Tourist Trap

Dragon Girl too was still massaging her neck, where 01 had delivered a meaty chop. “I guess the Chinese weren’t kidding when they said they had a war god on their side. Or at least his clone.” Dragon creaked her neck, then sprayed it with some topical ointment from her little first aid kit.

June sighed. “He’ll need to heal from his injuries, so we have this chance to get the Jagarata supers on our side. We could seriously get hurt if he’s getting 02.” June conjectured, knowing that another combat expert would make the fight difficult to call.

Once it was determined no more super destruction was taking place, Ranah tentatively made her way to the Crowne Rose. She eyed the destruction wrought here, stunned for a few moments before she could speak. “Guys, I have good news I found the prison and …oh…” She saw the dead body of 05. “…Is this Deep Defender? From Shanghai? I hear he was a creep.” She said, recognizing the fish face.

“You have no idea.” June rolled her eyes. This one was one clone she had no hard feelings for. “Is everyone safe?” she shifted the topic, to keep everyone on their toes.

“Yes. I stashed them in the slums where the military won’t go, and there’s a hero who lives there who’ll make sure nothing happens to them. Oh! I found out where your bad friends are being held. It’s three blocks down, no superpowered staff. You want to go get them now?”

June looked at Deimos. A normal prison didn't seem that hard. “…You want to take this? If its just guns, I can get them out without breaking a sweat.”

((290))

“Wait, that was a war god?” Deimos asks, a bit baffled he didn’t immediately die to him. If he really thought about it, he probably should have.

He couldn’t help but look at the corpse of the amphibian with disgust. He literally bit a man in half. Sure it was a clone, and apparently a real piece of work, but he still bit a living person clean in two. It was going to take a while to forget about that one.

Once Ranah spat out the information on Jason and Emmet he begins to think. A regular prison shouldn’t be too hard. “I can blast a hole in it for you to clear the way.” He offers. He could still fly and he did have a breath weapon that could crack an armored gate open like an egg.

“I can air strike the prison and you go scoop up the two goons. Then I can wreak havoc on some military from the sky if you’d like.” Since no metahumans were defending the neighborhood, he felt he could deal so heavy damage. Truth be known, he was still mad about his shoulder and wanted revenge. Beating up on 01 wasn’t currently an opinion, but blowing up some more tanks sounded like a great consolation prize.

Deimos steps away, moving to transform back into a dragon. However, instead of his normal, comfortable, quadrupedal stance, he chooses to stand on his hind legs. It was not a natural stance, nor did it look comfortable as he stood somewhat leaned forward, using his tail as a counterweight. His wings slightly raised up as well to keep the weight balanced right.

He sends a picture to June, a memory of earlier when he dropped from the sky and immolated the APCs. He then sends another picture of mimicking it on a prison just to reiterate the plan before putting it into action.

June looked at Deimos skeptically. “You really want to risk blowing up a building that has your, uh, ‘friends’, in it? Ran, how big a prison are we talking?”

Ranah clarified what she meant talking about a prison in this corner of the world. “Um. It’s a local precinct, an old townhouse converted into a police outpost…  your American mansions are usually bigger.”

June nodded and offered an alternative. “I figure We can be in and out before we call more attention to ourselves.”

They watched Deimos transform though, before they could completely talk it out. June received the mental image of an American style prison, one of those massive complexes of human misery. She tried to communicate back somehow that Asian countries did not quite have the budget for industrialized incarceration.

= = = = =

The normal policy for vagabond foreigners was to be caned, then forced to record a very scripted apology. However, their incarceration had coincided with the coup attempt, and almost every senior member of the military was called to the palace, which included the precinct commander. Left behind were teenaged guards to guard the foreign … teenagers. And their drugs.

The doors to the tropical house turned precinct swung open as June ripped the handle and lock off the door itself. Her strong sense of smell picked up the smell of burning opiates of different varieties, and her helm sealed off at her mental command. Surely enough, over at some sofas, several young police officers, underpaid and overworked, were happily going through Deimos’s friends’ stash, laughing and smiling to themselves, even warmly welcoming June.

“Hey welcome to the precinct! Are you a superhero?! That’s so cool. Your outfit is so cool! All black and shiny!”

June looked at the situation with disbelief. The key to this madness it seemed, was the leadership. She stepped back outside to wave at Deimos, if he was overhead flying. There was no meaningful resistance at the precinct, so this one was going to be an easy rescue. If the prisoners were coherent in any way. She wondered what he’d make of this.

((352))

Deimos hadn’t quite realized an asian prison wasn’t a highly secure facility… rather he found that this place would be more like a house. How did they keep prisoners from escaping? Too late, already a dragon. He spreads his wings, taking to the sky. He finds flying is much easier like this, putting less pressure on his front limb as he tucks it up against his side.

XXX

The dragon had been circling the skies as June checked things out. He couldn’t help but to be astonished by just how tiny and unguarded it was. He chooses to land when Dragon Girl waves him down, skidding to an uncharacteristically rough landing, back feet touching down first. Before he even fully landed he was back to transforming and then waltzing back in with June, wings folded in a very loose fashion, left hanging much lower than the right.

“Ayyyyy, Deimos!!!”

Deimos couldn’t believe what he was currently witnessing. Rather than being locked away in a prison cell, Emmet and Jason were currently hanging on the couch with some prison guards, smoking an absolute obscene amount of drugs.

“I- what!? Don’t just ‘hey’ me, what the actual hell are you doing?!” Deimos’s voice cracks a bit as he feels his fury building.

“Havin a fuckin party, whats it look like we’re doin!? These wonderful gentlemen brought us here, saw we had drugs and when the old guy left, we got fucking turnt!”These two were just living it up, One was in his underwear, the other was in a rather fancy suit that didn’t fit him at all… and was monogrammed with a name that most definitely was not Jason, nor Emmet.

“You put me in a bathtub of ice!”

“Well yeah. Charlie said that’s what you do to turtles to make them sleep. You put the turtle in the freezer. Works on a giant lizard too… right?”

If Deimos ever felt the urge to kill someone, it’d be right now. “I am not a turtle.” His voice fell, as if he felt the urge to assure these two he was most certainly not a turtle. “Look, you two gotta get back with your parents. They think ya’ll are dead.”

These two goons are suddenly distracted by the seven foot tall lady. “Hey girl, how you doin? Want some speed?” Emmet suddenly asks, rattling a bag at June and wiggling his eyebrows suggestively in a manner only a man on enough crack to see into the future could.

“How are we going to get these two idiots out? Looks like they made friends.”

MINIMUM SECURITY PRISON

June lets out a long sigh, taking the drug paraphernalia and tossing them out the windows. She wordlessly goes over to the desks, searching the drawers. The bottom drawer had lots of free handcuffs. She drags the young police officers to the window grates, and cuffed them to the grates. Ranah meanwhile, fiddle with some keys, trying out a bunch, trying to find which one would free Deimos’s friends. Sighing, June just breaks them apart, impatiently pulling and snapping with her fingers, throwing the broken cuffs on the ground.
June was about to say something, when the government mandated speakers in the station made an announcement.

“Please comply with all government regulations. Safety and security are being provided by the Jagar-Military. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Thank you for cooperating.” The phrasing on that last statement struck a bad chord with June. She grabbed the nearest nightstick and tossed it at the speaker, skewering it and embedding into the concrete.

“Okay, we’ve been sidelined for way too long just for these two. Where were we going again?” June asked, the presence of the drugs slightly dulling her focus.

“Palace.” Ranah simply answered, using her own water magic to cleanse the toxins from Deimos’s friends’ systems, robbing them of their high. “The country’s metahumans will join us there for the siege. There, these two should be coherent enough to return to their parents by themselves. And no more drugs!”

= = = =

THE PARLIAMENTARY PALACE – HQ OF THE COUP

The Palace was on high alert with the situation on the ground. As it turns out, oppressing your people when the country’s metahumans were all anti-military was a bad idea. The nation’s so called “heroes”, were doing exactly they were trained for, and overthrowing the yoke of the oppressors. Key areas were lost, and forces were rallying to the palace for a final stand. Sadly, this meant that rather than being taken captive, the amoral officers simply order people be shot on the spot. Those who weren't immediately taken out by local superheroes, would have to contend with critically wounded civilians littering the streets.

“02! Where are you? I demand your presence this instant!” Er Lang Shen’s clone arrived, battered and bloodied at the palace, roaring for the attention of his compatriot.

A member of the general staff stormed towards the giant, not reading his mood at all. “01 Report on the situation on the ground!”

The unfortunate soul who dared approached the enraged god clone was picked up and crushed in the angered deity’s one remaining hand.

“Mortal fools. I am Er Lang Shen! This farcical exercise is over! I will-” the 01 unit’s speech was cut short, as was his head, as the 02 who had remained hidden appeared from behind and above, and neatly decapitated him with a jade sword. The jade sword turned dark green and brown, and crumbled as semi-divine blood seeped into it.
02 shook her head, looking at Shen’s decapitated head. The thing was still trying to breathe, to talk, his eyes open in shock, staring at 02’s sudden betrayal. No one saw this coming, but neither was the return of the original’s personality. 02 stomped on it with her foot, taking a few good stomps to completely crush it. His horrendously muscular body crumpled into a kneeling position, a macabre fountain of blood.

She looked at the black masked communism trooper in the room, the only one who wasn’t shocked at the occurrence. “Colonel. Get your Death Battalion ready.”

The masked one salutes, and sprints off to prepare for the final fight.

((617))