StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Some background: not everything mentioned below is my own work, and features characters, organisations and situations developed by friends - major props go out to SiegeTank, Peregrin Toker, Speaker-to-Trolls and Shroom Man 777 (users on this board) and Invictus, Malchus and Mobius 1 (who I'm not sure if they're users on this board). This story is set within a collaborative universe which is based on superhero comic books. That's your cue to tread very lightly.

Acid
Overture - Things Might Get Trippy
Part One

The Port of London was a hive of frenetic activity normally, but today, like every day over the past months, it was once again packed to the gills. Some people were the dockhands, of course. But crowded in tight against the police cordons were men and women and even children carrying signs and placards with variations on the same theme:

Down with Saint.

Some might say they were entirely justified, considering what lay beyond the ridged aluminium walls of the drydock. A smooth, blue-black wedge, carrying at its heart a bank of inert fusion reactors. A dagger over three hundred metres long, studded with cells and silos and pits for weapons. Without any visible propeller, it was said to be driven by electromagnetic fields. It's uniform shell was broken only by a series of red letters and numbers near its pointed nose: SCE-3 TESTAROSSA. It practically brooded in its dry cradle, attended to without and within. A young man, with a bright orange hardhat completely failing to look natural with the clean white shirt a smart tie, clanked up wire-mesh stairs and stepped into the temporary office of Anthony Saint.

The wizard business man was rocked back in his chair, shiny leather shoes propped on the corner of an overstuffed desk. There was something grave about his face, set in lines. He was reading something, a sheet of thick, yellowed paper, a perfectly round, royal blue wax seal clinging to it. Saint looked up and his face softened, before creaking into a smile the covered his face. “Come in Geoffrey.” he said, taking his feet off the desk and scrunching the letter between his hands. “What's news?”

“Well sir,” Geoffrey began, taking off his helmet. “I've just got word that the superconducting engines have arrived from Hero Labs, and I just received a call from the Quartermass Experiment; the positronic matrix is nearing completion.”

“That still puts us behind schedule.” grumbled the laptop computer sitting on the desk. It's screen displayed nothing but a capital 'L'. “Irregardless of the Quartermass Experiment's expertise, it's not like they're writing her from scratch. Just putting together her core hardware.”

“Hush Lucifer.” Tony Saint sighed expansively, still smiling. He smoothed out his sleeve. “We're paying for quality, not speed.” He turned his eyes back to his aide. He arched his brow, and Geoffrey finished off his report.

“Mister Wei says that he and your guest should be arriving in a little under fifteen minutes.”

“Speaking of arriving,” Lucifer intoned with the unmistakable air of AI amusement. “We're about to receive a visit from a certain major. You might want to put your tie on.”

Outside, a black behemoth rolled through through the crowd, which parted before its awfully well polished nose. Noses wrinkled, and the environmentalists stirred with outrage, for the stench rolling off it was not the ozone tang of an electric car, but the smell of burning oil. A dirty, obsolete monstrosity. A relic which should have stayed in the past. Much like, some would say, the owner. He stepped out, hair and thick moustache grey like that of an aged man, but radiating the strength of someone much younger. He took a glance back at his car, glared at it, then the crowd. A cigar roughly the same size of a red wood tree was clamped between his teeth.

He straightened his uniform jacket and marched off towards the the dock.

When he arrived at Tony Saint's office, he automatically lifted his boot, then put it back down almost immediately. The door was propped up against the wall behind Saint's desk. “Hello, Uther.” said the fop, and there were traces of smugness in his equally foppish assistant.

“That's Sir Uther.” he snarled, jabbing his hand forward, brand flaming.

“Yes, yes, of course. And for what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from the great Major Britannic?”

“Just checking up on your little project. That's all.” for once, he didn't snarl or bark. No, this time he seemed inexplicably smug. “Just seeing with my own eyes what you're up to.” There was a glint in his eye as he approached the windows. Saint got to his feet and joined the big superhuman soldier.

“What I'm doing, Sir Uther, is self-evident. I am building the third of my Endymion class assault landing submarines.”

“Yes, but why, I wonder.” Uther mused, a chuckle bubbling at his lips. “Does Saintly Concerns really need a third of these boats?”

“It's a ship, and the answer will become self-evident soon enough.” Lucifer said. “Wei is here.”

Wei was the shortest man in the room, nor more than five and a half feet. However, he made up for it in sheer bulk, so broad that he could only get through the door sideways – and then, only barely. His face was scars; his chin long since mangled, two enormous old scars stretching across his entire face. Cross-shaped, starting from his cheek. They looked vicious, as though a normal man could never have survived them. Still, his lips turned up. The man following him seemed more confused than anything, glancing out the window at the submarine in drydock.

“How was your trip?” Saint asked of his closest friend and assistant.

“It was Africa.” Wei replied and more smiles were exchanged. Uther ignored the conversation and peered at the other man, he squinted.

“Do I know you?” he asked between puffs of his cigar.

“Why, that, Sir Uther, is Major Ulysses Stirling, formerly of the SAS.”

“Eh? But he's dead.” the cigar almost fell out of his mouth, but nothing shocked Major Britannic that much. “I was at his funeral. It was a good one too.” he added, mostly to the apparently dead man.

“Well, uh, I guess I'm not.” Stirling scratched one temple.

“But why are you here, of all places?” one major demanded of the other.

“That has everything to do with my newest submarine.” Saint clapped his hands together.

Four men and a laptop stood alongside the pit and watched Anthony Saint clamber up on the smoothly hull of the submarine. “The Testarossa is the third of my Endymions, and the first flight two of the class. This makes it, quite frankly, the most advanced submarine under the public eye, and very likely out of it.” his expensive shoes clicked along the dark hull. “The hull form is not traditional, much as was the case with my Luxion class fast attack submarines. Nor too is the propulsion system, which is magnetohydrodynamic and augmented by the electromagnetic fluidics control system in order to eliminate the problems of cavitation at high speed. Not only is it the largest submarine in the world, excepting the twoo thousand foot monster built by the dinosaurs, it is one of the fastest and most agile.”

“Enough patting of backs and sucking of cocks.” Uther snapped. “I don't care about its performance. That's for the eggheads at RACKET to bother with. Your company can only afford a limited number of soldiers, and you don't have nearly enough to justify a third of these things.”

“You've done your research.” Lucifer noted from Wei's hands. “Or someone else has.”

“However, that information is correct. But the Testarossa is not for a conventional force of Deep Blues.” he paused. “Tell me, Sir Uther, you know the story. Major Stirling went down with his men during the first and last assault against the mad-scientist Ichabod Weird – the inscrutable Doctor Weird. How then, did he survive the psychotic wonderland of the Weird Island?”

Uther took a long suck on his cigar and sighed, exhaling a great ring of smoke. “You're building a squad of fighting freaks.”

“Metahumans, yes.”

The strongest man in Britain turned the younger man towards him. “So you intend to work for this scumbag? Why don't you come back to the army, serve your country with pride.”

“Frankly major, that is what I intend to do. I spent ten years fighting for this country only to be beaten up by a cyborg chimp and subjected to two years of surgery at the hands of a man who was so absentminded that he'd wear odd socks on his hands.” Stirling squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I realise you can't have known I was alive. However, you didn't even come for our bodies. You left us there to rot and be used in experiments by a complete scientific lunatic. Forgive me if I don't feel much loyalty to the Royal Army.”

“But it's your duty to the British Empire!” Uther thundered and Tony Saint tossed up his hands.

“For Christ's sake Uther! How old are you? A hundred and thirty something? There is no British Empire. You watched it fall.”

Uther snorted. “Call it a lapse. Good day gentlemen.”

Britain's Greatest Hero stormed out the building. There was a silence in which Saint chuckled at his triumph, then the crack of snapping steel, the crash of tossed car and the screams of thousands. Evidentially, Major Britannic was dispersing the protesters. There was tiny, distant cry of 'I'm being oppressed' suddenly cut off by a thunderous roar of 'HIPPIE SCUM!'. Saint brushed his hands together, looking at the far wall.

“How convenient.”

*

Sitting in a certain restaurant on West Street, Major Ulysses Stirling tried to feel as though he was in the right location. He stared down at the glittering fork in his hand, sunk tine first into his steaming meal. Anthony had asked for a fifteen year old bottle of red cost more than a hundred fifty pounds. His meal, from the antipasti to the rump of lamb and the promised pannacotta cost over sixty. Between the three of them, there was more than three hundred pounds worth of food and drink. It was more than his entire troop would spend when they went out together. He shifted in his seat, carefully placed down his pretty knife and fork, then reached for his glass of Fuller's Ale. The muscles in his hand uncoiled, and when he took a sip it was like someone had removed an iron rod from his spine.

He had to admit the music was pretty good. A young lady in what he assumed was an expensive dress playing a liquid smooth tune on the baby grand just nearby. The light bounced from her earrings in rainbow flashes, and her hair was piled artistically on her head. He knew that Saint and his bodyguard were watching him, so he turned his attention back to them.

“It must be your first real meal in years, Major.” Saint remarked over his Glenarm Salmon.

“I'm not so sure.” Stirling replied, picking at the lamb. “I ate mostly ground beef for the two years I was in Africa. This is, without a doubt, the best tasting food I've had in the past four. But, even still, I feel as though all those meals I cooked on a little gas stove in some slummy 'apartment' were ... more real than this.”

Wei nodded, his suckling pig skewered. “They were meals closer to your own experience. Things you had learned and earned.”

“Something like that.” he took a bite. “May I ask, sir-”

“Tony, or Anthony, please.”

“May I ask, Anthony, how and why you selected me?”

“The how is a remarkably effective network of intelligence and contacts stretching around the globe.” Saint replied simply, sipping at his glass of wine. “As to the why, well, I would have thought that was obvious. Did you not defuse a rebellion threatening to plunge South Africa into ruin. You almost singlehandedly revitalised the defense of the SANDF. You ended the terrible reign of the metahuman conqueror, Richard.”

Of course. Richard, a man whose powers of persuasion was such that his very visage caused people to bow their heads. Whose words carried ultimate authority to those who heard them. A man with the voice of God, who could never be refused. He had bound together cities and villages and men and beasts and monsters. Richard, who threatened not only the stability of South Africa, but potentially the entire continent. Stirling had been there, and he had the defense forces rally to him, and from there they crushed a rebellion of millions in one fell swoop. The broke the main front, smashed their flanks. And for the king himself ...

The rebellion was running scared. A stampede, quite literal for all the animals that Richard had coerced. But the man himself was always nearby, and he could quieten it. He would rally them all with his words and his presence. He had no fear, for no one would dare kill him. No man could, their shame overpowering. He rose up atop his command vehicle, a tank he had stolen some time ago, crowded with speakers.

He opened his mouth to speak, and the bullet entered just below his eye. From what was not the optimum sniping position, Stirling took another breath, and stepped away from the window. The revolution kept running.

“Your tactical and strategic knowhow, your quickness and willingness to act, your strength of command. All qualities which I need.” he poured himself another glass of wine. “That you are superhuman in physical capability and expertly skilled in combat are simply bonuses, secondary. If you were a baseline such as myself, I would hire you anyway.”

“You know a lot, Anthony.”

“Of course.” the business man frowned, raised his glass to his nose. “Knowledge will always be power.”

Rar! I won't let up!

Acid
Overture - Things Might Get Trippy
Part Two

Ulysses Stirling could feel the coolness of the night through the plexiglass window, as the world swiftly and smoothly slipped away beneath him. He could feel the hum of the magnets driving the train along the West Coast Main Line. Wei had offered to drive him to Manchester, even though it would have been extremely inconvenient for the butler-bodyguard. No, the train had been fine. Beyond the window, lights blurred together into yellow-white streaks.

The old house was still there, of course. The washing line in the front yard. The tenacious roses lining the inside of the fence. His mother's knotted fingers grasping the basket full of shirts and trousers. He had smiled, because he recognised them as service duds.

Delores looked at the man in the rumpled suit jacket, standing beyond the gate. Her mouth dropped open and the basket of washing fell from nerveless fingers. “Ulysses.” she whispered hoarsely, as he stepped through into the garden. Her hands went up, fingers straining, and she took each step slowly. The sun was behind him, and his outline seemed blurred. She touched his face as wetness coursed down her cheeks. “Are you real?”

“Yes Mum. I'm real.”

She screamed then, and seized Ulysses by the wrist. She sprinted towards the house with a speed that belied her age. All the while her voice cried out: 'Dad! Dad! Come here!'

“What is it woman!” Adam Stirling muttered, through his busy moustache, newspaper under one arm. He looked at his smiling wife, then the man she was hanging on to. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” he said.

His brothers Alexander and George were there, but his sister Opha, and his other three brothers, Godfrey, Dwight and Wesley were not. He embraced his older and younger brother, and was immediately bombarded with questions.

Stirling shifted uncomfortably in his seat on the train. That had been the difficult part.

“Doctor Weird is brilliant, I'm sure you know. Harold Quartermass built the first working fusion reactor. Anthony Andrews ended global warming. Doctor Weird discovered the cures for cancer and HIV. They are a trinity, the greatest scientists on the planet.” he paused, rubbing his chin. “But while Quartermass is an advisor and philanthropist and Andrews is an active superhero as Doctor Difference, Ichabod Weir is ... he is a madman.” he saw his mother cover her mouth, and his brothers set their faces into hard masks. “I imagine that almost every day he brings into existence some new and genetically wonderful kind of life. The stories about his island are true; I saw creatures that nature had never intended. Flocks of shining birds no bigger than golf balls, swarming in their hundreds. Frogs and toads that did not croak but sung great operas composed by a cyclopean gorilla with a fez. He has made mermaids, their beauty not marred by gills or scales.” he sighed “There was a great eagle there that tried to teach me poetry.”

“Walking, speaking trees!” he exclaimed, suddenly leaping to his feet. “Elephants with chameleon skin! A giant satyr named Orion who would walk with his great horned hounds!” his lips were peeled back as though smiling, but his eyes did not join in. “It truly was a wonderland. One of the most fantastic places I have ever seen. A place created by Weird in the name of science. Everything he did: for science.”

“I can longer claim to be human.” Ulysses Stirling said, so softly that his father almost didn't catch it. “Over two years, Doctor Weird turned his science on me. I don't know what he did exactly; he never said anything that could be called more than rambling.” He held up his hand to the light, examined his fingers, then curled them into a fist. “But I know.”

George was rubbing his chin so hard that he was pushing his face out of shape. “You were one of his experiments?” the reply was only a nod. “Uly, that's incredible. You must have escaped somehow; the ordeal has made you superhuman I bet.”

Eyebrows raised, Ulysses faced his younger brother, who was grinning ear to ear. He gave a laugh through his nose and smiled himself. Always George; even in his twenties he couldn't resist the idea of metahumans. “I didn't think you'd take it quite so well.” he said, and knew that the explicit details would have changed that. Adam Stirling stood, ramrod straight.

“You are my son.” he barked. “That's what matters.”

That had lasted about as long s it took for his future plans to come up. His father had suggested going back to the military, as they could always use trained metahumans, apparently. The idea that he would become a mercenary working for some private corporation did not appeal to Adam Stirling. Ulysses made his excuses and left for Piccadily Station. He turned towards the man sitting opposite him in the neat black suit. “That's impressive.” he mused, and the man smiled.

“No more so than the deepness of your thoughts, Major.” he was slim, and advanced in age. His hands rested atop a cane, and his brows were furrowed, and it seemed as though they would always be like that. The Major amused himself briefly with the thought of cogs turning constantly behind that domed forehead.

“I'm a Major?”

“Very clever.” the man replied. “But pointless. I know you are Major Ulysses Stirling, presumed dead these past four years. Recently emerged from South Africa as an unknown war hero.”

“Not bad.” The Major said, relaxing into the flow-form contours of his seat. Bars of shadow flickered across the man's face as they crossed a bridge. “You seem to know the important parts.” there was something of sarcasm present.

The man shrugged. “Knowledge is power, they say.”

“It's rather impolite for you to know my name, and I to not know yours.” Stirling noted. He also noted that if the man made any false moves he could collapse both knees in short order. He stayed loose.

“Only enemies speak the truth, Major Stirling.” the man replied as the train slowed, then halted. Stirling could feel his gut clenching in readiness. “Let me show you something.”

He stood and led the way onto the Nuneaton platform. The air was brisk, and the concrete platform devoid of life. What few passengers were on such a late trip had not stirred from their resting places, and took no note of this slight hiccup in the express trip. The man in the suit gestured with his cane. “You would, like me, see a sleepy little town. A hundred and sixty or so kilometres to the southeast lies the hustle and bustle of London. You have grown up in this world. You have grown to become a part of it.” He turned and looked the Major in the eye. His stick clicked once against the concrete. “You trust this world, don't you. You might even call it your friend. Only enemies speak the truth, Major Stirling.”

There was a sounding horn, and the man pointed towards the open door. “Your train is leaving, Major.”

Inside, passengers were looking about themselves, startled by the sudden noise. Ulysses Stirling stood and watched the man on the platform until the accelerated too far and he fell out of sight. He chuckled and went to sit down.

*

“Major Ulysses Stirling, I'd like you to meet a vital part of this initiative: Alexei Ross.”

They were on a pretty island in the South Pacific. That Tony Saint owned such a place didn't really surprise the Major. His submarine fleet alone would have cost tens of billions of dollars; a little island getaway like this one was peanuts compared to several hundred thousand tons of seagoing technological monsters.

The man, Ross, rose up from his chaise lounge. His shoulder-length blonde hair was kept back by a pair of sunglasses. Oakley's with ruby lenses? They were always Oakley's. Ross extended a hand and the Major took it. Saint continued: “Alexei has provided several vital intelligence services to Saintly Concerns. He's extremely well connected.”

“I can't really say,” Ross began, and his accent seemed something like a blend of several. “that all those contacts are legitimate.”

“Can't really say that matters all that much.” Stirling replied, and Ross' lips curved upwards. He gestured towards a bottle of amber liquid on a nearby table and the Major nodded. As Ross busied himself with pouring drinks, Stirling turned towards Saint. “Though I think it's time you actually gave me a concise idea of what you're trying to do here.”

“Sit down then.” he glanced pointedly at Wei, who bowed his head and moved back into the villa. “I think it would go without saying that metahumans have changed the face of the world. If Lucifer was here, I have no doubt he would point out that even the term 'metahuman' was coined by the world's premier hero, the Awesome Archwind. I run a private military company. I hire out well-equipped, highly trained mercenaries to those who are willing to pay. So it occurs to me: why the hell why shouldn't I assemble a team of super-mercenaries?” he took a sip of the drink that Ross handed him. He frowned into his glass. “I mean, really; it just has to be done.”

Wei returned and handed a manila folder to the Major. It had the letters IACD scrawled across it in black marker. Raising his eyebrows, Stirling flipped the folder open. The first thing he noticed was his photo, taken from when he still wore the uniform of the Royal Army. He flicked through the stick of papers and found more photos. “IACD?” he asked.

“Infiltration, assault, combat and demolition.” Saint explained. “It's simple enough. You sneak in and blow shit up.”

“Your insurance premiums will skyrocket.”

“I have a lot of money.”

Flicking through, there were seven other files. A photo of a Japanese man sitting cross-kegged on a street. A red haired man with a Kalashnikov on one shoulder. A stunning woman with long blonde hair. Alexei himself. “How ... interesting. I presume you found most of these?” he looked towards Ross and the man shrugged. The Major's eyes narrowed and he turned back to other pages. “You don't have a birth date. Even this Eiji guy has a birth date, and it's in the nineteenth century. You don't have a country of origin. Or a weight.”

Saint was toying with a sweet wrapped in purple cellophane. He scratched his nose and waved his hand at Ross. “Well, the thing is, I wasn't technically born.”

“You're some sort of mas-changing android?”

“Well, no.” Ross sighed, took his sunglasses out of his hair. “I'm a god.” Stirling blinked just once, for close to twelve seconds. “It should be in the file.”

The Major turned back to Alexei Ross' file and scanned through. As he went deeper, the geometries of his face warped, as he went from peering very closely to slack jawed bewilderment. He looked up at Saint as the businessman was in the process of tossing the pink candy into his mouth. “You're mad. Completely insane.”

“I'm also very rich.” he replied, before his teeth came down and crushed the treat in two.

I'm Being Represessed?!?!
You sir, for this work, will surely win an internet. And the subtitle: Things Might Get Trippy, that's just cracking me up every time I read it.

Whoohoo! Comment GET! Thank you very much Vehrec, for your kind review. Aaanyways ...

This chapter integrates a friend's creation, a religious cult group that embodies the stuff of the ludicrous. To give an idea, their mission statement is as follows: "the salvation of mankind through alchemy and technology as well as the eradication of everything which does not look like it belongs in Warhammer 40,000."

And Akira? Never heard of him.

Acid
Overture - Things Might Get Trippy
Part Three

High Fläming Nature Park did not belong to Germany. It belonged, secretly, to the High Cognisant Ecclestial Holy Order of the Divine Machinery, more commonly known as the Technotheocracy, or 'those idiots with the Tesla coils'. The statement was accurate in the sense that the Technotheocracy did have Tesla coils, but then, so did everybody else.

There was an orphanage in the park, run by the agents of the techno-religious cult. For a hunter wandering near it, they would be struck by a dread coldness, tendrils of ice slipping into their skull. For the orphanage was nothing more than a front; a place for children manifesting the powers of an esper to be taken and changed. Twisted to the uses of the Technotheocracy. Men in women in dark cloaks and jackets swept the halls with the chittering of cybernetics. Armed humans as much machine as flesh, dragged screaming, frothing children to and fro. Rooms reeked of blood. In dim rooms, psychics of all ages huddled apart from each other, trying to get away from a cloying presence of their own. Not cold, but warm.

But beneath the orphanage was more important. Down, down, almost a quarter of a mile down. A dark pit all shrouded in mist and rimmed with burning lights of orange and blue and pale green. Seven concentric rings of humming spars; each one running the fifty metres from floor to roof. Ten metres apart, with twenty metres to the next ring.

At the heart of the room, a sphere some ten metres in diametre, skinned in ice. It floated, connected to the ground only by thick cables and tubes. Beneath the ice and the titanium shell lay seven-layers of field-active, anti-psychic wards. The outer layer: a foot electromagnetically charged mercury woven with goldcopper rune-filaments. The inner shield: a few microns of crystallised phlogiston. Tinfoil would not protect you from telepathy or telekinesis, but these, the seven most fiendish of barriers, nearly a thousand tons of wards, would. Or should.

And at the heart of it all was little girl, all cold and alone. Trapped in a bubble of hydrostatic gel, a forest of wires running from her temples, breathing filtered air through the mask over her nose and mouth. But worst of all was the thumping, crushing feeling inside her skull. The pressure of the deepest seas pounding on her brain. She could feel the cause; cold, unfeeling metal painstakingly embedded into her mind by the finest of cybernetic surgeons.

The little girl was done. She reached up and grabbed the internal halo of steel. It would come out.

It would come out.

*

“So.” Stirling began, bending down and picking up a rosy-orange shell. He turned it over in his hands and considered starting a collection of 'things from the beach'. “You're a god. How's that work for you?”

“Ah, well. Don't try to think of me as the 'real deal'. Trust me, if I had all my power, I would not be here. No, the moron who summoned me fouled the fuck up, so I only have the merest glint of my actual radiance.” he shrugged and gestured to the sky. “That said, it's a pretty good deal. You can walk into a church and legitimately say, 'hey guys, I'm intrinsic proof that your monotheistic world view is wrong'. You ever seen a priest snort Communion wine out of his nose? It's classic.”

Together they scaled the beach and crossed back towards the expansive villa; not only Anthony Saint's home, but the central headquarters for Saintly Concerns. The Major delighted in the feel of real, fresh grass beneath the soles of his feet, then cocked his head. “Do you smell that?” he asked, turning around to walk backwards. He glanced over the the left and saw flattened grass. Some sort of heat haze?

“It's a stealthed Junker battlesuit.” Ross said, taking a glance in the same direction. “Show him.”

All at once, something massive, metallic and humanoid appeared, late afternoon sunlight catching on a pattern of lenses. The lenses slipped back into armoured housings and the suit rose from one knee, then saluted. “What do you think, sir?” asked a strangely distant voice.

“That's incredible.” the Major breathed, a grinning from ear to ear. He approached the machine and looked up at the angular head; it was almost three times his height. “I had active camouflage back when I was with the SAS, but that was only octopus polymer, not even as good as the American scramble suits. What is this? Some sort of special phased array optics?”

“Ah, no sir.” said the pilot, joining the pair on their walk to the villa. Stirling nearly applauded at how quiet the machine was, considering it had to weigh at least a couple of tons. “Mister Saint calls it the 'electromagnetic interference system', and the handbooks describe it as a sort of laser screen. The technicians are always talking about how it's such a revolutionary addition to the catalogue of ECM. I just think it's pretty nifty.”

“Definitely.” the Major nodded. The pilot made a two finger salute and strode off. He turned to Ross. “I want one. Though, to be honest, I didn't think Saintly Concerns was this ... bleeding edge.”

“He wouldn't claim it, but Anthony Saint knows how to invent. The technology he hasn't adapted he designed himself. The submarines, the suits, the planes and so on.”

“He could make a lot of money selling that sort of technology.” the Major noted, brushing residual sand off his feet.

“And he will sell it; but only when he knows how to put it on something no bigger than a person.” they entered the house. “Tony relies on that sort of edge. It's competitive advantage. He offers services which other people don't or can't. Special services are what keeps Saintly Concerns alive.”

*

Beneath the orphanage, in the primary observation crèche overlooking the Egg of Light, ElectroBishop Holsman reviewed a report in handwritten in his order's constructed language: Technobabble. It reported new successes in the project; at this rate, they would have perfected the regulated psychic battery. He sucked contentedly at his nutrient rich thickshake; of course, the real triumph would be the discoveries they could make for theoretical physics. The very secrets of the universe could be cracked right open at this rate. He placed the report down and turned to the window, to look out at his charge.

It wasn't really a window. The observation rooms rimming the pit all had seven layers of psycho-active defense and a few metres of armour as a precaution; a window would have rendered all that moot. Regardless, he was still able to look out across the sanctum, with its seven rings of field-projecting slaves and the mist from the millikelvin temperatures; all of his own design. Holsman accessed the room's systems and magnified the Egg. He sighed through his implants, and told himself that later on he would open up a channel and have a little chat with her. Over the past few years, it had been Holsman who had headed the project and had interacted the most with her. He had been the one to name her; Sophie, the name of his own daughter before she had been killed. Most referred to her only as 'the subject'.

Not Holsman. Holsman cared.

“Father.” said one of the minor deacons on console duty. Vaguely, the ElectroBishop knew that he monitored brain patterns from the observation room. “I have a very strange ... well, I'm reading a pattern blue."

Holsman nodded. Pattern blue, the designation given to the reading one gained when examining an esper. That was to be expected when the subject was indeed an esper ... behind seven walls and seven walls again of some of the most powerful psychic defenses known to man. He dropped his nutrient shake. All at once it seemed as though bees had come into his head; the buzzing of whispers in his ears and over his comm implants.

+++Vacuum pressure is failing in the outer walls!

+++Temperature won't stay constant ... currently ranging between three and eighteen millikelvin.

+++The Egg's intertial mass is fluctuating ... but there's nothing wrong with the inertial control equipment.

+++Why won't anyone attend to the walls!?

+++The subject's vitals are spiking. Vitrified tissue is reviving.

+++What's with all the butterflies?

Holsman looked up at the view-screen. Glowing clouds of fluttering butterflies were streaming about the Egg. One of them haphazardly approached the control room, then slipped through. A deacon reached up, and the butterfly passed through his hand, then his head. He spilled open like an overripe tomato. Oblivious to the blood on his face and robes, the ElectroBishop rushed to the psychometric spectroscope. He ignored messages saying 'Father Holsman, there's an Enginquisitor Faustan calling for you' and 'Father Holsman! It's incredible! She's directly manipulating the atomic states around her!' and switched his most prized invention on, and swallowed audibly. Colourful wave-rings rose higher than they had ever before. Above the orange-pink kaleidoscope, a circle of black-green was growing and shrinking, sending out short-lived, probing tendrils.

He cleared his throat, shut out the comm noise, and whispered: "Patch me through to her." he could feel fear, measure it with his implants. But there was excitement. The readings were so beautiful. "Sophie, is everything alright?"

"Yes father." she said, and the darkness swelled out, engulfing the holographic display in a black hemisphere. "Everything is fine."

Outside, it was as if giant hands had seized the cables and tubes connected to the Egg and snapped them all free. The great coffin crashed to the ground, seemed to ripple, then split down a longitude. Liquid and plasma spewed and steamed and froze in great silvery washes. As the shell cracked open further, these icy structures shattered and collapsed. From the sphere, small feet disturbing the mist as she walked, came Sophie. Her long, white hair was slick from the containment gel. In one hand she held something like a ring of twisted thorns. She dropped it, to be forever forgotten.

“How did she get that out of her brain?” one of the deacons hissed, metallic fingers twitching. Holsman ignored him.

“Turn up the slaves. In the name of Newton keep her in there.” he ordered, then switched on the intercom again. “Sophie, why don't you just wait there? I'll come out to see you.”

“That's alright Father.” Sophie said. As she passed between a pair of light-distorting field-slaves, they bent, twisted and deformed. “I'm coming to see you.”

*

“Well Major, I can say you're in perfect health and actually mean it.” his doctor (well, everybody's doctor), glanced at her clipboard. Her name was Charlotte, though everbody, even Alexei, called her 'Doctor Jericho' at all times. The Major was no exception. “Which is refreshing. Even Wei gets sick sometimes. Your enhanced physiology is impressive.”

“Speaking of, could you actually tell me what my physiology is up to these days?”

“Hmm.” said Doctor Jericho, flipping over a few pages. “This list is by no means comprehensive. We've only just started, after all. You'll remember how much work it took to take a blood sample? That's because your skin is a weave-stiffened, monocrystalline whisker engineered from exotic flora.”

“How can you tell?”

“You're photosynthesising.” the Major's brow lifted, and he took a closer look at his left arm. “Getting a blood sample was difficult for other reasons as well. For one, your musculature was pushing the syringe back out. I can only guess that it's been designed to extradite foreign objects, such as bullets.” she flipped over another page. "Our radiology expert, Doctor Matthew-Smith, reports that your tissue and skeletal density is abnormal. On comparison, it appears that they most resemble multi-walled carbon nanotubes; albeit living carbon nanotubes.”

The raised brow dissolved into deep furrows. He remembered his old combat armour was woven from carbon nanotubes. He flexed one bicep, prodded it with an outstretched finger. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“There have been modifications to your brain as well, from the looks of things.” the doctor mused, examining a photo from the CT scan. She glanced up at her 'patient', saw him poking at himself. “I think the best way to explain it is that Doctor Weird has not simply modified you, but almost completely rebuilt you over the course of two years.”

“That's ...”

“Nifty?” she offered. He looked up.

“It may have turned out to be worth it.”

*

In a little town called Belzig, a man called Faustan was making calls. After each one, he took a moment to curse in the names of Leonardo, Einstein and Newton. Faustan had been an Enginquisitor for quite some time, and he tried to see if any of his past problems measured up to this one. He remembered massive vampire infestations in the eighties, a swarm of self-replicating robots in the nineties ... no, this was definitely the worst.

And in the names of Leonardo, Einstein, Newton and all the TechnoSaints, it was the fault of Werner Holsman! The bishop had better hope the girl had turned him into a film of protein; because if he wasn't already dead, he would be spending the next century becoming intimate with a variety of agonisers. Faustan would invent whole new ones purely for the occasion.

He dragged on his ornamented gauntlets. “They have clearance to deploy Metatron.” he paused. “Scratch that, they have to deploy Metatron. They have to do everything in their power to make sure she doesn't get to the surface. Make it very clear that if they do not, then I will do very interesting things with cybernetics, a field which I am not skilled with.” He clicked his fingers and shut the intercom off without bothering with the affirmation. Then he shut off his implants, leaving him with a modicum of silence. He opened up a box of worked iron cogwheels, and picked up his hand-held laser. A gift upon reaching the rank of full Enginquisitor.

Faustan holstered his weapon and tucked his helmet under his arm. His subordinates were trained, and skilled in their purposes. In all honesty his orders were nothing more than formality; dislike him though Faustan did at that moment, he recognised that Holsman knew the dangers involved and the measures that needed to be taken.

However, there was a niggling something. When Faustan was younger, he had been taken to meet the Divine Nuclear Pope as a part of a larger group. On that day, Faustan had been asked to demonstrate his skills under the seven eyes of the Mechanic Primate himself. He'd never felt such a heat in his lungs or a thumping in his ears.

He could feel that once more.

Ok, this is awesome. Do you have any other fics in this settings?

Shame on you Ford for not providing a link to the OZ Comix forum!

Would You Like To Know More?

This fic reads like DC/Marvel comic with actual though in how super-humans would change the world. And that link at 1st glance has a lot more of them!

Xon wrote:Ok, this is awesome. Do you have any other fics in this settings?

Shroomy and I work cooperatively on a story called Shining Sun which is something of an exploration of the superpowered condition. Ultimately, I would suggest having a look at just about all of the stories on the site; the arcs are especially excellent. A warning though, we often delve into parody (especially yon Shroomy), so iof you don't like the idea of a Hulk analogue being the result of steroid abuse, you might want to take a step back.

Thanks for joining in though. I love having readers.

And so we continue with this tale of woe, crazy religious people, a little girl with far too much power and a stack of money grubbing mercenaries.

Acid
Things Might Get Trippy
Part Four

The only doors in and out of the pit were close to twenty metres high, thirty metres wide and three metres thick. There were three of them in total, and they were totally locked down and unpowered. Sophie tore them free and tossed them across her frigid home, then walked up to the gargantuan elevator shaft, only to find it filled with solidified red plastic. She frowned and reached out to touch it. Under her fingers the surface began to turn back to liquid, and she pulled away. Sophie knew basic mathematics, and understood the concepts of volume. Instead she floated up to the wall she knew the Father to be behind, and opened up a hole large enough for her to slip through. Molten metal steamed in the cold.

Deacons and priests of the order fell from their chairs and scuttled away as she crawled down from a console and padded across the metal floor. Holsman didn't move, and she walked past him. “Sophie, where are you going?” he asked and incredulously, he sounded incredulous. “This is your home.” she waved her hand, whether it was to dismiss the ElectroBishop or open the seven doors out, he wasn't sure. Pad pad pad; she was out in the hall.

Enginquisitorial troopers were waiting. As soon as the doors closed behind her, grenades bounced down the hall and exploded into spheres of flame that rocketed up and down the hall. Behind portable barricades, soldiers in fully sealed armour waited until the deadliest effects had passed, then swept their railguns over the top and searched the smoke with radar and sonar, but found only distortion, not the shape of a little girl. Then the smoke cleared and Sophie waved. They opened fire. She pouted and swept them away. Men became liquid.

Walking through, Sophie wriggled her toes. “Warm.” she giggled.

Not even five metres away, Holsman watching her move towards another elevator. It wouldn't come when called; they'd shut off all the elevators. Then Holsman clicked his fingers. “We're going about this the wrong way.” he connected to security. “Castellan, reactivate elevator ED-209. We need to herd Sophie, not block her. Not yet.”

Several hundred metres above, the Castellan was attending to the movement of his forces. The control room was an enormous sphere, its 'wall' lined with hundreds and hundreds of cyborgs locked into work terminals. Massive hololithic displays floated in the open air in green and orange and red. “Father, I have seen your report on her capabilities. It is unlikely that we can stop her.”

“Not with your conventional forces, no.” said the virtual representation of the grey haired scientist, and the Castellan could see relief in its slumping shoulders. “But look!” a holographic window opened, showing the pit main elevator, filled with solid red. “A simple bakelite infusion stopped her; not because she couldn't get through, but simply because she didn't have anywhere to put it.”

The Castellan tapped the helmet in his hands. “Very well Father. Contact me if you have a better strategy for capturing her.” the representation dissolved into pixels. Turning on his heel, he addressed his senior staff. “Reactivate elevator ED-209, and have it connect to corridor 94-A-7. When she's in, flood it with Pale Horse.”

“Lord Castellan, Pale Horse is lethal. Aren't we supposed to be capturing the subject?”

“Yes. Alive is better than dead. Dead is better than free.” he accessed a subordinate's implants. “Millenion Leader. You have tactical data incoming. Deploy your Crusadroids to a forward position immediately.”

+++By your command.

“Alter the operation of graviton projectors in the vicinity of of ED-209 to twelve-point-three gravities.”

“That's only barely within the optimum operating parameters of our Crusadroids.”

The Castellan's eyes did not waver. “I know.”

*

“It's a pretty simple concept Major.” said the doctor. He was in his slacks, and standing in front of a large machine with a big, padded square on it. “You punch the spot, we measure it.” she gestured to the machine and he nodded. He drew back his fist, them put it straight through the device. Doctor Jericho took down a few notes and said flatly “I hope you realise that the damage is coming out of your paycheck.”

The Major shrugged and flexed his hand. “I think that's fine by me. You know doctor, you might have to think about new kinds of tests. What about ones in the field.?”

“I would prefer a controlled environment, but I'm one step ahead of you.” she placed a large, steel briefcase on a handy table and clicked it open. “There's no point in giving you a proper armoured muscle suit, as you're beyond what they're capable of. This suit is designed to monitor and regulate the functions of your body. We'll be using it to measure your performance in the field.” she paused for a moment as Stirling lifted the suit out of the case. “It's apparently highly effective body armour, and has a pair of liquid wire launchers and so on and so on. I didn't really listen to that part.”

The Major held up a thin glass tube filled with grey goo. He turned it around, peered at it, then held it up before Jericho's nose. “It's communication nanotech. Almost all Saintly Concerns' employees have it, as it makes communication convenient and secret. No noise, no visible radios.” she took the canister, loaded it up and waited for confirmation that the bots were active. He held out his arm and she shook her head, grinning. She stuck him in the neck and squeezed the trigger, flooding millions of tiny machines into his body.

“You know, you should come out to dinner with me.” she cocked an eyebrow at him, inch long spike still in the Major's neck.

“Where would we go, Major Stirling?” she asked, extracting the injector-gun and looking at her watch.

“The beach Doctor Jericho. It's nice enough. Or something like that.”

“You killed them.” she said suddenly, her jaw dropping. The Major raised his eyebrows. “Twenty million nanomachines don't just spontaneously fail. You ... your immune system must of killed them.”

Stirling nodded slowly. “So. Dinner?”

*

The elevator rotated open and Sophie stepped out of the pale mist, then stumbled. She felt suddenly very heavy. Just over twelve times heavier, though she had no way to know that. Dizzy, she fell to her knees and forced the elevator door to shut, taking the gas away. She took a breath at last, then a crushing force hit her like a freight train. Sophie pulled herself out of the crater in the floor and got to her feet, straightening up. Another pulse of extra weight, and she staggered. When the Crusadroids, nine-feet of walking, fluted armour, rounded the corner, they found a little girl sagging under the massive increase in her own weight. Teslatronic brains of pure electricity did not hesitate. Beams and bullets flew. In seconds, the walls were running like red wax.

Gritting her teeth, Sophie crushed them like insects, scattering heavy-metal armour like shrapnel. She stomped forward as more robots descended, and hidden defences spat arcs of purple lightning The hallway began to boil, heat haze distorting figures into blurs. The gravity impellers cracked and the normal pull of the earth was a relief. Sophie kept walking, out of molten metal and on to normal, solid floor. Her bare feet made no sound, up until she stamped one foot.

She was back where she started. She knew it, but to be sure, she turned around and went back towards the elevator. Only there was no elevator. Sophie scratched one temple and frowned heavily. It was a straight hall, no curve, no bend. Yet even so, it was just like a loop. One tiny hand touched the warm wall, then blew it wide open in a spray of glowing white metal. Floating through, she found men waiting for her, with rocket and flettchete and heat ray. Sophie swept them all away.

The Castellan watched as she blasted open a hole in the roof and floated up. “Fold 79 over to 96. We need breathing space.” his fingers were rubbing a hooked cross in one hand. He glanced at it, then turned his attention back to the floating holo-screens. She cut her way through several floors, floating up amidst dripping circles of steel, and found herself looking at ... herself. Sophie turned and looked down, back through her path, and found herself looking at a small smudge of whiteness – the back of her own head. Sophie rubbed her eyes and waved, and the smudge waved too. She looked up at feet. Then down at snow-white hair.

Sophie screamed, and steel bulkheads rippled into pieces under the force of her anger and frustration. The Castellan was not there to hear it, as he descended into the Vault. Since the subject had cracked her pit wide open, this now was the most secure location in the facility. As he approached each door, his implants, his genetics, the key in his hand and a dozen other variables were detected and confirmed. Nonetheless, his path was followed by mechanical eyes rolling their sockets, tracking him with hidden projectors capable of forcibly collapsing his atoms into their individual particles. The Castellan ignored them, and stepped into the monitoring station, waiting for it to light up.

He wasted no time, and inserted his key into the central plinth. The room seemed to creak, and from its centre rose a polished cocoon. It cracked open, and from within emerged a figure wrapped in glittering rust-wings. It stood straight before the Castellan, seven feet of chrome Adonis musculature, eyes set like twin topaz jewels above a wide, wide mouth. It cast flickering shadows from the halo of plasma about its noble visage. Some absurdist caricature of an angel cast in steel. As much machine and magic as man.

Metatron, eleventh of the Most Holy Mechangels, whose words alone could shake the earth.

Shoulders half quaking, the Castellan swallowed and raised his hand to his breast. “Hail, Holy Metatron.”

The cyborg returned the gesture, but did not speak. To hear Metatron's voice was death.

*

It was dinner at Saintly Concerns. Not so much a refectory, but closer to a restaurant. Ulysses Stirling was wearing a casual suit that he had borrowed from Alexei, and though it was mildly ill-fitting, he had to say, he looked pretty good. Doctor Jericho had agreed to come as well, though the only difference in her attire was that she was wearing sandals now. She sipped from a small fishbowl filled with lurid blue liquid and half a glacier of crushed ice. “How did I come to work here?” she laughed, and it wasn't a bad sound, the Major thought. “I did what just about everyone else here did: I saw an ad in the paper and sent in my qualifications. Not everyone was mysteriously recruited like you.”

The Major smiled. “Alright then, why did you come to work here? A private military corporation doesn't seem like the place I'd find you.”

She took a hard suck on her straw. “Well, that one's a bit tougher. You always hear about how cushy it is to work for Saintly Concerns. Lots of pay and benefits. Then you hear about all the things they do, in countries like Africa and so on. The WHO are quite fond of us, because we go around administering health services to the less fortunate ... the ones with the local 'lords' that take medicine for themselves. We deal with that.”

Nodding, the Major smiled. He could imagine that 'dealing' had everything to do with Saint's Deep Blue soldiers cutting down raiders with contemptuous ease. “I think that attracted me to it.” she continued, chin propped up on her hands, staring off at something distant. “And like I said, the pay is fantastic. The only reason why I don't buy a yacht is that Tony lends me his whenever I ask.

“But what about you? Why did you accept the offer?”

A smile touched his lips. “I grew up to be a soldier. My whole family did. Right from the day we were born, we were destined to become a part of the military; our names reflect that.”

“Oh, so that's where your name comes from.”

The Major shrugged. “So that's how we were raised. After I got off the Weird Island, I gave up on it but when Richard came along ... well, it just seemed natural to go back to war. So I went back to war. Then it was over, and along comes Wei, and he tells me that there's a position on offer, explains to me in what sort of company, and it just felt natural to accept.”

There was slurping sound as the doctor vacuumed up the remains of her cocktail. She smacked her lips. “That and the pay is good.”

“That and the pay sounded awesome, yeah.”

. . . Thickshakes. Technobabble "Everything that doesn't look like it belongs in WH40K" The Metatron who's voice is death. BY YOUR COMMAND?!?!?

You have done the Technotheocracy proud this day. Have a Tessla Coil.

I love the Technotheocracy. Peregrin took it to the limits with that idea, and I'm trying to make good on it.

Part five. Originally, this story was only going to be four parts long. Obviously, that didn't pan out. Oh well.

Acid
Overture - Things Might Get Trippy
Part Five

Enginquisitor Faustan rapped his fingers against the turret-mounted missile rack of his command multiped, then sipped at his warm coffee. “There are over three hundred espers in your facility, Castellan. Why have you not used them?”

The man was gasping through the comms. “My lord, the espers have long since been insane. Since she escaped from the Thrice Seven containment, they became worse. I had them culled so as to reduce potential threats.” he seemed to pause for Faustan to take a sip of his coffee. “My lord, I really am very busy. She has begun random telepathic assaults across the entire facility, and she has managed to take out most of the tactical staff here.”

Faustan rolled hot liquid from cheek to cheek. “ElectroBishop, is there any reason why I can't simply fry the neurons in her brain?”

“Several, my lord Enginquisitor. For one she-”

“And do you have any workable plans for capturing the subject yet?”

“Well, no, my lord. I just don't think -”

“That will be all. Castellan, proceed.”

He cut the line and finished his coffee. He really didn't need to have to deal with a soft-hearted scientist and his daughter complex. He quickly surveyed his forces, brought in from his local Teslatemple; only his tank was currently visible, what with the others having their octopus polymer engaged, leaving them nearly perfectly blended into the background. Only his tactical implants could point out their position visually. A dozen TAT-90 Paladine main battle multipeds, with all his kill-teams and their EMV transports in support. Over a billion euro represented as military assets. He calculated the rough value of the facility itself, then asked his tank crew for something stronger than coffee.

Assuming a worse case scenario, he hoped that it included his own death. One did not attempt to explain such losses to the Treasury of the Great Temple, even if one was the Divine Nuclear Pope.

*

Sophie stood with her toes curled over the edge of a hundred and fifty metre drop. She had no idea what the huge pit was for, with all its gantries stretching above and below. There were windows lining it ever ten or twenty metres; inside were twitching bodies, caught by Sophie's telepathy, which she was testing in earnest. There were people on the gantries, but Sophie had chosen to evacuate the fluid from their bodies.

She had an idea that she was half way to the surface now. Stumbling upon the strange room was a stroke of luck; she'd had enough of corridors – the men in the funny suits kept on finding new ways to block them off, and she was getting tired of playing that game. She spun on one heel, white hair fanning about her, then walked along the edge, one foot in front of the other. As she clambered onto a narrow bridge crossing the centre of the room, there was a noise of steel slipping against steel, and a pair of elevator doors parted. From within stepped a man of singular bodily perfection, all coated in shimmering silver. Wings worthy enough for the king of eagles stretched behind him in copper and gold.

Eyes of gold burned hotter than his flaming crown.

“Hi!” Sophie chirped, across the thirty metres of void between them. “Who are you? Do you want to play?”

Metatron opened his mouth to reply, and Sophie clamped her hands over her ears. Heat streamed around her, the bridge torn from beneath her feet melting in mere seconds. Gantries crumbled. Armour was stripped from unmoving bodies. Every window shattered, and glistening shards rained down. Metatron closed his mouth. “That's a funny name.” Sophie remarked, rubbing her feet together, looking down at where her platform had been. The iron angel stretched its mouth wide again and it was sound so pure that it was impossible to hear. Waves of rainbow light cascaded around her as photons lost their shape. Shards of crystal seemed to form around her, and she tried to scream through the endless pressure. Plates of steel shivered from the walls and crumpled at the very edges of effect; closer in, they underwent violent phase change.

For one terrible instant, she endured, until her eardrums finally burst. The pain speared through her head like white-hot wire and she lost her concentration. Much of the wall forty metres up collapsed inwards, sheets of metal crumpling like paper, conduits sparking and snaking. Her flight lasted only a tenth of a second. Metatron observed the crater, measured its width and depth, then spread his wings, ascending amidst freezing mist and steel turned to glass. He became the glowing eye at the core of swirling white vortex. The the clouds were gone and Metatron was crashing through floor after floor of corridor. Spears of sun-bright plasma lanced out, carving broad, molten tunnels through to the surface at obtuse angles.

The world was fire. Metatron, swathed in blinding coronal loops, swept back up towards the almost radiant white that was his target. His mouth opened. Her hands went out. It was like twin waves crashing together, and molecular motion stopped. Glowing walls shattered with the sudden change from 'molten' to 'solid'. Gantries from a hundred metres above tumbled free and were torn apart. Sophie seemed to gleam red and chunks of torn down metal collapsed upon her. Metatron's cybernetic brain blinked internally microseconds before an incredible force at the junction of neck and shoulder sent him spinning away.

*

Elsewhere, the Castellan stared slackjawed at the main holoscreen, along with what conscious staff he had, through a haze of static. He rounded upon the virtual of Bishop Holsman. “She can teleport!?”

The scientist rubbed his chin then clicked his tongue. “Yes. She can.”

“You can tell Lord Faustan about this,” he snarled under his breath, hands tightening to fists. “recent development.”

*

Angling his wings, Metaron halted his descent, then focused more energy through their field-generators. Light bent around them as he underwent a zero-shift, compressing the space between him and his destination to, as the name suggested, zero. His fist, wreathed in high-density plasma, impacted against Sophie; the sudden change happened so fast that even with prescient reflexes she was almost too slow to block. She went tumbling, and the cybernetic god followed, fists and feet flickering in dancing flame and visible air pressure. A burning hand encircled her throat and golden eyes surveyed the little girl. She sniffed back a trickle of blood, then glowed once more. Gleaming fingers collapsed into a mess stained with something like blood. He whirled, when his head sunk into the wall. He carved out a path nearly two hundred metres long, and ended up with both shoulders being gripped by tiny hands.

Metatron had not been human for several years, but even still 'he' recognised the tears in Sophie's eyes, and recognised her fingers biting into his flesh. But she didn't notice that his skin was less like metal and more like clay. She didn't even notice herself channeling her telekinesis through her body, for she didn't even know what telekinesis was. What Sophie knew was that this man caused pain, and as Metaron opened his mouth, she found herself pulling. Dark fluid gushed outward from both body and arms, and the angel knew pain. He began to scream, but the tiny hand closed his mouth, and held it closed.

The Mechangel fell from grace, tossed by what some might call the hand of god. Yellow cords of light snaked and jerked, marking his descent. His impact shook the facility to its very foundations. In the control room, the Castellan stumbled. In his own little observation room, Holsman fell on his backside. On the surface, a cup of warm whiskey slipped out of Enginquisitor Faustan's hands, even after he had managed to keep a hold on it through all the tremors that came before. He swore, and loudly, but took his incoming call.

Underground, Sophie floated and rubbed at her eyes. She sniffed and wiped blood off her face. She'd had enough. She glowed.

*

“What do you mean she can teleport!?” Faustan shouted unnecessarily at Father Holsman, wiping rainwater out of his eyes. “How could you not put that sort of information-” there were sudden cries over his implants, from the team inside the orphanage. He didn't bother to finish his sentence, but instead closed his helmet and leapt from the tank. It activated its camouflage and slunk away quietly. The Enginquisitor strode forward, not unlimbering his sidearm. No, violence would not solve anything here. He waited, feeling fluttering touches in his mind. Sophie peeked out, saw him, then ducked back inside the somewhat slumped building.

“Come here, child.” the Enginquisitor called through his loudspeakers. Then he grasped at his head and half stumbled. Only a tactical squirt stopped his men from opening fire. The girl looked at him, eyes reddened and shining.

“You don't play nice.” Sophie pouted, and there were cries over the comms. Faustan put all his psionic might into strengthening his mental walls. With an amplified cry of pain he unleashed his power, tearing up hard packed dirt and concrete and crushing trees. Coils of electricity fanned outwards. Sophie did not move; the ground around her did not shatter. Behind her, the orphanage sloughed backwards, a mess of timbers and stone. “I want you all to go away.”

Faustan could feel his breath – and his heart – stop in his throat. The little girl's hand rose, shivered in the air. Faustan prepared himself, then watched her lower her arm and turn away. He staggered to his feet, and unlatched his helmet. Blood splashed the earth and he hacked. He had a splitting headache, and he knew it wouldn't go away. He made a call.

*

“Despite the tremors giving Berlin the shakes, the true concern is with the energy beams seen lancing into the heavens.” the picture on Tony's laser TV shifted to show a remarkably clear, if shaky picture; probably taken on a tourists digital camera. It showed a serious of straight rule lines in almost blindingly bright white. The Major winced for the person who had the misfortune to have had been looking in that direction. “The caused considerable rain over the High Fläming Nature Park, which on the upside put out the fires caused by the blasts. Though at the moment authorities do not know the originator of the display, they are linking the quakes to the beams. The epicenter is known to be in the natural park and-”

“Twenty euro says it's a weapons test done by the German government that got out of hand.” Saint said, muting the TV.

“That's absurd.” Wei remarked. “I'll take that bet.”

The Major ignored the argument that broke out as Lucifer began to explain how it was very likely not a German test. Instead, he focussed on the television, and peered extremely closely – so closely he found his vision actually zooming in. He blinked and shook his head. He snatched up the remote and rewound the recording that Tony made of all news programs. He stopped, and zoomed in once again. “I don't have any cash, but I'll bet the first paycheck I get that it was caused by a meta.”

Saint and his assistant looked up. Cameras swiveled around to focus on Stirling as he approached the screen and jabbed out his hand. “Don't touch.” Saint said, and the Major pulled his hand away, then pointed back at a small white shape. “I'll take that bet. Lucifer, go clean that up for me.”

“You're thirty seconds behind, Anthony.” the screen resolved itself into a blown-up, altered image. Though not perfect, it was clearly a person.

“Holy shit. Lucy! Get me the German government!” Saint roared, and his computer grumbled. He slammed his hands on his desk and hissed, rubbing his stinging palms together. “I want to know how much this information is worth to them!”

And now it is time to see what the Technotheocracy has wrought, in this case for the entire world. Is this some thinly veilled commentary on religion? Never!

Acid
Overture - Things Might Get Trippy
Part Six

Acolyte Frieda Adler fidgeted, tugging on one finger. It had started to rain – real rain, not some side-effect from combat – which meant that she had to move her tanks into cover. Octopus polymer worked in all weather conditions, but it the townspeople would notice it. The kill-teams were still on the roofs, but no longer patrolled the streets for much the same reason. Belzig was a sleepy town, but it wasn't quite that sleepy. She pulled slightly too hard on her finger and the prosthetic came loose. As she put her hand back together again, she took a deep breath. While it did look as though the subject was coming in this direction, chances were she'd randomly change direction.

Frieda Adler immediately went to her knees and began to pray. Very, very loudly.

“Adler! By Newton Adler if you don't shut up and listen to me I will short circuit you from here!”

Her head whipping around so quickly that she almost snapped her own neck, Adler sought to find the source of the voice. She chastised herself; in her panic she had forgotten that she possessed implants for the purpose of getting shouted at by Faustan. “I'm sorry, Lord Enginquisitor.”

“You haven't got time to be sorry!” there was a pause. “No, no. We must be calm. Give me a report. Where are you now?”

“Eisenhardt Castle. I'm coordinating the lockdown from your office.” she moved to a window. From the outside, it showed only an empty room devoid of cloaked acolyte and holographic displays. “There are hidden field-slaves surrounding the village, and I have scramble-suited kill-teams throughout. The Paladines are out of the way; the rain renders their camouflage moot.”

There was another pause, and Adler imagined the Enginquisitor tapping away at the nearest hard surface. “I have been told that the chances are that the subject will pass through Belzig, and from there to Berlin. Something about residual memories. We cannot contain her, and short of borrowing one of the UN Spacy's defence platforms, we cannot currently kill her.”

“I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, my lord.”

“Just slow her down for as long as you can.” Faustan replied, and the off-hand delivery made sweat break out on Adler's forehead. “I have ... I wouldn't really call it a plan. It's more of a set of vaguely connected acts which may have some positive effect for the Order. Good luck, Adler and ... just do your best.”

“By your command.” she whispered. Four seconds later, there was a chime indicating alarm. Taking a deep breath, Adler turned to face the live feed from a trooper's helmet. In the distance - the rangefinder put it at just over four hundred metres – there was some sort of atmospheric disturbance. A wall of water swirling into a what appeared to be a perfect hemisphere. Adler recognised it as simple telekinesis in effect; she had seen, and done, it several times before. She swallowed, pulled on her coat, and issued a very simple order: hold your fire. It was time to take control.

The portable field-slaves proved useless. Adler had known that this would have been the case. Even as her car skidded towards the town hall. On her implants, she could see kill-teams crouched low on rooftops; in the corner of her eye she noted a camouflaged Paladine peeking curiously out from a wide alleyway. Adler practically leapt from the car as Sophie approached.

There was no point trying to fight. Acolyte Adler might have been a trained Techxorcist, and a relatively skilled esper, but she paled in comparison to Faustan, let alone the child-god. No, it wouldn't do to think of things like that. The barrier switched off suddenly, and Sophie was soaked.

“You must be very cold.” Adler half-called, all too aware that there were people watching from the windows. She also didn't know if the girl even spoke German. “It's very wet out.”

“That's alright.” the little girl replied, even as her hair was slicked down her back. Adler was truck by how very gorgeous she was; if she ever had a daughter – which seemed unlikely, all things considered – she hoped that she would be half as beautiful as this living engine of exotic destruction. “It's nice that you care though.” her hand went up and Adler's life flashed before her eyes. She realised that joining a pseudo-monastic order of what added up to crazy geeks probably wasn't the best move she had ever made. Oh well.

The rain stopped. The clouds parted. A shaft of sunlight, pure and bright, illuminated Sophie. Adler could feel awe in the surface emotions around her, and then her own dreadful realisation. She immediately directed the TAT-90 to open fire.

The primary armament of the Paladine multiped tank was a study in purposeful armour destruction. Its bore was not as large as Russian electrothermal cannons, or indeed American electromagnetic guns. Its processes were based in direct inertial manipulation, making it the most advanced kinetic energy weapon in the world. Its ammunition loads could vary immensely, with a truly mind-bogglingly broad catalogue of possible munitions, with an equally mind-boggling array of names. Acolyte Adlers had not specified what kind of ammunition to use, so the commander made a snap decision and loaded up a Plan1397 armour piercing strange matter projectile, code named Gáe Bolga. A specially constructed sliver of crystallised phlogiston, the Gáe Bolga APSMP was, like the gun it was fired from, one of the most expensive and advanced of its kind. Whether it was a good choice is highly debatable; what is not was the definite killing power of the round.

Knowing all this, one can imagine the look on the crew's collective face when it proved to be entirely useless.

Almost instantly, the commander switched on the music. Holst's Mars rang through the turret as it always did. As one, he and the driver altered position and aim, as the auto-loader moved the Gáe Bolga into the chamber with smooth, mechanical precision. Laced into the systems of the Paladine, the commander focused on the little girl and ignored the nearby Adler – she would be injured, seriously, but would survive. Orange concentric circles settled between the girls shoulder blades. Her head was half turned towards the tank.

Ignoring the apprehension, the commander triggered the cannon with a pulse of thought. Windows shattered, the buildings to either side slumped away. The sabot, as much stabilising equipment as anything, tumbled away. The round, nothing more than a glittering thread thundered away, trailing crackling tails of lightning, halted two feet from Sophie's body. A slice of cobbles shattered apart like a pane of falling glass. Nearly visible shockwaves collapsed buildings, picked Adler up and threw her against the wall of the town hall. The tower was falling, and she managed to catch it. There was a popping sound at the back of her neck, her implants overloading. As the tower slid to the side with a crash, she realised she would never use her telekinesis again. Squite frankly, she'd be lucky if she could eat solids again. She sighed.

Frieda Adler looked up at the girl, and barely saw the deadly narrowness of the Gáe Bolga it bubbled, and the Acolyte's last thought was that strange matter was not the most stable stuff in the universe. There was an eruption, a terrible outpouring of ruby light and white flame. The nearby Paladine was blasted sideways, crouched low on its many legs, camouflage polymer burning away. Belzig's historic town centre was erased in a microsecond of sun-like intensity.

From all throughout, townspeople came to marvel and wail at the raging inferno. Sweat soaked faces stared slack jawed at the terrible flames stuttering into the night. When the flames parted and Sophie emerged, the screaming stopped. She floated, snow blinding hair rippling in hot winds broiling outwards. More than one person fell to their knees when she crushed out the fire.

*

“Does the Messiah walk the Earth? According to the Church of the Naked Child, most definitely. With their psychic goddess heralding her own coming, it has become one of the fastest growing religions in history – best estimates put it as being millions of followers, a significant percentage of these currently following their Messiah to Berlin. Earl Makeson takes you to the scene.”

“Ron, it's incredible! A procession of true believers and newcomers alike! Men, women and children are streaming to join the Child's parade, to her perform yet more miracles.” with his swept back hair and bright eyes, Makeson had the look of a man constantly on the go. Behind him, a river of dancing, shouting, drum-beating, banner-waving 'true believers' trickled past. There were papier-mâché floats rolling past; it was obvious that much effort and little time had gone into them. Slogans in a multitude of languages blared out in bright paint. Makeson half dashed towards the procession, his camera drone bobbing as it fought to keep up. He grabbed a woman who singing something in German. “Folks, Gretchen Adelfried is one of the first, and I, well, not I, I don't speak German, have asked her to share her story, and she has agreed.”

He nudged the cam-drone and it zoomed in slightly on a lined, worn face, but one that appeared ten years younger from sheer joy. She began to speak rapidly in German, and at the bottom of the screen, the following appeared: I was there on the night she – Gretchen paused to 'uhh' – descended. She came in a flash of light and an enormous bang – she clapped her hands together – which alerted us to her coming. It is impossible to describe. She glided from the flames and smiled at us. Shes a messenger from Heaven, I know it.

“An angelic presence? Or just another metahuman?” Makeson said suddenly, taking the camera back and jogging in another direction. “Skepticism is just as rampant as religious fervour. Official statements deny that the Child is any sort of Messiah, and other religious groups decry the idea. With me now are representatives from the Guild of Light and Shadow.” the drone swiveled towards a small group of people, some of whom wearing berets in UN azure. Behind them, a set of white jeeps and trucks rumbled. A woman in a grey uniform with yellow and red insignia stepped forward. “Ma'am, what is the Guild's, and by extension the United Nations', stance on this matter?”

“I'll be frank Earl; this situation is just insane. We're just looking at another A or S classed esper, not some 'daughter of God' or whatever they're calling her.” she took a step towards the drone looked hard into its camera eye. It backed off. “We have equipment, constructed by the best in the business, designed to confirm this sort of thing. She reads as a blue pattern – she's just a psychic. She is no more likely to have descended from Heaven than Johnson, our own esper.”

“This is blasphemy!” screamed some lunatic with a thurible in hand. He spun it above his head like a fuming, spark-spitting morning star. Earl jumped back, while the Guild official grabbed the censer by the chain and booted the fanatic in the chest. She immediately slapped her own forehead, cringing.

Tony turned down the volume and looked around his office. “So, what do we all think?”

Alexei was fishing through his wallet, thumbing notes. “I'll bet three hundred and forty six euro that it all ends up in the Berlin Olympiastadion.”

“No one would be mad enough to take those odds.” Tony scoffed; perhaps with the knowledge of how much he owed the Major since the last round of his favourite game.

Wei coughed. “You're on.”

“Is this what you three always do?” Stirling half-mumbled, watching the screen as it switched to a sky-eye view of the girl leading the parade in her honour. His frown was extremely heavy.

“Pretty much.” Tony replied, still making no move towards a bet. “Not a betting man, Ulysses?”

“Rather he appears to be a concerned man.” Lucifer seemed to yawn. “He does not take these events as lightly as you would, Saint. As I recall, you once ran a pool on the chances of the success of the British assault on the Weird Island.” The Major turned around on his couch and cocked his eyebrows. Saint was tapping his index fingers together, looking out his door. His smile was cheesier than stuffed crust pizza, and considerably more awkward. The Major chuckled and Saint clutched at his heart.

“I'm just worried what will happen to this girl. She's only a child.”

Alexei frowned. “Well, you can't really be sure about that. Not everything is as it seems on the outside.”

“So you believe she's a messenger from God?”

“Are you kidding? I'm an atheist.”

There was a short pause, then Tony turned the volume back up.

By Atheist, Alexei of course means simply "I don't believe in OTHER gods."
And I find that whole little scene with the cultists dancing around, swinging their incense burners to be highly telling. Yes dear friends, this is how major religions get started.

Of course, the line immediately after what the cultist shrieked was and got kicked away was: "THIS IS SPARTAAAA!!!"

Vehrec wrote:By Atheist, Alexei of course means simply "I don't believe in OTHER gods."

His siblings are generally assholes, after all.

And I find that whole little scene with the cultists dancing around, swinging their incense burners to be highly telling. Yes dear friends, this is how major religions get started.

Of course, it's kind of telling that such a large movement could spring up practically overnight. Blame it on whatever super-internet present in the OZ Comix! world? I think I will.

A thought: who is more mad? The Naked Child Cultists or a more normal religion like Christianity? After all, while Sophie actually exists, she is clearly just another 'superhero'.

Of course, the line immediately after what the cultist shrieked was and got kicked away was: "THIS IS SPARTAAAA!!!"

Perhaps even 'police brutality' or something like that.

And the climax approaches, in a special extra long chapter. Man, you gotta be excited. In a way I'm not entirely pleased with some parts of this chapter. On the other hand, I am very pleased others. Regardless, I hope you enjoy it.

Acid
Overture - Things Might Get Trippy
Part Seven

Fuming on the cannon of a Paladine tank, Enginquisitor Faustan allowed himself to be examined. As a technician did something incomprehensible to his implants, Faustan began to seethe considerably louder. There was a pop and the technician fell back, clear fluid in his eyes. The source of the Enginquisitor's displeasure was obvious – ElectroBishop Holsman was approaching, and the bastard was smiling. Faustan struggled briefly with the incredible urge to rearrange the scientist's neurons, and allowed him to approach with faculties intact.

“Having a systems diagnostic, Enginquisitor? Allow me.” the old man clambered up with surprising dexterity. To what extent did his cybernetic modifications run? Faustan was interested in allowing the priest the honour of a slow, painful death, but acquiesced to letting the expert do his work. There was a click and it felt as though a great pressure had been removed from Faustan's brain. “Enginquisitor. I may have a solution to our problems.”

“That's good, Holsman.” Faustan replied, standing and looking to the sky. In the distance, dark specks were approaching, growing larger each second, more real as the sound of their wings grew ever louder. Clouds of dirt billowed up with each downward stroke of metallic wings. “Because you're coming on a flight with me.”

“Is that a threat, Enginquisitor?” Holsman half pouted. Faustan turned, stared at the scientist-priest for a moment, then nodded, just once, and strode towards the ornithopter, whistling.

*

“Major, this is Polly Debrois. She's been designated as IACD's chief technical overseer-”

“Advisor.”

“Advisor, and can explain to you much of the workings of your new equipment.” Alexei clapped a hand down upon her shoulder. Polly pushed a very large pair of glasses up the bridge of her freckle speckled nose and smiled. Alexei sauntered over and placed his hand on the shoulder of a young man crouched over a laptop. He looked up, face going pink; he had freckles too. “And this is Peter. Their parents weren't the most imaginative pair in the world.” the siblings frowned in almost the precise same way; the Major thought it was almost something out of Poe. Almost. “But they're hard workers. Well, Pete is.” Polly's frown deepened, and she tossed a dirty look at her brother. “He's not as naturally talented though.” he tugged at his collar uncomfortably, and his sister took something not unlike triumph out of it. Alexei clapped his hands together “I kid, I kid.”

Both sister and brother glared at Alexei's back and he waltzed up to the Major. He bent close and said 'They're really, really uptight.”

“I can imagine.” Stirling replied as Alexei headed towards the door. Th Major held up his case. “I got given this suit by Doctor Jericho. She is extremely vague on what it actually does, so I'm asking you.”

“The doctor is vague because she really has no idea what it does.” Polly said, clicking open the case. “You've tried it on, right?” the Major nodded. “We're really proud of these. I mean, we're more proud of the full Deep Blue AMS, but that was mostly Mister Saint's work.”

“But you two designed this one? I'm impressed.”

“You don't even know what it does exactly yet.” Peter said quietly. The Major huffed behind one fist, and Polly giggled. The Major twirled his fingers.

“Though not as extensive as the standard Deep Blue suit, this one – we haven't actually named them yet – serves many of the same functions. It's fully-active impact smart-armour; it can harden and reshape almost instinctively to threats, as well as your own commands, given through your nanny-comms.” she was becoming increasingly more giddy as she went on. “You can realign the carbonan around your hands into hard edges – a Deep Blue on full power-assist can drive their hand through steel plate like that. And you're supposed to be even stronger ...”

The Major rubbed the back of his head. “My immune system killed all the nanomachines.”

“I have a solution.” Peter said, just as quietly as before. He approached with an earpiece. “It's basically the same technology, just less sophisticated.” he paused. “And less low profile.”

Ulysses took the suit and held it up. “This thing has a helmet right? And it was supposed to have some sort of cable launcher or something like that.”

“Doctor Jericho only wanted the suit for observation reasons, so she didn't ask for all of it.” Peter explained walking away to some other part of the room. While they waited, Polly narrowed her eyes at the Major.

“Why do you want a sudden crash course in your suit? I didn't think IACD had been activated yet.”

“It hasn't. I'm just acquainting myself with my equipment.”

She sidled up alongside and nudged him with her narrow shoulder. “Oh really?”

The Major cocked an eyebrow. “Exactly how old are you again?” she colour drained from her face and when her brother had returned, she busied herself with the second case.

“The suits all come with hard tactical plates. They're not geometry-altering like the rest of the suit, but they are a lot tougher. They can do same adaptive mirror thing for defending against directed energy weapons, and have all the same camouflage abilities, and the wrists pieces contain the grapple-lines.”

“This is all very fascinating, but do you have any weapons floating about?”

For almost fifteen seconds, there was a quiet which Polly broke by snapping her fingers. The Major took a step back, while Peter, scratching one ear, shrugged. “We don't have any guns, but we do have something which I've always thought was cool.” he reached into the case and produced what the Major recognised as a knife of singular, enemy-gutting ability. He slipped his hand inside the knuckle guard and unsheathed the fighting blade. “It's made out of the same stuff that the planes are, and those are designed to make re-entry. The edge is-” a heavy thud cut Peter off – the knife was embedded into one of the stone pillars just outside. The went to retrieve it. Placing his hand on the grip, Peter gave a grin, and dust bloomed. With an easy swing he cut through stone.

“You're paying for that!” shouted his sister, and he shrugged, again, handing over the knife.

“You're only really supposed to use it when the blade is turned on.” Peter explained, mentioning something about 'brittle monomolecular edges'. The Major nodded, listening to the hum emanating from the knife. He reached out to finger the blade, and Peter caught his hand, shaking his head.

“Do you have anything else?” Stirling asked.

*

Things in Berlin were heating up, getting rowdy and ready to explode. Men, women and children stalked the streets, faces illuminated be a million different candles. A festival was brewing – the Messiah would be in Berlin by early morning the next day, so spake the prophets, and with Her would come the procession. Graffiti covered whole streets and city-blocks; scrawled across the fronts of six whole skyscrapers was the likeness of the Naked Child in bright orange, the work of a metahuman artist. Other messages were present, the proclamations of doom, the claims that Sophie was the anti-Christ ... there were other fanatics about apart from her own. If the Church of Naked Child cared, they gave no indications, and strung miles after miles of bunting and fairy lights and tinsel dragged out from boxes of old Christmas decorations.

In amongst the makings of the religious event, there plotted the unscrupulous and enterprising – those wishing to make a profit from the faithful and those wishing to make a profit from the Messiah Herself. T-shirts and shoddy plastic statues; representatives from companies like EVIL Corporation, secret reptilian agents of the Dinosaur Uprising, magisters of the vampiric Ordo Nosferatu and a dozen other semi-secret societies.

Others were on the move. In a hundred homes and other meeting across Berlin, and in a hundred more cars streaming towards the city, there stirred the 'concerned pro-human groups'. Signs were splashed with their usual tirades: 'no muties!' and 'humans first' and other antagonistic slogans that had no real place in the modern world. New signs were being made – with new slogans specifically targeted at a psychic like Sophie. Suffice to say, their claims were baseless.

Also rushing into Berlin like waters from behind a newly risen sluice-gate were the journalists, representatives of every news group in the entire world. A thousand cameras, ten thousand microphones and a hundred thousand tons of sheer drive for the big scoop. Earl Makeson was already there, and presently preparing himself for the main event, prepping all six of his expensive cam-drones, as well as the tiny camera on his tie. There was no reporter as good as Earl Makeson; he would have the scoop which they all wanted. The first interview with the 'Messiah'.

There were rumblings all throughout – tanks and soldiers and helicopter gunships and recon drones; the apparatus of the German military, called in for the duties of policing and protecting the city, should the need arise. And should the need arise, amongst the German forces stood the implacable metahuman operatives belonging to the Guild of Light and Shadow, the nigh-legendary Shadow Walkers. Officers and politicians twitched in their chairs and command posts and forward positions. What if the girl decided to prove her power – the Guild spoke of incredible psychic ability. What if her cult decided to prove something? Almost two million angry fanatics were not easy to deal with, even with the potential help from the world's greatest hero, Archwind, or some of the best control devices good money could buy. And there were other concerns with regards to civilians; the protesters, the anti-meta gangs. Many would be spoiling for a fight. Suffice to say that the mayor was only barely avoiding a spate of drinking that would explode his liver.

And all this excitement and burgeoning fear was reflected in Sophie's heart. She could feel the thoughts and feelings of millions pulsing outwards almost like diffuse, coloured ripples. Regardless, she walked on, illuminated by pretty paper lanterns and harsh spotlights. Sophie did not understand what fear was. Mentally invincible, she brushed aside all those negative feelings, and let herself be buoyed up on those positive ones rolling from the procession like a king tide. She ignored the frightened groups that hated her for her difference. She ignored the nervous soldiers in their beasts of steel with mighty electromagnetic guns. Her shadow reached ahead of her, an absurdly long stretch of darkness and she followed it, towards Berlin.

*

ElectroBishop Werner Holsman did not fidget. Rather, he busied himself reviewing notes and reports from those members of his old team that were still alive. His holo-maker projected a dozen screens above the desk he had appropriated in C3. The crew left him alone, unless they had a message for him, and Holsman in turn let them keep the monastery aloft. Who knew how long the violent Enginquisitor would be busy? Holsman did not fear death so much as feared his research being cut off – Holsman and Faustan may have been on roughly the same level of the complex hierarchy of the Order, but the warrior-priest would not likely be dissuaded by this fact alone.

No, Holsman needed results, and incidentally needed them right now.

Doors folded open like some hungry mouth and Faustan trooped in, flanked by a pair of women with the marks of Millenion Leader on their battledress. No one approached him with reports or messages or news; if the Enginquisitor wanted such things, he would ask. Instead, he immediately approached Holsman. The ElectroBishop stood. Faustan narrowed greying eyebrows at his 'partner', then waved the scientist down. “You told me you had a plan.”

This was essentially true, but it currently wasn't ready for presentation. Holsman applied some precise curses to his deacons, then turned off his screens. “Have you wondered, Enginquisitor, why Sophie is heading into Berlin? Or why she passed through Belzig and our stronghold there?”

“I have not had the time to analyse the motivations of a nine year old esper in anything resembling close detail.” he paused leaned over Holsman's desk. “Presumably you're going to tell me in an attempt to gain more time for your assistants.”

Holsman tugged at the collar of his robes, went red about the throat, then coughed. “As you would recall, Enginquisitor Faustan, you have been a part of this project since its very beginning. You were promoted to your current position in 1991, after ending the threat posed by a an Aggressive Hegemonising Swarm Object.” Faustan nodded slowly. Ancient history, really. His ultimate claim to fame, succeeding where his former superior and teacher had failed. “From there you became the overseer of my project. You sanctioned my acts, signed the forms, reviewed my work. And in 1997?”

There was a splash as Faustan's boot came down in a puddle. He swung the door of the car closed, then tugged the collar of his tightly bound coat up, to cover the cybernetics emerging from the back of his neck. He glanced up at the building with its grey glass and red stone, and at glowing purple word: Charité. He lowered his gaze to the older man, to Werner Holsman. They nodded, and entered the hospital. The strolled past nurse, doctor and patient alike, entered an elevator and ascended several floors. They made a beeline towards a certain room, a small gaggle of young people in green scrubs. Faustan focused briefly and thy all dropped, unconscious.

The two priests stopped at the door, Faustan's hand curled around the handle. Holsman made an impatient gesture, and the Enginquisitor opened the door. Inside, a new father was kneeling by his tired wife's side. She was cradling something close to her chest. “Hello my dear.” Father Holsman said softly, and the new parents started. Their faces melted into something like horror. The father stood, took an angry step forward, but caught sight of Faustan's passive, gaunt face. He stepped away, shutting his eyes against tears, and let the scientist past.

“You can't take her away from me.” she whispered hoarsely as Holsman stood over her, hands clasped and his face smiling.

“Now now. You and your husband came to me, Dietlinde Windsor, asking me to give you a child, and I promised you a child.” his smile grew, and from his angle Faustan could see it extending to the muscles around the man's eyes. “And I took as payment a promise. You promised me Dietlinde that if I came calling, you would give me your child. You promised me Dietlinde. I told you that there would a one-in-one-hundred chance that you would have to give up your child. This child was gift, Dietlinde; and you had to give me nothing more than your solemn word that if and only if I came to you, you would give me that child.”

She was crying, and she shied away from Holsman as he reached out. He was insistent, and stronger than Dietlinde would have been even if she had not spent hours giving birth. Her husband could not stand for it, and strode forward. Faustan back-handed Windsor hard enough that he went stumbling back against the wall.Clutching his mouth, he half-quivered and stared up at the Enginquisitor. There was blood on the back of his fist, but his face betrayed nothing; Windsor considered rushing back, but he sensed a deadly strength lurking in the coated man's body. The child began to wail. “I will not take your memories from you. You will always recall this night, where you had something important to you stolen.” behind him stood Holsman, carefully holding the crying girl. The few wisps of hair on her head were shockingly white. He cringed. “You will not just remember, but you will learn, Jonathon Windsor.”

He turned away, and the two invaders left the small hospital room. The girl was still crying. Faustan put his on Holsman's shoulder, halting the scientist's cooing. Holsman was reluctant, but he handed the small bundle of life to Faustan. He stroked her head, and when she quietened, his face cracked into a smile.

“I understand now. You think she's tracing her way back. We took her from Berlin to Belzig, to Eisenhardt Castle. From there, to the orphanage.” Faustan tapped his chin. “How likely is this eventuality?”

“Very.”

Finger pushed into his cheek, Faustan sighed. “And your plan?”

“You understand the concept of telepathic overload, of course.” Faustan nodded. “I believe it would be possible to make use of the effect to disable her. There are many millions of people in Berlin currently. If we incite enough fear or anger than it should be possible to cripple her.” Faustan snorted, and Holsman frowned. “I understand your skepticism, Enginquisitor. Emotions are generally diffuse. As such, I have modified our own psionic amplification devices, had them married to field-slaves ..." he brought up holograms and computer simulations. "We will be able to cover Berlin, or parts of Berlin, in a field of dense negative emotion and-”

Hand in his face, Holsman had no choice but to shut his mouth. “I understand your plan, ElectroBishop-” there was sense of satisfaction in the pit of Holsman's stomach at that. “But I also understand the limitations of the equipment involved and the psychic presence of a mundane. I will be able to resist. She will not even notice it.”

“But what if she took down her defenses herself?” Holsman said quietly. “What if she experienced a memory so traumatic that she could not help but shut down, if only briefly?”

Faustan took a step back, then turned away from the triumphant, grinning ElectroBishop. He clenched his jaw, took a breath and said: “Very well. Proceed.”

There are said to be few things that can be more stressful than that first journey, from warmth and comfort, through pain, and into cold and blinding light. I wonder, what was the truth behind Sophie's birth? Was she really a one in a hundred chance to produce a psychic demi-god, or was she the inevitable product of thousands of attempts?
Telepathic overload is very probable with all that. And I've read Sophie's bio. I think I know why what happens happens.

Vehrec wrote:I wonder, what was the truth behind Sophie's birth? Was she really a one in a hundred chance to produce a psychic demi-god, or was she the inevitable product of thousands of attempts?

I think it is now clear that Sophie's birth was not entirely natural. To what extent that Holsman modify the Windsors? And how far back did Holsman start? He could have been attempting for decades. He might have given thousands of sterile families children in order to find his 'messiah'.

And I've read Sophie's bio. I think I know why what happens happens.

I'm glad someone does.

Going by what has been stated so far, the telepathic overload will force Sophie to face emotions she doesnt want to untill her mind shuts down.

While that will work, it would suck to be in within a few hundred kilometres of her when what happens.

Xon wrote:Going by what has been stated so far, the telepathic overload will force Sophie to face emotions she doesnt want to untill her mind shuts down.

Most espers are essentially mental recievers. Even the weakest of espers can pick up a constant flow of emotion from others minds; it's partly the reason why all the espers in the orphanage were insane, because they could not help but 'recieve' Sophie's 'transmissions'. Their minds are sensitive, so without their psychic defenses ...

Sophie is only nine. Even though she doesn't actually know what it is to be afraid, she can still register negative emotions. And when there are potentially millions of people involved ...

While that will work, it would suck to be in within a few hundred kilometres of her when what happens.

I don't even have production notes for this story! How can you know that!?

Ford Prefect wrote:Most espers are essentially mental recievers. Even the weakest of espers can pick up a constant flow of emotion from others minds; it's partly the reason why all the espers in the orphanage were insane, because they could not help but 'recieve' Sophie's 'transmissions'. Their minds are sensitive, so without their psychic defenses ...

Yup, this is the, logical, end result of having mind reading and the ability sense multipule human thoughts/emotional states at a distance. It comes down to pure information overload of a single human mind attempting to process multipule human minds worth of information. Emotions and thought are simply the same type of thing, it is purely a matter of information complexity and scale.

A child growing up like that, would not have the ability to differentiate between themselves and other people, and that condition would make it imposible for them to function in a human society.

Sophie is only nine. Even though she doesn't actually know what it is to be afraid, she can still register negative emotions. And when there are potentially millions of people involved ...

Ah, so they are going to try to make her drop dead from fear (quite posible). No guesses on which side of the "flight or fight" instinct they are hoping Sophie picks before she mentally shuts down.

I don't even have production notes for this story! How can you know that!?

Logic plus a little understanding of the human mind.

When under immense stress(depression & massive negative emotions also included in this), a person will attempt to lashout to stop the source of the pain in an attempt to stop the source of the pain. Most of the time, the poor sap cant actually do that much damage. But with Sophie, it probably would have been easier on the insurance companies to just nuke the city with a cluster of strategic nuclear weapons.

Xon wrote:A child growing up like that, would not have the ability to differentiate between themselves and other people, and that condition would make it imposible for them to function in a human society.

That's a good point. While it's not so much a problem for Sophie (as she was 'raised' within the Thrice Seven Containment with a psychic dampner in her brain), I'll definitely keep it in mind for latter, simply because it's something to explore.

I like these sorts of things. 'Ego-ID fragmentation' is my current favourite buzzword, which came about thinking about the Junker battlesuit that appeared earlier on. Those things are operated on full mind-machine interface, and designed to panger to the pilots psycho-physiology as much as anything else.

Ah, so they are going to try to make her drop dead from fear (quite posible).

I don't think Holsman would come up with a plan which would kill his 'meal ticket', as it were. While he could potentially make another Sophie, this one is already there/

But with Sophie, it probably would have been easier on the insurance companies to just nuke the city with a cluster of strategic nuclear weapons.

One cannot fathom how monstrously large insurance premiums are in the OZ Comix! universe.

Ford Prefect wrote:That's a good point. While it's not so much a problem for Sophie (as she was 'raised' within the Thrice Seven Containment with a psychic dampner in her brain), I'll definitely keep it in mind for latter, simply because it's something to explore.

Whoot, too many things just go Rar! telepathy without considering the problems with it.

I like these sorts of things. 'Ego-ID fragmentation' is my current favourite buzzword, which came about thinking about the Junker battlesuit that appeared earlier on. Those things are operated on full mind-machine interface, and designed to panger to the pilots psycho-physiology as much as anything else.

I don't think Holsman would come up with a plan which would kill his 'meal ticket', as it were. While he could potentially make another Sophie, this one is already there

Dead by fear is just the heart stopping because it was going too fast. You still got 10 minutes before irreversible brain damage due to lack of oxygen.

Anyway, in my purely unprofessional opinion a person is more likely the mentally retreat from the world before they drop dead from fear. If nothing else because it is damn hard for a healthy person to drop dead from fear (the body can just take too much abuse).

One cannot fathom how monstrously large insurance premiums are in the OZ Comix! universe.

At least you and the other writers would consider them, DC/Marvel comics just ignore the issue.

Xon wrote:Whoot, too many things just go Rar! telepathy without considering the problems with it.

If anything, it might be that most telepaths are introverted in the extreme. One of the psychic characters in the OZ Comix! was originally considered to be autistic in the extreme, as she would not communicate - likely a defense measure against encroaching thoughts.

I'll be frank - Saintly Concerns uses mecha (and that's what they are) because I like them. However, I recognise that the fairly unique technologies in the battlesuit (the 'SC-RX78 Junker TSAU', which is a Gundam reference) can be used in superior platforms. There's no reason why the adaptive actuator muscles can't be used in the drive train of a tank, and there's no real reason why the interface can't be used for a tank pilot.

The only real difficulties are that you need to have your pilots trained so they don't forget their actually a person when they disconnect. The system can also cause high strain on the user.

It's also just not profitable at the moment for Tony to sell the technology. Alexei mentoined that Saintly Concerns relies on something of a technological, and truth be told, economical, edge.

If nothing else because it is damn hard for a healthy person to drop dead from fear (the body can just take too much abuse).

And Sophie is remarkably healthy for someone that has been holed up in a big ball of jelly for eight or nine years.

At least you and the other writers would consider them, DC/Marvel comics just ignore the issue.

Admittedly, there is the rather amusing character known as the Phantom Hardhat who does something to fix this industrial problems. He's somewhat inconsistant though.

And here we go - the storm is breaking. I'm somewhat dissappointed again though. I feel as though that it's somewhat confused in the later parts of this chapter, but I hope you lot can still manage.

Acid
Overture - Things Might Get Trippy
Part Eight

Stepping into the captain's office, Faustan opaqued the soul-walls, watching them mist into blackness. He dimmed the overhead spots then, with a heaving exhalation of breath, Enginquisitor Faustan fell pack into the padded chair. It was a living thing, and he ignored its attempts to make him more comfortable. He tapped one finger against the little chit in his hand, sighed a second time and inserted the chunk of solidified data into the desk terminal. For a nanosecond tailored programs went through the motions and opened a secure line to somewhere else in the world. The holographic display indicated that the 'phone' was ringing. Eventually, the owner of the chit answered.

Truth be told, the number of people Faustan liked outside of Odmilita was not very large. However, he reserved a special sort of loathing for Alexis Vael. She was one of the most influential members of the entire Order; something which Faustan could not stand. Vael was not a priest of science or a priest of war. She was not a great philosopher, not a woman of wisdom. Alexis Vael was the head of the many of the Technotheocracy's corporate interests. He sneered inwardly as he thought of it – she was not important because she furthered The Enlightenment, nor because she fought on any sort of secret battlefield or in a Technocrusade. No, she was powerful because she was very good at making money.

It did not help that she was completely and irredeemably evil.

However, Alexis Vael was beautiful. Faustan knew that she had been worked by ARNists until she was perfect in every way – the shape of her eyes and face, the swell of her breasts, the deftness of her fingers. When she clapped her hands and smiled, full berry-red lips pulled back over the straightest, whitest teeth in the world. “Gerad Faustan! What a pleasant surprise. I honestly did not think you would return my call. It was a most intelligent act on your part to do so, as I have some advice.” Faustan nodded and she stopped smiling, but for a faint upwards curl at one corner of her mouth. “Stop trying to kill the girl. I want to make some profit out of this fiasco.”

“I will act in the best interests of the Order.”

“That's a lie Gerad.” Vael replied cheerily, examining her nails. “The 'best interests of the Order' involve getting the little bitch with the white hair back in her pit, alive. For the Order's best interests, she needs to be used, not murdered.”

There was practically no hesitation on Faustan's part – the lie was well practiced by now. “Capture is more difficult than elimination. Other groups are converging upon the subject's location; a personal report from His Holiness indicates that The Beast has determined that there are strong chances that our greatest foes have involved themselves. What if she were to fall into the hands of the Nosferatu, or worse still, the Grand Order of Saint Anthony?” Faustan shook his head. “His Holiness and the acrocardinals will support me, should it come to killing Sophie.”

Alexis brushed her sharp fingernails back through her hair, then leaned forward. “Faustan. You do not have a choice in this matter. Take her alive.”

“His Nuclear Holiness will support me.”

“Take her alive.”

The hologram winked out. Faustan heaved his third sigh, then clicked for the intercom.

*

It would be difficult to describe the sheer multitude and magnitude of the response to Sophie's arrival. All at once it seemed like the city itself was roaring, calling out its excitement at having the Messiah present. Drums were beaten, horns were blown, bottles were thrown. People of all ages danced naked in the streets in her honour, while fireworks went up in the daylight sky. Police in full riot gear attempted to arrest such people, but they were extremely resistant. They wanted to dance in Her name, and dance they would. They wanted to herald Her presence, so herald they would.

The problems first arrived when Sophie encountered a wave of shouting protesters, signs high in the air. When they saw her, they became increasingly louder. Someone tried to hurl a brick at her, but she smashed it to dust before it was more than an inch from his hand. Then a ringleader emerged, megaphone in hand. He climbed onto a soapbox and his amplified voice cut through the shouting and chanting and singing. “Look at her! Just another piece of metahuman scum.” he needed to give no real reason; anger would do the rest. “Look at her, misleading those fools just as the metahumans have mislead the entire world.”

“Blasphemy!” screamed the closest twenty thousands cultists. Like a beast, a single entity made up many thousands, the mob decided to trample the anti-metahuman crowd into jam. As one they decided, as one they charged. Sophie saw death coming, so she decided to stop them in a very strange way.

She made butterflies.

Billions of them.

Streaming through the streets like rivers of rainbow light, glittering above the tallest buildings as billowing shifting clouds. Earl Makeson was so stunned that he lost his grip on the ladder he was climbing down and fell twenty stories. A tank commander watching was so startled that he kicked his gunner in the back of the head. For an unfathomable, and unspeakably unlucky, reason the Leopard's main gun was loaded, and the gunner accidentally set it off. With a whine and a glass cracking thump of displaced air, the 'silver bullet' blew a ragged, diagonal tunnel through a skyscraper. In the course of a few minutes, it would hit a sheep some hundreds of kilometres distant with the force of several kilos of TNT as kinetic energy. Suffice to say, the sheep was going to be very upset, much like the people of Berlin.

This chain of horrifically unlikely events triggered something even worse. While Sophie's cultists (and indeed her detractors) marveled at the butterfly light-show, a different type of religious fanatic waited. He was sweating heavily beneath the belt of high explosive strapped tightly to his body, and when the startled tank commander startled the gunner into firing off a round, the suicide bomber was so startled that he was driven into cardiac arrest. He leapt from his hiding place, screaming, heart in his chest popped like an overfilled water balloon. He sprinted forward, foam on his lips; exactly what denomination he belonged to, no one could tell – he could have been from the Church of Scientology for all anyone knew. Sophie made his bomb-belt – and him – explode. Anti-Sophie protesters ran screaming. Pro-Sophie cultists stood staring.

Then one spoke up. A young woman, with cute dimples and blonde-streaked, brown hair. “Don't you all see!?” she cried. “The Messiah is going to take us to Heaven!”

Clearly she was completely insane.

“No you fool!” roared an older man with hands like shovels – literally, for he was a metahuman, perhaps even the superhero once known as the Incredible Mole. “How can you mistake that – she is punishing unbelievers, and we too must punish them!”

Hopes for a voice of reason were shattered when a young man stars in his eyes said “The butterflies are a message! The Messiah isn't descended from Heaven – she's a messenger for aliens!”

Despite this being a somewhat more accurate claim, there were more cries of blasphemy and heresy, but also shouts of agreement. More theologies arose, sprouting like weeds, and bickering came with it. Bickering turned to violence. Before Sophie's very eyes, seven distinct major faction and hundreds of lesser ones began a holy war. It spread, and a wildfire analogy was fitting; Sophie and other espers could feel a wave of hot passion and violence pulse through the city at mob-speeds. And as civilians began to beat on each other, as soldiers stepped down from their states of battle-ready panic, as shadows lurked and began to pounce, the Technotheocracy and its Odmilita made its play.

Whistling loud enough to hurt the ear. Enough white streaks to obscure the sky. A forest of falling missiles. Expert systems reacted faster than human thought and opened up with the actinic arcs of blistering tesla-fields, the lancing of heat rays turning missiles into vapour. Counter missiles, chaff-screens. The sky above Berlin became a roof of fireballs as missiles danced and rattled and weaved, cross-crossing in arcs designed to defeat point defense. Sometimes, those explosions erupted against the earth and shook the city. Following came motes of ash, dark shapes resembling dozens upon dozens of wedge. The howled through the wind, faceless, sharp, but in some ways recognisable to some on the ground. Weren't they the new French stealth UCAVs?

They hurtled at incredible paces, launching their payloads against attack gunships and ground based targets, crippling anti-air defenses. Sometimes a heat ray would shatter one of the craft into flaming debris. Killing light descended, and warring factions screamed as streets erupted in sprays of molten heat. Those that lived looked to the sky in terror as more massive forms descended, like some invasion by an alien conqueror. But these were not the bloated disks of Mogar or the hideous, chitinous beasts of Damask. They were not massive enough, barely as long as a 747. They seemed like expanded visions of the little fighters.

They hummed. They crackled. They ruled the skies.

*

“The initial bombardment has crippled their anti-air capabilities. As expected, their Leopard 2s proved to be a considerable hindrance.” Faustan grunted as he fit his armour into place. That wasn't much of a surprise. He gestured for his aide to continue. “We are currently landing armour and infantry elements throughout the city. Projector-slaves are currently being moved in place, and should be ready within two minutes.”

“How long until there are significant reinforcements?” Faustan stared down into the faceplate of his helmet.

“With our perimeter units, it should be more than half an hour before a significant response force is in the city. We have Berlin locked down, and we believe we can maintain this position for eighty seven minutes. Should we require, we could move this vessel into a holding pattern over the city – the added firepower would allow us an additional thirty eight minutes.” There was a tenuous pause, and Faustan did not need to read minds to know what the woman was thinking: At the risk of this Commandment-class monastery. The Enginquisitor waved his hand.

“Eighty seven minutes should be ample time. Using our units to clear all paths for the subject, we can have her wrapped up well inside that time limit. Prepare the final strike elements for launch. I will leave you in command here.”

“Very good, my lord.”

*

“Berlin is a warzone!” shouted Earl Makeson as he pounded through the streets, face bloodied. The picture wasn't clear from the cam-drone, but the little robot did its best. “Bloods runs in the streets, as cultists and fanatics duke it out, as the forces of the government try to contain the fighting, as supervillains battle with the forces of the Guild!” There was a rumble and Makeson was knocked from his feet. “And now, some strange military force has invaded from mysterious flying wings!”

He pushed himself to his feet and brushed himself off. Looking directly into the tiny lens of one of his cam-drones he delivered the rest of his speech. “Berlin is boiling over into madness!”

He heard a familiar mechanical clanking and looked further up the street. There, a German tank! Sensing the story of his life, Earl Makeson, intrepid reporter, half jogged towards the war-machine, only to watch it crumple the crash into a building. It exploded, and Earl took a step back. Then a group of soldiers he assumed were from the flying wings. They were lead by a man in a rather impressive robe who carried no weapon. He had the air of a leader, and thus, an interview.

“Excuse me!” Earl shouted, sprinting forward. There was no spoken word, but one of the soldiers gunned him down all the same. Earl went splat against the ground, and the group continued on, taking two steps when the apparently dead reporter shouted: “Could I get an interview?”

The kill-team exchanged looks as Makeson got to his feet, with no holes over his chest and face. Faustan gestured towards the reporter and smashed him back into the ground in a cloud of concrete dust and the splintering of bone. “Oh sweet Jesus!” Earl screamed. He continued to scream very loudly as he dragged himself out of his crater. “Inter ... view ...” he gasped, and Faustan had him shot in the head. “Need ... scoop ...” he managed.

“I can accept you not being dead.” Faustan said in a low voice.”However, you have a hole the size of a twenty euro piece through your brain. I don't see how you could possibly come back the same person.”

“Give ... interview.”

“Err ... that's Earl Makeson at the scene.” Ron Burgundy said quietly, and Tony once again muted the television. He was alone, except for the constant companionship of Lucifer. The businessman's teeth were tightly clamped together beneath his cheeks. Lucifer observed the wrinkling of Tony's nose, the muscle twitch.

“Something personal, Mister Saint?” Lucifer asked, and there was nothing in the AI's modulated voice which indicated that he was mocking his employer. Before Saint could open his mouth to say anything, the door to the office flew open and the Major strode in. He glanced at the television, then planted both hands on Tony's desk.

“We need to go to Berlin.”

“Pardon me?” both Saint and Lucifer asked similtaneously.

“Pull some strings.” The Major snapped, leaning in closer. “I know you can do it.”

“Ah, Ulysses, how do you plan to get to Berlin? If you hadn't noticed, we live on an island in the South Pacific.” to punctuate his point, Tony clicked his fingers and shutters on his windows opened, showing the beach, where several employees were enjoying a game of beach cricket.

“One of the DeBrois mentioned something about your planes making re-entry. It sort of implies to me that they can make orbit too; which also means that we could make it to orbit within the hour.”

Tony hissed through his teeth, and Lucifer whistled. “He's got a point Tone-Bone. We have two Polaris and a bunch of Maves on base. We could load up a bunch of Deep Blues and two Junkers and get them out to Berlin snappily. I can run them via orbital laser link.”

“You can send myself, Wei and Alexei. We might not have the military might to stop them, but ...”

“You want to save the girl.” Tony finished. He rubbed his forehead, then bit his lip. “I'll make some calls. Get kitted up.”

I have a question. Is Earl Makeson a Zombie reporter, or just a Robot reporter? And was that that THE Ron Burgandy from Anchorman? Or was I only dreaming of it?