Deadbolt (IC)

[R. Bluefish]

"Weeell then." Echo deemed it safe to breathe again and wheezed slightly. "That's a bit of good news, I suppose. Makes for a welcome change." So I'm probably not going to need to start stocking up on anti-zombie weaponry. Phew, I'm crap with a shotgun. "So the virus shouldn't be a problem for right now. Fine by me, we've already got our share of problems.

 

"Also...yeah." She shot a glance over her shoulder at Tin Hat. "He wears that to keep out the radiowaves, I think. He's, uh, going through a rough patch right now." Although it wasn't as rough a patch as what Deadbolt was going through, from the look of him. She felt very privileged all of a sudden - all she had to worry about was a murderous alternate-universe clone and the occasional dumpster-themed supervillain.

[Supercape]

GM

 

Whilst Tin Hat, and, for that matter, Deadbolt, both seemed to suffer delusions of a wide and varied nature, there was in this case something to get deluded about. The space, and maybe the time, and maybe other dimensions around Deadbolt seem to distort every now and again, not often, and hard to notice. Like a tic, or spasm. Nothing severe, just a swimming of perceptions. 

 

And this was making the already sensitive Tin Hat more and more agitated. He gripped his cudgel firmly, and hopped from foot to foot. 

 

"I don't like you, man. Your dead. Like a zombie. And, I'm getting something...I can feel you screwing with my brain! Are you screwing with my brain???" he asked, violently. 

 

"Uh-oh..." muttered Jack. 

 

"No, no man, I'm cool, honest. I'm not screwing with ya brain!" replied Deadbeat, eyes looking dead and crazy and dead crazy. 

 

"Screw you! Your a doctor! Try to lock me up, and beam my head! Well I ain't gonna let ya! Not again! I'm gonna peel off your skull and show you want brains look like!" he screamed, terror and fury gripping him. 

 

With that, he raised his cudgel ready to smash Dead Bolts skull to a pulp. He looked strong enough to do it...

 

Jack had been lost in concentration, hearing through the ether. He snapped back to the frightening scene developing from him. 

 

"Neutron are coming!" he gulped to Echo, his face white. 

Edited August 6, 2016 by Supercape

[R. Bluefish]

Neutron? Oy vey. She was sure she had had worse days than this before, but damn if she could think of any. The scary thought was that she might still have worse days than this in future. And the day wasn't even over yet. Erik's gonna be pissed if I let the city get destroyed by a zombie virus. Or interdimensional annihilation.

 

"Whoah, whoah, whoah!" she exclaimed, jumping in between Deadbolt and Tin Hat's upraised cudgel. "Not the time, man! Neutron's on its way, this is not time for fighting each other - we need to make like a tree and get out of here!" She flinched back from his club, instinctively shifting her stance to place her center of gravity on her rear foot. "He's not screwing with your brain, okay?" Probably. "We're all in this together right now. We get ourselves someplace safe, then we can work this out, yeah?"

[Supercape]

GM

 

"There ain't any where safe! Don't you get it? The C-Beams? THE C-BEAMS! They are getting through!" he yelled, furious, clutching at his tin foil hat and grimacing. 

 

"Gotta get him! Stop him!" he finished, giving a wild swing at Echo. He was a tough guy, but unbalanced - in more ways than one, and swung wide. Grunting, he tried to barge past Echo. Again, he was a strong man. He must have been near forty. It was hard to tell in the dark, and harder still to see through the years of filth and hard living he must have had to endure. But whatever his age, he was tall and wide, and his limbs had a solidity to them. But he was not fast, and not agile, and his rage made him clumsy. 

 

He was almost sobbing as he stumbled around. 

 

"PLEASE! STOP THE C-BEAMS!" he yelled at Echo. 

[R. Bluefish]

Echo easily dodged the man's clumsy swing, his cudgel whistling past over her head. Thankfully he was slow - at least, he was compared to her. She hated fighting fast people. "Easy!" The bad news was that he seriously did not seem to be properly in control of himself. Socking him one in the jaw would ordinarily be her go-to solution, but her day had already been bad enough. She didn't need to top it off by beating up some poor mentally ill guy.

 

Instead, she ducked under his arm, stepping around behind him in a move that could almost have been choreographed. In an instant, she had him in a hold, gripping him under the armpits and pinning his arms behind him. He was a strong man, no question about that - but Echo bench-pressed minivans as part of her regimen. Her muscles were like iron against his struggles. "Listen!" she said. "You hear that?" She couldn't actually hear anything, because she didn't have Jack's ears, but she felt it would emphasize her point anyway. "That's the sound of Neutron coming for all of us. If we stick around, there's going to be a lot more C-beams where that came from!" She managed to jab a finger at Deadbolt while still keeping Tin Hat firmly in her grip. "He's not your enemy! He's going to help us! Help us stop the C-beams and everything! Do you want to bash his skull in and kill an ally, or do you want us all to get out of here together and save the whole damn city?" Or I could just carry you out, but I'd rather not do that.

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Ya think?" replied Tin Hat, adjusting his name sake. A touch of sarcasm drifted into his voice. 

 

Flash beams approached down the sewers. 

 

"Yup, they are here! Get ready to get shot! Ay! It's not death I'm scared of, you see. Its the bit just before death..." gulped Jack, who didn't know which way to turn. 

 

"Hehehe..." cackled Deadbolt. 

 

"I'm not ready to die. I may look dead, but I'm not. Survival, its the ultimate human drive!" cackled Deadbolt. 

 

"You see, its a great name for me. I thank you for that. But its not just because I turned keys. Its not just because I am dead..." he explained, slowly, his eyes glazed with madness. 

 

"Its because the virus...it doesn't just make you mad. It is energy. If you activate it. Thought becomes action. Will becomes power. And intent becomes motion..."

 

With that, he bolted upright, as quick as a blink of an eye. And then he blurred. Fast, faster still. Faster than any human, like a rocket. His legs seemed to hardly move. It was more that he propelled himself. Like a bullet. Away from Neutron, and down uncharted and dark sewer tunnels..

 

[R. Bluefish]

Echo recoiled. "Whoah!" Her hair blew back in her face as he blasted away, quickly drifting down to settle around her shoulders. Okay then. Deadbolt. Guess I should have seen that one coming. Her mind raced - she knew she didn't have much time to make a decision. Deadbolt - who they needed - was getting away. Plus Neutron was going to be here at any moment, and there was no telling what kind of tricks they might bring to the table. They might not be as easy to take out as the snatch squad had been.

 

Her senses were buzzing, and it took a moment for her to realize that they weren't her usual senses - they were her physics senses. Which she really needed to come up with a better name for. Whatever Deadbolt's deal was, his powers seemed to run off the same vague source as hers.

 

That settled it. "Hold on tight," she said. "We're getting out of here."

 

She already had Tin Hat pinned firmly in her arms, and he was still struggling like a slippery wolverine. Letting go of him, even just with one hand, would probably let him wriggle free and run straight into Neutron. Which meant it was time to get creative.

 

"This might be a little weird," she said, and without further warning, concentrated, altering her personal gravity in the same way she did when she needed to climb a wall. Only instead of using it to stick to something, she used it to make something else stick to her. That something being Jack. Jack found himself suddenly sucked towards Echo as the laws of gravity literally bent to her will, and he landed across her back in an uncomfortable - if secure - position.

 

Before either of them could protest, she was running, accelerating far beyond any human limits. Time warped around them, casting the world in strange grayish shades of light, as she sprinted after Deadbolt with on man held firmly in her arms and the other stuck firmly to her back. Echo was in luck, sort of - the...contents of the sewer made it comparatively easy to track him, because that stuff really splattered. She did her best not to think about what she would need to do to her costume after this was over. Dissolve it in acid, probably.

Edited August 11, 2016 by R. Bluefish

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Whoaaah!" came the two voices of Tin Hat and JAck, too shocked, at the moment, to protest. Tin Hat did struggle in Echo's grip, but for all his considerable strength, he was but a man locked into her superhuman arms. 

 

Echo followed the blur that was Deadbolt. The spray of sewage would be enough to induce vomiting. Tin Hat was clearly used to the odour, and whilst he did protest, he was wise enough not to open his mouth with all the backsplash wake from Deadbolt. Jack looked perilously close to heaving his guys, which would have added some extra spice to the aroma that was, at the moment, all pervasive. 

 

Around a corner, then another, hard to follow in the semi light. 

 

Then, in front of her, Deadbolt smashing through some fallen masonry like it was cardboard. Two tumbling halves of masonry rolled around the sewer wildly, giving Echo an obstacle...

[R. Bluefish]

Echo's heart jumped at the sudden appearance of the obstacle. Her instinct was to slow down - she was going at downright suicidal speed as it was, considering the winding tunnels - but if she slowed down, Deadbolt might get away.

 

'Course, Deadbolt would also get away if she got smeared across a block of masonry like a bug on a windshield. She didn't feel like ending her already brief and inauspicious career as a bloody smudge on a crap-covered rock. Her eyes flicked upwards as she ran, at the ceiling of the tunnel - and she swerved sidways, up the wall and onto the ceiling, neatly avoiding the masonry as it tumbled past. She kept running, circling fully around to the floor once more, making a mental note to apologize to her two unfortunate passengers. She had a feeling that this was probably even less fun for them than it was for her. Echo at least was used to her own physics-defying stunts.

[Supercape]

GM

 

For a brief second, Deadbolt turned to look over his zombie shoulder, and his withered eyes widened. 

 

"No! No! You can't be that fast! Nobody is that fast!" he gasped, before his countenance turned to anger. 

 

"You'll never catch me! I'm NOT going back! NEVER! you don't know what its like back there! I'll die first!" he yelled at his pursuer. 

 

Unhinged he might be, but cunning clearly remained, at some level. He turned a corner again, and up he went, scooting up a ladder, bursting upwards, and throwing a manhole cover into the air, far far upwards. He was not just fast, but strong as well. 

 

Deadbolt had moved up, out of the sewers, and into the city itself!

 

"No! No! Leave me down here! The C-beams are in the city!" whimpered Tin Hat, almost in tears, his voice husky with fear and terror. His scrabbling had momentarily stopped, evaporated with the sheer velocity of Echo's movement. But now, the thought of entering daylight and the streets of Freedom City, bustling and furious, was simply too much for him...

[R. Bluefish]

Tin Hat's words made Echo bite her lip in indecision. He had already helped her find Deadbolt, right? So he'd helped her more than he had to. Dragging him on a cross-city supersonic chase against his will would probably make her kind of a jerk. They had already put plenty of distance between them and Neutron, judging by the speeds they were going at - so maybe it was time to let the poor guy get on with his life. Quick-like.

 

She skidded to an instant halt, sending up waves of what she firmly chose to believe was water, and warped time further, almost stopping it entirely. Momentarily released from her gravitational hold, Jack hung nearly motionless in the air with a severely pitiable expression on his face, and she set Tin Hat down on his feet as gently as she could. Let's see...Feeling she owed him for his help, she produced a scrap of paper and a pen from her utility belt and scrawled him a note:

 

Quote

Thanks for helping me find Deadbolt. If you hadn't, we would probably all die tomorrow. We still might, but thanks to you we might not. I should be able to handle things from here, so go find a safe place to hide until the heat's off. I owe you a favor, so if you ever need anything, come by the Espadas School of Self Defense and Swordsmanship and tell them Escher Girl sent you. They'll know what it means.

 -- Echo

 

Her pen paused as she struggled with the last part, but she decided to leave it in. She didn't exactly have a public phone number for her Echo persona, and she didn't want to give him any info that could lead him to her secret identity - simply because he might accidentally reveal it to someone at an inopportune moment. She really did owe him for his help, so the dojo was the best bet for contacting her. If Erik had a problem with her telling a homeless guy where to find the Interceptors' home base, he could chew her out all he wanted later. It's not like supervillains have never attacked the place before. And I didn't really tell him what it is.

 

Task done, she tucked the note into Tin Hat's unmoving hand, along with a pair of twenty-dollar bills. Looks like I don't eat this month, but eh. And with that, she grabbed Jack, in her arms this time, and was off again. Time resumed its normal speed as she burst out of the manhole in renewed pursuit of Deadbolt.

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Hey, I'm feeling sick....blubgh...." mumbled Jack, from the sewage that peppered him and the dizzying speed of Echo. True to his word, he left a trail of stomach bile dribbling from his mouth, on Echo's costume, and trailing behind the terrific twosome as the Streets of Freedom City tore past. 

 

Deadbolt had popped up in Midtown (Downtown area) of Freedom City. Just next to the massive, impressive, and busy Millenial Mall. It was glass and steel and shiny. And that was exactly where he was headed! Into the crowds, the shops, the escalators, and the multiple levels. 

 

A few bystanders gasped at the blur of Deadbolt. At this speed, he was hard to actually get a look at; but those who did screamed or fainted. A super speeder was extraordinary enough, even for the famed Freedom City, but this was a corpse, a stiff, a zombie!!!

[R. Bluefish]

If Deadbolt made for quite a sight, Echo could only imagine how she must look, clad as she was in filthy blue-and-silver tights, with a tinfoil hat on her head and a vomiting man in her arms. I really hope this doesn't make it onto Youtube. And she imagined that none of them were exactly a symphony for the nose either, considering how covered in...stuff they all were.

 

"Excuse me! Pardon me! Comin' through!" She ducked and weaved as she super-sprinted her way through the crowd, using her unnatural reflexes to avoid colliding with any mall-goers. All she needed right now was to knock over a baby carriage or something, then her day would be complete. I always thought saving the city would feel more heroic and less...pathetic. All I've ever saved is 19th-century Utah and a city council election. "Superhero stuff, go about your business!"

 

As she ran, she tried to figure out exactly where they were. Midtown, obviously, and somewhere in the Millennial Mall. But where? Which entrance had they come through? Which direction were they headed? She cursed herself for not keeping better track of her surroundings. She was supposed to be used to traversing the city at super-speed.

Edited August 11, 2016 by R. Bluefish

[Supercape]

GM

 

Deadbolt was already inside the Mall, like a distorted blur. 

 

Screams and yells started erupting from the Mall, and in that confined space, with plenty of echoes and reverberation, it soon became an almost deafening cacophony.

 

He did not stop when he entered, but ploughed through the crowds, right along the ground floor of one of the arms of the Mall, from one end to another. He paused at the end, skidding to halt, considering the best direction to turn. 

 

Behind him, the crowds had parted like water. But not all; a couple of dozen shoppers had been knocked clean over, like ten pin clubs. Not injured, at least as far as Echo could tell. 

 

At least, not injured physically. Some has started screaming, some had started babbling, some had started giggling, a couple had started barking, and one old man started insisting he was Frank Sinatra and just exactly where had his band gone to?

Edited August 11, 2016 by Supercape

[R. Bluefish]

Whoah, that ain't good. Echo's eyes darted across the crowd as she felt panic start to rise in her chest. It looked like Deadbolt had some kind of madness-power, and he wasn't picky about who he used it on. For all she knew, those people might start biting each other's faces off at at any moment, or worse. They didn't seem much of a danger to themselves now, but...

 

On the other hand, punching was pretty much her one and only area of expertise. She didn't have an easy and effective way of restraining an entire crowd of people who weren't in control of themselves, and she couldn't just go around smacking them on the head. So that meant that her best bet was to go right for the source.

 

She paused in her sprint just long enough to set Jack down on his face and clap him on the shoulder. "Back in a mo'." Then she was off again, once more swerving sideways to run sideways along the storefronts, bypassing the crowd. "Hey! DB!" she yelled. "You need to cool it with whatever you're doing here!" She blurred straight towards Deadbolt and lashed out with her hands, trying to grab him. "I'm on your side here, so stop freaking out!"

 

The moment her hands touched him, a thought passed through her mind: this probably wasn't a smart idea.

 

Her physics-senses went into overdrive. Everything seemed to be warping and distorting around her - it was like the split second when she teleported, only she wasn't going anywhere. "What the...what's..." Her head felt like it was about to explode. The floor seemed to be rushing up to meet her, but she wasn't falling. Deadbolt was there, and she realized she didn't know where "there" was. The only coherent thought she could manage was the vague recollection of her intent to...was it attack? It was attack.

[Supercape]

"you are on my side? Funny,hahahaha! nobody is on my side! They are ALL against me, don't you see? I know what happens when they lock you up! I used to turn the key! Hahahaha!" he laughed, bitter and scared. It was hard to judge exactly what his mental state was - those glassy eyes, that dead looking flesh. 

 

"Pardon me for running! But I am rather good at it, you see!" he explained. "Ill leave you struggling..yes..yes...you see what my mind is like now? Poisoned by the virus, distorted by my little trip...fun, isn't it!" he gritted his teeth, angry again, but not so much at Echo. More at his life. 

 

With another bolt, he turned left and zoomed, like a blur, through the mall. Through her own distortions, she could hear shattering glass. 

 

He had propelled himself into "Speedy Simon's Sports Shop!"

[R. Bluefish]

Dazed, Echo stared after him for a moment, then took off in blind pursuit, the ground pounding past under her hyper-accelerated feet. As the broken window rose up before her, she leaped through, maintaining some semblance of grace even in her unnaturally confused state. She hit the ground in a roll and sprang back up, only for her senses to be assaulted.

 

Tacky store music was playing through tinny speakers. Brightly colored t-shirts and baseball caps were strewn around, spilled from knocked-over display stands. Customers were milling around in confusion and fear - whether simply panicking, or affected by Deadbolt's powers, she was in no state to determine. She took a step forward, shaking her head muzzily, and her foot slipped on a stray baseball bat. "Whurr'd he go?" she slurred through the haze of confusion, tilting her head this way and that in search of Deadbolt.

 

What's...where am I? Her brain felt like it was stuffed with marshmallows. A vague idea occurred to her, and she slapped herself. There was a ringing smack and she nearly passed out. Right, hitting self with super-strength = bad idea. It seemed to clear her head slightly, though, and with a resigned sigh she slapped herself again, this time with the other hand, dialing her strength back a notch as she did so. It took a moment for the stars to fade from her eyes, but when they did, she seemed to be thinking more clearly. Okay, note to self, don't let that happen again, or I'll spend the whole rest of the day kicking my own ass.

[Supercape]

One customer, in a daze, picked up a base ball bat and swung it ineffectively at Echo. 

 

Another screamed that the turtles were in her shoes. 

 

A third one gibbered with an inane grin. 

 

Simon Simmons, the owner of the store, was a greasy lump of lard with just enough muscle to lend a sliver of credence to his claim that he "worked out" as the tight (in all the wrong places) t shirt he had squeezed himself into proclaimed. Behind his counter, he had not been bowled over by Deadbolt's entrance. 

 

"Gah...gah...in the changing rooms....I think....he....damn...he was fast!" he mumbled. 

 

A trail of knock off sports wear did indeed lead to said changing rooms...

[R. Bluefish]

Echo took an instinctive step towards the changing rooms, then thought better of it. What was her plan here? They were quickly reaching the point where she needed to take Deadbolt down, plain and simple. People were in danger. She could talk some sense into him once she had kicked his ass.

 

But when she'd touched him, she'd fallen victim to his weird extradimensional mind-whammy. Man, I didn't get that power. All I got was super-jumping. She might not be so lucky as to be able to shake it off twice, so she needed to play things a little safer this time. But how? Punching was pretty much her tried-and-true method of combat. She was no ranged fighter - she didn't even have eyebeams.

 

Her eyes lit upon the deranged customer with the bat who had just taken a swing at her. The bat was currently coming back for another go, so she had to admire their persistence. "Hey, mind if I borrow this?" she said, reaching up one hand to grab the bat in midswing. She twisted it out of their grip effortlessly and swung it through the air, testing its balance. "Thanks."

 

She now made for the area the store owner had indicated. As she passed by the overturned hat display, she looked down, then snatched the filthy tinfoil hat off her hand and grabbed a baseball cap. "Much better," she said, settling the cap on her head backwards. Suitably attired, she edged up to the changing rooms, newfound weapon readied in a batter-up position. Hey Deadbolt, c'mon out. Nobody's gonna bat you.

[Supercape]

GM

 

From the changing rooms, an inane whistle, a hoot, and a cackling laugh. 

 

"Hehehe...nobody will recognise me now!" came Deadbolts dry voice. 

 

Out of the changing room he came, whistling innocently. 

 

"Howdy!" he said to Echo, as if they had just met. One had to admire his gall, or perhaps addled brains. True, his "disguise" might have fooled somebody at a distance, if they had bad eyes and weren't looking that hard. He was wearing a cheap hoodie, in an outrageous pink colour, and blue tinted ski goggles. 

 

"Knock yourself out. Great stuff they have here, huh?" he smiled at Echo, and, with an exaggerated swagger stride, whistled past her...or at least, tried to...

 

"The melons! The melons!" screamed one of the customers, pinching her ears furiously. 

[R. Bluefish]

Echo held out the bat as he tried to move past her, blocking his path. "Hooold it right there, pal. Despite how it may appear, I was not born yesterday. You disguise, while admittedly cunning, ain't foolin' these peepers." It might fool Chris, but not me, no sir.

 

She no longer had the luxury of avoiding ultimatums. Their battle was sure to attract Neutron's attention if it lasted much longer. "Last chance, Deadbolt. I'm on your side here, but if you keep doing this, I'm taking you down before you get somebody hurt. What's it going to be?" Slapping the bat into her palm to emphasize her point, she looked him dead in the eye. "You going to calm down and work with me here, or do I hit you with this here stick until you fall asleep?"

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Wha...wha...whose deadbolt?" said Deadbolt, giving a truly awful acting experience. He took a step back, hands flapping, in a picture of mock innocence that screamed GUILTY!

 

Realising the ruse was up, her threw of his goggles to reveal those same grey dead eyes. 

 

"There is only one person on my side. And that person is me!" he cackled, revealing a facial tic. "And, to be quite honest, ever since the S-virus got me, I'm not even sure about that. Maybe i'm mad! Whoop de doo!" he laughed. 

 

"But if you think I'm mad, you should see the others...hehehe...I've seen men beat their won heads to a pulp to try and stop the voices. Me, I took a bath in C-beams and loaded myself with antipsychotics....which, in all honesty, I should probably restock on..." he paused for a moment, uncertain. 

 

"But I'm never going back to my universe! Its quite crazy, you know! dooooomed!" as they say, rolling the last word ominously. 

 

"So, I'd say over my dead body. But as you can see, I'm already dead!"

 

And with that, he started to move...

[R. Bluefish]

Echo sighed. "Okay. Hard way it is, then." She lunged straight towards Deadbolt, swinging the bat around in an obvious arc - then at the last second, blurred around to attack from behind instead. Without hesitating, she brought the bat down hard on the top of his head, so hard that it snapped cleanly in half with a wince-inducing crack. "Insert baseball-related pun here."

 

Tossing aside the splintered bat, she danced backwards, expecting a counterswing, but he seemed to be shaking the little birdies from his eyes after her blow. "You know I really don't want to do this, right? Contrary to all appearances, I actually don't like fighting that much." She thought for a moment. "Okay, that's a lie - but still, I don't want to fight you right now."

[Supercape]

GM

 

Deadbolt slumped against the wall. Shaking slightly, as if the vibrations of the splintered and shattered baseball bat had somehow transmitted to his trembling limbs. They jerked independently in a dance macabre. 

 

He dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. It was not pretty. 

 

A young man started demanding the King of Egypt pull his troops out of Venice. The elderly woman to whom he made his impertinent demands started mumbling something about blue cheese and a Walrus named "Bertie". 

 

Deadbolt stopped twitching for a moment, and gurgled a giggle. 

 

"You like violence, don't you? Hehehahaha! Why don't you visit my universe, you will fit right in with all the mad!"

[R. Bluefish]

"I don't like violence!" Echo protested. "I deplore violence!"

 

She blurred once more, over to a shelf full of hockey equipment, and was back in a fraction of a second. A hockey stick was raised over her head, and the baseball cap had been replaced by a goalie's mask. She leaped, vaulting nimbly over Deadbolt's head, landing behind him once more to break the hockey stick in two across his back in a move that seemed to rather contradict her claim from a moment ago. I really hope they don't make me pay for these. "It's just that in my line of work, it's inevitable that you're going to have to hit some people. And you gotta love what you do, right?"