The moment my feet touched the ground here, I knew this place was doomed. The air itself looked contaminated, a red mist rolling through the air and wafting around me, bouncing off of the barrier I created to protect myself. There wasn’t a single living soul here as far as I could see, except for myself and the Angel floating with me.
My feet brought me to the locked door of a random house, one window kept open. I don’t know why they kept that window open, perhaps it was just slightly warm and they wished for some fresh air. But that random decision, probably not even consciously chosen, cost them their lives.
Teleporting the lock off of the door I stepped inside the building. I couldn’t hear any human’s, except for the sound of a TV. Heading through an open door I stepped inside of the living room, some crappy reality television still blasting even after its listeners had passed. Speaking of said listeners, all that was left now were two skeletons laying limp on the couch.
When I got next to them, I noticed the utter lack of any hint of organic material. Not a single hint of blood, flesh, skin, anything.
Hopefully, whatever they contained here would be consumed by that too. This place used to just be a small southern town with only a few hundred people living here, a small and tight-knit community where everyone knew each other. The only thing of note here was that it was the headquarters of a small and secret warehouse for the FFPA, not that anyone but a few dozen people knew that.
As I headed towards the location of the warehouse, I pondered what exactly caused this little… well… Freakout. There were a thousand reasons that someone in a small town might have a mental breakdown, but what could cause them to turn into a living plague? It felt… wrong to psychoanalyze, but he always did wonder. Wonder if he would have also turned into a Freak had he experienced the same things these people did.
Right as I arrived at the front door of the warehouse, I was interrupted by the voice of everyone’s favorite Angel “Hero, I wish to warn you that Unit 02 is approaching. It seems that the Puppet’s have noticed what is happening here, and have come to clean up their own messes”
I nodded my head and responded “Thanks Uriel… say, are you ever going to call me by my name?”
Of course, the Angel never responded because he has no sense of humor. Or perhaps he just doesn’t want to waste his time, who knows? Oh, the world is heating up-
Quickly I changed the barriers around me, changing the portal to instead banish anything near to a random spot in the galaxy somewhere, so far away that humanity hasn’t even discovered it exists and will never notice the changes in energy there. And as the flames hit my portal and went through, I was hit with the vision of an infinite void, filled with an infinite amount of energy. The energy pooled everywhere, tearing apart anything it could, yet it could never reach the end of the void. The energy burst like an exploding supernova, blinding my vision as I… well, fell on my ass, levitating above the ground by a few centimeters.
After a few moments I centered myself and found the entire area had been burnt to the ground. The air had gone from a red mist to being coated by a thick smog, covering the land. Where once there stood large strips of farmland and a deprecated community, there was now only ash. I noticed that Uriel had vanished at some point, leaving me alone with… her.
She was floating in the air, her humanoid shape partially abandoned as she had seemingly turned into a huge sphere. We knew she could detect and perceive things by heat signature, but given how oddly I had warped space, she shouldn’t know I was here. Well, she might still detect the spatial oddity, but I suppose some things were just inevitable. When you were having a confrontation against the Freak with the most Firepower (heh) you weren’t gonna be given any freebies.
Alright, enough pondering. Let’s get to it! Snapping my fingers, I banished all the smog to the surface of a random planet to clear the field. Then, I teleported myself next to her.. teleported her immediately to the surface of some random far off planet. I closed the link immediately, and teleported back to the ground. She… didn’t seem to be coming back anytime soon. Huh, that was eas-
The sky itself shone and my vision expanded. The planet itself was shown from a far off perspective, showing a ball of flame and heat rapidly crashing towards the earth. It smashed through the atmosphere and quickly went further, scattering the clouds of the planet as it headed towards the surface… of America.
Shooting up in alarm I disappeared from there, reappearing somewhere in some woods in Germany somewhere. I..; wasn’t exactly confident in my ability to tank a blow of that capability, thank god I managed to teleport away. Tapping into my awareness of the area, I startled as I realized the air seemed to be undergoing fucking nuclear fusion. Why in the fuck did that Snake create something like this?
No, no, calm yourself. You’re a big boy now, leading people by example. They… call you a Hero back at the base! Maxim the Hero! You couldn’t cower away from someone who was only the third most dangerous enemy you had to fight. There was still so much further to climb before you could truly be the hero Uriel said you were. So put on your big boy pants, and fucking go!
I teleported myself back to where that small town used to be, floating above what looked like a spherical cocoon of heat. It seemed by barrier’s could still hold out for now, though I wasn’t looking forward to my odds if I were to actually enter that place.
“You aren’t the Freak I was sent to suppress, are you? Not that it matters, you’ll be suppressed anyway.” That voice didn’t come from anywhere and my ability couldn’t pick up any disruptions in the space around me, yet… I still heard it.
“Are.. you mentally projecting into my brain? Please don’t do that?” God, he really needed to get some practice with big hero talk because this just sounds pathetic.
“Does it matter? Perhaps I’ll tell you once you become Unit 84, or something.” I once again didn’t even see the strike, the only thing I noticed was the psychic impact of the heat slamming against my barriers. It felt like my brain was exploding like a star, as I tried to comprehend what I was actually feeling. The level of heat here, and the control over its effects to the surroundings is just… god.
I didn’t even notice I had been sent downwards until I crashed against the ground, my back floating above the ground. She was standing over me now, having regained her humanoid form and attempting to.. punch me with her huge flaming fists? The strikes beating down on me further cracked my psyche, preventing me from understanding the information that was being sent into my brain. I… needed to figure something out, but what!
In a desperate attempt to give myself some space, my arms flailed in a slashing motion and created a… crack in space? My power was utterly silent on how the fuck that thing worked, as it just seemed to lead to a rift of pure nothingness. Still, the huge rift had destroyed the actual flames she seemed to be using.
“Neat trick.” The comment came from behind me, right before I was shot forward several kilometers as I vainly tried to stabilize myself. I suddenly paused in my movement, floating in the air in a hunch over position. I couldn’t even get up before two versions of her appeared, one attempting to stab me with a flaming sword and the other beating down on me.
Wait, two? That’s the same trick Uriel uses to confuse his enemies isn’t it. What did he say again? That he was just-I found myself tumbling all over the ground again and on instinct arrested my momentum, before making another slashing motion at one of her bodies. Instantly, a large spherical rift was made instead, which… instantly consumed her. That one was the punching one isn’t it? The… original?
Oh. I stood up, shouting loudly even as I ignored the attempted stabbings “Please, tell me I’m right about this! I’m going to fucking find you!”
It seems I hit the jackpot, the moment I said those words the clone detonated next to me. The heat was in the millions of degrees celsius, hotter than a nuclear explosion. Too much info flooded into my brain, yet I fanatically looked for something. The source! The source! I needed to find the source! If I could just find it!
My hand ripped through space, and I basically threw myself through it. I arrived and crashed onto a white tiled floor, my nose was assaulted with the weird chemical smell of a hospital room, my ears assaulted by the beeping of various pieces of medical equipment. I had arrived next to the hospital bed of someone who looked to be a comatose patient, a middle aged woman with long ginger hair and various odd looking pipes and needles plugged into her body. All around me I could see about four other hospital beds with various different patients, who were also each plugged into dozens of pipes.
Was… Unit 02 just a projection all along? It would explain how she could never be defeated by anyone, if she was just a projection of stupidly hot flames. It would also explain why someone so invulnerable would still be working to clean up the FFPA’s bullshit. I stepped closer to her to try and examine her. She looked so… human. Freaks usually looked mutated and horrifying in some way, abominations that just made it so easy to dehumanize them.
But as I looked at this woman’s chest slowly rising and falling from her breathing and the lines on her face, it wasn’t possible to dehumanize her anymore. Grabbing the emergency healing injection… thing that Uriel had given me and readying it to be injected, I steadied myself and reached out, mentally grabbing the space near her. Instantly, alarms began to sound, and I could feel people rushing towards me, and eyes on me via the various Cameras installed here.
When I was fully locked in, I teleported away. The process happened instantly and appeared back in our “heroic hideout” (also known as an abandoned warehouse in a destroyed city that we renovated to be fit for habitation). Immediately the various devices began blaring, all the screens turning red. I acted quickly, delicately teleporting away all the machinery and various other tubes inside of her body. Then I grabbed the healing injection and inserted it into her, praying that it’d work.
Luckily she didn’t seem to be dying, or turning into some horrible blob of flesh, or just… anything that those sick fucks at the FFPA would consider doing to someone. I kept my eye on her, warping space to create an invisible chair. Don’t judge me, powers were made to be used!
After a few minutes of her seeming fine, I started to wonder why it was so damn quiet here. The base was in an utterly abandoned area so the only human made noise here was done by us. I mean, Uriel did say they too would be looking for places containing sample’s of Unit 01 but they should have been back by now… I have a bad feeling about this.
Checking around with my power I quickly tried to scan for all of my compatriots, but I couldn’t find a single one of them. They weren’t even dead, I would have been able to notice if they did kick the bucket. Did they run into some sort of conceptual erasure Freak? If so, why do I remember them? Maybe something went wrong with some of Unit 01’s samples?
Scanning around didn’t reveal any more growth than usual. Unit 01 always grows and reduces in size every single day, but I couldn’t see anything unusual in its growth no matter how hard I searched. Still… Uriel was accompanying them wasn’t he?
I reached out and poked the link we had, waiting for him to show up. The response I got back was pretty simple, just telling me he was ‘occupied’. I sighed, fucking enigmatic bastard.
My observations were broken up by the sound of movement. Opening my eyes, I saw Unit 02 wide awake, her brown eyes keeping me in her line of sight as she attempted to sit up. Before she could try and make any violent moves, I gave her a small smile and said “Hi there! My name’s Maxim, and I don’t want to hurt you. Let’s just talk?”
She gave me a distrusting look, and just coughed instead of responding. “I.. do you need some water? I can get you some water if you want me to?”
A slow nod was the only response I got, but it was a response nonetheless! I rushed towards the kitchen (teleporting once I was roughly out of her line of sight) and filled up a glass, then rushed back. Walking next to her bedside I slowly put the glass down, and returned to my space bullshit chair.
Trying to break the ice, I awkwardly said “So…. nice weather we’re having today, huh?”
A confused, slow blink is my response. Then a slow, measured response “The clouds outside are foggy, and it’s about to rain. How exactly is that ‘nice weather’ we are having?”
I looked outside the window, and then energetically said “You raise a valid point! I just needed something to… melt the ice?”
“Isn’t that supposed to be breaking the ice?” She gave me an incredulous look, to which I just shrugged and smiled.
“Probably, but I felt like saying something else. You still got what I meant though, didn't you?”
She shrugged and didn’t respond for a while, seemingly distracted with something. I just sat back, letting the room get silent for a bit as she absentmindedly drank from her glass.
The silence was interrupted by the sound of a starting flame and burning cloth, looking I saw her stepping out of the bed with legs made of the same flame as her projection. Then, without me being able to even see any change they simply shifted back into her legs. Huh, clothes transformed too.
She hummed, and casually said “That still works. Now, tell me who you are before I melt your balls off.”
I jumped back slightly, sweating a bit “Geez, you make that threat so casually”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
She just shrugged, casually transforming her other limbs into flame too. I wondered if she was just immune to any changes in heat, or if her powers were just weird like that. “I lost my shit ten years ago when I transformed into the fucking sun, and I don’t think I ever found it again. Now, stop stalling”
The entire room began to crackle from the heat, weapons made of flame forming and threateningly pointing at me. I just stood my ground through, and calmly looked her in the eyes as I responded “As I said before, I’m Maxim! I belong to a… Well, a small group of people who want to prevent the whole Freak problem, and are trying to cut it off at its source. I don’t want to kill you right now, so let’s just have a quick walk-n-talk?”
Her eyes had a distrusting look in them as she spoke “If this some bullshit by that Snake, then I’ll melt you to bits. No one’s defenses are perfect.”
Wait, what?
“Wait, what?”
She sighed, and glared at me “What, you think I haven’t figured out how your defense works? Those portals around you are two way.”
And then I felt it, the presence of a warm hand on my shoulder. It wasn't a particularly hot flame, couldn’t burn me if it tried, but the fact that it had actually reached into my personal space and touched me!? Bullshit!
“How!?” My voice might have sounded a little desperate and panicked, and I was half tempted to begin firing immediately, but the fact that I wasn’t dead right now assured me somewhat.
“Why would I tell you that, do you think I’m a moron? Anyway, you aren’t attempting to do that weird slash thing yet, so I’m fine with having a quick chat.” She sounded so calm and confident, like everything was perfectly under control, despite the fact that she had been teleported to and woke up in a completely random spot in the middle of nowhere.
“Alright, well.. I can work with this! Do follow me as I give you a premiere, first class tour around Boston!” I tried to cheer myself up, and with a thought warped space a bit so that the exit door was right behind me. I turned my back to her, and opened the door, stepping through to reveal the utter wasteland we were in.
The entire city was dry and hot, all living life having long since vanished leaving behind only the artificial structures that could survive the disaster. The air was utterly quiet, bereft of any sources of sound, something which still unnerved him slightly. A place being utterly quiet was always far worse than it being obnoxiously loud, was something he had long since learned.
I waved my hands as if to present, and yelled “Ta-daaah! Please, gaze upon your work yeh almighty, and we shall despair!”
She smiled slightly, chuckling a bit as she gazed at the scene “You said this was Boston, right? I was here around a year ago, wasn’t I? I’ve burnt down too many places like this to remember the dates, but a year ago sounds about right”
There were many things I could have said right there, because that sentence had some stuff to unpack. But it just wasn’t worth it in my opinion. She was the second Freak to ever appear publicly after all, so she must have been really fucked up.
I kept my comments to myself though, and tried to give a response in what I hoped was my usual calm tone “Right. Well, sorry it’s not any better… Wait shit, what’s your name?”
“It’s Charlotte. A few people still call me that, these days.”
I hummed nonchalantly, chuckling somewhat as I joked “You got a nickname between friends or something? They call you Sunny Delight?”
A beat of silence was the only response I got, making me cough.
“Bad joke, I know.”
“Yes, it is.”
I coughed, trying not to think about how awkward this conversation was. Great going Maxim, really selling that ‘charismatic hero’-shtick you’re going for! I’m sure she’ll buy it at 2 for the price of 1!
“You know I could teleport us somewhere nicer, if you wanted me to. My buddy Surgei is fine with me teleporting into his place with random people, as long as I pay him a few bucks to keep quiet.”
For a second, the silence hung painfully and I was contemplating just teleporting away from here to avoid the social awkwardness, when I got back a non committal “Alright, sure”
“Alright then teleportation incoming!” Immediately I used my ability to spatially grab the both of us, then move us over to our required destination. Said location being the low quality, unclean and slightly vandalized bathroom in Sergei’s small night shop. The place was weirdly spacious for no reason, and was easily accessible by anyone who entered the shop because Sergei wanted customers to ‘get customers to dump the piss they made from vodka in his toilet, not his wares’. Weird guy. At least he didn’t place any of the camera’s in the bathroom after I reminded him of how weird that was.
Immediately upon arrival the door was simply kicked out by Charlotte, which made me wonder how fire could actually have so much kicking strength. The lock on it shattered instantly, and Charlotte stepped out into the shop. The shop was empty of customers, only Sergei visible. The man himself was an old looking, tall Russian man with a balding head, casual clothes, and an expression that made you think he was silently judging every action you took.
I also realize I perhaps should have told him about the abilities from our latest arrival, as the man himself saw Charlotte break his door and yelled loudly, pulling out a large revolver and attempting to fire (heh) at Charlotte, who evaporated the bullets in mid air. Fucking. Bullshit.
Sergei himself looked at me with a betrayed look, and with a heavy russian accent yelled “This not the days I die. Haha, not enough alcohol in system!”
I raised my hands in the air as I rushed between the two of them, shouting “Wait up, wait up! Everyone calm down, no need for anyone to get hurt!”
Charlotte gave me a small side-eye as she stepped through the store, browsing through the liquor section of his store (also known as half of the store). Sergei meanwhile kept his pistol pointed at her, but at least turned his head slightly to look at me. He chuckled slightly, and yelled at me again “We make agreement that you pay me when you teleport friends! Not monsters!”
I sighed, stepping towards the counter as I mentally reached out for something special. The large bottle was teleported into my hands, alongside a stack of around 200$. I smiled at him as I handed it over “There you go, buddy. If you shoot that raw, you’ll probably lose an eye. Exactly how you like it!”
Sergei chuckled, but his response was cut off by Charlotte as she walked over to me with 4 different cans of beer “Are you willing to pay for these? I haven’t been getting paid for my work in ten years now, so I’m a little low on money at the moment”
I shrugged and paid for the cans, causing her to give me a grateful nod. “So, Sergei, are we good to leave now?”
The man in question just grumbled, and told us to fuck off from his store. We complied, and the both of us stepped outside to the wonderful streets of ‘Some-Random-Russian-City-Whose-Name-I-Forgot’.
As we began to randomly walk the streets, Caroline popped open her first can and took a long drink. She sighed in relief, her voice sounding… relaxed “Fuck… I haven’t drank anything in ten fucking years. This… this feels good”
I just silently nod along, then casually ask “I’m assuming they didn’t give you any alcohol down there?”
She lightly chuckled, taking another swing of her can before saying “I would more describe it as them not giving me anything. I have no clue what exactly they did, but they basically kept me in a coma for ten years… it feels good to actually see things with my own eyes again, flame body just doesn’t cut it anymore.”
At this point our wandering had brought us to some random park, which we casually walked through “So, how does seeing anything work with that? Because that body doesn’t have functioning eyes”
She shrugged, finishing her first can which she immediately threw on the ground and stomped. I teleported it into the garbage can, because littering is a bitch thing to do. “I can project certain features onto my fire. The details don’t really matter, just know it wasn’t very fun.”
I nod, quite intrigued at the details. Don’t want to be too pushy though, such things might just piss her off. As we walked through the park, a cat ran along the path causing me to smile. “I’m… sorry for bringing it up. How are you feeling right now?”
She glanced at me, her eyes resting to study me for a second before she responded “It’s natural to be curious, I don’t mind. You did prevent me from being turned into a permanent coma patient, so it’s the least I can do”
I glanced awkwardly to the side, feeling bashful because of the actual reasons I was there. The only reason I showed up at that town was to bait her out and hopefully eliminate her, after all. “Honestly, that really wasn’t my intention at first. I only started the whole ‘wanting to save you’ thing after I found you lying there in the bed. So re-
I was interrupted by a short snort, and her tone was mocking as she told me “I mean, of course. No one in this world has squiggly clean good motives for everything, they have to manually tell themselves to have those. I wasn’t expecting you to be a gallant knight in shining armor, showing up to heroically save me from my torment.”
Her words struck a nerve with me without me knowing why, my next words perhaps coming off a bit aggressive “I’m a Hero, you know. Being a good person is what we do”
“No one is a Hero by birth. Becoming a Hero takes effort and constant dedication, you know? The reason I’m not a Hero is because I’m lazy, I don’t want to fuck myself over if I don’t have to. That’s just how it is.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so we simply walked quietly for a few minutes before the silence was broken by Charlotte laughing to herself, her tone sounding joyful “I can’t believe this is my life now.”
“Do you like how it went?”
Another shrug, as she opened up the second-nope, that’s the third- can of beer. "Meh. I’ve had ten years to get over all the things I lost, so this is just… a new beginning to me” after saying that, she slammed back her drink. Geez, what’s with this woman?
I pondered how to say what I wanted to for a bit, my tone sounding hesitant as a result “I’m… not really sure you can call it a new beginning, given that a lot of shit from your old life is still hanging around”
She gave me a look I couldn’t decipher, before turning to a nearby bench. I stayed silent as we walked over and both sat down. Her voice sounded strained as she spoke “When you say that, are you talking about That Snake, The Director, or just the FFPA in general? Because I can assure you, anyone else from my old life is probably long gone by now.”
“Who the fuck is ‘The Director’?”
Charlotte smirked at me, looking vaguely smug about something. “You know… the actual Director of the FFPA, and the guy who manages basically everything? Also the guy who’s apparently all in favor of bringing about the future That Snake is wishing for.”
Uriel had to have known about this, right? There was no way he didn’t, Uriel knew too much and this guy seemed too important. So… why haven’t I heard anything about him yet. I always pegged Uriel as ‘shady and enigmatic, but friendly’ so what the fuck is he going for here?
I could feel myself getting wound up as I began to rant “The director of the FFPA is working together with The Snake? But that doesn’t make any sense! The FFPA is way too good at actually killing Freaks, which goes against the entire goal of the Snake! All he wants is to replace all of humanity with Freaks, why would he-
I was interrupted in the middle of my rant by two simple words “You’re wrong.”
“What?”
“You’re wrong about what that Snake wants. I’ve talked to it more than anyone else, I know what it wants. All it cares about is your atomization, nothing else. Every person should be an Individual of their own world, a totally free island independent of anything else. Breaking the machine of the world we labor in, as it always says. Doesn’t matter if people are Freaks or not, as long as they’re independent”
I wanted to think she was lying to me, trying to redirect me away from my goals. But she sounded so passionate about it, the most emotional I’ve ever seen as she almost spits the words out of her mouth. It… would fit somewhat, I suppose?
I sat in silence for a bit as Charlotte caught her breath and took a swing from her fourth beer. Finally, I hesitantly asked “Ok, so… how exactly did you figure this out?”
She smirked. It was an empty smirk, devoid of any actual joy, born out of the instinct to smile at the pain and loss you have experienced. “I know, because of how much it loves to rant. That damn thing has been spending every single day since I’ve become a Freak ranting to me, talking about its goals, hopes and dreams. At this point, I think I understand it more than it understands itself. The damn thing isn’t… real, it’s just the logical result of this sickness tainting humanity.”
She sounded so bitter, and I found myself slumping over. I had always believed that the Snake was just some villain with one evil plan, and that I would ‘save the day’ once I stopped its evil scheme. But I just couldn’t see how I could stop this scheme, the scope was just far too broad for me to even comprehend it.
It was almost ironic that I couldn’t beat the power of Individualization because of it’s large, global scale. Fuck.
I dejectedly muttered “So, what the fuck do we do then?”
She gave me a strange look “Where did the ‘we’ come from?”
“What?”
The look she gave me, that judging look as she sighed and leaned back was… painful. As were the words she said next “I don’t really care about what That Snake does. It’s an abhorrent little thing, and it plans to change the world for the worse… but why would I care? I know that I’m fucking amazing, but some things are just too big for you to change.”
Of course. It made sense, I hadn’t actually recruited her at all. I hadn’t convinced her of my opinion or motivations, or made her see my side. The only thing I did was kidnap her from a hospital and wake her up, nothing else. What was I expecting, really?
I was broken out of my internal doom and gloom by Charlotte’s hand resting against the barrier on my shoulder, a small smirk on her face.
“But I can change the people themselves. In the end, the Director and Unit 01 are just human. I can change those people, prevent them from accomplishing what they want, and be happier than before. I can’t change the world at large, but I can change something about the individual people living in it”
Fuck it, I think I’ve made up my mind on what to do. I teleported a bottle of expensive whiskey into my hand, and shot it raw. My throat burnt and I found myself almost vomiting as I coughed from the taste, the bottle dropping from my hands and levitating a bit above the ground to prevent it from shattering.
“What was t-” Charlotte was cut off as I stood up from the bench and raised my hands in the air!
I shouted to the world! “I’ve decided! I can’t be the Hero that saves the world, but I can save you!”
“What.”
“I’m gonna teleport you now, and us two are gonna fuck some shit up!”
“What.”
But, I had already teleported the both of us. We appeared near our destination and I grinned, happy I could finally be the hero I was pretending to be. Alright world prepare yourself, for Maxim the Hero is coming!