Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Good, the Mad, and the Infamous

True Hero

Getting shot really hurt.

Even when you had the ability to shrug off handgun bullets like they were rubberbands.

And especially if the guns were automatic turrets.

Peeking out from behind the wrecked remains of a helicopter while waiting for his fast-healing to kick in, Delsin Rowe, member of the Akomish Native American tribe, graffiti artist, Conduit, and the man who (almost) singlehandedly kicked the Department of Unified Defense out of Seattle, glared at the row of DUP APCs arrayed against him and wondered why it was now that the Dupes had decided to grow a few brain cells.

Only a week ago, he had succeeded in driving out the last of the DUP forces from Seattle. Listening to the cheers of the crowds as they chanted his name and those of his friends, Fetch and Eugene, Delsin had felt absolutely invincible. He had, after all, become an insanely powerful Conduit, taken down hundreds of DUP soldiers, beat Brooke Augustine in two consecutive fights and exposed her corruption to the world, kicked the collectives butts of the DUP out of Seattle, solved a murder mystery, and saved his tribe from a painful death. All within a week, not to brag.

After "commandeering" a DUP APC and giving it one hell of a paint job, he and the others had struck out for Curdun Cay Station, certain that after the massive beatdown they had handed to Augustine and her Dupes in Seattle, taking on the garrison at the Conduit version of Alcatraz would be a piece of cake.

Right now, Delsin wanted nothing more than to go back in time and punch his younger self in the nose for thinking it would be so easy.

The first lines of defense for Curdun Cay had been just like Seattle; a few APCs spilling out their cargos of lead-spitting, concrete-throwing goons, a couple of helicopters attempting to blow them up with missiles, some Bishops, a few Super Pawns and Rooks, nothing that he and his merry band had to worry about.

And seriously, was Augustine some kind of chess fanatic, naming her soldiers after chess pieces? Because if he found a chess set in her office featuring herself as one or both of the Queens, that would be so messed up.

Approaching the main ground of the prison, he had jumped up onto a destroyed Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) and launched himself into the air, intending to fly up into the view of any Dupes in the prison yard, yell out a line from Die Hard, fire off a few Cinder Missiles, and then finish up his dramatic entrance with an Orbital Drop. The automatic turrets of the dozen or so APCs parked in the yard had quickly killed that plan.

It had been a good plan too.

He had smoked dashed back down as quickly as he had come up, barely surviving the onslaught of lead that had riddled his body. If there was a Lead Conduit locked up in Curdun Cay, he was so absorbing that guy's powers. That is, if he, Fetch, and Eugene survived long enough to free the Lead Conduit and the others. And the odds of that happening weren't favoring them right now.

Speaking of right now, he was currently pinned behind the wreckage of a helicopter, with about a dozen automatic turrets and some snipers keeping him from smoke dashing away. He had to rematerialize after going a certain distance; he couldn't stay a cloud of smoke particles indefinitely, especially with the strain he was putting his fast-healing through with every connecting shot.

"Hey, D!" his phone suddenly yelled at him with a Jersey accent. "You got a plan B or something!? And if you say 'Get 'em', I will personally laze your-"

Whatever part of his anatomy that she was planning on "lazing" was cut off by gunshots and cursing. Fetch was weaving in and out of a thicket of bullet-riddled and scorched trees, trying desperately to get some neon shots off, only to be forced back by missiles and snipers. For the former junkie, sniping was her thing. Counter-sniping? Not so much. She also couldn't get close enough for her other abilities to be effective.

"Delsin, we need to get out of here!" Eugene's panic was very clear in his voice, even through the phone's speakers. "Nobody said we had to take Curdun Cay in one day! If we retreat now, we can come back again tomorrow! Tomorrow night! If we don't, nobody will be able to free any of the Conduits in there!"

Eugene's Angel form, He-Who-Dwells, was very powerful, incredibly intimidating, and a big, fat target. He had been able to blow up a couple of the APCs in the yard before a hailstorm of air-to-air missiles had downed him and his angels in mere seconds. Delsin had no idea where he was right now, but judging from the sounds in the background, Eugene didn't sound like he was doing too hot.

"I'd consider that if I wasn't being shot at every time I move!" he yelled into the phone. "Let's give them a few minutes to get cocky, and then we can try that!" At this point, Delsin would have broken out into a traditional Akomish rain dance (yes, his tribe has those) if he thought it would have helped. Though if the dusting of snow falling around them and getting in his eyes was any indication, that wouldn't help at all. He wondered for a few milliseconds if there was an Akomish fire-and-brimstone-from-the-sky dance he had overlooked out of boredom. That would come in handy right now.

"D, look out!" Fetch's voice screeched out of his phone's speakers. "One of those really big guys is headed your way! Get out-!"

Before Delsin could smoke dash away, the chopper was suddenly flipped over, landing on him before rolling away. He lay there, pressed into the snow like an action figure smashed into a glob of Play-Doh, his entire body aching and his heartbeat thudding like a drum in his brain. Through the haze of the concussion and the snow blurring the vision in his left eye, he could hear Fetch and Eugene's voices screaming at him to move and see a big blob creating a bigger blob, the entire world losing its color to various hues of gray.

Lifting his head and blinking, his vision cleared, revealing the first blob to be a Concrete King and the second to be a massive block of concrete with his name on it. The world seemed to freeze: the concrete-armored King levitating over him in a swirling cloud of rocks, the glow of his powers shining off the flakes of snow ghosting by, the huge chunk of concrete blocking the late-morning sun, and his healing factor trying desperately to heal him. For a brief instant, all of Delsin's twenty plus years flashed in front of him.

The next flashes were from the barrage of missiles striking the King's back and head. The surprise of the attack enabled Delsin to move out of the way of the five-ton chunk of falling concrete, just barely avoiding being crushed underneath. The forced Conduit looked like he was fighting a massive internal struggle before his powers overloaded and he exploded in a shower of concrete.

Wiping the dust and snow from his eyes, Delsin looked in the direction the missiles had come from to find a DUP chopper flying right over him and towards the yard. Dropping abruptly, it unleashed a salvo of missiles into the yard, sending the burning husks of APCs, auto turrets, and Dupe soldiers flying. The attention of the DUP forces was now on the helicopter and its traitorous pilot. Tracer bullets and RPG contrails whizzed overhead with chunks of concrete, all in-bound for the chopper. Delsin saw the opening it gave as his fast-healing finally finished its work.

"Fetch, Eugene, that chopper's got them distracted!" he yelled into the cell. "Get in there and put the hurt on them!"

Running towards another APC and dodging the sparser gunfire, Delsin car boosted again and fired a cinder missile right into a group of pawns. Landing in the yard, he began dashing around and disabling the occupied turrets.

"Who's the idiot in the chopper?" Fetch asked as she darted forward and shot at the DUP snipers who had been keeping her down.

"It matters not," boomed Eugene in his He-Who-Dwells voice. About a dozen angels joined him in raining down video lasers on the remaining turrets. "Only an ally would dare risk their own life in such straits. We must stand with that brave soul!"

Before anyone could even think of an answer, a final missile struck the helicopter, blowing it from the sky and sending the debris raining down on the yard. Dashing through a falling rotor blade that would have cut him in two, Delsin was the first to see it; a human-shaped figure dropping down amongst the flaming ruins of the chopper. For a fleeting instant, he thought it was Augustine, back from whatever military prison she had been shipped off to and apparently out of her mind.

Then again, he was pretty sure that Augustine didn't wear a blue sundress underneath that trench coat. And he definitely knew that she didn't wear thigh-length, black-and-white striped stockings.

The figure executed a perfect superhero landing, confirming that she (he could confirm it was a she now) was a Conduit. He couldn't get a better impression other than she was female, a Conduit, had very dark brunette hair, and wore a sundress with striped stockings and calf-length boots underneath her open coat. A Rook opened fire upon her with his mini-gun just before Delsin was distracted by more gunfire.

As he finished up with the squad that had opened fire on him, a resounding crunch rang out through the yard. Glancing back towards the new Conduit, Delsin saw the Rook stumbling backwards with huge cracks in his armor, the barrels of his minigun crushed, and the girl still standing, sizing up her weakened opponent.

"Holy crap," he thought, "what kind of powers does she have?" Another burst of gunfire prompted him to take cover behind a wrecked APC and absorb the smoke pouring out of it. That question could wait.

The battle only heated up from there on out. Fetch was running and jumping all over the place, neon energy leaping from her hands to find its unfortunate targets in the form of rapid-fire lasers or heat-seeking mini-missiles. He-Who-Talks-Like-a-Medieval-Dork and his angels provided aerial cover and support, blowing choppers out of the sky and frying the big-bads headed their way. Smoke dashing and car boosting all over the yard, Delsin fired his cinder missiles to take out larger enemies and used his sulfur bombs to flush out those behind cover and subdue them. The stranger moved even more quickly than he did, never affording him the chance to identify what her powers were. Whatever they were, she used them very effectively. The bodies of both living and dead Dupes he came across could attest to that.

Machine-gun bullets, smoke shots, and lasers filled the air. The contrails of RPGs and air-to-air missiles arced across the sky. Between the powers of the four Prime Conduits and those of Augustine's Forced soldiers and their conventional weapons, it was no real contest anymore. DUP agents struggled against their restraints on the ground while others just sat there, accepting the terms of their surrender. As the battle continued, more and more of the Dupes began to lay down their weapons and hold up their arms, giving up. Held down by smoke, neon, and video energy, they could only watch as their cause, once so powerful and righteous, collapse to the ground underneath the combined might of the "Savior of Seattle" and his allies.

The fight climaxed with Fetch yelling for all of them to grab onto something before launching a ball of light directly above the remaining DUP forces. It quickly expanded into a swirling vortex of pink neon light, sucking in everything and everyone who wasn't nailed down. Clinging to a steel girder, Delsin caught sight of Fetch, levitating over the battlefield and grinning manically, her body wrapped in tendrils of neon. A moment later, he was thrown to the ground as the vortex exploded outward, throwing everything it had captured. Fetch landed on her feet, still smiling like an absolute maniac.

"Fetch, what the hell was that?" Delsin weakly called out from his prone position on top of a smoking APC. After nearly being pulled in two by a mini black hole (or was it a pink hole?) and then being smashed against the girder and falling on top of the burning hot vehicle, he didn't feel like moving.

"Neon singularity," she answered breathlessly. "Been a while since I let one of those rip."

"Such a powerful offensive attack," boomed He-Who-Dwells-in-the-Basement, who had been flying in place to avoid getting sucked in. He landed with a boom on the ground. "Why did you not unleash that power against our foes at the Battle of Seattle?"

"Cause you two yahoos never gave me the chance," was her response. "That, and you're obviously handling it real well."

"Oh." Eugene's normal body landed on the ground as He-Who-Dwells dissolved. "Well, that was very cool, Fetch," he said in his ordinary voice.

"And very painful," Delsin groaned. He craned his head towards the entrance to Curdun Cay, just in time to see the fourth Conduit disappear inside with a flash of blue. "Okay, break's over." He dashed from the APC to the ground and jogged towards the entrance, the others right on his heels. "You guys know who Miss Brunette Trench-Coat is? Because if Augustine had any kids, I'd rather not get in a fight with anyone with the mommy issues she would make."

"Tell me about it," Eugene snorted.

"Ya never know," Fetch muttered. "Someone like that might really want to help us tear her little empire down."

"First, let's find the controls for those cuffs," Delsin growled. The thought of someone shoving those cuffs onto him and keeping him from feeding himself or even wiping, let alone from using his powers, was revolting. Hank was many things, but he was right about one thing: that was no way for anyone to live.

Entering the now-smashed doors of Curdun Cay, they all stopped to look around, Fetch and Eugene with a swell of unpleasant memories, Delsin with a morbid curiosity. It reminded him of the concrete structures that Augustine had erected in Seattle, only on a much larger scale. They all reminded of her in a way; oppressive, foreboding, cutting, dark.

He shook his head and turned to the others. "Ok, here's the plan: we'll spilt up, look around, and call for back-up if we get cornered by reinforcements. See anything that looks like a control for the cuffs or the doors, break it."

"Or hack it," Eugene piped up.

"Yeah, you do that," Fetch snarked as she disappeared into the dark, concrete halls of Curdun Cay while Eugene turned invisible and chose the opposite hall. Spying a vent, Delsin grinned as he dashed through it. Things were looking good, though he'd like to know who their helpful friend was, and maybe shake her hand. Whatever her powers were, they were certainly effective. The downed and groaning soldiers that they hadn't taken down were proof enough of that.

Exiting the vents deep within the prison, Delsin began his search, a sulfur bomb waiting in his hand. In close quarters, those proved very effective against the Dupes running around the halls, trying to find the four attacking Conduits.

Brushing his hands off after restraining a squad of agents, Delsin looked around the hall where he found himself and nearly had to suppress a shudder. Looking at the concrete and metal that made up the massive structure, Delsin could see Augustine's handiwork: cold, impersonal, hard, and with an interest in only the functional and none in the aesthetic. A nightmare to someone with his sense of art.

Riding up the air currents in the ventilation system, Delsin thought about the former director of the DUP and her Conduit powers. Had she always been like this? One of the theories about Conduits out there was that their powers were a reflection of their personality. It made sense; Eugene had been a gamer before his powers developed, Fetch's speed and precision fit her impulsive and straightforward attitude, and Hank's smoke powers made getting out of bad situations easy.

There was also the fact that a Conduit's abilities seemed to adapt themselves to their owner's goals. Every time he had spared a surrendering DUP soldier, healed a wounded civilian, or made an on-the-spot decision, Delsin had felt something in him grow and grow until it reached some sort of threshold and broke through, filling him with a sense of empowerment and invulnerability. New powers had always become available to him following one of those.

Thinking back on those lives he had spared and saved and the decisions he had made following his "transformation", he couldn't help but wonder what he would have become and how his powers would have developed if he had taken the path most Conduits found themselves taking as their powers corrupted them. If he had given in to his darker impulses, then his powers would have followed suit, making him a monster instead of a hero.

And there was also the theory that whatever powers they got were random, and that as they learned to use their powers, their personalities changed to reflect their powers. And there was that whole thing of "power corrupts." Had Augustine been a decent person before her Conduit gene activated? Had her powers allowed the worst facets of her personality, her sadistic, cold, hard side, to come forth?

Delsin was so busy theorizing about the relationship between a Conduit's personality and powers as he rounded a corner that he nearly tripped over the downed DUP agent in front of him.

Righting himself before his face could kiss the concrete floor, Delsin found himself in an intersection filled with the bodies of dead DUP agents and a few restrained, living ones. Bullet holes littered the walls and ceiling of the intersecting corridors, huge cracks showed where a heavy object had impacted against the floor, a few Dupes laying feet away. What was really disturbing were the ones with what looked like playing cards sticking out of them; none of those were alive.

Delsin flicked his phone open and tapped in the commands for a conference call. "Hey Fetch, Eugene, remember that paper Conduit I told you guys about, Celia?"

"The same one who tried framing us while playing as Augustine's little hitgirl?" Fetch snapped. Delsin remembered that one of Celia's clues had shown her and Fetch to be friends while in Curdun Cay; he wondered what would happen if they ever met up again and if he would have to play mediator. And he still had unfinished business with the girl herself.

"Yeah, just came across a bunch of Dupes, most of them dead." He reached over a dead agent and pulled out a card, grimacing at the blood-stained ace of spades. "Either she's here, or the Joker's decided to join the party. I've heard of paper cuts getting nasty, but this is ridiculous."

"How's that?" Eugene asked. When he and Fetch received pictures from Delsin's phone of the card-inflicted injuries, Delsin could him hear him suppressing his gag reflex. "Now that's messed up."

"Tell me about it," Delsin muttered. Glancing back at the blood-soaked card, he thought back to the dead scientist he had found in Celia's apartment, and frowned in thought. Celia had filled the man with shards of origami, pinning him to the wall like a sick poster. Whoever had killed these guys hadn't bothered with folding the projectiles into birds, or anything else. Just simple playing cards. He was about to mention this when he noticed something about one of the survivors.

The guy was restrained just like his buddies a few halls back, but it wasn't smoke, neon, video, or paper that kept him down. The stuff pinning him was blue in color, not the electric, flickering pixels of video, but a light, baby blue with darker shades streaking thought it. A closer look revealed that instead of one solid mass, it was a bunch of fibers crisscrossing and interweaving through each other, wrapping the downed agent as tightly as a fly in a web and fastening him to the floor. Tracing the darker shade of blue, Delsin noticed that it formed patterns throughout the whole, resembling a stained-glass window. Oddly enough, it was rather eye-catching.

"Hey guys, I'm not so sure this is Celia's handiwork. She's into origami, not playing cards, and she's definitely not going to spare lives. Plus, there's this." He took a picture of the blue, almost web-like material and sent it to their phones. "Any idea what this stuff is? It's restraining the guys who are still breathing down here."

"Looks like some kind of cloth," Eugene answered.

"It's lace," Fetch interjected. "Spend any amount of time as a girl and you'll wear something made of lace."

"So our unknown friend is a Lace Conduit," Delsin said thoughtfully, studying the lace restraints with renewed interest and imagining the possibilities. He wasn't sure what lace would be able to do as a Conduit power, but it would be intriguing to find out. "Not the most manly power, but definitely one they'd never see coming," he added out loud.

"D, no," Fetch said flatly. "You can go hold her hand after we've busted the cuffs off and kicked the doors down."

"Yeah, Delsin," Eugene chimed in. "We need to get the Conduits out first. Besides, don't you have enough powers?"

"Eugene, I'm going to pretend you did not just say that, and I'll hold off on getting her powers." Delsin flicked his phone off and looked down at one of the agents. "Hey, the girl who did this to you? Where'd she go?"

The man's visor lay broken a few feet away, allowing his eyes to look down the opposite hall, which showed signs of more damage further in.

"Thanks!" Delsin said as he vaulted over the agent and down the hall.

"Fetch and Eugene didn't say anything about following her," he thought to himself, grinning.

Judging from the trail of living and dead agents the girl left behind her, she was getting close to something important, something which the DUP was desperate to protect, if the increasing body count was anything to go by. Running by the downed agents, he caught glimpses of the marks that Conduit powers left when they were used to shoot something, and they didn't look like paper or lace. Instead of investigating, he kept running. He would figure out the girl's powers when he caught up.

It was the sound of gunfire on the floor above that shortened his chase. Dashing again through the vents, Delsin found himself in front of a couple of heavy-duty security doors, which didn't look heavy-duty or secure in their current, smashed-in state. Stepping over an agent lying in the doorway, Delsin took a look around and snorted.

"Looks like a gamer's fallout bunker in here," he said out loud. The room was filled with desks that sported some of the most streamlined computers he had ever seen. Eugene would pass out in a dead faint if he ever came across this room; hell, if the guy ever did find the room, he'd probably never come out.

Delsin found about a dozen DUP personnel huddled in a corner. From the lack of armor and guns, it looked like they were tech support.

"Hey," he called, ignoring their collective flinch, "did a girl wearing a trenchcoat who wasn't Augustine come in here?"

They didn't say a word, their eyes alternating between him and the floor. For crying out loud, these people worked with the Forced Conduits who made up the bulk of the DUP forces, and their old boss was a Prime Conduit! The next time he did his artist thing, he was going to point that out that little hypocrisy.

Rolling his eyes, he took a second look around. This time his eyes locked on the impressive piece of computer hardware in the center of the room. The desk was built into its side, lights blinking while it whirred and hummed like it was about to take off. He walked up to the desk and studied what passed for its keyboard and mouse.

" Must be the computer that keeps everything running around here. Of course it is, it looks like one of those supercomputers in a villain's lair. Sheesh Augustine, how much more cliché can you get? What did you do, take notes from movie supervillains?"

If he could somehow access the controls for the cuffs and the doors, freeing his fellow Conduits would be a cinch. Now if only he had some serious hacking skills. Or any hacking skills for that matter.

Delsin glanced at the swirling vortex of colors that made the screen saver. It was really pretty to look at, a brilliant whirlpool that almost hurt his eyes, but he wasn't here for the DUP's screen savers. His mind wandered back to the mysterious girl as he reached over to touch the mouse and interrupt the saver.

" She's been helping us so far. She must want to free the Conduits too, but what are her powers? Lace used to restrain Dupe agents and playing cards killing others. Maybe there are two new Conduits here? And another thing, if Trenchoat's a Conduit, how come the DUP didn't report her escape? Unless they covered that up, of course. Or she was never captured in the first-"

With a loud buzz, Delsin's world was engulfed in a blaze of light and the sensation of a thousand discharges of static electricity all over his body. He belatedly remembered what had happened in Eugene's hideout the first time he had barged in. Instead of finding himself on a platform in the middle of a lake of lava worthy of Dante's Inferno, however, he was falling through open, unhindered sky.

Letting out a surprised yell, Delsin did his best to right himself in the air. Most of the time, he wasn't too worried about heights. He did have Conduit stamina and durability, and had landed unharmed after jumping from heights that would have broken both his legs before he became a Conduit. Right now though, all he could see was blue sky, clouds, and snatches of green far below. Way far below.

Before he could start panicking, several large objects shot past him. He caught a glimpse of a lot of them, flying, floating, or falling around him, just before he landed hard on something.

Delsin stumbled forward as the kinetic energy from the fall dissipated through his legs. He stood there in a half crouch for a moment, breathing hard as his heart rate settled back down. He was about to make a smart mouth remark ("That wasn't so bad.") when he caught sight of a very large club, the one from a card deck, right by his foot. He stood up, and as his eyes took in the incredible sight, his mouth dropped open in silent amazement.

"Holy crap! Eugene, you there, buddy? Eugene, this isn't funny man!"

When Eugene didn't show up as either himself or as He Who Dwells, Delsin looked around at his new surroundings before letting his arms fall to his side.

"Well, at least there's no lava to fall into this time. Or giant angels shooting at me."

There weren't either of these things. Instead, Delsin was standing on a platform, three gigantic playing cards (2 twos of clubs and 1 five of clubs), which was somehow hanging in the middle of the sky. All around him, groups (flocks?) of playing cards flew or floated serenely through the air, their slow graceful movements like large, languid birds. Whether they were flying under their own power or gliding on strong air currents, he couldn't tell. In the distance, just visible through a fine sheet of cloud, was a massive open card house, suspended in mid-air, ignoring gravity in its entirety. When it came to floating structures, this place was much like that game world Eugene had been hiding in.

Hopefully, this one and any others he came across wouldn't drop from the sky the same way Eugene's had dropped into that lake of lava. Less burning, lot more breaking.

Approaching the edge of the platform, Delsin jumped when a card came out of nowhere and stuck itself to the platform.

"Whoa! Ok, that didn't happen before." He gingerly tested the new card with a toe before stepping onto it. He then jumped up and down a few times to find that it didn't even budge beneath his denser mass.

"Conduit-proof. Nice." A whirring noise started up as a tube made of cards appeared in front of him, blowing a large volume of air and smaller cards, the latter disappearing as the force lifting them dissipated. Eyeing the tube and another, higher platform, Delsin thought for a second before smoke dashing into the "card vent."

A few moments later, he landed on the higher platform in a crouch, grinning at the familiar sensation of traveling through a ventilation shaft. Rising, he looked ahead at the newly discovered playground in front of him and grinned even wider.

"This is going to be EPIC!"

Using a combination of running, jumping, smoke and vent dashing, with some thrusters, Delsin began to make headway across this world of cards and clouds. He laughed at the thought of Reggie's face when he told him about this. Then he remembered that he couldn't tell Reggie about this, couldn't tell boast to him about any of the awesome things he could do just to see him get flustered. His laugh was cut off.

He stayed quiet for the next few minutes. HIs silence was only broken when the ever-lengthening slide he found himself on ended in a pack of cards, launching him skyward.

"WHHOOOAAAA!"

Landing on the platform of the card house after being launched like that, Delsin thanked his lucky stars that Fetch hadn't been around to hear him yell. Looking around the floating house of cards, he was just in time to see a trenchcoat vanish behind a corner. Darting forward as a cloud of embers and ash, Delsin came to a stop just before the corner. Best to play it cool; he was getting real tired of every Conduit he met running from and fighting him. Why were they so against sharing their powers with him? It wasn't like he was hurting them. It was more of a weird "zinging" sensation, rather than a painful one.

"Hey lady," he called out, "Uh, nice work out there in the yard, bet the Dupes never thought that one of their own choppers would—whoa!"

Delsin was both cut off and knocked over by the swarm of blue smoke particles and…butterflies, that swarmed right into him. Clambering to his feet, he looked up to see the smoke/butterfly cloud coalesce into Trenchcoat-and-Stockings Girl, who was running straight towards the edge.

"Wait, stop, don't do it!" Delsin yelled as he dashed to his feet. Conduits were incredibly hard to kill, but there had to be miles of empty air underneath them, and he didn't want to see the limits of Conduit stamina and healing tested like that. Even if it was inside a computer.

Unheeding, the girl kept running and leapt out into open space. The world froze for an instant as the girl reached the apex of her leap and began to fall downwards. Then she stopped falling, right in mid-air.

The girl was standing up, perfectly fine and not falling to her death, with nothing underneath her.

"What the…" Delsin trailed off. When the girl began to somehow float upward, he dashed forward and leapt. He felt his hands grasp the very edge of some invisible platform and held on tight as he pulled himself up. "How are you doing that?" he grunted out.

The girl turned to him, and he got a good look at her face for the first time. She was gorgeous. An oval face with glowing, peach skin framed with long, dark hair, and two emerald-green eyes regarded him with a mixture of amusement and surprise. Delsin felt his brain short-circuit and his grip begin to give out, forcing him to focus on not falling to his death. Gravity was such a buzzkill.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Rowe," she said, her voice tinted with a faint British accent, "but I have important business to attend to, and there's no time at all." They stopped rising and the girl turned towards another card house. "Perhaps another time," she added just before she smoke/butterfly dashed in a straight line, with nothing underneath her again, towards a closing door in the structure.

"Wait, I wasn't done—oh come on!" Delsin phased the rest of the way onto the invisible platform and began running after the girl, only to step off into empty air. After a millisecond of panic from looking straight down through a dozen miles, he was really glad that smoke let him fly for short distances.

Landing, Delsin was just able to phase through the remaining one-inch gap left by the descending card door. Just in time to see Stockings exit the opposite end of the card house. He briefly noted that she had perfected a technique with her skirt that was almost hypnotic. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to gawk like a teenage boy.

"Ok, now I've had it," Delsin muttered. He began dashing forward as fast as his powers would let him. Closing the gap between them, he was about to reach and grab her shoulder when she began doing the same thing, keeping ahead of him. "There's no point in running you know," he called out after her, "I'm a master at chasing skirts!"

"I'm sure your crowning achievement was catching Sims in the throes of a video game," the girl replied in a derisive tone as she jumped onto a card pack and soared upward, with Delsin following in close pursuit.

She had also mastered the ancient art of Caustic Tongue.

Another card pack later and Delsin was no closer to catching her. He had just tried using a sulfur bomb and she had just held her breath and closed her eyes before phasing away. Apparently, smoke wasn't going to cut it. Glancing around the newest card house, Delsin noticed the card that was glowing neon. Reaching out to it, the attempt to absorb its energy was a success.

"Let's see you outrun light!" Delsin grinned as he ran over to the edge and looked up at the much-smaller group of cards where she was. Spying her, Delsin narrowed his eyes and focused laser insight. One shot to the legs, and this chase would be over.

Catching sight of the purple glow coming off of her legs, Delsin was about to let one fly when he saw what she was doing. Raising a hand, Stockings shot a beam of neon energy into the sky, but instead of burning a hole in a cloud, the beam stopped and formed a platform, alongside a few others. Unlike the cards, these platforms looked like crayon-drawn squares that had been lifted off a page and fixed in midair. A few of them were even moving around in simple patterns like in some video game.

Switching out of laser insight, Delsin watched the new "Crayon Platforms" disappear from sight.

"Ok," he thought aloud, "that is the strangest use of neon I have ever seen in my life. And maybe the most awesome."

Getting to the platform was as easy as a photon jump. If only the girl wasn't running along her newly made, invisible platforms. Delsin was about to run after her (too dangerous to shoot while she was suspended in the air like that) when he noticed the block of ice sitting on some kind of weird dais, like it was holding it down or something. He stared at it for a moment before using laser insight to find the crayon platforms and jumping up onto them. He raced over to the edge closest to the girl in lightspeed, stopping short of going over.

"Hey!" he yelled, putting his hands to his mouth. "I don't know what your powers are, but to a power-absorption guy like me, they look really interesting. Can you please stop so we can talk about this?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Rowe," the girl replied, raising her voice so he could hear her and her annoyance, "but I have more important and productive things to do right now than sate your appetite for powers." He swore that was she rolling her eyes at him. "Now why don't you get yourself out of this digital domain, and just jump off. You'll find yourself back in Curdun Cay."

Delsin looked down at the miles and miles of empty air between him and the ground, and then back up at her. "No way," he said flatly. "You can't keep your powers from me," he added as he brought his arm up, both it and his eyes glowing with neon. "You can run, but you cannot hide!"

Her flight from the barrage of lasers he shot at her almost outstripped the speed of the cards that flew in to guide her path, Delsin moving constantly to keep her in sight. That didn't keep her from saying what she thought of him though.

"Of all the stupid-." She dashed right through a laser beam.

"Pigheaded-." She leapt to the next card as the one before had a hole drilled through it.

"Idiots!" she yelled as she hit a card pack and soared into the air. "I swear if you ruin this, I'll turn both the Jabberwock and the Red Queen on you!"

"Jabberwock?" Delsin said as he ran down the path she had taken. This girl was both beautiful and strange, and that wasn't just considering her very weird assortment of abilities.

A photon jump and a card pack later, and he was hovering straight towards yet another floating house of cards. He landed on it and began to run at lightspeed towards the girl. "Let's see you outrun this!" he yelled.

Just as he stopped and was about to trap her in a stasis bubble, the girl jumped onto a weird, blue mushroom and shot straight up into the sky, a sarcastic laugh on her lips. "Why run when I can fly?" she called out in a taunting tone just before she vanished into the clouds above.

Delsin stood there for a few moments, craning his neck to look straight up, his expression stupefied. When his neck began to complain, he turned his gaze back down until it came to the mushroom. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he sauntered over to it, crouched down and studied the fungus.

It was very large for a mushroom, and it was a periwinkle shade of blue. It looked somewhat like a layer cake that Betty had baked a while back: layers of different sizes, getting new one getting smaller as it grew taller, ending with a tiny nub of pastry. Only Betty's cake had been chocolate brown instead of blue, and there hadn't a spring underneath it powerful enough to shoot someone into the sky. If he had tried stepping on the cake (and that had never once occurred to him), the only thing launching him would have been Betty, throwing him into the bay. With half the tribe's help. Including Reggie.

Forcing that thought away, Delsin pulled himself back into reality, if this land of flying spades and floating aces could be called that. He let out a short laugh before walking a short distance back and then running full speed at the mushroom. "Let's go for a ride!"

A few minutes later, Delsin landed on a ruined bridge, laughing. He glanced back at the gigantic slide that he had just slid down and shook his head. "That would violate so many safety regulations in the real world," he added breathlessly.

Turning back, Delsin looked beyond the bridge where he had landed. "Now this looks more like something you'd find in Heaven's Hellfire. Just needs a touch of lava, or something else nasty, and less green to make it creepy."

The castle was something else; high walls with turrets that were only topped by the tower that bore a massive heart-shaped symbol at its summit. The massive canyon served as a buttress against any intruders, save for the cobblestone bridge whose supports vanished into the mist below. It was a ruin without a doubt, with the vines and moss growing on and around the walls and heart-based architecture. In some places, the vines were the only thing holding up sections of the castle, fitting into grooves made before the plants grew into them. And speaking of hearts, just as the massive doors of the entrance closed up ahead, he caught sight of a now-familiar trenchcoat vanishing behind them.

Delsin shot forward as a streak of light, intent on catching up with the British conduit. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw an odd little railroad, like one of those Victorian locomotives puffing away on a railroad track situated high above the mist like a bridge. The huge head of a really strange animal protruded from the engine's window, but he had other things to do right now than investigate weird animals. Maybe another time.

Coming up on the massive heart-shaped gates of the castle, which remained closed to him, Delsin simply ran up them before coming to a stop at the top the wall. Looking down into the courtyard below, he turned on laser insight in case the girl was in his line of sight.

She wasn't, but a bunch of other things were. Scattered around the courtyard were statues that looked like massive chess pieces, some of them red, others white, towering over the grass and flowers. Imposing horse-headed knights armed with swords and shields, rooks built like massive bouncers, and weird, little cyclops things that he assumed were pawns dotted the grounds, presided over by a solemn-faced King statue who stood by yet another entrance.

"Looks like I just found Augustine's favorite computer game," Delsin quipped, smirking at the chess statues. On a ledge opposite him, almost hidden by a red bishop with a massive nose, was a large, lavender drawing. Looking like something that a kid would draw on a wall in crayon, it depicted a girl standing triumphant over a bunch of…cards with skeleton heads and blobs with doll heads?

Delsin shook his head as the drawing vanished into streaks of barely-noticeable lavender sparkles after he turned off his insight vision. "This place can't get any weirder," he muttered as he jumped down into the courtyard.

No sooner did he land that the universe decided to prove him wrong.

Scrabbling out of the flowers near the base of the bishop statue, a huge playing card with arms, legs, and a head rose to its feet, loudly cracking its shoulders and neck. The joints at which its limbs joined to its body were blood red, like someone had sewn them on; the head was a skull covered by a black hood, its one big eye socket the shape of a club, same as the massive, bloody hole that dominated its chest. Straightening its back with a final grinding crack, the card/skeleton/zombie/whatever-the-heck-it-was threw its head back and roared, a deep, throaty, challenging noise.

"What the hell!?" Delsin shot the thing in its spindly legs, subduing it in neon bounds. Before he could get a chance to get a better look at it, more of them shot up from the ground nearby, all four of the different suits grinning at him with lipless mouths, their fingers twitching to rip into his flesh.

Delsin quickly learned a few things about fight the "card zombies"; one, don't get within their arm's reach, they were much stronger than they looked. Two, it was very hard to hit them in their narrow legs, especially when they were running towards you. And three, they would get right back up after being downed by body shots.

Head shots it was.

As the last one exploded outwards in a shower of red neon particles, something else began coming up out of the ground. A big grease stain coalesced and then just bubbled straight up, forming itself into a blob. The blob grew two long, gooey arms that almost brushed the ground next to its four, stubby legs. Pipes that emitted a foul stench protruded from its back, its black consistency belying the white, porcelain doll face that served as its head. It somehow opened its mouth and let out a sound that was between a deafening roar and a sickening gurgle.

Delsin stared at the thing with a deadpan expression. "Nope," he finally said.

Its doll face was shattered a second later by a phosphor beam, the rest of its body exploding outward in a wave of disgusting muck. Delsin instinctively jumped away from the goo, yelping when a drop of the stuff landed on his hand, burning him. The ooze scorched the ground as it seeped through the grass, sending up a disgusting odor of burned plants and inorganic chemicals, while the body of pipes rolled away. The doll face was nothing but shattered pieces speckled with black.

"Ow, ow, ow!" Delsin wiped furiously at the spot on his hand with a sleeve until the burning sensation wore off, leaving a burn mark on his hand and a nasty stain on the sleeve. As his fast healing got to work on the burn, he looked at the remains of the creature in disgust.

"Ok, either that girl has got the most twisted imagination in all of mankind's history, or Augustine's a fan of the most twisted game of all time," he said, kicking at the pipes and then groaning as he caught a whiff of the stuff burning the rubber on his shoe, leaving a nasty-looking and smelling stain. "Oh gross. Either way, it doesn't bode well for these guys."

He began racing through the castle's rooms and over its walls, searching for the girl. He came across more drawings, most of them depicting the girl fighting the card zombies, the goo monsters, and other things. The worst of them was the giant, long-fingered puppet and the tentacle monster with two more heads—inside its mouth. If these things were in this place with him, he'd stick with the zombies and the goo monsters, thank you very much.

The drawings also warned him of ambushes by the zombies (who far outnumbered the goo creatures), which proved especially helpful when the "big brother" versions of the things showed up. Card zombies with armor and massive maces, and one big, three-headed goo monster that liked chucking fire balls at him.

That last one had been a real pain in the butt, along with all of the other areas it had managed to hit. The smoke it produced was plentiful enough to be absorbed, except it had felt different from normal smoke. Running through it during the fight, Delsin had gotten a good whiff of it. Somehow, it oozed of a corruption and filth that belied the lies Augustine had told Seattle, a corruption that promised to seep into every pore of his being and twist him into something monstrous. He stuck with neon throughout that fight.

It didn't look like he was making any progress in finding the girl (elusive little thing), until he began finding the same thing back at Curdun Cay that had led him to the computer: bodies, or rather, what little the cards and goo creatures left behind when they died. The creatures seemed to be attacking them at different intervals and places, and like him, she was kicking their keisters back into what computer-generated hole that they had crawled out of. Definitely an attractive quality, especially with that British accent.

The remains from the girl's battles became fresher and fresher until he came across a tower after getting out of the overgrown hedge maze. At its very base was a tunnel, its mouth strewn with the armored card zombies' maces and the goo monsters' porcelain faces. Cocking an ear towards the cave, Delsin heard something that sounded very much like the usage of Conduit power. He was on the right track.

Glancing down the tunnel, Delsin looked at the new slide that led down into the darkness and shook his head.

"Nah, I think one super suicide slide is enough for one day." Off to one side of the tunnel was a weird pillar of something. Delsin had noticed various pillars spread throughout the castle and its grounds, and they had proven to be like the pillars of neon and smoke that had been in He-Who-Dwell's lair. Only a few of them had been his elements, however. He had no idea what most of them were, but judging from the static he was getting from this one, his upcoming spelunking expedition would be a breeze.

Raising his hand and willing the stuff to flow into it, Delsin grinned as he felt the energetic buzz of video replace his almost-depleted neon reserve. Flying over that slide and down into the depths would be interesting, and better than trying to keep from falling off the slide edge and into oblivion.

Skimming over the slide's gleaming surface, he noticed two things about this area of the castle: one, it was much newer than the rest of the place, like someone had done some renovating. The marble wasn't as aged or cracked, and there was nowhere near as much plant life growing over everything. The second thing was the smell. It was very faint, but horrendous once you got a whiff of it. Like something had rotted in there for years and then died.

"Ok," Delsin muttered to himself as he came to a landing at the end of the slide, "this place could not get any weirder." A few moments later. "Crap! I should not have said that," Delsin burst out, swinging his arms and letting them collapse to his sides. "Let me guess, a Yoda-like character is going to appear and start giving cryptic advice."

A deep laugh cackled behind him, prompting Delsin to shoot around, his chain turning into his giant video sword and ready for action.

"Ok, I can hear you! Come out with your hands up, and I won't introduce you to my big friend!"

When nothing, feline or otherwise presented itself, he backed away slowly into the center of the room and began looking around for the exit. It took him a few moments to notice the paper tag hanging from the blue heart decoration on the wall. Taking it, he read 'Shoot me.'

"Shoot what, or who?"

Flipping the tag over, he found the words 'The heart, you fool' on the back.

"Oh…hey!" he added indignantly, glaring down at the offending snip of paper.

Igniting it with a burst of video, he turned back to the heart and blasted it until it broke into marble shards. A door slid up, revealing a passageway beyond it. Giving the room one last searching glare, Delsin turned and hurried down the passage.

Using video to light his way, he jogged down the darkened hallways, blasting apart the hearts whenever he came across them. Seriously, what was with this place and hearts? Or with the flying cards and the card zombies? And what on Earth had the guy (or girl) who made this place been smoking when they came up with it? Cocaine? Marijuana? Opium for crying out loud?

It didn't help that the smell was getting stronger as he continued deeper and deeper in.

"Hopefully, absorbing this girl's power and memories will give me some answers," he thought to himself. "And judging from all the Dupes and freaks she's been taking down, she must have one heck of a power!" He quickened his pace on that thought.

Coming to the end of a staircase, Delsin found himself entering one of the largest caverns he had ever seen. The bottom was shrouded in mist, the light coming from chandeliers hanging down from an almost invisible ceiling. The smell was strongest here, enough to make him gag if he took a deep sniff. A large, narrow marble outcropping led out into the middle of the cavern, coming to meet some sort of dais. And right there on the dais, shifting and rotating a thick cylinder of interlocking segments, was the girl, her back facing him as she pushed and pulled at the cylinder, growling at it in a low, threatening voice.

Delsin was about fifteen yards away from her when she spoke.

"I have to admit, Mr. Rowe," she said, causing him to jump, "I wasn't expecting you here so soon. I thought for sure that you would find our present location too disorientating." The cylinder suddenly clicked together and she nodded in satisfaction. "I take it the Card Guards and the Ruin didn't prove too challenging?"

Delsin went for the nonchalant approach. "The card zombies and the goo creeps? Naw, those guys were total push-overs." He clapped his hands together, shifting his feet. "I, uh, take it you're not mad about what happened out there in the place with the flying cards." He cleared his throat. "Anymore, that is."

"To the contrary, Mr. Rowe, I'm furious." The girl finally turned to look at him, her emerald green eyes blazing so hard that he took a step back. "How can you be so stupid? Pursuing me in hopes of gaining my powers when the Conduits imprisoned in Curdun Cay are dreaming of freedom?" She cocked her head to one side and gave him a searching/accusing look. "Are you even here to rescue them, or is this all just a power play?"

"Of course I'm here to rescue them!" Delsin all but yelled at her, poking himself in the chest. "I just thought that, you know, I could do that and get your powers at the same time."

Saying it out loud, he realized how dumb it sounded. Before she could capitalize on that, he pointed an accusing finger at her and added, "And just what have you been doing since you got here, huh? Running around this freakshow of a computer game, killing a bunch of B-grade horror monsters? Yeah, I can see how that would better the lives of our fellow Conduits."

She looked at him, her gaze unwavering, before she reached back to the cylinder and clapped a hand down on it. It shot down into the dais with a whoosh, followed by a loud humming. Her eyes never once left his while the entire place began to vibrate. He held it as well as he could with the platform trembling beneath his feet.

Finally, she opened her mouth. "Mr. Rowe, I am going to boot your nethers. Anything you'd like to say before I get started?"

Delsin brought his sword back and hefted in front of him. "Yeah," he answered, "what's your name?"

The girl reached into her coat and took out a large kitchen knife, ornate carvings set into the blade and the handle. She swung it to one side and it lit up with neon energy, streaks of red and blue flowing along its length with black particles dancing on its razor-sharp edge. Her face set into a smirk, her green eyes gleaming with an almost mad joy, she answered.

"My name, Delsin Rowe of the Akomish, is Alice Liddell."

Delsin took that as his signal to charge. Shooting forward in a blaze of digital angel wings, he brought his sword up and swung it down. Before the sword hit the ground, he was enveloped in a cloud of blue butterflies and smoke particles.

Coughing, he turned around just in time to deflect her neon-enhanced knife. Video clashed with neon as Delsin countered her quick strikes with his monster of a blade that was far better for bashing opponents and sending them flying as opposed to actual sword fighting (the neon blade would be better for this).

Showers of blue video sparks flew alongside neon red, blue, and black, the glow of each weapon reflecting off their opponent's eyes, Delsin's wary and watchful, the girl's focused and shining. Delsin felt sweat forming on his forehead as he struggled to keep the neon blade at bay, his breathing labored from fighting someone with just as much strength and far more skill than he (not that he would ever admit the last bit). The weapons emitted a buzz like a lightsaber whenever they contacted, emitting a quick burst of light at each strike.

"Alice" finally got an opening and sheared off one of the buttons on his vest, which bounced off the edge and vanished into the fog below. The smell of burnt cloth filling his nostrils, Delsin deactivated his sword and shot away on his wings. Bringing himself to a stop and hovering in midair, his arms and legs buzzing with gravity-defying video energy, he raised his right hand, aimed, and unleashed a torrent of pixels right at Alice.

She countered by dodging the stream of projectiles, zipping all over the dais in butterfly form. As soon as he stopped shooting, she returned fire, with smoke shots. Surging away from the offending ember-charged shots, he let out a laugh. When Alice finally had to stop shooting at him to recharge, he began hovering again by one of the chandeliers.

"So you're a smoke Conduit, huh?" he called out. "If I had known that, I would have just let you run around this carnival house. I already got that power in spades!"

"Does your hand happen to include any aces from other suits?" She raised her hand again, but this time, a ball of electricity shot from her fingers and right towards him.

"Holy crap!" Surging again, Delsin felt every hair on his head and fiber in his beanie stand up on end just before the electricity ball hit the chandelier that had been behind him not a second earlier and explode. The blast was enough to send him flying back onto the marble outcropping. Jumping to his feet, he turned invisible, generating a digital angel to help him. He began to hurry towards her on the balls of his feet, quick and nimble, counting on his wingman and his laser to distract her.

Before the poor angel could fire, Alice chucked another electricity ball at him, disintegrating it into pixelated pieces. Delsin broke out into a dash, hoping to disable her before she could do the same to him.

Instead of shooting electricity at his advancing footsteps, a fine mist began pouring out of Alice's hands, coating the area in front of her in ice. When the spray hit Delsin, he cried out at the sensation of ice forming on his skin, so cold it burned. Shivering beyond control and trying to wrench himself out of the ice that was rapidly forming at his feet, he remembered a second too late he was in a fight and looked up just in time to see the incoming electricity ball.

He learned right there that there were few contrasts greater than almost being frozen alive and then getting electrocuted and blown up at once.

From his new position on the floor, he wondered what his hair would look like if he wasn't wearing his signature beanie. Probably like one of those old movie versions of Dr. Frankenstein, or maybe Einstein? Did the real scientist ever get teased for having a surname like Shelley's character? What had he been doing before getting shocked and concussed? Oh yeah, he had been in a fight with a trenchcoat-wearing girl named Alice with one big kitchen knife and one weird Conduit power.

"Wait a minute. Power, or powers?"

Before he could begin to struggle to his feet, someone planted a small booted foot on his chest. Opening his eyes, Delsin saw the neon blade of the kitchen knife just a few inches away from his neck, its owner smirking down at him.

His brain thought, "Dang, I didn't know someone could make a condescending grin like that look good." His mouth said, "You an absorbing Conduit?"

"Yes," Alice replied, an eyebrow going up. "I do absorb the powers of other Conduits, though not quite the way you do. Your supporters have been calling you a 'powerhouse' Conduit on the web ever since you demonstrated your true power on Augustine. I suppose that I would be called a…" she rubbed her chin and squinted in thought for a moment, "a 'Stitch' Conduit. Yes, I quite like the sound of that."

"No wonder you don't want me absorbing your powers," he wheezed out, the foot on his heaving chest not doing him any favors. "All that power from one drain."

"Assuming you could absorb my powers at all," she replied, looking back down at him. "I take it that you look inside the minds of the Conduits you leech your powers from as well?"

"Yeah," he answered, "so what?"

"Well, it just so happens that I have no desire whatsoever to have anyone poking around in my head." A haunted look crept into her eyes before it quickly left. "Now, I'm going to give you one chance to walk away. When the dais stops that infernal humming, we'll find ourselves back in the Curdun Cay Control Room, where we can go about getting our fellow Conduits out of this hellhole." She lowered the blade and moved her foot to a more comfortable position (barely). "Does that sound acceptable?"

Delsin looked up into her calculating gaze and pretended to give it some thought. Oh, he was definitely going to try and get her powers; no way was he passing up this opportunity. He didn't see why she was so concerned about him getting into her head. It wasn't like he was going to learn about any weird kinks she might have. Hopefully not.

He could feel the energy of a Karma Bomb surging through him from his fights through the castle and his battle with her, ready to be unleashed. And since Hellfire Swarm couldn't be used indoors unless there was a really high ceiling, he needed to get her outside where he could rain down angels on her head. Easy enough.

"I'm all for getting the Conduits out of here, but should that really ruin the good thing we've got going?" He grinned up at her and winked.

Alice's momentary surprise at his pathetic flirting was all he needed. He raised both hands before she could react and unleashed twin torrents of energy right into her center of mass, sending her flying back to the dais. He was on his feet in an instant, running back towards the stairs and surging forward with video whenever he got the space. The scream of anger that echoed behind him only served to fuel his flight.

Getting to the surface, Delsin shot over to the other end of the courtyard. A video Karma Bomb usually worked best with some distance.

Alice shot out of the tunnel and turned straight towards him, her eyes flashing with video energy.

"Here's a well-known fact, Mr. Rowe," she growled out through clenched teeth. "In Wonderland, I rule supreme."

And then she began to grow. Within seconds she was easily a hundred feet tall, her green eyes smirking down at him, her form flickering around like a video game boss being played on a computer that could barely handle the game. If Delsin had been holding anything, he would have dropped it in awe. He-Who-Dwells had just been knocked down to second place by She-Who-Grows.

He moved out of the way of the giant foot that almost squashed him just in time. He shot up the wall and into the sky on blue angel wings, desperately ducking and weaving to avoid the swipes of the angry giantess. Delsin turned around and shot by her face to startle her, give him a few much-needed seconds. He got an eyeful of two flared nostrils and an eye full of green fire, her hot breath almost nudging him off course. Behind her, he stopped in midair and shot torrents of video energy at her. She brushed off the impacting energy and swiped at him, finally knocking him out of the sky.

Delsin was sent flying through the air, finally crashing into the side of a castle turret. Groaning from the double impacts and just managing to hold on to the surrounding stone to keep from falling, he looked up to find her stalking right towards him, her form flickering but very solid, as his aching front could attest. How come he always running into giants that wanted to clobber him?

Then again, she was a much bigger target now.

Surging to the top of the turret, he faced her and yelled, "Thanks for giving my angels something to aim at, ya B-movie reject!"

Raising his arms, he tapped into the wellspring of power that was begging to be let out and sent a burst of energy at Alice. His entire body buzzing like static from an old TV monitor, he formed the angels and sent them flying upward, the sky darkening as they multiplied, signaling them all to come crashing down into the giant with a downward sweep of his arms.

He had been grinning when he fired off the Swarm, but that left as he watched Alice shrink down to normal size, his angels crashing into the ground as they attempted to hit her. A normal-size girl again, she dodged and phased, the remaining angels failing to hit her and impacting on the ground instead. As the last angel bit the dust, Delsin realized what had just happened: she had anticipated his next move and made him waste an entire karma bomb. Ok, it was time to bring the heat.

Shooting up into the air, he caught sight of her just beyond the spattering of blue pixels that signaled where the last angel had hit. He aimed, and then hit her with a tracer. The next instant the Bloodthirsty Blades shot through the air towards her. And this time, his attack caught her off guard. Thanking himself for saving them, he kept sending the Blades to pummel her, the vring sound of their flight a familiar and welcome sound, the odd ozone smell they left in their wake also familiar, and not so welcome.

He had to dodge the last set of blades (she had somehow deflected them with what looked like an umbrella). He could see her, hunched over and gasping for breath, particles of various elements swirling around her body to heal her. He came to a landing a few feet away from her and called out.

"Ok," he clapped his hand for effect, "now that we've established who's winning this fight, how about we shake hands and call it good?" He held out his right hand, wondering if he was about to lose it.

She looked up at him, her eyes now flickering between emerald green and a really freaky red. By the time Delsin had taken a step back out of surprise, she was charging towards him, her mouth open in a soundless roar and her eyes blazing blood red.

She leapt into the air and phased at the same time, avoiding his fire. As she rematerialized above him, a gigantic, white hobby horse appeared in her outstretched arms, a unicorn horn atop its head. Delsin blinked, it was the only action he was capable of at that exact instant.

It was enough for Alice to bring the gigantic-toy-turned-weapon and clock him on the side of the head with it with a loud crack, loosening every tooth in his head and sending him flying into a wall.

Crashing to the ground, a massive headache coming on, he groaned loudly before spitting something small and white onto the ground. With his vision blurring and refocusing again and again, it took him a few moments to identify the white thing as a chunk of stone or something, and not one of his teeth. From how smooth it felt against his cheek before the full force of the blow had impacted, he would guess it was marble.

Getting to his feet for the second time, he was suddenly aware of the heavy breathing only a few feet away. Looking up, he found himself staring straight into Alice's acid-green irises, which weren't flickering red anymore, but were still angry. She was also holding that huge toy in her hands, hefting it as if it wasn't taller than her and many times her weight.

"Mr. Rowe," she ground out, "you have no idea how much of a bullet you just dodged."

Before he could laugh and point out that she had just brained him with a freaking hobby horse made out of marble, the world shuddered. They glanced back towards the tunnel, where a massive white light throbbed and grew just before it exploded outward, swallowing the world around them. Delsin felt the ground drop out from beneath them, only there was no gravity to make them fall. The intense white of the void made him squint and focus on the only thing that wasn't blinding him, and she blinded him in a different way.

The two of them just existed there for a moment, her hobby horse vanishing with the world. She smiled a genuine smile, not one of those jaded smirks he had seen so far, just before she vanished without a sound or light to accompany her going.

Delsin hung there alone in the white oblivion before he too disappeared.

Reality came back with a jolt as they landed in front of the Curdun Cay Master Computer, gravity forcing the two to their hands and knees. Barely registering the collective gasps and yells of the Curdun Cay staff, Delsin stumbled forward and grabbed Alice's hands before she could attack or phase away. Power flowed from her arms and into his, the process of draining power familiar to him by now. Only this time, he could feel power rushing from his arm and down into hers, like she was doing the same thing to him.

Her expression morphed into a one of indignation just before it blurred with the surroundings in a swirling whirlwind of color and shadow. The series of images accompanying a power drain began, but something was wrong. Instead of the full-on absorption that he had done with Eugene and Augustine, this felt more like the first times with Hank and Fetch, incomplete and partial. And this time, he knew what it was like to have someone poking around in his head.

A photo with a bearded man, two women by his side, and a little girl whose eyes were almost too large for her face. A burning house overshadowed by a giant lizard. Two large men in striped shirts trying to hold a teenaged girl in a straitjacket down. A cat with mad eyes and a wide smile. The same girl wielding a knife and facing some monstrous thing. The girl on a couch talking to a centaur with wire-rim glasses. A toy rabbit whose head exploded in a geyser of blood and black goo. A monstrous train spewing out armies of the goo creatures from its smokestack. The same centaur, the goo oozing from his eyes and down into his beard, his mouth full of fangs. Rows upon rows of dolls on hooks like a sick assembly line. A key with a strange symbol. The girl fighting the centaur and pushing him into the path of the train. The girl running from new enemies, only to turn into a white, red-eyed demon.

At the same time, Delsin could feel Alice looking through his mind, but instead of looking at his life's story, she was looking at his…motivations. At his character traits, both the good and the bad, and how they had evolved over time. The only memories that she seemed interested in were the ones of the choices he had made ever since becoming a Conduit: Deciding to turn himself in at the fishery. Sparing that looter's life in the tunnel. Healing the downed civilians. Stopping drug deals. Choosing not to strike at the Lifeline rally. Convincing Fetch to spare the lives of the drug dealers. Helping Eugene to save the suspected Conduits from DUP custody. Sparing Hank's life. And deciding to expose Augustine. All of those choices, and their horrendous alternatives, only considered for mere moments, but still there.

He came to as suddenly as it had begun, sore and disorientated like he always was after a power drain. Alice seemed to be suffering from the same symptoms. Using a desk to pull herself up, she glanced towards him and said, "Did you get anything?"

Delsin held up his hand and video energy swirled around it to his surprise. "What the…I went through the power drain thing with you and I didn't get a thing out of it?!" He grabbed a chair to pull himself up, but since it was one of those roller chairs, it rolled away before he could get a good grip.

"We're both power absorbers," Alice grunted as she pulled herself to her full height and almost fell back down. "Our powers cancelled each other out. And by the way, your mind reading technique was easy to rebuff, like setting up a steel wall to keep a woodpecker out."

"Hey, I learned Eugene and Augustine's stories in one go," Delsin protested, finally getting to his feet. "I got Hank and Fetch's in two, but I was still getting the whole power leeching thing down."

"They had never trained to protect their minds," Alice said, glancing towards the DUP personnel who were watching them like hawks from the corner. "They never considered that they might need to, while I did. May we continue this conversation in the hall?" She motioned towards tech support. "I don't care for eavesdroppers, even unintentional ones."

Out in the hall, they settled into a quick walk. Delsin had no idea where they were going and after a long silence asked, "Uh, where are we going, and why haven't you brought out the giant toy horse to kick my butt?"

"We're going to the main prison yard, where we will find that those abominable cuffs have fallen off and the doors to the outside open with a mere press of a button," she answered, a smug tone in her voice.

"Wait a minute," Delsin said, realizing something. "That whole thing back there with the computer, that was you hacking into the controls for the cuffs and turning them off?"

"Yes," Alice said, half of her mouth quirking up in a smile, "and as to not giving you the pounding that you deserve for interfering," she glared at him for a moment, "your intentions weren't malicious, though the attempt as a whole was rather stupid."

"Hey!"

"It was!" she insisted. "Did you not once consider the fact that you lose all your powers after absorbing a new one, including that very one? And that you have no idea where they keep the Conduit trackers?"

"I…" Delsin trailed off as he realized she was right. If it hadn't been for Eugene back at Augustine's tower, she would have wiped the floor with him sooner or later. She had been toying with him! All the time expecting her experience to win out over his hit-and-run tactics. And if he had managed to absorb even one of Alice's powers, he'd be helpless right then.

"Crap," he finally got out.

"That sounds about right," Alice said, a prim smile on her face. Before Delsin could get off a smart remark, his phone rang.

"Yo, D!" Fetch's voice rang out of the speakers. "You're never gonna believe this, but the cuffs just came off all the Conduits a few minutes ago, and they're handin' the Dupes one hell of a smackdown! You wanna kick some Dupe keister and give that 'Conduits-and-Normals-can-coexist' speech, you better get down here fast!"

"I'll see you in just a moment," he answered. "I'll be bringing some backup, so leave a few for us, ok?" He disconnected before turning to Alice just in time to get another face full of paper butterflies and blue smoke.

"Better hurry, Mr. Rowe," she called out from up ahead. "I have no intention of leaving any for you!"

Delsin grinned and shot forward on digitized angel wings. Whoever this "Alice Liddell" was, it didn't look like things would get boring with her around.

Chapter Text

The Good, the Mad, and the Infamous

Infamous

As Delsin reformed from the Orbital Drop, he thought back to the smoke from Reggie’s truck he had absorbed to top off the video he had used to get back to the mainland.

“Good thing I went with that, and not concrete,” he thought to himself, nudging a smoking ember from the longhouse with his foot. “I need to get a Karma Bomb for concrete next time I find a Core Relay,” he remarked out loud, studying the destruction he had just caused.

The entrance to the Akomish Nation Longhouse was now the center of a crater, the wooden building a flaming ruin and Betty obliterated without a trace. Next to the smoking remains of the eagle that had adorned the top of the totem pole, Betty’s wheelchair lay, smashed and mangled beyond repair, one rubber-burned wheel turning idly in the breeze. She was gone.

“Well, Betty,” Delsin muttered as he approached the chair, “you remember that story with the hunter and the wounded deer, where he puts it out of its misery? You wouldn’t let me help you, so you really didn’t give me much of a choice.”

Moans begin rising out of the wreckage of the Longhouse, interspaced by a scream for help every few seconds. Remembering that most of the patients had been located towards the back of the longhouse, Delsin cursed under his breath as he passed the wheelchair and further into the fiery ruins. The flames he had flinched away from only two weeks earlier fazed him no longer, their heat and licking tongues promising only fuel for the Conduit’s favorite power.

Smoke was his favorite for three reasons: First, it was the first power he had acquired, and therefore the one he had the most experience with. The second reason was the fighting style it allowed him. Quick movement with the ability to phase around solid objects, the smoking chain allowed for a punishing melee weapon, he could get up close and personal with his fists, the cinder missiles were just plain fun to launch, and the orbital drop was to die for. And third, it was just perfect for what he did.

The destruction he caused wherever he went, the flying bodies of Lifeline activists that disintegrated into ash, the cars that exploded from hitting a Dupe APC with a cinder missile, reforming in the middle of a crater after an orbital drop and surveying the resulting mayhem, it was so Smoke. The heat and volatility he felt whenever he absorbed the element fit the resulting chaos like a glove. It was the perfect element for him as a Conduit, for the force of nature he embodied.

“After everything I went through, Betty, that was your answer for me? ‘You are Akomish no longer’,” he groused, punching a weakened door. “Augustine stuck me with her concrete daggers-,” he charged up a cinder blast and sent the door and its frame flying.

“They wouldn’t let me on that damn bus-,” he fired a cinder missile at the remains of the totem pole, sending splinters flying through the air.

“I was shot and blown up more times than I can count-,” he kicked the dead body of an older man into the air, hardly noticing when it disintegrated into ashes and chunks of concrete.

“Treated like some kind of leper the entire time-,” this time the body he kicked was still alive, the groans of the burned man who had worked as a grocer before Augustine’s torture turning into a high-pitched scream just before his fiery death.

“Almost taken captive by the Dupes-,” the last survivor, a girl he had briefly dated in high school, raised her hands in a meager self-defense, her weak pleas ignored as he sunk smoke shots into her concrete-riddled body, looking away in angry disinterest as the flesh burned away from the stone.

“And most of all, I lost Reggie! And that’s all she’s got to say to me!” he bellowed. He sent another cinder missile flying at the main pile of debris, scattering the flaming bits and pieces further. The blast uncovered an intact hospital gurney, a boy in his preteens laying strapped down on it. Delsin had never taken a good look at the other torture victims other than their x-rays, and he did a double-take right there.

Concrete spikes and shards protruded from the boy’s right arm, and neck. The arm was so encased in concrete that movement below the elbow was impossible, and would be painful even if he could, edges gleaming in the firelight like razors. The boy’s head was craned over painfully to allow the unnatural growth room without getting jabbed by its sharp points.

Burn wounds now proliferated over the kid’s exposed abdomen and face, an angry profusion of reds and yellow against the untouched brown. Moaning in pain, the boy weakly raised his other arm towards Delsin, his eyes begging for help.

His plea was answered with a cinder blast.

Delsin lowered his arm and looked around the destroyed Longhouse. The fires continued to lick at every piece of wreckage they could find. Splinters and shards of wood, the hospital curtains, beds and equipment, the decorations for the Akomish Day, none were spared. An arm stuck out from under the TV that had been blaring away when he had woken up. A card that read “Get Well Soon, Betty!” danced in the breeze before landing in a pile of embers and bursting into flame. A perfect example of why you shouldn’t tick off a Conduit.

Wiping off his hands, Delsin nodded in approval before his eyes settled on the buildings in the distance. The main town of the Akomish Native American Reservation was set right on the road as a tourist trap, the stores, shops, and homes standing alongside the trees as though they were a part of the forest. It was scenic, though he certainly wasn’t admiring it this time around.

“So I’m not Akomish anymore, huh Betty?” he sneered at the wheelchair as he began to make his way out of the wreckage. “That’s alright, cause I’m a conduit now, and once I’ve sprung the other conduits out of Curdun Cay and absorbed all of their powers, I’m gonna show the military, the Feds, and all the other haters that we conduits aren’t going to play their game. We’ve got the power, so they’re the ones that are going to have to kowtow to us, not like our ancestors did.”

He absorbed some smoke as he passed by a particularly-billowing fire and snorted a laugh. “Right after I’m done tearing this sorry little reservation down. You should have turned me in when you all had the chance,” he smirked, watching the red embers shift and move beneath his fingernails. Oh yes, this was going to be fun. After all the ridicule he had gone through over the years for merely expressing himself, now it was his turn.

The only warning he had was the sensation of the hairs on his neck and the loose fibers in his beanie standing straight up on end.

The blast sent him tumbling end-over-end, electricity coursing through his nerves and muscles, constricting him while the heat of the explosion tore through his back. Unable to dodge away, he could only watch as the pavement came up to greet him.

Almost knocked into unconsciousness, Delsin struggled to his feet and looked around, his vision blurring while his quick healing kicked in. This time, he saw it coming. The projectile was a ball of electricity, arcs and sparks leaping off it as it shot towards him, his dodge the only thing that kept him from getting hit a second time.

Rematerializing, he responded by firing off a cinder missile in the direction the lightning ball had come from. A figure darted away before the missile could hit, the explosion lighting up the area and giving Delsin a quick look at his attacker. He didn’t learn much, other than the fact that the figure wore a dark blue trenchcoat.

“Oh great,’ he thought, dodging to get a better line on his new target. “Let me guess: Augustine had a special electricity conduit ready to avenge her. Just an opportunity to get a new power. It would be awesome to have the same one as Cole MacGrath.”

He fired another cinder missile at the figure, only to dodge away himself when they answered with an electricity ball that just barely missed, the smell of ozone filling the air in its wake. He and the other conduit circled each other with the ruins of the Longhouse between them, firing off their respective missiles and dodging away when fire was returned. The fiery light of smoke exploded alongside blue arcs of electrical force with the smoldering ruin of the Longhouse in the center. The odors of ash and ozone filled the air while the ground shook from the impacts of the missiles, the scene illuminated with the brief flashes from the projectiles.

When Delsin ran out of cinder missiles, he let off a few smoke shots before dodging towards the burning ruin, the billowing smoke promising fuel to continue the fight. Stopping in front of the smoke-spewing wreckage, he was about to absorb it all when a final lightning ball came flying out of the embers and struck him right in the torso, tossing him backwards like an electrocuted and thrown doll.

Crashing to the ground, Delsin rolled before going off the edge into the bay below. The chilly water of Salmon Bay lapped threateningly below him, promising to block access to his powers along with a cold soaking if he fell in. Managing to grab onto the edge, he dodged back onto it, just in time to see his opponent come into view.

The first thing he saw was the sky-blue sundress she was wearing underneath her open, dark-blue trenchcoat. A pair of calf-length, buckled boots gave way to black-and-white striped stockings that disappeared into the dress. The girl wearing the clothes was, in a word, gorgeous. Her oval face, framed with dark hair and set with peach-tinted skin, was just perfect with the emerald-green eyes. Those same winsome features were currently set in a roar, her eyes blazing with a toxic fire greater than Augustine’s wrath. Her teeth were bared in a savage snarl, gleaming white pearls set between pink lips.

For an instant, time was frozen, his attacker stuck in a charge. Than everything began moving again as her body dissolved into a cloud of…something weird and blue, coming to a stop in front of him and reforming. He caught the glint of something sharp coming out of her coat just in time to bring up his smoke-infused chain.

Grasping both ends of the chain, he found himself holding back a large knife, blue and red neon dancing along its razor-sharp edge, black particles flaring out along its side. Feeling the edge of the cliff behind his heels, Delsin dug in with his feet and pushed back against the pulsating blade, trying to avoid both a dunk in the bay and his attacker’s sharp weapon. He could see her past the red blaze of his embers and the neon glow of her blade. The lights playing off her face and eyes to give him the impression of an avenging demon.

“Whoa now!” he yelled, phasing around her and rematerializing, reversing their positions. “We don’t have to fight! Augustine is dead, we conduits need to look out for each other now!”

“You don’t care about other conduits!” the girl declared as she turned around, her massive knife pulsating as though in time with her angered heart. “What about all those suspected conduits you killed in those suspension pens, you murderous tosser!” In her anger, a British accent emerged, likely disappearing when she wasn’t in raging murder mode.

Charging up his smoke, Delsin let out a cinder blast, aiming to send her into the bay where the water would short-circuit her electricity powers. Her response was to phase through the blast as a mass of blue embers and butterflies, reforming away from the cliff edge. Blinking once in surprise, Delsin was struck by the red-hot smoke shots exploding from the girl’s free hand, forcing him to begin dodging away as well.

“What the hell?!” he yelled. “Smoke is my deal! Stick with ball lightning, ya MacGrath-wannabe!”

“You obviously don’t stick to one element,” the girl retorted as she phased between him and the smoldering ruins of the Longhouse, continuing to fire whenever he became solid enough to hit. “Why should I?”

“Oh crap,” Delsin whispered before yelping as a smoke shot narrowly missed every man’s weakspot. He wasn’t up against an electricity conduit, this was a female copy of him!

Delsin’s attempts to reach the smoke of the Longhouse were thwarted, and his own smoke shots were avoided using his own dodge abilities. Feeling his smoke reserve drying up, Delsin dodged into the parking lot. Jumping up onto a parked car that had survived his orbital drop, he car boosted into the air, which unfortunately gave his attacker the opportunity to nail him with some well-aimed shots.

Coming down, he slammed his fist as hard as he could into the ground, sending out a smoke shockwave while breaking up a nice section of concrete. He greedily absorbed the shards of artificial rock, their hard, unforgiving edges flowing into his arm with the reassurance of punishing his attacker for daring to hurt him before turning to face the girl.

She dodged around before coming to a stop, her back to the cannery down the road. He launched himself into the air, smiling at the irony of rock giving him the power to almost fly. His smile turned into an outright smirk at the look she gave him when she saw him displaying his control over Augustine’s power before unleashing a concrete barrage, the spinning concrete disks slicing through the air.

The first round slammed into her, throwing her to the ground as she cried out, the saw-toothed edges of the projectiles giving her regenerative abilities a workout while smashing a straight line into the ground around her.

He laughed. “What’s the matter?” he yelled. “Augustine wasn’t into roughhousing her bitches?”

As the girl dodged to her feet, he fired off another barrage, intending to keep her down to finish her off. Just as the plates were about to impact her again, she…did something. In the amount of time it took to blink, her body turned into blue particles and butterflies before shrinking down into nothing, the concrete passing through the space that she had been occupying only a few instants earlier. As the concrete slashed a new groove into the ground, she reappeared the same way she had vanished, one hand on her hip as she now smirked at his surprised expression.

“I’m not one of Augustine’s lapdogs, Mr. Rowe,” she quipped before her smirk fell and her eyes turned hard as iron. “And I am no one’s bitch,” she growled out.

Instead of answering, Delsin fired off his last concrete barrage, hoping to catch her off guard and not do that weird dodge thing. Instead, a shield made of…something that looked strangely cloth-like sprang up in front of her like a shield. Instead of merely protecting her from the concrete, the disks that struck it came flying right back at him. Before he could duck out of the way, the lead projectile hit him in the head, sending him plummeting to the ground.

Stumbling to his feet and trying to ignore the oncoming headache, Delsin began blindly firing concrete shrapnel at the girl, only to feel it coming back to hammer him. Stumbling back, he realized that the girl must have purposely moved in front of his flailing shots in order to hit him with his own ammo. Gritting his teeth in rage, he summoned a thick armor of concrete around him as he boulder dashed right at the girl, catching her off guard from the change of tactics and throwing her to the ground again.

“If that’s true,” he roared as he lost the armor and she was struggling to her feet, “then why are you attacking me?!”

“Because,” she managed to gasp out as she got to her feet, her wounds mending as various particles danced around them, “the only thing worse than one of Augustine’s attack dogs….” She grunted as she straightened out and faced him, her injuries fully healed and her green flashing with an anger that not even Augustine in her self-righteousness could match, “is a sheep turned into a feral, mad dog,” she finished.

New found anger at being called a sheep and a mad dog in the same sentence filled Delsin as he drew back his fist and slammed it into the ground between him and the girl, the shockwave just barely missing her as she dodged away. When she stopped, she raised her hands and began shooting at him again.

Instead of the heat and mass behind her rapid smoke shots, Delsin yelped as he felt the projectiles slice into his skin and send warm blood spewing out. Dodging away, he caught sight of what had him falling to the ground after being freed from his flesh.

Cards. Playing cards. She was shooting him with freaking playing cards!

Delsin boulder dashed away as fast as he could towards the reservation, the combo of speed and armor protecting him from the cards that stuck into his rock-hard back.

“Ok, not a fan,” he groused. “Smoke and concrete aren’t doing a thing, and I’d have to break into a house to get video. Not a problem, except it’d slow me down, plus I’d probably get shot by the owners. Neon it is.”

Running and then using his thrusters to get to the top of the local bar, Delsin absorbed the energy from its neon signs. As his wounds spontaneously healed from the cuts of the cards, Delsin shot around and took aim with laser insight. The girl was easy enough to spot; hitting her was an entirely different story.

No matter how fast he fired, she was always one step ahead with her dodging. The street was cleared as pedestrians ran from the bolts of neon energy that opened up holes in the sidewalk and street, marking the path the girl had taken towards him. Whoever she was, she had been doing this long before his powers had manifested.

She finally stopped, right in the middle of the street, with only the shield between the two of them as she rested. Grinning viciously, Delsin fired off a phosphor beam right at her, doubting that it could fail to pierce whatever flimsy material it was made of. An instant later, he was on his back, gasping for breath as his powers began healing the fist-sized burn in his chest. Holy crap, his powers hurt. Over the noise of running and screaming civilians, he heard a single sound rise above it all: A condescending, derogatory “Ha”.

Rising to his feet before his wound had finished healing, Delsin aimed again. Not for the girl, but at the parking lot of the nearby local supermarket. Seeing the people hiding in and around the various cars and trucks that populated the space, he grinned savagely and let rip with more phosphor beams. The explosions would draw out the girl and maybe even hurt her, and the use of his powers would continue to build up a karma bomb. If he could hit her with one of those, the fight would be over.

The blasts from the exploding cars were enough to blow out the windows of the store (he had always hated the cheap window paint used to advertise deals and sales), only adding to the chaos of the parking lot. The civilians screamed and ran, some getting crushed by a flying car while others were consumed by the blazing fires or were accidentally hit by a stray beam, blowing them up into bits and pieces of neon-charged matter. The girl ran into the chaos as he predicted, trying to shield the hapless civilians as they ran from the destruction he had created.

“And you called me a sheep,” he yelled, laughing. “What does that make you, a shepherd?”

Out of phosphor beams, he watched as she helped the stragglers get to their feet and run. He shook his head, wondering how she could be so dumb as to help the same people who would gladly leave her to die if she was the one on the ground bleeding to death. Humans would never accept conduits, willingly or not. The best thing conduits could hope for was to dominate their weaker counterparts through any methods necessary.

The girl had stopped right in the middle of a group of survivors, her shield still up and in his direction. He couldn’t see exactly what she doing, and so when he was focusing on her, he saw the results clearly.

She held a hand over the man in the center of the group and made a rising motion. As she did, the man rose with her hand along with everyone else in immediate vicinity. For a brief moment, blue fibers floated around their bodies in an odd, soothing pattern before shrinking into the victims, healing their injuries almost immediately. As they landed on their feet, they took off, yelling their thanks as they ran.

Delsin scowled at them before grinning. Aiming again, he focused on the man that had been at the center of her healing, settled on the glowing red haze surrounding the head, and fired. The laser struck the man, capturing him in a momentary stasis field before reducing him to a burst of neon particles. Two more civilians were caught in the burst, the particles piercing their bodies, overcharging their matter and then blowing it outwards. The only things that even suggested they had ever existed in the first place were the glowing particles that drifted nearby, and those would disappear within a minute.

“Monster!” Delsin glanced back at the girl as she stood in the parking lot and screamed every invective she could thinking of at him. “Fiend! Brute! Philistine! How can something as evil and odious as you even exist?!”

“Easy!” he yelled back, a mocking tone in his voice, his arms thrown out in exaggeration. “There’s nothing to keep me from doing whatever I want!”

They stood, he on top of the “Crouching Hunter”, her in the middle of blasted and cracked parking lot. Smoke and ash drifted in the air, the screams and cries of the bystanders dying down as they put distance between themselves and the battle. Sirens wailed off in the distance, ambulances, fire trucks, and law enforcement soon to make an appearance for all the good they would do. Smirking brown eyes met furious green from across a street.

For a moment, all was still except for the ashes.

And then the girl surged forward, her mouth open in a silent war cry. She dodged and weaved with both her powers and her body as he opened fire, the laser bolts coming within centimeters of hitting her, only to blast holes in the already-damaged concrete around her. In the middle of the street, she shot up with bursts of her smoke-based abilities, coming to rest on the bar’s roof.

Before Delsin could react, she charged him, a huge, white…hobby horse…appearing in her arms, its eyes blazing with yellow energy. She swung the massive club as hard as she could, connecting with his head with a resounding crunch, the horse’s whinny adding to the sound.

He was sent flipping through the air out onto the street, his neon abilities no help when it came to recovering from an unexpected flight. The ground and sky spinning up and down before his eyes, Delsin was reminded for a ludicrous moment of a roller coaster that he and Reggie had gone on as a kid. His older brother had puked his guts up afterwards.

His flight ended when he slammed into the hood of a car, leaving a nice Delsin-shaped dent in it before bouncing out into the street.

Delsin lay there on the ground, his head pounding as his powers worked to heal his injuries. His vision had turned gray and dark, something that only happened when grievously injured. He had never heard people who had been at death’s door describing something similar, so it had to be a conduit thing. Halfway between the land of the living and that of the dead perhaps?

This girl was destroying him bit by bit. This needed to end, fast.

The neon particles still swarming around his body, Delsin pulled himself up and looked around. He could feel the energy thrumming within him now, begging to be let out. Catching sight of the smoke rising from the hood of the car he had hit on the way down, he grinned savagely. He started this fight with an Orbital Drop, he’d end it with another.

Reaching out, he absorbed the smoke through his arm, feeling it add to his fast healing and speeding up the process exponentially. It wasn’t much (he could only feel one cinder missile ready to go), but he had the Orbital Drop ready. His head cleared as the world regained its colors and the pain from his injuries disappeared. Delsin looked back up at the Hunter to see the girl jumping down at him, the huge marble club raised to continue bashing him.

Delsin dodged just as the hobby horse came down, smashing a hole into the pavement. He reformed on the other side of the car, smirking.

“You know,” he drawled, keeping his posture relaxed while watching the hobby horse, “we’d make a pretty kickass team. Don’t tell me that you don’t have any bad experiences from the normies. They’ll turn on you first chance they—whoa!”

The girl tore the horse from the road and swung it as hard as she could into the car, sending it flipping towards him. He dodged again, just barely avoiding the flying mass of metal. When he reformed, the girl opened fire with her rapid-fire smoke shots—on the car. It exploded, sending Delsin flying again. He was able to dodge in mid-air, coming down a safe distance away.

“I was abused and mistreated long before I became a conduit!” the girl practically roared at him. “I could write a bloody book on it! The difference between the two of us is that I refuse to be part of that cycle, while you accelerate the wheel of blood’s revolution!”

“And what are you doing?” he yelled back. “Setting yourself up as a second Augustine, swooping down to save the ‘decent, normal people’ from the big, bad bio-terrorist?” He rolled his eyes, making sure to exaggerate the motion. “The only thing these idiots understand is power, and that’s what I’m going to give them!”

He dodged before she could retaliate physically or verbally. “Come and get me, doll-face!” he yelled.

From the sheer amount of material she sent at him, he must have really hit a nerve with that one. Dodging and ducking the fusillade of smoke shots, paper cards, and electricity-balls, Delsin made his way towards the nearest gas station. He could feel the energy of a Karma Bomb flowing through him, trying to burst out of him. He had no idea how it worked, how expending energy could cause such a powerful attack to manifest, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was blowing the self-righteous snot behind him to kingdom come.

He went past the gas station, planning on unleashing the Drop when she was right next to it. The combined explosions of both the Karma Bomb and the gas station would be enough to at least cripple the girl, allowing him to end her at his leisure. Maybe he’d even get to absorb her powers before killing her.

He turned around, expecting her to be in position, only to find that she was half a block away from the station and on the other side of the street. Dodging a lightning-ball, he was just able to hear her taunt.

“You’re not that great a tactician and I’m not that stupid!”

Gritting his teeth in frustration, Delsin prepared his Drop but hesitated. She’d probably dodge away if he were to pull that move right now. He needed to distract her.

He glanced after dodging another lightning-ball, looking for something that would grab the girl’s attention long enough to blow her up. He was struck by a few smoke shots when he finally spotted a good one.

In front of the dollar store across the street from the gas station was a gray mini-van. He recognized it; it was the Roosevelts’. They lived a few streets away from Reggie’s house. He could see them peeking out of the windows, their faces a combination of fear and curiosity. He remembered that Mrs. Roosevelt had once told him he was going to give the Akomish a bad name to his face back in his teens. He grinned as he made eye contact with the woman, and then he fired off the one cinder missile right at the van.

He heard the girl scream the word “No!” just before he launched himself into the air. Racing skyward as three distinct pieces of smoke, Delsin came back together at the apex of his flight. He smiled savagely as he felt that instant of microgravity before igniting his fists and beginning his plunge back to earth. His vision was distorted by the intense heat generated as he hurtled back down, but he could easily spot the girl as she reformed halfway between his launching point and the van. She brought up her shield thing to send the cinder missile flying back and away from the van, as he figured she would.

Just before he hit the ground in front of her, he saw the girl look up at him. The surprise on her face was priceless.

He was laughing as he reformed in the middle of the crater left by his impact. The windows of the dollar store had been blown in, along with those of the van. The kids inside were screaming; the hood had a nice dent in it from serving as the landing pad of the girl. She was laying crumbled on the ground next to the van. As Delsin advanced, the van started up and squealed away. He would have liked to finish blowing it up, except smoke shots would take longer than he wanted to. He settled for flipping them off as they passed.

The girl was a mess. Her coat and dress were ripped and torn, even burning in some places. Scrapes and bruises covered what skin he could see, blood leaked from her nose and a split lip. Her breaths were shallow, gasping. Her eyes were barely open, mere glints of the green fire within blazing out at him. Her knife was about to slip out of a holster within her coat. He was tempted to step on it. For the first time, he noted the key and the horseshoe thing she was wearing around her neck, both blackened from the soot and heat of his Drop.

“That’s gratitude for you,” he started, crouching down in front of her. “You save their lives, and they just leave you to die.” He shook his head. “We conduits are the only ones we can depend on. As that DUP squealer said, we’re in an entirely different weight class than normals.”

He straightened back up and raised his hand. “As much as we’d make a great team and I’d like to absorb your powers, I think I’ll just put you out of your misery.” Wisps of smoke coalesced around his fist as he readied a cinder blast. “Too bad I never got your name,” he added.

Before he could fire off the blast, a wave of pure, raw force exploded out from the girl, sending him flying. He came crashing down to the ground on the edge of the sidewalk. Dodging to his feet, his charge at the girl halted when he saw the living nightmare that she had become.

Her coat and dress had turned white to match the new deathly pallor of her skin. Blood spattered her front, more leaking out of a hole over her heart like a gunshot wound. More of the crimson fluid streamed out of her mouth and eyes, the entirety of the latter the same shade of red. Her forearms dripped with the stuff, the blood covering them like a pair of macabre evening gloves. Her hair, which floated and tossed in a wind only it felt, alternated between ebony black and a sickening green. Those horrendous red eyes focused on him, and then she opened her mouth to emit a wail that spoke of pain, fear, and anger.

“Holy shit!” Delsin swore loudly. The girl - thing - what-she-was, shifted into a swarm of black and white butterflies, shooting forward and reforming right in front of him. Delsin swore again as the girl swiped at him with her blade, white neon and black particles dancing balefully on its edge. He ducked the blade and didn’t waste any time letting out a cinder blast right in her face.

The blast of smoke and heat which could break apart concrete shields and obliterate enemies didn’t even phase her. She dodged again and this time the blade was swinging hard and fast. Before he could dodge away, the blade sliced through his front three times, ripping buttons off and sending his blood spattering against the ground.

Delsin screamed in pain before he got away, embers and smoke swirling around the wounds inflicted by the neon-enhanced blade. The girl opened up on him in his flight, now a true retreat. Playing cards and smoke shots without end struck the conduit and his surroundings as he tried desperately to both run and absorb smoke from the nearby wrecked cars. His smoke reserve finally filled up while avoiding an electricity ball, Delsin turned and fired off a cinder missile.

The projectile struck her head on, exploding outwards with the force of an anti-vehicle rocket. From the resulting cloud of smoke, she walked forth, resembling something from a Japanese horror movie coming out of a burning building.

In a panic, Delsin fired off the rest of the cinder missiles as fast as he could. The projectiles whistled towards the girl before exploding, one after the other.

As the smoke began to drift away, the swarm of butterflies shot out and reformed into the demon girl, who now looked utterly incensed at the mere idea that he had deigned to try to kill her with cinder missiles. Raising her arms, she threw something into the air, arcing towards him. He dodged as the projectile broke open behind him. A safe distance away, he looked back to find the place where he had been standing and the car were spattered with some steaming, green substance. The car began to dissolve right before his eyes, melting down to the bubbling concrete beneath it.

Acid. The girl could throw acid bombs. He swore, then dodged away as another soared towards him.

The street around them quickly became an acid-corroded mess as she proceeded to throw three more of the acid bombs at him. He wasn’t fast enough to dodge the last one, which soaked the back of his vest. Yelping, Delsin ripped it off and threw it to the ground. The bird skull motif, which he had spent an hour working on just before attacking the DUP post in Puget Sound, looked up at him before the cloth dissolved, melting even the remaining buttons.

He felt the rush of displaced air and heard the fluttering of paper wings behind him. Whirling around, he found the demon girl right behind him. Before he could break out the chain, the hobby horse reappeared, its mane now bloody against its white marble. The blaze in its eye was as fierce as hellfire as it slammed into his head, sending him back. Not giving him the chance to dodge, the demon bashed him in the shoulder, spinning him around and throwing him to the ground. Finally, she raised it above her head and brought it down right in his midsection. Gasping from the bone-breaking blows, Delsin could only look up at her, wheezing in pain.

The horse vanishing, she raised her hands to shoot an icy mist right at him. He gasped as ice formed quickly around his limbs, freezing his legs up to the knees and left arm to the ground and keeping him from dodging. The ice crept around his body until only his head, torso, and right hand were exposed, his limbs shivering beneath their prison of ice, its prickly, numbing cold piercing him to the bone.

The demon girl stood above, her crimson eyes focused with an unholy light upon him. With no warning, she turned back into the raven-haired beauty that he had started the fight with. She looked down at him and smirked, her hands upon her hips.

“I’m told that hurts,” she mocked. Stepping forward, she crouched down beside him and grasped his hand.

For the first time, Delsin felt the power absorption begin, only he wasn’t the one doing it. Feeling his power flow into his arm and into her hand, he realized that he was also feeling her power flow from her and into him. Set against the blue sky and the smoke drifting into the sky, the girl’s face smirked down at him before dissolving in a whirl of blue, black, and peach before giving way to dark.

He felt her in his head before he was in hers. Instead of looking for his life story, she instead plied his mind for information. His knowledge of Fetch, of Eugene, of Augustine, and of that paper conduit Celia flashed through his mind as she absorbed it into her own. She was done with him, and she wished to know what he did about his allies and the DUP before going back to Seattle to deal with them.

It was only then that he learned her story.

“I was only eight years old when I lost my parents and sister to a house fire. After my burns healed, I was sent to the Rutledge Mental Institute, where I stayed for ten years, locked within my childhood Wonderland by my trauma and misplaced guilt. After conquering that, I was sent to the Houndsditch Neurological Research Center to continue my therapy. After nearly a year there, I remembered the truth about my therapist and employer, Dr. Angus Bumby. He was the one who started the fire, to cover his violation and murder of my sister, Lizzie, allowing him to continue his evil on other victims. His death resulted in my flight to America, where my conduit abilities manifested for the first time. I’ve seen why normal people fear us, and we cannot afford to continue the rampage of the Beast. If there is to be any future for both conduits and humans, we must be better than Kessler, than Sasha Hanson, than Alden Tate, than the Beast. Better than Augustine, and better than you, Delsin Rowe.”

As her story progressed, the images flashed by his eyes.

A photo with a bearded man, two women by his side, and a little girl whose eyes were almost too large for her face. A burning house overshadowed by a giant lizard, a centaur with wire-rim glasses watching from a distance. Two large men in striped shirts trying to hold a teenaged girl in a straitjacket down, two women, one of them with a huge nose, and a bespectacled man watching. A cat with mad eyes and a wide smile, surrounded by strange and bizarre creatures.

The girl, older now, wielding a knife and facing some monstrous thing. The girl on a couch talking to the centaur. A toy rabbit whose head exploded in a geyser of blood and black goo. A monstrous train spewing out armies of goo creatures from its smokestack. A green man with a massive nose dressed in a straitjacket fighting off a cybernetic hare and mouse and then collapsing to weep beside them. The same centaur, the goo oozing from his eyes and down into his beard, his mouth full of fangs. Rows upon rows of dolls on hooks like a sick assembly line. A key with a strange symbol. The girl fighting the centaur and pushing him into the path of the train.

The girl running from new enemies, only to turn into a white, red-eyed demon, tearing them asunder. The girl watching from afar as humans and conduits battled in the ruins of America’s east coast before the DUP showed up to cart them away to the cheers of the crowds. A lineup of the infamous conduits, himself at the front as their newest member. All of them spattered in blood.

Delsin came back to the waking world just in time to feel the prickly cold of the ice fold over his free hand. He was able to raise himself enough to see the girl struggle to her feet, cold mist flowing from her hand. She was breathing heavily, even when she righted herself and took a few swaying steps. Her expression was one of exhaustion, until she saw him. Then it broke out into a smirk, her eyes dancing with the joy of victory. Under other circumstances, Delsin would have liked that look.

“What…what power did you get from me?” he gasped out. Power absorption always did a number on the participants.

“Knowledge, Mr. Rowe.” The girl nearly fell down, just managing to avoid face-planting on the cement. “I know your allies now, I know how to beat them. Your reign of terror over Seattle is over.” She sneered down at him.

“That’s it?” he sputtered, trying to wrench himself out of the ice. With his hands trapped in the ice and immobile, he couldn’t do anything with his powers.

“We’re both power absorbers, Mr. Rowe,” the girl replied. She finally regained her feet and stood over him, smirking down. “I suspected something like this would happen. We can only absorb each other’s memories and knowledge. And for the record, it was really easy to glean the information about your allies from your mind.”

She raised her hands and fired bursts of neon energy around him, making Delsin jump and yell. When she stopped and stepped back to admire her handiwork, he was able to twist around to see what she had done. Emblazoned into the ground using the same neon energies that Fetch used to tag were the words, “ALL YOURS”, forming an arch with himself in the middle. Glancing behind her, he could see a crowd forming. The Akomish were coming out of their hiding places, curious to see what the girl was going to do. Looking from them to the words and back again several times, he realized what she wanted to happen.

“What!?” he yelled. “You don’t have the guts to finish me yourself, so you’re gonna let them lynch me!?”

“Seeing as you’ve murdered their friends and family, not mine, as the local law enforcement doesn’t have the proper faculties to contain you, and as I’m not a cold-blooded murderer,” the girl made a humming noise while stroking her chin in thought. “Yes,” she finally said.

As she turned to leave, Delsin struggled hard against his icy restraints. “Who the hell are you!?” he roared angrily.

The girl stopped and turned back to face him. “My name, Delsin Rowe, is Alice Liddell.” With that, she shot off in butterfly form.

Delsin continued to struggle against the ice, twisting and turning to dislodge any of his limbs, anything to get out of this. It was when he noticed the sound that he stopped.

At first, it was just a low rumbling. Cocking his head towards the sound, he found himself angling towards the crowd, which was growing slowly but surely. The fear that had filled their eyes earlier was now replaced by rage. Many of them sported weapons, ranging from baseball bats to crowbars to guns, all of them just twitching to be used. Those close enough to read the message that “Alice” had left behind were spreading it to the others, a horrendous mixture of rage and bloodthirsty joy spreading across their faces. The rumbling began to diverge, individual voices screaming out.

“Delsin blew up the longhouse with everyone in it!”

“Betty was in there!”

“He sold us out to save his own skin!”

“He’s been terrorizing Seattle since he got there!”

“He’s ruined the name of the tribe!”

“He killed my son!”

“He’s turned on us!”

“Kill him!”

“String him up by his neck!”

“Set him on fire!”

“Shoot him!”

As his former tribe members began to advance on him, Delsin’s choices since becoming a conduit flashed through his mind. Deciding to sell out the tribe at the fishery. Killing that looter in the tunnel. Killing the downed civilians. Killing the drug dealers for kicks. Striking at the Lifeline rally. Convincing Fetch to begin killing the Lifeline activists. Helping Eugene to kill the Akirans and the DUP working with them. Taking Hank’s life. And deciding to murder Augustine. All of those choices, and their alternatives, only considered for mere moments, but still there.

Delsin groaned. “Damn,” he muttered, “karma really is a bitch.”

Chapter Text

The Good, the Mad, and the Infamous

The Beast

When Rome had burned, Nero hadn't been playing a fiddle. It had been a harp. He couldn't help but wonder what the history books would say about him and the day that New Empire City burned.

A few months after New Marais, he had returned to the ruins of Empire City, several hundred Conduits following him. The eastern United States was gone, destroyed by first the Beast and then him. With Washington, D.C. gone, the domestic forces of the United States were broken. However, US forces abroad had been coming home to combat him, NATO following right behind. The only thing capable of fighting nations was a nation. And so, there at the epicenter of the original Ray Sphere Blast, he, Cole MacGrath, the Demon of Empire City, the Beast of New Marais, declared the creation of the Conduit Empire.

From what little they had scavenged from Bertrand's operation in New Marais and from the remnants of Kessler's in Empire, they were able to recreate the original Ray Sphere, which would exponentially increase the rate of Conduit activation. Weaponizing the sphere against the invading NATO forces was the tactic that won them the North American continent, wiping out thousands of humans and activating potential Conduits in one blast, diminishing their enemies and increasing their own ranks. After all, it wasn't like the former soldiers could go back to their human counterparts. The horror stories that arose from such incidents were enough to convince the new recruits that his side was the best for them now.

As his blasts and the spheres' were identical, it kept the military guessing about where he truly was, allowing them to move about and utilize guerilla tactics with superpowers. The radiation generated from him using the Beast's powers and the blasts from the spheres also increased the rate at which the Plague spread, further creating chaos and diverting forces that would have fought against him. The Plague was simultaneously an ally and enemy; it divided the attention and efforts of his enemies, while threatening to kill off potential Conduits before he or a Ray Sphere could reach them.

By the end of that first year, the North American continent was under the control of the Conduit Empire, with New Empire City as its capital. The American, Canadian, and Mexican populations had been converted into Conduits, safe from the Plague. It had spread however, infecting cities on other continents. Knowing that his job was far from over, he and his most trusted generals had planned their "conversions" accordingly, targeting cities and military bases of the most powerful nations left, knowing that they would be the first to respond to a Conduit attack outside North America.

When CD-Day had arrived, he had personally converted the city of London. All across the world, bigger and better Ray Spheres had gone off at the exact same time, killing millions of humans and activating thousands of Conduits. The enemies of the Conduit people had fallen in one stroke, any effective resistance against them wiped out or converted. Over the next few years, humanity was converted into Conduits at the latter's leisure.

From all corners of the globe, from every race, creed, religion, and culture, the Conduits came, streaming to the last bastion of civilization. With its population, New Empire City had grown in grandeur and glory, becoming a modern wonder of the world, filled with the creations of his subjects. Rich with culture, New Empire City had become a new, reversed Babel, languages ringing out not with confusion, but with understanding, the people of the world coming to the city instead of fleeing from it. A new culture was emerging, centered around the destruction of the old world and the birth of a new one, strengthened with every new concept and facet instead of weakened. Seven billion human beings spread across the entire planet, replaced by one shining city of seven million Conduits.

As the strongest Conduit of them all, he had declared himself the absolute ruler of the Conduit Empire, the Beast. Those few voices that had risen against him had been silenced quickly and brutally, cementing his power. In the new order, it was how powerful a Conduit was that decided their station in life. Conduits with similar abilities banded together, forming organizations that ranged from guilds down to gangs, depending on how numerous each type was. He himself was the "Guildmaster" of the lightning, ice, and napalm Conduits.

His most powerful generals included Lucy Kuo, the ice Conduit who had been with him since the beginning and also his wife, bearing the title of Beast's Consort and the commander of the Vermaak 88; Brooke Augustine, whose defection with the newly-formed Department of Unified Protection had permanently crippled the US government's ability to fight Conduits; and Sasha, whose organic mind control agent made taking care of particularly troublesome and powerful individuals easy.

There was a cult in the city whose adherents worshipped him as a god, known as the "Church of the Beast". They knew his generals as the "Beast's Trinity". It competed with the other religions for followers and influence in New Empire. He didn't care whether they worshipped him or not; after all, he wielded godlike powers, why not let some see him as one? The only good fanatic was the one who would die for him, would do anything for him, and they already had.

Today was the tenth anniversary of the first Ray Sphere blast, the one to give him his powers and set him on his destiny. This was supposed to be a special occasion. Humanity had officially been wiped out, the Plague was now completely harmless, and he was at the height of his power. Nothing should have been able to disturb this day.

Instead, the city was in chaos. At noon, as the festivities for Empire Day were about to begin, every TV in the city had been hijacked, a familiar individual on the screens. It was Abigail Walker, one of Augustine's best and most powerful agents, dressed in the specialized DUP uniform that only the most loyal were allowed to wear. He could remember her speech as clearly as when it had broadcasted.

"Hello New Empire City!" she had begun with a smile. "My name is Abigail Walker, but my friends and enemies call me Fetch." She raised two fingers. "Two things you should know about me: One, I'm a Pisces. Two…." The camera panned out to show that she was standing on a building across from the massive statue of himself in MacGrath Square, formerly Archer Square. Her smile fell as she brought her other hand up, revealing that she was holding a detonator.

"I really hate Cole MacGrath," she finished, and then pressed the button. His statue exploded violently, the blast echoing across the city. Crafted of the strongest materials, it had been guaranteed to stand for ten thousand years. Now, the pieces flew across the sky, literally raining on his parade. It crashed to the ground, raising a cloud of dust right from the Square.

"You see," Walker had continued, "back before MacGrath took up the power and title of the Beast, he was actually working on stopping the original Beast. MacGrath and Kuo joined up with him when they learned that being a Conduit was the only way to survive the Plague and only he could make more Conduits. The thing is," she paused dramatically as more explosions rang out through the city, "that wasn't the only option. There was this device called the RFI, and it could have cured the Plague and wiped it out. But instead of using it to save billions of people, MacGrath destroyed it and then became the Beast."

Anger and rage, not all of it focused on him, had spread across her face.

"Yes, he saved us from the Plague, but at what cost? Seven billion innocents, slaughtered to save seven million, all because we had won the genetic lottery. My fellow Conduits, we have lost our friends, our families, and our communities to this monster, who has declared himself king over us. We can't save the human race, but we can make sure that this false god, this Beast of a man, faces justice for the horrors he committed in Old Empire, in New Marais, and across the world. Join us, my brothers and sisters, and fight!"

And with that, she had turned and sped off in a burst of neon. The camera had caught her opening fire on military Conduits before it had been knocked down.

For the past hour, war had engulfed the city. Members of this revolutionary group battled against his loyal soldiers and followers, while citizens took sides and further added to the chaos. The rebels had somehow got their hands on energy upgrades, which improved their powers to match his soldiers and agents, giving them a fighting chance. Between their guerilla tactics, their knowledge of his troops and their tactics, and the citizens that kept joining the rebellion, his palace would be overrun within the next half-hour.

With the telepathy that came along with being the Beast, MacGrath stretched out with his mind and looked over the city. He couldn't take control of someone, merely listen to their thoughts and communicate his if he so wished.

His generals were in the thick of combat, battling multiple opponents at once while commanding his armies. Kuo was the only one to be doing well, her Vermaak ice soldiers trained in combat before their conversion and mentally stabilized by John's last blast. Augustine was angry, well, angrier than she usually was. It was the DUP that used the energy upgrades and suits and somehow the rebels had stolen them and even hijacked those energy drones still under DUP control. Sasha was having the worst of it. The majority of her troops had been powerful dissidents, and her control over them had suddenly snapped as soon as the attacks had begun. With support from the rebels, the freed dissidents were penetrating deeper and deeper towards his palace.

Turning to the minds of the rebels, he was surprised to find how many there were. Apparently, they had figured out ways of blocking his mental scans to keep their organization safe. It had existed for some years now and counted figures within his own regime among their numbers.

He found Walker sniping off DUP troopers at a checkpoint gate, one at a time, finishing up with a massive singularity that brought the structure to the ground. She was grinning savagely as she fired off heat-seekers into the mass of soldiers that rushed forward to fend her and the other invaders off. She was truly powerful in her own right. Pity that she was going to have to die for her crimes against himself.

Another agent of Augustine's among the rebels was Eugene Sims. Right after New Marais, his mother had been a US senator who had contributed to the creation of the DUP. She had also been the first US official to die at Augustine's hands when she defected to his side and brought the department under his control. Sims had turned every TV and computer monitor in the city into a weapon, spewing out demonic and angelic hard-light constructs to fight against those loyal to him while flying around as a gigantic angel, He-Who-Dwells.

After he fried Walker and Sims, he was going to have a very long talk with Augustine about those she trusted and let into the upper echelons of the DUP. A very long, electric talk.

Sensing alarm, panic, and surprise from some of his subordinates in the lower levels of the palace, he turned his attention to that area. A group of enemy insurgents had managed to breach the perimeter.

His servants, as powerful as some of them were, ran in fear from the terrorists, while his guards, most of them veterans of the Ascension War, stood their ground and fought back, laying down their lives for their savior and leader. He was going to teach his servants a lesson about loyalty.

As guardsmen and terrorists alike fought and died in the halls, he could sense their final thoughts before their brains began cycling through the events of their lives. He was pleased that most of their last moments were spent thinking of him; his guards were relieved that they were escaping punishment for failing him, while his enemies were disappointed that their part in the…White Queen's plan was over before they could see it fulfilled?

Scowling, he began casting around for thoughts and knowledge of this "White Queen" and her plan. The best image he could find was of a TV screen image of a white queen chess piece, and none of the terrorists' minds knew of the entire plan, just their part in it. The names of their parts in the plan were known by chess and card terms and names. Frowning now, he got up from his throne and began crossing his court to the entrance.

That such a revolutionary movement had been able to hide within his society until now and reveal themselves on their terms was worrying. That their apparent leader was able to maintain such a level of secrecy and planning among the terrorists was very disturbing. Whoever this White Queen was, they had been able to earn the trust of the silent ingrates of his city and turn them into an effective revolution while remaining anonymous.

Part of this was his fault: As long as they feared him, he had been willing to let those who dissented against him in only thought to live in the city instead of sending them to Augustine's personal little kingdom in Curdun Cay Station on the other side of the former continental US. They evidently needed more than the threat of annihilation, they needed to see it firsthand.

After he killed this group that was rapidly approaching his courtroom, he was going to show the terrorists why so many venerated him as a living god. He was going to amplify the powers of those who remained loyal to him, use his own godlike abilities against them, and once the rebellion was quelled, he was going to tour the entire city and smite those who harbored dissent against him in their hearts and/or minds. Fear was the only true way to keep people in line, it didn't matter if they were humans or Conduits, and he was going to strike the same fear the humans had for him into the hearts of the populace.

Halfway across the room, he glanced at a mirror as he passed by it. If it wasn't for the orange glow in his eyes and his younger face, he could easily have passed for Kessler.

Seven years earlier, he had personally confronted the only rebel leader and dissenter to be a real threat to him. The young man was the only one in his entire African tribe to survive a ray sphere blast. His strength and skill in plasma manipulation had truly been magnificent; he would have been an asset to the science and powers research boards. If only he hadn't obliterated most of Cole's right arm and damaged his abdomen. There had been nothing left but ashes once Cole had finished him off.

When his scientists had unveiled his prosthetic arm (able to channel his powers like his old one) and cybernetics for his chest, he had instantly recognized them. They were identical to Kessler's in every way, and so, had begun adopting his look and traits over time, even going so far as to take up his speech pattern. He had hated Kessler so much, still hated him in fact, and yet he wore and used his style so well. As he was the Beast and had subjected the world to an apocalyptic event, he supposed that it was something of an "in-your-face" to Kessler's memory that he took up his looks. That, and it did make him look pretty damn intimidating.

The doors, made of the highest quality materials known to Conduitkind, exploded inward just then. The farthest blown shards came to rest against his feet as he stopped and waited. The terrorists came right in, ready to face him.

Until they actually saw him, that was.

They all froze up as they realized he was expecting them. Him, the Demon of Old Empire City, the Beast of New Marais, the Prime Conduit. Mothers told their children that if they weren't good, the Beast would come and get them. What Conduits had been to humans, he was to them; a being in a league of his own. And he was ready and waiting for them.

"You have broken into my home, killed my guards, and here you stand before me," he said in the same patronizing tone that Kessler had used. "And yet, you lack the spine necessary to attack me here and now. How disappointing." He could now see why Kessler had done that; it always wound up the receiving party.

As one, the group unleashed on him, hitting them with everything they had. Projectiles of every material and energy type raced towards him; Gamma rays, wood, water, ice, marble, bone, blood, glass, iron, copper, even electricity, and others, a deadly testament to the variety of Conduit abilities and powers.

When the barrage finally ended and the debris cleared, he stood there, smiling as he took down his Polarity Wall/Frost Shield. He and Kuo had found a second Transfer Device in the ruins of Tokyo, which they had used to give him a sample of her powers. Combined with his retrieved polarity wall, the frost shield just made it stronger.

"My turn," he said as horror dawned on their faces. Before they could run, he activated one of his most deadly powers: Ionic Drain.

Gathering power within his hands and chest, he reached out to the energy that fueled all living beings. Their backs arched and their skeletons blazed white as he leeched their life energy right out of them and into his own reserves of power, the very act empowering him beyond all feasible limits. If only Nix could see how he was using the power she had given him all those years ago.

He would have made sure that she wouldn't have been a nobody in his world.

He straightened back up as the drain ended, his attackers collapsing to the ground, dead. At the very back, just beyond the range he allowed the ionic drain to have (collateral damage was fun but messy after all), a single terrorist turned and tried to flee, morphing into a cloud of smoke particles. Rolling his eyes, Cole shot forward faster than any Conduit was capable of and grabbed his would-be assassin as he rematerialized, passing a strong current of electricity into his body.

The man screamed and twitched as the electricity flowed through him, making him convulse uncontrollably and causing his flesh to smoke before letting him go. The man collapsed to the ground, his healing factor trying to fix the damage Cole had just done. Flipping him onto his back, he recognized the man.

Henry "Hank" Daughtry, one of the heart-and-mind dissenters. He had been a criminal before his powers had activated, and as soon as Conduit society had been established, he went right back to crime. He had gone underground about a year earlier, probably to escape the bounty put on his head and the threat of a prison sentence in Curdun Cay. Now, it was apparent that he had additional motive in going quiet.

"Daughtry, you disappoint me," Cole growled at the man as he regained consciousness. "Who is the White Queen? What was the point of this idiotic attack?" He would have just used his telepathy, but Daughtry was an intelligent man, with an iron will to boot.

"I-I ain't tellin' you nothin'," Daughtry spat, "you genocidal son of a bitch."

"That's not a respectful thing to say," Cole glared down at him as he wiped the sparking spittle from his face, "especially considering where you were when I found you: Cold, hungry, dying of the Plague in the filthy alley of some backwater in the South. I saved you, gave you power, and now you literally spit in my face."

"You killed my girlfriend and daughter," Daughtry snapped, "so you can just take your whole savior act and shove it up your ass!"

"Natural selection is hardly a kind process," Cole retorted, "as I'm about to demonstrate." Before Daughtry had a chance to plead for his life, Cole's hands were on him. He forced himself into Daughtry's mind, the electrical impulses between the neurons going into overdrive as he tore it to pieces and looked through them at his leisure, Daughtry screaming the whole while.

When he was done, he let go of Daughtry's smoking head, his dead body slumping to the ground. He had known a lot for only being in this organization for a year. This movement against him had been brewing in the shadows since the foundation of the Conduit Empire. It had only really gained steam in the past three years with the arrival of this White Queen and her "Ace". Nobody knew who they really were, yet they had been able to unite the disparate dissenting factions. They used chess and card decks to name operations and individuals (he remembered seeing this trend starting in the citizenry and had originally brushed it off as a new interest in the games; he was going to ban them after this). They had agents in every level of his government, society, and military. This attack had been meticulously planned, and it was basically a Hail Mary; all or nothing now.

Finally, he learned the whole point of the attack upon his person: Daughtry and his group's job had been to draw Cole out into the open and then retreat to the outside and continue fighting against his forces.

Draw him out?

His ears picked them up instead of his radar sense, two sets of very quiet footsteps right behind him. He shot around to behold two individuals creeping up on him.

They were both dressed in white form-fitting skinsuits, one male and one female. Their faces were covered by their suits' material, barring their identities. Their suits were featureless, other for the woman's leg holster which held a huge kitchen knife, while the male had a chain wrapped around his wrist and the symbols from a deck of cards on his chest. He couldn't read their minds or sense their bioelectricity, likely a property of the suits. Their part in the plan must be to assassinate him.

Well, they had gone through so much trouble to draw him out. Might as well give them what they wanted.

Cole brought his hands up and fired off two bolts of electricity at his would-be assassins. Just before the lightning struck, both assassins disintegrated, the male into a cloud of smoke particles like Daughtry while the female turned into…a swarm of blue butterflies? Both clouds shot to his sides, utterly avoiding his lightning. Just as he turned off the attack and turned to deal with them, both rematerialized at his sides. The material on their hands slid back as they each grabbed a hand.

Almost instantly he felt power flowing from his arms and into the two attackers. He was familiar with the sensation of giving power to his subordinates, just as John had done for him in New Marais. This was entirely different; these two were actually taking power from him without his permission! He tried to rip his hands away from them, but they had a grip like titanium. Struggle as he might, he couldn't stop the world was blurring together into a mess of colors.

In New Marais, John's mental voice had been just loud enough in his head to sound like they were having a conversation. In Old Empire, Sasha had been far more invasive, his brain feeling like she was drilling into it with a huge, dirty screw whenever she spoke to him and gave him hallucinations. Whatever these two were doing, it was a far cry from either John or Sasha's telepathic abilities. In fact, it was just like Kessler's intrusions into his mind to show him memories of the original timeline, only this was a two-way street.

He could feel the assassins(?) in his head as he saw into theirs. The scatterings of their memories were two distinct sets of images mixed together. One which resembled graffiti art and symbolism, while the other consisted of two-dimensional images which moved around like an odd puppet show. The images were rushed and mixed together, making it hard to separate them and truly understand.

A photo with a bearded man, two women by his side, and a little girl whose eyes were almost too large for her face. Another photo with a man and a teenager wearing Native American vests, a smiling woman, and a little boy with a beanie.

A burning house overshadowed by a giant lizard. A burning longhouse with the Seattle Space Needle falling in the background.

Two large men in medical scrubs trying to hold a teenage girl in a straitjacket down. A teenaged boy crying as he stood over the ruins of a burning house and a Ray Sphere crater.

A cat with mad eyes and a wide smile. A raven with outstretched wings and burning red eyes.

The same girl wielding a knife and facing some monstrous thing. The same boy wielding a chain and standing up to DUP agents.

The girl on a couch talking to a centaur with wire-rim glasses. The boy in cuffs talking to Augustine.

A toy rabbit whose head exploded in a geyser of blood and black goo. A man laying on a medical cot and coughing up blood.

A monstrous train spewing out armies of the goo creatures from its smokestack. A black figure with red eyes walking across the world, monsters rising in its wake.

The same centaur, the goo oozing from his eyes and down into his beard, his mouth full of fangs. The boy being allowed to hold the hands of the DUP agents and doing something to them.

Rows upon rows of dolls on hooks like a sick assembly line. Puppets rising from the bodies of the powerless and following the Beast.

A key with a strange symbol. A keycard with a DUP insignia.

The girl fighting the centaur and pushing him into the path of the train. The boy blowing a hole in a prison wall and running for his life.

The girl running from new enemies, only to turn into a white, red-eyed demon. The boy running from the DUP agents and facing Augustine in the ruins of Seattle.

The boy and the girl finally meeting and striking a pact together, to succeed or die trying in their endeavor, their images replaced by a white queen chess piece and the four aces from a card deck.

He could feel them in his mind too, looking at the various choices he had made since becoming a Conduit.

In Old Empire: Frying some of the people at Archer Square to claim the airdropped food. Opening fire on the guards at the Stampton Bridge to trigger a riot. Killing Brandon rather than telling him that his wife Lynnae was dead. Stealing blast shards from cops rather than helping them first. Forcing a civilian to close the tar valve. Letting a bomb go off at a police station rather than defusing it. Allowing cops to die to weaken the Reapers. Overcharging the tar kegs on the water towers rather than destroying them. Taking that girl's blast shards rather than helping her brother. Choosing the intimidating posters of himself. Leaving looters to hang by their feet. Shooting the gas tank to blow off the golem's arm and killing the injured bystanders. Killing a man and taking all his blast shards when he offered just one in payment for protection. Choosing to save Trish instead of the doctors and losing her anyway. Taking shards instead of helping their injured owner. Activating the Ray Sphere a second time instead of just destroying it. And finally, Kessler's revelation to him.

And in New Marais: Overcharging the bridge and killing civilians along with the Militia. Killing that mouthy Militia soldier rather than handing him off to the cops. Ramming the streetcar full of explosives into the plantation instead of freeing cops. Tricking Laroche and the Rebels by impersonating the Militia. Helping Nix to imprint on Bertrand's monsters rather than exposing him as he was making the creatures. Killing the Blast Shard Bomber and his hostages. Siding with John White, the original Beast, instead of fulfilling Kessler's purpose for him and stopping both the Beast and the Plague with the RFI. And finally, killing Zeke and becoming the Beast.

After that, it was the decisions he made as the Beast: Recreating the Ray Spheres to create more Conduits and speed up the plan. Setting himself up as ruler of the Conduits. Killing human prisoners without the Conduit gene to conserve resources. Turning people into spies by telling them he had the cure to the Plague and he would give it to their sick relatives if they would do his bidding, and then screwing them over when they were done. Killing anyone who represented a threat to his powerbase within the Conduits. Killing Conduit children as they weren't fit for combat. Allowing people to worship him as a god. And ultimately, driving humanity to extinction.

With that, it all went dark.

Cole coughed as he regained consciousness. That was one of the most intense things he had experienced since John had transferred the powers of the Beast into him.

Pulling himself up, he realized that his attackers were up too. The female tore off her mask, revealing an oval face with large, green eyes and framed by raven hair. She was on her feet, leaning over on her knees and gasping for breath. As her male counterpart got up, she glanced over at Cole, her eyes going wide as she realized that he was up.

"He's waking up, go!" she yelled at her companion. Stumbling to his feet, he began running down the hall rather than using his smoke powers.

Grunting, Cole got to his feet and fired off a large hellfire rocket after the man's retreating form. Just before it struck him, the butterfly swarm flew between the projectile and the target, rematerializing into the woman with some kind of shield in front of her. Instead of detonating, the rocket reversed direction and flew right back at him. Before he could dodge or bring up a polarity wall, the rocket struck him, sending him flying right back into his court.

Pushing off from the ground, Cole used his momentum to right himself. He glared as the butterfly swarm came in through the destroyed doors and reformed, the woman now wielding her huge kitchen knife and glaring right back at him.

"You're the 'White Queen' that's behind all this, I presume?" he asked, Kessler's speech pattern all too easy for him to assume.

"Indeed I am, Cole MacGrath," she answered, giving her blade a few swings as she sized him up. "I've been planning this since the day I gained my powers."

"Since I gave you your powers," he corrected. These days, everyone called him all sorts of titles: "Beast", "Your Excellency", "Lord and Savior", "Emperor", "Prime Conduit", and his personal favorite, "Demon". Only Kuo called him "Cole" and only in private. This one had a lot of misplaced confidence in herself. "If you're so bold as to call me by my given name, what is yours, child?"

Her face turned absolutely murderous.

"My name," she growled out, "is Alice Pleasance Liddell. And I am not your child!"

And with that, she charged forward.

From the onset of the fight, Cole felt something that hadn't afflicted him in years: Fear, and the doubt that his powers wouldn't be enough. This girl was the most vicious and mobile opponent he had ever faced, avoiding his attacks with a grace beyond Olympic level, only to charge in and deal out massive attacks and damage to him whenever the opportunity presented itself. She was smart, she was fast, she was tough, and she was strong. Dangerous in every and all senses of the word.

He had all of the powers he had ever wielded and then some. His lightning and electromagnetism, napalm abilities from Nix, ice abilities from Kuo, all of it amped insanely high by the power of the Beast.

She dodged his bolt streams and scythe bolts by twisting to the side, dodging around as a swarm of butterflies, and at one point doing the Matrix dodge. The freeze and hellfire rockets he fired at her were returned thanks to the shield she utilized. She alternated between dodging and shielding herself when he fired his shatter and nightmare blasts at her. Ice, napalm, and cluster grenades thrown at her were batted right back to him. She maneuvered past his frost shield to strike at him. She actually laughed at the spikers he summoned, cutting into the bugs with a strange familiarity, like she was used to killing inhuman monsters.

What really shocked him was the strength of her attacks, which were on par with his own. Playing cards that cut into his skin before exploding. Ball-lightning rockets that sent bits and pieces of his surroundings to strike him. Acid grenades that melted through every material that they touched, taking a nice chunk out of his prosthetic. Smoke projectiles poured from her hands like a machine gun. A huge hobby horse made out of marble sent one of his teeth flying. Hurling sharpened scraps of metal at him like Alden used to. She tossed out grenades that spat fire everywhere. At one point, she got right in his face and blew a mask of ice over him. She showed up his spikers by summoning demonic monsters that used Conduit-like powers. And finally, she struck him with an intense beam of laser light.

Getting up from the beam, Cole finally broke his Kessler impersonation. Roaring, he activated his Gigawatt Blades and charged her, any sense of strategy or control breaking down into rage. She unsheathed her oversized kitchen knife as he came at her, neon energy glowing along its edge with black particles flitting around it. The melee was even more intense than their ranged attacks, orange electricity dancing with red and blue neon. His power was offset by her skill and speed with the blade, his wild slashes and stabs dealt with by well-timed parries, most of her own slashes and thrusts getting past his defense.

Finally, they were caught in a blade-lock, the energy of the weapons buzzing and throwing arcs everywhere, their eyes meeting each other, glowing orange against acid emerald, bared teeth against set lips.

"Who the hell do you think you are, you little bitch?!" he roared. "You think you can take me on, the Beast?!"

"Yes I do, MacGrath," she answered, baring her teeth in defiance. "Underneath all that power, underneath your supposed godhood, there's nothing but a selfish and scared little man." She smirked suddenly. "And I've found that those are easily disposed of."

Gritting his teeth in rage, Cole broke the blade-lock and threw her back, right into the middle of the court. His court was literally a courtroom, the ceiling giving way to the sky above, streaked with smoke and glowing orange from the carnage below. He had the opening above for exactly what he was about to do.

Gathering every reserve of power he had, he focused on the girl, his rage and power centered on this one insect that dared to fly in the face of the only god on Earth. He could feel the electrons in the air above vibrating with anticipation at being unleashed, itching to show the world just what they could do when properly exercised and concentrated.

Raising his arm, he channeled every ounce of the titanic power he wielded into this one ability, the ultimate expression of power, worshipped by ancient humans as the weapon of every major god figure in mythology and theology, now his and his alone to use as he saw fit. The sky darkened overhead, and in the one instant after he brought his arms down, crackling with electricity, he saw the realization in Liddell's eyes, and reveled in it.

With a crack that shook the entire city, the largest and brightest bolt of lightning that he had ever called down lanced from the sky and struck her. The sky and the courtroom were lit up as though by a second sun, the only thing Cole could see was a small form within the lightning itself. As he had with Kessler and in his first fight with the Beast, he kept pouring on the juice, longer and harder than he had for both of them combined. If losing their White Queen to this didn't scare off the rebels, the mere mention of his name or seeing his face would be enough for them to piss themselves and run.

Finally, the immense light and sound faded away, leaving a small, blackened form at the bottom of a new crater in his courtroom. If he had held the lightning any longer, the floor would have collapsed beneath them. The entire room was a mess from their battle, portraits burned, decorations smashed beyond repair, ice, paper and who knew how many other elements were strewn among the rubble of his courtroom. The only thing that wasn't damaged at all was his throne, which was both ironic and symbolic at the same time. They could destroy the surroundings and order that he had instilled, but they couldn't destroy his power.

Right then, a contingent of the Lightning Bolts, his personal guard, ran, flew, and teleported into the courtroom, their clothes torn and nursing severe (for a human) wounds. The commanding officer strode up and saluted him, quickly followed by his soldiers.

"My lord," he addressed him, "my deepest apologies for not dealing with this scum myself." He sneered down at the form in the crater. "The rebels outside were proving to be far more of a threat than we thought possible."

"And what of them now?" Cole asked, turning his eyes to the officer and his troops, smiling to himself when most of them flinched beneath his orange gaze.

The man smiled. "They're cracking, sir. Shall we go out and finish the job?" From the electricity that flowed around his fists, he was looking forward to it.

"No, I'll do it myself," Cole answered as he turned from the crater and walked towards the entrance, soldiers parting before him like the Red Sea. "There was another one, who ran off. Find him and kill him."

"Yes, your Excel-"

Before the man could finish, a scream from the depths of Hell erupted from the crater along with a blast of pure, raw force. It sent the guards flying throughout the courtroom and sent Cole into the hall. Getting up and turning around angrily, he was about to firebird strike back into the room when he saw what was floating out of the crater. His blood froze colder than his and Kuo's ice as it touched down.

Cole had seen plenty of freakish and messed-up things since the first blast: Sasha and her tendrilled tongue, the amped-up Conduit David, Bertrand's monster form and his forced Conduits, and of course, John White's Beast form. But they were nothing compared to this Angel of Death.

She stood at least a foot taller than himself, red eyes glowering at the world while blood fell like tears from them. The woman's skin had turned as bone-white as the dress she was wearing, blood oozing from her chest like a gunshot wound, while her arms were bathed in the red fluid. Her hair, alternating between a deathly black and a sickening green, blew wildly in a nonexistent wind. A pair of wings adorned her back, the feathers as pure white as the rest of her, dampened by the blood that flowed from where they connected to the wings. For the first time in years, Cole felt true fear lance through him.

For an instant, they just stared at each other, two mortals approaching godhood. A lightning rocket suddenly hit the Death Angel's face, not even scratching her. With another shriek born of Hell, she turned and engaged his guards as they attacked her.

Cole could only watch as she slaughtered them. A paper card sliced into a female guard's neck before exploding and decapitating her. Acid burned through the armor and then flesh of another. Fire consumed a guard as another beside him was frozen and then shattered. A summoned monster bit the head off another. Not only were the guards' electric attacks not even hurting her, but hers were even stronger now, stronger than his. It was a bloodbath.

Fear finally overtaking him, Cole turned and ran away at superhuman speeds, leaving his guards to fight and die in his name. He made it to the first turn in the corridor, only for a smoke missile to greet him as he rounded the corner.

Picking himself up from the floor, he found himself looking up at the male assassin, the "Ace" apparently, as he approached him, smoke swirling around his hands and mask off. He looked familiar, but Cole couldn't remember where and when he had seen the Native American man in front of him.

"That," the Ace declared as he glared down at Cole, "was for my brother, you asshole."

Cole replied by throwing a large bolt of lightning at the Ace, aiming for his head. His new opponent simply raised his hand and caught it, the orange electricity turning to blue as he absorbed it.

"Sorry," he smirked, "I got that with your Beast powers. Here's something you don't have."

Two tentacles of water shot out from his hands and struck Cole before he could dodge, sending him howling down the hall on a veritable tsunami, agony coursing through his body as electricity arced and sparked into the water.

It was only through sheer strength of will that he summoned his ice abilities, freezing the water and taking away its ability to hurt him. He broke out of the ice with a combination of napalm and lightning, electricity actually arcing from his eyes as he glared furiously down the hall. This was the exact reason why he had hydrokinetic Conduits killed on the spot or given over to Sasha.

"Tell me," the Ace burst forward into a vaguely humanoid form of energized neon, flying down the hall and stopping just in front of him. "Are you angry because of the water, or that someone is finally standing up to you?"

Cole snarled and whipped the Amp from his back for the first time in years. The Ace's chain was unwrapped from his wrist, blue energy coursing through it before it transformed into a massive video sword. Both weapons intersected each other before breaking off and a new melee duel started.

A fusion of lightning, napalm, and ice swept along the Amp's prongs as Cole swung it, skill abandoned in exchange for strength and brutality. The Ace wasn't quite as strong as Cole, but he had enough skill to offset the Amp's attacks. When the Amp finally brushed aside the cumbersome video sword to finally score a hit, the Ace recovered by energizing his chain with neon instead, allowing for much faster maneuvering.

After that, the Ace kept changing his weapon up to throw Cole off. From a neon lightsaber to a glass hammer, to a smoke-infused chain, to a concrete mace and chain, to a paper sword. And those were just the abilities that he was able to channel into his chain.

As the Ace landed a hit right on Cole's jaw, he realized where he had seen him before. The first time had been on a DUP prisoner file; brought in for multiple charges of grand theft in partnership with Henry Daughtry, along with countless charges of misdemeanor vandalism. After that, it had been on video recordings of Augustine and her agents training the young man in Curdun Cay's extensive agency program. Finally, it had been on a report detailing his escape from Curdun Cay, his flight to the ruins of Seattle, and the subsequent battle with Augustine before his disappearance and apparent death.

"Delsin Rowe," Cole said as he spat out a mixture of saliva and blood (how long had it been since he last bled?). "I was so disappointed when I learned of your alleged death. You had such promise."

"As what?" Rowe snarled, "as another one of your stooges? As one particularly powerful toy for you to use and manipulate? Don't think so." He brought the paper sword up, water coating it and making it wave around like a tentacle.

"As my successor." At the look of surprise on Rowe's face, Cole continued. "You have the potential to become the most powerful Conduit in existence. What's more, I can see the drive and will in your eyes, focused and strong enough to do what needs to be done. Whatever you set your mind to, you have the strength to see it through to the end." He smiled at the young powerhouse. "Just like me."

Delsin studied him for a moment before his water curled the chain back around his wrist and disappeared. "This the part where you try to convince me to join you?"

Cole nodded and dropped Kessler's voice. "I don't know if you've ever let someone down. Got your ass kicked or straight up failed. But those are the moments that define us. They push you further than you ever thought possible and force you to make choices." He remembered a broken set of sunglasses laying in the ruins of St. Ignatius Cathedral. "No matter what the cost," he finished softly.

Delsin was silent for a moment. "So, I either join you, and take your place as the Beast when the time comes, or I continue fighting you, and possibly die."

Cole smiled. "Stand with the strong, or die with the weak. That simple."

Delsin brought up one hand to stroke his chin in thought. "Let me think about it." An instant later, the hand left his chin and fired a smoke missile right into Cole's face, again. "Hell no!"

Cole snarled. "You'll regret this, you little-"

He was abruptly caught off by the deluge of powerful missiles that shot from Delsin's hands. Smoke, neon, video, concrete, electricity, glass, wire, paper, and water projectiles struck the Beast faster than he could dodge, shield himself, or strike back. The hall around him was devastated from the blasts. As he was forced further down the hall, he could only watch as Rowe's attacks shredded the tapestries, paintings, and other art that depicted his rise to power.

His first stand against the Reapers. His battle with Sasha, painted by herself with her tar. His battles with Alden and his Dustmen. His final fight with Kessler. Achieving domination over old Empire. His first stand against the Beast. Facing off against the Militia, Bertrand's monsters, and the Vermaak 88. Joining the Beast and becoming his successor. Establishing New Empire City as the capital of the Conduit Empire. Crushing the US and NATO forces. Conquering the world. All of it destroyed by the power and hate of Rowe and his allies.

If he lost now, everything he had done would be wiped away and branded as the actions of a monster. History was written by the victors, and he had to win this. After all of the death, all of the pain, all of his sacrifices, he couldn't afford to become the villain.

Rowe finally stopped his bombardment because of the cloud of smoke that obscured the hallway, absorbing it all. Cole took the opportunity to summon an Ionic Vortex and hurled it at Rowe with all of his remaining strength.

The tornado, crackling with electricity, destroyed what little that Rowe had missed as it picked him up and sucked him in along with every piece of rubble from his rampage. It was strong enough to tear through the roof above them before it dissipated, dropping the debris to the ground. As the chunks of various building materials, art, and furniture rained down, Cole couldn't spot a body among any of it.

Cole ran forward towards the pile and studied it. When a surface scan revealed nothing, he sent a nightmare blast at it, sending the bits and pieces flying through the air. Still no sign of Rowe or his body. He turned and looked up at the new sky-light and the walls, still not seeing him. Where had the little punk gone?

He heard it too late, the sigh and hiss of hot particles coming together and forming into a whole, right behind him. He shot around too late.

Rowe raised his hands and a huge ball of concrete formed in front of him. He squeezed his hands together and the concrete was forced into the size of a beach ball without breaking down or melting. Cole remembered seeing something similar prior to the blast, some anime or cartoon that Zeke had liked to watch a couple of years before everything changed. His eyes widened as he remembered what happened next and brought up his polarity wall just in time.

An onslaught of concrete projectiles exploded off the ball and shot towards him, impacting off the electric/ice shield and practically vaporizing into dust. He could feel the power behind the impacts and actually wondered if something was going to finally penetrate his best defensive ability.

If he hadn't been so focused on the concrete ball of doom, he would have seen Rowe's next attack. Just as the ball ran out of concrete to throw at him and disappeared, a shadow appeared from above him. Cole had enough time to look up into the most terrifying thing he had ever seen before it slammed into him.

A torrent of angelic beings, equipped with wings, armor, and the whole nine yards, fell from the sky and hit him in a kamikaze attack that kept on coming and coming. It was as if the Heavens had finally had it with him and sent their armies to strike him down, something that some of the more religious Conduits who weren't in his Church wished would happen to him because of things he had done.

When the stream of heavenly avengers finally subsided, Cole was on the ground in a miniature crater, groaning as his healing factor began repairing his body. He hadn't felt this level of pain since he became the Beast, since he had become powerful enough to either deflect or take damage as he saw fit.

"That was a beautiful sight." Rowe pranced into view, smirking down at him. "Sadly, those weren't real angels showing you God's displeasure for your sins of genocide and murder, but I'll take what I can get."

Cole grit his teeth as he got up. He was going to murder this little brat and scatter his entrails through the streets and hang his compatriots with his intestines.

He got to his feet and was about to resume fighting Rowe when the Angel of Death showed up. She flew in on her bloodstained wings and landed right besides Rowe, making him jump back.

"Holy shit!" Rowe yelped, his eyes wide. "Alice, that you?"

The winged being that towered over both of them suddenly vanished, shrinking down to reveal the young woman who had confronted him in his throne room and not the charred piece of flesh at the bottom of the crater.

"Of course it's me," she snapped, rolling her eyes. "Who else would it be?"

"I don't know, the actual Angel of Death come to punish Troll MacAssface for his sins?" Rowe snarked back. "You just missed me hit him with Hellfire Swarm. Oh man, I hope somebody got that on camera, it was so epic. And it was right after I hit him with Big Concrete Balls."

"And I'm sure it was," "Alice" answered, glaring at Cole. "But can you give me your play-by-play after we've subdued or killed him?"

"Oh, right, sorry." Delsin turned back to him and adopted his own glare. If he wasn't so mad, Cole would have told him that the girl was better at it.

"How about the good, old one-two?" Delsin continued. "You hit him with a powerful attack, and then I hit him, and then we keep doing it until he's down or dead?"

"That sounds marvelous." Liddell aimed her hand at him, a golden glow appearing in her palm, growing in size and intensity quickly. "Here's a little something I got from you, Mr. MacGrath."

Finally getting his third wind, Cole roared and charged at them, aiming to stop her before she hit him with whatever she had brewing. He hadn't moved a foot before the glow exploded from her hand, and his world exploded with it.

He came to a few minutes later, his entire body on fire. He was looking up at the gray sky above, the smoke swirling upwards just another shade against it. He hadn't been hit hard enough to turn the world gray and get him this close to death since New Marais.

Moving his head around, Cole could see that he was on the ground floor, just short of the main gate. All around him were the bodies of his elite Lightning Bolts along with the armies of his Trinity: Kuo's Vermaak, Augustine's DUP, and Sasha's Reapers, the best of all his forces. And they had been killed by the rabble standing around him, eyes wide and limbs trembling as they realized who he was.

Looking back up at his palace, built over the remains of Alden's tower from Old Empire, Cole could see the massive hole in the side, likely the point where he had involuntarily exited the structure. It was going to take forever to repair his palace.

As he struggled to get up, the Conduit rebels around him began to back away, fear penetrating their minds and neurons prompting their hearts to beat faster. He was going to kill all of these little, fearful, ungrateful peons and then he was going to slaughter Rowe and Liddell and parade their heads around New Empire while he personally hunted all who had stood against him or harbored dissenting thoughts.

In Old Empire and New Marais, he had been the Conduit walking among the humans. Here in New Empire, he was the Beast walking among the Conduits. Nothing had truly changed; he was a god among mortals. The strong take what they want, and the weak are their slaves, their playthings. And no one was stronger than him.

Apparently, he had let himself get soft, thinking that inaction against him was enough. After today, he was going to slaughter those who hated him, from the children who were good so he wouldn't come after them, all the way to anyone who actively plotted against him or had been caught up in the heat of the moment. Even if the members of his Church were the only civilian Conduits who were left alive, it would be worth it.

Cries suddenly broke, and they all scattered, looking up at the sky. Cole followed their gaze.

Shooting up from the gaping hole in his palace were three balls of smoke particles, arcing further and further into the sky. At their apex right above him, the balls came together and formed a man, who then began plummeting headfirst back towards the earth, igniting his fists.

Cole struggled to get up, his still-healing injuries bad enough to prevent him from using his powers. He wasn't going down like this. He was the Beast, a god among gods, the most powerful being on Earth! He had no equals!

Just before Rowe hit him, Cole looked up into his smirking face, and realized that that wasn't true anymore.