Chapter 283: A glimmer of Hope

Chapter 283: A glimmer of Hope

Claudette’s kid...he took Chicago.So there’s a chance I’ll track down that doll Professor Replica is wearing there.

Any sane person would take the professor to a remote, hidden location with no ties to either of them and wait for Solaris to get bored.

Sometimes that even worked.

Still, there was a chance they had taken the professor to Chicago, aiming to lean on the advanced infrastructure that Paradox had built into it to weather Solaris’s fury and stage a counter-attack.

That line of thinking had never worked before, but it sure would make things go by quicker.

Whaddya know? Solaris mused as he walked through the silent, still city streets. He’s right here. That means this is probably a trap. At least they chose a quick death rather than dragging this out.

Paradox was frozen in place, helping Professer Replica to his – her – feet. A faint glow of magic emanated from his hand, seemingly trying to heal her. It wasn’t nearly fast enough.

The way Solaris saw it, the original Professor was dead, but before he died, he willed all his power, memories, and the title of Professor Replica to one of his unnatural creations.

In this case, a seemingly helpless young woman with a disarmingly innocent face. Calculated by the professor’s soulless ‘Command Center’ to maximize human’s protective instincts towards her.

Her gaze tracked Solaris as he approached, but she was still too injured to give herself the power to push past conventional physics and match his speed, only able to watch in horror as he strode up behind Paradox.

Solaris’s heart sank as he put two fingers to the back of Paradox’s skull.

Claudette was going to hate him forever for this, but Paradox was already gone. There was only mimic left in there. He couldn’t afford to give these mimics any more chances. They’d already demonstrated an unwillingness to turn against the Prime, and so they needed to be eliminated from the equation.

“Oy!” A voice caught Solaris’s attention.

Voice? He’d never heard anything at light-speed. It was outside the realm of what sound could accomplish. Therefore anything he heard now must be either a mental projections, or more likely...

A wildcard.

Solaris turned his head to spot a heavily sunburnt man wearing a tattered hat and cut-off jeans along with disintegrating sandals approached at a sprint.

Which was saying something, considering Solaris was already moving at lightspeed.

“Rack off, ya cunt!”

Ah. I recognize him. Australia Man, Solaris thought an instant before a bare foot caught his light-form in the chest and blew him away from Paradox at monumental speeds, cutting a Solaris-shaped hole in the nearby building as he flew.

Solaris dropped back into his physical form and tumbled violently for an instant before he stabilized himself in midair, the sizzling wound on his stomach flooding his body with pain.

Australia Man arrived in front of him, completely naked, save for the wide-brim hat artfully hanging over his crotch.

“Hello, Brian.” Solaris said.

“Tom! Welcome to the Australian Embassy!” Aussie Man said, spreading his arms wide to emphasize the surrounding city. “Chicago branch.”

Solaris glanced over at where Professor replica’s burns were sloughing off, revealing unharmed skin under Paradox’s spell.

The world shimmered a moment, and Chemestro appeared beside Australia man, followed by Marigold Zauberer, the immortal bitch.

Above him, the sky went black as a barrier that trapped light sprung up around the city.

“I guess we’re doing this,” Solaris said, loosening up his shoulders.

As far as traps went...this one wasn’t bad.

***Paradox***

“Let’s see if an Astra’s mending works on an Android,” Perry mused, triggering Sera’s Ouchie Corrector as he helped Professor Replica to her feet.

BOOOM!

Perry had the distinct sense of something whizzing by at irrational speeds.

He glanced over to see a white-hot section of perforated concrete in the shape of a man.

“Tom!” Perry heard Aussie man said through the Solaris-shaped tunnel in the building next to him. “Welcome to the Australian Embassy! Chicago Branch.”

Looks like Solaris is here, and I almost died, Perry thought, redoubling his efforts to get the Professor back to full speed.

Meanwhile, Perry pressed The Button. The Button caused a forced city-wide evac, and ritually sacrificed a litany of stuff to the Manitian pantheon. Blood for the blood god, wheat for the wheat god, money for the god of travel, baby teeth, hair, broken promises, and so on.

They were highly mechanized, with the prayers to Astra and Gyntax on a recorded loop that repeated so fast it sounded like a high-pitched whine.

The pressure of the blood entering the sacrificial pool could cut steel.

It was unconventional and geared towards speed over authenticity, but given who they were fighting, every femtosecond counted.

All that to say: ‘hey, we could use a little help here.’

The low-hanging cloud of divine energy that hung over Chicago like smog thickened, but nothing overt happened.

Hopefully they deign to give us the home-field advantage, Perry thought, tapping Professor Replica on the shoulder.

Stacy took a deep breath.

“I am free from the constraints of logic and nature.”

Stacy vanished, and the rapid-fire explosions in the distance grew even more furious, drawing a staccato rhythm across the domed city.

The battery buried deep under the city ticked up to 1% as it absorbed the side-effects of the fight, preventing the city from melting into slag even as they tossed each other across the city with enough force to wipe the place off the map.

We got this.

...Maybe, Perry thought as his armor closed in around him

“EEEEP!” Brendon shrieked and flinched as the suit tackled him to the ground, brandished a needle and jammed it into his arm.

“I didn’t post it! Don’t kill the messenger, man!” Brendon shouted as a cold serum filled his arm.

“What are you talking about?” The suit’s modulated voice asked, cocking it’s head.

“Uuuummm. Nothing?”

The suit watched him as if expecting something. Whatever was in that syringe made Brendon jittery, almost like he’d knocked back a couple espressos, back to back, minus the anxiety and heart palpitations.

“Huh. Marigold, over here. Summon his soul from the beyond.”

“...What?”

“You’ll be fine.”

An old lady that Brendon had only seen a handful of times when he was younger arrived, wearing old-timey royalty stuff, just absolutely bedazzled with gold, gems, and fancy looking clothes.

She said some magic words over him, there was a ear-popping sensation, but nothing happened.

“Was something supposed to happen? Could someone tell me what’s going on?” Brendon asked.

“It’s him in there,” The old woman said.

“Dad said he was eaten twice.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I got eaten?”

“Did you get tricked into a private place by strange people who then turned into horrifying monsters that attacked you?”

“...Yes? Not really sure what happened after that.” Brendon admitted.

“Turn him into a frog.”

“What?” Brendon asked.

“I think I see where you’re going with this,” Marigold said as magic began to dance around her fingertips.

“Can we just talk about this?” Brendon pleaded.

The old woman spoke some magic-y sounding words and a bolt of green magic lanced into Brendon’s chest.

Everything went dark.

“Fascinating...” Brendon heard the old woman speak as he came to.

“Geez! What the heck!” Brendon said, sitting up off the ground and patting himself down to make sure he didn’t have slimy green skin.

“That’s an interesting Wildcard power. And it might be exactly what we need.”

There were four people hovering over him now: Perry’s dad and Dave the unicorn had joined the group.

There was also a dragon, but Brendon wasn’t sure if it identified as ‘people’. He glanced around, confused at the change in scenery, since they were underground somewhere.

The face plate of Perry’s armor flipped up.

“Brendon, did you know you have a superpower?”

“Hah. What? No. What?”

“Why do you think that you got paid ten grand an hour to push a cart around?” Perry asked.

“Because...they like me?” Brendon guessed.

“Because you will always be Brendon,” Perry said, poking him in the chest. “Regardless of external or internal weirdness. A normal person would’ve been horribly mutated if they worked where you worked.”

“My hypothesis is that once the mimic consumed him, it duplicated his power, which went on to erase any...mimic-ness present and restored his soul. His power overwrote the mimic that copied it.” The dragon spoke, it’s voice violently rattling Brendon’s prey response. “A very...valuable effect.”

As the massive scaly head with teeth bigger than Brendon’s palm leaned in closer, Brendon bolted. He scrambled up and dove for the exit, only to find himself floating in midair.

“Chill out, Tyrannus isn’t gonna hurt you.” Perry said as Brendon tried to swim through the air.

Once his heart rate was closer to room temperature, Perry set him down.

“Well...We may have to dissect him a bit to understand his power. I wouldn’t exclude the possibility.”

Brendon bolted again.

“You’re not dissecting my friend. We’re gonna find a way to isolate and reverse engineer its effects without hurting him.”

“Is he more important than the world at large?” The dragon asked.

“The more important question is this:” Perry asked, standing directly between Brendon and the dragon. “Could you beat me?”

“Enough!” The old woman said, waving her hand dismissively. “I’ve cast a time dilation on the surroundings, but it does not stop it, and time is not our friend right now. We will pursue every method to replicate this anomoly we possibly can, starting with non-destructive means. But I won’t rule anything out. Sometimes sacrifices must be made. Is that understood, Paradox?”

Brendon watched as Paradox’s helmet flipped back down, modulating his voice.

“I understand that if I killed you, it would give me enough power to solve the mimic problem. Do sacrifices have to be made?”

The tension between the five ‘people’ present could be cut with a knife as Marigold’s eyes narrowed.