Grim watched the large screen in the command center as Stella directed an ordered retreat and abandonment of the outposts in the area that the Hero’s Coalition was advancing through. They were, without ceremony, simply demolishing everything in their path. Grim had decided early on to withhold as much manpower as possible, as the other side simply didn’t give a fuck about collateral damage.
He flinched slightly as another warehouse went up in flames, courtesy of some of the villains in the advancing mob of supers. They stopped short of immolating any fleeing workers or homeless, barely restrained by their heroic counterparts. Grim was honestly surprised the Heroes were even stopping them at all. It didn’t seem as if they cared.
Another video feed went down as he turned to Stella, “Did you get everyone out of the outposts?” he asked, wondering what the damage was.
The succubus nodded. “Yes we did Master. Six were abandoned outright, two more were sealed. We extracted everyone and locked down all the systems within them. They are no longer accessible, even by a technopath.”
Grim nodded. Supers were as varied in their power sets as they were their strengths. He would need to conduct experiments as soon as possible to ensure that he got his own powered army going as soon as possible… then he blinked.
Why not now?
“Hey, anyone want a boost to their power? No idea if it will work, and you might die,” Grim said aloud. Everyone in the command center immediately zeroed in on him, but only one hand popped up immediately.
A goofy looking man, tall and slim with long brown hair back in a ponytail stood up. He was wearing cut off uniform pants and a red and white Hawaiian t-shirt. “I do. Don’t care if it kills me. My power is gonna kill me anyway,” he said with a shrug.
Grim motioned him forward even as he turned to Stella with a questioning look. “Cellular degeneration. He kills things. Quickly. However his power never stops being used, and it affects him. The more he uses it, the quicker he dies,” she explained.
“Boss lady has it in one,” the lank man said, stopping in front of Grim. The others looked on with fear, having heard a lot about their head boss. The fact he dressed like someone out of a villains novel didn’t inspire any confidence.
“Name?” Grim asked.
“Shaughn,” the man replied.
“This is gonna hurt. You might die. Last chance to bow out,” Grim responded, reiterating the risks.
Shaughn just shrugged, so Grim reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. Out of any of the many things those watching were expecting, a chaste hug wasn’t one of them. Then Grim injected pure energy into his body, and Shaughn fell to the floor convulsing, an ethereal red mass of energy connecting Grims hand to his body.
Then the screaming began.
Shaughn screamed until his throat was raw as Grim rooted around in his very essence. He eventually found the odd energy powering his abilities… and he shoved energy into it.
Shaughn went from shaking and screaming to violently convulsing as Grim edited his very being, the core of what made him a super. It was, as he suspected, tied intimately into the soul. He had theorized this some time ago when he fully converted Solaria into Stella. The way her powers evolved and changed was indicative of her new nature. But he wasn’t converting this man.
“You and you. Hold him down,” Grim said, pointing to Jim and another nearby minion who leapt on top of the experimental subject. A good kick from a powered individual and Grim could kill a lot of people here, concentration was needed to prevent the energy from running wild.
No. This time he was simply stretching and filling the man’s soul, and thus his abilities, with raw power. He was wary of actually changing anything intentionally, watching how the energy interacted with everything. He would try more direct changes next time, after he figured out how this worked.
Eventually he withdrew the energy, and Shaughn stopped convulsing. He was breathing heavy, blood specked foam visible on the sides of his mouth. The two men holding him down got up and backed off quickly, not wanting to be within reach.
Grim examined Shaughn, seeing that he was still alive. Offhand he asked, “When will the Heroes be here?” He continued to examine the test subject even as Stella responded.
“Twenty or thirty minutes. They are making good time, and we aren’t doing much to stop or delay them. Tetra has some surprises about a mile out, but the bombs are single use Master,” she reported.
He pulled back his energy fully, letting Shaughn relax. “He’s alive. His power is… significantly stronger. And different. When he wakes up send him out. He is going to cause a lot of damage.”
“What did you change about him?” Stella wondered aloud, but Grim ignored her. He had other things on his mind than explaining how he had altered Shaughn’s abilities. Telling her he had changed the man’s abilities from breaking down cells to breaking down organic matter or reconstituting it entirely was not on the schedule at the moment.
Grim woke up his armor as well as Sunder. “Lets go. We may not need anyone else for this, but just in case have everyone standing by.”
Stella huffed in annoyance as Grim left the command center. He grabbed an elevator and rapidly found himself on the ground floor. The real ground floor, not some underground approximation. He strode through the clean and functional lobby and right out the front doors.
The parking lot outside was clean as well, with several vehicles, cans, and a large tractor trailer parked on one side. Grim decided that this wasn’t the best place for a fight and wandered across the lot and down the street a bit, then his phone rang.
Stella had forced him to use the device, and he was never a fan of them. They could track you in most universes he had one, and the constant connection to everyone around him drove him nuts. Annoyed, he pulled the device out of his pocket and hit the accept call button.
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“What?” he said gruffly.
“You were supposed to stay near headquarters Master,” Stella said crossly. “Now we have to figure out a way to deploy around wherever you are going to be.”
Grim shrugged, then realized the succubus wouldn’t be able to see it. “Whatever. Figure it out, then he paused. “Plenty of sewer connections around. Use those for right now. Maybe we should see about some ‘expansions’ later on?”
The line was silent for a moment before Stella spoke. “I ran that by Tetra. She said that’s stupidly brilliant, Boss has done it again, and why couldn’t she had thought of that.”
Grim was amused until she continued, “But she already had. Construction began a while ago and we can get enforcers to you as long as you don’t get more than a few blocks from HQ.” Grim hung up the phone without responding.
The gauntlet twins were silent, but Grim could feel their amusement. Well, he could feel Kane’s amusement. He wasn’t sure if Kim ever got amused. She was one cold piece of equipment. she sniped, causing Kane to outright erupt into psychic laughter. Grim rolled his eyes at their banter. He was about to respond when five supers landed in front of him. One seemed stretched out like laughy taffy, another was on fire. There was also a large man made of cinderblocks, a woman with lightning hands, and a final man dressed like a ninja. They were all wearing black and white spandex suits with a gold yellow 5 emblazoned on the front. The suites were so tight they left little to the imagination. “What is this? Fucking Halloween?” Grim asked, annoyed. “Seriously, a color scheme? God I hate this universe,” he grumbled. The supers looked confused, then angry. “We are the Great Five! Surrender villain or be destroyed!” “More like the Gimpy Five. You all go to the club looking like that? Seriously, but on some fucking clothes,” Grim said as one of the guys and the woman turned bright red. She turned to the other four, “See? This is stupid. I told you this was stupid. Color coordinated plastic pajamas. Stupid.” “We are intimidating. Soldiers all wear the same thing, so do Spec Ops,” argued the stretchy man. Then they all devolved into arguing. Grim grinned at their complete lack of attention and unsheathed Sunder, then he swung the shattered blade casually. It was like someone dimmed the lights for a moment. When visibility returned the street was painted in gore. Oddly enough, none of the buildings, streets, or sidewalks were even slightly damaged. The, now very dead, Great Five had donated graciously to the repainting of the front of several buildings. Grim looked at his sword affectionately. “Oh. I like you,” he said with a small grin. said Sunder. Grim shook his head and absorbed their souls. He would use them later, maybe experiment with making his own brand of Daemons. Once the souls were his, his thoughts turned to the pathetically short fight. Sunder had wiped them out based on his intent, proving the blade was far more than it seemed. He was about to sheathe the weapon when dozens of supers turned the corner several blocks down from him. They quickly spotted him, and a roar of one liners, threats, and insults were thrown his way. Grim wasn’t sure they even noticed the new paint. He finished putting Sunder back into his sheathe, much to the blade’s protests. But Grim had other aspects of his armor he wanted to test, including his new and much expanded ability to manipulate Hellfire. Holding both hands in front of him, Grim focused intently. With a single jerking motion he tore his hands upward, raising a massive wall of crimson fire a block in front of him. Many of the supers that were advancing his way stopped, but a few unfortunate souls who thought they would be immune to such fire went directly into the flames. Needless to say fire immunity was not Hellfire immunity. A dozen desiccated and still burning bodies came out the other side of his burning wall, prompting the entire group of attackers to come to a screeching halt. After watching some of their peers get fried, no one was really willing to try going through the oddly colored flames. Grim grinned and pushed the wall towards them. This caused a mad scramble as dozens, then hundreds of supers attempted to flee the oncoming flames. They ran backwards, dove into nearby buildings, and generally did anything they could to get away. Even throwing other supers into the flames to try and slow them down. Grim was appreciative of their efforts to sacrifice their allies. It meant more souls for him. More energy to maintain his attacks. More power in general. He whistled as he worked, walking forward slowly as he pushed the flames at his enemies. Unfortunately, he fell into the same complacency as the Great Five had earlier. Unlike those morons, his mistake only nearly cost him his life. The building next to him exploded outward in a massive display of strength as Death came hurtling towards him. Grim’s eyes went wide as the large mans first smashed into his side and dented Strap into his flesh. Grims concentration immediately broke as he was flung sideways into the building on the others side of the street. He smashed through the front façade, obliterating the concrete and wood entrance way with his body. Death had struck him far harder than the last time they met. The only reason he was alive right now was because of his enhanced armor, the sheer abilities of Strap himself, and his continually developing powers. Even then he barely withstood a single, probably not even fully powered, punch from the son of a bitch. “God you fucking hit like a tank,” Grim said, crawling out over the rubble. “If tanks could fucking punch that is,” he grumbled as he extricated himself from the now ruined building frontage. Death cocked his head to one side, his pitch-black skin absorbing the light around him. “Interesting. That would have killed many supers I know. Yet you remain unharmed,” he observed. “I’m going to enjoy tearing your teeth out through your ass,” Grim said, delivering a powerful haymaker. Death caught it, surprise evident on his face as he rocked slightly to the side. “You have gotten stronger. Interesting. I didn’t think you would be alive long enough to discover such things,” he admitted. Grim had no idea what the super was talking about, but he immediately became alarmed at the downright fanatical look that blossomed in Death’s eyes. Reversing his grip faster than Grim could track, Death swung his entire body over head and into the concrete, shattering it and embedding him several inches into the ground. Shaken, he was brough back overhead and slammed into the ground on the other side. This repeated several times before Death stopped and took a few steps back. “Fucker,” Grim said, spitting out blood as he stood up from the hold that had been made in the ground. He launched a Hellfire bolt at Death, who quickly dodged to the side. Even he wasn’t willing to touch the strangely colored fire. Turning back to Grim, Death caught a roundhouse kick to the chin that picked him up off the ground and deposited him on his back on the ground. “Suck on that you fucking…” Grim went wide eyed as Death stood up, a small trickly of blood coming from his nose. But that wasn’t what shocked him. No. The freaky super was smiling. A small, lifeless smile that barely even made it past his lips. Cracking his neck to one side, Death strode forward. “You are strong. Stronger than Retribution. I am going to enjoy this. Every second. Strong people are so, so very rare. Die for my amusement.” Then Death was gone, and Grim was hurtling through the air. He knew he had been hit. Hard. But didn’t even register it. His body plowed through a building, out of that building and then into a second one. His face and head throbbed. “No Shedim! I only have two left. If I’m not dying, they aren’t getting deployed. Period,” Grim said, standing shakily. “Fuck,” he said quietly.