The Balance had just completed a session in the VR training room and were on their way to their quarters to change and have a shower when the call came through.
Locker had reluctantly agreed to take over Young Sam’s room, just as a place to store his equipment and to change; he was still living off base for the moment. He gathered up his mask and headed with the others to the lounge.
A stern faced, well-dressed man leaning on a very ornamental cane and smoking a cheroot stared back at them from the video screen – this was Dr Maxwell Bradbury, the Chief Librarian at the St. Catherine’s Private Members Club in London and, if Akira was to be believed the Library was a major repository of mystical knowledge.
Bradbury got straight to the point, “Do any of you know anything about a break-in at the Library last night?”
Mary took the lead and shook her head, “No, why would you contact us? Do you want us to investigate..?” The Librarian shook his head, “Ah, I thought it might be connected with your own return from the Faerie Realms given it happened at exactly the same time of night and in the same room as your own reappearance, just 26 days after. Let me show you the security footage.”
His screen abruptly shrunk to a window within a window whilst the security recording played behind it. It showed the reading room, now missing the mirror they had travelled back though, start to brighten as every reflective surface in the room began to shine brighter and brighter and that light began to gather in some mysterious way into the centre of the room as five figures commenced to appear and become corporeal. To the shock of Mace, Mary and Akira, they found themselves recognising the faces… The Pierce Brosnan lookalike, the female vampire with the white hair, the redhead female witch they believed had been called Whittard, the trickster that Sam had confronted on the steps of the Library, the male vampire, Boire from Akira’s encounter in the Reading Room some fifty plus years from now…
Somehow, they had also crossed over through time just as they had but something, the shattered mirror perhaps, had delayed their arrival until last night.
“Recognise any of them?” The Librarians’ voice caught Mary slightly off-guard but she decided to stay quiet and not share what they knew about their identities just yet. She shook her head and continued watching, fascinated.
The man in the suit and the witch both gestured while muttering something unintelligible on the recording and the advancing Yeti guards and undead security zombies all froze on the spot. The crystal-bound demoness, Ophelia manifested and she was similarly frozen a second later. Damn, they were powerful. The tape ended with them walking up the stairs towards the next floor.
“Can I ask did they steal anything?” Mary asked quietly. Bradbury replied, “They entered my chambers and took the key to the vaults. But and this is the curious thing, they never went near the vaults, only stealing the key.” Akira, Mace and Mary exchanged glances. That key was in the shape of a small emerald pendant shaped like a sword. A key that had also opened up time and helped bring them home but hadn’t crossed over with them, possibly because it already existed in the here and now?
Mr Bradbury continued talking unaware of their non-verbal communication, “We’re not sure why they took it apart from its value as a gem however there were several much more valuable objects in my study they could have stolen. It’s quite useless to them; we altered the spell on the vault lock, created a duplicate key and mystically paired that with the vault locks. Should they return and try and use their key in the future it will now just activate the vault’s arcane security…”
Mary, Akira and Mace remained tight-lipped, the last thing they needed was someone realising the pendant had the ability to traverse time. But what did the future Court of Shadows’ presence in this time mean? After a couple more minutes of discussion they ended the call.
Before they could dwell on it though, a second call came in – this time from Inspector Tolliver. The others smiled; this was the first time that Jerome in his ‘professional’ capacity had seen his father and vice versa and Locker was still completely unaware that the others all knew his real identity.
Marcus came on screen and saw Jerome standing at the back of the group but made no attempt to single him out. In turn Locker tried to remain professional, acknowledging his father’s presence on-screen merely with a nod and a curt, “Inspector”.
Inspector Tolliver, who remained oblivious of the team’s duplicity in covering up their recent Faerie adventures, explained that he could do with their assistance again. Reports were coming in from all over London of multiple public disturbances – some of which have resulted in assaults, property destruction and breaches of the peace. Would The Balance be available to help out?
Mary stated that the team would be happy to assist in any way they can.
A look of relief crossed his face as he explained that someone had played an elaborate prank on the Met’ Police that had resulted in the Force being left extremely short-staffed and he had been asked to take a squad of Wessex officers in to help out.
This started when well over half of the Metropolitan Police that were due on duty today were ‘officially informed’ by email and text that they had been given the day off and not to report in for duty.
He went on to explain, “Unfortunately their phones are not picking up for some reason; we believe the calls are being blocked, so they are unaware of the situation. This has left the emergency services extremely short-staffed.
London Watch is currently dealing with a siege involving the ghosts of 18th century pirates on an abandoned sea fort in the Thames estuary but even when they can report back, the number of incidents means we will need all the assistance we can get.”
The team immediately agreed to head to London in the Crate. Mace’s Grav-bike was already loaded on-board in its cradle and Frankie insisted on making sure the Tinks drone was ready for deployment on landing though they still hadn’t detached its holographic projector.
Twenty minutes later, they landed near the Embankment opposite the London Eye and contacted Marcus who was already deploying his staff to deal with a number of unusual situations that were occurring across the city. He patched them in to the Police Response channel and asked them to decide what requests they wanted to deal with and he’d have them assigned over.
He apologised again for the chaos but with so many unusual occurrences happening across the city, they needed all the help they could get. With that he cut the transmission and the Police dispatcher cut in with service calls…
“Can officers please make their way to Buckingham Palace where there is a small riot broken out between several people, believed to be Chinese tourists? They are each claiming that they are the new owners after each claims to have bought the Palace when it was listed for auction in China. I understand no actual payments had been collected but apparently several of those involved are admitting to having paid very large bribes to ensure the sale went their way…? Any Chinese speakers out there available to deal?”
Seconds later a different dispatcher called, “Houses of Parliament – can someone please attend and turn away the fleet of pest exterminators that have turned up to exterminate the outbreak of vermin in the chamber?”
The dispatcher paused for a second as though either waiting for a response or reading a message then cut in again, “No, scrub that seems someone has actually filled the chamber with rats – no officer I don’t mean politicians, I mean actual rats. Can someone liaise with the exterminators? What do you mean they’ve already left, get them back!”
They couldn’t hear the officer’s responses so figured someone else must be on site and dealing then, “Vandalism at Big Ben, giant rabbit in a waistcoat climbing the outside of the tower claiming that the clock is running late and that it has a very important date..? Anyone?”
Along the river, the team could now see a ten-metre tall white rabbit swinging itself round the tower of Big Ben by the scaffolding, before stopping and staring at the newly refurbished clock face. It pulled a large pocket watch out of its blue velvet waistcoat and in a clear, loud, very posh Home Counties accent stated, “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late. It’s running late and I have an important date!” As they watched, it reached up and tried to push the minute hand back. This was accompanied by a grinding of the clock gears that could be heard even on the other side of the Thames, before it resumed its journey to the next clock face and repeated its actions.
Locker wondered if Banshee could somehow do a pied piper impersonation and draw the rabbit down without also damaging the scaffolding. Akira stated that they really needed to leave the rats in Parliament and deal with ‘bright eyes’ before everyone began to think they’d been dosed with LSD.
To add to the situation the centre of the London Eye’s observation wheel was suddenly obscured as a massive reptilian eye appeared out of nowhere, stared right at them, blinked then vanished.
The over 30-foot tall rabbit ignored it and continued its attempts to try to push the minute hand on the clock face backwards, much to the distress of the mechanism inside as ‘Big Bunny’ then swirled round to the next face and tried to ‘correct’ that as well.
Banshee flew up close to the rabbit and waited, trying to decide on a strategy.
Mace found the creature quite adorable despite its size and actions. She ran back to the Crate, uncoupled her bike and headed towards the gigantic white rabbit intending to investigate as Mary confirmed over the radio that they would deal with that particular situation.
As Mace got closer she could hear Akira advising her to “attack it!” she went on to explain that she wanted to find out why it was doing what it was doing…
Akira jokingly muttered, “in that case you need to talk to it”, however they had encountered a white rabbit before and no good ever came from trying to chat one up. Then she heard him joke again, “Burn it, I love the smell of roast rabbit in the morning!” Mace couldn’t keep the disgust out of her voice as she shouted, “Akira, I’m vegetarian, I don’t eat rabbit and anyway it appears to be sentient” The transmission went dead.
The rabbit was again climbing round to the river side of the tower as Mace brought her bike up as close as she dared and asked, “Sorry to interrupt but what exactly is your important date?”
Over the comms she heard Akira and Locker arguing about whether a Date or even a walnut constituted a date. It was almost like old times when Sam had been with them.
She realised then that she’d attracted its attention. It turned to face her and spoke saying “It’s time to play!” She could see that the pocket watch in its other paw was reacting as it spoke; energy was flowing across its watch face as it appeared to power up and rainbow-like streams of energy emanated out from it. As she looked she realised that it was running much slower that Big Ben.
Locker swung in close and tried to unleash his webbing strands on the sparkling pocket watch just as the rabbit swung out. The webbing hit the scaffolding instead. The rabbit glowered at its diminutive attacker, its blue eyes changing so they glowed an intense fiery red and its buck tooth mouth twisted as though angry. Locker allowed his swing to bring him round and away temporarily from the creature. The sparkling glow from the watch made him immediately wonder if there were any hazmat facilities available nearby.
Akira got the impression that the watch had to be some sort of weapon and the energy discharge seemed to indicate that it was charging up, ready for an attack. He also realised from the way it moved that it might not be a living creature. It’s movement felt artificial somehow, mechanical and he suddenly felt sure that it was some sort of robot.
Akira unleashed a mystical blast at the creature, which hit between its eyes. Smoke poured from the blast site. However if the creature had been badly hurt by the attack it didn’t show it. Banshee flew up and tried to insubstantialise it but the creature was too big, had too much mass and she failed. It responded by turning the energy-filled pocket watch on her still corporeal body. A flare of red energy was discharged as she tried to dodge but she was still struck a glancing blow that left her with pins and needles and a serious drain on her muscles. She felt tired just trying to move them but she knew she’d been lucky, a full-on shot would have likely paralysed her.
Mace screamed, “I really haven’t liked how you’ve treated my bunny rabbit and we still don’t know what that important date is” as she, reluctantly, very reluctantly, realised she had little choice and at Akira’s urging unleashed an EMP bolt. The bolt hit and activated. The creature’s energy drained out of it and its eyes went dark as the creature powered down, it looked like it was going to sleep with its ears flopped over its face still hanging by one paw as well as by its rear legs to the scaffolding.
“Obviously not the Duracell bunny” muttered Akira. Mace however couldn’t help feeling horrible at taking it down and was just grateful it didn’t do a ‘King Kong’ and fall to the ground.
Meanwhile more calls were coming in over the comms, “Riot in the Town Centre seems several rival coaches of football supporters have all turned up at the Brass Knuckles public house in Soho in response to an offer online of a free pint to anyone who arrives this morning in their team colours. Seems they are all rival teams and a fight has broken out. Proceed with caution and watch out for the supporters of Wolverhampton Ladies, they fight dirty.”
Then, “Report of the late Queen’s corgi’s being kidnapped, ah dognapped. No, scrub that, I’ve a report that they’ve been spotted driving miniature tanks down Oxford Street. Apparently they are to be treated as armed and dangerous. Anyone able to deal? Ah, tank fire has apparently hit the front of the HMV store, anyone able to arrest that corgi?”
They considered whether or not to attend either ‘shout’, with Akira joking that he quite fancied a free pint if they adopted some team colours. What was actually going on they wondered? It felt as though all of the incidents were just symptoms rather than the disease, distractions, but for what?
Another call came in, “Cleopatra’s needle – check out the report that someone has fitted rockets to the pillar as well as fins and a sign that reads, “Pyramids of Mars, here we come?” No, it’s not a joke and we’ve no bomb disposal available. There is smoke and flames coming out of the thing. Assigned to MeRCy, thank you.”
So, the MRC team, the Malfunctioning Robotic and Cybernetics section were close by, that might be useful to know.
The calls continued, “Can anyone deal with the Tourist Robbie the Robots invasion on the Embankment? You’ll recognise them by their selfie sticks which are using to clout everyone in their vicinity, ah description reads on treads, twin antennae and wearing Hawaiian shirts and MAGA caps… Should be easy to identify.”
Looking across the Thames, they could see twelve of the robots trundling along the embankment pushing people aide and hitting others with their extended selfie sticks.
Banshee immediately accepted the call as Locker was wondering if the incidents were centred round anywhere in particular; an eye of the storm so to speak but the whole of London seemed affected by a series of extremely unusual events and no specific location immediately stood out.
Akira wondered if this was related somehow to the recent arrivals at the Library. Hadn’t the guy on the staircase been some sort of prankster or deal maker or something like that? He just wished he’d paid more attention to Sam’s account of his encounter.
The robots opposite weren’t doing that much damage and Locker wanted to try and deal with them quickly so they could try and identify what activity they were covering up. They really needed to figure out what the big picture was here. Akira wondered if this was to cover for another assault on the Library perhaps?
They put a call through to the Library to check nothing untoward was happening there. There was broad Birmingham-accented “hello” as Mazhi answered. Akira jokingly referred to him as Gawaine just to tease him a little as asked if the Library was being targeted or affected by the events.
No, they’d not had anything untoward happen in the Library, not since the ‘midnight excursion’ and yes, Ophelia and their security was back up and running efficiently again (“if a group of zombies and ‘bigfeet’ could ever be described as efficient” he muttered under his breath). He did admit to seeing what was happening on the streets in the news reports, which seemed troubling but as far as they could tell, there was no mystical forces at play. As a result, the Library was not getting involved and he ended by again asking Akira to not call him Gawaine as, “my Imam really gets upset when people insist on referring to me as a mythical Christian knight!”
Akira apologised, muttered some weird quote about “the snow goose need not bathe to make itself white” and ended the call. That seemed to be a dead end at least at the moment. Locker wondered if magic wasn’t responsible for the chaotic incidents happening around them had something technological occurred recently that might account for these incidents and if so why.
They decided to try to deal with the robots opposite who were striking poses to their own soundtrack on 80’s music broadcasting from their chest-mounted speakers, intermixed with cries of “Danger, Will Robinson, danger!”
The reptilian eye in the centre of the London Eye appeared again staring out as they flew back across the River. Locker had to wonder if that was Sauron’s and did any of them have the ‘Ring’? Was this the guiding force behind all this, was it watching the chaos?
It did freak out Akira who even suggested, only half-jokingly, destroying the London Eye and deny it the ability to see what was happening? Mace seemed to think that it was about something watching, observing. They did hear that the mini-tanks with the corgi’s was unleashing paint pellets and that the tanks they were inside was being remotely controlled by someone. That was another link; none of these occurrences were deliberately lethal…
Mace flew as close as she dared to the Robbie’s and unleashed a series of EMP bolts at the front-most automaton’s, quickly rendering three of the robots inoperable and immobilising a fourth, leaving it twisting and gyrating but unable to proceed with just her first bolt. It seemed none of them were effectively shielded against any form of electromagnetic pulse.
The next series of bolts she fired into the air and over the front row of robots at the automata bringing up the rear. This took out the four in the rear and leaving the remaining active robots stuck in the middle of all the powered down mechanicals.
One of her remaining EMP bolts went through the gap between the foremost robots but unfortunately failed to hit.
Locker, having made his way on foot across the nearest bridge, literally swung into action using his webbing. He swung over the depowered robots landing in the centre against the till functioning robo-tourists. He hit out at the nearest of them while dodging the others’ selfie-sticks and cracking its plastic sensor dome with a single punch. It whirled, apparently ‘blinded’ as it whacked out recklessly with its selfie-stick at its companions.
Akira unleashed his theurgical-kinesis on the four shut-in mechanicals in the centre, lifted them into the air and dropped them into the Thames with a very satisfying splash. They immediately vanished beneath the water. He’d no idea if that would immobilise them or not but with their design and weight there was no way they would be able to get out of the river anytime soon. Perhaps they would take some very interesting selfies on the river bottom, who knew? Who cared!
Meanwhile more reports were coming in over the airwaves. “OK, sword fight in the London Mithraeum, yes I know that’s City of London’s responsibility but they are short-staffed too and for the same reason. Seems people have gathered there from all over London with their Excalibur’s to claim the throne having been promised it by a lady in their bathtubs? Anyone?”
There was a long pause, then “Ah, reports that the Prime Minister and her Cabinet have been attacked at 10 Downing Street and have been somehow reduced back to children… Apparently a fight has broken out over who gets the last chocolate biscuit, anyone able to deal?”
Locker muttered, “That sounds about right” not overly impressed by their current batch of politicians. He felt that dealing with a sword fight in a public place sounded more life threatening and urgent than dealing with a bunch of regressed politicians squabbling. There was no contest in his mind. “I think we should split up” he explained.
The others weren’t sure how they’d be able to help, though keeping the current Prime Minister Harriet Drummond and her cabinet, including the Secretary for State Sir Joseph Humboldt, safe should be a priority they thought. Further reports stated that they were all now exiting the building in a panic where they were assaulted by several clowns. Wasn’t a group of clowns referred to as a pratfall, thought Akira irreverently?
Then over the airwaves came an update, “Seems the security detail and Police assigned to the PM are under attack and can be seen collapsing unconscious in the street. This is now a priority.”
Locker proposed that the team split up at this point. Then another voice cut in, “London Eye appears to be blinking again, anyone able to confirm?” They looked up and saw the eye had once again reappeared, with Locker exclaiming, “Do you ever get the feeling we’re being watched?”
Akira thought that might be something they needed to deal with first. There was just too much going on and too few available to deal, the perfect distraction so what was the real reason behind all this craziness?
He was convinced that the eye above them was somehow behind it, given it was not interacting, merely observing. Could it be something from another dimension looking in? After their extra-dimensional adventures recently, he was unwilling to dismiss any possibility. Just because magic didn’t appear to be involved did not rule out the possibility this was interdimensional. After all that was where the Terminus threat was from and they were technologically based, not mystical as far as they could tell.
He elected to focus his full attention of the blinking eye; it certainly looked inhuman, reptilian even as he tried to pick up on what exactly this was, another prank or the real deal?
It was Locker who wondered if it might just be another illusion, a projection but if so, onto what exactly? There was no screen erected between the rim and the centre of the Eye and no indication that anyone had set up a holographic hard light field there either.
Locker meanwhile set off urgently for the London Mithraeum, accepting that ‘shout’ as he ran. He sprinted towards the bridge immediately, and flagged down a driver explaining he was commandeering the vehicle for official duties. The driver refused to hand over his keys but did agree to act as his temporary chauffeur, which Locker reluctantly agreed to as he needed to head to the Mithraeum as quickly as possible. He switched on his suit’s blue light and projected the emergency two-tone ‘get out of the way’ sound through his blue-tooth enabled shoulder-mounted speakers, which he detached and placed on the outside of the vehicle to help clear traffic out of the way. Could all of this just be red herrings, he wondered?
Banshee immediately headed towards Downing Street as fast as she could fly, leaving Akira and mace waiting for the eye within the Eye to reappear.
It took Locker mere minutes with the siren blaring for his maniac of a driver to screech to a halt outside the Mithraeum exhibition. Through the glass foyer he could see the final display hall, about London after the Romans. Someone had set up a large stone intended to hold visitors ‘buy in the gift shop’ replica Excalibur and they had recently added another display linking the legend to the New Knights. Around the stone, fighting it out were at least a dozen, all male, overweight geeks (his fan base he realised rather irrelevantly) fighting it out with what looked like real Excalibur longswords! He ran through the entrance, leaping over the turnstile and ran through the staff only door into the final exhibit.
“Oh God” he thought as he saw that the sword fight was in full swing, with sharp, shiny blades hitting at heads, limbs and torsos. Then it struck him, despite the deadly attacks and the fact that the swords looked very real indeed, no-one appeared to be getting hurt or drawing blood! The swords, despite their very real appearance, seemed to be made of some form of memory plastic and when it hit flowed round the body without cutting or piercing.
His “Oh God” instantly evolved into a “Thank God”. LARPers he initially assumed but none of them were in costume; they were dressed primarily in jeans, sweatshirts and hoodies and lacked the endurance of most LARPers he’d met previously.
He noticed they were all using identical longswords, so unlike the Roman Gladius, and as he used another burst of his attention-getting two-tone to get them to stop fighting. They immediately began to shout in a cacophony, “The Lady gave it to me”, “her hand appeared out of my bathtub and handed the sword to me” and “She told me I was the chosen king of England”. Well that and a number of them wanting to know if they could now join the New Knights since Excalibur had chosen them. It was total bedlam!
He then had a judgement of Solomon moment and realised he needed a roundtable or at least something round he could get them to gather round preferably wide enough that they couldn’t start hitting each other across it. Sure enough, he saw a circular table in the Fall of Rome exhibit and rushed to retrieve the mock-up.
Meanwhile, Banshee had reached Number 10 and she could see the chaos below. Parked outside was a very small clown car, a minivan really, dressed up to look like a colour-blind artist’s impression of a Police Van out of which had apparently spilled five people, most of whom were made up to look like clowns.
There was a Doctor with a very large toy stethoscope in a red nose and a rainbow wig, a man dressed up as a 1950’s female Nurse holding a massive hypodermic syringe, a clown Fire Officer, a man in a top hat and a long net who reminded them of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a clown Police Officer carrying a very large truncheon and finally a Mime, seven feet tall and with the muscles of Hercules.
The clown dressed like a Doctor was carrying what looked like a very large medicine bottle with a large cork stopper he had pulled out and a milky-white mist was emanating out of it. Every adult except the troupe of clowns immediately collapsed to the ground, in hysterical laughter despite being rendered unconscious. The cabinet reduced to children were also unaffected.
The clown dressed as a Firefighter, Officer Inferno according to his name tag but who sort of resembled facially Stephen King’s clown from “It” with a face that would scare adults never mind children was carrying a soda dispenser marked “dehydrated H2O, just add water.”
The clown dressed as a keystone cop, was rebounding around the street like a bouncing ball.
The strongman flexed his enormous muscles and Mimed tearing the children apart, all this to the sinister and creepy soundtrack of unconscious laughter from the sleeping Policemen lying in the road. Thankfully, the menacing gas was dissipating quickly.
In front of the door to Number 10 or running around hysterically in the street being chased by the man in the tall hat with a large net were about 20 or so pre-teens dressed as adults, apparently the rejuvenated Cabinet. In the pearls and resized adult clothes (apparently also reduced so they still fit) were a very young Prime Minister and her Cabinet.
Back in front of the London Eye, the eye within the Eye had again reappeared but this time accompanied by a dozen monstrous tentacles that had appeared within a mist out of the Thames waving around. Just as long as no one starts chanting “ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” thought Akira.
As he watched Akira realised that a cloud of dust had appeared in the middle of the eye and on the surface of the river just before the images reappeared. He was pretty sure that there was a projector somewhere, possibly on a building on the opposite side of the river projecting this imagery onto the dust. Sure enough, part of the mist on the river dissipated and a section of a tentacle suddenly vanished. Smoke and mirrors all right.
He was now sure that someone had put something under the cabins of the Eye that on command sprayed an opaque mist into the centre of the wheel so that a projector opposite could then project an image of the reptilian eye onto it. Clever and yet another distraction! The mist on the River Thames was likely artificially created as well.
Akira pointed out what was happening to Mace, who quickly unleashed another EMP bolt across the river towards where she estimated the projector had to be. There was a spark of energy and the eye again vanished but this time it revealed four winged figures floating behind the centre of the Eye, watching and observing, though they were too far away to be identifiable from where the two of them were standing.
Mace immediately flew closer. In the middle stood a man in a long trench coat and wings and to her surprise the other three winged ‘angels’ hovering beside him appeared to be famous female movie stars; Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Hedy Lamarr from their cinematic heydays to be precise. Her exclamation caused Akira to proclaim the male as “Gabby!” the self-proclaimed Archangel Gabriel and his Critics Three, even if Marilyn’s new halo was currently off-kilter and on a slow rotate.
Back at the Mithraeum, Locker had placed the table down next to the large boulder proclaiming that ‘whosoever shall pull forth the sword from this stone shall be the King of England’. He’d managed to get them all to sit down ‘at the head of the table’ as befitted their position and was busy signing and autographing swords and napkins whilst dealing with the ‘fans’, some of whom seemed to think he was now a member of the New Knights and wanted to know if they now qualified to join.
He suddenly had an idea. He grabbed one of the Excalibur’s from the hands of a nearby would-be king and shouted over his speakers, “Now accepting applications for the new King of England. Please form an orderly queue.” The geeks all started to rush over and jostled each other as he took the borrowed sword and rammed it into the stone with all the force he could muster.
Despite their best efforts, none of ‘the chosen’ could pull the sword free. Locker refocused his suit’s servos and pulled at the sword. He smiled behind his mask as the sword slid forth freely from the stone. He raised it high as a light appeared out of nowhere around the sword just as the blade burst in flames. Someone had rigged this for a theatrical ending he thought as he held the flaming sword high. “Looks like we’ve got a winner folks, sorry.”
There was a lot of cries of congratulations (as well as cries of ‘fix’ from a couple of sore losers) as Locker proceeded to shake everyone’s hand and ask them to head home with their prizes even as the sword in his hand extinguished itself without damage. He really wanted to retain the blade as a souvenir but its previous ‘owner’ insisted on its return. He acknowledged it was “fixed, but just!” and reluctantly signed and returned the sword before heading to join Banshee in Downing Street.
Back at the Eye, Akira elected to try unleashing the Somnambulant Spell of Sirrion on the winged foursome beseeching the Sorcerer in Scarlet to bring forth a thin, pinkish mystical mist, rising up from the ground, which he hoped would put the four winged figures into a deep sleep.
The mist flowed up and surrounded them. The initial reaction was that Gabby began to lose his feathers revealing a metallic framework underneath. His hair also fell out leaving a plastic looking hairstyle underneath. Seconds later the feathers on the three film stars also shred leaving mechanical wings and their appearance became more artificial though thankfully, the pink mist did not affect their hairstyles as far as Mace or Akira could tell. Then all four seemed to shudder for a second and the light in their eyes died as the figures seemed to momentarily go into freefall before their now mechanical wings again began to flap and their eyes flared. If they were mechanical, had they just undergone a hard reboot wondered Mace?
They were obviously not human and sleep obviously did not mean the same to devices as it did for sentient creatures, despite the similarity in terminology.
Mace unleashed another flurry of bolts using a magazine of EMP bolts. The first missed Audrey of the Critics Three, the second definitely hit Marilyn and left her apparently dazed. The next, at Hedy missed as another bolt hit Gabby leaving him also dazed. She elected to finish the cartridge, but only Audrey was hit this time leaving her also dazed.
“Should call you Drive By” muttered Locker over the commdots as he finally reached Downing Street and jumped out of the again commandeered vehicle at the barrier. He bounded over the unconscious security and ran up the street.
Akira ignored the ongoing commentary and focused on his winged opponents. They needed to end this and do so quickly. He mystically blasted at the gathered – The first blast hit the previously dazed Gabriel and staggered him. The second hit Marilyn who glowered at him, after all she’d awarded him the highest points last time they’d met, as the discharge incapacitated her. She started to go unconscious, the lights went out at which point automatic processes seemed to kick in as it proceeded to go sub-orbital and depart at near supersonic speeds.
His last bolt also hit Audrey and she went unconscious also as her deactivated chassis left the scene following the same trajectory as Marilyn’s.
Back in Downing Street, Banshee took in what was happening below. The clowns and children all appeared to be genuine humans, not robots or illusions; she just wasn’t convinced this wasn’t another misdirection. Their vehicle was much too small to cope with all of them, it was like trying for a world record for the number of people compressed into a telephone booth and to add to her misbelief they were in the process of throwing captured children (the Cabinet?) into the back as well.
Banshee responded with a terrorising shriek.
Locker listening in, knew what such an attack felt like, Mary had been trying to get him used to her sonic attacks given that, like Mace, he had no natural defence against them either. The attack would also affect the kids, no the Cabinet, and she could almost see the headlines now, ‘PM terrified by Meta’.
Several of the people down below very definitely affected. The clown in the supposedly ‘sexy’ nurse costume was definitely affected as was the Firefighter but it was mainly the children that were the worst influenced and the cry forced them to retreat back inside Number 10 where they tried to hide.
The clowns responded to Banshee’s attack – the Child Catcher was still ignoring her as he tried to catch the fleeing children leaving the strongman and the cop clown to jump up and try to grab at Banshee, not realising that she was currently insubstantial and collided with each other in mid-air. Meanwhile the Nursey figure had flung its large syringe into the air and it began to act like some sort of guided missile, though again it failed to impact, passing through her every time. The only one who seemed to be having any effect was the Firefighter’s soda dispenser which was shooting out massive streams of what Banshee had initially assumed had been water but which was interacting with her insubstantiality and causing some of the jet to actually ‘soak’ her and partially resubstantialise her.
The amount of liquid being sprayed far exceeded the capacity of the bottle in the clowns’ hands and for a brief moment, Banshee thought that perhaps there was magic at play here after all.
She turned and saw Locker appear at the end of the street heading towards the clown van. Locker took in the size of the big guy in the Mime make-up and the children being thrown in the back and unleashed a stream of his webbing onto the side of the vehicle and bracing himself yanked, hard.
The webbing hit the rear and to his surprise, he found he was swinging in towards the vehicle, passed the Child Catcher staring daggers at him as he managed to grab him in his net and tried to toss him into the back of the van.
That’s when Locker realised that the back of the vehicle seemed to actually be some form of teleportation portal and it opened up into a room or cell somewhere else, no wonder it seemed larger on the inside. As he swung close, he grabbed the side of the van with one hand and, seeing the young captives inside fired his web and swung free with the four teeny captives by firing off a second string of webbing, swinging them out of the cell and away from the danger zone.
It took a few seconds to calm them all down and make sense of what they were saying through all the tears and hysterics, but he soon realised that this was another hoax and they really were just kids. They’d been kidnapped shortly before from a park after their parents had been rendered unconscious and dressed up as the Cabinet whilst a big metallic lady took the real Members of the Cabinet down below stairs of Number 10, to where the security systems were kept.
The ‘robot lady’ appeared to be in charge and wanted something from the big computer and needed the ‘old woman from TV’ to get it for her.
Locker quickly relayed this information to Banshee who now knowing that the children were a distraction, immediately headed inside Number 10, straight towards the basement and the real Cabinet leaving Locker to deal with the clowns.
It took her a few seconds and several unconscious security personnel to figure out where to go but eventually she entered what seemed to be a mini GCHQ in the basement, The Prime Ministers own national communications hub. This would be where the PM went to access the nation’s data systems.
She saw that there were 22 unconscious politicians lying in a heap. The Prime Minister lay away from the others beside a logon port that apparently required her retina and fingerprint confirmation to access. Someone had used her to activate it before vanishing from the scene. The screen was flashing ‘Data Deleted’ repeatedly. Damn she needed Annie here, or possibly Mace? Mace was no hacker but she did understand computers and after all, this had already been activated.
He quickly looked around but the ‘robot lady’ was definitely gone.
Back at the Eye, Mace responded to Banshee’s call for help and set off at top speed for Downing Street leaving Akira to deal with Gabriel and the remaining Critic.
Arriving, she had to get passed the clowns and get off the bike before she could enter Number Ten. She saw the clown cop bouncing towards her as the syringe dart and strongman were homing in on Locker. To add to the confusion the Firefighter clown had turned its impossible torrent of fluid on her. She was soaked and battered as she twisted round so the bike acted as a barrier and she grabbed and swapped her bolt cartridge for ballistic heads. She unleashed a cascade of bolts. The first couple of her bolts missed the bouncing cop and childless Child Catcher but the next hit the scary clown dressed as a Fire Officer staggering him and knocking the spray down and away from her. No longer distracted, Mace unleashed the rest of her flurry of bolts.
Only the Mime artist-turned-strongman was hit as the water spray from seconds before obscured her vision. He bounced off the van as Locker rushed in and battered away at the Child Catcher with a palm punch to the face rendering him unconscious.
The strongman grabbed out at Locker in response, trying to hug him into submission but Locker managed to dodge his attempt to grab him, avoiding the missile syringe at the same time.
Meanwhile, Nursey’s syringe-missile flew passed Mace, turned and flew back in for a second time. She dodged it just in time causing it to bounce off the van.
The other clowns, with the exception of the unconscious Child Catcher and the Mime who was still trying to attack Locker, began to head back towards the van.
Banshee reappeared in the doorway just in time to see the clowns fleeing towards their vehicle with the nurse figure trying to throw the unconscious Child Catcher through the back door (and into the teleportal) as all of them except the strong guy climbed inside.
Banshee flew over and unleashed the corrupting touch on the Mime leaving him dazed and he staggered backwards as Mace now headed down towards the computer room. There was no way for her to recover the data but at least she could learn what they had been trying to delete by looking at their search parameters.
Back at the Eye, Akira unleashed a Mystical blast at Gabriel, hitting him in the head and rendering him inoperable. Half expecting a replacement figure to appear like last time, Akira was surprised to see that he went into missile mode and with the Hedy-bot flew away into the sky apparently heading across the Channel.
He got the impression from the quiet and lack of Police chatter that all of the incidents across the city were calming down at the same time. Assuming this was all a distraction then presumably whatever they had intended it to cover up had already succeeded.
Then they heard Mace’s surprise over their commlinks, “I can’t figure out everything they were doing but they obviously used the Prime Ministers’ biometric access to unleash some form of computer worm program to trawl through the connected systems for any information and all records it had on cyborgs and sentient AI’s and permanently erase the data. Given her status, The Prime Ministers access would have been above top secret and have allowed the worm access not just to every national database but several major networks abroad as well.
Mary muttered, “worm?” so she explained to Mary that a computer worm was a standalone malware computer program that replicated itself in order to spread through any connected networks to other computers. This program had been named ‘Shai-Hulud’ by its author.
Akira had a vague memory that Annie had once boasted that she’d created a computer worm by the same name. A later check confirmed that she’d been busy at Third Eye all day so couldn’t have unleashed her program. Could it just be a coincidence that two worm programs had been named the same or did this mean Annie was involved somehow?
As the Cabinet was being carried out unconscious from Number 10, Mary couldn’t help notice with her mystical sight a familiar sickly yellow aura radiating on the back of the Secretary for State, Sir Joseph Humboldt’s neck. He’d been infected by a control bug. Thankfully, as far as she could tell none of the others had been infected, yet. Still for Terminus to have infected someone in the Cabinet was very worrying. She had to pass this on as soon as she could. She needed to liaise with Harry Powers from AEGIS and let him know what she’d uncovered.
Locker was still trying to subdue his dazed but immensely strong opponent. He finally managed to get him into a chokehold, which rendered him unconscious. Unfortunately, all of the others had got inside the vehicle and as he watched his cabling snapped free as the vehicle appeared to invert itself and vanished into its own artificial black hole leaving nothing behind. At least they still had their now unconscious Mime who they handed over to the security detail sent to replace the unconscious officers being loaded into a fleet of ambulances with the now liberated children who were trying to explain about the nasty, nasty people who’d stolen them away.
As the headed back to the Crate, a final couple of calls came over the shared channel. London Watch had returned but had been kept occupied dealing with a squad of Melvin the Martian straight from the cartoons that had landed next to New Scotland Yard. Twenty of the metre tall creatures dressed in green-coloured Roman armour with basketball shoes, each identical; calm and soft-spoken, but legitimately dangerous. The report stated that their saucer had finally been forced to depart.
Scotland Yard later admitted that a female-looking robot had appeared in the MRC computer room during the Invasion and successfully deleted all of their on-site records of robots and AI’s – they still have some old, physical records of course but without the computer systems it could take them months to identify which records belong to which case. Only clue they had was that one of the staff believe that she overheard a transmission in which the figure had been referred to as ‘Motherboard’.
Interestingly all records of Annie and Frankie no longer existed on the Government’s computer systems anymore though nor were any other artificial lifeforms in the UK.
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 