“So…” Revenant decides to speak on the way back. The soldiers (and Palmer) were left behind to see what they could salvage from the corpses. He, the AI and two of his praetorians are coming back home. “... how bad is it?”
“Depends on how well we can maintain the cover-up.” Humility replies. “If we continue keeping up a convincing image of a mercenary unit aligned with the Alliance for the Preservation of Democracy, we’re fine. In fact, we can benefit from it. If we don’t… things will get ugly. If they find out about me, things will go horribly bad.”
Sounds utterly fabulous.
“Three centuries and the APD is still around?” Revenant asks back. It didn’t matter to him enough to ask when Humility mentioned it the first time. In his times, the APD was one of the three political blocs that divided the world between themselves, the other two being the Iron Pact and the Union of Progress and Freedom.
“It’s another iteration of it.” Humility replies. “The ethnopolities are all a part of the Confederation of Mankind, which is something of a common ground for ethnopolity alliances that agreed to stop shooting each other if some outside enemy appears. APD is one of said alliances, composed primarily of more conservative democracies.”
Makes sense. APD of his times considered itself to be a post-Days of Fire successor of the long-defunct NATO. It also won the Third World war, even if fairly narrowly and only due to repeating the Deal with the Devil that the Allies did during the Second World War.
Except, it was the other devil this time. No one liked the results.
“There are many of those alliances?” Revenant asks back.
“Fourteen or fifteen, depending on how you count.” Humility replies. One of his praetorians whistles loudly. Yeah, that spells chaos no matter how you look at it. “Loyalist transhumans, like the one I pretend to be, are banded together in the Vanguard of Progress faction. Our new friend out there is most certainly from the Res Publica Christiana. I think I also mentioned the communists and hardline socialists from the New Comintern when we talked about Uragan-B.”
“Right.” Revenant can see where this is going. Thorn’s going to be overjoyed. “The ‘Sinner’ stake, right?”
“Yes.” Humility replies. “We’re facing one of the RPC’s knights, most likely from a knightly order dedicated to dealing with pirates and similar space miscreants. Judging from the swiftness and brutality of the attack, and the way in which the pirate’s officer body was… artistically disrespected, it’s likely that we’re talking about a Visehradian knight errant.”
Revenant has about a thousand questions right now. He should start by going through them in chronological order.
“Question one: knights?” Revenant asks.
“A lot of RPC countries have nobility nowadays.” Humility replies. “Involved a lot of professional memetic engineering. The idea was to reforge the concept of noblesse oblige and chivalry into a working social group. More rights in exchange for much more duties and high moral expectations that are actually legally enforced.” Humility paused for a moment as Revenant digests the news. “One of the more successful attempts at social engineering in human history, all things considered. Which is a problem for us now.”
Interesting concept. Weird, but… to him, ethnopolities were the manifestation of the concept of weird. All things considered, there were many countries out there that made this idea look sane and normal.
“If things go wrong, we’ll have to deal with an enemy that cannot be bribed or talked out of fighting us.” The AI continues. “If they decide that we’re evil, they’ll be utterly relentless about expunging us from the world. Worst of all, those guys trade quantity for quality. No, wait. It’s actually not the worst.” Humility stays quiet for a few seconds. “The worst part is that it’s a Visehradian knight.”
At this point Revenant is almost certain that Humility is trying to use pauses in speech to act as an ersatz for emotions, due to whatever voice emulator their body had being so incredibly limited.
“What’s wrong with those guys?” Revenant decides to ask. “I mean, aside from the Visehradian Alliance being an ally of the US Government in our times. This did earn them some negative points in my book.”
Thankfully not a lot of Central-Eastern European heroes got deployed to the frontline before the war ended. Otherwise, things might have gotten… ugly.
“It’s not the same place.” Humility replies. “Their official colonies that now act as a continuation of their government in space are elsewhere. The Visehradian Commonwealth I’m talking about is a bit of a secondary attempt at colonies, at the edge of the Human Space. And they are, excuse me for saying it that way, batshit bonkers.”
Wow. And it’s a Rogue AI saying this. This is going to be fun. He can basically taste it in the air.
“They are a patchwork of about twenty ethnopolities that formed one, bigger, together.” Humility continues. “Due to coming under assault from some really nasty aliens, the sort that you really can’t negotiate with. Said aliens made a very bad call of trying to weed out the resistance through biowarfare.”
“Did the pathogens mutate and grant locals superpowers?” Revenant asks. With a hint of mockery in his tone, just enough to make his bodyguards chuckle.
“What are you, a comic book character?” Humility replies. Uh-oh, that actually hurt. Good shot. “No, but it completely devastated the environment and made the air full of contaminants. Not to mention the fact that most of their planets were also badly irradiated. Can you figure out how exactly did that backfired spectacularly on the invaders once a few decades have passed?”
It’s a clear signal that he has all the building blocks. And he didn’t get a lot of intel about the future. The list of choices is short.
Ten steps later, he suddenly explodes with laughter. Oh, that shit is absolutely fucking hilarious! And such a Humanity Fuck Yeah moment.
“Locals managed to maintain working healthcare to a degree allowing them to run appropriate genetic treatments to get rid of negative mutations… while perpetuating the positive ones throughout the population.” Revenant replies. “Evolution on a higher gear.”
“Yes, precisely.” Humility replies. “The result is to streamlined genetic evolution what the Pure were to attempting genetic long jumps.” Uh-oh. “They are dangerous. Worst of all, there are one of the most militarized cultures in the Human Space. They also have nobility, a part of being a part of the RPC. We’re most likely facing one of them.”
Uh-oh. So not just a religious fanatic refusing to bend rules… but also someone from a hyper-militarized culture. So the closest real-world equivalent of the Warhammer 40k space marine. It’ll be a delight.
“How fucked are we?” Revenant asks.
“Even unenhanced citizens of the Commonwealth are superhumans by the standards of your time.” Humility replies. “If we go by the standards of those that aren’t further enhanced with technology, like we can expect from our friend here, then the highest recorded sprinting speed is 102 km/h. Pre-Humanity 2.0 Project’s maximum speed was 44.8 km/h. The initial improvement after the Humanity 2.0 Project elevated it almost immediately to 52 km/h. Today it’s closer to 65 km/h, though this varies between local populations. Pure clocked at about 110km/h, by the way.”
Revenant whistles loudly. 102 or 110 km/h in a sprint? That’s comparable to most S-Rankers he knew. It’s just that with metahumans it was much harder to establish due to their growth rates being varied on different fields.
Thunderbolt, the Top Hero of Michigan, could reach 1224 km/h, but that was his individuality at work. But it was rather common for people’s base attributes to grow fastest when they were close to their individuality’s running (pun intended) theme. Thunderbolt was a speedster, so even without his individuality active he could sprint up to 134 km/h.
Metahumans were within the competitive range of the future Mankind that had centuries to improve themselves. In their narrow specialties, they could outperform the locals significantly. Outside of it, they were reasonably close.
He could make an appropriate combat grading, a necessity to establish combat plans. A way of knowing how many people he needed to deal with local threats of appropriate nature.
Their elite mooks were roughly comparable with modern regular militaries. His own praetorians had an advantage over it due to superior training, but were probably slightly outmatched in physical output due to the improvement in local genetics.
This also meant that his elites were going to be outmatched by the modern elites, who had both the training and physical improvements. On the other hand, even the local special ops units were going to be inevitably left vulnerable by an unexpected deployment of meta-abilities.
Average spec ops soldiers were probably A-Rank equivalents during the first engagement, then S-Rankers once they realized what they were facing. There was something of a slight variation here, though - villains tended to know how to engage multiple enemies armed with guns.
And even during the second or third engagement, you were always going to be the enemy that they weren’t prepared for, an enemy that could always pull some unexpected tricks out of their bag. The enemy here was… an upgraded form of an elite mook.
That tier of enemies was S Rank, but… as a group. 4-5, to go by a reasonable estimate. With variations depending on tactics, environment, available equipment and so on.
Then you had the tier above it. The special existences. The elites above the elites. Like whatever knight that was prowling around. There were all solid S+ Rankers, details greatly varied between individuals.
Superheroes and supervillains through technology rather than individualities and under different names. That’s how he had to treat them.
He could work with that. It gave him the framework he needed.
“So, we’re getting the morality of our ways assessed by a superpowered religious fanatic space knight.” Revenant summarizes it up. “Wild. Can’t wait to tell Decay about it. Quick question - if their template is stable, why did no one bother making it standard throughout Human Space? I, for one, would enjoy being stronger, faster and so on. And so would Onslaught.”
… wait.
Did he just make a sex joke? Since when was that an option?
Chapman’s giving him a strange glance for a moment. Looks like even his bodyguards found this behavior odd. He should probably tone it down or they’ll start suspecting him of being someone else with a good disguise.
“They have some of the finest geneticists available to Mankind living up there.” Humility replies. “I also strongly suspect that they struck a deal with Liberator. Something in their DNA is intrinsically resistant to the ‘long jump’ genetic modification method, meaning that any attempt to modify someone to match the visehradian genetic template is going to lead to violent rejection changes and, in almost all cases, painful death. Even if you try to transplant only a part of it.”
Smart, Revenant has to admit. Probably pissed off a lot of people, which only makes it a better idea.
“I assume that ‘Liberator’ you mentioned isn’t Liberator, the S-Rank supervillain, head of the Union of ‘32 and the self-proclaimed Arch-Anarchist of America?” Revenant asks just in case. There is a (minuscule) chance that this whole mess they were in wasn’t the first time, especially with all the unpredictability of the NIGHTMAREs.
“No, it’s Liberator, the Last Genetic Warlord of the Eugenic Wars.” Humility replies. “The best geneticist in human history, the man responsible for the creation of the bioware implant technology, and one of the main actors starring in the drama that was the collapse of the Solar Commonwealth, first and last interstellar government of Mankind as a whole. Some say that he was also the creator of the Pure.” Humility stays quiet for a moment, before resuming its speech. “He’s also the closest thing that modern Mankind has to a ‘king under the mountain’ myth. Someone who died, but who is said to be merely hiding somewhere only to reappear on Mankind’s darkest day and unite it before starting its Golden Age.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Someone left quite an impact.” Revenant admits. “Since Visehradians are an ethnopolity and you claim that Liberator assisted them, he had to be still around after the fall of the Solar Commonwealth. So is the myth actually a myth?”
“It’s not.” Humility confirms his suspicions. “Only a few people out there know it, but Liberator is still alive. Despite the fact that he was already old when he supposedly died two hundred fifty years ago… and baseline humans only live up to two centuries. My previous iterations clashed with him twice due to Liberator getting interested in my progress towards humanization and deciding to steal my research data to help him in his ‘Great Work’, whatever it was. I lost both times.” … seriously? That guy had to be actually rather scary. “Also, to make sure that this whole talk doesn’t feel way too off-topic I’ll just say that you already experienced Liberator’s handiwork.”
“Since you say ‘experienced’, I assume that it wasn’t something that you told me about this world, but something more… material.” Revenant replies thoughtfully. Then he has an idea. “Don’t tell me: the resurrection tubes?”
Humility, to his own surprise, nods.
“My earlier assessment was wrong.” The AI adds. “I said that the tubes were of local origin. However, I confirmed since then that New Springfield lacks the technological know-how to perform cloning of this level of efficiency, and that cloning is actually illegal there. I re-analyzed the footage of the damaged tubes that I had recorded before we were forced to flee from our old base and I’m now almost certain that the whole chamber was built by Liberator and then somehow merged into this mess. Though it most certainly wasn’t supposed to give birth to fictional supervillains, we have Visitor to blame for that change.”
“You think that Liberator himself is somewhere in this maze?” Revenant asks.
“Hard to say, but if he had a laboratory hidden somewhere in New Springfield, it’s very likely that he got sucked into this maze.” Humility admits. This isn’t something that Revenant feels happy about. He might want to… recover his investments. “But with how much of a maze this place is and its sheer size, our chances of him finding us are… well, needle in a haystack.”
Another complication to be on the lookout for.
He had to learn more about him, but all things considered, it didn’t feel like the reason for the Visitor to mess the planet so badly. So not just some less and less hypothetical great evil but also a laboratory of Mankind’s joint King Under the Mountain?
This place began to look almost suspiciously interesting.
“Back to our friendly local berserker knight.” Revenant decides to return to the main subject. “What are the chances of us fooling him or her?” Judging from the way Humility worded it earlier, it seemed like the knights were a co-ed thing today.
“Low to zero.” Humility decides to hit where it hurts. “I’m fairly sure that they are already suspecting us of something fishy. Don’t treat the enemy as a mindless berserker. They might be bloodthirsty, but they are also a noble. Raised from birth with the best education available. Since they were allowed to prosecute a one-man war against the pirates, they had to possess at least a degree in law and criminology, maybe also in psychology if they expected to have to deal with victims and keep them stable until handing them to proper authorities… or wanted to be able to detect lies more efficiently.”
Oh. Well, looks like they’re dealing with an SS-Rank superhero equivalent. It’s as if Mindscape had a child with Valiant. Brain and brawn. The worst combination to deal with as your enemy.
“What’s the most suspicious part of us as a group?” Revenant asks back. They need to find a way to make themselves look less suspicious.
No, he refuses to get rid of his black business suit. Despite it really giving him the Big Bad Evil Guy vibes.
“Your obvious lack of basic cyberware implants.” Humility replies. “Today, all but the most extreme of body purists will have a basic set of those connected to optical and auditory nerves. Something like a Personal Computer that you can operate in your head, connect to the internet without needing any outside infrastructure, run translation software to real-time translate speech of others and writings, that sort of thing.”
That explained the obvious lack of visible computers in Ball Python. There were some computer terminals here and there, but mostly due to them being needed to operate something that was a bit too much at risk of hacking to let it be connected to the internet.
“And when exactly…” Revenant says while glancing at the AI. They are almost at Ball Python. “... did you plan to tell us that?”
“Yes, because randomly approaching you and saying that you and your friends need to accept cerebral implants that can modify your visual and auditory feed would certainly be met with an overwhelming trust.” Okay, honestly, the AI was right about it. It would be very sus. “I implied in a talk with some of the locals in the engineering deck that you have special implants due to whatever exotech treatment you received to get your powers, and that due to their unique construction something in them began to malfunction during the event that brought us here.”
“Believable enough.” Revenant admits after considering it for a moment. “Until someone manages to check the insides of our brains. Bonus points for very little interactions between us and them. I still think that it was stupid at your end, what if someone asked any of us about their implants?” Humility doesn’t answer that. Huh. “Since I assume from your earlier words that it probably won’t fool the knight, I think we’ll have to get ourselves decked up with those implants.”
“How do you plan to do that?” Humility asks back.
“The way I solved most of the material shortages during the Second Villain War.” Revenant replies. “I’ll ask Clockmaker to provide me with everything I need. And, if she has to, she will involve Overhaul or Demiurge to get it done.”
Clockmaker might be getting boned on a nightly basis by the AI in front of him, but she isn’t an idiot. It’s way too early to actually trust the AI. She’ll ask the locals for the designs of their implants under the guise of repairing their own, and make them without letting Humility tamper with anything.
Looks like they’ll have to get those implants installed as soon as possible.
***
“So…” Onslaught whispers to his ear later the same day. They are in his bed (okay, their bed), Hypothermia allowed to sleep on her own for once. “... can we talk about our relationship now?”
“Looks like you’ve decided to use your mouth in more than one way this evening.” Revenant comments. He was lying on his back, facing the ceiling, Onslaught hanging off his side. It’s nice. “Go on.”
“Wow, looks like I’m really starting to influence you, Revy!” She replies cheerfully, before kissing him on the cheek. Yes, Revenant noticed this as well, thank you very much. “So… you do realize that your biggest emotional issue right now is apathy, right?”
“Apathy?” He asks back, the term actually coming out of nowhere. He doesn’t consider himself to be apathetic, if anything he is almost overworked nowadays. “How so?”
“You don’t make any moves, despite me seriously suspecting that deep inside you want to.” Onslaught replies. “You’re a villainous mastermind, Revy. You don’t feel comfortable doing something when you aren’t confident about it, so you default to staying stoic and quiet in the background. And you aren’t comfortable about your feelings because of your crippling lack of romantic life and how much of a disaster it was, even if it wasn’t your fault.”
The resulting introspection takes him about half a minute. Because say what you want about him, he is smart when he really focuses on using his brain on something. And right now, Onslaught brought something important to his attention.
“You know what, you’re right.” Revenant admits. “I think that it works like that. I… hate feeling vulnerable. And when I don’t know what to do, I feel vulnerable.”
“Oh, uhm.” Onslaught actually appears to be taken aback by it. “I didn’t expect it to work this well. I expected to have to hammer the nail in for the next hour at least, so… good job, me? I guess?”
She’s adorable when confused like this.
“Now you’re really resembling Kitsune.” Revenant says. She stays quiet, but it’s the ‘speak now or else’ type of quiet. “She tended to act as my personal therapist too.”
“You were willing to come forward with your emotions to her?” Onslaught asks. Uh-oh, someone’s jealous? “Without being prompted or downright harassed into it?” Wow, at least she knows that she’s harassing him for it.
“Because of her individuality.” Revenant replies. “It was called Impersonation. She was a shapeshifter, but with a twist that the better she understood someone, the more she empathized with them, the better her impersonation got. At the highest immersion level it was less like having a body-double and more like being cloned. She could copy intelligence level, memories, personality, even individualities, at the downside that she couldn’t stay at that immersion level for very long or she would have forgotten who she actually was and become the person she impersonated.”
“Oh.” Onslaught understands it. “For as long as you opened up to her, you could be in two places at the same time. And it was for work. The one thing that you were confident about.” He lets out a faint ‘mm-hmm’ of agreement. “How did she die?”
Ah, yes. He is lying in bed with his love interest… and talking about his past dead love interests (even if they were mostly one-sided about it). This is his life nowadays.
“Big battle, I needed both of my bodies in one place to deal with the mountain of work.” Revenant replies. “The heroes got desperate, and Gatekeeper teleported Valiant right into my command post for an attempted decapitation strike. I had an advance warning, but…” He sighs painfully. It’s… not a nice memory. “Black Knight intercepted him before he could reach me, so he had only one option left if he wanted to kill me before our reinforcements arrived. A sword throw. But he had only one sword and two targets. And that’s when Kitsune ‘panicked’ and yelled at me to cover for her and tried to run away.”
“She…” Onslaught says before realizing what it meant. Kitsune was wearing his face, using his brain. She knew that Valiant was going to throw the sword. When she did all of that the superhero thought that she was the true Revenant. She knew that - and she knew what would be the result of that. “... what was the deal with your command posts and heroes?! They just kept cornering you there!”
The sudden change of subject to a much less depressive one makes him chuckle loudly. No, scratch that, he actually laughed. It was a rare sight. Onslaught’s face seems to summarize her opinion on the subject as ‘mission accomplished!’.
“Fair, I’ll do my best for it to never happen again.” Revenant replies, before getting an… idea. “So, you think that I should try to be less… apathetic on the field of my emotions and relationships with other people? Actually be proactive instead of waiting for things to happen?”
“Yep.” Onslaught nods. “That’s the idea, yepyep. You should know at this point that the people close to you don’t bite! Even if I can certainly be persuaded to do it in certain circumstances!” Sigh. “I’m sure that you have to stay all serious, confident and stoic with a lot of people, not to mention brooding in the corner as you seem to like so much, but surely you can at least try to be Analyst more than Revenant with some people, right?”
“Well, it's honestly going to be a struggle.” Revenant admits. The idea changes into resolution. “That guy was dead for years, and barely anyone remembers him, me included. But… I think that I know how to start.”
And he does. Onslaught is pushed a bit back, Revenant throwing himself over her. This time it’s her that lies on her back, Revenant above her on all fours.
And then he kisses her. Rather intensely. And yes, tongues get involved. And guess what, that’s just step one for being proactive tonight.
After a longer moment of making out, he pulls back.
“Well, that’s very proactive for you and… w-wait, what are you doing?” Onslaught then says, only to change the subject rather rapidly once Revenant continues to kiss her. Lower and lower with every kiss.
“Heading to my destination?” Revenant stops the activity to answer her question, his head currently hovering over her stomach. Sure, he is kissing her through the pajamas, but they feel silk-like in touch, so she most certainly feels it. “With all the confidence that an SSS-Rank villain can and should display?”
“S-so you w-want to…” Her voice is actually rather shaky right now and he can see (despite the light being very dim in the room) her face going increasingly red.
“Return the favor, yes.” Revenant decides to reply. “Most likely more than that.”
“M-more, errr, like the, you know, home run?” It’s almost hilarious how she suddenly couldn’t say the words properly, instead of defaulting to baseball metaphors.
“Well, is it your safe day?” Revenant asks.
“Y-yes.” She replies. A bit shaky, but he believes it.
“Then yes, that’s my plan for this evening.” Revenant replies. Somehow, she blushes even more at that. “Unless you’re against it. But I do remember you saying that you want me to make a move on you rather than giving you what you felt was a ‘stop thirsting over me once I give you what you want’ sex. Plus, you said that you wanted me to be proactive. Or did I read something wrong?”
“No, uhm, no, I just… Do you have more settings than either the super-apathy or being like this?!” It seems that he successfully threw her out of her comfort zone now. Nice. He likes seeing her all bashful like now. “I mean, I’m a-all for it, j-just it c-came out a bit out of the blue and…”
He sighs, then he lets his head rest on her belly for a moment (gets a surprised squeal out of her).
“Oni, I killed people.” He says calmly. “A lot of them. I’m sorry but if you expected bashful handholding and the whole romantic slow-burn nonsense straight out of a romantic comedy, then you’re going to be disappointed as it’s a bit too late for me to be innocent. I didn’t make a move earlier because I didn’t want to hurt you and I needed some time to make up my mind and deal with the mess called my emotions. But now that I think that I’m done with all that, I’m really uninterested in waiting any longer. Are we doing it or not?”
She doesn’t waste a lot of time thinking it over. On a side note, he really likes the look on her face when she decides on something, it’s absolutely adorable. Although she didn’t manage to keep her face straight for a long time.