Blackbird & Countinghouse, in association with Narcoleptic Dogs Press and
Coherent Comics UnIcorporated, presents

WARDEN:  An ASH Universe Comic

(ASH property of Dave Van Domelen.  Warden property of Matt Rossi and Dave
Van Domelen.  All Rights Reserved.)

copyright 1999 by Tony Pi (pi@eyrie.org)

ISSUE NUMBER 14:  Change of Pace
Part Two of Change Is Good
(Adult content, language and situations - Please be advised.)

     [The cover shows Warden attacking Sister Christian aboard her 
      flying cybercycle as it hurtles at breakneck speed through the 
      air, with speedlines blurring the surrounding greenery.  Sister 
      Christian is fighting back with her cybernetically-enhanced arms.]


[-00:23:01]

     Under different circumstances, having your arm around a beautiful woman
on a Sunday night might be every man's fantasy.  But when she's Cockatrice
and you're hanging on for dear life on the back of her Ihi Badger as she
speeds through Central Park, a man begins to understand the plight of male
black widows and praying mantises.  I am extremely careful where I put my
hand.
     The femme fatale glides us into the circle of death-cycles already
assembled at the edge of the lake in the park.  A sleek white limosine with
darkened windows and closed doors idles in the middle.  Could it be Rex
Umbrae?  I activate my x-ray vision, trying to snap a pic of the King of
Shadows inside.  No luck; the limosine is shielded against such scrying.
     I dismount too quickly, unbalanced by the briefcase I am handcuffed to.
The thing's heavier than it looks.  Bathory, Cockatrice's lover and queen of
the King Cheetahs, slinks over to her side and whispers in her ear.
     On my left is Barnes, arriving with Sister Christian on an Ihi Scavenger
bulging with cyberlinked weapons and other modifications.  The "Chimaera"
hovers just above the ground.  It would take a bazooka to unseat those two
from that floating fortress.
     Glancing to my right, I see Hooks scramble off Manson Haight's Ihimaera
Tick.  Not just one of Manson Haight's clone-buds, like Heckyll, Jeckyll, or
Hyde...*the* original Manson Haight.  How can I tell?  Easy: the raven-haired
maniac has bared his chest and is force-growing a leering head.  Hooks
doubles over and throws up over his shoes.  The simulacrum severs itself from
Haight and continues to grow, unfazed by its nudity.
     "This is all your fault, Coulter," blames Hooks.
     I shrug.  There's nothing to say to that.  The three of us were in the
wrong place at the wrong time, and we're about to pay for it.  If I live,
it'd make quite a story sale.
     They cuff me to Barnes on my left and Hooks to the right, as Cockatrice
sums up our predicament:

     Umbrae's game is simple.
     Three rats are cuffed to three briefcases.
     Three rats cuffed to each other.
     You are a rat.
     One briefcase holds nothing.
     One holds enough nerve gas to annihilate a city block.
     One holds a cache of thirteen diamonds.
     Each will open in precisely twenty minutes from...mark.
     Each emits hypersonics, the better to hunt you with.
     The ice is yours...if you escape alive.
     You have a five minute head start.
     Run.

               *              *              *              *

[-00:19:05]

     "Grazz, didja see all them road-ragers?  One rider from each gang!  And
the limo!  We're *SO* dead!" whines Barnes as we run.  Not surprisingly, the
snitch still had breath to talk: it's an essential survival trait among his
breed, a trait I'd do well to acquire.
     "We're not dead 'til Sister Christian voxes," I snap.  "Our best chance
is east.  Cross Fifth and we live."  Central Park is supposed to be neutral
ground, according to the Truce: any gang can hang out as long as violence
doesn't erupt, or the grounds get vandalized.  Our best bet's to make use of
the Truce itself.  Head into the Upper East Side, which has been left alone
by the gangs, on pain of Umbrae's wrath.  Maybe there, we can find the tools
to free ourselves.
     "We gotta splice," Hooks says.  "Got nothing against you mekks, but I
don't wanna be gassed, square?"
     "Hey, spread the sentiment.  If you know what's going on, Hooks, now's a
good time to talk?" I suggest.
     "News on me," confesses Hooks.  "Umbrae must've just hacked this
tonight.  Welcome party for the 'Takuza?  You think Rex was in that limo?"
     "Whatever it is, it's big.  Cockatrice.  Bathory.  Sister Christian.
And if I'm right about the hypersonic trackers, the guest of honor's Warden."
     "The one time I wish him here, he ain't," grumbles Barnes.
     We run close enough to Fifth Avenue for me to use the telescopic
function on my cyber-eye.
     Roaring up and down the street are road-ragers.  I can see Ghost
Generals on deadly silent Ihi Specters, Satan's Eyes on their cheap and light
Stirges, Wheels of Pain on Ihi Arsenals armed to the gills, and more.
     I stop running.  "Forget the Upper East Side," I say.  "It'd be safer to
swim with piranhas.  Let's Plan B."

               *              *              *              *

[-00:16:33]
     
     We find a secluded hiding spot among the bushes.  Not that it matters;
they'll track us down regardless.  But still, it gives us a sense of
security, false as that may be.  In the distance, I hear the sound of
thunder.
     "If we can figure out which is the nerve gas, maybe we can lose it," I
explain, winking my cybereye.  We lay the briefcases down, and I switch on my
X-ray vision.
     Nothing!  I curse under my breath.  "I think the briefcases must be made
of or lined with collapsinum."  Collapsed aluminum is stronger than diamond,
heavy as stone, and impenetrable as lead.  This wasn't going to be as easy as
I'd hoped.
     "Either of you pick locks?" I ask.
     "If I had lockpicks, yeah," says Hooks, holding out his empty hands.
"How about you, cyboy?  Any lasers in your eye or jigsaw in your pinky?"
     I shake my head.  "Wish I did."  We turn to Barnes.  He holds up his
empty hands as an answer.
     The thunder grows, and I realize it's not thunder at all: it's the roar
of a motorcycle.  To be precise, an Ihi Tick, its rockets boosting a Manson
Haight over our bushes.  He lands with a thud on the other side.
     "Not fair!" shouts Barnes.  "We shoulda gotten five minutes!"
     The paraganger twists his bike to face us.  He licks his lips.  "I guess
I couldn't wait to kill my birthday presents."  He draws a pistol and waves
it between the three of us.  "Whozzit gonna be?  Eeny meeny miney moe..."
     My hand tenses around the handle of my briefcase as the newborn clone
chooses his target.
     "Ah!  Of course.  It'll be fun to watch the morons try dragging a dead
body between them."  His pistol aims directly at me.  "Bye bye, cy-guy!"
     He fires as I bring up my briefcase up to block.  The bullet ricochets
off the collapsinum surface, leaving only a smudge of lead.
     When a second bullet doesn't come, I lower the briefcase.  Barnes and
Hooks are staring open-mouthed at the clone who now has a neat bullethole
between his eyes.  The body finally slumps over the motorcycle, a maniacal
smile still on the face.  The bike falls.
     Barnes trembles.  "Now you're even deader, Coulter!"  He's right: rumor
has it that if you kill a clone, every Haight knows.
     "I can tell my popularity's about to skyrocket," I grumble.  I drag them
towards the body and the toppled motorcycle.  "Help me with the body."
     Hooks grabs Haight's gun, holding it in his trembling hand.  "Maybe we
can shoot through the cuffs?"
     "Certainly worth a try," I say, pushing the body aside.  Strange.  The
bullet is lodged too precisely for a ricochet, and it would have had to
rebound almost one-eighty degrees.  A suspicion creeps into my head.  That
bullet wasn't the one fired at me!  Is there a sniper behind us?  I turn my
head, trying to glimpse through the trees.  I think I see a figure on
horseback riding away!  But the sounds of the hoofbeats are drowned out by
the noise of other motorcycles approaching.  Who is that?
     Hooks hears the mechanical growls, panicks and takes aim at the chain
linking us.  Barnes grabs his hand.  "Are you crazy?" he hisses.  "They'll
know where we are!"
     "It's not like they can't track us anyways!" Hooks snaps back.
     "Stop it, you two.  I have an idea.  It might not work...but at least we
might move faster than being three sitting ducks."  I nudge the Ihi and
smile.
     "Oh, no!" says Hooks.  "No scoggin' way am I donoring on that
organlegging ride!"

               *              *              *              *

[-00:12:23]
     
     "*This* izzactly why I hate this," whines Hooks, an inch from my face.
I am sandwiched between the two, Barnes driving, me faced backwards on the
bike, getting real intimate-like with Hooks on account of the way we're
chained.  "Chanked like a three-headed Pranir.  Next thing I'll be
freezered."
     "'Lax, bud," says Barnes.  "Organlegging crop you ain't."  Small comfort
there, to know that if we died, at least we weren't Universal Donors to get
chopped up and sold to aliens.  That's Barnes's power...to detect UDs.  Not
really useful right now.
      We swing southwest towards the carousel.  Gimble, the fixer lady bug,
lives several blocks south of Central Park in an old, abandoned shopping
complex.  If anyone could gizmo us out of this mousetrap, it'd be her.
      We're snailing it, and in the distance behind us I can see more cycles
catching up.  "Can you *go* a little faster, Barnesy?" I bitch.  "'Cuz
Bathory, Cockatrice and Sister Christian are about to ask us to tango."
     "This contraption ain't built for three.  If I go any faster we'll flip
over!"
     "Then pick which death you want," I spit.  "Eaten, frozen, or baptized.
And trust me, you don't want the last."
     "Here," shouts Hooks, handing me the gun.  "Shoot them!"
     I refuse it.  "Yeah, like pointing a gun at three leaders won't get us
iced, like in a blink."  I grab the handle of the briefcase locked to my
right hand, and lift it behind Hooks, shielding him with it.  "Feel safer?"
     Hooks looks at my face, and screams.  "RED DOT!"
     Sister Christian's painted a target on my forehead.
     Then our motorcycle transmutes into ice beneath us, and we skid off the
path.  Luckily, Barnes *was* going slow, or else those scrapes may have taken
off more than just skin.  The flechette round that Sister Christian fired
misses my skull.  When our icicle bicycle shatters against a protruding rock,
we try to scramble to our feet.  We succeed only in getting more tangled with
one another.
     "Warden!  Help!" screams Barnes.
     Fate must have been listening to Barnes.  There's the sound of a bike
careening out of control.  Bathory shouts.  "Warden!"  Someone or something
growls.  I lift my head to scan the scene.
     Cockatrice is picking herself up after crashing her Ihimaera.  Warden
drops out of a tree onto Sister Christian's flying robo-buttress, slicing her
cyberwires with his bundi.  Her direct link to the Chimaera gone, the Holy
Techno-Nun frantically tries to control the machine she rides, which is now
spinning like a well-thrown football.  Warden deftly rolls onto the soft
grass.  Our Most Blessed Cyborg Virgin vanishes behind a hill.
     Bathory barrels down on him with her Ihi.  Warden leaps aside, tossing a
throwing coin towards her.  Bathory dodges the projectile with a flick of her
head.
     "These high frequency alarms are really getting out of hand," says
Warden.  "If you want my attention, you have it.  What do you want, Bathory?"
     Bathory spins around for a second pass.  Behind her, I can see more
motorcycles coming.  Bathory bares her fangs.  "It's a party, Warden.  One of
those three carries a gift for you.  The rest of us are here to help you
celebrate."
     A wave of thrillriders is crashing towards Warden and Bathory.
     Central Park is about to become Grand Party Central, and I'm going to
profit from it all.  I say a brief prayer to the Machine for this boon.
     "Come on!" shouts Barnes, tugging at my arm.  "We've gotta go, or be
wheel fodder!"
     "And miss the fight of the decade?" I shake my head.  "Don't you see the
elegance of his moves?  The ballet of blood?  The precision of his blows?"  I
snap away with my camera eye.  "A picture's worth a thousand creds."
     I don't expect the blow to my head.  It leaves me dazed, and I can make
out fleeting images of a briefcase and Hooks.
     "We don't have time for candids, cy-boy, sorry!"  he apologizes as he
and Barnes start dragging me towards the carousel.  I'm too disoriented to
care....

               *              *              *              *

[-00:08:12]

     When I can think straight again, I find that we are hiding among the
ruins of the merry-go-round, long since vandalized by paragangers.
"Where...?" I begin to say, but Barnes clamps his hand over my mouth.  I see
that Hooks has the gun in his free hand, shaking like electric jello.  It's
dark all around us, except for the beam of a flashlight hunting us in the
rubble.  As the light moves, whatever it shines on is transmuted to ice.
     Cockatrice is hunting our hides.
     "Where are you, boys?" Cockatrice asks.  "I hear those diamonds calling
out for a girlfriend."  Her voice is barely audible above the motorized
thunders and screams of pain close by.  It must be some battle I'm missing
out there.
     The light meanders closer to us, tracing its frozen river.  
     It flows towards us.
     The light glints off the revolver's barrel, which swiftly turns from
cold grey steel to cold white ice.  Hooks whimpers from the cold and drops
the useless weapon.
     "I don't care for guns.  A stare is deadlier," Cockatrice says.  "Time
to die, boys."
     "Wait!  Peach 'me first, Cockatrice..." says Hooks.  Some survival
instinct must have kicked in.  When Hooks talks, you listen...and you can't
help babbling out careless things.  Talking is his best defense, after all.
This *is* the guy who once talked Supernaut into giving up the passcodes for
the CyberNostra slush fund and lived to tell the tale...but that's a story
for another time.  Now he's using his power to buy us what little time he
can.  "What's really this game?  Why go to all this trouble iffen you're just
after Warden?  Why diamonds and nerve gas and all that?"
     Smirking, Cockatrice cannot help but reply.  "Who am I to question the
quirks of the Otakuza?  If they want to spend their money on strange games
with diamonds, then by all means.  It's not nerve gas, anyways, just sleeping
gas.  They want Warden alive.  The charade is just to make you sweat more."
     So, the Otakuza *are* involved.  "Ask her why the collapsinum," I
whisper.
     Before Cockatrice has a chance to resist, Hooks asks my question.
     "I only know what Bathory has overheard tonight," confesses Cockatrice.
"She heard that one case protects some delicate circuitries.  The Otakuza are
going to take Warden's power away tonight and sell it to the highest bidder
in Tokyo.  Then we'll be free of the blind bastard at last.  Enough talk!
Just scream loud enough for Warden to hear you, hmmmm?"
     I am seriously considering doing just so, when a man on a horse rides
out from behind the carousel to interpose himself between Cockatrice and us.
From what I can see, the man on the white stallion is old, white-haired and
bearded, carrying a heavy staff.  He holds himself with utmost confidence and
disdain for this scene.
     "Who the hell do you think you are?" shouts Cockatrice.  "Freeze,
bastard!"
     Nothing happens.  The rider laughs.
     "Hel I am not, but close.  I have laughed in the face of Ra, played
chess with Baba Yaga, crossed swords with Shiva.  I have besieged Gehenna,
beheaded the demon prince of Erebus, and revelled in the halls of Valhalla,"
boasts the man in his deep voice.  "What fear have I of a mortal Medusa?"  He
goads his horse forward, pointing his staff at Cockatrice.  "You know who I
am, and what I have come for."
       Cockatrice takes a step back.  "You can't be," says Cockatrice in
fear.  "The Barrier...."
     I begin to comprehend.  Her powers are meager in comparison to the power
that this man claims to have.
     "He thinks he's an avatar!" babbles Barnes.  "He's mad!"
     An avatar.  A man-god, whose likes we haven't seen since Ragnarok, since
the Godmarket.
     Hearing Barnes, the rider turns his head to us, and searches us with his
one good eye.  "You doubt my power?"  He raises his staff towards us.  "Tell
the world that Odin has returned.  Tell them of my mercy."
     A bolt of electricity leaps forth from his staff.  My body reels.
Barnes and Hooks thrash about, likewise jolted.  My cybernetics are
overloaded.
     We fall.  

               *              *              *              *

[-??:??:??]
     I hurt all over.  I don't know how much time has passed, nor how long we
have left.  The chronogram's gone from my field of view.  I'm half-blind and
half-deaf.  I look through my one good eye at Barnes and Hooks.  Both alive.
     He wants us alive, to spread the word of his return.
     A figure stands above me.  All-Father?  No.
     Warden.
     "They've scattered," says Warden, bruised and bloody.  He leans down.
     I have to warn Warden, about the trap, and the Otakuza.  I open my mouth
to speak but my tongue's asleep.  "Waadhen," I manage.  "Twap.  Pwoorz...."
Useless. I think *real hard* instead.  He's supposed to be able to read
minds.
     "I know about the nerve gas; Sister Christian thought of it earlier."
says Warden.
     YES!  BUT THEY'RE TRYING TO STEAL YOUR POWERS! I think.  READ MY MIND!
     Warden does not hear that thought.  "I must free you first."  He strikes
at the handcuffs with his bundi, freeing us.
     But it's too late: I hear three deadly clicks.  The briefcases open
automatically.  There is the sound of a hissing as smoke pours out of my case.
     I hold my breath.  If Cockatrice was lying and this *is* nerve gas, it
won't help, though....
     I see five gasmasked figures, immaculately dressed, approaching on foot.
The Otakuza.  They wield spears tipped with tasers, surrounding us.
     Warden tries to drag us all out of the smoke, but he can't manage all
three.  Maybe the device has drained his power already.  He coughs.  He seems
disoriented.  He must hear the 'Takuzas coming, however, and holds up his own
weapons.
     The Japanese paragangers converge on us with their weapons.
     I watch helplessly as Warden lashes out against the aggressors.  Gone
are his lightning reflexes, his ghostlike dance, his agile strikes.  The
Otakuza predict his moves, blocking his attacks while forcing their own
through his defenses.
     Warden screams in pain.
     I can no longer hold my breath.  I gulp in oxygen and gas.
     "But Warden never screams," says Barnes in disbelief, before losing
consciousness.
     The last things I hear, before I lapse into oblivion for the third time
tonight, are the sound of hoofbeats, rapid Japanese, the sound of breaking
bones and the hollow majesty of Odin's voice:
     "Flee while you can, mortals.  This blind one is under my protection."

               *              *              *              *

     I wake up in the Dumont Free Clinic, with Barnes and Hooks in adjacent
beds.  Hooks is awake, but Barnes is asleep. My cybernetics are still
off-line.
     "We're alive?" I say.  "How did we get here?  How long have I been
under?"
     Hooks shrugs.  "They've had problems with you, Coulter.  Costs to reboot
your systems, see?  Incompatibilities and all that jarg.  It's been a week.
No one's seen Warden since that night.  Not a one.  They found two dead
'Takuzas in the Park.  They say the 'Takuza took Warden.  Others gab he's
dead.  Rex Umbrae ain't saying this way or that.  Either way, New York City
is no longer Warden's."
     "Then the King of Shadows has finally won."
     "Natch."  He leans over, speaking in a hushed tone, not wanting anyone
to hear.  "'Less you scribe to the whispers that Odin wants his turf back."
     I reach for the phone.  It's time to call in my story, and get Renny to
foot the bill to get my cybers rewired, get the damn photos and audios out,
if they're not lost.
     I know what Renny'd pay for a story on Warden.
     What would he pay for a god?

============================================================================

NEXT ISSUE:  

     With Warden's mysterious disappearance, what will become of Manhattan?
What effects will the rumours of a god's return have?  And where *is* Warden?
Things keep changing....

============================================================================

Author's Note:  

     Jessa Dumont, Cockatrice, Renny Moss, and the Otakuza are mine.  All
others are Matt Rossi's.  Odin is his own.