Refractions (Worm Colab Dual SI)

This is both simultaneously super late, due to life kicking both Santo and I's ass, and a little early since we typically post on Fridays. But since we're approaching a holiday, that's the break.

Little bit of reflection from Gallant, before we really hit the gas.

–

Derail 3.3

I had fucked up. The worst part about this particular fuck up had been that it worked out for the best.

"Hey, Kid Win, how come your armor's different?" Asked a man holding a child's hand.

Chris turned his head slowly, his new helmet's numerous cameras clicking, whirring, and clacking, when he spoke, his voice was an off-puttingly organic mechanical growl. [From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me.]

"Wait, did he clear this new schtick with HR? Browbeat asked nervously.

"Who cares? See the look on the kid's face." Clock said aside in his normal voice, and, indeed, the look on the face of the man's son was wide eyed and his eyes were all but sparkling as Ch-Kid Win went on.

Somewhere between his starting that spiel and my looking away, his armor had gained an extra arm, whirring and wiggly bits, and had several winking lights. I couldn't be certain if those were purely decorative or not, and Kid Win would absolutely not give a straight answer.

[-will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved. For the Machine is immortal.] He whirled around and power walked away, his armor emitting a deep, familiar sounding blast of noise. With the extra arm and the whirring glowing camera bits on his new helmet, he looked like an alien.

"HR is going to kill you." Clock said, forced cheer in his voice and judging by his Aura, ready for Kid to lash out at him.

"Meh," Kid Win said, his voice sounding completely normal, "maybe my direct handler will try, but the toys division have been salivating around me lately. Makes me fear for my chastity."

Clock laughed, the knot of anxiety in his Aura slowly loosening, playful yellow seeping in as Kid Win bantered back without viciously insulting him.

For all intents and purposes, my little discussion with Kid Win had worked out for the best.

Everyone else saw me walk into his lab and once I walked out, Kid Win had changed his tune.

He stopped verbally lashing out at everyone and was even able to enter a conversation without insulting everyone's intelligence.

Sure, he was still a pain in the ass, but he was a tolerable pain in the ass now.

So, I had received a good job from the team and everyone, for the most part, moved on.

I was still waiting for someone to cuff me for blatantly using my powers on Chris so liberally.

There had to be a recording somewhere. Chris had shot me, with a stun round sure, but that still should have caused some sort of investigation.

But despite my paranoia, no Sword of Damocles appeared, for either of us.

"Don't you think you should cut back a bit on the whole crazy robot thing?" Browbeat asked quietly. "Some people might get scared."

"Nah, the nerds are eating it all up. And since I'm a nerd, those are the only ones whose opinion I care about."

"Piggot is going to kill you." Dennis threw in his two cents in a singsong voice.

"She should be thanking me. Apparently sales of my action figures have quadrupled."

"Really?"

"Yeah, something about trying to get the 'classic' look before the range gets updated, I think. People are weird about toys."

No, instead of coming down on us with the hammer of god, the higher ups apparently listened to Vista's reasonable request and started to send us back out. Not for a patrol or anything useful, but we were allowed to do some PR runs in predetermined safe zones.

I did my best to act like the charming and Gallant hero, but if I was being perfectly honest, I couldn't really manage it. I let Kid Win's new buoyant mood take up everyone's attention and settled into the background to stew.

I watched the mischief dance around him, hovering over the undercurrent of annoyance at the idea of wasting time with what he called "useless pandering to the masses." My stomach roiled at the colors.

On one hand, it was a relief to see the kaleidoscope of colors around him, there was still a thin underlayer of blood red rage, but subdued, controlled, even leashed and harnessed. Proof that he was full of life and vigor. On the other hand…

My brain decided to overlay the black void of despair blossoming within Kid Win like some perverse, rotting flower, until it blotted him out completely, and I had to look away before I threw up in my helmet.

Fuck.

"You know, Piggot's going to lecture you if you spend the entire patrol brooding."

I looked down. Standing in front of me with her hands on her hips and trying to look unimpressed by my brooding, Vista scolded me. The corner of my lips tilted up just for a bit. She was trying so hard to look mature and steadfast, but I could see the worry swirling around her.

"Hey, Vista. I'm just letting Kid Win give some much needed fan service."

Sadly, my deflection did nothing but annoy Vista.

"Right, and that's why you're over here sulking rather than making sure he doesn't make an ass of himself, again."

I snorted. I probably should be next to him. Just because Chris was now civil didn't mean that he didn't occasionally still piss people off with a flippant comment. It just meant that the person typically deserved it now. So, yeah, I should probably be next to him and step in if a civilian or reporter aggravated him.

But it was hard to watch over someone when looking at them made you physically ill from guilt.

"Hey!" Vista snapped a finger in front of my face. "I just said, stop it with the pity party."

"I'm not having a pity party." I retorted. It wasn't a pity party or sulking. It was brooding. If I tell myself that enough times, maybe I'll believe it.

"Really? Because it looks like a pretty pitiful party."

Despite my sour mood, that did get a snort of amusement out of me.

"Thanks. But I'm having plenty of fun in my pitiful party, then." I waved her off. "It's an off day, I'll be fine tomorrow."

"Sure. That's what you said during training yesterday and the Wards meeting the day before that." Vista scoffed. "Sitting around and staring at Chris like he shot your puppy isn't going to solve anything."

I wasn't sure if Vista was simply more perspective than I gave her credit for, or if she was watching me that closely due to her crush. Either way, I was actually pretty annoyed that I couldn't simply lie my way out of this one.

"Yeah, well, I think I'd handle it better if he had shot my puppy. At least then I wouldn't be blaming myself so much."

"Seriously, what happened between the two of you?"

"Do you remember your previous family?"

I winced as the memory replayed itself clearly in my head. I hadn't sounded that cruel, had I?

"I… said some things I regret." I said, "It wasn't my proudest moment. We came to blows and well, I think I knocked something loose."

It was a gross simplification of the event, but not necessarily a lie.

"I mean, okay." Vista sighed. "I get it, you have that hero complex going, but… it worked out, didn't it?"

She didn't understand. And a part of me wanted to grab her and shake her. To yell at her about how badly I had fucked up. How I had abused my powers to pressure Chris into a breakdown, not because I was trying to fix his attitude, but because I wanted to knock him down a peg. Because I was feeling vindictive.

I had to be the smartest one in the room and I'd hurt anyone to prove that.

In that moment, I wasn't any better than Tattletale. After all, didn't she give me a panic attack just because I insulted her intelligence?

Fuck.

"Yeah. It worked out fine." I laughed and hoped that none of the bitterness I felt showed.

"Well come on. Without Kid Win taking all the flak for being an asshole, Piggot will yell at you if you don't wave the flag enough or whatever." Vista gripped.

I agreed and followed Vista over to the crowd. I put on my public face and thanked whatever god existed out there that my costume had a helmet, because I couldn't put up the effort to smile. I didn't exactly feel very heroic at the moment.

After we had signed enough autographs and took enough pictures to blind a man, we were ushered away. I trailed after the group, not really excited about being in a van with a bunch of teenagers in my poor mood.

"Hey." A heavy hand clasped my shoulder and startled me out of my thoughts. "You okay?"

Aegis looked down at me in concern. He must have doubled back to check up on me. Part of his last minute push to really step up as a leader in the final days of his term. I would be cheering him on in any other situation, but at the moment, it just pissed me off.

"Yeah. I'm fine." I brushed his hand off.

"Really? Because I don't know if you noticed, but everyone's been pretty worried about you." He paused, and I saw the streak of vindictive yellow win out. "Except for Kid Win."

"Well, he would be in the right. I'm not exactly worth the concern at the moment."

"Dude. I don't know what the hell you did, but it couldn't have been that bad." Aegis said, disbelief filling his being. "I know you hold yourself to a high standard, but you have to admit that Kid Win probably deserved whatever you did."

"Yeah. The ends justify the means." I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster.

Aegis actually paused, taken back by the bitterness in my words. I could see him mull over something for a few moments as he gathered his resolve. He squared his shoulders and stood up straighter as if to project maturity.

"I mean, sometimes. Yes. We're heroes and that means sometimes we need to make the hard choices."

I stared at him. He tried so hard to sound mature and leader-like. It wasn't even a bad line, either.

Too bad I was about to shit all over his attempt.

"Huh, you know. You and Kid Win are more alike than you think." My hand paused halfway up to his shoulder, before falling back down.

Instead, I left Aegis to sputter and rage at those words. I sat down in the van and settled in, half paying attention to the chattering and contributing just enough to pass muster. My actual thoughts were a mile away.

The ends justify the means, huh? The words and intent weren't wrong. I knew that. But still. Just because those words were correct, didn't mean they were right.

I believed that. I had to believe that. That belief was the only thing keeping me from sliding down a slippery slope. If no one was going to hold me responsible, then I just had to take up that responsibility too.

—

"So, you've been just… sneaking crap out of your lab into your garage?" I stared at the piles of half finished Tinkertech that littered Chris' garage. At first glance it looked pretty chaotic, but I could see some semblance of organization, even if I had no idea how to read it.

"Sneaking is a strong word. I prefer…uhhh…fuck it. Yeah, I've been sneaking things into my lab to work on them and then sneaking that out of my lab and into my garage."

"Huh. Man, Protectorate security is… inconsistent, huh?" I knew that Chris was paranoid as hell and probably took a lot of precautions, but that still sounded way too easy to me.

"I'd call it as secure as a bucket full of holes, myself." He said, typing away at something on a laptop that looked like a rats nest of wires. "It was embarrassingly easy. Honestly, I've got a full report written that details out plenty of security holes that could be plugged up and how to go about it." He looked over his shoulder at me. "Before you ask. No. I'm not requesting they plug those holes until I'm done sneaking crap out of my lab."

"Sure." I could see the hint of worry in Chris' aura, so I refrained from asking him if that felt too convenient to him too. "So, then I have got to ask. What's the plan for finding Bakuda?"

Chris stopped typing to stare pointedly at me. "I thought you had the plan."

"Plan is a… strong word." I winced at the burning glare that Chris shot at me.

"Back to plan A then." He sighed and went back to typing. "Assault ABB goons, get them to tell me who their boss is, work my way up the chain until something rattles loose. It's time consuming and risky, but it'll work."

"That sounds dumb as hell."

"I'm open to suggestions."

"Okay, so… how about we don't just attack people at random and target ABB members that actually look like they're leaders. Gangs have a hierarchy, right? I doubt Bakuda is telling the grunts or bomb holders anything important."

"I don't know who the lieutenants are or where they are, and they're not dumb enough to wear a nametag. And about the only thing the grunts and bomb chipped know is who they answer to. Hence, yanking on the chain."

"So our current plan is to beat up enough grunts until they send in the elites and hope that leads us to the boss fight." I summarized, putting as much disdain into my voice at the crappy plan.

"A bit more nuanced than that, but in essence, yes." He flicked his hand and his pistol appeared on the table with a flash of light. "Remember when I shot you with that?"

"I mean, I remember you pointing at me and then waking up on the ground, yeah."

"Any pain? Nausea? Erectile dysfunction? Sweats?"

"No. I mean, my mouth was a little dry, but I think that was the regret and panic setting in." I tilted my head to recall the minute details of the moment before my head snapped down. "Wait, did you shoot me with untested, unapproved ammo?!"

"Nah. I tested it quite thoroughly." Chris said, waving his hand. "That's what I'll use to 'beat up the ABB'. They'll take a short nap, wake up tied up, and I'll have as close to a civil discussion as I can. And let them know I plan to hang Bakuda up by her entrails and save their collective lives. No muss, no fuss, then they'll tell me what they know and I'll move on from there."

I opened my mouth to begin pointing out every single thing wrong with that plan before I paused. No, I don't need to lord over him about how dumb that plan sounds. Better to just nip that in the bud right now and move on.

"Maybe I should do the talking."

"Probably for the best, one little slap of the good ol' despair juice and they'll spill their guts to make you stop." He smirked at me. "I can tell you that from experience."

He turned back to whatever he was doing, missing my scowl as I tasted bile for a moment and had to swallow to keep it down. That black flower of despair flashed over Chris for a moment and I had to look away. Thankfully, he was too busy Tinkering to notice my slip up.

"Not exactly what I was thinking of, but close enough. Let's leave the manipulation to the Master and I'll leave the combat to the Tinkerer, alright?"

"Fine by me. I'm a misanthrope at heart."

God, wasn't that the truth. I stood up and stretched to get some feeling back into my limbs before turning to Chris.

"Alright, so then our next step is to… just wait around at night until we find some ABB guys?"

"Yep." Chris popped the 'P' in that word.

"I'll go buy a ton of canned coffee."

Chris looked up. "And sunflower seeds."

"Why sunflower seeds?"

"Cause I hate coffee."

I did too. This was going to be a looong stake out.

Hey, sorry about the delay. Life kicked Hero and I in the dick pretty hard last week, and the two of us legit just forgot about this story.

Our bad.

But consolation prize, next chapter! 8D

---

Derail III.IV

Sacred hell, how does Peter Parker manage this crap?

As it turns out, moonlighting as a vigilante was goddamn exhausting. Dean and I have been running around Brockton Bay for the last five nights. It would have taken longer for us to get started if I hadn't been working on a set of vigilante gear for the last few weeks.

Thank god that I already had a reputation for sleeping in class. But hey, my grades were good, so all I got was a slap on the wrist.

The hardest part of the process had been using the specialty tools in my lab without Hal-beard-ier catching me.

For once, his apathy towards the Wards worked in my favor.

Dean's own gear had taken a single day to put together. Sure, it wasn't nearly as awesome as mine, but I didn't have time to give him something better than rocket boots, and shin and arm guards with Tinker Tech bits in them. Though I am now deprived of my rocket boots, it was a fair trade for a half competent meat shield.

I had a far more awesome set of gear for him in the pipeline. If I weren't running around at night, using up all the time I would otherwise spend working on it, running around stalking and beating up Asian people, I could finish it in a week or two.

Wait. That sounded racist.

In fact, that sounded extremely racist.

"Dude, are we the racists?" I tossed over my shoulder.

"Wha?" Dean snapped out of the micro-nap he had fallen in and looked askance at me.

"You know, we've spent the last week stalking and beating up Asian people with relatively little justification and no little gusto." I brought a hand up and moved my finger in a circle. "I gotta be careful about that, we live in the Neo-Nazi capital of the US. I'm kinda worried here, maybe I'm turning into a racist? I don't wanna be stupid."

Dean stared at me. I couldn't really see much of his face because of the stupid medical mask he insisted on wearing, but I think he was looking at me like I was stupid. Oh god, it's already begun!

"Okay, I'm pretty sure that's the lack of sleep talking, but just in case it's not. The only people we've beaten up are gang members who are serving a Supervillian terrorist. They just happen to be Asian. We're not racists."

That sounded both right, and too good to be true.

"You sure? I don't wanna wake up tomorrow and start thinking the Empire has a point. I'm not entirely certain why, but I don't think I'll be able to live with myself."

"I'm sure." For some reason, I believed him. Good. That was that worry taken care of.

I turned back to the building I'd been staking out while Dean napped. The lenses of my faceplate whirred and the entryway jumped forward in my sight. I clicked through the different vision modes, eventually seeing five glowing humanoid figures making their way to the door. Adrenaline spiked through me and banished the cobwebs in my brain.

"Alright, we have five coming out. Two of these five don't have bomb chips. Which probably makes them important. I'd mark them in your HUD but…that's not happening yet." I clicked through a few more vision modes. "They're the ones armed with rusty revolvers, the others look to be armed with mall-katanas, but sharpened. Seriously, just bring a fuckin' machete, they are cheap at Wallmart."

We remained lying on the ground at the edge of the building. We had learned the hard way that the only thing that standing at the edge of a building got done, was silhouette you against the light-polluted sky.

The two gangsters and three possible conscripts exited the building and started walking down the street. The five looked friendly enough, for gangsters. They spoke quickly in a language I didn't recognize, but it did not sound like Japanese or Mandarin.

We followed along behind them, silently hopping from roof to roof until we judged them to be at a suitably isolated location.

"Okay, here's the plan." I said, leaning close so I could mutter into Dean's ear. "I'll lay down suppressive fire, that should get them to keep their heads down, hopefully I'll tag a few of them. While I do that, you flank them from the side and push them out of cover. After that it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel."

Now that I thought of it, why would someone shoot fish in a barrel? They're already caught. That's just a waste of perfectly good bullets.

"Alright, let's go." Dean's voice brought me back to the present as he double checked his Tinkertech gear. "On your mark."

I aimed my modified AR-15 at the gangsters. "Three, two, one, mark!" I said and I emptied half the battery in the rough direction of the ABB goons, tagging who I thought was the leader and one of the conscripts, the other three reacted fast enough to dive for cover.

They shouted something as their comrades fell bonelessly to the ground, but I couldn't hear it over the roar of the rocket boots that went off right next to me. There was a red blur of motion as Dean leapt into action. He had taken a few days to get used to the new equipment, but he had gotten the hang of them quickly enough, at least he only ran into a wall one of ten times now.

He landed and, with a quick shove, tossed one of the gang members into the open, who I immediately tagged with a stun round.

Ambush successful, the remaining goons began screaming at each other in fear. Sadly, they had just enough sense to dive under cover before I could tag any more of them.

"Drive them out of cover!" I shouted while I kept up the barrage to keep their heads down. Dean took advantage of the suppressive fire to dash at the closest gang member before leaping into the air with a rocket assisted jump.

The ABB members had just enough time to lift his mall-Katana up to guard his head before an armored boot shattered it. The man panicked now that his weapon was gone, but I couldn't get a clear shot with the both of them so close together.

Dean struggled against the gang member. It was surprisingly hard to knock someone out quickly without doing permanent damage to them. Movies always made that look so much easier.

There was more yelling, this time from Dean, but again, rocket boots are loud. Note to self, build sound dampeners.

I activated my anti-grav belt and jumped, trying to get a better shot at the guy Dean was fighting, and saw the last remaining gang member with a gun crawling along, trying to get a shot at Dean's back. I put a stun round into him, then landed on the roof behind the guy Dean was fighting and put a round into his back.

Dean looked up and probably said something, but my ears were still ringing from the rocket boots so I just nodded. I jumped down, feathering my anti-grav to soften my landing, and we set about zip-tying the gang members' arms together.

By the time we finished zip-tying the gangsters, the first one that got shot came around.

"You know." I said, changing the battery on the rifle once my ears stopped ringing. "You could just use your powers. You don't have to stick to hand to hand."

"I can't exactly turn off the emotional aspects." Dean sighed. "I'm pretty sure it's a dead giveaway when one of the gang members feels super happy or super angry after getting shot by a big colorful blast."

"You ever try hitting someone with 'meh'?" I asked as I dragged the ABB gangsters and manhandled them into a rough line. "Would that translate as close to pure kinetic damage?"

"Surprisingly, feeling nonchalance in the middle of combat is also noticeable."

"Touche." I said, and turned to the ABB goons who were finishing up on coming around. Dean looked at them for a moment before sighing.

"So… bad cape, emotionally manipulative cape?" He asked. I nodded, and turned to the gangsters.

[Alright,] I said, my helmet modulating my voice into an intimidating mechanical growl, [I've already heard all about the Dragon this and the Dragon that. We can skip past that bit. So here is how it's gonna go. I don't want a crazy bomb bitch in my city, you don't want a crazy bomb bitch putting bombs in your grandma. We can help each other.]

I'm pretty sure the words the guy spat at me were slurs. Rude.

I shot a stun round next to his pelvis, the pavement cracked. [Well would you look at that.] I said. [My helmet calibration must have been off, if you start speaking English and are helpful, I might forget to fix it the next time I am forced to pull the trigger.]

Beads of sweat began to visibly run down his face.

"Hey, hey, Gun Guy, we talk." The other ABB member spoke up with an accent, but sadly, he was cut off.

The guy I had threatened began what I can only assume was a semi-patriotic tirade, thankfully, Dean gripped his shoulder and whispered something into his ear. By the burst of exotic particles that my sensors picked up, he had used an emotion blast.

The guy shut up and started weeping. The other ABB guys looked particularly uncomfortable because of this.

I walked over to the guy that cracked while Dean started on the crybaby. I knelt next to him and clicked the theatrics off.

"Alright," I said with a nod, "I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I give you my word, Bakuda will go down, hard. I just need to know where I can run into her. The sooner we're safe from that bitch, the sooner we can go back to relative safety."

"She has deadman switch." He said, his accent almost too thick for me to understand. "The Dragon won't stop her. More people have bombs implanted each day."

I tilted my head in the direction of the two unchipped gangsters. "So, why don't they have bombs in them?"

"They lucky. Bakuda only has time for so many. But she got family members."

I nodded. "Alright. I can do something about the deadman switch. But where can I find the bitch?"

He looked stricken for a few moments, before another of the gangsters spoke up. "One of the Hyung talked while drunk. The Dragon is calling a meeting at Warehouse in three nights. He'll be there." He gave me the address.

I nodded. "Good enough. I'mma cut you loose, if you reach for those swords, I will get violent."

I cut him and his friend out of the restraints and turned to see how Dean was doing.

Two of the gangsters were hugging a visibly uncomfortable Dean while weeping into his chest. The last one was kneeling on the ground and apologizing softly to his parents. My helmet detected a large amount of exotic particles in all three of them.

Damn, his power is more insidious than I thought.

I took the opportunity to take the two rusty guns, unloaded the cylinders and tossed them into my backpack.

"Okay. Thanks for the info. We've held you lot up long enough." I said, nodding at the helpful gangsters. "Go on with your night, keep your heads down. Here is some aspirin for the bumps. If you have cold sweats, a fever, or an erection lasting longer than four hours, go to a hospital. It's exceedingly rare for an organism to react like that to the stun blast energy, it hasn't happened on a human yet, but one out of one hundred rats…had issues."

They nodded solemnly and looked surprisingly touched by my warning.

"Wait," Dean stopped his awkward reassurance of the gangsters and shot me a startled look. "I thought you said those things were safe?!"

"I did test it quite thoroughly. On rats. 99 out of a 100 is the definition of safe."

"Your sample size is small and you should feel bad." Dean deadpanned before turning to the gangsters and impressed on them the importance of taking my warning seriously. He was immediately caught up in another hug from the overly emotional gangsters.

I could see Dean recovering from the hug and was about to give some dumb inspirational speech, but he paused mid motion.

A moment later I felt the familiar cold hand of panic grip my guts and give them a tug.

I turned around, reflexively teleporting the necessary components in my weapon so that it shot actual bullets and aimed the barrel straight at Glory Girl, who had cracked the fucking pavement as she did an utterly moronic three-point landing.

Her 'fear me' field was on full blast, I took that fear and did my best to turn it into something far more useful, like rage at her daring to violate my mind with such impudence. The LIDAR widget at the corner of my HUD informed me that the gangsters were cowering behind Dean and I.

Not that I could blame them. The skinny, preppy, tiara-wearing, cape fluttering, miniskirt-swishing, dumb-blonde white girl could pick up a truck and tear it in two. She was actually pretty damn terrifying.

"So," she said, a bloodthirsty grin splitting her face, "the two of you are new ABB capes. Amy owes me five bucks."

If I denied being Asian…does that make me racist? Eh, fuck it. "We're not ABB, blondie. Now kindly fuck off."

Super Barbie decidedly did not fuck off and only amped up the 'fear me' aura a notch higher. My finger twitched on the trigger and it took an effort of will not to start firing.

"Right, I'm suuuuure you're not lying." She floated forward with a cocky grin on her face and popped her knuckles. "That's why you're just all hunky dory with the gangsters responsible for half the city being a warzone. Try the other one, it has bells on it."

The foreign fear pulsed higher, I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted salt and copper, and brought the rifle to her centermass. "Bitch, you're on the fuck around phase of finding out. Leave and I won't be forced to give you a belly full o' lead."

Her eyes narrowed into a glare, her mouth working as if she were chewing on something that tasted particularly foul.

As my head pounded and every part of my mind screamed at me to end the threat, I spared a thought to wonder why Dean was not stepping in to de-escalate the situation. Her injudicious use of the fear juice made me very much the not good option for talking to the bitch.

Glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, I couldn't see his eyes past his sunglasses in the dark, but he had turned his head just enough to at least have me in his peripheral vision. I tilted my head slightly at him in a wordless question.

He tapped his throat. He then moved the hand downward repeatedly.

Crap, if he talks, Vicky will recognize his voice. Double crap, his voice modulator is part of his helmet, that helmet is currently a load of components and a few drawings in my notebook. Crap baskets, this means I'm going to have to take point in negotiating the dumbass blond down after I've already antagonized her.

Well, this can't possibly get that much worse.

Still, might as well get the collateral out of the way. I activated my backward facing speakers. "You lot, get out of here. Remember, keep quiet, keep your heads down."

The ABB gangsters were smart enough to turn tail and choose the better part of valor. Good, now that we didn't have to worry about them we just mi-

"Get her Hyung!" One of the ABB guys that had hugged Dean yelled out before continuing his run.

Vicky's predatory grin came back with a vengeance. "So, you're Hyung and I'm going to call the guy with the big gun Artillery. You were ABB capes after all. Come on, he's even wearing ABB colors!"

That's a terrible name. No way it'll catch on. Magus is much better.

"He is not weari–" I began, and stopped, "Wait…" I looked at Dean out of the corner of my eye. He normally wore his bright red hoodie and designer jeans. Today, however, he had altered his costume to a bright red hoodie and jungle camo pants. Red and green. ABB colors. "Well shit."

"Now, we can-" Glory Girl cut herself off and flung something at me. I felt like a boxer punched me in the cheek, the impact throwing my head back and making me take a few steps back. My HUD warned me that my helmet's integrity was compromised. The shrill alarm was drowned out by the roar of Dean's rocket boots.

Glory Hole flinched at the sudden sound and had to retreat as Dean buzzed around her like a hornet. He kept just out of her reach any time she threw a punch. The two of them danced around each other, giving me just enough time to shake off the headshot.

I teleported the damaged plate, swapping it out for a new one as I barely had the presence of mind to switch the components of the gun back to stun configuration and moved to pincer the blonde bitch between us. Dean did a dive kick, but Vicky flew sideways and dodged it by a hair's breadth, incidentally running into the stun bolt I put into her evasion vector more by serendipity than design.

Good news, I'm fairly certain her shield popped like a soap bubble.

Bad news, she immediately flew back, dodging the three other shots I sent her way and took cover.

Crap, while her cover would do fuck all against a bullet, it was more than enough to dissipate the stun shot.

If I put a few holes in her, Amy will fix them, right?

My next thought of potential maiming was cut off by the roar of rocket boots, a red blur and the rough impact of an arm going way too fast grabbing me and flying away.

Dean had taken Wonder Blonde's retreat as an opportunity to flee. On one hand, this was probably for the best, on the other hand, fuck Wonder Blonde and her stupid tiara.

Rather than waste time fighting the grip or feeling indignant, I activated my anti-grav and emptied my gun's battery in Battle Blonde's general direction, trying to keep her suppressed. I was fairly certain I nailed her between the eyes when she came flying out from behind her cover. Unfortunately, it did jack shit as her barrier tanked the hit.

This was a lot harder than I thought it would be. She could fly very quickly and could turn on a dime. It turns out, movies lied to me. Shooting a moving Superman is a lot harder when they take the time to dodge.

Dean pulsed another blast of his rocket boots, further fucking with my aim. Note to self, make an AA-version of my stun rifle, the semi-auto is proving to be utterly inadequate for dealing with flying Brutes.

Bottle Blonde went down. Weird, I could have sworn I didn't tag her twice in a row.

Wait. No, she's still moving, looks to be rummaging about for…

Oh.

Oh no!

Whoops. Would you believe me if I said that I thought that this week's chapter was a Santo chapter?

This was done a while ago and I completely forgot to post it. I am not doing a good job of keeping up with our scheduled Friday releases.

My bad.

---

Derail 3.5

I bolted down the street.

The heat from the jet boots was starting to reach painful levels, but I didn't dare to ease up on the speed. If there were any cars on the street, I would have eclipsed them easily.

I knew it wasn't fast enough.

"She can fly!" Chris screamed into my ear.

Yes, I was aware. Glory Girl could not only fly, she could fly fast.

In hindsight, running was a dumb choice, but it was better than fighting. Glory Girl was Brockton Bay's Alexandria lite. A gun and a pair of rocket boots wasn't going to dent her, let alone knock her out.

"Why the fuck can she turn on the dime!? Stop fucking dodging!" I heard over the rapid cracks of Chris attempting to shoot down Glory Girl. Not that it would help since her barrier would stop any stun bullet even if he did hit her.

"There's got to be somewhere I can lose her." I wheezed as I hopped a crossing and weaved past one of the few cars still moving around the sleeping city. "Chris, do you have a map or somethin-"

"Dumpsterdumpsterdumpster!" Chris screamed and violently slapped at my back. I flinched and barely managed to recover my gait and slid to a rough stop instead of wiping out on the asphalt.

"Dude, what the he-ell!?"

My voice quickly turned from stern into a squeak of terror as I saw the large metal cylinder slam into the ground right ahead of me, carving a furrow in the pavement. If I hadn't slowed down due to Chris, that would have probably been where I was running.

What the fuck? Was that a trash can?

That would have crushed me. If it hadn't killed me instantly, it would have pulverized my organs and turned me into chunky salsa. I would have died.

Vicky had almost killed me. Why did she almost kill me? Did she think I was a Brute? No, I've only moved fast due to the rocket boots. She had no way of knowing whether I was durable enough to survive that.

Holy shit.

Did she just use this much force when patrolling? I knew she had a problem, but how the hell has she not killed anyone yet? How-

"-nap out of it already!" The screaming in my ear, along with the loud 'Crack! Crack! Crack!' knocked me out of my shock.

Oh right, Chris was here. When did he get out of my arms?

Oh god, Vicky almost killed Chris too.

Vicky, no, Glory Girl was approaching us to hit us with the full brunt of her Brute strength despite the fact that we were squishy non-Brutes.

Shit.

I thought all we were risking were some bruises and maybe a broken bone. I was supposed to be worried about Oni Lee or Lung killing me, not Glory Girl squashing me by accident.

This has gotten out of hand and fast.

Keeping our identities a secret would be nice and I'm sure that Chris would violently object, but I wasn't going to risk getting my insides turned into mush on that.

Vicky would probably be mad as hell at me playing vigilante, but I could probably convince her to keep it a secret. Probably.

I looked over at Chris and was about to tell him to stand down when a white and gold blur punched past me and hit him like a car going down the freeway.

I stared blankly at Chris' prone body and tried to convince myself that he was fine. His body was twitching because he was alive and his spine wasn't broken from getting hit by a flying brick at high speeds. That wasn't his armor shorting out and the servos just misfiring, it was twitching.

His armor protected him. He's fine. I thought in blind hope as I stared at him, trying to will him to rise up through sheer belief.

Unfortunately, he remained stubbornly still.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

Glory Girl wasn't going to give me time to speak. She was going to hit first and ask questions later. And I didn't want to roll the die on whether or not she'd hold back enough to leave me alive, let alone conscious.

Fuck it, we'll do this the Chris way. And apparently, the Vicky way. Hit first, talk later.

I pulsed the boots and threw a powerful round kick with a sharp shout. My foot was covered in armored metal, propelled by a Tickertech rocket. I could have kicked through a concrete pillar.

Glory Girl raised an arm and blocked the kick without flinching.

"Seriously?" Glory Girl smirked at me. "You're going to try to kick the Brute? It didn't work the first time, did you think it was going to work the second?"

I answered by jumping off my other leg and twisted my body to throw a second kick. The second kick slammed into Glory Girl's head, about as effective as a spitball. Glory Girl grabbed onto my boots as I fell onto the ground in a heap.

"Man, I thought Tinkers were supposed to be smart." Glory Girl mocked me, her grip denting the Tinkertech boots as she began to ascend into the air.

I had just enough time to flail in the air for a moment as Glory Girl began to spin. My vision became a whirl of colors before I felt her let go. Tumbling through the air, I hit the ground and barely managed to turn it into a painful roll rather than a painful splat.

My head rang like a church bell and I wasn't sure if my ribs were broken or if hitting the ground had just knocked the wind out of every sail in my body.

My lungs burned as they tried to will oxygen back into my body. I forced my body to uncurl and struggled to get back to my feet. It took a few tries, but I eventually succeeded.

My vision swam, and for a brief moment I panicked at the thought that I could suddenly see Glory Girl's emotional aura. No, my brain was just knocked around for a bit and needed a moment to refocus.

But I didn't need emotional vision to tell what Glory Girl was feeling. She was floating triumphantly above me, a smirk on her face as she effortlessly wielded the trash can she had thrown at me a minute ago.

"Looks like it's time I took out the trash in Brockton Bay." Glory Girl quipped before pulling back and chucking the metal tube at me with body crushing force.

She probably thought that I was too banged up to dodge.

Thankfully, she was wrong.

I had rocket boots. Said rocket boots didn't need me to do much to activate.

The roar of the boots and shattering crunch of metalon brick just below me thankfully covered my profanity.

I hit the ground in a heap and scrambled back to my feet just in time to pulse the rockets again. I leaped over a charging Glory Girl.

"All the dodging was fun at first, but it's starting to get annoying." Glory Girl said with a huff.

This was probably where I was supposed to have time to quip something back. Maybe even pull off my hood and turn this fight into a conversation. Sadly, life always finds a way to piss all over my plans.

"Help!"

"Fuck!"

"Fucking capes. Who the hell is fighting in the middle of the night, Michin-nyun!!"

The world suddenly expanded beyond just Glory Girl, and I looked around with clear eyes. The street was alight with yelling and screaming. All the windows were lit up and I could see people poking their heads out of doors or windows. Some were pointing and yelling and I could even see one particularly brave teen trying to record this on their phone.

Holy shit, there are people in the city.

I twisted my head and looked at the building behind me. The trashcan Glory Girl had thrown had taken a chunk out of the building. I could see people inside the building yelling and screaming even as more parts of the building collapsed around them.

We had to get them out of there.

"Shit shit shit! Keep her busy!" Chris screamed as he ran toward the hole.

Oh good. He's alive.

Focus. Rescuing people comes first.

Or at least, that's what I thought. Glory Girl seemed to have other priorities.

"Stop!" Glory Girl tried to grab Chris. He responded by tossing a small cylinder over his shoulder, not even pausing to look back. Glory Girl tried to barrel past it, trusting her barrier to take care of anything Chris threw at her.

She was not prepared for the cylinder to explode into a cloud of mist. So she flew right into a cloud of pepper spray.

"Shit!" Glory Girl screamed and flailed in the air.

I couldn't believe that she still wanted to fight. I glanced over at the building. Chris was helping people out of the building and propped up a wall with a weird gizmo. But otherwise, it looked stable.

Fine, Chris can take care of that. I'll keep Glory Girl off his back.

I started to harass Glory Girl. Quick circling steps to always keep out of her way and constantly darting in and out of her range. Occasionally throwing a jab or a kick to keep her attention.

"Argh!" Glory Girl screamed, throwing wild attacks in my general direction as the pepper spray burned her senses.

I danced around her blind swipes at me. A snap kick ineffectively slammed into her stomach before I pulled back to avoid the retaliatory haymaker. I ducked underneath a half blind tackle and threw a rabbit punch at her back. My knuckles protested that one. Right, no punching the impenetrable barrier.

My world narrowed down to Glory Girl, the roar of the rocket boots and the sharp pain of striking an unmovable object.

I was thankful that Chris had put inertia dampeners in the boots, because I was pretty sure I would have broken something kicking her barrier at full force so many times.

"You fucking bastard!" Glory Girl tried to snatch my foot after blocking a kick, but I made sure to blast the rockets to retreat.

Still, we reached a stalemate. Chris's pepper spray meant that Glory Girl was half blind and needed to fight defensively. However, I couldn't manage to do more than tag her barrier before she moved out of reach.

Even worse, while it was technically a stalemate, Glory Girl, half blind, was still at an advantage. I was hitting her over and over again, but I was probably hurting my own body more than her with each strike. She just needed me to screw up a single time and the fight would be over.

Secondly, stamina was quickly becoming an issue. Adrenaline had been flowing rather liberally through my veins, keeping the pain at bay and letting me keep up the breakneck assault without pause, but it was only a matter of time before my body began to fail.

I just needed it to last a little bit longer.

Ducking into a rocket assisted slide, just in time to avoid a wild punch that would have cracked my ribs, I tapped the rockets to kill my momentum. My ankles screamed as I pivoted on a dime and boosted into a rocket assisted dash back at Glory Girl.

I stomped on the ground and threw all my momentum into my right foot, trying to blast Glory Girl back with a side kick.

I may as well have tried to punt a mountain for about as effective it was.

It probably would have been easier on my legs too. Since this final kick seemed to have been the final straw. I tried to pull my leg back, but was met with a flare of pain and rebellion. Whatever mix of adrenaline, foolhardy courage, and pure guts had been fueling my offense had finally tapped out and my body was calling in the debt.

"Shit." I gasped in pain as all the muscles in my legs started to light up like fireworks. It was like the world's most painful set of dominos, the pain started at my feet and shot up through my spine.

Unfortunately, my opponent was not nearly as spent as I was.

"There you are." Glory Girl snarled as her hands snapped down and grabbed my foot in a vice grip. Metal groaned and sparks flew as she crushed the rocket boot. I tried to pull my leg back, but it may as well have been embedded in concrete. I threw a wild jab at her face as a last resort, but all that did was bruise one of my knuckles against her face. I couldn't really tell, since her face was bright red and swelling from the pepper spray, but I thought she gave me a wicked smile. "Hang tight."

Shit.

Glory Girl grabbed my leg with both arms and heaved up. I had the horrible feeling of vertigo and my body in the air against my will before gravity got a hard assist as Glory Girl pulled me back down.

I slammed into the ground. Hard.

The rest of the assault was nothing but colors and pain. I imagine that she let me go after the first slam since only my back was a blooming flower of pain, but considering how that was spreading out to my entire body, I couldn't be sure.

I felt Glory Girl release my leg. I tried to get up to follow, but all I succeeded in doing was cough up some phlegm and roll onto my side.

My head swam and I couldn't tell which direction was up. My hands could feel the ground, but my brain whirled, told me that up was down and decided that collapsing into a heap would be a better idea than standing.

Standing wasn't an option. Fine, I'll use this opportunity to look around.

Glory Girl was still standing over me. She was looking at someone else and yelling something while gesturing wildly. My ears were still ringing like church bells, so I had no idea what she was saying. All I knew was that she was distracted.

I used every last bit of strength left in my body to try to throw one final kick at her, full of defiance and grit.

What I managed was to weakly lift my one remaining functional rocket boot and press it limply against her left leg.

Oh well. That'll do.

The roar of the rocket boot filled the air one last time along with the crack of what I assumed was the boot finally giving up the ghost.

Unfortunately for me, inertia is a bitch. I had activated the rocket so all that force went back up my body and threw it backwards. Since I was lying in a heap on the ground, that meant I had blasted my body into a slide down the road. It wasn't even in a straight line as I did not have enough muscle control to keep my leg straight. So like one of those colorful tops, I was sent whirling down the road.

Ow.

I groaned weakly from the few feet I slid back and just did my best to gulp as much oxygen as I could fit into my body. Lifting my left leg two feet into the air shouldn't have taken that much effort, but I couldn't do anything more than just lay on the ground and try to ooze into the many cracks of the poorly maintained street.

After an eternity of suffering, I managed to lift my head up to see Glory Girl lying on the ground.

What the hell?

What did I miss?

"Good shit!" I felt something grab me and drag me roughly and unceremoniously across the pavement. "I saw you take out her barrier with the rocket boot and I got her. I fucking got her! Stun bolt will only last a minute. So time to move move move!"

Oh. Chris must have tagged her with a stun bolt. Did I damage her barrier enough for that? My head swam. I couldn't remember how Glory Girl's barrier worked.

"Come on, man. We need to gogogo!" Chris' voice said somewhere above me as he tried to pull me to my feet.

I wanted to stand and walk under my own power, but sadly, my body just continued to ooze downward.

"Chris…" I called out weakly.

"Move dammit!" Chris complained.

"Can't," I managed to gasp as my head lolled limply against him. "I think… broken…"

"Shit. What's broken?" He didn't sound overly concerned, but that was fine, I could see it in his aura. What a pretty shade of yellow.

My brain attempted to fire some synapses to do a status check. All I got were fireworks, both inside my body and in my mind.

Ow.

"Lots." I gasped.

I heard a number of clicks, then something wrapped around my chest. A moment later, I was no longer being dragged across the asphalt. My body felt weightless like I was floating. My muscles seemed to finally release their tension as they no longer needed to hold me up and it was a sweet relief.

The lack of pain was beyond any bliss imaginable and my brain could not handle it. After a long night of staking out, fighting, pain, and struggle, the flood of endorphins was the final straw. My vision went black.

Aight. Posting this early cause busy day tomorrow, also Merry Christmas/Happy Hannukah, and a happy Festivus (Hero told me to write that last one. I have no idea what it means).

Hope you lot like. Do feel free to chat about what you liked and didn't and stuff. That helps a lot with motivation.

...Yeah.

---

Derail III.VI

With one final heave, I deposited my extremely lazy and possibly quadriplegic partner in vigilantism onto the bed in my garage. Thankfully, despite my constant paranoia, no one followed us after that disaster of a night.

I still half expected Vicky to show up on my front door to finish what she started. Now, onto brighter news.

According to my doctorate in human booboos that I very scientifically granted myself. My ribs were not broken, the carbide-ceramic plate that could tank a .50 caliber slug with only slight flinching which protected my chest, had utterly shattered and thus saved me from Glory Girl caving my ribcage in.

This meant two things, one, I'd have to scrap the plate I'd prepared for Dean's armor so I could repair my own in time for our raid, and two, my chest was one singularly big purple bruise. I looked like I'd picked a fight with a truck.

Which, objectively, was better than Dean, who looked like he'd picked a fight with an eighteen wheeler.

All things considered? I'd call today's operation a tentative success. We'd achieved our objectives, we hadn't gotten caught by the authorities, and despite Collateral Damage Barbie's stupidity in knocking out a wall, there had been no serious casualties among the tenants. Plenty of minor injuries, but no casualties.

Yeah, definitely a success.

Almost as if to prove my point, the corpse cosplayer next to me showcased how alive he was by groaning and weakly trying to lift himself up. I could even see his arms and legs spasm a bit, so no broken neck.

Success.

I grabbed the belt I'd prepared for this very occasion, and put it in front of his face. "Bite down, I need to clean the scrapes and sanitize them and it's gonna hurt like a bitch. It's full of grit, asphalt, and fuck knows what. And that's how you get gangrene."

Dean's eyes were a little glazed, but he followed orders like a good drone and bit down. And with the belt in mouth, he only screamed a little while I cleaned his wounds.

Well no, he screamed a lot. But at least it was muffled enough that the neighbors wouldn't investigate or call the cops…probably.

Another success. Man, we're really racking up the wins!

"Fuck." Dean spat the belt out. "Oh my god, please tell me you have drugs."

"Yup. I've got the good shit. But you can't have any till I'm finished."

A small sickly yellow orb weakly flickered around Dean's left hand. "I will make you cry… like a bitch… if you don't give me… some damn painkillers."

If he didn't look like he'd have trouble hitting a particularly slow witted sloth, that would be an intimidating threat.

I bopped him softly on the head. "Not being an ass, I need you cognizant enough to be able to tell me if I got all the shit out. The meds I'm gonna give you work under the principle that you can't be in pain if you're in a medically induced coma."

"Excuse me!?" Dean suddenly made a lot more effort towards pointing that yellow orb at my face. Oh, he's panicking. Right, most people don't enjoy being drugged into a coma.

"It's called hyperbole, ya doofus. They'll knock you out for most of the day, and you'll be loopy for hours when you wake up. Also dry-mouth, but that's not important."

The yellow orb flickered and disappeared. Dean stopped being a baby, bit down on the belt again and let me get all the shit out of his cuts.

I worked diligently at cleaning his cuts. I did not try to cause him pain, but I wasn't being as gentle as I could be, my arms felt like they had lead weights attached. "Good news, it's the weekend. Bad news, our assault on Lung's meeting is going to take place on a school night. Also, we don't have that much time to recover from our run-in with your dumbass blonde girly-friend."

"I'm not sure you should be mocking the girl that literally wiped the floor with the both of us." Dean hissed around the belt between his teeth.

I snorted. "Well, she's not here and I'm not gonna tell her I spoke bad about her behind her back, after she nearly turned me into chunky salsa with a fucking dumpster. It's a miracle she hasn't killed anyone… and that miracle's name is Amy."

"That…" Dean squeezed his eyes tightly, not sure if because I hit a sensitive spot or because of the mental anguish of the fact he has a murderess-to-be as his girlfriend. "That makes sense. I'm not happy about it, but it makes sense. Not even counting the building, any one of those hits would have done major damage if we didn't have your Tinker Tech."

"Yup. One of the plethora of reasons I don't like her. Though I think she got better after a few years as a…uhh…cronenberg?"

"Wonderful. I'll add it to my long list of people that I need to help before we get ourselves killed or arrested." Dean griped. He closed his eyes for a moment before shooting me a sharp look. "Tonight was a shit show."

Dammit. No, no. Reject reality, substitute your own. "I see today as an absolute success."

I decided to take Dean's incredulous look as him being supportive of my statement.

"Dude. I'm pretty sure I was about an inch away from being crippled and I wasn't able to even make a dent on Glory Girl." Dean looked shaken by his run in with a Brute 5. Which, fair. Brutes are kind of bullshit.

Fuckin' Capes.

Wait…I'm a Cape.

Fuckin' Capes!

"Bah! We achieved all of our strategic objectives, protected the populace from reckless use of powers, took down the shittier Alexandria through the power of friendship, teamwork, and this gun I found. Wins all around!"

"Yeah, well, I'd rather not chance our encounter against either Lung or Bakuda on the power of friendship." Dean shot back.

"We also have teamwork and firearms. Those are very clutch. We'll be fine!"

"Great. How effective are those against a dragon?"

"Depends on how early I can put a slug through his Corona." I said as I dug the bloodstained towel against a particularly stubborn patch of tar and grit.

"Fuck!" Dean had zero appreciation for the work I was doing to keep him healthy. "Please tell me you have a plan B against Lung. Because my only plan is to shoot him with enough good vibes that he can't turn into a murder dragon."

I stopped scrabbling at his back for a few moments. Well, that's an idea. Not the good vibes, that's just Dean being an idiot.

The question is. Could I turn a plasma cannon into a delivery system for Dean-Juice?

No, that sounds awful…Gallant-Juice. Perfect.

I would need to build a new focusing lens, and entirely new capacitors. And I'd have to make sure I could swap them out easily for a more conventionally destructive payload. Just in case Plan 'stop being squeamish and kill the fucker' turns out to be the better option.

"Hey, hey. No Tinker fugue when you're cleaning out my wounds." Dean's voice snapped me out of my happy place.

I blinked away the blueprints. "I have a plan B." Now. "But I'mma need your credit card. A few cases of energy drinks, and I'll need you to run interference with anyone who wants to contact me for the whole weekend."

"So you need me to lie and manipulate the rest of the Wards and possibly our boss?" Dean said it like I was asking for something unreasonable. What a hypocrite, he was a manipulative asshole, this was right up his alley. "I guess I can do that. I'll make something up about your father. That'll probably keep them from asking too many questions, since I can say I didn't want to pry."

See, he barely had to think to come up with a workable lie that took advantage of Dead-Chris' awkward relationship with his father! Manipulative bastard.

"Also gonna need you around say…probably most of Sunday. Which, hey, drugs! You'll have to stick around anyways. Also I think I'm done, you still feel anything in there?"

"Thank God." Rude. At worst I only caused Dean a mild amount of agonizing discomfort. "No, it's fine. Drugs, please give me those." Dean reached out a hand and gestured weakly. "I'll call the PRT after I wake up so I'm not high off my ass while lying."

"Right right. At least we're off duty today." I said and reached for the prescription strength meds I'd appropriated.

I wonder if I should tell Dean that I bought these from a Neonazi at the nicer end of town, so there was only like… a twenty percent chance they were laced with something else. Nah. I'm sure he'll be fine. Worst comes to worst, he has Amy on speed dial.

About ten minutes after Dean took the pills I offered him, he was out like a light. Snoring relatively gently as they did their job.

This called for experimentation.

I gave his back a solid poke and he didn't so much as twitch. Well, that certainly made the next step much easier. I grabbed the spray bottle full of 99% alcohol and sprayed it all over his back. The skin very quickly turned bright red and irritated.

"Yeah…die you fuckin' bacteria. I have become death, destroyer of worlds." I muttered as I gave him a second dose.

Spraying my own scrapes and cuts was a much more painful experience. But that was fine, the pain helped me wake up.

Now that gangrene was no longer a concern, I could focus on the important thing. Tinker Tech. I had a Rage Dragon to counter and limited time to gadget my way to victory.

---

What even was the Alternator Cannon? It looked like Murdered-Chris had tried to make a variable output energy discharger and…something about electrons?

Anyways.

Point was, it was less a cohesive system and more a hodgepodge of five or six different weapons that emulsified into a working cannon…somehow.

I found it offensive. Which was why I was in the middle of tearing it apart to salvage what I could of it. Once Dean woke up, I'd have to see if that other project would work or not.

Hopefully it would, otherwise the new cannon would turn into plan C. And Dean tended to be a little squeamish about the more expedient options.

"Why the hell did Dead-Chris use copper wiring for this?" I complained to the rubber duck sitting on top of my monitor on my desk as I ripped out the copper wiring and tossed it aside.

The rubber duck said nothing, but continued to cheer me on silently.

Seriously. I suspect Chris blew just about all of his Tinkering budget on this piece of shit. Why cheapen out on the goddamn conductors? This thing was liable to melt after a couple shots!

Hrm… do I have any gold jewelry?

Yeeeeeh, I'm sure no one in the family will miss these.

Hrm…

Actually…if I move this here, and grab this thing from there and put it over there, and take these two things and cross them with these three things…yeah, groovy.

And now to make it so I can switch these parts out in a jiffy. Yeaaaaaah. That's the good stuff.

Hrm… this needs more plasma.

Bitches love plasma.

I needed to get a battery, I'll need the acid inside it to strip this, but in the meantime this goes there…yeaaaaaah. That's the good stuff.

Where did I leave my batteries?

Oh, there was a battery in the smoke detector. Could I use those?

Hrm…

I stepped away from the table, the guts of the Cannon spread around it, and the floor, and through the door from the garage to the living room, and most of the kitchen. I walked past the blonde whose mouth was hanging slackly, her eyes wide as saucers…wait.

There is a smoke detector, bonus points, I now have more wiring and another bit of silicate. Yeeeeeh.

I moved back to the Cannon and stopped next to the girl. Hrm…I need more gold.

I looked at the girl. The tiara had gold. Not much, it's probably only gold plated, but I can make it work.

I took the tiara. Something grabbed me and stopped me as I tried to get back to the cannon. Batting at it did not make it go away.

Hrm… suboptimal. There are a lot of different materials in this thing. I need only the gold for semi-maximal conductivity. I'd have to separate the metals. Then again…gold was easy to melt…I'd have to alloy it with something, make it sturdier…yeaaaah. Rugged is good, rugged is life. Yeaaaaaah.

I came to as something lifted me off the ground and shook me violently enough to rattle my brain inside my skull.

"What the fuck!?" I asked adroitly.

"Stop ignoring me!" Victoria Fucking Dallon screamed as she shook me.

A jolt of fear ran up my spine, I did my best to turn it into anger and only partially succeeded. I pushed away at her face, it didn't do much more than satisfy my ego. "Victoria!? What the unliving fuck are you doing in my house!? When did you even fucking get here!?"

Wait…she was here, and Dean was over there, and all my Vigilante Gear was…oh.

Oh no.

"Oh my God, Dean!" She screamed and dropped me to run over to Dean, who was passed out face down on the mattress I dragged in here because my secondary lab needed a bed more than my bedroom did. "What happened!? Did you run into a villain!?"

"Nah, we ran into a Hero." My mouth said without asking my brain for permission.

"You what? Wait… his back, and all these bruises." Vicky said slowly. I could see the gears moving in her head. Shit, I forgot that she's actually pretty smart for a dumb blonde.

Fucking hell Dean. I told you to put on a shirt!

"Those uhh…he uhh…he fell down some stairs."

"He fell down the stairs." Vicky said slowly, glaring at me. I could feel the insect part of my brain start to gibber in fear. God damn fear aura!

"Yep…he fell backwards. Down two flights. When we went uhh…skating. Which is how he got scratched up." If I continued to double down on the lie. It would work eventually.

Victoria began grinding her teeth. "He got brutalized, scrapped up and almost died, from ice skating?"

"Rollerblade skating. Is that how you say that? That's how you say that."

"Dean can't skate." Victoria growled.

"And now you know why he got hurt. I told him not to, but nobody ever listens to me."

Her glare intensified, as did the feeling of dread emanating from her. "And those rocket boots that Hyung or whatever used to fight me last night that I can clearly see are on the table over there, they had nothing to do with it?"

I looked. Yep, those were Dean's rocket boots. They were dented to shit because Dean has no respect for my equipment. Oh no, wait, I could see an outline of Vicky's hand on the metal.

As was often the case; It was all Vicky's fault.

"Those are mine." I lied quickly. Oh no, wait, I'm lending him those boots, they are mine! Not technically lying for the win!

"They're yours?"

"Yep."

"They're too big."

"I'm a growing boy."

Vicky looked back down at Dean. "And that cannon over there?"

"Pet project." I shot back.

"And that shredded, bloodstained red hoodie also worn by Hyung?"

I looked at the garment in question. "That's mine too."

Wait, all this does is incriminate me. This helps no one. Oh well, in for a penny.

Vicky seemed to be growing increasingly frustrated with my nonsensical answers. "And that armor on the corner that is worn by the asshole that shot me yesterday?"

I looked at the corner she mentioned, the component pieces of my armor sat on their stand, awaiting my TLC.

Shit.

"That…could be anyone's." Maybe if I kept saying these things fast enough, she'll believe them.

Victoria thankfully stopped grilling me and turned back to her injured unconscious boytoy. She placed her hand gently on Dean's face. "Oh my God…I nearly killed Dean."

"AAaaaanyone'sssss." I sibilated.

"And you shot me!" Victoria accused me, deciding that she would rather be angry than worry about Dean.

"I mean, hypothetically, if you had gotten in an altercation with two people, one of whom just happened to shoot you with a fully non-lethal, mostly non-side effect causing, stun round. I'm sure it was in self defense after you used lethal force on them. Clearly showing a level of restraint some people lack." I mentally patted myself on the back for both being completely honest, in a manner of speaking, and for not devolving into profanity.

Vicky glared at me.

My gorge rose up my throat, a hand crushed down on my neck, the room's walls bore down on me, darkness flooded into my vision as the certainty of my death squeezed down on my heart. Something divine had appeared in the room and had found me wanting.

I told divinity to fuck off. In fact, fuck metaphors.

"And for fuck's sake, reign in your goddamn Aura!" I roared.

The fear I felt pulsed higher for a second before it vanished like it'd never been. I tried to control my breathing, reminding myself that filling her guts full of lead would be a bad idea, even if I couldn't for the life of me remember exactly why.

I enjoyed the quiet for several seconds as Vicky cradled Dean. Then remembered one crucial detail.

"Also, for the record. You also almost killed some Tinker Vigilante…who is not me." I hedged.

"Why were the two of you out there?" Vicky rudely ignored my attempts to obfuscate my not-so-secret identity.

"We weren't." When in doubt, quadruple down. "But, hypothetically speaking. If there were some new intrepid, valorous, handsome, young strapping vigilante lads out there, beating up Asian people –in a completely non-racist way for non-racist reasons. Non racistally…racistcaly?"

"Get on with it." Vicky growled.

I continued, gracefully ignoring her interruption. "Anyways. It might stand to reason that these two unnamed Vigilantes may have been looking for information that could have led to the capture and neutralization of Bakuda, and maybe, maybe Lung if they're lucky."

"Then why were you protecting those gangsters!?" Vicky demanded.

"We didn't. Because we weren't out there." As long as I denied reality hard enough, it would eventually obey. "But hypothetically." Vicky growled again. I should maybe start using a different synonym from now on. "The two intrepid, unnamed Vigilantes may have assured the ABB guys, most of whom were drafted against their will once Bakuda put bombs in their heads or the heads of their babies and grandmothers, that they would deal with the problem and bring Bakuda down so they could go back to not being gang conscripts. And them being caught and going to jail, would have given the larger ABB a warning. And with the fact that just about all of their new recruits want Bakuda and Lung dead, said ABB conscripts may or may not still be feeding the two unnamed Vigilantes information when they can and it is safe for them to do so. A process that a certain skinny, preppy, tiara-wearing, cape fluttering, miniskirt-swishing, dumbass-blonde white girl interrupted, then nearly killed the two of us and a bunch of civilians to boot!"

Vicky stared open-mouthed at me as I took a deep gasp for air. I ran over what I said in my head as I tried to catch my breath after that impromptu rant.

Wait…

"Uhh…I mean nearly killed the two intrepid handsome unknown and unnamed Vigilantes. Well, nearly killed one and left the other in crippling pain."

Great recovery. Racking up all the wins today.

Vicky stared down at Dean and I could see her eyes quickly assess all the scrapes, bandages and blisters that were oozing blood. She stood up. "I'm getting Amy."

She immediately flew off, narrowly missing the wall as she flew out the door.

Huh, I probably should have stopped her.

Okay…suboptimal. But now we won't have to worry about recovery times!

"This is still a win," I said with a nod, then turned to Dean's unconscious body. "Right?"

Serendipitously, Dean groaned.

I magnanimously took that as agreement. "Right!"

There was the added problem of needing to keep Victoria and her time bomb of a sister from turning us in. Which would probably get us in a lot of trouble, and in the worst case scenario get us jailed for the foreseeable future. Oh well, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

Actually, I have a better idea. I proclaim that this is officially Dean's problem.

After all, he did say that he was going to take care of all the interpersonal stuff. I mean, I'm building all this Tinker tech to take care of Lung. Dean really should carry some of his own weight.

Which means I don't need to think about the clusterfuck of convincing two members of New Wave to not screw us over, and can get back to gadgeting. Lung wasn't going to defeat himself after all!

"Yeah. Everything's turning out Chris."

On the bright side, Vicky forgot her tiara.

Hrm…better get to melting that down. Those conductors won't alloy themselves.

I vanished the feeling that I was forgetting something important as I got back to work.

I held part of the guts of the cannon up at Dean. "Oi! You think this needs more plasma?"

Dean's unconscious body groaned again.

"You're entirely correct my good sir! Bitches love more plasma!"

Author's Note:

Hero: Been a while. I had some changes to my daily life that pushed this chapter back a bit. It doesn't help that I have mixed feelings about this chapter.

Oh well. Let's see where this trainwreck goes.

---

Derail 3.7

There was something painful about going from blurred drug induced restful sleep and immediately snapping to wide awake because someone flushed all the drugs out of your body and replaced it with adrenaline to snap you into consciousness.

"Shit!" My brain synapses fired rapidly and tried to make sense of the abrupt change. I choked on my saliva and swung an arm in blind panic. It hit something hard and I swore as now I had to deal with the pain in my hand in addition to the catatonic colors and noise bombarding my senses.

Oh god, I'm having a drug trip. The drugs must have been bad. Why did I trust Chris with my dosage?

I attempted to curl up into a ball and huddle as my world would turn into a chaotic heap of my subconscious.

No wait, things were calming down. In fact, I could actually feel my heart rate slow down from 'Oh god, I'm going to die' to my resting heart rate.

Now that I no longer felt like my senses were being assaulted by the world, I took stock.

I was still in a garage with piles of mostly finished Tinkertech crap all over the place. Chris was half buried in some big cannon and was either taking it apart or putting it together. I could never tell.

All of that is good. I expected that.

What I did not expect was Vicky floating next to the bed, looking like she had slept with all her makeup on and never got around to cleaning it up, holding my newly bruised hand.

"Dean!" Vicky shouted and lunged at me.

"Wait!" I yelped and frantically tried to keep Vicky away. My ribs were cracked and I was covered in cuts and Vicky was a bear hugger. This would only end in pain.

I flinched and waited for the end.

Huh. No pain. Only warmth and softness. That's weird. I'm pretty sure I'm more bruise than teenager at the moment. This should hurt like hell, but all I feel is Vicky's slightly too tight hug and something squeezing my hand.

I looked down and saw a hand grasping mine tightly. Following the arm up, I found a two toned green aura of relief and familiar jealousy.

"Amy?" I gaped at the healer. "What? How? When? Why?"

Neither of them gave me an answer. Vicky was too busy hugging me while apologizing and Amy was too busy being relieved and jealous and then being angrily depressed about being jealous.

Why were the two of them here? This is our secret base. If they're here, they'll see everything.

I looked around the room again. Yes, all of our vigilante gear is out in the open. There was zero way that Vicky did not see all of that and connected the dots. Despite what the PHO liked to meme, Vicky was not in fact a dumb blonde.

I turned to Chris and snarled. "What happened?!"

He ignored me and welded something inside the cannon, whispering softly. "Yeeeeeh."

"Chris?" That was not the sarcastic, biting comment dodging responsibility that I expected.

"He's in a Tinker fugue." Amy helpfully explained, looking ready to be done with this entire situation. "He barely was able to give me permission to heal him before going back to work."

That made sense. The bulk of his emotional aura was all focus, except for a mix of worry, fear, and panic that had been shoved to the side. I think his brain was too occupied with Tinkering to actually process emotions. It was a little off putting.

So he was going to be absolutely zero help in this conversation. Great, all on me. Wonderful.

"Okay," I patted Vicky on the back as I tried to think of a way out of this situation. "Okay."

I needed to do damage control. First thing's first. I needed to figure out how much Vicky and Amy actually knew. This would be a great time for Chris to be lucid, but sadly that was not an option. So I was forced to work blind.

"Uh, so, I've been unconscious for a little bit. Last thing I remember was passing out on Saturday a little banged up and it's…" I said, trailing off, hoping that one of the two would fill in the silence. Amy, thankfully having good bedside manners, acquiesced.

"It's still Saturday." Amy answered, while keeping a firm grip on my hand. "Vicky came and got me after she found you unconscious and mangled in Chris' garage."

Well, at least I wasn't unconscious for that long. "Yeah… about that. I got into a fight and well, it didn't end well for me."

That's it. Start with little truths as a foundation and then build a house of lies on top of it. Easy.

"What did you try to fight, a truck?" Amy asked, annoyance and impatience really starting to build up from my delaying tactics.

"Dean, I almost killed you." Vicky sobbed into my neck.

"What?" Amy gasped, completely surprised by the sudden confession.

Well, shit.

"I mean, if we're being honest. I think I came away, pretty alright." I averted my eyes when Vicky looked up at me with accusing eyes. Yeah, even I couldn't sell that lie.

"You had several cracked vertebrae and it was easier to count how many of your ribs weren't broken." Amy quickly retorted, making Vicky flinch and tighten her grip on me to nearly painful levels. "If I hadn't been around you would have been in bed for weeks before walking normally, if you ever recovered."

"Okay, so maybe I was a little banged up. In hindsight, trying to fight Glory Girl without my power armor was a poor decision." I agreed ruefully and futilely tried to pull out of Vicky's grip. "But we can all agree that everyone in that fight made some poor decisions."

"Yeeeeeh." Came from the table's direction.

"See, Chris agrees. It was everyone's fault." He would probably deny that, but he was too deep in the Tinker Fugue to ruin my argument.

"Why were you fighting Vicky!?" Amy sputtered, looking rapidly between Vicky and me.

Wait, did she not know that? I saw genuine shock in her aura. She really didn't know that. Shit. What else does she not know?

"I mean, it was less of a fight and more of me running repeatedly into the brick wall that is Glory Girl." I tried to downplay the brutality that Vicky laid on me. "How did you think I got that injured?"

Amy let go of my hand to cross her arms. "She was babbling and crying so all I got was something about roller skating and older brothers. I just let her drag me here because it was easier than trying to argue with her."

She explained it tiredly, like it was a regular occurrence. The dark part of my brain whispered that it probably was.

"I said I beat up Hyung." Vicky tried to correct Amy.

"Look, I don't want to know what weird roleplay the two of you go through." Amy said through grit teeth and full of disgust and envy.

"What?" Vicky blushed and pushed me away. Thankfully, not with her Brute strength.

"Hyung means older brother." I pointed out. "Korean gang members call senior members older brother, or Hyung."

"Wait, you joined the ABB?!" Vicky spun around and grabbed my shoulders. She began to shake me like she could rattle the answers out of me. "How did you join a gang? Why did you join a gang?!"

"You did what?" Amy was going to get emotional whiplash with all the revelations she was getting today. Just like I was going to get actual whiplash if Vicky didn't stop shaking me.

"Okay, stop!" I barked, pushing as much authority as I could into my voice.

Vicky thankfully stopped shaking me in response. She let go of my shoulders and floated up so she could loom over me. Amy moved next to her and also loomed ominously over me. Geez, these two really were sisters.

"Talk." They said in eerie unison.

"Yeeeeeeh." Chris unhelpfully agreed with the two of them. Fine, I'm just going to say that he gave me permission to tell the truth. Not like he'll remember if he did or not.

"Okay, so it was the middle of the night and we found some ABB gangsters…"

—

I sighed as I finished explaining the entire night to the Dallon sisters. I tried to keep the nitty gritty details on the fight with Glory Girl sparse, but Amy was surprisingly insistent on hearing a blow by blow playback. Still, now that I actually put it into words, our plan wasn't that bad, right?

"That was the dumbest plan I've ever heard." Amy pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Hey. It wasn't that bad of a plan."

"Your grand plan was to beat up ABB members until one of them told you where you could find Bakuda. The same ABB members that all held bombs in their heads that Bakuda could have triggered at any moment." Amy mercilessly poked holes in our grand plan for solving Brockton Bay's Bomber problem.

"You know, when you say it like that, it does sound a little stupid." I weakly agreed. "But in our defense, the plan was working fine, until… you know."

"You ran into a Cape." Amy shook her head. "In Brockton Bay, which has more Capes per capita than any other city in the US."

"Yeah… maybe the plan could have used a few revisions."

"So this was just, what, some teenage boy stupidity?" Vicky floated restlessly back and forth. She couldn't even look at me for more than a second before snarling and restarting her flying back and forth. "The two of you thought that you'd fix the entire city by yourselves?"

"No." I snapped back. "But no one in the Protectorate was doing anything. Just patrolling and waiting wasn't going to stop Bakuda. So we did the proactive thing and went looking for her ourselves."

"Proactive." Vicky scoffed, "I'm pretty sure you mean stupid?"

"Excuse me?"

"So the two of you find Bakuda. Then what?" Vicky began building up steam, not letting me get a word in to defend myself. "She's going to be surrounded by hostages and probably with Oni Lee and Lung next to her. Were the two of you just going to fight all of them?"

"No. Do you think we're that stupid?" I spat back.

"The two of you thought that fighting one of the strongest capes in the Bay was a good idea. So yes!" Vicky angrily threw her arms up into the air, "You know how strong I am, Dean. What were you thinking?"

"That I was going to run away!" I snapped. "That I could try to get a clean getaway from a fellow hero and that even if I did get caught, I could fess up after you gave me a few lumps. I expected that New Wave's Poster Girl would show some restraint and not hospitalize a couple of capes that were just running away."

"You attacked me!" Vicky ignored my point.

"With a kick!" I threw my arms into the air. "You are a Brute!"

"You had rocket shoes!"

"Which did nothing!" I continued to press. "I attacked a Brute who can and has taken a truck to the face and walked away unscathed. You're not exactly an unknown in the city. Everyone knows you can take a hit!"

"And that makes it okay?!"

"Yes! No!" I took a breath. "I don't know. But it doesn't mean you can start hitting people like they're Brutes just because they hit you hard. You could kill someone. You almost killed me! But it's all good. Glory Girl has a safety net. How many times has Amy bailed you out from a murder charge?"

I fought to catch my breath. I didn't mean to say that last part.

Vicky flinched back as if I had stuck her.

I could see her mouth open and close, arguments rising and dying against my anger. I almost wished my damn powers would work on her so I could see if she was actually guilty about hurting me or if she was only guilty because she had hurt me.

The thought had crossed my mind after I fought her last night and a disturbed part of me needed to know. "This isn't the first time this has happened, you not pulling your punches, is it?" I probed.

"This isn't about me." Vicky quickly deflected my question and desperately turned to her sister for support. "Amy, back me up here."

I could actually see Amy's emotions at war with herself, which all but confirmed my suspicions. I wondered how much she was complicit in this.

"Vicky's right." Amy masked her discomfort and frustration and sided with her sister. "We're talking about the two of you almost got yourselves killed."

By Vicky, I almost pressed, but kept my lips shut.

"Why didn't you just tell me it was you?" Vicky shouted. I wondered, is the harshness in her voice due to the betrayal or because I had tried to turn this argument against her? Again, that unkind voice in my brain said it was both.

"It's called a secret identity for a reason, Vicky." I said as if I was explaining a concept to a five year old. "I know it's not a New Wave's thing, but the rest of the cape world runs on this idea."

"Except I know your identity, Dean." Vicky swung her hand out to the side and I resisted the urge to flinch at how close her hand passed by my face.

"You know Gallant is Dean, but…" I shook my head. No, arguing that point isn't going to go anywhere. "Look, I wasn't thinking. There was a lot of adrenaline pumping in me and-"

"You're lying." Vicky interrupted me before I could redirect the conversation. "Do you think I can't tell when you're lying? I know you, Dean. You don't act without thinking. You always have a reason for doing something. So why?"

Vicky floated down so she could look me in the eye. "Why didn't you trust me?"

I stared past Vicky and kept my face stoic, trying to mask my whirling thoughts. I knew why I didn't trust her. It was because she was just a dumb teenager and I didn't trust her as far as I could throw her. But I couldn't say that, I wouldn't say that.

I shook my head.

"Look, I wasn't thinking. I made a bad choice. It was dumb and I should have trusted you. I won't do it again." I took the easy way out and lied. I tried to turn away but Vicky grabbed my shoulder to keep me from looking away.

"No. We're not going to just brush this off."

"Why not? If we're going to ignore the other problem, why not this one?" I demanded, throwing her own deflection back at her face.

That was a dumb move, but I was too angry to take it back.

"This isn't about me." Vicky shook her head. "This is about you almost dying rather than just telling me you were a vigilante."

"Why are you so obsessed with this? It was dumb. I get it. I apologize."

The silence that fell on the room was suffocating.

This was fine.

We both made some mistakes, but everyone walked away from it.

We can learn from this.

It's fine.

I just wanted this argument to be over.

I ruffled my hair and exhaled, trying to let out some of the tension that was building in my body.

I avoided Vicky's glare, hoping that the bit of hurt in her eyes was just me reading facial expressions wrong.

Amy looked incredibly awkward as she sat between the two of us. I could see a swirl of discomfort, worry, hope, frustration, anger, and concern. This wasn't the first time she had witnessed us argue, but this argument was probably a bit heavier than our usual lighthearted bickering.

Chris was half leaning half sitting on his workbench, breathing deliberately slowly and evenly, finally having pulled his head out of the innards of the big gun he was reassembling. Though his face was impressively stoic as he stared disconcertingly at Vicky, it did little to hide his worry, anger, and a dangerous amount of fear. All worrying things, but even more so since he had a loaded Tinker Gun in his hands.

When did he exit his Tinkering Fugue? No, I don't have time to worry about that. I needed to calm him down.

"Hey, Chris." I tried for a jovial tone, but for once, my mouth failed me and the words came weak and full of worry. "How about we put the gun down?"

"Victoria." Chris grounded out, ignoring my suggestion, the corner of his eye twitching and the veins on his temple throbbing from fear fueled anger. "Control. Your. Fucking. Aura."

Vicky paused for a moment before she almost gleefully turned to the fresh and much more enticing target.

"You." Vicky floated off the bed until she was staring down at Chris. "This is all your fault, isn't it."

Chris' fear rose higher, which made the anger he was using to repress it flare stronger.

"Hey, wait-" I tried to step between them, but Vicky just bowled through me.

"Shut up!" "Be silent!" I flinched back as Vicky yelled and Chris hissed at me.

Chris turned back to Vicky and peeled his lips back from his teeth in a display that was most certainly not a smile. "Oh yes. I forced you to try to turn your fuck boy into chunky fucking salsa. I made you ram into me at a hundred and twenty seven miles an hour. I demanded you demolish an apartment building with plenty of families still inside. I did all this, it's all my fault you brainless blonde bimbo!"

It was like watching a train wreck. There was something mesmerizing about watching Chris angrily shout all the words I was trying to avoid. I knew that this would end badly. But there was something keeping my mouth shut.

Maybe a part of me wanted this to happen.

So I just waited and let them fight.

"You looked like Villains!" She shouted back.

"So that gives you carte blanche to hit me hard enough to tear my heart out of my chest!?" Chris roared back, spittle flying, he then stepped into Vicky's personal space, his arms spread as if for a hug. "Come on! Give me another! At least this time your enabler is here to make sure you don't suffer the consequences of your actions! When's the last time you pulled her out of doing something important to clean up another of your messes!? I'm going to guess last week!"

Vicky drifted back down to earth, anger and guilt pressing down on her. However, she puffed herself back up. She wouldn't take that from Chris. There was just too much bad blood between them, what with Chris' bad reaction to her aura and his constant sniping at her.

Vicky clenched her fists and for a brief moment, I thought she would take his challenge seriously and pop him like a zit.

It wasn't a gracious thought, but I did.

I wasn't the only one.

"Vicky!" Amy shouted, her voice full of fear and disapproval.

Vicky froze and looked at Amy in surprise. There was a brief moment of confusion before realization hit her.

"I didn't," Vicky looked at Chris who had moved the gun from resting on his leg to pointing at her. His hand was trembling. His whole body quivering as he fought the urge to pull the trigger, fear and anger battling each other.

She looked back at Amy who was just looking disappointed and flinched.

Finally, she looked up at me. Even without my powers, I could see the desperate hope that I would take her side, that I believed in her.

Shamefully, I avoided her gaze.

"I wasn't going to–" Vicky stammered, tears starting to gather in her eyes.

"Vicky." I said softly, raising my hand slowly towards her.

She flinched away from my hand like it was a viper.

"No." She whispered. "No. I wasn't. I didn't. I–"

Whatever she was going to say was lost to the wind as she fled. I had to shield my eyes from the dust cloud that her exit kicked up.

"Vicky!" Amy cried out pausing only to give Chris a death glare, before huffing and running in the direction Vicky had flown off.

Chris for his part, the moment Vicky left, had fallen to his knees like a puppet with its strings cut and alternated gagging and taking deep, gulping breaths. "Fucking Masters!"

I looked away from the empty space where I had reached for Vicky and looked down at Chris before looking back at the door Vicky had just left through.

Chris took a few more deep, timed breaths, his Aura going from uncontrolled sickening swirls to determination crushing down fear and anger remarkably quickly. He then stood up and shook his head.

"Well… that could have gone better." He spat into a trash can. "You know, you were right, I absolutely should leave the 'pehpoling' thing to you, cause man, I suck at it."

"Yeah." I agreed with him quietly. "You really do."

Not that I was as good at it as I thought I was.

He took a few more deep breaths. "We need to move out. They'll probably tattle on us. We can't afford to get caught before Tuesday evening."

I sighed. A part of me wanted to run out and find Vicky. To comfort her and to hash out whatever the building resentment she held for me before Chris had exploded that entire conversation.

The unkind voice in my head whispered that the damage was already done and that I should focus on the bigger picture.

I listened to that unkind voice. I was too tired to think of reconciliation, especially on someone I couldn't read. I just wanted this day to be over.

"Throw whatever you need into a wagon. We'll hide out in a motel or something for a few days." I ordered in a clipped tone. The armor Chris lent me flew through the air as I started to throw things into an easily moved pile. I wasn't going to take no for an answer on this one.

Chris spat again. This time I noticed the spittle was red. "Yeah aight, I know just the place."

I watched Chris start to move his pile of junk onto a cart for a moment before speaking up. "And when this whole bomb thing is all over, the two of us are going to have another talk."

"Oh no, are you breaking up with me?" Chris said flippantly, a small spark of amusement in his Aura. I ignored the small spark of fear that drifted alongside it.

"Depends on the talk." My voice on the other hand was flat.

Chris sobered and looked down at his box of junk. "For what it's worth. I am sorry. I didn't want it to get as far as it did. But it's difficult to think when the only urge in your mind is 'kill the threat before it kills you.'" He tossed another bit of scrap into the box. "Not an excuse. Just a fact."

My face may as well have been made of granite as I moved to help him. "Like I said, we'll have that talk after this is over."

I would listen to the unkind voice in my head for the moment. People were dying and I didn't have the luxury of being kind to everyone. But as soon as I could afford it, I would beat kindness into this damned world, even if I needed to break people to do it.

For now, we had a Dragon to slay and a bomber to catch. And we needed to do it on a limited budget, while on the run from friends, allies, and family.

Because nothing in this Godforsaken world can be easy.

Behold! Next chapter.

It's supposed to be up on Friday. But I've got a game Friday and won't make it home till like, two in the morning Saturday. So hey! You get it early!

Please please please, let us know what ya think. We worked pretty hard on it. XD

This story we was gonna do for funzies and not work hard at all.

...

We are not good at this 'do stuff to relax' thing.

---

Derail III.VIII

The wait before the moment of truth was supposed to be torture, and to be fair, the days leading up to this moment had been agonizing. Mostly because Dean had been very quiet the entire time. He only spoke to me when he absolutely needed clarification for something or other. I kind of missed the fuzzing. It made for good white noise as I worked.

Yet as go-time drew near, as I lied prone on the roof overlooking the warehouse the ABB were squatting in, all I felt was the itch in my knuckles that told me someone was going to lose some teeth tonight. My teeth prickled. My skin tingled. And try as I might, I couldn't stop my right trigger finger from tapping softly against my rifle's trigger guard. Tap, tap, tap, went my finger, perfectly matching the ticking of my digital watch.

A large part of me wanted to storm the place, run in guns blazing, trusting in my armor and my gadgets to see me through the day. I told that part of me to shut up. Only a fool gave up the element of surprise.

D (short for 'Dean' or 'Dumbass who still hadn't come up with a different cape name') bounced his leg up and down incessantly while we watched a surprising number of Asian people of numerous ethnicities slowly fill out the dilapidated building. Which I was fairly certain was condemned, which was very unsafe. These gangs need some OSHA.

Did Earth Bet have OSHA?

Questions for later.

It was thanks to our patience that we got to see a group composed of mercenaries in SWAT gear, a boatload of neonazis, half of Faultline's crew, and Bitch and Taylor walk down the street.

What.

And I cannot stress this enough.

The fuck!?

I blink-clicked the necessary icons on my HUD to put a notice on D's HUD lenses so he'd know to look in the direction of the incoming clusterfuck.

"What did we miss in the last few days?" D wondered in horrified amazement at the sight. "Because either Skitter left the Undersiders, or man, Tattletale is a lot dumber than I thought."

I chewed the inside of my cheek in thought for a few moments. "Either the savior of all realties turned very stupid. Or…wait…dogfights!"

D looked at me for a moment before looking up at the air. He looked back down at me in utter confusion. "What?"

Okay, maybe it would be a good idea to explain the somewhat convoluted logic. I double checked the math in my head and nodded. "Bitch is there! Big neonazi money in dog fighting rings. No way in any hell she'd join up with the 88. This is an alliance of convenience! That's why there's roughly equal numbers of any one group! They don't trust each other enough to have any actual concentration of force. The local big players probably called a truce to focus on the ABB. We must have missed it while we prepared!"

D continued to look at me like I had grown a second head. "What?"

Okay, maybe he was overwhelmed by my attention to detail. "Alright. All the local gangs agreed ABB bad for business. You know, what with the kill order on Bakuda. So they called truce. Gon' kick ABB ass. They shuffled the teams together so everyone gets a piece of the dragonball pie."

I could see the gears turning in D's head. I'd had to dumb it down to a fifth grade level, but I finally was able to get him to understand. He nodded sagely before saying, "And that means?"

I sighed. "Point is. It's about to get stupid down there. We have two options. Go in now and incidentally help the ABB. Or stay up here, let them fight it out, and attack the stragglers. Also overwatch and make sure Taaaaaay-kitter does not die."

It would be easier to remember to use cape names, if D actually chose one. I feel like I'm just using a nickname. And man did I have a lot of those for people.

Magus would catch on. This whole 'Artillery guy' thing was just a passing fling. I could feel it in my bones.

"So, considering our last outing, I'm going to vote for less combat." D said his piece. "We're equipped for the ABB, not a full on gang war. I'd rather not end up in traction again."

I don't know why he's complaining. The Plague Cauldron fixed him up real good. Better than the original, he no longer had that slight limp to his stride he'd had as long as I'd known him.

"Okay." I said and used my in-built teleporter to switch out the components on my rifle, and aimed down the new sight. I teleported my way through a few scopes with different vision modes before getting a semi-clear picture of what was going on inside. Mainly, a lot of people jam-packed into too small an area. "Man this is not going to go well for Lung."

"Honestly, I think I'd still bet on the Dragon." D shook his head. "Toe to toe with Leviathan is pretty hard to match."

"Nah, T-Skitter's here." I shot back.

"Yeah, I'm not going to hope that plot armor is still in effect." D harrumphed. "Things haven't exactly gone according to 'destiny.'"

I took my eye off the scope to tilt my head at him. "Actually, if I remember right. Word of god had it that he was actively trying to kill her off. But the dice kept coming up as killing every other potential protagonist instead."

"Even better. I'm not about to bet on a die roll." D scowled. "This isn't a tabletop session. These are actually people."

"Debatable" I shot back.

"Dude."

"What? It's all a matter of perspective really. By some definition we would certainly not be people. We're a pair of body-stealing liches. Only difference being we don't have a phylactery, and probably can't hop to a new and improved body if this one bites it."

I could see D's fist flare through a rainbow of colors before he took a deep breath and calmed himself down. After ten seconds without further comment, I considered the matter closed.

Ha. I won that argument.

Over the few minutes we had debated reality, metaphysics and philosophy. The Warehouse had been, in order, shot up, exploded, had a hole punched through a load-bearing wall, exploded some more, set on fire, had a huge metal sword-pillar grow out of it, been drowned in bugs, and exploded a third time.

Man, Cape fights moved pretty fast.

Another wall, this one not load-bearing thankfully, exploded out as a pair of very pretty valkyrie cosplaying neonazi giantesses stumbled out of it, with a tinier asshole in fullplate armor stumbling between their well-toned legs. He turned back and plugged the hole with a big sheet of spiky metal.

"Welp, looks like the 88 are trying to retreat. Aaaaan yep, there's Sabrina the Teenage Nazi." I said as Rune descended on a slab of concrete. "Okay, decision time. Do we wanna concentrate fully on Lung, or do we take a chance t-"

One of the valkyrie twins tossed a giant fucking spear at us.

We scrambled away from each other, I jumped to the next building over, and heard the roof behind us shatter into powder.

Well fuck you too.

I blink-clicked the icon on my HUD so that my shoulder cannon locked onto Rune, and spat out a continuous stream of taser bullets, the only sound it made being a low whine as the capacitors cycled.

Bright side, they were silent. So the first clue Rune had of the incoming attack was when she was hit by five of them and started doing the epileptic chicken dance.

She also dropped from three stories up onto a roof. Kinda lucky for her, otherwise she'd have become tomato paste.

"Fuck!" Said the giantess that had thrown the spear at us. I threw her a middle finger. I then shot her boss.

The 5.56 x 45 NATO rounds slamming into Kaiser were the first warning he received that he was about to get shot, a supersonic projectile being effectively silent so long as you were its target. My own ears were spared beyond the crack of the bullets flipping the bird to the sound barrier thanks to the magic of my suppressor.

Unfortunately, power-wrought plate armor is better than mundane plate armor, and what bullets didn't flatten against Kaiser bounced off his chestplate with loud pings, and whined away into the distance. Black-Naziman stumbled back under the barrage until the giant idiot with a shield crouched in front of him. I sent a few bullets at her head in response, hopefully her helmet rang like a gong.

I then had to scramble, because man, they were pissed, and the bitch with the spear was carrying spares.

At that moment, eighteen feet of scales and anger punched through the hole the Nazis had plugged with metal. The two twins and the black knight wannabe turned around to fight the dragon eunuch. I decided to be a cheeky dickwaffle and used my antigrav and jetboots to navigate my way to the roof where Sabrina had fallen.

Surprisingly, she was awake, which was too bad for her what with how her legs had a few extra bends in odd places. She also had a debris field rotating around her and shot some of it at me. I dodged as well as I could but my defense field flared nonetheless, teleporting away the more dangerous chunks, the smaller ones pitter-pattering off my armor.

I switched out my shoulder cannons for the stun-blasters, and let her have an unsafe dose of nervous system scrambling shots.

Bright side, she lost control of the debris field.

Down side, she lost control of the debris field.

Hopefully the buildings around us were insured. That unusually loud window shattering had probably been important.

Still, once the rain of projectiles petered out, it gave me the chance to land next to her and tase her directly with my gauntlet till she passed out.

Okay. Now to make sure she couldn't get away. I zip tied her arms and legs in a very uncomfortable position. Was that a bone sticking out of her thigh? Yep, that's a bone striking out of her thigh.

I put a bag over her head, then threw her over my shoulder and flew away from the fight so I could stash her somewhere out of sight.

Thankfully, the two giant ass valkyrie wannabes were distracted by the boy with rocket boots, who seemed to have given up the idea of secret identities and was just straight up shooting melon-sized emotional blasts at them.

They grow up so fast.

And then twenty-three feet of angry dragon with six legs and two wings sent an asshole in plate armor flying, tail-slapped one of the giantesses, and bit a few fingers off the other one. The three nazis collectively decided to make use of the better part of valor. The dragon was about to pursue, but then he got hit by an obnoxious radioactive-orange ball the size of a watermelon. This made the dragon pause and turn to the tiny asshole with the rocket boots.

Shit.

I clicked my communication app open and very calmly demanded. "What. The shit. Do you think you're doing?"

"Getting his attention. Set up the thing!" Dean screeched before dodging like his life depended on it.

Mainly because it did.

"I told you I'd need some lead time!" I said, tossing Rune to the floor and teleporting Cannon bits into place. "Goddamnit man!"

On the one hand, I couldn't rush this or the Cannon might explode, it needed at least another twenty to thirty hours of work before I was comfortable pushing the tolerances. On the other, I had to rush or my idiot partner would get himself killed.

Where's the plague of bugs when you need it?

---

Derail 3.8.2

I felt my mind narrow into a razor sharp focus.

There was no room for extra thoughts, like how long it would take for Magi or whatever Chris was calling himself, to put together the Anti-Dragon Cannon or where was Taylor in all of this chaos. No, my brain was focused simply on the foe in front of me. Not in any grand analytical fashion, but in a very simple and direct one.

'Claw!' My brain helpfully shouted.

I launched myself into a rocket propelled backflip, just in time to dodge the giant silver scaled claw that raked the ground in front of me.

'Tail!' My brain screamed in terror.

I threw my hands downwards and fired the widest emotional blast that I could manage. I didn't really focus on any particular emotion, I wanted kinetic force more than emotional strength for once.

The blast thankfully obeyed some of the laws of physics and the feedback slowed me down just enough to avoid the tail swipe that would have torn my legs off.

And so it would go. It was the world's most dangerous game of cat and mouse. Lung would strike at me and I'd use every bit of Tinker Tech assisted athleticism to just barely avoid the lethal strike.

Thankfully, this mouse had at least one fang to use against the cat.

I kicked off a wall that disintegrated just after I kicked off of it, due to dragon's breath and threw a hand vaguely in Lung's direction. "Please work."

A deep blue shimmering orb lit up my fist. I conjured up as much calm the fuck down energy as I could muster and fired it at the dragon's core. The deep blue orb roared through the air before slamming into Lung's chest. It struck with all the force of a speeding bullet. Which meant it did jack shit to the dragon's scaled chest.

For a brief moment, I thought it had done nothing and we were totally screwed.

Except for that same brief moment, Lung paused. It was barely anything, less than a second, but the blast did cause the dragon to hesitate.

'Teeth!' My head thankfully shouted before I could get lost in analysis and I scaled up a nearby wall to avoid Lung's attempt at cannibalism.

"Okay, this works. Good. Good to know." I had no idea if it would work or not and seeing my emotional blasts do something to the seemingly unstoppable cape was a good sign.

I could do this. We could do this.

'Fire!' My brain screamed.

Lung decided he was done trying to squash me and decided he wanted roasted mouse instead. He took a breath and opened his gaping maw and I could actually see an orange glow build up in his throat.

"Oh shit!" I shouted and planted my feet for a bit of stability. I cupped my hands together and pumped out as much emotional energy as I could muster. The orb this time was such a deep blue that it seemed to draw in and suck out the energy around it.

If calm didn't work, how about a larger dose of depression?

"Choke on this!" I threw my hands forward and fired the orb directly into Lung's gaping maw.

Lung gagged on the orb as it struck him in his vulnerable insides before it sunk deep into his body. The dragon convulsed as he gagged further, the fire in his maw sputtering out. Lung lashed out at the street in a wild rage, his claws gouging the street in his rage.

I had to squint for a second to make sure that I was seeing correctly, but there was no doubt about it. Lung had gotten smaller. It was just a little bit, but I could see that his height had shrunk down about a foot.

I could feel a grin stretch my lips up as Lung tried to maintain his rage and power.

That grin quickly died as Lung succeeded in maintaining his rage and fed the small bit of failure and weakness into the fire, burning even hotter now. He quickly regained the foot of height he lost and gained another two on top of it. The flames in his maw returned, now joined by flames spontaneously erupting around his feet and claws.

"Oh no." I was a victim of my own success.

'Fire, again!' My psyche screeched.

I didn't have a blast ready to shoot out and it would take too long to charge up a stronger blast than last time. Which meant I had to dodge.

I tapped my rocket boots and ran to the side. The exhausts on the armored greaves roared as I tried to dash around the dragon and get out of his range of fire.

Unfortunately for me, Lung wasn't just going to sit still and charge patiently. He twisted his body to keep me in sight before unleashing hell. Flames that were so bright that they lacked any color at all burned through the air right behind me. I pumped my legs harder as if that would help the rocket boots give me a bit more speed.

For a moment, it seemed to work. I gained a slight lead on the fire. But reality tends to be disappointing in ways you don't expect.

The flashing icon on my HUD reminded me of an important fact.

These rocket boots are only good for short bursts. They would overheat and melt my legs if they went on any longer.

"Shit!" I screamed as my brain raced. I could either stop running and burn to death, or keep running and have my legs melt and then burn to death.

No, I had to think. I had options. What else did Chris make for me?

"Okay, so this is a Tinkertech shield. Now, very important, you need to blah blah blah Tinkertech crap. Yap yap yap, sarcastic comment. Blah blah blah, plasma. Yap yap, insulting nickname."

Right. Tinkertech Shield, that'll help. I slid to a stop and braced myself as I slapped the button on my gauntlet. A large smooth white buckler warped onto my arm and emitted a bright blue glowing energy shield.

"Okay, this will work. Why didn't I think to use this before?"

My memory of Chris' voice continued to lecture me as if to answer my question. "But remember, whatever you do, do not use this against Lung's fire breath. Because bla-"

I was engulfed by fire.

---

Derail III.VIII.III

I watched the big wave of fire sweep over Dean.

Welp. He's dead.

Grieve later, deal with the dragon now.

I twisted the last set of wires, and skipped the safety checks. It was do or die time, and if Dean wasn't dead. Then he soon would be if I didn't bring down the thunder.

With a heave, I shouldered the large unwieldy cannon that should really be mounted on a vehicle. The gravity sled whining under its mass.

I stared down the scope, and waited.

I squinted, the titanic amount of flames that Lung was spewing was blinding my every sensor and biological sense. The light was so bright that my eyes watered behind my flash protected visor, even from such a long distance.

On one hand, Lung was large enough that I would probably hit him firing blind. On the other, I'd be exceedingly lucky to get two shots. More than likely, something important would melt after the first. I couldn't afford to waste it on a half blind shot from over 100 yards.

"Come on you big lizard." I muttered. "I just need a glimpse."

I concentrated on taking long, deep breaths, doing my best to keep my hands from trembling. Looking for the respiratory pause as I caressed the trigger. I banished my worries about my maybe-friend. Pushed away my concerns that this utterly untested weapon might fail.

I breathed. Sound falling away but for the slow thump of my heart, the bellowing of my lungs, and the minute whine of the cannon's capacitors.

The world around me slowly bled away. Until the only things that remained were myself, my gun, and my target. Until I, too, bled away, and there was only the target.

The faintest silhouette came into sight. The cannon bucked against my shoulder before my conscious mind registered the glitter of silver scales, a dark blue anti-light roared and banished all positive energy from the world.

---

Derail 3.8.4

A massive inferno raged across the street to burn away everything in sight. The asphalt melted into tar, any vehicle unluckily enough to still be on the street was pulverized and then melted, and any living thing would burn into cinders after a few agonizing seconds.

The only thing keeping me from that inferno was the impermanent shield flickering in front of me.

And it was just barely doing that.

'Hot!Hot!Hot!' My brain helpfully screamed as my arm burned from the sheer heat that bled through the shield.

For a brief moment, I thought I was safe.

Then I felt it. A jolt that ran down my arm. Not from heat, no, it was barely visible because of the sheer corona of flames that was everywhere around me, but I could just barely see the Shield Emitter begin to spark.

"Oh no." I barely managed to gasp, as the flames around me consumed all the precious oxygen in the area.

If that emitter broke, I was cooked. Literally.

The Shield Emitter began to glow orange and sparked erratically.

"No, no, no."

In the middle of an inferno, my brain raced at top speed. Sadly, in this moment where I was at death's door, it was focused on everything that could kill me.

Like the flames around me, or the fact that I was running out of oxygen in this wildfire, or that my feet were now stuck to the ground because the asphalt had melted into tar and I had sunk into the ground.

All I could do was watch as the Shield Emitter went from orange to dark yellow before giving up the ghost entirely.

I swore and slammed my eyes shut before bracing myself for hell.

Darkness engulfed my sight and I embraced oblivion rather than endure burning agony.

Or rather, that was the plan.

Because I didn't feel anything. And I didn't mean that in the weird tingly way when you're numb, because I could still very clearly feel my arm burning from the red hot Shield Emitter.

I carefully opened my eyes and found nothing.

Well, the entire street had melted into a hellscape. The street was actually bubbling and it smelled like death, but I didn't see a dragon ready to smite me for the heretical impulse to try to calm him down because he was throwing a hissy fit.

"I'm alive?" My brain helpfully reminded me of my searing arm and I quickly detached the Shield Emitter from my arm. When that didn't help, I took off the bracer as well and hissed as my burnt skin met open air.

"Jesus Christ, that hurts!" I wanted to jump from the pain, but I found resistance when my feet failed to move and had to windmill my arms rapidly to prevent myself from falling face first into melted asphalt.

"Okay, I'm in pain and feeling embarrassed from that. So I'm alive." I felt my lips curl into a giddy smile and any attempt to catch my breath were completely ruined by the nearly hysterical laughter that bubbled out of my lips.

After a few moments of that, I managed to wrench my boots out of the ground before the asphalt cooled and looked around at the devastated street. I noted the melted and on fire everything, all except for me and one other. The large and very naked Asian man that was sprawled on the street.

"And that's Lung. Who is naked." My brain helpfully noted as I gingerly walked closer to the sleeping dragon. I just barely managed to resist the urge to poke him and see if he was truly asleep. "He's out. So I'm guessing the plan worked? Holy shit, I can't believe it worked!"

The entire plan against Lung was that if his power scaled to the threat in front of him, the best way to neutralize him would be to make him not feel like anything is a threat. And hey, there just happened to be an emotion based Master in our duo.

Except I wasn't sure I could throw something that strong against Lung and make it stick for more than a few seconds.

Chris said that he only needed one to put a bullet in Lung's head, but really, we weren't even sure that would kill the bastard.

So we needed a way to amp up my powers. And would you look at that, we had a Tinker with a huge ass cannon that was built to shoot different and abnormal ammunition. So Chris jerry rigged a container could hold one of my blasts and had me shoot at the thing until my nose started to bleed from the effort, then had me take a break and do it again because the container wasn't at its limit.

So we had a gun that shot, "Calm the fuck down" at artillery caliber instead of peashooter which was my default.

"I didn't expect it to knock him the hell out, but I guess the extreme of calm is unconsciousness." I shrugged, but I had no real idea why it had knocked him out. "I'll take it."

I wondered what to do with the very large, naked, drooling man, who apparently was burn resistant even as a human, the lucky bastard. "Fuck, this day needs to be over already."

The shrieking buzz of hundreds of thousands of insects reminded me that while I wanted the day to be over, it was very much not over.

I watched in horrified awe as the ground and sky was suddenly filled with insects of all different kinds. Insects that did not have large enough brains to feel enough emotions for me to comprehend or influence. Insects that were under the control of the villain that was stepping out of the warehouse like she was ready to murder someone.

"Well, shit." I hummed and hawed as the bug Cape and her entourage of Bitch and a couple of those demonic dogs stomped towards me, only slowed down slightly by the cooling tar. "Well, hello there."

Polite is good, polite usually works.

Polite also did not seem to impress Skitter at all. I didn't even try to look at Bitch, she just gave me a headache. I had no idea what the hell the kaleidoscope of emotions she felt meant. So I focused on the very focused and very ready to commit murder Skitter instead.

"Is he dead?" And Skitter went straight to the point. Her voice overlapping with an inhuman buzzing that triggered something in the lizard part of my brain, making me cringe back.

"Nope." I said with a smug smirk. "My partner basically shot him with a super powered version of m- Gallant's Ma-Blaster power."

Way to go brain. I promise to give you more oxygen if you manage to get us out of this alive.

"He's going to come after you." Skitter hissed and the bugs all around me buzzed menacingly, almost in tune with her crimson fury. "As soon as he's out, he'll stop at nothing now that he knows you can stop him."

"Pretty sure Lung's out of chances. He's going straight to the Bird's Nest or whatever. And I'm confident that even he can't get out of that death trap." I hoped.

"He was supposed to go to the Birdcage after I beat him and Armsmaster dragged him away." Skitter spat out. "But look at where we are now?"

I scowled as I suddenly had a bad feeling about where this conversation was heading.

"And I suppose you have a solution for this?" I tried to keep Skitter talking.

Skitter drew a knife from a sheath on her back and started walking towards Lung. I followed after her as she stood over the gangster and stared down at him, the roiling anger inside her sharpening to a cold fury. "There is one way." She said, her voice flat and emotionless as the knife trembled.

It was kind of frightening how easily she said that. She really believed that she only had one choice about this.

"Why don't you walk me through this?" I resisted the urge to add, 'before you do something you'll regret' because I doubted it would help in this situation.

"Simple." She said, her voice still showing no sign of the storm within her. "He's escaped or been broken out every time he's gotten locked up." Her grip tightened on the hilt. "All we have to do is make sure he doesn't get another chance to get away. We might not ever get another chance at it."

That didn't sound unhinged at all. I scowled and felt my fingers twitch in anticipation, keeping a careful eye on Skitter's emotions for a flare or jump.

"I'm going to say that I'm not a fan of murder." I resisted the urge to grab her and pull her away. The buzz of the legion of insects that was surrounding me was a very good deterrent. "Not a big fan of letting it happen in front of me, either."

Skitter remained quiet for a long moment before speaking. "And even if the Protectorate were to take him. Can you babysit him until they show up? His gang might be running now, but they'll turn around and come back eventually. And the Protectorate doesn't come to this part of town. They'll just take him back and he won't even see the inside of a cell."

"Pretty sure it's standard operating procedure for a hero to sit and wait for the Protectorate to pick up the villain." I kept my voice even and steady. "As for the ABB, well, I'm pretty sure the hellscape and plague of insects you've got here will keep them at bay for another five to ten minutes."

She turned her featureless mask toward me, its yellow lenses glaring balefully in the dying fires. "I can't stay."

"Fair enough." I sighed. "Well, good news is that my partner has a very big gun to threaten people with. So I think we'll be okay."

She stared for a long moment. Her body was so utterly still that the only way I could tell she was not very happy, was thanks to my power. She turned around and started to walk away, and threw a parting word over her shoulder. "On your head be it, then. Though, word of advice, 'okay' is likely to get you killed."

"Maybe it will." I had just gotten into a pissing match with a dragon, so I wasn't going to defend the safety of my life choices today. "But that's the burden of a hero. Taking the hard options."

Her step faltered as her aura flared with too many sad and angry colors, but she did not say anything more as she kept walking, Bitch and her dogs at her heels.

I watched Skitter go, unsure what the clotting aura of regret and determination meant for her future.

Derail 3.9

A few minutes after Skitter left, Artillery found me sitting next to Lung, keeping an eye out for the Protectorate or any Asians that decided it would be smart to come back to the blast zone.

Thankfully, whatever mechanical magic that Artillery did to my powers seemed to extend its shelf life. Lung was still unconscious, without a single waver in his dark blue aura.

The unwavering lifeless depression was as peaceful as it was disturbing to look at.

"I would make a joke about the very large naked man next to you. But you look like shit. So I'll magnanimously spare you." Chris said. I noticed, annoyingly, that beyond some scratching of his armor's paint job, he was unscathed compared to my lightly seared state.

"Wonderful. You can use the energy spared from not doing that and pour it into keeping watch. I'm exhausted." I let my body relax just a smidge now that I had back up, but kept my guard up. Even if Lung was down, that didn't mean we were completely safe. This wasn't a video game where defeating a boss gave you a reprieve.

It was thanks to that vigilance that I caught it in the corner of my eye.

The flash of metal and the click of a safety being removed. A flash of blood red and steel determination.

"Oi." I reached up and grabbed the barrel of the gun pointed at the unconscious villain. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The metallic gray of Artillery's aura did not at all shift, he didn't even turn to look at me. "What needs to be done."

I applied pressure to the gun to point it away from Lung's head, but met resistance. I scowled and stood, tightening my grip on the barrel. "I just talked one dumbass teenager down from murder. Why the hell are you making me do it twice?"

"Because this is the only way it'll stick." He finally turned to look at me, the blood red rage beginning to erode the metallic determination. "Skitter blinded him. But after all is said and done, he gets to live, he gets out, and he goes right back to being the piece of shit he is. I'm not letting that happen!"

"So you're just going to kill him?" I stared him right in the eyes as I pressed against the barrel even harder, the gun started to tremble as we fought over it. "Just because he'll go somewhere else and sit around until someone else is dumb enough to poke a sleeping dragon?"

"He's a murderer, a rapist, and a fucking slaver." Artillery growled, the blood red rage spiked erratically, as he laid accusation after accusation. "The gold pile this dragon sleeps on, is built on a bed of human bone."

"Great. Wonderful. I get it." I nodded sagely, before applying more pressure to keep the barrel of the gun away from Lung's head. "Prove it."

Artillery hesitated. There was a brief calculation going on in his head. Colors swirled in a balancing act, before orange frustration tinged the blood red.

"I'll be happy to. I have all the files in a neat little folder back at base."

I stared at him for a moment and fought the urge to pinch my nose. I needed that hand to keep the gun pointed away.

"I can see that you're lying."

"You need to get better with your power. You're getting a false read."

"And I can see that you're way too emotional to be making this kind of decision." I ignored the bait, he'd want to make this about our powers rather than this being the right thing to do. "We're trying to fix this place. We're not going to do that by piling up bodies just because it's convenient."

"Except, killing him will objectively make the world a better place!" Artillery's frustration wasn't diluting the blood red rage anymore, it fed into it. Making it burn hotter and more erratically. "I'm willing to dirty my hands, so that the next person he would have raped, or mutilated, or killed, will get to live without having him tear their life apart!"

"And then what? We just keep going. We pile on the bodies until there are no more bad people left?"

"No, we just get rid of the ones in our way. The rest will eventually reap what they sowed."

"How magnanimous of you." I spat out. "Like a warlord, you'll sit on top of your little fiefdom and kill whoever brings you trouble. Content to sit on your throne, until someone dumb decides to poke the sleeping dragon."

"Oh woe is I, I am becoming that which I hate, truly he was my dark mirror all along, what dramatic fucking irony." He jeered in a scathingly mocking tone. "Or, and follow me on this one. I'm killing a career criminal, and eliminating a future problem that'll come back to bite us in the ass. With fire!"

"Uh huh. So he'll escape the inescapable prison and be a problem?" I inquired, my voice full of skepticism. "You know that for a fact?"

"Yes!" He hissed. "And with the swiss cheese you call a brain you've probably forgotten, again, but we have more important things to tackle than a two-bit kaiju wannabe every time this dumbass wants a rematch!"

I kept my face blank as I thought about it. I couldn't recall Lung doing anything memorable past this point. Not that I could exactly trust my memory of the story. As Artillery often, rudely, reminded me, my knowledge of this story was full of holes. So he could be right. This could be a good chance to eliminate a recurring problem.

No. I had to draw a line in the sand.

"No." I shook my head. "We're not going to kill him."

"No, we are not." Artillery said, and for one beautiful moment, I thought I'd gotten through to him.

And then he punched me in the mouth.

"Fuck!"

It was a quick jab. Hell, if it hit anything other than my jaw, I probably would have endured it and hit him back. But a hit to the jaw is a hit to the jaw.

It had done its job. It had startled me and made me take a step backwards to nurse my wound, if for only a moment.

When I looked up, Artillery had already spun around and pointed his gun down at Lung.

"No you don't!"

I clicked the rocket boots and launched myself at Artillery. I hit him like a battering ram, the weapon in his hands fired into the empty air as his aim was thrown wildly off.

"Bitch!"

Artillery twisted and rolled with the blow, letting me slide off of him and keep flying. I tucked and rolled off the ground into a crouch only to see that Artillery was racing back over to Lung.

"I said," I asserted, breaking back into another rocket powered dash. "No. You. Don't!"

I dropped into a slide tackle, slamming into Artillery's legs and knocking them clean off the ground.

"Bitch!"

Both Artillery and I rose to our feet at the same time. Artillery was ready to make another break for Lung when he noticed a problem.

He had made a fatal mistake. When I had knocked his feet out from under him, he had dropped his gun. Before he could even begin to crouch to pick it back up, an angry red bolt slammed into it and sent it spinning away from him.

"Bitch!"

"I'll say it one more time for empha-" I was cut off by a small flash of light as Artillery summoned a fresh pistol into his hands. However, the slight lag as Artillery situated his new weapon gave me just enough time to pulse the rocket boots and dodge the first shot. "Fuck! Are you crazy!?"

I didn't hear Artillery's response, but I assume he either disagreed with my statement or was hurling more insults my way alongside the bullets.

I ran like a madman, pulsing the boots at irregular intervals to throw off Artillery's aim. It seemed to work as I managed to avoid the hail of, hopefully, stun bolts coming my way. But I couldn't keep this up forever. However, apparently, neither could Artillery. With a spark rather than a flash, the pistol in his hands finally ran empty as it either broke or ran dry whatever ammo it drew from.

"Dammit!" Artillery swore as he gave the pistol a brief look of complete betrayal. "Now of all fucking times!?"

Yes, now of all times. I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I rushed at Artillery before he had time to pull another gun out of his ass. I shot a side kick straight into Artillery's stomach and sent him sliding backwards.

I didn't let him have a moment to catch his breath or recover. I slammed a roundhouse kick into his side. My foot fell to the ground and the ball of my foot touched the ground only to snap back into the air and slam into Artillery's side again, and again, and again.

Artillery grunted as he raised his guard and tried to endure the repeated blows. For a moment, he looked confident, but after the third kick slammed into his guard and knocked him slightly off balance, he faltered. I could see the confusion and panic start to rise over him as I didn't let up and set into a rhythm.

Kick, rechamber, kick, repeat. Until your target is nice and tender.

Or at least, that was the plan.

Another kick connected into his guarded side as a burst of light flashed in his hand, he stabbed it forward, jabbing me painfully in the stomach, and with a snap-crackle, I felt my core muscles spasm painfully.

"Gah!" I grunted and I completely lost my form. I twisted and had to rapidly backpedal to keep from falling on my ass.

"All this, for him!? The rabid, rapist, murderous scum!?" Artillery growled as he alternated jabbing with the prongs, and swinging the baton. His aura blazing like red flames. "The world will be a better place without him in it!"

I found myself on the defensive as I backpedaled. I had to be careful to only block the baton and avoid the crackling prongs.

"Fuck off." I hissed as I mistimed a block and got a jolt of electricity for my efforts. "If you're going to try to take the moral high ground here, then give it up."

"I'm sure all the families he's broken will agree with you!" Artillery shouted. "He gets away with his shit purely because he can punch an Enbringer. And he refuses to do the one thing that excuses his behavior! Why shouldn't I put him out of this city's collective misery!?"

"And I'm sure you'll be so happy to do the moral thing and tell the families that they've been avenged." I retorted, my voice full of venom. Only partially due to the third shock I endured from his stupid baton. "Except you're not doing it for moral reasons, you're just looking to justify your fucking murder! So, fuck that, fuck off, and fuck your stupid baton!"

I raised my right hand and pointed forwards. The ball of pissed off crimson I had been charging up erupted out of my hand and slammed into the baton, blasting it out of Artillery's hand.

I stepped forward, ready to go on the offensive again, but Artillery beat me to it. Rather than take a step back from losing his weapon, Artillery drove forward and bum rushed me. A reckless tackle caught me right in the stomach and threw me onto the ground with him on top of me.

I tried to buck him off, but he was more slippery than a snake, somehow ending up behind me, with an arm around my neck, and the other pushing my head forward into the crook of his elbow. I awkwardly swung an elbow into Artillery's stomach, but the pressure around my neck didn't lessen in the slightest.

What was most disconcerting, was that I could still breathe. But the world immediately started to darken as my blood roared in my ears. He wasn't cutting off my oxygen. He was cutting off the blood to my brain.

I thrashed for a few moments, panic kicking in. But the darkness seeped in, slowly and steady, until it claimed everything.

Right before I completely blacked out, the pressure stopped. I gasped for breath and the world seemed to slam back into my body along with the air I greedily gulped down.

I looked up and the world spun in a kaleidoscope of mishmashed colors that I couldn't make left or right of. I held back the bile trying to make its way up my throat and tried to focus the colors into something coherent.

There. That was Artillery pointing something at Lung.

Fuck.

I raised my right arm and pointed a clenched fist at Artillery. Distilled despair pooled around my fist. For a moment, I remembered the blackened, rotten flower.

I can always apologize after.

The blackest bolt hurled out of my fist and slammed into Artillery's back before racing around his body, enveloping him, then vanishing.

Wait.

What?

My emotional bolts don't do that. They invade a body and insert themselves into their aura before infesting them with whatever emotion I plant.

There was a small shimmer around Artillery's body and I connected the dots immediately.

Artillery took the time to look down at me, full of contempt, disappointment and just a hint of regret.

There were three surprisingly quiet 'thuds' as Lung's head came apart in a welter of blood, bone and gray matter. Leaving behind a ragged stump that spurted arterial sprays into the ground.

I stared at the carnage in horror. I had seen dead bodies before, but nothing as grotesque as this. Not for real.

"You…" I stumbled to my feet and snarled at Artillery, colors crackling around my skin, begging to be unleashed. "You…"

I poured everything into one last shot, a rainbow bolt the size of a shopping cart, erupted out of my body at Artillery. But it hit the shimmering shield around him and parted around him, like water flowing around a rock.

That confirmed it. He built a shield to use specifically against me.

"So… it's like that, huh?" I snarled, swiping a hand to the side.

He turned to look at me, his aura losing the contempt and disappointment, leaving it as infuriatingly sad as his voice. "Did you really think that, having been given carte blanche to study your power, I wouldn't make a counter to it?"

"Yeah, I kind of believed that. We had more important things to worry about and I felt that was more important than making a weapon because I thought I'd need to fight my partner. But that's the rub, you were expecting to have to fight me from the start, weren't you?"

He had the audacity to turn away from me, studying his handiwork as he sighed. "You probably won't believe me. But no. I thought we were on the same page." He idly kicked Lung's corpse after it twitched. "That said, I'm a firm believer in hope for the best, prepare for the worst."

"Well, congratulations. You were right. We get to stress test this, right here, right now."

I took a step forward. Dark corroding despair, seeped black wisps out of every pore of my body ready to be unleashed.

'Thud!'

I looked down at the huge bullet embedded next to my foot.

"That's your last warning shot." Chris said, his tone unchanged. His aura was becoming tinged with that steel gray of determination from before. Maybe he was feeling other things, but I couldn't see anything else. He would shoot me if I tried to fight.

I thought about it. I would probably take a bullet, but despite what the media will tell you, a bullet won't kill you immediately unless you're really unlucky or get shot in the head. That meant it would be a gamble. Whether I could overwhelm his barrier with one shot before he filled me with more bullets.

I thought about it. At best, it'd probably be a double loss. I'd be badly wounded, but Chris would either be incapacitated, or dead. At worst, his shield held up and I'd join Lung in the ground because I had to play hero.

I took a step backwards. I wasn't willing to take that bet. I wasn't going to die here. Not to Chris. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

"So that's it then?" I spat through grit teeth. I pointed down at Lung's body. "You're just going to murder your way to a better world?"

His shoulders moved in a minute shrug, the barrel not wavering for a moment. "Humanity has been doing that for the last twelve thousand years. Maybe this time it'll stick."

"Ahahaha… oh man, Einstein was right. You're insane." I wheezed. If I didn't laugh, I'd cry. And there was no way I was going to cry in front of this son of a bitch.

An infuriating twinge of amusement shot through Chris.

"Fine. Fine." I felt even that frantic painful laughter bleed out of me. Just seeing Chris amused even a little, by this situation just drained all the energy out of me. "I'm done."

I tore off all the Tinkertech that Chris had given me. The bracers, the boots, and the goggles were all dumped at Chris' feet. I'd need to make a petition to have Armsmaster take over Gallant's armor too. I didn't trust this fucker to not put a contingency in all of his damn Tinkertech.

"You can fuck off and murder villains on your own." I spat out. "The next time I see Artillery, I'm bringing you to jail or I'll die trying."

I didn't stick around to see Chris' reaction. If he wanted to shoot me in the back, he was welcome to do it. I wasn't going to waste my efforts trying to curb his dumbass anymore. I was going to do things my way. The right way.

Even if it kills me.

"Dee!" I forced myself not to pause, and girded myself for his final parting insult. "Try to stay safe! This city is treacherous!"

Fuck.

I pawed at my eyes, but just kept moving away. The Protectorate would be here soon. I was going to explain myself and deal with the consequences.

Alone.

Fuck.

---

Author's Note: Whelp, that happened. This chapter really earning that Arc title in many ways.

Things getting derailed on all sides. Funnily enough, even as the authors we aren't immune to that derail. This was very much not in our initial plans.

Anyways, have fun discussing the fallout. Next few posts will be interludes about said fallout.