DVANDOM _____ ______ _____ _______ LOOSE ENDS Part 3 of ?? [ ]__ [ ] [] [ ]__)) [ ] ` [ ]__ #87 - "Xenon X-odus Angstvangelion" [ ] [ ] [] [ ] \\ [ ] [ ] copyright 1997 Dave Van Domelen [_] [_]__[] [_] \\ [_]___/ [_]____ -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [cover shows Kat lying in the wreckage of some sort of armored contraption. Her face is scarred and red, still smoking from some sort of energy discharge across it.] "Honey, I'm home!" Joe shouted as he entered the room. His voice was tinged with bitterness that crept through the mock joviality. "Yes, you are," Dirk said in the clipped, efficient way he had. "How bad is it?" he asked. "Pretty effin' bad," Joe snarled, making a show of slamming his hat onto the table before reabsorbing it into his body. "And worse than your worst-case projections, too. Every last iota of our support at the grass roots level has evaporated. Our bought lawmakers are mostly still bought, but they're reluctant to do too much for us. And there's even some rumblings in our syndicate ties that Coppermane's starting to think he owns himself again. About the only good news is that Queen Enterprises doesn't seem to be taking advantage of the situation, but no one I asked could say why. This was one hell of a depressing recon." Dirk paused as if lost in thought, although truth to tell, his moment of deep reflection really only lasted a few milliseconds. "I seem to have underestimated the power of drama in this timeframe, and overestimated the memory of the common citizen. The winds shift too rapidly here, what with invasions and crises happening every few months...the public has learned to ignore any middle-term influences." Joe shook his head. "It can't all be that. I say that whoever was really behind 'Acton Lord's' announcement [in Dvandom Force #84 - Ed.] is still at work, trying to dismantle what we have left. At this rate, we'll have nothing but what's in this base by the end of the month." Dirk tapped a finger on the desk idly. "Who would you propose? Perhaps Queen Enterprises isn't being as passive as they seem?" "No...I got far enough into their structure to tell that the corporate confusion was genuine. I think it's Dvandom Force." "Dvandom Force?" Dirk nearly cracked a smile. "All indications show they swallowed our red herring whole, they've been chasing ghosts and our failures since before the Acton Lord incident. There's no evidence to imply they have anything to do with our current troubles." "Dirk, there's a reason we've worked well together for so long," Joe got practically nose-to-nose with his partner. "You're logical, I'm intuitive. We cover for each other's blindspots. And I think we're in one of yours now. I think that Boxer has told Dvandom Force enough to know how we think, and they've been careful to do what *you* expect. I usually come across as the idiot, so Boxer probably doesn't think much of me...but I can feel it in what passes for my gut: Dvandom Force knows more than they're letting on." "What do you propose we do about it, then?" Dirk asked, standing so that Joe would have to back up. "Send everything we have at them in a surprise attack, crush them before they can erode our position any further!" Joe pounded his fist on the wall, cracking it slightly. Dirk shook his head slowly, his eyes half-lidded and a slight smirk crossing his features. "Doesn't that strike you as putting all our eggs in one basket?" "Better than letting the eggs be stolen." "And what if your hunch is wrong? Oh, an irritant will have been removed, but our hand will be exposed, and if Dvandom Force is not behind this, we'll be in an even worse position than before. Sending our entire loyal force is not a viable option." Joe's face fell. "So, you're saying you think I'm wrong." "Not...exactly. Just not right enough to risk it all. Fortunately, I think I have another option." "Oh?" "Send a single powerful agent to destroy them." Joe looked skeptical. "Who? Coppermane failed in a solo attack before we enhanced him, and he was about as sneaky as we could get. I'm sure they're more ready for stealth...and I don't think anyone short of the two of us is powerful enough to beat their current roster in a contest of brute force?" "Not currently," Dirk held up a finger to punctuate his statement. "But while you were out gathering intelligence, I was working on a way to push the transformation of our operatives to a higher level. It will make them completely inhuman, so only a select few of our Centurions are suitable for the process, but in theory we could have a number of operatives with power to shake the heavens themselves." Joe caught the drift, and interrupted, "And what better field test for the prototype than to eliminate a nuisance...all the more so if they turn out to be more than just a nuisance." "Exactly," Dirk nodded, and the two grinned. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- "Power up to 30%, any readings?" Dr. Zwarghoff called out from the control booth. Although to call it a control booth would be to imply it was part of an integrated manufacturing center, which it was not. Actually, it was a van parked at the top of a small quarry at the edge of the King estate. Floodlights lit the interior of the gravel pit, and camoflage netting covered the opening so it wouldn't be blatantly visible from the air. From her position clinging to the surface of a giant green robot, Kat called back, "Still no cognitive response!" Then she turned to check the soundness of the straps holding her to the robot's side, not wanting to be thrown if the creation were to stir suddenly. "Go to forty!" "Forty percent confirmed." "Still nothing...maybe it needs a pilot inside to function at all, or maybe we didn't copy the MAC over correc...YAH!" Kat cried out as the angular robot lurched up into a sitting position, the top of its long head barely clearing the camoflage netting. Kat swung from its side, her jumpsuit's force field flaring into life as it protected her from the impacts while she bounced back and forth. There was a pause and an eerie silence, broken by a heartwrenching wail of despair from the robot. Then the whole world seemed to shake as the robot repeatedly smashed its head against the quarry wall, as if trying to committ suicide but not quite sure how to go about it. "CUT POWER! CUT POWER!" Kat screamed, slamming back and forth with each tremendous beat of the robot's head against the rock face. "I did! The reserves have to run out! Cut the tether, Kat!" Zwarghoff shouted back, trying to be heard over the relentless pounding. Kat paused, trying to time the swings while avoiding being crushed between sliding plates on the behemoth's body. Then, at just the right moment, she activated the force claws on her battlesuit and sliced the tether connecting her to the robot. She flew lazily through the air, like a softball pitched to a child, before striking the far wall of the quarry and sliding down in a battered heap. Feeling like one big bruise, Kat stood shakily, only to see the robot slump to the ground, its power exhausted. The spot she'd been strapped to hit the ground particularly hard. "And that, Dr. Zwarghoff, is an example of MAC psychosis caused by an error in the algorithm," Kat gasped, her voice a little hoarse from screaming and her vision slightly tinged with red. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- "So, who have you chosen for the first test subject?" Joe asked as he followed Dirk deep into the hidden base. "Mandrake might be a good idea. He'd welcome the chance for more power, and we need to get rid of him someday." Dirk shook his head. "Never depend on the failure of your allies, it can be more dangerous than depending on the stupidity of your enemies. Mandrake, if necessary, will be dealt with independently. I would rather risk the death of one loyal subordinate than risk the creation of a rival more powerful than I am, that's been the philosophy of the Centurions from day one. "The pool of candidates was small, troublingly so, but should suffice for now. I've allowed myself a touch of irony in my choice of the first subject from that pool, Seth Godwin. His current ability is to extend his arms and legs as tendrils of steel, I hope to push that ability to the logical extreme." "Wait," Joe said as they entered the observation room. "What irony?" "Biblical. If you see our master DeFacto as God, then we are his first creation, Adam. And our 'son' would be Seth," Dirk replied. "Does that make kitty-Kat into Eve?" Joe smiled. Dirk sighed. "Not really, although if you must stretch the metaphor, I suppose she could take the role of Lilith, the first temptress. Strictly speaking, of course, she helped create DeFacto, so perhaps she's Mary. But now we're mixing Old and New Testament, and the metaphor's losing just about every shred of meaning, so let's just drop it." Joe said nothing, just smiled in a way that said "gotcha." Dirk sighed. "If you'll look at the monitor, you'll see that Seth has been placed in the transformation chamber. It's forcefielded against nanomachines as a precaution, although this method doesn't involve injection of additional nanos." "Say, isn't that an awfully big room for just one human-sized chamber?" Joe asked, noting the relative emptiness of the lab in which the coffin-like chamber sat. "Not if it works," Dirk said, initiating the process.... -------]==+ <*> +==[------- Time passed. How much, exactly, is neither important nor easily determined, although it's safe to say the period was more than a day and less than several months. The season changed from fall to early winter, but that could have just been because of a front moving in. Suffice to say, nothing worth relating at this moment happened during the passage of this particular chunk of time, although it's always possible something important happened and you won't find out about it for a while. Plans moved forwards reasonably well, devices were tinkered with, information gathered, continuity-buffering slammed roughly into place. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- A light dusting of snow was starting to cover the fields and hills of Northern Illi.net (which, by the way, is pronounced just like Illinois, since the "t" is silent and the "e" is being snarky). The fields were mostly bare of crops, the harvest having been brought in successfully for another year, and the sparse trees offered little cover for anyone trying to move through the gently rolling hills. Fortunately, the low population density made cover redundant...if there's no one to see you, you need not worry about being hard to see. And thus did what seemed like a small lake of metal flow across the countryside, heading south with a purpose. Every so often it would arc rapidly over a roadway, getting out of sight over a hill as quickly as possible. If you had been...lucky...enough to be on the road when it did this, you might have seen a mass of metallic tentacles swarm over the road, carrying what seemed to be a random collection of metal rods and plates. You might also have been smashed into an unrecognizable mass by the tentacles, your car shredded for components and your body devoured by the hungry steel tendrils. Definitely an afternoon to stay off the roads. Eventually, the houses started to get even sparser, with the inhabited houses being rarer still, as if there was an ongoing exodus from this part of the county. If the mass of ropy silver had any coherent thoughts beyond the imperatives of its mission, it might have pondered the wisdom of those who once lived here. Its target had attracted attacks before, and the sort of people who could afford to live in this area generally knew how to tell which way the wind was blowing, getting out while the getting was good. This suited Seth, for that was still his name, just fine. His goal was to destroy net.heroes, not ruin the lives of normal folks. Did Seth still consider himself one of the "normal folks?" He certainly had when he was recruited out of that rally several months ago, but no one would mistake him for human these days. Maybe the festering fear and hatred of that which was different, feelings which had made him such a good recruit for the Century Pact, would one day cause him to turn his powers on himself, horrified at what he had become. But that day was not today. He had reached the edge of the King estate. The security system would pick him up as soon as he crossed the threshold regardless of what form he assumed, so there was no point in remaining incohate. The metal rods and plates started lifting into place like objects in a low-budget stop-motion film, carried by thin, strong tendrils which had once been Seth's fingers and toes. The mass of his limbs followed suit, coiling up around the skeletal framework and becoming rippling muscles which gleamed obscenely in the diffuse light of the cloudy afternoon, snow melting with a hissing sound as it touched the active tendrils. The plates covered some of this, but not all, resulting in a lopsided parody of a human, towering a spindly fifty meters of writhing cable and asymmetric plates. Seth started walking south. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- Dvandom Force is a smallish team, unlike, say, the LNH, which is a team so large that it can never be catalogued. Because of this, and because they're not in an area where someone can get particularly close before being detected, they don't have a regular "monitor duty" rotation like other net.hero teams. This fact goes a long way towards keeping the resignation level down. To make sure that *someone* notices it when the security system picks up something unpleasant, however, the security feed can tap into all television and computer monitors in the house, popping up a secondary screen window with the pertinent information. Normally, when watching television, Sidewinder would glance at the new window, see that the "menace" was a cow or stray cat, and hit the button on the remote to wipe the window out. Normally, he'd hardly skip a beat in his channel surfing. Normally, he wouldn't deliver a spit take that would cover the entire opposite wall with Mr. Paprika ("Now that's a MAN'S wallpaper stain!"). Normally, the security system wouldn't be showing him a fifty meter tall robot slouching towards him, though. After wiping off some of the Mr. Paprika and making sure he hadn't accidentally surfed onto Otaku No Channel [One of Manga Man's legal ventures - Ed.], Sidewinder ran to the window to see for himself. Sure enough, over the low trees that filled much of the property, a giant figure was visible. Sidewinder pressed down the panic button on the custom remote control, setting off the klaxons, and ran to the armory/garage to grab his battle harness. Squidman was already there, loading modular weapons onto his Squidmobile's racks. "Looks like our grace period ran out, Sidewinder," the Deepsea Detective said. "I've already notified Kat and Zwarghoff, they're going to try to get the prototype Atlas here, but we're going to have to hold it off unless we want to become homeless." "Where's the others?" Sidewinder asked, pulling on the GIF-generation armor harness and fastening the buckles. "Shopping. Shane volunteered to go with Anna to help keep VAXX from causing any accidental damage, Doug's either visiting his aunt or still shopping for her Christmas present. I think Stan's putting in some token board meeting appearance, and Kid Pocky's helping out with the Atlas," Squidman finished, slamming shut the weapons bay cover. "Looks like it's just us old hands, then...kinda like the Cosmic Plot Device Caper," Sidewinder smirked, powering up his armor with the whirring chirp of a modem connection. "Yeah, but Killfile never had anything that big," Squidman frowned as he got into the Squidmobile and remotely opened the bay doors. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- Perhaps Seth felt annoyance when he saw the two net.heroes streak out of the house towards him, one in the air and one on the ground. His mission was to kill more than two net.heroes, and if they weren't all nearby, he might never find them all. The flying one approached, probably at quite a good clip, but lazily slow to Seth's computerized perceptions. Small filaments shot out of the arms of the flying one and wrapped around Seth's torso. A numbness spread across Seth's body, and his torso began to unravel, as if it were no longer connected to his mind. The nuisance had become a serious threat, one to be dealt with. What might have been called a smile by someone several drinks into a major bender spread across Seth's face. Perhaps it might be considered an ironic smile, for Seth raised his arms and fired out tendrils of his own. They smashed into the flying net.hero's body, breaking through armor and robbing the man of consciousness. Part of Seth watched as the net.hero fell softly to the snow-covered ground, still alive. This was good...a hostage could help draw out any hidden net.heroes. And feeling was returning to Seth's torso, which was also good. Seth turned his attention to the small blue three-wheeled vehicle racing over the bumpy ground towards him. A small flight of missiles launched from a rack atop the vehicle, impacting almost harmlessly against the plates covering Seth's left thigh. He lashed out a tendril, and was more than slightly surprised to miss, the target bouncing to the right just in time to evade his attack. Then a large sphere emerged from the back of the vehicle with a "KRUMP!" sound. It landed at Seth's feet and a cold spray shot out from it in all directions...some sort of liquid N2 mine. Abetted by the moisture in the air and the coldness of the day, the freezing mists quickly encased Seth, numbing him more thoroughly than the flying net.hero's filaments had. The attacking vehicle backed off to what the driver no doubt thought was a safe distance, to wait for the results. That sickly smile crossed Seth's face again. He could easily shatter the ice, but his target was waiting too eagerly for this. Instead, he drove a part of himself down into the frozen earth, burrowing towards the blue annoyance. It backed up just before the tentacle erupted from the snow, as if the driver had some preternatural danger sense...or had installed sensors for every conceivable occasion. Either way, it was too little, too late, as Seth's extension slashed across the front of the vehicle, tearing off the front wheel and part of the engine. Wisely, the driver bailed out and started to run away. *Now* Seth would break the ice and round up the helpless net.heroes.... -------]==+ <*> +==[------- "They're being massacred," Kid Pocky noted with an odd detachment. "Someone has to take out the prototype and try to stop that thing." "The interface is still not where I would like it to be," Zwarghoff warned. "The pilot must be immersed in deep feelings of angst in order to synchronize with the drone personality, yet be in control enough to keep it from trying to suicide." "I'll pilot this...this Angstvangelion," Kat sighed, walking towards the ladder set up next to the giant green robot. "You've been watching Manga Man's cable network again, haven't you?" Kid Pocky asked, but the other two ignored him. As Kat strapped into the pilot's seat and sealed the hatch so that the cockpit could fill with anti-impact fluid, she reflected back on the last time she was an organic being piloting a robot. No, no problem being in a state of deep depression on her part.... * (flashback) * It was decades ago in Kat's life, and over a century in the future by other reckoning. But it was a future that the Looniverse would never see, a future whose divergence point had passed years ago in her home dimension. Humanity was, to put it bluntly, domesticated. Organics, or "Squishies" as they were called by the less sensitive, had stopped being the dominant race on Earth long before Kathryn Anders was born, supplanted by the RoboMACs, accidental creations of Artificial Intelligence research. The vast majority of humanity had been destroyed in the initial conflicts between the two factions which arose among the RoboMACs, and the remnants survived only under the protection of one of those factions, the Guardians. For most, it was a relatively idyllic life of art and philosophy, broken only by the occasional raids by MACE, the other faction, which had a rather extreme evolutionary viewpoint...not only did they insist on being the dominant species, they wanted to be the only intelligent species. It was like being a child for your entire life, doted on my loving, if somewhat imposing and distant, grandparents. No responsibilities. And that's what Kath, as she was then called, hated about it. Damn it, she wanted to be allowed to grow up, to be able to make her own choices, take on responsibility for her own life. Oh, she talked the whole "Humanity has to know it can matter" spiel when hanging around with others like her, but deep down she didn't really care if the rest of her race wanted to stay in the cradle until it slid into the grave...she wanted out *herself*. So it was that she came to be at the controls of a Robo she built herself, with the help of her friends, who were also piloting Robos. Each was as tall as the WarMACs which defended her living hometown of Chiplex, outfitted with heavy weapons and armor, and capable of transforming into what looked like abstract sculpture so that the Guardians wouldn't think her little band was doing something dangerous. "Jack, Josh, cut left...Waveform seems to be up to something in the backfield," Kath ordered into her comunit. A diversionary MACE strike on a floating research platform in Lake Michigan had drawn away most of the Guardian forces, and when the main attack on Chiplex had started, Kath's band of warriors saw its chance to prove the worth of their creations. The others followed Kath's orders quickly and effciently. She was leader not because of a great tactical skill...none of them had much experience in that area...but because her drive was so much stronger than anyone else's. She would have ended up leading no matter who had the job officially, so they let her have it. "Sal, Ray, keep your eyes on the skies, too much of the Guardian air cover went off on the wild goose chase," she added, then stopped short, surprised to see a sudden flurry of activity. Waveform was launching a number of small, almost human-sized, RoboMACs from a bay in his chest. They looked like datacubes, but quickly unfolded into humanoids, quadrupeds and birdlike creatures, streaking towards the five human creations. "Look out, Waveform's got a new toy!" Kath warned. "Ah, I can take this little birdie," Sal chuckled, firing his plasma cannon at the creature attacking him. It nimbly sideslipped the attack and plowed through the chest of Sal's Robo. Right through the fusion power plant housed there...they hadn't been able to use the safer neutrino sieves for fear of tipping their hands to the Guardians too soon. Sal's battleframe exploded in a fireball that lit the area with a reddish glow for several seconds afterwards. "Guys, don't underestimate..." Kath started to warn, but it was too late. Jack was trying to shake off a pair of mechanical animals, but one had peeled off the armor on his plasma cannon and detonated it internally. The armor held for a fraction of a second as the explosion ripped through the innards of the battleframe, then it vaporized like an eggshell with a handgrenade inside of it, the creatures thrown free but seemingly unharmed. Kath felt a pounding on her battleframe, and checked the lower sensors. A small humanoid was manically smashing away at her legs, and had already broken the forcefielded armor on one shin. Kath tried to sidestep and bring a weapon to bear, but the small MACEr was too fast for her. True, her control systems let her battleframe react at the speed of thought...but hers was organic, slow thought. Her opponent thought at the speed of light, at least when doing something as simple as fighting, and it was like trying to swat a fly...but the fly kept hitting like a sledgehammer. Kath gave up trying to directly hit the MACE attacker and cut loose a blast from her plasma cannon at the ground, churning it up and knocking the small Robo off his feet. Hopefully it would buy her some time.... Not enough. Before she could even complete the thought, her opponent was on his feet and emitting some kind of sonic disruption waves. She felt the feedback building in her cybernetic harness, and rushed to remove it before the power reached critical levels. Again, too late. Electricity arced from the helmet to the secondary control console, arcing through her face with the smell of charred flesh and burning insulation, and Kath lost consciousness.... * (end flashback) * Kat reached up and touched her face, where the scar had been for the last years of her first organic life. It was smooth and perfect, as the nanomachines had made it for her, but even after all these decades, she felt the scar. It had been the scar of a child who played too near the oven, and was placed back in the cradle afterwards. And now she was piloting into combat a Robo that wasn't her own body, for the first time since that day so long ago. Angst? Not a problem.... ============================================================================ Author's Notes: Certain scenes here are based on events of Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime and manga series where the main characters suffer about as much as my characters tend to, or even at the Paul Hardy level. Lots and lots of high density angst. A web search on the word "Evangelion" is likely to fill your buffer, if you're interested in knowing more. And it's long been established that real life anime and manga are available in the Looniverse, so Kat could know about Evangelion. Kat's flashback expands on a scene first presented in the Kopikat Special, which was meant as a complement to the Kopikat scenes in Pliable Lad Annual #1. Check out both in the archives. Newer readers may be confused by the reference to the Cosmic Plot Device Caper. This was the first LNH "story," written in a madcap way over the summer of 1992 and involving the first wave of LNHers, few of whom actually went on to write LNH after announcing who their characters were and maybe doing one story. Squidman (then Squid Boy) and Sidewinder are two of these CPDC characters who I now write, at the request of and with the blessing of their creators, David Goldfarb and Mark McConnell. I figure that since I don't do the ownership credits at the end of every issue, the least I can do is a gratuitous acknowledgement in the Author's Notes once in a while. }->