Are You Afraid of the Dark? [Worm AU fanfic]

[Iceflame55]

I'm VERY happy to see this get updated! Needless to say, I think 'skitter' is going to become Brockton's nightmare. Think about it. She's already got a terrifying power if used properly. Now, enter in 'The Dark' as her personal TRAINER; oh wait, it gets BETTER. He's head of the Dockworker's Union, and is likely VERY capable of 'arranging' Taylor's arsenal on every level is of the best. From personal equipment, to every insect her terrifyingly versatile mind can envision a use for.

I'd be VERY unsurprised if Taylor starts by trying 'cleanup' and ends up managing to becoming a shadowy Warlord/Crime Lord feared across the USA, if not the WORLD. And we all can thank the LOVELY PRT and Protectorate for it! Give them a WARM welcome! **Applause Meme Here**

 

[Ack]

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Part Six: Training Montage

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

A Couple of Hours Later (after dark)
Taylor

Holding Chewie in her arms with a heavy plastic bag hanging from one hand, she chose to avert her eyes when her father carried the plastic-wrapped bundle up out of the basement. The oven gloves and the long-sleeved shirt didn't look too much out of place, though the shower cap gave him a faintly ludicrous air. She switched off the kitchen light before she opened the back door, to avoid silhouetting him against the light.

"Clear?" he murmured.

"Clear," she confirmed. It was too dark out for her to see anything, but that didn't matter to the hundreds of thousands of bugs that were confirming that the surrounding two blocks contained no watchers.

He went down the back steps then crossed the yard to where the car waited, trunk open. It had already been lined with more plastic; there was no sense, he'd explained, in not taking extra precautions. She hadn't argued, though she'd wondered where one got rolls of industrial-strength plastic from. It seemed like such a niche product.

His burden safely deposited in the car, he relieved her of the bag. Within it, she knew, were Shadow Stalker's mask, her crossbows, and some extremely sharp arrows her father had found in a holder at the small of Sophia's back. Tying the handles of the bag together, he placed it in the trunk next to the body then shut the lid; not with an audible slam, but pressing it down the last inch gently, so that the latch clicked into place. Then he stripped off the oven gloves and shower cap and turned to her.

"Want to come for the ride?" he asked, and nodded at the furry bundle in her arms. "Chewie gets lonely and howls if nobody's around. So if you come, he has to come as well."

He wasn't trying to warn her off, she understood. He was just giving her all the facts. "Sure, I'll come," she said. "You need someone to watch your back, right?"

The smile he gave her sent a warm feeling right down to her toes. "It's definitely appreciated," he agreed. "I could do it on my own, but having a second set of a million eyes along is very useful." Moving to the passenger side, he opened the door for her. She got in and arranged Chewie on her lap while he closed the door for her. Manoeuvring her seatbelt around the wriggling puppy was a little tricky, but she managed. Chewie licked her face, then stood up with his front paws on the window ledge as if to say, Come on, let's go already.

"Patience, Chewie," she murmured, wiping puppy drool off her cheek (not for the first time) and rubbing his ears so that he arched his neck into her hand. "Dad's gotta lock up yet."

Sitting in the cool darkness of the car, holding the warm bundle of her dog in her arms, she considered the turns her life had taken over the last day. The hospital had been tolerable, but she'd been aching to get home. To sleep in her own bed, to play with Chewie, and to forget everything that had happened to her.

Well, not everything. Her bug powers weren't going away, and her father seemed to be intrigued by them, so there was that. And there was also the fact that her father was the Dark. A man whose very name had inspired the equivalent of a meme in the criminal underworld; one which nobody laughed at. It wasn't just Dad. It was Mom, too. As she rubbed her cheek against Chewie's soft fur, she tried to figure out how she felt about that. My parents used to kill people for money.

The most striking part of all this was that her father had never tried to explain away what he used to do, or even excuse it. He'd simply told her, and left her to decide how to react. Also, he and Alan Barnes had murdered Sophia Hess in the basement.

This was the part that she was still trying to get her head around. Sophia Hess pushed me into my own locker, full of horrible crap, so Dad told Alan Barnes to kill her. And he did, so Dad wouldn't do the same to Emma. To save her life, Emma was going away to boarding school in Europe, and Taylor would never see her again, just because her father had said so.

And Sophia Hess was a Ward. A superhero. She bullied me and put me in the hospital, and Dad had her executed because of it.

Superheroes were supposed to be the best of people. They were literally supposed to embody the concept. The bright costumes, the hopeful names, the powers. They were supposed to stand between normal people and the evils of the world. But Shadow Stalker didn't wear a bright costume, and even her name sounded creepy as hell. Still, she should've lived up to being a hero. Instead, she'd been a bitch and a bully, even after she stopped being a vigilante and joined the Wards. In fact, she'd gotten worse. She'd helped subject Taylor to abuse that had driven her to the depths of despair more than once. In the locker, Taylor had honestly thought she was going to die. How could someone do that to someone else and still call themselves a hero?

She was no hero. She was a villain, pretending to be a hero.

The epiphany left Taylor almost breathless. It explained so much. Far from protecting people from the evils of the world, she'd been one of the evils of the world. Her father had even mentioned how she watched crimes happen without intervening if the victim didn't fight back. That's not a heroic act. That's letting evil happen. It was how Emma got her head twisted around.

If Dad hadn't stepped in … what would have happened? Taylor could see it for herself. She would've recovered in time, and gone back to school. Well, if Winslow hadn't burned down … wait a minute. Dad knew the names of people that he didn't know before … and Winslow burned down last night? Coincidence? I think not.

The driver's side door opened, and Danny got in. "Ready to go, honey?" he asked.

"Sure," she said. "Uh, quick question though."

He gave her a grin as he fastened his seat belt. "Shoot."

She took a deep breath. "Did you burn down Winslow?"

Putting the key in the ignition, he started the car. "Yes, actually." He raised an eyebrow. "Do you have any objections? I was under the impression you hated the place."

"Oh, no objections at all," she assured him. "I was just wondering." Another thought struck her. "You told me Chewie can't be left alone or he howls. Did you take him along with you to burn down Winslow?"

The car clunked into gear, and he started it rolling gently down the driveway. "I took him along, yes. The idea was originally to gather information. Once I had it, I decided that the place deserved to burn. Chewie was in total agreement with me. In fact, he handed me the matches."

His delivery was so perfectly deadpan that she burst out laughing. Chewie yapped and licked her face, and she cuddled him to her. "I'll just bet he did," she managed between giggles. "My little Chewie, the arsonist."

"That's right." His tone became more serious as they headed off down the road. "Now for the next question I know you want to ask. What are we going to do with the body?"

Taylor stared at her father, wondering when he'd become a mind reader. A moment later, she got it. "Everyone asks that, don't they?"

"It was certainly the subject of discussion between myself and your mom on more than one occasion," he confirmed. "So tell me; what are the options?"

She thought about the matter seriously. "Drive out into the woods and bury her there, put weights on her and dump her in the bay, find a construction site where they're about to pour concrete … um, yeah, I'm out of ideas."

This was all weird to her, but she felt she could handle it better if she thought of it as disposing of the body of a villain who'd tried to kill her, and would've kept trying. And she probably would've hurt Chewie too, just to get at me.

"All good ideas," he said approvingly. "I've used them all in the past. But there's one you missed."

She frowned. "What's that?"

He indicated to take the next left, heading north. "Let them find it. But you muddy the waters at the same time."

<><>​

Next Morning
Sunday, 9 January, 2011
PRT ENE
Director Piggot

"What do you mean, Shadow Stalker's dead?" Emily Piggot hated Mondays, but Sundays had just made her list as well. "Don't we have precautions in place to make sure this exact thing doesn't happen?" When the Youth Guard finds out about this, the shit is going to hit the fan so hard.

On the other side of her desk, Armsmaster took a deep breath. "We do. Partnered patrols, regular welfare checks, a tracking device in the Wards-issued phone, and carefully devised patrol routes that kept them away from trouble hotspots. But she's … she was … good at ducking around the regulations if it didn't suit her to follow them. She apparently had a habit of ditching her patrol partner, going off-route and ignoring welfare checks as long as possible. It didn't help that her shadow state disrupted signal reception with the radio and phone, so it was hard to keep track of her at the best of times. I strongly suspect that she knew about this and played on it, because the number of 'radio disruption' and 'phone signal loss' incidences we had with her outweigh the rest of the Wards combined."

Emily spread her hands in frustration. "And she wasn't disciplined for this, why exactly? She was on probation, for Christ's sake!" Bringing a semi-criminal into the Wards had not been her idea, and she'd never been in favour of it, but they did need all the heroic capes they could muster on the streets, and the girl had been reasonably competent, so she hadn't complained too loudly. Now, it seemed she would've been well-served to complain a lot louder.

"Several reasons." Armsmaster's tone suggested he was reading a pre-prepared list from his helmet HUD. "She was smart enough to read the regulations and figure out exactly how far she could push matters before things got serious. Also, the radio and phone problems were due to interactions with her power, which she never actually allowed us to measure, so there was a chance that they were legitimate. A small chance, but a chance nonetheless. Next, she was abrasive enough that people rarely complained when she dumped them on patrol. Not that she did this all the time; just enough that they weren't surprised when she did do it. And finally, Triumph is good at shouting orders but not so good at dealing with breaches of discipline. He's on track to graduate to the Protectorate in the next couple of months, and I suspect he may be slacking off a little, leaving his problems to be dealt with by Aegis once he takes over."

"Really." Emily made a note: deal with Triumph re: SS. Then she looked up at Armsmaster. "So, give me the gory details. How did it happen, and where?"

"We found her at the Boat Graveyard, via an anonymous phone tip, a little before midnight." The armoured hero's tone was matter-of-fact. "The content of the call was simple: a disguised male voice saying they thought they'd seen a superhero get shot at the Boat Graveyard. Duration of call was less than fifteen seconds. Burner phone. Velocity got there within five minutes, and both located and identified her. She was lying face-up in shallow water near the docks. I was next on site, and we got her up on shore. Cause of death was easy to ascertain; someone had shot her in the forehead with a nine-millimetre pistol. Death would have been near-instantaneous. There was no seawater in her lungs, so she went into the water after she died. Rigor mortis had already set in, so she'd been dead for more than two hours already. Getting an exact time of death was difficult, given that she was submerged in water for at least part of that time. But there's a problem."

"I'll say there's a problem." Emily leaned forward over her desk. "She was dead long before we got that tip-off. Whoever shot her wanted us to find her. The killer was taunting us. Sending a message."

"More of a problem than that." Armsmaster grimaced. "Her mask had been removed before she was shot. No bullet-hole. It was lying beside her in the water, like it was tossed there. And from the angle of the shot, she'd been made to kneel before they shot her. Execution style."

"Christ." Emily clenched her fists. "Anything else?"

Armsmaster nodded. "She put up a fight. There's bruising on her body along with a cut on her face and marks from a stun-gun. No signs of sexual assault; no extraneous DNA at all, actually. Both her crossbows were nearby. They'd been fired. We found the projectiles some distance away." He paused. "Sharp arrows. The type she was using when she was still a vigilante. There were more in a holder on the back of her belt, under her cloak."

Emily pinched the bridge of her nose. "She shot at someone, intending to kill them, and missed. They subdued her, unmasked her and executed her, then left her for us to find. God damn it." This was getting more and more problematic by the minute. "Do you have any good news to tell me?"

To her surprise, Armsmaster nodded. "The bullet that killed her didn't go all the way through, and we were able to retrieve it. There were enough rifling markings on it that we were able to make a match. That bullet came from a pistol used in several killings by the Empire Eighty-Eight."

"Now why does that not surprise me?" marvelled Emily in a savagely mocking tone. "We had exactly one black Ward in the city, and she got unmasked and murdered by our resident neo-Nazis." She pointed at Armsmaster. "Have you contacted her family yet?"

He nodded. "Yes, ma'am, we have. They've been taken into protective custody until we can determine if the Empire intends to come after them as well."

"Good. Well, even if they don't, I'm not letting this stand."

"Director?" asked Armsmaster, taken slightly aback by her change in tone.

"If the Empire wants war, we'll give them war." Emily stood from behind her desk. "I'm going to be calling on Boston and New York for reinforcements, and then we're going to explain to Kaiser and his minions that nobody murders a Ward so blatantly in my town and gets away with it. Even if she was on probation and had a habit of going off the reservation."

"Yes, ma'am."

<><>​

Danny

The punching bag barely shuddered. Danny steadied it and leaned around to nod at Taylor. "Again," he said. "From the shoulder."

Taylor, wearing a sleeveless top and sweatpants, her face sheened with perspiration, nodded tensely. She wiped her forehead with the back of her glove and shaped up again. This time, she managed to put a little more force behind the blow, and the bag moved perceptibly.

"Better," he said approvingly. "Like that. Let's see if you can't do that five times in a row."

The breath rasped in her throat, but she complied. Once, twice, three times, she made the bag shake. The fourth was weaker, and after the fifth she let her hands drop to her sides. "I can't believe people do this for a living," she panted.

"It's a useful skill to have," he reminded her. "In a world where bug-spray exists, you're going to need to punch someone out sooner or later."

"And if they've got powers that make them immune to bugs and being punched out?" she asked; he judged that her question was half sarcasm and half serious.

"Running away is also a useful skill." His answer was entirely serious.

"And if they can run faster than me?" She raised her eyebrows, the sarcasm still evident.

I'll be waiting on a nearby rooftop with a sniper rifle. "We'll be working on that later. The endurance will be good for your boxing, as well." He moved around the bag and raised his own gloves. "For now, watch my form. You've been holding your hands a little low. When you lay a punch on someone, you're trying to put your fist all the way through them. Your entire body weight has to go into it. Doesn't matter if the other guy is your size, or ten stone heavier. Make him feel like he's been hit by an eighteen-wheeler."

Moving almost in slow motion so that she could follow his movements, he unleashed a right into the bag. It moved, but not very much. His left was faster, then his right came back at full power, making it buck and jerk on the chain. He hammered a four-punch combo into the hanging target, leaving it rocking and swinging, then instinctively followed through with a rising shin-strike that would've impacted under the short ribs.

"You didn't teach me that one," Taylor said as he steadied the bag again. Now, she sounded impressed rather than sarcastic. "Am I going to have to learn how to do that, too?"

He grinned. "If you want. But you're going to have to walk before you run. For now, I need to make sure you've got a solid grounding in the basics. Now go shower while I check on Chewie. It's time I got caught up on the details of what you can do."

"Yes, sir," she replied with a jaunty grin, the sarcasm back in full play. Holding out her hands, she let him unlace the gloves, then headed up the stairs.

He watched her go, then nodded approvingly. She had what his father would've called moxie. She's a Hebert. She'll last the distance. Teasing out the lace tags with his teeth, he began to remove his own gloves. He was looking forward to this conversation.

<><>​

Brockton Bay
Traffic Lights at Fifth and Main

The armoured truck had plenty of momentum, so Joseph Keller made sure to slow down well before the lights. "Been doing this job twenty years," he told his offsider as he downshifted. "Rain or shine, I can put this truck at any bank within one minute of the due time."

"What, you've never been late?" Mike was six months into the job. "Like, ever?"

"Oh, I've been late before," Joseph was quick to admit. "Once because of a blown tyre, and three times because—" He broke off, eyes flicking between the truck mirrors. Twenty years had given him a knack for reading traffic, and he really didn't like the look of those black Chevy Suburbans that were coming up behind.

"Because what?" Mike wasn't as quick on the uptake.

"Robbery." Joe grabbed the mic off the dash.

"What, you got robbed three times?"

"Four, now." Joe keyed the microphone while he slid the truck over another lane, hoping to maybe sneak around the corner before the Suburbans boxed him in. "Anchorfield three four nine to Control. I say again, Anchorfield three four nine calling Control. We've got five Suburbans crowding us, over."

"What the—" Mike peered out his own window, then recoiled as one of the Suburbans blurred past and swerved in front of the truck. "Shit! What's he doing?"

"Blockading us! Hold on!" Joe took his foot off the brake and shoved it on to the accelerator. The engine responded with a roar and the truck surged forward. He whipped the wheel around, trying to squeeze the ungainly vehicle into the gap between the Suburban and the curb. Hands moving on automatic pilot, he changed up again in an effort to wring more speed out of the truck.

The driver of the Suburban had clearly anticipated this, as the vehicle angled across the lane, nose almost in the gutter, before slamming on its brakes. An instant later, the nose of the armoured truck slammed into the side of the Suburban, driving it sideways with a great squeal of rubber on asphalt. The engine faltered, on the verge of stalling, and he punched in the clutch and downshifted again. Mike yelled as he was thrown against his seatbelt.

"Shotgun!" bellowed Joe, wrestling with the wheel. He was pushing the Suburban sideways at a steady rate, but it wasn't fast enough. If he could just reach the corner …

"… chorfield three four nine, this is Control. Copy five Suburbans. Be advised, backup incoming. Requesting update, over."

Even through the thick glass of the windows, he heard the multiple shots. They weren't aimed at the windows or the windshield; in fact, the shooters were nowhere in sight. But he knew where they were and what their targets were, because he felt it through the truck. Both rear tyres had just been shot out, with a corresponding loss of traction and control. Still, he kept his foot flat on the accelerator, engine screaming as he felt the rubber flaying off the wheels, doing his best to push that damn Suburban around the corner.

"Shots fired. I say again, shots fired," he managed into the mic. "Confirmed robbery. Black cars, no plates. Rear tyres just got shot out. Blockaded, over."

By now, Mike had recovered his wits sufficiently to reach back and retrieve a shotgun from the rack behind them. The chak-chak as he worked the slide was music to Joe's ears. The shotguns were loaded with rifled slugs, perfect for short-range work. He didn't care what sort of body armour these assholes were wearing; a high-velocity twelve-gauge slug would break bones and bruise internal organs, leaving them gasping on the ground. And if they somehow came to an armoured car robbery without body armour, they'd be stretchered away with fist-sized holes in them.

More gunfire sounded, and the truck lurched; that had been the passenger-side front wheel. It was official now. They weren't getting around the corner, and they weren't getting away. Okay, then. Time to show these sons of bitches who's boss around here. Even apart from the shotguns and their personal sidearms, they still had their passenger in the back. Steelheart, a rogue cape whose body could take on the consistency of whatever metal he was touching, was paid the big bucks to protect these shipments and keep insurance premiums down. Whatever bullets they hosed him down with were just going to irritate him.

He took his foot off the accelerator and put the truck into neutral, allowing the engine to go back to an idle. "Okay, then," he said tensely as he reached back to get his own shotgun. "The glass is good against small-arms fire, and we've got the big guy in the back. We can bunker down until the cavalry gets here."

Another Suburban pulled around in front of the one that had blockaded them. The driver's side door opened, and a man got out; tall, imposing, wearing a simple cloth mask. He raised a bullhorn to his mouth. Joe knew what was coming next; 'surrender or we bust in there anyway and take you out'. Same old, same old. He went to rack the slide on his shotgun.

"YOU THERE, IN THE TRUCK." Here it came. "ARE YOU AFRAID … OF THE DARK?"

Wait, what? Joe froze in the act of working his weapon's action. What did he say? That was a phrase that let every Brocktoner with a brain and a shred of common sense know when it was time to duck and cover. He'd never encountered the Dark himself, of course. Nobody he knew had. But everyone knew the question. And there was only one right answer.

"Wait, is that … him?" With a shaking hand, Mike pointed out the windshield at the masked man.

"Looks like it." Because nobody would be so fuck-stupid as to impersonate the most terrifying man in America. Carefully, Joe put the shotgun on safe and replaced it on the rack. Then he began to wind down the window.

"But doesn't he normally just kill people, not rob armoured cars?"

"Maybe he's saving up for retirement. Anyways, I'd rather be robbed than killed, get my drift?" Turning off the ignition, Joe took the keys out and dropped them out the window. Then he put his hands on the wheel, in plain view of the man with the bullhorn.

"Yeah, good point." Mike put his own shotgun back on the rack and leaned forward to place his hands on the dash. Joe let out a silent sigh of relief. They'd catch hell from the boss, but at least they'd live past the next five minutes.

<><>​

Taylor

Once again, Taylor blessed the impulse that had led her father to buy her a puppy. Sitting on the sofa, holding the bundle of warm fur, she was able to lean back and relax instead of tensing up over her father's questions. Chewie was enjoying the situation as well; as befitted his name, he'd found the corner of her sleeve irresistible, and was gnawing on it with little growls and shakes of his head.

"I can sense and control bugs out to two or three blocks, as far as I can tell," she explained. "It varies from time to time, but I'm not sure why. Anyway, I can sense every bug in the area, and I can control every bug I can sense."

"That's a lot of bugs," he noted. "Do you have any difficulty in doing this? I've heard that some capes get headaches when they try to push their powers too hard."

"Nope, no headaches." She smoothed down Chewie's ears as she thought about her answer. "If they're in my range, I can control them. If they're not, I can't."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "I suspect a few capes out there would be very envious of you. How precise is your control level?"

"As precise as you want." She wasn't sure where he was going with this. "I could have ten thousand spiders dancing the macarena on the living room floor if you wanted. Of course, I'd have to get ten thousand spiders together and learn how the macarena goes, but that's just detail."

Both his eyebrows went up. At the same time, he made a negatory motion with his hand. "Let's not have any spiders, doing the macarena or otherwise, okay, honey?" Pausing, he raised a finger. "At least, not in our living room. There are some situations where it would be definitely worthwhile to have spiders and other bugs going places where they shouldn't."

"Sure, okay." Taylor smirked. "Did you want to know how many spiders and roaches we have living in the basement? Because I can tell you, if you're really interested."

He gave her a medium-dirty look. "Unless the answer is 'zero', I'd rather live in happy ignorance. How good is the sensory information that you get from them, anyway?"

Chewie seemed to have given up on the sleeve and gone to sleep; Taylor shifted him to a more comfortable position. "Good and bad, at the same time. Sensing exactly where they are and what they're doing, it's extremely precise, down to a fraction of an inch. Sensing through them is almost hopeless. Bug senses are weird."

"Down to a fraction of an inch …" he mused. "So, if you had three bugs that were almost lined up in a row, you'd know which how far out of line the middle one was, and how to move it back into line? Even with your eyes closed?"

Taylor wasn't sure where this was going, but the answer seemed clear enough to her. "Uh, sure?"

He smiled then. "Taylor, honey, put Chewie to bed. Then we're going back down to the basement."

"The basement?" She rolled her eyes and groaned. "We just got done with the punching bag."

His smile widened as he shook his head. "Oh, we're not going to be using the punching bag this time."

<><>​

Coil

"It went off without a hitch," boasted the mercenary he'd picked to be the faux-Dark. "Soon as I called it out, they wet 'emselves and gave up without a fight. Even the asshole cape in the back said 'screw it' when we opened the doors. I dunno why we didn't do this years ago."

"Neither do I," mused Calvert, mostly to himself. He'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop after the robbery, but it really did seem as simple as that. Tattletale's analysis had been on the money, for once; or rather, she'd given him the correct analysis. Normally he had to torture it out of her. Has she figured it out and decided to play it straight for once?

Whatever the reason, he was pleased with the end result. With the Dark supposedly at his beck and call, he was going to become a power in this city. Once word spread, nobody would dare cross him.

And all because of a reputation that should've run its course years ago. How stupid are these people, anyway?

<><>​

Kenta

Lung's voice rose to a shout. "How many times do I have to tell you? There is no such person as the Dark!" His clenched fist erupted in flames, causing his minions to cower away from him. Except Oni Lee, of course; nothing scared that man. Lung wasn't even sure he was capable of feeling fear.

"I'm not questioning you, great Lung," babbled the minion. "But they say he robbed an armoured truck! The guards didn't even resist! All he had to do was ask the question!"

"HE IS NOT THE DARK!" It was a primal roar, accompanied by metal sliding from Lung's skin and flame bursting out all over his body. "Do you know how I know this? Because there is no Dark! There never was a Dark! Those who fear the Dark fear something that isn't there! They are cowardly and superstitious! They are fools, listening to tales started by the PRT to keep us in fear!"

"So, should we create our own Dark?" That was one of his bolder, more forward-thinking minions. "After all, who is to say whose Dark is real?"

Lung's rage dropped back to a simmering anger as he considered the question. "… no," he decided. "The people will come to their senses, sooner or later. They will realise that the Dark is a hollow name, and that there is nothing inside. We do not wish to be caught out when this happens. We will stand back and laugh at the fools who believed. And if we are lucky, we will be the ones to uncover the sham." He pointed at the nearest man. "If someone claims to be the Dark, what will you do?"

The man blinked, unprepared for the question. "Uh … shoot him?" It was more a question than a statement. He cringed, as if expecting flames.

Lung shook his head, deciding to be lenient this time. "I didn't hear you." His voice was a menacing growl.

"Shoot him!" the man declared, pulling his pistol and waving it at the ceiling. For even appearing to menace the Dragon of Kyushu with a firearm was an invitation to a painful end.

"Louder!" Lung waved his arm to include the rest of the minions.

"Shoot him!" Everyone had a pistol in their hand now. Their voices echoed in the room.

"I can't hear you!" he shouted.

"SHOOT HIM!" they bellowed.

He nodded, pleased. "Good. Now somebody find me some pants."

As they dispersed, he allowed himself a smile behind the metal mask. Whoever was pretending to be the Dark was going to have a very bad day if his men had anything to say about it.

<><>​

Kaiser

"Don't be an idiot, James. It wasn't him." Max leaned back in his chair and sipped at his drink. Perfectly aged whisky, served just right. Money had its privileges.

James tilted his head, apparently forgetting that he wasn't in costume and he didn't need the gesture to convey confusion. His face did it just as well. "But … he was a big man, and he claimed to be the Dark. The guards just gave up without a fight. What do you mean, it wasn't him?"

"I mean it wasn't him because it wasn't him." Max looked over at James, trying to figure out the best way to describe that water was wet and the earth was indeed round. "Listen. The Dark killed dozens of people. Probably hundreds. He had a twenty-year unbroken record of kills, was never arrested or even suspected by the cops, and didn't end up in a shallow grave. If he wanted money, all he had to do was pick out one of a dozen outstanding hits and collect on it. Robbery was never his style and never will be."

"So … he'll kill two dozen men over a dog, but he won't stoop to robbing an armoured truck in broad daylight?" James' voice was heavy with sarcasm.

Putting his glass down, Max clapped his hands in ironic congratulation. "Precisely! Now you're getting it!"

"You're all fucking crazy here; you know that, right?" James shook his head. "This whole city. Batshit crazy. Verrückt."

"Maybe," conceded Max. "But it still wasn't him. That Dark that's making waves? Dead man walking."

"So, what do we do about it?" James looked at him questioningly.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing." Max picked up the glass and drained it, then turned to look out the window of his office. "I lost two good people and lots of fucking idiots who got between him and his dog. There's no telling what he'll do to someone who gets between him and his kill. So, we sit back and we don't do anything that might antagonise him until he's done with business."

James didn't answer; a moment later, Max heard the office door open and close. Slowly, he shook his head. He's been here how long and he still doesn't understand how we do business?

<><>​

Danny

"Brace, but don't tense," he said out loud. "Just squeeze the trigger and let it happen."

"Okay." Taylor shifted her grip on the pistol. It was only a .32, so the recoil wouldn't jar her wrists too badly, but Danny still had her holding it two-handed. She did her best to line up the front sight with the rear sight, and both with the paper target he'd pinned up on the far wall of the basement, but her lack of experience showed. The pistol went off with a flat crack that barely made it through their earplugs. As he'd expected, the shot missed the bullseye by several inches. The previous nine hadn't done any better.

"Aw." She looked disappointed. "It's harder than it looks."

"Everything worth doing in life is," he reminded her. "But that was just to familiarise you with the weapon. You're used to the sound and the recoil now?"

"Uh huh." She nodded firmly. "I used to think guns were scary." She looked at the pistol in her hand. "Well, they're still scary, but I know a lot more about them now."

"Good." He pointed at the weapon. "Now, put a bug on the rear sight and another on the front sight, and one where you want the bullet to go. See how accurate you can get."

Suddenly, she looked intrigued. Raising the pistol, she held it while a couple of flies landed on it, and a roach scurried up the far wall. When she aimed the gun this time, she was a lot less unsure of herself; just gauging by eye, Danny figured she had it on target or nearly so. She squeezed the trigger, the pistol went crack, and bits of roach splattered across the bullseye.

"I got it!" she whooped. "I got it!"

Danny raised his eyebrows. "You did. Think you can do it again?"

Five shots later, she had proved she could definitely do it again. At least at short range against an unmoving target, she could reliably place a bullseye shot on target, six shots out of six. As she reloaded and policed up her expended brass, Danny went searching through the gear he had stored until he'd found what he was looking for.

"Here," he said, coming back to her. "Put this on."

"What is that?" she asked, putting the pistol on the bench and taking the length of cloth. "A mask?"

"Nope. It's a blindfold." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You don't even need to see the target with your eyes. Let's see how good you are when all you can use is your powers."

"Oh. Okay." While she was tying it on, he went and replaced the paper target; the bullseye was more or less gone, anyway. As an afterthought, he placed a thumbtack in the middle of the bullseye of the new sheet.

"Are you ready?" he asked, once he was back behind the firing line.

"I guess." She sounded doubtful. "I can't believe I'm about to do target practice blindfolded."

He snorted. "Well, this is one thing I can't teach you how to do. So take your time."

"Thanks, Dad." She reached unerringly for the pistol and readied it, as he'd shown her. Then she pointed it downrange and squeezed the trigger.

Crack.

Crack crack.

Crack crack crack crack.

She fired until the magazine was empty. The only expression he could see under the blindfold was one of total concentration.

After the last shot, with hot shell casings still tinkling to the floor, she safed the pistol and laid it to one side. They walked down together to where the target was pinned to the wall. Every shot had gone within an inch of the bullseye. The thumbtack was nowhere to be seen.

Pulling up the blindfold, Taylor stared at the paper. "My powers told me I'd hit it," she confessed. "But I didn't believe it."

"I'm looking at it, and I have trouble believing it," he said, and put his arm around her shoulders. "Taylor, honey, your powers have given you a great talent. Maybe one that most people wouldn't think of, and maybe not quite as useful as being able to smother someone in bugs at will, but a great talent all the same."

She wrinkled her nose. "You know I'd much rather I never got these powers at all. What I had to go through to get them …" The shudder that went through her looked entirely unfeigned.

He squeezed her shoulders supportively. "I'd much rather you hadn't gone through that, either," he said. "In fact, I'd much rather I'd thought to buy you a puppy on my own. But if there's one thing life has taught me, it's that there's no sense in regretting a path not taken. You accept what life deals you, and you make the best of it. Or you change it to suit yourself. I've never really been an accepting sort of person, myself."

"Change it to suit myself, huh?" Taylor looked up at her father thoughtfully. "I think I can learn to do that."

Grinning, he reached up and ruffled her hair. "That's my girl."

<><>​

PRT ENE
Director Piggot

"God damn it," snapped Emily. "You listen to me, Wilkins. Armstrong's already come on board; if you won't release troops to me, I might just order Armsmaster to call Legend direct and have him ask you why you're offering what amounts to thoughts and prayers over the murder of a black Ward by neo-Nazi elements! I need people, damn it! Boots on the ground! Not fucking platitudes!"

"I'm sorry, Emily, but my hands are tied. I can't—"

There was a knock on her office door. "What?" she snapped, looking up from the video call. "No, not you." Then she saw who it was. "Can it wait? I'm busy."

"It's important, Director." Assault's tone was uncharacteristically subdued. "This is something you need to hear."

This Sunday had been bad enough already. Now, seeing the set of his jaw, Emily was struck by a dark presentiment. "Fine." She directed a glare at Wilkins' image on the screen. "I will call you back." It was as much a threat as a promise. With a click of her mouse, she ended the call, then looked up at Assault. "Please tell me you're here to report Clockblocker for mooning the Mayor on the Boardwalk, on live TV."

"I wish it was that simple." Assault shook his head. "That report of an armoured truck robbery, by the Dark? It's bullshit. The man never did anything so basic. I need you to make that clear to the cops."

"And you're worried about this, because?" Emily clenched her fists on the desk. "The Dark is a murderer! I know you've got connections to people in low places, but why are you covering for him so hard?"

"Because one, I know for a fact he didn't do it, and two, if the cops come after him, he's gonna have to make a choice between not shooting cops and not going to jail. Up 'til now, he's managed to avoid that particular dilemma, because the cops have been smart enough to say 'fuck it' and look the other way. But robbing an armoured truck is not the same as putting a nine-mil hole through the head of some asshole who desperately needs it. The cops actually have to take notice." Assault paused and took a deep breath. "And while he's undoubtedly done shit that in any sane world would get him put away for a long, long time, he didn't do this. Also, the world is anything but sane. And then there's the other problem."

"Other problem?" Emily really, really didn't want to hear this. Unfortunately, her job description said otherwise.

"If the cops start trying to take down the Dark, a lot of them are going to end up in the hospital. They're gonna call on the Protectorate and the PRT for help. Which means we're going to be facing off against the Dark. I don't like that."

Emily's initial impulse was to remind him that he was a parahuman, in a team of parahumans, and one lone normal gunman was unlikely to pose a serious threat to them. Then she reconsidered. She didn't like the idea, either. "You think he's that good?"

"I don't think it. I know it. Twenty years, Director. Twenty years." He rapped his knuckles on her desk. "I don't care how you do it, but make it clear to the cops that the Dark didn't do that armoured truck job. For their sakes."

"Well, then," she snapped, "we can go after the real robber, at least."

"Bad idea," he advised. "Once the Dark finds out—and he will find out—he'll be gunning for the guy as well. At which point, the safest option will be to stand well back and award points for style." Turning, he headed for the door, then paused. "Oh, and one more thing."

"I don't want to hear it."

"Yeah. You do. Shadow Stalker wasn't killed on site. The body was moved after death."

The abrupt change of subject caught her unawares. "And you know this, how?"

"Call it a hunch. But mainly, the tides. Where she was found, the tide was just coming in. I know the time of death was hard to pin down, but if she'd been shot and left there in the early evening like the lab boys think, her body would've been picked up by the ebb tide and washed out to sea. Find where she was shot, and you'll find her murderer." He stepped out through the door and closed it behind him, leaving her to think over his words.

"Motherfuck." She picked up the phone. She had more calls to make, now, and she wasn't going to enjoy a single one of them.

At times like this, she kind of understood what drove a man like the Dark to do what he did.



End of Part Six

 

[gaouw]

Squeeeee!!!!

Thanks, Ack, for the wonderful continuation of a wonderful story.

A regular Ack Quality, to be sure.

 

[Simonbob]

Ah, Coil.

Such a Bond Villain.


He's a great bad guy. The kind you love to hate.

 

[Gaemnomut]

Nice to see an update to this. At this point I'm really feeling sorry for Piggot, her days are getting worse by the chapter.

 

[Ack]

Nice to see an update to this. At this point I'm really feeling sorry for Piggot, her days are getting worse by the chapter.

Click to shrink...

Not as bad as Kaiser's, Lung's and Coil's are gonna be.

 

[Prustan]

Not as bad as Kaiser's, Lung's and Coil's are gonna be.

Click to shrink...

Well, Kaiser at least has the sense to tell all of his people not to do anything that might attract Dark's attention his way. The others... not so much.

 

[Prince Charon]

Well, Kaiser at least has the sense to tell all of his people not to do anything that might attract Dark's attention his way. The others... not so much.

Click to shrink...

He's got someone else's attention, and he isn't going to be totally sure that no-one in his employ is actually guilty.

 

[JamesEye]

This was a really good read. Glad to have read it. Thanks.

 

[Scopas]

I just read this story in one setting, and all I can say is bravo, and can I have some more?

 

[Ack]

I just read this story in one setting, and all I can say is bravo, and can I have some more?

Click to shrink...

More will happen, but in a few months.

 

[8BallDuck]

Honestly, You could actually switch John Wick and Danny Hebert and the movie and this story would still be the same. Great job with this story I hope for more.

 

[Ragnarok]

At first I wasn't sure this was an Ack fic. Then came the graphic torture and murder of a teenager while actual literal Nazis with kill counts in the dozens and running a criminal Empire are treated sympathetically. Yep, it's an Ack fic.

 

[Ack]

At first I wasn't sure this was an Ack fic. Then came the graphic torture and murder of a teenager while actual literal Nazis with kill counts in the dozens and running a criminal Empire are treated sympathetically. Yep, it's an Ack fic.

Click to shrink...

Graphic torture and murder where?

I request and require you to quote the "graphic torture" scene as well as the "graphic murder" scene, or admit you know nothing of what you speak.

Meanwhile, far more description went into the deaths of several Empire guys, plus the execution of both Cricket and Hookwolf.

The only "sympathetic treatment" the Empire gets is Danny telling Kaiser that he'd better be okay with the status quo or shit will go down.

And of course, he's straight-up framing them for SS.

So that's three for three that you're out of line about.

Mind rephrasing a little?

EDIT: I specifically steered away from the whole 'graphic torture and murder' scene that some where anticipating. One touch with a stun-gun does not a graphic torture scene make.

It shits me to tears when people come in with this sort of unfounded accusation.

 

[Ack]

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Part Seven: Zeroing In

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

Dad pulled the car to a stop outside Arcadia High. I stared at the wall surrounding it, the clean-looking building, the neatly manicured lawns. There was not a speck of graffiti to be seen, no gang tags, nothing. Chewie wriggled on my lap, clearly anxious to explore this exciting new world. I wasn't so sure; school, after all, was … school. Before it burned down, Winslow had been a hive of scum and villainy (as that one movie had put it) and despite outward appearances, I wasn't quite prepared to give Arcadia the benefit of the doubt.

"Ready to go in and say hello?" I had to give Dad that, he wasn't being pushy. If I said no, he'd probably turn the car around and take me straight home again.

I sighed, and Chewie licked my chin. "Pfft, get off," I said without heat. "Yeah, sure. We're here now, so we may as well go and see what the fuss is all about."

We got out of the car and I clipped Chewie's lead to his collar, but kept him in my arms. It looked like a moderately long walk to the front office, and I didn't want to tire him out quite yet. I wasn't totally heartless, though; once we got close to the main doors, I let him down so he could sniff at (and pee on) a few bushes. As soon as I was sure he wasn't going to have an embarrassing accident—he really was doing very well with potty training at home—I picked him up again and we went inside.

The receptionist smiled as soon as we walked in, a facial expression with which I was unfamiliar, at least coming from school administration. "Can I help you?" she asked, the question directed at Dad and myself equally. This was followed almost immediately with, "Oh, what a cute puppy! What's his name?"

There may have been a quicker way to disarm my worries, but I don't know what it was. "Chewie," I said, the word popping out of my mouth before I had time to think. "Thank you," I added belatedly.

"Taylor had a bad experience at her last school," Dad said smoothly. "Chewie's a new addition to the household, but I think he's fitting in just fine."

"I totally understand," the receptionist replied with a warm smile. "He certainly seems attached to you. Can I see him?"

Carefully, I placed Chewie on the desk, keeping a firm grip on his leash in case he decided to try to jump off and go exploring. He did nothing of the sort, instead padding across the width of the desk to meet his new best friend. She skritched his ears and made the appropriate ooh and ahh noises, which of course he lapped up as was his right and proper due.

After proper introductions had been made, of both canine and human, she accepted the papers Dad had prepared. I regained possession of Chewie while she looked them over and nodded. "Yes, this looks all in order. Just a moment, please." Pressing a button on her desk console, she pulled the microphone on her headset down to her mouth level. "Ms Howell, the Heberts are here. Yes, Taylor Hebert." She released the button and looked up at us. "You can go right through. Ms Howell will meet you."

Ms Howell turned out to be a skinny blonde woman with a bowl cut; in body type at least, she could've been Principal Blackwell's sister. Just what was it with skinny women and high positions in school administration, anyway? I hoped my own future didn't lie in that direction. In this particular instance, she was the vice principal rather than the principal, and (shock, horror) knew how to smile. I began to wonder if the whole 'evil twin' thing was actually real, and whether I was just now meeting the good twin.

We settled down in a conference room, having pulled three chairs away from the table so that we could sit without anything between us. Ms Howell spared Chewie a little attention (he was a very gregarious puppy) then got down to business. Equally to my shock, her questions seemed to indicate that she was interested in finding out the truth rather than reinforcing a pre-formed judgement.

"So, I gather from your earlier academic transcripts that you could have had a place here from the beginning of your freshman year, but you chose to go to Winslow for reasons that you've already explained." She leafed through the pages as she spoke, glancing down at the text every now and again. "I can see here how your grades declined steadily in your first year, which I can absolutely understand considering the stresses you were under."

"Uh huh," I said, more to fill the silence than give a reasoned response. This felt utterly bizarre, to have someone apart from Dad acknowledge what I'd been through, and not just in a throwaway fashion. Chewie snuggled up to me, his fur warm and comforting under my fingers.

"I'm going to presume that you're a bright young lady," Ms Howell said, putting the papers down. "Per the destruction by fire of Winslow and the fact that more than a few of the students displaced from there will be trying to come here, I'm very much inclined to offer you a place ahead of time to make up for the poor showing that you were given there. However, I will also give you a choice."

I blinked, but didn't answer. After a moment, Dad coughed quietly and nudged my arm, reminding me that Ms Howell was waiting for a response.

"A, uh, choice?" I asked stupidly.

"Yes." She beamed at me as if I'd just done well on a test. If this was a psychological move to make me see her in a more positive fashion … well, it was working. So far, she was scoring higher on my Helpful Adult Meter than anyone but Dad or maybe Mrs Knott. Of course, I saw Mrs Knott for exactly one class a day, and none of the bullies shared that class, so that wasn't a high bar.

She gave me and Dad a serious look. "The choice is whether you want to continue as a sophomore, or to repeat your freshman year. If you come to Arcadia as a sophomore, given the mess your grades have been to this point, you're going to have to work hard to get up to the standard you should be at by now. We will, of course, give you all reasonable assistance in this matter." She spread her hands. "Or, if you don't think your grades are salvageable—and you would be a better judge of that than myself—you can come back in as a freshman, and hit your sophomore year running."

Once more, I was sent mentally reeling. I was being given a reasonable choice by the people in charge. It was almost as if they had my best interests at heart. "Uh … Dad?" I asked, looking over at him helplessly. I had no idea which way to jump.

On the one hand, the idea of being held back a year gave me an obscure feeling of being a failure somehow, though I knew she didn't mean it that way. But on the other …

"Making up your grades won't be easy," Dad said, echoing my thoughts almost exactly. "It's up to you, Taylor. Do you think you can handle it?" With hardly a pause, he kept talking. "Don't answer that quite yet." Turning to Ms Howell, he asked, "If Taylor came back in as a freshman but got back into the swing of things faster than expected, could she take the following year's exams to skip a year if she feels up to it?"

The vice principal of Arcadia raised her eyebrows. "I honestly cannot see why not," she said. "Taylor, do you think this is a viable course of action for you?"

Dammit, I was being offered far too many choices. I'd gotten used to having no way off the shitty path I was on, and now I had one and didn't know what to do with it? No fair, world.

"Uh … can I think about it for a bit?" I asked, holding Chewie closer to me for comfort.

Dad nodded. "How about you take Chewie for a walk outside?" he suggested. "I'll go over the boring details with Ms Howell while you're gone. When you get back, you can let us know what you've decided."

"Yeah, I'll do that," I said with some relief. "C'mon, Chewie, let's go."

Carrying the little pup out of the building, I put him down on the grass. With the lead played out, it was easy to follow him as he scrambled eagerly from one new discovery to the next. "So what should I do, Chewie?" I asked as he sniffed at the base of a bush, then added his own little contribution to the scents on it. "Do I set myself up for extra work just for the sake of my own pride, or do I admit that I can't do it and start fresh as the tallest girl in my year?"

To be honest, I'd been the tallest girl in my year at Winslow anyway, with only one or two possible exceptions, but this time around would really seal the deal.

Chewie's industrious snuffling disturbed a bug in the grass that my power had already noticed and dismissed, and he yipped and jumped back. I told the bug to go back to sleep, and tugged Chewie away from any more entomological explorations. "Actually," I murmured. "That is a good point. Thanks, Chewie."

Until he'd made the discovery, I'd been entirely discounting the fact that I had powers, and that Dad was going to be training me to be the best hero I knew how to be. Unless I had my cape pop culture entirely wrong (which I was totally willing to admit that I did) that would require a lot of late nights and extra time on weekends that I wouldn't be able to devote toward schoolwork, at least until my superhero career was up and running. Jumping into Arcadia as a sophomore would just serve to load more work onto my shoulders, and more stress was the last thing I wanted on my plate right then.

Over the next few minutes, I thought it through and decided that this was the correct course of action. While I'd be effectively a year older than everyone else in my new class, I'd actually been in the latter half of the year at Winslow, and nobody knew me here. And finally, I wasn't looking for the approval of anyone but myself, Chewie and Dad.

Gathering up a happily panting and well-walked little bundle of fur, I headed back inside. The secretary gave me a nod and a smile as I went past once more, and I ventured a smile in return. It still felt weird, like I'd taken a sharp right into the Twilight Zone: The Land of Nice People.

Dad and Ms Howell looked around as I knocked on the open door to the conference room. "I've made my decision," I said to the both of them. "I'm thinking that the last thing I want right now is more stress on top of what's already happened, so I'm willing to go into your freshman class with the option to study for those exams and take them, once I feel that I'm up to it."

"That's probably not a bad idea, all told," Ms Howell said at once. "I have no doubt you can do the work, but we don't want to burn you out and put you even more off the idea of coming to school than you no doubt already are." She chuckled to let us pretend it was just a joke, but we all knew it was no such thing. Just one hint of the attitude I'd gotten from Principal Blackwell, and Dad wouldn't have been able to drag me into the place.

"I tend to agree," Dad said. "I'm all for adversity building character, but 'too much of a good thing' is more than a cliché, as far as I'm concerned." His tone was light, but the look he gave me showed a deeper understanding. Even if he hadn't followed my whole thought process, I was willing to bet that he knew exactly why I was taking the easier road. In fact, it had probably been at the forefront of his thinking from the beginning.

Ms Howell nodded. "I'm glad we're all in agreement. I'll get the paperwork sorted out, and then you can be on your way." She gave me a sympathetic look. "I've got no intention of pushing you before you're ready, but when do you think you'll be able to start classes?"

Once again, I shared a glance with Dad. "It's Monday afternoon now. Maybe next Monday, on the seventeenth?"

Dad nodded. By way of explanation, he said to Ms Howell, "She came out of the hospital just the other day. Chewie's helped a lot, but I think a week at home is best before she goes back into that sort of environment. No matter how non-hostile it is."

"I wasn't going to argue," she replied at once. "The last thing we want is for her to have a panic attack in class because we rushed her."

I had to agree with that. Also, I didn't want to get a reputation for falling asleep in class because I'd been up too late doing things that weren't schoolwork. Also also, Chewie was good for heading off incipient panic attacks, but I doubted I'd be able to bring him into Arcadia with me. I had to make sure I didn't need him with me every minute of every day.

"Which reminds me," I said to Dad as Ms Howell got up and left the room. "How long do you think it'll take before Chewie will get used to us not being there during the day?"

He grimaced. "I think maybe I might have to take him into work myself for the time being. Not that the others will mind. Lacey loves dogs."

I snorted. "I suspect the real hassle will be when you want to take him home again."

"That's almost a certainty," he agreed dryly. Taking a deep breath, he looked around the room and slapped his knees in a blatantly obvious 'well, I'm out of things to talk about' gesture. "So, what do you think of Arcadia so far?"

"Well, the staff seems nice, but given that I haven't actually seen anything more of the school than the front office, I don't have much else to go on with, do I?" I raised my eyebrows and shrugged. "Chewie likes the lawn, so there's that."

"Chewie likes peeing on the lawn," he corrected me. "He also likes chewing on your sleeves, so his judgement is probably a little suspect in that regard."

It wasn't all that funny, but I was still laughing by the time Ms Howell came back with the paperwork.

<><>​

When we got back home, I released Chewie so he could attend to his water bowl then food bowl in that order. Over the sound of puppy jaws industriously crunching kibble, Dad and I went over the paperwork so that we were both aware of the start times and finish times, and what my actual subjects would be for my first semester returning as a freshman.

"Just so you're aware, these teachers are likely to actually try to teach their subjects, not just throw them at the students and hope something sticks," he pointed out with the air of an attempted joke.

I made a face. "God, I hope so. Mr Quinlan never put more than half an hour effort into an hour and a half period. Mr Gladly loved getting everyone into group projects so the cool kids could hang out together and he didn't have to do anything. Except reward the top-marked group with snacks from the vending machine, like a bunch of performing chimpanzees."

"Which I'm guessing were always the popular kids," he said sympathetically.

"Well, he marked fairly enough, I guess," I said, trying to be even-handed. "But they stole ideas off everyone else. Hell, Madison even stole my actual work, once or twice. He never saw a thing, never said a thing."

"Really." He said the word quietly, rolling it over his tongue.

"You don't need to, uh, kill them too," I said hastily. "Sophia actively wanted to murder me, and her death can be passed off as a gang killing. If another one of my classmates and one of my teachers also end up dead, after Winslow mysteriously burns down …"

He paused for a long moment, then nodded. "I'll respect your wishes in this. Of course, if they still managed to get to you somehow after all I've done, I reserve the right to change my mind."

I nodded. That was fair. "So, what did you want for dinner? There's the makings of a lasagne in the fridge, or we could just order in pizza."

"Lasagne sounds great," he said with a smile. "I'll even …" The mobile in his pocket rang. "Well, I was going to give you a hand. Let's see how long this call goes for." Fishing it out, he pressed the answer button. "Yes?"

I smiled as well as I headed into the kitchen. For all that Dad was a ruthless killer, my life was getting better by leaps and bounds. Getting Chewie, going to Arcadia, learning how to deal with my power, learning how to defend my self in the cesspit that was Brockton Bay … yes, things were definitely looking up.

<><>​

Danny

"Yes?"

"It's me."

Madcap. So as not to let Taylor hear, he spoke quietly. "Why are you calling?"

"Trust me, I didn't want to. But I also didn't want to see too many more corpses on the nine o'clock news, so here we are."

"So noted. Why are you calling?"

"Have you seen the news recently? Armoured car heist. The guy who pulled it off claimed to be you."

Danny didn't have to ask what he meant. Danny Hebert was a nonentity. The Dark was someone who could be impersonated. But just because he understood the implications didn't mean he was okay with it.

"Any idea who?"

"None right now, but I'm going through my contacts as fast as I can get ahold of them." Assault hadn't even tried to crack any jokes, which showed just how serious he really was. "I've clued the Director in that it wasn't you, and she's gonna try to get the cops to stand down. Can't guarantee that'll work. There's always some young glory hound." He took a breath. "Just working from general principles, it won't be Lung because they weren't Asian. Possibly Kaiser, though there was a distinct lack of skinheads and tattoos."

"Not Kaiser," Danny said definitively. "Not after Hookwolf and Cricket."

"You know that for certain?" Assault seemed to be edging between hope and disappointment.

"He called me personally, to apologise and ask if I was going to keep coming after his men."

Assault snorted. "Well, that's … actually kind of par for the course, for you. So the Empire's out of the picture. And the Merchants wouldn't have been able to pull this shit off in a hundred years."

"So you're saying it's probably Coil." Danny's hand clenched around the phone. Coil hadn't been in the city long enough to see him at work. It figured that the sleazy snake would decide to slither into his affairs and try to capitalise on his name, just as he was making progress on being a good father for once.

"Not for certain, no. But it's a good bet. None of the other players are big enough to try this, or have the goods to fit the frame."

"And Coil's got a bunch of mercs from around the world. Any one of whom could've pretended to be me." Danny nodded to himself in agreement. "Okay, thanks for the heads-up. Was there anything else?"

"Yeah. Shadow Stalker." Assault seemed to be tamping down anger. Objectively speaking, Danny didn't really blame him. Subjectively speaking, he couldn't give a fuck. "I thought you were just gonna, I dunno, break her kneecaps or something. Not shoot her in the fuckin' head."

"I didn't shoot her. Someone else did." Danny lowered his voice a notch, to put across the message that the subject was done. "And she might've come out of it with just a few career-ending injuries, but she had the gall to threaten me and my daughter to my face. After I told her exactly who I was."

Assault sighed. "Okay, so suicide by terminal lack of survival instinct, gotcha. I hope you're not going to be killing off any more of our Wards? Some of them are pretty nice kids."

"Not if they don't make a habit of targeting my daughter, I won't." That was as plain as Danny could put it. "They do their thing, I do my thing, and never the twain shall meet."

"A twain is something that wuns on a twack." And there was the old joking Madcap. "I'll make sure they're briefed on what to do if they ever encounter you. Short version: walk away. Long version: be polite, walk away, and don't look back."

"If they can stick to that, then they'll probably survive their time with the Wards and go on to enjoy a long and oh so fulfilling career in the Protectorate." He could make jokes, too.

Assault snorted. "I'm pretty sure that's not how you pronounce 'endure'. But are we good?"

"We're good." Danny ended the call, then thoughtfully put the phone away again. He noted that Assault hadn't asked if he was back. The time for that question had come and gone.

Someone was cheapening his reputation? The reputation he and Annette had built over the course of twenty years? Of course he was back.

He went through his contacts list and made a call. It was time to shake up the rat cage.

<><>​

Kaiser

The phone rang. Max picked it up, then stopped dead when he saw the number. Oh, shit. It's him. He's decided more people have to die.

There was only one thing for it. He had to tough it out and hope he was still breathing at the other end of whatever this phone call heralded. "Hello?"

"Kaiser. I'm disappointed in you."

The distant chill at the back of his neck became a sudden and horrific Arctic blast that froze his spine to the chair. "I … what? I thought we were good?" What's Krieg done? It was the only thing that made sense. If that idiot had gone ahead and done something to piss off the Dark, Max was going to personally eviscerate him, then hand over what was left to the Dark. In as many pieces as it took.

"The armoured car heist. Which one of your men did you pay to impersonate me? Or did you do it yourself and think I wouldn't find out?"

Sudden realisation burst in on him. The Dark thought he was behind that! In the meantime, he'd been sitting back, congratulating himself on knowing that it hadn't been the Dark at all. Shit, shit, shit, what do I say?

"No, no, that wasn't us, I swear. We had nothing to do with that." He felt sweat beading on his forehead.

"Well, it certainly wasn't the ABB. I got an anonymous call saying it was you. Are you certain none of your boys have gone off the reservation?"

Again, he wondered about Krieg's loyalty. But no, he hadn't heard even a whisper of anything like this. "How about Coil?" he asked, grasping at straws. "Maybe he did it, then made the call to throw the heat off of him."

"Hmm. Coil." The Dark actually sounded thoughtful, and Max decided he probably wasn't going to wet himself after all. "Interesting thought. Can you provide proof? Give me a name or a location?"

"What?" The solid ground beneath his feet was rapidly assuming the texture of quicksand once more. "No, I don't know his operation that well. I'm just saying it wasn't us, and he's the only other real suspect."

There was silence for a moment. "Meanwhile, someone else is saying it's you. I'll tell you what. I'll hold off on judgement for the moment. Give you a chance to bring me something solid. Prove it wasn't you. Sound fair?"

It didn't, not in the slightest, but Max wasn't going to argue. "Yes. Absolutely. I'll let you know, the moment I have anything at all."

"Good. Don't keep me waiting." The call ended.

Slowly, Max put the phone down on the desk, then visited his en-suite, to deal with a very pressing need to relieve himself. When he came back, he took the elevator down while making more calls. This would require all the resources he had at his disposal.

The meeting convened in a nominally abandoned building, actually owned through a multitude of shell entities by Max himself. It was kept neat and clean, fumigated regularly, and swept for bugs on a weekly basis, just in case. Max, in his armour as Kaiser, took the podium, while Menja and Fenja flanked him, and the rest of his capes stood at either end of the stage.

Before him sat the second-tier lieutenants, and their most trusted men. While this wasn't all the people the Empire could bring to bear, it was most of the smart ones. He didn't need numbers in this situation; he needed brains.

"Who here has any knowledge of Coil's operations, or any of his people?" he called out. There was a brief, confused silence, then murmuring broke out. Several people raised their hands.

He let the talk die down. "Excellent," he stated. "Coil has accused us of impersonating the Dark in that armoured truck heist the other day. I don't need to tell you just how bad it could be if that gets out."

Not one voice disagreed. The deaths of Hookwolf and Cricket, as well as the other wounded and dead in that dog-fight arena, had gotten everyone's attention. Nobody wanted to deal with the Dark again … ever. Even Krieg was silent; it seemed Max's message had gotten through to him.

"So, you're going to find out everything you can about Coil's operations. Any and all of them, but focusing on this fake Dark thing. I want results …" He leaned forward on the podium. "And I want them yesterday. Does anyone not understand me?"

Dead silence fell over the room. Not a man (or a woman; he was an equal opportunity supervillain) moved, for fear that it would be construed as an answer in the affirmative. Max fancied he could hear dust motes falling to the floor.

"Good," he said, and smacked the metal podium with his fist. "Get to it."

<><>​

I had the lasagne in the oven by the time Dad came in from the living room. He scooped up Chewie from where the pup was snuffling around my feet for potential dropped snacks, and scratched him behind the ears. Chewie grunted with pleasure, his whole body going limp in Dad's arms.

"Okay, what's got you in such a good mood all of a sudden?" I asked suspiciously. While we'd been in good spirits when we got back from the visit to Arcadia, right at the moment he was positively grinning with mischief.

"The Empire," he replied, rolling Chewie over so he could rub the puppy's tummy. Chewie managed to go even limper than he had been before.

"What about the Empire?" I asked. "You said something about how Kaiser called to apologise about Chewie. Was this more of the same?"

Dad's grin became a smirk. "No. Someone's out there pretending to be me. I just got the heads-up."

"Wouldn't that … well, piss you off?" I asked. Being the Dark was pretty important to Dad.

"It did, and it is," he confirmed. "But I've narrowed down who's probably responsible. I just made Kaiser an offer he couldn't refuse, and now he's got his men doing my legwork for me. Once I know exactly where to find him …" He mimed firing a finger-gun, not an easy task with Chewie demanding all his attention. "Problem solved."

"Okay, yeah, you win." I shook my head. Only my Dad could force the same people who stole Chewie to do his personal bidding in a situation like this. "Think it'll work?"

He chuckled. "Oh, it will. Let's just say I've been doing this for awhile. I know how people like that tick."

<><>​

At times, in my line of work, you will find yourself in a position where you need someone shady to do something for you; where if they were aware of the true state of affairs, they may half-ass it, attempt to gouge you for their services, or even outright refuse to help.

The best way to inspire someone like that to put their absolute best effort into serving your needs is as follows:

One, give them the impression that their continued health and well-being depends entirely on doing whatever it is you need them to do.

Two, you don't ask. You tell. It adds a certain note of urgency.

Three: you arrange matters so they believe you're doing them a favor by accepting the assistance.

Four, you allow them to assume that the requirement originated from outside, not from you. That way, they don't end up resenting you for it, and screwing you over out of spite.

I find this gets me better results than saying 'pretty please with sugar on top'.

• from the collected notes of Daniel Hebert

<><>​

Coil

Thomas Calvert surveyed his men. They were still in high spirits after the armoured truck robbery, and he couldn't blame them. It had gone off without a hitch, the guards surrendering without so much as a token fight. Even the cape in the back had put up his hands and stood aside once the doors were opened.

A few words of encouragement wouldn't hurt, he supposed.

"Well done, everyone," he said, thankful that the full-body costume he wore meant he didn't have to fake a smile. "You pulled it off. We officially have a Dark. This is the beginning of a new era for this organisation. The local idiots are so scared of a simple name that we can go where we want, do what we want. As of right now, we are untouchable." He gestured at the coolers full of beer. "Drinks are on me."

It wouldn't last, he knew. Reigns of terror rarely did. All it would take was a single moment of doubt, or even something so simple as one person deciding that he had the chops to match off with the notorious Dark. Sooner or later, the man behind the mask would die, and the legend would fade away to its long-overdue end. But until that point came (and he would stave it off with his powers as long as he could) he was going to cash in.

Which reminded him of something else he had to do. As the men who had been in on the heist swarmed the coolers, he gestured to the mercenary—a man named Frankoff—who had played the central role. A single finger-crook was enough to bring the man to his side.

"Yes, sir, Mr Coil, sir?" Frankoff's was at odds with the persona he'd put on to play the Dark, grinning but respectful to the man who had given him the opportunity.

"You've done well," Calvert said, quietly enough that nobody else but Frankoff heard his words. "But just remember, in case you're ever tempted to take your little 'are you afraid of the Dark' show on the road … I'm the one who made you, and I can unmake you just as fast. Do we have an understanding?"

"Uh, absolutely, Mr Coil, sir!" the mercenary blurted, his face going a shade paler. "I wouldn't even dream of it!" From the sheen of sweat that sprang up on his forehead, Calvert judged the message to have been received loud and clear.

"Good," he said neutrally. "You realise why I had to make that clear, right? The one thing I can't abide above all else is disloyalty." It wasn't an apology; neither would the man be getting one. Saying 'sorry' for something that had to be done would easily be taken as a sign of weakness.

Even if he had the build to carry off a tough-guy role such as the mythical Dark, there was no way he would opt to stand front and centre, a target for every hostile gun if (and when) things went sideways. So he needed someone like Frankoff to take the heat for him. But there was no way he was going to allow the man to let the role go to his head. Everyone else feared the Dark, and Frankoff feared him. That was the normal and natural order of things.

"Absolutely, sir," Frankoff said again. "You're calling the shots. I'm just the guy wearing the mask."

"Excellent." Calvert slapped him on the shoulder. "Well, maybe you should go and enjoy a beer or two. They aren't going to drink themselves, you know."

Frankoff obediently went over to join his fellows. Calvert watched him go through a round of back-slapping before being handed a beer. He had never been the one that everyone crowded around and back-slapped. That had always been someone else while he stood off to the side, observing the social dynamic without ever being able to break into it.

It was another reason he'd had the quiet word with Frankoff. Because he was not naturally charismatic, he made do with the next best substitute; money. Ensuring the burly mercenary was aware of both stick and carrot meant that even if someone else had the idea and suggested it as a joke, Frankoff would shoot it down before it ever got into the air.

Calvert's eyes narrowed behind his mask as a thought occurred to him; Tattletale was just the sort of person to try to bend his pet bogeyman to her will. Her natural charisma was also lacking, but he was unsure whether this was due to her still being in her teens, or if her odious personality had killed it before it had a chance to mature. The problem was, she also possessed a certain amount of money, and had been known to be persuasive from time to time.

He made a mental note to never let the girl get close to Frankoff. Trying to keep the information about the fake Dark from her would be as futile as attempting to bail out the ocean with a colander, but preventing her from using it would be a sight easier. If need be, he would prime Frankoff with strict orders to report every conversation with the girl, no matter how innocuous.

He tried to think of other precautions he should be taking. When he next went on duty at the PRT building, he would wait until someone spoke to him about the Dark, then check to see what was being done about the armoured truck robbery. This wasn't insurance against a trap being set for the ersatz Dark (his powers would work well enough for that) so much as a gauge of how seriously the PRT were taking it. There was no such thing as being too careful, after all.

<><>​

Danny

They were relaxing on the sofa after dinner, watching TV, when his cellphone rang. Taylor didn't need prompting; she grabbed the remote and muted the sound while he got the phone out. "Yes?" he asked.

"It's me," said Kaiser. "We're still digging up leads, but I thought of an independent source you might be able to check with while we're doing that."

Danny frowned. He hadn't been aware of any 'independent sources' in Brockton Bay. "I'm listening."

"The Undersiders. They're a relatively new group—"

"I know who the Undersiders are," he interrupted brusquely. "Get to the point."

"They're based more in ABB territory than ours or we'd be checking this out ourselves. The word on the street is that Tattletale claims to be a psychic."

"Hmm." He'd known the Undersiders had a Thinker, but apart from making a note of what it would take to bring the gang down (four bullets), he hadn't put much more thought into them. "She's that good?"

"Every single one of my people who's interacted with her is adamant on the subject. I quote: the smart-mouthed little cow always knows far more than she should."

That sounded at least promising. "Do you have a location?"

"Not a very accurate one, I'm afraid. We can pin them down to a few city blocks, but no more than that. Any gains wouldn't be worth the backlash for breaking the rules. Before you killed Hookwolf, Bitch would raid his dogfights occasionally, but we're calling those off altogether now. So, I'm not exactly sure how you're going to narrow it down closer than that."

Danny smiled. "Oh, I'm sure I'll think of something. What's the closest location you have?"

"Somewhere southwest of the convenience store on Richmond and Carey."

"Richmond and Carey, understood." He ended the call and turned to Taylor. "Do you feel up to coming for a drive?"

Taylor blinked uncertainly. "Are you going to be shooting anyone?" She held up a hand before he got a chance to respond. "That won't be a deal-breaker. I'd just like to know ahead of time, that's all."

"That's fair." He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I doubt it. We're just going to have a friendly chat with some supervillains."

"Two phrases which rarely go together in the same sentence." Taylor got up from the sofa, then picked up Chewie. "Sure, okay. Let's do this."

<><>​

Tattletale

Lisa finished watching the footage on her laptop, then closed the cover on it. Attempting to exude 'casual' from every pore, she got up and sauntered toward the corridor leading to the bedrooms.

"What's up with you?" demanded Rachel, who was sitting on the floor, brushing her dogs down.

Startled, Lisa stared at her. "What? What do you mean?"

Rachel snorted. "You're jumpy as fuck. And just now you were walking like you had a stick up your ass. If you need to go, go, but if you use up all the paper, you're the one going to the shop for new rolls."

"Uh, sure," Lisa mumbled, and fled into the bathroom. Locking the door securely, she sat down on the toilet lid. Jamming her arm into her own mouth, she did her best to scream silently so she wouldn't alert the others.

She couldn't believe it; she'd pulled it off. Coil had taken the bait and done perhaps the one thing that the Dark could never forgive or forget.

He'd made a Dark of his own.

When the real deal found out and came looking, she was just glad that she wasn't going to be in the line of fire. The screaming fit had passed, and now she was giggling at the thought of Coil's expression (under the mask, of course) when he came face to face with the Dark. Preferably with a gun in his face. A fly alighted on her cheek, and she waved it away irritably.

The dogs started barking around then. Lisa's power identified it as 'stranger outside' rather than any one of a dozen other variations. Which meant she needed to be outside rather than hiding in the bathroom. Flushing the toilet for the appearance of it, she quickly ran water over her hands, then unlocked the bathroom door and stepped out.

"What's going on?" she asked, taking up her domino mask from where it was lying on the table next to the small pistol she favoured. The spirit gum was still good, and she pressed it into place.

"Dogs smell someone outside," Rachel said. "They've got another dog with them."

There was a clank and a creak from downstairs. The sound of a heavy metal door opening. "Not outside," Lisa said tensely. "They just picked the lock. They're in the building." Leaning over, she scooped up the pistol.

"What are you waiting for?" demanded Alec, looking at Rachel. "Grow your dogs!"

"It's too cramped in here!" she snapped back. "And don't tell me what to do!"

"Fuck," growled Brian. Snatching Alec's scepter from him, he billowed blackness from his body, sending it pouring out the door and down the stairs. Lisa lost all vision and a good deal of her hearing, but she felt vibrations through her feet that told her he was heading out to deal with the problem. Moving cautiously, sliding her trainers across the floor, she moved around Alec and Rachel to the doorway, ready to back Brian up if he needed it.

She got to the top of the spiral staircase, leaning heavily into her power to make sure she didn't miss a step and go tumbling down. Grasping the rail firmly, she could feel Brian's descent, step by step. Even though the black fog muffled sound to a degree, she knew he was moving as quietly as he could. She felt the vibration as he stepped off the bottom stair, and knew it was all up to him.

A fly landed on the back of her hand. Her eyes widened uselessly in the darkness. Fuck, the bugs are under control! These are capes! "Grue!" she shouted, knowing he would hear her clearly. "C—"

Just as she went to articulate the word, another bug flew down her throat—aimed there, her power told her, too little and too late. Coughing helplessly, she subsided to her knees, one hand still clutching the rail, her pistol almost forgotten in the other.

Still, she was confident Brian would get the better of whoever had broken in. Being able to see while your opponent could not was a huge advantage, and Brian was a lot better at close-quarters combat than her, Alec or even Rachel. Unfortunately, she had no idea how the fight was actually going; as good as her power was, the total lack of any kind of input meant she was drawing a blank.

And then the darkness began to shred and fade away. Still coughing, she pushed herself to her feet, using her gun hand to brace herself upright. "So did you …" Her voice trailed off as she turned to look at the stairs, at the man who stood just a few steps down, silencer-equipped pistol pointing unerringly at her.

Out of the corner of her eye, at the bottom of the spiral staircase, she saw Brian lying on his side with his wrists fastened behind him. A teenage girl holding a puppy stood beside him, and Alec's scepter lay nearby. The girl was wearing a bandanna over her lower face, and a pair of glasses. She didn't show any signs of overt threat, but that could change in a moment. Still, she wasn't doing anything right then, so Lisa focused her full attention on the man before her.

He was tall and balding, and also wore glasses. Somehow, he knew the exact angle to hold his head so she couldn't see his eyes behind the reflected lights. As a slight smile quirked the corner of his mouth, her power screamed at her. The girl was the bug-controlling cape and he wasn't, but he'd just taken down Brian without taking a hit in return, and he was THE DARK!

Slowly, so as not to trigger a lethal reaction, she pointed her pistol down and to the side, and flicked on the safety. Then she let the weapon slip through her fingers until it clattered on the grating beside her.

"Guys?" she called out. "We have visitors. Everyone on their best behaviour. Don't do anything that'll get us all killed." She thought for a moment, and dredged up a word she hardly ever used. "Please."

The man's smile widened slightly. "Oh, good. You're as smart as they said you were. I have a few questions."

Oh, god. I brought him to our front door. What have I done?



End of Part Seven

 

[edale]

When the real deal found out and came looking, she was just glad that she wasn't going to be in the line of fire.

Click to shrink...

This is the line that ensured your downfall, Lisa.

Don't you know to never tempt fate?

 

[TheLastTalcBender]

I suspect that The Dark is about to get a cape team of his own. Assuming they survive; I doubt he's going to let them go after Lisa catalyzed a large annoyance for him, but killing them just for using his name to set a trap for their own problem might not be a lethal offense... if he gets that far. He'd still take down Coil, but I'm not sure he'd ask the right question for the Undersiders to survive too.

On the other hand, I assume that he would investigate, and she herself isn't the one stupid enough to actually make the fake (although being the one to suggest it I can't imagine she's in good favor either).

If he investigates more, I think he might try to help out the Undersiders, but I doubt it would be cheap, since they got his attention by crapping in his sandwich...

 

[edale]

I suspect that The Dark is about to get a cape team of his own. Assuming they survive; I doubt he's going to let them go after Lisa catalyzed a large annoyance for him, but killing them just for using his name to set a trap for their own problem might not be a lethal offense... if he gets that far. He'd still take down Coil, but I'm not sure he'd ask the right question for the Undersiders to survive too.

Click to shrink...

"So I have a quandary here, you see I take people using my name very seriously. And you set that happening in motion... but you were in a desperate situation so my usual response might be... Excessive. So we're going to do something a bit different," Danny said before pausing.

Lisa stared at The Dark, mindlessly nodding to everything he's saying while praying she makes it out of this alive. The other Undersiders glaring at her back behind her. "And... What would that be... Mr. Dark... Sir?" She asked hesitantly, when it was clear he was waiting for her to say something.

"Given that your former boss is now... Gone, you're all free agents now... And my recently Triggered daughter could use some friends, who won't betray or harm her. So you all work for her now. Don't disappoint me."

---
*edit- Added a tiny bit to Lisa's line.
Also, Imagine Lisa's (and the rest of the Undersider's) surprise when they meet Taylor, and find out Danny was being literal when he said "friends," and it wasn't a euphemism for lacky, lol.

 

[Scopas]

Dark was updated?! Hell yeah! What a great weekend treat!

Hey, Ack, can you please add a threadmark between parts 5 and 6? I didn't see a "Next Chapter" link, which confused me slightly.

 

[Simonbob]

"Given that your former boss is now... Gone, you're all free agents now... And my recently Triggered daughter could use some friends, who won't betray or harm her. So you all work for her now. Don't disappoint me."

Click to shrink...

"Even the puppy is above you in the hierarchy."

Bitch looked around, at the group as a whole.

"So. Does that mean the puppy is our boss? I can interprete. Alec, you'll be his bed."

 

[Ack]

Dark was updated?! Hell yeah! What a great weekend treat!

Hey, Ack, can you please add a threadmark between parts 5 and 6? I didn't see a "Next Chapter" link, which confused me slightly.

Click to shrink...

Will check.

EDIT: I've stopped adding in manual "Next Chapter" links, because threadmarks work just fine. The threadmarks are all intact.

 

[TheLastTalcBender]

"So I have a quandary here, you see I take people using my name very seriously. And you set that happening in motion... but you were in a desperate situation so my usual response might be... Excessive. So we're going to do something a bit different," Danny said before pausing.

Lisa stared at The Dark, mindlessly nodding to everything he's saying while praying she makes it out of this alive. The other Undersiders glaring at her back behind her. "And... What would that be... Mr. Dark... Sir?" She asked hesitantly, when it was clear he was waiting for her to say something.

"Given that your former boss is now... Gone, you're all free agents now... And my recently Triggered daughter could use some friends, who won't betray or harm her. So you all work for her now. Don't disappoint me."

---
*edit- Added a tiny bit to Lisa's line.
Also, Imagine Lisa's (and the rest of the Undersider's) surprise when they meet Taylor, and find out Danny was being literal when he said "friends," and it wasn't a euphemism for lacky, lol.

Click to shrink...

Yes, exactly! I love it.

Here's to hoping this ends up canon.

 

[Ack]

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Part Eight: True Lies

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



The Undersiders had a nice sofa, and an impressive console gaming setup. Well, I assumed it was impressive; I'd never actually seen one before. It looked pretty damn expensive to me. The rest of the place … well, if someone had told me that only teenagers lived there, I would've believed them. Subtle signs like stacked-up pizza boxes waiting to go into the trash.

The big guy, Grue when he was in costume, was extremely unhappy for reasons I could absolutely understand, despite the fact that he wasn't zip-cuffed anymore. He'd probably never had to fight someone who could beat him in his own darkness before now. This was almost certainly why he was on his best behaviour, but I could see him wishing very hard that we were gone.

It could've been worse; that bit went unspoken. Dad could've shot him, or killed him some other way. That he hadn't, made a point all of its own.

Grue's teammates were reacting in different ways; all telling.

The one who called herself Bitch (Dad addressed her as 'Miss Lindt') wasn't so much resentful as respectful. Extremely respectful. She had her dogs, three of them, lying on the floor beside her. Every few seconds, she looked down to make sure that they hadn't moved. The rest of the time, she was watching Dad, or glancing across at Chewie. Not at me; I wasn't even on her radar as anything other than 'person holding the puppy'.

The blonde, Tattletale, was absolutely terrified. Again, not of me, despite the fact that she knew I could control bugs. Every time one landed on her, she flicked her eyes to me. But most of the time her attention was fixed on Dad, even as she made tea in their little kitchenette. Her movements were careful and deliberate, and she never, ever put her hands out of sight.

Regent, the last member of their little group, was a different matter altogether. Dad hadn't given him back his gold-painted stick, but he didn't seem to mind. Of everyone here, he seemed the most chill with the whole situation. If I'd had to wager a guess, I would've said that he came across as someone with the most experience at sitting around under the eye of someone who could fuck his entire life up at will. But with all that, he didn't seem scared, or worried, or … well … anything. A little cautious, maybe, but that was about it.

This was probably why, after a somewhat uncomfortable silence, he was the first one to speak.

"Excuse me, Mr. The Dark, but can I say something without being shot?"

Dad nodded slightly. "Go ahead."

A corner of Regent's mouth flicked upward. "I have to say, I've seen Tats pissed off, I've seen her happy, I've seen her sad, and oh my good Lord I have seen her smug. But this is the first time I've seen her so scared she actually shuts up." He tilted his head. "I couldn't convince you to come visit on the regular, could I?"

Dad's eyes hooded with amusement. "I'll leave that for the rest of your teammates to decide. In the meantime, I'll thank you to moderate your language in front of my daughter and her puppy." He glanced at me and Chewie. "Yes, she probably knows the words already, but he's still very young and has sensitive ears. You understand." There was the slightest motion of the pistol silencer from where he had his arms folded.

Regent nodded carefully and sat back against the sofa, apparently no longer interested in being a smartass.

Grue cleared his throat, drawing everyone's attention. "Can I at least ask why you're here … sir?" The honorific was clearly an afterthought, and equally clearly sincere.

Dad nodded. "I have a problem, and I understand that Tattletale has a reputation of being a psychic."

Tattletale twitched at that, then finished pouring the tea and brought the cup out to him, on a saucer. He took both; the pistol vanished somewhere while he was doing so, but I suspected nobody was stupid enough to assume it was gone for good.

"Ahh, thank you, my dear. You may sit down now." He took a sip, and nodded. "Perfect. Now, as I was saying. I have a problem. Rumour has it that a man named Coil is abusing my good name for his own ends. You may have heard of the recent armoured-car robbery, where the perpetrator claimed that he was the Dark? He wasn't."

"You're saying that was Coil himself?" asked Grue. Dad's eyes cut his way. "Uh, sorry, sir."

Dad nodded to acknowledge the apology. "No, that wasn't Coil wearing the mask. Far too much of a risk if one of the guards gets brave. But I have it on good authority that only Coil could have arranged the robbery, so he is responsible. I need to find out all I can on him; where his bases and safe houses are, how many people he employs, and how I can go about arranging a personal one-on-one interview with the man." His attention turned back to where Tattletale was sitting on the sofa beside me. "And that's where you come in."

Interestingly enough, she was actually sweating now. I wasn't sure why; it wasn't like Dad was personally mad at her. "M-me?" she squeaked.

"Yes, you," Dad said patiently. "I know your type. You love being seen as the smartest person in the room, or am I incorrect on that score?"

Regent chuckled. "Well, Tats, he's definitely got your number. Shutting up now," he added hastily, as Dad glanced across at him.

"As I was saying." Dad took a step closer to Tattletale, the teacup still in his hand. "You're clearly a Thinker of some type. I'm told you always know more than you should. It's time you put that talent to good use. I need you to do a deep-dive on Coil. Everything you can dig up on him, even if you don't think I'll find it useful. Can you do this, or aren't you as smart as I've been led to believe?"

It was psychological manipulation of the most blatant type. I knew it, Dad certainly knew it, and Tattletale most definitely knew it. I could see it in her eyes. But it was also a bait she couldn't help but rise to. As Dad had said, her ego was immense. Even scared out of her wits, she had to prove herself smarter than the next person.

"I can do it," she declared, drawing herself up. Meeting his eyes seemed to be a struggle for her, but she managed it. "When do you want it by?"

"'Scuse me, wait a second." Regent put his hand up, like a kid in class. "Can I ask a question here?"

Dad smiled slightly. "It appears I can't stop you. Ask away."

"Right. Okay. You're the Dark. You are literally the scariest guy in three states. You pop someone off, you're gonna get paid for it, yeah? So are we working for free here, or do we get something out of it too?"

Grue and Tattletale both facepalmed. "Regent," growled the big guy under his breath. "If we get out of this alive, so help me I'm gonna …"

"No, he's right." Dad nodded to Regent. "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work. If you come through with actionable intel, I will owe you one favour for a later date. This favour will apply to either Tattletale personally or to the group as a whole. You get to pick which one."

Everyone's eyes widened at that one. I saw Grue and Tattletale glance at each other, and in that moment I knew they were thinking about taking the deal. Even Bitch seemed interested. Regent pretended not to be, but I had a suspicion that he just didn't show off emotion like everyone else.

"What sort of a favour?" asked Tattletale carefully.

Dad's smile widened fractionally. He had them, and we both knew it. Deliberately, he looked over at me and Chewie again. "Nothing that works against my personal interests, or harms anyone I care about. It has to be within my power to pull off. And nothing that denigrates my reputation as the Dark."

"If we ask you for something you can't give, you'll tell us so we can change it, right?" That was Grue.

"A deal is a deal," agreed Dad. "I will inform you if I am unable or unwilling to deliver the asked-for favour. For my part, I will trust you not to give me bad information."

He didn't raise his voice or change his tone; he didn't have to. Everyone there got the message loud and clear. Screwing with me would be a very, very unwise move. A moment later, I got the second part, when he glanced at Tattletale. If she was as good as people said, any bad information the team gave him would have to be deliberate in nature. She'd gotten the message too, from the way her lips whitened where they pressed together.

"Uh, getting back to the whole deep-diving Coil thing," Regent said. "What if he finds out and objects? I hear he's got mercenaries and stuff. Can we call on you if he comes after us, or are you just gonna sit back with popcorn once you've got the information?"

"You surprise me." Dad's tone was light. "Your team has an impressive reputation for being able to duck away from trouble. But in the case that his people prove better at tracking you than most, you may call the number I will be giving to Tattletale. Only use it if you're truly in need of assistance." He smiled coldly. "I don't anticipate this being the case. He and I will be having an in-depth discussion about the inadvisability of identity theft."

Regent shrugged. "Suits me. Even if I knew the man, I still wouldn't care."

"Strangely enough, I believe you." Dad turned his attention to the rest of the Undersiders. "Does anyone else have any questions before we go?"

Tattletale and Grue glanced at each other, then at Rachel. Then Tattletale looked back at Dad. "Uh, no."

"Good." Placing the teacup and saucer on the side table, he reached into his jacket, then raised his eyebrows at the sudden tension in the room. "Really?"

"You've got a pretty intense reputation yourself, you know," I pointed out, scratching Chewie behind the ears. He lazed blissfully in my arms, only his sharp little eyes moving to follow Rachel's dogs.

"Hm. True." His hand emerged again with a card held between index and forefinger. He put this on the table beside the teacup. "We'll be going now." His gaze fell on Tattletale as I got up from the sofa. "Thank you for the tea. It was delicious. When will you have it?"

"Tomorrow, next day at the latest." It seemed she had to force herself to meet his eyes, but she did it anyway.

"Good. I'll be waiting. Do not try to follow us." Dad stepped aside to allow me past, then followed me down the steps.

We left the building and walked briskly to the end of the block. Nobody had messed with the car that we'd parked around the corner, so we got in. I removed the bandanna I'd been wearing, then nodded to Dad. "Okay, I just took the bugs off them. I'm pretty sure Tattletale told them not to move until I did."

He gave me a warm smile. "Well done, Taylor. It's good to have competent backup."

As he started the car, I smirked and rubbed Chewie's tummy. He woke up briefly, yawned, then rolled over in my arms and went back to sleep. "Well, Chewie did his best."

He grinned and reached across the pet the puppy. "You think you're joking, but you might recall the story I told you about encountering Ms Lindt. She's the one who saved Chewie's life that night, and I saved hers, so we've already got a connection there. Also, the Empire's called off all dog-fights, just to make sure Chewie doesn't get caught up in them again. What she's been trying to do for months, I achieved in one night. I suspect she will go quite a long way to avoid antagonising us."

"Oh, wow." I'd actually forgotten about that. "Next time I see her, I'm gonna have to give her a hug for saving Chewie."

He shook his head. "That might not be the best idea. If I'm reading her correctly, she doesn't have the usual emotional responses to people, and might react badly to close physical contact."

It didn't sound like he was pulling my leg, so I gave up on that idea. "Okay, then. So what are we doing until Tattletale comes back with the information?"

"The hardest part about this life." When I looked quizzically at him, he grinned. "Pretending to be normal."

"Oh, okay." I felt a little let down. My dad was a trained killer, the scariest person in three states (if Regent were to be believed), and I was a parahuman who could control bugs. 'Normal' was about the furthest thing from my mind right then.

He reached across and ruffled my hair. "I'll be continuing your training in how to make the best use of your bugs, of course. The assistance you gave me in the fight against Grue was invaluable."

"Ah. Right." Well, that was better. For a given definition of 'better'. Dad's idea of training could get pretty strenuous. Though I supposed it was all for the good. Bad guys, as he was fond of saying, weren't likely to let me catch my breath. And Chewie certainly enjoyed all the running around.

"If you're up for it, of course." His tone was sly.

There was only one acceptable answer. "I'm your daughter. I was born ready."

"That's my girl."

"Woof."

"You said it, Chewie."

<><>​

Grue

"Okay, we can move now," Lisa said, and got up off the sofa. She took the card from the side table and tucked it into her pocket, then carried the teacup and saucer into the kitchenette.

"Wait, are you washing those?" Brian got up and followed her. He wasn't sure what his plan was, just that he'd seen this sort of situation in spy movies. "We could get fingerprints and DNA from them, maybe find out who he really is."

She put them on the sink, then turned to face him. Her features were so pale that her freckles stood out in stark contrast. Where she gripped the edge of the sink with her hands, her knuckles were white. "How are we even going to get that information? We're not set up for forensic examination here, and while I could maybe half-ass my way through doing that in an actual lab, I'd be just as likely to screw it up."

He shrugged. "Well, maybe you could pass it onto our mysterious boss. Or the PRT, or someone."

"Nuh-uh." She shook her head violently, causing her hair to fly everywhere. "Bad idea. So very bad. Someone talks, it will get back to him. He beat you down, in your own darkness, when he was just looking for information. If he decides that we've actually betrayed him, we're dead. Simple as that. It'd just be a matter of time."

"We're not gonna go against him." That was Rachel, standing at the entrance to the kitchenette. "I owe him. He went into the dogfights to save that puppy, and he killed Cricket and Hookwolf to save me. He's one of the good guys."

"Fuck." Brian rubbed the heels of his hands over his face, trying to forget how easily he'd been taken down. He'd been overconfident, which had been his first huge mistake, but he suspected that it wouldn't have made much difference.

The Dark had come in toward him; feet gliding over the ground, head tilted slightly, eyes unfocused. Just as Brian went to jab the guy with Alec's borrowed sceptre, some bugs had gotten in his eyes, then the guy somehow blocked the second try. From that first contact, he'd owned Brian; a vicious knee up under the short ribs, followed by a twist then a grab. He'd followed up by lifting, turning and smashing Brian to the ground while he was still reacting to the blow. It had been the most humiliating defeat Brian had suffered since … well, a long time.

"Don't look at me," Alec piped up from where he'd picked up his controller and was prepping a new game to play. "I know stone killers. He's as cold as they come. But he's not like some of them. You know, the ones where they've gotta kill someone or they don't feel complete? He doesn't give out that vibe. We play straight with him, he'll play straight with us."

"Exactly." Lisa put the plug in the sink and started running hot water over the cup and saucer. Reaching for the bottle of detergent, she put a squirt of the green liquid in the sink as well. "So as soon as I've done this, I'm going to start right in on what he asked us to do."

"Argh." Brian huffed out an aggravated breath. "I hear what you're saying, and I can see where you're coming from, but why do I have the feeling that we're all going to regret this?"

"Because we are." Lisa turned off the hot water at just the right time, then turned to look at him. "We're supervillains. Making bad choices now that we're gonna regret later on is basically what we do."

"Damn right," agreed Alec, thumbs busy manipulating the controller.

Lisa began washing up the cup and saucer. "The trick is to pick the regrettable action that we can at least survive, and hopefully get some profit out of."

Brian looked at her suspiciously, wondering if he was just imagining the impression that there was more to what she was saying than met the ear. With another annoyed huff, he went over and flopped onto the sofa. "Pass me a controller."

"Now you're talking."

<><>​

Director Piggot, PRT ENE

Emily stood at the podium of the briefing room. Every seat was filled; where not by PRT uniforms, then by costumes. Far more of the former than the latter, which was the way she privately preferred it. Capes were a necessary evil, as far as she was concerned.

Armstrong was the only PRT Director who had actually given her the time of day. He'd sent along a contingent of troopers, along with Bastion and Weld. The two capes least likely to be hurt by the Empire capes, she reflected sourly; not so much the two that would be most effective against them.

If she recalled the notes on those two capes correctly, Bastion was good at making barriers and force fields, which would be helpful, but scuttlebutt said he had a temper problem. Armstrong's probably moving him out of Boston for a little while, to see if that will settle him down.

Weld, on the other hand, was reportedly level-headed; in fact, Armstrong's notes said that he had leadership potential. He was also effectively bulletproof, and had strength to match his durability. The downside, of course, was that if he touched metal, he would stick to it. While Hookwolf and Cricket were dead, the number of metal-wearing villains in Brockton Bay was considerable. Just in the Empire Eighty-Eight, there were Kaiser, Stormtiger, Fenja and Menja. Victor tended to wear a breastplate, though while Crusader wore armour as well, Weld's powers would serve as a natural counter to the villain's spear-wielding ghosts.

Filling out the ranks of the capes were some minor names, as well as the New Wave heroes; these ones, at least, she'd had previous dealings with.

She tapped the microphone, creating a hollow booming through the room. All eyes turned to her.

"For those of you who don't know about this," she said bluntly, "one of our Wards was brutally murdered the other day. She was tasered, beaten, unmasked, tied up, then killed execution-style with a single shot to the head. After that, her body was deliberately left for us to find." A click on the projector control projected a publicity still of Shadow Stalker on the screen behind her. It would've been a picture taken at the scene, but there were minors in the room and she didn't want the Youth Guard assholes coming down on her neck any more than they already were. That picture would be in the briefing packets, to be handed out later. "She was sixteen years old."

A murmur swept through the room. The heroes looked especially grim; no cape liked to think they could be taken down and eliminated like just another mook. Young heroes in general and Wards in particular were to be protected, so the cape culture went. This was why they were given the soft patrol routes.

Emily stifled a snort. In Brockton Bay, there was no such thing.

"We don't have a specific suspect as yet, but this is why you're all here. Shadow Stalker was the only black member of the Wards, and she had a habit of going off on solo patrols … in Empire Eighty-Eight territory."

This time, the murmur was much stronger. Everyone in the room knew of the Empire Eighty-Eight. It had chapters in several cities, but none so strong as in Brockton Bay, its home base. Everyone there also knew of its ethos; the reason for its being. If anyone was likely to murder a black Ward in such an explicit fashion, it would be the neo-Nazis of the Empire Eighty-Eight.

There really were no other viable suspects.

"We will continue to monitor the activity of the other gangs, but the ones we're going after in force are the Empire and its followers. If we see Empire supporters, we'll be targeting them hard, charging them with whatever crimes they are committing at the time, and handing them over to the police. Empire capes, if encountered, will be brought down as hard and fast as possible." She took a deep breath. "I am not authorising lethal force—unless it is to protect yourself or one of your comrades."

The reaction to this part wasn't a dissatisfied mumble, as she'd feared it might be. It was a growl, a collective snarl of anger. Directed not at her, but at the enemy upon whom she was preparing to unleash them. With those last words, she had effectively signed the death warrant for any Empire cape who resisted with significant amounts of force, but she didn't care.

The Empire Eighty-Eight had been a stain on the face of Brockton Bay for far too long. Some said that they were too influential to remove from the status quo, that such a removal would threaten a reiteration of the Boston Games, back in the day. Power was attracted to a vacuum, after all.

It didn't matter.

The Empire Eighty-Eight had committed the most egregious sin in her book. They had murdered someone who was under her command, under her care, and they'd taunted her with the body. We can do this, their actions had sneered. And you can't do a damn thing about it.

She was going to see about that.

"Once we have the leadership in custody, we will be interrogating them to find out who authorised this despicable act." Her voice was hard and flat, brooking no disagreement. "That cape, if I have anything to say about it, will be going to the Birdcage. Those underlings who carried out the order will be facing trial as well. We are going to be sending a message to the gangs of Brockton Bay; nobody touches our Wards."

Just because she didn't like the irritating little shits didn't mean she was okay with them being murdered, especially in such a taunting fashion. Kaiser was going to learn that lesson if she had to engrave it on a fifty-calibre round and pop him through the head with it. And she would too, if she had to.

"Very well," she said. "Individual briefing packets have been prepared. I want every squad ready to roll by oh-eight-hundred tomorrow. Dismissed."

Turning off the mic, she stepped down from the podium. Armsmaster came over to meet her and she paused for him. "What is it?"

"I'm sorry we couldn't get more heroes," he said quietly. "I spoke to Legend, and he told me flat-out he was under orders not to send capes out of the city."

"Understood," she murmured in reply. She would've liked to have more troopers rather than more capes but either would do in a pinch, so long as they could be trusted not to cut and run. Unfortunately, that was something that could only be determined at the time.

Why she was being undercut with the number of troopers and heroes that could've been released to her, she wasn't precisely sure, though she had a few ideas. It probably didn't even have anything to do with her, personally. Sometimes it was just politics … or maybe they didn't want to be caught up in the shitstorm that would almost inevitably follow tomorrow's crackdown.

She left the briefing room with an air of confidence that was at least fifty percent assumed for the benefit of the troops. On the walk back to her office, she mulled over the aspects of the situation that had not been covered by the briefing; neither would they be. Going after a specific cape gang with the intent of wiping them from the face of the city was … if not unprecedented, then at least unofficially discouraged. Doing so would cause an upheaval in Brockton Bay's criminal underworld that would take some time to settle down into whatever the new normal turned out to be.

As she opened her office door, she ran her thumb over the nameplate. With any kind of luck, Brockton Bay wouldn't have a rerun of the Boston chaos. Whichever way it went, though, she figured there was better than a fifty-fifty chance that she'd be out on her ear in the aftermath, especially if any of the Empire capes (none of whom had a Kill Order against their names) happened to eat a bullet or three in the name of self-defence.

If she could just bring down that smug bastard Kaiser and the Empire Eighty-Eight in the meantime, she figured it would be worth it. She hadn't even liked Shadow Stalker, but those racist fucks had gone all the way over the line and way past it when they executed the kid like that.

Enough was enough.

They were going down.

<><>​

Coil

Holy shit. She's actually going to do it.

Calvert could barely contain his internal glee. If this was what it took to send Piggot off the reservation, he should've had Shadow Stalker popped about one month after she joined the Wards. But for all his plans and manipulations to oust her and take her place, he couldn't believe it was something that he hadn't even done that would bring her down.

Life was really, really weird sometimes. Also, highly satisfying.

He sat in the briefing room as she took everyone through the bare bones of the case. He'd known the basic information, but he hadn't been privy to the gritty details until now. Once he got hold of the information packet, he was going to read the hell out of it.

There was no doubt in his mind that it was the Empire who'd done it; after all, who else would be so stupid as to murder a Ward in such a public fashion? He hadn't done it, and none of his men had been out and about on that night. It wasn't the ABB, because Shadow Stalker hadn't shown any signs of being stabbed, caught in a grenade explosion or burned to death. As for the Merchants, as much as they could be mistaken for a gang, he imagined their preferred method of execution would be an overdose of something nasty.

In addition, the sharp arrows (he had a contact in Evidence) were equally problematic for the PRT. It was extremely doubtful that whoever had ended Shadow Stalker had been carrying a bunch of arrows that would fit her crossbows, just in case. The inevitable conclusion was that she'd been going out and about with them, looking to do exactly what got her caught by the PRT in the first place.

In other words, Shadow Stalker had lacked a certain amount of pattern recognition. Whether that had been what got her caught and killed, he doubted he'd ever know. Though the chances were that it had contributed in some way. Long story short, she was dead.

Officially, he was dedicated to hunting down her murderers and bringing them to justice. Unofficially, he didn't give a shit, but he was going to vaguely regret not having had the chance to swing her to his side. With the right incentive, or carefully crafted bunch of lies, he suspected that she would've made a useful tool.

As he left the room, he allowed himself a brief smile. Between the Shadow Stalker situation and his fake Dark, it seemed he couldn't put a foot wrong.

<><>​

Anders Household
Purity

The first indication Kayden got that something was wrong was when Max answered his phone and spent a solid minute just listening, his eyes getting wider and wider. When the call ended, he just sat there, staring at his phone. "What the fuck?" he exclaimed.

This was far enough out of character for him that she got up awkwardly (the baby was due any day now, and it couldn't come soon enough) and went over to him. "What's the matter?"

He stared at her; for a second, it seemed he didn't recognise her, then his eyes came into focus. "First the Dark, and now this. What the fuck's happening?"

"Honey," she said soothingly. "Talk to me. Whatever it is, we can figure it out."

He took a deep breath. "Right. You know that Ward, Shadow Stalker?"

She nodded. Shadow Stalker had a reputation for unwarranted violence (which didn't surprise her much, given that the Ward was one of those people) and she'd put more than a few members of the Empire in the emergency room. Usually with broken bones, though before she'd joined the Wards, Stalker had nailed her fair share with razor-sharp crossbow arrows.

Personally, Kayden thought it was just typical that a violent black vigilante got a pass from the PRT and got to join up with the heroes, while right-thinking white capes had arrest warrants put out on them. But that wasn't addressing the situation at hand. "I know of her, yes. What's she done now?"

She braced herself for the bad news; someone important to the Empire had been hurt or killed, and of course the 'misunderstood' little black thug would merely get a slap on the wrist and be allowed to carry on as normal.

"She's dead." Max spat the words out like they were poison. "Shot in the head."

To her credit, Kayden tried to feel regret for the wasted life, but Shadow Stalker had gone after enough of her fellow Empire members that it wasn't easy. In addition, she wasn't sure why Max was unhappy. Unless … "Wait, did we do it?"

"Well, I didn't order it!" Which wasn't a guarantee that it hadn't been an Empire thing; that, she understood perfectly well. "But that's not the worst bit. Piggot's decided that we're the only suspects, so she's called up all the reinforcements she can get, and she's coming after the Empire. She intends to end us. Literally, if anyone does anything to resist. She said straight out that she was authorising lethal force for if they feel threatened, or if they think someone else is threatened."

That sent a chill down her back. The PRT never went lethal if they could avoid it, except in the case of Kill Orders. This was mainly due to the rarely-stated but always-present threat of villain retaliation; if you come after us with intent to kill, every other villain in town will do the same to you.

Kill Orders were different, of course. People who had earned those were generally vile enough that nobody liked them, and even other villains could kill them for the reward with no repercussions. Kayden had never done that herself, but she'd heard that the villains who'd taken down the Siberian (losing half their number in the process) had made absolute bank, despite the fact that they'd levelled a small town to do it.

But it looked and sounded like Director Piggot had just unilaterally declared a mass Kill Order on every member of the Empire. And she'd called in help from out of town to do it. "Is that even legal? Can she do that?"

Neither then nor later did she or Max ever stop to consider the irony of a supervillain appealing to the rule of law to save them from the situation. There were rules, damn it, and if the good guys couldn't be depended on to adhere to them, who could?

Max's voice was grim. "Technically speaking? No. In reality? Piggot's quite likely going with the concept that it's better to beg for forgiveness than permission. She'll likely get a slap on the wrist for this, but anyone her goons gun down will still be just as dead."

She took a deep breath, and made the decision that had been dancing at the back of her mind for the last few moments. "That's it, then. I'm out."

"Out?" He stared at her quizzically. "What do you mean, 'out'? Out of the fight?"

"Out, as in out of the game. I'm done. If the PRT and the heroes are going to go lethal anytime some idiot Ward pushes the wrong thug the wrong way, being a villain isn't for me anymore." She patted her swollen belly. "I'm going to be a mother, Max. I can't risk orphaning my baby. Or worse, what if they decide to suspend the Unwritten Rules even further and start going after villains' families again?"

"They'd never do that." He was trying to be firm and reassuring, but she knew him too well. His tone was too hearty for it to be anything but an act. "There would be an outcry from the rooftops. It would result in a retaliation like never before."

"Like when that one guy murdered Fleur? That kind of retaliation?" She'd been with the Empire Eighty-Eight about five years when that had happened, and she hadn't approved of it even then. But nobody else (on the villain side, anyway) had seemed to have a problem with it, possibly because the kid (a teenager, at the time) hadn't been a cape.

There'd been no retaliation upon him or the Empire. He'd broken down in court during the trial, but after he'd done his time and gotten out, he'd been accepted straight into the gang. As far as she knew, he was still an active member, living his best life.

"This is different." But he was trying too hard, and she knew it. "Heroes don't take revenge for that sort of thing. At least, not extra-judicially. Not if they want to stay out of the Birdcage."

"Well, apparently they do now." She tried not to sound too sarcastic. "If the regional PRT Director says it's legal, does that mean it's even extra-judicial? And just between you and me, are Lung or Skidmark or Coil even going to raise an eyebrow when the PRT comes after us for the murder of a black Ward? It's not like they're going to get anything but profit out of this."

"If it can happen to us, it can happen to them." But he was trying to shore up a collapsing levee with leaky sandbags, and they both knew it.

"Not if they keep their noses clean, and don't murder Wards." She saw his eyes flare at the sharpness in her tone, but she refused to back down. "You know I'm right. And you know there's only one way out of this right now. When's this going down? When are they coming for us?"

"Tomorrow morning, eight AM." He frowned at her. "Why? What do you have in mind?"

She took a deep breath. "Can you put your hand on your heart, Max Anders, and tell me without a shadow of a doubt that the Empire Eighty-Eight had no hand in killing Shadow Stalker?"

He glared at her for a long moment. The look in his eyes told her that he dearly wanted to answer in the affirmative, but he didn't say the word. Finally, lips thinned almost to invisibility, he shook his head. "You know I can't. I didn't give the order, but that doesn't mean that someone in the Empire didn't do it."

"Then find out." Her voice was brisk. "Have the men you trust reach out to everyone under them. Find out who was out and about on the night in question. Where they were, and who was with them. For all we know, they might have boasted about it to their friends. You've got until eight tomorrow morning to find this person and present him to Director Piggot."

"What, just surrender?" He sounded horrified. "Just hand him over, whoever he is? The Empire is about right-minded people supporting each other! That's as far from 'support' as you can possibly get!"

She didn't budge from her stance. "And if the PRT rolls over us? Who'll be left of us then? I read a Russian saying once that basically said when the wolves are closing in, you've got to choose who you're going to throw off the back of the sleigh."

From his expression, he knew she was right. His jaw hardened. "God fucking damn it."

An idea occurred to her, and she raised a finger. "And no finding some sacrificial goat and telling the PRT it was him. They'll be wanting to interrogate him, and I'm quite sure there's details your man on the inside doesn't know. Whoever they get has to be the right one."

"But what if he's one of our best?" Though Max was slowly coming around, it was clear he didn't like the idea in the slightest.

"If he's going to pull a stunt like this without at least informing you, or his immediate superior, then he really isn't one of your best, is he?" In retrospect, she was quite proud of that point of logic.

He huffed out an aggravated sigh. "You're right. I'll send out the word." Clicking the power button on his phone to wake it up again, he looked up at her. "So you'll stay now?"

Though she was tempted, she shook her head. "I'm going to see how it all turns out. This might be a one-off, or the PRT might actually be changing their policies permanently. I have no desire to be sniped from half a mile away by a PRT special ops guy with a high-powered rifle and a light filter on his scope."

"I'll find whoever did it," Max promised. "And he will confess to the PRT that it was all his idea. Once that's dealt with, things will probably go back to normal."

"Probably isn't certainly." Kayden raised her eyebrows. "Until I know for a fact that they aren't about to go all kill-order at the slightest provocation, I'm unofficially retiring from the villain business. If they keep it up, I'll be making it official." She started making her way out of the room.

"Wait, where are you going?"

"Packing." At the door, she turned and favoured him with a glance. "Don't you think you'd better start making those calls?"

As she headed toward the bedroom she shared with him, she heard the first button-presses. She didn't know whether or not he was going to be successful in his quest but one way or the other, she didn't intend to be in the line of fire.

<><>​

Lady Photon

Sarah Pelham sat on the edge of the rooftop, looking out over the city. Beside her, Carol seemed to be engrossed in her own thoughts, but Sarah was pretty sure she knew the way they were going.

"Penny for them," she said lightly.

Carol roused herself from the introspective trance. "I'm thinking it's about damn time. Those assholes have been making the city look bad for far too long."

"No second thoughts?" Sarah tilted her head. "Even about how the Director said we're clear to use lethal force if we're protecting someone?"

Carol raised her hand, and a shining blade of light grew out of it. When she touched the weapon to the brickwork, smoke arose from the glowing cut. "They did the crime. They couldn't have expected for there not to be some kind of backlash from this."

"Even if we don't know who actually pulled the trigger?" Sarah's voice was quiet, thoughtful. Other ideas were running through her mind.

"If they're willing to hide him, they're all complicit." Carol looked across at her, allowing the lightblade to vanish. "Tell me you don't believe that they're not all criminals anyway."

"Oh, no. I'm down with it, as the youngsters say." Sarah smiled briefly, then her expression changed to something darker. "They murdered a kid, this time. A Ward. Unmasked her then executed her. The PRT wants to take the Empire out of the picture once and for all? I am totally on board with that. It's been a long time coming."

"Good." Carol got up from her perch and dusted herself off. "I'm going to call Victoria and get a lift home. Are we meeting at our place or yours in the morning?"

"Yours, I think," Sarah said. "That way, Crystal and Eric can help carry you and Mark to the PRT rendezvous. Seven?"

"Seven." Carol reached out to Sarah, her fist clenched. "We're gonna kick their asses."

Sarah bumped her sister's fist with her own. "Absolutely."

She watched as her sister strolled along the roofline a little way before pulling out her phone to make a call. Then, when she was sure she wouldn't be overheard, she took out a phone of her own; not her New Wave handset, but a burner she'd acquired about six months ago, just in case.

The 'just in case' had come due, as she dug into her pocket for the other thing. It was a folded scrap of paper, tattered and faded, bearing a single name as well as a string of digits. Carefully, she tapped the number into the phone.

For ten years, she'd convinced herself that this was not what a hero did. But now, with everything else that was happening, she couldn't lie to herself anymore. Some things just had to be done. And now, it seemed, he was back.

The phone, held to her ear, rang several times. Then it was answered. "You have the Dark."

She'd met the man once, years before. He'd scared her silly then, and even hearing his voice now wasn't much better. "This is … this is Sarah Pelham."

"Lady Photon." He sounded bemused. "You have my interest. Why are you calling?"

"I … there's a man. In the Empire Eighty-Eight. Seven years ago, he killed my brother's fiancée."

"Fleur. Yes, I remember. A great pity." There was no emotion in his voice to go with his words.

She took a deep breath. "I want you to find him and kill him. Tomorrow, when the Empire is disrupted from the PRT attack. I want you to look him in the eye as he dies, and tell him New Wave sends their regards."

She didn't bother giving the guy's name; it had made the news more than once, despite the fact that he'd been tried as a minor. The Dark would either know it or he could find it out. He was known to be very, very good at locating his targets.

"Understood. We can arrange payment once it's done."

That she would be paying whatever price he demanded was in no doubt whatsoever. She knew that for a fact. "Absolutely."

"Good. Then we can do business. You'll receive a message when the job's complete." The call ended.

She sat there, looking at the phone, before sliding it back into her pocket. Whether she'd just done the right thing or not, she didn't know. But it had to be done, all the same.

Carol came back to sit by her, her own phone call concluded. "Vicky's on the way. What was that about?"

Sarah looked up at the night sky. "Oh, just taking care of some business."



End of Part Eight

 

[Noctus]

Hell to the yes. Thanks for this awesome update. Excited for the next chapter!

 

[Evilhippy]

She took a deep breath. "I want you to find him and kill him. Tomorrow, when the Empire is disrupted from the PRT attack. I want you to look him in the eye as he dies, and tell him New Wave sends their regards."

Click to shrink...

Fuck yeah!

That is some tasty stuff right there.

 

[Zackarix]

"We don't have a specific suspect as yet, but this is why you're all here. Shadow Stalker was the only black member of the Wards, and she had a habit of going off on solo patrols … in Empire Eighty-Eight territory."

This time, the murmur was much stronger. Everyone in the room knew of the Empire Eighty-Eight. It had chapters in several cities, but none so strong as in Brockton Bay, its home base. Everyone there also knew of its ethos; the reason for its being. If anyone was likely to murder a black Ward in such an explicit fashion, it would be the neo-Nazis of the Empire Eighty-Eight.

There really were no other viable suspects.

Click to shrink...

Oh no! The Empire 88 has been framed for a crime they didn't commit! How could this have possibly happened?!

It's funny seeing everyone mobilize to avenge Shadow Stalker of all people. It makes sense, but it's funny all the same.

 

[Bad Habits]

Oh no! The Empire 88 has been framed for a crime they didn't commit! How could this have possibly happened?!

It's funny seeing everyone mobilize to avenge Shadow Stalker of all people. It makes sense, but it's funny all the same.

Click to shrink...

Eh, it's actually kind of sad though that it took Shadow Stalker from dying to kick over this ant hill. They've almost certainly done a lot of crimes worthy of this response, but it was the rogue cop, undeserving of the badge getting killed that set it off. Not the dozens, probably hundreds, of other innocent victims.

 

[Ack]

Eh, it's actually kind of sad though that it took Shadow Stalker from dying to kick over this ant hill. They've almost certainly done a lot of crimes worthy of this response, but it was the rogue cop, undeserving of the badge getting killed that set it off. Not the dozens, probably hundreds, of other innocent victims.

Click to shrink...

Irony, thy name is Brockton Bay.

 

[Osserumb]

A very probable future for the Nazis:

A few years ago, a violent racist gang was hunted by a PRT for a crime they didn't commit. Survivors promptly escaped from a Brockton Bay to the Boston underground. Today, still wanted by the government they survive as hired guns. If you have a problem, if no one else can be a distraction, and if you can find them....maybe you can out dregs of Empire Eighty Eight.

 

[Scopas]

Oh, this looks like a glorious clusterfuck. I'm glad that, after her death, Sophia is finally contributing to the greater good by giving the forces of law and order a bloody shirt to purchase carte blanche with.

I know that there's lots of good reasons in and out of universe for the PRT to not clean the town - out of universe it takes the spotlight away from the parahuman protagonists, and it goes against the crumbling world concept that Wildbow built, and in universe you have the presence of unstoppable forces like the S9 and Lung, not to mention Cauldron machinations - but it's so nice to see the forces of Order finally being able to deploy fully.

Here's hoping that the bulk of both unpowered and powered members of the E88 try to resist with as much force as possible. It'd be nice for the so-called Empire to finally have to fight a real army.