I call them short, but I'm pretty sure even the shortest breaks the word limit for submission to the comicbook.
Doesn't matter much, this first one in this thread was for my Supergroups Halloween contest. Something spooky I was told. It didn't win, but hey, somebody might like it...
My first story, possibly to be added to this collection after some editing, you can probably find with a search, is titled "I'm a Terrible Defender".
********Clockwork Ghosts********
Normally Johnny liked Astoria. The otherworldly creepiness of the place somehow synced with his own. Not perfectly of course, but enough that he didn't feel uncomfortable as he traveled down the streets. To an outsider he would appear to be racing by, if one could see him at all. Between the blur of the speed he was traveling at and that he grew transparent as he used his gifts it was unlikely that anyone could see him at all.
Several of the shamans of the Banished Pantheon didn't. They had raised a small army of dried and preserved corpses, and they hunted the street. While the shaman wove the magics to animate their ghastly puppets, floating masks imbued with the spirits that served the dark and departed gods, watched on.
Johnny Wraith, traveling at what he felt was a comfortable and easily controllable speed, saw them through the fog that blanketed the region known now as Dark Astoria. With a quick mental calculation he altered his path.
Johnny had heard other heroes talking about the life of a speedster. How they felt frustrated that the world was so slow, that carrying on a normal speed conversation grew boring as they had to wait for other person to finish talking. Johnathan Wraye had felt like that his whole life. He couldn't understand the complaints of the other speedsters, particularly not the mutant ones who were born with the power to move themselves at impossibly high speeds. After the accident that had stuck his body between phases of this dimension and the next he actually felt somewhat relieved. Now he could move his own body at the speed of his thoughts.
It was true, his senses were heightened somewhat, but he didn't think any faster than before. His reactions werent better because he saw things coming at him any sooner or that things moved slower relatively, though both were true to some extent, they were better because he could act as he thought, moving either at high speed or in bursts of even faster preplanned motions. He executed one of those now.
The shaman might have noticed that the spirit masks had shattered suddenly, but he didn't have time to do anything about it before a solid blow to his solar plexus left him on the ground gasping for air. With his concentration broken the advancing zombie horde stumbled around confused. But only for a moment. Johnny paused to recalculate the battlefield that the open freeway had become, and then once more sped into it. Each husk and chamber would have felt, if they had the ability to feel anything anymore, their hearts being torn from them. The complex markings carved into their chest and then empowered with a force that made them glow suddenly seemed to flicker. Some of them turned and looked with unseeing eyes as Johnny Wraith stood in the middle of their formation. His lithe young body outlined by the dark blue suit he wore, flexed and seemed to grab something unseen. He was taking hold of something that wasn't part of this world. And then he pulled. The dry corpses crumpled, the glowing emblems on their chest extinguished as if blown out like a candle.
"Do I need to tell you what you're charged with?" Johnny Wraith asked from behind his rebreather and goggles. The shaman simply crawled away. With a sigh the young hero returned to his speeding travel down the fog shrouded roads. He didn't want to deal with trying to haul one shaman back to jail, and sending the police in to clean up this mess would probably be more trouble than it was worth. He'd report to the guards what he'd done. The security chief would probably put out another request for other powered heroes to patrol the zone and cut down on the number of shambling pawns the Banished Pantheon had created. It would contain them for a little while, but wasn't a permenate solution.
Still, there were other things that needed to be looked after. Johnny slowed his high speed gliding, letting his legs resolve back into the world with the rest of his body, and he checked the address. This was the place.
In its earlier days it might have been an average office building where people worked for purposes uninteresting and thus unknown. The perfect front company for Nemesis, the amazing robotics genius and certifiable madman. Who knew how the prince of automatons funded himself? Well, a little investigation into the records of one of his forgotten front companies would help solve that. Checking out any of the front companies or offices might have, but this one would be the best chance. It was three years condemned, nothing having gone into, or out of, the building since before Nemesis had vanished just before the Rikti invasion and the chaos that event caused. An old dead building, swallowed up by the shrouded fog of Dark Astoria and now forgotten by all. A place of ghosts.
Johnny Wraith gave a smirk under his mask at the thought, and walked through the door, not bothering to open it. After all, he didn't need to when he was out of phase. The odd thing was, while phased like this, he still couldn't pass through solid walls, but doors, thin materials like glass or wire fences, even people, he passed through with ease. But some things seemed solid in both this world and the next.
Something about this place set Johnny's nerves on edge. He decided, standing there mostly intangible and invisible, that he'd pin down what it was before proceeding onward. The building was abandoned, yes. That much he could see, the lights being out, the wall paper peeling, and the whole place looking rather dilapidated. For a moment he paused, letting his senses soak in the area, letting himself see his surroundings not just with his five human senses, but the extra sensory abilities he seemed to guide himself with as well.
After a few moments of finding nothing particularly amiss in the foyer he started to take a step forward before realizing what it was. Or rather what wasn't. The carpet had been cleaned recently. Bringing himself into solidity he knelt down and touched the carpet. It was a silly gesture, his hands were encased in gauntlets, but he saw that the marks where a vacuum cleaner, or perhaps one of those rolling carpet cleaners, had passed over. Perhaps it wasn't as abandoned as originally believed? As he stood up he faded out. Johnny Wraith didn't leave footprints in the carpet. When he moved at his ghostly speed he sort of hovered or slid on some sort of ethereal energy. He couldn't lift upwards, but he enjoyed the sensation of skating.
There was a figure sitting at the desk. Johnny cautiously approached while invisible. She sat there motionless with a pleasant smile on her face and a slight tilt to her head. Johnny floated around behind the desk and saw she was not quite motionless. Her hands were typing at a keyboard still. The keys however had worn down, nothing was being typed. Her eyes were glassy and her blinks clockwork precision. This was an automaton, one of the clockwork people Nemesis builds to replace the disloyal.
Johnny Wraith straightened up to leave the lobby, but then glanced back. Her clothing even had a layer of dust on it. She had been left here for sometime, and pretty clearly was malfunctioning. Johnny Wraith made drew back and slammed a palm strike into the back of her neck, imparting a little bit of his ghostly presence along with the physical impact. There was a mechanical click, as if some gears had come out of joint, and her hands stopped typing, her eyes stopped blinking. The automaton was deactivated.
He wasn't sure why he did that, but something felt a little more right, shutting that automaton down rather than letting it continue to type the same paragraph over and over again. Laying one ghost to rest.
Johnny slid through the office, watching as other automatons went about a twisted version of their daily grind. One of them had walked into a corner and was still going through the motions of paperwork despite looking at a blank wall. Another sat at a desk that had not had anything placed in it's inbox for years.
"Have-it-by-tomorrow." one of the automatons said to empty air. The words were accelerated, like there was no pause between them and it made Johnny start slightly when he heard it.
"I w-w-w-ant the the the PST re-re-reports on my my my desk." One of them asked another, his voice recording jumping. The firsts timing was off, responding to a request not yet given.
Johnathan wasn't sure if it was somehow his wraith senses telling him these automatons werent alive even as they walked and breathed, or if he was disturbed more by how their movements were sluggish and jerky, more like the animated zombie puppets he had destroyed than the smooth flawless toys he had encountered previously when fighting against Nemesis' agents.
Johnny Wraith fought down the urge to reveal himself, just to see how they would react. They would probably be hostile, and this mission was one of urgency and secrecy. The location of this Nemesis front company had only recently been revealed, and it might still have some useful files or plans in it that would reveal more of the evil super genius' plotting.
Johnny floated through the building, down the stairwell and following a helpful floor guide posted on the wall to the archives room. As he glided through the halls silently and unseen however, he noticed something familiarly unpleasant. There were marks in the carpet as if something on spikes and moved across it, as well as the peeling wallpaper created by the residue of the steam powered creations Nemesis was famous for. The lights were out, and Johnny was passing through dark hallways. He could barely see, but it didn't bother him much. He managed to find the archives just off the side of a large multi-tiered room. The kind that, if it were lit and inhabited, might have been a pleasant place to take in lunch without needing to leave the building. At the moment the open space seemed sinister somehow.
Sorting through files was always a bothersome chore, but part of this job. Nemesis didn't like using computers, so the files were always hard copy, meticulously copied by hand in triplicate by one of the officers. Join Nemesis, fight to rule the world, learn to fill out excessive amounts of paperwork.
There was a faint click, inaudible beneath the sound of Johnny shuffling paperwork, the sound of steam driven clockwork gears activating. Then the small room was filled with gunfire, twin muzzles unleashing automatic fire from the small robotic platform. When the gunpowder smoke cleared somewhat the Jaeger robot closed its brass dome and scanned the area. Papers were flying and bullet holes filled the metal filing cabinets, but it didn't see its target to confirm the kill.
Johnny curled himself tight into the small alcove created behind the filing cabinet he had been searching. He was vaguely aware that he had been hit, one of the bullets having torn into his leg. He waited, trying not to breath, as the machine processed its next move. The Jaeger moved on four spindly but surprisingly strong spikes, vaguely resembling a crab with its domed top and bottom. It was a hunter, and while Johnny didn't know how it could see using only steam and gear work technology, but it did. It would find him if he stayed there, even if he faded into his near invisibility.
Johnny Wraith rolled out of his hiding spot as the Jaeger closed in on him. It rotated to lock onto him as he circled around and tried to get behind it. He leg hurt, so he avoided putting any more weight on it than he had to as he maneuvered. The robot was rotating itself faster than he was racing around it. This one's gearing was near perfect, so much unlike the other automatons he had seen in the building thus far. It made sense though; this one probably hadn't undergone the stress of daily activity. Time to fix that.
In a sudden rush Johnny Wraith came at the robot with his fists. Moving faster than the eye could follow he pummeled the brass filigree, imparting some faint ghostly power along with the incredible speed of his gauntleted fist. The metal warped, the inlayed designs being damaged, but the robot itself didn't seem to take notice. The top dome sprang open and two wickedly sharp blades spun out. Johnny pulled back not quite fast enough, but phased out his torso and let the blades pass through him without hurting him.
The Jaegers legs looked like a good target. Charging his gauntlet with extra otherworldly force Johnny dropped down, taking a swing at the side of one of the leg joints. He was rewarded with the sound of metal snapping, the ghostly power causing the metal to decay and the impact putting it over the breaking point. The Jaeger didn't fall over though. Infact, as Johnny drew himself up, the robot jumped, it's shell springing open again and the clank of gears meshing was the only warning as the central spoke for the shell spun, a thin chain attached to it with a heavy iron ball at the end.
Johnny was struck in the side of his head, his body only partially phased out. The impact was enough that he was knocked sideways into a filing cabinet, his ears ringing and his vision somewhat blurred. The Jaeger landed on its feet, but had been programmed to land on all four legs, with one missing it tilted and fell onto its side even as it reset and extended its two automatic rifles again.
Johnny pulled himself to his feet through the pain of his new headache, leaning and letting his ghostly aura carry him away from the gunfire. The robot couldn't track him as he circled it this time, and it only took another precise strike on the steam box mounted on the rear of the robot to completely disable it. With a dull grinding of gears the Jaeger collapsed into a heap, the last of the steam pressure venting. Johnny quickly gathered up the files and papers he wanted, trying to keep them away from the steam jet that was the last breath of the dying Jaeger.
"I knew..." The rasping voice made Johnny pull up short as he left the archives room. "I knew Lord Nemesis had a reason..." Glancing up to one of the higher tiers in the lunch room he saw the source of the voice. "Lord Nemesis had a plan, a purpose... for me to stay here... to guard this facility..."
For a moment Johnny Wraith could only stare at the figure. He recognized it's design, the capsule of clear glass filled with some sort of greenish bubbling fluid, the massive treaded boots and the arms that hung to the sides ending in alternately a cannon or a nasty looking sharp claw, the steam engine on the back, it was unmistakably a War Hulk. The pilot however, the figure curled up within the greenish fluid, wasn't the handsome solider, fresh from a promotion and piloting this weapon of destruction. This one was a floating corpse. "...yes... guard this facility... for all eternity... alone... with the ghosts."
Johnny Wraith watched in mute horror as the War Hulk raised one arm. The cannon mounted on it spat a blazing sphere at him, galvanizing the young hero into action. He phased out, darting forward as the shell exploded against the floor behind him. He felt a wash of heat from it, but little else. The War Hulk was moving though; with speed that something that bulky shouldn't have it vaulted the railing of the third floor tier and landed with a bone jarring thud directly in front of Johnny.
For a brief second Johnny Wraith looked eye to eye with the corpse in a jar. Bits of skin had come loose and were floating in the water, the skeleton was clearly visible, and the eyes were rotting away. But what repulsed him most was that it was still alive. It still moved of its own will, alive and preserved in its jar. Then the intricately detailed yet powerful arm swung at him, and he ducked under the gleaming bladed claw, pulling away from the ghastly specimen.
"They're all ghosts..." The all but dead pilot of the hulking war machine continued to mutter, possibly more to himself than anyone else, the speakers giving the aged, rasping voice an inhuman quality. "... once they were people, now they're just automatons built in their own image. Echoes, ghosts, to be tormented forever... forever trapped... forever repeating..." Johnny Wraith continued to be pushed back by the flailing claw. For a brief moment he was staring down the barrel of the cannon as it was brought up into his face. He grabbed it and pushed upwards while ducking under the arm. A blast of flame spread itself across the walls as the cannon used its flame thrower mode.
Johnny ducked under and around the War Hulk, slamming punches into its armor, hoping he could find a weak spot or corrode something vital with his powers. No luck. "You can't win, you're fighting a ghost... just a ghost... ghosts don't die..." The voice kept moaning at him through the speakers. Taking a chance Johnny grabbed hold of one of the panels, letting the War Hulk pull him around as it turned.
"...where...?" The pilot muttered as he swept the room with his flame thrower. Johnny pulled himself up the back of the war machine, getting a good grip on it and then hammering away with one gauntleted fist, smashing the steam engine.
With a rough twist Johnny was thrown free, but he landed well this time, rolling on the old carpet. "You're not the only ghost here anymore." Johnny Wraith taunted. The War Hulk leveled its cannon and the blue clad adventurer avoided the blast. "I'm here to put y'all to rest."
"Rest." The pilot was still muttering, and it was hard to tell how much was his actual voice, if any, and how much was part of the War Hulks speaker system. "How I long for rest... rest eternal... it has been denied to me." Even through the muttering however, the Nemesis solider continued to attack, lunging forward with the clawed arm. Johnny Wraith darted back out of the way, ducking behind a pillar that held up the second tier balcony. "I cannot leave my War Hulk... cannot leave my post... and I cannot die at my post..." The pillar was shattered by the War Hulks clawed arm. Johnny fled towards the hallway, hoping to phase through the door, when another explosive shell struck the hallway, making him pull up short to avoid the fire.
There was the heavy thud of treaded metal boots as the War Hulk charged Johnny. Spinning around, once more an exit was sought. The archives room. Johnny raced for the door in what was becoming a blind panic. His leg hurt, he wasn't moving at full speed, he simply couldn't concentrate enough, he needed breathing room. The flames licked at him, either from the fire already started or another spray from the War Hulks flamethrower, it didn't matter. As Johnny dove into the file room he heard the War Hulk rushing after him. He wasn't moving as fast as he could, but he was still out racing it. For now.
The War Hulk tore the door to the archive room off its hinges and flung it away. A needless gesture, the door was already open, but one that gave a moments respite Johnny Wraith used to his advantage. For a brief moment the slim figure in dark blue seemed to be everywhere around the shining brass war machine. Specially designed alloy gauntlets and battle hardened fists slammed into intricately carved brass armor from all different directions. The pilot couldn't react fast enough as his armor was mauled by shadowy blows. It swung wildly, trying to swat the blurred assault.
Johnny Wraith sped out of range of his flailing opponent. He felt the battle returning to his favor, and calculated another attack. Nothing he seemed to do was working though. He phased out as another exploding shell came flying at him, then again as the War Hulk flung the door to the archives room at him. He let himself grow solid for a moment, the strain of willing his body into an ethereal state, even if only partially, was too much to keep up. The War Hulk was charging him again in its massive loping strides. He braced and made ready to dodge around again, getting in a few more hits as he did, when the balcony behind him collapsed, falling forward onto him.
Johnny Wraith barely had time to react as the burning wood crashed down onto him, pinning him to the floor. He glanced over at the looming shape and the War Hulk brought its claw down onto him. The sharp blades of the claw caught the debris that pinned him, but it was still crushing him. He couldn't breath, he couldn't move. Panic started to well up inside of him again. All the times he'd fought before, and this was how he was going to meet his end?
Something dripped onto his goggles. He glanced up at the War Hulk as it dripped another bit of the fluid that preserved the pilot. Several of his blows had struck the clear pilot housing, it was cracked and leaking. The claw was having trouble closing, it couldn't build any more pressure, the steam engine that drove the War Hulk had leaked out, all the pressure was gone. Johnny Wraith lay there, helpless, and watched as the War Hulk collapsed, unable to support itself.
"Let us... rest..." The moaning raspy voice played out as life fled from the machine. "End... the... haunting..." Without the fluid to preserve him the pilot was falling apart. He spasmed once, going into cardiac arrest, and then was still within the fallen hulk of metal.
Johnny Wraith pushed through the debris that pinned him, letting his body pass through it as he could pass through just about anything else, if he concentrated enough. The flames and explosions had left terrible scars on the room, and the fire was still spreading. Shaking himself, Johnny grabbed up the files he needed, amazed they hadn't been destroyed during the fight, and raced out. The heavy fog of Dark Astoria kept the fire from spreading. But the building haunted, not by living souls but by lifeless automatons, burnt to the ground, collapsing onto itself agonizingly slow, as if even this laying to rest pained it. It wouldn't be until the next morning that the ruins seemed to form some semblance of peace about them.
Even then some of Nemesis' clockwork creations continued to move, giving an appearance of wretched life to what had long since passed on. Johnny Wraith would return to lay these ghosts to rest as well. After all the haunted ground in Dark Astoria could not bring the fear to his heart the way these clockwork ghosts could. But he would never know if all of them had been released from their endless programming. Some might still stalk the streets, obeying their long outdated commands. Next time you see such a robot walking the streets of Paragon, be warned. Even the unliving can seek death.
I call them short, but I'm pretty sure even the shortest breaks the word limit for submission to the comicbook.
Doesn't matter much, this first one in this thread was for my Supergroups Halloween contest. Something spooky I was told. It didn't win, but hey, somebody might like it...
My first story, possibly to be added to this collection after some editing, you can probably find with a search, is titled "I'm a Terrible Defender".
********Clockwork Ghosts********
Normally Johnny liked Astoria. The otherworldly creepiness of the place somehow synced with his own. Not perfectly of course, but enough that he didn't feel uncomfortable as he traveled down the streets. To an outsider he would appear to be racing by, if one could see him at all. Between the blur of the speed he was traveling at and that he grew transparent as he used his gifts it was unlikely that anyone could see him at all.
Several of the shamans of the Banished Pantheon didn't. They had raised a small army of dried and preserved corpses, and they hunted the street. While the shaman wove the magics to animate their ghastly puppets, floating masks imbued with the spirits that served the dark and departed gods, watched on.
Johnny Wraith, traveling at what he felt was a comfortable and easily controllable speed, saw them through the fog that blanketed the region known now as Dark Astoria. With a quick mental calculation he altered his path.
Johnny had heard other heroes talking about the life of a speedster. How they felt frustrated that the world was so slow, that carrying on a normal speed conversation grew boring as they had to wait for other person to finish talking. Johnathan Wraye had felt like that his whole life. He couldn't understand the complaints of the other speedsters, particularly not the mutant ones who were born with the power to move themselves at impossibly high speeds. After the accident that had stuck his body between phases of this dimension and the next he actually felt somewhat relieved. Now he could move his own body at the speed of his thoughts.
It was true, his senses were heightened somewhat, but he didn't think any faster than before. His reactions werent better because he saw things coming at him any sooner or that things moved slower relatively, though both were true to some extent, they were better because he could act as he thought, moving either at high speed or in bursts of even faster preplanned motions. He executed one of those now.
The shaman might have noticed that the spirit masks had shattered suddenly, but he didn't have time to do anything about it before a solid blow to his solar plexus left him on the ground gasping for air. With his concentration broken the advancing zombie horde stumbled around confused. But only for a moment. Johnny paused to recalculate the battlefield that the open freeway had become, and then once more sped into it. Each husk and chamber would have felt, if they had the ability to feel anything anymore, their hearts being torn from them. The complex markings carved into their chest and then empowered with a force that made them glow suddenly seemed to flicker. Some of them turned and looked with unseeing eyes as Johnny Wraith stood in the middle of their formation. His lithe young body outlined by the dark blue suit he wore, flexed and seemed to grab something unseen. He was taking hold of something that wasn't part of this world. And then he pulled. The dry corpses crumpled, the glowing emblems on their chest extinguished as if blown out like a candle.
"Do I need to tell you what you're charged with?" Johnny Wraith asked from behind his rebreather and goggles. The shaman simply crawled away. With a sigh the young hero returned to his speeding travel down the fog shrouded roads. He didn't want to deal with trying to haul one shaman back to jail, and sending the police in to clean up this mess would probably be more trouble than it was worth. He'd report to the guards what he'd done. The security chief would probably put out another request for other powered heroes to patrol the zone and cut down on the number of shambling pawns the Banished Pantheon had created. It would contain them for a little while, but wasn't a permenate solution.
Still, there were other things that needed to be looked after. Johnny slowed his high speed gliding, letting his legs resolve back into the world with the rest of his body, and he checked the address. This was the place.
In its earlier days it might have been an average office building where people worked for purposes uninteresting and thus unknown. The perfect front company for Nemesis, the amazing robotics genius and certifiable madman. Who knew how the prince of automatons funded himself? Well, a little investigation into the records of one of his forgotten front companies would help solve that. Checking out any of the front companies or offices might have, but this one would be the best chance. It was three years condemned, nothing having gone into, or out of, the building since before Nemesis had vanished just before the Rikti invasion and the chaos that event caused. An old dead building, swallowed up by the shrouded fog of Dark Astoria and now forgotten by all. A place of ghosts.
Johnny Wraith gave a smirk under his mask at the thought, and walked through the door, not bothering to open it. After all, he didn't need to when he was out of phase. The odd thing was, while phased like this, he still couldn't pass through solid walls, but doors, thin materials like glass or wire fences, even people, he passed through with ease. But some things seemed solid in both this world and the next.
Something about this place set Johnny's nerves on edge. He decided, standing there mostly intangible and invisible, that he'd pin down what it was before proceeding onward. The building was abandoned, yes. That much he could see, the lights being out, the wall paper peeling, and the whole place looking rather dilapidated. For a moment he paused, letting his senses soak in the area, letting himself see his surroundings not just with his five human senses, but the extra sensory abilities he seemed to guide himself with as well.
After a few moments of finding nothing particularly amiss in the foyer he started to take a step forward before realizing what it was. Or rather what wasn't. The carpet had been cleaned recently. Bringing himself into solidity he knelt down and touched the carpet. It was a silly gesture, his hands were encased in gauntlets, but he saw that the marks where a vacuum cleaner, or perhaps one of those rolling carpet cleaners, had passed over. Perhaps it wasn't as abandoned as originally believed? As he stood up he faded out. Johnny Wraith didn't leave footprints in the carpet. When he moved at his ghostly speed he sort of hovered or slid on some sort of ethereal energy. He couldn't lift upwards, but he enjoyed the sensation of skating.
There was a figure sitting at the desk. Johnny cautiously approached while invisible. She sat there motionless with a pleasant smile on her face and a slight tilt to her head. Johnny floated around behind the desk and saw she was not quite motionless. Her hands were typing at a keyboard still. The keys however had worn down, nothing was being typed. Her eyes were glassy and her blinks clockwork precision. This was an automaton, one of the clockwork people Nemesis builds to replace the disloyal.
Johnny Wraith straightened up to leave the lobby, but then glanced back. Her clothing even had a layer of dust on it. She had been left here for sometime, and pretty clearly was malfunctioning. Johnny Wraith made drew back and slammed a palm strike into the back of her neck, imparting a little bit of his ghostly presence along with the physical impact. There was a mechanical click, as if some gears had come out of joint, and her hands stopped typing, her eyes stopped blinking. The automaton was deactivated.
He wasn't sure why he did that, but something felt a little more right, shutting that automaton down rather than letting it continue to type the same paragraph over and over again. Laying one ghost to rest.
Johnny slid through the office, watching as other automatons went about a twisted version of their daily grind. One of them had walked into a corner and was still going through the motions of paperwork despite looking at a blank wall. Another sat at a desk that had not had anything placed in it's inbox for years.
"Have-it-by-tomorrow." one of the automatons said to empty air. The words were accelerated, like there was no pause between them and it made Johnny start slightly when he heard it.
"I w-w-w-ant the the the PST re-re-reports on my my my desk." One of them asked another, his voice recording jumping. The firsts timing was off, responding to a request not yet given.
Johnathan wasn't sure if it was somehow his wraith senses telling him these automatons werent alive even as they walked and breathed, or if he was disturbed more by how their movements were sluggish and jerky, more like the animated zombie puppets he had destroyed than the smooth flawless toys he had encountered previously when fighting against Nemesis' agents.
Johnny Wraith fought down the urge to reveal himself, just to see how they would react. They would probably be hostile, and this mission was one of urgency and secrecy. The location of this Nemesis front company had only recently been revealed, and it might still have some useful files or plans in it that would reveal more of the evil super genius' plotting.
Johnny floated through the building, down the stairwell and following a helpful floor guide posted on the wall to the archives room. As he glided through the halls silently and unseen however, he noticed something familiarly unpleasant. There were marks in the carpet as if something on spikes and moved across it, as well as the peeling wallpaper created by the residue of the steam powered creations Nemesis was famous for. The lights were out, and Johnny was passing through dark hallways. He could barely see, but it didn't bother him much. He managed to find the archives just off the side of a large multi-tiered room. The kind that, if it were lit and inhabited, might have been a pleasant place to take in lunch without needing to leave the building. At the moment the open space seemed sinister somehow.
Sorting through files was always a bothersome chore, but part of this job. Nemesis didn't like using computers, so the files were always hard copy, meticulously copied by hand in triplicate by one of the officers. Join Nemesis, fight to rule the world, learn to fill out excessive amounts of paperwork.
There was a faint click, inaudible beneath the sound of Johnny shuffling paperwork, the sound of steam driven clockwork gears activating. Then the small room was filled with gunfire, twin muzzles unleashing automatic fire from the small robotic platform. When the gunpowder smoke cleared somewhat the Jaeger robot closed its brass dome and scanned the area. Papers were flying and bullet holes filled the metal filing cabinets, but it didn't see its target to confirm the kill.
Johnny curled himself tight into the small alcove created behind the filing cabinet he had been searching. He was vaguely aware that he had been hit, one of the bullets having torn into his leg. He waited, trying not to breath, as the machine processed its next move. The Jaeger moved on four spindly but surprisingly strong spikes, vaguely resembling a crab with its domed top and bottom. It was a hunter, and while Johnny didn't know how it could see using only steam and gear work technology, but it did. It would find him if he stayed there, even if he faded into his near invisibility.
Johnny Wraith rolled out of his hiding spot as the Jaeger closed in on him. It rotated to lock onto him as he circled around and tried to get behind it. He leg hurt, so he avoided putting any more weight on it than he had to as he maneuvered. The robot was rotating itself faster than he was racing around it. This one's gearing was near perfect, so much unlike the other automatons he had seen in the building thus far. It made sense though; this one probably hadn't undergone the stress of daily activity. Time to fix that.
In a sudden rush Johnny Wraith came at the robot with his fists. Moving faster than the eye could follow he pummeled the brass filigree, imparting some faint ghostly power along with the incredible speed of his gauntleted fist. The metal warped, the inlayed designs being damaged, but the robot itself didn't seem to take notice. The top dome sprang open and two wickedly sharp blades spun out. Johnny pulled back not quite fast enough, but phased out his torso and let the blades pass through him without hurting him.
The Jaegers legs looked like a good target. Charging his gauntlet with extra otherworldly force Johnny dropped down, taking a swing at the side of one of the leg joints. He was rewarded with the sound of metal snapping, the ghostly power causing the metal to decay and the impact putting it over the breaking point. The Jaeger didn't fall over though. Infact, as Johnny drew himself up, the robot jumped, it's shell springing open again and the clank of gears meshing was the only warning as the central spoke for the shell spun, a thin chain attached to it with a heavy iron ball at the end.
Johnny was struck in the side of his head, his body only partially phased out. The impact was enough that he was knocked sideways into a filing cabinet, his ears ringing and his vision somewhat blurred. The Jaeger landed on its feet, but had been programmed to land on all four legs, with one missing it tilted and fell onto its side even as it reset and extended its two automatic rifles again.
Johnny pulled himself to his feet through the pain of his new headache, leaning and letting his ghostly aura carry him away from the gunfire. The robot couldn't track him as he circled it this time, and it only took another precise strike on the steam box mounted on the rear of the robot to completely disable it. With a dull grinding of gears the Jaeger collapsed into a heap, the last of the steam pressure venting. Johnny quickly gathered up the files and papers he wanted, trying to keep them away from the steam jet that was the last breath of the dying Jaeger.
"I knew..." The rasping voice made Johnny pull up short as he left the archives room. "I knew Lord Nemesis had a reason..." Glancing up to one of the higher tiers in the lunch room he saw the source of the voice. "Lord Nemesis had a plan, a purpose... for me to stay here... to guard this facility..."
For a moment Johnny Wraith could only stare at the figure. He recognized it's design, the capsule of clear glass filled with some sort of greenish bubbling fluid, the massive treaded boots and the arms that hung to the sides ending in alternately a cannon or a nasty looking sharp claw, the steam engine on the back, it was unmistakably a War Hulk. The pilot however, the figure curled up within the greenish fluid, wasn't the handsome solider, fresh from a promotion and piloting this weapon of destruction. This one was a floating corpse. "...yes... guard this facility... for all eternity... alone... with the ghosts."
Johnny Wraith watched in mute horror as the War Hulk raised one arm. The cannon mounted on it spat a blazing sphere at him, galvanizing the young hero into action. He phased out, darting forward as the shell exploded against the floor behind him. He felt a wash of heat from it, but little else. The War Hulk was moving though; with speed that something that bulky shouldn't have it vaulted the railing of the third floor tier and landed with a bone jarring thud directly in front of Johnny.
For a brief second Johnny Wraith looked eye to eye with the corpse in a jar. Bits of skin had come loose and were floating in the water, the skeleton was clearly visible, and the eyes were rotting away. But what repulsed him most was that it was still alive. It still moved of its own will, alive and preserved in its jar. Then the intricately detailed yet powerful arm swung at him, and he ducked under the gleaming bladed claw, pulling away from the ghastly specimen.
"They're all ghosts..." The all but dead pilot of the hulking war machine continued to mutter, possibly more to himself than anyone else, the speakers giving the aged, rasping voice an inhuman quality. "... once they were people, now they're just automatons built in their own image. Echoes, ghosts, to be tormented forever... forever trapped... forever repeating..." Johnny Wraith continued to be pushed back by the flailing claw. For a brief moment he was staring down the barrel of the cannon as it was brought up into his face. He grabbed it and pushed upwards while ducking under the arm. A blast of flame spread itself across the walls as the cannon used its flame thrower mode.
Johnny ducked under and around the War Hulk, slamming punches into its armor, hoping he could find a weak spot or corrode something vital with his powers. No luck. "You can't win, you're fighting a ghost... just a ghost... ghosts don't die..." The voice kept moaning at him through the speakers. Taking a chance Johnny grabbed hold of one of the panels, letting the War Hulk pull him around as it turned.
"...where...?" The pilot muttered as he swept the room with his flame thrower. Johnny pulled himself up the back of the war machine, getting a good grip on it and then hammering away with one gauntleted fist, smashing the steam engine.
With a rough twist Johnny was thrown free, but he landed well this time, rolling on the old carpet. "You're not the only ghost here anymore." Johnny Wraith taunted. The War Hulk leveled its cannon and the blue clad adventurer avoided the blast. "I'm here to put y'all to rest."
"Rest." The pilot was still muttering, and it was hard to tell how much was his actual voice, if any, and how much was part of the War Hulks speaker system. "How I long for rest... rest eternal... it has been denied to me." Even through the muttering however, the Nemesis solider continued to attack, lunging forward with the clawed arm. Johnny Wraith darted back out of the way, ducking behind a pillar that held up the second tier balcony. "I cannot leave my War Hulk... cannot leave my post... and I cannot die at my post..." The pillar was shattered by the War Hulks clawed arm. Johnny fled towards the hallway, hoping to phase through the door, when another explosive shell struck the hallway, making him pull up short to avoid the fire.
There was the heavy thud of treaded metal boots as the War Hulk charged Johnny. Spinning around, once more an exit was sought. The archives room. Johnny raced for the door in what was becoming a blind panic. His leg hurt, he wasn't moving at full speed, he simply couldn't concentrate enough, he needed breathing room. The flames licked at him, either from the fire already started or another spray from the War Hulks flamethrower, it didn't matter. As Johnny dove into the file room he heard the War Hulk rushing after him. He wasn't moving as fast as he could, but he was still out racing it. For now.
The War Hulk tore the door to the archive room off its hinges and flung it away. A needless gesture, the door was already open, but one that gave a moments respite Johnny Wraith used to his advantage. For a brief moment the slim figure in dark blue seemed to be everywhere around the shining brass war machine. Specially designed alloy gauntlets and battle hardened fists slammed into intricately carved brass armor from all different directions. The pilot couldn't react fast enough as his armor was mauled by shadowy blows. It swung wildly, trying to swat the blurred assault.
Johnny Wraith sped out of range of his flailing opponent. He felt the battle returning to his favor, and calculated another attack. Nothing he seemed to do was working though. He phased out as another exploding shell came flying at him, then again as the War Hulk flung the door to the archives room at him. He let himself grow solid for a moment, the strain of willing his body into an ethereal state, even if only partially, was too much to keep up. The War Hulk was charging him again in its massive loping strides. He braced and made ready to dodge around again, getting in a few more hits as he did, when the balcony behind him collapsed, falling forward onto him.
Johnny Wraith barely had time to react as the burning wood crashed down onto him, pinning him to the floor. He glanced over at the looming shape and the War Hulk brought its claw down onto him. The sharp blades of the claw caught the debris that pinned him, but it was still crushing him. He couldn't breath, he couldn't move. Panic started to well up inside of him again. All the times he'd fought before, and this was how he was going to meet his end?
Something dripped onto his goggles. He glanced up at the War Hulk as it dripped another bit of the fluid that preserved the pilot. Several of his blows had struck the clear pilot housing, it was cracked and leaking. The claw was having trouble closing, it couldn't build any more pressure, the steam engine that drove the War Hulk had leaked out, all the pressure was gone. Johnny Wraith lay there, helpless, and watched as the War Hulk collapsed, unable to support itself.
"Let us... rest..." The moaning raspy voice played out as life fled from the machine. "End... the... haunting..." Without the fluid to preserve him the pilot was falling apart. He spasmed once, going into cardiac arrest, and then was still within the fallen hulk of metal.
Johnny Wraith pushed through the debris that pinned him, letting his body pass through it as he could pass through just about anything else, if he concentrated enough. The flames and explosions had left terrible scars on the room, and the fire was still spreading. Shaking himself, Johnny grabbed up the files he needed, amazed they hadn't been destroyed during the fight, and raced out. The heavy fog of Dark Astoria kept the fire from spreading. But the building haunted, not by living souls but by lifeless automatons, burnt to the ground, collapsing onto itself agonizingly slow, as if even this laying to rest pained it. It wouldn't be until the next morning that the ruins seemed to form some semblance of peace about them.
Even then some of Nemesis' clockwork creations continued to move, giving an appearance of wretched life to what had long since passed on. Johnny Wraith would return to lay these ghosts to rest as well. After all the haunted ground in Dark Astoria could not bring the fear to his heart the way these clockwork ghosts could. But he would never know if all of them had been released from their endless programming. Some might still stalk the streets, obeying their long outdated commands. Next time you see such a robot walking the streets of Paragon, be warned. Even the unliving can seek death.
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