Gadget peeked out of the stairwell door, out into the Grand Hall — careful not to open the door too far, so people couldn’t see in — hoping that the remains of the six Cybermechazoids wouldn’t be discovered for some time. Then, he opened it wider, motioning for the others to follow as he crept out. Pumbaa rode on his shoulder like a lookout. Zoë and Misto followed them, out into the throng of the con outside. The Grand Hall was bustling, as usual, with Changelings of every Kith, Vampires of every Clan, Mages of every Tradition, Starfleet cadets and officers, and Jedi and their padawan learners, along with G.I. Joes and Stormtroopers and characters from every anime imaginable, from Full Metal Alchemist to Ranma ½ . Gadget adjusted the Dr. Manhatten Helmet on his head and Misto sucked in a breath — God, he looked so ghastly, with all that dried blood all over his snout and his fur — as they tried to blend in. Zoë looked around furtively . . . probably scanning the crowd for further signs of Ravenkroft’s biomechanoid henchmen. That was probably a good idea. Gadget reached up and switched on the Dr. Manhatten Helmet, and sighed as he flexed the mental muscles necessary to shut out the maelstrom of psychic chatter and seal it up behind the Wall, thinning it out, so he could look for one specific psychic voice that he recognized: The psionic “signature” of the Cybermechazoids . . . An awful, grating psychic pulse that hurt his head to “listen” to for longer than a few seconds. And a dead giveaway that more of Pumbaa’s brethren were nearby. For his part, Pumbaa sat on his shoulder, hanging onto the Dr. Manhatten Helmet for support and snorting excitedly at all the costumed heroes and villains walking by, all of whom pointed at him and either gasped or gave Gadget weird looks. Heh. So what? He didn’t mind. He was used to weird looks.
They made their way to the elevators, walking close to the walls, trying to stay out of the way of the crowds of passersby, the mingling clusters of people who stopped to chat with each other, and those who gathered around to see the exhibitions of professional cosplayers and merch-hucksters. Gadget smirked at the sight of the still-destroyed half of the registration desk — the hotel staff busied themselves around it; they acted like nothing at all was wrong with it; wow, I really did do a number on them, he thought — and the other damage their earlier fight had done to the place. Already, a team of professional contractors was at work fixing the front doors of the place, which had been cordoned off and marked as unsafe, a one-lane passage through them cleared for entry and exit, the glass swept away, but other than that, treated as normal, everyday, prosaic.
Damn, he thought. I really need to watch it, next time. How the hell did I do that, anyway? Just what, exactly, did I do? And how did I do it? Or did Ravenkroft and I somehow do it together? Did he have the same intentions as me? Oh God, that’s an ugly thought . . . That I maybe partook in a gangbang of the whole city’s brainwaves . . . That I maybe mind-raped several thousand — no, maybe somewhere north of ten thousand — people . . . Just on accident, without meaning to. Oh dear God, what kind of monster am I?
Revulsion made him shudder.
See? said the Beast. You’re no good to anyone. You hurt people just by being. You’re a stain on the universe’s underwear. You’re a liability and a walking blight. You put others at risk just by thinking the wrong thing. You think you’ve invented a miracle. You think you’ve discovered a new frontier. What you’ve really invented is a new way to violate people, and what you’ve really discovered is a new frontier in the abuse of power by a small, insecure idiot. You. Why didn’t you just pull the trigger when you had the fucking chance?
“Gadget?” asked Zoë, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m . . . I’m fine,” he said.
“Your hands are shaking,” she said. “Maybe you’d better take that thing off for a few minutes. God knows what it’s doing to your brain in its current state.”
“No way,” he said. “We need to be prepared in case Pumbaa’s brothers attack us again.”
They walked on. His head hurt, but he didn’t want to say anything; the less alarmed he made Zoë, and the more confidence he could instill in Misto, the better. The elevators were just up ahead, thankfully. Maybe he could take the Helm off for just a few minutes once they were inside the elevator, and rest for a minute or two until they reached the top floor.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” said a squeeing, girlish voice. Gadget turned to his left. Whoa. A drop-dead gorgeous professional cosplayer dressed as the anime character Shiki Ryougi, from the anime Kara no Kyoukai was running up to them, gushing and grinning. Her tall, lithe, and well-muscled body — she obviously worked out — and flawless skin (or maybe that was just a stellar makeup job) added to perfection of her cosplay; she simply was Shiki; that was all there was to it. Boy, Mystikite had cheated himself by not sticking around for this! She wore brown, laced combat boots, and sinuous, dark, low-cut blue yukata that clung to her curves in all the right places. However, since professional cosplay tended to go all-in on the side of the sexy, it was missing its midriff, exposing her bare belly — and a spectacular set of abs — and the yukata was cut short into a miniskirt. Over the miniskirt yukata, she wore a short-cut, bright crimson overcoat with a white fur collar and black striping on the sleeves. Slung across her hip were twin sheaths, in which she carried her daggers (peacebonded, of course). She had raven-black, short-cropped hair, the wide, deep pools of her eyes were a stinging dark blue, just like her yukata. She grinned a wide grin full of perfect teeth at Gadget, her full lips parting to let the sun shine through them, and said again, as she danced on the spot: “Oh my God! He is so cute!”
“Um, excuse me?” said Gadget. “Who — ?”
The cosplayer extended a hand. “Hi,” she said, “I’m Belladonna Nightshade. Pleased to meet you. And I’m talking about your little friend there!” She giggled. “On your shoulder! Oh my God, he is so freaking cute! And your friend’s cosplay,” she said, looking over toward Misto — whose wolfen face bore more than a trace of frustration at this new delay — “wow. Just wow. How did he make it so . . . So realistic?”
Pumbaa put on his own approximation of a “smile,” his small tusks jutting up into the air as he snorted and grunted through his grin.
“Thanks,” said Misto. “It . . . takes a lot of patience to endure the . . . er, the transformation.”
“Uh, yeah, it does look real, doesn’t it?” said Gadget, and he grinned — dopily, as always, and he knew it. Dammit, why did beautiful women always turn his knees into Jell-O and his brain into pudding?
“Thanks, really,” said Zoë. “We appreciate it. But — ”
“I like yours too,” said Belladonna, nodding at Zoë. “I get it. Totally. Wild-west gunslinger with alien technology on her wrists. Very cool. Very Cowboys & Aliens. Are you guys heading to a room party? I noticed the toga.” She nodded toward Misto. “Maybe I could tag along?” She cocked her head sideways and winked at Gadget.
Oh dear Christ did Gadget ever hate Ravenkroft. Right now more than ever, he hated the man’s — well, alien-human hybrid’s — guts with a passion.
“Gadget,” warned Misto, shaking his head. “Not again.”
“What does he mean?” asked Belladonna, frowning, “by ‘not again?’”
“She has a right to know,” said Gadget.
“A right to know what?” said Belladonna.
“Whoa boy,” said Zoë, rolling her eyes. “Here we go.”
“Listen, Nightshade,” he said, recovering his faculties, and clearing his throat. He gently put his hand on her arm and drew her away from the others. “We’re not going to a room party. The truth is, we’re headed to the rooftop of the hotel. There’s an alien spaceship parked up there, and on that alien spaceship, there’s a madman supervillain who has fused himself with the alien invader from another planet who owns the spaceship, and he plans to use a piece of alien technology from a different alien race to unleash a horde of exiled, transdimensional aliens from a third alien race back into our dimension, the first of them via the body of a friend of ours who he’s kidnapped and is holding prisoner. We’re going to the rooftop to use the psionic weapon on my head, my friend’s enhanced werewolf strength, my other friend here’s pyrokinetic powers, to hopefully defeat the supervillain and get our friend back, and maybe blow up the alien’s ship and stop two separate alien invasions in the process. Now. My advice is to leave con. Leave now, because it’s going to get ugly here soon. Real ugly. Ravenkroft — the supervillain I mentioned — has already sent some of his Teenage Mutant Cybermechazoid Samurai after us — and yeah that’s a thing — and he’ll probably send more, this time down into the hotel itself. So run. Like Biff says, make life a tree, and get outta here. While you still can.”
Belladonna was silent for a moment.
“Wow,” she said at last, her eyes wide. “That is the coolest LARP premise I have ever heard! What is it — a Technocracy campaign in Mage: The Ascension? Or is it maybe a GURPS campaign? Sounds like something you could only do in GURPS.”
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“Uh, it’s not a LARP premise,” said Gadget, shaking his head. “It’s — it’s real. It’s what we’re doing.”
“I get it,” she said, winking at him. “Right. Totally. It’s real. Gotta stay in character, right? But listen dude. I’m sorry but . . . I’m really not in the mood to join a LARP. I was really just hoping you and I could . . . y’know . . . get to know each other. But if you’re not interested . . .”
“No!” said Gadget, blurting out the word, practically yelling it. “No! I mean — I am interested.”
Pumbaa let out a yelping bark on his shoulder, by far the weirdest sound the little creature had thus far made. Gadget and Belladonna both just looked at him for a moment. Then he went back to grunting and snorting. He picked his nose absently.
“You are?” she said. “Interested, I mean? Then come with me to that room party. Right now. Your friends will understand. Won’t you?” She looked toward Zoë, and then at Misto.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his heart sinking into his stomach. “But I can’t. I have to save my friend. She’ll die if I don’t save her.”
Belladonna nodded slowly. “Y’know what? I respect your commitment. I do. So tell you what. Once you . . . save your friend . . . Come and find me. I’ll be around here somewhere. This general area. I’m working the con floor until around 6 A.M. Okay? What’s your name, anyhow?”
“My name’s Terry,” he said. “Terry Anders. But everyone just calls me ‘Gadget.’ It’s sort of my ‘nym. Gadget Anorak Prime.”
“Oh. Gadget. Huh. Cool ’nym.” She reached out and took his hand, and squeezed it. “My real name’s Katherine,” she said. “Like I said — come and find me, okay? I’ll be around.”
You blew it, whispered the Beast. A perfect chance with a gorgeous woman, and you flushed it down the toilet so you could continue on in this pointless, hopeless quest to go save someone who can’t be saved, and whose life is forfeit, just like yours soon will be.
And with that, she left, heading back toward the middle of the Grand Hall. Damn but she was sexy. And was it his imagination, or had she actually just expressed . . . interest in him? Was that possible? Nah, couldn't be. No way . . . could it? As a general rule, hot women weren’t usually interested in him. He was the one at the party that the cute girl never went home with. (Except that one time. Jetta, the one time he and she had . . . well . . . And she had been coming off that bad breakup with Mystikite. And they had both been drinking that night. And . . . well, maybe it wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t been at con together that year, and hadn’t been sharing a suite . . . and a dozen other factors. But still. She had seemed to genuinely go for him . . .) But anyway. Was it possible? Was she interested? So far, he had been nursing a near-incapacitating crush on Dizzy, who had seemed somewhat oblivious to the obviousness of the effect she had on him. Maybe he’d been doing that because it was psychologically safer for him — and certainly a more familiar feeling — to “love from afar” than to have to deal with the implications of a real, actual, reciprocal relationship with someone who actually liked him as anything other than “just a friend.” (Not that there was anything wrong with Platonic love; he and Zoë certainly shared that.) He’d have to bring that up with his therapist. If he ever made it back to see her again. Gulp.
“Can we please get moving now?” said Misto. “Time’s ticking. And so is Dizzy’s clock.”
“Right,” said Gadget. “Elevators.”
They made their way the rest of the way to the elevators, and Misto punched the “up” button. They waited for a few moments, just standing around, with Misto’s “toga-partying blue werewolf cosplay” attracting oohs and ahhs from the crowd. Finally, the elevator arrived, the “up” arrow lighting up and the car issuing a “ding” sound. The doors slid open, revealing a Klingon warrior making out with a Delvian Priestess. Misto issued a heavy sigh.
“Ahem! Is this all you two do?” he said to the lovers.
“Yeah, pretty much,” the surprised Klingon said, breaking his embrace with the Delvian. He grasped her hand, and led her out of the elevator. “Why, what’s the matter, jealous?”
“Bye then,” said the Delvian, as they stepped out and went on their way. “May the blessings of the Goddess of the Seek be upon you.”
Misto shook his head as he watched them go. “I swear, some people, all they think about is sex and romance. Hmph. Coraline would’ve had a thing or two to say about that, I assure you.”
“Oh come on, quit lying to yourself,” said Zoë. “You know as well as I do that if you wife were alive right now, and you two were here together, at con, you’d be eating her face and riding on every elevator in the joint while doing so, too.”
Misto sighed, and said nothing for a moment. He simply stared after the lovers. His yellow wolf-eyes filling with tears, he whispered, “Yeah. I would.”
Gadget patted him on the shoulder and got on the elevator, along with him and Zoë. The doors closed, and Misto sighed again, wiped off the fur under his eyes with his arm, and punched the “23” button. The elevator started to ascend.
“So,” said Misto, and cleared his throat, “Gadget. Any idea what’s wrong with your Helm?”
“I think,” he said, “that the main voltage regulator is messed up. It’s sending a fluctuating amount of current into the Tesla coils. Which means that I can’t control how much power it injects into the quantum vacuum. Which means that my powers of telekinesis are going to be . . . unpredictable. Which means we can’t count on my force-fields the way we usually can. They might work, they might not. Same thing with my etheric Ray Gun. It might appear, it might not. It might work, it might not. I don’t exactly know.”
“Hmm, not good,” said Misto.
“Yeah, I tried to tell you that,” said Gadget. “I need to repair it. Oh well. Little late now, now that we’re on our way up there.”
“Guess so,” said Zoë. “Guess we’ll just have to make do.” She sucked in a long, tense breath, held it, and then let it out.
“Nervous?” asked Gadget.
“Well shit yeah I’m nervous!” she said. “We’re about to take on a crazy supervillain and an alien invader in the same body, and on its own turf, no less! So yeah! I’m nervous!”
“Good,” said Misto. “Nervous keeps your adrenaline going and keeps you ready for a fight.”
‘What about you, Pumbaa?” asked Gadget, turning to the creature on his shoulder. The little guy let go of the Dr. Manhatten Helmet, and pantomimed fighting with his fists and grunted and snorted furiously. He almost fell off of Gadget’s shoulder. Gadget turned to Zoë. “I wonder if we should stop and let Pumbaa use the bathroom? He’s bound to have to go by now. And we don’t have a litter box.”
“Speaking of which I have to take a leak too,” said Misto. “We’ll stop at the restrooms on the twenty-third floor. Then we ascend the final flight of stairs and attack the alien ship.”
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. The coast appeared to be clear, save for a few people in cosplays moving back and forth between room parties and talking in clusters of three and four here and there.
“Okay,” said Misto. “Let’s go.”
Gadget and company headed out of the elevators and found the bathrooms. They reluctantly split up: Zoë headed to the women’s restoom, while Gadget, Misto and Pumbaa headed to the men’s room. Gadget headed into the men’s room with some trepidation.
He crept through the door. Wood paneling gave way to porcelain tiles. Okay. Ready. Steady. He wasn’t sure whether he’d find ordinary people in here . . . or more Cybermechazoids lying in wait. He eased around the corner, and peeked.
Whew.
No Cybermechazoids.
He and Misto went about their business — he had to lift Pumba onto the rim of a urinal so he too could relieve himself — which took, for Misto, about twenty minutes, as he was having digestive issues thanks to all the gore he’d consumed. After which, they headed back outside — Pumbaa once again on Gadget’s shoulder — to meet up with Zoë, who had already finished and was waiting on them. And she wasn’t alone. Two others had joined her.
“Ana?” said Gadget, blinking. “Katherine?”
The two girls stood on either side of Zoë. Ana brandished a semiautomatic submachine gun. Gadget was about to ask her where she’d gotten it, but then . . . Ah, okay. Right. The fallen SWAT team members, from earlier. One of them must’ve left behind a machine gun that hadn’t been found by the clean-up crew. And Ana had found it instead. You go girl, he thought. Katherine meanwhile had armed herself with a giant sword that looked almost to big for her, and she had discarded the peacebonding; it looked razor-sharp and ready to cut things in half. Any doubt he might’ve had, though, as to her ability to wield it, was cut short when she executed a complex, flashy maneuver with it, flourishing the blade from in front of her to her side in one fluid motion. Wow. Gadget’s eyes widened. The girl certainly knew how to handle a fucking sword!
“We’ve decided,” said Ana. “We’re coming with you.”
“Both of us,” said Katherine.
“How did you two . . .” said Gadget, a look of — genuine — perplexity crossing his features. “What?”
“You’re not going to talk us out of it,” said Ana. “You saved me, Gadget. I told Ana here what you did. And how it’s real. How it’s all real. I . . . I showed her. See, you . . . you gave me something.”
“I, uh, I did?” said Gadget.
Ana nodded furiously. “Yeah. You gave me a gift. I can do sort of one of the things you can do, now. I can . . . sort of . . . read people’s thoughts. And show people things. What’s inside my mind. Not perfectly — I only got this gift like an hour ago, okay? — but I met Ana downstairs just now, just like fifteen minutes ago, and I . . . read an image of you in her mind. So I went talk to her. And I showed her. About all of it. How all of it wasn’t a LARP, and how all of it was real. And we both decided that you and your friends need our help. So. Here we are.”
“We stole the weapons,” remarked Katherine. “And we decided on something else, too. From now on, we’re not plain old Ana and Katherine. We’re Sailor and Belladonna Nightshade. Because people named Ana and Katherine don’t put on costumes and save the world. People named Sailor and Belladonna Nightshade do that, just like people named Misto, Gadget, and Zoë Deschain.”
Gadget smiled, despite himself. Well, why not? Why the fuck not? Then, it hit him. They weren’t just risking their lives to save Dizzy. Or just risking their lives to save the world. No. They were risking their lives for something else, too. Their con. They were risking their lives to save the con, because FantazmagoriCon was something precious to them, something sacred that Ravenkroft had violated and ruined and profaned with his presence and his villainy. Something special and wonderful, and fun, that had been tainted by Evil. And even though the world was in peril — and another human life was in peril, too — somehow saving the con was important, too. Gadget understood. He looked at Misto. Misto looked at him. They both exchanged glances with Zoë, who shrugged.
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I’m too tired to argue.”
“Okay then,” said Gadget. “If it’s okay with you two, it’s okay with me. You two, bring up the rear, I guess. That alright with you, Misto?”
Misto grunted his approval. “Yes. Just try not to get killed. I feel responsible enough that Dizzy’s been captured and put through this. I don’t want any more blood on my hands than there already is. Figuratively, or literally.” He glanced down at his hands. They were still covered in the muck from the Cybermechazoids he’d slain. “Though I know that last wish is probably not going to come true.” He sighed, and glanced to his left, where sat the entrance to the stairwell that led to the rooftop. “Alright then. Onwards . . . and upwards.”