Bedlam: On a New Eve

Laura snuck through the streets, shuffling in her red coat along the seedy city. She was very pale, and somewhat frail, her cyan-dyed hair nearly combed to equal sides. Bedlam was never a bundle of roses at 10 at night, but she seldom made debate when traveling thru and through a night's work. Mai Thais Tea and Noodle Shop closed at nine on dot, never a minute sooner. Between serving tables, washing dishes and doing uncountable chores for her boss to earn a meager penny, she was quite tired of the hustle and bustle. Her hands were still wrinkly from an hour of dish washing. She had not gotten home that night; she had a little bit of time to find the person who had stolen her purse last week, stopping by the police station and trying to recall the details to men who couldn't be arsed to a hysterical dame. "He had a mask.. and-" "Little miss, do you know how many masked freaks run around the streets this part of night? You're better off putting an ad at your local Hero organization." The chief told her, trying to argue on the phone. Laura stammered and leaned against the counter. "You call yourself a cop? Do you want to be a hero or a coward?"
The chief laughed at her. She didn't find it so amusing.

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Midnight Masquerade Organizational Structure:
i.    ALICE - Primary organization head responsible for Midnight's clandestine operations.
ii.    SISHELL - Offshore company managing finances, account logistics and illegal monetary operations. Has numerous connections with Mobs and foreign banking.
iii.    P.H.L (Proxy Hunting Labor) - Hunting task-force responsible for bringing in rogue undocumented Proxies.
iv.    Den Registry - Recruits overmen, metahumans, superheroes, villains and super powered individuals to Midnight's cause.
v.    Hex-Adjacence - Contacts and alliances with 'Solar Society's Masquerade and the Kaleido resistance'

Ex-Midnight (expunged)
i.    Legionairres - High Profile Supervillain organization that went rogue from Midnight's Den Registry, now poses a threat to its former organization.
ii.    The Proxy Syndicate - Splinter group who stole PROXY samples, integrated them and runs their own operations after betraying the Midnight Masquerade.

A dark clad figure slowly approaches her team in locations unknown. She pulls up her hood to reveal neon blue hair and large round eyes with pupils dark enough to swallow the sun. The audience goes silent as she steps up. The figure, only 5 feet tall clears her throat to address her followers.
"Good eve good eve every body! Hope you didn't make any plans tonight! No don't worry, there are no military operations lead tonight or and doomsday plans just yet. "
"I hope you all got a good break at the refreshment stand. Now that we've got you all liquored up we can begin and get this years annual agenda out of the way..."

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Laura left the station, hands in coat pockets. From a distance she heard the sounds of a scuffle in the lobby. A woman with glasses and a camera followed her shortly after.
"Hey there! I'm a reporter! Shirley Watson, For the Daily Holograph, if you don't believe me! Can't you-" She caught her breath, the woman's scarf and flannel jacket not quite keeping it all in. Her hair was neat and well kept, she'd never seen anyone with a tie in a rush to talk with her. "Can you tell more about who took your stuff?" She was trying to sound confident, but it came out somewhat insincere.
Shirley stopped, leaving the girl to respond. Laura started putting the woman's name on her tongue. "Look Shirley.. The cops won't do anything about it. No one takes little crimes seriously in this city.."
She attempted to leave, yet the reporter pursued her. Laura sighed, what good could come of this? She had family waiting at home. "If I tell you, can you give me money for the bus? I could use some change."
Laura perked up. "Change a meal, consider it done!"
Laura explained as best she could while biting the chili-dog the reporter bought her.
"So he had a luchador looking mask that had horns and resembled some type of Lizard. He hopped on walls and.."
"I see.. fascinating, you know incidents like this really make me curious." Shirley was a little too calm to really be a reporter, she looked more like a spy in her leathery tights. The thick sweater seemed somewhat contrasting,
"But you said his mask was like the Luchadore? Are you sure?" "Pretty sure."
The reporter started to take a quick picture of Laura, she held her hands up in protest and started to remove it, but Shirley had grabbed her arm and put the camera on her face, almost knocking her off her feet. "Now you tell me, Miss! Do you have any idea who this person could be?" Shirley asked, turning it on her and taking a few photos too many.
"That's ENOUGH. Oh.." A photo came out of the camera, one purely of Laura's bust. "Sorry for yelling at you. But I don't know who they were. I've never seen them on the news or any public villain registry."
She gave the camera back to the reporter. "You may want to keep that picture. That's all I have to say." She handed back the picture of her chest and began to lookaway. The night had gotten colder, and Laura was far from her home's stop at the station. She saw the police lights shining in her face from outside the bus, some sort of incident atop a building- what was left of it. Capes. Crooks. Those superpowered crazies running through Bedlam were all the same, all with their own agendas.
Shirley got a message on her phone, her face lit up. "Sorry I've got to go! New scoop!" She looked up at Laura. "Actually.. feeling adventurous?" Her fingers rubbed against Laura's cheeks. "I will pay you for your assistance if you want. 50$" She stepped off the bus and looked upwards.
Laura paced back and forth, fidgeted. After a tone of indecision, she said "Fine." and stepped off to follow the reporter. "You're very brave. Or stupid. I'm the latter."
The girl sighed. "I just need the money." She'd follow her, for now.

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"Cough cough."
"Where do we start.." Rows and rows of suited men and woman sat in the audience. "When we first started this discourse over 2 decades ago, the man that started it, lead it, and ultimately fled it had very, lofty aspirations. Wrecking havoc, blowing up bridges, creating a new world. A better world for those distinguished enough to play part in it. He once described 'This is a sort of terrorism. One feels often violently torn out from oneself to claw forward.' A new organization, for a new world. Everything organized, everything laid out ahead."
She paced back and forth, as if lost in her own distress. "It seems so soon ago that this figure, this so-called "Lucy" appoached me, still an underling of his in the 3rd world orders of the world, and asked "Would you mind joining that?" I was the first woman ever to be recognized among his ranks. That invitation, it was, a pride and comfort that resists description." When she turned back to the crowd, her focus seemed scattershot at best.
"It was sadly, in the end an exercise in faltering potential. Despite our initial strong start, that man's conviction wasn't enough. Our goals not bold enough, ambition often fleeting. Success a lost void in the the very negation of Mr. Lucy's vaunted dream for this miserable planet."
She grips the mic tight and shakes her head in negation of these dreadful ideas.
"I'm of the personal belief that his lack of strength and faith in that vision was what allowed that agent, ever weary of our deception in strength, to undermine us so thoroughly. She brought the force upon us and burned this program to the ground. Our wings, once soaring to new heights had muddled and sent us sinking into the darkness from whence he ought to have thought we'd never return."
"Lucy feared already in 1984 both the return of those that might extinguish us and the triumph of those who would have us hunted. Those silvery hunters, the one's he's sought to put down prematurely, is that his precaution? In evidence of pro-active violence everywhere? No. Rather, what he feared was a fake liberalization, without importance. Without substance or true change. Not from killers or thieves, but politicians. From bureaucracy. He feared corrosion from within."
She stretches out her arms, as if resigned to exhaustion.
"But now, the extent of his scientific meddling! Well, that’s a different matter…"
"Alexander Nevermire". We hear more and more talk of a crisis of that one's infamous Experiment. Those ever instigating, creatures, that had been left behind. It's a lost cause, they say, as modern society and primitive science has discovered that one's work is insufficient for understanding man nor even deeply investigating his relationship with the world. The Proxies were abandoned. The legends of the so-called Tower experiment, lost to time and scattered to the winds of hearsay and mere speculation.  And the relationship with those tinkering with them and command, fissured until our Organization fell apart."

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Laura and the reporter headed into the pub 'The Slaughtered Lamb', Shirley leading Laura into the underbelly of the world. She ordered a 'Shepard's special' from the bartender, who coughed and lead the two in pack. Laura wasn't sure what was going on, she went with Shirley down a flight of dark stairs and eventually headed into a secondary set of chambers- headquarters of some kind. The ominous presence in the air had a distinct sense of danger to her. They peaked through the door, some of the darkest taboos coming to light inside. Laura's eyes lid up. "No way.."
"Journalism never sleeps!" Shirley took up her Holoheld and flipped through the information.
Villain Registry
The Grooge. Abilities: Liquid body transmission. Status: At large and dangerous.
Madoki. Abilities: Imagination projections. Status: Villain child prodigy. Frequently seen with the Grooge.
Louse. Abilities: Scythe hands, iron skin. Status: Allied with the War Birds.
Comrade Leninir. Abilities: Enhanced durability, physique. Status: In-Exile.
Father Brood. Abilities: Mercury manipulation. Status: Under watch.
Horntail. Abilities: Wall-crawling, acrobatic nimbleness. Status: At large.
Shi-Sung. Abilities: Vocal shattering. Status: Missing.
Ekko. Abilities: Fluid and liquid body transmutation. Vibration Duplicates. Status: At large and dangerous.
The Black Mantis. Abilities: Shadow manipulation. Mind control. Status: Presumed killed by White Scorpion.
BattleHawk. Abilities: Energy blades, flight. Status: Confirmed member of the War Birds.
Ravenstein. Abilities: Can gain wisdom thru blood meditation. Status: Applicant member of the War Birds.
Nomad. Abilities: Can turn on/off gravity. Status: Unknown. Presumed potential for espionage high.
Baron Luminous. Abilities: Light-based Telekinesis, self regeneration. Status: Out-of-Exile.
Wyrm. Abilities: Dimensional tunneling. Status: Last seen with The Fearsome Fester.
Red-Saber. Abilities: Pyrotechnic teleportation. Status: Missing.
Mr. Gaunt. Abilities: Liquid body transmutation. Status: Missing.
Atop numerous leather chairs, barstools and a pool table the group went about their business. The smell of smoke and whisky was substantial through the air.
"This is, a supervillain hideout?" Lauren started to squirm, she felt her blood running cold. "Is it really safe for a reporter to be sneaking somewhere this dangerous?"
"Shh... It's not my first time sneaking here." Shirley said, cupping Lauren's mouth. "Besides.." At first she was too stunned to understand what was going on, at least till Shirley went in and grabbed her by the hair.
She pushed the teashop worker in through the door. "W-what the hell.."
Miss Slaughter. Abilities: Trust Empowerment. Fingerblades. Status: Homicidal and large.
The woman and the pack within the lair all began to circle back to Laura, howls of malicious laughter going high and higher still in the air.

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Proxies: Entities believed to contain cells and small bodyparts ("Seeds") broken off from the entity that Mr. Lucy calls NOVUS PRIME and incorporated into a host. Forced integration has a 99.98% failure rate resulting in shock, extreme duress and fatality for the host. Successful assimilation is rare, oft requiring a strongly willed bodily compontent. Genetic sequencing and samples have been known to mutate and takeover individuals, while providing massive uncontrollable power, spikes in arousal and instinct and xenomorphic transformation. Proxies commonly have retractable exo-cords used for grappling purposes, shelled layers and chitin mutations across their upper skull, although newer ProxyTypes have been known to disguise themselves as almost entirely human with proper experimentation.

Known Proxies:
???Classified???
◘Pink Nebula
???Classified???
???Classified???
◘Ramona Flowers (Head Operations Director Ramona)
◘Alexander Nevermire
◘ZONE
???Classified???
???Classified???

She rolls her eyes and taps the mike a bit on the podium. "This was what broke us last time, they say." "This, Crisis in rendezvous endeavors is how ALICE fell. The Midnight Masquerade itself was shaken by this failure, it fractured us, splintered us down to our most cunning and our most faithful then tore us with the dance of wolves when left to our own bifurcation."
She stomps her foot, echoing a crash throughout the speakers
"Pish posh! Pressure politics! Firstly." There's a glance to the ceiling, as if praying for a better delivery.
"This is all tittle-tattle. It's blatant mediocrity lobbying as fatalism. In the first place, let's speak of this so-called crisis. It does not exist, it could not. The extent of science has not come close to finding its own limits, yet. Nor what's left in answers to be acquired from these thus called Proxies! There is still much to discover in practice. And in matters of, consciousness, In Proxy-Analysis, there are no immediate answers. I've kept here still for only the long and patient search for reasons."
Rubs her glasses a bit.
"Secondly, Mr. Lucy's abandonedment. How can it possibly be said that he has been left behind, that we've become an old relic, discredited and forgotten when we have still not yet entirely understood him? When the Proxies he feared and shunned from Alexander's vaunted tomb, were shoved aside like a basement dwelling afterthought."
Throwing her arms about wildly with each line, she starts to pace back and forth.
"Do you understand how that felt for me? Me, as a mere bureaucrat, as the one he trusted most to push his papers and divisions together? That suddenly he no longer trusted in us, in the projects put forward that day?"
"Shame. Shame, guilt, and radically new self-contempt beyond limits for his sudden defection. It made me cringe and cry and I'd stomp and scream and regret with a curse upon my very name that I'd ever said those words. That I'd once uttered, "Why Yes Mr. Lucy, I'm going to join your movement. And I'll devote my life to your work and give a new meaning to the word Insurrection!"
"His doctrine, the hallmark of ALICE put truth itself in question, and this concerns everyone, yes it concerns each individual personally. ALICE is hardly in crisis. It's quite unfortunate for Mr. Lucy."
Ahem.
"I will repeat, again, we are far from failing Lucy. His name has often and ignorantly also been used to cover for a lot of misuse in these seedy ranks, ever since his middle finger to our organization. There have been, deviations and epigones who did most unfortunately not always loyally follow his model. Often creating confusion about what he meant. "
She stares out into the crowd, making sure she's eagerly got their attention.
"After his leave in 1989, many claimed to be exercising a different kind of terrorism by reducing his teachings, and all of his efforts to a few banal formulas. Murder as sport. Technique as a ritual. Practice restricted to treating and controlling people’s behaviour. All this, merely as a means of surviving the individual to their social environment, the world we wish to conquer."
"This is the negation of Mr. Lucy. A comforting salon-chair Order capable only of terror and endless reduction of social control, of anarchy no more fascist and remarkable than every tyrant of the past! One only has to look at what Mr. Lucy has stripped of himself now to obtain to find out where he throws his aims now."
She bends over passionately, leering to the audience. "And for that, he deserves everything he's gotten. His shitty, lawless city he's so proud of. All the thieves and liars and shitty drugs he's let in, all the degenerate shitty businesses he's let flourish. It's all so he can dwell about in his playpen, his own shitty metric of shitty worth of his own that passes for accomplishment. .."
"When in fact, the only feat worth ever mentioning my sweeties, was us."

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"Brought back another one did ya? Aye, such a sweet kid.. she looks younger than your usual." Louse said, slurping disgustingly from their mug while they stood up in their suit of armor.
She recognized Horntail- the one who stole her purse. "This is.. not right. The entire situation immediately became clear to her, this woman, this so called 'reporter' was bad business.
Miss Slaughter slicked back her hair, letting it run free. Her soft spoken disposition became crackled and distorted, eyes crazed with bloodlust.
"What the hell?" The laughter echoed through the room. "F-fuck.." She tried to run out, only for 'Shirley' to grab her face and shove her onto a couch, sitting next to her.
"Don't be such a prude girl. I prefer softer fruit afterall." She stuck her nail into the girl's neck to cut her slightly, drawing a small trickle of blood below the chin.
"Get away from me!"
Slaughter smirked. She put her hands through the girls head and muttered, pursing out her lips sweetly. "What?" Laura asked. Her head felt a bit light, like her skull was full of rattlesnakes.
The synapses in her head began to fizzle and electrocute new thoughts, a flurry of feelings. The danger and fear of the situation dissipated.
"Calm downnnn." Miss said, removing all her burdens with a soft stroke.  
Laura felt the motivation to protect, the desire to see the best in someone you care for. The natural instinct to relate, to care for someone, to feel connection and friendship.
Loyal. Loyal to a fault. It was so lovely. Of course she trusted her. As Miss Slaughter started to fondle her breast and lick her cheek, she put aside the dark situation far into the back of her mind and went at ease, that trust coiling inside her mind sooner and sooner. She was loyal to Miss, she trusts her, she'd follow her everywhere she went. Loved her even. If only she were so lucky to have this woman kiss her ...what? Something was off. This was not right. This didn't feel right.
"This is what you want isn't it? You want to be here, don't you?"
She felt a surge of anger, but it couldn't hold her back. She let herself slip, that part of her she kept hidden for years now. Miss Slaughter's finger reached down to scratch her clit.
Laura squirmed, pulling away and throwing a punch. It was met with the most unworldly sensation as she grabbed hold of Miss Slaughter's wrist in an attempt to break free.
"What the hell.." She shook her head, wanting to scream. The drunken, calming haze fought the truth. "What was that?" She couldn't be pulled in again.
Slaughter began to crackle madly. "So weak minded" She laughed and reached for her throat, but Laura was not giving in. "Come on girl, lighten up!"
A sharp pain shot through Laura's body, and that flow of trust and calm came rushing back like she wanted to throw herself, her entire body into this woman's lovely arms. "Oh God!" It wasn't over yet.
She felt another surge of affection, she shook her head but it was no use, that part of her always won. Her knees buckled.
"NO!"
The door opened up with a knock.
Comrade Lenirir cleared their throat, and went over to get it.
A woman in a black hood clocked him all the way across the room leaving a smear of blood across the carpet.

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There's a sense of commotion that borders on the hysterical, the frenzy she pulls from the crowd. The energy, the high spirits. It all resonates with her peers the longer she whips them up, connecting her ambitions with their own in the dead of moonlight tonight.
"What does his city compare to our global organization? How we've served billions! How we, contributing to charity and confronting a degenerate media so full of shit, in the face of guilty socio-political heathens, have appealed to his old religious convictions and beliefs. Are we not his legacy? Is that not the hallmark that we, the TRUE successors of Alice, of Mr. Lucy's Creed have flourished! Way more important than any one he's committed to. So I say, no sir. We refuse your Crisis in faith, instead we feel a deeper connection with the words that you once inspired us with. We do not, I repeat we don't accept his resignation. We are not in Crisis. That man no longer speaks for us, his will has failed as the consciousness of a new generation. We're still going strong. And we accept all, and your support has made us more renewed and relevant than ever!"
"Let's step away from the failings of the previous leader for a moment." The leather sole of her shoe, tapping, reverberates like a hummingbird's clockwork heartbeat. "There is a real crisis going on. It is not of the our Organization, but that diseased world we wish so ambitiously too better and support. What is it that Alice seeks to threat?"
She plays with her tie here-there. Straightening it, keeping calm.
"Let me be brisk. I define it as not a disease, but a symptom. Something that in it's magnanimity, reveals the malaise of the society in which we live. Of course, it's not merely a philosophy. I do so abhor philosophy and, for an awful long time that philosophies of the world had nothing new of interest to say. Nor this symptom, the sickness of the world in one of faith, and nor am I too keen on referring to it as that of science. Let us just say that it’s a symptom in practice, yes a practice, and it is absolutely concerned with whatever is not going right."
Deep breaths leave her lips. The cold glare she gives is enough to chill to the bone.
"I speak with broad strokes, which is a terrible difficulty because our Order claims to introduce the impossible, the benevolent imaginary, into everyday life. To stack the social order into a list of diagnosis that cure the existence plaguing mankind. Thus far these definitions, they've obtained certain results, but there are no hard guidelines and still no rules, since the cure is ever prone to all sorts of ambiguities."
"Our object here is quite simple. I ask you my sweets, what isn’t going right with people today? I'll tell you."
The woman folds her arms and looks out.
"It is listless. This great feeble, lethargic listlessness that drives people to a torrent of suffering and repetitive drivel. The indolent and idle have taken the reigns on Societies god damn sheeple and we find this head has mawed itself into the great abyssal slump."
She stretches her hands out and cracks her knuckles.
"So what's the real issue here? I tell you! This great listlessness in life, it's a consequence of the abandonment of order and rush for perverse progress. Through ALICE, only we can expect to discover just how far it is possible, to draw out this listlessness that holds people in fatigue."
"And what is it that drive people to apathy, to this endless listlessness of human existence?"
Her hands fiddle with her collar, tugging and pinching it as she explains
"What is it that drives people to have themselves grouped, analyzed, sought out and brought together for higher causes. What's this great drive, of which people need to be cured?"
She glares at her listeners and pauses for dramatic effect.
"Fear. We often say when something happens and someone doesn't understand it, even if say they wanted it to happen. They become afraid. They're adept to suffer from a lack of understanding. And little by little they'll go into a panic. This is paralysis. With hysterical resonance, the body, human, social, political, it becomes ill from the fear of being ill, the mind wrecks havoc on the soul, and without really being so. With obsessive paralysis, the fear brings out the unthinkable to mind. We're paralyzed by thoughts that cannot be controlled, and phobias in which people and objects acquire different trivial meanings that make people afraid."
All can hear her slam her fist on the podium, but they stop right before she shakes it violently.
And then, calmly slides her hands out, palms outstretched.

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Slaughter's eyes went up. "J-janjan, you came back! I mean, gghrr, The hell are you doing here?!" She spit out, still shaking violently. "What the hell happened to you, and how did you get in here Janice?"
The figure threw their hood up, revealing a woman with grey skin, orange-black fur patches along her hands forming lion's paws and red hair with white horns. She had dark circles underneath her slit-pupil eyes and bags under her eyes that screamed danger, her tanned body athletic and firm. Her outfit was in the same dark shade of the pub, black leathers, a black tank top and tight pants.
"Your lover's spat last time cost me quite abit." She held up her gloved hands, tiny strings on her fingers like rings and she started to waggle.
Remotely, translucent bells began to ring around the room attached to intangible threads. These bells formed out of the nothing and their noise filled the lair, every soul inside the building was exposed and caught. The air was thick with it.
None could move, they felt as if their bodies were frozen in invisible blocks of ice, the cold chilling realization that everyone was paralyzed. Everyone but her, so long as the bells rang.
Miss Slaughter turned to Laura. "It's going to be fine Laura. She loves me. She wouldn't hurt me!"
Janice went over and stabbed her several times. "You were abit clingy, sorta like 'THIS'- no, this even. Remember when you gripped me here? How about -Here-."
Her knife sync'd with her words as she carved Miss Slaughter up. Still frozen, Slaughter's eyes began to glow.
"Oh stop that, that voodoo isn't going to work on me." Janice said.
Laura's body froze solid. She couldn't feel her legs or arms. All she could do was feel this love for Miss Slaughter. She wanted her to protect her. It was her fault that she'd been hurt. She was the reason she was here, her fault she wasn't safe. Why had she said that? Why? Why was she still thinking like this?
"Don't worry kid, I'm not going to let anything happen to you. There's no need to feel bad about this." Janice punched her in the crotch, sending Laura falling down in pain yet able to move again.
White Widower. Abilities: Previously silk/fabric manipulation, currently De-powered. Status: Currently in Justice Associates protection and Witness Rehabilitation.
"That mind bullshit she pulls on you should wear off in a moment." She rang her bells again doubling the effect, then started to pour kerosene on all the couches, the carpet, the bar and of course the bodies themselves, dousing everyone in  took a flammable liquid. Then she took Lauren back out the room, lit a match and glared at Slaughter. "Consider my bar tab paid." she threw the match into the room, jingled her bells one last time and slammed the door shut.
"Now I can let you go. But you'll have to follow me out. Don't do anything stupid or suspicious." she told the girl, who looked like she wanted to cry.
"But, you're a s-supervillain.." "Shutup. Just follow me." Her voice turned cold, it held the weight of a cold blade against one's ears.

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"This listlessness which paralyzes society is the product of primordial fear. It is this fear that we, ALICE aim to address and remove from the cataclysm of social reprehension. By removing fear, we can restore order. ORDER, is what this world needs..."
"And the cure?"
Her eyes roll in back of her head. The swirls her fingers play to the crowd like a conductor.
"This is often the point of contention. It was so much so that it lead to Lucy's leave from our ranks with the liberalization of his idealogical grounds." A hearty sigh is heard, so heavy with history and disappointment.
"Yes I know, I know. I am taken for an optimist, a baseless obscurantist who hides behind her deep thinking behind smokescreens. I often ask myself why. I repeat, with Mr.Morningstar, that remedying a critical  malaise is the subjective game by which we play with labs and guns and explosives.. Isn’t it clear however? Governance isn’t child’s play. Let us start with what will NOT be our go-to solutions. Our defector in his vile city is an excellent example to look towards as a failed remedy."
When they gaze upon her, the burdens she unshelves seem to magnify in weight all around her, they can see the world she's offering them. The chaos, the undoing of man. And they're all with her to the end.
"His, lawlessness, and let's call it that because it is a crude anarchic mess, is the epitome of degenerate body of politics. When civility goes out the window to make room for pure selfishness, to cushion and cater to the needs of the few, for and by the individual, the praxis of "Society" itself ceases to become relevant. It is only in the world of Order that creates the world of socialized things, which otherwise initially blurs into everything that is encompassing and all becoming. Predictions, resolutions, solutions, they all cease to be meaningful in his Materialistic corruption. Only Order can give a finished meaning to the essence of things. Without Order, nothing would exist. What would pleasure be, without the control of conscious over the flesh, or empowerment of a government against the intermediary of public speech? I'm not speaking in terms of fascist, but basic social structure. Order needs to be imposed, that much is simple."
The crowd watch her raise her pointer up.
"Like everything else, Order it is subject both to the principles of force and to the laws of language. Only words can engender thought and only power can enforce it to give it substance. Without the Order brought by language, humanity would never make any forward step in its efforts to understand thought. And though Power we bring that understanding forth, whatever the function you attribute to it, a form of cure, control, physical ordinance, there is just one medium that you can employ. We come to that through the stabilizing force of Order."
"A relationship with this Cure is one that demands a great deal of trust. Or rather, let's say an exchange, in which the important thing is that our people and subjects speak, and we the providers listen. And a break of silence. It's crucial that we as an organization poses no questions and no one adds any ideas of our own. We only gives the answers that they want to, to the questions that our subjects want. But ultimately the subject, the social body that allows us to lead are themselves always going where we, the leading capital and driving force of the world lead them."
Hands fold for a moment.
"This all came crashing down on Lucy Morningstar when he sought only to look for a better question, but provide no answers or Research for his surrogate facilities. We screwed up. I had some part of that, letting his temperance flair into petty public crime. This is me convincing you that we can do better. We're not common thugs or the myriad of botched takeovers like the beer halls of Munich. We changed the world. We're in every country, every continent, serving a majority of the population. Every last humanitarian aide, every bit of service or higher protocol for the world's charitable fare is lead by our efforts. We have representatives in 155 Governments simply due to our influence alone. But not that City, it's figurehead doesn't believe in governance. He denies the civility of relieving fear and stabilizing force that is control."

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Janice guided Laura back up the stairs to the main bar, where smoke could soon be seen spreading towards. They made their way towards the door when an arrowhead nearly shot through the two. "DOWN!"
Janice tackled Laura. Mr. Gaunt stood behind them, his metallic silvery body dripping from the heat. Behind him, Madoki, Grooge and Nomad soon joined, multiple burns on the latter's cloak and plague mask.
"Tsk." The reached out her hand to stun them in place, Grooge turning into a splatter of liquid first and throwing himself on Janice before she could even wag her finger properly. She could feel him stretching and shaping around her body, constraining her limbs in place. Nomad slowly walked over, taking out a sheet of aluminum. His glove had been burnt, but he tapped the sheet to become a white blank void in space/time and stuck his hand through it like rippling water. When he took his hand out, it was fully restored. "We warned you to stay away Jan. But you don't play along nice, do you?"
Madoki created a giant teddy bear along her back, whose arms were giant scythes. Gaunt morphed one arm into an axe and another into a sledgehammer.
Gaunt's eyes took a darker tone.
"Don't bother running away, you're trapped." Janice tried to scream, but it only turned into a sound of bubbling metal.
She was crushed in on all sides by the three.
The door to the room creaked open and the man in a dapper red suit popped his head out. He observed Janice's plight with indifference.
"Quite the pickle you find yourself in. If ever the wiser you find ways to stumble, I see it fitting you lay down and mumble. Ya sad little wrench."
"Who the hell are you?" Gaunt asked.
They ignored them, turning to Laura. "And you.. what's a beacon of sunshine doing in this hell? Your little brother must be worried sick.. if he wasn't so already sick already."
"Hey, hey I'm talking to you freak!" Gaunt
"Now if I'm not mistaken I caught a glimpse of you at the bus station."
The red suited man said with a smile. "You're that kid, right? Why don't you just run along? No sense in upsetting the bad lady here." He pointed to Janice, the White Widower. He looked Laura in face. His gaze, she saw his eyes had swirling red stars inside with spirals glowing around them, they carried an intensity unlike anything Laura had ever seen.
"But I'd really like for your brother to find that you're safe. If he doesn't.. if something happens to you.."
The bell's jingling could be heard. Janice had snuck her finger just close enough, her attackers went motionless. The Grooze, still globbed on her body pinning her down, dripping like a thick puddle of tar.
He looked over at the frozen bodies, then back at Laura. "You can get back to your little brother, heal him even you can leave here alive. But not for free. Everything has it's price my dear."
"A price? What price?" Laura shook in place,
"I'll make a contract with you, little flower. If you'll be mine, I'll protect what's yours. Offer yourself."
She looked down as he offered his hand. "I can heal Joshua?"
"I've forseen it." They smiled. "Accept this contract."
Laura considered it for a moment, looked back at Janice struggling under the weight of the slimy abomination, and then nodded. She shook with the suited man.
"It's okay.." she whispered and felt her skin glow in pain, but a soothing pain, it took away her fear and replaced it with a pleasant sensation she'd never felt before, she looked down and saw a glowing red outline under her skin, it started from her wrist and slowly spread outwards, and her hand was now covered in the glowing outline of her wrist and then her arm, it didn't stop spreading, her skin was becoming a dark red but still glowing like a lantern of light. "I-I-It's okay Laura, it's o-o-okay," she said, her voice a little stronger. The pain turned to a dull warmth.  The branding quietly finished, and a permanent mark with a strange small red-beady orb appeared embedded into her wrist. Around the orb was a branding mark- shaped like a pentagram with the orb at the center.
She turned to Mr. Gaunt, "Who are you?" she asked in "Country bumpkina low, calm voice. She had regained her voice, it was still shaky and broken but he could tell it was healing.
He pat her head. "Call me Mr. Lucy."

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The head director spreads her arms wide out out for her listeners.
"It is through out vigilance and tireless, painstaking sacrifices that we've lead the world forward. No other agency has done this. Through impossible odds and a collusion of fate and circumstance, we've come out from under the shadows to dominate and inscribe our name as a household brand of peacekeeping."
Palm to the Podium, eyes to the audience, the slap echoes.
"My greatest fear is that through their continual failings, Mr. Lucy and his hedonist party animals, his so-called Novus and their wreckless waton reigning-from-above, his worship of desire, this monstrous looming thing that does not exist but exists and predicates as a false remedy for Fear, ends up winning. Science and commerce substitutes itself for religion and ultimately is all the more despotic, obtuse and self-destructive. There is a sex-god, a drug-god, an atom-god, a factory god and money-god, a space-god, etc. If desire wins, humanity is finished." The crowd is going wild, she has them right where she wants them.
"Be at ease as I speak about Science. Science, real science, has it's place. It can be helpful, purposeful even. Those which offer solutions and are of great benefit to our cause. Our engagement with collective consciousness, and the metrics of these so called "Proxies" has done much for furthering Alice's goals." Her throat pauses to clear slightly.
"But this is not universal. Dare not dream to think so little of us. The other, unrestrained science with its own altars in the laboratories greedily gropes their own way forward without ever reaching any happy medium. Without purpose or progress, these Proxies have been a blight upon Bedlam for 20 years now. And it has even begun to fear its own shadow..."
Her voice starts to raise again.
"Those heathens of sin, donning their rubber starched shirts in their pure white aseptic laboratories, these rather obtuse elderly toddlers playing with unknown things, always making ever more complex devices, inventing ever more obscure formulas, they will never begin to ask themselves what might happen tomorrow, nor what these ever-novel research projects might bring to bear. A game of chance with them, it's ever more another drug, yet more weapons. Chemicals to choke your lungs and screens to clot your mind, more substances to inject into your veins so you'll overdose, those lunatics dabble in only more evil. Who even knows where these Proxies originate? Lucy introduced them to our world without saying why or where, and left us with the madness. Tasked with researching and introducing something to the world we do not understand, like a pox upon our house she laid out before us. How can our souls resign to that? How could anyone be okay with what fiddle the devil plays while we dance hum diddle diddle dum."
The woman grits teeth. Her fingers grip on the Mic and shoulders hug tight. Her eyes go wide and she makes a vast appeal to the audience.
"ENOUGH! Enough I say! And so what if it’s too late. These perturbant madmen now must ask themselves, never before. They are already changing the face of the universe, and it only now occurs to them that maybe, just perhaps this war on sensibility and limitations might raise the potential for limitless malice. And what if everything blew up in their faces? If say, the Proxies so lovingly raised in their shiny laboratories end up transformed into our mortal enemies? If these hordes of these strange entities one day overran the world, starting with these laboratory dwellers, these scientific amateurs themselves?" There were murmurs in the distance, hardly breaking her stride.
"My detractors might say that for a leader of a Charitable human organization and prominent leader of ALICE, that I have a rather pessimistic view of what they call 'progress.'"
She made finger quotes.
"Make no mistake. I am not pessimistic. Absolutely nothing is going to happen. For the simple reason that man, is good-for-nothing, not even capable of destroying himself. Personally, I would absolutely find the idea of an all-encompassing plague, a man-made sickness, rather marvellous. It would finally be the proof that we've managed to do something with his own time, without divine or natural intervention."
She swallows.
"All these viruses overfed for simple amusement’s sake, spreading out across the world like the locusts in the biblical prophesies, it would mark the triumph of mankind."

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Lucy's eyes had a new glow to them, one of ice. "With this contract, I'll declare you blessed with the hidden recesses of GlitterKiss. A child of pure magic. I'm calling this power of yours, 'Voidmaker'.." Suddenly translucent purple and silver frills began growing out around Laura's body, forming around her into the look of a crown.
"What is this?" Laura asked, the new pale gloves covering her embedded jewel. Her eyes were gleaming with a crystal-clear purple.
"In exchange for this contract, Laura, I'm going to offer you a gift. I will take all your ability to draw energy into me and make you stronger. All you have to do is ask." His voice was soft and sweet. She could now teleport by mind alone into curving streams of sparkling light. She could also use her ability to control energy and direct damage from any harm she had inflicted. Lucy took out a nail and had her hold out her arm, stabbing the top of her hand. She winced at the pain.
Janice could not get off the floor with her legs so stiff.  She watched as Janice in her new gleaming, glittering rubber purple-silver getup approached the other stunned figures and aimed her arm. The blood from the wound began to radiate a glowing energy and form spirals and hexagons in front of her. With a press of her palm towards them, she e pushed the blood into them. The hexagons lit up into an ultra luminescent volume of light and then shot out a wall of photons. The other three were hit by it and knocked into an explosive crashed pile by the bar. The curved streams would swerve and rush towards the Grooze, penetrating him and dragging him off of Janice into a wall.
Jan got up and approached Nomad. "You escaped my Pact ability.. and judging by your arm." She flipped his over, "You have one aswell."
The white and red hood over his face was turned aside to reveal a black head with red eyes and a face like a cat. When the lights of the hexagons faded away, the blood turned to liquid. The Grooze's flesh reformed back to normal, his flesh was now a deep ruby red with black veins. The rest of his body and clothes was burnt to a crisp. Madoki got up and created a crossbow from her teddybear, she began firing. Laura came up and found herself able to create tiny cubes of light with her fingertips, and fling them like curved bullets. In a flurry of projectiles, her own overpowered the spam of arrows and pelted Madoki until she fell back. The young girl went down hard, the red hood off her head revealing a bleeding forehead.
"Janice?"
She went over the Jan, who was using her knife to cut up Nomad's arm and extract the pact-maker's jewel from her wrist. "A little parting gift for my troubles."
Lucy grabbed it out of her fingertips. "Your troubles, are miles away. And now so is your gift." He said. "Never forget your debt to me isn't paid off yet."
"You bastard! Cut me a break already!"
"It's been nice seeing you again too Janice," he said as the girl turned to him.  "But I'm afraid there's a price."
"Yeah? You made a Pact with that bozo? What did they pay?" She pointed to Nomad.
"A traveler from AU, quite ambitious they were. But now our contract has expired." They walked over to Laura. "Young miss," Lucy said. "Why don't you get this little gift, now?"
He took Lucy's other arm and gently pressed it into her wrist, the solid object melted through her flesh in a painless way and then merged effortlessly. She could see lights pulsing from the veins where Lucy had shoved it into her flesh, and felt it's power coursing through her.
"The name of this Pact ability is called 'Lilyhand.' With any reflective surface you can access it in. In the white void.. anything, anyone and everything is healed one hundred percent, indefinitely within." He looked at Nomad's unconscious body with disappointment. "They bargained for this ability themself, but couldn't meet their end of the arrangement.. I trust you won't disappoint."
"What happens when you tap into it in person?" Laura asked, she still wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to do with it yet.
"That's not how it works. This power can heal a person from the point of entry into the void, until they naturally restore. But, it cannot be transferred by contact outside of it."
"So, if I bring my brother into that space.."
"He will be fully healed."
"But?" she looked at the grooze on the floor. "What did I have to getup for the original power?"
Lucy tapped their dress shoes and then rubbed the girls shoulder. "Him."
"W-what?"
"Specifically his memory. He won't remember you or know you."
She froze up, her mind racing with thoughts. "Where is he? Is he still at home?"
Lucy nodded. "He's fine, I promise he's taken care of."
Lucy pulled out a small, shiny black ring from his fingers and hung it around her neck. "This is your contract to me. If you'd like to break it, this will let you." He closed his hand over the ring, which grew in darkness and jetblack aura. If you'd like to break this, you must do so before you leave."
Laura was shellshocked, she felt as if a whirlwind of events had transpired and she barely had time to process any of it.
"Please don't.. This is too much."
"Do you see all the blood on this place? The bodies of those who gave their lives, the people who's hopes you destroyed?"
She shook her head.
"I can still feel them, Laura.. You should embrace your sins."
She looked down, looking like she was ready to cry. Taking his black ringed hand off her neck, she shoved it away. "If I break this, I'll lose this power. I'll lose the ability to heal him. Even if he remembers me again.. I couldn't do that to him! That would be like murdering my brother. I'd rather have never existed then kill him."
"What will you do to me? To my brother? After I've done this? My blood, my soul.. what will you do with it? I'm no longer a pure.."
"You still are, but I know now your power will help a lot more. So I'm going to protect you."
"You mean you're going to use her." Janice interrupted. "You effectively sold your soul kid. Don't let this little bitch tell you otherwise." She cleared her throat.
"By the way.. Morningstar is a woman."
"W-what?!" she stammered.
Janice nodded.
Lucy tapped the air creating a mirror behind her. Laura could see her reflection behind Lucy, and behind him and the entire room.
"If you think I'm lying, you can check the mirror." He smiled.
Laura looked at it, able to see an odd gleam within the glassy reflection. She nervously pushed her hand forward, able to feel her physical presence through it like a watery surface. "Any surface I can do this?" She asked.
"Anywhere with a reflection, and you can fit something thru atleast."
With a deep sigh, she started to squeeze her body through the mirror, observing an endless white void within. There was white on every single side as far as she can see, going out into infinity. Little white cubes floated on occasion. Each one had their own energy pattern and had a faint rainbow glow.
"The void is infinite. You should now know that, now that you've seen this part." Lucy's deep voice said.
She took out the nail in her hand- it swiftly healed up, blood flowing as if underwater, then the wound closed within moments.
Then she poked her head back out. "It needs some furniture.." she muttered.

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All eyes on her, the headlights illuminating the girl's pack and star-stitched purse.
"You might think I'm being ever more pessimistic. Nonsense. The difference between the the advent of perverse science, and what is not going right, It’s true even, everywhere around us there are troubling, all-consuming things. Like the TV that eats up so many of us. But that is only because there are these flaming imbeciles who allow themselves to be eaten up, who even invent an interest for themselves in what they are seeing."
When she starts walking through the aisle, the lights and shadows take a stark, severe turn upon her facial features, a sinister set of tones that make her the dreariest hearthrob in Bedlam.
"And then there are other monstrous things that are just as temporally voracious. These Bases built on the moon, research at the bottom of the oceans, etc. All sorts of things that simply consume people. But there’s no point in making a big deal out of them. Afterall, I am sure that when we have enough of rockets, TVs and drugs, all these wretched quests into the void, we will find something else with which to busy ourselves. It’s a reincarnation of the bombastic gospel, isn’t it? And what monster is more voracious than religion? But what do we know about what happened in other times? What of the lead pipes and black plagues left unchallenged from superstitions unknown? The cruel ordinance of the Pope, the anxiety of the worker enslaved to the assembly line like the rowers on a galley, that is today’s anxiety. That's today's repression of FEAR!"
"It's a such continual unending feast, like the cannibalistic coliseums of Rome, enough to be engorged for centuries, as we have already seen!"
The light gleams in her eyes.
"And the science we should cultivate that is, the truth, it is that the real change needed in the world. To see that the world does not exist, that there is no world as we know it, and that we can symbolically capture mankind and all his complexities in algebra or a pill-popping chemical formula, in DNA or pleasure inducing drugs. It is enough to be regarded by only the great mass of banalities that an infinite number of imbeciles believe the world to be."
The audience slowly begins to clap, she allows them to bask in her omens.

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Janice and Laura sat by the bar, the rest of the bodies of their foes were thrown out on the streets and Lucy had fled hell knows where. "Want a cold one?" Janice offered Laura a cup of scotch. "I don't.. drink.. It's bad for your health."
"Well you do now. Not like you need to worry about your health."
Laura looked at the glass hesitant, took the cup and downed it.
Janice threw a small bottle of pills in her mouth and swallowed them dry, she then made a cup of water and let it slide slowly down her throat.
"You work for Lucy too? When did he.. or, err, she? Not sure how that man's a women but, you have a pact with her."
"A contract. I have a contract with her. It's different than what you have." She wiped abit of wetness from her lips. "She likes looking like a gentlemen when it suits her."
"Different? How?"
"For starters, you can back out anytime with a chainsaw. Urrp." Jan sniffled. "Not like me. It's my job to either make, hunt or harvest pact makers. That includes you if Lulu ever loses your favor."  
Laura raised an eyebrow. "A chainsaw? How does that work??"
"That's another difference. Your pact can be taken, directly from your body if need be. Mine cannot." She waggled her finger, ghostly bells appearing throughout the room then disappearing just as swiftly when she finished.
"And Lucy has plenty of my power to draw from."
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Pacts: Give incredible powers. Material cost. Embedded in jewel along wrist. Can be extracted and stolen from other Pactmakers.
Contracts: Minor reality alteration for a symbolic exchange. Contracts always initiate employment in Lucy's service. Difficult to break.
Deals: Alter reality significantly to spacio-temporal effect for a heavy cost. Non-refundable, but require no service.

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"What kind of power?"
"He made me a new body. I'll be able to see things a little more clearly. I can manipulate time, I can even travel across universes, if you want to call it that."
"How can Lucy do that?"
Janice looked thoughtful.
"You got a good brain there. Don't waste it."
Laura went silent. "I'm going to get my brother back. I'll use my power to heal him and then.."
"And then what? He won't remember you."
She paused again, taking a long sip.
"Maybe I can be a superhero. Is being a supervillain fun?"
"You're about as bad with killing humans as.." She glanced back at the blood on the floor.
"I'm not trying to kill anybody. Just the ones that deserve it. That's what a hero does."
The White Widow rolled her eyes, rotating her stool around to face the newly minted Voidmaker.
"How did you end up in her service anyway? What made you decide to.."
"I.. didn't. My mother did." The woman scratched her ass. "I was sick. I had a terminal illness when I was born and wouldn't last long. My mother was a doctor, but she couldn't really cure me, likely nothing could. Morningstar approached her and she begged to make a deal. A deal.. is much more drastic than a Pact of Contract. It changes reality wholesale and rewrites one's timeline. In her case, she did gain the ability to heal me.. but she wasn't, herself anymore. And I wasn't me. She became a mad doctor, and I was some sort of lab experiment of hers. A protogen creation, to be exploited for her research.. I don't even have any memories of who she used to be, but I have nothing but contempt for that crackling witch. That harlot should've left me to die, then made me into this.." She hissed slightly.
"Then, how do you know any of that?"
"Because Lucy told me. I wished for a better life.. what I meant was my freedom, then old one, but she gave me a very different interpretation."
"That's.. A little much for me to swallow right now. Can you atleast help me get something stronger to drink?" Janice agreed and poured her cup full.
"What about you?" The villainess asked.
"Me?"
"Yeah, how'd you get roped in with my crazy Ex?"
Laura folded her knees up on the stool and threw her arms around them. "Well, um, when I was really little my father died in an accident. My mom went, kind of crazy and hurt me and my little brother alot. She did... really bad things. So bad that I had to grab him and get out of that place. I took him away in highschool and then started working immediately. But he got sick and I couldn't afford the sort of treatments that would treat his illness. I've just gone thru job after job and.." She sighed. "That woman offered me money if I came with her. So, that's it." She took a large swig of the cup.
"So what'll happen to me now? I cannot go home. I'll need to go heal him at some point but.. I don't live there anymore. He doesn't even know me."
She sniffled slightly. "I know I'll have to go clean up some but.. I don't know what the future holds for me."
Janice put her hands in her jacket pockets. "Anywhere you want to go? Or.. are you gonna stay around here?"
Laura held her mouth, barfing just a little bit in the back of her throat and then swallowing it back down. "I.. don't know." She sniffled, falling over into Janice's lap.
"Gross brat.." the woman moaned but held her tight.

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"Let's wrap this up. What is the face of the FEAR that we must revolt against? It is, something that is situated outside our body, the physical, political, and social body. A fear, but yet a fear of nothing, born of pure imagination, that can be driven by the body, deriving from mind. The fear of fear, in sum. Many of these supposed fears and anxieties, at the level that we perceive them, have to do with sex. It can be said that for the speaking animal called man, sexuality has no remedy and has no hope. The taboos have fallen, they say, and people are no longer afraid of sex. They're afraid of restrictions around it, of their fear-masking performance cut off, not the object in itself. "
The blue haired girl finally shakes her head, ready to finish.
"Be it sex, or whatever the anxiety of the day is, it must be conquered. Contained and burned down so perfectly that even it's toxic fumes do not spread out and influence the world any further. The invading sex-mania ongoing, is just a trifling advertising phenomenon. Curing Fear is a serious matter that concerns, I repeat, a strictly personal relation between the governance and the governed, the subject and the analyst. There is no collective hivemind, no average joe, just as there are no mass anxieties or paralysis's controlling the world. These are symptoms, remember?"
With an exasperated sigh, her sermon comes to a close.
"The fact of our goals being spoken about is nothing miraculous of what is already commonplace and should be obvious for anyone looking out today, shown off on street corners, treated like some detergent on the TV merry-go-round, knowing this cancerous pleasure does not bring any promise of joy."I do not say that knowledge. Certainly it is insufficient for treating particular problems and anxieties. It is part of fashion, of this, fake liberalisation that so called indulgent and permissive society gives us, like some terrible gift from on high. But it is of no use to us. We must rely on only our own in solutions and analysis, on our own science and not those of blasphemous ignoramuses. We are not gods among men, but must move forward at own pace. No one else's, and on none others digression."
Ramona gathers her papers and shuffles them into one clean stack. She takes a long smoke, breathes out and coughs up a storm.
 
"Only than can begin to cure this world of it's corrupt, rotten malaise plaguing us all. We're on our way towards the future. This is our credo, and with the powers afforded to us and old dogmas of the past come to light, ALICE shall rise out of the shadows and cleanse the shining way towards tomorrow yet."
Her audience is finally dismissed.
"Godspeed to you all. Also as a forward, we'll be revamping up security for the coming year. With trigger happy shooting attempts and hit-and-runs getting all too common, we've got to cover our bases."
The crowd clears. ALICE has convened and it's priorities have been set. Ramona Flowers looks at her hand- the jewel encrusted in it. The pact she made, the regrets she had. She's no longer one of Lucy's dogs, she swears it. If that bastard ever comes near her again, she'll be ready to take retribution. ALICE will be ready.
Auxilitrix. The Novus. Proxies. Pactmakers. Gods and men, the godless and less-than-god. She was prepared to deal with them all.
Ramona was done as death dealing with tricksters every whichway side of Bedlam. 

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Jan sat against her pillow, seeing Laura snore loudly on her leathery bed. She'd dragged her into her 2-story apartment full of furred carpet and numerous leopards. Her fishtank bubbled.  Laura's snores rumbled through the walls.