Archive Mutants & Masterminds: The Unlikely Prophets - Issue #1: A Gathering Storm

[Charlotte]

[Charlotte]

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

- Edmund Burke

Originally Posted By: Scarlet Samurai

Of course I would like to have a plan, something other than, 'cause a ruckus and hope that the people we want help us.'"

"Well, this time I have a specific address. I figure I'll just ask whoever's living there the same thing the Mathemagician asked you. I didn't know if that was just me or not - obviously it wasn't."

Afte a quick search on the internet, Larissa had the piture she needed, which when combined with the Book's magic and her bedroom door, gave the three of them the passage they needed.

They stepped through, hit by the bracing Seattle weather, which was getting ready to rain. They'd chosen to be direct, getting as close to the door of their target address as they could. Jack raised his hand, and knocked on the door.

"So, how presentable are the two of you, then? Is S.S. gonna scare them as much as you scared... you know, we're going to need a codename for you, girl. Can't call you by your real name in public if we're trying to keep you on the down-low, now can we?"

[The Scarlet Samurai]

"Do not call me S.S. Have you not studied history? The German SS ... No, if Scarlet Samurai is too much of a mouthful you can call me..." Kenshin trailed off, thinking for a moment, "You can call me Muramasa."

[Charlotte]

"Or Sam. Sam works too." He grins lopsidedly.

[SalmonMax]

"We could call him Scarlet S, or just 'Samurai,'" Larissa suggests. "As for me...I dunno. Wizard...girl? Sorceress? Um."

She glances at the door with a harried look. "Lets talk about this after we see them, okay? I can't think right now."

[z-Gloom]

Andi tensed at the knock on the door. "Are you expecting anyone?" At Radiance's negative head shake, Andi bounced to her feet and pulled her gun from the back of her pants. "Shit," she muttered, crossing to the door. She kept the gun at waist height; it'd be a gut shot through the door for anyone standing and a head shot for someone getting cute and kneeling. "Stay back," she hissed to her opposite natured-companion as she set the safety chain and opened the door to the length of the chain.

Hanging back behind the door where she couldn't be seen, she asked, "Yeah?" Her voice was hollow, edged with Darkness' taint. Then she waited for the visitors to state their purpose.

[Radiance]

Hikari nodded and dashed into her room changing into her other clothing and into her other body as it were. She looked out from the room and nodded once, signalling she was ready.

[SalmonMax]

"Hello!" Larissa said quickly. "Listen this might sound crazy, but please hear us out. We've come a long way..." She trailed off, not sure where to go from there.

"We just want to ask two questions. Who are you, and why are you here? Does that...mean anything to you?"

[z-Gloom]

Gloom felt Radiance's change. It was damned creepy, like a distant pressure became a very hard one.

The two outside the door spoke at the same time, but Gloom had no trouble understanding them. She glanced at the hidden Radiance, her question clear on her face: do I let them in? At the blond's nod, Gloom opened the door, still standing behind it. No point in freaking them out before they'd gotten all the way in. She kept the gun out too - she may have used these.... powers but she wasn't comfortable with them. Not as comfortable as she was with her gun.

[Radiance]

Hikari emerges from her room and looks at the strangers in her doorway. "You saw it too." It was all she said, but her right hand hidden beside her body made a fist reflexively, she was unsure of what else to say.

She decided on a direct approach. "I'm Radiance, I'm here because i live here."

[The Scarlet Samurai]

Kenshin bowed formally, which looked odd given his casual dress and the downright fugly baseball cap on his head. "Hello, my name is," he hesitated realizing that these people might not be who they were looking for, "Ken. Our deepest apologies for the intrusion but do those questions, 'Who are you?' and 'Why are you here?', do they mean anything to you beyond the obvious?" Kenshin's accent was recognizable as Japanese but his diction was otherwise perfect. He was slightly below average height, unsurprising given his clearly Asian ancestry, and had a pleasant smile. "Our friend here," Kenshin indicated the man with the tinted black glassed and the blind man's walking stick, "Believes that perhaps you have heard some music lately that may have altered the way you answer those two questions." Kenshin's hand went to his pocket and without realizing it he withdrew the folding knife that wasn't a folding knife at all, his anxiety found balm in the killing blade that his father had left him.

[Radiance]

Standing there in a blue t-shirt and jeans, the six foot tall blond-haired, blue-eyed bombshell that was Radiance watched as Ken Drew something from his pocket.

Warily she answered. "There's alot that's gone on that has altered the answers to those questions."

She was suprised in that Ken was Asian, like her, and caught herself wondering what "Ken" was short for.

[z-Gloom]

She was watching Radiance's face, and saw her eyes flick down. Gloom tensed further. What had just happened?

Gloom sighed. She'd worry about that later, after they weren't broadcasting their business across the building. She'd thought that an opened door was an explicit invitation, but apparently not. "We shouldn't be talking about this in the open. Get your asses in here," she said, her hollow voice still managing to convey annoyance.

[The Scarlet Samurai]

Kenshin looked at Larissa and smiled. He looked over his shoulder, and seemed about to speak when an odd voice all but commanded that they enter. Ken shrugged and, knife in hand and all but ready, he stepped across the threshold into the house as the tall blonde woman stepped aside. "So you heard the music then? And the voice asking the questions?"

[Radiance]

"Yes. I'm guessing you did as well."

[SalmonMax]

Larissa follows Ken in, bringing Blackjack along with her.

"Hi," she says self-consciously. "We did. We came here looking for you two. There's more too! We wanted to meet you, and...well get your take on it and see if you were open to some ideas we had."

She winces and shakes her head at herself. "I'm being vague. Sorry. What I mean is that we're planning to oppose the Order, and we wanted to see if you felt the same way."

[z-Gloom]

Gloom shuts the door the moment everyone is in, the thump loud in the room. When they turn to see her, the image is startling: a tall, strong-looking woman with black hair and pure black eyes - with four arms of course. One set is crossed in front of her, while the others hang at her sides. The gun is visible in her right hand, but its pointed down. Anyone who pays any attention to the Knights can tell her firearm is one of their standard issues.

"What's this?" she asked, her voice echoing as a black eyebrow rises. "Do you knock on random doors asking if people have heard questions and music, and if they'd please like to help you oppose the Order?" When others said the term 'The Order' they said it with fear. Gloom didn't sound afraid when she said their name. She sounded assured. "That's a good way to get reported."

[The Scarlet Samurai]

Kenshin spun when the door closed of its own accord. He gasped at what he saw, a woman, or something pretending to be one, with solid black eyes and four arms, one of which held a pistol of some kind. Kenshin stepped sideways in a protective maneuver to cover Larissa and Blackjack. "What indeed, you invite us in with a weapon drawn?" His expression said that there was more on his tongue that he had not said.

[Radiance]

"You come in talking about opposing the Order. I've done alot of work for them over the years. You might want to start explaining things, from the top."

There was a hard edge to Hikari's voice, but alt least she was willing to listen.

[SalmonMax]

Larissa's heart sank when she saw the gun, and heard Radiance speak. She swallowed, but her throat just made a dry click. This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

Finally she managed, "My dad's...was...a historian. He believed that the study of the past gave us context for the present, and guidence for the future. I'm a teacher. I've had a ringside seat as the Order reshaped history to make sure children believe things that I know aren't true. And not just history. Everything. Science and art and literature...everything is malleable. Nothing is firm. We're supposed to trust the Order more than our own eyes, our own ears and minds."

"It's wrong. I've always felt it's wrong, but I was never in a position to do anything about it. Now I am."

By the time Larissa finished, she was standing straighter and speaking more forcefully than before, as if each word she'd unburdened herself of had been made of lead. She looked from Radiance to the freakish woman hovering near the door, and added, "If you don't feel that way, fine, but I'd think twice about trying to side with them. The Order's spent a lot of time and effort trying to make sure no one can ever compete with them. They're more likely to take you apart to see how you happened than they are to reward you."

[z-Gloom]

Gloom snorted. "Despite having been a Knight for the last five years, I have no doubt that the Order will view what I am now dimly," she said, then laughed at her own pun. "My service record just became so much toilet paper thanks to some god damned cultists who couldn't follow the rules. But fuckin' opposing them is a world away from avoiding them. One is smart, the other is not."

She's right.

No one's fuckin' asking you.

Gloom shook her head. "It's never been a matter of trusting the Order," she said, which was a pretty bleak statement coming from someone who was part of the Order's strong arm. "I've helped disappear people, and I've thugged on grannies who we found baking cookies in their kitchen. I'm not blind. But I'm not dumb either. This is the Order and in case you guys hadn't noticed, they control everything. And there's three of you - five if we join. If. Opposition shouldn't even be our first worry.

"We're the first people with super powers to rise in god knows how long." Andi looked around at them. "We're a threat, and our first concern should be our survival. If I'm going to disappear, I want it to be under my own power, thanks."

[The Scarlet Samurai]

Kenshin lowered his arms, confident that the four armed woman wasn't going to start shooting just yet. "Actually there are three of us now. When you join us there will be five," he sounded so confident it was like he knew it was going to happen, "And then we five will seek out the other four." Kenshin indicated the blind man again, "Blackjack here has some way of sensing them or tracking them, us I mean. I don't understand it. I don't understand any of this, only a day ago I was a history professor in ... I was a history professor. And then my father's spirit spoke to me, my inheritance, my family's legacy, has passed to me and with it the power to do something about this evil. I don't know if we can succeed but I know that I must try. Honor demands it, my sense of justice demands it, and the people suffering the Watchmen demand it!"

[SalmonMax]

"I'm not saying we should be stupid about it," Larissa points out. "I'm not proposing we drive to the capitol and call Archon out for a duel. Our biggest advantage now is our anonymity. The Order's secret weapon is now working against them. People like us used to be impossible...and they still think we are. That gives us a window of opportunity. A time where we can plan, and learn, and use these powers to start something that will become bigger than us. Bigger than anyone. Even bigger than the Order."

[Charlotte]

Jack extended his cane, tapping his way around the room and letting everyone else speak for a few minutes.

"Forcing you to help us, of course, is wrong. I wouldn't dream of doing that." He reached up and took off his sunglasses, and revealed milky white eyes with scar tissue lining his eye sockets. "And the Order scares the shit out of me, too. Archon took my eyes, you see. He took a lot of things away from a lot of people and no one's ever called him, or any of them, on it, and I don't think that's right. She's right - " He waved in Larissa's general direction. "I'm not about to call Archon out directly either. But... I'm told there's a video of someone shooting the Australian magistrate with a homemade rocket that would liquify a tank. It didn't even faze him because he was wearing AEGIS-1. I've heard tales of Spartan just slaughtering five hundred people in a building with a rifle and a sword. If no one stands up to them, tell me. Are they going to get more restrained, or less?

"You say you're a Knight, miss, or rather that you were a Knight. Why'd you join, if I may ask? And 'Radiance.' I'm guessing that's not the name your mom and dad gave you. Why'd you pick such a name? Also, I smell paint. Does one of you paint?"

[Radiance]

"I chose it because I feel it suits who I've become, as to the smell yes, I'm a painter by trade."

In a moment of better decorum she didn't mention the paintings adorning the walls, knowing the last man couldn't see. Each one was of a different part of the city, all done by Hikari through the course of her career.

[z-Gloom]

"I joined to keep order," Gloom said, with all that implied. "Until this... day, I believed, in part, that what we were doing was necessary. Mistakes were made, but for every grannie I loaded into a van in the darkness of night, never to be seen again, I shot numerous criminals, religious fanatics, and others idiots who would tear down the world and kill people like you."

Suddenly weary, Gloom shoved the gun into the back of her pants. "God damnit, people. Are you sure you're ready for this?"

[The Scarlet Samurai]

"Am I sure I'm ready? No. In fact I'm sure I'm not." Kenshin smiled wryly, "I've never held a real blade before and I dropped out of the Kendo classes my father put me in after only a year, and yet..." Kenshin opened his left hand and showed the two women a rather ornate folding pocket knife. With a flick of his wrist he tossed it to the blonde, as it arced through the air it transformed into an elegant katana in an ornately lacquered sheath. "When I hold that sword, my father's sword, my family's sword, it feels right.

"Maybe I'm crazy, maybe everything since my father's death is the delusion of a shattered mind and I am just a former history professor who is now locked in an asylum. I don't think that is the case. Maybe this is an elaborate ruse by the Order to draw us out." Kenshin shrugged and took his sword back from Radiance who had found it impossible to draw from its sheath.

He draw the gleaming blade, the steel hammered into a slight curve the hammer strokes themselves deftly worked so as to appear like waves running down the blade. The steel carried the barest red tint as though one could never cleanse all the blood from it. "I don't think that is the case either, because this blade feels like it belongs to me, and like I belong to it." He drew the blade along the inside of his left arm and it left a red slash, then he sheathed the weapon, his blood already absorbed into the blade.

[Radiance]

Hikari shakes her head and looks to Gloom. "I don't think any of us really are, but if we don't act together, we won't really get the chance to matter."

"The Order will find us, and what then What do you think they'll do with us?"

[z-Gloom]

"We'll fuckin' disappear, haven't you people been listening to me?" Gloom said sharply. "If we're lucky, we'll die when they attempt to take us. That's why this is so fuckin' serious."

She sat down, head in a set of hands. The other set started to pick at her sweat pants in a nervous gesture.

[SalmonMax]

"Look, none of us can change what happened to us, or what we are now," Larissa says. "The only choice we have now is to either hunker down and hope we die of natural causes before they find us and take us...or to risk taking action to make things better, and hope we succeed."

"Sitting around waiting to die isn't much of a life though."

[The Scarlet Samurai]

"You sound like you've already given up. The Order has already broken your will over their knee and now they control you. I guess if you aren't going to join us in standing against the tyranny of the Order then we should leave." Kenshin returned the knife to his pocket and started for the door, "Come on you two, we have four more people to speak to, hopefully they will have the will to follow their hearts."

[z-Gloom]

Gloom choked back her less-than-witty retort and looked at Larissa, who seemed a little more reasonable than that jerk. "How do you know I can't go back?" she asked. "Do you know the first fuckin' thing about me, or how I got this way? What I might have already done to survive and make it this far? What pain or awkwardness or just plain old loss I might have had?

"You all come in here, and you bray about your perfect will and hearts, and none of you know what's happened. Nor do you really seem to care about anything other than your great goal."

And then Darkness decided to speak up.

The shadows pulled out of the corners, oozing around Gloom like living creatures. Andi's already shadowed appearance became darker until she stood in a reverse spotlight, a pool of darkness in the center of Radiance's bright, cheerful room. "You want to overthrow your masters," Gloom said, but the voice was markedly different than it had been even a second ago. "You want to make your world a better place. Start here, with these ones, and this one, whose life and body I have taken to save my own. So quick to decry them, when this Order has spoiled your hearts as well. Freedom without compassion is just another way to kill the soul of a being. Learn to love, or you are wasting your time. You are trading one evil for another."

The woman that was and was not Andi Murphy waited for their replies, as patient as the eternal darkness.

[Radiance]

Hikari just looked at Gloom and nodded. "How can I help?" Her voice was quiet. It was weird the way she felt a strange bond with the Dark Lady she'd only just met, but she knew there had to be a reasn for it. "I'll do what I can."

[SalmonMax]

Larissa stared; startled and scared, but also feeling a sense of awe at the sight of this woman's power uncloaked at last.

"I didn't mean to sound like I was any better," she said meekly. "I really didn't. I was trying to be inspiring." Lari managed a ghostly, guilty smile for a second at that. "Honestly, there's nothing perfect about me. I'm scared too."

She stepped forward, then again.

"You're right. I don't know you. And I don't know what you've been through. If you were a Knight Watchman, it must have been absolutely awful for something like this to happen. I don't judge you, and I'm very sorry I sounded like I did."

Now Larissa holds out her hands, offering them for Gloom to take or ignore as she saw fit.

"What I was trying, and failed, to say was that there are at least some people in the world right now who have some chance of understanding what you're going through right now. We may not be going through exactly the same thing, but we've all had shocks. We've all had our world turned upside down. And we're all now at risk. If you let us, we can be there for you."

[The Scarlet Samurai]

Kill her! The blade's voice in his head drew a startled reaction from Kenshin even as the darkness closed over the four-armed woman. That his reaction was less to her transformation and more to the sudden communication from the blade was lost on the others. He wrestled with a fought down the sudden overwhelming urge to draw the blade, instead listening first to the shadow clad woman and then to the others. Finally he bowed deeply, "It was not my intention to offend. Nor my intention to imply any perfection in myself that is not there."

[z-Gloom]

The shadow flowed away and a blushing - oddly, her cheeks didn't flush red, but a gray color - Andi blinked at them. "Well, that's stuff I didn't want people to know about me," Andi said, her face twisted bitterly. The shadows were collapsing, moving away from her and retreating to their corners. "Hi, I'm Andy, I'm possessed by... a four-armed shadow-thing. And did you know that shadows could be so fucking bossy?"

She looked at the others, and finally nodded to Radiance and Larissa. "I'll let you know what you can do, if anything can be done. I wish I knew right now something that could get Short 'n Dark out of me."

[SalmonMax]

"Is it like a possession?" Larissa wants to know. "There might be something about it in the Book." The capital B was audible in how she said the word as she dug in her oversized handbag and pulled out a venerable, huge old book.

"I'd be happy to look it up some time if you want. Maybe there's a spell to get rid of it, or an exorcism."

[Charlotte]

"If you two are in, that's good news. If not, I won't bother you again." Jack began shuffling the deck of cards he had in his pocket, pulling out random cards and counting to himself. "If you want help with whatever that thing was, miss, I'm pretty sure we're your best bet for either eliminating it or managing it.

"Hmmm. Next one's in London. And I got a feeling on this one, we might have to move fast. It doesn't seem to predict that far ahead. Sam, Spellarella, Radiance, and you - " He waved in the direction of Gloom's voice. "Are you ready to take the next step?"

[Radiance]

Hikari looks at Gloom and nods. "Yeah I'm ready." The look in her eyes implored Gloom to say yes too, She had a feeling it would just be better if they went together.

[z-Gloom]

Andi stared at Jack for a moment, absorbing the glum knowledge that all of her choices had been removed by Darkness' invasion. No, not all your choices, just the good ones. She glanced at Radiance and saw her pleading look. "Damn it," she muttered and stood up. "Lemme get my gear. I don't want to leave it here, Rade, someone might use it against you."

She didn't wait for an answer, but got a garbage bag and put her uniform in there. It hurt, more than a little, to treat her treasured, well-tended gear like trash. Still, she didn't hesitate. "Ready," she said when she exited the room and rejoined them. "And you should probably just call me Gloom. I'm not who I was anymore."