ic Tilting at Windmills

[Avenger Assembled]

"Yes, of course. Let's talk strategy, shall we?" 

 

-

 

Oost-Indisch Huis

Amsterdam 

 

For better or worse, Nina had already 'burned' her Monsoon identity in the Netherlands - there was no going back, and hiding who she was would distract from the overall point - to draw out Dutch nationalists. So it was that just an hour or so after her battle with the neo-Nazis, she was taking to the skies over Oost-Indisch Huis, the old headquarters of the Dutch East India Company. "You see what this is?" she demanded of no one in particular, glad that AEGIS was going to be dealing with Dutch law enforcement so that she wouldn't have that particular hassle to deal with while she lured out the neo-Nazis lurking in this city. 

 

"<This place is a desecration>!" she announced in loud Arabic, "<a desecration of five hundred years of history! Muslim gold, Muslim workers, Muslim power built this place! This should be a shrine to _our_ history, not the history of the fat, bewigged, sausage-eating Dutchmen who lived here! This country was built on OUR blood, NOT theirs!>"

[trollthumper]

Joe lurked at the back, watching as Nina worked her black magic. He was dressed more for the part this time - he'd traded out his usual flight jacket for one with a Thor Steiner logo, had a pendant with a Norse rune hanging from a chain on his neck, and wore a T-shirt with "ANTI ANTIFA" on it in letters approximating the Lonsdale font. He knew the symbols from trawling the Internet and discussing matters with others abroad; it just felt a little dirty to be wearing them. But if this was what skullduggery entailed...

"Can you believe this brazen bitch?"

Joe turned to find someone in similar gear. Nothing brazen or obvious, but enough of the little signals that said one might sympathize. The RAC patch was just one of them. "It's not enough that one of hers thinks he can just kill anyone who disagrees with him. Now she has to ride the lightning. Dance in his blood so that she can sell her glory. She really thinks she can **** on everything we are and get away with it?"

Joe heard and understood every word of it, thanks to the translator feed AEGIS had set him up with. Ignoring what he saw as the massive irony of it, he decided to press forward. "You're right," he said, glad that the thing could autotranslate so that he wouldn't sound like a drunk when trying to repeat Dutch phonetically. "Somebody should show her."

He stepped forward, looking up to Monsoon. "You! We are not afraid of you! We have seen worse, we have fought worse, and we've remained strong! You can come here and gnaw at us like rats, but you'll never cripple us!"

[Avenger Assembled]

"Have you!? I am but one, and there will be millions!" Nina didn't speak a word of Dutch, but she knew what Cannonade had planned to say in response - and with a little help from the AEGIS translators was able to give something back in a Dutch that sounded, well, like a foreigner speaking the language! "Let's review our recent history, shall we? In the last century you ducked inside your windmills for one war, you were overrun in days in another, and then the people you tried to rule threw you off in four years!" Nina was already rehearsing the public statement of contrition she'd be giving to the Dutch press, probably with her American boyfriend at her side, once all the exciting stuff was done. Ah, to be free of public opinion!

 

"But there is strength in your country," she conceded, "strength from the brave people outnumbered by the sheep on each side, and strength from the future that's coming. You taught us the lash four hundred years ago - but now the worm will turn! When Amsterdam bends its knee to Jakarta, how the men who built this place will weep!" 

[trollthumper]

Joe couldn't help but laugh on the inside, even though his face was locked in an expression of frozen, twitching rage. Monsoon was getting into the role of would-be conquerer quite easily -- Gonna try hard not to think about that - and the part of him that was always happy to see fascists suffer was enjoying the UBR members around them acting like howler monkeys poked with sticks. But then he remembered that he was playing with fire... and if this went wrong, he wouldn't be the one to get burned. He'd be back in the States while the violence washed out on the local immigrant population, the ones who just wanted to be a part of the country like anyone else.

God, I hate it when the assholes keep pressing the normal people into taking a side. He looked up to Monsoon with defiance. "You think we fear you?" he yelled. "We've stood against worse armies, and worse invaders! We stood before the strongest armies! We struck from the shadows when invaded! You think you can sweep in and drown this country under your values. But you will never know what it is to be Dutch! And you will never break that part of us!"

And I really feel like crap using the good parts of this country as cover to draw out the bastards.

[Avenger Assembled]

"FOOL!" 

 

Monsoon laughed manically, her hand closing into a fist. "Your culture is nothing but the surface scum clinging to the ocean of the future! And your so-called master race is nothing but the puling offspring of cowherds and the very BEASTS OF THEIR FIELDS! Come, maggots!" she taunted the angry, growing crowd of neo-nationalists below. "I have fought you before! Your forces are to me and mine as ants beneath a boot!" And then, greatly daring, she landed before the crowd, heedless of the danger. This had better work - my reputation has taken blows today, my body deserves better. 

 

She drew her scimitar, the blade raised above her head, and called "Come and take it!" 

[trollthumper]

Joe charged forward, bellowing wordlessly. It was better than trying to speak Dutch, and was likely just as viable a method of communicating with these goons. He swung blindly at Monsoon, and deliberately so - a few too many years of street fights and superbrawls meant he could punch goons in his sleep. Deliberately trying to miss someone while making it look like you were still trying to hit them took a certain measure of precision, one he was afraid he might blunder past.

But somehow, he managed to keep up the charade. She swung wildly with the sword, managing to cut up the clothes slightly without cutting his skin - or, more likely, breaking the blade against his skin. All the while, he kept descending further into frustration, with more of it real than he would have liked. But then came the signal. And, with all the force and planning of a demolished building, he tripped on a brick and fell to the ground, entirely at Monsoon's "mercy."

[Avenger Assembled]

Monsoon drew back the blade, murder in her eye, and for a moment Cannonade had to wonder how far Nina was going to go on this charade! (The sword would only break against his skin, but even so!) A moment later, though, she was reaching down with her free hand to take his. "Come! Perhaps we are not so different after all. You fought with honor for your people. Let us stand together in peace, not in war." Ugh - I hope all those sessions with that tedious little Psion fellow are enough to protect my mind from supernatural malcontents. Father certainly paid him enough! If the mind control went the other way, she had secured Cannonade's permission to knock him into the river if necessary.

[trollthumper]

Joe just stared up at Monsoon, trying to keep the glimmer of fury alight in his eyes. If the provocateur was watching, then any second now, either he or Monsoon would be flooded with the urge to utterly destroy the other person. Then again, the odds of that would likely go down if he gave the psychic what he wanted in the first place. He leapt to his feet, staring right at Monsoon as he spat at the ground.

"Your peace is poison," he said, "and subservience. We are not dhimmi. We are Dutch. And we will keep this land. Bring your worst. We will rise to meet it." He took off, trying not to feel dirty as some of the members of the UBR clapped and cheered for him. He was halfway down the block when somebody clapped him on the shoulder. He turned to find a guy with ten years and a lot more professionalism on him, but Joe knew the look of a scrapper when he saw one.

"You did well. People like her... they think they can barge into this country, tell us what it is, tell us we are nothing. They need to learn. How would you like to keep this land great?"

Joe smiled. They were taking the bait. "Nothing would please me more."

"Then come with me. Perhaps we should talk." And with that, Joe was led into the depths of the city. Fortunately, he'd made sure to keep just enough distance that Monsoon could get a rough idea of what street he was being led down...

[Avenger Assembled]

As Cannonade left in the company of his new friend, Nina was offended by the lack of psychic tampering she'd detected in her soul. What? How dare they not brainwash me into attempting Cannonade's murder? I am a mighty Arabian warrior, dammit! With a frustrated snarl, she stamped her foot and took off into the air, rising out of the city streets before the locals could take exception to some of the things she'd said. And done. Things were going to be difficult when Mark picked up his phone, she could tell. Not one for stealth, she trusted that Cannonade would pose a sufficient distraction to his new friend that neither of them would look up in the sky. It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a princess of Socotra!

[trollthumper]

"You did very well out there," said the older man. He was dressed fairly casually - jeans, dress shoes, button-up shirt, much more professional than the army of skins that clung to the outer reaches of the UBR. But he definitely had the frame and comportment of someone who'd doled out the carnage. "I wanted to keep my men back - we saw what the bitch did before, and no one else wished to be a martyr. Better to make a good show of being defiant."

 

Yeah, good shows all around. Joe kept his mouth shut as they moved through the alleys. "But you... you were willing to dive into her path. When the time comes, we will need more men like you."

 

"I hope that time is coming soon."

 

"Not soon enough. We can chip away, gain influence, but we cannot rout them all until we have the people on our side. Until we make it clear what threats they are." Their little journey brought them to a disused warehouse right off of one of the main canals. He knocked on one of the side doors, which opened silently. He gestured to Joe, who stepped through. The entire warehouse was done up like a modern tech start-up, only with a lot more nationalistic symbols. Men and women in professional wear moved about frantically, like it was election night and their candidate was in the lead. The man turned to Joe. "I will go talk to the others. Perhaps we can find a place for you here."

 

As he walked off, Joe whispered into his communicator. "Looks like they brought me to campaign headquarters. Don't think I'm gonna find anything worse than mail fraud here, but maybe they left the juicy stuff hanging out. I'll send you the address. How're things on the streets?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

"The natives are restless," muttered Monsoon as she peered down from a rooftop. "Stirred up by their tribal passions, ready to make sacrifices to their god...I will meet you soon." 

 

- 

A few minutes later, Joe was joined on the streets by a young woman in smart Western business dress. Nina still couldn't pass for the Aryan ideal - but in a black business dress and short heels, she looked like any other office worker rather than the ranting madwoman who had challenged Dutch society and history to its very core. "I have been thinking," she informed Joe, "and I am one of the good ones. I hate the Muslim fanatics for what they have done to my country and I love the civilization that America and Europe brought to the benighted hellhole that is my homeland." She sniffed. "You didn't tell them about your Arab girl because you wanted to make sure they were defenders of culture, not racists." She sniffed again, holding back a laugh, and wound up having to tilt her head back with a tissue from her pocket to hold off a nosebleed. "Ugh. Just a minute." 

 

When she was ready to go. she took Joe's arm and said, "Come on, babe, lead the way," in an American accent that sounded a lot like Mark's vaguely newscaster voice. 

[trollthumper]

Joe was momentarily speechless as Nina showed up down the street. But that was nothing compared to must have been going through the head of the guy who'd picked him up from the show of force. The contrast was striking - here was Joe, dressed like the archetypal white power skinhead, with symbols that denoted a flirtation with neo-fascism if not sticking one's tongue straight down its throat. And here was Nina, dressed for success and sounding like the perfect model of assimilation. For a second, Joe was left to wonder how this would go down. 

 

He was actually surprised when the man smiled. "It works," he said. "I am not sure how... but who am I to stand in the way of love? And it helps to show the nation where our true focus lies. We do not focus on the people, but the barbarism. It's worked before..."

 

Soon after, she and Joe were left waiting in the reception area as the man disappeared into the depths of the warehouse. He leaned in towards Nina. "Never underestimate the value of good PR," he whispered. "So, how do we want to do this from here? One of us breaks off to 'find the bathroom'?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hmm?" Nina had been, for a moment, studying her reflection in the glassed cover of a framed picture of some Dutch nationalist leader, her mind cast in other directions. "Yes. Babe, I need to use the facilities. Woman troubles. I don't want to be a distraction when you're meeting with the big cheese." A sympathetic look and a pleading face got her directed towards the women's washroom, even if she was distinctly sure she heard some muttering in Dutch as she headed there. Savages, she thought with a repressed sneer as she walked into the women's room. Humming, she walked from sink to sink in the women's room, thinking carefully back to Monsoon's fight with the Dutch nationalists earlier that day. I left the canal waters untouched and never actually drowned any of them. 

 

When she was done, she took a few steps away from the water, pressing her back against the cool tiles of the bathroom. "Fools," she muttered to herself, her voice drowned by the hissing of the water. "You have taken the daughter of a king to your bosom..." 

 

As she stepped out of the washroom, the door exploded behind her. Leaving her heels behind, she ran, screaming, the perfect image of a hysterical woman, as pipes burst open and sewer lines ruptured and thousands of gallons of water began gushing out through shattered tiles onto the floor beneath and right through it. 

 

"Aaah!" 

[trollthumper]

The warehouse trembled as if a bomb had gone off down the street. Soon after, as Nina's shriek filled the air, the sound of rushing sewer water and the small of all that came with that filled the air. Staffers began to evacuate the bull pen as water, waste, and fragments of porcelain slowly began to creep into the carpet. A skeleton crew remained behind to retrieve mailing lists and laptops while Joe and Nina remained relatively sedate, taking it all in. After a few seconds of scanning the perimeter, Joe began to react to the stench - with noises that weren't entirely exaggerated - as he began to move with the crowd. As he did, however, he noticed that the man who'd brought him and Nina into the building was ducking into one of the maintenance closets at the rear end of the building. 

 

"That way," he said, gesturing towards the closet. The two of them managed to push their way through the thickening human tide and the increasingly swampy office floor, making their way to the maintenance closet and ducking their way in. To Joe's lack of surprise, the man was gone. 

 

"Good idea on the distraction. Now this place smells about how it sounds." He looked around the closet. "All right, if I was the entrance to a secret lair, where the hell would I be?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

He was rewarded for his question by a ball of filthy floodwater that went rocketing past his head and circled around Nina's, whirling faster and faster, before it seemed to harden to crystal clarity. The waterblade buried itself in the cunningly concealed lock she'd discovered and slowly permeated the electronics before erupting back outwards, taking the entire security mechanism with it in a shower of sparks, quickly muffled by the water itself. "They are as poor at keeping secrets as they are everything else," she informed Cannonade frankly. 

[trollthumper]

Joe tried very hard to hold his nose as the swirling ball of sewage sunk its way into the mechanisms of the secret door, managing to fry the wiring in just the right way that the magnetic locks on the door all failed, popping back into their chambers. The door swung open, revealing a staircase leading downwards. "Wow," he said, "a basement. In Amsterdam. That's like a disaster waiting to happen." He turned to Nina. "And yeah, it's the kind of disaster you'd be good at. But we've gotta find something that clears that vendor first." 

 

It soon became clear that this had not come standard with the warehouse. The stairs were steely and modernist, and the walls around them were lined with a thin coating of metal. It gave Joe the idea he was descending into a submarine - which, for all he knew, he was. Soon, the stairwell opened up into a wide walkway that oversaw another warehouse-like structure. But this one was a lot more sparse, with little on the main floor and walkways other than gathered crates and containers. He gently pushed one crate, trying to get a better sense of the contents, only to unveil the logo that had been pressed against the wall. A stylized black lightning bolt in a red sphere.

 

"...welp. So much for the whole 'homegrown fascist' idea. Looks like the assholes are outsourcing..." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Nina sneered, her eyes narrowing with contempt at the too-familiar sight. "SHADOW." She spat the word. "Vile subhuman dogs. My...I have heard Kantor gained his powers by copulating with the ghosts of dead Egyptian gods." She looked at the walls and added, "I can flood this place. Destroy their work and everything they've gathered - but that would let them continue their disgusting farce on the surface." She looked at Cannonade, standing out of range of the equipment herself. After all, she was far more fragile than the bulletproof Cannonade. "Open the box. See what they're carrying. I hope it's something that carries a long, long jail sentence...even in a Dutch prison." She made it sound like a vacation - which compared to Socotra's infamous prisons it no doubt was.  

[trollthumper]

"Yeah, I... can't really comment on how these bastards got started," said Joe. "Wouldn't be surprised if it happened like you said, though. These bastards do enough corpse ****ing as it is." He ran his fingers along the cover of the crate, looking for somewhere to get a grip. He slowly pulled up, trying very hard not to make any noise - even if his grip was stronger than any crowbar. Aside from a few stray nails plinking onto the ground, there was little din. He set the lid aside as gently as he could, revealing a number of canisters laid out inside. The canisters had piping at either end, tiny little pinholes in mesh. "Look like gas canisters. Probably planning another false flag. You think we've got enough?" 

 

It was hard for Nina to make out the last bits of Joe's speech. The whole thing was starting to ware on her. If SHADOW was here and was carrying deadly materials, then odds were they were planning big. They had no idea how big this complex was, what there was lying in store... for the first time in a long time, she started to feel uncertain...

[Avenger Assembled]

Nina's eyes widened as she seemed to stare off at something Cannonade couldn't quite see. As she did so, cracks began to appear in the sub-basement walls, cracks that deepened even as the powerhouse watched. "Run!" she called to him, "Run and take all that to the surface. I'll flood the whole place," she was muttering, "flood the whole place and wash it all away, drown any of the miserable rats that live here, I-" she went on, her voice shifting to Arabic as she started shaking her head back and forth. 

[trollthumper]

"The hell?" Joe asked, knocked off his feet by Nina's sudden change of tactics. He expected a certain amount of "drown all the fools" out of her, but for her to adopt such a radical tack so fast... "This may prove they're terrorists, but it can't prove crap to clear the vendor. If we just take off and wash it all out --"

 

That was it. It was too fast a change. And washing away any remaining evidence would still give the UNG a chance to wave the bloody shirt, wouldn't it? Joe looked up, and Nina, holding a grip on her faculties, managed to follow the gaze. The walkway was surrounded by a number of rooms, all tightly sealed and buttoned-up. But through one frosted and bulletproof window, the two could see a silhouette of a person. 

 

Realizing that somebody had made her afraid was enough to clear away the doubts from Nina's mind. Any need to drown was all of her own cognizance. Which was bad news for the fool above...

[trollthumper]

The person watching upstairs seemed to shift footing slightly, not moving from their position but still looking down. Joe was ready to leap up, clear the distance, and take the bastard out. And then a bomb went off in his head. A fury of sensations, emotions, and flashing lights, leaving him struggling to stay on his feet. The sheer tide of thought wasn't the worst part. The feeling like the bottom of his stomach had fallen out wasn't the worst part. It was the fact that those feelings kept shifted out of focus, complete with brief sensations of restored normality - only for the tide to return, washing over him. All he could think right now was that if Nina hadn't made such a show, maybe he could've gotten this undercover operation done without it turning into a clusterf --

 

Nina, meanwhile, was having troubles of her own...

[Avenger Assembled]

Monsoon took off running when she saw the look on Cannonade's face, images of Joe's fantastic strength flashing through her mind with terrible speed. She didn't run away, though, she ran directly towards the shadowy empath who had maddened her ally and smashed shoulder-first through the smoked glass, using her hydrokinesis to keep her flesh together in an instinctive gesture. She rolled as she landed and came up fighting, abjuring her sword and instead grabbing the woman by the face-mask and lashing one arm behind her neck.

 

"You thought the big muscleman American was the big threat, didn't you, fool?" she hissed like a snake, ignoring the woman's frantic struggles to get away. "Well, you miscalculated. You should have feared me MORE!" She reached out and squeezed, feeling cells break and hearing the other woman scream in agony as blood suddenly gushed from her eyes and mouth. Blood dripped onto Nina's hands, where her automatic hydrokinesis made the liquid pool and drip right off, leaving her completely immaculate.

 

The other woman pulled away, just in time to dodge a blow from Cannonade, and Nina knew this would have to end fast. One punch from Cannonade could finish her.

 

"Do you see what you've done, slave?" she sneered at the bleeding, half-blind mind controller. "You've removed the inhibitions from a man who hates your loathsome kind and can put his fist through a tank wall! Surrender now and save me the trouble of removing your blood from our clothes!" 

[trollthumper]

Said American muscleman was having troubles of his own. Nina was gone, but Joe still needed to punch something. Fire burned behind his eyes, his blood boiled, and his heartbeat was like machine gun fire. Somewhere over the din he could hear someone saying something, loud and angry. Or maybe that was just him, hearing his own anger laid over it. He didn't know, and he didn't care. He leapt up, barging through the thin railing and landing on the walkway with enough force to leave boot prints in the metal. He pushed forward into the small room, where there were... two women. He couldn't make out much more than that. He charged forward, talking a wild swing at whoever was closest... and missed. He let out a wordless yell, his rage echoing off of the walls.

 

The woman in the face-mask and uniform - similar to SHADOW garb, but of different cut and with no insignia - ducked out of the way of Cannonade's fist, and locked eyes with Nina. "You think you can scare me," she said. "I swim in fear. And hate. And all that is so easy to pull at. Soft words do nothing." But Nina could tell there was something in the woman's eyes, something that treated this as more of a mantra and less of a certainty...

[Avenger Assembled]

Monsoon's hand lashed out and grabbed the woman by the neck, lifting her not with her own muscles but with the water within. She felt the vibration travel up her arm as Cannonade struck her in the back and could only imagine the impact the SHADOW empath was feeling. "Listen well, foolish woman," she sneered with royal contempt. "I can see your whole history in your eyes. You were born nothing, a clone with your brain stuffed with psionic T-cells. So you've had to struggle and connive and claw your way to power, make yourself better than your wretched clone sisters." She tightened her grip. "But true power, the divine right to rule, is something you're born with. Now, we both know that my friend and I are going to leave this place with you and use you as proof to bring down your little conspiracy. You can come with us and I can tell them you told us nothing. Or we can take you out with a broken back and make sure your dread masters know that you told us everything." She laughed, and it really did sound pretty sinister to her own ears! It really was too bad Mark didn't appreciate this sort of play, she mused.

 

"What's it going to be, little clone?" 

[trollthumper]

The SHADOW clone took a step back, as if recoiling from the detail of the vision that Nina had painted. But just a step, before she could take another one, resolve flickered across her face. "A little nothing," she said. "That's all I am, you say. But a little nothing did all of this. You paint yourselves as masters of the world, having drawn together everything that makes you, you. Even that word - 'your selves.' I have no self. I am the order incarnate. And it is so easy to be no one, when all that makes you, you, can easily be set against itself. A flicker of anger, a long-simmering grudge... all it takes to make true chaos."

 

Joe found himself suddenly slipping out of the grip of blinding rage. It felt like he'd come to some sort of epiphany, but it was flying so fast he could only grasp at its edges. "Grab head!" he cried, the words falling from his tongue. "Coffee! You touch! Make fire! Set mad!"

 

"Case in point." 

 

A cold bite entered Joe and Nina's heads, tearing past all defenses and going right for the base of the brain. "Do you know what else they put into me? How to produce cognitive dissonance so traumatic, it produces microaneurysms. What was that you were saying about power again?"