Wishworld, Endings and Beginnings II

In the devastated office that had hours ago been the seat of government for the last sovereign nation on Earth, an agent of unknown purpose surveyed her mark. Intelligence had been dead on, and now the wishmaker called Dassila was out cold, along with the rest of the terrorists. The fire-controlling spy Michael and the queen bee Dexter were both buried beneath the rubble. She flipped a switch on her helmet and spoke to persons unknown.

“General, we have them. All targets acted as per simulation. Yes. No. Do I really strike you as the kind of woman who would have trouble handling a couple of teenage boys?”

Then an overturned bookcase shifted, and Dexter, totally unharmed but pissed as hell, crawled to his feet, glaring hard at the woman and making the ‘wrap it up’ sign with one hand. The woman considered him, then returned to the conversation at hand.

“Update, the queen bee is still very much alive and kicking. Do not worry, Nicholas. This is easily remedied. Send in the extraction team, this will not take long. Over and out.” Raising the barrel of her rifle slightly, she turned to face the wishmaker.

“Who sent you?” The queen bee barked it out like a command. Understandably, he had been getting his way for almost a week now. Well, time for him to learn what life was all about. She leveled her sights at him.

“Stand down, boy. I don’t have to take you by force.”

Dexter gave a sharp laugh. “By force? You can’t hurt me, pawn. Didn’t your puppet masters tell you that? Or have they broken down all independent thought to the point where you thought it would be a good idea to take me on alone?”

She nudged Dassila with a boot. “I handled your right hand pretty well, didn’t I?”

“Hmm?” He smiled. “Oh, I guess so. Portable gravity wells, strategically placed to inhibit his movement but not yours. But you’re also wrong. My right hand -” He raised the glove with the claw. “My right hand is right here.”

“Keep joking, wishmaker. You’re still coming with me.”

“Jokes? A sense of humor was never a requirement for the supreme ruler of all land and sea.”

“Neither is it a requirement for an inmate.” She took several steps towards him, her rifle never lowering in the slightest.

His eyebrows arched. “They say the amount of attention one gets in jail increases in direct proportion to the atrocity of the crimes committed. While I am slightly curious to see what the overthrow of every head of state of every nationality in the world would bring me, I have too much left do to spend my time locked away in a prison beneath the Earth. Your gravity wells - they don’t come cheap. Neither does the information you obviously had on my small band of hellraisers. This is the last time I’m going to ask you nicely. Who are you working for?”

“You know what, wishmaker?” He could see his own face staring back at him in the visor of her helmet. “You can go to hell.” Then she fired.

Dexter twisted as the first bullet hit his body, somewhere near the heart. The claws on his glove extended and the metal glowed an organic green. Two more bullets hit him between the eyes and in the chest as he lunged towards the woman. After that, he just stopped counting.

She moved like a gymnast, dodging his wild swipes easily and pouring rounds of fire into his body. But he seemed unaffected by the hail of bullets, not slowing down as he doggedly tried to cut off her angles and edge her into a corner.

They continued in such a fashion until he finally edged her. As she leapt past him to escape, his left hand found her leg and he threw her against a wall, creating clouds of dust around her. He dashed towards her, and the glove came up, stretching for her neck. She caught the claws with her own gloved hands, but his strength overcame hers, and the claws inched towards her neck slowly but surely.

“I won’t hesitate to kill you.” He said, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “But why die in service of a government now obsolete? If that is who you’re really working for, but there’s no one else on Earth who can give you more than I can, now or ever. Join me, I’ll give you power such as you can scarcely imagine. I hate to see such talent wasted.”

“You -” Their gazes locked again. As much as reflective glass can glare anyway. “You really talk too much.” Then she released a thousand volts of electricity into his glove, killing it instantly. The previously vivid color faded away. His focus slipped for a moment and she fired point blank at the claw, shattering it in several places.

Her red hair, now covered in dust sprawled across the floor as her helmet and her gun clattered to the ground beside it. The poison in her neck was now spreading to her whole body. Dexter glanced at his right hand as the color faded back to normal. It really was a little miracle of bioengineering, especially considering the fact that his skin was impenetrable. But again, no problem is a problem at all for a man who could build anything from nothing.

For Michael, Dexter reflected, the impossible had a sometimes frightening way of being merely difficult. The glove, his hand, the visor the Michael wore, the Asmodeus itself…

Just about all the technology that had assisted in Dexter’s rise to power had been assisted by the man. And that was only one of his powers. It was lucky for him, thought Dexter, that Michael was content to play second fiddle to himself. The man was possibly the most impressive wishmaker he had ever encountered.

Wishmaker…

He frowned. The term that the woman had used. It had stuck in his head, though he could only guess at its meaning. But whenever he tried to think too hard about anything these days, he always ended up…

Shaking his head clear of thoughts, he turned his attention back to the task at hand. He had to free his followers from the rubble, and deal with the ones who were unconscious or dead. Then they had to hide the woman’s body, and set a trap for this extraction team, when it came. So much to do, so little time…

He was temporarily blinded by a bright flash of white light. There was a noise like the sound of air escaping, then something moved in the room and his vision returned. He whirled around in bewilderment.

The extraction team, it seemed, had come and gone. The woman, along with her gun, her helmet and any identifying equipment, had vanished.

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That was the second installation. Endings and Beginnings is our current storyline. About the artwork here... I'm not too happy with it on the whole, thought individual panels look better than last week's, as a page it doesn't look as good. Never mind. The writing is in one of my favorite styles though.

Those of you waiting for your characters to appear, sorry, you might have to wait awhile. I had originally intended to make the comic here an eight panel half page, and there would be the second half of the page later on in the same post. But I learned that I can't work as fast as I thought, otherwise I don't have enough time for it. Next week's might be shorter, I don't know. The reason for this is because I have exams.

Anyway, there's a very important announcement here.

Important Announcement!

After this post you should have enough clues to guess who the woman in white is. Your sole hint is that the person with the best chance of answering this question is Dexter. This does not mean that she is an acquaintance of his, it does not mean she is a wishmaker. Leave your answer in your comment, and I'll give you... something I haven't figured it out yet.

Your extra content this week is: character concepts.


Same time next week for a new Wishworld! This time, we introduce the good guy team. Now I really gotta go.