"My, my, you look quite ticked off, friend. Did something happen?" Arvin Ros, head of Daisy's Hero Branch, had an amused smirk on his face as he stared down at his laptop.
On the other side of the screen, Dean Ward ran his fingers through his hair. "You said this would all be under control." Ward hissed.
"When did I say that?" Ros questioned.
"It was you who came up with the fake Cinder plot, to begin with!" Ward hissed. "Your family are the ones that capture most of the Emperor's monsters. You use them for your own means and agenda. I was turning a blind eye to it since this time it helped us, but now your little pawn is gone, and we have the real Cinder running around once again."
Ros lazily tapped his finger down on his desk. Unlike Ward, who was still quite young, Ros was an older, plump little man who had seen a lot during his time working for the Branch. "I'll admit things haven't been going the best for us recently. It all started with that new villain, Battery. I never considered he'd pull his stunt. Not only did he manage to beat the Victorian, he even threw every hero out of their city. Worse yet, he's been doing a better job than we have. We'll need to get it back under control. I'll also take the blame for what happened to Skin Walker. I've used her as an agent for fifteen years now. Her powers made it a good way to come up with cover stories. This is the first time she's run away, however. It's quite worrying, as she seemed very loyal to whoever was in charge. It makes me concerned about what happened to her." Ros let out a sigh and shook his head. "If only we had a button that we could push that would just magically fix everything."
"We do have that button!" Ward yelled as he slammed his fist down into his desk, shaking his computer.
"We do?"
"The Victorian is supposed to be our dog." Ward hissed out. "She obeys us without question. Even now, she should be following our orders! So what if she lost once? It was a fluke. She won't lose again, I'm sure. Especially if the other heroes help her."
"That's likely true. The Victorian could swoop in and solve our little Battery problem. There's just one issue. Nobody can get ahold of her." Ros pulled out a cigar and lit up as he leaned back in his chair. "In the past, she remained in Rose at nearly all times. This made it easy for your mother to get in contact with her. When the Victorian wasn't in Rose, we had Boy Genius who could find her. Now, not only is she not in Rose, but Boy Genius has seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth as well. We simply haven't been able to give her any orders, so she's still doing her own thing until then."
"Will she even obey now that she isn't the number one hero?"
"Her father would. Just remind her of that fact, and she'll fall in line. She's still a good dog." Ros huffed out a stream of smoke.
Ward sighed again. "Why couldn't we have Full Monarch? Every Lord before now was actually worth something. Now we're stuck with all these useless fools. This Lord of the Sun is pathetic, as is the Sea. The only ones worth a damn in this generation are the Sky and Land."
"Speaking of the Lord of the Sky, Gladiolus City is still the only city not under Battery's control. We've managed to move all the other Enforcers over there. I've been working with them to come up with a plan. Mister Man and Lady Time are trying to get ahold of the Victorian, so we might be able to wrap up this Battery issue sooner than we thought." Ros stated. "In the meantime, though, what do you plan to do with the Lord of the Sun?"
"Hope Lauren? I was just going to throw her to the wolves." Ward shrugged.
"How cruel."
"No. What's cruel is her very existence. It's such a cosmic joke. She dared to be born with only a faction of Full Monarch's power. If she truly cared about us, she would never have existed. Worse yet, she got everyone's hopes up during the Beast fight. She actually made us all believe that she could live up to his legend. Now look at her. Depowered and weak once more. Barely above common trash like Golden Weaver. I had a few agents I've placed in Oleander, some of them living amongst Paragon's people, and I managed to overhear the issue of her powers. They believe they could return, but it's been days, and she has shown no sign. We don't really have time to wait for her now, do we? Honestly, it would just be a lot faster if she died and we got a new Lord."
Ros snickered at Ward's rant. "Come now, friend, even a broken toy can still be used. We both know the reason you're really mad. She humiliated you on live TV."
Ward's little talk with the hero Cinder had been filmed and broadcasted by dozens of people and was going around the news now. Everyone and their mother saw the man announce that Cinder was the fake, and most people were willing to believe it. They also saw as the fake Cinder casually threw the van near Ward, nearly making the man wet himself, before one shotting two of his Supers and blowing up his car.
Ward had been so flustered by the end of it he had called his mom to whine. Sadly for him, Madam Ward was a bit busy dealing with Battery in Rose City.
"We need to get rid of Cinder no matter what," Ward growled. "She could reveal the fact we propped up a fake. That was why I did what I did. I'm helping us, you know. If you don't want to go down with the ship, you should also focus on taking her out."
"Am I really in the same boat you are?" Ros cocked his head to the side. "After all, how does anyone know that it was me who hired Skin Walker and not you?"
Ros watched Ward's face twist to anger once again at his suggestion, but before either of them could say anything, the door to Ros's office slid open, and an unpaid intern ran in and began to whisper something into Ros's ear. Ros's eyes widened for a moment, and his grin grew.
"Really? You don't say. That's interesting."
"What is it?" Ward asked through clenched teeth.
Ros looked back at his monitor lazily. "A van."
"Huh?"
"A van is approaching my city. On the water."
Ward leaned back in his chair and stared at the other director with narrowed eyes. "What are you going to do about it?"
"Me? Nothing. I have no issues with the hero Cinder. She did save an entire city, after all." Ros tapped his finger down on his desk and stared back at the camera. "You, though... Well, I'm willing to bet money you'd like to have it dealt with, so why don't we cut straight to the point? You want Cinder dead or captured since she's currently depowered. What will you give me if I do it for you?"
Ward gritted his teeth, and they ground together so hard he could almost taste the flakes of a tooth on his tongue. "I thought you didn't want her to die."
"Well, logically speaking, if her powers don't ever return, she would be better off dead so we could get a new Lord." Ros shrugged. "I'm willing to let her live to see if the powers do come back, but as it stands now, not only is she seemingly against us, but she is also in a state where a villain could get their hands on her. I simply don't want that happening. More importantly, though, I also love the idea of you owing me a favor. So, what will it be?"
Ward let out another angry huff. "My father used to run the Branch, and right now, my mother is the one in charge! I don't need your help! I'll handle this matter myself!"
"Will you now?"
"Yes!" Ward slammed a hand down onto his keyboard and disconnected from the call. His screen went back, and he gripped his hand into a tight fist. "I don't need any help. I'm the son of the great Ace Ward; I'm the one who should rightfully rule the world. I'm the most human."
It was starting soon. He could feel it. Supers were reaching too far. With people like Battery or Cinder existing, the world as Ward knew it was on the verge of a change. A change that wouldn't allow someone like him to walk down the path he desired.
He was still in control.
For now.
***
Alexander gasped and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He winced a bit as he stared down into the toilet bowl. It had become mostly red after he was done throwing up.
He had let Jane take over with the driving after Hope, and that new girl had come back inside. He had felt the sharp pains in his stomach, and that had been his cue to leave. Luckily, most of these rooms had built-in bathrooms, so finding a spot to puke up his guts hadn't been too hard.
Alexander let out a weak chuckle as he tried to steady his breathing. The world was spinning, but he had been through this enough times to know it would eventually settle down.
When he had been in Oleander, he had Paragon to help him. Now, though, he was mostly fending for himself. He had basically forced Paragon to stay silent about it and not say anything to his wife or daughter. He was well aware that this trip was likely going to be his last. He intended to enjoy it. He wasn't stuck in the hospital after all. He was free. Free to go where he wanted and be with the people he loved. He couldn't have been happier.
"Come on, Alex." Alexander slapped at his face a bit as the world finally quit spinning, and his body calmed down. "Just a little bit longer. You can do this."
Physically, he was fine. The Dead Virus that had existed within him had been utterly removed, and he no longer needed to worry about it. The damage he had received, though, during his time while he was infected had been another matter altogether. His body was at the end of its story, slowly coming undone. The truth was, he should have been dead years ago. The day he had been touched by that vile villain should have been his last day on Earth. It was a miracle he had made it this far.
A miracle he wasn't going to look down on.
Alexander left the bathroom, and once he was done cleaning up his mess, he stretched a bit and made his way up front to where the others were. That alarm hadn't stopped. It was still going off, saying that they were low on battery. That Meta girl had assured them though that the van could run for a bit longer even when the battery was so low. The alarm was more of a warning, and they weren't quite at the empty stage yet. Once they reached Daisy, they'd be able to stop, and Meta would take a look at the van and see what she could do to fix the battery issue.
It mostly went over his head.
"Are you okay?"
Alexander looked down at his daughter as he stepped into the room. She was still in the car seat, sitting next to Meta. Jane was up front, doing her best to drive the strange car that they were in. He reached down and messed with his daughter's hair. "Of course I'm fine. I used to be a sailor, you know. Being out on the water has never bothered me." He joked.
"If you're sure." His daughter didn't sound too certain.
"I am."
It had been almost a full hour since they left Lillian. The van wouldn't have much more juice left at the rate they were going, but luckily, they didn't need to go much further. "Is that Lillian?" Jane asked.
Alexander looked out the window as he saw the city they were approaching. Daisy was sort of like Lillian and Oleander in a way. It was connected to another city, that being Gladiolus. Whereas Lillian and Oleander were mostly the same, though, Daisy was totally different from its sister city.
The sun was still high up, painting the city in a golden glow that made it hard to really see any of the details. Massive towering Giants walked around, just like the others. A large bridge connected the city, which went across the waters to Gladiolus. Unlike Daisy, Gladiolus seemed to lack any of the Giants.
Just as they had done in Lillian, they drove out of the ocean and landed on the beach of Daisy. The beach was slopped down, going mostly into the water, and around Daisy was a large hill with a big stone wall going all the way around the city. Daisy also didn't seem to have any massive skyscrapers, so from where they were, it made it impossible for any of them to actually gaze at the city. They all piled outside of the van, and Meta finally took a look at it.
"Shh, shh, it's okay." The gray-haired girl rubbed her hand on the car's hood. She was certainly an odd one. He wondered just who the hell she was. A friend of his daughters. Meta pulled the hood up, and a wave of steam and smoke came blasting out, but it didn't even cause the girl to flinch. "Oh." That was all she said once the smoke was gone.
"Is that a good oh or a bad oh?" Jane asked nervously.
Meta looked down at the engine, not saying anything for several moments. The engine was formed from what looked like trash. Discarded scraps of metal that were practically glued or taped together. It shouldn't have worked, yet it did, thanks to Metal Ronin's weird power. All Mental-based users could sort of use other gear crafted from other Supers, but it would require them taking apart what they were messing with and rebuilding it so that it would feed off of their power instead. The more complicated something was, the harder it would be to take apart. Thankfully, Metal Ronin's didn't seem too bad.
"It's using a spacial rift to generate the pocket realm that is inside of the van," Meta explained casually. "It's actually using several spacial rifts that are all stacked on top of each other, hence why the inside can rapidly change in length. This also is what allows the van to move. It actually hasn't been driving in a traditional sense. Instead, it has more or less been going forward in space, teleporting rapidly. Doing this to a human body isn't really healthy and could be dangerous, so I guess that is why he made this thing so big, giving it some shielding. It does make me wonder where he got all the stuff to make these things, though."
"I think he got it from the Watch Dogs." Hope finally spoke up. "They had this boat that could fly and stuff, and it also was larger on the inside like this van."
Meta nodded her head. "I see. Backup had an ability that allowed him to use spatial tech similar to the stuff Avalon used to make the original realms. I'm guessing what was left over from that ship you mentioned was rebuilt by Metal Ronin into this stuff."
"I think he used it in one of his suits as well." Alexander piped up. "He has this new suit that just sort of summons stuff for him. I saw him bust some of his gadgets out of thin air a bit ago when I was teamed up with the Sub Enforcers."
"Am I the only one who is totally lost?" Jane asked flatly.
"Nope." Kevin let out a sigh. "I always just tune out the smart mumbo jumbo. It doesn't have to make sense as long as it works. Powers are bullshit like that."
"Can you fix whatever issue the van is having?" Hope asked, folding her arms.
Meta nodded her head. "Of course. It'll be quite easy. As that hologram mentioned, the battery is low. I'd say less than one percent. We're lucky we got here when we did. Now that the van is off, the battery won't be at risk of draining as fast. I'll start with it, undo the engine, and remake it myself. This will allow me to power the rifts inside of it so it won't die. That said, you should know I don't plan on staying with you all for very long. I have some things to do in this city, so when I'm done, I'll take my leave. Without me, the van would eventually run out of power again. It might be able to last a day or two at most, but you'll need to find someone else to fix it again."
"That's fine." Hope shrugged. "I just need it to get to Gladiolus, which is close by thankfully."
"Gladiolus? What are we doing there?" Alexander asked, raising an eyebrow. "I thought we were heading to Rose?"
"We are. I told you, though, I had something I needed to do first." Hope explained. "There is someone in Gladiolus I'd like to speak to first before I go and see Mr. Larison."
"Larison?" Meta cocked her head to the side again. "You are Hope Lauren, so by Larison I would assume you are talking about Battery, correct?"
"You know Mr. Larison?" Hope asked a little taken aback.
"No. We've never met." Meta shook her head. "I did hear a lot about him from my father, though. He talks about the one called Jack Larison a lot."
Hope frowned a bit. That was a little ominous. She doubted Meta would explain further, though. The girl had a bad habit of not saying enough. "How long will it take you to fix the engine?"
"Not too long. Maybe about an hour." Meta shrugged. "The battery should last now that the van is turned off."
Hope nodded her head. "Okay. In the meantime, I guess I'll go take a look at Daisy."
"Is that a smart idea?" Jane asked, raising an eyebrow. "I mean, you did sort of tick off the Hero Branch."
Hope just shrugged. "Maybe, but at the same time, I really wanna see what Daisy looks like."
"Fair enough, I guess." Jane zipped up a jacket she was wearing and stepped forward. "I'm coming with you in that case, and I won't take no for an answer."
Alexander let out a soft snort. "I'll stay with Meta and the van. You two go have fun."
Hope glanced back at Meta for a moment. The gray-haired girl was already tinkering on the van and didn't seem to be paying any attention to them. Slowly, she took her backpack off and tossed it over to her father. "Keep Kevin company also. I won't need him."
"Are you sure?"
"I don't plan on getting into any fights; I just want to go take a look, is all."
"Yeah, but it's you..." Alexander let out a soft chuckle when he saw his daughter's cheeks turn a little red. "You seem to have a bad habit of drawing the wrong sort of people to you at the worst times. Seriously, stay safe. Try to keep a close eye on her, Jane."
"If any fighting starts, I'm pretty sure I'll be the one relying on her." Jane giggled.
Hope rolled her eyes and began to march up the hill. "I don't get into that many fights. The bad guys start most of them." She grumbled. She was followed closely by her mother.
Alexander remained behind and watched his family leave. He held the backpack his daughter had tossed him awkwardly in his arms, and he leaned up against the side of the van while Meta worked on the engine. It was hard to really tell what the girl was doing. She didn't have any tools. Instead, she would wave her hand, and a weird greenish glow would come out. Screws and other such things in the van would come undone and pull themselves out before putting themselves back in place. It didn't really look like the girl was changing anything about the van either. He supposed it didn't matter, though. Just so long as she made sure the damn thing wouldn't randomly explode on them.
"So, Meta, was it?" Alexander asked awkwardly.
"That isn't my full name. It isn't my real name either." The girl barely spoke up and didn't turn her head, keeping it under the hood as she worked. "I gave Ruby that name when I was in Hell Land as a nickname."
"Ruby?"
"That was the name your daughter gave me in Hell Land."
"You keep mentioning Hell Land? What is it?" Alexander asked.
"The name says it all." Alexander nearly jumped as the backpack he held grew a mouth. "It's basically hell on Earth, my dude. Cinder saved me from that place."
Alexander looked down at the backpack and gave it a once-over. "So, you're a friend of my daughter's, right?"
"Nah. Just someone using her to get what they want. Don't worry, though. I couldn't hurt her if I wanted to. Even without her other powers, I think she'd kick my ass. I'm not much of a fighter, as it turns out." Kevin muttered sadly. A few tendrils on his body glanced at Meta. "What's your deal exactly?"
"I'm waiting on my brother to come pick me up," Meta responded in her usual flat tone.
"Your brother is that guy I saw in Hell Land, right?"
"Yes."
"He creeped me out." Kevin shuddered a bit. "Same way you do. What's your story? What is it you even do?"
"My brother and I repurpose Super tech." Meta waved her hand and caused several pipes to pop out of the van before they spun around and put themselves back in place. "Unlike other Supers, my power is specifically made to copy and rebuild Mental tech. For others, it takes them a while to understand, and they need the tech in front of them for them to rebuild and use it. For me, though, once I figure out how something works, I can remake it as many times as I want. This includes biotech as well. That was why my brother and I were at Hell Land. We were selling some drugs I had created."
"Drugs!" Alexander stepped back in shock, his eyes going wide. "What kind of hero are you!"
"Hero?" Meta slowly looked at the man.
Alexander felt an uneasy feeling in his gut as he stared into the girl's blank eyes. "Y- Yeah. You know... The good guys. You're a friend of my daughter's, so... You're a hero, right?"
Meta stared directly at the other man before she slowly turned and got back to work. Kevin let out a small sigh of relief at the fact Meta didn't do anything drastic. "Trust me, man, just ignore her the best you can. There's a reason your daughter left me with you."
Alexander could feel his throat become dry, and he cleared it, stepping further away from Meta. "I'll just stand over here while you work on the van."
"Okay," Meta said in a bored tone.
He took a moment to look back at the direction his daughter and wife had left toward. "Between beating up Golden Weaver, running from the Hero Branch, and now letting a villain hitch a ride with them, I'm starting to get worried," Alexander muttered. "Just what the hell are you trying to achieve, Hope?"
Over at the wall, Hope reached it and placed her hand on it. It was a large stone structure that circled the entire city, blocking it all. The wall went up about as big as most skyscrapers, and since most of the buildings inside of Daisy were fairly small, it made it impossible for her to actually see anything about the city.
"How do we get in?" Jane questioned. "And how do its people get out?"
"I'd imagine it has a gate or something." Hope shrugged her shoulders. "I bet if we were to keep walking in a random direction, we'd arrive at the gate and be able to get in that way."
"Judging from the way you said that, I'm going to take a wild guess that we're not about to enter through the front gate-" Jane was cut off when her daughter grabbed her. She let out a loud squeak as she was flipped onto her back and held in her daughter's arms. "Hope?"
"Up we go."
"Hope!"
Hope crouched down and then fired herself up as hard as she could. Her legs bounced her up, and she went flying into the air, jumping as high as she could. She kept a strong grip on her mom, who screamed as loudly as possible, and in only a few seconds, she reached the top of the wall. She came down softly, landing on it, still clutching onto her mom, who was shaking.
"W- Warn me next time-"
"I'm jumping again."
"Wait-"
This time, she stepped off of the wall and plummeted down. She kicked part of her leg out and used it to slow her fall, grinding against the wall until they came to a soft landing on the other side from where they started. She finally sat her mother down, who grabbed at the ground, still shaking.
"You're worse than that Battery guy! Why can't you Supers learn to carry normal people more gently!" Jane yelled.
Hope sheepishly rubbed the back of her head and giggled. "Oh, come on, that was so cool, wasn't it?" Her mother just shot her a death glare. "Well, I thought it was cool." She poked her tongue out and then turned to finally take a look at Daisy. "Whoa. Not what I was expecting, honestly."
Cities could be weird. Not all of them were very modern-looking, and not all of them looked as if they should make sense. This is mostly because each great city was built at a different time by a different team of Supers back when Mr. Sini first created Sinicorp. Violet City was the closest thing she had seen to Daisy. Violet had been the city Fable protected, and it was more like a village or old-looking town that you would see in a novel about knights and princesses.
Daisy wasn't Violet City but likely had been built by the same person or at least influenced by it. Like the other cities, the Giants stood at either side, each one towering above the wall. They all had the familiar threading of water attached to the back of their heads that led to the center of the city, where a massive castle resided. It wasn't any normal castle, though. It was forged from glass and white marble and sparkled. Many of the houses actually looked to be made out of gems or glass. The street was a bright yellow, being pathed by a golden brick road that stretched out, and despite the fact it hadn't rained at all and was still the middle of the day, dozens of rainbows stretched out in the sky, which hadn't been visible until they arrived in the city.
Since it was the middle of the day, people were walking around. They, in a way, reminded her heavily of a cosplay convention. No one was dressed in normal clothes. Instead, it was men wearing heavy suits of armor or women in dresses or cloaks. Some guys walked around in gray robes clutching staves, and others had bows and arrows on their backs. There were still cars and other such things that you'd see in a normal city, but it all had this fantastical feel to it.
She had seen a few people from Daisy a time or two when people would vacation in Oleander, so it wasn't the first time she had seen them so oddly dressed, but it was kind of cool seeing so many. Daisy hadn't always used to be like this. It was a rather small city in the grand scheme of things and had only expanded and changed style after Lady Time took it over. The Enforcer had apparently been really into high fantasy, and so each year had added more and more to it over the course of fifteen years until Daisy had ended up the way it did now.
Honestly, the Giants really didn't stand out all that much. In fact, they looked like they belonged here. The people had apparently accepted them or grown used to them, as several decorations or offerings had been placed at the feet of the Giant, and as a person would walk by, they'd bow their head. Out of every city, Daisy had the lowest crime rate, with the exception of Rose. Lady Time would mostly spend her days modeling or teaming up with Mister Man or the Victorian, so it was unlikely the Giants had actually done anything in days.
"This... Wow." Jane said with wide eyes.
"Yeah." Hope's own eyes were wide as she looked around at the grand city. She suddenly felt very underdressed since she was just in her T-shirt and pants, and her mother was wearing a heavy jacket and jeans. They stood out and were already getting several odd looks, though that could have also been from the fact she literally dropped off of the wall. No one was calling any cops or anything on her, though, and she didn't see any Hero Branch vehicles that were coming her way. "Man, why couldn't we have lived here? This place is cool. I mean- Oh my God, a sword shop!"
Her eyes suddenly flashed, and she found herself being drawn to a small glass-looking building that was placed on the curb. Past the window, she could see what looked like a small little man that, in a fantasy series, would have likely been a dwarf. He stood behind a counter, and there was a wall of dozens of handcrafted swords hanging up. Her eyes were stars as she stared at them. "I want one."
"With what money?" Her mother snorted.
"Good point. We're totally broke, aren't we?" She sighed and deflated a bit.
"Just a bit."
She shook her head and began to walk away from the sword store. "Momma will be back for you when she's rich!" She promised as she glanced back at the many blades.
"So what are we doing exactly?" Her mother asked as they began to walk down the street, mixing in and out of the crowd of oddly dressed people.
"I dunno." She lazily shrugged. "I really just wanted to kill some time before Meta fixed up the van. My ADHD brain can't just stand by and do nothing, you know. Figured it'd be cool to look around." She looked at all the different buildings that resided around her. "So far, I'm not disappointed."
"Well, I will admit this place is quite pretty."
"Yeah, it is! I'll have to take some pictures and show Sky. I bet she'd love this stuff. She told me that she likes to look at pretty things since she can see again!" She said cheerfully. "Now that I think about it, though, I also need a new phone-" She was suddenly cut off when her enhanced senses picked up on a loud cry that came up ahead.
Her mother couldn't hear it but took one look at her face and just sighed. "I don't like that look, Hope-" Her mom once again let out a loud yelp as she picked the woman off and took off running at a high speed.
She moved past the crowd, going faster than the human eye could follow, simply vanishing to the other people's point of view as she followed the direction of the cry. When she finally arrived, she came to a sliding stop in front of a large park. It had strange blue-colored grass and dozens of trees with colorful leaves scattering off of them. Also in the park was a little girl who was crying and staring up at the top branch where a cat was stuck in a tree.
"Huh." She said, a little surprised. "New city, same side quests."
She had started her hero career by saving cats in trees, and that was something she doubted she'd stop doing anytime soon. She placed her mother down and, with a single jump, used just enough strength to appear next to the cat on the branch. It meowed at her as she scooped it up in her arms and dropped down to the grass below.
"My kitty!" The little girl took the cat with shaking arms.
"You should be more careful with him." She teased. "You don't want him running off again and getting stuck. I might not be there next time to get him out."
The little girl nodded her head. "I'll be more careful!"
Off to the side, Jane watched the display with a small smile. That smile faded though when a voice spoke up next to her. "My, my, my. Saving cats in trees. You really are a girl after my own heart, aren't you, Cinder?" Jane felt a hand on her shoulder as someone seemingly appeared next to her.
Hope froze for a moment when she heard the voice, and she frowned. "What do you want?" Slowly, she turned around and came face to face with the hero Purrfect. "And get away from my mother."