Apotheoclypse Now: 9/19/16 - 9/25/16

"I can see you're going to crush them now / I can feel you're gonna win"

(The Turd Crab from Beyond)

(Art by the Lemonade Project)

* * *

6

* * *

"How is this even !@#$ing possible?" SPYGOD asks, holding his lover for the first time in a long time.

"Thank Raitha," Straffer says, kissing him passionately in his fiance's office -- suddenly no longer as dark: "This is a hard light projection. Same principle that keeps the lightships together."

"That's not the only thing that's hard," the superspy says, kissing him back.

"We could do that, too," the blonde cyborg says: "If only we had time."

"That seems to be a thing, these days."

Straffer nods, and then holds SPYGOD's head in his hands: "We have a plan. We're about to do it. But it won't come cheap or easy. And I'm going to have to do something..."

"What?" SPYGOD asks, not liking what he sees in his lover's eyes.

"Someone's going to have to go into the hole and stop whatever's on the other side," Straffer says: "It might not have to be me."

"But if it is, you'll !@#$ing do it," the superspy says, nodding.

"Tell me you understand," the cyborg pleads: "Tell me you back my play."

"I wouldn't !@#$ing love you if you weren't the one who jumped feet first onto Planet Mother!@#$er with a laser gun between your teeth," SPYGOD says, after a second: "And it wouldn't be !@#$ing fair if I got to jump, and I didn't let you."

"That's why I love you," Straffer says: "You get it. You get me."

"Is that the only reason?" the superspy asks, giving him a kiss that could stop a normal man's heart.

"It's in the top ten," Straffer mumbles around his lips and tongue.

"But please," SPYGOD says, kissing him with each word: "Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please come back to me."

"I'll do my best," Straffer swears: "I will. The caterer will be furious if we !@#$ing cancel."

"Yeah. And I got my tux being specially made in Dubai."

"That guy in Satwa?" 

"Yes." 

"The one with the Thai place across the way?"

"The same."

"Black and gold?"

"!@#$ yes."

"I love you," Straffer says, looking him in the eyes: "I will crawl through hell, fight through heaven, and kick ass all the way through time and space if I have to, just to come back to you."

"Then go and do it," SPYGOD says. 

"And you promise me you won't !@#$ing brood," Straffer insists: "Go jump in your work. Make your stuff happen. Do what you have to."

"You know it," the superspy says, kissing him one last time. 

There's one more look between them. And then Raitha is there, smiling, instead of his lover.

And then she's gone, and there's just the office -- dark and foreboding, as ever.

And SPYGOD sighs, adjusts his sunglasses so no one can see he's crying.

And gets back to the !@#$...

Monday: 9/19/16

"...shock and revulsion nationwide as the interview between outlaw reporter Randolph Scott and the being claiming to be the Great Spirit goes viral..."

*CLICK*

SCOTT: "So what would you say to the people of this nation? What would you want them to know?"

GREAT SPIRIT: "I'd want them to know that the time of silence is over. You think that because you hear nothing, there's nothing out there. That's not true. We've always been out there, listening and watching. We've heard the silent cries of our people. Cries of sadness and anger. Cries for justice and peace.

"The silence is going to stop. You will hear their cries. And you will hear our reply, and see it."

SCOTT: "What form will that reply take?"

GREAT SPIRIT: "Sometimes you hear the thunder after the lightning. This time you'll feel the lightning first."

*CLICK*

"Well, Gretchen, I don't feel comfortable with some self-proclaimed god lecturing white people like myself about what some people did in this nation's past. We need to get past that, just like we need to get past this nonsense about slavery, and interning the Japanese, and profiling Muslims after the Computer Hell virus. We're a post-racist society, whatever the liberals might say, and we need to act like it."

*CLICK*

GREAT SPIRIT: "All I can say about the American Indian Movement is that they shouldn't have stopped fighting. Words are fine, but there's a time to talk and a time to fight. Wounded Knee showed the people what happens when power feels threatened. It should have made them discover their own power, and respond to that threat in the only way power understands."

SCOTT: "What's that?" 

GREAT SPIRIT: "More power."

*CLICK*

"... news coming in from Mars, from Freedom Party Candidate Ted Cruz. They have been fighting for just under a day, now. We hear they are breaking through the enemy's defenses and approaching their objective... whatever that is..."

*CLICK*

 "Well, Fred, the President has considered the situation. And he's decided that, given what's been going in at Standing Rock, it's best to just let this issue lie for a time.  We do not believe that our nation is under any threat from this entity, or his cohorts. In fact we've enjoyed some very fruitful dialogue with them, lately..."

 *CLICK*

SCOTT: "Is there anything you would say to your people, at this point? It's been a while since you've spoken to them."

GREAT SPIRIT: "We speak to them all the time. They just don't listen. They let this world blind them to the light from our fire, and deafen them to the drums from our circle. They can't hear the call to come dancing because they've lost the connection to our world."

SCOTT: "How do they get it back, then? Come sit by your fire? Groove in the mud here?"

GREAT SPIRIT: "Well, a good start would be to deal with their so-called leadership on those sorry reservations they live in. I've seen what passes for tribal elders, there. It makes me sick. They're more interested in using the law to make money. They let their people get sick on poison. And then they blame the white man for their problems."

*CLICK* 

JOE TWO MOONS: "How dare he claim to speak for our people? We don't even know who he is. All I can tell you is that as the leader of my Tribe, and the CEO of a casino that's brought countless jobs to this reservation? We're doing just fine without him."

REPORTER: "Sir, what about the pending investigation into your possible involvement in a heroin trafficking ring...?"

JOE TWO MOONS: "This interview is over."

*CLICK*

"... still unsure why a police officer shot an unarmed man, his hands in the air, who seems to have simply been returning to his stalled vehicle. The Governor of Oklahoma has promised a full investigation..."

* CLICK*

SCOTT:  "So what should they do, then?"

GREAT SPIRIT: "They should remember that they are a proud and worthy people. They should leave those pits the white man gave them and move out into the land beyond them. They should work hard, act well, and contribute to that world. Add to its culture. Create harmony. And bring the songs of our people out into the open."

SCOTT: "Conquer by assimilation?" 

GREAT SPIRIT "Up to a point. But they should also remember that they walk with their ancestors, and we spirits. When they encounter trouble, we will be there. When there is danger, we will aid them.

"And if there is trouble, we will come to stop it."

*CLICK*

"I, Seranu of the Olympians, state now and clearly that we bear no ill will towards our cousins. We find their cause to be just, and their concerns to be correct. 

"We only ask that they be considerate of the very delicate balance we gods find ourselves in, right now. With so many of us coming back to this world, it is only natural that its inhabitants may be afraid, or at least worried. 

"If we say or do too many things at once, that fear may turn to panic.

"And panic is often the author of tragedy..."

*CLICK*

 SCOTT: "You're here in South Dakota, at Standing Rock. You've chosen this place to congregate, and make yourselves known to be here. One might wonder if this conflict is the trouble you speak of."

GREAT SPIRIT: "All troubles are one trouble, now. The trouble is that our people are not taken seriously by the government of this land. They're used to handing off beads and trinkets, and hoping we quiet down and go away. They're also used to pointing a gun at us, and saying go back to your hovel and make no more noise."

SCOTT: "But you're not going to be quiet, are you?"

GREAT SPIRIT: "No, I am not. We are not. We are going to say that this pipeline goes no further. We are going to say that these lands be left alone. We are going to say that all sacred lands be left alone."

SCOTT: "And if they say no?"

*THUNDER BOOMS IN A CLEAR SKY*

GREAT SPIRIT: "That will be our answer. Only on that day, there will be lightning and thunder.

"And they won't like it when the lightning flies up their asses...."

*CLICK*

"... oddly enough, there has been no comment forthcoming from The COMPANY, which has taken the point in maintaining some semblance of order among the various pantheons that are now appearing, or wanting to emigrate, to America.

"Attempts to get a comment from SPYGOD as to the seriousness of this threat resulted in our reporter being tossed out of the Heptagon with his microphone crammed somewhere unsuitable for broadcast..."

 Tuesday: 9/20/1

"... coming through on this channel? Are you receiving us? This is Myron with the Reclamation Force. We're having communications issues, right now...

"... still advancing on the enemy position. We've lost about half of our remaining Lightship fleet to their defenses. It's like they've turned the caverns into crap and weaponized it. Every corner is a mine or a beam emplacement. We're lucky that...

"... Aesir running ahead of us. They're taking the crabs down, the combat troops are finishing them off, and some of the talents are clearing a path. Others are up with the lightships, dealing with the defensive grid.

"... lost some people already. A lot of Aesir are going down. I'm not sure if they're coming back up again..."

"... and... oh crap. Oh God, no. Um... you have to tell SPYGOD we lost-"

(TRANSMISSION ENDS)

* * *

"How do you lost a comatose patient?" Rakim asks, looking over the mounds of data he's been feeding the Brain Computer all morning.

"He was never !@#$ing comatose," SPYGOD says, holding up one of the security tapes: "All the time Martha was there? He was constantly blinking in and out. Sometimes he was an illusion, sometimes he was moving so fast he couldn't be seen to move."

"And no one had any idea of this?"

"Yeah," the superspy grumbles: "Syphon was always missing the !@#$ing obvious."

"Well, I bet she's not missing anything now," the former Brainman smiles, stroking his long beard as the computer digests what it's been given: "I'll let you know as soon as I have a prediction, sir."

"Yeah, that reminds me," SPYGOD says, taking a stroll out of the room and down the hall, and calling someone on one of his many phones...

* * *

"... yeah, he's still here," Frankie sighs, putting her hose on one leg at a time as her on-again, off-again calls up about his 'little favor.'

"Don't worry, I've got Holly looking after him... yes, she'll make sure he's okay. She's flighty, not stupid."

"I hear that!" Holly shouts from the other room, to which Frankie responds by flipping her off.

"I heard that, too," Holly protests.

"Yeah, no problem, handsome," Frankie grins: "So after this, it's Hollywood, huh? That's what you always say.

"Yeah," she sighs: "Love you too, you big ngo. Bye bye."

Then she hangs up, puts the phone down, and does her nails with total precision -- wondering who'll be paying her bar price tonight. 

Wednesday: 9/21/16

Dear Lord, forgive me. I may have forgotten how to pray.

I'm about to go into battle, Lord. I don't know if I will survive.

They say I'm invulnerable, now. They say I have powers that let me reform my body from almost nothing.

They say I should be able to walk through all the living toxic sludge that we are about to battle, and not only survive, but strike the decisive blow.

They're all confident in my abilities, Lord. They think they know how I'll do even better than I do.

But I'm scared, Lord. I was scared when I went up against that giant Antichrist, in Russia. And I'm scared now.

There's something about this place, Lord. This dead, red planet that's full of holes, and crawling with filth given form. This broken world we've come to reclaim.

This hole in time and space that someone's going to have to go through and seal.

They say it'll be Straffer who does it. They won't say why, though. 

All that I know is that when he spoke with SPYGOD, last, the goodbye they had made me cry. 

(Is it wrong that I don't care, anymore, that they're gay? That all I see when I look at them is the love?)

Lord, something tells me the plan is going to change. Something tells me I'm going to be called upon to do more than I bargained for.

Something tells me I won't be coming back from all this.

Lord, I am your instrument. Your servant. If you tell me to fight, I will fight. And if I must die, here and now, then I am ready.

But I am afraid, Lord. I am surrounded by the darkness, here. By shadows come to life.

And in the valley of this Shadow, I need to know that you are with me...

It's starting.The drilltank is coming up into the place where the lightships and the Aesir have been fighting, the last few days. We're about to do this.

And we're all here in this drilltank, surrounded by the light of a woman who says she's a god -- a woman I mocked, not too long ago -- and heading for the most dangerous part of the planet.

Oh Lord, protect me. Protect us. Have mercy on all of us. Let us succeed.

In your name...

* * *

My name is Randolph Scott. I'm an outlaw reporter. 

If you asked me what that means, I'd tell you that it's simple. I get the truth, no matter what, even if I have to become the story in order to report it.

Sometimes it means I just kick in the door instead of knocking on it. Sometimes it means I stick a gun under someone's nose until I get the answers.

Sometimes it means I fire that damn gun, too. I don't do !@#$ by half-measures, anymore.

There's no !@#$ing room for half measures, these days. Either you're in or you're out. 

And damn am I ever in. 

I wasn't always like this, though. I used to be fairly safe reporter, not too long ago.

I worked for Alternet. I stuck to topics that were easy to understand, and held positions it was easy to be self-righteous about.

I wrote whiny, self-indulgent columns about how the Republicans were screwing the country, or the world. I got on TV and gave the business to the talking heads from the other side, and took their business in return. 

It sounded important, at the time. And maybe in some ways, some of the things I talked about, and the views I held, were actually pretty damn important from time to time. Maybe I changed some minds. Maybe I even changed policies, though I !@#$ing doubt that. 

But it was all predictable. All boring. 

All safe. 

And then I managed to get onto a real sweet deal. A press conference with SPYGOD, himself, who'd just kicked major supernazi ass down at the South Pole, and was holding court on what he'd done, and why.

And me? I just had to !@#$ing stick my foot up his ass...

Randolph Scott looks at what he's just written, makes a sour face, and then considers nuking it all.

Too long, he thinks. Too much of him, not enough of the story.

Self-indulgent. Smug, even.

Not the sort of thing you could consider for a eulogy, let alone an obituary.

He takes a deep breath, considers having some more of the scotch he's been nipping at since Helga died, this morning.

Jana is having trouble breathing. He can hear her in the room next door. They call it "respiratory distress" -- when the body's shutting down, but the lungs and heart haven't gotten the message, yet, and are putting all their energy into keeping the brain alive, no matter what.

It sounds awful. It looks even worse.

He sat in the room for exactly and hour, watching. Trying to write. And then he realized he couldn't do it.

(Velma told him to get out. Bless her for that. )

So he's here, next door, trying to write up how they all met. How he started this whole story that led to them becoming not just a story, but his own family.

And how he's losing them -- watching them die because they just weren't built to last.

"So much for German engineering," he mutters, and considers if he should put that in there or not.

(Write though the pain. kid, he tells himself: write through the pain.)

And after a genuine snort of the good stuff, he does. Especially after he realizes that the reason he can't talk so much about his kids is because he can't really accept what's happening to them, now...

Thursday: 9/22/16

"How is this happening?" the Candidate gasps, looking at the latest poll numbers: "I'm losing ground to this Socialist twit across the board?"

"You are, yes," his campaign manager says, shaking his head.

"How can this be happening?"

"Well, there's a number of factors," the kid says, looking around: "But I'd say your son's stupid post about skittles had a hand in it."

The two of them are standing in the man's large hotel room -- an executive suite the size of a small airplane hangar, with a genuine Chihuly chandelier dominating the high roof. It's full of big time donors, fellow travelers, and the like.

All of them trying to put on a brave face, in spite of the weird turn the news has taken for their great, orange hope. 

"This can't be happening," the beefy, big-faced man says, sitting down in a chair worth over $5000 and shaking his head, touching the sigil the late King Whip gave him: "This is supposed to be protecting me..."

"Well, King Whip is..." the campaign manager starts to say, and then doesn't finish the thought.

He really does not want to ever have to think about what they found in that box -- not ever, ever again.

"This is just incredible," the Candidate says, putting the polling data down and reaching for a glass of champagne -- one handed off by a waiter who doesn't even bother to smile at him, anymore: "The fact that a city like Detroit can just get taken over by super criminals. Unbelievable."

"Well, the city's always had a really weird relationship with heroes-"

"That's what happens when a city gets run into the ground by useless people," the beefy man says: "It just gets really bad. Totally bad."

"Well, it's a bit more complex than that-"

"All I need to know is if this thing will keep working even though King Whip isn't around," he interrupts, tapping the sigil: "Just through October. Can we count on it?"

As if to answer him, the sigil crumbles under the weight of his finger -- just enough to send a few crumbs down his suit jacket.

The moment that happens, it's like a switch gets thrown. The mood of the party sours. People stop talking and start grumbling.

Some of them even look across the room at the man they were lauding, just seconds ago, and give him that look. The look he knows too well from countless soirees and parties and get-togethers, from all the years before.

The look that says "who are you to say such things?" and "what have you done for me, lately?"

And all he can say is...

* * *

"...please tell me you're fucking joking about fucking the horse," the Alter-Earth SPYGOD says to his new master as they step through time and space itself.

"I never jest about my romances, my good and faithful servant," the adoptive son of Odin chuckles -- his wide smile taxing the facial muscles of the person he's wearing.

"A horse?"

"The true question is not why I chose to masquerade as such a beast, but rather what was in it for me."

"I'm guessing your life was on the line?"

"Oh, to be certain," Loki chuckles, waving a hand to bring them out of where they are, and back into reality -- emerging in a large, dark cave.

"And then you gave birth to... what?"

"Faithful Sleipnir," the trickster says, looking around the cave: "Currently ridden by the All-Father, himself. Eight legs has this steed, graceful and swift. There are none better."

"And for that you laid with an animal."

"Have you, not, yourself laid with another to gain some advantage?" 

"All the fucking time. I just violate some dumb beast. That's..."

"Wrong?" Loki smiles: "Unseemly? Perverted? This from you, who have done so many delightfully wicked things in your time?" 

"I never raped a thing that couldn't say no," the Alter-Earth SPYGOD insists, disgusted at the idea: "Animals are food or beasts of burden. It's not right to make them suffer."

"Svaðilfari hardly suffered," the trickster says, considering something: "In fact, I think I was the best..."

"What?"

"Can you not feel it?" Loki asks, waving a hand around in the air: "We are not alone, here, friend (DETCADER). The ghost in time watches us, even now."

"Then get what we fucking came here for and get out," his new servant insists: "This time bullshit gives me a fucking headache."

"Very well," the person wearing Thomas Samuel's amazing new body says, and reaches down to take a certain very powerful gun from where the time ghost in question left it for the future to find.

And then...

* * *

"... Odin is down. I repeat, Odin is down..." Shining Guardsman says, doing his best to haul what's left of his friend back behind the lines. 

It was a bad idea, either way. The latest crab to come crashing through the dimensional portal was a lot larger than the rest. A lot meaner, too.

(And something about the sacs on its underside gave the others pause)

But Odin? He had no fear. He hadn't shown so much as a hint of it this entire time.

(Especially after the death of his son, Thor, on the first day of battle...)

No, not Odin. He leaped right at it -- spear in hand, sword at the ready. And those battle-hardened Aesir that remained followed shortly after. 

At which point the beast exploded, showering everyone within close proximity with the kind of poisonous, acidic sludge they've been wading in -- and losing people to -- every inch of the way. 

Odin took the brunt of it. He shielded the others as best as he could, but it wasn't nearly enough. 

And now Mr USA is dying -- his lower half a mess of melted flesh, torn muscle, and weeping organs, all showing under the skirt of Odin's armor.

Which suddenly isn't there...

"My God," the hero says in his own voice, and then gasping in pain.

"(REDACTED)?" the cyborg asks, gently putting him down: "Is that you...?"

"It is," Mr USA says, blinking eyes dilated by what must be extreme pain and shock: "I'm... I'm me. I can feel..."

He looks down at his midsection, and then up at the face of his younger ally: "I guess that's why I can't... feel the cancer..."

"Man, don't move," Shining Guardsman says: "Let me get you to the drill tank. We can stabilize you. We can..."

"No," the older hero dies: "It's okay. This is... this is how it happens. I saw this a long ago. When I was somewhere else. When I was with someone else... I can't explain it... take too long..."

"Please don't die," the hero begs his friend: "Not now. Not after we got you through the cancer, and..."

"The cancer was just delayed..." Mr. USA says, smiling in spite of it all: "Last treatment used up. I would have died in Moscow if Odin hadn't... if we hadn't..."

He closes his eyes again, and then opens them -- panicking.

"Tell Straffer..." he says, taking Shining Guardsman by the arm with such urgency it almost breaks his armor: "Tell Myron... it's not what they think it is."

"What is?" the cyborg asks, unsure if this is warning, delirium, or both.

"The war," he gasps, looking up at the flaming roof of the massive cavern as something explodes nearby: "All this... it's been planned... all plans... everyone..."

"Whose plan?" Shining Guardsman demands of him: "Tell me, man! What's going on? Give me a hint..."

"Naglfar..." the older hero says, pointing weakly to the roof of the cavern, and beyond it: "Look out for..."

And then he smiles, in spite of dying -- or maybe because of it...

Because here comes a large, gorgeous redhead to take him away from all this. 

The woman he's only ever seen tangentally, and then only because of the glowing dragonflies in her wake. 

"Tombo," he says, shaking her hand: "It's good to finally meet you."

"Come on, handsome," she says, going for the hug instead: "Your wife is waiting for you."

"What about... Charles?"

She winks: "Him too. They've hooked up over here, believe or not."

"Oh..." he says, and then chuckles: "Of course they did. I loved them both. Why wouldn't they love each other."

"It doesn't always work like that, silly," she playfully corrects him as she leads him away: "And no looking back, now. That's done."

"I know," he says, smiling: "It's all taken care of, anyway..."

And Shining Guardsman takes the time to weep, having seen America's greatest hero die a second time...

Friday: 9/23/16

"...I can't !@#$ing believe this," Josie mutters, watching the news feed: "I just can't..."

"Oh, I can," Dragonfly says, chuckling: "And I say good for her."

"This isn't funny, Agent," the COMPANY Second insists, pointing at the riot on the screen -- the one with a short, human dynamo in the center, tossing armored cops every which way: "This is a law enforcement situation. Red Wrecker has no business being there, let alone joining in..."

"Unless it's a revolution," the former assassin says, rubbing her hands together: "And then it might be a good idea for us to all know whose side we're on."

"And all of our heavy hitters are on Mars, fighting time crabs," the burly, pink-haired clone goes on: "And God knows how that's going...?"

"Still can't get through, ma'am," the harried communications director sighs.

"And Yanabah's at Standing Rock keeping that from boiling over. Gosheven's on top secret assignment. Swiftfoot's in the wind, again. Hanami's taken personal time at the worst time possible. Mister Freedom isn't answering his phone..."

"Free Fire's still a pile of scrap," some AGENT says, thinking he's being helpful.

"Rakim's sort of available," someone else offers.

"No, he's helping The Owl find her son," yet another AGENT corrects: "Been in with the Brain Computer all week trying to figure that !@#$ out." 

"And our Director is doing... whatever the !@#$ he's doing," Josie finishes the thought: "And now this. This!"

"You want me to bring her in?" Dragonfly asks, smiling as she watches the loop of Red Wrecker decking riot cops left right and center, one more time: "I will, if you make it an order."

"I shouldn't have to," she grumbles, but then nods: "Just do it gently."

"Like a lamb, ma'am," the white-clad, former assassin grins, heading out with absolutely no intention of obeying orders...

* * *

"Yeah, well, no," Slam Bang says, walking away from what's going on -- both armored arms up -- as yet another massive crab comes scuttling through the flowing rift in time, a few cavern entrances away.

"You don't have a damn choice!" The Sound shouts, his voice strange in the light atmosphere of Mars's massive, underground caverns: "You came here do to a job! Do it or-"

"Or what?" Kweekweg asks, his combat suit not slowing him down at all as he points his rather large harpoon gun at the intangible villain-turned-hero: "You'll set us straight, mate? Is that what you think?"

"We agreed to this," The Sound says, waving his hands at the frenzied battle just behind them -- the one Earth's forces are clearly losing: "All of us!"

"That was before this started going to !@#$," the armored bank robber says: "Me, I say we get the !@#$ out while the getting's good."

"What the hell is going on here?" a voice asks, its owner quickly whooshing over to them from the melee. 

"We're having some trouble with our part in things," the harpoon-hunter says to Shining Guardsman - - noting how loosely the cyborg's armor is hanging off his frame.

"All you have to do is hold this position until the crabs come this way," the armored hero insists: "Then you nail them from one side while we get them from the other. How damn hard is that?"

"Not hard at all, provided we forget we're cannon fodder," Kweekweg insists: "Or we forget that these things turn everything to poison when we do kill them."

"And then we forget that we're all supposed to climb over that poison to get to the next objective," SlamBang adds.

"We're all taking the same damn risks, here," Shining Guardsman insists: "All of us."

"We're not all immortal, though, are we?" the harpoon hunter says, gesturing to the fight going on -- especially to all the Aesir who are chopping their way through the enemy: "Some of us have to sell our lives pretty dearly-"

"How dare you say that..." the cyborg hisses: "After what just happened? How dare you say that!"

"I'm a villain, mate," Kweekweg chuckles: "Nice isn't in the description-"

"It sure isn't in mine, either," all the villains hear over their suit intercoms just then.

"Um, yeah," SlamBang says: "Is that you, Myron?"

"It is, yes," the former Underman says: "And I've heard every word, and I have to say I'm really !@#$ing disappointed. I thought we had an agreement."

"Well, it's like this-"

"Save it," Myron says: "You will stick to your part of the plan. You will do exactly as you're supposed to. Or I'll just blow your suits open from here and you can all suffocate for all I care."

There's a moment of silence, and then the villains nods: "Yes, sir" they say in near-unison.

"Stand your ground and aim your damn guns," Shining Guardsman says, rocketing away: "Don't make me come back to tell you that."

The Sound smiles, and then beams it at his two companions, thinking he's won.

But as soon as he's turned away, SlamBang and KweeKweg look at one another, and are clearly thinking the same thing.

There's going to be a reckoning. And soon...

Saturday: 9/24/16

The old man stands on a bluff overlooking the sprawling camp at night, hands on his hips, and studies the motions of those below.

He pretends he doesn't hear the woman as she approaches -- stealthy and sly, and quite unlike the creature she's got inside of her. But as soon as she gets within a few feet the Great Spirit chuckles.

"How long did you know?" Yanabah asks, not bothering to sneak up the rest of the way.

"How long did I know you were there?" he asks, his voice deep and firm: "Or how long did I know you were coming?"

"Both."

"I knew you were there because I heard you before you got to the bluff," he chuckles, adjusting the campy, offensive tie he's wearing today: "You walk pretty loud."

"I thought I was being silent."

"Maybe to most. I really should teach you how to move as I do. Without disturbing so much as a blade of grass."

"I'd love to learn that," she says, with no little amount of reverence: "I still don't know why you're being so nice to me."

"Because I knew you were coming," the Great Spirit answers: "All this has been foretold."

"All of this?" she asks, gesturing to the camp below.

"This great battle we stand on the brink of," he explains further: "The struggle that was. The conflict that is. The things yet to come..."

He looks far away for a moment, as though he's seeing through things, again. When he looks back at her it's as though he's seeing through her skin and into her soul.

"Bad times are coming, granddaughter," he says, putting a hand on her shoulder: "Will you still walk with me?"

"Yes," she swears, putting a hand on his hand: "Forever, if you'll have me."

"Will you fight with me?"

"You have to ask?"

"I do."

"Then yes," she swears as well.

"And will you not fight for me, when the time comes?" he asks: "If I tell you to lay down your gun and your bow and your knife? To let the being inside you rage but not let it out? Will you do that as well?"

"Of course," she says, not sure where this is going: "I swear it."

He nods, and then slowly turns from her to look down at the camp.

"The storm's coming," he explains: "First the wind changes. Then the sky darkens. When the rain comes, some will hide. And when the lightning strikes, more will run.

"It's going to be some sad times, that storm," he promises: "But after the storm, there will be sunshine, again..."

She stands by his side, proud to be there -- thinking she understands what he means.

And he stands there, doing his best to hide his sadness -- knowing she wont' realize what he means until it's too late...

* * *

"... and no one's here, I swear," the weird-acting security guard whispers into a sub-dermal communicator, located between his jaw and his ear: "Well, other than me. And that other guard. But he's on the other side of the building-"

"!@#$ing focus, you goddamn goofball," the person he's talking to growls at him: "If you screw this up I swear I'm tossing your ass into a blender."

"Whatever, boss," Gosheven sighs, looking down yet another long corridor and wondering if the secure room he's looking for is here: "Just don't blow me up, okay?"

"I told you-"

"Yeah, yeah," the shapeshifter (currently disguised as Jose Rodrigo, 34) snorts: "Tell it to poor Swiftfoot, if you can find him."

SPYGOD falls silent at that, and Gosheven doesn't know if he said the right thing at last, or maybe said the last thing he'll ever say.

"Have you heard anything from Mars, yet?" he asks, trying to defuse the tension after a minute too long of stonelike silence.

"If I did, don't you think you'd have !@#$ing heard it?"

"With you? I have no damn idea," the shapeshifter says, shrugging: "For all I know you've heard from Straffer every half hour, you've made it there and back twice, and Elvis called up the other night to complain about where you stashed him."

"He's in no shape to complain about a damn thing," the superspy says: "And I don't have time for your chatter."

"Okay," he sighs, but a second later he realizes he's found what he's looking for.

"Almacenamiento Especial 52," he reads off the door: "No abrir puerta de alarma. Peligro, no entre. Me chinga su esposo."

"You !@#$ing wish," SPYGOD snorts: "You got the way in, right?"

"Got it," he chuckles, using Jose's stolen keycard to gain access to the large storeroom. He's inside in less than a second, and then using everything he learned from the guard -- once he got him into several complicated and compromising positions -- to turn off the security systems made to keep those guards from snooping too much. 

"Do you have it in sight?" SPYGOD demands, not liking the silence.

"Do I !@#$ing ever," Gosheven says, whistling at the sight of what's dominating the room. 

"Well good, then," the superspy says: "Hold the damn fort as long as you have to. I'll have the Roaring Boys there in exactly five minutes, ten seconds."

"And then what?"

"And then, there's someone else I need you to procure for me," SPYGOD says.

"Who's that?" the shapeshifter chuckles, wondering how long it'll take the other guard to get to this point, and what he'll do to him when he does: "The guy who knows how to work this thing?"

And when SPYGOD tells him, Gosheven's only response is "who...?" 

Sunday: 9/25/16

"... Director Straffer of the UN Space Service, you !@#$ing acid-!@#$ing piece of garbage!" the blonde cyborg screams, shooting the latest emissary from the hole to pieces as he does.

"Sir!" Senator Ted Cruz says, clearly aghast: "Language!"

"I don't think that really means a damn thing, right about now," Shining Guardsman says -- his cobbled-together armor barely holding up in the face of what they now stand before.

They've finally done it. They've broken past the final guardians, the last defenses. They've strode past nightmare barriers and spiritually-toxic emplacements.

And now they stand on the shores of the great hole in time that has haunted the Lunar Planum for countless ages.

The enemy can't send any more of those massive crabs through, anymore. The moment they appear, New Man fires down the way and kills it before it even gets started towards them.

All they can do is send these horrible little things -- strange mockeries of the human form, some of them wearing faces both familiar and tragic -- to try and broker some kind of truce.

(The last one was a Lightship pilot they'd lost early in the siege. Seeing her made Straffer furious. Hearing her talk... well, that brought out the guns.)

"So now what shall we do?" Orn of the Vanir asks, patting his borrowed hips as he looks through the bag of tricks his vessel brought along or made here: "Is there a trick or a toy you shall require to travel into that?"

"Yes," Myron communicates from back in the drill tank, some distance away -- his team settling matters with the nasty things the last few batches of crabs gave birth to after they died: "I'm sure we'd all like to know what to do now?"

"There is, yes," Straffer says, grinning: "This has been a long, slow crawl. It ends only one way. We get in there, and we stop it up on the other side."

"And how do we do that?" Myron asks: "You and Odin sort of hashed that out. I only got every other word."

"And what do you mean by we?" Ted Cruz asks, hoping that this cup might yet be lifted from him.

And Straffer smiles, and is about to explain.

Until someone pulls a sword and something really stupid...

* * *

"... like get right on television and talk about us," Karl says, holding Randolph's hand.

"I want to," Randolph says, trying not to squeeze his son's hand too hard. It might snap the brittle bones under that papery, clear skin.

"So you don't lose any of the feeling?"

"So they know," the outlaw reporter says: "They know what happened to you. They know who you are, and what you did. They know all those special things about you, your brothers, your sisters..."

"They're all in here, still," the withered old man smiles, tapping his forehead: "The link between us. When one of us dies, it's like the rest of us get something of them. A little piece of their soul, maybe."

"I wish I could do that," Randolph says, trying so hard not to cry: "Have you in my head."

"You do," Karl says, putting his other hand down so he can hold his father's with both of them: "You always will."

With that he smiles, and closes his eyes. 

And the last piece of the tragic legacy of ABWEHR dies...

* * *

"... if I fucking drop this," the Alter-Earth SPYGOD insists, looking intently at the vial he's just concocted using the Wandering Shadow's rather impressive laboratory. 

"And this poison, you say, can kill a god?" Loki asks, seeming rather incredulous. 

"It doesn't look like much, does it?" the doppelganger chuckles darkly, putting the vial down into a safe container: "Just gooey water. If you rub some of this shit over a non-porous surface it'll dry up in minutes, but still be good for at least a whole week."

"And then?"

"And then, on contact with skin..." the counterworld man grins: "It does two things very fucking quickly. The first is that it binds the soul to its physical container. And the second...?"

He takes a narrow pipette of the stuff from the vial, and heads over to a rat in a small, glass box he's gotten from the dead spymaster's stores. One drop goes splat on the thing's head.

And a second later, the rat drops down -- its skull a hollow, red bowl that's turning to liquid as they watch.

"The second is that it consumes the body, like the venom of a Ridgebacked Wyrm," Loki says, astonished at how quickly it works: "Like a stack of dishes falling to the ground, and crashing to powder."

"I was gonna say a row of dominoes, but I don't know if they fucking have them in Asgard." 

"We have something similar," Loki says: "And you are certain this will work?"

"I've used it a time or two before." 

"On your enemies?" the trickster grins: "Or your friends?"

"A friend is just an enemy waiting for the right fucking moment to stab you in the godsdamned back," the SPYGOD of Alter-Earth proclaims: "I prefer to think of teammates."

"And I prefer to have slaves," Loki smiles: "Especially useful ones."

"So now what do we do," the servant in question asks: "Master?"

"Find the right rat..." Loki muses, holding up the glass cage to watch the red, semi-transparent goo that used to be a lab animal rolling around the bottom...

* * *

... of the cavern floor, Freyja's blade still stuck through his borrowed heart.

"I told you, husband, that I would I lay you low for this insult," she says, her knee on Odr's neck: "And so I have done."

"You crazy..." Straffer gasps, looking around as all the Aesir there -- what few yet remain -- raise their swords and point them in the direction of the strategic talents and combat troops: "What are you doing?"

"Attending to a matter of honor," the Shieldmaiden says, giving him a clear look of 'stay the !@#$ back': "One I feel no need to explain."

"I could well explain it to them, my wife," Odr gasps -- still some life in Xhasm's breast, after all: "But I think they would fail to understand."

"You should have accepted the golden tears, fool," she mutters, stamping on his neck -- breaking it not quite in two, and ending his life.

"You just killed our best chance of going there and coming back!" Straffer shouts: "Xhasm knew-" 

"Nothing of what we know," Freyja announces: "The All-Father is dead. His son has likewise fallen. All that remains for us now is the final war. The Ragnarok.

"And it lies within!" she proclaims, pointing to the hole in time and space they stand before...

* * *

"... we go in," Myron says to the others in the tank: "I'm not letting this get !@#$ing ruined at the last minute by her getting religion."

And he turns to do so, in that moment forgetting who's in the tank with him.

And SlamBang and KweeKweg look to one another, and then to The Sound, who's also not paying attention.

And then...

* * *

... Naglfar -- a ship made from the nails of thousands of dead men -- quickly turns from orbit, and begins to hurtle towards a certain spot on the surface of Mars.

And then...

* * *

... and all the remaining Olympians scream in pain as one of their number vanishes from their presence...

...Martha Samuels decides she's had enough of waiting for an answer about her son's whereabouts, and goes to put on a long-neglected, newly-augmented uniform...

... The Candidate looks at the crumbling thing on his lapel -- afraid to take off his jacket for fear of it falling apart -- and realizes he's on his own...

... and new pilgrims arrive at the protest camp, all wishing to speak to their spirits, and not caring about the National Guard that's currently observing their movements....

... as the Alter-Earth SPYGOD listens to what his so-called master commands of him, and finds it rather fitting...

... and Randolph Scott and Velma Dinkley bury their adopted children side by side, so they will always be together...

... and Hanami bows deeply before the red and silver beings she has just met, truly awed by their power and grace...

... and Red Wrecker and Dragonfly hide out in Charlotte, drinking and laughing as they wonder how long they can stay AWOL and get away with it...

 ... and authorities at Costa Rica's Laboratorias de Ciencias y de Almancenamiento Nacionales cannot explain how their central lockup at Cartago was burgled and then burned down...

... and SPYGOD realizes what a lack of news from Mars must mean, and activates the Roaring Boys to begin Operation Plagiarism...

... at which, ten minutes later, a well-known writer gets abducted between rooms in his house, and scuttled away to an unknown destination...

* * *

... as the surface of Mars buckles and then collapses in a certain spot -- doubtlessly burying everyone and everything that was there under billions of tons of red rubble -- a split second before the ship of the Aesir crashes right into it. 

There isn't so much an explosion as there is an absence of aftermath. No sound of a blast. No bright lights. 

Just a hole in reality that opens and closes, leaving nothing behind to show it was ever there.

Dust clouds churn and settle. The twin moons float on by. The sun rises, then crests, and then sets.

And if Mars itself feels it should stop silently spinning to mark the end of not one war, but two, it makes no sign.

(SPYGOD is listening to Crapage (Front 242) and having a Naglfare) 

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)