CLOAK	DAGGER	CHEMISTRO

Fifteen Minutes Ago

It came gushing down the steep hills first. Like a cascade of water, the darkness it blanketed everything it touched, washing people off their feet as it struck them, encompassing them in a feeling of numbness followed by an ever increasing cold.

The people at the epicentre of the eruption were killed within seconds of their exposure to it, with it's effects weakening the further it stretched from the source. As more and more of it pushed it's way through the gateway, the level of darkness began to spread upwards. Within thirty minutes, it was coating San Francisco's cars with it's matter, within hours it would be level with the second story windows of most apartments.

The Darkforce was loose, and it wouldn't stop until it had devoured everything in the city.

Ten Minutes Ago

“CLEAR!” Dagger yelled as she hurled another burst of light energy into the limp and lifeless Cloak. His dark body was an open doorway to the Dark Dimension, tendrils of black energy pulling themselves from his still form, his cloak splayed open. Every now and then Father Dillon would attempt to begin to fold the edges of the cloak inwards, but it was cold to the touch, and the tendrils pushed it open again after a few minutes anyway.

Plunging her hands into his chest again, they disappeared into the darkness up to her elbow as she pushed as much of her light energy into Tyrone as humanly possible. Her form was beginning to lose its structure. He skin already resembled that of someone in their late thirties, with deep frown lines and wrinkles beginning to form around her mouth. Her muscles were starting to shrink away from the bone, giving her the body of an anorexic teenager. She was pouring herself into Tyrone, parts of her soul and body were being taken in the process.

“We've got to try and stop this!” she screamed at the man stood beside her. He had similar powers to her, that was certain after the fight they'd just been involved in. He'd given her quite a beating as well, given that he was in his late twenties and obviously wasn't a couch potato. His thick moustache made it clear he wanted to be respected as an adult rather than as the twenty something he really was. “Give him some of your energy, this is your fault dammit!”

The man said nothing and swayed a little bit, looking at the woman he'd come with. Her name was Erin, and she had the most beautiful dark blue coat. When they'd taken the Spectrum and taken on these abilities, she had found a whole new world in her coat. It wasn't a technicolour dream coat, however, it led to a realm of fear, and freezing cold. Erin wasn't scared by that, she even embraced the cold. She was from Norway originally anyway, she liked the cold.

When the dealer told them that could get more of these drugs if they did him a favour, they were so high they would do just about anything to prolong the feeling. That included attacking total strangers. Erin had collided with Cloak and the whole thing had got out of control.

He crouched down on the floor, holding the sleeve of the long, blue coat, that lay limp and lifeless on the floor. Now he'd never see her again, he'd never be able to tell her that he loved her, and all because of these damn drugs.

“Hrmn. Dammit....GODDAMN FUCKING DRUGS!” He threw his hands up in the air and let his energy wash out of him. The light was so bright it erased the Darkforce that had settled around them. It was as though someone had dropped a tiny sun in the small, dark and dank back alleyway of the San Francisco streets. A sun that knocked Dagger off her feet and rejuvenated her, a sun that gave her back her young appearance and supple body instead of the stiff and creaky frame she'd been left with just minutes ago.

More importantly, the Darkforce geyser that had been spraying other dimensional stuff and entities from Cloaks body was cut off, stemmed off at the chest. A few more minutes of energy emanating from the man, and he was spent. Nothing but a hollowed out and burnt husk lay on the San Francisco streets.

Dagger sat up slowly, rubbing her forehead and looking to Cloak, who was finally stirring. The eruption had been stopped.

“What happened?” Cloak asked, but Dagger had no reply.

Nine Hours Ago

“It's a new drug, it's called Spectrum,” Richard the dealer described, opening his palms dramatically to put the emphasis on the name of the narcotic. He was a lithe man, dressed well with a high neck T-Shirt, and a long grey coat over his shoulders. He didn't look like he belonged in the dirty alleyway that stank of urine and vomit. He cracked a smile as he pulled out the day-glow tablets.

“What does it do?” the nervous looking junkie asked, the bags under his eyes glancing around as he looked over his shoulder to try and get a look for any police officers that may be lurking. His dirty blonde hair stuck to his face, spots and lesions lining his features.

“It's amazing, man, you pop one and it lights you up like a lantern. Best high you'll ever get, only ten dollars a tab for you, my man. Special Deal,” the dealer said with a smile. It was only six dollars a tab for anyone, but if you sell it right, you can make a mint.

“What do the colours mean?” the junkie asked, reaching out for a pill only for them to be snatched away by the dealer, who shook his head.

“Don't take 'em out here, man. They LITERALLY light you up. You end up glowing for hours. The colours mean that's what colour you glow when you take them,” the dealer began, before the junkie grabbed his wrist, yanking his palm open. He pointed to the separately bagged black pills.

“What the hell're they?” the junkie screeched, pointing to the black lumps by the dealers thumb. Their bag seemed to be bilious from extra air, not like the neatly packaged glow in the dark pills that sat in a sunken plastic sack.

The Dealer shook his head.

“No way man, not yet. I mean it, these things will blow your mind—literally. You can't handle them.”

“Don't give me the conscience crap, gimme the black ones. Gimme them all.” The Junkie threw a wad of money at the dealer and scooped up the pills from his hands, throwing them in his pocket and taking off down the alleyway.

The Dealer smiled to himself and counted his money slowly.

“Good days work, right?” he said looking at the open call on the iPhone in his pocket. The phone made no noise as it clicked to “Disconnected.”

Roxxon-Pharma

The leather coated chair creaked loudly, as he director lit a cigar and leaned back. Plumes of smoke rose into the air, and he chuckled to himself, throwing the used mobile onto the floor and stamping on it repeatedly with his heel. The smile still stretched across his nicotine stained features, shadow clinging to the craggy pits of his habit enriched wrinkles, he turned to face the man stood by his side.

“Took your damn time getting here,” the director said, offering a cigar to the man, who simply shook his head and raised a hand.

“No thank you, I might mix these things up, but I don't partake in them myself. Keeps my focus.” He ran a hand over his bald head, and smiled.

“Y'know I never thought someone like you could help me.” He removed the cigar from his mouth and looked up at the super villain before him.

“That a race thing?” the large African American man said, pushing his fist down on the directors oak desk.

“Not at all, I mean a supervillain. I've worked with plenty of 'your people.'” He grinned through his yellow stained teeth, his teeth clamped down on the cigar end.

“Just give me the money, yeah?”

“Whatever you say, Chemistro.” He handed over piece of paper with a smile.

“This better not be an IOU.” Chemistro snatched it from his hand and looked at it, a smile washing over his face. “Alright, good doing business with you. If it's all the same to you, I'd get the hell out of this place before it all goes to hell.” Turning around the supervillain made his way towards the door.

“Hell? I think you misunderstand, Chemistro. Hell is for people who are scared.”

Shaking his head, Chemistro left the room and hurried down the corridor. “If you aren't scared then you damn well should be, I know I am, and I made the damn stuff.”

Half an Hour Ago

Cloak spun in place as the duo came barrelling down the alleyway. Dagger looked up from his position on the floor. The pair had stopped for a moment, a resting period between battling drugs and gang members. Dagger was drinking a can of diet coke through a straw, sitting on some cool cardboard. They'd worked up quite a sweat dispersing a group of gang members.

“There they are!” The moustached man yelled, his open white shirt seemingly glowing as he bounded down the alleyway. The woman with short, bobbed black hair powered after him. She said nothing, her face gritty and full of determination.

“Tandy,” Cloak began, as the man leapt forward, kicking through Cloak and throwing a burst of energy down into the ground, cracking the concrete underneath Cloak. He stumbled forwards, as the woman in the blue coat tore past him. He watched her run, feeling their connection immediately.

“Darkforce!” he screeched in strange mixture of agony and pleasure. Dagger's eye's widened, as she threw her hands up, unleashing a burst of light that blinded Cloak, and knocked the other man off his stride, sending him hurtling into some dustbins.

It was clear to both Cloak and Dagger that the pair weren't trained. They were barely lucid. The man in particular was all over the shop, staggering and stumbling, letting off bursts of light energy without any thought on direction. Cloak offered himself an opportunity for a little smile, as the tendrils at the end of his billowing folds picked up the nearest dustbin lid and flung it towards the man.

It clanged into his back, knocking him off balance. Cloak slowly began to advance on him. In recent months both Tandy and he had begun to experiment with their powers, Cloak had gained an uncanny ability to control the pleats and folders of his name sake with some limited dexterity. He was able to mould it around fairly sizeable objects and manipulate them in a rudimentary way, like throwing a dustbin lid.

He was no Captain America, but he could still pitch it with some force. As he set upon the man who lay on his front before him, his head snapped to the side to watch the blue coated woman descend on Tandy. Her bursts of light had little effect on her. He made note, mentally, that her coat was still closed.

What did she have underneath it? What could possibly have happened to her for her to become a gateway to the Darkforce dimension?

“Tyrone!” Dagger shouted, as the man put both of his hands against Ty's chest. The burst of energy that came from his fingertips matched the ferocity of his laughter, launching Cloak through the air, and cracking off the corner of a building as he collided with it.

“Oh God,” Tandy said to herself, as the short haired woman descended on her. Kicking upwards, catching the woman in the jaw. She stumbled backwards and rubbed her chin gently.

“Bitch,” she whispered, as she grabbed the edges of her coat, pulling it open. Within her chest was a swirling mass of Darkforce, which slowly began to extend outwards, sucking loose pieces of debris towards her. Tandy gulped to herself, before scrambling to her feet, and kicking out again, hitting the woman in the side of the knee.

She buckled, landing on her side, as the vortex twisted it's way up the wall, scratching it's path out by taking bricks and mortar from the building, and shattering a window on the floor above.

The glass came raining down moments later, which gave Tandy an unwanted advantage. She closed her eyes to protect them and gave off a bright glow from her entire body, which was reflected through the glass, breaking it into different coloured lights that scored the ground and buildings, burning the blue coated woman's skin on contact. Nothing too severe, just enough to hurt her.

“Erin!” the man called, as the light simply reflected off his body. He shot forwards, throwing his fist outwards and hitting Tandy squarely in the face, knocking her to the floor.

“Ugh!” She hit the ground and flattened her body out, wiping some of the blood from her now split lip. He punched really hard.

“That's enough of that,” Cloak said, anger rippling through his voice, as he picked the pair of them up and flung them against the building. The both left little cracks in the brick work. Cloak was never particularly good at hiding his anger.

“Why are you trying to hurt us?!” he questioned, a tendril whipping out and slapping against the man's face as he tried to get to his feet, knocking him to the ground.

“Because you're trying to do us out, man. All we wanna do is feel good, and you're tapping the supply lines,” the man answered. A sincere answer if ever there was one, it just didn't make sense to the pair.

“Tapping out the supply lines?” Tandy asked, looking at the blood on the back of her hand as she pulled it away from her lip.

“Yeah! Why do you have to do that? We just want to have a good time, people're always trying to stop us from having a good time,” he went on. Tyrone simply shook his head.

“Drug users. I don't know what they're using, but they're certainly not in their right minds now.” He looked over at Tandy who nodded.

“They all talk the same as well. I don't know if it's supposed to be a cliché, or like an accent or something. It's slightly irritating.”

Ty nodded, as the woman said nothing. She locked her eyes on Ty's, and held his focus. His cloak began to open and he felt a stirring within his chest.

“Tandy...She's doing something to me...” He looked over his shoulder at her, panic on his features. The bobbed woman opened her coat, as the twisting tornado of shadow in her chest shot forwards, connecting her to Cloak. They both screamed in agony.

“LET HIM GO!” Tandy yelled, throwing her hands and two daggers of light into the pair. It had no effect. The woman was slowly starting to become covered in the shadow, creeping outwards like a march of a million tiny insects outwards from her chest.

Ty's eyes were wild as he fell backwards, the bridge between the two people keeping them connected. The woman with the coat seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, the darkness that her body had become was being slowly pulled through the whirlwind into Ty's body.

All over his form, tiny welts of Darkforce energy were beginning to form. Slowly growing larger and larger, moving across his body to the central point, forming a spire of Darkness that grew upwards, in a twisting spiral of flesh and piercing darkness.

“Tandy....it hurts!” Ty spat through gritted teeth, as the woman in the blue coat was absorbed completely into his form.

“Erin!” the man screamed, pulling himself to his feet, before sliding over again, unsteady and pale with concern and hurt.

“Tandy...I can't...It's going to...” His head rolled around limply on his neck and his mouth opened wide with silent agony. The spire in his chest grew higher and higher, before it exploded like a pimple with pressure on it. Darkforce shot out of the tip of the spire, spewing itself into the city, and across Cloak's body as the scream of agony shot through the alleyway.

Now

“Tandy...” Ty leaned unsteadily against the broken edge of the building. His pupiless eyes flickered in their sockets. It was dark, everywhere was perfectly pitch dark.

“Cloak?” Ty could barely see her. She aura was glowing, but she looked worried. Concerned. The Darkness that had been evaporated by her bursts of energy, and the burst of energy from the burnt out drug addict, had slowly crept back in. Neither of the pair could see anything.

“Ty, I don't like this,” Dagger said, in fear drenched hushed tones, “Everything's so dark. Can you see?”

Ty said nothing, as he glanced around. He could see everything. Things slithering around in the darkness, things clinging to walls and calling out in gutteral tones. Things that sung in the depth of the Darkness.

Something that people had never considered before, was how deep Darkness went. If light could be reflected and refracted and split into different spectrums, why not Darkness? The Spectrum was present before him, and it gave him nothing but feelings of fear.

Quickly the billows of his cloak wrapped around Daggers waist, pulling her towards his body to keep her close.

“This is very bad, Tandy,” Tyrone spoke softly into her ear, “There are all sorts of things around here. I can see them.”

He brushed against her hand with the end of his Cloak, and began to guide her forwards, moving towards the open street.

“How high does it go?” Tandy asked, looking upwards but seeing nothing before her.

“I don't know, but it feels as though it is a long way up. It feels as though it goes for a long way as well...but there is a definite barrier ahead,” Ty said, glancing around to try and catch a glimpse of something. He caught an armoured tail slinking over the edge of a building, but even his eyesight was limited. There was a much lower range of visibility when he looked through the darkness, three or four feet maybe. At a push. It filled him with terror as well—If he feared his innards so much, how could he not fear the city now it was covered in the stuff. He sighed to himself, and flinched as Tandy put her hand on his cheek.

“Hey, you okay?” she asked. Ty shook his head and looked down at his glowing friend.

“I am the cause of all of this, Tandy. It came from inside me.” He put a darkness filled hand against his forehead and bunched his eyes together.

“Ty, come on, you weren't to know what that girl was doing, any more than I knew what that guy was doing, you can't blame yourself.”

“I can, Tandy. This is my responsibility. I must do something about it, I must try and find a way to prevent people from being hurt.”

“You will, Ty, but we've got to try and understand what has happened. You can't change something without knowing about it first, or at least you can't do it very well,” Tandy replied, taking his hand into her own.

“I know, Tandy, but where do we start?” Ty asked, despair penetrating his voice.

“At the beginning, Ty. Lets see what we can find on the bodies of our attackers.”

Cloak guided Tandy back into the alleyway, as she turned up the light show. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead as she did, and Ty's pained expression grew even more agonising.

“Tandy, you don't have too...”

“I need to see too, Ty,” she replied, looking up at him.

He nodded and said nothing as she went through the pockets of the blue coat first, and then the clothes of the light manipulator. She found only a packet of tablets, multicoloured, even with one glowing brightly, seemingly in response to her, and a card with a telephone number crudely scribbled on it.

“What does it say?” Tandy asked, as she looked up at Ty.

“Spectrum, Tandy. It reads Spectrum.”

“Oh God,” she whispered to herself, feeling her way through the darkness. Joyce Saran walked through the pitched veil of what was now perpetual night in San Francisco, trying to find somewhere that gave off light, or somewhere she could seek refuge. Like thousands of residents of the city, she had been out shopping during the Darkness overspill. She had only nipped out to get some cat-food.

She clung to a lamppost and tried to control her breathing. She knew other people were around her, trying to do the same, but something had happened a few metres back there. Someone who was talking suddenly stopped, and the noises...

Horrible, bone crunched, skin rending noises.

She gulped loudly, and took another two steps forwards feeling the soft touch of a sports jacket in front of her. She let out a sigh and a gasp at the same time.

“I'm so sorry, sir, I didn't mean to stumble into you, I just...Can you not see either?” She looked up, to try and make out a face, and to her surprise, she could just about make out the form of the face. She smiled as the face bulged slightly, Joyce narrowing her eyes to try and make out features.

“Oh my God...What's wrong with your...MMMPHHGH!” The featureless glowing face shot from it's position within the sports jacket's collar, and hit Joyce on the face. She writhed around on the ground for a few minutes, the distended neck of the creature, nearly the entire length of the body, and faintly glowing, keeping her from sucking in any new air.

Slowly she went limp, and the neck retracted itself, a few inches at a time, pulling Joyce to her feet and then off her feet, pulling her into it's neck cavity. Joyce would never make it home to feed her Cats, she was instead, the source of food for something far more sinister, now wandering the dark streets of San Francisco.

NEXT: More Beasts, more Cloaks, more Daggers, and more Darkness!