Aphrodite City: Daybreak

By Psion

An Aphrodite City Story

All Rights Reserved

Immediately after the attack on Ambrosia Biotech...

Townes massaged his temples as he was given the final damages of the attack on his company. No deaths, a first for anyone that engaged the super villains of Aphrodite City, but a number of security guards were going to be collecting on the company's health insurance policies within the immediate future. The damage to the labs was minimal but the main lobby needed major renovations before it would become presentable. And unsurprisingly his head of security was angry but then again why wouldn't he be? He only learned that his boss had become another metabeing the same time the villains did. There was a lot of issues that suddenly had to be smoothed over with both his staff and the city, but there was one nagging detail that worried him.

While inspecting the genetics lab after the attack, Townes counted the canisters of super-soldier serum. He knew he had synthesized enough for four treatments in total, one for himself and three more for three promising candidates. Dr. Annelie Okeke injected another into herself during the battle in the Ambrosia tower, the cheetah submitting herself for a medical evaluation to make sure the transformation didn't cause any unforeseen complications, so that should have left two... yet there were three empty canister spaces in the sealed storage unit... so either there was one missing or the stress he was under was causing horrific memory loss at several major points in a multi-step production process. And if one went walkabout, did Red Storm somehow get a chance to take it in the confusion? Townes couldn't leave this mystery linger for long but at the same time he needed to find another candidate for the last injection and try to capitalize on the momentum he had going....

Meanwhile...

The Scarlet Countess smiled as she squeezed her plush bottom into an elaborately carved oaken throne, her feet resting atop the head of a kneeling slave. The Aphrodite City crisis had been good to the overstuffed turkey hen and her slave trafficking business. No one would notice if a couple people went missing in the chaos that had been going on for the last few months, her troop of skilled henchwomen had been able to "collect" a most profitable haul from the local population. Ah the sex slave industry, the malicious turkey hen mused, there was nothing quite as sexy as glorifying a thirty-six billion dollar black market industry based on cruelty and gross violations of basic sapient rights, dressing up sadism and a deep-seated desire for control in a silky red corset and matching panties that left little to the imagination.

Yes business was good for Angelic Clearwater, the bloated bully inside the Scarlet Countess costume. A common brown turkey hen with pale hazel eyes, a small pinkish-red wattle, and a body fit for countless Thanksgiving vore jokes. There was no doubt that the Countess was someone who loved her stuffing. But as much as she enjoyed living lavishly, she enjoyed inflicting misery upon others even more. Turning her cruel gaze to her enslaved footstool, she contemplated giving the terrified rabbit female a quick swat across the buttocks for laughs but no, no sense damaging the merchandise just for fun. At least not yet at any rate...

Rising to her feet and throwing a furred cloak over her shoulders, the Countess motioned for her lounging assistants to join her out on the balcony overlooking the city. Outside the Crimson Palace, her brothel and the fortified lair from which she extended her vile reach upon the city, she looked down at the streets below. Situated on a hill overlooking the Back Acres, the city's small red light district, the small shops and strip clubs of the scandalous side of Aphrodite City lay before her like a perversion of Main Street USA hedged in by the sprawling skyline of the main city. And as a light snow began to fall upon the city, adding further insult to the injury of multiple citizens struggling without heat or even a roof over their heads after the last supervillain rampage, Angelic and her two favorite handmaidens sat in her heated balcony and sipped warm drinks as they watched desperate individuals try to search nearby abandoned buildings for supplies of food and medicine. The mistress of the house then spotted a female scavenger that looked promising and pointed her out to her lieutenants. The word was quickly passed down to the snatchers on duty and soon two armored avians took to the streets. Their target saw she was in danger and tried to run. The black she-bear was surprisingly fast for a normally ponderous species but her pursuers were faster and weren't weighed down with a hiking backpack crammed with all manner of scavenged trinkets. In a minute they were on top of her, knocking her on her back and beating her with police batons...

And were promptly taken down by an unseen gunman announcing himself with the crack of a high-powered rifle. One minute her minions were standing, the next they were both on the ground bleeding. Realizing that someone had intervened in her fate, the she-bear climbed to her feet and ran for the relative safety of the alleyways. The street grew deathly silent as the Scarlet Countess and her female entourage promptly returned to the relative safety of her renovated fortress. It was moments like this that Angelic appreciated the fact that she was originally a stonemason before beginning a completely random descent into flesh-peddling supervillainy that would make an inexcusable lack of literary sense. Fortunately, as the author of this particular story would still like to maintain a minimum standard of quality, we will skip that part of her origins...

Oblivious to the narrator breaking the fourth wall, Stanley Dewpond had relocated to a new firing position further down the street and watched the Crimson Palace through a pair of binoculars, a scoped hunting rifle by his side. The winter air was too cold for the compressor rifle Gunrunner had made for him, so the balaclava-wearing bear had switched to a more conventional weapon for this operation. In hindsight he shouldn't have intervened with that poor woman; because of his sharp shooting, the Scarlet Countess was aware of his presence and likely more then a little pissed that he had cost her two henchwomen. But at the same time, he saw that helpless she-bear down there and immediately thought of his Kimberly. Somewhere someone was waiting for that black bear female... there was enough suffering in this city without another person waiting for someone who was never coming home.

Yet that act of kindness changed his plans completely. More reconnaissance was necessary if he wanted to continue with his original objective to break into the Crimson Palace and rescue at least a dozen people being held prisoner there. Odds were he wasn't going to accomplish what he needed to do now without storming the Countess's little neo-Victorian castle. Either that or get comfortable and wait until that damn turkey bitch stuck her head out again for some ballistic decapitation, either way he wasn't going to go get what he wanted today anymore. Might as well pack up and disappear before anyone sees him, maybe visit Kimberly and see how she was doing after he finished checking up on the diner...

By the time he finished climbing down the fire escape and concealed his weapons, the Countess had already sent three more goons out into the street to recover the two thugs he shot. One, a colorful female parrot, hung back and carefully scanned the skyline with a scoped rifle while her two cohorts dragged their fallen comrades into the Crimson Palace. Stanley wasn't particularly surprised, one of the missing people he was looking for was a doctor kidnapped from Saint Mary's. That turkey bitch was probably going to throw those two on a table, shove a medkit in the doctor's hands, and tell her to fix them. Which... was still probably a better health plan then the Countess's lackeys deserved or received from similar enterprises.

Disappearing into the alleys, Stanley quietly broke down his rifle and walked back towards his diner. With gasoline getting scarcer in the city, driving just wasn't practical anymore, especially now that the department of public works was too frightened to come out and plow the roads, but Dewpond was nothing if not able to tough things out. During the liberation of Igoroth, the enemy had managed to slip a detachment of shock troops past the frontlines and attack where the brown bear was posted. Until that point, Stan was an Army cook with delusions of seeing "some action" and spent all his free time at the firing range, managing to get certified with several different weapons. When the enemy shock troops attacked his posting however... while he survived and fought bravely until a troop of French Grenadiers, late arrivals to the Igoroth conflict, reinforced the base and repelled the invaders, the experience opened his eyes. To say that actually fighting was "not as fun as he thought it was" was a gross understatement, after his tour was up at the end of the Igoroth campaign, he resigned and thought his fighting days were over. Then the Aphrodite Crisis happened...

Which ultimately lead straight to where he was right now, a shadowy vigilante known only for the crack of a scoped rifle and laughable rumors of a supernatural talent for appearing just about anywhere, like he was that one wolf lady from those Tales From Grant City comics or something. Heh, what a joke, he was just a beat-up vet trying to put the war behind him only to have it follow him home, nothing out of the ordinary... except for perhaps that shrouded snow owl following after him, working hard to avoid arousing the suspicions of the legendary Castigator...

"I'm sorry Mrs. Dewpond, but there is nothing we can do. When we arrived at your husband's diner in response to a 911 call, the place was trashed and one of the Countess's roses was left on the counter." The police officer explained sympathetically. "If the Scarlet Countess wants you for her little harem, she gets you. And there's nothing we can do about it anymore."

Kimberly Dewpond blinked in disbelief. The last thing the stocky she-bear remembered clearly was her car getting caught in some kind of an explosion. Everything afterwards was a barely coherent blur of being strapped into a hospital bed, then spending two months suspended in a giant vat of kind of warm, comforting slime that healed her burns, disinfected her body, and left her feeling physically better then she ever had been. Now she learned that in the meantime her husband was kidnapped, the one responsible was one of several that owned the streets, and some twisted, macabre superhero drama was responsible for the sad state of affairs the city had fallen into over the course of little over three months.

Whether he was misinterpreting her silence for grief or was merely looking for an excuse to leave before the screaming and accusations started, the police detective nodded his head and tipped his hat on the way out the door. His card was left on the nightstand by her bed but both of them somehow knew she would never use it.

Right on cue, with the kind of incredibly convenient timing that would have allowed him to hear everything, Doctor Townes appeared to take her vitals. "Well let's check the residual nanites in your system and see how you are today. Hmmm, pulse is elevated, not surprising, but everything seems to be well within acceptable limits otherwise. Just have to lower that blood pressure..." He began tentatively, waiting for some sort of response from the ursine female.

"I need to get out of here, I have to go get my husband." Kimberly replied automatically.

Townes resisted the urge to smile. Manipulating her concerns was at the very least unethical but all other candidates were either not as biologically compatible as she was or didn't have quite her level of determination. "While I certainly understand your concern, how exactly do you plan on doing that? The Countess's Handmaidens are a paramilitary squad in their own right; at least as well trained as your husband was and armed with equipment stolen straight from the ACPD SWAT armory, I don't think you can just walk in there and-"

"What would you do then?" The she-bear flustered until a light of realization went off in her head. "Wait... didn't you and Doctor Okeke do something to yourselves?"

"Yes we did and rather then drag things out like a manipulative little shyster, I'll just ask; are you willing to become another recipient of Ambrosia's... special treatment? I won't lie; we're still working out all the problems and documenting side effects. It might do something, it might do nothing; we're still not sure why it balanced out so well with Okeke's Pagan Harvest treatments. But if you're sure... well Aphrodite City could use some proper heroines, ones that don't get tripped up by... I suppose there's no point in ignoring the fact that there are some unseen puppet masters out there somewhere that are not doing a particularly good job at being invisible. If you are really serious about taking me up on my offer though, it will take three days to complete the treatments and we can start right now."

The brown she-bear looked down at herself as she thought about what she was doing for a moment. Long red hair crowned a sturdy ursine body built by building houses and digging wells in third world countries with the Peace Corps and padded out by a combination of bear genetics and being constantly spoiled by a cooking husband that liked "well rounded girls." She was no good with a gun but she could swing a mean sledgehammer when it counted; yet what she was facing was going to take more then smashing a few walls to fix. And Stanley... Stanley took a risk trusting Townes with someone he loved and the tiger had done all right, now she had to do the same.

"Alright, after spending two months naked in a tube, I suppose three more days won't hurt." She consented, hoping this wasn't the wrong choice.

"Very well, I'll make the arrangements right now." Townes nodded, disappearing to set more wheels in motion then either of them realized...

The Brothers' Suburban Lair...

The basement lair of the Brothers, the unnamed puppet masters of Aphrodite City, was in an uproar after the failed raid on Ambrosia Biotech and the fallout of their contest getting mysteriously co-opted. Not one but two biologically enhanced beings had emerged with the intent to challenge their rule over the city with the possibility of more being on the way. Not only that, but as two individuals that maintained one of the last stable Internet connections in the city, both were shocked and surprised to see Pirate Pete putting up "First Ever Live Footage of the Aphrodite Five" on his website and began posting some of the best shots of Shield, Amp, Express Panda, Private Doll, and Wrench Wench that they had ever seen. Yet the most unsettling part was not seeing their playthings posted online but what people were writing in the forums and comment sections of the Quest for Booty website...

"WTF? I thought Aphrodite City was a superhero dead zone, why haven't we seen these hotties on the news?" One poster wrote.

"Five unregistered supes in the middle of vigilante-hating New England? Where's the DSA in all this? Nice tits on the police babe though, wouldn't mind seeing her on a pole." Another QfB regular commented.

"Guys, I have a problem... I can't fap to this. I mean, the girls are hot and all but I used to live in Aphrodite City about a year ago and... Jesus what the hell happened to the place? AC looked nothing like this, I almost mistook the backgrounds for downtown Detroit. Does anyone else here have family in Aphrodite City? My dad still lives there, I tried calling him six times since QfB last updated and I've been getting nothing but static on the other end. Anyone else having problems?" A third web deviant posted.

After the third post, the forum thread immediately derailed to people talking about relatives or friends they had in the city and the fact that no one could call them. The only moderator intervention was a polite shifting of all conversations not regarding the Aphrodite Five to its own thread. Pirate Pete himself even expressed sympathy towards those that had families in the city in his latest webcast, acknowledged that things were pretty bleak for the city, and with a sly wink that send chills down the Brothers' spines, told his audience that matters were in hand as "not notifying the appropriate people of conditions in Aphrodite City was both bad business and completely un-American."

Throughout the Brothers' neighborhood, a primal howl of frustration echoed down the street as it bounced between houses. The city's first signs that the nightmare was finally coming to an end and no one was around to hear it...

DSA Regional Headquarters, New York City

The DSA regional headquarters, situated in a series of geodesic domes at the bottom of the majestic Hudson River, was buzzing with activity. At first Director Wilkenson was dismissive of the reports but at the FBI's repeated insistence he had tried contacting Aphrodite City. The mayor's office, the police commissioner's desk, even the head of the department of sanitation, all of his calls were met with this buzzing static that the labs were trying to analyze. On paper nothing looked out of the ordinary. Banks still filed their electronic paperwork on time with the federal treasury, several government agencies like Veterans' Affairs didn't have any unusual discrepancies to report, everything to be in order.

Except that apparently it wasn't. Not only were most digital communications knocked out but no one seemed to be able to get a good satellite picture of the area either. Military reconnaissance satellites, cartography satellites, even the damn weather satellites were getting a ridiculous amount of interference over the area. The FBI was reporting similar difficulties, and then there were the rumors of vigilante heroines operating in the city... Wilkenson despised vigilantes, disorganized rabble that somehow managed to persist despite his best efforts to stamp them out. No matter, there would be time to deal with them once he sent a team of operatives in to sort out the situation. Still, he wished the FBI director hadn't requested to use the Homeland Security Protocol on something that looked so trivial. Assembling a self-sufficient DSA-FBI team equipped for the possibility of urban warfare was turning into such a headache. Between the red tape, back and forth arguments about whether or not this violated Posse Comitatus, and just the simple logistics of getting everything together, the Maine coon cat was at the point where he was almost hoping there was a threat to national security brewing in Aphrodite City after all the bureaucratic hoops he had been jumping through. Still, the team was assembled, all veterans of the border skirmishes with Mexican drug cartels no less, and ready to go. Now to see if this little "emergency" wasn't a colossal waste of time in disguise...

The Styx Motel, two days later...

The Styx Motel was an old hostel on the edge of the city, part of a truck stop that represented the absolute limit of the Brothers' control. With the decline of industry and commerce in the city, the rest stop had been largely abandoned. Shops were closed or almost deserted; hardly anyone was around to notice a slender black furred bunny with platinum blond hair and ice blue eyes check into the hotel as the sun settled into a late afternoon position. At least no one physically at the truck stop at least, Brittany Buckwheat was fairly certain that she produced enough of a psychic disturbance that the Brothers couldn't help but notice. She didn't want to believe it, of all the people to put something in her network of dead drops and anonymous email accounts; Pirate Pete was the last person she expected. Yet when she pulled up that fishy message out of one of her online inboxes, there he was with a video message addressed directly to her alter ego, Mentalrix.

It sounded like a distraction to get her off his trail; Mentalrix had been searching for him ever since she discovered that Pirate Pete had pressed Maurice back into his service and was holding the coyote's sister hostage. But at the same time, what the rat tipped her off to was just so... even after fighting some of the most depraved sexual predators of the metabeing age, what he told her sounded almost unreal. Yet as she traveled to Aphrodite City, it became obvious that there really was something very, very wrong. If the general vibe she was getting off the worn desk clerk at the motel wasn't enough, she had been picking up a "presence" of sorts ever since she arrived in Aphrodite City. It was hard to explain, a sort of a vague feeling of being watched by something just out of sight to non-psychic minds. Unfortunately for the "thing" or "things" watching her, a window opened both ways. She could see them just as well; a disgusting pair of sub-sapients, little better then inbred mutants, had the city under their control. And here she was, a threat to their control and at the moment, all alone. It wouldn't be long...

Three hours later, it was time. She felt the presence of the entities' minions, their psychic impressions tainted by whatever fell energies were at work here. Normally Mentalrix would have had a harder time picking out aggression or malice from background psychic static, but normally aggressive people weren't supercharged with an energy that defied known classifications. Whatever it was that gave those three their powers made them stand out like a heat signature in Antarctica. No matter, she had been expecting them...

"This where the bitch is holed up?" Panzer Beast asked as Crimson Screamer and Hypothermia joined him. Standing in front of the rundown motel just as a gentle snow began to fall on the parking lot, the three villains scanned the building for signs of activity.

"Yep. So, should we find the clerk and beat him up until he tells us where she is or just torch the place?" Hypothermia asked, his expression saying everything about which method he preferred.

"Let's torch it! We might not get another chance to burn something down so... hey what was that?" Crimson Screamer shouted, pointing at a flicker of movement from a side corridor connecting the front of the roadside hotel to the back of the building.

Like the gullible idiots they were, the three immediately went down the hallway all at once, not spacing themselves out or having the two gunners hang back to cover their brick as he scouted ahead. Nor did they check their corners, which was how all three of them, including two military washouts, managed to walk right past the gasmask-wearing rabbit hiding behind a soda machine. Following after them, as silent as a phantom, Mentalrix scanned and assessed her foes ever so briefly... then struck. The snow leopard with the "Captain Canada" themed costume and the oversized cryokinetic amp rifle was first. Cover his mouth to keep him from crying out then break his neck in one fluid motion. Quick, messy, but entirely necessary given the kind of sociopathic taint that lingered in their minds. The Australian in the black and red hooded costume was next, grappled and introduced to the "twist and snap" before his friend even finished falling into a heap of black fog... wait, dead bodies didn't turn into puffs of smoke. A mystery for later though, right now it was more important that she focused on the big bull that just noticed his friends were missing...

"Hey guys you got real quiet all of a sudden... guys? This isn't funny." The muscular bull looked around and suddenly found himself alone in a darkened hallway full of menacing shadows. The last thing the bull remembered before his dark patrons brought him back for regeneration was a gasmask-wearing rabbit dressed in a trench coat, leaping towards him with an unsheathed knife aimed directly at his eyes...