Prelude: Warren

GSG Banking Regional Headquarters, GSG Tower, Delaware

The security room was chaos. Red lights were flashing on all the boards. The phones were dead. The wall of monitors showing mostly static, and the ones that worked showed only chaos. Only one security officer was left, screaming into his walkie-talkie.

“Team 3, respond!” Nothing.

“Team 4, respond!” Silence

“Team 6! Team 9!! Anyone!! Any Teams, respond! Please!! Respond!!”

KLANG!

The door into the security center was solid heavy metal, bullet-proof and dense. So it wasn’t surprising that the guard had a look of horror on his face when he turned to see obvious pockmarks warping the door. He changed channels on the walkie-talkie. “Security is lost. The building is lost. Evacuate!! You need to--”

The door split open, and the guard screamed…

Meanwhile, on the roof, the regional vice president and his bodyguards were panicking, trying to will their escape plan to arrive. “Where is the damn helicopter?!” His bodyguard was peering the sky, then pointed at the growing dot on the horizon. “Sir!! Look!!” The vice president laughed, but then looked behind him. “Then what’s that noise?”

From the other side of the roof, a storm rose. She was dressed in a professional and conservative pantsuit of charcoal, which did nothing to de-emphasize the blazing-white fire coming from her glasses, and erupting out of her back in like angel wings, each feather a burning gem. A ribbon of burning red runes danced in the storm around her. In one had was an ornate klaive covered in miniscule runes that formed rorschach images of honesty and virtue. In the other was the (almost certainly) former head of security, coughing and beaten. She dropped him to the ground, and touched down on the concrete just before the helicopter did. The banking vice president, to his credit, did not piss his expensive suit, but instead just started in horror. “No...it’s Elizabeth Warren!”

She raised the massive glaive as if it were a feather, it’s point aimed directly at the man’s head. She spoke at a normal tone, but somehow the sound cut through the wind and distance and rotor blades.  “Vice President Kreuger. I would have words with you.”

The bodyguard grabbed Kreuger and shoved him on the chopper, giving a frantic thumb up to the sky for the pilot.. “Go!! Now!!”  He turned and, cursing, drew his weapon…

...an emerald credit card. Snapping it in two before Warren could get close to him, he was surrounded by a wave of black and green fire. Warren raised in the air, aiming for her prey on the helicopter, but was stopped by a vicious clawed hand from the fire that slapped her back to the rooftop. She stood up, grinning. “Finally...a challenge.”

The bodyguard’s sacrifice had not been in vain. Before her stood a vicious Fiducicore, a creature as big as a house and made up of the worst parts of bear, bull, and man. It’s road shook the ground beneath her feet, a gust of breath blowing her back with the rotting scent of failed mortgages assaulting her nose, but Warren was unphased. Again she leapt to the sky, and with a dramatic flash of wing a dozen burning feathers struck the beast, exploding with phosphorus heat and causing the beast to cry in agony. The beast used its massive money green paw to throw a HVAC unit at her, which was sliced in two with ease. She grabbed the ribbon that danced around her, and flung it to the beast like an arrow. The red bindings quickly struck, lashing about and forcing the beast to its knees. Warren grinned and whispered to her weapon “Voice-of-the-people, you may dine tonight!” In a flash, she was on the other side of the beast...and the Fiducicore disintegrated, the bodyguard collapsing in a heap unconscious.

Warren looked to the sky--there was no way she was going to get to that chopper now, but no matter. She would track them down and make them pay. She was interuppted by the sound of applause behind her though. She turned to see...Michael Douglas? No...Gordon Gecko. Her eyes narrowed. “Mamon.”

The Host grinned, still applauding. “Bravo! Very impressive! But...what the hell are you doing? I’m helping your side to, you know.” Warren kept her temper, but it was close. “You are not the economic system, spirit. You’re a cancer upon it, Wen-ti-ko.”

Mamon pulled off the highly-fashionable-for-1986 sunglasses and stared daggers, his eyes burning bale green. “You sure about that?”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing! It’s just when someone comes crashing into one of my temples and beats up all my sacrifices, I get curious.” He looked out at the skyline. “I’m not angry, Lizzy--please, enjoy your workouts. While they last…” the threat hung in the air.

“What? I’m supposed to be scared of your lackey Trump?”

Mamon feigned a mortal wound. “What? Sure, a good chunk of his soul’s mine, but he’s not my pawn, sweetheart. I’m neutral in all of this--I’ve got both sides to worry about.”

Warren pursed her lips, wise enough to know he spoke the truth and pure enough to be upset about it. “If not you, then who is giving him support? ”

Mamon shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think they’re local.” Warren’s eyes widened--if Mamon was  being a normal psychopathic Host, this was just gloating. If the riddle rang true though… “So why are you telling me, Wen-ti-ko?”

Mamon was already walking to the door. “Keep your enemies closer, Lizzy. And in debt if you can.” With that he disappeared in a flash of greed, and Warren was alone on the rooftop.

She had to investigate this. If this was true...then hell was coming.