Chapter 154: desperate measures

The blood in his veins turned to sludge, and finally, Perry felt his heart stop. He could no longer afford to wait.

PPP.EXE

(0/6)

A shiny black nodule leapt out of Perry’s mummified finger and was intercepted by one of Professor replica’s robots, standing guard over its creator.

Paradox’s Pernicious Prison was Perry’s attempt at capitalizing on the strengths of a half dozen different spells, combining them in a way that, while unoriginal in concept, was tremendously difficult in execution. The hair of Saint Natanya reacted violently with areonite, the Telusian Tar wanted to absorb and break down the Mindtaker ichor, vivant root made the Telusian tar solidify and turn brittle.

It had taken all his theory and practical application to get all the constituent pieces to act together by using the neutral giant’s eye as an emulsifier whose properties could be tightly controlled to dictate which reactions happen inside the spell itself, making something greater than the sum of its parts. Something that could let him fight for a long, long time on a single cast.

Something that could make him a Sweeper.

The nodule erupted into black webs, binding together no less than three robots who’d moved to intercept in shiny black tar webbing studded with pale white runes. The ivory sigils were seemingly made of bone, carved into hymns to Gintax and Astra that scrolled seamlessly through the inky black substance, fading in and out at random.

I don’t remember making those. Neat.

The bound bots began to decay at an alarming rate, rusting away, their motors sparking as they were crushed by the spell contracting on them.

Perry felt a trickle of life force flow into him as the spell crushed what little juice it could out of the bots. There wasn’t a lot, because they were robots, but having been made by Professor Replica, they had some life force. It was squeezed out of them like an orange press, and Perry greedily drank it in.

The hair of Saint Natanya filtered the stolen energy into healing and directed it to where it would most benefit him.

Thump.

Perry’s heart restarted as his flesh lost a bit of its leathery appearance. Perry’s limbs began responding again, moving with cracks and pops of tortured flesh. None too soon, because Professor Replica was…a little upset.

“What are they planning!?” He demanded, limping towards Perry, heedless of the black and ivory weblike goop consuming his robots.

Miss every shot you don’t take, Perry thought with an internal shrug, directing the spell to leap onto the professor. Much like Kolath’s Floating Armament, it could be directed, making it able to reacquire targets, removing the primary weakness of Threads of Gintax, which just…sat there.

The lair around them morphed in a liquid metal wave, deflecting and engulfing the spell while the professor marched on like the writhing floor under him was solid ground.

And it was. Perry noticed the floor momentarily hardening under each individual footprint while the rest of the lair seemed to fluctuate around the supervillain in a manner reminiscent of an old audio visualizer.

Riiight… still his lair. I should do something about that.

Perry had an idea for how to remove the lair itself from the equation, but he had to buy a little time to design it.

With a mental tug, the black webbing hardened into a spiralling drillbit and began spinning, boring its way through the tomb of steel surounding it, blurring through the air to Perry’s position before it spread out again, snapping the air like a violently unfurled umbrella.

No sooner than Paradox’s Pernicious Prison covered him than the ceiling began to once again rain death down from above.

Perry wasn’t sure if he had actually been fast enough to interpose the spell between himself and the hail of gunfire and lasers, or if Professor Replica was simply usin git as a way to keep the spell occupied while he checkmated Perry in come other way.

The distinction really didn’t matter, because either way, Perry’s was pinned down…mostly.

The shiny black tar was reverbing like a thunderstorm from all the kinetic force it was absorbing above him, when Replicators began charging him from every angle.

Perry detached a small portion of the shield, about a hundredth the width of a human hair and directed it to split the charging robots in half.

“Invuln-“

Perry switched tactics mid-word, causing the black and white garrote wire to dive down and slice through the floor.

“nerable!”

As soon as the professor finished reciting his Law, a tiny thread of black substance grabbed the floor and flipped it like an angry teen might rage quit a game of Call of Duty.

All the invulnerable robots were summarily buried under the upturned floor. Invulnerable they may be, but they would take more effort than they were worth unburying them.

Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation.EXE

(0/1)

In order to make the spell more accurate, Perry went for something he was intimately familiar with. For some reason, he thought of Dad.

Let’s see, first we start with 91% RDX, chemical composition (C3H6N6O6), then 5.3% dioctyl sebacate (CH2)8(COOC8H17)2, and then just a dash of polyisobutylene and motor oil to taste. Smells like home cookin’!

Infinite possibilities began to flood Perry’s consciousness, straining his ability to play keepaway. Perry extended two tentacles down from the inky dogma-studded umbrella above him and used them to fling himself upward, bringing the umbrella with him.

Paradox’s Pernicious Prison wrapped itself around him, turning him into a human wrecking ball as he smashed into the ceiling, disabling one of the ceiling turrets.

While Perry was distracted narrowing down the Idyllic Manifestation, one of the Professor’s robots blindsided him, peeling the tar Perry was guarding himself away in the blink of an eye before smashing him down to the ground.

HP: 7

“What’s your plan!?” Professor Replica demanded as two steel hands dragged him to his feet.

“Okay, okay,” Perry said, holding up his hands in supplication. “We’re gonna use the digitizer… to start an ice-cream chain called Replicant Creamery.”

“The fate of humanity is at stake, son,” Professor Replica said, his eyes twitching madly as he leaned in close to Perry’s face, blood on his breath. “Don’t get cute.”

“Right back at’cha, son,” Perry said, putting the finishing touches on his design. Nothing fancy, just a few tons of high explosives. “Why on Earth would I tell the guy trying to kill us all our plan?.”

“I’m trying to SAVE us all! You just don’t under-”

Perry gritted his teeth and slammed the roulette wheel of infinite possibilities to a stop, filling the entire massive room with high explosives….hopefully. Perry didn’t have the time nor the energy to set up a detonator or complicated architecture. All he had the focus for was a single chemical admixture repeated ad infinitum.

Thankfully, certain kinds of detonators counted as tools.

Multi-tool.

Perry jabbed the probes for the detonator into the mass of clay-like boom-putty that had manifested around them, and pressed the button.

HP: 7->0

“…UGH.” Perry groaned, staring straight up into the dust-choked sky. The building had the walls and ceiling removed, and Perry’s last HP had been used when he finally ragdolled back to the earth, laying supine in a pit carved out of the wilderness, roughly the size of a football field.

Boomer had shielded him from the falling car-sized shrapnel with his bulk, probably saving his life.

During the minute he’d spent airborne, HP caught only the damage above a boxer’s punch, which meant Perry had been buffeted by a constant barrage of less-than lethal raw kinetic energy for the last couple minutes, and his entire body felt like it’d been tenderized.

Still moveable, only half my bones are broken. Perry grabbed a chunk of steel shrapnel the size of a Buick and pulled himself out from under Boomer before he levered himself back to his feet, testing his knees and finding them functional. Barely.

“Cm’ere,” Perry muttered, crooking his finger.

The slick black and ivory spell coalesced out of the bits and pieces that had been scattered around the area, coming together in midair like liquid metal from a Terminator movie.

With a mental tug, Perry’s Pernicious Prison floated over to him and engulfed him in black and ivory. Perry almost felt like he was wearing a tuxedo made of living ooze.

He mentally dialed the life drain aspect to nothing (another improvement) and just like that, Perry had a suit that would help protect him from further damage, support his broken limbs...and cover his junk.

None too soon, he thought, scanning the surroundings.

Lining the massive pit that used to be Professor Replica’s lair was an army of Replicators. They stood, watching Perry with the stillness of a hungry predator.

But they didn’t move.

In fact…They weren’t watching him, they were watching something a few degrees to his left. Perry turned and spotted a pair of massive robotic hands clasped around something halfway across the crater.

Dragor’s Kinesis.

Perry lifted himself up and flew over to the hands, picking the top one up and flinging it aside.

Nestled inside the man-sized disembodied hands…was a man. Professor Replica was missing both his legs, which had been sticking out of the protection of his robot. His pre-existing stomach wound had been torn far wider, and his breath was coming in short gasps.

“You’re a tough son of a bitch,” Perry muttered as he squatted down beside the dying supervillain. “Any last words?”

Professor Replica’s gaze flickered over to Perry and his eyes widened, truly taking in Perry’s face for the first time, his expression registering surprise and recognition.

“YOU. I know you.” The first supervillain said, before his eyes went glassy, jaw slack.

Perry leaned down and checked the man’s pulse. Nothing. With a mental command, Paradox’s Pernicious Prison speared out and stabbed through Professor Replica’s head and heart.

Respect for the dead came second to making sure the most dangerous supervillain in existence didn’t get back up again.

The extensions retracted back to Perry’s sleeve, and he turned back to the replicator horde.

They stood like statues, watching the death of their god impassively.

Like Matador had said what felt like ages ago, robots simply didn’t care, only waiting for the next order.

Was he the one keeping them going this entire time? Perry thought, scanning the army. Did his death mean Franklin City was safe?

Perry drained a few more robots to bring himself back to peak condition, but they didn’t move or react at all to his aggression, simply ignoring him.

Finally, Perry sat down with his back against a massive chunk of steel buried halfway in the ground and waited for evac.

He didn’t have to wait long.

A blast of light descended from above as Solaris arrived in the blink of an eye. The leader of Franklin city cocked a brow as he took in the corpse and the surrounding machines.

“Looks like you’ve been busy.”

Perry chuckled, shaking his head.

“He was already dying. Guy could barely walk. All I had to do to win was rattle him around a bit, and it was still the hardest fight I’ve ever had.”

“Mm,” Solaris nodded, crouching beside Professor Replica’s corpse. “The most dangerous man is the one who is sure he’s doing the right thing. Goodbye, John.”

Solaris held out a palm, and in a flash of light, the corpse turned into a smudge against the backdrop of dirt.

He met Perry’s questioning gaze and explained.

“It’s best to remove any materials someone can get their hands on.”

“Ah.” Perry nodded in understanding. You never knew if there was a Manitian necromancer stupid enough to think binding Professor Replica was a good idea.

“We’re gonna have to have a team search the woods for his feet.” Solaris muttered to himself, scanning the miles of surrounding wilderness. His gaze landed back on Perry.

“Let’s get you home first, though.”

“I wouldn’t say no to that,” Perry said, the strength leaving his body as the tension dissipated.

“Cool,” Solaris said, picking up Perry. “Your son is excited to meet you.”

“WHAT!?” Son? SON? Perry’s skin went cold as he tried to figure out how long he’d spent unconscious battling Abun’zaul while the time dilation had been unraveling. It would only have to be a few hours…. Did gramma do something while he was out, or did Nat…

Solaris broke into gales of laughter. “Sorry, sorry, time dilation humor. You’ve only been gone a month and change.”

“Not cool, dude.” Perry groused.

“Eh,” The most powerful super on the planet shrugged. “You can call me Tom. Anyone that’s fought Professor Replica can.”

Perry raised a surprised brow. He didn’t feel comfortable doing that, but it was a nice gesture.

“Now I’m about to move us. Don’t hold your breath or you may pop your lungs.”

***

The next week went by in a blur as Perry recovered then joined the cleanup effort. Teams of supers swept further and further out from Franklin City, disassembling the passive Replicators and loading them onto garbage trucks to be converted into raw materials.

It was a harvest of raw materials that made Low Tide look pitiful by comparison. The sheer amount would allow Franklin city to recover, and even expand decades into the future. The mountain of steel, silicon, batteries and rare earth magnets seemed inexhaustible.

On the other hand, Franklin City’s farms had been trampled to dust by the replicator horde, and priority #1 was to get food production up and running…again.

Perry and his team were cleaning up Grampa’s farm, chopping up replicators and sorting them into the Perry’s personal dump trucks.

No sense not making a profit, Perry thought idly as he used his original spell to do most of the work for him, getting practice with the fine motor control. I need a name that’s easier to say than Paradox’s Pernicious Prison.It’s not even entirely accurate, I just wanted the alliteration.

“So humanity is gonna survive, right?” Heather asked, lopping off mechanical limbs by turning her hands into chisels before tossing them over her shoulder into the sorting pile that the crew of Oberon’s Scrapyard swarmed over, manually separating the smaller bits by material.

“Well, no guarantees, but it looks promising,” Perry said, waggling his hand. “New supers are coming out of the woodwork all the time, but the chances of them being as powerful as Professor Replica are slim. Without the replicators fighting the Prawns, there’ll be a bit next High Tide, but they’re not quite as bad as replicators, so…yeah, hopefully things will start getting better.”

“At least the next thirty years or so, though, right?” Heather asked, uncharacteristically out of breath as she hacked through the machines.

“…maybe?” Perry said with a shrug. “No guarantees.”

Heather sighed and rolled her eyes.

“I think she wanted you to tell her everything is going to be fine,” Natalie said from where she stood beside him, using her magnetic gauntlets to clear large piles of machines off Grampa’s fields.

“Why?” Perry asked, frowning.

Natalie pursed her lips, falling silent.

It struck Perry as odd, but he didn’t think too much about it, simply losing himself in the repetitive task of cutting and sorting machinery.

“While I got everyone here, anybody seen my hippie van?” Perry asked, scanning the rest of his team. It had seemingly been stolen sometime during the month he was gone.

Everybody shook their heads or grunted that they hadn’t, and Perry shrugged it off. There wasn’t anything valuable in it anymore anyway. He’d get it back eventually.

A short while later, Grampa barged out of his house with a soup pot that might’ve started life as an oil drum. It was filled to the brim, savory smelling steam wafting over Grampa’s shoulder as he wheeled it out on a handcart.

“Hey, everybody!” he shouted, waving his hand to gain the attention of Perry’s team along with the scrapyard workers.

“Soup’s ON!” Grampa shouted, brandishing a massive ladle and a package of thick paper bowls.

Perry glanced at his team.

“Breakfast?”

They nodded, and lined up with the rest of the Oberon Scrapyard workers, chatting idly as they waited for their turn.

Perry got his bowl first and savored the smell of the potato soup for a moment before he began blowing on the first bite, attempting to get it down to a more comfortable temperature.

Natalie got hers next and began adding a bit of salt and pepper from the nearby table.

“Here you go, Heather,” Grampa said, handing Heather her bowl.

Heather received the bowl of soup with a grateful smile, inhaling a deep breath of the savory scent.

Heather’s eyes widened, and a moment later she shoved the bowl of soup back into grampa’s hands before sprinting over to a nearby bush. Perry’s brows rose as the sound of retching came from behind it.

Grampa glanced at the bowl in his hand, then Heather, then Perry, brows gradually rising as he came to the wrong conclusion.

“Hoo, boy,” Grampa said, studiously avoiding Perry’s gaze as he set Heather’s soup down on the table beside himself before ladling up Plagius.

…

…..

Perry glanced down at Natalie, whose spoon was dribbling potato soup down the front of her shirt as she followed Heather with her gaze.

“So…what’s that all about?” Perry asked.

“I don’t…know…” Natalie said, her jaw slack.

***In a seedy chop shop in the bad part of town***

“So umm…why did you steal a piece of shit hippie van from the sixties?” Bloodrage asked as Scrape carefully swabbed every square millimeter of the machine’s interior.

“Take a wild guess, big guy.” Scrape huffed as he pulled out some screws and placed them into individual sample bags.

“I don’t have a guess. That’s why I’m asking.” Bloodrage said with a shrug.

Scrape sighed and threw his grease-covered towel over his shoulder. “Because you don’t fuck with me and live to tell about it,” He said, pointing at his legs, which now had pins in the bones to hold them together after Paradox had made them bend the wrong way.

Bloodrage chuckled.

“So instead of kicking ass on The Wall for the evening news, being a rockstar and getting your share of pussy…you…stole a piece of shit car?” the giant asked with a condescending smirk.

“Screw you, Herb,” Scrape said, giving the bruiser the finger. “It’s not about the car, it’s about the traces it has in it. Every mechanic who works on a car, without fail, scrapes their knuckles, cuts a thumb, or otherwise deposits their DNA. I know for a fact Paradox refurbished this thing. Don’t matter how good he cleaned up the cabin, somewhere under the hood is a drop of blood or a little piece of skin. And I’m gonna find it.”

“Best of luck, dude,” Bloodrage said with a shrug, pausing for a moment before he ducked out the door. “I know you’re a small fry, and it’ll take a while for it to bite you in the ass, but Solaris ain’t gonna be happy you bailed on your Draft.”

“What the fuck was I supposed to do? Replicators don’t even have DNA.” Scrape muttered, fastidiously sorting the samples and sending them through his custom-made analyzer.

“Fair enough. Later man,” Bloodrage said, waving.

Scrape grunted, continuing to dismantle and carefully preserve the engine, piece by piece.

Hours into the process, the analyzer’s bell drew Scrape out of his fugue state.

The Tinker who specialized in custom-built diseases turned around in his chair and scooted closer to the analyzer. It’d gotten a hit, and it wasn’t an animal this time.

In fact, the analyzer showed him that the DNA had a criminal record, connected to no less than six murders in Chicago in the mid seventies and early eighties, during the Post-Tide era, before DNA testing was being used in a reliable way, but entered into the system nonetheless.

“Who the hell are you?” Scrape muttered with a frown, scratching his chin. It certainly wasn’t the kid he was looking to kill.

***Stacy Watt-Powers***

Stacy’s parents were screaming at each other again. Normally Stacy took the radio into her room and turned it way up, but this time she couldn’t. Mom had sold it for drugs, which was why dad was yelling at her.

Stacy tried clamping a pillow down over her head, but every poisonous word her parents flung at each other, every sound of breaking furniture made it through, just quieter.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she heard mom start throwing things at dad in a drug-fueled rage, shattering dishes against the walls of their sagging mobile home. She didn’t want to be here anymore. She didn’t want to be anymore. In a moment of clarity, Stacy realized she could look forward to decades more of this strife.

How do grownups kill themselves? Her gaze wandered towards her dad’s painkillers, that he took for his back. She hadn’t realized why she stole them last week until just now. He’d assumed mom had stolen those too, and Stacy was too afraid to correct the screaming giants.

Dad always warned me not to take these, because they’re too strong for a little girl. ‘too many and you could die’ he said.

Stacy took the bottle and pushed down while twisting the top off, defeating the child-lock with her utmost effort. She downed the whole bottle.

Stacy laid down in bed, staring up at the ceiling and waiting to die.

Maybe if I’m gone, they’ll be happy again. They always looked so happy in those old pictures. Please God, make my parents stop fighting…

ACKNOWLEDGED.

Stacy’s eyes went wide as the booming Voice of God spoke to her.

ANDROID # 32,550,109. You have been selected as the ideal candidate to host The Creator. As per The Creator’s wishes, your consciousness will be re-allocated to a more positive circumstance.

Would you like an older brother or sister?

Sister, I guess?

ACKNOWLEDGED.

Stacy felt like she was lifted up and out of her body, and strapped into a roller coaster, zipping around the sky and bouncing off a little metal box overlooking the Earth, before riding along some power lines, bouncing off a weird tower, and arcing over a nice-looking neighborhood, speeding towards a pretty lady with a serene expression at madcap speeds before landing somewhere dark.

She couldn’t see anything, and normally darkness made Stacy afraid, but not now. She felt warm and loved for the first time in years.

Sleepy. The sound of her new mother’s heartbeat put her to sleep.

Back in the mobile home, Stacy’s body jerked, eyes opening.

“Goddamn,” John squeaked, sitting up in the strange bed he found himself in.

Squeaked?

He looked at his hand that had none of the sun, freckles, and the gnarl of age he’d been seeing over the last fifteen years.

He overlayed it on the nearby furniture.

It was tiny.

I’m a child. He moved to sit up in bed and felt something rolling into the divot made by his butt. An empty bottle of prescription painkillers.

Ah. I see.

John immediately stuffed his fingers down his throat and puked up the pills, not stopping until he was absolutely sure his stomach was empty. He wiped his mouth with the covers as he recovered.

Let’s see how bad the damage is. John thought, grabbing a little Barbie doll off the ground and bringing it to life.

He felt his powers activate, but it was like a hundred-pound weight on a ten-pound line, snapping instantly. The doll jerked momentarily, then went still as a wave of exhaustion passed over him.

How is this the most ideal body for me!? John demanded before taking a steadying breath. It’s fine. I’ll work up to it. Maybe even take a little vacation while I get back to where I was. See how my new humans are doing.

“You pawned her fucking radio!”

“Cuz you won’t give me any money for groceries!”

“Then where are the fucking groceries, huh!? It all went up your nose!”

“Fuck you!”

CRASH!

The sound of screaming and thrown dishes pulled John out of his musing.

I need more information about my situation.

John peeked out of the squalid room he’d found himself in and spotted two adults, a portly man and a rail-thin woman throwing dishes at him before he grabbed her and yanked them violently out of her hand.

Huh. He glanced down the hall and saw what looked like the master bedroom. John snuck inside while the two were involved in their petty squabble, and began fishing through the sock drawer until he found Daddy’s nine millimeter.

BLAM!

The wrestling couple froze at the sound of a gunshot, their gaze turning towards John.

“I know I programmed you to be perfectly human, but sometimes, I wonder…” John said with a sigh.

“Stacy-“ the man said, letting go of the coked-out woman.

Ah, my new name’s Stacy. Good as any. John wasn’t concerned with being a girl. It wasn’t relevant to his mission to save humanity.

“Get on your knees. Both of you.” Stacy said, leveling the nine millimeter at her new parents.

“Stacy, wh-“

BLAM!

Another hole in the ceiling.

They got on their knees.

“Face down. Hands on the back of your head.”

They got on their bellies.

“How old am I? What’s my last name? What are your bank account numbers? What year is it?” Stacy demanded. “Where are we? What city!? Who’s in charge of our city? Is Solaris still alive? Have any other Omni level supers sprung up in the last four decades? Which super runs around in a suit of pure black power armor that absorbs light? What do you mean ‘google it’?”

She glanced up from interrogating her parents with a deadly weapon and spotted a floor-to-ceiling mirror in the living room that reflected her new appearance. Big eyes, blonde hair, long lashes, fair skin, perfectly formed face. Cute as a button.

She looked about twelve or thirteen years old, with malnutrition partially stunting her growth to that of a ten-year-old.

Not a good sign for the mission if Command felt I needed the extra layer of social protection an innocuous appearance will provide at the expense of my powers being limited by my frail body. It must’ve calculated going into hiding for a time was the better option.

“And how did YOUTWO of all people raise someone this cute, eh?” Stacy demanded.