Brainpunch - CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: The Betrayal (Patreon)

Holy fucking shit, fuck Washers. They make everything harder. Protocols are moderately effective at best, you never know if your mind is your own, and most importantly? Every last one of them’s got a plan. It’s endemic to them, I swear. Interrogate any Washer long enough, and it comes out. A trillion-dollar scheme to convince Moody’s that zero-credit-history mortgages are a fucking fantastic idea, a conspiracy to overtake the Guardian Agency, the Twelve Minute War in Florida—and that’s just the most famous of them from the last five years.

The foiled ones, that is. The nature of this shit is that we don’t even know about the plans that fully succeed.

Makes you think what the USA would be like if it weren’t for Brainwashers. Maybe we would still care about the first seven Amendments.

Want to know one of the reasons why the Guardians have such a high percentage of the heroic Washers?

It’s because with the law on the side, they can do anything.

- An excerpt from Asphalt, an ex-Guardian leader brought in as a guest speaker for Course 25.047 (“Analysis and Application of Mental-Based Superpowers”) at MIT

#

Click.

Vivian realized what she was doing just as the firing pin on the pistol she’d unholstered hit nothing but air.

“What the fuck?” Vivian whispered.

“Shit!” Shockwave said, flinching instinctively.

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the FUCK—

Amazon tackled her. The gun clattered out of her hands.

Vivian hit the ground hard. Amazon had the grace to not crush her with her power, but she rolled once, twice, three times, coating her vision with a viscous crimson substance that she didn’t want to think about. Breathtaking pain blossomed in her side as something that should’ve stayed intact tore.

The two of them came to a stop with Amazon on top, pinning Vivian to the ground by her arms and legs. The A-rank’s costume lacked a mask, and the anger in her expression was clear.

“What are you doing?” Amazon hissed, searching Vivian’s eyes.

She opened her mouth to answer—

“Damn it,” a friendly voice said through the mask, clicking her tongue. “Don’t talk. I’ll be over in a second.”

Vivian felt confusion stir within her. This didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t she supposed to speak? Amazon was a friend, too, and she looked just about ready to murder Vivian in cold blood.

No, not cold blood. She’d tried to shoot Shockwave with an empty gun. That was… why had she done that?

Just like before, the sensation of Venus’ power breaking was like a bucket of ice-cold water to the body, dousing every nerve ending and flooding her vision. Amazon had a death grip on her arms, so Vivian couldn’t rub at her suddenly blurry eyes. Instead, she blinked as fast as she could.

“Take it off,” she begged. “Take it off.”

The cold-water sensation was joined and contrasted by an anger intense enough Vivian almost tried to punch Amazon’s brain.

To her credit, it didn’t take the Echelon heroine long enough to realize what had happened.

“Washer effect!” she shouted. “Careful!”

“Take it off,” Vivian repeated, surprising herself with how raw and angry she sounded. “My mask. Please.”

“You do it.”

Amazon adjusted her grip on Vivian, laying one arm gently across her neck. She didn’t press down, but Vivian got the message. If she tried to struggle with her newly freed hands, she wasn’t going to get very far. It felt unfair, but it made sense. There was no telling if she was still under the influence. Hell, even Vivian didn’t know.

She unclipped her mask hastily and tossed it aside, using her telekinesis to assist. The earbuds worked with some bone conduction mechanism—it was Synth shit that she didn’t understand. All that mattered was it was away now.

Pop. Lycoris appeared crouched next to Amazon.

“Huh. Shit. That’s not good. It’s the last temp, I assume? Any guess on the vector?”

“They might have our comms,” Amazon said, not letting Vivian move. “Mantis asked for her mask to be removed, but that could be a red herring.”

“It’s fucking Venus,” Vivian hissed.

“It’s not Venus,” Amazon said. “Did you hear her voice? It may have been a simulation.”

“Careful with your words,” Lycoris said. “Sound could be a vector, if the mic is what did it. Shock, you good?”

“I am,” Shockwave said. “I cut off my comms.”

“What?” Vivian said, indignant. “Are you s—“

“Shhhh,” Amazon said, muffling Vivian’s cries with a hand. “Don’t struggle. You’re bleeding.”

And whose fault is that? The fact that Amazon’s hand, bloody with the residue of the man she’d deboned, was now smearing gore over Vivian’s lips was not helping her rapidly spiking anger.

She inhaled, hoping to balance herself out, but the sharp, tangy scent of blood stopped her from breathing deeper. The taste of coppery, slimy blood dripped between her lips no matter how tightly she tried to close them. Vivian swallowed the urge to vomit.

The idea of spitting it out crossed her mind. Now that was appealing. Maybe Amazon deserved it for not letting Vivian get a word in edgewise.

Her chest grew tight with hot anger, but she didn’t. She didn’t even try using her power offensively. Now especially was not the time to alienate them.

They were being oddly defensive of Venus. Amazon’s immediate dismissal especially struck Vivian as odd…

Oh. Shit. Duh. If she’d been capable of affecting Vivian through her earbuds, there was nothing stopping her from having similar hooks in the others.

Vivian had to think fast. Was it just Amazon affected? Lycoris should have brought up the idea that Venus could be the Washer involved, especially since there seemed to be no love lost between Ayaka and the Indianapolis Guardians. She’d gotten along with Lachlan just fine, but surely even she’d been suspicious of Venus, right?

She couldn’t tell if Shockwave had been hit. He was the one that Venus had told Vivian to target, after all. He wasn’t visible from where she was lying on the ground, though the continued crackle of his power told her that he was pacing back and forth.

Venus had been capable of telling Vivian to shoot Shockwave through her power. With that in mind, why hadn’t she done something to more permanently silence Vivian. For that matter, if she could control them, why not just try again on Shockwave?

Her power must have not been able to affect them as much through the microphone.

Venus had said I’ll be over in a second earlier. Vivian had nothing to go off of but guesswork from her very frazzled brain, but she guessed that the Washer’s physical presence amplified her power. The amount of control she had exerted over Vivian had felt like it had lasted for a shorter duration, this time, and maybe it had been weaker. If it was the same for the others, then that was a potential explanation for why they weren’t acting too far out of the ordinary.

“Don’t stray off too far,” Amazon ordered. “We have one down to a Washer already and no telling where the Washer actually is. Minimize lines of sight. Lycoris, the moment you feel anything different—”

“I’ll shoot myself, don’t worry,” Lycoris said nonchalantly. “I got you.”

So if their one command was to ignore Venus as a target, then that would give her time to show up and ensnare them more.

Vivian couldn’t let that happen. She didn’t know what Venus wanted to do with the Echelon team, but it was probably safe to assume that the Washer wanted Shockwave dead. Vivian didn’t like the Kinetic as much as she had Barbarian, but she’d had enough of her teammates fucking dying in front of her.

She was going to have to make her next moves based off of assumptions. There just wasn’t enough data about Venus’ power in the database to be certain about what was happening.

Sound was clearly one way her power traveled. Based on Vivian’s memory of her first unwelcome encounter with the woman, sight was too. She was capable of altering perception to make her seem trustworthy, which featured a heavy visual component.

Vivian shut her eyes and plugged her ears as well as she could with her power. She didn’t want to move her hands for fear of Amazon thinking she was up to something.

The rest of Echelon still didn’t know Vivian’s full power, which could work for her here. What didn’t work was that she needed visual contact within her range in order to actually use it effectively, but that was a bridge she could burn when she got to it.

Technically, she could also just lash out blindly and hope to catch an important internal organ, but she was fairly certain that murdering a Guardian would be frowned down upon by Echelon, the Guardians, and basically every form of authority there was. While her teammates also bore a particular distaste for the supers in blue, they were still heroes.

For the first time, Vivian truly got what Lycoris meant about image. If she was someone like Miracle or Contingency or Sunrise or Iron Legion or any of the other heroes that rotated through her desktop wallpapers, she might be given time to explain herself. As she was, she was an unestablished indie with no claim to fame besides a couple of clips on Reddit. They wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in her head—or, potentially worse, a Washer’s instructions.

Click. Thump. Click. Thump. With the civilians here long dead or evacuated, the footsteps were practically deafening. There were two sets of them, slightly out of sync with each other. Vivian recognized one of them as Venus’ impractical designers, but the other was new. Those steps were heavier, clunkier. Boots, maybe?

“Oh, shit,” Vivian muttered, remembering who else was supposed to be here.

That could only be Safezone.

Amazon got off of Vivian. The change was sudden enough that Vivian nearly opened her eyes, but she remembered that Venus was within range of them at the last second and screwed them shut.

“Venus,” Amazon said, her voice faintly muffled by Vivian’s attempts to block out sound.

“Amazon,” Venus replied in kind.

A spike of pain shot through her, and Vivian groaned, holding a hand to her side. That was going to become a problem rather quickly.

The telekinesis wasn’t doing a good enough job of blocking sound, so she let it drop and instead used it to hold her freshly reopened wound together. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it got less blood on her hands.

The temperature seemed to rise as the Washer’s footsteps grew closer. Safezone. It had to be. His protective zone was either actively canceling the cold or specifically attuned to Whiteout’s power. Once again, the ridiculous lack of clarity that the Guardians had with their members’ powers was working against Vivian. Technically, this was beneficial to Safezone, but that made this current situation really, really awkward.

Did he have a general power-blocking effect? If he did, was he aware of what powers he was blocking? If Vivian tried to use her telekinesis to give Venus a stroke, would he be able to tell?

Vivian opened her eyes just in time to see a hulking figure fly through the floor-to-ceiling window at gate E5, shattering the glass.

“Careful!” Shockwave shouted unnecessarily.

Wind whistled in through the newly created hole, throwing the dead silence of the airport massacre into a chaotic mess of noise.

The person who’d just been launched through the window had to be a Shifter of some kind. He (at least, she assumed it was a he) was at least fifteen feet tall, his body covered in stony, spiky growths that obscured nearly every distinguishing feature but his eyes. He looked like a cross between a scaled-down Godzilla—weird comparison, Vivian told herself—and a porcupine.

Pieces of the spike growth had crumbled away, and more fell with every movement the giant made. As he turned, shoving himself back on his feet, a chunk of his hands crumbled, emitting a radiant, familiar light.

That was Sunrise’s power, Vivian realized. He had been fighting Whiteout and this guy for some time now, and somehow, this temp had either jumped or been blasted ten to twenty feet upwards into the gate.

He turned to face the assorted heroes.

“Ah, fuck,” Vivian muttered.

The spiky golem stormed forth, mincing corpses with each step.

Venus was using her power, but Vivian wasn’t feeling as motivated to help her friend as she had before. Either the Washer needed to direct the mind-fuck or it was less effective after a victim broke out.

Vivian considered trying to take advantage of the sudden chaos to use her power , but doing it while a bloody golem of death was barreling towards them seemed… unwise, to say the least.

Amazon leapt at the temp super, practically flying from a crouched position. She barreled straight into the center of it, and Vivian instinctively flinched in sympathy for the woman throwing herself face-first into what amounted to a walking sea urchin.

That concern turned out to be misguided. Amazon’s power scaled the longer and more intensely she’d been fighting, and the first two temp supers they’d faced must have hit her enough times to amp her up. The spikes on the front had been weakened by Sunrise’s blast, and Amazon’s enhanced strength meant she hit the temp like a cannonball, splintering more stone and sending both of them tumbling back.

“Get out!” Venus shouted at the golem.

He flinched backwards, which gave Amazon enough time to recover and land a meaty (stony?) spinning side kick directly on the same spot she’d collided with him.

The temp staggered. Vivian saw that a chunk of its lower torso had caved in. Dark red dripped out in uneven spurts, coating the spikes below.

Amazon didn’t give the golem a single second to breathe. Shockwave and Lycoris didn’t even get a move in before she bodyslammed it again. He was unprepared enough this time that she swept him off his feet, sending them both over the edge.

“She’d make a great David,” Lycoris said. “I’m sure we can make a meme out of that. Actually, wait. Religion might not hit that well. Hmm…”

“Pay attention,” Shockwave said. “Should we pursue?”

“You two go on ahead,” Venus suggested. “There was Washer influence on some of the civilians. I need to clear that up.”

“Whiteout is on the tarmac,” Lycoris said.

“What Washer?” Vivian interjected, groaning as she pushed herself to a half-kneeling stance. There was nowhere convenient to wipe her hands or face, and she wasn’t about to smear the blood of innocents all over her new costume, so she used her power to scrub it off as well as she could. “That temp’s an Aegis.”

“There’s another one in play,” Venus lied.

Vivian pretended like she was rubbing the sleep out of her eyes to avoid looking at her, but the honeyed words sounded so convincing. The Guardian could easily be right, after all. There were a lot of supers in Chicago, and there was no telling who was deciding to get involved in this shitshow. If living in and around San Francisco most of her life had taught her anything, it was that these situations could always get worse. A second Washer in play at this very airport would be the perfect cherry on top.

She screwed her eyes shut, pressing a hand to her reopened wound. No. Don’t let Venus get in your head.

“We’ll deal with the other Washer then,” Shockwave said. “Lycoris is right. Whiteout is on the tarmac. It’s cold enough in here. We won’t be able to operate properly if we get closer to him. He’s an A.”

“Unless you want to toss Safezone down there with us,” Lycoris suggested. “Would you prefer that?”

Venus considered for a moment. “Safezone, you can handle yourself. Go ahead.”

“I can’t make the drop,” Vivian said. “I’m bleeding.”

Lycoris took one look at her and swore. “Alright. I don’t think getting you in range of Whiteout a second time is a good idea anyway. Shockwave, how do you feel about regrouping with Amazon without Mantis?”

“Down two members,” Shockwave said, tapping a foot. He set his jaw. “Alright. Safezone, with us. We’re going to pursue. Amazon should be able to handle the golem alone. Keep us safe from Whiteout and Sunrise. Got it?”

Safezone, who looked like he’d walked straight out of a science fiction movie, power armor and all, gave an exaggerated thumbs up. “You got it, boss. Don’t let me die.”

“Of course,” Lycoris said. “Sit tight, Mantis. I’m sending you back to the entrance.”

Before Vivian could clarify what that meant, Lycoris drew a pistol and shot her in the face.

#

“—oly fuck!” Vivian shouted.

She hit the ground half a second later, which elicited another curse through gritted teeth. This one hurt much less than the last one did, thankfully.

Vivian got to her feet and looked around her. She saw empty security gates, barriers that had been trampled by the sheer volume of panicked travelers coming through, and most jarringly, no bodies.

There wasn’t any on her, either, and her side was remarkably stiff and not at all bloody.

Right. Lycoris had anchored her earlier.

It was effectively a second life. She felt way better than she had just moments ago. There was no pain beyond the usual, and more importantly, the fog in her head was gone. Venus’ influence wasn’t there.

That means she’s going to be able to sneak in more effectively this time, Vivian thought grimly. She might have been freed of the Washer’s influence, but she’d also just lost her temporary immunity.

Vivian wasn’t sure what her actual goal was here—nor if it actually mattered. If Venus had clearly acted against Echelon, it was safe to assume that she had something nefarious planned. Once again, Vivian dearly regretted not having a better reputation. She set aside the fact that there wasn’t much else she really could have been doing to do so in favor of being annoyed with herself.

She felt for her pistols. Lycoris’ power reset everything to the state it had been in when anchored, so she had both guns again. They were loaded, too. Good to know.

Shooting Venus was almost certainly going to land her in hot water, though. It was too easy to get lethal there, and Vivian wasn’t sure if she wanted to keep going down that path. Besides, it would be much harder to defend herself with Venus’ plan if the Washer was dead.

Venus hadn’t gone to fight against the last temp and Whiteout, which meant she was somewhere in the airport. Vivian was reasonably sure that the second-Washer thing was a blatant lie, which meant that Venus still had plans here.

What could she do to stop that from happening?

She caught sight of another chain store. It wasn’t a bookseller, this time. This was one of the ones that took advantage of being past airport security to charge ten dollars for a liter of water and thirty for a basic set of earplugs.

It was the latter of those that she wanted now. Vivian jogged over as fast as she could without reopening her injury, then started looting the store. It was already in disarray thanks to the rapid onset of people fleeing the terminal, so a little extra chaos didn’t hurt too much.

Foam earbuds were stored in the same glass cabinet as the electronics for some reason, which meant they were behind a locked door. Vivian used the same trick she’d done on a skyway door once before to jiggle the inner mechanisms of the lock until the cabinet door swung open, then sent a packet of the earplugs flying to her hand.

She looked over the other stuff within, then decided instead on a set of noise-canceling earbuds that had been marked up to truly insane prices. Vivian had lost her last set of earbuds a while back, anyway, and it wasn’t like anyone was going to miss these…

They were charged, thankfully, so she paired them with her phone, turned the canceling on, and started playing her anime OP/ED playlist at max volume. Vivian winced at how painfully loud the sound was, but she didn’t turn it down.

She retraced the steps they’d taken through the terminal, an upbeat J-pop song blasting her eardrums as she saw the signs of the massacre steadily increase.

As she walked, Vivian flicked her eyes around, looking for Venus. Every shop was a potential hiding spot. Venus knew Vivian knew they were at odds, so it was very possible that the Washer would just try to jump her.

The first person she recognized was not Venus. As she scanned a bloody intersection, she noticed that one of the facedown bodies did not look entirely human. Vivian recoiled at the lupine body that looked like a person had been horrendously infected by a werewolf before getting cut in half, then realized who this was.

She used her power in conjunction with her gloves to tilt Zach—Barbarian’s face up. Chunks of flesh tore from his body as she did.

He was dead. There wasn’t even a hint of breath. His eyes were glassed over. The skin hadn’t finished cooling yet, so he couldn’t have been gone long.

Fuck. I thought Safezone was supposed to be able to protect him. Had he not seen Barbarian on the way in? Safezone had said he was going to help, wasn’t he?

The realization clicked, and a hard knot of disgusted anger formed in Vivian’s stomach.

“It was Venus,” she hissed to herself, standing.

The Washer must have convinced Safezone not to help. It wouldn’t have been hard. He had no reason to suspect her.

Vivian finally spotted Venus a few minutes later. The Washer was not, in fact, dealing with the civilians. Instead, she strode towards the terminal exit that Vivian had come from.

Venus recognized Vivian a moment later and broke out into a smile.

She was pretty. She seemed trustworthy.

Whatever she wanted to tell Vivian, though, was drowned out by her new earbuds screaming out the first lyric to her favorite anime opening this season.

Vivian looked downwards, foot tapping in time with the beat.

The sight of Zach’s body stopped her short. A sensation like ice cracking struck her, and she remembered what she was here for.

She smiled back at Venus. The Guardian’s lips drew her eyes. What was she saying? That looked like a ha… deez? Vivian didn’t particularly care, but her mind drew the connections anyway.

When you hear me say…

No. She was here because of Venus, and it wasn’t to help. The other super was…

…the word “Hades”…

Vivian closed her eyes, centering herself. It was hard to do so when a band was scream-singing into her ears, but she tried anyway.

She’d seen so much death. Caused some. Had almost caused more. And it was Venus’ fault, wasn’t it?

A friend causing so much damage… she didn’t want to believe it, but she needed to.

…kill yourself.

She remembered the command.

And she stood stock still.

Killing herself was a bad thing.

Suicide is not a victimless crime, she remembered her therapist saying. You might consider it a way to solve your problems, but all you’ll do is make more.

That therapist hadn’t lasted very long, but she still remembered the words. Why would her friend tell her to do this?

Well, she hadn’t actually heard the word, had she?

“…Vivian. Do you hear me?”

Suddenly, the song was only playing in the left half of her world.

Vivian opened her eyes.

Venus had a hand tucked behind her right ear. She’d plucked an earbud out.

A number of events proceeded in very, very quick succession.

Venus used her power again.

The singer screamed.

Vivian felt like she’d been sprayed with a firehose.

Venus opened her mouth. “I said, k—“

Vivian punched her in the throat.

Twice.

The ostensible hero wasn’t ready for either assault. Vivian wasn’t a great puncher, but her telekinesis was perfectly suited for messing up the internals of a throat. She’d done enough research on biology to have some general idea where the vocal cords were, but she didn’t particularly care. Two things mattered right now, and that was stopping Venus from speaking and making it hurt.

Mantis accomplished those in spades. Venus’ eyes went wide, and she clutched at her throat. She tried to scream, but it came out as a hoarse half-sound. The Washer coughed, which did not help her throat at all. Blood dribbled from her mouth.

She shoved Venus, knocking the taller woman onto her ass. It was easy enough to hit people when they were in pain.

The power travels through sight and sound, Mantis thought, clarity returning to her like the ocean to land after an earthquake. Need to remove both.

Mantis punched Venus’ throat again, throttling it with her power, and she shoved once more, repositioning herself so she had a knee on the Washer’s chest.

Just like Amazon had done to her earlier, Mantis put her forearm on Venus neck. Unlike Amazon, she didn’t hesitate to put weight on it, giving her more leverage.

“What was it I said last time?” the murderer said. “Oh. Right. If you do that to me again, I will rip your eyeballs out of your skull with my fingernails.”

Distantly, she remembered that she was not supposed to reveal what her power could really do. Mantis couldn’t dig up the reason why, but Vivian knew was important somehow, so she did as she promised to.

Human eyeballs were surprisingly resilient to basic pressure, as it turned out, but Mantis had her power and all the leverage she needed. With a bit of telekinetic help, it was simplicity itself to sever the optic nerve. Actually pulling it out was a bloody mess, but she had promised.

Mantis dropped the eyeballs on the ground, ignoring the hoarse, unintelligible pleas for mercy. They made a wet plop sound next to Venus’ ears.

You killed my teammate.

She stood.

You violated me.

Crushing the eyeballs with her power proved to be surprisingly easy. They burst over Venus’ face.

There. Still alive, but nonfunctional. She wasn’t going to be brainwashing anyone else soon.

Her phone rang.

Call from: Lachlan

Vivian picked up the phone.

This was going to be hard to explain.