The Lamplighters Omnibus

"I..."

And then Wil E. Coyote looks down, only enough time to flash a 'Help!' sign before he goes plummeting down into the Grand Canyon. Oops, too bad, guess you'll catch that Roadrunner another day. Suddenly your fists feel like leaden weights, like every scrap of exercise is suddenly taking revenge on you, superpowers be damned. Your hands fall, hitting your armoured thighs with dull thuds and staying, slack. Your eyes fall. You shrug helplessly, a brisk up-and-down motion that silently begs all watchers to just leave and stop bothering.

"I'm just a fucking fan," you admit with a bitter laugh. "Feels like I spent my whole life waiting and planning for this to happen to me and now it has but I still don't know anything. I could give you complete stats on practically any hero in the city and their complete work history but that doesn't help me be one does it? I'm an armchair guy I've got... no idea how to be the real thing. A symbiote and some training won't change that. I'm in over my head."

Creeeak, creeeak, creeeeak, creee-

Sung stops the bag, letting it settle back down in front of you. He doesn't get any closer and try to hug you or anything, to which you are eternally grateful. You don't look at him. For a moment you only hear his breathing, practically hear him thinking.

"There's no shame in not being ready," he says at last, gently. "It's hard enough to succeed in this business with proper preparation, and you've landed in the deep end all at once." You think you sense his hand hovering indecisively over your shoulder. He thinks better of it at the last moment. "Your trainee license is valid for a month, yes? I think it would be easiest for you to just stay with us for now, at least until the renewal period. I'll keep training you of course - no harm in getting in shape, is there?"

He smiles, you can sense it. Your lip curls in the faintest approximation of a reply. You don't return it properly. Don't say a word.

"We're hardly a high-traffic agency, haha, so don't worry about having to run yourself ragged. You could almost say it's like camp!" The silence stretches on. Sung coughs. "But on that note, I should at least introduce you to the rest of the team properly. I don't think it's quite sunk in for some that you'll be staying with us."

You mumble something affirmative.

"I'll come get you when everyone's ready. You can do some warm-down stretches if you'd like, or just relax." And with that Sung mercifully leaves you be in that far-too-big gym, his footsteps only barely audible as he leaves the closing door behind and goes off in search of all his 'comrades'.

A moment passes. Two. Three. You take a long, slow, deep breath as the solitude starts to make you feel slightly normal again. Time to de-armour, get ready for a proper meet-and-greet - making a good first impression probably involves not looking like a tiny kaiju. So you step away from the bag, closer to your discarded shirt and shoes and socks, and tell the symbiote to bring you back to normal.

The armoured plates peel away from you, claws melting back into warm tar, the flowering wounds in your back and chest literally sucking the suit back inside your bloodstream. Leaving you wearing what looks like a pitch-black pair of athletic tights, gleaming in the light. You look down at your legs.

"Where are my old pants?" you ask.

You conspicuously receive no answer.

"Did you eat them even though I asked you not to?"

The silence grows even more conspicuous. You let it go on a moment, thinking.

"Do clothes get in the way of going into that armour-form?" you ask. "Do something I can notice if the answer's 'yes'."

It feels like warm mud trickling down your feet, clinging to the skin as the droplets roll around under the arch. The symbiote's extending down from the cuffs of your tights, binding your feet for better arch support. It's almost apologetic. It reminds you of your dogs, back when you were a kid. Didn't matter who yelled at them or for what, they'd always slink over and put their heads in the person's lap. Shoot them that 'I don't know what I did wrong please tell me I'm a good girl' look until they finally caved. Maybe you're just projecting, but the symbiote makes you feel the same way. You gently pat your biomass-coated thigh.

"It's okay," you murmur with a soft, self-effacing laugh. "I don't know what the hell I'm doing either."

Your hand sticks like glue. Just for a moment, just long enough to notice, before the feeling passes and your palm peels away from the black surface with a faint sound like tacky ink.

"And uh... don't take it personally but I'm gonna go put on some real pants over the top of you now. You kinda make me look like a rubberman like this."

***

The Lamplighters. You didn't have much time to yourself at the SERAPH hospital, but your preliminary research had revealed the agency to be about twenty years old at this point. Downright venerable by some standards. SERAPH doesn't bankroll hopeless cases and lost causes, they make sure they're seeing their money put to good use. You wouldn't be able to tell just by looking at this lineup. 'Conway' is still missing, so there's only one new face to be seen. And he's dripping on the couch, much to Florence's consternation squished up against the armrest. At least he put a towel down first.

You don't know what you expected of Caio, but you didn't expect this. He's a tall guy, easily a six-footer and change. His face is soft and boyish, tanned by heritage but pale by circumstance, his curly hair plastered down to his skull by the water. His dark eyes have a sort of shy friendliness to them, matching the little wave he sketches at you. And he's wearing a sci-fi bondage suit.

Okay that's not entirely accurate but you can't deny that's basically your first impression. The runner-up was 'wetsuit' but wetsuits don't look like they're rated to laugh off a mag from an assault rifle at point blank range. It's SERAPH tech no doubt about it, the 'fabric' portions actually made of flexible CNT weaves that hug his body like a second-skin. Barely visible beneath the more solid stuff, the undisguised alloy plates, the adjustable buckles and latches and straps and rails. The more you look at it the more it confounds you. It's like it was made to fit guys up to twice his size. You think about why that is, then the literal first thought as to why makes you stop. Maybe you weren't so far off with the 'bondage' thing. Small LED lights at his joints and chest glow solid green.

"Caio Cardoso," Sung introduces him for you. "Official hero name Leviathan. We joined about the same time, actually, didn't we?"

"Hello," says Caio with a quiet smile. Breaking off, eyes flicking over to Sung. "Oh, yeah! Mean, not from the same agency, but within a week of each other I think it was."

You try to smile back. You don't say anything out loud of course, odds are fantastic that'd only lead to horrible things, but you feel a certain je ne sais quois at the sight of Caio. Maybe it's just nice knowing you're not the only freak on the team, as nasty as that is to think. You distract yourself by focusing on the others.

"Katerina Zakharova," Sung goes on, indicating the woman that has apparently been used as a target at a firing range at some stage standing a couple feet away from the couch, arms folded. "Official hero name Meteora, but she prefers Kate. She's been here the longest outside of Conway, so if there's anything you need and I can't help then maybe she can!"

She looks so utterly thrilled at the prospect, you can just tell. You think Sung can too, because he puts his arm around your shoulders casual can be and subtly turns you to face Florence instead. "And this is Florence Trent. She was actually our newest hire before you showed up-"

"You're actually joining?" Kate interjects incredulously, eyes widening. "Shit man, my condolences."

He doesn't say anything but you can feel the look Sung shoots Kate. She remains completely unfazed. You make vaguely affirmative noises and don't look at her. Florence gladly fills the silence herself.

"Well, good luck with all that. I know you must be star-struck but don't worry, you won't have to deal with it for long." Florence smooths out her dress, sitting up straight and proud. "I already had one foot out the door by the time you showed up. In fact, the way things are looking up you could practically move into my room."

Star-struck? Why would you be... no. No way. This has got to be the latest weird turn in the weirdest of weird-ass dreams because the alternative is that you joined a random C-class agency and ran smack-dab into Princess Phoebe in the flesh. Jesus it's got to be 15-odd years since you first watched her show. You think she had her own kingdom and had to fight off kaiju or something, but she had her own alien friends she adopted and looked after and they all went on adventures and taught each other about friendship. It was bright and colourful and mostly for little girls but you watched it anyway because the fact that a kid about your age had actual superpowers she was really using just blew your mind.

You remember the time you told your parents you wanted to be Princess Phoebe when you grew up and cringe so hard your asshole turns inside-out.

"Yes, well as I was saying," Sung goes on, "Her official hero name is Princess Phoebe."

Suddenly it's not you you're cringing at. You can't help but take a second look at Florence. In that second look you suddenly remember that pink and gold were her costume colours on TV. Is... is she actually still doing the Princess Phoebe bit? She's got to be old enough to drink!

Kate mimes a blowjob, prodding the inside of her cheek with the tip of her tongue in a masterful addition of realism. Florence silently fumes, refusing to look so much as a degree in her direction.

"So I just wanted to give you all the opportunity to welcome John to the team," Sung finishes rapidly, trying desperately to ignore Kate.

"Nice to meet you," says Caio. Kate adds a few soft 'mmm yeah' moans to her succulent imaginary blowjob. Florence exhales hard enough her nostrils visibly dilate.

"Alright, good talk!" Sung pats your shoulder, slowly yet inexorably spinning you around to face the door. "Now it's your first day and one of the unglamorous parts of being with a C-class agency is learning your 'beat' so let's kill both birds in the bush and take you to a bar I know."

"B-but I don't drink," you protest weakly, but it's too late. You're already being frogmarched straight out the door without a moment's hesitation.

***

The docks district is different up-close. Honestly for all the time you've spent living here you've seen precious little of City 32 with your own eyes. It's mostly just been a block-or-two-radius around your apartment and a couple scattered tourist hotspots around the train stations. Yeah you've seen the brochures and marketing photos of the sandy beaches and brilliant azure water and gleaming white boats getting launched full of smiling, nonthreatening twentysomething white people but you've had no reason to even set foot here until now.

It's never really sank in that the beachside area is always the first to be hit until now. Until you can see the damage with your own eyes. All the prefabs with their ultramodern angular shames and pristine white siding scored and scorched by ball lightning and the claws of kaiju-spawn. Trash still littering the streets from when bins and dumpsters were overturned by the fighting, flitting this way and that forlornly on a half-interested wind. Most places you know, the cleaner-drones would've dealt with that by now. There's the signs of genuine fighting too, the bullet holes and laser marks, brassy shell casings gleaming in the gutters, pockmarked plasma craters sitting in once-flawless neocrete. Cars of all types smashed and scored and up on blocks, cannibalised for parts by opportunistic souls. You pass many a shuttered shopfront with their own fair share of battle-scars. Sung doesn't comment, so neither do you.

You double-take as you pass the gated community. You think you remember seeing the name before on your many wiki-walks - "Beachview Park" or something - but at ground level it barely seems real. Compared to the streets around it it's picture-perfect, more model than place where real people live. Beachview is up to code with the rest of 32's most-travelled districts, the elegant wrought-iron gate concealing a force-field rated to stop a runaway tank, the white walls high and reinforced, each villa an excited whisper that maybe if you look just when the time is right you could see someone famous by the pool. It's like its own fort on the trade route from the heart of the city to the bay.

Sung takes you to a bar called 'Flotsam'. You can't really tell it's a bar from the outside, the prefab mostly blending in with everything around it, and the holo-sign is staggeringly unhelpful. Sung leads you up the short flight of steps and through the small outdoor dining area, into the building proper. It's a general-purpose 'serving industry' sort of prefab, used as a bar one day when it could be a cafe the next or a full restaurant the day after. Could be a McDonald's in an hour, construction as fast as service.

The inside is a lot more homey. The lights are a dim, warm yellow-orange like the late afternoon sun. The booths and stools are bound in synth-leather, certainly fake to the touch but it's the aesthetics of the thing. Wood laminate floor, wood panelling on the inner walls, and a sign up behind the bar that says "Rebuilt [03] Times And Counting". As if to punctuate the implicit point, a stuffed Sphere-beast is mounted right beside it. Not as recent as the kind that came with Tentacle-Dreads of course, something more insectoid, like a quadrupedal stag beetle with a centipede tail. The marks from the weapon that killed it mar the glossy shell all over, far too many for any taxidermist to hope to fix. You don't see said weapon, but you assume it's under the bar.

" 'ey, J." The bartender's the kind to bring the word 'grizzled' to your heart unbidden. His hair is iron-grey, his skin wrinkled like a ballsack, and at some point in the past something with very big claws tried to peel his face off starting at the left temple. He's missing a lot of hair, most of the ear, the eye, some nose and some lip, but he's still here and it isn't. He raises the cigarette between his fingers in greeting as he spies Sung. His hand stilling, smoke curling up benignly to the ceiling, as he spots you. It's been legal to smoke anywhere since the new cigs with no carcinogens came out, but you get the feeling he'd puff a literal tumour in front of a health inspector if the mood took him.

"Who's your ugly friend?" he asks as he stubs out the cigarette in the waiting ashtray, the concept of irony eluding him.

"A new colleague, actually!" Sung puts his hand on your back, just between your shoulders, and drags you closer to the bar with a gentle pressure. "Very new. It's been a long day for him so I was just taking him to see the sights and try the best drinks in town."

"Fuck'd you bring 'im here for then?" He slides the crystal ashtray down the bar and out of the way with a practised flick of the wrist, resting his weight on the counter by his elbow. "You, goth-kid. You a talker, or d'you know even less English than J?"

"I talk," you force out, equal parts uncomfortable and annoyed.

"So what's your story? Where'd it all start? Gotta be some bad shit if you're joining his dumpsterfire," the bartender says, inclining his head in Sung's direction.

"It started two days ago when a mercury squid stabbed me through the heart," you say.

Silence falls. The bartender's sole good eye blinks at you a couple times.

"Shit, man," he says at last. "What'll it be?"

"Oh I- I don't drink-"

"Fuck you don't, not every day a man comes back from the dead. I'll pick something out for you, on the house." The bartender pushes himself up straighter, planting his other hand down on the bartop.

"Did I hear something about free drinks?" comes a slurred Irish lilt from the corner booth.

"Fuck off, Paddy."

"Just checking~"

Sung grimaces. "(Ignore him)," he murmurs under his breath.

The bartender snaps his fingers, pointing at Sung. "And you, J. Got your Jap-juice in the microwave, been waiting all day for its prince to come. Unless you're on for anything stronger?"

Sung smiles sweetly. "I was hoping to drink until you're pretty again. Would you pre-call the ambulance for me, too?" He turns to you. "Look after my drink for me when it comes? I just need to use the bathroom."

"Haha, funny fucker ain'tcha." He makes a shooing gesture. "Don't give out too many handies while you're in there, gonna need those wrists rested to pay for your drink later."

Sung disappears into the bathrooms, and the bartender turns away so fast it's like he's completely forgotten you exist. After an awkward pause you sit yourself down in one of the squeaky bar-side stools, turning this way and that. The microwave turns on, yellow light briefly illuminating the bartender's scarred face as he inspects what you presume is sake for Sung. Seems he'll be busy with that before he brings you anything. So you just sit there, feeling wholly out of place, glad that the place seems relatively quiet at this time of the day, and idly tap your fingers against the stained bartop.

"Whup- eyyy lookout."

Someone brushes past you, misjudges the distance, and smacks into the bar stomach-first. He bounces off, totters back a step or two, then regains his balance and leans the right way. His hands come down on the bar too hard, the loud thump almost making you jump.

"Can I get... a round... for myself and the lovely ladies outside?" he asks. The Irish guy you heard earlier. The way he's stumbling through his syllables almost makes his accent sound fake, like he's playing it up or putting it on completely. He seems to sense you staring, because the next moment he's swinging his head around to try and focus on your face.

"... shit, I'm seeing dead people," he blurts out with a snort. He's no prize himself. His long silver-white hair is greasy and unwashed, even slightly presentable by dint of being pulled back in a ponytail. His eyes are slightly on the blue end of green, but his pupils come to slight points at the top and bottom of the eye - and the darkness briefly flashes with reflected light as he swings his head. He's unshaven, silvery stubble clinging to the slack skin around his jaw, his own fair share of old scars dotted all over his face. His breath stinks of the very successful day already behind him, his lips curled in the self-assured smile of one that thinks the night ahead will be just as good. You're almost happy to see someone as big a freak as you.

The bartender returns, snatching the drunk's attention away with the rap of glasses hitting wood. "Bet you won't make it five words in."

"Bet you I make it ten," the drunk retorts with a cocky wiggle of his head, practically pouncing on the three drinks. It takes him a second to work out the configuration of fingers he needs to keep the glasses all secured against each other. "And if I win, next round's free~"

"If I win you pay your fucking tab for a change."

"Whaaat sorry what's that can't hear youuuu." The silver-haired drunk practically pirouettes and sashays out the door. You're certain plenty of liquid is slopping out of the glasses but frankly you're amazing he's keeping his balance at all. You watch him until he hits the doorway and just turn back, shaking your head slightly. You glance up, accidentally meeting the bartender's eye as he lingers to pour you your own drink at last. It's not beer, something translucent and green.

"Yeah yeah, should cut him off," he says, voice low and gravelly as an avalanche. "Way I see it, s'just safer this way, is all. I let 'im go he wanders off lookin' for more or a fight, then no one knows where 'e is. Better I keep 'im here 'til he passes out then call a cab."

"I... see," you say, unsure why he's bothering to tell you. Or maybe that's part of the general bar experience you've been missing 'til now. You tug the offered drink a little closer and cup it in a worldly manner, watching as the bartender pours a glass of steaming sake for Sung. You drum your fingers on your glass, wondering what's taking Sung so long. Surely he's not the type to... have a sit in public, is he? That's just-

"Ohhh, I'm gettin' ya now! Perfect slummin' conditions now they've swept all the half-eaten bodies up, so you thought you'd just pop down from Rich Cunt Island for a quick taste of the local colour! Well ladies, sad to say I'm as colourful as it gets, so unless you're after a taste of me you'd best be runnin' on home back to your husbands now, eh? They'll be due fer a turnin' soon, bedsores can be a real fucker!"

The bartender lets out a disbelieving laugh-snort through his nose, shaking his head. "Fuck me, did he even get to one?"

Your brow furrows. The bartender doesn't seem to be doing anything - yeah he might know this silver-haired regular better than you, but how can he be so calm about it? The drunk sure isn't letting up, nor does he seem to care that the entire bar and probably district besides can hear him. Your stomach tightens having to listen to it. What was Sung thinking, taking you to a place that serves guys like him? You feel a tremor in your chest.

[ ] Go out there and give that drunk asshole a piece of your mind. Everyone else might be putting up with it but you won't. Be assertive. [-1PP]
[ ] Go out there and try to defuse the situation as politely as you can. You don't really want him screaming at you or any fights breaking out, but you can't just sit here and listen to it.
[ ] Wait for Sung to come back and ask him to resolve it. He clearly knows this place a lot better than you, he'll know how to defuse the drunk asshole. Besides, you'd probably just make it worse. [+1PP]