jay2k-writing-stuff

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

Pareidoliaphobia

Astronomers said that Venus and Saturn aligning with the moon on Friday would give the illusion of a face in the night sky. But then why did I just see it blink?

We all look for patterns in the random and the mundane. "That cloud looks kind of like a dog." "That spot on the cat's face looks like a heart." "I saw Jesus in my burrito bowl."

Sometimes, yeah, you can see it too. Sometimes, you just chuckle and comment on what a good imagination they have. Or you maybe just smile and nod and find a polite excuse to walk away.

But I know different now. This isn't just the human brain looking for connections in things for no reason. This isn't just an attempt by the human psyche to impose order on a chaotic universe. This isn't just imagination having fun.

This is a defense mechanism.

It started when there was that "triple conjunction" in the night sky. Venus and Saturn aligning just so with a crescent moon to make a smiling face. They were talking about it for like a week on all the news feeds, as a curiosity for people to look out for. And like a lot of people, I was outside to get a picture of it on my phone and to enjoy the fleeting moment of astronomy's wonder.

But I saw it blink. I saw the smile widen.

Nobody else on my block saw anything like it. They all just told me I was seeing things, that I was the one that blinked, "Planets can't blink, buddy." And for a little while, I believed them. Just.

It was later that night, as I woke up around 4 AM by the call of nature, I caught a glimpse of the face again out the window, just over my backyard neighbor's roof. I smiled a little to myself to see it again, and had just crawled back into bed and started to get comfortable when the realization hit me.

The triple conjunction had been in the eastern sky. But my bedroom faces west.

I'm typing this now from my spare room downstairs, the one that's been empty since I moved in. Empty is good. Empty is safe. I tried the basement, but I started seeing faces in the shadows of all the junk down there, in the shapes of the bric-a-brac stored down there, and eyes started winking and mouths started showing teeth.

Our tendency to see shapes and patterns in the randomness of the world... this is not random, this is not our imagination.

There are things out there we can't see. Until we can.

I probably won't make it until morning. And I don't think I'm any safer in daylight.

But the next time someone tells you they saw a face in the clouds? Be careful. Because that face might see you too.

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

Do Not Anger The Imp

Your nemesis, a goofy and mischievous but ultimately harmless villain is standing over a group of bodies covered in blood, seething in anger. You’re sent to deescalate the situation and calm them down .

The Commission unofficially has a rating system for the various ne'er-do-wells that we've encountered over the decades. (Officially, they're only ever called persons of interest, but privately the terms villains, baddies, and rogues' gallery have all been used to describe them.) The higher your rating, the more dangerous you were, scaled from 0-10. Alien conqueror Gaej-Mo-Nai has been anywhere from 7 to 10, depending on how much of the imperial resources he has at his disposal. While your average, unpowered bank robber is at best going to top out at 1.

The Imp was only ever rated at his peak at 0.5. Despite his powers, Trey Vellin had only ever been an inconvenience, and his committal to "enjoying himself" through the public humiliation of others set him apart from a lot of the others. He could twist local reality to embarrass you in all kinds of ways, but the Imp never killed anyone. "The dead can't appreciate a good joke!" was how he liked to phrase it.

By the time I arrived on the scene, a few other heavy hitters from the Allied Heroes Commission were waiting around the perimeter. Voltaic looked antsy as they bounced with nervous energy, looking at the half-translucent dome around the building. Exo was atop a nearby rooftop, and I was not surprised to see that her techno-suit's frame had been reinforced and equipped with some of her heavier artillery. Pinnacle was hovering above, glimmering with cosmic energies.

I'd been briefed on my way over. The dome did not let anyone through, and the screams had stopped about ten minutes beforehand. I acknowledged them all as I stopped at the perimeter, hearing the local SWAT commander speak into his comms, "Doctor Ethereal's on-site. All units stay ready."

I spared little time for pleasantries. The Commission had a protocol for this kind of thing. I reached into the ether and plucked a few strands of the arcane weave before striding through the dome as if it weren't there. Voltaic was instantaneously there, but got knocked ass-over-teakettle by the dome's jolt. I ignored their protests as I went into the building, already picking up on the stain of some ritual in the ether as I went.

It didn't take long to find the scene of the crime. Even through the bloodstains, I could make out the arcanic circle scrawled into the floor, and when I stooped to touch it, I received a burst of psychometric memory fragments. It had been a complex ritual, a summoning combined with a binding spell. More than the simple binding that the summoning would normally entail, but one layered with a compulsion to the summoned's true nature. The imbeciles had no idea...

Only after I was finished parsing what I had learned did I finally look up to see the broken bodies of the cultists hanging from the walls and ceiling. Blood covered them all, oozing from orifices and lacerations, blank eyes staring into nothing, jaws slack and lifeless. The only one that didn't seem to have been broken in the same way occupied place of pride in the middle of the room, above the center of the circle, but even that was because the Imp hadn't finished with them yet.

I considered the Imp as I stood up. He'd gotten his moniker for a reason, being born of a demonic lineage to a human mother and father. He'd never been clear on where the demonic side of his lineage came from, but also never seemed to care about the specifics either. Blue-skinned and horned, his whip-like spade-tipped tail cracked behind him as he cradled the cult leader's skull in in his hands. The Imp's features had changed noticeably. The horns now curled back like a ram's, the tip of his tail looked sharper, more blade-like, his fingers sported wicked claws, and his eyes now glinted with gold in black sclera.

"I warned you," he hissed to the cultist as those claws curled a little tighter around his head, dug into his jaw and pried open his mouth. "Told you not to do it. That you wouldn't like the result. But you just - wouldn't - listen!"

I admit, I took a step back when the Imp's head swiveled around, 180 degrees, to look at me. His usual laughing smile now looked like a rictus grin. Tears streaked through the blood smeared across his features. "Why didn't they listen, Doctor?!"

"Who can say?" I kept my voice level, even as I metaphysically reached out to enmesh myself in the arcane weave. "But I'm here now, Trey. Why don't you tell me what happened?"

The Imp's head turned back to the cultist in his claws. "They've approached me many times before. Even summoned me," his tail whip-cracked against the floor, as if to indicate the circle, "to try to recruit me. But I've always said no. Do you know why?"

"Why's that, Trey?"

The Imp's fingers moved the cultist's jaw like he were some upside-down marionette, answering, "Because they want to burn it all down and build a new world from the ashes." He snorted. "Simple apocalypse cultists. How boring, no?"

"Very boring."

"They wanted me to embrace my calling," he continued, fingers tightening around the cultist's skull. "Even when I told them I wasn't interested! Wanted me to use my powers to tear down the veil and let the demons loose! As if I wasn't aware of exactly what that really meant."

"Tear down the veil?" Now he had my attention, as I regarded the cultist again. I'd heard phrases like that before. "Are they worshippers of the Sun Most Deep?"

The Imp giggled. It was the same high-pitched wheezing laugh that he'd always used, but at this time, in this place, it sounded far more sinister. "That would be a bingo!" His voice dropped an octave, growling at the cultist. "So they decided they'd force the issue. Summoned me again, but this time worked a new binding in there, so that my demonic lineage would come out, because of course a demon would want to destroy it all, right!?"

I said nothing, but my silence just compelled the Imp to fill it with words. "They didn't get it. I feel that demonic compulsion all - the - time. But I burn off the urges with mischief and entertainment at others' expense. So if they wanted me to embrace my nature, then I was happy to do so at their expense." He shook his head. "It never occurred to them that I don't want to be a monster."

"You shouldn't expect monsters to understand," I replied.

"Oh," the Imp's voice was softer now. "They'll understand. Eventually." He giggled again, and patted the cultist on the cheek, hearing the man whimper before his eyes rolled up in his head and he became as lifeless as the rest.

He stepped back from the last victim and with another whip-crack of his tail, I felt and saw the dome over the building vanish. I quickly got on the comms to SWAT and the Commission outside, telling them the threat had passed. Then I quickly wove bindings around the Imp's wrists, ankles, and tail, just as Voltaic burst into the room, took one look, and darted right back out to be sick.

The SWAT captain regarded the scene with a grim expression, turning as one of his officers checked the nearest cultist. "Got a pulse, but they're unresponsive."

"Sort of expected after he tortured them," the captain grunted. "Surprised he left them alive."

"Of course I did!" The Imp burst into a fresh round of giggles, his features starting to settle back into their normal devilish charm and whimsy, horns now reducing back to nubs and his tail soft-edged. "Why would I want to kill them? The dead can't appreciate a good joke!"

He fell into peals of laughter as he was dragged away, while Pinnacle met with me as I emerged from the cultists' building. He watched as Exo clamped a set of power-dampening cuffs around the Imp's wrists, then turned back to me. "What happened in there?"

I was silent as I mentally compartmentalized, taking the memory fragments I'd gleaned from the arcane circle and partitioning them away, where they would hopefully not plague my nightmares for the rest of my days. As it was, I'd be calling them at unpleasant moments for the next month at least. Finally, I took a deep breath and met Pinnacle's eyes.

"We may need to reassess the Imp's rating."

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

Warning Labels

Roughly every 100 years a necromancer tries to raise a berserker from the dead, and for the next 99 years every tome is updated to warn against this. But as the knowledge gets lost another necromancer tries yet again.

Here lay the sundered remains of the Bedamned Champion of Oletheron, Who-Revels-In-Blood, who struck down the Towers of the Faithful, slaughtered the Exalted Builders of Oikodion, and razed the lands to the horizon.

May it molder and wither in death. Incapable of peace, let it rest in silence and separation until all memory of it fades into eternity.

--from ancient runic carvings in the First Tomb of Ruin, believed to have been left by Episone, the last survivor of the fall of Prodomine

~*~*~*~

To: His Imperial Majesty, Keizen, Sovereign of the Regal House of D'Entaelin, King of Galathin, Protector of the Mid Reaches, Defender of the Faiths, Shield of the Arcanic Colleges, et al

Sire--

The job is done. The Bedamned Champion lies dead once more, at great cost, numerated below.

3 complete Imperial Legions, the 3rd, 7th, & 8th. (Their standards are in my keeping and will return to Galath with me.)

~80% of Logistica for the above. The Reveler did not discriminate in its victims.

A cohort of Bellicon League warriors. (The lone survivor, Tiran Soldat, returning with this missive.)

9 Archmagi of the Conclavum Arcanum.

A full accounting will follow of who and what was lost. The names of the Legion Commanders, Bellicon League warriors, and Archmagi are appended to this missive.

Diviner Teicari tells me that The-Reveler-In-Blood was raised from its eternal rest at the behest of Beryl-Eye. The only saving grace is that B-E was the Reveler's first victim after he raised it. Apparently this only required returning its head to its body, whereupon some devil-born magic began the restoration of the Reveler's body to life.

The head is inside the locked adamantine box, impaled on an orichalcum spike. Tei tells me this will inhibit whatever magic animated it, but as destroying its skeleton has proven impossible, the best choice for preventing the Reveler's resurrection is keeping its remains separate. Court Archmage Abedin should know what to do with the head.

It will be some weeks here putting out the fires, literal and figurative, before I can return to Galath. Honor demands I at least begin the restoration work here in Elandor.

Lastly, if I may, Your Majesty-- forgive my frank words, but I WARNED YOU. Beryl-Eye was too dangerous to be left alive, no matter if Abedin and the Conclavum had stripped him of all of his magical power. Tei believes that B-E forged a pact with some profane patron to regain some measure of power. Exactly which entity he contracted, Tei isn't sure yet but suspects it may have been Oletheron. This all could have been avoided if you'd had him executed to start with.

Your faithful servant I remain,

--Andro Victor Bravis, Lord General of All Imperial Legions, Militus Primaris

~*~*~*~

"Sorry, your study concerns what, again? 'The Ruiner?'"

"That's right. Or it might be under 'the Leveler?'"

"Follow me, I'll take you to the books we have about the subject."

"Oh, there's multiple works? That should help--"

(chuckles) "Something like that. Tell me about what you know about the Ruiner?"

"A demon, or as close as you can get to one without actually being from the Abyss. Some kind of beast sent by an Abyssal god or something like that. All the stories I've heard say that it's been the monster used by every necromancer that's gotten it in their head to try to conquer the continent."

"Yes, nearly right. The Ruiner, Who-Revels-in-Blood, was one of the worst, most vicious warriors the world has ever seen. Even before they were named Champion by the war-god Oletheron, the Ruiner was unbeaten on the field of battle. And then the Ruiner was made virtually unkillable through the god's blessing."

"And the other gods weren't able to provide a counter to such a blessing?"

"No other god could empower one of Their chosen to the same degree. And Oletheron couldn't undo His blessing without reducing His own power. Look, it's a thorny issue, even the priests won't push the issue when beseeching for answers. Anyway, here we are."

"...That's a big bookcase. Er, which one should I start wi--"

"That one. Top shelf all the way on the left. Read through it, then go through the next, and keep going like that until you get to that one, bottom shelf all the way on the right."

"And this will tell me everything you have on the Ruiner?"

"This will tell you everything about why you don't resurrect it! You read through the entire bookcase, you come back to me. There will be a quiz about this, by the way."

"I'm just doing resear--"

"Research. Yes, you said. That's always how it starts. You're not the first Conclave mage to come just looking to 'do research' about one of the worst continual calamities the world's ever seen. As you can see, we've had to take great pains to impress on you lot why the Ruiner needs to just stay dead."

"Isn't that overkill?"

"Once you finish reading through those tomes, you'll understand a little better. Best get started, boy."

--from an exchange in the Prime Library of the Conclave Arcanum, between Keeper Belibol and an arcanist

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

The Cursed Hoard

You are a dragon that specializes in cursed items. As you return to your cave, you are amused to find some wanna-be thieves that tried to steal from your hoard. 

"Vim, you're good with languages, yes?"

The little imp glanced up at their master, and considered the question. "I like to think I am, Master, especially in comparison to some of my lesser brethren, though if you consider the linguistic talents of the--"

Their master cut them off with a snort. "That was a yes or no question, Vim."

"Apologies, Master. Yes, I'm pretty good with languages."

"Is there a word among the various languages you know for 'amusement at someone else's folly or misfortune?'"

Vim perked up. "As it happens, yes, Master! It's from a human language from another where-and-when, called--" The imp paused, sensing the annoyance already building up, and amended their response. "--it doesn't matter. But the word you're looking for is called schadenfreude." They hesitated, then inquired, "Why do you ask, Master?"

"Every time I come home and see the keep above my hoard, I'm reminded of how much work it must have been for the builders, not realizing what the cave system they found had been claimed for already." A low chuckle issued forth. "I regret that I had to kill them as a matter of principle, even if I admire their handiwork."

"Your respect shows, Master! Hardly any damage to the keep despite your attacks! Truly, they didn't appreciate the magnanimity of your assault, sparing the decor as you did--"

"Be quiet, Vim."

The imp fell silent again as their master landed in the keep's courtyard with a tremendous crash of their size. They both froze, however, as they sensed something was amiss. Vim's arcane senses twinged in a particular way, while their master's nostrils flared. Both growled, as Vim reported, "Intruders have been here."

"A paltry three," their master confirmed, as Vim set down the bulging satchel they'd been carrying. Another deep breath, before some of the tension waned. "But there is no danger."

"Are you certain, Master? Even three adventurers can be dangerous if they've had sufficient time to prepare the battlefield, or come equipped with dragon-slaying weaponry--"

"No, Vim, these three were thieves." The imp looked up at the immense bulk of their master, their scintillating scaled hide shifting slightly as the dragon Prismarix's head lifted and scented the air again, eyes sweeping over the keep. Relaxing again, the dragon continued, "Bring our new trinkets, Vim. And let us go see our would-be burglars."

The imp, ten feet of obsequious servile eagerness compressed into a three-foot sack of rangy anxious flesh, heaved up the satchel again without complaint or apparent effort. They scampered behind Prismarix as the dragon's magic swirled around the glittering scales, until Vim was hurrying after a striding humanoid figure. The dragon's human guise was dressed as a nobleman, in fine silver-gray garments laced with golden threads, adorned with gemstones. Platinum-blond hair was swept back from aquiline features and two eyes that gleamed like fire opals.

Steepling his fingers together, lips set in a faint smile, Prismarix proceeded into the keep's great hall. "When was the last time we had burglars, Vim?"

The imp's face screwed up in thought, lips moving as they did some math. "Erm... sixteenth months, Master, unless you count the rats that got into the grain stores--"

"That recent? Hm. Feels like it was ages ago. Time can be funny that way."

"Well, Master, some philosophers like to compare time to a weird soup--"

"Be quiet, Vim."

They stood in the ritual circle which had been laid in the floor of the great hall, hidden amid the designs in the stone tiles, and with a gesture from Vim, the pair of them were teleported into the vault. The caves beneath the mountain on which the keep stood had all been repurposed for this by the dragon centuries before. The tunnels lit by everlasting torches and other discreet spellwork.

Tapestries and paintings were hung throughout, where space wasn't taken up by spellglass-front display cases or ornate racks. Nearly every display had at least one item of prominence. Here, a mannikin hand adorned with a selection of rings. There, a full suit of ebon armor with blood red crystal ornamentation, complete with a black-enameled sword gripped in both hands, planted in the base of its display. Gemstones on cushions in glass cases. A locked bookshelf filled with tomes and grimoires.

Room after room, tunnel after tunnel, extending throughout the entire mountain. Prismarix took a moment to close his eyes and smile faintly as he basked in the arcane energies surrounding him, then sighed. Before he could enjoy his collection, he would need to deal with the intruders. "Well, then. Let's be about it. Where are they, Vim?"

The imp closed their eyes, attuned to the wards and spells throughout the Hoard, and then started off down one of the tunnels. "Nearest is this way, Master. In the first gallery."

Prismarix chuckled. "Oh, the poor benighted fool. Very well, let's see which piece has transfixed them."

At the entrance to the room, however, Vim raised a hand. "Hold, Master, much of the gallery is in an active state. Give me a moment to restore it to quiescence." The imp vanished inside, and there passed a minute or two of angry shouting and declamations in Infernal before the servant bid their master enter. The expansive room held a number of paintings, tapestries, sculptures, and other objets d'art arranged in tasteful displays. It would not have looked out of place in a museum in one of the larger cities; it even had velvet ropes strung between bollards.

Laying on the floor was a body, wearing the sort of rough leathers common to the brigands that prowled the byways of the land, a dagger and shortsword at its sides. Prismarix walked over to it, feeling the pull of glamor from several of the paintings as he passed by, and paused as he reached the one called Malignant Altar, as an air of malevolence gripped at him. The disguised dragon turned one eye upon the piece, looking at the distant figure in the artwork, a pale robed figure reclined with an almost relaxed air, unstained by the bloodstained chantry surrounding it. The figure's throne was atop a mountain of bones. Prismarix could see a new detail in the foreground, a slumped body in rough leathers, face down in the pool of blood before the altar. After a glare from the dragon, the malevolent air abated, and he fancied he heard a distant laugh on the breeze.

"This one's been dead at least a day, Master," Vim reported as they prodded at the body, and the imp sniffed at it a bit. "Good news at least, the preservation enchantments kept it from decaying, but unless you got a way to snatch the soul back out of that painting, I don't think we can revive him."

"No," Prismarix decided. "But we can still make use of it." He turned to a plinth on which a jade urn sat, into which black obsidian designs had been set. With a whispered conjuration, he reached a hand inside, and drew forth a clinging wisp of light, which he gently blew toward the recumbent body.

Vim leapt back as the body seized up, then rose to its feet. Two blank eyes turned to the dragon, who ordered it, "Proceed to the main vault hall and await further instructions. Touch nothing. I will return for you." The undead servitor nodded its understanding, lurching toward the main hall, while the imp led their master to the next intruder.

They found her in the blue treasure room, called such for the blue tapestries and rugs adorning the room, not for the color of the treasure within. In addition to stockpiled ingots and stacks of coins, heaps of gems, and other more standard treasure, there were mannikins wearing various armor sets. It did not usually, however, contain statues, so the one of the woman in a similar set of rough leathers, facing a gold-framed crystal mirror was of interest to the dragon. He knew immediately the cause, as he cupped the heavy, diamond necklace with the glimmering emerald stone.

"It seems this one took an interest in Vasquela's Crux," Vim noted. The imp poked a bit at the statue, and then peered up at the necklace. "Same timeframe as the one claimed by the Malignant Altar, Master."

He nodded, letting the necklace fall back against the statue's throat, before whispering an arcane word and transmuting the stone body into wood and porcelain. The humanoid doll received a similar command to the undead servitor and after curtseying to the dragon, it marched off to await further instructions.

When they came to the last burglar, they found that him half-trapped in a tapestry. Prismarix smiled faintly. "Ah. The Ghatian Jungle was always a favorite of mine, Vim," he remarked to the imp. He glanced down to regard the scattered gemstones. Vim didn't need telling, and was already gathering these into a pouch to return them later. The dragon, meanwhile, was glaring at the pale and sweating figure gasping in the tapestry's clutches, the vines and branches of the jungle scene having animated and wrapped around him.

"Do you like my collection." It was not a question, and the burglar just made a croaking sound. At least a day's captivity had left him desperate for a drink. Prismarix held out a hand and waited as Vim pulled a crystal flask of water from their pack. "I've spent many an age acquiring various pieces, as most of my kind are wont to do. We all tend to have our peculiarities about what we covet. Have you guessed what mine is?"

He poured a measure of water from the flask into the would-be thief's mouth, but then clamped a hand over the attempted burbling apology. Vim spoke up. "I wouldn't talk yet, lad. The Master is of a mind to declaim for a bit. Count yourself lucky we returned when we did, or the Jungle would have taken you."

"Go put our recent acquisitions in the office, Vim," Prismarix ordered. The imp bowed and vanished in a blur to be about their duties, while the dragon smiled faintly at the thief. "I find curses so endlessly fascinating. Talented as I am with magic, I've never had the knack for producing them. Handling them, yes. Restraining them, yes. And when I realized that I could do something with all the gold that inevitably piles up after ages of hoarding, and that so many unfortunate people would happily part with their cursed regalia or artwork or sundry other things, well... it was really not a difficult choice to start building a collection."

The thief wisely said nothing. Prismarix nodded. "You'd heard rumors on the wind of some kind, about a collection of treasure, a dragon's hoard, one which had practically no defenses, no traps or wards." He smirked. "Don't look surprised. You're not the first burglars to discover why there are no conventional defenses. My collection rather neatly deals with intruders. And if you had managed to escape with something," he shrugged. "I would have found you and dealt with you eventually. Just for the lark."

He steepled his fingers again. "So. Your friends are mine, now. They'll serve until they fall apart. You will do so as well, but you get a choice. Will you serve until death, at which point I'll graciously let your soul part to its eternal destination, or must you die first and I just turn your body into another servitor and feed your soul to something else in my collection?"

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

The Only Real Winner

There are no winners in war but one: the undertaker.

The fighting was over. The smoke was clearing, revealing the aftermath. Some buildings still stood, others left as smoldering ruins. The blood cooled amid the mud and filth, and bodies sprawled and slumped everywhere. Bewildered people shuffled along in a state of shock, some of them without any wounds.

To call it a "war" was being overly generous, if one was a scholar of history. It would not register in the annals of the realm. Even locally, it would be forgotten in a couple of decades, but for a lingering twinge in some joints, and perhaps a bawdy tavern song, with the real reason for the fighting long forgotten, altered for a pithy line that met the required scansion of the music.

In the end, it was just one degenerate gang of thugs going to war with another brutal posse of toughs. It might have been over territory, it might have been over a protection racket, it might have been over some illicit trade, it might have been because one leader slept with the paramour of the other. It all just led to the same thing, a bloody, violent day that left smoke and blood and corpses.

The Holdt Crew were the nominal winners, in that there were more of their people still alive after the conclusion. But they'd lost too many people, too much property. Goods put to the torch, resources lost in one way or another. They didn't have the necessaries to retake what they'd lost or stake their claim to new territory. The Pikemen were in much the same situation, without even enough coin to book fast passage out of town.

Regard one Trike Holdt, youngest of his siblings, the only one to have survived the day. Leaning on a crutch, one splinted leg still seeping blood through its bandages (and will likely need to be removed by the end of the week), jaw swollen and bruised, he stood on the wooden planks before the general store which had fronted the crew's business since before he was born. He sighed. "How much is this going to cost us?"

Bazza, who had loyally served his brothers for years, shook his head. "Too much. It'll take months to make enough just to rebuild the tenement." Then, anticipating Trike's question, he added, "We can't drive up the prices in the store to recoup. People will just walk further, up hill to the next borough, and buy there."

Trike sighed again. "Tell me that the Pikemen lost the brewhouse, at least."

"Sure, and the warehouse," Bazza noted glumly. "But we lost ours, too, and enough stills and all will still take weeks to acquire, and since Coop died we don't have an expert to brew up stock. Losing the warehouses means we also lost the barrels."

Trike winced. Losing the barrels meant losing the whiskey being aged within. That was one of their long-term investments gone. He reflected in his head that he was already having to sell some of the family's valuables and fine clothes to recoup some money, but most of that was tied up already with repairs and care for their wounded. Still, the knowledge that Bosun Gilles of the Pikemen was in worse circumstances took some sting out of it.

Bazza tapped him on the arm, then indicated the wagon that had pulled up beside the store. Well-cared for, it was painted in black with subdued gray-silver livery, with a couple of destriers pulling it. The man that climbed down from the seat next to the driver wore a bespoke suit with waistcoat, a pocket watch with a silver chain, and a brief smile as he tipped his hat to them both.

"Mister Holdt, allow me to offer my sincere condolences after the loss of your brothers and sister," the dapper man said, with more solemnity than the faint smile on his face might suggest.

Bazza scowled. "What do you want, Markus?" he demanded, before subsiding when Trike whacked his shin with his crutch.

Markus van der Graaf smiled a little bit wider, but kept the veneer of solemnity in his bearing as he straightened up. "I presume you're going to need some," he paused and made a show of turning to look around at the carnage surrounding them, "disposal. And a respectful send-off with dues paid, et cetera."

Trike nodded, but held up a finger before pulling Bazza aside. "How much can we afford?"

"I mean, we can't do full procession for everyone, boss." Bazza scratched at his jaw. "I can ask around, see if the families are okay with cremation?"

"Do it, we'll find a way to make-do if some of them want more than an urn." Sighing again, Trike swung around and faced the dapper man again. "Please do, Mr. van der Graaf," he told the man. "Just make sure my people are kept separate from the Pikemen's."

"You can trust me, Mr. Holdt," the undertaker smiled again. "I'm a professional." He lifted a hand and clicked his fingers, prompting a quartet of burly men in workmen's overalls to climb down from the back of the wagon and beginning to set to their work.

Trike hobbled off with Bazza, who scowled over his shoulder. "Flash git," he growled under his breath. "D'you see what he's wearing? That's a custom suit from Lorde & Co. Costs more than I make in a month."

"Way of the world, Baz," Trike shook his head. "The only real winner at the end of the day is the man who digs the graves and tends to them as fills them. As long as he sees that my brothers and sister are treated with respect, I don't care how much he charges for it."

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

Mr Fixit Can't Fix This

You're usually known as the fixing guy, Someone comes in gives you money, You change their name change their home and hide them so they can't get caught, Your latest client is in a rush and afraid, Cause he pissed off the doctor.

I sat back from the terminal, flexing my fingers as I lifted them from the keyboard. The mad whorls and dendrites of the virtual world fading from my perception as I shut my eyes, taking a deep breath, then smiled as I could smell the tea on my desk. Grace was good at her timing, pouring a fresh cup just in time for it to be that perfect temperature as I disengaged from my work. I took a little sip of it, helping soothe my brain a little. Delving is a taxing process.

I'd tell you my name, but you probably wouldn't recognize it. I take pains to make sure my identity is protected, and am in a unique position to make sure that my data is secure and not proliferating. You'd probably know me better as simply 'The Fixer,' or sometimes 'Mister Fixit.' If you needed to disappear, clear your name out of the records, need a place to lie low, I can provide. Having a technopathic capability makes this very easy.

I'm a bit of a known quantity to the authorities-- the police, the feds, the Allied Heroes Commission. Less where they come to me for information, and more for my expertise. Witness protection kind of thing, and some of the heroes might need their identities scrubbed. There's limits to what I can do, of course, in this day of social media, but official records and the like are easy enough. But by and large, my clientele are those on the darker side of the legal spectrum.

My integrity is solid, since the Commission and the cops know they can't reasonably keep me locked up, not without some significant expense in setting up completely mechanical locks and cells and keeping me away from any technology. This day and age, that's hard to come by without risking human rights violations of some kind. My resistance to being turned by the authorities means the criminal sorts don't need to worry that I'll flip on them. And Grace has face-blindness and couldn't identify them herself.

She came in as I set the tea back down, collecting a folder off the desk and glancing at it. "Finished on Miss Fenchurch, then, sir?" When I nodded, she fed it into the shredder. "There's a walk-in waiting in the front room," she noted.

I sighed. "You've already warned them about emergency rates?" I didn't take many walk-ins. Having some time to prep before a client's visit was preferable, so I could more reasonably provide favorable rates to them. Walk-ins usually needed to disappear more quickly, and so I charged accordingly, and made it plain that if the authorities turned up before I could finish, that I would turn them in without a blink. 

Grace nodded. "He's got cash, even, for an upfront down payment." I looked at her thoughtfully, then pushed the tea away, getting one of my energy shots out of the drawer. Seeing this, she turned to leave. "I'll send him in, luv."

The man that was shown in had a definite hunted look about him. Probably paler than he usually is, could stand a shave and-- yeah, a change of clothes. This man hadn't been back to his home since... whatever had brought him to see me. I told him to have a seat, asked what he needed, as if I couldn't guess. He ran a hand through his tangled hair. "I need the full works. Pronto. Faster than pronto."

I got his name and address (Ricky Tombole of 237 West Hill Top in the Silverhills district) and was starting to think out the process, but I had to ask the question. "Why the rush job?"

Ricky shook his head. "You don't wanna know, man--"

"If you want me to help you, you need to answer the question."

He groaned, shaking his head again. "Man, I got-- I got Doc E comin' after my ass!"

I stopped, and took my hands away from the keyboard. "You pissed off Doctor Ethereal? What the hell did you do?!"

Doctor Ethereal was one of the Commission's top heroes, not just locally but worldwide, being one of the few metas capable of manipulating energies in a way that specifically was described as magical. She was a generally level-headed woman, given how she was frequently dealing with eldritch beasts and other nasties from the other side of the veil. And this poor idiot had somehow got her gunning for him?

Ricky had been part of a gang that had been using some magical artifact to breach security at various businesses and banks, phasing through walls and doors to steal money and valuables. Doctor E had tracked them down and there had been a shoot-out. She was too well-protected against bullets to have had any problems, but she hadn't come to face them down alone. Her apprentice, some new magic-using meta called Loreweaver, had accompanied her, and he'd gotten shot by Ricky, who honestly hadn't been expecting the bullet to kill the young man.

"Well, you've got a problem, now," I told him, after he finished explaining. "Because even if I do the full works for you and get you out of town tonight, it won't do you a lick of good."

"But you're the Fixer!" he blurted out. "You make people disappear!"

"From the Internet," I spread my hands. "I can alter your records and everything, but Doctor E doesn't need the Internet to find you. There's not a lot I can do for you."

"Aw, man, I'm fucked," Ricky's head was in his hands.

"Now hold on," I raised a finger. "May not be a lot that I can do, but I might know someone that could help. I won't charge you the full price of a rush job, just half, for this info, deal?" Ricky agreed, and paid out the cash on my desk. I counted it out quickly, checked the bricks hadn't had the middles of the stacks replaced with $1 notes, closed the duffel bag up and stuffed it under my desk.

"So, here's what you're going to do," I wrote down the instructions on a notepad as I spoke. "You're going to head down to Belabol Street on the edge of Neo Kobe, and you're going to find a little club tucked away there. Called Shadow Beats. Look for a booth, probably in the back or one of the corners. There's a broker you can talk to in the one with the deepest shadows."

Ricky looked up. "He can help me?"

"It is more capable than I am of dealing with someone like Doctor Ethereal," I corrected. "Be warned that the cost is going to be a lot higher. The broker doesn't deal in money."

Ricky somehow appeared even paler, but I spread my hands. "You want to be safe? The broker's your best bet. For a given value of 'safe.'"

----

Afterword: Prompt was on r/WritingPrompts, and was apparently meant to be tagged 'Established Universe,' as the doctor they'd wanted was The Doctor, as in Time Lord, TARDIS, etc. I'd had that suspicion, but had decided to take it in my own direction.

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

A Woman with No Face

a woman with no face is knocking on my door at 2:00 am.

I was one of those people who much preferred the new social dynamics that came out of the pandemic. Being able to work from home, not having to go outside so much, getting to interact with barriers between myself and the outside world... a lot of the more reasonable people objected to how distant we were forced to be from one another, and how this might affect society more long-term. Sure, maybe they had a point there. But I was grateful for the forced isolation.

It made it less likely I'd run into the ghosts and spirits and other things out there.

Don't ask me to explain how it works. I've tried for years to figure it out, gone to therapy for it and taken medication to try to make it stop. None of it has worked. I learned to mask up well before I had to start wearing an actual one when I went outside.

I don't see them everywhere. But I see at least a dozen every time I go outside. Sometimes they're of the deceased, going through the same routines they always did, or repeating the action that led to their death. Seeing some suit stepping off the curb and turning into a smear on the road where the bus had hit them is horrible, true, but I've become numb to those. The initial shock passes quickly, because they didn't have enough time to react to it. Even the residual dismay that onlookers had felt fades after a day or two, because there was little to attach them to the victim.

The jumpers can be a lot worse. The same emotional pain or emptiness which had born them down to the moment continues to linger like a weight, and for whatever they might have thought about how no one else cared about them, there were those emotional attachments surrounding them which in turn keep that pressure bound in. I've stopped taking routes that lead past the bridge if I can avoid it.

The spirits aren't usually born of people directly, the way ghosts are. I've come to think of them as concepts given shape. They can look human enough, but there's always at least one thing that says otherwise. Other people walk past the homeless junkies without looking at them because they've dehumanized them and want to pretend they don't exist. I walk past them because I can see the specter of addiction clinging to them, drawing needle-fingers through their scalp like they were a favored pet, and the specter will grin at me with black teeth and far too many yellowed eyes.

I won't get into the other things. They weren't born of humanity in any real sense of the word, and they look it. I try to avoid their notice, and so far, none of them have bothered to take notice of me. I'm glad about that.

Going outside means I see all of this. The lurking warden of debt chained to a salaryman on his way to the office. The jabbering creep of anxiety hunched on the shoulder of some poor student pouring over their books for some exam. The smoldering hulk of rage behind the blue-collar worker waiting to be fed with booze. The lingering remnants of those who've passed on, unwilling or unable to move along to whatever awaits.

I stopped trying to block them out. It just causes problems of my own, which the medication helps alleviate. But I try not to invite the problems.

Today, though, while I was out picking up my prescriptions' refill, I made eye contact with one. After a fashion. It was brief, and I looked away quickly, but she'd seen me see her.

And now it's 2:00 A.M., and there's a woman with no face knocking on my door.

I try to ignore it. There's no actual sound being made, it's literally just in my head. If I wanted, I could pretend it was some wisp of a fading dream, forgotten upon waking, but deep down, I know it's still happening.

I sigh and go to the door to open it slowly. There's not a lot to say about her. She's wearing clothes, but these are just gray-- no, not even really that, they're colorless. (Anyone who tries to claim 'gray' is 'colorless' hasn't seen real colorlessness. Trust me on this.) Just a shirt, a skirt that trails down to where her knees would be, but she doesn't have feet. She doesn't have much in the way of a body, even. Just enough characteristics to say 'woman,' and that's it. Colorless hair framing a normal-shaped head, and just a blank featureless smoothness where her face should be.

She moves back as the door opens, a hand raised to knock again, then lowers it, clasping her hands before her, fingers knotting themselves anxiously. I look at her, then glance up and down the hallway, before I gesture her inside. She drifts over the threshold, shuddering slightly, and then turns as I take the can of salt and pour a circle around her. She looks down at this, then back to me, a frightful stance in her appearance.

"I'm sorry," I tell her. "I mean no offense, but I have to protect myself. I don't want to hurt you."

She hesitates, before she nods her understanding.

I take a moment to marshal my thoughts. "I don't know you. But I saw you at the store, when I was leaving the pharmacy. Right?"

There's a hopeful energy to the nod.

"I try not to see any of you, when I'm out," I explain, regretfully. I gesture vaguely at the side of my head. "I have my own problems, you know? But yes, I can see you. Just like I can see the other things."

She gives a heartfelt shudder. Being what she is, she can see them too, now, regardless of whether or not she could in life. It doesn't make it any better for her in the circumstances.

"I don't know you," I repeat. "But... I think I can guess some things. Probably didn't have a lot of friends or anything before, huh?"

She almost shrinks in on herself a little before shaking her head slowly.

"Acquaintances, maybe, but maybe the only people you knew were just workmates," I hazard, "and anyone else was just online, right?" She nods, with the same slow, mournful energy. "Anyone else in your life, they just kind of looked through you. Customers or clients, they didn't really know you, didn't really see you?"

Another shake of the head, and she lifts her hand, pointing to where her eyes would be, then mimes looking outward with them before opening her empty palm.

"They just... looked through you," I translate, and get another sad nod. I sigh, leaning back against the wall as I look at her. "I can sort of relate, but I ... well, it's by choice, with me. I won't guess how you ... passed on, but... you're lingering, aren't you?"

She shrugs at first, before turning her head away for a moment, clearly thinking about it. I let her get on with it. This is obviously a fresh ghost, I reckon. The older a ghost gets, the less cognizant and contemplative they get, more prone to repetitive patterns, more feral. There's more of whoever she was still in her. And exposed as she is now to the other side, she's probably seen more than a few of the other lingerers, seen how they degenerate.

"You're scared," I finally say, and she turns back to me in surprise. "Not just of ... everything else you can see now. You're scared of being forgotten. Or maybe of whatever comes next."

She looks thoughtful, inasmuch as I can tell without a face to emote with. Then she raises her hands, raising one, then the other, and after another hesitation, she wobbles both of them.

"A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B?" I suggest, and she nods. "Well, I can't offer much insight on column B. Just because I can see the other side, doesn't mean I know what lies past it. I don't want to lie and promise there's something better. You know?"

She lowers her head, nodding her understanding. I sigh again. "As for column A... well, I can't promise I'll remember you forever. I have... issues of my own, but..." I scratch at my head, trying to stop the sentiment from nibbling too much at me. If I do this for her, it might invite more attention from others, and I've lived a careful life to keep them at a distance.

"Hang on a second." I stand up and cross over to the hutch in the corner. It takes a minute or two of rummaging before I find it, and a few things out and over to her. I set one item on the floor next to her salt circle, then use the salt can to expand the hoop to encompass it. She looks down at the magnetic alphabet board, then back up at me.

I sit down facing her, with a notepad and pencil. "Let's start simple. You should be able to move things, if you concentrate."

It takes about an hour for her to work it out. Starting simple with moving the Y and the N, yes and no questions. And then she starts to move more letters easily enough, and careful phrasing of questions allow me to assemble a little bit of a picture. She starts out moving her hands and fingers to move the alphabet magnets around the board, and soon enough figures out that she doesn't actually need to do this, and the letters move by themselves.

Her name was Jenny Gaines. ("J E N Y" as the board only has one of each letter and number, but a follow-up question clarifies the spelling.) She was a cashier at the store where I'd first seen her, and housekeeper at the hotel down the block from it too. She was 26 and she had no family. Dad had left, Mom had died from Covid. Not even a pet or anything. She'd had the sort of basic interests in TV and movies and books in what spare time she'd had. After she'd died (she didn't want to talk about what happened, and I didn't pry) her landlord had cleaned it out a week later and found a new tenant by the end of the month.

I ask the questions, taking care to phrase them in a way to allow for simple answers given the limitations of the board, and give her the time to assemble her response, while my pencil works on the notepad. She gets a little more animated as she goes, even after she works out that she can move the letters without touching them. I can feel fatigue crawling around my eyes as I watch her answering, but I force the tiredness aside. I'm going to call out from work tomorrow, I've already decided. And Jenny needs the time.

By the time we finish, Jenny has less of that anxious energy about her. I finally set down the pencil. "I want you to see something, Jenny." She tilts her head at me, and then jumps as I show her the notepad.

I hadn't been writing down her answers, not exactly. I'd been spending the time sketching. Drawing out her figure, admittedly still somewhat colorless, but I had taken care to crosshatch in some shading. Her hair was loose and framing her face, and she was reaching up to tuck a lock back behind her ear, smiling to the viewer.

She had a face in the sketch, because as I'd asked my questions, and let her answer as best she could, definition had started to return to her. A mouth, first, silently moving as she had moved, speaking without sound, and then a nose, eyebrows, and finally a pair of pale eyes, as colorless as the rest of her.

Seeing it there on the sketch, Jenny moves to the edge of the salt circle nearest it, hand pressing to the invisible field keeping her inside, blinking in astonishment. She reaches up and feels at her face, shuddering and gasping as she feels her eyes, her nose, her mouth. Tears well up, and she racks with sobs, a smile creeping at the edge of her lips as she looks at me again.

"I see you, Jenny Gaines," I tell her. "I don't know how long I'll remember you. But you were here. And while it might be scary out there, I did see you, I will remember you for as long as I can." I write her name in the corner, then tear the page carefully from the pad. I walk over to the hutch again, taking out a few pieces of blue-tack and stick it to the front of the cabinet.

She watches this from the salt circle, and her mouth stretches into another smile, a fresh well of tears in her eyes. I nod to her, and finally allow a yawn to crawl out of my throat. "I have to rest, Jenny. And I can't let you stay. You know that, right?"

She nods slowly, shoulders slumping slightly. I walk over to the door, opening it before reaching over with my foot to swipe a section of the salt away from the circle. She slowly drifts toward the door, but pauses at the opening. She looks from the hallway over to my hutch, where her sketch will stay until the blue-tack wears off. Then she turns back to me, giving me another smile, gratitude evident in her expression, before she fades from view as she crosses the threshold. I hear the faintest of whispers as she goes.

"...thank you..."

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

Hello, World - What This Blog Is For

So I've been writing in my spare time for probably close to two decades, but it's always just been fanfic or other stuff that I could never reasonably publish. Sometimes I'd get better ideas, even outlines of a story, but my brain (which is probably riddled with ADHD) could never focus enough to let me do it.

I can come up with ideas easily enough, but always struggled to write the actual story. Sometimes it would come to me having a solid scene in mind, but then the more orderly part of my brain demanded I write all the scenes leading up to it first, which is where it all fell apart.

I've gotten better, but more recently, I started getting into responding to writing prompts I found-- usually on reddit-- and found that imposing some limits on myself helped me focus. The "fresher" the prompt, the better (so as to get eyes on my pieces), and to try to respond within the same day, setting a deadline for myself. This way, I could indulge my love of world-building, but also keep it as tight as possible, so I wouldn't get bogged down in minutiae.

While I post my pieces in other places as well, I'm always keen to get more eyes on my work where I can, so I turned to tumblr.

Feedback's always welcome, as are questions or even fresh prompts.

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

Crowned by War II

"Come then, boy, and test your mettle against the Lord of Battles, and see if you can take my crown from me! You face the King of War, and you had best not disappoint!"

We stood in the sand-covered floor of the arena, the stands around us empty and barren. Above and across from me stood the Shrine of the War Crown, hanging with the banners accumulated over the ages by the one who wore it. It had showed the long-practiced care and maintenance, its earthen tones re-painted when needed, the scarlet adornments and accents also, the gold and silver and platinum filigree here and there polished. Only the Sign of War itself above the shrine needed nothing, a divine blessing keeping it cleaned and gleaming.

The sands in the arena had been smoothed and swept, raked into a mandala pattern with the same long care. Apart from around the pair of us. I was simply armored, light mail and plate with the sphinx-sigil and colors of the Bellicon League, a vambrace and gauntlet on my left arm, a bracer on the right, greaves and sabatons. I held my gladius at one side as I faced down my opponent.

Bellerex, by contrast, wore no armor whatsoever. He was bare to the waist, his body hale and well-built despite his age, and showed the multitudes of scars that he'd taken over the millennia of his existence. Tattoos banded his arms and his neck, though the ones on his forearms were hidden by the leather wraps he'd tied around them. He wore loose, pristine white trousers, with black footwraps and legwraps below the knee. His clean white teeth showing in the midst of his short-cropped gray beard beneath a shaved bald head. He bore a blade in each hand, a falchion on the right, and a short xiphos on the left, both held in an almost lazy, loose grip. Around his brow sat his crown, an iron circle wrought to resemble interlocked blades, woven with chain-like designs.

The echoes of his last boast faded in the grounds of the shrine, and I set my jaw. "Have at you!" I declared, and then I moved.

Only one such as he could have seen me move. I felt the parry of my slash, my vambrace already up to intercept the retaliatory swing of the falchion. Bellerex smiled as he regarded me, the xiphos locked with my gladius. "Oho! Such speed! But I could hardly expect otherwise of any challenger for my crown."

Sand fountained upward from the tamp of my foot, breaking the blade-lock. My armored arm knocked his falchion away before I lunged inward to slam into his broad chest. It was like striking a wall, but there was a micron of a step backward as he strengthened his stance. His arms scissored inward, to aim for a grapple or grip, but caught only air. He turned his head to look up, watching as I somersaulted over him, but then was already moving out of the way as, mid-turn, I suddenly catapulted back down, the slash parting the air with a sound like tearing silk.

"Ah-h-h," his satisfied sigh reached me as the sand fell back to the floor, xiphos held reversed as he scratched at his beard. The old man chuckled. "That lunging strike actually made me give ground, however small. And the air-step as well! Such techniques I've not seen in so long--"

He had to interrupt himself to sidestep my next attack, but his reverse-swing of the xiphos-- intended to strike my head from my shoulders-- went over me as I instead spun low, my legs scything at his. His stance was too strong to topple him, but I had not expected it to. I used that iron strength in his thigh to step up his flank, rising up at head height. I could see the delighted surprise in his expression as my other foot came around and cracked off the side of his skull.

The blow did knock him off balance, but he was still upright as I landed and moved in. The flat of my sword caught his wrist, knocking the xiphos to the sands, before the vambrace caught him in the jaw, I flipped the gladius around and caught him in the temple with the knot. He staggered again, still off balance, before grunting as I brought the gladius across his collarbone and upper chest. I felt the edge bite at his flesh and smelt the spill of fresh blood before I leapt away again, re-adjusting my grip as I watched him.

Bellerex had regained his footing, and was looking at the blood trickling down from the injury. He touched it and licked it off his thumb. "The fabled technique of the Bellocin masters. The strength of the ox, ferocity of the lion, the speed of the hawk," he recited the tenets of the league's style. "Of course, boy, you know this as well--"

I turned, parrying his own blinding speed, bending backward to avoid the cross-swing that came in response to the parry, and was already blocking the knee that came up with my greave. He was laughing as I used his raised leg for my own to step off of, thrusting myself backward, handspringing to come upright, then air-stepping upward to avoid the fresh blitz rush.

But then he leapt after me, air-stepping himself to match me. "--I was the one who taught the technique to the League to begin with!" He air-stepped again to lunge for me, only to get knocked back to the arena floor with my left hook. He landed nimbly, rotating his arm as he watched my own descent. "Hell of a punch, boy."

I nodded at the compliment. "I am not hailed as Marshal Strongarm without reason."

The old man chuckled. "I would be a fool to assume you didn't have other tricks up your sleeve, then. Not merely mastery of the Bellocin technique." This time his parry was faster, and so was his retaliation, leaving a scratch across my plate before I leapt clear of his immediate reach. He was already upon me less than a blink later, and I trapping his punching arm underneath mine. "Aha, you think at this close range I can't use the falchion effectively and can use your free hand for a solid punch or two before I'll get free--"

He had been expecting me to go for the face and head, perhaps under the impression that I could silence his declamations. And it was true that I value less verbal sparring in a melee, but instead of going for his face, I got one punch in on his liver before he tucked his right arm in and trapped my armored fist. He did not crow about the trap, merely grinned again, before his head snapped forward. I'm no stranger to the Weagian Kiss, I've utilized it myself, and endured them more sturdily than others.

Others weren't wearing an iron crown when they did it, though.

My vision went blurry as I staggered back from the clutch, feeling my skin split and bleed where the crown had struck. As fast I could be to recover from such a blow and get my vision back, I knew I didn't have that kind of time. I shut my eyes and let other senses prevail, managing to block the falchion again with my armored arm on an instinctive reaction. I heard the movement of air and turned, barely parrying a swing, then grunting as his fist caught me in the jaw. I managed to turn with the blow to avoid getting it dislocated, and kept turning as I dropped, again sweeping low with my foot.

Once more, his stance was too sturdy to be felled by the kick, so I tried the step-climb off his knee again. This time he was turning in response to it and his fist once more got me, striking me in the chest and sending me flying backward. I only just managed to turn and use the air-step to slow my momentum before landing in an awkward stumble. My vision was clear enough to see him already closing again.

Another tamp of my foot sent a fountain of sand up, obscuring my presence long enough to get out of the line of his charge, but I heard him laughing again as I blinked my eyes to finish clearing my vision. The lingering ache throbbed in my head from the headbutt, I could feel the blood trickling down my face, and managed to see him slowly advancing. "You've been the best fight I've had in at least five centuries, Marten!" he declared. "Not many people can remain standing after taking two of my blows!"

"I wouldn't expect so," I admitted. "Not many could even stand a chance against you."

The old man tilted his head. "I've proven I can keep up with and counter your Bellocin techniques. You've felt my physical might. And still there's no fear in you."

I scoffed. "To live without fear is to be a fool. Accepting one's fear and mastering it is key to reaching your best self."

Bellerex chuckled, but shook his head. "No, even the best of challengers that have faced me have had fear inside them. These were men and women I know had mastered their fears--"

"--and you beat them all because in spite of that, they still had fear of you," I wiped blood from my face with a cloth. "If not when they stepped onto the sands with you, then certainly not long after, when they realized exactly what they were facing."

"And you aren't afraid of me, boy?"

He was upon me again, hoping to instill that missing fear into me with another blitz rush. But his step faltered when I threw bloody cloth in his face, once more somersaulting over him with a slash of my own, then air-stepping back out of his furious whirling swing's range. More blood splattered onto the sands from the fresh wound across his shoulder blades, but he laughed again as he popped his neck.

I faced him. "I knew what I was walking into. I knew who I was facing. Amras the Last."

His smile at last faded. I nodded. "That was your name, long ago, before you came out of the Far Reaches, wasn't it? With your company of heroes? Sezuai, Rhaene, Nehtana--"

"Do not speak their names!" His voice roared now as he came for me again, with speed that eclipsed the blitz rushes earlier. I had already moved to avoid his furious pursuit, once again tamping down my foot to send a fountain of sand in front of me to obscure my escape. When he turned again to find me, he had to jerk his head out of the way of the xiphos, which I had scooped up and thrown at him. As it was, it tore his cheek open.

"You miss them, don't you?" I asked him, as he felt the fresh well of blood on his face. "You've wanted a worthy challenger not so much for the fight, but because you want someone who can beat you, so you can move on to wherever they're waiting for you."

My escaping dodge wasn't fast enough either, as it caught my arm. If it hadn't been my armored one, I would have lost the limb. I could feel blood slicking the interior of the vambrace and gauntlet as I air-stepped away once more, but he was doing the same in the chase. Once again, I tamped my foot, but he was too close this time and the falchion slashed through it. I leant back from it, grunting as it caught the bridge of my nose and edge of my cheekbone.

"I won't keep falling for the same tricks!" Bellerex snarled as I parried his next swing, ducking close and bulling into him with the blood-soaked vambrace. "Did you want another butt in the head, boy-- yeeaarrrgh!!"

The scream came as I sank my teeth into his gashed cheek and tore a strip from his face. I spat his flesh into the sands and then blood into his eyes before reversing my gladius and bashing the knot into the wound. He stumbled back with a wild swing of his falchion, but I had already ducked and air-stepped backward.

"You want to die!" I shouted at him. "But your pride won't let you lay down and accept defeat!"

His eyes were blazing as he looked up at me. His smile was more fierce, with less delight in it now. "Oh-h-h, I'll make sure your armor has pride of place in the trophy case, Marten of the Bellicon League--"

He stopped to catch my flying knee in his free hand. I was able to see the astonishment at how fast the attack had come before the other came up and into his chin. He staggered back, tanking the downward hammer-fist of my gauntlet across the back of his neck. He still managed to step back and avoid most of the upward reverse-slash of my gladius, leaving another bloody carve in his chest. He blocked the follow-up slash, then grunted as my armored hand slammed into his liver again.

I jumped back as he aimed another punch, then watched as he felt the fresh slash on his chest, the bloody mess of his cheek. "You've been holding back?" His voice was bewildered.

I said nothing, knowing that he would work it out quickly enough. I was proven right when he chuckled again, nodding. "Of course. I wanted a worthy challenge," he spoke out the thought process. "If you'd come out with everything from the start, and it failed at the outset, you'd feel the fear you won't let yourself have. Because if I went down from your best shot, you had nothing left to fall back on, and-- you knew I would be disappointed in that." He looked up at me with a new respect in his eyes.

I nodded. "Ramp up my techniques as you adapt. So in the end, I know I've either died giving you a worthy challenge, or I have elevated myself to the point that I can surpass you."

He gave another, somewhat rueful, smile and chuckle, before his lip curled, distorting the ruined side of his face. "And invoking their names?"

I shrugged. "Bringing up your former comrades let me know that my theory was right. Your pride won't let you go without falling to a worthy foe. I suspected when I studied the teachings of my antecedent, Tiran Soldat."

"Ah, word of his prowess reached me, of course," the old man admitted. "I regret that he never sought me out."

"By the time he learned of your shrine, he was unable to make the journey." I shrugged again. "Lungrot had taken root by then. He could never have allowed himself to face you at anything less than his best."

The old man laughed, sadly this time. "Perhaps I shall meet him, whenever I move on to what comes next." He gripped his falchion sturdily. "Our next exchange is going to be our last, you know this, yes?"

I nodded, squeezing the grip of my gladius tightly. "I won't hold back this time, and I know you'll be coming at me with everything. Perhaps I'll fail to stop the wars eternal, but it won't be because of weakness."

He nodded again, and there was a silence that fell as we each took the moment to center ourselves. I saw the instant before he was going to move, and I once more tamped down my foot. But this time, every bit of sand in the arena leapt into the air, obscuring everything, and causing his blitz rush-- faster than the fastest blink-- to falter as he lost sight of me.

I had already moved aside from the path of his rush, then air-stepped back in behind him, my sword cutting across the backs of his legs. I heard the stumble, then the crash as he went tumbling to the arena floor as the sand fell back down around us. As I slid to a halt, I could feel my muscles screaming at me; forcing myself past my usual limits with the speed of my technique was not without consequence.

So I was limping with stiff, sore legs as I approached the old man, who had turned onto his back, blood pooling around his maimed legs. He propped himself up onto his elbows, falchion having fallen and spun away in his collapse. He had a smile on his face as I shambled up to him. "Ah-h-h," he sighed. "You didn't hold back. Thank you."

He regarded me from where he lay. "You know what awaits now, yes?" He reached up and took the crown from his brow, holding it up toward me.

I stood back from it. "I do not want your crown--"

"Want has nothing to do with it, boy," he snapped. "I was not the first to bear it. Nor will you be the last. But the crown will always be borne by the one who bested their predecessor. Take it."

His tone brooked no argument. I grasped it, and he pointed a finger in command. Reluctantly, I planted the gladius in the sands as I took it with both hands, settling it on my brow. There was a Power in it, one which was waiting for me to complete one final task, before it would reveal itself to me. I looked back at the old man.

"Peace, the world will get for a while," he said, as he lay back. "It won't last. It never will. But for a while, the wars eternal will stop." He settled himself. "But now... the time has come for me to move along to what comes next." A sigh. "Finally."

I took up my sword and held it ready. He watched it rise, and nodded. I plunged it down into his heart, and he let his eyes close with a content smile at last. So passed the One Born of the Far Reaches, the Eternal Champion, Lord of Battles, King of War. Called Karlvon, Yudaragi, Vasto Polmarc, Bellerex, Amras.

The Crown's Power whispered, but I let it know that I did not wish to know its secrets yet. I needed rest, myself, and then to see that the old man received a proper send-off.

In time, others would come to the shrine. Others would add their armors and weapons to the trophies. More banners would line the path through the valley.

They would come to face the Last of the Bellicon League, Scion of Tiran Soldat, Marshal Strongarm...

Marten, Crowned by War.

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

Crowned by War

—"Why are you so... happy? I'm here to kill you."

—"Yes! You are! After five thousand years of boredom, someone has come to fight me! And you won't run away, no, I see it in your soul; you'll fight until you either win or lose. For this battle, the greatest of life's pleasures, I thank you."

The shrine was not some forgotten thing, for all that it was tucked away in a valley hidden deep in a high mountain range. Care had been taken in maintaining its grounds, the paths leading to it, the idols and displays lining the descent. Calling them idols was perhaps giving more credit than necessary, they were really simple manikins adorned with dented and scarred armor, with weapons mounted beside them on iron racks. Age-worn banners had been planted along the path as well, some bearing the standards and sigils of long-dead kingdoms and houses. Many of these had faded over the ages, the oldest little more than colorless rags stirring in the wind.

The tall wooden gates leading into the shrine's grounds were ancient and old, but that same care that had been put into everything else along the preceding route was evident here. The lacquer and paint had been touched up over time, and the hinges oiled, so they barely creaked when I pushed them open. The space beyond opened out and downward, into what was clearly an expansive arena floor, in which the sand had been arranged into an odd sort of mandala, the lines of a rake clear. Ranks of empty benches and chairs ringed the arena itself, and opposite the entrance stood the shrine itself, with an elder sigil of divinity standing proud above it, a ring of interlocked swords and chains. The Sign of War.

Sitting beneath the sigil was an old man, dressed in a mantled robe, a long-handled calligraphy brush in hand, painstakingly drawing it across a canvas scroll hung on an easel. His pate was shaven bald, his gray beard cut close. The years showed on his face, but he was hale and still well-built in spite of his advanced age. What one might mistake for wrinkles at a distance resolved into scars when one got closer. Tattoos banded his forearms, and I could see no tremors in his hands as he worked.

"I saw you at the paddock, at the second bend in the path in the valley." His voice had the rasp expected, but is still strong and clear, reaching me on the other side of the arena. He did not look up from the scroll as he moved the brush in shaping another mark. "I saw you when the tinker's wagon dropped you off, two leagues from the valley entrance." He swept the brush in a slow arc to complete the sigil he was painting. "I saw you before you woke up this morning."

I said nothing, calmly folding one arm behind my back, the other resting on the hilt of the sword on my hip, regarding him attentively as he finished with one last flourish. Setting aside the brush, he rose, taking up the scroll and easel together, and carefully moving it back nearer the entrance to the shrine. "Seeing you isn't the same as knowing you, however," he remarked, as he folded his arms in the voluminous sleeves of his robe without turning. "Who are you, that sought out this place?"

Instead of immediately answering his question, I clasped a fist over my heart, lifting my voice so it echoed around the arena. "Hail, Karlvon, Born of the Far Reaches." I bowed at the waist, continuing, "Hail Vasto Polmarc, Eternal Champion." I lowered myself to one knee as I pulled my sheathed sword from its place on my waist, planting the end beside me. "Hail, Yudaragi, Lord of Battles." I laid my sword on the ground before me as I knelt completely, lowering my forehead to the stone floor. "Hail, Bellerex, Crowned by War."

The old man had turned to regard me, mouth twisted into something like a smile, something like a grimace. "I've not heard some of those names and titles in a drake's age," he finally chuckled. His expression turned stern again. "Enough with the platitudes. Answer the question, boy!"

I rose to my feet, returning to the casual but attentive stance, leaving my sword where it lay. "I am called Marten. I've been hailed as Marshal Strongarm. Scion of Tiran Soldat. Last of the Bellicon League." I regarded the old man, who had pulled one hand from his sleeves to scratch thoughtfully at his beard. "For many an age, too many to count, wars have plagued this world. Endlessly fought in your name. Peace lasts barely a span of years before it all resumes again. Too many deaths, so much ruin, for little more than pride and fleeting glory."

Bellerex lowered his hand to his side, cocking his head. "I do not ask for those deaths, I do not revel in the blood or ruin. They are simply the cost of the choices made. Not made by me, Marten. It is always their choice."

"If the wars eternal are to ever stop, I must put end to War Itself." With a tamp of my foot, my sword leapt into my hand. In a flash, it was drawn and pointed at him, edge keen and gleaming in the afternoon light.

The old man tilted his head the other way, staring back at me. And then he laughed, clasping a hand to his forehead as he did so. I felt the flush climb my cheeks. "Do not mock me!"

"I mean no disrespect, Marten!" He was still laughing, but it wasn't the mocking cackle I expected, or the derisive chuckle. This was long and full of feeling. There were tears in his eyes as he turned his gaze to the heavens. "Ah-h-h, to have my prayers answered after so long."

Prayers? What could this man, a divinity in his own right, pray to? "Are you-- why are you happy? I'm here to kill you."

"Yes, you are," Bellerex was smiling at me as he shrugged off his robes, sweeping them into an arm with a smooth gesture and draping them over a bench. He wore loose trousers, spotlessly white, with black footwraps and legwraps. "For five thousand years, I've waited for someone brave enough to come to my shrine. To alleviate the boredom in my soul. To give me something more than endlessly caring for the garden, the sands, the trophies lining the path, and idle calligraphy."

I frowned, recalling the banners I'd passed on the way in. "I'm not the first in five thousand years--"

"You are the first who has no fear inside him." He shook his head as he wound leather wraps around his hands and wrists. "You will not run, boy. I can see it in your soul! You fight to the bitter end, win or lose. Every would-be challenger has lacked that iron resolve. As strong as they were in body, they were weak in spirit. Such men and women could never hope to provide a worthy challenge."

He spread his hands and laughed again. "And your conviction! You don't seek glory as they did! You seek something greater, as unattainable as it might be. A lasting peace." A shake of the head as he produced something from out of the air. An iron crown, fashioned to resemble interlocked swords, woven amid chain-designs. "For that, Marten, I thank you."

He settled the crown atop his brow, then leapt down into the sandy floor of the arena, conjuring a pair of swords into his hands. "Come then, boy, and test your mettle against the Lord of Battles, and see if you can take my crown from me! You face the King of War, and you had best not disappoint!"

I leapt down to join him in the arena. Bellerex was right that lasting peace might be unattainable, but defeating him would have repercussions that would end the wars eternal for at least a generation. In that time, the people might be able to rebuild, find something more to live for than to die in pointless conflicts. The cycle might break. For that reason alone, for that hope?

I would plunge into battle against a dozen Bellerexes.

My sword flashed as I sprang for him. "Have at you!"

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

Knights of Tafos

You are a squire to a dead knight - as were your father and grandmother before you. Today, for the first time in generations, the councilors reached an agreement - the invaders cannot be reasoned with; unseal the tombs.

Ours is a solemn duty. We serve a lineage that ended generations ago, but the oaths our ancestors swore generations ago still carry weight. Though many of our family leave to find a life apart from the duty, they always return in the end, to see that our sacred tasks are still done. Over the ages, we have become the keepers of memory, not just of our fallen patrons, but of the kingdom's old traditions.

Of course, ours is a kingdom in name only. The sovereign is a figurehead, with nominal power granted them by the Royal Council, themselves advised and guided by the Electorate, as old traditions give way to new ways, but families such as ours have always maintained the old ways, because we know the day will come when they will be needed. 

We have never been conquered. In days of old, our armies were a force to be reckoned with, trained to exacting and harsh standards, able to stand up to the greatest of foes, led by the Knights of Tafos. A solitary Knight was capable of slaying a score of men single-handedly in scarcely the time to speak of their capability. A battalion of them could defeat an army. The Tafosi Knights were the reason our kingdom rose above the others. None could overcome them.

As time passed, other means of influence and power rose to eclipse that martial might. Diplomacy and economics replaced knights and armies. Our military shrank in size, though still maintained its strict training regimen. The knightly lineages all passed into history, leaving only families like ours to remember them. And still the kingdom stood, for none would risk the instability of an economic collapse if they tried to move upon us. Such was the influence our kingdom held on the world markets.

Until now, at least.

A warlock had breached the veil and called forth a vast demon army, and nations had fallen to their march. What did demons care for commerce, when all they wanted was blood? What good would diplomacy do, when there were no words that could sway them?

I knew the day would come when we were needed. I had already dressed accordingly, the mantle draped over my shoulders, the staff of office gripped in my hand as I opened the door and coolly regarded the person on the other side. "Councilor," I greeted him.

"Madame Sexton," he bowed his head. "I had hoped a day like this might never come."

"If I recall correctly," I felt my lips twitch in a smirk, "you didn't hope. You told me it would never happen."

He had the good grace to flush with embarrassment, bowing lower. "I did say that. I was most unkind in the things I said about you, and your family."

"Me and mine have endured such ridicule and scorn for generations," I raised a hand and bid him rise. "We overlook such things, but to mock and demean the memory of House Tafos is something else entirely."

The councilor took a deep breath, but then squared his shoulders. "All attempts at forestalling the invaders have failed. The time has come. The Council and Sovereign are of one mind. Madame Sexton, unseal the tombs."

I nodded slowly, then turned and walked down the hall, beckoning him to follow. Down into the basement of the manor, and then down further still, into hewn stone passageways, lighting the torches as I went, murmuring the words of our vows and oaths as I went. The councilor was silent, though I could feel his urge to speak growing. Whenever I heard an intake of breath and the beginnings of a vocalization, I raised a finger to silence him and continued onward. He at least recognized that this was not a time or place for empty words.

At last we came to the end of the walk, into a vast chamber with only a solitary brazier awaiting us. I waited until the councilor caught up, and then clapped the end of my staff on the stone floor. Once, twice, three times, and the ancient witchlights flared to life, allowing us both to see the enormous space, with all of the stone-wrought tombs facing outward. "Behold, Councilor. This has been in the care of my family since before my grandmother's grandmother's grandmother. Welcome to the Crypt of House Tafos."

Each tomb's slab had been shaped to show the likeness of its occupant. Adorned in armor, the sigil of their families carved exactingly. Once, long ago, precious metals had been filigreed into the stone, and these had been looked after even in the lean times, when such gold and silver and platinum might have been worth so much. To take these from our charges would have been unthinkable.

The councilor was sweating, even in this cool chamber. "What do we need to--?"

"Sh-h-h," I raised a finger again, then walked to the brazier. With my free hand, I reached into the pouch on my belt, drawing out a handful of powder, casting it into the flames, which flared blue, then green, then white. My eyes squinted against the heat, lifting my voice. "Noble Knights of Tafos, remember your oaths, and heed my words! Your kingdom calls upon you in its time of need!"

The tombs shook, the grind of stone on stone filling the air as the first slab swung ponderously open. An armored figure emerged into the pale light, gleaming where cobwebs did not hang. Two pale blue eyes glowed from within the helm as it turned to regard us, and it walked over to the brazier. Even with the light of the flames directly in front of it, the helm's interior remained in shadow. The colors of the Knight's family still vibrant, the sigil shining on the plate.

I dropped to a knee, bowing my head, clasping my fist over my heart. "My Lord Sathin, it is this one's honest pleasure to serve." Beside me, the councilor belatedly dropped to a knee and shakily lowered his gaze under the Knight's glare.

"Who are you, child?" The Knight's voice echoed from his helm, addressing me. "I do not recognize you."

"I am Wren Magest, daughter of Corbin Magest, son of Magret Archone, last of her line."

Sir Sathin's gaze seemed to look into the air. "As in Raven Archone?"

"Your last squire in your living days," I confirmed. "It has been many, many generations since then, my Lord."

I did not need to lift my gaze to see the councilor gawping as more Knights emerged from their tombs, forming ranks behind Sir Sathin. All still wearing their helms, each one lit from within by two glowing eyelights.

Sathin looked down at me again. "Has the kingdom e'er fallen?" 

"We have never been conquered." To my surprise, this came from the councilor, who had lowered his gaze again. "Even after the need for knights ended, the kingdom has stood proud."

The Knights turned their gazes to him as one. He blanched, but his voice was firm. "I have not been kind in the words I've used about you and yours, milord. But I am honorable enough to admit I was wrong to say them, and acknowledge our need. The kingdom needs you."

"So say we all," I intoned.

"We will never forsake our oaths. So long as the kingdom stands, we will e'er serve." Sir Sathin turned to the ranks behind him. "House Tafos!" His voice bellowing to his comrades. "We march to war!"

And the roar that came back thundered off the walls. "VAE VICTIS!"

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

Soul of Nothing

"Your soul? Why the hell would I want your soul, it's worthless to me!"

He finished carving the last line of the rune at the same moment he finished the incantation, feeling the thrum of power emanate in the otherwise featureless room. The lights all dimmed, leaving just the solitary overhead over the table, and he sat in the chair, waiting. It did not take long before the figure resolved itself across from him, draped in shadow, only two pale hands visible, calmly lacing fingers together. There was nothing but an expectant silence in the air.

"Talk," he spat, slamming his palms on the table as he leaned over it. "We had a deal, and you--"

The figure unfolded itself, standing up, and seeming to grow ever taller as one of its hands clapped itself over his face, clamping his jaw shut. The grip was icy cold, and there was a hint of claw digging into his cheeks as it spoke. "Let's try that again, shall we? Mind your manners this time. I do not tolerate impoliteness."

It released him, and he dropped back into the chair, massaging where it had gripped him as he rearranged his thoughts. Memories ticked back over as he recalled the protocols about this sort of thing. He took a deep breath, then nodded. "My apologies. Thank you for answering my invitation. I called for you because I have questions about our deal."

The figure had arranged itself back at the table, hands once again folded there. "Hm. It's too late to back out. Far too late." There may have been a smirk in the shadows. "Thrice spoken, thrice agreed."

The summoner slapped his hand on the table. "I didn't get what I wanted!" He pointed an accusatory finger. "You were supposed to give me the talent to get rich!"

"And by the terms of our deal, I delivered." The smirk remained, the voice amused. "I gave the talent, you cultivated it and produced works which earned you great success."

He ground his teeth. "My scripts got me money, but nothing near what they should have after they got made. My scripts are getting panned by critics! No one's accepting my work anymore!"

A shrug from across the table. "I fail to see why this is my problem. Our deal said nothing about how much you would earn, or how long your newfound wealth would last you."

"I gave you my soul!" The summoner's voice rose in fury and desperation. "My soul for the success and wealth you promised!"

The voice on the other side of the table went flat, a coldness in its words. "I promised nothing but the talent to write the works you wanted. It was always down to you to make the best of it." But then it chuckled. "But... your soul? Why would I want your soul? It's worthless to me."

The writer went still. "But..."

The broker spread its hands. "I took the soul not from you, but from your works. The evocative spirit and inspirational spark of such creative works are far more colorful, far more beautiful, far more desirable." A hand disappeared into the shadows, and there was a movement, and a sound, like lips tasting a flavor off a finger, then a heartfelt sigh of pleasure.

Then there was a suggestion of a lip curling in disdain. "Far more than the shriveled, withered thing offered up by one such as you, so willing to trade it away for the fleeting grasp of fame and fortune."

"But... our deal--"

"--was valid. I was very clear on what I would give you and what I would take. I said I would take a soul. Not your soul."

The broker began to rise from its seat at the table, but the writer held up a hand. "Wait! What would it take to restore that ... that spark?"

"You have nothing of value to trade," the broker said coldly.

A hand grasped for the shadowy sleeves on the figure's arm. "My firstborn!"

A disappointed sigh. "Ah. Typical."

"Think!" The desperate man's thoughts were racing. "You want a soul? Think of the value of a soul, freshly born, so full of potential--"

"Potential is what you had, and you traded it away." A hand brushed off the fingers gripping its sleeve. "And I have no patience for a wailing, mewling thing that would need shelter and care and raising. Potential is worthless. Potential realized and fashioned into wonder-- that is worth trading."

The shadows began to draw back along with the figure as the lights in the room began to rise. "Fare thee well. I will overlook this pointless invitation once. If you dare call upon me again, do not waste my time."

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

Sureshot: A New Angle

You are a Villian who's a single parent of a son. Recently they started dating someone. When you arrived to their house, you notice how their parent is the hero you fight daily. Your son and date went outside for some alone time, leaving you and the hero some time to talk.

I kept my smile neutral, knowing that Pinnacle could see through it. Just like I could see through his, and I didn't need any meta-powered awareness to do that. Spend enough time in my line of work and you learn how to do a mean cold read on just about everyone. Helps get an angle on them. Besides, for Cal's sake, I couldn't kick off and put a blade through the man's face, despite my better instincts.

I could see that the other man was thinking the same thing. The subtle shift of his eyes toward Faith, the faintest twitch of his jaw, the hint of a grind in his teeth. I extended a hand toward him, and felt a little thrill at the little twitch he made as I did so. I introduced myself, using my real name. Not my trade name, not even the civilian identity that most of the files on me had. He took my hand cautiously, but his grim was firm. The barest hint of a squeeze that could crush my bones to powder, which I took without even a grimace. Pain was an old friend, you learn to tolerate it growing up in the neighborhood I did.

"Hale Langston," Pinnacle returned the introduction. "So you're Callum's father, huh?"

"Cal," my son and I said in unison. "Don't like being called Callum," he said, as I added, "His great-grandpa's name."

"Faith, why don't you go upstairs and finish getting ready," Pinnacle suggested. "Callum-- Cal-- could you go grab a fresh case of drinks from the basement for us? You've been here, you know where they're kept."

"Sounds like a great idea, leave Hale and I here a chance to chat, eh?" I clapped Cal on the shoulder and let him head off to the basement, with that uneasy glance that teenage children who are date have, when their parents meet for the first time. So far as they know.

I made a show of looking around the room as we were left by ourselves. A few awards and photographs on the wall. The military credentials of Captain Hale Langston, his graduation from the academy, pictures in front of his plane, hanging out with his comrades, the usual. Wedding photos, family portraits. The picture of Langston and a couple of other people in front of a hangar might just have been at any Air Force base, had I not recognized it as Hangar Four from Pendelson AFB, aka Fort Farsight, part of the Commission training program.

"Nice place," I remarked, and turned to find Pinnacle already in front of me, looming as only he could, eyes glowing with cosmic energies. A vein throbbed on his forehead.

"Sureshot." My name in the trade. His voice was low, but there was an echo of power beneath it as he hissed, "If you even think about harming my family--"

"Thinking ain't the same as doing," I retorted, and flicked my eyes downward. He looked down to see that I had one of my hard-light blades at his throat. He was tough, I'd seen him take a speeding semi truck to the face without a scratch. But my hard-light could penetrate that impervious skin. "And you know me, Pinnacle. I don't take suicide jobs. I do something like that, you'd turn me into a smear on the carpet."

His eyes narrowed, and the echo in his voice subsided slightly. "You do tend to keep to small-time jobs," he conceded, grumpily, but his eyes flared brighter. "Could be you're stepping up in the world. Trying to find an angle, yeah?"

"And put my family at risk?" I tilted my head, and raised my other hand, then let the blade at his throat wink out as I raised the other. "Faith doesn't know, does she?"

Pinnacle looked at my hands, eyeballed me again, then took a step backwards. "I think she suspects, but she's never asked, so I haven't told her. Does Cal?"

I shook my head. "Far as he and Mary know, I'm a defense contractor." Partially true. In my line of work, you take the jobs as they come, regardless of who's paying. I don't ask questions, much, and my clients know the limitations. No children, no one incapable of defending themselves. Minimal collateral damage. Not all of my clients had been criminals.

I added, "They've said they suspect I kill people for a living, but they won't ask outright. They don't want to know the details. She doesn't want her perception of me to change, and Cal doesn't want to have to answer questions if someone like you starts asking them."

We stood there, staring at one another. On one side, Pinnacle, the paragon of the Allied Heroes Commission, a metahuman with seemingly limitless strength and a spectrum of cosmic power, the man who'd ended the Xenari Invasion and who'd battled against some of the worst threats the world had ever seen. On the other, Sureshot, the "Meta-Killer" who had been the end of more than a few street-level heroes, the assassin who could find an angle to take down anyone, a hitman who took jobs from the highest bidder, including the Umbra.

"Don't try it," I warned him, seeing his anger starting to spark up again. "You know I can flare up fast, I can find the angle to stop you, and my shield can block your energies."

"I can burn through it," he pointed out. But as he said it, I saw a flicker of doubt-- no, of concern.

I nodded. "Sure, but you have to burn hot to do that, and that'd set the house on fire." I didn't need to add what might happen then. His family at risk. "And if you put my son in danger, you know I'll reciprocate. I have the angle for that." And I pointed my finger upstairs, where his daughter was getting ready.

He ground his teeth, but took a deep breath, visibly calming himself down. "Okay. Maybe this isn't some game of yours--"

"I don't play games," I spat. "I'm not some clown like the Giggler. Fercrissake, can we just stop? Cal's going to be back up in a second."

"...and Faith'll be back down soon," he sighed. He eyeballed me as he extended his hand again. "For tonight, at least, bygones?"

"Bygones," I agreed, clasping it.

"And maybe I put in a word with the Commission," he added, sotto voce, as Cal's footsteps came back up the stairs. "Get you some gig work with us, work off your criminal debt?"

"Not tonight," I said. I let my voice raise a little bit as my son came up with a case of sodas. "But hey, if you can get me work that won't mean I have to leave town so much, I might be all ears." I suspected Commission work wouldn't pay as well as the Umbra, but it might just keep me from facing the prospect of jailtime in the long run.

Because finding an angle isn't just about taking down a target, when you think about it. Sometimes it's about finding a way out.

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

The Name Broker

You sit down across from the Fae. "I'm here to buy a name."

I approached the table slowly. Despite the beams and strobes of the club, light did not seem to reach it, leaving the further half of the table in deep gloom. I could just make out the shape of a person reclining back in the booth seat, arms stretched back to the sides, head dangling over the back. Everything else was just vague, from the shape of the body, to the cut of the clothing. Even looking at the figure was difficult, and I could feel the pulse of the music and the draw of the dance behind me, trying to pull me away. Glamour. 

I stood firm, and the figure behind the table stirred. Even though that head hadn't lifted, I had drawn attention now. Anyone that can resist the effects of glamour usually holds some interest. I raised my voice over the din behind me. "Can I have a few minutes of your time?"

The figure gave something like a sigh and flicked some fingers dismissively. "No, you may not. I need all of the time I can get." The voice was a whisper, but quite audible despite the noise around me. It resonated with a tenebrous sibilance that set instincts off, but I kept down the urge to run away. Just another attempt of the glamour to drive me off.

I hadn't expected my opening gambit to work, so I rephrased my intent. "Ah, perhaps I misspoke. I meant to say, may I speak with you for a few minutes?"

There was a sound that might have been a chuckle, and the figure's head lifted. I could just make out the dual glint of eyes, above the gleam of a smile. "You have good manners." A roll of fingers and a gesture. "Pray, sit and speak." Or maybe it had said Prey.

I sat down at the table, resting my palms on it as I faced the figure opposite. "I'm here to buy a name."

The head cocked quizzically, arms shifting to drape across the back of the booth now. "Are you now? Such cheek. I guard my collection most jealously." Fingers curled and knuckles popped. There might have been the suggestion of claws on the ends.

"I am not asking you to give me one," I stated, more calmly than I felt. "I know there must be a trade in value."

A lip curled in disdain and claws flexed dangerously. "One name is not equal to another."

"Ah-h-h," I raised a finger, "then we're negotiating over value, as your statement implies a trade is sound in principle."

There was a stillness from across the table, the pinpricks of eyes almost flaring in a fury. Then arms slid off of the booth and two pale palms rested on the tabletop. There weren't any claws now, but the fingers seemed longer than they should be, maybe an extra knuckle in place. The figure leant forward, the equally pale lower half of a face emerging from the gloom, lips thin, a dark tongue flicking out to wet them briefly. This was a being that had prowled the periphery of mankind's awareness since time immemorial, since before even that. Those in the know knew well enough to tread carefully, as nothing lives that long without potent defenses. It had a Reputation.

"I know you, now." The voice affected a more modulated tone, less sibilant, less inhuman. It sounded amused, but there was a wariness behind it. It stood to reason, since I had amassed a Reputation of my own. "And what name do you seek to acquire?"

And I answered. The figure opposite went still again. "A dangerous one to know. For what purpose?"

"That," I shook my head, "is not germane to the negotiations, is it?"

A shake of the head in return. "It is, indeed, given the name in question. Answer the question before value may be discussed."

Names have power. Anyone who moves in these circles realizes this early, and takes steps to protect their own. As times passed, it's become more difficult for modern practitioners to do this, as technology progressed. If you know a being's name, it affords a means of power over that being. Demonologists and their ilk often tried to use it to compel various entities from across the realms, to varying degrees of success and failure, usually the latter.

The name I'd asked for was for something especially dangerous. Asking the purpose for knowing It wasn't unsurprising, considering what It was notorious for being. Less experienced practitioners than I had tried to conjure It, and while It hadn't gotten loose completely, dealing with those incidents took some doing.

So I explained the need. The figure on the other side of the table was silent. Fingers drummed thoughtfully. "The most valid of reasons," came the judgment. "We may discuss value. For this, I will require something nearly as equal."

I arched an eyebrow. "Nearly as?"

A shrug. "There is nothing in this plane of existence which could equal the value in question." Thin lips pulled back at the corners as the figure smiled. That is, teeth were being shown. More than you'd expect, and not shaped at all like you'd imagine. Gleaming, keen, and hungry. "I will, however, accept yours."

Now it was my turn to go still. "Mine?"

A nod. "A name with a history like yours? I think that could hold pride of place in my collection." Those pale hands lifted from the table and spread open. "What say you?"

Giving my name over would place me in thrall, until and unless the holder let it pass from the collection. Names have power. All that I am, all that I know, all that I have, in the control of a capricious, covetous creature such as this. The ramifications were unspeakable.

So were the stakes if I did not make the trade.

"Do I have your word that I may make use of the knowledge given to the purpose for which it is needed?"

The smile stretched wider. "Indeed. After that purpose is fulfilled, I will claim it immediately." One hand reached over the table. "Do we have an accord?"

"We have reached an agreement." The palm I grasped was colder than you might think, the strength of the grip stronger than words. I allowed a smile of my own. "We are agreed on the terms?"

"Indeed. The terms are most agreeable." The smile opposite had frozen slightly. I could almost swear a brow was furrowing.

I kept hold of the hand grasping mine. "Our bargain is struck, yes?"

"Yes..." The sibilance had crept back into the figure's voice. I got the impression of narrowing eyes. "What--"

I clasped the other's hand in both of mine. "Thrice spoken, thrice agreed, we are sworn, our deal is decreed."

"Wait!" The hand was snatched back sharply. "What trick is this?!"

"Exactly as spoken," I replied. "I have bought a name from you. You have agreed to take mine in exchange after I have used the purchased name for the purpose I need." I smiled. "You merely forgot to ask how it will be used. I intend to seal away the danger, but to do so will seal me away with it." I held my hand out expectantly. "I'll need that name from you now."

The shadows on the other side of the table darkened, and the teeth that showed in the mouth lengthened subtly. "Why should I part with it without equal value given!?"

"Thrice agreed," I intoned, and a choking noise came from the other side of the table. "To break your bargain will break your power," I chided. "You daren't risk it. Give me the name I paid for."

"I do not deal in credit." The voice was petulant now. "I want your name first."

"That wasn't the agreement. You cannot claim me until after I've finished. If you dare claim me by then." To do so would break the seal, and thus bring the horror along with me. And that facing down that kind of danger was something too risky to contemplate.

Faster than a snake, a pale hand lunged from the shadows and clasped my hand, claws curling under and into my palm. The figure leant forward into the light completely, inhumanly fine features twisted into a scowl. "Take the name, then, and be damned." And as the dreadful knowledge began to flood my mind, the Fae's coal black eyes glinted with something like respect. "A shame I won't be able to claim you properly for my collection. Most who bargain with me do not win."

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

The Mad Doctor of Silk Street

The one person none of the heroes or villains fucks with is known as "The Mad Doctor". he treats anyone who seeks his help, in exchange everyone turns a blind eye when he shows up to underprivileged neighborhoods to deliver free and technically illegal care. the new guy learns the hard way.

I put in work at the Silk Street Clinic on a regular basis. I didn't get any pay or recompense out of it. In part because it was part of the terms of my status, but mostly because I felt an obligation. I'd ended up the way I was because of neglect of care. Best thing I could do was make sure someone else didn't fall into The Life.

The clinic had its roster of healthcare providers, some of whom were a permanent fixture, some of whom rotated out from other, more well-to-do parts of the city. I was mostly a dogsbody, serving as an orderly more than anything. Fetching supplies, helping restrain thrashing patients, occasionally forcibly discharging troublemakers. I sympathized with a lot of them, sure. Some genuinely needed prescriptions for the drugs they were seeking-- the ones who needed meta blockers especially-- but sometimes they were just chasing a high, and they had to be shown the door.

Every so often, though, someone decided they wanted to flex. Try to intimidate the staff into giving them their pills or whatever. Didn't usually work, because that brought attention. Sometimes, my being there got them to back down. Sometimes, it didn't, but I usually didn't have to do much. The Allied Heroes Commission took an interest in clinics like Silk Street's, and even if the Commission didn't, we were right on the border of Neo Kobe, and the Umbra liked to make sure that we were left in peace.

But, as I said, every so often, someone thinks they see a hole in the hierarchy and tries to fill it.

The thug was into The Life far enough that he'd already moved past the 'bargain bin cosplay' stage of presentation, but that just meant he'd put a little effort into looking more fearsome. I could still see the shaky lines in his craftsmanship on the crude claw-mark design he'd put on his face-mask and vest. One eye bulged grotesquely, but not as grotesque as his left arm, which had swollen twice its usual size, the skin cracked and oozing a dark purple sludge. Spines had sprouted from some of the cracks, and his thumb and a couple of his fingers had elongated into vicious claws that glimmered with violet fire.

I knew how dangerous those claws were. He'd just ripped open one of the waiting patients with a swipe. Damn near tore my leg off too. It was all I could do to sit up against the wall, and I've had my share of painful experiences. Whatever energy this guy used just cut straight through my mental blocks I'd developed while coping with pain.

"Right! Now I've made my point," the brute snapped his claws together, causing some purple sparks to fly off. His voice was a mangled growl, words slurring together. "Unless you want more people to get hurt, bring me the stuff!" This was addressed to two of the doctors, Dr. Bill Travers, one of the regulars and one of the rotating specialists, I think her name was Something Patreski.

Dr. Patreski was nervous. "Bill, get him what he wants!" I tried to remember what I'd heard about her. I think she did a lot of concierge care for the rich pricks up in Old Cove Town. This was only her second time on rotation at Silk Street, but the first time something like this had happened.

But Doc Bill was keeping his calm, his hands raised. "I know how this works," he said, not to her, but to the brute. "Let me get you what you're asking for." He gestured to the phone, and got an impatient gesture from the brute. Bill picked up the handset, dialed a code, then spoke into it, his voice echoing over the tannoy. "Doctor Alcomb, we have a Code Silver. Doctor Alcomb, Code Silver in the practice."

Hearing this, I started chuckling, clutching my leg above the injury. "Well, that'll do it," I muttered to myself.

The brute-- what'd he call himself? Culling or something?-- glared at me, eye nearly bulging out of its socket, swollen and oozing. "What'd you say, old man!?"

I just shook my head. "Won't be long now," I assured him, smiling. Or at least showing my teeth.

Culling raised his claw in my direction, but Doc Bill raised his voice. "No need for that, now! We," he gestured at himself and Patreski, "don't have the code to open the cabinet where the meta blockers and high-end stuff is kept."

"Just show me where the cabinet is," Culling growled. "I can just rip my way in--"

He stopped, because he noticed the strange woman that had entered and crouched near me and the eviscerated patient. Rail-thin, her skin was so pale as to be nearly translucent, her colorless hair cropped short but still drifting about her head, caught in the smallest of air currents. She wore a set of red scrubs, but a much-stained white coat hung open over these. Her eyes glimmered like a fire opal as she took in the sight of the bloody mess in the lobby of the clinic.

She held a hand-carved wooden cane in one hand as she gently probed at my leg. I couldn't stop a hiss of pain from coming out. She raised her thin brows. "Greg Williams," she sighed. "If this is causing you actual pain, then it's more serious than it looks."

"Looks worse than it is," I grunted. "Think there's something in the claws. Not poison, just--"

She clicked her tongue and tapped the wound with the head of her cane. "Hush, now. I'll make sure you're taken care of." Without standing, she turned her eyes to the clinic staff. "Anyone else hurt?"

"No, Doctor Alcomb. Just Greg and--" Doc Bill paused, and looked to Petreski. "The other man was your patient." There was a note of reproach in his voice when she momentarily looked blank.

"Ned Michelson," Petreski supplied after a moment's thought. She hadn't had to refer to a chart or anything, which earned her a note of grudging respect from Bill.

The pale woman in the stained coat nodded. Then she finally turned her opalescent gaze to Culling. "And you?" She looked over his swollen arm, his eye. "Are you in pain?"

"I don't feel pain," the brute snarled, spittle flying as he loomed over her. "I cause it!"

She nodded once. "Hm. Quite." And with one fluid movement, she flipped her cane around, jabbing the head of it into the thug's thigh. I felt a sudden surge of energy in my leg, and my body lurched slightly as the nasty cut across my leg suddenly pulled itself shut, sinew and skin sealing back together without a scar.

At the same moment, Culling howled in agony as his leg suddenly burst open, spilling blood and purple ooze as he collapsed. And the grotesque transformation reverted itself, his arm dwindling back down to normal, his claws receding. Even his eye stopped bulging, though it still wept ooze. He clutched at his leg, bellowing in pain as she stood over him.

"I expect my clinics to be safe places," Dr. Alcomb's voice was cold, flat. "I don't ask questions about why or how someone got hurt or sick. I simply heal them. Everyone who comes to my clinics is expected to treat everyone in them with dignity and respect."

By this point, I'd gotten up and was quickly rifling through Culling's pockets. He tried to muster a protest, but I just slapped him on his injured leg to get him to shut up. Eventually, I stood up and addressed the albino woman. "Nope, no sign that he's with the Umbra. Or any of the other gangs. That means he's a rogue factor."

Dr. Alcomb nodded to me, then glanced toward a corner of the room. I followed her gaze, where a surprisingly nondescript man in a gray coat and hood stood, hands clasped behind his back. When he saw us, he gave a little bow of the head. "Doctor. I understand your clinic has had some trouble?"

She raised a finger, holding off a response, just as the door to the street opened, as a woman in a dark green hero's uniform alit on the sidewalk. A tech-tiara glittered on her forehead as she did a cursory sweep of the room. She clocked the body of the patient first, then myself, then the gray man in the corner, before she gave Culling and then Dr. Alcomb a look. "Doctor Alcomb. Do you require assistance?"

The doctor shook her head. "I believe the fight's gone out of this one," she lightly poked Culling in the chest with her cane. She bowed her head to both of them. "But I appreciate that the Umbra is so willing to step in to assist, Obscurus. Likewise, the Commission, Neura. Though both of your organizations were slow to respond."

"Deepest regrets, Doctor," Obscurus said with another bow. "We may have eyes everywhere, but word still only travels so quickly."

"As, indeed, with us," Neura agreed. "So many demands on our attention, only a few of us in the capacity to respond."

She paused. "May I ask as to what you intend to do with Sean Finney here?" This was evidently Culling's name.

Dr. Alcomb considered the wretched man. There was a disquieting gleam in her eye as she smiled at him. "I've wondered if I can transfer the pain and the wounds of a terminal patient-- indeed, a POST-terminal patient-- to someone." She looked from the thug to the body on the floor, then nodded her head. She tucked her cane under her arm and clapped her hands. "Prep the tables! I need two minimum, one for our patient and one for our subject here."

Still smiling, she turned to the other patients, who had been cringing back in the lobby, trying to avoid the brute's gaze and claw. "Ladies and gentlemen and other assorted gender assignations, I apologize for the trouble. Rest assured, I will be seeing to your care personally. But I understand if you feel this place is not safe. I can only apologize again, and promise this will not happen again."

Dr. Alcomb turned to the Umbra agent and the Commission hero. "I thank you for your offers of assistance, but I don't think I shall need it at this time. But I may require some assistance later. If only for..." She glanced at Culling. "...disposal."

Obscurus smiled. "I think that we can arrange to help there."

Neura made a face. "We'd prefer that he see the inside of a cell, at least for a little while." She gave Dr. Alcomb a look. "Please don't kill him."

Again, that mad smile. "You have my promise that he will not die while in my care. No matter how much he may wish for it."

[jay2k-writing-stuff]

Wildcard: Luck of the Draw

You are a reformed villain who was given a new identity to start over. The years have been hard, but you've managed to finally turn your life around. One day, a bunch of masked people break into your house and demand everything you have.

Dipping back into The Life is a challenge that one must fight every day. Because if you'll dip into it for a good reason, you'll soon find yourself doing it for a bad one.

It's easier for some people to leave The Life behind. Sometimes they have a solid support structure to help keep them level. Sometimes their powers might be easier to keep manageable. Sometimes they just might have the mental fortitude to keep themselves in check.

In my case, medication helped a great deal. Hell, getting help for my condition had been the main reason I'd been such a wild maniac to begin with. When you're dealing with a chronic condition, one that makes it difficult to lead an ordinary life, it wears on the mind. And I spent a long time broken, deep down. Not getting the help you needed breeds resentment, and that gets twisted up by a broken mind. And bad things happened.

But I've been getting better. It's a struggle, but it's manageable now. And I take it day by day.

And then this happened.

I had been asleep when they broke in. Two random thugs wearing balaclavas, packing heat. I noted that my place had been turned out, furniture strewn about, and quite a lot of damage to walls and floorboards. I was impressed that they hadn't woken me sooner, but I've always been a sound sleeper.

The nearest thug pressed the barrel of his gun to my temple. I pushed away the fog of slumber to focus. "Where's the stuff, old man?!"

"What stuff?" I asked, feigning sleepiness. But I could guess.

"The blockers! Where d'you keep the pills?"

I was right. It was a recent medical breakthrough, the only thing that really helped with my condition. I could never keep the names of all that stuff straight. Meta blockers was the more common name for it. It had been a boon to people like me, whose meta-gene caused problematic conditions.

And, of course, it could also be used for recreational purposes. Caught a high value on the street, if you asked the right people.

I feigned confusion as I tried to sit up. "Pills? What pills're you--"

The thug shoved me back into the bed. "Don't play dumb, old man!" He glanced toward his partner, jerking his head toward me in some kind of signal.

The other thug raised a phone and started reading off information. "Greg Williams. Ex-MP, Army. Discharged after injury. Recently started getting compensation for the injury, plus a prescription for meta blockers." He lowered the phone and pointed his own gun. "Tell us where you keep 'em!"

I sighed. I didn't question how they'd got their info. Anyone with the know-how could hack systems to find that sort of thing out. But they didn't actually know who I was.

I sat up again, this time brushing off the thug's attempts at making me lay back down. He just glared, but I ignored him, looking at the one with the phone. "You did some research. But not really enough." When they looked puzzled, I gestured to the phone. "Do me a favor, and look up the name 'Gabriel Winters.'"

Even through the balaclavas, I could see them mouthing the name, recognizing that it was familiar, but not knowing why. The one with the phone pointed meaningfully, and the nearer of the two pressed the gun to my temple again, but I was looking at the other one as they typed in the name and searched.

The look in his eyes as he read the top search, the trembling in his body as he dropped the phone and took a two-handed stance with his gun, the smell of sudden fear that he started exuding... these called to the wilder side of me, and it called back, as if to welcome me back into The Life.

But I held it down, still looking at the now-clued-in thug as I said, "Tell your boy who I am."

"W-Wildcard," he stammered. "W-we broke into Wildcard's house!"

Now the thug with the gun to my head reacted, and I could hear the tension in the spring in the gun as he started to squeeze the trigger. But in that same instant, I'd already grabbed his wrist and squeezed, pushing the gun away from my head. The boom of the gunshot went past me, just like the bullet did, and in the next instant, I was already out of bed, driving the thug into the wall, then up into the ceiling, where he went spread-eagle.

He remained there as I turned to the one who'd dropped the phone. "Speed, strength, telekinesis," I recited. "A lucky draw." I frowned. "Water-breathing, less useful. Super smell, too, but that's not exactly as good a power as you'd think."

He squeezed the trigger, but my telekinesis had locked up the gun, so the trigger wouldn't move. He flinched back as I closed the distance, grabbed the gun away, then hurled him back out of the bedroom. "Do you know, I never wanted to be branded a terrorist." He scrambled to his feet and tried to run, but a lamp flung itself into the side of his head, knocking him ass of teakettle. I folded my arms as I stood in the doorway. "But I was the unlucky one to come out of the Bright Spark Flash. Waking up every day with a new set of troubles, no one knew what was wrong with me."

The first thug tried to tackle me from behind, to use his greater size to his advantage, but I stepped back and ducked my head, flipping him over my shoulder and across the room. "Even after they worked out what the meta-gene was, and realized that my troubles were the result of it, they couldn't work out how to fix it. And by then, everyone was buzzing about the Allied Heroes Commission." I couldn't keep the old bitterness out of my voice. "All of their funding and attention went to these champions of virtue and paragons of power, they didn't care about some poor sick bastard like me."

The bigger thug got back up from where he'd hit the wall, and raised his gun, but then it came out of his hands and turned to point at him. The second gun came out of the bedroom and over to the second thug, and both kept their hands raised as I rambled on, "I won't deny, I took it poorly. I ruined my relationship with my family because of my hatred. And-- well, you both clearly know what happened from there."

They nodded. They knew. I'd learned how my meta-gene worked, through trial and error. Every time I woke up, I got a new set of powers. I learned how to tell what I got with each 'draw.' Learned how to use what I got. And just worked myself up into a wild frenzy. Then came the Proud Valley Incident, when I went on a rampage through the titular military base. Getting stopped by Commission hero Sergeant Stone. With my unhinged psyche and random power enhancements, they started calling me 'Wildcard.'

The public never knew what had happened to Wildcard after my last rampage. It had been almost fifteen years. The assumption had been that I'd been killed when Pinnacle had brought an old satellite down on my head. I'd just been thrown back in Howard Phillips Maximum Security, in the deepest hole they could find. And there I'd stayed, stewing in my own misery and hatred, until Neura had come to speak with me, to untangle my derangements and help me see reason.

Meta blockers had helped. Kept things level. Kept my head on straight. I don't know how the Commission swung it, to get me paroled, to get me the proper compensation I never received after the Bright Spark Flash, to set up the new identity and all that, so I could get back to something like a normal life. I had no illusions about how lucky I'd gotten.

Whereas these two idiots had been supremely unlucky that I'd forgotten to take my blockers yesterday.

"Here's what's going to happen." I kept the guns pointed at them. "I'm going to tie you both up, you're going to sit on the couch, and you're not going to move while I call the authorities. You're thinking it'll be the cops, but you're not that lucky. Because as soon as my address comes up in the system, they'll be sending along someone from the Commission."

I paused for effect. I couldn't really help it. I was tapping into the old sense of showmanship I'd developed over the years when I'd been Wildcard. When you dip back into The Life, it's hard to keep from falling into old habits. I gave them both a fierce glare. "But you idiots broke into my house. You wrecked the place, looking for my meds. Meds which keep me level. I do bad things when I don't take my meds. I could deal with you myself. Not bother with the Commission, maybe keep playing the hand I got dealt, remind people who the fuck I am."

I gave the both of them a smile. Or at least showed my teeth. "So. Which hand have I been dealt today, boys? Am I going to be merciful? Or am I gonna be the Wildcard?"