Fenris Chains - Dromi
#6 of Supers, Heroes and Villains
Well, here it is, part 2 of the Fenris Chains trilogy. Three rats with superpowers fighting the bad fight. ;)
This time the Fenris Chain in question is Dromi, the oldest of the three.
Criticism, comments, insults, all are welcome. Enjoy, or don't.
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"I've had sex with her." is the first thing Pehr said when I told my brothers that we'd been hired by Lady Injustice.
Kaarlo and I stared at him for a bit, trying to guess whether he was serious. Eventually, Kaarlo set down his book and just shook his head. "At this point, I'd be surprised if you hadn't." he said.
I expressed my disbelief with the eloquence and sophistication my brothers have come to expect of me. "You have not, you lying sack of shit!"
"No, I really have!" Pehr insisted. "It was about five years ago. You were in prison after that Russia fiasco and this fool," he nods to Kaarlo, who scowls at him angrily. "was in America. I was working as a guard at the museum and she was casing my bank when I went to drop off my earnings from the night before. I accidentally bumped into her and one thing led to another..."
"Yes, all right," I said. "We don't need a play by play. How come you never told us you'd met her before?"
Pehr shrugged. "Never came up, and you never want to hear about my sex life before. Also, she only slept with me to get information."
"What could you possibly know that someone like Lady Injustice would want?"
"The codes to the museum's security system."
"Have you ever tried getting to know a girl before you jumped into bed with her?" Kaarlo asked, probably not expecting an answer.
Pehr crossed his arms and looked imperiously down his long nose at Kaarlo. "At least I have sex. You're still moping over Fido back in America."
I tried and failed to contain a laugh, and Pehr rounded on me and asked, "And how is Lubyanka doing these days, Lauri?"
That shut me up but good. The "Russia fiasco" Pehr called it. Lubyanka, also known as The Dreaded Lubyanka for her ruthless efficiency, is Russia's top heroine. Named after the infamous prison, she's in charge of protecting Russia's capital, and the president in particular. Despite being relatively young, about Kaarlo's age I think, The Dreaded Lubyanka has established herself as a proud symbol of Russia's might and has defended her reputation by defeating any villain who's come after her looking to make a name for themselves.
Perikato - a big name supervillain here in Finland - put out a hit on her. In the hopes of getting into his good graces I tried to take the contract. It was a pretty big disaster. I took a plane to Moscow, scouted her movements, and when we met face to face, the next thing I remember we started making out right there in public. Or so I thought. It turns out that this was all just a dream because she caught onto me tailing her pretty early on and circled back on me. Caught me with some sleeping gas and poof: I was out like a light. She actually caught the whole thing on camera. My brothers will never let me live it down.
"Never you mind," I said snippily, then grunted as I realized that Pehr had managed to completely derail the conversation. Again. "This doesn't matter. We've got a job to do, so get your shit together."
"What has Lady Injustice hired us to do?" Kaarlo asked as Pehr basked in his victory.
"Ironically, she wants us to rob a museum." I said.
"No problem. They haven't changed the codes in like a million years, I doubt they've done it since I left." Pehr said.
"Not the Finnish museum, te tyhma, the British one." This was met this dead silence by my brothers. Even though he's a tyhma, Pehr knows the score, and Kaarlo knows it too.
"So let me get this straight," Kaarlo says finally, struggling to remain calm. "You want us to fly to London, a city that every major hero in the world visits at least once a month, a city where the Registration Headquarters, with its highly trained task force specifically assembled to fight supers, resides. And you want us to break into one of the most famous museums in the world, somehow avoiding the alarms that will bring Skyline down on our heads, which can only end with us being sent to Folsom at best, assuming they don't just lock us up in Belvedere and throw away the key. And what exactly is Lady Injustice paying us for this job?"
"Ten thousand Euros."
"I've always wanted to visit London, how about you, Kaarlo?" Pehr said, instantly switching his tune at the mention of money.
Kaarlo sighed. "I guess we're going to London."
"Hey, do you think I should ask out Kaitlyn Lee?" Gleipnir asked as he climbed down the rope after I reached the floor.
"I think that is quite possibly the worst idea you've had in a very long time." Leyding said from above me.
"Why? She's hot, I'm hot. She's a rat, I'm a rat. We've got so much in common." Gleipnir's insistence on talking about trivial things during a mission has never ceased to annoy me.
"Veliseni, you've got about as much chance of scoring with Kaitlyn Lee as I have with Erhaben." Leyding said.
"Yeah, but see, Kaitlyn Lee isn't engaged to anyone. You saying I couldn't score with her?"
"I could give you so many reasons why you wouldn't, but I really only need to give one: Scorn." I called back to them as I walked among the displays, looking for our target. Times were tough for the Fenris Chains; we'd cut ties with our former employers, the Second Wave, and gone independent, working any job for anyone willing to pay (We weren't very expensive, We'd had to lower our prices several times, as no one with the kind of money we wanted was willing to hire us after our disastrous departure from the Second Wave). The current job was to steal a rock for an American villain, Lady Injustice.
"I'm not afraid of Scorn." Gleipnir said dismissively.
"You should be. Her fire is strong enough to burn Skyline, and if she can burn Skyline, she can burn you."
Skyline, the Ultimate Wolf, is a hero, and one of the few people in the world whose strength and durability can match Gleipnir's. He's also got flight and some amount of super speed. He's a formidable hero that few supers are crazy enough to fight. Scorn is one of them.
"Whatever, Scorn tries to come after me, I'll just turn on the charms and she'll be putty in my fingers." Gleipnir said.
"So your plan, in the event that your attempt to woo her best friend fails, is to woo her?" I asked. "Typerys."
"Whatever." Gleipnir said, rolling his eyes. "Is this it?"
I moved over to see the display Gleipnir was standing in front of. A fairly large rock, cut like a jewel, but not evidently any sort of rare gem, sat in the middle.
"That's it." I confirmed.
"You'd think they'd have better security for such a big rock." Leyding said.
"The Lady's instructions were spot on. I don't know why she doesn't steal it herself if she's got the codes to the museum's alarm system, but I'm not complaining." I raised my fist and punched the display case. Surprisingly, it didn't break, but cracked heavily.
"Made of some strong stuff." Leyding observed. "What's so valuable about this rock?"
"The Lady didn't say directly, but she implied that it's magical."
Magic is a rare thing, a pretty closely kept secret among the super community - one of the few things we could all agree on is that the governments of the world don't need to know about it. There weren't any magicians that any of us knew about, but there were lots of magical items floating around from some point in the past when there apparently were. They tended to pop up in museums more than anywhere else for some reason.
"You think there's any more here?" Gleipnir asked.
"I doubt it." Leyding said. "But let's not find out."
I punched the case again and this time it completely shattered. The next thing I knew after that was a dull pain in my chest as I crashed backwards into another display.
I shook my head and looked to where I was standing and felt a cold chill stab into my heart. My attacker was Skyline, who was holding Leyding in the air by his throat.
Yes, that Skyline.
I'm ashamed to admit that I stood there like a useless lump, frozen in fear while Skyline choked the life out of my brother.
Gleipnir, too brash to be afraid, threw a punch at Skyline, but the wolf caught his wrist and held on tight. Gleipnir threw a punch with his other fist, and Skyline released Leyding to grab Gleipnir's other wrist. Skyline snarled something at Gleipnir that I couldn't hear and headbutted him in the face, once, twice, three times, then raised his feet and double-kicked Gleipnir in the chest. Hard.
For anyone else such a maneuver would have ripped their arms clean off; as it is, it dislocated both of Gleipnir's shoulders. As he wailed in pain, I finally broke free of my self-imposed paralysis.
My brothers were in danger and I was failing in my duty as the oldest to keep them safe.
I reached for the first thing that came to hand, a cane from one of the displays. Hoping to distract Skyline long enough for Gleipnir to recover and maybe deal a decisive blow - I was under no illusion that my strength was enough to match Skyline's - I screamed as loud as I could and swung the cane at Skyline's head.
I expected it to shatter into a thousand pieces, and he probably did to, because he ignore me was and turning back to Leyding when the cane connected with his head. Imagine my surprise when I was greeted not with a shattered cane, but a splash of blood as Skyline went flying into the nearest wall, cratering it. He fell to the ground, not dead I later learned but unconscious.
I stood there for a moment in shock, then dropped the cane like it was on fire. It clattered to the ground like an ordinary wooden cane that wasn't a magical item that had just killed one of the most powerful supers on the planet.
I didn't give Skyline a chance to recover, or the police sirens I could hear in the distance time to get closer. I grabbed the gem and stashed it in a bag I'd brought, then picked up my brothers and high-tailed it out of there.
I ran flat out for twenty minutes before I even dared to slow down. Kaarlo had passed out, but Pehr was still conscious. Together, with not a bit of screaming on Pehr's part, we managed to pop his shoulders back into a place. After checking to make sure Kaarlo was ok, I sank back against the wall of the dingy alley and sighed. The events of the night caught up to me and I started to nod off. As I fell asleep I felt Pehr curl up close to me like he had when we were kids. We'd find a hospital in the morning, but for that moment, I was just happy we'd gotten away in one piece.