Macronomicon
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Chapter 272: The Purge
🕑 Added 2024-04-23 17:12:47 +0000 UTC“Here it is,” Guile said, handing Truthslayer the medicine.
“How’d you get these?” the black-haired superheroine murmured, opening the case and peering inside.
Inside were four vials of the stuff Paradox had used to ‘cure’ Solaris, although the jury was still out on that. The important part was that it made a god mortal, however temporarily.
I hid inside Paradox’s incinerator in my subspace and caught a few of them as they were disposed of. Kid might be able to sense me when I’m aiming to harm him, but when I’m not…Almost burned my hands off through the hyperweave, though.
“You already know the answer to that question,” Guile said.
“Don’t ask,” Truthslayer said with a dry chuckle. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“Are we actually doing this?”
“We aren’t doing anything.” Truthslayer said. “I’ll do it. He’s not getting better, and he deserves…” Guile watched as Truthslayer choked up a moment before mastering her expression. “He deserves peace.”
“I’ll tell him he needs multiple doses. He trusts me. Once he’s got the serum in him, I’ll catch him in a lie, and he’ll…go to sleep.” She glanced over at him, her eyes red. “Is everyone else on board?”
“Everyone who needs to know, will know to look the other way.” Guile said with a shrug. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Solaris is dangerously unstable,” She said. “He could get violent any second, and a second is all it would take to destroy Franklin City. And if the mimic gets to him…” She shook her head. “It’s already almost everywhere. We’ve had to move him…too many times.”
Guile nodded. “I’ll get everyone ready,” he said. “Just in case. Some Anchors aren’t going to agree with this, but they won’t know until it’s over.”
Truthslayer nodded, closed the case and heaved a deep breath.
“Alright.”
****
Tom Franklin stared at the glass of water. How long had he been sitting there? Things had gotten a little better over the last few days. The memory loss and periods of confusion were getting smaller, if his tracker had anything to say about it.
Like Paradox had said, it wasn’t an instantaneous cure, but it was allowing his mind to gradually put itself back together, which was good enough. His skin wasn’t leaking light anymore, either.
Just another close call in a hundred-year string of close calls.
He made a note in his journal and grimaced.
‘Staring at water.’
He checked his watch, then remembered that he didn’t have one since the cell phone was invented. He checked his phone and wrote down the time.
’15 minutes.’
He picked the glass up and tossed it back, sighing in relief.
If Diane sees me this spaced out, she’ll give me an earful…
Tom’s heart sank a moment, glancing down at the journal, eyeing the words scratched into the paper, forceful enough to damage the sheet beneath them.
Diane is dead.
Right. Right.
A flood of memories washed over him. Two decades of hunting the man who’d killed his wife, only realizing with the wisdom of age that it’d been an accident. By then there was already too much bad blood.
So many valuable protectors of humanity wasted chasing a non-threat.
Backfire, Hound-dog Hell-Ware, Bastion, Boom-R-Ang, Molly, Ten-Don, Holy Holly…I’m sorry.
Like touching a hot stove and liking the pain, Tom remembered the way each and every one of them died, wondering exactly what went through their head. What it had felt like as they realized they weren’t going to make it. How much pain they’d perceived before everything went dark.
Anger at Professor Replica flared up for a moment, then fluttered and died like a sick bird. There simply weren’t enough Omni-class supers left to pick another fight with the Replicators.
Although…Tom thought of Claudette’s son. He might be the next. He’s damn close.
Which son? The twenty-something or the little snot-nose…No, they’re the same.
Tom carefully corrected his frayed memories, hoping it would take this time. They were beginning to take, but sometimes requires a little persistence.
Now I’m sitting here staring at an empty glass, Tom mused to himself, sighing and wiggling his toes in his sandals, turning away from the sink.
I haven’t had a vacation in…what? Fifteen years? Role was currently handling the daily appearances, and Locust was surprisingly competent at administrating the city. That old woman was more than just a supreme multitasker, she understood people at a deeper level than most.
Tom yawned and started the coffee maker, shuffling through his apartment.
Sometimes I think Coffee is the only reason the Earth is still spinning. Tom mused, waiting for that nostalgic smell. There’d been a fair number of times where it was the only thing that got him going. Some of those times had included saving the world.
Sure, once the coffee hit his light-based physiology, it vaporized, but he still got a caffeine rush. The doctors told him it was a placebo, but Tom would take it any way he could get it.
Knock, Knock, Knock. A knock on the door brought Tom out of his thoughts.
“Who ‘dat?” Tom grunted, pouring himself a cup of joe while shuffling toward the door.
“May,” Came a woman’s voice from the doorbell.
“May, who?” Tom asked.
“Grampa, open the damn door,” she said, and for a brief instant, a flash of a little girl giving him the stink-eye for lying to her. That tone brought it all back to the forefront.
Grumbling, Tom opened the door, revealing a young woman wearing a frankly pornographic suit of black leather…or is it something else?
She’s a bit older than I thought? And…
“May, what are you wearing?” Tom asked, aghast at the frankly shocking choice his granddaughter had made in apparel.
“I’m Truthslayer, remember? A super?” she asked, cocking her head in that same posture she had when she was getting miffed at him.
“Right. Right…that’s just what the girls are wearing nowadays. Hyperweave.” Tom muttered, turning away from her and making a note in his memory correction journal.
“Women…dressing…like…harlots…Normalized…Hyperweave…responsible.”
“Hah, hah.” Truthslayer gave a mirthless chuckle and brushed past him, bearing a little case which she set down on the table and unzipped, revealing a professional-looking set of vials and syringes.
“What’s that?” Tom asked, his heart starting in his chest. He habitually glanced at the door behind her, and the window overlooking Franklin city, his mind instantly assuming the worst. Shapeshifter? Mind control? Assassination attempt?
“Your medicine.” She said, showing him a vial. “This is the stuff Paradox made to get your brain to patch itself back together. You need a weekly dose until you’re back to 100%.”
Tom frowned, glancing at the vial of clear liquid.
“I always loved your grandmother, you know. She took good care of me, and you’re just like her.”
Truthslayer’s lips quirked up in a smile. “liar,” she said, shaking her head, tugging on him gently with her power. Letting him know it was her. Their secret handshake.
“I just didn’t remember needing more than one dose,” Tom said, sitting down at the table and rolling up the sleeve of his fluffy robe.
“Well, you also have Alzheimers, so that’s not too surprising,” May murmured as she put one of the syringes into the vial, extracting a “One dose a week, just to make sure it’s at full strength while your brain patches itself up. Once you’re mostly back together, we can stop and let the effect dwindle. So sayeth ‘Dr. Paradox’, who studied your condition for a whole weekend. You should be thankful.”
“Freakin’ Thinkers,” Tom murmured, shaking his head. Paradox was more like a Drainer with his dad’s Magnum Opus running through his system, but he was definitely a smartass.
It was almost insulting to be cured by a kid who gave the problem the barest amount of his time, fixing everything practically casually.
May ripped open an alcohol wipe package and wiped Tom’s shoulder.
“Whaddya think, I’m gonna get an infection?” Tom asked wryly as she paid more attention than necessary to procedure.
“You never know,” May murmured, meeting his gaze as she stuck the needle into his arm, filling his veins with cold medicine.
Something’s wrong. Something about the way she met his gaze...
Tom leapt up and unleashed a blast of light from his palm, cutting his granddaughter in half.
As she toppled to the ground in two crispy halves, Solaris prayed he was right and he hadn’t just killed his last blood relative.
But if I’m right…
Tom glanced down at the needle in his shoulder and tore it out, flinging it aside.
The syringe skittered across the tiled kitchen floor, disappearing under the dishwasher while he kept his gaze on his granddaughter.
For a gut-wrenching moment, nothing happened, May simply lay there in shock, eyes wide, jaw moving silently.
For a moment, Tom thought he might’ve…
Then it happened.
May’s halves grew tendrils, attaching to each other, drawing her crispy halves towards each other. They sloughed off the burnt meat and sealed in a matter of second.
“I’ll take some small comfort in knowing it wasn’t me that killed you,” Tom said, raising his hand to vaporize the monster that’d consumed his granddaughter.
Nothing happened.
“You should’ve run.” The corpse of his granddaughter gargled as her lungs came back online. “Now you’re going to die.”
It was true. In the single heartbeat he had while his power still worked, he could’ve gotten halfway across the world. If he’d been thinking straight, and not about his granddaughter, he would’ve done just that.
If he’d been thinking straight, he would’ve vaporized her completely, not half-assing it.
Now he was gonna die.
“Ah, fuck it,” Solaris muttered, grabbing the scalding hot pot of coffee and taking a sip, relishing the first burn he’d had in fifty years. The Real Coffee Experience. “Had to happen sooner or later.”
His last living relative was gone, twisted into a horrific abomination that crawled towards him on rapidly mutating limbs. There really wasn’t anything left to live for. His son, his wife, his daughter, his other grandkids…now May.
Maybe It’s about time I shuffled off the stage. I’m sick and tired of this world. Of clinging to the last fragments of my mind in a world that’s gone insane. I just want a break. And maybe this is it.
Solaris threw the scalding hot coffee at the mimic as it launched itself towards him. the creature reeled back, screeching in pain while the aging super grabbed a butcher knife out of the knife block.
“Never said I’d make it easy for you, though.” Solaris muttered, hefting the blade before wading in and hacking away at the creature, all pretense at defense forgone in favor of extracting maximum damage. “You killed my granddaughter.”
A few minutes later, in another point in Franklin City, Chemestro was working out.
Today was Cardio, and Chemestro was sprinting at full speed down his personal track, wearing a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound vest.
Chemestro enjoyed the burning sensation spreading through his body, the taste of blood in his mouth. The pain scoured away all doubt, stress, and worry, leaving nothing but calm. It was the closest to meditation he would ever come.
Every once in a while, as his body struggled, Chemestro could feel his mind touching…something else. Something beyond himself.
It was probably hypoxia.
Still, he pursued this state of mind, simply to be free from the cage that was his life, his body, his ‘friends’ and ‘family’.
It was a delicate moment. Sometimes at the end of a run, he could point to a moment and say ‘there, I was definitely there’, but when he was inside that moment, trying to pay attention to it would tear the state apart like cobwebs, as if his consciousness itself was some kind of scouring wind.
It resided outside consciousness. Outside of reality.
Against the backdrop of his body panting, muscles burning, Chemestro felt his self diffuse and expand, seemingly projecting on a larger canvas than his narrow view of reality, spreading in directions that had no name.
He didn’t dare acknowledge it. That would shatter the ephemeral, dreamlike moment.
He simply kept running.
It’s coming.
Between one step and the next, Chemestro felt a ripple cut across his billowing, expanded self, heading straight for him. Something filled with pain, rage and malice. Something moving at the speed of causality.
Chemestro’s instincts reflexively rendered him completely permeable, to light, to heat, matter. His expanded senses picked up the ball and included thought, meaning, reality.
Chemestro’s eyes widened as he seemed to step outside the world itself, in a dreamlike state, looking in on his underground running track from outside reality in a moment seemingly frozen in time.
The old analog clock on the wall was still, the second hand refusing to budge.
No, wait.
Click.
As though it were forcing its way through molasses, the second hand clicked forward.
Then, for the briefest instant, so small that he might’ve doubted himself, Chemestro saw Solaris standing in the corner of the room.
Then he was gone.
A flood of nameless dread suffused Chemestro’s entire body.
In another location, inside the very same second, Nocturne was watching TV in his underwear, resting a beer on his gradually expanding stomach.
He was getting old, to be sure. The super suit barely managed to contain his paunch nowadays. I guess I should probably call it soon. I’ve got plenty of money, and I can always do good on the side, The sound-based super thought, watching contestants wipe out on the spinning bars and topple into slime pits and chuckling.
BEEP!
The Alarm went off, but Nocturne didn’t have time to process it.
Between one second and the next, Nocturne’s brain caught up to the fact that he was no longer sitting down watching Lincoln City Gladiator. He was in fact being held aloft by Solaris, whose hands were already in his mouth, preventing him from whistling.
Nocturne tried to click his fingers, but they turned to ash.
“Fucking mimics,” Solaris sneered.
The fingers in his mouth pressed upwards, delivering pain to the roof of his mouth.
After that, Nothing.
At that very same moment, Darryl Collins, also known as the Mechanaut, launched out of bed, The Alarm blaring in his head.
His Watchdog AI that kept an eye out for erratic movements from Solaris had triggered, and in a big way. The man had visited the homes of no less than four Anchors in less than a second.
There was no way that was enough time to talk to them or organize some kind of political agenda.
Plenty of time to kill them, though.
Darryl hit the emergency escape button in his head, ejecting his soul out of his decoy body.
An instant later, his decoy was reduced to so much gas, along with 95% of his secret backups and hidden armories.
The purge of Franklin city’s Anchors took less than a minute.
Comments
Bookwyrm
Well I guess technically he could thrust him to the hell realm unless there are different realms that we don’t know about
Deegles
no need to turn Anchors once they've bagged the most powerful super.
Gavriel
Did Solaris get eaten, or is he just going batshit while he waits for the cure to kick in? My opinion is that he survived, and the mimic killing his granddaughter triggered him to go batshit on "mimics", the reason is pretty obvious, as the mimics aren't likely to kill anchors, they'd turn them instead.
R
I loved this chap'! That really show how powerful but still human (so a mortal not all-seeing), the strongest super really is. That said, I wish good luck to Perry (and earth) if Solaris was really eaten
HenryMorgan
I don't like this story direction, why did you have to throw out all that effort to cure solaris just for some cheap shock value?
Ozzy
It's probably to late to mater at this point but in my opinion I do not like this chapter at all. How everything went down seems like a huge stretch with none of the details making much sense. Perry can perceive dimensions so well he can see 4th dimensional entities swimming around but he somehow missed someone hiding in subspace right under his nose while he is in hyper alert mode handling incredibly important drugs in the middle of a mimic epidemic. Also one of the most powerful, experienced, and well prepared people in the city was captured by a mimic so fast and quietly that no one noticed. None of this makes sense and it all feels so forced and I don't even understand why, the stakes were plenty high enough already. Perry might be all but invincible but none of the people he cares about are. A single mistake could have him losing everyone he loves to the mimics or other threats and even if he prevents that the whole world could be overrun and consumed. That's not even mentioning the reality warping entity siting in space that seems to be paying more specific attention to Perry recently. Bending the story into pretzels to suddenly jack up the stakes seams unnecessary.
Apotheosis
Edits make it perfect, this is peak
Ronin
The small updates to this made every difference. I really liked the changes made, and think it has far improved the original.
closeded
That update at the beginning makes all the difference.
Josiah Elliott
Yeah same, and we know that Solaris has such ingrained paranoia that it's one of the few things to survive the Alzheimer's so there's no chance he doesn't at least double check that he does actually need the multiple "cures"
Bookwyrm
it may only work for a few minutes, but that Is more than enough time, and he can shove him into an endless void with little to no effort, like he did to big eyeball dude.
Bookwyrm
granted reaching Tyrannus would be hard, but using a 4D drone of some sort would work nicely , as you haven't really tapped into the full 4d stuff yet.
Bookwyrm
the blood contract, we have established that he has the ability to stick nearly anybody with it, minus maybe solaris and Aussie man, he has the ability to make ocilating mono molecular blades+ a bit of paradox spice no defense can stand up against that.
Macronomicon
which power is that?
Bookwyrm
ehh as much as I don't like it, I feel like you cant just build Solaris up as this super world ending power and then corrupt him, I think a better way would be Tyrannus either getting corrupted or just flat out trying to kill perry, I especially like the corrupted one because that implies that he may not adhere to the contract. also you seriously cannot give perry a power to make anybody do anything for a long period of time and not let him use that against Tyrannus.
Pastor Joubert
Cranking those stakes to 11
Hayden Leech
Ding!
afgasd adgasd
It's all one thread it doesn't really matter, sorry about your problem it's a shame.
Hayden Leech
I like to think Truthslayer was one of the first taken. Back when nobody knew there was a danger and discovering the relationship by stumbling into it. Perhaps she’s the one who killed lightshow.
Hayden Leech
May I recommend a single large comment in the future. I probably would’ve read it. I’m just imagining a texting conversation with you. Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
Stephen E Wilson Jr.
Feels like a brick thru a fancy China set. Thanks, I hate it. Greatly Looking forward to how you will weave gold into pottery Japanese style to fix it. Time for the big finish. Places, everyone!
Stephen E Wilson Jr.
I think so too. Only way this gets resolved without far too much scorched earth.
afgasd adgasd
It's been acknowledged that the mimic just needs to take over some powerful people and it will become exponentially more dangerous
afgasd adgasd
It makes the leadership of Franklin City and powerful characters seem very flawed
afgasd adgasd
I really don't know what all the anchors and important people are doing separate from each other during a mimic super crisis
afgasd adgasd
It's gonna be pretty epic but Solaris got done dirty, did anyone ever tell him about the mimic or no?
afgasd adgasd
Idk
afgasd adgasd
Only way forwards from this is everyone dying and Perry going sicko mode + super Saiyan + ratio etc and rejecting the hold of causality
afgasd adgasd
I'm sure theres a plan. I thought that the serum had to be paradoxed to be strong enough
afgasd adgasd
Not a fan
Hayden Leech
Fuck. Checkmate.
Ronin
Not overly a fan. It just doesn't make a while lot of narrative sense that Perry would just leave Solaris alone when he was so cautious as to make multiple cures, just in case something happened. I do think this was a great showing of Evil Solaris. But it feels like the story was more focused on Solaris being eaten by the mimic, than it was on making that outcome make sense. Still enjoyed the chapter, I just think it doesn't make a whole lot of in-universe sense.
Chris Britt
Not really a fan of this. We just threw out like 8 chapters worth of stuff with a deus ex machina
Colin Groh
Like a lot of other readers I'm not particularly happy about it, especially because it's killing some great characters essentially offscreen. I'd imagine this is what Perry's enemies feel like whenever they look away and he pulls out a ludicrous advantage and levels up onto a whole new playing field. I get the impulse to allow the enemy to have one of those every once in a while, but I question if this instant annihilation is the right way for them to raise their threat level. It looks more like just sweeping the board away of all the characters that were never going to get screen time again
Spirit Stones
Don’t really like this a lot, seems forced
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Hmmm, i am quite conflicted. On one hand, it sure does raise some stakes, which were kinda missing for a while considering perry's power. I think killing off some characters is a good idea. However, this is basically a brick wall in the middle of a weave that a story is. A lot of plot threads and pacing just... broke. There are plenty of ways to create a threat to perry without throwing half the story out. Perhaps one of the mimics recovered more of the system, letting it grow, albeit less. Could be a rogue replicator project taking over various non-replicator systems, perhaps darryl's mechs and stuff. Edit: in my opinion, the closure to a story shouldn't be a single core event, but rather a chain of disaster dominos that kills of some strong characters, but ultimately is both more reasonable and interesting.
nugitoBambino
yeah i'm a bit confused, i thought they said that these mimics were less powerful than perry's because they couldn't copy powers as well but could copy tech
nugitoBambino
yeah chemestro appears to have escaped as well. Marigold is probably fine, but I'm pretty worried about Claudette
nugitoBambino
yeah, i don't think it's perry's cure either. at absolute best it was from the machines the mimics got into from the cure and one escaped with like a fraction of the data. maybe just enough to suppress him.
Andrew
Thank you!
xyphion
I dunno, feels like all that time spent building up the cure and redundancy is just wasted now. Came out of nowhere and feels forced? I like the outcome rampaging Solaris is scary awesome.. But it cane about wrong maybe?
closeded
Seems unlikely that the anchors would leave Solaris alone.
Domy
This does feel like it came out of nowhere. Feels a bit to sudden.
Matt R.
Seems like most people are saying this so far, but this kinda came out of nowhere and seems hard to justify, there’s too much redundancy around Solaris rn. Perry literally acknowledges it.
Victor Cavalcanti
Well, shit.
PlasmaticPi
I don't think truthslayer did. I think those were something Abun cooked up just to temporarily suppress Solaris's powers which is much easier.
Daemion
I feel there are too many things that had to go just right for this outcome. The mimics needed a sample of Perry's tech to depower Solaris (and wasn't there an issue with injecting anything into Solaris due to him vaporizing everything, including the needle?), they needed to get to Truthslayer first, they needed to know that Truthslayer is his granddaughter and how he'd react to her, there needed to be no guards... ...and why the hell did anyone think that leaving the Omega class super alone while his mind is addled was a good idea? If they wanted to fix him, they should have had someone with him 24/7, sharing old stories, talking about people, showing him videos and giving him books to read... all so he could re-construct his memories more easily. If he had gotten sidetracked with his musings, he might have lashed out at someone. It would only take a moment. Why was he left alone? From a narrative POV... I don't know. This is piling worldending problem on worldending problem. If Solaris murders or turns all the named characters in Franklin City, then what's the point in having saved the city before? How do the mimics even get that powerful? Just copy the person? And the power transfers just like that, too?
Hayden Leech
Fuuuuuuck
Calvin
thanks, I hate it
Ryan Naquin
I only question how truthslayer got hands on Perry's cure. I would think he would have destroyed all other instances of it since he was being so careful. I know he had his AI make mutiple vials of the cure but did those contain his curse?
austin kutz
Perry is almost definitely going to reverse time or something. His kids are there right now, I'm pretty sure
Hunter Joseph
Not a fan of this outcome. I get that it's a decent end of story plot point, but still not a fan. I also feel like there would have been so much redundancy around her and Solaris, placed by them or perry until he was 100% that this shouldn't have happened. Like why go through all perry did to cure him only to say fuck it before the jobs completely done. Also it'd be unrealistic that perry or Solaris would allow any amount of the Solaris normalizing serum to survive after the first time succeeding. Leaving any around or the method to make more laying around would be an incredibly massive hole to miss
Doodlyboy15
I was under the impression that making some kind of global 'brandon wave' would cause the person's... person-ness to kind of overright the mimics and fix the issue.
Kirvin
I would imagine Marigold is fine considering she has been an actual enemy of Solaris in the past and isn't dead, she probably has ways to avoid him. But it does seem like this would mean most characters outside of very few like Marigold and Chemestro would basically be gone.
Deinos
Heh it's kinda funnily ridiculous, in a kind of way damned if i do damned if i don't way of curing Tom. It was good but I'm wondering what happened to the other guys that should be protecting him from exactly something like that.
Crombell
I wasn't aware this was supposed to be the end, dunno if this makes me feel better about the slate being wiped clean
Owen Kaz
Perry is back in the city at this time. I expect the next chapter to start with attempts to kill him alongside a mass infection of the city. Afterall, as powerful as the Mimic now is, it wants to consume more than destroy.
PlasmaticPi
My one question is why, when Solaris is at his weakest, they didn't have guards in the room with him?
PlasmaticPi
I mean its the end of the series, where everything that happens afterwards doesn't matter. What did you expect?
Kirvin
It would be nice to have some explanation of how this was pulled off by the mimics, since it seems like this would be such an obvious thing to prevent, especially considering Perry and all the anchors knew the mimics stole hardlight technology specifically to target Solaris.
mhaj58
So if I’m reading this right, Replicazaul got to Truthslayer, who infiltrated Solaris, who was too mentally weak to get away. Now Solaris is going nuclear and Franklin city is doomed. Darryl is the only man who escaped. Is Claudette still alive? Is Marigold? The ending says Solaris purged every anchor, but I doubt Darryl would have escaped alone.
Owen Kaz
Whatever's easier. He likely turned Nocturne, found vaporizing perry's dad to be safer, and knew that Chemestro was an issue either way
Gaunt
Thats it: the next shoe, the next major hit for Perry'a growth. 2 minutes of light speed is 2.235e+7 miles. Plenty of time to take the city off the board
Dax
Indeed
Crombell
Feels like a lot of the plot leading up to this point was all kinda in vain if this happens regardless, and like we're rapidly leaving behind the entire established setting. Too many important people and civilians are likely to either have died in the mimic arc, the space between sentences in this chapter, or will in the coming few chapters, for Franklin City to really exist afterwards. Might be intentional, can't quite tell. Currently not feeling too enthused about it, as I did actually like the setting of the story. Though I also don't know what you're cooking, so the impression is subject to change.
Doodlyboy15
Is he turning the anchors or literally annihilating them?
JAMAJ
Welp. Fuck haha. Good stuff. Looking forward to the next chapter
Ford-Thomas Frank Loveland
Well shit
Macronomicon
Whaddya think? This is a pretty pivotal point in the story. I think if Tom were turned, things would rapidly spiral out of control. Like, a matter of seconds. Once you have the most powerful super on your side, you don't have to play the stealth game any more.
