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killer shrike hope this story doesn't queer any plans of HH or ag
Wed Feb 23, 2005 at 11:39:41 pm EST
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Mr. Epitome #40 (has some bad words)
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Mr. Epitome #40


“Gone, But Not Forgotten Part Two”


Previously: The Epitome Division of the Office of Paranormal Security was undergoing a top to bottom review by independent investigators, one of whom was an old acquaintance of Mr. Epitome’s. As Special Agent Clarice Grackle and the Paragon of Power had a reunion of sorts a new threat known as the Forgotten Man readied himself for a campaign against the US Government.

Twelve years ago: Washington D.C.


The bolt of energy scoured a wound across Epitome’s chest even though he managed to tumble away from the brunt of the attack. He skidded to a halt, ripped one of the parking lot lampposts up by its roots, and used it to bludgeon his opponent to the earth.

The woman quickly rose from the assault, as she had used her wings to protect her from the strike. She unfurled them and let fly another blast of cosmic force, atomizing Dominic’s impromptu weapon. Then she took to the air again, juking to the left to avoid a flying charge by the costumed law enforcement officer. As Epitome reached his leap’s apogee the woman cast another bolt, hitting him square in the back with enough force to send him careening across the length of the lot. Epitome smashed into one of the concrete supports for a nearby overpass. With a malicious grin she blasted the two-lane on ramp above the Paragon of Power with a dynamiter’s precision and intent. Eighty tons of reinforced concrete crashed down on the man.

“Rookie,” Pegasus branded, before turning to face the assembling federal agents.

“So this was all a set up, right? The disk isn’t here?” she asked rhetorically.

The feds started shooting. Pegasus sighed and began her ascent away from the sting operation. She was about a quarter-mile up when the rebar struck her in the back, piercing skin and muscle and bone. Her right wing spasmed, and she began to plummet to the ground.

Epitome leapt up to meet her halfway. Hammering away at the woman with punches that would crush granite, he snarled, “Turn your back on me?!”

Pegasus managed to block out the pain enough to transform into her centaur form. She struck Epitome with flashing hooves, “Perhaps I underestimated you. My deepest apologies.”

Then she blasted Epitome in the face.

Dominic experienced his aqueous and viscous humours evaporating for the first time. He howled in pain, but managed to grab onto one of Pegasus’s forelegs. Epitome drove his knee into her midsection just as the two of them hit the ground.

Pegasus shifted to her human shape again in an attempt to free herself, but her enemy held on. With his free hand Mr. Epitome snagged onto Pegasus’s auburn locks and drove her face repeatedly into the ground.

“Send you to the fucking glue factory!” he vowed through charred lips.

Penny Christopoulos doubted the man was making an idle threat. She managed to get her arm up and sear away the hair Epitome held onto and spun out of his grasp. With her remaining strength she kicked him in the chest, knocking him to the ground.

“We’ll finish this some other time,” she promised, before the mysterious energies of the Constellation claimed her, taking her to a place of healing and reflection.

Dominic, his sight ruined, relied on his other enhanced senses to tell him his foe had escaped. Just as they told him of Clarice’s approach.

“Epitome! God, call for an ambulance!!” she shouted to a nearby agent. The young woman suppressed the urge to gag at the scarred pits that were once her friend’s eyes, “Sit down, Dominic. You’re going to need a doctor, but you’ll be OK.”

“Promise?” the Exemplary Man joked.

“Yeah.”

The Paragon of Power reached out and found Clarice’s hand, “I, uh, I’m a little scared here.”

She took the gauntlet and clutched it tight, disregarding the gore that stained it, “Superheroes don’t get scared, remember?”

A look of irritation crossed Dominic’s face, but he quickly banished it, “They also don’t get their faces blown off either.”

*****


It would be a week before the doctors at Bethesda would release Mr. Epitome. In that time his eyes had managed to grow back, though the more sophisticated rod and cone cells had not sufficiently developed. Epitome was still effectively blind.

“Can I drive?” he quipped as Clarice wheeled him out of the hospital.

“Sure. I’ll just catch a taxi back to the hotel, if you don’t mind,” she replied.

Clarice put on the wheelchair’s brake and watched Dominic stand. He was dressed casually, and wore a pair of dark glasses to cover his wounded eyes, “Do you want to wait here while I get the car?”

“I’ll walk with you,” he held out his arm. The petite redhead took hold and began navigating him across the lot.

Once they were in the car Dominic felt safe to address business, “Any word on Pegasus?”

“No. The scientists figure she teleported away.”

“Didn’t think she could do that,” he mused while turning on the Chevette’s radio.

Clarice pulled out into the mid morning traffic, “Someone else might have been responsible for that stunt. Maybe whoever hired her to get those files.”

“Have we figured out why she’s interested in Cromlyn’s department?”

“No, and the Agency boys aren’t being very helpful. They’re saying we don’t have the clearance to know the particulars.”

Epitome scowled, “That’s bull. I’m getting tired of people in this government shutting us out.”

“What do you propose we do about it?” Clarice, clearly intrigued, asked.

“I’ve been a good soldier for a while now, long enough to earn their trust. I think its time they showed us some gratitude and let us be involved in what goes on behind the scenes.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Well, I guess the government could go to those sad relics in the Valiant Vanguard and ask them if they’d be willing to do the work we do,” Dominic grinned and pronounced, “I didn’t become Mr. Epitome to be somebody’s stooge, Cissy. I want to decide policy, not just implement it.”

Clarice shook her head, “I don’t think an ultimatum like that is a good idea. Too soon.”

“But later, maybe.”

“Yeah.”

“I suppose I can wait. A few days.”

“At least until your sight comes back,” Clarice chided before turning serious, “This is the worst you’ve ever been hurt.”

Epitome nodded ruefully, “I didn’t handle it well.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Still, with this power, I should be able to deal with such adversity.”

Clarice Grackle pulled into the motel the Epitome Task Force was staying in while on assignment on D.C., “I know you don’t want to hear this, Dominic, but you’re only human.”

The two exited the car and walked the stairs to Epitome’s room.

“I put some groceries in the fridge and turned down your bed,” she explained while watching him count the steps needed to navigate his surroundings.

“Thanks,” he sat on the bed and unlaced his shoes, “Can you stay awhile?”

“Sure,” the young woman dropped down next to him.

“Can you stay the night?”

“Dominic,” she shook her head, “It’s a bad idea. We’re not at the Academy anymore. We’ve got careers to consider.”

“Is that your only reason to not try again at a relationship? Because if it is, it’s pretty weak.”

Clarice scowled, “You can afford to say that. I’m the one who will be seen as some kind of… gold digger if we get back together.”

“Gold digger?”

“I don’t know!” she grew exasperated, “What do you call someone who sleeps with a co-worker in order to advance their career?”

“Office slut?” Epitome offered facetiously.

“Yeah, that works.”

“We’ll know it’s not the case. And you dodged my question. Is your only reason because of work?”

“Yes,” Clarice admitted.

“Then I think you should reconsider,” Dominic smiled, but there was a hint of anxiety to it, “We had fun together, didn’t we?”

“We did.”

He gauged the approximate location of Clarice’s face by the sound of her breathing (which had quickened with anticipation, Dominic was happy to note) and gently reached out to caress her cheek, “Just think of how much fun we could have now.”

Clarice leaned into the touch and sighed, “I don’t know: I’m kind of holding out for a superhero that can fly.”

After a brief chuckle Epitome used his hand to undo Clarice’s ponytail. Her hair came loose and shrouded her face as Dominic bent down to kiss her lips, her chin, her neck.

She pulled away only briefly, to remove his glasses. His eyes were opaque and for the moment vestigial, but he blinked by reflex when they were exposed to the light.

“I hope they don’t spoil the mood,” Dominic said sheepishly of his disfigurement.

Clarice answered by unbuttoning his shirt. Then she got started on her own.

*****


Not quite now: but close

The Mind’s Eye skirted the Narrative edges of the Parodyverse in her astral form, a journey that with one false move could lead to her erasure.

The psychic tried to ignore the gaps of nullity that waited beyond the world as she knew it, but she could sense them: disturbing chasms of Non-story that waited- ever present threats to all that existed. She normally would not have made the journey or even deigned take such a personal hand in a retrieval assignment unless it had directed benefited hers and Factor X’s organization. However, given the notoriety of the client Nadya felt her involvement was required.

Her psychokinetic abilities allowed her to sense her destination, and she swerved through a network of Story Framework and recalibrated her ethereal form so that she could re-enter the Textual Realm. The Mind’s Eye was taking a big risk by trespassing here: she and Doctor Vasillych had heard of the Triumverate, powerful conceptual beings that shepherded the various Tales of the Parodyverse, and knew they did not appreciate meddlers. Or thieves.

Once she was in orbit on the planet the former KGB agent narrowed her senses to focus on the target. It was where she had been told to look. Nadya willed herself downward to where it rested. Its form splayed across a dusty lab table, inert and untended.

Nadya gathered it up in her telekinesis and, fast as thought, followed the silver cord that would take her and it home through the portal her employer had kindly provided.

“Ah, Miss Prokofiev,” the Hooded Hood bade as she materialized in the arch villain’s Throne Room, “Welcome back. I hope your excursion across the fringes of the Parodyverse has not had any adverse effects on your mental state. Some find such close proximity to such Actuality disconcerting.”

Once the Mind’s Eye took possession of her corporal form she rose from the fainting couch she had been provided and shook her head, “I am fine, sir, and as you can see, I have returned with the bounty. Where would you like it?”

The Master of Retcons gestured to the wall mounted shackles that now waited in one corner of the dark chamber, “Set him there, please. It will allow me to better inspect his condition.”

Nadya complied with her telekinesis.

“Thank you. And thank Doctor Vasillych for me. Your fee will be transferred to the requested account,” the grey-mantled man strode over to his newest possession and considered it.

“I will, sir.”

There was silence in the chamber, as the Mind’s Eye wondered if she was in fact dismissed, and if so, how to leave the incomprehensible confines of Herringcarp Asylum.

“Is there anything else, Miss Prokofiev?” the Hood asked, his back to the diminutive blonde.

Not wanting to seem flummoxed by her situation, Nadya decided to pry, “I was just wondering why you were willing to pay so much for that corpse.”

The Hooded Hood, never turning to acknowledge his questioner, reached up and pried open one of the giant simian’s eyes. It gazed back at him dully, an empty vessel of vast power and potential.

Empty for the moment, that is.

“You never know when something like this may be of use,” was all he said of his plans for the Omni Competent.

Next: The Forgotten Man attacks. More flashbacks, as we get to see how Epitome evolves into what he has now become. Out soon.

Footnotes:

Pegasus (Penny Christopoulos) is a shape-changing legendary immortal creature from the Mythlands. Sometimes an auburn-haired women, sometimes an angel-winged warrior, sometimes a winged centaur and sometimes the mythical beast from which she takes her name, Pegasus can also project comet-like cosmic bolts which gain in power the longer she takes to form them. In her winged forms she can fly, and outside a planetary gravity field she can fly at faster-than-light speeds (she’s immune to vacuum and cold). Proud, passionate, and professional she was previously a mercenary in the villainous Scourge before gaining a Presidential pardon. Pegasus gains her cosmic powers from and serves a mysterious organisation known as the Constellation. She cannot remain in physical form for more than 24 hours at a time, and must spend at least an hour thereafter as a disembodied mass of cosmic energy communing with the Constellation (but she tries to keep this a secret).

Edward Cromlyn: Was a leading member of the Shadow Cabinet, a vast conspiracy that sought to resurrect Lord Resolution, also known as the Machine God, the Final Thought, Ultizon, and (to his friends) Basketball Jones. As I recall Cromlyn was an OSS spook in Ian’s “Mumphrey in World War II” story, so I put him as a leading figure in the Central Intelligence Agency for the purpose of some backstory. Pegasus is interested in all things Resolution because her employers were trying to stop the Resolution Prophesy from taking place.

Valiant Vanguard: Another Crazy Creation of the Cleverly Comprehensive CrazySugarFreakBoy!, the VV appear to be a Parodyverse version of the Avengers, active prior to the Lair Legion’s formation. From what I gathered they were operating in the late 80s and early 90s. (edited)

Factor X, (Dr. Gregor Vassilych) the greatest foe Mr. Epitome never faced, former Soviet spymaster used his KGB connections to build himself a profitable practice as a middle-man between different criminal groups. If someone needs an army of cyborg mutants, Factor X would be the man to go to. If a cyborg mutant is looking for work, Factor X would be the man to call. Vassilych is suave, brilliant, and ruthless, so of course he looks like Vincent Price. X’s key advisor is a powerful telepath known as The Mind’s Eye (Nadezhda "Nadya" Prokofiev).

Omni Competent: An alternate reality version of Mr. Epitome who wound up taking over and destroying his planet, one of the now linked Shattered Earths. At some point the villain had his brain put in the body of a mutated white gorilla and subjected to the same treatment that gave Epitome and Glory their powers. Since OC couldn’t flee the Shattered Earths in this body he tried transplanting his brain into Mr. Epitome’s body and fled to our Parodyverse. The plan was thwarted by Epitome and the Probability Dancer, and his consciousness, at last check, was in custody. The Triumvirate moved the Shattered Earths from its confinement in a pocket dimension (See Crisis #5 for that), which was motivated the Hood to take possession of the mindless form of the Omni Competent. Who knows why.







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