Chapter 1, Part 2, Episode 3

“Seriously what?” Guinevere asked, turning to her girlfriend.

“Turning him off,” Manny repeated.

“What the hell are you talking about, ‘turn him off?’” Guinevere chided. “And what does that mea…wait. No. Oh, hell no!”

“Only for a few seconds! It happens all the time!” Manny said, his mind racing.

“It does not happen all the time!” Guinevere countered. “You’ve snapped, Scepter! You are talking about killing him!”

“I’m with my girl,” he heard Romeesha say. “That ain’t even funny.”

“We’re in a hospital! They’ll just resuscitate him!”

Romeesha put up her hands. “I am so not doin’ this.”

“You make it sound like an everyday event! Just how hard did you hit that tree?”

“I—“ Manny began, then stopped. “Hush, you two. Nurse alert.”

On cue—it was so creepy when he did that, Guinevere thought—a nurse came in to check on the man Manny thought of snuffing out and bringing back to life five seconds before. Manny actually stifled a laugh. Whatever the women were wearing, it must have been a beaut. Guinevere the grease monkey, bald as a cue-ball so her hair would catch on machinery or on fire, rarely stepped out of her overalls and tanktops, although on formal occasions she was known to wear a sports bra. Computer-Goth Romeesha… well, if it was Day-Glo-hued cybergothic Spandex, Lycra, or industrial grade rubber micro-minis, she’d wear it. The fact that she grew out her afro, dyed it neon pink, and then split it down the middle into two pom-poms (she wasn’t called the ‘Neon Minnie Mouse’ for nothing), just lent added flair. She could stop traffic. Although Manny, acutely aware of others’ thoughts, was well aware that a 5’2’’ woman with double-D cups would stop traffic anywhere she went. She certainly bolted the nurse to the floor.

“You’re…Mr. Kitabora’s friends?”

Manny guffawed, swallowed, and looked angelic. “In all our glory. I’m Doctor Emmanuel Veracruz. The tall lady is Guinevere White. The shor—um—‘petite’ one is Romeesha Armstrong.” She hated being called short. Having worn them all her life, she was the only woman in the city that could win a sprint in high-heeled platforms.

“Doctor?”

“Shrink,” Romeesha helped. “We know it ain’t obvious.”

Manny shot her a look.

“Do they have any new info on him?” Guinevere asked. “Kit. Not the shrink. The shrink’s a lost cause.”

“I am in the room, you know.”

The nurse shook his head. “I don’t have that information. But I’ll let one of his doctors know you’re here.” He then replaced the IV drip and left the three.

Once the interlude had passed, Miss Gwen and ROM rounded on Scepter—

“Aaaaand you think I’m nuts,” he said.

“Homocidal. Nuts. Take your pick,” ROM finished. “One gets yo’ ass in prison.”

Manny set his jaw. “I’ve been trying to link with Kit for the last two days. I’ve tried every angle I can think of. I’ve even tried getting him off.”

Miss Gwen closed her eyes. “Just when I think the day can’t get any more crazy.”

The man crossed his arms. “If you have any better ideas—“

“Other than killing him? Plenty!”

            “—then let’s hear it.”

Chapter 1, Part 2

            “If he wanted us dead, we would be,” Manny replied fatalistically.

“Almost did Kit in,” Guinevere sighed.

“Probably,” Manny theorized, “because other than Paine, Pitch Black was the only one to score a direct hit.” Turning back to Kit’s prone form, he said, “When the monks taught me how to use my powers, it was never for anything as destructive as what Vagabond can do.” He paused. “Similarly, Vagabond probably doesn’t have the finesse you need for all the things I do. And that’s the problem: The trick with telepathy is that you have to know how the damage was done in order to fix it. You can’t use a hammer for a screw.”

            “You try that Jedi Voice Trick on him?” Romeesha asked, using the term Kit would have used.

            “’Nepalese’ Voice Trick,” Manny said, giving the trademark reply with a smirk, going along with the joke. “I can compel a person to do anything, even against their will. But they have to be conscious.”

            There was silence, and then Miss Gwen spoke. “How are you holding up?”

            Manny sigh-laughed. He undid the buttons of his shirt, revealing a yoga-toned torso, and turned his back to the women to reveal a huge, ugly bruise over most of his back. He stiffly turned around slowly, grunting.

 “Oh, shit,” Romeesha drawled. “What’d the doctors say?”

“I told ‘em I slipped on a carpet and over a rail. Landed on my back,” he said. “The old ‘clumsy blind-guy stereotype.’ Nobody suspected I was thrown against a tree. Anyway, I have three cracked ribs, but my spine is OK. Very mild concussion.” He pointed to a noticeable welt on his head. “I’ll be fine. Dressing was tough.”

“Why did Vagabond attack you first?” Guinevere asked. “That was low. Attacking the blind dude.”

“He wasn’t picking off the easy targets. He’d have taken you two out if so,” Manny replied, buttoning up and tucking his shirt into his jeans. He sensed a flash of indignation. “None of you have ‘aggressive powers.’ Nash can vaporize metal. Alastair can make anything blow to pieces. Guinevere can build things and Romeesha can hack computers. Unless you are packing heat, he’d have just as well ignored you.”

“Thank you. I feel so empowered now,” Guinevere snipped, mildly ticked she wasn’t considered a serious threat. “And the next time your washing machine is on the fritz—“

“No offence. But I’m the only other psychic of us,” Manny explained. “Although I can’t do half the shit he can. He can pick up cars and throw them into the next state. I’m more of a mentalist. I can completely take over a person’s mind. I can wipe it clean. And I can surf psychic energy to its source and cancel it. I could have done that. I could get into his head, if he was distracted enough…and I had a lot to drink beforehand. After what Sanjay and Kit did, I would have had an opening. So he knocked me out first chance he got.” He smiled slightly. “I’ll pull through. How is JJ?”

            “Benji’s got him tied up in his basement.”

            “You’re kidding.”

            “No joke,” Romeesha replied. “He was buggin’ out. Quartz had to hold him down and Eartha had to knock him out.”

            Manny sighed. “He’ll be fine, once he withdraws. It wouldn’t take them long to figure out you can have skin-to-skin contact with the man. Poor guy.”

            Guinevere sighed, her eyebrows shooting up and then down. “Good to know you’re gonna pull, through.”

“Been better. I’ve taken some vacation, so my practice is taken care of. Besides, to have your shrink look more beat up than you are is bad press.” He paused. “Moving around is harder. Bo keeps coming to the rescue, and Finn has offered to help while I recoup. I’m getting my rest. But as soon as they let visitors in, I’m here. Bo’s been a real doll and drops me off before he goes on duty at the precinct. He’s thinking of re-enlisting, not that DODT over, in case you hadn’t heard.”

“Didn’t,” he heard Romeesha say. “But ain’t surprising. The man’s a soldier. Loves his country and all ‘dat.”

“So what can we do for Kit?”

“My first thought was to haul Vagabond in here—“

“Seriously?”

“You are fucked-up!”

“—but I know that’s out of the question.”

“Even if we could find him.”

Romeesha spoke. “Too bad he ain’t a computer. You can just turn it off when it freezes up. Works every time, pretty much.”

Manny’s eyebrow’s poked up from his sunglasses.

            “Whaaaaat…?” Romeesha asked thickly, her head going off to one side. Then she blinked. “Oh, now don’t even go there! Seriously?”

Chapter 1, Part 2

Vagabond

            He continued retching long after his stomach was empty. His entire body, so unused to this…normal…state, after a lifetime in ecstatic frenzy, had no other way to react. The dreamer had been torn from the dream, violently, and without regret.

            Regret. Now that was a word he knew very well.

            Not that he paid attention to it. It was like navigating a maze of knives. Provide you didn’t throw yourself against the walls, it was simplicity itself to avoid getting hurt.

            Hurt, of course, was another word he knew very well. And there was no avoiding this one. No, that’s a lie. Of course there was…is.

            Feebly, using his monstrous arms as pillows, he slowly leaned forward onto the ceramic of the commode, it’s razor-sharp coolness ping-ponging across his nerves. It’s not that he was about heave—his body finally understood the futility—he was just…so…tired. Which made perfect sense, if you knew the man. What he had been through. What he had done.

            It was only when he felt the pangs of his feet falling asleep did he move, and even then, it was just to slip to one side, and settled down upon one hip. There was so many things to be done, and the day was getting no shorter, but the idea of just staying there took on an undeniable allure.

            You know when you are tired enough and just about any position you find yourself in is the most comfortable in the world?

            Sounds of summer were flitting through the shut window, muffled, as was the light. It was a beautiful summer’s day. It was a beautiful day to die.

ROM, Miss Gwen, Scepter, & Pitch Black.

“…Manny?”

            “I’m awake!” He sat bolt upright, his glasses, having popped off his ears when he was face-down, flying across the room.

            Guinevere came to the blind man’s side while Romeesha picked up the shades. “How is he?”

            Still a little dazed, Manny blinked, his glaucus-white eyes, sightless as they were, stinging. He had fallen asleep on his nose at Kit’s bedside, the reassuringly monotonous pinging of the heart monitor lulling him into dreams. Two days of constant telepathy, and still nothing. “No change,” he sighed, defeatedly. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

            “Here yo’ glasses, Doc,” Romeesha said, putting the shades in his had, the tenderness in her voice off-setting her gangsta twang.

            “Thanks.”

            Romeesha’s eyes drifted to Kit. “So fucked, seeing somebody like him like this.”

            Guinevere put her arms around the other woman. It was comforting, but uncomfortingly helpless. In terms of sheer strength, blow for blow, Kit could probably take even Danilo down. He was Kazuhito “Kit” Kitabora, professional bodybuilder, for crissakes. At any given time, he was in at least two muscle mags. He should be slinging weights, or playing country songs on his guitar, or stopping the conversation dead in its tracks by being a Japanese man with a Tennessean accent. He should not in an ICU. Seeing him now, like this…it wasn’t right. Vagabond…

            “You getting’ anything from him?” Romeesha went on.

            Manny shook his head. “No. Nothing conscious. It’s like…paralysis. It’s like the lights are on but nobody is home.”

            “What does the hospital say?” Guinevere asked. Manny could here the musical lilt of Trinidad in the woman’s voice.

            Manny sat back in his chair. “They have no idea. Clearly Kit’s in a coma, but they have no idea why, of course. Everything is working fine: heart, lungs, kidneys. But he’s completely unresponsive. They even stuck him with a pin, to see if he was faking it. Now they’re talking some sort of chemical shock or psychosomatic break.”

            Guinevere closed the door. “I don’t think they’d buy it, if we told them.”

            “I still don’ know what Vagabond did to him,” Romeesha muttered. “Damn psycho.”

            The man rubbed his temples. “Even I don’t know for sure.” He could empathically sense their dismay at that, and he quickly explained. “Kit is here. I can feel him. It’s hard to explain. It’s like he’s a computer that’s frozen up. I can get in so far, and then I run into something. Nothing I do can get through. I’m pressing all the buttons, but nothing is working. It’s not like a block or shield, although it may as well be. And it’s not like his mind was blasted out of his brain, although Vagabond could do that. Remember, we were just in his way. We interrupted him. He wasn’t trying to kill us, just get rid of us.”

            “’Not trying to kill us?’” Guinevere repeated, incredulous.

            “You wanna put money on ‘dat?” Romeesha asked.

Chapter 1, Part 2

ROM, Miss Gwen, Scepter, & Pitch Black.

            Vagabond

            He continued retching long after his stomach was empty. His entire body, so unused to this…normal…state, after a lifetime in ecstatic frenzy, had no other way to react. The dreamer had been torn from the dream, violently, and without regret.

            Regret. Now that was a word he knew very well.

            Not that he paid attention to it. It was like navigating a maze of knives. Provide you didn’t throw yourself against the walls, it was simplicity itself to avoid getting hurt.

            Hurt, of course, was another word he knew very well. And there was no avoiding this one. No, that’s a lie. Of course there was…is.

            Feebly, using his monstrous arms as pillows, he slowly leaned forward onto the ceramic of the commode, it’s razor-sharp coolness ping-ponging across his nerves. It’s not that he was about heave—his body finally understood the futility—he was just…so…tired. Which made perfect sense, if you knew the man. What he had been through. What he had done.

            It was only when he felt the pangs of his feet falling asleep did he move, and even then, it was just to slip to one side, and settled down upon one hip. There was so many things to be done, and the day was getting no shorter, but the idea of just staying there took on an undeniable allure.

            You know when you are tired enough and just about any position you find yourself in is the most comfortable in the world?

            Sounds of summer were flitting through the shut window, muffled, as was the light. It was a beautiful summer’s day. It was a beautiful day to die.

“…Manny?”

            “I’m awake!” He sat bolt upright, his glasses, having popped off his ears when he was face-down, flying across the room.

            Guinevere came to the blind man’s side while Romeesha picked up the shades. “How is he?”

            Still a little dazed, Manny blinked, his glaucus-white eyes, sightless as they were, stinging. He had fallen asleep on his nose at Kit’s bedside, the reassuringly monotonous pinging of the heart monitor lulling him into dreams. Two days of constant telepathy, and still nothing. “No change,” he sighed, defeatedly. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

            “Here yo’ glasses, Doc,” Romeesha said, putting the shades in his had, the tenderness in her voice off-setting her gangsta twang.

            “Thanks.”

            Romeesha’s eyes drifted to Kit. “So fucked, seeing somebody like him like this.”

            Guinevere put her arms around the other woman. It was comforting, but uncomfortingly helpless. In terms of sheer strength, blow for blow, Kit could probably take even Danilo down. He was Kazuhito “Kit” Kitabora, professional bodybuilder, for crissakes. At any given time, he was in at least two muscle mags. He should be slinging weights, or playing country songs on his guitar, or stopping the conversation dead in its tracks by being a Japanese man with a Tennessean accent. He should not in an ICU. Seeing him now, like this…it wasn’t right. Vagabond…

            “You getting’ anything from him?” Romeesha went on.

            Manny shook his head. “No. Nothing conscious. It’s like…paralysis. It’s like the lights are on but nobody is home.”

            “What does the hospital say?” Guinevere asked. Manny could here the musical lilt of Trinidad in the woman’s voice.

            Manny sat back in his chair. “They have no idea. Clearly Kit’s in a coma, but they have no idea why, of course. Everything is working fine: heart, lungs, kidneys. But he’s completely unresponsive. They even stuck him with a pin, to see if he was faking it. Now they’re talking some sort of chemical shock or psychosomatic break.”

            Guinevere closed the door. “I don’t think they’d buy it, if we told them.”

            “I still don’ know what Vagabond did to him,” Romeesha muttered. “Damn psycho.”

            The man rubbed his temples. “Even I don’t know for sure.” He could empathically sense their dismay at that, and he quickly explained. “Kit is here. I can feel him. It’s hard to explain. It’s like he’s a computer that’s frozen up. I can get in so far, and then I run into something. Nothing I do can get through. I’m pressing all the buttons, but nothing is working. It’s not like a block or shield, although it may as well be. And it’s not like his mind was blasted out of his brain, although Vagabond could do that. Remember, we were just in his way. We interrupted him. He wasn’t trying to kill us, just get rid of us.”

            “’Not trying to kill us?’” Guinevere repeated, incredulous.

            “You wanna put money on ‘dat?” Romeesha asked.

End of Part One

It was so fast.

Benji roared in agony, staggering backward over his feet, landing flat on his back. He was practically having a seizure of his own.

Danilo only barely saw how Sanjay had, once his jaw was free, got a hold of Benji’s glove with his teeth, and with a jerk of his head, exposed a section of skin and jammed his head onto it.

That was all it took.

Sanjay’s veins pulsed a meaty red where they ground against Benji’s skin. Blinded, shrieking, the younger man, barely out of boyhood, stumbled backward, breaking contact. If he had been manic before, Sanjay, finally having got a taste, was in a full-blown frenzy now. He was heaving himself madly, his eyes rolled up into the back of his head, the msucles popping.  Danilo, kept his hold iron fast and was sorely tempted to use his own powers on Sanjsy—which would probably result in snapping the man’s head right off. The problem with a full nelson hold: you can’t move easily from it into a reliable submission hold.

So Danilo improvised: By jerking Sanjay fully around and ramming his head into the wall.

Sanjay went down quietly.

“Asshole. I hope I gave you a concussion.”

The reply was a roar devoid of any human element. And a foot slammed into Danilo’s balls.

Bellowing, the Brazilian fell to his knees, his head flopping forward and exposing the back of his neck. Sanjay looked positively beatific, and as he—

“Oh, fuck this,” Danilo, heard Benji snarl, and only barely saw the man take off his glove.

“OH, SHI—“ was all Danilo managed to get out before he slammed himself into the floor. The beam of pure black shot over him, hit Sanjay square in the chest, sent him flying. The yelp from the first impact was cut sickeningly short by the second as the man smashed into the wall, landing in a crumpled mass on the floor. He did not move.

For one impossibly long second, the two other men did not move, either. Benji was still holding himself up on one arm, the other held out and aloft, the dark energy of redirected gravity gone as quickly as it had appeared. Danilo was still in a ball on the floor.

Time had simply stopped.

And with a shriek, jerked forward.

“My God, Benji!” Danilo was crawling--scrammbling--away, hauling himself up, but Benji wasn’t paying the slightest attention to him. “You nearly took my head off! Fucking Christ!”

But he wasn't looking at Benji. He was looking at Tug-of-War, the man that could absorb gravity itself and redirect it to devastating effect. Danilo himself, he knew, was now Dandelion, wielding the power of monstrous strength and iron-hard invulnerability. Tug-of-War's voice was low, steady, and unassailable: “You were thinking it, too.”

“Thinking what? Killing him?” Dandelion was not giving this up. "That's Sanjay, you stupid fuck!"

“You were thinking of using your powers on him. I was just faster than you.” Benji, still shaking from Paine’s agony, rose very unsteadily to his feet. “And he’s not dead.” It was as if he were commanding Fate. “Now sit him up, get that shake in him, then come upstairs. I’m fucking done.”

Dandelion stared after the man, then at Paine (who was breathing, thank God), and then after Tug-of-War again.

“Jesus.”

END PART 1

Chapter 1, Episode 5

Gagged, Sanjay half-articulated a series of syllables that, with little difficulty, were understood as “Let me go.” There were other, more garbled and less-familiar sounds that neither man wanted to contemplate. They knew Sanjay, what his power did to others and to him. That he kept lunging at them, trying to get into physical contact, was sickeningly obvious. Danilo had never actually ever seen Sanjay in anything remotely similar to this. Sanjay had, over the years, developed a tolerance, and considering he only had to touch another for a few seconds to incapacitate them, that tolerance was all that was needed.

When he attacked Matt—Vagabond—he must have been in contact for several minutes, and considering the state Matt was in, it must have been like lip-locking an atom-smasher.

Still, to Danilo, there was something about addiction that made him want to beat the affected into the ground. And now, having recovered from the initial shock, he was now deadly grave. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to see this. He wanted Benji to take care of this and he wanted to not be bothered. He brought up his hand, slowly clenching it into a fist. “You think you can take me on?” It would so easy. Danilo would summon his power, his muscles would shine, and Sanjay would be airborne. It would take all of a nanosecond.

But if that very serious threat made an impact in the mind of the third man, there was no comprehension of it. Sanjay jabbered a garbled mixed of syllables that finally bunched together in a god-awful howl. Drool was running down his chin.

The two other men flanked him. The idea, Benji earlier explained, was for Danilo, stronger, faster, more agile, to immobilize Sanjay, and for Benji to get the tube down the man’s throat. Once they got the ball-gag out, of course. One step at a time…

The first part went fairly well: Danilo, an expert in several martial arts, after a few aborted attempts, got Sanjay into a full nelson hold, though it was not easy. Maddened, oblivious to pain, Sanjay, his arms flapping ridiculously in the air, heaved and flailed, a tornado of seizing body parts that made holding on to him like holding on to a writhing eel. It was clear he was trying to kick out. In the back of his mind, he had to marvel at anyone who could be so bound up and at the same to so impossible to hold down. He disliked situations when they were not like the controlled environment of his classes.

Benji quickly got the gag out of Sanjay’s mouth, which, not surprisingly, was followed by a gale of shrieks. It was pathetic to see. Sanjay, usually so Buddha-like in his remote tranquilty, had that skin torn away to reveal the maddened underflesh exposed, raw and raving. Benji knew a little of that.

And that momentary contemplation, that very human trait to want to reach out into the darkness to another, for solace and to be solaced, proved, as it often does, costly.

If there was a god, a divine entity, that played a hand in giving mortals more-than-mortal power, then he or she was a total bitch.

Sanjay is called “Paine” for a very good reason. For he brought one thing and one thing only to the battlefield: To be touched by him is to know the purest agony. Every nerve catches fire and burns to the ground, so fast your scream is caught in your throat, your mind is wiped brilliantly clean to see the very face of God and all the secrets behind it.

That was how Paine put it, but then, he always did take the poetics of the thing a little too far.

To put it simply, you cannot touch Paine without all the pain receptors in your brain going off at once. And Paine cannot touch you without all the pleasure centers in his brain going off at once. In a horrible irony, he cannot help but to enjoy, sometimes obscenely so, hurting people, or anything. Worse, he cannot turn his power “off.” 

Chapter 1, Episode 4

“It took Quartz, Eartha, and me almost an hour to get him chained up,” Benji went on. “When Paine finally comes through this, he’s going to be sore all over. Eartha ain’t known for her patience, and is for her right hook. Sent the boy flying.”

            “You know, you could probably immobilize him—“

            Benji held up his hand. “I’m not there yet. I’d slam him against the wall. That could break every bone in his body, and I do not want to deal with that. If we can keep him out of a hospital, the better. But one of us will have to keep him busy, enough to get this hose down his throat.”

            The noise, a horrible, sobbing shriek, broken only by equally desperate inhales, only got louder as the two approached the bottom door. Danilo heard the unmistakable clink of chains. He also detected the unmistakable odo—

            “Hold your foot against the door.”

            “What?”

            “If he’s busted loose.” Benji flipped the light switch. The screams reached a nearly inhuman pitch. “Not that I think he did. But I want to know where he is before I open this.”

            “Right. Think I might need some extra oomph?” Danilo found himself yelling to be heard. His hand glowed yellow.

            “You’d snap the door right off the hinges,” came the reply. “I’m going to crack this. He should be directly opposite this door on the far wall.”

            Opening the door slightly, Benji peered into the dim gloom beyond. He smiled grimly. “Still chained. Come on.”

            As Benji opened the door wide amid a tempest of shrieks, Danilo reeled back, his hand to his face. “Aw, damn! It reeks!”

Benji stared sadly at the pathetic, screaming, writhing figure across the room. “Sweating, rapid heartbeat and palpitations,” he said, counting off on his fingers. “Tremors, vomiting,” the man paused for drama, “and diarrhea.” He sighed. “All the classic signs of acute physical withdrawal. With violent tendencies thrown in for color. I thought that three solid days of this would tucker him out. No such luck.”

“Mãe do dues,” Danilo said with a grimace. “I’ve never seen him like this. He’s been bad before, but…”

“I don’t think he, or any of us, knew what he was in for when he attacked Matt in that whatever-it-was state,” Benji said. “I think Sanjay came damn close to short-circuiting.” Benji quickly closed the door. He didn’t want the neighbors to hear. Trying to explain this one to the police…

“Why do you have that ball in his mouth?”

“So he wouldn’t chew off his tongue.”

“JESUS.”

“Oh, yeah.”

The figure across from them lurched to its feet. His eyes were peeled back, but far from being glazed over or manic, they were horrifyingly, rivetingly clear and focused with a blunt, meaningful attention on the two men. His black hair was loose, free, matted with vomit and worse. Wracked with fire from within, a seizure danced across his body, first in one leg, then an arm, then the other arm.

He looked nothing like the man he was a week before.

Benji took a step forward. He was too tired to be threatened. “OK, Sanjay. We’re going to try to give you something to eat.”

“Why didn’t you bind his feet?”

“I don’t have shakles, or enough chain.”

“Rope?”

“He’d work out of that. And tear his skin to pieces.”

“Eesh.”