1.20 Aftermath Part 2

“Leo,” says Joan suddenly and he looks down at where she is resting against him.

“Yes dear?” replies Leo as he thinks about what could be wrong.

His girlfriend doesn’t seem to be distressed or upset, but she does sound surprised.

“I can’t change your sexual orientation,” pouts Joan, “For that matter, I can’t change anything about you. I just keep getting error messages about ‘Access Denied’.”

“Interesting,” mutters Leo, “But wouldn’t you have to be trying to alter me without my knowledge to uncover this?”

Joan flushes and looks away from him.

“Don’t bring that up unless you want to talk about your secrets,” replies Joan, sounding embarrassed, “So unless you are willing to discuss the guns under my bed, your cyborg hand and that freaking halberd of yours, just forget it.”

“I am more than willing to talk about those things with you Joan,” replies Leo with victorious smile on his face, “So why are you trying to change me?”

“I just want to make you attracted to me,” grumbles Joan as she crosses her arms in a huff.

That is rather reasonable.

Shut it you.

What have you got against me?

You tried to kill Joan and tried to take over our body.

We weren’t trying to kill her, just trying to make her manifest. Besides, trying to take over your body backfired on me big time. I’ve been reduced to just a figment of your imagination.

Technically that isn’t true.

Who cares?! It might as well be true from where I standing. I’m stuck helpless in your mind while everybody else thinks I’m dead.

Do you have family?

Why do you care?

Because we’re stuck with you.

…

Spirit Mistress…

Fine. I’m an orphan, but I do have a younger sister, Alyssa Woods.

And your name is?

It was Marlene Woods if that is what you are asking.

So how did you get your powers?

Oracle gave to me when she recruited me to the Transcendency.

You were given your powers?

Yeah…

May we access your memories?

Sure, why not?

Thank you Marlene.

Humph.

Leo feels Spirit Mistress’ memories mixing with his own. He ignores the few flashes of supervillainess’ life that he gets and shoved the memories off to one side so he can deal with them later. Right now, Joan is his focus.

“Alright,” replies Leo, “I want to tell you something first.”

“Oh?” says Joan, looking interested as she looks back up at him.

“Well, you see,” starts Leo and he goes on to explain how when Spirit Mistress tried to possess him, she basically ended up as a new companion for him and then elaborates about her past and current situation.

“Can I speak with her?” asks Joan.

“Sure,” replies Leo, “Just enter my mind.”

“Cool, thanks,” replies Joan.

Leo?

Hi Joan.

So where is she?

Here.

Hi Spirit Mistress.

…

So how are you?

Why do you care?         

Because you’re stuck in my boyfriend’s head silly.

Don’t call me silly! I’m older than you!

How are you then?

Seventeen.

And your sister Alyssa?

Fourteen.

So what situation is your sister in?

She lives with a foster family. Unaware of my powers or who I worked for.

Oh.

She’ll be worried that I’m not back by now.

I will inform her of your situation then.

No!

Spirit Mistress dearie, you don’t a choice in the matter. You and your friends almost killed me and Leo. But tell you what, I will cut you a deal.

What deal?

If you are nice and helpful Companion to Leo, perhaps I will restore you to a physical body in a year or two.

Really? You can do that?

Yep. I’m pretty all powerful now.

I-er-thank you for that offer.

You’re welcome. Bye!

As soon as Joan redraws from Leo’s head, Spirit Mistress speaks up again.

Was she being serious?

Yes. Though I believe she will do it soon rather than later provided you behave. Joan is a kind and generous soul and will probably decide to reward you sooner than she said if you are deserving.

I will try and be as helpful and nice to you as I can.

Don’t worry about it. As long as you don’t get in my way, I won’t mind what you do. And Joan won’t care what you do if I don’t have a problem with it.

Oh, okay…thanks I guess.

You’re welcome.

“So now that little issue is resolved, let’s move on,” says Joan as rests her head against his shoulder again, “By the way, thank you for sharing that with me. I expect you to do that from now on. Especially since I have powers of my own.”

“Don’t worry dear,” replies Leo reassuringly, “I will. As you said, I don’t need to worry about you being endangered by my problems anymore.”

“You know, one thing I like about our relationship is that despite me being the one that is all-powerful,” says Joan with a relaxed sigh, “Is that you are still the most dangerous out of the two of us.”

“Debatable, but I’m glad you feel that way,” replies Leo, “I have tried my best to make you feel safe.”

“So now can we get on with what we were doing before?” asks Joan, “Pretty please?”

“Sure, I’ll grant you permission to alter me,” says Leo.

“Yes!” exclaims Joan, “I just got a message saying I have permission now. Just give me a moment…”

1.19 Ascendance Part 2

Leo wastes no time as the black-clad Adonis comes crashing through Joan’s bedroom wall. With one swift motion born of inhumanly good reflexes and battle-honed instincts, he summons Reinkal to his hand as he aims the halberd at the intruder.

Still charged from the mop-up after the battle with Apocalypse, Leo fires off a beam of black energy at the hostile parahuman.

These people are dangerous and mean business.

They just casually killed Abigail. We can’t risk them doing the same to Joan or us.

And we have to take things extra seriously with that woman involved.

The energy beam rips through the head of the parahuman and man topple over, his corpse falling forward with the head half gone.

Whatever his powers were, they weren’t enough to protect him from Reinkal.

With a single stride, Leo stabs Reinkal into the corpses to restore some of the power he just spent.

One down, four to go.

“D-did you just-” stutters Joan, not even finishing her sentence as she stares at Leo in shock.

“Yes,” replies Leo as he looks at the cameras and other sensors via his phone so he can track the other invaders.

One of them is a black haired woman with pale skin, most likely a Bellator. She can phrase through walls and fly.

Then we got Jane Smith in her black catsuit with a thin, tall, hunchback man with razor sharp one foot long claws instead of fingernails. Probably an Abnormal given those deformities. Given how he slew Abigail, he has long ranged invisible razor attacks. Capable of tearing through high level nigh invulnerability with pin point precision.

I doubt that is much width to such as an attack so dodging is still an option.

But looking at the footage, he seems to have some good reflexes. Definitely superhuman and most likely superior to our own.

That is a problem.

And the last guy?

Tinker or Gadgeteer with power armour and a large variety of equipment.

Could be worse.

We still don’t know the full extent of their powers.

True.

We must be wary.

“Follow me Joan,” whispers Leo, “Take your phone out and use the camera function.”

“How do-oh, Ceta has got it,” replies Joan as she begins to pull out her phone, “She is going to use the nano-bots in me to give me HUD.”

“Good idea,” agrees Leo as he pulls out some modified sunglasses that will give him a HUD of his own, “Give me a moment.”

Moving swiftly since he doubts they will have much longer, Leo heads over to Joan’s bed and pulls out a emergency utility belt that he has stored away along with a couple of handguns with Hunter bullets.

Maybe I am paranoid, but I’m sure glad I’ve prepared for a situation like this.

It isn’t paranoia is they really are out to get you.

Damn right.

“Here,” says Leo as he tosses a handgun to Joan, giving the other for himself as he places Reinkal down for the time being.

I can also summon it again later. This way I get a surprise weapon up my sleeve in addition to having additional hand free.

As he spots the Abnormal stop moving on the floor below him and begin to raise his hand upwards, Leo quickly steps back. He barely moves out of the way in time to avoid the Abnormal using an invisible ranged attack to tear a hold through floor.

The Abnormal points a finger at Leo and smirks even as Leo aims his pistol. But while he doesn’t vaguely feel some mental discomfit and his emotional state heighten, Leo is unaffected by whatever the Abnormal is trying to do.

Idiot doesn’t realise that we are immune to mental attacks.

He doesn’t give the Abnormal a chance to realise his mistake before firing off a single shot. The Hunter round lodges itself within the Abnormal’s skull and explodes a split-second later, taking most of the head off in the process.

Did you see him begin to regenerate before the Hunter round went off?

That would have been troublesome.

Good thing we used explosive rounds.

Leo glances as the ammo counter on his HUD. The number has gone down from twelve to eleven.

It feels like I am in a video game. Despite everything I’ve done in Gears.

Probably because things like this aren’t supposed to happen to us while we are home and when we do things like this, we’re supposed to have our power armour on.

True. Somehow the compromise of having some gadgets rather than having all of them or none of them just makes this feel less real.

“*&%£ you $%@#ing *&@#%£$!” screams a woman and Leo turns around just in time to the black-haired phrasing woman phrases straight through the floor and into Leo before he can do anything.

As he feels a sudden surge of agony and stress, Leo staggers backwards, clutching his head before toppling over.

“Leo!” shrieks Joan, but Leo can’t hear.