Talyesin's Tales

The Big Guy lets out a huge roar as his body continues to morph. Ram’s horns erupt from his forehead. His fingers curl and harden into claws. His feet change into something like a velociraptor’s, the big toe curling and bending back, turning into a huge sickle-claw. A long tail erupts from his back, segmented with a spike on the end like a scorpion’s.

He starts to wreck the lab. Ace and I trade a look. I look at Kimmy. She’s gone pale. I know she’s thinking about her cousin. I pop my claws, grab Hi-Q and haul him to his feet.

“Open the door!” I yell at him, squeezing his throat just enough to let him know I’m not kidding.

He’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the Behemoth behind us. He starts to laugh.

We don’t have time for this. I squeeze enough to get his attention, drawing blood.

“Open the door or we’re all dead!”

“My creation will destroy you all!”

“Ace!” I say. Ace grabs Hi-Q’s wrist-control and starts to try and figure out how to open the door. I hear Kimmy say “Move!” and my body twitches, straight up and flipping backward. The Behemoth’s tail has impaled its spike right through Hi-Q’s head. I check and make sure Ace and Kimmy are alright - they dodged out of the way in time. The body is stuck on the spike and the tail twitches back and forth trying to dislodge it. The corpse comes loose soon enough but not before it’s smashed to messy bits.

The Behemoth is on all fours now because it can’t fit in the lab standing up. I see the beast open its mouth wide and roar. The mouth is full of razor-sharp triangular teeth like a shark’s. It’s getting ready to charge and there isn’t much room for us to dive out of the way any more. The three of us have our backs to the door.

Which opens behind us.

It’s the Mole. And Cricket, holding our costumes.

“I believe a hasty retreat is in order?” Mole says.

We grab our gear from Cricket and follow the Mole. Behind us we can hear the Behemoth trying to force its way through the too-small doorway. Roars fill the underground lab.

Mole knows the way so we follow him. There’s a lot of goons unconscious on the ground as we go. Later he explains that Cricket found him when the depths of Peter the Great’s treachery became clear. Together he and the teen had fought their way into the complex to save them. At the time we don’t exactly have time for a lot of exposition, since the Behemoth is doing its best to follow us out, smashing support beams as it goes. The whole complex is getting mighty shaky, bits and pieces are breaking off and now we’ve got to duck and dodge falling machinery. Broken pipes are spilling gas and water everywhere.

I look over to Kimmy, who’s pulled on her mask and wig on as we run. She’s pulling on her shirt when I say, “And you keep saying I never take you anywhere.”

She laughs. It’s an old joke between us. Damn she’s gorgeous when she laughs.

I pull on my own mask and feel a lot less naked. My costume took a serious pounding in Junkernaut’s explosion - the tail is pretty shredded. I do a mid-air somersault and pull on my pants. Ace has opted for tying on his strip-mask and utility belt.

Mole’s led us to a metal staircase and Ragdoll and I are up it in seconds. Cricket just jumps up ahead of us. Mole’s not very fast and Ace is bringing up the rear, keeping an eye behind us for the Behemoth. He starts throwing cards suddenly, and there’s a series of explosions behind us. There’s a bit of a cave-in behind us, but we can hear it still coming after us.

I have enough presence of mind to wonder about the complex. It’s huge. Somehow someone built this underground lair under the Mole’s nose, filled it with Praxis technology, and started using it as a drug lab. That’s suspicious enough to make a mental note.

We finally reach a level that looks like a basement - crumbling cement walls instead of man-made cavern tunnels with metal supports and pipes and wiring. Through the door and up the rickety stairs we go. At the top of the stairs is an empty room.

Well, almost empty. Umbra and Junkernaut are standing there.

“Swell,” Ace says, pulling out two decks of cards. He starts one-hand shuffling them in each hand.

“Remind me not to play poker with you,” I say.

“Out of the way, miscreants,” the Mole says to them.

“I knew you couldn’t stay away, Cricket,” Umbra says.

“Oh please,” she answers, rolling her bug eyes. “As if.”

Junkernaut’s looking a little shaky, trembling, as though just holding himself together is taking a major effort.

“We don’t have time for this,” Ragdoll says to me. There’s noise behind us, down below the basement. I think it’s finally dug its way clear of the cave-in.

Turns out I was right, because my body twitches and I have just enough time to push Ace and Mole out of the way of a huge clawed arm as it breaks through the basement door. Junkernaut gets smashed into the wall. Ragdoll and Cricket manage to jump clear, but the snapping mouth appears at the door and it starts to pull its way through.

Umbra slips into a shadow and disappears. Junkernaut, decides he’s got something to prove so he starts slamming away at the Behemoth’s face. It grabs him and throws him hard at the wall.

“Out! Get out!” I yell. Cricket and Ragdoll are out a window, Ace and Mole out the door. I run after Ace and say, “Your exploding cards! How do they work?”

“Touch the number, give ‘em a toss, why?”

I hold out my hand and he hands me the whole suit. I spread them like a fan and touch all the numbers.

“Uh, son? You sure you-?”

“Run!” I yell, and toss them all at once into the building where Junkernaut and the Behemoth are still going at it.

The explosion blows the entire building up. Or rather, down, since it collapses into the complex underneath it. The two of them are buried at the bottom of a deep hole under tons of rubble.

Back at the Mole’s Underground Lair we bandage up our wounds - my accelerated healing is already taking care of my broken finger - and salvage what we can of our costumes. My tail is a total loss, and my goggles are smashed. I question the Mole about the complex but he insists that he had no idea it was there. It’s not impossible - teleportation isn’t exactly common, but it’s not impossible, after all. Teleport the gear into the basement, dig out the complex with advanced disintegrating mining tools - it’s all possible. But an awful lot of trouble to set up a drug lab, even one as complicated as extracting adrenaline from enhanced and powered humans and processing it into Boost. The whole thing smells fishy to me.

“What’ll you do now?” Ragdoll asks Cricket.

“I can’t go back to the gang,” Cricket says, but she’s smiling. “But the Mole needs a sidekick. I kinda like the idea of kicking some ass.”

“The Mole and Cricket, huh?” Ragdoll smiles. She looks over to the Mole and offers her hand to him.

“Thanks.”

“Not at all, my dear,” he answers, shaking her hand.

“If you two ever need help, let us know,” I say as we start to leave. Hands are shaken, and thanks offered. The three of us head back to the surface.

“Jeez, it feels like we’ve been going uphill for an hour,” Ace says as we finally reach street level. “And we’ve gotta go back down there for the Pixie Dust.”

“Right,” I say.

He pulls a card out of his belt and looks at it.

“You know it’s barely noon?” he laughs, showing me the readout on the card.

“I’m starving,” Ragdoll says.

“Listen,” Ace says. “We’ve seen our faces. Why don’t we go get cleaned up and meet up for lunch?”

I look at Ragdoll, who doesn’t look opposed to the idea.

“Okay,” I answer. “How about Julius’ in a hour?”

“Sounds good to me,” he says, offering his hand. He thinks about something for a second and says, “I’m Rick.”

I take his hand. I’ve known him since I came to this alternity. My alter-self knew him for a couple of years before that. Say, five years or so of working the same turf.

“Matt,” I answer.

He looks at Ragdoll and offers his hand to her. She thinks about it for a couple of seconds, finally taking it, saying, “Kimmy.”

“Matt, Kimmy,” he nods to each of us. “See you guys in an hour.”