Monday, May 30, 2016

Valhallopolis: 5/23/16 - 5/29/16


"Collectively they agree to exhale and be free / Now one after another they tumble silently"

(The Russian Legion)

(Art by the Lemonade Project)

* * *
18
* * *

Brothers shall fight - and fell each other
And sisters' sons - shall kinship stain
Hard is it on earth - with mighty whoredom; 
Axe-time, sword-time - shields are sundered, 
Wind-time, wolf-time - ere the world falls; 
Nor ever shall men - each other spare


Monday: 5/23/16


*CLICK* 

"... repeat, the Interim President is dead. Dan Quayle was shot and killed while under COMPANY protection, apparently by one of the AGENTS tasked with guarding his life..."

*CLICK* 

"... portions of the city are still burning tonight, following a titanic struggle between two groups of higher entities. At this time it is still unknown why the Olympians traveled from their White City to confront the Aesir, in Moscow..."

*CLICK* 

"... blew his face clean off. Six shots, right to the skull. And then what she said afterwards..."

*CLICK*  

"... told you Islam was trouble. I told you we should just deport them all until we figure this out. Was I right or what...?" (CHEERS) "Yeah, we knew. We knew. But they didn't listen..."

*CLICK*  

"... Russian forces fell back to a safe distance after it became clear they could not contain the elemental energies generated by the battle. Hurricane-force winds and lightning strikes were encountered..."

*CLICK*  

"... reports of strange behavior on a global scale. Civil servants, military figures, governmental officials, and other highly-placed persons have been caught trying to sabotage or destroy sensitive systems and vital infrastructure...."

*CLICK* 

"... a clearly-shaken Speaker of the House, after addressing an emergency joint session of Congress, to discuss how best to handle this Constitutional crisis. General speculation is that he will, in turn, take over as the Interim President now. A position he went on record as not wanting, before..."

*CLICK*

"... lightning was accompanied by other things, including what is being described as bolts of darkness, waves of water, and, finally, a punishing burst of solar energy that has incinerated a great deal of eastern Moscow..."

*CLICK* 

"... and then, when they're caught, these people are all more or less saying the same thing. Allegiance to IS. They did it for Allah. Some group called Al-Hidhah..."

*CLICK*  

"... clearly the COMPANY bears ultimate responsibility for this. The assassination happened in their facility, by one of their people. Apologists are saying mind control was involved, but my sources tell me those clones have always been a little wonky..."

*CLICK* 

"... chariot of the Olympians limped home not long after the sunburst. At this time it is unknown how many of them were wounded, or may have died..."

*CLICK*  

"... Candidate's numbers have surged dramatically among independents, given his tough stance against Muslims and the White City..."

*CLICK* 

"... still seeking confirmation that a Chinese General almost launched ten nuclear missiles at India...."

*CLICK* 

 "... Freedom Force continues to help guard Moscow, and contain the menace inside. They are getting a lot of help from the Russian Legion, a massive force of tactical strike robots. Some say the androids may have won the battle, and continue to keep the peace. Others wonder.."
 
*CLICK* 
"... string the pink-haired (BLEEP) up and shake her the (BLEEP) down until we get every single terrorist (BLEEP) out of the (BLEEP)ing Heptagon, you ask me..."

*CLICK* 

"... this just in, the White City has turned black. Perhaps in mourning. Perhaps for some other reason..."

*CLICK*  

"... thousands of ultra-nationalists from all over Europe trying to smuggle themselves into Moscow, in spite of the Russian Legion, to join the Aesir..."


*CLICK* 

"... calls for the self-proclaimed Republican Candidate to explain his full relationship with the late Secretary Wheeler continue to go unheeded. So do a lot of things. Following the unsuccessful attempt on his life, the other week, his public appearances have been restricted to campaign speeches in very secure locations, and with high security profiles..."

*CLICK*  

"... the United Nations Space Service has issued a Security Blackout to all Astronomical Observation posts and telescopes. It would appear that Earth is, once again, about to come under attack..."

*CLICK*

 "... he was not the greatest Vice President, and perhaps not the best person to sit inside the Oval Office in time of emergency. But he was there when his country called upon him, ready to take on a thankless job, just to keep the nation going through the crisis. And for that he should be remembered, and thanked by every American..."

*CLICK* 

"... sight of the head of the so-called Lord of Death, Satanoth, perched upon the front of the Mayor's Residence in Moscow. Some say it's still alive, and trying to scream. Others say it's as still as death..."

*CLICK*

".. some twelve to fourteen million civilians, trapped within the city limits of Moscow. Unable to leave, enduring unknown hardship as they languish under the boot of an invading force. The world stands helpless, wondering how this stand-off will end, and who shall survive..."

*CLICK*

"...And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying


Tuesday: 5/24/16

"Three days, sir," Campaign Director Straffer says, looking rather weary over the video screen: "They took advantage of the Opposition to launch more 8-Balls at us."

"But you can hold them off?" the Speaker of the House -- soon to be the new Interim President -- says, his face already developing the lines that come with the job.

"Yes, but it won't be easy," the blonde cyborg admits: "It's exponentially worse than last time. They didn't double the numbers. They squared them."

"That's... wow," the man says, scratching his head and looking around his soon-to-be-vacated office on Capitol Hill: "That is pretty bad."

"Yes it is," Straffer says, wondering when someone's going to bring him some coffee: "We're blowing them apart before they get to the halfway point, but sooner or later we're going to make mistakes. We'll miss a few, or they'll throw us a curve ball. And then, well..."

"Well what?" the Speaker asks, his eyes wide as dinner plates.

"I'm sure you've played Tetris, sir?"

"Well, yeah. A time or two. Not really my thing."

"Well, you know what it's like when you lose control of the game, and it all starts raining down, and it's all you can do to keep up at the halfway point on the screen, rather than down at the bottom? And it's harder to plan, to see, and to act in time?

"Now imagine that with particle cannons, fired at things that, if one gets through, it'll be the ISS again if we're lucky, and Miami if we're not."

The Speaker nods, getting the point.

"And, just to make matters worse," Straffer says: "After the last time we learned the platforms can't handle constant operations. We can only use one for so long before we have to rotate over to another one. Otherwise the control interface shuts down to save the platform serious damage."

"But you can fix it?"

"No," the Campaign Director says, deciding to just be honest with the incoming all-too-temporary leader of the free world: "The Olympian who designed them is seriously pissed off at the Space Service Director. That's if he's even alive right now. After Moscow..."

Straffer lets his words trail off, and furrows his brow. The Speaker nods, and then gulps, quite visibly.

He does, however, recoup very quickly: "I can't pretend to know what you're doing, or how it gets done. And I can't fix your machines, either. It sounds like no one can.

"What I can tell you is that, as the United States is one of the major members of the United Nations, I will do everything in my power to make sure you get the resources you need."

"That would be muchly appreciated, sir," Straffer says: "And if I can make a suggestion?"

"Anything."

"Interceptors, sir," the Campaign Director says: "We were promised more attack craft. Once these things get past the moon we can't fire at them. Our fleet is the only thing that can take one of the things down, and they have to concentrate firepower to make sure they get every last piece of them."

"Are these things that dangerous?" the Speaker asks.

"Sir, if a single lump makes it through the atmosphere and lands... well, you might not have Miami again, but you'll have an ecological disaster, somewhere. And we might not even see it until it's turdscaped an entire region."

"Turdscaped."

"Yeah, that's what we're calling it. I'm sure some eager beaver in the Pentagon will show you pictures of what the inside of Miami looked like before we cooked it. And I'm told the floor of the Atlantic Coastline looked pretty damn bad before they used that pink stuff to kill all affected life in the area."

"That's... a term I could do without hearing again."

"Well, if you can get us our interceptors, hopefully it won't ever come up in conversation," Straffer says: "There's been some issues with construction. That's what my Director is saying, anyway."

"Not anymore," the Speaker says, putting his hands on the desk: "If America must lead, sir, we will. I'll have our UN Ambassador start rattling cages and getting to the bottom of this."

"Thank you, sir," the cyborg says, having some idea how well that's going to go: "That would be most helpful."

"Meanwhile, I suspect you've got some... 8-Balls to knock off the table?"

He smiles at his joke -- big and dopey. Straffer smiles back and hopes the man doesn't give him any more reasons to worry.

And as he goes to rally the troops for the mother of all shootouts, he hopes his fiance is alright, and wonders where the hell he's gotten himself off to, this time.

* * *

"So, what's the last thing you remember?" SPYGOD asks the man he found in the cryo-chamber, who's just now getting unfrosted enough to think straight.

"I don't know for sure," Senator Cruz says, sipping at the coffee his rescuer brought him: "I think it was seeing that giant brass bull come for me. And then..."

He shudders, trying not to remember.

"He put you inside of him, sir," SPYGOD explains: "It's what he does. What he did. He put you inside him, lit you on fire, and used that energy to power him, somehow."

"I burned," the Senator says: "But I didn't burn. I screamed in pain. It hurt terribly. And then I blacked out, and..."

He looks around, then down at the coffee: "Did someone shoot him? I seem to remember a gun."

"Yeah," SPYGOD admits: "There wasn't a bang, but something got fired at Moloch. He got rendered inert, fell down, and turned to dust. And there you were in the center of it all, crispy and black."

The Senator sighs, looking at the coffee: "I thought I was dead. I was just dreaming, though."

"Yeah," the superspy says: "And then someone stole your body out of the morgue, and we haven't found you until now."

"What's happened to me?" Ted Cruz asks: "I didn't get a scratch on me when the bomb went off. It cooks me like a hot dog on a grill but I'm still alive. And then they freeze me and... I'm alright now?"

"Well, I got two theories, sir," SPYGOD says, gulping down his own cup of Syrian army coffee: "One is that you got God on your side, like your daddy !@#$ing thought."

"Well, now-"

"And the other is that you, Senator, have got superpowers," the superspy says, pointing a finger at the man's nose: "Which is good for you, maybe. But it's a !@#$ing headache for me. Because I know the Mahdi had you all this damn time, and god !@#$ing knows what he might have said to you."

"I don't remember anything, sir," the Senator says, clearly annoyed at the accusation.

"Yeah, but do you really?" SPYGOD asks, leaning in: "See, he could make you forget. Or make you tell me he didn't. Maybe you'd even believe it.

"And right now, with him dead, and a whole city full of !@#$ing undead monsters running around at night? I got to be really damn careful. One wrong move and we're both dead.

"And let me tell you, Mr. Senator sir, after all the !@#$ I have been through over the last couple weeks? I am in no goddamn mood to get dead because you got !@#$ing programmed to mess my fine gay ass up."

"So until I know what's going on, I got two eyes on you," SPYGOD goes on, tapping his glasses with two of his fingers: "One because you got powers. And two? Because you might do something stupid."

The Senator says nothing. And SPYGOD reaches over, takes the man's coffee cup, and helps himself to a healthy sip. 

Wednesday: 5/25/16

"There they !@#$ing go, again," Red Wrecker says, looking down the way at the edge of Moscow.

"Yeah," Dragonfly says, shifting her weight from hip to hip as she watches the Russian Legion firing at the latest group of idiots trying to sneak into the city.

At some point the warbots went from having legs to no legs. After that, they perpetually hovered, forming a tight-fitting interlink of heavily-armed war machines -- some five units tall in most places, with guns pointing both forward and back.

Nothing is getting out or in. But that doesn't stop people from trying...

"How many does that make?" the short heroine asks, sipping at her mint-flavored health shake and wondering who decided what "mint" tasted like when they manufactured it.

"Today, or in total?"

"Today."

"Three," Dragonfly says, scratching her chin: "Or maybe four. It's hard to tell, since they have to kill them twice."

"Right," Red Wrecker says, wincing as her body reminds her -- yet again -- that she's still healing up, and should still be back in bed.

(!@#$ that, she thinks. She's lazed around enough.)

The shooting stops, as abruptly as it began.

"So does anyone have any damn idea where American Steel is?" Red Wrecker asks, looking her white-clad friend in the eyes: "Everyone just !@#$ing shrugs. I'm kind of tired of not being told."

"No one's sure, no," Gail says, shaking his head: "Dr. Uncertainty says she was having problems with her armor and had to go into 'repair mode,' but wasn't sure where she went to do it."

"We never see her out of that armor, do we?" Florence says: "You think she's like Hanami? Or Free Fire?"

"What, an android?"

"Yeah."

"Might be," Dragonfly says: "I kind of doubt it, though."

"Why?"

"I dunno. I think it's just..." she starts to say, but then gets interrupted by the Russian Legion shooting the idiots again.

"Damn," Red Wrecker says, squinting her eyes to look: "I think those !@#$ers moved quicker now that they're dead."

"They're less scared, now," Dragonfly says, knowing a thing or two about death: "Or not at all. They've got an order and they need to carry it out. Worst that can happen is they die again, and then they're free."

Red Wrecker nods, and then winces: "I just... I think of Blastman when I see that, you know?"

"I know, hon," Dragonfly says, putting an arm around her short ally -- careful not to hit any tender spots: "He didn't suffer for long. He wasn't suffering at all. It wasn't even really him. Just his body."

Florence nods, putting her arm around Dragonfly: "You finished it, right?"

"I did, yeah," Gail says, not liking to think about that moment; the second she realized the latest resuscitated casualty to stumble into her kill zone was once a good friend -- minus his helmet, his head crushed and broken.

His eyes wide and raging, no longer him.

She didn't even hesitate. She kicked him in the skull as hard and fast as she could -- finishing the job that Thor's hammer had started -- and then leaped towards the next target. And the next. And the next.

Over and over and over, until she was at least fifty kills past him, and able to truly realize what she'd done...

And what did she feel, then? How did she feel after she really knew her friend and ally was dead, and she'd been the one to put him down?

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

It was as if she was numb in the heart -- gone well past her capacity to care, much less grieve, and was running from event to event on a shake-brained adrenaline high.

That's been over a week ago. She has yet to come out of that state. Even hearing that Satanoth -- her abusive former "owner" -- had died hasn't made her feel anything.

(Except maybe relieved, for obvious reasons...)

This is not normal for her. Not at all.

She'd lost allies and friends in the field before, and while she had to keep going -- finish the mission, or just !@#$ing survive -- she felt something for their passing. Sadness, rage, pity, or just dark amusement if they'd had it coming.

Hell, when Black Card bought it she'd been wrecked. But then she'd loved the crotchety old bastard. She'd betrayed him all the same, when the moment occurred, but she'd have confessed sooner or later.

He may even have understood.

And Disparatre! Losing him had been torture. The loss of what was. What could have been.

All that time wasted, waiting for what happened next, but never did...

But now? She's lost Blastman, and Swiftfoot before that. Free Fire is in pieces, they say, and SPYGOD's missing in action.

The President is dead. Katy killed him and then herself.

And so many dead Russians, around her. Heroes she'd only met seconds or hours before the fight. Soldiers that had flirted with the cute American heroes, knowing they had no chance in hell but eager to try, anyway.

So many dead. So many lost. And she can't feel a goddamn thing for any of them.

She wonders if this is more fine print to the new deal she'd made...

* * *

"So here's my proposition, Gail," Tombo said in Satanoth's ghost larder, some time ago: "I can get you out of here. I can make you a new body, just like your old one. I can bring you back to life.

"But there's a catch. And I'm not going to lie, hon. For you? This is going to be a tough one."

"What is it?" the ghost of Red Queen asked, desperate to leave before he comes back to eat her.

"You ever watch Babylon 5?" the red-haired ghost asked, smiling a little. 

"Not really my thing, no. I was more into... wait, why does that matter?"

"Well, if you had seen the show, which is awesome, by the way, you'd remember that the main character dies between seasons. And when he comes back there's a being with him that's given him some of his life, so that he can keep going. Not enough to give him a normal lifespan. Just another twenty years or so. More than enough time to do what he has to do, and keep going for a while."

"So... you're going to give me twenty years?"

"No," Tombo said, shaking her head: "I'm going to bring you back to life. I'm going to put you back in your old body and heal it. I'm going to send you back into the world to live there for as long as you can. I mean, you'll die eventually. Maybe it'll be old age, but..."

"Yeah," Gail said "That's not gonna !@#$ing happen."

"You never know," the red-head sighed, perhaps remembering her own, extremely stupid and unfair demise: "But here's the thing, hon. And I am totally serious about this. I have to give you a condition, and you have to stick by it or else everything I do will be totally cancelled. 

"You will die, again, and this time there will be no coming back. No deals, no miracles. Nothing."

"What is it?"

"If you would be saved by death, you must never invoke it again," Tombo said, her eyes narrowing: "And that means you cannot kill another human being, ever again."

"What?" Gail gasped. 

"What I said, hon. No killing people. Not by direct action, nor by indirect. No bullet to the head, no knife to the heart. No claymore in the ground, no spiked pit in the jungle. 

"Now, you can wound, you can knock out. Hell, you can even cripple people. You can do anything you like up until the point of no return.

"But if you go past that point and take a life, even if they totally deserve it? Even if the fate of the whole !@#$ing world lies on your shoulders, and your hands?"

She fell silent and looked at Gail, who would have gone pale if she wasn't already a shade: "I die."

"You die. And for good, this time."

"You're asking an assassin not to kill."

"Yes," Tombo grinned: "But I know you read The Invisibles, hon."

"Just that one weird issue where the guard gets shot by that guy in the mask," she shrugged: "SPYGOD was getting everyone to read it when we did that huge thing. All those clones and tanks in the secret base with Ben Franklin and everyone..."

"Yeah, well, I don't think anyone had any idea what the hell was going on, there," the redhead chuckled, raising an eyebrow: "Anyway, when you get back to life? I'll tell you where to find my comics stash. Pay attention to King Mob's character arc. You'll find it... inspirational."

"I haven't !@#$ing said yes, yet," Gail growled.

"I know, dear," Tombo said: "I'm waiting."

"For me to say yes? How do you know I will?"

"Well-"

"Look, I'm !@#$ing sick and tired of people just dropping deals in front of me!" the ghost of Red Queen shouted: "Ever since I hooked up with SPYGOD it's been one !@#$ing thing after another. Hey, do this. Hey, that went badly, now do this. Hey, that went even worse! Do this, instead.

"Every time I say yes. Every time it winds up even worse than before! And I'm !@#$ing sick of it!"

"Yeah, I know," the redhead said, giving the ghost a moment to fume: "And I'm sorry, Gail. I really am sorry. But I can't feel too sorry for you."

"What?"

"Gail, you said it yourself," Tombo says, pointing a finger: "You're an assassin. You kill people. Some of them are people I've had to help. And maybe some of them deserved it, and maybe some of them really didn't. 

"But you killed them. You. Intentionally. For money. Or on orders, which is pretty much the same !@#$ing thing if you ask me.

"So did you really think you could just keep pushing the damn karma button and not get zapped, eventually?"

Red Queen looked at her, and then down: "I thought you cared."

"You think I'd be here if I didn't?" Tombo almost shouted: "You think I'd waste my time with some damn contract killer if I didn't feel sorry for you? Jesus Christ, Gail. Think once in a while."

There was silence, then. And then, slowly, Gail nodded: "Okay. Fine. You're right-"

"Yes, I am," Tombo interrupted: "And I've just offered you the mother of all sweetheart deals, provided you can get your head out of your ass and be willing to change."

Silence, again. Deeper this time. 

"So no killing," Gail said after a moment, looking back up again.

"No killing people,"  Tombo specified, holding the finger up: "Animals are okay. Undead is okay, too."

"What about cyborgs?"

"Depends how much meat they've got left. If there's a soul remaining, that's a no. If it's just parts and a program, well, fire away."

"Aliens?"

"I hate to sound racist, but if they're not human it's not my problem. Though I hope I could convince you to spare them, too."

"Gods...?" Gail asked, smirking. 

And as soon as Tombo told her the answer, the deal was as good as struck.

* * *
Red Wrecker's been crying. Gail almost didn't notice, given her reverie.  

"It's not fair," she says, holding her free hand over her eyes -- the tears pouring down: "He was a great guy. He didn't deserve to go out like that."

"We all get what we deserve, hon," Dragonfly says, hugging her a little tighter: "Maybe not right away. Maybe it takes a while. But sooner or later we go down. All we can do is hope that when we do, it means something. We help someone. We save something greater than ourselves.

"But that doesn't mean we have to like it, do we?"

"No," Florence says, wiping her eyes: "No we don't."

"We're going to make them pay for this, Florence," Dragonfly promises her, whispering into her ear: "You got my word on that. These gods are gonna !@#$ing suffer. They will fall.

"And when we're done we'll build a little mountain out of their damn bones, dose it with kerosene, and light the !@#$er up so bright it'll be seen from goddamn outer space."

It's not the most comforting thought in the world. But something about how Dragonfly says it makes Red Wrecker's sadness go away.

And they stand there, arm in arm, for quite some time -- waiting for the Russian Legion to shoot another group of racist, eurotrash morons that thinks it can sneak past a solid wall of warbots.

Thursday: 5/26/16

"It's okay, Karl," the voice says: "Just take a deep breath. Relax. You're safe now-"

"Safe?" Karl almost shouts: "Do you have any damn idea what you're saying? How can I be safe from... from that? From him?"

The kid looks awful. He's been burned so many times that his scars have scars. The left side of his face is a melted ruin, and some of his fingers have been burned down to the nubs.

And that's what they can see. Under the ripped and torn clothing he was wearing when they found him -- crawling through Moscow's sewers, looking for a way out -- he may have other, nastier injuries.

"Karl, look at me," the voice says: "Look at my face. Look at me."

He does, but just barely. He's crying and shaking and shivering, almost losing control.

"None of this is your fault," the voice says, its owner's hands taking the boy's hands and holding them tight: "You were forced to do this. I know. I saw."

"He made me," Karl whimpers, tears pouring out of his eyes: "He made me attack Jana with a knife. Made us... hurt each other. Do things..."

"Oh god," the voice says, going in for a hug: "Oh God, I'm so sorry."

"I wanted to scream," Karl goes on, hugging back for dear life and not letting go: "I wanted to be sick. I wanted to get away. I couldn't move!"

"I know."

"I couldn't moooooooooooooooooove....."

He falls apart, then. Hysterics upon hysterics. Screaming and crying and howling until his throat almost rips out of his mouth.

And Randolph Scott holds his beloved, lost son -- down in the hiding place he and his allies have made in the besieged city of Moscow -- and thanks the God he doesn't really believe in that his son, like his daughter Jana, are finally both away from the monster who took them. 

* * *

"He must be somewhere, noble Heimdall," Ve hisses, his pale hands bursting into flame: "For just as none may enter this city, nor may any leave it. The siege wall of steel and fire has seen to this!"

"Indeed," the gold-eyed Aesir says, knowing full well where Karl is, and who is with him, but choosing to say nothing -- at least for now.

(And hoping Ve does not think to command him, outright.)

"Then how can he simply leave?" their leader shouts, throwing a wave of fire across a wall in what used to be the Mayor's study -- all but melting the handsome photographs and scorching the stately wallpaper around them.

"Perhaps he was spirited away by our new foes," red-haired Tyr offers: "Tossed into their chariot like some winsome wench, fresh from the pillage."

"We saw him not at the battle, itself," Thor rumbles: "But then, I would expect no less than craven behavior from him. He was no warrior, no soldier."

"But he was there before it," Ve insists: "At my side. Awaiting my bidding."

"So perhaps he has been taken as hostage by these Olympians," Freyja says: "Perhaps they seek to make him speak of things seen, and heard."

"Somehow I think not," Vili says: "It seems not within their ways to behave thus. It seems more a thing for we Aesir."

"Does it matter, truly?" noble Baldr asks: "As brother Thor has so forcibly pointed out, he was worth less than bum-splatter upon the floor of the servants' quarters-"

"He still had his uses," Ve insists: "And I was not finished with them."

"Come, brother," Vili says, taking a careful step forward: "I know of the needs you had in the past, before you came forth to hold the form you now possess. But now that we have returned to this world, was such a one truly worth so much trouble? Does his absence truly bode ill for our bringing of the Wolf-Time?"

Pale Ve just looks at his brother, and slowly nods: "No. You are right, my brother. It does not. He would be of little use for the battle we now fight. The things we must now do.

"My concern is this," the God in the pyrokinetic's body goes on, looking from god to god in the suddenly-small room: "Not that his absence changes things. But that his disappearance is a problem

"He should not have been able to simply leave, like some unwanted guest at the feast. 

"We should have seen him go. We should have known he was absent.  

"And yet, all these days... and now, suddenly, we notice he is missing?"

He looks around the room, focusing on each Aesir in turn: "How did he escape the hateful eye of Tyr? The senses of Thor? The watchful guard of Syn...?"

He looks to Heimdall, but says nothing directly to him, turning around to face the others instead: "How can we have been so blind as to allow such a jarl as he to merely vanish?"

"Mayhap some trickery is afoot, then," wise Bragi says, holding forth his hands: "Mayhap our trickster is not as bound as we would care to have him be."

Everyone gasps at that thought, and Ve all but wheels on Thor: "Could this be true, my nephew? Could you have failed to imprison foul Loki, as my brother, your father, willed it thus?"

The suggestion enrages Thor, clearly -- thunder booms in the distance, and the skies outside the window grow dark and heavy. But the thundergod dutifully drops to one knee to offer fealty: "My lord Ve, brother to the All-Father, my father. I swear upon my name, and his, and yours, that I did as I was commanded. 

"I bound him fast within the entrails of his son, Nari, and set him below the serpent, whose venom drips into his eyes and burns his brain. And I charged his wife, Sigyn, to hold a bowl above his head to catch the poison. But when the bowl fills, she must dispose of it, at which time the foul poison can do its work. 

"In this way, he is bound for all time. He cannot escape the clutches of his son's bowels. He cannot die, for he heals from the poison while the bowl is above his head. But in the pain of that poison he can perform no trickery upon us. Silenced is his tongue. Addled is his guile. He can only writhe and scream and curse his sorry woman for her kindness."

He looks to Ve, who looks down, and then nods - extending a hand for his nephew to take: "Forgive me, lord of Thunder, for doubting you."

"All well and good," Thor says, taking the hand and raising up to both feet again: "I feel a different explanation yet awaits us-"

"But yet, this binding is not permanent," Wise Bragi says, holding forth his hands once more: "No offense to your good work, Odinson, but were Vor here she would remind us all that, come the Ragnarok, we shall face our venomous brother once more. For he shall have slipped his bonds, and come to face us under the hoary banner of our enemies, the Jottun."

"Aye," Vili says: "In the time to come-"

"But is that time not now?" Bragi asks, looking about the room: "Have we not said this be the Wolf-Time? Have we not told our new foes we bring it hence, and here, by our words and our deeds?"

"What mean you, Bragi?" Ve asks, clearly displeased at the thought this produces: "If you've a truth to say, speak it plan!"

"I tell you my meaning plainly, here and now, my Lord Ve, my brothers and sisters," wise Bragi goes on: "If we have turned forward the seasons to the Axe-Time, the Sword-Time, the Wolf-Time? Then all that shall come to pass must surely do so. 

"Plainly put, that means that the half-brother of the Odinsons is free of the excellent bonds our friend Thor placed him within. And if we consider his nature, then we cannot expect that he would be content to sit in our hall and make sport with the body of the All-Father, and drink what mead we left behind. 

"No, my friends. We must believe that Loki Laufeyson walks the world as we do, a free man, ready to play his part in the doom that approaches..."

And all the Aesir gasp at that thought.

Friday: 5/27/16

"Here they come," Straffer says, looking at the horrendous thing his twenty specialists are all seeing through their helmets. 

It blots out the stars, the darkness ahead of them. A million million black balls -- approaching singly and in groups. 

And this time, they're not in straight lines, which will make it harder to get as many in one blow...

* * *

"Look at them, out there," the Candidate says, wincing at all the protestors at his rally, at the convention center: "Must be a couple hundred."

"About a thousand, sir," the head of security says: "We're making sure they don't get in."

"That would be a good thing," the man says, shaking his large head at the thought. 

Wondering how many of them might have a gun...

* * *

"Alright, then," the Campaign Director says: "You all ready?"

Someone shouts "Yes" -- perhaps too loudly -- but everyone takes up the word within seconds.

And a second after that, the particle cannons start firing -- atomizing 8-Ball after 8-Ball.

At which point the countdown begins, and all hands know how long they have until the platforms must be shut down...

* * *

In the far back, hiding up in the rafters, the man with the gun waits.

No one can see him. He's made certain of that. 
(High technology -- some purchased, some stolen, all effective)

It's just a matter of time before his target comes out, and he can take a clear shot...

* * *

The dark cloud marches, and the men and women fire at it.

Particle cannons roar silently in space -- lighting up for a brief second, then expelling a growing, solid cylinder of pure energy.

Some take the outliers. Some concentrate on the center. Some calculate angles and vectors, and try to take out as many as they can.

And with each volley the point of annihilation comes closer and closer to Earth...

* * *
"Sir, we can't have you go out there, yet," one of his lesser folks tells him after that ridiculous Governor from Alaska -- who showed up unannounced --  has had her say.

(And come back to pester him for a position, once again...)

"Why the heck not?" he asks, clearly upset: "Listen to that crowd-"

"We're having some problems with the audio feed," the gal says, holding up her communicator: "Just give us a few minutes and we'll have it sorted."

* * *

Time goes by too quickly. The darkness advances, the firing line moves.

And then an alarm begins to go off -- shrill and insistent.

"Alright," Straffer says: "Everyone get ready to move..."

And in seconds, there's another alarm. This one informing the specialists that the platforms are moving position, in time with the turning of the Earth...

 * * *

Too long, the assassin thinks as he shifts his weight. Much too long. 

The piece of !@#$ should have been out by now. He should have nailed him by now. 

It's all going too long. Do they know? Are they coming for him? 

Five more minutes, he decides. And then he's gone...

* * *

The relieved platform specialists take their helmets off and breathe. Drink. Go next door for a smoke. 

The new entrants pick up where their previous placeholders left off. Shooting their quadrants, just as someone else is now shooting theirs. 

In this way, there will be no overheating. The platforms will all be used in turn. 

All they have to do is worry about missing too many...

* * *

At the ten minute mark, the gunman sighs, packs up his weapon, and moves away.

Something isn't right here. Somehow they know he's in the audience. 

Somehow they suspect he's going to kill the Candidate before he reaches the damn convention. 

But it doesn't matter. If not today, there's tomorrow, and then the day after that...

* * *

And Straffer wonders how long they can keep this new plan going, given how much ground they're already losing to the attack...

* * *

And the Candidate takes to the stage, wondering why he feels so cold -- as though he'd seen an image of his grave, yawning open at him...

Saturday: 5/28/16

"... No, seriously. Pre-Death was a thing. Everyone talked about it, except in the mainstream media. But you talk to anyone who worked EMT shifts, or emergency or rescue workers? They'd tell you people just died before they were actually supposed to. Killed in their cars before getting into an accident, ODing before they took a single pill.

"Only now, the same people who were saying that it was a thing? They're now saying it's over. It's been gone for about a week, now. And that's really interesting when you consider the timing-

"Good evening to you all, our children, good people of the Earth. I am Seranu, King of Olympus, ruler of the Olympians.

"Please forgive this intrusion into your televisions. It is very rude to interrupt your evening in this way, and I would not do it unless it was a matter of the utmost importance. 

"But there is something that needs to be said. And now that we, here, within Olympos have come to an understanding concerning it, we must also speak it to you. 

"This message is being sent to you in all of your many languages, so there will be no misunderstanding, and no mistake. We recognize some ideas may not translate very well, and for that I apologize, again. Hopefully it will not impede understanding. 

"As you are all aware, last Sunday we traveled to your city of Moscow, there to confront the beings that have called themselves the Aesir. We hoped for a peaceable talk, hopefully followed by a change in their behavior, or a return from whence they came. 

"As you are also well aware, that did not happen. They attacked us, killing one of our number. We defended ourselves, and perhaps killed some of them. 

"And when it became clear that to press our attack would mean not only their death, but also the whole-scale destruction of that city, and the deaths of every human being within it? We decided to withdraw rather than allow that to happen. 

"Given the history of this world, I can safely say that no nation in living memory has ever seen the truly terrible results of a war between Pantheons. So you may choose to regard my reasoning as cowardice, or braggadocio. 

"Please do not. Please believe me when I say that when gods go to war with one another, the world suffers for the pride and folly of such beings. Humans become both weapon and shield, and the landscape is scoured and warped for ages to come. 

"We would not wish this upon you, our children. We wish only to aid you in your time of need. To be the guardians you have asked for. The assistance you have prayed for. 

"The friends and mentors you deserve.

"That is why I must speak to you, now, of these Aesir that have returned to this world. 

"When first we announced our awakening, I said that, so far as we knew, we were the only Pantheon that had returned. I spoke truly, then. I had no belief that we would see another body such as ours within a human lifetime, or even an epoch of ours. 

"For the time of Gods is long past, and our presence here is something of an anomaly. 

"The Aesir, as a group, should not have returned at all. Not for many billions of your years, if ever. 

"They speak of a time known as Ragnarok, when the end of the world shall occur as they have prophesied, and each God shall meet his or her appointed end in the battle. And whether that time should come at all was something of a question. 

"But now they have returned, and their return has come at the expense of many lives. Human vessels have been hollowed out and used to house their divine essence, so as to more fully live within the world, and affect it. 

"And the temperaments of those vessels has irrevocably tainted the divine essence, within, turning a pantheon once noble and virtuous into creatures both savage and depraved. 

"They no longer live within the boundaries of their prophecies, my children. They seek to accelerate their promised end. They desire to bring about their Ragnarok,  here and now.

"And the fact that its promised ravages will end all life upon this Earth is no barrier to them. For they do not care for you, the people of this world. They care only for their mad desire to fulfill their doom.

"There are those who support these creatures. The people who were in league with the vessels they have inhabited. The people who supported the ideals and beliefs of those persons, even if they did not belong to a group, or engage in their activities. What you refer to as single-issue voters, I believe?

"My children, all the peoples of the Earth. I beseech you. Turn your back upon these Aesir, and the ideas of the creatures that have merged with them. Deny them your support, your belief. Deny them the power that support and belief gives them. 

"If all of you turned your back upon then, Moscow would fall within hours, and the world could be clean of their taint once more. 

"Failing that, there are more drastic options. We have no desire to use them. Already we protect this world from an attack from without. We have no desire to engage a different sort of enemy from within. 

"But if we should lose another of our race? If we should be attacked, here in our home? If we should be denied the right to perform our duties, or hindered in our ability to protect you?

"Then we will do what we have to. What we were created to do. What we must.

"I am Lord Seranu, and these are my words. Heed them, please. And be well." 

"... and that's why I know those damn Olympians were behind pre-death, folks. Satanoth dies? It stops.

"Kind of makes you wonder what else they're up to, huh?"

Sunday: 5/29/16

"You sent for me, my Lord Ve," Heimdall says, walking into the Mayor's office.

"I sent no such order," the pale-skinned brother of Odin says, holding the cold head of a dead Olympian in his hands.

"You were about to," the gold-eyed man says, smiling through teeth made of the same substance.

"Yes, I was," Ve says, smiling through black lips as he puts Satanoth's head down on the table: "We need to talk, all-seeing Heimdall. 

"And I suspect you know of what we must discuss..."

* * *

"Look, no one wants to say it, yet," Peg says over the videoscreen, looking at Josie in her office: "But it's only a matter of time. The new President's going to want to clean house. We're kind of sticking out on the pile, right now."

"They can't trash us," Josie says, shaking her pink head and wondering if it's too late to start drinking on the job: "We're sentient beings, Peg. Just because we're clones doesn't mean a damn thing."

"Maybe not. But I have a bad feeling we're going to get blamed for what Katy did-"

"Katy didn't do anything!" Josie shouts: "She had something done to her. This isn't the first time someone's mind controlled someone into something."

"I know that, and you know that," Peg says: "But how long before grief turns to anger and they ask this new guy to do something? And how long before he decides doing something could be as simple as firing us all?"

"Then... I'll go to him, first," Josie says: "I'll go to him, talk to him, and try and get him to see reason."

"You want me to go with you?"

"No, just me," Josie says, nodding: "It'll be less of a threat that way. I might even catch him in a decent mood..."

* * *

"Tell me, Heimdall," Ve says, walking closer to the far-seeing warrior: "Who became you? Do you even know?"

"I do, yes," the gold-eyed man says, nodding: "A chronicler of fictions. A man terrified of the religion of the deserts."

"Which one?" Ve asks, grinning: "There are three, all with one sour, unhappy God sitting in what must be a staid and mirthless Valhalla."

"The one whose followers are sometimes guided to kill others in that God's name," Heimdall answers: "This vessel feels they are like that, or at least desirous of such a death, or that such a thing be done at all. His tales are diseased with fear of that happening, and he has allowed that fear to taint his own soul. 

"And yet, he is not an evil man..." the gold-eyed warrior goes on, looking askance -- as if the answer was through the floor, rather than in his own mind: "Merely a broken one, in need of rest and love."

"Then you are indeed fortunate, noble Heimdall," Ve says, patting his pale hands together: "For though I feel the desires of this man, and know something of his temperament, I know little of true consequence. I have some of his memories, yes, but they are as a goblet tossed upon the floor. Broken clay and spilled wine, mixed amongst the dirt and things tracked in from the muck outside the hall.

"All I can say for certain is the paleness of the skin, the black of these lips and eyes, the dreams of conquest and rule..."

And then he holds up his hands, and they burst into flame. 

"And the fire, last of all. Burning and bright, and oh so hungry..." 

* * *

"So, this is your plan?" Senator Cruz asks, shaking his head as something incredibly ravenous howls, a little too close for comfort.

"It is, yeah," SPYGOD admits, looking at the door they're going to be running out of, in just a few hours.

"Just wait until it's fully light, and then... what did you say-"

"Run like !@#$, Senator."

"Run like... like that," the man sighs: "Do you really think we can make it through the desert and get picked up by friendly forces while dodging those... things?"

"I think we'll have a !@#$ing easier time doing it in the daytime, when they're asleep."

"I still don't see-"

"Look, Ted? Can I call you Ted?"

"Well-"

"Okay, Ted? It's really !@#$ing simple," SPYGOD says, tapping the doorframe: "We can't !@#$ing radio for help. It's busted. I can't fix it. And we can't !@#$ing stay here because we might get bombed by the damn Russians at any moment. And we're about run out of rations and coffee, and that office has enough !@#$in it to grow mushrooms."

"Yes, it was getting pretty nasty in there."

"Exactly. So you and me need to get the hell out of town, get to civilization, and get help. And seeing as how you can't !@$#$ing die, and I can !@#$ing kill everyone I need to to get us out of country...?"

SPYGOD looks over his glasses -- dead, white eyes in his head -- and does his best to look serious.

"Then we need to leave," the Senator says, holding up his hands in defeat: "I got it. Yes."

"!@#$ing groovy," SPYGOD says, leaning back and checking his watch: "Let's put you back in the race, Senator. You've been gone too damn long..."

* * *

"I did not ask you before the others for a simple reason, noble Heimdall," Ve says, shaping the fire of his hands into a sword -- long, heavy, and brutal: "I wished to give you the chance to come to me. I wished to see if, indeed, you recalled your nobility. Your service. Your oath as a warrior to your King.

"Imagine my surprise and sadness when, days later, you still have not come to me. Imagine my displeasure at having to summon you to this room to ask you to reveal what you should have said before."

"And what is that, Lord Ve?" Heimdall asks, knowing full well how this is going to go.

"Karl," Ve says, leaning closer to his warrior: "Where is he?"

"I... I cannot say where he is, Lord Ve," Heimdall says, doing his best to hold to the truth of things.

"But you can see where he is," the pale Aesir says, pointing the sword's tip between the gold eyes of the all-seeing warrior: "Can't you?"

"I can, yes," the warrior admits.

"So you can see the truth, but cannot bring yourself to speak it," Ve sneers, putting the sword away -- fire turning to smoke in the air: "And wise, sonorous Bragi worried about the trickery of the Laufeyson. He would better to have seen to the trickery from within our own ranks!"

And there's nothing Heimdall can say to that. 

* * *

Up on the hill overlooking Moscow, some distance from the Army camp, an old, heavyset woman in a white dress uniform is clearly annoyed to have her observations interrupted. 

"Doctor Thokk?" the Russian Colonel says, saluting her from behind as she holds up a finger -- clearly indicating he should be silent as she watches the town through a complicated instrument. 

He stands at attention for some time. Maybe more than necessary. But, eventually, she deigns to put the scope away, slips a heavy cap onto the top of it, and turns to regard him. 

"Forgive the intrusion, ma'am," the young man says, saluting her once more -- marveling at how tightly her white hair has been pulled back by that severe bun: "I am Colonel Numetzov. I have been sent to ask you for your recommendations."

"My recommendations," the old woman says, chuckling: "In regards to what?"

"The Russian Legion, of course," the Colonel says, a little confused: "I was led to believe you are responsible for them."

"No," Doctor Thokk says, scowling: "You are thinking of Doctor Prisluga. Her genius created them. I merely adapted their programming to the fighting of such powerful beings."

"Then I am still in need of your expertise," the Colonel says: "My superiors wish to know when the crisis will be over. When the Russian Legion turn from containment to attack?"

"Only when the time is right, Colonel," Thokk says, turning away from him and going back to her scope: "To attack now would be to catch millions of civilians in the crossfire. And these poor souls would become creatures the Aesir could use to attack us."

"Oh," the young Colonel says. He clearly hadn't thought about that.

"So for now, we contain," she says, not caring to look at his clearly-clueless face any longer: "But when the time comes to act? Oh, we shall know, Colonel. We shall know..."

* * *

"Perhaps we have all been addled, Lord Ve," Heimdall says, taking a respectful -- and hopefully safe -- step away from the pyrokinetic: "If Loki does walk this world, as Wise Bragi surmises, all our actions are suspect."

"What do you mean?" Ve sneers through black lips: "Would you lay your perfidy at the feet of that half-a-giant? Can you not own up to your own failings?"

"My Lord, think, I beg of you," the all-seeing warrior says, putting his hands together in supplication: "Think of the hall, the day these vessels appeared. Think of how the debate went from lofty to base, and thereupon to violence and murder. Thor himself slew his father in rage!"

"And I have forgiven him. What more needs be said?"

"Only that we have not been acting as ourselves, even before we took these forms," Heimdall says: "That the mortal who spoke to us. Did his words not seem strange? Did they not feel as though they were a command, rather than a request?"

"So quick to place blame upon Loki, or enchantments," Ve says: "So reluctant to claim your own mistakes as a true warrior. Have you fallen so far that you can no longer see light from your grave?"

"My lord, please," Heimdall continues, choosing to kneel: "My life is forfeit. I knew this the day I first lied to you. But consider all we have turned our back upon. Our honor. Our place in things. The prophecies we hew to. The doom we know is coming-"

"Ah, yes," Ve says, narrowing his black and red eyes: "Now that, my servant, is a subject of some discussion. For is it not said that, come the Ragnarok, Loki shall be the one to slay you?"

"Aye," the gold-eyed warrior says: "At the battle with the frost giants. He and I clash swords for a day and a night, and at the end vile trickery looses itself upon me, and I-"

The fiery sword is back and whistling through the air before Heimdall can finish stating his oft-repeated doom. It severs his head in two, leaving blood and brain to fly everywhere. 

"Such be the way of prophecy," Ve says, kicking the still-kneeling corpse onto the floor, and dispelling the sword: "As I have said, Heimdall. If it be our doom, then yet have a say of how it comes to pass.

"Would you not say so, dead god of death?" the pale Aesir asks the head of Satanoth. When no answer comes, Ve laughs, and leaves the room -- wondering if he should incinerate the body, or leave it there as a reminder of things to come. 

As such, he does not see Satanoth's eyes go from the stare of death to the sharp focus of wakefullness. 

And he missed the grim smile upon the Olympian's lips, now that a death has fed him...

(SPYGOD is listening to Petals (Beth Orton) and having a Legion)

Monday, May 23, 2016

Valhallopolis: 5/16/16 - 5/22/16

"I'll hum the song the soldiers sing / As they march outside our window"

(Thor and undead allies)

(Art by the Lemonade Project)

* * *
19
* * *

Monday: 5/16/16

At first all he can see is the trees, swaying. 

Large pines, off somewhere. Waving this way and that, like they're caught in some kind of storm. 

He can't hear the storm, oddly enough. He feels cold and wet, but he isn't sure if it's rain or not. 

He can't move his head to look up at the sky. He can't turn his body to face the direction. 

He just lays there, on the ground -- cold and wet and so very weak -- and watches the trees sway, now illuminated by crackles of what might be lightning, or maybe explosions of some kind. 

Maybe both. 

If he thinks hard enough, he can remember why he knows it's both. He can remember the battle that's raging around him.

He can remember why he's lying here, on the ground -- wet and cold and unable to move. 

Someone stumbles into his field of vision. A Russian soldier, torn and frayed, walking like each step might be his last before he just drops his hands, lets his guts fall out of his chest, and follows them down to the ground. 

There, that did it. He trips over something and goes face-first into the dirt. Twitches once, then twice.

He doesn't do it a third time. He's gone. 

Wait, maybe not. He's moving again. 

He gets to his hands and knees. Looks up, then around. 

His eyes. They're white as milk. Skin grey as canned mushroom soup. 

("...all we can afford, dear," his mother is saying. Brother laughs when he cries...)

Black crud drips from between rotting teeth. Fingers tipped with long, sharp nails. 

The corpse raises itself up and shouts to the sky. He still can't hear anything. 

He can just see that it must be a loud shout -- the soldier's spraying black, chunky mist from his mouth from the effort. 

Then the corpse walks back over him, like he's not even there. Strides back into battle, guts out and all. 

Only now, he'll be on the other side. 

Now he'll be fighting his allies, his friends. The heroes who came here, this day.

The people fighting the Aesir, their deranged human allies, and their hordes of undead.

("...must share this power with your brother," his dying father says, but one look at Joey and he knows that's a mistake...)

Then the world goes as bright as the sun, then as dark as night. He feels his body jerked one way and the other. 

He lands, he thinks. He's facing a different direction. 

Still cold, still wet. Still unable to move. 

The battle. He can see it now. And it's horrible. 

("... we'll just have you pretend to die, is all," SPYGOD explains to the group: "What do you !@#$ing know about short-lived replicants...?")

Zombies rush and rage, brandishing swords and clubs and spears. The Aesir move among them, striking key blows and sliding back into the hordes of living and dead. 

And his own people? He sees very few of them. 

American Steel, flying above it all. Firing, screaming, wondering why they won't stay dead. 

Hanami, beside him. Dropping down to tangle with Aesir when she can. Not doing too well, but giving as well as she can. 

Dragonfly, there in the middle of the fray. Hands and feet moving faster than he can see.

Beside her, Red Wrecker takes the ones that get through. Punching low where her ally kicks high.

Beside her, Dr. Uncertainty, firing some strange weapon at the dead. It looks like tin cans attached to a large Geiger counter -- it very well may be. 

And there, not far away -- the source of the winds, the lightning, and the rain. 

It's Mr. USA and Thor. They're still going at it, however long later. 

Trading hammer blows and fist strikes so strong the world shakes, and yet neither deign to drop. 

He watches this, now. Unable to move or close his eyes. Cold and wet and all too still.

Oh.

The wet is red and thick. The cold inside and out. 

The stillness nearly complete, as each breath comes slower than the last...

("... the helmet is your power. Always wear it. Never lose it. And never ever hit something you don't intend to...")

Pieces. It's in pieces. The weird rock it was made of crackles and shines.

He must have finally hit an immovable object with his unstoppable force. 

The hammer. Of course. He would have rushed at it, wouldn't he?

He would have tried to save his friend from having to kill another friend, here and now...

The helmet is in pieces. His skull is shattered like an egg. No wonder he can't move, or hear.

It's a wonder he's not dead, yet. 

("... right down your throat you goddamn son of a-" he says, just before the hammer hits him-)

Oh, now he can hear something. Buzzing. A cloud of something, buzzing. 

Lights, ahead of him. The world is going red-grey and still, but still there are lights. 

Dragonflies. Hundreds of them. Thousands. 

Inside the cloud, wrapped in her purple cloak -- there she is. The one they don't like to talk about, but is glad to have on their side. 

The Living Dead Girl.

"You know I hate that name," Tombo says, pulling her cloak back as she comes closer. Red, luscious hair -- curly and long, spilling every which way in the breeze her insects make. 

"No, please," he says, somehow able to talk again: "My body. They'll use it. They'll use me against them..."

"Yes, they will," she says, walking right up to where he sits -- still and wet: "And I'm sorry. But if it's any consolation, your powers are gone. You'll be just another shambling biter, and they're doing a good job dealing with them...

"Yes, you are," she whispers, looking over her shoulder at one knot of colored motion in particular, as if proud of her handiwork. 

"Please," he begs, crying worse than he did the day he learned that his brother had turned to crime: "Just one more chance. Just let me do this. Let me save them."

"I can't do that," Tombo says: "But you're the only one of the team who dies today. Take some comfort from that."

There's a loud explosion, and something not unlike a scream is heard over the entire battlefield. 

"What the hell was that?"

"That's... not something you have to worry about, now," she says grimly, shaking her head sadly.

"Is it what's going to happen?"

"Who says it hasn't already?" she sighs: "Time's all muddled up, here. Past and future, present and possibility. We look to the world of the living to say goodbye, or watch, but all we can see is a jumble. A stack of photographs knocked over onto the floor. 

"They call you a ghost, but from our perspective it's the world that's gone all funny and rotten."

He doesn't know what to say to that. He looks around, wondering if he can still see pieces of the helmet from here. 

But he can't. He can't really see anything, now. Just a red-lit road with a couple thousand flashes of light on it. 

And the lights are growing fewer all the time...

"Did I..." he tries to ask, the words not coming easily: "Please tell me I made a difference. Please tell me it wasn't all just stupid costumes and fighting. I lost my family, my brother... friends. I've lost so much, and now I'm !@#$ing dead and I don't know if it was worth it."

"I can't tell you if it was worth it," Tombo says, looking around: "That's a decision you have to make for yourself. Maybe not today, maybe not in a hundred thousand years. But the worth of your life is in the eye of the beholder, and when history is dust and hearsay, and you alone can tell the tale of your life, you'll be the only judge.

"What I can tell you is that everyone makes a difference," she continues, looking down at him: "Everyone. Kings and queens. Heroes and villains. The great and the good and lowly and the bad. People everyone knows, and the ones no one can remember. 

"All of us have our part to play, great or small. 

"And this was yours."

Does that cheer him up? No, not really. What really could at a time like this?

But it does make him think. It makes him consider.

It makes him understand that maybe this isn't so bad, after all. 

And when Tombo reaches out her hand, and says "Kevin, come with me to ((GREAT MYSTERY))," while might take him a second or two to comply, Blastman does -- deciding that, for good or ill, he died here, today, and maybe that's the way it was always going to go.

That and when your time truly comes, there's no arguing with death...

And then they're moving along with the glowing cloud of dragonflies, far and away from here.

And then they're gone.

Tuesday: 5/17/16

"Yeah, an evac would be !@#$ing nice, right about now," SPYGOD mutters, looking out the very small, very thick window at a city that's been turned into an atrocity exhibition by its new masters.

The Syrian Army communicator he's found is useless. Something tore it apart like it was made of paper, rather than heavy steel and durable plastic -- tossed it into the far corner of the room like trash, along with the pieces of the Al-Hidhah soldiers they hadn't wanted to use for decorative elements.

The headquarters is a shambles, but at least it's still holding, still strong. The small, underground warren of concrete rooms wrapped around steel -- with more steel and concrete on the outside -- is a good model, made to withstand a lot of exterior punishment before cracking.

So it sound have still been intact by the time he and the Mahdi arrived, if only the morons running it hadn't !@#$ing opened the door during the night.

(At least, that's what he thinks must have happened, based on the mess he found when he got in here.)

There's evidence of a firefight in the entrance area. Bullets all over the damn place, along with blood, and the marks of long claws that could rip through steel like flesh.

An explosion, a little further back. Someone must have decided to blow themselves up for the cause. If it worked, there's no sign, but it wasn't a good holding tactic.

If anything, their attackers just swarmed their sorry asses after that.

Every room tells a different story. The skinny armory the forward-thinking locked themselves into, only to see the heavy, steel door get ripped to pieces, then torn from its hinges. The bunks where still-sleeping men died horribly in their beds. The office where the base commander shot himself instead of face what turned his men into meat and bone.

(The only whole body left in the whole place, oddly enough.)

And finally the command and control room, where the bravest of the brave made their last stand -- not knowing that their true leader, and his plus one, would come here in a couple days and actually !@#$ing need all the stuff they used to make a rude barricade.

Not that they needed to bother giving a roll-out for the Mahdi. He's long gone by now...

SPYGOD thinks he hears one of those things, out in the distance. A howl that chills his bones and makes him almost lose control of his bladder.

But no. It's just the wind. Or maybe a Russian plane, overhead, looking for more targets in the graveyard that Aleppo's turned out to be.

It's the day. They aren't active now.

They can't be active when the sun is in the sky, banishing them below the ground.

Or can they...?

* * *

As far as magical mystery tours went, this one turned bad almost too quickly to comprehend, much less survive. 

The two of them had been right to hunker down and wait for morning, rather than head into Aleppo with half the day gone, and no idea what they'd find when they got there. Not with the Wendigo in control of the night, there. 

Not with the few weapons they still had in their hands, either. They'd expended half their stolen stash on raiders, zombie viking attacks, and the occasional patrol of one !@#$ing faction or another of this crazy-ass civil war.

(No undead attacks, lately, though. He wonders what happened to make that change...)

So they dug out an existing hole to make it longer and deeper, threw some cover over themselves, and sat down to wait until morning. They kept quiet, as they had nothing they really wanted to say to one another. 

And they tried to ignore the everpresent, otherworldly howling that came from the city -- a terrible reminder of what they'd be walking into, the next day. 

It was a reasonable plan. It should have worked, too. 

Except that they weren't the only ones trying to get into town...

The first sign that the !@#$ was about to go straight down the toilet was when SPYGOD -- on watch, of course -- saw red lights coming straight for their position. Old-style military flashlights with the night lenses on, to cut down on visibility. 

Too bad they were in the hands of a bunch of Syrian loyalist yahoos who didn't know what the !@#$ they were doing. They were making enough noise to alert any decent sniper, much less a city full of carnivorous monsters. 

He'd almost thought to wake the Mahdi, except that he wouldn't have been waking him. He knew the guy never slept -- he just pretended to, perhaps out of politeness, but more likely to try and lull his unwilling ally into a false sense of security. 

(And SPYGOD saw no reason to let the Mahdi know that he knew what the creep was up to.)

But then there was a louder, closer howling. The desert exploded in storms of sand, antler, and claw. 

And all around their rude little shelter were the Wendigo -- bursting from where they'd been hiding, all around them, and preparing to destroy and devour the interlopers...

* * *

"... dumb !@#$er tried to talk them out of it," SPYGOD says, talking to the cracked, unseeing face of Free Fire -- the only remnant of the orange android he could readily identify: "That was a damn sight, let me tell you. 'I am the Mahdi and you will obey me!' Who the !@#$ did he think he was, that guy off Doctor Who?"

The superspy shrugs, looking around the room: "Well, it didn't go too well for him. Lucky for me, I ran the !@#$ away. Just that there was nowhere to run to but the city. And somehow I !@#$ing escaped them all, two nights in a damn row. 

"And the less I !@#$ing talk about how I did that, the better..."

He sighs, grabs the remnants of a rolling chair, and plops his fine, gay ass down into it -- still holding Free Fire's face as though he were Hamlet, delivering a soliloquy to Poor Yorrick.  

"Of course, they might have !@#$ing wanted me to escape. Maybe they wanted to see where I was going. 

"And now that I'm here, well, maybe I'm tonight's !@#$ing entertainment..."

He looks around the room, then down the blood-soaked hall.

He wonders how much work he'll have to do between now and sunset to make this place Wendigo-proof. 

He thinks of how the Mahdi insisted they get here, because there was not only phones for him to call and fix his !@#$ -- all the booby-trapped people, out there in the world -- but some great thing he needed to have secured for the next phase of his big damn plan. 

And he wonders if he can find it, and make it work for him...

Wednesday: 5/18/16

"You have to be kidding me," Dragonfly says, looking out the window of the Russian Army bivouac she woke up in, a few hours ago, and looking at what's going on down the road.

Hearing it, even from here. 

"I wish I was, Gayle," a heavily-bandaged Mr. USA says, not wanting to look anymore: "After everything. After all that. They just never learn."

"No," Hanami says from the chair she's been put into -- shattered legs twitching as her systems try to heal her: "They never do."

And, as if to underscore that point, another cohort of all-too-familiar androids fly overhead, heading for the ring of steel and fire they've made around Moscow. 

* * *

Battle, as anyone will tell you, is intensely confusing.

No one can really say what happened to them with a full degree of certainty, once the bullets and fists start flying. Reality goes sideways, action is all there is, and details get lost in the adrenaline-fueled rush to survive. 

And just as it's incredibly hard to be sure of what happened to you, alone, it's even more difficult to say what happens to others. Even those with electronic brains or total recall are still dealing with their own filters and perceptions, so that what happens around you might as well be postcards from a foreign country you've never visited.

So, even among the Freedom Force -- veterans of scores of combats, large and small -- trying to put a finger on what happened when is next to impossible to do, even after a few days of rest and recovery. 

One thing they can agree on, though: control of the battle really did go out of their hands the moment they realized that Blastman wasn't coming back from the serious blow Thor delivered with that hammer of his.

Of course he would have tried something like that. He always joked about being the human battering ram -- pyramid, in his case.

And when he saw that not even Mr. USA could get the better of the son of Odin in a one-on-one fight, of course he would have tried to swoop in and take the Aesir's head off, or at least knock that damn hammer out of his hand.

Of course he would.

But Thor saw him coming, as he doubtlessly would -- even in the heat of battle. And he stayed his hammer until the right moment, just so he could swing it right at the tip of Blastman's rocky helmet...

The explosion flattened everyone in a fifty foot radius. The living and the dead went flying. Mr. USA tumbled back onto his ass and skidded twice that distance in seconds, actually falling unconscious for a crucial, scary second. 

And when he got back to his feet, and saw the mess the collision had made, he was grimly aware of two things. The first was that Blastman was lying in a bloody heap, some distance away -- not moving, and with his helmet broken into pieces between here and there.

The second was that Thor was still standing, holding his hammer in the exact same position. Not a scratch on him, not a scorch-mark. 

And the smile on his face was as black and evil as anything Mr. USA had ever seen in his nightmares.

That's when the Aesir redoubled, their Odal shocktroops leaping ahead of them into battle. That's when even more zombies came running up, a rotten army squirming between the cracks of the living and the divine.

That's when the dead allies around them came to unlife and joined the other side...

What could they do but fight? It was all left to them, now that strategy and containment had failed. All they could do was simply pound at their foes -- incapacitate the living, obliterate the dead, somehow beat back the gods -- and hope for some sort of miracle. 

But as the waves increased, and the dead multiplied, and the lightning bolts tore through all they held in reserve, they all soon realized that today might be the last stand of many a hero, and many a team. 

Until they heard a noise that they thought they'd never hear again, and looked up to see a nightmare rushing into save them...

* * *

The official story was that nothing had survived the cataclysm at Buryat.

The Metal Plague had been defeated, thanks to Mister Freedom's plan. And the defeated robots had all been inside the complex when it mysteriously self-destructed, denying all its secrets to the Russian government.

Officially, at any rate -- but the truth was much more complex.

The truth was that some traces had yet survived. 

Pieces the Freedom Force had left all over the landscape while defeating earlier, less sophisticated iterations of the self-improving robots. Parts found elsewhere in the world while mopping up. Chunks available for sale on the black market, stolen from private auctions, prized away from governmental lockups and the lairs of would-be world conquerors.

Over the last few months, in secret, the Russians had been reverse-engineering the menace they had unwittingly played host to, for all that time. And while they had not quite understood the transcendent genius behind the machines' workings -- much less fathomed their ultra-sophisticated programing -- they had produced a few working prototypes.

And once they exposed those prototypes to the same rigors of combat they might encounter in a battle with a large, mechanized army, or a few strategic talents, their metal beasts began to learn, to grow, to improve.

And, most importantly of all, to multiply. 

Thus was created the Russian Legion -- reborn from the ash and scrap of the Metal Plague.

And on that day, at what might have been the nation's darkest hour, its leaders decided to unleash the storm of as-yet-untested white, blue, and red androids upon the invaders, and hope for the best.

* * *

That was three or so days ago. Since then, there's been ample time to consider the consequences of that one, single action. 

There hasn't been much else to do, given everyone's condition.

Mr. USA is broken, but healing. Strong bones knit back together, superior muscles lash back to the bone. Even the telling, hammer-head shaped dent in his sternum -- almost enough to crush his heart -- is starting to push out, however painfully. 

Red Wrecker is still unconscious from blood loss and shock. Dragonfly was in the same boat, though her problem seemed to be more to do with over-exertion -- she hardly had a scratch on her whole body. 

No one's sure what's up with American Steel and Dr. Uncertainty. At some point he fell under the weight of the undead, and she swooped in to get her. After that, they've been mysteriously absent from view.

(Had they been forming some kind of relationship? Mr. USA thought he detected some level of familiarity there, between them, but noted they went to great lengths to keep it under wraps.)

Hanami is the worst off. One of the Aesir decided he'd had enough of her swooping in and out of their ranks and took an axe to her pelvis -- several times. She can still fly just fine, but everything below the waist is a mess of cracked skin, exposed wires, and broken gears. 

And then there's Blastman -- though no one wants to talk about him, given what the Russian Legion did to all the undead fighters they encountered. 

There's also all the other heroes -- Russian or otherwise -- who are here with them, recuperating, though keeping track of who's alive, maimed, or dead is not a concern they care to deal with, right now.

They're a little more concerned about the legion of self-repairing, ever-adapting androids that swooped in firing, three or so days ago, and have never stopped shooting since. 

They made short work of the viking zombies -- using flame-throwers and high explosive rounds to turn them into black, sloppy smears and charred parts on the ground. 

Then they turned their attention to the living thugs, who were just crazy enough to run at them. They used short-range, high-energy lasers in a slashing pattern to cut them to pieces -- ensuring their worth as resuscitated casualties would be next to nil. 

As for the Aesir, they suffered heavy losses at first. After all, these were gods of war they fought, and they were merely beasts of plastic and steel. 

But as the initial wave of androids was smashed down, inch by inch, it was replaced by another. And this wave was that much tougher, that much less easily damaged. 

As was the wave after that. And the one after that. And the one that followed that one.  

On and on, wave after wave, until at last the Aesir found they could no longer destroy them with magical weapons, or words of power. Could no longer fry them with lightning bolts, or bursts of heat or cold. 

Could no longer even best them in rude hand to hand combat. 

And them came the horrible moment -- ominous on both sides -- when the gods of battle and Ragnarok heard a horn calling for their retreat, and gladly obeyed...

The respite gave the Russians time to get their wounded from the field, and the heroes time to pull one another out of the fray. And they decamped to an area some distance away, there to sit and wait as the city of Moscow was surrounded by wave after wave of the Russian Legion. 

And each wave linked with the other, to form a wall of machine creatures with one order -- CONTAIN AT ALL COSTS. 

That was three or so days ago. Now the outskirts of the city lie in flaming ruins. Now the dead lie in burning, broken heaps on the streets and bridges. 

Now no one is getting out -- alive or dead. 

* * *

The Russian hero National Man has been by a few times, mostly to check up on Mr. USA, but also to act as a liaison between the teams, the Russian Army, FAUST, and everyone else who'd got a finger in this pie. 

(He doesn't look too bad for having had a magical spear go right through his guts. He's been told the colostomy bag is only temporary, and laughs it off with what might be black humor, or maybe a lot of vodka.)

The last time he stopped by, he said that the Russian Legion was only a stop-gap measure (much like the bag he still needs help putting on). He has been assured that there is no way they are going to allow a massive phalanx of god-killing, self-willed androids to remain operational after this matter has been put to rest.

He says that, and something in his eyes betrays the fact that he doesn't know if it's true.

He says that, and somehow he knows it's a lie. Either because they have no intention of deactivating such a weapon, or they have no ability to do so. 

And every time he leaves them, the Freedom Force members look to one another, remember Buryat, and wonder if the cure for this divine disease isn't going to kill them all.

Thursday: 5/19/16

"Sir, we can mourn later," Josie says, doing her best to appear professional in front of the image of the Interim President, broadcast over the screen in her office on the Flier: "Blastman wouldn't want us to dwell on his death. He'd want us to fight on."

"I know that, Director," Dan Quayle says, looking rather displeased: "He'd also probably remind you that I've been cooped up in your Heptagon basement for far too long."

"Just until we can guarantee your safety, sir. And I know they're taking good care of you."

"Oh, excellent service," the Interim President says: "Your sister Katy's in here all the time, making sure I'm okay. Offering me extra blankets and a pillow. A mint on my pillow."

"Well, sir, after what's been going on back home-"

"Yes, let's talk about that," the President says, tapping his fingers on the bare, metal desk he's been leading the country from for the last couple weeks: "Because to be frank? Right now I could really care less about one dead American hero. Not with a damn space war going on over our heads and this mess in Moscow. That's just the headlines."

"Sir-"

"No Director. You and me? We know what's going on behind the headlines. And that's that my Secret Service has been having a damn field day chasing assassins, and a lot of them are coming from the Secret Service. They're targeting me, my cabinet, the candidates of every major party, and some of the damn minors."

"I saw that, sir," Josie says: "I'm shocked anyone would go after the New Green Party. I didn't even there was a New Green Party until they killed-"

"And do you know what those mother!@#$ers say when we catch them alive?" the man interrupts her, clearly not caring about how the NGP's candidate was blown off her bicycle on the way to a rally anymore than he cared about poor Blastman: "Do you?"

"I did read the reports, sir-"

"They say they're doing it for Allah, Director," the man says, scowling: "They're doing it because the man on the phone stopped calling them, telling them not to do it."

"Which means the Mahdi is dead, or otherwise incapacitated," Josie says, nodding: "Which means SPYGOD's team succeeded in its mission."

"Which means we're going to have the mother of all blowbacks if we can't find out everyone he had on his call list!" Quayle shouts: "It's not just me, Director. It's not just us. It's the whole damn world. I'm getting calls from every major head of state. Their own people are trying to kill them. Their own ministers are sabotaging things."

"I saw that, sir," she says: "Now that we're actually talking with FAUST, thanks to this thing in Moscow, we're more in the loop with Europe. It's a mess."

"Well, hadn't you better do something about it?" the Interim President rages: "Before we all wind up getting nuked by someone that bastard isn't going to be calling in the next couple of days?"

"Yes, sir," she says, nodding: "I've got top people working on it, right now."

"They've got 24 hours to get me an action plan and execute it," he says, pointing a finger: "Or I call for your resignation. And I will not be replacing you with one of your sisters, Director. I'll be bringing in someone who knows what they're doing."

He turns off the phone. She absentmindedly thinks about turning off the oxygen supply to his quarantine cell, but sighs, and disregards that idea.

"You heard all that, gentlemen," she says, turning SPYGOD's team's viewer back on: "That's what we're dealing with."

"That's... pretty bad," Myron says, flanked by Gosheven and Shining Guardsman: "And I don't know what to tell you. Last we heard from SPYGOD, he went in with Free Fire to deal with the guy, and told us to vamoose so we didn't get hit. Then we heard nothing, so we came to the base in Turkey to rendezvous with him."

"And we don't have the slightest idea-" Gosheven starts to say, but then Josie puts her fist down on her desk -- hard enough that something cracks.

"Shut. Up." She hisses, looking very upset: "I've played dumb up until now, but I'm through. I know, gentlemen. I know."

"You know... what?" Shining Guardsman says, hoping having his suit on will make his poker face somewhat convincing.

"She knows," Myron says, shrugging and looking at the two of them, and then back to her: "And as leader of the group, now, I have to take full responsibility. It was one thing while SPYGOD was calling the shots. Now..."

"Now, I'm going to give you one chance," Josie says, pointing the finger of the she didn't just break on her desk: "The President wants a !@#$ing action plan? Well guess what, boys. You. Are. It.

"You got 72 hours to go find me a list. Find me anything I can use. I don't care if it's partial or full. I don't care who's on it. You get that list and you get it to me, and we stop this !@#$ before it gets any worse.

"Or I swear to mother!@#$ing god, the last thing I do as Director of the COMPANY before they toss my big, tattooed ass out of this office is stick you all in a hole in the Heptagon so damn deep down that they might not even remember to !@#$ing feed you!"

She turns the viewer off. Looks at her hand.

"!@#$ goddammit mother!@#$#ing !@#$," she mutters, shaking it and wincing at the pain: "Let's not do that again."

Friday: 5/20/16

"Well, it was not a complete loss," Tyr opines, looking down at the remnants of his latest plan to overcome the angry, mechanical wall that the humans threw up around the city: "At least we now know one thing we did not know before with complete certainty."

"And what is that, brother Tyr?" Heimdall asks, his gold eyes perceiving much -- including how badly beaten their living servants are, even when clad in armor forged from dragons' flame.

"That our thralls are weak-willed and feeble-minded," the God of War says, stepping to the side just as one of the android snipers takes a shot at him -- the blast going wide and hitting some glass and steel tower, somewhere.

"I saw that from the beginning."

"Yes, well, we do not all share your perspective," Tyr chuckles, running a hand through his blood-red hair: "And sight is merely the seeing of things. Seeing is not always knowing."

"And knowing is not always seeing," a dark-complected woman says, striding up behind them. She wears a long cloak of green and black, and holds a leather bag between her two spindly hands.

"You would know of such things, Vor," Heimdall says: "But tell me, seer. What do you make of this? What do the runes say of this?"

"Nothing good," the woman says, holding her bag up: "I have thrown many times, since the day we were bested by this foe."

"We were not bested!" Tyr insists, not deigning to turn and meet her gaze: "And you had best not say as such around Thor, else he shall best your face with his hammer."

"Even the son of Odin knows not to try the hand that throws the runes, good Tyr," Vor says, chuckling as she shakes the bag: "He has learned too well from the words of his father, All-Seeing and All-Knowing."

"Yet for all his sight and knowledge, he lies dead upon the floor in Valhalla," Heimdall says, casting his sight back to that sorry tableau -- far, far from here: "Else we would not be here, under the rule of Vili and Ve."

"There is that, yes," the woman says, turning somewhat pale at the thought of it, and putting a hand to her throat: "A strangeness that was unforeseen. A fate unknown, even to us."

"Feh!" Tyr snorts, finally turning to see her: "Words upon the ground. I need no foresight to guide my sword, woman. Not this day nor any other. And I will find my fate as it comes."

"Then hear the words I have cast upon that ground, Tyr," Vor insists, shaking the bag at the red-haired god of war: "Every cast, every time, the same story unfolds. Evil and temptation. Chaos and unrest."

"Is it to come, then?" Ve asks, appearing from seemingly nowhere -- his eyes turned to blazing balls of fire, his pale hands smoking.

"No, my lord," the woman says, turning and bowing to their leader: "It is here, now. We have entered a time of doom, simply by being here."

"That is known to me," Ve says, gesturing to the wall of metal warriors that surrounds their taken city: "As it is known to us all, surely. This is the fire that precedes the blazing forest. The cough that portends the plague.

"The darkening skies and broken shields that tell the coming of Ragnarok," he hisses, raising his axe high, as if to some point in the sky -- far, far away: "Here and now, in this time."

"My lord, no," Vor says, disregarding the hand of warning that Heimdall holds up before her: "I beg you to listen. You have misunderstood my words. This is not the wolf-time. This is not even a tenth of that black day, when we shall all fall before Fenris, as foretold. 

"This is merely a shadow of that doom. An echo of the war to come. This is not our time.

"But by being here, now? We bring something far worse to this world than the Wolf-Time. We bring-"

Vor doesn't even see his hand as it drops the axe upon her head. And she bursts into flame and becomes ash before she can utter a single scream.

"We bring fire to the world," Ve says, shaking her black god-dust from the edge of his weapon and looking back to their current concern: "Much as untold others before us, only this time the fire shall not merely enlighten. 

"This time it shall cleanse..."

With that, Ve turns and walks away, leaving two gods and a pile of what was once a goddess -- her bag of runes mysteriously untouched.

"You spoke of the difference between seeing and knowing, Heimdall," Tyr says, clearly unmoved by all of this: "Here then is a further lesson, for those who would be wise. The difference between knowing and saying, or merely keeping one's mouth shut."

With that the god of war laughs, and walks away, leaving Heimdall to contemplate things.

And make a decision he's avoided, up until now.

Saturday: 5/21/16

"If you do not do this now, it only gets worse," Mister Freedom says, for what is clearly the seventh time in almost as many days: "I do not know else to say it, my King and Brother. Not in words, not in deeds."

And Lordly Seranu looks to the Olympian -- banished, then recalled -- and turns his head to avoid this weighty decision, once more. He stares at the empty, black throne that their dark brother sat upon, here in the chamber of the Gods, and wonders.

"He has the power to end me," he speaks, at last, turning back with what may be actual fear in his eyes: "The power to end us all."

"Not all of us," elder Synchro says, stroking his long, white beard: "'And with strange aeons, even death may die,' they say."

"He cannot take the dark into itself," shadowy Soubre counsels, though he seems a little dubious at that claim.

"And I'm not letting him turn my night into a travesty," Noyx insists, his round head of hair glowing with the power of the approaching full moon: "Not any more than he already has."

"And if all else fails, you can say I will come to speak with him," Mister Freedom says: "And he knows how that will turn out, should I have to consider his puzzle too complex to solve."

Seranu looks to them all, and then to his sister-wife Kanaan -- still sitting on her throne, her needles jammed into her eyes, her prophecies stilled.

"But I... am unsure," Seranu says, looking away from his sticken queen: "What if he does not listen? What if I am slain-

"You rule because you lead," Noyx finally says, clearly good and disgusted with this sorry display: "If you will not lead, then rule is no longer yours. Is it?"

"I can think of no more direct a thing to say," Mister Freedom says.

"Or more impertinent!" Seranu shouts, clearly unhappy to have his right to be king questioned: "You would do well to watch your rocky tongue-"

"We must be as one!" Synchro says, stepping between them: "Horror comes from the stars! Terror stalks the skin of the world! If we do not do all we can to stand by our pledge to these, our children, then what sort of parents have we become?"

"Bad ones," Seranu sighs, nodding and taking Synchro's hand, and then reaching another out to Noyx: "Forgive me, brother. Forgive me, all of you. I have been afraid, and in my fear I have been foolish."

"Also in your pride and presumption," Mister Freedom says: "But these are matters we can address later, once we have dealt with this matter before us."

"Yes," the King of Olympos says, clearly not looking forward to that conversation: "Then it is decided? I shall go into the black pyramid of Satanoth, there to speak sense to our wayward brother."

"And we shall await outside, should you need us," Synchro says: "All of us on the leeward side of eternity's arc. He shall not dare strike you when we are all close."

Seranu nods at that, but the fear in his eyes is still there. Still clear.

* * *

"What the goddamn hell happened here?" Gosheven says, dancing around the ruined floor of the tent like it was filled with big, evil spiders: "Poor Free Fire!"

"Poor everyone," Myron says, getting some equipment out of the back of the drill tank: "It looks like they got ambushed by the walking dead."

"The Viking Dead, more like," Shining Guardsman says, picking up a helmet and a sword from the moldering corpse on the ground: "Look at this mess. You think they made it out alive?"

"I'd say they did," Myron says, waving one of the equipment pieces around, and then finally stopping in one direction: "Heat sensors are damn near useless out here, but I got the kind that works below ground."

"What's that got to do with anything?" Gosheven asks.

"Well, the further down you go, the hotter it gets," Shining Guardsman says: "Jesus, man. Didn't they teach you any geology in school?"

"I didn't need to go to school to know that," the metamorph says, laughing as he mimes giving a blowjob to an invisible !@#$: "Saturday night at the back of the bar, ladies!"

"Does gaydar work like radar?" Myron says: "Because if you can find SPYGOD's direction that'll be half the damn battle, right there."

"No, it does not work like radar," Gosheven grumbles: "Good Jesus !@#$ing Christ in a pink Easter basket. You guys are so rude."

Shining Guardsman snorts at that, shrugs, and goes back to looking for some semblance of a working computer system. Myron moves about to get triangulation.

And Gosheven -- angry and fuming as he stomps around the outside of the tent -- makes the most important discovery of the whole damn day. 

* * *

The ghost whimpers as it crawls along the ground -- its legs chewed-through stumps at mid-thigh. It looks up at Seranu with a silent pleading in its eyes, as its jaw has suffered a similar fate.

"I told you I would kill you if you came back," Satanoth says, looking down from his ebon seat, dead center in the inverted, black pyramid of his throne room. The lights are all out, and he sits in shadow -- deep and cold.

"I know, brother," Seranu says, holding his hands before him: "I spoke to you rashly, before. I was frightened and worried, for I did not understand. And I did not handle your... your sickness very well.

"And so I come to apologize, and plead with you once more."

"You should not have come, fucker," Satanoth mutters, leaning forward so that his King-Brother can see the full horror of what has happened here.

He has become bloated, the lord of Death -- grotesquely fat, with pendulous belly and breasts. His jowls are pronounced, and wet with the dead blood of corpses and the cold ichor of ghosts.

And the look in his eyes is that of a madman -- just gone insane after seeing the true face of the gods.

"Yes," Seranu says, stepping forward: "I should have. And I should have come before you did this to yourself. Before you fell further into this madness.

"Forgive me, brother. I was afraid."

"And you should still be!" Satanoth screams, leaping from his throne -- his weight seeming to be no impediment -- and landing before his brother and king: "How dare you come before me!"

"I dare!" Seranu says, stepping close enough to allow his brother to do more than return the blow he struck when last they stood before one another, should he care to: "I dare everything, brother, because I am afraid!"

"What?"

"I look to the other side of the world, and I see what they are doing, these newly-returned Aesir, and I am afraid! I see the ruin left of my sister-wife Kanaan's eyes and I am afraid! I see this world slipping from our hands, and into theirs, and I am afraid!

"And I see the doom our exiled brother created, so long ago, as it comes towards this world in pieces, and though we have given these mortals the tools to save themselves I am seeing what these Aesir can do, and wonder what they might do to those tools, and I am afraid!

"And you sit here, in your dark world, and abuse ghosts and their corpses?" Seranu says, gesturing to the throne behind Satanoth: "You, one of our mightiest? You, the one not even I can command?

"Well, brother, I know not what has taken place inside your heart and mind. I know not what malady afflicts you. But I do know that something has poisoned your spirit. You speak not as yourself. You act not as yourself.

"You are being commanded, brother. Even now, some alien spirit squats within your mind, soul, and heart, voiding selfishness and uncaring into the spaces between, and wiping that filth across your virtues when it finishes.

"Are you going to tell me that the Lord of the Dead, who not even I may command, is content to be commanded by the likes of a ghost?"

Satanoth turns purple, then. He howls. He rages and raised his fists, as if to strike.

And then... he raises an eyebrow.

Then furrows both of them, looking one way, and then the other.

"My... oh..." he says, shaking his head as if in disbelief: "I... I am..."

"You are, yes," Seranu says, reaching forward to put his hand upon his brother's swollen belly: "Indeed, if you put your hands upon mine? Perhaps you can feel what I have sensed. The cancer within you. The rot."

"Indigestion," Satanoth rumbles, and then, doing as his brother and king bids, closes his eyes as if in deep concentration.

And then, with a turn of his head, vomits something vaguely humanlike out of his gloriously distended mouth.

"Fuck you..." the ghost of Loreli says, squirming on the floor in a pool of blood, ichor, and half-digested flesh: "You fucking piece of shit faggot..."

"I... remember you," Seranu says, uncertain: "And yet I do not. How can this be?"

"The creature my creature found, killing our children," Satanoth says, remembering the actions of the White City's guardian, once he'd removed her from her god-body: "Somehow, we can now see her. Perhaps because of her time within me."

"I'll kill you..." Loreli goes on, fingers scrabbling for purchase upon the floor.

"I think not," Mister Freedom says, appearing nearby along with the other dark brothers of the Olympians: "Senchro? I think you may have the key to this puzzle."

"That I do," the bearded god of time says, waving his hand. Suddenly the woman on the floor contorts and screams as she is made into a mortal, once more.

And then screams as a hole opens in the floor beneath her, slamming shut not long after she passes through it.

"My realm will give her no further chance of perfidy, or revenge," Mister Freedom says: "Perhaps in time I will learn the true question of her existence. Perhaps I will cure her of the disease, much as you, my brother, have been cured of hers."

"I thank you for that, Brother Restriit," Satanoth says, clearly humbled: "I thank you all."

"Once more, we see that killing does not always solve a problem," Mister Freedom says, somewhat happy to be referred to by his rightful name: "At times it merely makes it worse."

"A lesson we should take some time to digest," Soubre says, becoming immediately crestfallen when no one gets his joke -- or at least cares to acknowledge it.

"There may be no time," Seranu says, looking off in a certain direction: "The world is invaded, my brothers. Laid low by another pantheon, their motives not their own, their actions cruel."

"And usurping of my domain," Satanoth hisses, the skull of his eyes becoming very cross indeed.

"Then we are agreed?" Noyx asks: "We must go show our returned brothers the error of their ways?"

"Oh yes," Seranu says, thinking of Kanaan's blindness, and what most likely caused it: "At the very least." 

Sunday: 5/22/16

"It happens, my lord Ve," Heimdall says, looking around to the southwest. All the other gods atop the roof of the Mayor's former home turn and do the same.

"As we thought it might," Thor spits, patting the handle of Mjolnir: "Let them come. I am eager to taste their blood."

"As are we all," Tyr says, laughing: "Should we stride forth to meet them, or let them endure the wall of fire and steel first?"

The Aesir laugh at that, and Karl -- who lurks nearby, waiting for Ve to command him -- finds himself hoping to every god he can't see that the Olympians kick these people's asses something fierce and hard.

It's about damn time something went right around here...

* * *

... on the main floor of the Heptagon, it's pure bedlam.

AGENTs run every which way but up the damn walls. Pads ring, pages are omnipresent, and everyone needs to talk to everyone else right the !@#$ now. 

Because SPYGOD's team came through, and in a big way.

"They didn't just a list of names the Mahdi got his hooks into, Katy," the recently-awakened real Peg is telling her sister, over her pad: "They found several, all more or less lying all over the floor."

"What do you mean?" the large clone with the green bob cut asks, heading for the secure elevator.

"Well, apparently he had a bunch of pre-programmed phones he was using. He'd use them to call up so many people that day, and then they'd smash them. Only they got caught in mid-call, and all the phones on his desk weren't destroyed."

"Awesome!" Katy says, showing her official pass to the guard and getting in: "So how long before we know everyone?"

"Maybe not everyone, maybe not ever, but they're going through the ones that were destroyed right now, to try and salvage numbers. Who knows what they'll find..."

* * *

"... after a good night's sleep," SPYGOD grumbles, getting up from his makeshift bed, in the most secure room he could make, and heading to the door to be sure he's still alone down here.

No noise. Nothing. He decides to risk it.

He unwinds the claymores, and the other boobytraps. Then he opens the door, just a crack, and looks outside.

"Awesome," he says,  and goes about his morning. Which means taking a long slash and !@#$ in the office with the dead guy (can't smell any worse), making coffee and breakfast using that man's stash of rations, and then going about searching the compound one more damn time to find whatever the hell the Mahdi thought was so !@#$ing important he just had to get his damn self killed getting back to Aleppo.

Unless he was just suicidal...

* * *

"... they have to be," Mr. USA says, looking up at the gold and marble chariot of the Olympians as it flies overhead, and goes towards Moscow.

"I wouldn't be so sure," Hanami says, hobbling along beside him -- her legs are getting better, however slowly: "These are gods, (REDACTED). I am sure they can hold their own in a fight."

"They're not perfect, though," Dragonfly says, knowing their flaws all too well.

"You do not have to be perfect to win the battle, my friends," National Man says: "Merely one step ahead of your opponent..."

* * *

"... Karl Josephson," Heimdall says, waving his hand before the face of the burned young man: "Nor am I your ally. But in this time, at this place, I think I must be your salvation."

"What do you mean?" Karl asks, watching as the others go along the main road -- flanked by their human subjects, and the dead -- to greet the chariot that's just arrived.

"I mean that it is not your doom to die here, commanded by a man who would be a god," the gold-eyed Aesir says, following the black-haired kid's eyes to what's about to happen: "Your true fate lies far afield, and at a more fitting time.

"But should our commander, my king, ask me to say what I see of you? I cannot lie. And you will be dead."

"I don't know what you mean," Karl says.

"Mayhap you do not," Heimdall says, smiling -- his teeth as gold as his eyes: "But I see your hands behind many things unseen, young man. In those moments you are not bidden to act? You take action. You arrange things from afar. You hide objects, and people. You make the truth known to others, as always you did."

Karl nods. Then gulps. He's got him, alright -- dead to rights.

"So go," the god says, waving his hand before him again: "When you see your moment, take it. And be elsewhere, then, and in good and strong company. For the desire to come back and serve shall strike you as it does all others, and you can only free yourself by not being here."

And Karl...

* * *

... exits the elevator, and walks down the long, curving hall towards the quarantine berths.

"Let the President know I'm on my way, as usual." she radios ahead to the guard: "I've got some good news for him..."

* * *

"... where the !@#$ing !@#$ would I !@#$ing hide something secret?" SPYGOD shouts, not caring who hears him. 

The Wendigo know he's here. He's heard them creeping around outside, and howling on the roof of the thing. They haven't figured out how to tunnel in or he'd be dead ten times over, he's sure. 

Still...

"It'd help if I knew what the !@#$# I was looking for," he grumbles, tossing the armor one more damn time: "Bigger than an elephant? Smaller than a dildo? About the size of an elephant dildo?"

He thinks, once more. He considers the ruined door, and what's across from it. 

"If it's too big, how can you turn it in here?"

He goes over to the wall across the door. Taps around. 

Feels something that shouldn't be there...

* * *

"... should you?" Lord Seranu says, looking down at the Aesir from the prow of his chariot: "You said you would not return until your Ragnarok befell this world. But that event is billions of years from now. You know this."

"And you know that all prophecy is in the hands of those it foretells the doom of!" Ve says, pointing a pale, smoldering finger at the lord of the Olympians: "So if we say the Wolf-Time is now, then it is now! And you have no say in the matter."

"Oh, I think we do," Satanoth says, stepping forward, and then leaping down to stand before the Aesir -- most of whom take at least one step back: "Especially when one of you decides to tamper with my domain."

"What would that be, Olympian," Thor chuckles: "Stuffing your face ere your belly splits?"

The skull-faced lord of death steps forward: "Speak that to my face, little thunder god. You will find my reply most interesting."

"Here is mine!" Thor shouts, pulling his hammer out and...

* * *

... smacking her hand on the ID Panel by the door. 

"Well, about time," the Interim President says, sitting at his desk and munching his bowl of oatmeal: "I think we've talked about this, Katy. I need to have a proper breakfast. This Quaker State stuff isn't cutting it."

"I know, sir," she says, clearly out of breath. And when he turns to see what's up, he sees why. 

She's clearly been in a fight. She's bleeding from her nose and her ear, and has stains all over her uniform. 

Other people's blood at a guess.

"What happened?" he asks, dropping the bowl of oatmeal: "Is... did someone just try to kill me? One of your people?"

"Not yet," Katy says, holding up the gun she stole from the guard outside and saying...

* * *

"!@#$ goddamn son of a !@#$," SPYGOD says, gasping at what the armory was holding inside of it -- and who exactly is in the stolen COMPANY cryo-tube: "How the hell? How the !@#$ing goddamned hell are you still !@#$ing alive..."

* * *

... after the beating Thor gives him is unknown. But before the badly-broken Olympian can get to his feet to try and return the favor, Hel steps up behind him and -- with one smooth motion -- shoves her fist through his chest to take out his beating heart.  

And Seranu screams...

* * *

... as she watches her clone sister, Katy, execute the Interim President on COMPANY telecom with six well-placed shots to the face and forehead.

Then she turns, looks at the camera -- perhaps directly at Josie -- and says the words Josie's been afraid she's going to hear since she learned that Katy's number was on the broken phone they just decrypted.

"In the name of Allah, most merciful, most beneficent."

Then she puts the gun to her mouth, and pulls the trigger one last time.

And then...

* * *

... every single necromancer, all over the world, feels their heart seize up for just a second.

... blinded Kanaan begins to weep, knowing full well what is about to happen even if she couldn't see it a moment before.

... Straffer is woken from his sleep to be told that another 8-Ball attack is on the way.

* * *

... and the trees around Moscow sway in the wind, as another storm, even more terrible than the last, begins to brew...

(SPYGOD is listening to Hunger of the Pines (Alt-J) and having a Shorts Bloody Beer