Super Sales on Super Heroes: Book 2

Chapter 23 - The Return -

“Adriana,” Felix said, not wanting to lose the chance his nameless benefactor had given them. Ducking down into the carrier he met the lead Adriana’s gaze.

“Get out in the far field and get over to the other camp. Let’s curtail any pillaging and looting before they get a chance. I need it done at a run, so take whatever mechanized units you need. Questions?” Felix asked.

Adriana shook her head, getting up from her seat.

“Oh, and Adriana… what do you think about changing your hair color permanently? Something to distinguish you from Andrea. I promise to treat the two of you the same, and you can always recombine later on, but it might be good to have at least one unique feature,” Felix said. His words had started to ramble a bit at the end. He wasn’t sure if he was making a situation out of something that wasn’t there.

Adriana stared at him for a moment, then gave him a smile.

“Nn. I think that… I think that’d be a good thing. Though I think we’ll choose brunette. We are, and are not, Andrea. I’ll discuss it with my Prime when I rejoin her,” said the Beastkin.

“Good. As much as I love staring at you in that harness, you need to go get going,” Felix said, gesturing at the door.

“Oh? I’ll let my Prime know that, too. Maybe she’ll wear it for you tonight.”

Adriana slipped by him without another word, leaving him alone in the carrier.

Huh. Those are two very separate personalities… long-term troubles maybe. As long as I treat them the same, I suppose, it isn’t my problem.

Standing up, Felix found Victoria waiting. She opened her mouth and before she could get started, Felix held up a hand.

“We’re staying here in the carrier. Adriana is going to go hit the other camp and curtail the pillaging, raping, and killing. I can’t imagine yonder warrior tribe taking their loss easily. They’ll take it out on the other one,” Felix said. Then he shook his head. “No. We’ll end this one here and now. We take the other tribe into the alliance, force them to work together with Hern, and banish the third. That doesn’t break any of the decrees that were set down.”

“Decrees?” Victoria asked.

Felix felt his stomach lurch. He didn’t really want to think about it if he didn’t have to.

“Did you see a silhouette on the field? Right before that enemy conga line of gods vanished?” Felix asked, his voice soft.

“Yeah. I did. It just… appeared. They all… knelt before it, it looked like.”

“Yeah. They did. That silhouette is someone… or something… I owe some favors to for a change in my own powers I wanted. I kinda forced it to intercede here. It left me with a few commands I am quite loath to break,” Felix explained.

Victoria nodded her head, looking out to the field again. “It sounds like the world is a scarier place than I thought it was,” Victoria said.

Felix heard a chime in his ear signaling an incoming call.

I had no idea we got reception on another planet. They must have put up some temporary signal relays or something.

Reaching up to his ear, Felix tapped the button.

“This is Felix,” he said.

“What the heck just happened?” Kit asked him, sounding completely out of breath.

“Huh?” Felix muttered. “What do you mean? Weren’t you watching the feed? That was the whole reason we outfitted so many people with cameras. You wanted them specifically for HR.”

“I was watching! We even tried to record it. Every single camera has a blank spot. I could see when those people appeared, one started attacking, then the recording goes white,” Kit said, her tone curt. “Every. Single. Camera.”

“And… did it come back on?” Felix asked. He had a sneaking suspicion but he didn’t want to believe it.

“The cameras? They did, yes. They all turned back on as if there wasn’t even a problem. The people were gone and the field was empty,” Kit said. He could hear the loud thump of her sitting down heavily in a chair.

“Well. Something did happen. It might be good if we waited for me to make it back to HQ to talk about it though. It might even be best to let you read it from my head and a few others. It’s… it’s honestly hard to explain.”

Kit sighed from her end of the line. “I imagine so. Because that’s not all that happened.”

“Oh?”

“I’m sending you a few clips of video. These happened minutes ago but are all over already. Watch them but don’t hang up. Your wrist terminal should be able to display them fine.”

“Alright, alright. Send it my way then,” Felix said. Turning over his wrist, he opened up the display, flipped it to his email, and waited.

Crap. Need to call Miu off before she murders her way all the way down to the peasants.

Typing off a quick command into an email, he sent it Miu’s way. She was well outside of radio range he was betting. With any luck, the notification would catch her interest if the signal relay could get it out to her.

Several video clips fed into his inbox. Opening the first one he cleared his throat. “So what is it I’m looking at here? While it loads, that is. Any type of—”

“Just watch,” Kit said.

“Fine, fine.”

Biting down his impatience, Felix managed to wait quietly.

The video blipped once, then turned on.

It was a church service.

He couldn’t recognize the religious iconography in the video on the walls. There was no point in guessing at the religion for Felix. He’d never had a mind for worship so there simply was no base knowledge for him to work off of.

A man stood on a raised dais and was standing in front of a podium. Felix assumed the man was giving a very good sermon since he was being drowned out by applause.

Finally noticing the look of horror on the man’s face, Felix realized it wasn’t applause.

It was a grinding, shuddering rumble that was increasing in volume every second. To the point that it was simply too loud for the microphone on the camera to pick up anything else.

Light began to shine from a symbol on the wall. One that was smaller than the others. It was dull at first, then it exploded into a blazing beam of scorching whiteness.

The video cut out after that.

“Was that a bomb?” Felix asked, moving to open the second video.

“No. It wasn’t. In fact… the next two videos are the same, though one is from outside of a museum. A museum of religion,” Kit said.

“Alright. I’m not sure what’s happening here. When did this happen exactly?” Felix asked.

“A minute or two after the recordings blanked out.”

That means that whatever my friend did here… affected Earth. But in what way?

“Ok. I’m up to speed. But… what does it mean? Did anything happen afterward? I mean, did they just go back to normal?”

“Yes… and yet no. A few religious leaders… exploded. A number of people simply died. Stranger still, some recovered from terminal illnesses and diseases. Some that they simply shouldn’t have been able to,” Kit said.

“I… I don’t even know what to say to this. It doesn’t make any sense,” Felix murmured. He really didn’t either. None of it registered with him as anything that connected with what he knew.

“Maybe it’d help if I told you that every single spiritualist, from the weakest clairvoyant, to the strongest necromancer… passed out. When they woke up, they were all changed. By and large, most of them are incredibly stronger than they were previously. Especially those devoted to religions or cults.

“You know how Witches and Warlocks were believed to simply be a lower form of Magic or Wizardry?”

“Yeah. Their magic was very similar, but it couldn’t put out enough power to be useful.”

He’d actually looked into it at one point. Most of them used fairly mundane relics and simple beliefs to fuel their spells. Once he’d realized that it would only do enough to get him in trouble, Felix had dropped the study fairly quickly.

“Every Witch and Warlock in our employ reported in. They experienced a massive upsurge in power.”

“They did?”

“Orders of magnitude greater. They also reported something else.”

Felix was in a bit of a hurry and didn’t really have time to play this game, but he imagined Kit was enjoying herself.

“Oh? And what’s that,” Felix said amiably.

“Sorry, I know this bugs you. It’s just so exciting. They all reported that… that something reached out to them. Reached out to them and they suddenly felt complete. Whole. The spiritualists said something similar.”

Something reached out to them?

“This is a guess but… you said that they were gods that you saw? Gods and goddesses?”

“Yeah. Apparently the enemy prayed and—oh. You think…?”

“What I think is that in the tales passed down, priests were magicians of their own caliber. Before the non-human races appeared.”

Frowning Felix looked up and out onto the bloody grasslands. His history was shaky at best.

“Quite a few people thought it was the end of the world back then. I mean, the non-human races just appeared one day, and by all accounts, magic was at an all time low.

“And now… we opened a portal to another world and all of the… the religions… woke up,” Kit said.

“That seems pretty far fetched,” Felix said.

“I would agree. Except that we actually have a priest or two in our ranks. They also reported similar events to the Witches and Warlocks,” Kit said. “And apparently, they got a more direct message.”

“And that was?”

“’We have returned.’”

“That sounds ominous,” Felix said, feeling like he’d done something incredibly stupid.

“That it does. Way to go there, Pandora. Let’s pray hope is still in the box. I can’t imagine gods from thousands of years ago being up on today’s morality and society. I’ve already notified Lily and she’s working to get whatever info we can. She still has contacts in the magical community after all.”

Felix pressed his hands to his face.

Everything kept getting more and more complicated.

“I’ve got Jessica on the line,” Andrea said, looking up from her terminal.

Felix closed his eyes and rubbed at them with his palms. It’d been a few weeks since the battle on Legion world. Election day was literally around the corner now.

Tomorrow, even.

Felix was feeling tired and run down at this point. He was quite glad for the governor race to be over soon. Win or lose.

“Yeah?” he said.

“She said she linked up with Erica. They have some others from other stations they want to bring in. She’d like to schedule a meeting with you to go over it,” Andrea said.

“Uh huh. And pump me for a story as well. Her career has really skyrocketed since we’ve been feeding her and Erica stories,” Felix muttered. Opening his eyes he blinked a few times, trying to get everything to come into focus.

“They’re pretty,” Andrea said suddenly.

“That they are. And I’m already with a lovely wolf Beastkin and her sister. Go ahead and schedule the meeting for today. I wanted to drop those stories off with her to sink the other candidates tonight anyways. I’ll pack things up and head over that way. I need to stop by Felicia’s lab first and see how things are rolling. She promised me a peek at the new Fist,” Felix said, standing up.

“Nn!” Andrea said, her cheeks turning a faint red. “Adriana is happy… by the way. We joined briefly the other day. They’re happy being Adriana and our sister.”

“Good. Off to see Felicia,” he said, leaving the ANet and entering the elevator.

He’d taken to hiding here whenever he needed some time to himself. Few people would venture into the ANet floor willingly.

Two Adrianas smiled at him as he passed by, watching him intently. Practically staring at him.

They’re quite a bit more intense than the Andreas.

A few minutes later and Felix couldn’t help but wonder if this had been a bad idea. Felicia had been excited to see him.

Which made every inch of skin on his body crawl. She was never happy to see him.

Unless she wanted something

“Felix! Great timing. I wanted to talk to you,” Felicia said as she stumped over to him as he was cleared through security.

“Oh? And what does my armorer need?” Felix asked, unable to help himself.

“Eh? More people, honestly. But I wanted to talk to you about Legion’s Fist, and your points,” Felicia said. She smacked the back of her hand against his stomach and went in the opposite direction she came from. “This way. I want you to look at this.”

Felix followed along. Unable to help himself he looked into every lab room, desk, and terminal he saw as he passed.

Everyone was working on something. He could see prototypes, modeling, data points, even an entire meeting that looked like it was talking about testing protocol.

“—ee if we can’t make upgrades simply based on your power! I mean, when we really dug into the original Fist we found a lot of things we’d never even considered. That’s why we tore it apart, put it back together, and then retired it,” Felicia said.

“Huh. Yeah, that makes sense. I suppose we could see what the point cost is. No idea how much it’ll do or how far I can push it though. Some of that more subjective stuff gets weird,” Felix said.

“Excuses already? You’re the naysayer today, are ya?” Felicia said.

She slapped her hand into a panel next to a doorway. The door slid open and she made to enter immediately.

“Come on then, come take a look at the Fist and let’s see what we can do,” Felicia said as she walked through the doorway.

Felix followed along and stopped almost immediately just inside.

It was bigger than the last one. At least double the size in fact. The weapons were similar, but sized up. There was even what looked to be a gigantic cannon sticking up over the shoulder and pointing skyward.

How would you even use that?

This new Fist was clearly designed for a battlefield, and not for a building.

“I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. This isn’t for going into buildings. Your normal armor is for that, and excels at it. Why create another tool that does the same thing?” Felicia said.

Stopping in front of a console, she began typing something in.

“White and I have been working pretty heavily on this one. We took a lot of his other work and built it in. Nanotech, rail guns, better energy sources, better alloys,” Felicia said.

She typed something rapidly in and the Fist began moving.

It was eerie how little noise it made as it lowered itself to the ground.

The torso opened up, the lower half forming a stairwell, and the upper half moving out of the way. The cockpit inside looked as if the original one had been mirrored.

He wasn’t quite sure how that’d work if he was supposed to control it as if it were his own limbs.

“Similar helmet design to your armor. It feeds in, and responds, as if it were your body. We spent a lot of time getting it right,” Felicia said.

“Am I that easy to read?” Felix grumped. Lately it felt like everyone knew what he was thinking as he thought it.

Felicia stopped what she was doing and turned to look at him.

“No. But we all talked to Kit about your thoughts once she got into your head. It’s… good to know you’re exactly what you say you are. Also easier to understand. Even if you are an ass.”

Should have known. Not a problem, though. She’s not sharing anything I wouldn’t already tell them if they asked.

“Good, I suppose. So… you want me to try to upgrade it?” Felix asked, starting to draw up what he wanted his popup to do.

“Yep. I want you to more or less do what you did last time. We figured out a lot of things that would’ve taken us time to get to, and we would have, but time saved, ya know? So… more of the same,” Felicia said, facing him. She leaned up against the console and folded her arms across her chest.

“Fine, fine. By the way, how are you and Ioana doing? I don’t get to see much of her. She’s always working,” Felix said.

He focused on Legion’s Fist, trying to think back to what he did last time. He’d simply wanted it completed at the time. To be what it would be if they’d had the time to finish it.

“We’re… we’re doing well. Too well. I keep expecting something to go wrong,” Felicia said after a moment.

“That’s a silly way to look at it. Why predict a negative when you have no reason to? Focus on the now or lose it,” Felix said with a touch of anger in his voice.

A number of people he’d met in his life had always focused on the problems. The concerns. The negative what ifs that could happen.

They spent their lives worrying and complaining, instead of working to fix it.

Ah, let’s do that then. Let’s apply that thought to this.

Making that his driving thought, Felix wanted to see what the Legion’s Fist would be if Felicia and Mr. White had another year to work on it.

To see the state of the mech at that point.

Equipment(Legion’s Fist II): Build out extended by one year

Warden Unit will be completed per specifications.

Upgrade?(53,000)

“Well. I got the answer. About fifty-three thousand points,” Felix said.

“And what’d you do exactly?”

“I wanted to see what’d it’d be like if you had another year to work on it.”

“Huh. That’s definitely one way to look at it. Change that though. What would it look like if we upgraded it to the next version,” Felicia suggested.

Nodding his head, Felix altered his desire.

Equipment(Legion’s Fist II): Build out changed by one iteration.

Warden Unit will modified by one development cycle.

Upgrade?(112,500)

“Damn. Jumped up to one-hundred and twelve. Give or take.”

“Ok, go up another version.”

Felix frowned and decided he’d humor her.

Don’t exactly have that kind of point value, you know.

Equipment(Legion’s Fist II): Build out changed by two iterations.

Warden Unit will modified by two development cycles.

Upgrade?(359,250)

“Three hundred and sixty. Roughly,” Felix said, shaking his head. That was a massive point investment.

“See, that’s a big point jump though. It isn’t a straight multiplication. Which means the development on that one is much bigger. Ok, do that one,” Felicia said, nodding her head.

“Hah. And where do you think I’ll get those points? It’s not like th—”

“Ah. That’s right, I haven’t told you. I’ve been converting some of my budget into gold. Right now I have enough for about a million points. This is what I want first,” Felicia said, waving her hand in the air. “Your point budget right now is at about one hundred, I’ll take up two-hundred and sixty of that on my own.”

… Damn. I never even thought about doing that. That’s not a bad idea. Have departments turn their budget to gold to convert to points instead of straight funding.

“I also told everyone else what I was doing the other day with my budget. I expect they’ll probably be doing the same.”

“I would be, too” Felix admitted.

“Alright. Do you have the gold handy or do we have to do some transfers?” Felix asked.

Felicia looked back to the console and poked a button.

“Oi, bring in two hundred and sixty thousand points worth of gold,” Felicia said, and then looked back to Felix with a wide grin. “I can’t wait to see what we would have made in the future. This’ll jump us ahead by years I bet.”

Felix began turning gold into dirt as soon as the lab assistants started to cart it in. As soon as it was altered, the dirt was carted right back out.

By the time three minutes had passed, Felix mutated enough gold to make economists twitch.

And when it was all done, he only took a moment to pull up a window and make the upgrade.

Legion’s Fist began to rapidly change in front of them.

The design went from sleek lines to hard edges. Weapons melted and reformed themselves into vaguely similar designs, but clearly different.

Overall, it was a similar design, but was clearly a different machine.

“Yes, yes!” Felicia shouted, clapping her hands together. “I can’t wait to start poking around in it. Shit in my beer, is that a portal device on this thing?”