Hello all and welcome to the newest/oldest installment of Chair Theatre. A reboot of a previous...
I want to play a different Game (TT/Lantern SI)
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Index - Chapter 1
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
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- He / Him / It
Hello all and welcome to the newest/oldest installment of Chair Theatre. A reboot of a previous story that I started without a clear path of where I wanted to go, and do and such. This time, the situation is different and hopefully I'll be able to get to and past where we left off which wasn't actually that far in. A link can be found here. Much thanks to Rokoran and Enohthree, the betas for the story. After the next chapter is posted, I'll post the summary beneath this paragraph, and the index under that. Please enjoy, leave a like if you wish.
Warning: The following story contains lovecraftian themes, violence, psychological trauma, and the occasional musical number.
Summary: A bargain with a dying eldritch being is struck. Become the next physical host of the incarnation in exchange for power, and a promise to defeat their hated foe. Join our hero as he stumbles through learning these powers, working with and against the cult that worshiped the eldritch being, and the many enemies it made. Fun times ahead!
Power at a Price
At first I'd thought it was a dream. The place was just so bizarre; a lake totally covered in fog, a white night sky with black stars, a crumbling city of yellow rock on an island underneath what looked to be a star in a permanent solar eclipse. I was sitting on a boat that seemed to be pulled by a long rope toward the island, stunned.
But then I noticed the pepsi soda can I'd had in my hand at the dinner table; the last thing I remembered before being here was with me, fizzing still. I drank, while watching the island grow slowly closer. The fog over the water was thick to the point that I couldn't even see the liquid underneath. There were particles of reflective metal in the water-clouds too, which coupled with the alien sky and strange city led me to believe that my sister had spiked my food with bath salts or something.
I really didn't want to wake up to find I'd ripped the skin off my hands; I needed that skin for important things like writing and eating and keeping younger sisters in line. A peculiar thing I noticed as the island grow closer, or at least larger, was that the rope did not appear to be going slack, indicating a device or person pulling it.
Long after my soda was drained, the boat was dragged onto the rocky shore. The sound of wood-on-stone grinding put my teeth on edge, as all scraping noises did, and I had to spend a second unclenching. Off the bow, the rope, now less than a foot long hung limp in the air, as if it had always been that short. No winch in sight, no people as far as the eye could see.
Standing up in boat, I could see the city in more detail; almost medieval in design, sloping roofs, short buildings, aside from the occasional tower, and cobbled streets. Nearby, there were statues of what looked to be bat-winged wasps with mammalian jaws rather than insect mandibles, and a lack of compound eyes; they looked to be placed helter-skelter around the shore. Perhaps it had been modern art's bizarre equivalent here.
Looking at them made my eyes hurt. Like I was watching an optical illusion or held my eyes crossed for a long time; a sustained ache that grew worse the longer I stared. Unlike such normal aches though, it vanished as soon as I was not watching the statues.
I was going to get up out of the boat to explore the town when I heard a noise on the still air: a pained wheezing. Freezing mid-step, I considered the evidence. Alien sky, plus freaky fog, plus bizarre statues, plus ruined town, plus wandering said ruined town equaled the exact reason white people died in movies. My large posterior met the boat seat once more.
It was so quiet. There was no wind, no crumbling rock, no splash of waves on the shore or boat; no sound at all except that which I made, and the pained wheezing from somewhere in the city.
And then I heard faint crunching noises, like someone walking on gravel. I looked around, but couldn't find the source at first - nothing seemed to be moving. It wasn't until the noise came again that I noticed.
Two of the statue's heads had turned to look directly at me.
In a burst of motion that would likely have been humorous to people watching, I left the boat and almost fell into the gravel. From there, I walked toward the city at a brisk shuffle all the while chanting "Nope" softly to myself. Not knowing the rules for the statue monsters, I tried to keep my eyes on them despite the ache, only blinking or looking away briefly to reset the pain.
There were no signs in the town, street, store, or otherwise. That made navigation a trifle difficult, but since my goal at the time was 'get away from those freaky things', I found the task manageable.
Then I found what I could only assume was a dead statue monster. Trapped under a pile of rubble, its head and one long leg exposed, but otherwise totally buried. From the scale of the head and leg, its size was comparable to a horse. A horse that had claws on the end of its limbs as long as my hand, and spikes along its mouth - like teeth made from its exoskeleton.
From my years of watching animal documentaries I could tell that the spikes formation was meant to bite and tear; to pull meat off rather than cut it. I left the corpse quickly, before its friends could catch up.
Fool that I was, I had forgotten the wheezing sound from earlier, and was surprised when I noticed how close it was. Deciding I was probably going to die anyway, from those statues chasing me down somehow, and desperately trying to convince myself this was a drug hallucination, I followed the noise into what could, at one point have been a fancy house.
Inside, on the second floor in a room facing out to the street below, was a mangled figure in yellow robes, slumped against the wall. Black ichor pumped from a hole in its flank, having left a trail from the balcony to its current placement. The figure's robes were hooded, so I couldn't see what its face was like, but I could see its hands: long, white, and with jagged nails.
"Sorry for the sudden summoning," it wheezed, coughing out black spittle onto the hem of its robes. "If time were not so vital, I'd have eased you into it. Given you visions of this place for a few days, let you adjust. Such as it is, we don't have the time for artistry."
I didn't say anything at first, walking into the room and standing opposite the slumped figure. From this angle I could see its lower jaw, forked and white-skinned with small tentacles covered in the black liquid curling like a wiggly beard and a lack of lips. "I figured. So what did you summon me for? Need something to eat to fix yourself up?"
The figure laughed. "My, but you're being understanding. Called to a foreign island in a foreign world... ah, if all my summons were as adaptable as you..." It laughed some more, which turned to a hacking cough, forcing a hand to its mouth to stop the black blood, for what else could it be, from going everywhere.
"I'm still not sure what to make of this place, and I'll probably freak out in a few minutes, but I'm still in shock right now. Safety in numbness." And from there, I arched a brow at the figure. "Should I call the space ambulance or something?"
"Nah," the figure flicked its coughing hand dismissively. "Too banged up for that. While I have you lucid, and I never thought I'd say that sentence with this tone, I'm going to make you a deal."
"Does the deal involve not getting eaten by those statue monsters?" Looking out over the balcony, I could see some at the end of the lane, peeking around buildings. "I'd like whatever deal we make to include that."
"Hmmm, a tough one, but I think I can wiggle that in somewhere." The figure nodded its head solemnly. "Look, let's not beat around the bush here, I need a new host. This one," the figure motioned to the oozing wound in its side, "is not going to be lasting much longer. And I need a host to do my job."
"How much control are we talking?" I rubbed my chin, knowing already that I was going to get the short end of the stick, but making use of the dulled emotional response to the situation I was having. "Will we have to share control of the limbs, am I going to stop existing outright?"
"When I say host, I mean more I'll be a passenger in you for a bit of time." It attempted to smile, but it's blackened needle teeth, like a goblin shark, made for poor reassurance. "While I fix myself up a bit. From there, it'd be a merger of sorts. We'd merge identities and become a new one."
"Reasonable," I nodded, electing to sit on the floor and maybe get a look at the creature's face. But under that hood there was no face, no nose, the only facial structure was a crest of bone jutting out above the top lip. "And what else do you want?"
"Typically we haggle over the first thing," it paused to cough into its hand again, "before moving on but hey I am not in the mood to argue. I have a score to settle with the guy who did this to me," it gestured again to the bleeding side. "And once we're feeling up to it, I'd like to tear his skull out and beat him to death with it in that order." That was a funny thing to say, and I almost laughed. But even the suppressed mirth put a crack in the safe numbness I had been working with.
The urge to laugh grew, as did the urge to panic.
"Also reasonable," I lied conversationally, grinning a bit too much to hide the coming freak out. "What promises can you make that after such a beating it wouldn't be me sitting where you are?"
It held up one finger, and set its mouth in a firm line. "I'm not going to fall for the same trick twice. Especially not one as simple as what put me here."
"Did you seriously fall for the 'hey, look over there' gag?" I sighed theatrically, guessing blindly - but from the indignant sputters the figure produced, I apparently hit the nail on the head which got me to actually start laughing. "What is this, amatuer hour?" A problem I'd always had was that once I started laughing, I couldn't stop.
"In my defense, it was a battle of cosmic scale. I didn't expect low brow ploys."
"Why would you not expect low brow ploys? Because apparently they work against people like you!" And then sudden stabbing pains in my head killed my laughter and pressure from all sides assaulted me as the figure pushed itself up and hissed through its teeth-
"Don't you talk down to me…."
"Is this how you negotiate all your deals?" I ground out, clutching my head. "Strong-arming the guy you're trying to convince?" The pressure released itself all at once, not from my convincing the figure but from another coughing fit taking over it. I removed my hands and took a deep breath to try and settle myself, putting the full bodied freak out off for a moment. "I have heard your terms, I could just go walk out there to be eaten by statues. What's in it for me?"
The figure, taking a moment to compose itself, smiled. "Power," it said with malicious glee. "Cosmic power."
"Power's nice. What else?" The smile vanished, replaced with a confused frown. "What else, good… sir, madam, blood fountain?"
"I… what else is there?" Without a word I stood up and made for the door briskly. "W-wait!" I probably shouldn't have been pushing my luck with someone who could casually summon people to alternate realities, but getting the most out of any potential bargain seemed prudent and I wanted to leave so badly. So I stopped in the doorway, crossed my arms and gave what was quite possibly a powerful cosmic being of some sort a bored look. I had to thank my teenager self who had practiced the art of hiding panic under a mask of derision. "What do you want if not power?" It looked genuinely puzzled.
"Power is nice. But it's not going to put food on the table, it's not going to make me happy, well it might when I need to put someone in their place, but the rest of the time no. For giving up my individuality and having to cart you around for who knows how long, I'm going to need more than power."
The puzzled expression on the figure's face turned to annoyance. "Do not try and rob me, mortal. You should be grateful I'm offering as much as I am." I smiled at him and waved.
"Bye then, going to get eaten by your friends while you bleed out on the floor. Have fun!" And I actually did leave the room and was halfway down the stairs when what could only be a minor earthquake happened, accompanied by another splitting headache. I could feel words howl through the ache into my brain, as if they were being etched into my skull.
NAME YOUR TERMS.
I stayed there on the stairs, coming to terms with what I was doing. I was toying with a being that had magic that was possibly some form of alien god, that could just casually make earthquakes and talk to people in their minds while being close to death. And it was working.
"I really should just run," I whispered to myself, straightening up with great effort. "The worst those things can do is eat me… I think."
When I got back to the room, all sign of mirth had left the slumped figure, which glared at me with its blank face. "Time was, all you mortals cared about was power."
"And look where that got them," I snapped, just as irritated. "Now, terms. Item one, that power we agreed on. Preferably in bite sized chunks so I don't explode and make this whole thing moot." The figure nodded stiffly. "Item two, I keep my independence for as long as you can keep the merger from starting. Want to have a nice long time to enjoy my half of this exchange."
"Half he says as he dictates," a cough interrupted it there, and it didn't bother to cover its mouth, black going down the front of its yellow robes. "To someone on the brink."
"You summoned me; if you wanted someone more pliable, you should have summoned them! Word on the street is I'm an asshole." My hands were shaking, I was seriously considering just running rather than continuing to push my luck. "Next on the list, I'm going to need some minions to help out with this and maybe explain what this eldritch pregnancy will do to me."
"That's part of the 'becoming me' package, it's by default that you get all my worshippers and underlings." It wasn't capitalizing on my weakness, which I couldn't tell was from how good I was hiding the feelings, or how desperate the figure was.
"See if you had included that in the earlier pitch we could have made so much more progress by now." The snarling became more intense, so I carried on. "Next, I'm going to need something to use this power through and maybe earn a living with. A book of magic, powerful gun or something?" Having power but no way to use it was almost as bad as not having it.
The figure fished around in its robes, and produced something clutched between two long fingers. "This should work, I think." I couldn't tell what it was, other than it was small, and covered in the thing's blood. "Something from one of my more stable aspects."
"Is it going to do what I asked?"
"Should. Needs a bit of a recharge though." Confused, I watched the figure wipe the object on its robes, revealing it to be a ring of what I could only assume was gold. "For semi-mortals, the Qwardians have good craftsmanship. Not many can make things out of sculpted fear quite like them."
The gold ring lit up slightly and, floating into the air, drifted over to me. I could see it to be an undecorated band with a smooth yellow gem set into the top. I couldn't tell if it was amber, topaz, or maybe yellow diamond, my knowledge of rocks being limited, but it hovered in the air waiting for me to take it.
"Whoa, hold up." I waved my hands in a warding off gesture. "You can summon people, make earthquakes, mess with my head, and you have a yellow power ring that you're not even using to save yourself right now?"
The figure sighed. "It can't fix what's wrong with me; the physical wound is a representation of the cosmic injury I'm currently leaking power from. Which I would like sealed up by having a new host if you don't mind-"
"Yeah yeah, whatever. We haven't even got the deal sealed yet." I poked the ring, seeing if it set my finger on fire or something. It just started spinning in place, like it was in low gravity. "So I play Mr. Seahorse for you for an indeterminate amount of time, and in exchange, I get a stipend of cosmic power in bite sized chunks so we don't explode, minions, a good bit of time to enjoy all this, and this… glowing ring that you just happen to have."
"If you don't want it, I can take it back…." I snatched the ring out of the air, narrowing my eyes at the figure. "Good. There's also the issue of fusing and getting sweet delicious payback on the guy who did this to me in the first place, but that's something for another day." It tried to stand again, before what I assumed where its legs gave out under it. The blood oozing from its side was slowing down. Sighing in frustration, it stretched its claw-like hand out to me, and I cautiously approached.
We shook hands, signifying the deal was accepted, and when I tried to pull away, found it digging its nails into the back of my hand. "Something you might have wanted to ask," the figure hissed through its needle teeth. "Was how I intended to make all this happen. Or, where I was going to fight my dear enemy was, or who they were, or who I am. No matter now." There was something digging through my hand, moving too quick for me to really do anything but clench my teeth and watch as what looked to be a snake climbed up my arm under my skin.
"I'd make this less painful for you, but I'm about to be you and, well," it grinned maliciously at me. "Word on the street is... I'm an asshole." I blacked out shortly thereafter, feeling the thing in my arm moving into my chest cavity.
It begins.
Warning: The following story contains lovecraftian themes, violence, psychological trauma, and the occasional musical number.
Summary: A bargain with a dying eldritch being is struck. Become the next physical host of the incarnation in exchange for power, and a promise to defeat their hated foe. Join our hero as he stumbles through learning these powers, working with and against the cult that worshiped the eldritch being, and the many enemies it made. Fun times ahead!
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Power at a Price
At first I'd thought it was a dream. The place was just so bizarre; a lake totally covered in fog, a white night sky with black stars, a crumbling city of yellow rock on an island underneath what looked to be a star in a permanent solar eclipse. I was sitting on a boat that seemed to be pulled by a long rope toward the island, stunned.
But then I noticed the pepsi soda can I'd had in my hand at the dinner table; the last thing I remembered before being here was with me, fizzing still. I drank, while watching the island grow slowly closer. The fog over the water was thick to the point that I couldn't even see the liquid underneath. There were particles of reflective metal in the water-clouds too, which coupled with the alien sky and strange city led me to believe that my sister had spiked my food with bath salts or something.
I really didn't want to wake up to find I'd ripped the skin off my hands; I needed that skin for important things like writing and eating and keeping younger sisters in line. A peculiar thing I noticed as the island grow closer, or at least larger, was that the rope did not appear to be going slack, indicating a device or person pulling it.
Long after my soda was drained, the boat was dragged onto the rocky shore. The sound of wood-on-stone grinding put my teeth on edge, as all scraping noises did, and I had to spend a second unclenching. Off the bow, the rope, now less than a foot long hung limp in the air, as if it had always been that short. No winch in sight, no people as far as the eye could see.
Standing up in boat, I could see the city in more detail; almost medieval in design, sloping roofs, short buildings, aside from the occasional tower, and cobbled streets. Nearby, there were statues of what looked to be bat-winged wasps with mammalian jaws rather than insect mandibles, and a lack of compound eyes; they looked to be placed helter-skelter around the shore. Perhaps it had been modern art's bizarre equivalent here.
Looking at them made my eyes hurt. Like I was watching an optical illusion or held my eyes crossed for a long time; a sustained ache that grew worse the longer I stared. Unlike such normal aches though, it vanished as soon as I was not watching the statues.
I was going to get up out of the boat to explore the town when I heard a noise on the still air: a pained wheezing. Freezing mid-step, I considered the evidence. Alien sky, plus freaky fog, plus bizarre statues, plus ruined town, plus wandering said ruined town equaled the exact reason white people died in movies. My large posterior met the boat seat once more.
It was so quiet. There was no wind, no crumbling rock, no splash of waves on the shore or boat; no sound at all except that which I made, and the pained wheezing from somewhere in the city.
And then I heard faint crunching noises, like someone walking on gravel. I looked around, but couldn't find the source at first - nothing seemed to be moving. It wasn't until the noise came again that I noticed.
Two of the statue's heads had turned to look directly at me.
In a burst of motion that would likely have been humorous to people watching, I left the boat and almost fell into the gravel. From there, I walked toward the city at a brisk shuffle all the while chanting "Nope" softly to myself. Not knowing the rules for the statue monsters, I tried to keep my eyes on them despite the ache, only blinking or looking away briefly to reset the pain.
There were no signs in the town, street, store, or otherwise. That made navigation a trifle difficult, but since my goal at the time was 'get away from those freaky things', I found the task manageable.
Then I found what I could only assume was a dead statue monster. Trapped under a pile of rubble, its head and one long leg exposed, but otherwise totally buried. From the scale of the head and leg, its size was comparable to a horse. A horse that had claws on the end of its limbs as long as my hand, and spikes along its mouth - like teeth made from its exoskeleton.
From my years of watching animal documentaries I could tell that the spikes formation was meant to bite and tear; to pull meat off rather than cut it. I left the corpse quickly, before its friends could catch up.
Fool that I was, I had forgotten the wheezing sound from earlier, and was surprised when I noticed how close it was. Deciding I was probably going to die anyway, from those statues chasing me down somehow, and desperately trying to convince myself this was a drug hallucination, I followed the noise into what could, at one point have been a fancy house.
Inside, on the second floor in a room facing out to the street below, was a mangled figure in yellow robes, slumped against the wall. Black ichor pumped from a hole in its flank, having left a trail from the balcony to its current placement. The figure's robes were hooded, so I couldn't see what its face was like, but I could see its hands: long, white, and with jagged nails.
"Sorry for the sudden summoning," it wheezed, coughing out black spittle onto the hem of its robes. "If time were not so vital, I'd have eased you into it. Given you visions of this place for a few days, let you adjust. Such as it is, we don't have the time for artistry."
I didn't say anything at first, walking into the room and standing opposite the slumped figure. From this angle I could see its lower jaw, forked and white-skinned with small tentacles covered in the black liquid curling like a wiggly beard and a lack of lips. "I figured. So what did you summon me for? Need something to eat to fix yourself up?"
The figure laughed. "My, but you're being understanding. Called to a foreign island in a foreign world... ah, if all my summons were as adaptable as you..." It laughed some more, which turned to a hacking cough, forcing a hand to its mouth to stop the black blood, for what else could it be, from going everywhere.
"I'm still not sure what to make of this place, and I'll probably freak out in a few minutes, but I'm still in shock right now. Safety in numbness." And from there, I arched a brow at the figure. "Should I call the space ambulance or something?"
"Nah," the figure flicked its coughing hand dismissively. "Too banged up for that. While I have you lucid, and I never thought I'd say that sentence with this tone, I'm going to make you a deal."
"Does the deal involve not getting eaten by those statue monsters?" Looking out over the balcony, I could see some at the end of the lane, peeking around buildings. "I'd like whatever deal we make to include that."
"Hmmm, a tough one, but I think I can wiggle that in somewhere." The figure nodded its head solemnly. "Look, let's not beat around the bush here, I need a new host. This one," the figure motioned to the oozing wound in its side, "is not going to be lasting much longer. And I need a host to do my job."
"How much control are we talking?" I rubbed my chin, knowing already that I was going to get the short end of the stick, but making use of the dulled emotional response to the situation I was having. "Will we have to share control of the limbs, am I going to stop existing outright?"
"When I say host, I mean more I'll be a passenger in you for a bit of time." It attempted to smile, but it's blackened needle teeth, like a goblin shark, made for poor reassurance. "While I fix myself up a bit. From there, it'd be a merger of sorts. We'd merge identities and become a new one."
"Reasonable," I nodded, electing to sit on the floor and maybe get a look at the creature's face. But under that hood there was no face, no nose, the only facial structure was a crest of bone jutting out above the top lip. "And what else do you want?"
"Typically we haggle over the first thing," it paused to cough into its hand again, "before moving on but hey I am not in the mood to argue. I have a score to settle with the guy who did this to me," it gestured again to the bleeding side. "And once we're feeling up to it, I'd like to tear his skull out and beat him to death with it in that order." That was a funny thing to say, and I almost laughed. But even the suppressed mirth put a crack in the safe numbness I had been working with.
The urge to laugh grew, as did the urge to panic.
"Also reasonable," I lied conversationally, grinning a bit too much to hide the coming freak out. "What promises can you make that after such a beating it wouldn't be me sitting where you are?"
It held up one finger, and set its mouth in a firm line. "I'm not going to fall for the same trick twice. Especially not one as simple as what put me here."
"Did you seriously fall for the 'hey, look over there' gag?" I sighed theatrically, guessing blindly - but from the indignant sputters the figure produced, I apparently hit the nail on the head which got me to actually start laughing. "What is this, amatuer hour?" A problem I'd always had was that once I started laughing, I couldn't stop.
"In my defense, it was a battle of cosmic scale. I didn't expect low brow ploys."
"Why would you not expect low brow ploys? Because apparently they work against people like you!" And then sudden stabbing pains in my head killed my laughter and pressure from all sides assaulted me as the figure pushed itself up and hissed through its teeth-
"Don't you talk down to me…."
"Is this how you negotiate all your deals?" I ground out, clutching my head. "Strong-arming the guy you're trying to convince?" The pressure released itself all at once, not from my convincing the figure but from another coughing fit taking over it. I removed my hands and took a deep breath to try and settle myself, putting the full bodied freak out off for a moment. "I have heard your terms, I could just go walk out there to be eaten by statues. What's in it for me?"
The figure, taking a moment to compose itself, smiled. "Power," it said with malicious glee. "Cosmic power."
"Power's nice. What else?" The smile vanished, replaced with a confused frown. "What else, good… sir, madam, blood fountain?"
"I… what else is there?" Without a word I stood up and made for the door briskly. "W-wait!" I probably shouldn't have been pushing my luck with someone who could casually summon people to alternate realities, but getting the most out of any potential bargain seemed prudent and I wanted to leave so badly. So I stopped in the doorway, crossed my arms and gave what was quite possibly a powerful cosmic being of some sort a bored look. I had to thank my teenager self who had practiced the art of hiding panic under a mask of derision. "What do you want if not power?" It looked genuinely puzzled.
"Power is nice. But it's not going to put food on the table, it's not going to make me happy, well it might when I need to put someone in their place, but the rest of the time no. For giving up my individuality and having to cart you around for who knows how long, I'm going to need more than power."
The puzzled expression on the figure's face turned to annoyance. "Do not try and rob me, mortal. You should be grateful I'm offering as much as I am." I smiled at him and waved.
"Bye then, going to get eaten by your friends while you bleed out on the floor. Have fun!" And I actually did leave the room and was halfway down the stairs when what could only be a minor earthquake happened, accompanied by another splitting headache. I could feel words howl through the ache into my brain, as if they were being etched into my skull.
NAME YOUR TERMS.
I stayed there on the stairs, coming to terms with what I was doing. I was toying with a being that had magic that was possibly some form of alien god, that could just casually make earthquakes and talk to people in their minds while being close to death. And it was working.
"I really should just run," I whispered to myself, straightening up with great effort. "The worst those things can do is eat me… I think."
When I got back to the room, all sign of mirth had left the slumped figure, which glared at me with its blank face. "Time was, all you mortals cared about was power."
"And look where that got them," I snapped, just as irritated. "Now, terms. Item one, that power we agreed on. Preferably in bite sized chunks so I don't explode and make this whole thing moot." The figure nodded stiffly. "Item two, I keep my independence for as long as you can keep the merger from starting. Want to have a nice long time to enjoy my half of this exchange."
"Half he says as he dictates," a cough interrupted it there, and it didn't bother to cover its mouth, black going down the front of its yellow robes. "To someone on the brink."
"You summoned me; if you wanted someone more pliable, you should have summoned them! Word on the street is I'm an asshole." My hands were shaking, I was seriously considering just running rather than continuing to push my luck. "Next on the list, I'm going to need some minions to help out with this and maybe explain what this eldritch pregnancy will do to me."
"That's part of the 'becoming me' package, it's by default that you get all my worshippers and underlings." It wasn't capitalizing on my weakness, which I couldn't tell was from how good I was hiding the feelings, or how desperate the figure was.
"See if you had included that in the earlier pitch we could have made so much more progress by now." The snarling became more intense, so I carried on. "Next, I'm going to need something to use this power through and maybe earn a living with. A book of magic, powerful gun or something?" Having power but no way to use it was almost as bad as not having it.
The figure fished around in its robes, and produced something clutched between two long fingers. "This should work, I think." I couldn't tell what it was, other than it was small, and covered in the thing's blood. "Something from one of my more stable aspects."
"Is it going to do what I asked?"
"Should. Needs a bit of a recharge though." Confused, I watched the figure wipe the object on its robes, revealing it to be a ring of what I could only assume was gold. "For semi-mortals, the Qwardians have good craftsmanship. Not many can make things out of sculpted fear quite like them."
The gold ring lit up slightly and, floating into the air, drifted over to me. I could see it to be an undecorated band with a smooth yellow gem set into the top. I couldn't tell if it was amber, topaz, or maybe yellow diamond, my knowledge of rocks being limited, but it hovered in the air waiting for me to take it.
"Whoa, hold up." I waved my hands in a warding off gesture. "You can summon people, make earthquakes, mess with my head, and you have a yellow power ring that you're not even using to save yourself right now?"
The figure sighed. "It can't fix what's wrong with me; the physical wound is a representation of the cosmic injury I'm currently leaking power from. Which I would like sealed up by having a new host if you don't mind-"
"Yeah yeah, whatever. We haven't even got the deal sealed yet." I poked the ring, seeing if it set my finger on fire or something. It just started spinning in place, like it was in low gravity. "So I play Mr. Seahorse for you for an indeterminate amount of time, and in exchange, I get a stipend of cosmic power in bite sized chunks so we don't explode, minions, a good bit of time to enjoy all this, and this… glowing ring that you just happen to have."
"If you don't want it, I can take it back…." I snatched the ring out of the air, narrowing my eyes at the figure. "Good. There's also the issue of fusing and getting sweet delicious payback on the guy who did this to me in the first place, but that's something for another day." It tried to stand again, before what I assumed where its legs gave out under it. The blood oozing from its side was slowing down. Sighing in frustration, it stretched its claw-like hand out to me, and I cautiously approached.
We shook hands, signifying the deal was accepted, and when I tried to pull away, found it digging its nails into the back of my hand. "Something you might have wanted to ask," the figure hissed through its needle teeth. "Was how I intended to make all this happen. Or, where I was going to fight my dear enemy was, or who they were, or who I am. No matter now." There was something digging through my hand, moving too quick for me to really do anything but clench my teeth and watch as what looked to be a snake climbed up my arm under my skin.
"I'd make this less painful for you, but I'm about to be you and, well," it grinned maliciously at me. "Word on the street is... I'm an asshole." I blacked out shortly thereafter, feeling the thing in my arm moving into my chest cavity.
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It begins.
Last edited:
Kolarthecool
Hiding from the light of day.
- Location
- Calgary, Canada.
Neat.
ebolasos
Hiiii please be my friend!
- Location
- Down under
Try great old one from lovecraft and not gould.
- Location
- US
Snake like symbiote with a god complex. Somehow that doesn't spell out great old one.
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
As much fun as a Goa'uld would be, ebolasos is correct. Just a very tentacle-y great old one, Hastur.
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
What was that?
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
Hasty Turnip?
Chapter 2
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Now with more plot!
You are Who you Eat
Sleep paralysis, the condition of being totally immobile and unable to speak after waking up, was horrifying to someone who had never experienced it before. However, where victims of the condition had genetics to blame, I had a more pragmatic reason - staring down at the face of a statue monster as I was. It was frozen in an investigative pose, head tilted and close to mine, and if it had visible nostrils I'd say it was sniffing me. Unfortunately, it was so close that I couldn't wiggle out and escape.
'This is it - this is how I die', I decided, as the ache in my eyes started to set in. The moment I blinked, I was going to feel jaws clamp down somewhere and agony, I just knew it. Or worse, I'd blink and it would kill me outright. It was a contest of wills, my desire not to die against the compulsion to blink from this arcane force. I'd not gotten a good look at the creature's eyes earlier, but now I could see them to be at the ends of small stalks rising from its face. They had no pupils, only an expanse of inscrutable yellow.
I blinked.
When I opened my eyes again, the beast was gone, as if it had never been. A simple survey of the room revealed the being with whom I had struck the bargain was now a pile of empty, black-stained yellow cloth. "Well," I murmured to the pile, as if it could somehow understand, "was nice talking to you, I guess." What should I have said to the absence where it had been? Standing, I flexed my hand as I left, feeling a dull ache pulse there - a reminder of the deal I'd struck.
Looking at it revealed that I now had a scar on my palm - a dime-sized dot surrounded by three curved lines, the topmost of which closely resembled a question mark. As good a reason as any to invest in gloves.
The logical conclusion to make, bargain struck and my reason for being... wherever I was... complete, was that I would return home via the boat I had arrived upon. Backtracking was moderately difficult without signs, but finding small landmarks like the dead statue monster and buildings in recognisable stages of collapse certainly helped.
Things had changed while I was away from shore - instead of a rocky area between the lake and the city, the foggy liquid now rose flush to the feet of the decrepit structures. I had no way of telling the tides by an alien sky, and thus no explanation was forthcoming. In the distance was the boat, sitting pretty on the glimmering fog covering the waters.
In a moment of sudden realization, I recalled that there had been statues all along the shore, but did not see them standing out of the fog at present. I stood there for a moment, debating if I wanted to risk swimming out to the boat - with the valid possibility that I couldn't get into the boat without capsizing it, or… I could use the ring. Pulling it from my pocket, I gave it a look-see once more. It faintly shone yellow, meaning there was some power within it,... perhaps, maybe, it could help with my current predicament.
"Do I put on the token of a bargain with an unknowable being to avoid swimming, or go for a dip in the water?" I asked myself rhetorically, going over all the magic rings I'd read about over the course of my life. What I had was too fancy for the One Ring, and too yellow to be a Planeteer ring. That would be horrible I realized, thinking on the notion of an Eldritch team of Planeteers. "By your powers combined, I am Captain Cthulhu!" I laughed at my own joke.
"I doubt that; you're about a hundred plus meters too short, and I'm noticing a distinct lack of tentacles." I almost jumped out of my skin at the sudden voice. Behind me was a totally normal black teenager dressed in a blue hood-and-cape superhero outfit, the image of a silver trumpet on his chest to match the one in his hand and a domino mask on his face. "Hello there. Nice to see a guy your size able to move so quick," the teen snarked, half-insultingly.
"Who the hell are you?!" I shouted in turn, panicked and holding the ring tight in my hand. "Where did you come from?!" The teen looked confused, then suddenly a lot less friendly.
"If you couldn't hear the horn, it means you're some form of monster then. I thought you were some wizard that got sucked into this place - it happens sometimes - but, well...." Quite the expressive domino mask he had, that it could portray an arched brow like that. "Well? Aren't you going to assume your real form now that I've caught on? Try and eat me?"
"I don't eat people!" I was able to get my breathing under control, but the surprise of the teen's appearance coupled with the fact that those statue monsters could be anywhere had me more than slightly spooked. What if one of them appeared? What if more than one of them appeared?
"What, you a vegetarian or something?" The trumpeter laughed a bit, smiling at his own joke. His laughter died as he looked at my panicked, confused and slightly annoyed expression. "Wow, you're good at faking emotions. I'm impressed."
"I'm not faking!" There were none of the statue monsters were in sight, so I took a moment to breathe the panic away. "I was just having dinner with my family, and suddenly I'm here, and I'm trying to go back home. Can you help?"
"I could," he nodded. "And maybe you're telling the truth about just being summoned here. Except this is Carcosa. If you came here without magic, it'll mutate you so bad you'll only look human while you're here." He shrugged. "And that's if I buy that you aren't some evil monster the King cooked up. Oh well, hope you can make it out of here." The teen turned and started walking away.
"Wait, you can't just leave me here!" I started walking after him, but as I did he put his horn to his mouth and blew. No sound came from the horn that I could hear, but I could see waves of distortion emanating from it, hanging in the air and slowly twisting into a disk. As it formed, colour bled into it - white, rimmed with blue. waves of distorted air emerged from it, forming into a disk hanging in space, eventually turning into solid white edged in blue.
"Yes, I can, and I have to. You could totally get to Earth some other way, but if I take you I'm responsible for all the things you wreck." He didn't even slow down as he stepped into the disk, the construct collapsing after he stepped through. I stopped, looking where the teen had been, then over my shoulder at the boat.
The cloudy water had moved again: where I had previously been standing was now covered. I got the distinct feeling that either I was witnessing the beginning of a flood, or the island was sinking. There weren't many options left. I bit my lip, and put on the ring.
:Ring systems reactivated. King in Yellow, you inspire unimaginable fear. You serve our purposes:
I was so confused by the way the ring spoke, and the fact that the ring spoke, that I almost didn't notice the term it used to address me. The ring cast a consistent yellow glow from its gem, flickering gently with each word. "Um, that's incorrect. I'm not a king, and I personally prefer yellow-green to pure yellow. Also, what are you?"
:Accessing. No error in name detected. This ring is a tool by which the user can manipulate fear for use as the user desires:
I walked to the edge of the clouds, thinking about what the information presented meant. Fear manipulation… didn't green lantern rings do that? Or yellow lantern rings, in this case. "So… am I part of the Sinestro Corps?"
:This ring is not affiliated with any Corps, being a standalone device commissioned directly by the Weaponers. Original mission was the assassination of Green Lantern Kyle Rayner by user Alexander Nero. This mission was declared failed; no new missions have been assigned:
"Oh… that's nice, I guess. So, I need that boat over there pulled to me, or to fly over to it. Can you do that?"
:Affirmative. This ring operates on neural impulse interface.. You need only will it, and the ring will do the rest:
I screwed my face up, unable to believe it was that easy, but, lacking for options, gave it a try. I want the boat to come to me, I thought, and jutted the ring toward the distant dinghy. The jeweled band sputtered faint sparks of light, but nothing changed. No construct formed, no aura manifested.
"Oh come on," I growled. Maybe I wasn't being forceful enough, and tried it again with more 'oomph' - to the same end, unfortunately. "Why is this not working?"
:Scanning. Non-function is due to user error: neural pathways not activating in correct sequence:
Frustrated and occasionally looking over my shoulder expecting a statue monster to appear, I repeated the process I'd been attempting to no results.
"I'm doing something wrong, and I'm going to smack myself for it in a minute, I just know it." A thought occurred to me, and I questioned the ring..
:Neural impulses are the function by which sentient lifeforms control their limbs and facilitate communication in real time:
Oh. Oh. So it was as simple as moving my arms… into a sword, or a gun, or the jaws of life. But in this case, I just needed to grab a boat, and so I stretched out my arm, fingers splayed wide in an exaggerated grabbing motion..
Almost immediately I had results, a rope of yellow light rising from the gem and swelling at the end, forming into a simple hand. It really was like moving a third arm, albeit without weight or bones restricting its movement - and despite the distance, the arm could just keep stretching until it grabbed the prow of the dinghy and began pulling it toward me. Things were looking up!
The sudden appearance of a shadow above me rekindled my earlier panic. I jumped and turned to see a statue monster looming over where I had been. But this time… this time, I had something to fight with - and I did so, bringing the hand I had conjured back at speed to strike the statue.
And in that moment I realized it was still holding the boat, which broke into splinters when it struck the statue. My construct hand shatted like glass, leaving a jagged stump at the end of the grotesquely elongated arm. "Oh," I said numbly, realizing what I had just done. "Shit."
The statue looked no worse for wear, the wood fragments not lodging themselves very deep in its carapace if they did at all. I was desperately trying to come up with an idea for what to do next when the statue did something horrifying: It rolled its shoulders, and shook the wood fragments off, while I watched unblinkingly. So much for my understanding of the rules of these things.
The horse-sized, wasp-like monster stepped forward, and I could feel the earth shake with its footfall. This thing had to be heavy to do that, and so I carefully stepped back and continued to until I was at the edge of the clouded water. There was no escape... I tried to fly, but with the thing approaching and the irritation forcing me to blink, the ring just sputtered and choked when I tried to command it.
The monster's advance was slow but steady, moving into my way as I tried to scoot around to run past it. Unable to run deeper into the city, or fly away, my only recourse was the cloudy water - and between certain and uncertain death? There's only one choice.
There wasn't water under the clouds. There wasn't anything. I was falling, tumbling over and over and over as I fell through an endless fog of glittering yellow. Vertigo took over as I continued to revolve, so much so that I barely noticed the change in colors from pure yellow to blue, then green and finally grey until, at last, my spinning slowed, and I saw what could only be the ground rushing up at me.
The last thing I remember before I blacked out was an awful crunching noise.
Someone was moving me. I could feel hands on my limbs, and they hurt. I wanted them to stop, but they wouldn't. Noises that I could tell were words - but not ones I could understand - were made near me, and I wanted that to stop too. I couldn't see, no matter which way I turned my eyes.
The pain crept in slowly. At first, it wasn't too bad, but it built up steadily from a tingling to a stinging to a needling, and soon enough I felt as though each and every cell of my body were aflame. It made me want to just lie there and fade out of existence… but they just kept talking, moving me around. Why did they want me to suffer? Sadism, perhaps?
"... eyes damaged, likely blind…." after a while, I could parse snippets of the conversation going on. From the way they were talking, I assumed they were EMTs or at least people with medical training. Both male, on the younger side of things, and without noteworthy accents.
"... organs ruptured…." I could tell I was laying on stone, not dirt or a gurney. Maybe what had happened was all actually a bath-salt induced dream and I had jumped off a building at some point? "... require at least three sacrifices…." Wait, what?
Something was being injected into me; I could feel the pinprick and the displacement of liquid. Over the course of the next few minutes, both the pain and my impaired ability to sense the world sharpened, much to my agony.
"Highness, the sacrifice is almost ready," said one of the male voices I had heard earlier. "The book is almost done being read, and then you can repair yourself, and lead us in the rites." These people were insane, I decided. I must have been insane too, for so many bizarre and impossible things to have happened so quickly.
I laughed at the insanity, laughed and cried, and just wanted the day so far to have not happened. As if off in the distance, I could hear music - a violin playing, gradually coming closer. If I had to put words to the tone of the music, I would say a growing sense of unease. What's happening?, I wondered. As the heightened perception finally reached down to my hands, I could feel the ring again and, desperate for information, tried to make construct eyes by which I could see.
It was both harder and easier than I imagined. It wasn't like actual eyes, instead, it was closer to seeing the world through a cell phone camera - poor quality and sluggish, slow to adjust if I tried to 'look' at different things. The important thing, however, was that I could see.
I was in a wooded area at night, on a stone slab surrounded by figures dressed like yellow Ku Klux Klan, all holding flaming torches. That set off so many warning bells. I tried to move - pain. None of this was right, from start to finish... and I was fed up of things happening to me rather than being able to act.
The yellow Klan was parting, letting a shorter person in a simple yellow hood/cloak through the ring. They walked in silence, until the new guy stood in front of the altar upon which my mangled body was laid. "Highness," one of the yellow cultists breathed reverently, his hood/mask flapping with his breath, "this one has read the sacred book. Now he will take your sign into himself, and thus give of himself to you." The taller figures forced the new one to his knees, and through the parting in the cloak I could see fairly normal clothes, jeans, a football shirt, and that the kid's hands were cuffed together. I was getting the feeling that he wasn't here willingly.
"The others will be prepared soon, Highness, they are resisting the power of the book. We will work in haste to see them made ready for you." No, I thought. In any other situation, I would have been helpless to fight, but I had a power ring now, the universe's greatest tool - and one that responded to mind over matter. A ribbon of yellow rose out of the ring at my instruction, reaching for the handcuffs, molding into a key as it went. It inserted itself into the lock, and twisted sharply.
With a series of clicks, the cuffs fell off the guy's wrist, and for a second there was silence before he noticed what I'd done, pushed himself to his feet and started running. The yellow cultists near me shouted and went after him, before hands of yellow light seized them by their ankles and yanked.
"Why is the Highness doing this?" "Was the sacrifice not worthy?" "Stop jabbering and get after him!" were a few of the many cries that erupted from the crowd before they barrelled after the escaping 'sacrifice'. I tried to send hands after them, but the constructs grew fuzzy and insubstantial after a short distance. Ideally, if I lived, I could fix that with practice. The next few minutes were filled with my fighting with the two that I'd caught, keeping them off their feet while they tried to kick at the constructs.
And then a piercing scream filled the night air, driving birds from their roosts. A burning sensation went through my limbs, and rapidly the aches and pains that had wracked me only moments before faded away. Due to my distraction, the constructs allowing me to see and hold the yellow cultists down faded away, but a moment later, my own eyes became functional.
Slowly, I got to my feet, realizing with horror what had transpired. The first warning signs were that the tentacle scar on my hand was now oozing blood, and that I had lost what felt like two hundred pounds. Then I noticed I was wearing clothes that I hadn't been a moment ago, and a yellow cloak. I felt my face, and it was unfamiliar to me. "What have you done?" I asked in a hushed tone, knowing full well exactly what had occurred, but wanting an explanation.
"Highness," the more talkative of the two said. "Your body was damaged, we needed to get you a new one, so we used the old magic kept in your book to bind the sacrifice to your service. The boy is now your familiar, and his seeming is yours to use as you wish."
"How did you do this? How do I change it back?" Hello? I tried thinking. Can you hear me? I'm trying to get you your body back! Hello?
"Any who have read the holy book and carry your sign are targets for your service my lord." The two were starting to stand. "And there is no way to reverse it." I was taking deep breaths, noticing just how much air this guy's lungs could hold, and recalling information that I had not experienced. Training for football camps, fishing with a dad that was both a stranger and familiar to me now, going on a camping trip with cousins that I didn't care about but were also good friends with. The dichotomy was disorienting, to say the least.
"So, uh." I rubbed at my temples as a headache came on, and I could see the other cultists trickling back to the area around the slab. "How many of you guys have read the holy book?"
"All of us, highness. It is how we know to serve you." They really didn't see where I was going to go with this. Oh my god, they had killed some sixteen-year-old kid to fix me, what the hell was wrong with them?
"And... how many of you have my sign on you right now?" The two near me pulled down their sleeves to show what looked like the bleeding scar on my hand tattooed below their left wrists. "Ah, good. I assume everyone has that?" They nodded, and my face set. " Good. You all belong to me now."
"Wha-" They didn't even get to finish their sentences before I blinked, and they were gone. All of them, vanished as if they had never been. Left to my own devices, I sat down and tried to parse through the sudden rush information as the contents of the cultist's minds was poured into my own.
:Ambient fear depleted, recharge status: Ninety-six percent:
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You are Who you Eat
Sleep paralysis, the condition of being totally immobile and unable to speak after waking up, was horrifying to someone who had never experienced it before. However, where victims of the condition had genetics to blame, I had a more pragmatic reason - staring down at the face of a statue monster as I was. It was frozen in an investigative pose, head tilted and close to mine, and if it had visible nostrils I'd say it was sniffing me. Unfortunately, it was so close that I couldn't wiggle out and escape.
'This is it - this is how I die', I decided, as the ache in my eyes started to set in. The moment I blinked, I was going to feel jaws clamp down somewhere and agony, I just knew it. Or worse, I'd blink and it would kill me outright. It was a contest of wills, my desire not to die against the compulsion to blink from this arcane force. I'd not gotten a good look at the creature's eyes earlier, but now I could see them to be at the ends of small stalks rising from its face. They had no pupils, only an expanse of inscrutable yellow.
I blinked.
When I opened my eyes again, the beast was gone, as if it had never been. A simple survey of the room revealed the being with whom I had struck the bargain was now a pile of empty, black-stained yellow cloth. "Well," I murmured to the pile, as if it could somehow understand, "was nice talking to you, I guess." What should I have said to the absence where it had been? Standing, I flexed my hand as I left, feeling a dull ache pulse there - a reminder of the deal I'd struck.
Looking at it revealed that I now had a scar on my palm - a dime-sized dot surrounded by three curved lines, the topmost of which closely resembled a question mark. As good a reason as any to invest in gloves.
The logical conclusion to make, bargain struck and my reason for being... wherever I was... complete, was that I would return home via the boat I had arrived upon. Backtracking was moderately difficult without signs, but finding small landmarks like the dead statue monster and buildings in recognisable stages of collapse certainly helped.
Things had changed while I was away from shore - instead of a rocky area between the lake and the city, the foggy liquid now rose flush to the feet of the decrepit structures. I had no way of telling the tides by an alien sky, and thus no explanation was forthcoming. In the distance was the boat, sitting pretty on the glimmering fog covering the waters.
In a moment of sudden realization, I recalled that there had been statues all along the shore, but did not see them standing out of the fog at present. I stood there for a moment, debating if I wanted to risk swimming out to the boat - with the valid possibility that I couldn't get into the boat without capsizing it, or… I could use the ring. Pulling it from my pocket, I gave it a look-see once more. It faintly shone yellow, meaning there was some power within it,... perhaps, maybe, it could help with my current predicament.
"Do I put on the token of a bargain with an unknowable being to avoid swimming, or go for a dip in the water?" I asked myself rhetorically, going over all the magic rings I'd read about over the course of my life. What I had was too fancy for the One Ring, and too yellow to be a Planeteer ring. That would be horrible I realized, thinking on the notion of an Eldritch team of Planeteers. "By your powers combined, I am Captain Cthulhu!" I laughed at my own joke.
"I doubt that; you're about a hundred plus meters too short, and I'm noticing a distinct lack of tentacles." I almost jumped out of my skin at the sudden voice. Behind me was a totally normal black teenager dressed in a blue hood-and-cape superhero outfit, the image of a silver trumpet on his chest to match the one in his hand and a domino mask on his face. "Hello there. Nice to see a guy your size able to move so quick," the teen snarked, half-insultingly.
"Who the hell are you?!" I shouted in turn, panicked and holding the ring tight in my hand. "Where did you come from?!" The teen looked confused, then suddenly a lot less friendly.
"If you couldn't hear the horn, it means you're some form of monster then. I thought you were some wizard that got sucked into this place - it happens sometimes - but, well...." Quite the expressive domino mask he had, that it could portray an arched brow like that. "Well? Aren't you going to assume your real form now that I've caught on? Try and eat me?"
"I don't eat people!" I was able to get my breathing under control, but the surprise of the teen's appearance coupled with the fact that those statue monsters could be anywhere had me more than slightly spooked. What if one of them appeared? What if more than one of them appeared?
"What, you a vegetarian or something?" The trumpeter laughed a bit, smiling at his own joke. His laughter died as he looked at my panicked, confused and slightly annoyed expression. "Wow, you're good at faking emotions. I'm impressed."
"I'm not faking!" There were none of the statue monsters were in sight, so I took a moment to breathe the panic away. "I was just having dinner with my family, and suddenly I'm here, and I'm trying to go back home. Can you help?"
"I could," he nodded. "And maybe you're telling the truth about just being summoned here. Except this is Carcosa. If you came here without magic, it'll mutate you so bad you'll only look human while you're here." He shrugged. "And that's if I buy that you aren't some evil monster the King cooked up. Oh well, hope you can make it out of here." The teen turned and started walking away.
"Wait, you can't just leave me here!" I started walking after him, but as I did he put his horn to his mouth and blew. No sound came from the horn that I could hear, but I could see waves of distortion emanating from it, hanging in the air and slowly twisting into a disk. As it formed, colour bled into it - white, rimmed with blue. waves of distorted air emerged from it, forming into a disk hanging in space, eventually turning into solid white edged in blue.
"Yes, I can, and I have to. You could totally get to Earth some other way, but if I take you I'm responsible for all the things you wreck." He didn't even slow down as he stepped into the disk, the construct collapsing after he stepped through. I stopped, looking where the teen had been, then over my shoulder at the boat.
The cloudy water had moved again: where I had previously been standing was now covered. I got the distinct feeling that either I was witnessing the beginning of a flood, or the island was sinking. There weren't many options left. I bit my lip, and put on the ring.
:Ring systems reactivated. King in Yellow, you inspire unimaginable fear. You serve our purposes:
I was so confused by the way the ring spoke, and the fact that the ring spoke, that I almost didn't notice the term it used to address me. The ring cast a consistent yellow glow from its gem, flickering gently with each word. "Um, that's incorrect. I'm not a king, and I personally prefer yellow-green to pure yellow. Also, what are you?"
:Accessing. No error in name detected. This ring is a tool by which the user can manipulate fear for use as the user desires:
I walked to the edge of the clouds, thinking about what the information presented meant. Fear manipulation… didn't green lantern rings do that? Or yellow lantern rings, in this case. "So… am I part of the Sinestro Corps?"
:This ring is not affiliated with any Corps, being a standalone device commissioned directly by the Weaponers. Original mission was the assassination of Green Lantern Kyle Rayner by user Alexander Nero. This mission was declared failed; no new missions have been assigned:
"Oh… that's nice, I guess. So, I need that boat over there pulled to me, or to fly over to it. Can you do that?"
:Affirmative. This ring operates on neural impulse interface.. You need only will it, and the ring will do the rest:
I screwed my face up, unable to believe it was that easy, but, lacking for options, gave it a try. I want the boat to come to me, I thought, and jutted the ring toward the distant dinghy. The jeweled band sputtered faint sparks of light, but nothing changed. No construct formed, no aura manifested.
"Oh come on," I growled. Maybe I wasn't being forceful enough, and tried it again with more 'oomph' - to the same end, unfortunately. "Why is this not working?"
:Scanning. Non-function is due to user error: neural pathways not activating in correct sequence:
Frustrated and occasionally looking over my shoulder expecting a statue monster to appear, I repeated the process I'd been attempting to no results.
"I'm doing something wrong, and I'm going to smack myself for it in a minute, I just know it." A thought occurred to me, and I questioned the ring..
:Neural impulses are the function by which sentient lifeforms control their limbs and facilitate communication in real time:
Oh. Oh. So it was as simple as moving my arms… into a sword, or a gun, or the jaws of life. But in this case, I just needed to grab a boat, and so I stretched out my arm, fingers splayed wide in an exaggerated grabbing motion..
Almost immediately I had results, a rope of yellow light rising from the gem and swelling at the end, forming into a simple hand. It really was like moving a third arm, albeit without weight or bones restricting its movement - and despite the distance, the arm could just keep stretching until it grabbed the prow of the dinghy and began pulling it toward me. Things were looking up!
The sudden appearance of a shadow above me rekindled my earlier panic. I jumped and turned to see a statue monster looming over where I had been. But this time… this time, I had something to fight with - and I did so, bringing the hand I had conjured back at speed to strike the statue.
And in that moment I realized it was still holding the boat, which broke into splinters when it struck the statue. My construct hand shatted like glass, leaving a jagged stump at the end of the grotesquely elongated arm. "Oh," I said numbly, realizing what I had just done. "Shit."
The statue looked no worse for wear, the wood fragments not lodging themselves very deep in its carapace if they did at all. I was desperately trying to come up with an idea for what to do next when the statue did something horrifying: It rolled its shoulders, and shook the wood fragments off, while I watched unblinkingly. So much for my understanding of the rules of these things.
The horse-sized, wasp-like monster stepped forward, and I could feel the earth shake with its footfall. This thing had to be heavy to do that, and so I carefully stepped back and continued to until I was at the edge of the clouded water. There was no escape... I tried to fly, but with the thing approaching and the irritation forcing me to blink, the ring just sputtered and choked when I tried to command it.
The monster's advance was slow but steady, moving into my way as I tried to scoot around to run past it. Unable to run deeper into the city, or fly away, my only recourse was the cloudy water - and between certain and uncertain death? There's only one choice.
There wasn't water under the clouds. There wasn't anything. I was falling, tumbling over and over and over as I fell through an endless fog of glittering yellow. Vertigo took over as I continued to revolve, so much so that I barely noticed the change in colors from pure yellow to blue, then green and finally grey until, at last, my spinning slowed, and I saw what could only be the ground rushing up at me.
The last thing I remember before I blacked out was an awful crunching noise.
Someone was moving me. I could feel hands on my limbs, and they hurt. I wanted them to stop, but they wouldn't. Noises that I could tell were words - but not ones I could understand - were made near me, and I wanted that to stop too. I couldn't see, no matter which way I turned my eyes.
The pain crept in slowly. At first, it wasn't too bad, but it built up steadily from a tingling to a stinging to a needling, and soon enough I felt as though each and every cell of my body were aflame. It made me want to just lie there and fade out of existence… but they just kept talking, moving me around. Why did they want me to suffer? Sadism, perhaps?
"... eyes damaged, likely blind…." after a while, I could parse snippets of the conversation going on. From the way they were talking, I assumed they were EMTs or at least people with medical training. Both male, on the younger side of things, and without noteworthy accents.
"... organs ruptured…." I could tell I was laying on stone, not dirt or a gurney. Maybe what had happened was all actually a bath-salt induced dream and I had jumped off a building at some point? "... require at least three sacrifices…." Wait, what?
Something was being injected into me; I could feel the pinprick and the displacement of liquid. Over the course of the next few minutes, both the pain and my impaired ability to sense the world sharpened, much to my agony.
"Highness, the sacrifice is almost ready," said one of the male voices I had heard earlier. "The book is almost done being read, and then you can repair yourself, and lead us in the rites." These people were insane, I decided. I must have been insane too, for so many bizarre and impossible things to have happened so quickly.
I laughed at the insanity, laughed and cried, and just wanted the day so far to have not happened. As if off in the distance, I could hear music - a violin playing, gradually coming closer. If I had to put words to the tone of the music, I would say a growing sense of unease. What's happening?, I wondered. As the heightened perception finally reached down to my hands, I could feel the ring again and, desperate for information, tried to make construct eyes by which I could see.
It was both harder and easier than I imagined. It wasn't like actual eyes, instead, it was closer to seeing the world through a cell phone camera - poor quality and sluggish, slow to adjust if I tried to 'look' at different things. The important thing, however, was that I could see.
I was in a wooded area at night, on a stone slab surrounded by figures dressed like yellow Ku Klux Klan, all holding flaming torches. That set off so many warning bells. I tried to move - pain. None of this was right, from start to finish... and I was fed up of things happening to me rather than being able to act.
The yellow Klan was parting, letting a shorter person in a simple yellow hood/cloak through the ring. They walked in silence, until the new guy stood in front of the altar upon which my mangled body was laid. "Highness," one of the yellow cultists breathed reverently, his hood/mask flapping with his breath, "this one has read the sacred book. Now he will take your sign into himself, and thus give of himself to you." The taller figures forced the new one to his knees, and through the parting in the cloak I could see fairly normal clothes, jeans, a football shirt, and that the kid's hands were cuffed together. I was getting the feeling that he wasn't here willingly.
"The others will be prepared soon, Highness, they are resisting the power of the book. We will work in haste to see them made ready for you." No, I thought. In any other situation, I would have been helpless to fight, but I had a power ring now, the universe's greatest tool - and one that responded to mind over matter. A ribbon of yellow rose out of the ring at my instruction, reaching for the handcuffs, molding into a key as it went. It inserted itself into the lock, and twisted sharply.
With a series of clicks, the cuffs fell off the guy's wrist, and for a second there was silence before he noticed what I'd done, pushed himself to his feet and started running. The yellow cultists near me shouted and went after him, before hands of yellow light seized them by their ankles and yanked.
"Why is the Highness doing this?" "Was the sacrifice not worthy?" "Stop jabbering and get after him!" were a few of the many cries that erupted from the crowd before they barrelled after the escaping 'sacrifice'. I tried to send hands after them, but the constructs grew fuzzy and insubstantial after a short distance. Ideally, if I lived, I could fix that with practice. The next few minutes were filled with my fighting with the two that I'd caught, keeping them off their feet while they tried to kick at the constructs.
And then a piercing scream filled the night air, driving birds from their roosts. A burning sensation went through my limbs, and rapidly the aches and pains that had wracked me only moments before faded away. Due to my distraction, the constructs allowing me to see and hold the yellow cultists down faded away, but a moment later, my own eyes became functional.
Slowly, I got to my feet, realizing with horror what had transpired. The first warning signs were that the tentacle scar on my hand was now oozing blood, and that I had lost what felt like two hundred pounds. Then I noticed I was wearing clothes that I hadn't been a moment ago, and a yellow cloak. I felt my face, and it was unfamiliar to me. "What have you done?" I asked in a hushed tone, knowing full well exactly what had occurred, but wanting an explanation.
"Highness," the more talkative of the two said. "Your body was damaged, we needed to get you a new one, so we used the old magic kept in your book to bind the sacrifice to your service. The boy is now your familiar, and his seeming is yours to use as you wish."
"How did you do this? How do I change it back?" Hello? I tried thinking. Can you hear me? I'm trying to get you your body back! Hello?
"Any who have read the holy book and carry your sign are targets for your service my lord." The two were starting to stand. "And there is no way to reverse it." I was taking deep breaths, noticing just how much air this guy's lungs could hold, and recalling information that I had not experienced. Training for football camps, fishing with a dad that was both a stranger and familiar to me now, going on a camping trip with cousins that I didn't care about but were also good friends with. The dichotomy was disorienting, to say the least.
"So, uh." I rubbed at my temples as a headache came on, and I could see the other cultists trickling back to the area around the slab. "How many of you guys have read the holy book?"
"All of us, highness. It is how we know to serve you." They really didn't see where I was going to go with this. Oh my god, they had killed some sixteen-year-old kid to fix me, what the hell was wrong with them?
"And... how many of you have my sign on you right now?" The two near me pulled down their sleeves to show what looked like the bleeding scar on my hand tattooed below their left wrists. "Ah, good. I assume everyone has that?" They nodded, and my face set. " Good. You all belong to me now."
"Wha-" They didn't even get to finish their sentences before I blinked, and they were gone. All of them, vanished as if they had never been. Left to my own devices, I sat down and tried to parse through the sudden rush information as the contents of the cultist's minds was poured into my own.
:Ambient fear depleted, recharge status: Ninety-six percent:
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Yes, I'm going to be using tropes as chapter titles.
The Out Of World
Lichte's Brain
- Location
- -
A reboot of IWTPAG? Sweetness!
Addendum: Nice way to tie in Herald, Chairtastic.
Addendum: Nice way to tie in Herald, Chairtastic.
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Chapter 3
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
A Name to Run Away From Really Fast
The needle in a haystack analogy was never more apt than in my current situation - sifting through the pile of identities, memories, and skills to focus on the ones belonging to the body I was currently using.
He wasn't responding to my mental calls, so I decided that this probably wasn't the medium by which I could talk to him. Perhaps it would be a reflective surface, or a vision quest. But I couldn't just sit on a stone tablet while I dug through my… new familiars. There were two other people being forced to read the alleged holy book to become sacrifices. The boy, whoever he was, wouldn't forgive me letting them be used too.
From skimming the cultists' memories, I got a general direction in which to stumble - though I was stumbling only for a while, as my walking adjusted to the lower weight of my limbs and shorter gait. I had gone from six foot five to somewhere in the five foot range, I guessed.
There was music playing nearby: two instruments, discordant, a recorder and a flute - I got the feeling of the certainty of death, the desperate desire to live, and the fear of pain from the songs. "What is that?"
:Accessing. This ring enables limited emotion-reading, specifically to the emotion fear. By design, this emotion-reading is attached to a reward stimulus to program the user to pursue the fears of their victims:
Victims. It wanted the… people feeling that fear-music to be my victims. I decided, stupidly in my haste, to ignore that in favor of working toward the would-be sacrifices.
Damien. Kayla. The memories of the boy I was using as a meat-suit hit me, and I knew their names. Bits of other memories floated in but I pushed them aside. Navel-gazing wouldn't get them out of harm's way.
There was a cottage in the woods; the sacrifices would be kept in a secret room under the storm cellar..., or so the memories told me. I didn't know how much I wanted to trust the recollections of the insane people I'd eaten in a single blink. The cabin was found, decrepit and empty, with the wood and iron storm cellar door built in and left unlocked.
Growing up in the suburbs, I had no idea how heavy those things could be - though, fortunately, I was wearing the body of a kid training for football. The music was annoyingly loud as I walked down the cellar stairs, but it let me pinpoint where the two were. By then, I had no patience left to look for the secret door, so, instead, manifesting a massive three-clawed hand out of the ring, I started digging into the floor of the otherwise empty cellar.
A segment of the floor was torn away, crumbling into smaller fragments as it went; what was left was a hole just wide enough for my new body - I had to stop that train of thought. It wasn't my body, it was just a... loan.
Anyway, I hopped down the hole. The ring lit up and my descent slowed enough to set me down easily. There, cuffed to steel-backed chairs, were two teenagers with their heads being held by a pair of cultists. Between them was a table with a thin book open upon it; one the kids fought not to be reading.
"Highness?" One of the cultists looked up from their work to stare at me, prompting the other to do the same.
"You both belong to me," I said without hesitation, and in a blink, they ceased to exist. I took a moment to force the sudden flood of memories out by forming a construct to open the cuffs holding the teens to their chairs.
The male looked up first, hesitant, and obviously in pain from being forced to hunch for what could have been hours. The recorder music faded all at once as he suddenly stood and bounded over to me. "Eugene, you got out!" he cried, almost literally. Oh, so that was the meat-suit's name, I realized. Eugene, how… ugly.
I looked at the teen, really looked at him: blond hair, brown eyes, scrawny, taller than the body I was in. He was looking at me with a hopeful smile that slowly died as he realized I wasn't going to return it. The girl didn't stand from the chair, just turned to look at us warily. A doleful girl, brown eyes and hair. Somehow, looking at her, I got the feeling she knew I wasn't her cousin.
"Come on," I said to them and, sure enough, they flinched. "I have no idea where we are in relation to civilization, but we need to get going."
"Eugene, cuz," the teen, Damien, laughed in much the same way as I had earlier. "What's wrong with your voice, man?" There was a hint of desperation in his eyes, and the recorder music started to come back. I sighed, and simply looked up at the hole, rising shakily. "Cuz?"
Once back in the cellar, I reached down my hand for the others. "Give me your hand, and we can get out of here." The two teens looked at each other, worried, before Damien tentatively reached up. For all that he was tall, the blonde was light and I had him up a moment later. When he reached back down Kayla took his hand almost immediately over mine.
My grasp of who Eugene had been wasn't good enough at the time to tell how he would have reacted, but I felt snubbed by that. After she climbed up, she stood opposite me, slightly behind Damien, whose expression was starting to twitch dangerously.
"C'mon Eugene, you're acting weird!" As I was reluctant to start the conversation myself, Damien ended up shouting to break the silence. I didn't want to explain to them what had happened - I was an asshole, after all. My delivery would be blunt and callous. "What did they do to you, man?"
"That's not Eugene." Kayla had whispered, but in the empty cellar it carried well. "It looks like him, but it doesn't move or sound like him." There wasn't sadness or desperation in her eyes, I noticed after a moment. There was only resolve to be seen there. "Who are you, and what have you done with our cousin?"
"Well let's start with the biggest issue," I started in a drawl. "I may not be Eugene, but I'm wearing his meat." Damien reacted more than Kayla; flinching and backing away. "I don't know if he's still up here," I tapped my head to indicate my meaning, "but I want to get out of him. In a way that doesn't mean killing me, preferably."
"Why…?" Damien started to talk, but had to take a breath. I got the feeling he'd stopped breathing after my line about 'meat'. "Why do you care?! They called you 'Highness', you're their boss, you made them do this - why would you help us?!" At that last line, I bristled, and it was only that Damien was close to weeping which kept me from simply lashing out.
I didn't want word getting around that I beat up crybabies, I told myself. "I didn't tell them to do anything. Until they did their little ritual, I wasn't even able to speak." My eyes narrowed as I watched Kayla's eyebrows climb. "Admittedly, there isn't a way to confirm that, since I ate the cultists the same way I ate those two holding you down."
Realizing what I had said, I pinched the bridge of my nose in annoyance. So much for not eating people.
"What happens now?" Damien and Kayla started to edge around me; or rather he pulled her along after him. They were obviously going to try making a break for the stairs - the music was changing from 'fear of death' to 'escape'. But it was a good question... and even if I didn't have a good answer, they deserved one.
"I don't know." I didn't look at them as they suddenly bolted up the stairs, and I tried to ignore the screams Damien threw out as he went. But more than that, I tried to ignore how pleasant I found them.
--
Flying used similar neural paths as swimming, but through the air, for me anyway. Eugene's cousins, after running as much as their hungry and tired bodies could go were farther from civilization than they'd started. With the music to guide me, I followed after and relocated them once they'd passed out. The forest service cabin I left them at had everything they needed to navigate back to civilization, presuming the ranger didn't come back first.
Said civilization happened to be Seattle, and I had no desire to visit the Puget Sound. So southward I'd flown.
The pacific northwest was so uninteresting to float through that I had a great deal of time to think. A much needed reprieve, in which to… well, stress out about my situation.
Where was I even going? What would I do for money, for food? How would I spit out Eugene so he could get on with his life? Did I want to do the same for the cultists? Was I even on my Earth? My Earth certainly didn't have magic Klansmen… I hoped.
"Ring," I murmured into the quiet forest. "Can you access the internet from here?"
:Affirmative: And from there, a search of recent news and Googling ensued. Headlines such as Another Day Saved in Metropolis, or Checkmate UN: Integration Approved, along with various clippings of spandex clad persons, cemented that I was in the DC universe. Such was to be expected, given I had a yellow power ring, but I'd be lying if I said lording it over the mundane masses with superpowers wouldn't have been fun for a while.
There were lots of heroes and villains I could team up with, or maybe carve out a personal kingdom... so many options, really. The question of what to do with my power was once again foremost in my mind.
"Could go into the horror business," I mused out loud to break the deafening silence of the woods. "Might make that a backup plan, I don't know much about horror." And it wasn't like I needed the fear - I had the lantern to charge from. Which I would probably need to go get, so I queried the ring for its location.
:This ring does not come with a paired lantern. It is intended for the user to charge it off passive fear absorption:
Well... that would be annoying to deal with. So, I did need a way to reliably collect fear, which of course favored villainy. But the problem I had with villains was that they usually lost, and I didn't want to be a loser. "Ring, do you have advice on how I should do this?"
:This ring's constructs, if properly applied, can refine and polish most precious metals, gemstones, or woods; calculating for local geology the greatest abundance of material resources is within a portion of the planet's mantle, where large clusters of precious gems form in magma bubbles:
It even showed me a projection of where to go. "Okay. Something to consider, but how about something local? To the planet's crust?"
:Searching. In lieu of assigned mission, a standard occupation is not unconventional. Agent Nero met his needs by recreationally killing and collecting resources from his victims:
"Thank you for that horrible mental image." I'd probably go after those geodes when I was more skilled with the ring. Last thing I wanted was the environment shield to die while surrounded by lava, and recreational killing was for hunters and psychopaths.
:Search complete. Law enforcement, accountant, bounty hunter, or private army member are recommended service industries that meet this ring's fear requirements, and can justify its use day-to-day:
"Huh. I'm surprised you didn't recommend I become a thief or something."
:Such action would lead to local law enforcement pursuit, King in Yellow. Records from Agent Nero's use indicate twenty-five percent of total power expenditure over his career was to escape pursuit or investigation:
Sloppy, I couldn't help but think. What did he do, leave evidence? Still… "What sort of private armies would hire a sixteen year old body?" Despite my being in my early twenties, Eugene was still sixteen, so I had to work around that.
:If user desires detailed listings, this ring will require additional time to search:
"No, no - I guess I can do something else. I can try some of these suggestions, but I'm not exactly fit for fighting yet. Do you come with a training mode?"
:This ring is equipped with a tutorial. Would you like to active it?:
The gamer in me wanted to skip it and learn the hard way. The part of me that didn't have a respawn mechanic, however, considered it a wise plan, so I diverted from the road and into the forest. Less than a minute of flight later, I touched down. "Alright, start the tutorial."
:Level one, understanding the functions of the ring….:
---
Ordinarily, a bounty hunter would need to be attached to a specific bondsman in a judicial district to pursue bail jumpers, and would only gain about ten percent of the bail the accused was given. However, supers were able to pursue other supers for the full bail amount because almost ninety-five percent of all supercrime was impossible for non-supers to stop - and considering so many supercriminals were indicted at the federal level, there was generally no need to worry about jurisdiction, save for a few locals. Even poor D-listers were able to make a name for themselves, it seemed.
I rounded up about fifteen such individuals in an afternoon, lumping them together in one massive ball construct while flying around Oregon and northern California. The FBI looked worried when I showed up with a ball of angry criminals on their doorstep, but hastily got agents together to take away the detainees as I handed them off one by one.
"... Pants Man, tech-user, used a clothes-beam-rifle to animate outfits to serve as fashion minions, captured and his rifle disassembled, here are the components," I rattled off, dropping the 'super' villain, who traded spandex for denim in his outfit. The clothes-beam was placed into an evidence box and led away with him. "And last we have Foxy Grandma, metahuman with the power to control canids. Attempted to make an army of dogs and foxes by raiding wildlife shelters and various kennels. Captured by simple construct bindings, and her army returned to their homes."
The stereotypical spook filling out forms while I listed these captives nodded with each one. To his credit, he kept an air of professionalism around him despite being out in his building's parking lot handling all this. "Your country thanks you for the good work, young man. Though next time," he pulled down his sunglasses and gave me a look, "we would appreciate you taking them to a prison, who will let us know."
I nodded, feigning an expression of chastisement. "Sorry sir, won't happen again, sir."
"And with that, we just need you to sign here, and we'll get you the bounty you've most certainly earned today." He held out a pen and his clipboard to me. On the form clipped to the board was the list of the poor souls I'd brought in, and their bail amounts I was to be credited. "Please also check the box on preferred payment method."
Taking the pen and board, I considered. Cash was the best way, as I'd need some to open a bank account - curse the minimum starting balance - and Eugene's body was starting to complain of hunger. Box checked, and my signature applied where necessary, I returned it to the spook whose name I hadn't gotten.
He chuckled and smiled faintly as he looked at the form. "You know, with some of you first time young heroes, we can trick you into giving your real names with these. Guess you're savvy to that." My brow arched, because to my memory I had put down my real name.
"Could I see that again sir, I need to let my dad know how much I got from this." I feigned an expression of embarrassment and looking away while shuffling my feet. "I may or may not have left a hole in the roof when I got these powers and he isn't home from work yet, but…."
He actually laughed. "If only homeowner's insurance covered superpowered kids, huh. Here you go, son." He handed the clipboard back to me for a second while I immediately looked down to my signature.
'The King in Yellow'.
Shit.
---
On an unrelated note, does anyone know the new code for linebreaks cause the button for it is gone.
The needle in a haystack analogy was never more apt than in my current situation - sifting through the pile of identities, memories, and skills to focus on the ones belonging to the body I was currently using.
He wasn't responding to my mental calls, so I decided that this probably wasn't the medium by which I could talk to him. Perhaps it would be a reflective surface, or a vision quest. But I couldn't just sit on a stone tablet while I dug through my… new familiars. There were two other people being forced to read the alleged holy book to become sacrifices. The boy, whoever he was, wouldn't forgive me letting them be used too.
From skimming the cultists' memories, I got a general direction in which to stumble - though I was stumbling only for a while, as my walking adjusted to the lower weight of my limbs and shorter gait. I had gone from six foot five to somewhere in the five foot range, I guessed.
There was music playing nearby: two instruments, discordant, a recorder and a flute - I got the feeling of the certainty of death, the desperate desire to live, and the fear of pain from the songs. "What is that?"
:Accessing. This ring enables limited emotion-reading, specifically to the emotion fear. By design, this emotion-reading is attached to a reward stimulus to program the user to pursue the fears of their victims:
Victims. It wanted the… people feeling that fear-music to be my victims. I decided, stupidly in my haste, to ignore that in favor of working toward the would-be sacrifices.
Damien. Kayla. The memories of the boy I was using as a meat-suit hit me, and I knew their names. Bits of other memories floated in but I pushed them aside. Navel-gazing wouldn't get them out of harm's way.
There was a cottage in the woods; the sacrifices would be kept in a secret room under the storm cellar..., or so the memories told me. I didn't know how much I wanted to trust the recollections of the insane people I'd eaten in a single blink. The cabin was found, decrepit and empty, with the wood and iron storm cellar door built in and left unlocked.
Growing up in the suburbs, I had no idea how heavy those things could be - though, fortunately, I was wearing the body of a kid training for football. The music was annoyingly loud as I walked down the cellar stairs, but it let me pinpoint where the two were. By then, I had no patience left to look for the secret door, so, instead, manifesting a massive three-clawed hand out of the ring, I started digging into the floor of the otherwise empty cellar.
A segment of the floor was torn away, crumbling into smaller fragments as it went; what was left was a hole just wide enough for my new body - I had to stop that train of thought. It wasn't my body, it was just a... loan.
Anyway, I hopped down the hole. The ring lit up and my descent slowed enough to set me down easily. There, cuffed to steel-backed chairs, were two teenagers with their heads being held by a pair of cultists. Between them was a table with a thin book open upon it; one the kids fought not to be reading.
"Highness?" One of the cultists looked up from their work to stare at me, prompting the other to do the same.
"You both belong to me," I said without hesitation, and in a blink, they ceased to exist. I took a moment to force the sudden flood of memories out by forming a construct to open the cuffs holding the teens to their chairs.
The male looked up first, hesitant, and obviously in pain from being forced to hunch for what could have been hours. The recorder music faded all at once as he suddenly stood and bounded over to me. "Eugene, you got out!" he cried, almost literally. Oh, so that was the meat-suit's name, I realized. Eugene, how… ugly.
I looked at the teen, really looked at him: blond hair, brown eyes, scrawny, taller than the body I was in. He was looking at me with a hopeful smile that slowly died as he realized I wasn't going to return it. The girl didn't stand from the chair, just turned to look at us warily. A doleful girl, brown eyes and hair. Somehow, looking at her, I got the feeling she knew I wasn't her cousin.
"Come on," I said to them and, sure enough, they flinched. "I have no idea where we are in relation to civilization, but we need to get going."
"Eugene, cuz," the teen, Damien, laughed in much the same way as I had earlier. "What's wrong with your voice, man?" There was a hint of desperation in his eyes, and the recorder music started to come back. I sighed, and simply looked up at the hole, rising shakily. "Cuz?"
Once back in the cellar, I reached down my hand for the others. "Give me your hand, and we can get out of here." The two teens looked at each other, worried, before Damien tentatively reached up. For all that he was tall, the blonde was light and I had him up a moment later. When he reached back down Kayla took his hand almost immediately over mine.
My grasp of who Eugene had been wasn't good enough at the time to tell how he would have reacted, but I felt snubbed by that. After she climbed up, she stood opposite me, slightly behind Damien, whose expression was starting to twitch dangerously.
"C'mon Eugene, you're acting weird!" As I was reluctant to start the conversation myself, Damien ended up shouting to break the silence. I didn't want to explain to them what had happened - I was an asshole, after all. My delivery would be blunt and callous. "What did they do to you, man?"
"That's not Eugene." Kayla had whispered, but in the empty cellar it carried well. "It looks like him, but it doesn't move or sound like him." There wasn't sadness or desperation in her eyes, I noticed after a moment. There was only resolve to be seen there. "Who are you, and what have you done with our cousin?"
"Well let's start with the biggest issue," I started in a drawl. "I may not be Eugene, but I'm wearing his meat." Damien reacted more than Kayla; flinching and backing away. "I don't know if he's still up here," I tapped my head to indicate my meaning, "but I want to get out of him. In a way that doesn't mean killing me, preferably."
"Why…?" Damien started to talk, but had to take a breath. I got the feeling he'd stopped breathing after my line about 'meat'. "Why do you care?! They called you 'Highness', you're their boss, you made them do this - why would you help us?!" At that last line, I bristled, and it was only that Damien was close to weeping which kept me from simply lashing out.
I didn't want word getting around that I beat up crybabies, I told myself. "I didn't tell them to do anything. Until they did their little ritual, I wasn't even able to speak." My eyes narrowed as I watched Kayla's eyebrows climb. "Admittedly, there isn't a way to confirm that, since I ate the cultists the same way I ate those two holding you down."
Realizing what I had said, I pinched the bridge of my nose in annoyance. So much for not eating people.
"What happens now?" Damien and Kayla started to edge around me; or rather he pulled her along after him. They were obviously going to try making a break for the stairs - the music was changing from 'fear of death' to 'escape'. But it was a good question... and even if I didn't have a good answer, they deserved one.
"I don't know." I didn't look at them as they suddenly bolted up the stairs, and I tried to ignore the screams Damien threw out as he went. But more than that, I tried to ignore how pleasant I found them.
--
Flying used similar neural paths as swimming, but through the air, for me anyway. Eugene's cousins, after running as much as their hungry and tired bodies could go were farther from civilization than they'd started. With the music to guide me, I followed after and relocated them once they'd passed out. The forest service cabin I left them at had everything they needed to navigate back to civilization, presuming the ranger didn't come back first.
Said civilization happened to be Seattle, and I had no desire to visit the Puget Sound. So southward I'd flown.
The pacific northwest was so uninteresting to float through that I had a great deal of time to think. A much needed reprieve, in which to… well, stress out about my situation.
Where was I even going? What would I do for money, for food? How would I spit out Eugene so he could get on with his life? Did I want to do the same for the cultists? Was I even on my Earth? My Earth certainly didn't have magic Klansmen… I hoped.
"Ring," I murmured into the quiet forest. "Can you access the internet from here?"
:Affirmative: And from there, a search of recent news and Googling ensued. Headlines such as Another Day Saved in Metropolis, or Checkmate UN: Integration Approved, along with various clippings of spandex clad persons, cemented that I was in the DC universe. Such was to be expected, given I had a yellow power ring, but I'd be lying if I said lording it over the mundane masses with superpowers wouldn't have been fun for a while.
There were lots of heroes and villains I could team up with, or maybe carve out a personal kingdom... so many options, really. The question of what to do with my power was once again foremost in my mind.
"Could go into the horror business," I mused out loud to break the deafening silence of the woods. "Might make that a backup plan, I don't know much about horror." And it wasn't like I needed the fear - I had the lantern to charge from. Which I would probably need to go get, so I queried the ring for its location.
:This ring does not come with a paired lantern. It is intended for the user to charge it off passive fear absorption:
Well... that would be annoying to deal with. So, I did need a way to reliably collect fear, which of course favored villainy. But the problem I had with villains was that they usually lost, and I didn't want to be a loser. "Ring, do you have advice on how I should do this?"
:This ring's constructs, if properly applied, can refine and polish most precious metals, gemstones, or woods; calculating for local geology the greatest abundance of material resources is within a portion of the planet's mantle, where large clusters of precious gems form in magma bubbles:
It even showed me a projection of where to go. "Okay. Something to consider, but how about something local? To the planet's crust?"
:Searching. In lieu of assigned mission, a standard occupation is not unconventional. Agent Nero met his needs by recreationally killing and collecting resources from his victims:
"Thank you for that horrible mental image." I'd probably go after those geodes when I was more skilled with the ring. Last thing I wanted was the environment shield to die while surrounded by lava, and recreational killing was for hunters and psychopaths.
:Search complete. Law enforcement, accountant, bounty hunter, or private army member are recommended service industries that meet this ring's fear requirements, and can justify its use day-to-day:
"Huh. I'm surprised you didn't recommend I become a thief or something."
:Such action would lead to local law enforcement pursuit, King in Yellow. Records from Agent Nero's use indicate twenty-five percent of total power expenditure over his career was to escape pursuit or investigation:
Sloppy, I couldn't help but think. What did he do, leave evidence? Still… "What sort of private armies would hire a sixteen year old body?" Despite my being in my early twenties, Eugene was still sixteen, so I had to work around that.
:If user desires detailed listings, this ring will require additional time to search:
"No, no - I guess I can do something else. I can try some of these suggestions, but I'm not exactly fit for fighting yet. Do you come with a training mode?"
:This ring is equipped with a tutorial. Would you like to active it?:
The gamer in me wanted to skip it and learn the hard way. The part of me that didn't have a respawn mechanic, however, considered it a wise plan, so I diverted from the road and into the forest. Less than a minute of flight later, I touched down. "Alright, start the tutorial."
:Level one, understanding the functions of the ring….:
---
Ordinarily, a bounty hunter would need to be attached to a specific bondsman in a judicial district to pursue bail jumpers, and would only gain about ten percent of the bail the accused was given. However, supers were able to pursue other supers for the full bail amount because almost ninety-five percent of all supercrime was impossible for non-supers to stop - and considering so many supercriminals were indicted at the federal level, there was generally no need to worry about jurisdiction, save for a few locals. Even poor D-listers were able to make a name for themselves, it seemed.
I rounded up about fifteen such individuals in an afternoon, lumping them together in one massive ball construct while flying around Oregon and northern California. The FBI looked worried when I showed up with a ball of angry criminals on their doorstep, but hastily got agents together to take away the detainees as I handed them off one by one.
"... Pants Man, tech-user, used a clothes-beam-rifle to animate outfits to serve as fashion minions, captured and his rifle disassembled, here are the components," I rattled off, dropping the 'super' villain, who traded spandex for denim in his outfit. The clothes-beam was placed into an evidence box and led away with him. "And last we have Foxy Grandma, metahuman with the power to control canids. Attempted to make an army of dogs and foxes by raiding wildlife shelters and various kennels. Captured by simple construct bindings, and her army returned to their homes."
The stereotypical spook filling out forms while I listed these captives nodded with each one. To his credit, he kept an air of professionalism around him despite being out in his building's parking lot handling all this. "Your country thanks you for the good work, young man. Though next time," he pulled down his sunglasses and gave me a look, "we would appreciate you taking them to a prison, who will let us know."
I nodded, feigning an expression of chastisement. "Sorry sir, won't happen again, sir."
"And with that, we just need you to sign here, and we'll get you the bounty you've most certainly earned today." He held out a pen and his clipboard to me. On the form clipped to the board was the list of the poor souls I'd brought in, and their bail amounts I was to be credited. "Please also check the box on preferred payment method."
Taking the pen and board, I considered. Cash was the best way, as I'd need some to open a bank account - curse the minimum starting balance - and Eugene's body was starting to complain of hunger. Box checked, and my signature applied where necessary, I returned it to the spook whose name I hadn't gotten.
He chuckled and smiled faintly as he looked at the form. "You know, with some of you first time young heroes, we can trick you into giving your real names with these. Guess you're savvy to that." My brow arched, because to my memory I had put down my real name.
"Could I see that again sir, I need to let my dad know how much I got from this." I feigned an expression of embarrassment and looking away while shuffling my feet. "I may or may not have left a hole in the roof when I got these powers and he isn't home from work yet, but…."
He actually laughed. "If only homeowner's insurance covered superpowered kids, huh. Here you go, son." He handed the clipboard back to me for a second while I immediately looked down to my signature.
'The King in Yellow'.
Shit.
---
On an unrelated note, does anyone know the new code for linebreaks cause the button for it is gone.
Last edited:
The Out Of World
Lichte's Brain
- Location
- -
Should be
Chapter 4
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
This chapter has been beta'd by the good folk @Enohthree and @Rokoran
Not Wearing Tights
I'll admit, I toyed with the weak villains along the west coast for a couple of days, figuring out what I could do with my ring - making constructs of different proportions and functions. All to meet my ring-power requirements and simple amusement. One of the most satisfying moments I had was interrupting a bank robbery where the villain's minions, armed with assault rifles, tried to shoot at me.
I had stood there, letting them shoot me while a hard light barrier deflected the bullets. When that failed, they tried to ram me with their getaway car, to a crushing failure - quite literally, as I'd squeezed the vehicle with construct hands until they said the magic words: "I surrender".
There wasn't really a need for me to put myself at risk; I could link my eyes to those of whatever construct I created if needed. Therefore, after a day of practice, I merely floated high above the scenes of combat, allowing my constructs to rampage freely. The only weakness was the cord of energy connecting them with my actual body - something none of the rubes I was beating up could exploit.
With the bounty money I was gathering, I kept Eugene's body in decent condition. It would be poor form to let it fatten up like I had mine, so I forced myself to eat healthy for once in my life, and to exercise. Renting motel rooms, unafraid of knives in the night, gave me a place to sleep - though, as the days went by, I found I was sleeping progressively less. There was no longer a pressing need to obtain resources for survival, so my goals shifted toward 'want' rather than 'need'.
Namely, a 'super suit'.
The search started with the possibility of the default uniform stored in the ring - however, Alexander Nero had been a fan of leather. Leather pants, boots, and a trenchcoat with no shirt did not make a suitable super suit for my tastes. Besides, Manchester Black pulled the look off far better than Eugene's body could.
Therefore, in what I hoped to be the last motel I'd stay in, I sat on the twin bed before a yellow construct of Eugene's body while I adjusted the prospective outfit with thoughts and gestures. Spandex or leather of any kind went out early on, due to equal parts ethical concerns - because it was not my body I would be showing off - and because the material just did not look good on Eugene.
A more civilian look was needed. Given Eugene's body was much smaller than mine, there were a plethora of options to pursue. Ideally, something that unsettled people, for passive fear generation. I gravitated toward the formal side of the spectrum - partly because I wanted to look fancy, and partly because a sixteen year old in a three piece suit or tux looked distinctly... off to me.
Fortunately, Star City was not lacking in the fashion department. Started by S.T.A.R. labs, the place was basically Las Vegas as done by scientists rather than mobsters. And somehow, actual, factual magic got involved because, as I was flying downtown from my motel, I passed an outdoor show where a man was pulling rabbits the size of small cars out of a perfectly normal-looking top hat.
Soaring through the air doesn't grant a lot of time to socialize, so I had grown used to not seeing or talking to people at all outside of brief stops to collect a bounty. Thus, when a teenaged black girl in black pants, a yellow-and-black tube top, her hair in pom-poms and insect wings growing out of her back flew up alongside me, I was stunned for a moment.
"What," she inquired with a smirk. "Never seen a bee-girl before?"
"No," I admitted honestly, having to change course rapidly to avoid an art-deco office building. The girl outright grinned, and began to spiral as she flew.
"Well in the case, stare and be amazed!" Given I had no schedule, I had no need to break off the conversation, and continued to fly with her. "Name's Bumblebee, I'm sort of the only hero in town since Kid Flash left."
"Hi, I'm the King in Yellow; no, I didn't get to pick the name," I added the explanation at her incredulous look. "The powers chose it for some asinine reason."
"Your powers chose your name?" The incredulity lasted only a moment before she went back to a more peppy tone of voice. "Not the strangest thing in this city. You'll see a lot more of it if you stay... which is actually what I'm here about."
"I don't know if I'll stay." I spent a moment to actually take stock of the city. It wasn't unpleasant to look at, but I didn't know how the people behaved. "I mean, I have no ties anywhere at the moment. Gotta have a reason to stay, you know?"
"Yeah, I hear that." She motioned to a rooftop, and the both of us landed there in short order. "Look, I'll level with you, I don't know you. But word on the street is you're doing good work, getting baddies back in jail without a whole lot of damage or public disturbance."
"Most of my captures end with the 'baddie' as a gibbering mess," I arched a brow. Bumblebee shrugged.
"The bar ain't exactly high, considering Kid Flash used to make sonic booms all the time, so people had to replace their windows almost constantly." Her expression was long suffering, and in a city with so many tall buildings, I could understand the frustration. I noticed something about her tone, an uneasiness, a restlessness. "And I'm having to head out of town for a good long while, which would leave Star City open for any big bad looking for tech." And she took a breath before clenching her fists and screwing up her face, and said in a desperately rushed voice: "I'm asking you to settle in for a bit, I'll give you some of my contacts so you can get some sweet tech cheap, and be on call if you need help."
"Look." My voice became firm as I started to hear faint chimes that sang to me of desperation. "You don't have to bend over backwards for me. I'll stay until your job is done, and maybe by then I'll have a… reason…" I looked at Bumblebee again, and it was like a switch flipped in my head. Memories of sitting in front of a TV, watching a cartoon girl squaring off against her opponents, leading her team and so much more. "Holy shit."
"What? Powers acting up? I know a guy at S.T.A.R. labs who has a lot of healing tech if you need it." She looked worried, but I was too dumbstruck to respond beyond pointing at her.
"You… you're Bumblebee."
"Yeah, introduced myself a bit ago. Aw man, did you hit your head or something?" Instinct wanted me to behave like a fool and try to touch her to confirm her realness, but cold logic fought back saying Bumblebee was a character and there were once 52 versions of her running around.
"N-no, I just didn't connect that you were that Bumblebee. I'd heard about you, but hadn't actually seen you until now." Bumblebee stood a bit straighter, and became conspicuously nonchalant.
"Oh, I didn't realize people were telling stories about me already. I mean, I only started last year." The girl was fighting a smile as she continued to talk. "So, I notice you going rather civilian in your fashion sense."
"Yeah, I was looking for a tailor to make up my suit when you showed up."
"Sweet. I can point you to a guy who'll keep your measurements confidential from the fans I'm sure you'll pick up after a bit. Star City's a sucker for big shows, after all."
---
Bumblebee officially left town later that day, apparently leaving it to me. I was given a small notebook of contacts: scientists at S.T.A.R. Labs, clinic doctors, town gossips, and a singular police officer.
That last, I planned to meet face to face, to get a feel of the ground rules. Unfortunately, I got more than a couple odd looks in the precinct as I walked by with a visitor's pass hanging from my new suit's breast pocket. It was a good suit too - goldenrod colored, white silk gloves to cover that nasty scar on Eugene's hand, matching tie, and polished black shoes.
Gaudy, yes, but gaudy worked for the Joker, and it could work for me. It also got the bulk of the officers giving me incredulous looks, and being underestimated is always a good thing. Sergeant Alton Phelps had set aside a bit of time from his busy schedule of doughnut eating and paperwork to talk to me as a 'courtesy', so I was heading to his office.
Phelps was a large man, overweight and balding but still muscular, dressed in full uniform. His expression when I walked in was one of vague amusement, and he actually chuckled when I introduced myself. "Quite the fancy name you have there," I tried to share in his amusement, but the Sergeant rapidly became more serious. "So, from your call, I got the feeling you're taking over for Bumblebee for a bit?"
"An indeterminate amount of time," I agreed, sitting when he indicated one of the two chairs in front of his desk. "Given the nature of her mission it could take a while."
"And what exactly is her mission, Mr. 'King'?" My face lost all expression.
"I am not at liberty to discuss the goings-on of Bumblebee's assignment, Sergeant Phelps. Could we please get to the point of this meeting?" Phelps frowned a bit at my response, but recovered quickly.
"Okay, the general unwritten rules for this town. Cause a minimum of property damage, don't kill anyone unless there are no other options, and you let the police department or the mayor's office know of extreme threats." He leaned over his desk to look at me in what could have been an attempt at an intimidating look. "Now for specific rules. If you find, or even suspect, a police officer to be involved during one of your… super-escapades, you let me, Police Chief Cline, or the Mayor know about it. The only time you confront them is if there's a clear and present danger."
"And if you, the Chief, or the Mayor are involved?" We had a staring contest after that, both of our expressions blank, though his with a bit of confusion.
"Go to the FBI building downtown if that happens. We'd like a way to contact you in the event of something major happening, but I understand getting a phone number will take a couple days. You don't have to help out firefighters or EMTs, but if you do we'd appreciate it. Hell, if you've got the powers, helping out at Star General Hospital would go a long way toward earning some goodwill."
"I certainly could heal with my powers." If a Green Lantern could will people out of a coma, I could use fear to fix people up too. "But I probably need a bit of practice before I do it for life and death situations."
"Good, I suppose. A general rule of thumb, though this hasn't actually been an issue since the seventies, is that in the event of riots or a state of emergency the SCPD would be grateful for any assistance you could offer."
All reasonable rules; he was certainly being more accepting than someone like Harvey Bullock. A part of me hoped Harvey'd be choking down Joker venom soon - purely out of spite. "With that said, there are some things you need to know." Yellow constructs took shape, a grotesquely proportioned spider, a long and winding snake, and a disembodied jagged set of teeth. "My power is drawn from fear - I make people afraid... often traumatizing them in the process."
Phelps cupped his chin and considered. "Perhaps do something to win over the public before that becomes widely known. So they can forgive some… eccentricity." Wise advice, if I was going to be staying here. "What can you do with your fear powers, anyway?"
"Anything. With the ring, all things become possible if you know how to will it into existence." And almost immediately, an idea came to mind. If Star City liked a show I could give them one.
---
The next day, I learned that once enough people started experiencing fear at the same time for the same reason, the discordance of their individual musics would smooth out into a lovely harmony. I also learned that 'awe' was considered a type of fear when I passed over downtown towing an iceberg through the air toward the lake a Google search told me was responsible for the city's water.
Lake Blehl had been having an overdraw problem recently, and thus, the city had something of a drought. After I was through, it had an iceberg problem. The poor 'berg was so large it couldn't even float in the drying lake - instead, it sat on the lakebed and waited for the heat to melt it away. The icy island presented a rather pleasant view, actually.
A view rapidly ruined by the presence of a helicopter. Perhaps they meant for it to be intimidating, flying quick and loud toward me; instead, I found it annoying, and had to fight an impulse to smack them out of the air. After it passed me and turned around to hover in my proximity. "This is the Mayor!" Came a woman's voice over a speaker from the aircraft. "We need to talk right now, young man!"
The setup was just too perfect, and it had been too long since I last had been an asshole to someone. There was only one real choice to make. "That was an extremely poor choice of words!" I shouted back at the 'copter, forming a large, taloned hand that launched itself at the aircraft. It forced open the sliding door on the side and reached in.
"What is- oh my god! Aaah!" Target acquired, the hand retracted from the flailing helicopter with a skinny Latina woman in a dark blue suit-dress. She was terrified, judging by the music coming off of her as I pulled her closer.
"So. What did you want to talk about?"
"Please don't drop me."
--
Insert witty comment here.
Not Wearing Tights
I'll admit, I toyed with the weak villains along the west coast for a couple of days, figuring out what I could do with my ring - making constructs of different proportions and functions. All to meet my ring-power requirements and simple amusement. One of the most satisfying moments I had was interrupting a bank robbery where the villain's minions, armed with assault rifles, tried to shoot at me.
I had stood there, letting them shoot me while a hard light barrier deflected the bullets. When that failed, they tried to ram me with their getaway car, to a crushing failure - quite literally, as I'd squeezed the vehicle with construct hands until they said the magic words: "I surrender".
There wasn't really a need for me to put myself at risk; I could link my eyes to those of whatever construct I created if needed. Therefore, after a day of practice, I merely floated high above the scenes of combat, allowing my constructs to rampage freely. The only weakness was the cord of energy connecting them with my actual body - something none of the rubes I was beating up could exploit.
With the bounty money I was gathering, I kept Eugene's body in decent condition. It would be poor form to let it fatten up like I had mine, so I forced myself to eat healthy for once in my life, and to exercise. Renting motel rooms, unafraid of knives in the night, gave me a place to sleep - though, as the days went by, I found I was sleeping progressively less. There was no longer a pressing need to obtain resources for survival, so my goals shifted toward 'want' rather than 'need'.
Namely, a 'super suit'.
The search started with the possibility of the default uniform stored in the ring - however, Alexander Nero had been a fan of leather. Leather pants, boots, and a trenchcoat with no shirt did not make a suitable super suit for my tastes. Besides, Manchester Black pulled the look off far better than Eugene's body could.
Therefore, in what I hoped to be the last motel I'd stay in, I sat on the twin bed before a yellow construct of Eugene's body while I adjusted the prospective outfit with thoughts and gestures. Spandex or leather of any kind went out early on, due to equal parts ethical concerns - because it was not my body I would be showing off - and because the material just did not look good on Eugene.
A more civilian look was needed. Given Eugene's body was much smaller than mine, there were a plethora of options to pursue. Ideally, something that unsettled people, for passive fear generation. I gravitated toward the formal side of the spectrum - partly because I wanted to look fancy, and partly because a sixteen year old in a three piece suit or tux looked distinctly... off to me.
Fortunately, Star City was not lacking in the fashion department. Started by S.T.A.R. labs, the place was basically Las Vegas as done by scientists rather than mobsters. And somehow, actual, factual magic got involved because, as I was flying downtown from my motel, I passed an outdoor show where a man was pulling rabbits the size of small cars out of a perfectly normal-looking top hat.
Soaring through the air doesn't grant a lot of time to socialize, so I had grown used to not seeing or talking to people at all outside of brief stops to collect a bounty. Thus, when a teenaged black girl in black pants, a yellow-and-black tube top, her hair in pom-poms and insect wings growing out of her back flew up alongside me, I was stunned for a moment.
"What," she inquired with a smirk. "Never seen a bee-girl before?"
"No," I admitted honestly, having to change course rapidly to avoid an art-deco office building. The girl outright grinned, and began to spiral as she flew.
"Well in the case, stare and be amazed!" Given I had no schedule, I had no need to break off the conversation, and continued to fly with her. "Name's Bumblebee, I'm sort of the only hero in town since Kid Flash left."
"Hi, I'm the King in Yellow; no, I didn't get to pick the name," I added the explanation at her incredulous look. "The powers chose it for some asinine reason."
"Your powers chose your name?" The incredulity lasted only a moment before she went back to a more peppy tone of voice. "Not the strangest thing in this city. You'll see a lot more of it if you stay... which is actually what I'm here about."
"I don't know if I'll stay." I spent a moment to actually take stock of the city. It wasn't unpleasant to look at, but I didn't know how the people behaved. "I mean, I have no ties anywhere at the moment. Gotta have a reason to stay, you know?"
"Yeah, I hear that." She motioned to a rooftop, and the both of us landed there in short order. "Look, I'll level with you, I don't know you. But word on the street is you're doing good work, getting baddies back in jail without a whole lot of damage or public disturbance."
"Most of my captures end with the 'baddie' as a gibbering mess," I arched a brow. Bumblebee shrugged.
"The bar ain't exactly high, considering Kid Flash used to make sonic booms all the time, so people had to replace their windows almost constantly." Her expression was long suffering, and in a city with so many tall buildings, I could understand the frustration. I noticed something about her tone, an uneasiness, a restlessness. "And I'm having to head out of town for a good long while, which would leave Star City open for any big bad looking for tech." And she took a breath before clenching her fists and screwing up her face, and said in a desperately rushed voice: "I'm asking you to settle in for a bit, I'll give you some of my contacts so you can get some sweet tech cheap, and be on call if you need help."
"Look." My voice became firm as I started to hear faint chimes that sang to me of desperation. "You don't have to bend over backwards for me. I'll stay until your job is done, and maybe by then I'll have a… reason…" I looked at Bumblebee again, and it was like a switch flipped in my head. Memories of sitting in front of a TV, watching a cartoon girl squaring off against her opponents, leading her team and so much more. "Holy shit."
"What? Powers acting up? I know a guy at S.T.A.R. labs who has a lot of healing tech if you need it." She looked worried, but I was too dumbstruck to respond beyond pointing at her.
"You… you're Bumblebee."
"Yeah, introduced myself a bit ago. Aw man, did you hit your head or something?" Instinct wanted me to behave like a fool and try to touch her to confirm her realness, but cold logic fought back saying Bumblebee was a character and there were once 52 versions of her running around.
"N-no, I just didn't connect that you were that Bumblebee. I'd heard about you, but hadn't actually seen you until now." Bumblebee stood a bit straighter, and became conspicuously nonchalant.
"Oh, I didn't realize people were telling stories about me already. I mean, I only started last year." The girl was fighting a smile as she continued to talk. "So, I notice you going rather civilian in your fashion sense."
"Yeah, I was looking for a tailor to make up my suit when you showed up."
"Sweet. I can point you to a guy who'll keep your measurements confidential from the fans I'm sure you'll pick up after a bit. Star City's a sucker for big shows, after all."
---
Bumblebee officially left town later that day, apparently leaving it to me. I was given a small notebook of contacts: scientists at S.T.A.R. Labs, clinic doctors, town gossips, and a singular police officer.
That last, I planned to meet face to face, to get a feel of the ground rules. Unfortunately, I got more than a couple odd looks in the precinct as I walked by with a visitor's pass hanging from my new suit's breast pocket. It was a good suit too - goldenrod colored, white silk gloves to cover that nasty scar on Eugene's hand, matching tie, and polished black shoes.
Gaudy, yes, but gaudy worked for the Joker, and it could work for me. It also got the bulk of the officers giving me incredulous looks, and being underestimated is always a good thing. Sergeant Alton Phelps had set aside a bit of time from his busy schedule of doughnut eating and paperwork to talk to me as a 'courtesy', so I was heading to his office.
Phelps was a large man, overweight and balding but still muscular, dressed in full uniform. His expression when I walked in was one of vague amusement, and he actually chuckled when I introduced myself. "Quite the fancy name you have there," I tried to share in his amusement, but the Sergeant rapidly became more serious. "So, from your call, I got the feeling you're taking over for Bumblebee for a bit?"
"An indeterminate amount of time," I agreed, sitting when he indicated one of the two chairs in front of his desk. "Given the nature of her mission it could take a while."
"And what exactly is her mission, Mr. 'King'?" My face lost all expression.
"I am not at liberty to discuss the goings-on of Bumblebee's assignment, Sergeant Phelps. Could we please get to the point of this meeting?" Phelps frowned a bit at my response, but recovered quickly.
"Okay, the general unwritten rules for this town. Cause a minimum of property damage, don't kill anyone unless there are no other options, and you let the police department or the mayor's office know of extreme threats." He leaned over his desk to look at me in what could have been an attempt at an intimidating look. "Now for specific rules. If you find, or even suspect, a police officer to be involved during one of your… super-escapades, you let me, Police Chief Cline, or the Mayor know about it. The only time you confront them is if there's a clear and present danger."
"And if you, the Chief, or the Mayor are involved?" We had a staring contest after that, both of our expressions blank, though his with a bit of confusion.
"Go to the FBI building downtown if that happens. We'd like a way to contact you in the event of something major happening, but I understand getting a phone number will take a couple days. You don't have to help out firefighters or EMTs, but if you do we'd appreciate it. Hell, if you've got the powers, helping out at Star General Hospital would go a long way toward earning some goodwill."
"I certainly could heal with my powers." If a Green Lantern could will people out of a coma, I could use fear to fix people up too. "But I probably need a bit of practice before I do it for life and death situations."
"Good, I suppose. A general rule of thumb, though this hasn't actually been an issue since the seventies, is that in the event of riots or a state of emergency the SCPD would be grateful for any assistance you could offer."
All reasonable rules; he was certainly being more accepting than someone like Harvey Bullock. A part of me hoped Harvey'd be choking down Joker venom soon - purely out of spite. "With that said, there are some things you need to know." Yellow constructs took shape, a grotesquely proportioned spider, a long and winding snake, and a disembodied jagged set of teeth. "My power is drawn from fear - I make people afraid... often traumatizing them in the process."
Phelps cupped his chin and considered. "Perhaps do something to win over the public before that becomes widely known. So they can forgive some… eccentricity." Wise advice, if I was going to be staying here. "What can you do with your fear powers, anyway?"
"Anything. With the ring, all things become possible if you know how to will it into existence." And almost immediately, an idea came to mind. If Star City liked a show I could give them one.
---
The next day, I learned that once enough people started experiencing fear at the same time for the same reason, the discordance of their individual musics would smooth out into a lovely harmony. I also learned that 'awe' was considered a type of fear when I passed over downtown towing an iceberg through the air toward the lake a Google search told me was responsible for the city's water.
Lake Blehl had been having an overdraw problem recently, and thus, the city had something of a drought. After I was through, it had an iceberg problem. The poor 'berg was so large it couldn't even float in the drying lake - instead, it sat on the lakebed and waited for the heat to melt it away. The icy island presented a rather pleasant view, actually.
A view rapidly ruined by the presence of a helicopter. Perhaps they meant for it to be intimidating, flying quick and loud toward me; instead, I found it annoying, and had to fight an impulse to smack them out of the air. After it passed me and turned around to hover in my proximity. "This is the Mayor!" Came a woman's voice over a speaker from the aircraft. "We need to talk right now, young man!"
The setup was just too perfect, and it had been too long since I last had been an asshole to someone. There was only one real choice to make. "That was an extremely poor choice of words!" I shouted back at the 'copter, forming a large, taloned hand that launched itself at the aircraft. It forced open the sliding door on the side and reached in.
"What is- oh my god! Aaah!" Target acquired, the hand retracted from the flailing helicopter with a skinny Latina woman in a dark blue suit-dress. She was terrified, judging by the music coming off of her as I pulled her closer.
"So. What did you want to talk about?"
"Please don't drop me."
--
Insert witty comment here.
Chapter 5
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
College level geography is an excellent course no matter your major, and you should all take it.
---
Mysterious Informant
"I'm not going to drop you, Miss Mayor," I snapped at the woman My construct hand changed its shape into a chair to seat her while around us yellow light grew in broad swaths. A room was being constructed, a rudimentary office. The poor Latina watched as a yellow light desk formed in front of her. Behind her, a wall rose up with two faux windows of considerable size.
"What the…." Her tone of shock and awe pleased me. While I added detail to the 'office', she whirled around to look at the 'copter flailing in the air as the pilots struggled to regain composure. I went with an art deco style, since I had seen that design often among the buildings of Star City. Safe bet that her office in city hall had something similar in its decorating. "How?"
"I'm using your fear to sculpt a place for us to talk." The last thing to do was to make a seat for myself and flop into it. "That's how my power works, I use people's fears to make things happen." Her expression of incredulity was met with a warm smile. "Which I hope preemptively answers the question of why I carried that iceberg through downtown?"
Like a true politician she took a moment to calm down and straighten herself up in her construct chair before leaning on the desk. "Who are you?" I had forgotten the two of us had never actually met, so an exchange of names took place - I learned her name to be Lauren Corte-Real. "Right, Mr. Yellow. What the hell were you thinking, hauling an iceberg through my city?!" Yelling was a bit of a trigger of mine - brought up bad memories.
My warm smile melted away into an ugly grimace, my eyes narrowed in a glare. "I was thinking the lake was drying up."
She put her face into her hands for a moment before talking again, this time more calmly. "And you didn't think to inform me - or the fish and game department? Or perhaps just bring in liquid water?" Fair points that were wasted on me - I was of the mind that she was my enemy for the moment.
"Why should I have told you? So you could delay it by grandstanding or debating with the governor or state senate over it?" My tone was biting - like a teenager would use in an argument. In hindsight, I found it shameful.
"So we could prepare. That iceberg is going to generate astronomical amounts of fog as it melts, the pumping stations aren't set up to accept the intake it'll generate and there's a risk that the dam could be damaged from the shock of the lake's water and water chilled by proximity to the iceberg!" I developed a bit of grudging respect toward the Mayor. Given a moment to adjust, she had no problem laying into me - more than many police I had met while bounty hunting could say.
"I'll grant you that. However if the pumping stations can't adjust quickly to new water, how do they deal with rain? The dam I will freely admit to not having considered and I will assist in repairs if the the shock does end up damaging it. The fog is a non-issue - the prevailing winds would take it into the Sierra Nevada out west." The city was just in sight of the range, but the lake to its north was almost at its feet. "And there are no roads through this portion of the mountains so there's no one to risk besides people travelling where it's already unsafe." Thank you, college level geography classes. The two of us were quiet, looking at each other then to the iceberg as a sizable portion broke off loudly.
"Rainwater increase is hardly comparable to a melting iceberg! Rain would take days to raise the water as high as that iceberg is now! Look" she sighed as she turned back. "Just… let us know before you make sweeping changes, alright?" After taking a moment to think on that… I agreed with her assessment. The 'berg was already splitting to pieces in the distance. But my hubris would not allow me to acknowledge she was right.
She was getting exasperated, I was getting annoyed that my attempt to be good had received anything but thanks. So I decided to try negotiation. "How about this? I let you know what some of my big projects are that will directly benefit the city, perhaps you specifically if you want here and now. I bite my tongue with your team of vultures - I mean public relations," I faked a smile. She narrowed her eyes. "We work out a spin, perhaps a schedule relating to your election periods. And, to be nice, I'll say it was your idea when they work and my fault if they mess up."
She leaned back in the construct chair, crossing her arms in consideration. "In exchange for…?"
My smile returned. "I'm going to be the city's primary hero for the foreseeable future, helping out as much as my schedule allows. So I'm going to need a place to stay." Mayor Corte-Real's eyebrow arched up in response, but I didn't hear a 'no' yet. "Star City's been around since the sixties. There's a storied history of superheros I bet, and I'm pretty sure at least one of their old 'hideouts of pretentious justice' has been found by now."
She considered the deal for a moment, face blank. "The city doesn't pay for the set up or repairs," she said at last. "And until your public works start offsetting utilities, you find a way to pay for those. I'll be generous and leave off the property tax." I'd need to see the costs involved before I'd know what had to be done to pay for them. But, if push came to shove I could follow the ring's original suggestion: geode mining.
"You'll forgive me if I ask the deal be in writing?"
"I'll have a contract for you to sign by end of business today." Prompt, especially for a politician.
"Excellent. My next big project starts off with a quick trip to S.T.A.R. labs, and, if all goes well, the sun…."
----
"Does everything in this city have to be built in art deco?!" In its heyday, the facility Corte-Real had awarded me had been called the Retreat. A name I wished it had lived up to, as time had all but ruined the structure. Holes in the walls and ceiling in places, furniture outdated or broken, the wiring needed to be replaced, and the central computer still ran on vacuum tubes.
All of that could be fixed, given time and money. And until a situation requiring my attention cropped up, I had both. My ring was listening in on local radio signals for anything on the police force's chatter to indicate need for my services, so I could focus on getting the facility clean again.
Fairly monotonous work, clearing debris and dust from the building. Lots of time to multitask - look up information on concrete, electricians, S.T.A.R. labs' machinery costs. Those geodes were definitely looking attractive from the way the numbers were adding up. There was also the prospects of taking satellites into orbit, or taking rich people on solar system trips.
A popup from the ring let me know that its power had dropped below fifty percent, even with passive recharge. Which meant I needed to resolve that issue as well. "Phenomenal cosmic power… and it runs on batteries. Oy vey." Though, if my plans with S.T.A.R. labs worked out, that'd be less of an issue.
:Schedule alert. This ring has been programmed to remind user that event: 'Call Robin' is allocated to this time:
Oh yeah, that thing I was supposed to do that day before the iceberg happened.
"Fine, didn't have time to do a proper search but whatever. Let's give them what we have." Before the call I took a moment to spruce up in a wall-mounted mirror, get Eugene's hair slicked back down and parted, straighten the tie and make sure the seams of my suit were straight. "Let's hope this doesn't take long, there are other things to do today."
:Schedule shows one event remaining for today. Scheduled custom audio test:
"Not in the habit of jotting down every little thing yet. Something I need to work on - remind me of that tomorrow would you?" I reviewed where they would be chronologically. There had been no mention of the Puppet King, but Thunder and Lightning, the HIVE trio, and Dr. Light had already appeared. Which meant Red X would be happening soon.
:As you wish:
"Good, make the call would you?" A stream of yellow energy rose from the ring and into the mirror. Yellow ripples emerged from the central point of the mirror, as a crude mimicry of a Skype interface took shape, and the unfortunate need to log in. Username: 'Hail to the King', password: DavidTibalt. "Now let's see if I remember how to do this, it's been a while."
:Searching for user 'Titans, Go!' Search returns one result:
"Send contact request, edit message to 'Have info on Slade, might help'." The display changed as the ring obeyed my orders, and after the request was sent there was only a moment before the 'Titans, Go!' went from a question mark to 'online'.
:Incoming call from 'Titans, Go!' Accept or deny?: Of course I was going to accept.
"Put them through." The mirror went dark as a loading spiral took over, before a sight familiar to me came up. The main room of Titans Tower, in Jump City. And standing at the bottom of the display, tiny from the large screen they were using, were the Titans. The orange-skinned redhead alien warlady Starfire, the green-faced shapeshifter Beast Boy with that one fang sticking out, the hulking half-metal Cyborg, mysterious and monochromatic Raven in the back as always, and the technicolor explosion that was Robin up front, looking all serious. "Hola~." I greeted them with a broad smile and a wave.
Difficult not to be peppy when you were meeting some of your favorites in real life, eh?
"Um, hi." The cowled Raven muttered. Her voice was more gravelly than I remember it being.
"What's this intel about Slade you have? Does it include a possible attack?" Robin, as expected rushing in with vehemence those unfamiliar with Robin's MO would be shocked by. The Boy Wonder took everything far too seriously, from my memory.
"I would make a joke about the exchange of pleasantries to lead off polite conversation," my attempt at a chiding tone became joking from the leftover giddiness of seeing them. "But I expect Beast Boy will throw something together soon enough."
The changeling perked up, and began to scratch at his hair, concentrating. "Uh yeah, gimme a sec." And his voice was not quite how I remembered it either. Everything was… slightly off from my memories. Like, I had only seen them through a mirror and now I was looking at the real thing.
"Anyway, I do have information." I took a deep breath to lead off the length of talking I was going to have do next. "His name is Slade Wilson, capename Deathstroke the Terminator, single most effective unaffiliated assassin in the business. Don't fight him one on one, he'll destroy you metaphorically and literally."
"Oh! How about this?" Beast Boy had a look of inspiration and zoomed off to Robin's side. "Robin, you should totally hail to the King." I had never been involved in a joke so terrible it stopped the conversation for a solid minute until that moment. The awkward silence ended when Cyborg pried BB off Robin and hauled him away. "Hey, it was funn- ow!"
"Sorry about that," Robin ground out, looking miffed. "Please continue."
"Sure." I nodded, and resumed regurgitating information at the Titans. "His main way of fighting, from what I've gathered, is a gun and sword approach. This scheming, hand-to-hand thing is new."
"Can you tell us about his goals? Why he is doing all this?" I got the feeling I had only been telling them things they knew.
Think, what did Slade's motives indicate from the show? And like my highschool years, I remembered something that should have been obvious from the start.
"He's looking for a replacement goldfish." That got confused looks from most of them except Raven, who remained stoic. "Let me explain. Slade is pushing sixty right now, he's a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars - talk to the Army, whole cornucopia of information there. But he's almost at retiring age and so he takes an apprentice. He's got three kids perfectly capable of taking up the one-eyed mask and then the most likely one, the one actually interested in the family business dies.
"Grant Wilson, capename Ravager, killed in unknown circumstances, give me a bit of time and I can find you his cemetery. Slade's darling child. But his second boy, one around your - our age. Unlikely to be from the same mother - Slade has a bit of a philandering problem. I only know is capename: Jericho. He's had his metahuman gene activated, powers of possession, and has been rendered mute by a cut to the throat. Boy's somewhere in Tibet right now if I have my mountain ranges right."
"This, Jericho, he rejected Slade's attempt to make him an apprentice?" The gears were turning in Robin's head. I could almost see them.
"Mhm. And Slade, the long-time consummate professional, calm and collected schemer, developed this," I smiled a smile most unpleasant, "terrible anger problem regarding apprentices not doing as he tells them. Or worse, wanting to get out of their arrangement."
Robin narrowed his eyes and pinched his chin, thinking deep, I could tell. "What about his daughter?"
"I don't know," I told them honestly. "I can look for her, but I don't even have a name to work with yet. No idea what powers she has, or training. She could be too young for all I know." They had eyes only for Robin, their expressions concerned. And that stung a little. I wanted to be the center of their attention for a bit and when I realized that, I was ashamed. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you anything more useful."
"No," Robin actually smiled, smirked even. "This helps a lot. Now we have some insight into his motives, and a few buttons to push the next time he shows up." Uh oh. "Thanks for the info. So, you're a hero in… Star City it looks like?"
"Not much of a hero, 'business' has been less than lively." I shrugged, trying to give a look of 'what can you do?'
"That's supposed to be a good thing, you know." Raven commented from the back. "If you're in Star City, why are you telling us all this? How did you get it? And why do you care about Slade at all?"
The sudden string of pointed questions had been unexpected, so I was stunned for a moment before answering. "Um, Slade's fixation on your town is new, he used to be an international thing. I told you, talk to the Army. The Freedom of Information act can get you far." And for the last question, I couldn't help smiling like an idiot. "And you guys were my favorite superhero team before I got my powers." The more sociable members of the Titans lit up in excitement - I got the feeling they didn't have a huge following quite yet. Robin just continued to smile though less smirkily, and Raven didn't react. "Uh, that's all the information I have right now, sorry."
"It is not a problem friend… we do not know your name!" Starfire spoke up at last and floated up into the screen, expression excited. "Please tell us your name so we can thank you!" Being from a world of more cynicism than idealism, her genuinely thankful reaction came off as.. forced, to me. But then I remembered her personality was just that nice.
"Um, I'm the King in Yellow - yeah it's weird, but the powers chose the name I'd have gone for something less obnoxious."
"We'll let you know if any of your information helps out." Robin started to mess with the computer panel on his end, indication a soon-to-be end to the call, so we exchanged goodbyes quickly.
As the call ended I realized what I had just done. "Oh god I just told the people he's been toying with how to flip him from into enraged frenzy mode." Instant, soul-crushing regret filled me and there was nothing to do other than hope they didn't believe me. If they actually used the information I gave them, Slade would probably kill them all in a blind rage. Or worse.
:Scheduled test of slow clap processor beginning: A trio of deliberate, slow claps emerged from the ring as the skype-construct faded away. :Test successful:
---
The amount of repairs needed to the facility I still had to name meant it couldn't be a 'secret lair' any more, but it would be livable by sundown, as I was speeding up the process. Drawing moisture out of cement so it could set and finish drying in moments, making weasel constructs to run new wiring through the building, and doing all of the heavy and delicate lifting with further constructs.
And I had until the end of the month to pay for it all.
So while I sat, waiting for the computer core to finish installing, the ring ran records searches for me. Looking up the Wilson family through legal and... less than legal means. Looking for the Wilson family tree. If Robin couldn't find results this way, I doubt I would.
"Alright we're done, getting out of the way of the other guys" said the coverall-clad, hard-hatted, clipboard carrying foreman. "Here's the final paperwork. Just sign down here." I had been relaxing in one of the few chairs still able to bear weight, so I just took the clipboard and let the automatic processes sign my epithet. He took the yellow and white copies of the paperwork, leaving me with the pink. "Thank you, Hastur. Remember us… in case you need anything."
"Yes thank you for your work-" I froze and looked up at the foreman as he and his men left out the front steps. "What did you call me?"
"Your name," he called over his shoulder, not looking back. 'Hastur' certainly wasn't my name. But it felt… familiar. Like a word I hadn't said in years. Curious, I looked at the copy of the paper I had signed, and was confused.
I had contacted Star Construction, but the contract I was holding was for 'Sothoth and Sons'. That name filled me with dread, and I couldn't pin down why. It made me think of chains, a cage, and a feeling of being watched.
"I get the distinct feeling that an enemy just made a friendly intimidation visit." That set me in a pouting mood. "I wanted to do that."
---
Don't you hate it when people pull a cheesy villain cliche on you before you get to pull it on them?
---
Mysterious Informant
"I'm not going to drop you, Miss Mayor," I snapped at the woman My construct hand changed its shape into a chair to seat her while around us yellow light grew in broad swaths. A room was being constructed, a rudimentary office. The poor Latina watched as a yellow light desk formed in front of her. Behind her, a wall rose up with two faux windows of considerable size.
"What the…." Her tone of shock and awe pleased me. While I added detail to the 'office', she whirled around to look at the 'copter flailing in the air as the pilots struggled to regain composure. I went with an art deco style, since I had seen that design often among the buildings of Star City. Safe bet that her office in city hall had something similar in its decorating. "How?"
"I'm using your fear to sculpt a place for us to talk." The last thing to do was to make a seat for myself and flop into it. "That's how my power works, I use people's fears to make things happen." Her expression of incredulity was met with a warm smile. "Which I hope preemptively answers the question of why I carried that iceberg through downtown?"
Like a true politician she took a moment to calm down and straighten herself up in her construct chair before leaning on the desk. "Who are you?" I had forgotten the two of us had never actually met, so an exchange of names took place - I learned her name to be Lauren Corte-Real. "Right, Mr. Yellow. What the hell were you thinking, hauling an iceberg through my city?!" Yelling was a bit of a trigger of mine - brought up bad memories.
My warm smile melted away into an ugly grimace, my eyes narrowed in a glare. "I was thinking the lake was drying up."
She put her face into her hands for a moment before talking again, this time more calmly. "And you didn't think to inform me - or the fish and game department? Or perhaps just bring in liquid water?" Fair points that were wasted on me - I was of the mind that she was my enemy for the moment.
"Why should I have told you? So you could delay it by grandstanding or debating with the governor or state senate over it?" My tone was biting - like a teenager would use in an argument. In hindsight, I found it shameful.
"So we could prepare. That iceberg is going to generate astronomical amounts of fog as it melts, the pumping stations aren't set up to accept the intake it'll generate and there's a risk that the dam could be damaged from the shock of the lake's water and water chilled by proximity to the iceberg!" I developed a bit of grudging respect toward the Mayor. Given a moment to adjust, she had no problem laying into me - more than many police I had met while bounty hunting could say.
"I'll grant you that. However if the pumping stations can't adjust quickly to new water, how do they deal with rain? The dam I will freely admit to not having considered and I will assist in repairs if the the shock does end up damaging it. The fog is a non-issue - the prevailing winds would take it into the Sierra Nevada out west." The city was just in sight of the range, but the lake to its north was almost at its feet. "And there are no roads through this portion of the mountains so there's no one to risk besides people travelling where it's already unsafe." Thank you, college level geography classes. The two of us were quiet, looking at each other then to the iceberg as a sizable portion broke off loudly.
"Rainwater increase is hardly comparable to a melting iceberg! Rain would take days to raise the water as high as that iceberg is now! Look" she sighed as she turned back. "Just… let us know before you make sweeping changes, alright?" After taking a moment to think on that… I agreed with her assessment. The 'berg was already splitting to pieces in the distance. But my hubris would not allow me to acknowledge she was right.
She was getting exasperated, I was getting annoyed that my attempt to be good had received anything but thanks. So I decided to try negotiation. "How about this? I let you know what some of my big projects are that will directly benefit the city, perhaps you specifically if you want here and now. I bite my tongue with your team of vultures - I mean public relations," I faked a smile. She narrowed her eyes. "We work out a spin, perhaps a schedule relating to your election periods. And, to be nice, I'll say it was your idea when they work and my fault if they mess up."
She leaned back in the construct chair, crossing her arms in consideration. "In exchange for…?"
My smile returned. "I'm going to be the city's primary hero for the foreseeable future, helping out as much as my schedule allows. So I'm going to need a place to stay." Mayor Corte-Real's eyebrow arched up in response, but I didn't hear a 'no' yet. "Star City's been around since the sixties. There's a storied history of superheros I bet, and I'm pretty sure at least one of their old 'hideouts of pretentious justice' has been found by now."
She considered the deal for a moment, face blank. "The city doesn't pay for the set up or repairs," she said at last. "And until your public works start offsetting utilities, you find a way to pay for those. I'll be generous and leave off the property tax." I'd need to see the costs involved before I'd know what had to be done to pay for them. But, if push came to shove I could follow the ring's original suggestion: geode mining.
"You'll forgive me if I ask the deal be in writing?"
"I'll have a contract for you to sign by end of business today." Prompt, especially for a politician.
"Excellent. My next big project starts off with a quick trip to S.T.A.R. labs, and, if all goes well, the sun…."
----
"Does everything in this city have to be built in art deco?!" In its heyday, the facility Corte-Real had awarded me had been called the Retreat. A name I wished it had lived up to, as time had all but ruined the structure. Holes in the walls and ceiling in places, furniture outdated or broken, the wiring needed to be replaced, and the central computer still ran on vacuum tubes.
All of that could be fixed, given time and money. And until a situation requiring my attention cropped up, I had both. My ring was listening in on local radio signals for anything on the police force's chatter to indicate need for my services, so I could focus on getting the facility clean again.
Fairly monotonous work, clearing debris and dust from the building. Lots of time to multitask - look up information on concrete, electricians, S.T.A.R. labs' machinery costs. Those geodes were definitely looking attractive from the way the numbers were adding up. There was also the prospects of taking satellites into orbit, or taking rich people on solar system trips.
A popup from the ring let me know that its power had dropped below fifty percent, even with passive recharge. Which meant I needed to resolve that issue as well. "Phenomenal cosmic power… and it runs on batteries. Oy vey." Though, if my plans with S.T.A.R. labs worked out, that'd be less of an issue.
:Schedule alert. This ring has been programmed to remind user that event: 'Call Robin' is allocated to this time:
Oh yeah, that thing I was supposed to do that day before the iceberg happened.
"Fine, didn't have time to do a proper search but whatever. Let's give them what we have." Before the call I took a moment to spruce up in a wall-mounted mirror, get Eugene's hair slicked back down and parted, straighten the tie and make sure the seams of my suit were straight. "Let's hope this doesn't take long, there are other things to do today."
:Schedule shows one event remaining for today. Scheduled custom audio test:
"Not in the habit of jotting down every little thing yet. Something I need to work on - remind me of that tomorrow would you?" I reviewed where they would be chronologically. There had been no mention of the Puppet King, but Thunder and Lightning, the HIVE trio, and Dr. Light had already appeared. Which meant Red X would be happening soon.
:As you wish:
"Good, make the call would you?" A stream of yellow energy rose from the ring and into the mirror. Yellow ripples emerged from the central point of the mirror, as a crude mimicry of a Skype interface took shape, and the unfortunate need to log in. Username: 'Hail to the King', password: DavidTibalt. "Now let's see if I remember how to do this, it's been a while."
:Searching for user 'Titans, Go!' Search returns one result:
"Send contact request, edit message to 'Have info on Slade, might help'." The display changed as the ring obeyed my orders, and after the request was sent there was only a moment before the 'Titans, Go!' went from a question mark to 'online'.
:Incoming call from 'Titans, Go!' Accept or deny?: Of course I was going to accept.
"Put them through." The mirror went dark as a loading spiral took over, before a sight familiar to me came up. The main room of Titans Tower, in Jump City. And standing at the bottom of the display, tiny from the large screen they were using, were the Titans. The orange-skinned redhead alien warlady Starfire, the green-faced shapeshifter Beast Boy with that one fang sticking out, the hulking half-metal Cyborg, mysterious and monochromatic Raven in the back as always, and the technicolor explosion that was Robin up front, looking all serious. "Hola~." I greeted them with a broad smile and a wave.
Difficult not to be peppy when you were meeting some of your favorites in real life, eh?
"Um, hi." The cowled Raven muttered. Her voice was more gravelly than I remember it being.
"What's this intel about Slade you have? Does it include a possible attack?" Robin, as expected rushing in with vehemence those unfamiliar with Robin's MO would be shocked by. The Boy Wonder took everything far too seriously, from my memory.
"I would make a joke about the exchange of pleasantries to lead off polite conversation," my attempt at a chiding tone became joking from the leftover giddiness of seeing them. "But I expect Beast Boy will throw something together soon enough."
The changeling perked up, and began to scratch at his hair, concentrating. "Uh yeah, gimme a sec." And his voice was not quite how I remembered it either. Everything was… slightly off from my memories. Like, I had only seen them through a mirror and now I was looking at the real thing.
"Anyway, I do have information." I took a deep breath to lead off the length of talking I was going to have do next. "His name is Slade Wilson, capename Deathstroke the Terminator, single most effective unaffiliated assassin in the business. Don't fight him one on one, he'll destroy you metaphorically and literally."
"Oh! How about this?" Beast Boy had a look of inspiration and zoomed off to Robin's side. "Robin, you should totally hail to the King." I had never been involved in a joke so terrible it stopped the conversation for a solid minute until that moment. The awkward silence ended when Cyborg pried BB off Robin and hauled him away. "Hey, it was funn- ow!"
"Sorry about that," Robin ground out, looking miffed. "Please continue."
"Sure." I nodded, and resumed regurgitating information at the Titans. "His main way of fighting, from what I've gathered, is a gun and sword approach. This scheming, hand-to-hand thing is new."
"Can you tell us about his goals? Why he is doing all this?" I got the feeling I had only been telling them things they knew.
Think, what did Slade's motives indicate from the show? And like my highschool years, I remembered something that should have been obvious from the start.
"He's looking for a replacement goldfish." That got confused looks from most of them except Raven, who remained stoic. "Let me explain. Slade is pushing sixty right now, he's a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars - talk to the Army, whole cornucopia of information there. But he's almost at retiring age and so he takes an apprentice. He's got three kids perfectly capable of taking up the one-eyed mask and then the most likely one, the one actually interested in the family business dies.
"Grant Wilson, capename Ravager, killed in unknown circumstances, give me a bit of time and I can find you his cemetery. Slade's darling child. But his second boy, one around your - our age. Unlikely to be from the same mother - Slade has a bit of a philandering problem. I only know is capename: Jericho. He's had his metahuman gene activated, powers of possession, and has been rendered mute by a cut to the throat. Boy's somewhere in Tibet right now if I have my mountain ranges right."
"This, Jericho, he rejected Slade's attempt to make him an apprentice?" The gears were turning in Robin's head. I could almost see them.
"Mhm. And Slade, the long-time consummate professional, calm and collected schemer, developed this," I smiled a smile most unpleasant, "terrible anger problem regarding apprentices not doing as he tells them. Or worse, wanting to get out of their arrangement."
Robin narrowed his eyes and pinched his chin, thinking deep, I could tell. "What about his daughter?"
"I don't know," I told them honestly. "I can look for her, but I don't even have a name to work with yet. No idea what powers she has, or training. She could be too young for all I know." They had eyes only for Robin, their expressions concerned. And that stung a little. I wanted to be the center of their attention for a bit and when I realized that, I was ashamed. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you anything more useful."
"No," Robin actually smiled, smirked even. "This helps a lot. Now we have some insight into his motives, and a few buttons to push the next time he shows up." Uh oh. "Thanks for the info. So, you're a hero in… Star City it looks like?"
"Not much of a hero, 'business' has been less than lively." I shrugged, trying to give a look of 'what can you do?'
"That's supposed to be a good thing, you know." Raven commented from the back. "If you're in Star City, why are you telling us all this? How did you get it? And why do you care about Slade at all?"
The sudden string of pointed questions had been unexpected, so I was stunned for a moment before answering. "Um, Slade's fixation on your town is new, he used to be an international thing. I told you, talk to the Army. The Freedom of Information act can get you far." And for the last question, I couldn't help smiling like an idiot. "And you guys were my favorite superhero team before I got my powers." The more sociable members of the Titans lit up in excitement - I got the feeling they didn't have a huge following quite yet. Robin just continued to smile though less smirkily, and Raven didn't react. "Uh, that's all the information I have right now, sorry."
"It is not a problem friend… we do not know your name!" Starfire spoke up at last and floated up into the screen, expression excited. "Please tell us your name so we can thank you!" Being from a world of more cynicism than idealism, her genuinely thankful reaction came off as.. forced, to me. But then I remembered her personality was just that nice.
"Um, I'm the King in Yellow - yeah it's weird, but the powers chose the name I'd have gone for something less obnoxious."
"We'll let you know if any of your information helps out." Robin started to mess with the computer panel on his end, indication a soon-to-be end to the call, so we exchanged goodbyes quickly.
As the call ended I realized what I had just done. "Oh god I just told the people he's been toying with how to flip him from into enraged frenzy mode." Instant, soul-crushing regret filled me and there was nothing to do other than hope they didn't believe me. If they actually used the information I gave them, Slade would probably kill them all in a blind rage. Or worse.
:Scheduled test of slow clap processor beginning: A trio of deliberate, slow claps emerged from the ring as the skype-construct faded away. :Test successful:
---
The amount of repairs needed to the facility I still had to name meant it couldn't be a 'secret lair' any more, but it would be livable by sundown, as I was speeding up the process. Drawing moisture out of cement so it could set and finish drying in moments, making weasel constructs to run new wiring through the building, and doing all of the heavy and delicate lifting with further constructs.
And I had until the end of the month to pay for it all.
So while I sat, waiting for the computer core to finish installing, the ring ran records searches for me. Looking up the Wilson family through legal and... less than legal means. Looking for the Wilson family tree. If Robin couldn't find results this way, I doubt I would.
"Alright we're done, getting out of the way of the other guys" said the coverall-clad, hard-hatted, clipboard carrying foreman. "Here's the final paperwork. Just sign down here." I had been relaxing in one of the few chairs still able to bear weight, so I just took the clipboard and let the automatic processes sign my epithet. He took the yellow and white copies of the paperwork, leaving me with the pink. "Thank you, Hastur. Remember us… in case you need anything."
"Yes thank you for your work-" I froze and looked up at the foreman as he and his men left out the front steps. "What did you call me?"
"Your name," he called over his shoulder, not looking back. 'Hastur' certainly wasn't my name. But it felt… familiar. Like a word I hadn't said in years. Curious, I looked at the copy of the paper I had signed, and was confused.
I had contacted Star Construction, but the contract I was holding was for 'Sothoth and Sons'. That name filled me with dread, and I couldn't pin down why. It made me think of chains, a cage, and a feeling of being watched.
"I get the distinct feeling that an enemy just made a friendly intimidation visit." That set me in a pouting mood. "I wanted to do that."
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Don't you hate it when people pull a cheesy villain cliche on you before you get to pull it on them?
The Out Of World
Lichte's Brain
- Location
- -
Nice to know the King has friends on the other side. Let's just hope the fellow doesn't run into any Shoggoths anytime soon.
Vaalintine
Wild Wondorous Wolfalope
Yog-Sothoth, huh? Not necessarily a bad thing, given that evidence supports Hastur being an aspect or underling of him. Also, I wonder if Raven will recognize his name?