Talyesin's Tales

Trapped in the Kane Sanitarium with an assortment of Action City's costumed crimefighters, Squirrelman and his companions found themselves reliving the same battles, over and over again, until Darklight declared that to escape the time loop, she had to kill them all...





For a second, I think, Oh Jesus, it got her, the Kane got Darklight, just like the security guard, she's cracked, she's our best chance at getting out of here and THE FUCKING KANE GOT HER.

I'm not proud of it.

She's probably the best equipped to deal with the forces of madness and evil in this place. It didn't get her. It didn't. Please.

"Anna?" Physique asks her.

"For the spell to finally be completed, we all have to be dead," Darklight explains. "So I'll cast a spell that will free our souls from our bodies. During that time, our bodies will be dead."

"Swell," Dragon grumbles.

"There's a slight problem, however."

"Other than us being dead?" Phenom asks.

"Shit," I mutter, remembering something. I turn to Red Bolt and say, "The guards?" He's back in a couple of seconds with their guns.

"How much do you all know about magic?" Anna asks us.

Most of us have fought magic-based criminals. Superia, Rapunzel, and Ace turn out to be the ones with the most experience, but none of us is a mage.

"A magical spell is an application of the mage's will, channelling energies to alter reality," Anna explains. "If that will is somehow blocked or stopped, the spell will cease to function."

"So?" Ragdoll says.

"I don't propose that we stay dead, obviously. To bring us back, I'd have to include that in my spell. But with my being dead..."

Ace figures it out. "There's no guarantee that your spell will work."

"Exactly," she smiles at him.

"If I understand you correctly, then," Rapunzel says, "You'll cast a spell to kill us and bring us back, but because you'll be dead, the bringing us back part might not work?"

"That's correct," Darklight nods.

"Great," Dragon says. "Anybody got a Plan B?"

"This is the only way," Darklight says. "Trust me."

"Otherwise we end up looping through all this until we really are dead," I say. "We're just going to have to die."

"I'd feel a lot better if we could put it differently," Blue Jay says.

"Biologically inert?" Red Bolt laughs.

"Strictly speaking death doesn't render you biologically inert," Phenom says. "There's still the decaying processes and all that."

"Plan B anyone?!"

Superia is thinking out loud. "Darklight, the spellcaster's will? What happens to it when the mage dies? Does it shut off, or dissipate?"

"It dissipates."

"So what if there was more willpower?" Superia asks.

"What do you mean?"

"What if we all channelled our will into you, supercharging the spell? That would keep it from dissipating, wouldn't it?"

"In theory, I suppose," Anna answers, thinking. "Something like a covenwork spell might be able to keep it activated."

"Our playmates downstairs are going to start wondering where we are," Ragdoll says to me. I nod.

"Okay folks, listen up," I say. "Red and Rapunzel, you two stay up here, put everyone in their rooms, all but one patient. Hide them in a supply closet or something so they're not prey, but leave one room empty. Closing the doors seems to be the trigger that refreshes the time loop, so let's try and keep that from happening as long as possible. The rest of us are heading downstairs."

"What about Johnny Giggles?" Ace asks.

"Rapunzel and I will take care of him," Red Bolt grins. She smiles too.

"Okay. Be careful."

"You got it."

The rest of us head downstairs, quietly, trying to take them by surprise.

"You'd think he'd get tired of humping that fern," Ace whispers as we check them through the airlock.

"I dunno, that's a good-looking fern," Physique jokes.

"What does that make him, botanosexual?" Phenom wonders.

"A freak, just like all the others," Dragon says. "Let's get 'em."

"That's not exactly masterful tactics, is it?" Ragdoll smirks.

"It'll do," I tell them. "Let's go."

We rush in. The fight is bitter and bloody, tooth and nail and fang and claw. Someone gets a good punch in my side and something goes snap, slows me down, makes it hurt to breathe too deep. Physique gets piled on by three or four bruisers until Phenom gets there. Ragdoll gets into it with Arachnid, both of them out for blood. I actually have to pull Ragdoll off of her as she's slamming Arachnid's face into the floor. Ace runs out of cards. Blue Jay gets trapped in Dust Devil's vortex, winds up dizzy and vomiting, her bare legs and arms scraped raw. Even Dragon and Superia get knocked around.

The sub-basement is even worse. By then, though, Red Bolt and Rapunzel have joined us, it's a little easier going. Not much, but a little. The end result is the same, though. All the psychos back in their cells.

All but one.

We put him back in his cell, but leave the door open. We head down to the lobby and take a minute to catch our breath.

"This better work," Physique says. Her face is a mass of bruises, her left eye black and swelling shut.

Dragon spits out green blood on the floor, says, "Yeah. I'm not sure we'll all make it through another go around."

It's true. We've had the shit kicked out of us. We look like survivors of some kind of disaster. Costumes torn. Bleeding. Broken bones, sprained joints. Even our tough guys, Superia, Phenom, Physique, Dragon. All of us.

"So how does it work?" I ask Anna, holding my side.

"We form a circle. Join hands." She's got heavy dark circles under her eyes. She's exhausted.

We all are.

We form a circle, take each other's hands. I've got Ragdoll on my right, Darklight on my left. Ace is after Anna. Then Physique, Rapunzel, Red Bolt, Superia, Blue Jay, Phenom, Dragon and back to Ragdoll.

Dragon looks at Phenom, says, "Just 'cause we're holding hands doesn't mean we'll be swappin' spit in the shower," and they both laugh, like it's an old inside joke. I remember they were in the Warpers together for a while.

Darklight closes her eyes and mutters to herself slowly. There's a tension in the air as the power of her spell builds. Her head snaps up, her eyes glowing, and power shoots through me into Ragdoll, through her, through the circle, and back the other way, linking us all.

It's a very weird sensation. Our... souls... are touching, but not separate. Not apart. Distinct without being disconnected. Emotions and thoughts rendered meaningless as we connect on a level that's beyond mortal experience.

It's not easily translatable into words.

Darklight's still incanting the spell to kill us and bring us back to life.

"I just thought of something," Ace says without actually needing to speak.

"We all did," Phenom says mentally.

"The last door," Dragon rumbles.

"How do we close it?" Ragdoll asks.

"I can race up there," Red Bolt volunteers.

"We can't break the circle," Superia says.

"I'll do it," Rapunzel says, her hair already stretching and snaking its way up the stairs to the second level. She closes her eyes in concentration. I can... see her... in my mind, picturing what the hall looks like, feeling for the door.

"It's too far," she says, sweating with the effort.

"We'll help," I say. I feel us all feeding our energy into her, willing her to stretch further, find the final cell door, close it.

Darklight's spell is growing, almost ready. She sends us a little mental nod. We close the door. We redirect our collective will, feed it into the spell.

I wish I could say there was a bright white light, a tunnel, green pastures and angels, whatever. All I remember is waking up from darkness, the connection gone.

I open my eyes.

We're in the lobby, all of us, lying on the floor. The clock chimes out its last count... and the final bell tone dies out as it normally would.

"Everyone okay?" I ask, sitting up slowly.

All of us are sitting up slowly. All our wounds never happened. The cell doors never opened.

No laughter.

"HELL yeah!" Ace yells.

"Red, the guards," I say, but he's already gone and back with the guns.

"Heeeeeeere's Johnny!" I hear behind me, down the corridor toward the maintenance room.

"Every time?" I ask Ace.

"Yeah. Got old fast."

"You'd expect a little more creativity from Number Three on the Most Wanted List," Blue Jay smirks.

"Seriously," Dragon chuckles.

"Anna? Don't let him get out, okay?" I ask her. She smiles and nods.

We chase down Johnny Giggles as he teleports all around the Kane, trying to get past Darklight's sealing spell. Eventually Ace nails him with an EMP-card, fries the teleportation circuitry in his suit. He's still a homicidal maniac though, dangerous and immortal, so he takes chances no sane person would.

Still, we're eleven to his one. It's really only a matter of time before he's beaten.

Ace is grinning. "Friends and neighbours, we just caught Number Three on the Most Wanted List."

"That is total bullshit!" Johnny yells from where Rapunzel has him tied up in her hair. "They just knocked me down to Number Three to piss me off!"

"Anybody got a ball-gag?" Dragon asks. Red's back in a blur of red and yellow, and Johnny's trying to yell around the ball-gag that suddenly appeared in his mouth.

"Should I even ask where you got that?" Blue Jay asks.

"It's an insane asylum, they've got a whole room of that stuff," Red Bolt explains.

"Call it in?" Phenom asks Ace, who grins and nods.

The cops show up in a few minutes. I don't recognize them, but looks like Blue Jay does. We hand them Johnny Giggles. ACPD's finest are impressed.

"So who gets the collar?" one of them asks.

I look at the others, all of them nodding or smiling at me, turn back to her and say, "The Crimefighters' League."

She looks at me, an eyebrow raised. "Who?"

I tap her electronic notepad. "The Crimefighters' League. Take it down."

"I've never heard of you."

"You will," Ace grins.

"We're not official yet," I explain, "but we are a team."

We wrap things up at the Kane and head outside. The storm stopped suddenly at midnight, so the air has that fresh-washed smell that comes after rain. We're all grinning and smiling, even Dragon.

"So now what?" Red Bolt says.

"The Crimefighters' League just got their first collar," Ace says, "I say we party!"

It's an astonishingly attractive idea, and I'm not the only one to think so. We deserve it after what we've just been through. We decide to head back to the big empty room we're going to use as our headquarters. Ace and Physique head off to get food and drinks. Ragdoll and I show the rest of them the place we found.

"It's a big empty room," Phenom says, but it's clear he likes it.

"Good location," Dragon says, looking over the balcony to the street way below.

"It'll be better when there's stuff on the walls and equipment and all that," I say.

"And someplace to sit?" Blue Jay smiles.

"Yeah," I say, looking around. "I guess we sit on the floor for now. Like in college."

"Some of us, maybe," Rapunzel says, forming a little seat out of her hair. Dragon squats back on his haunches, leaning on his tail.

"Wait," Anna says, mutters something, and the air sort of thickens near the walls, into couch-like shapes. It's a little weird, sitting on nothing, but we're too tired to care.

Ace and Physique show up with beer and sodas and pizza. We dig in, starving. Physique and Dragon finish their first beers in a couple of seconds.

Physique opens her second beer, says, "We don't have any security set up, we'll have to keep it short and quiet."

"Wait," Darklight says. She looks at Superia and asks, "Give me a hand?"

"Of course," Superia smiles, taking Anna's hands.

There's a pulse of energy from the both of them that stops at the walls. Anna grins at Superia and thanks her.

"What did you do?" Red Bolt asks.

"I made us dim."

"That's a handy trick," I tell her, smiling.

"Dim?" Phenom asks.

"Less likely to be noticed," Darklight explains.

"So we can party as hardy as we like," Ace grins. He pulls out a card and fiddles with it, pulling in a radio station with not-half-bad music.

We eat pizza and drink our drinks. We laugh and compare notes about the evening, reliving it without the gory details, admiring our handiwork. Ace proposes a toast to me, "our leader-man," and I turn it around, saying "A leader's only as good as his team." At some point Red Bolt starts taking bets as to how long before all our "fiercest foes" decide to team up and form the Crime-Doers League or the Anti-Crimefighters League or whatever lame name they'll come up with. That gets us onto the subject of what cases we're currently working on.

"The Krieg are really busting my balls," Phenom says.

"I've run into them a couple of times, too," Red Bolt says. "And the Technocracy. I think they might be working together over in Westside."

"I've been chasing Peregrin since he busted out of Bendis," Blue Jay says. "He and Kestrel have got a spree going."

"The Kreechers are expanding into Dock Street, probably got a turf war gonna happen with the Do-Badders," Dragon says.

"Monster Master's got something going in the train yards," Physique says. "Plus, I think I've found a WOLFEN cell."

"Me too," Ragdoll says. "And Master Planner is up to something."

Superia nods and says, "Plazm is somewhere in the city, but I can't find him. And there's Phantasm, of course."

We all nod at that one.

"I'll be glad when all thirteen of him are caught," Blue Jay says.

"Everyone will be," Red Bolt grins.

"I've been investigating the UnSeelie in Downtown since last we met," Darklight says.

"I've had problems with them too," Rapunzel says to her. "Also... I'll a little embarrassed to admit this, but... Poodle has been kicking my butt every time I run into her."

We chuckle.

"Don't worry about it, Rapunzel, Poodle's a tough one," Ace says.

"She has this ray gun that ... makes me dizzy, can't focus, and she gets away."

Ace nods. "Vertigo-inducer. I've got something that'll help you out with that."

"Where'd you find the WOLFEN cell?" Physique asks Ragdoll.

"Out toward Speedway," Ragdoll answers. "You?"

"Uptown."

"Shit."

"I'll say."

"You ran into the UnSeelie?" Darklight asks Rapunzel, who nods.

"Yes. Redcaps."

"Downtown?"

"No, no. Muggings and protection rackets in Lower Uptown."

"Technocracy and the Krieg together?" Phenom asks Red Bolt.

"Bad news."

"Seriously."

And suddenly we're all talking about our cases as though they're our cases, not individual cases we're each working on, coming up with plans to root out the WOLFEN cells, break up the Redcap protections rackets, shut down the Krieg and Technocracy, find Plazm and Phantasm and Poodle and Peregrin, keep the Kreechers in their place.

"Oh, and I interrupted a truck hijacking a couple of nights ago," Phenom says. "Stopped the goons but the big boss got away. Bozo calling himself Doctor Hi-Q."

"Yeah, we ran into him in Downtown," I tell him, explaining the Boost facility we found that Dr. Seventeen Syllables was running underground, the cyberzombies, the cave-in. "He met a messy end, though."

"When was this?" Phenom asks, a little confused.

I look at Ace. "What, a week ago?" He nods.

Phenom shakes his head. "Can't be the same guy. The truck hijacking was two nights ago."

I describe Hi-Q to him. Tall, skinny, bald, cybereye headgear, cyber-tech gauntlets.

"That's him," Phenom says. I look at Ace and Ragdoll. Everyone's listening now.

"We saw the body," Ragdoll says.

"Hell, we saw the death," Ace adds.

"He got speared through the head by his own creation," I explain.

"Eww," Blue Jay says.

"Looks like we're heading back Downtown," I say. Ace and Ragdoll start nodding, and suddenly everyone is.

"Say when, leader-man," Red Bolt grins.

"Not tonight, okay?" I say. I finish my beer and ask, "Anyone want another?"

"I'll get them," Blue Jay says, starting to get up.

"Sit down, Blue Jay, you've been playing waitress all night," I say, getting up, taking orders. Ragdoll gets up to help.

We're pulling beers and colas out of their cases and she leans in really close and says, "You know, we have a lot of sex to catch up on."

I look at her, grin and nod and say, "There's something I want to do first."

She looks me in the eye and can see what I'm going to do. She thinks about it for a second, then nods. I turn to the others.

"Folks? I'd just like to say something," I say, handing out the drinks. Ragdoll stands by me.

"Zip it for the leader-man," Ace says to everyone. "Go ahead, son."

"Thanks Ace," I say with a grin. "We did something exceptional tonight. Really, truly, exceptional. I mean, more so than you'd expect from a world filled with human beings who can fly and lift trucks and run faster than a speeding bullet. We started the evening as a bunch of acquaintances, some friends, some strangers... and we came out of it, a team. We saved each other's lives a dozen times or more. We took the hits aimed at other people. We came to each other's rescue. We worked together toward a common goal. Though we don't have the scars to show it, we fought hard, time and again, and won, every single time.

"I want to tell you I'm proud of what we've done tonight. I want you all to know I trust you with my life... And more."

I reach up and pull off my mask.

"My name is Matt Mattheson. I'm an accountant, CEO of a mid-sized accounting firm."

"Rick Duncan," Ace says, pulling off his strip mask. "Freelance electrical engineer."

"Anna Kimble, although most of you know that," Darklight smiles slightly. She has a public ID after all. "I run an occult shop in Weirdsville."

"Lisa Dumont," Physique says. She's public too, so it's not a surprise. She pulls off the headband around her forehead and shakes out her honey-brown hair. "Full-time crimefighter."

"Kimmy Sinclair," Ragdoll says, pulling off her mask and wig. She runs a hand through her short blonde hair, looks at me and adds, "Although it'll be Mattheson soon enough."

This leads to her showing off the engagement ring. Everyone is suitably impressed.

Blue Jay touches her amulet and there's a flash of light, and she's standing there in her civvies.

"Stephanie Cooke," she says, smiling at us. "I'm a graphic designer."

Red Bolt blurs and suddenly he's in his civilian clothes too. Dark brown hair, green eyes. Jeans, sneakers and a blue shirt. "Jay Allen," he says. "I'm a reporter for the Herald."

Superia stands up, and says, "Return now to mortal frame," and suddenly there's two voices speaking, "Simple form and humble name, To come forth when needs arise, And Superia answers the innocents' cries."

There's a... fading effect, and suddenly there's a girl standing where Superia was. Brown hair with a pink streak in a ponytail, glasses, UIAC sweatshirt and jeans. She's pretty but not gorgeous, not exactly in great shape, but not bad either. In other words, a totally normal college girl.

"My name is Katie McCormick," she says, pushing up her glasses shyly. "I'm a student at University of Indiana, Action City. Honours Classics."

"You're Superia?" Phenom asks. Lisa gets up, heads for the bathroom.

"Sort of," she says. "The technical term for it is she's an alter-ego shared consciousness iconic godform."

"A wha?" Dragon rumbles.

"As near as I can figure it, Superia is the living representation of the goddess inherent in every woman, translated into a modern icon."

"How fascinating," Anna says, smiling at her.

"Waitaminute, you're what, twenty, twenty-two?" Ace says. "Superia's been around for fifteen years now."

"I was seven the first time I manifested Superia," Katie says. "I was a bit of a shock, let me tell you."

"Sure," Dragon says, a little doubtful, but adds, "Uh... Mike Washington. Used to be a truck driver. Long haul toxic waste, mostly. Pay was good. Can't get much work now though, not with a mug like mine."

Rapunzel pulls off the little diamond mask she wears and shortens her hair to jaw-length. She says, "Astrid Wagner, although everyone calls me Jessica, or Jessie. I own a restaurant, the Edelweiss, in Uptown."

"I've eaten there," Stephanie says.

"Me too," Kimmy adds. "I bring clients there sometimes."

"Well, thank you both," Jessica smiles.

So now Phenom is the only one in the room wearing a mask, although most of us are still in costume. He looks around and takes a deep breath, pulls off his goggles and lowers his half-cowl. Behind me, Lisa comes out of the bathroom.

"Name's Trevor Andrews," he says. "Full-time crimefighter."

"That's not possible!" I hear Lisa say behind me. She jumps past me, tackling Trevor and slamming him into the wall, an arm across his throat. It takes all of us to haul her off.

"Lisa, calm down!" I yell at her. "What's the problem?!"

Mike has her in his claws. Lisa's eyes never leave Trevor.

"He's an imposter! It's not possible!" Lisa snarls. "He can't be Trevor Andrews!"

"Why not, Lisa?"

"Because I watched Trevor Andrews die!"