Dead men tell no tales.
-Tom
Serra
Diana was in her office in
Keist placed a stack of papers on Dian’s table before giving her a short summary, “A short report from the police, Diana, concerning the attack. They’ve identified the men who,” Rachel paused for a moment, “abducted you. There were a few survivors, but all of them claimed they did not know who was their employer. They said their leader was one Gus Dekman, and only Dekman knew all the accounts.”
“And any ideas where this Dekman is?”
“They found his body at the bottom of the harbor. He was apparently killed with a dagger through his throat.”
Diana frowned. That didn’t sound right. Tom Serra was holding him off, and then the ship exploded after I left. If Dekman was the leader on the bridge, and he wasn’t killed by the explosion… “A dagger through his throat?” Diana asked for confirmation.
“Yeah. And they said they had accounted for all the bodies except for the guy who helped you.”
Diana stood from her chair, sore from a whole morning of looking through reports from the United Nations without any real physical activity. “I’m going down to the prison hospital for a while.” My lasso of truth will be useful in ferreting out any information the captive commandos have concerning their employer. Also, it would give her a chance to stretch her muscles, breathe some of the outside air, enjoy the sun.
She stepped through a window, and flew into the sky.
Nick Foley was a desperate thug. He had never expected matters to turn out this way, and he was very afraid of what was to come.
Gus Dekman had hired him, and he knew who had hired Dekman, even though Dekman himself did not know. But Nick did, because that same employer had hired him as her inside man inside Dekman’s operation to ensure that Dekman would not double cross her. Nick was to be her insurance against any hanky panky by Dekman. It was all Fallon’s fault for recommending him to Fallon’s boss.
Then things had gotten out of hand. First he had been shot to pieces by some whacko beggar off the street at the orphanage. Next, all his pals had the same thing happen to them, and Foley felt more than a bit grateful that he hadn’t been killed unlike most of them. According to the medical staff looking after him and the others, only five others had survived. Foley had been surprised that any of them had survived at all, considering how cold blooded that damn drifter was. Killing was one thing, but threatening to shoot off a man’s very essence! That guy was no joke.
That was all going to count for nothing now. With his limbs all disabled by that son-of-a-gun, escape of any kind was impossible. On the bright side, there was that cute nurse who would visit him for his injections…
But now they were going to haul him before Wonder Woman and her blasted magic rope. And he was going to have to spill the beans, including the knowledge of who had hired Dekman to humiliate the amazon.
Damn Veronica Cale. He had kissed goodbye to the small pot of gold Cale had offered him for keeping tabs on Dekman, but from what he had heard of Cale, she did not tolerate failure.
Damn it all to hell.
Unless Cale could somehow get him out, and he doubted even somebody with her resources could pull it off. He’d be lucky if she didn’t silence him.
The woman in the uniform of a nurse stared at the sight of Wonder Woman in the sky near the prison hospital from her window. That meant only one thing, and that also meant she had to act immediately.
She took out a small remote, and pressed a button. Then she left the room, walked off into another corridor, pressing another button on the remote.
Clayface morphed from his female guise into the form of a guard as he walked out into the corridor. Yes, he had wanted this rematch for a long time now…
Nick Foley gasped, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. He felt a sharp, stinging pain in his lungs, then everything went black.
Diana landed easily on the roof of the hospital, and tried to quell the sudden unease she felt. The prison hospital commandant was waiting for her, and he led her without much preamble down to the wards themselves.
The first thing that told Diana that something was wrong was when she noticed that there were very few guards about. The next was the sheer silence from the hospital. Her enhanced hearing could not pick up anything.
What is going on? Diana thought before she sensed a sudden movement from behind her. She dodged a swipe from the commandant, then flew down the passageway to put some distance between herself and the man.
“What are you doing?” She demanded.
“A rematch!” The commandant replied, charging down the hall at her. Then he shot out one arm at her, which seemed to be made of… clay.
Clayface! Diana
was alarmed. Originally one of Batman’s many enemies in
Donna wasn’t here now. Donna was dead.
Wonder Woman gasped as she was hit by Clayface’s arm. Almost immediately, she could feel herself weakening. She pushed herself away, and took out her lasso of truth.
But Clayface did not give her a chance to use it. He surged towards her as an amorphous blob, filling the corridor with his huge mass.
Diana yelled an Amazon war cry as she took up a defensive stance, ready for battle.
“What the heck are we doing here?” Tom asked the man standing behind him on the building roof. “If you want a sniper, you can just grab any thug for hire off the street.”
It had been a confusing two days after Ares had dragged him into his cabal of crazed thugs and ambitious megalomaniacs. Then before Tom could figure out what was going on, Ares had sent him and the so-called Duke of Deception, a media mogul named Stanley Burnside, on a mission. His very first.
“Lord Ares wants you to do this.” replied Stan. “Said it was to be a test of your loyalty.” Stan was equipped with a holographic projector that would mask their presence from any prying eyes. It certainly made their job easier.
“Loyalty test? With a sniper rifle?” Tom scoffed as he sighted in the Accuracy International L961A rifle, otherwise known in most circles as the infamous AWP. “There isn’t a target I won’t kill.”
Stan said coldly, “Don’t be too sure.”
Tom grimaced as he pointed the gun towards the far away prison hospital, more than 900 meters away from the building rooftop. He had no idea what it was that Ares wanted him to do, but if it was the first step towards paying off the debt he owed Ares, then so be it.
Wind was a bit of a problem, but wasn’t so bad that he needed a windage compensator to adjust. He could adjust on his own. It wasn’t as if they were asking for bull’s eyes level accuracy.
Come on, what are we waiting for? He asked himself. He fought back the mental urge for a shot of weed. He had been going into symptomatic withdrawal intermittently for the past few days, and odds are it would only get worse. Hopefully not now.
Diana screamed as she felt another part of her torn away, making her feel even weaker. She staggered away, clutching the remnants of her costume as Clayface laughed hideously.
A blow against her back slammed her front against a wall, and Diana felt pain on her full breasts as Clayface pushed her hard against the wall. She felt cool breeze on her buttocks as her star spangled panties were torn away. “Nooo!”
“Yes!” Clayface exulted, “Not only do I get more powers than I ever did, but I’m also going to fuck the great Wonder Woman!”
“In your dreams!” Diana summoned up her remaining strength and pulled out a nearby pipe, which sent a burst of water straight at an unprepared Clayface, blasting him into another room.
Diana tried to use her powers of flight to escape, but realized that she couldn’t. Clayface has absorbed too much of me. I must get away.
No sooner had she completed the thought when Clayface smashed into her with incredible speed. She barreled through a concrete wall into the outside.
The Amazon Princess was badly hurt by that last blow. She could feel pain throughout her body as she tried to stand up, to continue the battle. But all she could do was flail her limbs weakly on the ground.
Clayface grabbed her by her hair, then punched her once in the face. “That’s for that time when you kicked my butt with that sister bitch of yours.”
Wonder Woman, bleeding from her nose from the hit and battered almost senseless, could barely hear what her opponent was saying, but she knew that she was in dire peril.
The villain hammered several more blows into her, and it was all the superheroine could do just to stay conscious. Then he slammed her into the ground with enough force to crack the hard concrete, then proceeded to tear off what remained of her costume around her shapely hips. Her strong, muscular thighs were coated with Clayface’s morphing form, and she could feel him feeling out her most sacred of places with thin, long appendages.
“Get… away…” Diana managed to croak out, “Stop…”
“I will have you, in more ways than one!” Clayface laughed as he formed a massive appendage as his penis. It was huge, more than five inches thick, and Diana realized with a chill with he could adjust its length and width to whatever he wanted.
Combine that with his newly gained superstrength, and he could literally tear her apart. Diana fought down the urge to scream. For some reason, the telepathic network of the JLA wasn’t working. Some form of null field, she guessed.
“Haha! Take this, Wonder Whore!” Clayface exulted as he reared back, ready to plunge his tool into her dry vagina.
“Never!” Diana forced her last bits of strength to grab his solid penis and throw him away. Then she smashed through a wall, staggering to the outside to get help. The bright rays of sunlight warmed her chilled body. Diana knew she could not win this battle, not in this condition.
“Dammit, you bitch!” Clayface roared as he chased after her. Diana was momentarily grateful that the villain had not managed to access her superspeed yet, but what he had was already more than enough to destroy her.
One long tendril from Clayface wrapped around her leg as she ran, tripping her painfully onto the ground. Diana turned over on the ground in time to see him blocking out the sun, a flood of clay engulfing her view.
Then she saw no more as he possessed her completely, feeling herself growing weaker and weaker as he sucked her clay body away. Clayface had abandoned the idea of humiliating her, opting to just take her powers. But he took advantage of what he could. She could feel him pressing against her tight vagina, trying to push past her meager resistance.
Diana wept with shame. Unable to speak, she could only pray to her patron goddesses in her mind. Help! Hera, help me!
“What the fuck!” Tom exclaimed as he saw the scene through his scopes. The woman stumbling out of the hospital looked familiar. Or at least, her uniform was familiar, but she looked a great deal… smaller than the woman he had rescued from the ship a few days ago.
“Here, use this.” Stan tapped a magazine on Tom’s arm.
“Got it.” The magazine snapped into the rifle easily, but the brief feel of its weight told Tom something. “It’s non-standard ammo.”
Stan scoffed, “You expect to deal with that beast with normal rounds?”
Tom tried to stay dispassionate as he saw the hulking monster which looked like he was made of melted clay swarm over the woman, but he felt a strange anger growing in him. “So what am I supposed to do?” Meanwhile, Clayface had totally swallowed up the woman.
“You’re supposed to shoot at them. Simple, no?”
“The effects?”
The Duke of Deception shrugged, “I don’t know. Ares didn’t bother to tell me. He just wants you to shoot when Clayface and Wonder Woman are locked up together.”
“Wonder Woman?” asked Tom. “That’s her in there?”
“You mean you don’t know that is Wonder Woman, that she’s made of magic clay?” Stan shook his head. “Damn, but you’re more messed up than I thought. Anyway, if you ask me for my opinion, I think Ares wants you to kill both of them. Everybody knows Wonder Woman and our boss are mutual enemies. I guess he wants to know if you would really kill the woman you saved the other night.”
Shit. Do I shoot or not? Tom wrestled within himself. What if the rounds are meant to kill both of them, or just the woman? He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to make a decision.
On one hand, there was the woman. It might have been only a short while on the ship, but even then he could feel her goodness, that she was a true heroine dedicated to helping others. Could he kill her?
Then, on the other hand, there was his vengeance. All of a sudden, all the pain, the regrets, came flooding back up, and Tom gritted his teeth at the agony of his memories. There was no contest. For the sake of his revenge, she would have to die if Ares wanted it that way.
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Tom apologized to Wonder Woman as he aimed at the blob of clay.
He squeezed the trigger to the point where it was almost at the firing point, then he breathed in, and let out some of the air in his lungs. He sighted in again, adjusting for wind and gravity. Then he pressed the final few millimeters on the trigger.
The AWP roared.
One moment Clayface was pushing hard against her maidenhood, despite her futile efforts to keep him out, while he drew on her strength and powers, the next she found herself suddenly collapsing on the ground, suddenly feeling a lot stronger.
All around her on the ground was a mess of clay.
What happened? Wonder Woman thought. She could feel that her virginity was still intact, for which she was eternally grateful. But where was Clayface? She looked around. There were only pieces of scattered clay around. Did somebody just kill Clayface? And where are all the hospital staff?
She spun herself a new costume to cover her nudity, and then dashed into the hospital, already half suspecting the truth. Moments later, her worst fears were confirmed. Clayface had killed everybody present.
“I want the truth,” Tom Serra demanded as he walked into Ares’ office in the Areopagus, the realm that the god of war possessed as his personal domain.
“Truth is a relative thing.” The god replied, sitting in his plush chair behind a small desk, which held a computer. “But you knew that already.”
“You wanted a test of my loyalty, and I passed it. I figured you owe me some answers.” Serra had finally bothered to check up on the news archives, and he had come away slightly dazed. The woman he had saved that day and again at the hospital was a world renowned superheroine? More than that, she was Ares’ foe, so why did he want to help her by killing the villainous Clayface?
“Yes, you have proved your loyalty to me. So in turn I will tell you this. Princess Diana of Themyscira will not be defeated by others. I wish that privilege for myself, one day where I shall break her utterly. In addition, she has many allies throughout the world, all of which would be able to defeat her assailant, and then be able to drag out the identity of Clayface’s employer. I, for one, do not wish for that to occur yet.” There was a slight emphasis on the word ‘yet’.
“And with all those dead commandos in the hospital, nobody will ever know who was behind the affair.” Tom remarked. “And it would be simple enough for anybody to put to and two together and conclude that whoever got Clayface had also hired the commandos to humiliate Wonder Woman. Clayface was to act as insurance, silencing any errant mouths.”
Then Tom leaned forward, his hands on the desk, “Did you hire Clayface?”
Ares shook his head, “No. I have other means to defeat the Amazon. Indeed, I have realized better means of conflict. And you, Serra, will play an important role in my plan.”
The god stood up, towering even over Serra. “Come, the others are waiting. It is time to reveal the plan to you.” Ares strode out of the office, into a conference room with a rectangular table, with built in consoles for every seat. Tom followed warily.
The others, Ares’ handpicked minions, were already seated. Stanley Burnside, aka Duke of Deception, a media mogul, owner of the powerful cable new network BNN. Morgan Carter, Lord Conquest, a powerfully built black man and a highly decorated general in the United States Army. Joshua Peres, Earl of Greed, a Jew and a financer, owning one of Wall Street’s largest trading firms. Finally, Reinhardt Schroeder, Baron Blitzkrieg, heir to the original Baron of World War Two, fanatic Nazi and wanted criminal. He glowered at Conquest and Greed, while they stared back with just as much bile.
Tom narrowed his eyes as he sat down. Ares is careful. He has placed influential men in his councils, but at the same time he made sure he could play them off against one another. What the hell have I gotten myself into? The yearning for marijuana took the opportunity to surge in him again, and Tom fought it back down. He had the whole night to let go. He just had to hang on.
Ares started speaking, “This is a war of
ideals. The Amazons and their patrons seek a world of peace. I, however, seek a
world of war, so as the better to place myself on the throne of
“One is to encourage war and conflict between nations. The other is to raise a cult dedicated to me.” Ares then nodded towards Blitzkrieg, who spoke next.
“As we have seen several months ago when
Chronus returned to
“As a result, I have been setting up groups of worshippers in countries around the world, but progress has been very slow.” Blue dots appeared, sparsely located all over the world.
Greed cut in next, drawing a glare from Blitzkrieg which he ignored. “A few months ago we conceived a plan which could both encourage conflict, as well as draw more worshippers. It’s quite simple, actually.” He grinned, “We set up a company, named Ares Macrotech.”
The image changed to show a company logo. Greed continued, “This is a war of ideals, and the current capitalist environment of the world means that any memes and propaganda would be best spread by products and services. Look at MacDonalds, Starbucks. All brandnames recognized the world over. With this company, we can seek to do the same, and then it’ll be easier to get more members for the cult.”
Then it was Stan’s turn, “We placed a distant cousin of mine, Phillip Delacroix, as owner of the company,” the image of a man appeared, “But two weeks ago he had the gall to get himself killed in a skiing accident. So we’re stuck without a paddle up shit creek, because the company is about to finalize a deal with the US military, and it’s a very important deal which would serve as an important stepping stone towards expanding the company. We need somebody to masquerade as my cousin, and also run the company, because the rest of us don’t have the time. We have our own tasks.”
Tom noted the features of the man. Blond hair, blue eyes. “I see what you mean now. You want me to take over his identity and his job.”
“That is correct,” answered Ares. “You will run Ares Macrotech for me, and guide it towards being one of the most powerful corporations in the world.”
“Then why me?” asked Serra. “Any blond haired, blue eyed guy off the street could serve just as easily. Or you could just allow somebody else to take over.”
“Because your skills will be very useful, and simply put, I cannot trust any man I pick off the street to do anything I want. You have proved that you hold no attachments to anybody today. That will be extremely useful.”
Tom shook his head, “I know nothing about running a company.”
“Then we’ll just have to give you a crash course.” The Earl of Greed replied, smiling broadly. “You’ll have three weeks to learn everything, to become Phillip Delacroix.”
Tom shivered, then realized it had nothing to do with Greed’s words, but rather the urge to get some weed. He convulsed, falling off his chair and onto the floor, shivering uncontrollably from addiction withdrawal.
“So there are no leads left?” Wonder Woman asked the police detective.
“None. Zilch. Nada.” The old cop grunted. “Clayface killed the commandos, but the perp who killed Clayface got away absolutely cleanly. We have nothing, not even a DNA sample, just the chemical they used to kill Clayface.”
“Thank you.” Diana said as the detective
walked away glumly. The entire prison hospital staff had been killed by Clayface, and though the supervillain’s
death made up for it somewhat, there would still be chaos in the
And almost inadvertently, she would be blamed for the debacle. Diana sighed as she realized the extent of her failure. It wasn’t her fault, but she felt responsible for it nonetheless, and so would the media. Burning News Network, owned by Stanley Burnside, would be unloading their worst invective on her.
There was not much she could do about it, but she resolved to do better the next time round. The past few days had been a debacle, and while there was the temptation to lie and do some media damage control, her innate honesty and integrity won out.
Wonder Woman thought as she flew back to the embassy, I don’t feel so wonderful nowadays. She decided that she needed some time to herself, to meditate on the events of the past few days. I’m going back to Themyscira. I need to know why this is all happening to me…
“Damn that blasted Amazon!” Veronica Cale screamed as she threw the remote at the TV set. It bounced off with a clank. “What does it take to bring her down?”
Fallon, her bodyguard, walked over and picked up the remote, “At least Clayface is dead.”
“I would rather he destroyed that bitch.” Cale hissed. “And ended her lies to the world once and for all.”
“Well, that may be true, but I did say that hiring Clayface directly was a risk, and if he had been caught by the Justice League…”
“My lawyers will do their jobs.” Veronica Cale scoffed. “After all, Lex Luthor did the same for years, and he never got busted.”
Fallon shook his head, while placing the remote control back on her desk, “Pride before a fall, Miss Cale. We were lucky Clayface isn’t around to talk.”
Cale frowned, then nodded, “Yes. I found it strange as well.”
“In other words, there’s somebody else.”
The blonde woman played with a pen as she stared at Fallon. “Then find out who that is. I could always use more information.”
She sat back into her chair, thinking of more plans and schemes to destroy the Amazon Princess. You are too dangerous to humanity, Wonder Woman. I will make sure that you and your false ideals are exposed for the frauds they are.