8FOLD: Daylighters # 2, "Dungeon Crawl"

[Drew Perron]

On 11/24/2018 9:25 PM, Tom Russell wrote:
> Traditional superhero teams can't deal with the number and scope of
> threats to life on the planet Earth.

It's a hassle!

> Melody Mapp, DARKHORSE, age 20.
> Speedster and full-time superhero.

Yaaaaaaaaay! \o3o/

> Kumari Starshell, CASCADE, age 29.
> Aquamancer. Half-human soon-to-be Queen of Lemuria.

oooooooh interesting.

> LOBSTERMAN, age 44.
> Super-strong monster. Ex-villain serving time in prison, on work release.

NICE. I remember really liking him back in that one issue of Jolt City.

> Pam Bierce, LOOP, age 30.
> Chronomancer. Has reemerged after having been presumed dead for six years.

...wow she was really young in Jolt City, huh. @@ I feel weird now. X3

> It wouldn't be accurate to say that Melody is used to being stared at,
> because it's not something you ever really get used to. She doesn't
> hate it, necessarily, at least not the way that Bethany does; there's
> a certain shallow and fleeting thrill to the adulation of the crowds.
> But it can get tiring, it can get overwhelming. Which is one reason
> why she loves Tokyo, and especially Akihabara; everyone's staring at
> everybody, and no one's staring at her.

ooooooooh. That makes sense.

>     "Hey, Lobsterman," says Melody. "How're you doing?"
>     "Lobsterman fine," says Lobsterman. "How Darkhorse?"
>     "Darkhorse fine," says Melody.

CUTE

>     "You off on some other adventure?" says Melody.
>     "No; I already got Bethany's group where they needed to go. So
> until they need a pick-up, I'm going to hang around Tokyo, take in the
> sights."

Aw lovely. :>

>     "Sights weird," says Lobsterman. "People weird."

Big mood

>     "You're a little weird yourself," says Melody. "You're a seven foot
> talking lobster."
>     "Lobsterman not weird," says Lobsterman. "Lobsterman normal. People
> weird. Also, Lobsterman seven feet two inches."

BIG mood. (Seven-foot-two-inch mood.)

> and so the trip from
> Tokyo to Kyoto is made via the latest version of Dr. Fay's
> tread-cycle. Lobsterman straps himself into the passenger seat, and
> Melody runs on the treadmill at the front. The vehicle moves with her,
> at close to her natural speed, while she vibrates the whole thing out
> of synch with reality so as to pass harmlessly through all the people,
> vehicles, and buildings in her way.

That is so amazing.

> As usual, and despite Dr. Fay's
> many improvements and precautions, by the time the trip is completed,
> the tread-cycle is a smoking wreck, despite the fact that she wasn't
> going much faster than a pleasant, steady jog of a hundred miles per
> minute.

omg. X3 <3

>     "Well, that's another sixty thousand dollars down the drain," says
> Melody as she and Lobsterman step away from the wreckage.
>     "Actually," Medusa whispers in her ear, "Reverse lives in Kyoto. I
> can ping her, see if she has time to use her negenthropic powers to
> repair it."

That's such a cool idea.

>     "Cool beans," says Melody. "Any word from Cascade?"
>     "She's here," says Medusa. "I think she wanted to make an entrance."
>     "Behold!" booms a voice from above. "In your time of need, the one
> you call Cascade is here! True heir of Lemuria, last of the blood of
> Kandam, the heart of the ocean!"

I LOVE THIS. :D :D :D (also yessss, Kumari Kandam reference, shout out to the 
thing I keep wanting to do in LNH20 but never get around to)

>     "But it is," says Cascade. "I hated you and Terak both with the
> hate of a thousand generations. But now, I am to be married to Terak,
> uniting our two great houses, and restoring my sacred birthright. So
> we are enemies no longer."
>     "That's great," says Melody. "As for the mission..."
>     "Just as I shall learn to love Terak," continues Cascade, "I shall
> love you, as a comrade-in-arms. Nay! As a sister!" Cascade embraces
> Melody, squeezing so hard that Melody wonders if she'll need to
> vibrate her atoms at super-speed so as to avoid damage to her internal
> organs. "For we are like sisters, you and I, having both shared
> Terak's bed!"
>     "Is that how sisters work in Lemuria?" says Melody.
>     "I do not know!" cries Cascade. "I am an only child!"

Every part of this is amazing and that last line is *quintuple* amazing. X3 X3 X3 <3

>     "Well, now that we're all here," says Melody, "why don't we go talk
> to some people about video games?"

Yaaaaay! :D

> After some pleasantries, our heroes are taken behind closed doors,
> where preliminary work is underway on what the Nintendo
> representatives will only call project NX - a console they're aiming
> to release sometime in twenty-seventeen. (While that's not too far
> away from the last day of twenty-fourteen, it still has a far-off,
> distant-future connotation for Melody, who was supposed to die six
> days ago. She's still getting used to the idea of having a future.)

;-;vvvv HELL YEAH MELODY

>     The Nintendo reps explain that they discovered some aberrant code
> in the prototype's architecture, and that the code started to edit
> itself. Shades of the Gorgon, but the Gorgon's supposed to be dead,
> replaced by Medusa.

Oho. :o

>     "Here's the short version," says Melody. "That bad day in August,
> bunch of folks around the world got infected with this virus which
> made them insanely violent at the drop of a hat. It also allowed their
> brains to serve as vessels for the alien psionic network that was
> coordinating all the various attacks on the earth. We kicked the
> aliens out, but those people are comatose. Medusa, could this be
> another attempt to establish that psionic network?"

ooooooh, gotcha.

>     "If so, two and a half years is a long time to wait."
>     "Not as the Pulse measures time," says Melody. "They've been around
> for thousands and thousands of years, building their space empire
> piece by piece. So they must be patient if nothing else."

Truth, makes sense.

>     "I fear that is not the case, machine woman who lives in my ear,"
> says Cascade.

Heeheehee. Female characters don't usually get to do this kind of speech pattern 
and I love it :>

> "No one who lives can read this script. It is lost even
> to us. But my eyes have beheld them once before, in the forbidden
> necropolis."
>     "Well, that sounds cheerful," says Melody.
>     "It is not, friend Darkhorse. It is a place of horrors and
> torments, and of deep magic. But I fear it will be there that we find
> answers."

HELL YEAH.

I mean

oh no~ >.> <.<

> San Francisco. Cradle Tech HQ.
>     Pam and Knockout Mouse spend about an hour waiting in one of the
> conference rooms, and over the course of that hour, Pam gets kinda
> sorta caught up on the last six years. Intergalactic space wars and
> universe-erasing primordial destroyers are quite a bit heavier than
> the stuff she was used to in Jolt City. "And they put Derek in charge
> of all this?"

Ohhhhh, of *course* Pam's the perfect viewpoint character here.

>     Knockout Mouse smirks. "I know what you mean. He's different than
> he was. I mean, he's still bad at superheroing, but he finally
> realized that and so he doesn't go out in the field anymore. He looks
> at the big picture, helps us assemble teams, deals with the government
> people. He's a lot happier than he used to be. A lot fatter, too."

Aw, good. :>

>     "He was kinda chubby to begin with," says Pam.
>     "Yeah, well, he's a little sensitive about it. So I thought I'd
> give you a heads-up."
>     "What, you think I'd say something?"
>     "From what he told me about you? Yes."
>     "Okay," says Pam with a nod, "that's legit."

Heeheehee

>     There's a knock, and then the door opens. Derek enters, followed by
> a white woman in a green costume carrying an umbrella. Knockout Mouse
> wasn't kidding; Derek's put on forty pounds. In six years, it seems
> like he's aged twelve: his face is tired and worn out. But his smile
> is the same.

Awwwww.

>     "Hi Pam," he says.
>     "Missed you, squirt." Reflexively, she gives him a hug, and that's
> when she realizes it's the first hug she's had in six years. She
> squeezes him harder. "Missed you something awful."

Aaaaaaaaa ;-;vvvv

>     "Missed you too," he says, ending the hug. "And your cooking."
>     "Yeah, I bet you did," says Pam. "But I see that didn't stop you
> from scarfing down whatever Dani's been feeding you."
>     His face falls. "Dani, uh, Dani died a couple years ago. Cancer."
>     "Oh, I'm sorry, Derek," says Pam. "I didn't know. I liked Dani."
>     "Me too."
>     She hesitates, then: "Martin?" [2]
>     He shakes his head. Silence descends over the room.

;;;;;;;;;;;;-;;;;;;;;;;;;

>     She takes a breath, then relaxes her entire body. Tightly-wound
> time unspools before her like ribbons. She tenses up again and
> exhales, greeting him again with a hug, her first (and second) hug in
> six years.

Ohhhhh. Yep. Legit. X3

>     "Neat trick," says the woman with the umbrella. "You must be able
> to sidestep all sorts of embarrassment that way. Don't like the way a
> conversation's going? Just take it back a few lines." [3]

You u.u

>     "My name's Rainshade, dear," says the woman. She offers a gloved
> hand, less like she expects Pam to shake it and more like she's
> expecting her to kiss it. Pam shakes it.

omg.

>     "Metamancer," says Rainshade. "Basically I borrow the magic of
> others, use it for my own nefarious ends." She smiles, but it's a
> flat, lifeless smile, a smile that feels like an affectation.

...must not hug...

>     "Allow me," says Rainshade. Pam feels something tug at her from the
> inside out, and suddenly Derek is talking again about how she's
> legally dead, and offering Pam her old room.
>     "That'd be great," says Pam, staring at Rainshade. She flits her
> eyes back toward Derek. "When can we get out of here?

Legit >:/ That's coming on way too hard, lady

>     "Who else would I be?"
>     "Well, there was a body," says Derek. "It sure looked like you. It,
> uh, we cremated it, per your instructions."
>     There's a sick feeling in Pam's intestines, like a black hole
> collapsing in her guts. "I don't understand how that could be."
>     "I have some theories," says Rainshade. "But I'll need to know more
> about how your powers manifested, and what happened in Vegas.

...ohhhhh a possibility comes to mind.

> A little weirdness out of the corner of my eye, and life was normal
> otherwise, and that was about right for me. And now?
>     "Now I'm a time-traveling wizard-person who's back from the dead
> after spending six years living in a secret underground bunker."
>     "It's a lot to process," says Derek gently.
>     "Yeah, well, let's just say sleeping in my old bed and futzing
> about my old kitchen are looking real attractive right now."

Yeah. @- at v

>     Lemuria itself is contained within a pressure-resistant dome that
> also provides its inhabitants with artificial atmosphere. The ruins of
> the necropolis lie just outside the dome. That's no problem for
> Cascade and Lobsterman, both of whom can breathe underwater and can
> withstand the pressure and the near-freezing temperature.

Fascinating. I forget why Cascade can but not, presumably, all Lemurians.

>     "Look at Lobsterman, everyone," says Lobsterman, cackling. "Look at
> Lobsterman. Lobsterman am Darkhorse. 'Oh, Darkhorse puny human body
> will be crushed by pressure.' Lobsterman laughs and laughs."

X3 X3 X3

>     "Dude," says Melody, "it's over a thousand times the pressure at sea level."
>     "Dude," says Lobsterman, "it over thousand pressure at sea level!
> Ha! Lobsterman still laughing!"

XD XD XD

>     Which doesn't make Melody feel any better about all this. She's
> weary of magic in general, and even wearier when it comes to Cascade,
> who has tried to kill her on more than one occasion. Though honestly,
> Cascade trying to be friendly is somehow worse. ("Sisters." Bleh.)

Awwww.

> Her super-speed isn't going to be much use here, and her
> other trick - vibrating through solid matter - is a non-starter in
> this environment. When she gets startled while phased, her body tends
> to snap back to reality, and if she does that when her molecules are
> phasing through water, the water will end up inside her organs.

Ewgh. @-@ Gotcha.

>     A cyclopean wall surrounds the necropolis. The boulders have been
> worn down, some fallen, and there are gaps everywhere. Honestly,
> Melody's surprised that it's lasted this long after thousands of years
> at the bottom of the ocean. Probably something else to do with magic -
> Terry would often prattle on about Lemuria's mystical heritage -
> something else for Melody to be uneasy about.

To be fair, I'm sure erosion underwater is Different.

> There's a gap in the
> wall about twelve feet across, and Cascade explains that this is
> called the gate between the worlds of flesh and of shade.
>     "Grab a handful of earth in your fist," she says solemnly, "and
> sprinkle it as you pass the threshold."

that is so cool

>     "Lobsterman has no fist," grouses Lobsterman. "Lobsterman has
> claws. Lobsterman no sprinkle. Lobsterman lack fine motor skills."
>     "Then you risk the wrath of the dead," says Cascade.
>     Lobsterman grumbles, then scoops up a clump of earth in his claw.
> As he passes through the gate, he unceremoniously drops the clump.

Heeheehee


>     "This is where my ancestors are buried," says Cascade. "The Kings
> of Kandam, and the Queens of the Deep. When the usurpers stole the
> throne, it became a gathering place for those who remained true to our
> cause. One of Terak's ancestors couldn't stand that, and so it became
> forbidden. A special dispensation was granted to my family, so that
> once per generation, we might tend to the bones of our ancestors. I
> came here as a child, as the last of my blood, and did my duty."

DAMN. That's so good!! I want to know more about this whole conflict!

>     "You said something about horrors and torments?" says Melody.

Heeheehee

>     "Ha!" says Lobsterman. "Lobsterman beat up fearsome guardians!"
>     "There are also subtle traps," says Cascade.
>     "Lobsterman beat up subtle traps too!"

X3

>     Melody is the first to cross the threshold. Even with the water
> making her movements sluggish, she still perceives the world around
> her through a speedster's eyes, everything unfolding in slow motion,
> hyper-aware of her surroundings. Chances are she'll be the first to
> spot anything dangerous, and will be able to warn her companions.

oooooh ahhhh

>     Cascade follows Melody, and Lobsterman follows Cascade. The
> corridor leading into the crypt is too narrow to accommodate
> Lobsterman's breadth; he actually needs to walk sideways to pass.
>     "Lobsterman walk like crab," whines Lobsterman. "Lobsterman no
> crab. Lobsterman name not Crabman! Lobsterman name Lobsterman!"

*snerk* Love it.

>     "Perhaps," says Cascade. "This was not here when I was a child. Not
> the door," she points across the room with her blade, "not the chasm,"
> she points downward, "and not this room."
>     "But this is the right tomb?"
>     "Yes," says Cascade. "That much I'm sure of. But something strange
> is at work here."

oooooooh. Lovely mysterious and disturbing.

>     "I'll go back for him," offers Cascade. She turns to face the corridor.
>     It's at that moment that Melody's eyes flit toward the chasm, and
> sees the ginormous tentacle reaching up from its depths. "Cascade?"

Aw shi--

>     That gives Melody an idea, and over the course of two seconds her
> super-fast brain turns that idea into a plan, mapping out potential
> outcomes and contingencies, and then, immediately, she puts that plan
> into action. She leaps up and grabs her own glow-orb between her
> gloved hands. Her gloves may be insulated, but the glow-orb is hot
> enough that she can feel its searing heat, like trying to take a
> cookie sheet out of the oven with a pot-holder that's too thin.
>     It will take a fraction of a second for her palms to relay the
> message to her brain, and for her nervous system to register the pain.
> Instantaneous for anyone else, but all the time in the world for
> Melody, who is vibrating the glow-orb (but not her own body) so that
> she can phase it into one of the tentacles. By the time she starts to
> stifle her involuntary scream of pain, it's being drowned out by the
> screaming of the creature.

DAMN!!!! She is AMAZING, and you write the experience of being her and being 
amazing so well!

>     "Lobsterman almost beat him," complains Lobsterman.

X3

>     "You're welcome," says Melody, taking off her gloves before they're
> seared to her flesh. Her palms are blistering. She might heal faster
> than most - the perks of having super-speed blood - but chances are
> that her plans with Simon for New Years just got a lot less romantic.

Awwwww.
>     "With my aquatic magics," says Cascade (Melody hates the plural
> form 'magics'),

Heeheehee <3

>     "Friend Lobsterman!" exclaims Cascade. "We have need of your mighty claw."
>     "Yes!" he says excitedly. "Lobsterman love punching walls!"
>     WHOMP! He leaves an impressive, claw-shaped dent in the center of
> the wall.

Heeheeheehee <3 That's some good enthusiasm.

>     "Hurray for Lobsterman!" he demands, raising both arms in triumph,
> his eyestalks bristling victoriously.

Hurray for Lobsterman! :D

>     Melody sees it first, of course: the way the bubbles in Cascade's
> current are multiplying, the way they're crashing against Lobsterman's
> plated belly, the way the particles of dirt are moving toward and past
> him. It's going to push him into the tunnel. There won't be enough
> time for her to tell him to move - at least not at a speed he can
> comprehend.

Ohshi--

>     There's another solution, but it's not necessarily a better one. As
> a precaution and one of the terms of his work release agreement,
> Lobsterman has a "puppet" implant in his neck that Derek's friends at
> Cradle Tech reverse-engineered from FEVER technology. It's standard
> for all the Daylighters who are currently serving time in
> Super-Security Prisons for their past crimes, and the work release
> program wouldn't have been approved without it. The idea is that when
> one of the baddies is out in the field and decides to revert to type,
> Medusa can use the puppet implant to take control of their nervous
> system long enough to neutralize the threat. [5]

Well that's disturbing as heck.

>     If she felt he was in any real or mortal danger, there'd be no
> agonizing; she'd already be telling Medusa to do the thing. She's not
> sure what's going to be waiting for Lobsterman in the tunnel, but she
> figures that he can handle himself, and if he can't, well, she and
> Cascade won't be too far behind. Better not to act in this case.

Awwwwww. That's a good mature decision.

>     She hates that. There are times when she's out in the field with
> someone, and she can see that the bad guy's about to clobber 'em. And
> part of her wants to stop them, wants to stop all of them, and once
> upon a time, she did. It created a lot of resentment. The others felt
> like she didn't trust them to do their jobs.

Awwwwww. I can empathize with this so hard.

>     "How do you think it went?" Derek asked her.
>     "It was great," said Melody. "We stopped the multiversal constant
> from being redefined by the rogue thought experiment, and we captured
> the Primordial Multipliers."

This is an excellent throw-away description. :D

>     Derek squirmed. From his tone of voice and his body language, she
> could tell he had rehearsed this encounter in his head, and she could
> also tell that he wasn't expecting any pushback.

Derek why would you not be expecting pushback from Melody of all people. Like. 
She's a Very Opinionated Person.

>     "They're not mutually exclusive," said Derek. "Yeah, you got six
> months left, and that sucks. When you're gone, we're all going to miss
> you."
>     "Spare me," said Melody.
>     "Let me finish," said Derek. "We're all going to look up to you,
> too. You're like Julie Ann, or Bethany. One of the best of the best.
> It's hard to feel like we can ever measure up."
>     (Especially true in your case, Melody had thought at the time.
> She's a little ashamed of that now.) [6]

Oh sweetie.

>     "Maybe you can do everything on your own," continued Derek. "But
> the rest of us can't. Show us that it's okay to trust people, to rely
> on them."
>     "But they make mistakes," said Melody.
>     "Let them," said Derek. "How else do people learn? Heck, make
> mistakes yourself."
>     She raised an eyebrow.
>     "Small mistakes," offered Derek. "Just enough to show them that
> you're human, and that it's okay for them to make mistakes. Just
> enough to let people think that you need them, even if you don't, so
> that they know it's okay for them to need other people, too."

Derek is giving good advice, in an authentically kinda-awkward way. I like him a 
lot.

>     Melody resisted that at the time. She still does, to a degree,
> though it's easier now. Part of that is that she's been working with
> Medusa in her ear, and has legitimately come to rely on her. And part
> of it is not dying six months after that conversation with Derek. The
> disease is gone, and she has a long and extraordinary life ahead of
> her. Her days aren't counted anymore; time feels infinite and full of
> possibility.

Hell yeah :D :D :D <3 <3 <3

>     Everything has just unclenched since then, and so it's with
> relative calm that she watches Lobsterman get sucked into the tunnel.
>     "Oh no," she deadpans under her breath.

*snerk*

>     Cascade takes point, weapons at the ready, her glow-orb floating a
> little ahead of her, Melody close behind. "Darkhorse," says Cascade,
> "do you recall when last we met? Crossing swords atop the coral tower,
> in the Risen City?"
>     "I remember you swinging a sword at me, yes," says Melody. "I don't
> seem to recall having a sword of my own."
>     "One was offered, woman of the surface," says Cascade. "But you
> said that one who is good requires no instrument of death."
>     "What I actually said was, 'Nah, I'm good.'"
>     "Yes, precisely," says Cascade, a little irritated. "That's what I said."

Heeheehee

>     "Only that here again I shall offer you a weapon - my sword or my
> mace - whichever suits you best."
>     Melody stares at her palms. The burns are barely visible in the
> faint light. Still sting like hell, though. "Nah," she says. "I'm
> good."

Fascinating.

>     "Cling to your morality if you must," says Cascade. "But I fear you
> do so at your own peril. And mine. It would be disastrous if you were
> to die before my wedding."
>     "Oh, am I invited?" deadpans Melody.
>     "No," says Cascade bluntly.

*cackles*

>     "That's what we call people from the surface," says Cascade. "After
> the noise you make when you drown," here she fails to suppress a
> laugh, "because, because you can't breathe underwater! Glub! Glub!
> Glub! And your arms flail around and your eyes bug out! It is very
> comical!"

Oh my god Cascade. Plz. X3

>     Normally Melody would do a "rubber-band" - running (or in this
> case, swimming) for a set period of time in one direction, then back
> to her starting point, then in another direction, then back, repeating
> it a few dozen times - to give her some idea of her surroundings. But
> Cascade has the only glow-orb, and even if Melody were to carry her
> (doable; she's not as heavy as Lobsterman!), there's no chance the
> glow-orb could keep up with them. They could do it at normal speed,
> but there's a very strong possibility that they'll get disoriented;
> the whole point of rubber-banding is that you're zipping right back
> two or three seconds later.
>     What they need, then, is some kind of a landmark at the central
> point, so that they know they've snapped back.
>     "The solution is obvious," says Cascade. "You'll be the landmark."
>     "But I'm the one with the super-speed."
>     "And I the one with the light," says Cascade. "I will swim for one
> of your human minutes. My Medusa can keep track of that, and tell me
> when to swim back. As a child of the deep, I'm hardly one to get lost
> in the waves."

That makes so much sense. I love how you roll one idea into another, naturally, 
in the narrative. (Even tho it makes it hard to pick out a piece to comment on. X3)

>     "You're not alone," Medusa whispers in her ear.
>     "Sorry, Medusa," says Melody. "I didn't mean it like that. Just out
> of my element here."

Awwwwwww I love Medusa so much

>     Medusa starts playing some Wazowie. That's not what Melody would
> have chosen. She's fairly agitated and a little nervous right now, and
> Wazowie's peculiar brand of pop-punk isn't going to calm her down.
> What it does, instead, is give the butterflies in her stomach
> something they can dance to. The nervousness is amped up, turned into
> music, turned into energy, and she can lose herself in that. It is, in
> retrospect, a perfect choice. Medusa knows her better than most people
> do, better than she knows herself.

Yesss. :D <3 <3 <3

>     It's a four minute track. When it's over, the angry fleeting
> euphoria almost immediately reverts back to anxiety. Melody's stomach
> ties itself into a knot. Cascade should have been back by now.

Ohshi--

Drew "wasn't sure if this mission would be done-in-one, looks like nope!" Perron