Aha! Success! Another issue hits the web, and I collapse in exhaustion.
=)
But really, we're gearing into the arc's climax here, and things are all
starting to
come together. I've got two weeks left until my light summer schedule hits
and
I'll be prepared to guarantee nothing larger than two week gaps between each
issue (which is the regularly scheduled length of my gaps). This doesn't
mean
that next issue _won't_ be out on time -- I have to have something to do to
keep me from studying for my finals. =)
Thanks, as always, to those who commented on issue twenty-nine: Ken
Schmidt, Dave Benson, Tom Russell, and Rory Bryant. Y'all are great.
Enjoy!
=========================================================================
DERELICT Press Presents
The thirtieth issue of
/~~\/~~\ {] /~~\ (^^^ || ***** /~~\
/ /\/\ \ [) ~\__ (^^ || ,' ~\__
/__/ \__\ (} \__/ ( || ', \__/
" Gold "
Crows: Part 5 of 7
A psuedo-Acraphobe title
._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._.'COVER`._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._.
Censor Girl stands center cover. Behind her metal half is the jungle,
all greenery and dark shadows. But the background shifts and fades, until
a cityscape lies behind her flesh half, a night scene with all the
buildings lit up. Her arms are crossed, head held high with eyes half
closed. She is tense with anger.
)()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
They stood in the center of street. All eyes were on Nei. The
young net.heroine looked horrified, covered in a fine layer of cement
dust from the huge chunk of building she had just caught, and then tossed
off to the side. Paytan took a step toward her.
"You weren't supposed to see that part," whimpered Nei, then
turned and ran.
"Nei! Wait!" yelled Savannah, and tried to run after her. She
made it a few steps, until her right foot hit a stone she hadn't seen and
skidded out from beneath her. She fell heavily and rolled, coming up with
scraped hands.
Paytan cursed, and started after Nei while Brit helped Savannah
up. The girl was already half a block away and still sprinting, braid
tossing behind her.
Paytan burst into a run, considered for a moment using a spell to
slow Nei down, then discarded the notion. She'd already wasted enough
magic on Corvine. Ahead, Nei swung around a street corner and disappeared
from view. Paytan caught a look at herself reflected in one of the store
windows, a horned girl in a black T-shirt and jeans running as if her
life depended on it, and nearly laughed. Some things were just funny to
see.
She rounded the corner and nearly tripped over Nei, who was
sitting on the curb, curled over so that her head rested on her knees.
She was sobbing. The kind of huge, bone-deep sobs that never make
it to the movie screen because they're not cinematic enough. Paytan
reached out, then took her hand back before she actually touched Nei.
"Nei, what was -- "
Nei lifted her head. "I just wanted to do the right thing! I
wanted everything to work like it _should_ --"
"Whoa, wait a sec." Paytan, unused to the duties of comforter,
looked around for someone else to help carry the load. But everyone was
still around the corner back about a block. Internally, Paytan winced.
Hopefully she wouldn't screw the kid up. "You have been doing everything
right. I mean, aside from the whole 'Paytan's a villain' fiasco, which
had nothing to do with your powers."
Luckily Nei ignored that last bit. "But I couldn't let you die,
right? I mean, it was either that or not, and the rocks were coming
down..."
"Not letting me die was a good thing."
"And I _know_ I shouldn't have, I know it was --
Paytan sat down beside her, and patted her awkwardly on the
shoulder. "Look Nei, a minute or two ago everyone could have been
standing around my corpse, okay? Because of you they're not." Inside she
shuddered, because that bit hadn't seemed real until she'd said it.
Demons always wanted their victims to stay alive for the next few rounds
of torture. But that, a few minutes ago... it would have been final.
Later. She would deal with it later.
"Yeah," whispered Nei, and looked her in the eye. The expression
on the younger net.heroine's face was hard to read, tearstreaked as it
was. "Yeah, it was worth it."
"Why didn't you tell us?"
Nei flung her arms out. "No one in the LNH is just... really
strong. No one famous, anyway! I thought if I, you know, made it a little
strange, then I'd fit in. I'd be a better hero."
"Nei, being a hero has nothing to do with what kind of powers you
have."
"Yeah, I know," snuffled the neo-net.heroine. "I just started out
that way, and then I couldn't just come out and say, 'Hey, I'm a big
liar' right?"
Paytan snorted. "It would have been better if you had. No more
surprises, then. Look -- " She stood up and brushed her jeans off. Nei
looked up hopefully and Paytan stuck out her hand. "No more lying, okay?
Or I'll kick your ass."
Nei nodded. "I won't."
"You promise?"
"Promise." Nei grabbed Paytan's hand and shook, once, then Paytan
pulled her to her feet.
"Good. Let's go see what everyone else is doing."
Everyone else was standing around talking while Savannah tried to
track down Bryan through the use of a payphone and a huge pile of
quarters. Brittany sat on the hood of Allen's car, heels thumping gently
against the siding. Allen was pacing back and forth in front of her,
hands folded behind his back. He smiled when Paytan arrived.
Nei walked up and stopped in front of them, head down. "I'm
sorry. I mean, there's nothing else I can say. I have super-strength, not
just, uh, the metal thing. It won't happen again."
"Okay!" said Brit, and patted the hood of the car. Nei smiled and
sat down beside her. Allen just rolled his eyes.
"So," he said, "What was the point of all that?"
Paytan moved so that she stood beside him. "All of what?"
"Corvine wanted a hostage, not the money. They left most of it in
the street when the helicopter took off."
"Yeah," said Paytan. "They wanted Brittany."
"I think they wanted anybody, actually," said Nei hesitantly.
"It's just that Weirdness Girl and I got here first, and we, uh, caused a
lot of damage to the inside of the helicopter."
"I think they were unhappy about the squishy things," added
Brittany.
Paytan looked at her.
Brittany sighed. "You know! They're in airplanes a lot, and you
can disattach them from the headrest and use them for your neck, or your
arms, or -- "
"Pillows?" asked Nei.
"Kind of. Close. Yeah. Anyway, I kind of tore a few of them."
Brittany looked abashed. Twenty or so feet away, Savannah placed the
phone gently on its receiver, and began to walk in their direction.
"So, they wanted a hero for ransom purposes?" asked Paytan.
"Maybe." Allen looked thoughtful. "Corvine doesn't seem to be as
in to taking over the world as most of the guys who use Censor Girl. He
might be the kind to go in for ransom."
"So he's just using her as an enforcer. He needs one, too. I
nearly knocked him unconscious with one of my spells, and most of the
stuff we run into just brushes 'em off," added Paytan unhappily. "And
Savannah says Censor Girl's on our side."
"Not quite," said Savannah, reaching the group. She leaned
against the front of the car (now noticeably tilting under the weight of
three heroines). "She just doesn't want to be on Lord Corvine's side."
"And she told you this," said Allen. Savannah shook her head.
"Not in so many words, no. But she's doing this against her will.
She hates the whole thing. I think he's got something on her. Maybe
blackmail?"
"How can you blackmail her?" asked Paytan. "She's already a
villain-at-large. I mean, she's pretty much been associated with half the
major upsets in this universe, right? What's he gonna blackmail her
about?"
"A sordid affair?" asked Brittany.
"I think it might be something more physical," said Savannah.
"I'm betting he's linked into her cyborg half somehow. There might be
some kind of old control modules there, and he's just taking advantage of
them."
Paytan smiled. "Without Censor Girl he's nothing. He's a guy in a
nice suit. _And_ we have his real name, which Bryan is now researching,
am I right?"
Savannah nodded, and glanced away.
"She told us where his secret base is, or the general location
anyway. I say we head down there, and threaten to tell every superhero in
existence who he really is if he doesn't let Censor Girl go."
"That doesn't normally work, does it?" asked Brittany.
"But this guy's a businessman, or he looks like one," interrupted
Allen. "He doesn't seem like most of the crazies who wouldn't care if
people knew who they really were."
"So we start flying now, Bryan sends us the information en route,
and we kick some ass. Sound good?" Paytan cracked her knuckles.
Savannah cleared her throat and stood. "I think we should
double-check the information," she whispered.
"But isn't Bryan -- "
"That information may not be trustworthy," she said. Savannah
looked up, and Paytan noticed for the first time that her eyes were wet.
"I think, uh, I think that the library computers may not be the best
source of knowledge. They're open to the public, so people might be able
to hack into them and change things."
"We'll check things back at HQ then, too," said Allen.
"Okay, let's go!" Brit jumped off the hood and headed for her
hoverbike.
Savannah stood and followed, too fast for Paytan to pull her
aside for a moment. Paytan stood and watched her go for a moment, then
Allen opened the car door and motioned her inside.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
"Love isn't something you can force, Bryan. If a relationship is
going to work, it will work. You have to be patient. After all, if you
haven't met the right person, then that might be why things aren't
working out."
"Really?"
"Yes. Once, when someone was courting me, he just wouldn't go
past the Third Expression." She paused, to emphasize the lack. "He just
wouldn't, no matter how we tried! I even gave him a... you don't have the
word... a tin vase? Found out two years later, he had lapschour sickness.
Just think if we'd gone into the Fourth Expression, or even Girhom's
Trill! We'd have both gotten it. It would have been a tragedy."
Bryan sat back. "Really."
"But if you really want things to work, try giving her a tin
vase. It almost always wins them over." Kismet looked painfully earnest.
In the recesses of the library somewhere, a phone rang, and she turned
her head to follow the sound.
She really was very pretty, with stunning features and deep blue
eyes. She was terribly thin, and her blond hair caught at the light like
liquid gold. It was almost the same color as Savannah's.
Bryan sighed, and wondered what she was doing right this moment.
A librarian walked up, looking very tense and pale, and handed
him a phone. Bryan looked at it, surprised, then raised it to his ear.
"Hello?"
"Hello," said Savannah. He nearly dropped the phone. "I'm still
angry at you, because you're a liar and a villain, but we just found out
something important, it may save peoples' lives, and I'm not going to let
someone die just because I'm pissed off. You're in a position to do the
research."
"Okay," he managed to stutter. "Is it about the Reality?" Her
voice sounded so flat, so cold.
"No, unfortunately. A villain. Codename Lord Corvine, real name
Enrique DuLourde, and he works for Luce Incorporated. We need to know how
dirty the company is, if Enrique is their only foray into this sort of
thing, or if it's bigger."
"I can do that."
"Okay."
"Okay."
"Goodbye," she whispered. With a click, the phone went dead.
Bryan cradled it in his hand for a moment, then set it gently down on the
surface of the table.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
The black helicopter had limped back to the heliport on top of
the business tower. From there a limousine had taken them to the airport,
where they had boarded a tiny unmarked supersonic jet. The whole journey
had been made in silence.
Censor Girl sat beside Lord Corvine, staring at the back of the
seat in front of her. She felt confused, empty. She did not want to be
here, in this plane, flying to wherever. But there was nowhere else she
wanted to be, either. Her mind felt like an abandoned ship, set to drift
long ago and abandoned by its sailors.
The damned voice echoed into her head again and again, <You will
destroy the LNH>, a constant reminder that her choices were not entirely
her own. Corvine himself was no threat. It was the voice in her head that
he could control from a station somewhere far away, that could make her
do what he wanted.
Beside her Lord Corvine sank a little deeper in his chair. She
could almost see his lower lip sticking out in a pout. "Stupid," he
muttered. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
Satisfaction stabbed through her. "I'm sorry sir. I misunderstood
your orders."
Corvine turned to her and grabbed her cyborg arm. "Damn right you
did! No wonder no one ever took over the world with you at their side!"
He tried to shake her for emphasis, but she didn't budge. "I'm the only
one here doing my part! Does everyone else just expect me to magically
wave my hand, and make the plans work!?"
"Some villains can."
He growled, and let go of her to flop back in his chair. "Bad
equipment, bad workers. No one follows orders, or does what they're
supposed to. No wonder villains never manage to take over the world."
She just smiled at him, blank. She felt the plane shift beneath
her. They were circling, changing altitude. Wherever they were, they were
landing.
"Wait until they hear about this. Heads will roll, and it won't
be mine, I assure you," muttered Lord Corvine. He turned to glare at
Censor Girl. "I'll have all of you reprogrammed."
Then the plane began to drop faster, and Corvine stopped talking
completely, his hands gripping the armrests like his life depended on it.
One bump, two, then Censor Girl could feel the ground rolling beneath
their wheels. They came to a stop. Corvine looked at her, and she
pretended not to have noticed his fear. A man who named himself after a
bird, and he didn't like flying.
He stood, and motioned her perfunctionally to follow him.
Annoyance bloomed within her, and her hand twitched involuntarily, as she
imagined his bones snapping in her fingers. Corvine leaned to leave the
plane, sunlight washing over his shoulders, and she sighed.
Then she reached the door, and stopped, stunned.
The world outside was a mass of verdant green, like liquid
emerald with the azure bowl of the sky overhead. Massive trees thrust
upward all around them, and the ground was covered with a carpet of
vegetation. Somewhere distant, a jaguar's cough slipped through the
underbrush. She was in a jungle.
She had faint memories from when she had still been human,
looking at a picture of the redwoods. The closest she had ever been to
anything like this. Beside her Corvine cleared his throat.
"Home sweet home," he said, and pulled a thin controller from his
vest pocket. He hit a button, and a chunk of the jungle off to the left
wavered and disappeared.
In front of them lay an unassuming grey building, three stories
high. The roof was large enough to land a helicopter on, and not much
else. The only other thing of interest was a field off to the side with
five small satellite dishes in it. Everything else was trees and vines.
Censor Girl blinked. She ran back through her monitor files on
the signal that had led her out of the LNHHQ when the cell door popped
open. Cross-checked the information with the most recent entries. She
blinked again.
If the numbers read right, the fool had brought her straight to
the place they broadcast the signals that could control her. Was he that
stupid?
She glanced at him as he stared proudly at the little pile of
bricks and paint in the middle of a vast wildness. How did this man get
to be a villain in the first place?
He turned to her and smiled proudly. "Shall we go in?"
She smiled back, sweet as sugar. "Lead the way. Master."
-=ð=- -=ð=-
The flight.thingee soared through the sky with Paytan at the
controls. Brittany, over everyone's objections, was riding shotgun, with
Savannah and Nei back in the body of the machine. Allen was still at the
LNHHQ, double-checking the information they'd gotten from Censor Girl on
Lord Corvine.
About an hour or two into the flight the door to the passenger
bay slid open, and Savannah stepped quietly into the cockpit. Brittany
took a big gulp of soda and waved, and Savannah leaned against the wall
of the flight.thingee, arms folded and head down. Time passed. Paytan
concentrated on the control board and not flying them into a mountain.
After a while Savannah shifted and raised her head. "Paytan? Do
you remember Romeo and Juliet?"
Paytan looked away from the controls for a moment to think. "I
hated that book. They made everybody at my school read it."
"Why'd they have to die?"
"They were stupid and the universe hated them, as far as I can
remember." She paused for a moment, then took a deep breath. Why did
_she_ have to be the one getting landed with all the heart-to-heart talks
these days? "... you're big on literature all of a sudden."
"Bryan's a villain."
Paytan spun around in the control chair, and the flight.thingee's
nose dropped sharply. Brittany choked on her soda and grabbed the
controls. "A VILLAIN!? You said he was a nice guy!"
"He _is_ a nice guy! I didn't know!"
"What kind of villain!?"
"He's in the Junior Brotherhood of Net.Villains."
"THE WHAT!?"
"Paytan, the plane," interjected Brittany.
But Paytan was standing, walking across the captain's cabin. She
kicked the metal wall. "Do you know how many times we fought them!? What's
he look like?"
"Blond... blue eyes, with -- "
"I KNOCKED HIM UNCONSCIOUS ONCE!" Paytan paused. "Hey, wait. I
don't think he wanted to fight me, either." She walked back to the
captain's chair and sank slowly into it. "Maybe he is a nice guy."
"He's a villain," said Savannah, and slid down the wall to sit on
the floor.
Brittany took Paytan's hands and placed them gently back onto the
plane's controls, then took a big gulp of her soda. "But he's nice," she
noted.
Savannah nodded.
"Maybe we can get everyone together, and work out some kind of
avoidance pact? I could be the arbitrator!" Brittany smiled.
"The LNH _is_ pretty big. I mean, if we don't fight the JBoNV
when they show up, I'm sure some of the other heroes could," said Paytan.
She glanced back at Savannah. "Unless you wanna kick his ass. If that's
how it is, then I've got your back." She took her hands off the controls
again to punch a few times into the empty air.
Savannah smiled, just as Paytan had hoped she would, but it faded
a few seconds later and she closed her eyes. Paytan frowned, and swore
she'd kick Brian's ass no matter what, as soon as they got home. One more
thing wrong with the world that didn't need to be.
If somebody was going to be a villain, the least they could do
was be up front about it.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
"Well," said Lord Corvine. "Perhaps things aren't a total wash
after all." He sat on a throne at the center of a room covered in banks
of computers, at the heart of El Lucifierne. He glanced at one of the
distant screens, where a blinking dot moved slowly toward their location.
Censor Girl stood beside the throne, just in front of one of the
computer banks, silent. She watched the back of his head, the fine
feathery black hairs that coated it and the way he tilted it just a
little to the side when he spoke. Behind her, the computer banks hummed.
He put his hands behind his head and stretched. "We'll have to be
ready when they arrive. You'll do most of it, of course. Just wait until
they've landed and stepped into the complex, then attack. It should be
simple, if they're unprepared. And there are enough mecha linked into the
building's computer system to give you a hand, should you prove yourself
more incompetent than you already have."
"Yes, sir."
One of the hands waved at her casually. "Go on. Find a good
hiding place, and wait until they arrive. I'll use the mecha to distract
the others, and you do the grabbing."
"Yes, sir."
It took a moment for Lord Corvine to realize she was still in the
room. He turned around in the throne to glare at her. "Did you hear me?"
She watched him without expression. Inside her head, over and
over, the words of the net.heroine echoed. What do you want to do?
She had wanted this. The plots and plans, standing at Killfile's
side, basking in the pride in his eyes. But that had been a long, long
time ago.
Lord Corvine frowned at her, a tiny little moue of displeasure,
and all of a sudden she couldn't help herself. Censor Girl burst out
laughing.
"What's wrong with you?"
She kept laughing, from the center of her gut, loud and long. The
sound shattered the silence of the room, took whatever sense of ominous
power existed there and tore it to shreds. She had forgotten, somewhere
along the way, that she was more than a mere thing. Even as she laughed,
she could feel her muscles clench and unclench, hear the faint whoosh
of the oiled machinery that composed her cyborg half. Feel the synergy
between the two of them, between what she had once been and was now.
Corvine thrust himself to his feet, face flushing a bright tomato
red. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. Finally he took two quick
steps forward and slapped her.
Quick as a cobra, she slapped him back. The force of the blow
sent him to the ground clutching his jaw, and she smiled down at him just
before she rested her foot gently on his neck.
"I _own_ you," he choked out.
"Killfile used me and used me until he was gone, then everyone
else did the very same thing. There is nothing left of the woman who
loved him, and precious left of the cyborg who served him, either. All I
am now is what I can jam together from pieces of myself that no one saw
fit to destroy," she whispered.
She leaned down, so close that the tip of her nose nearly brushed
his. The shift in her weight brought her foot down a little more heavily
on his neck, and he began to make strange noises in the back of his
throat.
"But what I've got left is all mine, and I won't have you or any
other half-bit, washed up, know-it-all asshole who thinks he's a villain
screwing around with it." She could see herself reflected in his bulging
eyes, the soft glow of her red cyborg eye as it schlik-schliked shut then
open. "What do you see now, master, with those eyes of yours?"
-=ð=- -=ð=-
Brian's fingers flew across the keyboard. His forehead was
wrinkled in concentration and his shoulders ached from being hunched over
in his chair for so long. Still nothing on Enrique DuLourde, aka Lord
Corvine. The man was disappointingly average.
"I'll be leaving soon," said Kismet. Bryan stopped and leaned
back in the chair so he could see her. She was still in the windowsill,
staring out into the parking lot as if she could see something very far
away.
"If you need to, you can go now. I mean, I don't really need you
for anything so -- "
Kismet looked at him strangely, then laughed. "Oh no, that's not
it. I was merely trying to, uhm, break the silence? To make
conversation."
"Oh." He leaned back over the keyboard. "Where did you want to
go?"
He heard her let out a deep sigh. "Home. I will go home."
"Really?" He got the impression that home wasn't a place Kismet
could just buy a plane ticket to, or hop over to visit during the
holidays.
"Yes, really." Her wings chimed softly. "It will be imago time
soon. How is your search?"
Brian leaned back with a sigh. "There's nothing on this guy. A
perfectly normal business major, graduated a couple years back, bounced
from company to company a while, got married. Now he's a high muckety-muck
in Luce Incorporated."
"He could have done a dark pact, couldn't he?"
"A what?"
"A... a deal with the things that your legends say live under the
ground? Demons, right? Like Paytan, only... only born that way, I guess."
Brian tapped his fingers beside the keyboard. "Possible. But
you'd think he'd make a pact to get better deals or something. Not
become a villain."
"Maybe for someone close to him. For someone who could not do it
themselves?"
Brian frowned, and kept typing. After a moment he made a
surprised noise, and Kismet leaned further in the window. "He got the job
through his wife, Stephanie Aranea. She's an even bigger muckety-muck in
the company. And there's -- "
He made another noise, and kept typing. Kismet leaned in so far
she almost overbalanced herself.
"Oh shit," breathed Brian. Then he smiled, wide and triumphant.
"What? What?"
Several article summaries from various newspapers flickered on
the screen of the library computer. It wasn't a pact with dark powers at
all, but something far better. Lord Corvine's wife had been a busy woman.
The first two articles were clearly based on rumor, but they both
hinted that Stephanie may or may not have had an odd connection to an
unnamed cult. The last, from a small press paper that had folded just
after printing the article onscreen, connected her to an unsolved murder.
And the murder?
One Dr.Dan Drisby, local professor and researcher of things that
wanted to stay hidden. Researcher of the Reality.
"We've got the bastards!" he shouted, and the whole library
turned to watch him. Some people dove for cover. He didn't care.
Stephanie Aranea and Lord Corvine were tangled up in the whole Reality
thing somehow, and he knew how to find them. People always kept sensitive
material in their secret bases, things like locations, real names... the
keys to the kingdom. "We have to get to Savannah, now."
He was already up, gathering his disks and shoving them in jacket
pockets, heading for the door. Kismet leaned in to peer at the screen for
a moment, then jumped off the windowsill and into the air to follow him.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
Lord Corvine sat alone in an empty control room, rubbing his
neck. When he'd awakened from whatever Censor Girl had done to make him
black out, the whole room was wrecked. Around the walls the computers
sparked and beeped, nonsense code running across screens, all that was
left of the once pristine programming. The monitor cameras outside showed
every transmitter disk smashed to pieces. Nothing was going as planned.
Nothing but the children that were heading his way, and they were
all that mattered. Still, if he didn't report in as planned he'd be dead
within the hour.
He hit a button, and a small panel of the wall rolled away to
reveal a phone. He lifted the receiver to his ear and hit two buttons.
"Hey yeah, we've got a problem. Yeah, Steph's doing fine, she's
at home. I'm calling from El Lucifierne. Yeah, we lost Censor Girl. I don't
know, I don't know, she just freaked out on me, I couldn't stop her. She
took out all the computers, too. We'll have to do this another way."
A pause.
"Great, that's wonderful. I'll be ready."
Another pause.
"How did you know this would happen?"
He winced back from the phone.
"Okay, sorry, you had no idea, right. I forgot how crazy you guys
are about failsafes. Yeah, I know. I'll be ready. Oh, don't worry about
that," he said.
Teeth gleamed in the wan light.
"She'll be here."
________________________________________________________________________
Binky, Kismet, Mr.Fossavellus, the Junior Brotherhood of Net.Villains,
Out-of-It Lass, Perdition, Weirdness Girl, copyright Jennifer Whitson,
1995. Censor Girl is Public Domain. Everyone else is someone's.
Next Issue:
What happens when you let the cat out of the bag, and find out
it's a tiger?
The gang reaches Lord Corvine's base, and everything falls into
place...
========================================================================
