ic Psichology [IC]

[Sophistemon]

Sam followed the shouted advice and took off like a rabbit -- a wild hair, not a tame one -- for the exit. He had to keep his mind focused on the barrier, the one thing that made them bullet-proof, but as usual his mouth was running independently of his brain. "Baku!" he shouted. "Baku, Baku, Baku! We've got to get out of here; this place is going to kill us!" Something shifted beneath his feet. The floor shook, slightly, and then there was that squealing sound, like stretching metal. "It's here," he whispered, gorge rising. "Becker, it's here! It's coming! What do we do?"

[Blarghy]

GM

 

Baku stopped in the doorway for another hateful yet smug look back at the wizard.  "No, Presto, not me--only you." 

 

He spoke too soon. 

 

Whatever advice Becker might have--and from her wide eyes and white knuckles, she had come to the same conclusion as Sam--was drowned out by the eruption in the floor underneath Baku, and his surprised scream.  It turned to panic when he saw that black, fluid, horribly alien creature rising up from beneath him; the monster didn't bother tearing a proper hole in the floor, merely buckling the tiles and oozing around them like a giant hand, its talons closing around Baku.  He instantly regretted his new form; the little dog might've been very quick, but it couldn't fly, and biting the shiny, oil-shade "flesh" accomplished nothing but an evil taste in his mouth. 

 

Becker decided to open fire, doing her best not to hit Baku and sacrificing some vital shots in the process.  Along with the sound of her gun was, somewhere, another burst of SMG fire.  It seemed that some of the guards, unseen for the moment, had a new tactic of their own. 

[Sophistemon]

Presto felt conflict squeeze at his heart. He couldn't cast another spell without lowering the barrier and putting himself at risk, but nor could he allow Baku to be subjected to the predatory nature of Warne's subconscious guardian-monster. He shook his head. That was coward's talk... and besides, his suit could probably absorb any bullets that came his way. Not to mention he knew quite a few spells that could knit flesh and rebuild bone. "Baku!" he shouted. "Hold on -- curl up! Becker, I'm going to lower the shield; get ready to hold them off!"

 

The Hand of Lloigor was a tetchy spell, to be sure, and one that had caused Samuel no small amount of trouble in the past. It was, in a very real way, the very spell that had sent him sprinting down the path to villainy in the first place. But he'd practiced it since, almost religiously, and conquering the notoriously difficult bit of magic had made him feel more powerful than ever before. The magician sucked a breath and released his hold on the mystic barrier, which collapsed behind him. He ducked behind some debris, attempting to put something between himself and the guards, and pointed his wand at the monster.

 

More specifically, he pointed his wand at the little dog in the monster's grasp. He imagined a hand, invisible and grasping, with thin fingers that closed tightly -- but not too tightly -- around Baku. Carefully, sweat beading along his brow, he willed the Hand of Lloigor to grip the Dreamweaver and pull him free of the creature's hold.

[Blarghy]

GM

 

Most of Sam's plan unfolded accordingly: after he dove behind a copy machine--which subsequently showered him with bits of plastic from uncomfortably close gunfire--Becker turned to occupy the mental constructs with shots of her own.  Best of all, Presto's spell performed perfectly.  Baku flew out of the swirling, inky flesh just as "jaws" came down around the empty air he had occupied.  The teeth burst through the top and bottom of the monster's "head" and it issued a furious scream.  For his part, Baku didn't stop screaming even as Presto held him aloft in temporary safety. 

 

Perhaps very temporary, as the creature rushed to finish breaking through the floor; its long, mutable limbs already stretched after Baku eagerly.  Somewhere in its shiny black body, an oval tissue-clump rotated around and fixed on Presto.  If it was an eye, then the gaze inside it was most unpleasant.

 

Bullets continued to rip apart the office, and one of them seemed to come out of nowhere, from the swirling chaos, and drive right through Sam's skull...yet he felt nothing.  When he glanced behind him, he saw a ghostly man in an Army uniform fall to the ground.  Blood sprayed in quick jets from the left side of his chest.  He gave Presto a stare of absolute terror, and in that moment, he looked far too young. 

 

"Kello's down!" someone shouted from the next cubicle over, or what remained of it.  The specter ran through the wall and slid on his knees to the wounded soldier's side.  "Private Kello's down!" he repeated.  "Someone help me!" 

 

Sam had already seen Warne in his younger days, wearing Army camo instead of a suit, but never before had Presto witnessed such shock on the agent's face.  It blended with uncertainty, confusion, desperate hope, and so many other little emotions.  He tried to stop the blood flow with shaking fingers and wide, panicked eyes.  Presto could see them change soon, see the exact moment when the psychic realized that his efforts weren't going to work.

 

All those complicated feelings slowly coalesced into something with no precise name, as Warne held the other trooper's hand tightly and watched him die. 

[Sophistemon]

Sam watched with growing horror as the creature tore itself free of the floor and turned its malevolent attentions upon him. He twitched the wand and drew Baku towards him, the screaming Dreamweaver making the expenditure of magic even more unpleasant for all of his wailing. "Baku!" shouted the magician. "I need you to calm yourself. There's a way out of here for both of us, but we need to work together. Okay? Give me your word and I'll set you down." A magician's word was a special thing, in many cases binding. A broken word could lead to curses most foul, in many cases, and might draw the ire of higher powers. Then the bullet tore through his head, harmlessly passing through flesh, blood, and bone to emerge from the other side and slaughter Private Kello. Sam viewed the ensuing scene with a torrent of emotions whipping chaotically through his mind, but settled eventually on a deep, gnawing despair. Life wasn't fair. He'd known that for years, but to see it proven time and again was beginning to wear him down. "I'm sorry," he told the Warne of the past. "God above, I'm sorry." He looked down at Baku, and then over at Becker, still frantically firing round after round into the silent defenses of the agent's subconscious. "We need to go!" he shouted. The monster was tearing free, and it wouldn't be a hypothetical threat for long. "Becker! What do we need to do?"

[Blarghy]

GM

 

A different mental guardian answered Presto's question, although when he looked for the voice, it wasn't the Colonel Reyes he met previously, but rather an old phantom of the man.  He had a rifle in his hands and shouted to his troops, "Suppressing fire!  Pin them down so B-Team can circle around!"

 

"Release me release me release me release me release--" Baku screeched again and again--while deliberately not giving Sam the promise he asked for. 

 

Becker pointed her free hand at the door behind the monster and started to say something, but then registered what past-Reyes had ordered.  Her expression turned to shock and she spun on her heels, just in time to catch one of the guards as it leaned around the cubicle next to her.  As Reyes suggested, the group at the back of the room had kept them distracted with continuous gunfire, while their ally snuck closer. 

 

Well, both allies.  The other rolled from behind cover, coming to one knee not five feet from Sam, and unloaded half the SMG clip at him.  Presto's armored uniform reduced the bullets to some uncomfortable thumps, but the attack also spawned another memory.  This new Warne looked older than before, in his usual suit and tie; he staggered back with one hand on his opposite arm, blood dripping through his fingers and a snarl on his face. 

 

Meanwhile, Becker grappled with her own assailant, broke one of the guard's wrists, took the weapon, then broke both knees with a hard kick and a few bullets, respectively, before turning her new gun on the oily monster in the floor.  It thrashed under the hail of gunfire, opening numerous wounds in its clay-like flesh, and yet still kept fighting to free itself. 

 

"We have to get to that door!" Becker shouted.  Her tone had a further implication: But I'm not sure how!

[Sophistemon]

"Gnhg!" grunted Sam, his free hand reached up to clutch his chest in the aftermath of the gunfire. He hated being shot; it was never a pleasant experience. "Baku!" he snarled. "Damn it, we don't have time!" He came to a decision, spawned partly of desperation and partly of pure, innocent hope. "I'm going to let you go," he said. His voice was soft, and he released the spell that kept the Dreamweaver captive so that he could swing the wand around and launch a bolt of sizzling blue lightning at Warne's subconscious defender. The fewer enemies they had to face the better, he thought, and the more they could focus on the monster attempting to kill them all. "Baku, please! We can all get out of here alive if we work together!"

[Blarghy]

GM

 

The guard spasmed and erupted into ashes under the awesome force of Sam's magic.  All around Presto, however, the room shook with old screams and mismatched, overlapping voices; the pathway that his lightning traveled through the air remained, a shimmering blue ribbon, and through it he could see some kind of movement.  It was Becker's turn to ask a question, especially when she saw herself hustling across the room, shooting a weird, chrome, experimental rifle at some ethereal target. 

 

"What's happening?!" she demanded, struggling to be heard. 

 

Baku never paused in his shrieks.  As soon as Presto released him, he fled for cover in the broken wreckage of the office cubicles.  The monster of Warne's mind lashed a whip-arm after its prey, growled in frustration to lose the Dreamweaver, and lunged at the other cause of its frustrations instead.  A dozen flexible appendages, their tips as sharp as blades, sliced the air on their way to Sam.

 

Next to him, yet another Warne manifested.  His jacket and buttoned shirt were torn to pieces from cutting weapons much like what Presto now faced...and the whole room began to throb like rapid heartbeats. 

[Sophistemon]

The magician swore and crossed his arms before him -- not over his chest, but held out in midair. He spoke a word of power and conjured a fiery wall of protective sorcery, a smouldering half-dome shield to defend himself from harm. "Take that, you... thing," he snarled. And then, annoyed, he shouted: "Baku! For Pete's sake, get back here! I'll protect you, but we've got to get out; you can't just stay in here!"

[Blarghy]

GM

 

Presto's burning shield blocked most of the lashing tendrils, but while he focused forward, several bullets caught him in the back.  Once again, his mystical costume reduced them to minor inconveniences, but more strangeness came with the shots.  In the air in front of him, bizarre spots shimmered like heat, and flared weakly.  He felt himself instinctively wince; somehow, Sam knew they were bullets, blocked by a different power than his own. 

 

The room continued to pulse, then twist.  Becker was shouting at him, but she sounded so distant now, as did the phantom screams and gunfire.  The gruesome monster bearing down on him looked simultaneously close and far away; it made awful noises of rage as it reached for him, its knife-fingers falling short. 

 

Suddenly, Sam wasn't in the office anymore at all.  The room dimmed; the walls of white plaster became stone, and above him, exposed pipes ran just below the ceiling.  He was probably more focused on the sight ahead, however: not ten feet away, a woman in a black uniform, pinned with an NYPD badge, was firing her pistol at him repeatedly, her mouth open and her eyes two dark pits.  Three more police officers grappled behind her in a pile.  Around them were suit-and-tie government agents, many of them with their own handguns out and blazing.  They fought one another haphazardly, a chaotic frenzy, their enraged screams overlaying a softer background of high-pitched wails.  Even below that, Sam could hear an insane laugh that went on and on and on...

 

...Until it sharply vanished, replaced by quick, frantic breaths.  His own, he soon realized.  He felt like he was sitting down now, his shoulders pressed hard against a wall, and his head ached.  Bearing down on him was a crazed teenage boy wearing khakis and a nice polo shirt--and wielding a firefighter's axe in both hands.  The blade gleamed with fresh blood and a clump of black hair.  It wobbled in the air mere inches from Presto's nose; his own hands struggled for control of the weapon, and furthermore, he could feel a sort of pressure in his brain, but it was hard to control, and he was just so scared.  The boy's lips parted, and out came an inhuman sound, something a marsh-beast might howl into the night.

 

"WHOOOoooooooOOOOOoooooOOP!"

 

...But then the images tore away from him again, sending the wizard spinning.  He came to rest on an even worse sight: decaying, outstretched fingers reached for him, once again held back only by the power of his mind.  Time seemed to move painstakingly slow; Sam felt every icy breath, smelled the rot in the air; without his permission, his eyes followed that hand back to the dead thing that owned it.  Gender was difficult to tell, given only hairless gray flesh and exposed bones to judge, but he could read horrible desires in that slackjawed smile.  It loomed over him much like the previous memory had.  Closer and closer, the fingers came, despite his frantic efforts.  When they met his ribs, his jacket and shirt crumbled to dust at their touch, and then oh god, the pain...

 

...Which shifted around to his opposite side, no longer a sickening, stabbing feeling, but now something white-hot.  A loud rat-tat-tat filled his ears, and suddenly he was falling.  Below him was a dark, dusty floor.  Before he hit it, Sam's head turned involuntarily to see a blurry shape, lit by yellow flashes, one after another.  Yet more gunfire, his foreign memories told him.  In his peripheral vision, he could barely make out a huge chrome man, familiar from his time with Colonel Reyes.  It was shooting too, and shouting something, but he could only focus on the floor, which somehow became less clear even as he plummeted toward it.  He didn't feel the impact.  Instead, there was the overwhelming taste of copper, and then his world went black...

 

...And eventually warmed back to a dull gray.  Sam felt cold tiles underneath him.  His vision remained blurry for a long moment, but wherever he was, whatever he had just experienced, his numb body at least seemed to be his own again. 

Edited March 22, 2017 by Blarghy

[Sophistemon]

"I... what?" There was a pause, and Presto swore. It was the kind of word his mother would have bopped him for, the kind of word his father would have used as the justification for a grounding, but he said it anyway. "What in God's name was that?" the magician demanded. He groaned and forced himself to stand, wobbly, on his his feet. He glanced around in an attempt to gain a better understanding of his surroundings. "Becker?" he called, vision swimming. "Baku? I... something just happened, and I..." He reached up and clutched his forehead, felt his gorge rise up to his throat, and swallowed back the vomit. "I think I'm in over my head."

Edited February 12, 2017 by Sophistemon

[Blarghy]

GM

 

A soft beep, somewhere, was Presto's only answer.

 

As his eyes cleared and he sat up, he slowly realized where he was: a hospital room, currently empty.  The machinery around the bed was still on, albeit not hooked to a patient, and the sheets had been stripped down.  A suitcase sat next to the bedside table.  On that table, for whatever reason, was a blue teddy bear sitting on a folded piece of white construction paper.  The window blinds were shut, as was the door to the hallway. 

 

Then, from what Presto thought was the bathroom door, came faint noises--shuffling sounds, and the light rustles of cloth against cloth.  Light came past the door's edge in a thin line; it apparently hadn't been shut all the way. 

[Sophistemon]

Presto reached for the paper, unfolded it, and glanced at the contents before he looked to the door. He set the paper down and drew his wand. It felt good in his hand, as always. A physical manifestation of his strength and potency, he felt his strength renewed just be holding it. He tried, and failed, to avoid thinking about what Freud might say. "Sometimes a wand is just a wand," he reminded himself, and opened the door another inch. He peeked through, hoping to see enough so that his next action wouldn't be completely off the cuff.

[Blarghy]

GM

 

GET WELL SOON, the colorful letters said on the page.  A simplistic man in a trench coat floated below the message.  Whoever it was, it clearly couldn't be Warne; the man had a large, cheerful smile on his face.  Just in case Sam had forgotten how incongruous that was, he saw a reminder on the other side of the door.

 

Warne stood in the bathroom, buckling his belt.  A folded hospital gown rested on the counter.  He faced the mirror, and reached for his white buttoned shirt--also folded, and sitting on his equally-neat jacket.  The man paused, however, and simply looked at his reflection above the sink.

 

His torso and arms were a mass of scars.  Not cool and attractive scars that action heroes showed off in the movies, their clothes inevitably ripped to reveal the smooth, pale marks of past glories, carefully placed so as to not distract from chiseled muscles.  These were ugly, knotted things, even after the surgeries he likely underwent.  For example, Warne gently peeled back the corner of a bandage on his side.  The rounded mark underneath it looked like a crater on the moon, but red and angry. 

 

Rat-tat-tat, Sam might remember, right before plummeting to the dusty factory floor.

 

A chunk was missing from his left bicep.  Not far down, from his elbow to the middle of his forearm, lines of scar tissue reminded Presto of vines or barbed wire, all intertwining across his flesh.  Knife marks were sunken into Warne's pectorals; the longest scar started out deep, then jaggedly swung away and zigzagged down nearly to his waist.  The man didn't even seem to have a naval anymore.  Most of his stomach was one big disfigured mass, perhaps from an explosion that he shouldn't have reasonably survived.  Just to the side of those were, best as Presto could tell, four fingerprints embedded into his ribs.  More old bullet wounds scattered across his exposed back, and across both shoulders, the horrifying signs of either fire or acid ranged from mid-spine to the base of his neck.  Only God knew what his legs looked like. 

 

Warne studied all of this in the mirror for a long moment, his face unreadable.  At last, he lightly pressed the fresh bandages back in place and unfolded his shirt.  As he put it on, wincing at the necessary movement, he actually did smile.  It just wasn't particularly happy.

 

"What difference will a few more make?" he asked himself with soft acceptance. 

Edited February 23, 2017 by Blarghy

[Sophistemon]

Samuel paused, watching. Scars. Why hadn't he ever considered the scars? He'd prided himself on being a 'gentleman thief,' a super-powered criminal and not, he would repeat not a super-villain. He didn't kill people, had never killed anyone in his years-long campaign of crime. But Presto had hurt people, hadn't he? Could he think back and remember with any real clarity the number of times he'd waved his wand and sent someone flying into a wall? Or the amount of fire, lightning, and hurricane wind he'd thrown at the costumed counterpoints who had arrived, all self-righteously indignant, to stop him? He could not; they were too many. How many scars had he caused? How many people now wandered the Earth after having been made lesser following their run-in with the flamboyant mister Steiner? Too many. "No wonder he hates me," murmured the magician. "No wonder they all hate me. God, they should." He thought about Lynn, and how she'd looked at him when asking the question "What exactly brings Presto the Preposterous into my shop?" when they'd first met. How much of that distrust was still there? How much of her acceptance, of Gretchen's begrudging friendliness, was nothing more than... than what? Pity? The magician turned his head away as Warne moved to finish dressing himself and made his exit into the hallway. He looked back and forth, up and down the length of the passage, and gauged his next move.

[Blarghy]

GM

 

Turning away from the bathroom brought Presto face-to-face with Becker.

 

The mental guardian looked very worn, her bulletproof vest drooping and lumpy, hair ruffled, a patch of blood on one cheek, and judging by her stance, a fresh limp.  Nonetheless, she now carried two stolen SMGs from the lesser guards, one in each hand, and her eyes were as steely as when they first met.  If anything, that gaze softened a little when Warne passed through Sam, ghost-like, picked up his suitcase, stuffed both the teddy bear and that odd drawing inside, and strode out the door. 

 

"That wasn't how I wanted you to make it down to this level," she told Sam, just a bit gentler than earlier.  She seemed to have an idea of what he might've experienced. 

 

"...But perhaps it's for the best.  A preview of what is to come."

[Sophistemon]

Becker's sudden and unexpected appearance gave Presto a start, and he swung his wand up in a smooth, practiced motion. It was with no less seriousness than a seasoned officer of the law might draw their service revolver. A split-second before whispering a word of power, he registered the identity of his intended target and stopped himself. He lowered the wand and placed his other hand over his rapidly beating heart. "Damn, Becker. Of all the things today to kill me, a heart attack?" He followed her gaze, saw Warne, and softened. "He carries it with him, doesn't he? Not just on the outside, but... here, too?" He patted his chest, then withdrew the hand. "It's hard to believe, isn't it? He has a force-field, doesn't he? I've seen him repel bullets. What could have done that to him, to leave a hole like that?"

[Blarghy]

GM

 

"We all carry our pasts," Becker pointed out.  "You might not have his scars, but surely you can understand being haunted by old mistakes.  And as for force fields, it's a good day when Warne only has to put up with little toys like these."  She waved one of her SMGs. 

 

"In a way, though, he can be proud of some of those marks.  A few remind him of times he made the world a safer place.  More than just a few."  But then, her lips straightened seriously.  "You probably won't be seeing those memories, down at the core.  The glimpses you just had--those bad scars--they're his failures.  He keeps those memories alive even when he forgets better days.  Some of them, painful as they were, taught important lessons.  But mostly, it's just hard to let go.  They collect and compress, becoming a key part of who he is...as you'll soon see."

 

Becker opened the hospital room's door, but instead of the usual clean hallway beyond, there was a dim hotel suite.  Somewhere inside was the quiet drone of a TV.

[Sophistemon]

Presto stared a moment, thinking. A scream echoed in his mind, followed by the cacophonous gasp of a crowd, followed by the sound of impact. "Yes," he murmured at last. "I do understand." He looked into the door, into the hotel room it led to, and sighed. "Inward and downward," he said, softly. "Inward and downward." He stepped forward, into the room, and kept his wand at the ready. "What can I expect, going deeper?" he asked. "What's waiting for me this time? More guards? That ink-black psychic poison Warne keeps in his head?" There was a pause, and then an ounce of hope crept into his voice. "Maybe something happy?"

[Blarghy]

GM

 

Becker laughed.  It wasn't the nice kind. 

 

"No.  No, I don't think so."

 

They made their way to the main room, lit only by the TV.  Its volume was turned low; Presto could barely hear Will Smith's voice as he faced off against a giant roach-monster.  Warne's film choice would've been amusingly ironic, but he didn't appear to actually be watching.  The agent was slumped down in a leather chair across from the screen, frowning, his eyes unfocused, a glass of dark whiskey cradled in one palm.  He had an expression that Sam may've worn himself a few times, whether or not he recognized it: a man ignoring the present because he was too trapped in the past. 

 

"I can't go with you, but briefing people is most of what I do these days," Becker said after a long, reflective look at Warne.  The TV screen changed: it now showed a bizarre cyborg with little left of his face besides a breathing mask and opaque goggles.  What skin he did have was heavy scar tissue, not too different from some of Warne's own less visible marks. 

 

"Christian Mannis," Becker named him.  "Or these days, Mantis.  I'm not sure if you'll meet this one down there, but it's possible.  He's a recent blister on Warne's thoughts.  Shot him down quickly, then endangered an entire town.  It could've ended very badly, if I hadn't assigned another agent to the mission too.  Somehow no one died, but Warne came close himself, and his failure risked a lot of lives.  He'll remember this one.  Still, maybe the memory hasn't had time to fester and ingrain itself yet, unlike the others."

[Sophistemon]

"Mantis," mused the magician. "Cyborg? All that metal... what does that do to a man?" Samuel had met cyborgs in prison, though they'd been de-powered. Stripped of what enhancements could be removed, the more permanent ones brought down to more human levels. They were more pathetic than anything else, malformed and crippled. No more so than Presto had been without his magic, mind you. To be stripped of the Gift was to suffer a crippling of the soul. In that way, Sam could relate to their plight. "How did... how was Mantis beaten?" he asked Becker. "Just in case I meet the man, I mean." He looked at the glass that Warne was drinking from, and at the expression on the other man's face, and his thoughts turned sour. Sam had been a habitual user before his incarceration and court-mandated rehabilitation. Alcohol was an acceptable escape from the pain of the past, but not cocaine? It didn't seem fair. "Not so different, maybe?" he mused. "If opposites attract, maybe similarities repel." He shook his head. "No, probably not. It's just that black and white morality you people forced him into. Booze is legal, powder isn't, so I'm the bad guy and he gets to drink himself to sleep with a clean conscience. You did a number on him, that's for sure." He blew air from his mouth and shook his head. "The hell with it. What's next?"

[Blarghy]

GM

 

Becker stared at him coldly during his final thoughts.  She only replied to Sam's earlier question: "Bullets," she told him.  "The other agent beat him with lots of bullets, from very big guns."

 

The TV screen changed again.  Now it depicted the rotting skull-faced lich that bore down on him during his wild transitions through Warne's nightmares, before Sam was cast down into the hospital room.  Its expression was simultaneously hungry--in those blue, lidless eyes--and mindless, thanks to the slack jaw, only held in place by human leather and force of habit. 

 

"Professor Walton," Becker named the creature.  "Warne's first serious assignment as a team leader in the FBI.  His superiors sent him to investigate missing college students; he and his fellow agents didn't understand what they were dealing with until it was too late.  They found Walton in the basement of a campus library, and the arrest went poorly.  All of his subordinates were killed, as was nearly Warne himself.  They quickly turned from trying to apprehend the monster to fleeing from it; fortunately, Warne was able to radio for support before Walton cornered him.  Oddly enough, that was his first interaction with AEGIS, at least as far as he's aware; they had apparently been monitoring the situation too, and intercepted the transmission.  They responded with two ten-person teams, armed with special weaponry.  Half of them still didn't make it."

 

In his chair, Warne silently moved his free hand to his ribs, where Presto had seen the fingerprints branded directly into his flesh. 

 

"Walton was a thing of decay, feeding on the living and even corroding them with his very touch.  We found his private arcane collection in the aftermath; Warne doesn't know the details, nor does he particularly want to, but there was magic at work here.  What he does care about is that he wasn't powerful enough to protect his people.  He couldn't have properly prepared for the incident, not without knowing more at the start, but that won't bring back the dead, and their families probably aren't comforted by excuses." 

[Sophistemon]

"Oh," Sam sighed. "Oh." Things were beginning to click into place. Samuel, or rather Presto, was a bizarre sort of amalgamation of everything Warne had learned to distrust during the course of his life. It wasn't just that Presto had been a villain, or a magician, or a habitual user of recreational drugs... it was that he was all of those things, at once, combined with a flippantly selfish personality and... and the delusion of redemption. "Lord," he said. "His life is a goddamn horror-show." He looked over at Becker, and his face was masked by concern. "Is he well?" he asked her. "Does he talk to anyone? In prison, they made me speak with a therapist -- doctor Hyde. At first they made me, but as time went on... I kind of got to enjoy getting things off my chest. It helped. Does AEGIS give him someone to talk to, or does he just... carry all this, alone, forever?"

[Blarghy]

GM

 

"AEGIS supplies, and often requires, psychological visits," Becker confirmed.  "Most agents don't like it, but the administration has learned the practicality.  If you don't take care of your tools, eventually they break, and that's not good for anyone.  In addition to the mandatory biannual evaluations, Warne also gets a visit to the couch after particularly tough missions such as these.  He is exactly as hard to deal with as you can probably imagine."

 

Again, the screen changed.  On one side was a young, fit man in Army fatigues; he stood beside some horrible mutant, partly human overcome by vegetation.  The middle-aged woman might've been beautiful once, but now her hands and forearms had turned to thick masses of vines and thorns, and her face was split, with dripping green stalks reaching out from several crevices. 

 

"Private Reid and his mother.  Reid was one of Warne's rare friends; they met in Colonel Reyes' unit, and to the surprise of all, Warne agreed to go with him during a month-long leave.  Reid knew Warne didn't have a family to go home to, so he brought him to his instead, back in Vermont.  Unfortunately, they discovered too late that the Reid household had been infected by some sort of quickly-reproducing parasite, which used the home as a base from which to spread out and take their neighbors too.  Warne doesn't know what it was, or where it came from, but when he and Reid went through that door, they stepped into a special kind of Hell."

 

The TV showed Presto a scene he had already seen before: the preppy youth standing over him, swinging a firefighter's axe.  It shifted to then show Warne in the midst of a swarm of the plant-people; one had its vines wrapped around Warne's lower arm, while another bit hard into his shoulder.  More scars the wizard might recall. 

 

"Unprepared and unable to tell how much humanity was left in the hosts, Warne settled for trying to save Reid--who was quickly caught and infected too--and fight his way out.  He failed at both.  By the time authorities arrived, the suburban house was barely standing, Warne had barricaded himself in the basement, and we had to quarantine the entire town.  Warne himself voluntarily submitted to isolation and intense medical examination for two weeks.  Whatever happened afterward is very classified, but he never saw Reid again.  It was an unpleasant lesson about the risks of friendship."

[Sophistemon]

Sam reached up and touched white a glove to his face, where not long before he'd felt the bit of an axe tearing through the flesh and bone. He grimaced, then withdrew. "He doesn't blame himself, though, does he? The Reids weren't infected because Warne had opened up; that's just a coincidence." He turned to look at Becker. "It's not his fault. He's... almost irritatingly rational; he has to know that, right?" And maybe he did, consciously. But a child that grows up friendless and alone, who keeps suffering the same 'coincidences' over and over again over the course of their life, who is conditioned into avoiding friendship because of the loss and the pain it might bring... maybe his subconscious was a completely different matter. How then, did he interpret Samuel's continued attempts at bridging the gap? This former villain, this criminal scum, certainly wasn't worth that risk. Why would Warne make himself vulnerable to what was certainly an inevitable betrayal? Presto looked back into the memory, closed his eyes, and sighed. "AEGIS is all he has, isn't it? No friends, no family, just duty. He deals with people like... me, the way he does, because it's the only thing that keeps him going."