LIGHTNOVELONLINE Issue 447 – Congressional Cuts
“I would handle it with great care and sensitivity, Senator Blake,” DiDi replied coolly. “That is usually very difficult for the government, so it is unwise to leave the responsibility to them. The temptation to abuse authority, find out some secret about a hero no one else knows, and then out them or sell the knowledge or just plain take petty revenge, will happen.
“For example, there is no central database of secret identities for heroes among us. Either you know them, or you do not. If they need to be contacted, they are contacted by those they trust, or they are not.
“When that trust is violated, the cost is usually paid in blood. Governments are fantastically bad about keeping that trust, whether it be by incompetency, bribery, treason, technological inferiority, misguided idealism, or espionage. Your own intelligence services and special operations were basically under the thumb of vampire lords and werewolf packs for a century!” She delighted at seeing them all wince at the fact, although her face did not show it.
“Extending trust to the government is not something any wise hero with a secret identity is going to do. To a villain, it is largely irrelevant. Heroic types and the law don’t generally punish the friends and family of criminals as a preventative measure. Criminals will. Oh, not the smarter ones, of course, but there is a known lack of common sense among the criminal set.
“Passing that bill will mean choosing between friends and family, and being heroic. A good number of heroes doing good work are just going to evaporate if that basic level of trust is not shown them.” DiDi tilted her head slightly. “Heroes intervening against criminals is basically the highest level of community involvement and charitable activity you can expect from a person, since it actually places their well-being at risk. This rampant distrust of them is clearly not of any benefit to anyone but those people who don’t have your trust, anyway.
“But all of that is moot. Senator Blake’s paymasters will not be seeing it come into law, so it will be back to the drawing board. Senator Blake, this is the apex of your groveling subservience to your masters. I strongly suggest you not even bother to run for re-election, take your election chest, and retire to one of those brothels in France Midas sends you to frequently. I believe you prefer the one in Cannes.” Her head turned slightly. “Representative Phillips, you have chosen a very poor example of who to imitate in your political career. I highly recommend that you think deeply on whose recommendations you listen to and whose money and favors you take, or your career is also going to be brief.
“We know, Congressionals. You are dealing with the smartest people in the world when you are dealing with us. Your implicit trust in that we will not resort to low methods and the backstabbing actions you wield yourselves is actually well-founded, but the belief of your masters that we are idealist idiots who wouldn’t stoop to defend ourselves properly against what you are doing is most entertaining.
“The amount of effort on our part spent finding out who is funding you, giving you orders, buying your votes, sending your sons off for sex vacations to the Marianas, giving your family members cushy jobs, and so forth and so on takes literally no part of our time at all. We are fully aware of who you all truly work for, and we track it all closely.”
Blake and Phillips looked ghastly pale as they stared at her in disbelief. There were going to be people investigating her words, and they were going to be finding out some very, very uncomfortable truths.
They had wanted Tony Stark to be here. He was a playboy and a wheeler-dealer, someone who spoke their language and made deals on his own... and had his own many faults that could be exaggerated and played against.
Someone who could tell truth from lies, was just as if not more competent than Stark at the game, and had the power and backing that she did had definitely not been their first choice for a Congressional Board consultant.
There was almost no leverage against her, save for her non-Stater status and mysterious background. Her ability to not allow information on her to be saved on electronic or printed media made it nearly impossible to build up a relevant database on her, let alone go looking for records of her elsewhere, and any living witnesses to her past, or those of her sisters, was very hard to find.
Of course, that just made the curious look all the harder, and they still couldn’t find out a thing about her.
The questioning of her continued more cautiously, sparks tossing about her shoulders making the Congressionals flinch whenever they happened, and snickers come from the watching crowd. Her replies were clipped, direct, answered the questions if needed, and warned them away from getting off-topic if they were too personal or probing.
Her green card status was called out more than once, to which she merely replied that they had invited her to speak, Reed Richards had invited her to lead the Baxter Building and Future Foundation, and Tony Stark to oversee Ferrus Enterprises. If the honorable Congressionals thought that a green card meant she wasn’t qualified to do so, they were lying to themselves now.
It also meant she wasn’t beholden to the States and had no overriding patriotism for them to attempt to play on, but that was their problem, not hers.
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I do have a problem, however...
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“Hyde, Cobra,” DiDi greeted them before they could throw off their coats and make ready to attack her. They paused as she picked them out unerringly. “You know that you can’t take me. I know you’ve been paid to raise a ruckus and try to whip up fears to get that dead bill passed. If you do so here on the Capitol steps, I will terminate you on the spot.”
She walked right towards the two, more skating than stepping, legs looking very good in those heels a few inches off the ground, and everyone got out of her way, watching what was going on. She stopped right before the two of them, and the two men looked at one another in consternation.
Lightning crackled over the hand that was not holding a briefcase, quivering, humming with a dangerous vibe to it that set the teeth on edge.
“You give me a name, you get off easy. You don’t give me a name and start a fight, well, there are warrants out on both of you, and I am a duly deputized law enforcement agent of the city of New York empowered to carry out assistance to legal authorities as is appropriate. You two will be going for a month-long stay in the infirmary with severe nerve and brain damage, and almost complete incontinence.
“And I will get that name out of you.” She smiled very whitely at the two of them. “So, what shall it be? Pain and crapping yourself for a month, or a name?”
Both of them swallowed and looked at one another. “This, this contract came from the government, Doctor,” Mister Hyde told her, and her smile only grew wider, making them even more nervous. “Part of the contract. Even if they arrest us, we won’t be charged...”
“It gonna be worth pissing all over yourself in a bed for a month?” she asked them politely, inclining her head towards where a couple Capitol policemen were warning people back and watching them all quietly, having definitely called in an alarm.
King Cobra glanced at his long-time ally. “We gotta at least make this look good, Doc,” he murmured a bit stiffly.
“Cobra, there is no way under Heaven you are going to look good if you try anything,” she told him kindly, and he swallowed, glancing at that deadly, ominous, too-quiet hum about her hand. “When I release this electricity, your pain and humiliation begins. I doubt they’ve paid you enough for the medical bills that are going to result.
“Your contact?” she finished calmly, lifting her electricity-wreathed hand just an inch.
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A moment later, those standing by saw her wave up a Portal to somewhere else, and, their heads hanging, the two costumed men walked through it into a holding cell in New York City, where some waiting blues calmly cuffed them and led them away for processing.
Dr. Dynamo glided off toward the Supreme Court, and while some people hurried after her curiously to see what she was going to do, those in front instead got out of her way.
As for that contact person, he heard about the incident quickly via spotters, and made to take a late lunch from his analyst position in the Central Intelligence Agency. He made it out to his car before the dart hit the side of his neck, and he was deftly dumped into the back seat of his own car by two attractive women, who drove his own vehicle and himself off the lot and out of memory.
There was no follow-up investigation from the Agency, and if another dozen, then score and more American government personnel went missing over the following weeks, it all seemed anticipated and routine.
The abrupt retirement of half-a-dozen members of the National Congress, including Senator Blake and Representative Philips, to the point they eschewed their own pensions, also created some news. Knowing eyes looked at one another, and wondered how far the reach of Dr. Dynamo actually extended.
Someone had poked a dragon, and now that dragon was stirring. Her attention was now on the corridors of political power, or perhaps it had always been there, and they had just not stirred her to action. It was an event a great number of people did not want to see, but the multiple assassination attempts, sabotage runs, and violence that would result from these attempts would also lead to the disappearances of more and more ‘untouchable’ men in positions of wealth, power, and influence in like kind.
They were attempting to warn her and other ‘heroes’ away from seizing the mundane power that was theirs. Unfortunately for them, she took the ‘warnings’ quite personally, and those moving against her with extralegal means found the same honor given back to them.
It made for an entertaining time in the mercenary and espionage circles of the world, and the headlines of billionaires and government functionaries disappearing with much evidence of grossly illegal doings swirling around them were as much fun to play in the media as the scurrilous rumors and accusations leveled at them by the owners of some of those newspapers.
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-They want me to Headmaster the new Academy. They figured I couldn’t turn down the honor,- DiDi /laughed.
-They want you in a more public and vulnerable position, where they can leverage the safety of the students and the surrounding public against you,- I /inferred blandly as I started my run. Lightspeed came up quickly, inertia taking a backseat until I told it otherwise, and my invulnerability spiking to impossible levels as all my atoms lined up and vibrated in the exact same direction. -So, what did you do?-
-I handed it off to Circe. She hasn’t been doing anything but handling the occasional magical side dish when Morgan was busy, and shutting down the last of the Dragon mages. We’ve been wanting to set up a school of magic, so why not do something similar, and Morgan and Nimue can use it as an extension to our own school of magic.-
-Reasonable.-
The time delay between technorganic sensors reading me and active defenses coming online was more than long enough to give me time to reach my target. I was past the point defenses and inside the active shields, popping the passive worldshield on my way in before I slammed into the planet.
The thousand tons of starship I was towing behind me did obey the laws of physics, but I opened up a passage through the atmosphere, so it had no trouble reaching the ground before it hit, and a whole lot of kinetic energy was dumped into the planet, following me as I blew through the mantle, the core, and then out the other side in a literal eyeblink, the world-wrecking seismic waves following after me.
Remy LeBeau was playing the planet-destroying quakes like a harmonic symphony, layering them for maximum effect and tearing apart the planet below as his brothers juiced him. Scott was sweeping the skies and setting off uncounted numbers of satellites, whose often highly-volatile power cores were sucked away by Vulcan and dumped into Remy’s control of the gargantuan amounts of kinetic energy exploding through and around the planet.
Didn’t have to worry about taking down the world-ring factories here. The planet was flying apart, and going to do the job for us, as well as rip apart both moons.
-Now I just have to head to the United Nations and give them the unwelcome news. You’d think Briggs or Sama would send someone, but nooooo...-
-Well, you’re not making war preparations,- I /noted as I swung into the ring of sentry ships before the visual display of the planet going up behind me reached them, and I began my living missile job as Sol’s fires leapt up around me.
On cue, Carol and her Skrull non-twins popped up and began laying about them with cool teamwork and merciless precision, too, and inconsequential death tolls climbed...