The roads leading into the town were blocked off; twelve telepaths and dozens of metas of various descriptors were slowly working through the town; from the rooftop of a parking garage, Arakiel could see them processing people, one by one; bringing in victims bound in straight jackets or strapped to gurneys, and then releasing them after. At least a hundred cops and agents were there sorting through the aftermath.
Laying on the ground wearing a simple white tank-top and boxers; his armor and equipment laying out on on the ground, with numbered labels next to each as Silver was carefully taking pictures of each object, Imperious stood looming over the man, glowering down at him; though only the bottom half of her face was visible beneath the helmet. "Alright. Explain yourself. What were you doing, and why."
The man stared up at her; visibly shaking. "We... were gonna call ourselves the Four Horsemen. Rob banks. Kill some metahumans and regular cops. The levers were supposed to work on anybody, so... even if a speedster showed up, he'd turn into a raging lunatic before he reached us, or go mad with fear and get the hell out. And then... Then some consultant who had been working at the dig site showed up, and managed to grab my lever. We chased him down. And... ran into you."
Imperious studied the lump of silver and crystal; and the other two, virtually identical ones, which had been retrieved from the two corpses. "The dig site. Explain what you mean."
"Uhh... I'm a digger. I do mining work usually, run a backhoe, a few other pieces of equipment. There's something buried up in canada me and my team were working on clearing up... and we found this thing. Size of a truck, with a dozen or so of those levers sticking out of it. The Hate guy... I dunno who he is.... figured out what they were. Helped us try em out. And, well. Sorrow... him I knew, he was demolitions... came up with a plan. We were gonna become supervillains."
Imperious chuckled. "Just with magical emotional manipulation? Seriously, one guy who magic didn't work on shows up... or one angel... and you're all dead."
"It's not just feelings. They make you stronger. And Hate, he knew how to cast some spells with it. Was gonna teach us. Throw lightning and stuff. We were gonna kick ass."
She nodded, and glanced at Silver. Silver studied his camera for a moment, and then slid it into a pocket. "Already uploading to the lab. We're directed to retrieve the three artifacts and return them to the vault back at HQ, and take the survivor in for processing. If this Mort character is correct, we'll likely end up bringing them back to Canada. Can you verify none of his other gear is magic?"
Imperious studied the pieces of armor. "It has a.... residue on it. Those artifacts are.... crazy. We're talking hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of people died to make each of those little levers. The enchantment itself is simple. I've taken a closer look, and talked to that 'Mort' guy, and its basically.... each one is made to manipulate one specific emotion. I'd guess they were part of a larger array, made to bend the wills of an entire region, and the more of them you have together, they start to amplify each other. We could, in theory, copy them.... but we don't have enough power to do it. Any ability to augment the holder's powers is... accidental. Just a matter of holding such a crazy amount of power."
Silver sighed. He tapped his helmet, as Arakiel kept an eye on the surroundings, rifle in hand. He was already glad he'd brought the new guy. It was possible that, since they contained a part of himself, one of his bullets might have bled the emotional impact onto himself when it was fired; the whole team might have ended up compromised, depending on how badly it impacted Imperious. Lucky. These 'Four Horsemen' idiots might have even won the day and moved on to become real supervillains. "Alright. Retrieve Mort for me. We'll deal with this back home."
***
"So, basically speaking... we need three things. A device to kill someone with infinite speed. Something to throw someone who might be impossibly heavy into space... and some ground-based ordinance that can strike spatial targets. If we can get that, we might just manage to get out of this with the Earth intact."
Hephaestus glowered down at Apollo from his chair. The boy-god had pulled him out of a conference with some of the most brilliant minds on earth about re-engineering his FTL design so that it could go even faster than the Jotun versions, to ask him for this nonsense. He towered over the boy even in his chair; were he standing on his artificial legs it would be even worse. "For thousands of years now, you've told me 'we can't win. It's hopeless. We need to help humanity escape!'. Now, with less than a decade to go, with colony ships getting ready to launch to survive all of this... you're telling me you want guns. That maybe it could be won after all."
"Exactly. I finally found out what causes the cataclysm at the start of the Jotun war. Let me send you the details about the 'Chains of Eternity'. They were in the Jotun archives."
Hephaestus sighed... and turned back to his console. "Restore admin access to Doctor Livingston. Tell him that the message will be passed to Apollo." He shook his head, slowly. "Just a few hours ago, I got a request from one of the doctors working for NASA. He said that their 'DMA' needed to talk to you, to head off a possible conflict between you and them. That it was urgent, end of the world stuff. My standard practice has been to only allow Americans to work so long as they kept their interactions strictly related to the project and didn't try to use it as a back-channel to reach the other Olympians, or any other such nonsense."
He leveled one finger on Apollo. "So here they are. The mindlessly violent warmongers who use nukes on civilian targets and keep invading other countries for pitiful, transparently greedy reasons. Trying to head off a possible confrontation peacefully. While my brother comes to me asking for weapons to kill their soldiers and citizens."
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Apollo stared for a moment. "...The other precognitive. Whoever it is, they've got to be able to see at least up to the Jotun invasion. Shit. I need to kill them, too, or they'll ruin everything. And soon."
"...Or you could just talk to them, you idiot. What does your foresight tell you happens if we go to war with America and her allies before the Jotun show up? I might not be able to see the future, but I don't predict anything good."
Apollo rolled his eyes... and then dropped down to the floor, crossing his legs and having a seat. "Just a bit. I need to focus."
He inhaled deeply. Closed his eyes. "...The colony ships never get launched. The Americans and their allies pull all of their resources from the colony ship program and turn them to warships or their own program.... All of the FTL drive components are being built in Japan, and we aren't able to get the Chinese factories ready for it in time. The whole human race... dies out."
"Talk to Zeus first. Then go talk to them. I'll make you some Titan-killing weapons, but only after the peaceful route fails." Hephaestus gestured to his lab. "My facility is already protected well enough. Not even Lightning could get in here alive without my permission. The trick will be to make such a system mobile, and lure him in."
***
Arakiel leaned back on the couch of his new room, studying the place. He'd 'moved in' twice in two weeks; but hopefully his stay with the Swords would be a bit more long-term. The Mobility suit was on the wall, mounted in what the Engineers called a 'Quick-Deployment' rack; essentially, while wearing the bodysuit for it, he stuck his hands and feet in, got his torso in the right spot, and jerked his hands; and the whole thing would snap into place. He'd gotten a practice session in with it... and it was crazy.
The Jotun power supply was worth more than a tank all by itself, the plasma rifle was top of the line, and he even had a side-arm, sort-of; a two-shot 40mm grenade launcher that looked almost like a pair of pringles cans strapped together on a pistol handle. He could be loaded up and ready to go in seconds... and then spend ten minutes carefully removing pieces and putting them back on the rack when he got back.
On the plus side, there was someone whose job it was to clean, repair and maintain it; and there was even a whole other rack ready to go, just swap the Jotun reactor from one to the other, in case he had to deploy too soon after the most recent go. And even that 'Kamikaze' suit as a backup.
It was a bit odd. Outside of the armor suit, he'd been issued a couple of DMA uniforms; which still had armor built-in, despite looking like just dress pants and a button-up shirt. Even more odd.... if he ever operated alongside Army units, he was, effectively, considered an Officer; which.... was weird.
The room was nice. Like a luxury hotel, complete with amazing decor. It felt weird, being himself, sitting in his boxers and a t-shirt, in a place clearly meant for someone far above him in the food chain.
He had just started to toy with the TV when a knock came at the door. He glanced up. Imperious was on the other side; wearing a proper uniform; black looked good on her. But then, she cheated; she could look however she wanted. He stepped up to the door, and rather than opening it, just tapped the intercom button. "Heyo, Imperious. What do you need?"
"We got the go-ahead from the mexican government, and are gonna go retrieve Doctor Disaster. The boss-man wants you along for this one, just in case; the Cartel has a couple of speedsters on-staff, so having you and Terminal both along will help keep things.... safe as they can be."
"Already? Man. I thought it was gonna take a few days. No such thing as down-time, here, huh?"
"Well, Excalibur is gonna get a psych eval first, so he won't be on this mission; but the only metahuman threats we're likely to see are those speedsters and Disaster himself. So this should be fine. Wheels-up in ten."
***
As Candy walked into the lab, she shivered. Most of the girls had been here at least once by now; the cartel always paid well, and according to the stories, it didn't end up that bad.. the man didn't even always want sex, just seemed lonely, with the Cartel not letting him go anywhere... but there were monsters here.
The first girl who came back, everyone had thought she was lying. But when the second, third, and fourth all had the same story.... well. Candy was no less horrified, but at least not surprised, to see a 4-foot-across spider perched on top of a crate inside the fence.
The guard looked her over for a moment, admiring her curves and the barely-there red dress... and nodded. "Alright, miss. Do whatever he wants, be a good girl, you get your money and get to go home after. I'd say he's never killed any of the girls, but if you're from Mama C's, you already know that."
She nodded, and took a deep breath. Ten thousand dollars, two days. Easily worth it. She opened the door, stepping inside... glancing up as an orange light blinked overhead, and a buzzer sounded.
A pale, heavyset man glanced up at her. "Ahh, hello there. I take it you're the one who pulled the short straw this time? Come on in. Ignore my pets... they're all properly secured, and can't hurt you."
An enormous reptilian monster lay in a cage, actively looking around the room, confused. It was the size of a car, at least, with three heads, sharp teeth... and some sort of weird devices attached to its head and torso. As she slowly made her way through the warehouse to the man's location where he was studying a computer screen, her heels made loud metallic clicks across the grating. "H... Hello there. My name's Candy. Mama C sent me here for you."
She abruptly froze. Directly ahead, against the wall behind the man... were corpses. Dozens of them, stacked in class tubes, floating in liquid. "I... I... I thought you didn't kill..."
The man glanced behind him, and sighed. "Not generally, no. Experiments on human subjects are generally pointless. Unfortunately, I ran across a single coincidental situation where I was able to copy someone's genetics and powers onto their half-sibling, turning the two almost into twins, just of different genders. And the Cartel has been very insistent that I reproduce this miracle. It's not going to work; I tell them it's not going to work. But it has worked twice now, and sort-of worked five more, out of hundreds of victims; and the Cartel has four new metahuman soldiers because of it. So... they keep throwing people at it."
He waved at the array of corpses. "It's all a bunch of nonsense. At bare minimum, the two would need to be closely enough related to receive a kidney donation, and reasonably close to the same age. But they keep throwing strangers at me. It doesn't matter. Eventually, they'll give up, abandon it, and I can spend more time on my true passions."
Candy was amazed by what she was hearing... and seeing. Despite the terror of the situation, she found herself caught up in what was going on; and asking questions about what he was doing, what the point of the giant reptile in the cage was, the spiders, even the strange vat full of marble-sized red orbs suspended in water; her fear slowly fading as she listened to the mad genius explaining this project or that, the results he was waiting on.
Unless he was some sort of monster on a personal level, Candy had decided she'd go along willingly next time; no short straw required. This was actually kinda fun.