Acid Fang

She had finally arrived...

So, this was it. The legendary Resistance...

Truth be told, when Charlotte first heard that the scattered remnants of the old world had finally grown a spine and decided to take a stand against the Metahuman Empire — a hell of an ambitious undertaking, by the way — she had expected something with a bit more... grandeur. Like, say, a thousand soldiers marching in crisp new uniforms, or at least a staging ground packed with heavy military equipment. Hell, even a few rusted-out, pre-war tanks would have been a more inspiring sight than the depressing reality currently sitting in front of her: a dilapidated little concrete complex ringed by sagging barbed wire, dumped right in the dead center of a lifeless, sun-baked steppe.

This was The Labyrinth's forward outpost? Seriously?

"Well, if this is the grand army of humanity, we're feckin' doomed," Charlotte muttered, a dry chuckle escaping her lips as she surveyed the handful of guards patrolling the perimeter. She shook her head, a familiar knot of doubt twisting in her gut. Had she really made the right call coming here? Sticking her neck out for the very people she used to terrorize? "Well, too late to turn back now, Lynch..."

Charlotte drained the last dregs of her gin, tossed the can into the dirt, and vaulted out of the back of the transport truck, her heavy boots crunching against the dry earth in front of the gate.

Staring up at the perimeter wall, it finally clicked. She remembered where she’d seen this exact architecture before. It was an old ECA base! The Evolon Control Agency used to dot these glorified panic rooms all over the map, stockpiling them with basic personnel and ammunition so that the moment a supervillain showed up to wreck the place, they could hit a button and summon the real muscle from Atlas City. She actually remembered taking over a nearly identical structure near Zurich, back in her golden days of villainy. If her memory served her right, it had only taken two Threat Level 2 Evolons to completely wipe the floor with the local garrison and disable the anti-aircraft defenses in under twenty minutes. Of course, the agency had immediately scrambled Lady Liberty to respond, and the glowing cape had subsequently kicked her teeth in — but that was a whole other story. The point was, if the Resistance hadn't seriously gutted and upgraded this place since the pre-war era, the Empire's vanguard was going to chew them up and spit them out before lunch.

Charlotte waved her hand lazily at the sentry tower, marching up and rapping her knuckles hard against the rusting iron of the main gate. It clanged with a hollow, pathetic ring. She dug into her leather jacket, pulled out her crumpled transit pass, and held it up toward the security camera.

"Oi! Open up! It's, uh... Acid Fang... or, Charlotte Lynch. Whichever feckin' name is on your little clipboard. Look, I'm supposedly on the side of the 'good guys' now. They sent me all the way from The Labyrinth. Heard this shiny little fortress of yours was in desperate need of some help. So, congratulations, your backup has arrived!"

Acid Fang leaned against the iron mesh, crossing her arms as she stared up at the guards with a tired smirk.

"Now, be a darling and tell me there's a stocked fridge in there. I'm completely out of gin, down to my last smoke on the ride over, and if the Empire is gonna vaporize us by the weekend, I'm absolutely not dying sober!"

"Bravo-3 is in position," Charlotte whispered, pressing two fingers against the clunky earpiece jammed into her ear. "Wait, no. Fuck. How does this thing even work? Am I Bravo-3 or Delta-3?!" She smacked the heel of her hand against her forehead. "Right. Tango-3. I'm Tango-3. Anyway, I made it to the 157th floor!"

Almost four months had passed since Acid Fang threw her lot in with this ragtag crowd, and before she even realized it, she had slowly become one of them. Of course, her first impression of the Resistance had been downright depressing. The bulk of their fighting force was made up of former civilians who looked like they’d barely ever held a weapon, let alone fired one in anger. And the Evolons who had voluntarily signed up? Well, most of them were former superheroes. Specifically, the exact same caped crusaders she used to beat to a pulp and douse with acid back before the world ended. Needless to say, forced team-building exercises with her old victims hadn't exactly been the smoothest way to start a working relationship. However, Charlotte had gradually settled into the rhythm of the insurgency, quickly accepting the new rules of the game. When she really broke it down, this gig wasn't all that different from her previous life of crime. In both cases, the job description was the same: infiltrate a highly secure location and either blow something to kingdom come or steal whatever wasn't nailed down. The only real difference was the set dressing. Instead of cracking open national banks or corporate vaults, she was now raiding Imperial "radio centers" and heavily armed "field laboratories."

Ah, right...

There was one other minor difference. Instead of simply slapping her in cuffs and tossing her in a metahuman holding cell, her enemies were now actively trying to send her straight to the Lord. A minor trifle, really.

Stepping over the unconscious bodies of two Imperial guards, Charlotte strolled down the opulent, gold-trimmed corridor of the Imperial Radio Communications Demarcation.

"Place looks just like that casino vault in Monaco," she muttered to herself, admiring a pristine marble bust before casually knocking it off its pedestal with her elbow.

She wandered over to a massive floor-to-ceiling window and peered down. Far below, Capital Street was awash in a sea of blinding lights, marching banners, and military pristine. The Metahuman Empire’s grand Foundation Day parade was in full swing, the cheering of the crowds drowned out only by the thud of celebratory fireworks exploding in the distant night sky.

Charlotte poked at the earpiece again.

"Look, I'm just putting it out there, but I'm still not convinced it was a brilliant idea to sneak into the literal heart of the Empire right in the middle of their biggest feckin' holiday. Yeah, yeah, I know. The fake IDs worked like a charm, and sure, we might actually manage to upload this nasty little virus into the Triumvirate's comms channel. But the second they realize what we've done, this whole building locks down, the trap slams shut, and we are screwed."

She flashed a razor-toothed grin at her reflection in the glass.

"It is pure madness... and I feckin' love it!"

Turning away from the window, Acid Fang approached a set of towering oak doors. She let a drop of highly corrosive acid sizzle at the tip of her tongue, readying herself for whatever lay on the other side.

"Alright, lads. I'm ready. Going into the control room!"

Anyone who has survived long enough to watch the conflict between the Metahuman Empire and the Resistance knows one grim truth: for the past couple of years, the war has been heavily tilted against humanity. The Empire might advance at a snail's pace, but it is a horrifyingly relentless, heavily armored snail. Every few months, another Resistance outpost or city-state simply vanishes off the map. Recently, Imperial enforcers have pushed their borders so far out that their kill squads are even being spotted deep within the Northern India region. Under such dire circumstances, news of any victory — no matter how small — is a mandatory cause for celebration. So, when the 15th Division miraculously routed another Imperial assault force and managed to put two high-level Evolon enforcers in the dirt, the field camp erupted into a makeshift festival. For obvious security reasons, the brass rationed the alcohol, but the soldiers were nothing if not resourceful when it came to morale. Some brilliant engineer had dragged a hastily 3D-printed, hollow statue of Kinetic Siren — one of the Empire's most feared supreme commanders — out of the supply warehouse and strung it up. Dubbed the "Kick-netic Siren", it had been stuffed with whatever stale sweets the quartermaster had hoarded, and troops were currently taking turns beating it with a baseball bat.

In short, everyone was having the time of their lives. Cheers erupted every time a piece of candy hit the dirt, while others clustered around burn-barrel fires, trading war stories. A few quiet souls had opted to climb up onto the roof of the main hangar to simply sit and stare up at the night sky.

Charlotte was one of them.

Leaning back against a ventilation unit, she took a slow drag from a flask. It was filled with surprisingly decent gin — smuggled in courtesy of a supply commandant she'd befriended last month.

"It's feckin' mad, if you really think about it," Acid Fang murmured to the empty air, the sharp bite of the alcohol warming her chest. "Just a couple of years ago, I was sitting exactly like this. Different roof, different continent... somewhere outside Buenos Aires, I think. Drinking the exact same cheap gin, looking up at the exact same bloody stars, and actively discussing the best way to bypass the security grid of a jewelry factory."

She let out a chuckle, shaking her head at the sheer absurdity of her life.

"And now? Now I'm apparently freezing my arse off in a warzone, saving the damn world. The irony of it! Though... maybe it really is for the best..."

Charlotte took another sip, the fiery liquid settling the residual adrenaline from the week's fighting. As always, in the quiet, unguarded moments, her thoughts drifted to Sean and Daniel.

"Wonder what those two idiots are up to right now," she whispered. Sean had apparently just graduated from The Labyrinth High School. A sculptor, he'd proudly declared in his last letter. He wanted to make art. And little Daniel had actually gone and joined the field medical corps over a year ago. Patching people up instead of breaking them.

"At their age, I was busy holding up that shite pub down on O'Connell Street. They're doing good. Better than I ever did! Maybe... maybe this actually was the right call. I mean, think about it, Lynch. Instead of them having to visit their deadbeat 'sister-criminal' in some super-max prison, they get to brag about their 'sister-the-savior-of-the-world.' Who'd have feckin' thought?"

She laughed, a genuine, raspy sound that lost itself in the cool breeze.

"Haha... well. We'll see how long our luck holds out..."

[What kind of story do you want to create this time?]