by P. S. Power
“If you'd join us Mr. Tompkins?” The older man said, looking more than a little uncertain about the idea.
“Call me Denis... please.”
“Very good Denis. This way?”
The round table wasn't the nicest in the place, but suddenly all of Team Three sat, along with the red-haired and bearded Team Two guy. Bridget got sent away with a swat by her grandmother, but jumped into Brian's lap first and hugged him a good bit more ardently than was strictly correct. Laughing the man pushed her off and sent her on as well. No one else batted an eye at the scene, so Denis let it go. What was he going to do if Brian was sleeping with her anyway? Maybe get Prime to help ambush him? Or Marcia? No one seemed worried though, so it was probably nothing. The guy had pushed her away after all.
Marcia walked in along with an older woman wearing an old fashioned dress and a lavender shawl. Even old lady white stockings and buckled shoes. The whole look screamed “put on” to Denis, but she smiled nicely enough and walked over to him directly, left hand outstretched to be shook. Without thinking he returned the move.
The woman spoke, her voice warm and a bit distant.
“Tampering, old now mainly. Much of it in the early years. I can't count it all at this remove. Mental intrusions as well as extensive and prolonged physical and psychological torture...years. Nearly decades. Definitely an Infected doing it back then. More recently, at the event a few months ago. Told to attack Brian Yi specifically, then later to attack anyone he could. Similar in feeling to the main influence of the day, what affected everyone else, though the first unique message. Medical earlier today as well, some non-standard. I've seen some similar things in Proxy.”
She smiled at him, something in her eyes shifting subtly.
“Nice to meet you. Ellen Doer.”
“Um, nice to meet you too? Denis Tompkins.” They still held hands, which he let go rapidly then just in case the woman had to feel all that stuff about him all the time they were in contact.
Marcia patted him on the back.
“So you're only half the prick we thought you were. Good to know. Ellen can tell if anyone has messed with something. She basically just said that you got screwed with hard and a lot over the years. Fucked up.”
The older woman looked at her primly.
“Watch your language dear.”
Denis had to fight not to laugh, it just seemed so... Weird. After a second everyone else chuckled, so it wasn't just him. Marcia stuck her tongue out.
“Sorry Ellen. I'll work on it. Can we get you to go over the prisoners we took later? If it's the same intervention...”
The old woman told them that would be fine, then left to let the meeting go on without pause.
The idea that someone had screwed with his mind... Yeah that could explain a few things maybe. What did it mean someone did that to him growing up? An Infected... Prophet Darren? That didn't seem exactly right. The guy hated Infected people, sure, and no one hated harder than those trying to deflect from their own sins. Still... The man was just a monster, not sick. Denis couldn't handle it if everything that had happened was beyond the prick's ability to control.
He couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for him. It would be too much to ask.
The rest of the meeting seemed to be all about letting him meet the other players and gently letting him know they were expected to go up against some kind of ultimate super team. Brian spoke first, pointed to the red haired man who still dressed like a bum. A very clean one, but the clothing didn't just look like cast-offs, they looked worn and repaired, torn and patched over and again. Some of the patches had obvious patches on top of them.
The guy did wear a newish pair of running shoes however. IPB issue, just like what he wore at the moment himself.
“Denis, this is Advocate Hobbs. Hobbs to his friends. He's... from another reality... and isn't Infected at all.” Brian tapped on the fake wooden top of the table with his right index finger, then frowned.
“I guess the easiest thing to say about him is that his people have some with powers like the Infected, without the overt drawbacks.”
“Aye. Advocate Yi stands true on this. The seven families run the lands I come from, more or less. Perhaps fairer to call them the five now. Not in the way you people organize your lives, more as workers in a bee hive. I'm not one of them, a mere sport, who's ability to aid plants in growing is considered inconsequential to the greater scheme. Hence being allowed more productive and moral work than governance.”
Denis looked at the man openly and tried to take it all in. A guy from another world who dresses like a bum, made plants grow and could kick Marcia's ass? Freaky.
The Director took over from there.
“So, since our current problem involves a very dangerous person from his world, one of their seven families, a woman known as Devorah Timberland, we've enlisted... Advocate Hobbs into our defense and he's proven very helpful so far.”
The man continued without pause, rushing, as if he expected Denis to call them all liars or something. The basic deal, past the addition of people from other realities wasn't hard. The original “Team One” of the IPB, “Alpha Squad” was working to take the world down and start a war, because their leader, “Braid”, was a crazy bitch that thought she could influence all of reality to her will. Simple enough.
Most of their problems seemed to be directly coming from there. Maybe. It was really hard to tell what was their influence and what things just happened. Any situation could be either or even both, or neither. Basically a really messed up set of things that hardly made sense at all. Worse it sounded like that original team could really kick their asses and the Timberland woman actually might be able to pull her little megalomaniac act off, given her super-powers which Hobbs described only as “strange precognition”. More than that, he was assured, simply defied explanation, other than the fact that whatever she had, it worked.
Marcia sat back, her white uniform thick and stiff looking, quilted canvas or something equally uncomfortable with about eight layers to prevent easy tearing. After a few seconds she leaned forward, her light chocolate eyes finding Denis' and holding them.
“We don't know where Hooper and his friends are in this. They could be influenced by these people or really just what they seem, heartless bigots that make the Nazis look like kittens. It's tough to know. Technically, based just on what we have right now, we have enough to take in Hooper, except that if we try that, his followers will go to war instantly. Probably not against the IPB either, but some little Infected kid that glows in the dark or something useless like that. To make it worse, the Infected are starting to fight back, targeting Hooperites, which is just making everything spiral out of control. I can't blame them, but...”
But if they attacked, the Infected all look like monsters, since the non-Infected controlled the government and the media, there was almost no way to get around that. Then, Denis knew, there wouldn't be any good way to stop the Infected from fighting back either and most of them doing so could do a lot more damage than a hippie with some love beads back in the sixties.
Double fuck.
The hard thing of course, Rachel explained quickly, being that while they had to stop Alpha, doing that didn't fix the world. Each day that passed brought them all closer to the war between the Infected and the normals and no one could win that.
“There are a lot more of them than us, true, but...” The hot woman said sighing a bit. She stopped talking, so Penny, back in the dining room now, finished the thought.
“Um, but the truth is the military can't beat the Infected. Not if the Infected band together at all. They know it on some level, but the politicians don't really seem to get it. Not those in Hooper's camp at any rate. So all we can do right now is try to keep things calm, even as we face greater and greater attack.”
Well, yay, Den thought, what a wonderful way to do things. It made wonderful and perfect sense. Of course, he didn't have a better plan to offer either. Keeping the pea
ce wouldn't be enough, but what else could they do really?
He kept his mouth shut. It wasn't the fault of anyone at the table here after all. Taking his fear and anger out on them wouldn't be fair. Taking a deep breath he tried to relax and go Zen. The conversation went on around him, and the information got absorbed, but no one asked anything of him in particular until the end.
Then Marcia spoke to him directly.
“Right, so for now that means that the riot squad has to make everything work and keep working and that we can't count on anyone in the world to help us. Maybe not even the other people in the IPB. That means we need you on board Den. If we don't have you we might as well kiss keeping the masses contained goodbye.” Her tone held entreating sounds, her eyes looked nearly scared, not a common thing for her at all.
Denis paused for about ten seconds, thinking, as everyone else stared, looking more anxious with each passing moment.
“What? Yeah, of course I'm in.” He smiled. “I just figured everyone knew that already. I'll do my part if I can.” Did the jerks think he'd just walk off and leave them to face the whole world alone?
Yeah, of course they did.
Morons.
He could leave maybe, go get a job or even live on the streets again. But he couldn't just leave people to face monsters alone. These may not be his friends, but they were still all the people he had. His kind, if there was such a thing. Family. It was a freaky thought, but it didn't seem wrong. He'd already abandoned one family to a monster. It wouldn't happen twice.
Brian smiled at him.
“Good. We need all the help we can get now.”
Then, as if they'd accomplished something, the whole thing broke up and everyone just left. Everyone except Marcia, Brian and Denis. Both of the others looked at him, then each other, then back again. No one spoke, so finally he did.
“So, is this when I learn the secret club handshake? Or I get my super-special Dick Tracy decoder ring?” He'd always wanted one of those, of course. After a few seconds his hopes were dashed, yet again.
The short haired brunette shook her head and chuckled.
“No such luck. Just wanted to say good job on subduing those police earlier.” She got up and patted him on the back and actually said “Atta-boy” when she did. For a second anger flared at the words, then got stuffed down. Just a joke. Playfully teasing like someone might do with a friend.
Yi leaned back.
“Yeah, between that and the airplane thing I have to say I'm feeling pretty proud to have you on the team. Marcia told me how you put the only parachute on Karen without even blinking, even knowing that you'd probably die if you did, that it was your idea too and how you just told everyone that was what was going to be happening. That took guts. Leadership. Thank you.” He sounded grateful which was a little uncomfortable.
Denis had to just shrug. After all it wasn't some big deal. Karen had the best chance of making it down with the chute alive. All gymnasticy and shit. Light too. It all worked out. Plus, she really had to survive, didn't she? Oh sure, he woke up three times a night screaming, thinking he was about to smack into the ground, but other than that, he assured Brian, not a problem at all. Denis did manage to add a wide eyed chuckle to it, so it seemed real enough.
He did mean it.
Brian nodded, “I know how the dreams can be.”
“Yeah, I bet that's true.” Den said softly, thinking about what the man must have seen already, in just the last few months.
Proxy looked up and to the left, his face going dark. Dangerous. For a second Denis wondered if the guy was about to beat him up for what he'd said, even though it hadn't seemed bad in any way. Instead he jumped up fast and hard then ran out into the hall, top speed. At the door he... vanished.
Right, his power to go and fight for someone else. The guy didn't even have another ability. Just a regular guy like he was physically. It had to be the most screwed up power ever. He mentioned this out loud to Quartz who stared at the door as if willing Yi back into the room.
“No shit. Some of the stuff he's had to fight too... Sixty-three class fives at once, one time and Tesseract, you heard about that?” She didn't look at the man with her, not at all.
“Yeah, Lancaster mentioned that. Not the class fives...”
“Trapped in a Canadian lake for a week treading water surrounded the whole time, by these... creatures, then he finally managed to drown them all, one by one. Thank God they didn't have the ability to hold their breath. We call it the Canadian incident now. A little girl, Melany Miller, was turning people into zombie-werewolf things. Not bright creatures, but strong and tough as all get out. Canada finally had to hit her and an army of them that were trying to eat her with ten fuel air bombs. A bigger explosion overall than a small nuke. She was eleven, and had no control over it.”
“Fuck. That's what Hooper used to...”
“To screw us all into war, yeah. Dumb-ass. His people have vilified her in the press, but in the end she begged the Canadians to drop the bombs, to kill her, because she didn't want anyone else to be hurt. Someone like her is worth ten Hoopers and those creeps of his keep badmouthing her like she was evil or something.”
Marcia went on for a while, covering how every few days Brian fought someone, or several someones at once, about half the time Infected and about one in ten so powerful that he really should be losing, if they were going to be honest. Technically he had a class two ability, at least as far as all the testing had shown. A regular guy with a knife and some training, only boosted to that high a power class because of the element of surprise. Just like Denis had thought.
“But he keeps coming back. He spends a lot of time in medical, though his new armor helps a lot there. Every time he leaves we all wonder if we'll ever see him again...”
They did this time, almost as if he heard them talking about him and timed the entrance. Denis gave a little wave and tilted his head. Brian had blood on him, a lot of it, but seemed unharmed. It wasn't his, he assured them, not even waiting to be asked.
“Three guys trying to rape another one to death in prison. I need to go have the Director call that in so the guy I saved doesn't get blamed for it. I killed the attackers. I made the last one tell me the name of the prison first. It's his blood.”
It came out... cold.
Like all emotion had gone out of the guy. Marcia nodded and went with him for some reason, worried it seemed.
Denis just sat and waited until nearly nine, then went and sat in his room with the door open, since someone should be around to give him a shot of something. That someone turned out to be a mildly plump cutie that wasn't even as tall as he was and had a medical bag filled with enough drugs to keep a junkie happy for weeks. Or days, depending on how fast they dove into an overdose.
“Hi! Denis? I'm Doctor Sara. Mind if I have a look at your arm then stick needles in you?” Her voice held good humor at least.
Denis sat on the edge of the bed and waited for her to check him out. It hurt a little, since she needed to take the splint off to check for swelling and give him three more shots in the arm. Then he got some Band-Aids with little smiley faces, even though he didn't need them, which was cool, and a single tablet to help him sleep. He took it, because it was free mainly, not because he needed it.
For all that work, sleep didn't stick around too long, tossing and turning he just felt uncomfortable all night. It probably explained why Den felt so grumpy when he got up. No pounding at the door at least, four-thirty or not, so he showered carefully with the splint off, then dressed in Team Three sweats and headed to the restaurant on one. At least he thought it was the day of the shoot. He might be wrong there, because so much had been happening lately. Not that he needed to show for work, since Prime had his old job now, but still, moral support and propping Kerry up if needed on the air. The hostess took him to a table off to the side, one with more than enough space for everyone if they showed up and got him a pot of coffee and cups for everyone, just in case he w
asn't a moron.
He was.
Sort of at least. Right day but, as Warren informed him as he came and sat next to him, wrong time by a lot. They didn't have to meet until noon for show prep. Oops. Well, no one had told him about that, not that it would matter.
“So... why are you here this early then? Trying to pick up that cute hostess? I can't blame you there, if I thought she'd go for it, I'd try myself.” The tone Denis used was light, but Warren shuddered.
“God no. Nothing against Darla, she's a sweetie, but... eww, women.” The man shuddered convincingly enough that it didn't seem to be a total act.
Ah. Gay. Well then.
Taking a breath, Denis smiled. Cool enough. Wasn't like the guy had been trying to pick him up or anything.
“All right then... trying to pick up a cute waiter?”
“Nope. I work here. Head chef, don't you know. How else do you think I'd rate being on television? Luckily Mark likes the idea of not everyone on board being Infected and so does Director Moore. Works for me at least. It's hard to get your own cooking show, but just being on one can basically make a chef's career.”
It all fit. Why Warren was second in command for the show and all that too. He actually had skills. The two men could have carried the show on their own he realized, one Denis Tompkins wasn't needed at all. Prime could make cocoa for them all and it would probably work just as well or better. Good enough. Still, he was signed on. That meant showing up and cheering for the team if nothing else. Get the crew water and stuff. He'd just borrow a rolling cart from the restaurant.
Den mentioned this to Warren who didn't say anything, just waved over a friendly looking heavyset woman and waved to the man across the table making introductions.
“Jan, Denis. Vice versa and all that.” This got done with a smile and some gesturing back and forth.
“He's got an order for this afternoon. Denis? Jan will get you what you need. Brilliant woman, so pick her brain a bit. Right now I need to get back to work, since the morning rush is about to begin.” The man patted Jan on the back and gave her his seat.
