Reagan couldn’t wipe the smile from their face as they drank in the fruits of their labor.
A man in scrubs stabbed a scalpel into the eye of a cape wearing an eyesore of a costume made primarily of bright green spandex. The injured cape roared in agony and swiped at the man with a glowing hand that sliced through the scrubs and carved out streaks of flesh while leaving sparkling trails of twinkling light in its wake.
Yes.
The man in scrubs had more immediate problems to worry about however, as a scaled humanoid grabbed hold of his neck and began to choke him with clawed fingers that jabbed in deep enough that blood seeped from the wounds. His fingers scrambled to find purchase on the slippery scales, a wet gurgle escaping from his throat.
More.
All of that violence, all that struggle, and it was casually erased in a matter of moments when a nearby cape in motorcycle leathers and jeans breathed out a cone of hazy gray smoke that washed over the three of them and left skeletons and sinew falling to the ground. An end that swiftly became the beginning of a new cycle when a giant of a man with a bastard sword slashed at the cape, cutting down into them without cleanly bisecting them.
Glorious. Reagan thought, as they slowly began to turn and examine their work. They drank in the turmoil like the finest vintage and pondered whether there was a different, more apt descriptor for the web of consequences unfurling, this tapestry of their triumph being woven before their very eyes.
A lanky cape clad in white adorned with clocks dodged drunkenly between bodies, cradling his side with one hand while lashing out with the other. Bodies hanging suspended mid-motion were left in his wake, providing obstacles for the dance of death to shift around. The cape’s luck finally ran out when a man with an unnaturally tall, gaunt figure struck him from a blind spot. The man in the suit had no face and advanced with startling speed to claim its prize, and the cape in white was left squirming on the ground under his abruptly still foe, caught in a trap of his own making.
Magnificent, perhaps? No. That was certainly evocative of the events themselves but hinted at none of Reagan’s triumph.
Pink motes of light played prelude to gouts of crimson as a cape in blue ninja attire narrowly avoided a swipe from one of the four blade-like arms of an enormous creature not unlike a praying mantis. It hissed, venom seeping freely from its open maw as it cut and slashed, ichor oozing from the myriad cuts upon its body from the motes. In the end, it wasn’t the beast that did her in but one fight bleeding into another, resulting in her body bursting into a swirling storm of lights when a spike of ice impaled her from behind.
Divine? Reagan couldn’t quite help the pleased smirk that crept over their face at the idea of others likening of themself to God. They had, after all, chosen the moniker of a god.
A humanoid creature made of stone smashed into an overweight hero in a spandex bodysuit and armor, but despite the high speed collision, the hero barely budged. He might have been a Brute, but if he was, then his power was limited in scope. He screamed, the sound music to Reagan’s ears, when acid was thrown at him by another overweight man, this one with translucent skin covered in what looked like barnacles. The stone creature abandoned its original prey and lashed out at the newcomer, sending him skidding along the ground and kicking up dirt. It then twisted, shifting from stone into metal just in time for another volley of acid to splash harmlessly against it.
Brilliant? No. Fuck no. Reagan couldn’t help but hear the word in Renee’s voice, prompting them to unconsciously grind their teeth.
Speaking of. They twisted and turned, looking for any sign of the leather and bronze of their sister’s costume. The Protectorate hadn’t changed her image, as they recalled, and there was little doubt in their mind that she would be in the city. The vainglorious cunt would never miss out on a chance to play the hero. Defending the weak and powerless from the unstoppable horror was too perfect an opportunity to pass up.
No. She was in the city. The only question was whether she was here.
The braggart was nowhere in sight, but Reagan’s eyes did alight on Panacea, to whom they gave a mocking bow. Had they known earlier how exhilarating this experience would be, they would have done this years ago! Volunteering to ‘fight,’ tricking the officers with illusory injuries, then one little touch, one passing brush against the famous healer. Who better to spread Reagan’s power than someone everyone wanted to touch them? What a coup!
One of the minions, a spider-like monstrosity with threefold the legs and blades capping them, turned its many inhuman eyes on Reagan, and they concentrated, shrouding themself from the beast’s sight. In short order its attention shifted to a hero in a gaudy military and American flag themed costume, earning itself several bullets through its torso. They wouldn’t need to rely on their weaker illusions if the Endbringer’s minions were affected by Reagan’s infection, but they dismissed it as a pity and refused to get hung up on it.
No, instead they basked in the feeling of how far their web had been spun, how deep the infection had run. The chance to spread their reach so far, to bring about such pandemonium during an Endbringer battle… It was intoxicating.
“Loki!!”
Unadulterated joy coursed through Reagan as they whirled to face the direction the cry had come from. Down the slope from where they stood, Renee smashed her fist into a long necked creature with blood stained white fur, knocking it a few meters back. She was only a dozen meters away or so, and Reagan could feel the taint of their power in her. Unable to resist the urge, they quickly began to manipulate the illusions of those in between them to try and clear the way.
“I know this is you! Show yourself, Loki!” she bellowed before crying out in pain when the beast she had knocked away moments earlier surged forward, dodging under a swing from the hero and biting the arm from below.
Renee howled in pain, and Reagan purred, their eyes lidded. Their sister wrapped their free arm around the minion’s neck, snapped it in with a vicious yank, then proceeded to beat the still warm corpse repeatedly. Close enough to see the finer details, Reagan could see the gouges in Renee’s arm begin to heal.
Reagan dismissed the illusions their power had been autonomously weaning into Renee’s mind and slotted a vision of themself into their place. Not of Reagan’s true pixie cut, strawberry blond hair and casual clothes, no. The visage of Loki, adorned in black and red regalia with golden trim and long, pristine blond hair.
“Did you miss me?” they slipped into Renee’s ears, drawing a snarl out of their sister while the real Reagan watched from a few meters away
“Here? Of all places here, Loki?!” Renee seethed as they tensed, clearly read for an attack from any angle.
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Well, it would be simply rude to not oblige, wouldn’t it? Reagan eyed a nearby cape hurling smoldering balls that exploded on impact and stoked the terror in his heart. The illusion of hot breath on his shoulder had him whirling around towards Renee, whom Reagan had cloaked in a more general illusion of his greatest fear. Their power didn’t convey what terrified their victims, but Reagan was more than accustomed to working around that limitation and making their puppets dance.
“You sound surprised.” Reagan allowed Renee to see all of the incoming projectiles except for one, savoring first the desperate dodging then the cry of anguish as the sphere seared her skin. “You of all people should know I can be found wherever there’s havoc to be had.”
Renee’s flesh was already knitting back together, the blistered, charred skin giving way to unblemished smoothness exposed by the hole scorched into the underlying green cloth of her costume. Reagan desperately wanted to tear that patch right back open but was left disappointed when their toy was killed by the sudden removal of his bowels by an armored beast with gnashing teeth and multiple heads.
“You’re sick, Loki. Depraved,” Renee barked, once again searching all around herself for some telltale sign of where Reagan’s true body was. Hopes that still lingered from the early days of being capes—when their grandfather’s death secured them the greatest inheritance of all: Powers in a bottle.
“Ever the charmer, Boudicca,” they drawled, prompting Renee to lash out at Reagan’s projection of their cape persona. Reagan sneered at the weak attempt. Had it managed to land on an actual target, it wouldn’t have done much with the scales of Renee’s power so heavily tipped towards defense. “You’ve gotten sloppy. I knew those Protectorate pricks would clip your claws, but this is pathetic.”
Another swing. Another miss. “People are dying, goddammit! Stop this!”
Reagan couldn’t help rolling their eyes, a disappointed chuckle worming its way out of them. “… and? We all die in the end. Why faff on about something we all do?”
“Loki—”
A decapitated head narrowly missed striking Renee’s head as it arced through the air, instead passing harmlessly and rolling to a stop against a corpse on the ground. The domino mask affixed to its face pegged it as likely having come from a cape, though some of the Endbringer’s minions seemed to be masquerading as such.
Blood that had pooled under the corpse was soaking into the head’s beard. Reagan felt the urge to kick it to splatter the viscera everywhere and had to restrain themself, lest they give up the game to Renee.
“Take this poor sod!” they eagerly pressed as they began to have the illusion of Loki circle around Boudicca. “Any other day, bloke’s death gets a passing mention in the news but otherwise goes completely unnoticed. Maybe the cape spazzes online give a fuck, but nobody worthwhile. Dying today? Well, it’s an Endbringer attack. Sure it’s a new one, but that stopped being noteworthy after more began popping up after the Simurgh died.
“No, no. An arse load of capes die, so once more his death’s forgotten. Just another name on whatever bollocks memorial they throw up. But this?” Their illusory self gestured broadly to the chaos around them, and even the real Reagan took a moment to observe the havoc taking place. “This is new. This will be remembered. And yet, he’ll even be forgotten as a part of this because what’s interesting isn’t Joe Bloggs here. He’s a footnote at best. People will remember the truce being broken, and they’ll remember who broke it.”
“Please…” The bedlam around the two of them was only getting worse, and Reagan eagerly drank it all in with an anticipatory grin as they savored Renee’s redoubled efforts to hit them. Every attempt to stop them—every punch, every kick, every word—all of it ending in failure. “Please… Just stop this! We were going to be heroes, dammit! You and me, against the world!”
“That was always your problem, Boudicca. You’re so caught up in the past that you can’t see the present, much less the future.” Reagan breathed deep, pushing past their nose’s protests. They didn’t enjoy the musk aroma of the carnage, but they simultaneously never wanted to forget it. The sights, the sounds, the smells—they wanted every facet of this moment, of their greatest work, burned into their memory. “We leave the past for dead with every breath we take, entombing its corpse in the mausoleum of our memories. But we are here, in the now, going where that mausoleum cannot follow.”
Renee roared, moonlit tears bleeding from her eyes. She had abandoned her pointless struggles to strike them—broken. “You did it, didn’t you?! God help me, Reagan, did you kill mum?!”
The Loki in Renee’s head hummed and leaned forward over her shoulder. Reagan could almost feel the warmth of her skin as their lips reached her ear. They spoke, and though it was only a whisper, there was no escaping the voices in one’s head. “There is only one grave you should be concerned about—the one none of us can escape.”
How long had it been since that vial opened their eyes? Since the epiphany, the enlightenment Eden’s elixir had endowed them? It was past time to inter Reagan, to slough off skin that had not fit in years, to fully embrace who they had been becoming ever since that day.
Loki found the weight of the switchblade felt divine in their hand as the blade flashed open with a click. They stepped up to Renee, masking the sight and sound of their approach coming as easily as breathing to a god such as themself. The woman masquerading as a hero was weeping, mourning anew a woman already long dead, for months no less.
Pitiful. “Trapped in the past as ever, Renee. We shall grant you life among the dead as you desire.”
Loki raised their blade to strike at Renee’s exposed neck, and there was a flash of light in the corner of their eye. Something knocked them away, and more than the feeling of the dirt and grass, they felt the joy and triumph ascendant just a moment ago begin to flee. More flashes brought more force, blows that left them gasping in pain and mourning their stolen victory. Their head lolled back against the blades of grass, and they saw a woman approaching in armor that gleamed like an opal in the moonlight, purple lips primly pursed and cuffs in hand, primed to bind them.
No!
They focused, shoving aside the sadness and the haze it cast over their thoughts, and pushed the image of themself rolling to the right while truthfully aiming a low kick at her. They had intended to sweep the cape’s legs when she moved to pounce on the illusion, and though they succeeded in striking her, it was a glancing blow that left her stumbling instead of falling. Loki had their illusory self to the right draw a gun from their pocket while they started to pull themself to their feet, but they were forced to leap left when the cape threw another orb of light directly at them, completely ignoring their illusion.
“Who dares?” Loki hissed, anger surging up enough to consume the sorrow still simmering within them. They could feel the touch of their power on the cape, yet they were neither mad with fear nor affected by their illusions. A cape with a sensory power and immunity to fear? A strange, unlikely combination, but no other explanation came to mind.
The armored cape answered with hurling more spheres of light from one hand while hastily stowing the cuffs to free up the other. Loki once more dodged while creating an illusion over themself that split away, testing their theory while they began to nudge the nearby infected to attack. The illusions they had been weaving to keep the area free of interference for their confrontation with Boudicca abruptly began to advance on the intruder cape’s position, and the cape was forced to retreat, vanishing into the crowd.
Loki immediately looked for Renee and swore when she was nowhere in sight. The danger from the interfering cape was over, but she had successfully derailed their fun. Still, she couldn’t have gotten that far…
Loki began to backtrack only to watch, wide-eyed, as what looked like mercury snaked its way up and around some of the bodies in the area before solidifying and squeezing them to death.
What.
Loki was dumbfounded, the nigh automatic process of constantly casting illusions on someone forgotten for quite possibly the first time since the first few months after they got their power as they watched in morbid fascination. Bones cracked, protruding through the skin. Screams of absolute agony, animalistic and human alike, filled the air. Blood, viscera, and the pulped remains of organs oozed, poured, and burst from the bodies as skin was stretched to its breaking point, the ripped edges of it already putrefying and rotting away.
What is this.
The mercury boiled into a fluid once more before all of it rocketed into the sky into orbit around a large, easily human sized sphere of dull gray metal. The orb burst apart, joining the storm swirling around it, and left in its wake was a figure floating in the eye of the iron hurricane.
A figure untouched by Loki’s power.
Loki exhaled sharply, a delightful shiver racing down their spine.
We should invite them to play!