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inkribbon796 · 3 years

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Like a House of Cards Ch. 2: Not What He Seems

Summary: With their new glitch in the system captured, the heroes need to figure out what to do.

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

After they had finally caught him, Logan didn’t scream or hiss at them. He was entirely too calm, just sitting within the circle, seemingly meditating or sleeping. One leg knit under the other, his back perfectly straight, and his eyes closed.

It wasn’t until Marvin walked in that Logan seemed to glare at him with unfathomable hatred, and because Nate and Bing were close enough that they watched his pupils dilate with robotic precision.

He didn’t say anything, just staring at Marvin and Nate.

“Logan?” Joan came as close as he was allowed. “You okay, buddy?”

The trapped Suit broke eye contact with Marvin to look at Joan. To them he seemed perfectly normal. His normal polo shirt and square glasses. His mouth was its usual flat line. “I am more than sufficient.”

To Joan, Logan didn’t look like a demon. He looked like he always had.

“Hey big guy,” Marvin smiled, leaning down a bit with his hands on his knees. “Don’t worry, we’ll make yeh[1] feel better soon.”

“When I get out of this, I will shove your tongue through your larynx and make a xylophone out of your rib cage,” Logan threatened Marvin.

“Yikes,” Marvin commented, the venom in the threat surprising everyone. “What did I do? Piss in yer[2] coffee?”

“If you had just done that I would have killed you outright and been done with it,” Logan didn’t even blink.

“How far gone is he?” Marvin asked, “I’ve ne’er[3] seen one go through a shift.”

“Hard to say,” Nate sighed. “He should still be within the first stages, but he’s got all the signs of a fully turned demon.”

“Would twenty fookin[4] years be enough?” Marvin suggested.

Nate shook his head, “No, he would have much more apparent signs that the process was starting.”

Ethan and Chase ran in, Ethan was looking around, “You guys catch him?”

Then he stiffened nervously, “Oh there he is, is that Logan, he doesn’t look like a demon.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem, he reeks of glitch demon aura,” Mare told him. Mare got dangerously close to the circle, hoping for a territorial reaction but Logan just stared at him. “He’s been coached. He should be hissing at me. He should be doing something.”

Logan just stared at him, not blinking and not defending or rejecting Mare’s accusation.

“So who got you that body?” Mare asked. “I know you’re in one.”

“Perhaps you should go and pleasure yourself with a cactus, you might find your answers there,” Logan told Mare.

“Points for creativity, Pixels,” Mare smiled and he could have sworn he saw the shadow of a smug smile on his face.

“How far along is he?” Ethan asked, kneeling next to Logan but not within arm’s reach. “I didn’t know people could turn into demons.”

“They do it all the time, if there’s enough trauma to the soul to cause it,” Mare explained.

Bing suddenly raced out of the room, he’d been trying to get the base off the lockdown protocol and the instant he did was flooded with messages and warnings. The city was in a crisis while they’d been off line. “Battle stations, everyone. There’s something wrong.”

Wade, Jackie, and Marvin raced out with Bing as Mare and Nate hesitated next to Logan. Ethan was right behind the three and Jackie had already dashed off to the comms room as fast as the corners allowed.

Once the three remaining heroes had cleared the doorway, “Ethan” elbowed through a piece of weak glass and pressed in a code before hitting the big button that sealed the entryway and the common room from the rest of the base.

Wade turned around to see the smile on Hearts’s face as the door shut closed and the anti-magic wards came up to protect the base from magical intruders.

“The hell, Crank,” Nate shouted.

“Chase” took out a baton and slammed it into Mare, and caused the demon’s tentative corporeal form to shatter apart and rush for Nate’s body for safety. The sudden rush of aura caused Nate to collapse and drop to the ground, unconscious.

“Five minutes,” Chase set his watch.

“We won’t even need two,” Ethan chuckled as he took something off his belt and cuffed Nate’s hands in magic-nullifying cuffs. Then he pulled up a chair and smiled at Logan. The Suit made a pretty pathetic mockery of Logan’s voice. “I’m not gonna get captured, I know what I’m doing. I’m fuckin’ Logan. I’m hot shit in a fucking champagne glass.”

“Enough,” Logan glared at him.

“Oooh, I can go through walls, I’m unstoppable” Ethan taunted.

“Are you going to help me or not?” Logan growled, clearly angry.

Ethan leaned forward, the tip of his nose centimeters from crossing the circle’s barrier, “So how’s Patton?”

“Safe,” Logan promised, his tone dangerous. “I told you, he doesn’t feel anything anymore. Complete topor.”

“I know not to trust a demon,” Ethan reminded. “ Especially when they’re trying to sell me bullshit. I saw him when you took him out last time. He was looking bad.”

“He’s fine,” Logan snarled. “I have the situation under control. He is not a threat, he is sleeping.”

“Fine, let me hold him, and I’ll let you back out,” Ethan proposed.

“You are not taking him anywhere,” Logan growled. “He is mine.”

“You demons are just sad, old bastards who can’t let the past die,” Ethan reminded. “If you actually cared you’d take Patton out into the Mojave and I don’t know, turn him loose. Not like he’s gonna start killing immediately. You guys don’t lose everything day one, right?”

Then bangs on the door began in earnest and Chase glared at Ethan, “Two minutes, huh?”

“Hey math, wasn’t my strong suit,” Ethan chuckled and broke the circle with his foot. Logan immediately rushed for the door. He was out first before slamming into the barrier that had been designed to keep Lunky in now kept Logan in.

Chase caught up and his hand went through the back Logan’s chest and grabbed the handle of a blue solid state drive, a single golden heart locket hanging from the notch on the drive. the nanites surged into the drive just before Chase took him through the boundary. Ethan was hot on his heels as they raced out. They stilled to a halt at the sight of the huge black energy dome that covered over half the town.

“Well that was fast,” Ethan said as he looked up. “What is this, the second time we’ve seen the dome?”

“Yeah,” Chase commented and brought up a nanite shield and braced as Jackie slammed into it. “Fookin’[4] go!”

The nanites surged around the solid state drive and Logan appeared, his eyes still glowing a fierce blue for a couple seconds after forming.

“I’ll get the generator,” Logan called out as Ethan disappeared with his invisibility. He took a step before Bing was facing towards him with a laser.

“Yer not goin’ anywhere,”[5] Bing warned.

“Crank, where are yeh[1]?” Marvin demanded angrily. “I just wanna[6] talk.”

“The hell are yeh fookers?”[7] Jackie spat at Chase. “Yer[8] not Average.”

Jackie felt a ripple of time wash over them and at first felt relief, until he was suddenly face-first on the asphalt, Bing was a block down from them and fighting with Logan, and Marvin felt already drained of some magic in a fight he couldn’t remember.

Then there was the harsh force of a foot stomped into Jackie’s back. “Why don’t you take a rest, ol’[9] boy?”

Jackie felt horror coursing through his system, a matching look on Marvin’s face. The speeder knew that voice, he hadn’t heard it in years and it was half buried by a filter, but the cadence was the same.

He looked up to see J.J standing there, his foot planted squarely on Jackie’s back. He should have felt relief that he was here to help. But all he felt was a cold chill.

J.J was mute. Magic nor medicine had helped after Anti’s first attack against him and his emerging powers had destroyed his vocal cords.

And the idea of fighting another J.J terrified him.

“You seem troubled, old boy,” J.J had a smile on his face, his voice sounded like an old timey radio announcer, but that voice was fed through a crackling speaker of some kind.

“No,” a slow dawning washing over Séan like an ice bath. How the imposters had gotten so close. How they had managed to stay unseen for so long. And how none of them had been reset to prevent it.

If not for Joan’s text who knows how long they would have gotten away with it?

“How?” Jackie asked. “What’d yah do ta J.J?”[10]

“Well the lad wouldn’t keep helping us so he had to take a little vacation,” false-J.J admitted. “He should be back in about two weeks.”

“What do yeh[1] want with us?” Jackie demanded. “We got somethin’ yeh want?”[11]

That question earned Jackie a smile, and moved to open his mouth but another ripple in time happened and J.J jumped back just in time to not get hit by Silver who was flying by. Bob and Amy charging in at the same time. Bob’s shield hitting something as he was rolling in. Which was Ethan, and it caused his invisibility to go out for a second which let Marvin blast him with magic and Ethan was further knocked back.

“Googs, now is not the time ta grow a ****in’ conscious, help me catch ‘im!”[12] Bing shouted as he was chasing Logan back towards the base who was shooting from electrical outlet to electrical outlet trying to escape towards the Gainesville part of the city. Google wasn’t that far behind.

Chase’s arm was covered with nanites and he snagged Logan out of the air, pulling out his solid state drive by the handle. Marvin watched the little locket jingle. “Hold it, hold it Lo.”

There was an angry crackle of electricity before Logan reformed as Bing and Google followed him out of the closest electrical outlet or bundle of wires.

The heroes and villains around the area facing down against the Suits as the dome loomed overhead in the city’s skyline.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Accessibility Translations

1. you

2. your

3. never

4. fucking

5. You’re not going anywhere

6. want to

7. Who the hell are you fuckers?

8. You’re

9. old

10. What did you do to J.J?

11. We got something you want?

12. Googs, now is not the time to grow a fucking conscious, help me catch him!

#Superhero AU #Masks and Maladies #footnotes #magic #Logan Sanders #Crankgameplays #Chase Brody #J.J #Marvin the Magnificent #Natewantstobattle #Natemare #Bingiplier

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