A Pearl Before Swine Pt. 03 Ch. 07-10

"What's that?" she asked drearily, looking at the holo screen Evan was looking at.

"Oh, its nothing. I am just looking for some outdoor temples. That's the only clue I have about my mom's disappearance" he replied, somewhat truthfully. "All the temples I have searched up so far are way too ... industrial" he continued, trying to give some context without having to explain the whole story.

"Hey, I know a good place" she mentioned sounding more awake. "Over in the far corner of Sector 31 there is a really nice church from the pre-Powered age. It is just about the opposite of industrial" she laughed.

At that moment, Evan received a message from Marcus. "Have you seen Leena? She was supposed to meet me for lunch at noon today." Looking at the clock, the two hours and thirty minutes past noon it showed began to reignite his anxiety.

"I think she had a job interview" he messaged back. "Can't remember what it was for."

"That was in the morning" came Marcus' hurried reply. "And I cant get ahold of her at all. She was super excited for her modeling interview, and was messaging me non-stop. Have you ever known her to just stop talking about something like this?"

Evan jumped at the touch on his shoulder. Sierra turned her holo screen at him with a grave face. The city bulletin had issued a midday report. After reading the headline, Evan felt the world around him fade away in a cacophony of despair. It read:

"BREAKING NEWS: Mass attack on fashion giant NEXUS leaves twenty injured, 100+ missing.

The world became a dull ring for Evan as he hazily read Marcus' next reply. "Maybe NEXUS didn't allow her to bring her phone inside?"

Chapter 9: It Searches

One-hundred and forty-five dark forms huddled against the mahogany brick wall. One-hundred and forty-five dark forms shivered in the damp breeze of the secluded apartment complex courtyard. It was deep under business level and surrounded by the iron legs of skyscrapers. The dim daylight was mostly a dreary blue from reflecting off the surrounding metal superstructure.

"This place screams undercity" thought Angler 3 as he motioned for several guards to replace the current sentries.

Both Angler and prisoner alike cowed in fear as a fuming figure approached. Angler 3 thought he could understand Angler Leader's barely contained rage. This was not supposed to be a kidnapping operation.

Angler Leader received a call in the late morning, and the urgency was so great that she didn't even bother maligning her subordinates' state of unpreparedness, instead hopping on the first truck to the scene. The goal was simple, contain the breach. How complicated would it be? It was just one rogue operative to retrieve, and no one would be the wiser. Most of NEXUS had been evacuated by fake police officers under the pretense of a small containable fire.

Then all of Neptune's depths broke loose. SOMETHING exploded in a bubble of agony-inducing sound. While it did little damage outside of the local rooms it originated from, the sound resonated in everyone's heads for several seconds. On the periphery of the conflict, Angler 3 only saw the aftermath of the skirmish. Entire floors of the fashion complex began to collapse, and the entire perimeter he was holding buckled under the chaos of a panicked crowd. A hectic mix of police officers arriving on the scene, undercover agents of which Angler group was only one section of, and screaming fashion designers, turned the scene into a nightmare.

In the end, the culprit of the chaos was presumably subdued and extracted from the situation by "the organization" while the mess was hurriedly cleaned up. The official death toll was now over 40, but Angler 3 saw nearly twice that being picked up by Angler team and other groups of the organization. Any body remotely connected to the organization was gone, as well as anyone inside the destroyed zone. Even if they managed to collect every body; Angler 3 assumed there were still some under the rubble; it would have been impossible to cover up the incident. Exposure on a large scale this early was the one thing that could topple the shadowy organization. The order came through to go underground until further notice, but Angler team got tasked with holding onto the remaining prisoners.

Angler Leader strode up to the front of the line of roped together citizens. "All right" she spoke stoically with more restraint than Angler 3 expected. "Here is what is going to happen. You", she gestured at the man in front of her, "are going to tell me everything you saw. Depths even everything you THINK you saw. Now. Talk."

The still dazed man unfortunate enough to be at the start of the line cowered from her intimidating presence. "I ... I don't ... know."

With a violent blow, she sent him to the pavement. "ANYONE WHO LIES TO ME, GETS MORE OF THIS" she shouted while delivering a brutal kick that shut off the downed man's feeble movements to crawl away. She moved towards the next person in line. A smaller woman, about 5-4, was dragged to her toes by the front of her fancy lapel. "Now, anything you want to tell me?"

"I have something for you" said the third girl in line calmly. Angler Leader set down the lady she was holding and took a look at the new speaker at an unfortunate time. The girl took one step forward, lifted her arm, and unleashed a full bombardment of pepper spray from under her sleeve.

"AAAAIIIIIIIIGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!" Angler Leader shrieked as the point blank spray caught her straight in the face. Ever the one for violence, her leg lashed out as she spun to the ground and glanced off the new girl, knocking her to the ground. Angler 3 quickly jumped on her and relieved her of both the spray and the knife in her other hand that was used to cut herself free. She was wearing a frilly yellow designer dress, and Angler 2 stepped forward to search her for more weapons.

Finding a safety pin in her sock, a pointed hairpin in her braided ponytail, and a sharp looking pair of nail clippers in a hidden pocket, Angler 2 began to roughly rip the dress off her.

"What are you doing?" Angler 3 asked after the matted dress proved resilient to rupture.

"She could be hiding plenty more under this" came the gruff reply.

"Allow me" Angler 3 continued drawing his bone white sickle knife from its sheath. "Stop struggling or this could get messy" he warned the squirming girl. Angler 2 pinned her to the ground, and she laid fearfully still as Angler 3 began to cut off the offending garment. When it was finally dealt with, her body lay revealed.

She wore a matching set of smooth plain peach colored undergarments that matched her pale skin tone well. They were ineffectively covered in a tight one-piece corset that was little more than a halter of black straps. Her breasts were small, A or small B-cups he reckoned, and her entire body was skinnier than it looked under the dress. Angler 3 slid the side of his sickle knife along her left clavicle towards the small dip in her chest. She blanched and turned her eyes in anticipation, but he only used the curved blade to catch the golden chained necklace and pull it over her head. "What is your name?" he asked.

"Go to the depths you worm brained hagfish" she spat at him. Then she actually spat at him, but the glob of spittle just fell back between her breasts. He smeared the clear slime mindlessly on her smooth skin before Angler 2 interrupted.

"Huh, this one here is an Alina Aurora" he smirked in a bass voice while reading some identification card found in the maze of her discarded dress. The girl still looked back defiantly at the smirking officers, daring them to make the next move. Fortunately for her, Angler Leader came back into the picture.

Having finally recovered from the douse of facial irritant, Angler Leader stormed back towards the prisoners with a godlike fury. "Maybe she isn't recovered after all" thought Angler 3 as he got a closer look at her face. Her entire face was swollen and puffy although he couldn't tell if the bright red coloration was from the irritation or her pent up rage. Her entire face was clenched in a roar of agony and insanity, and her flaming eyes seemed to be holding back tears by sheer strength of will. Angler 3 thanked Neptune's lucky trident that he was not the one facing her wrath.

She stopped and faced off with the stripped down girl while giving her maniacal stare filled with both agony and fury. Suddenly she just motioned for the girl to be taken away and moved right back to the line of prisoners. Launching back into her violent interrogations, there were only two indications that anything had happened. The first was the utter compliance of all the remaining prisoners. The second was the sheer force and command of her terrifying presence. It felt like all of the thunder in the world being contained by a balloon. "Neptune's depths" Angler 3 thought to himself observing the awe of even the rest of the Anglers. "No one is going to have the guts stand up to her for a very long time."

The interrogation took another hour before it was interrupted by a new arrival. Twenty armed guards in full black military gear marched into the courtyard guiding a self-driving massive metal box.

"What in Neptune's depths is this?" Angler Leader demanded as the leader stepped forward. He was average height, and neither his attitude or build differed in the slightest from the rest of his squad.

"Angler Leader" the altogether average voice began. "You have been tasked with securing the payload until further notice."

"And what exactly am I securing?" she sneered back. "You may have noticed us already securing other payloads in the meantime. We're spread thin, forced underground, and not one of you Neptune cursed hagfish sitting in your high and mighty chairs have pulled your head from the sand to deal with this!"

Angler 3 assumed that this man was one of the figures at the high desks during the shadow meetings. He brusquely repeated the orders and showed Angler Leader the contents of the box.

"And just HOW in the depths are we supposed to secure THAT!" she screeched at him. "I saw what that thing did. How YOU" she jabbed her finger into his chest, "failed to contain it. Do you want us to level these skyscrapers when it blows again???" At that proclamation, a ripple of nervous chatter started around the courtyard. Several people took a half-step backwards as they realized what they could be standing next to.

Just then a figure standing behind the box jumped -- no LEVITATED -- on top of the makeshift prison. She held two fingers of her right hand vertically in front of the center of her face and leaned her head forward. A discordant cry rang out from the tiny window of the box. Everyone in the courtyard except the officers in black cringed at the sound. Now they knew exactly what they were standing next to.

Despite the present danger, focus quickly returned to the floating woman. Most people hadn't seen a Powered in many years, and the most of those final memories were of one of the shortest and bloodiest conflicts in history. Her wavy brown hair floated like tendrils in the moonlit water. She GLOWED with an aura that somehow managed to be grey in color. Her black dress hovered in weightlessness, and her eyes slowly faded from the bright blue glow that flashed from the sockets when she made the creature shriek.

"You have your orders" the commanding officer repeated before motioning his troops to leave. The sorceress stayed with the box, and Angler 3 assumed that she was some sort of safeguard against whatever was contained within.

The ordinary prisoners were quickly herded together as Angler team suddenly found themselves not in the mood for playing around. As they gathered around the box, the sorceress on top laughed and waved her hand. The iron door that must have been half a meter thick unlatched and swung open with a booming CLANG.

Immediate chaos erupted, but before anyone could react properly, she laughed again an finally spoke. "Don't worry about her, come take a look. She's harmless now." The entire team hesitantly inched towards the open door and looked inside.

The creature inside was both beautiful and horrifying simultaneously. It had a mostly human shape, but she -- and it was definitely a she -- was far too large. The proportions were correct, but she lay nearly nine feet tall. Her skin was a milky transparent white, and she was covered in a thick layer of slightly more transparent milky slime. Her mouth and gills made tiny gasping maneuvers which revealed inset silvery teeth, pointed and vicious. Instead of hair, she had some sort of small frills, her hands and feet were webbed, and she bore some vague resemblance to an axolotl. Here eyes were white clouds, and they stared blindly at the strange source of light above her. The sorceress made the same hand motion, her eyes flashed blue again, and the creature let out another cry as her eyes were more deeply clouded over.

The sorceress gave a wicked giggle as Angler team gaped at the sight before them. "You can look" she cooed. "I've got the Axolotl under lock and key." "So it seemed the Axolotl's captors had also noticed the resemblance" thought Angler 3 as he took another step closer.

Up close the semi-transparent skin revealed the biology underneath. The bones were only barely visible, and several surface level blood vessels pulsed with clear plasma. The inner organs were impossible to differentiate from each other, but small movements could occasionally be seen. Only two places on her body had any other color palette. Her head transitioned into a slightly less clear white as the complicated surface level biology there was not really visible. Her nipples on the other hand stood out like a sore thumb. They were slightly small proportionally to her size, but they were larger than most normal women. The soft milky tissue of her breast abruptly gave way to a neat pink areola capped with a equally candy-pink peak.

The sorceress drifted down into the cage, yielding a soft collective gasp from the surrounding audience. The Axolotl made no move other than cowering at her touch. "Yes dearest, don't worry, the Angel is here for you again." The Angel reached out and dipped her hand into the slime to latch her nimble fingers around a nipple. She pulled until the Axolotl mewed with pain, and then she slid her fingers down the body through the slime.

Reaching the nearly invisible slit, she slipped a finger in. Her pink digit could be seen as a blurry protrusion, slowly massaging the inner passage. The Axolotl squirmed, but her movements seemed to be limited to subtle jostling.

The entirety of Angler team stood with mouths agape as the Angel floated back on top of the cage. The rumors of the Powered's depravity had spread since the last Powered War, but they all assumed that it was mostly tall tales. Even Angler Leader looked nervous as she contemplated an extended stay with the perverted coupling.

The door suddenly swung closed, and the sorceress, now known to Angler team as "the Angel" began to hum to herself while making the same arcane hand gesture.

Angler 3 "got" to be in charge of the nightly guard duty, and he took first shift for himself. The prisoners were secure, and he had no interest in lingering around the lunatic Powered floating in vigil over the box, so he wandered towards the lone girl who had been isolated for further punishment.

The girl Alina ignored his entrance into her cell. She continued to study the brick wall next to her makeshift bed. Undeterred, he sat down next to her. She shifted slightly to better cover her skimpy brassiere.

"Did you know, the last time I was here, I stayed right here in this apartment?" he asked almost to himself. The girl did not deign to give him a response, but he carried on anyways. "This place was falling on hard times then, but look at it now. A ghost town. I was asleep in this very room when it happened." He paused a bit to let the budding question seep in her head even though he knew she would never ask it. "The whole building shook, but that was nothing compared to what came next. The sight of that three thousand meter tall tower collapsing onto itself ... was astounding."

He pulled a holo pad from his pocket. HER holo pad which he had snuck off her body before Angler 2 had begun his strip search. As he showed her the page it was left open to, she finally gave a reaction. It was stopped as soon as it began, but he saw the fear in her eyes. Not for herself, but for the danger that lay revealed to her enemy. She only stared at him as he tucked the holo pad away and spoke.

"It is coming again. The end. And no one realizes. You're very lucky that you're alive right now. I'm lucky you're alive ... because I think you can help me." With that he stood and walked away, leaving a lost-and-found jacket in his place. The girl's skinny limbs were covered in goosebumps, but she did not give him the satisfaction of putting it on.

Later that night he walked by her window again. She was curled up shivering in the jacket. He smiled. When she found what he left in the pocket, she would know what to do.

Chapter 10: Hazy Dreams on a Lucid Tide

She was swimming. Or maybe she was drowning. Maybe she was just floating on nothing. She couldn't shake the feeling of nearly weightless momentum while simultaneously struggling to breathe under an incredible constricting force. She drifted in and out of consciousness while pain ebbed and flowed with the steady pace of an atomic clock. When she drifted off, she sighed in peaceful bliss. When it roared right back, her blood felt like it was burning. A particularly strong wave reached her head, and she gasped for air.

And then she got it. With a startling desperate inhale, she awoke. The flow turned into a fire, and the ebb only dulled the pain. Her entire body was paralyzed, and her mind was still lost in a haze of darkness, but she was bathed in fire like a dragon's maw. Her blood boiled, and her skin incinerated in the heat. Every molecule of her body felt like it was pulling itself apart.

The pain finally broke her muddled trance. She still had no sense of direction or balance, but a glimpse of water zoned in the tiny part of her brain that still functioned. Slowly and awkwardly, her body began to spasm in an attempt to reach it. Each muscle pulled individually, and coordination eluded her. With the flames growing taller, she finally managed to begin an inching crawl. At the water's edge she paused. It's grey depths were ... wrong.

"Greeyy" she managed to mouth. Grey. What was it about grey? She could not bring herself to take a sip of the saving oasis. Even as she burned, the cool paradise just didn't feel right. Something in the back of her mind was screaming. The fire saved her then. The moment the monster lunged from the water every nerve in her body was lit with the fury of a thousand suns. The kick of adrenaline and shock ignited from her every pore, blasting her into the sewer wall. The scorched monster writhed back into the depths, as her poisoned mind finally cleared itself of the shroud.

Pearl was in the sewers. She struggled to recall her last fading memories. Oh no. The Viper. "Neptune's locker" she managed to rasp out as she remembered her defeat. She looked down towards the twin fang marks in her costume where her body had been flooded with a paralyzing toxin.

Only to discover that her costume wasn't there. The blast of energy that had erupted from her had ripped her nigh-indestructible costume to shreds. Both small breasts hung loosely from her chest. Usually perky and tight, even they seemed exhausted from her ordeal. The arms and legs of her suit were merely ripped, and the torso hung on by mere threads. Her hairless slit was wet with perspiration just like the rest of her body.