[ASH] Shadow Girls #8 - Warden's Legacy

[Dave Van Domelen]

     [Cover shows the fight between Warden and Supernaut in Warden #12,
      with the Morning Stars as ghostly observers.  The cover copy 
      asks, "Super...or Naut?"]

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 .|, COHERENT COMICS PRESENTS             An ASH Universe Story
--+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 '|`   SHADOW GIRLS      #8 - Warden's Legacy
			 copyright 2022 by Dave Van Domelen
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	  		    The Morning Stars

     Tetra-Red		 Xueli "Julie" Li - The Leader
     Hexa-Blue		 Tamica "Tammy" Sullivan - The Brains
     Octa-Green		 Dhriti "Tee" Singh - The Fighter
     Dodeca-Yellow	 Jessica "Jess" Davies - The Scout  
     Icosa-Pink		 Olivia "Liv" Stuart - The Heart
     Black Opal II    	 Madelyn "Maddie" Chin - The Mentor...under protest

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[June 8, 2027 - Plato's Cave]

     "Guys, guys, I maybe kinda overheard my parents talking about work and I
didn't really mean to but I don't really have the hang of our expanded senses
yet and I just sort of pick things up sometimes when there's a quiet spot in
my music or..."
     "The point, Liv?" Julie asked.  With school out for the summer, the
Morning Stars had started meeting on weeknights as well, under the cover of
training at a totally plausible and not fake at all martial arts dojo giving
self defense lessons.  And, to be fair, they were learning quite a bit about
martial arts from Maddie, even Tee, who had a head start.
     Liv took a deep breath, and everyone just sort of winced in anticipation
of the verbal barrage they knew was coming.
     "Okay so my parents work with the Cybernostra and I know you guys don't
really like 'em, yuh, but they're basically cops now and I know a few of them
and they're nice people and I'm kinda worried about them now because I heard
my parents say that Doctor Jacky and Baron Saturday had been nosing around
Cybernostra territory a little too much lately so they're worried that the
rumors of a new zombie Supernaut might be true and that would suck SO badly
if it happened and..."
     "Wait, SUPERNAUT?" Maddie held up a hand.  "I haven't heard anything
about him since he crashed Umbrae's wedding last year.  And got blown up.  I
don't think there's enough left of him to make into a zombie."
     "A NEW one, like I said Maddie," Liv tried to give the team's reluctant
mentor a rather cross look, but combined with her small stature and pink hair
it only ended up looking adorable.  "Not with the alien tech this time, but
jacking Cybernostra with technoloas and then using them as parts to stitch
together a franken-Supernaut strong enough to let Jacky and Saturday stop
being bad jokes who can't keep any living followers anymore now that the
Macoute has dropped them like a bad habit and the 5th Avenue Zombie
Snakeaters are kind of falling apart, literally."
     Jess snorted.  "Not really seeing a problem.  Maybe the Cybernostra will
finally take out those voodoo creeps for good if they cross enough lines."
     Julie shook her head.  "If they actually do managed to put together
Zombienaut before the crackdown happens?  A lot of people could get hurt.
And Liv's right..."
     "She is?" Tee asked.  "About what?"
     "Everything," Liv tried a slightly more effective scowl, but still
looked cute. 
     "The part where she said the Cybernostra are basically police now, at
least on the south side.  The Boys of Pain run most of that on the north,"
Julie nodded to Tammy, "and if they're still too much of a paragang
sometimes, they're trying.  If the voodoo boys do too much damage to the
Cybernostra, then Bathory's probably going to decide it's time to go loud.
We need her to stay quiet until we're ready to put her down."
     "Hmm," Tammy nodded, clearly starting to work on a theory.  "Agreed.
While we may have a long term desire to push Rex Umbrae and his cybernetic
allies out of the City, in the immediate and medium terms we are far better
served by the stability he enforces."
     "I wouldn't have put it so coldly, but yeah," Julie agreed.  "I think
our first step should be gathering information.  Right now it's second-hand
rumors at best, no offense, Liv."
     "None taken!" she replied brightly.
     "I have some ideas I'd like to run down online," Tammy stood and stepped
towards the computer room...the old Black Opal base was old enough that it
had a dedicated computer room, although most of the space taken up by the old
1980s mainframes was now taken up by vastly more powerful RAID system with
covert access to systems that a mere civilian would never even know existed.
     "Tee, Liv, Jess, we'll go rooftopping.  Liv, you know any usual
Cybernostra haunts we could check, just to see if they're getting cocky and
are easy to shadow?"
     "Um, I know a few we shouldn't check out, because there's cocky and then
there's justified?" Liv replied.
     "Good enough, let's hit the roofs," Julie snapped, then headed for the
tunnels.  A moment later, the other three followed, if a bit uncertainly.  

	       *	      *		     *		    *

[Later that night - Plato's Cave]

     Tammy leaned back, exhaling in what Maddie thought was a rather self-
satisfied sigh.  
     "Find anything useful?" she asked the girl.
     "About Liv's concerns, not particularly, but I was able to find enough
in your quasi-legal internet sources to put the last pieces on a theory I've
been turning over in my head for a while.  Information about the Cybernostra
that is technically under Combine government restriction was not terribly
useful for tonight's business, but was quite enlightening."
     Maddie arched an eyebrow.  "And what theory might that be?"
     Tammy closed her eyes and rubbed her temples for a moment before
replying, "I don't feel that you will be pleased by it."
     "Okay," Maddie stood and stepped across the small computer room, "now I
definitely NEED to know.  Spill."
     "In short, I believe your former ally Warden artificially extended the
active Paraganger period by several years past its natural end, by his
actions." 
     Maddie sat back down and frowned skeptically.  "What evidence do you
have?"
     Tammy shrugged.  "Nothing that would hold up in court, not that this is
a matter for judicial review.  Look, I can either play twenty questions on
this matter, or you can let me start from the beginning, even if I repeat
things that I know you know.  The logical chain is important.  But as a
preview, I will say that something Julie said earlier told me I was on the
right track and wasn't the only one making a particular connection."
     Maddie made a "go ahead" gesture.
     "No one has formally declared when the Paragangs of New York became a
serious problem, but most agree that it started in earnest about ten years
ago, as the first adult paranormals decided to come to Manhattan and play at
being villains.  And make no mistake, for the first year or two, it was a
matter of fashion and play.  This attracted minors to the growing scene, and
an unknown number of baseline humans who either hoped to gain powers by
association or just bask in the reflected glory."
     "Even 2017 wasn't exactly safe for us locals," Maddie noted.
     "Of course not.  A paranormal 'cutting loose' is going to have
significantly greater repercussions due to their powers, even if THEY are not
taking the matter seriously.  And make no mistake, only a handful of those
early paragangers took things seriously.  Notably Bathory and Cockatrice,
obviously.  But consider, what was the population of Manhattan in the late
20-teens?  About a hundred thousand.  Add the surrounding boroughs and you
still don't exceed perhaps a half million normal citizens.  The City was hit
hard by the Ride of the Valkyries and the general events of July Sixth, and
lost even more population in the years that followed.  There were *scores* of
powered paragangers.  How is a population less than that of Twentieth Century
*Milwaukee* going to support that kind of predation?  Even if most of them
were just playing at crime, they were still parasitic, a drain on the
community, a barrier to urban renewal and recovery."
     "Milwaukee did host the original Academy of Super-Heroes for a few
years," Maddie noted.  "Superhuman concentrations happen."
     Tammy shook her head.  "I chose my comparison purposefully.  By the time
the original ASH moved its headquarters to Milwaukee, they were already
mostly facing regional or even global threats.  There were relatively few
local paranormal criminals prior to the explosion of such during the
Godmarket.  The known paranormal Paragangers in 2022, not even counting any
covert Cybernostra or Onyx Eye operatives, was comparable to the total number
of paracriminals in the greater New York City area at its height as a
supernormal hub, when its population was more than an order of magnitude
larger."
     "Are you implying that someone intentionally brought paragangers here?"
concern tinged Maddie's voice.
     "No, as far as I...or any experts I have been able to find," she
gestured at the terminal, "can tell, it really was just a fad.  For all the
efforts of the Academy, a great number of paranormals slipped through their
net in the late teens.  For some reason, which I suspect may have been active
bribery or computer interference on the part of the Cybernostra, the
government never really thought things were bad enough to risk conflict.
They may have sent in some recruiters to try to convince some of the
paragangers to come out of the cold, as it were, but the sheer scale of the
problem clearly never came to the attention of the right people.  Still, as
near as I can tell from the data I have been able to find, 2021 was the
natural peak year for the paragangs.  Given a few more years, the fad would
have ended as it became too much like work to maintain the structures needed
to keep the gangs fed and otherwise supplied.  Other than the Boys of Pain
and maybe the New York Macoute, NONE of the paragangs were organized like
traditional street gangs, and they were clearly ready to move on, leaving
behind a handful who truly called Manhattan home, or had real ambitions of
rule."
     "Shouldn't Warden's crusade have hurried that along?" Maddie asked, but
she already suspected what Tammy's answer would be.
     "It could have, but he went about it in almost exactly the wrong way, at
least initially.  He was incredibly brutal, for one.  Anyone not ready to
surrender the lifestyle *immediately* knew that they couldn't keep treating
it as an aesthetic.  Warden may have made a handful flee, but the rest
redoubled their efforts and started taking the paragangs seriously.
Remember, these were largely people who had decided that they wanted to be
rebels, live their own lives without listening to what their parents or the
government might say.  The paragangs selected for the stubborn, those who
will leap from a bridge simply because it is forbidden."
     "God...I knew Tho...the Warden had been a lot worse before he started
making connections with people other than his Mentor, but I hadn't really
considered how much worse he might have made things before he reined himself
in and stopped listening to that telepathic voice of vengeance."
     "Don't engage in excessive sympathy for the paragangs, they were still
quite violent and had graduated to thrill-killing in some cases, notably the
now deceased 5th Avenue Snakeaters," Tammy pointed out.  "If that had been
his only mistake, however, it would have passed once he reined himself in, as
you put it.  But there was another factor in his early rampaging that
destabilized matters to the point that the government took notice."
     "The Onyx Eye tong."
     Tammy nodded.  "While mostly skilled baseline humans, the tong had been
recruiting some of the paragangers into its own ranks, just as the
Cybernostra did.  The Eye and the Cybernostra acted as a moderating influence
on the paragangs, seeing themselves as the home teams, as it were.  They were
willing to let the paragangs have some fun, watch for potential recruits or
rivals, and subtly kept a lid on matters.  Even without some obvious
information blockage, it's possible that the Combine would have continued to
view the paragangs as a motley assembly of rowdy children thanks to the
efforts of the Onyx Eye and the Cybernostra.  But Warden struck several
telling blows to the tong, and had no small impact on the Cybernostra's power
structure, such as his defeat of the original Supernaut."
     "So, between the general perversity of the paragangers and Warden
kneecapping the two factions who actually wanted things kept calm, things got
a lot worse for several years, to the point the United World sent in STRAFE
in a failed attempt to fix things?" Maddie slumped.
     "Essentially.  As Julie pointed out, hurting the Cybernostra too badly
tends to take the reins off the paragangs.  If Warden had been more careful
about his targets from the start, or even never began his crusade, it is
likely all but a handful of paragangers would have left for greener pastures
by the end of '23.  The success of the new ASH would likely have inspired
many to go to the Academy, in fact.  But for all his prowess, I doubt Warden
could have known that."
     Maddie shook her head.  "He didn't really know anything, not when he
started.  He was acting at the direction of an angry young telepath who
wanted everyone who hurt her and killed her family to pay, and it took him a
while to really wake up to himself, he told me."
     "Ahhhh, that makes sense," Tammy nodded.  "I presume this is the
telepathic Mentor you mentioned?  Yes.  Well, her goal may well have been to
burn the whole city down, in which case she would have directed him to engage
in the precise actions that would make matters worse.  But that is entering
the territory of wild speculation.  Ignorance on both their parts is perhaps
more likely...even a powerful telepath can't know everything."
     The room was silent for several long minutes after that as Maddie tried
to digest the implications of Tammy's terrifyingly plausible theory.  If she
ever saw Thomas Malfeas again, could she avoid letting him know how much he
might have hurt the City?  Should she mention Rebus to Tammy at all, given
that some of the information manipulation that the teenager blamed on the
Cybernostra could just as easily have been the machinations of the Conclave
of Anchors, seeking to gather dangerous paranormals in one place for easy
containment?  She definitely needed to run this past Jessa and Beth, though.  
     "You're right, I'm definitely not pleased," Maddie finally admitted.

	       *	      *		     *		    *

[June 10, 2027 - Stuyvesant Town]

     The grim skeletons of partially deconstructed mid-20th Century apartment
blocks cast angular shadows in the handful of security lights left burning
all night, lights that hid more than they revealed.  The last holdouts of old
StuyTown had moved out a couple years ago, and the property was being rebuilt
by a company that was almost definitely a front for STRAFE.  The United
World's primary paranormal response organization mostly operated out of the
nearby East Village, and while it had withdrawn superhuman tactical resources
in the wake of the island being ceded to Rex Umbrae, they kept plenty of
affiliated field experts in town to keep an eye on things.  
     Construction work was proceding at a relaxed pace, so there was almost
no one to see five shadowy figures flitting about the rooftops and the
exposed skeletons of the buildings.  And none did see them.
     "Why are Mr. Stone and his friend even here?" Icosa-Pink whispered, her
choker picking it up and transmitting it clearly to the other Morning Stars.
"It doesn't make sense, this isn't...anything, really.  Why would the
technoloas send them here?"
     "They're being pretty random," Dodeca-Yellow pointed out.  "Might be
trying to shake any pursuit...doesn't explain why they never bother looking
up, though.  Even if they forgot we exist, plenty of threats in this town
come from above."
     "It is possible that the Cybernostra has upgraded its defenses, and the
technoloas are having trouble taking full control, leading to conflicting
orders and random walks," Hexa-Blue theorized.
     "In any case, I don't like how close they're getting to tripping an
alarm before we can figure out what they're up to," Tetra-Red declared,
quietly.  "They're in what looks like a pretty dead zone right now, I think
we should drop 'em and then see if we can disable and remove the Loas.
Question them when they wake up."
     "If they're fighting it, we should help them, not hurt them!" Icosa-Pink
declared, leaping into the light.
     "SHIT!" Octa-Green hissed, and leapt after Icosa-Pink, followed quickly
by the other three and no small amount of additional swearing.
     "Mr. Stone, you need to fight it!" Icosa-Pink yelled, reaching out a
hand.
     The Cybernostra she had addressed reached out his own hand...and
deployed a cannon from his forearm.  It spat cyan light that splashed over
Icosa-Pink's chest, devoured by and destroying the shadows that sheathed her
and normally protected her.
     "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
     The next few seconds were a blur of colored shadows and cyan light, but
with their reflexes dulled by whatever code conflict was occurring, the two
Cybernostra didn't stand a chance against four enraged girls who had zero
interest in reaching out a hand of friendship when a boot of anger was
available.  
     "Is she...?" Tetra-Red asked, quavering as the second Cybernostra hit
the ground in a shower of sparking circuits.
     "She powered down involuntarily, but the uniform seems to have held
against what energy exceeded her shadows," Hexa-Blue said, feeling for a
pulse on Icosa-Pink's hand.  "She's alive, thanks to Black Opal's tailoring
skills and fabric supplier." 
     "Unnnnghh," Icosa-Pink moaned, stirring to motion.  "I feel like I bit
into a power cord again," she said shakily as her eyes fluttered open.
     "Bah," Dodeca-Yellow snorted.  "What did you think you were going to do,
break through cybernetic brainwashing with the Power of Love?  Any one of us
could have dropped these idiots without permanent damage as long as we
didn't, you know, STAND THERE LIKE A MORON."
     Tetra-Red and Octa-Green glared at Yellow.  
     "I...I thought that I might be able to...fix them?  Like that feeling I
had about Killgamesh?  But once I got close enough, I didn't get that feeling
at all, and then I got the feeling of being SHOT in the CHEST and thanks for
CARING, J...Yellow," Icosa-Pink spat.
     "If we're done with the internecine squabbling," Hexa-Blue interrupted,
"I do not think I can safely remove these technoloas outside of a proper
surgical environment.  I surmise that part of the arms race between Dr. Jacky
and the Cybernostra included features that make the parasitic control units
especially difficult to remove.  Additionally, I lack the relevant skills to
perform whatever surgical procedure is required, as cybernetic implantation
is not an elective at MUSS One, although it strikes me as something that
might have some demand.  The best I can do is carefully disable what look
like important circuits and trigger the alarms on their Blackcels so that
someone comes for them."
     Tetra-Red paused, clearly wanting to do something more proactive, but
finally said, "Okay, do that.  Green, help Pink out of sight until she can
power back up.  Yellow..."
     "Whatever," Dodeca-Yellow snarled, leaping off into the shadows.
     "FINE.  Blue, I'll backstop you in case the Blackcel alarms are of the
nasty booby trap variety."
     "I doubt they are meant to be lethal, now that the Cybernostra is trying
to be Fine Upstanding Citizens, but I will be careful," Hexa-Blue assured
her.  
     It turned out that the Blackcels were not so much lethal as they were
LOUD, and the two reeled from the antipersonnel sonic weapons for a moment
before gathering their wits and fleeing the scene.
     "Well, back to de drawing board," a voice muttered from the shadows.

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Author's Notes:

     Is Tammy 100% correct about Warden's impact?  Well, she's got some good
points, and his early career as Mentor's minion had some definite negative
effects.  But keep in mind that she's still working from limited information,
and is tending to project some current situations too strongly into the
past.  For instance, the Cybernostra of 2021 was not quite the "adults in the
room" that they are in 2027, for all that they did inherit some institutional
wisdom from the mundane organized crime structure they evolved from.

     Tammy's "sidebar" ended up kind of taking over the issue, which was
originally intended to focus on Liv, but I think it worked well enough with
the two sharing the spotlight.

     Supernaut crashed Umbrae's wedding in ASH #75 and while his brain case
did survive the immediate aftermath, it is unrevealed (and to a large extent
undecided) what Umbrae did with the unstable brain in a box.  In fact,
several danglers from there just never got picked up on, I'd been setting
things up for a story idea Matt Rossi III had at the time, but it never ended
up happening.  For now, though, even though it's pretty clear Matt won't
return to writing Warden, I'm going to leave Mr. Malfeas off-stage so that
the Morning Stars can hold the spotlight.  Maybe he's off in Japan, helping
the Otakuza fight that island full of demons.

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