1/18/13 - Seven Days of the Con Job - Pt. 7.0

"This is What You Were Waiting For..."
Henri, Josie
(Art by Dean Stahl)

* * *

There's the Story of a Man Who Loved Too Much

He Ended Up Inside a Prison Cell

You've Got To Want To Give To Get It

Or You Could Land Up In the Same Suspicious Hell

* * *

 "... news coming in from the city of Korhogo, in the Cote d'Ivoire. Residents are saying that, since last night, their town has been invaded by what appears to be the spirits of the dead. 

"They're described as human-looking, for the most part, glowing and translucent, and looking like they did when they were dead. Many of them are of local people, but a number are of strange individuals, many of whom appear to be wearing prison uniforms.

"No one's been hurt by these phantoms, so far, but more than a few people have suffered heart attacks and shock upon seeing them. 

"The Terre Unifee says that they are aware of the situation, and are sending Le Compagnie to deal with the situation..."

* * *

"Are you hearing this, then?" the white-armored Russian hero snorts, waving his hand at the television he brought into SPYGOD's front room, just to have something to watch, other than his apparently-broken prisoner: "I should be there, with my comrades. Instead I am here, with you."

SPYGOD doesn't even answer that. He's curled up on the couch, across from Bely Rytsar, listening to the same song over and over and over again on his headphones and crying. It's just loud enough that his jailer -- able to stay up and alert for weeks at a time, thanks to his armor -- can make out the tune, but not enough to hear the lyrics. 

But it's gotten very !@#$ing annoying. 

Sadly, Bely's not allowed to touch the prisoner. He isn't even supposed to yell at him, under the circumstances. Everything must be done above board. 

So if this pidaras wants to sit there, listen to that song, drink American beer, and cry? He gets to do exactly that. 

Still.

"You truly are a suka," the man mutters, disgusted: "I expected much better from you. You, the man who saved this world, and then betrayed it. One betrayal and you are done?"

His prisoner whimpers something. 

"What was that, little man? I did not hear you."

"I !@#$ing loved him,"  SPYGOD whispers, his voice like crushed glass: "I was going to !@#$ing marry him. I told him all that. And he just sold me out for a better job."

"Bah," the Russian says, waving it off: "This is what we are calling Monday morning in Moscow. Everyone sells one another out. No love is true. You called yourself the god of spies? Surely you must have known this?"

SPYGOD says something, but it trails off into incoherency. But the Russian doesn't care to have him repeat it, because he doesn't really want to hear it. He instead goes back to watching ghosts stumble around an African town -- maybe just a little less dazed and confused than his prisoner. 

He really wishes he could just hit him. That would make all this go a lot better. So maybe when he's done, and they come to put him on trial, he'll see if he can get in one good, solid punch to the promezhnost when the cameras aren't on. 

You can get away with murder when no one's watching. In Moscow, they call that "Tuesday."

* * *

Mark Clutch can't stop screaming. It's not for him. It's for her.

When he was young, and liked to make model kits, his father gave him an ingenious, little plastic contraption. It laid flat on a table, and had little grooves and slots that one could put alligator clips into. The idea was that you used it to hold a model kit's pieces in place while the glue was drying, so you didn't have to sit still for minutes -- or even hours -- to keep the parts from setting the wrong way.

He can't help but think of it, now that he's watching El Inquisidor Escarlata use a similar device to hold Martha's right hand down as he takes it apart.

There's almost nothing left of it. He's separated flesh from muscle, veins from arteries. All that's there are gnarled nerves and raw, wet bones, held together with plastic clips. 

(No blood no blood how can there be no blood?)

She stopped screaming a long time ago, maybe around the time he completely peeled her thumb. Now she just moans, as if she's coming out of a fever, and then slides mercifully under again. 

But Mark can still scream, and he does. Thinking of all the times he saw that hand in action. The way he held it when they talked. The way he kissed it, that one time, when they almost might have done more than just be coy.

Strings of meaty muscle, splayed out on wires. A deflated balloon of flesh about the wrist. Delicate webs of blood vessels, twisted and still. 

And bones, which the scarlet-clad interrogator uses an extremely-sharp knife to prize away from the tendons, one millimeter at a time.

"You know something, Mr. Clutch," the man says as he further disassembles Martha: "You do not know what it is, but you do know it."

"I don't! I don't!" the man screams, his mind a broken thing: "If I did I'd tell you! I swear! I don't know!"

"Then you must tell me more. Tell me everything."

"Please, Jesus! I swear I don't know any more than I've already told you!"

"Then I fear we'll be moving along, up the arm," El Inquisidor Escarlata sighs, tapping the wrist with a free finger: "Radius from ulna, stripped and clean. Then her humerus. Then her clavicle. And if I have to go that far, well..."

He taps the front of her chest: "I can take her organs out, one by one, and keep them connected. I can keep her alive indefinitely, though she is just pieces on a bed. And she will feel everything, Mr. Clutch. 

"And she will know your silence is what caused her that pain."

Mark just screams and babbles out everything he can think of, large or small. None of it is worth a !@#$, he knows. None of it will save the woman he loves. 

But it's all he can do, especially when their interrogator begins to unwind Martha even further...

* * *

"All of that for love?" Director Brilliand asks, seemingly astounded by what he's hearing.

Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir nods at the hologram in the corner of his office, sipping his tea from a plastic ball as he looks down into it: "I know, Director. It seems an insane thing. But you will admit that love has driven many a person to insane actions."

"I don't understand," the wasp-faced director says, shaking his head: "He did know that the damage to this robot-"

"Android, sir," the warrior gently corrects his superior, smiling a little: "But yes, he did know the damage was extensive. He did know it might be a long time before she was close to being herself, again. He even knew that she might never be what and who she once was, and that he'd just have to understand that.

"But tell me truly, Director. When it comes to affairs of the heart, are any of us willing to hear the word 'no,' or 'wait'?"

The Director considers this, and then nods: "Still, the carnage is extensive. So many of our orbital defenders dead or broken. So much damage done."

"Yes," Faraj says, nodding: "A sad thing. It's fortunate we moved it further away from its previous position, or else we wouldn't have had much warning, and no time to prepare."

"A good bit of foresight on your part, Faraj, yes."

"Simple precaution, Director. We have discovered so much more than we'd anticipated, but that also opens up many more dangers. I don't want a weapons test to atomize a continent."

"Have you had any luck with them?"

"Not as yet. If we had, we'd have used them yesterday, surely?"

"Ah, yes," the Director says: "Well, it's a good thing you have Hanami, then? I must say you are in very good hands with her aboard."

"Oh, very good indeed," the man says, smiling oddly at that. 

"And the launch date?"

"Soon, I should think," Faraj says, looking askance: "We've made incredible progress the last week or so."

"It must be soon, Faraj," the Director says, leaning in closer to the camera on his end: "I'm having a hard time justifying any delays at this point."

"Director, just less than two weeks ago we had a machine but no idea how it worked. Now we know that not only can we use it as propulsion and shielding, it can also become a weapon. But if we are to take it into battle, we must understand it completely, and well, or else it will be our undoing. Surely you understand this?"

"I do, yes, but-"

"Then you'll just have to tell the people you're dealing with that we only get one shot at this, so it must be done right. It's not enough to simply launch it and pray."

"Isn't that what we were going to do before?"

"Perhaps," Faraj smiles: "But things have changed. Now we have a real opportunity to meet the enemy with a real weapon. We would be fools to ignore it simply to blast off as soon as possible."

"There are those who think experiments can wait until Mars."

"I would rather not experiment over their heads, Director," Faraj says, showing some steel in his eyes: "They are being most gracious in allowing us to make our stand, there, and to allow the Venusians to join us. This is a delicate matter, one that your time dealing with franc-pinching bureaucrats and the European press hasn't quite prepared you for. If you don't mind my being frank?"

"I don't," the Director says, clearing minding: "But I worry if so much power at your fingers hasn't made you forget who's in charge?"

"Have no fear, Director," Faraj says, nodding: "This ship is yours, as is the mission and the glory. But I will do whatever I have to do in order to bring the best fighting force to bear. And that means being a warrior, a leader, a scientist, and a diplomat.

"And if you'll excuse me? I do have some science to perform."

"Very well," the Director says: "But soon, Faraj. Soon."

The moment he turns off the hologram from his end, Faraj stretches out and leans back, the better to watch Hanami going down on him. 

"Are you in good hands, Faraj?" she asks, smiling up at him.

"Oh, I think I am," the man smiles, reaching down to take her hair in his hand: "I'm sorry if I seemed less responsive. It's not every day I have to speak civilly with a man who'd planned to kill me."

"Not that he wasn't going to !@#$in' kill all of us," Dr. Fuller grouses from the window, where he and Brightstarsurfergirl are wrapped around one another, floating in post-coupling passion: "Good thing those kids found out what was !@#$in' going on, ey?"

"Yes," Faraj says, sadly, thinking of the cost: "But the truth costs us, habibi. It is never a gentle thing. And when it wants to be spoken, there will be no taking it back."

At which point he allows himself to do what he's been aching to do since that !@#$-smear of a coward called in the middle of their "executive meeting," much to Hanami's delight. 

* * *

"Oh my," Henri says, leaning back on the extremely-messy bed and staring at the ceiling, his eyes wide and unfocussed. 

"Oh my?" Josie says, lifting her very large self up and towering over him.

"Oh my..." the wormy little man repeats, seemingly lost in space without his glasses. 

"... God?"

"I do not believe in God," he states simply: "But I will pray to you all night if that's what comes of confession."

Josie giggles and smacks his chest, which makes him wince a little. But he's too tired -- too enraptured -- to feel any pain. 

He knew this was probably going to happen. He's known it since they started their trans-Atlantic collaborations. He'd been assured of it since he'd made plans to come here. And after yesterday, it seemed as sure as the Sun rising. 

But still, the moment it all came true? Magical -- pure and simple magic. 

On the screen, some British actor is running down a beach, trying to get away from a weaponized weather balloon. They've been watching that entire series all night long, episode after episode. To be frank, he hated it from the start, but it made her relaxed. More open to possibilities. 

More eager to see all the interesting things he'd brought with him from France...

Hours later, he was broken, exhausted, and happier than he'd ever been in his life. And to think, this was but the first night of so many!

"I'm going to get you some water," Josie says: "I don't want you getting dehydrated."

"Of course," he breathes, still lost to things. But no so lost that he can't enjoy looking at her big, muscular !@#$ -- upside down, no less - as she leaves the bedroom for its adjoining bathroom. 

As she does, he notices something he didn't see before as they were ripping each other's clothes off. A small, round mark, just above the crease of her buttocks. Something of a third dimple, sitting there. Almost like an "outie" navel, somehow. 

And as he looks at it, he wonders where he's seen something like that before...

The british actor says something that seems important. He doesn't notice it for the chilly feeling he's getting.

* * *

The man shakes off the cold and enters the Spanish post office, taking one last, careful look in the window in the front door to make sure he wasn't being followed.

Satisfied, he crosses the nearly-deserted floor -- almost closing time on a Friday -- and, as he's done a half a dozen times, goes to his post box and opens it up.

This time there's actually something in it.

He hitches a breath, and then exhales slowly. He looks at the small, plain envelope -- festooned with stamps and stickers indicating it should get here as fast as inhumanly possible.  And as soon as he's sure it's not a threat he takes it, slips it into his coat pocket, and goes back out into the cool air of Irun.

It rattles and thumps, whatever it is. He's sure it's not a bomb. It could be a tracker, though. If so he should wander a bit before opening it, just to be able to give anyone the slip.

At some point, he decides he's gone far enough. He stops by a park overlooking the Rio Bidasoa and, sitting on a bench, opens it up.

Inside is a note, wrapped around a something wrapped in bubble wrap. He doesn't have to look at it too hard to realize it's a fairly sophisticated CPU -- the kind that would have been used as the memory and mind of a certain kind of robot.

The kind he's been intimately familiar with for some time, now.

The note's a simple scrawl: This is her. They have her head. They think the CPU is in it. 

I was ordered to destroy it, but !@#$ that !@#$, man. I know how you feel. 

So you look after her, and stay low 'til we're in the clear. 

And if you do put her back together? Leave me the !@#$ out of it if it goes bad. 

The Violet Demon smirks and nods: "Thanks, man."

And then he balls up the paper and tosses it into the river, walking away with METALMAID in his pocket, wondering how he does feel about the psychotic Slaughterbot his life has revolved around for far too long, now.

Maybe he loves her. Maybe he's using her. Maybe he's somewhere between the two.

But he knows he better figure it out, and quick. Time is not on his side, now.

And if he screws this up, well, the consequences could be really !@#$ messy.

* * *

Martha Samuels can't stop screaming. It's not for her. It's for Mark.

When she was young -- still just the Talon to her father's Owl -- they ran into a dangerous sex offender. He called himself The Glove Man, which showed a real lack of creativity on his part. But what he lacked in that regard, he made up for in the imaginative ways he used his razor-sharp namesake on young men in the Chicago suburbs.

One time, they'd just missed him. He'd been there not more than ten minutes before they'd arrived, and before he'd gone he'd mutilated no less than four young men -- all of them flayed and vivisected, each one just a little different from the others.

As she stood there, trying not to cry as the four wounded boys gasped in pain, she couldn't help but think that what their tormentor had left behind looked like prehistoric ferns in a movie, all twitching and curling in the ancient wind. 

And as hard as she tries, she can't help but think of those bloody flesh-ferns as the scarlet-robed interrogator uses that knife-glove thing to dig deep into Mark's groin.

"You know something, Ms. Samuels," the man says as he slides his pinky-knife into Mark's perineum, angling up to miss the bone: "You do not know what it is, but you do know it."

"I don't!" she yells as Mark screams anew, finding some new reservoir of air at this latest degradation: "I can't tell you what I don't know! How can I tell you what I don't know?!?!"

"Then you must tell me more. Tell me everything."

"I've already told you everything! I don't know any more! I swear to God, please, just leave him alone!"

"Then I fear we'll be doing permanent damage, here," El Inquisador Escarlata says, pulling the knife in and out: "Maybe I'll leave him with no bowels. Would you love him if he had to defecate into a bag, Ms. Samuels? They smell. They burst. And they look quite unsightly."

"Please, leave him alone," she begs: "Work on me, okay? You do it to me. You leave him alone!"

"Oh no," the man says, smiling and regarding her: "There is no place for that, here. You cannot ask me to give his pain to you, any more than he can take yours when your time comes. All you can do is watch him be taken apart, slice by slice, inch by painful inch. 

"And he will know your silence is what caused him that pain."

Martha screams, again. She prays to God to get them out of here. To make this stop she'll do anything. Anything. 

But if God is listening, he doesn't make a sound.

* * *

"So, here's the thing," the badly-mustached man explains to the Emperor of Pain, gesturing wildly as he talks a mile a minute in the otherwise-deserted dining area: "This guy, he's got every !@#$ reason to hate this person, right? He !@#$ing killed his girlfriend, burned half his face, and has been causing this huge rain of !@#$ all over town, right?"

"Right," the older man sighs, wondering where The Sound is going with this.

"But then, after he gives him this total bull!@#$ line about how he doesn't ever plan anything out-"

"Why is it bull!@#$?"

"Are you kidding me, old man?" The Sound laughs: "Half the movie is this guy's plans unfolding. He's got one plan nestled inside another, like those... um... what the !@#$ are those dolls where there's the one inside the other?"

"Matryoshka?" the Emperor says, his annoyance becoming palpable.

"Yeah! Those things. So it's all one big !@#$ing plan. And then he explains that he did this to upset the system that this man was a part of, just to show him how !@#$ wrong he was. He's completely !@#$ing invalidated his whole !@#$ life in less than a day, right?

"And then, get this, he !@#$ing gives this man a gun, knowing he'll give him a 50/50 chance of survival, and gambles it all on the guy going his way. He got this man to go over to his side of things, even though he did all that crazy bad !@#$ to him."

"And that's why you love that movie?"

"Yes! Because the Joker totally turned Two-Face, and he spent the whole !@#$ing movie setting it up! Brilliant!"

"So you say," the old supervillain says, narrowing his eyes: "A curious turn of phrase, Sound."

"Oh?" the man says, brushing his 'stache with a finger: "What do you mean?"

"Well... I've always considered henchmen to be disposable," the man says, leaning into the table: "And as for alliances with others? Well, they're never to be entered into lightly, but then never to be depended upon, either. I'm sure you've noticed that our fraternity is quite a mess?"

"Well, yeah," The Sound says, not sure where this is going.

"So I've learned to trust my instincts, over the years. If someone doesn't sound right, I get rid of them. If something doesn't feel right? I leave. No apologies, no regrets. I either kill or climb into my car, sometimes both.

"And if I'm wrong? Well, it's not like I'm going too lose any sleep over it, am I?"

"No, I guess not," the younger villain says, grinning: "Reminds me of this !@#$er I knew-"

"Tell me, Sound. You've heard the story about the infamous meeting at Doctor Morbo's castle, yes?" the Emperor of Pain says, leaning back a bit and twiddling his fingers: "The one where all us big time villains came together to try and work out a mutual arrangement. A team-up, if you will?"

"I heard it went right down the !@#$ing toilet."

"Yes, it did. And the reason why isn't something we like to talk about. But... would you like to know what happened? Who really threw the first punch?"

"Uh, !@#$ yeah," the Sound says, scooting his chair into the table: "Lay it on me, old man."

"Well, it was the funniest thing," the Emperor says, ignoring the younger villain's attempt at flippancy: "There I was, in this room. And I was there with Doctor Morbo, our host, and the Lord of Spiders, whom you know. Duke Bloodmoon had come down from his rival castle, Steel Corsair from his zeppelin. The Steamqueen, herself, was there, which was no little thing. And The Human Scream and Mister Foulness, neither of whom was ever pleasant company. And all our chief henchmen and seconds in command. Everyone, really.

"And then someone, I won't say who, said the most curious thing. It was a phrase. A throwaway line, really. 

"But something about how that person said it? The way it left their lips? It made me think that this person was hiding something. 

"And maybe it was nothing, just some little thing. Maybe wanting to get the others to do in their old rival once the plan really got off the ground. Like I said, you know how we all are.

"But as the conversation went on, and we began to hammer out what hoped to achieve, and desired to do, the more I listened to what this person had to say, and couldn't help but think that everything they said was wrapped around whatever they were hiding. That they were steering the conversation this way, or that, in accordance with that secret.

"And do you know, Sound? I got the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this person wasn't here to do our kind of work. Maybe this person was here to do someone else's work."

"You mean a plant?" the Sound says, aghast.

"Yes, Sound," the Emperor says: "A plant."

"Holy !@#$."

"Indeed," the old man says, nodding: "Now, I had no proof. Mindreading was never my forte, you understand. But I did understand that the longer we sat there, with this possible traitor in out midst, the greater the chance someone might smash into our room. I'm sure I need not elaborate."

"Well, no. So what did you do?"

"Oh, I hurt the Human Scream," the Emperor of Pain smiles: "Just a short, sharp twinge in the solar plexus. But angled in such a way that he thought the person I suspected had done one of their trademark tricks. 

"And once he got up to remonstrate with that person? Well..." the Emperor waves a hand: "Things were said, fists were thrown, henchmen and seconds sacrificed. A villain or two destroyed, or maimed. And I alone escaped unscathed to tell the tale... well, I and Morbo, the Lord of Spiders, and Steamqueen, at any rate."

"Wow," the Sound says, nodding: "So what brought that up?"

"You did," the Emperor says, pointing a finger at the man's head, which instantly feels as though he's had the mother of all brain freezes: "'Turned,' you said? Do you know who uses that kind of terminology, Sound? Someone who's been turned, or else spends too much time doing the biding of someone who turns others.

"Like SPYGOD, for example."

"Agh, no!" the Sound tries to say, holding his hands to his temples to keep his brains from exploding: "I swear, no-"

"Swear all you like, little man," the old fellow says, standing up and increasing the pain levels: "I don't like you. The Pusher doesn't care about you. No one will mourn or miss you, except maybe the Angle. And he's not here, is he?"

The Sound grits his teeth, and then, suddenly, stops being in pain. 

The old man looks surprised, and then realizes he can't hurt a man if he's not solid. 

But before he can cry out or do anything, the Sound puts his intangible fist through the Emperor's chest, and then goes whole and full once more. 

The sound is disgusting -- especially when the Emperor coughs up blood -- but he dies before he can visit any more pain on his assassin. 

The Sound turns semi-solid, and lets the old man drop to the floor. Then he sighs, long and deep, and takes out a small communicator from just inside the neck of his costume. 

"Fury one, calling in," he mutters: "Fury one, calling Shadow Cabinet. Big !@#$ emergency. Over."

"This is Shadow Cabinet," a scrambled voice answers: "Receiving. Over."

"I just had to !@#$ing kill the Emperor of Pain," the Sound says: "He was onto me. No one saw. Please advise. Over."

There's just hissing for a moment, and the villain can imagine the man on the other end sighing, smacking himself in the head, and cursing his luck. 

"Can you hide the body? Over."

"I can, sure. Over."

"Then do so, and lay low. Operation Game Changer is on schedule. Repeat, Game Changer is on schedule."

"Copy that," the Sound says, and, quick as he can, bundles up the old man's lifeless body and sinks into the floor, planning to dump the Emperor somewhere in the ground, and then go back up to clean up the mess. 

And pray he can hold it together long enough for the !@#$ do go down. 

* * *

There's a spot in Neo York City very few people know about -- a completely-sealed room with no doors or windows, where only those who know of it can go.

It's a drop spot -- and occasional meeting place -- for those lucky few who can teleport, and only those who are known to SPYGOD are allowed to enter at all.

As such, it's not used a lot. It's kept meticulously clean, but no one is sure by whom.

And to speak of it to others is to be excluded from the fraternity, and perhaps a few other things as well.

Today, there have been two entrances, and two exits.

The first was this morning. A well-dressed, African man was teleported in by an African woman in jeans and a t-shirt (Kurt Lives, with a blue, demonic face below the lettering). They left a small, white box with a complicated lock on a table, and then left as quickly as they'd come.

The second was this afternoon. A woman in red leather, her features masked by a skull-bandana and a pair of large sunglasses, was teleported in by a man in a blue suit. He released her so she could take the box, and lit up a nasty, French cigarette as she examined it.

Then she walked back into his arms, and they vanished.

And the second they were gone, the room shimmered just a little, as someone odd stepped into it.

A middle-aged woman dressed like a 60's hippie stood there, looking around as she absentmindedly crocheted what might have been a very long hat. She looked over her granny glasses and took in the room, with gold in silver eyes. 

And then, after she saw everything that had happened, and would ever happen in this room, she looked up, as if she could see someone, and said one word: "Interesting!"

With that, she walked back into the wall, as if she was never ever there.

(SPYGOD is listening to Before (Pet Shop Boys) and having an Ananke)

1/17/13 - Seven Days of the Con Job - Pt. 6.0

The New Rulers of The World
The Angle, Emperor of Pain, Chassis
The Pusher (with METALMAID), Lord of Spiders, The Sound
(Art by Dean Stahl)

* * *

It's Only the Wind

They Say it's Getting Worse

The Trouble That it Brings

Haunts Us Like A Curse

* * *

It's 7:26 in the AM, and the Sun's rays strike a monster, floating. 

Tempete Bleu is hovering outside a certain window in a certain high apartment building, over in Neo York City. It's the one that was, up until a few days ago, surrounded by angry protestors and the news media -- all hoping to get a piece, however remotely, of its infamous occupants. 

At least until the occupants pulled off an audacious -- if short-lived -- escape.

Now the angry demonstrators are all gone. In their place are legions of Terre Unifee guards, police vans, and the occasional tank armed with subsonic crowd suppressors. They stand toe to toe on the remnants of furious signs, written in dozens of languages, and sneer at the passions they read there. 

Up above them all, their greatest hero stands on the air, itself, looking into the newly-replaced, much stronger window that houses their charge: SPYGOD, himself, fresh from recapture, interrogation, and the mother of all punitive beatings.

He's sitting on a couch in the front room, dressed in only a light, white coverall with prisoners markings and a half-mask to cover up his eye. He's right across from a bulky, white-armored Russian hero -- Bely Rytsar -- who's leaning against the wall, languidly watching him for any sign he might try to leave, again. 

He's not, though. 

He's sitting there with his arms wrapped around his chest, still sore and bruised. He's got his headphones on, and is listening to the same song, over and over agan.

And he's trying not to cry, but is clearly just one little push away from failing miserably. 

Tempete grins to see him so broken, so low. And the thought that, when the time comes for him to be executed for his many crimes, he will be the one to fling him into the Sun? 

Oh, that just makes him smile all the more. 

It's decided, then. First he goes along with this farce of a trial, then the punishment. And when his man-turned-god -- who doesn't even know who Tempete Bleu really is -- is a cloud of gay cinders in orbit around their star? 

Then he will crack the world, burn the sky, and turn the rain to blood and !@#$.

Just another day or so, and he ends everything, well ahead of whatever superfluous doom is on its way. 

He can wait. 

* * *

"I will begin this by saying that I am not a patient man," the grey-haired Mexican fellow -- dressed in the flowing, long red robes of a Catholic cardinal -- says, as he lays out strange, sinister-looking things on the tray between Mark Clutch and Martha Samuels. 

"I know," Martha says, looking at El Inquisidor Escarlata as best as she can through the bonds of her chair: "My father worked with you, once. He said you were insane. No better than the criminals you fought."

"Well, there we have a disagreement," the man says, turning to regard the naked woman, strapped down so tight it's a torture unto itself: "One of many, if we're being totally honest. 

"And we will, I can assure you," he added, his smile a thin, cold thing.

This was the dreaded Truth Room, far down below the Heptagon, inside its super-slam. Down here, captured costumed villains, super soviets, heroes gone bad, and other undesirables were thrown into escape-proof cells for what might be months, years, or a lifetime. 

And if they were let out at all, it was only to come here for questioning. 

Martha had heard a number of horror stories about this room, over the years. All the heroes did. Some of them were just rumors, spread by SPYGOD and his AGENTS to spook strategic talents into behaving themselves. And it didn't hurt that, every so often, some idiot in a cape would switch sides, get caught, and prove those rumors true. 

But this black, brick cylinder? Its walls spattered with old, dried blood and what might have been human !@#$? Hung with the sorts of things Martha had only seen in one of those awful gory movies a long-gone boyfriend had insisted on watching with her? 

This was real, and worse than she ever could have imagined. 

"Your friend," the scarlet-robed man says, indicating a similarly-undressed, equally-bound Mark: "He has never heard of me? Yes or no."

"I don't know," Martha says, and instantly regrets it. She barely sees the man move before he's picked up something from the tray between their chairs -- like something from a Cronenberg movie -- and jabs it into the spot where Mark's left pectoral muscle meets his arm. 

The resulting scream is loud and bright, and makes her ears rattle along with his teeth. 

"That is the first and last time I will hear that phrase here, today," El Inquisidor Escarlata says, holding the instrument there just long enough to let the scream die down, and then removing it just as quickly: "If you say it again, I will do permanent damage to him. If he says it, I will do permanent damage to you. This is understood?"

"Yes," Martha says, clearly afraid to ask him the obvious question. 

"Yes," Mark whispers.

"The truth, then," the man smiles, wiping the instrument with a sterile pad and putting it back down: "Mine is a useful ability. I can tell, without fail, whether someone is lying to me or not. I can tell a brazen lie from a small one. I can even discern if someone is holding something back, or knows, on a subconscious level, that there's more to be told.

"Sadly, I cannot tell what that truth actually is. So I must resort to other means to get it out of them. Once upon a time, I merely scared criminals. By the time I'd met your father, I was beating it out of them. Since then, I have... refined my methods."

"And now you torture people for Le Compagnie," Martha says: "You must be proud of yourself-"

"Martha," Mark cautions: "I don't think we want to !@#$ this guy off."

"A very astute observation," the man says, picking up what might be a very good attempt to blend H. R. Giger with Freddy Krueger from his tray of toys, and then slipping it onto his left hand: "I can see why you two are in love. You are in love with each other, yes?"

"Yes," Martha says.

"... yes," Mark says, with just a little trepidation.

"Oh, there's no need to be ashamed or afraid, young man," the Inquisidor says, flexing the biomechanoid blades he's affixed to his fingers: "We know of your feelings for one another. That is why I am here. It is hoped I can extract the truth from you without having to rely on more crude and final methods. Perhaps when this is over, and your co-conspirator is tried, convicted, and sentenced, you can be publicly rehabilitated. You can be put to work, once more, for the good of society?"

"I won't serve them," Martha says: "I'll answer your questions if I can-"

"You will answer them even if you cannot," the man corrects her, putting a blade under her nose, and then right up into her nostril: "You see, when dealing with a man like SPYGOD, we can only assume he had plans within plans, and schemes within schemes. We can only assume there was much going on that he did not tell you, but that you might have seen pieces of. So I am here to help you piece those things together, so that we may learn all we can."

"And you know we know something even if we don't realize it," Mark realizes: "So you can torture us to death if we can't remember his secret code words. Is that what you're saying?"

"Exactly," the man says, gently flicking the knife, which takes out the side of Martha's nostril. She screams in pain, and then tries to get hold of her emotions, but fails when Mark starts screaming on her behalf. 

"You bastard!" he shouts, especially when he uses a spray can of stinging and painful disinfectant upon the wound, followed by some weird spray that causes it to cauterize, but not really heal. 

"I have been called worse," the man says, only now wiping the blood from the blade: "But know this, Mark Clutch. I give you my word I will not torture you to death, provided you cooperate. I have not been allowed the luxury of that, here. 

"Now, that's not to say you, or her, will ever be desirable again," he continues: "You may have to hide your faces behind masks for more than crimefighting. You may need prosthetics, or transplants. In time they may even allow you to have some plastic surgery, just to be seen in public. 

"But you will always bear some evidence of this time we've spent together," the man says, smiling coldly once more: "A small little gift, from me to you."

"Know this," Martha says, her face streaked with blood and nasty, brown flakes of coagulant: "You can torture us, you can kill us. But you can't take Heaven from us. You do understand that, right?"

"Oh, I do," El Inquisidor Escarlata says, moving over to where Mark sits, and considering where to cut first: "But Heaven's gates are a long way from here, and we have only begun our journey."

And - with that gruesome decision made -- the interrogation truly begins.

* * *

"C'est bien, c'est bien," Henri says into his communicator as he saunters out of the transport, heading across the Heptagon's landing platform along with a few other folks who made the trans-Atlantic trip with him: "Appelez-moi quand ils apprennet quelque chose? Bien. Bien. A bientot."

"Well hello," Josie says, standing at the edge of the platform, and smiling to see Henri. In response he smiles back and walks over just a little faster. 

"Hello, my dear," he says when he gets there, going to kiss her on both cheeks. To his surprise she wraps her meaty arms around him, snuggles him close, and picks him a full foot off the ground, much to the amusement of those nearby. 

"I'm so glad you're here," she whispers into his ear, smiling: "Please tell me this isn't just about what's going on down in the sub-basement?"

"Only in part," he gasps, indicating that maybe she should put him down -- which she does, ever so carefully: "The President has sent me over here to discuss a number of things. Most of which we should probably do in private."

"Agreed," she says, and gestures to her exclusive elevator, nearby. When they approach he feels a weird sensation -- like being tickled by the wind right down to his DNA -- and then the door slides open, somewhat begrudgingly. 

"So, the trial?" she says as soon as the doors are closed, turning to look down at the little man: "We need more information?"

"We need everything," he says, his eyes gleaming a little: "Anything we can find out from his lover. Anything we can find out from the Team Alpha members we've actually captured, rather than merely killed. Anything from his old associates, some of which are still in hiding, I'm led to believe?"

"'We want... information,'" she quotes, matching the gleam in his eye, and then being a little disappointed when he doesn't get it: "You never watched The Prisoner?"

"Should I have?" he asks, a little confused: "Was it one of those Showtime things?"

"Oh no," she says, hitting the button to go down: "It was a British show from the 60's."

"That's probably why I never watched it," he shakes his head: "I cannot stand the rosbifs or their television shows. I'm hoping we can find an excuse to burn their BBC to the ground, one of these days."

"Well, this was ITC, so hopefully you'll spare it," she grins, delighting that he doesn't know the difference: "Anyway, there's this spy, and he quits his job. His superiors aren't happy with his decision, and think he might have sold out to someone else. So they kidnap him, take him to some weird place called The Village that he can't escape from, and tell him he's now Number 6. Everyone's got a number there, and someone named Number 2 is running the show. Every episode there's a new Number 2 trying to get him to say why he quit, which he won't do, and every episode he refuses."

"I don't like him already," Henri grouses: "What sort of a person won't answer a straight question from their superiors?"

"Who indeed."

"And shouldn't it be Number One instead of Number Two?" the man goes on as the elevator stops: "Who is Number One?"

"'That would be telling,'" she quotes again as they step into her office: "Anyway, the point isn't the story. It's the point of the story. It was about maintaining human dignity, freedom, and individuality in a world where nothing was what it seemed, anyone could be plotting against you, and the real enemy was often hiding in plain sight."

"It sounds juvenile," he sniffs, going over to her desk and putting his briefcase down upon it.

"Well, I fall asleep watching it," she says, smiling at him: "So I suspect you'll see at least a few episodes while you're here."

He smiles a little at that, thinking of some of the interesting things he brought along with him.

This was, indeed, going to be a lot of fun. 

* * *

"So, what do we do with our world first?" the Pusher asks his fellow conspirators, who are sitting at a table across the room the map of the planet they just stole from the Terre Unifee.

"We could totally !@#$ing disrupt the food distribution in Asia," The Angle chuckles, extending his arm through a geometric jump to literally point at the map from across the room: "I figure some starving faces on the nightly news'll bring it home. Who doesn't love a humanitarian crisis?"

"I wouldn't care about them," the Emperor of Pain sighs, trying to enjoy the coffee that Chassis "liberated" from the local Big Belly, just this morning: "The Third World is always starving to death. They'll find some has-been rock stars and throw a benefit concert if the disruption goes on too long."

"Your cynicism is amusing," the Pusher says, having another sip of his special tea, and then putting the mug down on his new trophy -- the dreaming head of METALMAID, perched on top of a car battery.

"Which means you disapprove," the old man replies, furrowing his brow over his domino mask. 

"No, it means it's amusing. But do you have something other than it to offer?"

"I'd say a breakdown in medical supplies to Europe. When their children can't get their insulin and their parents can't have their heart medication, you'll get their attention."

"I say scare them," the Lord of Spiders says: "A military accident. All those transports going overhead, carrying munitions to who knows where? Drop them from the sky over someplace small but photogenic."

"Where would you pick?" the Angle asks, very interested in this.

"Barcelona," the tarantula-faced man says, pounding his fist on the table: "It's pretty and inconsequential."

"I always wanted to go there, someday," The Sound says, somewhat wistfully: "Ring myself in the Sagrada Familia."

"Do you have another suggestion?" the Pusher asks, sighing.

"Well, let me think-"

"That's the problem!" Emperor of Pain shouts, almost spilling his coffee "We've been at this for two !@#$ days and we haven't come up with a good idea we can all agree on, and it's because we're thinking."

"So we just do something, and !@#$ the consequences?" the Emperor of Spiders asks: "Well, that sure sounds familiar-"

"Quiet, both of you," the Pusher says, putting his tea down on their former leader's head: "We just got rid of one shrill !@#$. Let's not replicate her by accident."

There's some giggling there, but not from the two elder villains in question.

"I think the Emperor's right," the man goes on, adjusting his million dollar, green tie: "We control every superhuman mechanism the TU has. We have a world of choices at our fingertips. It's more power than we've every had, any of us. And I'm sure we all know how power can be paralyzing. We chase a dream our whole lives, and then when we get it..."

"We're just a dog chasing a car, in other words?" the Angle asks.

"Man, I loved that movie," the Sound offers. 

"What movie?" the Lord of Spiders asks, and the others just sigh.

"So, we need a snap decision," the Pusher says, leaning over the table and looking each person in the eyes in turn: "We need one thing, right now, that will get their attention and show them how little control they have. How much we have. What we can do if they don't play ball. It has to be big, it has to be crushing. But it can't be so bad that we can't trump it with anything even worse."

"Then I say... Barcelona," the Emperor of Pain says, putting his hand out.

"Barcelona," the Lord of Spiders says, putting his hand over his friendly rival's.

"Barcelona," the Angle repeats, doing the same.

"... Barcelona," the Sound says, seeming a little sad.

The Pusher smiles, and puts his hand over theirs: "So be it. Barcelona Delenda Est."

And if either of the younger villains at the table don't understand the reference, they wisely keep it to themselves.

 * * *

"Of course, sir, please," the tall, balding Secret Service Agent says to the hovering, blue-clad hero, waving the way down the hall: "The White House is your house, sir. The National Facilitator isn't here, right now, but-"

"I'm not here to see him," Tempete Bleu says, smiling at the thought of shoving his !@#$ into a ragged crack in this man's gleaming pate, either before or after killing him: "I'm just visiting."

"Should he be informed of your being here, sir?"

"No," the hero says, patting the man on the head -- a promise for later,  perhaps: "I will find my way and show myself out. Thank you, Jerome."

And then he leaves, letting the fellow wonder how he knew his first name.

He knows them all now. Their names, their parents, their parents' parents. Their virtues few, their vices many. Their hopes and dreams and secret lusts, and how to turn them all against them.

But there's still a few things he doesn't know -- most notably, what's calling to him from the White House basement. 

The last time he was here, he felt something. He just wasn't sure what. It's part of why he asked Mr. USA that stupid question, though not all -- even Antichrists need to vaguebook from time to time, apparently.

So, since he was in this benighted, backwards, and all-too-undeservedly-powerful country to check up on SPYGOD, he figured he might go solve this mystery. As his new mentors were teaching him, there were no such things as coincidence. There was only prophecy unfolding, or destiny being decided anew. 

It's a short float to the basement. Then a small jaunt down one hall, then another. And then he's standing in front of a wall that shouldn't be there, and knowing full well there's something behind it.

Something very important, and powerful. 

Once, he would have torn down the wall. Now he simply tells it to ignore him, and it does. The metal made from alien ores does not deter him in his progress. 

What does is the blinding light on the other side: a bright, puissant flare that echoes the primal burst that created the universe, untold aeons ago, when his ultimate foe spoke those four hated words. The day when the barrier between light and dark was finally made, and those lovely, scrabbling things that lived within the latter were forced down and away. 

"Let there be light," he muses, his eyes adjusting to the sword stuck in the floor. 

He shouldn't be here, right now. He knows enough to know this. That light should have burned him up, heatlessly, giving him the shortest tenure of any Antichrist. 

And yet, apart from a sunburn he'll have to suffer through for a few hours, he's just fine. 

The answer seems to be in front of him. The sword has been poisoned, somehow. Tarnished on some metaphysical level. Made less.

"Well then," Tempete Bleu says, walking towards the strangely-impotent fire of his eternal adversary: "Here we both are, then. Are you going to strike me down for invading this shrine, marking your dominion? Or are you just going to wait for free will to defeat me, same as always?"

There is no answer. There never is, and never will be. His mentors have taught him that the Backers do not to answer with words, but action.

Alright, then. 

He unzips the front of his uniform. He pulls out his flaccid prick, and aims it at the sword. He grunts just a little, forcing a certain biological process into motion.

And then he splashes the sword with copious amounts of his urine, smiling as the holy metal shrieks and loses its light from the violation.

He laughs, then, watching the sword waver, sag, and begin to melt. It falls over to the floor, its glow wavering, then flickering, under the weight of his water. 

"Consider this the gauntlet thrown down, you ancient salope," he shouts: "The war is coming!"

And as the light goes away, and the darkness overtakes the room, the true sight of France's greatest hero begins to take shape...

* * *

... from the darkness she fell into when that nasty-looking, clearly-insane woman in the miniskirt -- and nothing else -- hit her that one, last time. 

Florence blinks, realizing she can't move or speak. For a scary moment she thinks she's been paralyzed, but within seconds she realizes she's just been immobilized by a series of high-tech, metal restraints. They're the kind that band around every joint in the body, one after the other, and then lock into each other to totally prevent movement. Metal Mummy, they call it. 

She's been Metal Mummyed, and the men who are wheeling her away are TU guards. 

!@#$. They got her. !@#$ it. 

She should have known better than to get in a fight with that crazy !@#$. Not in public, anyway. There were too many distractions. Too many onlookers. 

Too many innocent bystanders for that woman to grab hold of and hold hostage. 

And that's exactly what happened. No sooner did Florence -- aka the Red Wrecker -- and Suzi Slam start brawling in downtown Neo York City than the fight got turned into an impossible choice between running away and watching the deformed cheerleader gone wrong stomp on people. 

A choice she could not make. 

So she stopped fighting and started begging. She told the woman -- clearly suffering from muscle dysmorphia and some crazy-bad steroid abuse -- she could do whatever she wanted, just put down the kid. Please just put down the kid, and they'd talk. !@#$, she'd give her a free punch, just put the kid down. Please. Please.

It took three seconds too long for Suzy to make up her mind. She thought maybe she was getting through to her, but in reality she'd been thinking of how to hurt her the worst.

She threw the kid at Florence is what she did. Threw him like a javelin, right at her chest. It was all she could do to jump and catch him, cradling his neck and head as best she could to keep him from getting his neck broken.

And as soon as she was sure he was as okay as he was going to be, and put him outside of the fight, Suzy was right next to her, swinging at her temple. That's when things decided to go black for quite a while, and as far as she could tell it wasn't quite done with that. 

She closes her eyes, and suddenly she's in a transport, under armed guard.

She opens them again and they're wheeling her off it, across the landing pad at the Heptagon.

Another blink and she's in an elevator, going down. Yet another and she's being wheeled down a hallway, hearing screams she can't recognize and pleading from a voice she can.

And then she's in a room, being put into a cell that's been made to accommodate her special restraints. Suspended from its roof, wired in and tubed up, she can see she's not alone. Gosheven sleeps in a tank across the way. A man she's never seen before -- but somehow thinks she knows -- lies on a table, hooked up to all the life support in the world. 

And Yanabah swings from a Metal Mummy in another cell -- drooling from the tranquilizers they've dosed her with. 

"Don't worry," someone in a lab coat says, walking over to her with a large syringe in her hand: "We'll get to you, too, eventually. And when we do, I'm sure you'll be happy to talk."

She just stares at her, wishing she didn't have the gag in her mouth. If she didn't she'd very happy to tell her two very special words. 

But maybe that's what she gets for making a bad decision. 

Maybe that's how this is meant to go. 

The screaming starts up again, from down the hall. And when the blackness comes to call, once again, she decides to not fight it. 

Sometimes oblivion is the best option.

(SPYGOD is listening to Pet Shop Boys (Only the Wind) and having an Antichrist IPA)

1/15/13 - Seven Days of the Con Job - Pt. 4.5

Les Trois Grandes
Foudre Blanc, Tempete Bleu, Ciel Rouge
(Art by Dean Stahl)

* * *

Far off the beaten path, in the mountains of India, there's a particular peak that does not appear on any map. 

It's a terrifying thing -- tall and scraggly, utterly bereft of plant life. The animals all give it a wide berth, and people who look at it don't care to stare for too terribly long.

It's just not a healthy thing to consider, for some odd reason -- especially not on a night like this.

Before that unholy mountain is a windswept plain. In that plain, well within the mountain's moon-shadow, is a cairn of black and tan rocks. It's maybe two feet tall and four feet wide, and with no writing to explain why it's there. 

Suddenly, there's a wavering motion in the air, and someone appears directly in front of it.

It's a man, dressed in what might be some kind of sterile suit. It's got a clear facemask and an oxygen tank. It's also got blood spattered all over it. 

The man reaches down into a pouch, on the suit's belt, and pulls up a small, plastic communicator. He says something into it, and then tosses it off into the dirt, where it sparks, smokes and warps itself into uselessness within seconds.

By the time it's broken itself down into nothing but unhappy molecules, the man has vanished again. This time it's by an entirely different mechanism, and for a much different purpose. But the disappearance is so seamless and smooth that, if anyone had been out here to watch, they might think they just saw a magic trick. 

And they might just have applauded, in spite of themselves. 

* * *

“Quite the speech, my friend,” Foudre Blanc says to a well-dressed man, shaking his hand as he does: “Very convincing.”

“Thank you,” the fellow says, clasping the hero’s hand with both of his own and smiling: “I certainly hope so. They say you can lead a horse to water…”

“But you can’t get him into the boat?”

“Exactly!” the man laughs, his voice echoing across the large, tightly-packed hall he was just addressing.

The room is filled to bursting, tonight. Hundreds of Front Nationale representatives are there, along with delegates of other likeminded groups from throughout Europe. They all press flesh and chortle, so high on the fumes of what they just heard that their normal antipathy for one another is mostly absent.

“So, do we have a timetable?” the white-clad hero asks, wondering how long it’ll be before the Lega Nord people start a fight with the Golden Dawn, just because.

“Soon,” the man says, nodding at that mousy woman from the Danish People's Party as she touches his sleeve and thanks him.

"Just soon?" Foudre Blanc replies, a little dumbfounded: "My understanding is that that... thing is getting even closer. Surely we have to be ready to move soon?"

"And we will," the man assures him, patting him on the back: "It's just a delicate thing, you understand. All these people, all these technical setbacks. And then the matter of getting us up and away in the first place..."

He pauses for a moment to nod at that weird-haired fellow from Party for Freedom, who's entertaining a gaggle of starstruck NF people with his own tales of making things difficult for Negros.

"If there are still difficulties, you can count on my help," Foudre Blanc says: "My company has gladly given time, money, and resources towards this goal. And will gladly continue to do so."

"And it's greatly appreciated, Bruno," the man says, nodding to others still as they pass (Jobbik, Finns, those ones from Spain who change their name every other year): "Indeed, if it hadn't been for Industries Roquer, I doubt we'd have gotten this far this fast."

"Even with the backing of the Terre Unifee?" the white-clad hero chuckles.

"Well, it's one thing to have the reins, and another to be able to gallop the horse out of the stable at any time," the man winks: "I'm sure you understand, having your own group of secrets to tend to."

"I do indeed," Foudre Blanc says, quietly wincing as Julien starts heading their way, the better to schmooze on the man of the hour, too.

"Have no fear, my friend," he says, smiling at the hero: "We will take to the skies, as I have promised. We will leave this sorry mess of a world behind. And we will set up a new, more pure one elsewhere."

"A noble goal," the hero says, taking a step back as the Old Man's number one comes up to fawn.

The after-speech festivities go on for some time. And with each passing moment, Foudre Blanc becomes more uncertain of things. More ambivalent.

It's not that he's against the plan -- indeed, he's one of the principal bankrollers. But rather that, when he started his campaign, he imagined that he would be cleaning up Paris of the human filth that had infested it, so that future generations could once again live in a clean and beautiful city. 

But this way? They'll be leaving it in the dust to be destroyed whenever that massive space disaster gets here. One of the greatest cities in the history of the world, rendered unto dust by some horrible thing beyond human imagining. 

Does that mean his mission is a failure, then? Or is he simply trading what would otherwise be a lifetime of work for a sharp and final lateral move? 

He's not sure. He resigned himself to a lifetime's crusade, back when he began it. Indeed, he knew he might die with that mission unfulfilled.

But now -- as he stands on the brink of seeing it done by default -- all he knows is that he will be disappointed that the final piece of negro filth that dies in his city will not perish by his hand, but instead by some abomination that he'd never dare to look upon, himself.

Disappointed, and more than a little cheated to see his promise to Sabine fulfilled by default. 

Eventually, the evening comes to a close. People leave in small knots and whorls, and then in one final trickling. On the steps, at the end, Julien shakes the man's hand, and then walks away quickly before Foudre Blanc comes up to pay his own respects. And then he's gone too -- zapped off into the electrical wires -- leaving only the man of the hour, who must now catch a cab, as though he were simply another businessman out at night. 

Unbeknownst to him, as he hails a taxi, he is being watched.

One of his spies is a woman wrapped in a red shroud, who lurks in the shadows of a nearby building and glares at him. If looks could kill, he would have died a thousand deaths by now. Indeed, it’s rather difficult for her to avoid going over there, right now, and giving the dead their due.

Especially after everything she just heard inside that hall…

But Ciel Rouge is not stupid. She knows she cannot touch him, here and now. Not with the power he holds. Not by herself.

No. She must wait for the right moment to expose him, and his followers. She must gather more facts and gain more allies. She must be ready to bring the house down in such a way that it wouldn’t collapse on her, instead.

And she thinks she knows just what to say, when she finally gets the chance. 

She vanishes, leaving him no wiser. And as he finally gets a cab to stop and pick him up, he's observed by yet another person -- a black-clad, young blonde woman who kneels on a rooftop, miles away. 

If anyone came onto that rooftop, just then, they might think she’s making ready to take his head off with the rifle she’s wrapped around. But the rifle has a long-range microphone where the barrel should be, and a large telescope attached to what should be a sight. 

Helga smirks, watching as Guillaume Brilliand, Director of the Space Service, gets off the street at last. 

I've got him, she tells the others. 

And suddenly, something becomes very clear to them all.

* * *

“So, you want to tell me what’s really going on, here?” Mark Clutch asks SPYGOD, walking into the otherwise-deserted room the man is sitting in. It might have been a library, once, except that all the shelves are empty, save for dust and cobwebs.

“Well, I’m having a !@#$ing drink,” SPYGOD says, raising a glass from the side of his ratty chair: “Straffer’s taking a !@#$ shower. Martha’s making sure the car’s good to go-“

“And you’re going to answer some !@#$ questions for a change,” Mark insists, leaning over him.

“You sure you want to take that tone with me, son?”

“!@#$ straight I am,” Mark says, too angry to be properly scared.

“Okay…” SPYGOD says, having a sizable gulp of his drink: “Let’s have it.”

“What are we doing?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I did, Mark. That’s just kind of !@#$ing broad.”

“What are we doing here?”

“Well, that’s kind of !@#$ing existential-“

“Shut up!” Mark shouts, knocking SPYGOD’s drink out of his hand and putting his fist in the man’s face: “I swear to God if you get smart one more time I’ll-“

He doesn’t even see SPYGOD move. One moment he’s standing in front of a sitting man. The next he’s sitting in the chair, and SPYGOD’s standing over him.

“What?” he says, his brain still reeling from the sudden movement.

“Now it’s my turn,” SPYGOD says, pointing to the glass where it lies on the ground, empty: “And before I !@#$ing say anything, you better understand something son. I love Martha with all my !@#$ heart, but you ever knock anything out of my !@#$ing hand again, you’re going to be making yourself a new one with your other one broken and shoved right up your !@#$. You !@#$ing got that, son?”

“Well, at least now we’re being honest,” Mark snorts.

“What the !@#$ do you mean?”

“I mean you’re finally showing us how it is.”

“You mean you didn’t !@#$ing know, already?” SPYGOD asks, raising an eyebrow: “I shoot people for less backtalk, Mark. You know that.”

“Yeah, and that’s one of the few things I do know.”

“Look, son, I !@#$ing told you,” SPYGOD sighs, putting his hands to the sky in exasperation: “I’m not telling you a !@#$ thing more than you need to know because it’s not !@#$ing safe. Not for the plan, not for me, not for you.”

“Maybe I should decide that?”

“Because I am sick and tired of not knowing anything,” the man says: “I am sick and tired of being led around by the nose from place to place. I am sick and tired of following mysterious leaders who don’t tell me who they are and ask me to put my !@#$ life on the line, and then-“

“You realize you just !@#$ing described being someone’s sidekick to a t, right?”

Mark blinks a few times, and then, sighing, just looks down at his hands: “It’s just… I love Martha, (REDACTED). I’d follow her around the world. I’d trust her with my life. And the reason for that is that she does not play this secret agent man game with me.”

“It’s not a !@#$ game, son.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Pretend I !@#$ing don’t. Explain it to me, Mark. Small words, long sentences.”

“Alright then,” Mark says, looking him in the eye: “I spent a long time hiding in a treehouse on another planet, following the orders of a guy in a mask who claimed to be working for you, but really wasn’t. And then almost dying because one of the people we thought you vouched for turned out to be… what the !@#$ WAS that thing?”

“Moloch?” SPYGOD says, shrugging: “Damn if I know. Dangerous, that was for !@#$ sure.”

“Yeah. And come to find out it’s Mr. USA-“

“That was not Mr. USA.”

“No, I mean the leader of the resistance, who was Mr. USA, who’d been living a parallel life to the Mr. USA we all knew, and acting in secret all this time, and not stopping !@#$ from happening, and-“

“Stop it,” SPYGOD  commands, waving a hand in front of the man’s face, as if to wake him up: “We just got over this !@#$. Let’s not !@#$ing start it again, okay?”

“Well, that’s just it. Maybe I’m not over it. Maybe I still have a problem being led a mysterious leader who not only doesn’t want to tell me what’s going on, but just admitted even he doesn’t know what’s going on. Maybe I’m sick and tired of being in the dark.”

There’s silence for a time, then. Mark sits there, unsure if he’s going to get smacked, shot, or yelled at some more. But whatever anger he felt when he strode in here seems to have dissipated, somehow.

Better out than in, maybe.

“Look,” SPYGOD sighs, trying to be a little more gentle: “Do you know what a !@#$ N-Machine is, Mark?”

“I think they might have told me, once or twice.”

“Then imagine this, son. Imagine you !@#$ing know something, and you know you !@#$ing know something. Okay?”

“That’d be a first.”

“Now, imagine you get !@#$ing captured by someone who wants to know that something. And imagine they have people who are !@#$ing good, I mean really !@#$ing good, at figuring out that you know something they !@#$ing want to know. And imagine they’re in a !@#$ing hurry and don’t care to try to talk or torture it out of you. Especially if they’re !@#$ing smart enough to know that torture doesn’t !@#$ing work?”

“Then they’d use the machine on me,” Mark says, sighing.

“Exactly, son. They’d use the !@#$ machine on you. They’d drain your whole !@#$ing life out of your !@#$ eyes, just to find out that something. They’d inflict that horrible agony on your !@#$, just to know what you know. And then you’d be !@#$ing dead, and we’d be down a !@#$ good person at a time when we can’t afford to !@#$ing lose anyone.

“And Martha would be !@#$ing heartbroken,” SPYGOD continues, leaning in a little more: “She lost her whole !@#$ family that night. You and her son are all she’s got left, and he’s kind of !@#$ing stuck in the Big Apple. And she loves you back.

“So don’t !@#$ing ruin it,” he finishes, tapping a finger on the man’s forehead with each word.

Mark just nods, looking down and feeling really !@#$ stupid.

“Alright,” SPYGOD says, standing fully up and getting ready to go: “I’m glad we had this talk, Mark. I feel we really had a productive !@#$ing discussion, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Mark says, weakly.

“And just for future reference?” the man says, pointing to the glass on the floor: “That whiskey was !@#$ing older than both of us put together. If you can’t respect me, at least respect my hooch.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Mark sighs, but the man’s already gone.

* * * 

"Tasukete..." the guard on the floor keeps repeating, weakly holding his guts in as his life trickles between his fingers. 

His words might have some weight with his killer, except that the man's not paying any attention to him. Indeed, he's not paying attention to anything in the room. Not the other Space Service guards, here in the room, who had the courtesy to die quickly, or at least more quietly. Not the alarms that are ringing helplessly, as there's no one else alive in this part of the Rebun Island facility to come answer them. 

And not the guards in the rest of the facility, as they have their own problems, now...

The beefy, Japanese man in a floral shirt sits in a chair at the central terminal in the room, which is filled with other, smaller terminals. Under normal circumstances, it would be filled with communications personnel, all eager to talk with the various missions going on right now. 

But they're not here, right now. They're all on the other side of things, fighting for their lives against some horrible monster that, up until now, they thought was a story for children, or at least people who refused to grow up. 

And as they aren't able to stop the man, he's used his recently-reinstated access codes to link up with the Sled, and look at their executive security logs. 

What he's watching is making him cry.

It's hard to be certain what's going on, in the knot of bodies that's floating in zero-G. There's men and women in there, all sliding over and around one another. People are !@#$ing and being !@#$ed, in various ways and combinations. Lots of moaning and groaning, cries and laughter. 

And in the center of that flesh frenzy is an adorable, young woman who seems lost in wonder, and yet all too eager to take part in it. 

"Hanami..." Ju-San -- aka Mister 10 -- says between sobs, pressing his hand to the screen and closing his eyes as she finally decides where to start. 

And when he opens her eyes -- just as she really starts to enjoy herself -- he sees the face of Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir above her, doing things to her that he so desperately wanted to be doing himself. 

He knows, in that moment, that everything he had feared has come true. Everything that outlaw reporter intimated to him was correct. 

He's lost her. They've taken her away from him. 

And the only way to get her back is to go up there and take her back.

"(I will kill you,)" he promises the spaceman, his sadness being replaced by a white-hot anger he can barely control: "(I will kill you with my own hands, you !@#$ing outsider worm!)"

And then he's gone to make good on that threat, leaving only the dead and the dying he used to command in his wake. 

* * *

 "So..." The Scarlet Factotum says, retracting all of her blades and guns back into herself, and holding up the Pusher's severed head for inspection: "Does anyone else have any {quote}complaints{endquote} about how I run things?"

No one does. Her personal army of supervillains and technicians all hold up their hands, doing their best to distance themselves from the steaming human meat on the ground. 

"Good," the freakishly-ugly robo-woman in the extremely revealing -- and now incredibly-torn -- red dress says, tossing the head onto a nearby table: "Because if there's one thing I cannot !@#$ing stand, it's disloyalty. Especially now that we've actually gotten to our goal!"

She waves her bloody hands at the board, where, just sixty seconds ago, they got the last piece of their plan into place. They now have either replaced or recruited all the human machinery that the Terre Unifee uses to run the world. All the super-powers they've put to civilian and military use are either under the thumb of their organization, or have been cunningly swapped out with one of their own number.

The world is hers now, all she has to do is give the order.

The world is hers now, all she has to do is give the order.

The world is hers now, all she has to do is give the order-

"Is that actually going to hold her?" The Emperor of Pain asks, looking at their now-deposed leader as she lies in a heap on the floor. 

"I think so," the Pusher says, adjusting his million-dollar tie and looking at the specialist he hired for the job: "How long can we have her like that?"

"Indefinitely," the grey-suited woman with television static for eyes says, handing over the remote box: "As long as her CPU is active, she'll loop that over and over again and have no idea anything's wrong."

"Well done," he says, nodding to her: "The money's in your account. Are you sure you won't join us?"

"I prefer being independent," she says, winking a flickering eye: "But remember me, when you come into your new kingdom."

"I will," he says, shaking her hand before she turns to go. 

"We're just letting her go?" Lord of Spiders asks once she's out of earshot.

"No one messes with Joy, or they answer to me," the Pusher insists, looking down at his twitching, former client: "We are clear on that?"

"Yes," the Emperor of Pain says, nodding a little too quickly for his own liking.

"If you really want to kill someone for real, go find that Violet Demon guy and air him out," the Pusher says: "He's a little too queer for her.  If he comes back and finds her gone, well, we might have a real problem on our hands."

"I'll do that," the Lord of Spiders says, as he never really liked the kid, anyway. 

"Chassis?" the Pusher says, gesturing at the woman made from a white car: "Take her down to the shop. Take her CPU out, hook it up to a battery, and bring it back to me. We're keeping her as a souvenir."

"I hear you," she says, grousing: "And then what?"

"And then..." the man says, sitting down in his now-deposed leader's big chair, looking at the big board: "We let the world know we're actually in charge."

* * *

To her credit, Martha feels it first. 

She's out working on the car in her civies, just to make sure it's going to be in good working order. And somewhere between checking the oil and putting the cap back on she suddenly gets the feeling that something is wrong. 

She can't say what it is for certain. Maybe a change in the breeze, or a sudden stillness. Maybe the loss of certain sounds, rather than the introduction of new ones.

But after having her own home invaded, last year, she's rather sensitive to that awful feeling that someone is looking at her with ill intent.

When she was young, and being the Talon to her father's Owl, he always told her to value her instincts. He said that perception and a clear head was one thing, but that one always had to be ready to go beyond them, and just trust that the sudden need to duck and back away, or stand up and rush in, were being guided by something. 

(They'd say God, of course. Others would say luck. Still others would say "synchronicity," but she always !@#$ing hated that word.)

So when she turns right around, swinging a crescent wrench in a long arc at what seems empty air, and connects -- hard -- with what was probably someone's jaw, judging by the crunch, she's not at all surprised. 

"We've got company!" she shrieks, bobbing and weaving her way back to the mansion as fast as she can from however many invisible people are right on her tail.

There's firing, right behind her. She can hear the distinctive sounds of darts as they thud into the dirt and trees around her. Martha's scared as !@#$ and all-too-aware that she could be hit at any moment, but right now she's too focused on getting into the house to worry about that.

It's simple math in her mind, really: house, suit, retribution. She might not even need the suit, given how badly these idiots are aiming. Just her fists, maybe-

Something hits her, right in the temple. A fist, not a dart. Excellent follow-through. Hurts like !@#$.

She crumples and goes down, but does her best to leap back up again. They call it Kip-Up. Her dad trained her for hours to get her to do it. And she trained Kaitlyn just as hard.

(My God. If they know she's here, they'll be after her next. And John.)

She leaps up and kicks blindly, somehow knowing where her opponent will be. Something cracks under her foot. A scream, then flailing strikes she can easily block in spite of their transparency. 

Martha ducks down once more, managing to narrowly miss being hit by another wave of darts. They slam into the back door of the mansion, less than six feet away, now. 

(People inside the room. Looks like fighting. Maybe Straffer, maybe Mark.)

She sweeps with her leg and takes her invisible enemy's out. There's a surprised cry and then a massive THUD in the dirt that brings up a comical cloud of dust. 

She leaps back up to continue running. "Company!" she shouts again, ducking and weaving as she runs for the door. 

The darts keep missing. Are they really that bad?

"My god," she says, getting into the kitchen and slamming the door behind her, eyes adjusting to the figures in the dark. Straffer by the door, Mark up against the wall. 

"Are you okay?" Straffer asks.

"Yeah, but they're in no-suits," she breathes: "And they've got tranq darts. Tell me we've got glasses or something."

"We do, yes," Straffer says, turning around suddenly. He's wearing a pair of black wraparounds. And he's got two things in his hands. 

One of them shoots a dart right into Martha's neck before she can even say anything. 

"What...?" she asks, feeling the drugs course through her body. She starts to fall before she can say anything more, suddenly realizing that Mark isn't just up against the wall. He's slumped there -- full of darts and barely conscious. 

"What the !@#$?" SPYGOD shouts, running into the room. He's got just a second to take it all in, and then, just before he can say or do anything, Straffer uses the thing he's got in his other hand.

Whatever it is, it makes SPYGOD jerk and dance like a puppet whose controller has just had a seizure. 

He drools and flails, unable to control himself. He falls to the floor herking and jerking. And when he tries to talk it sounds like a sped-up record.

"Don't bother, hon," Straffer says, standing close to him: "It's someplace you're not going to be able to get to, anytime soon. I slipped it in this morning while you were... compromised."

SPYGOD is trying to talk. It's not coming out well. It's shouts and tears and a question. Why?

"I'm sorry," his lover says, taking off the glasses as the door opens, and the invisible agents begin to come into the room: "I really am. I do love you, (REDACTED). I always will."

Again the question, sped up and nearly incoherent: "Thenwhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy y y y y"

"They promised me I could be in charge of the Space Service again," Straffer explains, having to raise his voice to be heard over the decloaking TU transports, outside: "All I had to do was turn you in and I'd be reinstated immediately. I'm sure they'll want to debrief me first, of course. That's how it works. But soon, I'll be back up where I belong."

More stammering. More crying. 

"Sorry, hon. I told you I valued my career. You'd have done the same."

Martha tries to fight the drugs, almost getting up to get forward and rip Straffer's smug, lying face off. Except that, before she can raise her arm off the floor, something steps down on it. A white boot, connected to a blue leg. 

A blue leg with a white lightning bolt arcing up it, towards a mocking, almost sinister face.

"Bonjour, Mdme Samuels," Tempete Bleu says, as his transparent men become translucent, and then fully visible. 

And just as she loses consciousness, she thinks she can see another face behind his own.

It makes her scream to look at it. 

* * *

 It's all about wonder

The power to be

Like thunder expressing

Electricity

* * *

(SPYGOD is listening to Axis (Pet Shop Boys) and having a WBC PsycHOPath)