Meander

> Plot diabolical schemes.

You are now MONTGOMERINE JAMES LEOMILIAN MAXISON MANWOOD-THORNCHESTER, ESQ. You are a HIGH-RANKING OPERATIVE in the REDRIA¦EMCORP HIERARCHY. You are NOT LOYAL.

> Steeple fingers as you contemplate your dastardly schemes.

Fingers?

>Laugh maniacally.

Step 2: Laugh maniacally. You do, and then feel a little silly. It doesn't really suit you.

>Get coffee. You cannot plot without coffee!

Step 3: Get coffee. Your PERSONAL COFFEE is still warming up! You blame the PERPETUAL WINTER for requiring continual coffee-heating.


You're really not sure why you even bought Plotting Dastardly Schemes for Beginners to begin with.


Besides, you aren't a beginner - you already have a DASTARDLY PLAN to enact. Clutching tight your AP3X PHONE, you make a call to one of your associates.


"What do you want, Manwood? I'm drinking here."
A cruel smile makes its way across your face as you explain. "Two targets; you have one witness and one elimination."
"Why me, Manwood? You only ask me when your other lackeys can't do your dirty work."

"It's the Redria operative. The one in music. The one who can fly."
"She finally slipped up? The goddamn super?!"

Amidst the noise, you hear her finish her drink and slam it on the bar. In the darkness of your office you allow yourself a small measure of satisfaction.
"I'll take it, Manwood - does she know we've been tracking her?
"After two years? She'd have to be utterly naïve not to."
"Good. If she doesn't live up to the challenge you're selling me, Manwood, someone is going to pay. Double."
"Do the job, Lavender."
She hangs up.

====

Tom: How did she move so fast?!?!

You are now TOM SMITH again. You begin, fracturedly, to ponder how JAMMROLL caught up to you when you were running full tilt. It's only now that it's hitting you: she can fly. She can fly she can-

She has your hand quite tightly. In light of that you promptly take another method of escape, and go into shock. A memory surfaces as she drags you along:


A memory from a long, long time ago. You were only six.

----


It was the fourth of July. Chaos was in the streets, but not for celebration. Looking back, it was obvious why the Reformists had chosen the date they had. They wished to change the meaning of 'Independence' forever. The Crash had made all suffer, equally, and compatriots to their cause had multiplied - and at the appointed time the multitudes rose up.


They made no bones and left no illusions. The coup was bloody, brutal and total. They gained control, and what they lacked in subtlety they made up for in speed and in strength. No one was safe, not from the conspirators that infiltrated every level of society.


You had no idea where you were going; the only goal was away, away from the chaos - away from the shouting and the violence behind. Your mother dragged you by the hand down the ruined street, past the fires and the blood and the burning.


It was so long ago. You don't even properly remember what she looked like then - your mental image of her was always of her in her last days - before they finally killed her.


Your father's face, however, you will remember forever. The look in his eyes: pained, as his wife and only son made their way away, and in pain, as the wreckage crushing his body pressed down with the inexorable hand of gravity.


You will remember forever the moment the sharp smell of gasoline fumes, and forever the sparking, sibilant sound of the flames.


His visage as it was borne on a wall of yellow fire bore on it shock, as if he never expected to die trapped and burning. He probably didn't. No one expected this, except perhaps the Reformists and the most cynical of economists.


Urban legends still fly about that day - some ridiculous, some almost believable, and for the most part untrue.


One of them concerns a fire-bringer, who flew about in a swathe of destruction, aimlessly killing anything that looked amusing to kill. They called him the Conflagrator, the Hellbringer, the Shut Up You Guys Supers Don't Exist...


You called him real.


You and your mother never spoke of him, never acknowledged that her husband's death was due to anything but neutral, unthinking fire. You came close to broaching the subject many times. You came close to convincing yourself it was all the imagination, that perhaps your child self simply personified the inexplicability of a father's death into an antagonistic figure to act as straw man for sorrow and anger.


But no innocent child's imagination could have manufactured that malicious smirk, of pain caused and thoroughly enjoyed, of pulverizing lives already shattered into dust, ashes and a trail of burnt bodies.



----



You break JAMMROLL's grip and stare her down. You declare to her that she is a SUPER, that you get kind of tetchy around SUPERPOWERED INDIVIDUALS even though you didn't know for sure they existed until five minutes ago, and that you would like some ANSWERS thank you very much.
"There isn't any time." She looks around suspiciously. "If it's answers you want, Smith, you'll have to come with me. It isn't safe here."

>

SpoilerShow

Attempt #231 at steepled fingers:




Also image #100! :D