[cover shows Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" but all the gold has been replaced by Dodeca-Yellow's amber-tinted shadows, and a metal snake slithers down the man's arm.] ____________________________________________________________________________ .|, COHERENT COMICS PRESENTS An ASH Universe Story --+------------------------------------------------------------------------- '|` SHADOW GIRLS #10 - Museum Piece copyright 2023 by Dave Van Domelen ____________________________________________________________________________ The Morning Stars Tetra-Red Xueli "Julie" Li - The Leader Hexa-Blue Tamica "Tammy" Sullivan - The Brains Octa-Green Dhriti "Tee" Singh - The Fighter Dodeca-Yellow Jessica "Jess" Davies - The Scout Icosa-Pink Olivia "Liv" Stuart - The Heart Black Opal II Madelyn "Maddie" Chin - The Mentor...under protest ============================================================================ [June 26, 2027 - Museum Mile, Upper East Side, Manhattan Autonomous Sector] The tail end of the Twentieth Century had not been kind to Manhattan's iconic Museum Mile. Frankly, the entire Third Heroic Age had been rough on museums of every sort, since the rise of so many supernormals with unusual abilities made it very hard to defend against those with an inclination towards burglary. Sure, most of the time superheroes or even mundane authorities would recover the stolen works (super stealth powers do not include superior ability to fence goods without getting caught), but not always intact. And, of course, there were always the occasional necromancers or mad scientists who wanted to reanimate dinosaur skeletons, even though most of the displays were resin copies. Resin copies could be animated by particularly strong magic too, especially if the necromancer believed they were real bones. Even purely artistic displays weren't immune to that, with Rodin's "The Thinker" going for a walk on at least three occasions. The Godmarket just made things so much worse, though, particularly for museums of history and science, or any art museum with ancient works on display. Suddenly, seemingly mundane talismen turned out to still be important to Zeus or Frigga or Mars Nodens or whoever, and they would flare to life with divine power. Having someone turned into a godly avatar during a museum tour tended to void insurance policies, and by early 1998 most of the museums on Museum Mile had closed down for one reason or another, their exhibits either stolen or coming to life. Then came the sacking. Oh, it wasn't immediate. Most of the people who would have wanted to pay for stolen art vanished on July 6, having thrown their lot in with one of the gods in exchange for even greater wealth and power. But it didn't take long for the vacuum at the top to get filled, and as usual it was the least scrupulous who were first to start picking over the corpses, both metaphorical and actual. The nascent Combine government did manage to move a number of cultural treasures to safer locations, but even these efforts were riddled with bribery and theft. By 2010 or so, Museum Mile had very little remaining inside the walls of the museums, and even some of the more interesting exterior architecture had been carted off to decorate the property of the new rich. Ironically, it was the paragangs who started to restore Museum Mile. Most of the buildings became nightclubs with varying levels of tasteful or tasteless decor, but when the Jolly Molecules decided to donate some of their "prettier" inventions to restock the Guggenheim, others followed suit, generally with less explosive exhibits. The Boys of Pain adopted the Africa Center and El Museo del Barrio, while it was rumored Bathory started restocking the Metropolitan Museum of Art so she could have some place to pretend to be high class. It was all somewhat fitful and the results underwhelming by any professional curator's standards, but it was a start. A start that Rex Umbrae built upon aggressively, using his contacts to recover many of the lost and stolen exhibits...both via legal maneuvers and lethal maneuvers, it was rumored...and start rebuilding the city's prestige. All that said, the Neue Gallery was still a nightclub rather than a proper museum, even if it did still have what was probably a genuine Klimt hanging over the dance floor. What it also had was a strict No Zombies policy, yet despite that Dr. Jacky was known to party there on a regular basis. And that, rather than a desire for cultural enrichment, was why Jessica Davies was walking out of the subway entrance nearest the Neue Gallery. Well, some sort of lesson was probably going to result from this visit, cultural or no.... * * * * [June 18, 2027 - Plato's Cave] "It's pretty simple," Maddie explained. "I want you to answer the questions on the smartboard while you're powered down. Then, when you're all done, power up and I'll give you a second set of questions that cover the same basic ground, but require different specific answers." "Did you just make these up?" Tammy asked, sitting across from Jess. "No, they're actually part of a battery of questions I got from a contact at MetaPsych. They've had to develop protocols for detecting possession and mind control and so forth." "You think we're *possessed?*" Liv asked, and Jess stifled a snort. "We might be," Julie shrugged. "Like, these are from a goddess, and we've all noticed we're...MORE ourselves, I guess...when we're powered up. But more in specific ways. Maybe Professor Shade didn't warn us about this because with the gems all together a lot of stuff cancelled out. Or because he's a guy and the goddess wasn't as in tune with him?" "Let's just get this over with," Jess sighed. "So you can tell us if we're replicants or whatever." "Did you just make a nerd joke?" Tee arched an eyebrow. Jess glared at her. "I'm having a positive influence on her," Liv retorted. "That...is debatable," Tammy ventured. "This is personal, you don't need to share your results with each other, or even with me," Maddie pointed out. "I'm not a trained diagnostician here, but I think it's worthwhile for you to see how you change, and it's okay to keep it to yourself." Half an hour later, they were all back to "normal," whatever that counted for anymore, and were comparing their responses with each other anyway. "I think it is fairly obvious that I am far more analytical as Hexa-Blue," Tammy pondered, "but I hadn't realized how strong the effect was until I read this," she gestured with her screencomp. Once they'd decided that the files from Professor Shade were safe, there was no longer any reason to keep using the ancient laptop computer, and Maddie had provided them with the modern equivalent to use in Plato's Cave. (Liv kept playing games on hers.) "I'm not seeing a lot of difference," Liv frowned. "I don't think you ever really 'power down,' Liv," Tee pointed out. "I'm a LOT more aggressive. I'm not even comfortable looking at some of my powered up responses, and no I don't want to share the details." "I think we all need to step back, for a week, let's say," Maddie suggested. "Stop patrolling, keep training, but keep doing these journaling exercises and try to get a better grip on how your minds change. I think you're all making good progress on how your bodies work when you're powered up, but your brains change too." Jess rolled her eyes. "I'm not any different, up or down, but I guess I'll give it a week, if you *insist*. I'll want you to work on some costume improvements, though, while we're cooling our heels. Something we can wear when we're not worried about keeping it hidden under our street clothes." "Fair enough," Maddie admitted. "Eventually we have to go back on the offensive with Bathory, and something a little less skin-tight so that I can make it stronger and you don't have to rely as much on your powers for defense would be a good idea. Especially since Inky is still out there." * * * * [June 26, 2027 - Museum Mile] "You don't look 21," the bouncer eyed Jess skeptically, glancing between her face and her ID. Her very good fake ID. "Ugh, I know," she sighed. "I keep having pervs after me cause I look like a kid." The bouncer chuckled. "Well, there's one less of those now, Ms. Tanner. No guarantees there aren't any inside, but if anyone gets too handsy, just yell. We're trying to run a respectable seedy nightclub these days." He handed the ID back and waved her through. The music was loud, the lights were garish, and while the dance floor wasn't all that crowded for a Saturday night, it was also impossible to tell how many of the people were normies, paras, or even Hangmen under cover keeping a lid on things. But everyone was definitely alive, for non-zombie values of that term. The techno-houngan Dr. Jacky lounged near the bar, the stools on either side of him empty in a way that made it clear he wasn't the most popular of people these days. He wasn't exactly shunned by paragang society, since they did let him into Neue Gallery, but no one was lining up to share his personal space either. The skull makeup didn't help, and clashed with what little coherent theme the club had managed to scrape together. Jess sat down on one of the empty stools. "Oho, I don't 'memba seeing you in dis place before," Dr. Jacky leaned closer to be heard over the music. It was hard to tell if his accent was entirely a put-on, or just a mix of Haitian and something else. Jess leaned in, placing a hand on his thigh. "Most people don't see me if I don't want them to." "Sneaky!" the houngan grinned. "An' you be wanting to be seen by little ol' me now?" he leaned in. That close, he could tell that her makeup was doing more than just prettying her up, it was as much a mask as the skull he had painted on his own face. Not that this was that unusual in the club scene. "Why don't we grab a booth so we don't have to shout?" she gestured at a row of what were clearly fast food restaurant booths that had been coated in peeling gold leaf in some doomed attempt to fit in with the painting over the entrance. The two made their way to the least-nasty of the booths and slid into it, the wobbly table between them. "Now what and what d'ya really want, missy?" Dr. Jacky's playful tone had vanished. "Y'may have fooled de bounca, but I don't think y'wan' any of Little Jacky, and y'too young for me." "Okay, fine, it's a fake ID, but I really am older than I look," Jess insisted, placing her hands flat on the table. "I got dragged to this ghost town by my parents, I'm just trying to find a way to get back at them. Getting with the notorious Dr. Jacky would be great for that." Dr. Jacky chuckled. "I can appreciate a good ulterior motive, cheri," he placed his hands over Jess's. "But I and I don' last long bein' that TRUSTIN'." Jess recoiled at the sting of a needle on the back of her hand. A needle attached to a kind of robotic worm or snake that was trying to coil around her arm. "Mebbe I curious bout y'real motives? But once the loa rides, what YOU want don' matta much no mo'." Deep amber shadows suddenly covered Jess as she bolted from the booth and leapt for the door. "Shit! It's the girl who broke Mirage!" one of the patrons shouted as Dodeca-Yellow lurched and fought for control of her own body. The shadows were keeping the technoloa from attaching at any more places, but it already had a firm grip on her hand. "Should we be catching her or thanking her?" shouted another. "Let the Hangmen decide," a third commented. "If Jacky doesn't take her home with...hey, where'd he go?" Dr. Jacky was, in fact, nowhere to be seen, and in short order Dodeca-Yellow managed to stagger past the confused bouncer and vault shakily across the street into Central Park, repeatedly slamming her arm against the safety fence around the reservoir in an attempt to dislodge the technoloa. "Stupid, stupid," she mumbled as her body fought with itself. "Just because they work better on cyborgs doesn't mean they don't work on everyone." She finally shattered the metal snake along with a section of the fence and maybe a bone or two in her arm, before diving into the reservoir itself and getting as far away from the crowd spilling out of the Neue Gallery as she could. ============================================================================ Author's Notes: It is really hard to write a story focusing on a character without getting into their head at all, but I felt that was necessary here. Jessica's whole thing is being closed off from others, and that means the usually omniscient narrator too. Dr. Jacky's real accent is fairly faint, but he plays up the bad horror movie stuff when he's "on stage." This is at least a small part of why the New York Macoute got tired of him. Fear of being turned into zombies was the main reason, though. ============================================================================ For all the back issues, plus additional background information, art, and more, go to http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH ! http://ash.wikidot.com/ is the official ASH Wiki, focusing on the Fourth Heroic Age, but containing some information about other Ages. ============================================================================