The Worthy Enemy

Then the chain whipped up, wrapping twice around the haft of the halberd and wrenching it close to Vayger's body. Suddenly the reach of the enormous weapon meant nothing; suddenly Gore'gav's iron grip was a liability and in refusing to relinquish it the ork was forced to hunch over towards the ground. This put his face exactly where Vayger needed it to be to strike him across the jaw with her metal knuckles.

Ork blood sprayed across the dark concrete, watering the dry canal bed. Gore'gav responded with a growl and a vicious swipe of one enormous fist but Vayger dipped out of the way just in time so that his balled fingers struck the ground below, putting cracks in the material. Her chain slipped off of his halberd as she stepped away, whipping it casually like an animal tamer preparing for a session with a particularly unruly beast. Gore'gav took it up again and let the edge drag along the ground as he charged at her, managing an upward swing which the elf avoided by skipping backwards. Then she swung the chain at his face, striking him in the same spot she had punch.

His howl of pain was the signal for the Bloody Tusks to charge, eager to answer the strikes against Gore'gav with drawn blood of their own. Engines that had been idling roared, guns were aimed and discharged, and the go-gangs went to war.

The animosity between types of metahumans seemed to go beyond the recent history that was the sixth world. Territory, materials, money, blood feuds dating back to the 2060s or 50s... These were the reasons orks or elves or policlubs like Humanis would put forth when questioned on the source of their antipathy towards anyone visibly different from them. Reasons that it seemed most agreed were good ones, real ones that were personal and practical alike.

But in clashes like this, there was something more at work. Something primal, something... latent. Orks roared, ready to discard their barren mortal lives for glory in the next world. Elves sang, fighting for the approval of their elders and to prove their superiority. A few things had changed over the millennia: the weapons were more sophisticated, the drugs were more refined and the music was louder... But when the sharp end of things arrived it was still the same as it had always been. Conflict, conquest, and death.

Vayger danced around Gore'gav with the reckless agility of someone who had indeed once lost their mind and built a new one from the shattered fragments of the original. Violence, speed and momentum: these were her real armaments and every time the ork tried to apply his enormous weight and size advantage, she punished him for it. Every overextension turned into a pull of the chain around the throat, or a kick in the knee. Every missed swipe opened him to a swift jab in the side or the throat or across the face. Their subordinates kept their distance for fear of being struck by Gore'gav's wild flailing strikes. He carved grooves into the concrete trying to rend his foe; he would only have to hit once.

Once she had been the daughter of a prince of Tir Tairngire. In another world she could have been Duchess Greenheart. That future she had discarded along with her senses of honor and justice and certainly of sportsmanship, so that now when Gore'gav went to one knee her first and only instinct was to kick him directly between the legs as hard as she could with her steel-tipped leather boots. The impact was felt through his hand-stitched leather greaves, and the ork warrior let out an unworthy squeal that only the spirits could hear above the din of clashing go-gangers.

Grasping his groin with both hands, Gore'gav collapsed onto his side and rolled onto his back, teeth clenched tightly together. Vayger mounted his upper body without hesitation and wrapped her chain around the ork's throat to hold his face up, then from the left sleeve of her jacket produced a long, narrow blade. She held it up to the light from the street to let it gleam, to let him see the coming stroke. But she said nothing; words would be cheap in a moment like this.

The digital readout in her helmet switched to display in stark red on a white background: POOR IMPULSE CONTROL.

Hands pinned to his crotch, Gore'gav snarled at her and faced the end with as much dignity as he could muster.

The various sounds of battle were drowned out by the deafening arrival of a wave of sonic energy. The canal was host to such a volume of noise that the concrete it was made of vibrated. All ability to communicate was lost on both sides, be it taunting foes or coordinating with comrades. A blinding turquoise light spilled out from 21st street, so intense that the lamps above the road seemed like dying candles by comparison.

Vayger's melodramatic indulgence gave way to an instinctive glance at the street above. Her helmet's display blocked most of the radiance, allowing her to make out the bulky silhouette that was its source: a suit of powered armor, plates of steel and ceramic fit together in sections over its operator. The chest, back and riot shield attached to the left arm were covered in an extra layer of translucent material that allowed the diodes inside to broadcast their luminosity at their current intensity.

And the speakers mounted on the armor's shoulder were blaring music.

"Zwei, drei, vier, one, two, three, it's easy to see but it's not that I don't care, so? 'Cause I hear it all the time but they never let you know on the TV and the radio, cha!"

It only distracted Vayger for a few seconds but that was all Gore'gav needed to muster his strength and throw the elf off of him. She managed to keep her blade drawn and sliced at his face but merely nicked his chin. Then he was rolling away on the concrete, groping for his halberd.

Beneath the screaming music, someone of no clear affiliation shouted, "It's Neon Justice! Run for it!"

"She was young, her heart was pure, but every night is bright she got! She said sugar is sweet, she come a-rappin' to the beat then I knew that she was hot, she was singin'..."

Justice dialed the diodes down and lept from the edge of the street to land in the canal among the stunned go-gangers who had until a moment ago been brawling to the death. An ork with a club made out of an old bumper made a mistake and swung it at the armored figure; the riot shield came up instantly, blocked the strike and then, with hydraulic force, bashed into the ork's face to send him sprawling on the concrete holding his newly broken tusks.

"Don't turn around, wa-uh-oh! Der Kommissar's in town, wa-uh-oh!"

Members of the Ancients began to disengage and flee the scene immediately, as Vayger had ordered them to do. Where Neon Justice went, Lone Star wasn't far behind. The Bloody Tusks however saw only the prestige that could be gained from defeating San Francisco's neon knight. The mirrored visor in the front of the armored helmet took in the approach of a dozen berserk orks with a calm indifference that seemed all the more threatening for the fury of the attackers.

"You're in his eye and you'll know why, the more you live, the faster you will die!"

To say Neon Justice dismantled the knot of Bloody Tusks coming for them was an understatement. Hand-forged and makeshift weapons bounced off the armor's exterior or simply broke when applied to it with too much force. An ork with a harpoon gun fired it from the back of an armored pick-up and Neon Justice caught the weapon mid-flight in their right hand. Without letting go of it the railgun on the armor's right wrist fired a shot that hit the ork in her stomach and sent her flying off the far side of the truck with an ungainly thud.

Gore'gav had abandoned his duel with Vayger in favor of taking a stab at Neon Justice with his halberd. The jagged edge scraped off the front of the riot shield and sank into the concrete beside one of the armored feet. Then he was seized by the throat and held in the air, pawing uselessly at the arm while the leg servos carried him back-first into the canal wall.

"Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?"

The riot shield collapsed into the left arm and was replaced by a single cylinder of metal on a reciprocating actuator. All Neon Justice had to do was press it to Gore'gav's knee and pull a trigger somewhere inside the glove: more than enough pressure was applied in a sudden thump to fracture the limb and cripple his ability to walk. The ork roared in pain.

Vayger collected her chain and wrapped it back around her fist, waving at Ancients around her, separating them from orks they were still quarreling with and ordering them away as fast as the injured could be gathered. The Bloody Tusks made no such efforts; by their beliefs the dead were the lucky ones.

The sirens of Lone Star cruisers were already starting to fill the air over the music.

Six orks descended on Justice in an effort to free their leader and the response was a sudden flaring of the diodes in the armor, blinding them as surely as a flashbang would have. They were then easy prey for the armored figure who dispatched them with swift, efficient and--to Vayger's annoyance--less than lethal attacks to extremities.

Someone had started Vayger's bike for her and when she got in the seat she took off like a shot down the canal. Three war trucks and a pair of three-wheelers went after her.

= = =

The experiment was, at last, in motion. It was a great source of frustration to Havelock that he lacked the materials for a larger sample size, but if the entities were even half as potent as he had been led to believe the California Free State would soon be much more sympathetic to his agenda. Though he supposed that now it was their agenda. There was no going back now, no putting the horror back in the bottle. But this did not trouble him; he had made his decision over a year ago. Perhaps there had never even been a decision; perhaps this was always what was going to happen.

He took a drag on the cigarette in his hand and then set it down in the ashtray beside the display screen. These were the only two lights now in the lab; the machines he'd used to cause the fissures had gone offline when the materials had been used up and it was quiet except for his own breathing. The muted footage of the riot being broken up by Lone Star reflected on his nicotine-stained glasses.

None of this was of particular interest to Havelock. The sixth world was a hellhole, as had been the fifth world before it. He didn't care about gangs or cops or the vigilante making them look bad. They were all symptoms of a system that had not been well-designed. A system which had in fact, he surmised, been designed not to work well, by inane and unqualified architects stretching back thousands of years, each possessed somehow of less talent than their forebears.

Again he picked up the cigarette and breathed in the poison. No, he didn't care. Had he ever? It was hard to imagine, now. Only the most cynical of observers could call what the denizens of modern-day Earth did "living." But one day soon, after the changes, after more fissures had been opened, the planet would teem with life. A better version of it, by his estimation.

So why was he watching? Perhaps he just wanted to see the world as it was for the last time before the change started. These so-called people, caught up in the futility and fecklessness of their own lives. The drone footage of ork gangers trying to fight their way out of a canal while under fire by police gave way to a feed of a press conference where a police official was answering questions. With a tap to the screen Havelock turned the sound on.

"--this time we have no comment on the peacekeeping strategy going forward. Lone Star is in talks with CFS representatives and affiliates about requisitioning more personnel and escalated equipment loadouts in response to ongoing criminal activity."

The ork pointed at someone in the crowd of reporters and a woman's voice posed a question. "Lieutenant Sokoth, is Lone Star any closer to ascertaining the identity of the crime-fighting figure that the people of San Francisco have taken to calling 'Neon Justice?'"

This subject seemed a sore point to the lieutenant, whose expression clouded over. He offered no company slogans or corporate double-talk, instead spitting what seemed to be pure venom.

"The so-called 'Neon Justice' is a criminal no different from the go-gangers and extortionists that Lone Star is trying its damndest to fight! Whoever this person is obviously has no real commitment to law and order because if they did they would earn a certified badge and operate with a license like the rest of us trying to fight crime in a legitimate way!"

"The California Free State and the people of San Francisco have chosen us to defend them from anarchy and violence and it is to those people that we are ultimately accountable! This coward who has hidden their identity behind a helmet thinks they can operate outside the agreed upon law with no regard for regulation or concern for collateral damage. According to all the courses I took at the academy, that is called injustice!"

"Lieutenant," the reporter pressed, "What do you say to the speculation some analysts have put forth that Neon Justice is in fact someone within the Lone Star police force, someone with extensive military training and access to state-of-the-art weaponry and equipment, in particular the powered armor suit they always appear in? And that these connections are what has enabled them to so far avoid being apprehended by police?"

At this Sokoth seemed genuinely troubled, as if he somehow had not considered such a thing as a possibility. But in a moment his composure was restored, as well as his vigor.

"If one of our officers or affiliates was behind this farce I would hope they would have the decency to tell the rest of us about it instead of keeping us in the dark. If they don't then they're not worthy of wearing a badge. Rest assured that Lone Star is working around the clock to bring metrics of public safety back to contractually agreed upon levels. And we're going to accomplish it without the aid of self-appointed thugs in fancy armor!"

"No," Havelock whispered around his cigarette, "You aren't." In a few nights time, the illusion of safety in the sixth world would be a thing of the past.

= = =

Vayger led her ork pursuers on a merry chase through the canal as it led towards South Beach. Weaving among concrete pylons and the wreckage of past eras, she was eventually able to trick the war truck drivers into spinning out and colliding with the terrain, putting them out of the game. The three-wheelers proved more difficult to shake, being almost as maneuverable as her motorcycle and adept at fitting into the increasingly tight spaces of San Francisco's disused infrastructure.

A readout on her helmet told her she was being followed by more than just the orks.

Eventually she gave the Bloody Tusks the slip by stopping in an alcove below an overpass and cutting off the electric engine of her bike. The two noisy gasoline-powered three-wheelers barreled by without even slowing, continuing down the canal without so much as a backward glance on the part of the drivers.

Getting off the bike, the elf began the process of checking herself over for injuries. She had a few new bruises but nothing seemed to be broken... yet. The low whistle of compressed air alerted her to the approach of the more competent actor chasing her tonight. She peeked around the corner to see Neon Justice hovering across the floor of the canal, propelled by air jets in the feet and lower back of the armor. Vents in the front of the shoulders, below the hardened speakers, pulled it in and a pair of compressors spat it out of the jets. A little gaudy by Vayger's reckoning but damned effective.

She hid in the dark of the overpass and tugged her sleeve to let the blade side out of it into her hand.

Neon Justice saw the bike and slowed the jets to a stop, then once they were shut off walked slowly towards the two-wheeled vehicle. When she was near enough Vayger leapt out and stabbed at the gap in the armor between helmet and chest.

A plated hand came up and grabbed her wrist before she could put the blade into the ballistic fiber. Her arm trembled trying to put the point to her targeted region, but the hydraulically supported power armor held her at bay without difficulty, and due to the gentleness of the operator inside the armor without hurting Vayger.

The speakers clicked on and a distorted male voice emanated from inside. "You are under arrest."

"Yeah?" Vayger asked, grinning. "What for?"

"Inciting a riot. Eluding authorities. Resisting arrest. Other charges to be determined once identity is ascertained. You have the right to remain silent and I suggest you use it."

"Or what?" Vayger wondered. "You got to be a cop to get away with police brutality, Neon Justice."

"Don't call me that," the voice said. Even the modulator couldn't eliminate the note of irritation in the words.

"Whole city is calling you that now," the elf said gleefully. "Like you're straight out of some bad trideo from the 2040s."

"They shouldn't be calling me anything."

"You can't break up three riots in a month and not make it into the news. But look on the bright side: now we're both on the bad side of the law."

"What have you done?"

Still struggling to move the knife closer, Vayger flipped her rainbow-toned hair with a motion of her head. "Want me to go confess to your preacher friend?"

The helmet of Neon Justice's armor separated into four segments that slid down into the chest and back plates fluidly, exposing Dawson's head. Her lustrous dark hair was stuck to her neck with sweat and her breathing was coming heavy.

"Confess to me," she whispered.

At last Vayger relented, pulling her arm away and sliding the blade back into its sheath inside her sleeve. "So now I have to pass your purity test before you'll fuck me again, is that it?"

Dawson didn't move away from her, and Vayger likewise refused to back down. "I'm trying to make things better out here," she said evenly. "I need to know you're not trying to make them worse."

"Make things better," Vayger repeated mockingly. "Who are you trying to convince? You looked like you were having fun back there, Imp. Did beating the piss out of those losers make you feel young again, babe?"

The steely look Dawson gave Vayger suggested she didn't appreciate the comment but all the same when the elf lifted her left hand up to caress the side of Dawson's face with the back of her fingers, the woman leaned slightly into the touch and closed her eyes. Vayger's heart thumped happily in her chest.

"Why do you do this?" Dawson asked softly.

"I don't want anything anymore, Imp," Vayger whispered back, "But to take care of my girls and boys. Anything else I look like I want is just a distraction to blow off steam."

"There are better ways than this," Imp whispered.

"That's where you're wrong!" the elf hissed, before dumping her fury in a slow exhale.

"Let's not have this argument again," Vayger said. "Not right now. We can work out our differences in another way, can't we?"

Dawson smirked slightly. "Not while I'm in this armor."

"You sure?" Vayger questioned, raising her eyebrows. "I'm small. I bet I could fit in there with you."

"The kinetic foam that inflates once it's on would disagree."

"So just pull out some of that junk in there. Do you really need air jets?"

"I'd never get this thing up an incline without--"

The sound of a harpoon being fired from a cannon interrupted Dawson's words. Though her heart might have softened in the years since the occupation her reflexes were still a thing of beauty; the riot shield deployed out of the left arm and she spun around sweeping Vayger around behind it.

The crudely forged projectile struck the top of the shield and shattered, sending shrapnel scattering across the bulwark and over its edge. A large chunk struck Dawson in the exposed part of her head, right below her left ear. Blood spattered across the concrete pylon beside them.