"What's this? Where am I?" The male figure gracefully rose from the floor, wearing some kind of red and purple costume. He was holding his helmet under one arm, and he blinked in surprise once he saw himself in a nearby reflection.
He touched his face as he murmured, "I'm young again?"
He was a fairly handsome man in his twenties, with dark brown hair and icy blue eyes.
Kismet had expected him to recoil and look about in confused fear once he saw that there was fighting going on in the background. But instead, he merely blinked and seemed to accept that, yes, there were indeed people in various gang colors beating up on anybody who wore a different color than they did in an all out brawl. He clearly had no idea what was going on here, but he wasn't afraid at all.
If anything he calmly put on his red helmet, which had tiny decorative horns on the front of it and had purple trim all around it.
Hermes was the first to figure out that the new guy might be a cape judging by the way he dressed, and he called out, "Hey, you! Can you help me save my wife from the Nazis? She's the one who summoned you… so if you want answers, here's your chance!"
During this exchange, Steel Eagle had taken the time to point the shrink ray gun at Kaiser, who was standing nearby on the floor and pulled the trigger. Within seconds Kaiser was back to normal, wearing his iron medieval armor that had Nazi imagery engraved into it.
Kaiser stretched out his body and flexed his hands, clearly happy to be back to normal. Doubly so when he noted that his metal extruding powers were back to its lethal level, instead of nerfed to lego-pain-causing levels. People would properly fear him and follow him once again.
Night and Fog walked behind Steel Eagle as he dragged Kismet away towards one of what he assumed was the exit, ready to attack Hermes and the new person should they try anything.
The newcomer just stared at the Nazi capes, his expression morphing into that one of cold disdain as he took in the themes of their costumes. He then spoke as he walked over to them. "Obviously allies of Red Skull, I see. I believe I told him that the next time he tried to carry his schemes out on American soil, that I would have his head. Or did he think he could get away with it thinking that I was on my deathbed? When I'm done with you, he will be next!"
The Nazi group obviously had no idea what this newbie was blathering on about, but Night and Fog moved together in sync to protect Steel Eagle, their leader, as they activated their powers.
Fog transformed himself into a living fog that blanketed the area, while Night used this chance now that nobody was looking at her to transform into a black, inky monstrous form that moved around at super-speed. It was said that she moved so fast that to the naked eye it looked like she teleported.
Hermes started blasting like crazy at the fog and at the massive black monster as it sped around, but the newcomer simply walked on towards Steel Eagle and Kismet as if the two capes hadn't done anything, seemingly unfazed by what was going on here.
The air started to look strange, as Fog tried to engulf the cape in the red and purple costume, to cut off his oxygen and do horrible things to his insides once the man breathed him in. However, there seemed to be some kind of force repelling him away from the newcomer??
Not to mention… there was also a strange force pulling Fog back together, and trying to compress him into a small ball made out of the fog? But how the fuck was this possible--nobody was able to affect him at all when he was in this breaker state of his. He had the odd feeling like he was now gasping for breath, despite the fact that he hadn't needed to breathe before in his fog-like state.
He felt disoriented as he was forcibly reverted back to his original body and found himself falling from a great height. With that, Fog was out cold now.
The inky-black monster that was a writhing mass of insect-like legs and eyes screeched loudly when she saw her husband be knocked out somehow, and Night charged at the offending man like an angry bull, moving too fast for the human eye to see-- And all of a sudden she just… stopped?
She found herself slowly levitating into the air, the new cape gesturing at her with one arm outstretched. His hand slowly curled into a fist at the same time she felt herself being crushed…. Almost as if he was *commanding* some unseen force to crush her like an insect using his hand gesture.
She frantically struggled in the air as she was slowly being crushed little by little like she was stuck in a hydraulic press. There was this sickening sound, like a thousand bones, necks, and spines were all being snapped. Her body finally stilled, and Night was dumped onto the floor once the man was sure she was finally dead.
With that, he kept on walking towards Steel Eagle and Kaiser as if he hadn't just casually murdered one of their own and made it look so easy.
"Who the fuck are you?" Kaiser demanded to know. Nobody could see how wide-eyed he was right now behind his armored helmet, as he gaped at the newcomer. But he didn't think anybody would've blamed him for gaping at the cape like a shocked fish, considering that the guy had pretty much curb-stomped over two of Gesellschaft's finest capes in mere seconds.
The man just smirked, as he simply said, "I am Magneto."
The way Magneto said his name, it was like he had expected them all to know him, to recognize him from the name alone? He sounded so arrogant as fuck when he said it. Although with the power he was exhibiting, a part of Kaiser couldn't help but wonder if that arrogance might be justified. But then, why hadn't he ever heard of Magneto before?
"Kismet! Are you alright?" Hermes called out as he rushed over to Magneto's side. Hermes was holding out his right arm towards Steel Eagle, which had some kind of tinker tech blaster on it.
Kaiser couldn't help but think that was kind of a ridiculous design, having to hold your arm in an uncomfortable position like that before you fired them at your enemies.
Kismet was about to nod but winced when she felt the dull knife generated by Steel Eagle digging into her throat. That was definitely starting to leave a mark, despite the protective cloth she had around her throat as part of her costume.
"Um, yeah, I'm fine for now. Steel Eagle here seems awfully agitated." Kismet weakly said, as she found herself being dragged backward again, as Steel Eagle tried to inch his way towards the exit.
It was at this moment that Lung had the perfect timing to spot both Kaiser and the Gesellschaft cape, and roared as he rushed over at them. He was still amped up and was wreathed in a fire so he made for a very intimidating, impressive image as he ran at his most hated enemies in Brockton Bay.
Kaiser immediately put up metal spikes, which came up out of the ground all around him, as he chose to intercept Lung personally so that Steel Eagle could make his escape. He also exuded some metal spikes coming out of his armor for good measure, in the event should Lung actually get close enough to get at him. He grabbed two of his own spikes and broke them off so that he could start swinging them around like a sword, acting like a knight that specialized in two-handed swordsmanship.
The two of them circled around each other, The action movie effect seemingly kicking in as the two of them suddenly seemed to take on a cool, dramatic air as they started to battle.
The musical accompaniment via the nearby radios kicked in once again with the fight songs, which made Kismet look up at the tower itself and silently/mentally ask, "Pearl Tower? Could you not do that, please?"
The Pearl Tower, of course, did not answer Kismet's desperate pleas for it to stop the action movie effect, for it was not a sentient thing that could respond to telepathic commands. As much as Kismet wished otherwise.
It was almost like a dance between the leaders of the ABB and the Empire, as they battled to see which one was the strongest… and at one point Kaiser had actually done a high triple back-flip in the air as he shot out a dozen razor-sharp metal blades out of his armor, much like the way a cartoon porcupine shot out his spikes. Kaiser landed gracefully on his feet, while Lung had simply dodged his attacks using some martial arts technique that knocked the metal spikes out of the air and spun around to hit Kaiser with his newly grown tail. He then breathed fire all around the area, setting some things on fire.
And goddamn, didn't they both look cool doing it instead of looking ridiculous like anybody else would've done if they had tried to pull off those impractical stunts in the middle of a real fight. In fact the entire scene kind of reminded Kismet of some fighting video games she had seen once before.
At this point, some of the gang members nearby stopped fighting each other to cheer their leaders on as they watched the battle unfold.
Meanwhile, Magneto had evidently taken advantage of this distraction to puppet Steel Eagle's body so that he was no longer holding Kismet hostage, which wasn't that hard at all considering that he had been fully armored from head to toe, his bracers and other armor panels were hidden away under his red Nazi uniform with his chest plate and mask being the only visible pieces of metal.
Instead, Steel Eagle found himself helplessly suspended in the air as Magneto walked towards him.
"Give me a good reason as to why I shouldn't kill you," Magneto said very casually as if he was discussing the weather with Steel Eagle.
Kismet ran to Hermes, and her husband checked her over for any serious injuries before finally hugging her in relief.
They turned around to see what Magneto was up to, and their eyes widened when Magneto asked why he shouldn't kill Steel Eagle.
"I do not beg. To do so would be unbecoming of a proud Nazi," Steel Eagle said stiffly, once he realized that he was sorely outclassed and that there was no way out of this. "So you might as well get on with it."
Magneto didn't say anything in response to this but he compiled all the same as he slowly started breaking every bone in Steel Eagle's body starting from the feet up as he used the metals in the armored boots and hidden armor panels to crush the bones into dust.
Amazingly enough, Steel Eagle didn't die right away, not even when Magneto crushed his ribs together, destroying both his lungs and heart in the process.
"Hmm, I see… a regenerator, eh? Then I'll have to take very special care that you die for good…" Magneto mumbled, as he finally worked his way up past Steel Eagle's shoulders to the head itself.
His slow, methodical way of executing the other cape in the most painful way possible was leaving a large bloody mess of gore and viscera all over the floor.
Seeing that just made Kismet queasy as hell, as she hid her face away into the crook of her husband Hermes' shoulder. She wondered if she had summoned a villain, considering that Magneto's method of getting rid of the Nazis was a tad too brutal and gory even for her.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On a much lighter note, Squealer was going through some serious humiliation right now. It was one of the worst things ever to happen to her, and she had been through some serious shit before. Of course, to an outsider, they would think it was funny as hell.
Namely the fact that two little kids seemed to be treating her like she was a barbie doll came to life with the sole purpose of being their plaything.
She was sitting at a small table that had actual tea doilies on it and everything and all around her were stuffed toys seated in their own little chairs. Her RC Car was in a corner, being recharged at an outlet.
Across her sat Roll.Exe, who were pouring out imaginary tea into empty teacups for all of her stuffed playmates to drink.
"Ugh." Squealer couldn't help but grumble a little bit as she was forced to play along with them, at least until her car was recharged. Once that was done she could finally get away from those kids and explore this place.
At least Rock.Exe seemed to have the decency to think this whole thing was completely banal too, as he didn't seem to like the whole tea party that Roll.exe was holding for them all. He kept on glancing over at the RC car, eager to see if it was ready to go already. Squealer kinda felt the same way, but for completely different reasons.
"So uh… I thought that seven-year-olds or something stopped doing tea parties and junk? Aren't you too old for this?" Squealer mumbled.
Roll.exe seemed to ponder that but then shrugged. "Technically, Rock.exe and I are actually just months old… we're not even a year old yet."
Squealer blinked at that. "What?"
Rock.exe nodded. "It's true. Dad made us and we haven't a mommy yet because he didn't marry anybody yet, so we weren't really born in the same way human kids usually are."
"What. Uh…. your daddy's a bio-tinker?"
Rock.Exe and Roll.Exe looked at each other, pondering this question.
Roll.exe then said, "Not really? I mean, we don't have physical bodies yet, so all we have is our consciousness right now. So, as a result, we're stuck in this tower, we can't ever leave. So we kind of just haunt the place roaming around to keep it safe from invaders and stuff."
Rock nodded. He then turned his holographic body fully transparent to drive the point home. "See? We're not completely alive in the same way you are. But we do have minds and exist. But daddy promised us physical bodies one day."
Squealer visibly paled at this. The other thing that happened to be one of her greatest fears, besides heights? Ghosts.
She could deal just fine with most horror movies, but anything to do with ghosts tended to freak the hell out of her. And with two kids admitting to the fact that they weren't completely alive and didn't have physical bodies *yet*? How the fuck were they supposed to get physical bodies, by possessing people???
Naturally, her mind went straight to ghosts… and her phobia of ghosts kicked in overdrive.
"AAAAAAAHHHH!!" Squealer screamed loudly as she rushed to get out of there, not even caring that her car wasn't fully charged up yet. Or that she was leaving it behind.
"What's her problem?" Rock.exe muttered confusedly, stretching at his head.
"Dunno. I was going to explain to her about the holo-emitters around this room, and how we're AIs but she interrupted me…" Roll.exe frowned as she said that.
"At any rate, we should really stop her. I don't think dad would be happy with us if we let her run around the place like that. Don't forget, she's a villain!" Rock.exe said.
Roll.exe nodded.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Back at ground level, Magneto had used his magnetic powers to basically "microwave" every cell in the now deceased Steel Eagle's remains to ensure that every cell was destroyed, that the man couldn't simply regenerate from a single cell.
After all, stranger things than that had happened, and Magneto had experience with enemies constantly coming back to life after a while thanks to details like that. Of course he couldn't even be sure this would keep Steel Eagle dead permanently. Maybe he had clones lying around somewhere, like that goddamned Red Skull did. Magneto had honestly lost count of how many times he had killed Red Skull in the past, only for him to pop back up like a bad rash.
Red Skull had this annoying ability to just simply transfer his consciousness into any other body he was genetically related to in some way, and it worked even better if the new body was a clone of his old body. And naturally he had ensured that he had fathered dozens of offspring all over the world in addition to cloning himself, which was why that Nazi was so difficult to get rid of. And worse, he fostered and kept the Neo-Nazi groups alive all over the globe, such as the super-powered group called the Axis Mundi.
And it looked like he had done the same here with this new group of unfamiliar mutants.
The question was-- how long had he been dead that Red Skull felt emboldened enough to start doing this on American soil once again? And he was quite certain he had died for he remembered it very vividly.
As much as he kept himself absurdly healthy and fit for an old man, the years still managed to creep up on him and he had finally reached 99 years of age before he felt his age.
It hadn't been all bad however. Professor Xavier had partially succeeded at his dream, of having mutants everywhere be somewhat accepted in society. The ironic part however? The two of them had nothing to do with that…. Instead society at large had been mostly influenced by heroic non-mutants who had gained their superpowers in other ways, such as Spider-man and Captain America. Seeing heroic figures with superpowers constantly save the world over and over, and with Mutants at their side helping out?
That did a lot to change minds out there.
Though mutants were still discriminated against in certain parts of the world, and in certain states in America, it seemed as if they were finally gaining acceptance from the rest of the world anyhow. That at least gave him some hope on his deathbed, that everything he and Professor Xavier had fought for wasn't for all naught. That the next generation would carry on their fight.
Magneto had appreciated Charlies Xavier standing at his side while he was dying, and even when his rival held his hand in a comforting way, although he would never admit that to anybody else. For all the enmity they sometimes had between themselves, they still respected one other even if they didn't agree on Mutant-kind's role in society. After all, what the two of them really wanted was the same thing, for Mutants to be accepted and seen as largely normal, even if they didn't agree about how to get there.
Professor Xavier were a lot of things for Magneto as a result, such as being both his worst enemy and his best friend simultaneously. Such a complicated relationship.
Remembering such a touching, emotional scene was somewhat ruined by the fact that he was young and ready to take up the fight once again. It just felt… anti-climatic?
Speaking of which…
Magneto finally turned around to face the one who was supposedly responsible for bringing him back to life.
The costumed woman standing by her husband's side looked somewhat violently ill as she recoiled from the smell of burnt human flesh and the sight of gore, but she bravely stood steadfast as Magneto approached her.
"Kismet, is it? I heard you were the one who brought me back to life." Magneto said.
Kismet merely nodded at this wordlessly, seemingly at a loss on what to say after witnessing his brutal take-down of Steel Eagle.
"Then, I owe you my life. Would you like me to deal with the rest of this… riff-raff?" Magneto asked, as he gestured at the commotion in the background as both Kaiser and Lung battled one other while gang members watched.
"NO!" Kismet practically screamed in his face, but then she cleared her throat. When somebody started telling her something over her built-in headset in her helmet. "N-no… um, the PRT is on their way to deal with those para-human criminals, so you don't need to trouble yourself. Seriously though, I just don't want any more gory deaths happening here on the premises."
"Who, or what are the PRT?" Magneto asked.
"The Parahuman Response Team. Consists of both Parahumans and regular humans, a branch of the governmental police force that neutralizes and polices the more criminal elements of … well, Para-humanity." Hermes answered for Kismet.
Hermes then asked back, "What, they don't have something similar back on your world? You were a cape back in your world too...right?"
Magneto blinked at that. What did they mean, 'his world'?
At his look, Kismet then explained. "Um… that's the funny thing about my power. It seems to like yanking people from across the multiverse at the moment of their death and summoning them in a new body or something? You're on Earth Bet, now."
Magneto silently digested that piece of information. That wasn't exactly the weirdest power he had ever heard of, as he had met a mutant who was nothing but eyeballs all over their body (and could see into all dimensions), but that was still pretty out there. And being on a different Earth certainly explained why those mutants back there had never heard of him. Actually, anybody here even mutants to start with? they seemed to call themselves Parahumans here, but…
It was then that the front entrance to the Pearl Tower burst inwards as Armsmaster flew in on his motorcycle, followed by both Assault and Battery. It made for a very dynamic entrance, especially when they landed on their feet and motorcycle in what was a very dramatic pose as the flying shards of glass conveniently flew away from the heroes, glittering in the light.
They held that pose for a few seconds as they looked around to gather data about what was going on here, before leaping into action once again, as they threw containment foam bombs everywhere they saw a gang member.
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Mags paused as she walked by what appeared to be an indoor pool. It looked to be a public pool area, and she could even see doors leading to men's and women's showers and changing areas.
She knew she should hurry on and find a central computer where she could infect the entire building's system…. But well. Just look at her, she was still caked from head to toe in both crap and feathers!
And the smell was starting to make her feel nauseated and dizzy. Plus, she would be greatly humiliated if others were to see her like this.
Her mind made up, she rushed towards the pool's shower areas.
Once she was in the ladies' locker room, she gingerly peeled off her shit-coated clothes, making sure to take her UBS port out of the clothes' pocket afterward using a towel so that none of the feces or other dirt could get on it. She wrapped a towel around it and put it inside an open locker before heading off to the showers.
She peeled off her underwear on the way there, and eagerly stood under the showers as she turned it on… not even caring if it'd be freezing cold first before it warmed up for her. She had shut her eyes before turning it on, so she didn't notice that the water coming out didn't look quite right.
It was a smelly brown color.
As you will recall, there was a chain of malfunctions within the building's piping system on that particular floor, and that explosion from earlier certainly didn't help matters any.
Mags noticed this when she tried to wash the fecal matter out of her hair, only to see that the shower was only adding MORE instead of taking it away like it should've had.
She let out a loud scream of frustration at this, as she stepped away from the still-running waters and ran back into the locker room. She turned on all the tap waters in the sinks, only to see that they were all the same brown sludgy color.
She let out a cry of despair at this, because she really, really did not want to run around covered in shit. Having somebody see her like this…? UGH!
She then froze as a thought occurred to her. That pool out there, it was full of pristine, sparkling, and heavily chlorinated water. That would certainly be one way to get herself clean, right?
She didn't even care if people caught her swimming in the pool naked, as long as she got this shit off herself. That's how desperate she was right now, and the smell was starting to overwhelm her again.
Against her better judgment, she grabbed a few towels and ran outside to the pool.
Unfortunately, for her, the world where the Skyscraper came from tended to be very lax in safety regulations when it came to using chemicals that kept the pool clean longer. The Chinese, in particular, used a brand that had been banned in America in the Skyscraper's universe. This was because the product kept the pools clean for a very long while when it wasn't being used for months, cutting down on the need for cleaning staff or even pool filters. It had been a necessity because the building had been a work in progress for years on end, and even afterward it'd take months for it to be finally open to the public.
This product, when put into chlorine water, was known to cause all kinds of nasty reactions in people, varying from hives and rashes to outright allergic attacks. Although in fairness to the Chinese, it was also meant to be taken out of the pool when the pool was ready to be used again. America had only banned it after one too many careless pool owners forgot that they were supposed to filter it out using a pool filter before swimming.
Of course, a far more sensible person might ask why they just didn't keep the pool completely empty of any water to keep it clean and sanitary if it wasn't going to be used for months. The answer, of course, is that rich people in general, tend to be very unsensible and out of touch with reality.
Zhao, the rich billionaire and also the architect who had built the Pearl, tended to justify such ridiculous costs by claiming that he might decide to use the pool himself during one of his breaks when he was keeping an eye on the building's process. And of course, he didn't want to have to wait for it to be filled up again and again before he could use it.
It was just so much simpler to use a strong powerful chemical that could keep the pools sparkling clean all year round, and one that could be filtered out by the swimming filters so that the waters became safe to swim in.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--Meanwhile, up in the panic room--
"What the hell is she doing?" A mystified Clarence wondered out loud as he watched mags take a swim in the pool area on the 10th floor. The security cameras were of low quality enough that he didn't even realize that she was basically skinny-dipping in the pool… and the fact that there was a dark cloud of shit within the water spreading out all around her as she bathed in the pool helped obscure that fact.
He had been watching her for suspicious activity while the rest of the Automata team monitored the ongoing fight on the ground level, but so far none of her actions had made sense to him.
She exploded the ladies' bathroom for some reason and was seen leaving a store next to it covered in what looked like black and white gunk (It was really dark in that area as most lights were off).
And then now she proceeded to go swimming like it was her day off and it was vacation time?
That did not compute at all. Was she on drugs or something?
"Wait, Ulala. Are you seriously live-streaming the fight downstairs right now? Seriously?" Tech-fire sounded so surprised that Clarence looked over at him and Ulala.
Ulala just scoffed loudly, her monitor showing various online sites streaming the video feed from downstairs. "But of course. Been doing that from the very start. I wouldn't be able to call myself a good reporter and broadcaster if I didn't take this opportunity to earn us new viewers. And look, we're already getting plenty of likes and other reactions! Even Uber and Leet is commenting on it on their own channel."
Tech-fire stared at Ulala as he replied, "Not everything has to be live-streamed online, you know? I'm not sure that Kismet would be happy about this."
Ulala laughed as if the idea of not live-streaming everything they did was completely foreign to her, and thus Tech-fire had to be kidding."Pfft, yeah right. I made a good living doing just exactly that. Also by being a reporter-slash-entertainer, but yeah."
Mrs. Thompson was petting the robotic cat on her lap she had built, as she stared up at the dozens of monitors displaying the unfolding incident from all angles. She then said, "Oh, it seems that the PRT finally arrived. About time, we called them a while ago…"
Sure enough, Armsmaster and the others were making a very dynamic entry in one of the monitors.
Mr. Thompson shook his head at that. "I have a mind to complain to the Protectorate about their response time."
It was at this point that Rock.Exe and Roll.exe popped up on Tech-fire's monitors where he was sitting at. The two of them wore sheepish expressions, as they spoke. "Um, Dad? We need to tell you something important."
Tech-fire turned his attention towards his creations, and replied, "Alright. What is it?"
Roll.exe was the first one to speak up. "It happened earlier today, and…."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---a few moments ago---
<
Unfortunately, they couldn't just wander around physically, as seeing most rooms in the tower didn't have holo-emitters or special sensors that would let them interact with the real world. So when they weren't in cyberspace, they were usually confined to the pearl room or the playroom that their daddy had made to interact with them whenever he wasn't working on the code for the cyberspace he was making.
So they were stuck looking at each room through security cameras if the room had any. The humans could get really funny about where the security cameras shouldn't be, like in bathrooms and bedrooms for some reason. As very young AIs they didn't exactly understand why humans held such a viewpoint. What happened if you had an incident in the bedroom or bathroom and needed help?
Sometimes being a born AI really sucked, if you had no physical body in the real world for moments like this.
<
Rock.exe looked over at that hallway using the cameras and sure enough, they could see the doll-sized woman sneaking alongside the walls and hiding behind random objects like trash cans as she looked around herself.
<
Unfortunately for the young AIs, they didn't realize that there was a very odd malfunction in the speaker that would turn any voice spoken though it sound demonic and scary as hell.
"Squealer!" a pair of twin demonic-sounding voices said almost in unison, "Come back to us so that we can play some more. There's nothing to be scared of."
Squealer actually let out a loud squeal of fear, and ran away, a trail of pee puddles trailing after her… indicating that she had peed herself out of fear.
<
<> Rock.exe replied.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tech-fire was rubbing his forehead in exasperation once his digital children finished explaining about how Squealer had climbed her way up here and had come in through the pearl room, and how they had been playing a while until she got scared by something they said and ran off. And how they had attempted to talk Squealer into going back to the playroom, but that she didn't listen.
"And why didn't you report this right away?" Tech-fire asked.
"Well, we were gonna, but Squealer made a very good point that since she didn't go up the floors the usual way, and was already here when we were given that order, that we didn't need to fight. Because technically we didn't let her up here, she was already here? So we decided to play with her instead." Roll.exe answered.
Tech-fire very nearly head-desked at that.
"How did she get up here?" Ulala asked, sounding genuinely curious.
"She's got this awesome modded RC car… it's got all kinds of things mounted into it, even what looks like a 360 degrees camera. I wanted to put myself into it so that I'd ride with her. It looked a lot of fun to be in." Rock replied, looking somewhat hopeful at that.
"Is that so. Show me it then, eh?" Ulala got up from her station. "She might have been recording a lot of things here that she wasn't supposed to record."
Tech-fire got up as well. "And I guess I have to go look for Squealer and catch her…?"
Clarence then asked, "Should I come with you? We don't really need this many people to man the monitoring station after all."
Tech-fire paused at this and then nodded. He said though, "But you might need to suit up. Can't have squealer know what you look like without a mask."
Clarence smirked slightly. "It was about time for me to debut as a hero anyhow."
He then turned around to face the Thompsons. He gestured to one of the monitors which were keeping an eye on Maggie in the swimming pool area. "Keep an eye on Maggie over there though, as we think she's a spy. Write down any suspicious behavior you see from her!"
Mrs. Thompson saluted. "Got it."
At this, the three of them left the room…. Ulala went one way towards the playroom while the two men walked down the hallway towards where Squealer was seen last.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---meanwhile, down at the ground level of the Pearl--
Assault and Battery made for an excellent synchronized team as they worked together…. Using each other as springboards to perform acrobatic feats as they took down dozens of gang members by using confinement foam bombs. And punching out the ones who tried to fight back.
Armsmaster went around on his motorcycle, foam-bombing every gang member as he raced across the hard floors and performed some pretty sick moves that only a movie stuntman would be able to do.
It was pretty cool, actually, and made Kismet forget that she was also supposed to be doing something about this situation instead of just standing there gawking at how awesome the protectorate heroes were being right now.
She pulled at her power--
>Ding<
Roll 12--Aloo Pie. An aloo pie is a fried dumpling popular in the Cuisine of Trinidad and Tobago. It is a soft, fried pastry made from flour and water, and filled with boiled, spiced, and mashed potatoes (aloo being the Hindi word for "potato") and other vegetables like green peas or chana dal (split chickpeas without their seed coat). Its shape is similar to a calzone, and it is usually larger than a samosa, approximately 13 centimeters (5 inches) long.
Effect: up to 60,000 aloo pies on levels 1 to 10 will rain down on people.
Suddenly, everyone in the general area found themselves being pelted by pies.
A few gangers slid and slipped on the dumpling-like things as they tried to get out of the way, and they hit the floor with some loud confused cursing.
Assault seemed to take the whole thing in stride as he just used this distraction to take down a few gangers, and afterward grabbed one aloo pie out of the air and bit into it.
"Mmm, delicious." He remarked and grinned goofily as he watched some of the nearby gang members make a fool out of themselves as they tried to stand up again on the slippery floor, which was now smeared with splattered Aloo pies.
There was a chewing noise behind Kismet, and she turned to see Magneto eat some himself too.
Right, he was in a new body that hadn't eaten anything yet, huh? He had to be hungry.
But this wasn't what she was hoping for… she wanted something that would control the crowds!
>Ding<
Roll 21-- Pain Compliance. Pain compliance is the use of a painful stimulus to control or direct a person or animal. The stimulus can be manual (brute force, placing pressure on painful areas, or use of painful hyperextension or hyperflexion on joints), use tools such as a whip or electroshock weapon, or use chemicals such as tear gas or pepper spray. The purpose of pain compliance is to direct the actions of the subject, and to this end, the pain is lessened or removed when compliance is achieved. This provides an incentive to the subject to carry out the action required.
Effect: Annette now knows all the way to painfully torture people into complying with whatever she wants them to do.
The fuck? That sort of thing would get her labeled as a violent extremist! No way in hell she was gonna do that.
"Come on, please give me something better."
>Ding<
Roll 5-- Fugue state. Dissociative fugue, formerly fugue state or psychogenic fugue, is a dissociative disorder and a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality. The state can last days, months, or longer. A dissociative fugue usually involves unplanned travel or wandering and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity. It is a facet of dissociative amnesia, according to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). After recovery from a fugue state, previous memories usually return intact, and further treatment is unnecessary. Additionally, an episode of fugue is not characterized as attributable to a psychiatric disorder if it can be related to the ingestion of psychotropic substances, to physical trauma, to a general medical condition, or to dissociative identity disorder, delirium, or dementia. Fugues are precipitated by a series of long-term traumatic episodes. It is most commonly associated with childhood victims of sexual abuse who learn over time to dissociate the memory of the abuse (dissociative amnesia).
Effect: Annette learns how to deal with people suffering from fugue states. Too bad it only lasts five hours.
At that point, Kismet just gave up and decided to depend on the military-style martial arts that she had learned via her powers in the past, instead of depending on her pulls for now.
She leaped into the fray, knocking out as many as gang members she could. Behind her, her husband Hermes followed, also using the martial arts to keep any gang members from helping the ones being pinned down by Kismet.
At that moment she could feel the effects of the Pearl Tower overtaking her completely, turning her into an Action Movie Heroine…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some long, long minutes later, Kismet found herself wheezing slightly as she stood there taking in how many gang members that she had taken down.
She and her husband had managed to help the Protectorate heroes capture all of the non-powered gang members, although she knew that all the fancy moves she kept on pulling off one after another were going to catch up with her in the morning.
She really did need to keep herself in shape… she kept on meaning to talk to her husband about taking up exercising each morning, but….
"Now that just leaves the capes to deal with," Hermes said, sounding equally as winded as she was.
Kismet then looked over to where Lung and Kaiser were still fighting and noted that the Protectorate Heroes had finished up on their end too, and were about to tackle the capes themselves.
"Freeze, you're both under arrest!" Armsmaster bellowed towards Kaiser and Lung as he got off his motorcycle and readied his halberd.
Assault and Battery moved to stand behind him, so Kismet decided to do the same with her husband following her cue.
Although, she had to wonder if gang leaders like Kaiser and Lung ever honestly listened to commands like that. It was clear by Armsmaster's stance that he was expecting them to put up a fight though.
And sure enough, Lung just glanced at them for a second before grabbing Kaiser and throwing the metal-clad nazi cape at them. Assault and Battery got out of the way, but Armsmaster was knocked over as he tried to shoot some kind of tranquilizer at Lung only for Kaiser to get in the way.
And unfortunately for Kaiser pieces of his armor were torn off so he ended up being the one who got tranquilized instead. Within moments he was completely knocked out.
"Ooi leee, O me!" He yelled out in his dragonic garbled speech, and Oni Lee appeared at his side. He then stood between the group and Lung protectively while his leader made a run for it.
Kismet blinked, realizing that she had completely forgotten about Oni Lee this whole time. What the heck had he been up to when all of this was going on??
Kismet, Hermes, Assault, and Battery all moved at the same time to attack and subdue Oni Lee, but he started duplicating dozens of himself all around, and his clones moved too as well….
Cue yet another martial-art-style action fight sequence as all four of them fought against Oni Lee's duplicates who were trying to kill them with Takobiki-style knives, while Armsmaster gently laid down Kaiser before foaming him.
Armsmaster then looked towards Lung's fleeing form and whistled for his motorcycle. His motorcycle came roaring to life and rushed over to Armsmaster as he quickly hopped on it and started speeding off after Lung.
At this point, Lung was outside and running towards the escape van that they had prepared beforehand just in case.
Oni Lee seemed to notice this and seemed to have spawned a few more clones to fight not only the hero group inside but also to act as a barrier between Armsmaster and Lung outside.
This seemed to greatly frustrate Battery, as she let out a scream and started beating on as many Oni Lees as she could without getting too badly injured herself. But, every Oni Lee she hit just simply turned to dust.
Armsmaster meanwhile tried to get around Oni Lee so that he could tranq Lung, but he was ultimately forced to fight Oni Lee too as well, speeding around on his motorcycle as he sliced a dozen Oni Lees in half with his halberd.
Lung got into the escape van as he slowly shrunk down, and yelled something everyone else couldn't hear at this distance. The driver of the van seemed to obey however as they sped off.
Oni Lee took this as a cue to leave too, and the remaining clones all turned into dust.
"Damn. Oh well, we managed to nail Kaiser. We've got the entire collection of Nazi Capes now, that's not a bad consolation prize?" Assault remarked as he looked outside to see a very frustrated Armsmaster attempt to catch up to the fleeing van on his motorcycle.
Kismet smiled at him and was nodding in agreement.
It was then her personal comms inside her helmet beeped, and Kismet turned it on just in time to hear a panicked-sounding Ulala yell, "It's Skidmark! Somehow he's sneaked explosives into the building, and even worse they're near where we stationed our cleaning staff!"
"What"
Hello, VoidCowboy69!
You are now viewing U&L's commentary on Automata's live broadcast, which will become archived once the live broadcast is over.
Follow the Chat Rules or else be booted. Don't be a creepy asshole and everything's peachy keen.
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VoidCowboy69: Holy shit, that new guy in red and purple just pulled a Darth Vader on that creepy insect-like cape that had way too many legs. And yes, I know I'm late to the party, still watching the past few minutes of the stream before catching up to the current stream. But holy shit, who the hell is that guy? Never mind, he just said his name.
~*Skittles*~: All I'm saying is if the gangs are all like this every day where they can pull off bullshit moves like that on a regular basis? It's no wonder why the regular cops haven't been able to do anything even without the gang capes around to protect them.
JanFeb (Premium User): you know, that's a very excellent point. Add in the fact that I've heard some merchant gang members are hard to pin down and fight due to how high on 'roids they are sometimes. I've been wondering and complaining why nobody seems to do anything about the gangs instead of keeping to the status quo. But, I guess I know the answer to that question now, eh? It's not that they're not trying at all. It's just the fact that they can't without setting off a powder keg?
~*Skittles*~: Exactly, Jan! If anything this has given me a greater appreciation for what both the cops and the PRT has to deal with.
Cocoababy126: lm40 U83R H42 73h 8357 K0Mm3N72 3V3r!
Auto-L33tSpeakBotTranstlator: "Lmao Uber has the best commentary ever."
JanFeb (Premium User): Ugh, not another L33t speaker. Why do those assholes always come around? Just because there's a cape here called Leet doesn't mean you should actually do leetspeak.
Cocoababy126: L0l, j00 M4d 8r0? g37 W17 73H 71m32, gr4NDp4.
Auto-L33tSpeakBotTranstlator: "LOL, you mad bro? Get with the times, grandpa."
~*Skittles*~: They say that, but it's hard to take somebody seriously when they named themselves Cocoa Baby over the internet. And this is coming from somebody called Skittles. Heh.
Cocoababy126: 937 WR3cK3D b1207ch
Auto-L33tSpeakBotTranstlator: "Get wrecked bitch"
JanFeb (Premium User): I just find it sad that Uber had to program a bot that translates L33t speak when l33tspeakers kept on spamming the chat from a while ago. I'm still annoyed about that. I pay good money to support this channel for high-quality entertainment and trolls have to come in and ruin that for me? No thanks.
VoidCowboy69: Are my ears deceiving me, or did that Magneto dude just offer to kill everyone in the building that wasn't affiliated with the PRT or Automata? Starting to think he might not be a good guy. But then why are Kismet and others hanging out with him. I smell something fishy.
~*Skittles*~: you always think everything's fishy AF, Void. /-9_9-\ Not everything has to be a conspiracy theory, ya know?
Nannyboysxx: I'm honestly so let down. I was hoping to see that sexy woman shrink down everyone and play with them before stomping them into bloody paste… god, I wish that could happen to me.
Bartab(Mod): clearly you didn't read the chat rules… don't be a creepy asshole!
((Nannyboysxx has been booted from the chat. Reason: don't be a creepy asshole))
VoidCowboy69: Wow. normally I'd say don't kink shame, but even that was a little too much for me. 0_o;;
~*Skittles*~: .......... Ugh, same.
JanFeb (Premium User): Starting to question my decision to become a premium user on here, to be honest. What am I paying for exactly when weirdos like that one can just come in and ruin the mood? I mean, I want to support Uber and Leet, but…
VoidCowboy69: Maybe U&L could set up a website instead of only earning their money through streaming? The online "Space Channel Five" site has all kinds of new web services never seen before, like their side service exclusively dedicated to supporting online artists by pledging money to them a month? Some people's been trying it out, and many are saying it's legit. Hell, I've been trying it out just recently and I've been earning a few dollars for the fanart I've been drawing. Not too bad.
JanFeb (Premium User): Wow. that's actually a pretty good suggestion. Guess there's a good brain behind the troll who's constantly spouting off conspiracy theories on PHO?
VoidCowboy69: Jeez, you share some conspiracy theories for *FUN* and try to explore all the ways they might be possible without even taking it seriously, and you forever get branded for life… It's not like I honestly believed in *all* of them, guys! I don't even believe in the Jewish conspiracy, I'm not a racist like those Nazi numbskulls.
~*Skittles*~: …. That kinda implies that you did fall for a few, Void. Still very worrying, bro.
VoidCowboy69: -__-;;
================================================================
********
Ulala explained that she had jacked into the feed from Squealer's camera, and pretty much downloaded all of the data. Going through it quickly, she realized that Squealer had made more than a dozen RC cars that had built-in technological abilities such as becoming invisible. And not only that but most of them also had bombs built into them.
Rewatching the older video feeds that had been saved, it seemed like Skidmark's plan was to blow up everything once he was done stealing from the Automata group.
But, things had changed and now it seemed like he was planning to take hostages to get what he wanted instead.
Just fucking great.
Kismet sighed loudly. She then turned to face the others. "So, chances of quickly evacuating those captives out of here before the bombs go off?"
Magneto stepped towards. "I can levitate them all out of here if the authorities here have vans to put them into?"
Assault nodded. "The PRT is already on their way with dozens of vans."
Magneto was already levitating most of the captives through the broken doorway before he finished his sentence.
Hermes then turned towards the escalators. "Time to see what Skidmark wants with us, I suppose."
Kismet followed him, reaching out to the others via the comms. "You heard all of that, right?"
"Indeed." Clarence said, "We've secured Squealer up here and put her in a shoebox. We might have to bring her down to skidmark, to calm him down? He might be calmer once you've returned her back to normal."
Kismet nodded, but then realized something. "Oh, shoot. Steel Eagle took my shrink ray gun… he was using it to return Kaiser back to normal. Where is it?"
She looked over at Magneto, hoping that he hadn't destroyed it when he killed that nazi cape...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The stranger-type merchant cape grinned as she handed the shrink ray gun over to Skidmark. Her name was Skia, the Greek name for Shadow.
She only could only become completely invisible to others if she crouched up against walls and corners inside shadowy areas, hence her name. She also had poor greek immigrants as her parents, which was how she had come up with that name. Which she considered being a good thing, as she didn't really want to be stuck with a shitty name. No offense to her leader, but Skidmark was kinda shit at naming and it showed. Thankfully Skidmark had allowed it as he liked the sound of it.
So far, the PRT and the rest of Brockton Bay had yet to know she existed at all, but Skia honestly preferred it that way.
She was just one of the many merchant capes who had triggered when Lung tried to destroy that space rocket in an attempt to deny Merchants a rich resource a long while ago. God, she still shivered at the memory of exploding fire everywhere and Oni Lee trying to kill every merchant thug in sight…
But that was trigger events for you, shit like that wasn't fun at all to recall.
Anyways, She was currently telling her leader everything about what happened downstairs, such as witnessing Magneto kill off Steel Eagle and seeing that shrink ray gun fall to the floor after the deceased nazi cape let go of it.
She had kept on waiting until everyone was distracted enough to not notice her sneak across the area to grab it, and it paid off.
Skidmark grinned nastily. "You're freaking, awesome, Skia. wish we had a spy-type like you a long time ago, would've saved us so much trouble."
Skidmark then turned to the rest of the merchants, who had somehow sneaked away in the ensuing confusion when the gangs started fighting each other for a while.
Not all of them were gathered around Skidmark though, many of them were in the process of looting as many of Pearl's stores as possible per Skidmark's order. And many of them were now wearing the gear from the sports store that Skidmark had landed into when Lung threw him through a few floors.
And a few were keeping an eye on the cleaning staff they found hiding in the back rooms. As a last resort, they might be used as hostages.
"Any sign of Kismet's tinker lab? With that enlargement machine?" Skidmark demanded to know.
One of the merchants nodded, wearing a red football helmet with a Chinese symbol on it that he had looted from the sports store where he had met up with Skidmark. "We found it, but that MRI thingy and the other junk we found is gonna be hard to carry outside to the van."
Skidmark then twirled the shrink ray in his hand. "Well, good thing we have somethin' that can shrink shit and make it easier to carry, eh?"
The rest of the merchants chortled at that, once they realized that they could literally shrink everything and carry everything in their pockets and backpacks. They could literally clean out the entire mall area and have tons of merch to sell for years! Of course, the hardest part would be getting away without both the protectorate and the Automata group noticing them.
They might have to fight their way out, but most of the new merchant capes were okay with that. The unpowered ones were understandably more nervous about that, however.
Skidmark then pulled out the two-way radio he carried with him and tried to contact Squealer in the RC car he assumed she was still riding. "Squealer, come in."
Much to his surprise, a different female voice answered him.
"Squealer's not here, but she's currently in our custody." The voice said.
"Who the fuck are you?" Skidmark demanded to know.
"Ulala, owner of Space Channel Five, and also a member of the Automata group. Nice to meet you!" The woman sounded too entirely peppy for Skidmark's tastes.
But, this told him that Squealer had been caught. Just great.
"I suppose you'd be wanting something from me in return? For returning Squealer back to me, I mean? Or are you just gonna arrest the both of us?" Skidmark had to know though.
"If I were you, I'd just give up right now. But don't worry, we'll bring Squealer down there to be unshrunk by Kismet. Then you two lovebirds can go off to jail together!" Ulala replied in that annoyingly peppy manner of hers.
Skidmark smirked nastily. "Oh? Too bad about all the hostages I've taken… and the fact that I have the shrink ray gun in my hand right now. That puts a real damper on your plans, eh? Return Squealer to me, and we won't have any problems."
He then nodded at one of the merchants, who then dragged one of the random cleaning staff outside of the room they were being held in. The person they dragged out just happened to be that older lady who had been sympathetic to Mags earlier when she spoke of her kids being in trouble.
The woman whimpered as she was forcibly dragged out in full view of the security cameras, which skidmark waved at. He made sure to let the security cameras see that he did indeed have the shrink ray gun as he claimed.
"And that's not all… I've got explosives planted everywhere too, bitch! So you definitely better do as I say if you don't wanna have this place go up in flames."
Ulala was uncharacteristically silent at this, and Skidmark couldn't help but grin. That'd teach the pink-haired bitch to be so overly peppy at all times.
His smile faded when he noted an unfamiliar woman coming his way, dressed in what looked like an ill-fitting swimsuit made for Chinese bodies instead of American ones. And red welts were forming all over her body, and her face was so swollen that Skidmark couldn't even tell what ethnicity she was supposed to be so he didn't know if she was an ABB mook or what. There was an odd stench coming off her like there were the remains of shit and cleaning chemicals on her.
She was visibly gasping for breath and seemed to barely see anything judging by the way she touched the walls along the way. She blinked, barely registering the fact that there were Merchant capes lying around. She called out, "H-Help. Having an allergic reaction, I think? Call a hospital please."
The older woman they were holding hostage gaped when she saw the sorry state the other woman was in, and she called out, "Maggie! What happened to you?"
"Was in bathroom… bathroom exploded. Things got all over me. Got sick. Went to wash things off… got even sicker…" Maggie gasped as she tried to explain.
"Oh, that's where one of the RC cars got to. I was wondering where it went." one of the merchants commented, seemingly non-plussed by the fact that there was a woman having a severe allergic reaction to something in front of him.
Skidmark scowled at the man. "The fuck? They aren't supposed to explode without my say so! You're saying all the cars we placed around this building could explode anytime without me pulling the trigger?"
The man started sweating nervously at that. "Um… might've been just a loose wire? But I'm pretty sure most of the cars won't explode."
"Pretty sure? Listen, you knob-goblin fucker, be 100% sure or else! I ain't paying you guys for pisspoor quality work, you hear? If I wanted cheap knock-offs I'd be knockin' on the ABB's door asking to borrow their laborers for my sweatshops!" Skidmark snarled as he got up into the other man's face.
It was at this point that one of the nearby elevators dinged, indicating that there was one coming down… and the doors opened to show both Tech-fire and Clarence.
Tech-fire was wearing armor similar to Proto-man from the Megaman series, only his armor had red and yellow flame patterns on them much like the ones you'd find on a modded car.
Clarence Birdseye, who had yet to find a good name for himself and still had the placeholder name of "Birdy" as his cape name, was wearing much bulkier armor, which was mostly white and black. To those familiar with both the Megaman franchise AND Batman, they'd note that it looked like a cross between the Simga outfit from the Megaman X5 game and Dr.Freeze's suit. The way the designs blended together due to Clarence's specialty in freezing technology, created a very interesting and unique-looking suit. More so because cold vapors of "steam" kept on coming off his suit as a reaction to the slightly warmer air around him, creating a very interesting-looking effect for the cameras out there. And instead of the fishbowl helm that Dr.Freeze was known to have, Clarence instead went for a more sensible-looking astronaut-type helm where the visor was black, hiding his face from sight.
Due to the fact that Clarence's suit literally had a cold aura when worn, Tech-fire ended up being the one holding the shoe-box that had Squealer trapped within it. After all, the last thing they needed was for Squealer to possibly freeze to death just because Clarence was the one holding her.
The merchants were all on guard instantly as they saw the Elevator doors open to reveal the pair.
Skidmark kept himself well-composed as he turned around and asked, "Yo. You got Squealer as I asked for?"
Tech-fire merely nodded and silently pulled the lid off the shoebox, letting Squealer stand up in the box itself.
Squealer seemed relieved to see her boyfriend and was even happier when she noticed that Skidmark had managed to snag the shrink ray gun from Kismet.
"Babe! Got up to plenty of trouble without me? I feel so left out!" She couldn't help but joke slightly.
Skidmark chortled at that, as he gestured for Tech-fire to put the shoebox down. "Aw, baby. Don't worry, you'll be joining on the fun pretty soon!"
As Squealer got out of the box and into the ground, Skidmark shot her with the ray. He watched as her girlfriend finally return back to normal size…
Only to blink when he realized that the doll clothes didn't really look that good on a normal-sized person the way it would've on a small doll. The buttons and the fasteners in the back of the dress were ridiculously oversized now on a normal person, for one thing.
God, Squealer looked ridiculous in that pink poofy getup now.
Wait. that wasn't even Squealer's original getup when she first got shrunk. According to the shrink ray gun rules, the dress should've shrunk while Squealer got bigger? Or did the ray see clothes as part of Squealer due to clinging to her body?
Was this just a built-in modesty thing to ensure that no person would ever get embarrassed when they found themselves without clothes when being shrunk or scaled back up to their normal self?
As he pondered the fridge logic of the shrink ray gun's rules, Squealer ran over to him.
"Skiddy! You wouldn't believe the shit they put me through!" She complained, "Making me face my worst fears and junk!"
"Oh?" Skidmark said as he pulled her into a one-armed embrace.
"That ball they have at the top? It's basically some weird mirror room that makes you look like you're hovering high in the air with nothing under you! And, that creep over there made ghost kids who chased after me!" She pointed over at Tech-fire as she said that last part.
Skidmark shook his head as he tsked. "What kind of douche likes messing with people's heads, huh? Have the decency to go one-on-one with my girl, Spunk-Sucker!"
Tech-Fire snorted loudly at that. "Yeah, no. Would fighting a doll-sized woman would even be a fair fight in the first place? I'd just look like the bad guy here."
Clarence cleared his throat before taking this chance to throw in some banter of his own. "Felonious Fiends! We're giving you the chance to do the right thing, by letting those hostages go. If you refuse, we'll only go harder on you!"
Skidmark and Squealer blinked at that while a skeptical-looking Tech-fire mouthed, 'Felonious Fiends? Really?'.
It was then that Kismet and the others finally showed up on the other side of the area, surrounding the Merchants and their hostages.
Skidmark let out a chuckle at this. "They think they've got us outnumbered, babe. But, this is the public debut of our new capes! Merchants, time to show off!!"
At his command, the merchants all leaped into action.
--The Pearl, 10th floor--
The Automata members down on that level all tensed up as the merchants moved to… pose at them, Power Rangers style??
Huh??
"Roll call, everyone," Skidmark said, as the merchants all went into dramatic poses.
"Whirlygig!" A heavily tanned girl, possibly half-black, with thick black hair hiding her face called out. At this, all the debris at her feet started to levitate, spinning around her like she was inside a cyclone.
"Skia!" a trampy-looking bleached blonde girl called out on the other far end.
"Crush!" a massive muscular-looking Hispanic man yelled out as he flexed his muscles.
"S-Scrub!" A young teenage boy that only seemed to be one year older than Taylor shuttered out, looking like he was unsure about even wanting to be here. He stood in the middle of the group.
"Flak!" an acne-ridden, homeless-looking black-haired man in his late 18's to 19's called out.
"Salvo!" a blonde dude called out.
Skidmark and Squealer then took their place in the power rangers-styled posing group.
"A while ago, the merchants gained new members… today, we show the world that we now outnumber the other gangs when it comes to having capes in our gang!" Skidmark bellowed. "Once, we only had three capes. Mush, Squealer, and yours truly. Now, we have nine! The Empire and the ABB are at their weakest now, so it's our turn to shine and show the assfuckers of the world that we won't take their shit anymore!"
The way he was talking, sounded more like he was trying to hype up his recruits than he was making a public statement to Automata and the rest of the world.
Kismet looked over at Hermes, who just shrugged when he caught her looking.
It seemed to be working anyway, as the new capes now seemed pumped up to make their debut.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--Earlier--
It was just too bad though, that for those unfortunate new capes, that they had caught the eye of Karma's power. [Karmic Retribution] had gotten thoroughly "bored" of both Mags and the other groups, for a lack of a better word as most powers weren't able to feel things. But now it "wanted" new targets to flex its' ability on.
And now it would've been disappointed had it any feelings, because it had done a scan of the new capes' backgrounds to decide how deserving they were of the Karmic backlash it was planning for them. They weren't evil enough to warrant the more cruel and unusual punishments it could dream up… nor were they misunderstood innocents who deserved some good luck to go their way.
That is, save for Skidmark. He had done plenty of evil in his life to fully deserve the hell coming his way… but unfortunately, the kind of hell [karmic retribution] wanted to unleash on him would end up having a wide-area effect, pulling innocents into the fray here. So it would have to hold off on him for now.
With Squealer, she had a habit of terrorizing the people around her and using that fear to bolster her position in the merchants, regardless of if they were civilians or part of a gang. But, outside of nearly having killed people with her reckless driving she hadn't done much worse than that despite being a shitty person? So, [karmic retribution] decided that it would only be fair that a woman who liked terrorizing others with her vehicles, would in turn face all of her worst fears. Which admittedly turned out not to be much. If Squealer had been afraid of more than just heights and ghosts, it would've been able to do so much! For example, if the merchant lady had been scared of clowns it could've come up with so many hilarious ways to terrorize her. Ah well.
And those new capes had done way less than Squealer did...the worst they did was do drugs, but that was mostly a victimless crime since the only people they harmed were themselves. Shockingly enough, the rumors that they ran around kidnapping kids and forcing drugs on them turned out to be false, it was mostly a lie created by rich kids who had gotten caught by their parents doing drugs but didn't want to get in trouble for it.
But, at the same time, they were also shitty people who deserved some kind of consequence for their actions today. But, it had to be proportional to the crimes they did commit, and not be disproportionate punishment at all. [Karmic Retribution] was at a loss as a result. What to do about them as a group?
It was, after all, not a very smart creature and it mainly depended on Taylor's immature teenage mind for inspiration on how to dole out the worst punishments ever. And it seemed that Taylor was just a young kid at heart who mainly had strong opinions about all the major crimes committed out there, but had no experience dealing with people who had only ever committed minor crimes. So she had yet to form any strong opinions on how to deal with minor crimes, thus [Karmic Retribution] had no data to work with on that front?
Oh. There was one thing that Taylor mainly thought about the Merchants as a whole. She thought they were all trash who needed to be captured by police and put into jail for a long time?
Hmm. [Karmic Retribution] could work with that. And it knew how to do it while publicly humiliating the merchants at the same time!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The thing about newly minted parahumans? They didn't have much experience in how their powers worked fully, much less how their powers interacted with other certain power sets.
And well, the parahumans were all standing too close to each other in their power ranger-like poses as they all activated their powers.
The intent had been to go on the offensive right away as they all separated into two and attacked the Automata group. But, instead, their powers started interacting right away and got tangled up in each other like kittens playing with string.
Flak and Salvo were cluster-mate triggers as seeing the two of them had been standing too close to the space rocket when Oni-Lee tried to destroy it forever that one time, setting off a massive fire in the area. They had found themselves trapped…. And well. Although their powers were similar to each other they still manifested in different ways.
Flak was a brute-breaker type, becoming more stronger the more projectiles were thrown his way… but he also had a breaker form at the same time that made the projectiles bounce off back at the enemy throwing random shit at him. His power was the very definition of "I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you throw at me bounces off of me and sticks to you!"
Hence the name he had been given, for he could stand up to any flak thrown his way.
Salvo was more of a brute-striker with similar powers to Flak, only that anything that touched his body could be reformed into a thousand small flaming balls that Salvo could then "shoot" back at the enemy who was attacking him in a machine-gun-like fashion. Which made the name chosen kind of self-explanatory.
Naturally, they had become besties due to having a shared traumatic experience and having helped out each other. But, they had never really tested out their powers around other capes, only each other. And now they were going to find out that their powers had an unexpected effect around Whirlygig…
Especially when Salvo's tiny fireballs found themselves being sucked up into Whirlygig's telekinetic cyclone, which was enough to throw Whirlygig off her game. She had never "handled" something so hot before in her spinning telekinetic field, and it was starting to do weird things to her telekinesis. and not only that but the way they sped around her was leaving streaks of lights all around her, obstructing her vision. So, she now literally couldn't see where the enemy was at, or where she was moving.
Honestly, Whirlygig was starting to regret her decision to be in the center of her cyclone. It just had looked so cool when she was standing there in the center when shit flew all around her, ya know? She just didn't think there could be downsides to that! Such as not being able to see anything when glowy shit got caught up in her spinning telekinetic field.
She very nearly tripped over Flak, and accidentally pulled him into her telekinetic field. …..now he was stuck spinning all around her helplessly, screaming at Salvo to help him. Salvo moved to grab one of Flak's legs in an attempt to pull him out, but the only thing that happened was the fact that Salvo got pulled in too.
The debris inside the cyclone bounced off Salvo, turning into tiny fireballs all at once. Now the entire cyclone was glowing brightly with thousands of tiny fireballs spinning around and around…
And some of the heat from the mini-fireballs was getting to be too much for Whirlygig, who decided to push her telekinetic cyclone outwards in an attempt to push the heat away from her, which made it bigger in the process.
Unfortunately, that meant that the Cyclone was starting to take up more room, creeping closer and closer to the other merchants.
"H-hey! Watch where you're going!" Scrub yelled as he hopped away from the Cyclone, but it just kept on coming closer and closer to him. Without thinking much about it he impulsively threw up a large ball of… something? It looked like a floating, glowing greenish-teal of plasma at first but it sped at the cyclone so fast that Kismet or anybody else couldn't get a good look at what it was.
Somehow the tiny fireballs and Flak spinning inside the cyclone were able to deflect Scrub's attack away and send it flying back at him.
Scrub's attack orb-thing hit the ground, which created a large hole. Unfortunately for Scrub, he didn't clear the ground when he tried to jump away once the hole was formed, causing him to have his deer-in-headlights look on his face as he fell through it. It seemed that he hadn't expected for his attack to be used against himself, but that's exactly what was happening here.
Anybody glancing down through the hole would've seen that Scrub was lucky enough to land in what seemed like a half-filled metal trash can instead of breaking any bones in his body. However, he was also unlucky in that he found himself stuck in the trash can, as he found himself struggling to get out of it without much success. He let out a loud yelp when his struggling caused the trashcan to tip over, and started rolling towards some stairs.
Meanwhile, Whirlygig stumbled backward, moving the cyclone with her… unknowingly picking up some nearby large trash cans with wheels that the cleaning staff had been carrying with them. Said trash cans were pulled into the cyclone and somehow managed to scoop up the male merchant capes who were still spinning around in there.
"Ugh, so sick…" Whirlygig was nauseous now that her power was straining under the weight of two adult grown men and heavy trash cans combined. It honestly felt like somebody was sitting down directly on her stomach or something!
it turned out that there was a weight limit to how much her cyclone could carry without making Whirlygig feel like she had to throw up. Who fruckin' knew? Not her, because she honestly hadn't done much power testing, just learning how to turn off her power so that things didn't spin around her uncontrollably.
She found herself on her knees, vomiting her guts out. Due to the drugs in her system at the time, the stress of overtaxing her powers finally got to her, and she passed out. At the same time, her power tossed out the objects that were too heavy for it to carry.
Flak and Salvo found themselves screaming as they sailed across the air inside trash cans, and yelled some more when the wheeled trash cans themselves decided to take a joyride bouncing up and down on the stairs. The jerky motion was too much, causing the men to feel seasick somehow. It was though a sheer will that kept them from throwing up on themselves inside the trash cans.
Skia and Crush froze up at this, as this had happened in a minute (and a half), and had happened so fast before they could react.
The Automata just stared at them awkwardly, practically asking them if they seriously meant to do that with their silence.
Skidmark then yelled, "Oh, for Pete's sake!"
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Ulala heard some raucous laughter on one of the monitors, which briefly startled her until she recalled that she still had been monitoring Uber and Leet's commentary on their public broadcast to see how the public was reacting to the events tonight.
"Ah… I can't stop laughing… " Leet gasped, blinking back tears caused by laughing so hard.
"I've officially seen everything now. I mean, I just saw trash take itself out!" Uber said, which set Leet off again.
"That… that's why you don't do drugs, kids. Or you'll turn into somebody so stupid that you don't know you're meant to take out the enemy side, not your own!" Leet then said between fits of laughter.
"God, the looks on the Automata family's faces… they're just standing there like they didn't know what the fuck just happened here." Uber snickered.
"Can you blame them tho?"
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"Uh, right." Hermes cleared his throat. "Your group's obviously in no condition to fight at all considering your tendency to use drugs… So how about you just give up peacefully? We'll be sure to speak on your behalf if you cooperate."
"Fuck off!" Skidmark screamed, angry that nobody seemed to be taking him seriously… not after some of his capes had embarrassed themselves like that.
At this, the remaining merchant capes all moved to attack the Automata group. Skia went up against Tech-fire, Crush against Birdy, while the main leaders of the Merchants went up against Kismet and Hermes.
More specifically, It was Squealer VS Kismet while Hermes took on Skidmark himself.
Squealer tried to pin down Kismet under a wrestling hold, and Kismet couldn't help but gag once she smelled Squealer. She smelled like she hadn't bathed in days, and there was also the strong smell of piss like she had pissed herself recently.
"Ugh, have you ever heard of taking a shower before?" Kismet said as she pulled on her power while battling Squealer at the same time.
>Ding<
Roll 5--Detergent. A detergent is a surfactant or a mixture of surfactants with cleansing properties in dilute solutions. These substances are usually alkylbenzene sulfonates, a family of compounds that are similar to soap but are more soluble in hard water because the polar sulfonate (of detergents) is less likely than the polar carboxylate (of soap) to bind to calcium and other ions found in hard water. In domestic contexts, the term detergent by itself refers specifically to laundry detergent or dish detergent, as opposed to hand soap or other types of cleaning agents. Detergents are commonly available as powders or concentrated solutions. Detergents, like soaps, work because they are amphiphilic: partly hydrophilic (polar) and partly hydrophobic (non-polar). Their dual nature facilitates the mixture of hydrophobic compounds (like oil and grease) with water. Because air is not hydrophilic, detergents are also foaming agents to varying degrees.
Effect: The entire area on this floor is completely doused in Detergent soap, covering not only the floor but everyone else too.
Everyone startled slightly as they found themselves completely covered in what seemed like a foaming liquid soap of some kind.
Still, it did wonders to snuff out Squealer's scent which Kismet was thankful for.
'Thank you, power. Couldn't stand smelling her anymore' she gratefully and mentally thanked her power, as she did a spinning kick that knocked Squealer off her feet.
But as she discovered, the foamy detergent soap just added a new problem--namely the fact that everything was now slippery as hell, and she noted that Clarence Birdseye in his white and black power armor was now sliding across the floor as he wrestled with the cape who called himself Crush.
Crush seemed to be a simple brute type with some super strength thrown in, but even he seemed helpless against an overly slippery floor. He had been in the process of trying to crush Birdseye to death with his arms when he got doused in the soap and found himself slipping all over the floor. And now it seemed to be a competition over who could stand on their feet without falling, while they tried to throw in a few punches at each other.
Skia on the other hand seemed to be taking the non-confrontational route as she had run off to hide somewhere, somehow turning invisible while Tech-fire tried to track where she was at.
Hermes was taking full advantage of the slippery floor as he busted out the military-style martial art moves on Skidmark, keeping Skidmark off balance even though he couldn't do anything to harm Skidmark directly as the merchant leader had put up his deflector force fields at the last minute.
Everyone was so intent on battling each other, that they all forgot about the small bombs that were traveling around in the RC cars, or who were all controlling them at the moment.
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"Shit, it's the PRT and cops. We've got to move before they spot us." The driver in the white van called out to the men sitting inside the back of the white van, as he looked at the dozen vans with the PRT logo on them speeding by towards the Pearl building.
The men back there were watching the video feeds, waiting for Skidmark's signal to press the buttons that would trigger the bombs inside the RC cars. But for the most part, they had no clue what was going on in there at all, as seeing they didn't have access to online services that would let them see Automata's live feed right now.
One of the men nodded at the driver. "Take the van around the back of the building. That should keep us out of sight from the cops while keeping us in range."
"Alright." The driver agreed with that plan as he started up the engine and started circling the building.
It seemed that the area back there was littered with broken glass bottles from last night when a bunch of teenage hooligans had decided to hang out and get drunk without anybody bothering them.
Now, the broken glass wouldn't be able to puncture car tires at all normally… the glass itself would've needed to be exceptionally sharp for that to work, and the odds of that happening was super low as a result.
Unfortunately, it seemed that today wasn't the driver's lucky day at all as he suddenly found himself losing control of his vehicle as three of his tires randomly blew out from being punctured by broken glass. The vehicle shook and rattled about as he steered and tried to gain control.
Finally, the sliding vehicle rolled to a stop.
"Jesus." The driver panted slightly, his heart beating like a jackrabbit's. He then looked back into the van itself. "Everyone else alright?"
There were a couple of loud pained groans, and the driver took in the scene of overturned TV monitors, etc. The TVs themselves hadn't been secured properly to the walls of the van, so when the van spun around and slid all over the place? Well, they had toppled over on the men taking care of them. And in the process, also hit the control panels that remote-controlled the RC cars and were meant to set off the bombs.
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Meanwhile, back in the Pearl, the RC cars themselves mimicked the white van outside as they spun and slid across the floor, somehow managing to position them just perfectly as they were directly under the merchants on the 9th floor. And they received the signal to trigger the explosives inside them, so they exploded.
Like the one in the bathroom, those RC cars only had so much explosive packed into those small RC cars, so there was no giant Hollywood-style explosion, and were more like a series of small explosions. However, just enough to destroy everything nearby and weaken the integrity of the floors above and below…
Everyone on the 10th floor lost their footing as the ground shook, and holes formed right where most of the merchants had been standing. Crush, Skidmark, and Squealer found themselves falling through the floor only to create yet another hole as they crashed through the 9th floor into the 8th floor below.
It just so happened that on the 8th floor there were some large trashcans typically used by mall restaurants where they'd store all the refuse that would be hauled out to the dumpsters at the end of a day. Later, some people might wonder why those trashcans were conveniently placed where they were, as those were typically stored away in the back of the restaurants instead of out in the open like that. But then they would discover that the cleaning staff had moved them around the other day, using them to keep the closed restaurants clean.
So it was chalked up to a coincidence that they were positioned just right for Squealer, Skidmark, and Crush to land in soon as they fell through the 9th floor.
Like the other industrial-type trashcans, those were on wheels, so they started moving once the merchants had landed in them.
Incidentally, it also so happened that the "quakes" from the explosions had caused a few tables in the restaurant level to collapse and create a large ramp that led towards one of the large windows...
All three merchants panicked once they saw they were heading for what looked like a makeshift large ramp made entirely out of tables and started shaking the trashcans they were in, in an attempt to push it into its side so that they wouldn't slide towards the ramp anymore. Or at the very least, try to steer the trashcans they were riding in away from the ramps. For some reason, they weren't successful at all and instead found themselves speeding up, as if some invisible force was pushing them towards the ramp.
They screamed as they crashed through the glass window into the ground below, with Skidmark enacting his forcefields at the last minute so that he wouldn't get pulverized falling from 8 stories high. His forcefields also served to soften the blow for the others, as they followed after him on the way down.
They got knocked out for a short while there as the trashcans were the ones to absorb the impact and got destroyed in the process, but that didn't stop them from getting knocked around badly. When they came to they found themselves being surrounded by the PRT, all of them aiming containment foam guns at the merchants.
All three wordlessly put their hands up.
"So, uh… I have to apologize to you all." Kismet was saying to the cleaning staff who had recently been taken hostage and then rescued.
All around them, the PRT officers and the explosives experts were doing a clean sweep of the tower, to ensure that the Merchants hadn't left any more bombs lying around. Everyone else, on the other hand, was standing outside.
"See, I had you all come in today because I honestly believed that the gangs would be strictly confined to the bottom floor and that at the worst all you'd have to deal with was broken glass and some broken plaster to clean up after I was done with the gangs. But, as you can see, things… well, they escalated." Kismet said.
One of the cleaning ladies scoffed at that. "Yeah, no kidding."
Kismet sighed. "Not to mention the issue with the… biological waste... on the 10th floor. That's going to be a health hazard and not something you all can clean up safely. We'll have to hire a bio-waste collection company to help clean it all up instead. So, I had you all come in for nothing and also endangered your lives in the process. For that, I am truly sorry."
"Are we still going to get paid?" another woman asked, getting straight to the point. She didn't seem to care that she had been put in a dangerous situation, as long as she had survived it without any injuries. And most importantly still got something good out of it. Such was the mindset of the typical Brocktonite native.
Kismet nodded at her. "Yes. We're also doubling your pay on top of the hazard pay, just so that you can recuperate from this ordeal and be able to stay home for a while if you desire. Also, I completely understand if any of you no longer want to work for us. Working for a cape family can get a little...well, intense at times and it's certainly not for everyone. I can give you a severance package on top of the usual hazard pay and the double payment itself."
Most of the women and men in the group looked satisfied at that and seemed to accept things now that Kismet had explained that they were still getting money out of this situation.
However, there were still some issues to deal with, as there was a worried-looking older woman who was hovering over a prone form on the ground. Maggie's head was propped up with some clean rags that served as a pillow for her.
Clarence, who was still in his black and white armor, was sitting next to Maggie as he tried to comfort the woman. "Don't worry, the EMT is on their way." He was saying.
He was far more sympathetic to Maggie now that he knew that she hadn't anything to do with the explosions themselves, nor did she seem allied to any of the gangs in town.
"Hang in there. Think of your kids." The old woman said.
Maggie weakly nodded, thinking of her husband and Dob for some reason. Maybe because they were like kids who constantly got into trouble without her around to keep them in line? She said out loud, "Right. The most important job of them all."
"Eh?" Clarence blinked at that, not having expected that response.
The old woman chuckled. "That it is. Motherhood might not pay much, but it's the most rewarding job of them all."
Clarence's look of confusion morphed into one of horror, as he connected the dots. Was this the job that she had been so slavishly devoted to despite claiming to be hurting for cash?
Of course, that explained so much… Motherhood was a job of sorts, even if some people normally didn't think of it as one because it didn't pay in cash. And here he was, having falsely assumed that this woman was up to no good. Man, he felt like such an asshole right now. Especially after all this poor woman went through! He was making it up to her, no matter what.
He was snapped out of his thoughts when Maggie suddenly started gasping for breath, clawing at her throat as if something was choking her. The two of them grabbed her arms so that she wouldn't harm herself anymore once bright red marks appeared on her throat from her actions.
He then called out "We need a doctor here! Something's going on with her!"
Kismet ran over then, asking, "What's going on?"
"She's been having severe allergic reactions to something.. She was able to breathe, until now." The elderly woman answered in a worried tone of voice.
"The EMT is coming, but they haven't arrived yet." Roll.exe piped up, having been monitoring the entire situation.
"Shit!" Kismet said, as she frantically wondered what to do. She really didn't want to have an innocent person die here like this. She covered her face with her hands and then asked her power if it could do anything for Maggie. She needed a doctor badly, so maybe give somebody here medical knowledge??
>Ding<
Roll 18--Fourth Doctor. The Fourth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by Tom Baker.
Within the series' narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old alien Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels in time and space in the TARDIS, frequently with companions. At the end of life, the Doctor regenerates; as a result, the physical appearance and personality of the Doctor change.
Baker portrays the Fourth Doctor as a whimsical and sometimes brooding individual whose enormous personal warmth is at times tempered by his capacity for righteous anger. His initial companions were intrepid journalist Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), who had traveled alongside his previous incarnation, and Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) of UNIT. His later companions were savage warrior Leela (Louise Jameson), robotic dog K9, Time Lady Romana (Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward), teen genius Adric (Matthew Waterhouse), alien teenage aristocrat Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), an Australian flight attendant Tegan (Janet Fielding).
Baker portrayed the character for seven consecutive seasons, which remains the longest tenure of any actor to portray the lead, counting both the classic and modern series. He is considered to be one of the most recognizable and iconic incarnations of the Doctor both in the United Kingdom and internationally.
Effect: A young-looking Tom Baker in his early 20's as the Fourth Doctor appears. He retains all normal time-lord abilities, although he is sadly without a Tardis of his own.
Kismet put her hands down in time to see a young man in his 20's, wearing what looked to be a semi-formal outfit with a long coat, plus what seemed to be a ridiculously long striped scarf in various colors. And under his wide-brimmed fedora made out of felt, he had a head full of brown curly hair that was almost like an afro in how it was shaped.
As he looked about himself in confusion, Kismet then called out, "You wouldn't happen to be a doctor? Because we've got a woman here who's in danger of dying!"
At this, she pointed over at Maggie.
He blinked. "Hmm? Oh yes, I'm the Doctor."
At that, he moved over to where Kismet had pointed and knelt by Maggie. He then stated the obvious by saying, "She seems to be having a strong severe allergic reaction to something. Her airways seem to be slowly closing up because of that."
"Yup. can you do anything about that?" Clarence asked, seemingly unfazed by the fact that the doctor had popped out of nowhere. By now he was pretty used to the oddness.
"You got a pen?" The Doctor asked, and when the old woman handed him one he took it apart and then stabbed it into Maggie's throat.
"Got to get air into her lungs this way, you see…" He said as he pulled out a weird-looking tinker tech wand thing that was about the same size as the pen, just slightly bigger and wider. It was metallic silver all over, save for the tip of it which seemed to have a red round thing on it.
It started making a buzzing sound in his hand as he waved it over Maggie's chest. "And here I'll use my sonics to relax her muscles and loosen up some stuff so that she'll breathe easier… there. She should be fine."
Sure enough, Maggie seemed to stop struggling for air as she went limp on the floor, her chest heaving as she took in deep breaths.
Everyone else relaxed at this, now that part of the crisis was over.
"So. Anybody care to fill me in on what's going on here? This place looks like a hornet's nest kicked over." The doctor said as he looked around in interest, noting the PRT officers and the bomb squad milling about as they came in and out of the tall tower.
For some reason, Kismet got the strong feeling that this "Doctor" was used to bizarre events regularly, and weren't too terribly phased by the fact that he was now in a different place without any real explanation for what was going on. Dunno, it was just the way he was acting that gave her the impression.
Just what kind of person had she summoned?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some hours later, Annette was just so utterly tired and just wanted to crawl into her bed to sleep. She had to deal with a shit load of people, being interviewed by the PRT and the like.
She also had to deal with her daughter being pissed off at her because Annette had intentionally sent her off with Nanny Ogg and told Nanny to distract Taylor so that "Karma" wouldn't show up at the fight itself. In time Taylor would hopefully understand why Annette did that one day, but tonight she hadn't liked the fact that her mother hadn't wanted her anywhere near the tower when it was happening.
So as a result, Taylor was forced to watch it online like everyone else in the city.
So now she had a quiet and sullen Taylor stomping up the steps to her bedroom, while she and Danny went to theirs to crawl into bed.
Annette fell asleep promptly the minute she got into bed, she was just that tired.
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A/N:
Me-- "Wow, the random page factor seems to be back to normal and not sending me any more pages based on what I viewed before. Now Annette can summon other things besides people and fictional characters, I hope…."
RNG-Jesus: "BWHAHAHAHAHA! Bitch, you thought you could control me? I do what I want! If I send you people, just suck up and deal with it!"
Me--"*sighs* I suppose I could've seen that coming…"
On a related note--- this chapter was originally meant to be much longer, but I felt that both the Doctor and Magneto deserved their own chapters as they reacted to everything around them.
I decided that they should have their own chapters, as a way to refresh the mood, so to speak?
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Magneto and The Doctor really do deserve their own chapters.
Also, I've been playing Outer Worlds lately.... got a little bit sucked into it, thus the reason why this chapter was late. heh