Onslaught

"How long does it take to spawn another character from the series?" Revenant decides to ask the most important question right now. He needs to know the potential timetable to work with.

"A few hours." Humility replies. "Depends on the size of the subject. And I believe we're having a 'human-sized' limitation due to the tube size."

That won't be a problem. Aside from some outliers like Wolfhound, the villains he knows about are human-sized and mostly human-shaped. And he genuinely thinks that Wolfhound should just stay dead.

"Start resurrecting Onslaught." He replies. His years of self-control training lead him to the point where he managed to stop his voice from shaking while saying those words.

"Sure." Humility turns towards the nearest active tube and starts clicking the buttons. Revenant notes down the fact that they are still using buttons in the future. "And… done. Onslaught, whoever it is, will be up and running in about two hours. Huh, must be rather small."

That she is. Very small. And, eventually, even smaller. Just radioactive ash in the wind.

The girl whose death created Revenant. The evil spirit lashing out against everyone he considered to be at fault for her death. Even if it was the world itself.

He is yet to figure out what to feel about the whole 'I was never real' part, and now he is slapping himself in the face with something even more emotionally devastating. Huh. He never took himself for a masochist, but hey, you keep discovering new things about yourself until your funeral.

In this one case, even after it.

"I think we should use those two hours to secure some food and water, if possible." Revenant replies. "You can do without it, but I can't. Clothes would be well-received as well. I'm not enjoying being naked here in the slightest."

"I think that I know where to start looking." Humility replies. "Follow me."

***

Five minutes later, Revenant understands Humility's earlier words about the facility being a 'maze'. There is no rhyme or reason to it.

It feels like no secret underground facility he ever visited… and he visited quite a few. His own headquarters of Overlook. Halworth Industries' secret factory and research complex beneath the surface of Ceres planetoid (Clockmaker's personal hideout). Some of the Villain Academy's facilities, changed by the aftermath of Archvile's downfall into tombs.

They were ergonomic, to begin with. Things were supposed to be easy to navigate, while also being easy to defend. Whatever sort of hell maze he was in right now didn't restrain itself with such mortal logic.

"What the hell is wrong with this place?" Revenant asks while stepping over a triangular protrusion of the floor reaching almost to his hips. He can see a side corridor opening to his right, leading literally nowhere. Just three meters before hitting a wall.

The whole thing is rather… grimdarkly industrial? Floor grating, walls of metal plates that appeared faintly rusted, some exposed cables and pipes on the walls, the hexagonal shape of the corridors, the whole thing being much darker than it should be.

Honestly, OSHA compliance clearly wasn't a thing in the future. It was so damn easy to trip…

"You want the list sorted chronologically, alphabetically or in order of severity?" Humility replies. Its frame appears heavier than its size suggests, at least judging from the loudness of its footsteps. Probably more armoured than he thought.

Also a paragon of humour, it seems.

"You know what I meant." Revenant replies.

"Judging from what I saw on the way here, Visitor merged most if not all of the underground man-made structures on the planets into this monstrosity of a dungeon." Humility replies. "And added some other things, for as long as they fulfilled the definition of a claustrophobic's worst nightmare."

"Sounds fabulous." Revenant shoots back while walking over another floor deformation. "Any examples?"

"I walked through what seemed to be a mass cargo transport vessel." Humility replies. "Almost two miles long spaceship seamlessly merged with the rest of this mess. Must have been on the orbit of one of the globes that Visitor devoured."

"The crew?" Revenant asks.

"Don't ask." Humility replies. "We can only hope that it didn't follow me here."

Well, if that ain't ominous.

"I assume that just flying it out of this maze is a no-option." Revenant decides not to ask. "Because it certainly wasn't an option considering the estimated thickness of the blockage unless the technology of spaceship production improved massively in the meantime."

"It did, but not to the point where it makes spaceships capable of emerging from such a depth without being rendered too damaged in the process to be useful." Humility replies. "Looks like we're here."

There are locked doors in front of them. They are signed, but the words are gibberish. There is a panel next to them that seems to be powered. Truly, a blessing from the Lord.

"Give me a moment." Humility replies. After two minutes of playing around with the terminal, the door opened.

It feels like some sort of living quarters. Gives him serious 'communal housing on a spaceship' vibes. There are several bunk beds in the back, something resembling a small kitchen annex in the front part of it (okay, that's less 'spaceship-like', they have mess halls).

Humility switches on the sink faucet and puts its hand into the resulting water stream.

"Contaminated, but nothing significant." Humility announces. "You can expect it to taste so-so, but no health risks unless you have a very vulnerable stomach, then you might end up with diarrhoea. The fridge is still powered, let me check it real quick."

Humility heads over. Revenant grabs a cup (he has no idea what it was made from, some sort of synthetic material) and pours some water into it. Some slight sediment and it tastes a tiny bit bitter, but he drank worse.

"Some food is here." Humility announces. "Should last two people a week or two if they'll ration it. But we should probably find you some working aeroponics section or a mess hall with more food supply."

"For as long as your analysis wasn't wrong and I won't keel over and die…" Revenant replies. "... the water alone is a blessing. Any chances for clothes?" He can certainly see what looks like an entrance to a probably small bathroom. That will be a blessing too.

"Well, let's see if whoever was living here has left us with something useful." Humility replies before pulling out some deployable wardrobe from the wall. "Oh, my, looks like someone really enjoyed the stylish black. To a really unhealthy degree."

Revenant sighs from his position next to the kitchen sink.

"We both know that it's literally my villain uniform," Revenant adds dryly. Humility turns its face plate towards him. "You saw the comic, you're just being mean, while probably trying to figure out how it appeared there in the meantime."

"Touche." Humility replies. "Is it wrong of me to suspect that the other set of clothes belongs to Onslaught?"

"It's hers, alright." Revenant replies, while coming closer to inspect them. Some random green T-shirt with a "Home is where your PC is" inscription in front of it. Blue sweatpants. Red socks and black sneakers, even. "It's connected?"

"Somehow, clearly enough." Humility replies. "Visitor's passage murderfucked logic system-wide. This place must be somehow connected to the clone vat room, enough to spawn some personal belongings of whoever gets spawned there. On a level that has nothing to do with science. Fascinating."

Revenant focused on putting his own clothes on, in the meantime. The business suit appears the same in texture. It was made to be fireproof, acidproof and so on, even bulletproof unless the police or the army brought a sniper rifle or something of similar penetrating power.

Is it still like that? Normally, he would be sure. With it being spawned through some damage to the fabric of reality, he isn't. He'll have to test the properties later. For now, he is happy that he is no longer naked.

Black suit boots. Black business suit over a white shirt with a black tie. White gloves (gotta avoid leaving the fingerprints on the murder weapon). White fur collar. All of that with some hidden gimmicks and much more resilient than they look.

No knife, no gun. It's just the outfit. Is it because it was his villain uniform, or is it because he was wearing it when he died? He'll find out once they resurrect someone that survived until the end of the plot.

"You look as if you escaped from a black-and-white movie." Humility comments. "Or a noir genre in general."

"You wouldn't recognize the concept of style even if I hit you with it in the face plate." Revenant retorts with something akin to vague smugness. Then he sighs. "Black is mostly because I was mourning someone."

"Let me guess, Onslaught?" Humility replies. Yeah, that was easy to guess. "I hope you didn't resurrect her due to wanting to see her again, but due to her being useful in our current situation."

"When physical threats are involved, she's among the most powerful and useful of my lieutenants… or potential lieutenants." He replies. "And I'm not ready to summon fellow supervillains. They rarely agree to follow orders of someone who doesn't have a way of backing them up."

"How relatable." Humility replies. Revenant's little dress-up game is over, and he starts gathering Onslaught's clothes. "Who is she?"

"It's a long story." Revenant replies.

"Can't you at least give me her name?" Humility replies. "Or yours, now that we're talking about it."

Revenant sighs while putting down his dead fiance's panties (bold red? okay, he is officially surprised now, then again it's not like colours mattered to her).

"Asking a villain or a hero for their civilian name is considered a major faux pas." He replies. When was the last time he used his real name? He was Revenant for years. "Feel free to give us nicknames related to our individualities, looks, manner of speech or past acts, but do not ask for our real names. It's just rude."

"You people are weirdos." Humility announces a few seconds later. "And your girlfriend has a twisted sense of style when colours are involved."

As if she ever had any.

***

He tells Humility to wait outside of the clone vat room and enters it alone. There are still at least fifteen minutes (they explored their surroundings a little before returning) left. But he can already see her behind the transparent glass of the tube.

She is… small. Despite being twenty years old, she was barely one and a half meters tall. She probably doesn't weigh more than fifty kilograms. Might be closer to forty, actually. She is thin, so painfully thin.

Her black hair is long, almost reaching her hips. Onslaught joked once that she was so small because her hair sucked out all nutrients from her body. It's also as messy as ever, she never really cared a lot for it, aside from washing it regularly.

Her skin is slightly pale as always… and very, very freckled. Also, completely naked and no, he has no idea how to deal with it.

Revenant told Humility to wait outside both because it was going to be a seriously emotional moment for him - and he hates letting untested allies see him in moments of emotional vulnerability - and because he didn't want the AI to get pissy over how weak she looked.

He kept standing there, hunched over, trying to figure out what to say, what to think about it. By the time the timer runs to zero, he still has no idea.

The tube opens, and she falls towards him. Unlike the case of his own resurrection, this time it's not faked, her legs simply giving up under her.

He grabs her before she has time to fall to the ground.

"W-who is it?" Onslaught asks, her voice shaking, her open eyes staring blindly into space. He can see signs of her individuality kicking in, she might be asking but she's already preparing to fight.

It's her voice. The one he didn't hear for so long. Something deep inside him crumbles. He has no idea what it was.

His body acts on instinct, hugging her closely. How he missed it. How he missed her. The girl that became the final catalyst that created Revenant, the SSS-Threat Level supervillain that started and ended the Second Villain War.

"It's me." He says. His voice, somehow, doesn't shake.

"Analyst?!" She gasps while hugging him back. Ah, a name that he didn't hear in a while. "What happened, I felt… it hurt, then I woke up here, and… am I naked? Why am I naked? What's… Analyst?"

She must have felt the tears streaming off his face. She pulls back (he wants to hold her closer, but…) lightly. He can feel her hands on his face, inspecting it. She probably noticed that something has changed, she was always very attentive to details with that and…

"How long?" She asks. There is something akin to faint horror on her face. She read it from some small changes to his face and his reaction to her. She was always smart.

"Y-years." This time his voice fails him a little. "The government p-panicked after P-Pittsburgh, and… they dropped a nuke on New Liberty. Almost everyone in the town died, including you and your father, a-and…"

She shakes in his arms when he mentions the deaths. It's not even about her, but about her father, isn't it?

It could be worse. But the plot demanded the protagonist to survive. To finally fall off the deep end. So, when the news of the explosion broke, Hypothermia moved fast enough to knock the gun out of his hands.

All she did was delay it for several years. And make it include a lot more people than it originally would.

"We c-can bring them all back, I promise." She is shaking, trying to digest what she just heard, her individuality probably feeding off it. It's a big no on his side. "It worked with you, it will work with them."

"H-how?" She manages to say. Yes, death is rather hard to recover from. Aside from outliers like Deathless or Father Dread.

"I'm going to tell you something hard to believe in." He says, his eyes on her face. He can scarcely imagine something that would make him pry his eyes off it. "But…"

"Whatever it is, I'm going to believe you." She replies, her fingers stroking the side of his face lightly. "So… tell me."

And he does.

He tells her that her life was a lie. That her memories were false. That her father - the one that doted on her her whole life, despite his career as a supervillain - never existed. That she lived and died as some fucking plot device to make him into a societal menace.

That through some eldritch parascientific and totally not magical fuckery they were now somehow alive.

She says nothing the whole time. She is listening. Eventually, he decides to speak those words.

"Look, I understand if… you don't want to continue… our relationship." He says. Something on her face flinches. "It was false, to begin with, and…"

"Once a dummy, always a dummy, isn't it?" She cuts in, a faint smile on her face. "Why would I want to break it, when you literally brought me back to life just now? If that's not love, then what is? And it's clear that you were no longer following the script."

"I'm just trying to think rationally, and…"

"And that's your problem." She cuts in again. She decided that he was doing something stupid, and decided to amend it… slightly forcefully, if needed. Yeah, she was always like this. He loved it in her. "You're rational. Too rational. Your individuality can train your smarts, but it can't sort out your emotions for you. Emotions aren't something you can train into a level-up. You're emotionally a twenty-something, probably with PTSD, so when in doubt, you default to using your intellect for what's 'rational'. I loved you, and I still goddamn love you, stop resisting or I'm going to kick your ass."

Right.

She leans forward, her forehead resting on his shoulder.

"It'll probably take me a while to process the whole 'our world was a lie' thing." She says, and… he can relate to that. "But in the meantime, I think that you just got yourself a first lieutenant for whatever organization you're trying to make. You'll have to help her put her clothes on, though, unless we're planning to do it on a metal floor grate."

… yeah, not a good idea at all.

***

"Seriously?" Humility sounds vaguely angry about it. "Your first pick is a cripple?" Onslaught - now slowly walking forward while leaning over Revenant's shoulder - flips the AI a bird. She misses it slightly, but the general direction is correct. "And she's blind too?"

"I might be blind and can barely move my legs." Onslaught replies. "But this won't stop me from kicking your ass." Revenant decides to be slightly more diplomatic. While also ignoring the emotional turmoil inside of him.

"Look, I get it that you're a rogue AI with a death toll in the billions and a history of relentless human experimentation, not to forget the attempted xenocide of a sapient species that you confessed to almost cheerfully…" The supervillain asks dryly. "... but do you also have to be an ableist?"

"I have no idea what that word means." Humility replies.

Revenant actually blinks at it after this announcement.

"Looking down on people who are disabled or are perceived as disabled?" He asks. What the hell happened during the few centuries he missed?

"First of all, this is absolutely stupid." Humility replies. "If you have a rifle and two soldiers to give it to, one of which is missing a hand, you're going to give it to the one who can actually use it properly, unless you're a complete idiot or have a death wish. Second of all, with gene therapies and modern prenatal care, there is no such thing as 'being born with a disability'. And with modern medicine, you either die instantly or return to full health after a while. You can't be prejudiced against a social group that doesn't exist."

And somehow, Humility managed to do it. Wow. Modern AIs are no joke.

He also didn't miss Onslaught's hand squeezing his shoulder. No more disabilities. So maybe, just maybe, she would manage to be finally healed properly with modern healthcare. One more reason to find the way off the world.

"How tough is your robotic frame?" Revenant decides to ask. "And is there something that we don't want to be destroyed in this corridor?"

"You want me to fight her?" Humility asks. Revenant and Onslaught nod in unison. "This robotic body can withstand anything up to a point-blank shot from an anti-tank gun. Do your worst. And no, I will not pull any punches just because you're a…"

Humility's voice is cut short. Because Revenant just jumped to the side. Onslaught, instead of falling to the ground, leaps forward with a speed so fast that even Revenant with his improved eyesight and reflexes can barely follow her.

Her limbs are enveloped in red energy discharges, her skin goes black and her eyes (if he could see them from his current position) glow faintly red as well.

Despite Humility weighing at least two to three hundred kilograms, Onslaught runs through it and slams its back into the wall at the end of the corridor, before taking a step back and starting to rain punches at the robot in front of her.

Who, at this, has its guard up. Good for it, its robotic arms are clearly tough enough to resist Onslaught's chain punches, his fiancee being a fighter as powerful as she was unskilled. Humility beats her in technique.

A downward double-elbow strike clears her route. Humility manages to headbutt Onslaught with enough impact to - if it was Revenant's head - shatter the skull and smash the brain to the pulp. Onslaught bends backwards as if beginning to fall.

She then rapidly reverses the motion and headbutts Humility back. The robot seems unfazed, but the back of its head hits the metal wall behind it with enough impact to make it crack, pipes and cables breaking around them.

Humility responds with several quick punches. There is enough strength behind them to push Onslaught back, but the final one gets grabbed instead.

Humility then finds itself being thrown over her opponent's body and slammed into the floor. The grate can't withstand so much impact so it caves in. It's still trying to get out when Onslaught gets closer, her left hand pulling Humility's arm to the side so that the AI can't put its guard up even nearly as well.

Onslaught then delivers several strong punches to the robot's faceplate. Five, if Revenant counted it correctly. That's when Humility manages to slap her in the face with its free hand strongly enough to gain a second or two to tear itself from the caved-in floor and jump back.

The AI bought itself only a second or two before Onslaught was back at it. The robot grabs her arms, and the two start attempting to push each other back, in a pure contest of strength.

Humility loses, although not by far. The AI's body is truly a major feat of engineering, especially as despite the vicious beating it received, it appears unharmed (maybe aside from some injuries to its pride, hopefully).

The dreaded Slaughterer of Billions is almost pressed into the wall again when Revenant decides that enough is enough and claps his hands loudly.

"I think that's enough for a presentation." He announces. He can also immediately hear Onslaught clicking her tongue in disappointment. By the time her individuality shuts down, he is standing right next to her, so she catches her before her legs give in. "Are you still having problems with my pick, Humility?"

"No." The AI replies. "I can't consider her as someone underperforming when she can do that."

So it's less NOT being ableist and more NOT treating her as disabled. He isn't sure what he expected, but he should be happy with what he got. When your list of titles includes 'Slaughterer of Billions', your personality is probably less than stellar either way.

"Also, what was that individuality?" Humility appears to be interested in that subject as a whole. It's totally due to its mad science hobby, isn't it?

"Do you want to…" Revenant asks, but Onslaught doesn't let him end.

"Go on, I know you love talking about individualities." She replies. "So I'm not going to even try to restrain you. Go wild."

"It's called Stress Stockpile," Revenant says to Humility. "In a way, it's best compared to an internal power source that she can use to supercharge her strength, durability, speed, healing factor, senses and so on, one that grows over time, proportionally to how frustrated and stressed she is in general. And, as you can see from her state of health…"

"... she had that in spades her whole life." Humility cuts in. "That was her whole strength?"

"How much was it?" Revenant asks his fiancee (is she still his fiancee?)

"About half of what I can do." Onslaught replies. "I need to be either angry or in actual danger for proper adrenaline release to be able to tap into the stockpile. It just wasn't enough to go all out."

"And the whole of what she can do is about twenty percent of the whole stockpile." Revenant comments. "Because her body is too weak to withstand the whole thing. And no, her stockpile doesn't get depleted by being used. As I said, it's more of a constantly expanded power generator than a battery to be discharged."

"I see." Humility comments a few seconds later. "10% of her total possible strength was enough for her to almost damage a robot designed to withstand everything until the level of modern anti-tank weaponry. I actually got several warnings about the stress approaching the limits of the frame resistance. You know what that tells me?"

"No?" Revenant, for all his skills, isn't a telepath.

"That individualities are total bullshit." Humility announces. Revenant groans internally as if that's something new. "Also, tell your doomed love interest to actually train. She had strength, but her technique was a joke."

Revenant glances at Onslaught. She must have sensed his movement (she IS still hanging off him) because she decided to open her mouth.

"If you let me punch it again, I can get at least twelve percent now, even if it was speaking the truth." She announces.

Yeah, those two are going to be at each other's throats constantly. Great.