The Freakshow!'s Story

Capetown, TX. 09/20/2017, 10:36 AM. 73°F,
Partly Cloudy. Arc 4: Abberance.

---

Chaos. It was indescribable as anything other than complete chaos and pandemonium. The English language could try in vain, but there's no describing the utter devastation that was going on before Jasmin's eyes.

..... "Everyone is coming together." Jasmin Lehtinen spoke her thoughts aloud, in awe. All around her was a mass of capes, and more poured in, from around the world, like ants. There was a crowd of hundreds now, almost entirely made up of foreign aid and support groups from around the world. A large chunk was the United States' own HLA and THA teams from all around the country. The building's parking lot was large, but it could hardly accommodate the crowd that was forming. Jasmin looked at the HLA's headquarters building. You'd expect a team of heroes to have a tower or a skyscraper somewhere, maybe letter-shaped and on a perfectly-sized island nearby. Instead, Capetown's HLA HQ was more like a police station, no more like a fire station. There was a section of the building that was obviously large and box-shaped, like how you could always point out the gymnasium at a school. Probably a training room, Jasmin thought. The parking lot was also large, large enough to accommodate a lot of emergency response vehicles. Even so, the group swelled past the parking lot's perimeter, and into the empty streets. On the edge of the crowd, more capes arrived, through portals, flying vehicles, or carried by Speedsters. it was surreal. Capes of all sizes, shapes, ethnicities, colors of suits, villains, heroes, people made of fire or earth, capes with things floating around them, or Tinkers in suits of armor. Changers that look like monsters or animals, capes hovering above the head-line, or capes flying about. The murmuring from the surrounding crowd made conversation nearly impossible.
..... Until up ahead at the HQ, a large, flashy-green portal opened up. The portal threw out swirling green sparks at the edges of the portal-way, almost like Dr. Strange's portals. From inside the portal came a blinding white light, infront of which Jasmin could make out four dark silhouettes. Immediately, Jasmin knew who these four were, and in the same way it did when she heard the air raid sirens start up, her heart paused for a second. The Triumvirate.
..... The first to step out of the portal and come into focus was Legend. Leader of the Triumvirate, and aptly named, Legend had a blue suit with silver and red accents and a red cape. Legend, Jasmin knew, had a nigh-invincible body, could fly, and had mind-boggling strength. The next to step through was Hero, who, in Jasmin's opinion, was a lot less aptly named. He looked more like a villain, like Dr. Doom, than one of the most renown heroes in the world. Hero's powers' specifics weren't fully public knowledge, but it's known that he has access to virtually any power in the world that he wants' and is limited to three to four at a time. The next to step through, and last of the Triumvirate, was Suit. Jasmin didn't know much about his antics and tactics, but she knew he was the most impressive Tinker on the planet. Like a mixture of Rick Sanchez, Tony Stark, and Batman, he had a gadget for literally everything. Jasmin looked at him with the most interest, as he was possibly the most mysterious of the Triumvirate to her. Suit has never been seen outside of his suit, like Master Chief, no one knows what he looks like or even his skin color. He's known as the most powerful and versatile Tinker in the world, due to being able to copy a Tinker's specialty once he comes across another Tinker. As a result his gadgets are so much more complex and magical than even the most powerful Tinkers Jasmin has heard of. Suit's suit itself has thousands of different gadgets and things invisibly embedded into it, and the suit can morph between several different styles and looks, each with different specialties and functions. He has specific suits for specific Abhorrents, and today, he was in his Tangle suit. The last silhouette, though not officially part of the Triumvirate, was a famously strong cape named Synergy. Synergy was known to commonly accompany the Triumvirate during major threats like Abhorrents. Synergy, Jasmin knew, was a seriously powerful Trump cape with the power to copy the powers of other capes that he touches, up to two at a time. When he copies a power, he has the power's full potential unlocked as the original cape could possibly have. So, say there's a cape that isn't experienced with their power but has potential to learn a lot, Synergy, after copying the power, would use the power like a master. Synergy also has the ability to synergize two copied powers and have them interact in unpredictable ways outside of the scope of the original two powers. This combination makes him an extremely powerful cape.
..... These four were the veterans of the veterans, and while their being here did calm Jasmin a little bit, it also filled her with a sense of dread knowing that the situation she was in was very, very real. Jasmin watched ahead as soldiers began to flood out of the portal that the Triumvirate had walked out of. PCRT? That was the most likely answer, but they didn't have the normal black face mask and red-accented body armor that Jasmin was used to seeing, these soldiers instead had bulkier clothing with blue accents and half-gas-mask-like half-night-vision-like goggles.
..... "-and those are PCRT Abhorrent response members. Their suits are Tinker-made, specifically to resist Tangle's radiation, laser-beams, and his plant minions' attacks." Ray said, as Jasmin realized she had speaking to her this entire time, as Jasmin hadn't been paying attention. As Ray finished her sentence, Jasmin noticed that up at the front of the crowd, Suit took a large sleek black box reminiscent of a suitcase off of his back. He got on a knee and placed it on the ground. Immediately, it started coming apart as if made of hundreds of boxes that were seamlessly each a part of the original box a second ago. Then, rotors popped out of the tops of the black boxes, each perfectly smooth and the size of a rubix cube, and they began flying around the crowd of capes. Drones, Jasmin thought, as one flew to her and hovered in front of her. Jasmin looked next to her at Ray, and noticed that Ray had put her left arm outstretched in front of her, and the drone landed on her wrist, and began to transform, reconstructing itself into a wrist band, about two inches wide and an eighth of an inch thick. Jasmin did the same, and though the wristband seemed to be made of some sort of black metal, it felt curious to her, as she felt literally no paths of connection to it through electricity. For the first time in her life, Jasmin felt something she couldn't shock.
..... "Some kind of power-resistance material, probably made by some Tinker who is the only in the world who can make it. Besides Suit, I guess." Ray spoke again, confirming Jasmin's suspicions. Jasmin moved her arm around and was surprised that this amount of metal on her arm felt completely weightless. Jasmin looked to Lucas and Mark, or Chrysopoeia and Sandstorm as they were in costume, and they also had the wristbands. Systematically, every cape in the crowd began accepting the drones onto their arms. Legend, up at the front of the crowd, began a noble-sounding speech about how everyone here was doing a great service to humanity. Suddenly, Jasmin became aware that her face was naked, without her iron-shavings mask. Jasmin pulled out the bottle and unstoppered it, magnetizing the shavings to her face, conscious of the spiky configuration they fell into along the magnetic field lines. Ray, or Seraphim, wasn't in her portal-costume, but it was understandable as the armor of portals would be dangerous in this crowd of close bodies.

Jericho flinched, partially out of reflex and partially because he wasn't paying attention, when the sparking swirling amalgamation of green light and energy abruptly popped into existence ahead. His eyes narrowed, focusing in on the 'gateway' as it were, taking in every possible detail about the quartet of capes before opting to change his eyes into those that normally belonged to a raptor. Minute details, tiny features, everything possible to see with 'mundane' sight opened up for Jericho. Suit was taller than Jericho expected, and Legend was... Almost everything that the Changer thought he would be, and maybe a little not so.

It was Hero that Jericho immediately distrusted, if only because the costume that he wore was one that made Jericho think of villains from comic books and similar. Hero made the Changer... suspicious, but for no good reason, seeing as how the man put himself through harms gauntlet day in and out when it came to the Abhorrents.

His gaze slid over to Synergy, or at least the man who held the name, and studied him for a time. Tall, dark, bald and with a posture that seemed to scream “Regality.” Jericho was reminded of a lion when he looked upon the man. His attention shifted back to Jasmin and the rest of his ‘friends’. Multiple eyes sprouted into existence upon his skull, ink flowing and then fading into nothing as pupils contracted and dilated on each recognizable face. Jasmin, Vic-Nobody, The Gunman, The girl who stepped out of light, the ‘not-a-batman’, and then a blondie who seemed to arrive just a little bit later than everyone else on a disk of turquiose light. Jericho’s eyebrows rose at the somewhat familiar form, before furrowing in concentration as he tried to piece together where he may have seen the unknown cape from.

His attention was again yanked away, his focus turning towards a small scuffle between a man who dressed himself like some sort of medieval ranger, with a bow and arrow to tout, and a man who wore nothing but a body suit marked with digital numbers. The body suit man had the ranger held up by the collar of his cloak, and a small circle had formed around the two. Several other capes watched on warily, and as some others from the edge began to push to break the two apart, Jericho noticed a familiar woman making her way over.

A black, silver and magenta colored cape floated over to the two scuffling, their words and voices growing louder and a little more heated. The cape’s mask covered their face, adorned with with the magenta markings that covered their- her- whole suit. A helmet that was remniscent of a hawk’s head, along with a visor that covered everything except for the bottom half of her face. From mid breast and upper sternum, her suit was silver and seemingly armored, with two markings on her stomach and upper groin glowing with hot pink light. Her voice was nothing like her suit led Jericho to believe: firm instead of soothing, authoritive, and pissed. “Hey! Hey! Pull yourselves together. Don’t break the unspoken rules.”

It was those words that caused the commotion to come grinding to a halt. ‘Don’t break the unspoken rules.’ Every cape within hearing distance, even some of those who only heard the ‘...rules’ stood a little straighter, gritted their teeth- all manner of stress reflex. ‘The Unspoken Rules’ were rules between capes that were exactly as they sounded: unspoken rules that every known and unknown cape followed. To break them was to vilify yourself against quite actually every other cape in the area. Maybe even the continent.

The two scuffling capes separated themselves, one looking cowed and the other looking almost as if his pride had taken a direct hit. Jericho, on the other hand, recognized Laser Hawk the moment she began speaking. His mind flew back through time to the aftermath of the bank heist: an HLA woman who turned her hands into magenta light and essentially dissolved matter. A breaker who was... Scary to say the least. Respected to say even less. She had flight as part of her kit, but from what Jericho saw of her, not very fast flight. He could outrun her, probably... She only flew as long as her hands were glowing, maybe a part of her power?

He was nervous all the same, a minutely guilty part of his conscience poking its dirty, dirty hands into his emotions. The Changer hummed to himself, reflexively shuffling away from Laser Hawk and the group of capes around her. He bumped into Jasmin, muttering sorry in his passing as he disappeared just a little deeper into the crowd of capes. There were plenty of people around to take attention off of him, right? “Fuck.”

It was only after a short moment of getting into a comfortable enough space- (read as getting distance between himself and Laser Hawk) that Jericho turned back towards the ‘front’. A drone was in his face, and as he reached out, the automaton landed and formed into the bracelets everyone else was receiving. Legend was going on about something or another, Jericho wasn’t paying attention, far too interested in the metal bracelet around his wrist.

Capetown, TX. 09/20/2017, 10:40 AM. 73°F,
Partly Cloudy. Arc 4: Abberance.

---

Jasmin Lehtinen caught a glimpse of something that made her heart skip a beat. A familiar sight, familiar capes. Myrlyn, Jeu, Drow, Alchimyst, and the rest of the Adept Mages bunched together. Curiously, she only saw two heads of white hair. Weren't there three brothers with white hair? Jasmin felt a moment's apprehension before remembering the Unspoken Rules. They were allies. For now. All of the local heroes were present in force. It wasn’t a surprising fact – skipping this fight, as a hero, let alone a team of heroes, would be unforgivable to the public. Jasmin was surprised that nearly all of the big villain gangs were all present. Gangs that brutally fought for territory and money, gangs with unbreakable feuds against each other.
..... That was the thing about the Abhorrents, Jasmin had learned. They were a much bigger threat to society, to humanity, to survival and extinction, than any amount of human-on-human hatred. It's why the Unspoken Rules exist. During Abhorrent attacks you take no opportunity against your fellow capes. Not to find out their identities, not to end their lives, not to bicker and fight. You focus on the common enemy. Or else.
..... "-all should know your chances going into this battle. Given the statistics from our previous encounters with Tangle, a ‘good day’ still means that at least one in three of the people present will probably be dead before this day is done. Tangle is an antediluvian horror capable of killing each and every one of us. The odds are likely not going to be as good as a 33% death rate."
..... This jolted Jasmin into listening to Legend's speech. It seemed to have caught the attention of the rest of the crowd, as uncomfortable shifting and a quiet murmur rippled through the crowd. Everyone knew that it was dangerous being here. But hearing numbers brought unease. One in three dead as a best case scenario. And that's not counting life-threatening or life-altering wounds.
..... “I’m telling all of you your chances now because you deserve to know. We're all humans here, we all have the right to live. We so rarely get the chance to inform those individuals brave enough to step up and fight these monsters. The primary message I want to convey, even more than briefing you on the particulars of his abilities, organizing formations and battle plans, is that I do not want you to underestimate Tangle. I have seen too many good heroes, rogues,” Legend paused for a fraction of a second, “And villains, too, die because they let their guard down.
..... “Tangle is the fifth and final Abhorrent to have shown up. I won't give a full history lesson, but his first attack was in 1992. At 75 feet tall, hes the shortest of the Abhorrents, but his body is shaped like a snake's and his tail trails for several hundred feet. Though he looks like a plant, his biology is something entirely alien to us. His body is made up of intertwines 'vines' similar to how a large rope looks. Each of these vines is layered like an onion, with the outermost layer being as hard as aluminum, the next one as hard as steel, the next tungsten, etc. until it quickly reaches harder than existing materials. Materials so strong virtually no one's powers can harm them. Though Tangle looks like a plant, he is not mindless. Do not underestimate him. The extent of his intelligence, and whether he is sentient, is unknown. But he can prioritize target, and has shown tactics and skill, as well as usually having an apparent specific location or target when he's attacking a city.
..... “As for abilities, Tangle is fast. Not speedster-level, but he can accelerate to 75 miles per hour in half a minute from a standstill. He's even quicker when he's already moving, turning, or thrashing. He has two auras. Two hundred feet out from him, all metal capable of rusting will immediately start to rust all of the way through. Not just a rust layer on the outside, but all the way to the center. Steel bars will be reduced to rust as weak as a sand castle. About a hundred feet out from him, a radiation aura starts. Getting inside this aura is an immediate death sentence within 2 weeks. Getting close enough to touch Tangle is enough radiation to kill you before the fight's over with. It's more dangerous than standing next to a melting reactor. If you aren't immune, don't get close.
..... “Tangle also has macro-scale control of both light, or electromagnetic radiation, and plants. He will shoot you with lasers. He will flashbang everyone. He can turn invisible. He can make you blind. He'll hit you with radiation blasts without you even knowing. His application of the control of light is extensive. After battle, everyone present should go through cape-powered healing and/or radiation therapy. Lastly, he can grow plants in seconds, and make them strong enough to constrict and crumble concrete. He also has minions made entirely of plants, that he likely controls like the command center of a hive mind."
..... As if the timing were rehearsed, as soon as Legend finished the speech, a loud crashing-crunching-explosion-like sound similar to a concrete building being thrown into another building was immediately followed by the sound of gasps and screams. Jasmin whipped her head to look behind her, and she felt the entire crowd do the same. Down the street, a giant mass of writhing and whipping tentacles coming out of a large snake-shaped form had just crashed into a building, failing to do the 90-degree turn at the intersection. It immediately turned, whipping its 'head' to stare at the crowd of capes.
..... Tangle's 'mouth' looked like a green bulb of a flower yet to bloom. Like the bulb on the Pokemon, Bulbasaur's back. Slowly, it peeled open, revealing a pink petal-like inside. And a maw inexplicably lined with teeth. Then a glass-shattering, ground-shaking shriek emanated from it.
..... Panic. Jasmin couldn't think as the massive abberation raced down the street towards the crowd. Already, capes were rushing forwards, providing a line of defense, whilst others ran in the opposite direction. Fight or flight. There was a third option, seizing up in the middle, as Jasmin was currently doing. The primal fear was something she'd never felt before in her life. It was similar to that time she had been 10 feet away from a mountain lion while camping five years ago, the heart-sinking deer-in-headlights feeling, but it was deeper, worse. The fear was not just the primal fear of a predator or a deadly situation, it was also the fear of the unnatural, the eldritch, the alien. Tears welled up in her eyes as her disabled mind and body were unable to react to the primal panic swirling in her brain. Jasmin's powers began to take over, switching to her electromagnetic vision, she could immediately see the electrical impulses lighting up like fireworks in the brains of other capes. Adrenaline. Hers came too, and suddenly, as her body tensed to jump, she was swallowed up by Jericho's shifting form.

Jericho’s heart dropped into his feet, maybe even fell out of his chest outright and onto the pavement below. Splattered like a water balloon or something. Panic flooded his system, his mind froze, his skin prickled with needles of numbing cold... Then he shoved it all out of his head, reflexively going so far as to begin shifting and morphing then and there, ink flowing around him as he took the biggest form he’d taken in... ever.

Long, moose-like antlers rose from the back of his skull, as his body shifted forward, his legs remaining about the same position as they were, his torso shifting and moving forward as flesh rapidly began extending backwards from his buttocks. His body swelled with flesh, muscle and bone, skull disappearing under a swirling vortex of ink for a moment before reappearing in the shape of an elk’s fleshless head.

From his waistline down, Jericho grew himself into a centaur-esque shape, flesh and muscle just barely obscured by a thin, thin layer of gray fur. It was more predatory, if only because of the paws with short, thick, blunt claws. His torso grew upwards just a faint amount more, and from just behind and below his original arms, grew a second pair. All four arms grew thick and furry, muscled and capable, as the rest of his body proportioned itself out a magnitude better.

His lower half was relatively horse sized, his upper shaped as if someone took a body-builder and made him both hairy, monstrous, and with a ‘crown’ of antlers thick enough to put an actual moose to relative shame.

Jericho reared back, twisting to reverse his position as his forelegs passed over the heads of the nearby capes easily, planting back onto the concrete below as a small space formed around him, he reached out, moving quickly as he shuffled some people out of the way, grabbed Jasmin, Seraphim, Chryssopea, and Sandstorm up into his arms, setting Chryssopea and Seraphim on his centaurid half as he turned and shouted with a voice that roared into the following silence of Tangle’s own screeching. The word hissed during the beginning, like a serpents’ call before rumbling and roaring out clearly despite the non-human maw it leapt from.

“SCATTER!!!”

Before making past anyone else in his way, getting the five of them as far back and away from tangle as possible. He took a sharp left turn once he cleared the parking lot, once he cleared the buildings directly adjacent to the crowd, ducking behind a three story and stretching his arms upward to knock out two second story windows with a branching pair of bone-clubs that sprouted from each radii, latching the appendages there and holding on tightly. The clubs then became hands, swirling with ink during the short transformation, before grabbing the bottom of broken window sills, more hands and arm like structures sprouted and grabbed the other edges. Secured. The hands that held Jasmin and Sandstorm stretched higher still placing them on the roof of the building while Jericho’s torso turned around entirely and spoke to Chryssopea and Seraphim. “Up? Yes or no? I’ll leave this body here as a stairway regardless... If Tangle doesn’t come here.”

He didn’t wait for an answer, choosing instead to focus on the entirety of the form he was utilizing. Every muscle, bone, fiber of hair, nerve, ounce of fat, all of it he dedicated to memory. He dedicated it to permanency, before a portion of his torso fell over and to the side, his hind legs bending so that the farthest back end was sloped towards the ground. A relatively normal sized, human torso sized, bulge moved through the bulk of the centaurid half. A human sized Jericho stepped out from the still straightened forelegs, before shifting into a smaller, eagle-sized form. Skyblue and white feathers sprouted into existence, before being replaced by a sporting of plumage that seemed to shift color spontaneously.

He took off, rising up into the air before continuing to soar higher and higher still. The crowd of capes back at the HQ had indeed done what he had shouted, and as he focused on the scene below him, Jericho relaxed. If only for a short moment, before remembering that Tangle was an absolute threat. Something that he knew, deep in his core, in his very being, he couldn’t hurt. Nothing he had, nothing he could’ve thought to grow or utilize, would actually hurt the Abhorrent. He couldn’t get close, he couldn’t stay far enough away... He was helpless and useless.

..... Jasmin, or Sähkö as she was now wearing her mask, stepped onto the roof of the building that Jericho had brought her to and surveyed the scene with quiet horror, throwing up the hood of her blue hoodie. She watched as capes that presumably could survive close proximity to Tangle rushed forwards down the street, in attempt to stop the beast before he rushed into the crowd of more squishy parahumans. Then, a white line seared across her vision, leaving a black-fading-purple blind spot in her eyes. Immediately, she heard an artificial-esque feminine voice, similar to Siri or Alexa, speak from her new wristband, "Laser Hawk down." Sähkö whipped her vision over to where Capetown's HLA team had been huddled. Already Cosmic's spheres and Tendril's tentacles were being thrown up as shields, but Sähkö could clearly make out a place where molten concrete was. Presumably, Laser Hawk had been standing near. Elicitor was also right in the middle of the molten concrete, though Tendril was already lifting him up and out of it before any secondary damage could be done.
..... The female artificial voice started naming off more names, before Jasmin could even react to Tangle rushing forward and swiping his tail through a building and into a crowd of capes, like massive steel pipey-wires, destroying all in the tail's path. "Intellast down. Pluto down. Kuro-Yūrei down. Thirty-seven in critical condition. Two-hundred-and-ten capes with radiation poisoning." Jasmin balked at what she had just seen go down, and they were only a minute into the fight. Sheetrock, bricks, rust, and dust rained down on the crowd as the building collapsed. Jasmin noticed that concrete everywhere was crackling and crumbling as creeper vines sprouted, pushing cement apart. Metal streetlights instantly turned into rust, and crumbled like sandstone Jasmin used to crush with her hands at playgrounds when she was little. Loud explosions rang out as Suit and hundreds of other tinkers launched rockets and threw bombs. Lasers bounces off of tangle, but plasma and particle beams seared a paper-thin layer of the beast's skin. An unimaginable amount of cape attacks were being launched at range, with a few capes immune to his radiation aura closing in for close-combat.
..... "What can I even do to help?" Jasmin asked to herself, incredulously.