It was the second half of Monday morning and Gustav and Chris were walking quickly up towards the Big House. They had survived the latter half of the previous week, met more people than they could possibly remember properly (or so they thought) and were allowed, finally, to make their own way around the school grounds without a dedicated chaperone/guide unless they requested someone. The previous weekend had been boringly dull as they were told that they weren’t allowed a pass to leave the school grounds at least until the following weekend, especially in light of the attempted assault on them when they’d first arrived. That meant watching school sports matches or TV primarily and Chris’ trying to unravel the mystery of the school’s apparently sentient security system, without success.
They had however learnt about the hidden lifts down to the Special Curriculum facility from the basement of their dormitory, but had been told to use them only at weekends or in emergencies.
They had already attended registration or ‘interrogation’ as everyone seemed to call it, followed by a double period of English, and were now ready to let off a little steam. Thankfully, Special Curriculum was next, which meant that they were having a quick morning trudge across the school grounds and up the hill to the Mansion instead of enjoying their morning recess.
They didn’t want to be late, as today was going to be another training match. They made their way Down Below, changed into costume and headed to the Combat Testing Chamber where they found themselves facing their opponents for this session. The boy seemed unremarkable, wearing a hoodie patterned after the union flag, visors over the eyes and blue trousers tucked into his boots. They’d meet Cadet briefly before. However, standing beside him was a figure slightly over four foot tall but as broad as he was tall, looking for all the world like a gigantic shell-less turtle standing on his two rear limbs. His costume had a large S emblazoned on the chest of his red, dark blue and white edged skin-tight suit, which left little to the imagination. They had never seen him before, either Down Below or in the school, so it seemed likely that this alien-looking creature had an alternate identity somehow.
Smash’s mouth changed shape slightly though his beak made facial expressions difficult as he introduced himself as “Smahsahakl“ but immediately admitted that as almost no-one here could pronounce his name properly, he just went with the identifier ‘Smash’.
“You take Smashie and I’ll take Nicey” muttered Firewall as they prepared themselves for the attack.
The start light was immediately illuminated. As it did, the alien-looking creature lumbered towards them. “It’s nice to meet the two of you. I would like to take this opportunity to provide an appropriate warning before we start. Hopefully, when things get a little rougher that you will consider surrendering rather than battling on to the inevitable end, as my co-pilot has some serious anger issues and likes to do more damage at times than is absolutely necessary. I promise I will do my best to keep him reined in.”
Ashen wondered whether he was talking about Cadet or..? Firewall asked first, “You referring to Cadet?” The creature again attempted a grimace that was as close as it could get to smiling and looked at Cadet who seemed to be pulling some sort of silvery-white cloak out of his backpack, “No, no! He’s nice and fully in control of his anger issues. No, I mean my co-pilot who has a tendency to get angry and he has fifty percent control over my systems.” He then wandered back over.
As he did so, Cadet unfurled his cloak and whirled it round himself, raised the all-concealing silvery hood and knelt down so he was completely encapsulated within the material. Chris’ smiled; his initial thought, especially seeing the glint of metal threads in the weave, was that Cadet was completely insulating himself against any form of electrical attack. Cadet had obviously learnt something from viewing their previous combat session.
He then threw something straight up at the ceiling of the chamber. It hit the chamber roof where it ricocheted down towards them and hit the ground between them, breaking into multiple segments, which unfortunately fizzled harmlessly. They glanced back at the cloaked figure, but there was no other movement from within its folds.
Ashen flew up high and began hammering away at the integral light fittings, hoping to break the lighting tubes and render the chamber completely dark. His fists did successfully damage several of the lights before he heard a thump and found he was no longer alone as Smash leapt towards him. He had already managed to take out the majority of the lights in the centre of the chamber and rendered the room full of long, dark shadows, though. The alien creature, as soon as he was close enough, unleashed a massive thunderclap with his hands – the waves of kinetic energy emulating out, hurled into Ashen’s airborne body and sent him spiralling to the ground where he successfully rolled with it, landing shaken but unharmed.
As soon as the lighting dimmed, Firewall pulled out his infrared glasses and put them on. Having found out about Ashen’s affinity for shadows, he knew they would come in useful, so had managed to obtain a pair from the equipment room the last time they were at Special Curriculum. He then erected his firewall barrier and unleashed a Taser attack on Cadet. It was possible it would have no effect, but then again the metal strands in the cloak might just help conduct the charge.
The Taser hit the cloak, but there was no obvious damage and the figure didn’t appear affected by the attack. He remained unmoved and completely concealed within the wraps of the cloak. Then the force wave of Smash’s thunderclap hit Firewall as well, causing him to brace himself behind his barrier.
Something came hurdling towards the energy barricade from the direction of the cloaked figure. It hit the electrical field and flared into a sudden, blinding burst of light, which lit up the entire chamber as a second object thrown with it splashed against the ‘wall’ and flowed beneath it. A water balloon thrown at the same time as the flash was causing the wall to flare and intermittently short circuit in sections before it re-ignited. As both Ashen and Firewall’s sight recovered from the flash, Ashen shouted out, “Might be time for a switcheroo.”
Chris realised he was standing in a puddle of water, potentially grounded. Ashen took the opportunity to rush towards the cloaked Cadet and grabbed it in a bear hug – only to discover he was hugging a shape-retaining piece of cloth, empty of its previous occupant. Cadet was, and apparently had been for some time, hiding elsewhere in the chamber, possibly disguised on in some form of chameleon-mode. He held the shaped material as he thought for a second about the metallic threads in the cloak and hoped Cadet didn’t have the means to electric them.
Meanwhile, Cadet was out there, somewhere, plotting his next attack. Ashen couldn’t help wonder what his powers were; invisibility possibly or insubstantiality? The Smash ‘meteor’ meanwhile was hurling towards Firewall, so he dropped his barrier, turned insubstantial and stepped away from the puddle just as Smash was about to hit. He also unleashed an EMP blast at the same time, hoping he wouldn’t affect the chamber and surveillance equipment too much, even as he hoped there was something electronic about his attacker’s ‘systems’.
The lights all went out simultaneously, but the blast had no apparent effect on Smash as he landed behind Firewall having hurled straight through his data-streamed insubstantial form.
Then a small canister dropped from the ceiling towards Ashen, hitting the ground with a hiss as a voice from above shouted “UV and garlic essence” as a warning. “Oh God, here we go” as he tried to dodge out of the way. Ashen knocked the canister against the far wall and saw a white flash and some mist emanating from inside its cracked shell, and he thought its trajectory might have come from midway up the South wall.
Ashen tried to see his attacker but failed. He activated Shadow’s Veil to conceal himself and get as close as he could to a frustrated Smash, swiping away at an insubstantial Firewall. Wondering just how strong the little creature was anyway, he grabbed at Smash and tried to wrestle him. It was pitiful. Ashen grabbed him in a strong grip and found himself lifted off the ground as though he was a feather… Smash was aware of Ashen’s grip on his arm and shook him up and down with no apparent effort. Smash was strong, very, very strong.
Firewall rushed towards the South wall and unleashed an energy burst at the wall, only to find Ashen hurled by Smash fly through his insubstantial data format, distracting him slightly. Ashen passed right through Firewall and towards the wall but managed to tumble in such a way that he controlled his flight, so he suffered only a few cuts from the experience. Meanwhile, Firewall unleashed the blast, which radiated out from his body. A groan came from the Southern wall, as well as from Ashen’s prone form.
“You’ll recover,” shouted Firewall at his partner, only to hear a faint” Yeah, but it still hurts”. Then he heard it, an earthquake shook the ground as Smash unleashed a massive shockwave that tore up the entire floor of the chamber and sent fragments of concrete cascading across the chamber. Ashen couldn’t help think that Smash’s co-pilot was obviously having some serious anger issues.
With the floor shattering, the various fragments of the initial bomb thrown by Cadet back where they’d been standing initially suddenly activated prematurely, releasing what appeared to be clouds of tear gas from each section of the grenade.
Both Ashen and Firewall found the ground beneath their feet shattering and cracking and causing them both to stumble with the sudden unevenness of the ground. We could learn a lot from their teamwork, Ashen thought as he tried to regain his footing on the now shattered floor.
Cadet unleashed another couple of tear gas pellets, landing near their feet. The cloud of gas enveloped them as they held their breath and got a safe distance away from the swirling clouds.
There weren’t many spaces left to run to without venturing into the previously unleashed clouds of gas, which were slowly spreading throughout the whole chamber.
“Time to surrender, I think, unless..?”
Ashen hovered just above the surface of the ground and moved towards Smash, where he unleashed his allure voice. “It’s been wonderful and I’ve been very impressed with your powers, but let’s calm down a little as it seems your co-pilot is getting the best of you.” He tried to put all of his meta-powered persuasion into the subtle attack. At first, he thought it was working, as Smash seemed to calm down, leaving him hopefully entranced.
Firewall turned substantial again, quickly erected his barrier and grabbed at his rebreather mask, which he slipped over his mouth and nose. Then, unleashing an energy burst from where he stood, the energy pulse permeated out in waves filling the chamber. A shadowy figure hanging against the wall seemed to stagger.
Smash instantly shook off the effect of the entrancement and immediately unleashed another thunderclap attack – the blast flowed through the barrier and left Firewall shaken and stirred, but otherwise undamaged. Ashen felt himself hit the wall, but was otherwise unharmed.
A set of bolos unexpectedly flew towards Ashen, revealing Cadet by the far wall wearing a second cloak, one that camouflaged him like a Chameleon – this cloak was apparently capable of mimicking colour and patterns to allow him to blend into his background. The bolo missed by inches but continued, bouncing off the wall behind him then ricocheting off a couple of others before finally falling to the ground, its momentum spent. It had missed, just.
Ashen turned to his opponents, “Ah, you guys want to just call this match a draw? They will need to carry out some major repairs on this chamber as is.”
Smash grimaced a smile and said, “Yes, I guess I’ll need to remove my ear plugs so I can actually hear what you said. I think that was a request to end the combat… Ah, you see, Cadet gave me them at the beginning of the game. He said they were to prevent any form of sonic persuasion. But if this is to end the match, I would be happy to consider, as I’m not very fond of fighting.”
“That surprises me; you are very good at it.” Ashen said. Smash explained as he switched off his earpieces, “No, it’s the co-pilot who is good at it; he is the one with the anger issues. I much prefer artwork, have you seen the wonderful plants on this planet?” Ashen nodded his agreement (and his bewilderment). Smash said, “I can’t find Cadet.” They shouted out, “Cadet, you happy to call it a draw?”
Cadet stepped forward and switched off the chameleon circuit on his cloak.
To their surprise, Cadet was just an unpowered human, with skills and toys – one of which was his use of the communicator earpieces to generate white noise to cancel out any use of vocal persuasion skills. What you can’t hear can’t influence you.
“Yes, competing against both of you has been a challenge. A draw’s fine with me, I’m happy to go away and evaluate everyone’s performance today. I wasn’t aware of your ability to turn insubstantial. That took me by surprise. I hadn’t expected that after your previous combat and I hadn’t worked out a way to counter that, which gave you an unexpected edge. I was aware of Ashen’s voice skill so was able to use the earpieces to link to my sonic disruptor to shield against that, though Smash’s willingness to play entranced took me off guard as well.
My fake cloak made of memory cloth worked to focus your attention, but Ashen’s use of darkness and your insubstantiality gave you both an unexpected edge, so I’m happy to agree to a draw.” He stepped forward and shook their hands as they walked out of the chamber together.
In the observation room, two men began checking their notes. The first observer muttered aloud, not quite quietly enough that the other person in the room couldn’t hear it, “Well that was most definitely an ‘auribus teneo lupum’ type situation…” The other observer was silent for a minute as he tried to translate the Latin phrase, then asked, “holding a wolf by the ears?” The other man nodded, “It was an unsustainable situation, whatever they did to resolve it was going to be risky.”
Before their second session, coach Silver, who’d been monitoring the match, handed them each a communications earpiece similar to that used by HCP qualified personnel. The near undetectable earpieces could access multiple channels, were programmable and easily concealed but issued with all but the first channel disabled; that was set to a generic team communications network. Firewall quickly activated a second channel and encrypted it on both sets so Ashen and he could hold private conversations unmonitored.
Everyone shook hands and headed to their next session. Ashen did ask Smash if he had any of his artwork round the school, they could see. Smash stated that he and his co-pilot both created in different mediums so his own work wasn’t on display around the school, but he was more than happy to show some of his work next time they were in Down Below.” I’m only getting used to the idea of drawing in two rather than three dimensions, but I love working with such primitive materials,” he explained as he left them with Silver.
Silver offered to run through an analysis of their bout, including the risks of going against unknown foes that might be stronger than they were and couldn’t be beaten by use of their abilities, or where their own powers had been identified and secretly nullified. Cadets’ sonic disruptor running through their opponents’ earpieces had secretly countered Ashen’s Voice of Allure.
They were then re-introduced to the VR Suites – each chamber had a 360o treadmill and a virtual reality helmet that attached to the anonymity collars on the training suits. The training scenario was going to be the same as the previous test; get inside a warehouse without being seen – but this time with both of them working together.
As they merged into the scenario, they again saw the searchlights on the roof and the guarded entrances of the warehouse. This time, though, they were together and had shielded comms. There was only a single telephone line into the building, and that terminated in an office filled with people. They had about 20 minutes for both of them to successfully infiltrate the building without being seen before the session would end.
They quickly checked out their options. Firewall considered teleporting in using an electrical cable but Ashen needed access to shadows or darkness to try, though he might need assistance to get through locked doors and passed the guards.
After several minutes of planning, Firewall sent his digital form covertly down the electrical cable to the fuse box. Having dismissed the idea of using an EMP pulse, he planned to just trip the fuses to all the lights, including those on the roof, but realised that these would reset themselves automatically after about ten seconds. He contacted Ashen and warned him that the plan would need to change and there was an extremely tight time limit. He hoped the door would have some form of electronic locks on the door, and was disappointed to find the locks of the outer doors were all manual.
Instead, Firewall headed back outside and reset the scenario, having picked up a VR-generated lock pick gun with multiple pins to automatically unlock the chosen door. He them re-entered the building via the electrical cables.
They still had to work out how to get Ashen inside without either of them being seen. There would be other objectives to achieve later, but for this session, all they needed was to covertly infiltrate the warehouse.
Firewall, as quietly as possible, got to the inside of one of the warehouse entrances on the North side of the building and quietly unpicked the lock but left the door closed. On the outside of the chosen door were two guards. Heading back to the primary fuse box, he told Ashen where to get to and then threw all the switches. Suddenly everything electronic went dead and the ‘people’ inside the warehouse started screaming. They had ten seconds before it would reboot. Ashen created a distraction by knocking on the wall loudly just before he set off travelling through the shadows to get as close to the guards as possible.
The noise of the knocking, seconds before, caused one of the guards to head over to check out the source of the sound. Ashen activated his Shadow’s Veil and used the shadows to get next to the closed door; he then managed to open it slightly without revealing himself. Trying to figure out why the door had suddenly unlocked, the remaining guard pulled it open wide. As the guard looked inside, Ashen slipped past, concealed within the shadows, and flowed deeper into the building to meet Firewall.
With seconds to spare, both were inside, unseen. As the VR scenario ended, they removed their helmets and saw Mr Hawke, who was also one of their teachers on the surface, stood outside, waiting.
They uncoupled and headed into the corridor. Mr Hawke, said, “That wasn’t bad, a good attempt. Next time, we’ll move you up to level two and give you an actual objective to achieve inside the warehouse.”
Ten minutes later, redressed in their school uniforms but with their earpieces covertly hidden in their ears, they walked out of the lift and into the ‘Big House’. It was as they were walking to the main door that they saw it; a fragmented vision, like a shattered figure of a man, running through the lounge for a split second about a foot above the ground. Then, just before it ‘vanished’, they saw a flash of blue flame surrounding a partial human figure. Then everything returned to its mundane normality.
“Did you see that, Chris?” “Yeah, I did.” He tried to drag up what he remembered about the history of the school, in particular the legend of the ‘Burning Man’, the pupil during World War 2 who set himself on fire and ran through the school trying to burn it to the ground. That didn’t account for the other figure they’d seen, though; a running figure who seemed to being chased (or chasing?) the burning figure. They were aware that there were tales that the mansion was supposedly haunted. There was another interesting fact that Chris vaguely remembered accessing, that after the mansion had been destroyed during the Terminus Invasion they rebuilt it but not to the same exact design as the building had been in the 19th Century, instead they elected to lower the floor by about a foot to the original 17th century floor height. Both figures had appeared to be running about a foot off the ground. Was this some sort of vision of the past? What was actually going on? Had it been a prank being played on them by an illusionist or someone who could create holograms? Chris’ vaguely remembered reading somewhere a theory that some ancient stone-built buildings might be able to act like a sort of video recorder; that somehow recorded highly charged emotional events in its past which would then be replayed under certain circumstances, like a badly tuned and re-recorded videotape. Not a ghost as such, just a replay of a past event?
How had Ms Rui described it when they’d first arrived at the school? Ah, was this yet another close encounter of the Claremont kind?
After lunch, it was a normal if busy day of school and a useful distraction from their earlier encounter, however during afternoon recess they again ran into Ces’ Morgan and one of Ces’ hanger-on’s, Chris Williamson who were walking past.
They couldn’t help notice Ces’ grab one of his classmates and slip him something that looked like his ID badge. They were about to walk by when Ces’ saw them under the canopy and immediately began to call them both queers and promise them they would get a proper welcome to the school soon.
Then they saw a blonde girl from their class, Charlie Simpson, and Outrage heading towards them. As he went to leave, Ces openly questioned whether Gustav and Chris’ were also “mutie-vermin” if they were hanging around with the likes of her – meaning Outrage. However, as soon as Outrage got close, he very promptly left, heading for the corner of the main building with Chris.
As they pushed through the other gathered kids, Gustav and Chris’ saw Bethany run past them and pull a young kid away from their path. This kid seemed too young to be at a High School (he looked about nine or ten at the most) yet despite the massive size differential he seemed determined to challenge the two bullies. Bethany spoke quietly to him while shielding him. It looked for a second or two as though Ces’ might consider a confrontation with them both, but glancing back saw Outrage and hurried away round the corner with his crony out of sight.
After a few seconds, it became clear that Bethany was managing to get through to the kid, but he still seemed to be furious at the two near-adults.
Gustav nodded to Outrage and asked, “Has anyone ever crashed that Sunday club of theirs, the anti-mutant brigade?” She paused and admitted, “It would likely cause more problems than its worth if an obvious meta like myself were to turn up. They’d claim we were intimidating or harassing them if we crashed it. Wouldn’t stop someone else from attending if they weren’t outed I suppose, but I’m not aware of any. Anyway, I’d suggest you two keep out of their way. They’re bad news, however you look at it.”
They nodded to the girl with her – Charlie who seemed as though she wasn’t quite ‘there’ all the time, The way she spoke and moved were off somehow.
As Outrage and Charlie walked inside, Bethany and the young boy – little Chris Templar from Year One apparently, passed them and they heard Bethany mutter, “Never mind Amazons, they really should have called themselves the Furies. Shame they wanted alliteration…”
Chris turned and whispered to Gustav, “You know, call me crazy but I’ve a feeling we have met that young kid before, like earlier today – in the Combat Chamber with Cadet? It’s just a feeling but there’s something about him, a sort of resemblance but more something about his mood, you know his sort of matches the co-pilot. I wouldn’t say anything but I think there is more to that kid than meets the eye.”
The rest of the school day passed quickly and they found themselves visiting several of the after school activities that had interested them. Gustav suggested Chris might be interested in joining a couple, such as the computer club, the hackerspace (with its access to a 3D printer) or the science club. Chris said he’d thought about joining the geeks, though the science group might appeal to Gustav. What he really wanted was to get in with the school’s hacking fraternity.
They discussed their various options including Chris’ joking that they should use the 3D printer to build themselves girlfriends. He’d personally prefer to avoid joining any of the sports groups because of changing but he wouldn’t mind if there was a snooker team though he hadn’t seen any notices for such a group, perhaps he might find somewhere in St. Mary Mede or Wessex?
They ended up attending the jiujitsu club and watching a session and left feeling that this might be an option for both of them. One of the pupils ran the club, Colin Duncan who seemed very knowledgeable about the sport despite his insistence on wearing a simple white belt with his Gi though he was obviously graded. Well liked, Colin was a strict tutor, which led to a small but dedicated group. He was the only pupil actually teaching a martial arts group in the school. What he taught a lot of was traditional jiujitsu, using people’s own body-weight against them. As they listened, they began to feel the voice sounded familiar – a voice they thought they’d heard earlier today. They also recognised both Bethany and young Chris, who were apparently regular attenders.
Gi uniforms could be picked up for free from the main office and because they used a classroom for their sessions, changing wasn’t a problem because the students arrived already dressed ready to participate.
After dinner, as they both headed back towards Albion House, they heard an unfamiliar female voice behind them and a weird sound – what the girl actually said to them, they weren’t able to remember later but whatever it was, it led to a feeling as though both of them were falling into a deep daze.
It was obviously at least several minutes later when they found themselves awakening and returning to consciousness. They were standing upright, facing some faces that looked familiar. Ant Andrews had shown them these faces before from a HeroNet posting – the faces of the six known members of the Rejects – Siphon, SlowMo, Shriek, Siren, Spoil and Savage and the shapes of at least two of them were immediately familiar from their midnight attack the week before.
Chris’ and Gustav were standing, to attention, in some woods near a river, obviously some distance from where they’d been previously. The blonde was speaking but they couldn’t hear a word she said and unfortunately they couldn’t lip-read. In fact, as they stood there, they realised that they couldn’t hear anything that the Rejects were saying, but they could hear a familiar voice in their ears; Cadet was talking to them through their earpieces. “I’ve used my sonic disruptor over your earpieces and I’ve hacked into the schools’ ‘baby monitor protocol’ to get access to you. You should now be able to act without being entranced again. It’s going to take us a couple of minutes before we can get some support to you and find you, but in the meantime we can stop Siren from affecting you again. We don’t know what they are wanting, and the white noise means we can’t listen in. Unfortunately they took away your IDs so we don’t know exactly where you are, but we’re working on triangulating your position and I’ve got a couple of teachers as well as some students out searching for you.”
The blonde in front of them appeared to be trying to give them commands but they weren’t obviously responding as she was expecting. The use of Cadets’ sonic disruptor meant they were rendered completely deaf.
Cadet continued, “I was alerted as soon as I found your ID cards on the lawn. I’ve sent Icicle and Outrage to try and find you, and ‘Ant-Man’ Andrews is also on his way. Just try and hold on until we find you.”
As the Rejects started to realise something was wrong, Ashen flew into the air and tried to use his voice of allure on Siren, saying, “You have such a lovely voice. People have said I have a voice that is alluring too. Maybe we should compare notes?” He couldn’t hear his own voice, but she appeared to be able to hear him, even if it failed to work on her for some reason. Siphon tried to absorb his energy, but the attack was aimed at Gustav, who was the wrong choice of victim for her energy drain. He rose a little higher in the air just in case.
Chris’ knew they had to delay them. He turned insubstantial and unleashed a laser blast at Siren. He would have preferred a less potentially dangerous attack, but they had tried to kidnap them.
The attack took her by surprise, but only managed a glancing hit. Her reactions were better than Chris had expected. Shriek immediately let loose with a sonic blast at Gustav in the air. His earpiece stopped his hearing and inner ear from being affected, and he managed to dodge the kinetic effects of the blast. The trees behind where he’d been were shredded, however.
Meanwhile, Chris felt a wave of inertia flow over him, slowing down his reactions as SlowMo stepped forward and gestured. The momentum field washed over Chris, slowing him down.
Savage stepped in and rushed towards him, not realising he was insubstantial and her punch passed through his image causing her to stumble into SlowMo’s field.
High up, Ashen watched Savage stumble in slow motion then something in the shadows caught his attention; a creature was forming itself out of the darkness, forming long dusky talons and uneven limbs, almost human but not quite. Its head was inky black against the dark grey of the shade with only its green glowing eyes identifying it as somehow sentient. This was intended to trap him should he elect to enter the shadows, in order to try and escape. Thankfully, it couldn’t appear to leave the darkness. Then several others began to form in nearby shadows.
Ashen, as he now considered himself, clicked on his comms unit and asked Chris, “What do you want me to do? Do you need help, or should I fly away and get us some?” Chis’ replied, slowly as he tried to counter SlowMo’s power, “I.think… Twat.them!”
Ashen flew straight at SlowMo and grappled him, trying to drag him up into the air and breaking his concentration. Unprepared for a physical attack, he panicked while being held by Ashen, struggling in the air.
Chris’ felt the inertia shatter and he immediately changed back into his normal substantial form, erected his energy barrier around himself, put on his rebreather just in case and Tasered Siren. The electricity travelled down a weakened laser beam and struck her in the chest, leaving her dazed and struggling to breath.
From the air a large turtle-like figure bounced into the hollow, knocking several of the Rejects to the ground with the sudden impact and immediately bounced out heading towards the river but Smash hadn’t left alone, a screaming, hysterical Savage was held firmly in his grasp as he vanished out of sight. It looked as though the cavalry had arrived.
In your earpieces they could hear another voice coming over their team channel, “Whoop-Ant is here, time to start the party!” But there was no-one else present though the overweight woman with dyed red hair, Siphon, suddenly collapsed as though punched and then they saw a small, red coloured mini-figure, a couple of centimetres tall bounding from the collapsing figure. It screamed, “Keep out of the shadows” as it headed towards another of the Rejects. Shriek responded by unleashing a sonic blast. Their earpieces blocked the sonic damage, but it hit against the chest of the returning Smash (sans Savage) and reverberated. SlowMo wasn’t so lucky and the blast rendered him dazed. Ashen bit gently into his neck, used his exsanguination ability to place SlowMo into a state of control, and gently told him, “Stop give up, this is your last chance…” In his dazed state, SlowMo still struggled to resist and then went unconscious as Ashen dropped him to the ground, a small trickle of blood dripping from his neck.
Smash wandered in amongst the remaining standing Rejects and gently tapped Spoil on the head, rendering her instantly unconscious. Chris couldn’t resist shouting, “Smashing job, Smash!”
Firewall fired his laser beam at Shriek, it struck her in the upper torso and she fainted with the pain. Only Siphon was still standing – she grabbed Siren and ran towards the darkness and the gathering shadow creatures. As she stepped inside the protection of their shadow claws, there was a sudden burst of light, and both they and the animated shadows vanished from sight.
The miniaturised figure in red and black started expanding in front of their eyes into adult size and an almost familiar voice spoke, “I’ll make arrangements to contact the Police and have these people taken into custody. This is the reason you need to make sure you wear your school ID badges at all times so we can keep track of you, just in case. Not that it’s ever happened before, it hasn’t but there is something very suspicious about all this. That’s the second time the Rejects have tried to attack you and there was those mysterious shadow figures as well. I didn’t recognise who that was.”
Gustav landed on the ground in front of him and said, “If it wasn’t for Cadet we could be anywhere by now” and Chris agreed, “We’d be toast.” Whoop-Ant suggested that they might want to ask Cadet if you can program his sonic disruptor onto one of your comm-channels. Chris admitted it sounded like a good plan.
As they looked at their three remaining prisoners, Smash went bounding off to retrieve Savage from wherever he’d left her. Their gang was now decimated; Whoop-Ant wandered over and started asking the conscious prisoners, who’d sent the and why? Shriek immediately screamed at the others, “Don’t tell them anything or the Mistress will punish you!”
Who was this mysterious Mistress?
Growing up Meta, UK-Style! 