God help me, there's more. - Tales of the Parodyverse

Post By Fin Fang Foom Mon Aug 15, 2005 at 11:50:15 pm EDT	Subject God help me, there's more. Originally Still continued.	In Reply To Fin Fang Foom Mon Aug 15, 2005 at 11:48:10 pm EDT

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As it was with most people, the life Hadrian Villas had ended up building for himself wasn’t just the polar opposite of the life he’d originally planned, it was also completely counterproductive to reaching that original plan. After deciding to join the insurgency, he’d intended on remaining a loner and not contributing much outside of violence, but, of course, he’d ended up sleeping with Lilith, becoming friends with both his fellow superhuman allies and the civilian leadership of their city, and greatly helping them in rebuilding a society that he was going to end up destroying, anyway. Why empower someone that you’re going to have to fight, in the future? Logically, he knew that his strategy (side with the insurgents to take down New America’s government, then take out the insurgents and whatever other goverments had popped up over the globe, paving the way for the HV “natural law” that he was 99% sure would kick in when true anarchy was present) was the right thing to do, but, when the illegals and insurgents talked about putting their hope in him, about how it was wonderful to finally have a leader that wouldn’t let them down…it made him feel sick.

In Hadrian’s view, humanity and utopia had one of those “horrible timing” relationships, like the kind you saw in the (thankfully) extinct romantic comedy movies. Whenever his species had the kind of opportunity that would enhance their way of life, they didn’t take it--and whenever his species wanted the kind of opportunity that would enhance their way of life, it was nowhere in sight. Plus, it was incredibly easy to be fooled. There were times when a civilization should have gone the anarchy route, and didn’t, and vice-versa. With so many factors involved, so many possibilities and problems…it was simply difficult not to be tricked by a cultural optic illusion. And at this juncture in history, when mankind had seen their greatest enemy and boldly reacted by having a cultural meltdown, it was more important than ever to get things right. Hadrian--a literal wise man and an actual genius--had absolutely no idea what to do. Did you help the insurgents build a better society? Did you avoid being seduced by an order that would most likely end up becoming defective, as so many others had in the past? Did you somehow try to combine the two? And what if events spiraled out of your control before you’d made up your mind?

Most of the insurgent encampments in Central were like the one near the now-flat patch of land that had once been Salt Lake City, Utah: between a few dozen and a hundred people hiding in amateur-insulated basements, hit-and-run attacking any Safe America troops that were unlucky enough to be sent into their region. Their wives, sisters, and daughters had been forced into prostitution in order to pay for the black-market food. The infant mortality rate was staggering. Not wanting to be part of any socialistic “welfare-state”, they refused to move in with the insurgents that lived underneath Kansas City, where they’d have been fed, clothed, given freedom and a chance to vote, and generally taken care of. (Though most of the Salt Lake men refused any help, the women and teenagers were much smarter--Hadrian had given them water-filters, and they routinely smuggled in care-packages of food and medical supplies.) They avoided the other insurgents. Everything felt prehistoric, out here…they had no idea what was going on in the outside world, there were strange sightings that were beyond their comprehension, and their tribe was just struggling to survive. Regardless, it was still safer than becoming slaves or cannon-fodder for New America.

The air was so smoky (due to now-dead fires that had been caused during the attacks) that the anemic wisps that came from their outdoor barrel-fires could barely be seen. It was far warmer than usual, today--probably in the twenties--so some of them were getting some fresh air, smoking (which kind of made the whole “fresh air” thing pointless) or staring up at the oblivion-colored clouds. Varying levels of snow were everywhere. Most of them were gathered in the middle of a set of blocks that had two-story-high mounds of rubble every thirty feet…a stranger came out from behind one of those mounds. Instead of being bundled up in dirty clothing like the rest of them, he was wearing a black outfit that looked like it had never seen dirt in its life, which had short-sleeves. This young man had somewhat dark skin, and was toned like a gymnast might be. In a small community like this one, everyone knew each other, and he obviously didn’t belong. Some of the men and women (adults and teenagers alike) pulled weapons out, aiming at him. Safe America was known for trying to send in spies.

Ignoring them, he walked right up to one of the barrel-fires, and stuck his hand in it--the fire reacted by jumping and intensifying in strength. He did the same with the others. Seeing that he was unhurt, they lowered their guns. And now that the fires were more powerful, people flocked to them, as opposed to just a few halfheartedly enjoying them.

Taking a gamble on the stranger’s apparent ethnic background, one of the men said, “Are you him?”

“Yeah.”

“If you need to talk to Anderson, he’s down the first hole on your left.”

“Thank you.”

Hadrian Villas skipped the ladder and jumped straight down the hole. Inside, there was only one way to go. Compared to their own underground home, it was badly-built and in poor condition, with dirt frequently falling and the support-beams obviously under a significant amount of strain. Exhausted guards eyed him warily. Occasionally, there’d be a side-tunnel that led into a basement, but his enhanced perception told him that Anderson was straight ahead. He passed people that had seen better days. The worst of these was a young boy, paler than most (which was saying something) and coughing his lungs out. His mother was with him, she was a frazzled-looking woman, quite clearly emaciated. Stopping them in the tunnel, Hadrian pulled out what looked like a wallet--it actually had cylindrical pockets that held short vials of liquids of varying colors. He pulled out one that was almost glowing golden.

“Is that pee?”

“No, it’s--it’s liquid light that only comes from a crystal farm in a city underneath Tibet. It’ll clear up your cough in no time.”

The boy looked at his mother, who recognized Hadrian. She nodded.

Pulling the cork stopper out, Hadrian handed it to him, and he downed it. Putting the empty vial back in his wallet, he said, “Give it about an hour, and he should be mostly better. But you both need to eat more. Who’s taking your food?”

“Who said anybody was--”

“You’re both in worse shape than most of the people here, and I can tell that it’s been almost twenty-four hours since either of you have eaten.”

“How can--”

“Who is it?”

“My, um…my…”

Hadrian understood immediately. “Where is he?” He barely stopped himself from using the word “pimp”.

“Right over there,” she pointed.

“Do you want to come with me when I leave, or do you want me to just stop him from doing it again?”

“We can’t leave, my husband would kill us!”

“Is your husband also your ‘manager’?”

“Y-yes.”

Hadrian got down on one knee, looking at the boy. “Where do you want to live?”

“Anywhere but here. And, uh, Dad doesn’t have to come with us, does he? He hits her…”

“It’s up to your mother.”

She blinked. “…you can really get us out of here?”

“Depending on how long it’ll take you to gather up your belongings, you can be in Kansas City in just a minute or two. You could choose a new job. And, we have classes that your son could take.”

“We don’t have any, he sold them off for beer, he--for god’s sake, I’m--just get us out of here, now, before I change my mind and decide to be an idiot, again.”

“You don’t have anything hidden anywhere?” Hadrian addressed this to the boy, who shook his head. “Any goodbyes to make?” Again, both shook their heads. Hadrian then put his finger to his ear, in which a tiny, hard-sound angelic letter was implanted. “It’s me, Harmonic--I need you to teleport these two, right now.”

They both turned into biological data and vanished as the husband/pimp came out into the hall. “What’re you--HEY!! YOU STOLE MY FAMILY YOU STOLE MY FAMILY”

Hadrian let the guy break his hand in an attempt to punch him, and then responded in a blur, beating the living crap out of him in under three seconds. Afterwards, when the man was on the ground, Hadrian increased the heat of his aura (as he’d done with the barrel-fire kindling, earlier) and, with his finger, gently scarred his face diagonally. The thin wound cauterized instantly.

“I just marked you--when my people see someone that has that mark, they know they need to shoot them on sight. Do you understand me?”

One of the guards had started to approach, but he wisely backed off.

“Do. You. Understand. Me?”

“Yuh. Yessir.”

“Good man.”

Not wanting to deal with any more of this (he’d never put up with this sort of suffering in his own society), Hadrian sped into the basement that Anderson--their ostensible leader--called home. Anderson, a middle-aged man who clearly got more food than his followers, was sitting in a beanbag chair that was in turn sitting on a wooden platform. He had a forty-ounce in one hand and a willing-looking teenage girl in the other.

“And so the gods deign to visit us,” Anderson said, cheerily. “Break up any of my families on your way in?”

“Just one.”

“You’re slacking off, son.”

“You’re lucky I’ve let you live this long, old man.”

“Threatening? Not your usual style. You must be in a hurry.”

“I understand you spoke to Harmonic, early this morning.”

“Yes, your towel-less towelhead did interrupt my…morning exercises, unfortunately.”

“Some of your people have seen lights in the sky, things like that?”

“I blame the black-market moonshine.”

“And you had a doomsday prophet in your camp?”

“Emphasis on ‘had’. She took off maybe a week ago. Not a bad lay, but she couldn’t shut up about something or other.”

“I need to know exactly what that ‘something or other’ was.”

“Wanna trade for it? Your non-working girls are a lot healthier than my people’s employees, they could probably make more money. How do you feel about renting?”

The next thing Anderson knew, he’d been flung across the room, slamming against a cement-brick wall and crashing to the floor. Something hard and fast hit his knee, shattering it. The girl ran screaming out of the room. Once again, the guards saw what was going on, and decided it would be best to stay out of it.

“Specifics. Now, please.”

“--how should--aghh!! Some crazy crap about, about artificial lava in the sewer-systems of major cities. Weakening the foundation, turning manholes into mini-volcanoes, something like that. So the whole thing’d sink into the ground and melt.”

“Thank you.”

Literally spitting teeth, “Go back to your little commune, you freak.”

“My citizens have votes--yours don’t. Simple as that.” Hadrian would have killed him, but, someone just as bad would have taken his place, so there wasn’t much point.

“We let the market decide.” Seeing that the violence seemed to be over, he felt comfortable adding a weak “Why don’t you get out of here and go back to, uh, to spreading your poisoned ideas!”

That statement jumpstarted something in Hadrian’s brain. As he’d been gathering intel about the New American contingencies, he’d found himself naturally thinking about Price’s overall strategy. Using non-media-delivered psychological warfare was certainly effective, but he felt like it wasn’t quick-spreading enough for a practical person like Price…still, what could you really do differently with the idea? He suddenly realized that the answer was in the target, rather than the process: it spread through word-of-mouth, which meant that “infecting” a large group of people would be more productive than doing the same to a small one. However, the only sizable groups left were Safe America contingents and Labor Initiative slaves, and frightening those doing the work of New America would be counterproductive, for Price. That left illegals and insurgents. The only substantial, nearby group of them was the Kansas City tribe, but according to Akiko’s frequency-trick, this unknown superhuman hadn’t gotten close to it. So who was left? Hadrian thought of a faction that was not only somewhat large, but one that also had a trait that would make it irresistable to someone trying to spread memes.

Ignoring the now-passed-out Anderson, Hadrian activated the hard-sound energy character in his ear. “It’s me, again--we need to get moving, I just figured out what this lunatic’s next target will be…”

---------------------------

As a general rule, paradoxes had been watered down: they were now fodder for obvious irony, not-so-poetic justice, simplistic anecdotes, and comedy routines. They were used for pointing out the insanity of everyday life, instead of the insanity of life itself. Those who knew about the scientific examples of the phenomenon couldn’t quite articulate it in a way that captured the public’s attention. Where was the focus on the fine line between powerful extremes that combined and fed off of each other, producing strange logic? Where was the serious discussion about how a lot of the beliefs and activities we took for granted didn’t really make sense at all? The Reverend Robert Zelner understood paradoxes quite well, however, as his life was now trapped between two of them…namely, he’d made a deal with the devil in order to advance the cause of (his) God, and the only way to make up for his twisted brand of puritanism was to become a modern-day pilgrim.

There were many different kinds of pastors and preachers and priests--Zelner’s brand was easily recognized. He was the one that accused working wives/mothers of being “greedy”. He was the one that organized protests at the funerals of gay police officers and soldiers who’d died in the line of duty, carring signs that said “God Hates Fags”, “He Deserved It”, and “Have Fun In Hell”. He was the one that had an hour-long TV program in which he’d railed against sexually-ambiguous cartoon characters (which obviously had the power to destroy our society), moral relativism, and pretty much anything created after 1959. His radio show had talked about how it was so very uncivilized for these other-religion-subscribing terrorists to kill unbelievers; the “Christian” thing to do was to wait for the second coming and let God kill them for you. He’d bashed pretty much every other denomination, as they were “loving” or “accepting” or some other allegedly-unBiblical thing. His idea of family values involved multiple failed marriages and a gay daughter that he hadn’t spoken to in years.

He’d created an alliance with Price and the Wertham family, back in the late ‘70s. Suffice to say, he had more of a zeal for being represented in politics than for tending to his flock, and he’d been instrumental in putting the temple and the moneylenders into the same party. Yes, he’d overlooked some obvious sins by those who were controlling the party, but if you wanted to win America for Jesus, some moral compromise had to be involved, apparently. The problem was, the results just weren’t there. He’d watched as their hedonistic status-quo was maintained, instead of weakened…and then it got even stronger, even though his own party was reigning. Meanwhile, superficial commercialism was distracting people from the church, threatening to make spirituality obsolete. He wrote books bashing this, and gave lectures criticizing it, but he never confronted those in his own party who were actually responsible for it. The lack of succcess of like-minded, third-party candidates proved that this party was their only practical option, so he didn’t have a choice.

His reaction to the attacks had been clear enough: it was punishment for humanity straying from God. What they got for tolerating the homosexuals and feminists and non-fundamentalists in their midst. Unfortunately for him, people weren’t exactly happy with God for letting this happen, and his statements triggered more resistance than usual. He was thrilled that Wertham had ended up in charge, though…he somehow convinced the administration that it was time to pay the piper, in regards to the support Zelner had brought to them all these years. Now that they had unquestionable control, changes had to be made. But Wertham seemed more interested in foreign affairs (there must have been some hidden upside of the American Empire idea that Zelner hadn’t seen), while Price listened to Zelner’s ideas without much enthusiasm. Though they did go along with him, they acted as if it were a meaningless gesture, with no considerable ramifications or strategic purpose. Just paying off a debt. But to Zelner, it was everything he’d been working for for his entire life. It was the surefire utopia he’d always wanted. He thought America would finally be restored to its past glory…instead, they’d given him the dark side of the country’s history, with slavery, mass poverty, casual rape and murder, near-anarchy on an untamed frontier, and wars that even Zelner could see were unnecessary.

The scales had fallen from his eyes--he now realized that he’d turned into a pharisee. Zelner remembered how God had given the Jews a messiah who neither took political power nor started wars against their Roman oppressors, which they’d been expecting…Christianity worked best as an empire of the mind, transcending borders and governments; it didn’t need to be a state religion or conquering force. Escaping from DC with his thankfully-alive daughter (whom he’d proceed to bond with), he led a small group of Christians through the wilderness, running from the perverted monstrosity of a religion that he’d helped create, and which went against everything it had originally stood for. He’d tried to legislate his own brand of morality, only to watch it be hijacked for shallow political purposes. But he had a plan--a way to make up for his past failures. It had started with bringing down both the skycarrier and the hospital tower in Central (to stock up on supplies), and continued with the hijacking of Project: Horus (to get both it and weapons at the base). His next move was identical to the move that America had been founded on: simply leaving and starting over somewhere else.

A mountain of fog was smothering the valley of urban wreckage that was Tulsa, Oklahoma. It covered the entire city and stretched up into the air for almost a thousand feet. Tulsa was on the edge of Central’s bad weather, so, while it was cold, it was more rainy than snowy. Ponds and rivers had been created from that precipitation, existing in the fissures between rolling hills of debris. Because of the fog and the strange weather’s tendency to interfere with scanners, the skycarriers stayed away from this area, not wanting to fly blind. A few obligatory Safe America patrols had made very quick passes, not giving it a close look while declaring that it was illegal- and insurgent-free. Zelner’s people had settled there, raiding canned food and that some of Zelner’s now-dead survivalist friends had stored in the basement of a boarded-up church. Now, all two hundred of Zelner’s followers were in a frenzy, as they wanted to use Project: Horus (which was parked right out in the open) to get out of there as quickly as possible.

On the surface, it looked like a jumbo-size Lairjet: the same design, but much longer, wider, and sleeker. The Lair Legion had gone on a few space missions before the attacks, and someone had apparently been planning to use that fact to their advantage--an anonymous party had designed a counterfeit Lairjet that was built for an extended voyage in space. According to the notes the Safe America troops had found in the Andes, they were planning to create an imposter LL that would return from a supposed lengthy journey to the other side of the universe, only to be shocked to find “imposters” that had been on Earth all along. They’d just been ready to start creating a fake LL (it looked like they were going the genetically-enhanced shapeshifter route) when their main complex had been taken out in the attacks. The hangar survived, but they didn’t. For plausibility’s sake, the phony Lairjet really was capable of interstellar missions--they were afraid that if they succeeded in replacing the LL and a problem then came up in another galaxy, if they’d cheaped out, they’d have to come up with a reason to explain why they couldn’t just fly out of the galaxy and save the day. Suspecting that they’d need extra help defeating the real LL, this Lairjet had been given far more armor and weaponry than usual, enough to wipe out several states at a time.

Zelner’s pilgrims weren’t just leaving the country…they were leaving the planet altogether. They feared that everywhere on Earth would eventually feel the danger of New America, so, they had to go beyond their reach. The Lairjet (Mary had given it the codename/nickname of Project: Horus because of a certain hawk god who ruled the sky) was just barely big enough for them to permanently live in--it even had a biosphere farm that would eventually allow them to grow their own food, and a feature that took space-induced ice on the hull and transformed it into drinkable water. Their initial plan was to fly to Mars, see how the craft had held up, and then take off for good. They’d make it as far as they could before they had to stop to recharge the energy-batteries, which could completely replenish themselves over a period of a week. For Zelner, the American experience had come full-circle: fleeing to escape persecution and find a better way of life.

And while most dreams died prolonged deaths--compromises and setbacks and failures that were spread out over decades--Zelner’s new dream was slaughtered in a matter of minutes.

Distant thunder mutated into a dozen overlapping, otherworldly screams. The wind picked up. Bouts of sheet-lightning illuminated two strange-looking people that were far away, though they were fast approaching. Zelner’s followers (he considered them all equals; he was finished with actually leading), who were in the process of loading possessions, supplies, and weapons into the Lairjet, reacted to this by panicking, neither running into the Lairjet nor forming any kind of defensive circle. (Most were both outside and armed.) Suddenly, brown-furred, red-skinned demons sprang out of the ground, terrorizing them. They looked surprisingly like humanoid monkeys. Bullets went right through them, while decidedly-real bursts of fire emitted from their horns. (Another nanotech trick.) Zelner looked up to see someone on a hill--he’d quoted from Revelation more times than he cared to remember, it had to be the Pale Horseman. At his side was a mirror-skinned creature whose appearance literally unnerved everyone. Reality seemed to be cracking around the edges, as light bended in strange ways and black cracks appeared in the world around them. Red rain began to fall.

Psychological warfare was a matter of planting ideas and experiences in people’s heads, knowing that they’d talk about them and spread the “virus”…but Price’s previous targets had been somewhat incestuous, in terms of social interaction. That was why he’d used nanotech to create illusions on other continents, as well, instead of just relying on word-of-mouth to carry the info there. Doing it to people that were leaving the planet ensured that, while they’d get away from New America, they’d be carrying an apocalyptic parasite with them. Destructive mental baggage that would keep them from ever being truly free or beyond Price’s control in the future. Wertham wouldn’t have been happy with such a plan, but, spreading the fear of armageddon to the stars was far more important than recapturing just one vehicle, no matter how powerful it might be.

Though he was going to let most of them leave, he had to put up a good show. The Pale Horseman pointed at the Lairjet, and his monster companion charged through the crowd in its general direction. The (holo-) demons were more intent on scaring them than actually hurting them, it seemed, though they weren’t above singing the occasional pilgrim. Zelner wasted ammo on the mindmirror (its protoplasm could harden and become invulnerably dense or remain liquidous), while trying to find where his daughter had gotten to. The Lairjet’s ramps retracted, and their hatches closed, but, for some reason, they weren’t using the onboard weapons to help out. (Then again, with the demons and the pilgrims all mixed up together, how could they avoid killing innocents?) Psychadelic visual effects used the fog and clouds as screens, it was just as disorienting as looking at the representative reflections in the mindmirror’s skin. The Pale Horseman skimmed the crowd, cutting down a few people with some kind of black-energy sword. Meanwhile, the mindmirror had walked underneath the Lairjet--with the ship’s landing-gear out, there was about a fifteen-foot-clearance--and after extending the length of its arms, it was struggling to pick it up. (The ship’s sheer size and molecularly-dense armor made it quite heavy, even for a creature that was now as strong as Anvil Man, thanks to the emotional power it was leeching from humanity.)

Glimmering tendrils of protoplasm branched out from the mindmirror’s hands, stretched across the undercarriage and sides of the craft, and hardened, stabilizing it with a sort of crisscrossing network that distributed its weight more evenly. The mindmirror hefted it off the ground. Though the hull came alive with some sort of shocking energy, the mindmirror ignored it. More tendrils of protoplasm clogged up the rear turbines, the retrorockets, and the vertical takeoff/landing hovercircles on its flat belly. The mindmirror then simply started walking away with the bigger-than-a-skycarrier ship, though its steps sank deep into the concrete and asphalt. Zelner’s people were retreating. The smell of charred flesh ricocheted off the wind. Though Zelner had found his daughter (she’d been doing just fine without him, as she was a far better insurgent than he was), the Pale Horseman seemed to have recognized him, and he was calmly gliding towards them on his hovercycle. Someone tossed Zelner their only super-weapon, a sort of missile-launcher: they’d used the first shot on the tower, the second shot on the Lairjet’s crew, and their third shot would be aimed at this manic.

Putting intelligence ahead of pride, he handed it to his daughter, who fired it almost immediately. The shot was dead-on. Since the Pale Horseman was some distance away and out in the open (with no insurgents around him), she hadn’t dialed down the power at all, as she had in the hangar in Texas. The comet-looking missile hit him and exploded; it rolled a wave of force over everything within the radius of a mile. But when the smoke cleared, the Pale Horseman was still there, just powering down a dome-shaped forcefield. He accelerated, turned off his sword, holstered it, and grabbed both Zelner and his daughter by their necks, laughing. With the gunfire and the demonic screaming and the strain of the faux-Lairjet trying to turn on its engines to escape, it was difficult to hear, but Zelner thought the freak said something about not having to kowtow to Zelner, anymore. His daughter still had the weapon in her hand, and she somehow managed to get the fourth and final shot off--she aimed it at the mirror-monster carrying the Lairjet. The Lairjet wasn’t damaged, of course, but neither was the monster...however, the crater it created in the ground made the monster trip and nearly drop the whole thing.

Then, a crackling, scintillating pulse washed over everyone there. The demons vanished, as did the haunting noises, red rain, and the strange images in the sky. There was a rumbling. Taking advantage of the mindmirror’s misstep, the Lairjet’s turbines increased in strength and blew away the tendrils, and it shot into the air, hovering above the battlefield. The Pale Horseman dropped both of the Zelners, once again brandishing his sword. Zelner thought that this was his miracle--he’d been praying for years that, when the time came for him to be punished for what he’d done in the name of God, that innocent people (like his daughter) wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire. That the burden of his sins wouldn’t be passed on to others. He’d thought of all this as just such a horrifying event…but now, it was clear that help was on the way. Powerful beings came over the hill, and he rejoiced, which was followed by horror, as he saw two things: first, it wasn’t superheroes at all, but hundreds of cyclopean black robots that were opening fire on both the insurgents and the two supers (lasers firing out of their visors); second, the same robots were just barely visible in the cockpit of the Lairjet, along with blood splattered on the atomic-tempered windows.

Though Zelner had never met the man with the power of The Name (however, like most everyone else, he’d heard of him), he suddenly understood what was happening…someone didn’t want them to create another America, because the current one was bad enough as it was.

The first plasma shot from the Lairjet was neon-blue and as wide as a semi, it missed by a wide margin--the robots were just figuring out the controls--but it created a hole in the ground that was at least fifty feet deep, and the pilgrims closest to the blast were sent sprawling. Dozens of crisscrossing scarlet lasers (from the robots) strafed the pilgrims, meant to cut off their avenues of escape rather than kill them immediately. It worked. Both the Pale Horseman and the mindmirror were getting blasted with lasers, as well, but they were charging against the dazzling attack, looking to meet these new enemies head-on. The second shot from the Lairjet enveloped the mindmirror and sent it flying, but it only blew an arm off, which quickly regenerated. When the robots got within the pilgrims’s more limited range, the pilgrims returned fire…but their conventional ammo couldn’t get through the robots’s metallic hides. Robots swarmed over the Pale Horseman. Zelner realized that the pilgrims (not counting the ones who’d died on the Lairjet, there were still more than a hundred of them) were being forced into a relatively tight group, so the Lairjet could take them out with its third shot.

Right as the craft fired, green blasts of cosmic energy hit it, slamming it about a hundred feet laterally and knocking the beam off-course--it took out one of the urban ponds that were far away from the battle. Jarvis had arrived. As thorough as the pilgrims had been, they’d missed a tracking device that Jarvis had personally planted on it, just in case. Wertham had contacted him upon finding out that it had been stolen, desperate to get it back. But Jarvis didn’t know what to make of the situation. Unknown superhumans, insurgents, and robots were engaged in a three-way battle that was now four-way. The Lairjet immediately shot back with lightspeed-fast solar beams from side-mounted cannons, which Jarvis dodged, dodged, was clipped by, dodged, and was hit by. Dozens of lasers from groundbound robots flew by him or bounced off him. The Pale Horseman took the opportunity to hack through the distracted, aiming robots. Jarvis then recognized the mindmirror, which had gained a humanoid shape and sentience since he’d last seen it. This surprised him so much that he was blindsided by a subnuclear missile from the Lairjet, which drowned out all other sound for the next few minutes, sending him crashing to the ground. He flew right back up and rammed into it, of course.

Underfoot of the gods, Zelner and the pilgrims ran this way and that, hopelessly trying to get away. The fallout from their enemies attacking each other would block them each time. Thankfully, these powerful beings had forgotten about them, at least for the moment. Not that it mattered. Regardless of whether or not they survived the day, they knew now that they could never escape New America…

---------------------------

To put it simply, a certain legendary country had two main secrets--Harmonic knew one, and the man with the power of The Name knew the other.

It was a cultural optic illusion that took place on a magnificent, horrifying scale: namely, that freedom was running away. And how could it be denied? Humanity was on the verge of extinction thanks to actions made by both other species and their own, war was everywhere, countries’s long-cherished ideas had been casually trampled, the old alliances had been shattered, poverty and disinformation and poor health and danger and a lack of choices in life were dominant. Yes, Wertham claimed that freedom was on the march, but that was easily seen though. Was it all over? Was it pointless to even try to make a difference? To someone living in a world where five and a half billion people had died, where those in power were either caught up in pointless crusades or lacked the willpower or resources to seriously change things, yes, it could certainly seem that way. That was the illusion. Having a uniquely American soul, Harmonic knew a basic fact that no-one else did. The truth was, while freedom was indeed forced to run, from time to time, it was never running away…

It wasn’t that much different from the other important battles that had taken place on American soil--the flashes of light, the roar of violence, the dismal weather and fog, the underdog atmosphere, the confusion and tragedy of the battlefield. It was urban warfare in a decimated city. Each volley exchanged between Jarvis and the Lairjet seemed to shake Earth itself, while the robots’s backup was on the way…there were low-slung mini-tanks that looked like a cross between long humvees and motorcycles, as they had one wide wheel in front and one in back, in addition to laser-weaponry situated on their roofs. Also, gigantic, segmented armored vehicles (though the two-wheelers were also armored, albeit less so) came charging in. Their front fourth was a segment with two metal wheels, their rear three-fourths was a segment that had six…there were gun-turrets and mini-missile-launchers in the larger segment. With the counterfeit Lairjet occupying Jarvis (it had been specifically designed to fight the entire real LL at once, in addition to taking on any militaries or nations who figured out the truth, so it was more than capable of holding its own against a Class 9 superhuman), the robots had turned their attention back to the pilgrims and the two superhumans. Mini-tanks raced around the pilgrims, once again cutting off avenues of escape, while a heavy-armor vehicle took aim from a hill five blocks away.

Most of them took cover in semi-exposed basements or behind half-collapsed walls, but Zelner, his daughter, and a dozen others were blocked by laser-fire. Right before one of the turrets shot at them (a spotlight-sized green beam), white angelic binary caused HV to appear before their eyes, and he screamed at them to get behind him and stay down. Then, grabbing his cloak with both hands, he made it spread and billow, and for a split-second, it seemed impossibly large and wide--it was like something out of a nature show, one of those reptiles or fish that could somehow puff out or appear much larger to scare off a would-be attacker. The beam hit him. His cloak saved their lives, of course, creating something of an eclipse; they saw green energy going above and alongside them, but not actually touching them. Afterwards, there were scorchmarks on the ground on either side of where they’d been ducking, and a clean, clear line that showed where HV had blocked it. The mini-tanks closest to Zelner had their wheels turned to dust by Lilith, and the heavy-armor vehicle that had fired was punched by Anvil Man, who sent it barrel-rolling through a wall. Harmonic teleported Zelner and the people around him down into a sturdy basement. Akiko’s matter-accelerating eyebeam surprised the mindmirror, blowing it up and forcing itself to spend a minute or two pulling its splattered self back together.

This hadn’t been what Hadrian had expected to find, to say the least--he’d only thought that they’d see another psych-warfare tactic from this unknown superhuman. But there was a Lairjet and Jarvis and the shimmering creature and a not-so-small army of robots. Though they didn’t know the specifics, their task was clear enough: protect the pilgrims and either win or help them escape. But if Jarvis called in Safe America, they’d have even more problems. For the first few moments, HV hoped that the Lairjet was on their side (it was attacking Jarvis, after all), but he picked up on a robotic presence in it, and it matched the ones that were attacking the pilgrims. He also sensed a strong bond between the Pale Horseman and the mindmirror. All five of them started attacking the robots and their vehicles, as the robots seemed more interested in killing the pilgrims than the other two did. Jarvis looked down and saw HV, and they exchanged intense, slow-motion eye-contact, but both were too busy with other things to get their long-awaited confrontation out of the way.

Harmonic was wiping out robots with his hard-sound dataguns, and he experimentally tried to teleport the Pale Horseman and the mindmirror to a place where they’d be trapped, just to simplify the battle…but the Pale Horseman’s armor had a molecular-stabilizer that also acted as a meta-anchor (the Lairjet had something similar), and the mindmirror contained so much information that it would have been impossible to break it down for teleportation. Some of the larger vehicles launched broadsides of mini-missiles at the area the pilgrims were holed up in--Lilith disintegrated the first wave of these projectiles, while HV magnetized his aura to pull the next wave off-course, and Harmonic teleported the rest, re-inserting them into reality right behind the vehicles that had fired them in the first place, causing them to shoot their own shooters. Anvil Man was backhanding mini-tanks into the sky, while Akiko was slicing and shooting away at a dozen robots at a time (her guns’s explosive shells could penetrate their humanoid hulls), effortlessly dodging their optic laser-blasts through a combination of advanced ninja training and bionic speed.

On HV’s orders, Harmonic broke away from the battle…he was to teleport two dozen pilgrims at a time, relocating them to the KC insurgents’s stolen skycarrier, which was nearby. (Harmonic could teleport small groups over great distances, and large groups over shorter distances. There was so much genetic and psychological information encoded in the human body that disassembling and reassembling many bodies at once took quite a bit of processing power.) Meanwhile, Jarvis was pounding away at the Lairjet, which alternated between relying on its armoring and powerful forcefields. (Unlike the Falconers’s shoddy suits, it could fire through its own shields.) He knew that it had five separate forcefield generators, so if one was weakened, it could switch to another, while the damaged one recharged. Its blindingly-fast targeting system kept tagging him with a variety of energy-blasts--thermal rays, concussive force, enhanced lightning, antimatter pulses, etc. His punches and Jarviscosmic blasts would sometimes send it skidding across the sky, but he couldn’t seem to knock it off-balance. If it decided to retreat into space, he doubted he could keep up, as it was designed for faster-than-light travel. But he didn’t want to call in backup, either…he had to beat it by himself, to prove that he was New America’s most valuable asset, rather than this Lairjet.

Anvil Man made herself good and obvious, wading into dozens of robots, while Lilith took over for her with the vehicles, throwing them and overturning them and reducing their wheels and weaponry to subatomic powder. Robots that had been preparing to raid the buildings that contained the remaining pilgrims were once again distracted by their self-defense programming, attacking Anvil Man instead. They only had so much blasting power in each laser-cartridge, and only so many extra laser-cartridges stored in their heads, so they were wasting it on her instead of their actual targets. Akiko quickly climbed up a building, pulled up her green jacket’s sleeves (she was wearing her usual combat outfit--bluejeans, a black t-shirt, and the jacket), held her arms out straight, and superthin, cylindric, triggerless sniper-devices popped out of the skin on her forearms, extending their barrels over the backs of her hands. She cybernetically picked off the robots that got too close to buildings with pilgrims in them. Meanwhile, white flashes of light kept coming from basement windows.

The Pale Horseman had his dark-matter sword in one hand, slicing robots in two, while his other gauntlet emitted transparent, light-bending waves of force that sent enemies crashing backwards. His hovercycle was on autopilot, having a groundbound dogfight with several mini-tanks. (The hovercycle fired rocket-propelled grenades, hardened chemical shards that softened into acid on contact, electrical bursts, and photonic streams that could leave bowling-ball-sized holes in most types of armor.) With some help from his advanced intelligence, he’d both created and mastered his own type of martial art within 48 hours, and as far as he was concerned, it was superior to all others--so he was kicking robots in the face, shattering their visors or taking their heads off entirely, as his suit gave him superhuman strength. (Not as much as Anvil Man or the mindmirror, but more than Lilith.) He was being targeted by so many enemies that he’d really stopped paying attention to his early-warning-system and sensors, so, he was surprised when a matter-accelerating beam ricocheted off his suit, the molecular-stabilizing device in the small of his back protecting him. His suit located the source on a nearby rooftop; he turned to see who it was, only for another beam to hit a vehicle that he was in the process of dodging, and the explosion knocked him on his back.

HV was helping Anvil Man and Lilith protect the block in which the rest of the pilgrims were hiding. His aura was invulnerable and razor-sharp, as he kicked and spun and elbowed and leapt and generally reminded the robots that having limbs was a privilege that could be taken away. Giving his aura the temperature of the surface of Mercury, he left slagged, smoking holes in their faces and torsos. They’d try to grab him, but he’d once again make his aura sharp and slice through their armor or become frictionless and slip away. He did his best to keep pushing the battle away from the civilians. Anytime one of their shots would have missed him and gone into a populated backdrop, he “caught” the blast with his cloak or threw another robot into it. At one point, he magnetically drew a dozen robots to him, which Lilith took out with a wave of disintegration. He used his cloak as a whip, a blunt object, a means to ricochet lasers at other robots, and a blade. Sometimes, he’d leap into the air and greatly increase his aura’s density and weight--he’d then land on a robot or two like a few dozen tons of titanium. Or he’d be more acrobatic, flipping and twisting and using their heads for handstands while he swivel-kicked with both legs. Those who tried to grab his cloak found it to be too sharp, too hot, or too slippery to get ahold of.

The Lairjet had found a good strategy for dealing with Jarvis: another side-mounted cannon had protruded, and it was launching a constant stream of explosion-colored energy spheres at him, which were honing in automatically. He kept trying to zip away from them, but the stream would adjust and continue to pound him with the explosive globes. Each impact triggered a detonation and knocked him back. HV saw that an identical cannon had just appeared on the craft’s other side, and it was aiming at the blocks they were protecting. He had both Akiko and Harmonic stop what they were doing (sniping and evacuating, respectively) to help Lilith out, as he and Anvil Man were going to be busy for a few moments. HV then got Anvil Man’s attention, glancing at the not-yet-fired cannon. The black behemoth nodded. He started to run right at HV, who was still fighting off robots. When Anvil Man got close, he actually jumped over HV’s head, and HV reversed his aura’s magnetic polarity, sending Anvil Man cannonballing into the sky, aimed (fittingly) right at the cannon. Since Jarvis was momentarily stymied, they’d been giving their forcefields a break, which was their mistake--Anvil Man smashed the second cannon to pieces. He flattened a mini-tank when he landed.

Harmonic then vanished, teleporting the last few batches of pilgrims to safety. No longer committed to defending a single area, the heroes spread out quickly, throwing the robots off-balance. (Their new goals were to take out the Pale Horseman and his friend, stop this robot-army from going after the pilgrims again, and hopefully steal that Lairjet. But they didn’t plan on confronting Jarvis, if they could avoid it.) Lilith crushed seven of them with a tossed heavy-armor vehicle, while Harmonic and Akiko were back-to-back, each blowing away robots with a pair of guns. Harmonic added a hurricane-esque blast of sheer sonic force to the mix. But Anvil Man was attacked from behind by the mindmirror, which had shaped its hands into giant, club-like hammers. They battered each other for a moment, and then the mindmirror reverted one arm to a more liquidous form, wrapping it around Anvil Man’s torso and flinging him into the sky. Anvil Man was teleported away in midair by Harmonic, and he reappeared right behind the mindmirror, still carrying the momentum--he smashed into him. Lilith disintegrated the mindmirror as best she could, but he kept regenerating each layer that she took away. Trading partners, Lilith took on the robots that HV had been fighting, while HV froze portions of the mindmirror with a touch, but it let those parts of itself break off and shatter, creating even more protoplasm to fill in the gaps.

Before they could continue, green spotlight beams from a distant cluster of heavy-armor vehicles separated them, making a four-block square explode with just three hits. HV and Anvil Man stood up to the blasts, while Harmonic briefly phased himself, Akiko, and Lilith. The mindmirror was blown backwards. Not wasting time, Harmonic teleported Lilith behind the heavy-armor vehicles, and she quickly disintegrated the beam weapons. She then took out the vehicles in a more hands-on style. Akiko’s liquid-metal weapon had become a round shield, which she had on one arm, while firing away with a gun in the other. HV saw the Pale Horseman battling with a fleet of mini-tanks that were rushing him and firing at him from all directions. Taking advantage of the chaos, HV had Lilith weaken (but not fully disintegrate) the portion of the street the Pale Horseman was standing on, while Harmonic shot him in the side of the head with hard-sound data. He fell, and the mini-tanks ran right over him. Suddenly, metal plates in the underside of the Lairjet slid open, revealing racks of missiles…it fired wave after wave at the supers, pounding the remains of the city with massive explosions. They dodged as best they could.

Jarvis had realized that he could cancel out the globes with blasts of cosmic energy--they’d detonate before they reached him--and so he escaped from that continuous attack, ramming the ship again and again from many angles, while staying out of the cannon’s arc of fire. He then decided to stick to the other side, as its cannon didn’t work. Of course, all its other cannons did, as he found out, but those weren’t nearly as bad. He noticed that some of the missiles it was firing at the other supers were vanishing and blinking back into existence just a foot or two away from the Lairjet itself, hitting it. While it was reacting to that, he punched it as hard as he could, and the ship barrel-rolled several times, ending up hovering at a forty-five-degree angle, with its belly facing him--right as he rocketed towards it to hit it again, it shot a wall of missiles at him. He pushed through them. Then came the next wall, which he also blasted or powered past, and the next, and the next…these weren’t small-but-powerful mini-missiles that could take out an armored vehicle, they were full-size ones that could atomize five-story buildings. Suddenly, the remaining sphere-cannon somehow depressed down far enough to resume firing at him, adding to the damage the missiles were inflicting.

More robot-reinforcements were showing up, though these were in personnel-carrying vehicles that didn’t have weapons. They flooded out of them. HV, Lilith, Anvil Man, Akiko, Harmonic, the Pale Horseman (who’d picked himself up and slaughtered the ones that had run him over), and the mindmirror all ran straight at them. Both groups exchanged fire and then hand-to-hand attacks. HV sliced off heads with karate-style chops, Lilith swept waves of entropy over them, Anvil Man turned crowds into bits and pieces with mere waves of his arms, Harmonic phased through them, disrupting their software, and Akiko blew them away with her guns. The Pale Horseman seemed to rejoice in taking on ten at a time. The mindmirror turned to liquid and ripped them apart with a dozen superstrong tendrils of protoplasm. HV momentarily ended up right in front of the mindmirror, but it didn’t seem to notice him…it hadn’t gotten a bead on him the first time HV had attacked him, either. HV’s aura made him immune to mindreading and psychic attacks (but not psychometric powers), and it also held his mental frequency in…since the mindmirror saw things in terms of such frequencies, HV was invisible to him.

The remaining robots and vehicles had massed and were approaching from the rear, trying to sandwich the superhumans between them and the new robots. Lasers hit HV, Anvil Man, and Lilith, while Akiko dodged them (her brain was hardwired to a sensor/scanner system that gave her a 360 degree view of the battlefield, helping her see coming attacks), and Harmonic simply let them pass right through his body--there was nothing new in any of that; they’d been being shot at the entire time, it was part of the job. Switching “breeds” of opponents, Akiko exploded heavy-armor vehicles with her eyebeam (they had no molecular-stabilizers), and HV and Harmonic backed her up, while Lilith and Anvil Man took on swaths of robots. Harmonic teleported mini-tanks high into the sky, letting them crash down to earth--HV also took them on, slicing through their armor to slag their circuitry with his lava-hot aura. Getting tired of disintegrating entire bodies, Lilith just started taking out the robots’s heads, which removed their only weapon from them, in addition to leaving them with a stupid backup CPU in their chest…it wasn’t capable of much thinking at all. But she mainly did it because it was a really, really funny visual.

Meanwhile, Jarvis was finished with holding back against the Lairjet. He hadn’t wanted to do any serious damage to it, as--if he succeeded in recapturing it--the more time it’d take to repair it, the more they’d have to wait before being able to use it in battle. Besides, he’d taken out many such ships, before…the pattern was always the same. You pounded on it until you were able to get inside and take out the pilots. But as far as he could tell, neither its forcefields nor armor were weakening, and it seemed to introduce a new weapon to him every other minute or so. Pushing through yet another onslaught of missiles and energy-globes, he managed to ram the cannon that had been shooting the globes, the impact actually traveling through the forcefield and fracturing the device that he’d come to hate. It retracted in self-defense. After that, Jarvis unleashed a series of punches that, at first, just made the ship shudder and shake, but soon sent it sliding fifty feet across the sky, and then a hundred, and then two hundred. The Lairjet was being thrown off-kilter so much, and being attacked so constantly and significantly, that its targeting system wasn’t able to compensate. Homing-missiles did hit him, but he didn’t seem to care.

Back on the ground, the original wave of robots had run out of laser-ammo--they were now reduced to nothing but close-range fighting, which they weren’t that good at. Akiko dented their chests and faces with ninja-fast, cybernetic-powered kicks, while Anvil Man and the mindmirror destroyed them in almost a routine fashion. HV schooled one robot in how to hit people three times before they realized that they’d been hit once. Lilith threw them into each other, laughing. Harmonic was phasing through the remaining vehicles, glitching up their systems and absconding with disconnected, head-sized CPUs; no humanoid robots were inside. The Pale Horseman stood upon what was practically a hill of sparking metallic corpses, sinking powerful fingers into one robot’s neck while preparing to plunge his dark-matter sword into its body. (It was obvious to Price that everyone here except for himself and the mindmirror were clear and present dangers to New America, which was why he’d stuck around, after the pilgrims had left.) HV saw the Lairjet being forced away from the battle, and Akiko intercepted and decoded a disturbing transmission:

Apparently, when a robot got a certain distance away from an attacker (they’d been punched a mile or so from the main fighting, and Jarvis hadn’t yet caught up with the Lairjet to hit it again), its main objective kicked back in, as the robots in the Lairjet were informing their comrades that they were going after “Primary Targets”. The pilgrims. Since there was so little air-traffic in Central, finding the (non-stealth) skycarrier would be a piece of cake. Without hesitation, the Lairjet’s extra turbines kicked in, propelling it out of sight.

Compared to the Lairjet, the skycarrier that the pilgrims were in was incredibly slow, and it had no weapons, as well. It wouldn’t be a fight at all. Knowing this, HV had Harmonic teleport him on top of the Lairjet, leaving Akiko in charge. Afraid that “Project: Horus” would get away, Jarvis raced after it. HV used his aura to adhere to the essentially-invulnerable craft, ignoring the snake-esque weapons (blasters attached to prehensile cords) that popped up from its roof, looked at him oddly, and fired nonstop. Jarvis shot at the Lairjet with thundering blasts of cosmic energy, flying alongside it. After using the hard-sound comm-letter in his ear to warn those in the skycarrier (which was en route to Kansas City), HV pounded on the roof, employing all of his tricks--none of which did any good, of course. The molecular-stabilizer that was hooked up deep within the Lairjet prevented the hull from being frozen or melted, it couldn’t be sliced, and he simply wasn’t strong enough to make a dent in it. The stupid thing barrel-rolled a few times, trying to shake him. When that didn’t work, it activated one of its forcefields, but, though it raised him off the roof by about a foot, his aura could stick to energy, as well. Jarvis and the Lairjet were battering each other. HV had to think quickly, as the Lairjet would catch up with the skycarrier at any moment…

No longer considering the robots to be a serious threat, the mindmirror charged Anvil Man in its liquid battering-ram form, knocking him (or her, rather) through several buildings. It then tackled her while she was still on the ground. Anvil Man got several hits in, as did the mindmirror. But the mindmirror turned one arm into a whip-like tendril, wrapping around Anvil Man’s ankles and swinging her into walls, through a floor and into a basement, into more walls, and back outside, slamming her into the ground repeatedly. All that did was give Sabrina time to catch her breath, as she’d been fighting robots and vehicles nonstop--for her, impacting against concrete walls and cold-hardened soil felt like what getting hit with cardboard or styrofoam felt like for regular people. Digging the tip of an anvil hand into the stiff earth after being swung into it, Anvil Man let the mindmirror try to pull her loose, and then snapped her legs forward, yanking the mindmirror off its feet and sending it flying into a battle-weakened building that fell on it. But it came barreling back out, now with six arms that each had a massive sphere on the end…it pummeled Sabrina relentlessly, while the rest of its body remained liquidous, so her punches went right through.

Most of the remaining robots had formed a circular firing squad around Lilith, Harmonic, and the Pale Horseman, who were battling with each other. Akiko was trying to distract the robots--mainly by impaling them--but it wasn’t working, as only a few would break off to fight with her at a time. Wavering deluges of force-energy knocked Lilith off her feet, while Harmonic shot at him with his dataguns, which were blocked by a forcefield. Then, he dropped the field, rushing Harmonic and punching him directly in the face, before he had a chance to go intangible--instead of bleeding, some of his bright white coding was exposed, and it quickly repaired itself. This surprised the Pale Horseman so much that he didn’t hear the proximity alarm from his sensors until it was too late. Lilith hit him in the back of the head with much more power than he’d thought she had, sending him flying head-over-heels, into and then through the firing-squad. His hovercycle swooped towards them, blasting indiscriminately, and Harmonic tried to phase through it, but it rammed his intangible self in the stomach, and he unwillingly rode it for some distance. Finally, he just teleported a few tons of debris on it, though he could hear it struggling to escape. Lilith was trying to go after the Pale Horseman, but the robots kept distracting her.

Akiko knew she wouldn’t be able to do much good in either fight…as much as she hated to admit it, both of them were simply out of her league, especially in a wide-open, broad-daylight battle. (Though she was very direct, she sometimes used sneaky ninja tricks or long-range attacks, when up against more powerful opponents.) She needed to even the odds for all three of them. First, she pulled out a trick that she very, very rarely used: reversing the flux of her matter-accelerating eyebeam, she aimed it at the mindmirror and fired, hitting him right in the torso. Second, she screamed something about going back to the other pilgrims at Lilith and Harmonic, but it was intended for the robots. Picking up on the keyword “pilgrim”, the fact that she looked normal enough to possibly be one of the pilgrims, and the fact that she was invisible to their scanners (but not visual systems--her cyber-body couldn’t bend light, though it had stealth technology that masked her from scanners and sensors), they deduced that at least some of the pilgrims were actually hiding nearby, somehow cloaked from their scanning devices. She ran into a building, and they followed her, leaving Lilith and Harmonic alone.

A hundred feet away, the mindmirror was having problems--it could move around just fine, but its protoplasmic body was having trouble shapeshifting and regenerating. Thanks to Akiko, its molecules had been slowed down to a ridiculous degree, and it was stuck in two-armed humanoid form (it had gotten cocky and gone back to normal when the ray had hit). When it tried to convert itself to liquid or create shaped weapons out of its limbs, its body became a thick, viscuous, melted-plastic-esque ooze that was incapable of changing and solid enough for Anvil Man to hit. The mindmirror was now covered with anvil-shaped indentations. Without its special tricks, it had the same capabilities as Anvil Man, but none of the battle-experience that Sabrina had gained, during her five years with the insurgents. (The mindmirror had only been alive for several hours.) And the transfixing images in its “skin” weren’t affecting Sabrina at all, as she didn’t technically have eyes. Yes, the mindmirror would through her through a wall or pile of debris, from time to time, but it was obviously scared and slower and not at all used to being stuck in one form. Whereas Sabrina had been stuck in a prison-like body for years, and she was more than happy to finally have an opponent that could take all the punishment she could dish out. What felt like an eon of repressed rage was unleashed on the mindmirror’s increasingly-tired form.

The Lairjet was five seconds away from getting within firing-range of the pilgrim-filled skycarrier. HV clung to the top of it, while Jarvis kept trying to damage it enough to force it to land. (He hadn’t even gotten through the hull.) Knowing that it was impossible to get inside or somehow destroy the craft before it reached them, HV tried a different strategy--he’d increased the weight of his aura, before, but never more than a few dozen tons. How far could he go? Concentrating, using willpower techniques that only HVs knew of (they usually applied them to martial-arts feats), he immediately made his aura weigh a hundred tons. The Lairjet sagged, but kept going. He doubled it. Then, he managed to expel all kinetic energy from his aura, turning himself into a theoretically-unmovable object. Not even a Class-10 superhuman would have been able to pick him up or shove him a millimeter. The Lairjet’s engine was capable of faster-than-light travel, however, so it was powerful enough to compensate. But it had to add strength to its hyperjets to balance out the sheer drag that HV’s weight and kinetic energy-void were causing. The robots piloting it knew that if they slowed down to shoot, they’d be overcome by HV’s mass. They tried to ram the skycarrier, instead, but HV added another hundred tons, and they sank momentarily, blurring underneath it. Now, however, they planned to go as fast as they could--to wear out HV and finish the job. They aimed for the upper atmosphere.

The Pale Horseman sliced Lilith with his dark-matter sword, which didn’t draw blood (like Harmonic, she didn’t have any), but it did hurt, and the sheer impact of it made her crash through a mound of debris. Harmonic let loose with a constant, house-sized wave of invisible sonic force, which the Pale Horseman struggled against mightily, using his gauntlets’s force-blasters to cancel some of it out. Twin pairs of eye-shaped indentations were revealed in the area between his shoulders and neck, which fired thin purple beams that went right through Harmonic, producing massive explosions in the distance. Lilith tried to jump on him from behind, but his sensors caught her, and he backhanded her in the face. Harmonic responded by shooting him in the gut with his dataguns at point-blank, blowing him hundreds of feet through the air. Lilith used her entropy abilities to weaken the structural integrity of a few actually-upright tall buildings that were near where he landed, and they fell on him, through he activated his forcefield at the last second. Harmonic teleported another layer of wreckage on top of the pile that had trapped the hovercycle. (It kept trying to blast its way out, but it could only use certain weapons to do so, to avoid blowback--it wasn’t designed for close-range attacks.)

Elsewhere, the last of the robots--a few dozen of them--were running sweep patterns in the demolished mall that Akiko had run into. It was just the sort of place that a large group of human beings might hide. Pitch-black, of course. But, since they had scanners, why would that be a problem? Twin, high-tech guns blew away the robots at the rear of one of the recon groups, while a matter-accelerating eyebeam took out two more, the resulting explosion setting those around them on fire. Holstering her guns, Akiko held out a palm, and a slit opened in her skin: a flurry of dollar-coin-sized, razor-sharp discs blasted out; they looked like miniscule CDs. They slashed the robots’s visors. In her other hand was her liquid-metal weapon (currently a katana sword), and the way she used it was obvious. By the time the other robots arrived to help, she was seemingly gone…the “seemingly” part became relevant when sniper-fire started taking them out. For combat robots, they weren’t very bright, really--the strategy of attacking someone in order to lure more enemies to the spot of the attack, which you’re aiming at from afar, was even older than Japan, and that was saying something. More assaults came, and they could never tell where she was or in which direction she was shooting from.

The damaged, staggering mindmirror picked up a stone column that was apparently from some sort of library or government building, trying to use it to ram Anvil Man. Impressively, despite not having any fingers, she caught it and pushed back--it lost its grip, and the column clipped the mindmirror right in the head, leaving a sloping, lopsided dent that made the mindmirror look like the creation of a giant toddler, who’d accidentally smudged its forehead with his thumb. Anvil Man naturally charged and leapt into a flying-tackle, flooring the mindmirror, wrestling with it, and delivering a great number of body-blows. The mindmirror got one clumsy hit in, knocking Anvil Man off. As the mindmirror got back up, Anvil Man swung her legs, tripping him up. When it tried to run at her, Anvil Man sidestepped and spun, clotheslining it right in the neck--for a humiliating split-second, its feet were higher in the air than its head. It slammed to the ground. Its previously-shiny surface was now covered with dirt and grime, and the images it showed seem to have less clarity and power than before. Her next punch was direct…the hit sent it soaring up in the air and back towards the others.

Its crash distracted the Pale Horseman, who was holding an intact, heavy-armor vehicle in each hand, preparing to throw them--they were some of the ones that Harmonic had stolen the CPUs from--and Lilith proceeded to destabilize certain volatile devices in those vehicles, creating explosions that sandwiched the Pale Horseman. Harmonic teleported behind him and shot him in the back with his dataguns. The armored figure rolled with the impact, somersaulting forward, coming up on his feet and instinctively facing Harmonic, but when he remembered that there wasn’t any point in trying to attack him (the whole intangible thing), Lilith grabbed him by the back of his neck and flung him into the mindmirror, which had just been decked by Anvil Man. Noticing the weird nature of the mindmirror’s protoplasmic body, Lilith experimentally tried to disintegrate part of it…its arms dropped to the ground, as it could no longer hold itself together that well or regenerate limbs. Before she could try that on the rest of him, the Pale Horseman came at her, slicing with his dark-matter sword and blasting her with waves of force. Knowing that trading opponents was always refreshing, Harmonic decided to take on the armless mindmirror--meanwhile, Anvil Man backed up Lilith, wanting to see how sturdy this guy’s armor was.

With the power it was pumping into its turbines, the Lairjet should have been going just under the speed of light, but thanks to HV, it was a mere Mach 10. He now weighed something like five hundred tons, and not only was he still devoid of kinetic energy, he’d actually discovered a negative form of it, a sort of reverse-inertia that existed in the mysterious Gimmler strata of the omnispectrum, which he was doing his best to channel via his aura. Jarvis was struggling to keep up, unable to accurately target his blasts at such a high rate of speed. The ship was now in the high stratosphere, as they were trying to see how HV did in an area with less air…they didn’t know that his aura was more than capable of transmuting oxygen from pretty much any atmosphere or lack thereof. (One of the few alchemy tricks he could do with it.) The world was now a psychadelic roller-coaster ride, as his silver cocoon shifted and bristled against the heavy friction; at this speed, wind-resistance was like plowing through a never-ending ocean of invulnerable metal. He could hear the Lairjet’s turbines screaming and straining. There were explosions of multicolored light across his vision (whether that was thanks to his enhanced perception or pain, he didn’t know) and the sound of metal-strain dancing across the Lairjet’s threatening-to-warp-out-of-shape hull.

Back at the main battle, the Pale Horseman was trying to overcome Anvil Man with his force-blasters, but she waded through the energy and hit him square in the face, smashing him backwards through a building’s somewhat-upright wall. Explosive purple beams from his shoulders did the same to both Anvil Man and Lilith. Activating his dark-matter sword, he ran at them, but it glanced off Anvil Man’s molecularly-dense “skin”, while Lilith gave his kidney region a punch that could have shattered a garage-sized block of steel. Anvil Man matched that with an even more powerful slug to his stomach. Lilith then grabbed him by the ankle and swung him facefirst into Anvil Man’s also-swung anvil-hand. He activated his forcefield (dome-shaped) to give himself a breather, which they proceeded to pound on. Focusing on his still-buried hovercycle for a moment, he increased its engine-power, helping it escape the wreckage. The ‘cycle fired mini-missiles at both Anvil Man and Lilith, most of them striking their targets, while a photonic stream from it hit Anvil Man in the chest and knocked her off her feet. It buzzed around them and gave them something new to attack, distracting them while the Pale Horseman plotted his next move.

The now-armless mindmirror charged at Harmonic again and again, but he simply let it run right through his intangible form each time, and it would bring down a building on itself--and his phasing seemed to mess up its mind, as well. It was powered by apocalyptic emotional energy, while Harmonic was literally nothing but optimistic, visionary information. It was an easy mark for his dataguns. He wanted to finish this and help the others, but Akiko had told him to keep it busy, for a few minutes…more for his sake than anything, he knew. Whenever possible, HV and Akiko would give them brief rests, and this was one such time. Since he’d been teleporting so much, Akiko wanted to be safe instead of sorry. Full-on sonic blasts left deep dents in its body. Bored and wanting to try something, Harmonic waited for it to come at him, again, and then teleported one of the CPU-less heavy-armor vehicles an inch in front of its (lack of) face. It ran right into it, of course, nearly decapitating itself--and when it landed on its back, it was unable to get back up. No arms. He shot at it for a while, but it seemed kind of unethical, really. He wasn’t a bully. Harmonic then buried it under a few tons of debris, deciding that his break was over.

Deep inside the mall, the robots’s numbers were dwindling…one group of them gathered around a fountain that they’d thought they’d seen her duck behind. Akiko hit it with her matter-accelerating beam, of course, and the resulting explosion took them out. It was pathetic that they were still falling for that. She then went back to just sniping them, while occasionally removing a robot’s head with her sword or shattering one of their knees with a well-placed kick, causing them to fall and be even easier to blow away with her high-tech guns. Finally, there were only fifteen or so left--out of nowhere, she leapt into the middle the group, taking them all on at once. Her first attack was a simultaneous combination of kicking, slicing, and shooting, which wiped out a third of them immediately. Her sword became a round shield, again, which she blocked laser-blasts with, and she used her shield-hand to deliver a storm of razor-sharp mini-shurikens, which blasted out from a suddenly-revealed slit in her palm. Shurikens, explosive-shells from one of her guns, and her matter-accelerating eyebeam decimated her enemies. She threw one robot into another, then shattering the last robot’s visor and CPU-brain with an insanely-fast kick. (Her combat boots had dense metal tips that HV had made via alchemy.)

The Pale Horseman had mounted up on his hovercycle, and he was jousting against the slower-moving targets known as Anvil Man and Lilith. (Unfortunately, Lilith found, his ‘cycle also had a molecular-stabilizer, which prevented her from disintegrating it.) Purple beams and mini-missiles continued to rain down on and around them. He was giving his forcefield a chance to recharge, after the damage it had taken from the two of them. His ‘cycle also had a forcefield generator, but he doubted he’d need it, since he was so much faster and more agile than them while on it…then, a bulldozer materialized a fraction of a millimeter in front of his face, the impact knocking him off the ‘cycle. It tried to circle back around to him, but it was hit or blocked by more teleported items: a giant pile of steel I-beams, a cement-mixer, and several dozen sacks of cement to go with the mixer. For some reason, there were all kinds of construction equipment falling through the sky--when they were about to crash down, they’d vanish and reappear in a higher spot, rinse and repeat. Then, he realized what was going on…they were gathering momentum. A dump-truck was teleported above his head and fell on him at several hundred miles an hour, followed by another, and yet another.

Harmonic’s teleporting ability had three interesting traits: first, it was much easier for him to teleport inanimate objects, as DNA and sentience were hard to quickly translate into his angelic binary. Second, teleportation didn’t cancel out momentum. Third, he could re-enter things at weird angles--so if something was falling, he could have it come out sideways or even upside-down, ramming something from below. The Pale Horseman found this out the hard way when a swarm of concrete blocks (which had been teleported high in the sky so they could fall and gather speed) appeared and hit him from all different directions. Five separate cranes battered his arms and torso; like everything else, they were going as fast as bullets. A flatbed truck overshadowed him and then fell straight down, just like in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. Anvil Man and Lilith would sneak up on him and hit him, as well, but Anvil Man especially liked to hit his hovercycle’s forcefield. Then, the Pale Horseman was blindsided by a disconnected, chain-trailing wrecking ball that had apparently been falling through the upper-atmosphere for several minutes, as it was red-hot, fused (from the heat, thus making it even harder), and going faster than any of the other items. It hit him in the cheek, the legs, the stomach, and the back of the head, as, each time it made contact, it’d be immediately re-teleported and re-aimed, still working off its considerable inertia.

Thousands of miles away, exotic ammo caches in the Lairjet were blowing up, thanks to the strange physics assaulting the ship. They were in that weird area between the atmosphere and space itself. Jarvis was screaming something at HV, which he obviously couldn’t hear--but the molecularly-dense skin on Jarvis’s face was cracking, revealing glowing green energy underneath. HV had added yet another hundred tons to his aura, which was also taking on the properties of the reverse-inertia that he’d discovered only minutes earlier, in addition to increasing his personal gravitational field, which made him even heavier. The Lairjet’s hull was rumbling. HV was pretty sure they were somewhere over Africa, going East around the world. (He thought they’d lapped it at least twice.) He could sense the ship’s forcefields wearing out and not being recharged, as all of their energy was going into the hyperjets. The robots who’d hijacked it figured he wouldn’t be able to last much longer, so they could go back and finish off the pilgrims, but that was the mistake that was always made…underestimating humanity. They didn’t know history like he did. His lover and best friend were technically artificial, so it wasn’t an anti-robot thing--both “real” and artificial people alike tended to think that human willpower was weak. Did he think that way? Did either his original plan or his current cover misjudge humanity?

The Pale Horseman finally managed to punch the almost-supersonic wrecking ball, and though it shattered, the recoil nearly broke his wrist. He wished that his forcefield would hurry up and finish recharging. Several dozen hits from massive, quick-moving pieces of construction equipment later, he was covered in a small mountain of them…instead of being teleported away so they could plummet and gather momentum again, Harmonic was now leaving them on the ground, for some reason. By the time the Pale Horseman blasted and dug his way out, he saw Anvil Man and Lilith pounding away at his hovercycle’s weakening forcefield, while the mindmirror was actually getting back to normal--its molecules were no longer so slow-moving, so it could shapeshift and repair itself, again. Before it got a chance to, another matter-decelerating eyebeam got a hit in on it, making it too thick to change, again, while a regular version of the beam lit up all the wreckage that he was climbing out of. The last thing he saw before the hill of debris exploded was Lilith melting the mindmirror into sheer nothingness. It blew him into the sky, of course. Harmonic teleported Anvil Man on top of him, who got him in a scissorlock with her legs and proceeded to hammer him with anvil-hands. They crashed down to earth.

The nonstop waves of friction were becoming a problem, for HV--his aura could handle the incredible heat that was present at this high rate of speed, but the friction was threatening to shatter his aura’s adherence to the Lairjet’s hull. Yes, he could make his aura frictionless and slipstream right through it, but that would reduce the drag on the ship. The first thing he thought of was an annoying saying that the Crescent Key people had always told him, when he was growing up: if you have an obstacle, turn it into a tool. He had an infinite supply of friction all around him. Since he could transmute air with his aura, why couldn’t he take the friction that was hitting his aura and use his alchemy skills to convert it to something useful? Electricity wasn’t far from magnetism on the omnispectrum, and since he knew he could magnetize his aura, why not electrify it with power from the friction? He closed his eyes and focused. The friction that was weathering his aura sparked and coalesced and crackled until it became slithering bands of lightning that covered his entire body. Though the Lairjet was insulated from electrical attacks, this was insanely powerful, and it turned the hull into a photo-negative of itself. The robots were destroyed in the process. Jarvis desperately ripped off a weakened hatch, flew in, and raced for the controls.

Unsurprisingly, though the Pale Horseman had access to any amount of physical, financial, and (formerly) political power, the only person who’d ever understood him had been sentient for only a few hours, and then been killed by Lilith. After landing (and having Anvil Man land on top of him), he went right after her, getting on his damaged hovercycle and making pass after pass at the heroes, swinging with his dark-matter sword and blasting with various energy-weapons and mini-missiles. Akiko ducked or leapt over his blade, while Anvil Man powered through it and managed to clip his ‘cycle a few times. Lilith was more than happy to return in kind, throwing leftover construction equipment (which Harmonic had raided from a site a mile away) and other pieces of debris at him, while Harmonic gave his teleporting a break, using his dataguns and sheer sonic force. Suddenly, the hovercycle clicked--it had run out of mini-missiles. The Pale Horseman was unfazed, hitting both Anvil Man and Lilith with photonic streams that sent them flying hundreds of feet, while distracting Harmonic with force-blasters aimed at Akiko; the energy-wave was too big for her to dodge, so he teleported her, instead of teleporting the other two and repeating the “take someone that’s been thrown and have them crash into the person that threw them” trick.

Inside the Lairjet, Jarvis grabbed the universal power-adapter--there were actually several of them, each in a different form, but he went for the one that was an energy-absorbing handle attached to a clear metaplastic cord--and blasted JarvisCosmic through it, pumping up the ship’s engine and helping it gain speed. He could shake HV, he just knew it. Meanwhile, never-before-seen levels of electricity were pounding through the hull (via HV’s connection to it) and into the ship itself, screwing up systems and starting fires and causing explosions. Jarvis had exhausted himself in the chase, so he wasn’t able to give as much energy as he’d have liked. There was only one move left to make: aim for outer space, give however much power it took to go faster-than-light, and hope that HV would be reduced to a bloody smear on the ship’s silvery skin. HV saw the ship tilt upwards and immediately understood what was going on. As much as he wanted to capture the ship, he couldn’t let New America have something this powerful…it was in that moment that the fate of the world was reduced to a child’s game. Jarvis was pulling, HV was pulling back, and letting go would produce some very interesting results.

They were seconds away from making it into space. Seeing that the Lairjet was aligned to go over the moon, HV added a final hunded tons to his weight, slightly sinking the ship and putting it on a collision-course with that pockmarked, grey heavenly body. Jarvis wasn’t worried--at this speed, he had four or five seconds to steer around it, far more time than he needed. Then, HV let go and was sucked backwards off the craft. Without his drag weighing on the turbines, the Lairjet instantly increased its speed tenfold--this was before Jarvis could aim it in another direction. In something that was slightly less than a picosecond, the ship impacted the moon, silently exploding and leaving a continent-sized crater. Lightspeed crashes tended to do that. HV (his weight, kinetic energy, etc. back to normal) seemed to float, for a moment, but he knew that he was actually falling through the atmosphere. Fittingly, this could be the highest point in his life; he’d just screwed up a major plan of New America’s and saved the pilgrims. Though he’d never been suicidal, he had to wonder…what if this was how he ended things? What if he avoided making that horrible, horrible decision? It’d be a hero’s death, instead of a villain’s life. He didn’t contact Harmonic for a teleport. His old friends, heat and friction, returned. It was time to make a choice…

It was a strange thing, for love and friendship to possibly doom a planet. As a superhero, he knew he’d have many future opportunities for a similarly glorious demise--because of this, he felt fine about not taking advantage of this particular one, as he wanted to make sure that Lilith and the others were okay. Once again using his aura to transmute energy, he took the friction and heat he was encountering and turned it into a bizarre form of light that quickly hardened and covered him like a transparent, glowing yellow orb, giving him an extra layer of protection for his re-entry. He aimed for Tulsa and used the hard-sound-energy character in his ear (it could pick up on spoken words, as well) to give the others a very specific set of instructions. The ball of light kept getting bigger and bigger, as it added more converted heat and friction. Suddenly, the bright energy somehow crystallized, turning multicolored. It was so dazzling that it shone through the darkness of the planet’s thick cloud-cover, reminding people what a falling star looked like. Its trail was like a kaleidoscopic rainbow. Just to get rid of excess power that was gathering in his aura, he transmuted some of it to obscure healing rays that he’d studied in an ancient text, reinvigorating himself after the Lairjet incident. He stored more in the crystal shell, as crystal was an excellent container for metaphysical energy.

The Pale Horseman had been more than holding his own against the other four heroes--then, without warning, they teleported away. While looking around for them, he saw what looked like a distant star…it turned from yellow to a weird jumble of colors. After watching it for a few moments, he was shocked when, in the span of a second, it went from being a distant dot to being a frighteningly-close, island-sized glob of hardened crystal that had explosive light inside. It hit him directly. Far too wide and fast-moving to dodge, of course. A good portion of the uninhabited city of Tulsa was flattened by a concentric circle of a blast. Despite the fact that both his armor’s and ‘cycle’s forcefields had been recharging at the time of the impact, he survived. The Pale Horseman was now lying face-down in black soot, a dome-shaped forcefield being projected from his ‘cycle, while he tried to prop himself up with his elbows. He saw weird energy wisps snake into the four heroes (who were now back), it looked like it gave them a boost in their health. HV was literally alive with semisolid light that was in the process of breaking up and reverting to normal.

“Dr. Price, I presume. I’m HV. You want to drag the world back into the Dark Ages, and I want to enlighten it--I think we just might need to work out some issues.”

Though the Pale Horseman’s molecular-stabilizer prevented his body and armor from being teleported, Harmonic was able to teleport Anvil Man inside the dome-shaped forcefield, making it very cramped…she proceeded to repeatedly pound the Pale Horseman into his own field. He caused the ‘cycle to drop the field, at which point Lilith ran out of the fog and hit him in the side of the head. His scanners and sensors had been fuzzy ever since the explosion of light. Lilith tried to disintegrate his suit, Harmonic tried to teleport it, and Akiko hit it with her matter-accelerating eyebeam, wearing down his molecular-stabilizer. He had to divert power away from his superstrength to keep it from giving out. Naturally, Anvil Man chose that moment to jump him and beat the holy living crap out of him. Though the purple, explosion-causing beams that came out of his shoulders shook Anvil Man loose, HV was ready--he jumped over the armored figure, and for a split-second, he made his aura weigh a hundred tons. A lightning-fast kick was delivered to the Pale Horseman’s face. He made his aura go back to normal before gravity kicked in, blending the jump-kick into a somersaulting land. The Pale Horseman had been hit with large, heavy objects all day, but never in such a focused way; it was usually more all-encompassing than sharp.

Using her eyebeam, Akiko shot the ground he was standing on, and it charged with energy and blew up. The blast knocked him into the air. He managed to land on his hovercyle, just like in an Old West movie, and took off. There was nothing more to be won, here--he might as well leave. At first, it seemed like they weren’t following, but then, Anvil Man was teleported right in front of him, swinging and hitting his ‘cycle head-on. The Pale Horseman was thrown forward, skipping across the pavement like a stone. When he got back up, he pulled his dark-matter sword out, ready for anything. Or so he thought. The tallest remaining building in Tulsa--ten stories, he was standing in front of it--weakened in just the right place to cause it to topple onto him. Elsewhere, Anvil Man and Lilith got ahold of his hovercycle (though its forcefield had come on) and threw it as far as they could. The Pale Horseman was so surprised to see it go out of his comm-range (now, it’d rely on limited AI autopilot, which wasn’t the brightest thing) that it was easy for HV to blur onto the scene and issue a rapidfire series of punches and kicks, his invulnerable aura leaving stinging pain with each one. The Pale Horseman fought back as best he could (and he was stronger), but HV had far more speed and innate talent and experience in this area.

He started pounding HV’s aura with his dark-matter sword, and HV reversed his polarity, magnetically repelling the Pale Horseman through yet another wall. Inside was an empty room the size of a department store. The ceiling and second story fell in on him, thanks to Lilith. Hip-deep in wreckage, he was assaulted by Anvil Man, Lilith, and HV, and he actually did a decent job of holding them off, with a combination of his sword, his force-blasters, the explosive purple beams, and his unique martial-arts style. His forcefield (now fully recharged, and in a form-fitting shape, rather than a domed one) certainly helped with this. Akiko was sniping his field from some distance away, only instead of her usual explosive shells, she was using concussion-bullets: upon contact, a white, spherical forcefield the size of a billiard would instantaneously expand/explode from the shell, the impact was like getting hit by a cannonball. (She’d seen a demonstration where such a bullet had been set on a steel floor and triggered from afar; the forcefield expanded so quickly and powerfully that it left a perfectly-round dent in the metal. The flash of energy only lasted a second.) After the Pale Horseman got out of the debris, HV increased his aura’s weight and wrapped himself around his legs, making him a stationary target, while Anvil Man and Lilith double-teamed him, wearing down his forcefield.

After about two minutes of this, the three of them were teleported away, replaced by house-sized, molecularly-accelerated chunks of debris that hung in the air for a split-second, before exploding--Akiko had shot them with her eyebeam beforehand. While momentarily blinded by the smoke (his scanner/sensor array had been damaged), a train-like gale of sonic force collided with him, sending him flying backwards. It then hit him from another direction. And another. Dataguns were involved in this, as well. He was knocked through a looted bank vault and a train station. At one point, he went flying over an empty construction site that had clearly been the source of Harmonic’s earlier attack. He tried to run. Apparently jinxing himself, right as he thought of that teleporting spectacle, a dump-truck appeared before his eyes, its blunt side clipping him in his (thankfully forcefield-protected) face. He fell flat on his back. While still lying down, he saw white light flash from a nearby sewer grate, and a sonic blast broke up through the street and propelled him into the air. Before he had a chance to fall, it hit him from below again. Then, he was blasted from side to side, always at upwards angles. Harmonic was teleporting himself all over the sky, using the Pale Horseman as sort of an aerial pinball.

The Pale Horseman did eventually get to fall--but it was on Anvil Man’s unavoidable fist. (Seeing who was waiting for him down on the ground, he strafed with purple beams, blowing up the everything around Anvil Man and pushing her back, but she never stopped focusing on him.) He careened through several piles of debris, eventually rolling onto his feet, giving his weakened forcefield a break, and activating his sword. (His other energy-weapons could make it through his field, but not the sword.) During another high-speed bout with HV, Akiko hit the armored man with her eyebeam and the concussion-shells, while Lilith picked up a metal pole and used it to knock his feet out from under him. She tossed the pole to HV, and he increased his aura’s temperature, melted it, and splattered the slag onto the Pale Horseman’s face, covering his plexiglass lenses. With no scanners to fall back on, this was a problem. He tried to wipe it off, but HV just as quickly reversed his aura’s temperature, touching it and freezing it solid. Activating his not-fully-recharged forcefield and putting it in dome mode (so he could touch his armor’s outer shell), the Pale Horseman tried to get the hardened metal goop off, but Anvil Man charged the weakened field, actually shattering it. The feedback was shocking for the man inside the suit.

Being so-called “heroes”, he thought they might play fair, but, instead, Anvil Man and Lilith ganged up on him while he was disabled, hitting him everywhere but the face. (They didn’t want to break the metal that was masking his vision.) He felt datagun hard-sound, HV’s aura-covered fists, and more of Akiko’s concussion-bullets. Firing blind didn’t seem to do much good, nor did lashing out and hoping for the best. Though it seemed counter-intuitive, he was reduced to jerking his head around, hoping that one of them would accidentally connect with it and destroy the ice-cold slag…after thirty humiliating seconds, it worked. He hit HV and Anvil Man with purple beams, the impact of the explosions sending them flying backwards (neither had time to brace themselves), while using his gauntlets’s force-blasters on Lilith and Akiko. Harmonic had broken off to take on the newly-returned hovercycle. Before the Pale Horseman could take control of it, it was mashed by a series of teleported pieces of construction equipment, which, luckily for Price, hadn’t had as much momentum as the ones he’d been hit with earlier. Still, it was enough to overwhelm its exhausted forcefield. The Pale Horseman whipped out his dark-matter sword and attacked Lilith and Akiko with it; Lilith blocked for the other woman, while Akiko rolled to the side and shot him.

A blindingly-fast purple blur clotheslined him in the back of the head: HV was back, and Anvil Man was right behind him. Momentarily between HV and Anvil Man (Lilith, smiling, stepped back), the Pale Horseman was surprised when HV magnetized his aura, as it seemed like a stupid thing for HV to do. With the molecular-stabilizer, his armor was immune to magnetics…he realized the hard way that Anvil Man wasn’t. The black behemoth was drawn to HV at a high speed, steamrolling over the Pale Horseman and crushing him between the two of them. Then, his suit’s heads-up-display screamed that the hovercycle was in danger; Akiko and Harmonic were wearing down its own molecular-stabilizer by way of her eyebeam and his teleportation. HV’s aura became oddly sticky and clingy, as he locked the Pale Horseman’s arms in some contorted form of a hold, while Anvil Man and Lilith took turns hitting him in the face, chest, and stomach. Price couldn’t get his arms up to aim his force-blasters, and HV’s elbows were covering the part of his shoulders that the purple rays came out of. Sparks started to dribble out of his armor. Basic systems were rebooting over and over again, never left alone long enough to fully reset. The whole thing was running out of power and reacting to the collective damage he’d taken during the last thirty or so minutes.

He had spare power-pods in ‘cycle. Triggering the cybernetic link to his sword--which had been knocked out of his hands when he’d been sandwiched between HV and Anvil Man--it flew towards him, hitting Anvil Man and Lilith and giving him a chance to throw HV over his shoulders. HV didn’t actually let go, but he was distracted long enough for the Pale Horseman to catch his sword…which Akiko promptly shot out of his hand with a hail of concussion-bullets, shattering the metallic handle the energy came out of. The Pale Horseman used his forceblasters to separate himself from HV, and then ran for the ‘cycle, while it veered towards him. He needed to lead them on a chase for a minute or two, just long enough to catch his breath, recharge, and come up with a plan. His scanners and sensors were still dead, while his HUD was sending him patchy data detailing the condition of his suit and the hovercycle. It was blaring any number of warnings. Harmonic teleported obstacles in front of him, which, in his desperation, he actually managed to steer around. HV was keeping pace with him, getting ready to attack. But he heard Akiko shout something, and, suddenly, the hovercycle that was clutched between his knees throbbed in an odd way.

Buried in the many system-warnings he’d been getting was an announcement that his ‘cycle’s molecular-stabilizer had crashed. Akiko’s (intact) scanners had picked up on this, and she’d told Lilith, who’d quickly degraded the containment-casing around the more volatile parts of the hovercycle: the absorptive lining that kept the engine’s heat from seeping out and making the photonic-stream-weapon’s battery explode, for instance. The specially-treated plastic that kept the energy in the power-pods from rupturing and creating block-sized blasts. The shocks-like shield that made sure the hoverforce didn’t recoil against any sensitive, high-tech innards. Everything that wasn’t supposed to go off, but could, did. An incredible amount of power channeled through that hovercycle, and the fiery spectacle it created was impressive indeed. The Pale Horseman rode a painful cushion of destruction high into the air, thinking that all he had to do was land and fight back. Then, a wall of neon green energy enveloped him, reducing him to a mere stick-figure of a silhouette and sending him flying over New America’s sky. It was impossible to tell whether his smoking, charred form was alive or dead.

Jarvis hovered in the sky, more green energy boiling from his fists and eyes. He’d seen better days. The crash on the moon had winded him, in addition to destroying the “pocket GPS” that he always carried with him--finding his way back to Tulsa had been harder than he’d thought. He was enraged, unsurprisingly. No more Project: Horus. No more hope. No more anything. He’d lost Lisa, his friends, and now the Lairjet. Sensing what he was feeling, and despite wearing a mask, HV gave him a look that said, “It’s nothing you don’t deserve.”

Jabbing a finger in HV’s direction, Jarvis screamed, “YOU’RE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY!!”

Despite the danger they were in (the five of them taking on even a weakened Jarvis didn’t sound like a strategically-sound idea), Lilith couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “The Swarm tried to do that, you idiot--only instead of making it better, you’re making it worse! Don’t you get it!? You’re actually helping them, because you reacted just the way they wanted you to! They don’t want us actually going after them, they want us getting distracted with a bunch of meaningless crap that’ll weaken us, so they can come back for the kill!”

Jarvis, like Wertham, was always surrounded by people that agreed with him, or were at least too afraid to voice their true opinion around him; hearing such a seemingly-radical idea was a shock. “No, that can’t be true, that’d mean--that’d mean that all this was for nothing. All these wars. It has to mean something…”

“What have you actually accomplished? I was one of the five that helped fight off the Swarm…what kind of progress are you making?”

“Shut up, shut--SHUT UP!!” Jarvis was moments away from rocketing at HV, his fists were charging up with more and more cosmic energy.

HV glanced at Harmonic, who nodded. “No…when we do this, it’ll be on my terms. Keep fighting the wrong wars, and see if that helps humanity.”

Jarvis flew straight at him, but he found himself teleported to Antarctica--by the time he flew over South America and finally found Tulsa, again, they were long gone. He landed, did a quick search anyway, and blasted the remainder of the battle-shattered city, screaming and finally falling to his knees, raging at the gods that he wished existed, so he wouldn’t be facing these tasks alone…

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Follow-Ups:

* Last one! Yay! - Fin Fang Foom - Mon Aug 15, 2005 at 11:51:37 pm EDT
- * Great stuff. Here's hoping for a sequel, spiritually if not chronologically.... (no text) - Nitz the Bloody - Sun Aug 21, 2005 at 09:25:36 pm EDT
- * This seriously just made my year. I'll get right on this. - anonymous - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 11:28:21 am EDT
  - * You do that, slacker. (no text) - Finny - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 12:34:57 pm EDT
- * And, if you want to reply, you can reply to this post, just for simplicity's sake... (no text) - Finny - Mon Aug 15, 2005 at 11:53:14 pm EDT
  - * Hey, what a cute surprise!!!... (no text) - Yo - Fri Aug 19, 2005 at 05:39:38 pm EDT
    - * Alas, it's not as cute as you, Yo. (no text) - Finny - Fri Aug 19, 2005 at 06:02:23 pm EDT
      - * You forgot to mention sexy. - anonymous - Fri Aug 19, 2005 at 06:26:22 pm EDT
  - * Give me some time to print this out and digest this. And I hope this means you're sticking around. :) (no text) - CrazySugarFreakBoy! - Fri Aug 19, 2005 at 04:28:24 am EDT
    - * I'll be sticking around if the tree-spirits don't kill me for causing everyone to waste all that paper... (no text) - Finny - Fri Aug 19, 2005 at 06:00:27 pm EDT
  - * I'm afraid if I start to read, I will be unable to stop, and thus miss my plane, so shall wait to read this when I return home. (no text) - Al B. - Thu Aug 18, 2005 at 06:37:05 pm EDT
    - * Very good. (no text) - Finny - Fri Aug 19, 2005 at 05:58:00 pm EDT
  - * So, FALL. - anonymous - Wed Aug 17, 2005 at 04:20:18 pm EDT
    - * Thanks, of course. (no text) - Finny - Fri Aug 19, 2005 at 05:57:01 pm EDT
  - * It'll take me seven years to read all this, but it's good to see 'ya in any regard. ;) (no text) - G-Eyed - Wed Aug 17, 2005 at 03:09:29 pm EDT
    - * *cracks whip!* (no text) - Finny - Fri Aug 19, 2005 at 05:52:42 pm EDT
  - * This board does have an Edit feature you know. :) (no text) - Anime Jason - Wed Aug 17, 2005 at 09:35:40 am EDT
    - * Compared to the amount of words, I think I had relatively few typos...granted, I don't use spellcheck, as it doesn't like my various made-up words. (no text) - Finny - Fri Aug 19, 2005 at 05:48:52 pm EDT
  - * Welcome back, Finster. Stick around. (no text) - Dancer - Wed Aug 17, 2005 at 08:45:20 am EDT
    - * My favorite cheerleader! *ducks, runs away* *nt* (no text) - Finny - Fri Aug 19, 2005 at 05:45:35 pm EDT
  - * I detected some slight political satire in the first two parts of this story. (no text) - killer shrike will finish the rest tomorrow - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 09:28:30 pm EDT
    - * *looks around innocently* (no text) - Finny - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 09:42:37 pm EDT
  - * It's good to have you posting again! Welcome back! (no text) - ag - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 07:52:19 am EDT
    - * It's good to be back. (no text) - Finny - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 12:32:50 pm EDT
  - * First Impressions - HH - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 06:53:55 am EDT
    - * Re: First Impressions - Finny - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 12:29:19 pm EDT
  - * Yeah, okay. So where's FALL? - Nats - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 12:08:22 am EDT
    - * Four times the nipplage, I say! (no text) - Finny - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 12:15:02 am EDT
  - * That's very, very, very, very, very long. (no text) - Visionary - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 12:07:12 am EDT
    - * It's quite short, really. Only 160some pages in Word. For me, that's a short story. (no text) - Finny - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 12:16:08 am EDT
      - * So long as you're pacing yourself. Anyway, an interesting tale... - Visionary - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 10:53:13 am EDT
        
        * I could describe that scene too, dammit! (no text) - Finny - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 12:30:57 pm EDT
  - * Holy crap, I'm a bum right now and I don't know if I have time to read this! :) I'll get to it tomorrow...sometime (no text) - Hatman - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 12:05:08 am EDT
    - * No rush, obviously--I don't expect anyone to be as obsessive as I am and get through it quickly. (no text) - Finny - Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 12:17:11 am EDT