Once upon a time there was a guy by the nick of Griever. He liked fanfic. He played around with some ideas. He found one belonging to someone else which he liked. He put it up on a forum after random avatars were created. He mailed a question to the author. He never got a reply. He forgot it. He turned to other things. But it lingered. And something brought it out. And he scribbled. And he hemmed. And before the night was through he wrote *sweatdrops* 32KBs of stuff.
And lo, Griever was sheepish.
---
It was a day like any other.
In this new world.
The things. The people. The things that were also people.
The Fortress stood, its walls a mixture of masonry and technological tidbits added here and there.
It was huge.
It was the only cradle of civilization this far south on the island. Remote settlements aside, because they came and went, what with the sort of things that roamed the countryside.
Still, there was motion. Perhaps more than usual, if not as much as to stir the inevitably waiting scavengers that usually watched for tasty treats from within. Like lone travelers.
The Fortress had retained the name of the city it had been built on the ruins of.
And now, nearly a year after the Day when reality had taken a hike, London was getting ready. Subtly, underhandedly, and not arousing suspicion.
But getting ready nonetheless.
To receive the continent's refugees.
***
---
Brave New World
a short story in the Dragon Highway setting
by Griever.
Disclaimer: The Dragon Highway setting is property of Gregg Sharp. Or at least that's where I stole it from. Anything else isn't mine either.
---
***
The man had gone by many names.
He'd also gone as many curses.
Mindbender. Telepath. Brain-leech.
He preferred Katz.
There were others, but those seemed less important somehow.
This one was simple, to the point, and told people absolutely nothing about him.
He preferred it that way.
Gravel was displaced as someone landed next to him ...
"Out for a stroll?"
The voice was teasing, like a wisp of warmth running across his senses, and could be called the very definition of sultry ...
Which, while he was on topic, perfectly defined its owner.
That, and the fact that Millenia was a redhead.
The two appendages sprouting from her back gave away another important fact that should be noted about the individual.
Millenia was a demon.
Or, had been, initially.
Now, he wasn't sure what she was, and she wasn't telling. Or letting him peek. He tried not to, as a rule, but she had a mental discipline that was totally at odds with the freewheeling and sarcastic image she presented.
Nice legs, though.
The redheaded demoness smirked as if she'd heard the thought. She hadn't. Mind reading wasn't her ball of yarn.
Reading body language, however, very much was.
And it wasn't like he needed to hide his.
For most of the past year, she'd traveled with him.
For reasons she'd not disclosed.
He had ... suspicions, but didn't really want to confront her with them. You didn't point things like loneliness out to someone who could break you in half without trying very hard.
"I'm just taking in the sights," Katz replied. It was a lie.
It was perhaps the most obvious lie in the world, since the sights consisted nearly entirely of barren stretches of land that had been seared away to reveal possible hiding place of ... well, that was something that he wasn't comfortable thinking of.
The things that roamed this world ... Millenia in a rage was as placid as bored housewife who'd OD'd on Prozac in comparison.
Even as small as the outpost was, it was well guarded. Impromptu sand banks, a machinegun nest, soldiers sleeping in full gear. And that was only the obvious part of it.
They'd learned to. Oh, had they ever.
It was amazing that so much of the military had survived the Hiccup (although he tended to think of it as more of a Fuckup, capital and all) without much in the way of drastic changes.
Not that this was saying much.
In a world where, if what statistic reports there were were to be believed, only a tenth of the population survived, alongside the Others, there had been some redefinition of the way people thought on matters of numbers.
"You're not getting ... tired," his companion of more than six months asked, her voice still retaining that instinctive confidence, but also laced with ... trepidation. "Are you?"
It was an euphemism.
Many things were, in these days of miracle and wonder.
Miracle and wonder among them.
And even in the literal sense, being tired ... was not a good thing.
Not for someone like him.
It meant he might be just that moment too slow one time.
Which was all it took.
He looked at the sun. Rising. Golden rays on sky blue canvas ... painting the world red.
Metaphors.
Gods, he was thinking in metaphors.
He looked at her again, his eyes closing.
"Yeah."
Her own eyes widened in response, almost imperceptibly.
"But fuck, I'm too spiteful to let it keep me down."
Remembering the first time she'd heard that tone in his voice still had her suppress a shiver of remembrance.
The Ruin of Berlin had left traces on all of them. Some more profoundly than others.
Not that she was exempt.
***
Berlin, Event +6 day
... and in places, there was fire.
Smoke, rising in thick and billowing clouds, covered the sky in a thick shroud.
Or should that be the other way around?
The moments Post-Event had always been chronicled as the most frantic. The most frenzied.
People panicked.
Panicked people were easy prey.
The changes wrought were dramatic in some cases, seemingly understated in others, and nonexistent it most ...
Ironic, that after the first panic was past, some of those changed most drastically had been incarcerated.
Not that this was entirely without cause. The teenager who'd suddenly turned into a replica of the Human Torch and, as a result, killed more than twenty of his classmates was, sadly, not the exception.
That was then.
This was now.
It's somewhat amusing to see how fast things change.
The flames shot forward, their heat searing chitinous carapace as the beasts of nightmare come true shrieked their insectile scream.
Fire. Extreme cold. Extreme pressure. Force. Four vulnerabilities.
As guns unloaded and low caliber ammunition was found wanting, ricocheting from alien flanks and limbs, and the drones swarmed closer despite their Human Torch's flames being used to decimate their numbers, those suddenly seemed like awfully few.
In situations like this, one has the oddest of thoughts.
Katz wasn't afraid of the black things coming for him, snatching him, restraining him and using his body as an incubator for another of their get.
He was afraid his arms and ears would fall off.
Maybe it would have been better if they had. The ringing in his head would have stopped, then.
It was distracting.
So was juggling.
Which was, in a way, something he was currently doing.
Coming out of the F*ckup, as he'd dubbed it, hadn't changed him much.
Still basically the same height. Still the same eyes, hair. Still the same person. A little more fit and trim, but compared to some that was minor indeed.
He seemed to recover faster too, and this apparently extended to healing. The long gash on his leg that should have made him immobile, one he'd gotten 3 days ago on one of the barricades in the city center, was little more than a faint white line now. Had been, since a few hours after he'd gotten the injury. He'd been able to walk before that happened, though it had hurt like a bitch at the time.
Necessity.
With him, the changes appeared to have come from the inside. Freaky healing aside. He heard whispers. Sensed presences. The glows of human intellect, the flickers of beasts, the shadowy _goop_ that was the hive mind of the Griger Aliens swarm - disgusting, that.
As he could receive, he could send. He didn't want to know if he could do more. That had been enough to send him into a nice, cozy little cell, and have guns pointed at him whenever he moved.
A mean, dark, and altogether familiar part of him had wanted to see if he could just fry their minds and get the hell out of dodge.
The second day, he was released. And, due to a series of events that had been more a blur of unrelated faces, voices, and minds to the fatigued young man, he'd apparently been picked to lead a suicide squad.
A pyrokinetic who'd gone through the trauma of killing his friends not a few days ago, and was still mostly an emotionless husk.
Those few who'd volunteered ... either too brave or too insane to just turn tail and _run_ damnit! Something he felt he should be doing, oh, right about now.
Manji. Freakin' Blade of the Immortal hundred man slayer and pretty much unkillable Immortal. Why he was staying was a mystery, but Katz suspected it had something to do with the small echo he felt within the manslayer's mind. Like a long forgotten memory that still had grasp of the subconscious.
It was what had remained of the psyche that had been inhabiting the body before the F*ckup.
Some had changed more than others.
Case in point, the de-facto leader of the little war party.
It didn't really matter, at this point, whether or not he was Kent Allard or Lamont Cranston. Pulp or movie. Two silver, nickel plated automatics. Red scarf. Longcoat. Fedora. Hawk nose.
The Shadow knew evil. The Shadow, in some myths, was much more evil than it/he was 'good'.
Katz had been a bit of a fan. He'd cast misconceptions aside as soon as he saw and *felt* the man's presence.
Case in point.
The Shadow was kicking ass and not bothering with either taking names or looking for gum.
The MP5 rocked against Katz's shoulders, the pain a nonexistent thing to his mind right then.
He'd never fired a weapon before the Event. He hadn't known how.
Then he'd had an accident and, in a moment of stark terror, copied the memories and skills of one of the policemen present.
More than enough to tell him how to fire a submachinegun.
Not that he needed more at the moment.
He was the link. Allard, Cranston, whatever, may have been able to influence minds, but he couldn't do it with as much versatility as Katz could manage. And besides, in a fight, Katz saw no reason to fool himself that we was anything but the weakest link.
So he relayed. Coordinated. And feared that his ears would fall off from the noise and his arms from the near constant vibration of the gun's shell ...
Why were they here?
Simple.
It was a last attempt.
A final cry of defiance.
A rescue mission.
Shortly after the Event, Berlin had not been that changed.
Okay, other than the fact that there was now a dragon napping on top of the Brandenburger Tor. And nothing, not explosions, not fire, not ... well, anything they'd thrown at whatever was attacking at the moment, seemed to rouse it.
A few days later, and more than a few hundred weirdness points up the scale, things had gone apeshit.
And that was the polite phrasing.
Katz hadn't know what he was seeing and sensing, at first.
It only became obvious after the ESP-granted information had proved to be moot.
Aliens. Xenomorphs. Creatures forged from dream and drama, or was that nightmare and horror.
In the middle of a still crowded, if now less so, city.
There were things that could withstand them, yes ... but with the chaos, panic, and general mess?
That being a sidenote to getting those changed or called by the Event to help out in the first place.
An overwhelming number of these was so arrogant ...
Katz bitterly remarked that it had seemed so much more fun in the anime, and games, and book and ... *sigh* . Badasses without a cause, forced to fight despite protests, saving the day at the last second.
He found out first hand just how much of an asshole such a person can be when he'd been asked to translate between the local officer in charge and a man who could not have been anything but a mage.
Not that Katz could speak whatever it was the mage spoke. Telepathy, like his at least, was pretty much universal, if you adjusted for odd sentence structure and such that would occasionaly pop up.
When the mage heard they wanted his help he'd harrumphed, turned around, and walked through a dead ringer for a Dimension Door spell right out of D&D.
Thus it went.
Or rather, had gone.
Now they were following right on the heels of the Xenomorph foraging troupe that had snatched a fair few of the remnants in the rear section of the convoy that was supposed to lead them out of the city.
Towards what was still under discussion.
Being away from the hive was something of a selling point, though. The farther the better.
He could feel the mind glows of the people they were there for. Still there, intact, still not infected from the look of things.
Lucky, he'd have said. He didn't. He was too busy with mentally juggling chainsaws.
At least that was what this felt like. Guide them aside for a moment, Manji forward, cut those three down. Covering fire. Concussion into the left tunnel exit. The Shadow's instructions kept coming, and he kept relaying.
Then the glows split.
There was no time to wait. No time to waste. Manji and the Shadow took off in one direction, with the latter following his own sense of ... well, something certainly, and half the armed men trailing.
Katz had Torch fry anything we came across from the front, while liberal application of lead came the ones coming from the side tunnels away ...
It happened faster than Katz could see. The only thing, the first thing, he saw of the attack was Torch on the ground, burning still, and a spindly - more so than the others - Xenomorph pinning him to the ground. Unharmed by the heat, or seemingly so.
It took a glance to tell him what this was. Even as bullets bounced off.
Too thick hide.
Large, ridged crown instead of the elongated cylinder of a typical drone.
Praetorian.
Its second jaw shot out, and Torch somehow managed to slide to the side ... enough that it took a chunk out of his shoulder rather than his head.
It was instinct that had Katz reach out, take hold of the sludge of the Hive mind, and rip it away from the Guard of the Alien Queen.
It also left him swaying, blood flowing from eye-sockets and nostrils.
The next few moments were not something he remembered well, the pain in his head having increased nearly tenfold, and now hammering against his skull like a smith with too little time and too many commissions.
He remembered shaking off the fog of pain, the sensation receding, perhaps due to that healing factor he seemed to have developed.
He remembered Torch crying out in pain, clutching at where the beast had taken most of his shoulder down to bare bone.
Then crying fiery tears as he stood, shook, showing for the first time in the time Katz had known him a sliver of emotion.
It was an odd mix of determination and regret. And guilt.
The mind-reader's shouts fell on deaf ears as Torch hurled himself into a side tunnel, a trail of flame in his wake ...
His final moments were spent on drawing the Xenomorphs away.
Torch had been all of thirteen years of age.
They pushed on, Katz swaying as he forced himself to further exertion in keeping the Hive mind influence at a distance, in effect keeping the drones from coming closer as well.
... then they reached their goal.
The birthing chamber.
Normally, they would have been repulsed. Fleshy shells of the eggs that housed the first stage of Xenomoph development nearly covered the whole floorspace. The walls and ceiling were covered in ugly slush.
Bodies hung suspended from slush that had hardened into restrains of sorts, in a grotesque parody of crucifixion, some of them long gone - chests ripped open from the inside where the parasitic stage of Xenomorph development had ripped its way free.
Now? The only thing they felt was a numbness.
They moved methodically, Katz seeking out those still alive and uninfected, the others getting them down.
***
She stirred, her mind not quite working yet, but still recognizing the fact that she was on the verge of starvation ...
Reaching back, trying to find the most recent memory, had her reliving the spike of shock and utter ... isolation ... that had caused the tumble into unconsciousness.
In the years since her awakening, she'd never truly been alone. Even after her essence had been separated from her initial Host, forming its own body to inhibit.
Waking, she still felt that emptiness. But ... no. What was it that had awakened her, then?
There it was again, the brush against her mind, not filling the emptiness but still moving something that had been left behind ...
She coughed, sputtered, feeling something out of order with her body. The energies it had been made of moved to fight whatever it was.
From outside, it would have looked like an epileptic fit, ignoring the fact that those did not usually come complete with arcs of black lightning running across the affected person's body.
Eyes shot open, and in a final wretched heave, the muscles of her throat and gullet expelled the infection ...
***
Katz jerked to a stop, making two of the men now apparently under his command halt as well.
They were done, or so he'd thought. Find someone uninfected - and that was easy enough to determine for him since the condition affected the brain's workings, even if only by a slight margin - and direct the other to pull them out. Move on.
... save those who could be saved.
The thought that they were leaving so many behind ... he would have felt sick, if it weren't for the numbing cold in his mind. There'd be time for that later.
And then there was a spark, as one of the figures affixed to the wall he'd thought dead spluttered to life, shuddered ...
... his talent, already strained from keeping the Hive mind and its drones away, reacted violently to the sheer intensity of contact.
The only thing even a bit similar to it had been getting shocked by a live-wire during an attempt to dismantle a lamp back when he'd been young and stupid. Well, stupider.
Black lightning coursed through the figure, and it finally coughed out a ball of writhing, pink-grayish mucus that ...
It was instinct more than anything else that had Katz raise his weapon and perforate the still fetal stage Xenomorph with a quick burst.
A moment of stillness ... the figure struggled to get free.
"What're you standing around for? Cut whoever that is loose!" shouted Katz.
***
His senses returned to him, informing him that he was being carried on a stretcher. The bindings on his arms and legs were there, he surmised, less because someone was afraid of him becoming violent and more because at the pace whoever was carrying the stretcher was moving, falling off seemed a valid possibility.
"Awake, I see," the familiarly grating voice said from somewhere off to the side, and the presence was unmistakable even if his head felt as if it had been wrapped in multiple layer of cotton.
"Wishing I wasn't," Katz responded after a moment, managing to say that much through the pain. The mother of all migraines, a rock band drumming out a heavy bass beat on the inside of his skull, the ache radiating from the inside to the very surface of his skin.
His eyes felt as if they'd been charbroiled, his mouth tasted as if he'd taken a swig from a sewer - at least what he imagined it'd taste like, and boy, not a pretty mental image that - and he could swear that he was actually feeling his hair, from roots to tips.
It hurt too.
Through the haze that his eyes were slowly dealing with, he could tell the Shadow had dispersed with his scarf. The face underneath wasn't quite what he'd been expecting, not nearly as hard-lined and hawk nosed ... then he remembered that its owner was known to have some minor morphic talent in that regard.
"You nearly burned yourself out, kid," the trenchcoat and fedora wearing crime-fighter said. "It's a wonder your brain isn't mush right now. Though I'd imagine it feels like it."
"Funny, Lamont. Tell me another," Katz closed his eyes to keep them from the pain, at least, and leaned his head back onto the stretcher.
"You can call me that, if you wish," Lamont shrugged. The actual resemblance to Alec Baldwin, who'd played him in the film, was rather slight. "It's as true as any of the others."
"Did we get them out? I can't quite ... remember."
"Mostly. A few were lost." the response wasn't cold, it was just ... bland. A statement. Even in his state Katz could recognize a mask, and this was a damn good one. He used something similar most of the time. "Three men on your side, two on mine, and five civilians between us ... and the boy."
Katz searched what holed recollection of the escape he had. They'd cut the redheaded woman out of the cocoon, after she'd spat an underdeveloped chestbuster out, and he'd found her familiar in an odd way, but there was simply no time. The Xenomorphs had to be kept at bay ... but, not. Before that. Boy? Boy.
"Oh." the memory came to him. Making him wince. There was really nothing else that could be said. "Wrong way to get redemption."
He could almost feel Lamont's evaluating gaze, no, he did feel it. Whatever powers other than sheer skill the Shadow had, they had to do with the mind. His own skill in that direction let him feel something ... coldly evaluating slipping over the surface of his mindshields.
He didn't think for a moment that they'd be enough to keep this particular intruder out.
The tendril of ... whatever that had been ... withdrew a moment later. Lamont stood, turned, and walked faster, pulling away and pulling his scarf up again.
"We will talk later."
Katz thought this was just fine with him. He let his mind drift, feeling out the aches and pains that he'd inflicted on himself during the extraction ... and dozed. And healed.
***
He dreamed of sky. Blue. Perfect. All around him, with the fluffy white of cloud cover beneath, and the dark blue far, far above.
Wings beating, soaring, diving.
The ultimate form of freedom.
He dreamed of power.
And insanity.
He dreamed of being bound. He dreamed of sleeping. And dreamed of being. Just being. Without a cause other than that he'd pick for himself.
Of being freed ...
Of battles fought ...
Of fear, terror, and anger.
But also of more tender things.
Which was when he started paying attention, since he was fairly sure he'd never had dreams of that particular nature about a guy.
Freeze.
The world stopped, rewound, was examined as he unconsciously applied his will and talent, drawing things out.
Then he felt as if he'd ran into a brick wall, face first. Groggily, he fell back.
And woke.
It was not a rapid awakening. More one that came gradually, eyes blinking, hands unconsciously reaching out for something.
Running through something. Soft. Downy. Felt like cloud, if you could actually touch one ...
Katz's eyes focused, and he saw red.
Literally.
A brilliant fiery orange-red mane of hair, through which his fingers were apparently running, almost on their own accord.
It wasn't quite until his gaze met a pair of expressive chocolate brown eyes, set into a heart-shaped face, that his consciousness began to click into place.
It was ... he hesitated to think it for a second, but the thought surfaced on its own ... almost magical.
The voice was sultry by default ... but held a sharp edge that one could very easily cut himself on.
"Are you going to let go anytime soon, or are you looking forward to living your life out without fingers?" the eyes narrowed in irritation.
His consciousness decided to help him out a bit, sending the information 'Not a dream, this.' to him.
He blinked.
His hands froze, and slowly drew back.
His head wasn't in pain anymore, he noticed offhand, but that was put on the sideline when he started wondering where in the world he remembered seeing that face before.
A more recent memory, a bitter one, of the Hive came to the fore.
The woman that coughed up the Alien.
But even in that chaos she looked like someone he _should_ have known on sight ...
The motion from behind her back drew his attention.
Folded. Longish. A black that could have passed for deep purple in the right light.
The cascade of realizations that happened afterwards would have done a domino setting proud.
"M-Millenia?" he choked out, in disbelief. He should have known better, upon reexamination. Disbelief wasn't something that could be relied on in the new world.
"So, you _do_ know who I am," she started playfully. Then her features turned sharp. "Now explain why the hell you were rooting around in my mind, human!"
Katz gulped.
***
Kent Allard. Lamont Cranston. The Shadow. Yin Ko. And a dozen, maybe more, probably many more aliases he was known under.
He was pulp fiction. Or had been, before the Fuckup.
Now?
It was very hard to ignore the reality of the situation, since Lamont was sitting opposite of him, their eyes meeting, and minds pushing against one another.
They were ... different. Katz was rough, untrained, and learning on the fly. He adapted well. He had the occasional inspiring thought that let him get the upper hand ... for all of two seconds. The Shadow was better. The Shadow lived up to his name, since his mind was slippery as smoke, but could harden to tempered steel, nay, diamond in a matter of instants, when he wished.
It was frustrating, grueling, and tiring a regiment.
For Katz, certainly. As the only other member of their little refugee party who could play games with the mind of men and beasts, he was the obvious 'sparring partner' for Lamont. Or should that be, student?
Though Katz' impromptu teacher believed strongly in learning by doing.
That was only one way in which the younger ... well, in a way at least, man was being battered around.
He could take skills from minds, directly, if he could touch the person he wanted to 'read' and focus sufficiently. The incomplete bit of skill he had from one of the officers, regarding firearms, was soon replaced.
But that was just mental. Knowledge. A lot of skill came through muscle memory, and that he had to develop on his own.
Lamont was just as hard a taskmaster in this regard, taking ruthless advantage of Katz's unnatural recuperative powers.
'What am I, a frickin' Energizer Bunny?'
The moment of inattention was punished by a spike of pain spearing through his mind, having pierced past his shields.
"Focus." Lamont said. Or had he? Katz didn't think his lips had moved.
Still, he learned. Simply because he had too finely honed a survival instinct not to.
***
Tension was almost palpable.
The tent was large, but still filled to the brim, and the rain thumping a regular rhythm out on the thick surface only added to the oppressive atmosphere.
Berlin was a hundred miles behind them, and each of those miles had been fought for, tooth and nail. Or at least that was what it felt like.
Several buses, trucks, a few military transports ... and a surprising number of survivors.
Several of them no longer what they'd been before. And several of them brought from elsewhere, or even outright created out of Gods Knew What by the Event.
The debate going on was ... ugly.
At least, Katz had the urge to retch. His shields were up and he still caught stray emotions - proving that he had some minor empathic talent as well, and that it was almost more troublesome than telepathy had been.
Beside him, Millenia looked like she was contemplating tearing several people apart, just for the heck of it. He couldn't read her. Never had been able to, even when she'd told him to try once, a few days prior. That one occasion had been a singular event, it seemed. Still, they had managed to forge a sort of friendship in the overwhelming madness that the world had been thrown into. If only because he seemed to be one of the few people who respected her nature and temper without giving into irrationally prejudiced fear.
Lamont, sitting a few meters off, was calm. Collected. And coldly furious.
Manji was pretty much indifferent. The immortal ronin had stuck by them simply because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Sometimes, Katz envied his ability to keep unconcerned about events.
"... aren't real!" was the end of the latest tirade. The man was frantic, and you didn't need to be a mind reader or apt at interpreting body language to be able to tell. One look at his eyes told the tale just as surely.
Now that the most immediate danger was seemingly past ... since for some reason the Hive had not sent anything save a few drones during the first night after them ... other concerns were being addressed.
Or, as Katz thought of them, Hirngespinnste.
Phantoms of the mind.
The Event had called the Xenomorphs to life, as well as other things ... did that make those created during it real? Or merely monsters waiting to strike, no matter the openly stated intentions.
He'd shared his thoughts about the important thing - why the Xenomorphs had left them to their devices, with Lamont and the others. The speculation had come to a surprisingly and disturbingly unified conclusion. They didn't think we were a direct and immediate threat.
Meaning there was something still behind them that the Hive was afraid of. Or at least concerned about.
And who knew what was beyond the horizon they were heading for ...
No, the danger was by no means past.
It was so tempting. So damnably tempting to just let go, crash into the minds of those stuck up assholes, and simply ... break them.
Katz shook his head, nodding when he caught a look from Lamont. If anyone, Yin Ko was very familiar with the temptations of power.
The Shadow knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men very well.
Katz had suspected. Now he was taking his first steps on the way to learning.
Calm was important. What he remembered of his life, pre-Fuckup, told him he was very much a follower of this philosophy.
Common sense told him he needed to vent, or there would be casualties.
He took a deep breath. He exhaled. He cracked his neck, a mannerism that had remained with him even then ...
Later, he would be hard pressed to remember what he'd said. The words were just ... flowing. He'd never been a good orator, but anger took care of any vestiges of hesitation.
Amazingly ... he'd found himself playing them. Using their emotions as buttons, molding them with nothing but words ...
Why did he have the feeling that this was, in part, one of Lamont's tests after he was done?
In the hushed quiet, he turned and walked out. The people didn't need to look at the face of the person who'd just thrown all of their pettiness and fear in their faces, laying them bare.
Millenia's laughter could be heard, echoing through the night and rain ...
***
Normandy.
Present Day. Present Time.
France had been ... difficult. Paris had become a city besieged from within and without, and they'd gone against better judgment and given aid.
More refugees.
Some strays picked up from the countryside.
Other post-Event empowered joining them. Among other, more odd characters.
A melange of humanity, in the true meaning of the world, not merely the biological one, had poured Westwards and Northwards.
London was safe. At least, as safe as possible now. Perhaps the only safer places were Rome and the Vatican, New York, Toronto, and Tokyo. Those they'd heard about, anyway.
Now, standing on the shores of Normandy, looking towards the sea ...
Katz exhaled. And felt something he'd not dared to for a while now.
Hope.
Beside him, he felt the presence but not the mind. He smirked ... no. He smiled. For the first time in months, it wasn't mocking, or self-depreciating.
But he did feel tired ...
The roar from behind jolted him back to life.
And fear.
Turning before it had ended, he looked. And froze.
In the sky, wings spread majestically, a flight of dragons circled. Paused. And dove.
Right for the still moving convoy.
Wings unfolded beside him, as Millenia unfolded her own to take to the sky ...
He felt helpless, then. Nothing he could do.
Not against this.
He couldn't even get close enough, and even if he could ...
Introspection was broken by two things. Millenia's hands slipping underneath his arms, locking around his chest ... and the faint echo of ... something. Not _thought_ but rather a sense of motion. Something other than the attacking dragons he could now clearly sense the malice of ...
This roar was even more deafening, and Katz grasped Millenia's hands to keep them from taking off as he took in the sight ...
Large. Beyond large. Huge. And ugly.
But recognizable, even as plasma jets burned through atmosphere. The bays opened. The dropship released its cargo, before being overtaken by what Katz vaguely recognized as a pair of Phoenix Hawk Land Air Mechs straight out of Battletech.
As a pair of Vulture and Dire Wolf Battlemechs came down, jumpjets trailing small clouds of steam, already firing at the flight of dragons, Katz realized just what London had up their sleeve.
He looked to Millenia, who was still staring, since she'd never seen 'Mechs before, here at least, and hadn't been expecting to. Not that he had, but at least he was familiar with the origins.
"I think," he started, catching the demoness attention.
"That we need a vacation." they echoed one-another, wearing tired grins.
It looked like their ride was here.
END
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
And lo, Griever was sheepish.
---
It was a day like any other.
In this new world.
The things. The people. The things that were also people.
The Fortress stood, its walls a mixture of masonry and technological tidbits added here and there.
It was huge.
It was the only cradle of civilization this far south on the island. Remote settlements aside, because they came and went, what with the sort of things that roamed the countryside.
Still, there was motion. Perhaps more than usual, if not as much as to stir the inevitably waiting scavengers that usually watched for tasty treats from within. Like lone travelers.
The Fortress had retained the name of the city it had been built on the ruins of.
And now, nearly a year after the Day when reality had taken a hike, London was getting ready. Subtly, underhandedly, and not arousing suspicion.
But getting ready nonetheless.
To receive the continent's refugees.
***
---
Brave New World
a short story in the Dragon Highway setting
by Griever.
Disclaimer: The Dragon Highway setting is property of Gregg Sharp. Or at least that's where I stole it from. Anything else isn't mine either.
---
***
The man had gone by many names.
He'd also gone as many curses.
Mindbender. Telepath. Brain-leech.
He preferred Katz.
There were others, but those seemed less important somehow.
This one was simple, to the point, and told people absolutely nothing about him.
He preferred it that way.
Gravel was displaced as someone landed next to him ...
"Out for a stroll?"
The voice was teasing, like a wisp of warmth running across his senses, and could be called the very definition of sultry ...
Which, while he was on topic, perfectly defined its owner.
That, and the fact that Millenia was a redhead.
The two appendages sprouting from her back gave away another important fact that should be noted about the individual.
Millenia was a demon.
Or, had been, initially.
Now, he wasn't sure what she was, and she wasn't telling. Or letting him peek. He tried not to, as a rule, but she had a mental discipline that was totally at odds with the freewheeling and sarcastic image she presented.
Nice legs, though.
The redheaded demoness smirked as if she'd heard the thought. She hadn't. Mind reading wasn't her ball of yarn.
Reading body language, however, very much was.
And it wasn't like he needed to hide his.
For most of the past year, she'd traveled with him.
For reasons she'd not disclosed.
He had ... suspicions, but didn't really want to confront her with them. You didn't point things like loneliness out to someone who could break you in half without trying very hard.
"I'm just taking in the sights," Katz replied. It was a lie.
It was perhaps the most obvious lie in the world, since the sights consisted nearly entirely of barren stretches of land that had been seared away to reveal possible hiding place of ... well, that was something that he wasn't comfortable thinking of.
The things that roamed this world ... Millenia in a rage was as placid as bored housewife who'd OD'd on Prozac in comparison.
Even as small as the outpost was, it was well guarded. Impromptu sand banks, a machinegun nest, soldiers sleeping in full gear. And that was only the obvious part of it.
They'd learned to. Oh, had they ever.
It was amazing that so much of the military had survived the Hiccup (although he tended to think of it as more of a Fuckup, capital and all) without much in the way of drastic changes.
Not that this was saying much.
In a world where, if what statistic reports there were were to be believed, only a tenth of the population survived, alongside the Others, there had been some redefinition of the way people thought on matters of numbers.
"You're not getting ... tired," his companion of more than six months asked, her voice still retaining that instinctive confidence, but also laced with ... trepidation. "Are you?"
It was an euphemism.
Many things were, in these days of miracle and wonder.
Miracle and wonder among them.
And even in the literal sense, being tired ... was not a good thing.
Not for someone like him.
It meant he might be just that moment too slow one time.
Which was all it took.
He looked at the sun. Rising. Golden rays on sky blue canvas ... painting the world red.
Metaphors.
Gods, he was thinking in metaphors.
He looked at her again, his eyes closing.
"Yeah."
Her own eyes widened in response, almost imperceptibly.
"But fuck, I'm too spiteful to let it keep me down."
Remembering the first time she'd heard that tone in his voice still had her suppress a shiver of remembrance.
The Ruin of Berlin had left traces on all of them. Some more profoundly than others.
Not that she was exempt.
***
Berlin, Event +6 day
... and in places, there was fire.
Smoke, rising in thick and billowing clouds, covered the sky in a thick shroud.
Or should that be the other way around?
The moments Post-Event had always been chronicled as the most frantic. The most frenzied.
People panicked.
Panicked people were easy prey.
The changes wrought were dramatic in some cases, seemingly understated in others, and nonexistent it most ...
Ironic, that after the first panic was past, some of those changed most drastically had been incarcerated.
Not that this was entirely without cause. The teenager who'd suddenly turned into a replica of the Human Torch and, as a result, killed more than twenty of his classmates was, sadly, not the exception.
That was then.
This was now.
It's somewhat amusing to see how fast things change.
The flames shot forward, their heat searing chitinous carapace as the beasts of nightmare come true shrieked their insectile scream.
Fire. Extreme cold. Extreme pressure. Force. Four vulnerabilities.
As guns unloaded and low caliber ammunition was found wanting, ricocheting from alien flanks and limbs, and the drones swarmed closer despite their Human Torch's flames being used to decimate their numbers, those suddenly seemed like awfully few.
In situations like this, one has the oddest of thoughts.
Katz wasn't afraid of the black things coming for him, snatching him, restraining him and using his body as an incubator for another of their get.
He was afraid his arms and ears would fall off.
Maybe it would have been better if they had. The ringing in his head would have stopped, then.
It was distracting.
So was juggling.
Which was, in a way, something he was currently doing.
Coming out of the F*ckup, as he'd dubbed it, hadn't changed him much.
Still basically the same height. Still the same eyes, hair. Still the same person. A little more fit and trim, but compared to some that was minor indeed.
He seemed to recover faster too, and this apparently extended to healing. The long gash on his leg that should have made him immobile, one he'd gotten 3 days ago on one of the barricades in the city center, was little more than a faint white line now. Had been, since a few hours after he'd gotten the injury. He'd been able to walk before that happened, though it had hurt like a bitch at the time.
Necessity.
With him, the changes appeared to have come from the inside. Freaky healing aside. He heard whispers. Sensed presences. The glows of human intellect, the flickers of beasts, the shadowy _goop_ that was the hive mind of the Griger Aliens swarm - disgusting, that.
As he could receive, he could send. He didn't want to know if he could do more. That had been enough to send him into a nice, cozy little cell, and have guns pointed at him whenever he moved.
A mean, dark, and altogether familiar part of him had wanted to see if he could just fry their minds and get the hell out of dodge.
The second day, he was released. And, due to a series of events that had been more a blur of unrelated faces, voices, and minds to the fatigued young man, he'd apparently been picked to lead a suicide squad.
A pyrokinetic who'd gone through the trauma of killing his friends not a few days ago, and was still mostly an emotionless husk.
Those few who'd volunteered ... either too brave or too insane to just turn tail and _run_ damnit! Something he felt he should be doing, oh, right about now.
Manji. Freakin' Blade of the Immortal hundred man slayer and pretty much unkillable Immortal. Why he was staying was a mystery, but Katz suspected it had something to do with the small echo he felt within the manslayer's mind. Like a long forgotten memory that still had grasp of the subconscious.
It was what had remained of the psyche that had been inhabiting the body before the F*ckup.
Some had changed more than others.
Case in point, the de-facto leader of the little war party.
It didn't really matter, at this point, whether or not he was Kent Allard or Lamont Cranston. Pulp or movie. Two silver, nickel plated automatics. Red scarf. Longcoat. Fedora. Hawk nose.
The Shadow knew evil. The Shadow, in some myths, was much more evil than it/he was 'good'.
Katz had been a bit of a fan. He'd cast misconceptions aside as soon as he saw and *felt* the man's presence.
Case in point.
The Shadow was kicking ass and not bothering with either taking names or looking for gum.
The MP5 rocked against Katz's shoulders, the pain a nonexistent thing to his mind right then.
He'd never fired a weapon before the Event. He hadn't known how.
Then he'd had an accident and, in a moment of stark terror, copied the memories and skills of one of the policemen present.
More than enough to tell him how to fire a submachinegun.
Not that he needed more at the moment.
He was the link. Allard, Cranston, whatever, may have been able to influence minds, but he couldn't do it with as much versatility as Katz could manage. And besides, in a fight, Katz saw no reason to fool himself that we was anything but the weakest link.
So he relayed. Coordinated. And feared that his ears would fall off from the noise and his arms from the near constant vibration of the gun's shell ...
Why were they here?
Simple.
It was a last attempt.
A final cry of defiance.
A rescue mission.
Shortly after the Event, Berlin had not been that changed.
Okay, other than the fact that there was now a dragon napping on top of the Brandenburger Tor. And nothing, not explosions, not fire, not ... well, anything they'd thrown at whatever was attacking at the moment, seemed to rouse it.
A few days later, and more than a few hundred weirdness points up the scale, things had gone apeshit.
And that was the polite phrasing.
Katz hadn't know what he was seeing and sensing, at first.
It only became obvious after the ESP-granted information had proved to be moot.
Aliens. Xenomorphs. Creatures forged from dream and drama, or was that nightmare and horror.
In the middle of a still crowded, if now less so, city.
There were things that could withstand them, yes ... but with the chaos, panic, and general mess?
That being a sidenote to getting those changed or called by the Event to help out in the first place.
An overwhelming number of these was so arrogant ...
Katz bitterly remarked that it had seemed so much more fun in the anime, and games, and book and ... *sigh* . Badasses without a cause, forced to fight despite protests, saving the day at the last second.
He found out first hand just how much of an asshole such a person can be when he'd been asked to translate between the local officer in charge and a man who could not have been anything but a mage.
Not that Katz could speak whatever it was the mage spoke. Telepathy, like his at least, was pretty much universal, if you adjusted for odd sentence structure and such that would occasionaly pop up.
When the mage heard they wanted his help he'd harrumphed, turned around, and walked through a dead ringer for a Dimension Door spell right out of D&D.
Thus it went.
Or rather, had gone.
Now they were following right on the heels of the Xenomorph foraging troupe that had snatched a fair few of the remnants in the rear section of the convoy that was supposed to lead them out of the city.
Towards what was still under discussion.
Being away from the hive was something of a selling point, though. The farther the better.
He could feel the mind glows of the people they were there for. Still there, intact, still not infected from the look of things.
Lucky, he'd have said. He didn't. He was too busy with mentally juggling chainsaws.
At least that was what this felt like. Guide them aside for a moment, Manji forward, cut those three down. Covering fire. Concussion into the left tunnel exit. The Shadow's instructions kept coming, and he kept relaying.
Then the glows split.
There was no time to wait. No time to waste. Manji and the Shadow took off in one direction, with the latter following his own sense of ... well, something certainly, and half the armed men trailing.
Katz had Torch fry anything we came across from the front, while liberal application of lead came the ones coming from the side tunnels away ...
It happened faster than Katz could see. The only thing, the first thing, he saw of the attack was Torch on the ground, burning still, and a spindly - more so than the others - Xenomorph pinning him to the ground. Unharmed by the heat, or seemingly so.
It took a glance to tell him what this was. Even as bullets bounced off.
Too thick hide.
Large, ridged crown instead of the elongated cylinder of a typical drone.
Praetorian.
Its second jaw shot out, and Torch somehow managed to slide to the side ... enough that it took a chunk out of his shoulder rather than his head.
It was instinct that had Katz reach out, take hold of the sludge of the Hive mind, and rip it away from the Guard of the Alien Queen.
It also left him swaying, blood flowing from eye-sockets and nostrils.
The next few moments were not something he remembered well, the pain in his head having increased nearly tenfold, and now hammering against his skull like a smith with too little time and too many commissions.
He remembered shaking off the fog of pain, the sensation receding, perhaps due to that healing factor he seemed to have developed.
He remembered Torch crying out in pain, clutching at where the beast had taken most of his shoulder down to bare bone.
Then crying fiery tears as he stood, shook, showing for the first time in the time Katz had known him a sliver of emotion.
It was an odd mix of determination and regret. And guilt.
The mind-reader's shouts fell on deaf ears as Torch hurled himself into a side tunnel, a trail of flame in his wake ...
His final moments were spent on drawing the Xenomorphs away.
Torch had been all of thirteen years of age.
They pushed on, Katz swaying as he forced himself to further exertion in keeping the Hive mind influence at a distance, in effect keeping the drones from coming closer as well.
... then they reached their goal.
The birthing chamber.
Normally, they would have been repulsed. Fleshy shells of the eggs that housed the first stage of Xenomoph development nearly covered the whole floorspace. The walls and ceiling were covered in ugly slush.
Bodies hung suspended from slush that had hardened into restrains of sorts, in a grotesque parody of crucifixion, some of them long gone - chests ripped open from the inside where the parasitic stage of Xenomorph development had ripped its way free.
Now? The only thing they felt was a numbness.
They moved methodically, Katz seeking out those still alive and uninfected, the others getting them down.
***
She stirred, her mind not quite working yet, but still recognizing the fact that she was on the verge of starvation ...
Reaching back, trying to find the most recent memory, had her reliving the spike of shock and utter ... isolation ... that had caused the tumble into unconsciousness.
In the years since her awakening, she'd never truly been alone. Even after her essence had been separated from her initial Host, forming its own body to inhibit.
Waking, she still felt that emptiness. But ... no. What was it that had awakened her, then?
There it was again, the brush against her mind, not filling the emptiness but still moving something that had been left behind ...
She coughed, sputtered, feeling something out of order with her body. The energies it had been made of moved to fight whatever it was.
From outside, it would have looked like an epileptic fit, ignoring the fact that those did not usually come complete with arcs of black lightning running across the affected person's body.
Eyes shot open, and in a final wretched heave, the muscles of her throat and gullet expelled the infection ...
***
Katz jerked to a stop, making two of the men now apparently under his command halt as well.
They were done, or so he'd thought. Find someone uninfected - and that was easy enough to determine for him since the condition affected the brain's workings, even if only by a slight margin - and direct the other to pull them out. Move on.
... save those who could be saved.
The thought that they were leaving so many behind ... he would have felt sick, if it weren't for the numbing cold in his mind. There'd be time for that later.
And then there was a spark, as one of the figures affixed to the wall he'd thought dead spluttered to life, shuddered ...
... his talent, already strained from keeping the Hive mind and its drones away, reacted violently to the sheer intensity of contact.
The only thing even a bit similar to it had been getting shocked by a live-wire during an attempt to dismantle a lamp back when he'd been young and stupid. Well, stupider.
Black lightning coursed through the figure, and it finally coughed out a ball of writhing, pink-grayish mucus that ...
It was instinct more than anything else that had Katz raise his weapon and perforate the still fetal stage Xenomorph with a quick burst.
A moment of stillness ... the figure struggled to get free.
"What're you standing around for? Cut whoever that is loose!" shouted Katz.
***
His senses returned to him, informing him that he was being carried on a stretcher. The bindings on his arms and legs were there, he surmised, less because someone was afraid of him becoming violent and more because at the pace whoever was carrying the stretcher was moving, falling off seemed a valid possibility.
"Awake, I see," the familiarly grating voice said from somewhere off to the side, and the presence was unmistakable even if his head felt as if it had been wrapped in multiple layer of cotton.
"Wishing I wasn't," Katz responded after a moment, managing to say that much through the pain. The mother of all migraines, a rock band drumming out a heavy bass beat on the inside of his skull, the ache radiating from the inside to the very surface of his skin.
His eyes felt as if they'd been charbroiled, his mouth tasted as if he'd taken a swig from a sewer - at least what he imagined it'd taste like, and boy, not a pretty mental image that - and he could swear that he was actually feeling his hair, from roots to tips.
It hurt too.
Through the haze that his eyes were slowly dealing with, he could tell the Shadow had dispersed with his scarf. The face underneath wasn't quite what he'd been expecting, not nearly as hard-lined and hawk nosed ... then he remembered that its owner was known to have some minor morphic talent in that regard.
"You nearly burned yourself out, kid," the trenchcoat and fedora wearing crime-fighter said. "It's a wonder your brain isn't mush right now. Though I'd imagine it feels like it."
"Funny, Lamont. Tell me another," Katz closed his eyes to keep them from the pain, at least, and leaned his head back onto the stretcher.
"You can call me that, if you wish," Lamont shrugged. The actual resemblance to Alec Baldwin, who'd played him in the film, was rather slight. "It's as true as any of the others."
"Did we get them out? I can't quite ... remember."
"Mostly. A few were lost." the response wasn't cold, it was just ... bland. A statement. Even in his state Katz could recognize a mask, and this was a damn good one. He used something similar most of the time. "Three men on your side, two on mine, and five civilians between us ... and the boy."
Katz searched what holed recollection of the escape he had. They'd cut the redheaded woman out of the cocoon, after she'd spat an underdeveloped chestbuster out, and he'd found her familiar in an odd way, but there was simply no time. The Xenomorphs had to be kept at bay ... but, not. Before that. Boy? Boy.
"Oh." the memory came to him. Making him wince. There was really nothing else that could be said. "Wrong way to get redemption."
He could almost feel Lamont's evaluating gaze, no, he did feel it. Whatever powers other than sheer skill the Shadow had, they had to do with the mind. His own skill in that direction let him feel something ... coldly evaluating slipping over the surface of his mindshields.
He didn't think for a moment that they'd be enough to keep this particular intruder out.
The tendril of ... whatever that had been ... withdrew a moment later. Lamont stood, turned, and walked faster, pulling away and pulling his scarf up again.
"We will talk later."
Katz thought this was just fine with him. He let his mind drift, feeling out the aches and pains that he'd inflicted on himself during the extraction ... and dozed. And healed.
***
He dreamed of sky. Blue. Perfect. All around him, with the fluffy white of cloud cover beneath, and the dark blue far, far above.
Wings beating, soaring, diving.
The ultimate form of freedom.
He dreamed of power.
And insanity.
He dreamed of being bound. He dreamed of sleeping. And dreamed of being. Just being. Without a cause other than that he'd pick for himself.
Of being freed ...
Of battles fought ...
Of fear, terror, and anger.
But also of more tender things.
Which was when he started paying attention, since he was fairly sure he'd never had dreams of that particular nature about a guy.
Freeze.
The world stopped, rewound, was examined as he unconsciously applied his will and talent, drawing things out.
Then he felt as if he'd ran into a brick wall, face first. Groggily, he fell back.
And woke.
It was not a rapid awakening. More one that came gradually, eyes blinking, hands unconsciously reaching out for something.
Running through something. Soft. Downy. Felt like cloud, if you could actually touch one ...
Katz's eyes focused, and he saw red.
Literally.
A brilliant fiery orange-red mane of hair, through which his fingers were apparently running, almost on their own accord.
It wasn't quite until his gaze met a pair of expressive chocolate brown eyes, set into a heart-shaped face, that his consciousness began to click into place.
It was ... he hesitated to think it for a second, but the thought surfaced on its own ... almost magical.
The voice was sultry by default ... but held a sharp edge that one could very easily cut himself on.
"Are you going to let go anytime soon, or are you looking forward to living your life out without fingers?" the eyes narrowed in irritation.
His consciousness decided to help him out a bit, sending the information 'Not a dream, this.' to him.
He blinked.
His hands froze, and slowly drew back.
His head wasn't in pain anymore, he noticed offhand, but that was put on the sideline when he started wondering where in the world he remembered seeing that face before.
A more recent memory, a bitter one, of the Hive came to the fore.
The woman that coughed up the Alien.
But even in that chaos she looked like someone he _should_ have known on sight ...
The motion from behind her back drew his attention.
Folded. Longish. A black that could have passed for deep purple in the right light.
The cascade of realizations that happened afterwards would have done a domino setting proud.
"M-Millenia?" he choked out, in disbelief. He should have known better, upon reexamination. Disbelief wasn't something that could be relied on in the new world.
"So, you _do_ know who I am," she started playfully. Then her features turned sharp. "Now explain why the hell you were rooting around in my mind, human!"
Katz gulped.
***
Kent Allard. Lamont Cranston. The Shadow. Yin Ko. And a dozen, maybe more, probably many more aliases he was known under.
He was pulp fiction. Or had been, before the Fuckup.
Now?
It was very hard to ignore the reality of the situation, since Lamont was sitting opposite of him, their eyes meeting, and minds pushing against one another.
They were ... different. Katz was rough, untrained, and learning on the fly. He adapted well. He had the occasional inspiring thought that let him get the upper hand ... for all of two seconds. The Shadow was better. The Shadow lived up to his name, since his mind was slippery as smoke, but could harden to tempered steel, nay, diamond in a matter of instants, when he wished.
It was frustrating, grueling, and tiring a regiment.
For Katz, certainly. As the only other member of their little refugee party who could play games with the mind of men and beasts, he was the obvious 'sparring partner' for Lamont. Or should that be, student?
Though Katz' impromptu teacher believed strongly in learning by doing.
That was only one way in which the younger ... well, in a way at least, man was being battered around.
He could take skills from minds, directly, if he could touch the person he wanted to 'read' and focus sufficiently. The incomplete bit of skill he had from one of the officers, regarding firearms, was soon replaced.
But that was just mental. Knowledge. A lot of skill came through muscle memory, and that he had to develop on his own.
Lamont was just as hard a taskmaster in this regard, taking ruthless advantage of Katz's unnatural recuperative powers.
'What am I, a frickin' Energizer Bunny?'
The moment of inattention was punished by a spike of pain spearing through his mind, having pierced past his shields.
"Focus." Lamont said. Or had he? Katz didn't think his lips had moved.
Still, he learned. Simply because he had too finely honed a survival instinct not to.
***
Tension was almost palpable.
The tent was large, but still filled to the brim, and the rain thumping a regular rhythm out on the thick surface only added to the oppressive atmosphere.
Berlin was a hundred miles behind them, and each of those miles had been fought for, tooth and nail. Or at least that was what it felt like.
Several buses, trucks, a few military transports ... and a surprising number of survivors.
Several of them no longer what they'd been before. And several of them brought from elsewhere, or even outright created out of Gods Knew What by the Event.
The debate going on was ... ugly.
At least, Katz had the urge to retch. His shields were up and he still caught stray emotions - proving that he had some minor empathic talent as well, and that it was almost more troublesome than telepathy had been.
Beside him, Millenia looked like she was contemplating tearing several people apart, just for the heck of it. He couldn't read her. Never had been able to, even when she'd told him to try once, a few days prior. That one occasion had been a singular event, it seemed. Still, they had managed to forge a sort of friendship in the overwhelming madness that the world had been thrown into. If only because he seemed to be one of the few people who respected her nature and temper without giving into irrationally prejudiced fear.
Lamont, sitting a few meters off, was calm. Collected. And coldly furious.
Manji was pretty much indifferent. The immortal ronin had stuck by them simply because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Sometimes, Katz envied his ability to keep unconcerned about events.
"... aren't real!" was the end of the latest tirade. The man was frantic, and you didn't need to be a mind reader or apt at interpreting body language to be able to tell. One look at his eyes told the tale just as surely.
Now that the most immediate danger was seemingly past ... since for some reason the Hive had not sent anything save a few drones during the first night after them ... other concerns were being addressed.
Or, as Katz thought of them, Hirngespinnste.
Phantoms of the mind.
The Event had called the Xenomorphs to life, as well as other things ... did that make those created during it real? Or merely monsters waiting to strike, no matter the openly stated intentions.
He'd shared his thoughts about the important thing - why the Xenomorphs had left them to their devices, with Lamont and the others. The speculation had come to a surprisingly and disturbingly unified conclusion. They didn't think we were a direct and immediate threat.
Meaning there was something still behind them that the Hive was afraid of. Or at least concerned about.
And who knew what was beyond the horizon they were heading for ...
No, the danger was by no means past.
It was so tempting. So damnably tempting to just let go, crash into the minds of those stuck up assholes, and simply ... break them.
Katz shook his head, nodding when he caught a look from Lamont. If anyone, Yin Ko was very familiar with the temptations of power.
The Shadow knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men very well.
Katz had suspected. Now he was taking his first steps on the way to learning.
Calm was important. What he remembered of his life, pre-Fuckup, told him he was very much a follower of this philosophy.
Common sense told him he needed to vent, or there would be casualties.
He took a deep breath. He exhaled. He cracked his neck, a mannerism that had remained with him even then ...
Later, he would be hard pressed to remember what he'd said. The words were just ... flowing. He'd never been a good orator, but anger took care of any vestiges of hesitation.
Amazingly ... he'd found himself playing them. Using their emotions as buttons, molding them with nothing but words ...
Why did he have the feeling that this was, in part, one of Lamont's tests after he was done?
In the hushed quiet, he turned and walked out. The people didn't need to look at the face of the person who'd just thrown all of their pettiness and fear in their faces, laying them bare.
Millenia's laughter could be heard, echoing through the night and rain ...
***
Normandy.
Present Day. Present Time.
France had been ... difficult. Paris had become a city besieged from within and without, and they'd gone against better judgment and given aid.
More refugees.
Some strays picked up from the countryside.
Other post-Event empowered joining them. Among other, more odd characters.
A melange of humanity, in the true meaning of the world, not merely the biological one, had poured Westwards and Northwards.
London was safe. At least, as safe as possible now. Perhaps the only safer places were Rome and the Vatican, New York, Toronto, and Tokyo. Those they'd heard about, anyway.
Now, standing on the shores of Normandy, looking towards the sea ...
Katz exhaled. And felt something he'd not dared to for a while now.
Hope.
Beside him, he felt the presence but not the mind. He smirked ... no. He smiled. For the first time in months, it wasn't mocking, or self-depreciating.
But he did feel tired ...
The roar from behind jolted him back to life.
And fear.
Turning before it had ended, he looked. And froze.
In the sky, wings spread majestically, a flight of dragons circled. Paused. And dove.
Right for the still moving convoy.
Wings unfolded beside him, as Millenia unfolded her own to take to the sky ...
He felt helpless, then. Nothing he could do.
Not against this.
He couldn't even get close enough, and even if he could ...
Introspection was broken by two things. Millenia's hands slipping underneath his arms, locking around his chest ... and the faint echo of ... something. Not _thought_ but rather a sense of motion. Something other than the attacking dragons he could now clearly sense the malice of ...
This roar was even more deafening, and Katz grasped Millenia's hands to keep them from taking off as he took in the sight ...
Large. Beyond large. Huge. And ugly.
But recognizable, even as plasma jets burned through atmosphere. The bays opened. The dropship released its cargo, before being overtaken by what Katz vaguely recognized as a pair of Phoenix Hawk Land Air Mechs straight out of Battletech.
As a pair of Vulture and Dire Wolf Battlemechs came down, jumpjets trailing small clouds of steam, already firing at the flight of dragons, Katz realized just what London had up their sleeve.
He looked to Millenia, who was still staring, since she'd never seen 'Mechs before, here at least, and hadn't been expecting to. Not that he had, but at least he was familiar with the origins.
"I think," he started, catching the demoness attention.
"That we need a vacation." they echoed one-another, wearing tired grins.
It looked like their ride was here.
END
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
