Chapter 165
The Reunion
Saturday
Vision sat from her up front view of the funeral. As a member of the League, she had been awarded one of the most coveted seats in the entire event. She even had a more prestigious seat than members of The Clan did, and from what was said by Aru’ka moments ago, it was apparent that The Clan had a better chance of recruiting her than she did as a member of the League.
Aru’ka’s words had cut deeply, as it clearly exposed them and their intentions for what they were, they were here to recruit her, not to pay homage to the man who made this encounter possible. Yet, something was clearly wrong with this picture. Well not the picture, but what was happening to the casket. Inside the casket was a deeply crimson color of power that sent shivers down Vision’s spine from just looking at it. When she had asked others about it a moment ago, everyone had been dismissive. Well mostly everyone, as Wondra had hit her up on side in a personal chat room.
Personal Chat from Wondra: What is it that you see?
Personal Chat to Wondra: It is a deeply crimson energy that feels repugnant to look at.
Personal Chat from Wondra: Is it a large or small surge of power.
Personal Chat to Wondra: It is small, well for now. I think someone else noticed it and started putting up encapsulating runes around it. The runes are very powerful.
Vision said the last part, having seen a direct line of energy go out from Aru’ka to the casket at about the same time the tiny thread of energy began to bloom within the casket. Just when Vision thought it was enough to warn the others about, that energy had been dissipated, and then seemingly dissolved by the complex runic structure that had been placed around the casket.
Personal Chat from Wandra: Do you know who set up the runes?
Personal Chat to Wondra: Believe it or not, I think it is the Aru’ka girl.
There was a slight pause as that thought was relayed, then finally Wondra responded.
Personal Chat from Wondra: I believe you. There is a lot to that girl that even I can’t puzzle out. For now, keep a close eye on the strange energy and most importantly keep me apprised of anything else that happens.
Personal Chat to Wondra: Will do.
And like that, the intense conversation with Wondra was over. Now that the pressure was off, and the moment had passed, Vision felt a surge of pride and panic hit her in equal measures. Pride that she had proven her value to Wondra, so much so that Wondra had not only spoken to her directly but had also given her a personal task to accomplish. Then as soon as she felt giddy for being recognized, she then immediately felt the pressure of having to perform a needed task for Wondra, and proving that she deserves a spot on this team, which was where the panic set in.
Before she could get too caught up in her plans to watch the different energies and detail what was happening to Wondra, when she asked, the priest went and flipped the script on this whole agenda.
“Before this gets too far, I am told that Judge, Warder’s loving wife has a few things to say.” The Priest stated.
Mophisto: What?
Night Wing: I don’t think this was part of the agenda.
Night Wing of course was stating what everyone else was thinking, that this was not part of the agenda. Even Vision found herself flipping over the double-sided pamphlet in her hand to see if she had missed something.
Wondra: Silence, and you will find out.
Wondra said into the chat, then staring down both sides of the members of the League that flanked her. When she spoke, even Titanus listened, as he sat up perfectly straight and prepared to hear what was going to come next.
Everything had been happening so quickly that Vision missed the moment when Judge, Aru’ka, and a random male all stood up and went to the podium that was standing behind the casket.
Standing up to the second podium that was on a hidden catwalk behind the casket, Judge stood dead center, while Aru’ka was on her right and the male in a Super costume was on her left side. Looking over to the two, both nodded to her, before she began speaking.
“Thank you for this, and most importantly thank you for coming today. To celebrate the life of a great man.” Judge began, then took in a deep breath as she looked like she was about to tremble. It was only now that Vision realized the way her uniform looked slightly too loose on the goddess of a Super. Yes, she was still powerful, yes she still filled out the uniform in all the right places, but her cheeks were thin, there was a slight looseness that was not apparent on most Supers. Looking down at her own uniform Vision could see that her uniform was a lot more filled out. This was odd to Vision, but she couldn’t quite place her finger on the reason why.
So caught up was Vision in the moment, that she almost missed the gentle touch from the male Super. Was this a boyfriend? A side lover that was there to push her on? Had Judge already moved on so quickly from Warder that she felt now was the time to bring her paramour out? Had Warder been with this paramour? All these questions and more went through Vision’s mind as she watched, trying to understand why they all were standing up there. Then a quick look back by Judge to the male Super caused a dazzling smile to form on Judge’s lips. It was there in that look that Vision felt a pang of jealousy, as that smile denoted warmth from a goddess. Warmth that Vision felt she lacked the courage to try to achieve with the seasoned warrior.
“As many of you might remember, it was just over a month ago when Warder and I retired from being Supers. Yet, we still continued to help out where we could. Warder’s death will go down as another statistic proving that once a Super retires, they should stay retired.”
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Nervous chuckling.
“At the time of our retirement we were asked vigorously to ‘take it off.’ The it in this case obviously being our masks. At the time we did not. Not because we are afraid of what we look like, that we secretly had a bad reputation with our neighbors that would come out shortly after our retirement in a tell all book.”
Chuckle.
Now the crowd was laughing, especially at the expense of the recently retired Captain Hammer, whose neighbor came out with a tell all book called “Captain SHammer.” Where they proceeded to tell everything the could about being neighbors with the Captain, details from always missing the trash day. To never mowing their lawn, to the hideous blackout curtains he chose to hang up to hide his day-to-day Super life. Normally such a book would be squashed by loyal representatives, but apparently the good Captain had burned so many bridges during his career, that once he had gone public with his name, the representatives no longer felt it possible to squash all the media stories about him.
The book itself wasn’t that bad, but the book being published meant that editors and journalists that were forced to sit on bad stories related to the Hammer were considered fair game, and that produced a landslide of negative publicity that ruined Captain Hammer’s retirement, where he had a string of movie and endorsement deals lined up that were all cancelled.
“No, the reason we kept our identities a secret was because we were the proud parents of two future legacies.”
Mophisto: Legacies?
Night Wing: I knew it!
Linker (Moderator): Settle down.
Vision was about to post something to the group chat, but found that there had been a ten second ban.
The Moderator of this chat has placed a ten second ban on all posts.
Seeing the message, Vision let out a huff.
“Legacies?” Vibranium called out, even going so far as to raise his hand as if he was in class.
Judge, paused from her apparently prepared speech to look up and lock eyes with the purple suited Super.
“That is correct. I would like to introduce my twins.” Judge said, placing her hand on the back of both Aru’ka and the boy and pushing them forward, while taking a half step back.
Click, flash, click.
At that there was a flutter of cameras going off as everyone took images of the three together.
“As many of you are already aware, our…” Judge trailed off, as she realized she used the wrong pronoun. “My daughter, Aru’ka is already making a name for herself as a well-known Super. But what you might not know is that her brother Skywalker, is also a fully-fledged Super.”
There was a slight pause as she stated the name Skywalker, as it appeared she had a hard time accepting that as the name being used by her own son.
Mophisto: So, with a name like Skywalker, we can assume he has the flight ability?
Night Wing: Probably.
Vision was surprised to see that the ban had been lifted, but then realized that it had obviously been more than ten seconds. At that Vision wondered why Linker had paused chats but figured that it likely had something to do with the idea that people would be chatting about what was happening so much, that they missed what was being said. At least that is what Vision assumed the slight pause in the use of Linker’s chat feature was for.
Polytechnique: Are we still only here to recruit Aru’ka? Or do we want the brother as well.
Titanus: How does the brother measure up, @Vision.
With Titanus calling out her name like that, the text flashed red, indicating that she was meant to respond. Shaking herself, Vision always felt that the chat feature was so incongruous with reality. She read the chat once, then realized Titanus was effectively asking for her to use her powers to evaluate the brother, without stating that. Feeling slightly flustered, she paused, and then looked up and then truly began to evaluate the brother.
That was when she found him to be something special.
That was part of why Vision was on the team, she had chosen all the Perception rewards she could that would help her identify any Super and their class. The fact that this one was hidden implied that he had some obfuscation techniques available to his class. Ones that hid both his name and his class. Fortunately, she could see the rating of the class and what his level was.
Vision: He is a level 32 Legendary class, one that can hide both the personal and class name.
Vision replied succinctly to the group mind-chat, trying to answer everything as quickly and efficiently as possible. With that there was a long pause, as apparently Titanus and the other leaders of the guild all thought together in a side chat. While Vision couldn’t see the chat occurring, she could see the weave of power that linked Wondra, Titanus, Linker, Refuse, and Transition together, showing that the four oldest members were hosting a personal conference.
Finally after a few seconds of deliberation, the chat broke and Titanus was the one who spoke.
Titanus: All right, the game plan is still the same, we want to keep trying to get Aru’ka. But we are also going to bring in the brother. With that @Night Wing, @Kamala, @Vision, and @Zandia, you four will be our first attempt. Go up to him and try to ‘convince’ him to join. Or at the very least make him feel like this is the place he wants to go.
Night Wing: You want us to seduce him?
Titanus: Do whatever you need to do to bring him to our side. He is a male, and you four are the prettiest of our new batch of recruits.
And like that, Vision felt slightly revolted at the fact that she now felt she had to prove herself to the team by seducing, or at the very least being overly friendly to the boy. Not that she thought the boy was bad looking, well with a face mask, it was kind of hard to tell honestly, but Vision felt that this was part of the job that she would rather not deal with. The fact that Titanus, one of the more chauvinistic Supers of all time was the one giving the command, as opposed to Wondra only made the command that much more repugnant to stomach. The fact that Wondra hadn’t given the command hopefully spoke to the idea that she was at least opposed to the idea, and did not concur with the order, but refused to speak out due to fear of not having a unified front for the team. That is what she hoped at least.
From there, the marching orders were clear. Their primary target was still to lure over Aru’ka, the necromantic healer, the dragon slayer, and now apparently master rune technician. The way they were going to do this was through the brother, and it was now Vision’s job to do so.
Vision was so distraught with her new task, that she almost lost track of her original goal that was given to her by Wondra.
Shiver.
Only an intense surge of spine chilling energy made her realize something was wrong. Then before she knew what was happening, she was already up on her feet.
“Sit down,” Wondra said, her voice coming out as an audible hiss that smacked into her ears.
Vision paused, and looked around, seeing that she was making a scene, but then realized the reason she was up on her feet.
Trembling.
Vision’s body was shaking from the sudden swelling and surge of energy. Her voice caught in her throat, she wanted to state what she was feeling, that the surge of evil energy was just too much, that they needed to get out, that something bad was going to happen. She wanted to say all of these things, but then her voice caught in her throat and all she could do was raise one trembling hand to the casket.
“Everyone needs to leave.” A calm voice spoke out over the loud speaker, pausing Vision turned to see that it was Aru’ka, who had pushed not only her mother, but her brother away to stand behind her.
“What is going on?” People shouted.
Now it was becoming more and more apparent, as the evil energy that had been held in check by a few lines of runes was suddenly being overwhelmed by surges of energy.
With a glance up, Vision saw no less than five thick threads of energy surging up, forming a dense dome around them, and then plunging down directly into the casket that had been held at bay due to runes keeping everything in. Unfortunately that ring of runes was shattered when external energies were applied, slamming into the structure and combining with the apparent anchor of this energy storm.
Wondra: What is happening.
Vision: I don’t know. I just…
Vision tried to think about it, tried to understand exactly what was happening. But for the life of her she could not understand. This was power on a scale and magnitude far greater than she had ever seen. These were energies that were corrosive in nature, powers that went against the natural laws of the world, and yet. And yet, they were here and now blindingly bright, and doubly repugnant to view.
Vision took an involuntary half step back, only to feel her wooden lawn chair shake from her action.
“Everyone, starting with the back, we need you to quickly get up and leave the immediate area.” Aru’ka said. Then with a movement, she was up on the railing that separated the raised platform they were on from the casket. Then jumping down, she jumped onto the casket.
Clatter, clump.
The sound of her feet landing and impacting the hard casket echoed all around.
Vision tried to understand what was happening, but then saw that Aru’ka could apparently see the evil energy as well as she stuck up her hand directly into the beam that was coming down, in an attempt to block it. At least that is what Vision thought, but it was too late.
A surge of runes came up again, but it was too late.
Slurp.
There was a sickening slurping sound, as the fabric of the universe opened up and something truly evil came through.
Running.
Vision was not afraid to admit that she listened to her instincts that told her to run. She wasn’t the only one as dozens of influential people, the President, her secret service members, and so many other dignitaries were all trying to escape.
Wondra: Rally on me.
Seeing the words in chat, Vision paused, she had only made it a step and a half away before she stopped and caught herself. Seeing that Wondra was there, the most powerful Super in the world, caused her to relax slightly. If she ran, that was it, her career with the League was over. There was also no chance of her surviving on her own, if that monster that was now being summoned from another dimension got free. No, her best chance at survival was to be with her team, right here, right now.
Realizing that, she turned to join Wondra and the others. She felt slightly relieved to see that Mophisto, the teleportation and illusion master had to teleport back as well.
Then just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, she saw the beginning of the demonic monster beginning to form, right from the casket, right where the body of Warder resided. Then with a shock, she realized something.
Vision: That….that’s Warder…