Chapter 789 - 6

Glenn tch'd at him. "I don't like how you talk either. For an alleged scholar, you sure do speak English like a toddler."

"What is toodlor?"

"Tiny baby, too young to do much but burble."

"I could English better. I cheat. Not good idea. Stuck here too long to keep cheat. Vista say English to me. Slow words."

"You're going to be a hard sell." he finished rounding the green man. "Where would I even start marketing you?"

"Am doctor."

"Healers are pretty valuable. But, from what Dragon's reports are on your powers, you're a scary motherfucker. I saw the videos from her suit cams." he sighed. "I mean, good on you for getting Armsmaster to shut up for a minute, but come meet our 'scary brutish alien Dictator' is hardly going to draw a crowd."

"Am doctor. Best doctor."

"That hardly matters if people don't trust you to touch them. Case in point, your fight with Glory Girl ended with her on a stretcher. Everyone was so hostile that she had to wait for treatment for days elsewhere."

"Broke bone easy. Touch and fix."

"What does it look like?"

Joyful Fluttering Locust Mariner held up his hands. "Either bite good, or go slow. Fingers."

The right hand unraveled, showing not only a tangle of gray root-tendrils, but they also formed a fringe of minute root/hyphae facing towards Glenn. "Slow but fast."

He reached out for the desk and grabbed a wooden pencil; Glenn saw a motion that sickeningly confounded a squid attacking its prey with watching a strangler fig invade its host--just much faster. Within seconds of contact, the pencil was placed in an exploded view on the desk. Dismantled eraser and metal collar on one side, perfectly intact graphite core on the other, and the delicate hollow yellow shell of paint was set nearby the equally hollow wood of the shaft, both completely unharmed.

"See?" asked the green brute, before returning his hand back to match its opposite. "Surgeon need no tools."

"Eww!"

"Is bad?"

"Yes, dammit, it's bad! It's gross! Worst of all its unmarketable!"

"I see. Tastes bad."

Glenn looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Yes... ?"

"I had this problem. Long time."

Glenn tried vainly to suss out what the half-English words meant. "People thought you were gross when you were a Dictator too?"

"Yes. Dictator long time. Early children scared but love their Grandfather." he frowned. "Recent children only fear. They know me but not know me. Burn palace. Exiled me. 2... 5... 0... years peace. They don't care."

Glenn could only just keep his mouth from gaping. He wasn't sure what he was expecting from the exiled alien Dictator with a Brute rating of six, but this wasn't it.

"Did you have a big family?"

The brute nodded proudly, holding his arms as wide as he could, before his face became contemplative. "Outlive many of them. Is sad. Last one I held in my arms. Daughter of Granddaughter of Great-Granddaughter of Great-Granddaughter."

Glenn swore he heard the distant sounds of children playing in the hall. Passingly annoyed by the thoughts of noisy tour groups showing up where they shouldn't be allowed, he pointedly put it out of mind.

"Too small to have name yet. Too small to fear me yet."

Glenn's jaw tightened. "If your family feared you, why did they let you hold the baby?"

The brute rolled his head from side to side, with indifference. "Am doctor." He saw disbelief in Glenn's eyes, and expanded on his laconic statement. "Chosen of The Great Mother. She loves her children. I love my children. Keep them safe. No danger having child. I make safe and whole. Eat disease before birth. No weak blood."

"Weren't there other doctors they could go to? You didn't have a monopoly, did you?"

"I don't know 'monoply', but yes doctors. Am best doctor. Even helped the ones that exile me. No gills. No bent spines. No flippers. I fix, and they do not even know it. <>"

Gills? Glen thought to himself.

"I came for help. <> says you Peee Aree can fix." his gaze seemed tired. "No more fear. Not here. Not again. <>"

Glenn looked at this green man, and tried to take his measure. He was normally a good judge of character, but there was nothing conclusive he could grab onto. Too many layers of confusion were obfuscating what evidence he could see.

"I can help you. I'd normally say I've succeeded with worse material to start with, but I think we both know that's not true." He clapped his hands together and pointed with his paired index fingers. "You need to put in effort if you want my help. If you fail to even attempt to follow my office's advice, I'll wash my hands of you, and you can figure out how to fix this on your own."

"Deal."

It was only many hours later that Glenn realized that he'd completely forgotten his plan to test the brute's temper. He hoped that he hadn't been intentionally suckered into a sob-story. Instead, he had gotten distracted by the brute's strange ideas for his costume and 'Hero name'.

Apparently, the translator had a reasonable grasp on Earth-culture, despite being an alien. She had helped him localize what would otherwise be difficult to convey through costume design. The most galling part was that they didn't really need Glenn's input on the design, name, or fabrication of the outfit. The manilla folder she'd brought to his office was more of a courtesy, to notify him that he was not needed in that capacity.

He looked over the bill of materials. It was a bizarre combination of things he had heard of, like sharkskin leather and quartz lenses. As well as things that he hadn't heard of, like Seasilk and Black Pearl. There was nothing inherently protective about the materials however, including nothing that would really qualify as proper armor, unless that shark leather was much tougher than he recalled.

The designs were definitely based on period woodcuts Glenn had seen, or at the very least extremely accurate Venetian Carnival Masquerade Mask reproductions. The base material of the outfit was dyed black sharkskin and seasilk, forming what looked like heavy robes and a matching wide-brimmed archaic hat design meant to fit over a tight coif that connected the top of the head to the neck seamlessly.

The underlayer was more of the same materials, but with more leather over vital organs, and a matching pair of gloves and boots. The outermost visible layer was decorated with iridescent metal thread (whatever 'Drawn Dreamstone' was), in an elaborate floral motif that incorporated a small fortune worth of understated pearls.

It was the mask, however, that was the most recognizable piece, for Glenn. It enclosed the top of the face only, leaving the bottom of the mouth exposed. Made from more leather and silk, the mask had a pair of built-in spectacle-looking eyepieces of circular quartz. They sat upon a long curved beak that was thick and pointed at the end. Glenn recalled that the woodcuts always had the head fully enclosed in their depictions, so he assumed that the exposed mouth was a nod to the other mask designs used by the 'Medico della peste' from the Venetian Carnival.

His nom de guerre would be 'Sagacious Physician', and he would fight crime dressed as a plague doctor.

Glenn wondered how much was lost in translation, or if this was the least frightening thing that the green brute could think to represent himself. He shook his head and made a note to have his assistant prepare a pre-made 'I told you so' memo for when the brute found out exactly how intimidating that design would be. Ironically, the best thing about the costume was that it completely hid the green skin, red eyes, and white hair that made the brute stand out so much.

At least he didn't have to dust off his office's guidelines for how to market a Case 53.

Of course, the costume design submitted to Glenn left out the actual design of iridescent metal threads hidden in front of the black background. Conversely, the design was much more noticeable on the interior of the costume (which had a matte black background instead of a shiny one), though that would only really be visible while worn if the cape were fully extended by some movement.

Instead of the floral design shown in the drawings, Mariner had made a work of art--in the style of The Great Mother. It was only from very close up or from just the wrong place that the reflection of the threads would show to mortal eyes a glimpse of the horrors hinted at amid the strange angles. Sacred art for the Lintha--merely gazing upon it was an act of depravity in most cultures.

{{JFLM activates the following charms when making the costume: Muse of Beauteous Horrors, Art Begets Art, Horrid Idols Raised, Pelagic Muse Artistry, Squamous Idols Raised; social attack encoded "Mortals beware, all others know your place beneath my heel."}}

----

A mismatched pair stood on top of the building's roof in Downtown Brockton Bay. On the left, clad in high tech platso-ceramics of efficient gray and blue, stood Armsmaster. On the right, seemingly just another shadow amid shadows, until its movement betrayed not only solidity, but glittering adornments that only just hinted where the edges might be within the darkness. Armsmaster turned and regarded the annoyance next to him, wearing a costume that screamed at Armsmaster of a long history of pseudoscientific ignorance and medical failure, culminating in the debunked Miasmatic Theory. It vexed him terribly to be even standing next to this brute with medical pretensions. Not that he had the option to avoid the green brute, and his ignorant costume design.

This was the night of the new recruit's first patrol. Even if he wasn't an exiled alien dictator that insisted that his Powers were literal Magic, he would have still needed to accompany the brute. That's just how first patrols worked. He didn't trust anyone underneath him, and so they had to prove that they weren't a walking talking police incident report waiting to happen, before he could fully utilize them as approved Protectorate members.

Brockton Bay could ill afford losing any more of its stalwart defenders, as Armsmaster could only just try to stamp out the worst villainy while having to triage the rest of the crime-ridden city. He saw its slow decline now, not only in his simulations, but every time he walked its streets, and he did not like feeling so helpless about it.

He was determined to make the best of a bad hand that he'd been dealt. If this brute couldn't reveal the secrets of the universe, then he'd fill a ten hour shift on the patrol rotation. It was just a matter of time before the patrol was done, and he'd have a chance to take first hand observations. His current models didn't give him any particular hints as to where he should assign the brute's patrol in the gang-infested lands of the city. After all, large scale fish illusions at sea is a strange power to combine with basic super strength and durability, but it hardly gave him an obvious role on the team. Maybe the brute would be a decent Tank. He certainly lacked the versatility of Alexandria packages, like Glory Girl.

This was also his first chance to try out the auto-translator unit that Dragon had been working on. Her designs were interesting to Colin on multiple levels, but he didn't know how reliable their data was yet on that unknown tongue that the brute and the purple woman with gills spoke. Right now, it was running on the audio system from Armsmaster's helmet.

"Brute. Can you see the city from here?"

"Can see. You want english?"

"Yes. I want you to speak as much English as possible, but if you don't know the word, just say it in whatever that language's name was."

<>

"Okay, I got 'Old Language' and then something about buildings."

"I say that. More though."

"Whatever. Just so long as you can follow orders."

The beak-shaped mask cocked its head. "I no follow orders. Impossible. You ask nice, and I help. <>"

Armsmaster hated the constant power struggles with this idiot. "You work for me, you understand that, brute? I tell you to jump, and you jump!" He turned and poked a gloved finger into the tip of the beak.

"I have contract." said the brute through his exposed lower jaw. There was a finality to the statement that made it clear that he considered the matter closed. Even if wasn't one of the Great Mother's blood oaths, nor anything sanctified in the legalisms of Cecelyne, he would wring every last bit of blood from this stone, so help him.

In exasperation, Colin pulled up the contract terms again on his HUD, before grunting angrily. He removed his finger from the beak. "You do have a contract. Fine, do as I say, or I won't feed you this week."

"I hunger."

"Then behave yourself, dammit!"

"Fine."

"Good, now you've already been given the briefing before we left, about the city and its layout, and how to behave properly as a hero on patrol. Do you have any questions?"

"Why map round?"

Colin couldn't be more confused. "What? Why was the map round?"

"Yes. Maps flat."

"Shut up. Do you have any questions that aren't more reminders of how big of a let down you are as an alien that believes in magic?"

Joyful Fluttering Locust Mariner snapped his teeth shut with passing anger, the sharp clack audible even over the background of the city night. <>

"I didn't get any of that. Say it slower."

"No. Hunt now." stated the brute, before jumping off the rooftop towards a neighboring one.

Armsmaster shouted at the brute's black back. "Make sure you stay within shouting distance! If I can't see or hear you, you don't get fed!"

--

Joyful Fluttering Locust Mariner had centuries of experience as a man-hunter, in both senses of the word. It called to his nature to investigate the smells and flavors of this new city like a bloodhound that had slipped its lead. Within minutes, he had given his chaperone the slip, not even particularly intentionally on his part. Though with his mastery of disguise and stealth, the mere idea that an unprepared Armsman could keep track of him if he didn't want to be found, was absurd.

With so many options, he knew not where to start his hunt.

After a second of reflection, he thought, do heroes hunt?

Probably not like he did.

If only he could figure out where to start.

--

It was just past midnight when Taylor stepped purposefully across the implicit line dividing the upscale Boardwalk from the crack whores that hung around the Docks. She did not know it at the time, but her story was just beginning.

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