ic (IC) Pop Quiz: Or Are You Deceived?

[Gizmo]

Winifred's necktie and vest had long since been discarded in the far corner of her cell and the top few buttons of her dress shirt undone in concession to the fevered pitch with which she worked over simmering bowls and fuming beakers. Her captors had stocked her rudimentary lab with a wide variety of ingredients but cannily nothing in great enough volume that she could fashion an effective incendiary or sufficient acid to breach the walls that held her. Even the heat of the gas burner was frustratingly meagre, slowing down her work. Even so sweat dotted her brow and she took long, shaky breaths as remaining composed became more and more difficult as what she guessed to be hours ticked past.

 

She looked up warily as the lighting in her cell and the one adjacent to it shifted, fearing for a moment that she'd taken long enough that they were about to introduce pulsing lights or some other stressor to force a transformation. Instead her face scrunched up into a scowl as she recognized Abel, now wearing an unbelievably pretentious black lab coat. "Did your masters decline the additional funding to have 'evil' embroidered in red thread across the breast?" she called with a snap. He might have simply been ignoring her as her doppelgänger was paraded about unwillingly but from the complete lack of reaction and the change in illumination she suspected he could neither see nor hear her at the moment.

 

She, however, could hear perfectly well as Abel was suddenly slammed against the forward wall of the other cell by a familiar albeit dishevelled figure. "Matthew!" she cried out in surprise only to once again see no response. As he addressed the maddened version of her from Smith's home world the bottom fell out of her stomach. "No! That isn't me, you unbelievable git!" She pounded on the wall connecting the two cells with both fists, desperately trying to get his attention. "You're going to get yourself bloody eviscerated and-- nnngh!" Her left arm spasmed violently and her right hand clenched into a useless claw as the familiarly, horrible feeling of sinews tearing themselves apart began to wrack her frame as fear and rage cascaded through her without hope of reprieve.

 

"Damn-n-nation..." Winifred muttered through gritted teeth, staggering back over to her workbench. "Have to be g-good enough." Clumsily she tossed the last two mixtures she'd produced into a single glass tube, the reaction a bubbling, preternaturally luminescent green. Gripping it and ignoring the searing heat on her fingertips the alchemist hesitated. "If there is a God in h-h-heaven with any pity, it would be exceptionally n-nice if I c-nnh-could save my friend and not mur-murd-murder a baby." Without another word she downed the haphazard serum in a single burning gulp before falling to her knees and screaming.

[Avenger Assembled]

A lot of things happened in very short order after that, at least from Matt's perspective. 

 

The cell door slid open - and Fred looked up at him. She looked at him with rheumy yellow eyes like infected cataracts and smiled a smile where all her teeth looked like the ravenous, carnivorous fangs of a shark. Heh! Meat! The Fred-thing declared in a voice that was like Fred's but distinctly was _not_ like Fred - a moment before it went for him, moving with impossible speed and tenacity as it grabbed his arms with sharpened nails and lashed its head out like a striking snake to try and bite out his throat! 

 

An instant later, he heard the wall behind him smash open - and as the teeth snapped towards his jugular, he distinctly heard the distant, far-off echoes of a dog's howl... 

[Gizmo]

The hand that burst through the wall of the cell in a shower of stone fragments and shards of shatterproof glass was granite grey shot through with veins of luminescent green like a rich ore deposit. Quick and strong, fingers wrapped around the feral Winifred's head and pulled her bodily off of Matt before unceremoniously tossing the thrashing cannibal across the room. "Hands off cuz, get yer own!" More of the wall was shoved away, widening the hole enough for the hand's owner to step through.

 

It wasn't Winifred, exactly. For one thing this woman was easily seven feet tall and head to toe hard, athletic muscle rendered in the same marbled colours. The sleeves had been torn off of the remnants of her dress shirt and at her new height it rode up enough to showcase broad shoulders and washboard abdominals. The surefooted swagger of her steps, jungle catlike and the cocky grin under tousled emerald hair didn't seem like they belonged to Winifred either, even if the features and their proportions were all familiar.

 

She looked Matthew over and her grin widened. "Hullo, Mattie! Yer looking worse for wear but I ain't sorry to see you, neither. Here, hold this, would you?" She handed the disoriented guitarist what proved to be a wailing infant then turned back to the first Winifred he'd encountered and cracked her knuckles. "Have to have a sisterly talk, we do."

[Fox]

Even Matt wasn't sure how good his hearing was, but it was good - and he'd spent a lot of time listening to Fred. He liked Fred. He liked Fred's voice. That was not Fred's voice, his ears screamed, even as his body yanked itself backwards out of snapping jaws he'd barely had time to register. Fang would have been proud of that, would have commented that at least something she'd taught him had stuck. Had that been Fang's howl, or...? Were they--

 

And then he had a baby. A live baby. From...also not Fred? More Fred than the first one, at least, but he was rapidly losing track of what was real. "I don't--hey! I don't know what to do with this," he insisted, automatically moving to cradle the infant's head. "I don't...this is not my job. You aren't my job," he muttered, soothing, taking a few steps back from the impending chaos. "You are the exact opposite of my job."

[Avenger Assembled]

At the sight of her counterpart, the Feral Winifred wrinkled her nose. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! She seemed disappointed by what she saw, if a creature like what she was was capable of an emotion like disappointment. Baring her talons, she made a leap for the Solution anyway, though - and was promptly brought down by an electrical discharge that radiated through her control implant with a visible crackle of blue-white light. The blast knocked it to the floor but she was clearly not out of the fight, crawling forward with a pitiful fury. 

 

The baby was life, cutting through the death that permeated this place (and seemed to be clinging to Matt in particular) like a light shining in a dark room, and as he took it in his arms Matt distinctly heard the distant sound of a far-off canine, then another - dogs looking for their pack. He could taste the deaths still on the back of his tongue and by now he could sense something more about them - he was tasting the death of things as well as people, things like the version of Fred that was still trying to get up and fight its vastly superior foe. 

 

Things. And the death of a world - the death of dreams, of hopes, of heroes, a civilization's dreams and nightmares alike bursting in bubbles in a sea of red, tooth and claw - the baby seemed to like Matt, burbling up at him as the distant howling of lost friends echoed in his ears. Did he hear another voice? An equally mammalian but somewhat smaller one? 

 

Behind Matt, Merlin demanded to know what the two of them were doing here - but waving his arms, added urgently that that was no time to worry about that, not when the world was ending upstairs. And why were there two Freds, anyway? 

 

 

 

[Gizmo]

The taller, greyer Winifred looked down at her convulsing counterpart with something akin to disappointment. "They done a real number on you, huh, cuz?" She looked over her shoulder at the familiar chittering and broke into a broad grin. "Ay, Merlin! Is the whole gang here?" Almost immediately her expression clouded over as the next thought crossed her mind. "Wait, is they? Cor, I'll break some heads tonight yet! C'mon, Mattie!"

 

Without any further deliberation the not-quite-Alkahest reached down and grabbed the gnashing Winifred by the back of her strange corset, holding the feral creature at arm's length like a temperamental cat. Looking briefly up and down the hallway she headed off in the direction the monkey had come at a jog.

[Fox]

Matt watched her go with the glassy look of someone who was drowning in too much...well, too much everything, really. His day (was it still the same day?) was on a whirlwind descent with no signs of slowing down, and he was having a hell of a time keeping up. He tried in vain to reach out again to Fang, or Sky, or Moon...but all he got back was emptiness, distance, and memories.

 

They'd taught him to fight, as much as they could when his jaw was so weak. They'd taught him to train, and to track, but what could he find here? They'd taught him to think - and to run. What do we do when we are in trouble? she'd asked him; not Fang, but like her, older, wiser, more patient. More primal. What do we do when our enemy leaves us with nothing else?

 

"We run with the pack," he muttered, gritting his teeth. "C'mon, Merlin, you can join the monkeys on my back. This whole place is death, top to bottom, and I hate it," he admitted, shooting the familiar an oddly vulnerable look. He was alone. He'd never been alone. "You keep me going the right direction, and maybe I'll at least get to see my family again."

 

Smoke ran down his limbs as the primate found a hold on his jacket, and then he was off - Matt could run with the best of them. He sure hoped that Fred (the Freds?) knew what they were doing.

[Avenger Assembled]

Merlin frantically signaled Matt to run as fast as he could! Gesticulating wildly, he informed the teen that there was big trouble overhead - multiple bad guys of various powers, and strange magic to boot. At Merlin's signal, Matt got two distinct impressions - one was that Death was waiting for him up there, a greater Death than he'd ever personally seen or known, greater even than the death of a world that was still chewing on his heels. The other was that the dogs were that way, and coming closer...

 

Leading the way, the thing ahead of him found the way up through the complex almost contemptuously easy. The bloody knobs running the place didn't seem to know what to do without their fancy gewgaws, which it seemed like that little chunky o'Raina's had screwed over somethin' fierce. She knocked them aside as they frantically hammered at security cameras or pounded on the communicators at their wrists; screaming in terror about how "It was loose!" and "I don't want to die like this!" and if Merlin looked sadly at discarded laptop parts as they went, neither of the heroes he was with were in any shape to notice.