Karma Police

[x-roulette.livejournal.com]

Wanda and Jennie wake up and discover a familiar face in the same predicament, and their captors reveal themselves.




The first thing Jennie became aware of was that her leg had gone numb. She stretched it out in front of her to wake it up, and then two thoughts occurred to her.

One, she was sitting down on something cold and wet, and two, she couldn't move her arms, and as her memory informed her of her last waking thoughts, meant that, three:

Son of a bitch, not again...

She cracked a cautious eyelid. She was tied to someone else at her back, and they were in a very large, empty space. There were other women around them, tied up in pairs and surrounded by space heaters. And just beyond those, she could see people wandering the perimeter, looking infuriatingly smug and ordinary.

There was a heavy feeling to her head and Wanda tried to spit out the cotton feeling in her mouth. It took her a few tries to realize that was her tongue and she grimaced at the feeling. She made the mistake of opening her eyes but quickly shut them again -- the light was bright and painful.

Drugged. They'd been drugged...Jennie. That got her to open her eyes and she quickly took everything in. Moving her head, though, meant she smacked the back of it pretty hard and the noise reminded her very much of two heads thunking together. "Ow," she muttered, trying not to draw too much attention to herself.

"Well, it's about goddamned time the two of you woke up." The voice came from one of the women in one of the other pairs; unlike the others Wanda and Jennie were sharing the space with, this one was familiar. "I mean, you've been napping for hours," Domino continued in a drawl. "Meanwhile I've been asking our captors if any of them are related to Nathan - since really, Nathan's relatives or people he's pissed off are the only ones who ever kidnap me. No joy, yet."

Wanda stared. "Dom? What the hell is going on?" She turned her head and her shoulders relaxed when she saw Jennie on the other side of her. "You look like hell. I cannot imagine what I look like." She wiggled slightly but it only jostled the woman she was tied up to and she stopped, relaxing her wrists in an attempt to get some room to maneuver. It didn't really work very well.

Another look around told her she didn't recognize any of the other women in the room and she frowned, taking a deep breath to push past the nausea before dropping into the sight. The frown deepened. "Jennie," she said softly, "try to access your powers. I can see but nothing is moving and...well. Those folks over there? Don't seem to be connected. At all."

That really shouldn't have been possible. Even the newest item in the world had its flaws and manipulation points thanks to the probability field. But these guys simply didn't.

Jennie blinked several times in order to get her eyes to focus. Her head still felt like it was stuffed full of cotton, and there was a sharp, bitter taste in her mouth. Along with a steadily building panic attack.

Again again again, it's happening again, no no no.

She put her head on her knees and tried to focus. She was tied up but nothing was wrong, she was still Jennie, and she could still see the lines. And the people beyond the circle didn't have any.

"No, they have nothing, t-they not surrounded by anything."

"Quite right, Miss Stavros."

The speaker stopped pacing and knelt where Jennie could see him. A slender man of Asian descent, his khakis and unremarkable coat would never have gained a second glance on the New York streets, but the ease with which he moved was almost like a dancer, or a performer -

A mime.

"Yes, quite right," he said upon noticing recognition cross Jennie's face. "A derivation of certain flowers that grow on a mountaintop in -ah, but that would be telling. My name is Minh Thien Tran, and I have been elected to speak for my comrades. What all of you have by now noticed is that the unnatural abilities you all possess are quite useless in our presence."

He motioned to the other occupants of the building, which in the dawn light through broken windows appeared to be a train station, long since abandoned. "To answer Miss Domino, no, we are not relatives or associates of Mister Dayspring. Although we initially suspected him of being one of the anomalies we seek, our research led us to you. A simple police dragnet led us to Miss Kovacs," Tran indicated one of the other women tied up behind Wanda and Jennie. "Sixteen warrants for casino fraud in Atlantic City. Miss Vasquez here has been through three foster homes and half a dozen psychiatrists who have attributed her claims of 'bad luck' to a chemical imbalance. Miss Maximoff, your exploits have not gone unnoted, especially in association with Doctor Agatha Harkness. While she researches chaos theory, you manipulate it. You all," he waved a hand at the captives, "possess the ability to alter probability, chaos, the very structure of reality on a whim."

Tran stood, looking down with some sadness at Jennie before shaking his head. "We cannot permit this to continue."

"Permit?" Wanda cocked her head at him, pleased that the effects of the gas were starting to quickly fade the more awake she became. Not back to normal yet but it was better than what it was before. "Who are you to permit us to do anything? Besides crazy kidnapping mimes."

But what he said sank in and she looked around at the various people here, a little stunned. Until she'd met Domino and then Jennie, she'd never encountered another like her and it was a little...bizarre.

"Oh, joy. Kidnappers with a Grand Plan. You know, I actually prefer the thugs who pull this kind of crap for a paycheque. They're more predictable." Domino tilted her head, eyeing Tran like she was planning just how to remove his spleen. "I have to notice the gender imbalance going on here. Lots of women tied up, bucko. That says something about a man."

There was something to be said for bravado, and snarling at one's captors. But Jennie was beyond that now, her head was pounding and her breathing too fast. She wasn't even going to bother with a show.

"Just tell us what you want," the girl said, fighting to keep her voice level.

Tran sighed and shook his head at Domino. "We know the type of people you associate with, Miss Domino. I assure you, our goals are neither dogmatic nor based on greed. As for who we are and what we want, we are the Exemplars. Our order has been pledged to secure the safety of humanity for ten generations. Where our fathers failed..." Tran looked regretful for a moment, then resumed his composure. "Where they failed, we shall succeed. They protected against threats from without, we have turned our attention within."

Pacing across the floor of the train station, Tran indicated one of his comrades who sat in a lotus position, methodically flipping quarters onto a board in front of him, then picking them up and repeating the process. Beside him sat a digital readout, numbers flashing on its surface seemingly at random. "Professor Emiliano is one of the world's leaders in chaos theory, a peer of your Doctor Harkness, Miss Maximoff. I myself pursue a similar eschatological focus, but from a more philosophical perspective. Father Ruprecht, on the other hand," he nodded toward a bearded man who leaned against a pillar, glaring at the women. "is a Jesuit priest who has advised the Vatican on matters of predestination and the ineffable divine. All different roads to the same source - order and chaos, if you will."

"These abilities you possess," Tran continued, "manipulate the natural progression of events. You take matters of randomness - the very building blocks of existence - and toy with them like a child with matchsticks. We exist to counter that danger you possess. We are, for lack of a proper term, humanity's antibodies to the infection of chaos that you spread every time you tamper with the course of events. As you have no doubt found, when we are gathered together, reality seems to assert itself rather strongly. Stronger than any of you have an ability to affect. In our presence you are, in a word, absolutely normal. We intend to make this effect permanent. You should all live through the procedure, and resume regular, normal lives. This is the way of things."

There was a sharp murmur from the group of women at the last statement and Wanda felt her anger spike. They'd been kidnapped and trussed up like turkeys and now they wanted to strip them of their powers? She glanced at Dom out of the corner of her eye and then back to Tran. "No," she said simply. "Whatever right you think you lot have when it comes to protecting order and chaos, you have no right to take away our powers. I met some guardians once, a while ago, and trust me, I think they would be rather disturbed at what you're doing."

It wasn't grandstanding but she was trying to buy them some time. They'd gotten out of worse situations before but they needed to step it up quickly. The threat of their powers being stripped plus having to protect the other women certainly turned things up a few notches.

"Delusions of grandeur," Domino said, sounding bored. "Or of godhood." There was the hint of a snarl in the second comment as her violet eyes flickered to the priest. "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, you jackass." She had drawn her knees up as she spoke, and in a movement that would have been much smoother before she'd had a building in Israel dropped on her, pushed. It threw her and the woman she was tied to sideways, crashing into one of the space heaters.

"Miss Domino," Tran chided, making no move to pull her up, "while Shakespeare's quotations may be pithy and apropos for a university literature course, rest assured that we are aware of everything under heaven and earth."

The woman tied to Domino grunted in surprise, then hushed herself as she seemed to realize what the mercenary was doing. Her feigned struggles covered Domino's actions, and Tran paid them no further heed as he looked over to his companions.

"Mister Covington, what is your evaluation, please?" he called out. From the far side of the perimeter, a man in a leather jacket with pale blond hair looked up from a laptop.

"Quantum probability remains at one hundred percent stability, Mister Tran," Covington called back. "Professor?"

The bespectacled Professor Emiliano did not look up from where he was continually flipping his coins. "Randomness continues unaffected," he intoned in a thick Spanish accent, "The anomalies are not influencing the strings of probability. We should proceed."

Proceed. Jennie experienced a brief flash of memory; fluorescent lights glinting off glasses, Sleep through he whole thing. And the cold swell of fear inside of Jennie snapped. It spread out through her stomach as heavy, burning fury. She looked around the room, and what the lines told her made her set her jaw.

While people were distracted by Domino's sudden crash, Jennie looked back over at Tran, and when she spoke her voice was eerily calm. The lines were tipped so precariously, and Jennie realized they might need just the slightest more push.

"You small-dicked, sissy, fuckwadded tools of the patriarchal agenda. You get scared any time a woman gets any sort of power. When I get out of these restraints, I will slap that philosophy right out of you. No one, no one gets to decide who I am or what I can do but me. Not you, not some 'brotherhood', nobody. You got that, boy?" From the look in her eyes, it was clear it wasn't the ravings of a scared teenage girl. It was a promise.

Tran stopped, looking slowly at Jennie. "I do believe, young lady, that is the first time I have ever been insulted in such a fashion. Believe me when I say that we will not hurt you, this is for the greater good, you must understand that. Or would you risk another incident such as the fracas that you and Miss Maximoff caused a short while ago? Or perhaps the events that occurred last year in Monaco? Our knowledge is great, Miss Stavros, and our cause is just. But we shall waste no more time. Let us begin."

His voice was steady, but something in his eyes wavered when he looked at Jennie? Fear? Respect? Whatever it was, it was a chink in the armor.

"Mister Tran?" Professor Emiliano's voice, however, was unsteady. "We have a problem."

"Explain," Tran barked back. The bespectacled professor just stared at his board.

"Forty of forty, heads. Highly improbable, Mister Tran."

Wanda craned her neck around to peer at the board of coins. Professor Emiliano was now flipping them again and she watched as the coins sailed through the air, silver glistening in the light...only to see them all, one by one, land on their sides. Not an impossible action but one hell of an improbable one.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw slight movement from Dom and quickly went to draw the attention away from her. "It's not going quite according to plan, is it?" she asked, voice dry. "We're unwilling, for one, which is probably a bit of a shock. And things just seem to be happening a bit too oddly for your tastes. You claim we are messing with things beyond our control?" She eyed the strings, the frozen strings and then stared hard at Tran. "I think you might have just woken the dragon."




You can only push the laws of probability so far before they push back. Laws of nature, once bent, sometimes become broken.



There had been a piece of broken glass by the space heater; that was what Domino had spotted, quite some time ago as a matter of fact. She'd only been waiting for Wanda and Jennie to wake up before she made her move. The glass cut through the ropes - and into her skin, which it wouldn't have done if her powers had been accessible right now, but it didn't matter. It wasn't as if she wouldn't have taken a bullet or two just to be able to get free and kick a few of these bastards in the head enthusiastically.

She freed the woman behind her at the same time. "Get the others free," she murmured under her breath, pressing the glass into her hand and then rolling back to her feet while Tran and Emiliano were still preoccupied by the coins. She had about... three seconds. Constant shifting around had kept her legs from going to sleep, but she was stiff from being tied up.

Fortunately, Wanda and Jennie were, after all, right there.

The woman tied to Domino thankfully had the presence of mind to quickly crawl over to Wanda and the other captive. She was a bit luckier than Dom as the glass cut into ropes and little else. When she realized they were running out of time, she pulled her hands apart as hard as she could, the remaining bits of rope chaffing against her skin as it tore.

She was on her feet as well, legs protesting, so that the two women could now get to Jennie. She hurt but she was angry and there was such tension in the air...they were getting out of there one way or another.

Within seconds Jennie had the glass and was sawing at the ropes that bound her and the girl behind her. She hissed as she nicked herself with glass, but kept going. Those smug sons of bitches thought they could tie them up and cow them into submission. They were about to learn just how every wrong they were. Jennie and the other girl were on their feet quickly, and the shard was passed among the remaining women. Their first goal was escape, but Jennie wanted to ensure there would be payback along the way.

Tran glanced from Professor Emiliano over to Covington. "Status!" he shouted, keeping a safe distance from the captives. Covington waved a hand in confusion.

"The quantum probabilities are... this is not making sense!" he shouted, "We are seeing waveform collapse before observation, I have never seen a Schrodinger Event of this magnitude!"

Next to the Professor, the digital readout began to speed up its display, like a slot machine gone haywire. The coins still stood balanced on edge as the numbers came up on the display: 7-7-7-7-7...

Finally, the man that Tran had called "Ruprecht" strode forward, pushing the slightly-built Vietnamese philosopher aside and withdrawing a complicated-looking pistol from under his coat. "We cannot afford to waste time, Tran," he growled. "May God have mercy on us for this necessary evil in the name of the greater good."

In one quick motion, Ruprecht leveled the pistol at Wanda and pulled the trigger.

At that moment, strange things happened - or more accurately, very normal things did not happen. In the vast majority of probabilities, the pistol's hammer would have fallen on a firing pin, impacting the primer of a chambered round, setting off a charge of powder and propelling a nine-millimeter bullet out of the barrel.

In only the most astronomically improbable situation would the gun have ejected its magazine, had its slide detach, and basically fall to pieces simultaneously.

Yet somehow in this moment, the world seemed to flash red, and the wildly improbable became very, very possible.

With the world tinged red around her and as the gun crumpled into metal pieces in the man's hand, Wanda didn't hesitate. He'd tried to shoot her -- certainly a step above the "solution" they had previously and she was taking exception. They had to move quickly to get the ones without training out of there, though.

"God has no mercy for the likes of you," she snarled, snapping an arm towards his throat in a feint but really going after his knees. Get him down and he wouldn't be able to come after them. Even with that being her intention, she hadn't expected her feint to have him taking a step back -- normally he would have been fine but there was a cracking noise above him right as he moved. He looked up in alarm as Wanda jumped out of the way as a light fixture came crashing down on Ruprecht in a rain of glass and metal.

She spared a glance at Tran before she started to edge around the other man and the broken pieces of glass. "Looks like you did wake the dragon," she said, "and it's hungry."

Other men followed Ruprecht's example, drawing guns and training them on the women in front of them. Jennie and the girl she had been tied to advanced closed towards the edge of the circle as the machines continued to go haywire. Finally, one's itchy trigger finger got the better of him and he opened fire.

Jennie made a move to fling up her arms for protection, but paused. She could see bullets, and sense their trajectory. And quite improbably, she could dodge them. Jennie laughed, and walked towards the man, somehow managing to dodge each shot he fired at her. He swallowed, and raised the gun to her chest. But when the hammer came down, there was an audible click. The girl looked down at the gun in his shaking hand, and then looked him in the eye, raising an eyebrow. Gingerly she plucked it from his grasp, and in her fingers it crumbled into ash.

She tsked at him, and then punched him in the face, breaking his nose and leaving him on the ground gasping.

Odd, Domino reflected, and went for the professor. He had problems keeping his pants up, all of a sudden, which made it all very easy. One of the other sailed in, clearly with the idea of protecting him, and Domino dodged and drew him to the left - and found herself unable to repress a peal of laughter as he tripped over one of the space heaters. Responding to an inward 'push' of the sort she didn't bother trying to interpret, Domino sprang forward, knocking him down -and vaulting over his prone body just in time. There was an ominous cracking sound, and the Exemplar dropped through a hole in the floor and into the basement.

"Quantum instability is off the chart!" Covington shouted, closing his laptop and running for an exit. Behind him, Tran swore as he advanced menacingly on a group of captives that had yet to free themselves from their ropes.

"It's for the greater good," he hissed, reaching into one pocket. He paused as a small object fell from above. He looked up as a second rusted screw tumbled, followed by a loud creaking of metal as an entire rack of long-broken light fixtures swung from the ceiling like the nine-iron of the gods, smashing into Tran and launching him across the train station that had turned into a maelstrom of chaos.

The ropes that held the rest of the prisoners suddenly snapped and then they were screaming. Wanda turned and yelled, "Use what you know, dodge and get out of the way!" She was caught off guard by someone slamming into her from the front but as she fell backwards, she grabbed a hold of him and sent him flying up and over. He sailed through the air and hit -- and then went through -- what had once been a solid wall.

She was barely on her feet when one of the men got a kick into her jaw and she stumbled backwards, foot suddenly finding nothing but air. Wanda windmilled for a second before tumbling over the edge and onto the tracks. Cursing, she laid there for a second before climbing slowly to her feet, a frown forming when she couldn't quite get her footing. Things were starting to vibrate softly; she could feel it in the tracks under her feet and in the strings all around them.

Something big was coming.

The train station was old, full of rusted metal and corroded fixtures. It was practically screaming for something bad to happen. Dodging a falling support beam, Jennie thought to herself that whoever these Exemplars were, they weren't exactly very smart. Looking up, she saw a line change, one of the other support beams was going to come down and one of the older men was in its path. Cursing her inward sense of altruism, she jumped up on the beam she had just dodged and threw herself at the Exemplar. Improbably, she covered a great amount of distance in a short amount of time, slamming into the man and rolling as the beam came crashing down.

"Don't say I never did anything," Jennie panted as the old man groaned and rolled protectively onto his side.

Across the train station, Covington headed for an open door before stopping dead in his tracks at the threshold. "...quantum probability is totally screwed..." he breathed.

Turnpike Station had been shut down in 1947 during the Second World War, and never reopened after its' patron railway company went bankrupt. The rail line going into the station had been unused for over half a century, with miles and miles of track just awaiting the inevitable municipal ordinance to be removed and shipped off for scrap. There was only one switch, untouched for six decades, which even connected the Turnpike Station line to any active railway.

The odds of that switch ever triggering were beyond implausible, bordering on the impossible.

Right now, the impossible was a ten-car automated freight train bearing down on the station at close to seventy miles per hour.

"Wanda, get off the fucking tracks!" Domino shouted, and found herself dodging bullets as one of the Exemplars found himself in possession of a gun that did indeed work. Luck wasn't always good. But she dropped, rolled, and came up already throwing the piece of the space heater. It was a blind throw, but it still hit the Exemplar smack in the forehead.

Shaking off her shock at the sight of the train, Wanda tried to skip backwards, away from the track, but her heel caught. Normally, falling backwards would have ended up with her breaking her fall but things were certainly not normal today. Wanda arched her back, hoping to essentially throw herself as far away as possible...but when her hands were braced on the ground, she instead pushed up with her feet, completing probably the most graceful backwards cartwheel of her life.

The only backwards cartwheel of her life since at nearly six feet tall and muscular, she tended to leave the flippy shit to others. Landing on her feet a safe distance away, she flattened herself against the nearest wall.

The train smashed through the station, sending chunks of concrete and metal flying as it ground itself to a halt, digging a short trench through the floor. When the dust cleared, everyone blinked to see that flying debris and falling beams had somehow managed to completely miss those captives who hadn't been able to get to their feet - in some cases missed only by inches, but all the women were completely untouched.

Jennie coughed and got to her feet, brushing dust from her hair and clothes. When things had settled more, Jennie noticed that while all the women remained, all of the Exemplars were gone. Including the one she had just knocked out harm's way.

"You know," she sighed. "I'm getting real tired of this 'bad guy mysteriously disappearing shit.'"

Domino grimaced as she rose, hobbling a little. That had been a little more active than anything she'd indulged in since before the bombing. "Eh. Can't complain - I would not have wanted to try and decide what to do with them."

"I have a thing or two I want to do to them." Jennie muttered, smacking a fist into her palm. She then turned and helped another one of the other women to their feet. The remaining girls had untied themselves, and a couple had already slipped out of the train station. Possibly those with criminal histories themselves. "Everybody else okay?"

A mess of curly hair popped up over the top of the siding as Wanda climbed back up onto the platform. "I feel like I should have been wearing sunglasses for that," she muttered to herself before turning her attention on the rest of the crowd. "I seem to be fine and from the looks of it, we all escaped with just a few bruises." Some of the women were milling around, still in a state of shock. The life they led -- business women, retired, soccer moms -- didn't exactly add up to international danger. "We had better get out of here."