my heart goes out to this guy who decided to play delta as his first metal gear game I don't know why you'd do that to yourself at this point I'd prefer it if you started with mgsv i hope whatever youre going through things get better soon
The metal of the bars bit into whumpee's hip and shoulder as he pressed against it. The stone floor was cold and unyielding, but here he could curl up for as long as he needed to against caretaker.
"What happened, are you ok?" Caretaker had asked, when whumpee entered the jail block.
"No," He wanted to say. "Nothing has been ok for a very long time."
"I'm not injured," He said instead. "I just need to sit with you for a bit."
Running across the ceiling would be faster. Henry scaled a bookcase, jumped, then flipped the orientation of his personal gravity and fell upward. He landed on the balls of his feet, found his footing, then ran across the empty expanse of the living room ceiling. He vaulted over the top of the door frame and sprinted through hallways, scaled the ceilings of stairwells, and dodged expensive lighting fixtures in the soulless, massive rooms of his father's house.
When all the furniture was hanging over his head, it was even easier to see just how hollow his father's lifestyle was. No one used all this space. No one sat in the furniture. No one got a moment's enjoyment out of the ugly, twisted modern art fixtures. It was all stage dressing for a pointless show that no one but General Tilney cared about. Henry was grateful he'd learned how to flip his perspective and escape his father's world.
At least, he told himself he'd escaped. Yet somehow, he always seemed to find himself falling back into Dad's orbit.
At last, he reached his father's study. Glancing upward, he saw light glowing beneath the door. He flipped his gravity back toward the ground, then reduced his weight to about a tenth of normal, so he fell gently and landed without a sound. Then he released himself back into the pull of normal Earth gravity and barged into his father's domain.
"Where's Catherine?" Henry demanded.
Dad sat in one of the leather chairs in front of the bookcase he never touched, a glass of whiskey in his hand. He sat up smoothly, unruffled by Henry's sudden entrance. "I sent her away more than an hour ago."
"What do you mean, sent her away?"
Dad set the glass of whiskey on the side table and snarled, "I told that conniving minx she was no longer welcome in my house, and if she wasn't gone within ten minutes, I'd call the police."
Eleanor had been right. Eleanor never lied, but just this once, Henry had held onto the hope that maybe their father wasn't quite as monstrous as he had seemed.
Anger was not a dominant part of Henry's nature, but here, now, he saw red. "What possible right did you have to do that?"
Dad's face hardened as he stood. "I have every right to throw out a criminal who entered my home under false pretenses."
Henry laughed, one loud, harsh bark, at the ridiculous idea of Catherine being a criminal. He'd never met anyone more guileless outside of an elementary school. "What pretense? You invited her!"
"On the understanding that she was a ward of the Northanger Allens and shared their superhuman abilities. But I recently learned she's nothing more than the ordinary human daughter of a dirt-poor provincial science teacher."
Henry was so enraged that he wanted to spit. Dad and his obsession with dynasty. Everyone in the world evaluated by his own stupid standards. They had to have the right amount of money, earned in the right industries. Had to come from the right superhuman families, with the right kinds of abilities. Henry had been shocked that Dad had bent his rules far enough to let Catherine come as an honored guest, but now it all made sense. As much as Dad ever made sense.
"So you threw her out because you believed the wrong rumors? At least tell me you gave her a ride back home."
"Why should I? That child has made enough demands on my hospitality."
Henry's jaw fell. He hadn't adjusted gravity, but he felt twice as heavy as normal. This was worse than he'd expected, even from Dad. For perhaps the first time in his life, he had no words.
But he found them. "You're telling me," he said, his voice low, "that you sent Catherine out into the city, alone, at night, when half the lowlifes in Northanger know she's connected to the Allens?"
Dad stepped around the chair and faced Henry, his weight centered, his shoulders thrown back. Dad typically kept his gravity at nearly twice Earth normal, and it made him dense, muscular, powerful. He looked like an immovable force of nature. "I did," Dad said simply. "Do you disapprove?"
That was bait, but Henry couldn't avoid taking it. "Of course I disapprove!" he shouted, gesturing wildly. "She could be mugged. Kidnapped. She could be bleeding in an alley or tied up by some superhuman scum who wants a ransom, and it's your fault."
Dad scoffed. "This isn't Pemberley. People walk the streets every day without being harassed by criminals."
Henry hoped he was right. He hoped with everything he was that for once his father was right. But somewhere deep inside, in that cynical part of him that the world kept well-stocked with pessimism, he knew that Catherine was in danger.
He whipped his phone out of his pocket. Catherine was too sheltered even to carry a cell phone, but maybe her roommate could tell him if she had made it home safely.
His phone buzzed before he could make the call. A text from Eleanor. A video link Eleanor had captioned Catherine.
The link brought up a shaky cell phone video, taken and uploaded only minutes before, showing a college-aged girl being ambushed by two superhumans. One of the superhumans incapacitated the girl with a blast of soundwaves. The girl wore Catherine's one-of-a-kind pink jacket.
Henry's fist clenched around his phone. Thorpe. The brother and sister had been trying to break into the upper echelons of Northanger's superhuman community for years, but Henry knew how little that world tolerated outsiders. Apparently, they'd given up on normal means of rising up in the world and had decided to go straight for ransom. The two weren't bright, but they were utterly self-serving. They wouldn't hesitate to hurt Catherine if it amused them.
Henry pointed the screen toward his father, an accusation and a condemnation. "She's been captured," he said and sprinted toward the door.
His body grew heavier with each step, and he was dragging his feet before he was halfway to the door. Suddenly, he found himself rooted to the floor.
Dad, who hadn't moved, glowered at him. "Where do you think you're going?"
Henry pulled with all his strength, but only managed to move his foot a single inch. "Dad, please," he begged. "I have to help her."
"Like some inane 'superhero'?" Dad sneered. "Maybe they do that in Netherfield, but in Northanger, we don't brawl with our own kind in the streets."
Henry strained to move his foot another fraction of an inch. "She's in danger. I can help."
"You can't do anything. You're a shiftless coward who never found a fight he couldn't run from."
If Dad was going to use this as another opportunity to berate him for his refusal to join the military, so help him...
Henry gritted his teeth. "Let. Me. Go!"
"I will not let you disgrace our family's good name by running into battle with some upstart no-name superhumans."
Henry, exhausted by his efforts, struggled for breath. He closed his eyes and focused on the pull of the Earth's gravity, which was aided by his father's power. He had never been able to overcome Dad, but maybe if he reduced the Earth's pull on him, just a little...
His weight decreased, and he found himself able to move. One step. Two.
In the blink of an eye, Henry crashed to the floor, crushed by an oppressive gravitational force that left him flat on his back.
Dad loomed over him, his eyes cold and empty. "So you want to do this the hard way."
Henry almost wanted to laugh--a touch of desperate gallows humor. Catherine had been right after all. Her imagination, primed by sensationalist superhero stories coming out of Netherfield, had convinced her that Dad's shifty behavior meant he was concealing a supervillain's lair somewhere in the house. Henry, when he figured it out, had found it more amusing than anything, and quickly set her straight. Yet she had seen the truth more clearly than he had. Maybe Dad wasn't a murderer. Maybe he didn't rob banks or construct death rays. But he was still a villain, and always had been.
Henry knew it was useless to fight. Dad hadn't done this in years, but only because Henry had made an artform of avoiding these confrontations. He had learned how to laugh off an insult, how to dance around unpleasant truths. He knew to tiptoe around his father's temper and avoided this house whenever he could. He had learned to dodge, dart, and downplay, because that was the only way to win. Henry could play merry havoc with the Earth's gravity, but when up against his father's will, Henry was always, inevitably, crushed.
That was the way the world worked. There was nothing he could do about it. There was no such thing as a selfless superhero, rushing to save the innocent. There were only people, made cruel by power, throwing their weight around to bend the world to their will, and they always, eventually, won.
Yet Catherine didn't believe that. And Henry was learning that Catherine, in her sheltered, innocent way, had strange habit of being right.
She believed in goodness. She had believed in him. He couldn't fail her when it mattered most.
Henry strained against the force of gravity. He tried to decrease the Earth's hold. His father only increased the pressure upon him. Soon, Henry was gasping for what shallow breaths he could manage. He was pressed so forcefully to the ground that his head tilted backward. His father, looming over him, appeared to be hanging from the ceiling.
Henry smirked as the solution struck him. It was so absurdly simple. All he needed was a change in perspective.
He gave up on trying to free himself and instead turned his abilities toward his father. He felt the gravity around his father's form--so much heavier than Earth's normal--and shifted its orientation a full one-hundred and eighty degrees.
General Tilney fell to the ceiling with a crash that broke the plaster. Stunned and injured, his concentration shattered, and his hold over Henry dissolved.
Henry leapt to his feet and bounded toward the window, then jumped through it and floated gently down to the street, laughing aloud. He felt light as a feather, and it wasn't just because he'd made himself nearly weightless. He had, metaphorically and physically, thrown off the weight of the world, of an entire lifetime under his father's power.
He had an idea of where Thorpe and his sister would take Catherine. He glanced around, got his bearings, and leapt over the house in a single bound.
Catherine made no secret of her love of superheroes. Henry hoped he could live up to her expectations.
