The Lamplighters Omnibus

City 32 is a beautiful city all year round, but never more so than Spring. It's an ultra-modern city, a planned city, the city of the future leaped right off the brochure page and onto a picturesque bay. The shining reflective water is dotted all over with ships, leisure craft agilely darting around the fishing trawlers making their patient way to and fro. Above-ground maglev trains wind elegantly through the towering downtown skyscrapers, gleaming in the noon light. The shining city gradually flows inland like a spread fan, the impeccable planning marred just a tad as it gives way to more suburban sprawl. The airport straddles the line between urban and sub further to the south, a steady procession of airliners swooping in and out of the city on their planned paths.

Something pierces the skin of reality and tears it in two like a fresh kill's hide. The world screams in agony, and the sky turns dark. Out of nowhere, impossibly, clouds form in the blue sky and thicken into an impenetrable steely-grey curtain. Earth grinds against the invader world, and the sparks of the collision rain down on the sea as lightning bolts. The wind rises, howling through the streets, making the trees bend and sway like reeds as it whips the sea into a boiling frenzy. Every ship in the bay scrambles for safety, some quicker ships making a break for it up and down the coast, others hurrying for designated disembarking zones as the sea-wall rises from its hidden cavern.

Warning sirens blare all throughout the emptying streets as the dark grey clouds above hammer the city with driving rain like a hail of arrows. Slanted so hard by the rising wind it's practically horizontal. Everywhere police squadcars with their lights on, flashing red and blue markers towards safety. Deeper into the city for those with a chance of making it further inland before landfall, into the hardened bunkers below for those without. Panicked people stream through the labyrinth of abandoned cars, some crumpled in last-minute collisions. Ambulances add their lights to the murky twilight, their sirens to the din. Carving people out of their vehicles even as the freezing rain plasters their uniforms to their pale, numb flesh and the beast from the sea draws nearer.

It rises from below, rises and rises and rises, until the bay seems little more than a pool. A towering black shape in the storm, aquatic and saurian and insectoid all at once. Each shake of its half-submerged tail is a tsunami in its own right, sweeping tonnes of water this way and that with little more effort than a dog shaking itself dry. Its eyes burn through the wind and the rain, such a luminous toxic yellow they seem more like pinholes right back into the hostile world that spawned it.

The tiny black blots surrounding it like flies switch their floodlights on. The forest of rubbery tentacles growing from its skull like a mane goes mad, writhing and lashing in all directions. The helicopter fleet pulls back to the best of its ability. One is still too slow, made sluggish by the storm. It's simply cleaved in half, the men inside it too small to even see from this distance.

The main rift that admitted it may be closed, but its presence more than suffices to open more. So many more. All across the bay, the shoreline and the harbour, reality rips like a cheap sheet. At ground zero it feels like everything's vibrating, like you're about to shake apart. Half of space goes one way and half goes the other. It's like ball lightning and a black hole in one, bolts of plasma striking wildly in all directions as the accretion disc forms. As the pinhole window to another dimension at the centre grows and grows and grows. Grows wide enough for something to slip through.

And through these rips crawl monsters of every size, diminutive copies of the main creature the size of rhinoceri to undulating squid-like things that move like mercury to eight-limbed double-jointed raptors that skitter across even rain-slick vertical surfaces like spiders. The staccato pop of gunfire erupts all across the dock district. Repelling the beasts as best they can, any normal person can. A police officer in blue holds his ground no matter how much he shakes, firing again and again at the jittering lightning-quick nightmare drawing closer and closer. Only missing, only winging, until his sidearm clicks empty and the monster's close enough to strike. Giving his partner time to get the shotgun from the trunk. The slug catches the thing in mid-air like a fist, hurling it to the ground in a daze. The first officer staggers over to the open trunk to retrieve the PDW waiting inside for him. His partner fires again and again and again until the spawn finally stops moving.

A man flies through the storm. The wind and rain aren't affecting him, can't affect him. He jinks to and fro between skyscrapers at harsh right angles without so much as a passing friendship with inertia. He remains upright all the while, not a degree off, more stable than any wire-and-harness rig. He wears a rig of his own, bristling with camera lenses, floodlights, and a good old-fashioned speaker. His eyes are shielded from the weather by tri-lens goggles. And in his hands he carries an anti-materiel rifle as long as he is tall, chambered to take out four elephants standing in a line.

"FIFTEEN MINUTES TO LANDFALL" he roars into his mic over the din, and with a short feedback whine the waterproof speaker projects his voice a block in every direction. Ka-THUNK ka-THUNK go the floodlights as they switch on, bathing the darkened streets in harsh fluorescent white. Even the spawn are frightened by the blinding light, flinching and hissing.

A streak of dark fire darts through the street like a lightning bolt, searing a harsh track in the eyes of all those watching. Baron Blackflame skids to a stop dead-centre in the street, dark coat flapping dramatically in the gale behind him.

"KYAHAHAHAHA!" He makes sure to laugh his signature laugh as the burned and bisected spawn fall in heaps behind him. Slapping his hat down firmly on his head as the wind threatens to hurl it into the sky. He gives everyone behind him a thumbs up with his free hand. The fleeing crowd resumes in a more orderly fashion. He looks up and says something to the hovering figure, his words stolen by the storm, his free hand now touching the earpiece seated carefully in his ear.

"Disruption radius looks to be about five miles this time!" Not as loud, but he doesn't bother to turn off the speaker either. "We're just hitting the rim of it! Hang back and mop up!"

The Baron shoots the flying man another thumbs up and whirls, his long coat swirling around him like a ragged black curtain. He seems to blur and smear before the eye, taking off like a madly pinballing streak of flaming ink. The hovering sniper turns and levels his weapon. Steady as a man on solid ground, only the sheer weight of the rifle itself to concern himself with. But his mismatched left glove locks in neatly with the barrel, the load-bearing wires along the sleeve snapping into action. He's steady as a rock as he gazes through the scope. Impossible conditions for a sniper. But he has two nice, big, glowing targets.

KRA-KOOM. It sounds like a thunderclap. The sonic boom releases a small shockwave, briefly clearing the rain. Eyewitnesses swear they can see bright blue electric traceries sketching the bullet's path through the sky as it drives itself smack dab through the kaiju's eye. The beast reels back as if punched in the snout, and its earsplitting shriek carries clear across the bay, shattering every seaward window.

It falls forward again with one heavy step. A minute later the wave of displaced water smashes the sea barriers like a fist, slopping over the top to join the flooding. It clutches its face with one plaza-sized claw, indigo blood streaming between the fingers. Its other eye opens, focusing squarely on the man that shot it. It slowly lets its claw drop. It takes another city-striding step. The newly-repaired eye opens wide, unblemished.

The rifle barrel slowly drops. He swallows audibly. "W-well I tried."

He lurches behind a building for cover, flicking through channels all the while. "This is Quantum Scope calling SERAPH, the target has a healing factor! Recommend you focus your efforts on evacuation for the time being!"

He swoops in between the rain-wracked skyscrapers, scanning the streets below. He barks out their names as he passes, reporting civilian and city service movements, spawn concentrations, and other heroes on-site. Skidding (figuratively) to a halt and snapping his rifle up at the sight of unguarded stragglers fleeing through the maze of cars, pursued by a quicksilver squid. Shot from him'll give it something to think about.

Duchess Rainshadow beats him to the punch. A torrent of pure rainwater backed by the force of a couple dozen fire hoses hits the creature like a runaway freight train and just flings it up into the sky like a leaf. The woman herself skates over the top of the cluttered street, borne aloft by an infinitely cresting wave. She slows slightly, turning her gaze skywards to meet his. All this water and not a drop of it ruining her hair, not a bead on her ceramic domino mask. Quantum Scope lets her pass with a thumbs-up, watching her turn the corner and flow down the hill toward the bay. Powerless on a hot day, unstoppable goddess in a storm. Funny how things work out.

He rises higher, high above the skyline, higher than all but the tallest skyscrapers. Giving himself the perfect view of the kaiju's remaining progress. He zooms in on the bay, chewing on the tip of his tongue as he measures it out. Bad time for it to come, a lot of primary and secondary defences out for maintenance. Once it gets to the sea wall it can kick it over like a sandcastle. A quick scan of the boiling water either side - a few fins and flippers breaching the water. Advance aquatic response doing its job with the spawn phasing in underwater.

"SERAPH can I get an ETA on the cavalry?" he asks, more than a tad worried.

"On your left."

"Huh-? S***!"

Quantum Scope jinks sharply to the right as an entire cavalry company comes galloping past on a stormcloud of its own. They pass in a blur of polished plate and jingling mail, weapons raised high, otherworldly steeds tossing their heads and huffing hot steam from their nostrils. Their hooves are rolling thunder, and the king at their head wields the lightning. The armoured figure holds its lance aloft, and for a moment it appears only a simple needle-shaped length of steel. Then it starts to spin, and the world twists around it. Air, water, light, sound, it's all sucked into the greedy vortex that is the lance as the King of the Wild Hunt takes its host into a dive. The kaiju steps closer, so much closer in a single stride that two more is all it could possibly need to set foot on land. The lance thrusts forward, literally missing by half a mile as the Wild Hunt race to meet their quarry.

The blinding white beam that erupts from the tip leaves a charred, smoking crater the size of a bus in the creature's brow-ridge. The worst of the damage seen only briefly before it claps its claws over the wound, howling in agony. Its tentacle-mane goes mad, striking and snapping and slicing through the air like a cat-'o-nine-tails. The Wild Hunt charge on fearlessly, parting around its head like a stream around a rock. Blades flash, hooves thunder, the King stows its own lance and draws its cold sword to join the fray. The kaiju's hair is well and truly cut, long train-sized lengths of severed flesh falling into the sea. All over its skull and claws a myriad wounds race to close. The Wild Hunt loop around and come in for another pass, and another, and another. Hacking and slashing, stinging tirelessly like a swarm of steel wasps. The creature takes a staggering step back.

It rips its claws away, and this time it doesn't just roar. A torrent of aqua-blue light erupts from its yawning, fanged maw that scatters the Wild Hunt like leaves. The light bathes the clouds, shines through them, turning the stormy grey a sickly blue-green. Claws curling, still roaring, as the wide arc slowly narrows as if being focused. Intensifying, becoming a blue-white beam that bores straight through the iron blanket of cloud and up into space. The Wild Hunt scrambling to reassemble and renew their assault. Its gaze turning downward, immense yellow eyes turning in its sockets. Tilting its head back down to slice the city in half.

A black bullet streaks through the sky, a Mach cone of wind and rain stretching around it as sharp as a dart. Only high-framerate playback, ultra slow motion, can even discern basic details before it collides square with the point when the kaiju's throat meets its jaw.

KRA-KOOM-KOOM-Koom-koom-koom...

The rain stops. The clouds evaporate in a wide arc, scooped up like cotton candy. The noon sun high in the azure blue sky shines down brilliantly on the kaiju in its last moments as it slowly, ponderously, keels right back over and falls like a sack of bricks. The displaced water rises in a gargantuan geyser, spraying high enough for a rainbow to gleam in the suddenly-cleared air.

Only to fall again, like a tsunami.

Quantum Scope's gaze snaps down to the sea-wall. Just in time to catch the Duchess leap on a column of spraying water, alighting neatly on the three-foot-thick lip as if heels were the easiest thing to manage in the world. Her cyan sarong falls, the moisture leeching from it so quickly that it's bone-dry by the time it hits the back of her exposed calf. She meets the oncoming wave head-on, and strikes it in two.

The wave parts and stills forcibly, racing to either side of the keystone in the seawall arch. The water rushes and gushes through the untold thousand channels and trenches and canals dug for just that kind of situation, bleeding away the excess mass of seawater. It even goes towards hydroelectrically powering the city grid. How environmentally conscious.

"Ha-ha! I see everyone was already hard at work!"

Quantum Scope's head jerks back up. The city's saviour is suddenly directly in front of him, bobbing gently as if floating on the sea as he hovers level with him. He's massive, easily seven-foot and change. And a dog. Jackal, to be precise. The bare (copious) muscle of his upper body coated in pitch-black fur, his head canine, snout and pointed ears and all. Claws that can and have cut straight through steel safely turned away, the hero's closed fists pressed proudly to his hips. He wears little but a billowing gold-trimmed cape so white it practically glows in the sun, and a matching skirt (with black compression shorts underneath for modesty, something all flying heroes have to consider). His eyes are angular, framed by tattooed gold eyeliner, the irises the same lustrous shade, yet as wide and friendly as the fanged grin on his face.

"Anubis," Scope says haltingly. "Was starting to think you were busy."

"Oh I was, I was! A dragon in Israel, spirited fellow! But I heard you were having a little trouble over here, so I finished up and came as soon as I could!" He glances down at the bay, still sloshing as it steadily settles. "Apologies, I was a tad sloppy in my haste. Give my warmest regards to the Duchess, would you?"

"So are you sticking around for interviews this time, or...?"

"Ha-ha!" Anubis tips his head back and barks with laughter. "I'll say the same thing I say every time." He straightens out, staring straight into Scope's eyes, and points a clawed index finger into the camera not-so-concealed within the goggles. "If you've got questions, leave them on my site like everyone else!" he finishes with a grin. "Now ah, I should really be off. Duty calls and all!"

Quantum Scope waves the other hero off as he turns and rockets away faster than any bullet known to man. His wake still isn't enough to knock Scope out of position, but boy does the wind buffet him like a fist. He shakes his head to clear it, adjusting the fit of his goggles, and looks down at the city. The storm that Anubis so kindly punched in half is clearing the rest of the way now that the kaiju is dead, the half-flooded dock district streets gleaming in the sun. He clears his throat.

"Ahem... audiovisual rig graciously sponsored by Orange Smash. When life gives you oranges, smash 'em."

The video ends. You scroll down past the description, full of even more referral links and disclosure information, to check the comments section. It's full of the usual arguing about Anubis' feats, one or two people saying he turned them into furries, quite a few more talking about how much they want Duchess Rainshadow to step on them- yeah nothing important down there. You scroll back up, glancing at the date and time readout in the bottom right corner while the autoplay timer runs down.

12:34pm, 05/29/2042

Wow, you were up before 1. Progress.

You didn't see hide nor hair of anyone in the video at the time, of course. Your sad little apartment is far enough inland you need to take the train to get downtown. The warning was downgraded in your area, only recommending evacuation ahead of the disruption radius. You stayed and watched. You'd subscribed to Scope's feed - worth every penny. You got to see Anubis up close, like you were really there. You've watched the VOD a dozen times, been checking back ever since in part just to see how high the viewcount's gonna go this time. And then, as if it heard you, the autoplay completes and takes you to an interview with Gabriel Shaw about his latest movie.

You know all about it already, of course. It's about his tussle with the Repligator, an alligator-morph with the power to split into seemingly infinite copies. Long story short he figured out the copying part was due to unstable Sphere-tech embedded in the guy's chest, so he shorted it out with an electrical shock and hacked it to reverse the copying. Kind of disappointing to be flush with spoilers because you follow the real-life versions, but you're still going to see the movie anyway. You've got advance tickets.

"What're you talking about? I don't do my own stunts! What if I got hurt!?" Shaw faux-splutters, shifting easily to a good-natured grin. "No but you're right, being able to do your own action scenes with no special effects is kind of a mixed bag. All of the stunt guys, powered or not, they're great guys really, true professionals, but there's always that little, y'know, fear there. What if I pull my punch just a fraction too late because we're not quite on the same wavelength?" He gestures with his hands as he talks, as if trying to solve an invisible spherical Rubix Cube. "That's why I've been making an effort to build up my own consistent team of stuntmen I can just, y'know, bring with me everywhere. We're like a package deal, Shaw And Friends. We train so much and know each other so well it's like we can just... fight, y'know? Looks great on-camera. The dailies, at least. I'm not responsible for what they do to it in the editing room, hahaha."

He smiles. Gabriel Shaw is possibly the most photogenic man on the planet. Some say it's his actual power (and they're kinda right). While he mostly prefers to just go by his real name, his official superhero alias is Paragon for a reason. He's essentially physically perfect, immune to disease, heals faster, stronger and quicker and tougher, the entire package. All he's missing is flight and laser-eyes, but he says he's working on that.

You pause the video, get up, and walk to the fridge. A few sad scraps and soda cans greet you. Not enough for a snack, let alone the two meals a day you're on. You sigh and slowly shut the door. You meant to get groceries yesterday.

You try to make the best of it in your head as you lace up your shoes. You can make a day of it, head out, try and get some sun, maybe hang out at the mall. Set a reminder on your phone so you remember not to go home empty-handed this time. It'll be fine.

You slip your key and wallet in your pocket. You put your earbuds in the other. You pluck the charging cable out of your phone last and carry it with you as you step outside into the corridor. You lock the door to make sure nobody steals your Nothing, and head down the stairs.

You tap the address bar on your phone screen and wonder how to occupy yourself on the trip into the city.

[ ] Check out the AnuBiteSite. You can see what questions he's answered this time - maybe he even got to one of yours? Plus you can have a chuckle at the people in the comments trying to figure out who could beat him in a fight.

[ ] Check out Shaw and his publicised movements. It's a well-known fact that the man is absolutely tireless, leaping from one press junket in one city to the next like a grasshopper on cocaine. There's human interest stuff in there too, which is the part you appreciate most. Maybe you can find a hint of when he'll be in City 32.

[ ] Check out the graduating Guardian Gryphons class. They mostly stay out of the spotlight and work on their powers and image until senior year. Maybe there'll be some cool newcomers you can remind yourself to watch.

[ ] Check your How To Get Superpowers favourites folder. Can't hurt, can it? Even this long after the Conjunction people are still learning more every day.