ic Red Card(IC)

[Ari]

July 4th, Monday, 2022, 4.33PM

Sunset Hill, Emerald City, Oregon, USA

 

One hour after a giant bowling ball almost crushed the Liberty Dome...

 

Fort Cutler was well-named, a broad, square, red-brick mansion shouldering its way between other, milder mansions clustered at the top of Sunset Hill, overlooking the grey Pacific Ocean and the glittering twin Emeralds below. It was an open secret in the contacts that the Clines maintained that some of the most successful supercriminals in the world, retired by reason of age or injury, lived behind these handsome doors.

 

Richard Cline was looking for two in particular, Preston Cutler and Josephine Sherman. A few decades back, they'd done crimes as the masked duo of the Sportsman and Princess Poison. Tony played the Robin Hood gimmick by robbing sports events and showing up world champions at their specialties (barring a spectacular defeat at the hands of Bruce Lee), while Josie prowled the society circuit for daring (and deadly) jewel thefts. Both had been pals and accomplices of Richard's in his youth, and they'd eagerly kept in touch well into their current age, even asking him and Paige to be godparents for their now-grown son, Michael.

 

And, very recently, a giant bowling ball exactly like one of Preston's had nearly crushed the Liberty Dome where Richard, Paige, and their children had been. The Cutlers hadn't picked up the phone when called, and somehow couldn't be contacted by less mundane means. And so, here he was.

 

In answer to his knock, the door emblazoned with a stylized 'C-S' swung in, and a trim old man with a neat black suit, a bristling mustache and great wings of white hair peered out. It took a second before his resemblance to Diomedes, one of the deadliest assassins of the 20th century and vicious rival to the second Bowman, sunk in.

 

"Oh!" he blinked, smiling warmly, "Young Mr. Cline! What a pleasant surprise! Mr. and Mrs. Cutler are in the garden, hosting an Independence Day party. Dr. Devastator just got out of prison, they thought it fortuitous. Shall I show you to them, sir?" He stepped partly aside, silently acknowledging that Richard knew the way and could get there *very* quickly.

Edited July 14, 2022 by Ari

[Avenger Assembled]

An advantage of being husband and father to telepaths was that Richard knew exactly what was happening back at the Liberty Dome, where Paige, Will, and Holly were all helping clean up or treat the injured, along with watching Bryant. He looked at Diomedes and considered the man's face, looking him over with a skeptical look. Seems a lot shorter than the last time I saw him. A lot of old supervillains had found ways to cheat aging one way or another, certainly he and Paige didn't look like they were in their early sixties. Diomedes was fit for a man who'd been able to fight the second Bowman and be seen on the arm of the glamorous Clock Queen but it was hard to tell if he'd actually found a backdoor or if he was just a physical culture freak. 

 

No use wasting a lot of time thinking about it. "Yeah, yeah, they're real Patriots, I'm sure. Lead the way, buddy." He considered what to say as they made their way through the living room, studying the place with new eyes, as intense in a few seconds as a good detective in minutes. "What's going on in Casa del Cutler these days?" 

[Ari]

GM

 

"Oh, the humdrum operations of a comfortable family, sir." Diomedes led the way through a tangled maze of lavishly-appointed rooms packed with photos of both the owning family and their infinite constellation of relatives and criminal chums, hallways crowded with photos of Josie's more famous thefts and newspaper clippings of Preston's triumphs. "Mr. Cutler's brother, Simon, was just here to thank the mistress for her help in getting him that state Senate seat. His predecessor's health took a rather sudden turn for the worse, forcing her to resign."

 

This far in, Richard could hear the laughter and music coming from the backyard, and smell the barbecue smells mixed with one of Preston's beloved cigars. For what felt like a longer time than it hopefully was, Richard and Diomedes walked past shelves and display cases packed with trophies, from mundane kids' leagues to (stolen) Olympic statuettes. 

 

"Young master Michael has recently completed his apprenticeship, and embarked on his solitary journey to manhood. It is the fond hope of his parents that he follow in their footsteps, but alas," Diomedes shook his old head, sighing, "there is a scourge of youthful rebellion these days."

 

That had to be a joke, coming from a man who had killed his own father for trying to get between him and a target.

 

Abruptly, the two turned a corner and stood on the threshold to a large flag-wreathed patio, where a grill was set up being manned by a pair of servants. Around the long tables circling it, dozens of other familiar faces smiled, ate and talked and laughed. Children raced back and forth, or played around the jungle gym stretching perilously over the diners. In the centre of the centre, pale and thin as death, the genius inventor of the Devastoids kept her eyes down and sipped at an iced tea. 

 

With a light cough, Diomedes caught the attention of a tall middle-aged man with bright blue eyes in a polo shirt and khakis, smoking in a lawn chair in a huddle of other men, who quickly excused himself and hurried over.

 

"If you could, tell Miss Devas how well she looks. Her time of confinenment was hard. Ring if you need anything, sir." With a bow, the butler vanished. It was an impressive standing jump into the rafters, most people couldn't have caught it even if he hadn't clicked on his invisibility watch.

 

"Rich! You got my invite! Two home runs in one day, how are you doin'!" the smoker was on him now, Preston Cutler beaming from ear to ear as he grabbed one of Richard's hands in both of his. Unlike his butler, the former sports-themed supervillain hadn't retained all his vigor, but he was still strong.

 

Suddenly taking in his guest's look, Preston's face tensed. "I...wait. Rich, has something happened?"

 

Several of the other guests had started to take notice, watching curiously from the tables. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Richard put his hand to his mouth and considered his response. This would require due thought. Luckily that was something he was very good at - or at least good at doing very quickly, which in his experience was all you needed.

 

There were a lot of ways to do this. Subtle prop comedy where he pulled out first a television playing news broadcasts of the attack on the Liberty Dome, then pictures of his family, then the marked dome cross-section that Preston or whoever hadn't been smart enough to hide. Talking the other man aside and telling him he had a heavy goddamn secret for him and they needed to talk in private. Punching him in the goddamn face at super-speed for threatening the safety of his wife and family. 

 

He considered his options in the space of a barely-perceptible blink then said in a voice not designed to carry. "Meathead," it had been a term of affection when they were younger - mostly. "The Liberty Dome. The bowling ball." He looked at the other man for his reaction. 

[Ari]

GM

 

For a few seconds Preston looked baffled, staring back at Richard as he visibly tried to work out what he meant.

 

Then, a dawning realization and horror flashed in his bright blue eyes.

 

Then he plastered a great big smile on his face.

 

"Josie!" he called back to a middle-aged brunette done up like Lady Liberty, helping hand out food with conspicuous long white gloves, "Rich needs some quick insurance advice, I'll be right back. And turn that music up! This is America, and our pal is free again!"

 

Slightly disappointed, but curiosity placated, the guests turned right back to what they'd been doing before, though slightly louder thanks to the cranked-up volume. The woman, Preston's wife Josephine, the former Poison Princess, smiled a smile as pretty as her touch was deadly and waved gracefully to Richard.

 

Stepping quickly, for a normal human, into an adjoining room, Preston faced Richard, visibly paler even in the warm golden glow of the lamps. "Rich, I...I know who did it. My son, Michael. I gave him my gear before he left. If he's hurt your family, it's on me too."

[Avenger Assembled]

Fast-Forward's response was sharp. "I'm standing here talking to you, so you know they're fine." Richard looked away, trying to modulate his tone a little. Just a little. "The girls saw it coming; the boy and I got the civilians out of the way. People could have died," he said bluntly, "and you know what'll happen to your wife, and your kids, and this nice house, if they start digging into it." He'd technically been a superhero longer than he'd been a supervillain but under enough stress the former were always 'they.' "Where is Mike now?" An effort not to call him Mikey. 

[Ari]

GM

 

"They wouldn't dare! We're the home team here, protected by every-!" for a second the old Preston, fiery and sneering, stood before him; then the older man was back, quieter and thoughtful, "No, you're right. They can't risk the exposure, we'd be dead this time tomorrow."

 

"Well, you didn't see him, so he probably didn't stick around..." Preston rubbed his chin, squinting at a painting of a storm-tossed sailing ship inexplicably dominating the sitting room, then suddenly stepped closer and tapped the "C" in its name, Cornwall, "...hey 'Deez, how's the transmitter working?"

 

The painting slid aside to reveal an LCD screen, which switched on to show Diomedes and a read-out of computer data. Without missing a beat the old archer said "Master Michael's brain implant is working perfectly, and indicates he should be at his usual spot in Slapshot's old lair below the hockey rink at War Memorial Stadium, downtown Emerald City on the Washington bank." 

 

As he spoke, a map appeared, threading a cold red line from Sunset Hill to the inner city.

 

"Huh! Now that was a softball. Thanks, 'Deez, keep me posted." Tapping the screen so it was once again concealed, Preston flicked the map onto one of the other walls, where it neatly expanded and showed a list of directions. Very few of them had anything to do with streets, and much of the route was underground. Logos showed corporate territory holders, and their boundaries were clearly marked.

 

"Best thing about this town, Rich," Preston gestured to the map, "it's all for us. We can go anywhere we like, and there's always a lair or a cache or a secret passage handy. Slapshot's pad is pretty basic, but it's low-tech too, so easier to hide. Just head through the janitor's closet on the second floor, you'll know what to do when you see it."

 

"Do you mind heading in first? I gotta break this to Josie and the kid, could take a while."

[Avenger Assembled]

Richard, like most people who had been in the business, knew there was something up with the Emerald Cities - something that had been up for a long time. But he wasn't particularly worried about it. Lots of places had bad guys in positions of power; it was just sometimes they liked to put on costumes in their spare time. He didn't have much patience for that. A guy who actually had power in the world who then used his powers to get more power was just an asshole, not like the people he'd grown up around. Anyway, whatever was going down in the Emeralds was something to deal with another time. 

 

He considered the situation. With anyone else, he'd have expected a trap. But Preston wasn't stupid, most of the time. Taking Richard by surprise when it counted was damn near impossible, and of course he was in constant communication with the most powerful telepath in the world. 

 

"Yeah. See you soon, meathead." Then he was off. 

[Ari]

GM

 

Speeding through the maze of hidden passageways was like a (less complicated than usual) trip back in time. The network had been built in segments over decades, judging by the fleeting glimpses of where electrical and electronic pieces had been installed, torn out and reinstalled. Each had a distinctive style and mood borrowed from their designer, from the stark and glowering Brutalism of Dr. Devastator to the fluid and heroic Art Deco of Wind Wizard, the elegant irregularity of Madame Zero's Modernist sensibilities, and of course the hodge-podge of "lifted" technology and materials obtained and assembled by Invisible Inc. The ones "donated" by local corporations were much less personalized and much heavier on the logos and ads.

 

Some of the equipment was even still of the vintage from when he'd been on the other side of the law, with more than a few of the more outdated speakers and flickering green-text monitors sending cheerful welcomes and wishes that he, their good friend Richard Cline, enjoy his stay in Emerald City.

 

If nothing else, it was amazing how many ways you could shake up the routine of "rectangular tube with some doors".

 

As well, with his altered perception Richard could tell that things were shifting around him, rearranging to bring him where he wanted to be. As he ran, he kept catching glimpses of other figures passing on their own errands, until with a last wrench of a handle he emerged on the second floor of the Memorial Stadium. This late on a Monday it was practically empty.

 

Finding the janitor's closet was a snap, and the hidden panel with the door controls might as well have been in full-view to someone so long in the game. But as the wall slid open and the lights clicked on to reveal the winding staircase, Richard saw (and smelled) something unexpected: blood.

 

A thin trail of dark liquid led downstairs, with small puddles at the landings and smears on the wall. 

 

The source wasn't hard to find, lying face-down on the floor under the glare of pitiless fluorescent lights: Michael Richard Joseph Cutler, dressed in fearsome armor reminiscent of both a hockey player and a futuristic super-soldier, which had a small red hole in the side. At first glance the young man looked dead, but at Richard's footsteps he twitched and spoke weakly through the vocal amplifiers of his fearsome, hockey-mask like helmet, "Finishing...the job?"

    

Edited September 13, 2022 by Ari

[Avenger Assembled]

"Ah, jeez," said Richard. He took a moment to case the room, though subjectively it was more like several minutes, before he dropped down to the wounded young man's side. Hell. This space is probably too narrow for Spica, and if I move him outside without checking him I could break something vital - especially if whoever did this to him is still there. "Hey boyo, it's your Uncle Dick," he said, kneeling down next to the wounded young man. "I'm going to get you out of here. Who did this to you?" As they talked, he tried to get the younger man out of his costume, the better to check him for actual injuries. 

[Ari]

GM

 

The many advances in supersuit technology since 1963 made removing the armor and its underlayers a cinch, and revealed what could only be described as a super-bullet hole in Michael's left ribs. That the truly horrific tangle of bones and flesh wasn't yet fatal was probably thanks to Mike's augmented physiology, but his sheet-white face, staring blue eyes and trembling mouth suggested he wasn't exactly grateful for being spared this long. 

 

When asked about his attacker, Mike flinched and looked away. "Didn't...see..." he mumbled, "Been here...all day, fixing...fixing gadgets. Bowling-" he stopped, shuddering at the pain of breathing. Squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth he whispered "Bowling balls. Heard doorbell. Answered. Shot before it...opened. Fell. Crawled. Pass...passed out."

 

Suddenly he looked up at Richard with wild hope. "Uncle Dick! Got...got my call! You...coming...getting Lizzie...getting her away from...us?" With what must have been considerable strength when not lacking so much of his blood, Mike gripped Richard's shoulder with a huge hand. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Easy there, kiddo," said Richard, taking the big young man's hand in his own. At sixty, a father several times over, he was struck by how young Mike was. Lying through his teeth. Bullet's real, though. He didn't know who had shot the kid but he could take a guess from the first name that had come to his mind. He thought suddenly of Lizzie, playing in the summer sun with her brother, and looking at Paige and realizing they wanted a daughter. 

 

Goddamit. 

 

"You stay here, you keep the door locked. I'm going to find your sister, all right?" And that was what he did, though not without conducting another super-fast search of the headquarters before bolting out onto the street. The Emeralds were a big place but Fast-Forward could run and that was exactly what he did. He had a feeling he wouldn't have t go far. 

[Ari]

GM

 

Mike's lair was empty, bar the essentials.

 

Richard's long experience with supervillain lairs, particularly the cutely-thematic ones, helped put a very solid point on the mystery: lairs had *stuff* in them, not just the necessities but trophies, reminders, little things dedicated career criminals acquired over time in places they were reasonably sure nobody else would ever see. Even kids just starting out like Mike would have things, especially after seeing the sheer nostalgia-soaked state of Preston and Josephine's citadel. At the very least, it would have had a picture of his little sister.

 

A second tour of Lower Emerald, and Richard found pretty much what he expected: Melissa Persephone Cutler, burying a canvas bag under a bridge in a secluded park north of the Memorial Stadium. A bag bulging with some very familiar round shapes, and an odd, oblong one. Something alerted her just as he arrived, and in a spray of mud she spun to face him (remarkably fast for an unaltered human), shovel held axe-like and at the ready. She dropped it immediately on seeing him, and sighed in relief.

 

"Mr. Cline! I thought you were-it doesn't matter," she shook her head, squinting through the glare off the low-ebb stream, the sun still hot and piercing through the trees, "is Mike okay? I know that sounds weird to ask, but I didn't have a choice. Me and him staying on this side, it's safer for both of us. I hope you understand, sir." 

 

The words weren't what Josie might have chosen, much too blunt and direct, but Richard could hear her defences of Princess Poison and the Sportsman's darker deeds and dismay over Richard and Paige going straight. Supercrime payed, but you'd better pay *out*, and the Cutlers weren't lacking in debts to answer for.

[Avenger Assembled]

"The wound in his chest is closed, if that's what you mean." Richard looked at the girl squarely and said, "You want to tell me what happened?" It wasn't hard to guess what was happening here, or what was going to happen  to the girl and her family if people didn't play their cards right here. It wasn't hard for him to impose Holly's face on this girl's body and think unhappily about the sins of the parents being visited on the children. He liked to look back with pride on his glory days on the wrong side of the law, but of course that was easy enough to do when all your crimes were pardoned and you didn't have to worry about your kids going wrong. 

 

"I know about the Emeralds," he said suddenly, hazarding a guess and liking the taste of it. "But something this big, it's going to attract attention beyond whoever the law is out here." He'd never thought too highly of Oregon or Washington's culture or their superheroes. Grew good weed though. 

[Ari]

GM

 

"Honestly, better if it breaks up sooner than later. Team-ups between villains, historically they only last if one side is strong enough to keep the rest afraid and obedient. But "you'll be a small fish in our pond" doesn't sell to new members, so they have keep us relatively equal and enforce peace.They've tried to compensate with sharing money and social power, but encouraging greed encourages competition. Nobody wants it to last if they're not on top, but nobody wants to become a threat to the mututally-profitable order, either. So they look for loopholes, use their kids as proxies, assassinate each other's secretaries."

 

Melissa sighed. "It goes on and on, and gets worse and worse. And if it falls here, it rises somewhere else. Sorry, I'm talking a lot and haven't answered your question. In my defense, can't really talk like this with anyone else around here."

 

Tossing the shovel aside, she sat down on the mostly-dry bank, tilting her hat back to briefly squint at the sky. "Mike wants to leave. Leave the life, leave it all. And he loves me too much to let me stay. I don't want to leave. If I do, not only do I become a target for retribution, I become...nobody. Worse, a security risk, without the glamor and immortality of someone like Bombshell to make up for it. The way I see it, Mr. Cline, I'm spending the rest of my life around people who don't like me no matter what I do, and I'm not putting up with righteous contempt on top of that."

 

"So I pretended to be persuaded, came to his lair and shot him. Then I took some of his gear, accessed the tele-grid and threw one of the bowling balls at the Liberty Dome, remembering you and Mrs. Cline would be there. Now, even if he goes over, that will weigh on the heroes' minds: no matter how forgivable, it's a lapse in judgement that left him vulnerable and endangered innocent lives. They don't forget those. And now I can't go over, because I shot and almost killed my own brother and nearly killed many others. On purpose."

 

The silence when Melissa finished was deafening. The trickle of the stream and rush of the sea-breeze seemed blunt and muted.

[Avenger Assembled]

Oh, jeez. She's nuts. 

 

Not in the fun way or the colorful way, but in the way that meant you were willing to kill people to get what you wanted. Even your family, or people who were close to it. He thought of Bryant, with no powers at all, who'd have been as helpless as anybody else if the rest of the family hadn't been there with him. 

 

"All right, then," he said, playing this straighter than he would have with almost anyone else. "If you've planned everything out, I guess you know how this-" He didn't bother with banter, not with a sick kid who needed to be stopped before she hurt anybody else, so instead he led with the left hand while feinting with his right and tagged her, temporarily putting her on pause - or out of phase with the time-space continuum if you paid attention to what the nerds said. 

 

Unfortunately, Richard was paying entirely too much attention to what the nerds said. 

[Ari]

GM

 

What happened next was hard to track in the moment, but easy enough to describe.

 

As Melissa flickered out of sync with the rest of the universe's slow decay to nothingness, several identical figures dressed in white suits with snowflake masks flashed into view, scattered on either side of the stream. Raising ice-covered arms, they unleashed flurry of crackling white beams at Richard! 

 

At the same time, one of them barked out "Stand down, Cline!"

 

"You're due a talk with the big man!" shouted another of the same guy "Use of powers unprovoked is against the rules!" 

 

"Don't push it, Cline! There's more of us on the way!" added a third.

 

The quintet at least seemed to have some sense and fear of what they were up against, throwing their whole weight behind the massless energy beams that seemed to fill the entire world in an instant.

 

One of the beams clipped Richard's leg, sending a jolt of icy chill through his body...and a sense of something clawing at his powers. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hey pal, that's what your mother said last night!" said Fast-Forward, his voice hardening as he realized the amount of danger he was in. He wasn't just dependent on his powers for his speed (having gone without it he knew how bad it was though), he was dependent on it to look like a man two-thirds his age. "Why don't you come over here and see how a man fights, you pantywaist snowflake!" he added, charging through the crowd of rapidly moving duplicates, testing their solidity out with a few super-speed punches. He scored hits, some real ones - enough to tell him that this was going to be a serious fight. 

 

Sometimes duplicators were weak sisters when their powers were up, just shadows of the real guy wherever that turned out to be. It didn't seem like this was true for this guy. 

 

He kept moving, carefully moving away from where Melissa was frozen solid, trying to move the duplicators where he could really hit them, keeping up a stream of insults about their costume choices, generation, and the sexual exploits of their mother, who was probably much less promiscuous than Richard was painting her.  

[Ari]

GM

 

An indignant "Hey-!" was all one of the snowbound stun-beam-flingers said, before Richard's flying fist caught him straight under the chin and sent him catapulting into the stream's charming, rustic stone bridge. 

 

The rest of the blows hits solidly, but without the same finality and force. A nerdier hero might have started thinking about the chill sensation around their bodies matching that of the beams hissing and flashing around the riverbank, leaving trails of frost and frozen greenery in their wake, but those kinds of details were rarely the kind worth slowing down for. What was worth noticing was how careful they were to avoid hitting the time-frozen body of Melissa Cutler, and their movements bringing them into what would be a loose circle around the young woman.

 

Meanwhile, amid the ceaseless barrage, one of the masked attackers had ducked behind a tree and concentrated, a fine white aura shining around his body, and long fingers of ice sprouting from his upraised hand as another of the men shivered into existence. He didn't come into being wearing a mask, and for the moment stood looking around in confusion, giving Richard a good look at a soft-faced young Asian man with a snowflake tattooed on each cheek.

 

His creator grabbed him by the shoulder and pointed at a spot Richard had occupied a good few milliseconds before. "That's the intruder, freeze 'im!" he yelled above the din, a flourish of his hand conjuring up a snowflake mask he quickly handed to the new arrival.

 

"You got it St-! I mean, Whiteout! I mean, me!" his creation said, hurriedly slapping on the mask and racing to join the fray!

 

 

[Avenger Assembled]

Despite all the tough talk, Fast-Forward had to admit he was running out of ideas. That was the problem with super-speed, you had all the time in the world to think up battle strategies but you could run through most of them  faster than the speed of sound. He could just run away, he supposed, but that would just leave poor crazy Melissa stuck here to deal with who-knows-what. Maybe she was paralyzed in time but there was no reason they couldn't just put her over their shoulder and do -  God knew what. Not the thinking part of the group here! 

 

Then an idea came to him; maybe there were ways to run away without leaving the world behind. "Hey dumb-dumbs!" he called as he ran through the group of duplicates, dodging their blasts by the skin of his teeth. "I'm about to drop the mystic power of the star Sirius on your heads!" He flipped through the pages of the Tome of Theurgy as he went, chanting under his breath with a sound like the unzipping of the sky itself. As he ran, light lit up under his feet, tracing the mystic patterns of the Behenian stars. "Now I'm no science jockey, but I think that's gonna really fry your cannolis! So you'd better get out of here while you still can!" He ran all the way to Melissa, frozen in place like a statue, and touched her. "As for me, I'm gone." 

 

And then they were. 

[Ari]

GM

 

At Richard's shouted warning, the white-masked duplicates and their progenitor scrambled away from the light of the herald of scorching summers, launching on makeshift jets of ice that propelled them far off into the waving firs. But long before they realized the error of their trajectories, Richard and Melissa had arrived back inside the stately Cutler home. The countless knick-knacks and objet d'art in the living room (one of them anyway) rattled and swayed momentarily in the small shockwave of their arrival, but otherwise everything was quiet and still...except for two voices in one of the sitting rooms, its light spilling in along with the sound.

 

Preston and Josephine were there, smiling fondly at each other over glasses of one of the red wines Josie had started making years back. At the window stood one of the Emerald City Police, clean-cut and shining in her blue and green uniform, watching the street through a set of heavy goggles. She started abruptly, announcing "Elevated chroniton levels, Mr. Cline's close, prepare to secure Michael Cutler."

 

"Confirmed. Preparing containment" said another voice, its owner briefly coming into view as they crossed an intersection, another ECPD officer tapping briskly at the controls of a heavy-duty collar with attached rigid cuffs. Other footsteps echoed in the house as officers converged in a loose semi-circle around the front door of the house. 

 

"Go easy on the old guy," urged Preston genially, "he's had some problems with the law, might not want to hand over Mike to a bunch of strangers, even if the kid *did* try to kill a stadium full of people. In fact," with a grunt, the first Sportsman got to his feet and stretched, "I'll talk to him, sort this all out easy."

Edited May 30, 2023 by Ari