Novel's Metapowers! - Issue #1, The Problem With Having Russian Vampires and Greek Gods in an RPN Roleplay...
Gadg8eer
K.i.D Player 10
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Novel's Metapowers! Issue #1: The Problem With Having Russian Vampires and Greek Gods in an RPN Roleplay...
Hades Under World Resort Olympus
April 23, 2023
"Hades! I'm back from the dead!" said a young voice in a falsetto tone to convey the speech of the doll resembling a motherly housewife in his left hand. "I thought I'd never see you again! I'm so glad you're back for oddly unexplained reasons and not secretly a clone made by that demonic jerk, Iblis!" the Prince of the Underworld said in his own, eternal child voice while purposefully pulling double-duty as both the boy playing with the toys and the animate action figure in his right palm. "I made you Lotus Flower Cookies, your favorite!" he said in the falsetto voice, and made a tiny plate of equally tiny blue plastic cookies appear in the doll's arms. "Wow, thanks, Persephone! You're the best step-mom ever!" his action figure said as he controlled it as if it was a second body.
"Aw... You really miss her, don't you?" Hermes spoke to his adorable scamp of an Uncle, having entered the room via the electronic lock that would never be immune to his control over messages of any and all types. Despite being the nephew, Hermes had actually been born "before" Hades, with Hades being the "youngest" of Zeus' siblings and Hermes being the oldest of Zeus' sons.
It should be noted that pantheistic gods of all cultures are beings of concepts created by their worshippers' mythologies, not biological beings. It should also be noted that Zeus was an infamous pervert who married his sister Hera like the divine trailer trash he secretly was, and that even among the Greek pantheon incest was completely avoided by most gods and only indulged rarely - usually before waking up to a hangover of cataclysmic proportions and instant regret upon seeing who was beside them - by the few who hadn't; of course, this meant that even Zeus couldn't compare to Dionysus when it came to inducing the feeling of horror and disgust known - surprisingly, for a very NOT sexually appealing emotion - as "squick" in the 21st Century.
That said, Hermes tried to never think of that part of his family's past, if only in respect for the dead. The only reason it came to mind to him was because Hades would always be fairly innocent, and had been naive enough that he hadn't realized how odd it was to beg his niece to adopt him as her stepson.
It wasn't that Hades had started out that way. He had originally been the oldest son of Cronus, and had grown to be equivalent to an adult himself, what you would imagine someone days away from turning 18 would be. Of course, as the god of death he wasn't exactly ever capable of having offspring, and that was before Cronus was caught in a vengeful prophesy by the Titan's own father Ouranos.
Cronus was desperate to escape being usurped by one of his own children, and being a power-mad jerk who had been convinced by his mother Gaia to... well, just read up on Greek mythology. Ouranos lived but he was not happy with his mistress or his son, and so he swore revenge on Cronus for hurting the basically innocent sky primordial that had basically been blackmailed by Gaia into- well, yeah, read the awful mythology.
Anyway, since Cronus was a power-mad titan who would gladly snap half the universe out of existence to rule the rest forever, he swallowed his own kids whole - at the insistence of his queen Rhea, who knew that because he was the Titan of Time, the worst her beloved children would suffer was temporary timey-wimeyness rather than instantly being reduced to the sands of time by Cronus' crushing teeth.
After she gave birth to Zeus and tricked Cronus into swallowing a baby-sized statue of a baby (the Greeks actually painted statues, it's just that natural dye-based paints don't stick around for several millennia) that she had wrapped in an actual blanket, so that he wouldn't look for where she had hidden their youngest son.
Zeus was told when he became the equivalent of 18 years old that he was the son of the Titan of Time who ruled all of Europe and the Mediterranean sea, and that said Titan was a literally power-hungry monster who had eaten his siblings and planned to eat him too, but that Zeus' destiny was "to overthrow Cronus, save his siblings from his father's belly, then rule the sky from his luxurious mountain chateau atop a volcano of bishonen-level beauty and a badass total height, while spending his time watching women dance on poles and living sexily ever after... at least until mortals discovered how to control lightning, as if that could ever happen!" which of course immediately motivated the arrogant jock who only became interested in sports because he accidentally founded the Olympics as a baby.
His grandmother Gaia actually had nothing to do with making Cronus vomit up Zeus' siblings and couldn't have cared less. However, Ouranos was never going to stop with just a prophesy to bind Cronus' fate, and it was bad enough that the son he was forced to provide to Gaia had taken his, um... yeah... as well, but at least he was just an old primordial god who could have defended himself if he hadn't been stupid enough to be distracted by Gaia. He had never physically hurt, let alone killed, his son for what Cronus did to him or for any other reason, but Cronus eating his own kids was worse than anything Gaia had ever done to him. Ouranos had brought the monsterous Titan into the world and he would damn well help take him out of it!
So Ouranos, long past caring about his own continued existence, confronted Gaia, did something that would have been unspeakable - if Gaia wasn't such a selfish bitch - with his hands, to retrieve a "magical herb" from "within her" to give to the goddess Metis, a diplomat who worked for the Alliance of Ocean Gods which existed at the time. She was also an expert alchemist, and mixed the "herb" with yeast and sugar. She then met with Zeus and told him of the plan to overthrow Cronus which she and Ouranos had been concocting for a very long time. Since Zeus was already too strong to be hurt from being inside a simple baking oven, he allowed himself to be wrapped in the sourdough she had made with the poisoned starter, which she then baked into a loaf of sourdough bread.
Presenting the loaf to Cronus as "literally Zeus in a giant sourdough bun" on an actual silver platter, Cronus took a sniff, smelling only Zeus and the sweetness of the sugar, and swallowed it whole. After just a few seconds, Cronus felt horribly ill, like he'd eaten something no man would want to eat, and vomited up everything in his stomach that was still intact in reverse chronological order.
First was Zeus, who went from an 18 year old "demi-god" to 25 year old "literal god of lightning" in less than 60 seconds. Then the statue of Zeus as a baby, which had turned into a stone version of Zeus' current appearance, and which would be placed at Mount Parnassus because Zeus was a vain son of a bastard. Then his siblings, of whom Hades was the last to be coughed up. As a result, the "older" siblings had each de-aged to a form roughly equivalent to the amount of time that Zeus had taken to save them plus the 7 years he gained after being freed first, leaving the now-immortal Hades as a truly innocent and once naive child-god who looked to be around 12 years old.
Of course, Hermes had only seen the second half of that story first-hand. The first half was recounted to him by Hades when they first met. It was for that reason and many others that the two of them were good friends, especially now that they and Charon - a living boat, capable of taking the form of any watercraft needed for the number of souls which needed to be transported, who was also a god... somehow... and whom Hermes worked with as the psychopomps of the Greek Under World - were the last of the Greek gods. Which was why the news he had would hurt both of them so much for Hermes to have to tell...
"You look sad and angry?" Hades asked, treating the Messenger of the Gods, who was technically the boy's employee, as the "older brother" figure he'd always been to Hades. Zeus and all of Hades' other siblings, retaining their status as Olympians while gaining seniority over Hades, turned into infamous bullies towards him and to mortals for centuries, before most of them died with the fall of the Roman Empire. Zeus had finally mellowed out and apologized to Hades - who was surprisingly forgiving, though that may have been due to Zeus dying a "first death" after sacrificing himself which permanently trapped him in the Underworld and realizing he owed Hades his life just for allowing the other gods to have one "extra life" in the Underworld - when he realized he only survived within the Underworld after the fall of the original Rome and of the newer Eastern Roman Empire ruled from Byzantium because a planet was given his Roman name of "Jupiter", and finally died for real at some point in the 19th century when the new empire of "America" figured out how to generate and use electricity in ways Zeus had only dreamed of, bringing about an understanding of what lightning - real lightning - was actually made with and removing any remaining belief in the power of a god to smite via a lightning strike.
"I've got some bad news..." Hermes said, looking depressed. It really did take the Greek Gods far longer to realize they weren't supposed to abuse their privileges if they wanted to continue being worshipped, so it made the two of them stressed whenever mortals and even non-divine immortals - "mortalborns" as the mortals had dubbed them, but these days the term was practically meaningless now that everyone had access to Ambrose and other, newer immortality treatments - seemed to forget what it was like to be called "little piss-ants" by Ouranos way back whenever it rained (yeah, Greek mythology was usually really gross).
"How bad?" Hades asked, looking scared.
"14,000 dead children killed a few hours ago, and their parents who were brought here last week, bad. Charon and I just arrived with the kid souls from eastern Ukraine. Also 500 dead soldiers who refused to kill the kids when the remaining majority of their army were all too happy to follow their twisted orders." Hermes explained, staring at his own feet.
"...I need to see them, they'll be scared and they need to know it'll be okay from now on. Also, go to each of their parents' hotel rooms to let them know their girls and boys are here now, they were probably worried sick." Hades said with tears in his eyes.
"Right away, Uncle." Hermes responded.
"Wait! One more thing." Hades temporarily stopped him. "Who exactly are fighting this war? It's been over 30 years since the end of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union fell shortly after the tensions ended, didn't it?"
"It turns out that, despite everyone's best hopes, it wasn't quite the obvious-looking happy ending it seemed to be." Hermes responded, explaining the real story of the Russian Federation's history. The Kompromat project, the rise of the Mafia State in 1990s' Russia, and the election of Vladimir Rasputin at the turn of the millennium.
"Who the Hades is Vladimir Rasputin?!" Hades angrily took his own name in vain.
"Aside from now officially being a War Criminal?" Hermes shrugged, and used his powers to find out. "Former KGB Agent.... Fabricated newer identity of Grigori Putin, the former advisor to the Tsarina of pre-Soviet Russia... One of the Arch-Vampire Lords of the Sanguine Masquerade?!"
Hades had a look on his face that Hermes had seen before. "How did the kids and disobedient soldiers die?"
"Prince Hades, I know that look. Don't do anything you'll regret-"
"HOW?!"
"Blood Cider." was all Hermes could say, both of them feeling like vomiting from what he'd just said.
"It didn't used to be like this..." Hades fumed. "It used to be that supervillains and monsters could be counted on to make stupid mistakes like monologues and wanting to conquer the world with their evil legions as willing cannon fodder. Now all these bullies want to do is get elected so they can conquer the world with their own citizens as cannon fodder, willing or unwilling! And suddenly it's so bad that the freaking vampires are getting in on it?!"
"Kid, I know. It's awful, but trust me. There's still hope. These youngsters are already being saved and given justice by your actions, even if they're not in the world of the living anymore! You know more than anyone that if anyone can say the forces of good will win, it's me. Or E'l, but E'l doesn't exactly get involved in mortal affairs anymore." Hermes explained.
"Alright, I won't do anything I regret. Just promise me, Hermes... Please do something, anything, you won't regret because it means I didn't do it. You always say you have plenty of blood on your hands and that I should try not to be like you were once. So please, I'm begging you... Stop these overgrown flying wolves from doing this again. Each and every bloody bare hands genocide is bad enough, I can't take another Holocaust!" he whined in legitimate pain, referring to the fact that the Holocaust was slow, painful deaths on an industrial-scale rather than implying the more "manual labor"-style killings in genocides hadn't been larger than the Holocaust (they had been, unfortunately) on many occasions.
"I'm way ahead of you, Uncle. This never sat well with me either..." Hermes responded.
High Desert State Prison, Nevada, United States of America
April 22, 2023 (Mountain Standard Time)
"Mayday! Mayday! This is High Desert State Prison in Nevada! We're under attack! I repeat, we are under-" the warden shouted through the emergency radio, only to realize when the radio antenna had been destroyed just before he stopped talking that the broadcast light had blinked out. "Oh shit."
Their assailant had never been seen before according to police records of supervillain-related activity, a small figure - about 4'2" in height - cloaked in shadow by a metapower ability that was neither magic, psionics or technology but some sort of mix of all three.
As he heard light but steady footsteps approach the entrance of the room, the warden turned to the door, expecting the attacker that had knocked out or even seriously injured most of his security staff to enter the locked room to get through the door and kill him. None of the other security measures had stopped the being, not even the anti-aircraft cannons or naval artillery turrets that would have killed most metapowers who tried to fly in like this one had. Hell, even Florida Man - had he turned evil - or most Kaiju would have gone down with the amount of ammunition they'd wasted on the invader. The thing literally just let them shoot it until they completely ran out of bullets and shells, then made its move. The only beings he'd ever heard of that could take that kind of punishment were high-ranking angels, the Deadly Seven, and...
The small but dread-inducing steps got closer and then arrived in front of the 6-inch steel plate door that kept the emergency radio room safe in this kind of situation. The warden was sweating as he realized it already knew he was there. A hissing sound was heard, and the man prepared for the door to be blown off, when a bright red point of light was seen tracing along the edges between the door and its frame. Was it trying to cut its way in?
But no, the continuing burning of the solid steel didn't result in structural compromise, but a thick and quickly-cooling line of molten steel globiness. "You're sealing me in, you little gremlin?! Do you have any idea what Earthly nation you just attacked, space demon?!" the warden shouted.
"The United States of America, the only nation on the planet that allows private prisons? Especially to hold former leaders who committed countless acts of treason and are known for fraud and bribery?" said the being, their speech disguised by a voice changer. "Or do you mean your so-called nation, this specific privately-owned prison you run as Warden and are the CEO of the High Desert State Prison Corporation, LLC that profits off of it... Mr. Beauregard?"
"None of that ain't legal!" Beauregard shouted in his southern accent.
"Oh? How about this then?" the being asked.
At that moment, the emergency power was replaced by full electrical support again. Somehow the dedicated solar plant and external power grid connections had been brought offline before the attack had even begun, without any visible signs of damage, and the staff hadn't been able to get it back online during the firefight. The same happened to the telecommunications links as well, making cyberportation backup and any sort of call for help impossible save for the emergency radio which was still offline, and it didn't look like any of the other phone or metaverse connections had returned to normal despite the computer terminal in the radio room turning on and playing an audio file...
Ward. Stonewall Beauregard's Telephone Log (date_unknown) said:
"How the **** did you get that?!" the warden demanded to know.
"With a warrant." the being said as the door was finished being sealed. "I broke in a few days ago, just after that call, and left a stash of emergency rations in the lockers to your left. I'll let the FBI know you're in here once I'm done."
The already quiet footsteps that began quickly faded into silence.
A few minutes later, after ensuring that no remaining staff would be in physical condition to stop him, the being re-enabled the telecom links and the security system that he'd disabled before the alarms could go off, allowing the authorities to have security camera footage of what was about to happen.
The being disabled the cloaking system, revealing himself as a childlike being wearing an odd ensemble of an outfit...
He approached a door labelled "Cell 16", then summoned up a digital skeleton key he'd looted from a defeated guard with his Dream Specks goggles, using the strange blue digital object to open the physical door.
"Finally admitting I'm the real prez, eh pigs- Who in the world are you supposed to be?!" King Card complained.
"Unlike you, I don't see a reason to spread myself around in plain sight like some sort of obnoxious brand. I'm more of a blink and you'll miss it kind of person." the boy said. He tapped a pair of seemingly sewn-on buttons on the poindex finger of his Toon gloves, and suddenly a pair of large plastic Ratling guns that emerged from the child's backpack were pointed at Card. "Who did you hire to get you out of here tomorrow, Reginald?!" the boy loudly demanded to know.
"Tomorrow? You've got some badly infotelligence, runt." Card spat back. "Do you have any thoughtability to who I am, you little shit?! Get the f-"
The Ratlings seemingly retreated, just as a yo-yo struck the former President Evil in the face so hard that it actually cracked one of Card's cheekbones, before retreating into the boy's glove. The Ratling guns almost instantly returned to point menacingly at Card.
The recording played to Warden Beauregard just moments earlier was heard over the PA system speakers in Cellblock 6. Card's orange-stained face turned pale. "No... That bastard promised... I'll kill you, Vladimir!"
"No you won't. He's on my hitlist, and you aren't going to be alive in 120 seconds if you don't open your stupid mouth!" the boy said. He knew he was crossing a line, but he didn't care. Some would say murdering a man, even one who had tried to nuke the world into extinction among many other crimes, was a start of darkness. To Gadg8eer, a person who had discovered that, one way or another, he was 10 years old and always would be, what good is a kid hero who will never die or age if they don't protect and avenge civilian children who can die far more easily and only have one chance to enjoy their childhoods if they do survive?
"Who the hell are you?!" Card demanded to know, preparing to try and escape the cell he'd spent over 2 years in by diving around the boy or even charging into the diminutive figure.
"Don't count on it, monster man. You're so obsessed with winning and having power over others as a form of feeding your sick addiction to getting attention, that you feel like everyone is obligated to know who you are!" the boy responded, and then summoned a pair of large, floating robot hands from his backpack. "Me? I don't think you understand. You're not even worthy of knowing who I am. You never were, and considering how completely insignificant my efforts have been to the world until now, that says a lot about how much of a piece of human garbage you really are. All you need to know is that you locked kids up because they were from south of the American border, and two of them starved to death because YOU hired a gang of racist thugs and made an executive order so that even the actual border guards who knew not every Spanish-speaking person in the country you betrayed is an illegal immigrant or welfare sponge couldn't protect people from being rounded up and put in cages! Not even a cell like you've been, actual barbaric cages! It takes the death of one child for me to lose my cool and go from hero to anti-villain, and you liked the fact that your orders resulted in the deaths of two and countless more never seeing their parents again!" As he finished his short anti-villainous monologue, the two robot hands slammed into the concrete and steel frame of Card's cell, causing the entire Cellblock to shake ominously. "So I'm only going to ask once, and if you don't tell me, the torture begins. What does the Russian President have over you? ANSWER ME!"
"Has over me?" Card said, and laughed insanely. "You don't even know you're poking at a hornwasp's nest just by asking this, do you?"
"All it takes to kill a hornet's nest is someone who can't be bribed, blackmailed, threatened, killed or made irrelevant to show up with a flamethrower one night and torch the whole swarm." the kid pointed out. "That was never you, though, was it, Reginald?" he said, and then the robot hands started to pull the parallel cell walls on each side of Card and pulling inward. "No, you've been blackmailed plenty of times. Threatened into submission to that vampire-in-a-past-life moron on the other side of the Northern Hemisphere too, apparently, like the coward you really are."
"Ahahahahahaha!" Card broke into all out laughter. "You fool! In a past life?! If you're really going to kill me, do it. The Sanguine Masquerade will have me turned into blood wine just for saying this sentence. In fact, why don't you go deal with the real Captain Capital over in Georgia and his secret ego-boosting empire instead of trying to startify World War III if you hate me so much for doing the anti-opposite?"
"How do you think I'm immortal, you piece of crap?" the mystery boy asked. "Here's a hint. Souls never die, only the bodies they live in."
Card's demeanor broke instantly. "Th-that's impossible! There's no s-such thing as souls!"
"Life Pro Tip. You are a soul, and you're probably a really ugly one too since you've done so many ugly things and you have a fat wrinkly face in the world of the living already." the clever boy pointed out. "Of course, if I'm immortal, and that's somehow because souls never die, and most souls aren't visible to us? The necromancers and oneiromancers are probably right, there's at least one afterlife to be prepared to afterlive in forever. After all, I'm a soul too. Every mortalborn is. That's why I haven't killed you or anyone else here. I even made sure I'd knock out the innocent guards with a sleep ray, but injure the corrupt guards who beat up prisoners - prisoners who didn't even do anything threatening or anything - because lol, prison riot isn't police brutality made them immune to prosecution on top of legal precedents to make them immune to prosecution. So let me put it this way. There's no one left to protect you for at least another 15 minutes. I could send you to the Emerald Earth right now so you'll be judged for your crimes properly by E'l Himself, just by no longer holding back when my spare hands pull these walls together and crush you in a concrete clap!"
"No! Anything but thatness! I don't want to outlive that death long enough for the world to get their revenge on me!" Card begged.
"Well, isn't that an incrimination little confession. You hear that, anyone? King Card doesn't want to live long enough to see the consequences of his own actions!" the kid hero responded, and a bunch of little text response thingies appeared for him to read and dismiss. "Guess what, buttface, we're going on a road trip. I think Capital might be very interested in finding out that you just revealed, to my entire live stream subscriber base plus the law enforcement agencies that temporarily backed me so I could legally do this, that he's got a good reason to get rid of both of us but can't stop the signal!" the boy said, and then quick-drew his Sleep Ray and fired it at King Card. "FBI guys, I've got him, plus evidence enough to put a warrant on Jay Justice. I'm going to need that extraction and cleanup crew now."
"Oh! Hi? You're the first person to start watching my stream, but then I shouldn't be surprised that no one has been watching it except the authorities I'm working with, 'cause of how much I suck at being a hero. Seriously, 17 years I've been doing this and I'm still a kid and a cosmic plaything... but yeah, thanks so much for the sub, LoveIsHot! Mind explaining your username though? Mine's simple, I'm a gadgeteer and the number eight was my snowman friend, until his magic hat got stolen in 2008." the 10 year old kid said to the new subscriber, "I'm Gadg8eer!"
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