ic Strange Aeons

[Raveled]

The Glove paused, freezing just for a moment before laughing hard. "Oh, c'mon girl. Who else would I be?" He gave her a bright smile -- and suddenly rushed forward, almost too fast for the eye to follow. Blue Jay had been watching the entire exchange, however, and was waiting for such a move. She loosed, aiming for the not-Glove's feet; it didn't hit, but the shaft got between his legs and caused him to slow down for a moment. However his fist was already in motion and he couldn't stop it, cutting through the air between him and Warp.

[Curious Key]

Warp slipped to the side as the imposter zipped forward to hit her, pitching her body down, under his hand as it flew uselessly over her head. Warp slammed her palm into his side in the same motion on her way out; she wasn't strong but her hands knew how to hurt. But he held strong against her regardless. Warp spun around and bounced on her toes behind him. "You know, I thought people'd have more class than to impersonate heroes already." She raised an eyebrow. "Tell me; is the Golden Glove as much a lech as you are, or are you just a crap actor?"

Edited March 13, 2013 by Freely Seek

[Raveled]

The imposter went to one knee under Warp's assault, but her blow didn't seem to phase him. "You won't have to worry about the real Golden Glove anymore," he rasped, his voice suddenly high and harsh. "I dealt with that fool easily. Come here and I'll show you how!" He twisted and tried to leap at the young heroine, but his leg wouldn't uncurl. He looked down and realized there was an arrow in the ground, pinning his pants leg to the floor.

From her perch, Blue Jay grinned and tapped her commlink. "Feel free to beat him up some more, Warp," she said to the other Claremonter. "It's pretty fun to watch from up here."

[Curious Key]

Warp's eyes jerked at the voice in her ear. Still not used to that, and followed the arrow's path and found Blue Jay at the top of a stairway. Warp tipped an imaginary hat to her and twirled back to face the imitator and held out an open hand, something crawling and dark hissing over her arm. "Before you go do that," she said, "I've got a little demonstration."

Mostly, Kat had control over her power. Like she was shoveling coal into a train to keep it running. Except, sometimes, like now, there was dynamite mixed in. Warp's eyes flared in glorious red warning as her blazed with awful crimson, like the hungry sky Tona remembered from her home in the Terminus. It flowed out of her hand, fell the wannabee Golden Glove like a thing left starving and ate.

Edited March 15, 2013 by Freely Seek

[Raveled]

Blue Jay's face went pale as Warp emitted a strange, red light -- the same kind of light she remembered from her homeworld. It entered the body of the ersatz superhero and his mouth stretched wide in a silent scream. He fell to the ground suddenly, shuddering and making small sounds of pain as the ball of entropy tore him up from the inside. His clothes and even his skin began to smoulder, slowly shriveling and burning off him -- and then his skin burned, its healthy tan fading and being replaced by a sickly white, scars appearing on his back and arms as he went face-down. The odd transformation continued as his old skin -- skin paint, maybe? -- pooled on the ground underneath him. His golden gloves burned away as well, revealing one fairly-ordinary hand and one hand that looked to be made of red stone, with long, claw-like fingernails.

Blue Jay slowly came down from her perch, arrow nocked and aimed, but no matter how close she got the pale man with the crimson hand didn't move. She looked between Warp and the newly-revealed man, as the civilian tried to help Merneptah get up. "What.. what was that, Warp," she whispered to the other heroine.

Edited April 9, 2013 by Raveled

[Curious Key]

Again, as the power leapt from her fingertips Warp felt loss; whatever spark that had ignited her powers gone or lost. Last time she had happened across that power, a tiny God had swatted it aside like a toy. Warp was not prepared for what would happen when it hit dead on. As the exilitation of serving as her power's vessel faded, she had enough presence of mind to be disturbed by what was happening. For an awful moment she thought she might have gone too far.

Warp knelt down by the villian and pressed a finger to his neck, felt the steady beat of a pulse. She wiped her forehead and breathed out. "He's fine." She said, to anyone who might be listening. "Fine."

She stood up, made a show of brushing off her vest. "It's what I do to space to go from place to place. Just, burn a little of it away so I can slip through. If I give a nice big charge, I can do it to things too. Packs a whallop. It's just . . ." Warp bit her lip. "Usually not that potent."

[Raveled]

"... Right." Blue Jay relaxed her grip on her weapon and stowed the arrow, but she kept the unconscious man with the red hand between her and Warp. "What is going on here, exactly? This guy painted himself up and found a mummy to punch?"

"Well, I don't know about the painting, but the rest of it is pretty much how it happened." The man in the cardigan had finally hauled the mummy to its feet and was now readjusting his sweater and tie as he addressed the heroes. "Merneptah as translating some hieratic scrolls, when that man burst through the door, announced he was the Golden Glove, and tried to punch out the prince!"

"Oh. Well then." Jay threw her hands in the air. "He did just paint himself up to find a mummy to punch. Wonderful. So why would he do that?"

[Curious Key]

Warp sensed Jay's hesitation and winced away, turning sideways and nervously rubbing her own elbow behind her back. Turnabout was fair play, she guessed. Though on the other hand, it didn't seem like Blue Jay was as comfortable around Terminus mutants as she pretended.

She forced herself to push past it for a little while, think about the money and the red-handed villain in front of her. "I can't imagine he did it for the hell of it," she said. "It could be that he just wanted to stop whatever it was Mern . . ." She frowned, tasted the word in her mout a few times and found it too strange. ". . . The Prince was doing, or just smear the Golden Glove." She shrugged. "Or both. What scrolls was mummy translating anyway?"

[Raveled]

"Some court documents," Cardigan said with a shrug. "They were pertaining to the succession of the position of the high priest of Tooth, from one --"

"The usurpation of the position," Mernepath insisted, rising to his full height and shaking his wrapped fists at the sky. "It should have gone to Hebeny, not that upstart Sekhimib. Oh, woe unto the land of my ancestors, for they have buries their wisdom with my body!"

The outburst effectively silenced the room, and when the mummy slumped back down (the villain's blows had evidently done something to it) it still took a minute for Blue Jay to speak up again. "Okay. But why was a dead man translating old scrolls?"

"Because he can read it like we read the morning newspaper! These aren't just dusty names to him, they're people he lived and laughed and loved with." Cardigan paused and cleared his throat. When he spoke again it was slowly, like he was ashamed of what he was saying. "And then there was the incident with Dr. Ford."

[Curious Key]

Warp's eyes had already started dulling as the cardigan started talking. She quickly concluded that he would be a borning history teacher and that the Prince would make an interesting one. But his last furitive admission got Warp's attention. The name Dr. Ford meant nothing too her, but it was the second time since an imposter started punching a mummy that she'd heard that name. "Hang on a second," Warp said, holding up her hands. "Back up a little bit. Dr. Ford? Who is that? And what did rags here do to them?"

[Raveled]

"Merneptah did nothing! We didn't even know he was, uh, cognizant for years. He was discovered in the '30s and kept in the British Museum for decades. Then he was sent around the world as part of their Egyptology exhibit, and when it came to Freedom City Dr. Ford performed some scans of Merneptah, when he... sat up."

"It was a stress for the old man," the prince put in, "when I climbed off the examination table. His heart gave out, and as there were no priests to give the final rites I gave benediction to his ka and ren, allowing them to pass on. His ba entered me, and came together with my akh to give me knowledge of this strange time I exist in."

Cardigan sighed. "And then security came in and saw a mummy standing over Dr. Ford, who was dead. They overreacted, and he defended himself, and then the Freedom League got involved... and anyway, Merneptah was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and a couple other things, I think. It was a whole big hooplah between us and the Egyptian government, anyway. But now he's here, helping us, as part of Project Freedom. And I have no idea who would want to kill him!"

A cough drew the group's attention to a uniformed security guard standing off to one side. "Uh, beg your pardon, Dr. Cooper, but the police are here. About the, uh, Glove guy." Behind the guard, both heroes could see a pair of uniformed police officers enter the room; one was older and male, with a bushy mustache that looked right out a Prohibition movie. The other was shorter, younger, and female, with her peaked cap perched on blonde curls.

[Curious Key]

"That . . ." Warp frowned and tapped her fingers against her side. "Sounds a lot less bad than what I was thinking. And is completely useless." She made a soft, frustrated sound in the back of her throat and addressed the prince. "You couldn't see him for what he was before. Does he remind you of anything now?" She gestured to red-hand. "Ancient cults? Supernatural nasties? Clique you snubbed at the school dance?"

She took the police's approach mostly in stride. "No Golden Glove here," she said, planting a hand on her hip and pointing a thumb over her shoulder at the unconscious body. "But we caught his impersonator red-handed."

[Raveled]

The police advanced into the room, the male officer chuckling dryly as he neared the scene of the fight. He knelt down next to the unconsious man and gave him a once-over. "Oh, that you did, lass," he said with a brogue thick enough to swim in. "The Red Right Hand -- a real bastard of a bruiser. I'm sure you lassies got a fight out of him." The lady cop didn't say anything, but merely followed close behind.

"So you know who he is," Blue Jay said, her eyes tracking over the naked, scarred man.

"Oh yeah. A two-bit thug and low-life who loses a hand jumping trains and replaced it with a jade artifact -- and suddenly he's the toughest Kraut on the mile, aye?"

The archer pulled a confused expression, and not just over what a 'Kraut' was. "So why does he wear the glove?"

"Oh, the Golden Glove's a real cape," the officer replied. "Street-pounder from Philly. Ol' Red probably sliced him up something fierce, stole his outfit, left him bleeding out some place when he hitched a ride up here." The officer stood up, dusting his pants off. "Alright then. Let's have a word with the Prince in private, aye?"

Blue Jay hesitated. She wasn't used to dealing directly with the police like this. The officer's casual attitude towards a brutal attack didn't mesh with what Jay knew about this planet's inhabitants. And the fact that the female officer hadn't said anything yet was starting to creep her out.

[Curious Key]

Warp raised an eyebrow. She was more willing to forgive some strangeness in the police force of a city that helped guard a city where superheroes and supervillains made trouble for them every third day, but she looked over sideways and saw the hesitation in Blue Jay's expression. The unease was contagious, though she was having trouble pinning down exactly what the trouble was. "Not my place to answer, I'm thinking." Warp glanced over her shoulder at the Prince. "How bad do you have it back there? Do you need to go to a . . . a . . . " Warp's mouth pressed together in thought. " . . . A taxidermist or something?"

Edited March 31, 2013 by Freely Seek

[Raveled]

"I shall recover," the Prince insisted.

"Aye, that's a good 'un," the cop said. "In the meantime, I should have a few questions for you. Why don't you just follow me out to the car?"

Blue Jay stepped in between Merneptah and the police officer, who fairly jumped back from the archer. "We should stay with the Prince," she said, keeping one eye on the quiet female cop. "We don't know why Red wanted to attack him. He might've been paid to."

The older officer scowled at the younger woman. "Don't you tell us how to do our job. We'll keep him safer than any cape!"

[Curious Key]

Warp clapped her hands together and gave the officers a sunny smile. "Great!" She said, like a flute on a high note. "Then you won't mind taking us along to make sure. We're just worried." Warp held her hands palms up. "We'd feel so much better if we saw he was safe ourselves. Right Jay? Until we know for sure why some thug with a ceramic hand decided to use the Prince to practice boxing there's always a chance there'll be more coming for him later. And there's nothing like a superhero to keep a super villain off your back."

[Raveled]

The officer clenched his jaw, and the silent blonde glanced between the heroines. After a moment he turned and gestured for everyone to follow him. Merneptah pushed away from the professor and started following the police officers, and Jay glanced at Warp, shrugged, and followed behind the group. They wound their way towards the front of the museum, and the officers paused on the steps. "There is just one question I'd like to ask you girls before we go any further," the male officer said.

And then he exploded in a blazing ball of light, brighter than the noon-day sun. Some instinct hammered into Blue Jay at an early age caused her to squeeze her eyes shut and turn away, so she missed the brunt of the blast and her eyes were left clear. Merneptah roared in confusion as the male officer disappeared and the female officer's outfit melted, revealing a suit of, well, revealing purple tights and a face mask. "How in all the world did a pair of children take down Red Hand? He must be off his game."

Edited April 16, 2013 by Raveled

[Curious Key]

Warp cocked her head at the male officer, still smiling her best smile, considering how to best grease the wheels of the establishment when he turned from officer of the law to light, near blinding. Warp closed her eyes tight and raised her arm over her eyes to ward away the light.

Blinking away the few dots left in her vision, Warp lowered her arm and stared at the woman standing where the officer had been, taking a long moment to process what she was seeing.

Edited April 17, 2013 by Freely Seek

[Raveled]

The Prince roared in fury and surprise, as the wave of piercing light swept over the group. Civilians on the street screamed and backed away from the group, some waving their hands blindly in front of their faces. The villainess didn't seem too concerned with them, though; as the mummy tried retreating back up the stairs she pressed her attack, streams of colored light exploding from her head and slicing towards Blue Jay. The young archer ducked and wove around the attacks, however, and delivered a stinging knee to the lady's mid-section -- and then hopped off, swearing violently. "Warp! She's got some kind of maudit armor under her clothes!"