Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 139: Ghost Town

“Robots.” Perry said, tapping his fingertips on the wood table.

“Yeah, they’re probably robots.” Natalie said, keeping her head on a swivel. She didn’t have a lot of leeway, damage-wise, so she kept her helmet on in case this whole thing turned out to be a trap.

“Here’s your order, young…man?” The waitress said, giving him a weird look. Her gaze scanned the entire group, body-conforming hyperweave and all. She looked…confused.

“Thanks, miss” Perry said with a wide grin and an amiable nod before digging into his beef sandwich.

“Oh my god, real beef,” Perry groaned between bites. “How!?”

“What do you mean, robots?” Plagius asked.

“You took history class, right?” Perry asked incredulously.

“Some of it?” Plagius shrugged.

“To quote the Franklin City textbook:” Perry said around a mouthful of Italian beef sandwich. “He [Professor Replica] immediately began a campaign to replace humanity with robots, forcing all the supers of the day to band together to engage in a fifteen-year war that laid waste to much of the United States before he was stopped. End quote. Whadidya think the Replicators were protecting?”

“I don’t know, I thought they were just assholes.” Plagius said.

“Well, yeah, there is that,” Perry shrugged. “I’m guessing the Replicators are using Chicago as a testing area to perfect human-like androids.”

“It’s worse than that,” Mass-Driver said, shoveling a deep dish into his mouth.

“Eh?” Perry asked, frowning.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Mass-Driver said, waving the waitress back to their table. It being two o’clock in the morning, the 24-hour restaurant was relatively dead.

“Yessir?” She asked, standing perhaps a little further back than her job required.

“What year is it?” Mass-Driver asked.

“Nineteen seventy-two,” She responded with a frown.

“I was in here about four years ago. You probably don’t recognize me with the fancy getup,” he said, motioning down to himself.

The waitress lit up. “Oh, OH! You’re that nice FBI man that would come here all hours of the night…Bruce, right?”

“That’s me,” Mass Driver said with a nod.

“Wow,” She blushed looking down at Mass-Driver’s rippling muscles. “Is that suit padded, or…”

“All me, sweetheart. It’s been a long four years,” Mass Driver said, looking more haggard than Perry had ever seen him.

“I can tell,” she glanced at the rest of the table, then leaned forward, whispering into Mass-Driver’s ear. Perry could make out every word, because of his enhanced Attributes.

“Are you undercover, or something?” She asked quietly. “Do you need me to call the cops?”

“Something like that, but for right now, all I need is some more of your delicious pie,” he swatted the waitress on the bottom, causing her to squeak as she hustled away. Mass Driver turned his attention back to them, only to be met with a flat stare from…pretty much everyone.

“What? it’s the early seventies here. It was just like that, and you kids can’t prove otherwise.” Mass-Driver said, taking another bite of a Chicago deep dish.

“She remembers you?” Perry asked.

“Yeah, from back before the first Tide,” Mass Driver said. “I used to take some of my work back to the hotel. It was a really busy time back then, what with Vietnam, the riots, Martin Luther King Jr… It constantly felt like the world was on the brink of ending for us G-men. I mean, until the world actually ended, that really put things in perspective.

“What’s the Vietnam war?” Natalie asked.

“Who’s Martin Luther King Junior?” Chemestro chimed in.

“It’s…shit that would’ve mattered if High Tide hadn’t eclipsed it all.” Mass Driver muttered. “Damn thing blew a ten year hole on either side of it in the history books.”

“So, why does a robot remember you from before the Tide?” Perry clarified, keeping them on track.

“Well, I’m not sure of the mechanics of it, but I think it involved feeding Patti over there to a highly specialized meatgrinder that extracted her memories.” He thumbed over his shoulder at the waitress peeking at them from the kitchen.

“There’s no actual confirmation that that’s how it happened,” Mass Driver said. “That’s just the consensus of most of the Tinkers at the time while we were fighting Professor Replica…You know, before they were captured and turned into robots themselves.”

“Excuse me?” Perry asked.

“Oh, yeah, they don’t put that in the high school history books, because it’s fucking terrifying. Professor Replica could use a person to make a robot that looked and acted exactly like them, and had all their powers. We weren’t just fighting him, we were fighting everyone he’d ever beaten, too. It was This. Close.” Mass Driver held together his thumb and forefinger.

“If that dope runner hadn’t Triggered when and how he did…” Mass Driver said, shaking his head.

“Umm…dope runner?” Natalie asked.

Mass Driver’s face lit up with a mischievous grin.

“Oh yeah, we’re not in Franklin City anymore. Away from prying ears.” He glanced over his shoulder nervously, then looked back at them. “If anyone asked, I didn’t tell you kids nuthin’ understood?”

The assembled teenage supers nodded.

“So back in nineteen sixty eight, I was investigating Solaris, or Tom Franklin as he was known at the time, for drug running,”

Perry’s eyebrows climbed as Mass Driver laid out how Solaris had been the suspected kingpin of a drug-smuggling operation, posing as a mild-mannered auto mechanic. He’d (allegedly) started by accepting acid and pot in barter from hippies, working his way up to opiates and cocaine, before finally getting into the game as an actual supplier and distributer, making contacts outside the US through his many less-than reputable customers.

“I only figured this out much later, you know, hindsight being what it is,” Mass Driver rambled on. “He must’ve been stashing the dope in the ‘legitimate business’ Caddies and Fords driven in by upstanding, wealthy citizens. We straightlaced ‘G-men’ only thought to ‘randomly’ search the brightly colored hippie vans driven by shifty-looking druggies. Damn things were such glaring bait that I’m frankly ashamed of myself.”

“Seems kinda obvious.” Perry said.

“Screw you, it was nineteen sixty-eight, there was no internet to replace critical thinking back then, I was a young man of forty, and if the world hadn’t ended, I would’a thought of it soon enough.”

It wasn’t that surprising to hear that Solaris was clever, had a knack for managing people and was morally grey. These were things that Perry knew already. None of that affected the here and now.

“So this whole city got fed through a brain-sucking machine? Perry asked.

“Probably.” Mass Driver said. “I hadn’t seen a civilian model before, but yeah, all of Chicago is probably filled with the robot replicants of the previous occupants, just…living their lives.”

“And why are we making a target of ourselves by being above ground for any length of time?” Chemestro asked.

“Because I had a craving for pizza, and because we’re supers. Having huge balls is part of the job description.” He glanced at Moonlight Flash, who was delicately nibbling on her own deep-dish. “No offence.”

“None taken.”

“If they’re all robots, Can I drain all of them, then?” Plagius asked, wiggling in his seat and eyeballing their server.

“Try and I’ll break every bone in your body!” Mass Driver raised his voice with an unusual amount of emotion, causing Plagius to blanche.

Mass Driver settled back in his heat and sighed. “As far as I’m concerned, kid, these robo-people are the closest thing to a gravestone the victims of the fall of Chicago are ever going to have, so I would prefer it if you didn’t piss all over them. Understood?” Mass Driver cast a long glance over at Patti, humming to herself as she worked behind the counter.

“Yessir,” Plagius said, swallowing nervously.

“Were you dating?” Perry asked.

“Maybe, if the world hadn’t gone to shit…maybe.” Mass Driver muttered.

“I think you misrepresented your reasons for risking our lives to come into this diner,” Chemestro said, stating the fact that everyone else in the room had figured out already.

“Yeah, maybe so.” Mass Driver said, knocking back the last of his coffee before fishing around in his pocket, thumbing through his wallet with increasing urgency. “Anybody bring analog American money printed before nineteen sixty-eight?”

“I got a card?” George said.

“I only carry gold coins,” Moonlight Flash said.

“Chits,” Plagius said, pulling out some chits he’d gotten from recent noob-hunts. Obviously there was no ATM nearby to convert a portion into cash…because it was the seventies.

A stunned silence passed through the team as they stared down at the feast they had just consumed. Nobody had any money that the restaurant could process…

WHOOO!” Heather was the first to jump out of her seat and run for the door, hopping across booths with unnatural agility.

“Wait, what’s going on!?” Natalie asked, squeaking as Perry threw her over his shoulder, grabbed her to-go box and began running.

Dine and dash at a restaurant in a ghost town. Scratch that one off the bucket list, Perry thought as he barreled through the front door, followed closely by the rest of the team.

“HEY!” Patti The Waitress shouted after them as they sprinted down the dark streets, running up to where they’d parked Boomer in a dim alleyway.

Perry couldn’t stop himself from chortling as he tossed Natalie up into Boomer’s cockpit, handing her her to-go box. She wasn’t willing to take off the helmet until she got into a safer place. Given her inherent squishiness, Perry saw nothing wrong with that reasoning.

He glanced back down the sidewalk where Moonlight Flash was meandering toward them at a sedate pace. “Chill out you guys, I left a gold coin,” She called after them, shaking her head. “If that doesn’t cover it-“

Perry frowned as he felt something move behind her. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, but just like when he’d travelled through the Blue section of Neuron’s lair, he knew something was there.

“Midni-“

Ellanore frowned at him a moment before she took another step, her body falling apart into three distinct chunks.

“EL!” George shouted before she’d even hit the ground, snapping his hand forward, a torrent of power rushing out of him. In front of Perry’s eyes, Moonlight Flash’s time rewound, causing all three of her pieces to coalesce mid-step.

George closed his fist to break the spell, then reached out and grabbed his confused sister with a tether of pure magical force, yanking her forward.

“I think we should start running now.” Perry said as the formless something began barreling silently towards them, its speed drastically increased now that they were aware of it.

“Run!”

Against his better judgement, Perry closed his eyes, cranking his Stability down and Attunement all the way up.

Sliding Stats

Stability: 37 -> 33

Attunement: 51 -> 55

Perry’s armor and the rest of Chicago fell away, leaving him in a starry void. Just him and the murder machine charging towards him. It was an upgraded version of a Replicator, with sleeker, more robust limbs designed to rend prey limb from limb.

Oh, interesting.

Eyes still closed, Perry scanned the surroundings to make sure there weren’t any other bastards lurkin-

“Hard-“ There wasn’t enough time to warn Nat of the invisible monster looming over her and Boomer, arm cocked to slice her apart.

Dragor’s Kinesis.EXE

(1/3)

Perry shoved the creature away as its scythe-like limb swept down with spring-loaded speed.

A brilliant line of bright red blood bloomed on Hardcase’s upper arm as a cut seemingly manifested out of nowhere, causing her to cry out in pain as her suit and the flesh underneath parted, pumping blood into the air.

“There’s three of them!” Perry shouted, shoving all three of them back.

“Point them out!” Moonlight Flash shouted, closing her eyes and grabbing the top of Perry’s helmet, a roiling mass of pale blue energy coalescing in her other hand.

Perry pointed them out.

“Invisibility Purge!” MoonlightFlash exclaimed, and three pale orbs of light shot out from her palm, settling into place directly above the robots ‘heads’, such as they were.

“Holy crap, what is that?” Heather demanded, finally able to see the outline of the creatures under the pale light of the spell

Mass Driver swooped out of the side of Perry’s peripheral vision and smashed into one of the …No, scratch that, through one of them.

Their physical forms seemed to be completely on a separate plane of existence that Perry could only see by bringing himself into The Void.

Then everyone just about shit themselves when half of Mass Driver’s torso fell away from him, at about the shoulder. The blood that squirted out of his severed shoulder reversed direction and crawled back in his body, the arm reattaching seamlessly. He had complete control of his entire body’s inertia, and if he didn’t want to bleed, he wouldn’t.

“Fuckin’ arm fell off,” he muttered, dancing backwards from where the pale outline swung at him.

Now, how did that happen? Perry thought. Mass driver had passed through the monster entirely, including it’s blades…

The very edge of their blades are tangible, monomolecular cutting instruments. Mass-driver forced himself through it like a piano wire cutting someone in half…but worse. They’re probably mag-locked in place to prevent us from damaging them. The rest of their body is hiding on another plane…

Plane?

Realm-piercing crystal dagger?

…just might work.

“Think you guys can buy me some time!?” Perry asked, sprinting over to Boomer’s luggage and slamming it open, yanking out the demon-summoning bazooka and a healing stick, throwing the latter up to Natalie.

“I don’t think we can do anything else,” Mass Driver shouted, bobbing and weaving.

PLagius responded with a shrill scream as he scrambled out of the way.

“George, eyes up!” Moonlight Flash shouted, tugging him away from one of the killbots sneaking up behind him before he was bisected.

“I’m tired from saving your ass,” Perry’s cousin muttered, leaning on her shoulder.

“Pansy,” Moonlight Flash teased with a smirk. “Half a second of time manipulation isn’t that big a deal.”

“You say that again!” George shouted, seemingly catching a second wind. “Say that again, you couldn’t even-“

CRUNCH!

Crunch? Perry looked up from where he was disassembling the cannister and spotted Heather taking swings at the robot with massive talons. Heather’s body seemed to pass through the robot without incident, but a fraction of a second later an ephemeral hand emerged from her arm and made a separate attack with colorless, washed out, partially see-through claws of a similar size.

CRUNCH!

Whatever Heather was doing, it was working, but it was mostly just dinging up the Replicator’s armor. It would take her all night to disable one at that rate.

It got the robot’s attention though, so that was good.

“Go for the joints!” Perry shouted encouragement.

“Ah know, ye piss-biter!” A young woman’s face popped out of Heather’s back to yell at him.

Well, that’s new, Perry thought, shaking off his surprise and refocusing his attention on saving their asses.

Must go faster, must go faster…Perry hummed a little ditty to himself as he cut open the cannister containing the undeployed summoning circle. He could hear the hum of approaching engines. Big ones.

At the center of the cannister was a little chip of realm-piercing crystal about the size of a paint chip. Or a chocolate chip. It wasn’t big.

Perry closed his eyes and entered the Void.

The Realm-piercing crystal was visible, an ocean-blue drop in the sea of nothing.

This might work, Perry thought, opening his eyes again to grab the Realm-piercing crystal between thumb and forefinger, tugging it apart.

Against all logic, the crystal stretched, because Perry dictated it so, until it was a good four feet long and about a fraction the size of a human hair.

Let’s see how these bitches like a taste of their own medicine, Perry thought, grabbing a nearby street sign and cutting the hollow steel tube into a handle for the new vorpal blade, crunching it down in place around the thickest end of the crystal.

Crunch!

One of the robots fell to one knee, the ghostly claws stuck in its knee joint.

“Hell yeah!” Heather pumped her fist.

Perry stepped past her and drew the Realm-piercing crystal through the robot’s torso, bisecting it into two chunks of sparking metal. It popped out of whatever plane it’d been hiding in and reappeared in full color in front of them, twitching in death.

“That one still counts as mine!” Heather shouted.