A man. I couldn't make out details or colour through the haze, but I could tell the interloper was about my height, carrying an assault weapon...
...and was that the glint of Ouroboros brass on his arm?
Yes.
The heat radiating from my own arm was becoming unbearable. But if I was seeing things right, maybe I still had a chance.
I released my grip on the rifle, trusting the sling to keep it on me...
...and slapped my palm against the snake emblem.
-- Acyl