Wilderness hannah, p.20
Wilderness Hannah, page 20
part #3 of Damsel Series
Only, he seemed fine, other than acting weird. He didn’t collapse in front of them at least, his heart exploding in his chest.
The man smiled again, seeming more than a little gross, while he did it. As if he were going to try and put a hand between her legs, over the satellite connection.
“I recognize you all, of course. Tyler Yuan, Terry Lamond and of course, Wilderness Hannah. It’s a bit odd that people from a television show should call me, isn’t it? I did notice when Veronica was on with you... I have the complete season of Life of Kate. The next two, as well. You get cancelled after that, which is a shame. I particularly liked the arc where Lara gets pregnant and has a genetically modified baby. Only she didn’t know that, did she? Wait, that part isn’t going to be in the show at all.”
The man looked smarmy then, also as if he were saying things that were true, but also hard to imagine. Things meant to confuse her, as she sat in the back of the unfamiliar shop. Instead of giving in to things being a bit different, she nodded at the crazy man.
Nate had said he was a loon, but she’d figured her brother had been being polite about his penchant for having sex with little girls. Apparently, the man was the whole picture that way. All he was lacking was a bit of greasepaint and he could have been a clown.
One who would need to be kept well away from the kids, of course.
His talking about seasons of a show that didn’t exist yet, got her to think for a moment.
“Tell you what. Give us everything you have on what Sendra is up to, rat out the people you’re working with, and we won’t put up video of you sucking off a goat man, then eating him. I know you don’t think that kind of thing will hurt your business, that people will look the other way, to get what they want, but almost everyone has limits.” She was planning to go into the power of deepfakes and computer generated graphics, when the man, still looking too young and too round, pulled a cloth handkerchief.
“Oh, my... You know about that? How did you get video?”
She had to fight a smile then, and turned it into a shrug.
“You surely don’t think television is still one way, do you?” She was making that up, of course.
The man stopped then and made a face. One that did not speak of happy things inside his head.
“I heard the picture quality on that kind of thing is very poor. Besides, everyone knows about my little hobbies... That won’t make a difference to anyone.”
She closed her eyes then and turned her head slightly, as if in annoyance. It was really to buy her a few seconds to think.
“You can’t really think that’s true, can you? You blew a goat, who had been turned into a man, and then... Well, you know the rest. I get the quality thing being a concern. Tyler, can you put that up on the web? Under... El Chupacabra, perhaps? Make sure to use Doctor Pond’s name, so he can find it easily?”
“No! Wait... I’m sure we can come to some kind of agreement. Sendra wasn’t working for me, she hasn’t been in a long while. We rather parted on poor terms, which, I assume, is why she pretended to be fleeing here, on that plane. You know that she can teleport, don’t you?” He looked at all of them, but focused on Tyler, specifically. “Just like her sister, Katherine. Kate Sinclair. She looks so like her mother did, at her age. A clone. Not one of my better works, truly. Her powers are interesting enough, I suppose, but having teleportation without the psychic ability to find places is a failure on my part. It’s crippled my girls. The ones with that particular ability. Ah, well, I’ll do better, on the next one.”
Hannah waved that bit of banter away, even as Tyler went stiff, standing up straight, slightly behind her.
“We did know that, actually. So, stay on the page with us here, Doc Pedo, Sendra was leading someone to you? Why? That would, most likely, end in a lot of death.”
The man smiled then, his upper lip involuntarily curling in disgust.
“Death doesn’t matter. I’ve died before, several times and will do it again, no doubt. For all I know, Sendra was working alone. She truly doesn’t like me. She blames moi for her failures in life, instead of looking into the mirror to find the true culprit. So many of my children are like that, for some reason. As if it’s the job of the parent to raise them? That’s why I have all these servants...”
The man stopped speaking, and just looked away. As if watching something. Then he grinned and came back to them.
“Now, I’m sure I won’t be punished for the mistakes of a child? That doesn’t seem fair at all, does it? If we aren’t going to be invaded, then I really should get back to work. I do hope that this is sufficient to prevent any untoward video from surfacing?” The man reached forward and tapped something, turning the display off, on his end.
Vidya made a face and then growled a bit.
“Well, this was an effort for very little. I’m of half a mind to let everyone go in tomorrow and clear the place out. Unfortunately, they’re family. Some there, one or two, are mainly even innocent. What do we do now?”
She was looking at Vidya, holding her gaze steady, unblinking and with a focus that seemed, for a moment, to be unnatural. As Hannah watched, there were five or so traceries in the air, about what could be done. What was about to. One, the faintest, had the woman spinning, picking Tyler up and tossing him backwards. The strongest one had her simply standing, for some reason.
Tyler started to speak.
“We could...”
Hannah interrupted him. After all, as he started to talk, the outline of the possible future, the faint thing that was almost not there, suddenly started to grow darker. Becoming more certain.
“Let’s check in first. Everyone be careful right now... Jokes might be taken the wrong way, even if they’re meant well.”
Instead of acting out, Vidya simply stood for a moment, and bowed her head.
Technically they should have used the Alistair network to talk to everyone else, since that was their most secure type of conversation, at the moment. Hannah used her cell instead, getting in touch with Red Cape, after trying several other people. That one was because things had actually happened, while they were gone.
“Damsel? Nevernever opened a rift, and took Lash and Wisp through. Wisp was hurt, very badly. They have a healing amulet that might work over there?”
That made sense. Debbie had one that she wore like jewelry. It used to belong to Hannah, but she’d never asked for it back. Really, it made sense to give the person who could go to the Never on their own a lot more than just the one thing that way, now that she thought about it. That she hadn’t, seemed stupid of her, suddenly.
“Wisp will be okay, then. That thing will fix anything. We’re headed back to the basement. We have news. Nothing major, but we might not need to attack an island nation just yet.”
Not that doing that would be a horrible idea either. Except that, of course, it would be a kind of war and that led to deaths. Things that she might well not be able to fix with some jewelry and a trip to another realm. There were real limits that way, after all.
For one thing, bodies had to exist, and then you had to find them. She didn’t know what went on with souls, but kind of felt that if they waited too long, the dead person might just choose not to go back. In that case, the spell wouldn’t work at all. Also, the only two such things like that she’d had were gone now, along with the jewelry that the spells had been on.
The magic. It wasn’t as if she’d chanted complicated instructions at the things.
Veronica simply turned, to leave, with Tyler and Terry standing there, acting as if they didn’t know what to do with themselves. Both of them stared at her, for a moment.
Tyler grunted, seeming surly.
“I don’t understand. The thing with Kate that man said?”
The real trick there was that Ty honesty had gotten it all. Even Terry had, most likely. It was just a lot to take in, at the moment. A thing that she’d been going through herself, all day.
“Honestly, nothing there has changed at all. Now you know a few more pieces to a complicated puzzle. Don’t let it be more than that? Kate is still our friend, and having been adopted isn’t a crime. Now, can you two, um... Work on that VR program for us? The knife fighting one?”
Vidya spun in place then and looked at the two new people, her face going hard.
“Explain this.” She was being commanding, and almost abrupt in her words.
Terry, for some reason, was the one to speak. She sounded almost cute, doing it.
“It’s a complex program on a very narrow topic. It puts the user in a knife fight against a variety of opponents, with different skill levels. The biggest difference is that, instead of putting all the resources into environments and external aesthetics, it’s going to concentrate on the primary attacker in each scene and the movements they make. There will be about a hundred times more animations available than in anything else that exists right now, and what you do, as the player, will actually be counted in a more realistic fashion. The game will also remember what you’ve done and try to get you to learn and use more skill, as you go along. The highest levels will make the other fighter faster and stronger than you, on a superhuman level, even.”
That was the thing Hannah wanted, more or less. Veronica gave a somber nod, not looking at anyone and Diaspora, after a moment, did the same.
“When this is finished, get me a copy? If it works as claimed, I’ll see if my people want to commission other, similar things. It’s hard to stay sharp, going up against shadows all the time.”
Then she left, not waiting for the others to move.
Veronica grinned then.
“Wow. That was practically friendly, coming from her. I think she likes you two!” There was a phony seeming thumbs up then and a facial expression that seemed overdone, if pleased, as Hannah was pulled away, to the car.
No-one spoke as they went back to the suburbs, a trip that took about forty minutes, due to traffic. They were in a hurry, running around, getting ready for a war of sorts, but the regular people of the world didn’t even know anything had happened at all.
Honestly, when Veronica turned the radio on, Hannah was shocked to find that there was news of an attack on two people, by an escaped fugitive. Sendra Pond. No names were given of the victims, but then, Hannah realized, that kind of thing was never spoken of. No-one talked about Superion X, either. Again, a thing that was almost completely normal.
A bad thing had happened, but both people, while having been tortured, were expected to recover. All of which was even true, if not expressing the gravity of what might well yet happen over those events at all.
Interestingly, when they got back to the basement, The Red Cape and his family were gone, apparently having headed to a safe location. She didn’t know where that was, at first, until Wisp, who was standing there with her face mask off, in front of the rest of the team, moved over to give Hannah a hug. Then she did that with Veronica and Vidya, as well.
“Well, crap, right? I took Superion and his folks to your apartment, Hannah. That...” She froze then, her face strained. Then she soldiered on, since it was the kind of person both Wisp and Kate were. “Sendra knows where I live. She’s pretty awful, but she still came over on the holidays, every few years.”
Her blue outfit was in tatters, and almost everyone in the room was staring at her, as if her lady lumps were showing. Carl, dressed in his Luther outfit, which was loose but made of heavy material, with a strong rust colored and tan theme, a bit like a fantasy character, but with guns, knives and a leather bag on his side that contained who knew what. His face was covered enough that only his gray eyes showed.
Zip was in a new seeming yellow outfit and danced around the room, not holding himself back much. Debbie was still in her tan skirt, and seemed done in, but not harmed at all. She was sitting on a wooden chair, in the plain basement, which hadn’t magically transformed to tell them anything at all. It did that, occasionally. That day it was silent.
Of interest, Al was standing there, too. He was the other person who wasn’t acting as if it was weird that Kate Sinclair was there, dressed up as apocalypse Wisp.
Hannah got her idea though and nodded.
“Right. Doc Sendra barely knows I exist. She isn’t psychic, right? What can she do, do any of you know?”
Kate waved her hand, seeming fine, even if her wardrobe needed to be updated, suddenly.
“Personal teleportation. She’s slow, though. Part of that is that she never put in the time to learn how to use her powers very well. The other piece is that she’s about a fifth as strong as I am that way. The same with telekinesis. We can feel where the other is, sort of. That’s how I was chasing her. She lost me though and it’s kind of like playing Marco Polo, only over the whole world. It only works with us. Um...” She looked around, and then shook her head.
Not staring at Hannah, for some reason. No, she seemed a lot more worried about Debbie, Zip and Luther. Guardia was there, but didn’t rate a look either.
“I’m a clone of my mother. A mad scientist, Henry Pond, stole her DNA a long time ago, and made twelve daughters from it. Well, there could be a lot more, by now. We were used for various functions. Not all of them good. Then, you know, mad scientist, right? I’m the youngest. Again, that we know about. So, I can feel my mom, Sendra and my sister Devya. We’re genetically twin sisters, more or less. Mom really can’t do that, being normal, psychically. We, the rest of us, have similar powers. So it’s related to that. Like I said, it doesn’t really work that well. Also, doing that tends to send ripples down the line, so she’ll know I’m coming, if I try that trick. It’s how she ambushed me. I teleported into a warehouse, only to have a shelf of heavy wooden boxes fall on me. It literally ripped my left hand off.”
That was back and seemed normal now, as she wiggled her fingers in the air.
“Thankfully I got back here, teleporting. Debbie got me into the Never and used a healing amulet. I still almost died.”
That, it seemed, was the end of that story, at least the one they were getting that day. Instead of growling at her, Luther turned on Alistair. As if that made any sense.
“You knew all of this?”
Hannah closed her eyes and then shook her head.
“Luther? Let’s not go down that road? He knew. He knows everything. Including every secret you have. Part of the price of him not blabbing about that, has to be that he doesn’t do it to anyone else. Now, before anyone suggests that means he could take down every major baddy in the world, I’d like to point out that Superion X’s family was murdered earlier. Tortured to death.” She was going to suggest they find Sendra, since leaving her alive after that seemed a poor plan.
Carl shook with rage at the very words.
“I get it, Damsel. Just because I don’t have anyone in the world I care about outside this room, doesn’t mean I don’t think we should protect your people. Al’s as well. This is just a bit of a shock. I thought Wisp was a dude, all this time. That’s going to set a person back a bit, you know?”
Hannah nodded, not mentioning she’d worked that one out almost instantly, herself.
“Where’s The Moore? Is he safe?”
Lash nodded, instantly.
“He’s working out a locator spell for the good doctor, as we speak. The plan is to not let her rest, until we have her or she is no longer a threat. We don’t have anything to do at the moment. Unless we’re going in on the raid?”
Diaspora sighed and shook her head.
“Pond doesn’t know anything about this. It seems like Sendra was leading an army of superhumans to his door, on purpose. I told him that he was going to die, if that happened, but the truth is that such a battle might well fall in his favor. About twenty percent of the superhumans in the world come out of his laboratories, after all. Even if they don’t know about it.”
Zip nodded, rather quickly.
“Half of them come out of various labs. I don’t know if it’s actually that high for Pond’s operation, but it’s not an inconsiderable amount. Ten percent are alien, or use alien technologies. Thirty percent are cursed or have some kind of magic in their making, and the remainder are skillful people, in one way or another, who were either born with the magical talent or make deals for power. That, or are like you, Damsel. They earn them, through hard work.”
Everyone else was acting as if that basic information was perfectly normal to know. It was the very first time that Hannah had heard it at all.
“You mean most people aren’t struck by lightning and have lab chemicals fall all over them, giving them powers?” She sounded very innocent, and was going for slightly lost sounding, but everyone in the room chuckled. Even Carl, which had to cost him broody points.
Zip, smiling, nodded.
“Exactly. Toxic waste only gives you super cancer. We all learn to make up stories for people, so they won’t be as afraid. We aren’t all the scary product of a mad scientist, built in a lab or given powers for some alien reason we probably can’t comprehend. It’s all an accident. You were kicked in the head by a horse at age ten, and could suddenly see the future, or god talked to you, giving you a gift, to use for good ends. It wasn’t that some crazed man just wanted to see what he could get away with, or someone casting a spell, that changes the course of an innocent person’s life. Not at all.”
She didn’t respond, just looking around the room.
Wondering what the real stories of everyone there actually were, given that. Then she realized, she actually knew some of them. For instance, Lashondra really had come from a different reality. That was magical in nature, but it had been her own magical mistake, during a terror attack where she’d opened a portal to the wrong space time, trying to save herself. The Moore... well, she didn’t know that one, but the man used magic a lot. He’d also shown up to find Lash, when she’d come over, at sixteen or so.
