Distractions: Part 11

Haley’s lip curled, “Then I think you need to get out of here and let us discuss it. You know that we’re not the whole League. Some of us who aren’t here are going to need a minute to talk about this.”

“Some of us who are here will too,” Cassie’s hand brushed her gun.

Adam glanced down at it, his face hidden in the shadows, but his mouth seemed to tighten, jerking into a smile, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The shadows that made up his body swirled into themselves and disappeared.

Amy made a motion with her left hand and a drop of blood fell into the palm of the gauntlet on her right hand. In that one move, I found myself thinking both that it made complete sense that she’d have a mechanism to draw blood in her gauntlet and how much of a nightmare the League’s publicists said her powers were.

She said a few words over the blood and a puff of red smoke exploded into every corner of the room.

Glancing around the room, she said, “I didn’t trust him to leave, but I’m glad to see that he’s really gone.”

I glanced around, not sure what I was supposed to be seeing. The red smoke seemed to have disappeared, “What does that detect?”

“Magical creatures or people with a lot of magic flowing through them,” Amy waved toward the back of the room. “He’d have to end his connection with the fey he works with if he wanted to hide and the fey don’t even have that out.”

“Huh,” I said, “that would have been useful back in Castle Rock.”

“I know. I only worked it out recently,” Amy stopped, and frowned. “Topic change… Who’s Johnny Destruction?”

“Bad news,” Cassie said, shaking her head. “The original League fought him a few times. He’s the son of Destruction Lord who was a League villain for years and years. His big thing was fire—very hot. He could burn down city blocks. The original Rocket had to rework his armor to avoid being cooked inside. My dad had a bad time regenerating because Destruction Lord could cook so much of him at once. Even C had issues with his heat.”

I added, “I told you about the time we fought Evil Beatnik. He managed to find a kid connected with them who called himself Destruction Boy. He wasn’t even at full power but the one time I fought him directly, my rocket pack’s fuel came close to exploding.”

Kals raised an eyebrow, “The Abominators didn’t make any gene lines with those abilities—at least none that survived… What are you going to do about that guy?”

Letting out a sigh, Daniel said, “Nick knows this already, but I think we’re better off allying with him. We don’t let him into everything, but we let him work with us.”

Haley crossed her arms over her chest, “I trust that you can sense enough of the future that you have a reason to recommend it, but I think we still need to think about what we’re going to do if he betrays us, straight out murders somebody because he thinks they deserve it or turns out to be more influenced by evil fairies than he thinks he is.”

“I’m not going to be any help at all,” Kals said, glancing over to where Adam had been standing. “If he keeps on doing whatever that was, I can’t put any control phrases in place.”

Cassie checked out the window, as if expecting to see something outside, “I want to say don’t work with him at all, but knowing what his little friends can find out? I don’t like to say it, but if we’re going up against a clone of my dad and Johnny Destruction, it’s good to know it ahead of time.”

I nodded, “Plus whoever the rest of the group is. If those are the guys coming to kill Uncle Steve and maybe go after our parents, I think we want to know everything we can. The problem is that Haley has a good point. It’s great that he has people to watch our enemies, but I feel like we need someone to watch him.”

Amy used another drop of blood to send another puff of reddish smoke outward and into the rest of the building. Then she said, “I can try to work something up. I might have to call in Samita for help, but tracking and killing monsters is what Bloodmaidens do. We’ve had problems with the fey and people who have given themselves over to them before. So the past Bloodmaidens have ideas for things we can try.”

Cassie eyed her, “Can’t you do the same things they did?”

Shaking her head, Amy said, “Not unless you’ve got someone you’re willing to sacrifice so you can drain their blood.”

Cassie grinned, “Do you think anybody would miss Major Justice?”

7 thoughts on “Distractions: Part 11”

  1. Someone would, but maybe fewer people than he’d like to imagine.

    On another note, I hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving had a good time. Unlike last year, I wasn’t responsible for cooking everything. Nonetheless, we still ended up with a lot of leftover turkey. As a result, I made turkey burritos yesterday. I’m not sure what we’re going to do with the rest of it.

    Oh… Also, Top Web Fiction

  2. Seems to me that a Blood mage teamed up with a regenerator like Cassie might be like hooking a laser up to a dedicated nuclear reactor — plenty of power, and it’s not gonna run out for a looooong time.

    Hg

    1. That passed through my mind. That said, at least as I imagine it, blood is more of a tool to work with life force for blood mages. Cassie doesn’t have an infinite amount of that–though her ability to heal would help her last longer even there.

      1. Yeah, it seems like the blood of a regenerator would be worth “less” for purposes of blood magic, because it basically contains very little life force. Honestly, for balance and flavor purposes, part of me feels that once something has been regenerated it is useless as a magical sacrifice (it would just serve as a link to the original owner, via the law of contagion), while actually sacrificing something magically before it regenerates slows the regeneration down. So either Cassie’s blood would be useless for powering Amy up, or taking a decent quantity of it would render Cassie anemic for a while.
        At least, that’s how I would handle it for a tabletop RPG. For a story, it’s more just whatever makes the story work best.

      1. Jeah whenever I have time and there is a larger chunk to read. I can get much more into the story 🙂 than reading it weekly.

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