Dreams of Demons, R

[Daughterof_Evil]

As many of you know, two months (or so) ago, I completed a very long story called Shadows of Angels. Right now I am giving you the sequel, Dreams of Demons. It will be violent, sordid, and very dark, which is the reason for the R rating. Here is a little description of the current theme so no one gets confused.

After the death of Bruno Mannheim, and the removal of Granny Goodness from Earth, the international crime organization Intergang fragmented according to beliefs and geography. An American terrorist named Geoffrey Mullen arose as leader of the North American sect of Intergang, bringing together the different strands of the criminal underworld. In doing so, he made an ally out of Lex Luthor, who provided supplies and arms for Intergang’s war for “revolution”.

X is an amnesiac cyborg experiment, knowing only of her life after being “reborn” at a LexCorp facility outside Metropolis. She becomes inextricably bound with Intergang when Luthor discovers her mysterious combat talents and gives her to Mullen as an assassin. X travels with North American Intergang across Britain, France, and eventually Germany in order to unseat the leading powers of German Intergang and expand Mullen’s international reach. Tortured, beaten, and drugged with steroids, X eventually escapes Intergang in a bloody coup.

The following is a list of characters to make things easier, since I will by no means require you to go back and read all of the forty episodes of the previous work. All but Professor Peterson and Dr. Vale are my property. The characters listed with an * means the character belongs to my close friend Tonbo Rosso. I’ll tell you now that though many of the characters or situations seem involved in the Superman universe, I deal wholly in the Batman world.

X: A young teenaged girl, a cyborg, and a combat slave to Intergang. During her time serving as a tortured terrorist and assassin, she begins to remember the shattered pieces of her former life, and recalls a mysterious alliance with Robin the Boy Wonder. These recovered memories drive her to escape from Intergang.

Prof. Christopher Peterson: Mentioned in the Superman episode “A Little Piece of Home” as the man responsible for giving Lois Lane a sample of kryptonite, Professor Peterson is a geologist who works for LexCorp. He befriends X and tries to steer her away from Intergang.

Dr. Emmett Vale: Mentioned in both the Superman comics and series as the man who created the cyborg Metallo, he is the doctor responsible for X’s metal body. Though his skills have improved with the alien cybernetics technique of the Shori Engel, he still has a lot to learn about human nature.

Geoffrey Mullen: A former American terrorist/assassin and now the leader of American Intergang. He was spurred into revolutionary feelings by the death of his wife and unborn son by a mysterious assassin trying to get to him.

Annaka Behm: Mullen’s right hand woman, his second in command, a former German sniper with a mysterious past.

Darby Whitacre: Mullen’s general and weapon’s manager; a Haitian-American lesbian. She replaced Mullen’s old weapon’s manager, Marilena Sylvermann, who was killed by German Intergang.

Nevig Lockhardt: An elderly Welsh man who runs both British Intergang and the dummy company that funnels money to Mullen. He is known most famously for his habits of impregnating women across the world to “harvest” his illegitimate children and train them to be assassins, like him. He works with Mullen to unseat the leader of German Intergang.

Dr. Ernest Sylvermann: An Israeli expatriate and physics professor who has given up both his country and religion for science. He became Nevig Lockhardt’s son-in-law after marrying Lockhardt’s illegitimate daughter Marilena. After Marilena’s death, Dr. Sylvermann joined Lockhardt in Intergang.

Brugnon La Touga: The estranged son of a wealthy French shipping family, Brugnon was stirred into the secret service after his mother’s mysterious death. When he began to investigate Intergang as a free agent, he enlisted his twenty-year-old sister Cerise to help in reconnaissance, but she was killed by Intergang when her secret was revealed. Now obsessed with avenging his sister, he aided X in her escape from Intergang, though she doesn’t know it.

Coquin: The nickname of an ambiguous person who is trying to overthrow Intergang. They are an incredibly good hacker, and work within Intergang itself as a member of the group. Brugnon La Touga often works for them, and his role in X’s escape was Coquin’s idea.

Hans Klirren: The leader of German Intergang. Little is known about him, only that he desires complete world domination.

*Hiramiaku: A genetically engineered assassin of Japanese-Indian descent. Stoic, fearless, and sometimes cold, she kidnapped X from Intergang in Paris just for the thrill of it. When Intergang caught up with her and defeated her in battle (until then thought to be impossible) she committed suicide.

*Saru: Hiramiaku’s adopted younger brother, a former Japanese circus performer. Sweet, kind, and utterly deadly, Saru in turn adopts X as his younger sister and does everything in his power to keep Intergang from getting her back. He fails, and devastated by Hiramiaku’s suicide, attempts suicide himself. He is only stopped by X.

*Memoria and Praevidare Khasekemwy: British twin girl and boy who reside in Gotham City. Though their exact origins are unknown, it is obvious they are somehow enhanced (genetically or cybernetically) to have excellent memories and almost unlimited brain power. Batman and Robin use them for information, though the twins are undoubtedly criminals.

Tech Notes

Metallo: The so-called hardest element on the planet, it makes up fifty-six percent of X’s body. Metallo is traditionally used for industrial tools and such, but LexCorp owns much of the world’s supply and the company uses it as it pleases.

Shori Engel: Left in the LexCorp databases by Brainiac, the Shori Engel is an alien bio-mechanical organism that supplements whatever it is introduced to. When infused with X’s body, it created an interesting flesh-metal effect, plating her bones in metallo and giving her bionic limbs a thin, flexible metallo skin.

Macchina: A super-steroid concocted of animal hormones, essential vitamins, and Venom that Intergang fed X in a steady supply.

Nanites: Mentioned in the Superman episode “Knight Time”, nanites are sub-cellular robots made through nanotechnology, or the manipulation of atoms to form microscopic agents. In X’s case, nanites “live” in her blood stream and heal any flesh injuries she acquires almost immediately.

[Daughterof_Evil]

This part includes mild violence and allusions towards debauchery. Hope you enjoy it.
***
(Part of the text has been destroyed by fire, water and smoke damage. The remains of the original are preserved here.) Progression so far in the Shori Engel has led to a great deal of hope with the treatment of Girl X. No reports of missing children have been filed, at least not any matching her description or what we’d think she would look like. The muscle layers are beginning to regenerate over the silicate and metal frame we’ve used to supplement the remains of her facial structure. Not much was left after her accident, just splinters and fragments; we had to completely remove her bottom jaw, fill it with steel dental replacement—(Here the manuscript is torn to obscure legibility.)

(Resumes legibility here.)…seems that the Shori Engel is beginning to coat her remaining bones in a fine, hard shell of metallo, using the atoms of the metal in its nanobionic fusion treat—(Water damage.)—burned beyond recognition, the cartilage is coming back steadily, and in some places the dermis and epidermis are beginning to form as well. At this rate, she should be back to normal in a few weeks, though her mental state is something to be question—(Page ends.)
***
The first page of the magazine special was just a big picture of Bruce, sitting on the edge of the hood of a gunmetal grey, two-seater sports car parked in the driveway. Behind him, Wayne Manor rose up on its cliff above the sea. Bruce was dressed in grey slacks and a black wool turtleneck, dark hair combed back in a shell over his head, one curl dangling over his forehead.

BRUCE WAYNE GOES CANDID, read the giant blue letters superimposed over the image. The much smaller caption said, Wayne posing with the newest addition to his collection of fine cars.

…Besides being a world-class philanthropist, Wayne believes that charity begins with home. Two years ago, he adopted Timothy Drake, a thirteen-year-old boy raised in the slums of downtown Gotham. When we dropped by, Tim, who is now nearly fifteen, was busy with his homework and couldn’t speak with us.

“ I’m so proud of him,” Wayne says, leading us around the stately art deco gardens surrounding the Manor. “ He came here without any knowledge of how to act or what to do, and just jumped right in without any inhibitions at all. He’s done a great job. His schoolwork has improved dramatically.”

Later, Wayne gives us the tour of the giant subterranean garage that houses his collection of fine automobiles. Each one is in mint condition, restored by Wayne himself or his trusted butler Alfred Pennyworth.

As open as he is, he becomes quiet when his first ward, Richard Grayson, is mentioned. As many of us remember, Bruce Wayne made headlines with his decision to adopt the orphaned young circus performer after his parents were killed during a performance.

“ Dick has…gone his own way,” Bruce explains eventually, taking a pleasant tone. “ It was necessary that he find his own path in the world. He knows I’m still very proud of him, of the way he turned out. He’s a good man…”

In the back of the same magazine, there was a five page spread on Lex Luthor’s newest technological innovation: the CX38 bionic prosthetic device. It was an arm made out of lightweight metals and heavy-duty plastic, covered with a complex layer of synthetic skin knit with sensory studs that allowed the user to actually feel sensations like hot, cold, wet, grainy. It was installed directly into the body using a scaffold-like device implanted around the prosthetic site to keep it in place. Then neural lines would be led to the brain with fiber-optic cabling, completing the circuit of tactile feeling.

…the first patient being a die-cast operator from West Virginia named Bernard Liebowitz, who lost his right arm in an accident eighteen years ago.

“ I was so excited when the LexCorp scientists chose me for the trial run,” he explains. “ And Mr. Luthor gave me a job at his company with full benefits so that the future of my family will be secure. You have no idea how good it feels to not have to go back to that die-casting plant.”

The President of the United States was the first one to congratulate Luthor on his success. It is a well known fact that during his campaign, the President had Luthor’s support after Luthor himself was taken out of the running. The two have been good friends ever since.

“ But there are many people to thank,” Luthor says modestly. “ My people in research and development, the amputees who volunteered for human trials. Dear Dr. Bradfield, a cybernetics physician and personal friend of mine who died of a brain hemorrhage a few days before FDA approval became public…”

“ Okay, let’s clear some stuff up,” Tim said steadfastly. “ One, I wasn’t doing my homework when that lady showed up. I was down here, doing research--“

“ Playing video games is more like it,” Alfred mentioned.

“ Can’t prove it,” the boy said quickly and calmly. “ Anyway, I was in the Batcave doing research. Two, Bruce was lying, my schoolwork is crap.”

A costumed Barbara stared at him bemusedly over her cup of tea. “ And?”

“ And…” Pause, “ I forgot my point with that one. But I was in the Batcave doing research while that woman was here. And I…”

The screen of the Batcomputer flickered. Both of them sat up in their chairs at once, staring at it. The report that was laid out on the monitor shuddered, then blinked into black.

“ My word,” he heard Alfred say.

“ That’s weird,” Tim said. “ A bug with the system?”

“ No,” Barbara sat her tea down. “ It’s safeguarded to correct itself if the system ever gets corrupted.”

“ So what is it?” the boy asked. The Batcomputer’s noxious glow had been the sole source of light in the Cave at most periods, so now there was nothing but a deep, satiny darkness that made simple white shapes out of Barbara’s masked face.

“ It’s being attacked,” she whispered.

“ A hacker?”

She nodded. The screen flicked back on, back exactly to the same report, only now the text had been replaced with something else.

I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE.
I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN PLACE.
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW.

SACRED JUSTICE MOVED MY ARCHITECT.
I WAS RAISED HERE BY DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE,
PRIMORDIAL LOVE AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT.

ONLY THOSE ELEMENTS TIME CANNOT WEAR
WERE MADE BEFORE ME, AND BEYOND TIME I STAND.
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.

Barbara swore and hit a few abort commands on the keyboard. “ If they’re in the computer, they can hack the security cameras that lead up to the Manor!”

Tim jumped up. “ Hit the switch! Pull the plugs! Do something!”

Alfred walked curtly over and tapped a panel on the side console of the massive machine. The screen blanked, then booted back up, bringing back the same open report, only now with its old text.

“ What was that!?” Tim cried.

“ ‘Mysteries cut into stone above a gate’,” Alfred replied.

“ What?”

“ Dante’s Inferno,” the butler explained. “ A warning scribed onto the Gate of Hell.”

“ Someone’s got a lovely sense of humor,” Barbara said, sitting down and running the security systems. They were all on red code, buttons blinking and tiny sirens going off. Somehow the intruder had worked their way around the systems just enough so they didn’t even detect their presence.

Tim sat on the side console and brought his sneakers up on the edge, wrapping his arms around his shins. “ Weird,” he repeated.
***
They opened up the back of the semi once they got past the Turkish border, sweeping through it with big metal flashlights. Boxes, mostly preserved rations meant to be sent to armies in Saudi Arabia and Iran. The first man who entered the back turned around, the beam of his light bounding across styrofoam crates.

A creak. “ You hear that?” he asked with a crusty French accent.

His companion snorted. He hated French. “ Didn’t hear nothing,” Probably Russian. The light coming in the back of the open semi drew craggy lines on his face; he was short and stocky, wearing a dusty denim jacket like a cowboy in an imported Western movie.

The first man stumbled over something in the back, falling face-first onto a floor littered with tiny foil packets.

“ Dammit,” he muttered, sitting up. The packages under him were ripped, crumpled, their contents missing or scattered in little freeze-dried balls on the floor. He reached out for the big metal flashlight, which had rolled three feet away.

That’s when he saw her, face caught in the orb of yellow light. Sharp features, short, spiky dark hair, eyes big with bags under them. Her eyes looked past him, through him, the eyes of an animal.

“ Vin-“ He barely got the name out. She jumped over him, in a single, solid move, then dodged past his partner at the door. There was a clink. And a flash. He could smell the gas filling the semi. He knew it was a thirty second fuse.

X was wandering placidly down the dirt road when the fuse was up. The semi swelled at first, then contracted, then just blew apart, flames and bits of metal licking up at the dark sky. She pulled the hood up over her face and continued on, towards the east, showing no emotion whatsoever.
***
There was a man on the sidewalk, one in a flannel jacket with dingy blonde hair and the seeking eyes of a john. His hands were shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched, all defensive moves. Perverted, but not a threat. Still, Robin had the unmistakable urge to string the guy up by his ankles, pull his pants down, and leave him there.

The man turned the corner, and Robin sighed, realizing it wasn’t his job to do that tonight. Besides, Batman had gotten angry with him the last time he’d done that. Batgirl was on the other side of the block, watching just as he was, and she wouldn’t appreciate it if he became distracted.

There was a crackle in his headset, the one Batgirl made him wear because of his absence of a cowl. “ Batgirl?” he asked.

Another crackle, but no answer. He set his teeth and scanned the street. It was still empty. A door closed a few blocks away, very loudly. Some shouting: obscenities, among other nasty words. He snickered to himself.

“ Something funny, chum?” came in very crisp through his headset.

He choked.

“ Ah, thinking of me,” the British boy cackled through the line. “ I tend to do that to particularly handsome men.”

“ What do you want!?” he snapped.

“ Well, other than the obvious,” He imagined Praevidare Khasekemwy rolling his white-iris eyes, tinkering with those ridiculous ruffly cuffs.

“ Get off this frequency! It’s for emergencies!” Robin found himself yelling. Super hero talking to himself on a rooftop.

“ Calm down, Boy Wonder,” came in Memoria’s clean, staid voice. Like her brother, she was British-accented, but far more stoic. Then, to Praevidare, “ Brother, he’s not into girls like you. Begone.”

Pouting, Praevidare replied, “ Fine, sister, ruin all our fun.” He was gone.

“ What’s wrong with you!?” Robin growled. “ I’m working here.”

“ I just got some new information yesterday about the type of woman you’re interested in,” she muttered sarcastically.

“ Huh?”

“ Really your kind of girl. Criminal record and everything…”

“ Spit it out,” He scanned the street again. Prostitute in neon green hot pants, black tank top, track sneakers, strolling up and down the street, looking like she was all of thirteen. She was wearing one of those backpacks made to look like a stuffed animal, a grimy teddy bear with its tongue sticking out obscenely.

“ Definitely not working with Intergang anymore. Solo. Last reports she was in Germany, but that didn’t last more than two weeks. Then she dropped off the map again, though some people in Turkey say they saw her. I doubt that was correct. God, I don’t want to hear Liam’s crap again,”

The prostitute sat down on a stoop, looking at her nails, which he saw through his binoculars were done in chipped pink polish.

“ I‘m not interested anymore,” he said, lowering the binoculars. “ So don’t contact me again.”

“ What?” she asked with mock interest. “ Boy Wonder giving up on the search for love?”

“ Shut up,” he grumbled. “ I don’t care anymore. So stop stalking me.”

“ Your wish,” she said. “ But don’t expect to find us easily the next time you need us.”

He was about to come back at her with a sharp quip, but a snap in his headset told him she had already left the frequency. Below, on the street, the john in the flannel jacket had come back, and was paused before the girl on the stoop. She looked at him disinterestedly, slinging the teddy bear backpack across her lap.

Robin was down to the sidewalk in a second, skidding down a rain-pipe anchored to the building-side. The john hit the cement on his side and submitted dully to being tied up.

“ This some kind of group foreplay thing?” he asked as his face was shoved into the concrete.

The girl swiped at Robin with her backpack. A teddy bear full of bricks hit him in the head.

“ You just cost me some money, punk!” she screeched. Hit him again, this time in the shoulder. He went down on his knees, covering his head. He didn’t want to hit a girl, especially a little girl, and it didn’t look like she could do too much damage. She was all skin and bones, up close.

“ Hey, I don’t think I wanna do this anymore,” the guy on the cement said.

The girl stopped, in a huff, and stepped back. She was Gotham City Pale, sort of grey-skinned, with limp brown hair up in a ponytail. Layers and layers of eye makeup to hide the rings around her eyeballs were you could see she hadn’t slept. She went over to the john and went through his pants pockets. He wriggled in appreciation, then screamed when she found his wallet and walked off with it.

Robin got to his feet and brushed himself off. Then looked up, noticed a smiling woman in the shadows.

“ Don’t even say it,” he commanded at her as Batgirl followed, laughing to herself.

[witness]

Here we go again! Glad to see it didn't take you too long to start on the sequel! Great start to what will probably be another awesome story. I cannot wait to read this. Please try not to take too long in between posts. I love your stories and can't get enough of them. Write more soon!

[Panther]

X is back! Yes!!!! Looks like we're in for yet another great story!

I love those Brit twins - why do I have a feeling Tim just burned a major bridge?

I'd forgotten about the partially destroyed medical report from the beginning of SoA. Very curious that its popped up again. And who could possibly have hacked into the batcomputer? Guess we'll just have to wait and see...

later,

[Sable Phoenix]

YES! I'm SO glad that you didn't wait too long for the sequel, DoE. Now I'll once again have something to check these boards for every week.

[The_NewCatwoman]

Excellent as always!

I really hope things work out for Tim this time with X

ever hopeful:

tNC

[Tonbo_Rosso]

Love it



You have a definite nack for blowing the cieling out in the first few paragraphs.

Keep it up great Daughter of the wich is evil.

Tonbo

[Daughterof_Evil]

witness: Thank you so much for saying you love my stories! That means so much to me! Are you ever going to get back into the writer's groove or are you currently working on it?

Sable Phoenix: My story!? Looking forward to it!? Now THAT gives me a reason to wake up in the morning.

Panther: Yeah, I had forgotten about the medical document, too, until I finally remembered it and put it into the beginning. Just for some continuity. And Tonbo is grateful you like her little British kiddies...I am very fond of them myself.

theNewCatwoman: Ever hopeful, huh? I guess you'll just have to wait and see!

Tonbo: The Devil herself! Thanks for the encouraging remarks, lovely.

And to everyone, I have to express sincere thanks for your comments and support. It might take me a while to get the second part out, so please hang on and don't try to find and torture me!

Thanks!

[witness]

Are you ever going to get back into the writer's groove or are you currently working on it?


As a matter of fact, I've been writing the sequel to Legacys. It is titled A Brother's Quarrel. I've posted seven chapters already and am currently working on the eighth. Looks like you've got some catching up to do! ;)

Patiently waiting for your next chapter as well.

[Daughterof_Evil]

Hey, everyone, just coming back to drop something off with you. Sorry it took me so long to post this part, technical difficulties absolutely forbade me from it. So here it is, all spiffy but not quite clean.

This part includes massive violence, perhaps some swearing. It might take me awhile to post the third part, so enjoy it for now. Thank you all for the lovely comments, and everyone go read witness's incredible story A Brother's Quarrel, which I just read and was blown away by. Thanks again!
***
The day was hot and dry, the earth and the sky melting together at the distant horizon to form one separate entity. Veils of mirage wound up from the sand as the all-terrain vehicle ground along, leaving in its wake a set of tracks that slightly resembled the pattern on a snake. She pulled her hood up. The sun was very bright.

The ATV she’d stolen from an outpost near the border, along with the two plastic containers of gas lashed to either side of it with electrical tape and the pair of aviation goggles she was now wearing. The wind wasn’t bad, it was just the sunlight. She must have spent longer than she’d thought at that Intergang facility, tucked underground, away from the light, because now her eyes were extra sensitive to it. She cleared one dune of solid yellow sand and saw the infinite stretch of the others beyond it.

She had no idea where she was going; she had already established that. East was all she knew, where the languages weren’t quite so strange and she could maybe find more out about herself. She remembered what her onii-sama had told her and held that close as a guiding star. The ATV went downhill slowly and gingerly.

A snap, and she ducked at the right moment. The wooden spike flew up out of the sand and lodged in her back gas tank, right where X’s head had been. The tart smell of petrol hissed into the air. She bounded off the seat as the explosion went off behind her, throwing her to the ground. The sand heaved up again, and X rolled to the side, another puji-stake stuck right where she had been. She struggled to her feet.

It was then that the sand began to melt, to mold itself up into a shape of a human. Beyond that, another person, dressed in black, yellow sand spilling off as they rose up. They had swords with thick, long blades curved like talons.

She pulled her own sword quickly, the metallo katana gleaming out in the sun. She had nearly forgotten how light it was, how agile to her touch. Behind her burned the carcass of the ATV. One of the plastic containers of gasoline went up with a pop and a shuddering boom.

The first man was the quickest to act. He jumped at her, feet not even touching the sand, and struck, hard. Hit again and again. X measured the vibrations of the strikes, and concluded that the sword, a scimitar, was made of stiff, hard steel mixed with something else, something like iron or zinc. She analyzed just where to hit, and did so with alarming accuracy.

The scimitar splintered down its length, up to the tang. Pieces of steel fell like shards of pure sunlight to the sand. X leapt forward and kicked the man in the chest, throwing him back onto the sand.

The second man, as if cued, jumped into action. He ran at her, swept for the stomach, but was blocked, then turned and swept for the head. She ducked and turned, kicking him in the kneecap. He wailed as it fractured into five separate parts. She completed the turn in a perfect arc, lopping off his head at the last second.

She recognized immediately the snap of a cartridge into a high-caliber weapon, and was in a flip just as the bullets stung the hot sand. Replacing the katana into its scabbard in mid-air, she turned horizontal and hit the ground on all fours. The wind shifted and blew a curtain of black gasoline smoke into her eyes. She coughed and jumped backwards a few more times, each leap bringing her within millimeters of the flying lead fired after her. She turned abruptly to the right, making a twenty-foot hop behind the dying ATV.

The man stalked her around the body of the vehicle, squinting into the orange flames and through the melting framework. He couldn’t hear her footsteps; the crackle of the blaze was too loud.

He saw her finally as she whipped around the wreck behind him. He raised the gun, but she had jumped straight into the air, blocking the sunlight behind her dark form. Her feet locked onto his shoulders, the tip of her katana bit into his chest. As he fell over, she flipped backwards and away, landing in the sand some twenty feet distant.

She wiped the blood from her blade with her hand, then replaced it in the scabbard. She could have just shot him -she still had a lot of ammunition and her aim was near perfect- but it hadn’t seemed grand enough. She needed to show them her power, the strength of her rebellion. Squinting into the sun, she made her way down the next dune, leaving the burning ATV and the red-stained sand behind her.
***
The neon bliss of Ginza splayed out under the window, the crawl of animated light displays reflecting off of the glass. He turned away and neatly dodged the edge of the low bed, strolling towards the door. The tiny white refrigerator had a half dozen bottles of liquor in it, each of them marked with an electronic tag that would signal the front desk if opened so they could put it on the bill. He cracked one open and drank it straight, no glass.

His skin was olive-tinted, eyes deep blue, dark hair trimmed just over his ears. He’d never let his shaving go in his entire life, and he wasn’t one to grow stubble in an afternoon, but his face was becoming shadowed with the narrow growth of a beard. He went into the bathroom and leaned into the mirror, rubbing his face with one hand. He set the toy-like bottle of vodka down on the black marble counter and looked in closer. There was a small, pinkish scar that followed his jaw line on the left side; he remembered the exact moment when the silver serving tray Consuela had thrown hit him there.

The beard was annoying, yes, but so were the red plastic rimmed glasses and the packet of cigarettes tucked into the pocket of his blazer. All of it was necessary to complete the deception: he was not Brugnon La Touga, but Bernard de Ferny, a nearsighted chain-smoker from Lyon.

He buttoned up his shirt and left the bathroom, checking the clock. The man was supposed to be here already, and no one had called to tell him he had a visitor. He put on a tie while he was at it, and the white cutout of the silk around his neck contrasted sharply with the black dress shirt. He turned away from the mirror and looked to the left.

“ Well, hello,” he said calmly.

He stood against the sliding glass door, melting into the background of Tokyo. Behind him, a huge pink neon sign advertising canned coffee illuminated, lighting the boy up with a fleshy halo.

The boy, true to description, was tall and skinny, layered with lank muscle, sleek black hair nearly to his shoulders. His pale skin was dull with oil, his long hair matted, his clothes (a limp grey smock and black track pants; he wasn’t wearing shoes) were shabby and dirty. He smelled like viscous brown mechanic’s grease and dust and animal.

Brugnon sighed. “ Do you always come in the window?”

The boy nodded solemnly.

“ You should clean up, for God’s sake,” Brugnon scolded. “ You smell like some sewer creature.”

Saru’s shoulders slumped, he bowed his head in shame. “ Do not matter,” he said quietly.

Brugnon straightened up. They were the same height. “ I heard about Hiramiaku,”

Saru shuddered suddenly, violently. Brugnon could tell he was trying to repress the urge to sob. He went to the closet and began rooting through it. Pulled, from his broad wardrobe, a pair of black slacks, a black houndstooth vest, a white dress shirt looped with a silver-grey tie, and hooked them on the doorknob of the bathroom.

“ Go get yourself proper,” Brugnon commanded. “ You can’t mourn forever.”

Saru disappeared inside and didn’t emerge for an hour and a half. His black hair was combed back neatly, the clothes impeccable on his wiry frame. He was knotting the tie around his throat with sure, quick gestures. His posture had changed entirely, shoulders back and spine straight.

“ What happened to the girl?” Brugnon asked immediately.

Saru looked up, startled. “ Uguisu-chan?”

“ The girl, X,” he said. “ I sent you to free her, and I haven’t heard anything of her since. Has she spoken with you?”

Saru shook his head from side to side. “ No,”

Brugnon lowered his brow, scrutinizing him. “ I heard you two became very close. What is she like?”

Saru kind of gave a screwed-up smile, more like a smirk. “ Imoto-sama,” he explained, holding his flattened hand about five feet off the ground. “ Little sister. Quiet, shy, good fighter. Not a good cook though.”

“ Your little sister?” Brugnon said. “ You thought of her as your little sister?”

“ Middle child,” he said with a big grin. His smile fell. “ Older brother, now. Only child.”

The suicidal impulses had apparently faded with time, though he still got a gleam in his eye when she was mentioned. Saru noted, slightly annoyed, that Brugnon was being particularly tender about the subject of family, and even though he’d never met Monsieur La Touga before, he knew from Hiramiaku’s stories that that wasn’t his way.

“ What does she look like?” Brugnon asked. “ When I saw her, it was only from behind.”

Saru narrowed his long, dark eyes. “ Why?”

“ I’m trying to get an idea of the girl who saw my sister last,”

He stepped back. “ Mademoiselle Cerise La Touga,” he spelled out with a perfect French accent. Brugnon nodded. Saru went on, but it took him a second to remember and pronounce the English word, so he improvised. “ Chibi. Green eyes, black hair,” he gestured at his jaw to show how short her hair was, “ palu.”

Brugnon checked his watch. “ You should go.” He went through the closet and came up with a brand new black trench coat. “ Use the lobby this time.”

Opened the door for him as the boy pulled the trench coat on, shutting the door on him and the twenty-five hundred dollars worth of clothing he’d just given away.
***
It was a personal meeting, something they hadn’t had in the five months since Mullen had left with the girl. The helicopter beat noisily behind them, its engines powering down into stand-by mode. Mercy turned and made a looping gesture with her arm, telling him to keep the engine running.

Forest green marble stretched out for yards in all directions of the floor once they entered the back of the building. Luthor was ahead of her by six or seven steps, and she quickly caught up, striding confidently at his side.

“ We’ve got fifteen minutes, Lex,” she mentioned.

“ I’m aware of that,” he growled. Days of media blitz had left him filled with abstract, pent-up anger. His body language spoke like strings tuned too tightly on an instrument.

They got into a brass-lined elevator and took it down to the sublevels, where the air was slightly cooler and smelled like damp earth. Gilt elevator doors opened on surroundings composed of twelve different shades of grey concrete, a forest of white pipes snaking along the low ceiling. As they went, they passed a laundry room where two Pakistani women –one in a caftan and veil and the other in a pantsuit- were doing laundry. Doors all along the corridor were open, tails of coaxial cabling and phone cording spewing all across the floor.

“ What is this?” Luthor asked before even reaching the door.

The man in the middle of everything looked up, hand fisted around a sheaf of papers. He had a strong, tanned face, dark brown hair, eyes so coldly blue they looked like chlorine pools. There was an X-shaped scar across his face, the intersection of the two pieces in between his eyebrows.

“ Luthor,” he nodded calmly. There was a woman sitting next to him, Annaka Behm, his second in command. She was a tall, blonde German with a cool, business-like appeal.

Luthor strode over and grabbed the papers from Mullen. “ Ten million dollars, Mullen. Ten million dollars of my equipment just walked out of here,”

“ Fifteen and a half,” Mercy corrected, consulting a palm computer from the pocket of her uniform.

“ A damn outrage,” Mullen conceded. “ Your tech people are running the files now, trying to see where it could be possible for them to breach the systems.”

“ You’re very confident of yourself,” Luthor said tersely. “ Especially for a man whose own tech man was crucified last week.”

“ He was crucified to your company’s logo,” Mullen reminded him.

Luthor ignored that. “ I’ll get you a replacement. Maybe ship Cervelle in from Rouen,”

Mullen thought it over. “ Acceptable,” he agreed.

“ In exchange, I want to see the new one,” Luthor demanded.

“ Whitacre!” Mullen yelled.

The woman appeared in the doorway. She was black, with short, bleach-blonde hair, dressed in a black jumpsuit and big gardening gloves. At her side was a young boy. He was pale, with big, dark eyes, brown hair, and a teenaged face chemically hardened. He was about as tall as Darby Whitacre, Mullen’s weapon’s manager, with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a muscular form. He was dressed in a black body suit. Mercy instinctively checked for the large-caliber pistol strapped to her thigh.

He bore the expression of someone that had lost something vitally important. A soul, maybe.

“ He came from a hospital in Wales. Badly burned in a warehouse fire. Wouldn’t have survived without us,” Mullen said. “ Probably fifteen or so. His name is X003, but they like to call him Dritte in the lab.”

Luthor turned to face the boy. He remembered the girl, that tiny, pale thing with the big, scared eyes. She cried, that first time he met her. Cried for the blooming expanse of white nothingness in her brain.

“ Your name, soldier?” he asked.

The boy stepped back and bowed stiffly, in the Japanese manner. “ X003, sensei,” His voice was quiet, pained, and unaccented.

“ He can do everything the other can?” Luthor asked Whitacre.

“ Yes,” she said, “ except for the very complicated combat moves. To tell you the truth, I’d never seen anything like what that girl could do.”

“ That’s because this one’s just been programmed; the girl actually had the real life experience to back it up,” Mullen said. “ Otherwise, the downloading program has worked fine.”

Luthor looked back to the boy. “ What do you feel, X003?”

Dritte trembled. “ Nothing, master.”

“ Nothing?”

“ Nothing. There is nothing within me.” He said it slowly, loudly. His eyes bulged.

They couldn’t have seen it beforehand. He had darted around Luthor and grabbed Mercy’s gun, then jumped atop the table Mullen occupied. The man looked up, dumbfounded, into the barrel of the pistol.

Saw in that boy’s face his own madness, the madness of the girl who’d come before him. Madness was an ever-present state, not something like sanity or insanity that came and went like a volatile nuclear wind.

Dritte brought the gun up to his own temple and pulled the trigger.

Luthor stepped back as the heavy body hit the floor. Mercy was up against the wall, face frozen in a numb look of shock. Darby Whitacre was calm, but wounded.

“ And that’s happened before?” Luthor asked. The wall opposite him bore a curt splatter of red and tiny bits of fleshy grey.

“ X002 did the same thing,” Whitacre confessed. “ Last week, right after X001’s escape. Put his hand into a high-voltage electrical socket. Brain dead before we could do anything.”

“ It isn’t some kind of defect with the hardware?” Luthor questioned.

“ The same things were used on X001, and she never became suicidal.”

“ Odd,” Luthor nudged Dritte’s body with one patent leather wingtip. A bunch of wires poured out of the dead boy’s head. “ And you can’t salvage him?”

“ Once the brain is gone, there’s nothing left. The circuitry and fiber-optics become virtually useless.”

“ What about X001? She was nearly brain dead.”

Whitacre shrugged. “ Vale ran over it with me before he left. Actually, there was a lot about her no one could seem to understand.” She shrugged again. “ But that’s your department. I just train ‘em.”

Luthor snorted incredulously. “ What about the others? The works in progress?”

“ Coming along alright,” she admitted. “ Everything with the Shori Engel is in perfect tune with their biorhythms, but X004 is the one they seem to be worried about.”

Luthor rubbed his chin with one hand. His gold signet ring caught the light. “ X004 is the one from Belize,” he said.

“ Caught in sweatshop explosion. Nasty business,” Mullen said. “ Burned near to a crisp.”

Luthor turned to him and glared. “ Now what are you doing to reclaim my property, Mullen?”

The man smiled thinly. “ I’ve got people all over shadowing her. It seems she’s heading East, maybe into Russia or China, somewhere she can get lost.”

“ She’s smarter than we thought,” Annaka said. “ She has already killed two of our agents in the Iranian Desert. They were expert bounty hunters from Saudi Arabia. Never been defeated.”

“ She’s not acting alone,” Whitacre explained. “ This security systems business by itself is enough to prove that. We’re obviously not the only ones looking for her.”

“ Fine!” Luthor barked. “ Do whatever possible to return her to us and I’ll give you a tidy reward.”

He marched for the door, Mercy at his side. Out in the hall, he stopped, then turned back and smiled into the room in a silky way.

“ Oh, and Mullen, try not to damage her too much,” With that, he disappeared.

[witness]

Oh.....my........god.......


Wow! This is only the second chapter and I am now completely in awe. First of all, poor Saru. Kind of funny that he was in the shower for an hour and a half. But still, it seems that he's lost all hope. Though he's not killing himself. Small silver lining.....

Oh, and the first part with X in the desert. I could literally see this within my mind's eye. Seriously, the stories on this board are some of the best. I just wish that they could be made into episodes.

Finally, the thing that shocked me the most. Lex Luthor. Before, the thought of making more than just one X hadn't crossed my mind. But to see him actually using his resources to continue, it amazes me. I guess it should have been expected. After all, he invested millions, why shouldn't he continue? I just hadn't thought it would come to this, with X001 being such a fiasco for them. So difficult to control.

And to see them killing themselves makes it even more horrifying. I am truly amazed and cannot believe that this has only been the second chapter. Can't wait for the things to come!!!!!!

P. S. Thanks for the compliments and high praise. It means a lot.

[Sable Phoenix]

Okay then! It's great to read another chapter... you really are a good writer, DoE.

That being said, it's a good thing you put that disclaimer that this chapter was not quite clean, because for the first time I noticed an error in your writing. Actually two errors. The first was when you said that the sky and earth melted together into one separate entity. Ouch! It should have been one continuous blur, or maybe one contiguous entity, or something like that...

The second error was (and this is a pet peeve of mine, since it's so often done in movies) the fact that a wooden puji-stake caused the ATV's gas tank to explode. Number one, gas doesn't explode--it burns. Gas VAPOR explodes. Number two, how did a wooden stake ignite the gasoline in the first place? Now, if it had been a fire arrow or something similar, then the ATV would have burst into flames, sure, but a wooden stake? Even bullets don't ignite gasoline, like you also see in the movies all the time. Sorry to ride this so hard, but like I said, it's a pet peeve.

With all that out of the way, though, you have, once again, delivered an excellent installment. Keep it up.

You know, every time I read your stories, I'm inspired to write down some of the Batman ideas that have been kicking around in my head for a long time. Maybe I should actually do it sometime.

[Panther]

I got chills up my spine when I saw 'X004'. I can't believe Luther is continuing with the project when little x has casued him so much big trouble! And those poor children!!!! I loved the fight in the desert, a deadly, gruesome scene and also an intereting look into what she is - and isn't - thinking about now. I'm glad Saru seems to be recovering.

But where is Robin????


gotta go

[Daughterof_Evil]

Thank you everyone for the great comments:

witness: No problem about praising you...it is well-deserved. And thank you for telling me how much you've enjoyed this, it really means a lot to me. Again, glad you liked it.

Sable Phoenix: Ach, you got me there, Sable. When I wrote the "separate entity" thing, I meant it was an entity separate from X, but I should have elaborated. And the puji-stake? Pure drama. You're totally right about the explosion being incited by nothing, I just assumed the puji-stake could have hit the ignition or something and made the explosion. You see, I needed an explosion...I hadn't written one in so long and I was getting withdrawal. So thanks for pointing that out. I'll be much more careful next time. And I'm happy you were entertained by it, despite all the technical errors!

Panther: Yeah, Luthor is all business-smart, really, and not very good at seeing the future. So you can see why I would take advantage of that and make him a money-hungry, inhumane S.O.B. It's just too easy! Thanks for the continuing support. I was beginning to wonder where it was you'd wandered off to!

[Daughterof_Evil]

Turkmenistan had passed like a severe, hallucinogenic fever dream. It was the waning of the Macchina hormones in her system that deluded entire countries into hours, simple slashes of minutes in her brain. She fell into convulsions once they hit Tajikistan, and stayed in a mind-blending stupor for three solid days.

When she awoke, the groaning of the passenger cargo the only thing to accompany her, she was soaked through with sweat. Every nerve was hyper-sensitive, every movement bringing a gush of feelings, thoughts, emotions. The metal under her was rough with rubber gripping compound. She was surrounded by crates, all of them stacked around her in pale pillars.

She sat up and found her mid-section incised by the sharp pains of hunger. Peeled off her cloak and got to her feet, staggering through the crates, her fingers brushing their sides. They were covered in Russian glyphs, some of which she found herself understanding in a base, child-like way.

She quickly organized them mentally by content. Ball bearings in the corner crates, small engine parts in the other corner, screws, mufflers. When she saw the screws, she sat back down, her legs melting out from under her like jelly. Sweat dripped off her brow. She found herself panting, quietly, quickly, like an animal. She very suddenly fell over, onto her side, as the train rounded a corner.

She crawled across the floor to the place where her cloak laid in a limp, warm pile, and knotted it around herself. Trembling with cold. Her body seized in a frigid convulsion. Despite herself, she cried out, tears streaming from her eyes. It was pain that went into, through, beyond the flesh, penetrated her mind, reminded her of the waste of her existence. She was not a feeling, thinking human, but a machine. This agony was imagined.

She fell gratefully unconscious a few minutes later, just as the train hit the core of China and began to slow for a station up ahead. There was a checking of passports and licenses, and the guards began traversing the tracks, unhooking certain cars and reattaching others as the engine began to rumble off.

X wouldn’t be able to recall it, but a shaft of grey-blue polluted sunlight fell over her form as the door swung open. The single guard stared at her a moment before calling over the others.
***
She burst into light and awake the second the steel knuckles hit her in the jaw.

The room was dark, defined only by a few shapes of brown slashed through with blocks of yellow light. Her head throbbed, not from the punch, but from the blood rushing into it. It was about thirty pounds of bondage-fetish gear that weighed on her, hanging upside down, one ankle and both wrists secured with studded patent-leather manacles and chains connected to the ceiling and floor.

She heard the snap of a bootheel and directed her attention up.

“ She is awake?” a woman asked. Almost no accent, but barely a flicker of Chinese inflection.

“ Yes, ma’am,”

X breathed in slow and hard. Three people, one female and two men. The woman was wearing silks scented lightly like lilacs, the men in greasy leathers. The woman took hold of her jaw in long, spindly fingers.

“ You are X001,” she said. X looked into her face. Lank, Chinese, middle-aged, with a dusting of fine wrinkles around her eyes and full lips pencilled in with dark rouge. Her hair was brought back in a loose bun.

X wrenched her face free and found herself swinging backward. The winch above creaked. A leather riding crop cracked her in the ribs, but she couldn’t feel it. Only the sound registered its connection with her person.

“ Mullen’s missing property,” she heard the woman grumble.

She turned to her. “ We see your tattoos, X001. My name is Miss Chian. As you’ve probably realized, you’ve wandered into the People’s Republic of China. We don’t like your kind here.”

X twisted in her chains. They had removed her guns, her sword, her cape. She felt naked and vulnerable hanging there, even though she was fully clothed.

“ Though Mullen is a good friend of mine,” Miss Chian said, “ and I’ll honor that friendship by returning you, there are a few points we need to cover first…”

Someone pushed into the room a tool cabinet on casters and opened one of its drawers. The man left. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw the gleam of steel surgical implements on suede. A glass vial was pulled out, something clear and bright yellow sloshing inside.

As they prepared a very long needle, she sat still. Through the dark she could see there was a door against the far wall, probably locked and with a guard or two outside. Miss Chian would not have a key—they would open it for her from the outside.

She was very calm as they injected the first needle directly into her neck. It wasn’t Macchina, didn’t thrill and burn like steroids or bite like amphetamines. A taste like grass flourished in her mouth. Miss Chian stood back, angry that the needle hadn't had the effect she’d liked.

She’d had lots of needles at LexCorp.

“ She needs more,” the woman demanded. The man at her side, slightly shorter than her and wearing a ski mask, did as she told, filling the needle again. He put it in through the same vein, like a surgeon. X smelled the gamy scent of antiseptic foam on his gloves.

Five minutes passed, and nothing had happened.

“ I’ve emptied the vial,” the short man said dismally. “ This isn’t going to work.”

“ Shut up,” Miss Chian growled.

“ He’s right,” X said matter-of-factly. “ I’m immune to most industrial chemicals for several very good reasons.”

And then, like a bit of ghost, an insane smile flickered across X’s face, and was gone.

Miss Chian’s eyes went wide, probably the same exact time the chains connecting X’s wrists to the floor just broke like they were cardboard. The girl spun in place, grabbing the surgeon and twisting hard till she heard a snap. He fell limp to the floor, and X swooped back and hit the wall with her free foot, striking out at anything she could. The tool chest fell over, spilling its methods of torture all over the floor.

Miss Chian ran to the door and began beating on it. “ Let me out, you useless bastards!” she screamed. The winch in the ceiling broke with a cartoonish ping sound, and she heard X’s feet hit the cement. The girl’s heavy, rushed breathing as she came closer.

The door swung in, and Miss Chian ducked out, the guard in a red-starred uniform shutting it and locking it behind her. She leaned against the wall, panting.

Inside, X paced calmly, stealthily. The broken chains on her wrists and ankle rattled. She put her hands up to her neck and found a thick collar, slick leather studded with steel nubs. Someone has a sick sense of humor, she thought, but didn’t take it off.

She found her things in the corner, bundled hastily in the cape. The ammo was gone, the fancy LexCorp laser rifle missing, but she replaced the holsters and the bandoliers, fitting the cloak over herself. Her hand settled on something round on her utility belt, something about the size of a lime.

Outside, Miss Chian moved away from the wall. “ Don’t make an incident report,” she told the guard. “ This never happened.”

White flash.

Steel, cement, bone flying outward in a solid burst. It sucked back in, succumbed to napalm-fueled flames that licked and pulled at the crumbling ceiling. A hole gaped wide where the locked door had been, haloed by a nimbus of fire.

X moved through it like chaos was her natural element, her life’s blood, her eternal force. Her hood up over her face, she was angel of death to the kingdom of corpses lying behind her.

The long, grey hallway stretched out before her, red disaster lights screaming and bounding. And three shadows running for her.

She drew her sword.
***
Nightwing knotted the bola again. “ How’s school?”

Robin leaned against the brick of a chimney. “ Fine.”

“ No tests, nothing?”

“ Nope.”

“ Liar,” Nightwing stood back from the edge and admired his handiwork: three thugs, unconscious, hanging upside down. And Bruce wondered where Tim got the urge to string up johns by their ankles.

“ Things are good, really,” They both hopped the alley and strolled across the next roof. Robin took out a grappling hook and shot it off, riding it along the street, his feet grazing the building sides. Nightwing soared soundlessly beside him, brow lowered and eyes scanning the alleys.

They came to rest atop a ten story near the waterfront. Robin realized, with sudden anger, that this was where he’d stood contemplating her death.

“ You got a girlfriend?”

Stunned, he gaped at him. “ Huh?”

“ A girl. You know, those people that happen to wear skirts, have long hair…”

“ No kidding!” cracked Robin as Nightwing shook out his lustrous ponytail.

“ Really,” Nightwing said.

“ It’s a boys’ school. You know that, you went there,”

“ I mean, girls come for parties and stuff, right?” Nightwing prodded. “ At least they did in my day.”

“ Why do you ask?” He had an idea why, but wasn’t willing to share.

“ Don’t you like any of the girls that show up?”

“ I don’t go to the parties,” Robin said sheepishly. “ They’re kind of stupid. At least the school ones are. And the only girls they invite are from the Catholic school uptown, and they usually have a nun watching them.”

Nightwing winced. “ Sister Clarice?”

“ Oh yeah.”

“ Ouch,”

“ Well, out of the Catholic girls, you like any of them?”

Robin rubbed the back of his neck. “ Karen Alu-alahi, I guess she’s kind of pretty.”

“ You talked to her?”

“ Once,” It was when he was holding her hair as she puked into a trashcan outside the school gym. She said thanks, he said you’re welcome.

“ Ask her out to a movie or something,”

“ Yeah, maybe.”

“ What’s Batgirl doing tonight?” Nightwing asked.

“ Since when do you care?” Robin asked back, taking his binoculars off his belt.

“ Just wondering. Alfred told me she and Batman had a big stakeout deal they were doing. I was thinking they might need some help.”

Robin, bored, put the binoculars away. “ Okay. It’s pretty quiet here.”

Nightwing stood up, testing the wind. “ Yeah, watch something explode just as we leave.”

They waited a few seconds more for good measure, then took off, the bay at their backs.
***
It was safe to say the action was over by the time they arrived.

The apartment, once lushly appointed in gilt and velvet, had been ransacked; windows broken, chairs and desks lying in shattered heaps on the carpet, ammunition shells scattered about. There were three men dead in the stairwell. In the sitting room, a woman in a black suit lay under a table, unconscious. Further down the hall, men were lined up against the wall, hands and ankles bound with the gold tasseled cording used on the curtains.

“ Yeesh,” Nightwing muttered, entering the bedroom. A man lay on the bed, tied down. Batgirl was on one side, Batman on the other.

“ What happened in the stairwell?” Robin asked.

“ Ambush,” Batgirl said curtly. “ They caught them at the top of the stairs.”

Robin looked at the man on the bed. He was short, slender, with pale skin and a downy mane of brown hair. British, by every indication, wearing a red dress shirt and black slacks. More window cording anchored him down to the flowered bedspread. His shoes were missing for some reason.

He was smiling in a sleazy way.

“ And this guy?” Robin asked, sounding bored.

“ Darien Bonaparte,” Nightwing said immediately.

“ Pleased to meet you,” the man said. His accent was pleasantly British, obviously upper-caste and educated accordingly.

Batgirl prodded at one of Bonaparte’s bound arms. “ British mercenary, stopped in Gotham for a bit. Rumor is you have ties to Intergang, but what we’re wondering is which one.”

Nightwing picked it up. “ Thirty-eight confirmed killings in the last year. Carried out a nasty assassination in Tel Aviv last week that brought him within range of a certain gear in the Intergang machine—“

“ And terribly afraid of heights,” Batgirl went on.

Bonaparte grinned. His teeth were like broken piano keys.

Batman leaned over to him. “ Ever been to the top of the Gotham Empire State Building, Darien?”

“ Never cared to,” the man answered flawlessly. Decades of study in the martial arts had sealed his personality in a hard veneer. He wasn’t even sweating. Robin was beginning to think that he really wasn’t afraid of heights.

The others began untying him, each of them to a limb, and Robin joined in. Once free, Batman hoisted him up by his collar and thrust him out the window.

Bonaparte continued smiling.

“ This is only three stories, Darien,” Batman said. “ Think of a hundred more…”

“ It was Lockhardt,” he said, the veneer splintering. “ He called me to Tel Aviv to kill someone in his way, and once I did, he explained that he and Mullen were having some troubles agreeing on anything.”

“ What kind of troubles?”

“ He never said. He told me he was saving the real job for someone special.”

“ In Tel Aviv, you killed…?”

“ A man named Sonjay Inseleipshan. A sniper Mullen used in Germany. He was useless.”

Batman pulled him back in and tossed him on the bed. No last words or anything, he just left the room, the three others disappearing in his wake.
***
The three came at her quickly, drawing their weapons. She raised her blade so it caught the flickers of the dying flames behind her. Holographic laser sights danced across her face.

“ Stop!” one of them cried. As they came closer, she realized they were not grown, but something caught between child and adult. Teenagers, though the word in her mind was almost derogatory.

She stood still, sword tight between both hands. “ Who are you?”

They came to a stop. In the slight glow from the explosion site, she saw the glint off of their giant submachine guns.

“ There is no time, X001,” one of them said, but which she didn’t know.

“ You must come with us now,” another said.

“ How do I know I can trust you?” she asked.

“ Your older brother sent us for you,”

She breathed in quietly, replacing the sword in its scabbard. They beckoned, and she followed them out into the white daylight and fresh air of a Chinese forest.

[The_NewCatwoman]

Forgive me for taking so ridiculously long to reply to this latest example of spectacular work by DoE. I could go on shamelessly ranting about your fantastic story but I haven't the time.

"If you write, then write like your life depends on it, or what do you have to live for?" - me, myself, and i

[Tonbo_Rosso]

Well I for one am ready to create a small shrine to our favorite evil little girl, but I could just be bias.



As awsome as usual, I see my work is done here.

[Panther]

If I could, I'd think of something clever to say about both capitalists AND communists chasing after X. Poor girl seems to bring out the worst in _everybody_.

BUT - Saru sends help!!!!!! marches around the room chanting: Saru to the rescue, Saru to the rescue, Saru to the rescue!!!

>sits back down< Oh yeah - help has arrived! Wonderful decriptions and character development, as usual.

must go,

[Daughterof_Evil]

tNC: Thank you for taking the time to reply, especially if you have so little time in the first place! I've been watching the progression of Broken with awe, though, like you, it's been hard to find time to reply to anything. I can't believe Lashina had a kid with Supes! Evil, evil! Though I can't wait to meet the little squirt...

Tonbo: Now, darling, we all know you already have a shrine to me, and it's called FINISH REVOLUTIONARY BOY WONDER!!!! Please, for the love of all that's unholy! And thank you for the comments! Whee!

Panther: I bet you could come up with some very witty things to say about X's unwanted fan club, and I would sit placidly here to hear them. Except for--

Saru to the rescue! Saru to the rescue!!

Thanks again, Panther! I've always cherished the support you've given me throughout the months and eventual years! And I can't wait for your next story, whenever you choose to grace us with it.

Thanks to everyone!!!

[Daughterof_Evil]

Thanks a lot for the support, guys and gals. It's been a really weird week for me, so I was hoping this post will serve to even things out a little. It contains mild swearing, mild violence, an all around PG post but I can never be too careful. Tell me what you think, and I will slobber and grovel embarrassingly.
***
“ That guy…” Tim started.

“ Darien Bonaparte,” Bruce filled in for him.

“ How’d you know he was afraid of heights?” he asked.

Bruce tapped out a complex command on the keyboard. A German newspaper clipping sprang up. There was a picture of Lex Luthor accompanying it; he was standing in front of a building with his logo on it, shaking hands with a doctor.

“ Certain contacts told me his stepfather used to hang him upside down by his feet off the top of their tenement when he was very young.” Another tap. The text of the newspaper clipping translated immediately into English.

“ Tenement?” questioned Tim as he sat on the side console of the great computer. “ I thought he was rich.”

“ He approximates his accent and style that way,” Bruce said. “ It’s apart of the deception mercenaries are expected to keep up.”

“ Kind of like you?”

“ Yes,” replied his mentor without hesitation. “ Except I refrain from killing people.”

Tim thought back to the tenements of his childhood, the hulking, dusty buildings overgrown with the rot of industrial decay. The roofs were off limit, but he managed to go up there anyway, the tarpaper sticking to the bottoms of his sneakers, to watch the neighborhood at night. Things got bad, but his dad never held him over the edge by his feet.

“ He have any siblings?” the boy asked.

“ He was the only child by his mother’s first marriage,” Bruce explained, not asking why he would want to know, “ and for that reason he was considered the pariah. He did have four half-siblings.”

“ How do you know all this?”

“ I told you, I have contacts.”

“ And he was with Intergang?”

“ Barely,” Bruce cut-and-pasted the translated article into Luthor’s lengthy file. “ Working on the outskirts of Intergang to avoid the muddy politics of the inner circles.”

Tim scratched his arm. “ He was talking about Lockhardt.”

He arranged Luthor’s video clips by date swiftly and surely, including the newest of his interview with Summer Gleason. “ Yes.”

“ Anybody know where Lockhardt is?”

Bruce paused, then continued. “ You’re very curious about Nevig Lockhardt, Tim.”

“ Just wondering.”

“ Does it have anything to do with the girl?”

“ No…”

“ She’s not working for him anymore. That much is clear.”

“ Been talking with Barbara, Bruce?” Tim asked grimly.

“ No. I just know everything.” It was a joke, though with the way he said it, it could have been bad news.

“ It just made me think, when he said Mullen and Lockhardt were having some problems,”

Bruce was silent, both completely divorced from reality and at the same time not caring what made Tim think in the first place. The boy swung his feet.

“ I guess I’ll go to sleep,” he said, hopping off the computer console.

“ Goodnight,” Bruce muttered. As Tim turned and looked at him, he saw his mentor’s face aglow with the bluish light of the monitor.

“Goodnight,” he said quietly. Then he continued up the stairs.
***
Beijing viewed from the back seat of a stolen SUV, through the heavily tinted, coal-colored glass. One of the saviors (as she began calling them secretly) was driving, another was sitting in the front passenger seat, and the other was in the back with her. They had removed their ski masks, discarded their black garb, stuffing their guns into plastic cases in the back of the truck and covering those with blankets. Under all of it, they were dressed in long cotton sweaters and generic blue jeans, looking as normal as possible.

Just as she imagined, they were all teenagers, and they never stopped talking. Jabbering strings of Chinese accompanied them through the crush of the streets. They were triplets, or just three clones, because they all had the same broad, flat nose, smooth cheekbones, thin lips, brown skin. Each had a matching dome of fine black hair, and small, deep eyes. Big, awkward hands on the steering wheel or in their lap or on the side console, like Saru’s but a medium tone of brown and not his trademark pale.

She fidgeted in the giant pink plastic raincoat they had put her in to hide her clothes as they drove through checkpoints. It made a squeaky noise whenever she moved.

“ You know Saru?” she finally questioned as a man in an olive-tinted suit waved them through an intersection.

“ To an extent, yes,” the driver said. His English was nearly perfect, like Miss Chian’s.

She gazed out the window. A mother was pushing a stroller on the sidewalk, shiny plastic shopping bags clasped in her hands.

“ Then you know what I am,” she said deeply, in a tone she’d never used before. A car honked politely behind them.

“ We don’t ask questions, we only do as we’re told,” the front passenger said.

“ So you work for Saru,” X concluded.

“ We work for those Saru works for,” the savior sitting beside her said. He didn’t look at her as he spoke, and barely moved his lips.

“ Who does Saru work for?” she almost whispered.

“ Just those whose interests involve you staying alive and away from Intergang,”

X blinked at the washed-out landscape of the sidewalk. Just people coming and going, silent, alienated, bars of warm human life stretching away into the bright of the sun.

“ Have you ever heard of Coquin, X?” the driver asked.

The girl sat up. “ No.”

“ Coquin is a double agent working inside Intergang. They were the one that arranged your escape.”

“ That is who Saru works for?”

“ Yes, but even then, Coquin works for someone who works for someone else. It is a chain of command.”

X was quiet for a moment. “ How is Saru?” came out choked.

“ Alive.”

She brought her knees up to her chest, hoping that her older brother had a place to sleep safely, food to eat, clean clothes to keep him warm.

“ And the boy in red?” she questioned.

The driving savior looked back at her, just catching her in his peripheral vision before looking back at the road.

“ I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“ He is a boy, dressed in red. Saru told me he knew he was alive before he left me.” She had become very serious, her tone dropping. The savior sitting next to her looked at her in surprise, like he’d just actively watched a demon enter her body.

“ I don’t know any boy like this. You are being very vague. Do you know his name?”

She wrought her mind for a moment, carefully accessing and discarding every thought or snippet of memory about him. “ I…I can’t remember.”

Driving Savior lowered his brow. “ He is instrumental to your escape?”

“ I believe he may be. I’m not sure who his allies are,”

“ Describe him.”

“ Caucasian, with a tan, black hair all spiky.” Thinking. “ A black mask, black cape with yellow on the inside, a red suit with an R on the left breast.”

As soon as she gave out the last detail, the saviors broke into an abrupt argument in Chinese. Pieces of recognizable words surfaced to her, but then they stopped as suddenly as they started.

“ We haven’t heard of anyone like this,” the driver said.

She was quiet. By the urgency in their voices she could tell that he was lying, that they were covering something up. It was another ready-made conspiracy about to swallow her.

She didn’t say anything, and within thirty minutes Beijing was becoming a dark stain on the horizon behind them.
***
It was dark before they reached a place the saviors thought was suitable, and once they reached an agreement, the driver veered off the road and into the tangles of bamboo.

X jumped out of the car and shed her pink raincoat, tossing it in the back seat and slamming the door with such force the SUV shook. She stalked out into the forest, the beams of their flashsticks bobbing behind her. They had replaced their special ops gear in a few seconds.

One of the saviors offered her a flashlight. “ I can see in the dark,” she said brusquely, nudging it away. “ If you’re offering charity, I could use some ammo.”

He produced a long bandolier of 9mm cartridges, and she accepted it, snaking it around her torso and handing him the empty one. He and the others extinguished their flashlights, turning on the nightvision option on the goggles they wore over the ski masks.

“ You are upset,” he said, keeping an even pace with her.

“ You’re lying to me,” she snapped.

“ We’re only editing our information. You have to do that sometimes.”

“ You’re hindering my progress,”

“ You forget, we saved your life!” one of the other saviors cried quietly.

“ You saved nothing,” she hissed. “ I was doing fine.”

“ You would have never made it out of that compound without us,” the savior next to her said. She didn’t know why she still thought of them as the saviors; it probably was some subconscious decision having to do with Saru.

She was about to come up with a wise-ass comment when she stopped. The others did, too.

“ What—“ She cut him off with a quick hand gesture. They all were still.

“ Listen,” she whispered.

“ What?” asked one.

She stood up straight, craning her neck. Green and yellow stalks rose up on all sides like a solid curtain.

“ Helicopters,” she said. With barely a flinch of muscle, she had disappeared up into the overlapping canopy of bamboo overhead. Seconds later, she reappeared, landing in a crouch.

They stared at her.

“ Two helicopters, coming in from the northeast,” she said. “ About twenty miles off.”

“ Beijing,” a savior said. “ We must hurry.”

The crashing of the brush rose to a deafening degree as they pounded through, guns drawn. X had no idea where they were going, and she didn’t much care. The old person she was had been replaced by a more efficient X, a girl dredged up out of the past.

Rough of the wrist-thick trunks against her palms, smooth leaves against her face…the columns of bamboo seemed to last forever, stretching out in her mind to alter itself into another experience in some other place and some other time. She could smell the wheat, the tall plumes of the dry, dusty grass, and the pounding of feet. They were all running now.

The clearing came up ahead, a wide circle of flattened rushes. The bamboo here was brought together in a dome overhead, tied with twine or wire to hide the landing space. In the middle sat a small black helicopter, its pilot –a thin, old Chinese man in navy Maoist clothes- leaned up against it. A cigarette burned in his claw-like hand.

One of the saviors yelled at him. The man threw down his cigarette and scurried into the pilot compartment, hitting switches. The blades began to turn. Two saviors ran to opposite sides of the clearing and began undoing hard, complicated knots in the twine tied there. The bamboo that had been domed overhead fell away, revealing the clean night sky.

The third savior came up beside X. “ You go with him, now,” he said, taking off his mask. She finally realized how young he was, no older than sixteen or so. There was a small, circular patch on the left side of his neck, partially obscured by his shoulder rig.

She bowed to him. “ Thank you for all your help,”

He patted her on the shoulder. “ Take care, X001. I don’t know why everyone makes such a fuss about you, but it all must be worth something.”

She nodded. “ I hope so.”

He handed her his large submachine gun. “ Just in case. We don’t want to have to rescue you from another compound.”

The old pilot began waving out the window. X bowed again to the saviors and ran for the helicopter, jumping into the passenger seat just as the old man lifted it up from the clearing.
***
Darien Bonaparte had a solitary cell on the outskirts of the temp jail at the GCPD. There was a three foot-by-one-foot window about six feet off the ground, sealed with blast-proof plastic and steel mesh, that looked out onto the city. The guard, a big, hulking Italian man, had excused himself just after giving Bonaparte his dinner.

He didn’t even hear the window open, didn’t feel the little gust of wind the intruder had worked so hard to bypass, and didn’t know he was there until a skinny arm caught him in a head lock.

The steel dinner tray hit the ground with a clatter. Bonaparte jumped up and tossed the boy across the cell, but Robin grabbed the bars that enclosed them and kind of hung there.

Bonaparte spat. “ Damn you! I already told you everything I know!”

“ I need to ask you about Lockhardt,” Robin said, lowering himself to the floor.

“ Unless you’ve got another tall building to hang me out, you’re not getting anything out of me,”

Robin nodded toward the window. “ Doable.”

The man glared at him. “ What is it?”

“ Did he have any bodyguards when you met with him in Tel Aviv?”

“ What the bloody hell does that have—“

“ Just answer,”

Bonaparte sat down. The light coming in the window made his cheekbones look like ice picks.

“ He had one bodyguard, a Spanish fellow I used to know.”

“ No girl?”

“ Girl? No—“ He stopped. “ You fishing for something, Bird Boy?”

“ What did the girl look like?”

“ Spanish lady, barely even a girl.”

Robin was quiet. “ Oh.”

“ He did have a girl for a bodyguard in France, I hear,” Bonaparte said. “ But I never saw her.”

“ Did she have a name?”

He shook his head. “ No name, or I never heard one.”

Robin leaned back against the bars. “ Why did Lockhardt leave?”

“ I told you already: he was having problems with Mullen. I don’t know the sticky details; that’s why I steer clear of them usually.”

“ There weren’t any rumors or anything?”

“ What the hell is this, high school? No, there weren’t any rumors. It was a clean break.”

The boy hunched his shoulders. “ You’re being pretty cooperative.”

“ Why not? I don’t have anything to lose.”

Robin went under the window. “ Sure you don’t.” He jumped off from the white sink and grabbed the window edge with his hands, then pulled himself up and disappeared out, securing the grating behind him.

[The_NewCatwoman]

Originally posted by Daughterof_Evil
tNC: Thank you for taking the time to reply, especially if you have so little time in the first place! I've been watching the progression of Broken with awe, though, like you, it's been hard to find time to reply to anything. I can't believe Lashina had a kid with Supes! Evil, evil! Though I can't wait to meet the little squirt...



Ohhh well, it seems that by now /everybody's/ had kids with everybody else. I was just thinking earlier about how it would be if I grouped them all in a room together. "Children of Superheroes Support" I suppose. Jean and Thomas would be all over each other. Poor Dresden would probably be off in a corner somewhere trying to talk himself into joining the convo...

NEway, while I'm just rattling off, I really enjoyed this fine little piece of writing. I'm glad that X got out of that situation alive, although I wish the saviors had told her the truth. I'd have like to have seen what they thought of the "boy in red".

ta ta for now:

-tNC

[Sable Phoenix]

Hey hey! WF's been down for the past month, but obviously the boards haven't. I just realized that I never thought of trying to find the message boards on their own. Silly me.

Allright, DoE. Once again your writing is superlative. I loved this line:

"Bonaparte grinned. His teeth were like broken piano keys."

You certainly have a way of turning a phrase. Keep it up.

[Tonbo_Rosso]

And the flying wedgy, I mean boy blunder, does it again. I think I'd put money down aginst him in a game of old maid.

Beautiful once again DoE. Such discordent poetry does not come out of a brighter pen.

That shrine is getting completely revamped. Tonbo swears never to post something that half baked after a sushi high again.

All said and done, I'm curious what my little twins will do next.

[Daughterof_Evil]

Thank you, all of you, for the wonderful support. Of course, I'm not going to try and pretend that this day is not significant, it's just that everything has been run through the wringer a few too many times. So let's just focus our thoughts elsewhere, ne?

This episode is rated a strict R for bad language and violence. Please read and review, and next time I think I might have the time to thank you individually for your lovely comments. Thanks bunches, anyway!
***
It was noon, and X imagined herself looking down at Tianjin from ten thousand feet up.

She had been shuttled from home to home since landing outside the city near dawn. Saw two mothers fixing breakfast for their children, watched two fathers kiss their wives goodbye, did the dishes over a sunshine-yellow porcelain sink. Heard the noises of normalcy, the clink of spoons in empty cereal bowls, tiny feet on linoleum, the front door slamming. One of the families had a cat, a fat orange tabby that stood in the corner surveying everything with cool, amber eyes.

She liked the cat, the way it stood back and watched but didn’t interfere, like a spy for a tiny, separatist world all its own.

While she was at You-furen’s kitchen table drinking tea out of a clay mug, the postman came, and she took up her gear and went with him. He stowed her in the back with parcels and undelivered mail packed in brown canvas bags. An hour later, after he made his last rounds in the suburban neighborhoods, he drove back to the giant warehouse that was headquarters for the mail system.

She hopped out once he parked behind the corrugated steel sliding doors, and looked around. There was a small jet idling there, men in brown uniforms tossing bags of mail into its back from a long conveyor belt leading out of the warehouse and into an adjoining one. Once and awhile, one of these men would pick up a stray letter, open it, then toss it back underfoot.

The postman gestured wildly for X. She tugged the hood of her cloak down to her shoulders and joined him. He was a middle-aged man, with shiny brown skin and an unkempt mop of black hair. His glasses were tiny and wireless, perched high on his nose like they were apart of his face.

“ This is Miss X,” he said. The man standing next to him, wearing an olive-colored suit decorated with medals, looked like an official, an older official with neatly shaved hair and a little bit of a goatee. He kneaded his hat between his hands.

X bowed.

“ You worked for Intergang?” asked the official in impeccable English.

“ Yes, once.”

“ Intergang has not been kind to my position or my supporters,” he said, raising his chin. “ That is why I have done so much to get you through my country. Intergang has corrupted the Chinese government to do what they want; they operate freely here without fear of prosecution.”

“ I am very sorry,” X said.

The official waved his hand at her. “ Never mind that. You’ll get on this plane and it will take you out of the country.”

“ Thank you,” She bowed again, then stopped. “ May I ask who’s directing your decision?”

“ I do not know,” the official said. “ I don’t want to know. It could be dangerous for you to know.”

“ I can’t imagine how I could be in more danger,” X said.

One of the men loading mail yelled to the official, and he replaced his hat and yelled back. He pointed at X. “ It is time for you to get on.”

A clatter as the giant corrugated doors behind them were pulled open. X ran over and jumped into the cargo compartment, wedging herself in between two bags of sharp parcels. The engines of the jet roared to life; the men along its polished side pulled the conveyor belt away and flattened themselves along the wall. The hatch went up, sealing her away in the dark.

She heard some yelling, and then quiet as the plane turned. There was only the sound of her breathing, which was slow and even, a sound sort of like the wind along the side of a building with an open window.

The engines powered up. She leaned back and braced herself. It was the same moment she heard the cracks, and the gunfire raked along the side of the jet. The plane started to roll, immediately going at a pace too fast and taking off a little too early. She sat back and sighed.
***
The neon on the sign advertising Chinese dish soap had gone out. That was why it was his favorite choice at night. He sat on the top, his feet propped on the dead neon tubing on the framework under him. The streets spread out below like a grey-blue lattice, glittering from the sparse rain that had hit that afternoon. The impassive blanket of clouds overhead half-shrouded a demure sickle moon.

Robin scanned the police frequencies for something to do. A domestic disturbance on Gibson Avenue, an accidental alarm on the waterfront, a burglary on McAffrey. There was a spark in the sky. He sighed and turned the radio off on his glove. Shot out a grappling hook and rode it all the way downtown.

The tarmac on the top of the police department was still slick from the rain, and when he landed he slipped and skated across the length of the roof, stopping as he hit the platform the Batsignal was rooted to.

He pulled himself up. “ Urgh…”

A scrape, then crash. Glass rained down on him, he covered his head with his arms. Jumped to his feet as the last shards caught the gory red of the sky and illuminated a piece of the blackened shape darting from tarmac to Batsignal and up to the police antennae and back.

A sudden groan as a dark figure jumped into a crouch atop the shattered Batsignal. Robin grabbed a batarang and threw it, but it glanced off the arc of steel and missed the form in black entirely as they jumped off the Batsignal. A boot grazed his forehead. He fell back and hit the tarmac again. A flap of tight black, and they were gone, away.

Panting, disorganized, Memoria Khasekemwy appeared from behind the Batsignal. A giant, ancient-looking musket was clenched in one fist.

Robin staggered up. “ What was that?”

She glared at him and straightened up, brushing herself off. “ Just a little scuffle, that’s all.”

He pointed at the Batsignal. “ You’re paying for that.”

“ It wasn’t me,” she spat. “ I came here to contact you, and whoever the hell that was ambushed me. Broke the damn thing.”

“ I thought I told you to leave me alone!” Robin cried.

She shook out her silver-white hair, which sort of glowed pinkish in the nuclear-red glow off the sky. “ I have some news for you.”

He crossed his arms. “ What?”

Memoria turned around and paced to the side of the roof, laying the musket on the edge and placing both black lace-gloved hands firmly upon it. For the first time, he noticed that she had a rather long braid running down her back in the midst of the head shaved up to her chili bowl.

“ You better appreciate this. My brother was shot in the head for it.”

He hunched his shoulders. “ Is he okay?”

“ Fine. He’s been asking for you…you’re aware how fond of—“

“ Stick to the facts.”

She glared at him out one icy eye. “ There was a bit of an altercation at a LexCorp lab about three weeks ago. They succeeded at keeping it very quiet. A doctor was killed, the very doctor Luthor was using for developing cybernetics, the doctor he mentioned last week had died of a brain hemorrhage.”

He perked up. “ What lab? How was he killed?”

She turned around and sat on the edge, laying the gun across her lap elegantly. It shined in a way that made it seem like a part of her outfit.

“ A lab near Rostock, Germany. The doctor was decapitated. There was another death, but not of anyone they wanted acknowledged. That one was crucified.”

“ Okay, who did it, and why should I be caring?”

“ Remember I told you about X?” Her white eyes bored straight through him. He nodded.

The next words were whispered, slowly:

“ God save the queen, because the little devil escaped.”

“ And…?” His throat was dry.

“ What else?” She leaned dangerously back. “ She’s out for blood, vengeance, the whole she-bang. She is searching and yearning and pining for a piece of the real world.”

Robin stared at the tarmac, eyebrow quirking under the mask. “ LexCorp was the ‘lucrative sponsor’?”

She nodded. “ I honestly thought you’d figure that out before I’d tell you, but the best laid plans…”

“ What does this have to do with the Hoshi Aka?” he asked.

“ Nothing,” Memoria said. “ Nothing at all. Oh, and just so you know, the man you interrogated last night, Darien Bonaparte?”

“ Yeah?”

“ Hung himself in his cell this morning.” He dropped his head. Nothing left to lose, huh…

She leaned fully back to admire the anemic moon.

“ Watch it,” he said. “ You’ll fall. And I’m not really sure I’d catch you.”

She stayed back and smiled at him, running her tongue along her bottom lip.

“ You super heroes. You should come and visit Praevidare, he misses you. And if you’re coming, bring that foxy redhead for me, will you?”

With that, she fell backwards and off the building, completely out of sight. He ran over and looked, but there was no trace of her, no dark cutout against the gleaming wet of the street below.
***
The landing gear popping into place was what roused her from her delirium. A bag of mail across the compartment shifted and fell over. She felt the descending of the plane through the depressurization of her ears, the hum of the ground growing louder and louder, the rubber meeting pavement with a little ecstatic squeal.

She moved, and every nerve and bone screamed. Sleep danced outside her mental periphery, but she wasn’t beyond pure dementia, and she lay and wallowed in it till the jet came to a complete stop. Neon shapes flickered in and out of her vision, a gleaming, oily nightmare of patent vinyl and chains. A scalpel glared close to her eyeball, then became the dagger of halogen light streaming in the open hatch.

She covered her eyes and squinted. The smells of oil and sawdust drifted in to meet her.

“ Up. Get up.” Someone said. Readjusting her pupils accordingly…

“ Get up. This is the Ustare Experimental Revolution front.” A blank, sub-automatic barrel glared her in the face, and behind that, a person in a black ski mask with an emblem sewed onto the forehead. It was a man, she could tell.

“ Who the hell are you?” came out of her mouth without her consent.

“ This is the Ustare Experimental Revolution front,” he said. “ Get up, we need to talk to you, Miss X001.”

“ I’m not moving, *****er,” That slipped by, too.

He primed his gun. “ Please get up. We are a sect of Intergang needing—“

That word. It was enough to prove her convictions, justify her means. Faster than he could have ever seen, she grabbed his gun and hit him in the face with it, then vaulted over him as he fell backward. She was out on concrete and steel in a matter of seconds, leaping in twenty-foot bounds into the air and through the iron eaves of the old hangar. Their bullets were woefully slow. She didn’t even scan their ranks before dropping her last grenade down onto their heads. She was propelling herself up through a whited-out skylight and into the stout release of night air when the charge went off, a napalm-fueled nova blooming along the floor of the warehouse.

The scout on the roof couldn’t have helped himself. He was a sniper, she could tell, not used to close-range combat, with a scope on his gun. She had knocked out his knee and taken his rifle in a second or so, then moved to the edge.

A cold circlet of a gun barrel against her temple. “ Please cooperate. This could be very nasty for you.”

In a few seconds, X had analyzed him. A man, upper-class Pakistani, possibly from the Indus River region from the distinct bitterness of the patchouli smell he wore. Late thirties, one-hundred eighty to two-hundred pounds, most of it muscle provoked into growth by greyhound steroids. The animal musk of the hormones hung around him almost as much as the patchouli. He wasn’t the same man from the plane; this man was PR.

“ Drop the gun,” he said. She did. It bounced off the side and to the ground some fifty feet down, going off with a crack. The city in the distance glowed dimly, a slightly yellowish mirage in the blue dark. Its hum was the heartbeat of a million souls.

“ You will come with us or you will suffer, understand?”

“ Go to hell,” she said. It was very sudden, her hand in his gut, wrist-deep in intestinal tissue. She heard him sputter, cough, and finally, pull the trigger.

The bullet was warm, numb oblivion in her skull. Flickers of ruby-red in the air next to her. Salty-bitter taste like chemicals. And the ground, fifty feet down, rushing closer and closer.

Wound to pain to bliss. Then braindeath.

[Panther]

ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



You killed off your main character???????????????


Other than that this post was suburb, I'm in awe of all the descriptions.

gotta go,

[Sable Phoenix]

Holy COW! You never lose the ability to shock the reader, DoE.

Next installment, quickly, please!

[Coran]

Well done DoE. As always your descriptions are excellent and your knock for leaving us with a cliffhanger is unnerving. Is it possible for X to survive this one, or is that the end of the main character? Please post again soon!

[The_NewCatwoman]

Oh say it a'int so! Oh I'm pretty sure she isn't dead. She can't be. It's not possible....


right?

tNC

[Daughterof_Evil]

Ah, lots of indignation! Thanks to everyone who replied with such lovely comments and exclamations. I would love to respond to you individually, but I haven't the time currently, as I'm smooshed between one thing I have just done and another thing I have to do.

Brave New World is the property of Aldous Huxley and only used here in the sincerest respect. Please note that this episode contains brief allusions toward S&M and sexual humor. Thank you all and goodnight!
***
“ Weekend!” Tim yelled, jumping onto the couch. Alfred appeared at the doorway, Tim’s vest, jacket, and sneakers in one hand in the order the boy had discarded them on his way in.

“ Don’t forget your homework, Master Timothy. Master Bruce expects you to have it done before you go out tonight,” the old butler said as he drifted down the hall towards the kitchen. Tim knew his routine. He’d put on the tea, then iron his wrinkled blazer while the water came to a boil.

The boy grabbed up the remote and switched on the TV, rolling up the sleeves on his shirt. Flipping through the channels one by one, scanning the more than eight hundred international stations Bruce got. Fifteen hundred in the Batcave, but he didn’t feel like going down there so early after school. He paused and watched an Indonesian game show, then went on.

Oddly enough, there was nothing on. Rather than turning the television off, he settled on an artsy black and white German movie and set it on auto-translate. A spew of English profanities came out loud and thick, and Tim sat completely still waiting for Alfred to come in and protest.

He didn’t. Breathing a sigh of relief, Tim turned it down and took out his homework. The math and English were spread out across the coffee table, the science stacked next to him on the couch. Within a few minutes he and the papers had moved onto the floor like they had all oozed there together: Tim on his stomach with Brave New World propped open in front of him, his English take-home test unstapled and radiating around him like a fan, a number two pencil hanging out of his mouth, a rolled-up sheaf of algebra in one hand being used as a drum stick on the carpet.

Alfred came in with a tray of milk and sandwiches made to look like they were for tiny people. Tim accepted the milk with a thank you and gulped half of it down over Mustapha Mond philosophizing with John Savage.

“ Call it the fault of civilization. God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness…"

“ I say they’re afraid of change,”

Tim looked up. The German black and white movie was gone, replaced with a news program being broadcast from what looked like China. The boy looked for the remote and found it balanced neatly on the back of the couch. Damn, Alfred was sneaky.

It was Lex Luthor, sitting in a leather armchair in front of a floor-to-ceiling window that was a slice of Mount Fuji. The interviewer was the Japanese version of Summer Gleason, with a short black dome of hair and a sweet, round face. Her smile was constant and comforting.

“ We have come so far in the past few years with genetic and cybernetic technology it would be irresponsible of us to do nothing with it,” he said, steepling his hands, “ and there is so much need in the world. I mean, you yourself, Miss Kamui, are a monument to that achievement.”

“ So you’re telling your opponents that there is a definite market for the technology your company has produced?” Folded her perfect, tiny hands over her lap. He noticed that the earring in her left earlobe seemed to be a tiny logo.

“ More than a market—a real, honest necessity for my technology. It can benefit everyone on this planet if we let it.” He clenched his hand decisively, retaining that featureless, platonic smile that shown like the compiled bits of every friendly smile in the world.

It flashed to a picture of the anchorwoman in the middle of a parking lot, talking next to the news van. A slew of kanji glyphs appeared under her image, and she spewed into a long lecture in Japanese that was translated along the bottom of the screen. File footage of protests in Metropolis. People marching with signs reading things like I’D RATHER BE AN AMPUTEE THAN A ROBO-FREAK, or REAL LIFE IS PRECIOUS, CYBER-LIFE IS NOT.

Back to Mika Kamui. He remembered her suddenly from a short news piece done by Summer Gleason a few weeks before, about the Japanese station that had taken on an Akuma Incorporated robot personality construct for its anchorwoman. She smiled in a completely fear-inducing way, then the scene cut to the news desk.

“ She even has a sense of humor,” Tim turned. Barbara was standing behind the couch, hands on its arched back. Her leather jacket was folded over a cushion, it was too warm to wear it.

“ The robot lady?” Tim asked.

“ Sure.” Behind Tim’s head, an image of a slick, shining runway. Svelte young women strolled back and forth, their transparent green vinyl garments showing all the mechanisms at work inside their disassembled bellies. Tiny gears, fiber-optic lines, the perfect flatness of their chests and the narrowness of their boyish hips. They were all manufactured copies of one another sporting different hairstyles but the same large, dark eyes and glass-smooth black hair. Each one was a partially-dismantled Mika Kamui.

“ It’s kind of creepy how perfect she is,” the boy mentioned dryly. “ Give me a flesh and blood person any day. Metal’s just not my thing.”

“ How perfect they are,” Barbara said, gesturing at the screen. A girl in a transparent vinyl kimono strolled to the end of the runway and turned slowly, allowing a three-hundred-sixty degree view of her waist, which had been reduced down to a three inch core of spine-like fiber-optics and metal pieces like the inside of a watch. As she went back up the runway, one could see the screwdrivers stuck into her pincushion geisha bun. “ It’s unfair to think real women can compete with something programmed to fulfill a man’s every desire.”

“ When all you really want is something to do the dishes for ‘ya,” Tim said mockingly. A cushion hit him in the back of the head and he was face-first in Brave New World.

Barbara sat down and started in on the tray of sandwiches. “ You men are all the same,” she said with faux exasperation and a little smile.

“ Hey, you group me with guys like Bruce and Dick?”

“ Gladly,” She took a glass of milk, too. Skipped lunch.

The Japanese news program had gone on to something else, some zaibatsu anger management ceremony. Barbara changed the channel gratefully, skipping through Portugese children’s programming and that same Indonesian game show. She stopped on a Metropolis fashion program.

“ Sheer is definitely in this year,” Lana Lang predicted sagely. “ All the Japanese robot models are wearing it.”

“ My God, Lana!” Barbara yelled emphatically. “ Use your head!”

“ You better get on it, Babs,” Tim advised.

“ Go to the Cave,” she said wearily at him. “ I’ll meet you down there as soon as my lunch is over.”
***
Woke up in a haze of red.

“ I told you not to do that,” said Barbara outside his range of vision. “ You’re going to be sore all week.”

Something cold and flat and porous was placed to his face. One of Alfred’s old tricks, placing steaks on head injuries.

“ Eww, meat,” Tim managed to mutter. He sat up and looked around. The red had receded, replaced with hunks of black interspersed with soft grey. He remembered hitting the balancing beam, then the mat, and going under.

“ Never try to back-flip out of a sweep kick,” Barbara had said. “ You can’t pull it off.”

“ I could if I wanted to,” Tim remembered having said a few seconds before smacking the beam. Barbara was right; he was going to have a sore head all week, and a bruise, too.

“ Dumb boy,” she said next to him, tussling his hair. “ Go work on the Batcomputer for a while. Till your head clears up.”

He obligingly did as she told, and went and sat before the giant monitor. The sheer size of the computer swallowed him up. Using the one hand not holding the steak to his head, he keyed up recent cases.

“ Do be careful with the steak, Master Timothy,” Alfred said somewhere behind him. “ You will be having it for dinner.”

“ Ha ha,” the boy muttered. The Darien Bonaparte case had been sealed; it had been confirmed that the British hitman, approximately thirty-four years old and five-foot-five, had hung himself in his cell at the GCPD two days earlier. He left no note.

Bonaparte’s ties with Intergang had been studied down to the microscopic levels, to no avail. Batman had been right when he said that the man had stuck to the shallow rim of Intergang; wherever Intergang went, he was sure to be in the country next door. He had no family. His friends were few and secretive. He was going to be buried in the municipal plot outside the city where homeless people and John Does were laid to rest in caskets made of plywood.

Attached to Bonaparte’s biography was Lockhardt’s, and Tim found himself opening up the video file from the airport in La Havre. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, he clicked on Play.

The video box filled with what appeared to be a long spiel of TV static, the kind that came up when the cable went down. He clicked on it again, tried an abort command, then moved to hit the master switch on the entire system.

That’s when his eyes caught it. Melting out of the static was a picture in black and white, a pale figure lying on their side. Arms tied behind their back, legs folded up to their chest, head bound in what seemed to be a white bedsheet. A tiny, female form was held captive in what looked like scant black vinyl bondage gear, her wrists and ankles held with chains.

“ Tim, what…?” Barbara said behind him. He was gaping at the screen, at the little person with the muscles sticking out of her shadowed legs.

Superimposed over the image came the words:

YOU LIKE IT ROUGH, BIRD BOY??

The screen went black as his fist smashed the keyboard.
***
The basement window popped open. Once he lost his balance, it was only a matter of regaining it in mid-air, and he hit the teak floor on both feet. The flashlight he’d been holding in his mouth had rolled across the floor, casting a little oblong of silvery light onto the edge of an Oriental rug.

He took up the flashlight and went up the basement steps, pausing before the door and pressing his ear to it. Nothing. He tried the knob. Locked.

The door swung suddenly outward, and Robin found himself face-to-face with a big Southern gal called Madame.

She crossed her arms over her ample chest. “ What, may I ask, are you doing in my cellah?”

He grinned and flinched. “ Is Memoria home?”

Madame crossed the parlor. She was wearing a pleated blue satin dress and a pearl choker around her neck, her dark hair piled up on her head in sausage curls. “ Memoria has gone. And Praevidare has a gentleman caller.”

“ Where did she go?” he asked.

The woman produced from a tiny, feathered fan a black business card printed with grey lettering and handed it to him.

“ ‘Suicide Pact’?” he questioned.

“ A club downtown. You won’t know it when you see it, but just trust your instincts, darlin’,” She sat down in a giant velvet wing chair. The hem of her petticoats pulled up and showed her fishnet stockings and low boots.

“ Thanks,” he said, and started back for the basement.

“ You sure you don’t want to see Praevidare, child? He wouldn’t mind,”

“ No thanks,” he said. He disappeared into the dark.

[The_NewCatwoman]

OMGosh, what can I say? It was a throughly enjoyable connection piece. Keep going!

Not much more to it.

tNC

[Panther]

Oh, what happened to X? It's not fair stringing us along like this!! And what will Robin find?

Incredible post, great descriptions all around, especialy the channel surfing!

Hope to see more soon!

later,

[Sable Phoenix]

DoE, I love this. One can really sink one's teeth into your writing and chew on it thoughtfully, enjoying all the little nuances you've injected. You have a very tasty writing style. Your descriptions, detailed but not flowery, are wholesome and filling, like homemade potatoes and meatloaf.

How's that for mixing metaphors?

If there's an example on these boards of "show, don't tell", you are it, my friend. This was a great little episode because it really made me feel like I was there, watching it all. Keep it up.

When are you going to be professionally published, girl?

[Daughterof_Evil]

tNC: Thanks, girl! That means a lot coming from the writer currently churning out all the vampiric loveliness that is Perfect Dark.

Panther: He he he. You know I live to confound and enrage my readers, so you'll just have to wait and see what happens to X, and what Robin encounters on his way...

Sable Phoenix: Anybody who compares my writing to meatloaf and potatoes is okay in my book. I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and as for the publishing part, even I am not sure. Thank you thank you, though, for the vote of confidence!

Thanks for all your wonderful comments, guys and ladies! And now, without further distraction...

[The_NewCatwoman]

Originally posted by Daughterof_Evil
tNC: Thanks, girl! That means a lot coming from the writer currently churning out all the vampiric loveliness that is Perfect Dark.

Whooo, you sound happy! I'm only here for a moment so, keep up the great work.

[Daughterof_Evil]

Okay, this one answers the pressing question " Is X still alive??"

What do you guys think?

So far, this is the one with the highest level and most diverse objectionable content. The violence is medium, the swearing mild, but it does include a scene of same-sex seduction and drug content. That most lovely scene of debauchery was crafted for me by Tonbo, who realized my talents in objectionable content only go so far, and two new characters, Hands and Mama, are hers on loan to me. I should also mention that I have nothing against the fine people who make Pine-Sol.

Enjoy!!
***
She woke up in what seemed like a roiling piece of hell, her head swollen and eyes sealed shut with blood. A perfect line of pain followed her spine and from there spiked out along her nerves. She pulled herself to her knees and rubbed at her face, the dried blood coming off in flakes. Her vision came back a few seconds later.

It was still dark out, the glowing edge of the far-off city cut against the black sky. Behind her, the fire inside the hangar glowed through the windows. She looked down and found she’d been lying in a pool of her own blood, the wound on her temple sealed but still tender. It hurt to blink.

Slowly, she started to walk, shuffling at first with a deep ache in her hips that made it difficult to move. The further she went, the more the pain grew. She was panting within a few minutes, delving deep into the warm forest surrounding the hangar. She heard a car come to a stop behind her, shouts in Hindi, and hurried through the brush.

Someone began stalking beside her. The boy grinned a flash-white smile at her, and winked. She reached out to touch him, and he disappeared, like he had just dissolved into the forest.

A crash in the jungle behind her, and she began running, every joint and vein and bone burning like napalm ran through her. Whispers fluttered through her ears. She could smell them coming closer and closer, and time blurred, stretched, then broke altogether.

She was at the roadside on her hands and knees, breathing heavily, pink-stained sweat running off her face and arms in thick rivulets. A spot at the base of her skull throbbed and seemed to crack. She coughed up bits of red into her cupped hand, then fell over on the gravel and pulled her cloak around her. Above her, the sky pulled apart in hunks like broken glass.

It was awhile before she got up again, and began trudging down the road. She concentrated on one foot in front of the other, the crunch of the stones beneath the soles of her boots, the lip of tar that ran a ragged ribbon on her left. The city was still there, just above her line of sight. She knew if she could just get there, and find out where she was, she would know where to go next.

The buzz in her skull increased to a piston-roar, and it at once became impossible to continue. Still and straight, she stood at the edge of the road and shut her eyes.

Her voice came to her like a carnal hiss. “ Care to dance, little girl?”

X opened her eyes.
***
Robin opened his eyes.

Outside, it was an ash-grey building that had once been an industrial savings and loan bank. It still bore the giant billboard, faded now, and barely readable. He had come in through the greenhouse skylights, sprayed over with matte black paint and secured with an intricate scaffolding of stainless steel bolts and bars. A glass cutter had allowed him the two-foot hole through which he descended via jump cable.

A blast of laser light caught him in the eye, and he grabbed fiercely to the cable. Below, he listened to the heartbeat thrum of the crowds, caught in their freakish bursts of dance as the lights flushed over them. Flat television screens were bolted to every surface; above the bar, around the dance floor, up in the rafters where he now crouched in silence. They played fractures of light and imaging, old Godzilla movies and soap operas and sci-fi shows and what he figured was pieces of weird fetish porn. For a moment, what appeared to be the diagrams of an automobile flashed across the screens and was then gone.

The dance floor was a sunken pit, and the bar tables lined it on elevated areas ringed with grey metal railings that looked to be plastered with tiny holographic stickers. He saw a gleam of silver-white hair and hopped from rafter to rafter till he was above her head. She was sitting at a table in the corner with a woman who had a shaved, tattooed head and wore plaid pants and go-go boots with a low-dipping black corset and a black jabot knotted around her pale throat.

Breathing carefully, he prepared to fall.
***
X was instantly standing above a tumultuous wave of ravers dancing in the psychotic flicker of the lasers. She slowed her breathing. The music was low and pounding. She let her heartbeat match it carefully.

A thin, tanned hand circled her waist fingers slide across her abdomen, and began running up and down her tight stomach. A body moved behind her dancing and swaing to the music. X was still, and the hand ran up her ribs and over her flat chest. She was emotionless, cold. Another hand ran down the side of her white silk covered thigh.

She pulled roughly away and turned around. “ What do you want?”

A smile out of the dark. A young woman stood in the bits of light, her moves seamlessly confident. She was Indian, that was sure, with large dark eyes and black hair pulled back in a tight, high braid. Her lips were painted black, there was a single, staring eye scribed onto her forehead with gold and red paint.

She pressed herself against her. X backed up till her back hit a vertical rafter. The woman was wearing a fitted red blouse open all the way down her tan chest and black leather pants, no bra. She moved with X and put both hands against the girl’s shoulders; leaning in, she ran her tongue across the ridge of X’s ear.

“ Get away from me,” X said, and pushed her off.

The woman smiled. “ Shy, are you? You don’t dance?”

X breathed heavily. “ No. Go away.”

“ You’re feisty,” The woman smiled a feral wolf grin. “ I like that. I am Hands.”

“ Where am I?!” growled X.

“ Within,” Hands replied as she began to dance again. “ This flesh of yours is deeper than you think.”

“ What have you done to me!?”

“ Made you aware. You dream the memories of someone else.” A flicker of light illuminated all the details of Hands’ face: the dark, upturned lines drawn around her eyes, the finely hammered cheekbones, little gold lotus blossoms in each ear.

“ I want to go back,” the X said.

“ What, back to your metal-flesh? Something that has caused you so much pain? You are dying, X, don’t you know?” Hands stopped dancing and began to undo the white silk sari X was wearing.

“ I’ve died before,” X said truthfully, shutting her eyes, feeling things she knew she did not have parts for anymore.

“ Abandon that body, X, and come to us! We will hold you forever like this, in our embrace, and never let you break or rust or die.” Hands murmured in her ear as she began to nibble at the nape of X’s neck.

X opened her eyes and looked at her. “ But it’s not real.”

“ That matters not!” Hands insisted and stepped back, outstretching her hand. “ The experience is enough!”

X turned and looked down at the people dancing, their bodies and brains forever locked in the hellish waltz of their faux-life.

Hands reached further for her, grinning still as if she knew her answer. “ Don’t you want to live, X?”

She tipped forward. “ No.”

She fell, the second time in so many days, hours, months, and hit the dancers below with a very loud crack.
***
Robin’s feet and hands touched down on the hammered steel table perfectly, just as he’d calculated twenty feet above. The bald woman didn’t waste any time pulling a giant semi-automatic on him, pointing it squarely between his eyes.

“ Move and you get it, hero,” she said with a thick, crude British accent. Both wrists glittered with studded black cuffs, and when she talked he got a sight of her badly managed teeth.

“ Relax, Pip,” Memoria said, standing and placing a delicate hand on the gun. She was dressed in a long, tight black vest and a sheer, ruffled black blouse secured tightly around her neck with a black-shell cameo. Knickers, but with fishnet stockings and low boots with buckles on them.

Pip replaced the gun on a thigh holster and turned to leave. There was a large, red dragon tattooed across the back of her skull.

“ What is it?” Memoria asked, getting up and crossing her arms.

Robin climbed off the table and stood to face her. She was as tall as him.

“ This place isn’t your style,” he grumbled.

She picked a piece of lint off his neck. He brushed her off. “ I’m collecting information,” she told him.

“ Think it’s funny what you sent me today?” he asked.

“ What?” she questioned dully.

“ The picture! That…girl! Some weird bondage thing…it was all you…Trying to get to me,”

“ I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, going to the bar. She gave a complicated hand gesture to the bartender, and he started in on a drink for her.

“ Like hell,” he said.

“ Not my fashion to hack your systems,” The bartender handed over the drink, and gave Robin a cross look. “ It’s too juvenile.”

“ Then who else?”

She shrugged and downed her martini, then slammed the glass down on the clear, yellow resin counter. He stared at the counter closer and realized that stuck in the translucent epoxy were tiny instruments of torture. A pair of tongs, forceps, an eight-foot whip, a length of chain.

“ Someone with a lovely sense of humor,” she said, smacking her lips. Her white eyes gleamed weirdly; he had a feeling she was drunk or high or something, either chemical or information.

“ This is messed up,” he said. “ It came up when I accessed the video file of that airport in La Havre.”