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Working with Criminals

Chapter 6: Breaking the Impasse

For Taiko

By Draconicon

The answer, to him, was neither of them. They were both criminals, and even if they had gray moments, they were both people on the side of villainy, overall. Whether the Lord in Lavender had a good point about trying to get paid for fixing the world or the Man in Red had a better one about trying to keep people from being mind controlled didn't matter. They were both bad guys, and they both needed to be pushed out of controlling any world.

But how?

Meshiah is going to keep trying to 'heal' the city if he gets free, he knew. And if the Lord in Lavender gets out of this, then he's going to come back with even more back-up to try and take it back later. Why? Who knows, who cares, but it's not going to go well.

This might not be Novus Ager, or at least, not the one that he had been protecting for so long, but it was still related to it. It still had the ability to shift around, the capability of bouncing from place to place, of being something different. It was the place where the impossible happened, where superheroes roamed the skies and the streets, where super villains were less dangerous and more amusing, where the good people were still getting a good life and the bad people got punished for being assholes.

Even here, even though there was so much wrong with it, there was the potential for that. No matter what, Nor was going to fight to see to it that it stayed that way rather than falling under some criminal's control.

But...how?

The mouse and the Dane, the Man in Red and the Lord in Lavender, were still having their face-off in the middle of the streets. The mouse had been able to take out a great deal of the Dane's soldiers, dealing with a large cluster of the heroes on his own and summoning a crew to deal with both villains and police. However, despite that, the Lord in Lavender was still there. He could still turn the tide on this.

Nor groaned, shaking his head. Olag helped him stand up a bit more, a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry about it, little buddy. We got this."

"Mmmph. I don't want you to have it, though."

"What are you talking about?"

"This isn't your place."

"Better us than this ass, let me tell you."

"That's not...ugh..."

Olag didn't get it. He was the mouse's creature, through and through. They might have been friends, but he'd seen how that worked. Olag worked for the criminal mastermind, not for himself. He couldn't expect help from that quarter.

Instead, he glanced at the other figures that were waiting. No sign of Meshiah. Like the Great Dane said, the lord of the city was currently drugged and out of the way, kept from interfering. The other Nor, the one that he had been imitating, was out cold for the moment, leaving the Lord in Lavender in charge of the other remaining heroes.

And as for the villains...

Nor looked over to the side. The cluster of supervillains waiting in a crowd had a familiar lion at the head of them. Nemean, seemingly a CEO in this city, but no less intense with his stare than he had been in the original Novus Ager. He knew that look. Knew it all too well.

I want you...

The mule shuddered slightly, wincing as he slowly continued his recovery from being knocked all over the place. His body was gradually repairing itself, fixing the bruises and soreness that had come from jumping into a helicopter and then crashing it. Even with his wincing, even with the way that he hobbled as he shifted from one hoof to the other, Nemean, suit-and-tie Nemean, kept staring at him with the same hungry expression.

I want you.

There it was again. That was exactly how Nemean was looking at him, like he was some sort of resource that the lion could tap, like he was something that the big guy could use for his own purposes, like...

Like he was the next conquest that the big guy wanted to take.

He's been studying different superpowers back home, learning how to adapt them to his own body. He's always wanted mine...what if that's the case here?

There was no way that the Lord in Lavender would ever give up the other Nor to the lion, even if there had been a lie on the matter before. He wasn't going to give up someone that he apparently loved like that. Not without a fight. But a different Nor, one from a different universe that seemed to have similar powers?

That was a different story.

And if I pushed the villains out from under him...

He glanced at the stand-off, the masked mouse and the well-dressed canine still glaring at each other. The mouse's cane flickered, and the Lord's eyes seemed to glimmer. Red and lavender, bright and dark. Something - he didn't know what, but something - was on the verge of breaking out.

But if he took Nemean and the others out of the equation, then the Lord in Lavender would have to submit, and if the Dane submitted, then the heroes would have to work with the mouse for at least a short time to get the villains back under control, and by the time that happened...

It wasn't perfect, but it might work. It would keep the criminals out of power, at least.

He pulled away from Olag, shaking his head as he limped for a few steps. His body finally finished fixing that particular injury, and he managed to walk normally.

"Nemean."

The lion smirked, the other villains around him turning and narrowing their eyes. And why not? The Nor of this universe was the Inquisitor. They probably didn't trust him in the slightest.

"Yes, prey?" Nemean asked.

"Not like you to work for someone else like this."

"Work for someone else? You mean him?" The lion nodded towards the Great Dane. "I'm not working for him. I have a deal with him."

"What kind of deal?"

"One night of help to get a dozen heroes under my belt."

"And that's what you want?"

"It's a jump-start on my research, heh..."

"And why haven't you started fighting?"

"Because the other one offered me the same thing."

A dozen from one, a dozen from the other. Twenty-four supers for the lion to experiment with, to see how their powers worked and work on a way of giving himself their same abilities. That wouldn't end well...and it explained why Nemean was still sitting on the sidelines, offering his power but not using it at the same time.

Shaking his head, Nor took another step forward, barely five feet away from the front lines of the villains. Some of the minor ones took a step towards him, but the lion in the dark suit called them to a stop with nothing but a wave of his hand. Instead of looking scared, he chuckled.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because you're losing a big opportunity here."

"I think I've got a big one already. It'd take me years to get so much research material, normally."

"Yeah, but if you side with him, you don't get what you really want."

"And what's that?"

"Me...and him," he said, nodding towards his Alt.

Nemean arched an eyebrow, but there was no denying the interest on his face. Perhaps there might have been another time, when the lion hadn't looked quite so smug a moment ago, but this time, the expression shift was so obvious that there was no way that anyone could have missed it. Nor nodded.

"I thought so."

"You thought what so?"

"I thought you were still interested in me. The Nemean in my world is obsessed."

"That's an exaggeration...but I am interested, I suppose I can't deny that."

"Then why throw in with someone that's just trying to restore order and who's going to keep you away from who you really want?"

"..."

Nor couldn't believe that he was saying this. It was just about begging for a civil war between heroes and villains right then, but it was the only thing that he could think of. If Nemean kept himself on the edge of the battlefield, waiting to influence it on the part of the highest bidder, then the whole thing would get worse and worse. The air was already tight with tension, and he could feel the air around him swirling about, like the gathering power of the two criminal masterminds was about to explode. Who knew what was going to happen when that occurred?

Nemean slowly cocked his head to the side, a gradual smirk slipping across the lion's face. Nor fought the urge to swallow, to gulp, to show some sort of fear. The last thing that he needed was for this villain to think that he was intimidated.

Because he was. Oh, he was. And he knew that it was only going to get worse before it got better. He took another step forward. Now he was right in front of the villains, but still about ten feet away from Nemean...and about nine feet away from the lion's power.

Keep out of reach, Nor reminded himself. Don't forget about the telekinesis up close...

It was a dangerous ability when used correctly, and thankfully, back at home, Nemean was often too stupid and angry and arrogant to actually use his ability with any level of effectiveness. If anything, he seemed to use it more as a personal shield than anything else.

But it was worse than that. It was an ability that could strike hard and fast at the speed of thought. Any attack that he saw coming could be hit with an insanely strong blow and diverted off-course, injuring his opponent and protecting him at the same time. Not to mention redirecting bullets or worse.

But as long as he stayed back...

"What's better, Nemean? A sure twenty-four heroes, or two that you've wanted for all too long?"

"...You know what I'm going to say to that," the feline said, chuckling. "My question is, why are you making yourself a target, hero? Do you think I'd just accept you gracefully?"

"Not a chance in hell."

"Then why?"

"Because it's the right thing to do."

"Heh..."

Nemean smiled...and then Nor felt something grab him by the balls.

His eyes went wide as the tight grip held his balls tight, yanking him forward by a half-step, his jockstrap coming off. It was ripped right off his body, thrown over his shoulder, and left behind as he was dragged forward by one foot and then the next.

"How -"

"Ah. Your Nemean was weaker, wasn't he?" The lion smirked, his eyes glowing slightly. "My powers have a range of twenty feet. You were doomed as soon as you approached."

...Fuck.

He could feel the power getting a tighter grip on him the closer he got, and he could only imagine that Nemean had a bit more subtlety to the way his power worked than he was really admitting. Maybe he only got the strong levels of control up close, or maybe he had greater range but less power. Or maybe -

CRACK!

The ground split between the mule's legs, the shattering ground shooting forward and splitting the villain crowd in two. Nemean was forced to step to the side, too, getting himself out of the way and letting go of Nor at the same time.

The mule whipped his head around. Olag had just saved him, the bear's axe buried in the street. The big guy had swung it hard enough to split the ground like an earthquake, and was only just lifting it up.

"Get your hands off my little buddy..."

"Do you have claim then, brute?" Nemean asked as Nor jogged out of his range. "I believe that the mule was making an offer of himself."

"Yeah. Fuck that offer."

"You plan to fight me?"

"I think that'd be fucking fun."

"Fine. Let's begin."

Nor didn't know how it would go to have someone as strong as Olag fighting someone was crafty as Nemean, but he knew that it was going to wreck the place. He had to -

"Everyone." Nemean rolled up his sleeves. "The deal with the heroes is off. Execute Plan Pride Land."

The villains cheered, surging forward. The first wave, a bunch of super-strength brutes, charged for the Lord in Lavender and the Man in Red, while the rest darted for Nor, the heroes, and the Man in Red's crew.

Predictably, the first wave were launched backwards, both the mouse and the Great Dane lifting their hands and sending them flying in a different direction. How, he didn't quite know; the mouse used his cane to make some of them leave the ground and keep flying as they went leaping off in a different direction, while the Dane seemed to...well, he wasn't sure. It almost seemed like shadows, silhouettes, reflections came flying out from him, hitting the brutes and sending them flying backwards as if they had just run into themselves.

However, for all the power that displayed, there were more of them than there looked. Nor's eyes went wide as he saw more appear, and then more still, some coming from beneath the streets, some coming from the nearby buildings, some coming in from helicopters that were slowly outnumbering the news vehicles in the skies.

Where...

Nemean. He knew that the lion had to be part of this, an organizer that had managed to bring all the resources of the various villains together. How, he didn't know, but it meant that there was more power behind the various villains of Novus Ager now than there had ever been in the past. There was no way to fight this. So...

"Retreat!"

He shouted the command at the top of his lungs. His voice was similar enough to Alt's voice that he was able to make them listen, and they started to back off. Several shot lasers from their eyes, some conjured up elemental blazes, but for the most part, they were slowly pulling back.

Nor would have gone with them, but not only was he under attack himself, he had a different goal. Even as he lashed out with punches and kicks, gradually clearing a path, he kept himself aimed for Alt's unconscious body.

He wants us both. I can't leave him behind...

Kick, punch, duck, kick, kick. He was leaving hoofprints behind on a dozen or more bodies, kicking the thugs and the minions of different supervillains away from him. He could feel them falling one by one, walking on them as he tried to clear a path. Yet, they kept coming, and some of them were getting dangerously handsy.

Here and there, he felt electrical jolts, sometimes getting at his arms and chest, other times going for his cock, balls, or even his ass. The mule grunted as one of them almost got up behind him, feeling a buzzing against his pucker before he was able to spin and grab the thug by the wrist.

Tossing him towards the water, Nor glanced down at what he'd been attacked with. It was some sort of dildo, or plug, something that was meant to go inside him. There was a button on the underside, and when he pressed it, not only did the plug swell larger, but it opened up a series of prongs and circuitry at the tip, almost like -

Like a flash drive from hell, he thought. And with Nemean putting this together...

Shivering, he tossed it away. Finally, he'd managed to reach Alt. The unconscious mule still groaned as Nor pulled him to his feet, the pair of them standing dick to dick for a moment before Alt's eyes opened. The gold patterns along the other mule's body seemed to flow for a moment before he was able to focus again, the pair of them meeting eyes.

Then, they split, both of them barely avoiding a blast of ice from another villain. They ran as one, doing the same move as they leaped over a car for cover.

"Okay, what the hell did you do?" Alt asked.

"I tempted Nemean."

"Oh, great. Selling me out, were you?"

"Hey, I offered the both of us."

"Oh, sure, very selfless."

CRASH! The glass in the window broke, raining down over their heads as they both ducked at the same time. Once again, they moved in tandem, grabbing the underside of the car. Nor didn't even think about what he was doing; he just did the same thing that Alt did, or maybe Alt was doing the same as him. They flipped it, sending it flying into the distance and knocking a series of enemy supers out of the way.

Panting, they looked at one another again. Nor shook his head.

"Look. I'm not trying to start anything. But I could have left you there."

"...Fair point. But you also could have just given Lil that thing back."

"You think that's going to make things better?"

"Better than starting a war!"

Nor groaned. He supposed that he could have used the rod on Nemean, now that he thought about it, but the whole issue of not using it was still there. Even though Nemean was a villain, and someone that was obviously very dangerous, it would be even more wrong to take away that free will, to lock him up and leave him without any chance to do anything that he wasn't ordered to do.

That was the act of a villain, and Nor would never do that.

Another blast went over their heads, this time made of electricity. The lightning knocked out a bunch of streetlights, but on the plus side, it gave the other fleeing heroes some cover in darkness as they ran towards the core of the city. The two Nors watched them go, leaving Alt sighing.

"Well, no stopping this retreat."

"You were thinking of fighting that?"

"It would be the right thing to do."

"...It would, wouldn't it?"

"Slow them down, keep the retreat safe."

"Make sure that the villains knew that they weren't in charge yet."

"Probably hurt a lot, but we'd recover."

"Yeah, and -"

THUMP!

The two of them jumped back, looking at the crater that had just broken the ground only a few feet away. Nor leaned over it, then winced.

Down in the middle was Olag, the bear's axe showing definite signs of wear and tear. Worse, he had bruises up and down along his arm and face, and he was not looking like he had been winning his fight. White fur was matted with red here and there from small cuts, and where they weren't bleeding, they were frozen, the bear's ice running over them to keep them sealed.

Nor and Alt looked up at a second, quieter thump. Nemean landed just on the other side of the crater, his suit all cut up, his tie severed, and his nose half-broken. One hand looked almost useless, too, showing that Olag had at least done some damage back.

But the fact that the polar bear had been beaten back...well, to be honest, that was the scary part.

He wins against me more often than not, these days, he thought, looking from the bear to the lion and back again. If he lost to Nemean...

Well, that meant that they were in a more serious situation than he thought, particularly with how relatively unscathed the lion actually was. They were outmatched, and they needed to pull back and regroup.

Without any sign of the Man in Red and the Lord in Lavender, they were more or less on their own for the moment...and Nemean looked up to see them.

"Prey," the lion said, huffing softly. "Stay where you are. I'll collect you in a second, after I get rid of this dick."

"I vote to not listen to him," Alt muttered.

"I vote for fighting."

"That's not going to work."

"I'm not leaving Olag down there."

"Do you remember he punched me into a truck?"

"Well, then, what do you suggest?"

"Running."

"Running? That's not..."

"Heroic?"

"No!"

Not that they had a lot of time to decide. The lion had already begun his descent into the crater, and he was not looking particularly happy. Either Olag had done more to damage Nemean than the supervillain was willing to show, or his pride hurt more than the mule realized. Either way, things were not looking -

The lion stepped onto the bear's axe, and Olag's eyes opened again. He growled deep in his throat.

"Get your fucking fancy shoes off my fucking axe. Right. Now."

"Or what? You're going to hit me with it again? You know how that will work out."

"Heh...fuck, yeah, I know how that will work. But it ain't the only thing I can do."

"I can block any attack you make."

"Yeah?"

The bear squeezed the handle of the axe. Everything glowed blue, and a second later, an ice spike shot up from beneath the ground. It went through the blades of the axe, into the lion's leg, and then kept going up. The impact was enough to send Nemean flying, tumbling head over heels into the distance.

"Block that, bitch..."

The bear collapsed, and the two mules were left staring at him. They slowly pulled their jaws back off the floor, then turned to each other.

"Ready to take him now?" Nor asked.

"Shut up."

The retreat ended with the heroes getting driven back to the center of the city. It wasn't ideal, as the town kept shifting around, rotating around town hall and a few hotels, but it was better than trying to defend in one of the rings. The majority of the heroes that were not immediately needed to throw together fortifications on the street or in the air were gathered in the Plaza Hotel next to the town hall in one of the bigger meeting rooms that the hotel would sometimes rent out.

Today, though, it was the gathering place of all the different heroes that were left in the city, and Nor, unfortunately, was essentially on trial.

As soon as they'd finished their retreat and realized that he wasn't one of them, the heroes had sided with Alt and wrapped him in chains. He was currently sitting naked on a table, surrounded on all sides by other heroes that were shadowy versions of the people that he knew from back home.

If he wasn't used to being naked in front of so many people, he might have actually been embarrassed. As it was, he was more annoyed, particularly with the way that they were taking it.

"So, I was deceived, then," Meshiah said, the albino husky shaking his head. "I wonder how long this stranger was in our midst before we discovered him."

"Not long," Alt muttered from the other end of the table. "I was only gone for a few days before I came back and found him...Well, I found him."

Probably in a way that had to leave the Lord in Lavender out of this. The last thing that they seemed to want was for him to talk, considering that he had been silenced every single time that he'd opened his mouth.

And they were painting him as some sort of spy, or traitor, or someone that was already on the side of the heroes. Meshiah had asked questions that were very pointed, the sort that one asked of a spy that had tried to sabotage them. Like, why he had ordered a retreat when heroes were duty-bound to fight against the villains of the city, or why he had been fighting with Alt in the first place, or...

It had been a long list of questions, and each one had seemed to dig him in that much deeper in the eyes of the other heroes. They seemed utterly convinced of his guilt, too.

He clenched his hands into fists behind his back, growling to himself as he tried to figure out a way out of this. There was a civil war brewing out there, and it was only a matter of time before Nemean came back and started fighting again. Olag was downstairs, left in a healing nap at Meshiah's insistence, but the bear wasn't looking like he was going to be waking up anytime soon. Other than that, he had no idea where the rest of the Man in Red's crew had disappeared to, let alone what they'd do if they could be found.

His plan had gone from bad to worse. How the hell they were going to dig themselves out of this one, he didn't know.

This wasn't supposed to happen, he thought, looking at the control rod on Alt's belt. The other mule had taken it as soon as they had gotten back to the town hall, and nobody had bothered asking what it was. All they did was talk about him and what he might have fed the villains, what information had been stolen, what prisoners freed. Any evidence of due process had long since disappeared, leaving him with nothing to defend himself.

And nobody was deciding what they were supposed to do next. Everyone seemed to be far more intent on finding someone to blame for this, and considering that he was the obvious choice...

Nor gritted his teeth as one of the heroes at the table faced him. It was a shapeshifter, a wolf that was able to grow in size, as well as change to most any other 'normal' feral species. Not dragons or anything like that, but anything that one normally found out there was fair game. The wolf shifted slightly, baring his teeth as they grew bigger, and Nor knew that the moment they found him guilty, he'd be passed around like a punching bag.

This was not the way that it was supposed to go.

The room had gone silent, he realized, and Meshiah and the other heroes in charge seemed to be staring at him, waiting for an answer to a question. Nor blinked, shaking his head.

"Sorry. I was thinking."

"Do you confess to being a villain's spy?" Meshiah asked.

"What? No!"

"There is overwhelming evidence. You disguised yourself as Nor," he said, gesturing at the purple-skinned mule. "You ran from duly authorized heroes of the city when you were caught, and you were found in the company of multiple suspicious characters as they entered the city from an unknown origin. Not only that, but you have incited a civil war. If that is not evidence that you are not working for the heroes of the city, then I don't know what is."

"I'm working to make things right again. Can't you see -"

"If you were on the side of right, you would be working under me. But, you are not, and so you are not," Meshiah said. "With that in mind, I have little to keep me from finding you guilty of espionage and spycraft."

"You have got to be kidding me."

"I do not joke about things of this magnitude."

He imagined that the husky didn't joke about most things, what with the way that he treated the 'sickness' of the city so seriously. The constant shifting of Novus Ager had nearly ground to a halt with the efforts of the city's mayor, and if he wasn't going to listen to the mule about his own innocence, no way in hell was he going to listen about that.

Meshiah shook his head.

"I'm afraid that, in lieu of any mitigating evidence, I am forced to pronounce you -"

"Ah, there you are."

Everyone turned from the mule to the doors at the far end of the room. Nobody had heard them open, not even Nor, but everyone could see how was standing there. Two men, one tall, one short, one in a red suit, one in a lavender one, and both of them looking more dirtied than they would like to be.

The mouse chuckled, tapping his cane against the doors. They shut, and the two men walked forward, and, disturbingly enough, the Dane was smiling.

"It seems that we have a crisis on our hands," the Lord in Lavender said.

"Yes, indeed," the mouse responded, and one could almost hear the grin in his voice.

"Considering that Nemean has this level of power, I almost feel like there's a possibility that we could lose."

"Or the possibility of gaining quite a bit of profit."

"Oh, there's always a chance of that. But one man, with that much strength? Impossible."

"Oh, indeed. And that means that he came to it by cheating."

"Cheating, or stealing."

"Which is cheating by a different name," the mouse corrected, the two of them talking as if they were all alone in the room as they walked up the center of the room. "After all, you're cheating someone out of something that belongs to them."

"Accepted. But now, I think I hear opportunity knocking."

"And so do I."

"A game, then?"

"A game, indeed."

Nor groaned. First, they were ready to tear each other's heads off, and now, they were all grins and giggles? What the hell had happened out there? And what was this about a game?

"The first agent to get the item off of Nemean gets to keep it?"

"And the one that fails has to leave," the mouse added.

"Done."

"And we both know our agents."

"Indeed."

Mouse and Dane turned at the same time, gesturing at the different Nors. Alt, as Nor had come to think of him, blinked a few times, while the 'real' one groaned under his breath.

"...I beg your pardon, but what is the meaning of this?" Meshiah asked.

"Long story," Nor muttered. "But they'll be happy to explain, I'm sure...

The End