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I hadn't gone into RV until the special even. I must say that I'm having a blast. It's not as...hrm, how can I put it. It's more player oriented than Siren's and I'm of a mixed mind about it.

I like that Siren's has an equilibrium of sorts that is interrupted by player activity. I don't have that much of a sense of that in RV. I think that the roaming NPC groups should be more mobile, with pitched battles in the streets.

Also, now that I think of it, another thing that I didn't like is that it's the Atlas map. I like Siren's because of the many changes of terrain. In the same vein, Warburg, while being mostly city scape, still has a very very varied geometry and provides for an environment that can be taken advantage of in combat.

RV seems to scream "heads up confrontation" which is nice for some situations and not so nice for others.

Overall, I don't know how much time I'm going to spend in the zone when it goes live. The event is exciting, but a lot of that positive feeling is predicated on the sense of extreme newness that I'm playing several archetypes I've been a bit gun shy on in the past. The thing is, at this juncture, I'm finding that I'm looking more to developing the new character-centered discoveries, rather than come to RV.

I think it's okay from a view of a place to go beat on people. But I'm not feeling that much of a narrative buy in. Maybe because in Siren's the battle isn't as "high sci fi," it's a good old fashioned war.

Maybe in the future, if there are actual missions for the zone (which will be something I hunt for tomorrow) my opinion may slide to the more positive. Until then I'm enjoying the event. I'm drawing on a new well of fun and creativity and am looking forward to parlaying it into anothe year of fun.

Well, that's the end for now. Thanks for reading this far. PM me feedback if you want. I always want to know what I did wrong and what I did well.

Thanks again,
Div

John Henry didn't necessarily like being alone in the lab, but the lack of other physical presences gave him an opportinunity to be silly. Silliness wasn't something indulged in when he went through his first turn on the wheel of life. He was too busy trying to turn himself into a "mighty sorcerer" to try enjoying himself aside from an occasional mental vacation.

.Now he pretty much had no choice and thanks to the evils of the internet he was being bombarded with tons of information most of it useless. However thanks to streaming media, he was able to catch up on movies, one of which, Rent, based on some broadway musical about the death of the Bohemian lifestyle in New York City during the 1980's, didn't make that much of an impression, but the soundtrack was another story. It was just so damn catchy, and singable. It also covered the full gamut of the feelings he'd been experiencing over the last few weeks: withering depression, depressed hopefulness and reckless abandon to get out of depression.

He was at the "reckless abandon" point tonight, but considering he was in an underground lab on an island in the Indian Ocean and looked literally like death warmed over, he wasn't going to be able to do anything but he could at least sing about it. Tonight he was channeling the randy angst of a 19 yea-old, HIV positive heroin addict stripper who desperately wants to go out and party. He was in full voice, meaning he sounded awful but didn't care. You can only choke so much sound out of the throat of a corpse.

It didn't help that when he left his room to get more meat from the kitchen, he decided to dance turning the entire trip down the hall into a bizzare melding of Night of the Living Dead meets Fiddler on the Roof with a touch of "Risky Business."

By the time he made to the kitchen, he was at the chorus again and at full caterwaul when static burst through the headset. The music, which was being transmitted from the lab computer, died. The monitors in the kitchen, which usually showed the news or images of something innocuous like flowers and meadows, went white in a shower of electric snow and "intrusion detected initiating network shutdown" flared momentarily accross the screen then all of the power went out. He stood frozen in darkness momentarily then pale fans of light from battery powered emergency units flipped out onto the walls.

John Henry walked hurredly down the hall and back to his room, closing the door firmly behind him. He picked up the panic button and pumped it three or four times...nothing.

He closed his eyes and "thought out loud," hoping to hear something from Aache or Luz, but he got silence again. Aache went into his closet and pulled on a light bleached linen shirt over his t-shirt and put on a pair of cloth tennis shoes Divus brought for when he was finally ready to go outside.

He grabbed a sheet from the bed and left the room, walking quickly down the hall. He would have ran, but his eyes were everywhere looking for anything out of place, any light or difference to indicate what was going on.

"I miss my goddamed sense of smell," John groused inwardly. Not that he had been Hounddog Man in the past, but smell often told him things were off before anything else picked up.

And almost responding to his mental command, his nasal cavity swelled painfully with the sensation of crisp air-conditioned air flowing over his rejuvinated sensory organs.

"Hot damn," He muttered. He wanted to think about why it happened, but right now he was purely concerned with getting to one of the emergency exits.
__________________________________________________ ________________________________

"What are you two doing standing here?" Sol Divus almost yelled. "Go save him!"

Exalt quirked an eyebrow, "What is it they are after?"

Divus had pointedly not told Exalt about what has been happening, it had helped that Exalt spent a lot of time in Europe. He kind of wished that he was still there, "Not here..."

Exalt's eyes narrowed, his glowing eyes reduced to pulsing slits, "Then we will leave. Aache is in the main base alone. The invaders are jamming the medical teleport backup systems and he cannot get to one of the physical emergency exits, so he is maintaining several invisibility spells and his healing. He told me to make sure to tell you that one person got through the base teleporters to Eminent's lab before the power was killed. So we need to do something whether you want to tell me why or not!"

"What are they looking for?" Divus murmered. "It doesn't make goddamned sense," he said louder. "Wyvern, Longbow whoever doesn't have any reason to invade our facilities and assault our people." he turned to Sol Divus, "It has to be Arachnos."

Sol Divus eyes narrowed and ice started to form on his skin, "don't play stupid Divus. It isn't attractive." He looked at Hyperpower, "The reason is standing right beside you."

"Impossible," Divus said with a vaguely hysterical firmness. Sol inwardly revised his assessment of the sitation. Divus knew what the strongest probability was, he just didn't want to see it.

"Fine," he smiled with the lemon almond sweetness of arsenic laced candy, "If Longbow takes John Henry and he dissapears, they are going to develop serious personel problems in the Rogue Isles. They aren't the only ones with access to tech that can jam medical teleporters."

Sol Divus levitated above the crowed dance floor and flew out of sight. His companion looked annoyed and then melted into the crowd.

Divus, Exalt and Cassie hastily exited the bar arriving at the hidden exit in King's Row. As soon as they re-entered the dimension, Aache's psychic S.O.S shrieked accross their minds.

"Goddammit there you are!" The telepathic message yelled. "What's taking you so long? Get these bastards out of here."

"Divus was having an argument with himself...literally," Exalt said wryly. "How are you doing?"

"Much better," Aache replied sarcasticly. "I've managed to heal the dammage from the dozen or so arrows pumped into me, now there are roving packs of international terrorist vigilanties roaming the halls with funky guns that neutralize biological powers. Several of the XRX sisters who showed up during the first call are out and I can't get to them."

Several moments passed but Divus didn't reply he simply worked his jaw in disbelief.

Exalt stepped in, "The Divus double said that the energy weapons were Longbow munitions."

"He's right," Aache said, "I've been probing my butt off. It's been hard but I managed to pull that they are here for some Praetorian named Mal Divus. Apparently the corpse John Henry's spirit is locked in belonged to him."

"How did they find out?" Divus interjected disbelievingly.

"They're getting their orders from someone named 'Indigo' if that means anything. I've never heard of em."

"Where're Nephel, Luz, Eminent and Totino?" Exalt asked.

"Nephel recognized the name. He went Atlas Park to talk with Azuria. Totino was stranded at his workshop in the Rockies and he's taking one of his sub-orbitals in. Eminent and Luz are in Barcelona. Everyone who can do something is in motion, but we're scattered."

The comlinks came back up and Totino's agitated voice crackled through, "All right, everyone who's Paragon-side is assembling at the Faultline emergency exit. I'll repower the teleporter there and we go in and [censored] those [censored] up!"
__________________________________________________ ______

The headset hissed back to life and Totino's voice came over, "John Henry!"

John Henry blinked and ducked into a side hallway and tried to talk as soft as possible, "I'm here. What's going on?"

"You're awfully calm," Totino noted.

"It's either that or run around like an idiot, now what's happening?"

"Longbow has sent a high powered assassin after you. Her name is Indigo and she's big trouble. Someone is in the base with you and they probably have some new fangled weapon that disrupts powers. You need to keep out of sight. It'll be at least half an hour before we can do something. There's a panic room in the main bathroom. Get there asap and flip the switch behind the latrine. Don't leave the lab. If he's smart, he'll wait since as far as they know you're a big bad supervillain. However, I suggest that you don't go outside. There may be people waiting for you outside. Alright, I'm out."

The link died as tons of questions welled up. John Henry squelched them and started running for the bathroom.
__________________________________________________ ____________________________

"What are you going to do?" The eye asked.

Upon leaving Pocket D and ariving in St. Martial, Sol Divus headed immediately for the Arachnos garrison and caught a shuttle to Warburg.

"Longbow has several hidden communications outposts in Warburg," He thought to his companion. "I'm going to grab a communications officer, inject him full of persuaisive chemicals and listen in on the operation if I can."

"Don't you think you're taking this too far?" The eye said. "We have a mission to perform and this side project to assuage your long festering sense of guilt is starting to put it in jeapardy."

Sol's jaw worked for a moment, then he leaned back and seemingly to catch a nap. But he brought himself into full rapport with his Eye of Solestine, "Look, this is serving the mission. If John Henry can be reconstituted and brought back into action, he will be useful in the future okay? What I'm doing is for the mission."

"However it wasn't part of the Mission and we could have succeed without it," The Eye said with frosty dispassion. "In fact I do not see how this pertains to engineering your ascension in the ranks of Arachnos in any way. You were sent back in time to help mobilize Arachnos against the threat that the Hamidon will pose, not only to this Earth, but to the realities around it. Since you have allowed your need to save the astral consciousness of the one who sired you to cloud your clarity, I will have to take my concerns to the Corps command to get their input."

Sol was quiet for several moments, "Do as you think best." He paused then added, "But I will not let Hamidon take this away from me again."
__________________________________________________ ____________

Exalt left for Faultline, leaving Divus and Hyperpower alone.

"Were you going to tell me?" Divus asked Cassie.

She lifted her chin defiantly, "Would it have made a difference?"

"Yes," Divus said. "If we had known Longbow knew we would have involved M.A.G.I first. I would much rather have the Federal Government involved than a self righteous international corporation who works with superspies."

"At least this 'self righteous corporation' is doing better than a bunch of freelancers concealing an interdimensional crimminal," she snapped.

"HE IS NOT A CRIMINAL!" Divus raged. "HE IS MY FATHER!"

He had involuntary shifted back to his blue skinned white haired form and Hyperpower took a step back.

"I've been trying to tell you," he started half sobbing, "I don't hold any grudges against him. He died bringing me to life. Without him I wouldn't be what I am now. Of course I'm going to protect him. I could care less about the corpse of some crook from another universe."

"It could be a trick, he could be fooling you..."

"When I touch him, when I'm around him," he said. "I know it's him. I have memories of the same feelings when he was around his family. I can see the psychic connections between us. I know that if I really wanted I could probably take him back into myself and everything would be the way it was. But I don't want that. I want to be my own person and he's letting me, hell encouraging me. It tears out his guts to be in that rotting skin, but he's pushing me to be my own man. I will not repay that by letting him fall into Longbow's hands!"

Divus stepped into air and turned to leave.

"Wait!" Cassie called. "Where are you going?"

"To the one person who can tell me where Indigo is," He replied.

"Divus!" Cassie called again. "I love you."

Divus's face twisted and glowing trails streaked his face, "God help me Hyperpower, but I love you too." And he flew off towards Peregrine Island.

As she watched him receede into the sky, Cassie reached into her purse and slipped her comlink, connecting the earpiece with her phone.

"Anne Marie," she said triggering the autodailer.

"Hello this is Anne Marie's voice mail...." she heard on the other end of the line.

She tried again, and again, each time not getting an answer. She tried Ostrander's line, no answer. She flexed her calves, and bounded to the city trams. She was about to board the train to Steel Canyon and go confront her collegues. Her stomach twisted as her Intuition gut punched her. She looked to the sky and Divus was falling.
__________________________________________________ __________

Almost there John Henry thought as he sprinted the last way to the door. He knew the intruder was near, his new nose smelled the cologne or deoderant in the sterile air. Then he felt a curious burning sensation on his back below his left shoulder blade and everything went black.
__________________________________________________ __________

Sol Divus' breath caught in his chest as he felt his vision dim, and a huge weight settle on his chest. He almost fell over in his seat in the shuttle, prompting an alarmed cry from the pilot.

"Sir, are you alright? Sir!"

Sol could barely keep his eyes open, much less speak as he listlessly rolled on the floor.

"Attention Warburg Garrison," The pilot announced. "This is shuttle X273 requesting permission for immedate landing. We have a medical emergency."

John Henry woke up. He was lying face down on the floor. His shoulder throbbed from where he, presumeably was shot. Standing over him was a fully masked man in a red skintight leather unitard with webgear wrapping his chest. He was holding a sleek-looking purple rifle and had it aimed at him as he approached.

"Oh no you don't" A voice whispered in John's head. The air chilled, churned and swirled as ice cold spears of psychokinetic force appeared and stabbed into the red clad man, who screamed and tried to run out of the ice storm.

Get up John Henry! Get up! It was is own voice now, urging him on, even as he got to his feet, he felt his will ripple outward buoy him up, and carry him to the restroom.

"Nicely done father," a voice said. It sounded like Divus, but had a distinctly clipped intonation and almost mocking humor laced in it. Divus had not have gotten the hang of irony or sarcasm yet.

"Who are you?" John Henry asked as he carefully checked each stall then went behind the room's only latrine and flipped a small switch. A generator turned on and heavy plates slid over the doors. The wall monitors flared to life with camera images of the dimly lit halls.

"I'm called Sol Divus now," the voice continued. "I'm Divus, all grown up as it may. It's my fault you're in this mess, but it was the only way I could think of to stop you from dying."

I must be hallucinating, John Henry thought to himself.

"No, not hallucinating," Sol interjected cutting accross the thought. "I am here at least in spirit. Divus is too, although he can't speak right now. He's experiencing my memories unfortunately. I didn't expect that. It's what I get for taking a sympathetic magic shortcut when there was someone insanely similar to me on the planet."

"I always sucked at sympathetic spells," John Henry commented absently.

"Like father, like son," Sol said with a tired wryness. "We're here because the fragile psychic matrix binding you to that body had been disrupted. You were about to flutter off into nothingness, but the back up spells tapped energy from Divus and I to keep you in tact. I fully expected most of the energy to come from me, but Divus was caught in the spell as well."

"Why are you going through all of this trouble?" John Henry asked. He realized that he was talking out loud but he was relatively alone, so it was okay.

The voice in his head actually sighed, "I know this is going to sound crazy and I'm going to have to ask that you believe me. I come from a timeline 300 years in the future, where Earth was completely taken over by Hamidon and his Devouring Earth. 200 years before that, the United States abolished indivudual heroes and turned over all of those operations to Hero Corp and Longbow who, with the aid of Rikti technology had perfected the art of creating custom metahumans. It by no means stopped freelance heroes from practicing, but it effectively shut them out of duties like patroling the burrow where the Rikti starship crashed; Portal Corp operations, and putting down Hamidon when it appeared.

What you don't know, but Divus does, is that anyone who has fought Hamidon, absorbs part of its power. Its the rare person who leaves without some taint of it, but that taint can be purged and most at the time saw it as a "good thing." However Longbow now had thousands of lab created metas they could throw at Hamidon which they did. They thought they were winning and had found an alternative to nuking the Hive and Eden into ash. One day all of the Longbow troops fighting Hamidon stopped, falling into comas. In the emergency, we were called out of retirement and we went to fight the gargantuan amoeba. As soon as we crossed Hamidon's outer membrane hundreds of heroes fell dead, their souls sucked out of them. Only constructs, androids and those with enough sheer psychic power were able to resist. I lost you."

Sol paused for a long while and then continued, "I will be quick. I never wanted Divus to suffer like this. The Longbow troops with the greatest concentrations of Hamidon's power turned on humanity and the war was on. We lost, badly. I had reconfigured my ectoplasmic matrix to let me repair almost any damage to me at the cost of durability. I fought long and hard even after humanity fled the planet. I stayed behind to destroy the last gate. And as payment I had a giant monster parked on my back. If I ever got up, he would smash me to the ground.

I would have stayed that way forever, but the Corps Solestine came to our world. The Devouring Earth had started to spread through the local continuium of Earths, and they were coming to destroy the Devouring Earth's capacity for interdimensional travel. Barring that, they would destroy the planet. They found me, remade me and made me a Sol, one of their soldiers. And I fought for them to push the Devouring Earth's advance back.

During the operation, we discovered that Hamidon was ready with its next step: time travel and had constucted a black crystal leviatian with the psychic ability to rend small tears in the timestream. Hamidon was going to send his spores through time and contaminate history so that he could come to power sooner.

Of course we attacked. But before the creature fell, I decided that I wanted to try to change history myself. So I leapt through a tear and I arrived in Paragon City almost a year ago. Unfortunately, I was mistaken for a Praetortian duplicate and put in prison. Doubly unfortunately no one would listen to my story and I was put in prison. Let's just say...bad things happened in the Ziggurat and I decided that I had chosen the wrong method... I'm digressing. Once I realized that you still existed in this time frame, I decided to give you your life back so you can choose your own destiny, instead of getting eaten by a giant amoeba."

"Do you still think that future is coming to pass?" John Henry asked.

"It looks like it," Sol Divus said solemly, "I wish I could have talked to you about this before now. Damn Divus and his stupidity."

"What now?" John Henry asked.

"I gave Divus a device to let you contact me," Sol said. "I didn't care if they listened. I just wanted to be able to tell you my side of the story. Now I must go. Divus and I are sharing too much psychic space and need to part. But before I leave I want to give you one last gift. I set up a trigger in your consicousness to unbind your magical potential. I had to improvise somewhat because there was so little of you to work with. Divus now knows what I did, hopefully he'll tell you. Listen carefully, the trigger is..."

Sol Divus was shocked awake. He looked around the medical bay of the Arachnos Warburg garrison.

"Sir," a black clad doctor said, "You had flatlined, we put you into the medical teleport grid for resuscitation. Your vitals are still weak. Do you know what is happening to you?"

Sol Divus cursed into the vaults of his mind. He was so damn intent on sharing he forgot to release the power in John Henry that would let him sustain himself. He had to hope that the spell weave binding had regenerated enough to hold him in the corpse. Otherwise it was going to be a long night.
__________________________________________________ _____________________________________________

Cassie ran out onto the railing, she could see that Divus' fall had stabilized but he was still heading towards the ground and heading fast. She flipped upward onto the roof of the tram station and lept skyward, leap frogging off of intervening buildings to get more height, Divus had started turning in her direction feebly. She impacted him hard, snatching him out of the air and landing hard on a nearby rooftop.

"Divus, Divus! Wake up!" She said gently slapping his cheek. She pried open his eyes to check his pupils, then realized that he didn't have pupils. She scooped him up to take him to the nearest hospital when his head lolled around and he desperately grabbed her sleeve.

"Find John Henry, they tried to kill him, we're keeping him alive," he said struggling to get the words out.

"How?" She asked, "no one is answering my calls."

"Take me to Gregor Richardson, the MAGI rep for Galaxy City," He said.
__________________________________________________ _______

John Henry was having trouble staying awake. He felt like he was bleeding from an open wound, but as far as he could tell he was uninjured physically. It wasn't that much of a leap for him to realize that something must be wrong metaphysicaly. No, still wrong metaphysicly. Whatever this Sol Divus did did not work.

This doesn't make any sense, he thought, why am I still here?

"Because your sons are sustaining you," a clinical, dispassionate voice said into his mind.

The question was obvious, "Now, who are you?"

"An associate of Sol Divus," the voice responded. "Sol has been incapacitated by the poorly wrought emergency measure he built into your reanimation matrix. The damage caused by the neutralizer has not repaired itself as anticipated. You are now hemorraging life force and the spell is drawing from Divus and Sol Divus to keep you alive."

He blinked, "Oh hell."

"Yes," the voice said. "Now the real question is, are you willing to be cut off from them. To let them live."

"Yes," John Henry said, not really thinking about it. "If I held on, they would die, and then I'd follow. I'm scared [censored], but I'll be damned if I don't do the right thing."

The voice didn't respond for several minutes. Then it replied, "If you were to live...what would you do with that life?"

John Henry thought for a long long moment, "Honestly, I don't know."

"Would you die to help save your species again?"

"I would fight," John Henry responded. "I guess if necessary I'd die too, but dying wouldn't be highest on my agenda. I'd fight smarter this time."

"Thanks you for your candor," the voice responded then his mind was quiet again.

"My, people do come and go here," he thought. "Or then again, maybe I'm just going crazy."
__________________________________________________ ______________________

"Sol Hank," Sol Divus's Eye called.

"Um, I'm kinda busy here," He responded. Glowing humanoid constucts of psychic energy empowered by his mind and controlled by his Eye roamed out ahead of him, ripping into the eratz Wyvern troops in the Misphits base. Pulses of healing psychic power radiated from him bathing Totino and Brisingamen. XRX Protector hovered above them, her force fields enveloping her teammates.

Brisingamen, an 8 foot tall android valkerie cut in gleaming silver and blue steel stiffened and spikes of ice condensed on her shell and she brandished her war axe.

"This unit has grown tired of this," she said "Wait here."

She strode out into the bullets and explosions sending out psycho-synaptic pulse waves, snaring the subconsicouses of the invaders and bringing their fire onto her. More ice grew onto her shell to be chipped away and more and more weapons fire was directed her way. Intermittent pulses of energy draining purple light refracted harmlessly away and she jogged off into the hall way and they followed.

"Unit: Totino," she said into the comlink, "Set up the fun."

Totino grinned and started putting down proximity stun explosives at mouth of the hall she ran down, . Despite his irritation, he didn't want to kill all of them, but they would be in traction for a long time. After the bombs were down, he set off several smoke grenades in the area.

"Hurry," Brisingamen urged. "I am coming back up."

"Fade!" Totino yelled to the rest of the team. Sol Hank slipped into invisibility and XRX collapsed her shield onto herself, hardening into a protective bubble. Totino, triggered his cloaking device and sped back into a protected nook.

Brisingamen appeared in the room in a roaring flash of light and ice. A mass of black and brown garbed men hit the smoke cloud, their id's clouded by Brisingamen's alien technology. The explosions ripped into the crowd channeling up the narrow hallway.

Totino activated his drone camera, Tex Mex, and sent it down the hall.

"Aw," he said, "I missed a few."

He stepped out, pulling his TBFG from his back and opened up with a full automatic spray of rubber bullets that took out the rest.

Brisingamen smiled.

"Okay," Sol Hank said, responding to Sol Divus's eye, "What was that you wanted?"

"John Henry is injured and because of that injury Divus is dying in Galaxy City, get there as soon as possible. " It replied.

Sol Hank sent his thought through the heavily guarded gate into the Faultline district, once in Greater Paragon City, he easily found Divus thoughts, but they were thready and weak.

"Totino," he said urgently, "Divus is dying, he's at Freedom Court in Galaxy City and they can't helping. I'm going so I can conference Aache in Telepathicly."

"Aache should go with you," He responded.

"No, because if he's with me, then no magic guy will be here to help with John Henry when you get that teleporter working," Sol responded.

Totino didn't argue, "Go."
__________________________________________________ _______________

Cassie thought , "I must be crazy, I should get him to a hospital, not here."

Gregor Richardson, Galaxy City burrow liason for M.A.G.I., the Federal Goverment's occult investigation bureau had ushered them into the vault and had Cassie lay Divus down next to a shard of pulsing green crystal.

"That should get him stable," he said clinicly with the faintest trace of an Austrailian accent. "Now what the hell is going on?"

Divus explained, slowly painfully at least what he knew about the spell and had recently learned. Cassie looked on in disbelief while Gregor's brow furrowed. When he had finished relating the story, Gregor stood, "I have to make a call."

He stepped out of the room drawing his mobile from a pocket, "Azuria, this is Gregor." He paused listening then he wrinkled his nose, "You know I hate it when you do that, yes he's here. We'll see you in a few minutes."

Sol Hank strolled into the M.A.G. I. offices. Thanks to the connection they shared through Sol Divus' Eye, he knew exactly where Divus was.

"Hurry," the Eye urged. "We don't have much time."

Gregor stepped into his path, "Excuse me..."

"Sorry," Hank apologized rushing past him, "But Divus needs me."

He strode into the room, "Howdy," he said to Cassie. "You must be Hyperpower. I heard a bunch about you. Aache is riding pillion in my head and we'll see what we can do."

Hank knelt down by Divus's head and following the Eye's instructions he took off his cowboy hat, revealing a glowing blue eye rooted in his forehead. Hyperpower gasped.

The Eye said, "Now!."

The orb in Sol Hank's forehead blazed and a beam of psionic power lanced into the astral umbilical connecting Divus and John Henry. Yellow-white ionization marked the energy trail in the air.

"What are you doing," Hyperpower asked.

"Severing his connection with John Henry," Sol Hank said.

"But he, John Henry, may die," she responded.

"Divus will die if they stay connected," he grimaced.

Hyperpower bit her lip and stepped back.
__________________________________________________ ___________

John Henry felt himself falling. The magic powering his senses, his movement, had evaporated and he felt himself falling in darkness, but once he realzed that he still had a sense of consciousnes, he stopped falling and opened his eyes. He was standing on the limb of a huge, craggy tree with under a baleful red sky. He felt alive again, but the thrill was cut short when he looked down. The base of the tree was shadowed in red tinged darkness illumitated with undulating flaming vapor and lightning.

"Well done," The dry voice said in his mind, no, directly into his consciousness.

John Henry looked around, and floating in the space next to him was a cleaming red orb. A silvery material veined its surface giving it an unevenly marbled appearance and texture.

"Who are you?" He asked, although he was getting tired of asking that question.

"I am your guide," it said simply.

"Where am I?"

"This is a representation of the failing spell matrix what was keeping you bound to the corpse of Mal Divus," The eye said. "The fires below are where it is fragmenting and coming apart. The fires will spread to the top and then your spirit will be unteathered."

"Can I stop it?" John Henry asked. "What do I need to do?"

"Look up," the orb said. A bright red glow eminated from the uppermost branches. "That is where you need to be, it is the center of sorts, the hub."

John Henry eyed the precarious climb, "I just can't fly up there can't I?"

The orb paused, "I don't see why not, but I can't tell you how. The information is not in my knowledge base."

"It doesn't have to be," he replied. Divus pressed his palms together in front of him. It wasn't a particularly magical gesture, but it was a signal to that long dormant part of him that it was time to make with the magic. He could feel his "weight" in his mind and it was surprisingly light. He stepped into the air, his weight a dim constant pressure in the back of his mind.

"Wait!" the orb called out.

"What?" John Henry responded.

"Don't leave me here," It said with just the slightest hint of humor. "Take me with you."
__________________________________________________ ___________________________________

Divus woke up, surging to full alertness and bolting to a sitting position. Imagery from Sol Divus' memories flickered in his vision. His sense of smell and touch were being overwhelmed with vivid memories of being crushed into dark rich smelling loam under the heel of a multistory stone monstrosity. He was awake but trapped in darkness, unable to break free unable to.

"Divus!"

"All gone," he whispered, "everyone's gone, devoured by the Hamidon, all gone. We let it happen."

He was surrounded by the smell of rotted flesh, the human population of entire cities put out to mulch and rot. No one cared.

"Divus!"

The darkness holding him down vanishes in a tremendous explosion. Desperately he rises, flying into the sky. The swarm web is gone and in its place a sky full of slate grey aquiline vessels dropping small suns onto the planet's surface. He was free, but free to do what?

Hyperpower was shaking him, but Divus wasn't coming around, she had pushed Sol Hank aside when Divus started ranting.

"He's trapped in a memory," Sol Hank said, he stayed on his knees, not rising. "You have to bring him back to the present."

Cassie looked down at him and considered the tried and true slapping method, but she thought better of it. She quickly dipped into her purse and pulled out the Chanel DeVore perfume that Divus loved. She had always maintained that the cologne was the only good thing Vanessa DeVore had ever done before going completely bonkers and becoming a soul sucking vampire. Luckily, Chanel owned the trademark and the production facilities. She sprayed a copious amount on her neck and hugged him close, "C'mon baby, wake up."

The vision of ships faded from view replaced by, hair and the heady light scent of Chanel DeVore. A tremor came rumbled through his limbs and then he relaxed.

"It's okay," she said. "It's okay."

"No it's not," he replied. "I don't think it's ever going to be okay again." Then he blacked out.
__________________________________

The object sat on the top of the tree, a glowing red Christmas star a top a skeleton of ash whitened branches. The glowing rhombus seemed to be floating, suspended by its own glow, but as John Henry approached, he could see that it was being held up by a ratsnarl of diaphanous filaments weaving upward from the top branches.

"What the hell is that?" John Henry asked. Once again he felt like he was repeating himself...alot.

"It's part of a key," the orb said. "Sol Divus' arcane knowledge has atrophied signifigantly over the years, but he had enough knowledge to get the primary binding spell complete. He tried to build in failsafes, some worked, this one didn't."

"Failsafes?" He asked, "Like what?"

"For example, did you never really consider why no one tried a resurrection spell on you? Certainly people more far gone than you were at the point the spell was disrupted and have been brought back."

"Not really," John Henry said carefully, "I was willing to trust Divus' and Eminent's judgemet."

"If they had used a resurrection spell, there was a strong possibility that Mal Divus's soul would have returned to his body, casting you out into the void," the orb replied.

"Oh," He replied.

"Yes. So Sol Divus set in several rituals to interfere with resurrection magics. Unfortunately he could not engineer a back up way to power a repair if the spell was disrupted. This was that attempt."

John Henry flew closer, slowly gently brushing the filament snarl, but jerked his hand away upon feeling a light, intimate touch along the inside of his skull, like the tightening throb of an incipient headache. He reached out again and slowly stroked the fine branches marveling at the feeling.

"The branches represent your power, the innate magical potential that use weilded as a hero and you used to create Divus. The rhombus is a small shard of alchemically distilled essence of the demon lord Bat'Zul, imprisoned beneath the city of Cap Au Diable in the Rogue Isles. By itself, it is at best a magical oddity for use in a potent potion, but Bat'Zul is special in that it's potency seems to be self sustaining. Indeed that seems to be the fate of the demon itself, to have its seemingly limitless power harnesed. The distilled essence seems to carry that trait as well. The shard was supposed to be a back up power supply to enable you to repair the spell if it were damaged. However, to keep you from immediately jumping back into the heroic fray before you were healed, he blocked your access to your power with a password geas. With no access to your power you could not use the essense shard and he was not able to give you the password."

John Henry hesitantly reached for the shard, then paused, "What's the catch?"

"What?" The orb replied.

"What is the catch?" John Henry asked.

"Does there have to be one?" Sol Divus asked. As far as John Henry was aware, this was the first time seeing he had seen his prodigal son. His face was more angular, drawn and set into his forehead above his glowing white eyes was a glowing golden orb with the same silver veining as the red orb he held in his hand.

"In magic, you never get something for nothing," John Henry responded.

"True," Divus said.

John Henry looked at his "sons" taken aback by their sudden appearance.

"The price has already been paid, to an extent anyway." Sol Hank said. His cowboy hat was off and set into his forehead was a gleaming blue orb.

The three men had appeared in a semi circle around John Henry, the "open" end of the half circle was the essence shard.

He looked down at the red shard in his hand, then at the others, "Are you real, or just translations of my subconscious?"

"We are here," Sol Divus said, "linked astrally through our Eye's of Solestine."

John Henry looked accross the assembly, "Divus doesn't have one."

"That's why I'm here," Hank replied. "Just relaying...and witnessing."

"Witnessing what?"

"A choice," Sol Hank responded.

"How so?"

Sol Divus spoke, "You've always wanted to be powerfull, to be great. It's why we are who and what we are. You need to be mindful when you take that shard. You can become what you were: strong potential constrained. Or you can take a chance and let the orb in your hand remake you."

"What?" John Henry exclaimed dropping the orb, which hovered in place.

"The Corps would like you to join us," Sol Hank said. "Not in a full time capacity, as an adjunct of sorts."

"Why?" John replied.

"I did not want you involved with the Corps," Sol Divus said. "It's a very demanding life. Actually that's an understatement. There are few of us that have stable assignments. Mine is a long term program. Sol Hank actually spends a lot of time off planet, but he is based here because of all of the interdimensional traffic that comes through this copse of dimensions."

"The Corps would like another agent in this area," The red orb said. "In return, I will become your Eye of Sol and I help you maximize your resurrection."

"Like your organization did with Sol Divus after you found him?" Divus asked.

"No," The red orb responded. "Sol Divus was remade using facilities that we do not have access too and would take many months to bring here. What we will attempt is to bring John Henry's nature and desire together and give him what he wants. There is a lot of room for error. This could be a big dissapointment. You will be alive however." The orb didn't sound confident though.

"If the facilities aren't anywhere near here, where did you come from?" John asked.

"I am a program that activated from an astral shadow left by Sol Divus' eye when he was drawn into soul rapport with you by the sundering of your spell. It had been in communication with Solestine Command. This project had endangered Sol Divus' life and in turn, the mission which, to be honest, was more important than your life. However we saw an opportunity to get another agent into the Rogue Isles which is also brimming the potential for disaster. It was decided that we would help. There is no catch. You can take back your old life and there will be no ties beyond that which you already have with your 'sons.' Or you can join the Corps, you will be allowed to quit at any time and I will leave you, however we hope that being a part of our mission to safeguard the multiverse from creatures like the Devouring Earth and the Celestial Hive."

John Henry had a flashback, the battlefield, the smoke, Max, Violetta, and Heartsigh, "What about the Rikti?" John Henry asked.

"The Rikti...they aren't an issue for the Corps," The red orb responded hesitantly. "If you do choose to intervene in their activities, we will not stand in your way. I stress you will be a freelancer, one of many beings who do not carry the title 'Sol' but do aid in our mission."

John Henry sighed, "And I'd have to go to the Rogue Isles?"

"Well," the orb responded, "You could do it as a Longbow plant, but first you'd have to join Longbow and earn the position and given your history I don't think that would be possible. You could also immigrate, but that would be seen with suspicion."

John Henry already assumed the worst, "You want me to assume Mal Divus' identity." He said.

"Yes," the orb responded.

"But how is that supposed to work? I don't have any of his memories and I'd be very impressed if you did."

"Your memory loss and personality shift can be blamed on the combination of reanimation magic and the Longbow neutralizing tech which is so unstable and unreliable it isn't even publicly known."

"How do you know so much?"

"Oh, you will learn alot about the underbelly of Paragon City in the Rogue Isles," Sol Divus said. "It and Paragon City are as linked as closely as Statesman and Recluse."

John looked at Divus, "What do you think?"

Divus blinked, "I...I don't know. I lived Sol Divus's memories, I'm still parsing, I don't know what to do."

"Learn from my mistakes," Sol Divus said. "I tried to solve my problems by hitting things. The way you solve things now: more power more smash. Admittedly, I still use a lot of brute force. But you, you have an opportunity to try to change things from the policy level this time. It will be alien at first, but you've been freed a lot earlier than I was."

Sol Divus paused, "As much as it galls me to say it...this moment could be the real change in the timeline I've worked towards. Divus, by becoming part of the governing and decision making process, you may be able to stop that future from coming to pass. I'm not willing to wait for you though. You will have to change the future by saving lives. Unfortunately, I will change the future by destroying those who would let themselves become the destroyers."

Divus' eyes were hooded. John Henry could feel the sense of loss radiating from him, "Look, if I do this, aw who am I fooling, I'm going to do this. We can always talk, I'll be there for you. I can feed you information that can help you. Hell, since I'll be Mal Divus, you can be John Henry Divus. You have been for the last 4 years anyway. Use the name, use the identity to help change the future."

John Henry paused, thinking very hard then shook his head vigurously.

"Sorry," John Henry said, "While I'm flattered, I don't think it would be prudent to make this kind of decision with the sword of damocles hanging over my head."

The red orb paused, "Understandable."

Divus touched his shoulder, "I think you should. Don't forget, I have all of your memories. I know that you've always wanted something like this. It isn't exactly what you would have preferred, but it is also something that comes along every day or something you can just send an email and apply to."

John Henry regarded the red orb and the tugging temptation to say yes. But he didn't have all of the information he needed to make a choice, but then again would he ever have all of the information.

"I can quit at any time," He said to the eye, "And I won't be stripped of my powers, and dropped into a sarlac pit?"

The orb thought for a moment, "I would be remiss if I did not say that there are members of our organization who...lack certain HR skills. However, it is the High Command that sets the policy. If you choose to leave it is because of the nature of the agreement between you and command and you have three witnesses to that effect. You will be a freelancer, you have the right to decline what is asked of you, in turn, your ability to call upon command resources will be dependant on what you contribute. If someone tries to force you into an operation, you have the right to resist with all of the means available to you."

"That sounds more like it," John Henry grumbled.

"Nothing is perfect in this omniverse," the orb replied, "we only do the best with what we have and what we know."

"We have to go soon," Sol Hank interrupted. "Aache is coming with the body."

John Henry reached out with his left hand and seized the rhombus, "Alright, you have a deal."

"There's no going back after this..." Sol Divus said. "The reconstruction process could go wrong."

"Let's do it before I loose my nerve," John Henry said hurriedly.

The third eyes of Sol Hank and Sol Divus flared into incandescence. The orb in John Henry's palm followed. They linked in a triangle of power, gold light from Sol Divus to Sol Hank, blue from Sol Hank to the red orb and red from the red orb to Sol Divus.

"Okay, Sol Divus," The Red Orb said, "Release the geas."

Sol Divus nodded then said, "Dark Phoenix.'

The rhombus ruptured and the demon's essence raced into John Henry's spirit.

"Sorry Divus," Sol Hank said, "I'm going to have to send you back, I can't manage this and keep you safe at the same time."

Divus woke up on the floor, still being cradled by Cassondra, "Hey babe," he grinned groggily. He felt hale and whole aside from a splitting headache and the psychological remnants of what amounted to an extended adrenaline rush.

Sol Hank was lying face down on the floor unconscious. Aache, Totino, Nephel, Azuria a reedy-looking middle aged man in a Hero Corp uniform flanked by two Longbow officers were crowded into the room as well. The limp corpse of John Henry lay limply on the floor. All life gone from the limbs, the eyes cloudy and unseeing.

Aache was crying and yelling at the top of his voice at the old man, "THIS is your fault! It wasn't your business what we were doing. How dare you send your men into..."

"You are mistaken," he sniffed. "We are here on a tip that a dangerous criminal was..."

"On whose jurisdiction?" Nephel asked.

"We are registered heroes just like yourselves," he responded coldly. "We have just as much right to arrest alleged crimminals as you do."

"Ah," Nephel said tutting his right index finger against his right cheek, "But you see, we've already taken the 'criminal' into custody why are you here?"

One of the Longbow officers stepped forward brandishing a badge, "I am Lt. Matt Frakes, Hero Corp liason to the Paragon Police department we are here to take the criminal, Mal Divus, into custody."

"Indeed," Azuria replied. There was an uncharacteristic edge to her voice. "I'm sorry, Leiutenant is it? But this is situation was brought to my attention by Nephel, and between the interdimensional immigration and international issues involved. I believe that this a federal matter. However while you are here Mister Ostrander, can you explain how top secret experimental Longbow weapons got into the hands a vigilante terrorist organization like Wyvern?"

"I don't know what..." He began...

"I do," Totino smirked, producing a purple black rifle. "It's similar to the weapon that took out poor Darla Mavis. I wonder if we started doing a trace on parts would we find some Longbow suppliers in the mix, otherwise Longbow has a big [censored] scandal regarding them unable to keep their tech under wraps."

"Tell Indigo to go shake another tree," Divus growled.

"Quiet!" Azuria's voice cracked accross the room, roiling the already tense atmosphere. She seemed to be listening and her eyes were distant. "Back away from the body, now!"

Everyone backed away and Sol Hank gestured and three glowing humanoid psionic constructs took up guard positions around the body.

"Okay, everyone," Sol Hank said telepathicly to the assembled Misphits, here's the short version of what needs to happen after the fireworks." He filled Aache in first so he could help distribute information to the others. There was a lot of disbelief on all sides and more than a little incredulty. The end of the discussion ended with Divus saying, "okay, soon as we get him away from here, you can talk to him about it."

During the exchange, John Henry's corpse burst into vermillion flames simultaneously rocking upward to a sitting position. A rumbing chant eminated from the creature and John Henry desperately strove to keep the encroaching demonic energies from consuming him. His Will met the onslaught, but instead of standing his ground he embraced the energy, taking it into himself. In a flash of rememberance, he remembered Divus' birth and realized that he could create a new coccon for himself. The Eye was there now, cautiously reassuring. He didn't have to make a cocoon. He realized what he did earlier, the mistake. Instead of forcing the energy outward, he merged with it became it. He sensed the power mapping the body he was in replicating it's functions and metabolisms and burning the rest away. He could dimly percieve the former presence of the demon and several visions flickered through his sight: an underground lake of magma with bulbous sticklimbed bird-like horrors easily waiding through with something a thousand times their size wading above them, he saw earthquakes and destruction, then, curiously, long orange pipes stretching above a dark, sad-looking town with gleaming angry spires above the sad building. Red lightining danced around the pipes and he found himself drawn to that aspect of the demon's power.

The vermillion flames began to attenuate. The wavering light began to pulsate as each flame became a surging line of electricity, as the last bit of organic matter was consumed, John Henry's anchors to mortality vanished and he was like his sons, an ageless construct of psychic energy. A living levinbolt. Then the light receeded sucked back into rapidly appearing brown 'skin.' He stood before them, nude and exhausted. He looked like Divus, except for a slight bit more of a barrel chest, and his, pupiless eyes, which glowed the same vermillion as the fire and lightning from which he was born.

John Henry looked around at Aache, Divus and Sol Hank, "Did I do it right this time?"

Aache sent back, "Okay, we sooo have to talk."

Divus simply replied. "Welcome back...Mal"
_________________________________________

After a brief staring contest with Ostrander, Azuria once again invoked her authority, particularly since a potent amount of demonic energies were just released in her presence. Nephel smootly suggested that maybe they should transfer "Mal Divus" to the magical containment ward in the hospital wing of the Zigrurat, instead of simply arresting him.

The other Misphits did not have to pretend to be disturbed with the idea John Henry being Mal Divus. They were disturbed as putting a relatively innocent man, in the Ziggruat. Despite what Divus and Sol Hank relayed, they hovered protectively close to him as they waited for Azuria and Totino to hash out travel arrangements. Divus and Hyperpower stood to the side. Once he was sure the part of John Henry's soul that contained his memories, personality and consciousness were intact, he took Hyperpowers hand, and never let go, firmly aware of the emotional tug of war the two embodied.

He could feel John Henry's presence in his mind, more strongly than ever. As strong, if not stronger than he could sense Sol Divus. The transformation was complete, he only looked human because that's what he understood instinctively. It would help that he could still use chemical energy transfer from food while he adjusted to his new life. Divus definitely remembered the awkward phase when he went from being basicly human to what he was now. He could only hope that the next few weeks did not tax his father to the breaking point. Then again at this point maybe they were brothers.

"This is wild," Divus murmured under his breath.

"You're telling me," Hyperpower replied. Once Ostrander showed up, she felt distinctly uncomfortable. But outside a glance of recognition, he had basicly ignored her. Her feeling were conflicted, but the whole time, her focus was on Divus. The external focus kept her from turning inward in a storm of self-incrimination. Despite it's PR, Hero Corps is a corporation with all of the politics involved and she sold her personal life for her professional life.

She was even more shocked by Divus' half-hearted denuciation John Henry as Mal Divus. Sol Hank was far more dedicated as was Aache. The other echoed Divus and hovered around the naked man like a mother hen around a baby chick. "Mal" looked drawn and inwardly focused. She had been with Divus long enough to read his moods even if he didn't have pupils or irises.

"What's the deal with you guys and glowing eyes?" She asked suddenly.

Divus looked over at her, processed the question and shrugged, "I don't know. In someways I'm what he always wanted to be, I guess the glowing eyes were part of the self image. It's odd though, but that "new" body is closer to what he originally looked like, sans some of his spare tire.

Mal Divus glaned in their direction with a raised eyebrow and smirked.

Divus blinked, it was a direct telepathic message, the connection was there and gone but the words were still here.

"What's wrong?" Hyperpower asked.

"Sonofagun," he said. "He said that 'vanity runs in the family."

"Why did you do it?" Hyperpower asked suddenly. "Why did you say he was Mal Divus?"

He pulled her close and whispered to her, "It's not my place to tell."

Totino and Azuria walked back into the room, "Okay," "I've worked with Divus, Nephel, and Aache before so they will be the armed escort. Totino will drive and Hyperpower will be the Hero Corp representative. I do hope you have a uniform with you dear."

The uniform comment struck Cassie as odd, but then again, she did look like an extra from "Shaft." She did have a spare suit. It wasn't nearly as durable as her usual, but did fit in her bag.

She realized why when they stepped out of the building and sea of flashing bulbs and camera lights met them.

The Misphits tensed and Azuria whispered, "I trust you to get him to the Zigurski Prison Totino, I don't trust you to do it without a side trip to somewhere inconvient like Lithuania or the Moon ."
__________________________________________________ ____________________

Sol Divus left the Warburg garrison as soon as he was ambulatory against the strenuous objections of the medical officer on duty. He still wasn't feeling well, but there were too many secrets in his body in head that he was not willing to share with Arachnos. Besides he felt that there was something besides the hippocratic oath motivating his doctor, but those are the risks of working in the Rogue Isles. Medical care could just as easily equal unagreed upon experimentation.

As soon as the shuttle docked in St. Martial, he flew into the city, and pounced on a pair of thugs who had to ill fortune to have slipped into an alley to conduct a deal. Sol Divus forced his aura into theirs siphoning out their life and vitality, completely restorning his. He left them alive, encased in deteriorating blocks of icy force and proceeded to his apartment in the Golden Giza. He needed some time to think.

The loft apartment was sparsely decorated with very few walls. Everything was sectioned out: kitchenette, computer area (not that he needed one, but apperances necesitated one), sleeping area and a living room dominated by an extremely large television which he immediately switched on.

"Bug sweep," He throught to his Eye.

The orb bathed the openspace in a strobe-like tracing fan of light. After a minute of activity, he felt the orb access his powers, but use them far more subtlely than he could consciously. The light faded and the Eye replied, "Recording devices neutralized."

Sol stripped down to the skin, turned on the television and flopped onto the couch and bounced right back onto his feet as CNN's lead new story danced accross the screen, "Misphits of Science capture Praetorian spy Mal Divus." The footage showed Divus, Nephel, Totino, Aache and Hyperpower escorting a regenerated John Henry through a throng of people. They looked tense and grim.

"What the hell were they thinking?" Sol raged.
__________________________________________________ ____

"What the hell were you thinking?" Totino asked Azuria.

"I can ask you the same thing," she replied with a soft firmness. "Extradimensional duplicates powered by demonic energies are serious issues."

"He's not a duplicate," Divus said without thinking.

Azuria raised an eyebrow.

John Henry who was squished between Hyperpower and Divus patted Divus' hand, lingering as he realized that he had a full range feeling again. He blushed and pulled back and looked at Azuria.

"Hello John Henry Divus," she said calmly. "Why, pray tell, are you masquerading as Mal Divus?"

They all looked at her most with mouths gaping.

Azuria pursed her lips and gave a round of withering looks, "I know I have a reputation for being a head in the clouds new ager, but I am not stupid. Nephel told me part of the story, but you need to brief me on the rest before we decide what we can do next. Ostrander and Indigo are no doubt scheming behind my back as is. So we are going to put him somewhere safe, now tell me what happened."

"Then what Nephel told you has to be enough," Mal said.

"If you do not tell me more, I will have to put you in Zigursky Prison until we can suss out the truth," She said.

"I understand," Mal said, then winced. Divus was crushing his hand.

"Zigursky is a harsh place with its own rules," Azuria cautioned. "You will not be protected there. I'll have you put into solitary on the grounds that you are a suspected edbee, but mark my word, I will find out what's going on."

John Henry/Mal Divus nodded then thought to the eye encased in his left right palm, "Are you sure this is the right path to take?"

"There is a convergence of events coming," his eye responded. "Sol Divus has memories of events that happened in his timeline fairly that independent of the changes he is trying to make. One of those events will put you in the Rogue Isles, but you have to be in Zigursky."

"When will I get out?"

"Soon."

"How soon is 'soon'?" Mal asked. He was not fond of the idea of jail.

The eye didn't reply for several moments, "Just...soon."

"Great," the new Mal Divus said sardonicly, "Just great."

The End, until next time.

Chapter 2

One of the things Hyperpower loved about Divus, was fighting with him.

She smiled as a gang of 8 Freakshow, a high powered gang with a fetish like penchant for cybernetics, advanced on the two of them. One of them was an almost completely cybernetic tank with giant mallets instead of hands. Siren's Call was chaotic enough without another gang of superpowered opportunists stepping in to muck things up.

"I'll take the tank," Divus said.

Hyperpower's smile turned into a fierce grin as she lept bodily into the croud, feeling her superhuman metabolism ramp up. Her fists flew, as she mauled the first three in a lucky bit of targeting. The others divided, two going after Divus and the rest staying with her.

Divus ignored them and charged at the tank, fists glowing. Red, yellow and rainbow lights sheeted off him as the air whistled around his doubledfist's strike. The attack sheared into the heavy plate of he ganger's torso and psychic feedback lanced into his nervous system stunning him. Divus followed up with 4 point blank shots blazing energy to the chest and it went down.

Cassondra winced as a particulalry vicious tyke who had his arms replaced with scythes, scoured her back, but the wound was already healing. She spun, bashing him to the ground with a fist, whipping back in time to catch his compatriot in the face with an elbow. She slipped into the familiar pleasurable rhythm and soon found her self swinging at dead air, the ground around her littered with broken, unconscious bodies.

"Nice," Divus said from the sidelines.

"You think so?" She smiled. Then, feeling a breeze, she twisted around and remembered that the back of her uniform had been ventilated. "Crap. I need to head back and get changed."

"I dunno," Divus said moving her into his arms, "It can make this outfit really accessible."

"Stop that!," she said smacking his fingers and backing away. "Did zombie guy say anything about me."

Divus sighed, "His name is John Henry and no he hasn't. He's gone all stoic and Southern on me. Besides, it's only been a day or so since you met."

"He doesn't like me," she said.

"Can we not talk about him," Divus said pressing his face into her 'fro.

"We should" she said. "What if he finds a way to go back?"

"He can't" Divus replied, "Something about his removal made me 'fill up the space' so to speak, at least according to Eminent and Luz. In a freaky way, My own soul was already there, it was just subordinate to John Henry's like being part of a spiritual RAID arrray. "

She was looking at him open mouthed, "Spiritual RAID array?"

He blinked, "What? It was appropriate analogy. Any how I'm now the primary and the space he was taking up has been filled. So where do you want to go tonight? Pocket D is supposed to be having a 70's themed bash tonight. I was hoping we could go?"

She smiled, "You're going to dance?"

"Yeah."

"Alright, I'll meet you at 9?"

He hugged her and said, "Yes."

___________________________

"Why oh why do I have so much crap!" Cassondra moaned.

The contents of her closet were splayed about the room. It wasn't that she didn't have anything to wear she just couldn't choose anything. She had the hair, but then again she also has a feathered blonde wig that was just waiting to make it's debut. So many choices, she was actually relieved when the phone rang.

She was already wearing her headset, "Hello."

"Are you sitting down?" Anne Marie Novak, one of Hyperpower's friends from work, said breathlessly.

"No," she replied holding up a pair of wedge-heeled leather boots and inspecting them for scuffs.

"Good, get your butt down here," she said. "I have those results you were waiting for and I can't talk about them over the phone! Hurry up." then she hung up.

Cassondra looked down at what she was wearing, cutoffs, and tank top. She wasn't on duty and didn't have to be in uniform and Anne Marie did say Hurry.

She slipped on some tennis shoes and grabbed, her, id, keys and emergency teleport beacon. She threw open a window and felt her body juice up. She leapt outward in a long graceful arc, uncannily guiding herself down on to a building ledge from which she launched skyward again, bounding towards Hero Corporation.

Anne Marie was waiting for her outside the building, smoking a cigarette. Her blond hair was pulled tightly back in a bun and her white lab jacket covered the top of a powder blue pantssuit.

She was scanning the skies as she toked and once Hype came into view, she stubbed out her cancer sitck and lit a fresh one.

Hyperpower landed a few feet from her, questions written all over her face.

"Hello dear," Anne said warmly, linking their arms, "let's grab a bagel."

Cassondra recognized the uncharacteristic tension that sang up Anne's arm. Uncharacteristic because Anne, a forensic psychometrist, had experienced a lot of horrible things so many that a lot didn't phase her. She tended to be fairly reserved and observing of everything. She quickly fell into step with her friend. "When did you start smoking?"

"I've always smoked Cassie," she said. "Usually only after a bad night of Reading."

"You didn't work another 24 hour shift did you?"

"No, I got a good night's sleep and was fully bright eyed and bushy tailed when I got to work. Then everything went to hell. C'mon lets cross the street."

She was quiet as they walked directing them deeper into the buildings around the Hero Corp headquarters in Paragon City until they were lost in the sprawl. Anne Marie guided them into a side door...and she found herself in the extradimensional nightclub Pocket D.

"When did you find this entrance?" Cassie marvled.

"Online," she responded. "I was trying to find someplace close to work so I could go to the party tonight." She walked deeper into the club b-lining to the dance floor and it's loud driving music. The European and Asian contingent were in partying and the music carried a distinct high energy drive.

Cassie sobered, "Okay girl, what's going on."

"I sent those samples through like you asked," she began. "I was keeping it quiet, doing it as part of diagnostics to keep it off the radar, but the results tripped a whole lot of alarms. Someone with a lot of pull was looking for those tell tales and there's been strange activity around the office ever since."

"What came back?" Cassie asked.

"They matched a felon who escaped the Zig seven months ago during that Arachnos sponsored breakout: Malcom Divus. I cross checked against your Divus but there wasn't a match, but they do look an awful lot alike." Her face was expectant.

"How much did you tell them?" Cassie asked almost to softly to be heard.

"Nothing," She replied, "I told them it was some dirty underwaear I took some samples from for diagnostic purposes. Not that I knew that much. I did not manage to keep your name out of it though, they hit the security records and saw that you gave them to me. I figured you were checking up on a case but wanted a quickie analysis as part of an investigation. They seemed to buy it. Then someone else showed up. Cassie what've you gotten into?"

"I don't know," she replied truthfully.

"You'd better know," Anne interjected. "Do you know who Indigo is?"

"No," Hyperpower said warily, "Should I?"

"It would have been impressive if you had," Anne said. "She's some sort of high end spook contractor for Longbow. She's been nosing around the offices, not really talking to the rank and file but she definitely has the managers in a knot. This is an interesting froth you've whipped up."

"Crap, crap crap," Cassie said and she moved off to find a wall to lean against.

"What's wrong? I'm the one having a bad day?"

"Can you keep a secret?"Cassie asked.

"Honey, a Crey 9000, mind stripper couldn't pull anything from this grey matter"

"Okay," Cassie said, then she quickly told her the story about Divus, Sol Divus, John Henry and the corpse.

"Oh hell," Anne Marie responded.

"What?"

"The file that was flagged when the results came through were cross linked to Sol Divus. There was speculation that Mal and Sol Divus may have been the same person but no prints or DNA are on file for Sol Divus."

"They're two different people," Cassondra said. "I've seen them, or rather, I've seen Sol Divus, right here in Pocket D and that...corpse...was somewhere else. Divus said that John Henry doesn't have any powers and is under constant watch, he couldn't be in two places at once."

"I know you love Divus," Anne Marie said, "You have to tell someone. Praetorian incursions are a matter of global security."

"I can't" she said stricken.

"You have too," Anne Marie said soberly, "What if this 'John Henry' is really Mal Divus? We need to let the authorities at M.A.G.I. make that determination, not a bunch of freelancers."

"I'll be betraying a trust," Anne Marie, "I mean really really betraying a trust."

"It sounds like your own trust has been stretched here," Anne Marie responded. "I just think you should do the right thing. It's bigger than us and we need to report it to people who can handle it."

Cassondra sobered, "Okay Anne."

The interview was grueling. Her supervisor, a stick of a man known only as Ostrander, seemed to keep asking the same questions over and over again. She was used to cut and dried reporting, but this smacked more of an interrorgation than meeting. She didn't have all of the answers and the heroes involved had security rankings signifigantly higher than hers and the reputations and influence to go with it. She just had a pair of dirty underwear from a bitter animated corpse with future shock and separation anexity.

A tall dark haired woman dressed head to toe in deep blue leather sat in on the discussions but she kept silent the entire time, just listening.

"Do you think they know that the body they're holding is from Praetorian Earth?" Ostrander, asked.

She sighed, "As I have said before I don't know. The body was found on an Arachnos smuggling vessel that Longbow seized. The Misphits had been tipped off as well as Longbow. The Misphits got there first and recognizing the psychic signature, took the body."

"So they smuggled it into the country instead?" He asked.

"No," she replied, "Their base isn't in the United States, I do know that. I don't know where though."

"How do yo think they'd react if we approached them to turn it over?"

"They are more concerned with the soul that's bound to it, and they are not letting it out of their sight until whatever is happening with it is done. He's under constant surveilance."

"How would you characterize the personality inside?" Ostrander continued.

"Angry," she said. "I know he doesn't like me, but that could be because I'm dating what was his body."

"I don't understand that," Ostrander responded.

Hyperpower was glum, "I don't either. They have a lot of the same personality traits, but there are clear differences between them from the little I've observed and Divus's explanation, the two spirits were working in tandem and when one left the other became permenant primary."

"Any chance that Divus is possessed by the Praetorian?" He asked.

The question chilled her, "I don't know. I guess we have to trust that they know what they're doing."

"We don't trust them," Ostrander replied. "But that's why we're working to build Longbow into a viable alternative to relying on freelancers. Thank you for your candor Hyperpower. I understand how stressful this is. You may go."

She bobbed her head in a curt nod, cutting a wary glance at the still, statuesque figure in blue and left the office.

Anne Marie was waiting for her in the hall way.

"So how did it go?" She asked.

She thought about it for a few paces before responding, "I don't feel good about it at all. I mean, I know how Ostrander feels but these people have put their lives at risk for the city and the country over and over again. Hell John Henry died during the Rikti war. I feel like I'm betraying him."

Anne Marie was quiet, then responded, "There's a reason portal technology has been heavily regulated. Statesman has had two dimensional duplicates try to come conquer this dimension, Tyrant, from Praetorian Earth and Reichsman, from 'Third Reich Earth.' We can't take the chance that something like this will happen again. We have to be vigilant, especially since we're still recovering from the Rikti War and fighting insurgent Rikti units."

"They're fighting that fight too, Anne Marie. Especially while Longbow is out harassing Recluse."

Anne Marie shrugged and changed the subject, "I need a cigarette."

Cassondra let her. Her stomach was in knots, she wasn't sure what, if anything, would become of this. She didn't know whether or not to tell Divus what happened. If she did, she'd have to admit her part in getting the ball rolling.

_______________________________________

The doorbell to Cassie's apartment rang promptly at 9pm, but she was ready. After getting back from HQ, she threw herself into getting ready. Just when she thought she would have to go with something generic, she found the foundation for her costume, a pair of 4 inch white espadrille wedge sandals with nylon laces that were made to snake up to the knee. She quickly found a shimmery blue angel winged tunic that reached about mid thigh. She tied the tunic at her waist with a golden girdle belt and she did a little turn in the mirror. Something was missing...something kitschy.

She grabbed her highly feathered Farrah wig and put it on.

"Oh man," she said to herself, "I look like a streetwalker...perfect."

She topped it with a white fox stole and huge Jackie-O sunglasses and she was ready to roll.

She opened the door...and nearly died.

Divus stood in the doorway, completely unselfconscious wearing gleaming golden trunks and knee high gleaming gold boots. A delicate collar encircled his neck and he had a brass chain attached to it which he was twirling suggesstively in his left hand as she opened the door. Every inch of exposed skin, even his hair, was covered in a light dusting of golden glitter.

"Who in the hell are you supposed to be?" She asked incredulously.

He grinned, "I'm Rocky from the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show.'" He held out the leash to her, "Wanna walk me?"

_______________________________________

"Why is 'Bad Girls' by Donna Summer, playing over and over in my head?" Cassie mused aloud as they walked down the streets of the Steel Canyon burrow of Paragon City.

"Because you looked like a coked out 70's supermodel taking her equally coked out boy toy out to make the other women jealous?" Divus ventured.

She laughed, "Maybe so. I do love you y'know."

Divus stopped and for a second Cassie was afraid she went too far. But he was smiling like a cat and he tugged on the chain until she was close enough to scoop into his arms.

"You've made me the happiest man in the whole damn city," he crowed. "I love you too."

They broke apart heading North towards the green line.

"Did you ever give John Henry that device to contact Sol Divus?" She asked.

"Nah," he replied. "I've checked with some contacts and he's worse than bad news. Did you know he's put well over 1,000 Longbow officers in the hospital? They'd have been dead if not for the emergency teleport network. I don't know why he did what he did, and I really don't care. If we can keep John Henry away from him, that's all that matters."

She hooked her arm closer in his, admiring how work talk didn't seem to spoil the mood, "Have you thought about what he said that night at Pocket D, about Praetorian Divus being flesh and blood. Given the startling resemblence to you that the body John Henry is in has, I wonder if that's the body of Mal Divus."

"So what if it is?" Divus replied laconicly not breaking a stride. "If the folks on the Rogue Isles want to kill each other in arcane schemes, let them."

"But what about John Henry?" she asked.

"What about him?" He said. "I know where he came from, I know how he got to be where he is. I don't want him back though and eminent said that his spirit will fully regenerate that souless husk soon. He will have his life and I will have mine."

An edge creeped into his voice and she responded to it, "You're afraid that he'll go back."

"A little," he admitted. "It's not like it was bad before, but, well, once you taste freedom, you don't want to give it up.'

"What was it like?" she asked.

"Fun," he grinned. "Well it was one long rollercoaster, fight patrol, fight patrol. Hop over to another dimension, fight, patrol. It was one long adrenaline rush. But, there wasn't any room for either of us to be human, to feel. All of our friendships felt so tenuous, but that was mostly because we had problems understanding sometimes. Now, we're free to pursue our own vision of humanity."

She blinked at him for a moment, "You're unreal, you know that right?"

"I'm still terribly idealistic," John Henry responded. "John Henry was the root of my cynicism, or rather cynical experience. He came by it honestly though. I wish he could remember what's happened over the last 4 years. I think it would make him feel less isolated."

The train ride from Steel Canyon to Talos Island was packed with revelers. The casts of Caberet, Shaft and Mahagony mingled with Greese, Xanadu, Saturday Night Fever, and a whole host of old comic book characters. Divus and Hyperpower, snuggled in the mass of people anticipating the fun to be had. When the tram stopped, everyone disembarked, heading towards one of the best known entrances to the extradimensional Neverland.

The smell of sandalwood incense, fragrant fingerfoods and liquors washed over them with the burst of warm air from the bar. ABBA's "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie (your love after midnight)" blared in the background, shaking the dancefloor as the lovers approached.

Waitstaff wove their way through the bar keeping patrons fueled on hors'dourves and alchohol. Divus and Cassie gave themselves over to decadent abandon, winding up in a mass of wet gyrating bodies.

"We never talk, but then again you never call," Sol Divus said using the shock of his appearance to smoothly cut into Cassie and Div's dance.

"Hey!" Cassie bristled.

Sol Divus was wearing heavy black stacks with gleaming metal skulls on the knees and toes. His torso was cinched tightly in a black leather corset decorated with leather horizontal strapping. Black gloves snaked to the middle of his arms. His head was crowned with a mane of shoulder length black hair and a brilliant white star shone over his right eye.

"Who're you supposed to be," Divus asked, using the question to give him an opportunity to center himself.

"Ziggy Stardust, Frakenfurter, KISS, take your pic," he shrugged. "Now why hasn't John Henry gotten in touch with me? I have some important things to relay to him."

"You have some nerve..." Hyperpower began.

Sol held up a shushing finger. The merriment had gone out of his eyes, "This is between us."

Her eyes blazed.

"Why don't you tell me?" Divus said. "I'll tell him."

"You're an unreliable messenger plus I really can't depend on you to give information without editing it. I fully expected you to eavesdrop but to not let John Henry know that the man who put him into his current predicament wants to talk to him is a bit too protective. You know he would talk to me."

Divus just looked at him then he noticed that the young man he saw with him before was here now, dressed pretty much the same as before, but this time his mohawk was dyed bright magenta and heavy black make up lined his eyes and coated his lips. "Who is that? Your boyfriend?"

Sol looked at Hype, "And is Foxy Brown here your girlfriend?"

Divus stiffened again.

"Lets not play word games Divus," Sol said, "You don't have the temperment for it and you're still too damn straight forward to be subtle."

"What do you want?" He asked bluntly.

"I want to make sure that John Henry has all of the tools he needs to build a new life for himself. If it wasn't for those Longbow bastards raiding the ship, I'd be giving him the information directly," Sol said. "I put a lot of time and money into the spell weave that anchor him to that corpse. Eminent is competent, but still."

Divus stiffened again, at this rate, he was going to turn into a board.

"Is that the corpse of Mal Divus?" Cassie interjected.

"What's it to you?" Sol asked, not taking his eyes off of Divus who said, "Answer her."

Sol Divus rollled his eyes, or rather the two of them, the third eye maintained rigid eye contact, "Maybe, oh alright yes. He was just floating around hiding. It wasn't as if he was doing anything with his life and his presence saved the the trouble of finding a scientist with decent cloning facilities. Plus Mal had a few things in his alchemy lab that turned out to be very useful for me."

"Why?" Cassie asked.

"I just told you why," Sol Divus snapped.

"No," she said, "I mean why go through all of this trouble?"

Sol Divus sighed and said, "Include John Henry on conversation and I'll tell you."

The music changed and the crowd relaxed and began to flow again. Divus and Sol stared at each other intently while Sturm and Cassie exchanged nervous measuring glances.

After what seemed like an eternity a tall, wide, sky blue skinned, man wearing nothing but white shots, white gloves and white boots stepped into their midst. White stars were tatooed blazed on hs arms and back and a white inverted triangle set on his chest. His glowing white eyes passed over Cassie and Sturm and finally settled on the two Divi.

"Exalt," Divus said in greeting, but inside all of his bells went off unfortunately Cassie was ahead of him.

"Exalt? Divus' ex boyfriend?" Cassie interjected.

Exalt straightened ignoring the exchange. "We have trouble at the Misphits base," he said in clipped lightly French accented English. "Wyvern is invading us. I must warn you they are using some sort of strange new weapon instead of their usual archery. Some sort of energy rifle that robs the body of vitality and power."

Sol Divus's head snapped around and he began gesturing, "Are they about this long, and dark purple with a vaguely blunt, triangularly shaped muzzle?"

Exalt eyed the Divus double warily, "Yes, that's it exactly."

"That isn't Wyvern," Sol Divus said grimly. "They may want you to think it's Wyvern, but that's Longbow."

"Well don't just stand there," John Henry said. "Come in or get out."

The new visitor irritated him. She was a beautiful woman with fine rounded features cast in deep honey-brown skin. She wore leather thigh high action boots with pockets at the top of each cuff, simple white pants and short sleeve top in that peculiar lycra/leather look that only superheroines have access to. A black five pointed star sat on her chest and her arms were bare save for a pair of steel bracers that covered her forearms. She looked uncomfortable and openly grossed out. John Henry didn't have the patience to deal with someone else's squeamishness.

"You don't look like other zombies I've seen," she said.

John stopped in mid chew, "Other zombies?"

"Yeah," she said. "There are some cults around Talos Island that use zombie shock troops and there's a mad scientist in Boomtown that stitches bodies together and animates them through some sort of weird science. They don't look like you."

John Henry thought for a few moments then replied, "I guess it depends on if they're made with preserved parts. I'm all 'natural' so I guess that would be different. But then again, I don’t have that much experience with them."

She shrugged, "I guess they're kind of 'old hat' as far as the media types are concerned, especially in King's Row. That place goes further down the tubes every year but no one really pays attention."

"That makes me a guilty party," John Henry said with a slight bit of rue, "I've been mostly reading about the Rogue Isles."

Hyperpower looked at him oddly, "Why?"

"It's not here," John Henry said matter of factly.

"Why?" She said again.

John Henry sighed, "Look...Cassondra...why are you here? If you're just here to peek in and peek out then fine. But this has not been a good night I'm not going to put my feelings on display for at total stranger."

Hype looked increasingly uncomfortable, "Look, I...my name, my real name is Cassondra, but my codename is Hyperpower."

John Henry went quiet for a long moment. He swiveled his chair to his dinner and hoped that his torso had hidden that he had picked up his panic button as well as another strip of meat.

He tore off a piece and chewed slowly. The revulsion was plain on her face, she should not be here. Then again as far as John Henry was concerned, he shouldn't be here either. He was finally starting to show some emotional stretchmarks .

"So why are you here Cassondra?" If she was willing to stay through the silent, look I eat raw meet grrr treatment he could at least talk to her.

"I...I don't know really," she began, "I was going to break up with him, with Divus. All of my friends said that he was [censored] and a member of Rough Trade and they get together and...do things. I wasn't going to be his down-lo [censored] so I told him I was going to break up with him." She paused, trying to find worlds.

"And that led you here, how?" John Henry asked although he was sure he would not like the answer.

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, "I wish I could say that it was over a heart to heart about why I was the one for him. But it wasn't, we met his evil twin at Pocket D and they had a conversation. He told Divus to give you a special phone or something so you could talk. Then he told me everything."

John Henry laughed, "So you’re telling me that you were going to break up with him without actually talking to him first? I hope you still plan to, he'll be better off."

Hype's hands snapped onto her hips, "What it that supposed to mean?"

"What does it sound like 'Miss I'm gonna break up with a man without talking to him or investigating because some people that don't even know him says stuff about him.'"

"I needed to know," she said feeling slightly off balance.

"What? That your boyfriend wasn't going to develop a sudden taste for sausage and buns?" He snapped.

"Yes," She hissed regaining her equilibrium, "No one likes being a joke!"

"And it's more special because he could cheat with a guy?" John Henry asked, the anger he's feeling giving his face animation and play he hadn't felt in weeks.

"Yes!" she said.

"Why?" He asked.

"Because it's wrong," She said wrapping her self in her convictions. "And there are other issues too, like disease and.."

John blinked at her and laughed, "Divus doesn't need to be with you because you're a [censored] twit."

"I don't have to justify how I feel to you!" She replied. "I needed to know that what he told me was true. I just needed to know that he was free of his...urges."

"And here they are," John Henry ranted gesturing theatrically. "Starring in today's episode of 'Morality Play' as the Wages of Sin is John Henry Divus. He's as ugly as the sin that mars his soul. He's been prepacked for his trip to hell, especially since his [censored] heaven has been stolen!"

"Don't take your issues out on me!" She responded.

"Why not? You are my [censored] issue!" He responded flushing. "You didn't come here for my benefit. You came here to make sure your honey was purged of his 'issues.' Why don't you go back to Hero Corp and meddle with some country's sovereign government. Or better yet, head over to the middle east, I'm sure some queers need to be stoned and your little association of jack-booted thugs can set up a contract. "

"Look," she said defensively, "Hero Corps does good work and if we have do some questionable things to get a monster like Recluse out of office then we will." It was an old argument for her. Divus didn't trust Longbow, he said they were too much like a legitimate Malta Group for his tastes. Apparently that mistrust ran deeper. She started to hope that the mistrust of her organization, like the taste for men would fade as he spent more time away from this...person.

Between issues of X-Men John Henry had done some surfing. He couldn't help himself, he had needed to know more about this woman and who she worked for. He had read about Hero Corporation and their exploits in the Post-Rikti War U.S. and about their advances in melding Rikti technology with genetic engineering. What he found didn't really assuage him, if anything it made him nervous.

"You're part of an organization with an army of manufactured metas and no one really understands your goals," John snapped. "You're nothing but brightly clad, highly paid mercenaries."

"We keep people safe and let them be free!" She responded. "What the hell do you know about it, up until recently you've been dead."

"That's true," John Henry said revectoring, "But...I died well, doing something awesome. Now I'm back here in this rotting piece of [censored] of a body dealing with the woman who's steal who I considered to be my perfect man."

"Stealing?" she said incredulously, "You don't even know who died to give you that body. You're so [censored] busy feeling sorry for yourself you..."

Cassondra had a sudden flashback to the conversation she witnessed in Pocket D and a horrible possibility dawned on her. She needed to get back to Hero Corp.

She broke off what she was going to say and wrinkled her face uncomfortably. "Would you mind if I used your restroom?" She said. She maintained the hostility, anything else would be suspicious. "I don't know my way around this part of the base."

"Sure," John Henry replied, wanting her out of his face. He gestured, "Right through there." As she stepped through, he had a poisonous little smile because he'd left his goo smeared clothes on the floor near the shower.

Hyperpower smiled when she spotted the goo smeared clothes on the floor. Div did the same thing when he stayed over. It was one of the few things about him she hated. She turned on the water in the sink. She hoped the corpse would think that she had a shy bladder. Pulling a plastic evidence bag from a pocket, Hyperpower began collecting material from the bedclothes, hoping that she could get enough for an effective DNA and background radiation analysis.

It took a while but she got tired of picking out dried goo and just took a pair of underwear, folding it carefully to that she could conceal it. She stood up, flushed and turned off the water.

John Henry pressed the panic button as soon as she entered the lavoratory. Aache's presence appeared, but it was weak and thready, "What's up?"

"Hyperpower is here," John thought at him.

"Divus' girlfriend?" Aache paused, "Man just thinking that sounds weird. What's she doing?"

"Chatting right now," John Henry groused, "She wants to make sure Divus is all gayed out."

"Wow," Aache responded, "well, I'd help out if I could but right now I'm up to my neck fighting giant animated topiary."

"What?" John replied.

"Devouring Earth, do a search for them when you get the chance. Crap! I have to go."

The mindlink went dead and John was left seething.

Hyperpower came out of the bathroom , "I think, I've overstayed my welcome."

John Henry thought, "You didn't have any welcome in the first place you slag." What he said was, "I really don't want to see you again."

She walked across the room and opened the door, "I don't think you have that choice. Divus and I are going to be together and you are going to have to accept it."

"Tolerate," you mean.

"Whatever you need to think to get you through," she said closing the door.

Divus and Hyperpower headed straight away to the headquarters of the Misphits and gathered the troops, unfortunately, Paragon City's problem's intruded in spectacular fashion.

"I don't have time for this," Divus snapped into the comlink.

"I...don't...care," Tugthumper snarled back, "We have at least three major emergencies and the city is calling on every cape who can come to mitigate some of the problem and we need everyone we can.

"Jesus," Divus groaned, "I have a personal emergency!"

"Unless that emergency involves you bleeding out of somewhere important or you getting someone to the hospital who is bleeding out of somewhere important you better get your [censored] in gear! Hamidon is more randy than usual and is sending devouring earth monsters into Founders Falls from Eden. Worse, the Rularuu are making an incursion into Perigrine Island. At the same time some genius has trained several of the multi story monstrosities from Monster Island onto the heart of the city to try to fight the aliens. It's a big friggin mess. Choose a section and get there!" Then he signed off.

Divus seethed but Tug was right, the members of Rough Trade who had the security ranks to function in those burrows were probably on their way and Tug wouldn't have beaten him over the head if it hadn't been a real emergency.

Luz, Hyperpower and Divus were in the main control room of the base of the Misphits of Science, the "supergroup" chartered by Eminent, Flametrick Sub, Luz, Nephel, Brisingamen and XRX Mental Typo. Divus had divided his time between Rough Trade and the Misphits helping both when asked and on very rare occasions helping get both groups together. He had a feeling that a rare occasion was here.

Luz was already looking at him expectantly. She had seen the change in his demeanor and posture immediately. The converstion about this "Sol Divus" and the conversation he wanted to have with John Henry was about to come to a screeching halt.

"Luz," he said hesitantly, "That was TugThumper, something wretchedly major is going down." He elucidated each threat as Tug had relayed them and Luz was nodding. "I will alert the others. Nephel, Brisingamen, and Flametrick Sub should be able to go to Founders. Totino and myself will go to Perigrine."

"I'll go to the Hive," Divus finished.

Hyperpower had tensed. All of those fights were threats she wasn't nearly equipped to deal with. She could try to insist but she was seeing Divus as she had when she first met him. He'd become grim, distant, focused. But then he turned to look at her and that armor fell away and his face brightened and he had a somewhat rueful smile on his face.

"I guess this part of our date is being cut short too," Divus said,standing. Luz had teleported away in a flash of light to send out the call.

"Yeah," she replied a little nervous. Then something occured to her, "Is John Henry here? I'd like to meet him. Maybe we can chat while you're off saving stuff."

Divus looked visibly torn, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," she replied with a confidence that she definitely didn't feel. "Besides I can always use the Hero Corps teleporters to get home."

Divus still didn't think it would be a good idea, but she seemed adamant and John Henry was a grown man. "Computer, grant Hyperpower visitor access." He said. Then turned to her, the base will show you around. I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Just come back in one piece, okay?" She said.

He kissed her on the cheek and flew off to the teleporters.

John Henry wasn't having a good night. After filling his head with illegal soap operatic super hero fluff fiction, he happily retired for the night only to wake up in excruciating pain. Real pain, he was alarmed and excited and immediately hit the call button. He felt Aache's presence in his mind immediately.

"Whats ah, never mind," he said as he just read John Henry's memories of the last few minutes. He instructed him to call over one of Totino's medbots to administer a bit of pain medication unfortunately it didn't work. Moreover despite the presence of pain, he wasn't showing any incipient vital signs indicating that the rest of his involuntary systems were ready to come online.

"This should help," Aache's voice murmured in his mind and the pain went away. "You may want to be careful though. The spell will last a bit, but you may want to check your food in case your sense of taste is back up to speed. Also, eat...eat a lot. If we can get you more fully regenerated maybe the natural pain controls will assert themselves. If you need me buzz. G'Night."

Aache's presence faded from his skull and John Henry decided to go ahead and get some housekeeping dones. He wasn't going back to sleep. His daily chores were as much therapy as typing. Also, it was necessary for his own peace of mind. He was a dead body, animated with a funky mix of necro-alchemical magic and slowly coming back to life, but he was still a dead body and they stank and leaked.

He pulled the bedclothes from his bed and tossed them down a hamper slide and stripped down and climbed into the shower. He could feel the warm water on his skin for the first time since everything started and it was a luxurious feeling. Unfortunately, he wasn't allowed bar soap and had to rely on an extremely fragrant sage scented liquid body wash. He didn't scrub just let it sluice him off.

He stepped out and slowly petted himself dry. He closed his eyes for this part. He didn't want to see his ruined body that up close and personal. Unfortunately he had to have his eyes open for the next step, he took a hair dryer and blew his body dry on a mild setting. The bathroom smelled clean and fresh with just an undertone of dead. It was the best he was going to do.

He pulled on a pair of lose fitting lined linen pants and padded out to his room and put on new bedcovers and lit incense. Went to the mini fridge and pulled out several strips of beef and popped them in the microwave for a few seconds, just long enough to knock the chill of of them. With lots of napkins he returned to his computer desk to pick up on his comic reading. He'd just finished reading about these X-Men being ambushed by giant robots on Christmas eve and being snatched up onto a space station. He'd taken a big mouth full of very tender, and to his surprise very spicy, meat when someone knocked at the door.

"Come in!," He said choking down the bite.

Hype was nervous. She had navigated the hallway of the cavernous base until she had reached a secondary teleporter and arrived at another cave. She checked the GPS on her Hero Corp recall unit and still recieved a strong signal. The screen on the wall of the teleporter room, continued to relay directions and she walked down the hall. She found the room and knocked.

"Come in!" replied a muffled voice.

The door swung open and a cool air conditioned breeze coupled with an almost suffocating smell of white sage washed over her. She stepped into the room and stopped. Her vision swam slightly as a sight from a bad horror movie. A rotting corpse in white pajama pants with no shirt was sitting in a clean white room taking a bite from a strip of raw red meat and clicking on a mouse reading a scanned comic page on the computer.

She froze unable to say anything as it swung around to in its chair to see her. It was his face, his face all grey puffy, deformed, cracked with hints of red grey and green showing in the skin. She eyes she'd looked into for so many hours during many nights of passion were staring at her cloudy and dead, but with a razor sharp focus and awareness. He took another bite of meat and she felt her gorge rise. At that moment she would forever link sage and death.

"May I help you?" The corpse asked.

It was his voice, and she recognized that tone of tense annoyance. It was the same baritone, the same inflections. She rubbed her arms and stepped into the room.

"My name is Cassondra," she said her mind working, "I'm new. Divus said I could check in on you and introduce myself."

"I think we should break up."

Divus' head hurt. Not because his mind was being lanced by psychic attacks, or because he was being batted around a room like a fly. His head hurt because he hurt all over, from the drowning feeling in his gut to the painful cramping in his limbs.
When he was flying over the buildings in the Paragon City burrow, Kings Row, and he saw her resplendent in a sapphire blue strapless gown, she took his breath away, in a good way. He couldn’t wait to spend the evening in her presence, listening to her voice, breathing her smell, just being near her.

But her face was etched with concern if not sadness. As soon as he landed, she ushered him through the discreet portal into the extradimensional night spot Pocket D. She whisked him into the private room they reserved for the night. Tension sang through her, but Divus did not know what to make of it at the time, so he kept his mouth shut.

A bottle of champagne was waiting for them in the room, and she opened the bottle with a swift pull and poured herself a tall glass and swallowed it in a gulp.

"I think we should break up," she said.

"W..why?" Divus stammered all of a sudden bewildered.

"You're a poof!" She exploded. "I wondered why my friends were laughing at me when I told them about you. They didn't say anything, just that 'I had it going on' to be able to snag you. They were behaving like you were simply hard to get. Only after I pressed them did I get the truth and even then I don't believe them until I hear it from your [censored] boyfriend!"

"You heard what from who?" Divus retorted.

"Your ex, Exalt," she replied, "He said you were fey as a gadfly."

Divus ground his teeth, "I haven't spoken to him in 4 months. A lot of things...have changed since then. And I don't want to be with him I want to be with you."

She sighed bitterly and poured herself another drink, "I can't handle that, I just can't. I can't take the chance of you seeing some buns or pecs in spandex and leaving me or playing me behind my back. I can't have that. I just can't!"

There was a knock on the door.

Divus, trying to gather his thoughts to reply, opened the door. All of the doubt and pain of the moment vanished and the familiar icy, angry drive returned.

"Hello Divus," Sol Divus, clad in a shiny black body suit with a gleaming white star on the front, grinned from the hallway, "I was in the neighborhood and sensed you were under some duress. I decided to see what was happening. "

Divus was already lunging towards him, fists glowing with concentrated power, but the containment shields generators hidden in every square inch of Pocket D, activated barring Divus from his target. Soon the psionic blockers kicked in and Divus couldn't attack him at all. DJ Zero, the owner of Pocket D, did not brook any fighting on the premises.

Sol peered in and saw a woman, with a wide afro and honey-brown skin , easily six feet tall, clad in a flowing sapphire gown. He nodded respectfully to her and pulled back into the hallway, "Ah you're having a spat with your girlfriend. So sorry to interrupt."

"Wait a second!" Divus spoke up.

"Yes, dear brother," Sol Divus responded.

"Why did you do it," he seethed, "Why did you do it?"

"Why do you care?" Sol replied smoothly, "Don't you like it, being free of that weight inside you. Don't you like being able to pursue your own life with your own feelings rather than the agenda of someone who died aggrieved and frightened and saddled with issues?"

"Holy," Hyperpower whispered, "it's a Praetorian."

Sol Divus laughed finishing with a haughty sniff, "As if. I'm not one of Tyrant's boys although whether or not you believe me is up to you. Then again, if you bothered to do any research, you'd know that the Praetorian Divus, a rather pitiful creature if I do say so, had been imprisoned in the Ziggurat eight months ago and had escaped with the first wave of The Chosen along with several other Praetorian forward guard. His name was Mal Divus. I am Sol Divus." He pointed at the glowing eye in the middle of his forehead. "Mal is flesh and blood not like you and I. We are something else. Psychokinetic powerhouses we are my brother. What I am to you is far far more substantial than being a simple evil twin. But you have a date and although It would be tempting to claim credit for this bit of serendipity, I wouldn't want you two to loose any time."

Divus noticed someone lurking around the corner, a young man wearing leather briefs, black knee high leather workboots, straps across his arms and torso, a black spiked collar crowned with a high mane-like mohawk of white hair. His eyes were wide moving back and forth between them.

Sol followed Divus' glance, "Sturm," he said firmly his voice cutting the momentary silence.

The young man bobbed his head, "Yes, Captain, sorry Captain." And pulled back out of sight.

"*Sigh* kids," Sol said rolling his eyes.

Divus was still steaming, unable to speak.

Sol tossed a plastic wrapped cell phone into the room, "Tell John Henry to call me. Tell Totino he can take it apart all he wants, there won't be any surprises."

He pivoted and strode down the hall, taking the young man by the hand and leading him to the dance floor where they disappeared in a sea of people.

"What the hell was that?" Hyperpower exclaimed.

Divus jerked his head around looking at her, then he remembered, she was only security level 22. There were a lot of things she didn't know about that were stranger, but considering the situation.

"Do you really want to know what's happening?" Divus asked earnestly.

Hype stilled, looking at him, "This isn't going to be like running around Siren's Call beating on Tsoo and giant spider robots is it?"

"No," Divus responded evenly, but as he spoke to her, that yawning sense of impending loss returned, "I know this night has spiraled out of any thing vaguely approaching romantic, but Hype, I don't want to let you go. I know you've heard some things but that's the past and this is about the future. But I have to tell you the whole story. Are you ready for that?"

She stared at him wide eyed, one hand semi-protectively at her chest. She nodded.

Divus held out his hand, "Then come with me."
__________

"I hope you aren't too cross with me," Sturm said murmured into Sol's chest, letting the vibration carry his words over the music. "Your voices, so alike It was like you were arguing with yourself."

Sol chuckled and held him closer, "Like I said upstairs, it was just a bit of bad luck." Stupid eye, he thought.

"It's not my fault you are so attuned to your temporal analogue," the Eye replied. "Although I am amused at his choice of partner."
"Why?" Sol responded, maintaining the rhythm with Sturm, "There's nothing wrong with enjoying all that life has to offer. I would have dallied more if the circumstances under which I lost my soul hadn't been so...dire."

"You know they're going to call you as soon as they get back to their base," The Eye said bluntly.

"Yes," Sol responded.

He lifted Sturm's chin so he could peck him on the lips, "C'mon luv, that bit of business upstairs is going to make this a short night. I'll make it up to you."

Sturm was stoic but Sol could sense the disappointment. He let the barriers he kept on his feelings fall for a moment and caught his lover into a lingering embrace and a kiss that almost literally took his breath away.

"Is that better pouty boy?" Sol asked.

"Yes sir," Sturm smiled demurely.

“The glowing woman and the man in the cowboy hat looked at me the air distorted around their heads and I fell asleep.

Ego: 1, Fear: 2.”

John Henry Divus moved the cursor, saved and closed the journal file then stood up from his desk. He stretched, wincing as his skin hissed and cracked with the movement. He couldn't feel it, thank God, but he couldn’t feel much else either. He only had the vaguest senses of pressure or heat and cold. The journal was as much for physical therapy as well as mental therapy. It had taken a long time get the fingers to work right and even then, and he had managed to break several keyboards by pushing to hard. Totino finally had to settle for the cheapest, loudest keyboard he could get his hands on because the aural feedback helped more than trying to type only by feel and sight.

Mousing was much easier and made web surfing a much more enjoyable activity and he spent a lot of time online when he wasn't in physical therapy, psychiatric counseling or magical ritual. He went back and looked at the diary file, thinking that maybe he should add more, but decided against it. While he wasn't getting physically tired, the concentration of typing was leaving him feeling mentally drained, so he surfed.

After being kept psychically sedated for close to 4 weeks and being well, dead, for 4 years, John was hungry for information and desperate to catch up with his friends and family. Eminent and the others had decided that until the legalities of his citizenship could be straightened out he would be kept in the Seychelles. However he was obliged to spend all of his time indoors because he tended to stink and rot when exposed to sunlight.

"It's one of the downsides of dealing with necromantic magics," Eminent had mused at the time.

Of course that made John Henry a virtual shut in with only a digital window out on the world and night walks on deserted beaches.

News coming out of the Rogue Isles held a lot of his attention. After being pulled from the coma, Divus sat with him and Eminent and described what happened between Divus and his double in painstaking detail.

"I wish I had brought my camera," he chided himself on multiple occasions.

"You film yourself fighting?" John Henry asked incredulously.

Divus stopped, eyes wide then he smiled. Despite the deadness John felt inside, a chill slid down his spine. Divus looked just like him...only perfect. Perfect symmetry down to his wide nose and full lips and almond shaped eyes. Like someone drew a copy of a face and cut and pasted the reverse into place. John never remembered looking that perfect, blue skinned, but perfect.

"What's with the blue skin anyway?" John asked.

"I went through a 'secret identity' phase," he responded. "I wanted to be able to move through the city unrecognized so I wove some light transmutation spells to give me a few looks to choose from. The white hair blue skin look was my favorite." He glanced down at the watch embedded in his left arm band. "I have an appointment I need to keep. I'll see you tomorrow."

The days stretched into weeks and were often laced with dissapointment. John discovered that his parents had already mourned him and didn't consider Divus to be their child and wanted nothing to do with him. All of his friends had similarly moved on. Divus hadn't tried to maintain any previous relationships out side of the metahuman community and didn't seem to be suffering because of it. John was. He wanted people to correspond with outside of the laboratory and it would be a long time before he could actually venture out to any populated area.

The regenerative process was very slow and it also had to be fed. John had to eat...a lot almost constantly. His taste buds were as blasted as the rest of him, and considering the amount of muscle he was rebuilding, protein was very very necessary. Raw beef and sushi both marinated in Tabasco became his dishes of choice.

"Gag," Aache said one day during a bull session where he was ragging on Azuria, the head of the Federal Bureau of Super-powered Affairs’ (FBSA) Modern Arcane Guild of Investigation (MAGI) in Paragon City. "Do you have to eat that stuff when I'm around?"

"Yes," John Henry replied, "Eminent and Luz have said that the regeneration rate more than doubles when I eat a lot. So I'm going to keep doing it as long as I can,"

Aache shuddered, "I guess I can't say anything. When I had cancer I was on a near constant chemo drip. It wasn't pretty."

"What?" John responded, "Cancer?"

"Yep," he responded, "picked it up after an up close and personal tour of the core of the Terra Volta nuclear reactor. It was a quick acting mutant bug, really quick. Hell the only reason I didn't die in the first week was because of my own healing powers. I was neigh an invalid for most of a year."

A pang of sympathy ran through him and John Henry pulled a napkin over his meal, "You're running around now, what happened?"

Aache grinned, "The Misphits caught wind of another assault on the reactor. I figured that if I was going to die, I could at least die doing something, so I went along and I got myself hammered by a Freakshow Tank Smasher."

"A what?"

" Freakshow are cyber fetishists," Aache explained. "They have the most chunky, ugly cyberlimbs I've ever seen. Some of them get everything except their head replaced, those are the tanks. Their arms have big hammers or blades attached to them. Man are they annoying! Anyway, we're at the core and one of those hammer guys took me out. Luz tried to rez me with a spell but it didn't work. Then Nephel, you’ll meet him later, did some sort of freaky thing and boom, I'm standing and feeling better than ever. I thought it couldn't last, but all of the cancer cells were dead. I guess the radiation fried them to hell and back, then Nephel resurrected me and not the cancer. It's not something I could recommend, especially since Nephel only really knows how his powers work. By the way, don't stop eating on my account."

John chuckled, "I'll hold you to that." Then he sobered, "Don't take this the wrong way, I'm really appreciative, but why are you doing this? I mean at this point we both know I'm not Divus, hell even Divus isn’t Divus any more."

Aache smiled but didn't reply for a few moments. Finally he said, "When I was sick Div was there. He, Totino, and the rest were there and it'll be [censored] of me to pass up my chance to help out. Plus it's kind of like hanging out with the parents of one of my best friends without the awkward generation gap."

John laughed.

"My ears are burning," Divus said striding into the room.

Aache looked up, "Hey Div." Then he turned to John Henry, "That reminds me, I'll be right back."

They both watched him leave and John returned to his fiery tar tar.

"So how're you doing today?" Divus asked.

"Same, getting better slowly," John replied around a mouth full of food. "I've been thinking about some of the things you've been telling me and one thing was never clear. What's a 'Praetorian'?"

Divus dropped into the chair next to the bed Aache vacated, "Well you know there are other timelines, dimensions like ours but with differences caused by whatever little bits of fate chance or choice. Well, Portal Corp ran across one where Statesmen and the other members of the Freedom Phalanx were leaders of an ultraviolent, oppressive, totalitarian government. It seems to be one of the few timelines where a lot of actual duplication has taken place. There Statesman is called 'Tyrant' and every single member has an 'evil' counterpart. Tyrant dubbed them his Praetorian Guard, like back in Rome. It's became a buzz word for evil double, although most doubles spotted on this Earth seem to be clones or Praetorians."

"And the guy who stole me is your Praetorian double?" John asked.

"Has to be. My ectoplasmic structure can't be cloned." Divus replied.

"I wonder why he went through all the trouble." John was moving back to a more familiar line of questioning. "I wonder if he has a 'me' inside him."

"Next time I see him I'll ask, after I beat him unconscious," Divus laughed.

"Stop smiling so much Divus," Aache said strolling into John Henry's room. "It's creeping me out. You were all serious, stoic, 'weapon of justice.' Now you get your soul ripped out and poof, you're acting like a real person."

Divus looked up at him grinning wider, "Don't take this the wrong way John Henry, but when you were snatched out of me, I was scared at first. I mean, I knew I had a soul and that it seemed 'unstuck' but I figured it was because of the rebirth. I'd never really been without it. When I was...out of commission because of Recluse, it was just a blink of time. I lost consciousness, and when I reappeared, I knew something was wrong. I felt lost, alone and then you were back and my sense of purpose and center returned. But now, it’s been nearly two months, and I don’t know. I'm not scared anymore. I'm giddy. I feel free. I was scared thinking that I'd drain away to nothing, but I'm still here. I'm still me. I'm better. I feel like a weight has been lifted all of the anger the rage is gone..."

John Henry tensed up while Divus was talking, but he mentally bit his lip. He needed to know how this was affecting his other half...no...how it was affecting his son.

Aache however, had realized something was up. The already high level of stress in John Henry had increased. But when John spoke, his voice was still calm, friendly. He even smiled.

"Looks like I was having a major influence," John Henry responded smiling. He didn't want to end the conversation. "Do you resent that?"

Divus's smile faded a little, "I think I did, but not in the way you think. With you in me, I felt a solid sense of purpose, no fear, no happiness, just a driven anger. It was a very comfortable place." He paused, "But now, I'm enjoying feeling. Enjoying happiness, fear sadness, seeing what it feels like to be my own person."

John's old emotional defenses slid into place. Instead of the deadness of his face being a hindrance, it became an asset. He could control his voice and he worked hard to keep it modulated and friendly.

"You're in a really good mood today," John smiled, "It can't be my company."

Aache saw the truck coming, but couldn't intervene fast enough.

"I'm seeing someone," Divus said. "Her code name is Hyperpower."

Aache and John started but Aache spoke, "Her?"

Divus smiled, oblivious to what he was saying.

"Yeah," he said, lost in the moment, "I met her in Siren's Call while on patrol. She was taking on a small group of Tsoo by herself. I flew in to assist and, well. I joined her on patrol and wound up with a date. We’ve been seeing each other regularly since then."

"But what about Exalt?" Aache asked, "You've been seeing him off and on for a while now."

Divus' smile receded and he became thoughtful, "Yeah, It's just that I'm not attracted to him any more. It was never emotional in the first place. Just when lust cropped up every few months. But now, well I really really like girls."

His voice held that same kind of far off wonder teenagers have when they discover the mystery of sex, "It's strange," Divus continued but, "I never really paid that much attention before, but with this new surge of emotion has come a new array and range of emotional latitude."

"So you're bisexual now?" Aache asked. He was now more invested than John who had withdrawn slightly.

Divus started thinking, "I'd never really thought about it. I mean, I remember being attracted to guys, but I never felt anything for them...hell I never really felt anything romantic until John Henry was extracted from me. Maybe I'm not bi at all maybe I'm straight? Either way, I'm not going to think about it too much. Hype makes me happy and I'm enjoying being happy. I've had a long experience with angst and anger and I think I don't want to go back there."

John Henry slid back into the conversation, "Then be happy." He said awkwardly patting Divus on the shoulder pushing his dead face into the brightest smile he could manage. "It doesn't matter where you find happiness as long as you do it." John was very happy that he didn't have functioning tear ducts right now.

Aache got the hint, "Well you're going to have to let us meet her soon. We can't have you running around with some strange woman without us giving her the full degree. I'm sure Dark Fluffy will have a whole lot of questions."

Divus laughed eyes still glittering with unsuppressed wonder and happiness. He glanced at the clock on the computer screen and stood, "Whoa, I'm going to be late." He stood and gestured, mumbling an incantation under his breath. His blue skin darkened to a rich brown and his white hair became black. His costume transformed into a suit."

"Got a date?" John asked.

"Yep," he beamed. "I'll see you tomorrow." He dashed out of the room.

Aache waited a long while before saying anything. John Henry slumped against his chair lost in thought.

John finally broke the silence with a long bitter sigh, "I can't help but think that my sense of self-loathing is so strong that when I created the perfect body for myself that not only do I make him perfect, I make him straight too."

"It does...it does...make it seem like you getting removed was the best thing for him," Aache added trying to be delicate but failing.

"Yeah, I get the rotting body, he get's the power, the acceptance, even the girls and I shouldn't even give a damn about the girls," John was seething. "It's like he was built to be my heaven and now...now I’ve been evicted and it's moving on without me. I mean, I've wished I was straight when I was lonely and young. I thought I was over it. I guess I wasn't."

Aache was thoughtful, "Maybe, maybe not. Divus...Divus isn't just a construct any more, I don't know if he ever really was. Your presence dominated your shared form."

John interrupted, "But I don't remember..."

"Yes you don't remember, but it was there. It pushed Divus to be a hero at all costs to the point of denying his humanity. He's now a teenager just discovering that there are other feelings besides anger and responsibility."

"Do you know this 'Hyperpower?'" John asked.

Aache nodded, "I've heard of her. She's with Hero Corp. Mom, apple pie and all of that stuff. Very hot and sophisticated."

"What kind of powers?"

"Very basic," Aache said, "at least as far as I know. Super strength and very tough."

"God," John moaned, "I feel like my bloody mother when I came out to her. Well, I didn't blow up at him and tell him to get out of my sight. Then again hearing him talk about how happy he is..."

"Ah, guilt is a glorious thing," Aache said.

"Yes, yes it is," John said staring at the computer screen.

Aache came over to the computer and put a disk on the desk, "I was going to give this to you later, but I figure you need something to distract you now. These are scans of some comic books from some alternate timelines."

John was immediately incredulous, "WHAT?"

Aache looked embarrassed, "look, it's harmless okay? Just some intellectual property tapped by sampling the network traffic in a given area through a micro portal. Besides they come up with some crazy [censored], especially in those worlds without metahumans."

John's surprise receded, squished back under the weight of burgeoning depression, "How much is on here?"

"A few gigs," Aache responded, "But they're organized by title and the issues have a separate directory for each issue."

"Wow, where should I start," John said. "What do you recommend?"

"Well," Aache mused, "If you want a continuous story that last through lots and lots of issues, then I must recommend 'X-Men.' It's cheesy sometimes, but it'll keep you engaged."

John popped open the DVD drive and slipped the disk in, "Thanks Aache. I think I want to be alone now."

Aache nodded, "I understand." And he slipped out closing the door behind him.

Reccollection: Date 2002

The Rikti were winning.

The heroes that had been gathered for this final fight had been split up, fractured by explosive fire from the tall, insect-like sleek black alien battle suits. The creatures teleported in and out of our ranks, dropping havoc and then dissapearing. In those gaps the alien troops advanced, less refined by appearance and methods, but all the more menacing; faceless armies like a endless batallion of wingless, bipedal mantises flanked by swarms of floating drones that continuously spat out gobs of rainbow-bright shiny death.

I stayed close to Centennial Max, a tower of a man covered in a stone exoskeleton held to his form by technology he created, Turbo Violetta, an ex manicurist, with a strange talent for growing her nails into steel hard blades, Heartsigh whose magic could heal almost any wound, and me. I called myself "Noire" because it sounded cool and dark, but I always told myself that my codename should have been "Gimpy Dork" beacuse that's what I was.

I could heal..a little, I could fly...not very fast...and I could shoot things. I used to think I was good at that, even testing to see how much damage I could put out with my little "Clout" spell that sent a focused burst of magic at a target. The folks at Freedom Court in Paragon City told me that it was the equivalent of a .44 magnum. I should've been more pleased, but there were people like Statesman who was a walking atom bomb and the people I was with right now. They were bazookas and heavy machine guns. I was just a side-arm who's energy was best put to use keeping Max from being torn down as he formed a wall between us and the hordes we flowed through.

Violetta spun and danced, evading the alien firepower with uncanny grace and slashing through alien metal and bone with balletic ferocity. In our very center Heartsigh pulsed with healing radiance. I could feel his prescence in our minds as he pumped us with life and vitality directly from his spirit. Max stomped the ground, sending ground troops tumbling away from his shockwave.

"I made an opening," he called out, "Follow me."

As we moved, Heartsigh set off a pulse of light. Using his magic was instinctive, but he still paused, a quick moment and he was momentarily alone without Violetta or Max shielding him.

Volleys of light shot over our heads sizzling into him. Max groaned and leapt over me soaring into the air, snaggng the riddled glowing body from the sky and bearing him to the ground. Violetta blurred, her nails glowing with reflected energy and her diaphanous skirt following the wind and aliens began to die. Max had fallen to his knees and I ran over squeezing under an arm pit.

Heartsigh was burning, not with open flame but like a cigarette with glowing embers and char marks marking the impact points of the energy bolts.

"hup...hup...I...I...never wanted to die in Rhode Island," he smiled as I knelt down and took his hand. "Vegas, I always wanted to die in Vegas, or Niagra Falls." I pumped my magic into him, but he was still burning and I couldn't stop it. I couldn't think of anything pithy, stupid, or comforting to say. I started crying as I tried again, over and over, but I couldn't stop, he was still burning.

"Oh stop bawling," he said, "You're not going to put the fire out with tears" then he stopped moving and smoke started leaking from his nose and mouth.

Max snatched me up and started running, "Violetta!" he yelled into his comlink, "Let's go!"

Max started running, sprinting as much as an 8 foot all man covered with rock could. I ran in his shadow, but I fell back suddenly caught in an acrid greenish gray smoke that burned my eyes and lungs. He scooped me up trundling through a fanade of pink torpodes of light, the distinctive signature of air ionized by high energy psionic emissions.

After several tense minutes, we broke through to the main battle. I couldn't see Violetta and couldn't spare the attention to search, I was constantly keeping Max going. The land had been charred and broken to the point where it looked like we were fighting on the moon under a blue sky.

Then, I died. There wasn't a bright light or anything, or maybe my sensory organs had been quick fried in the presence of whatever did me in. I remember being afraid and tired and reaching for more power to feed to Max.

The world went black but a latticework of red light stretching as far as I could see emerged from the darkness. I was holding strands of it in my hands, it tasted of magical power, more power than I'd ever held before. I could use this lattice to help me heal Max, because even at that moment I was stuck in heal-bot mode and trying to get to the relative safety of the main battle. But I couldn't see Max, I couldn't see anything, so I drew on the blood red power to build me a body, a body strong enough to help me help the people at the battle.

Apparently I didn't help the people in the battle. I woke up in 2006 on a table in a small, underground laboratory, in the Seychelles islands in the Indian ocean.

I learned that four years have passed, the Rikti have been pushed back and Paragon City was back to it's mission to rival New York as the greatest metropolis in the northeast.

I was leery at first. I mean, one moment I'm on a battlefield fighting alien hordes for the future of the planet and poof I'm somewhere else.

However a friend was there to greet me, a techhead named Totino. He was my main supplier of illegal interdimensional intellectial property...aka comic books from other dimensions.

He greeted me as I woke up. Then he introduced me to someone else...me. Well, the me that I apparently fashioned out of all of that life energy lying over the battlefield. He had all of my memories he also had none of my limitations. He was tall, excessively muscled and had blue skin, a big white afro and glowing white eyes. The sense of recognition was shocking almost reminiscent of how parents described parents seeing their children for the first time in the hospital. I knew he was mine not quite like a child, but still mine. It was odd so odd I started upward trying ot get on my feet to look at him further.

I sat up smoothly with no stiffness, everything seemed to work really really well.

Totino and Big Blue Me just kind of stared at me expectantly, not saying much.

"What?" I joked, "Don't I look good for a dead man?"

I laughed, then I looked down at my mottled and bloated midsection, my hands came into view. It was a cliched moment of me rotating them in front of my face looking at the bloated and puffy fingers. Oddly though I couldn't smell.

I'm not gonna scream. I'm not gonna scream. I'm not gonna scream. I'm not gonna scream. "This has to have a good explanation," I stammered, voice cracking and pitching upward. But I didn't scream.

Ego and self consciousness 1, Fear 0.

The two of them didn't reply immediately.

Once more with feeling (okay and quite a bit more fear), "Whatthegoddamnfuck is..."

There was a *sigh* from behind me. I turned around to catch three other people entering the lab. The man leading them was dressed in immaculate, white labclothes that seemed to scream "stain me, stain me please!" His white hair was pulled back into a pony-tail and his eyes were covered by dainty, expensive looking glasses.

He was flanked by an astonishingly beautiful woman with long platinum hair wearing gold hip boots and a white mini dress with gold trim and a gold trimmed white short cape. Her skin seemed to glow lighting up the room as she approached. The guy with them was tall and a little wide, dressed in tight fitting leather jacket, gloves, black jeans and a black cowboy hat.

"John Henry Divus," the white haired man said, coming to stand next to the table where I lay, "Do you recognize me?"

I squinted at him. I couldn't place him immediately, but soon I felt a buzzing recognition bounding in skull. I relaxed and let it run and I remembered where I'd seen that face before, "You're that alchemist/wizard Eminent. I used to read your comic books when I was a little."

The platinum haired woman's face broke into a small mischevious smile, "You had your own comic book? You never told me that."

Eminent blushed slightly, "Yes Luz, but those days are long past." He turned is attention fully to me, "This is going to sound fantastic, but you will find the reality what I'm going to share with you will bear itself out. Patience is a lot to ask, but I must ask it. I also must ask that you remain calm and don't...strain your body it's recovering from its current state of disrepair. "

Then he told me what had happened, well not everything. He gave me the 1 minute version, especially since the full version stretched 4 years. I did die, but I created a new body for myself, but I went a little overboard (what can I say I was scared and dead at the time). I created a...a...well ectoplasmic golem. It grew around my spirit like a reef around a seed coral and became it's own creature subconsciously motivated by the memories and consciousness that lay with in me. It became the hero I wanted to me. Not the putz I was.

This guy, he just called himself "Divus" (which is something I should have thought of dangit) and he'd been active ever since, living out my idea of a perfect life: constant adventure and taking down the bad guys. Divus also lacked what I considered "disavantages" he didn't crave love, sex or companionship. He was a loner only willing to go to others for help if it was something he absolutely couldn't do. He was secure in his feelings and his self appointed mission. Until someone named "Lord Recluse" manged to pulled the plug on most of the super powers and magic in Paragon City. Divus winked out of existance and my soul was left without a housing. Well, sort of, it went someplace...another Divus.

A "Pretorian" (whatever the hell that is) from another dimension, Eminent had said. Oddly, though the Praetorian Divus didn't know what he had until I had left when the power was restored to Paragon City and Divus reappeared. So he went and stole it from Divus...except he didn't keep it. He stuck it in dead body that was geneticly identical with my old body and was shipping it to the United States from his base of operations in the Rogue Isles when some of Eminent's friends intercepted it during a lucky raid on an Arachnos (whoever that is) smuggling ship.

"The fact of the matter," Eminent summed up, "Is that I do not know exactly what has been done to you, unfortunately magic is twitchy like that. You have been bound very tightly into that corpse, and laced with an extensive network of spells that let your soul, take root in the corpse and germinate. You soul is growing within the corpse, but we don't now what it it growing into at least not yet. Your senses, mobility, are all being handled by the magic of the spells. "

At that moment, I tried one of my own spells, but nothing happened, hell I couldn't even sense anything outside of my own skull. I was headblind and helpless.

Ego 1, Fear 1.

"You are dying very slowly in reverse it seems," Eminent said, "we are working to find out what you are becoming. But you need to rest so you wont throw any part of the delicate systems keeping you together out of balance."

"What do you mean?" I exclaimed, fear had taken hold now.

"Consciousness is a delicate thing to maintain integrity of," he said. "The human brain is built for it and nature has a variety of systems that can support it, but what you are right now is on a precipice. The slighest disruption could erase or change your personality and consciousness entirely. You need to rest your mind."

"Rest?" I started keening higher. "How in the HELL am i supposed to rest?"

The glowing woman and the man in the cowboy hat looked at me the air distored around their heads and I fell asleep.

Ego: 1, Fear: 2.

48 hours earlier

"Remind me why the hell I'm doing this?" Vertikus Aache groaned.

"You're being paid a ton of money to just hangout in these lovely surroundings and be quiet," Sol Hank snapped back telepathicly maintaining his Texas twang while speaking mind to mind, "Now hush and meditate or somethin'."

The hold of the refrigerated container ship was cold, loud, and cavernous. The two vigilantes and sometime mercenaries had snuck aboard the Dobega Sue Kay earlier that night. The ship was en route from the Bahamas to Perigrine Island in Paragon City with a load of banannas, rum, and tobacco. It had been a long flight, but getting aboard and hidden away did not take much effort all. It helps that two telepaths who could also turn invisible were working in concert. The people on the vessel were lucky that the two were moonlighting vigilanties rather than pirates.

Aache looked at Hank, "You should be shivering,"

Hank looked at his erstwhile partner then looked down at what he was wearing, a white wife beater, worn jeans, cowboy boots and his "never leave home with out it" authentic cowboy hat bought at Luella's Feed N Seed in Lubbock, Texas. The shirt was one of the few things he could wear without being mutilated by the two skeletal cybernetic prosthesis that jutted from his bare torso. Between the batteries and the motors, Hank always felt more than a little warm.

"Being in here is like relaxin' in air conditioning," he grinned. "Lookit you, snugged from head to toe in black leather like some escapee from an early 90's Madonna video."

Aache huffed, "My pants aren't leather," he looked down, he wore a fitted leather jacket and gloves and black denim pants. He also wore heavy boots and a cowboy hat, athough it was of more dubious origin. Hank clamed in an outraged voice that it had "Wal-Mart stitchin' " that he would have recognized anwhere. Aache remained unplussed, mostly to annoy Hank. Besides he knew he bought his hat at Target.

There was enough of a similarity to the two that they could have been mistaken for a couple of full time partners given how duos match up somewhat thematicly, but they were casual associates at best, brought together by mutual aquainances who needed something sneaky done.

"Are you good for bit," Hank queried with an arched brow at his suffering partner.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Aache groused.

"Alright, I'm gonna catch some winks," the cybernetic cowboy replied leaning against a bulkhead and tucking his hat accross his face. Once the light was gone, the bones of his forehead slid aside as his Eye of Solestine rose up. With practiced ease, he slid into full rapport with it and sent a signal to his relay vessel in high orbit. After a few minutes, he recieved an acknowledgement and found himself in radiotelepathic contact with one of the "bosses" behind this caper.

"Hello Sol," Sol Divus relayed, "I...I wanted to thank you for doing this again. Did you arrive safely?"

"Yeah, wasn't too much of a stretch, got Totino to lend us one of his hot rod jets for the trip back," he replied, "Where are you?"

"In the secondary hold with the rest of the Arachnos contingent," Divus replied.

"Who knew fresh fruit needed so much love and attention?" Hank laughed,

Sol Divus wasn't amused, "I'm sorry I didn't have the time to arrange something less comedicly cliche."

"Don't rustle your feathers," Hank replied, "It's good enough. The ship looks clean and even a telepathic sweep can't find your little hidey hole. By the way, do your..ah...friends know what you're smuggling."

"No, they have their hands full with the stuff that's actually illegal," Divus responded. "The UN hasn't yet gotten to smuggling souls stored in dead bodies accross international boundaries yet."

Hank laughed

"If you two..." began Divus' Eye.

"are finished with the down home moment, wrap things up," Hank's Eye completed. "This is a strain on our power reserves and the transmission may be noticed soon."

"Yes, yes," Divus said, "Do you guys have everything ready on your end?"

"Yep, when the unloading begins, your stuff will be mixed in with the regular goods. We hit crate MX435 then ghost its contents out of there to Eminent's lab."

"Does Aache suspect anything?"

"Nah," Hank replied, "But he does know Divus and he's a mage. He's been trying to help the big guy get through this, but Div's been a little crazy. Aache has worked with Divus for years. During that period when Aache was out of action with lukemia. Div was never really far from him. That's probably why Eminent selected him. Probably as soon as that crate comes out of that hidden area, Aache'll detect that soul."

"Good. Thanks again. May the stars be your guide..." Sol Divus said as he signed off.

"May the moons be your anchors," Sol Hank replied to nothing. Then he fell asleep.

Several hours later Hank was jolted away by a very insistent telepathic touch.

"Wake up!" Aache's mental voice hissed into the foggy pit of Hank's mind, "Fade as soon as you can!"

Hank moved the hat back onto his head even as he bent the light around him masking him from sight except for a faint outline. Outside of the touch of his mind, Hank could not locate Aache.

"Follow me," Aache sent along with a tendril of trailing thought. They ghosted from their perch through a breach in one of the far bulkheads into a scene of chaos. Red and white garbed Longbow Troops were fighting with black armored Arachnos soldiers. They stayed high above the battle as explosions and bullets and energy bolts riddled the area.

"While you were asleep," Aache said, "I went hunting for our crate and I couldn't find it. I started to figure that it had been disguised somehow so I came back to try to figure out how to find it. After an hour or so, there was an alarm and I hear loud engines even through the hull. Then Longbow flooded in, hundreds of them, and they started tearing the place apart. They found a nest of spiders. It must've been warded because I didn't detect a single thing. "

Sol Hank groaned, "Don't tell me you..."

"What?" Aache challenged, "They can't frag someone they can't see or touch, well can't touch for 30 seconds) but that was enough time to find our target. We have to get it out of there before it gets blown up. Did you know that longbow mooks carry mini guns, grenade launchers, and flame throwers? FLAME THROWERS?"

Sol Hank laughed, thinking laconicly, "It's a damn good thing you talk so much. It keeps you from asking too many questions."

As Hank and Sol landed next to the crate, a fevered cry climbed above the sounds of carnage, "[censored]! Oh [censored]! Sol Divus is here! Sol Divus is here! Call in the Ballista!"

"What?" Aache exclaimed, "That's the [censored] that [censored] over Div. You take care of the crate, I'm going to help."

Oh [censored], thought Hank. Time to improvise.

Apparently Aache wasn't as sensitive as he thought, or the crate was more shielded. He breached the crate with a few quick applications of raw psionic energy.

Once's the casing was breached, Aache's head whipped around, "Whatthehellwasthat?"

"I'm sensing somethin funny," Hank temporized stepping into the crate, "kind of like a presence, but it's muffled. Can't you?"

Aache joined him, "I..feel it too, wait a second," his eyes defocused for a few seconds. "Holy [censored]." He stepped into the crate and shook a glow stick to life.

A bodybag lay on the floor. Aache knelt next to it on the floor, chanting under his breath. Hank concentrated, weaving the illusion of an unbreached crate over his handiwork.

Aache opened the bag, and hissed, "I'm gonna have to ask Eminent where he gets his information, this is a jackpot. No wonder Sol Divus was on this ship."

"Time for an Oscar caliber performance," Sol Hank's eye quipped into the vaults of his mind.

"Shush," He replied inwardly.

"Tell me what it is later," Hank said, "Let's get off of this boat. Based on what you said earlier, Longbow has a penchant for wide area high damage stuff, I really don't want to be here when this 'Ballista' arrives."

"Yeah," Aache agreed, "Let's get this to Eminent, he's a much better mage than me. He'll find a way to put it back."

"Put what back?" Hank asked.

"Divus' soul," Aache said looking at the body of Malcolm Divus with a thorn shard embedded in its chest.

Two weeks later:

Kalinda the Fortunata stood over Sol Divus' hospital bed.

Athough her face was concealed by her blood-red helm, stern inflection laced each clipped, lightly accented word, "So Sol,care to explain what happened?"

Sol's eyes lolled under the painkillers and he realized that something was very very wrong, "What's...happening?"

The Eye, resting under his skull, began managing his surface thoughts, giving the Fortunata's telepathy something to read while his owner got his senses together. Unfortunately it had been out of commission as well and only just completed repairs. The AI did not want to think about what the mindwitch could have sussed out while they were vulnerable.

"You're on Mercy Island," she said. "The teleporters almost lost you and this seemed to be the closest station that could receive your signal."

Sol groaned and tried to sit up, "What...what happened to the shipment?"

"You don't remember?" she sounded terribly disappointed.

"Longbow intercepted the shipment," he slowly remembered thinking out loud. "It wasn't an accident either. They were packing like they were expecting Black Scorpion, Sirocco..."

"Or yourself," she interrupted.

The memories were tough, elusive, he was fighting a Ballista, one of Longbow's vat grown, alien tech infused soldiers. A Special Ops soldier managed to get him with a neutralizer grenade. It sapped his strength, but it was not enough to incapacitate. He remembered triggering an auto-injector. A blue lightning would clear things right up...

"Oh hell," he whispered.

"That's what I thought," she said clinically. "If we let such an obvious betrayal stand, some of the other factions in the Rogue Isles will think that they can profit by selling Arachnos officers to Longbow hit squads."

Sol bolted up, adrenaline chasing out the rest of the fog, "I need to get a lab done, find out what was..."

She handed me a printout, "already done." She was smiling. It seemed to fill her voice, "Can I trust you to attend to this matter?"

"Yes," Sol replied grimly. Worry flooded him however. He needed to find out what happened to his special cargo. However, to please Kalinda, he needed to decorate St. Martial with garlands of Tsoo intestines.

Now:

Sol strode into the hallway, cloak billowing behind him, checking the auto-injectors that lined his torso. The Tsoo drugs were the best stuff on the market, laced with magic for maximum effectiveness. Unfortunately the Tsoo are quintuple-crossing bastards.

That's why he went through Hardcase. As the Rogue Isle's premier demon hunter, he's one of the few folks operating out of this den of scum and villainy out of relative altruism. He also knows his magic. Sol was willing to pay him extra, because he's close to being a friend and because he's good.

Sol devoted the bulk of his load to to reflex boosters, mostly "Dancing Purple Dragons" and "Golden Lions." He had a bare minimum of the life support drugs: four anti-shock health stims, "Green Lilies," one pure stimulant, "Blue Lightning."

"You had better hope he is coming alone," his Eye of Sol chirped into his consciousness. "If he went through proper channels, there will be a platoon of Ballistae coming into the building."

"You know," Sol said leaping down an empty elevator shaft, "it always throws me how unpleasantly amusing you can be."

"I do what I can," the Eye said smugly.

Sol was quiet, the Eye was trying to put him at ease, but he was scared, very very scared.

"He's coming to kill me," Sol thought to the companion in his head. "He's bringing the teleport jammer Totino made for him and he's coming to turn me into a hemoglobin mural."

"And he can do it," The Eye finished. "You pressed the buttons."

His teke flared and he landed heavily in the wreckage of the lobby. A year ago, Crey Corporation embarked on a project to steal the memories of the heroes of Paragon City and implant their identities into their manufactured techno-undead Paragon Protectors. They did it to Divus, triggering a psychotic episode where he killed everyone in the building before having Totino , the techhead for the Misphits of Science, wipe their computers. Anyone would have been horrified, but the violation had been especially pronounced for him. Divus was guarding something precious. Too precious to fall into the hands of those corporate fools.

Sol started slowly, arranging for Divus to see him in passing while in in Pocket D, Then pushing the issue by causing mistaken identity incidents with some of his more party worthy friends. Finally Divus showed up and it was just a matter of time before the hero could be goaded into coming here to prove which one of us was the "real" one.

"Unforfunately," Sol thought, "both of us are real." He took the mask off and hung it at his belt.

"He's here," the Eye said.

Sol nodded and settled against the wall, relaxing. He let his consciousness fall inward fully interfacing with the Eye which in turn was networked to the cameras, speakers and attack drones he "liberated" from a rogue Arachnos platoon.

"Hello Divus," Sol purred. The speakers made his voice seem to come from everywhere.

Divus didn't reply. No pithy comeback, no jingoistic saying. He just started shooting, filling the atrium with torrents of psychokinetic doom. Sol sent wave after wave of robots in, forcing the occasional retreat, but Divus had, perfected his brand of destruction, and he could be very patient.

Time to put a stop to that.

"Glad you could join us," Sol said with a mocking lilt. He made sure he could hear his voice over the speakers laced through the building. Then he began a quiet litany of sensitive events in Divus' life. There was nothing subtle about the mocking of his life as a pathetic third tier hero trying to get acceptance, only ascending to 2nd tier because of all of the deaths of the better heroes during the Rikti War.

He mocked his terrified acceptance that he was going to die when the final big battle began. The wrenching feeling when his magic caught the iridescent ball of life released by the deaths of tens of thousands of people and suddenly he wasn't so dead. He wasn't so pathetic.

"But you weren't very real either, were you Div dear?" He continued. "Not as real as you were. You couldn't feel like you used to. You couldn't love. You felt affection and loyalty, but rage...rage is what kept you going. Made you a hero. When Lord Recluse's mystics killed all of the metahuman powers and magic in Paragon city you winked out of existence. I know I felt it. Your precious cargo came to me. At first I didn't know what had happened until you came back. But now I do. I am you. And you...."

A burst of feedback knocked him out of rapport with the Eye.

"Woah!" Sol said shaking himself.

"We've lost contact with the drones in that part of the building, there was a catastrophic explosion."

"Nova," Sol said standing. "I guess it's time to make an appearance."

He flew down the hall cape flapping in the wind. The wreckage was extraordinary. Divus knelt in a crater 20 feet across, grounded drawing energy from the earth. Nothing was moving, the walls were gone.

Okay, it's now or never, he thought. Spreading his fingers wide, he smashed all of the auto-injectors home, except for the first aid meds.

His gums tingled and skin felt as if it were afire as the world suddenly slipped into slow motion.

He hurled shards of telekinetic force at the hero watching them fracture against his force field. Divus was already levitating into the hair, fists glowing when Sol hit him with the Nectar he got from Scratch during the Valentine's day fiasco involving the Well of the Furies.

Then Sol fed, drawing strength, speed and vitality from him. Unfortunately, Divus was a Hero of the City. Sol Divus was not. He was impressive but not that impressive.

Divus, kicked off from the ground haloed in a rainbow splash of energy and punched Sol with a glowing fist sending him soaring down the hallway to bounce around the corner.

"Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow," Sol hissed.

"He's coming!" The Eye alerted.

"Oh crap," Sol groaned, not bothering trying to get up, he flew towards the elevator shaft and up it.

"How far behind is he?" He asked the eye.

"Close," the Eye replied

A bolt of blue white force struck, tumbling Sol painfully against the sides of the ruined shaft.

"Sorry," it replied, "I didn't realize he had that kind of range. Fly faster."

Sol hit the top of the shaft and used the remainder of his strength to send a blizzard of telekinetic force shards down the shaft. He put the mask back on, then stumbled to the office where Malcolm was being held.

Malcolm wet himself when he the explosion downstairs. "Is he going to bury me in the wreckage of the building?" he thought.

Mal struggled trying to dislocate things to get loose. Frantic he'd managed do something terribly disfiguring but not very effective to his hand when the smiling man, strode into the room.

"Glad to see you're still with us," Sol said crisply, but fatigue pervaded his voice. He reached under his cloak and pulled several grenades grenades and tossed them into the hall. Purple-pink smoke gushed out of them.

"Wh...what's going on," Malcolm stammered.

"We have visitors, hero visitors," Sol responded in a hollow manic voice brimming with mock disgust. "Divus and Longbow troops. It's your lucky day. I can't have you slowing me down. But I can deal with you now.

Sol gestured and the heat was sucked from Malcolm's body encasing him and the chair in a block of ice.

Sol fed, siphoning speed, life and vitality from the frozen man, "If you survive this, I hope you have a nice time in the Zig. Especially since you look so much like one of the heroes that put them there. He let the cape flutter to the floor and flew out of the window.

The psychokinetic construct dissipated and Malcolm started to struggle again, the chains and wood had been damaged by the smiling man's last stunt and after an adrenaline fueled effort that would have lifted six cars from a six babies, he was free. But he didn't know where to go. He couldn't fly yet and his medical teleporter was gone. Taking a ragged breath, Malcolm staggered into the pink smoke filled hallway.

"You're getting close to redlining your dosage," the Eye said clinically.

The world was a blur, despite the drugs. The two speed charges propelled Sol Divus towards the ground at blinding speed. His knees creaked and he felt microfractures splinter through his legs as he hit the ground. He slammed the med stims home and blurred back into the building.

"Help me! Someone please help me. I've been kidnapped! Please!" Malcolm gasped as he walked through the purple gas clouds. Blinded, confused and still drugged, he opted for a pathetic stance, hoping the Longbow troops would see that he's been horribly abused and take him for medical attention. It would be no problem to sneak away from them afterwards.

Malcolm saw a shape in the smoke, big broad. "Please!" He said, twisting into a shambling parody of a run, help me!"

The smoke parted, revealing Divus, glowing eyes haloed by the smoke.

"Thank god, you're here! I was being held captive, I was...what's that whistling sound?"

The reflex stims were starting to fail. Sol was in the shaft when he felt himself starting to feel a little thready.

"Get ready," he told the eye.

He ascended into the cloud of Nectar smoke in time to see Divus bringing his fists, glowing with focused power, home completely caving in the chest of Malcolm slanting his collarbone and shoulders forward.

"Now!" he thought to the eye.

An amber crosshair appeared in his vision as the Eye of Solestine temporarily overrode his visual input. He couldn't handle this degree of data input long, but he didn't have to.

Sol pulled a thorn from his pocket. A fresh thorn harvested from the Circle of Thorn's own world tree during his last trip into Orenbega. He stabbed Divus in the back with it drawing out the soul of the original Divus, John Henry Divus.

Divus slumped forward, but recovered all most immediately, "Give it back!" He was alert but not ready.

Sol Divus backpedaled, layering him within blocks of ice. Using the waning edges of his speed, he darted past the hero, snatched up the corpse of his extradimensional double and flew out of the window.

Sol pocketed the thorn quickly. It's cargo was precious and irreplaceable. Sol began a bounding race of tk boosted parabolic jumps. The Arachnos outpost in Warburg wasn't far, only a mile or so. But he had to avoid the types of people who cruised the island looking for random fights.

Sol was sprinting along the ledge of a building when a ball of energy caught him in the side slamming him against the granite facing. He boosted himself into the air to a guided landing on the ground itself.

"Sorry about this Div," Sol muttered, taking off the mask. Sol landed near a group of Mu Scorers, one of the many Rogue Arachnos patrols that roamed the island, and he dropped a wide area blizzard of psychic ice on to them. He slammed home the Blue Lighting and siphoned speed and life from one of them and flew into the air. Those not incapacitated by the storm flew after him.

Divus was speeding down towards him, fists glowing. He slowed bringing his fists into firing position when Sol spoke into his mind.

"You don't want the thorn to get damaged," Sol snapped. "Especially with these guys behind me."

Torrents of red lighting snaked into he air as the mummy like Mu mystics approached. Sol redirected carrying him away from Divus who started engaged the new foes.

Sol alighted on another ledge, gathered himself and launched back into the air. Holding his breath the entire time. Without the mask filtering his air, Warburg smelt salty and fetid, but he'll get used to it again soon enough.

He came down in the middle of the Arachnos base, startling several nearby soldiers who drew weapons.

"Hold it right there you piece of Zig trash!"

Sol cocked his head to the side, revealing the Arachnos Captain badge he earned just a few days ago gleaming on his collar.

The soldiers looked flustered, Sol couldn't resist. "That's Zig Trash...."

"SIR!!!!!" One of them exclaimed pointing at the sky behind me.

Condensation made Divus look like a streaking jet as he strained against the air. He was on a downward arc as if he were going to land and take our precious thing from me.

Then he was haloed in a flash of red light and was gone. The security drone had attacked, triggering Divus' emergency teleporter.

The soldiers stared at each other for a long moments and then looked at Sol, "Any orders...sir?"

Sol thought for a moment, "I'm going to take a bed in the med bay for a few minutes. Let me know when the next shuttle to St. Martial arrives."

"Um, sir...ah...your...um baggage?"

Sol chuckled patting the corpse on the bottom, "Don't worry yourself soldier. I'll have him processed...personally."

Let them stew on that, he thought striding to the medical bay.

Yesterday:

"Man, I hope you know what you're doing with that crap!"

Sol grinned at Hardcase as he accepted the case of combat drugs, "Actually I think that I'm insane, but thanks to this stuff, I should come through it intact."

The demonhunter crossed his arms, "I'm worried about you man. The scuttlebutt says that you've been spending a lot of time in Warburg. That place is bad news, crawling with rogue spiders, Malta and Longbow, no one is safe there."

"Well there's no way in hell, I'm going rogue," Sol replied popping open the case and smiling. He looked up at his friend, well as much as he has any friends in the Rogue Isles and sighed.

"Look Sol, You ain't bad, not like some of the wackjobs they let out of the Zig, but they say you're slaughtering Longbow troops and that isn't good, they're going to be keeping an eye out for you and I've heard that they have monsterous tech that we have yet to see," he said wrinkling his nose. "Remember what happened to Darla Mavis and that was an 'accident,'" he finished referencing the information broker on the Nerva Archipelago who lost her powers in a Longbow weapons accident.

Sol snorted, "Yeah, their Rikti genome manipulation projects, manufacturing their own metas. In my mind they're no worse than Malta."

"C'ept they got badges," Hardcase replied.

Malcolm Divus shifted uncomfortably in the ridiculously straight backed chair. From what was visible, it looked like a lovely burnished mahogany, very sturdy, heavy and strong. If it were made from lesser materials, he would have broken free the moment he woke up. Rawhide leather wrapped chains dug into his wrists at the joint wrapping around the heavy wood armrests. His ankles were crushed together with another chain and y-bound to the heavy oak desk in front of him. Yet more chains bound him, posture-up in the chair abdomen, sternum, throat and head.

"Isn't this a bit much?"

The neck binding made speaking and breathing more difficult, but he wasn't about to let this poncy git have the last word if he could help it.

His host sat at the other end of the table in an identical chair. Muscular legs stretched black wool slacks which were tucked into polished knee high riding boots. A black wool collared shirt wrapped his chest and heavy polished black gloves snaked up his fore arms. The most maddening thing about him, at least from Malcolm’s bound perspective, was the lack of face. He wore a white porcelain kabuki mask shaped in the rictus of a grinning kami. Wisps of fog seemed to escape from the folds of his clothes. He'd never heard of anyone that looked like this operating in the Rogue Isles, at least no one with the pull to get into Warburg. He should have heard of this person at least from the gossip grist. Nothing stays secret for long.

"Are you comfortable?" His host asked voice deep and hollow behind the mask. "You have a certain reputation Malcolm and I wanted to make sure that you didn't go disappearing on me."

Mal tried to keep a straight face, but it was a useless effort mostly fueled by the cruel reminder that he was trapped here. Under most circumstances he could say a Word or twirl a spell that would loose these bindings and let him slip Between and escape. But right now, he felt tired and listless.

"What have you done to me?"

"What do you mean?" The reclining figure responded.

"You know goddamned well what I mean!"

"I drugged you with a diluted tincture of Haitian Voodoo powder," The masked smiling man said casually. "Not enough to send you into arrest or coma, but there's enough tetrodotoxin in your system to keep you from doing anything dramatic."

Mal started to sweat, his hands cramping under the increased tension, "What do you want? I have money, lots of it. I can..."

"I want your life," the grinning man said with a disturbingly deep sibilance.

Mal started to struggle, straining against the chair, the chains. He flexed his fore arms, but his fore arm blades had been removed. The struggles become more pronounced, more violent until he found himself in a seizure. Every muscle in his body turned against him as lungs, diaphragm, throat and tongue united in violent opposition to each other.

"Oh no," the Smiling Man exclaimed with that same empty smoothness, "We can't have any of that." He flexed his palm and iridescent light coalesced around his frothing guest locking him into place. He gestured again and the remainder of Malcolm’s physical vitality exploded from him, runneling though the room.

The prisoner collapsed against the chains wheezing and bruised. "God God GOD! Why are you doing this?" He wheezed around the choke collar. "Who are you?"

The Smiling Man was quiet for a few beats then he came over and propped himself onto the heavy table. A black gloved hand reached up and removed the mask.

Malcolm started struggling again, weakly this time. The poison and his host's tender ministrations beginning to finally take their toll. He was staring up into his own face. There were differences yes indeed. This face was narrower, harsh, sculpted, devoid of any extraneous shape almost diamond shaped. The eyes glowed white with no hint of iris and in the forehead sat a third eye laced with glowing circuitry that constantly moved seeming of its own volition.

"Divus?" Mal whispered, not quite able to get it out. He'd heard stories about his counterpart on Statesman's earth. Malcolm Divus was an unmitigated coward. He struck from the shadows, preferring to poison, black mail and assassinate his way to power. He created homunculi and sent them out into the world to be him. He was a mastermind, no one should find him. A stupid accident involving a wayward duplicate brought him across the dimensions. However he had never ever wanted to meet Divus.

The Divus of this earth was a savage. In Malcolm’s mind, the sacrifice his double made during the Rikti war was beyond stupid. He survived the war in his dimension by staying hidden, only emerging when he absolutely had to. Tyrant and his Praetorian goons were more than suited for that kind of manual labor. This Divus, he was at the vanguard on this rock and died for it. But he didn't stay dead, he came back as some sort of grand poltergeist. His double revels in destruction. He's only a "hero" because he destroys the "right" people.

"So that's what you think about him?" The Smiling Man said. "Yes, when we're this close I, or rather my Eye, can read your surface thoughts. I don't pry too often, but it's occasionally ncessary. The thoughts of someone as rank as you can be a bit tedious and I don't want to kill you myself."

"What do you want, hero of Paragon City?" Mall hissed.

The host smiled, an empty smile because it stretched through his lower face and completely missed his eyes, "You have me confused. I'm not Divus."

"What?"

"You haven't heard of me, because I made a point to not travel in the same...circles as you. When I learned you were afoot in this dimension the opportunity you represented was far too precious to waste in clichéd games of serendipity."

"Who the [censored] are you?"

"I am Sol Divus."

"Huh? What's that's supposed to mean. You're Divus!" he spat.

"I'm a Divus," he replied. "Just like you. A pale reflection of the real thing."

"Someone has self esteem issues," Mal snarked.

The silver light appeared again this time it hurt, he could feel the heat being sucked from his tissues. The moisture followed it desiccating his throat.

"I was responsible for protecting something very very precious once," the other Divus said slowly. "Unfortunately I was unable to and that loss wounded me deeply. So I dedicated myself to protecting another very very precious thing. This time I lost it, because of the weaknesses of others. Thanks to this," he tapped the eye in his forehead, "I've been...blessed really...with the opportunity to try to make things right."

"What?" choked Malcolm his mind racing, "are you saying you’re from the future."

"I implied it," Sol smiled. "You said it."

"Ha! hahahahahahah!" the laughter was a series of hicks and gasps but the surreality of the situation was nothing short of comedic, "What? Do you have a woman in the next room for me to have sex with so you can raise the next John Connor? The messiah who will save us all? It isn't going to work honey. I don't eat cheesecake, especially under duress."

"Honestly Malcolm," Sol replied in that slightly hollow baritone, "The only thing I need you to do is stay put."

He rose from the table table putting the mask on again. He went back to his char and pulled a black cloak to his shoulders. "While you were unconsciousness, I read your life Malcolm Divus. You were such a talent, a potential force in the making. So wasted, so wasted." He strode towards the one door in the office where he was being held. "I will find a much better use for you."

This is my first novela length fic. There is a lot of assumed knowledge about the CoH universe i.e.: who Azuria is, the Rikti War, the nation status of the Rogue Isles. I test drove this on a group of people who play CoH and a few who didn't. Those who had accessibility issue, didn't make it known. THen again, the answers to most questions are easily accessible through Google or the CoH website.

The story is PG-13, but there are some minor elements that could be considered "slashy." So if you're too sensitive about these sorts of things, consider yourself forewarned.

Basicly this is a story that has been playing out in my head over the last two years as I've played my two mains, Divus my hero, and Sol Divus my villain. It's kept me going strong through many many hours of play and once I got Sol Divus to 40, I decided that it was time to put it down: to share the story but also to put it in a perspective for myself and set up the story for the future.

So with that in mind. Here it is, "Growing Pains"

[ QUOTE ]

QFT - that is just an example of a group that might be in a Mayhem Mish.

Anyway, most of the mayhem missions will be in Oranbega...






*ducks*

JUST KIDDING! please don't hurt me...

[/ QUOTE ]


LOL, I just snorted juice out of my nose!

[ QUOTE ]


The bare legs option for Male and Huge body types has been added to an internal build. It will be coming down the QA path and to a server near you soon.

[/ QUOTE ]

YAY!!!!!

[ QUOTE ]
NCsoft Player Meet and Greet

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Oh...I am SOOO there!

<rp>

My note to Wyvern: Bring it. I need some new ice statues to sell to the Giza.


</rp>

I'll keep this simple....YAYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've always maintained that Longbow=Malta with a badge. They are a Project Wideawake waiting to happen.

Really not happy about the helms being gender specific, nope not pleased at all. I really hope the male costume options in CoV are at least on par with female options this time around.

Hello Manticore, I have a few story related questions:

1. Will the original Superadine research be addressed in an in game event or story arc? You have the Trolls and Skulls abusing it constantly. Sooner or later some of them have to tap into the dimension teleporting/sensing/warping powers it can give in a small percentage of the populace. Are the citizens of Paragon City looking at potential transdimensional "meltdown" if a Superadine abuser's dimensional abilities emerge explosively?

2. Will there be any more development of the Devouring Earth story? I would really really like to see more about the origins of the Devouring Earth and how the Hamidon came to be.

3. Will there be anything else going on with Sister Psyche? She's 70+ years old and looks like a supermodel and rides minds with ease. That has got to make someone nervous, jealous, and curious. Any chance that will be explored?

4. Will the Zulu taskforces be eventually be broken up into contact missions, so the zone's story can be enjoyed outside of the long task forces?

Just finished playing with my level 50 blaster on the test server. Defiance, well to be blunt, doesn't seem to worth anything. By the time it's kicking in I'm dying and need to kick on phase shift or run away. Is this something for a low level blaster because it literally does nothing to improve my play.

Also, if this is some sort of PVP nugget, it's pyrite. In a match or a street fight, if a blaster is at the point where defiance is kicking in, he needs to be somewhere he can rest.

My entry: Solestine
Jacket and skirt by Versace
Top by Prada
Shoes by Manolo Blahnik (Titanium edition for the superheroine on the go)
Solestine

Fashionable and functional