Chapter 1, Episode 16

            Stephanie was running at a break-neck pace into the hospital. Years of practice, and she could do it even in high-heels. She nearly took out a police officer before she skidded to the ER desk. Before the nurse could even ask, the supermodel was already talking, “My name is Stephanie DiStazio! I am the contact person for Brent Xenos! He’s here, right? Is he OK? What happened?”

            She was practically bouncing off the walls waiting for somebody. She had called everyone she could think of, but only Alastair and Finn, having no day-jobs per se, could make it as soon as they hung up. Nash and Danilo were wrapping things up. They were on their way. When a doctor appeared, all pretence of being an uppity supermodel went right out the door and the Jersey Girl came out swinging, and she nearly turned into her stone form, which would have made everything so much worse.

            “Miss DiStazio?” a doctor asked.

“What happened to Brent?” She was right in his face.
            “Miss DiStazio,” he looked around her. “Are you his family?”

            “Uh, no.”

            “No offence, ma’am, but I really should be discussing this with kin.”

            Stephanie shifted her weight uncomfortably. “They threw him out when he told them he was gay. That was seven years ago. They’d just blame this on his orientation and be done with it. You people called me. I’m the contact. And besides, his ‘kin’ are in Honolulu.”

            That brought a pause. “I see.”

            “What happened? Is Brent OK? He isn’t…he didn’t—“

“Mr. Xenos has been the victim of a very serious assault.”

            She blinked. “Oh, God. Can I see him?”

            “We have him on a sedative,” the doctor replied. He seemed to be holding something back, and she knew it.

“What. What else?”

            After another pause, the doctor continued. “We believe we are looking at a case of torture.”

She almost didn’t hear the word. It didn’t make sense. Brent? Who? How? Why? “What?”

            “It’s why we called the police. Mr. Xenos was dumped on our doorstep, wrapped up in a plastic tarp—“

Oh, Jesus, they know his weaknesses. Brent could make entire chains of volcanoes blow, but not if he couldn’t touch them. Something as simple as a shower curtain could stop him in his tracks. But who did this?

“—he has had almost every joint in his body dislocated, he has been sexual assaulted, and his entire body has been contused.”

            Stephanie didn’t quite understand all that until she saw Brent. And she screamed when she did. She nearly didn’t recognize him. “Contused” was doctor-speak for “bruised.” He was literally beaten black and blue down every last inch. Even the soles of his feet. His entire face was swollen.

            “Brent?” Stephanie whispered, her voice almost a squeak. Oh. My. God.

            “He can’t hear you,” the doctor supplied. A detective, the man Stephanie nearly ran down in her Manolos appeared next to her.

            “How well do you know Mr. Xenos?”

            Stephanie looked up, dazed. It took her a moment to get the words into her head, and another few minutes to realize she was being questioned by the police. “Why does this always happen to him?”

            “He’s been assaulted before?”

            Stephanie blinked. “Oh. No. I mean Brent has always been…very unlucky. I’ve known him for a few years,” she said, answering the first questions.

            “Do you know who could have done this to him?”

            The woman shook her head.

            “No enemies?”

            “God.”

            There was a pause. “Got an address for him?”

Chapter 1, Episode 15

OK, here's the assault scene. I've included it all in one post, so if you want to skip it, it'll be easy. Next weeks installment will pretty much let you know what happened.            

Brent literally had his balls in a vise. And looked it.

            “There’s no metal around,” Alexander intoned. “Nothing you can absorb into bodily or absorb and fire at me. Everything in the room is wood, plastic, or Formica. Very Sixties Chic.”

            Brent was no trained fighter, like Danilo. Nor was he I-don’t-care, like Alastair. He was no slacker at the gym, but like a lot of gym-rats, he had the body without any idea of how to use it. He was there, on a bed, naked, spread-eagled, his cock and balls very firmly held by a man who clearly had the upper hand in so many, many ways.

            “Really. I’d like to hear that story.”

            He got a look of abject terror as an answer. Alexander had never seen a boner wilt so fast. “Cat got your tongue?”

            Brent began to tremble.

            A strange look, of both annoyance and wonder, “Jesus. You really aren’t trained at all, are you? A first-year student could get out of this hold. Oh, I wish I could see the look on Antarctica’s face. She must be having a heart attack. Not only does a rag-tag band of wildborn do a frontal assault on her facility, they actually manage to pull it off, and not just ‘pull it off,’ they trounced her!” He was positively laughing. “Trust me when I say I really want to know how to did it. Are you that lucky or that powerful?”

            And, inexplicably, he let Brent go. He was out of the bed in a flash, heading toward the door, when something bright and blurred sang over his head. There was a strange cutting noise, a spray of wood, and Brent froze in his tracks. A huge gash appear on the wall in front of him. Something, something moving fast, had sliced through it, drywall, doorframe, wainscoting, all of it. Part of the door swung, slowly, inward. Brent was agape.

            “And that’s what I can do,” Alex said. He was right behind Brent, whose cock was magically once more in an iron grip. “Energy blades. All I gotta do is wave an arm. It’s kind of like a scythe.”

            “Who are you?” was all Brent could get out.

            He smoothed his brilliant hair back with his free hand. “My name really is Alexander Sarkesian. But I think you mean what do they call me.” He paused. “Vahagn is my codename.”

            “You’re going to kill me.”

            “Who knows what the future holds?” Alex mused melodiously. “Good thing you didn’t drink too much. Most guys would be pissing their balls out about now.”

            Brent, terrified to the point of paralysis, was already weighing a life without his balls. It was what Alexander’s other hand was about to do that worried him. And when that hand got Brent by the neck, all he knew is that he was up and flying through the air, landing in a jumble on the bed. Alexander—Vahagn—was on him in a nanosecond. And in him a nanosecond later. Ramming Brent’s screaming face into the pillow, Vahagn leaned in, his voice saturated with venom. “How did you do it?”

            Gritting his teeth, Brent managed to get his voice. “Get off me! We…we just did! We followed a tracer to the desert!”

            Vahagn rammed himself further in. “I can generate those energy blades from any part of my body, Brent. Get it?”

            The other men went totally limp. “Ugh!  …yes!”

            “What tracer?”

            “It was a phone! They stole a phone when they took Finn and—“

            “A phone?”

            Brent suddenly realized it was no longer his own life on the line. It was everyone. “Why are you doing this? What did we do? Who are yo—“ A fist slammed into the back of his head, and his voice died at once.

            “Let me make two things very clear, Brent. One: you really aren’t in a position to ask me anything. Two: your little stunt is going to make life very, very difficult. No one knew where that lab was. I mean no one. And you find it within, what, three days? With a phone?” Brent struggled, but Vahagn expertly pinned him down. The man was putting up a good fight, but had no real skill, no technique. Good lord, was it really possible that he and his team were just plain lucky? It didn’t seem possible. It was simply too hysterically funny.

“Yes,” Brent gurgled. “With a phone.” There was a sharp crack and Brent’s world flashed white. He shrieked.

            Alex had dislocated his shoulder. “You have several more joints I can go through. I was trained. We all are. In all sorts of things. Even in kinds of sex we wouldn’t ordinarily consider.”

            Through a red-hot haze of pain, Brent managed to twist his head around. “Go to hell.” He began thrashing.

            “Oh, the irony of that statement,” Vahagn laughed. He hit Brent so hard on the back of the head that the other man passed out for a few seconds. When he came to, Brent felt his right leg pop out of its socket. But he did not scream. Outwardly.

            “I already know about Finn, Brent. We all do. His life is practically an open book. We know what he can do, and what he can’t, like control his power when he is asleep or out cold. That is the main reason he was left alone. Powerful, to be sure, but just too dangerous. Too impractical. What if he was knocked unconscious? He could take out others, or fry a ship’s circuits.” He paused. “Why Antarctica even considered taking him I cannot fathom. But she always was one to overcompensate. But enough about Finn. He’s now settled back into his life with his surfer-dude boyfriend living the hetero-normative gay life. They’re going for the whole monogamy thing, but I give that a year, tops.”

            Something new flashed across Brent’s dazed mind. It wasn’t a thought. It was an emotion. It surged through him, steeling him. Rage. “Fuck you.”

            “’Bout time you started getting angry,” Vahagn mused. “Here. Why don’t I change tactics…”

“Kill me, Vahagn.”

            That was unexpected. It wasn’t a plea. It was a command. “Getting ahead of yourself, don’t you think?”

            “I control the ground you walk on. Can you stay in the air forever? I’ll find you. I have the whole planet on my side.”

            “Yes, but that ‘finding’ part is going to be a real pain.”

            Brent suddenly gabbled, convulsing.

            “Yes. I told you we were all well-trained.”

            Brent couldn’t believe it. He had come.

            “Why physically take your cock from you,” Vahagn whispered in his ear, “when I can make you give it to me?”

            Brent tried to bite him. Vahagn avoided it easily.

            “I, of course, found you, no sweat,” Vahagn observed, dislocating Brent’s other shoulder. “But you know that. You see, they knocked you out. Plenty of time to take a few photos and body scans. Talk about ‘classified.’ But, anyhoo, it was then a matter of running your photo through a facial-recog program. That porno you did, what was it, Master Blaster, I think—not bad! No wonder you got an AVN award,” he man mused, forcing Brent to ejaculate again. “But enough about that. Trust me, if I found you, they already have. And you know what amazes me is that none of their psychics have swooped in to mind-fuck any of you.”

            Brent, screaming, bit into the pillow.

            “Which means that you must have a psychic on your side. A powerful one, too, to keep you shielded. And not just you, but a whole bunch of people, scattered over who knows how large an area. Any psychic who can do that alone must be powerful. And probably a little nutty (and selfish, since it’s clear nobody is coming to help you, but then, that’s a psychic. The best ones are so damn aloof) but that comes with the territory. But pray that continues. Once that shield goes, you’ll all be out in the open. Now, you were pretty smart to knock out the interior communications and security systems—and how on Earth did you do that?—before you rescued Finn and stole that damn clone of Sean. What does he call himself now? Benjamin?”

            Brent felt his other leg go. He was now officially a rag doll. He cried out, coming again. “Stop it!”

            “I can make you give it up to me again and again. Until I get what I really want.”

            “I won’t tell you.”

            “Heh. I knew you had some spirit,” Vahagn laughed, yanking the other man up by his hair, his arms hanging horridly at his sides. He dropped him, picked him up, dropped him, picked him up again. “This is fun! Anyay, because you blacked out the cameras, they, and I, have no idea who your team is, except you. There was that chick with the hair, but that could have been a costume. Sure looked it, anyway. And I’ll bet, if I know them, my former collegues already have a clone of you on the way.”

            Brent, nearly mad with pain, managed to glance at Vahagn, wild-eyed.

            “Oh, don’t give me that look. You were out cold. Plenty of time to extract a little DNA. You have no idea how rare a boy like yourself really is, to control all stone and metal. So I expect that you’ll have a twin pretty soon, born 25 years apart.”

            “You’re insane!”

            Vahagn exhaled, his cheeks puffing out. “Boy, did I hear that line a lot. One of the reasons I took off. But trust me when I say they have cause. And permission. You have no idea what is out there. What is at stake. Not just you. This whole world. This whole existence.”

            Brent gasped. “No. I won’t tell you. You’re insane.”

            Vahagn turned the man over, remaining inside him. It was clear Brent was beginning to disassociate what was happening to him, the marvelous defense mechanism people have when brutalized. It was like fainting when the pain got too great. “Oh, no. Stay with me. I want you here.” Turning him over fully, Vahagn laughed and said, “And there’s that horse-dick we all know and love and pay to see. It’s better when you can see it happen to you. Better for me, I mean.” He made Brent come again. Vahagn had truly taken Brent’s body from him.

            “I won’t tell you.”

            Vahagn smirked.

           

            And Vahagn when stopped, looking at the mangled man impaled on him. And he held Brent’s head down, and leaned close to his ear and said, “You never cried once. Very good, Brent. Very good.”

Chapter 1, Episode 14

This Episode will feature a sexual assault. IF you can't handle it, please skip this whole episode.

His name was Alexander, and when he put his hands down the front of Brent’s shorts, and kept them there, Brent became the most hated man ever. All the other pretty boys couldn’t hold a candle; he was tall, blond, and even in the black light of the club, everyone could see his vividly violet eyes. He was the high-school jock, Viking warrior, underwear model, and the hero from a Jane Austin novel all rolled into one. His clothes were painted on. He had the perfect height, the perfect mass, perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect voice, perfect skin. He was Perfect.

            It fact, he was a little too perfect, but when the good times are really good, one has a habit of not thinking about it. You’re having too much fun.

And he wanted Brent.

Every last inch.

And by golly, Brent was ready to give ‘em.

           

            “Not much to tell,” Brent admitted as Alex settled himself comfortably on Brent’s chest. “Habitually long-term unemployed graphic designer.”

            “’Habitually?’”

            “Name a recent disaster. I’ll bet you I lost a job to it.”

            Alex rose an eyebrow.

            “That was a real question. Go on!”

            “Uh, well, what qualifies as a ‘disaster?’”

            “Get creative.”

            “OK…um, 9/11?”

            “Yep! The firm I was with, we were actually a subsidiary of a business in New York. They went under, and so did we.”

            “Ouch. Well, let’s see…the recession?”

            “Which one?”

            Alex blinked. “Huh?”

            “The one now, the one in 2000…”

            “Um—“

            “Trick question. Both.”

            “Really.”

            “Yup.”

            “I don’t want to play this anymore.”

            “You’re not the only one. Anyhoo, you loose enough jobs, and it doesn’t matter if it is or is not your own fault. You become a jinx. No one touches you.”

            “Says you,” Alex grinned, throwing off the covers and merrily going down on Brent with all the gusto of a wet/dry vac. “I’ll touch you.” Brent was singing opera in seconds.

            “So that’s it?” Alex said, bobbing up to catch his breath. “No more stories?”

            “I’m a simple guy.”

            “I don’t know about that.” Alex grabbed Brent’s cock and manipulated the head. If you could dance lying flat on your back, Brent did. Alex smiled wickedly. “Personally, I’d love to hear the one about that lab you raided.”

Chapter 1, Episode 13

This chapter describes a sexual assault. Not not read it you can't handle it.

Then there was his job. Jobs. Terrorist attacks all the way over in New York, economic crashes, the CEO suddenly dying on him, a sex scandal that had nothing to do with him, more economic crashes—the man, who was excellent at his work, had miraculously gone through so many jobs that he was, from his resume, entirely un-hirable. Which, when it drove him to the occasional porn gig to pay the electric bill, the world probably judged him. He was to be forgiven for is numerous bouts of paranoia and misanthropy. Brent was, in fact, a perfect example of “it being beaten out of you.”

            Needless to say, the man just could not catch a break. But through it all, he still managed to put on a brave face. It wasn’t until much later everything came crashing down.

            Somebody upped the ante.

            It was the subject no one talked about. It’s possible that he actually snapped. Who wouldn't?  And how can you console the inconsolable?

            Afterwards, he simple gave up. No more. He walked away from every possession he ever had, and most of his friends. He turned his back on everybody else, becoming, in effect, a hermit. Being gifted with the power to absorb, and be absorbed by, stone and metal, he found a boulder in a park and took up residence in it. If there was the occasional call to house-sit, he was able to “fly” through stone as well: he simply sunk into the bedrock, up the walls of Stephanie’s building, and stepped out of the exposed brick of her walls. He couldn’t take his clothes with him when he did this—there had been a few awkward moments over the years—but it clearly did not bother him. If he was thrown into a police car, he simply absorbed into the metal of the vehicle until the coast was clear. To boot, his body absorbed the minerals it needed from the rock directly. He almost never ate real food.

            But Omri and Stephanie weren’t thinking of all of the past disasters a la Brent. It was a future one that, not surprisingly, Brent found.

            Or rather, found him.

            It was before he had “gone boulder.” Right before. The very second before. He was at a club, smack in the middle of that part of the night that where the crowd divvies up into the “look how hot I am as I ignore you forever” crowd on one side and the “look how hot I am as I judge you forever” on the other. Not surprisingly, Brent managed to be the civilian on the field between both armies when the hottest man there did not, in fact, ignore him or judge him. He all but slung Brent over his shoulder.

He was tall, a staggering 6’5’’ (Brent was “only” 6’1’’) and built like a brick shithouse. Unlike the trimmed, shaven pretty boys, he was actually rather hairy. Which was truly a thing to see, since he was a platinum blond. He looked like an Icelandic truck driver—or a trank driver. And when he came up to Brent and introduced himself, Brent could not believe his luck.

            Which should have made him suspicious.

Chapter 1, Part 4, Episode 12

JUST A REMINDER. THIS CHAPTER WILL FEATURE A VIOLENT SEXUAL ASSAULT. IF YOU DON'T HAVE THE STOMACH, SKIP.

“Thanks for letting me keep my stuff here,” Brent replied.

            Stephanie waved it off. “It’s a big place. I was so intent on buying a showpiece I didn’t think of what I was going to do with all the space.”

            Omri sat back. Stephanie could have drifted right off a Vargas painting. She looked exactly like a 1940’s pin-up girl. Instead of sharp angles and alien-looking features, she was curves and bosoms and long, long, legs, with a small, pert mouth and large, doe-like eyes. Put her in some thigh-highs with the seam up the back and she’d be every World War II soldier’s wet dream (the straight ones), exuding an innocent, but constant, eroticism. She was the next Betty Page. Only better.

            That she was a dyke was supremely ironic.

            Although, by her own words, she was a “futch”—a “femme butch.” No dresses, minimal make-up, short bob of a hair-do. Unless she was on a catwalk, in which case, all bets were off.

            “So tell me,” Omri said at length. “What are we celebrating again?”

            “You shitting me?” Stephanie asked.

            Brent was matter-of-fact: “Good riddance to Vagabond. We can now get on with our lives! Whoopee!” He took a swig of Barolo.

            “Says us,” Omri replied.

            “What are you talking about?” Stephanie put her bottle down.

            “Come on. Can’t you feel it?”

            “Feel what?”

            “Vagabond isn’t in our heads anymore.”

            “And that’s a good thing.”

            “Yeah, but he’s not shielding us anymore. We’re in the open.”

            It was the one thing Stephanie had gone out of her way not to think about. Omri, however, always one to think too much and enjoy too little, was just the man for the job of Official Buzzkill. Both of them shot a look to Brent.

            Brent Xenos was actually one of the best people they knew. He was thoughtful of others, generous when he could be, the most non-judgmental person on the planet. If there was a wounded bird to shelter, an old lady to help cross the street, or a cry for help in the darkness, Brent was the man who came running. That he got used every single time didn’t at all dent his eternal optimism in his fellow man. For a time.

            But why the man even set foot into daylight was beyond anyone. He was, without question, absolutely, 100%, a complete loser. Which was perhaps a harsh thing to say (if only Brent wasn’t the first one to admit it) if it wasn’t for the fact that the man was a bull’s eye for disaster. His professional life, his personal life, everything about the man was a pile-up of tragedy, each more bewildering than the next. No matter how much effort he but into something, no matter his commitment, no matter the credit to his name, it was simply never enough. God loved to torture him. Period. And it was much too fun a show to stop.

            Boyfriends? He actually got the lines, “I love you but I love somebody else more” and “You’re too normal in a weird sort of way.” Getting dumped by text? Brent. E-mail? Brent. The fade-away game? Brent. Catching his BF in a mass orgy? Brent. Finding out that the boyfriend who espoused monogamy to the point of a cult was actually addicted to both sex and meth? Brent. Getting blacklisted as poz because he didn’t want to bareback a guy who was already poz? Being good enough to fuck but not good enough to commit to? Brent, Brent, Brent, and Brent-in-spades.

            And, when he decided to have a go at bodybuilding contests and devoted himself to hard 6 months at the gym—he had already been impressive at that point, just not competition grade—and could NOT come running at the drop of a hat like he used to, he was dumped cold for being selfish.

Chapter 1, Part 4, Episode 11

**OK, FOLKS: HERE IS THE SCARY PASSAGE. I WILL DEPICT, AS THIS CHAPTER PROGRESSES, A VERY BRUTAL SEXUAL ASSAULT. SKIP THIS IF YOU'RE NOT UP TO IT.

            

VAGABOND

The water wasn’t even that cold, but the shock of feeling it without the filters of his energies nearly knocked him out.

            As the water coursed down his body, the man watched as the riverlets ran and criss-crossed his skin. Matching the feeling of the water to the sight of it. It looked like trying to observe something from very far away. Or through a fog. Something you hadn’t seen for so long that you found yourself reminding yourself that, yes, that was what it was supposed to look like. Like this. Yes. Like this.

            His hair flopped forward in a black mass of coils and tendrils, and for a second, he felt ridiculous.

            No more need for this, I guess.

            He had decided he no longer needed his powers. Not now, not after they were all dead. Because, oh, yes, he killed them all. Every last one.

            But as one promises never to do something, and then suddenly finds where they need to do that self-forbidden thing, he opened the gates of his mind, and with far more relief that he would have ever admitted, he let the Lights out.

            Its surged over the strands of his hair, in a surging flair, the dye was ripped off, and what had gone into the shower as a black-haired man, emerged, shakily still, a radiant, Apollo-blond. The Lights were gone. Again, he did not need them, but he was glad they were always there.

            Drying, he caught himself in a mirror. I look appalling. And that man is still screaming. “Shut up, already!”

            The world shook and shattered.

           

            “There you go,” Brent said, pouring the last of the wine.

            “I got more,” Stephanie assured them all.

            “Anybody care which kind I get? Red, white?” Omri called out from the kitchen.

            “Nope!”

            “Let the photographer decide,” Stephanie said grandly.

            Omri came out with three bottles. “One for each?”

            “Me likey,” Brent said.

            “Gimme,” Stephanie said, fumbling with the corkscrew.

            Omri plunked himself down. “You sure you don’t mind us all drinking through your wine supply?”

            “I hardly ever use it,” Stephanie said. “I’m hardly ever here to use it.”

            Must be fun being employed, the perennially unemployed Brent thought.

            “It’s, what, Paris, then Rome?” Omri asked the model.

            “And then Berlin and Stockholm after that,” Stephanie added. “Thanks,” she said to Brent, “for house-sitting.”

            “Better than my usual digs,” Brent replied, easing back into the chair.

            Omri blinked. “Isn’t your ‘usual digs’ a boulder?”

            “’Rent-free boulder,” Brent corrected. He tipped the wine bottle back.

            “Has you there,” Stephanie snickered. It was so easy to forget how shattered he was.

Chapter 1, Part 4, Episode 10

Would you have killed him

“You saw what he did to Tug-of-War. To Pitch Black and Paine,” Alastair said quietly. It was now Justify Killing Vagabond Time. “And what he did to us. All of us. You, me, Danilo, Romeesha. He didn’t just highjack our lives. He hijacked us. Kidnapped us off to the desert and force us to fight him. Not to make us better, but to get him ready for whatever could be thrown at him. We were just steps…”

“Steeled.”

That didn’t make any sense. “What?”

“The man’s face. I figured it out. He was steeled.”

Alastair blinked. “We’re back at the drawing again?”

“He was steeled. It’s not over. When he defeated Vagabond. It was just the first step. You said it. ‘Just steps.’”

“You’re me freaking out, man.”

Finn hurriedly sketched in the man’s face. Eyes, nose, mouth, brows. Falling out of the air, rising up from the page, the man’s face materialized. Finn’s whole body was suddenly into the effort, as much as his mind already was. It was only, from Alastair’s perspective, a few strokes of the pencil, and yet there Finn was, leaning in close the surface of the paper, his eyes on fire, focused and alight. He was in the zone, where nothing and nobody, save artist and canvas, existed.

And then he stopped.

Finn always knew, creepily, when to finish. Still in Alastair’s arms, his body relaxed.

Alastair’s head tilted in wonder. It was spot on. Actually, it was uncanny. Vagabond and the…man, whom they only knew as “Unicorn.”

Finn inhaled, as if to speak.

Alastair was quiet. Something was coming.

“I would have killed him, too.”

The other man winced. For someone like Finn to come to a conclusion like that, the man who remembered with fresh guilt killing a bee for fun (he was convinced it was trying talking to him when he did that) as a child, it was a catastrophic step. Alastair hugged his love closer.

That night, they made an all-consuming love, frantic, as if they were trying to run away from something. Or gain something that had been lost, and the memory was so pure, so sweet and fresh, it was as if it—whatever “it” was—was still there. They reached out to each other, these two men, throwing down all the walls, all the shields, until no protection was left. They reached out, gave each other their fires and dreams, and for one universal moment, they were the gods of each other.

Later, when Finn wearily retired to the basement, Alastair followed, and lingered on the basement steps, out side the scorch zone. It took longer this time, but where it had not been before, suddenly there was a great orb of prismatic, opalescent light around the man, as scintillating as a mirrorball. It was beautiful.