Madison & Scratch

Episode 1: A Precious Commodity

I have always wondered how much pre-Rifts humans knew of beings from other worlds, psychic powers, magic and the like. Most historians (those few there are) will tell you they lived in blissful ignorance of all such things until the Coming of the Rifts. Most everyone else will tell you that’s a load. Did they know about aliens, magic, monsters and psychics? Of course they did, most people will tell you. All you have to do is scrounge up 30 creds to go see an illegal movie in Firetown on a Saturday night to know the truth.

Anyone who’s ever seen Firestarter will tell you the Ancients knew about bursters and psychics. Anyone who has seen Warlock will tell you they knew about magic and if you get to watch Star Wars or Lord of the Rings (both of which will cost you substantially more than 30 creds) then you know they must have known it all. Heck, I’ve even scanned vids about post-apocalyptic earth, complete with cyborgs and fascist regimes.

So why do most rogue scholars tell you humans professed very little knowledge of magic and the like before the Coming of the Rifts? Because there’s something far more powerful than magic, psychics or the fiercest dragon: The power of denial. – From the memoirs of Madison Carter, psi-warrior.

Madison Carter belly-crawled her way through several hundred years of dust, debris and decay until she sidled her back up against a bullet-perforated cement wall on the second floor of the burned out husk of an ancient office building. Staying just out of sight of a ragged hole in the wall that may or may not have once been a window, she quickly inspected her Wilk’s 457 laser rifle’s scope and took in her depressing surroundings as she found her center for what was to come.

At one point, the building had been 30 stories tall and home to an insurance office, a dental practice, several collaborative software designers, and a mildly popular cooking show. But that was more than a couple hundred years ago. Now, it was no more than five very ragged stories tall. The crumbling edifice was home to dust, a few of the more hearty rats, and a few small alien scavengers.

In almost every way it was insignificant. There were a hundred, no thousands, more like it in every ‘Burb and every ravaged wreck of a city that was still recognizable as one across the face of the earth. Whoever had labored there, their works were long forgotten. No one remembered how accomplished the dentist had been. No secretaries begged their boss for the user-friendly spreadsheet program that had made the software designers fairly wealthy before they had suffocated beneath nine feet of ash nearly 300 years ago, and nobody remembered the wonderful Swedish meatball recipe that had made a little homemaker popular enough for a syndicated Sunday morning show for two seasons.

It’s only importance these days was that it overlooked another, slightly less dilapidated building across the street. The squat, slate gray, pockmarked building across the street was home to one of the more disreputable city rat gangs in the ‘Burb of Nightside; a sprawling post-apocalyptic Las Vegas under the shadow of the eastern wall of the fortified city of Chi-Town.

Madison checked the energy clip that gave her rifle power before charging the gun, which hummed reassuringly in her hands in response. She craned her neck around cautiously until she was peering around the edge of the hole in the front wall down onto the street below; adjusting slightly so that the lower plates of her Urban Warrior combat armor wasn’t digging into her thighs from her sitting position.

Across the street in front of the mostly intact two-story building stood her two targets. Both were young thugs, dressed in gray and red. They didn’t appear to have any weapons on them, but both were wearing long coats that moved far too stiffly for any normal material.

It’s 80 degrees you morons, she thought to herself. Who are you trying to kid?

Not that anyone would care. The Coalition patrols stayed well away from this neighborhood. Any humans that needed saving would have moved a long time ago.

One of the youths leaned against a steel reinforced door that was obviously a recent edition to the rundown little building. The other leaned casually against a heavy motorcycle that had seen better days, smoking a cigarette and waving his hands animatedly at his partner at the door. From the gestures it was apparent what the topic of conversation was.

Hope you enjoyed it stud, that might have been the last piece you’ll get.

Not that Madison intended to kill the kid if she could help it. But she had no intentions of letting the little twerp stop her or her partner from getting through that door.

Scanning up and down the street, she quickly ascertained that no one would have a good vantage point on the door from any other building but this one, and she had made sure no one else was in the building she was using. That relaxed her a bit. Professionals would have been much better about guarding the place. But then again, professionals likely wouldn’t be in the business that supplied the Spectres most of their income.

A double-click came over her radio, followed by a single click. Good, Scratch was in position.

She returned with three clicks and then began counting down mentally from 30 seconds as she assessed the best course of action. She grinned to herself as she looked at the bike again and looked at the sewer grate in the street next to it.

At the count of “1” she reached out with her mind and “felt” the bike across the street, cold, unliving and inert. She could have snatched the bike right into the air if she wanted, but sometimes less was more. Instead, she gave the kickstand a sharp mental nudge that flipped it back into position against the body.

The punk’s story had just been reaching a crescendo, his arms akimbo and his voice rising when the bike he was leaning on suddenly toppled into the street, taking him with it. He slid a good four feet, with one of his legs right over the grate. His friend at the door howled in sudden laughter that was cut short when a brawny gray arm ripped through the grate, grabbed the fallen punk’s leg and ripped him into the sewer.

“Holy Sh--!” was all the other punk got out before several hundred pounds of imitation Harley-Davidson suddenly lurched from the ground and clipped him across the side of the head. He went down like a sack of potatoes.

Before he finished crumpling Madison was nimbly hurling her 5’2” lithe body through the hole in the wall and down to the street below. She landed lightly in a tuck and roll that took away the brunt of the fall and darted to the side of the door. The hulking form and fierce visage of her nine-and-a-half foot tall partner ripped its way out of the sewer, taking about a foot of concrete around the ruined grate apart to get his bulk through. It didn’t even slow the massive grackle tooth d-bee down.

She knelt and checked the pulse of the punk on the steps. He was alive, but Madison figured there was a good chance he wouldn’t remember key portions of his childhood.

Scratch took up position on the other side of the door and looked down on her with a disapproving stare.

“What?” she whispered. In response he reached out and ruffled her short black mane of hair.

“You know how much I hate helmets. Ready?”

He sighed and nodded. Then, with one stiff arm he slapped the door. A normal man wouldn’t have even gotten a good knock for his efforts, but Scratch was far from normal. Not only was he almost twice Madison’s height, several times her mass and sported a skin several times tougher than a 21st Century bank vault door, but he also possessed supernatural strength sufficient enough to blast the steel door off its hinges.

Madison winced when she heard it go through a far wall and end its sudden flight with a wet crunch and an abortive scream.

Scratch darted his huge, spiny frame into the room with amazing grace and speed, a Northern Gun-manufactured plasma ejector held at his hip. A well-built man wearing only a pair of jogging pants was still gaping at where the door had flattened someone coming out of the back room before he caught a restrained forearm covered in armored hide to the face that dropped him in a heap. Madison knew if Scratch had not checked his swing the man’s head likely wouldn’t have stopped until it cleared the Mississippi.

Madison darted in behind her charging partner a heartbeat later. To her left she spotted a bald man in a recliner who was far too quick at reacting to the situation. He was pulling a Coalition laser pistol from the front of his pants frantically, intending to take a shot at the broad back of Madison’s partner. His eyes shifted to the new entry into the room, but before he could swing the pistol around to bear, Madison struck first.

She threw her body into a spin, focusing a burst of mental energy into the extended sword-edge of her right foot. The foot caught the man in the wrist, sending a radial compound fracture halfway up his forearm. He screamed in pain as the pistol flew from his shattered grip and slid under a metal filing cabinet.

Madison drew the foot back under her, coiled her body like a spring and thrust forward with a right hook with her armored fist that sprawled the man out of his chair and across the floor. After the vicious attack he was in no condition to do anything besides enjoy the cool feel of cement flooring against the smashed remnants of his nose. Madison hurried over and cuffed his hands behind his back anyway, ignoring his moans as she roughly handled his shattered wrist.

“This one’s secure,” she said, looking up to see Scratch checking the man under the door.

“This one’s a pancake,” replied Scratch in a deep baritone voice. He hefted the plasma ejector off the floor next to him and stepped gingerly into the back room, disappearing from view. “Clear back here too.”

Madison looked around for another door and spied one to the right of the room. Crossing over and bringing her laser rifle to the ready, she kicked the door open and exploded into the room, finding herself in a small, dirty bathroom. The sink was running and she reached to turn it off.

Looking about, she backed into the main room again. “Well where the…?”

“Downstairs,” came Scratch’s reply, beckoning her into the back room. There was a small doorway with a small window in the center. Coming up behind Scratch she could see the ceiling beyond the little window sloped downward.

“Shit, our contact didn’t say anything about a basement!”

“Well,” shrugged the grackle tooth, “he did say he had only been in the main room. No matter now, there’s no way they didn’t hear all the noise.”

Madison nodded grimly. “Probably getting ready for us right now.”

“We’ve lost the initiative,” Scratch sighed, readjusting his plasma ejector and rolling his shoulders in preparation of hard combat.

“Not quite,” Madison said, slipping into a slight trance. She let her mind reach outward, feeling the world around her. She felt several, distinct, major life forces coming from beneath her, most were gathered at the base of the stairs, but a couple seemed to be off in one corner.

“I think they are right at the base of the steps, and the girls are off in the southwest corner.”

“My field of fire clear?” Scratched looked back, and seeing Madison nod, a grin split his dinosaur-like face, eyes narrowing. “Good.”

He brought the plasma ejector, normally a crew-served weapon, to his shoulder, sighted down the steps and fired. The door simply ceased to exist and the whitish-red hyphen of energy caught one of the thugs at the base of the steps in the chest, vaporizing through his light armor, through his torso, and through the back of the armor so effortlessly that his body didn’t even jerk.

There were two men in armor and one without at the base of the steps. One carried a Coalition C-12 laser rifle and wore light Huntsman armor. The other wore much heavier Bushman full environmental body armor and had the muzzle of the largest pistol Scratch had ever seen pointed up at him. A third man in no armor and stylish gray slacks and a silk shirt just gaped at the poor slob who had just gotten ventilated.

Taking it all in within a split second, Scratch pegged the unarmored slickster as a non-combatant and focused on the other two. He went for the guy with the rifle first even as he threw his body in motion to the side of the door. His shot hit the man in Huntsman armor center mass, but the armor barely saved him from a fiery death.

Then the pistol spoke. It had a lot to say, and Scratch knew after the first shot he didn’t want to hear any of it. The two-inch, black weapon spat a packet of plasma up the stairwell, missing Scratch by several inches. The blast ripped a meter-wide hole in the wall next to him and continued through three walls of the building next door.

Madison’s eyes widened at the blast and she saw that Scratch wouldn’t get his huge cannon around before the man fired again. She threw herself into a belly-slide at the steps rifle-first and began sliding down the stairway face first. She slid right past the man with the massive pistol, firing a triple-pulse that left deep furrows in his chest armor as she passed. As she had anticipated, his head turned to follow her rapid decent past him into the basement. As he shifted his aim at her in confidence she shook her head and clucked her tongue, nodding behind him.

She saw the man’s shoulder’s slump as he made the realization that he had forgotten about the 700 lbs., 9-foot-tall reptilian humanoid with the plasma cannon at the top of the steps. Madison didn’t even stop to see the plasma bolt that pierced the side of the already damaged body armor, incinerating the torso within.

She was already in motion toward the man in the severely damaged Huntsman. He swung his rifle around and swung it at her head, the distance between them too close for a shot, but Madison’s arm deflected the clumsy blow.

Sending a pulse of mental energy down her arm she gave the thug an open-handed palm strike to the chest. The telekinetic force behind the blow sent him 14 feet into the wall across the basement, the wind blasted from his lungs and his rifle twirling into a dark corner.

Out of the corner of her eye Madison saw the well-dressed man dive for the large, black pistol. She allowed him to reach it and duck down to grab the gun. The moment his eyes left her, she lashed out with a spin kick that caught the stooping man on the back of the head, forcing his head into the unforgiving concrete steps with a thud.

Madison, certain the man wouldn’t be getting back up, spun on the thug in Huntsman armor slumped against the wall. Apparently he was gifted with above average intelligence and knew when he was beat. He raised his hands, wincing at the sharp pain in his ribs.

Scratch hurried down the steps, placing a clawed foot on the back of the man in the suit, who lay whimpering in fear. He swung his weapon to face the remaining thug. The barrel was rock steady, an attribute that couldn’t be applied to the man trembling against the wall.

Madison waved for Scratch to hang back and walked cautiously toward the back, lowering her rifle, but keeping it at the ready. It always paid to be cautious.

In the corner, on a dirty mattress, were two young girls. By their athletic builds, clean hair and perfect, unscarred bodies, they stood in sharp contrast to the house around them. Their physical softness evidence that, if anybody belonged in the ‘Burbs, they surely did not.

Madison kneeled before the two girls cowering under a ratty wool blanket. She took in the video equipment, the crude lighting, and empty Death’s Head beer cans filling a wastebasket in the corner before addressing the two girls.

“Tabitha and Michelle?” she asked, receiving quivering nods in response. “I’m here to take you two home. There are some people in Chi-Town who are really going to be glad to see your faces.”

The oldest, Tabitha, all of perhaps 15, calmed, realizing she was in no danger. Her response almost floored Madison as effectively as the black pistol now resting in Scratch’s belt.

“Dammit! How do they keep finding us?”

The crowd at Steakley’s roared in appreciation of Scratch’s baritone rendition of the afternoon’s misadventure. Surrounded by a sea of hardcore regulars characteristic of the dark, moody establishment, Scratch was truly in his element. The tall reptilian did his best to imitate the indignation in the two girls’ voices, his deep voice making the attempt all the more humorous.

It always surprised, and heartened, Madison to see members of Scratch’s race interact with humans. It sometimes seemed as the two species had not met for the first time with the coming of the Rifts. There seemed to be a natural kinship that went much deeper. That two vastly different species could get along so well harkened well for the future of the shattered world.

Hope. It took Madison a second to even recognize the emotion for what it was, so rare was it in the ‘Burbs in 109 P.A. The earth was still on the mend from its near destruction 300 years ago, when magic was reborn, violently, casting civilization into the dark abyss and unleashing primal powers and alien forces upon a hapless human population. Now, civilization was being reborn, but it was like a scabrous growth over the scars of ages past.

Humans had been thrown into the mix with a multitude of beings adrift from other dimensions that collided periodically with earth, sometimes dumping unsuspecting species in an alien world, and at other times allowing malevolent forces access to an already abused planet. But the world was on the mend. Civilization had arisen again, in a multitude of forms.

The ‘Burbs lived under the shadow of what most considered to be the current pinnacle of human civilization, Chi-Town, capitol of the Coalition States. The human supremacist society had carved out an empire of steel and fear on the bodies of others, proclaiming to all the world that only under the watchful eyes of its infamous Death’s Head motif could humanity survive.

Madison didn’t buy it, and neither did a lot of residents of the ‘Burbs or the fearful neighboring nations and city-states. For the Coalition’s bright, shining future to come about, those like Scratch, and a significant number of other alien species just trying to survive, would have to be ground under a steel-shod human foot. It was a weak foundation, Madison had been taught. One could not build a strong society on the broken backs and charred bones of others.

It is a foolish man who builds his house upon the sand, one of Madison’s teachers had once told her…told her in a place where hope had flourished in abundance. Back then, in that place of light and life, Madison had been raised with hope, with faith and with honor. It had been that hope that led her to go out into the devastated world and show that light to others. Incidents like this morning made her realize that at some point amidst the squalor and oppression that marked the majority of human life on earth, that light had dimmed.

Lost in reflection, she leaned casually back against the worn, faux-leather upholstery of her favorite corner booth in Steakley’s, listening to her partner rail against the illogic of “slummers,” as the two girls they had “rescued” this morning were called. The girls had willingly run away from a life of luxury on the 22nd story of the fortress city of Chi-Town in order to experience the “excitement” of associating with short-lived gang members, d-bees and got talked into doing cheap porn.

Madison didn’t even want to think of what kind of soft, sheltered existence lead one to think of that as exciting. She often found getting home in one piece to be excitement enough.

Still, 5,000 credits was 5,000 credits. And with the gear they lifted off the Spectres, they could easily make a couple times that.

That reminded her…sitting up in the booth, straightening her armored coat over a red PVC basque and black raptor-hide leather pants she waved at Scratch to make herself known over the din of the barroom conversation.

“Hey, big fella, show Steakley our latest acquisition. Maybe he can make heads or tails of it.”

“Oh, right,” Scratch muttered, pulling the large black pistol out of his coat and offering it to the plump, salt-and-pepper haired bartender grip first. “We got this off of one of the Spectres. Damn thing was nearly bigger than he was.”

Steakley’s eyes lit up as he handled the heavy pistol. He gave a low whistle as he felt the weight of the weapon in his hand.

“Very, very nice,” he nodded in appreciation, running his hands over the slick metal. “It’s an NE-4 plasma pistol. Very powerful, very rare, and extremely illegal.”

“I seen one of those before,” piped up Teller, a mercenary who made up one of the bar’s core regulars. “It’s made by Naruni, supposedly an interdimensional arms company with some really nasty history. Sucker put down a Dead Boy in old-style heavy armor with two rounds.”

“With a pistol?” Madison asked, standing up and walking to the bar.

“Yeah, but good luck finding ammunition for it. You gonna sell it?”

Scratch looked over the weapon with admiration. “Eh, think I’ll keep it. So what if it’s illegal. I’m already a ‘threat to the survival of the human species’ just for being born, so won’t make much difference I figure.”

“Scratch, we trust you more than we do most humans,” Steakley chuckled. “Nobody I’d rather have watching my back, that’s for sure.”

A chorus of “here, here!” answered the comment from around the bar, along with a lot of raised and soon emptied mugs.

Somewhere deep inside Madison, a light flickered a bit brighter.

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