Shadows and Light - part 3
by Glitch Girl

"Freedom Force! Wow you're HERE!

"...it was awful..!"

"...just too much..."

"...a monster, I tell you..."

"...never seen anything like it..."

"...horrible! Just horrible...!"

Mentor took a slight step back from the mass of witnesses that crowded in on him and the other members of Freedom Force. He still didn't feel completely comfortable around humanity, especially humanity in such a heightened emotional state. And the noise... He could make out snatches of conversation, but it was impossible to focus on one long enough for it to make much sense, and as much as they all wanted to help, they all wanted to do it their own way. It would have been easy to force his will on them and make it stop, but these people weren't an enemy: they were merely frightened and confused,and seeing the Freedom Force, had found a way to ease their anxiety by trying to help what they saw as their potential saviors.

The Freedom Flyer's sensors had easily found the destroyed office that contained an extremely high concentration of Energy-X, but it turned out to be empty of anyone who'd been directly exposed to the powerful catalyst, only the members of the fire department who'd managed to contain the blaze within and the group of onlookers made up of students and faculty and a few scattered police officers trying to maintain order. Mentor knew they'd have to check the sensors again for signs of those exposed in the blast, but in the meantime, it looked like they were going to get the eye witness reports, whether they liked it or not.

"Everyone, PLEASE!" shouted the Ant over the din. "We'll do everything we can, but first tell us exactly what happened, ONE AT A TIME!"

There was the briefest pause, then the crowd started to tell him exactly what happened... all at once.

"This thing came down the hall..."

"...it had these weird legs, oh and wings. Big wings..."

"...Freedom Force, I have something to tell you..."

"...Know what it did to Andy? Threw him like he didn't weigh a thing..."

"...tore the door right off..."

"...it's REALLY important!"

"...that laugh. Horrible horrible laugh..."

"...I think it ate Doctor Monneka..."

"... IT WAS DOCTOR MONNEKA!" someone shouted out from the crowd. "I was THERE!"

Mentor popped to attention. "What was that miss?"

The noise of the crowd died for a moment as most of them turned to the source of the voice. Heads turned and bodies parted until there was a clear path between the Freedom Force and the witness.

The girl looked around nervously, suddenly finding herself the center of attention.

Alche-Miss looked her over. She could tell the girl had been through some kind of ordeal recently: her face was flushed and smudged slightly with soot and there was a small cut on her temple. She had a white lab coat wrapped around her over her clothes, but upon closer inspection, the blouse and skirt she wore under it were scattered with small tears that looked like they'd happened that day. Otherwise, she didn't seem that remarkable. She was of average height and appearance, with blond hair cut in a sort of "bob" style. Even so, there was something about her, the southern sorceress couldn't quite place what exactly, but she didn't quite look like your typical college coed looking for a MRS degree. (It was an old joke, most girls went to college looking for one thing: a future husband)

"Uh..." the girl stammered, apparently at a loss for words.

"It's all right, honey," Alche-Miss said gently as she stepped forward to comfort the girl. "Did this Doctor Monnkea do something to you?"

"No! I mean, I think he was but... well..."

The girl took a nervous breath and suddenly the words began tumbling out. "...Doctor Monneka was selling something to the commies and I saw him and the guy he was talking to, I think his name was Leninski, and of course I couldn't let them do that so I tried to stop them but I couldn't and they caught me and then they were going to kill me but then the commie guy ran away and the thing he was going to buy from Doctor Monneka exploded and then Doctor Monneka changed into a some kind of monster and, and, and look, can we talk somewhere else more private PLEASE?"

Another dead silence hung over the crowd as the girl looked at the three heroes with pleading eyes.

"Um, Alche-Miss," the Ant said at last, "Mentor and I can stay out here. Why don't you take her... over there and...um... talk to her?"

Alche-Miss briefly flashed him a black look. Men.

"Come on." She motioned to the girl to follow her into the nearest office. "You can tell me all about it in here. Have a seat," she added, motioning to the padded chair behind the desk littered with papers, family portraits, and little pebble sculptures with googly eyes and witty sayings that belonged to someone with a penchant for tourist traps.

"Do you mind if I stand?" the girl asked timidly.

"'Course not," said the Freedom Force mystic as she shut the door behind them. "Now, what's your name sugar?

"...Jenni. Jenni Martin."

"All right Jenni, tell me again what happened. And this time, tell it just a li'l more slowly."

Jenni looked around as if making sure they were indeed alone. "...There's, uh... Well, first, there's one little thing I need to show you."

"What's that?" she asked. For some reason, the girl looked a little taller than a few moments ago.

"Um... This."

She pointed down.

Alche-Miss looked. From the girl's feet and the floor was a good six inches of empty space.

Jenni gave a weak smile. "I think something happened to me too."

Alche-Miss calmly started at Jenni's feet until the girl floated back down to the ground. Then, with perfect aplomb, she to the door, stuck her head outside and said "Mentor? Ant? Could y'all come here one tiny moment..?"

Later...

"It's energy-X all right," said the Ant as he put away the small scanner he'd been using. "She's practically radiating it."

"Is that bad?" Jenni asked.

"Not necessarily," said Mentor. "The mutagenic qualities of Energy-X are highly erratic in their manifestations but-"

There he goes again, thought Alche-Miss, talking like everyone was some kind of science whiz. She cut in, "Mentor..."

"Are the effects similar to the cellular degradation caused by radiation or is it closer to a biological or photosynthatic response to an energy source?" asked Jenni.

The Ant perked up. "Sort of a combination of the two. I'm still studying it... I mean WE'RE still studying it, but looks like it bombards the cells with energy causing a reaction like vitamin d synthesis in skin cells, but at the same time it physically combines with the host cells and alters them, most of the time forcing them to adapt to the new energy without any outward physical sign, except for the purple glow of course-"

"So the purple glow is actually a byproduct of the combinatory reaction?"

"Indeed it is," said Mentor. "Very astute of you to notice."

Alche-Miss rolled her eyes. Not another egghead. "Look, this is all very fascinating, but we've still got some monster runnin' around out there, and you did say you know what happened and all, right?"

Jenni nodded.

"So... what happened?"

"Well, I was going to Doctor Monneka's office when I overheard him talking to someone. I heard them mention a name I'd read about in the news, um... Sukov. That was it."

The trio of heroes exchanged glances; they remembered Sukov, now Nuclear Winter.

"I remember that he was a known communist," Jenni continued. "and the guy Doctor Monneka was talking to worked for him. They were talking about an exchange, and I just couldn't let the doctor sell us out to the commies so I rushed in there and I tried to stop them. I know it was stupid, but I didn't know what else to do. The other guy, Leninski, he caught me and threw me against the desk and he was going to shoot me. And something happened, I'm not sure what, but all the sudden, the commie guy sees something and starts to run and Doctor Monneka was shouting at him and... and then the canister exploded. And then it gets kind of weird..."

Earlier...

Jenni's head was still ringing from the sound of the explosion as she slowly recovered her senses. she was still on the floor, backed against what was left of Doctor Monneka's desk, but she couldn't move her legs and everything around her had a haziness to it. The haziness, it turned out, was due to the dust from all the debris around her, including the large ceiling support that had landed across her legs, pinning them to the ground. A faint purplish glow that was fading to a pale white surrounded her, she couldn't quite figure out where it was coming from, but she was more worried about her lower extremities at the moment. Her legs didn't FEEL broken, but still, she couldn't move them as long as the beam was here. She gave an experimental push to see if she could move it.

It felt like it weighed a ton. Maybe if she had something she could use as a lever. Or maybe she should call for help...

Across the room something moved. A figure in a lab coat, much like one Doctor Monneka wore, was trying to stand. Unlike Doctor Monnkea however, this person was huge and their skin... either it was a trick of the light or something, but it was "glowing" with black fire. The glowing man took hold of one of the many fallen beams as he righted himself, but as he touched it, the beam promptly caught on fire.

She let out a gasp before she realized she had.

The figure turned around and she could see its face lit by the fire light. It was dark red and leathery, with wild white hair streaming down its back and a frame that strained against its ill fitting clothing. Yellow eyes regarded her with cold amusement, much like a cat regards a mouse.

The worst part was, despite all the changes, she recognized him; it was Doctor Monneka, the man who wanted her dead moments earlier, and she could tell from his eyes that he was ready to finish the job.

If he tried to hurt her, she couldn't exactly fight back, not with her legs stuck like this. She was trapped with this monster that stood before her, framed by the fast spreading fire which made him look like he'd just stepped out of the heart of Hell itself.

Suddenly, the Monneka-monster's body was wracked with spasms. He dropped to the floor and bellowed as a pair of massive, bat-like wings erupted from his back and spread wide.

Monneka stood again. He seemed unusually pleased by the latest development. Thankfully though, he'd apparently lost interest in her and stepped out of his burning office into the hallway outside, which still left the fire and the support beam. Jenni's situation had only improved slightly.

She pushed against the beam again, using all her strength, hoping she might be able to move it a little. Her hands started to tingle, but she told herself that it was probably due to the strain. Outside she could hear sounds of people, some kind of commotion... Maybe, she thought as she pushed against the metal weight, maybe one of them can help me if I yell loud enough.

That's when she heard Monneka laugh and the panic hit her like a tidal wave.

She'd been shared before, but this, this was raw, primal, cold fear. The type of fear that defied all reason, logic, and thought. It was the type of fear that drove the animal levels of the brain and told you that now was a very good time to run and hide as far away as possible.

It was the type of fear that ran on instinct, even instinct you didn't know you had.

Jenni's hands glowed bright white and a beam of pure concentrated light surged out of them, blasting through the beam like it was rotten balsa wood and breaking it in half.

If Jenni had been in her right mind, she would have stopped, stared at her hands and marveled about how in the world she could do something like this and how she'd gotten this marvelous burst of power.

At the moment though, she was far from her right mind. She just wanted OUT. Her brain was working at light speed...

Front door? Bad idea...

No back door. No windows. Just a hole in the ceiling...

Close enough.

Without thinking further, she jumped.

Plaster, wood, and other broken building materials fell past her, raking her skin and tearing at her clothes as she rocketed upward. She didn't care, she had to keep moving, had to get away. Suddenly, she was surrounded by a bright light as the shattered pieces of building fell away from her.

Not just any light. Sunlight. Daylight.

She wasn't in the building anymore.

She was above it.

The fear she'd been feeling before drained away as she hung in the air staring down in wonder. How in the world..?

Her thoughts quickly moved to the canister and the article she'd read. What was it... energy-something. It was a letter... Z? M? K? X?

She realized she was starting to sink rapidly.

The problem was, she didn't know exactly HOW she had gotten up in the air in the first place, so it was a little hard to recreate it to stop her descent. Squeezing her eyes shut, she concentrated hard, trying to remember how it felt, what she did...

After a tense moment, she felt herself slow down and risked opening her eyes again.

She was hovering about three feet from the roof several dozen yards away from the collapsed office she'd been in moments before. She could see bits of flame licking at the edges of the hole. Somewhere inside, she could hear the sounds of people screaming and shouting.

"Demonika," she thought to herself as she carefully floated herself down to the roof. That was how a few of the underrgads referred to him behind his back after he'd menaced them too much. She'd never called him that before, never even thought to, but now... now it seemed appropriate. The man WAS a monster in more ways than one.

As if to further confirm this, the front doors of the science building went flying across the front walkway as twisted wreckage and Demonika stomped out into the sunlight. He bellowed something she couldn't quite make out, spread his wings, and took to the skies. In moments he was out of sight, leaving a crowd of witnesses and the arriving fire and police departments far behind.

For a long time, she just stood on the edge of the roof, trying to make sense of everything.

Demonika was a monster. Not just figuratively, but literally as well. Something in that canister had changed him.

That something had changed her too. For one thing, she could fly. People aren't supposed to be able to do that, but with everything that happened up in Patriot City, it wasn't impossible, just improbable.

She could fly AND she broke a support beam with what appeared to be (and "felt like", now that she thought about it) concentrated light. Probably related to some of the particle aspects of light when concentrated to a very narrow field, but even so, it didn't behave quite as a laser of that focal width should behave, except for that one in that article in Popular Mechanics, but that particular writer was always exaggerating things for effect. Now, the beam itself appeared to have concussive force which would imply the possibility of...

A large shape overhead snapped her out of her thoughts. She looked up, dreading the worst.

Instead of Demonika, it as a large, silvery airship. She'd seen it in the newspaper before; it belonged to the Freedom Force.

She suddenly felt relieved. If ANYONE could explain what happened to her and Doctor Monneka, it'd be the Freedom Force.

Of course, she'd have to get off the roof first.

Present...

"...and then after I floated down, I went inside and borrowed a coat since my clothes got kind of torn up. After that, I found you, and... and that's it."

"Do you know where Doctor Monneka would have gone?" asked Mentor.

She shook her head. "He was heading away from the city, I'm pretty sure. Other than that, I have no idea where he went."

Meanwhile...

Leninski drove down the road as inconspicuously as possible. He'd seen several fire trucks and police cars pass him going the opposite direction, which meant he wanted to be as far away from the University as possible before they had time to start their investigation. Plus, the deal Doctor Monnkea was a complete and utter disaster, something he did NOT look forward to reporting to his superiors. Things couldn't possibly get worse.

It was right then that something huge dropped out of the sky and landed in the road in front of him. Leninski slammed on the brakes, but he was going to fast, and instead managed to smash into the whatever-it-was. The car jerked to a stop, throwing the commie agent hard against the dashboard.

He lay against the steering wheel for a few seconds, catching his breath as his horn blared out a steady noise due to some unwritten law of car wrecks. Finally, Leninski straightened up...

...and started as he looked right into the face of a demon.

"Hello Leninski," it smirked down at him. "Remember me?"

To be continued...