The Last Picture Show [IC]

[Electra]

Wander looked up towards the projection booth and debated going up there as well, but decided against it. Jack of All Blades was already hanging off the only good rafter, and it seemed like the situation was in hand. She continued walking towards the screen, glancing down the aisles as she went. Aside from the rapidly-rotting food, nothing seemed to be amiss with the room itself, and the movie was just a movie. But something was going on, something had scared the bejesus out of all those people. What could it be?

[Avenger Assembled]

Harrier had no hairs on the back of his neck to go up, but something about the corrupted nature of this place made him deeply uneasy. Magic was one thing with which he had little experience; sorcery was something for an Omegadrone to destroy, not something which they might hope to capture and learn from. Could the unquiet dead make a place such as this? He thought of some imaginary world in the depths of the Doom Coil, inhabited by the living souls of all who'd died in the Terminus, and shook his head. He'd seen too much annihilation to believe, to truly believe, in the existence of some immortal thing inside all that lived. He'd seen far too much destroyed to believe in _that_.

For his part, Caradoc said, "I suggest we form a detachment and begin a spiral sweep of the building from our current location. Stay together; creatures who can manipulate perceptions will attempt to separate us in order to influence our perspective." Putting words to a tactical situation was a novelty for him, but he was able to do so with only minimal disruption. "If any of your fellows comes under the influence of the dead, d...er, show him the error of his ways before he can injure anyone. Jack of all Blades and Nick Cimitire, what have you discovered up there?" he called.

[trollthumper]

"Just take a few deep breaths. Give yourself a moment. That's it. Now, just give us a quick bit on what came out of the film while we take you outside. It's safe out there. There's no need to worry."

The projectionist calmed down instantly under the influence of Gabriel's voice. Once he had fully regained himself, he looked into the eyes of the heroes. "I was at the reel change, switching out into the second part. It was about two minutes in that it happened. The sun rose, and it was red. It just... hung in the sky during the scenes, casting red light down. Then France started to fade away, and there was this blasted waste land, like a city after nuclear war. These things kept wandering the city, looking like famine victims that were a step from death. They were... singing, something horrible. Then the screaming started, I looked down, and... they were in the audience. I looked back up at the screen, and there was this... this eye, staring down at me, boring into me, and I got this feeling like I wasn't anything, like no one would remember me after I was dead." His absolute calm started to break a little as he cast his eyes downward. "I didn't want to see anything after that."

"If any of your fellows comes under the influence of the dead, d...er, show him the error of his ways before he can injure anyone. Jack of all Blades and Nick Cimitire, what have you discovered up there?" he called.

"The projectionist," Nick called back to Caradoc as he helped the man to his feet and led him out of the booth and into the theater proper. "He says the film went surrealist in the worst way possible. Blighted landscape comes up, things cross from screen to reality, and something hideous starts stripping away his sense of worth. I say we get him out of here before the creepiness comes back."

[Avenger Assembled]

Could she have snuck up on me, up on us all, with all of us in this terrible place? Caradoc dismissed that possibility quickly enough. But at the same time...If she is mad, or mind-controlled, to attack her would be a crime. "I see someone over there. If my actions appear guided by illusion, warn me before I can harm anyone." Roaring into the air on a column of black-tinged fire, Caradoc flew up and hovered in the air in front of the red-haired woman, blocking her view of the screen. "Who are you?"

[Gizmo]

"It's true, I'm very friendly!" Jack called through the glass as Gabriel reassured the projectionist, grinning winningly. The smile abruptly slipped from his face as a slick feeling of nausea settled in his stomach and the edges of his vision shifted colours as though under a black light. Recovering woozily from the sudden spike, the energy manipulator recognized the sensation as his synesthesiatic metahuman senses' way of relaying the very antithesis of his stock and trade. Entropic energy death surged toward the front of the theater, and he spun on his perch to see Wander and Caradoc approaching someone seated there. "No! Stay back, she's poison!" he shouted impulsively, swinging after them from the rafters.

[trollthumper]

Caradoc looked down from his position to see the body of January, a woman lost to him long ago in the Terminus. She sat in the seat, placid, looking upwards towards him with longing eyes. But the beauty of her face was marred by lips strained a necrotic black... and as his eyes traced down, he saw that her torso was in ruins, as if some hideous acid had torn its way through her belly and left a hollow cavern within.

She reached inside her stomach, as if grasping at something invisible. "This one takes after you, drone," she said as she drew her hands out. They were stained black as well, holding something tiny and delicate. "Poison, just like her father."

[Electra]

Wander's eyes widened as she looked towards the figure in the front row, but she didn't seem to be seeing what Caradoc saw. She simply stared for a moment, white-faced, till Jack's voice from above seemed to break the reverie. "Poison," she murmured. "You're not real. You died. It's not real!" she said again, louder, and looked to Caradoc. "Whatever you're seeing, it's just a trick." Her voice was tight, as though it cost her something to say the words, but she sounded very sure. "Move away from it, don't let it touch you."

[KnightDisciple]

"You've been very helpful sir. Just head right for the front exit, and the authorities will be able to help you from there. We-"

Gabriel stopped as Jack suddenly yelled out about poison. When he next spoke, his voice was suddenly hard, like steel.

"Get moving. Now."

The undertones of authority were subtle but unmistakable. Gabriel eyed the glass leading out of the booth for a moment before shaking his head and making a remark to Nick.

"Probably shouldn't bust the glass. Long way for us."

With that, he hovered off the ground and flew carefully down the stairs, thought not fast enough to hit anything. Sonic energy hummed around his arms, leashed and ready for the right moment. It wasn't long before he was gliding through the door into the theater, his eyes squinting in the gloom.

"Lord preserve us..." he murmured into the shadows.

[Avenger Assembled]

"...no. No, I cannot allow you to have their faces." Caradoc pointed his sword at the thing in the chair, seeing in his mind bodies burning in the trash pits of Nihilor, the red sky overhead burning with the cold, eternal flame of the Doom Coil. He smelled burning flesh, and felt the pain of tightly-gripped sharp metal in his hands as he'd watched them burn. So long gone now. Alive, even for too brief a moment, in my memory. Unbidden, the thought came to him: What would you think of me now, my January, if you could see what I have become? The tip of his mystic sword began glowing with energy. "Show me your true face, monster, and I will show you mine," he said, his voice growing flat and tinny inside his armor.

[trollthumper]

Nick took off after Gabriel, clambering down the stairs and into the theater. The minute he crossed the threshold, he could feel something clawing at his senses. He opened up his perception of death... and was treated to a horrific stain that coated the entire cinema, surging up and down as if it was breathing. At the center of it was a pinnacle in vaguely humanoid form, rising out of the stain, with a black that burned his eyes. He swore he saw it turn to him, and shut his eyes, preparing for some sort of attack.

A voice crept into his head. You think yourself a master, little mortwright, it whispered to him. You dabble in the shallows of my ocean. One day, I shall take you in and show you the true death.

"And you aren't even gonna buy me dinner first?" he muttered to himself, trying to drown out the fear. "I don't work that fast." He shut off his senses, trying to drive out the offense of the thing around him, and was left with the theater, his companions, and the thing in the front row. Looking at it with his other senses, however, he quickly realized one thing.

"Take that thing out!" he shouted. "It's not a ghost! Whatever it is, it was never mortal!"

She simply stared for a moment, white-faced, till Jack's voice from above seemed to break the reverie. "Poison," she murmured. "You're not real. You died. It's not real!"

"I knew you'd say that, Erin," said Megan, her voice tinged with hurt. She sat in the front row seat, her eyes diverted from Caradoc's burning lance. "I just came to say goodbye. I have a new family now."

For half a second, it seemed to Wander that the other seats in the theater were filled. She couldn't see their faces, but she could smell a massive, roiling stench, and see that the bodies were in a state of decomposition.

"I know they'll take care of me."

"Show me your true face, monster, and I will show you mine," he said, his voice growing flat and tinny inside his armor.

"This is my face," said January as she rose from her seat. "I have been brought into the song at the heart of the Coil, and given myself over to its keening. It has my face, and my heart." She stepped forward to meet Caradoc. "Come join in the choir inevitable."

[Avenger Assembled]

Caradoc's body seemed to shiver in the air as his shining armor and sword faded away as everyone watched, revealing beneath the false shell the all-too-real thing within. The cold light of the darkened theater reflected eerie shadows against the gunmetal-grey armor of the Omegadrone; its faceless shell expressionless as it looked down at the terrible thing beneath it. When Harrier spoke, this time Wander, Jack, and Gabriel recognized the tinny, metallic voice of the Omegadrone they'd all gotten to know. To Jack's senses in particular, as glowing black dots began to form at the tip of Harrier's pike, what he felt wasn't the rotten stink of a Terminus baby or what he felt when Mona's powers erupted: the waves of energy practically radiating from the infuriated Omegadrone were like something else: if Terminus babies smelled of decaying fruit, Harrier smelled like that fruit burning. And screaming.

"I KNOW YOU FOR WHAT YOU ARE, MONSTER!" boomed Harrier. "THIS IS A CREATURE OF THE TERMINUS!" he shouted aloud, heedless of his own monstrous appearance. "IT MUST BE DESTROYED!" And with that he fired, his pike screaming to life with that sound so terribly familiar to all superheroes, as the raw power of entropy lashed from him and tore into the creature beneath.

[Avenger Assembled]

"You think you can haunt me with the memory of a dead face!?!" Harrier was shouting, righteous fury, rage, and grief making his hands shake, boiling, all-too-human emotion burning in his blood. "I have seen love burn to ash a thousand times! I have been the destroyer of youth, of joy, of beauty...but no more!" He brought his pike up, its tip crackling with power, and slashed it across the fiend's face in an arc of black ichor. "No more will I cower before the nightmares of the past! Go back to the pits which spawned you!"

[Electra]

Wander was very startled when the knight in shining armor dissolved next to her, and in an instant her bat was in her hand. Another instant later, though, and she recognized her colleague Harrier, the ex-drone who'd showed her the ins and outs of the Terminus. She could understand why he'd be wearing a disguise these days. Whatever he was seeing, it was affecting him greatly, perhaps because he didn't have so much experience with evil psychics trying to torture him.

She stood aside while he shot a glowing bolt into "Megan" and took a swing at her, forcing herself to remember that this was a monster callously using her memories against her. Holding onto that thought gave her the anger and the resolve to step up on Harrier's heels, while the thing was still reeling, and smash it across its little Megan-face. "Stay out of my head," she commanded it, her voice tight and grating.

[trollthumper]

As Jack and Gabriel ran to the foot of the theater, they finally got a solid glimpse of the thing in the front row. To Jack's eyes, it appeared like something made of solid shadow, its form crowned with horns and its fingers tipped with horrifying talons. It smelled for brimstone, and he could faintly hear tortured screams passing behind it as it stepped.

"The fires of Perdition seek to warm once more," it said in a mellifluous voice. "You cannot escape, child. You can try and fight, but the mark of Hell has been burned bone deep. There is only one way to escape its mark - surrender."

To Gabriel, on the other hand, the thing appeared like an emaciated corpse, stretched out on wide, molting wings that dripped blood, a broken angel. As its head lay limp, it raised one arm towards him with a grotesque jolt.

"The gates shall provide no shelter," it choked out, "and the risen shall fall. He is the Light, but there was a Darkness before. And it shall call Him home, and take his children in its arms."

[Gizmo]

There was a tremendous amount of extremely disturbing input assaulting Jack's senses as he released his grappling line and somersaulted through the air toward the melee, ripping at his awareness and pushing him to the very edge of his endurance. Fortunately, if there was one thing the fencer was very good at narrowing his focus to, it was putting the business end of a sharp implement into something he really did not like. "Pfft, you think I can't tell the difference between hellfire and your nasty Terminus juice?" he crowed mockingly as his acrobatics brought him directly down on the horrible thing, crackling electrical rapier first. "Tell you what, have a trip to the real deal on me!" The spire of energy ripped into shadowy form, tearing down its length as the swashbuckler balanced himself nimbly on the row of seats behind it. "And tell 'em Jackie B said hi! Harrier, I sure hope that's you in there!"

[trollthumper]

Nick paused slightly when he saw Caradoc drop his cover to reveal the Omegadrone concealed within. But whatever half-remembered nightmares of the Terminus Invasion swiftly danced through his head were stifled when he saw the Omegadrone open fire, and the others treat him as a colleague. "No greater ally than the one who had you wetting yourself in terror, I guess," he said as he charged down the aisle.

The Terminus thing swept at Wander with a hundred shadowed arms, but not one could gain purchase against the heroine. "You left me, Erin," said the thing cloaked as Megan. "You shouldn't have -- "

"Hey!" Nick's voice cut off the thing's taunt. "Drop the 'monsters of the id' act. Mind showing me a true face I can kick in?"

The thing -- whatever it disguised itself as -- seemed to smile for a flickering instant, and its various illusions vanished. Where once had stood various half-formed fears now stood a true nightmare. It hovered over the front row, its body casting no silhouette on the screen before it despite the light of the camera. Three legs -- two humanoid, one segmented like an insect's -- descended from a waist ringed with red plate metal. The waist was the joining point for two torsos that twisted between one another like the strands of DNA, from which extended a mass of arms from almost every creature in creation. Four heads topped the thing, the faces hidden behind masks of burnished steel.

"At the heart of the Coil is a song," it said, "made of every last regret, every passing fear, every moment of failure. We are the choir. The Wrackhands. Ours is the song of Zeta, twin to the heartbeat of Omega. It enters through the ear, and breeds in the heart."

"You guys sing, huh?" Nick said. Spectral fire tore through the empty air, forming a tight crown around the four heads of the Wrackhand. It gasped as the cold fire besieged its thoughts. "You're not really my thing. You ever hear the Cramps? They know how to do the creepy stuff."

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel's face twisted not into a scowl, or a frown, but a snarl of raw anger and hatred.

"You dare come here, to cause havoc and death? You dare come here, and try to wile your way past us with your lies, attempting to prey upon our fears?"

His voice dropped an octave, and gained an odd reverb.

"You speak of songs of ending? I have a different song for you! Taste a fraction of the power of the Song That Sung The World Into Being!"

With a muted roar, sonic energy tore from Gabriel's hands, lashing against the oily creature of darkness and decay.

"Begone from here! You have no place here! You are not welcome! Begone before we strike you down utterly!"

[Avenger Assembled]

"This is no world of cowering slaves and mindless serfs!" said Harrier, shouting to be heard over the inhuman roar of his flaming jets. Omegadrone though he was, his every move a nightmarish legacy of the past, there was no doubt whose side he was on. "This is a world of free men and women, of heroes who have proved the lie of power and shattered the bonds of entropy as no other could before them! You are a jackal sniffing at the heels of what a lion could not slay and I cast you down into the Coil which spawned you. May the foul decay that is your mother DRAG YOU BACK INTO HER WOMB!" And with that, he drove the end of his pike, the tip crackling with unholy Terminus energy, straight into the belly of the beast. Straight into...I do this in your name, January, and in what we made and lost together.

[trollthumper]

The blow from Harrier's staff cleaved the Wrackhand in two from the shoulder of its twisted torso down to the hip. A horrific screech filled the air as the energies of the Terminus erupted from its spectral form, searing the eyes and tearing at the eardrums. Beneath the screech, the heroes could hear one pained statement:

"The song of Zeta shall call its children home."

With that, the Wrackhand's form collapsed entirely into shadow, vanishing without a sound. The bombardment of Terminus energy abated, Nick got his bearings. Tentatively, he opened up his senses to the flow of death... and reeled once more. "Theater's still chock full of death," he said. "Mind you, with that wonderful display of subtlety, I'm surprised the entire front row didn't get slagged. It's weaker this time, though. Maybe that thing getting out of Dodge cut the ties to the Terminus."

[Avenger Assembled]

Harrier floated there in mid-air for a moment, lost in his memories. When he spoke, he said simply, "Burn it to the ground. The taint of such abominations can linger long after their destruction." It sounded like he spoke from experience, and indeed he did. A moment later, less brutally, he added, "Dr. Metropolis may be able to restore the building from its original blueprints. If the taint in this building survives, it will spread like a cancer. Whatever actions we take, we must take them quickly, lest all be threatened by the thing we slayed tonight. Even in its death."

[Electra]

Wander remained still for a moment, staring at the place where the thing had been with her bat cocked as though she'd forgotten she still held it. Finally she blinked and took a breath, standing down with some effort. "Destroying it sounds like a plan," she muttered, "but we better make sure we actually got everything that's in here. There might be another nasty waiting for us somewhere else. Any of you guys getting, I dunno, psychic traces or whatever?" she asked the others. She looked a little bit strained, but was still definitely in control of herself.

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel breathed a sigh of relief as the creature vanished. He gave a grateful nod to Harrier and the others. He frowned when Nick spoke up.

"Are we talking about a general "taint", or do we have some sort of secondary creature going on here? How do we get rid of-"

And then Harrier weighed in on what to do. Gabriel blanched, but didn't speak up immediately.

"Are you sure there's not another way? I can understand the need to cleanse the taint, but...superheroes or no, telling everyone out there that this place has to burn to ash won't go over well. I suppose I can try to soothe frayed nerves, but still. Not exactly an easy sell."

At Wander's words, Gabriel gave a nod.

"One way or another, that's a good point. What if the projectionist wasn't the only one stuck in here? And what if there's smaller goons?"

[Gizmo]

"That's Harrier alright," Jack noted largely to himself at the former Omegadrone's grandiose manner. "Good to see you, big guy. Did the Arthurian chic. And yeah," he continued, addressing the group as a whole, "trust me when I say this is a definite 'kill it with fire' situation. Stuff from the Terminus sorta sweats 'not good'." The energy manipulator hopped down from his perch and leaned heavily against the theater chairs, doing his best to hold down his lunch and intensely regretting his second visit to a street vendor earlier that day. "I'm just not sure fire specifically is going to cut it. This bad juju is all... seepy."

[trollthumper]

"...well, if it comes down to it, I suppose fire's a good option," Nick said. "Fire doesn't just destroy, it has a tendency to cleanse, to purge something of decay before it can make a mess. There's a reason cremations are so popular in some faiths." He took a look around the cinema. "If we don't want to engage in the destruction of a landmark, though... well, there's always an exorcism, but there's a bit of a difference between trying to abjure an evil spirit and a spiritual toxic waste dump." He turned to Harrier. "You, uh... seem to have more experience in this field than I do. You've got any good idea what's inimical to Terminus energy?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"Terminus energy is the anti-creation. The destruction of all that is. Even that which decays dies. Even that which destroys dies. And there at the end of all things, lies the awesome power of entropy." Harrier seemed to realize how that grim intonment sounded, hesitating a moment behind his faceless armor. When he spoke again, it was with more animation. "If fire is for some reason unacceptable...magnetism, or the nuclear forces. Something that rearranges the basic building blocks of matter to remove the taint of decay without destroying the essence of what is being saved. Sorcery is...orthogonal to that which is Entropy. It may help. It may do nothing. It may make things worse."