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Evil Janet · Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 3:40 pm Post subject: The End of Evil Janet

Here it is at last... Janet's final episode?

Staring Down Eternity – The Demise of Evil Janet

Blood seeped from the ears of the stalker who lay in a twisted heap of limbs on the energy-scarred floor of the ASC teleport bay. Her face was a contorted ball of fury and vehemence, even as she was about to die. Defiant to the last, Dracula’s Bride was not about to plead for mercy, especially not from her vanquisher, one not renowned for mercy of any kind. Dracula’s Bride tried to stand, at least to go out with some dignity – but she could not move.

“A good investment, those stealth suppressors,” said Evil Janet, coldly casual and ignoring the bloodied and ragged stalker at her feet.

“Ja,” answered Dr Zweistein, “und ze freeze vays supplemented your holds most admirably.” The scientist had a clipboard in her hands and had been calculating some equations.

“Not,” added Janet pointedly, “that I needed the assistance.”

Zweistein shrugged. “Ve Greman’s haf ze saying, ‘Besseres safe als traurig’.”

“Better safe than sad?” questioned Janet. “Don’t you mean sorry?”

“A german NEVER zays zorry!” declaimed Zweistein haughtily.

Finally Janet acknowledged Dracula’s Bride.

“And you? Are you sorry?” she enquired indifferently. She expected no reply and she got none. “I should torture you and then let you go back to the Nightstalkers to let people know what happens to people who try to break in and sabotage the ASC base… but I won’t.”

A look of puzzlement crossed Dracula’s Bride’s face and she licked at the blood that was dripping from a deep cut on her forehead and falling on her lips. What was the unpredictable and temperamental Evil Janet about to do?

“I am fed up of your plotting DB,” she continued, referring to her victim by her initials, as they had known each other sometime. “I don’t want it any more, I don’t need it and I am tired. Sick and tired. We have shared some extraordinary experiences together, but now I see that all it was your conniving manipulation, little steps along a long path to reach this very moment.” Janet shook her head. “Except… this wasn’t how you saw it was it? You would have swallowed up the ASC into the Nightstalkers and erased myself, the doctor, Johnny and Yuri from the records.”

Then Janet laughed. It started as a chuckle that jiggled her chin, built to a hearty laugh that shook the ribcage and crescendoed into a wild cackle that echoed through the corridors and rooms of the supergroup base. Only now did fear show on Dracula’s Bride’s face, as Janet allowed her head free to move, and rightly so.

“No. Tonight it will be YOU who are obliterated from history,” growled Janet. Suddenly behind her appeared Polly, her gravitational singularity that had meant doom for so many of Janet’s enemies. “I won’t say Au Revoir… just goodbye.”

Polly vanished and then suddenly appeared above the stricken stalker. Janet then did something that no one alive had ever seen her do before. She channelled her energy bolts into Polly and the ball of surging power grew and writhed like a maelstrom in the air.

Below, Dracula’s Bride would have writhed too, racked with pain and agony. Her mouth was impossibly wide, but no scream emerged as her larynx was paralysed and she could not breathe, her lungs seized, as had her heart, her liver, her kidneys. Only her brain functioned for now and its single thought was this was not how I was supposed to die!

Then her flesh began to wrinkle, the first part of her fragile body that gave way to the gravitational thrust that Janet was forcing upon her. She seemed to age rapidly, though her hair remained dark and her eyes clear. Until they imploded, leaving two watery sockets. She became matchstick thin, unbelievably gaunt and there was a cracking noise as her ribs caved in, followed by a loud report as the skull was finally crushed. No parts flew out, no blood splattered, for everything was being forced inwards and being compacted, smaller and smaller. There was no longer any discernible human form, just a mish-mash of bone, flesh and cloth, though soon they too became indiscernible. At the last there seemed to be a tiny black ball no more than 5mm in diameter and then there was nothing. Dracula’s Bride had indeed been obliterated.

Dr Zweistein had dropped her clipboard and her chin. “Mein gott!” she blasphemed. “Vot haf you done Janet?” She stooped to where Dracula’s Bride had lain only moments before and ran her gloved hand over the surface backwards and forwards. “Iss she completely gone, or haf you jus shrunken her into microscopic zize?” She turned to Janet, who had shed a single tear and was letting it run down her cheek with no attempt to wipe it away.

“She is gone,” said Janet simply and then looked Dr Zweistein square in the eye. “Completely. No body, no spirit, no soul.” She raised a gloved finger to the corruptor. “You once said you could resurrect anything…” she then pointed to the space on the floor, “then resurrect THAT!”

She swivelled and walked to the doorway back to her rooms, but stopped and said half turned over her shoulder. “You can bring life; but me? I only bring death.” Then she strode swiftly out of the room.

*************************************

Those were the Halcyon days for the ASC. They had risen to great power and were known as one of the mightiest villain groups in the Rogue Isles, counting amongst their number, Nick Anything, Winnie the Foe, Aaarrrggghhh, Genome X, Dr Sterfgeval, Flaming Wasp as well as many other powerful villains.

Janet and Alexandra Zweistein had formed a formidable pairing as leaders of the ASC, but all that was thrown into chaos one day when the young villainess Sweet Fanny Adams visited. She was an orphan and during her time in the Rogue Isles she had attached to Janet whom she saw as a mother figure.

“Ah have news Jan,” said the super-powered teen in her southern US drawl. “Seems a powerful mastermind from the House of Counted Shadows would like to join ya, defect as it were.”

“Really? That so?” said Janet, engrossed in her project on the worktable.

“Uh-hu,” nodded Fanny picking up a coloured vial from Janet’s desk that immediately caught Janet’s attention so that she used her grav power to thrust Fanny’s hand back to the desk until she released it. “Name o’ Fairygothmother. Bit o’ a mouthful, so we jus’ call her FGM mostly. She is funny tho.”

“I have heard of Fai… FGM,” acknowledged Janet. “She could be useful to the ASC. I hear she has contacts.”

“She sure seem t’ know a lot of people,” confirmed Fanny rubbing her wrist sullenly, though nothing had been hurt other than her pride. “She says there be a rebellion goin’ in the House of Counted Shadows an’ she can bring people with her.”

“Well when you see her, tell her she is most welcome,” said Janet, shrugging to ask if the statement really needed to be said.

“Ah know, bu’ she’s a leader in her supergroup an’ I hear she wants like fer like.”

Janet put down her work and raised an eyebrow. “She wants to be a leader in the ASC?”

“She ain’t said so much, bu’ ya can sense it,” sighed Fanny. “Bu’ not fer meh ta figure. Jus’ thought ya might wanna know.”

Janet and Dr Zweistein talked it over. Things had gone exceedingly well for the ASC in recent months and though the addition of FGM and her promised followers would swell the ranks at the ASC, did they want to rock the boat and upset the status quo?

In the end they could reach no firm decision so at the toss of a coin it was decided. Fairygothmother would be the third leader of the ASC and so the unholy Trinity was formed.

***************************************************

The mass exodus from the House of Counted Shadows was not forthcoming. Fairygothmother had misjudged the mood. Not everyone had seen things the way she had and many remained behind.

In truth, Janet was not worried by this. What she had been worried about was that the ASC would be seen to steal the members of other supergroups. Honour amongst villains might be less evident than it was amongst heroes, but Janet still had a grasp of that. Indeed, Janet was probably less evil than she outwardly portrayed.

Yet she never showed it; that was not until one winter’s eve. Cooler air had brought tropical storms to the Rogue Isles and there was little villainy to be had and so the base was largely empty.

Dr Zweistein was taking advantage of this to do a stock take of everything the base contained and decide whether any of it could be used in her nefarious experiments. She had just finished cataloguing everything having wandered half-lit corridors when she noticed that though the light was dim in Janet’s office, it was most definitely on, when she had turned it off earlier. As she approached she thought she heard a noise that she usually only ever heard from her cells… sobbing.

Entering Janet’s office she was confronted by a sight that chilled her to the bone. It was not something horrific or gruesome; such things were two a penny in a days work for Dr Zweistein; but it was disturbing to the core because it was something that she had never seen before, nor would she ever, thankfully, ever see again.

Janet was on the floor in front of her desk, sobbing and bleeding copiously from many wounds. Not just pitifully sniffling to herself or in pain of physical hurt, but in the full trauma of emotional anguish. Around her lay broken vials with myriad coloured fluids running from their breached containment, running and mixing with her blood. Above her stood a Mu guardian, hovering as a sentinel over Janet and instinctively Dr Zweistein blasted it to oblivion. Then she healed and used her accelerated metabolism to aid and strengthen Janet.

“Ze Arachnos kanst nicht be trusted Fraulein Janet,” advised Alexandra as she stooped to help Janet, but she did not seem to want to move.

“The Mu was what kept me alive,” said Janet heavily and slowly and not turning to acknowledge Zweistein. She stared down eternity, but she was no longer crying, though she sniffed and rubbed at her nose, not even noticing that all she had done was smear blood over her face.

“Glocken von der Hölle!” spat Dr Zweistein. “Ve must get you to ze med-bay!”

“I didn’t want any of this,” said Janet, completely ignoring the German, but now pushing herself up. She slipped a couple of times in the mixed blood and who knew what other fluids before calling on her grav powers to levitate herself upright. She floated over her desk and into her high-backed chair. The powers relinquished her and she slumped ignobly in her chair.

“Maybe,” shrugged Dr Zweistein, “but you haf done so much!” As she looked at the mess of broken glass around Janet’s office she wished she had her co-leader’s powers to clean up the mess.

“All I wanted…” said Janet, still ignorant of her confederate, “all I wanted, was to get to the top. Then when I reached the top I could do all the things I put on hold.” She threw her arm out wildly and a bookcase full of books some five metres away toppled with a resounding bang and clatter of books.

Zweistein knew Janet had a temper, but had never seen her so morose. Cautiously she pressed a pager on her utility belt. She was going to need help.

“I thought that once I had perfected the IGAD… to the benefit of all humankind, I might add… that I would settle down to a normal life.” Janet folded her head in her arms. Out in the corridor neon lights flickered as the storm that ravaged outside took a sub-station offline, but Janet’s oil lamps did not flicker once. “I still wanted to get married and maybe even have children. A boy and a girl…”

“Vot about Un Divine?” said Dr Zweistein and immediately bit her lip hard. Now was possibly not the best time to mention Janet’s ex.

“Yeah, so ok, I was married,” snarled Janet, “TO A FREAK!” She stood and raised her hands aloft, blood running in rivulets down her arms and Dr Zweistein gave her another healing blast. Janet would however need proper medical attention soon. “And I AM A FREAK!”

The oil lamps flickered as a third presence entered the room. The trinity had become one, as Fairygothmother had answered Dr Zweistein’s urgent page. The powers of the otherworld, the powers that Janet so desperately sought, came naturally to FGM. With Dr Zweistein’s radioactive powers and FGM’s command over life and death, there was no chance Janet would die, however much she would seem to welcome it.

“I AM A FREAK!” screamed Evil Janet, and indeed she was. Suddenly the petite dom flew into a fearsome rage, wrecking havoc in her office and destroying indiscriminately. But as she thrashed and wailed and fought against her fate, the other two parts of the ASC unholy trinity sustained her until it was passed.

Janet lay back on the floor once more, in her office that had been utterly devastated, and curled into a foetal position, this time with Polly over her. But even as FGM and Dr Zweistein eyed it cautiously, she did not use its power on her friends. It was not something to enter her mind. Besides, her phenomenal outburst of rage had passed and she was back to plain, ordinary, but Evil, Janet.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered almost imperceptibly. “I’ll put this right soon.”

“No you won’t touch a thing,” insisted Fairygothmother, but softly. “We have enough vagrant villains doing nothing right now that can sort this out. You just let us help you to the med-bay and rest your head hun.”

“I would… like…” then Janet slumped into unconsciousness and Polly disappeared.

*******************************************

Many people would have given up at this point, but not Janet. In fact the events of that night were never mentioned and the destruction was blamed on the storm. Only Dr Zweistein and Fairygothmother knew the truth of what had happened and they told no one. Thus, as the ASC had grown in power under two leaders, it also continued to grow in influence under the unholy three. There were regular forays to inflict havoc and mayhem in the boroughs of Paragon City, banks were looted (much to Dr Zweistein’s joy – as it turned out, she had relatives who were bankers in Switzerland), other villains were kept in check and heroes were vanquished.

But success in the Rogue Isles meant that you became a target. Heroes climb the ladder, villains pull those higher than them down to their level. Increasingly the ASC found themselves being raided. Heroes realised that the ASC were becoming a very real threat to their spandex-styled life, whilst other villain groups resented their success and wanted what the ASC had for themselves and they were not going to ask politely.

So it was just another raid that Evil Janet was responding to as she flew to the portal on Spider Tower. Dr Zweistein was already there and she followed her into the lobby, where assembled were Fairygothmother (her undead all summoned and yabbering madly, as FGM’s pets were liable to do), Nick Anything, Flaming Wasp and Aaarrrggghhh. Reports indicated that Winnie the Foe, Dr Sterfgeval and Cynthia Black were also on the way.

“What have we got incoming?” asked Janet immediately. The ever-organised Fairygothmother had an answer.

“A curious concoction of heroes and villains,” she said, conjuring an image in the air that showed a large contingency of both moralities gathering at a telepad, location unknown. However at least one was already in the base, for the alarms had gone off. It was likely to be a stealthed controller or a stalker, scouting ahead of the main attack.

“Kann dieses zutreffend sein?” said Zweistein. “Ich kanst belief it!”

“Maybe they have put their differences aside to fight a common foe,” said Nick, in what was a startling moment of insight for a brute.

“Well they will find us anything but common,” assured Janet. “Pets summoned, shields on…”

“AM?” suggested Dr Zweistein levitating into the air.

“That would be good,” nodded Janet. As they made their preparations they were joined by the others. “ Any ideas FGM?”

“We are out-numbered, but we have the advantage of base defences and our defences are very good,” said FGM, “but my arcane intuition is that some of us should go to the generator room. Surely they will try to cut our power if they can.”

“Agreed,” said Janet. She looked across at Dr Zweistein who shrugged and nodded. “Nick and Winnie, you go to the generator room.” The pair raced off to intercept any attack there. “Dr Sterfgeval, you and Cynthia wait in reserve. The rest of us, we’re going to patrol the base and show these fools that they cannot defeat the ASC, even joining their powers together!”

Nick and Winnie did indeed intercept a stealthed controller… and a stalker… and a defender, blaster and a corruptor. Mass invisibility was a very useful power to have and it seemed the intruding controller had it. Dr Sterfgeval and Cynthia Black were despatched in short order to their assistance, whilst the rest of the team braced themselves for the second wave of the onslaught.

The trinity plus Flaming Wasp and Aaarrrggghhh positioned themselves near a slow field and two scorpion surprises. As it turned out, they needed all the help they could get.

One moment the teleport bay was empty save for the five villains, the next it was writhing with heroes and villains intent on overturning the ASC, either to rid the world of their power or to seize it for themselves

Janet took a second to work out the odds, but the best she could come up with was three to one against them… not good. She was a keen student of Sun Tzu’s Art of War and she knew that the great strategist had said, “If your enemy is of superior strength, evade him,” but here there was nowhere to run.

Fortunately she also practised one of Sun Tzu’s other axioms, “treat your men as you would your own beloved sons and they will follow you into the deepest valley.” And this was a very deep valley they found themselves in, but the ASC followed.

Flaming Wasp used his fiery fury to hold the initial thrust and soak up the aggression, Aaarrrggghhh was high on aggravation, Fairygothmother was coolly manipulating her undead to herd and direct the enemy to exploit their weaknesses, whilst Dr Zweistein flew here and there uttering German curses on the foe and raining radioactive death down on them. They were miraculously holding the enemy, but if the other party from the generator room should break free then the battle would surely turn against them.

Janet was summoning all her powers to hold and immobilise whole mobs of the combined enemy, some of them held totally paralysed in the air, others with limited movement, yet others mobile but slow. She summoned Polly to her side and the offensive against them slowed yet more. Her domination rose and with it so did her ire.

How could these people unite against them? Though she knew enough not to trust any villain who had not been tied to her service, the idea of allying with the enemy heroes made her hackles rise. She had to make an example of these fools, to show others what happened when heroes and villains united against her beloved ASC.

So she did what she had done once before to make an example of Dracula’s Bride. She channelled her energy bolts into Polly. The singularity flared and grew in power, repelling the invaders and seizing some of them ever tighter. Along with this the other half of the team consisiting of Nick, Winnie, Dr Sterfgeval and Cynthia had returned victorious from defending the generator.

They fell upon the assorted enemy from behind and the invasion force broke. Heroes and villains alike took flight for the base entrance portal, though four of them were trapped in the combined holds of Janet and Polly. One of them was unaffected, merely held, intended to be the witness of what would befall his stricken allies, two scrappers and a brute, who were suffering the same fate as Dracula’s Bride. They were physically tougher than the erstwhile stalker though and were lasting much longer, but even they would not survive for long. Blood vessels burst, causing ugly black-purple bruises and huge veins throbbed under their skins.

Janet sighed and then she laughed, for she knew that she could not show any weakness. She laughed until she could laugh no more… as suddenly a strange force seized her and she could not move.

It would appear that the illusion controller who had launched the attack on the generator had escaped the ASC’s retaliation. He or she was invisible somewhere in the room and had taken a chance on confusing Polly – successfully. Now it had turned on it’s mistress and Janet was being compressed. Her previous captives took the opportunity to flee, even as Fairygothmother’s zombies chased them down, hounding down the slowest and weakest, the brute, and ripping him limb from limb.

Janet though was suffering a worse fate.

“JANET! NEIN!!” screamed Dr Zweistein and dropped a dose of radiation on the singularity that did nothing to weaken its power. If anything it seemed to absorb the extra power and grow more. Janet’s “modification” of Polly would be her own undoing. Though the arrayed members of the ASC flung themselves together at the singularity, the hugely empowered Polly just repelled them back and remained undamaged.

Janet could feel her skin contracting, growing taut and breathing was impossible, yet for some reason she was still able to move, but agonisingly slowly. Maybe it was because the gravity power came from within her that she had some resilience against it. She tried to dismiss Polly, but the ability proved beyond her stymied powers.

In an instant of terrible clarity she knew what she had to do and with unbearable slowness she reached out to Polly. She had been mercifully close to the singularity, as her destroyer had once been her defender and shield. Had she been any further away then the confused singular ball of amplified gravitational wrath would have crushed her as sure as it had Dracula’s bride. But she didn’t want to go out like that.

Finally, in excruciating slow-motion, Janet’s hand reached within Polly’s gravitational sphere and she let lose one last energy blast, calling on every last milligram of her remaining power. Polly flared, there was a blinding light, a rush of wind as air collapsed into the vacuum.

And with that, she was gone.

_________________
My kind of life don't last, preacher. So I expect I'm invested in making good sport of it whilst I can. - Mal Reynolds: Firefly

Evil Janet - Grav/Energy Dom 50 * Jimmy Spoons - Thug/Poison MM 40 * Womanman - Super Strength /Invulnerability Brute 32 * Doc Och - Dark/Dark Stalker 13

Alts not in the SG: Sweet Fanny Adams - MCBeth - Evil Ken Eval