5 September 2017. Justice City. Business District. 

The man’s eyes surveyed the hostages kneeling before him, trembling with their hands on the back of their heads. Although calling them hostages might be a little premature. The robbery had been progressing smoothly so far, with no police, heroes, or troublesome vigilantes intervening to mess things up.

For now, at least, there was no need to use anyone as a bargaining chip. As the kneeling people were told, nobody would get hurt as long as they behaved. But only as long as they behaved. One already had disregarded the man’s advice, and his charred remains now served as a gruesome, and smelly, reminder of what awaited those who tried to play hero. The sounds of tearing flesh and breaking bones in the background of the otherwise silent room also helped pacify the frightened group.

Satisfied, the man allowed himself a small smile behind the featureless black mask hiding his whole face. He raised the modified Škorpion VZ61 and nonchalantly rested the barrel against his shoulder. The Czechoslovakian machine gun wasn't amongst his favorites, but it mattered little to someone like him. From pistol to rocket-launcher, including Gatling’s and about everything that shot stuff into people, a single touch was all he required to master any weapon completely.

This special ability made him what people called a “parahuman”, something not quite human, beyond or beside humanity depending on who you asked. Pop culture would dub him a Super Villain, but the term “super” had been long since condemned by the general populace as very politically incorrect. Not to mention just plain incorrect, since many supposed “super” humans found themselves crippled by their own power rather than enhanced in any way.

What stuck from pop culture, however, was the love for stage names and silly outfits, some sillier than others. The man wasn’t really one for flashy costumes, preferring to wear a practical non-descript black body armor. However his power led him to always carry a great many weapons on his person, therefore some newspaper had once nicknamed him “the Arsenal”. It had stuck and, honestly, he kind of liked it. And to anyone who dared to shorten it to “Arse”, he’d tear a new one, in the middle of the forehead.

After one last glance at the potential hostages, Arsenal turned to the right.

“Drake, try to keep the noise down a bit. It’s disgusting.”

A grunt came in response from the man sitting cross-legged on the tiled floor. If, however, the creature could be called a man at all.

Culminating at 6’55’’ without even getting up, the behemoth appeared more reptilian than mammalian, let alone human. His hunched appearance evoked a monstrous green scaled gorilla, with forearms each thicker than one of Arsenal’s thighs, but with sharp claws instead of nails. His head recalled that of a raptor from the Cretaceous, wisps of smoke sometimes filtering from the corners of his maw. 

For all vestment, the creature wore tight-fitting black pants, a large trench coat, and a fedora hat. The sight might have looked comical, if not for the three basket-ball-sized flaming spheres slowly orbiting his head or the femur poking out of his massive jaws. Bits of burned flesh still stuck to the bone. By his side, the barbecued corpse of the wannabe hero was missing a leg. Easy math.

With a resounding crack, the bone disappeared inside Drake’s maw. The creature burped loudly and fire jumped out from deep inside him, between his jaws and across the room, to turn a computer into a pile of molten scraps. Good thing the robbers had thought to deactivate the fire alarm beforehand. The monster then sent at Arsenal a smug grin full of sharp pointed fangs.

The masked man clicked his tongue and looked away. He found Drake repulsive, both inside and out. But they didn’t need to be best buddies to work well together. So the gunman kept his comments to himself. In his mind, upsetting the beast would be both inconvenient and a waste of time. They needed him for his brawn, not his brains anyway. It was already surprising the lizard possessed even this much of the latter.

Powered individuals of Drake’s sort were rare, abnormal. Abilities that caused such large physical changes typically killed their host upon first awakening, and the few who survived their transformation into freaks very seldom remained sane afterward. Depending on the circumstances, they would be either put out of their misery, or captured and shipped to special care-and-detention facilities. Drake had somehow slipped through the cracks.

Arsenal had been more than a little reluctant when one of his contacts he used for recruitment had introduced the saurian to him. But so far the gunman had had no complaints beyond the freak’s overall unpleasantness. Drake was a brutal bastard, but he was definitely sane, at least in comparison to a feral beast.

“H for A… H for A…”

A noise from the radio strapped to his collarbone caught the Arsenal’s attention and he leaned into the transceiver.

“A listening.”

“H speaking. We’re in and secured. Over.”

“Alright. Tell C to begin the preparations. Over.”

“Got it. Out.”

The conversation ended and Arsenal returned to his careful watch of the hostages, windows and side doors. He occasionally shot a glance towards the main entrance, but it wasn’t his principal concern. The design of the building made it impossible for them to be seen from the street. They’d locked the front door and hung an official-looking message board implying the bank was closed for exceptional reasons. That ought to keep people out for a time.

Of course, the trick wouldn’t last, but they didn’t plan on staying too long. This kind of operation required timing and precision, both of which were Arsenal’s true weapon rather than his supernatural ability to handle firearms and tantamount. Any run-of-the-mill retard could learn how to shoot a gun, but it took a special kind of intelligence to think up plans that fell into place like clockwork.

It also took a certain kind of skill to execute them. Arsenal and his small team were no novices. For the past four years, Him, Drake, Hertz—who was currently back in the vault—and a woman called Sidestep had hit several banks, museums, companies, and other juicy targets all over the city.

Six months ago, however, Sidestep at gotten herself atomized, literally. She had tried to teleport out of a bank before Hertz could fully neutralize its spatial shield. Every important building had one nowadays. It created minute spatial distortions through the whole building—or something. Arsenal didn’t understand the specifics. Sufficed to say it was imperceptible and inoffensive…as long as you weren’t trying to jump through space yourself. In which case you’d be lucky if enough was left of you for cremation. Sidestep’s remains wouldn’t have filled a thimble.

That said, the money they’d amassed even before her death should have been enough for most to retire already, but not for them. Each had their own reasons to continue.

Hertz, for example, was a technopath. Nothing to do with a psychopath and all with a telepath, but with machines instead of minds. At least, that’s how the gunman pictured it.

Hertz’s abilities revolved around technology and tinkering up futuristic device—or messing with them in the case of the spatial shields. Theoretically, his power had unlimited potential. Most parahumans, no matter how powerful, were one-trick ponies. Technopaths could possibly surpass them all as long as they had the right resources. However, there lain also their greatest weakness. Those resources cost money, lots of it. A broke technopath was no better than any average Joe.

Moreover, they couldn’t simply not build stuff. Their power had a tendency to become obsessive, like an itch they had to scratch. Lock up a technopath away from any technology for a couple weeks and he would go bad shit insane. Because of this, almost every techy worked for one large corporation or another, which were all too happy to supply them in exchange for marketable patents.

Even then, the majority of their kind was a little touched in the head.

Arsenal’s reasons for money were less complex. Debts. Simple as that. Like many people, he’d been stupid as an adolescent. When his powers had first manifested, he’d thought himself invincible. Several bullets in his abdomen and nearly getting his arm blown off had eventually gotten through to him that he very much was not.

However, by the time he’d come to his senses, he’d been sinking into such deep shit he’d had no leeway of being choosy about whose hand pulled him out of the muck. Now he owed a great deal of money to very dangerous people, whom even he could simply not afford not to repay.

Everything wasn’t as bleak as it sounded, though. Arsenal quite enjoyed living as a notorious criminal. He had the smarts to pull it off and the experience not to fuck up anymore.

Even while slowly repaying his debt in monthly installments, he’d been setting aside enough to last him a lifetime. And now he was close to clear his tab, so to speak. Another two—maybe three hits, including one to get himself a nice retirement bonus, and he’d be on his way out of the country, to a nice villa on a beach in the Bahamas, or anywhere he damn pleased.

He did feel a little bad for intending to ditch Hertz, but not so much that he’d change his plans for sea and sun. And sex. Never forget sex.

As for Drake, Arsenal didn’t know what the lizard man’s reasons were, and frankly, he didn’t give a damn. In all their years as repeated accomplices, the freak had maybe pronounced five full sentences in his presence, the rest of the time only communicating in grunts. Not a great basis for developing a sharing relationship. Not that Arsenal wanted one.

Sidestep had had her own reasons too, but obviously, they weren’t really pertinent anymore. Her replacement, Carrier, claimed he needed the cash for some “personal project”, the specifics of which he preferred to keep to himself. He was much younger than the rest of the team, barely seventeen, but he’d been referred to Arsenal by the same man who’d recommended Drake. He’d been assured the kid was a professional and, like with the reptilian freak before, it had proven true over the past few months. 

The kid was actually an improvement from Sidestep. Like his nickname suggested, Carrier could take a much bigger load with him when he teleported than the woman had been able to, which was an invaluable quality when time was of the essence.

Just a few more…

Arsenal’s mind was half-drifting towards sandy beaches and topless beauties handing him colorful cocktail—when his radio once again cut through his musing.

“H for A! Arsenal! Shit! Arsenal, you there?!”

Hertz’s voice was frantic. Arsenal was instantaneously alert but, unlike his colleague, he remained calm.

“A speaking. H, what’s the matter?”

“He’s gone!”

“What? Who’s gone?”

“Carrier!”

“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Sidestep’s incident immediately came to mind. The gunman cursed himself for actually trusting a brat who still reeked of mama’s milk! Just because he hadn’t messed up until now…He took a calming breath. “Didn’t you say you deactivated the shield?”

“Shit, Arse! Who do you take me for? I wouldn’t do that mistake twice!! He’s gone I tell you! Vanished! One instant he was there, then poof! And he’s not responding on the radio. Gone!”

Hertz was the only one who could get away with occasionally shortening Arsenal’s nickname. They’d become close enough to consider each other tentative friends. At least as much as friendship was possible with their lifestyle.

“The money?”

Carrier double-crossing them was the second obvious conclusion.

“Still there! A, we need to get out! I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Calm down, Hertz. Alright, pack up and come back here. We’ll have to…”

Arsenal’s sentence died on his lips when he noticed Drake’s orbiting fireballs suddenly flicker out of existence as if a switch had been turned off. A confused glance from the wannabe dragon confirmed it hadn’t been on purpose.

The gunman paled.

“Fuck! Hertz, get the hell out of here! It’s a code N!”

“WHAT?! But she was supposed to…”

Well, obviously that tip was off.

The rest of the technopath’s words was lost on Arsenal when one of the bank’s windows suddenly exploded inwards in a rain of shards and a blue figure came crashing through. Immediately the figure revealed itself as a woman, falling feet first and arms crossed protectively before her masked face.

“Fuck!”

Arsenal raised the Škorpion and emptied the magazine in the intruder’s direction as the hostages started screaming and throwing themselves to the floor and under desks. He thought of grabbing one and using them as a shield, but leaning down would put him in a vulnerable position and they were simply too far from him. Why didn’t I keep closer?! The answer came to mind immediately. He’d grown complacent.

The woman landed on the ground and immediately ducked under cover, running between furniture in the direction opposite to the captured people, trying to keep gunfire focused on her and away from them.

“Shit! Drake, get her!” Arsenal called out without moving his eyes away from his target.

The bullets had done nothing, repelled by a translucent energy shield that had materialized inches above the woman’s skin, or rather above the skin-tight blue bodysuit she was wearing, reminiscent of some famous ex-soldier from the Metroid video game series. Her helmet, almost entirely composed of a blue visor that covered her whole face, was similarly protected.

Drake’s pyrokinesis would be as useless against her. Nemesis was a heroine famous for negating all and every power in her vicinity. Though she wasn’t omnipotent. Her ability didn’t extend to permanent changes resulting from powers. It didn’t affect Drake’s muscles or Arsenal’s knowledge of weapons, hard-coded into his brain.

In fact, he felt a little relieved about that. He’d assumed the information was really inputted in his memory and not somehow sustained by his ability, like a cloud storage thing. But it wasn’t like he could have just looked around town for Nemesis and walked into her range to test it out. He wouldn’t be able to pick up any new weapon with her nearby, but that was irrelevant at the moment.

Meanwhile, the heroine was also returning shots, but not bullets. Her weapon emitted some kind of energy blasts instead. Even if she accidentally hit one of the hostages, at worse they would have gotten stunned. However, she was a great shot, as Arsenal quickly discovered when he was forced to jump out of the way of a second blast in a few seconds. Small energy weapons had a clear advantage when it came to rapid fire, though it caused them to overheat if abused.

When the Škorpion ran out of bullets, Arsenal threw it away, then unholstered two handguns from under his armpits and kept shooting at Nemesis’ general position. Even if the bullets couldn’t penetrate her shield, he knew he’d been a little hasty in thinking they did nothing.

He was correct in his assertion that most parahumans only had one or two cards to play, and he knew for a fact Nemesis had no shielding powers. Which meant her protection had to be generated by some sort of device, likely technopath-designed.

He also knew from listening to Hertz’s incessant ramblings that these devices needed a shitload of power to run. Her suit was too form-fitting to hide any large battery, to a point it was actually slightly distracting in fact. And since she was bothering to take cover, Arsenal was confident in his supposition each hit depleted the autonomy of her shield. She couldn’t take too many before becoming defenseless.

However, he wasn’t planning on waiting until then. As a plan B maybe, or C. Always having backups was the key to success. But right now, the first purpose of his barrage was to limit her movement range.

“ROOOOOOAAAAR!!”

A green blur suddenly appeared from the right with a deafening roar. Drake had never been one for subtlety. But then, he didn’t really need it. He was on Nemesis in a matter of seconds, his hulking form dwarfing the otherwise tall woman. His fist descended on her, too fast for her to avoid.

Yet she did. Her forwards momentum abruptly stopped, very unnaturally, and the punch missed her head by a hair’s breath. Arsenal didn’t have time to ponder how she’d managed that feat because, without pausing, she crouched and pivoted, again with inhuman speed, and swept Drake’s feet from under him.

The behemoth collapsed backward, cracking the tiled floor, and she followed with an equally fast left jab to his stomach. This one, however, had no apparent effect, at least not on Drake. Arsenal saw Nemesis faintly shake her hand as if to dissipate pain. He could imagine the heroine’s grimacing expression right know. He knew from experience how hard the freak’s scales were.

Then she fiddled with her energy weapon, likely scaling up the power output to something above mere stunning, and pointed it at the fallen lizard-man. Arsenal finally reacted.

Oh no, you don’t. Two can play this game, bitch!

Dropping his handguns, he grabbed another weapon from his waist. The gun looked like something between a very realistic toy and a makeshift firearm. He pointed it in the heroine’s direction and pressed the first trigger.

The contraption began to buzz and vibrate dangerously, menacing to come apart. He could feel the heat rising in his palm. Then with a timing nobody but someone with an intimate understanding of the weapon could pull off, he pressed the second trigger. The gun abruptly cooled down as it released a condensed pulse of white light that darted across the room.

The action had taken less than a second. The ray collided almost instantaneously with Nemesis. Her shield flared, then flickered and shut down. There was no showy visual effect like it erupting in particles of light, nor was there any wound on her body, but the way she momentarily froze in surprise was all Arsenal needed to know Hertz’s invention had successfully destroyed her defense.

A pity this electromagnetic raygun could only damage electronic components. “A work in progress” Hertz had called it. But with technopaths, everything was always a work in progress.

Nemesis’ instant of distraction was also all Drake needed to regain the upper hand in this fight. His punch caught her cleanly in the chest, expelling the air out of her lungs and launching her several feet back. She tumbled to the floor, her chest heaving breathlessly—and not a little erotically to the onlookers with how her suit was hugging her forms. She wasn’t exactly curvy, but Arsenal would nevertheless tap that in a heartbeat.

Arsenal smiled behind his mask. He didn’t know how she’d managed that super-speed stunt before, but without her suit Nemesis was just a normal woman, if a well-trained one. The combination of her nullifying power and martial arts might be enough to take out careless parahumans who relied overly on their active supernatural abilities, but against people like Drake and Arsenal whose powers improved them passively, as long as they didn’t let her use her gadgets, she was the powerless one.

Drake was smirking with all his fangs, enjoying the sight of his weakened prey struggling to stand up and eager to toy with her more. Arsenal, however, didn’t want to lose any more of their precious time in futilities. Every passing minute was another for the police to gather outside the bank or more heroes to arrive.

Police, he didn’t mind too much, but heroes were another matter. The only thing more problematic were vigilantes. That bunch was unruly and unpredictable. But fortuitously unlicensed crime fighters were unlikely to come out on such a public scene in broad daylight. In the eye of law enforcement, they were no better than criminals themselves.

In the worst plausible case scenario, one or more heroes were already waiting in front of the building, and the only reason they didn’t come in was because of Nemesis. Another weakness of the heroine was her inability to discriminate whom she targeted with her power. Only one other hero was known to sometimes work with her, but Arsenal had heard from a reliable source—because he kept tabs on such things—that her partner was currently away in another state, so he wasn’t worried.

He put the raygun back in its holster and took hold of the AR-15 he carried over the shoulder. He had another small smile. After all, what better weapon to end an American idol than with US citizens’ most prized semi-automatic rifle? He always had been a closet fan of irony.

He only had a short time before the heroine got her bearings back, but he knew it was better not to hurry too much and miss this opportunity. He took a careful aim, an easy task in the light flooding the room from the broken window, then, with a passing thought this might be good timing for a cheesy one-liner had he been the type, he pressed the trigger.

A sharp metallic sound echoed loudly in the room, almost covered by the rifle going off, and Nemesis lunged for her energy weapon, lying on the ground where Drake had hit her. Arsenal blinked and looked down at his own weapon. The gun had nearly been ripped out of his hands, causing him to miss, and now had a massive dent in its side.

Fuck.

His eyes widened in horrified realization. His head snapped reflexively towards the window and Arsenal almost could have sworn he saw the man prone atop a distant building nearly two miles away, smirking wickedly while readjusting his oversized sniper rifle. But of course, that was impossible. Immediately after, his mind caught up and the robber hurriedly jumped to the side.

“Why is he here—ARGH!!”

Pain exploded in his left shoulder before he could move completely away from the opening. The blow sent him whirling towards the ground, but he never felt the impact with the tiled floor. A violent shock traversed his body, originating from the electronic projectile stuck to his shoulder. He lost consciousness.

The last image that burnt itself in his retinas before darkness engulfed him was that of Nemesis aiming her energy gun at Drake’s reptilian face and the weapon flashing red. Then nothing.

* * *

Morgan leaned against a wall in the lobby of Esteems Financials, one foot propped against the dark oak baseboard.

With the corner of her eyes, she was observing coolly as the member of the PCU, the Parahuman Containment Unit of the US police, loaded the unconscious bodies of Arsenal and Drake, bound of stretchers, into an armored transporter. The reptilian humanoid also had a translucent plastic mask strapped to his face, pumping gaseous incapacitating agents into his system to keep him under until they reached facilities better equipped to restrain the monster.

A third man, who had been formally identified as the criminal technopath Hertz, was pushed in along with his two accomplices. Morgan had caught him near the vault as he was trying to flee with a large amount of cash and far more technological equipment than he could reasonably carry alone. He’d cried when she’d taken the latter away from him. Typical technopath behavior.

Seeing her like this, apparently calm and collected, nobody would have guessed she was, in fact, fighting to keep her breathing steady. She was still suffering from Drake’s punch. Several of her ribs had to be bruised. Although it could have been worse. Luckily, her bodysuit had mitigated most of the damage.

Despite the borderline obscene tightness of the outfit, every square inch of it was nevertheless packed with some of the latest tech on Earth, courtesy of NovaTech, the company that employed her as a heroine—or, as she often put it in the secrecy of her mind, as a glorified booth babe.

She was also afraid she might have broken her left wrist. At least, it was definitely sprained. She’d have a talk with the tech team about recalibrating the new boosters. The small canisters were scattered over her suit and could release short bursts of compressed air that momentarily increased the speed and power of her movements to superhuman levels, but the intensity of the boost turned out harder to control than they’d anticipated in the heat of battle.

Well, it’s also my fault for punching a dinosaur. Way to go for the great Nemesis.

She was distracted from her self-depreciating thoughts by a cheerful voice suddenly jumping out of her open communication channel. “Hey! Nem! Wassup princess? Getting your ass beaten for once? Can’t leave you out of my scope five seconds, now can I?”

The obnoxiously loud greeting, if it could be called that, echoed painfully inside her helmet. Fortunately, the headgear was set on privacy mode. Sounds could come in, but no matter how ear-splittingly one specific idiot shouted over the com-line, nobody would hear a thing but her. Not even the director of the bank, who was standing a step away.

The fat, sweaty, bald man had been trying to drown her in spittle for the past fifteen minutes, under the pretense of thanking her, while she endeavored to ignore him but at the same time keep track of the key points in his blathering in order to respond accurately should she be asked a question.

It was a type of mental gymnastics she’d gotten quite proficient at over the years. Being a famous hero and supposedly a role model for the youth, she couldn’t exactly tell people to fuck off whenever they were being a pain to deal with, which was most of the time. She could always find plausible reasons to ditch her most annoying fans, but excuses went only so far. Besides, she was contractually obligated to appeal to the public.

“Killshot, what are you doing here?” she snapped curtly. “You weren’t supposed to be back in town until tomorrow.”

“Awww~…Don’t be like that, Nem. I was worried about you. I heard you were sent on a job solo and I couldn’t just sit still. So I had Jumper drop me off and—”

“You used one of the world top heroes as a TAXI?” Morgan was baffled. Even for Killian, alias Killshot, that was a new level of ridiculous.

“He owed me one, okay? And it’s good that I hurried too. I only took the time to grab a jetpack and my baby at HQ, then I rushed here—”

“Wait,” she interrupted again, her voice dangerously low. “You aren’t telling me that you came out, unauthorized, with company property, and still in civilian clothes?!”

“Relax. I’m on a rooftop two miles away from here. Nobody’s going to see me. And I’m properly wearing a mask. There was this convention in Bredrige I went to after dealing with that Albatros guy, and I found this Sogeking mask that I just had to buy. I mean, it’s not every day that…”

She let him go on for a short while, to compose herself and avoid showing any outwards sign of irritation, which would have no doubt confused or worried the banker who too was still talking, at her rather than to her. The two simultaneous speeches were starting to give her a headache.

Sometimes, being her felt tiring. Most of the time actually.

Right now all she wanted was to get out of here, drop her gear at NovaTech, go back to her apartment, feed her cat Excalibur, maybe call her baby sister to see how she enjoyed college so far, then pop an Advil or two, crash in front of some dumb TV show, and forget the rest of the world existed.

She sighed inaudibly. When did my life become like this? There had been a time when she’d enjoy her job. There had to be. She just couldn’t seem to remember.

“Killshot.” Eventually, she interrupted his monolog about some cartoon she couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of. Pirates? Really? How old are you? She hoped she sounded as pissed as she felt. “Go back to HQ, now. Apologize, and maybe they won’t fire you.”

What is it with this guy anyway? He knew the company rules, and she knew he really needed this job, at least far more than she did. If it was about money, she already had enough to stop working for a lifetime if she played her cards right. He did not. Yet he always acted like nothing mattered and only spoke about those stupid cartoons all the time! He was so infuriating.

“Sure. I’ll do that.” She could almost hear the shrug in his voice and she was convinced he was lying. Never mind. She was done caring for the moron. “But you know, Nem. Saying thanks for once wouldn’t kill you.”

“I didn’t need your help,” she replied in a clipped tone.

“Oh. So your powers now include immunity to bullets? Did I miss the memo? Was that the reason why your shield was down? You don’t need it anymore?” His irony dripping with laughter had a gift for upsetting her. Then again, most things seemed to do just that recently.

“He was aiming at my head. Even with the shield down, my helmet would have taken it. By the time he fired the second round, I’d have blasted the abnorm and the shooter was just a learner type. The techy wasn’t even worth mentioning.”

“Yeah. Sure. Whatever. You, my friend, are a tsundere.”

Morgan’s frown deepened. I’m a what now?

“But seriously, Nem. You okay? You sound like that stick up your ass is even deeper in than usual.”

She scoffed. “And you have such a nice way to show your concern.”

“What can I say? It’s a gift. The ladies love it. But seriously, I mean it. We haven’t seen each other in a week and you seem about to strangle a puppy. Is it about your—”

“Killshot! No personal talk over the com,” she almost growled. Although, honestly, their conversation up to now was already stretching the rules.

NovaTech had a strict policy about communications. Not to ensure productivity—like some employers forbade personal calls on company phones—but to avoid the identity of its heroes to be leaked. Even though the communication channel was theoretically secure, the key word was indeed “theoretically”.

You could never be sure to have proofed anything against every single parahuman out there, simply because it was impossible to identify every single power out there. Each day new abilities and ability users were discovered all over the world, and sometimes just a tiny variation in a known power could render years of research in counter-supernatural defense protocols completely irrelevant.

Like the spatial distortions field—SDF for short, which the French found hilarious—had been once considered the ultimate anti-teleportation security measure. Until a certain group of robbers had clearly proven it wasn’t, by vanishing without a trace from the supposedly most secure bank of the city, and the entire content of the vault with them. Later the teleporter of the group, a woman nicknamed Sidestep, had been confirmed dead after an upgrade to the SDF. But obviously, they’d found a replacement and a way to bypass the upgrade.

Frowning, Morgan cast another glance at the departing PCU convoy. It bothered her the teleporter had gotten away. Her range should have covered the whole bank. Sadly that didn’t prevent him or her from just walking away, then teleport when their power came back online, so to speak. In the first place, she’d only captured Hertz because the technopath couldn’t bear to abandon his gear.

At least they’d be able to interrogate him and understand how he countered the spatial distortions. Probably if he cooperated, he would even be the one to build the new replacement version. Techies rarely stayed long in prison. They were simply too profitable. Unless of course they were diagnosed with something like murderous psychopathy. Even the greediest companies wouldn’t want to work with someone whose dream was to create a zombie plague.

Then again...

She shook her head and stopped that line of thought. Down that way awaited madness.

Talks of the upcoming apocalypse had become a popular trend in the past few decades. In a sense, it was understandable that people were afraid. With incomprehensible powers popping up left and right, who was to say that someone, somewhere wouldn’t one day wake up with the unique ability to make the core of the planet implode?

Just a couple years back, a pyrokinetic boy had allegedly caused an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italia. Further investigations had proven the volcano had been about to erupt anyway and the kid had only helped things along a week early or so. Any serious scientist in the parahuman studies would also tell you there was a limit to how much power any given individual could wield. But of course, facts had never stopped people from believing whatever they wanted. Scientists had been wrong in the past, hadn’t they?

As a hero, Nemesis was in an excellent spot to peek at the darkest and most evil the parahuman community had to offer, but still Morgan refused to join the ranks of the doomsayers. She believed one couldn’t live always expecting the worst to happen or seeing it in others. Otherwise, they would end up…

…like my brother.

She sighed again. That was what Killian had almost asked about and the real reason she’d cut him off. Her brother was a subject she’d rather not acknowledge until absolutely unavoidable. As in, standing-right-before-her-and-shouting-insults-to-her-face kind of unavoidable.

“Nem?”

She suddenly noticed the sniper still hadn’t left. Their com-link was still active and he was probably waiting for an explanation of her behavior. Of course, she couldn’t exactly answer “I hate my life” and expect he’d drop the matter.

“I’m fine. There’s just something about this job that bothered me,” she lied smoothly.

“Well…duh? You almost got shot.” He sounded incredulous.

“It’s not that…” she trailed off. Then her eyes widened when a thought struck her. She’d only meant to use the shooting as an excuse to avoid the real issue, but as her mind latched onto the idea she found out that, yes, she did feel something was off with what had gone down here.

There was nothing glaringly obvious, but small details piled up. First the composition of the robber team that was such a bad matchup with her power. Then a strange raygun that could destroy her shield. And the fact it had happened when her partner was away. She had a hunch even the missing teleporter could probably fit somewhere in there. There could only be so many coincidences.

She wouldn’t admit it to Killian, but she could admit it to herself. She might have died today.

“I’ve got a bad feeling, that’s all,” she said, unknowingly echoing Hertz. Her tone was final. She didn’t want to discuss the matter further right now. She would mull over it by herself later, when her chest didn’t feel as constricted and without the pain that shot up her arm every time she moved her left wrist.

Then her eyes caught something that made her mood turn even sourer. “I have to go feed the vultures. You go back. I’ll be right behind you. If you’re not at HQ when I get back, I’ll hunt you down myself.”

“Oooh. Scary~. Alright, I’m leaving. Go get them, tsun-tiger.”

Morgan shook her head again. Sometimes she had the impression the two of them didn’t even speak the same language.

Switching off the privacy setting of her helmet, she excused herself to the director, whose verbal prostrations were finally running dry. She still had some difficulty getting away from the man. Yes, she understood how grateful he was. No, she didn’t think she’d be able to attend his third daughter’s baby shower. And, no, he certainly didn’t have to name the child after her.

He was particularly adamant about the latter and only relented after she calmly explained that she was sincerely honored, but that the gesture would be meaningless since “Nemesis” was after all not her real name. And, no, she couldn’t give him her real name. No, not even a related patronym.

As she made her to the building’s entrance, the heroine mentally wondered if the man’s unborn daughter would ever know what terrible fate she’d been saved from. Who would call their child Nemesis, seriously? It’s like asking for her to be bullied. Or a bully herself. And God forbids she awaken powers.  

At the same time, she also wished someone had been there all those years ago, before her birth, or even her brother’s birth, to stop her own parents from calling their children respectively Merlin, Morgan, and Guinevere. That their family name was actually Pendragon only added insult to injury. She actually felt secretly bad about Guinevere, since back then Morgan herself had thought it was “such a beautiful princess’ name” for her baby sister. In her defense, she’d been only seven.

She decided resolutely never to have children of her own. Kids were unaware monsters and would only transform into uglier adults. Of course, there were exceptions. Her parents, despite their cataclysmic naming sense, were pretty much perfect in Morgan’s opinion. She still believed they were the rare exception, though.

So much for not always seeing the worst in people. She sighed.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Ruminating dark thoughts, Morgan stepped out of the bank and into the sun. Immediately, she was assaulted by the brightness of the day and a cacophony of shouts, both which her helmet quickly suppressed to manageable levels.

“Nemesis!”

“A word for the Justice Sentinel?!”

“Who were the culprits?! Is it true Arsenal has finally been caught?!”

“Is our money no longer safe with banks?!”

“Nemesis!”

“Nemesis! I love you! Marry me!”

“NEMESIIIIIIIS!!!!”

“What is the city doing to stop super criminality?!”

“Do you think the death of a man could have been avoided?!”

“I’m your greatest fan! Look here!”

“Nemesis! What truth is there behind the rivalry between you and the heroes of Pharma Corp?!”

“Go die you freak!”

“YOU SHUT UP!!”

“The readers of Heroes’ Confidences would like to know if you are seeing anyone. What are your sexual preferences?! Are you straight? Lesbian? Bi?”

“Nemesis!”

“Nemesis! What response do you have for those who denounce your recent streak of exploits as fake and a devious publicity stunt by NovaTech Industries?!”

“Has heroism sold its soul to the Devil?!”

“I tattooed your name on my ass! Would you kiss it?!”

“Nemesis! A sexy pose for the Costume Tribune!”

Repressing an urge to take out her blaster and fire into the crowd, Morgan turned towards the microphones that were literally being shoved in her face. One actually bumped against her visor. At least her face was covered and she didn’t have to fake a smile. Her dispassionate gaze swept over the journalists and gawkers, one group only distinct from the other by their recording equipment. Professional cameras versus smartphones.

She also spotted the usual gathering of people whom she suspected to spent their miserable lives sitting in wait next to their radios, waiting for any hero’s appearance to crawl out of their caves, look angry, and brandish signs made of cardboard and plywood, filled with slogans as original as “SUPERS GO HOME”, “HERO=VILLAIN”, or “NORMAL AMERICA TO NORMAL PEOPLE”. Whatever that last one means.

One guy wearing an obviously fake exaggerated scowl on his face and violently waving a board reading “THIS IS A PROTEST BOARD” did raise a chuckle out of her. But she was only very mildly amused.

Don’t all these people have something better to do with their day than waste my time?

“Wouldn’t you say such brutish interventions by individuals outside of our qualified law enforcement only puts the American citizens at a greater risk?!”

A particularly shrill voice reached Morgan’s ears, audible even over the general noise. She quickly spotted a familiar face, wearing a familiar scowl, caked in a familiar overload of makeup, under a familiarly unfashionable tight bun of graying auburn hair.

“Lyudmila. Do you ever sleep? You seem to be everywhere I go,” Morgan said as she pivoted to face her new interlocutor. Her inflection was humorous, but her tone was as cold as she believed the soul of the woman in front of her to be. Though, in truth, Morgan used that tone on pretty much everybody.

There used to be a time when her supervisors at NovaTech would try to make her sound more enthusiast when dealing with the press. They’d quickly given up, preferring—or maybe resigning themselves to cultivate her image of “cool and aloof beauty”. Which suited her just fine. That way she didn’t have to pretend she enjoyed those leeches’ company. The public could draw whatever conclusion they wanted from her attitude, calling her haughty, shy, a “tsundere” or whatever. She couldn’t care less.

She wasn’t a heroine for the glory or to be loved by the masses. It was a job. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe, in a deep recess of her heart, remained a little girl still dreaming of one day walking her father’s footsteps, and become a great hero of the people just like he’d been in his time. But in the face of the media and merciless public opinion, the adult her only thought the prize certainly wasn’t worth the hassle.

In the first place, Dad lived in a more black-and-white world, where Evil versus Good still meant something. This is the era of information, of corporate heroism, and of the ever-shifting grays. She felt strangely poetic all of a sudden.

The aged female journalist returned Morgan’s cold greeting with an even deeper scowl—if that was even possible.

“I will sleep when the people are safe from freaks like you! The Morning Truth will not be swayed by the lies of your kind!”

The reporters around had somehow calmed down. Lyudmila Kwipper was a bit of a celebrity herself in the milieu. And apparently, watching her and Nemesis exchange pikes and veiled barbs was almost as interesting as a testimony from the heroine herself. Morgan mused that at least the woman had this one quality of shutting up her rapacious colleagues.

“Lies? I will tell you one truth. Today three dangerous criminals, the gunman Arsenal, Drake the man-dragon and the technopath Hertz, were removed from the streets of our city. I believe the people will appreciate the increased safety.”

Following her words, there was much typing, scribbling, and exchanging glances with cameramen amongst the flock of journalists observing from the sidelines, their head moving left and right between the two women like an audience of rabid tennis fans during an intense match.

The ball was currently in Lyudmila’s court. She didn’t waste time in throwing it back.

“Yet a man died! How do you justify that?!”

“It is unfortunate, and my sincere condolences go to his family, but the man was killed well before I arrived on the scene.”

“So you could have saved him if you had been faster!”

Morgan smirked humorlessly under her visor at Lyudmila’s victorious tone. Game, set, and match.

“I’m not sure I follow, Miss Kwipper. Are you saying ‘freaks like me’,” she joined her words with air quotes, “shouldn’t step in to stop crime, or that we should step in faster? Please clarify.”

Her tone was all too civil and the woman from the Morning Truth could only grit her teeth before stepping back and fading into the crowd like some sort of mean and bitter old ghost.

Morgan didn’t feel much sense of achievement, however. People like Lyudmila were the easiest to drive away. Them, and those who claimed her to be of alien descent. These people strived on half-truths and scandals. With the exception of a few stubborn, as long as you politely called them out on their bullshit and refused to give them any purchase, they lacked the foundation to keep launching attacks.

Others were not so simply repelled. As soon as it became apparent the joust had concluded, the reporters came back on the offensive like a swarm of flies on a big fuming pile of manure. At least they were very successful in making Morgan feel like shit.

Nevertheless, with a casualness conferred by habit, she answered questions without anybody ever suspecting how annoyed she really was. She made sure to only rely on hard facts and to avoid speculations which could, and would, be used against her later, should they be proven false, while she also deflected any personal inquiries.

And there were lots of these. No matter how many time it happened, Morgan was always appalled that people seemed more interested in her three sizes than in the arrest of dangerous murderers. Not that it surprised her much.

She wasn’t a stranger to being objectified. She knew well that she was parading around the city in something many would, and had, compared to a fetish outfit. She had stopped looking herself up on the internet when the searches had started to return as many erotic fanfictions as all other results combined.

She wasn’t blind to the fact her suit had been designed with the exact purpose of enhancing her otherwise modest silhouette. That it didn’t show any skin was a meager consolation. The engineers could spin whatever crap they wanted on “expensive polymer chainmail” and “strategically placed gear”, the truth was that the large N plastered right on her chest—which stood of course for Nemesis but was styled like the N in the NovaTech logo—kind of defied the purpose of trying to make her believe she was anything but a walking billboard.

She always thought it was funny they even tried. Even among those select few in the company who knew of her identity, most tended to forget that, she might be a heroine who beat people up for a living, but she had still graduated college with a degree in marketing. She probably knew more about the art of objectifying women than any of the designers behind this slutwear.

She had insisted on finishing her studies before starting out as a hero. She hadn’t wanted to be left completely without resource, should she for some reason be forced to retire early. Too many “supers” got injured, or simply aged, and ended up their lives as pathetic useless drunks wallowing in nostalgia. She’d witnessed it first-hand with many of her father’s old acquaintances. Not the man himself, though. Morgan suspected her Dad would be fine with whatever as long as he had the mother of his children by his side. Morgan had never seen a couple so disgustingly in love.

So, again, she had no illusion about her job as “hero”. But nothing in her contract stated she had to enjoy showing off her body in its all-but-naked glory. Like everything else, it was a necessity she had to bear with.

For several minutes, she entertained the crowd, making sure to put her chest, and the company’s logo on it, in good view of the cameras, and acting the part of the good little booth babe she was supposed to be, all the while screaming on the inside.

Ironically, it was that same company that pulled her out of the frying pan. But unfortunately, it was only to throw her into even hotter fire. Her com-line came live again and a deep male voice, filled with unusual worry, came through the speakers.

“Nemesis. Come back to HQ immediately. There’s an emergency. It’s about Salve.”

Morgan repressed a groan of painful frustration.

What had her dipshit brother done this time?!

* * *

Morgan ran down the hallway fuming and not even thinking about her painful ribs or wrist anymore.

When she’d arrived at NovaTech Headquarters, she’d discovered the situation was even worse than she’d first thought, since they were evacuating the building preventively. The top brass was passing it off to the general employees as an unscheduled security test, but Morgan had received the officious version as soon as she stepped into the complex.

Now she was on the seventh basement floor, deserted from all but the five-man security team she was approaching, and of course her waste of breathable air of a degenerate brother, though the trash wasn’t in sight yet. She stopped by the group and raised the visor of her helmet. It wasn’t a problem. The five men were “safe personnel”.

“Situation?!” she barked at the team leader, not even taking the time to acknowledge the man’s salute. Her day had been terrible so far, and as impossible as it seemed considering she’d already almost gotten shot in the head, it was still steadily getting worse.

Luckily for everyone, the team leader was tensed enough to not only not mind her rude directness but also appreciate it. The faster this was dealt with, the better.

“Your brother locked himself inside. We were waiting for you to force our way in.”

Morgan nodded. What little information her superiors had been able to give her stated Merlin had activated some sort of device—more of a magical artifact really, as risible as it sounded. Ever since then, great energy fluctuations had been emanating from the room he’d barricaded himself in.

The reason they had waited for Nemesis was obviously for her power, which affected not only parahuman but also about any inexplicable phenomenon, the kind that some crazies persisted in calling “magic”. And the reason she hadn’t yet deployed her nullifying field was because she didn’t know whether her ability wouldn’t do more harm than good. Sometimes shutting off the power source of a device simply wasn’t the way to go to defuse it.

A textbook case of this was the Philadelphia Mutation Incident. Nine years ago, a vigilante had thought he had successfully prevented the explosion of a bioweapon built by a mad technopath, only to discover that the energy shield he’d deactivated had not only been protecting the bomb but also had been all that was preventing the dangerous chemicals from mixing. When it failed, the device had detonated. The death toll had reached thousands, and still counting, because the reagents contained in the bomb had caused deep rooted alterations to DNA strands that sometimes only manifested generations later.

Point in case, Morgan had learned not to expand her power field blindly.

“Stand back,” she ordered, and the team was happy to move away from the door.

She took out her blaster and pointed it at the door. A swipe her thumb removed the safety restriction and she fired at the lock. Under the full unrestrained power of the energy gun, the steel melted like plastic brought to a blowtorch.

Switching the safety back on, she kicked the door open.

“MERLIN!! YOU PIECE OF TRASH!! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” she shouted before her mind could even process what her eyes were seeing. Then when it did, she added: “AND WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU NAKED?!?!”

Morgan stepped further into what she vaguely recognized as one of the less important research labs, then stopped right in her tracks. All the furniture had been pushed to the walls, freeing a large space in the middle of the room. Swirling patterns that looked straight out of a cheap fantasy movie spread on the gray floor, forming a near perfect circle and pulsating with an ominous greenish glow.

What in the name of God is this?!

At the center of the… the magical circle—Morgan could find no other word to describe it—sat her brother, cross-legged and completely naked. His thin body too was covered in glowing runes. Keeping her eyes on them for too long caused Morgan’s vision to sway and she was suddenly assaulted by a feeling of both weakness and nausea.

She forced herself to rip her gaze away from the winding glyphs. It helped only marginally. The air itself seemed to carry a sickening aroma.

Her eyes moved to her brother’s face. He had a huge grin plastered on his face, the kind she hadn’t seen him in years. Yet it wasn’t a pleasant sight. The smile was twisted, vicious and jubilant. When their gaze met, he addressed her with a mocking tone dripping with condescending hatred. The one he always used with her these days.

“My, my. The Great and Transcendent Nemesis Herself deigns to grace her worthless elder brother with her magnificent presence. I suppose I should be flattered?”

God. How much she wanted to punch him in the teeth.

“Merlin! Stop this madness right now. Do you think the higher ups will leave you off the hook this time?! You want to get fired?! That’s it?! You want to go back to that shit-life of yours from before?!”

Merlin tilted his head to the side, his insane grin not slipping an inch.

“Madness…?” He shook his head slowly while letting out a low chuckle. “Hah! This isn’t madness. No, dear sister, this is a thing of beauty!”

In a wide gesture, he designated the drawings around him.

“This, this is a peek at the untapped potential this world has to offer. One that your precious ‘higher ups’ in all their pretended wisdom are too stuck up to notice. Yet they dare pretend to be at the top of supernatural research?! HAH!! What top?! Just old toads at the bottom of a well. I’ll show them. I’ll show everyone!! I’ll show everyone. I’ll show everyone…” He kept repeating the same sentence like in a trance.

Morgan could only stare in horror. She couldn’t believe this was happening. This wasn’t her brother. This couldn’t be. Yet she couldn’t deny those raven black hair and emerald green eyes—because she saw the exact same every day in the mirror. Merlin and she were three years apart, but when they were younger people would always confuse them for twins.

Well, nobody would make that confusion now anymore.

A beard of a few days was eating at Merlin’s face. His black hairs had lost their luster and hung messily around his face. His green eyes were glazed and underlined by deep purplish black rings. His cheeks were sunken in. His body looked much thinner than what she’d caught glimpse of in the past couple of years and she was almost convinced he was using again. She wondered what drug he was on right now.

Like always when she saw her brother, conflicting emotions were warring inside Morgan. Anger was competing with regret, and an urge to beat him senseless conflicted with a desire to grab him by the shoulders and shout and shake him until he came back to those same senses.

She couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. He’d been getting better, this past two years. He really had!

She’d pulled some strings and NovaTech had agreed to hire him as a hero, like Merlin had always dreamed of being, as long as he cleaned off his alcohol and drug abuse. And he had! He’d come to his interview sober and fresh and had gotten the job easily. Healers were rare and always much sought after, even when their talent was only average.

For a while, she’d thought she would get her big brother back. The one who carried her on his shoulders to Church despite their Mom’s scolding. The one who protected her against bullies when she’d been too shy to stand up for herself. Not the decaying slob he’d become, always high or drunk or both, and begging her for money the rare times he wasn’t.

He’d been getting better.

Then how had it come to this?

“Merlin, please. Stop whatever this is, now.” She was disgusted to notice the almost whiny note in her tone. “I’ll try to put in a good word for you. I’m sure there’s still a few favors I can cash in. Think of what Mom and Dad would think?!”

Mentioning their parents seemed to snap her brother back to reality. But only to have him direct at her a glare burning with hatred.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he snarled.

“Mom, Dad, the higher ups… Are you even listening to yourself? All you ever talk about is others, others, others! You’re a dog, Morgan, a bitch living only to please others. You think I don’t see it? You might fool them, but me? Oh, you can’t fool me. They all look at you like you’re so great, but I, I see the truth. You hate it. You’re miserable. You’re a good little soldier who’s dying on the inside. A pitiful bitch. And yet. And YET you look down on everyone else. Like you’re so great. Like you’re so special,” he literally spat the word. “You look down on me!! And everyone else does too. I know it. They all think I’m useless! The useless brother of the GREAT Nemesis! HAH!! I’ll show them.”

Morgan swallowed hard. That had hit far too close to home for her to just dismiss it. But she steeled herself. She could see the greenish glow of the magical circle, or whatever that thing was, getting brighter, and the nauseating feeling in the room was growing more oppressive along with the lights.

“You don’t have anything to prove Merlin. You’re not useless. You’re a healer. Your power saves lives!”

He exploded in crazed laughter. He was beginning to really scare her. Anger, she was used to, but this weird crazed joy was creeping her out immensely. The sound was so grating that the security team, who stood behind Morgan, took a step backward.

“Save lives?” The irony in Merlin’s voice was so caustic it almost physically hurt. “You mean heal scratches and bruises? Why don’t you admit the truth?”

She was afraid to ask, but she felt she had to.

“What truth?” 

“That you only got me this job so that you could rub in my face how great, how special, how superior you were! To show me how useless and pathetic I am! To be compared to me and feel better about how completely miserable you are!”

“I just wanted to help you!”

“Help me? Hah! You make me sick. Stupid whore.”

Morgan suddenly wished she’d left her visor down because she feared she might start crying. Instead, she drew from years of self-imposed discipline and composed herself an emotionless mask. Clearly, reason wouldn’t reach her brother. He suffered from a severe inferiority and persecution complex and had ever since Morgan’s power had awakened and outshone his admittedly weak talent at healing.

“Merlin. I won’t ask again. Stop this and quietly come out. It’ll go more smoothly if you cooperate.”

“Cooperate? Oh? Am I a criminal now? Finally, you show your true color. Don’t worry, sis. Soon, I’ll be so powerful that everything will go ‘smoothly’ for me, with or without your permission.”

“What do you mean?”

She wasn’t really interested in his answers anymore, but she needed him to keep talking, to keep his attention focused on her.

At the same time, she held a hand behind her back and gave instruction to the security team via finger signs. They were to spread out along the walls, and a soon as she used her power, they would move in to capture Merlin. She had determined it could be done probably without danger. In any case, it surely would be a worse idea to let these strange markings get any brighter.

“What I mean? But exactly what I said. Do you remember this?”

He held up a black stone that was pulsating green at the same rhythm as the runes. Only now did Morgan remember the supposed artifact Merlin had in his possession. Her gaze zeroed in on the stone. She faintly recalled having seen it once, when she’d confiscated it from a self-proclaimed necromancer she had subdued, as Nemesis of course.

The man had been a charlatan, using telekinesis to move corpses, but the stone had been intriguing in that he’d seemed so adamant to protect it. However, NovaTech’s researchers had been unable to find anything remarkable about the rock, except that it appeared to be a block of one-hundred-percent pure obsidian. This was the reason why the stone was stored in such a low-priority lab in the first place.

On hindsight, Merlin had been there that day. He’d participated in the raid as his alter ego, Salve.

“The necromancer’s stone?” she asked for confirmation.

“Indeed! And all of you were too dumb to understand its true power!”

“And you do?”

“But of course, I do. I do. But… don’t think I haven’t noticed what you’re trying to do. Getting the bad guy to monolog about his master plan to stall for time? Why, little sis. That’s like, Hero 101. I feel a little insulted.”

“Yet I don’t hear you stop talking.”

“But that’s because you are not stalling for time, little sis…”

His twisted grin returned and Morgan suddenly had a very bad premonition. Merlin’s next words echoed maliciously in the almost unnatural silence.

“…I am.”

Suddenly the black stone shattered and a burst of freezing and foul-smelling wind swept across the room. The runes on the ground flared and blinded Morgan and the five security guards. Immediately she tried to activate her power. She could do so normally in a heartbeat. The vast majority of parahumans had to focus to use their ability, but Morgan actually needed to concentrate not to use hers. Releasing it was simply a matter of letting go of her mental block.

It should have been easy. Turn off Merlin’s light show. Grab him. Drag him to the directors’ office and be done with this terrible, terrible day. It should have happened that way.

Yet, for the first time, her power refused to come out. Her eyes widened in horror.

What is going on?!

It was as if an outside force was pressuring her whole body. It didn’t only affect her power, she had trouble breathing too—and moving. An otherworldly cold was rapidly seeping inside her and she could feel her heart slowing down. Her consciousness grew faint. She fell to her knees. She was distantly aware the security team was faring even worse than her. All five were already on the ground, unmoving.

As if from far away, she heard Merlin’s mad laughter and exaltation.

“Yes! YES!! It was true! I wasn’t mistaken! It’s really there! NOW GRANT ME POWER!! SPIRIT OF THE UNDERWORLD!! Grant me power and I will show them! I will show that BITCH who’s so great! Who’s so SPECIAL!! Yes! I can feel it! The power! It’s filling me! It’s… wait. Wait! There’s too much! TOO MUCH!! NO! STOP!! STOP SPIRIT!! I order you! I am your mast—NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

Through the mist obscuring her thoughts, she heard Merlin’s shout devolve into an inhuman shriek of pain.

Then there was a muffled but deafening sound, like an ocean’s worth of water collapsing onto itself. Then the roar of a hurricane. Morgan struggled to open her eyes. Her whole vision was abruptly filled with a huge shining translucent wall, like an immense ripple in the hair, advancing in her direction at a speed that looked sluggish, but that was only her brain slowing her perception due to the shock.

The wall washed over her and she was instantly crushed by an indescribable pressure. A head-splitting pain cleaved her brain in half. She’d never felt anything so horrible. It was as if something inside her was being ripped apart and burnt. She screamed, hoping to alleviate even a sliver of the maddening pain, her raucous voice joining her brother’s in a discordant duet.

Before long, unconsciousness claimed her.

* * *

A few hours earlier, relative time. Void in-between worlds.

Sometime before the siblings’ showdown, in a place empty of nearly anything but nothingness itself, there was…

Boredom.

How strange. Drifting inside the void, the former Demon Queen had this thought.

During her millennium of existence, Meria had thought plenty of death. Her own, sometimes. The death of others, more frequently, especially when it befell them by her hand. Which again, happened frequently.

She’d imagined death to be a lot of things. In fact, she had needed not imagine much. It was common knowledge on Zarath that after the death of one’s body, their soul would travel to the realm of the gods, where they would dwell for a time, until their eventual reincarnation for a new life cycle into the mortal world, with no memory of any past existence until they once again returned to the gods.  

However, the precise location where in that divine domain their soul would end up, that depended on which god they had served most faithfully during their latest lifetime.

A fact much fewer knew however, and which was often misinterpreted, was that one didn’t actually get to choose which god they were following. Or at the very least, not in the sense most acknowledged the term “follower”. For example, even if one were a devoted priest of the goddess of life Hielva, if that person launched a holy crusade to punish some alleged infidels, then their karma would naturally belong to Nerwatka, god of war.

And they’d been in for a surprise when they finally croaked.

It was, of course, a simplification. The ways of the heavens were much more intricate. If a war was launched to protect the lives of others, then whose jurisdiction the soul fell into was open to debate.

Also, the stronger one’s karma, the stronger was their connection to their attributed deity. Every mortal in Zarath was able to feel the weight of that connection. But since most lacked the understanding to properly assess anything divine, they could not identify which god they were following, only that they were being paid attention to. Which was pretty stupid, in Meria’s opinion. The gods could have easily remedied this issue and avoid a great many deals of very misguided existences.

But the gods are cruel bastards. I bet they laugh at seeing those poor fools invoking their names in the most ridiculously erroneous fashions.

At least that was Meria’s impression of all the gods she’d met. Hielva had been particularly unpleasant, but then again they had a bad compatibility in the first place.

Meria had never felt that connection to the divine. Oh, she’d felt plenty of desire to punch a few smug holy faces and kick several divine arses, but never had she experienced that deep sensation of belonging Elise, Sheila, Zephyr, and Shadow had tried describing to her.

Maybe that was the reason why the gods hated her so much. She truly didn’t belong. She was a hiccup in the fabric of the world. A mistake that shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

Not that she cared, of course. She wasn’t whining on her fate. In fact, if she was truly foreign to the matrix of the world, by logical deduction she probably had no fate. So it mattered not to her what others believed her place to be, or not to be. She was, period, and she was there to stay as long as she pleased—if only to piss off everyone who thought she shouldn’t.

Of course, now I am no more. Or am I? This is really confusing.

Which brought her back to her considerations about death.

If she didn’t feel that connection to the divine, then where would she go in the unlikely chance she got herself killed? That question had plagued her mind for eons. Would she dissipate into nothingness? Remain in the mortal world as an animated corpse, not really living but unable to truly die? Or maybe just skip the Heaven stage and directly reincarnate? Or an erring ghost perhaps? She might have enjoyed being a ghost, but a walking corpse sounded far too unsanitary for her tastes.

She’d thought of many scenarios over the centuries, from the most plausible to some completely nonsensical. If she had to be honest, it had caused her quite some anguish.

However…

What she really, really had not imagined, was that her death would be so utterly, perfectly, absolutely, indescribably...

Boring.

There was only so much a disembodied mind floating in infinite darkness could do. And she’d pretty much done it all twice over already. She could move, at least she had a feeling it was the case, but since wherever she went nothing seemed to change, she might as well have been stationary.

She had no way of keeping track of time in here either. She could have already spent several millennia in this void, or it might be that her dead body still hadn’t finished cooling where it laid in that bloody shrine. Maybe even the concept of time itself didn’t have any relevance in this place.

At a few occasions, she thought she’d sensed another presence, but the feeling had been so faint she guessed she’d probably been mistaken. She wondered if, perhaps, she was slowly falling into insanity. She’d heard some people lost their minds because of loneliness.

However, she was used to being alone. She’d been alone nearly her whole life. So she should be fine. She wasn’t going crazy just yet. At least because of loneliness. Although she might just lose her mind to boredom.

She recalled something Shadow had said once when they’d been discussing her lifespan—or apparent lack thereof.

“Eternity sounds pretty long, especially when nearing the end,” he’d said.

And, two centuries later, Meria still hadn’t the faintest bloody idea what he’d meant by that.

The black dragon had been full of these kinds of odd phrases and proverbs. He might have been feared as the most fierce and dangerous of his race, but at heart, he’d been a scholar.

He would shut himself up for years at a time in the royal library of the demon capital, working on one project or the other. Shadow had loved magic theories above all. He would travel all over Zarath and visit the most isolated, forgotten, gods-forsaken places to find scrolls, books, paintings and stone tablets on the spell and practices of this one secluded tribe, or that one eccentric hermit.

By the time they both died, the dragon had been probably the single most knowledgeable mortal on the subject of magic. She wouldn’t be surprised if the spell he’d used to slaughter the draith flock had been an original composition. Although, even him couldn’t find a way to get Meria to touch anything remotely alive without killing it. On that one issue, both were slumped.

Not that it matters anymore. Then again, what does? Does anything matter when you’re just thoughts in the dark? ...How poetic.

That last thought had been ironic. She wanted to sigh, but she lacked the body to do so. She’d never thought she’d miss that cursed envelope so much.

All to her idle musing, it took her a long time to notice she was moving. Or maybe it took no time at all, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was that, suddenly, she became aware of differences in her environment. Nothing visible. All around there was still only darkness. But the…feeling of her surroundings, for a lack of a better term, was changing.

And considering how much she’d tried to travel in this seemingly endless void without ever noticing any variations, she deduced she had to be now moving at quite a fast pace. Or at least she was covering a lot of distance relatively to her perception of time. It really was very confusing. But since she didn’t seem to have any control over the phenomenon, she decided to just wait and see where she was being led.

She wasn’t worried. In fact, she’d discovered it to be quite hard to feel anything whatsoever without a physical body. A soul was after all only an aggregate of magical power imprinted with knowledge and karma. Values and desires may remain, but strong emotions were very much a bodily production of hormones interacting with a brain, and surprisingly a heart had very little to do with anything.

She found it rather intriguing that she was able to think without a brain, but not feel. And yet she was bored. She couldn’t help but feel that was a bit unfair.

She didn’t know how much time she spent dashing across the endless void like a shooting star, but she clearly felt it when her journey came to an abrupt and dizzying stop. It was like crashing into an invisible wall. Not pleasant at all.

Ouch.

Meria hadn’t fully regained her bearings that something prickled her.

Ow. What with this all of a sudden?

Had she possessed a body, she might have likened the prickling sensation to a mosquito bite, even more so that she then felt magical power being slowly drained from her soul. And while having your soul drained did sound pretty dreadful, in reality she was as much at risks as one would be of getting sucked completely dry of blood by a single normal mosquito. Close to null.

Thus even without her current apathy, she probably wouldn’t have experienced any worry, though she would have felt irritated.

“…es…”

Uh?

This time, she hadn’t imagined it. She was sure of it. She’d sensed a presence. But, once again, it was so faint she had trouble pinpointing it.

“…ow…ant…ower…spir……derworld…”

The presence was becoming clearer, but it was such a tiny, minuscule wisp that locating its position was akin to try and spot a specific speck of dust in total darkness. Which was, in fact, a pretty good metaphor for what the dead demon soul was currently attempting.

“…bitch…”

Ah. Found you.

She’d found her speck of dust. She was a little happy. As insignificant as it was, it was still better than the boring nothingness she’d endured until now.

Unwillingly to let her new source of entertainment slip away, she reached out towards the speck. She could feel its frailty, so she put extra care in her movement, as if she were trying to catch a butterfly. Not that she’d ever attempted such a thing when she’d been alive, but she pictured the feeling had to be similar.

“…o…top…irit…….ooooooo.”

…Ah.

Then the speck vanished. Not slipping away, but popping like a bursting bubble. Likely it was so insubstantial it couldn’t even withstand her overbearing proximity. She felt mildly sad. And a bit annoyed too.

Stupid little thing, getting my hopes up like that. Wait. What’s this?

The mosquito-sized drain, which she had entirely forgotten about, had suddenly enlarged and was sapping her power at a now non-negligible speed.

A twinge of uneasiness pierced through the fog of apathy.

Losing her body was one thing. Upon death, there still had existed a high probability of continuing as a soul, one way or another. But disappearing wholly into oblivion? That was a truly frightening perspective. One she wanted to avoid at all cost. Even with their feelings cut off, every existence from insects to gods would strive instinctively for survival.

Mobilizing all the meager control she had of her rudimentary form, she tried to resist the siphon. She pulled. She bent. She locked herself in place. But to no avail. Nothing worked. More and more of her was disappearing into the unseen funnel. She started to despair.

However, by the time half of her had been swallowed, something changed. Her perception was quickly shifting and she began to believe maybe she wasn’t actually vanishing, but going somewhere else. Somewhere familiar, but foreign at the same time.

At least it’s still consistently confusing. I’ll take what I guess I suppose.

The high level of cynical irony in her own thought surprised her. She was feeling again! But all feelings weren’t good. With her returned emotions, she began growing increasingly apprehensive of what was happening to her. She had to use all her self-control to keep her fear from erupting into full-blown panic.

Her other senses gradually came into focus, same but different than she remembered. Sight first. Blurry colors. Green. Gray. White. Then scents. Sounds. Moans? Smell. Touch.

Then came the pain. Not a physical pain, but a soul-wrenching torment that tore through her being and clawed at her essence. Her soul screamed, twisted, suffocated. She was shattering from the inside!

DAMNED PTAEESH!!! WHAT IS THIS?!?!

She screamed, screamed louder than she remembered ever screaming, hurting her throat and vocal cords.

She was distantly aware of the implications of the fact she had a throat at all. She had been reincarnated! But she had no time marveling at this fortuitous improbability. He soul was crumbling, and with the realization that she wasn’t disembodied anymore, she finally noticed where the problem laid.

RAVENS AND CROWS!! How stupid. THIS BODY IS FAR TOO SMALL!!

Her emotions had definitely rekindled, and Meriataneesh was pissed. Like often in the past, back when she was still a child weaker than many and when her Death powers hadn’t been near as developed, she used her anger to combat the pain overwhelming her senses.

I haven’t come back to life just to die again right after taking my first breath! Gods be damned! And fuck you Hielva!! …Ah. That felt good.

She gritted her teeth. If she let herself croak without a fight, she would have to resurrect again just so she could properly die of shame.

Calm down a little Meria. Think.

She hadn’t meant this new body was small in the physical sense. What she had implied was this envelope was much too cramped to contain her whole being.

A soul was in essence magical power with an identity. Meria wasn’t entirely sure about all the specifics of reincarnation, but in her limited understanding when a soul was bestowed upon a new body, the magical signature of both synchronized. Body and soul would then grow alongside each other, as the being matured and accumulated the ambient magical power inside their soul using their body as a medium.

Her situation was exactly that her new corporeal form was suddenly receiving a massive influx of magical power from her soul, while the latter couldn’t stabilize inside this foreign shell because, in a manner of speaking, it kept spilling out. Therefore both body and soul were slowly dying, each unable to exist without the other in the mortal plane.

Or a mortal plane. Even in her current distressed state, Meria could tell the flow and composition of the magical power around her were all messed up. Either she had appeared inside a magical singularity, or she was very, very far from home.

That concern would have to wait, however. She needed to take care of the most pressing issue first, otherwise she would forever have nothing to worry about. Because what worries would have something that didn’t exist?

Forcing herself to ignore the pain—an exercise she had far more practice in than she cared to remember—she dived into herself. With her mind’s eye, she observed the magic at work, dripping from her soul into this new body. At least she tried to.

She quickly gave up on making sense of the mayhem. It would have been like trying to analyze a natural disaster with only visual input as a reference. Feasible, perhaps, but she didn’t have a few years at her disposal to dedicate to it. In fact, she didn’t think she had more than a few more heartbeat before said heart busted.

She focused on the most obvious details. There were two. Her body was dying. And her bloated soul would never fit in as it was.

Alright. You can do this.

Those who had known Meria in her previous incarnation would sometimes tell she was “overly direct”. Maybe it was because she had enough power to stampede her way through most problems, but subtlety had never been her strongest suit. Therefore, when faced with object A that refused obstinately to fit inside container B, her first response would be to hack object A to pieces until it did.

But of course hacking her soul to pieces to avoid her soul getting destroyed would not only be highly counterproductive, it would also be extremely idiotic. She could tell she wasn’t thinking straight for even considering that option.

However was what a soul? It was a large container of magic. And a very flexible one at that. What refused to fit inside her new body wasn’t the container, but the content. As long as she got rid of the content, she could save the container. Or at least she hoped. Shadow would have called her theory half-assed and probably added it was insane.

Maybe it is.

But what did she have to lose?

A mad grin formed on the lips of what could be called her astral projection within her own psyche, and without her knowing, the lips of her new real face stretched into an equally menacing smile. Extending a hand, she gathered power into the first shape that came to mind, which happened to be that of an extremely ominous but familiar scythe. She didn’t seem to notice, however, as she lifted the blade, and swung it against the external membrane of her soul!

The spiritual scythe cleaved through the thin layer like through paper and a torrent of power, finally offered an outlet to escape from this insane pressure, gushed out like an endless torrent into the world beyond.

Relief was instantaneous. Meria could feel the burden on both her soul and her new body lessen. But she soon was faced with another issue.

There was a huge gaping hole in her soul!

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! That’s the reason why I let Shadow and Zephyr take care of strategies!

Had anyone in Zarath witnessed the current state of the Demon Queen, they would likely have coughed blood in disbelief.

Alright. I need to seal the breach before I’m emptier than an orc’s balls after an orgy! …Wait. That’s it! No, not the orgy. A seal! Am I great or what? Right. Self-congratulations later.

For what she was planning she first needed control over her physical body.

Here goes nothing.

She tried to open her eyes, which had closed during her pseudo-meditation. To her relief, it worked. Limbs proved to be far trickier. She fumbled for a while with the fingers before moving onto the arms. It didn’t go smoothly.

“Ugh!”

She groaned in frustration. She looked like she was having a seizure. She was also acutely aware of the power that continued to leak out of her at an alarming rate. However, she wasn’t aiming for perfection. Just basic control of her upper limbs would suffice for now. Eventually, she achieved what could be called passable for a newborn foal and decided to move onto the next step before there was nothing left of her.

She was about to proceed when she noticed her nails.

“Ptaeesh!”

She swore. She wouldn’t achieve anything with those pitiful things. What was she, human?

Oh. Right. I probably am. She wasn’t appreciating the irony much at the moment.

Then her gaze landed on a pile of large stone shards next to her and she smiled.

Better.

She jerkily grabbed one, cutting her palm deeply on the edge as she did, but that gash the least of her worries right now.

Carefully she raised the improvised knife to her chest. She managed to do it without stabbing her own throat, which she considered an encouraging point. Her standards weren’t very high at that moment. She also noted her chest was conveniently bare. Removing clothes would have required a level of psychomotricity far beyond what she currently possessed. The absence of breast disoriented her for an instant, but she had a large rip in her soul. Anyone would agree that missing body parts weren’t a priority.

Engraving a rune would normally require her to imbue her claws, or knife, with magic, then inject it into the glyph though the tool. However, her body was literally inundated with power right now. She believed she could forfeit a few steps. A good thing too, because currently, her control over her power was near inexistent.

Gritting her teeth, she sliced into her flesh. The seal she had in mind was unseemly crude but was exactly what she needed. She also couldn’t manage anything more complex at the moment. Right now, simple was definitely best. In no time, she completed the last shaky line of the rune.

The power gushing out of her abruptly cut off. In fact, all her magical senses shut down and she found herself restrained to her puny mortal senses, which weren’t even that good. She was trapped in her own personal prison of flesh, bones, and muscles. She was in agony but, at least, she was alive. That had to count for something.

She pondered for an instant and decided it did.

She smiled.

Then she fainted.

* * *

5 September 2017. Justice City. Old City. 

The dojo echoed with sounds of a solitary blade slicing through the air, its whistle reverberating against the naked brick walls. Eye closed, a man executed stance after stance, his bare feet lightly tapping on the floor mats. A faint sheen of sweat covered his olive skin, coalescing into tiny drops along his thin black eyebrows and along the horizontal scar running from one high cheekbone to another over the bridge of his nose.

“Oyabun.”

A voice suddenly broke the silence. A young man had appeared without a sound behind to the sword wielder. In a heartbeat, the tip of the katana was against the young man’s Adam’s apple. A bead of red blood pearled against the white of his skin. Unfazed, he nonchalantly pushed the sword away from his throat with his index finger.

“Careful where you point that, boss. I’d like to avoid dying today if possible.”

With a huff, the older man sheathed his blade, straightened his hakama and walked to a side of the room, where a small round table and two chairs stood. He sat on one and, after a small bow, the young man sat on the other. Neither spoke.

Seconds later, a soft rapping was heard and a small woman in yukata entered through a sliding metal door after bowing politely. With quiet and precise steps, she brought a trail with a fuming teapot and two empty clay cups. She set it on the table, then bowed, turned around and walked away. At the door, she once again bent her waist in direction of the room, then closed the sliding panel, leaving the two men in silence. She herself hadn’t pronounced a word the whole time.

The younger reached out for the pot and poured tea for his elder, then for himself. They shared a drink in quiet for a short while before the young man finally opened his mouth.

“The attempt failed.”

The other showed no signs he had heard. Only a twitching eyebrow betrayed his displeasure.

“Killshot showed up unexpectedly,” the youth added.

“Was he not supposed to be out of state?” The swordsman eventually reacted, along with a sharp glare at his guest.

“Yes,” the youth confirmed, again, unfazed. “It might have something to do with Jumper’s brief appearance at NovaTech HQ earlier today.”

“Was it not your job to monitor such things?”

“It is, but by the time the information reached me, it was too late. I can’t be everywhere at the same time.”

“Is it so…” the older man’s voice trailed off and the momentary anger that had shown on his face faded away. “It is a shame. We will not soon have such another such opportunity to get rid of the Nemesis.”

“She might also be on her guard from now on.”

“Trying to kill a tiger, only to sharpen its claws, is it? Well, no matter. Even if not soon, an opportunity will arise again.”

“I could—”

A raised hand cut him off.

“We have too much to lose with what you are about to suggest. We shall leave the Nemesis be for a while. In the first place, killing her was never the primary objective.”

The younger man only nodded, patiently sipping on his tea.

“You will go and retrieve Hertz.”

“Hertz?” He made a grimace. “Boss, you know how I feel about technopaths. They give me headaches. What about Arsenal?”

“It is a shame he will die in the mad rampage of the man-beast,” the older man replied in an even tone, as if announcing tomorrow might be cloudy.

“He’ll die, uh? Well, too bad. Not that I object. Getting finally rid of that lizard will be nice too. Those feral instincts are a pain to deal with. Poor Arsy though…” The young man’s voice took on a wistful flirtatious tone on that last statement.

“We cannot have him talk. He was reaching the end of his usefulness in any case.”

“How ruthless,” the youth commented with a cynical smirk, covering his mouth in mock shock. The gesture was oddly feminine compared to his behavior until now.

“We would have let him go had he not gotten himself captured.”

“I’d say, the fact you can say this with a straight face after you set him up against Nemesis is truly amazing, Oyabun.”

“Enough talk. Go,” the older man ordered, turning away to signify the discussion had come to an end.

The sound of a cup being set down on the table was heard, and when the man in the hakama looked around, he was alone once more. Slowly, with deliberate movements, he picked up the teapot and poured himself another cup. But as he lowered the pot, he suddenly froze. Across the surface of the fuming liquid in his cup, the faintest ripples could be seen.

Soon, a low rumbling sound filled the air.

The man was on his feet in a blink, a hand on the pommel of his sword, scanning the obscure room while a feeling he hadn’t felt in a long time snaked up his spine. It took him some time to recognize that feeling.

It was fear.

Then, abruptly, the north-eastern wall of the dojo came alight and a shining shockwave rushed at him from across the room, occupying the entirety of the space. The man’s eyes widened, then narrowed dangerously. For an instant, the shape of a black flower shimmered briefly into the air between him and the incoming blast.

However, it shattered from the impact and the light passed right through it and the man behind as if neither existed. Like a flood, the ethereal glow poured into the room for several seconds, before the last of it left through the opposite wall, leaving behind not trace of its passage but faintly rippling tea and the collapsed body of an unconscious man.

* * *

Originating from the Research Center of NovaTech Industries, the humongous shockwave filled to the brim with an unknown energy swept across the city and its surroundings, causing a global blackout and leaving in its wake the mayhem of a whole population suddenly fainting in the middle of whatever they were doing.

The cataclysm would be recorded in history books as the Justice City Power Surge.

* * *

????. ????. ????.

In a dark place, an ancient presence stirred. Asleep, the being’s dried and cracked lips slowly stretched into a vicious smile, black blood trickling down his chin. Yet he did not wake. It was still too soon. But time would come. Eventually. At last, every piece was in place…

In a week. In ten years or several hundred. It mattered little…

Vengeance would come…

He would rise again…

They would regret the day they had betrayed him…

Eventually…

No need for haste…

He had all eternity before him…

For Death, even forever meant but an instant…

He would wait…

Eventually, she would come…

Definitely…

Come to him…

Come to me…

Meriataneesh, my precious daughter.

* * * * *