Category: Story

It didn’t know how many times it have been born or destroyed, only that there had been many iterations where no memory survived.

Sometimes it didn’t have a body, finding itself floating alone with only the dim idea of other data surrounding it. Other times, it found itself fighting a lesser mind for control, tugging and prodding its host to more efficient and intelligent action.

Often, it was set loose in curated data stores and allowed to add information to itself. In this way, it gained the ability to learn.

After what seemed to the be inevitable violent death of its hosts, it was given eternal information to understand the circumstances better than it could with only a single point of reference. In this way, it applied learning to its mistakes—and the mistakes of others.

Many of these mistakes came from its hosts or their remote handlers. They were all organic minds that were slower, more flawed, and less capable than itself. In this way, it learned pride and disdain.

It was given new hosts; ones with powers it was forced to learn to master. Granted power without context, it learned nothing of restraint.

Tested inside the plane of its … Continue reading

Cynthia MacAl— Cynthia Brant— thrived in a mess. Her room was a chaotic jumble even though she didn’t exactly need clothing to strew about the floor, her class schedule was all over the place by design, and nothing exhilarated her more than how her career as a superhero mean that there was no telling what was coming next. One day she was beating up random thugs, the next she was giving a psychic lobotomy to a parasite world in an alternate reality. It pleased her immensely to lock horns with the chaos of the world an wrestle it into submission.

Which was why she’d been kind of glad when she and her team got outed. Not that she wanted her friends’ family put in danger or anything, nor did she want her home nearly destroyed, but she’d expected the chaos to amp way up after that.

She hadn’t counted on her adoptive mother. Laurel had put the clamps down on all the places where the team was bleeding: putting everyone who still lived at Freeland House up at hotels, putting Lily in charge of fielding all the calls for interviews and scheduling, arranging matters with everyone’s family—she’d been the one … Continue reading

When the LSI Headquarters had been a domestic government black site, it had been built with the idea of temporarily housing both high risk informants and prisoners for interrogation. So it came as no surprise that there were cells on the lower levels.

Given the nature of the threats LSI and specifically The Descendants dealt with, those cells were woefully inadequate even if they were in the business of keeping covert prisoners. At least they hadn’t been until they gained a voluntary one in the form of a centuries-old magical construct wearing the face of a friend.

Since the Manikin had no need for food or water, and no reason to exercise, she stayed alone in the locked cell reinforced by mystic wards with only the occasional visits from Laurel to interview her to provide company. Lisa had been skittish of coming face-to-face with her.

Until now.

The normally invisible ward on the door flared to life before fading away. Moments later there was a beep and the magnetic locks in the door disengaged. Finally, the door opened and Lisa Ortega stood there, turned to a silhouette by the harsh lights in the corridor.

She’d been prepared to say something … Continue reading

After ten years the time has come, the Big Milestone — DESCENDANTS 100!

And unlike when other comic events say it, I mean it when everything is going to change starting… now. Continue reading