FATHER QUEST - A Cartoon Network: Villains Victorious CK2-Style Quest Cross Over
- Thread starter HellaCooltricks
- Start date
daedalus725
Kell of Kells, godking of Planet X
- Location
- Daedalus crater, The moon
Vamps are Historically not great with fire
- Location
- USA
As powerful as nanites are, I'm not sure we are going to be able to make use of them. We would have to start effectively from scratch.
You don't have the mantle yet. You haven't crafted it.
okay, let's say if we did have the mantle would we be able to burn out the nanites or is our powers constatly burning any nanites that comes into our body, or are we already infected like black knight said that everyone is?
- Location
- going at sufficient velocity
Damn poor Spankulot might have to put him down which I hope not but if it comes to it make it quick.
Also RIP guard bro dude was our first plain human admirer besides Hank.
Let's hope these events further Father's journey to Heroism.
Lol we keep doing good with metalocalypse.
Also RIP guard bro dude was our first plain human admirer besides Hank.
Let's hope these events further Father's journey to Heroism.
Lol we keep doing good with metalocalypse.
Interlude: The Truth Stings (Pt.2) [VOTE]
In military terms, the situation had escalated.
In plain English, the prison was careening towards heck in a handbasket.
Gunfire, screams, the roar of your flames, and the ringing slap of dozens of clawed hands against tender flesh left little space for you to even think. Once the Spankubeast had turned the first guard, the problem had spread exponentially. You could handle yourself against the vampire EVOs just fine, but you couldn't be everywhere at once. Two became four became eight became sixteen and now there was a veritable army of infected inmates, guards, and prison staff on the prowl.
Turning the corner, you spotted what remained of a poor watchman. He bounded towards you on all fours, shedding the shredded remains of his uniform as he pounced. His greedy mouth opened to reveal far too many fangs for its size.
Raising your hand, you blasted the vampire out of the air like a clay pigeon at a skeet shoot. Your flame enveloped him, scorching his body and sending him writing to the ground in an effort to extinguish itself. It took a concentrated effort to keep the temperature just hot enough to hurt without killing him. Holding back was frustrating. And when your powers worked off your emotions, that made for a pretty risky feedback loop. You felt your unchecked anger stoke the flames dangerously high and scrambled to reign it back in before you accidentally incinerated someone.
Furious adrenaline wasn't the only thing welling up inside you. To be honest, you weren't sure what you were supposed to feel.
You'd lost a friend, but worse; before he turned, he'd rejected everything good and Adult you'd ever believed in. Spankulot had been so ashamed of himself he thought he deserved to rot here in this awful place. By extension, he must have thought the same about you.
No. Nevermind. You pushed such troubling thoughts aside. Right now, you needed to handle the mess you'd made.
The Spankubeast wasn't difficult to track. Its rampage left an obvious trail of warped metal, gouged concrete, and spank-happy monster men.
Speaking of which…
You flew ahead of a big burly one menacing a group of prisoners, but even as the heat of your fiery aura drove that one off, another burst out of an air duct behind you and dragged a prisoner kicking and screaming into the vents. You quickly welded the grate shut. But that gave the first monster an opportunity to turn another prisoner before scampering away. The survivors huddled in your shadow for protection. You weren't sure how much you could really offer.
"There's too many of 'em to fight." The one armed TV static man you saw earlier observed. "Can't you blast us a way outta here, shadowman?"
"Oh SURE! And let all the FREAKY vampires have the run of the ENTIRE city!" You crossed your arms. "I gotta answer to the government now. Pass."
One of the orc gangbangers snorted. "Bet it's easy to make that call when you're immune."
You'd been slapped multiple times tangling with the rampaging EVOs. It still stung where the Spankubeast had gotten you with its opening suckerpunch. Somehow, you were still yourself.
"Hey, pal. It's only 'cause of that I'VE been able to step in and save YOUR keisters." You fired back. "And what with how you were treating MY buddy back there in the lunchroom, maybe I oughta LEAVE your sorry green butt for him to SPANK!"
The static man interceded between the two of you.
"Hey, now. We're civilized people. Ain't no need to carry on like a bunch of ignorant thugs." He pointed down the hall the opposite direction from where the EVO vampire had fled. "My boys and I've been working on a little escape plan for a while now. If you can get me through the mess hall into the rec room, I can get us outta here without any of those things followin'."
Well, it was a plan at least. But if escaping was your only priority, you could've done that on your own. Who knew how many others were still trapped in here? And why did you even care??
The thought of that guard sacrificing himself to save your life flashed through your head again and again. Ugh. All that hero worship must've been getting to you. You were even starting to think heroic thoughts.
You pushed that internal crisis into the same corner of your mind you stuffed the last one.
"FINE." You told Mr. TV Static. "Let's GET outta here."
As you broke into the mess hall, the first thing you saw was patient zero. The Spankubeast screeched in idiot joy, its fleshy-tendril mouth flailing triumphantly as it wailed on two victims at once with its blunt palms. The EVO's imprecise blows sent bolted down tables flying through the air and splattered trays full of half-eaten food across the ceiling as its many limbs flailed. It turned to face you, its twitching mouth tasting the air.
You'd half-hoped you'd be able to avoid this.
It dropped its mutating playthings in the middle stages of their transformation and let out a ferocious roar.
"GO!" You shouted at the prisoners. "I'll handle Spankul-- The monster."
The Spankubeast stalked forward, its huge head swaying back and forth as excited drool dripped from its fangs. It stopped right across from you--staring you down but not yet striking. Instead, it waited for a moment, before letting out another shriek. Every piece of unbroken glass in earshot cracked. The prisoners you'd been escorting clasped their hands over their ears as they sprinted for the rec room. You braced for it to strike. But the Spankubeast did not.
Why?
The two newly transformed EVOs stepped out in front of it. Were they protecting it? Like soldier ants defending their queen? No, that didn't seem quite right. It was more like…
A challenge.
Rolling up your shadowy black sleeves to reveal arms of pure blazing fire, you stepped forward. It was time to put.
Your.
Foot.
DOWN.
You stomped the ground, shattering a meteoric crater into the concrete which then erupted into a great flaming geyser. The vampiric thralls were launched halfway through the ceiling, their legs dangling uselessly kicking air.
You marched determinedly out of the flames.
"ALRIGHT. Listen here, Spankulot," you said, jabbing a finger at the shambling thing. It reared away like a cornered animal.
A small hope lit up inside you as it reacted to hearing its name. No. Wishful thinking. You'd paid enough attention to Black Knight's lecture--it was basically an animal. It was probably just going off your tone. Even still…
"I DON'T care if you're some SORTA big scary monster!" You continue. "I said I was gonna bring you BACK to normal, and I MEANT it!"
Its mouth lashed out at you like a whip. You caught it, and squeezed. It recoiled from your flaming grip. It wasn't looking at you anymore. Now it was glancing frantically about for an escape.
"OH NO you don't!"
You took a running tackle. Too late. It scampered up the wall and across the ceiling into another part of the prison.
Much as you wanted to go after it, you had another priority. If you were gonna play along with the hero act, you were gonna do it right.
You dashed into the rec room. The head orc was fumbling with a screwdriver shiv to unfasten a set of metal bars bolted over a wall mounted TV. Evidently, being whittled to a deadly point did no favors for the tool's functionality.
You made a finger gun and melted the bars.
"So WHY are we huddled around the TELLY-vision? Is your BIG plan to DISTRACT the monsters with cartoons?"
"Never heard of White Noise, huh? Guess I've been on the inside too long." The static man reached out and touched the screen. "I'm the reason they put the bars up."
The TV lit up with flickering snow. It rippled like the surface of a pond.
One by one, White Noise helped the inmates step through the glass.
Then he paused.
He'd left you and the orcs for last.
His featureless face was unreadable, but you had a pretty good idea when you were being scrutinized.
"Hey, fuzzface. What's the holdup?" The orc leader bristled.
"I said I'd get us out. Us meanin' my people." He turned to you. "You, I can't speak for. But as for you Wild Brood… I seen some of you without your masks on. Any damn fool who deals in race mixing is not my people."
You and the orcs both got the picture. You raced to grab him, but before you even took a step White Noise had vanished into the static. The TV went dead.
As if on cue, you heard a snarl from behind you. A pack of EVOs streamed through the doorway and across the walls and ceiling like a swarm of hungry locusts.
"That skinhead bastard played us like a freakin' jukebox!" The head orc swore.
He could blame White Noise all he wanted. He was a piece of work all right. But what'd you expected? YOU'D decided to play goody goody. YOU'D decided to try and do the right thing instead of sticking with what you knew. YOU'D decided to be a complete and total sucker. The temperature in the room steadily climbed by degrees.
You vented some of the excess heat by unleashing a searing jet of fire at the doorway. A wider jet than you'd intended. The head orc was blasted off his feet. He groaned, clutching the rubber mask half-melted to the side of his face.
His comrades shouted in alarm before rushing to his aid.
"Hey, cool it man!"
"He winged Odnarb!"
Well EXCUSE you for trying. They weren't making it any easier to concentrate. Forget them. They were probably all thinking about how to betray you too. Of course they were. How could you trust that ANYONE was on your side when the world had taken away the simple, sensible bounds of black and white and turned everything an ugly shade of gray.
Your flamethrower became less directed. Soon enough, you were just radiating flames in all directions, no longer caring WHAT or WHO you melted. All you knew was you had to get this searing anger OUT!
"Oh crap!"
"He's gonna blow!"
The Wild Brood scrambled to flip a heavy steel table for cover.
Sure enough, you erupted like a human volcano. The EVOs piling through the door were scattered like playing cards. So was most of the furniture in the rec room. And the bricks in the doorway. And the wall behind you.
The flames subsided and you stood there panting in the middle of your own smoldering crater.
The heavily damaged prison wall collapsed outwards. You blinked through the last rays of the setting sun.
And the dozens of pairs of headlights which formed the enormous vehicle blockade surrounding the entire prison.
Squads upon squads of men in what you recognised as Providence uniforms stared back at you. A man with a scar across his eye wearing a slightly fancier outfit glanced to his men, then back to you, and then threw up his hands as though in surrender to the whims of fate.
"Well. I guess that decides our entry point."
- - - - - - - - - -
Orderly traffic descended into hapless panic as commuters tried to veer away from the ongoing carnage. Some did a u-turn and tried to flee back into oncoming traffic, triggering a chorus of screeching brakes, shouts, and fender benders. Others, not wanting to risk the pileup, simply abandoned their cars where they were and ran screaming down the road.
Izzy sidestepped Gunther Gator's charge and hammered him below the ribs with a Muay Thai elbow strike, only to be caught out by a haymaker from Greta.
Daphne winced as Izzy's body went sailing into the side of Dethklok's limo. The whole car rocked with the impact, nearly toppling over onto Daphne and the members of Dethklok hunkered down behind it.
"Oh man, did you guys see that?" Nathan said. "That's what our next album is missing. We need to do a song that's exactly as violent to people's ears as being in this fight. We could call it uhhhhh…."
"Gatorsklok?"
"Blood Bayou?"
"Rip Off Their Scales With Your Bare Fingers?"
"Call for help!"
Nathan rubbed his chin. "Not brutal enough. Now Scream For Help, that's pretty metal."
"No, I mean we have to get help!" Daphne said. "She's getting slaughtered out there."
Grady was still out cold draped over the hood of the limo, but Izzy was still outnumbered two on one. She was fighting like she really did have tiger's blood -- the manifold bruises on both Gators could attest to that -- but they were both much stronger than her, and up against their comic book healing factors there was no way to win a battle of attrition.
"Why's that our problem?" Asked Pickles, the drummer (doodily doo ding dong doodily doodily doo).
"Yeah!" Agreed Skwisgaar Skwigelf, Scandinavian demigod of rock. "Besides. I betsed six million dollars to Toki thats the crocogators would wins."
"Heys!! I nevers agreeds to that!" Toki whined.
A car alarm bleated and was silenced with a shriek of twisted metal as one of the Gators sent it hurtling through the air.
Daphne pinched the bridge of her nose. Oh god it was easier when she was working with actual teenagers.
"Look. There's three of them. And only one of her. And I think they're really hungry. Do the math."
Nathan counted on his fingers. "Oh shit. Guys I think she's right. Murderface, give her your Dethphone."
"What!? Why me!?"
"Because nobody likes talking to you, so you've got the most minutes left."
Murderface grumbled, but handed Daphne his phone. She tried to avoid cutting her fingers on the needlessly sharp decorative blades.
"I'll dial 9-1-1!" She said.
Nathan looked away. "Don't um. Do that."
"What, why?"
"I got rid of all the highway cops. Speeding is pretty metal. Why would I pay some guy to tell me not to do it?"
"Okay," Daphne struggled not to let the budding annoyance creep into her voice, "no biggie. You're the governor right? So.. we'll call the national guard."
Nathan scratched the back of his head.
"Oh jeepers.." Daphne buried her face in her hands.
"Look, they're in Syria. Okay? They've got this whole civil war thing over there, and I owed a friend a favor… it's complicated."
Suddenly, Daphne smacked herself in the forehead. "Providence! Duh!! Greta said they were EVOs! Why didn't I think of them sooner!?"
"Yeah, why didn't you?" Murderface said.
Daphne shot him a glare.
She dialed Providence's EVO emergency hotline and waited.
Daphne waited.
She waited.
"Well?" Pickles shook her shoulder. "C'mon, man! What's the holdup?"
She listened intently, pleading, praying for a voice.
She got a busy signal.
Izzy flopped like a ragdoll through both of the limosine's windows, showering Daphne and Dethklok with shards bulletproof glass. She landed in a jellied heap.
"Oh hi guys!!" She wheezed. "Haha, I think all my bones are powder."
"That so, hun?"
The limo's suspension creaked. And then its wheels left the ground.
Greta Gator held it aloft above her head.
"I think all y'all could use a little bit more tenderizin'."
She slammed the limo down like an enormous club.
The car came crashing to the ground.
In two pieces.
"Huh?"
It took Daphne a second to realize the buzzing in her ears was the sound of a helicopter overhead.
A tall man wearing shades and a green suit jacket dangled one-handed from a chopper of unmistakable Providence design. He extended an oddly shaped sword, and a similar blade shot up from between the two halves of the limo to rejoin its brother.
Izzy whistled. "Ooh.. Magnetic swords. Shiny."
Green Jacket dropped to the ground. He touched a comlink in his ear.
"Holiday. I've got seven civilians on the scene. One wounded. Three confirmed EVOs sighted. Two still active."
He released his comm.
"Any of you do that?" He gestured to the still slumbering Grady.
"All me, baby." Izzy slurred.
"Huh."
- - - - - - - - - -
You'd like to say Providence lived up to their reputation. You'd like to have watched them swoop in commando style with a crack team and a foolproof plan to save the day. But unfortunately the situation had spiraled too far out of anyone's control for that kind of decisive solution.
They'd tried to hold them at the breach as long as they could, but the sheer number of EVOs swarming through quickly proved to be impossible to stem. Worse, they found other exits. Vampire claws made short work of barred windows. Some found their way onto the roof and leapt to the ground.
Some untransformed prisoners fled out of the building ahead of them. But only a handful.
For every chokepoint that fell, more defenders were caught and transformed, reinforcing the ranks of your relentless enemy.
A mid-ranking grunt approached the scarred commanding officer.
"Captain Calan! We can't keep this up. We'll be out of men before the reinforcements get here."
"God…" Calan made a growling noise in the back of his throat. "FALL BACK!" He roared. "Back it up people! Maintain encirclement. I want a firing retreat to Position B!" He directed his men with urgent hand signals. "Nobody engages these things from closer 'n you can huck a grenade."
"WHAT about me?" You asked, feeling more than a little foolish.
Calan let out a sharp breath through his nose.
"Oh right. The big war hero. Yeah, I know better 'n to try and give orders to you self-directed types."
"SO…"
Calan pinched his brow. "Just use your best judgment and don't block our sightlines."
You were sort of hoping for a little more to go off of. Heroing did not, apparently, come naturally.
So you did the first thing your impulses told you to do and went to town on any EVO in sight. Your fists battered them back in twos and threes. It made you feel a little better. But their bodies crumpled just so easily. You needed a punching bag that offered a little more resistance.
Through the din of battle you heard the by now familiar roar of the Spankubeast. You ignited, and burst like a comet through the dense horde, your blazing trail igniting the grass of the prison yard in your wake. It turned in time to catch you right in the chest like a bullet to the heart. You kept going, tearing a skidding trench into the dirt with its disgusting body.
You hit it again and again until even its thick hide began to bruise. You didn't have any more words for the thing. It'd taken your friend. It was your friend. You'd done this to him. You didn't really care. In the moment, all you wanted to do was beat it until the boiling in your blood subsided.
Clawed hands raked your back. Your tunnel vision had kept you too focussed on the big one to remember its thralls. The vampires dogpiled you, biting and scratching with such intensity that you actually began to bleed even through the shadow suit.
"GEDDOF!"
You wrenched around and exploded into a ball of fire. Once the thralls had given you a wide enough berth, you returned to the Spankubeast, only to be greeted by an open palm racing towards your face.
WHAP!!!
You sailed like a shuttlecock over the growing mob of creatures. You landed as a tangle of shadowy limbs practically in Captain Calan's lap.
He barely looked at you before he continued shouting into his radio.
"...get me EVERYTHING on the East Coast. And when I say everything I mean EVERYTHING. If a janitor so much as knows how to hold a gun, I need them too. This whole situation is an unprecedented disaster waiting to happen. We have to shut this thing down, RIGHT the hell now."
The cordon was much thinner than it was before. The Providence troopers had been pulling further and further back to avoid coming into contact with the massing horde. More and more arrived by APC and helicopter every minute but even still new gaps kept appearing in their line as the vampires broke through and tore off into the woods that surrounded the prison.
"Christ. Where on Earth're the Black Pawns?!" Calan ran a hand through his hair. "Black Knight gives her special praetorian guard all the best training and toys and they're off lounging on some Mexican beach when it actually hits the fan. And our big gun's takin' his sweet time too! We're Providence! Can we not mobilize with a little bit of urgency?"
As he ranted, he slung his rifle off his shoulder and opened fire at a stray EVO making a break towards the city center. The heavy slug blew a hole into its side and it collapsed like a deflated balloon.
"Y'know, I could call in some of my people." You offered.
Calan squinted at you. "You got a PMC?"
"I've got some ICE CREAM men."
"I'll let you know when I get that desperate." Calan said. "Any bodies we add to this that don't know what they're doing are gonna turn into more hostiles."
An idea popped into your head. A little meanspirited, but you were sick and tired of pretending to be a hero tonight.
You pointed at the Wild Brood--covering behind a Providence van trying to avoid attention.
"But they're already HERE anyway."
The Brood's leader stared daggers at you.
"You fellas know how to shoot?"
"I've got a world record in Chrono Panic 4." One orc admitted.
"Good enough." Calan slipped a pistol out of its holster and tossed it to him. "Consider yourself conscripted."
The orc considered the gun warily. The gang's leader took it from him.
"The Wild Brood're tough. But we ain't jarheads. Dig?"
He shot the lock off the Providence van's door and then turned the gun on Captain Calan.
"Won't pretend it's noble of us, but I put more stake in livin' free than dyin' well. C'mon boys. The road's our home again."
The orcs piled into the car. They had the engine hotwired and revved in under four seconds.
The leader tossed the pistol out the window and gave Calan a mock salute before they sped away.
You and the captain exchanged a look.
"Might have to take you up on those ice cream men" He groused.
An explosion from behind you jerked both of your heads back to the raging battle. You expected to see an explosion, but instead a cloud of hazy white gas erupted over the EVOs' heads. Many of them were turning in on their own ranks, dividing the mob enough to slow the rush of runners leaking through the cordon.
More explosions heralded yet more clouds of choking smog. The EVOs caught inside them began to flail and paw at their itching skin. Shouts and cracks of snapping bone joined the noises of battle.
Then the crowd split, revealing quite possibly the largest human being you had ever laid eyes on. He wore a set of heavy riot gear, except because his chest was so massively broad, he wore two strapped together front to back like an apron. In each huge hand, he carried a grenade launcher. He turned and fired them to provide cover for a small band of similarly outfitted prisoners to push their way safely through the swarm.
He spotted Calan and through the lenses of his mask, his eyes took on a wolfish gleam.
"So Providence DID bother to show up."
Calan groaned.
"Oh god not him."
"No glory for Black Knight's lapdogs today. Hunter Cain rescues himself."
- - - - - - - - - -
The man in the green jacket faced off against Greta and Gunther, who for their part were still looking very puzzled.
"That's enough. Stand down now, and I won't pursue you."
Gunther snorted. "You really 'spect us to believe that? We heard what Providence does to us EVOs."
"And THEY was the ones what went trespassin' in the first place!" Greta added.
"That was your only out." Said Green Jacket.
Gunther took a swipe, only for Green Jacket to catch his claws against his crossed blades and deliver a savage kick to the groin. Gunther collapsed as all the air left his lungs at once.
Greta threw another car at him while his back was turned. The agent's blades flashed once and it too fell apart in halves. But Greta had learned from the first time. She used the car as cover to disguise a leaping slam Green Jacket only barely rolled away from. Her fist-first landing split a gaping fissure through the asphalt. He didn't waste a moment slicing Greta's achilles tendons out from under her before stamping down on her scaly throat.
If Izzy fought like a caged tiger, this man was a violence machine.
"Watch out! They heal quickly!" Daphne called.
Green Jacket whipped about to block a sucker punch from Greta, ankles freshly knit back together. One of his swords went sailing out of his grip, but he kept a firm grip on the other and his defense held.
"Good to know." Said Green Jacket.
Shouting from the sidelines didn't exactly feel great, but things had escalated to the point where the best thing Daphne could probably do was to stay out of his way and keep the camera rolling.
Dethklok seemed to have long since come to the same conclusion. They had braved the wreckage of their limo and were passing around a bottle salvaged from the minibar.
Green Jacket hacked hunks of flesh away from Greta. She tried to claw open his belly, and lost an arm for it. She grabbed his collar and tried to pin him to the ground--and promptly lost her leg privileges below the knee. When out of desperation, she attempted to swipe at him with her tail, he severed that, and left a very indignant torso snapping at his ankles.
"Don'tchu dare lay a finger on my momma!"
"Look out!" Daphne cried belatedly.
Gunther had recovered from his 'sensitive' injury and slithered up behind the agent. He wrapped him in a crushing bear hug too tight for him to use his sword.
Suddenly, Izzy popped up with a handspring and sprinted across six lanes in a red headed blur. She caught Gunther's tackle over her shoulder and brought him crashing to the ground in a bizarre hybrid of aikido and football tackle.
Daphne was a karate gal herself, but she knew enough about the principles of jujutsu to recognise that the bizarre pretzel leg lock Izzy deployed into was leveraging Gunther's own EVO strength against him. That left her arms free to immobilize his upper body in a sleeper hold. Plus she bit his ear off for good measure.
Izzy tightened the hold.
Gunther's tail thrashed like a whip against her back once, twice, and then he went slack.
"I thought your bones were broken." Green Jacket said.
"Oh right. I lied." Izzy giggled. "I went limp to disperse the damage."
"Way to go Izzy!"
Daphne stood up to congratulate her.
Only for an enormous scaly hand to clamp down around her trim waist. Not for the first time in her life, Daphne regretted dieting.
Grady Gator pressed her face against the shattered asphalt, glowering between Izzy and Green Jacket.
"I don't know where you came from, fancy boy," he growled, "but both of y'all stay right where you're standing."
- - - - - - - - - -
What must've been a full hundred vampire EVOs lay in incapacitated heaps across the prison's outer yard.
You didn't wanna think about how many more were unaccounted for. How many might've made it into the city to infect more people.
Calan had dispatched half his men to try and head off the runners before they made it into the outlying suburbs of nearby Youngstown. He was back on the radio arguing urgently with some bigwig on the other end. You caught the words "Bleach Order" thrown around a lot, and you were pretty sure it meant something way worse than dirty laundry.
That left you, Cain, and a skeleton crew of Providence grunts to try and hold back the Spankubeast's reserve forces.
The alpha EVO seemed to be directing them. It made a hideous gargle, and a wave of EVOs darted in to skirmish while it personally led a second group around to flank. With the Providence grunts pinned down, the Spankubeast turned and made a break for freedom. Its leathery wings unfurled and began to flap in tandem with each thunderous step it took. It was preparing for takeoff.
Hunter Cain leveled his grenade launcher. It made a hollow bloop! and spat a tumbling gas canister screaming for the Spankubeast's head. It used its oversized palms as brakes against the dirt, and jerked its ungainly body in a different direction. The grenade went wide.
"You missed." You said, pointing out the obvious.
"My aim's not the problem." Cain spat. "This 'less lethal' junk is too slow. Used to working with heavier ordinance."
You tried to put up a wall of flames around the creature, but it just shielded itself with its wings and barrelled through it. It was picking up speed again. Its feet left the ground as it began to take flight.
KRAKOOM!!
A massive ball of packed earth exploded into clods against its skull. The impact knocked it skidding onto its side, snapping several tree trunks in half.
Captain Calan looked up from his radio. Relief washed over his face.
"About time you showed up!"
A young man wearing jeans and an orange jacket straddled a tree stump. He was carrying… no, his entire arm WAS a high tech artillery piece approximately the size of a small sedan.
Even you knew who this guy was.
"Where the hell were you!?"
Agent Rex gave a shrug. "Offloading nanites at Purgatory Base. Hey, when you've gotta go, you've gotta go."
Rex saw Cain and narrowed his eyes.
"Jerk."
"Freak." Cain answered.
You guessed there was probably some bad blood there.
The cannon's mechanism slid back. An industrial scoop dug out another ball of packed dirt and loaded it into the barrel. It fired with a tremendous boom that nearly uprooted the surrounding trees. This time, the Spankubeast managed to shift so it was only a glancing blow.
"That's two nil for me on hits, by the way." Rex told Cain. "Who even let you have one of those anyway?" He indicated Cain's grenade launcher.
"Took 'em from the prison armory when the riot started."
"Aren't those USUALLY LOCKED?" You asked.
"I knock hard."
"So let's SHOW this THING the door."
Cain threw away his grenade launcher and retrieved two riot shields from his back. He slid one over each hand like a pair of massive knuckle dusters.
Four sets of fists machine-gunned the Spankubeast like an automatic piledriver. When it managed to thrash both of you off of itself, Rex forced it down again with a shot from his cannon.
Finally it had had enough. The Spankubeast unfurled its extra arms and caught the three of you flailing all of them at once. Cain got his shields up in time, which saved him, but rendered the bulletproof plexiglass into crystal powder.
It screeched in absolute fury, spraying you where you lay with its foamy drool.
"Yeesh." Rex wiped his goggles with his sleeve. "Somebody's gotta learn how to say it, not spray it. Who was this guy?"
"My cellmate." Cain said.
"Well that explains the temper."
It lifted a fallen tree trunk and brought it down over your heads like a club. You spewed a gout of flame and burned the tree to ashes in its hands. It might've saved you from the tree, but the hands kept coming.
Cain executed an evasive combat roll, but you and Rex received stinging slaps across the face.
It roared its victory. Emboldened, the remaining thralls redoubled their attacks on the thinning Providence ranks.
"Ow." Rex rubbed his sore jaw.
"He had QUITE the BACKHAND even before he went FREAKY." You agreed.
"If you guys can get him pinned for long enough, I can cure him." Rex said. "Unless 'Kill 'Em All' Cain wants to object."
Cain found his discarded grenade launcher and loaded another canister. "Won't work." He grunted. "But I'll give you one chance, kid. Guess I owe him that much."
Rex blinked.
"Seriously? Thought you'd be harder to convince."
"Can we GET ON with it already?!"
Cain fired a gas grenade at the ground right in front of it. You used that as cover to tackle it through the blinding cloud. You could only pin two of its many hands, and deflecting their slaps while straddling the writhing monster wasn't a feat you could keep up forever.
Luckily, you weren't alone.
Rex appeared at its head, his fists ballooned into metal boxing gloves. He wrapped them around its flailing proboscis mouth and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.
Sweat beaded on his brow.
You could hear that frantic pulsing beep you'd first heard when the Count went EVO. A circuit board pattern lit up across its flesh from where Rex's hands made contact.
For a second, the thing went totally still. Maybe it was your imagination, but you thought, maybe, its eyes got a little more human.
But then the beeping faltered. Rex fell back clutching his head.
Holding out any hope had been a mistake, and now it came crashing down over your head.
The thing looked at you with its stupid hateful eyes.
You hated it right back.
You hated what this whole stupid world had turned into while you were gone.
There had not been nanites before. You knew that. Or monsters like these. Or questions you didn't have the answers to. Or prisons this gray and hopeless. Or friends who left you. Or conflicts that couldn't be solved with a big dumb robot and an evil plot.
The world had done nothing but take and take and take from you ever since you woke Grandfather up.
It wasn't so much that it was this creature's fault as that it was there.
Before you even knew what you were doing your whole body was on fire and you were throttling its neck in your hands. Your hate seared the skin as easily as melting the wax from a dripping candle.
It tried to slap at you but your radiant temperature just burned its arms away without you having to so much as lift a finger.
It felt so fragile now, it was almost funny the way you'd struggled with the thing before.
"Hey, hey!!" Something shook your shoulder. Rex's big metal hands were glowing white hot as he fought through the heart of your flames. "No chingues! Are you crazy!? You're gonna kill him!"
Rex's metal fingers wrapped around your torso and tore you off the half-dead EVO. He threw you to the ground before his mechanical limbs finally overloaded and melted into hot puddles of molten scrap.
"Ow! Ow! Hot! Ow!"
Rex flapped his human hands frantically.
You realized that the entire forest was on fire.
"Did.. DID I do that?" You asked softly.
Your flames died as you took in what you'd done completely unconscious of your actions.
"You shouldn't've stopped him." Cain said. "He was doing his friend a mercy. If I ended up like that I'd expect the same."
Rex's whole body was trembling. "I just don't understand… I.. I mean it's failed before, but that backlash. It's like, not only were his EVOs undoing the cure, they were trying to corrupt MINE too. I have to-- If I can--"
Cain punched him in the face.
"Kid, give it a rest." He said. "You're a punk. But you're not stupid. When was the last time you got your little trick to work on something that rejected it?"
Cain pulled you to your feet.
"This is gonna end one of two ways." He said. "You can finish it now, or Providence gets a new lab rat. Which is it gonna be?"
"Well I.." You flounder.
Spankulot was your friend. Is, if he was still in there. There weren't a whole lot of people other than you who remembered how it used to be. Even if he rejected it now.
So did that mean you were obliged to try to save him? Or to spare him from something worse?
You'd seen Providence's labs firsthand, and it hadn't been pretty.
THREAD VOTE:
Select one of the following:
[ ] Keep Spankulot alive
He will be rescinded into the custody of the authorities--whoever that may be. You have no guarantees for how he will be treated.
[ ] Put him out of his misery
Just… end it quickly.
VOTE WILL BE CALLED IN 24 HOURS
THERE WILL BE A 12 HOUR MORATORIUM
- - - - - - - - - -
Green Jacket's hand stayed firmly on his sword, and Izzy's on the handle of her combat knife. But neither made a move.
Daphne squirmed as hard as she could. She even managed to get a hand free, but against a creature that weighed as much as a car, it wasn't worth a lot.
"That's reaaal good. You get the picture. Now I'm gonna take my kin, an' this here meddlin' kid for insurance, and I'm gonna head on back into the swamp to have a nice long chat with her about some old mem'ries."
Frustration welled up in her belly. She hated this. Feeling helpless. Danger Prone Daphne, back in the clutches of the monster of the week. She'd left Mystery Inc in part to get away from that. Now here she was back at the scene of a crime she'd already solved being menaced by the same rogue's gallery of petty crooks hopped up on ghoul stories.
"Why do you have to do this?!" She demanded. "It's like you people are stuck in a loop! I'm sorry for what I did to your town. Maybe we should have known better to leave it alone. But we were kids. And being a monster again isn't going to bring your old life back."
Grady's hand pressed harder on her back. It was getting difficult to breathe. Daphne looked to Dethklok for help, who collectively shrugged.
"I think you've got it all mixed up, missie. End of the day, the town was just an excuse. Bein' a monster was the best thing that ever happened to us. Bunch a backwater yokels, shoot, nobody listens to them. But if people are afraid of you… well… That's some kinda power. Almost makes me grateful, settin' us up to become the real thing."
Daphne's eyes widened. And not just from the pressure popping them out of her skull.
"W.. hat do you.. mean…"
Her hand groped across the ground desperately searching for something, anything. Her fingers found cold metal. The sword Green Jacket had lost.
"Meddling as ever, ain'tche?" He smiled wide as anything. "Well alright. I met a man in prison. Real smart fella. Said he had a way to get me loose if I'd volunteer for a lil experiment. Not that you'll ever get to the bottom of that one."
Grady paused.
"Funny. And here I thought what the Freak did to your little boyfriend would've taught you what happens to people who don't mind their own damn business."
Her last gasps of air left Daphne's lungs as a roar of anger. She drove Green Jacket's sword into the soft part of his snout as far as it would go and held it there.
"Magnets.." She croaked.
Thankfully, Green Jacket got the picture.
He held his blade out in front of him. Daphne could feel her half trying to rip free of Grady's face as the gator man redoubled his efforts to crush her flat in earnest. Daphne grit her teeth and held it in. In the next half second, she knew her ribs were going to buckle.
Green Jacket let his sword pull him through the air like Thor's hammer. He converted the momentum into a graceful flying kick, his polished boot cracking against the side of Grady's face.
Four quick flashes of steel severed the EVO's limbs just like Greta's.
Daphne scrabbled out from under his now dismembered arm panting and gasping for breath.
"Omigosh I almost died…"
Izzy patted her shoulder. "Hey, do it enough and it gets better. Like I'm pretty sure I'm immune to concussions now!"
Green Jacket glanced between the incapacitated Gators. Gunther was still passed out, but Gerta and Grady were spitting mad and slowly but surely regrowing their severed limbs from stumps.
"Holiday. We've got three class 5 regenerators. Please advise."
He cupped his earpiece.
"..."
Green Jacket tentatively reached for his sword.
"Understood. I'm sorry."
He planted a foot on Grady's chest to hold him steady and lined up the edge of his blade with the EVO's thick neck.
"Wait!!" Daphne grabbed hold of his arm. "They're still people! I thought Providence prioritized curing and containing before.. you know."
Green Jacket's sword wavered.
"I'm not Providence."
"Huh??" Izzy pointed at the Providence issue helicopter above their heads. "But the--"
"Complicated." Green Jacket cut her off. "We don't have the resources to cure, or contain, and the real thing is… otherwise occupied. And will be for too long to risk an escape."
"Oh.." Daphne let go of his arm. She looked away.
Once upon a time, the Gator family had been desperate people driven to do something extreme to make ends meet. She knew too many like them back in Crystal Cove.
"I know it's a tough call." For a second, it almost sounded like his voice softened.
"Not to me, chop his fuckin' head off!" Said Pickles from the peanut gallery.
"Gimme the sword, I'll do it!" Murderface shouted. "It'll be like fuckin' Braveheart."
"Yous means Highlanders."
"THEY DID IT IN BRAVEHEART TOO!"
A glare from Green Jacket shut them all up.
"Sometimes in this line of work, we take on necessary evils." He told Daphne.
"NOT TODAY WE DON'T!!"
The air filled with the sound of a second set of chopper blades.
They watched warily as an iphone-white drone descended from the sky. Its green and black LCD face smiled happily down at them. Speakers blared triumphant music to herald its arrival.
"HAVE NO FEAR LAW ABIDING CITIZENS!" Said the all-too-chipper voice. "ON-THE-SPOT EVO CONTAINMENT, COURTESY OF THE ONE, THE ONLY, THE MARVELOUS SUPERJAIL!"
Mechanical arms snaked out from the drone's body, scooping all three of the prone Gators into one big wire mesh net.
"Wait! On whose authorization?" Green Jacket demanded.
If screens could sweat, the drone would fill virtual buckets.
"UM…" It said. "UH OH! ANOTHER CRIMINAL AT LARGE NEEDS APPREHENDING! FAREWELL LAW ABIDERS!"
It zipped away as fast as its tiny propeller could carry it.
They watched it go in frank befuddlement.
Green Jacket tapped his comm again.
"Situation sorted itself out. Remains to be seen if it's for the better. Keep the chopper warm. I'm coming up."
He turned back to Daphne. He pointed at her dropped camera. She'd entirely forgotten about it.
"Have you been recording this?" He asked.
"Nope!" Izzy cut in. "No siree!"
His eyes narrowed behind his impenetrable glasses. He considered them both.
"Good." He said. "Wouldn't want to have any problems."
The chopper dropped a ladder, which he mounted.
"Hey wait!" Daphne cried. "Just who are you?"
His face remained inscrutable. Finally, he answered her.
"...Six."
The chopper withdrew.
"Fucking. Brutal." Nathan repeated himself.
He locked eyes with Izzy. "Hey. Could you have broken that thing's neck?"
Izzy shrugged. "Yeah probably?"
"Would you be willing to like. Come into the studio and kill stuff for us? Bears. Wolves. Sacrificial goats. That sort of thing. I need a sound library of strangled death screams for the next album."
"Yeah why not, I get weekends off." Izzy said.
"Cool, cool. I haven't been feeling it lately. But tonight really got the creative juices flowing." Nathan scratched the back of his head. "Hey, other redhead. You were lying to that fed guy right? If you've got a recording I'll pay you for it."
"Oh ya, we're like. The world's seventh largest economy." Pickles agreed.
"Yeah, SUCK it France!" Murderface added. "We're richer than your cultural heritage having, artisanal cheese exporting asses."
Daphne pulled Izzy aside. "Excuse us for a minute. Girl talk."
"What's up?" Izzy asked.
"Six was giving us a pretty unsubtle hint he didn't want people to know he was here." Daphne said in a hushed whisper. "He showed us some trust by not confiscating the camera. I think we should make good on it."
Izzy frowned. "Huh yeah. See where you're coming from. But Dethklok's like, the super extra biggest band ever and also a cult. And practically its own country. We'd be burning a PREEETTY huge bridge for AdultCo. Normally I'm very pro burning stuff, but aren't you supposed to be helping us grow Miss Media Manager?"
She had a point.
Well Daphne Blake. Your first big decision at AdultCo awaits.
Select one of the following.
[ ] Sell Dethklok The Footage
Result: +3 Funds. Izzy's I Wanna Be Famous bonus permanently applies to Diplomacy actions against Dethklok and their fans. The public learns about Providence's failure to show up for this EVO attack, and about Six's splinter group. ??? may take steps to cover their tracks.
[ ] Bury The Footage
Result: Dethklok is disappointed. Six will be grateful. Providence will save face. The trail stays fresh.
VOTE WILL BE CALLED IN 24 HOURS
THERE WILL BE A 12 HOUR MORATORIUM
In plain English, the prison was careening towards heck in a handbasket.
Gunfire, screams, the roar of your flames, and the ringing slap of dozens of clawed hands against tender flesh left little space for you to even think. Once the Spankubeast had turned the first guard, the problem had spread exponentially. You could handle yourself against the vampire EVOs just fine, but you couldn't be everywhere at once. Two became four became eight became sixteen and now there was a veritable army of infected inmates, guards, and prison staff on the prowl.
Turning the corner, you spotted what remained of a poor watchman. He bounded towards you on all fours, shedding the shredded remains of his uniform as he pounced. His greedy mouth opened to reveal far too many fangs for its size.
Raising your hand, you blasted the vampire out of the air like a clay pigeon at a skeet shoot. Your flame enveloped him, scorching his body and sending him writing to the ground in an effort to extinguish itself. It took a concentrated effort to keep the temperature just hot enough to hurt without killing him. Holding back was frustrating. And when your powers worked off your emotions, that made for a pretty risky feedback loop. You felt your unchecked anger stoke the flames dangerously high and scrambled to reign it back in before you accidentally incinerated someone.
Furious adrenaline wasn't the only thing welling up inside you. To be honest, you weren't sure what you were supposed to feel.
You'd lost a friend, but worse; before he turned, he'd rejected everything good and Adult you'd ever believed in. Spankulot had been so ashamed of himself he thought he deserved to rot here in this awful place. By extension, he must have thought the same about you.
No. Nevermind. You pushed such troubling thoughts aside. Right now, you needed to handle the mess you'd made.
The Spankubeast wasn't difficult to track. Its rampage left an obvious trail of warped metal, gouged concrete, and spank-happy monster men.
Speaking of which…
You flew ahead of a big burly one menacing a group of prisoners, but even as the heat of your fiery aura drove that one off, another burst out of an air duct behind you and dragged a prisoner kicking and screaming into the vents. You quickly welded the grate shut. But that gave the first monster an opportunity to turn another prisoner before scampering away. The survivors huddled in your shadow for protection. You weren't sure how much you could really offer.
"There's too many of 'em to fight." The one armed TV static man you saw earlier observed. "Can't you blast us a way outta here, shadowman?"
"Oh SURE! And let all the FREAKY vampires have the run of the ENTIRE city!" You crossed your arms. "I gotta answer to the government now. Pass."
One of the orc gangbangers snorted. "Bet it's easy to make that call when you're immune."
You'd been slapped multiple times tangling with the rampaging EVOs. It still stung where the Spankubeast had gotten you with its opening suckerpunch. Somehow, you were still yourself.
"Hey, pal. It's only 'cause of that I'VE been able to step in and save YOUR keisters." You fired back. "And what with how you were treating MY buddy back there in the lunchroom, maybe I oughta LEAVE your sorry green butt for him to SPANK!"
The static man interceded between the two of you.
"Hey, now. We're civilized people. Ain't no need to carry on like a bunch of ignorant thugs." He pointed down the hall the opposite direction from where the EVO vampire had fled. "My boys and I've been working on a little escape plan for a while now. If you can get me through the mess hall into the rec room, I can get us outta here without any of those things followin'."
Well, it was a plan at least. But if escaping was your only priority, you could've done that on your own. Who knew how many others were still trapped in here? And why did you even care??
The thought of that guard sacrificing himself to save your life flashed through your head again and again. Ugh. All that hero worship must've been getting to you. You were even starting to think heroic thoughts.
You pushed that internal crisis into the same corner of your mind you stuffed the last one.
"FINE." You told Mr. TV Static. "Let's GET outta here."
As you broke into the mess hall, the first thing you saw was patient zero. The Spankubeast screeched in idiot joy, its fleshy-tendril mouth flailing triumphantly as it wailed on two victims at once with its blunt palms. The EVO's imprecise blows sent bolted down tables flying through the air and splattered trays full of half-eaten food across the ceiling as its many limbs flailed. It turned to face you, its twitching mouth tasting the air.
You'd half-hoped you'd be able to avoid this.
It dropped its mutating playthings in the middle stages of their transformation and let out a ferocious roar.
"GO!" You shouted at the prisoners. "I'll handle Spankul-- The monster."
The Spankubeast stalked forward, its huge head swaying back and forth as excited drool dripped from its fangs. It stopped right across from you--staring you down but not yet striking. Instead, it waited for a moment, before letting out another shriek. Every piece of unbroken glass in earshot cracked. The prisoners you'd been escorting clasped their hands over their ears as they sprinted for the rec room. You braced for it to strike. But the Spankubeast did not.
Why?
The two newly transformed EVOs stepped out in front of it. Were they protecting it? Like soldier ants defending their queen? No, that didn't seem quite right. It was more like…
A challenge.
Rolling up your shadowy black sleeves to reveal arms of pure blazing fire, you stepped forward. It was time to put.
Your.
Foot.
DOWN.
You stomped the ground, shattering a meteoric crater into the concrete which then erupted into a great flaming geyser. The vampiric thralls were launched halfway through the ceiling, their legs dangling uselessly kicking air.
You marched determinedly out of the flames.
"ALRIGHT. Listen here, Spankulot," you said, jabbing a finger at the shambling thing. It reared away like a cornered animal.
A small hope lit up inside you as it reacted to hearing its name. No. Wishful thinking. You'd paid enough attention to Black Knight's lecture--it was basically an animal. It was probably just going off your tone. Even still…
"I DON'T care if you're some SORTA big scary monster!" You continue. "I said I was gonna bring you BACK to normal, and I MEANT it!"
Its mouth lashed out at you like a whip. You caught it, and squeezed. It recoiled from your flaming grip. It wasn't looking at you anymore. Now it was glancing frantically about for an escape.
"OH NO you don't!"
You took a running tackle. Too late. It scampered up the wall and across the ceiling into another part of the prison.
Much as you wanted to go after it, you had another priority. If you were gonna play along with the hero act, you were gonna do it right.
You dashed into the rec room. The head orc was fumbling with a screwdriver shiv to unfasten a set of metal bars bolted over a wall mounted TV. Evidently, being whittled to a deadly point did no favors for the tool's functionality.
You made a finger gun and melted the bars.
"So WHY are we huddled around the TELLY-vision? Is your BIG plan to DISTRACT the monsters with cartoons?"
"Never heard of White Noise, huh? Guess I've been on the inside too long." The static man reached out and touched the screen. "I'm the reason they put the bars up."
The TV lit up with flickering snow. It rippled like the surface of a pond.
One by one, White Noise helped the inmates step through the glass.
Then he paused.
He'd left you and the orcs for last.
His featureless face was unreadable, but you had a pretty good idea when you were being scrutinized.
"Hey, fuzzface. What's the holdup?" The orc leader bristled.
"I said I'd get us out. Us meanin' my people." He turned to you. "You, I can't speak for. But as for you Wild Brood… I seen some of you without your masks on. Any damn fool who deals in race mixing is not my people."
You and the orcs both got the picture. You raced to grab him, but before you even took a step White Noise had vanished into the static. The TV went dead.
As if on cue, you heard a snarl from behind you. A pack of EVOs streamed through the doorway and across the walls and ceiling like a swarm of hungry locusts.
"That skinhead bastard played us like a freakin' jukebox!" The head orc swore.
He could blame White Noise all he wanted. He was a piece of work all right. But what'd you expected? YOU'D decided to play goody goody. YOU'D decided to try and do the right thing instead of sticking with what you knew. YOU'D decided to be a complete and total sucker. The temperature in the room steadily climbed by degrees.
You vented some of the excess heat by unleashing a searing jet of fire at the doorway. A wider jet than you'd intended. The head orc was blasted off his feet. He groaned, clutching the rubber mask half-melted to the side of his face.
His comrades shouted in alarm before rushing to his aid.
"Hey, cool it man!"
"He winged Odnarb!"
Well EXCUSE you for trying. They weren't making it any easier to concentrate. Forget them. They were probably all thinking about how to betray you too. Of course they were. How could you trust that ANYONE was on your side when the world had taken away the simple, sensible bounds of black and white and turned everything an ugly shade of gray.
Your flamethrower became less directed. Soon enough, you were just radiating flames in all directions, no longer caring WHAT or WHO you melted. All you knew was you had to get this searing anger OUT!
"Oh crap!"
"He's gonna blow!"
The Wild Brood scrambled to flip a heavy steel table for cover.
Sure enough, you erupted like a human volcano. The EVOs piling through the door were scattered like playing cards. So was most of the furniture in the rec room. And the bricks in the doorway. And the wall behind you.
The flames subsided and you stood there panting in the middle of your own smoldering crater.
The heavily damaged prison wall collapsed outwards. You blinked through the last rays of the setting sun.
And the dozens of pairs of headlights which formed the enormous vehicle blockade surrounding the entire prison.
Squads upon squads of men in what you recognised as Providence uniforms stared back at you. A man with a scar across his eye wearing a slightly fancier outfit glanced to his men, then back to you, and then threw up his hands as though in surrender to the whims of fate.
"Well. I guess that decides our entry point."
- - - - - - - - - -
Orderly traffic descended into hapless panic as commuters tried to veer away from the ongoing carnage. Some did a u-turn and tried to flee back into oncoming traffic, triggering a chorus of screeching brakes, shouts, and fender benders. Others, not wanting to risk the pileup, simply abandoned their cars where they were and ran screaming down the road.
Izzy sidestepped Gunther Gator's charge and hammered him below the ribs with a Muay Thai elbow strike, only to be caught out by a haymaker from Greta.
Daphne winced as Izzy's body went sailing into the side of Dethklok's limo. The whole car rocked with the impact, nearly toppling over onto Daphne and the members of Dethklok hunkered down behind it.
"Oh man, did you guys see that?" Nathan said. "That's what our next album is missing. We need to do a song that's exactly as violent to people's ears as being in this fight. We could call it uhhhhh…."
"Gatorsklok?"
"Blood Bayou?"
"Rip Off Their Scales With Your Bare Fingers?"
"Call for help!"
Nathan rubbed his chin. "Not brutal enough. Now Scream For Help, that's pretty metal."
"No, I mean we have to get help!" Daphne said. "She's getting slaughtered out there."
Grady was still out cold draped over the hood of the limo, but Izzy was still outnumbered two on one. She was fighting like she really did have tiger's blood -- the manifold bruises on both Gators could attest to that -- but they were both much stronger than her, and up against their comic book healing factors there was no way to win a battle of attrition.
"Why's that our problem?" Asked Pickles, the drummer (doodily doo ding dong doodily doodily doo).
"Yeah!" Agreed Skwisgaar Skwigelf, Scandinavian demigod of rock. "Besides. I betsed six million dollars to Toki thats the crocogators would wins."
"Heys!! I nevers agreeds to that!" Toki whined.
A car alarm bleated and was silenced with a shriek of twisted metal as one of the Gators sent it hurtling through the air.
Daphne pinched the bridge of her nose. Oh god it was easier when she was working with actual teenagers.
"Look. There's three of them. And only one of her. And I think they're really hungry. Do the math."
Nathan counted on his fingers. "Oh shit. Guys I think she's right. Murderface, give her your Dethphone."
"What!? Why me!?"
"Because nobody likes talking to you, so you've got the most minutes left."
Murderface grumbled, but handed Daphne his phone. She tried to avoid cutting her fingers on the needlessly sharp decorative blades.
"I'll dial 9-1-1!" She said.
Nathan looked away. "Don't um. Do that."
"What, why?"
"I got rid of all the highway cops. Speeding is pretty metal. Why would I pay some guy to tell me not to do it?"
"Okay," Daphne struggled not to let the budding annoyance creep into her voice, "no biggie. You're the governor right? So.. we'll call the national guard."
Nathan scratched the back of his head.
"Oh jeepers.." Daphne buried her face in her hands.
"Look, they're in Syria. Okay? They've got this whole civil war thing over there, and I owed a friend a favor… it's complicated."
Suddenly, Daphne smacked herself in the forehead. "Providence! Duh!! Greta said they were EVOs! Why didn't I think of them sooner!?"
"Yeah, why didn't you?" Murderface said.
Daphne shot him a glare.
She dialed Providence's EVO emergency hotline and waited.
Daphne waited.
She waited.
"Well?" Pickles shook her shoulder. "C'mon, man! What's the holdup?"
She listened intently, pleading, praying for a voice.
She got a busy signal.
Izzy flopped like a ragdoll through both of the limosine's windows, showering Daphne and Dethklok with shards bulletproof glass. She landed in a jellied heap.
"Oh hi guys!!" She wheezed. "Haha, I think all my bones are powder."
"That so, hun?"
The limo's suspension creaked. And then its wheels left the ground.
Greta Gator held it aloft above her head.
"I think all y'all could use a little bit more tenderizin'."
She slammed the limo down like an enormous club.
The car came crashing to the ground.
In two pieces.
"Huh?"
It took Daphne a second to realize the buzzing in her ears was the sound of a helicopter overhead.
A tall man wearing shades and a green suit jacket dangled one-handed from a chopper of unmistakable Providence design. He extended an oddly shaped sword, and a similar blade shot up from between the two halves of the limo to rejoin its brother.
Izzy whistled. "Ooh.. Magnetic swords. Shiny."
Green Jacket dropped to the ground. He touched a comlink in his ear.
"Holiday. I've got seven civilians on the scene. One wounded. Three confirmed EVOs sighted. Two still active."
He released his comm.
"Any of you do that?" He gestured to the still slumbering Grady.
"All me, baby." Izzy slurred.
"Huh."
- - - - - - - - - -
You'd like to say Providence lived up to their reputation. You'd like to have watched them swoop in commando style with a crack team and a foolproof plan to save the day. But unfortunately the situation had spiraled too far out of anyone's control for that kind of decisive solution.
They'd tried to hold them at the breach as long as they could, but the sheer number of EVOs swarming through quickly proved to be impossible to stem. Worse, they found other exits. Vampire claws made short work of barred windows. Some found their way onto the roof and leapt to the ground.
Some untransformed prisoners fled out of the building ahead of them. But only a handful.
For every chokepoint that fell, more defenders were caught and transformed, reinforcing the ranks of your relentless enemy.
A mid-ranking grunt approached the scarred commanding officer.
"Captain Calan! We can't keep this up. We'll be out of men before the reinforcements get here."
"God…" Calan made a growling noise in the back of his throat. "FALL BACK!" He roared. "Back it up people! Maintain encirclement. I want a firing retreat to Position B!" He directed his men with urgent hand signals. "Nobody engages these things from closer 'n you can huck a grenade."
"WHAT about me?" You asked, feeling more than a little foolish.
Calan let out a sharp breath through his nose.
"Oh right. The big war hero. Yeah, I know better 'n to try and give orders to you self-directed types."
"SO…"
Calan pinched his brow. "Just use your best judgment and don't block our sightlines."
You were sort of hoping for a little more to go off of. Heroing did not, apparently, come naturally.
So you did the first thing your impulses told you to do and went to town on any EVO in sight. Your fists battered them back in twos and threes. It made you feel a little better. But their bodies crumpled just so easily. You needed a punching bag that offered a little more resistance.
Through the din of battle you heard the by now familiar roar of the Spankubeast. You ignited, and burst like a comet through the dense horde, your blazing trail igniting the grass of the prison yard in your wake. It turned in time to catch you right in the chest like a bullet to the heart. You kept going, tearing a skidding trench into the dirt with its disgusting body.
You hit it again and again until even its thick hide began to bruise. You didn't have any more words for the thing. It'd taken your friend. It was your friend. You'd done this to him. You didn't really care. In the moment, all you wanted to do was beat it until the boiling in your blood subsided.
Clawed hands raked your back. Your tunnel vision had kept you too focussed on the big one to remember its thralls. The vampires dogpiled you, biting and scratching with such intensity that you actually began to bleed even through the shadow suit.
"GEDDOF!"
You wrenched around and exploded into a ball of fire. Once the thralls had given you a wide enough berth, you returned to the Spankubeast, only to be greeted by an open palm racing towards your face.
WHAP!!!
You sailed like a shuttlecock over the growing mob of creatures. You landed as a tangle of shadowy limbs practically in Captain Calan's lap.
He barely looked at you before he continued shouting into his radio.
"...get me EVERYTHING on the East Coast. And when I say everything I mean EVERYTHING. If a janitor so much as knows how to hold a gun, I need them too. This whole situation is an unprecedented disaster waiting to happen. We have to shut this thing down, RIGHT the hell now."
The cordon was much thinner than it was before. The Providence troopers had been pulling further and further back to avoid coming into contact with the massing horde. More and more arrived by APC and helicopter every minute but even still new gaps kept appearing in their line as the vampires broke through and tore off into the woods that surrounded the prison.
"Christ. Where on Earth're the Black Pawns?!" Calan ran a hand through his hair. "Black Knight gives her special praetorian guard all the best training and toys and they're off lounging on some Mexican beach when it actually hits the fan. And our big gun's takin' his sweet time too! We're Providence! Can we not mobilize with a little bit of urgency?"
As he ranted, he slung his rifle off his shoulder and opened fire at a stray EVO making a break towards the city center. The heavy slug blew a hole into its side and it collapsed like a deflated balloon.
"Y'know, I could call in some of my people." You offered.
Calan squinted at you. "You got a PMC?"
"I've got some ICE CREAM men."
"I'll let you know when I get that desperate." Calan said. "Any bodies we add to this that don't know what they're doing are gonna turn into more hostiles."
An idea popped into your head. A little meanspirited, but you were sick and tired of pretending to be a hero tonight.
You pointed at the Wild Brood--covering behind a Providence van trying to avoid attention.
"But they're already HERE anyway."
The Brood's leader stared daggers at you.
"You fellas know how to shoot?"
"I've got a world record in Chrono Panic 4." One orc admitted.
"Good enough." Calan slipped a pistol out of its holster and tossed it to him. "Consider yourself conscripted."
The orc considered the gun warily. The gang's leader took it from him.
"The Wild Brood're tough. But we ain't jarheads. Dig?"
He shot the lock off the Providence van's door and then turned the gun on Captain Calan.
"Won't pretend it's noble of us, but I put more stake in livin' free than dyin' well. C'mon boys. The road's our home again."
The orcs piled into the car. They had the engine hotwired and revved in under four seconds.
The leader tossed the pistol out the window and gave Calan a mock salute before they sped away.
You and the captain exchanged a look.
"Might have to take you up on those ice cream men" He groused.
An explosion from behind you jerked both of your heads back to the raging battle. You expected to see an explosion, but instead a cloud of hazy white gas erupted over the EVOs' heads. Many of them were turning in on their own ranks, dividing the mob enough to slow the rush of runners leaking through the cordon.
More explosions heralded yet more clouds of choking smog. The EVOs caught inside them began to flail and paw at their itching skin. Shouts and cracks of snapping bone joined the noises of battle.
Then the crowd split, revealing quite possibly the largest human being you had ever laid eyes on. He wore a set of heavy riot gear, except because his chest was so massively broad, he wore two strapped together front to back like an apron. In each huge hand, he carried a grenade launcher. He turned and fired them to provide cover for a small band of similarly outfitted prisoners to push their way safely through the swarm.
He spotted Calan and through the lenses of his mask, his eyes took on a wolfish gleam.
"So Providence DID bother to show up."
Calan groaned.
"Oh god not him."
"No glory for Black Knight's lapdogs today. Hunter Cain rescues himself."
- - - - - - - - - -
The man in the green jacket faced off against Greta and Gunther, who for their part were still looking very puzzled.
"That's enough. Stand down now, and I won't pursue you."
Gunther snorted. "You really 'spect us to believe that? We heard what Providence does to us EVOs."
"And THEY was the ones what went trespassin' in the first place!" Greta added.
"That was your only out." Said Green Jacket.
Gunther took a swipe, only for Green Jacket to catch his claws against his crossed blades and deliver a savage kick to the groin. Gunther collapsed as all the air left his lungs at once.
Greta threw another car at him while his back was turned. The agent's blades flashed once and it too fell apart in halves. But Greta had learned from the first time. She used the car as cover to disguise a leaping slam Green Jacket only barely rolled away from. Her fist-first landing split a gaping fissure through the asphalt. He didn't waste a moment slicing Greta's achilles tendons out from under her before stamping down on her scaly throat.
If Izzy fought like a caged tiger, this man was a violence machine.
"Watch out! They heal quickly!" Daphne called.
Green Jacket whipped about to block a sucker punch from Greta, ankles freshly knit back together. One of his swords went sailing out of his grip, but he kept a firm grip on the other and his defense held.
"Good to know." Said Green Jacket.
Shouting from the sidelines didn't exactly feel great, but things had escalated to the point where the best thing Daphne could probably do was to stay out of his way and keep the camera rolling.
Dethklok seemed to have long since come to the same conclusion. They had braved the wreckage of their limo and were passing around a bottle salvaged from the minibar.
Green Jacket hacked hunks of flesh away from Greta. She tried to claw open his belly, and lost an arm for it. She grabbed his collar and tried to pin him to the ground--and promptly lost her leg privileges below the knee. When out of desperation, she attempted to swipe at him with her tail, he severed that, and left a very indignant torso snapping at his ankles.
"Don'tchu dare lay a finger on my momma!"
"Look out!" Daphne cried belatedly.
Gunther had recovered from his 'sensitive' injury and slithered up behind the agent. He wrapped him in a crushing bear hug too tight for him to use his sword.
Suddenly, Izzy popped up with a handspring and sprinted across six lanes in a red headed blur. She caught Gunther's tackle over her shoulder and brought him crashing to the ground in a bizarre hybrid of aikido and football tackle.
Daphne was a karate gal herself, but she knew enough about the principles of jujutsu to recognise that the bizarre pretzel leg lock Izzy deployed into was leveraging Gunther's own EVO strength against him. That left her arms free to immobilize his upper body in a sleeper hold. Plus she bit his ear off for good measure.
Izzy tightened the hold.
Gunther's tail thrashed like a whip against her back once, twice, and then he went slack.
"I thought your bones were broken." Green Jacket said.
"Oh right. I lied." Izzy giggled. "I went limp to disperse the damage."
"Way to go Izzy!"
Daphne stood up to congratulate her.
Only for an enormous scaly hand to clamp down around her trim waist. Not for the first time in her life, Daphne regretted dieting.
Grady Gator pressed her face against the shattered asphalt, glowering between Izzy and Green Jacket.
"I don't know where you came from, fancy boy," he growled, "but both of y'all stay right where you're standing."
- - - - - - - - - -
What must've been a full hundred vampire EVOs lay in incapacitated heaps across the prison's outer yard.
You didn't wanna think about how many more were unaccounted for. How many might've made it into the city to infect more people.
Calan had dispatched half his men to try and head off the runners before they made it into the outlying suburbs of nearby Youngstown. He was back on the radio arguing urgently with some bigwig on the other end. You caught the words "Bleach Order" thrown around a lot, and you were pretty sure it meant something way worse than dirty laundry.
That left you, Cain, and a skeleton crew of Providence grunts to try and hold back the Spankubeast's reserve forces.
The alpha EVO seemed to be directing them. It made a hideous gargle, and a wave of EVOs darted in to skirmish while it personally led a second group around to flank. With the Providence grunts pinned down, the Spankubeast turned and made a break for freedom. Its leathery wings unfurled and began to flap in tandem with each thunderous step it took. It was preparing for takeoff.
Hunter Cain leveled his grenade launcher. It made a hollow bloop! and spat a tumbling gas canister screaming for the Spankubeast's head. It used its oversized palms as brakes against the dirt, and jerked its ungainly body in a different direction. The grenade went wide.
"You missed." You said, pointing out the obvious.
"My aim's not the problem." Cain spat. "This 'less lethal' junk is too slow. Used to working with heavier ordinance."
You tried to put up a wall of flames around the creature, but it just shielded itself with its wings and barrelled through it. It was picking up speed again. Its feet left the ground as it began to take flight.
KRAKOOM!!
A massive ball of packed earth exploded into clods against its skull. The impact knocked it skidding onto its side, snapping several tree trunks in half.
Captain Calan looked up from his radio. Relief washed over his face.
"About time you showed up!"
A young man wearing jeans and an orange jacket straddled a tree stump. He was carrying… no, his entire arm WAS a high tech artillery piece approximately the size of a small sedan.
Even you knew who this guy was.
"Where the hell were you!?"
Agent Rex gave a shrug. "Offloading nanites at Purgatory Base. Hey, when you've gotta go, you've gotta go."
Rex saw Cain and narrowed his eyes.
"Jerk."
"Freak." Cain answered.
You guessed there was probably some bad blood there.
The cannon's mechanism slid back. An industrial scoop dug out another ball of packed dirt and loaded it into the barrel. It fired with a tremendous boom that nearly uprooted the surrounding trees. This time, the Spankubeast managed to shift so it was only a glancing blow.
"That's two nil for me on hits, by the way." Rex told Cain. "Who even let you have one of those anyway?" He indicated Cain's grenade launcher.
"Took 'em from the prison armory when the riot started."
"Aren't those USUALLY LOCKED?" You asked.
"I knock hard."
"So let's SHOW this THING the door."
Cain threw away his grenade launcher and retrieved two riot shields from his back. He slid one over each hand like a pair of massive knuckle dusters.
Four sets of fists machine-gunned the Spankubeast like an automatic piledriver. When it managed to thrash both of you off of itself, Rex forced it down again with a shot from his cannon.
Finally it had had enough. The Spankubeast unfurled its extra arms and caught the three of you flailing all of them at once. Cain got his shields up in time, which saved him, but rendered the bulletproof plexiglass into crystal powder.
It screeched in absolute fury, spraying you where you lay with its foamy drool.
"Yeesh." Rex wiped his goggles with his sleeve. "Somebody's gotta learn how to say it, not spray it. Who was this guy?"
"My cellmate." Cain said.
"Well that explains the temper."
It lifted a fallen tree trunk and brought it down over your heads like a club. You spewed a gout of flame and burned the tree to ashes in its hands. It might've saved you from the tree, but the hands kept coming.
Cain executed an evasive combat roll, but you and Rex received stinging slaps across the face.
It roared its victory. Emboldened, the remaining thralls redoubled their attacks on the thinning Providence ranks.
"Ow." Rex rubbed his sore jaw.
"He had QUITE the BACKHAND even before he went FREAKY." You agreed.
"If you guys can get him pinned for long enough, I can cure him." Rex said. "Unless 'Kill 'Em All' Cain wants to object."
Cain found his discarded grenade launcher and loaded another canister. "Won't work." He grunted. "But I'll give you one chance, kid. Guess I owe him that much."
Rex blinked.
"Seriously? Thought you'd be harder to convince."
"Can we GET ON with it already?!"
Cain fired a gas grenade at the ground right in front of it. You used that as cover to tackle it through the blinding cloud. You could only pin two of its many hands, and deflecting their slaps while straddling the writhing monster wasn't a feat you could keep up forever.
Luckily, you weren't alone.
Rex appeared at its head, his fists ballooned into metal boxing gloves. He wrapped them around its flailing proboscis mouth and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.
Sweat beaded on his brow.
You could hear that frantic pulsing beep you'd first heard when the Count went EVO. A circuit board pattern lit up across its flesh from where Rex's hands made contact.
For a second, the thing went totally still. Maybe it was your imagination, but you thought, maybe, its eyes got a little more human.
But then the beeping faltered. Rex fell back clutching his head.
Holding out any hope had been a mistake, and now it came crashing down over your head.
The thing looked at you with its stupid hateful eyes.
You hated it right back.
You hated what this whole stupid world had turned into while you were gone.
There had not been nanites before. You knew that. Or monsters like these. Or questions you didn't have the answers to. Or prisons this gray and hopeless. Or friends who left you. Or conflicts that couldn't be solved with a big dumb robot and an evil plot.
The world had done nothing but take and take and take from you ever since you woke Grandfather up.
It wasn't so much that it was this creature's fault as that it was there.
Before you even knew what you were doing your whole body was on fire and you were throttling its neck in your hands. Your hate seared the skin as easily as melting the wax from a dripping candle.
It tried to slap at you but your radiant temperature just burned its arms away without you having to so much as lift a finger.
It felt so fragile now, it was almost funny the way you'd struggled with the thing before.
"Hey, hey!!" Something shook your shoulder. Rex's big metal hands were glowing white hot as he fought through the heart of your flames. "No chingues! Are you crazy!? You're gonna kill him!"
Rex's metal fingers wrapped around your torso and tore you off the half-dead EVO. He threw you to the ground before his mechanical limbs finally overloaded and melted into hot puddles of molten scrap.
"Ow! Ow! Hot! Ow!"
Rex flapped his human hands frantically.
You realized that the entire forest was on fire.
"Did.. DID I do that?" You asked softly.
Your flames died as you took in what you'd done completely unconscious of your actions.
"You shouldn't've stopped him." Cain said. "He was doing his friend a mercy. If I ended up like that I'd expect the same."
Rex's whole body was trembling. "I just don't understand… I.. I mean it's failed before, but that backlash. It's like, not only were his EVOs undoing the cure, they were trying to corrupt MINE too. I have to-- If I can--"
Cain punched him in the face.
"Kid, give it a rest." He said. "You're a punk. But you're not stupid. When was the last time you got your little trick to work on something that rejected it?"
Cain pulled you to your feet.
"This is gonna end one of two ways." He said. "You can finish it now, or Providence gets a new lab rat. Which is it gonna be?"
"Well I.." You flounder.
Spankulot was your friend. Is, if he was still in there. There weren't a whole lot of people other than you who remembered how it used to be. Even if he rejected it now.
So did that mean you were obliged to try to save him? Or to spare him from something worse?
You'd seen Providence's labs firsthand, and it hadn't been pretty.
THREAD VOTE:
Select one of the following:
[ ] Keep Spankulot alive
He will be rescinded into the custody of the authorities--whoever that may be. You have no guarantees for how he will be treated.
[ ] Put him out of his misery
Just… end it quickly.
VOTE WILL BE CALLED IN 24 HOURS
THERE WILL BE A 12 HOUR MORATORIUM
- - - - - - - - - -
Green Jacket's hand stayed firmly on his sword, and Izzy's on the handle of her combat knife. But neither made a move.
Daphne squirmed as hard as she could. She even managed to get a hand free, but against a creature that weighed as much as a car, it wasn't worth a lot.
"That's reaaal good. You get the picture. Now I'm gonna take my kin, an' this here meddlin' kid for insurance, and I'm gonna head on back into the swamp to have a nice long chat with her about some old mem'ries."
Frustration welled up in her belly. She hated this. Feeling helpless. Danger Prone Daphne, back in the clutches of the monster of the week. She'd left Mystery Inc in part to get away from that. Now here she was back at the scene of a crime she'd already solved being menaced by the same rogue's gallery of petty crooks hopped up on ghoul stories.
"Why do you have to do this?!" She demanded. "It's like you people are stuck in a loop! I'm sorry for what I did to your town. Maybe we should have known better to leave it alone. But we were kids. And being a monster again isn't going to bring your old life back."
Grady's hand pressed harder on her back. It was getting difficult to breathe. Daphne looked to Dethklok for help, who collectively shrugged.
"I think you've got it all mixed up, missie. End of the day, the town was just an excuse. Bein' a monster was the best thing that ever happened to us. Bunch a backwater yokels, shoot, nobody listens to them. But if people are afraid of you… well… That's some kinda power. Almost makes me grateful, settin' us up to become the real thing."
Daphne's eyes widened. And not just from the pressure popping them out of her skull.
"W.. hat do you.. mean…"
Her hand groped across the ground desperately searching for something, anything. Her fingers found cold metal. The sword Green Jacket had lost.
"Meddling as ever, ain'tche?" He smiled wide as anything. "Well alright. I met a man in prison. Real smart fella. Said he had a way to get me loose if I'd volunteer for a lil experiment. Not that you'll ever get to the bottom of that one."
Grady paused.
"Funny. And here I thought what the Freak did to your little boyfriend would've taught you what happens to people who don't mind their own damn business."
Her last gasps of air left Daphne's lungs as a roar of anger. She drove Green Jacket's sword into the soft part of his snout as far as it would go and held it there.
"Magnets.." She croaked.
Thankfully, Green Jacket got the picture.
He held his blade out in front of him. Daphne could feel her half trying to rip free of Grady's face as the gator man redoubled his efforts to crush her flat in earnest. Daphne grit her teeth and held it in. In the next half second, she knew her ribs were going to buckle.
Green Jacket let his sword pull him through the air like Thor's hammer. He converted the momentum into a graceful flying kick, his polished boot cracking against the side of Grady's face.
Four quick flashes of steel severed the EVO's limbs just like Greta's.
Daphne scrabbled out from under his now dismembered arm panting and gasping for breath.
"Omigosh I almost died…"
Izzy patted her shoulder. "Hey, do it enough and it gets better. Like I'm pretty sure I'm immune to concussions now!"
Green Jacket glanced between the incapacitated Gators. Gunther was still passed out, but Gerta and Grady were spitting mad and slowly but surely regrowing their severed limbs from stumps.
"Holiday. We've got three class 5 regenerators. Please advise."
He cupped his earpiece.
"..."
Green Jacket tentatively reached for his sword.
"Understood. I'm sorry."
He planted a foot on Grady's chest to hold him steady and lined up the edge of his blade with the EVO's thick neck.
"Wait!!" Daphne grabbed hold of his arm. "They're still people! I thought Providence prioritized curing and containing before.. you know."
Green Jacket's sword wavered.
"I'm not Providence."
"Huh??" Izzy pointed at the Providence issue helicopter above their heads. "But the--"
"Complicated." Green Jacket cut her off. "We don't have the resources to cure, or contain, and the real thing is… otherwise occupied. And will be for too long to risk an escape."
"Oh.." Daphne let go of his arm. She looked away.
Once upon a time, the Gator family had been desperate people driven to do something extreme to make ends meet. She knew too many like them back in Crystal Cove.
"I know it's a tough call." For a second, it almost sounded like his voice softened.
"Not to me, chop his fuckin' head off!" Said Pickles from the peanut gallery.
"Gimme the sword, I'll do it!" Murderface shouted. "It'll be like fuckin' Braveheart."
"Yous means Highlanders."
"THEY DID IT IN BRAVEHEART TOO!"
A glare from Green Jacket shut them all up.
"Sometimes in this line of work, we take on necessary evils." He told Daphne.
"NOT TODAY WE DON'T!!"
The air filled with the sound of a second set of chopper blades.
They watched warily as an iphone-white drone descended from the sky. Its green and black LCD face smiled happily down at them. Speakers blared triumphant music to herald its arrival.
"HAVE NO FEAR LAW ABIDING CITIZENS!" Said the all-too-chipper voice. "ON-THE-SPOT EVO CONTAINMENT, COURTESY OF THE ONE, THE ONLY, THE MARVELOUS SUPERJAIL!"
Mechanical arms snaked out from the drone's body, scooping all three of the prone Gators into one big wire mesh net.
"Wait! On whose authorization?" Green Jacket demanded.
If screens could sweat, the drone would fill virtual buckets.
"UM…" It said. "UH OH! ANOTHER CRIMINAL AT LARGE NEEDS APPREHENDING! FAREWELL LAW ABIDERS!"
It zipped away as fast as its tiny propeller could carry it.
They watched it go in frank befuddlement.
Green Jacket tapped his comm again.
"Situation sorted itself out. Remains to be seen if it's for the better. Keep the chopper warm. I'm coming up."
He turned back to Daphne. He pointed at her dropped camera. She'd entirely forgotten about it.
"Have you been recording this?" He asked.
"Nope!" Izzy cut in. "No siree!"
His eyes narrowed behind his impenetrable glasses. He considered them both.
"Good." He said. "Wouldn't want to have any problems."
The chopper dropped a ladder, which he mounted.
"Hey wait!" Daphne cried. "Just who are you?"
His face remained inscrutable. Finally, he answered her.
"...Six."
The chopper withdrew.
"Fucking. Brutal." Nathan repeated himself.
He locked eyes with Izzy. "Hey. Could you have broken that thing's neck?"
Izzy shrugged. "Yeah probably?"
"Would you be willing to like. Come into the studio and kill stuff for us? Bears. Wolves. Sacrificial goats. That sort of thing. I need a sound library of strangled death screams for the next album."
"Yeah why not, I get weekends off." Izzy said.
"Cool, cool. I haven't been feeling it lately. But tonight really got the creative juices flowing." Nathan scratched the back of his head. "Hey, other redhead. You were lying to that fed guy right? If you've got a recording I'll pay you for it."
"Oh ya, we're like. The world's seventh largest economy." Pickles agreed.
"Yeah, SUCK it France!" Murderface added. "We're richer than your cultural heritage having, artisanal cheese exporting asses."
Daphne pulled Izzy aside. "Excuse us for a minute. Girl talk."
"What's up?" Izzy asked.
"Six was giving us a pretty unsubtle hint he didn't want people to know he was here." Daphne said in a hushed whisper. "He showed us some trust by not confiscating the camera. I think we should make good on it."
Izzy frowned. "Huh yeah. See where you're coming from. But Dethklok's like, the super extra biggest band ever and also a cult. And practically its own country. We'd be burning a PREEETTY huge bridge for AdultCo. Normally I'm very pro burning stuff, but aren't you supposed to be helping us grow Miss Media Manager?"
She had a point.
Well Daphne Blake. Your first big decision at AdultCo awaits.
Select one of the following.
[ ] Sell Dethklok The Footage
Result: +3 Funds. Izzy's I Wanna Be Famous bonus permanently applies to Diplomacy actions against Dethklok and their fans. The public learns about Providence's failure to show up for this EVO attack, and about Six's splinter group. ??? may take steps to cover their tracks.
[ ] Bury The Footage
Result: Dethklok is disappointed. Six will be grateful. Providence will save face. The trail stays fresh.
VOTE WILL BE CALLED IN 24 HOURS
THERE WILL BE A 12 HOUR MORATORIUM
Last edited:
Frankly Daphne, letting Six kill them would have been more humane.
- Location
- going at sufficient velocity
Well it hit the fan HARD this turn also we really should of seen Spankulot earlier maybe we could of avoided all this.
I say we kill Spankulot we can't cure him and his death will free all the others at least from their spankpirehood so no risk of spreading further and this will make Father grow after all can't have a Hero without tragedies striking them.
Also no on the recording we are probably on providence bad side already given the prison break.
I say we kill Spankulot we can't cure him and his death will free all the others at least from their spankpirehood so no risk of spreading further and this will make Father grow after all can't have a Hero without tragedies striking them.
Also no on the recording we are probably on providence bad side already given the prison break.
- Location
- USA
...well fuck. Rex is alive and free, if working for hyper bitch Black Knight.
Nnnnot sure anymore who 'won' VV Generator Rex now.
But Spanky... at best he's gonna be a monster for years. A cure will REQUIRE the Meta Nanites.
Nnnnot sure anymore who 'won' VV Generator Rex now.
But Spanky... at best he's gonna be a monster for years. A cure will REQUIRE the Meta Nanites.
BTW I wanna sell the Foitage, entirely because i dont wanna dissapoint Nathan.
- Location
- going at sufficient velocity
Is editing the footage to only show Izzy kicking ass an option?
Lifeandlice
Practitioning side-character
- Location
- Usa
Yoooo this was amazing, but unfortunately this was tense enough I feel I gotta move on to the choices rather than ramble about the very effective writing.
SpankuBeast: I think ultimately, even disconnected from Father's connection to him, he's too dangerous to be left alive. The corrupting nature of the spank vampire mixed with the Nanites proves to be damn hard to stop and I can't bring myself to believe that Rex could cure him/them with anything less than the Cure wave or that Providence would treat ol Spanks well.
Footage: I'm caught between here, but I'm thinking maybe bury it. Why? That trail staying fresh is probably Six's. If we could get our hands on a currently adrift Six and Holiday then that'd be down right amazing. We have resources starting to roll in and a giant hole in the ground that can be converted to holding cells if needs be.
SpankuBeast: I think ultimately, even disconnected from Father's connection to him, he's too dangerous to be left alive. The corrupting nature of the spank vampire mixed with the Nanites proves to be damn hard to stop and I can't bring myself to believe that Rex could cure him/them with anything less than the Cure wave or that Providence would treat ol Spanks well.
Footage: I'm caught between here, but I'm thinking maybe bury it. Why? That trail staying fresh is probably Six's. If we could get our hands on a currently adrift Six and Holiday then that'd be down right amazing. We have resources starting to roll in and a giant hole in the ground that can be converted to holding cells if needs be.
- Location
- USA
An excellent point. Six is one of the most dangerous normals on the entire planet, easily so. And Holiday a verified genius. Recruiting either to work for us, even part time since they arent gonna stop their main objective, would be a massive boon.
And even more tantalizingly, the two are effectively Rex's adoptive parents, making stealing him from Providences control viable.
Same situation there, we cant afford to NOT have Rex out fighting and curing EVOs, but the sheer potential OPTIONS there...
Thanks! Glad to hear people are liking my stuff.
- Location
- Hyperborea
[] Keep Spankulot alive
I don't want to give up on a friend, even if it's difficult.
[] Bury The Footage
I don't want to give up on a friend, even if it's difficult.
[] Bury The Footage
I suspect the trail is whoever turned the gator family into EVOs. I'd also prefer not publicly shaming Providence, their job is hard enough already.
Ohmaigah
Man be Vibin
- Location
- Ask Carmen Sandiego or Waldo
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You see, given how Providence has been getting their ass handed to them at nearly every turn, I'd say we should reveal the footage. Hopefully it'll kick their asses into high gear on getting their shit together. Also, Puma-Dyna has been their only single supporter looking back through the rival reports, so perhaps this might be the one true action they need to get more support from some of the other Kings in America.
PumaDyne doesn't care about Providence, they just got paid to build some tech.
- Location
- The Golden State
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sadly despite been our friend, currently there is no cure unless if there was there is no way of knowing if he is gonna come back as he was, or worse handing him over might turn him into their nefarious means. Ending his misery is something that we should do
Ohmaigah
Man be Vibin
- Location
- Ask Carmen Sandiego or Waldo
- Pronouns
- He/Him
ah. Still, point still stands. They uh..they're bad at their jobs
Lifeandlice
Practitioning side-character
- Location
- Usa
Alright so wanted to go ahead and share my thoughts on the secondary choice since I had more time to think about them. Please note that this is just my thoughts and I could be missing characters from the source material or evidence hidden in the text. As I am not privy to the secrets behind the curtain take what I say with a grain of salt and come to your own conclusions.
Upon further examination I'm thinking that the trail noted is not actually Six's, but instead that of the 'mystery smart man in jail' who experimented on the Grady's and turned them into Evos. Now I'll keep my thoughts to generator Rex as if I try to include other series geniuses who *might* be in jail it'll muddy the waters too much for me. Sticking to that only three characters come to mind as men that would have the genius, or general ability, to be able to experiment on nanites to this extent.
Van Kleiss, Caesar, or Moses.
I don't think I know a reason for Caesar to be in jail and I don't remember him being the type to make EVOs. Van Kleiss would probably be noted a bit more than just 'smart fella' and I doubt he'd be in a regular jail to begin with. That leaves Moses. Moses has both the know-how, being a genius who is good enough with nanites that he could both cure or make EVOs worse, and the willingness to do so, he used to make EVOs worse and sell them as bio-weapons.
If it is Moses he's a monster, morally and intellectually and we'd have to step into that conflict prepared for whatever EVO bio-weapon he'd keep on hand. However, and this is this bug thing for me, if it is him and we did track him down we'd probably have a choice. Moses is probably one of the biggest nanite experts in the world and probably incredibly smart generally aswell, wrangling him under our banner would be a serious boost or we could trade him in for massive rep and possible boost, or, the real kicker, try and see if we can use him as bait/a price for Holiday and Six. See Moses tried to sell Holidays sister as a bio-weapon, I don't know about you but I'd be pretty upset about that personally.
Upon further examination I'm thinking that the trail noted is not actually Six's, but instead that of the 'mystery smart man in jail' who experimented on the Grady's and turned them into Evos. Now I'll keep my thoughts to generator Rex as if I try to include other series geniuses who *might* be in jail it'll muddy the waters too much for me. Sticking to that only three characters come to mind as men that would have the genius, or general ability, to be able to experiment on nanites to this extent.
Van Kleiss, Caesar, or Moses.
I don't think I know a reason for Caesar to be in jail and I don't remember him being the type to make EVOs. Van Kleiss would probably be noted a bit more than just 'smart fella' and I doubt he'd be in a regular jail to begin with. That leaves Moses. Moses has both the know-how, being a genius who is good enough with nanites that he could both cure or make EVOs worse, and the willingness to do so, he used to make EVOs worse and sell them as bio-weapons.
If it is Moses he's a monster, morally and intellectually and we'd have to step into that conflict prepared for whatever EVO bio-weapon he'd keep on hand. However, and this is this bug thing for me, if it is him and we did track him down we'd probably have a choice. Moses is probably one of the biggest nanite experts in the world and probably incredibly smart generally aswell, wrangling him under our banner would be a serious boost or we could trade him in for massive rep and possible boost, or, the real kicker, try and see if we can use him as bait/a price for Holiday and Six. See Moses tried to sell Holidays sister as a bio-weapon, I don't know about you but I'd be pretty upset about that personally.
- Location
- USA
I honestly feel like killing him is a bit of a backslide.
"He changed, so I killed him." Not the most rational, but Father isnt the most rational individual.
"He changed, so I killed him." Not the most rational, but Father isnt the most rational individual.