"Gahaha! Too late, Skipper!" Mordecai Tri-Arm guffawed, tearing his shirt off with all three of his eponymous arms. "Just half an hour left until this ship's crushed by cruel gravity -- and you and your cretinous crew with it! You're finished!"
Skipper laughed just as loudly as he landed on the slick surface of the airship, the rain and wind blowing his hair back. The eternal storm of Moloch 9 raged around them, flashes of lightning occasionally illuminating their bout.
"Really?" Skipper shot back, wiping the rain from his green eyes. "Funny -- I thought I was doing pretty well, personally."
He'd lost his longcoat much earlier in the fight, back on the factory fall, leaving little more than a black shirt and his Aether to protect him from the raging winds. The rain falling around him seemed to shine green as it reflected the light of his emerald essence.
All three of Mordecai's eyes -- why wasn't he named after those? -- were fixed on Skipper's form. The third of them, perched on his forehead, gently oozed blood that sparked with putrid brown Aether. He licked his thin lips.
"You know," he purred, flexing his triplet biceps. "I might be convinced to let you folks live. You've proven you're strong, after all, brother. Why not use those talents for me, huh? Just give back what you stole. I pay well." His green skin, another mark of his Scurrant heritage, glistened in the rain.
Skipper grinned, but there was no humour in it. "You'd need a billion stator a day to buy me off, pal -- and even then I'd betray ya. Gotta decline. Thanks for letting me catch my breath, though. Really appreciate it."
Mordecai narrowed his eyes. "Y, you are an asshole. No wonder the Avaman wants you dead so bad."
The green of Skipper's eyes grew just a little colder. "Well, you know, I've got that effect on people. Heartbeat Shotgun."
Skipper launched off the ground, zooming towards Mordecai's position, his hands cast behind him. Just from looking at him, it would be tempting to think such a maneuver was easy, but in this tempest it was anything but -- the on-the-fly calculations needed to fly through that chaos without being cast aside like a stray leaf were almost unimaginable.
Brown Aether coalesced around Mordecai's body as he braced himself, his third eye squeezing open to such a degree that it nearly popped out of the socket. The blood that oozed out from it blasted forward, hardened and sharpened to such a degree that it was like a watercutter. Mordecai turned his head this way and that, doing his best to slice the incoming Skipper to ribbons.
Red and green danced around as Skipper weaved his way around the blood cutter, each slash missing him by mere inches. More than once he was forced to use Heartbeat Bayonet to parry a particularly persistent angle of attack, and each time he did droplets of stray blood splattered onto the deck below.
Dancing through the wind and blood, Skipper's cry was barely audible -- but it was audible enough.
"Ruth!"
She leapt into action, appearing from behind a nearby control tower, charging towards Mordecai in a serpentine pattern. Her Skeletal Set was already on, and her claws kicked up sparks as they dragged along the ground.
Mordecai swung in her direction, his third eye briefly swelling to twice its usual size before deploying a massive bubble of blood. The blood-bubble lunged after Ruth, pursuing her with horrifying speed for a moment before exploding.
Shards of crystallized blood like icicles launched towards Ruth, and she skidded to a halt as she prepared to dodge -- but far too late. If not for the word that passed her lips, she may have been run through right then and there.
"Bruno!"
The blonde young man leapt in the way of the blow, deploying forcefields from his hands that deflected the rain of shards. Then, bringing his own body low to the ground, he hissed:
"Serena!"
The del Sed twins switched places, and as Serena charged forward she gathered the remnants of the blood together in her hands in the form of two crystalline red swords. She and Ruth charged towards Mordecai from the right, as Skipper zoomed in from the left.
The Scurrant couldn't defend against all of them, so he elected to dodge instead -- but even that wasn't going to work.
As he went to jump back, Serena leapt up into the air with a flare of pink Aether and hurled one of her red swords as if it was a javelin. It pierced Mordecai's lower-right hand, impaling it against the deck of the airship -- pinning him in place. In that moment of recoil, his blood-beam ceased, giving Ruth the opening she needed to rush in and pin both his remaining arms with her claws.
Mordecai screamed in pain, falling to his knees, his body restrained -- but before long, that third eye would start blasting once more, and worse.
Skipper landed back on the deck, transitioning from a roll into a dead sprint. He ran towards Mordecai, arms pumping, his gaze resolute. He wouldn't make it in time, but he already knew that -- and so he called out once again:
"It's your turn! North!"
North grinned unseen to himself. About time.
The invisibility hologram he'd applied to himself dissipated, and he stepped forward cracking his knuckles. He'd reappeared behind Mordecai, and as he extended both his hands towards the Scurrant's head, his enemy got only the briefest panicked glance of North's form. A grey-haired Umbrant in a black baggy coat.
"Wait!" he cried.
Too late.
Nightmare Underground: Eleven Devils in the Rain.
A small black bubble appeared, utterly enveloping Mordecai's head. He thrashed and writhed, but the bubble followed his movements utterly with his limited range of motion. This move wasn't really that impressive from the outside, to be honest, but North was more than aware of what was going on inside that little bubble.
You couldn't come up with an illusion technique without testing it on yourself, after all.
Inside that bubble, Mordecai Tri-Arm would be experiencing an endless landscape of rain -- not so different from this storm, only far more infinite and eldritch in its design. The drops would be falling at unnatural angles, obeying the laws of some ungodly gravity as they coursed and scoured through the air. The only interruption to that deluge would be the titular Eleven Devils -- human-shaped voids in the eternal storm, surrounding Mordecai's viewpoint.
If that was all, North's Nightmare Underground would be little more than a series of pretty pictures -- but he had quite the nasty streak. The way light bounced off those raindrops, the angles and colours between the Devils: all of it was designed to trigger the human brain's nausea response. With each revolution of recognition, that response would intensify until…
A spurt of vomit poured out from within the black bubble. Self-explanatory.
The admittedly disgusting distraction had done its work, though, allowing Skipper to reach their position before Mordecai could retaliate. Emerald Aether coursing around the lower half of his body, Skipper hurled himself towards the Scurrant --
-- and sent him flying off into the storm with a well-placed dropkick.
Skipper landed on the deck with a hard thud, but the grin on his face didn't fade in the slightest. He whipped his hand back over his face, getting his dark hair out of his eyes.
"Another job well done," he panted.
----------------------------------------
It was two nights later, at a lightpoint a few systems away, when North confronted Skipper. The older man was reading through his script on the balcony of the hotel they were staying at, but quickly stuffed it back into his pocket when he heard North approaching.
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North frowned as he stepped out. Quite often he'd tried to snoop in on Skipper's affairs, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't quite hush his footsteps enough to escape Skipper's notice. His holograms could fool the eyes, but the ears were another matter entirely.
"Something up?" Skipper asked, taking a quick swig from a canned drink he had resting on the railing. "Pretty late to be walking around, yeah?"
"Could say the same to you, boss," North said, stopping beside him. He leaned over the railing, eyes scanning the dim lights of the station beyond.
"I'm not walking around, though," Skipper replied, grinning as if he'd outsmarted the Umbrant. "I'm standing right here."
"Then I guess I ain't walking around either, am I?"
"True enough." Skipper extended the hand holding the can towards North, squinting to read the text on its side. "Can I offer you some, uh… Noxious Pop in this trying time?"
North wrinkled his nose. "Nah. Do my best not to touch anything but water. Never know what kinda chemicals they're putting in it."
"Fair." Skipper returned the can to the railing. "So, Mr. North, what is it I can do for you this fine evening? I've already sent you your pay for the month."
And it had been as generous as usual -- only now, that was just as worrying as anything else.
North cleared his throat. "I did some, ah, independent research on that pirate we took down. Interesting character."
Artificial wind whistled over the balcony, and Skipper audibly clicked his tongue. "Ah."
"Turns out," North raised an eyebrow, an accusatory sliver entering his tone. "Mordecai Tri-Arm was one of Paradise Charon's premium boytoys -- in other words, one of her operatives. So that's what we're doing now, huh? We're messing with Contenders?"
Skipper sighed, rubbing his forehead with a finger. He suddenly looked very tired.
"What is it you want, North?" he said tersely. "Some more money to stay quiet about it?"
"I wanna know what the hell it is we stole from that guy, boss. That's why we were there, right? Grabbing something off of him? If I'm stickin' my neck in the guillotine, I wanna know what the hell it's for, right?"
Skipper fished around in his jacket pocket, pulling out a tiny data stick that he held up in the air. It was no bigger than his little finger, unmarked, but Skipper held onto it as carefully as if it were a bomb.
"Am I supposed to know what that is?" North said, turning around to lean his back against the railing.
"A sneaky little back door the Second Contender had set up in the Supremacy's system architecture," murmured Skipper, turning the data stick around in the light. "Figured I'd make use of it myself."
North raised an opportunistic eyebrow. "Back door? What, you're looking to mess around with their weapons or something?"
"Try communications."
A grin spread across North's face. "Niiice. What's the plan, then? Take down their communication network and ransom it back to them? It's a risky play, but it could work. Nice dividends if you make it out clean, too."
"Not… exactly."
"What, then?"
There was no answer.
The grin faded from North as he looked up at Skipper. As he stood there, silent, the older man had a complicated expression on his face -- like he was wrestling with whether or not to say any more. Finally, however, he opened his mouth.
"I want to change the shape of this world," he said.
North laughed. "What? What's that supposed to mean?"
With another sigh, Skipper dispensed with the subtlety. "I want to take down the Supreme. I want to take down the Supremacy. I want them not to exist anymore. I need them not to exist anymore. This back door will help with that, when it comes to it." There was a strange, feverish tone to his voice -- like he was a man possessed.
The laughter trailed off and died. "You're… you're joking, right?" North said, almost pleadingly, like he was talking to an elderly relative who'd begun to succumb to senility.
Skipper's face was dead serious. "I'm not joking." He hurriedly returned the data stick to his pocket.
"But…" North went on, another chuckle slipping into his tone. "But that's crazy. That's like saying you wanna take down the laws of physics, or water being wet, or…"
"There was a time before the Supremacy," Skipper said simply. "Why can't there be a time after?"
North tried to forage for another argument, but the same one just came out of his mouth again. "But it's crazy."
Skipper sighed, stepping back from the railing, plunging both his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "Maybe," he said. "That makes me crazy, too, I guess. Wouldn't surprise me."
He began to walk back inside, pausing only when North shouted it a third time.
"You're nuts!"
Skipper looked back over his shoulder. "Don't you wanna believe in something?" he muttered, with something approaching pity, before passing through the doors.
North stayed out there a long time, staring out at the dark, his body still even as cold air washed over it.
He'd always prided himself on his ability to think, to reason his way out of situations. He'd grown up picking pockets, advanced to cracking safes, and evolved until he reached this level -- tricking the very light itself into doing what he wanted. Through it all, he'd considered his wit his greatest weapon.
That hadn't changed: a chill went down his spine when he considered what would have happened if he hadn't asked these questions. Would he have found out what was going on here before it was too late? Unlikely. Bruno didn't care enough to ask, Ruth was too boneheaded, and Serena was the same but with air. He'd only have understood just how crazy Skipper was once he'd plunged them into the fire.
To make it anywhere in this world, you needed to be unburdened. North understood that.
Relationships, responsibilities… all that stuff just served to weigh you down. Even ideals -- no, especially ideals. Those, in particular, were a chain around the neck, pulling you down to the ocean floor.
Dying for your beliefs made a pretty story, but it didn't change the fact that you were dying. You'd live a much happier life not believing in anything. North turned away from the cold night and headed back inside.
It seemed to him this was a good time to make some exit preparations.
----------------------------------------
Present Day…
"What?" North spoke to Ruth through his hologram, standing over the unconscious guards. "Don't trust me?"
He'd learnt to throw his voice a long time ago -- it was useful for lending his illusions a little more reality. The moment the last word left his lips, he began to move: slipping past Ruth and heading down the opposite hallway, his own invisibility hologram concealing him from sight.
It had been fun to catch up with his old crew, but it was clear now that they were far too suspicious of him to be useful. He wouldn't be able to get away with anything with their eyes on him -- and there was still a whole lot he needed to do on the planet Panacea.
He had a job to do here, after all. The turtle had paid well for his services.
Ruth's cry echoed down the hallways as his fake copy dissipated, but he was far enough away now that it wasn't a concern. He had bigger problems -- for one, what he was supposed to do next.
He'd been hired to help the Coalition of Three take down Titan Hessiah, but that was easier said than done. This outbreak or whatever it was had been the greatest hurdle -- but even without it, infiltrating the upper floors would have been a difficult task. Heat and motion sensors meant that invisibility wasn't an option, so he'd had to steal the identity of one of the security officers who'd died unseen in the initial attack.
With a nearly invisible flare of transparent Aether, North reassumed his disguise -- long red hair that didn't exist hanging over his eyes. He'd fudged Micah Mallion's height and weight slightly, sculpting the image to fit his own proportions, but it didn't seem that anyone had noticed.
Apparently, Ansem had already tried to execute Titan Hessiah and failed. North had been instructed to get closer to him, then, observe him and figure out what he was up to -- but that wasn't so easy either. He kept his employees at arm's length, and spent most of his time on a private floor so well-secured North couldn't even step foot on it. And besides…
Titan Hessiah did not sweat.
To be more accurate, Titan Hessiah didn't always remember to sweat. North would catch him sometimes, in sweltering heat, his skin as dry as sandpaper. Only then would he sweat, as if it was something he needed reminding of.
North had no idea what was going on there, but it sent shivers down his spine -- and he knew to leave well enough alone. You couldn't pay him enough to go anywhere near that guy.
Which begged the question, of course, how were they going to take him down? North prided himself on making efficient use of his resources, and in this case those resources were Skipper's crew. He wouldn't allow himself to be captured by them, but that didn't mean he couldn't use them.
His security communicator beeped, and North put it to his ear to hear the announcement.
"Notice to all officers," Commander Marsh's gruff voice came through loud and clear. "We're bringing a potentially biohazardous entity into quarantine -- Floor 16, isolation chamber. I want that floor sweeped and cleared before we get up there. Make sure nobody down below goes wandering, either."
North smirked to himself.
Opportunity had knocked. Opportunity always knocked.