The Doctor's Army

 Daniel returned earlier, with Justin and the Bloody Biker with him. I gave a nervous glance at the Biker before addressing Daniel.

"I don't see the Demi God Hunter anywhere," I noted.

"He prefers it that way," Daniel replied. "I'ma head inside and grab my spare labcoat."

"Does that one also have mustards stains?" I asked.

"Shut up," he informed me, and went inside.

Justin finished up attaching his scythe arm and followed him in, leaving me alone with the biker. He approached me, with a sadistic smile on his face. I stood my ground.

"Heya, buddy," He said. "How's that cheek of yours doing?"

"Fine," I said. "No thanks to you."

He chuckled at that, and grabbed my shoulder with one hand.

"You should be proud of it," he said. Then, he leaned in closer, right up to my ear, squeezing tightly, and added "I leave worse wounds on those who fail to impress me."

I tried not to shudder. Tried...

He released his grip and turned to his solid steel bike, raising a hand toward . And the bike just... melted. It became a stream of floating liquid metal, that slowly reformed itself into a length of chain, which wove toward him, wrapping around him several times, like a pageant shash. He then turned around, and entered the base. I let out a breath I didn't realize I had been holding, and entered as well.

Seraph, Phantasm, Paris, Royce and Kai were standing around in the room, observing the Biker quietly as he took the place in. He turned and briefly addressed Phantasm.

"Been a while," he said.

"Traitor," Phantasm replied in a stiff voice.

"Knob head," the biker replied.

"Sellout," Phantasm retorted.

"Tosser," the Biker said.

Their conversation ended there. So, I guess they're acquainted. Also, weird hearing those particular insults in an American accent...

"Where's everyone else at?" I asked.

"Justin went to join Tony and his crew in the main lab," Seraph informed me. "Daniel's in his room, getting some stuff."

There were a couple minutes where little was said or done. Then Daniel walked back in. He had a new labcoat on (which also had a noticeable mustard stain that he'll be mad at me for mentioning" and had something odd slung over one shoulder. He was also dragging the large sword he had crafted using the Empty City's power behind him, its runes glowing a bright periwinkle from HELLFIRE's presence.

He paused for a moment, leaned the sword against a table, and tossed me the thing over his shoulder. I examined it. It was some kind of upper body armor, made of some kind of metal plating in the front, with the back made of chainmail, with a couple slits around the shoulder blades. There was a button attached to a battery pack at the back of the neckline.

"Throw that on under your robes," he told me.

I did as he instructed, removing the Scion robes I got from Dyson. The armor fit me perfectly, as if it were tailor made for me, and the slits in the back were positioned perfectly so I could sprout my wings through them. I put my robes back on over it.

"So, I appreciate the extra defense, but what's with the button?" I asked.

"Give it a try," he said.

I hesitantly did so, and felt a sudden tingle go along my spine. Daniel grabbed the sword, and vanished. I suddenly felt a great deal of weight dragging me down from behind, and I made an instinctive effort to remain upright and regained balance, adjusting to the new weight. My right arm went up, gripping the hilt of the giant weapon that was now magnetically clinging to my back.

"What the Final Fantasy fuck?" I asked.

"Like I said," Daniel said. "I didn't make that sword for me."

With some effort, I tugged the sword off my back and took a stance with it. It was heavier than the Jian I used to wield. This one required both hands to even lift. But something about its large size and weight felt... right. Like this was the type of weapon I was meant to wield.

"Thanks," I said. "Like... seriously."

He clapped me on the shoulder.

"Douitashimashite," he replied.

I racked my brain for a bit. I had heard exchanges between him and Kimiko, so I might be able to figure that one out.

"That's... 'your welcome'?" I asked.

"Obviously," he replied, approaching Phantasm. "So, you must be Phantasm."

"I am," Phantasm muttered.

Daniel cleared his throat and pulled himself to full height, gripping his cane confidently in front of him.

"Your outfit is stupid," he said. "Seriously, how many dark, brooding figures with hoods concealing their features do we really need in this team?"

With that, Phantasm unleashed that weird aura of fear he has. Everyone there buckled to varying degrees from it, but Daniel...

He tensed up for maybe half a second before pulling himself together and grinning up at the offended specter.

"I've been face to face with the Brute," Daniel said. "I handled it's rage quite well. I can handle your fear."

And suddenly, everyone collapse, pain spreading through our bodies. The Biker and I managed to remain mostly upright, but Seraph, who was used to dodging attacks, and Royce and Kai, who hadn't built up the same pain tolerance as me, were barely on their knees. I caught another sound above us, that I couldn't quite identify.

Daniel simply switched to red mode, embracing the pain and drawing from it.

"Yeah, nice try," Daniel said. "But it'll take more than that."

The aura of pain ended, and a set of hidden claws concealed inside of Phantasms sleeves extended, depositing a pair of folding pistols in his hands, before retreating. The guns unfolded.

I'm not going to call what happened next a fight. Because I know Daniel too well at this point. He's a lot of things. Dangerous. Kind of an asshole. Cocky, stubborn, and with enough power to back it all up.

But he is, first and foremost, a scientist.

This was an experiment.

Phantasm began shooting at Daniel, who held up the red power, and teleported around, dodging the gunshots at a bit of a distance, while silently counting each shot fired. It wasn't until the 24th shot that he intentionally allowed himself to be hit. The bullet struck his chest. While the red power impeeded the impact of the bullet enough to avoid any real damage, he dropped to his knees for a few seconds, overwhelmed by shear terror.

Terror which lasted just long enough for Phantasm to discard his spent clips. Then he shook the fear off, rose to his feet, cane planted firmly, and announced "Excellent! I quite like the data I've collected."

Phantasm paused while reaching for his extra clips.

"What?" he asked.

Daniel clear his throat.

"The aura that this man uses to inflict feelings onto others isn't limited to emotional feelings, but physical ones as well," he said. "Furthermore, he is able to compress that aura into his bullets to achieve an amplified effect in whoever he shoots. Correct?"

Phantasm reloaded his guns, a frown on his face.

"You were sizing me up...," he said.

"And I've concluded that you might actually be useful," Daniel replied. "But, I'm not done expe-"

Before Daniel could finish his sentence, the Demi God Hunter dropped from the rafters above him,  armed with his glaive, and sung directly down at him. Daniel, hearing the sudden movement above him, teleported elsewhere. The Hunter, braced himself for the fall, pulling back on his attack, so as to avoid slamming his weapon against the solid ground that Daniel has just occupied.

The first thing the Hunter did after that was charge at me. I tried to fight back with my new sword, but he effortlessly disarmed me, slammed the staff part of his glaive into my throat, and then tripped me, and slammed some rigid part of his body into my solar plexus.

I didn't see what happened to the Biker, but I heard him exclaim "Bloody Hell! Not again!" Followed by a loud thump. I managed to raise my head enough to see Seraph engage him and disarm his glaive, only for him to dodge her attacks and hit a couple nerve, causing her to keel over.

He drew his side weapon, which looked like a metal pipe with a sword hilt and turned to Phantasm. Phantasm unleashed his fear aura, which the Hunter simply shrugged off. The Hunter closed in, dodging a couple bullets as he did. Phantasm unleashed his pain aura again, causing everyone to collapse even further, but the Hunter only shuddered briefly before continuing his attack.

He closed the distance, and swung the pipe upward, making contact with Phantasms jaw. The clang the pipe made was way louder than was reasonably possible, ringing in the ears of everyone in the room. Phantasm went down to his knees, clutching his skull with both hands, and crying out in pain.

The Hunter simply stood still for a moment, as if waiting. This gave Kai, who was further from the shockwave of noise, to regain his composure. Then, in a bold move, he picked up the bokken from the floor behind him, and charged at the Hunter. The Hunter caught the wooden blad in a gloved hand and turned to face Kai.

"Settle down, child," he said calmly. "I have no qualms with ordinary humans. It's these empowered monsters that I aim to-"

There was a sudden change in the air. The Hunter tossed Kai out of the way of an incoming force, and barely dodged it himself. What was less a bullet, and more a concentrated spear of rage and destruction, flew past his, scorching the chest of his outfit, and striking the wall behind them, exploding in a sphere that left a giant hold, removing a large circle of the wall, as well as some of the floor and ceiling.

The Hunter, regaining his composure, turned back to face Phantasm, who had gone through a sudden wardrobe change. His black clothing had been replaced by jet black armor plates, and his hooded cloak was made entirely out of blackened chainmail. And his gun... His guns were fucking massive. I didn't understand how he could hold them in one hand, let alone have one casually lifted directly towards the Hunter's skull, without any sign of struggling against the weight.

"My power, as an Emissary, is defined as 'Escalation'," Phantasm calmly explained. "I have a number of forms I can escalate between, each with an Emissary power of its own."

The Hunter stood his ground, defiantly gripping his weapon. He had a hand hovering near one of his pockets, ready to draw something else out of it.

"My default form possesses a power known as 'Aura'," Phantasm explained. "The good doctor already summed up how it works. This form, my second, possesses the power titles 'Destroyer'."

His finger hovered over the trigger, as he turned his head to face the Hunter's.

"How curious are you to learn the full meaning behind that title?"

Before anything else could happed, Daniel teleported between them.

"That enough!" he demanded, slamming his cane firmly on the floor.

Phantasm and the Hunter slowly eased up, with Phantasm eventually reverting to his previous form. I looked around at everyone else. Kai was okay, Seraph was recovering from the nerve attacks, and the Biker was recovering from a slit throat, which explained what I had missed happening to him. Apparently he's immortal or some shit...

"That was an excellent demonstration," Daniel said, before turning to Seraph. "You good?"

"No warning?" she asked.

"Wouldn't be a surprise attack otherwise," he said. "Even I didn't know when exactly he was planning to drop in."

"Of fucking course," Seraph scoffed.

"I am sorry," Daniel said. "But I needed to give a proper test to make sure everyone's ready for this, and he agreed to avoid killing any of us. And you all passed the test quite well."

"Seriously?" the Hunter asked. "They went down like-"

"Soldiers," Daniel interrupted. "They got caught off guard. They fought. They did their best. They lost. A defeat more than common amongst people going into battle. Everyone here is ready for the upcoming war."

"Even the kid?" the Hunter asked, gesturing to Kai.

Daniel laughed hard at that.

"Are you kidding me?" Daniel asked. "That 'kid' had the shear balls to stand up to you after you kicked the asses of every superpowered being in the room."

Kai blushed, and backed away a little bit. Daniel averted his gaze, staring off at nothing in particular.

"I'm down an intern," he mention. "Just... anyway..."

He straightened up.

"There's a war coming, and I don't know when our what's going to happen. But i'm confident that the group we've gathered together can make a difference."

There was some chattering amongst ourselves for a couple minutes, before Elie nervously opened the front door.

"Uh, hey... have things calmed down?" He asked. "I heard a bunch of battle noises, and a wall's gone..."

"S'all good," Daniel said. "Come on in."

Elie entered, with Jane and Kimiko in tow.

"Sup?" Daniel asked.

"We have a problem," Elie stated. "My blueprints were... um... stolen."

"Again?" Daniel asked.

"Not the Extractor blueprints, this time," Elie said. "I um... I don't want you to be mad about this, but..."

Daniel turned to Elie scowling.

"Have you been working on an Enhancer!?" he demanded.

"No!" Elie said. "... wasn't building one, but I was studying your own work on it, and trying to brainstorm ideas to possiblycreate a safer version of it."

Daniel glared furiously, before forcing himself to calm down.

"So, what you're saying is, someone has the knowledge to potentially supercharge Demi-Gods without risk of blowing them up along with everything in the area?" he asked.

"Yes," Elie said. "And... I know who has it..."

Daniel's expression shifted between curious, then angry, and then depress, as a realization hit him. He didn't need Elie to tell him. He could guess.

"Tyler...," he muttered.

Before Elie could respond, Daniel's phone rang. He answered it swiftly.

"Hello?" he asked. "Oh, Professor."

"Ben?" I asked.

Daniel nodded once before continuing.

"What?" he asked. "When and where? Okay. Yeah, gotcha. We'll be there, armed and ready."

He paused for a moment.

"What do mean, my lab?" he asked, before his eyes widened, and he vanished, dropping his phone to the floor. I swiped it up, speaking into it.

"Ben? I asked. "What's going-"

"Follow him," Ben replied quickly. "Bring Sera. Wake up the detective and the medic first."

He then hung up. I turned to Seraph.

"We need to get to the lab," I said.

She nodded, turned to the others, and demanded "Nobody kill each other till we get back!"

We both rushed to the lab to find all of Solar Progeny unconscious on the floor.

Daniel stood before a shadowy vortex on the wall, that was slowly closing into nothingness. I remembered Ben's words, and ran to Tony's side.

"Seraph, take care of-" I said.

"Ciel first," Seraph interrupted. "I know, we need her up first to help fix all the wounds and stuff. Ain't my first shit show, dude."

I gave Tony a gentle shake.

"Hey, buddy?" I asked. "You good?"

"Tony's eyes fluttered awake.

"I'm sorry," He said. "Dawson and Tyler... a couple others... Caught us off-guard. Couldn't stop them..."

"What did they take?" Daniel asked. His words were colder than I was expecting from him.

Tony coughed a little bit. Seraph had gotten Ciel up, and the two of them were now assisting Justin and Terrence.

"Samples," Tony gasped quietly.

Daniel rushed to where his samples were kept. I patted Tony on the shoulder briefly before going to join him.

"All the samples are here, right?" I asked, running my gaze across them.

"The samples themselves are, but..." He said, opening up a drawer on the desk bellow them. I saw all of the Cells he had Extracted energy into. "No..." he muttered.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Red Cap," he muttered. "Azoth. Vision. Valravn. Convocation. All missing. And... Brute..."

"Oh no," I muttered.

"Those energies are all incredibly unstable," Daniel said. "The Brute's most of all. There's no telling what kind of damage they can do with all of that..."

"We need to stop then," I said.

Daniel thought for a moment, then shook his head.

"One thing at a time," he said. "Malkator told me the time and place to attack the forest. And it's soon. Our team is ready. We need to act on that for now. And I'm sure... positive that Dawson and his cohorts will clash with us along the way. When we do, we'll take care of them. And Tyler..."

He took a deep breathe, held it for a few seconds, and let it all out.

"I'll get through to him," he said. "Somehow. I'm going to get my intern back."

I gave him a pat on the back.

"I know you will," I said.

I turned back to Tony and approached him.

"You okay?" I asked.

"More or less," he said.

"What can you tell me?" I asked.

"Dawson phased them all in with his shadow magic," Tony said. "We fought. We lost. They took some of the samples. Daniel showed up just before I lost consciousness. He saw them. Then they left."

"This is like the ambush from before," I said. "But they timed it wrong. He had gotten back when they still expected him to be gone."

Tony shook his head.

"No," he said. "They timed it perfectly. They wanted this. They wanted Daniel to catch them, right as they were leaving. They wanted him to see them. So that they could rub their victory in his face."

"None of that matters," Daniel snapped. "Ciel!"

Ciel snapped up at attention. Justin and Terrence were conscious, but still out of it.

"Wounds!" Daniel barked. "Treatment. Now!"

Ciel nodded and whipped out her medical kit. Daniel turned his back and headed out to where the others were. I gave a last look at Tony, who Seraph was patching up, before I followed.

Daniel faced everyone, and addressed them.

"We have a lot of problems," he said. "One of which includes a man empowered by Nightlanders and my former intern, who's got a shapeshifting tree in place of his right arm. But we'll deal with them when we cross them. For now, our focus is on the forest, and the beings being corrupted by it. They're the reason I called in an expert on dealing with metahumans."

"I don't trust Demi Gods," the Hunter said. "That includes the lot of you. But at the very least, you all aren't feral. Which is something I can't say about these Green Men. They're savage, and that makes them more of a threat. They need to be stopped, along with this damned forest, before they spread further and do more harm. That's the only reason I'm siding with any of you."

Daniel nodded.

"Go get some rest," he said. "Build up your strength. We don't have much time left. We need to be ready to attack when we need to. Sleeping bags are in that room. Sorry I can't give better accommodations, but I'm on a budget, here.

Everyone left to get their sleeping situation sorted out. I stuck around.

"You okay?" I asked.

Daniel thought for a few seconds.

"You know how shit hit the fan back in Seattle?" he asked.

"We titled 3 posts after it, so yeah," I said.

"I think something much grosser is about to hit something spinning a lot faster," he said. He sighed, and followed up with "Are we ready for this?"

"Fuck no, we aren't," I said. "But back in Seattle, I saw part of you I didn't think existed. You did the right thing. You pushed yourself beyond your breaking point to save as many people as possible."

"Only because you were there to nudge me the right way," he said. "I would have just bailed if you weren't there."

"We were in it together back there," I said. "And we're in it together again."

I gave his arm a gentle punch.

"We've got this," I said confidently.

He hesitated, before clicking the switch on his cane, drawing the concealed sword out a couple inches. He examined it thoughtfully, before smiling to himself, and re-sheathing it.

"Yeah," he said. "We do. Now, let's go check up on Tony and the others."

"Yeah," I agreed, stretching a bit and letting out a tired yawn. "And after that, let's get some of that 'rest' you were talking about earlier."