ic Double Dutch

[Heritage]

Grim hung the phone up with a firm click, really not wanting to hear any more of that jovial voice she was starting to despise. She sat there for a few more seconds, saying nothing as she continued to stare off into space. At length, she roused herself from her unhappy funk.

"If all the Dukes are connected, what if we somehow break that connection? Might that disrupt his...I dunno, his weird quantum state or whatever it is?"

She traced a large circle on the floor with her foot, once again opening the portal into her own little pocket beyond the Veil; she reached inside and pulled out the two crossbows she'd confiscated from two other Dukes, uncocked them and then set them aside. Finally she stepped over to where the Duke slumbered, still wrapped up in the rope she'd conjured earlier.

"Robert, can you help me lower him into that dimensional anomaly? I want to try a little experiment."

Once the two of them had gently lowered the sleeping noble into the hole and carefully laid him out on the bed of soft pine needles inside, they both climbed out and she shut the portal closed with a snap of her fingers, leaving this Duke outside his own dimension. The fae heroine crossed her arms and grinned wryly.

"Let see if he feels that."

Then she turned back to Robert. "Thanks for your help with that." She indicated all the wires strewn around the room. "So, do we think he generates his own power or is he off the grid? If there's a circuit breaker or something, maybe we can cut off the power at the source."

Edited November 26, 2014 by Heritage

[Supercape]

GM

 

Lord Robert Harrow looked rather confused at the Eldritch ways of Grimalkin. It was clearly outside his comfort zone. 

 

"What is that? A pocket universe or something?" he asked, still sleepy. 

 

"Don't ask me how the Duke is doing what he is doing. Its beyond me. At least, its beyond me given the data I have. He seems to be hopping his consciousness from body to body, that's clear. Some kind of telepath or mentalism? In any case, I suspect all the hops take their toll. Every time he does it, I get another spike on these readings...except in the opposite direction..."

 

He showed the readouts. Even a novice could see the spikes upwards when Velocity was speeding, and downwards when the Duke was jumping from body to body. 

 

"I think it's his own telepathic power that does it. Except, its not perfect, over the years he has stretched himself, and was starting to slow down. That part, at least, is true. What you did to his body. I guess that feels like an itch he has to scratch...."

[Thevshi]

"Yes, I am not sure you quite realize who you're dealing with here."  Velocity commented quickly.  "Now let's be done with this threatening civilians shall we?"  Then in a blur of movement she had run over and snatched up the briefcase beside the Duke.  Before the Duke even registered it was gone, the yellow clad speedster was out of the bookshop and off toward City Center, speeding into Freedom Hall and quickly descending down into the lower levels where the Wreck Room was located. 

 

After quickly ensuring it was not currently in use, Velocity tossed the briefcase inside, sealing the room.  She then stopped up in the control room, turning on the room sensors.  "Daedalus, this is Velocity, I have placed a potentially dangerous object in the Wreck Room and have sealed the room.  If you could come down and deal with it, I need to get back out there and run down the one behind this."  She said into her League communicator. 

[Supercape]

GM

 

Silberman's bookstore

 

"Wha----" said the surprised duke, or at least, one of them, as the bag was whipped from him. The gust of air flagging his hair was the only sign of Velocities speed. 

 

He frowned deeply, his bushy eyebrows vying with each other to be most discontent. 

 

"Of all the blasted...is this worth it, I ask you?" he sighed to the store staff. 

 

He checked his watch and shrugged. "The more the merrier, I imagine. At least, when it comes to Velocity..."

 

And once more, the Duke collapsed, snoring heavily on the floor of the Book store. 

 

At the Freedom League Wreck Room...

 

Pffft!

 

A little puff of gas hissed from the bag. Followed by the scans of the Wrecking Room, and a computer readout...

 

ANALYSIS: NITROUS OXIDE...ALSO KNOWN AS LAUGHING GAS...

 

Back at the Castle

 

Bring Bring! Bring Bring! Sang the telephone once again, right in front of Grimalkin and Lord Robert Harrow. 

[Heritage]

Grim was pacing the cellar, nimbly dodging the poorly-insulated wires as she gnawed on a thumbnail. There was no word from Velocity yet, but maybe that was a good thing, right? Unless everyone back at the bookstore was already dead...

It finally sank in that Robert had asked her a question. "Oh, yeah, it's like a hole into my own little corner Beyond the Veil; figured out how to do it about twenty years ago." She snorted. "Wish I'd had it back when the twins were little; could've had a little peace and quiet from time to time!"

When the phone rang, the changeling practically leaped across the room to grab the receiver and jam it to her ear. "What do you want now, you twisted pr###?" Boy, did she want to rip the annoying grin off all his faces!

Edited October 3, 2014 by Heritage

[Thevshi]

Velocity looked at the information on the screen in the Wreck Room's control booth, slightly surprised by the results.  "Laughing gas?  Well, guess the Duke is not too much for mass homicide."  She commented.  She keyed her League communicator once again.  "Deadalus, Velocity again, turns out the device I had only contained Nitrous Oxide.  But I could still use any analysis you might be able to make."

 

With that, she was off in a blur of yellow, returning to the bookstore in less than a second.  Coming to a sudden halt by the now slumbering Duke, the speedster looked down on him with a small frown.  "Yeah, that figures."  She then took out her cellphone to give Grim a call and learn what was going on back in Holland.

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Oh ho ho! I am far to fat to be twisted, my little butterfly" chuckled the Duke down the phone to Grimalkin. "How amusing and pretty you are! Why, you have been quite a delight. A splendid little side show whilst your speedy friend speeds me up again. That last little jaunt to America...why, it blew my socks off, quite literally!"

 

"I imagine the little jigsaw is falling together now. You can't win, you know. Do you have any idea how many clones of me I have made? ten? twenty? a hundred? All I need do is keep them fed and watered. Or in some cases, simply kept on ice. Yes, I am an expert on cloning. Made my fortune that way, passing off cloning technology to the Red's during the cold war. You see, I have no wish to die, not even a little. Slowing down, even by microseconds, is simply unacceptable"

 

"So I started cloning myself, again, and again. I have got very good at it. And given my peculiar little talent of hopping between my bodies, immortality is mine. I am not a harsh man, or cruel, merely determined to live, and live delightfully, an immortal hedonist" he said, smiling down the phone. 

 

"Now, I would very much like Velocity to return to my laboratory and run around very very fast indeed. Otherwise, I have decided to ram the train I have just taken over straight into the central train station of a major city, and kill this body. Oh, and many hundreds of other people too. Poor little folk. Now, you wouldn't want that on your conscience just because you weren't prepared to exercise a little, would you?"

[Heritage]

Grim felt the blood rising into her face as the sick Dutch bastard prattled on and on, like the world was his personal choo-choo train set; she imagined him lying flat on his belly, idly twisting the phone cord around his fingers as his spindly little legs kicked in the air. The tips of her pointed ears were so hot she thought they might burst into flame at any moment. The blood roaring in her ears almost made her miss Velocity's call; when she answered it, her throat was tight with barely-controlled fury as she held the two phones so both parties could hear her.

 

"Hi Vel. I assume you easily defeated his Ducal-ness, or else he wouldn't have called me again threatening to kill a trainload of innocent people."

 

There was a brief pause.

 

"But it doesn't really matter, since we're not going to play his game anymore; on your way back to the lab, could you grab as much gasoline as you can so we can burn his house to the ground? I think we'll start with the lab and all his cloning equipment. Later!"

 

She hung up both phones at the same time, then turned to Robert and tossed her smartphone to him. "Please answer that if your love calls back; I need to tear this building apart brick by brick."

 

And with that, she calmly conjured up a cricket bat and began to smash everything in sight.

Edited October 10, 2014 by Heritage

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Er..of course...." muttered an uneasy Lord Robert Harrow as he took the telephone. 

 

He was soon to become even more uneasy. The rage of an enraged Grimalkin was not easy to behold. And aside from the pure fury of the fey, every machine and instrument hit and struck exploded in a shower of sparks, The lightning flashed uneasily, and he could swear the power cables on the floor almost wriggled.

 

And then...

 

A massive arc of electricity. Then another, then a whole symphony of arcs, all lancing to the central monolith in the room. Amidst an explosion of arcing power, the monolith cracked open...

 

And inside, the body of the Duke. Or a body, at least. 

 

This one was, however, different. Power cables were attached to his entire body. His body was a patchwork of metal and chrome, only his eyes remained untouched, glittering with pleasure. 

 

"Now this body. This took some doing! The power! Even I would not have guessed! The Speed of Velocity is truly incredible!" he said, entire body crackling with energy. 

 

"I could even be more beautiful than you, dear butterfly!" he said to Grimalkin. "Yes, more beautiful still...I just need more power...." he said greedily. 

 

The room exploded with sparks and lances of electricity as the final surge hit his cyborg body, the powercables falling off him completely...

 

Robert was thrown across the room, his chest smoking, knocked out...or worse...

[Thevshi]

As fast as she was, Velocity had not been able to get a word in edgewise once Grim answered her cellphone, the other heroine quickly going off about how she was done with dealing with the Duke and was ready to burn down his entire castle to stop his plans.  "Oh great."  The speedster stated with a sigh when Grim hung up.  She then keyed the comm system for the League once more.

 

"Daedalus, one last thing, I am heading back to Holland now, to the castle owned by Duke Dooyeweerd to try to deal with the guy behind this gas bomb, and some other things.  If you don't hear from me again in about a minute you should probably assemble a team to come looking for me."

 

And with that the speedster was gone from the Wreck Room control booth and Freedom Hall, speeding back across the Atlantic in seconds.

 

Mere moments later, she was coming to a halt inside the cellar of the Duke's castle, quickly taking in the scene.  Her heart skipped a beat when she saw Robert's injury, but she quickly focused on the Duke that had emerged from the sarcophagus.

 

"Okay, enough is enough, no more playing nice."  She called out, pointing toward the Duke.  "Stand down, before you get hurt."

 

[Supercape]

GM

 

The augmented Duke moved out of his monolith, sparks flying around his body. There was something in the way he moved...fast. Faster than he had a right to be. It was still a fraction of the speed of Velocity, a drop in the ocean. But that drop had been infused. The Duke was sped up, ever so slightly. 

 

"Stand Down? In this body! Hahaha!" laughed the Duke. Something about him seemed more arrogant, less playful, more fierce. 

 

"Why I do declare I shall elect to decline, my friend. I have never felt so alive! Your speed, it is intoxicating, addictive! I had only been looking for a why to prolong my life further, stopping the slow decline of my brain, but now I taste the furious pace and power you possess, even just this morsel, I find myself unable to decline myself gorging on it" he said directly to Velocity. 

 

"No more jumping, no more clones! This body was designed for power, and power it has, not like the pale imitations you have seen. And it is more powerful than ever!" he laughed as electricity flowed through his body and his eyes glowed. 

 

The lights in the room flickered and sparked, the room flipping in and out of darkness as the power fluctuated wildly. 

 

"So Dance, and make me sing, make me grow still further!" he said, shooting a bolt of lightning at Velocities feet...

[Thevshi]

Velocity easily sidestepped the lightning bolt, her gaze still fixed on the electrified form of the Duke that had arisen out of the sarcophagus. She was really tired of the Duke and his games, especially now that Robert was hurt.

"Please, you still are nothing but a spark plug. Suit yourself, for this is likely going to hurt."  She replied as her hands became a blur as the reached for her belt. In the blink of an eye, she had drawn out a small handful of steel ball bearings, which she then threw at the Duke in rapid succession.

*CRACK* *CRACK* *CRACK*

Multiple miniature sonic booms echoed in the cellar, as the projectiles broke the sound barrier. Three of the supersonic missile weapons struck the Duke squarely in the chest. The impact of the projectiles was enough to knock him over, clearly rattling him.

Velocity meanwhile had moved over next to Robert, easily avoiding the sparking power cables scattered about the floor of the room.

[Supercape]

GM

 

Every missile was thrown at unbelievable speed. And yet, somehow, the Duke blurred as he moved. If anyone but Velocity had tried a stunt, the Dukes speed may have been enough to evade them. As it was, they landed in him, clanging against metal and burying into the flesh of his amalgamated cyborg body. 

 

"aaaargh!" he shouted in pain, as more sparks flew off him, and the whole room briefly lit up like a fire work display of electrical arcs. 

 

"I am sorry...for...your husband...I have no wish to kill...or hurt...." he grunted, unsteady, still jerking with blurred movements, uncoordinated. 

 

"Please, forgive me...it is just...my will to survive....so long...long years...to end them in the tragedy of pitiful slow dullness of mind and body...I cannot abide the horror of such a fate..."

[Heritage]

All the Duke's whimpering and feeble apologies just served to make Grim even madder, because he felt he was somehow special, and shouldn't have to grow old and die like everyone else. The way poor Bill was after that last fall, helpless and dying in bed-

 

In a fury, the changeling roared and flung herself at the sparking, pathetic cyberDuke, her conjured cricket bat swinging again and again at him in a wild barrage of blows. "Shut! The Hell up! You Selfish! BASTARD!"  She seemed heedless of her own safety in her rage.

[Supercape]

GM

 

The cyber-duke body was assaulted by a flurry of Cricket Batting, with each connection sending out a shower of sparks that sizzled on the bat, and arced right into Grimalkins soul. The cellar was beginning to look like an expensive firework display, as the sparks and arcs landed this way, and that, with some machines and instruments sizzling and exploding as they got hit, leading to a snowballing display of lighting. 

 

"Ouch! Ouch! How rather slightly extremely annoying!" said the Duke, his eyes crossing as the bat knocked his head left and then right. 

 

He sunk to his knees, dazed. 

 

"If I was to be hit by anyone, it would be you, my little butterfly" he moaned to Grimalkin, his tongue slurring somewhat. "But why does it have to be with a Cricket Bat? The English are such tiresome bores, you know..."

[Thevshi]

Velocity was a bit taken aback by Grim's anger at the Duke.  Of course, the speedster still had not quite had the chance to tell her friend that the Duke had not really planned on killing all her employees and customers at the bookstore.  Of course, that may not have mattered all that much anyway, given all the other things the Duke had done since they had arrived here.

 

"We came here to help you.  If you had been open and honest with us, we could have found a way to help you instead of wasting all this time."  Velocity shouted.  But she had little time to argue with the Duke now.  She needed to get Robert out of the cellar and to some help.  In a blur of motion, she ran over and scoped the unconscious noble off the floor and then was gone from the room before anyone had even realized she had moved.

 

Less than a second later, she had come to a stop in the library of the castle, setting Robert down on a sofa as she prepared to start looking for medical books.

[Heritage]

Grim jabbed a finger at her chest. "Hey, I like the English! They gave us Monty Python, Mr. Bean and the Beatles! And I watch Love, Actually every Christmas!" Some of the white-hot fury was starting to fade, but she was still pretty hot under the collar. She paused for a second, leaning on her cricket bat as she stared down at the Duke as she tried to catch her breath.

 

"Now the Belgians...gave us French fries, waffles, Brussels sprouts...and Jean-Claude Van Damme; not too bad! Oh, and Tintin and Poirot!" Then she shook her head and clucked her tongue. "Wait, no,  that was Agatha Christie; another one for the English!" Then she hefted the bat over her shoulder, both hands tightly around the handle. "And now I'm gonna knock you clear out of that stupid robot body!"

 

WHAM!

Edited November 21, 2014 by Heritage

[Supercape]

GM

 

The last strike spun the Duke around full circle, seeing stars...he came down in a shower of sparks, on one knee, face hung. 

 

"Impossible! Impossible! This body has the strength of a hundred men! It was charged, charged beyond my hopes and expectations by your speedy friend. I won't be beaten...I won't! not this body! years of work, of painstaking research, experimentation, trail, and error...then to plan...to get your friend here, to speed it up..."

 

He shook is head. 

 

"As pretty as your butterfly wings are, my pretty, I shall have to pluck them! You are a wild, feral thing. To see you is to delight, but from afar, I think, yes, from afar. You were not in my plan, my delicate little flower. How foolish I was, mayhap blinded by your sparkling!"

[Thevshi]

Velocity had read through a number of medical books in less than a second and the moved over to provide some rapid chest compressions on Robert. Thankfully the quick treatment worked, and the young English lord began breathing once again, even if he was still unconscious. With Robert out of immediate danger, the speedster left him to rest on the sofa in the library, as she sped back down to the cellar.

There she found that Grim still had the Duke well in hand, the cyborg Dutchman still appearing to be on the ropes and dazed. "Alright Duke, are you read to just surrender and make this easy for you? So far no one has been too seriously hurt, so you should not have too serious of charges against you. Perhaps something can be done to help you, but you need to stop fighting and lying to us." The speedster said, although she was not sure how easy it would be to get Grim to settle down.

[Heritage]

By the time Velocity returned to the basement, she found Grim sitting down on one of the the couches she'd made earlier, the cricket bat resting on her lap. "Robert okay?" When the speedster nodded, the changeling visibly sighed with relief.

However when her partner began to talk about criminal charges, Grim frowned. "Uh, I don't know how the laws work here in Belgium, but back in the States we'd be looking at a long list of assault charges, plus attempted vehicular homicide; the man shot me with a crossbow and tried to run me over with his Rolls." She shrugged. "Just sayin'."

Then she turned to the Duke. "The thing that gets me is how selfish and short-sighted you are." She shrugged again. "Everyone dies. Nothing lasts forever. Entropy increases. That's how the universe works. But you, you could've lived forever in the hearts of your people if you applied a, a tenth of the energy and resources you squandered on yourself to, I dunno, fight world hunger? Or find a new cleaner energy source? Or a cure for cancer? Something..."

She just sat there shaking her head, waiting for the cyberDuke's next move.

Edited November 25, 2014 by Heritage

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Dear me, dear me..." said the Rattled Duke, still sparking away. "What is all this talk of being useful? Why, I find being useless is the only really useful thing to do!" he chortled. 

 

"No no, I am a work of art, and I cannot abide undue termination. Oh, I am sure when the last particle is ripped apart at the end of the universe I will come to accept right and proper termination, but not till then. Why, I have had such fun. It is the age of miracles, and we have a troupe of strange and magnificent actors, like your good selves!" he said, giving them a broad smile with arcs of electricity dancing between his teeth. 

 

He paused a moment. 

 

"I confess I do not believe, despite all my plans, that I can defeat you. Perhaps, my little buttercup, on another day. Perhaps just the one of you. But I had not fully comprehended the speed of Velocity or the rage of Grimalkin..."

 

"And so, where does this lead you? Will you arrest me? Will you slay me? Will you try to convict me, of crimes unproven and unwitnessed? Will you seize the law into your own hands? Dismantle this body? Try to claw back the atom of speed I have stolen from you?" he asked, earnestly, with another wicked and amused smile on his face. 

[Thevshi]

Velocity frowned slightly at the Duke's smug comments. Part of the speedster just wanted to knock him unconscious just so she did not have to listen to him anymore. But for the moment the Duke at least appeared to be surrendering, so there was no real justification for that. "Your crimes are hardly unwitnessed." She stated. "For one thing, we witnessed them, as did you various servants that you ordered to carry us down here when you thought you had drugged us. So there is kidnapping right there. You are not as untouchable as you might wish to believe."

"As for taking back any of the speed that you took from me, that will be something that the experts will have to look into. Perhaps we will be able to do so, but in an event, I do not really feel any less than I was."

[Heritage]

Grim waved her hand, and the roboDuke was securely bound with thick black loops of galvanized rubber. "And in case you think they'll take your side, you did very loudly fire them all and call them traitors while you were waving your poisoned crossbow and trying to run me over, so...they might not be as fond of you now."

She stood up, drew another circle in the air, and dropped the 'original' Duke she'd been holding in her Vault onto the couch she'd just been sitting on, and quickly bound him as well. Then she walked to the table and indicated the pair of crossbows she'd confiscated earlier. "Plus we've got some physical evidence; these are covered with poison and your prints, and we've got your journal."

The petite shapeshifter stood by her friend and sighed as she rested her head on the taller woman's shoulder. "I'm tired. And my arm hurts again..." She rubbed the spot on her left shoulder where the Duke shot her, forgotten for a while in her fury.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Heritage

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Well now, ho ho ho, I seemed to have overplayed my hand, have I not? Quite the pickle I have landed myself in" he explained, stretching languidly. 

 

"But that is the beauty of it all...the gamble...the excitement! I had a magnificent time!" he declared raising his finger to the heavens in a victory, of sorts. 

 

"Now, I really must confess to being reluctant to leave this resplendent body. But, as you say, it is evidence. And I am sure I would find prison rather tedious, to say the least. I can do without the necessities in life, but I must have the luxuries!"

 

He patted his cybernetic belly. 

 

"Bon Voyage, dear flesh and steel! It was quite the...blast!"

 

As quick as you like, he started to rumble....the power building up inside him....

[Thevshi]

Velocity gave a small smile at Grimalkin leaned on her shoulder and mentioned being tired and sore. "Hopefully this will all be wrapped up soon, you can nap on the way back to the States." But clearly the Duke had no intention of just letting himself be carted off to jail.

Velocity tensed slightly as the Duke mentioned a "blast" and then began to rumble as if power was building up inside him. As always, the yellow clad speedster reacted quickly, far quicker than most could. She snatched up Grim, shouting out as she did. "Shrink down!" In a blur of movement, Velocity was gone from the cellar, taking Grim with her as she sped up towards the library to get Robert as well.