ic Sounds Like a Sequel

[Blue Rose]

Okay.  Mad scientist testing super drug on random civilians.  That seems pretty straightforwa-

 

"Wait, dinosaurs?"  Sam blinks.  "Um... what dinosaurs?  Does he, like... have them in cages or something?"

 

That was a lot of info so fast.  Evil drug?  Check.  Captive for ransom to make more evil drug?  Check.  Dinosaurs?  What in the?

 

And with their luck, they aren't the adorable, playful little ones she had so much fun with when she went time traveling.

[Raveled]

"Well, yeah. That's sort of Dr. Rex's thing. He thinks that humanity would be better off if we weren't the apex predator, so he came up with a serum to make people dumb and angry and then he cloned some dinosaurs to go around hunting people." The soldier frowned. "He thinks that if humanity knew we weren't the most powerful things around we wouldn't treat the planet or other people the way we do." He was quiet for a moment and then added quietly, "That made a lot more sense when he was saying."

 

Tona shook her head slowly. "So a crazy man thinks that dinosaurs will solve everything. Sounds about par for the course. Let's just hope the serum really does wear off."

[Blue Rose]

Sam raises a finger, mouth hanging open, but she's speechless.  Utterly speechless.

 

It takes a moment for her to compose herself, then declares, "So.  Next time you're talking to a prospective employer, I'd like you to find an excuse to spend a minute alone.  Maybe a moment in the bathroom to freshen up.  Then, I want you to reword whatever they're saying the goal is just like that, to see if it passes the crazy test."

 

That settled, it's on to business.  "I suggest you get somewhere safe until this blows over.  Where is this doctor?"

 

The boy might also be a good place to start, but if they can stop the doctor, then the boy should be safe, and they have a better lead on one than the other.  As soon as they have the information, it's back to creeping forward.

[Raveled]

"Um. I'm not exactly sure where he is. I was just supposed to keep an eye on the passengers, I don't know where everyone was going to be. He likes being in charge, though; he's probably all the way forward, maybe even in the control room." The man rubbed the back of his neck, clearly uneasy. "You two aren't going to, like, hurt anyone are you? Most of the guys are pretty decent people."

 

Tona crept forward and peeked through the window into the next car. It wasn't another passenger car, instead it was a diner car full of upholstered booths. In the corridor of the booths were several other passengers, all kneeling with their hands behind their head. A few more armed cultists were visible at the far end of the car, and directly in front of the next door was a large, coiled, reptilian form. It didn't look like the dinosaur was paying much attention at the moment, but if they just burst into the car they would have to deal with it.

[Blue Rose]

"I try not to," she assures the man.  "I didn't hurt you, did I?"  And with that, she moves on.  Gotta keep going forward before... whatever craziness this guy is trying to pull.

 

Sam sizes up the situation.  Hostages.  Crap.  That makes this complicated.  "I'm gonna make a distraction, then we move.  Ready?"

 

In the compartment, Sam wills an image into being.  A creature, a vague mockery in human form, skeletally thin under purple pinstripes and lacy skirt, limbs moving at impossible angles for anything connected by sinew.  The thing's head is large, broad, covered in a bone-white mask with gaping holes for eyes and an enormous, Cheshire grin.  It floats in the air in utter defiance of gravity, chin resting on gloved hands.

 

"Aw, look at the little humans," it mocks with a high, grating voice, like fingers on a chalk board.  "Pretending they're powerful."

[Raveled]

The cultists responded with remarkable discipline considering, bringing their guns up with a minimum of fumbling. Four gun barrels tracked the specter as it floated near the ceiling. The cultist in front, a woman with dark hair but in a bob, spoke up. "Who the hell do you think you are," she demanded. "Are you some kind of cape? We'll hurt these people if we have to!"

 

The cultist in the back dropped his weapon on its sling and pulled out a hand radio, speaking into it. Tona swore; her mask and the built-in radio receiver were back in the cabin, so she couldn't listen in. As they watched, though, the dinosaur raised its head and blinked lazily. It slowly stood on scaly legs, a brightly-colored crest of gaudy feathers rising on its head like a mohawk. The archer narrowed sharp eyes at the creature, and after a moment she nudged Sam and pointed out what looked like a stubby radio antennae protruding from the back of the creature's skull.

[Blue Rose]

"How cute.  The little humans think I care," the Cheshire thing says as it rolls over in the air.  Or rather, its body does, while its head stays perfectly still.

 

Back on the other side of the door, Sam wings a plan together.  "I think that one with the radio is controlling the dinosaur.  Think you can take her out, then we go in and take the rest?  I can calm the dinosaur down if she goes wild."

 

As she speaks, her illusion bursts into a mad cackle, fading in and out of existence in various physically improbable poses at the far side of the room, making a general attention grab.

[Raveled]

Tona's smile was fierce and small, and the gems in her bracers glowed blue in anticipation. She flexed her fingers and shook out her hands, rising from her crouch to a more ready position. "I can take out any of them," she said. She stood in front of the door in a pose almost like a runner, and waited for Sam's signal.

 

In the dining car, the cultists continued tracking the creature as it floated all about the room. "If you don't care about us, what are you doing here," Blonde demanded. "We didn't do anything to antagonize you. If you don't have a problem with Doctor Rex, then get out here. Otherwise, we're going to see how well you deal with some bullets!" She gestured sharply with her weapon and the rest of them followed suit.

[Blue Rose]

"The signal is bullets," Sam says as the scene unfolds.

 

In the room, the skeletal thing pretends to clean its twice nonexistent nails in disinterest.  "Boredom, mostly," it answers, but when the blonde mentions shooting, it perks up.  "Really?"  Its body rolls into a cross-legged position, then its head moves, spinning twice atop the horror's neck as it rests its hands on its knees, a dull fire just starting to rise in the back of those hollow, lifeless eyes.  "Interesting."  It sits there, smiling, daring the goons to light it up.

[Raveled]

The cultists looked uneasy; the blonde woman licked her lips and glanced around at her fellows, but they were all looking to her for leadership. "Okay, we warned you!" They opened fire, their stubby SMGs lighting the room in bright strobes and tossing spent shells aside. The hostages, kneeling on the ground, screamed and threw themselves to the floor, cowering and sheltering under their arms. The dinosaur rose from its crouch and jumped up on a table; it flicked its tail back and forth lazily, but it didn't seem perturbed by the gunfire.

 

At a motion from Tona, Sam hauled open the door and left a clear firing line. The archer pulled her arm back, a bow of brilliant blue energy manifesting and an arrow growing out of it to rest near her ear. In a moment, she had drawn and loosed a half-dozen cerulean shafts down the car. They struck the cultist way in the back who still had the radio clipped to his belt. He went down, bowled over by the kinetic force of the arrows, and Tona paused for a moment. The dinosaur turned to look at her, and she barely had a moment to consider her options before it charged.

 

The creature opened its mouth and let loose an ear-splitting shriek as it crossed the distance, leaping the last several meters to land full-body on the archer. She rolled with the impact and ended up on her back, the dinosaur standing over her and snapping at her with its tooth-filled maw. "Sam!" Tona grunted as she kept its snout and clawed hands back with main strength. "It didn't work!"

[Blue Rose]

Maybe not.

 

In a world where the first resort is usually punching things until they stop moving, Sam has gotten a lot of mileage out of a winning smile and the power of friendship.  Black magic and friendship.

 

With the main interference dealt with, Sam reaches out to the magnificent beast and starts petting its head, filling its mind with soothing thoughts.  "It's okay, girl.  Good girl; pretty girl.  You don't want to hurt us."

 

As she redirects her magic, the skeletal, cackling thing in the bullet storm fades away.  Not long now before they turn their guns.  She'd better even these odds real quick.

[Raveled]

Kit's fingers brushed lightly against the creature's scaled skull. It shook off her touch, but her mental magics still pushed into its mind, filling the creature's brain with thoughts of acceptance and serenity and togetherness. The raptor paused for a moment in its attack and Tona paused, but a breath later the creature was snapping at her again. Kit felt her magic being fried and burned from the dinosaur's mind, walls of steel and lightning slamming into place around it. The archer continued to struggle under a couple hundred pounds of prehistorical predator.

[Blue Rose]

Dammit!  That radio woman wasn't the one controlling, maybe?

 

"Something's resisting me..." she calls out, studying the tech on the animal's head.  Would probably just need to unscrew that panel and...

 

Screw it!  She reaches out to the receiver and blue sparks arc out of her hand, unmaking a few important looking wires.  "Need a couple more seconds..."

[Raveled]

Kit swayed and jerked with the dinosaur's head and the receiver. She sent a surge of hellfire into the wires, melting them and causing the receiver to short out in a dramatic shower of sparks. The raptor paused and jumped off Tona, sitting back on it's legs and peering at them quizzically. It seemed like without the orders from the radio receiver, it wasn't inclined to keep attacking them.

 

Tona wasn't inclined to give it the chance, though. She did a handspring and landed on her feet, a pair of blue clubs in her hands, a hard look in her eyes. She rained down blows on the dinosaur in a blue blur, energy impacting flesh in a steady, unbroken rhythm. The animal tried to fend her off, but the girl was too well-trained and too angry to allow a retreat; with a final, ringing crack she sent the dinosaur into a heap on the floor.

 

She didn't have much time to savor her victory, though. The lead cultists screamed out "Open fire on the capes" and a crackle of fire sounded from inside the dining car. Tona jumped to the side and the bullets whizzed past, not hitting anyone.

[Blue Rose]

Alright, the receiver is down.  She's backing off.  Good, now, just gotta-

 

Wham!  Wham!  Wham!

 

No... no, no, no, no, no!

 

"Don't hurt her!" she calls out as Tona brings down one final blow that reduces the poor animal to a battered mess, and leaves Sam's jaw hanging open.  She never gets used to it when Tona gets like that.  She's not even sure if the dinosaur's alive after that.  "You didn't have to..." she trails off, as bullets stream through the door.

 

No time to dwell on it right now.  She flicks her fist open, releasing a wispy blue puff of flame that zips around the corner and through the door.  Her fox fire isn't the most devastating thing, but the pain is extraordinary; as the next volley of bullets ends, she hear's a man's scream, then the flop of a body on the ground.

[Raveled]

Tona leaned into her cover as the bullets chewed into the metal of the wall. "Sam, I love that you don't do violence very often, but that dinosaur was trying to disembowel me!" The stream of bullets paused as the cultists ran through their clip. Tona stepped out and sent a barrage of bolts into another one of the cultists. She saw one more on the ground, clutching his arm and writhing in pain from Sam's eldritch energy; and the blonde woman fumbling another magazine into her weapon. She shot the archer a shocked look before Tona stepped back into cover. "I'll cook the beast a steak when it wakes up," Tona said, "but right now I don't want to leave it behind us!"

 

The blonde woman was panicking. She was down to her last handful of bullets and her companions were down. She could just imagine all the terrible things Dr. Rex would do to her if she failed. In a burst of desperation she started forward, grabbing one of the cowering hostages and throwing him to the ground. She pointed her weapon at the trembling man and put her foot on his back to hold him in place. "Alright heroes," she shrieked. "Throw out your weapons. Do it, or this guy's brain gets splattered!"

[Blue Rose]

"That wasn't her, that was whoever had the remote!" Sam corrects between gunshots.  "It wasn't her choice, and she backed off when I fried the radio!"

 

Then, the last goon makes a very bad decision, and Sam lowers her voice.  "Her?" she points in the crook through the wall.  "She had a choice.  I have a plan."

 

In moments, she takes on the voice and appearance of the man she talked out of evildoing earlier and takes up his gun she hid earlier.  A thump against the wall and a dropped gun later, she's explained her disappearance.  "Freeze, girly," she grumbles in a man's voice.

 

"I got 'em; we're coming out!" she calls to the goon as she points the gun at Tona's back.  Safety on, of course.

[Raveled]

Tona stared in disbelief at Sam, and the gun. She almost couldn't believe that she girlfriend was going to put her between two guns.

 

Reluctantly, Tona stepped out and let Sam put the gun against her back. She stepped forward into the dining car, stopping well short of the trembling hotages. The blonde cultist peeked around Tona's bulk to look at her 'fellow cultist'. "Where the hell did you go?! You were supposed to keep anyone from getting this far forward! Dr. Rex is going to have your hide, man."

[Blue Rose]

"Hey, hey, hey!"  Sam says defensively, keeping her act up.  "They're slippery.  I came as soon as I heard the shooting, and it don't look like you were doin' any better."  She nods to the downed thugs.  "I'll hold her.  Get some rope or something to tie her up; I don't want her going anywhere.  We can let the doc decide what to do with her.  An' you better not make any trouble, girly, or he may not be so nice!"

 

Just turn your back for us...

[Raveled]

"Okay, okay. Sorry." The blonde cultists blew out a breath and ran her hand over her head. "Keep your gun on her. She's got some kind of freaky sidekick, this weird cat-ghost thing. And she took down the raptor somehow, too, I didn't think anyone could fight like that." She stepped off the hostage and turned to consider her fallen comrades. "I don't think we have rope, but we have duck tape we used to tie up the hostages. Mack had the extra tape." She knelt down next to the terrorist that Kit had disabled with her hellfire and rummaged through his webbed vest, looking for the remainder of the tape roll. "Man, I'm not looking forward to telling the Doctor that one of his babies got hit like that."

[Blue Rose]

When the blonde turns her back, Sam lowers the gun and steps in front of Tona, raising a hand to tell her to stop in the likely event she's about to punch the woman.  Sensible, but not necessary at the moment.

 

Her disguise melts away, and she waits for the woman to face her.  "Hi," she says as she meets the woman's gaze.

 

They say the eyes are the window to the soul.  In Sam's eyes, the blonde sees Nothing.  Not the absence of something, but an absolute void that draws her in, until all is Nothing and Nothing is all.

[Raveled]

The cultist stood and was shocked to find that her compatriot had disappeared, replaced by a young red-head. She opened her mouth and started to point with the roll of duck tape, but then she met Kit's eyes and anything she might have been saying died in her throat. Those eyes were deep, and endless, and as much as the woman tried to fight it she felt herself falling into them until their uncanny hue expanded to encompass the entire world.

 

Tona waited for a long minute, then stepped lightly around Kit and snapped a finger in front of the blonde woman's face. She glanced back and forth between her girlfriend and the mesmerized cultist, suppressing a feeling of unease. "Je ne sais pas," she muttered to herself and took the tape from the woman's unresisting hand. "Do you have follow up for that, Sam?"

[Blue Rose]

Even as Tona snaps, Sam doesn't break her gaze, eyes locked on the blonde's.  "She's actually holding out better than I expected," she admits, surprised she's even standing.  "I vote for the vast cosmic power of duct tape!"  She considers further, "Probably for all the goons.  And the dinosaur.  Lots of tape for the dinosaur."

 

She adjusts her top, glad she didn't bother covering her brand.  As much mojo as she's been slinging around, she can feel the wisps of heat tickling the back of her neck.  And this spell gets it real antsy.

[Raveled]

Tona carefully stepped around and behind the cultist, tying her arms back with zip ties and then wrapping her hands and wrists and forearms in layers of duck tape. After a moment of fumbling and unclipped the woman's machine gun and laid it on the surface of a bar that was halfway down the train car. Then she went to work tying and taping up the rest of the cultists, occasionally glancing at the unconscious dinosaur and trying to gauge how much tape she would need for it.

 

Halfway through the man who had been thrown to the floor spoke up. "Excuse me?" As Tona watched, he slowly rose to his knees. "Are... are you superheroes? Are you here to stop them?"

 

Tona glanced at Sam and shrugged. "Serendipity," she said. "But yes, we are going to stop them."

 

The man let out a long sigh and all of the hostages visibly relaxed. "Then, um, do we have to keep kneeling down."

 

"Ah. Um, no. You can stand up." The archer tapped her chin for a moment and considered the dinosaur. "Stay away from the lizard, though."

[Blue Rose]

As Tona goes through unclipping ammo, Sam follows and pops the last round from the chamber.  Until she gets to the last one, and stops Tona from unloading it.  "We can't be everywhere," she points out, then looks to the captives.  "Is anyone trained to use this?" she asks, holding the gun.  She doesn't like arming civilians, but leaving unprotected civilians surrounded by an unknown number of armed guards and dinosaurs?  That's worse.

 

While she gives one of the former hostages time to speak up, she gives Tona an aside, "If the Crocodile Hunter taught me anything, lizards can bite really hard, but it's easy to hold their mouth shut.  The tape should be enough to keep her from biting.  Maybe we can, like... duct tape her claws together?  Balled up in a fist or something so she doesn't cut her way out?"  The finer points of tying up a dinosaur aren't exactly something she considers every day.