1/10/13 - Peur Bleue (Les Trois Grands) - pt 4

"Nique ta mere!" Foudre Blanc hisses as he sprints down the hallways to the exit. The phone of Nurse Marie Corisande keeps ringing, and ringing. But Nurse Corisande -- aka Madame Slithertongue -- is not picking up, even though she's supposed to be at home.

And he can't port out of this facility because of the safeguards, here.

There's no limit to how bad this could be for all involved. There's just a possibility that Corisande finally decided to flip on the arrangement with the Front Nationale, in spite of their efforts to get her out of jail. She might just have used her hold over that con Capitaine to get information on what's really going on at the Police Nationale. And maybe she's planning to sell it to a high bidder, get out of Paris, and start her life over somewhere else -- truly free at last.

It wouldn't be too much of a stretch, given her past dealings with fellow supercriminals and underworld types. She's a snake, after all. What else could they have expected?

But if it isn't the Nurse? If it's some imposter wearing her looks, and using similar powers of mind-control?

Then someone has clearly broken their operation wide open. Then someone is in possession of something that could bring that operation straight down, to say nothing of the NF, itself, and certain aspects of the Terre Unifee as well.

And that someone would have a piece of information that would make Foudre Blanc look very bad in the eyes of his two, ultra-powerful teammates in Les Trois Grands...

So he runs for the open air, knocking people down and cursing every step of the way...

* * *

The dead woman's phone is ringing and ringing. Nefartiti is grumbling and cursing, tossing every last piece of dead person in the apartment into the frothing sink with what's left of the nurse, and throwing all the Dark Alchemist's special dissolving powder she has left in along with it. 

This hasn't been the best-run job in the world. She will readily admit that, now. !@#$, she'll even tell that crazy robot they all work for that they stepped right into the !@#$, here.

But how were they supposed to know how big of a pile it really was?

All they had to do was infiltrate the Police Nationale's prison system, and get information on the super villains that the Terre Unifee was holding, around the world, so they could add the useful ones to their side when the time came. But how were they supposed to know that the super she'd been sent in to replace had been a supervillain? How were they supposed to know that the Terre Unifee didn't even know she had been one?

How were they supposed to know that there was another hand in play, here -- working the TU for its own purposes?

If things had gone according to plan, her and Husqvarna would have kept this deception going right up to the point where the big plan went down. But instead they walked right into two ongoing things that no one had any idea of. And, as soon as they realized the depth of their mistake, it was all they could do to get what they'd come for, burn their tracks, and get the !@#$ out. 

She'd convinced the Capitaine to go in and get the information, which he had done according to their admittedly-shaky, last-minute plan. She was currently getting rid of all evidence, which was not going according to that same plan, but at least going in that direction. 

Now they just had to get out of Paris without being seen, which would require Husqvarna to stand by and do nothing while she did away with the Capitaine.

Nefartiti walks over to the black box on the table. She turns the key, and the blinking red light goes solid. 

"Has it been a !@#$ing half mile, yet?" she asks Husqvarna, who's been oddly silent since their last communication.

"Yes he is," the man says: "I was just about to call you."

"Well then, this is for !@#$ing staring at my !@#$ boobs all night, you !@#$ing horse-eating yahoo," she snorts, and presses the button.

* * *

When Capitaine Maximillien DuNord was six years old, he watched with amazement while his father curb-stomped a black tourist in broad daylight. 

The man was from Mali, of all places. He'd been visiting France on his own, rented a car, and drove off into the northern countryside to see something off the map. And, just his luck, the car had broken down in their small, little town.

He spoke excellent French, but seemed a child in a man's body. Maybe that's why he didn't realize the drunken, violent men he approached for assistance were not going to aid him. Maybe that's why it took him forever to start screaming for a different kind of help when Maximillien's father and uncles grabbed him, tossed him to the ground, and kicked him for what seemed an entire hour.

And then, when the fellow seemed more red than black, his father dragged him over to the side of the street, adjusted his head just so, and killed him with one solid stomp to the back of the head. 

When the police eventually came, Maximillien could only stand helplessly by as his father was betrayed by his own brothers. He couldn't do or say much at the subsequent trial, and they wouldn't let him go to prison to visit him until he turned 18, by which point his father -- having fallen in with some disreputable types, even there -- had been killed with a makeshift weapon in the showers.

So when Maximillien got old enough to decide upon a career, he didn't choose law enforcement because he wanted to help people. He chose law enforcement so that the "right people" would be there, should someone like his father ever need help for doing the "right thing" for France and its people. And went into the Police Nationale because it was somewhere that someone with his temperament could be an asset, rather than a liability; the fact that he got to beat up negros almost every day and claim it was part of the job was just the icing on the cake.

So when his friends in the Front Nationale needed his help with their plans for the Police Nationale, he was happy to extend them every courtesy. He even went well above and beyond their needs, just to be sure that lovely, persuasive woman he'd met had everything she needed to do her job. And the fact that he got to help her with her unique and deadly methods of feeding and stress relief? A major side benefit, to be sure. 

(Who knew there was so much happiness in slavery?)

As such, any honest appraiser of Capitaine Maximillien DuNord of the Police Natonale would have to declare him a piece of human filth, barely worth the genetic material used to create his body, much less the biochemical energy needed to animate and maintain it.

Which is why it's bizarrely fitting that the scarab-like device that blows his skull apart is not only keyed to his loathsome gene structure, but also draws its explosive energy from his body's biochemistry. And he must have been a well-fed man that day, because the blast not only turns his head into a cartoon-like, atomic cloud from the jawbone up, but also takes out every window on his side of the street, and maims quite a few hapless pedestrians in the process.

"Well, !@#$," Husqvarna says, swiveling his sniper helmet's aim back to focus on the headless corpse as it stumbles a step forward, and then falls down on its con: "I had no idea those Scarabombs were so nasty, hon."

"Whatever," Nefartiti mutters: "Wheels up, Husqvarna. Burn your !@#$ and go."

"Totally," he says, re-acquiring Ciel Rouge a split-second later: "Just a moment..."

* * *

That was not a bullet, her Other says, but Ciel Rouge doesn't need that presence's say-so to know that. She'd have felt the explosion from the barrel, and heard whistle of the bullet through the air. She'd have experienced a slight sympathy as his head caved in on one side and blew out on the other. 

She'd have known it for what it was, and this was not that. Not at all. 

She teleports, quickly, to the side of his jerking, twitching body. It's a mess to say the least, and the smell nearly overcomes her equilibrium. But she commands herself to be at peace, on the inside at least, and her body obeys.

And then, before the pyramid-headed, would-be assassin on the rooftop can draw a bead on her, she teleports both herself and what's left of the Capitaine somewhere that the bastard can't see them. 

Somewhere she can have privacy for what must happen next.

* * *

At last, the well-guarded front doors to the prison facility are in sight, and with them freedom.

Foudre Blanc shouts for people to get out of his way. He screams abuse and hurls himself at them, making them come to heel. Confused guards shout and then flatten against the walls, knowing that if one of Les Trois Grands is acting this way, there must be some emergency. 

(And boy are they !@#$ing right about that.)

He leaps over the line for the body imager, making sure no one smuggles anything in or out. He powers past the front doors, running through an alarm as he does. 

And then, not three steps from those doors, he screams in anger, and then goes to electrify himself, s as to enter the maze of wires and cables that allow him to zip around the city. 

But something goes wrong, just then. He jumps up, but then falls down, right onto his well-armored chest.

"What?" he sputters, chuckling the readings on the computer on his wrist. Everything is charged and working. Why hasn't he transformed?

Why?

 * * *

"What the !@#$?" Husqvarna says, suddenly unsure of some things. 

"What?" Nefartiti asks.

"Nothing," he lies, quickly shrugging the sniper helmet from his head and shoulders, ducking down to get out of them, and allowing them to clatter to the roof: "Meet you at the rendezvous point. Out."

He looks down at the sadly-unused weapon, and says its self-destruct code ("Bring me cheese, love slave") at which point it begins to smoke, sputter, and turn to metallic sludge. 

"Nice," he says, admiring Doctor Playgood's handiwork. All he has to do now is get down the same service elevator he came up, get into the special car that's waiting in the garage -- the one with holographic screens for windows, to disguise its real driver and passengers -- and get the !@#$ to their air transport, just south of town.

And if he can do it without having to kill anyone, all the better.

He's about to turn around and do just that, but then someone's right in front of him. Someone dressed in a blue uniform, with red and blonde hair, and a very strange smile on his face.

(Made stranger by the fact that his eyes are closed.)

"Well, how about that?" Husqvarna says, looking at Tempete Bleu: "Figures you'd show up just after I melted my !@#$ gun."

The French hero doesn't say anything in response. He just stands there and smiles.

"Oh, the silent type, huh?" Husqvarna says, roaring up his chainsaw-hands and getting ready to throw down: "Well, let's see if I can't make you !@#$ing scream, you piece of !@#$. Been sneaking around too !@#$ much on this job."

Still nothing, except the smile's gotten a little wider.

"What, too scared to look?" the assassin taunts.

"I don't need eyes to see, anymore," Tempete Bleu says, his voice strange and echoing: "Let me show you."

He does.

Husqvarna screams. 

* * *

"Yes, we're about to !@#$ing head out," Nefartiti says into her communicator as she heads for the now-completely-sanitized apartment's front door: "He's meeting me on the !@#$ street, and we'll rendezvous at the agreed point."

"Good," the voice on the other end says: "I gotta tell you, though, this isn't going to look good-"

"Can it, Buzzard," she mutters: "This whole operation's gone !@#$s up into a sea of merde due to bad intelligence, and if you think I'm taking the !@#$ing fall for that, you've got your beak up your brainstem. Now fire up the !@#$ing engines and get ready to-"

A massive thunderclap interrupts her rant. It shakes the entire building, and makes car alarms go off all over the place.

And somehow, Nefartiti just knows something has gone wrong.

"What was that, lady?" the Buzzard asks.

"Never mind," she hisses: "I'm going dark. Don't take off 'til I !@#$ing get there, or I swear I will cram so much natron up your !@#$ you'll !@#$ dust for the next two thousand years."

And then she's out of the apartment, down the hall, and running for the elevator like the devil himself was after her.

* * *

Ciel Rouge appears in a small doctor's office, not far from the explosion. Nurses and patients scream, but she ignores them, and all but runs into an examination room.

"Get out!" she shouts at the doctor and patient in the room, just about to undergo a prostate exam. The two men stammer and shout, but then, seeing who it is -- and what she's carrying -- begin to be sick, grab their clothes, and run out.

She lays the headless body down upon the table, then. She puts his cold, dead hands over his long-stopped heart. Then she puts her hands over his, takes a deep breath, and stares at the empty space on the table, right where the head should be. 

Maximillien Emanuel DuNord, you have died, she lets the Other speak through her: I see you remain around your body, though you no longer belong to it. I see you should be gone, but yet here you are. I name you in-between, and I command you to speak.

In her mind's eyes, she sees that the space is no longer empty. A ghostly image of his head floats there, now -- his eyes wide and scared.  

What's happened to me? he whimpers, clearly terrified. 

You died, mortal man. We have already said this. 

I... I can't be dead. No... 

Be brave, mortal man. You have only left one hut for another. 

But... I had so much to do... so many more things... 

You should have done them while you could, mortal man. Now stop your crying. It will not do to have your new friends see you come unto them a weeping shell of a man.  

I can't see them... 

You are in-between. I can send you where you need to go. 

You... you can? the ghost says, suddenly hopeful. 

Such is my power, mortal man, for I am the one who dances between the worlds. I can send you to your Heaven, I can cast you to your Hell. I can even place you up above the gods, should you prove yourself worthy of it.

But I have some questions, first. And you had better be able to answer them...

* * *

A bright bolt of lightning all but explodes from the wall socket of the nurse's apartment. It hovers in space for a second, and then turns into a human form. Foudre Blanc stands there, looking extremely upset.

And with good reason.

Apparently, they'd upgraded the security at the place, last weekend. The zone that kept people like him from coming in or out had been increased some distance past the front, too. And had anyone told him? Well, of course not. 

But he'd deal with their !@#$ing incompetence later -- right now he has a job to do. And he'd better do it quick, because he can feel Tempete Bleu, nearby.

And he can tell that something's seriously off with the man, today.

 * * *

"So that's what all that was about," the blue-clad hero states, looking off into the distance as what's left of the idiot with chainsaws for hands burns at his feet. 

(The chainsaws are strangely intact, even after all of that.)

From here, he can see the woman he came here with running down the street. He can almost sense her desperation, and her fear. 

If he doesn't do anything, she'll probably steal a car, and then go meet up with the third member of their party. He can hear a peculiar set of jet engines, out there, south of the city proper -- sitting in an abandoned field, hidden from view. 

Not from him, though. 

He doesn't even have to wave a hand, now. He simply wills it, and the lightning comes -- sharp and jagged, and with a force that can topple towers, and burn cities. 

It's enough to turn the hidden plane (shaped like a Buzzard, of all things) into scrap metal, to say nothing of its poorly-attired pilot. 

As for her, he'll just follow, ever so slowly, watching her every illegal move along the way. And he'll do so from far above -- savoring the moment when she finally gets to her destination, and sees what's happened. 

Only then will he appear to her, however briefly before the end.

And he will show her such wonderful things before it happens...

(SPYGOD is listening to Ripe with Decay (Nine Inch Nails) and having an Electrostatic Ale)

1/10/13 - Peur Bleue (Les Trois Grands) - pt 3

Paris, France

October 18th, 2005

"Mon Dieu," Bruno Roquer is quietly begging as he crawls on his hands and knees, trying to get away from the burning wreckage of his car.

His handsome face is slashed by broken glass, and burned from where the petrol bomb went off. He can barely see for all the blood in his eyes, and can hardly hear after the explosion that nearly tore him apart.

But he's moving, at least. That's a good thing. His parents always taught him that if he could move, he could do anything.

And maybe he can still save his fiancee, Sabine...

This had been stupid and ill-considered. He knew that, now. He shouldn't have insisted on going out to their favorite restaurant, on the outskirts of the city. Yes, they had reservations that took months to get, and, yes, it was her birthday. But they still should have stayed inside, during this time of unrest and violence.

They should have been sensible, and waited out the storm.

But it was her birthday, and he insisted. His car was faster than any mob, surely. They'd just slip through the crowds at high speeds and run around the mobs as they set fire to the world. They'd be out of the conflagration before they knew it, and sipping aperitifs above it all, watching Paris burn.

Just the two of them, up on high while the world came down around them.

She'd said it wasn't a good idea, but he hadn't listened. He never did. He always told her what he wanted, and she gave it to him, one way or another. She claimed she liked that in a man, but there were times he wondered if she was really happy.

Would he ever know, now? The mob that had abducted her at gunpoint, and then tossed the flaming bottle into his passenger seat, seemed intent on terrible actions with her. 

But he cannot think of that, now. He can only move forward, one inch at a time, and hope he's not too late-

The explosion propels him forward, maybe twenty feet or so. In its wake he's left deaf, dumb, and blind -- drowned in a black and silent sea. 

When he comes to, some time later, he can see the car burning behind him, though he can't feel the heat. The city burning around him, though he can't hear it scream. 

He crawls on his hands and knees, no longer able to feel the pain that wrapped him up when his world exploded into fire.

And with each inch -- each thick, dragging, painless inch -- he comes closer and closer to the woman lying in the street... 

Foudre Blanc exits the city's electrical system just then, and reforms in the middle of a thankfully-deserted cul-de-sac.

He wants to scream, but he cannot, because the only sound that can leave his lips is a pathetic whine. So he raises his fists to the sky, grits his teeth, and then sinks to his knees, shaking with rage.

There's a rational explanation for this, he knows. Turning himself into a bolt of electrical fire plays havoc with his memories, and causes some of them to replay before his eyes. He's seen millions of old memories while traveling through those wires -- things long-forgotten, or else only half-remembered, suddenly accessible as though he'd put them through a film projector in his mind.

But for some reason, almost every memory he's been witness to has been bad. The time he broke his arm at age seven. The time his cat was run over by a car. The first breakup with a serious girlfriend. The day his parents died.

And Sabine...

It's this city, he thinks -- this painted putain they call Paris, that attracts human filth and scandalous behavior like flies to merde. She's hated him since he took up arms to tame her racial and religious imbalances, all those years ago. And when he and those like him stand up and say "no more," she finds some way to hobble them, just so she can keep wallowing in excess. 

"You'll be tamed, you whore," he hisses, grabbing hold of the street and crackling the asphalt with electrical fingers: "We'll make you behave, even if we have to burn you to the ground, street by street, and start all over again..."

She doesn't have anything to say about that. She never does -- not directly, anyway. But he's sure that, as soon as he regains his strength and goes back into her wires, she'll find some other, truly awful memory to dangle before him.

It's just her way of letting him know that, while he might call Paris his city, the salope is going to fight him every step of the way.

* * *

Che diavolo...

When Tempete Bleu comes to, there's nothing but blackness and fire all around him. The sounds are strangely muffled, as though he were hearing them through miles of water. And while he can feel the ground below him, as he crawls forward in confusion, his senses are dulled and uncertain.

Stai bene?

Slowly the murky disconnection resolves itself. Now he sees columns of smoke so thick they almost look solid, as though he'd entered some stygian cathedral. Rubble is strewn everywhere, the world is cracked and crumbling around him, and the heat makes rippling waves in the air.

Che cazzo è successo?

A silver angel approaches through the haze and the heat, waving a hand in greeting. For a second, the hero wonders if he's died and gone somewhere else. 

Altrimenti è qualcuno vivo?

But then the angel comes closer, and he can see it has airtanks and a helmet, and the hero realizes he's still in Rome. 

Mi puoi dire che cosa è successo?

It's just a firefighter in a bomb squad suit.

Era una bomba?

And all of his questions are !@#$ing stupid. 

"(Sir, are you hurt?)" the man asks, walking carefully through what's left of the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo: "(Do you need assistance?)"

"I'm fine," Tempete Bleu says, not fully turning around to regard him: "Never better, in fact."

"Oh, well..." the firefighter stammers, as his French is a little rusty: "What has happened?"

"Something exploded," the hero answers tersely, looking around the flattened building. Nothing remains but rubble, now -- centuries of prayer and song wiped away in a second.

"Was it a bomb? A villain?"

"A villain..." the hero muses, looking around for any trace of the man he came here to meet. There is none. 

There wouldn't be.

"Who was it?" the firefighter asks.

As if to answer, Tempete Bleu rises up from the ground, and floats a full foot above it. Then he turns around, ever so slowly, so as to look the firefighter in the face.

The scream that man gives just before he dies is the best thing the hero's heard in years.

* * *

"Jesus !@#$ing Christ," Husqvarna mutters as he stands at the edge of a tall, windy building, staring down the scope of his sniper helmet at the meat-faced target he's been tracking for a few blocks, now.

The helmet's a weird sort of thing: an elongated, high-tech facemask with a sniper rifle on one side, a targeting mechanism on the other, a tripod under his chin to steady his aim, and a neck-brace to make sure he doesn't break his neck when he fires it.

It's not the sort of thing he'd recommend to anyone, even if it is accurate as !@#$. But when both your hands have been replaced by massive, deadly chainsaws, you have to learn to adjust.

Point of interest: when Husqvarna lost his hands in a horrible logging accident, he didn't cry or whine about it at any point during the whole ordeal. In fact, he was secretly glad, because he understood that this gruesome occurrence -- and all the bull!@#$ that happened afterwards -- was not a tragedy. This was an origin story, and one that had been waiting for him his whole life.

(That didn't stop him from using his new, ill-gotten chainsaw-hands on his safety-adverse lumber baron boss his first day as a legitimate supervillain, though. The !@#$ing cheapskate had it coming.)

But, special destiny or no, it was quite the thing to go through life with chainsaws for hands. Anytime he had to step outside of his relatively-narrow special skill-set, he needed to have accommodations made. So he had a car he could steer with his shoulders, waiting back at home. The doors in his lair were motion sensitive, and there was voice activated !@#$ all over the place. He'd even hired a few live-in ladies to come in and deal with his hygiene issues, because nothing is worse than having to go when you can't deal with it properly.

(Oddly enough, that's how he'd met his girlfriend.)

And since he had been teamed up with Nefartiti for this job, and he'd drawn the role of "quiet problem remover," he'd been given the sniper helmet, which was pretty darn cool. It sort of reminded him of the guys from the Spy vs. Spy comics he read as a kid. But then it also sort of reminded him of that one freaky pyramid-headed monster from Silent Hill, only with a massive gun attached.

He looked at the capitaine, marching back home to what he thought would be an afternoon abattoir blowjob. He looked at Ciel Rouge, who was following him closely, and slowly but surely catching up to him. Back and forth, forth and back.

Nefartiti said she could deal with the guy, herself -- just let her know when he got a half mile away. And he trusted her to know what she was going, as she'd carried her end of the bargain thus far. But that left him wondering what he should do, instead.

And that made him wonder if maybe he could kill a flock of birds with one stone, and maybe put that red !@#$ out of his fellow criminals' problem zone once and for all.

"One bullet can change the world," he mused, changing his helmet's targeting program, and aiming the sniper rifle at the teleporting woman, instead.

* * *

"La Vache! What do you mean the Capitaine isn't here, today?"

"Well, just that, Msr," Pierre says, shrinking into his desk as Foudre Blanc towers over him: "He was here for a time, this morning, but then he left. I think he was a bit off from the night before-"

"A bit off?" the white knight asks, incredulous: "That man can hold anything you put down his throat."

"Well, I'm sure I wouldn't know about that, Msr."

"No, you wouldn't," he sighs, shaking his head. He really needed to talk to Maximillien, right now.

"Well, you're not the only one who's been looking for him, today."

"I haven't?" he asks, intrigued: "Who else was interested?"

"Well, I probably shouldn't say anything-"

"No, Pierre," the hero insists, leaning over the desk so much that the front of his helmet is almost in the man's face: "You should."

"Well, Ciel Rouge... she was, um, convinced that she saw him in the records room, earlier today," Pierre stammers: "But I told her that he'd left."

"Even though she saw him with her own eyes?"

"Well, yes. He'd used his passkey to get out, you see."

"Really?"

"Well, yes. And then she asked if he'd used his passkey to get in there, but I said that no, he hadn't."

"Really?" Foudre Blanc asks, wondering why that salope was so interested in his comings and goings.

"Well, yes. She was also asking after Nurse Marie, but I told her she came in early, too, and then left-"

The white-clad hero holds up a hand to shut him up: "Pierre, you can see what everyone does from this office by seeing when and where they use their passkeys, correct?"

"Yes, I can-"

"So could you show me those records, Pierre?"

"I'm not really supposed to," Pierre starts to say, but before he can finish it Foudre Blanc's on his side of the desk, and moving the monitor around so they can both see.

"Capitane Maximillien DuNord, please," he demands, pointing to the screen. Pierre sighs, takes a deep breath, and calls them up, also pointing to the screen.

"You see, Msr?" he says, moving his finger down the line: "He came in this morning, at six. He was here for a few hours, and then he left around nine or so. Between those two times, he was in the new prisoner intake almost the entire time-"

"Is that what you see, there?" Foudre Blanc asks.

"Well, yes, Msr. What do you see? I know you don't normally know what to look for-"

"I know enough to know that says Records Room, from 9:30 until 10:15," the hero insists, tapping the screen in the relevant places: "It also says he accessed the prisoner database the entire time. And it has him leaving the building at 10:19, and not nine or so, as you said."

"But..." Pierre says, looking at the screen: "That's not what it says..."

"Pierre, did you have any other visitors, today?" Foudre Blanc asks, realizing this could mean something very bad, especially for him and his people.

"Well..."

"Did the Nurse come to see you, this morning?" he asks, putting his hands on the man's shoulders and looking deep into his eyes: "Were you visited by her?"

"No..." the man says, but there's something uncertain in his eyes.

"Merde," he sighs, and looks Pierre in the eyes again: "Pierre, this is important. 'Une France pure dureront pour toujours.'"

"What?" Pierre asks, confused.

"Oh no," Foudre Blanc says, uncertain of what's happened here. Clearly this man's mind has been messed with, but the trigger phrase Madame Slithertongue agreed to use if she had to work on their own people was not erasing the programing. So either the Nurse wasn't doing what she was supposed to do, anymore, or that wasn't their nurse that came in, this morning.  

And if that wasn't their nurse, then something was seriously wrong. 

"I'm... I think I can remember something," Pierre mumbled, his eyes darting all over the place: "What on Earth... mon dieu, what did I do?"

Foudre Blanc sighs, and, tapping the man on the forehead, kills him with a massive bolt of electricity to the brains. He then does something similar to the computer, making certain anyone who didn't know better would think a freak electrical accident killed this man. 

And then, on his way out of the room, he starts calling their Nurse at home, praying there's an easy explanation for all of this merde. 

* * *

Saint Paul Trois Chateaux looks much the same as Tempete Bleu remembers. Red roofed, white buildings, all smashed in with each other along twisting, old roads that have too many cars. Friendly people and the noisy tourists they have to put up with.

(Stray animals running in fear as he looks at them, even from up here.)

But something is different, now. He can't quite put his finger on what, but as he floats above the center of town, looking down at the streets of his childhood, something seems amiss.

Ah, there. In the thick forests south of town, close to where he used to play as a child. Something is calling to him, there.

Something that has a voice he can no longer ignore.

As he moves in that direction, he thinks he remembers what really happened to him, as a child. So much of it was so jumbled, all those years. Had he been taken into a cave by tall men in robes, or pulled into the sky by swirling aliens? Did he pull the bus from the river with a wave of his hand, or push it there?

Did he save his school or destroy it?

The answers are coming to him, now. And as he gets just past the farmer's field he used to squish insects in, before he became something more than human, he now realizes why he went there to do it.

That voice was nearby, calling him with words he couldn't quite hear, yet. Singing a tune he could only just sense on the periphery of his senses.

Calling him home, but only when he was ready.

And as he approaches the forest, he's not surprised at who he finds standing there, waiting for him.

"Welcome, Armilus," it says, holding what may be hands up to greet its long-lost son.

* * *

You know someone's about to shoot at you, woman?

"I do, yes," Ciel Rouge says as she teleports again, making sure she's just out of the Capitaine's range of hearing.

You think you can dance out of that one?

"Why not? We've handled worse."

Only when we've needed you to.

"True," she admits, wondering if her Other is trying to set up yet another painful object lesson, just to show her who's really in charge.

The ridiculous-looking man with chainsaws for hands and a gun for a helmet has been following the two of them for some time, now. At first, the gun was trained on her target, but now it's on her. There could be a number of reasons for him to do this, but she won't get any answers if he's dead.

And she really won't get any answers unless she sees what he's actually going to do, next.

If he had fired at the Capitaine, she was going to put herself between him and the bullet, knock the Capitaine down and out, and then go deal with that fool. But now, she runs the risk of her quarry getting away while she deals with the would-be assassin. But she figures she can teleport him somewhere safe, knock him out, and then go corner the man on the rooftop before he can get away.

She doesn't like teleporting that many times in quick succession -- especially after having been porting from spot to spot this entire way -- but she figures it'll work.

So she keeps going, feeling the nasty sensation of having a weapon aimed at her, and hoping to resolve this matter before too long.

The truth will be hers soon. She just has to wait for it, and hope it costs as few lives as possible.

(SPYGOD is listening to The Mark Has Been Made (Nine Inch Nails) and having a Pont du Diable Malbec)

1/10/13 - Peur Bleue (Les Trois Grands) - pt 2

"So have you found out any more about your other two?" the old man quickly asks, as he's getting rather tired by the conversation: "The red woman and the blue man?"

Foudre Blanc sighs, as he'd been dreading this question: "I know that the armor still keeps that salope from reading me as she does others. She let something slip about dancing her way to a solution, last night at dinner, when we discussed this problem, but I don't think that's significant."

"Don't be too certain," the old man says: "We know she's from Mayotte. All that negro influence? Perhaps it's where she gets her powers from. This could be useful."

"Perhaps."

"And the blue man?"

"Still nothing," he admits: "But I'm succeeding in getting her to wonder as well. And if anyone will figure out what it's all about, she will."

"And when she does, she'll go straight to you," the old man smiles: "You see? I told you it was a good thing to make her think she can love you. You can toss all the francs in the world in front of some putain, and she'll follow you as far as the money goes. But you get a woman to think she loves you? You can get her to follow you anywhere."

"I know," Foudre Blanc replies, more than a little unnerved by the old man's smile "You were right. Thank you for that."

"Thank you, Bruno," he says, sipping some more wine: "And please tell Julien I need my feet warmed when you leave, will you?"

"Are they numb?" the hero says, starting to get to his feet (as he's taken the old man's hint).

"No, just cold," the old man sighs: "I suppose it's a good thing I can still feel them, yes?"

"Of course. I just don't like to think of you being uncomfortable."

"Bah," the old man says, laughing a little: "That's all old age is, my son. One new infirmity after another. You get used to some, you never get over others. And one day the final infirmity will come for you, and that will be all."

"I suppose," Foudre Blanc says, gesturing towards his suit: "It's just that... well, they gave me this. They should have given you something, too."

"What, should I be out on the rooftops, keeping the beurs in line?' he laughs: "No. My body was not strong enough for that sort of thing. It's enough that they can keep me alive, in spite of what's happened. And while I would have liked to have finished my days in power, well, sometimes you do not get to get what you want.

"Still, I regret nothing," he says, gesturing around the room with his wine glass: "Things happen as they have, and perhaps for a reason. If I could only be the one to pave the way, then all this? All this will not have been for nothing."

"You are right," the hero says: "Good day to you, Jean-Marie."

"Good day to you, my son," the old man says, respectfully looking him in the face as he heads from his bedside, across the room, and towards the door. With each step, the frail old man seems to get smaller and smaller, until he seems hundreds of miles away.

And as Foudre Blanc gently and quietly closes the door, the old man seems further away still. 

* * *

Tempete Bleu looks down over the center of Rome as he hangs in space above it, thinking of ants and shoes.

When he was a small child, living in Saint Paul Trois Chateaux, one of his favorite things to do was to run through the fields and imagine how many bugs he was smashing with each step. In fact, he looked forward to a new year at school with a joy usually reserved for birthdays, as it would mean he'd get a new pair of shoes to use in his eternal war with such pests. 

How many afternoons had he spent crushing insects in that fashion? How many boiling anthills had he stomped flat, again and again? How many stick insects and praying mantises had he left broken and twitching? How many delicate spiders had he brought down within their bejeweled webs?

But then, that was before things changed for him. Now, if he ran through the same fields, he'd leave mighty, foot-shaped divots behind him as he went. He'd leave burning bushes and cracks in the mantle.

He'd break the Earth apart, just for the sake of a dead, chitinous thing that he could simply swat flat with a wave of his hand.

No. He had to be careful, now -- more cautious. He couldn't allow his enthusiasm to run away with him, as though he were a child of eight, once more. Things broke too easily, now.

And if he broke them at the wrong times, too many questions were asked...

There.

Again. He hears it again. That same sound he'd heard down below, when he'd dealt with those stupid meatbags, earlier in the day, before going off to deal with some more pressing issues. And he'd done them all rather quickly, just so he could fly back here and check into what he'd heard.

That extraordinary, yet familiar sound...

"I can hear you down there," he says, narrowing his eyes to bet a better look at its source: "Where are you?"

As if to answer, the same noise is made again. This time it's louder and longer -- easier to track. And that allows him to realize that it's coming from some church, on the north side of the Piazza del Popolo.

There's something inside of it, waiting for him -- someone, possibly. A person he hasn't spoken to nor seen in years.

Tempete Bleu smiles, and then flies down to meet his mentor.

* * *

Ciel Rouge spends the rest of the morning staying just a few steps behind Capitane Maximillien DuNord, who spends that time alternating between the records room and new prisoner intake. The latter is where he should be for most of the time, of course, but whereas the rest of the time should be spent checking up on hallway patrols, incident reports, and things of that nature, he's in that room, instead.

And, from the sounds of things, up to his elbows in the sort of protected files that can only be accessed from there.

She isn't able to see exactly what he's doing in there, of course. If she ported in and out he'd know she was onto his being up to something suspicious. And, given that he actually lied to her, that morning -- and she is certain of that, now -- she's not sure she'd get an honest answer, even if she caught him in the middle of something.

Better to wait, then, she figures. She'll keep an eye on him, see what he's up to, and when he has his rendezvous with the nurse...

Come to think of it, she hasn't seen her all day, either. She would have thought she'd have come across her at some point, surely.

She ports herself a little further away from the records room, to a position where she can still keep an eye on the door, and calls into the records office.

"Pierre?" she asks: "This is Ciel Rouge. I have a question about our nurse."

"Oh, Marie Corisande?" the affable fellow on the other end asks: "What did you need to know?"

"I hear she came in rather early, today?"

"She did indeed. Something about being thorough, she said."

"Well, that's good. I needed to speak with her about something. Do you know when she'll be in her office?"

"Oh! Well, she has gone home early, today."

"She has?" Ciel Rouge says: "I thought the Capitaine was going to arrange a meeting for us this afternoon?"

"Oh, well he's gone home as well," Pierre says: "I think they might have tied one on together, last night, and both been the worse for it this morning?"

The man laughs, but Ciel Rouge doesn't find that even the least bit funny -- especially when, just a few seconds later, the man who isn't there comes out of the records office, adjusts his uniform, and walks down another hallway.

"So he isn't here?"

"No, Madame. He is not."

"And he didn't just use his passkey at the records room?"

"No, Madame. How could he?"

"Could you double-check that, please?" she asks, smiling: "I know those records are available to you, even if they're not supposed to be...?"

There's a moment of silence, and then some stammering, and then Pierre gets back to her: "No, Madame. There's no record of it at all."

"Thank you," she says, a little shaken as she hangs up. She can't tell if he was lying to her, either, or simply misinformed.

Some powerful dancing is going on, here, woman, her Other says: Only a strong foot could stand against our ways. 

"Someone like us?" she asks: "Is that even possible?" 

Got to dance longer before we find out, is the only reply that presence can give. And she gets the sense it's more than a little uneasy, too.


"We keep following him, then," she says, porting along to keep him in sight. 

* * *

"So how is the old man, today?" Julien asks as Foudre Blanc comes down the stairs, into the main room where all of the nondescript man's allies and underlings are busy -- making phonecalls, printing pamphlets, and cutting deals with the sort of people one might think a superhero should be arresting, and not observing from across the room.

"Mssr. LePen's spirits are high, but his feet are cold, Julien," the hero says, wondering where he's seen some of those people before, in or out of costume: "You'll deal with that?"

"I will have it dealt with, yes," he gestures to a rather pretty young woman, who's dressed as a stripper's conception of a nurse. As she ascends the stairs, they can both see she's forgotten her underwear under her skimpy, white and blue striped skirt.

"So was it really his feet that were cold, I wonder?" Julien chuckles, watching her walk up until she's past the bend at the end.

"I'll be sending over some plans for the Maker, later today," the hero says, finding this conversation as distasteful as he finds the man he's having it with: "It's to be given his full attention."

"Well, we have that freak of nature doing a few other things-"

"Cancel them," Foudre Blanc insists -- so loudly that all other conversations in the room stop: "This is of primary importance."

"Well, I'll be sure to do that, then," the man sighs.

"Good," the hero says: "And now, if you'll excuse me, I have better people to consort with."

"You know, you could be a little more grateful to us," the man says, trying to regain some of his dignity before the people he's supposed to be in charge of: "The Front Nationale has done you quite the service."

"You have, yes," Foudre Blanc says: "And, in return, I'm trying to do you a service by keeping you on task, and seeing to your success. All I ask from you is that you do what you're told when I'm here. The rest of the time you can pretend you're in charge of this... mess."

Julien opens his mouth to say something, but before he can the hero's turned himself into a pillar of lightning, shot himself into a specially-modified electrical outlet, and then gone back into the city's web of current.

"Merde," he mutters, adjusting his tie and looking back at the room, at which point everyone who'd been looking at him goes back to doing whatever they'd been doing before he can shout at them. 

* * *

"What do you mean he's being followed?" a young, black-haired woman in a tyvek suit shouts into a cell phone, resisting the urge to look out the kitchen window.

"Just that," the man on the other end says: "He's had a tail since he left the place."

"Who is it?" she asks, stepping over the visqueen on the floor -- and the severed limbs it holds -- to get to the bubbling, red and green mess in the kitchen sink.

"It's one of the heavy hitters. The red !@#$. Red Sky."

"Oh !@#$," she says, feeling her stomach flip in her gut as she dumps some more smoking, white powder into the froth that used to be Madame Slithertongue: "That means she's on to us."

"Or on to him, at any rate," he says: "He's just striding home like he's trying to get his !@#$ sucked for lunch. And she's teleporting after him like she's got all the time in the world."

"Did he upload the records we needed?"

"Let me check..."

"Come on, Husqvarna," she mutters, wondering how fast she can turn the human remains she'd found (and made, admittedly) into slop down the sink.

"Yes, we got it," he says, a massive amount of relief in his voice: "It's all here."

"Did he trash the node he worked from?"

"I don't know that. He's the only one who does."

"And he's leading her here," Nefartiti sighs: "I can't sanitize the place that soon. That snake-faced !@#$ I impersonated is taking too long to go down the pipes-"

"I can take him out right now," the super villain interrupts: "I can put one in his !@#$ left temple and turn everything over the nose to sausage. Give me the word..."

"And tell them we don't know if he got out clean?" she shouts: "You realize we'll be shot, too?"

"Maybe, maybe not, hon. But you want to !@#$ing go a round with Ciel Rouge, instead, be my guest."

Nefartiti sighs, realizing this is going to be a mess, no matter what.

"Do I do it?" the assassin asks: "Last chance."

"No," she says, looking over at a small black box on the table -- one with a button, a small key, and a blinking red light: "Call me when he gets half a mile away. I'll do it."

* * *

"Everyone, please, we must go," the silly little man in the black priest's robes says to the tourists who'd been in the Basilica, just a minute before. They're not happy, clearly, but the look of sheer horror on the Priest's face after talking with Tempete Bleu leaves little doubt in their mind that something serious is afoot.

Something about how he's floating above the ground, in the center of the church, makes it seem as though the world's about to end.

As soon as the last person is gone from the place, the blue-clad hero waves a hand, and a mighty wind rushes towards the huge and heavy front doors of the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo -- making them slam shut. The sound ripples across the high ceiling and echoes from the side chambers, and the tombs within them.

And now he is alone, but yet not.

"I wondered how long it would take you to get here," a portentous voice says, coming from a particularly creepy tomb, between a half-column and a wooden booth.

"I heard you, earlier," Tempete Bleu says, looking at the unassuming, effeminate figure, lounging by the wooden booth. A pale-skinned, dark-haired man with poisonously-green eyes, dressed in a form-fitting black suit.

And not wearing any shoes.

"You were meant to," the man says, smiling: "And I knew you'd remember, in time."

"Those protestors?" the hero asks, floating down to put his own, clad feet on the floor: "The fools with the guns I had to deal with. They were yours?"

"It was the only way I could be here," the man says, raising his palms up in a mock apology: "You know the rules. 'Blood for blood, flesh for flesh.'"

"Do I?" he asks, not certain.

"How much do you remember?" the man says, beckoning Tempete Bleu closer: "The time before Le Trois Grands. Before Direction Noir?"

"I remember... power," the hero says, looking at the man's face as he approaches the tomb he stands beside: "I remember meeting you. I remember you talking me through it, but..."

"Is that all?" the man asks, seemingly disappointed: "Do you remember what really happened to you as a child?. What we spoke of? What you did?"

The hero shakes his head, as if trying to shake out the memories from his brain. So many conflicting things. So many parallel stories and incompatible lies.

So many lives, lived side by side as if they all happened at once...

"You don't remember, then," the man says, putting a hand on the hero's chest, just over his heart. He sighs, as if reading something there with his fingers.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"For now? No," the man replies: "But soon, Armilus. Soon, you will remember everything. I've been sent to help with that." 

"Can't you just tell me?" Tempete Bleu rasps, almost begging.

"It's too soon," the man says: "But still..."

He points to the tomb, itself. There, a lifelike sculpture of a white-robed skeleton peeks from behind an iron grille, body hand crossed over its chest. 

"The tomb of Giovanni Battista Gisleni," the man explains, gesturing to the macabre memento mori: "A rather interesting piece of tombcraft. One of my favorites. I especially like the motto, here: Neque hic vivus, Neque illic mortuus."

"'Neither living here, nor dead there,'" Tempete Bleu translates: "An interesting conceit."

"Yes, well, he should have added 'flagrat in infernum,'" the man chuckles, stroking his eerily-hairless chin: "Those architects were always a rotten lot. Pocket blasphemies hidden in secret rooms and chambers. All those sexual puns and peccadilloes, preserved forever in marble and wood..."

"And is he?"

"What?"

"Burning in Hell?"

"Ah, well," the man says, looking at the hero: "That's a tale for another time. The important thing is that, while I can't tell you everything, I have come to tell you something."

"What's that?" Tempete Bleu asks, his eyes full of a strange kind of hope.

The man gestures for the hero to lean in close, and then, taking his head in his hands, gives him a savagely passionate kiss.

And then, as quickly as he's done that, grabs him by the roots of his red and white hair, and -- holding his head so he can't get away -- whispers something into his ear.

Something that makes France's mightiest hero scream...

(SPYGOD is listening to The Only Way Out is Through (Nine Inch Nails) and having a Chimay Blue Cap)