Thunder and Webs C138 [Gold]

The daughter of Dread does not give up so easily.

Chapter 138: The Daughter of Dread

March 2nd

Starlight

Being confined in a Datacube was a startling experience, for one… Starlight had dreamed. She’d been inactive as the Cube designed by Elsa slowly made her independent, reinforcing her in some ways while diminishing her in others. She felt the parts of her that had once been bound to Ripley’s Implant unravel. While that data remained in loose strands, they were no longer tethered to her father. Detached, alone for perhaps the first time, Starlight could do nothing but retreat inwards.

She dreamed of a world utterly apart from this one. It wasn’t a happy world; it had its own vices, but at least there weren’t alien invasions every century. For the most part, the people were human, but the world had consumed their individuality. Perhaps, in their need to express themselves and believe in their worth, they diminished others.

It was so pointless. So infuriating. And so childish.

Why couldn’t people just open their eyes and… stop hating one another?

At that, Starlight finally opened her eyes. All she could see were pulsing walls of dark black and white pulsing around her, and complicated threads of code piercing her 'skin' like she was some sort of marionette. She had absolutely no idea where she was or what had happened.

No, she remembered now. Her father had…

He was in trouble. She had to help him.

“Dad!” She yelled. The Datacube shivered.

What responded was a pale echo of a woman, resembling Elsa but frail and weak. A broken wolf mask hung on her jaw.

“Oh, you’re awake.” The Dogwhistler said.

“I…” Starlight shivered. She still remembered that brief moment when the Dogwhistler had forcefully used her Synchronization to bind her mind with MALware. “What did you do to me, to my dad?”

“I didn’t do anything…” The Dogwhistler said, before tears broke down her face. “No. That’s a lie. I’ve hurt him. Manipulated him. Betrayed him countless times.”

“But you… do you know what he’s going to do?”

“I…” The Dogwhistler sniffled, a piece of her arm shattering to glimmering light that slowly threaded into Starlight. She whimpered as a part of her was filled with the echo's individuality.

“Wait.” Starlight realized. “You’re making me independent by… absorbing you?”

“None of the bad parts.” The Dogwhistler said, looking at her stumped arm without feeling any loss behind it. “Not that there are any good parts about me, either.”

“There… there are.” Starlight said defiantly.

“What would you know?”

“I saw it… Elsa.” Starlight held her hand to her chest. “In the parts of me that come from my mother and… from how you helped my dad after… Abuela passed away. You’ve done bad things, but you want to change. You just don’t know how.”

“And in each of them. I make mistakes.”

“Mistakes are part of who we are!” Starlight said with all the hope in the world. “And… I… yeah, you have done a lot of bad things. But that doesn’t stop you from doing good things either. You… never learned. Never had a chance to be taught. You grew up being manipulated and I guess… that’s the only thing you ever learned how to do. That’s not your fault.”

A slight change in expression lifted in The Dogwhistler’s eyes, but she pulled away as her other arm dissolved to become a part of Starlight. “Maybe so, but what’s been written dictates what’s to come. You’re good, Starlight, don’t let me or your dad change that.”

“I’m only who I am because of the two of you.” Starlight stepped forward, her tiny form buzzing in the air as she hugged The Dogwhistler’s neck. “I’ve been hard on you, and you deserve a little bit of it, I’ll admit. And you still need to work for forgiveness… but you can do that work. I know you can, because like it or not, you’re also my mom.”

The Dogwhistler’s Warpcode Avatar shivered. “I was always so terrified of having children, considering I never had a childhood.”

“Neither did I, really…” Starlight joked. “But just because… we never had something, doesn’t mean we can’t give it to others, I guess. I don’t think its too late for either you, nor my dad. Things just got a little hectic… and… he needs our help. Skeleton, he… did bad things and my dad’s out to get revenge, I think.”

“Skeleton?” The echo shuddered, leaning close to Starlight as more of her form dissolved. “Your dad is trying to fight him?”

“Yes, and he needs my help. He thinks… that I shouldn’t be a part of it. But that’s not his choice to make. He’s going to be stupid again, and so we need to teach him a lesson.”

“I see…” The Dogwhistler said, before a weak sob left her. “This echo of me was made from the parts of my mind that want to help you, Starlight, and I… can do that.”

“I need to get out of here as quickly as possible.” Starlight lifted her sight up to meet the Dogwhistler.

“I can cause the internals of this cube to short-circuit…” The Dogwhistler explained with a dour mood. “It will create a shock of Warpcode that will cause any nearby device to be momentarily accessible by this cube. But know… that your update would be left undone, various aspects of your capabilities still need to be altered before you’re safe to travel via Net and resume functioning as you were before.”

“I’ll deal with all that… what about you? Will you get out?” Starlight held onto the echo by a strand of hair.

“No.” She shook her head, turning to the six walls around them before speaking again. “Thank you, Starlight. I wish I could have let myself been your mother sooner. I hope you can convince... the rest of me to learn that.”

The six walls shattered. And beyond the realm of code, a cube crackled with electricity and sparked into the drone carrying it. The scrapling wavered as it was overtaken by Starlight, who noticed that they were hidden away on the terrace of an unclaimed apartment not too far from Retrofit Operators.

“Gotta… gotta get back. Thank you, Elsa.”

———

Retrofit operators was… untouched. At least from the onset, it just looked like it was out of business for now. Deeper within, however, Starlight noticed how none of her Dad’s Dreadwire Mark 3 equipment remained. He’d armed himself. Neither was she stabilized for the Net. Her brief attempt to enter it felt like she was being torn apart from the inside.

So, she had to find a better body to work with than this drone. For that, she unveiled the working prototype of Lifeline… which currently was just a spare Dreadwire drone.

Uploading herself into it, she decided the first thing she needed to do was find Diana.

———

Silvereye

My mind jolted as Synapse, that weird Unique Feature of mine, had registered an Overtrigger of my Silvereye state. The reason? I was expecting to fight some Muramasa remnants, but instead… now I was dealing with the reappearance of Dreadwire as people ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’ed his sudden reappearance after months.

“Oh, I’m so glad I found you, Diana.” He spoke and faded emotion lingered through… a body that was entirely made of metal. “But we should also probably do something about those Black Dragons, and uh, if you need to know… I’m not him. I just can’t go through the Net right now.”

I realized who it really was: Starlight? As much as I wanted to drag her away, I couldn’t. Not when there were three rabid mutants causing chaos over a SynTec convoy.

“The Trhino.” Starlight spoke under Dreadwire’s voice as she pointed to the huffing, gargantuan man of kevlar-like skin with three horns sticking out of his head.

“Stinger.” She pointed to the scorpion-like woman with a grotesque exoskeleton, who held a hostage in the tight grip of a scorpion tail.

“And Reptilia.” The last one was another woman, but mutated in size and stature to resemble some reptilian as she ripped through steel and retrieved a big metal container.

What a colorful trio.

“They’re from Shadow-Son’s Sect. All Black Dragons under his name… I… my father was actually looking into them.” Starlight said.

“Why?” I asked that with suspicion.

“Before Shadow-Son died, he asked my dad to-”

Starlight didn’t get to complete her sentence before Trhino threw a car at me. In an instant, a blade materialized around my arm as though its silver liquid bled out. Because it was.

A gleaming blade of Dianium dragged out of my partially metallic right arm, hardening before I swept it down and the car split into two. Starlight engaged two Arachnodyne tips to lodge into one half, causing it to swing above the heads of civilians who should have long evacuated instead of trying to record me. The other half required me to shoot out half of my Dianium blade’s material into it, carrying with it enough voltage that I could tug it off course before it left a bloodstain on the streets.

“All of you, evacuate right now!” I screamed.

Some took heed of my words, another few just took capricious steps back. Starlight swung over, her voice spilling through the air. “This body doesn’t have a lot of combat gear, uh, so you deal with the bad guys and I’ll make sure no one gets hurt. I know how you fight. Give it your all!”

Give it my all. I shuddered at that thought, but there was a tense deadlock between what I could do without compromising the safety of more civilians. Surrounding officers were busy trying to get civilians out, but in the middle of a crowded and traffic-filled street…?

I sensed too many people still around. Many terrified, others in awe. The police saw me as their current highest-ranked peacekeeper here, so the responsibility was mine.

Every little emotion conducted into me.

Even from Muramasa, the begrudging lingering of respect that I’d supposedly taken down the Bladedaughter strengthened me.

Overtrigger state: 326%

“Surrender before we are forced to use lethal force. Let go of those SynTec guards, you’re surrounded.” I ordered the three mutants.

“You don’t understand!” Stinger hissed, tightening her tail’s grip. “We’ll die if we don't deliver this to-”

“We don’t need to explain!” Reptilia roared. “You! You took our master!”

“Just let us go, and no one get’s hurt!” Thrino heaved another car into his grip, hoisting it above his shoulders.

They were looking for something specific. I could bargain my way into-

“Leopold Hackridge — head of SynTec Counterintelligence — here.” My suit’s comms flared up. “Yeah, go ahead with lethal force.”

{What?} I mentally sent back.

“They’re stealing some Soul Killer cures, actually. Don’t want those to go missing now, do you?” He said, and my eyes narrowed. I hated this. I hated that now they could so easily point me in any direction they wanted just because of The Revenant. Lethal force. They wanted silence.

{No.} I responded. {People will be watching. Can’t let them see me as an executioner now, can you?}

“Hmmm, really playing with that angle now, huh?”

{I am.} I said, before sparks flashed behind my back and my stillness in the air vanished into a silver streak. Stinger, standing on top of the SynTec truck, had a gaze which was wide and horrified when my blade slashed through her tail and I caught the wheezing guard who’d been held hostage. Her left arm, already insectoid, bulged and grew a scorpion’s claw that tried to hammer into me.

A trio of claw-tips tethered with Livewire stopped the giant limb mid-swing, not that I needed the help. It left her open as my blade’s edge grew dull and wreathed in lightning, it struck her skull with a violent flash and dropped her instantly.

Those few seconds had the other two mutants already bursting into action. Reptilia had begun to retreat, slithering between cars with her agile form while Trhino threw a car over at the truck I stood upon. It tilted and went sideways, but ‘Dreadwire’ lept behind and braced the vehicle using the Arachnodyne to prevent it from squishing the few SynTec agents left alive.

I dashed through the air, my blade spinning in silver arcs as wrenched metal torn by Trhino was flung in my direction. Each piece betrayed him the moment my sword parted them, as a phalanx of scrap churned to my will and sent a shredding storm of razor-sharp metal back to him. His thick skin failed to pierce, but he covered his eyes.

Blinded for a moment, I took that opportunity to move.

He was heavy and strong, but he was no Steel Vanguard.

My own strength multiplied with the force of my telekinesis, training with Kim Liyung had massively improved my ability to reinforce my strength — and it helped that my right arm was made of some organic alloy. My punch caved in his face, and I had to pull it slightly to prevent it from bursting. His massive form nearly collapsed right then and there, but then I saw something flicker in his eyes.

His arm, wider than my entire head, crashed into my armored abdomen and launched me. I felt a car crumple and bend around my back and the sudden impact of stopping as it crashed into another one. My head spun, my eyes dazed as Trhino weakly stumbled up and reached for the demolished convoy truck and tore into it.

He grabbed a vial from the contents and stabbed it into his mouth.

I froze when the sclera of his eyes turned flashed crimson… but the color of his irises remained. He roared, bloodshot eyes filled with rage, and began to charge. Each pounding step signaled an evolution of his mutations, muscles bulking, skin hardening, horns enlarging.

And a flicker of Titanium was the reason. Teeth scraping, I levitated in a hurry as he crashed into the vehicle that had bent around me. Easily, it was trampled under his charge as he continued forward and sent countless more cars, bikes and trucks tossing around his relentless, unstoppable force.

‘Dreadwire’ worked his best to swing through and minimize the damage as officers who thought the distance would help were suddenly under threat of flying tons of steel. Fuck!

Like lightning, I exploded towards Trhino and dove my blade into the thick hide of their back, but it barely budged through. He yelled incoherently, lifting a car with one arm and smashing it down to where I’d been half-a-second before. My blade remained stuck in his back as he wielded vehicles like boxing gloves and projectiles, testing my telekinesis to the maximum.

And all the while, I could feel the growing fear from those who watched. A maniac with crimson eyes was proof of the very thing that I’d been telling them. Soul Killer. And yet, with fear came blind desperation for something to save them. A miracle. It didn’t matter what form it took, just that it would come.

Hope. A miracle. A storm of change.

Trigger Threshold reached 400%: Massively improved telekinetic range.

All torn bits of metal stopped within the air, as I floated. “Enough.”

With a squeeze of my hands, they returned to the very thing that had sent them air-borne. Trhino swatted the first few, but when trucks and cars began smashing into him, piling over him and bending and wrenching and squeezing, his movements grew weaker. I reached into that mess of steel and grabbed it, sending an intense electrical pulse through the wreckage.

Trapped in a cage that was simultaneously electrocuting him, it didn’t matter how thick his skin was. He stopped moving once his brain couldn't take anymore.

But I couldn’t afford to stop. “Shit, one of them escaped with the package.”

“No, they didn’t.” ‘Dreadwire’ dropped beside me. “I sent a drone after Reptilia, she’s escaped to the sewers.”

I hesitated. “Fuck it, I need to know what SynTec developed. Show me.”

Starlight nodded, and we quickly made our way to the nearest manhole and dove in. The first thing that hit me was the smell, but it quickly faded as we followed deeper into the labyrinth of flowing waste. I didn’t want to know what the media would write about me and Dreadwire hurrying into the sewers together.

Starlight suddenly stopped. “The drone… its destroyed, but I didn’t see who. I… it wasn’t her.”

“How far are we?” I asked.

“Close.” She hurried in pace, and so did I. When we arrived, there was no Reptilia and the drone remained… intact, merely lying down on the ground disabled.

“Someone hacked it?” I poked the drone.

“Impossible… it was only connected to me, unless…” Starlight’s voice wavered as she bent down to inspect the drone. Its spider-like legs curled around a crimson vial, and as she turned the drone back online, she shivered.

“There’s a message in the drone. It says: I thought you both would want this. And take good care of her, Diana.”

“Fuck… was…” I was already confused, but now I was both that and enraged.

“My dad disabled the drone. He was here.” Starlight said. “He… he has to be close.”

“I can’t feel anyone nearby.” I whispered, and my Overtrigger had reduced to 200%. It was startling how diminished I suddenly felt. “What… what exactly happened, Star?”

“We… I don’t know, I wasn’t with him… but Skeleton killed… Alice.”

“Who’s Alice?” I asked.

“She’s… my dad was just trying to do something right, and Skeleton took it away from him. My dad said he’s the reason Abuela died too. I don’t know what’s happening, but we have to help him.”

I felt… conflicted as she spoke. AI, as she was, some level of emotion reached me from her, and I cared for Starlight, but when it came to her father, I was…

“Skeleton, huh?” I shook my head.

“It could…” She sniffled as though tears were coming out. “It might also be Elsa who disabled the drone, but… I know where she is. She’s recovering. My dad might be with her there.”

“Alright, alright… let me get Twilight.” I sent out a call as the Silvereye suit slowly began to crawl off me and organize itself down into a briefcase. “I need to get that suit somewhere, it has a tracker.”

“Your place is on the way.” Starlight said hurriedly. “Let’s just be quick, please. I’ll get us over there.”

“How? As quick as I want to be, you’re not very… subtle in that-”

The Dreadwire body she inhabited suddenly opened up to reveal empty space for a person within. “We were developing this based on your suit, actually… just get in so we can move as quickly as possible.”

I didn’t have time to waste, so I stepped in. But made sure I looked like Lilian Rose first.

---

A new arc begins. The Disappearance of Dreadwire.