Part 3
“Hello, TOM. You can’t IMAGINE how long I’ve waited for this day to come.”
In the School’s lobby, as the battle outside rages on and her Antibodies keep the rest of the ChaotiX occupied, Anti-Venom has finally made her move against Venom.
Sure, she’s still outnumbered. Venom is backed up by their fellow ChaotiX members: Bellikose, Mania, Shadow, and Toxin, who isn’t an official member yet, but it’s definitely in the cards.
But all five of them are Klyntar hosts, and she’s got a weapon designed specifically for killing Klyntar, as Woody’s corpse can verify.
None of them will dare to do anything while she wields All-White. They have seen what the consequences will be.
She has the situation under control. (Or so she thinks.)
Venom snarls at their fluffy half’s former owner.
“WE haf bin waitin fow dis day tuu. Da day we weck-tih-fai ouw miss-take: nu nummin yu in yu off-ice. An we am VENOM. Git it wite ow we stawt nummin yu fwom da footsies up.”
Anti-Venom had plenty of nightmares about that exact scenario back when she was just Michelle, and she scowls at her former pet for reminding her, pointing the Biosword at Venom.
“You should have just stayed in fucking Manhattan instead of traveling cross-country to find me! Wasn’t it obvious that I didn’t WANT you anymore? Were you so dense that you couldn’t figure it out when I didn’t come back?”
Bellikose cuts in.
“If we’re not mistaken, there’s a Foundation branch in Manhattan. They would have been happy to take Tom off your hands, and they wouldn’t even charge you a surrender fee.”
The reason for the Foundation not charging to surrender fluffies is so fluffy abusers can’t use the “oh no, I can’t afford the surrender fee, I’d better hold on to this shitrat and keep abusing it” excuse, but of course, one of the few things fluffy abusers excel at is finding excuses to abuse fluffies.
And if they can’t find an excuse, they’ll just invent one, like a racist cop looking for a reason to arrest an innocent minority for being a minority and existing near the cop.
But some abusers don’t even need an excuse, and their reason for doing what they do can be boiled down to “Because.” The worst of fluffy abusers are completely unapologetic about their desire to inflict suffering upon fluffies for the sake of inflicting suffering. They do it because they can. Because that’s their idea of a good time. Because hurting someone small and weak makes them feel powerful.
Because they had been suppressing the urge to hurt innocents in order to be accepted by civilized society for far too long, so once they were given an underclass of sapient beings that had no legal protections, they weren’t in a hurry to lose their playthings. Their masks of civility fell off a long time ago, and now they embrace what they are.
There is a reason that they had to make an entire tenth circle of Hell just for fluffy abusers.
And there is a reason that fluffy abusers are no longer considered worthy to be turned into demons.
Now that their hobby has been illegalized in many places and continues to be outlawed in more, the abusers who fight hardest against the Anti-Abuse Laws are the most dangerous ones, the ones who won’t stop hurting innocents until they’re stopped by force. The bottle coveys, as Cetteville’s own Commissioner John Jackson calls them.
These days, the forces of law and chaos alike stand between abusers and the fluffies they wish to harm.
More often than not, their victims find their way to the Foundation anyway, thanks to the efforts of the ChaotiX, who are happy to show fluffy abusers what real power looks like, to put those sadistic bastards on the receiving end, to give them a taste of their own medicine.
And, naturally, the abusers find their way to a jail cell, or a psych ward. Someone who enjoys hurting innocent sapient beings is someone who needs to be monitored at all times, and probably needs to be heavily medicated too.
Slapping a straitjacket on them doesn’t hurt either.
“So why didn’t you just bring Tom THERE, instead of abandoning him on the streets?”
Mania offers their two cents as well.
“Come to think of it, why didn’t you just TELL Tom that you didn’t want him anymore? Why did you tell him to wait for you to come back, when you clearly weren’t PLANNING to come back?”
Shadow folds their arms.
“You want to know what WE think? We think you just did it that way because you thought it would be FUNNY. We think you NEVER cared about Tom. You just saw him as a plaything, one you quickly tired of and cast aside. After you left New York, you forgot all about him and just moved on, thinking you’d never see him again. Aber der Witz geht auf Ihr Konto.”
Anti-Venom angrily points at them with her free hand, a nerve clearly struck.
“You stay OUT of this! ALL of you! This is between me and the SHITRAT.”
She points at Toxin next.
“Or rather, the SHITRATS. You know, ONE was bad enough, TWO was far too many, but THREE? That’s the last straw, they’ve ALL gotta go, before EVERY damn shitrat has a Klyntar.”
Toxin gives Anti-Venom an offended look.
“Da fuk did WE eba du tu yu?”
“You EXIST! Your Klyntar was spawned from Carnage, and Carnage was spawned from Venom. You were BORN guilty.”
“Pfft, sins of da daddeh much?”
“Shut it. I’ll get to you after I’m done with GRANDPA.”
Then Anti-Venom points at Venom, sneering hatefully.
“My life was FINE before you showed up in my office, you know. Fine, and Klyntar-free. I had a good job, a nice apartment, and EVERY barista in San Francisco had my usual order memorized. Everything was going GREAT. But ever since YOU crawled back into my life, the Klyntar have only been making my life harder, and harder, and HARDER. I lost EVERYTHING because of you. And without Pax, I would be DEAD because of you. He’s right, your kind doesn’t BELONG in this world. And now, I’M the one who will purge the universe of the Klyntar once and for all. Things are finally looking up for me.”
Bellikose raises a slimy eyebrow.
“We just noticed something. You keep saying I and me instead of we and us. Does your Klyntar not have a mind of its own?”
“Nope. It’s just me in here. And shut up unless you want what I gave the red one. If you want to keep your Klyntar intact, you three are going to walk right OUT of here, and leave these two for me. When they are dead, what happens next is entirely up to YOU, but know this: you can’t escape FOREVER.”
WHAM
The front doors are kicked open again, a man and fluffy striding inside.
“Neither can you, Michelle.”
“Yu shudda stayed away fwom da Skoow.”
I smirk at Anti-Venom as she turns around and lays eyes on me and Marley.
“Oh right, you call yourself Anti-Venom now. It’s so good to finally meet you properly. We’ve been trying to find you for a while, y’know. Nice sword. Looks familiar.”
“Daddeh haf bee-ten a sowd wike dat bee-fowe. An Mawwey gut a sowd tuu.”
Yeah, Marley’s wearing his sword bracelet, but he still hasn’t gotten a chance to use it in battle yet.
Anti-Venom snarls at me, and I can feel the hatred radiating off her.
“Fucking Korkea. YOU’RE to blame for ruining my life as well. If you hadn’t gone and introduced yourself to Tom and his slimy friend, NONE of this would be happening today. I’d have dealt with them by now, and I’d be living a normal life.”
“Okay, what is the deal with villains always blaming other people for their own actions? Are you just pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for the choices you make? Is your Fabergé ego so fragile that you simply can’t accept being at fault for anything bad? Because that explains why people like you become villains. You’re the one who abandoned Tom in the shittiest way possible, and brought an invasion to our front doors.”
Marley nods.
“If yu had takun Tom tu da Fown-day-shun, he nu wudda bin in Sen-twaw Pawk wen dat mee-tee-ow wan-ded, an he nu wudda bee-come Venom.”
“And because you didn’t give him closure, he sought you out in San Francisco. If you had dropped him off at the Foundation, he’d have been adopted by someone else, and he would have stayed in New York. But you didn’t think about him at all after you moved away. You never thought that he could find his way back to you.”
I glance at the dead orange and red fluffy on the floor, knowing all I need to know.
“But he did, and it was in San Francisco that his Klyntar spawned, and latched onto the fluffy that became Carnage. Had Tom stayed in New York, Carnage would not exist. Neither would Toxin, or Anti-Venom. So in a way, you played a part in what happened in San Francisco too. I won’t say that you’re entirely to blame for that fiasco, because that wouldn’t be fair in the slightest, but you could have prevented so much with a little honesty.”
I laugh at the bitch who had the audacity to attack our headquarters, knowing damn well what she started off as.
“Oh, what am I saying? You’re a lawyer. You lie as easily as you breathe. Just standing near lawyers sets Niv’s sussy baka sense off. You have that in common with Dibbler.”
It looks like I’m successfully pissing her off, which means I have her full attention now.
“Oh, fuck YOU! Pax is right about you too! You can’t go ANYWHERE without unleashing mayhem! Chaos literally follows you everywhere you go! You got bored of trashing this shithole of a city, so you came to mine! You SAY you care, but you don’t give two tugs of a dead shitrat’s cock that my life was ruined, by YOUR friends! By YOU! You just do whatever you want and say fuck the rules! You act like you’re ABOVE the law! And you don’t care that people like me get screwed over!”
When my eyes start glowing red, she shuts up.
“Again, it was your own actions that ruined your life. All I did was introduce myself to Venom and offer to help them find Tom’s owner. Which, like we already said, wouldn’t have been necessary if they had known all along that you didn’t want Tom anymore, and weren’t coming back to New York for him. Whose fault is it that they didn’t know, hmm? Can’t be mine. I didn’t meet Venom until after they had their first round with Carnage, which was well after Tom met his Klyntar in New York and they hitched a ride to San Francisco. I think I introduced myself about a week after the Intergalactic Tournament? If it hadn’t been for the Klyntar finding the Flufftopia chip in Tom’s body, not knowing what it was, and removing it, Tom would still be chipped, and finding you would’ve been a snap. But that’s not the Klyntar’s fault. Tom could have explained it to the Klyntar, if you had explained it to him, but apparently, you never even told him that he was chipped, let alone what the chip was for. Do you get what I’m saying, Michelle? Venom acted on incomplete information because you intentionally held the truth away from Tom. Your lies are what lead you to your downfall. No one forced you to lie to Tom. That’s all on you.”
“Dis aww happund cuz yu, wady, am a bitch.”
Anti-Venom points at Marley.
“Fuck you too! When I’m done with those other shitrats, you’re next. BOTH of you.”
“Yeah, uh, you might wanna take a look behind you, ‘cause… Venom ain’t here anymore.”
“What?!?”
When I point, Anti-Venom turns around, seeing that I was telling the truth, and our Klyntar friends slipped out while I was keeping her distracted.
Just as planned, of course. Maybe you can guess how they got out.
She glares at me as she turns back to us.
“You motherfucker. Fine, guess I’ll just have to kill you first.”
As she brandishes her sword, a white doppelganger of the one Umbra used during the World Revolution, I follow suit, drawing the Sword of Kings.
“Oh, it’s a sword fight you want? Alright… let’s test out my new move.”
FWOOSH
The Sword of Kings’ blade ignites, courtesy of my pyrokinesis.
“And let’s throw a little spice in there, too!”
As she charges at me, swinging her white sword, I move to block.
CLANG
In the parking lot, the Klyntar hosts watch the battle from outside the force field, Ulysses with them.
If you hadn’t already figured it out, Ulysses was the one who got them out of the lobby and past the force field. Teleportation is another thing he can do with his psionic powers.
They can see the battle unfolding inside the force field, and it doesn’t block sound, so they can hear it too.
With Anti-Venom now fighting Calvin inside the School’s lobby, she’s no longer spawning Antibodies, and the ChaotiX are gaining ground against the enemy.
But they know that Pax can just withdraw Anti-Venom and have her spawn more, so the plan Calvin has put together is going forward.
Venom looks disappointed at this turn of events.
“We wan-ed to deaw wif dat bitch ouw-sewfs.”
Bellikose kneels down, stroking Venom’s slimy fluff.
“You saw what that sword did to Carnage. She’d have done the same to you, and the rest of us.”
“Otay, but nao wut? Whewe du we gu fwom hewe?”
Ulysses points at the force field.
“I think you’ll see where we’re going with this imminently.”
As the group watches, the force field starts shrinking.
It’s being projected by drones, which are moving towards the center. They’re stealthed, so they can’t be seen by those who can’t see the invisible.
This is the Eye of the Storm Maneuver used during Carnage’s attack on San Francisco. If you have read that Saga, or if you are even remotely familiar with Fortnite, you need no further exclamation. (Feel free to quote the Fortnite meme of your choice. Dab or floss if you truly must, go on, get it out of your system.)
But this time, there’s a key difference:
That force field isn’t going to stop shrinking.
The eye of the storm is going to close.
The group sees Marley running out the School’s front doors, still open from when Calvin kicked them in, and shouting at everyone.
“HIT DA FUKKIN DEKK!!!!!”
CRASH
As everyone backs away from the School’s main building, something bursts out of the School’s roof, rising up, and the hosts crane their necks to see what it is.
It turns out to be Calvin, carrying Anti-Venom up into the air with the Meteoric Slash he learned yesterday.
And he’s going much higher than when he learned it from the Forgotten One.
I rise up, up, up, getting very close to the roof of the force field, Anti-Venom screaming helplessly as she goes along for the ride, caught on the Sword of Kings’ burning blade.
SLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASH
When I reach the zenith of my jump, the top of my head inches away from the force field, I slash at Anti-Venom over and over again, my burning blade destroying chunks of her Klyntar with every swing, her white sword being shattered when she feebly attempts to block.
SHUNK
Then I impale her through the gut, crashing down to the ground with her and screaming like a wild animal.
FWOOSH
I wreathe myself in flames as we fall, looking much like a meteor, just as this move is named.
And as we’re only feet away from the hole in the roof, my flames burn brighter.
“DON’T FORGET: YOU’RE IN MY HOUSE, BITCH!!!!”
“FUCK YOU KORKE--”
CRASH
FWOOM
“--AAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGH!!!!!”
When we crash back down into the lobby, I unleash a massive burst of flames that blows the doors off their hinges, creates a crater and blackens the walls, floor and ceiling.
SHATTER
Judging by the cacophony of breaking glass, I think I blew out every window in the building too.
CRASH
And I just keep going, slamming Anti-Venom right through the basement levels, fortunately missing the cells and the giant FauCore that powers the School, tunneling deeper into the Earth.
Once I finally come to a stop, we’re at the bottom of a deep pit. I can just barely see the daylight shining down from the top.
HOOOOOOOOOOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIT. Skeleton Guy’s gonna LOVE this.
That… certainly was more spectacular than when he demonstrated it.
He wasn’t joking about Cal being able to get more out of the Meteoric Slash.
You think the bitch survived?
Let’s see.
I pull my sword out, extinguish my flames, sheathe my sword, grab Anti-Venom by the leg, and fly up out of the pit.
Once I reach the lobby, I drop Anti-Venom onto the floor, away from the pit, and I examine my handiwork.
Only then do I notice that calling her Anti-Venom is a bit presumptuous now.
Michelle’s face down on the floor, most of her Klyntar destroyed and bleeding from her mouth, gut and back. She wasn’t naked under that thing, she’s got her underwear on, a white bra and panties.
Did… did Pax make her strip before he put that Klyntar on her, did it eat her clothes when it bonded to her, or did I just do that?
It’s not very sexy, what with the bleeding hole through her and all. I mean, some people are INTO that shit, but they’re weird and gross and we definitely shouldn’t encourage them.
Even if she didn’t have those injuries, blondes haven’t been my type since I dumped Gilda.
I caught Gilda cheating with Dave around Christmas, the year before I became a superhero. Once again, a blonde ruins the season for me.
And even if I wasn’t happily married to Judy, I’d jump off Faucheuse Tower with a dampener on again before I date a lawyer.
Michelle called me out for breaking the rules, but twisting them for personal gain isn’t much better.
I wonder how many criminals got away with their crimes thanks to people like Michelle and her old co-workers. Vic dealt with that law firm not long after the San Fran attack, he probably knows.
Marley runs in through the front doorway.
“Daddeh! Did it wowk?”
I nod, smiling at him, my eyes fading back to blue.
“I think so, Mar. Michelle’s alive, but… well, you can see for yourself.”
Marley navigates his way around the pit to Michelle, seeing the sorry state she’s in.
“Yuk. Yuh, she am in nu con-dish-un tu keep fite-in.”
But apparently, Michelle still doesn’t want to give up, so she pushes herself up with one hand, struggling to stay conscious as she looks at her other hand, the Klyntar biomass melting off it.
She desperately grabs at it, but it’s not rebonding to her, instead slipping between her fingers like water.
“No, no no no, stay with me, stay with me!”
“It’s over, Michelle. Look outside.”
She just barely manages to turn her head, seeing the force field getting close to the building as it shrinks down.
When it passes through the monsters spawned from her Klyntar and the splattered chunks of white slime on the grass, it disintegrates them instantly, leaving everyone else unharmed, ending the battle in seconds.
“My Antibodies! What’s happening to--”
And when the force field passes through the lobby and reaches Michelle, she screams as the remaining shreds of her Klyntar are disintegrated too, leaving her powerless, in her undies, and bleeding out on the floor.
“No… the power… give it back…”
pop
pop
I teleport out and in as the force field passes through my position, not sure that it won’t affect Niv or his darkness juju.
Thanks for not flipping that coin.
The force field passes through the wall behind me and Marley as it keeps shrinking, towards the exact center of the grounds.
On the way, it’ll destroy every last one of the monsters, and now that Anti-Venom is just Michelle Howard again, there probably won’t be more coming.
I smirk at Michelle again.
“Now it really is over. No more sword, no more powers, no more Klyntar, no more minions. You have thoroughly lost, Michelle. You’re just another loser who came at the king and failed to take his crown. How the fuck did you think this was gonna go, huh? You, the ex-lawyer with no real combat experience against me, the seasoned warrior who has faced opponents far stronger than you and won? You seriously thought you could beat me? Pur-lease. I didn’t even need any of my power-ups to beat you. I didn’t need my friends to beat you, and they held their own against your forces without me. We’ve done this dance plenty of times. You can’t imagine how much we were holding back. Now you see that we’re not as easy to kill as those feral fluffies you killed, which you are going to pay for.”
She glares at me, still fighting not to succumb to her injuries.
“And how-- gnn-- am I going to pay for it? You gonna kill me? Like you killed Dinopolous?”
“Well, that depends. Are you going to cooperate if we try to bring you in alive? Are you going to leave Venom alone from now on? Or are you waiting for Pax to bail you out so you can give it another go?”
Marley steps up next to me.
“Fink cawe-fuwwy, nao. Fink bee-fowe yu du anee dum shit.”
“Yeah, because Pax doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to bail you out. After your poor showing, who can blame him? See what I meant earlier? Pax doesn’t care about you, Michelle. You were just an asset to him, and now you’re a useless asset.”
“Mowe wike a yoos-wess ass-hat.”
“Here’s the deal we’re going to offer you: surrender, and we’ll heal you, give you a fresh set of clothes, and let you live so you can go to prison and answer for your crimes. Resist, and we’ll let Venom have that lunch date with you they’ve been putting off, after dunking you in the sauce of their choice.”
I look up through the holes in the ceiling, going up through each floor, all the way to the roof, the sun shining down on us like a natural spotlight.
“Oh, and if you suddenly and mysteriously vanish from your cell for any reason, the deal is off, you will be marked for death, and if we encounter you again, it’s kill on sight with you. So if anyone is planning to bust you out behind our backs, they should probably think better of it.”
I look back down at Michelle.
“What’s it going to be? Choose quickly, because you’re looking a little pale. Must be all that blood you’re losing.”
“Fine! I surrender!”
“Good call.”
Five minutes later, we’re outside the School, Ulysses has returned with our Klyntar pals, and Michelle has been healed up, wearing a T-shirt, sweatpants and slippers we were able to find in the School.
I gave her a Hermit Bean and explained what it was for, because the healing hands would have been inappropriate with her previous state of near-nudity.
And, uh, making sure she didn’t die of her injuries kinda took priority over getting some clothes on her.
Kinda tempted to bill her for that Hermit Bean, but I’m still not entirely sure what the exchange rate between dollars and drakes is.
The whole team is here, recovering from the battle, and the Nerd Squad is here to survey the damage with the Unseen Union.
Tommy has blipped here, bringing Leo and his hippie friends back by portal so Toxin can tell them how things went, and Tommy’s tending to anyone else who still needs treatment. With the battle over, blipping the wounded out to Blueberry’s Forest isn’t necessary anymore.
Jeff and Electra were portalled to Blueberry’s Forest with Bulma, Ms. Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Woodstock and the hippies when the attack started, so they’re back too, Konba and Valerie filling them in.
Alpha and his family are examining the building with our scientific and magical squads, and they’ve brought Mal with them.
Fortunately, none of us died, but the School itself has been roughed up pretty bad. The statue of Pierre was torn off the fountain, the training facility is trashed, and of course the windows of the main building are all shattered.
It’s not unsalvageable. Cetteville has been trashed before, and we fixed that.
We have incredible magic and technology at our disposal, and we have Al and Om’s construction company and Mal’s builder team on speed dial.
So to speak, in the latter’s case. Their world is about as advanced as Magicca, phones aren’t really a thing there.
Give us a few days. We’ll have this cleaned up.
Before long, a police car pulls into the parking lot, Commissioner John Jackson getting out.
I don’t need to invite him in. He’s a Cabal member, they meet here. I’m guessing that Deston called John to let him know we’ve got Michelle in our custody.
Which won’t remain the case for long. We’re turning her over to the police as per the terms of the deal.
From there, she’s going to jail, and then to trial, and then probably off to a lengthy prison sentence.
I’d say that she’s going to need a lawyer, but she IS one. At least she’ll save money on legal fees, right?
Actually, Niv, it’s extremely unwise to represent yourself in court, even if you are a lawyer. You know what they say: the man who represents himself has a fool for a client and an ass for an attorney.
Or woman, in this specific case.
Being qualified to practice law doesn’t automatically equal being qualified to practice CRIMINAL law. Even for lawyers who DO specialize in criminal law, representing themselves is little better than being represented by family members. They’re too close to the case, they can’t remain emotionally detached. And if the average person represents himself in court, he-- or she-- will be going up against someone who has studied the law inside and out for YEARS, and knows EVERY trick in the book. It's not even a contest. It's like a toddler boxing against Mike Tyson in his prime. Also, judges have VERY little patience for the courtroom antics of amateurs who don’t know anything about the law, and exhausting their patience NEVER ends well. You’ll end up held in contempt.
Man, trials are NOWHERE near as fun as media makes ‘em out to be.
Yeah, I still remember Vanessa’s trial, and I’ll probably be testifying at this one too.
As John walks over to us, I smile at him.
“I trust you can take it from here?”
He’s already got a pair of handcuffs ready.
“She’s not gonna go all Klyntar in the squad car, is she?”
“Nope, we took care of that--”
CLAP CLAP CLAP
Everyone turns to the source of the sarcastic clapping, seeing Pax in his white business suit.
Michelle’s the only one who is happy to see him, because she probably thinks that she’s been saved at the last second.
The look on Pax’s bearded face says that he’s pissed, and is barely managing to maintain the flimsy illusion of calmness. Occasionally, his eyes flicker with pure white light.
“Yes, I’m sure that you’re all feeling very proud of yourselves right now, but we’re not done here. I demand that you turn Michelle over to my custody at once. She may have failed me, but she is still a Peacemaker, and I alone decide the punishments of Peacemakers who stray from the path of light. She is under my protection, so she is coming with me. Refuse to comply, and I’ll leak all of your secrets immediately.”
He looks at me.
“And I know things about your teammates that even you don’t know, Calvin. Every. Dirty. Little. Secret.”
I can see Jack out of the corner of my eye, and for some reason, he looks nervous.
Right now, there’s no time to ask.
I step up, not looking so pleased myself.
“No way. We beat Michelle fair and square, and now she’s going to jail, which is where she belongs. And you’re going to let her stay there, instead of bailing her out with your bullshit light powers or trying to blackmail us into letting her go.”
John nods, having already handcuffed Michelle, Venom watching her like a hawk.
“I saw Cal’s broadcast too. Sounds like there is reasonable cause to investigate the Peacemakers, to find out how many people working for you should be in prison.”
Pax sighs in an overly dramatic manner.
“At least they’re making themselves useful with me, instead of rotting in a cell and using up resources that could be put to better use elsewhere. I only wish to rehabilitate criminals, Commissioner. Could you not just consider the Peacemakers to be a work release program?”
John grins at him.
“Sure, I could have been persuaded to do that. If you had cleared it with the government and the prisons before snatching convicts from their cells. Oh, and also if you weren’t a creepy puppet of an alien being who wants to enslave us all. You feel as if our laws don’t apply to you. As if they’re beneath you. As if your rules are the only ones that matter.”
Pax rolls his eyes with a petulant huff, folding his arms.
“Well, the law doesn’t seem to apply to Calvin. Why have you not arrested him for the murder of Oliver Dinopolous? He confessed to it in a live broadcast, for goodness’ sake! What more do you need, man?”
“For starters, he didn’t kill Oliver here. He did it in New York. Sort of out of my jurisdiction. And, uh, my colleagues over in Manhattan aren’t exactly in a hurry to chase him cross-country. They’ve got enough to do there.”
Pax unfolds his arms, throwing his hands up in frustration.
“Oh, don’t give me that codswallop! I know that the real reason the police won’t arrest him is because you all need him and his band of rogues to do the dirty work even you can’t be seen doing! You need them to fight the battles you can’t, because you’re no good at anything more complicated than thief-taking! So you just let him do as he pleases and turn a blind eye!”
John’s grin becomes wider.
“Calling me a thief-taker, huh? I see that as a compliment, ‘cause I never forgot where I came from, Pax.”
Pax scoffs.
“Neither did I: the gutter, with a bottle in your hand. If you hadn’t met your wife, you’d still be there, you’d still be a pathetic, penniless, drunken beat cop on the graveyard shift. I see that mark on your wrist, Commissioner. You’ve been touched by darkness, just like Calvin has. You’re no better than him.”
I cut in, not in the mood for another round of this bullshit.
“Dude, you exist across timelines. Have you ever met Anti-Calvin? Because he is infinitely worse than me.”
Pax turns to me with disgust and scorn.
“Yes, I have met him. He gave me the finger. And I must say, there is frighteningly little stopping you from becoming just like him. Your excuse is that it’s okay for you to do bad things because there are worse people out there?”
“I spend every day trying not to be like him. Yeah, I might get a bit close to the line sometimes, but I still know when to hold back.”
John nods again.
“If I really thought that Cal has gone too far, I’d let him know.”
Pax holds up a hand.
“Enough. It’s clear to me that you won’t relinquish Michelle. By all means, go ahead and drag her off to prison.”
Michelle seems surprised to hear this.
“Pax! I thought you were gonna get me out of this! What the fuck, man?!?”
Pax looks at her, trying his best to seem apologetic about this, but I can see through his act.
“I will. Just not today. Walls and bars are no obstacles to me, Michelle. I will always be with you. And I’ve told you to watch your language.”
I step between Pax and Michelle, giving the former a warning look.
“Remember what I said: if she vanishes from her cell, it’s kill on sight.”
Venom grins up at Michelle.
“An wemembew wut WE sed: footsies. Up.”
That takes all the fight out of the bitch.
“…On second thought, jail doesn’t seem so bad right now. Officer, please get me away from that thing.”
John nods one more time.
“I’ll read your rights on the way back to my squad car. Also, don’t call Venom a thing.”
As he leads Michelle out of the grounds, I smile at Pax.
“And now it’s your turn to fuck off. Unless you’re in the mood to throw down?”
He turns, looking at Faucheuse Tower, which is visible from pretty much anywhere in the city.
“Someone is in the mood for that.”
BOOM
There’s an explosion, and a mushroom cloud rising up from Faucheuse Plaza, above the surrounding buildings. The Tower’s in the business district, there are a lot of skyscrapers there.
Before we can move, a translucent white dome appears over the School grounds, and that’s not our anti-Klyntar force field.
As everyone is caught off guard by this unexpected development, Pax chuckles.
“Thank you for recalling the entire ChaotiX to the School, Calvin. I see even Vidunder is here. Or should I say Billy? Yes, not even a door to Yggdrasil will get you out of my barrier. And put that silly little portal gun away, Victor, unless you want everyone to know your real name.”
He was-- he was PLAYING us all along!
So his true goal was not the demolition of the School. That was just to get us all in one place.
Communications are being jammed too. I can’t contact anyone outside the barrier.
“Pax, you motherfucker, what are you keeping us away from?”
“I’m not keeping you away from anything, Calvin. You are the only ChaotiX member who can pass through my barrier. You alone can go deal with this threat. The barrier will drop if either you or your opponent dies.”
Pax smiles ever so smugly at me.
“Last time you faced that specific opponent, you couldn’t win without three other Omega Classes backing you up. But now you must face him alone. I look forward to seeing you die in agony, and I’ll be sure to show it to the next version of you I meet. I’d wish you good luck, but I don’t want you to win. So I’ll just say this: goodbye.”
FLASH
He vanishes in a flash of light.
Once he’s gone, I look around at everyone, giving them a reassuring smile.
“Hang tight, folks. I’ll go deal with this.”
I know who is attacking Faucheuse Tower.
Another loose end we didn’t wrap up.
And I think I know how to beat him.
So I take off, passing through the white barrier as I fly to Faucheuse Tower.
Two villains down.
One to go.