A World of Nemesis (RP Story)

[Agent Storm]

It was a recently discovered dimension, controlled by Nemesis and his armies. Unai Kemen had asked her to go there to help the resistance forces rescue one of their leaders. He’d mentioned that the request came directly from the FBSA, so he was sending his best person. Chandra had had to chuckle at that; Unai had no idea how much practice she’d had in guerilla warfare.

What he hadn’t mentioned was that on this particular world, hyper-technology and magic did not function reliably. From her best guess, the place seemed to be similar to her own home, a dynamic consensus-based reality based on the combined works of Jules Verne and Nemesis. Her early experiments had shown that this place, like her home, came complete with static reality backlash. The discovery had tempted her to go back to Unai and tell him to find someone whose powers worked better here, but she’d been here for almost half an hour and had yet to encounter any sign of life, much less Nemesis or resistance forces.

Her communicator crackled, picking up police reports from Peregrine Island. Chandra frowned; there were multiple reports of masked and costumed thugs attacking the area near Portal Corps. Bad timing, when she was on the other side of one of their portals. She murmured into the comm., glancing around the forested hills.

“I got the police report. Is anyone on-scene?”
“*crackle* Squad is *hiss*, Storm. Just stay *static*, it’s being *crackle*.”
She frowned again, turning around.
“Parker, your signal is breaking up. Repeat, your signal is breaking up.”
A hiss and crackle of static was the only response she heard. Turning, she began jogging back to the portal. The Union’s communicators were certified for trans-dimensional signal, as long as there was an active portal present. If the signal was breaking up this badly, something was wrong.

Something was wrong. The normal blue-white energy of the dimensional portal was shot with reddish-yellow, fluxing in and out of the containment field. Swearing in Hindi, Storm snarled into her communicator.

“The portal’s fluctuating. Can anyone hear me?” A hiss of static was the only response. Parker’s voice spoke in the back of her mind, asking what her situation was. She briefed him quickly, telling him that she was fine, that she was at the portal, and that it was unstable.

“I’m attempting to stabilize the portal.” Voice and mind both, and she could only hope that Parker was relaying her situation to the rest of the coalition. Closing her eyes, she focused her senses on the flickering portal. Nothing. She could, dimly, sense the portal’s energies, but the rules of this world and her own inability to manipulate the portals directly kept her from stabilizing it. “I can’t get it, Parker, it’s an Order of Reason paradigm.” She knew he’d heard that. They’d be able to stabilize the portal from the other side easily enough, Paragon City was flexible enough to allow for almost any twists in reality. Pacing around the portal, Storm waited.

Tendrils of pinkish-purple energy began to emanate from the unstable portal as she waited. Her eyes widened. That looked almost like…”Sheka! The portal’s fluctuating! It’s not holding!”

::Dammit, Storm, get out of there!:: Parker shouted into her mind. Chandra took a step towards the portal, and her body shuddered as the Quantum energies pulsed out from the containment field. She began to turn, to run away, but there wasn’t time. She heard a dull “whump” sound, searing pain, and then…blackness.

[Agent Storm]

Smell. The scent of burning leaves, singed hair, and the unmistakable scent of burnt flesh.
Sound. A crackle of flames, leaves rustling in the breeze.
Taste. The metallic iron of blood, the dry black taste of soot.
Sight. Blurred and indistinct green and brown, probably leaves. Reddish brown and black, blood and burnt flesh.
Touch. Pain. Left arm, and side, and chest, and face. The well-known feel of burns, bad ones. A branch jabbing into her ribs. The minor irritation of an insect crawling over her face was subsumed by the sudden onslaught of agony. It had registered last as she drifted towards consciousness, a trick of waking from injuries that she had taught herself years before.

Storm clenched her jaw, biting back a scream as she became aware of her body again. The movement was a mistake, waking new agony as burnt muscles moved. Her stomach clenched, and she swallowed back bile. A tiny, frightened voice within her asked what had happened, why they hurt so much. The analytical part of Storm’s mind responded, without thinking. ::Quantum energy…someone fired a Q-gun into the portal.::

She swallowed again, noticing the taste of blood and soot more strongly this time. She felt distant, disconnected from her body. Shock, she noted in passing. Shock and possibly blood loss. She would have to fix that. Concentrate, Storm, she told herself, focus. You’re in shock. You’re hurt. Heal yourself. Do it fast. You’re helpless, and that explosion would have attracted attention.

A trick of the mind, that’s all it was. Cells repaired themselves, and she convinced them to do so faster than they normally would. A thing of Entropy, tied into the cycle of life and death. It was something simple. Something she could almost do in her sleep. Chandra focused, beginning the spell to accelerate her healing.

Her stomach twisted, suddenly rebelling entirely. Helplessly, she curled on her uninjured side and vomited into the bushes. It was insult to injury, more than her weakened body could take. As blackness rose to claim her again, she recognized the cause of her nausea.

Paradox Backlash.

[Agent Storm]

Chandra woke again to the sharp smell of disinfectant. Iodine and hydrogen peroxide, she thought. The pain was gone, replaced by a dull muzziness and sense of floating distance. Morphine. She recognized the feeling well, from too many times spent lying wounded in a hospital. The surface under her was soft, cushioned, a far cry from broken branches and sticks. Her left side was blessedly numb and temporarily free from pain.

Someone had found her. A surge of adrenaline cleared away some of the drug-induced fog, and she opened her eyes…eye. She saw nothing out of her left eye, whether from bandages, injury, or both she couldn’t tell. Cautiously, she moved her uninjured arm. Good, she wasn’t restrained. That boded well, better than she’d originally feared. She looked around, trying not to move her head too much. It looked like a crude field hospital room. From the drape and sway of the ceiling, she guessed that she was in a tent. There was a primitive IV stand next to the cot, and a small table with antique medical instruments on the other side of the room. Then she heard voices.

“Nicht, schlaft sie. Andere drei bis vier Stunden.”
“Wonder ich, mich wohin sie von kam.”

A white-coated man pushed the door-flap open and stopped in his tracks, his face a mask of surprise. An older woman in an antique nurse’s outfit, ridiculous cap and all, followed him.
“Mein Gotte. Sie ist wach.”

Chandra reached out with her mind to read the meaning of his words from his thoughts and sensed…nothing. He was standing in front of her, but his mind was as closed to her as it would be to a Sleeper. Either he was heavily shielded, which she should have sensed, or…She swallowed awkwardly, some of her uncertainty showing on her face. Even with the morphine blurring her mind, she should be able to read their thoughts.

The woman, nurse, murmured something to the man. Chandra took a careful breath, suddenly realizing that her mental blindness wasn’t limited to these two. She couldn’t sense anything. Her eye blurred with sudden tears as she felt the empty space where Parker’s mind should be. Without their link, he had no way of finding her, no way of knowing where she was or what her condition was. The tears were quickly suppressed, an automatic reaction to her situation. She didn’t know these people, and couldn’t determine their intentions towards her.

“Who are you and where am I?” Chandra asked, hoping they understood English. Her words were slurred, but recognizable to her ears. The man looked puzzled for a moment, then shook his head. Chandra swallowed again. At least they weren’t pointing weapons at her, and she wasn’t strapped down. It could be worse. Antique clothes, antique medical supplies, she judged the time period to be about the late 1800s, early 1900s. Distantly, Chandra noticed a twinge of pain in her left arm. Her mind was already clearer, more focused. The drugs were starting to fade from her system. Analytically, she noted that she was going to be in a lot of pain in a few minutes, and had no way to effectively communicate her drug tolerances to these people. And no way to block the pain.

“Ich bin Doktor Stein. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he asked, moving towards her.

German, then.

“No.” Chandra replied shortly, guessing that he’d asked if she spoke German. She watched him warily as he came nearer to the cot, past experience having taught her to be wary of strange physicians.

He nodded and held up his stethoscope. “Herz. Atmung.” He seemed to be a bit at a loss for how to communicate his intentions to her. Chandra felt her lips twitch in a slight smile.

“Cardio-pulmonary. I’m a doctor.” She responded. At least medical terms were fairly universal. And Doctor Stein’s attitude was more nervous and uncertain than any mad scientist she’d met.