Summus Proelium

How Is The Ministry Preparing For What They Believe Will Be The End Of Unified National Governments? (This takes place prior to the Sleeptalk situation)

“Yes, thank you, Edward,” Sterling Evans graciously announced while leading a dark-skinned man with an expensively-tailored suit to the double doors of the conference room. The two of them, along with Sterling’s wife and a dozen others who had already filed their way out, had just spent several hours going over the details of an alliance with a Korean car company. “I’m sure our friends in Seoul will be just as interested in Mr. Khumalo’s acquisition as we are. Give them--let’s say twelve hours to wake up and review the documents, then arrange a call so we can go over the particulars.” He offered the man a smile and a handshake. “By this time tomorrow, it should all be arranged, and you deserve all the credit for pulling this deal together.”

After shaking the man’s hand and thanking him again, Sterling watched him go. Once Edward was out of earshot, he murmured under his breath to the unobtrusive figure who had been standing nearby the entire time. “You’re absolutely certain about this?”

“Yes, sir,” Christiana Diaz, known to the Evans household staff as an assistant chef, to the people around this building as a nearly-invisible office drone they could never quite remember the name of, and to the Ministry leadership as the assassin Plan Z, assured him. “Edward Mawers definitely stole the idea for contacting Friedrich Khumalo and proposing an acquisition of his mine from Missy Lansworth, his immediate subordinate, and silenced her with the threat of releasing pictures taken from her time as an exotic dancer to pay for university. She put the pieces together, he swooped in and blackmailed her to retain credit. And then, to ensure she never spoke up, he manufactured a reason to have her fired two weeks ago. He covered his tracks decently, but not well enough.”

Sterling considered that for a moment in silence, before nodding. “Okay then. I gave him a chance to come clean. Now we do it our way. First, I want all of his evidence of Ms. Lansworth’s previous career removed from his possession and destroyed. Second, Edward is to be immediately transferred to another position. I believe assistant mailboy at our new branch in Guntersville, Alabama would be more his speed. With an appropriate drop in pay, of course. He’ll threaten to quit, and when he does, we’ll gently remind him that the terms of his employment stipulate he cannot work for any other company in any of the fields we cover until the end of the remaining ten years of his contract. If he proceeds to violate that agreement, we will, of course, pursue him legally and ensure no company will come within a hundred miles of hiring him for fear of being caught in the blast radius. Otherwise, he can either spend his remaining contracted time in purgatory and see how many of our competitors want to hire someone after a decade of mailroom duty, or quit early and take a job somewhere that doesn’t violate our agreement.”

“Given the scope of what this company works with, that may be difficult,” Christiana pointed out mildly.

“Yes, I suppose it would,” Sterling agreed. He smiled very faintly before continuing. “As for Ms. Lansworth, contact her immediately and offer Edward’s position, as well as the standard signing bonus for a new executive. Tell her she’ll also have an additional ten thousand if she can make it here in the morning to be on the call with the people from Seoul, with all her notes on the subject. I’m sure she kept them.”

With that attended to and Christiana off to take care of it, Sterling took a moment to politely ask one of the nearby receptionists to ensure he and Elena wouldn’t be disturbed for the next hour, while they went over the financial details of the agreement. Then he closed and locked the conference room doors before turning to face his wife, who had been working at her computer on the far side of the long table. “You were right, Edward never would have found that mine on his own, or realized the opportunity it presents.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Elena agreed, closing her laptop before focusing on him with a fond smile. “But then, the mine is hardly the point. Missy Lansworth speaks four languages and was able to deduce that this mine existed and its location before any official details emerged, simply by observing where certain materials and personnel were being transferred to by their local government. And she did it from over eight thousand miles away, by following the paperwork. She’s a very impressive young woman. One we need to keep close at hand for C-Day.”

C-Day, or Collapse Day. Sterling and Elena firmly believed that there would come a time, perhaps not soon but at some point, when Touched abilities would become so prevalent and powerful that the national government would be incapable of maintaining order over such a large area. At this point, smaller nation states would emerge, cities and their surrounding areas functioning autonomously under the rule of the most powerful group. In the case of Detroit and its suburbs, that would be the Ministry. They had been preparing for this off and on over the past two decades. When the time came, the people of this city, and their resources, would be protected. The Ministry would function in the open then, rather than remaining in the shadows as they did now. There were those on both sides of the ‘Fell’ and ‘Star’ line who would come together to protect Detroit from invaders. The time for playing cops and robbers would be over, as useful as those fights were for training purposes. And for those who couldn’t be part of that… well, they would be removed.

All of which meant they would need the best and brightest people to ensure the future Detroit functioned properly. They needed people like Missy Lansworth, not those who stole credit from them like Edward Mawers.

Holding a hand out to his wife, Sterling casually offered, “Speaking of preparations for the future, shall we see how our diminutive friends are doing today?”

Elena accepted the hand up with an easy nod, a fond smile finding its way to her face. “Oh yes, dear, I believe we should. Yellowbrick?” She spoke up while touching a bluetooth earpiece. “If you’re not too busy, it would be just lovely if you could provide a bridge over to Construction Site Congo. That’s where they’re working today.”

No sooner had she requested that, than Sterling opened the nearby door into what should have been a supply closet. Instead, it led to the familiar amber pathway through a void to another door. The two of them thanked Yellowbrick before heading over the bridge. They would return before anyone noticed they’d even left the conference room.

Coming through the opposite door, Sterling and Elena found themselves in what would appear to be a subway station. There were some very important differences, however. For one, this station and the tunnel it was attached to were much deeper than most subways. They were over two miles underground at this point. This network of tunnels, once they were finished, would encircle the entirety of Detroit while also crisscrossing back and forth over key portions of it, with entrances allowing one to emerge within a few blocks of any part of the city. In the end, it would look like a spiderweb of tunnels and shafts leading to the surface.

The platform itself was about fifty feet wide and almost as long. There was a space mapped out where the official entrance would one day be, but for now those who came here used various other methods of arrival. Oxygen was provided through heavy-duty pumps from the surface, disguised as innocuous things up there such as air conditioning units.

Scattered all across the platform were slumbering dogs attached to wagons full of equipment and tools. They were well-fed and cared for, not only by the Ministry, but by their owners. Owners whose incredibly small forms could barely be seen bustling about. Hundreds of termites, who were all very busy preparing these tunnels using their unique ability to disintegrate material and create new structures out of it. Structures that were needed to make the tunnels function properly. Because these weren’t simply long holes in the ground, and there would be no actual ‘train’ to carry people around. When they were complete, a person would simply be able to step into the tunnel and be carried through an invisible propulsion field to any other part of the city nearly instantaneously. Not quite as quick or convenient as Yellowbrick, of course. But they couldn’t expect her to handle transportation of that scale. She deserved a life of her own, even if she was… well, who she was.

In time, these rapid response tunnels would allow the Ministry to deploy entire troop squads to anywhere in the city within a few minutes. It would take quite some time to finish such a system, however. For now, what mattered was ensuring the termites were safe and happy here.

They were assets. And whether it was a brilliant woman who had been blackmailed into giving up credit and her position, or a hive of intelligent TONI insects whose first introduction to humanity had gone tragically poorly, Sterling and Elena Evans were not the type to throw away useful assets.

After all, the time would come when those would be in very short supply.

*************

A Couple Touched Reactions To Paintball Versus Pencil

“Would you like a drink to celebrate, sir?” The tall, almost anorexically-thin Latina woman named Samara Vargas, asked politely. To most people, she would have been completely unrecognizable. After all, the woman known publicly as Yahui normally only appeared with a mixture of various animal features. Her power allowed her to manifest any number of animal traits across any part of herself, rendering a costume or other disguise essentially unnecessary.

Seated on a pile of cushions, Cuélebre (or Danilo Taca as he had been known before Touching), stared intently at the computer screen on the wall, and the action going on there. “And why would I want to celebrate, precisely?”

Samara cleared her throat a bit, glancing that way as though to assure herself she hadn’t hallucinated the events on the screen. “It looks as though Paintball is about to get himself killed by Pencil. Given your annoyance with the boy, I assumed--”

“You assume I would cheer the death of a child at the hands of a sociopath, simply because I’ve quarreled with him in the past?” Cuélebre interrupted. “Perhaps you believe my ego so fragile that simply being embarrassed by videos of our past conflicts would lead me to wish for his dismemberment, torture, and beheading?”

He didn’t give her time to respond. “I may wish to embarrass the boy in kind, even harm him in the course of a fight if necessary. And yes, I may have lashed out in anger in the heat of the moment. I may even do so in the future. But if you believe I am the type of person who would cheer on someone like Pencil, you truly do not know me at all. You--”

In that moment, Cuélebre paused, giving the screen another look. Paintball had acquired one of Pencil’s own guns, and seemed to have actually managed to hurt the man, against all odds.

“You know what?” he announced with a small smirk on his demonic face, “I changed my mind.

“I’ll take that drink after all. This just became interesting.”

--------

The steady whirring sound of a moving treadmill, punctuated by the thump, thump, thump of feet rapidly coming down on it, filled the living room of the man known to the public as Kriegspiel. In his private life however, the six foot five figure with long, graying hair that made him look like an aging rock star was called Joel Weiss. Having turned fifty recently, many also would have said he was getting too old to run around dressed up as a superhero, getting into the sort of scrapes that came with that sort of life. Fortunately, his power allowed him to enhance the physical abilities of people around him, including himself. It meant he could function as well as someone two or three decades younger.

Besides, if anyone did bring up the subject, he would only need to point to the nearby television screen as an answer to why he continued to play an active part in the Touched world. It was frozen right now, paused since he couldn’t bear to look at or hear it at the moment (despite having seen how it turned out several times already). On that screen was the steady image of Paintball barely escaping yet another attempt from Pencil to kill him. One more out of dozens that had taken place within that room the boy had been trapped in.

That boy couldn’t be older than thirteen, maybe even younger. And he had been trapped in that room with a psychopath who wanted to torture and kill him while livestreaming the event. Yes, it had worked out for the best in the end. But Paintball shouldn’t have been alone in there. If he was there at all, it should have been with help.

Which was the real reason for why Joel would continue to do this work no matter how old he got, no matter how silly he felt at times. He would do it because the younger generation, people like Paintball, needed to have people there who could help them, who could have their backs… even if actually being there wasn’t always possible.

As long as his power compensated for his age, Joel would go out there every night and do everything he could to stop situations like the one on that screen from happening again.

Now if only he could wrap Paintball in enough bubblewrap…

************

Paintball Meets Drive (This takes place during the three day time skip between the previous arc and the current one)

“I’m telling you, if we wanna stick to the time table, we’ve gotta pick up the pace.” Three men were standing around the store they had broken into, with one of them hurriedly grabbing expensive antiques to put in the box one of the other men was holding. At the same time, his other hand was motioning for the third guy to get moving. “You know what happens if we’re late.”

“Oooh, ooh!” The response came not from the man’s companions, but from a smaller figure in a jumpsuit covered in various images in different colors. The newcomer had just sprung feet first through a narrow window in a corner of the room that barely accommodated him. “Do you turn into pumpkins!?”

Even as the three men were turning to react to that, Paintball crashed feet first into the one who had been talking, taking him to the floor. “Wait, no,” he lamented while rolling forward off the man he had just left wheezing on the ground, “the carriage became a pumpkin. So that would mean you guys turn back into mice?”

The man who had been doing nothing quickly started to pull a pistol out of its holster at his side, but just as he started to take aim, Paintball pointed that way without even looking and sent four rapid shots of red in the same motion. The first hit the gun, the second his chest, the third a cash register, and the last struck the wall behind the man. The weapon was immediately torn from his grasp and sent into that wall. At the same time, the cash register was yanked off the counter it was resting on and sent flying into the red mark on the man’s chest. The impact made him double in on himself and collapse to the ground near his companion, who was still struggling to catch his breath from that first kick.

The last guy, who had been standing there holding the box of precious antiques, took one look at what was going on before simply heaving the box toward the Star-Touched. “Eh, I’m not all that into old stuff anyway!” With those blurted words, he spun to run out of the room as fast as he could go.

Considering where they were, it wasn't hard for Paintball to realize what was in the box. He immediately triggered spots of blue on his shoes to spring up and over the thing while it was being flung at him, pointing down with his hand to send a wide spray of orange paint that completely covered every object inside. The box slammed into the floor, but the paint kept the antiques perfectly safe, and would disappear in a few seconds anyway, leaving them untouched.

Not wanting to just let that guy get away that easily, Paintball smoothly landed that flip and chased him out of the building. In the distance, he could already see the man jumping into the back of a van. There was some sort of shouting going on, an argument. Rather than give them time to settle it, he immediately shoved the door shut behind himself and used a quick shot of pink paint against part of the door and the wall before pushing them together with one hand so it wouldn't open easily. Hopefully that would keep those guys in there busy so they wouldn’t just be able to walk out and disappear.

By that point, the van had started up and was pulling out. Before it could get away, Paintball ran that way and leapt up with help from blue paint before sending a shot of red at the roof. The van was just picking up speed as he was yanked that way. He'd rather take the men inside by surprise instead of immediately being shot at through the roof, so he used a shot of black to silence the metal just before landing on it.

Okay, now he was on the van. He just had to use a bit of pink on the metal there to make a hole, drop inside, and--

It was a good thing he was using red paint to stick to the van, because in that second, the thing took off. It didn't simply start to pick up speed. It instantly vanished into a tunnel of rapidly-shifting neon lights. To those standing outside, it would look as though the van and the Touched crouched atop it both elongated to several times their normal size, then catapulted forward and vanished. Stuck against the roof, Paintball found himself staring all around, slack-jawed as the tunnel of lights grew brighter and more chaotic over those few seconds. Something… something was happening to him. Something about this method of travel was interacting with his spacial sense in a weird… disturbing way. It was over before his red paint even wore off, but it felt like an eternity. Things almost seemed to be shifting inside his own brain.

When the van finally stopped, Paintball swayed from one side to the other, before his paint expired. In that moment, he slipped too far one way and fell all the way to the pavement. His suit protected him from the worst of the impact, but he still fell with a thud on his back before simply lying there next to the driver’s side door, staring blearily upward.

A moment later, that door popped open, and another helmeted head poked its way out to look down. In the background, the sound people arguing in the back of the van could be heard. They apparently weren't aware of his presence. But the driver was. Some part of Paintball knew this was dangerous, that it was bad. And yet, all he could do was lay there and stare at the other helmet.

“Ohhhh pretty colors. I like the colors,” he slurred deliriously. His voice sounded soft and a bit inebriated, as if the boy had been out drinking at far too young of an age. “I make colors too, they go ooooh shphshh… wait no, that’s not right, I made the wrong sound. I’m sorry, I’ma hafeta try ‘gain. I make colors and go ffffffffftttttt….” There was a pause before he giggled and spoke in a conspiratorial tone to the man staring down at him. “That’s not the sound they make either.”

“Were you riding on the roof?” the driver asked, sounding concerned while keeping his voice low. “I don’t think you should do that. You’re supposed to be inside the vehicle, not outside. That’s the rules. You didn’t even have a seatbelt. You have to have a seatbelt.”

“Sokay,” Paintball informed him while gesturing broadly as he lay there on his back. “I’m a professional. I know what I’m doing. I know-- I hafeta take you to jail. You’re a robber. Or a driver for robbers. I ‘unno how they settle that. Assessory. Wait no, that’s wrong. Acks. Acks-serry. Acksery.” He giggled. “Why can’t I say the word? Acksorcery.”

“Drive?” A voice called from the back of the van. “You say something?”

The driver paused, staring down at Paintball for a moment before shaking his head. “No, I’m just talking to myself. We need to leave, make another jump just in case.” He looked down at Paintball briefly before adding in a whisper, “I hope this wears off and you’ll be okay. Maybe we can fight another time. Good luck.”

“You hold on right there, Mister Ass-tarry,” Paintball slurred, “you don’t wanna resist arrest. I’ll fight you now. Put up your dukies.”

By the time he raised his fists and focused on where the helmeted face should have been, it was gone. And so was the van with the men inside.

And in about five minutes, once the effect of riding on top of that van through the warp tunnel completely wore off, Paintball finally managed to pick himself up, look around, and realize something important. Besides the fact that there was a new Fell-Touched in town with some sort of warp speed vehicle powers.

The cops were probably having a hell of a time dealing with the door back at that shop.