ASH: Shadow Girls #11 - Super...or Not?

[Dave Van Domelen]

     [the cover shows a titanic zombie Supernaut looming over the 
      Morning Stars, taller even than some buildings, in a very 
      deliberately exaggerated "pop art 60s" style of cover, complete
      with colored shadows and warped perspective.]

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 .|, COHERENT COMICS PRESENTS             An ASH Universe Story
--+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 '|`   SHADOW GIRLS      #11 - Super...or Not?
			 copyright 2023 by Dave Van Domelen
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[July 1, 2027 - Underground, the Bowery, Manhattan Autonomous Sector]

     "Oh, gross!" Tetra-Red shook her arm furiously after punching a Zombie
5th Avenue Snakeater in two, showering the stairwell with pieces best left
unidentified.  
     "Hey, watch where you get that zombie gunk!" Octa-Green ducked a
particularly ripe gobbet.
     "It appears that even the best efforts of the houngans could not
preserve the Snakeaters indefinitely.  I suspect that had we waited a few
more weeks, the gang would have literally fallen apart on its own," Hexa-Blue
theorized.
     "Eyes front," Black Opal said over the secure comlinks.  "The wall of
dead meat just confirms that this is the place, but we don't know if
Supernaut II is active yet."  She remained back in reserve, but without
superhuman powers of her own she doubted she'd be much help down in the
Bowery basement lab.  She could, however, misdirect any well-meaning police
action or deal with any Snakeaters who somehow made it out in one large
enough piece.  She also had a small drone hovering in the rear so she could
see some of what happened, but that wasn't very useful in the stairway.
     "And we're in!  Holy...that guy's bigger than Killgamesh!" Tetra-Red
finished ridding herself of zombie bits and pushed open the double-wide
delivery doors.  
     "And twice as ugly!" Icosa-Pink added.
     "I an' I think this be the end o' the line f'yas," Baron Saturday
grinned behind his skull facepaint, tipping his battered top hat towards
Dr. Jacky.  Jacky seemed a little less confident than his partner, but tapped
a control on his wristband and looked at the asymmetric hulk of flesh and
metal that lay against the inclined slab.
     "De new Supernaut LIVES!" Baron Saturday exulted.

	       *	      *		     *		    *

[June 30, 2027 - Plato's Cave]

     "Something seems to have rattled our least favorite houngans recently,"
Maddie addressed the assembled Morning Stars.  "They've actually had the
remaining Zombie Snakeaters out and about, probably trying to assemble the
last pieces they need on the double, after months of keeping them mostly out
of the public eye."
     "And the public smell," Liv added.  "They are soooo past their
expiration date, yah?"
     "Indeed," Tammy nodded.  "But that did allow me to assemble a heat map
of sightings in the surveillance systems we have access to, as well as online
chatter.  That tells us Supernaut II is likely being built somewhere in the
Bowery, although that still covers a significant amount of territory."
     "I guess you have more to add, boss-lady?" Julie quirked an eyebrow.
     "I don't have a street address, but I've narrowed it down a lot," Maddie
confirmed.  "It has to be a building still drawing power, but not otherwise
too active...they might be able to pay off or intimidate a few holdout
residents in the immediate vicinity, but there's a lot of places where they'd
have been ratted out long ago.  That drops it to a half dozen likelies, and a
friend of mine is checking for any suspicious security systems."  No need to
mention that Jessa Dumont was specifically looking for any telepathic dead
zones.  Anyone trying to keep secrets in the literal shadow of MetaPsych
would need some sort of mental screen.  Those were hard to find unless you
were on top of them or had a very specific place to look, but Jessa had
enough to go on now.
     Jess hmmf'd.  She'd been more taciturn than even her normal, but
everyone had been turning more extreme, to Maddie's deep concern.  The
journaling exercises weren't doing as much anymore, and seemed more like time
spent in bias confirmation than introspection now.
     "Why wait?" Julie asked.  "If it's down to a half dozen, I'm sure we can
go rattle some doors and find it in a few minutes.  The sooner we kick in the
right door, the less likely it'll be that Supernaut II will be in working
condition."
     "Hold up, Julie, we're the good guys, and a lot of innocent people live
in the Bowery!" Liv countered.  "We don't want to give some nice old lady a
heart attack by showing up at her door loaded for bear!"
     "Not THAT many innocent people, if they're already on Maddie's short
list," Tee shrugged.  "And wouldn't any bystanders be better off if we can
bust in and break normal sized heads rather than having a giant zombie cyborg
fight spill out onto the streets?"
     "Speed is definitely indicated," Tammy nodded, far more coldly than
Octa-Green's visible battle-lust but perhaps more worryingly to Maddie's
ears.  "Given the precepts of the houngans' faith, it seems likely that they
are aiming for a final ritual on Saturday.  We need to strike before that
time if we are to maximize our chances of success and minimize collateral
damage."
     Maddie held up her hands.  "Look, I'll narrow it down as much as I can
before Saturday.  If nothing else, I may be able to rig something that will
get noncombatants out of the neighborhood, like a fake gas leak or steam line
issue.  Just promise me you'll wait until I give you the go sign?"
     For a moment, Maddie worried that she'd just lost the girls.  That
they'd storm out and look for a fight that they weren't prepared for.  That
it would be a huge disaster.
     Julie sighed theatrically.  "I suppose we can wait a day or two, make
sure we don't burst dramatically into an empty basement and scare the rats to
death." 

	       *	      *		     *		    *

[July 1, 2027 - Under the Bowery]

     It was...not going smoothly, Maddie thought as she listened to the
increasingly agitated cross-talk on the coms.
     "You weren't listening," Hexa-Blue explained, "if you had stepped one
point two meters further to the right before pulling out that tube, the spray
would have hit the technoloa in Dr. Jacky's hand and fouled it!"
     "Don't tell me how to boss fight and I won't tell you how to be a nerd,"
Octa-Green retorted.
     Maddie had considered adding cameras to the collars that housed the
communication systems, but even with the best image-processing software
designed for athletes with bodycams, the result was too jittery to be useful.
The girls simply moved inhumanly quickly and left Maddie with motion
sickness.  At least their speed let them recover from all of the incredibly
stupid moves they'd been making since entering the basement.  The drone she'd
managed to get into the basement lab couldn't watch everything at once, and
right now she had it tasked to making sure Baron Saturday didn't pull any
surprises.
     "Don't any of you remember who you are?" Icosa-Pink's voice pleaded.
She'd been trying to get the zombie Supernaut to "wake up" from its near
mindless state and turn good or something.  
     It was not working.
     "Ho, I an' I recognize those moves, Miss Yellow," Dr. Jacky taunted.
"Y'right t'fear the long arm of the loa!"
     What?  Had Jacky been watching one of the fights from the shadows?
     "Have you been soloing?" Tetra-Red asked.  "Also, I need to kick you in
the head for that pun," she added, most likely not talking to the same person
in both instances.
     Dodeca-Yellow merely grunted noncommittally as Dr. Jacky laughed, a
sound cut short with a yelp as Tetra-Red apparently fulfilled her threat.
     "Fine.  If none of you will listen to the plan, I will reduce the
variables to something simple enough for even Octa-Green to follow,"
Hexa-Blue grumbled as she came into the drone's view.  Stepping oddly, as if
avoiding cracks in a derelict sidewalk, she approached Baron Saturday, whose
sneer of anticipation faded as she got inexorably closer.  Suddenly leaning
in, she grabbed Saturday by his battered topcoat and threw him onto a patch
of floor which exploded into tentacles of darkness, binding him to the ground
as he screamed in terror.
     Hexa-Blue looked directly at the drone.  "Simple trap to keep anyone
from approaching," she explained to Maddie.  "He has now been hoist on his
own petard, as it were.  If pulled down rather than hurled upwards.  The
metaphor's validity does not require literal truth."
     With Saturday at least temporarily out of the fight, Maddie turned the
drone to take in the rest of the fight, making a mental note to build one
that had cameras in more than one direction.  When she had time.  If the
girls would ever slow down enough to let her fill in the gaps.  She missed
the relatively relaxed pace she and the others had taken when preparing to go
out as Hellhound.
     Tetra-Red had returned to the fight against Supernaut, leaving Yellow to
occupy a daunted but not defeated Dr. Jacky.  Somewhere along the line
Supernaut had lost its right hand entirely, and the cannon built into its
left arm sparked and shuddered as the zombie tried to fire it despite the
critical damage the system had taken.  The floor was getting slick from both
Supernaut's internal fluids and the contents of bubbling flasks that had
apparently been part of the technomystical revivification process.  Technoloa
writhed about where they'd fallen, Dr. Jacky had apparently decided there was
no point in being conservative with them anymore and was trying to hit anyone
he could.  So far, they'd all dodged, even Icosa-Pink whose heart clearly
wasn't in the fight, but at some point someone would step too close and the
numbers would shift against them again.
     "Pink, it's not working," Maddie said over Liv's channel.  "Dr. Jacky's
got direct control.  Maybe if you take him down it'll be possible to convince
Supernaut to stop fighting?"  Maddie doubted that anything could talk the
cyberzombie down, whatever was animating the body was not any of the original
inhabitants of the constituent parts.  But if it got Icosa-Pink back in the
fight, a little white lie would have to be okay.
     Icosa-Pink turned towards Dr. Jacky, then paused.  "But what if that
hurts Supernaut too?"
     "THAT'S THE POINT!" Octa-Green shouted as she drove a shard of broken
lab equipment into one of Supernaut's glowing orange eyes.
     Then the lab's lighting flickered and Dr. Jacky went into spasms for a
few seconds.  Before he could recover, Dodeca-Yellow had turned and snapped
his head back with a roundhouse kick, dropping the cyber-houngan to the
ground.
     Maddie whirled the drone around, stopping when she noticed Hexa-Blue
holding the fanged head of a technoloa against an outlet.  "It stood to
reason that there was a feedback mechanism in the devices, and I was able to
overwhelm Dr. Jacky for a moment via an electrical surge," Blue explained.
"Now, I suppose the 'hit the pile of undead meat until it falls apart' plan
will be sufficient, carry on."

	       *	      *		     *		    *

[Half an hour later, under the Bowery]

     "Looks clear up here, Sergeant," officer Chavez said, resisting the urge
to hold her nose. 
     "Well, other than all the zombie guts," Sgt. Eiber snorted, pulling a
filter mask out of his belt and attaching it to the open face of his helmet.
"Masks up, everyone.  None of the sensors say it's a hazmat situation, but
this is a magic situation, no sense coming down with some awful zombie crud
just because it's not on the list," he tapped a quiescent box attached to his
body armor.  The dog and pony show when the department got the gizmos claimed
that it could alert them to any known normal or paranormal pathogen or toxin,
but even if the sales talk was accurate, there was a lot of wiggle room
around that "any known" bit.
     Sgt. Eiber led the small squad down the stairs.  Officially, they were
just another paragang response team.  Unofficially, they got the calls that
involved the new faction in town, the self-proclaimed Morning Stars.  Some of
his officers resented the end of the relative quiet that had descended after
Warden left, but Eiber was pretty sure that things were about to boil over
again one way or another...too many of the "reformed" paragangers felt like
they were just biding their time, and the mess of former 5th Avenue Zombie
Snakeaters decorating the stairway and the street outside suggested that even
if the Morning Stars hadn't come calling, Jacky and Saturday were about to
break the peace.
     "I hear someone moaning," Chavez held up a hand as Eiber stopped to look
her direction.  "You hear it too, Sergeant?"  They'd switched to helmet
comms, so hopefully whoever was moaning didn't hear them coming yet.
     Everyone held their breath for a moment, and there was nodding.  "Sounds
like a man's voice," Sgt. Eiber confirmed over the secure line.  "Someone's
awake, and might be a threat...go quiet, but be ready to go loud."
     Of course, the stairs chose that moment to creak loudly, something that
no amount of noise-baffling boot sole could prevent, and everyone burst into
motion, pouring into the basement room.
     The lights flickered occasionally, and the ground was littered with bits
of flesh and cybernetics, including a rather large lump that had probably
once been one helluva big zombie.  Dr. Jacky and Baron Saturday were mostly
unconscious, tied up in what looked like the remains of Jacky's technoloa and
random wires and tubes, plus at least one piece of rebar bent entirely around
Jacky's hands like handcuffs.
     Several of the officers made retching sounds, probably didn't get the
filters properly seated, Eiber thought.  Good object lesson...the place
probably smelled like a late 1800s meat packing plant.  
     "Looks like the party's already over, everyone," Sgt. Eiber observed.
"Call in the forensics guys and get a meat wagon for the big bad voodoo
daddies.  And maybe a big-ass bolt cutter for Jacky."
     It didn't take much looking to see all kinds of illegal equipment in
here, and the pieces of cybernetics scattered about probably had a match in
some missing Cybernostra, so for once the police were going to be able to
arrest some of the bad guys and have it stick.
     But it sure looked like the Morning Stars were doing their best to
deserve his squad's attention....

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Author's Notes: 

     I wrote the second half several months after the first half, I just sort
of stalled out on the Big Fight Scene.  I finally decided to write it through
a limited perspective, and then tacked on the final scene as wrap-up rather
than have Maddie walk in on the carnage at the end.  This also let me bring
back some named but minor characters from Warden and give the "technically
illegal vigilantes" subplot some time.

     Those of you who played City of Heroes, Supernaut II is (was) very much
in the Vahzilok aesthetic.

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