Enfant Terrible (IC)

[Electra]

Erin waited, not twitching a muscle, until Curtis and his arm-candy disappeared into the green room. She disliked the man on sight, a reaction she reminded herself was totally unimportant to the matter at hand. It didn't matter if the guy had a slimy vibe to him, what mattered was whether he was some kind of magic supervillain trying to take over a comic book company for completely unknown and unfathomable reasons. When the corridor was clear, she nodded to Mark, then dropped soundlessly to the floor. She raised her arms and caught him as he jumped down, then led the way to the double doors out to the stage. It was clear from the rehearsal noise earlier that the room wasn't open to the hall just yet, but other than that, she had no idea of the setup. 

 

"Go in silent," she whispered to Mark, her hand on the door. "If there's a curtain, stay away from it. We need to get a look at his magic kit and see what sort of tricks he's got planned." She was no magical expert, not by a long shot, but she figured she could tell dime store magic tricks from someone actually preparing to summon up a demon or ten in front of an audience. Carefully, quietly, she pushed open the door and slipped inside. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Inside, the curtained-clad stage had at its centerpiece a magnificently-carved, barbaric statue of a snake-woman in marble and bronze, her eyes set with red jewels and in her hands writhing, albeit frozen-still serpents whose yellow eyes gleamed with preternatural wickedness. At the foot of the statue was an altar carved entirely from a single stone, and on top of that was a long, curved bronze dagger with a mirrored blade so bright Erin and Mark could see themselves in it as they approached. The statue was a good twenty feet high, big enough to brush the top of the stage, and set in its marble lower body was a golden oval outline shaped roughly like a door. 

 

Neither of them could read the script carved on the statue, or the altar, but they could make out the shape of the dread runes and gain some idea of their intent. Closer still, there were faded paintings along the statue's backdrop, obscene Victorian oils that bore the mark of the truly depraved, each one continuing the snake theme which the whole display suggested. Mark walked up to the altar, amazed at the sheer ostentatiousness of the display, and turned to Erin, his eyes wide. "The stone isn't clean, there are...there are marks on it. Oh my god..." He looked up at the statue, hand over his mouth, and murmured, "She was right!" 

[Electra]

Erin muttered an imprecation as she looked over the vulgar display. "This is no stage show," she agreed. "I don't know what it is, but it's obviously no balloon-animal and magic hat show. I don't know what your mom saw from him, but it looks like at least some of her intuition was on the money." She pursed her lips at that admission, suspecting that was just going to make everything a lot more complicated. But first things first.

 

It was easier to come up with a plan, Erin discovered, if she came at it from her security training, rather than her hero background. "The first thing we have to do is shut him down before he manages to do whatever he's planning," she began, starting with the obvious for Mark's benefit. "If this were a hero work gig, I'd say we just pick him up and haul him in before he has a chance to do anything. But if we do that here and now, as civilians, we're not objective witnesses. You've got too much at stake with your mom, and I'm helping you. We'd have no proof that he was up to anything bad, and he's the injured party by default, because of the scissors thing. But we also can't risk letting him do his ritual if we can stop him. That's putting people at risk just so we don't look like jackasses, and that's wrong too."

 

She rubbed her chin, staring at the statue. "What we need is an expert," she decided. "Someone who knows magic, someone who's integrity is beyond question." She looked at Mark. "We need to get hold of Adrian Eldritch." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Despite Edge's many contacts in the hero community, it was actually Erin who had the Master Mage's telephone number in her cell as an emergency contact from her time working for the Farettis. The phone rang several times, then she heard a deep, accented voice on the other end. "Hello, Miss Wander, how may I help you?" Sallah, Eldritch's loyal butler, quickly handed the phone off to his employer to hear Erin explain the situation. As she did so, there was a sudden rattle at the stage door - people were coming! Mark snapped his fingers and laid down some real magic, however, transforming the door into a solid block of concrete. At Erin's look, he shrugged a little desperately. 

 

"I couldn't just let them come in!" he whispered as he hurried over to her side, the sound of pounding at the door growing louder. "What does he say?" 

 

"That does sound like a serious problem," said Eldritch as Erin finished her explanation. "Your timing is fortuitous - I'm currently engaged myself in negotiations with Mucalinda, the naga king, that may prove helpful in your situation. Can you hold out without me for another ten minutes or so?" 

[Electra]

Erin ran through the timing in her head, the last minute preparations, the emcee introducing the show, the inevitable sparkle and flash that someone who felt compelled to summon a demon in front of an uninformed audience was sure to add. "I think so," she said in a low voice. "But if the ritual goes ahead too far, we're going to have to step in and try to stop it. I've seen demons summoned into  Freedom City before and it was a horror show. I just don't want there to  be a lot of collateral damage and no proof left behind if it comes to that. We'll try and stretch things out. Thank you." 

 

She looked over to Mark. "One more minute, then let them back in, and you and I teleport to the parking lot and come back in," she told him. "Make sure to get my shoes. We'll want to be visibly in the audience at the start of this show." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Mark counted off the seconds on his watch, something he wore but most people their age didn't. There was a good reason for that - he'd inherited it from his father. Right on the money, he snapped his fingers again and they vanished, reappearing inside his car. "Oh my god, I can't believe that actually happened..." He pointed down at Erin's bare feet and slowly shoes crept back onto them, just like a fairy godmother casting a spell. "They might think the door thing was weird, but as bad as the light is I don't think anyone could tell it was actually concrete for a minute. They'll just think it was stuck and then unstuck." He shook his head. "That bastard," he said with a sudden heat that was very unusual for Mark. "He must have picked on my mom because he thought no one would believe her. For fun." 

[Electra]

"Don't think about it right now," Erin reminded him, adjusting the straps on her new shoes and opening the car door. "We've got to get back inside and act normal, like we're expecting to see some tacky magic show at a second-rate office party. Keep it together for another eight and a half minutes, and we'll nail the son of a bitch to the wall, and he'll never get anywhere near your mom again. If we're lucky, he'll look like a fool and piss off his demon master in the process. Now smile," she ordered, plastering one of her own across her face as they headed for the door that would take them back into the party hall. 

[Avenger Assembled]

When he was on, as he was the moment they were back inside, Mark was such a dazzlingly perfect all-American boy that it was hard to believe he'd been holding back such anger back in the car. He finished making Erin's introductions to the crew of writers, artists, and staffers that he'd obviously known since he was a little boy, laughed at jokes that were about as old as the Andi Comics company, and chowed down on buffet food that had been out long enough to wither ever so slightly in the warm headlamps. He smoothly shielded Erin from any inquiries into her personal life or much about her knowledge of comics - the former seemed to be of special interest to the people curious about whether or not she worked with Mark through UNISON. It wasn't hard to guess that they thought she might be another super-agent, Mark's secret ID being rather thin for somebody who was otherwise so determined to keep with superhero conventions. 

 

When the show started, Victor Goldwater, the owner of the company, came out to give a short speech about how well things were going and how much money he'd hoped they raise for their cause - a fund that would help raise money for students to go to art school. There was no mention of his long-time artist and writer's recent mental breakdown, which was probably for the best but still made Mark shift a little uneasily in his seat. The first act to go on was an elderly man who Mark murmured to Erin was one of the company's night janitors, who gave a passable baritone rendition of Danny Boy. Behind him, covered almost too negligently by a cloth, Mark and Erin could make out the draped forms of the barbaric altars Curtis had planned to use in his act. 

 

At the ten minute mark, just as the singer was finishing his encore, a middle-aged man in a distinguished, old-fashioned suit quietly came in and sat next to Mark and Erin - it was easy enough to recognize the Master Mage of Earth if you had met him face-to-face, but not if you were a civilian looking at him in the dark. "Hello," he said warmly, "I hope I haven't missed anything. Tell me what you saw." The civilians at the table kept up their conversation as if Eldritch wasn't there at all. 

[Electra]

"You're right on time, and thank you for coming," Erin replied, her voice a murmur. Despite her years in uniform and all she'd seen, there were still a handful of people in Freedom City she still held in some awe, and the Master Mage was one of them. "Edge and I don't know much about magic, but this setup was much too elaborate to be a stage piece, and he's been bragging where he didn't think he'd be in danger of being caught. He told Martha Lucas all about it, assuming no one would believe her." Erin's voice, still quiet, filled with anger and guilt. She'd been first in line to disbelieve, hadn't she? 

 

Briefly she explained the layout they'd seen behind the curtain, her descriptions of the size and location of each piece detailed, her description of actual runes vague. Her observational training hadn't included magical languages. "But we're here in our civilian identities, and without an expert or the show going on, there's just no proof," she finished. "We have to stop him, but we also have to expose him." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"This is a grave situation," agreed Eldritch, furrowing his eyebrows in concentration as he looked past the curtain to the scene beyond it. "I know As-as-ra of old and her rage is both vast and terrible. And even beyond that, the serpentine gods have been agitated since Set's return." He frowned. "Even an aspect of As-as-ra could summon tens of thousands of poisonous vipers to fill this entire room, especially if Curtis does have a magical hold over these people. You need not fear waiting for some dire act; I will interrupt his summoning once it begins and I can chart his particular incantations." He hmmed. "But what you will need to do is be ready for his escape. An interrupted summoning will still require my presence here to prevent an incursion from the Minoan Plane of Shadow, rather than let the..." He trailed off, looked at Erin and Mark, and said, very carefully, "I won't be able to catch him myself, so the two of you will have to do that." 

 

"We'll be ready," promised Mark without hesitation. "Even if he runs, he won't get far." He looked at Erin, then back at Eldritch. "Then we can just take him to jail, right? Magical summoning's a crime if it's for dangerous purposes," he told Erin, "it's been illegal since the 40s when they didn't have any other way of busting Nazi sorcerers. It's the same as if he was planning on letting a caged giant snake loose in here...which I guess might happen if we're not careful." 

[Electra]

"Yeah, I know," Erin told Mark, apparently more willing to be talked down to by the Master Mage of Earth than by her flighty teammate. "We took the same civics classes, remember? Now that we've got the proof nailed down, we just need to grab him. We'd better be ready." She looked around the table, where people were mostly focused on the stage.

 

She picked up her glass of fruit punch and took a sip, then suddenly fumbled the cup. Red punch splashed down her front in a long arc, soaking right into the fabric. "Oh no!" she moaned quietly as their companions turned to look at her. "And this was brand new!" Looking rather more upset than Mark had ever seen Erin look about an outfit, even back in the days when she'd barely had enough to fill a dresser drawer, she rose from her seat. "Help me find some club soda before this sets," she told Mark, "otherwise it's going to be ruined." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Mark followed Erin away from the table, nattering about the club soda and how he was sure they'd get the dress fixed, no problem, until they were out of sight. He glanced at the program and nodded, "Looks like Curtis is up next," he said, and sure enough the emcee was already "introducing a man that needs no instruction." Mark bit his lip and glanced in the direction of the stage for a long moment before turning back to Erin as they stepped into the corridor. He and Wander had been in this situation often enough that she didn't need to speak, even as distracted as he was - with a snap of his fingers, he was in costume and so was she, and without the flashy accouterments that some of his counterparts liked to add to their costumes. "I can't get us anywhere specific without looking, but I can probably pop us right back onto the stage," he said to Erin. 

[Electra]

"Let's take the backstage door again," she suggested. "That's his quickest escape route, and we need to get an idea of who's back there before we risk chasing him. And if you teleport us in too soon, it could ruin everything." Mark's phenomenal luck was probably enough to forfend that possibility, but even now Erin didn't care to trust to luck. Drawing her bat, she raced down the hallway they'd come down earlier, still deserted with everyone watching or part of the show. "Clear as much of the backstage as you can," she instructed as they paused for a moment outside the door. "Get them back to that green room or the parking lot or wherever. Then if there's a fight, we have someplace to push it besides into the audience." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Knowing that Curtis had some sort of mind control effect built into his walking stick, they waited just outside the door as they heard his act begin - odds were good they had a moment or two, at least, and bursting in too soon would risk giving Adrian Eldritch two more big problems to fight along with whatever dire magic the cultist-comic book writer was trying to work out there. When they heard the first shouting outside, Erin and Mark exchanged a look and Mark stepped back just enough to let Wander kick in the door. Normally two superheroes bursting onto the stage would have gotten the attention of everyone in the auditorium, but they were rather occupied with the rippling dimensional portal in the air - some of them still hypnotically staring straight ahead like so many frozen mice in a snake pen, others screaming and running for the exits, a few particularly credulous souls seeming to watch the entire display with fascination as they watched what was surely the show of a lifetime. 

The crowd on stage was frozen in place; some of the 'assistants' in robes shaking off the effects of the spell that had been holding them, the blonde ingenue Curtis had been flirting with earlier trying to pull herself free from the ropes that tied her to the altar, a few still locked in place but not actually moving now that their 'master' was busy with other things. Eldritch was in the air, chanting in a language neither Mark nor Erin could understanding, glowing sigils of mystic energy pouring from his fingers and wrapping themselves around a warping distortion in the air that looked as if someone had tried to push in a portion of the universe but hadn't gone far enough, stretching rather than tearing it. Eldritch added as he cast his spell, "You'll not have this day, dark serpent lady!" There came a deep, guttural hiss from inside the ripple, but nothing actually crossed the barrier. It was as if they had come in halfway through the movie, but that was one thing Mark was happy enough to miss. 

 

Especially when he caught sight of Alan Curtis, the dark wizard biting his lip nervously as he began to make a break for it, edging slowly towards the doorway where Erin and Mark were waiting for him. "You!" Curtis shouted, seeming to recover at the sight of the young heroes. "You may have foiled me now, but you'll never-"

 

"Not on my watch, you gross hippie!" yelled Mark as he reached out and grabbed the hand of the nearest bystander, calling over the chanting. "Everybody hold hands!" Most of them did, at that, and vanished in a flash of light as Mark snapped his fingers. It wasn't enough to get all the people on stage, not with some of them still zonked out by serpentine hypnosis, or whatever it was, but soon there was only a a small handful of bystanders and the cornered cultist on stage with Edge and Wander. 

[Electra]

Erin spared half a glance for the audience, most of them still frozen in place by the events unfolding in front of them. Even in Freedom City, some people didn't have nearly enough in the way of survival skills. With Curtis' attention momentarily on Mark, she launched herself across the stage in a dizzying series of handsprings that would've guaranteed her a standing ovation if she'd been part of the talent show, finishing in a midair twist that sent her plummeting into the would-be demonologist. Using her bat for leverage, she pulled them both to a kneeling position on the stage and twisted his arms up behind him. "Okay, Curtis, you're done!" she told him, loudly enough that it carried to the audience. "You're not going to summon any demons, or terrorize any more innocent people."
 

[Avenger Assembled]

Curtis responded with the sort of lewd comment about Erin riding him that might have gotten his head pulped back in Erin's days of heavy psych treatment, then added, "Typhona, attend me! Show these interlopers who their master is!" At his words, a man-sized humanoid with bizarrely mammalian secondary sexual characteristics seemed to wriggle out of the air and bite at Erin, fangs coming perilously close to her flesh before flinching away at the last minute.

 

"Oh no you don't, you freak!" yelled Edge, the lights overhead visibly flickering for a long and perilous moment as he ran up there and got right next to Curtis. "No more weird monsters, no more warped heroes, and no more Alan Curtis!" And with that, a bolt of lightning cracked down from the ceiling and struck the wizard between Erin's arms, knocking him finally unconscious with a powerful jolt of electricity. "And stay down!" Edge yelled with great satisfaction as the serpent-woman faded from existence, the crowd gasping as Curtis' spell seemed to break. 

[Electra]

Erin's eyes went a bit wide at Mark's impassioned declaration, but there wasn't much she could do to stop the lightning that arced from the ceiling and into the trapped magician's body. She quickly laid Curtis down and put two fingers against his neck, reassured by the heartbeat she felt there. "Okay, that's enough," she reminded Mark, just to be on the safe side. "He's down, we're done here." Indeed, whatever Eldritch had done was already clearing the air of its magic tingle, and whatever was being summoned was safely back on the other side of reality. "Let's get the STAR Squad in here to lock him down before he can regroup." She looked at her comrade, obviously expecting him to make the call. 

[Avenger Assembled]

While Mark made the call to summon help for them against the mad sorcerer, the crowd was beginning to panic as they came out of the spell. "What was that thing?" one demanded. "What was he going to make us do?" With a look at Erin to turn her head, Eldritch (who had finished his chanting when Curtis was knocked unconscious) raised his hand and spoke to the crowd, a blue-white glow shining like a beacon from his palm. Having seen this movie already, Mark turned his head and focused on his conversation with STAR Squad - they knew how to deal with evil mystics well enough, and the news that one had attacked a crowd with a snake monster was going to get a rapid response indeed. 

 

Meanwhile, Eldritch informed the crowd "Alan Curtis was an evil magician who tried to summon a snake monster to attack you all. He was defeated by Edge, Wander, and Adrian Eldritch. He will be taken away and you need not fear anymore." With that, he turned back to Erin and winked. "I had better go speak to the people in the green room," he said, floating by overhead as he went to do just that.

 

The crowd blinked a few times, and, just as Edge came up behind Wander to report the cops were on their way (having left Curtis bound and gagged with steel and burlap, respectively) began to cheer. "They saved us! Woo-hoo!"  

 

 

[Electra]

Erin nodded, checking the bonds on Curtis one last time, even as he squirmed and tried fruitlessly to chew through the gag. "This should hold him well enough till they get him wrapped up. If one of those in the green room was his accomplice, Eldritch can ferret that out." She spared a glance for the crowd, but didn't acknowledge or even really internalize the cheering. An audience was always the low priority concern until a mission was over, and she wasn't entirely sure they were out of the woods on this one yet. Rising, she took Mark's elbow, angling them so they faced away from the people in the seats. "You okay?" she asked the reality warper, her voice low enough to be for his ear only . "Keeping it together?" It wasn't the most comfortable question to have to ask or answer, but her teammates had done it for her before, and she could return the favor. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'm good, I'm good," said Mark, who had turned red for a moment but now did seem to be calming down. "I just...I don't like it when people do that," he said, flexing his hands back and forth as he glared down at the wriggling Curtis. "Jerk." Anger wasn't something Mark found easy to express, so he did his best to swallow it. The sight of the bad guy at his feet, mad but unable to do anything about it, helped a lot. He smiled a little at Erin, and said, "Thanks, though. And for...making sure I did the right thing there." Eldritch emerged a few moments later with a snake-skinned woman bound in glowing gold mystic bonds, who hissed and spat at Curtis angrily as they got close.

 

"There has been a falling-out," he commented to Mark and Erin dryly.

 

When STAR Squad arrived to find two superheroes holding a bad guy wizard for them, they took the situation for what it was - uniformed and body-armored officers carried Curtis off towards the police wagons that had pulled up outside, confiscating his fallen serpent-cane and loading his 'bride' off in the other one. Mark asked around among the people who'd left the green room and came back with news about exactly who the snake-woman was. 

"June Marsh, one of the new secretaries," he told Erin. "_Not_ that girl he was hitting on real hard, either. They're trying to figure out if she was just a cultist or an actual Serpent Person." He looked at the crowd of comics professionals and realized that a significant portion of them had their tablets, pads, and other drawing tools out. "I think we'd better get out of here," he said significantly, knowing that Mark Lucas and Erin White might be missed soon. 

[Electra]

Erin studied the crowd, her brow furrowed as she realized that some of the people were taking pictures, others already drawing. Their secret identites were already thin with this crowd, much less if a bunch of artists started studying them closely. "Good call. We shouldn't need to make a statement, it pretty much speaks for itself." Pursing her lips, she considered the logistics of their return. "There's a big coat-check closet just outside the hall that nobody ought to be using right now. If you pop us in there, back in dress clothes, we can just step back into the room and get lost in the crowd," she suggested. "And absolutely not one joke about you and coat closets during parties!" she reminded him in an undertone. 

[Avenger Assembled]

The remark made Mark cough as they teleported out, but luckily it didn't spoil their stealth as he changed them back into their regular clothes. Mark took the lead as they made their way through the crowd, checking on friends to make sure they were all right, telling them the story of how he and Erin had taken shelter in the coat closet when all the fighting started. It was a thin story, even for a super-identity, but luckily this was the kind of thing Mark had grown up selling. The party guests were still recovering from shock, albeit an attenuated one, and though Erin distinctly caught a view of several sketches of Wander and Edge being worked on, no one seemed to be openly putting the two heroes together with the two of them. When he was sure everyone was no more than scared, Mark made their way out of the building and through the police cordon, then finally out to his car. 

 

Once there, he sat behind the wheel, shaking his head, his voice rising. "I can't believe it, Erin, I really thought that my mom had gone crazy, but she was right! She was totally right about that guy! Which means that...that..." He looked at her, and suddenly seemed to deflate, his voice dropping. "Which doesn't really make anything better at all, does it?" 

[Electra]

Erin sighed. "Well, it means she's not actively delusional, as far as we can tell," she offered. "And that she's not as paranoid as I was worried about. It doesn't mean she doesn't still need help, but maybe it won't be as difficult to get through to her as it would be if she couldn't tell bad guys from regular guys anymore." She reached out and gave Mark's shoulder a light and awkward pat. "And maybe this will be good for her," she suggested, trying to sound positive. "A lot of bad things happened that she couldn't control, but this time she shone a light on a really bad guy before he could hurt someone. And you believed her and helped her. So maybe she'll believe that things can be better for her, and that you'll help her now, right?" Privately Erin worried that having one of her fears proved real might make Martha even more intransigent on the rest of them, but there was no sense borrowing trouble. 

 

"Anyway," she said, folding her hands into her lap, "seems like the party's pretty much over in there. You ready to hit the road?"  

[Avenger Assembled]

Talking amongst themselves, Erin and Mark decided it made the most sense for Mark to discuss this situation with his mom personally. Mark drove back, as he had arriving, and was unusually quiet as they made their way back to his house. When they were almost there, he finally said, as if saying something he'd rehearsed in his mind, "I'm sorry if what I said about family was insensitive, earlier." He gave Erin a look that seemed to confess he honestly didn't know if it was. "I'm really glad you were there for me today." He smiled shakily, his cheeks blushing just a little. "If it means anything, Erin, I consider you part of my family too, even if they've been pretty messed-up lately." 

[Electra]

Erin gave him a quick smile, offsetting the uncomfortable shrug at the reminder of family talk from earlier. "Sure it means something," she told him. "We're teammates from way back, and we always will be. I know if I needed help, you'd be there just as fast." She let out a short laugh. "And I guess I'm really grateful we're never going to legally be family the way the Mark and Erin were in that messed-up universe, but family's not all about blood and marriage. I guess maybe it's just about being there." She looked towards the house, where lights were still burning in most of the windows. "You going to be okay in there? You want me to come in with you and talk to her?"