Alea Iacta Est - a Worm AU Fanfic

[Jack of Olives]

Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary types; I give you genuine, scientific proof that Thinkers are bullshit!
Disclaimer: the proof in question may not be genuine or scientific. Please contact your local PRT for any questions.

 

[DieKatzchen]

Note, as I've said before, too easy for my taste in a serious fic, anyway.

Click to shrink...

I'll be honest, I don't mind it so much. Sometimes it's fun to watch the heroes do a Conga Line on the villians. I suppose the difficulty could be turned up a tiny bit, but as Hannibal would say, "I love it when a plan comes together"

 

[Ack]

I'll be honest, I don't mind it so much. Sometimes it's fun to watch the heroes do a Conga Line on the villians. I suppose the difficulty could be turned up a tiny bit, but as Hannibal would say, "I love it when a plan comes together"

Click to shrink...

They hit him where he thought he was strong. Turns out his weakness was an underground base full of water.
And with three separate Thinkers working against him, one of them a precog, he was kinda screwed from the word go.

Also, I don't like Coil, so fuck 'im.

 

[Prince Charon]

They hit him where he thought he was strong. Turns out his weakness was an underground base full of water.
And with three separate Thinkers working against him, one of them a precog, he was kinda screwed from the word go.

Click to shrink...

Thinkers are scary bullshit, yes. This is why he wanted control over every Thinker in Brockton Bay, because this is the sort of thing that they can plausibly do (sure, they needed other capes to help, but they could still have taken him down with another group, or done it later with more patience and some mundane help, using other methods). Smart Thinkers are even scarier, because they're actually working out how to use their powers better, and not just doing whatever the voices in their heads tell them to do. It's something I have to consider any time I try to write a Wormfic (not that I've got much written yet in any one fic).

Also, I don't like Coil, so fuck 'im.

Click to shrink...

With a rusty chainsaw - or just kill him. That's preferable.

 

[Ack]

Alea Iacta Est

Part Fifteen: Initial Foray

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

"So Coil's off the board now too," Lisa said with altogether unseemly satisfaction, drawing several vicious red lines through the name that had been written on the whiteboard. "Director Piggot knows who he is, so she won't give him even the slightest chance to wriggle out of it." She looked at the other names on the board, one of which had been crossed out rather more neatly.

"Did you seriously write all those names up just so you could cross out Coil like he owed you money?" asked Taylor from behind her, leaning back on Kayden's sofa. Her tone was amused rather than accusatory, so Lisa didn't even bother looking around. Lisa heard the ting of a coin being flipped, and the tiny thwap of it landing. Taylor snorted. "Sources say yes."

"Did you even need to flip the coin?" asked Theo, sharing the sofa. "I could tell that's what she was up to, and I don't even have powers."

"Yet," Annette reminded him, leaning over the back of the sofa and giving him a noogie. Even as he struggled and spluttered and tried to push her away, she continued unfazed. "We're both third generation, right? Getting powers should be like taking a walk down the block for us."

Dinah, sitting crossways on an armchair, made a rude noise between her lips. "I hope so, for your sakes. Getting them as a first generation is no fun at all." She chewed for a moment on the pen she was holding, then tapped it on the writing pad she had on her lap. "So here's my question. We've successfully removed the two gangs in Brockton Bay who had close and personal knowledge about any of our members. Even if it was mostly accidental in the case of the Empire. Do we go after the ABB next or the Merchants, or do we leave them alone and just target crime in general?"

"I vote Merchants, because they're assholes," Lisa said, circling that name on the board with the red marker. "Literally all they do is sell drugs. Sometimes to kids."

Kayden exited the kitchen with a tray of cookies and other snacks. "Don't forget, the ABB does exactly the same thing themselves. And of course, they've got the illegal brothels, the illegal gambling, and rumour has it that they're also involved in human trafficking." She looked at the dubious expressions around the room as she set the tray down on the coffee table. "No, this is legitimate. Not Empire propaganda. It's a thing."

"Well, this is Brockton Bay, so I'm not about to dismiss it out of hand," Lisa observed. She grabbed a cookie and took a bite out of it. "Mmm, nice. Your own recipe?"

"My mother's, actually." Kayden looked pleased at the compliment, but then she switched back to the serious topic. "Both the Merchants and the ABB will be expanding into the vacant territory. While the Merchants have more capes, Lung and Oni Lee are more aggressive. I'd strongly suggest not taking on Lung on a haphazard basis, and not without another heavy hitter, such as Glory Girl, on side."

"Oh, trust me," Dinah said, wriggling off the armchair to snag a cookie for herself. "If and when we take on Lung and Oni Lee, it'll only happen after Lisa and I have set up the battle plan and Taylor's nailed down every last variable. And of course we won't fight them both at once. Each one acts as a force multiplier for the other."

"Ooh, munchies!" Annette left off harassing Theo and dived over the sofa in what was apparently intended to be an acrobatic roll. However, the cushion buckled under her and she let out an undignified yelp as she landed on her butt on the floor. "I intended to do that," she claimed unconvincingly, pushing her hair out of her face and reaching out for a piece of home-made garlic bread.

"I'm not even going to bother testing that for truth," Taylor teased her, flicking the coin so it landed cleanly on its edge on the tray alongside the bread. "So Dinah, you're saying we should maybe put the smackdown on the Merchants first, as a trial run? And what's with all these big words, anyway?"

Dinah stuck her tongue out at Taylor, then took a bite out of the cookie. "I've been reading books on strategy," she said once she'd swallowed. "Cross-referencing that with the videos I've been able to find on cape battles in Brockton Bay and elsewhere, I've come to a very simple, very basic conclusion."

She put the rest of the cookie in her mouth and chewed on it while the others looked at her.

"Well?" asked Theo.

Lisa snorted. "Isn't it obvious? Capes suck at strategy."

"That can't be right." Kayden frowned. "Max always made a fuss about 'deploying his forces correctly'. Telling certain people to attack certain targets."

"And yet he held up a long sharp metal object over his head in a lightning storm," Lisa said, holding the whiteboard marker aloft in a dramatic fashion. "The man was not adept at thinking ahead."

"Anyway, just telling who to attack which opponent isn't exactly Art of War stuff," Dinah said. "That's tactics, not strategy. Strategy is making your opponent think you're doing one thing when you're really doing another. So when they react to what they think you're doing, they're in the perfect position for you to hit them out of nowhere."

"And of course, if you're really good," Lisa chimed in, "when they react to your surprise move, you've anticipated that and you've got another one ready to knock them sideways all over again."

Kayden nodded thoughtfully. "Making the other guy expend all his energy hitting shadows, while you get a proper strike in every time," she said. "It's easy to anticipate a single move, but to look several moves ahead and be able to correctly figure out which way someone will jump each and every time … that's a tall order."

Dinah and Lisa shared a look, then they both glanced over at Taylor. All three of them grinned. "So, you were saying?" Lisa asked.

Annette let out a sharp bark of laughter, making Theo jump. "You three. Holy shit. Put you together and you're a strategy engine. I love it."

"I think we'll need you as well," Taylor said. "We might be a strategy engine, but you know how to visualise encounters and figure out what might happen."

Dinah looked at Annette in confusion for a moment, then her frown cleared. "Definitely," she agreed. "You'll be better at it than me, for sure."

Lisa didn't like not having all the information. "What are you talking about?" she asked. "Annette's not a Thinker like the rest of us. Where do you get the 'visualise encounters' thing?"

"I've been learning how to play Dungeons and Dragons with her and her friends," Taylor explained. "If she can keep a five-person encounter moving smoothly, she can figure out how to strategise a cape battle."

Annette blinked, then brightened up. "Cool! Do I get a costume when the rest of you do?"

Taylor shrugged. "Well, the public members already have them, and the rest of us won't be doing the public thing if we can help it, but sure, what the hell."

"Woo hoo!" Annette jumped to her feet and started an impromptu victory dance. "Gonna be a superhero, gonna be a superhero …"

"So what do I do?" asked Theo. "I haven't got any powers, and I barely know anything about strategy. It's not like I can read up on it and be an instant expert overnight."

"No …" Dinah said slowly. "But you do have a strong insight into the criminal cape mind. I'm guessing your father tried to educate you on the capes of Brockton Bay for when you took over from him in the family business?"

Theo scratched the back of his head. "Kinda, yeah? He was always talking about how I needed to be ready, like I was gonna get powers any second and have to take over from him at a moment's notice. He was always about knowing the motivations of all the villain capes, so if I ever had to deal with them in a business way, I'd know what to offer that they'd accept."

Taylor grinned at him. "So yeah, you'll be able to tell us why they're likely to jump this way or that. Awesome."

Theo frowned suspiciously. "Are you just telling me this so I feel better about myself and don't think I'm being left out?"

"Do I look like someone who might do that?" asked Dinah. "My power doesn't lie."

Yeah, but you might. Lisa didn't say it, and carefully didn't tap into her power.

Kayden was their host and their primary heavy hitter, and alienating her by marginalising her stepson from the other kids in the team was something nobody wanted to do. Besides, his lack of powers notwithstanding, Theo had been immersed in Brockton Bay's cape culture all his life. He had to have forgotten more about the city's heroes and villains than Lisa had learned since being drafted into the Undersiders.

The intercom chimed. "Ah, that'll be the others," Kayden said. Wiping her hands on her apron, she headed through to the front door. Pressing the button on the panel, she said, "Come on up."

"Thanks." That was Danny's voice. Lisa relaxed; even with the electronic filtering, he sounded calm and unthreatened. Not that anyone forcing their way into this apartment right now would be doing anything but setting foot in a lion's den. If she, Taylor and Dinah couldn't figure a way to screw with the heads of any intruder, she would lose faith in all teenagers everywhere.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. As Kayden had gone back into the kitchen, Theo jumped up to get it. In came Danny, Andrea, Janet and Amy Dallon, with the surprise addition of her sister Victoria. It was no secret that Victoria was also the teen hero Glory Girl; neither was it hard for Lisa to figure out why she was there. She didn't say anything though; instead, she smoothly turned the whiteboard over so that it showed some kind of … city map? Oh, yeah. Taylor mentioned Dungeons and Dragons.

"Hey, Dad," Taylor offered from the sofa. "How was your day?"

"Only moderately stressful," he replied with a grin that told Lisa a great deal. He's happier now that Taylor has powers. She used her powers to solve one of her problems. Is glad that she's got friends to work with. Not so sure about me, but he's coming around. Mentally, she shrugged. Being an ex-villain meant there would be inevitable baggage to deal with.

"Amy!" Annette leaped to her feet. Lisa saw her gauging the chance of jumping over the coffee table, then meeting her mother's eyes and the quick headshake. Her mom's probably used to stuff like this happening.

"Hey, Annette." Amy came to meet the redhead and they hugged. Amy didn't seem to be put off by Annette's touchy-feely nature, which was interesting. There were undercurrents going on that the healer probably wasn't aware of quite yet, but which Lisa could see happening a mile away, though she had no idea how this was all going to turn out. Still, it was fascinating to watch.

"Oh, hi, Glory Girl!" Dinah jumped up from her chair, eyes wide in a well-simulated fangirl reaction. "Remember me? We met at the Weymouth Mall. I'm Dinah."

"Hello, Dinah." Victoria Dallon smiled indulgently, taken off-guard by the sudden burst of faux enthusiasm. "Yes, it's good to see you again too. So yeah, I heard my sis has a bunch of new friends, so I thought I'd come along and see what the fuss is all about."

Lisa didn't miss the tightening around Amy's eyes and mouth, though she was pretty sure nobody else picked it up. It probably wasn't even about the fact that Vicky was crashing a cape team meeting that she knew nothing about. More likely, Amy was irritated by the concept of Vicky deciding that her friends needed to be checked out, because Amy wasn't cool enough to make friends without her sister's help.

The fact that this supposition was (broadly speaking) true would merely serve to irritate the crap out of Amy. They all liked the snarky healer, not least because she'd healed Kayden in the hospital. Lisa was fairly certain that Annette's feelings for Amy went beyond merely 'liking' her, but she wasn't about to let her mind go down that rabbit-hole. When all was said and done, Amy was a welcome member of their group, not just of the team, and not just because of her powers. Lisa knew all too well what it was like to not know who she could depend on in a pinch.

Which raised the next question: how do we get Victoria Dallon to go away without making it seem like we're chasing her off? Lisa was adept at the first, but it usually went hand-in-hand with causing people to leave in tears by prying at sore points in their lives. Making an enemy of Glory Girl was something she didn't want to do in costume, let alone out.

She glanced from side to side, hoping that someone else in the room got an idea before she was forced to pull the nuclear option; or worse, get so boring that Glory Girl left of her own accord. Annette, still holding onto Amy's arm, didn't look like she had anything to contribute, and Amy was currently engaged in being annoyed at Vicky. Lisa glanced at Taylor then at Dinah, who grinned slightly.

"Oh, well, we're just discussing what we're going to be doing in our next game of Dungeons and Dragons," Dinah said breathlessly, managing to sound like a star-struck eight-year-old. "You want to play, too? I'll help you make a character up. We can be magical elven princesses together!"

Lisa bit her lip to avoid laughing out loud. She'd never played the game, but she was certain whatever Dinah played in the game, it was not a magical elven princess. Vicky was wavering, but hadn't decided to go yet …

Lisa almost missed Dinah's nod to Taylor. "Hey yeah," Taylor said enthusiastically. "We'll be able to tell everyone at school that Glory Girl plays D&D with us!" She produced a multi-sided die from somewhere; Lisa wasn't quite sure where, but her power told her it had twenty sides. "Roll for initiative!"

In a motion that looked careless but had to be anything but, Taylor sat forward in her chair and tossed the die at the tray. It hit the upcurve and bounced into the air; Vicky jerked her head back just too late as the die hit her in the left eye, then bounced to the floor. "Ow! Hey!" she yelped. "Watch it."

"Sorry," sang out Taylor. "My hand slipped. Happens when I get excited. So, you wanna play D&D with us? You'd make a great magical elven princess."

"Are you okay there?" asked Danny. "That got you right in the eye."

"Nah, I'm good," Vicky said. "Force field caught it, but that flinch reflex is something you never quite get rid of. Still, I'm gonna have to call a raincheck on playing Dungeons and Dragons. I already wear a tiara in my day job. Doing it while pretending to be a princess might be a little on the nose."

"Aww, that's too bad," Annette said cheerfully. "Dinah's already memorised the magical princess song. She could've taught you to sing it easily."

"Yeah, no, I think I'll definitely pass. Besides, I need to go on patrol with Mom and Eric soon, so I gotta go." Vicky nodded to Danny and Andrea. "Nice to meet you, Mr Hebert, Ms Campbell …" She paused, looking awkwardly at Kayden. "Sorry, ma'am, I don't think we've met."

"Well, not socially, anyway," Kayden said with a polite smile that had Lisa falling about on the inside from repressed laughter. The chances of Purity having duelled with Glory Girl were fairly high. "Kayden Russell. I'm Theo's mother."

"Ah, okay." Vicky gave Theo a vague wave. "Hi. Um … is it okay if I just open a window here?"

"Certainly, Miss Dallon." Kayden went over and unlatched one of the windows. "Feel free to visit anytime."

"Sure, no problem, Ms Russell." Vicky paused at the window and looked back at her sister. "Give me or Mom a call if you want a lift, okay?"

"Oh, she'll be fine." Andrea grinned at her. "We've got three cars between us. I'd be astonished if we couldn't give her a ride home."

"Right, sure, okay." The teenage hero climbed out the window, then flew away. By the time Kayden had the window closed, Taylor was howling with laughter, with Dinah a close second. Lisa lost it around then, dropping to her butt on the floor and leaning against the wall. Through the tears of mirth welling in her eyes, she saw Amy and Annette leaning on each other and giggling madly. Even the normally dour Theo joined in.

By the time Lisa could see straight again, Danny was sitting down at the dining room table with Andrea, while Janet and Kayden looked on with bemusement. "Okay," said Janet. "I'm guessing that Dinah doesn't play a magical princess in this game of yours?"

"I don't—I don't even play!" gasped Dinah, her face red with laughter. "Oh god, the look of utter horror on her face!"

"I can't believe you hit her in the face with that d-twenty," Annette told Taylor, in between chuckles. "That was perfect. Though we probably managed to put her off the game for life, now."

"Serves her right for inviting herself along to vet my friends," Amy grumbled, though a smirk kept crossing her features. "Was that whole thing an act put on to chase her away? That was amazing."

"That was Dinah," Lisa said, smirking right back. "And Taylor, chucking that, uh, d-twenty at her? That was genius. That's what tipped the scale."

"That and Mom making up the whole magical princess song thing," Annette said, shaking her head. "Man, I wonder if she'll ever realise how badly she just got played?"

"I'm just wondering if we shouldn't have actually let her in on what we're really doing here," Janet said quietly. Everyone turned to look at her, and she raised her good hand slightly. "I know, I know. Uninvited, a bit bratty, more than a little entitled. But think about it. She's a big hitter, I don't like to confront people directly, and Kayden's vulnerable as our only real front-liner. Glory Girl would make things a lot more secure on that front."

"Janet's actually got a point there," Danny said, getting up from the dining room table. "I'm not an expert on how cape teams work, but it seems we're heavy on Thinkers and light on actual throw weight." He looked toward Kayden and Dinah. "Correct me if I'm wrong."

Kayden shook her head. "You're not wrong. The Empire was weighted very much the other way. Most active teams are."

"The Undersiders are too," Lisa remarked. "Well, they were until you guys poached me away. I was the Thinker support, if you don't count Coil. Which I don't, because that asshole would've burned us in a heartbeat if it got him a good deal." She shuddered. "Sometimes I got the feeling he was looking for another high-end Thinker to, you know, drug up and keep in his lair so he could double-dip on his power. I'm just glad my power needs me to get out and see stuff, or that might've been me."

"If and when we take on Lung or any other team with a big hitter, Glory Girl would be a distinct asset," Dinah said, getting back to the original topic. "Right now, though, we haven't got any big wins under our belt that anyone knows about. We don't even have a team name yet. The only people who even know we're a group are … well, us."

"From that, I'm hearing 'Merchants' as our next target," Taylor decided. "Guys?"

Lisa nodded. "I like the Merchants for this. Their heavy hitters are what, Mush and Squealer?"

Kayden nodded. "Yes. Skidmark's got potential, but he's barely more than a medium hitter because he's an incompetent, drugged-out fool. Their last member's called Whirlygig. She can make small objects spin around her in a cloud. I don't think she's got a ranged attack. Neither does Mush. Skidmark can fake a blaster attack if he works at it, but his biggest asset is the fact that his power lets him be very hard to pin down one-on-one."

"Which makes Squealer the most dangerous one." That was Theo. "My father gave her fifty-fifty odds of murdering Skidmark one day and just taking over. She hasn't yet, so I'm dubious. Still, she can build tanks from junked cars. They look like they shouldn't run, but they face up to the PRT and get away. According to my father, her most impressive invention isn't the tanks, but the fact that she can drive them through town and not be seen or heard by anyone until she gets to where she's going."

"Huh," mused Lisa. "Cloaking or teleportation?" Either one would come with its own potential problems, teleportation being the most irritating.

Leaning toward the tray, Taylor picked up the coin that had fallen over at some point during the discussion. "Heads, cloaking. Tails, teleportation." She flipped the coin into the air then grabbed a cookie before it came down. Holding up the back of her other hand to catch it, she took a bite from the cookie, then finally looked. "Heads," she mumbled around the bite, swallowed, and repeated herself. "Heads says she cloaks her stuff."

Annette nodded decisively. "Good. Both of them are a pain in the butt, but invisibility's a lot easier to plan around than straight-up teleportation."

Kayden raised her eyebrows. "You talk like you've had to deal with both."

"Well, not in real life, obviously," Annette said hastily. "But you'd be astonished how often things like that come up in a high-level D&D game. I can't guarantee the fixes would be identical, but it definitely gives me a baseline to work with." She looked from Kayden to Theo. "But I'm going to need whatever hard numbers you've got on everyone's powers. I don't want us going in blind, here."

At that moment, Aster wailed from the bedroom. "I'll take care of her," Kayden said. "Theo, you've got this." She gave her stepson a smile and headed out of view.

Theo took a deep breath. Annette gave him an encouraging smile. "Okay, then," he said. "Skidmark lays down kinetic fields. They can be on the ground or on any object he can see, and they have a colour gradient, from violet to blue. Anything touching the field is pushed from the violet side to the blue side. One field on its own isn't very strong, but he can layer them …"

<><>​

Three Weeks Later

Skidmark

Adam Mustain was irritated. The Empire Eighty-Eight had been virtually eliminated in Brockton Bay, and now some minge-sucking arsewipe was messing with the Merchants. It wasn't any of the known heroes attacking head on; he could deal with that shit. But for the last two weeks, someone had been pinpointing their stash houses and calling the cops in on them. One night after the next, like clockwork. Like someone knew exactly where they were.

Even more irritatingly, they were able to arrange matters so that when the cops came in, it was always when the Merchants were busy elsewhere. By the time him and his people actually heard about the busts and mobilised, the cops were already on site in force, usually with a couple of heroes hanging around. Him and Squealer and Mush and Whirlygig (she'd refused to let him call her 'Shitstorm') were usually enough on their own to make the cops think twice about taking them on without a good reason, but once the drugs were taken away and the arrests made, what was the fucking point anyway?

By now he'd lost hundreds of thousands of bucks' worth of product, and that was money he'd never see again. Worse, when he questioned his dealers about who was singing to the cops, nobody had word one to say, even when he got a little enthusiastic with his questioning. In fact, some of them had started slipping away when he wasn't looking. Not to snitch to the piggies, just … leaving. Leaving the Merchants. Abandoning what he'd built.

After the third hit, when Sherrel had suggested it might be someone on the outside, he'd told her to fuck off. Were the cops raiding any other buildings in the area, or just theirs? These weren't blind guesses. Some little taint-sniffer was talking, and he was going to find out who. But no matter what he did, no matter how much they begged for him to stop, nobody had a word to say about the stash house hits. Nobody knew nothin'. And now he was losing dealers. They'd had a good deal, but it looked like they'd rather fuck off than work for him.

So, a week in, he'd gone back around the dealers who were still sticking by him, and he'd asked a different set of questions. Had they seen anyone, he asked. In the days before the busts, had there been anyone loitering around that smelled of cop. Usually the piggies liked to arrest the dealers at point of sale rather than risk going up the chain and running into capes, but it looked like they were getting a lot sneakier now. Maybe they were following the dealers back after doing the buy, or just using drones or some shit. Whatever it was, they were locating his stash houses and fucking with his livelihood. That shit needed to come to a screeching halt, or he was going to kill some donkey-fucker.

At first, his dealers were almost insulted when he asked about undercover cops. They might've asked what he'd been smoking, but they didn't need to ask, because they smoked the same shit. Still, whether they were straight or so fuckin' high they were licking the Simurgh's ass, they all knew what a cop looked like, and they all swore blind not a one had come near the dealers or the stash houses. It was all their regulars, all the time.

Well, except …

When he heard that 'except' for the first time, Adam thought he was about to break the case wide open. But it was nothing. Just a few teenage kids, wandering past the stash house itself. Not even really looking at it, not bothering the guards, just walking past. They'd only stuck in the one guy's mind because one was a redhead and they were all dressed a bit too good for the 'hood. It wasn't exactly uncommon to see rich kids slumming it in Merchant territory for a cheap thrill and a hit of the good stuff.

Except … Adam still had a feeling about it.

Then he talked to the guys who'd been at the other stash houses that had gotten hit, and one by one, they'd repeated that little detail. A bunch of kids, all dressed neat and tidy, one of them a redhead. Not hamming it up, nobody staring at the stash house or taking notes or even using a phone to get some sneaky pics. But the same bunch, for each stash house hit. Or rather, a group with the same description, which he figured was close enough.

By the time he nailed down exactly what was going on, he was eleven stash houses down. This shit had to stop. The guys at one of the remaining ones had seen the kids, while the rest hadn't. Which meant he knew exactly where the cops were going to hit next. He figured that after they kicked in the front door and ran into him and his crew, they'd be a lot less eager to follow some smartass little teenager's tipoff.

He had it all worked out.

<><>​

Squealer

If Sherrel Bailey had ever had the slightest belief that standing guard was in any way fun or interesting, that shit was long gone now. Her latest creation was parked in an empty lot not far from the stash house, idling in low-power mode with the cloaking field up and running. The sensory suite she'd built into it was rough and ready, composed mainly of scavenged and stolen security cameras and fire sensors, but it was enough to see anyone coming. The trouble was, she was bored. So fucking bored.

A car cruised past, but it wasn't the teenagers. The cameras picked up a skinny guy in the driver's seat, and a blonde chick riding shotgun, with another chick in the back. They didn't look to the left or the right, just kept on going. The car showed up as perfectly normal on the more exotic scans she pinged it with, and it didn't have any extra radio antennae, so she put it from her mind.

The two-way radio on her dash crackled. "Yo, Squealer. Anything going on?" It sounded like Adam was just as bored as she was.

"Nope," she said. "Car went past, but it's nothing. Should be going by you any second now." Mist drifted past some of her cameras and she frowned. "How cold is it out there?" Brockton Bay got cold in the winter, but nowhere near as chilly as places like New York or Boston, even though it was north of them. Fog just didn't normally form around this area.

"Not that fuckin' cold. Haven't seen the car yet. How many in it?"

She frowned. "Should've got to you by now. Skinny guy driving, two women passengers."

"Right, right, I see it." He paused. "How many people in it, did you say?"

"Three," Sherrel said clearly. "Driver, two passengers. Skinny drink of water, two chicks."

"Must be a different fuckin' car. Just the driver in this one."

Sherrel sat up, adrenaline flushing through her system. "That's not right. I saw three—what the fuck?"

She broke off with the exclamation as the cameras caught a change in the light level around the armoured vehicle she was sitting in. It was like someone had turned on a massive floodlight and aimed it where she was parked. All of her cameras were pointed at ground level, but she had a few of them on swivels, so she started turning one to point upward as she slapped the button to bring the tank to full readiness.

Skidmark began to say something then, but she never heard it, because at that moment something punched a hole through the back end of the tank. She'd never been one to worry about such pissy stuff as actual safety equipment, so the blast threw her out of her seat to land sprawled up against one of the walls. Alarms were blaring, lights were flashing, and a good chunk of the control panel went dead and dark. Her power meter started going down fast; it looked like the engine had been damaged.

Ears ringing, she engaged backup batteries and tried to throw the tank into gear, just as a second blast smashed into the tank, this time blowing the back end clean off. Sparks sprayed from every circuit and panel, and the vehicle groaned and died. Clawing her way to her feet for a second time, she mashed the startup button again, but absolutely fuck-all happened. A tendril of smoke curled its way into the control area. Either something was on fire, or it really wanted to be.

"Fuck!" she screamed, unaware that she was mostly deaf. Forgetting all about the two-way radio that had fallen under the control console, she pulled a panel off beside the driver's seat. Behind it was a lever with the sign "Do you really want to do this?" next to it. Without a moment's hesitation, she grabbed the lever and heaved. Explosive bolts blew, detaching a chunk of armour as well as the wall behind the panel. Cool night air rolled in; she grabbed a pistol from a compartment next to the lever and jumped out.

Outside was a lot more well-lit than she recalled, with some sort of floodlight up on one of the buildings overlooking the empty lot. Even though the angle was all wrong, she brought up the pistol to see if she could shoot it out. A moment later, her hand cramped and she dropped the weapon. Then another blast came spiralling down and hit the tank for a third time. It was definitely on fire now.

Forgetting about the pistol, not even trying to query why Purity was attacking her tank (or even how Purity knew the tank had been there), Sherrel bolted for it. The safest place she knew was the stash house. There was a narrow alleyway between two buildings that she'd previously scouted; once she came out the other side, she would be diagonally across the street from the house. Twenty seconds, done and dusted.

There were trash cans in the alleyway, which someone had arranged differently to the last time she'd been down here. Still, it was easy to dodge around them, though a dumpster had been dragged across to block it altogether about two-thirds of the way along. Making use of a convenient trash-can, she climbed on top of the dumpster and prepared to jump down. She didn't like the idea of landing on the tumbled cans on either side, so she prepared to jump down onto where the vague rounded shape of a manhole cover showed in the darkness.

The manhole cover wasn't there. It was just a manhole.

"Fuuuuuu …"

<><>​

Skidmark

Adam had no idea what was going on.

First off, Sherrel disagreed with him about how many people were in the car. Big deal, he only saw one. The driver was probably getting road head or something. But then she said 'what the fuck' which meant something was going on. He'd just started to ask about that when there was a loud noise in the background and the radio cut off.

"Hey, Sherrel, what the fuck? Talk to me!" He looked at the two-way radio. The charge was still good. "Quit fuckin' around and tell me what's going on!"

"Uh, boss?" called out one of the armed mooks on window duty. "Might wanna see this."

"I'm surrounded by syphilitic cock-jugglers," he grumbled as he went through into the side room. "What do you want, you bleeding rectal tumour?"

The mook pointed, and Adam goggled. There was a glow on top of one of the nearby buildings. He couldn't see the source directly, but there was a fuck-off huge cloud of smoke rising from right about where Sherrel had parked her plonking great death machine. "FUCK!" he screamed. "Why does this always fuckin' happen to me?" Pausing and eyeing off the cloud, he made up his mind what to do next. "Mush! Where the fuck are you?"

It took two more yells before the wizened little man appeared, already starting to gather some of the abundant trash in the stash house to make his Mush form. "What?" he mumbled. "Something happen?"

"Yeah," snarled Adam. Some twatwaffle just blew up Squealer's tank. Take some of these useless pricks and go see what happened. If you catch who did it, mess 'em up good."

Mush looked at him in what was possibly a doubtful manner; Adam couldn't really tell through all the trash the scrawny little turd had covered himself with. "Sure that's a good idea?" he asked. "Could be a trick to make us come over there. Maybe Whirlygig—"

"Whirlygig's staying right here," Adam interrupted him. "That's why you're taking the guys. You're fuckin' bulletproof like that anyway. Don't be such a little bitch."

"Fine," grumbled Mush and shambled from the room. Adam could hear him calling for reinforcements. The guys weren't anything special; Adam had gotten his remaining dealers together, and taken those who weren't so shitfaced they knew which end of a gun went bang. But he'd also promised them a bonus when all this was over, so they knew to at least pretend enthusiasm.

As soon as Mush and the exploration party were out the front door, Adam locked it again. No fucker was getting in to score his product when his back was turned. And even if the cops did hit the place, they'd have him and Mush to deal with, and that wasn't even counting Whirlygig.

It didn't matter what had happened to Squealer. This shit was over as of tonight.

<><>​

Janet

The short-lived scream from the alley behind her made Janet smirk, but it didn't distract her from concentrating on the collections of water that were people in the house just down the block from where she stood in a patch of shadow. Even though she had powers, she felt weird wearing a domino mask. Fighting villains, she knew, had its perils. Panacea had explained what had happened to her Aunt Jess (aka Fleur), once upon a time. So the mask was necessary, if not really her thing.

She brought up more fog, causing the air humidity to precipitate just that little bit extra and reduce visibility. It didn't impair her in the slightest; she could tell where Kayden was on the rooftop above, where Panacea was in the alley with Squealer, and where Mush was coming with the people he'd chosen.

Just as Theo, Taylor, Lisa, Dinah and Annette had agreed he would.

Danny had supplied the heavy wrench to open the fire hydrant, and now she was holding back the water pressure with her powers alone. She waited until Mush was almost level with her but on the other side of the street, and let go with the first blast. The slug of water hammered across the width of the road and knocked the trash villain off his feet. As the mooks goggled, she angled the stream slightly, blasting them sideways, one after the other. Each time one of them tried to get up, she washed them farther away from Mush.

When the last one got the message and stumbled off down the street in full rout, she returned her attention to the now-waterlogged villain. He was still coherent enough to get up, so she aimed the high-pressure spray at him once more. This time, she focused on blasting the trash off him, washing it away and knocking him over every time he tried to rebuild himself.

Panacea came up alongside her. "Squealer's secured," she reported. "Where did you get the idea of hanging a net inside the manhole, anyway? From your sailing days?"

Janet snorted, moving her hand in a curving motion to shape the outgoing spray. "Nope. From playing pool. Did you have any trouble?"

Panacea chuckled. "Nah. She was climbing out, swearing like Uncle Neil when he's stubbed his toe, and I offered her my hand. She took it, and that's all she wrote."

"Hah." Mush was down to the last few bits of trash, so Janet directed the spray at his face. No matter where he turned, even if he faced away from her, he couldn't get a good breath of air. To make matters even worse for him, she was wrapping bands of water around his limbs that restricted his movement, but she didn't want to chance actually drowning him. "Want to go wrap up Mush for me?"

"Love to." Panacea started across the road. "That'll be two down, two to go."

"We do make a good team." Janet stopped the flow of water and began to screw the cap back on the hydrant with quick, efficient movements.

At the same time, she focused on a particular house down the road and across the way, and concentrated her attention on the pipes.

<><>​

Skidmark

He didn't know what this weird fog was that had just rolled down the street, but he knew he didn't like it. Not one little bit. Worse, the guys Mush had taken with him had just run past the house, going the other direction. The funny thing was, they were all soaking wet, like they'd been caught in the rain. The fog was heavy, but it wasn't that heavy.

There was no sight nor sound of Squealer or Mush. This was starting to look like a deal gone wrong. Two of his capes were just gone. The Merchants were on the brink. Should he run for it, he wondered, or stand and fight? And what was that glow lighting the fog from above? The last thing he wanted to deal with right now was a fuckin' UFO. Some guys might get off on a bit of anal probing, but not Adam Mustain.

"Uh, Skids?"

He looked around, annoyance washing through him. "Whirlygig! I left you watching the back yard, you useless bitch!"

She looked pissed at him, but didn't comment on what he'd said, which was lucky for her. He was spoiling for a fight right then. "The pipes are rattling," she said. "Just thought you might want to know."

"What's that supposed to mean?" But he was talking to her back; she was returning to where she'd been to begin with.

Frowning, he went through into the kitchen. Sure enough, there was a distinct rattling and banging coming from the water system. Next door, in the bathroom, it was even worse. Once more, he wasn't sure what was going on, but it was starting to shake the whole house, and he knew it was bad news. The toilet had a complex pattern of ripples on the surface of the water. Adam had become intimately familiar with toilets during his last year of college, given his growing drug habit, but he'd never seen this one.

He was just leaning over to look at it in more detail when it gushed clear to the ceiling, catching him in the face and flinging him across the bathroom. He scrubbed at his eyes, realised he was sitting in water, and looked up to see fountains arising from both the toilet and the washbasin.

As he scrambled to his feet, he heard bangs as pipes burst throughout the house, sending water spraying out of holes in the wall. By the time he got out of the bathroom, he was ankle-deep in water. The kitchen was also flooding, he realised, and the water was rising by the second.

The ambush, he finally allowed himself to admit, was a dismal failure. He'd been outplayed and outmanoeuvred from the beginning. All he could do now was fuck off. "Whirlygig!" he yelled. "Time to go!"

She didn't answer him—he strongly suspected she'd already deserted the sinking ship—so he dashed to the front door and heaved on it. It moved not at all, which wasn't altogether surprising, given that there was a foot of water on the inside. Swearing to himself, he started laying down field after field inside the door, designed to pull the water away from it. The water began to swirl violently, washing against the door then blasting into the interior of the house.

Grabbing the handle, he heaved once again. This time, the water pressure was minimal, allowing him to drag it open an inch. The field took over at this point, hauling it all the way open so fast it nearly dislocated his wrist. One of the remaining mooks tried to dash out past him, but put one foot on the skid-field and was launched screaming toward the maelstrom that was the kitchen.

Hastily—the water was nearing thigh-deep by now—he threw down some more skid-fields, these ones designed to pull the door and water sideways, away from the door. Once they had the door held, he dismissed the first fields without thinking … and was washed out the door.

"Mother … crapping … dickhole … arsebandit … knobgobbling …" he yelled as he tumbled over and over into the street. Behind him, the house blasted water from every door and window, but he didn't care. All he wanted to do now was get away from Leviathan's little brother, or whoever was pulling this shit.

There was still an inch or so of water on the road where he was, but that didn't matter. He laid down a long skid-field, then another and another, and then stepped on it. Aided by the flow of water, he began to skate away down the road, dropping fields as he went. The best thing about this method of transport, he'd long decided, was that any vehicles trying to chase him would hit the field and lose control. The fog made it hard to see ahead, but all he had to do was stay in the middle of the road and—

The fishing net strung between two electricity poles swept him off his feet and wrapped him up like a Christmas turkey.

<><>​

Panacea

Amy took a moment to admire how thoroughly Whirlygig had been tangled up in the net trap in the back yard. The Merchant woman had clearly had the option to not come out with her powers active, but she'd decided that they were under attack and gotten out a window. The fishing nets Janet had sourced had come in amazingly handy, as had Theo's description of how Whirlygig's power worked. Once the power had caught one end of the trap, the woman had literally wrapped herself up before she could turn it off. A series of carefully-placed hooks ensured that she couldn't release herself with equal ease; it was going to take someone with a knife to get her out of that.

For now, there was nothing sticking into her, the water was no longer flowing out of the house, and she wasn't about to suffocate. Reaching out, Amy touched skin and put the villain to sleep.

"So how's Skidmark?" asked Janet, exiting the back door of the house.

"Still tangled in the net you set up there," Amy said with a grin. "The look on his face when I tagged him was amazing. I love how you arranged it so his skid-field would activate the trap."

"It took Lisa and Dinah to get the fine details right," Janet pointed out. "So, did you want to hang around and talk to the cops?"

"Not right now," confessed Amy. "My folks still don't know I'm moonlighting, even if I'm not in costume." She looked down at her black top and jeans, then touched the matching domino mask on her face. "I really don't want to open that can of worms with them at the moment."

Janet nodded. "I hear that. Same for me, except I don't want to open the whole costumed-hero can of worms ever."

They walked through the house and out the front door, where Amy paused and took a note from her pocket, along with a small box of pushpins. Sirens were starting to sound in the distance as Janet helped her pin the note to the door.

They headed out to the street, where Danny was waiting with the car. Kayden was already in the front seat, so Janet and Amy got in the back. As they sedately drove away, Amy and the other two pulled their masks off.

<><>​

Armsmaster stared at the note that had been pinned to the door.

Skidmark: down the street to the left.

Mush: down the street to the right.

Squealer: in the alleyway across the street to the right.

Whirlygig: in the back yard.

You're welcome.

No name was appended.

For all that a bunch of criminal capes had been taken off the street, he knew Director Piggot would not be happy about this. Not at all.



End of Part Fifteen

 

[Simonbob]

For all that a bunch of criminal capes had been taken off the street, he knew Director Piggot would not be happy about this. Not at all.

Click to shrink...

Ah, the sound of paranoia in the Bay!


To be fair, this is something to be worried about. Entire gang taken down, no idea who did it, after all the other "incidents"? Yeah, there's a new power in the Bay, and the cops have no clue who, or why.


Scary.

 

[Death by Chains]

"... Doing it while pretending to be a princess might be a little on the nose."

Click to shrink...

Uh... AFAIR, 'on the nose' is Commonwealth English, not something an American would say. 'A little too close to home', perhaps?

Niggle aside, another great installment. I can hear Piggot's blood pressure rising from here....

 

[RikkuEcRud]

Uh... AFAIR, 'on the nose' is Commonwealth English, not something an American would say. 'A little too close to home', perhaps?

Niggle aside, another great installment. I can hear Piggot's blood pressure rising from here....

Click to shrink...

American here, from New York state so close to where Brockton Bay is supposed to be, but not quite close enough for my dialect to be exactly the same as theirs - "on the nose" is not unusual to say/hear, might even be more common than "too close to home"

 

[Vanrus]

American here, from New York state so close to where Brockton Bay is supposed to be, but not quite close enough for my dialect to be exactly the same as theirs - "on the nose" is not unusual to say/hear, might even be more common than "too close to home"

Click to shrink...

Personally I'd say it fits better in the context as well. West Virginian here, and I'm pretty sure I've used that phrase before.

 

[Psyckosama]

Uh... AFAIR, 'on the nose' is Commonwealth English, not something an American would say. 'A little too close to home', perhaps?

Niggle aside, another great installment. I can hear Piggot's blood pressure rising from here....

Click to shrink...

Actually, "On the nose" originated in NA not the commonwealth, just so ya know.

 

[Death by Chains]

Huh. Learn something every day....

 

[Ocean Sailor]

Yay, Alea is back! It's been so long I binged the whole 100k+ words to get back on track, but it's totally worth it.

 

[Ack]

Alea Iacta Est

Part Sixteen: Rolling High, Rolling Low

[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Director Emily Piggot
PRT ENE

"And were the Merchants where the note said they'd be?" Emily didn't want to have to ask the question—she was almost certain she knew what the answer was going to be—but she asked it anyway.

"Yes, ma'am." The more Armsmaster disliked a situation, the more curt his answers became. Emily could understand this; she was much that way herself. "Skidmark was wrapped in a fishing net with hooks to hold it closed, as was Whirlygig. Squealer was in an alley next to a manhole that had had a similar net set up as a trap. And Mush was lying on the sidewalk, soaked to the skin. All four were unconscious, but recovered when stimulation was applied. Squealer's latest creation had been destroyed on site by high-powered energy bursts. The house they'd been squatting in had somehow been flooded from the inside. Every faucet had burst and the toilet had blown its float valve through the ceiling. They were literally flushed out."

Emily frowned at the levity, then took note of Armsmaster's expression. He doesn't even realise he made a pun. "So, who do you think did all this?" Because there was no way in hell that sort of thing happened by accident. Not even in Brockton Bay.

"Unknown hydrokinetic, high-power Blaster," he stated bluntly. "If I were a betting man, I'd lay long odds that the Blaster was Purity. It's the same MO as the Coil setup."

"Well, the pattern certainly fits to several decimal places," she allowed. "I hope these people, whoever they are, understand what they're dealing with when it comes to Purity." Capes are bad enough as it is, but letting a villain pretend to be a hero sends the wrong message. Assault hadn't been her idea, but she'd been ordered to let it happen and it seemed to be working out so far. This did not mean the next one would, though. Shadow Stalker's disastrous reveal had proven that, in spades.

"And with this hydrokinetic," Armsmaster said. "At least we know Purity's basic capabilities. We've got nothing at all on this other person."

Emily nodded. "Someone powerful enough to flood a base so large in just minutes by drawing on the entire city's water supply is distinctly worrying."

"The entire water supply?" Armsmaster looked intent. "Are you sure?"

"Certain." Emily's lips thinned. "I got a phone call from Mayor Christner himself, asking why his water pressure had suddenly dropped to near nothing. Fortunately, it went back to normal afterward. Though it's going to be quite some effort, pumping all the water out of that base just so that we can investigate it."

"At least we managed to figure out which water main was feeding it, so we could divert it for the duration." He didn't sound thrilled even with that minor victory. "But even after we drain it, we'll have the problem that much of it is likely to have collapsed. Digging through the remains is going to be extremely effort-intensive, for unknown rewards."

"And yet, we have to make the effort." Emily didn't like it any more than he did. "Who knows what he had stored down there, and what's still intact. The last thing we want is a bunch of rogues burrowing in there, finding some working Tinkertech, and deciding to go villain with it."

"Or even non-working Tinkertech. There were those reports of Coil's mercenaries having high-powered lasers attached to their rifles." Armsmaster's voice took on a tone Emily had heard before; that of a Tinker wondering exactly how good another Tinker's work was, and if it could be adapted to their own use.

"Well, the last thing we want is a third party getting their hands on any of that, working or otherwise." She grimaced. "So we keep pumping and we keep digging. Anything that comes out of there gets bagged and tagged until the lab jocks can analyse it."

"Understood." He cleared his throat. "Any instructions on the Merchant capture?"

She'd already thought this one through. "Interrogate each of them separately to see what they know of who hit them, investigate the house thoroughly in case our mystery capes actually went in there, and check traffic cameras in the area."

"So we're treating them as potential hostiles?" His tone was neither approving nor censorious, merely awaiting confirmation.

Emily set her jaw. "We're treating them as unknowns who may or may not be harbouring a criminal within their ranks, attacking other criminal capes for motives that could range from keeping the streets safe to removing rivals. Even if their motives are pure as the driven snow, their actions threaten to unbalance the status quo in ways they almost certainly didn't take into account."

"Gang war between the ABB and the remains of the Empire Eighty-Eight over territory," Armsmaster said, confirming that he was following her thought process. "Because Lung will push."

"And that's if they're on the up and up." Emily shook her head. "If they're playing a longer game, looking to deliberately destabilise matters in Brockton Bay, they're certainly going about it the right way. It's only sensible to find out everything we can about them in case shit goes sideways." Her expression soured. "If they want to play their little game, they're going to find out I've been playing it a lot longer."

<><>​

Kayden's Apartment
Taylor

I rolled the dice across the table and studied the results with growing satisfaction. When I raised my eyes to everyone watching me, I saw Lisa break out into a grin before I even spoke.

"The Merchants have all been arrested, they'll be tried for their various crimes, and they will go away for a nice long time," I announced. "And just by the way; Dinah, Theo, Lisa? All that work we did locating their stash houses and handing them over to the cops? That's what's going to nail them to the wall. They can't just plead 'having a little fun' with that big of a distribution network."

"Haha yeah!" crowed Annette, giving Theo a high five. "You go, little brother! That's what we're talking about!"

Kayden smiled as Theo flushed with shy pride, then gathered him into a hug. "I am so proud of you," she said warmly. "You don't need powers to be amazing."

"This is what teamwork is all about," Dad noted as he stood there with his arm around Andrea. He gestured at all of us. "Everyone did their thing and pulled it off perfectly. But we have to remember that not every plan is going to go exactly as intended, every single time. Yes, you three are an extremely potent force to be reckoned with, and I'm not taking away from that one iota. However …"

Janet nodded. "However, sometimes shit just happens. It's not what you prepare for that will bite you in the ass, but what you don't prepare for. That day Harvey and I took the Avalon out for a fun day on the water, we had all the usual precautions in place; first aid kit, distress flares, spare water and food, satellite radio, EPIRB, the lot. But we weren't listening to the emergency weather channel once we left harbour and a nasty storm spun up out of the Caribbean. Caught us by surprise because we'd been playing grab-ass instead of watching out for that one little detail." She folded her arms, tucking her stump under her armpit. "Mistakes like that, you never stop paying for."

Dinah caught my eye and tilted her head toward Janet. I realised what she meant and walked around the table. Putting my arm around the older woman's shoulders, I held her close. "This is why you're here now, with us," I said. "To help us avoid stupid mistakes in the future."

Turning her head toward me, she raised her eyebrows slightly. "Your dice told you that, did they?"

"No," I said honestly. "All they tell me is that we can do a hell of a lot more good working together than individually. It's just what I think."

"But she's not wrong," Dinah added earnestly. "Of all of us, you just edged out Mr Hebert in the job of 'knowing what we don't know'. I mean, Lisa's good and all, but …"

"… but even I need some kind of hints to play with before I can put my power to work," Lisa agreed. "Plus … hmm." She frowned.

"Plus what?" asked Andrea. "Don't leave us hanging there. C'mon, spill with the deets."

Lisa's frown deepened. "I can't be certain, and I wouldn't even be considering it if I didn't have you guys to bounce it off, but … I'm wondering if my power isn't biased toward optimism. Like, if I make a plan and there's a potential obstacle, chances are it'll tell me 'we got this' instead of 'let's back off and have another look at it'."

Silence fell while we digested this not exactly thrilling news. I'd seen Lisa's power in action before now, and it had seemed to be fairly reliable, but she had a much longer baseline of experience with it than I did. The idea that it might be adjusting the perceived odds of a plan working was … problematic.

"So what you're saying," Dad ventured, "is that if you're left in charge of the 'go/no-go' phase of a plan, your power is more likely to tell you to 'go' rather than 'no-go', even if there's a potential problem to deal with?"

"Yes … no … dammit!" Lisa ran her hands through her hair, disarranging it further. "Right now I'm absolutely certain in my own mind that this isn't true … but can that be trusted? When I repress my power, I'm a lot less sure about it, but when I don't repress it, it tells me that I'm worrying about nothing and that I can handle all the variables."

Amy, silent until now, cleared her throat. "That sounds … concerning. Almost as though your power is forcing a split personality on you. The part of you that accepts unconditionally what your power is telling you, versus the part that raises legitimate queries about it." She tilted her head slightly. "I wonder if all Thinkers have this problem?"

The silence that fell across the room then was a lot more uncomfortable. Meeting Dinah's eyes, I could tell what we were both thinking. What if my power isn't one hundred percent accurate in what it's telling me? Worse, what if (as seemed to be happening with Lisa) my own biases were affecting the results I got from the rolls? Up until then I had prided my power in being utterly impartial … but what if it wasn't?

"Well, uh, that's definitely a potential problem," Janet said. "I guess we're just going to have to make sure we double-check each other's work a little more closely from now on. And Lisa, if you ever feel it getting on top of you, let someone know. Cutting you out of the loop until you can get your head back together will hurt the group dynamic, but not as much as making decisions based on flawed assumptions."

"Well, that's what us token normies are for," Annette announced cheerfully, putting her arm around Lisa's shoulders. "We can make plans too. The difference is, we know we can screw up."

"Which brings us back to what we're doing here," Dad said. "Taking down the ABB. Or rather, taking down the capes. Lung and Oni Lee. Comments?"

"We can't fight them both at once," I said immediately. "The numbers for that are horrible."

"But are you sure?" asked Annette, in a fake-suspicious tone of voice. "Or is that just what your power's telling you?"

Andrea left Dad's side and took a couple of steps to lightly smack her daughter upside the head. "Behave," she chided playfully. "It's not like anyone couldn't have figured that out without powers."

"Yeah, yeah," Annette said, then stuck her tongue out at Andrea. "But it was funny."

"Taylor's right." Lisa turned the whiteboard over and scrubbed off the planning details we'd made for the attack on the Merchants. She took care to leave the locations for the stash houses we hadn't had time to nail down properly; we'd get to that when we could. Finally, she wrote Lung's and Oni Lee's names side by side, with a vertical line separating them. "Fighting Lung will be bad enough. Fighting him with Oni Lee running interference for him would be a killer. And I mean that literally."

"Do you think Kayden and I could take Lung at the same time?" ventured Janet. "Because if we can't …"

"You two are the only ones of us who are capable of bringing him down," Dinah assured her. "But we need a third to make it a certainty. Unfortunately, that person isn't here." She glanced at Amy.

"What?" The healer was visibly startled. "You want me to bring Vicky in on this? Up until now, you've been all about keeping her out of the loop."

"She's about the biggest hitter in Brockton Bay." Lisa wrote in three names under Lung's heading.

Janet

Kayden

Vicky

"Can't Manpower hit really hard too?" asked Theo. "He's one of the reasons Hookwolf never really liked mixing it up with New Wave."

"He can," agreed Lisa. "But he's not totally fireproof, and he still needs to breathe. Also, he's ground-bound, while Lung eventually grows wings."

Amy rolled her eyes. "Also, bringing him in on this brings in Aunt Sarah, which brings in Carol, and I am so over that shit right now."

Annette left Lisa to go back to Amy. "Hey, hey. It's okay. We're good to be here right now." She gave the brunette a hug, which Amy accepted and even returned.

I cleared my throat. "But the biggest problem with fighting Lung and Oni Lee together is that they cover each other's weaknesses. Lung is a tough opponent on his own, but he's beatable, so long as Oni Lee doesn't show up to help out. Likewise, Oni Lee is beatable so long as he doesn't get to simply spam attacks all over the map." Annette gave me a thumb's up, probably for the gaming reference. I returned it.

"As far as I know, he needs line of sight to teleport somewhere," Theo offered. "So, if we block that, we can maybe hamper his movement? Also, he usually takes a second or so between teleports to get his bearings and send out another version. If he can be hit immediately on showing up, that injury stays with him. Fath—uh, Max—had Victor working on an overwatch scenario with a sniper rifle in case Lung and Oni Lee ever decided to go for broke and attack the Empire directly."

"Well, I can locate him as soon as he shows up," Janet said. "But no matter how I screw with his hands and arms, I won't be able to stop him from teleporting somewhere else."

Annette rubbed her chin thoughtfully, leaving the other arm around Amy. "Yeah, but, could you make him go blind? Temporarily, I mean?" I personally had no doubt she could send Oni Lee blind—or far worse—in a very permanent fashion, but this would come down to what she was willing to do.

"I can … maybe do that?" Janet didn't sound very sure. "I'd have to be very careful to not do permanent damage."

"In the heat of combat, not a great idea to depend on finesse." Kayden gave Janet a shrug. "Sorry, but it's true. Adrenaline and all that. Too little and nothing happens. Too much and …"

"Pop," Andrea said. Well, we'd all been thinking it. Or at least, I had.

Janet shuddered. "Pass. I'm not even going to go there."

"Grue's darkness can't be seen through at all," Lisa said. "He's done it before with Oni Lee, and it's worked. The trouble is, once Coil was taken out of the picture and I more or less walked away from the group, the Undersiders weren't so thrilled with me for taking away their main income stream and safety net in one move. In fact, I'm pretty sure they kind of broke up after I left. Went their separate ways."

"Is he still in town? Would he be willing to work with you for the street cred?" asked Kayden. "Having a hand in taking down Oni Lee would be worth a lot in certain quarters."

"It's possible." Lisa frowned, thinking. "I'll have to track him down and talk to him first, to see if he's still pissed at me. So that's a definite maybe."

I hefted my dice. "I'll save you the time." They clattered on the table, and I sucked in air through my teeth. "Ew. Yeah. He's not happy with you, but he's likely to listen to reason. Forty-nine point three five percent chance. The street cred line would push it up a bit. Money would sweeten the deal quite a bit more."

Lisa put up a finger. "How about if I can't pay him too much for his time? I got some of Coil's accounts before they were shut down, but not enough that I can afford to just throw money around."

Rattle went the dice. "Just you, using your best approach? I give it a fifty-seven point nine one percent chance of working."

"Hm." Lisa wrinkled her nose. "Thanks. I'll still give it a try, but I appreciate the heads-up." She looked around. "So, what other options do we have, in case that doesn't pan out?"

"Janet, how about that fog you made during the Merchant attack?" asked Amy. "That'll kill line of sight for sure, if you make it thick enough."

"Fog, I can definitely do," Janet confirmed. "I'd have to bring it up quickly enough that he doesn't get suspicious until it's too late to get away. And even then, it would be very hard to make it thick enough that he can't create multiple clones in a small area and use them to attack anyone who comes near."

"Which means Amy can't come close enough to disable him until he's disabled, in which case we need to be able to disable him without requiring Amy." Dinah bit her lip. "Chicken, egg. Egg, chicken."

"Can't you just, you know, hold him still?" Amy looked at Janet. "All I need is a touch."

"Not still enough for what you need without risking permanent damage." Arms folded once more, Janet dropped her chin a little, a sign that she was starting to withdraw from the conversation. She may have ended Kaiser with a well-placed lightning bolt, but she'd long since made it clear that didn't mean she was okay with hurting and killing people.

"What if I fixed it straight away?" pressed Amy. "You know I could."

"And what if the damage was to his brain?" countered Janet. "I've never done this before. I don't know what would be affected." Her voice was a little harsher, a little higher-pitched. I smelled rain on the breeze coming in through the window, felt the temperature drop a couple of degrees. Distantly, I thought I heard thunder.

"Amy, enough. We're not doing that." Andrea moved up alongside Janet and rubbed her back gently, in slow circles. "We're not going to ask you to do anything you're not comfortable with." Setting her jaw, she looked around at the rest of us. "Figure out another way to do it."

Immediately, I looked at Dinah; as did Lisa, Annette and Theo. It made sense; she was the one who could figure out who was the best person for a job. She blinked, then shook her head. "Okay, my power's still saying Janet and Amy are needed for this, but Kayden is also required for … providing the final piece of the puzzle?"

Our attention shifted to Kayden, who looked blank. "Me? I can't do much more than blast him into pink mist … wait a minute." Enlightenment showed clearly on her face. "Janet, remember the hospital room, when Cricket was coming after me? Remember how you stopped her then?"

Janet paused, then the penny dropped for her as well. "Pepper spray," she breathed. "I could guide pepper spray onto him." Her whole demeanour relaxed visibly as she said this.

"And he certainly won't be able to see straight with a face full of pepper spray," Dad noted. "Or breathe without effort. What do you think, Amy?"

Amy glanced from Janet to Dad, then nodded. "Oh, yeah. Everyone's all gangsta until they get a sinus load of that crap. I don't think I've ever treated anyone who was able to function normally with a good dose of it in their mucous membranes. That'll definitely work to keep him in one place until I can get a hand on him."

Lisa lifted the marker pen to the whiteboard. "So the plan is, we go after Oni Lee first to isolate Lung, then hit Lung once Lee's in PRT custody?"

"That's about it," agreed Kayden. "I know I'd prefer to take on Lung without Oni Lee being involved than with."

"I'd personally rather not take on either one, but that's just me." Lisa scribbled on the whiteboard, summarising the plan elements we'd already come up with in Oni Lee's section. "The question is, when are we going to do it? Having Lung come to Lee's rescue would be just as problematic as the other way around, if not more so."

Dinah turned to me with a grin. "Gee, I don't know. What do you think?"

I returned the grin as I collected my dice. "I think …" The dice left my hand, and rolled and clattered across the table. "… the next time when we'll have a reasonable window of time to capture Oni Lee without Lung interfering is … uh, Sunday, March sixth."

"So, about two weeks away." Annette grinned. "Excellent."

"What do you think, Theo?" Lisa raised her eyebrows. "Between your know-how and our analysis, can we build up a profile on him between now and then?"

Slowly, Theo nodded. "Yes, I definitely think so."

Kayden put her arm over his shoulders, then brought her hand up to gently rub her knuckles over the top of his head. "That's my boy."

<><>​

ABB Territory
Sunday, March 6
8:32 PM
Oni Lee

All was quiet in the territory ruled by Lung and the Azn Bad Boyz. Tributes were coming in as smoothly as clockwork, the substance trade had taken an uptick since the demise of the Merchants, and the Empire Eighty-Eight had understandably reduced their activities since the deaths of Kaiser and Hookwolf. There was graffiti on some walls, most applied with more enthusiasm than accuracy, depicting Kaiser's last moments, usually with a caption that read something along the lines of 'what a moron'.

Lee walked smoothly down the street, his pace steady and unvarying, looking neither to the right nor the left. He knew his boss was out of town, an event that occurred rarely enough that he couldn't offhand recall the last time it had happened. Neither of them thought for even a moment that the absence of the Dragon of Kyushu would cause unrest or even unease among the faithful … but it was better to not tempt fate.

There were those in the city, among the ranks of the racist white supremacists or those who would uphold the law (as if Lung were subject to their puny laws) who would take such an event as an opportunity to raid ABB territory and disrupt matters before he returned. They would never venture to attack Lung himself, of course. Lee could recall the last few times that had happened. It had not gone well for the attackers.

All who knew Lung and Oni Lee knew a simple truth; where Lung was, Oni Lee was not far away. And where Oni Lee trod, Lung watched over him. So tonight, Oni Lee was walking the streets, showing his presence. And by inference, showing that Lung was nearby. Out of sight but never out of mind.

He looked around, fixed a point on a nearby rooftop, and sent himself there. The consciousness of the new clone looked around at the copy still walking along the street, until it collapsed into a heap of ash. He wasn't aware that he was being created and destroyed anew each time he manifested a new clone, but it wouldn't have bothered him if he'd known. As far as he was concerned, he had continuity of memory, and that was all that mattered.

It was dark up above street level; moonset had occurred about an hour ago, and the city lights washed out all but the brightest of the stars. Still, Oni Lee knew the rooftops like the back of his hand, so he picked a landmark in the middle distance and sent himself there. When he arrived, he paused for a moment. His instincts were telling him that something was subtly off, but he wasn't quite sure what.

Slowly, he turned his head, trying to pin down the sense of unease. Nothing came to his ears or eyes, though there could be flyers in the sky and he'd never know it until they came close enough for the light from below to reflect off their costumes. As his hand caressed the first grenade on his bandoleer, he inhaled deeply, tasting the night air.

Was that the scent of perfume or deodorant, brought to him by an errant breeze? He looked around more sharply, but all he saw was a coil of fog, drifting by. And then another, and another. Looking up, he saw that the few visible stars had been blotted out by cloud.

He'd seen sudden fog coming down on Brockton Bay, but those had been under different conditions. There had been no drop in temperature, no recent changes in the weather. This smacked of outside interference.

Alarm flared in his mind and he took the grenade from its place, forefinger sliding into the ring of the pin with practised ease. "Who's there?" he shouted, looking around as more and more fog slid into place around him. All he could see was the rooftop directly nearby; nowhere to go if he wanted to retreat.

But Oni Lee did not flee like a craven mongrel of the streets. Oni Lee attacked. It was part of his legend, that he did not fear death itself because he had already died ten thousand deaths. He brought death to others, and lived to spread the tale.

Almost instinctively, he began to teleport, shifting his clones from one point to another, each one holding a grenade with the pin pulled, creating a group of ever-renewing versions of himself, all looking in different directions. He had used this technique before. Anyone attacking from the outside would be confused as to which of him they should target. And as soon as they did attack, he would have a target of his own.

But nobody attacked. Or rather, the attack came from a different angle than he'd expected. The first he knew of it was an acrid smell, then a wave of mist fell over all of his clones. Before he realised what was going on, his eyes were streaming uncontrollably, and every breath felt like fire. He had to get away, had to teleport! But already, his eyes were swelling shut and he was coughing and retching uncontrollably.

A bright light impinged on his eyelids. Dimly, he tried to throw the grenade he was holding, but his hands cramped up and the grenade wobbled away on a short arc that barely dropped it off the rooftop. A moment later, it exploded in the alley next to the building. He tried to get his pistol out of the holster, but his fingers simply would not work.

I am Oni Lee! he told himself, even as he fell headlong, trying to breathe past the mucus in his throat. I do not lose like this!

The touch on his cheek registered too late for him to do anything about it. Blackness claimed him.

<><>​

Panacea

Amy knelt over Oni Lee's prone body, panting heavily. "Okay …" she said. "That … I never want to do that again."

Kayden put her hand reassuringly on Amy's shoulder. "It's alright," she said. "If Janet hadn't made him drop it in the alleyway, I would've just flown us away again. Check it out; we captured Oni Lee. And we didn't even need Grue to do it for us."

Amy tried not to hear the unspoken part of that; I would have left him to die to his own grenade. Kayden might be a nice woman who doted on her baby daughter and encouraged Theo to express himself, but she was still a supervillain who had killed before, in the name of racial purity. She wondered how Taylor and the others dealt with that knowledge, or if they even treated it as a factor anymore. Just because they don't think about it doesn't mean it's not true.

Which meant that Lisa's failure to bring Grue in on the capture—apparently it had been a close thing, but he'd said no in the end—was probably a good thing. For all the good intentions in the world, supervillains were still supervillains. They didn't play by the rules, more or less by definition. And bringing yet another villain in to work alongside the villain they already had, had the potential to give rise to so many problems that Amy didn't even want to go there.

But they'd done it. Oni Lee was down. All that required now was to secure him and hand him over to the PRT. Breathing deeply to get her heart rate under control, she reached into her pocket for the flexi-cuffs. The other members of the team had wanted to go with zip-ties, but she'd sat through the PRT lectures about how cuffs were far more secure, especially with prisoners who didn't care about hurting themselves.

One hand and then the other; the cuffs zipped neatly into place. She made sure to secure his hands behind him, so that he would have much more trouble doing even simple things. Removing the bandoleer and gunbelt, she set those aside, then figured out how to get his demon mask off. Normally she wouldn't have bothered, but a blindfold was a lot easier to apply without an oni mask in the way.

There was a click and a flash; irritated, she looked over her shoulder to see Kayden holding her phone. "What the hell was that?" she asked. "Did you just get a picture of his face?"

"What if I did?" asked Kayden. "He's a criminal and a murderer. If you ask me, he belongs in the Birdcage or on a Kill Order. Not just sent to prison."

"That's for the courts to decide," Amy muttered, clenching her teeth together. Lisa was a supervillain too, but she mainly dealt in teenage snark, which Amy was quite happy to throw back at her. Kayden didn't have the air of someone planning a sudden-but-inevitable betrayal (Vicky loved that show, especially the Aleph version) but she also didn't act like someone who was intending to play along with the superheroes every step of the way, either.

On the one hand, Taylor and Dinah were adamant that having both Kayden and Amy on the team was the best way to ensure that they'd do the most good for Brockton Bay, and Amy knew better than to argue with one Thinker, let alone two arguing in tandem. In addition, Theo was a nice kid who desperately needed peers of his own age, for all that he was Kaiser's son (and hadn't that been a bombshell of epic proportions) and Aster was just plain adorable.

But on the other … Amy didn't know that packing the ranks of this nascent maybe-superhero maybe-team with villains was a recipe for disaster (she wasn't a Thinker, after all) but at best it was going to have a neutral outcome. She wasn't about to quit the team over friction with Kayden (if she ignored the Nazi supervillain past, there were zero problems to be had) but … the friction was still there. And Amy really preferred to have more people on her side, who saw things from her point of view.

As she finished fixing the blindfold, she made the decision. Up until now, she'd resisted bringing Vicky in on the whole deal, for a variety of reasons. One, because this had been her thing, a team she'd joined of her own accord, where she actually had a secret identity of sorts. Two, because wherever she and Vicky went, she was automatically overshadowed. It wasn't really Vicky's fault, but it happened anyway.

But now, not entirely certain about Kayden's motives and unsure if Taylor and the other Thinkers had taken matters into account with her background (and totally not sure how to ask about that) she figured she needed backup. Vicky would listen. Vicky would understand.

Vicky would have her back.

<><>​

PRT ENE
Director's Office
The Next Morning

"Oni Lee."

"Yes, ma'am."

"No casualties?" She had trouble believing that.

"None whatsoever, ma'am." The PRT captain sounded positively pleased with himself. "We got the call at about a quarter before nine. One of the side roads between Empire and ABB territory. There was Lee himself, lying on the sidewalk, wrists and ankles flex-cuffed, blindfolded. Fast asleep. His weapons were in a sack next to him. He woke up while we were loading him into the van, but he couldn't do a damn thing about it."

"So, in other words, he was handed to you on a platter." She could see that took the wind out of his sails a little.

"Well, yes, ma'am." He shrugged. "But we've got enough on him to put him away for a good long time anyway."

"This is true. Anything else? Were his clothes soaked, by any chance?"

He looked puzzled. "Soaked? Uh, no. It didn't rain last night." Then he held up a finger. "Oh, one other thing. It's not in the official report, but it'll be in the Director's-eyes one that we'll be filing once we have all the information. They lifted a partial off one of the flexicuffs, and you'll never guess who it belongs to."

She glowered at him. "It's too early in the morning for riddles."

"Right, right." He cleared his throat. "Panacea."

"You're sure about this." Her tone said, you'd better be.

He nodded firmly. "The lab guys are certain. But we figured you'd want to keep it on the down-low."

"You figured correctly. Was there anything else?"

"Uh, no, ma'am. We'll have the report to you ASAP."

"See that you do. Dismissed."

The captain left, and Emily leaned back in her chair. So Panacea's somehow mixed up with these mystery capes, hmm? Well, now I know who to pull in when I want to have a chat with them.

But I have to admit, bringing in Oni Lee like that took balls.

I won't lower the boom on them just yet.

<><>​

ABB Territory
Lung

"What. Happened?"

Lung was trying not to become too angry. When he became too angry, when he decided that a threat needed to be met, he became more frightening. Frightened people tended to babble and miss details. So he tamped down the fire inside himself and forced his voice to remain even and reasonable. "Tell me everything."

The tale came to him from half a dozen people. Oni Lee had been doing the rounds, as he did. His presence reassured the people that their capes were watching over them, that any incursion would be met with fire and fury. Nobody knew that he'd been out of Brockton Bay, save the driver he'd taken along, and that man had only learned of his task just before they went.

And yet, someone had picked this one night to do the one thing nobody did with impunity. They had attacked the territory of the ABB. They had attacked the capes of the ABB. Some people had wondered about the encroaching fog, but nobody had been alarmed. The only warning anyone had that something was going wrong was the exploding grenade.

People had climbed to the rooftops and scouted the area, looking for the source of the grenade. They had found the heaps of ash which had indicated multiple teleports; Lung had seen this before. All clumped in a small area. It had been a battle.

But a battle where nobody else had fallen. There was no blood, no bullet casings, only one grenade spoon, and the faint acrid scent of pepper spray. Footsteps and other marks in the ash, showing that someone had been there, but who? Who would attack the ABB so brazenly? Who could battle and capture Oni Lee without a single casualty? Who would even try?

There were too many questions, not enough answers. He was not unaware of the downfall of the Merchants, or of Coil before them. The impression he'd gotten was that these had been isolated events. It pained him to admit that he'd been wrong, but there was no other option. Someone was out there, hunting supervillains.

Which meant that he was next. Somewhere out there, someone thought that he was a worthy subject for a hunt. Behind his mask, he bared his teeth. Dragons are not hunted. Dragons hunt.

If and when these would-be hunters came into his territory again, they would be in for a very nasty surprise. For they would be seeking just one cape; Lung. But they would find two.

For the ABB had a Tinker now. She was crazy, it was true, but sometimes crazy was what he needed. Oni Lee hadn't been the most stable of individuals, after all. He was interested to see what she would build first, especially considering that she had told him her specialty was bombs. Bombs were good.

They may have planned for me. But they have not planned for Bakuda.

And therein lies their downfall.



End of Part Sixteen

 

[Ack]

Alea Iacta Est

Part Seventeen: Speed Bump

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


Taylor

"Okay, so Oni Lee's out of the way." Dad gave us all a serious look, which was a little impressive given that he was seated in an armchair with Andrea lounging across his lap. "This does not mean taking down Lung is going to be easy. Just not impossible."

"Yeah, I got that." And I did understand it. Lung had gone head to head with an Endbringer. This wasn't going to be like that Saturday morning cartoon I'd once seen when Mouse Protector had threatened Mr Metallic with a plastic sword to trick him into believing he'd lost his magnetic powers. In the real world, villains didn't just give up so readily.

"Janet," said Kayden thoughtfully, "just how complete is your control over water?"

"That's a hard question to answer," Janet replied. "What do you want me to do with it?" Her wary expression underscored her dislike for using her power too much.

"If you surrounded Lung with water, literally put him in a bubble of it, what's he going to do?"

Janet looked at Kayden, then at the rest of us, as if she suspected a trick question. "He's going to heat up the water until it boils away." Duh, she didn't quite say.

I saw Lisa's face light up at the same time Kayden asked the follow-up question. "But what if you stopped it from boiling? You can make water precipitate into rain right across the city. I've seen you do it. Could you hold the water around him anyway, no matter how much he tried to heat it up?"

"I … I don't know," Janet said quietly. "I've never tried. Especially against someone who can just throw more heat at the problem."

I shrugged. "I bet I know how we can find out."

Janet looked dubious. "I know your dice are very reliable, but ..."

Smirking, I glanced over at Dinah. "You know the best way to test it, don't you?"

She gave me a dirty look. "Of course I do."

Janet looked between us suspiciously. "What am I missing? What are you two up to?"

Dinah rolled her eyes and stood up from where she'd been sitting. Marching into Kayden's kitchen, she grabbed the electric jug, checked the amount of water in it, then carried it to the sink. Just as she started filling it with water, Janet clicked to what she was doing.

"Wait," she said. "Are you going to boil water right here and now to see if I can do it?"

"Well, why not?" asked Lisa. "Better to do it here and now under controlled conditions, than trying it out in the field and having to deal with a pissed-off rage dragon if we fail. Right?"

"Well, I suppose," Janet conceded, a little reluctantly. "But what if I succeed with the kettle and fail with Lung?"

"You won't," said Dinah. "Fail with Lung, I mean. When I asked my power just now who was best suited to the job of dousing Lung's flames, you're the only one whose name came up."

"Well, doesn't that mean I don't have to do this now?" Janet made a throwaway gesture. "If I can do it, I can do it."

"No, no, my power says you've also got to do this." Dinah shrugged. "Don't ask me. It just says it's the only way to get it right."

"More to the point," Andrea said perceptively, "why don't you even want to try?"

Janet ran her hand through her hair, making her look somewhat frazzled. "I … I don't know," she confessed. "I held back for so long from doing anything with it, trying something new is scary."

"You did lots of new things with it when you took down Coil's bunch and Oni Lee," Annette said, tilting her head like she usually did when something didn't add up. "Why's this one new thing different from everything else?"

Lisa cleared her throat, in that smug I-know-the-answer way she had. "Because everything else was just moving water around, or actual weather manipulation, which she already subconsciously knows how to do." She gave us a grin. "Making water not turn into vapour when it boils, that's a whole new ball game. If she can succeed in adding or subtracting heat, turning water into steam or ice at will, that'll change things up for the whole team. Especially if she can control the steam or ice like she can with liquid water."

"I'm really not sure I can do that at all," Janet said. "Making it rain's different. I just … well, a really crude explanation is that I just bash the water vapour together until it wants to rain. But I don't even do that manually. It's just a thing that happens because I want it to. I'm pretty sure steam is different."

"I wouldn't think too hard about it," Dad advised. "I've never heard of any capes losing the ability to use their powers because of the Centipede's Dilemma, but there's always a first time."

Dinah frowned. "What do centipedes have to do with water control? Is that a reference to some cape I've never heard of?"

Andrea chuckled. "You shouldn't confuse the kids like that, hon. They aren't used to the classics. But I bet Taylor knows what you're talking about."

I did; the poem he was referencing was one Mom had taught me years ago, partly because I was scared of bugs and she wanted to make them less frightening. I'd never actually seen a centipede in the wild, so I wasn't sure how effective it would be, but millipedes were a good enough illustration of the principle.

"Yeah," I said. "Basically, it involves thinking too deeply about something you normally do automatically. Like asking a centipede which leg it starts off with. In the poem, it gets confused and falls over in the ditch."

"Oh." Janet grimaced. "So if I overthink it, I could get it wrong? Wow, that is not the way to make me feel better about all this."

"Hey, it's alright," I assured her. "You'll do just fine."

"I notice you didn't roll any dice before saying that," she said, raising her eyebrows. "Is that you making sure you don't have to lie to me?"

"A little bit, maybe," I admitted. "Also, questions about powers are tricky. Ambiguous answers are the worst. Asking 'can X do Y' is all well and good, until I get a 'no', which leads to total confusion when they do it anyway, until I find out that they couldn't do it then but they can do it now."

A gurgle and a low pitched whistle from the kitchen got our attention. "Okay," announced Dinah. "The jug's boiling. Janet, can you feel the water?"

Uncertainly, Janet nodded. "I can. Do you want me to try to stop it from boiling?"

Dinah nodded. "If you could, please."

Silence fell over the living room as Janet concentrated. I listened hard to the sound of bubbling water, willing it to stop. If Janet could pull this off, stopping Lung would be a whole lot easier.

The jug continued to boil. Janet's expression became intense, her hand in her lap balling into a fist until the knuckles were white. She clenched her eyes shut; I could see the strain on her features.

After about thirty seconds of effort, during which time the jug continued to bubble away unabated, she opened her eyes and let out a long gasp. "I can't," she said in defeat. "The water's there and I can manipulate it. I can even feel the temperature. But I can't change the temperature, and I can't stop it from becoming steam."

"Can you still control the steam?" I asked, curious.

"Oh, sure." Janet pointed upward, and I saw a swirling white cloud up near the ceiling. "It's still pretty warm, but spreading it out lets it lose heat fairly quickly. But no, I can't force it to stay liquid or even keep it below boiling temperature. Sorry, Dinah. I guess your power's wrong for once."

"What if it isn't?" Theo asked unexpectedly from where he sat with Aster on his lap. I looked over with interest; he was still pretty shy about expressing an opinion, but what he said was always worth listening to. "Dinah, what exactly did your power tell you?"

"That Janet's power made her the best person for dousing Lung's flames," Dinah said promptly. "Why?"

He suddenly seemed to realize that everyone was looking at him, and visibly backpedalled. "Uh, nothing. I was just wondering … well, what if there's another way to do it? Just a thought, that's all."

"Hmm." Kayden looked at him a moment longer, then returned her attention to Janet. "Theo's got a point, you know. We were all fixated on the idea of you brute-forcing Lung by holding the water in place and not letting it boil. You know your power better than we do. There might be other options that we haven't thought of."

Janet didn't look convinced, but she nodded anyway. "Okay, I'll think about it some more."

"Good," said Dad. "Back to the main topic at hand. Does anyone see a problem with moving on Lung by this weekend?"

"Nope, but it never hurts to check." I held up my dice. "Now that Janet's considering new and interesting ways to introduce Lung to all the water, I might have another look at our chances of taking him down." The dice rolling tray was at my elbow, so I let the polyhedrons fall. They clattered to a stop, and I did a double-take. "Ah. This isn't good."

"Not good? What's not good?" Annette got up to check on the dice, while everyone else more or less leaned over toward me. I saw Lisa beginning to frown; she was the only one other than me who could reliably read my dice.

I pointed out the numbers. "Twelve point seven five three percent chance of success. My last roll was in the high eighties, guys. Something's gone seriously wrong."

"Oh, shit." Janet's expression was stricken. "Whatever it is I decide to do is going to backfire and wreck the whole plan. Should I sit this one out?"

"No," Dinah said at once. "My power still says you're an integral part of the plan. Taylor, what are the chances if Janet takes no part?"

I shrugged and rolled the dice, then blinked. "Wow. Seven point nine three one two percent."

"Well, it's not Janet then," Andrea decided. "What's gone wrong? What's happened?"

Lisa raised her head. "Guys … why was Lung out of town?"

I had my alphabet dice ready to hand. Using two hands, I picked up ten of them—all I could hold—and let them fall, all at once. They thumped and thudded all over the tray, then came to a halt. I studied the result. "Okay … it says N-E-W-space-B-A-K-U-D-A."

"He's recruited someone new called Bakuda," Dad said, getting in just in front of Lisa. "But who's Bakuda?"

She gave him a dirty look and pulled out her phone. "Let's see if they've made the news elsewhere."

I picked up the dice again. "Who or what is Bakuda?" Thud thud thud went the dice.

There were no spaces this time, but I didn't need them. "Oh, shit," I whispered.

"What?" asked Dinah, Annette and Kayden all at once.

I stared at the dice. They stubbornly refused to change what they said.

B-O-M-B-T-I-N-K-E-R.

<><>​

Danny

With the hint from Taylor's dice, Lisa had been able to quickly narrow down who Bakuda was; specifically, the main suspect in the Cornell bombing spree. Authorities were offering a reward for information regarding the whereabouts of an Alice Takawara in connection to this. Apparently, the FBI were treating it as a terror attack.

Danny wasn't sure if they'd officially give up once Bakuda made herself known as a member of the ABB under Lung, or keep looking under the pretence that they hadn't made the connection. He'd heard rumours from people he knew in the Dockworkers that the PRT didn't get along too well with the other three-letter agencies at the best of times. This wasn't a surprise, considering how more and more resources that were signed over to them every year, with the ever-increasing number of parahumans out there.

The question was, would the Feds opt to share information to the PRT, or try to apprehend her themselves? Interdepartmental jurisdiction was a thorny question at the best of times, and he knew damn well that before all this parahuman crap had started, a simple mask and assumed name would have done zip-all to dissuade the FBI from performing a much-needed arrest. From what he understood now, though, there was a kind of unspoken agreement that a supervillain's secret identity was ironclad until they were arrested and officially unmasked. Also, the PRT (and their affiliates in the Protectorate) were automatically assumed to be the experts in dealing with parahuman crap. Even when they weren't.

But fortunately, this was getting beyond the point. Right now, all the team needed to know was how to deal with her as well as with Lung. Oni Lee was in custody, which would help tremendously, but the next step was to decide whether to focus on Lung or on Bakuda.

"We can't let her get too established," Lisa insisted. "You know how they say, 'never attack a Tinker in their base'? If her thing is bombs, she can carry them everywhere. She might have a dozen different offensive powers ready to go at a moment's notice. So, we've got to hit her from surprise. We can't let her see us coming, or she's likely to retaliate. And someone who's willing to set off bombs in a university isn't likely to be squeamish about targeting civilians. It's got to be a hard takedown."

"Amy is the best option for doing that without killing her," Dinah said at once. "If she can bring Vicky in on it, that's two options." She gave Kayden an apologetic look. "No offence, but your blast is likely to splatter her across several city blocks, and we don't want to get a reputation for killing indiscriminately."

"None taken." Kayden lifted her chin. "But if it looks like she's about to kill one of the others, I reserve the right to protect them."

Danny nodded. "I think we can accept that. Where is Amy, anyway?"

"Team appearance, with the rest of New Wave," Andrea said at once. "She said she'd be along later."

"Good," said Dinah. "We'll fill her in then." She looked at Kayden. "Just by the way, I do have a role for you when we're dealing with Bakuda. Once we make sure there's nobody in her workshop, your blast would be perfect for demolishing it at a distance."

Taylor grinned. "While the rest of us watch the fireworks from a safe distance."

"With popcorn," Annette added, draping herself over Taylor's shoulder. "Don't forget the popcorn."

"The popcorn's your job," said Dinah without missing a beat.

"What?" asked Annette. "Come on, your power couldn't have told you that. It didn't tell you that." She paused. "Did it?"

Dinah grinned at her. "You'll never know."

That was actually pretty funny; Taylor laughed out loud, and Lisa joined in. Andrea giggled, and even Kayden chuckled at the over-the-top look of outrage on Annette's face. Danny just shook his head with a grin of his own.

"Okay, being serious now," Kayden said. "Lisa's right. I hate to say this, especially after we were all hyped up to beat Lung, but Bakuda is potentially the greater danger here. If I know the villain mindset, she's going to want to make her mark. If we want to keep casualties to a minimum, we're going to need to stop her before she even gets going."

That was when the buzzer sounded.

<><>​

Taylor

Almost reflexively, I scooped up three of the alphabet dice and rolled them, asking a question in my mind. They came up Y-E-S.

"It's Amy," I announced out loud, half a second behind Lisa. She wrinkled her nose at me, and I poked my tongue out at her.

"I'll go let her in," Annette said hastily, undraping herself from my shoulder. She hustled over to the door before anyone else could get their first. "Heyy, how's it going?" she crowed into the intercom. "C'mon up."

"How'd you know it was Amy?" I asked Lisa as Annette hit the button to let Amy in. "It's a buzzer. No clues."

She gestured to the window. "I caught a glimpse of Glory Girl dropping her off. Which you could've too if you'd been paying attention."

"Cheater," I accused her idly.

"Says the girl who can make dice come up any number she wants."

"I don't do that, not in the game." I was very careful not to. My character sheet had a pencil-drawn circle for the d20 to end up in; and another, slightly larger circle for the damage dice to land. Any roll I made outside of those circles simply didn't count.

"Yeah, yeah, sure, sure."

I considered bopping her on the end of the nose with a tossed die (which would then bounce back to the dice tray), but then the door opened and Amy walked in. Annette went to glomp her (which was standard practice between the two; Amy, interestingly enough, had zero problem with this) but stalled when she saw Vicky standing behind Amy. "Oh, hey," she said, then glomped Amy anyway. Self-consciousness was not something Annette was big on.

"Hey, 'Nette," Amy said, giving the redheaded girl a return hug. "Everyone, I decided to invite Vicky over today, if that's okay?"

Vicky stepped inside and looked around, her eyebrows raising when she saw the number of adults in the room. "Okay, this is not what I expected. Is there some kind of event going on that I should be aware of?"

Dad shared a glance with Kayden, then another with Andrea. I didn't see any kind of overt signal pass between them, but he shrugged resignedly. "How much have you told her?"

"Nothing, really," Amy said hastily. "Just that I wanted her in on this."

He pressed his lips together. "Really, you should have talked it over with one of us before doing this."

No shit, Sherlock. There was a reason we were keeping Vicky out of the loop. Well, until we were ready to ask her for help.

I met Lisa's eyes, then picked up half a dozen alphabet dice and rolled them, just as Vicky looked around with exasperation. "Well, to be honest, it would help if I knew what 'this' was. Is this some sort of live-action roleplaying game thing? Is that why that one girl's rolling dice there in the corner, where she thinks I can't see her?"

The question in my head had been, Is bringing Vicky in going to cause drama?

One by one, the dice rolled to a halt. I easily read off the result.

L-I-L-B-I-T. Little bit.

Lisa leaned over and glanced at them, then snorted with amusement. "Coulda told you that," she murmured.

Well, a 'little bit' of drama didn't sound too bad, and Lisa and Dinah weren't throwing off 'danger danger' vibes, so I gave Dad a cautious nod.

He sighed and nudged Andrea gently. Rolling her eyes, she uncurled like a cat and stood up from the chair. "I'd much rather more forewarning about this," he said as he got up as well, whereupon she promptly claimed the chair for herself. "But Taylor and the others seem to think it's okay. I'm guessing this was a spur of the moment thing?"

<><>​

Vicky

"Well, yeah," Amy admitted. "I just asked her to hang around when she brought me over. I thought she could be a part of it."

Vicky breathed deeply, then let it all out again. This was getting more and more irritating, and the way they were talking over her head didn't help in the slightest. "Part of what?" she demanded. "Ames, someone better tell me exactly what's going on, or I'm outta here!"

For some reason, everyone seemed to look to the brown-haired kid on the sofa—Dinah, if Vicky had it right. Nodding as though in resignation, Dinah stood up. "What's going on, Glory Girl, is that we're all part of a superhero team. Your sister has been working with us on a part-time basis, and she's clearly decided that she thinks you're a good fit for the team as well."

Nothing physically changed in the room, but Vicky had the distinct impression of having watched a jigsaw puzzle come apart and reform in a totally different pattern. All of a sudden, the guarded looks from the people around the room made perfect sense, as did all the double-talk and obscure references. "What … the … hell?" she demanded. "You're all capes? Even the rug rat?" She gestured to the baby, currently cradled in the arms of a chubby teen. "Was this whole roleplaying game thing and babysitting thing a huge con? And where do you get off, Ames, joining another team? When were you even gonna tell Mom?"

The petite mousy woman—Vicky thought her name was Kayden—stood up and took a step forward. "First, please lower your voice and watch your language." Her tone was pure mom, and she looked ready to push back hard if Vicky wanted to make a thing of it. "Second, no, Aster is not a cape. The babysitting and gaming aspects were real. A convenient cover, but real. Some of us here are capes, and some are not. We are all part of the team. Amy?"

Vicky watched as Ames wriggled around in the hold of the red-headed girl without actually making her let go. This was the most physical contact she'd ever seen her sister endure from anyone she wasn't healing, which made her day just that little bit more surreal. "Vicky, I'm with this team because they asked me to join rather than just assumed I wanted to be part of it, and basically made it clear that I could do a lot of good by working with them. More than I'm doing with New Wave, to be honest. I think you could help us do good too, which is why I asked you along."

"Which is actually kind of convenient," said Dinah, as though they practised this kind of segue all the time. "We were actually just talking about how useful it might be to bring you along on our next mission, and I was wondering how to suggest it to Amy." She looked at Amy and shrugged. "You know, without making it look like we were trying to replace you with your sister. Because you're absolutely a valued member of the team."

Amy chuckled ruefully. "Huh. Well. Wish I'd known that then. I wouldn't have made an idiot of myself now."

The red-haired girl ruffled her hair fondly. "You might be an idiot, but you're our idiot." Surprising Vicky utterly, she planted a kiss on the tip of Amy's nose. What was even more astonishing was the way Amy didn't shove her away. In fact, she seemed to almost melt into the girl's embrace with a silly little grin.

Forcing herself to disregard everything that she was going to have to corner Amy about later, mentally filed under the heading of what the hell, Ames? When did you start liking girls?, Vicky took a deep breath. "Okay, got it. New team. You've somehow managed to poach Ames, and now you want to bring me in as well. So hit me. What's so great about your team? What've you done, recently? Why should I even give you the time of day?"

The blonde woman, who'd been standing back with her arms crossed, tensed as a couple of them glanced at her. "It was an accident," she insisted. "I mean, okay, I meant it, but only because I had no choice."

Kayden sighed and turned to face Vicky. "What she's referring to is something you've undoubtedly heard about. Remember how Kaiser died? That was her."

Vicky blinked and stared at both women. "I heard he stuck a metal sword in the air during that thunderstorm. Got struck by lightning. That wasn't an accident?"

"He'd stabbed me," Kayden said firmly. "When he raised the sword, he was going for a decapitation strike. She didn't have a choice."

"Wait." Some pieces of the puzzle had finally clicked together for Vicky. This wasn't stuff she was officially supposed to know, but Dean was bad at keeping secrets if she wheedled him the right way. "I did hear about that through the grapevine. But the person he stabbed was supposed to be Purity."

"It was," the woman confirmed. "He was going to take Aster and Annette away. I wasn't going to let him."

Vicky stared at the unassuming woman who had just admitted to being one of the most potent flying Blasters in the city … and also a neo-Nazi criminal. "You're Purity."

"No, I'm Kayden." The woman gave her a hard stare. "Don't even go there. I'm reforming. Going hero. Ma-Kaiser laughed at me when I said I wanted to do that. Nobody here is laughing."

"Vicky." It was Amy's voice, from behind her. "I want you to think really, really hard about what you say next. These are my friends. You're my guest. Don't mess this up for me."

It was the pleading note in Amy's voice that got to Vicky. She looked at each of the people in turn, then slowly nodded. "Okay, I'll bite. What's your team called?" Because she certainly hadn't heard of any new teams on the scene recently.

"We haven't got a public-facing name yet, because we haven't gone public." The tall lanky guy held out his hand. "Danny Hebert. That's my daughter Taylor, over there. She's a cape, I'm not. You already know Dinah, that's Lisa, Janet, Andrea, Theo, and the one hanging all over your sister is Andrea's daughter Annette."

Vicky blinked as she shook his hand. "I'm probably gonna need some reminders on those. So apart from calling down lightning on Kaiser, which I really want to know more about, what else have you done …" She paused, staring at Kayden. "The PRT thing with Coil! You were there! Were you working with this team then?"

Andrea—Vicky thought she had it right—rolled her eyes. "Well, duh. She's been one of us basically from the start. And you shoulda seen what she did to Hookwolf."

"Wait, wait." Vicky held up her hands for a moment. "So all that stuff that's been happening, the gangs all being taken apart, that wasn't just random shit? That was you guys?"

The blonde girl with the green eyes and mischievous grin nodded. "If by 'stuff that's been happening' you mean the Merchant takedown and Oni Lee being brought down like a wimp, yeah. That was us. We set 'em up and knocked 'em down."

Vicky still couldn't wrap her head around it. "Okay, I got it. But how can you be sure you can trust Purity? She's a villain, simple as that."

"Wow, yeah, because it's totally impossible for anyone to ever learn how to not be a villain." The girl rolled her eyes, then whipped out a mask and placed it over her face. "Totally." Reaching up behind her head, she ran her fingers through the neat French braid, throwing her dark blonde hair into disarray.

It took a moment for Vicky to recognize the style of mask and the vulpine grin below it. What clinched it was the way the girl was giving her the finger with the hand that held the mask in place. "Crap, you're Tattletale!"

"Who?" Tattletale whipped the mask away and gave Vicky an outrageous wink. "Never heard of her. She must be a figment of your imagination."

If it wasn't the last straw, it was close to it. Running her fingers through her own hair, Vicky clutched at two handfuls of it and let out a groan of exasperation. "What the he—uh, heck's going on here? Amy, what've you gotten me into? What've you gotten into?"

"A team that actually does stuff, rather than spending more time looking for good publicity," Amy retorted. "Lisa and Kayden are one hundred percent invested in the team. Lisa, because she joined up to help us take Coil out of the picture, and Kayden because she's got Aster and Theo to worry about now. We were looking at going after Lung next. Are you in, or are you out?"

"Ah yeah, about that," said Danny. "Annette, could you do us a favour and fill Amy in on the change of plans?"

Annette—the redhead currently draped over Amy—grinned and managed to somehow crack her knuckles without letting go of Vicky's sister. "So here's the skinny," she said. "While Lung was out of town, he picked up another cape …"

<><>​

Taylor

Following the explanation, Amy seemed willing to take it in stride while Vicky was distinctly on the back foot about the whole thing. Unfortunately, this only served to make her more belligerent. "Oh, come on," she said with a dramatic eye-roll. "How do you even know so much about this newcomer cape? She hasn't even hit the public eye yet and you all know her name, her cape name, her powerset, everything."

Amy sighed. This apparently wasn't her first rodeo when it came to her sister being problematic. "Seriously? That's your biggest problem with all this? That we know too much about the people we're going to be facing before we ever see them?"

"Well, yeah." Vicky spread her hands. "Who even does that? I bet all that stuff isn't even in PHO yet."

"We do that." I realized a second later that I'd spoken up. "We're a Thinker heavy team, with exactly two heavy hitters." I held up a handful of dice. "I'm a precog, Lisa's an intuitive and Dinah's an organizer. As soon as we realized she was going to be in the picture, we started figuring out how to deal with her. Which reminds me." I put down the number dice and picked up the alphabet dice. "Can she detonate her bombs remotely, or does she need a timer?"

The ten dice thudded into the tray. For the benefit of those in the room, I read the reply out loud. "Does both."

"Ah." Annette held up a finger. "How does she set them off remotely?"

"Ooh, good question." I gathered up the dice again. Ten of them were just about all I could hold at once, and I hoped it would be enough for this answer. Dropping the dice into the tray, I observed the answer. "Huh. Toe ring L."

"Toe rings on the left foot," Lisa filled in. "Okay, that's definitely something that would've given me headaches."

"Oh, come on!" Vicky interjected. "How reliable's all that, anyway? You're literally throwing dice and interpreting the result!"

Well, they were certainly correct about the 'little bit' of drama, I thought with an internal sigh. "It's my power. I have to toss dice or other things to actually show the answer. The other part of my power is that I can toss anything with absolute accuracy. Once my power gets the answer, I can make the dice do whatever I want." That was a little broad, but I was starting to lose patience with her.

"Bullshit." She folded her arms. I suspected she half-believed me, but she was so invested in opposing what I said that she had to dig her heels in no matter what.

"Fine," I said, nettled. "Call a result. I'll do it."

The challenge had been thrown down. She stomped over to where I sat, and examined the dice in my tray; five d10s and ten alphabet dice. "Okay," she said. "All those dice, stacked on top of each other, on the table."

Looking her dead in the eye, I stood up and gathered half a dozen alphabet dice and three of the d10s, all by feel, and turned away from the table. Then, still holding eye contact, I tossed them over my shoulder toward the table. Grabbing the rest, I did the same again. We all heard the clatter as they landed. I allowed myself a smile as I turned to look.

The flabbergasted expression on Glory Girl's face as she beheld the fifteen-die tall stack—interspersing two alphabet dice with one d10, all balanced on a single d10—was a thing of beauty. "Oh, no way," she muttered as she leaned closer, then she saw the piece de resistance; the bottom d10 was balancing on its point, supporting the dice above it on the other point … while spinning in place.

Her jaw dropped and she was clearly lost for words. "How …"

Well, almost lost for words.

I shrugged. "You called it. I pulled it off. Now do you believe me?"

"Well …" I could see her trying to figure out some way to explain what I'd done.

"Oh, for god's sake, Vicky," snapped Amy. "Stop being such a dumbass! You're embarrassing me in front of everyone, here!"

Where a thousand reasoned arguments may not have done the trick, that one got through. Vicky looked from the stack of dice to me, then to her sister and everyone else in the room.

"Okay," she said quietly. "If Amy says I'm being a dumbass, maybe I'm being a dumbass. What is it you need me to do?"

"Well, before you got here," Dinah explained, "we were having a strategy session on how to deal with the ABB. We'd just about agreed that Bakuda needs to be taken down before we make our move on Lung, because of the danger she poses. And that's where you and Amy come in."

"Wait, why aren't we hitting Lung first?" asked Vicky. "He's a lot more dangerous than any Tinker."

"That's not necessarily the case," Lisa corrected her. "What's the one thing every Tinker needs in order to be truly dangerous?"

Vicky shrugged. "Parts? Tools?"

"Given the chance, any Tinker can assemble parts and tools," Theo said unexpectedly. "What you need to starve them of is time itself. Time that might be spent building new devices, acquiring hard to get materials and in general consolidating their position." He ducked his head as we all looked over at him. "That's what my father used to say, anyway. He never felt it was fair that the Empire lacked Tinkers."

I nodded. "If we take Bakuda down, Lung will know for a fact Oni Lee was no fluke. But he can't stay in rage dragon mode forever. Bakuda, on the other hand, is likely to feel amazingly threatened if we capture her new boss, and Tinkers who feel threatened may be even more dangerous than the regular type."

"And Tinkers who focus on bombs have a way of passing that threatened feeling on to everyone else around them really effectively," Lisa pointed out.

"Um …" Annette said, raising a finger. "I have a question."

I took my dice tray over to where the stack of dice was just beginning to wobble, and held it in the right place so they all fell into it. "Shoot."

"Anyone can make a bomb," she said. "I mean, if you look on the right place online, you can get detailed explanations for building anything except maybe a nuke, and I'm not even certain about that."

"Including a nuke," Lisa corrected her. "I went looking once."

Annette rolled her eyes. "Yeah, that makes me feel a whole lot better. Anyway, my point. What's her Tinker deal? What does she do to make bombs special? Firecrackers that demolish whole buildings? Bombs that don't make noise when they go off? Bombs that just go bang don't exactly require a Tinker to build."

"That's a really good question," I said slowly. "Okay then, let me get set up here. Lisa, I may need you to interpret."

I made myself comfortable in the chair, put the d10s to one side, and poised myself with the alphabet dice. "Okay," I said out loud. "What do Bakuda's bombs do that's out of the ordinary?" And then I tossed the dice.

<><>​

Several minutes later, Dad was still scribbling in a notepad. "Turn … people … to … glass," he murmured. "Okay. Any other new and horrifying revelations?"

"You got the black hole and the pain bombs?" Lisa asked; at his grunt of assent, she nodded. "All good for the moment then."

"No, not all good," Kayden said. "This person is going to start tossing bombs around in my city that turn people to glass? We need to stop her yesterday." A glow started building up around her hands.

Vicky grimaced. "Much as I hate to agree with Purity, yeah, that's what we need to do. Okay, I'm totally on board. What's the plan?"

I met Lisa's gaze, then brought Dinah in on it too. "Time to do what we do best."

Dinah grinned. "I'll get the map."

Lisa cracked her knuckles. "Oh, hell yes."

<><>​

Bakuda

Brockton Bay wasn't Boston, Alice decided as she climbed the stairs to the roof, or anything like it. Her hometown had an air of faded gentility about it, while Brockton Bay was more like a gangster who was trying to convince everyone that since he'd gotten out of prison he'd turned over a new leaf. While asking if someone would like to buy a second-hand watch.

Interestingly enough, the fearsome reputations of the Brockton gangs didn't quite seem to live up to reality. Even in Boston, she'd heard rumours that the PRT was scared to go after the Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB because of the backlash this would incur. The white supremacists alone had more capes than all the hero groups in town, and they weren't all second-stringers either.

But now that she was in town, things were different. Lung had gotten her back to the Bay only to find out his trusted second in command Oni Lee had been snatched up by the PRT after a battle with a mysterious foe. This had put a distinct dent in the air of infallibility that he was clearly trying to foster with her.

She knew it couldn't be the Empire, because they were having their own problems, starting with Kaiser himself being made over into crispy fried racist on the roof of an apartment building in a thunderstorm. Events had snowballed from there; one of the big hitters had quit the team (after, rumour had it, being stabbed by Kaiser). She'd then murdered another big hitter (Alice hadn't bothered remembering the name; all those white racists looked the same to her) before going off to do her own thing, leaving two more of the gang to get captured by the PRT.

All this had been before the Oni Lee grab. In fact, they'd waited two weeks until Lung was specifically out of town to recruit her before they made that move. Which said to her that someone was making a move, but they were being careful about it. But one thing was certain; whether it was some bunch of villains looking to clear the way before they moved in or the heroes being more subtle than normal, there was no way she was going to tolerate that shit on her watch.

Whoever it was, no matter how carefully they'd planned for Lung (and she had no doubt they probably had a whole dossier on him by now) it was obvious from the fact they'd waited until he left town that they knew they couldn't match up to him when he had anyone by his side. And barely anyone knew she was in the city; even the regular gang members had only seen her face and heard her name. As Bakuda, she wasn't known anywhere else. She hadn't even demonstrated any of her specialized bombs for them.

The sun was just rising as she stepped out onto the rooftop. She stretched and yawned, unfavourably comparing the bay with Boston's waterfront, and giving the PRT headquarters in their converted oil rig the finger while she was at it. That was just begging for a bomb she'd been thinking of, that gave steel the consistency of taffy for about ten minutes.

Whoever was going after the gangs knew nothing about her. Which meant that if anyone made a move on the ABB once she'd had a chance to get some more bombs built would be in for a horrible—

The punch came out of nowhere, smashing into the side of her jaw like a runaway truck. Spinning around, she went sprawling to the rooftop. One of the eyepieces of her gas mask shattered, but that didn't matter; a couple of seconds later, while she was still trying to regain her scattered senses, straps were snapped and it was yanked off her face. Flopping onto her back, she stared up into the face of a cheerful blonde-haired teenage girl. "Surprise!"

Who … what … where … how …

Gravel crunched, and another teen knelt beside her. This one had brown frizzy hair and freckles. "Welcome to Brockton Bay," she said. "I'll be fixing your broken jaw now. You may feel a little numbness. This is perfectly normal." A hand was laid across her cheek, and then she was out like a light.

<><>​

Panacea

Coming to her feet, Amy dusted off her knees and gave Vicky a dirty look. "'Surprise'? Really? That's the best you could come up with?"

Vicky shrugged. "Hey, it worked, didn't it?" Kneeling next to the villain's legs, she worked the left boot off, and then the sock. "Hey, looks like Taylor was right on the money. Toe rings on the left foot."

Amy rolled her eyes. "What did you expect?" A noise caught her attention and she turned her head. "I think someone's coming up to the roof."

"Okay, let's go." Expertly, Vicky picked up the unconscious villain. "Get the mask, will you?"

"Get the mask, get the mask," muttered Amy. "Igor, fetch the brain." With the mask in hand, she allowed Vicky to put an arm around her waist, and in another second they were up and away.

"So, where to?" asked Vicky.

"There's a spot in the driveway behind the PRT building that the cameras don't cover," Amy instructed. "We'll drop her there and send in an anonymous tip."

"You know she'll probably be able to describe us." Vicky sounded pensive. "Mom's gonna go batshit if she finds out we've been doing hero stuff out of costume."

Amy shook her head. "Nah. When you broke her jaw, you also gave her a concussion. She's not gonna have any short-term memory after coming up out of that roof exit. She'll have no idea what just happened."

"Huh." Vicky flew on for a few more moments. "You know she hasn't committed any crimes here in Brockton Bay. What are they gonna hold her on?"

Amy grinned. She'd already asked Taylor that question. "The Cornell bombings, for starters. With that as leverage, they may even try to recruit her."

"You're shitting me."

"Hey, don't look at me. That's what the dice said."

<><>​

Lung

Kenta climbed the stairs to the roof of the building he was using as a base for the moment. He wanted to talk to Bakuda and make sure she understood the consequences of failure under his leadership. It was good that she was an early riser. This meant she would be able to get much work done.

He opened the door and stepped out onto the roof, already opening his mouth to speak. The words died on his lips as he surveyed the empty expanse. "Bakuda?" he called. "Where are you?"

Only the wind answered him. He strode out onto the roof, looking around with mounting puzzlement. Had she fled his employment so quickly? This made no sense at all. He hadn't even paid her yet.

An object caught his eye, and he went over to see what it was. A single discarded boot, with a sock partially hidden under it. Picking them up, he stared at them.

Why did she take the boot off? Or if someone attacked her, why did they take it off her?

Nothing made sense here. What the fuck is going on?


End of Part Seventeen

 

[naarn]

An excellent getting-superpowers-actually-helps-make-things-better wormfic.

I have no idea why they were so fixated on holding Lung in a non-replenishing sphere of water. Adding a stready stream of water to it should work, as would moving him to the ocean where that would happen automatically, and possibly holding him in a sphere of superheated water vapor could work too though the last one is dubious.

 

[Ack]

An excellent getting-superpowers-actually-helps-make-things-better wormfic.

I have no idea why they were so fixated on holding Lung in a non-replenishing sphere of water. Adding a stready stream of water to it should work, as would moving him to the ocean where that would happen automatically, and possibly holding him in a sphere of superheated water vapor could work too though the last one is dubious.

Click to shrink...

It was more of a "it would be a lot simpler if we could do this" thought process.

 

[naarn]

It was more of a "it would be a lot simpler if we could do this" thought process.

Click to shrink...

I suppose.

It seemed to me like they said "why don't we use water", and she said "but we'll lose some water!" and they all insisted "stop the water losses!" and conspicuously ignored the simple answer of "MOAR WATER!!!1!!".

 

[Ocean Sailor]

Brockton Bay wasn't Boston, Alice decided as she climbed the stairs to the roof, or anything like it. Her hometown had an air of faded gentility about it, while Brockton Bay was more like a gangster who was trying to convince everyone that since he'd gotten out of prison he'd turned over a new leaf. While asking if someone would like to buy a second-hand watch.

Interestingly enough, the fearsome reputations of the Brockton gangs didn't quite seem to live up to reality.

Click to shrink...

The punch came out of nowhere, smashing into the side of her jaw like a runaway truck. Spinning around, she went sprawling to the rooftop. One of the eyepieces of her gas mask shattered, but that didn't matter; a couple of seconds later, while she was still trying to regain her scattered senses, straps were snapped and it was yanked off her face. Flopping onto her back, she stared up into the face of a cheerful blonde-haired teenage girl. "Surprise!"
Who … what … where … how …
Gravel crunched, and another teen knelt beside her. This one had brown frizzy hair and freckles. "Welcome to Brockton Bay," she said.

Click to shrink...

Hahahahahaha!
So yeah, Bakuda, I'm afraid that, old gangster that she is, Brockton Bay is going to make the dismissive newcomer eat their words. And no, you don't even get salt to go with them, it's all being used to rub it in.

 

[Twilight666]

Ack wrong thread

 

[Ack]

Ack wrong thread

Click to shrink...

Yeah thanks I noticed.

 

[karay]

I wonder whats contessa's end game roster for the team.

 

[naarn]

I wonder whats contessa's end game roster for the team.

Click to shrink...

I assume she doesn't really have one, or not completely. Theo hasn't triggered yet, so she doesn't know what his powers will be. Aisha hasn't triggered yet, I think. Lots of other not-easily-predictable things are presumably ongoing.

 

[Ack]

Alea Iacta Est

Part Eighteen: Whack-a-Lung

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal].

PRT Building ENE
Director Piggot's Office
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
10:45 AM

Emily clicked on the email and skimmed through it. As she'd thought, it was a cc from Maintenance, projecting next quarter's budget. None of the numbers jumped out at her and the bottom line didn't seem excessive, so she clicked away without leaving a comment.

Her phone rang, and she checked the name. It was Armsmaster, which meant it was the call she'd been waiting for. Swiping to answer, she tapped the 'speaker' icon. "You've got Piggot. Talk to me."

"The techs and I have finished scanning her, ma'am." Armsmaster's tone was matter-of-fact, as though he hadn't just been checking over a dangerous Tinker for booby-traps. "There's no sign of any implants. The gas mask and toe rings are currently sequestered in three different storage containers, all Faraday shielded."

"Bring her up," she said. "I'm interested in what she's got to say for herself."

"Understood, ma'am." His voice didn't change at all. "Just be aware, she's not happy with the situation."

"And I'm not happy that she's in my city, so she's just going to have to take a number and wait in line." Emily cut the call, then tapped keys on her computer. The dossier they'd been able to assemble on Takawara came up on her screen, and she ran her eye over it once more. Most of the information was publicly available; what little required warrants had been open to them once the phrase 'Cornell bomber' was mentioned to the judge.

Alice Takawara had a Japanese father and a Caucasian mother. She'd gotten into Cornell on a scholarship, but it seemed her grades had begun to slip in recent months. Emily figured this probably had to do with a combination of arrogance and spending more time partying than studying. She'd seen the type more often than not.

Looking at the grade in question, Emily pursed her lips in a silent whistle. What sort of stresses had the girl been under if she triggered because of a B plus? If I'd gotten straight B+ in college, my parents would've been celebrating. Slowly, she shook her head. This was someone who believed they could—and should be allowed to—do nearly anything, and lashed out against everyone else when they ran head-first into reality. So basically, the same as about seventy-five percent of capes.

So far, the indicators were not great. But she was under pressure from above to pull some sort of a win from her hat after the Stalker debacle, and Takawara was her best bet so far. Nobody had died yet, but a lot of property had been damaged, including a professor's car which had … melted. Fortunately, without the professor in it.

If Takawara had murdered anyone, Emily would've been able to justify sending her straight to holding and then to trial. But 'trigger trauma' was apparently a thing, these days. The latest directives suggested giving brand new capes the benefit of the doubt for any crimes they might have committed in the heat of the moment. Personally, Emily didn't think a protracted series of bombings over several days counted as 'heat of the moment', but she wasn't the one who made the rules.

There was a knock on her door, and she raised her voice. "Enter."

The door opened. Armsmaster came into her office, then stood aside as a petite woman with Asian features, wearing prison orange, was escorted in by a single trooper. Her hands were cuffed in front of her, with the heavy mittens used to constrain Tinkers fastened onto her wrists. While her legs were free, a short chain led from her cuffs to a heavy leather belt strapped around her waist.

Emily gestured at a single chair that had been placed in front of her desk. Made of molded plastic and metal, it would offer no pieces for a Tinker to prise off and sequester. "Ms Takawara, take a seat. Trooper, dismissed."

"Ma'am." The trooper stepped back from the door and closed it behind him.

Emily looked at the woman, who was still defiantly standing. "Perhaps you didn't hear me. Sit down."

Takawara stared back at her. The woman had brilliant blue eyes. "I prefer to stand."

So it's going to be like that, is it? "Very well." Emily's eyes narrowed. "Is there any particular reason why you choose to stand?"

"I don't take orders from you," Takawara stated, as if it were a law of nature. "Your heroes broke the rules, so you can go and get fucked."

Well, he did say she was unhappy. "How exactly did they break the rules?" God knew capes would be capes, Emily was fully aware of that, but she hadn't heard anything new about them acting up. The swearing, she would deal with later.

"They attacked without warning!" Takawara tried to wave her hands for emphasis. "I haven't even committed any crimes in this fucked-up city! One minute I'm heading upstairs to get a breath of fresh air, the next I'm right across town and a couple of your fucking stormtroopers are scraping me off the pavement and carrying me inside!"

That was information Emily hadn't been privy to before. "Where were you when you were attacked? And did you see your attacker?"

Takawara looked cagey. "I was home. Well, as close to a home as I've got in this shithole. And no, I didn't see shit. One second I was there and the next I was here." She tried to cross her hands over each other, but the cuffs wouldn't let her do it. "It was like I got teleported or something."

Sitting back, Emily clasped her hands together on her desk. "Well, to put your mind at ease, it wasn't any of the local Protectorate or Wards who brought you here. We received an anonymous tip, and the troopers sent to investigate found you right where the tip said you would be." Unclasping her fingers, she spread her hands apart. "And law enforcement officers are entirely permitted to take wanted persons into custody, if they happen to show up on our doorsteps under mysterious circumstances … so long as we didn't have anything to do with those circumstances."

"That's bullshit!" snapped Takawara. "Even if it wasn't your heroes who brought me here, whoever it was assaulted and abducted me! Fruit of the poison tree or something like that!"

Emily chose not to allow herself the tiny smile she wanted to show. She was already in charge of the situation; rubbing it in wouldn't make Takawara any more cooperative. "It doesn't work that way. Criminals can indeed leave other criminals to be arrested, and we will arrest them. We will investigate your allegation of assault and abduction, but we will also hold you for trial on the crimes we can pin on you."

"But—but I was basically taken from my home!" protested Takawara. "That's not allowed! The unwritten rules say so!"

This again? Emily hadn't encountered a cape this naïve in a while. She tilted her head. "I'm sorry, which rules are these?"

"The unwritten ones!" Takawara tried to wave her hands for emphasis but failed. "The ones that're there to protect capes!"

"Ah, yes," Emily replied blandly. "The 'rules' that aren't actually written down anywhere. The ones that aren't part of the PRTCJ, which are the rules I swore to follow when I donned this uniform. Those rules." She leaned forward slightly. "You are aware, are you not, that these so-called 'unwritten rules' are all in the legal system already? People aren't actually supposed to attack each other in their homes. People aren't actually supposed to rape or murder one another." She shook her head. "Capes sequester a few specific instances of the law and wave them around as if they're something special. As if the rest of the legal system doesn't actually apply to them. Do you have any idea how entitled that makes you appear?"

Takawara took a moment to respond. "You know, Lung's going to fuck you up for this. He'll burn this whole place to the ground. He went up against—"

"—Leviathan, yes, I know," Emily interrupted. "And he lost. Kyushu still sank."

"And then he came here and beat the shit out of your precious Protectorate and Wards, all at once!" Takawara continued, as if Emily hadn't spoken.

"No. He didn't." Emily's tone was calm and measured. "He fought the Protectorate, yes. After he got to a certain size, it was deemed better to allow him to disengage rather than continue to exacerbate the property damage. In short, they drove him off. Just as New Wave has also done. As he failed to do to Leviathan. He's strong, but not so strong that he'll even consider attacking the PRT building on his own. And he's just lost two of his cape henchmen in quick succession." She shook her head. "You're on your own, Ms. Takawara."

She paused a beat, more from distaste at what she was going to say than any desire for dramatics. "There is, however, a second option."

Takawara rolled her eyes. "Don't expect me to roll over on Lung for you. These lips don't snitch; and anyway, I barely got here. I couldn't pick out the building where he put me if you paid me."

"Did I say anything about snitching?" Emily wasn't being totally honest. If Takawara had offered to give up any information about Lung, she would've taken it, albeit with a large grain of salt. The girl's currently demonstrated level of arrogance hadn't altered Emily's initial impression of her. "You've already got a domestic terrorism charge hanging over your head, courtesy of the FBI. That's a Federal crime which, as soon as I handed you over to them, would put you behind bars in a nice secure Tinker-rated facility for a decade or two, easily. Or … we could do a deal, here and now."

From the widening of Takawara's eyes, nobody had bothered telling her until now just how badly she was screwed. Still, she tried to put on an uncaring façade. "Deal? What kind of deal do you think you could offer that I'd consider taking?"

"You rebrand." Emily had no particular love for this idea, so she didn't even try to pretend enthusiasm. Besides, she was shit at acting interested. Pitch the concept and when she throws it back in my face, too bad so sad. Next stop, Federal prison. "We try you and sentence you, then suspend the sentence on the condition that you take on a heroic identity. You get input on your name and costume, but we get the final veto."

"I'll do it." The words popped out of Takawara's mouth, so rapidly that Emily didn't actually register them at first.

"Yeah, thought not." Emily sat back in her chair and spread her hands. "You'll be transported from here—"

"I said, I'll do it!" Takawara stepped forward exactly one pace before Armsmaster's hand clamped on her shoulder. "I'll rebrand!"

Emily blinked. "You will?"

"Fuck yes!" Takawara's eyes opened wide again. "Do you have any idea what would happen to someone like me in Federal lockup? I'm not even twenty-one yet! They'd pass me around like a tasty meat snack! Gimme the form, I'll sign it!"

"Slow down. You haven't heard all the terms." Emily began to tick off points on her fingers. "We get the veto on costume and name. We test you comprehensively on what your Tinkertech is capable of. You only build what we sign off on, with Armsmaster double-checking all your work. Doing anything to violate your probation, up to and including constructing even an electric toothpick without express permission, will render this deal null and void, in which case the next stop would be whatever hole the Feds like to drop people into these days. And yes, you will be supervised twenty-four-seven."

Takawara nodded. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. I'll do it."

"I haven't finished yet." Emily had saved this bit for last. "Being on probation, you will effectively rank lower than even the Wards on station. Literally anyone in this building will be authorised to give you orders, and you will be required to carry them out. If you believe this is being abused, you may bring a complaint to your supervisor or to me and it will be listened to, but I will look poorly on frivolous complaints. Do you understand all this?"

"What part of 'I want to stay the fuck out of Federal lockdown' did you not get the first time?" Takawara asked; rhetorically, if Emily was any judge. "I'll take the deal. Just give me the chance to read the forms over first."

"That's a wise move." Emily smiled coldly. "We prefer to avoid allegations of railroading. And one last thing. Your language."

"What about my language?" asked Takawara suspiciously. "Is this a race thing? My father moved to America before I was born, just so you know. I barely speak Japanese."

"No, it's a swearing thing." Emily looked her dead in the eye. "You've been cursing since you walked into this room; no doubt because you don't want to be here but there wasn't much I could actually do to punish you that wasn't already going to happen. But things have changed. From this moment on, you have to convince me that we both want them to stay changed. Which means you control your mouth around me, just like everyone else. Understood?"

"Absolutely!" Takawara nodded vigorously. "No more swearing, got it, uh, ma'am. Director. Can I call you Director?"

"You may." Emily had no illusions in her own mind that Takawara would be calling her 'Piggy' privately in short order—some of the Wards already were—but she didn't care what they said behind closed doors so long as they accorded her the requisite amount of respect in public. "Armsmaster will walk you downstairs and give you the step-by-step details. And Ms. Takawara?"

"Yes, uh, Director?" Takawara wasn't cowed, not by any stretch of the imagination. But at least she'd been smart enough to take the deal when offered.

"You've got one chance. Don't screw it up."

"No, Director."

At Emily's nod, Armsmaster escorted Takawara out of the office; the door closed behind them. Slumping back into her chair with a gusty sigh, Emily shook her head. She'd honestly expected Takawara to turn down the idea flat; to be brutally honest, she would've preferred it that way. But the girl had accepted the terms as given, so they had to give her a fair shake.

Now all we have to do is make sure she turns out like Assault, and not like Shadow Stalker.

Terrific.

<><>​

Arcadia High
Lunchtime
Taylor

"Sneaking up to the door," Annette announced, "I check it for traps."

Lucy, the DM this week for our little gaming cabal, raised her eyebrows. "You didn't say you'd checked the space in front of the door for traps, but I'll take that as part of your intention." She made a couple of rolls behind her makeshift screen—cobbled together from a couple of Manila folders—then nodded. "Nothing goes off under your feet, but as you wriggle the handles, you feel the scraping of metal on metal, as if something's about to click into place."

"Oooh," murmured Annette, as the rest of us inhaled in sympathy. The last time she'd triggered a trap, she'd just barely managed the roll to avoid becoming crispy fried rogue. "Okay, then. Time to get out the trap-disarming kit. I warn everyone to get back out of the way, in case this thing has an area effect."

Just then, Lucy's phone went off. She glanced at it, then silenced the alarm. "Okay, ten minutes until class. We'll resolve this roll right now, then pull it up."

"Gotcha. Flavius kneels beside the door, every sense alert as he sets about disarming the trap." Annette rolled the d20 onto the table. It clattered across the surface and came to rest on my character sheet, showing a nineteen. "Yes! Score!" She high-fived me, then fist-pumped as she scooped it up again.

"Yeah, with your numbers, you locate the triggering mechanism, jam it, then disable the thing altogether." Lucy said. "If you'd tried picking the lock, it would've shot a poison needle into your finger. As it is, the door begins to open … and we'll wrap it up there. Good game, guys. See you tomorrow." She scooped her dice into the pouch and folded up the screen; both of which went into her backpack.

Annette and I both put our dice and character sheets away, then headed into the building. "That was pretty cool," I said happily. "Flavius is badass."

"Yeah, isn't he just?" Annette grinned at me. "So, how do you think we'll go with Mr. Big and Ugly tonight?"

"I'll be checking right up until go time," I admitted, "but the plan's solid. The trick will be to get him to be at the right place at the right time."

Annette nodded. "And that's Dinah's job."

<><>​

06:05 PM
ABB Territory
Annette

Time for Operation: Fleeing Goblin. Let's hope it works in real life as well as it does in game.

The last of the evening glow painting the skies over Captain's Hill was fading toward burnt orange. All around the city, the street-lighting had come up, except where neglect or outright damage caused patches of darkness on the highways and byways of Brockton Bay.

Annette stood on a rooftop along with most of the other members of what she was starting to term 'the gang' in her own head. They'd have to come up with a better name sooner or later, but that was probably going to take a pizza and movie night, and lots of silly idea, before they settled on one they liked.

She hefted the two-way radio—Mr. Hebert's connections with the Dockworkers were handy for stuff like that—and pressed the button. "Juliet, are you there, come in?"

"This is Juliet. All good, over." Janet's voice came over the radio strongly. "Ready when you are."

Janet was situated a couple of blocks away, at the closest location Lisa and Taylor had been able to pinpoint where their proposed trap could be sprung. Instead of being on a rooftop, she was sitting in the car with Danny. His job, if things went sideways, was to get her the hell out of there.

"Good to hear. Stand by. Kilo, are you there?"

Kayden's voice, tense but calm, responded. "On site, and ready when you are, Golf."

Annette grinned and looked around at the rest. They'd considered giving her the callsign 'Delta' for 'Dungeon Master', but she'd nixed that because it might cause confusion with Danny (Dinah was 'Mike' for 'Management'). Instead, they'd gone with 'Game Master' as an alternate term. "I hear you. Stand by, all. Re-checking for final confirmation."

Taylor didn't need prompting. With Lisa holding the penlight over the rolling tray, she cupped her alphabet dice in her hand. "Is Kayden walking into a trap?"

The dice clattered into the small pool of light. Taylor grinned and shook her head in unison with Lisa. Even standing at the edge of the roof, Annette could see the letters N O.

Next, Taylor rolled four d10s. "How long after she starts will Lung show up?"

Clatter went the dice. Annette couldn't quite see what they showed, but Lisa spoke in unison with Taylor. "Eight minutes, forty-seven seconds."

"Damn," muttered Vicky. "He's close." Amy, next to her, didn't say a word.

"Theo did say he was likely to be patrolling this area of his turf after Oni Lee and Bakuda both got captured," Dinah reminded them. "Showing the flag, reminding them who was in charge around here."

"Yeah, I know." Annette scanned the city skyline again. "It's why I picked that particular drug house, once you guys identified it. Kayden will be able to draw him down this way, yeah?"

"She's the best person for the job, and she knows how to do it," Dinah confirmed.

Annette nodded. "One more thing. Is anyone or anything likely to interfere with the successful completion of this mission?"

Taylor rolled the number dice again. "Eleven point zero one nine percent."

That decided her. Eighty-nine percent is pretty damn good odds. Thumbing the radio button, Annette lifted the radio to her mouth. "All points, all points. ETA is just under nine minutes. We have a go. Let's make this count, people." She watched as Amy tapped her phone to start the timer.

"Just remember," Dinah said to Vicky. "It's got far better chance of working if you hold off until the right time. Not before. Jumping the gun on this sort of thing can lead to disaster."

"Yeah, yeah, got it—whoa …" Vicky whistled as light flared over the Brockton Bay skyline, and a distant boom reached them. "Is that Purity—I mean, Kayden—going full ham? 'Cause I've never seen her not holding back, before."

"Yup." Annette folded her arms, watching with justifiable pride. "That's our Kayden, alright."

<><>​

Lung

As the cavalcade roared through the streets of Brockton Bay, Kenta growled with anger and frustration. This had to be related to the disappearances of Oni Lee and Bakuda, though he wasn't actually sure how. The cape who was demolishing the stash house was undeniably Purity; he'd gotten a positive ID from his men on site.

The last he'd heard of her was just rumours. One, that she'd injured Stormtiger and murdered Hookwolf after being stabbed by Kaiser. And two, that she'd clashed with the Merchants by blowing up one of Squealer's contraptions. How she'd survived being stabbed, he had yet to find out. Flesh wounds were a thing, he supposed.

It didn't surprise him that she and the remains of the Empire Eighty-Eight were on the outs. Kaiser had been a pompous blowhard of the highest order, and his death in that lightning storm had caused the entire ABB a great deal of laughter. Purity's split with him, in hindsight, had seemed virtually inevitable. Of course, she'd regularly targeted ABB assets before that point, so this attack was on brand for her, but it also meant she didn't have any Empire Eighty-Eight backup.

Maybe she's just heard about Oni Lee being captured and has decided to strike while she thinks I'm weak? She'll soon learn how wrong she is. Flame flickered from his nostrils. As she dies screaming.

The other consequence of her being no longer affiliated with the remains of the Empire was that nobody was likely to seek revenge for her death. Lung had little fear of retaliation, but the ABB barely consisted of sixty or seventy people at the moment; one angry cape could make significant inroads into that.

The upholstery was starting to smoulder as the car screeched around the final corner and slammed to a halt. It wasn't a choice to stop so much as to avoid the rubble from the building that Purity was methodically demolishing. Power glaring so brightly it was impossible to look directly at her without getting serious spots in front of the eyes; she was sending down blast after blast into the building. He could tell it wasn't going to last much longer, but the building was no longer his concern.

Also making the road impassable were craters, surrounded by rubble where she'd targeted his men, or at least blown rubble at them. Many were groaning and trying to stand, while the upright ones clutched injured arms or other wounds. Nobody was shooting at her; he suspected that anyone who tried got a blast in return.

Pushing the door off its hinges, he clambered out of the car and straightened up. By now he was already eight feet tall and ramping up faster now that his enemy was in sight. The flame flickered over his body as his armoured scales slid into place. "PURITY!" he bellowed. "I'LL KILL YOU!"

She yelled something in return that he didn't hear and sent a spiralling blast down his way. It missed him, but only by a small amount; the car was destroyed, and the men who'd been in it were sent sprawling. Rubble peppered him, merely serving to increase his aggravation.

Raising his hands, he sent a blast of flame up toward her, but it petered out before it reached her. A blindingly brilliant light against a black background like that made it very hard to determine distance. Snarling with frustration, he leaped up toward the roof of a building opposite the mostly demolished stash house, scrambling until he reached the roof. Moving sideways, she fired another blast at him; he had to leap out of the way before part of the building collapsed under his feet. His rage was growing by the second now, making him more and more determined to bring her down once and for all.

She was closer now, so he sent another fire blast at her, seeking to blow her from the sky once and for all. When the thermal bloom cleared, she was flying away down the street, but losing altitude. Fierce joy blossomed in his heart; he'd tagged her! Normally he needed to get to the point where he could grow wings to seriously endanger her.

Jumping from the building, he landed and rolled, then started loping in pursuit. She was still flying, but now she was down between the buildings, straining to move faster. When she landed, he grinned viciously in anticipation—as much as he could grin at that moment—but then she took off again, wobbling into the air.

She was injured, that much was certain. He didn't know how badly she was hurt, but she'd never retreated this quickly before. And while she could still fly (after a fashion) she wasn't moving much faster than he could run. He could keep this pace up all night, while she would inevitably weaken.

Purity was doomed. He just wished someone could be there to get footage of the final death-blow, but that didn't matter. Parading her mutilated body before his followers would do just as well. Up until now, she had been widely considered one of the most powerful Blasters in the city. When Brockton Bay saw the images of her destruction at the hands of Lung, he anticipated many of the Asian holdouts around the city would flock to his banner.

Her flight faltered again and she dipped down to the ground to make a few limping steps before lifting off once more; in response, he increased his pace, far outrunning the members of the ABB who were still battle-worthy. The kill was near. His talons, even now lengthening and sharpening in response to his bloodlust, would shred her body and drink deeply of her blood.

I will eat your heart.

Another block passed by beneath his pounding feet. Purity's pace flagged, but she must have known he was close behind her because she persisted in her futile attempt to escape him. She was limping worse now; even though he couldn't see her body directly, her burns must be troubling her greatly.

Not as badly as they will be.

She stumbled around a corner, then took flight to cross a street and attempted to duck out of sight around another corner. Lung laughed out loud at that, pursuing her relentlessly, each stride eating up two of hers. The Empire bitch couldn't outrun him, couldn't outfight him, and she certainly couldn't outlast him.

A little farther down the street, he saw her. She was staggering along, her power-glow flickering like a faulty strobe. If he wasn't mistaken, she was dragging one leg. And then, as he came toward her, she turned and faced him, her head bowed.

A cornered rat could still bite, he knew; even weakened, her blast could injure him. Of course, in his current state, he could shrug off nearly anything she could do to him. He had little to fear from her, and she had everything to fear from him.

Confidently, he strode forward. "I'm going to kill you slowly," he promised her.

She straightened up painfully.

WHAM.

The spiralling energy blast took him full in the chest and sent him hurtling back down the street. Digging in his talons and sending asphalt flying everywhere, he brought his undignified tumble to a halt before scrambling to his feet once more. More rage suffused his body, even as his regeneration closed the wound her blast had opened in his chest. The silver scales slid back into place, as if it had never been.

She will scream before she dies.

His prey was limping away again, farther down the street. He gathered himself and threw himself after her. No more words would suffice, just a long drawn-out roar of fury.

As he bore down upon her once more, he saw her turn again. Her arm raised to point at him, then drooped. The glow built, faded and then intensified again. She can barely stay up. I have her now.

She'd taken her best shot, and he'd gotten right back up. He could almost taste her delicious despair. The ABB would boast of this victory for years to come, how he hunted her down like a beast of the field.

And then, as he closed with her, she fired her blast again. This time, she missed altogether, tearing a large manhole clear out of the ground. Whatever was beneath that manhole must have been important because a huge waterspout shot up, blasting him off his feet and temporarily extinguishing the flames that surrounded him.

Snarling, he regained his feet a second time. She was just on the other side of the brand-new fountain in the middle of the street! Fire burst out of him in all directions, evaporating the water clinging to him in a dramatic burst of steam.

Enough with these delays! He saw her shuffling sideways, as if to hide behind the upthrust of water that was already ankle-deep where he was. Gathering himself, he leaped over the hole in the street, and the water gushing out of it.

And that was where everything went badly wrong.

He was almost on her, his talons reaching for her, when the water reached upward and wrapped around him. Between one instant and the next, he was in a ball of it, ten feet off the ground, suspended with no footholds or handholds to go on with. Again, his fire went out as he stared around wildly.

What is this? How is this happening?

Enraged beyond measure, he exerted his power to force flame to surround his body anyway. Bubbles sprang up around him as the water boiled. At the same time, he thrashed powerfully with his arms, legs and tail; swimming for the edge of the blob of water that had the audacity to try to imprison him.

He almost made it, too. His hands reached the edge and found empty air, his head following shortly thereafter. But before he could draw in a breath of lifegiving air, there was a flash of movement and an impact that drove him back into the centre of the sphere of water. He tried to focus on it, but all he could see was a hovering figure. Not brightly lit, like Purity, but flying all the same.

He was going to need to breathe at some point. Also, his attempt to boil the water away wasn't working. Certainly, steam was rising from the top (an odd sight from inside the water, to be sure) but more cold water was flowing into the blob from the gaping hole in the street, sucking the heat energy from his body faster than he could replenish it.

This time, he tried to shoot a fireball from his hands at the flying figure. A huge mass of bubbles blasted from his hands to the edge of the blob, but were swallowed up by the cool water before they even got there. He tried again, to even less avail this time.

Air was definitely beginning to look like a problem. Or rather, the lack of it. It was odd; while he was blasting flame in all directions, he was able to breathe perfectly well. But here, under water, he was cut off from whatever oxygen supply fed him in the open air.

Marshalling control over his wandering thoughts, he threw everything into one last all-out effort to get to the edge of the ball of water. He was Lung. If Leviathan, the embodiment of storms and waves, could not force him to submit, then he would not give up here. Onward he struggled, digging at the water with both taloned hands and clawed digitigrade legs, swimming with powerful strokes that would leave Olympic athletes weeping tears of envy.

Through eyes dimming with oxygen starvation, he could see the surface rippling just there, just ahead of him. Within the ball, strong currents were trying to drag him back to the centre. He rejected them, tearing at the water, pushing harder and harder.

I am Lung.

I will prevail.

His head burst from the surface once more.

He opened his mouth to inhale.

A flashing impact, and he was sent tumbling back inside. Between the lack of oxygen and the stunning blow to the head, he could no longer focus. Slowly, reluctantly, his body began to shrink and slough off the Changes.

He was unconscious before he knew he'd lost.

<><>​

Sergeant Patricia 'Sally' LaSalle, PRT

The PRT transports rolled to a halt, their wheels splashing through the copious water running over the road. Sally got out, finding her boots in ankle-deep water, and reached inside the transport for the radio mic. "Three four one to Console, come in Console. Over."

As she spoke, she kept her eyes tracing over the roofline, while other troopers covered the ones approaching Lung's unconscious body, half-floating in the water. It wasn't hard to ID the guy, even minus the metal mask. The dragon tatts were a dead giveaway.

"Three four one, this is Console, come in."

"Ah yeah, Console. We're on site where the tipoff said to come. Lung is down, I say again, Lung is down. We are securing him right now. Also, you're going to need to get onto City Maintenance, over."

"Three four one, this is Console. I copy Lung is in custody. What's the need for City Maintenance, over?"

Sally chuckled. "There's a damn great hole in the street. Looks like someone busted open a water main. Water's going everywhere. Lung looks like a drowned rat, over."

"I copy busted water main, three four one. Nice job. Notifying City Maintenance soonest. Console, out."

"Roger that. Three four one, out."

Sally put the mic back on its holder and returned her full attention to keeping her head on a swivel until they had Lung tranqued and in the back of the van. Exactly why the water main conveniently suffered a rupture right where Lung was, and how someone had managed to hold his head under water until he passed out, were both matters far above her pay grade.

But it was gonna be a beer and pizza night tonight, after they got back.

<><>​

Taylor

I was still climbing down the fire-escape to ground level when Kayden came in for a landing where we'd parked her car. Dad and Janet pulled up in his car at that moment; they both got out and came to join the group.

Once she landed, I could see that Kayden was holding her arm and moving a little painfully, though not with as much effort as she'd put on for Lung. Also, her costume was a little singed here and there.

"Shit, did he actually get you?" exclaimed Amy. "I thought all that was for show! It was supposed to be for show!"

"Ow. No, not all for show." Kayden winced. "He tagged me with the edge of his last shot."

"Let me see." Amy laid her hand on Kayden's arm, then rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on. It's not that bad. Barely even a first-degree burn."

"First-degree is bad enough," Kayden muttered. "It still hurt like crap." A moment later, her expression cleared. "Oh, that's better. Thank you very much."

"No problem." Amy grinned as she gave the older woman a quick hug. "You're the one who had the job of decoying Lung to where Janet could trap him."

"Which, I'm just gonna say, you did perfectly." Kayden added her approval to Amy's as they both looked at the blonde hydrokinetic. "Bringing in more water than he could boil away worked better than I expected, to be honest."

"You're the one who set him up," Janet said diffidently. "And Vicky kept him inside. All I had to do was keep the water circulating. I had the easy job."

Danny chuckled. "Okay, enough trying to pass off the glory to everyone else. We all did a good job. Lung is in custody, and the ABB is now officially without any capes on the street. I think we can all call tonight a rousing success. What do you say?"

"I say, when you're right, Mr. H, you're right." Vicky offered him a high-five, which he returned. "And thanks for bringing me along tonight. I would've liked to be able to play a few more rounds of whack-a-Lung, but I'll take what I can get."

"You did your part perfectly," Dinah told her. "Everyone did. We did good, tonight."

I hugged her. "Yeah, we did. I wonder if the PRT or the ABB will ever figure out what actually happened to him?"

She snorted with amusement. "That's up to you and Lisa to decide."

<><>​

The Next Morning
PRT ENE Building
Director Piggot's Office

"Okay, this can't be a coincidence." Emily looked over the report turned in by the team that had collected Lung. The nominal leader of the ABB was securely ensconced in a high-security holding cell in the depths of the building, with static-shockers and containment foam ready to deploy if he started ramping up. He'd been half-drowned when they found him, though he'd recovered from that relatively quickly. Now, he was just pissed off.

"You're absolutely right, ma'am." Sitting in the reinforced chair before her desk, Armsmaster studied his own copy of the same report on a tablet. "Purity's presence and a strong water manipulation aspect. Three times, villains taken down and then left for us to take into custody." He frowned. "The water manipulation is missing from the Hookwolf incident, but perhaps it wasn't needed there. Or they hadn't teamed up yet."

Emily nodded. "I'm inclined to agree with you. It seems that since Purity made her definitive split with the Empire via disposing of Hookwolf, she's teamed up with this water manipulator and declared war on Brockton Bay's gangs. First the Merchants, then Coil, then Lung." She pursed her lips. "But she wouldn't have been able to nail down Lung so definitively if either Oni Lee or Bakuda had been in the picture. Do you think she had a hand in their capture as well?"

"That aspect does strain suspension of disbelief as a coincidence as well," Armsmaster admitted freely enough. "About the only part of Oni Lee's capture that I can link even tangentially to a water manipulator is the report of an unseasonal fog in that area of town around the time he was being captured. Bakuda, not even that."

Emily snorted. "Yeah, she just ended up on our doorstep, neatly tied with a bow saying Please arrest me. You attended the interview I had with her; do you recall any particular highlights?"

He nodded. "I'd have to check the appropriate recording, but all I personally recall is how she agreed to rebrand. As I remember it, she caved relatively easily."

Emily chuckled. "You might say that. She was playing the role of a dyed-in-the-wool hardcase right up until I mentioned Federal charges, whereupon she suddenly decided she had better things to do than play grab-ass with a bunch of lifers in Leavenworth for the next ten to twenty." Her expression creased with dark humour. "I doubt your bike could've pulled a quicker U-turn than she did, right about then."

Armsmaster nodded. "Very true. And she didn't mention Purity or a water manipulator, did she?"

"Not at all." She shrugged. "When she was brought in, she had a fading bruise to the face, consistent with whatever smashed her gas mask. Medical examination revealed a minor concussion, which means we'll have to keep her until she's fit to agree to rebranding as a hero before actually getting her to sign anything. But the last thing she recalls is going upstairs to get some air."

"Suggesting a rooftop ambush," he mused thoughtfully. "Well, whoever it was who captured her and Oni Lee and left them for us, it certainly wasn't Purity. Based mainly on the fact that we actually had something to take into custody and put in the cells. I still remember the mess she made of Hookwolf."

"I don't think anyone is going to forget the mess she made of Hookwolf," Emily said flatly. She shut the report down and dusted off her hands. "Well, however it was done, the ABB is officially off the streets—the capes, anyway. We can leave the police to handle the unpowered members. Lung still has a Birdcage sentence hanging over his head, so we'll expedite that soonest."

"And what about Purity and the water manipulator?" asked Armsmaster. "What do we mark them down as? Heroes or villains?" What he was asking was, do we leave them be or try to track them down?

"That's actually … a good question." Emily thought about it for a moment. "Purity's a known villain but she demonstrated she was on the outs from the Empire most definitively. Having Kaiser and Hookwolf try to murder her kind of puts a pin in that."

"We know she's got two children to care for," Armsmaster added. "The boy Theo and the infant Aster. Or at least," he added with his usual meticulous care for detail, "Kayden Russel has those children to care for."

Emily frowned. "You know how it goes. Unless and until we can pin down Ms. Russel as being absolutely and undeniably Purity, we can't arrest her for Purity's crimes. Even very strong corroborative evidence just won't cut it."

Armsmaster nodded. "Also, she's managed to be involved in more than half a dozen villains being taken into custody in the last few months, which is a better record than most of the Protectorate heroes in Brockton Bay at the moment." He tilted his head, conveying uncertainty with the gesture. "Maybe we should let her run for the moment. So far, she's doing our job for us, and making us look good in the process by not grabbing the headlines."

"Hmm." Emily intertwined her fingers, rubbing the extended index fingers over her lips. "I think that's not a bad idea." She gave a sharp nod. "Until we get further information, anyway."

Armsmaster returned her nod. "Until that, yes."



End of Part Eighteen

 

[meloa789]

It is good to see this back.

 

[Necrovore]

Okay, bit of a plot issue...Armsmaster escorts Bakuda into Piggot's office, and even grabs her when she gets too active when saying she will rebrand, then at the end of the chapter you have Piggot acting as if he wasn't there at all and telling him how the meeting went.

 

[RoninSword]

I assumed he was reading things on his helmet screen and payed just enough attention to act if anyone got physical.

 

[Necrovore]

I assumed he was reading things on his helmet screen and payed just enough attention to act if anyone got physical.

Click to shrink...

That level of inattention would be dangerous, going that route it would make more sense to have had the PRT trooper stay and Armsmaster leave to go get work done.

 

[Ack]

Okay, bit of a plot issue...Armsmaster escorts Bakuda into Piggot's office, and even grabs her when she gets too active when saying she will rebrand, then at the end of the chapter you have Piggot acting as if he wasn't there at all and telling him how the meeting went.

Click to shrink...

I assumed he was reading things on his helmet screen and payed just enough attention to act if anyone got physical.

Click to shrink...

You are both correct.

That was my bad; I'm doing a minor rewrite.

He was there, but he was going over technical specs.

 

[Simonbob]

I assumed he was reading things on his helmet screen and payed just enough attention to act if anyone got physical.

Click to shrink...

I assume he was sexting Dragon.

 

[macdjord]

This chapter was interesting, but it felt kinda lacking. While the story isn't lacking for conflict, it's been rather one-sidedly in the protagonists' favour. Nothing has felt like a genuine threat since Kaiser. I can enjoy a good power romp once in a while, but I liked this story a lot more when the good guys were facing actual challenges they struggled to defeat.