She released the orb that generated her force field. “Well that was… I’d say weird, but that’s a pretty relative term in our profession.”
Hope nodded agreement. “Are you guys usually a nexus for fictional superheroes?” She considered what she’d just said. “Um. I want to emphasize that I’m only fictional in your hyper-dimensional substrate.”
“Evidently… he really was fictional,” the Harem beside her said. Hope and Sydney traded a Huh? look.
“Meet me over by him.” Harem gestured where her bespectacled self knelt by their fallen attacker.
The pair stepped closer to find Harem kneeling over a man who looked superficially like the one who attacked them. He was taller but much skinnier, and didn’t come close to filling out his uniform, which was, there was no other word for it, cheap looking. His bandoliers were made out of yellow duct tape, and his blue bodysuit wasn’t made of unstable molecules or even spandex. He wore dark blue cargo pants and a matching turtleneck with custom stitching on it.
“It’s a cosplayer.” Halo said, as obviously bewildered as Hope. “Did he have an illusion over him earlier?”
“His beams were real enough.” Maxima loomed over them. “The wall is still damaged.”
Dabbler was already scanning him with another spell. “Mmm, there’s a trace of energy leading out of the room, but it’s fading fast. Whatever fueled his transformation may be in the merchant bazaar or beyond.”
“You mean the dealer’s room?” Halo poked the sorceress.
Maxima nodded and started issuing orders. “Right, Dabbler, come with me, we’re going to find…” She didn’t get any further as screams swelled from the audience. The main door to the dealer’s room burst from its frame as a giant creature stumbled through, and Hope blinked again; it looked like a robotic gorilla. She wasn’t the only one stunned by its appearance, and nobody moved until it hauled back to take a swing at a terrified convention goer.
Stunned as everyone else, Hope moved far too late but Maxima covered the distance to the Mecha-Gorilla in the blink of an eye to smack the descending arm away from its target with enough force to send parts of the armor flying into the wall and spin the entire beast on its feet. Turned around, the thing presented a very obvious “this is my power source” pack on its back, and Maxima tore it off like it was cardboard.
And then it was; the cosplayer who hit the ground with a yelp where Mecha-Gorilla should have landed seemed as confused as anyone else.
“Hey what the hell are you doing to my costume!?” He started to push himself up, fell down again. “Ow! Ow! My arm! I think it’s broken! Why did you attack me, it’s just cosplay!” He rolled on to his side, cradling his arm and crumpling more of his cardboard Mecha-Gorilla outfit.
If he was dressed up as something from a movie or comic, Hope, trying to slow her racing heart, couldn’t identify it. But she didn’t recognize the next two who came bursting into the room, either—not so much through the broken door where Maxima stood as through impromptu entryways where parts of the wall used to be. One of them could only be described as a big pile of tentacles with an eye on top, either an alien-of-the-week from an old Doctor Who episode or something inappropriately Japanese, and the other one looked like an evil magician complete with top hat and twirlable moustache. He also had a purple cape and golden gauntlets, one of which he aimed at the podium where Arianna stood trying to direct the crowd.
“N’ya hah! Who wants to see a lady disappear?!” he cackled in a cartoonishly evil nasal voice, firing blue rings of energy. Hope launched herself, but Hiro intercepted them first and Hope shielded her eyes from the blue flare. When she uncovered them she saw that the only thing to disappear had been his shirt, blown off like ash, his torso obviously immune to the effect. His sharply chiseled, depilated and buffed torso.
“Oh my.” She realized she’d said it aloud when Halo smirked.
“It happens. Every. Battle.”
Harem laughed. “That’s another five bucks for the Wardrobe Malfunction Jar.” Then she yelped—pulled away from the group by a tentacle that snaked around her ankle while everyone was distracted. Another one whipped around Hope’s waist and tried to pull her with no success. It did drag several con goers toward it—male and female, and Hope noted with relief that it wasn’t pausing to rip anyone’s clothes off, so its origins remained blessedly inconclusive.
But if it was another transformed cosplayer, how could she attack it safely?
As she hesitated Halo yelped and popped her shield back into existence around herself when one of the flailing tentacles made a grab for her. Shocked into action, Hope grabbed her own and squeezed to crush it in half—they had to be just faked-up extensions from the costume body. The rubbery limb started to give, but then sprang back into shape and jerked free of her loosening grip. Attempting to grab it again, she realized she could barely close her hands around it.
Oh, crap. On a cracker.
A tingling numbness begin to spread from her waist where the tentacle held her, and her knees threatened to give. Seeing her wavering, Halo tried to bat the tentacle away from her with her own blue neon one but the rubbery appendage just twisted with the strikes. Hope gathered herself to leap into the air, but Dabbler came out of nowhere to put a hand on her shoulder as she chopped through the tentacle with an improbably demonic and glamorous sword.
Dabbler continued to brace her, which was weird because she had both hands around her sword. “Don’t worry, cute-stuff, it only had you for seconds—the paralyzing effect should wear off quickly.” The “civilian consultant” let her go and spun around as a vortex of light swirled up her body. In its wake, she changed from a copper-tanned beauty to a purple something. Something still humanoid and beautiful, covered in iridescent green stripes, sporting two different kinds of horns, digitigrade legs with cloven hooves and another pair of arms.
Hope’s Laconic Acceptance of Weird Shit was being seriously challenged.
Transformed Dabbler gripped her sword with all four hands and leapt over a row of chairs to slice through the tentacle dragging Harem away, leaving Hope to slide to the ground, the tingling in her limbs half numbness, half returning sensation.
Halo landed to help her up. “I’m sorry! I just stood there smacking it like an idiot! I thought you had it, I didn’t realize…”
“Itslokay, I dibn’t…” Hope stopped and tried to rub feeling back into her jaw. Oh, my hand works again. “I thought I did, too.”
“I could have used my particle beam to cut it,” Sydney babbled, pointing to an orb with fire and lightning dancing around inside it, “but it’s so powerful I can’t use it near civilians.”
“I think they’ve got it covered.” Hope watched an exotically inhuman Dabbler chop away at the tentacles, dancing through them with an expertise that suggested this wasn’t her first time fighting this sort of creature. “What is she?”
“It’s her...cough…battle form.” Sydney explained, an expression on her face that said I’m absolutely lying right now but that’s what we tell the public. If you’d like to know more, please speak to someone well above my pay grade.
Hope knew all about those sorts of explanations. “Okay.”
Severing the last of the tentacles from this monster changed it back into a guy wearing a cloak covered in popped animal balloons. He looked as bewildered as Mecha-Gorilla guy had. So did the evil magician, once Hiro tore off his gauntlets and, after fending off an ineffectual but comical deluge of rabbits, squashed his top hat.
Taking it all in, Hope winced. Yeah, it’s going to be so much fun trying to convince everyone I’m real now.
But not her problem right now—her super-duper hearing picked up Maxima’s orders coming from Sydney’s earpiece. Arc-SWAT’s leader had advanced through the shattered doors into the next room and found more business.
“Move it, people! Transformation threats are proliferating in the dealers’ room—engage with non-lethal force and ensure the safety of untransformed civilia
ns! Whatever’s going on, knocking them out or destroying key parts of their costumes seems to revert them back to normal! Dabbler, we need to identify the source of this shit ASAP!”
An unruffled Arianna returned to the lectern, calmly urging the con goers still in the auditorium to remove their costumes before they were affected by whatever was happening, and asking if anyone knew a way to get a message to the entire convention center. A good thought and one that made Hope wince again; this was turning into a full-scale bystander-threatening event and she wasn’t trained to work with this team. She turned to Halo.
“You guys have your hands full, let me help!”
Goth-Harem hopped up to them, one leg obviously still numb, and held out her hands. “Here, take my choker and earpiece! Only one of me really needs to be wearing one anyway, have you used a tactical mic before?”
“Yes!” Hope took the offered choker, snapping it around her neck and wiggling the earpiece into place. Halo pressed the button on her own choker.
“Maxima, Astra is going to help! She’s using one of Harem’s sets, so if you see a Harem flying around on your HUD, that’s why.”
Harem fiddled with the earpiece as Maxima replied. “Astra, do not engage unless you feel you have an easy takedown. Stick to defending civvies and helping keep exits clear.”
Hope felt around on the choker and quickly found the switch. “Yes Ma’am.”
Still fiddling, Harem adjusted what Hope had thought was the tip of an earpiece mic (of course it wasn’t—if it was, they wouldn’t need the collar’s throat-mic) until it sat just inside her peripheral vision. A light on the tip projected a heads up display into her eye, overlaying her vision with icons of the team members matching their chokers. Harem and Halo’s icons floated over their heads, and Hope panned her head around to see other Arc-SWAT icons from members already on the other side of the ruined wall. A compass, GPS coordinates, and a wealth of other information ran in neatly organized rows along the top and bottom of her vision. It was almost like having Shell back.
“Is that in focus?” Harem asked.
Hope nodded distractedly. “Yes, thank you. Wow, this is really handy.”
“We used to have goggles that did the same thing but they kept getting punched off and smashed. These are…” Harem tilted her head. “…slightly more durable.”
“Oh, crap!” Beside them, Halo started. “Uh, Max, I get why you don’t want her on offence, but people don’t know she’s with us! They’ll think she’s one of those—”
Crap. Halo was right. Panicked con goers wouldn’t know her from all the other fictional heroes popping up—the fact that she wasn’t attacking the Arc-SWAT team would only confuse them.
“Damn it!” Maxima shot back. There was a pause, then a thud that made the convention center shudder, knocking several ceiling panels loose. “Hell with it! Astra—engage as you see fit but DO. NOT. KILL. ANYONE. Minimum force takedowns, am I clear?”
Hope nearly saluted. “Yes Ma’am, absolutely!”
“Then get your butts in here!”
“Thanks, Harem. On it, ma’am!”
As fast as Hope moved, Halo moved faster. The girl grabbed two of her orbs—the flight and forcefield ones, obviously—and went through the hole in the wall at a trajectory aimed to take her high into the next room. Hope followed; clearly Halo intended to make herself a target—smart move with an indestructible forcefield to keep her safe, and it gave Hope a perfect opportunity.
“Yikes!” Halo flinched with a yell as a short hafted war hammer rang her shield like a bell. Hope followed the hammer back down to the mighty-thewed Norse god who’d thrown it.
“Well met, shield-maiden! At last, a worthy foe—hey!”
Letting her drop carry on past his shoulder, she snatched his billowing red cape from its silver clasps as she passed. The transformation was almost instantaneous, but she snatched the professional model’s returning but suddenly much lighter hammer and crushed it against the floor for good measure before grabbing his molded plastic armor and shaking him.
“Listen! Everyone in costume’s in danger! Make them take masks or gear off before they change, too! If they change, leave them to us! Move people out!”
And Arianna must have found someone who knew the PA system; Hope could hear similar instructions blaring over the crash and din of the fight. Just feet from them, Halo’s lighthook snaked out and yanked a lightsaber from a red-skinned Jedi’s hands and the sight shocked Hope’s man out of his paralysis. She let go.
“R-right!” He easily hoisted the dazed Jedi and retreated down the aisle between the smashed kiosks.
Over her new earpiece, Hope listened to Halo dispense genre-savvy tips. “Harem, pop down to a restaurant and see if you can find a banana—the guy Hiro’s fighting is afraid of them! Don’t give me that look, I didn’t write the character! Also see if you can find dish soap, we need to de-oil the guy Dabbler’s facing off against. Who would even dress up like him? Ug, you’d get oil all over your pants and…”
Then someone jumped Hope from behind and tried to drive a knife into her temple. The knife bounced, but when she reached back for her attacker whoever it was flipped away, leaving a beeping grenade tucked under the top of her cape. Grabbing the live grenade she doubled over to curl around it, tucking it tight against her stomach and clenching in anticipation.
This is going to sting.
The whump of the explosion felt like a boot to her stomach, but her next breath was relief—mostly showy fire and boom, the grenade had little in the way of actual impact. A realized version of the Hollywood prop? Whatever it was, it had barely scuffed Hope’s costume and she spun around looking for her assailant.
The woman in a catsuit adorned with paramilitary gear might have been stunned at Hope’s lack of gooey red explosiveness, but she ducked aside fast enough when Hope lunged. A series of impressive looking but impractical backflips later, Hope caught her in mid flip and tore the catsuit in half, leaving a dazed woman in a sports bra and panties to tumble into a pile of shipping boxes. Hope helped her to her feet and gave her the same briefing she’d dropped on “Thor.”
Turning about, she took in the room. Halo had landed to use her lighthook, whipping it around to knock back transformed cosplayers while flicking her forcefield off and on, each flicker expanding the field to encompass more uncostumed con goers as she moved back towards the hole they’d come through. Smart. Maxima and Hiro took turns playing clay pigeon, popping up to draw fire as Halo had, while purple flashes told Hope that Harem was keeping busy at ground level with her syringes. But Varia fought—
Hope almost groaned. Not the Big Guy.
The Bronze Bostonian hung onto the hulking green giant as he roared and spun around, trying to peel her off his back. Whatever power Varia was getting from contact with him wasn’t obvious—she was glowing and Hope didn’t think even contortionists could bend like she was bending—but she was keeping the lumbering engine of mass destruction from taking out his rage on anyone else while she tried to get at his—
You’ve got to be kidding me. The transformed cosplayer only wore one obvious piece of costume to remove.
When Hope pantsed him he turned back into a wiry kid with Styrofoam muscles. His ragged purple trousers smelled like ass and body paint.
“Thanks!” Varia laughed, holding out her hand. “Let’s see what—”
“Guys!” Halo yelled over the com link. “One of these things is not like the other! In the middle!”
Looking back, Hope saw that Halo had managed to herd her charges out of danger and pop back up for a new look. She followed the bespectacled girl back into the air, scanning the convention floor, and saw that Halo was right; the guy she wildly pointed at was different.
First, like Hope he was the only powered-up “fictional character” in the room not attacking the Arc-SWAT team or other con goers. Hope could tell he was powered up because he was glowing and sparking and the staff he waved around pulsed with light. It also twisted, t
he dragon carvings on it slithering around the staff and sniffing the air as if searching for something. Every time the staff pulsed another nearby cosplayer blinked into his played character.
“Who’s he supposed to be?” Hope yelled, forgetting about her throat-mic. The guy looked like a scruffy Phantom of the Opera, minus the mask and plus a hooded cloak.
“Don’t know!” Halo returned.
“And don’t care!” The pinpoint-honed blast Maxima shot at his staff sizzled the air past Hope’s ear. And disappeared into the staff’s own glow with as much effect as the optic blasts had had on her earlier. The disreputable villain, whoever he was, started at the burst, looking wildly around for its source, and broke into mad laughter.
“Wait a second!” Sydney knew the guy. “He’s the tool from out in the hall, talking all fancy about the Doom of Man! Sexist little vole shart! What about the Doom of Women?”
“Sydney! Focus!” Maxima yelled over the earpiece while firing more ineffective blasts at the staff, all negated by the glow surrounding it.
“Right, uh, he didn’t have that staff then… I think he… He must have bought it in the dealer’s room! What kind of idiot would sell a magical doomsday staff…” Wait a minute...
“What is it?” Astra asked. She’d gotten off to a rocky start, but was handling herself pretty well now.
“I recognize the staff! It’s a prop… I mean, it was used as a prop on that show that only lasted one season. Legend of the… Uh, Legends of the Under Moors or something. It was the wise man’s staff—but it didn’t do anything on the show! It was just a walking stick!”
“If it doesn’t match anything, could it be the source?” Astra suggested distractedly. “So maybe the studio prop department found it at an estate sale and thought it looked cool? They didn’t know what it was, but this guy saw it on the show and did?”
“My money’s on Chinese antiquity shop,” Sydney nodded sagely as Astra dove to chase what looked like a ninja with a pair of panties over his face. “They have the best MacGuffins.”
Wearing the Cape 6: Team-Ups and Crossovers Page 32
