Earning Her Stripes (Worm AU fanfic)

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-Seven: Idiot's Gambit

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


Victor

The timing could not have been much better. They'd finished their meals and drinks (coffee for him, tea for her) and had just paid when his phone went off again. Othala still looked less than impressed, but only slightly so, as he took it out and answered it on the way out the door.

"Speak," he ordered.

"They just took off from the PRT building. Heading north, maybe north-north-east. We're trying to keep up but it's not easy." In the background, he could hear the sound of a car engine revving.

"Okay, keep at it. Call me back if anything changes. We'll be there soon." He ended the call and handed the phone to Othala. "Come on, let's go."

"Where are we going?" she asked as they got in the car. "And why am I holding your phone?"

"To catch up, if possible," he said grimly, fastening his seatbelt. "Buckle up. We might be taking corners faster than normal."

Her eyes widened, and she didn't argue as she grabbed for her own seatbelt. She'd been in the car when he'd had to drive at speed before. Barely had her latch engaged than he had the car in gear and was peeling out of the parking lot.

He drew on every iota of his impressive driving capability, weaving through traffic as though it wasn't there, and avoiding problem traffic areas as he headed north.

<><>​

Monochrome

Taylor didn't think she would ever not enjoy the sensation of flight. Okay, so it wasn't her doing the flying, but even hitching a ride on a multi-ton power-suit as it roared through the sky was a lot of fun. The best bit was, she had no fear of falling to her death from this height. Since she'd gotten her powers, all heights were the same to her.

Looking down at the houses they were passing over, she checked the landmarks then slapped the shoulder of Madison's power-suit to alert her that they were nearly over her house. The suit raised one arm in a thumb's-up gesture, probably because Madison also knew they were in the right place. Reaching over, Taylor tapped Emma on the shoulder.

Emma didn't look thrilled as she clasped Taylor's forearm, but they all knew it was the best way to pull a dismount in the daytime without being positively ID'd. If Madison landed in Taylor's back yard, or Emma's for that matter, it would take far too long and give anyone with the slightest amount of interest the chance to pinpoint exactly which house it was. The Blockade armour was many things, but subtle it was not, especially while in flight.

As they were about to pass over the house, Taylor jumped off the back of the suit, pulling Emma into a close embrace. She wasn't sure how high up they were, but the houses looked remarkably tiny. Then she extended her durability field over her teammate, turning the bright colours into shades of grey. Waiting until she knew she was going to land in her own back yard—tiny steering-fins extruding from her 'costume' made sure of that— she then pulled a stunt that only her powers could manage.

Gravity and inertia were only suggestions when she was fully encased, and while she normally used that to reduce the effects of either one, that didn't have to be the case. This time around, she accelerated them both downward at ten times normal gravity for about two and a half seconds, then decelerated just as fast. The entire descent—two thousand feet—was over in five seconds; Emma finished her involuntary yelp only after Taylor was standing on the ground in her own back yard.

Setting Emma down onto her feet, Taylor let the black-and-white costume vanish to reveal casual clothes underneath. "Come on, let's get inside."

Emma complied, though she shook her head once the back door closed behind her. "I will never get used to that. We went from 'up there' to 'down here' faster than I would've thought possible."

"That was the general idea." Taylor went to the fridge and opened it. "If someone's scanning the skies looking for cape footage, we just want to be a blur on it. Juice?"

"Yeah, thanks." Emma went through into the living room, to where her clothing had been laid out on the sofa. As Taylor located two glasses and poured juice into them, she knew Emma was removing her helmet and good-steel accoutrements and pulling her clothing on over the bodysuit.

"So, what do you think about what Piggot said?" Taylor put the juice away and carried the glasses through into the living room. "About the whole cops and robbers thing, I mean."

"There's two ways to look at it," Emma said as she accepted a glass from Taylor. "One, it's pure laziness and excusing her inaction. Two, it's sheer genius and it keeps casualties to a minimum."

"And which is it, do you think?" Taylor settled onto the sofa.

Since Emma had gotten her powers, she'd ended up with a very … balanced view of the world. She always looked at both sides before making her final judgement call, even if she disagreed strenuously with one or the other. While this could be irritating at times, Taylor had found it quite worthwhile to ask for her opinion on matters like this.

"I tend to favour the second hypothesis." Emma also had a habit of using big words when presenting her judgements. "The Triumvirate have come to town recently, and they took away a couple of the more troublesome Empire capes when they left. All the evidence suggests that Director Piggot has been gradually tightening the screws, making the city less and less hospitable to asshole capes."

"And meanwhile, in the background, she's been doing other things to improve the city," Taylor suggested. "Like getting Alexandria to move that ship at the mouth of Lord's Port."

"Exactly." Emma sat down next to Taylor. "Only, it's not happening all at once, so as to give Director Piggot time to get the cape crime down to a manageable level before the port goes back into full operation. The last thing she wants is a strong cape gang going into the smuggling business with a fully operational harbour at their disposal."

"Ugh." Taylor rolled her eyes. "They were bad enough without regular shipping to draw them in. One of the reasons Dad and the others managed to hold them off for so long was that there's been only minimal profits to be had from having their hooks in the Association. As soon as the Port kicks into gear again, that's going to change in a big way."

"Yeah, I remember him talking about that sometimes." Emma finished off her juice. "I want to thank you again for giving me and Madison a chance to make things right."

Taylor nodded. "Well, I haven't regretted it yet, and I'm actually pretty pleased with the results so far." She chuckled and gestured toward the front door. "And the lawn and garden bed have never looked better."

Emma grinned in return. "We did do a pretty rockin' job, didn't we? So, what's your plans from here on in? How did you want to play it with the Empire?"

It was a valid question. "Well, I think I need to consult with both my teammates before reaching a decision on that one. Because I know Madison has opinions."

The grin turned into a chuckle. "You caught that, did you?"

"I'm pretty sure they caught that in Boston."

<><>​

Coil

There were exactly three known ways of getting into the secure holding area under the PRT building where Shadow Stalker was being held. The first was to be escorted there in custody, the second was to fight past all the security measures with overwhelming force … and the third was to have official authority to walk in. Of the three ways, Thomas preferred the third one.

He could've added a fourth way to the official list—sneaking in using powers—but he preferred not to tip his hand unnecessarily. At this point in time, he was using what was technically a fifth method—faking his clearance—though it didn't guarantee him getting out again. Not that this mattered to him, because once he'd gotten what he wanted, he would never have been there.

He'd done his not inconsiderable best to get actual permission to see Shadow Stalker, but the security around the girl was as close to airtight as the cells themselves were. Piggot had heard out his reasoning about how Shadow Stalker could possibly help with inconsistencies in some cold cases he was reviewing, but had decreed that he could submit queries to be conveyed to her. The smaller the circle of people who came into contact with her, the better. It wasn't just him, he'd been told. Nobody who wasn't already connected with the case was getting in to see her.

Most men would've given up at this point. But Thomas Calvert was not most men. He returned to his office and started working innocuously on minutiae such as squad rosters, requisition forms and equipment damage reports. At the same time, in a throwaway timeline, he was busy delving into the computer system, making use of the few backdoors he still had access to.

Even then, he had to burn all his online assets to get to the point where he could assign himself clearance to see Shadow Stalker. The permission itself was transitory; it would need to be reviewed and approved by Piggot to continue, and he knew damn well that was never going to happen. So, he had to get down there now if he wanted the chance to find out what the girl knew before his clearance crossed Piggot's desk and was summarily revoked.

In the one timeline, he stayed at his desk; in the other, he stood up and strode out into the corridor. Armed with the freshly printed (and entirely bogus) clearance form, including the notation that he'd signed the accompanying NDA (it wouldn't matter to him if he had or not), he headed for the elevator that would take him down to the sub-basement levels.

On the ride down, he composed himself. He wouldn't have the luxury of being able to tailor his approach to whoever he spoke to, trading it out for the certain knowledge that he wouldn't be caught doing this, no matter how badly he screwed it up. But he didn't want to screw it up, because Shadow Stalker would be transferred out at some point in the future (another bit of information Piggot was keeping damned close to her chest) and every failed attempt used up valuable time he could be doing something (anything) else with.

The interleaving doors opened on the bottom sub-basement level, and he stepped out into the echoing concrete corridor. Blast doors were positioned at intervals along it, with one poised to drop down in front of the elevator itself. Hit one alarm button, and getting out would become insanely harder.

Entirely unconcerned about the weight of security all around him, and the multiple cameras scrutinising his every move, he marched along the corridor to the security checkpoint leading to the area where Shadow Stalker was incarcerated. The Empire Eighty-Eight and ABB prisoners were also in high-security lockdown, but they were in a different section to Stalker. For her sins, she got to languish in what was effectively solitary confinement.

Thomas didn't judge her for her actions; he'd done much worse in his time. What he disapproved of was her sheer bloody-minded sloppiness. With her capabilities, she could've been so much smarter and more effective about carrying out her aims. It didn't help that said aims were predicated around a stupid and short-sighted worldview. If he'd pursued murderous vengeance against every last person who'd pissed him off, he would've had zero time for anyone else. He preferred to outmanoeuvre them and leave them in his dust.

"Commander Calvert, here to question Shadow Stalker," he reported, halting at the checkpoint and holding up the forged papers.

"Going to need to see your authorisation, Commander," the guard said via a speaker. "Director's orders. Minimum contact." As he spoke, a slot motored open in the front of the checkpoint.

"Understood." He slid the papers into the slot, pulling his fingers back before the cover closed again. "Has she been troublesome?"

"Just noisy." There was a pause, and he could see the guard perusing his documentation. The man seemed to be taking far too long about it, but he couldn't be seen to be impatient. At best, it would inspire the guard to take even more time; at worst, it would raise suspicions. Right now, he didn't need suspicions.

'Noisy' sounded good to him. It meant Shadow Stalker hadn't gone sulky and silent. He wanted her willing to talk, even if that 'talking' was actually her yelling at him. All he truly needed was to learn the names of the members of the Real Thing before Piggot discovered his bogus clearance to see the girl. You can try to suppress the information, but I'll always find it out.

The door buzzed, then clicked open. "Everything looks in order, Commander. Go on in. You have thirty minutes."

He had less time than that, he knew; the moment Piggot got notification of his entry to the secure area, as per the clearance rules she'd set up, there would be the equivalent of a nuclear explosion in her office. The blast radius would reach him sooner rather than later, so he had to get answers now. So, from the moment he stepped through the door, he moved at his best faux-nonchalant pace toward Stalker's cell.

<><>​

Victor

It took more time than he liked, but he eventually pulled onto the side of the road behind the three chase cars that had gotten this far. Affixing a domino mask to his face, he got out of the car and went over to where his men were clustered around a map laid out on the hood of the first car. "Report."

"We lost 'em somewhere around here." Burkhalt, a steady and reliable member of the Empire, tapped the map with his finger. "I was watching through the binocs and thought I saw Blockade drop something, but it went out of sight before I could get a fix on it. Then he did a long turn and dropped out of sight. We converged on the area but didn't see anything."

"What about that park?" It was close to where they were on the map. "If I had to choose a landing spot for a power-suit that big, that's what I'd pick. Not my own back yard."

Burkhalt nodded. "Yes, sir. We went there first. No men, no power armour. Just a few moms and kids messing around. They said they'd heard the noise but hadn't seen anything."

"Eight-foot-tall power armour doesn't just vanish into thin air." While this was true, it was also evident that something had happened.

"No, sir, it doesn't." There wasn't much else for Burkhalt to say.

"Well, then. Keep an eye out. Now we know what area they live in. It's merely a matter of time."

"Roger that, sir." Burkhalt nodded and started to fold up the map again.

"Well?" asked Othala as he got back into the car.

"We have a general area, but that's it." He grimaced. "For someone piloting a multi-ton battlesuit, Blockade is remarkably elusive."

She put her hand on his arm. "You'll get them. You're the smartest man I know."

He started the car. "Let's hope Kaiser feels the same way."

<><>​

Taylor

Emma's phone rang just as Taylor was locking the front door. She pulled it out and answered it. "Hi, Mads. Yeah, Taylor's right here. Want me to give the phone to her?"

Taylor glanced around; nobody was with in earshot, so she took the phone and put it on speaker. "We're both listening. What's up?"

"Someone's trying to get a line on us." Madison didn't sound overly worried, but she'd been markedly less timid ever since she got powers. "I was just walking out of the park where I leave the suit when a bunch of guys came up and started looking around. One of them asked me if I'd seen a battlesuit fly overhead. I said I'd heard it, but I hadn't seen anything."

A chill traced its way down Taylor's spine. "Shit. Which one of the gangs do you think it is?" She knew it couldn't be the PRT, because they already knew.

"Well, the main suspect has to be the Empire," Emma said at once. "Or this other guy called Coil, supposedly some kind of criminal mastermind, but he's basically a B-rank player. I don't even know what his costume looks like."

"Did you clash with him before Sophia went off the rails?" asked Taylor. "Because I've never heard of him either."

"No. Just the Merchants and the Empire. What are we going to do about this?"

Taylor frowned. "Well, I was going to run the idea past you guys of backing off from the Empire a bit and maybe just doing some PR patrols, but if they're actively coming after us, we need to deal with that threat." Sophia's attempt to kill her father was still fresh in her memory, and she never wanted to go through that again.

"Also, if they find out how Sophia specifically targeted your dad and my parents, they might start wondering why." Emma was definitely thinking along the same lines.

"So, my whole thing of not backing off was actually the right course of action all along?" Madison wasn't quite gloating, but she was treading a very narrow line.

Emma pursed her lips. "Well, in fairness, we technically provoked them into this by taking in a whole bunch of their members at once. If they were used to Director Piggot's 'cops and robbers' concept, I can see why they'd feel threatened."

"They should feel threatened. They're criminals. Some of them are murderers. I'm not exactly feeling any sympathy for them."

Taylor intervened before the incipient argument could really get started. "Okay, so we're agreed that the Empire is a threat that needs to be addressed. The first thing we're going to do is alert Director Piggot to what they're up to, and give her a heads-up about our intentions. And the second thing … is do something about it."

Emma nodded, a satisfied look on her face. Madison was a little more definitive than that. "Fuck, yes. Let's make those Nazi assholes sorry they ever burned a cross."

"They're the Empire Eighty-Eight," Emma pointed out reasonably. "Not the Ku Klux Klan. They're still the bad guys, but I'm pretty sure they don't actually burn crosses. Though I could be wrong."

"They're racist assholes either way. And Nazis, which makes it even worse. We going out tonight?"

Taylor considered the question. "I'd say we are, yeah."

"Good."

<><>​

Coil

"Hello, Shadow Stalker." Thomas approached the cell with a confident stride.

The girl in prison orange, sitting with her feet up on the bench, looked up at him sourly. "Who are you supposed to be, asshole? The good cop, just because they managed to dig up a black guy? Fuck off."

Hmm. Tough audience. "No, I'm not the 'good cop'. Or the bad cop, either. I'm not here about your case at all. I was hoping you could enlighten me about something."

She sneered at him. All told, it was a pretty good sneer. "What, so you can add another bogus charge to my sheet? This whole thing's a bullshit put-up job from beginning to end, and everyone knows it. They were just jealous so they forced me out of the team."

This was it. He was so close. "Who did, Shadow Stalker? Who pushed you out of the team? What were they jealous about?"

Even as she opened her mouth to tell him, a calculating look crossed her face. "What's it worth to you? And how come you don't know, anyway? Piggot for damn sure knows, and most everyone else who comes down here to laugh at me. So how come you don't?"

He thought fast. She was actually smarter than he'd given her credit for, to pick up on that little nuance. "No, you're right. I'm being kept out of the loop. Personally, I think the Real Thing is overreaching way too far and they need to be reined in. Director Piggot considers them beyond reproach, but they're dangerous. Don't you think?"

This time she laughed out loud, a harsh and bitter sound. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Piggy hates every cape she's ever known! What the fuck are you really here for?"

The alarm that blared through the secure cell block made him jump. He knew exactly what it was about. Piggot had been informed he was down here. "I just need their names," he said urgently. "Firebird, Blockade, and Monochrome. Who are they?"

Her jaw took on a stubborn set. "Get me out of here and I'll tell you."

"Tell me and I'll get you out of there!" He was lying, of course. The clearance he'd managed to get didn't include opening the cell for her.

A siren started up, overlaying the alarm bell. Red lights flashed along the length of the corridor.

"Okay, fine!" She stood up from the bench and came over to the polycarbonate panel that made up the door to her cell. On one wrist was a metal cuff that Thomas hadn't seen before. "Firebird's name is—"

As Thomas leaned close to listen over the blaring siren and clanging bell, confoam sprayers activated and covered him with globby yellow foam, cutting off Shadow Stalker's words. "What?" he yelled. "What?"

But he couldn't hear a thing, apart from the dull, distant sound of the alarm bell and the siren.

Muttering a curse, he dropped that timeline.

Okay, so a slightly different approach is required.

Unfortunately, it was getting close to the time he was due to leave for the day, so he wouldn't be able to stay back without at least raising eyebrows.

I'll try again tomorrow. Dammit.

<><>​

■

PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: DirectorPiggot
From: Monochrome
Subject: The Empire is Playing Stupid Games


Hi, Director.

This is just to let you know that the Empire Eighty-Eight tried to trail us home from our meeting with you. They got within about one minute of outing Blockade.
I was going to back off a little, but this is far too dangerous to let slide. We need to hit them hard enough that their Nazi great-grandparents feel it.
I know we might have started it by being a little enthusiastic about smacking their capes around and capturing them, but going after our civvy identities is not cool. So we're taking them down hard before they start kidnapping or killing our friends and relatives. Because you know that's where they'll go.

PS: the talk this afternoon was good. Thanks for listening to our side of things.

- Monochrome

■

<><>​

Deputy Director Renick

PRT Building ENE

Paul heard the cursing before he opened the connecting door. Emily was normally moderate in her speech, but her time as a field officer in the PRT had given her an exceptionally broad vocabulary. He paused and knocked, to give her warning that he was there.

The swearing stopped, and he could almost hear her taking a deep breath and composing herself. "Come in," she called.

"Sorry to bother you," Paul said as he brought a file with him. "I just needed your signature on something. Is there a problem?"

"Give," Emily said bluntly and pulled out her pen. Taking the file from him, she scrawled her signature, then handed it back. "Yes, there's a goddamn problem. Kaiser's playing fuck-fuck games, and the Real Thing caught him at it. So that whole chat I had with them earlier, about moderating their approach? Out the fucking window, because Kaiser can't stand losing so many people to a three-person team."

Paul raised a finger. "Uh, I understand the term, but …"

Emily rolled her eyes. "Sorry. He had men try to follow them home after the meeting. One of them nearly caught Blockade out. So now the Real Thing is actively gunning for the Empire."

"And with their track record …" Paul shook his head. "I don't think I'd be betting on Kaiser."

"I don't want to be betting on anyone." Emily's expression was intensely unhappy. "Betting means gambling, and I prefer a sure thing. And they were on board with it, too. Fucking capes!" She slammed her fist down on her desk.

Paul wasn't sure if she was referring to the Empire Eighty-Eight, the Real Thing, or both groups, and he didn't want to ask.

Either way, he knew, things were about to heat up rather than cool down.

Oh, joy.



End of Part Twenty-Seven

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-Eight: Stupid Prizes

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


Later That Evening

Monochrome

"Okay," Emma said. "We have a potential problem."

They were sitting in the living room of Madison's parents' house, out of costume for the moment. Mrs Clements—Marcy, as she'd insisted they call her—had just brought out a tray of cookies. To an outside observer, it would've been just a pleasant gathering of friends. The TV was even on, to bolster the illusion of normalcy.

"What, apart from the fact that the Empire's trying to follow me home?" snarked Madison, grabbing a couple of cookies.

"Which is the one we're here to solve." Taylor claimed one for herself. "But I'm guessing that's not the one Emma's referring to."

"No, it's not." Emma looked at each of them in turn. "We're prepping to go out and smack the Empire down. Sure, we're able to do that. But not if we don't know where to look. In order to punch the cape, we need to be able to find the cape."

"Oh." Taylor realised she was correct. In her mental imagery, the Empire capes would've been just showing up, spoiling for a fight. The reality was likely to be a little different. A line out of a book she'd once read seemed appropriate: 'Never assume your opponent will cooperate with your battle plans'.

Emma nodded. "Even worse, as soon as Mads gets in her suit and takes off, if they've got people watching the area, they'll have a location to keep an eye on when she lands again. Sooner or later, they'll pinpoint it, and potentially be able to ambush her out of the suit."

"Wait a minute." It was Mr Clements who'd spoken. "You think the Empire has people watching for Madison to go to her suit?"

"Well, they were asking people if they'd seen it," Madison reminded him. "So yeah, I'd think the next step would be to stake out the area, Dad."

He nodded. "So, we turn the problem into a solution."

Madison frowned at him, then looked at Emma and Taylor as though they knew what he was talking about. "How do we do that?"

<><>​

Over Brockton Bay

Rune

Tammi stifled a yawn. This was far from the first time she'd stayed up this late, but the combination of doing the same thing over and over, with zero action to show for it, was boring as all crap. Still, it was important. Kaiser was pissed, and that meant there was going to be blood in the water.

She gently banked the chunk of concrete she was flying over the city into a long turn, making sure not to make it too sharp or abrupt. Right now, with tensions as high as they were, she didn't want to make Victor or Alabaster yell at her. Just before they went out on this mission, Kaiser had given a short speech on 'everyone pulling together' and 'united against the world', which in her mind boiled down to 'don't fuck this up'.

She really, really didn't want to fuck this up.

"Anything?" asked Alabaster, for about the fifteenth time.

It had to be getting on Victor's nerves, because it was totally pissing off Tammi. She fantasised about tipping the slab at just the right time to drop him two hundred yards to the ground, but she was pretty sure that would count as 'fucking it up'. Plus, she knew damn well he'd survive it, and Alabaster was really good at holding a grudge.

"Not yet." Victor didn't move his eye from the scope of the sniper rifle he was carrying. Kaiser had said not to kill Blockade, but a blown-out kneecap would make it really hard to operate that damn powersuit.

If Tammi understood the plan right, they wanted to at least identify Blockade; ideally, capture him. A little pressure in the right direction should make him amenable to working for the Empire Eighty-Eight, and fill in the gap in their lineup. Kaiser had wanted a Tinker in their ranks for years.

But even without that, just forcing the Real Thing to stand down when it came to Empire business would be a step in the right direction. Kaiser really hated to lose, which Tammy totally understood. She disliked it intensely herself.

While Victor scoured the ground and rooftops for anything that might resemble a concealed suit of power armour, she stuck to the search pattern he'd laid out for her. The park where they thought Blockade had landed was under direct surveillance and they could respond to any call within minutes, but Victor had decided to search farther afield, just in case.

This absolutely was important, and Tammi knew enough not to think otherwise.

But still, she was bored. Bored. Booooooored.

<><>​

Coil

Suburbs, Safe Timeline

On the surface, Thomas was relaxing at home, in his living room, with a good book. The TV was on more for background noise than anything else, and he had takeaway coming in the next half-hour. It was a pleasant way to spend a Monday evening, and it meant that he could clearly demonstrate that he'd had zero contact with Shadow Stalker, if anyone happened to ask that question.

PRT Building, Throwaway Timeline

Thomas Calvert swiped his card, waited for the beep, then pulled the door open and walked in. He nodded to the night desk guy, who nodded back in a disinterested fashion. Thomas was a reasonably familiar face who had the clearance to be in the building after business hours, so there was nothing to be concerned about.

Swiping for the elevator, Thomas rode it up to his floor and went into his office. He seated himself behind his desk, booted up his computer and started delving into systems he really had no business going near. He had the backdoors and the stolen passwords that would get him what he wanted: access to Shadow Stalker. While he could've left it until morning, he'd heard a rumour that she was to be moved soon, perhaps even in the next few days. He wasn't the kind of man to leave that sort of thing to chance, so tonight it was.

It would take time, especially given that he was starting from scratch (again) but as he liked to joke to himself, he had all the time he could give himself.

<><>​

Firebird

An Hour Later

The car was nondescript, as far as cars went, but it was the little things that stood out in Emma's mind. It wasn't parked in a driveway, for one thing, and it had been carefully placed between streetlights so that anyone inside wouldn't be easily seen. The other point of note was its proximity to the park that Madison was currently using to stash the Blockade armour; anyone sitting in the vehicle would have a fine view of anyone entering said park.

At first they'd thought the surveillance would be conducted via unmarked vans, but either Kaiser was aware of that trope and had decided to steer well clear of it, or he didn't have any available. Either way, after finding zero vans in the area, they'd started checking out cars.

So far, they'd found six with men sitting in them, doing nothing much except smoke and (she assumed) talk with their stake-out partners. What about, she wasn't sure. The preferred conversational topics of racist assholes were a closed book for her, and she was fine with it staying that way.

Looking from the rooftop down toward the car through its windshield, her miniature binoculars picked out an unshaven face briefly illuminated by someone drawing on a cigarette before it was brought down below window level again. "He looks really, really bored," she murmured.

Beside her, Taylor smiled. "Bored is good. Mr Clements absolutely called it."

"Think there's more of them around?" They'd covered the neighbourhood around the park for a few blocks in all directions, but that didn't mean there weren't people not in cars. For all she knew, the Empire had people posing as homeless vagrants, keeping an eye on places where cars couldn't easily be parked.

Taylor pursed her lips. "So long as they don't have eyes on the armour, it should be okay." Madison's armour, with its holo-disguise to make it look like an electrical junction box, was tucked away discreetly behind a large tree in the middle of the park. It was far enough away from the illuminated pathways that nobody could see it through the shadows.

"Yeah." Moving back from the roof edge, Emma put the binoculars away. "Stage two?"

"Stage two."

<><>​

Monochrome

Madison was waiting outside her back door, the light off, when Taylor dropped down from above.

While looking up how to camouflage herself at night, Taylor had made the interesting discovery that going pitch black wasn't actually the best way to do that. Shadows, it seemed, drew the eye. As she couldn't do anything other than black and white, she'd experimented with tiny specks of white on a black background. The way Madison eeped and jumped when Taylor landed right beside her gave her the impression that it worked.

"Wow, you're human after all," Taylor jibed with a grin. "That tough-girl act of yours had me wondering."

Madison blew a raspberry at her. "Not funny. You caught me by surprise, that's all."

"Sure, sure. Whatever." Taylor spread her hands. "Ready to roll?"

"Any time." Madison grabbed her hand, and Taylor exerted her protective ability. Immediately, Madison's clothing—dark blues and reds—turned to grays, as did her skin tone. With her free hand, she pulled up the scarf she had wrapped around her neck so that it covered most of her face, mainly to reduce the chance that she'd be seen.

"Three, two, one, yoink!" Taylor kicked off with a light jump that sent them soaring up and over her house, toward the park. Once they were at altitude, Taylor spread her arms—without letting go of Madison—and popped air-guides to let them glide in the right direction. Madison had her other arm spread out as well, probably so she could feel that she was contributing; Taylor chose not to correct her illusions.

"Wow." Madison's voice was hardly more than a murmur. "I don't know what's better. Gliding like this, or flying in my suit."

"I prefer this," Taylor admitted. "I like the feeling that I'm just suspended above the city. Peaceful. Nothing's trying to get at me."

Madison snorted. "Nobody's able to get to me when I'm flying in my suit, too."

"I said 'nobody's trying to get at me'. Totally different. Nobody knows about it when I'm up here. Everyone knows about it when you are."

"Yeah, yeah," jibed Madison. "I can tell suit envy when I hear it."

Taylor grinned. "Says the shortest member of the team, who built a suit to make herself eight feet tall."

"Oh, I'll totally own that." Madison said it readily enough that Taylor figured she meant it. "Being tall is amazeballs."

"I know, right?" Taylor looked down at the street they were passing over. The park was just up ahead. "Okay, we're going to be doing a high-speed drop in just a second. Try not to shriek too loudly. We don't want to let the bad guys know we're here before we're ready for them."

"Pfft. As if you can scare me by—"

Taylor let them drop all the way to the ground, touching down barely twenty feet from the camouflaged suit. The entire fall took less than a second.

"—yipe!" To her credit, Madison did keep the exclamation to a loud whisper. She lifted her feet a couple of times, feeling the ground under them then did her best to give Taylor a dirty look. The deep shadows where they were ruined the effect, but Taylor gave her a B-minus for effort anyway. "That was mean."

"Also funny." Taylor kept her voice down. "Don't forget 'funny'."

Madison headed for the shadowed 'junction box', with Taylor at her side. "Y'know, part of me wants to accuse you of holding a grudge for all the shit I helped pull on you, but the rest of me wouldn't blame you if you did."

That could stand being addressed more fully, but Taylor knew they didn't have the time right then. So she satisfied herself with a noncommittal "Mmm," while she watched Madison put her hand on the box and wake it up out of standby mode. Then she turned to keep a lookout while the suit unfolded just far enough for Madison to climb inside. She only relaxed once her teammate was safe behind a layer of good steel.

Crouching slightly, she leaped skyward once more. Inside the suit, she knew, Madison would be activating the radio. "Stage two complete. Stage three is a go."

<><>​

Rune

"What was that?"

Tammi looked around at Victor's question. "What was what?" There didn't seem to be anything out there, except lots of night sky above and lots of city below. Brockton Bay was supposed to be enchanting from above, especially at night, but it had lost all its appeal for her after the first hour or so.

"I thought I saw movement." Victor lowered the rifle and rubbed his right eye before raising the weapon again. "But there's nothing I can fix on. I think there might be a flier around here somewhere."

"Aegis?" ventured Tammi. He was the only flier in the Wards who didn't glow when they flew. "Or maybe one of New Wave's fliers?"

"No." Victor was a bit of a dick when he couldn't figure out what was going on. "They all show up on IR like a beacon. Whatever I saw was the same temperature as the background."

"Well, at least we know it wasn't Blockade, right?" Alabaster had to put his two cents in. "You wouldn't need IR to spot that damn suit."

Tammi was forced to agree. Using an IR scope when that suit was in flight would likely be damaging to the eyesight. "So, is it still there?"

Victor frowned, searching the skyline. "No."

Tammi wanted to ask him if he was sure he hadn't been seeing things, but she didn't want to be yelled at, so she kept quiet. Sometimes it sucked to be the youngest on the team.

It would suck even more if Blockade decided to take a night off and let us float around here all night while he's watching TV and getting takeaway.

That was definitely a thought she wasn't about to share with the other two.

<><>​

Throwaway Timeline

Coil

At last.

Thomas wanted to do a little dance of victory—it had been even harder to sneak past Piggot's safeguards this time—but he wasn't quite sure that there was no ongoing video surveillance of his office. He knew they weren't watching his screen outputs, because someone probably would've kicked his office door in by now if that were the case.

Instead, he settled for a luxurious stretch in his office chair while the faked authorisation printed out. He knew what he'd done wrong last time. This time, he'd ask the right questions.

The printer beeped to indicate that it was done, and he stood up from his chair. Because he was a careful man, he took the time to look the clearance over carefully. There were no errors, and he smiled slowly.

It was time to go make the Real Thing regret that they'd left Shadow Stalker alive.

God knew, he never made that mistake with anyone who had damaging information on him.

<><>​

Vince Foley, Empire Eighty-Eight Minion

"Hey, Vince."

Scott's voice was barely louder than the gurgle of coffee running out of the thermos and into Vince's cup. He finished pouring, then looked up. "What?" Swear to God, if he tells another one of his stupid jokes, I'm gonna … well, he wouldn't do anything then, but later on he was going to rip the guy a brand new series of assholes.

But Scott was pointing at something outside the car. Vince leaned forward and looked. It was a guy walking across the road, wearing a hoodie and carrying something big and rectangular. "That's Blockade!" Scott hissed. "It's gotta be!"

Vince felt excitement rising in his chest, but he tamped it down as best he could. "Could just be some guy."

"No fuckin' way." Scott shook his head. "That's a toolbox he's carrying. I heard it clank just now."

Vince peered through the windshield at the guy. The thing he was carrying did look like a battered old toolbox. But with that hood in place, there was no way to get details of his face; all Vince could see as the guy paused under a streetlight was the glint of light on glasses. Wearing glasses and carrying a toolbox was pretty well shorthand for being a Tinker in every Saturday morning cartoon ever. Not that Vince was a Saturday morning cartoon sort of guy, but he knew the gist of things.

"Okay, if he goes in the park, we call it in." Vince took a drink of the coffee. It was still warm, but tasted like shit.

Together, they watched the guy cross the sidewalk and step into the park itself. He looked around once, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a flashlight. The beam showing the way, he guided himself deeper into the darkened park.

<><>​

Rune

Victor's phone rang. Tammi was holding it, as Victor needed both hands for his rifle, so she swiped to answer, and hit speaker so Victor could talk normally. "Speak," he said.

"Sir, it's Foley. We just saw someone that could be Blockade go across the road and into the park. He was carrying a big-ass toolbox and a flashlight."

Tammi's eyes widened. Without needing to be told, she turned the slab of concrete and started toward the park.

"Do you have a description?" asked Victor. "Anything that will let us pick him out of the crowd?"

"Uh, about five-ten, not skinny but not fat either. Had a hoodie on, and glasses. We didn't see his face."

"Good, good. Hold position. Let me know if anything changes." Victor nodded to Tammi to end the call. Once she'd done that, he said, "Text Kaiser. Two words. 'It's on'."

She grinned as she tapped in the words and sent the text.

"So, how we gonna do this?" asked Alabaster, raising his voice slightly over the wind-rush.

"There's one tall building near that park." Victor jabbed his thumb at his chest. "You'll drop me off there. Rune, drop Alabaster right on top of Blockade while he's fixing his suit, then wait in the air and keep an eye out for the other two. Alabaster, you get to subdue him and fuck his suit up. Once you've done that, we'll take him back to Kaiser and see if he's willing to see reason. Questions?"

Tammi didn't have any. Victor might've been a dick sometimes but he had the best plans.

<><>​

Throwaway Timeline

Coil

The guard at the security checkpoint looked moderately surprised when Thomas showed up.

"Can I help you with something, sir?"

"Yes. Something's just come up that I need the prisoner's input on. An ongoing situation, so we need answers now." He held up the papers. "Here's my authorisation."

"Copy that, Commander." The guard hit a button, and the slot in the front of the checkpoint motored open.

Thomas slipped the pages inside, making sure once more that his fingers were clear before it closed. Those things sometimes acted like they had a taste for blood. He didn't fidget or even glance at his watch while the guard checked the papers over; the attitude he projected was calm competence.

Just as it had done before, the door buzzed and clicked open. "You're clear to proceed, Commander. I'll buzz you at thirty minutes to wrap it up."

"I doubt I'll need that long, but I appreciate it." Moving at a steady pace—Piggot might have gone home for the day, but Renick would be undoubtedly curious about why someone was visiting Shadow Stalker at this hour—he headed into the prison block.

Now, let's see what sort of answers I can get before they foam me this time.

<><>​

Monochrome

Crouching in front of the partially unfolded suit, Taylor mimed working on it with a large wrench. Her protective shield was pushed out from her skin as far as it would go, bulking her out by a full inch in all directions. It was amazing how much larger this made her look, and how it concealed her body shape by careful adjustment of its contours. The two layers of clothing on top, with the hoodie over that, had completed the bulking-out process, giving her the profile of a medium-skinny guy rather than an actually skinny teenage girl.

Mr Clements had originally volunteered to be the faux Blockade, but they'd shot that idea down harder than Behemoth stomping on a lead balloon. When Taylor showed that she could go one better, he'd gotten on board with that idea instead, and offered the toolbox from his garage as a prop. The clanking of the tools inside, she felt, really sold the act.

She had an open phone line with Madison. Emma, who was acting as spotter on the tallest nearby building (and the place where they strongly suspected Victor might set up an overwatch situation) could text her, and she could relay the message to Taylor, via her phone earpiece. It was a clunky setup, but workable for the moment.

Right about then, her phone beeped with an incoming text, alerting her that something was going on. Madison's voice came through the phone call. "Emma says thirty seconds."

Taylor grinned. Waving the wrench in the general direction of Madison's powersuit made her feel silly, but the act was paying off. "Let's do this."

<><>​

Victor

Rune swooped the slab of concrete down over the top of the building just long enough for Alex to jump off, then she headed down toward the park. He could feel his heart rate increasing with the excitement of a plan coming together, so he applied biofeedback techniques to slow it down again. The last thing he wanted was for buck fever to spoil any shot he needed to take.

Kneeling down at the edge of the roof, he put the rifle to his shoulder and the scope to his eye. There was only one tiny patch of light in the park where there shouldn't be light, and he settled the scope onto it. A smile stretched his lips as he saw their quarry at last. The suit was partly folded up and the flashlight was lying on the grass while Blockade did something with a wrench.

He frowned. While the light was a little inconvenient, it shouldn't be drowning out the IR scope. But although he could see Blockade, he couldn't see the guy's IR glow. It was like he was a robot … or something of that sort.

"Shit," he muttered, clawing for his phone. Something was badly, badly wrong. Alabaster would be coming up on that scene right now, and he could hold his own even against a major Brute for a while, but Alex needed to call Rune in right—

A metal disc whipped past him and hit the rifle hard enough to knock it clear out of his hands and over the side of the roof. Deflected downward by the impact, it bounced off the edge of the parapet and struck his phone, shattering the screen and leaving his hand tingling and numb. Finally, it ricocheted back the way it had come, to the hand of the teenage girl who'd thrown it.

"Hi," said Firebird as she clicked the disc back into place on her forearm. "Nice evening we're having, isn't it?"

<><>​

Alabaster

Rune didn't want to get too low, but that was just fine. Paul could see their target, so he took a run-up and launched himself in that general direction. He tumbled through tree branches, breaking a few, and hit the ground hard enough to break a few bones. Seconds later, he was up again, drawing one of his pistols. Blockade was just a few yards away, turning to look at him and dropping the wrench.

Paul sneered. It wasn't like the heavy tool would've actually helped the Tinker against him, but at least he could've pretended to put up a fight. "Okay, fucker," he said, pointing the pistol at Blockade's gut. "Step away from the powersuit."

The guy did as he was told, standing up and taking a few steps away. Then, in a tone that sounded way too high-pitched for any normal guy, he said, "Go."

That was when the suit unfolded all the way and stood up, its eyes lighting up as its systems came active. Paul didn't hesitate. If the Tinker could remotely activate his suit, the next command would be to go on the attack, or to carry him out of danger. So Paul shot him, in the stomach, three times. Fuck you and the power-suit you rode in on.

The suit didn't power down, but neither did it try to protect its master. Instead, it activated its flight thrusters. Paul was bowled over backward as the suit took off straight up, a lot faster than it had done on the available footage.

The burns healed almost as fast as he got them, but when he looked over at where Blockade had been, he got a horrible shock. Still standing where he'd been, the Tinker was shedding the half-burned, half-shredded clothing, to reveal … fuck! That's not Blockade! That's Monochrome! This was a bait-and-switch!

He didn't bother shooting Monochrome again. Instead, he bolted. Victor's dry, lecturing voice came back to him, explaining how Monochrome could quite easily figure out how to kill him. He really didn't want to test that out.

For the first time since he'd gotten his powers, Alabaster ran for his life.

<><>​

Rune

When Tammi heard the three shots, she tensed. Oh, shit. Alabaster had to shoot Blockade. Kaiser's gonna be a bit pissed that we killed him. But still, those were the risks when it came to fucking with the Empire Eighty-Eight. Those who played stupid games got stupid prizes.

And then, with a growing thunder, the suit rose out of the shadowed park, outlined against the glow of its thrusters. Instinctively, she angled away from it, not wanting to risk a mid-air collision. But it changed its course toward her. She altered direction again. It followed.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit. Victor and Alabaster could take care of themselves. She had to evade this thing. Crouching low on the slab, she pushed all her power into making it outrun the thundering power-suit.

"Rune!" The voice was a magnified bellow. "Land that thing and surrender! My friends have already got your friends! You've got nowhere to go!"

Sticking one hand up to give the suit the finger, she angled over sharply, dropping toward the rows and rows of suburban houses below. Blockade's suit swept past way too close, nearly causing her to piss herself in fright. She'd thought it was a lot farther back than that.

"Fuck you!" she screamed back. "I'm Empire Eighty-Eight! We don't give up and we don't surrender!"

The suit came around in a sharper turn than she'd expected, but she knew she was more agile than that in the air. It came boring back in, and she realised it was faster than her. Okay, okay, I gotta do this smart.

Trying to just fly away from the suit with its creepy fucking glowing eyes was a total non-starter. But if she got down low enough so Blockade had to slow down or break shit with that clumsy fucking suit, she could maybe slip away in the confusion. It wasn't much of a plan—Victor could probably make a better one—but it was all she had.

As the suit came at her again, ginormous metal hands reaching out toward her, she dived for the ground again. As it dived in response, she realised too late that it was able to turn just enough to get too close for comfort. She jinked to the right, but one long arm came out, and cold metal fingers closed around her left arm, plucking her off the concrete slab. "Gotcha!"

"Let me go, you fucker!" She struggled, but the fingers were ridged for grip, and it had her good. In desperation, she tried tracing a rune on the armour itself—maybe she could make it fly where she wanted to go—but it evaporated as fast as she tried to make it stick. "Motherfucker! That's cheating!"

"No. That's good steel." She could hear the smugness in Blockade's voice. "Now land that chunk of concrete safely. You're under arrest, and all that jazz. You'll get read your rights when we can get you to the PRT."

"Fuck you!" she spat. "Put me down right the fuck now, or I crash it into someone's house!" Under her control, the chunk of concrete was heading down toward a quiet suburban street, gaining speed all the time.

Blockade didn't back down. "If you do that and they die, that's, uh, depraved indifference. With all your other crimes, they just might try you as an adult for that."

That didn't sound good. "Uh—"

"Pull it up! NOW!"

Rattled by the shout, Tammi obeyed, or tried to. The high-speed chunk of concrete had almost levelled out when it clipped a street-light, ricocheted off at a bad angle, and smashed in through the front window of one of the houses. It was going so fast that bits of it came out through the back wall before they came to a stop in the back yard.

Tammi had the feeling that she'd really, really screwed up this time. "Fuck. I tried to stop it. I did."

"Well, it could've been worse. The lights were off, no car in the driveway. Infrared shows nobody inside. You got lucky this time."

"Oh." Tammi didn't feel lucky.

<><>​

Coil

Throwaway Timeline

"Hello, Shadow Stalker."

The girl lying on the bench sat up and looked around. "What the fuck is it now? Are you trying to make me crack or something by interrupting my beauty sleep? And is sending a black guy in to interrogate me supposed to make me spill my guts?"

"No, it's not." He stayed away from the polycarbonate panel this time. "Cards on the table. I've heard that Monochrome has convinced Firebird and Blockade that you're a threat, so they're going after your family to keep you quiet. I need to know who they are, so I can stop them."

"The fuck they are!" Shadow Stalker was on her feet, her eyes wide with outrage. "They can't fucking do that!"

Thomas shrugged. "You're in here, and they're out there. What can you do to stop them?"

That was the trigger. "Okay, you want names?" Stalker's eyes narrowed again. "I got names. Firebird is Emma Barnes. She lives at …"

Safe Timeline

Holding a notepad, Thomas wrote the names and addresses down as fast as he could manage. He'd really hit the jackpot with this approach; she was spilling all the beans she had access to. She even outed Monochrome as 'that dorky fucking queef loser Taylor Hebert', giving her address as well, plus the fact that Taylor's father was the Head of Hiring at the Dockworkers' Association.

There were so many leverage points he could use right now. He knew the names, he knew the addresses, he knew the friends and he knew the names of the families. All he had to do was apply the right pressure in the right places, and the Real Thing would be—

He didn't even have time to flinch as the concrete slab blasted in through his front window and obliterated him.

Ex-Throwaway Timeline

As he was reeling from the unexpected cutoff of the other timeline, the alarms went off. He took two steps, then the foam-sprayers engulfed him in sticky yellow globs.

No. No. No. This isn't how it works!

This was supposed to be the throwaway timeline!

<><>​

Firebird

Emma observed Victor's stance and form as they circled each other on the rooftop. He was good; she could see where he'd blended a dozen forms together. But he wasn't good enough.

"We could go anytime now," she offered. "Or are you waiting for a tumbleweed or something to roll between us?"

"Why won't your skills go down?" he gritted. "And why can't I add them to mine?"

"Because it's my power, dipshit." She stepped in, watching how his guard shifted and changed to respond to her proximity. He was bigger and stronger than she was, and he was fast, and he'd stolen hundreds or thousands of man-hours of learned combat skills.

But he didn't have her power. Every martial art had its biases, and with biases came weaknesses in the form, however infinitesimal. She came in, feinted, blocked his counter with a disc, then smacked the side of his wrist when he extended it just a little too far. Before he could try to overwhelm her with strength, she was through the window of opportunity and gone again.

"Was that all you've got?" he taunted. "You barely touched me."

"Next time I hit that wrist, I fracture it." She held out her hand and made the classic 'come at me' gesture. "Your turn. See if you can tag me."

He was confident in his skills, but still cautious. She watched him come in, seeking an opening. Deliberately, she let him see two: a blatant one and a subtle one. No doubt suspecting a trap with the more obvious hole in her defenses, he went for the subtle one, a strike at her kneecap.

It was all going his way, right up until she went through his defenses, smacked his wrist again, then back-kicked the ankle that he'd intended to use to disable her kneecap. He tried to counterattack, failed as she faded away, then grunted as he put weight on the ankle she'd hit. "Goddamn it, stand still."

"Haha, fuck you, no." She set herself up again. "How's the wrist?"

"You know what? Fuck this." Victor did what Emma had expected him to do from the beginning, and pulled the pistol from his shoulder holster.

One disc hit the rooftop hard enough to spray gravel into his face, then smacked into his groin hard enough to make him scream and fold up. The other one knocked the pistol from his hand then bounced off his head just hard enough to put him on the ground unconscious for the next minute or so.

Emma kicked the pistol off to the side and retrieved her discs. "That's what you get for targeting my friends. Asshole."

<><>​

Monochrome

Alabaster definitely had a good turn of speed. Taylor supposed that it came from never getting tired. He sprinted to the nearest surveillance car, screaming at them to go, go, go. She followed along, letting the shadows hide her until the right moment.

The cars started to peel out, and he made a flying leap to go in through the rear window of the last one in line. They headed off down the street, accelerating to unsafe speeds.

Taylor jumped.

As the cars rocketed through the streets of Brockton Bay, heading back to wherever they considered a safe place, she crouched on the roof of Alabaster's ride.

This was gonna be fun.



End of Part Twenty-Eight

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-Nine: Wake-Up Call

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


Director Emily Piggot, PRT

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"Oh, for fuck's sake."

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"Renick, I swear to God …"

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beep

"Piggot."

"Emily, we have a situation."

"I don't hear Endbringer sirens, so do us both a favour and define 'situation' for me."

"Did you authorise Commander Calvert to get access to Shadow Stalker?"

She sat up in bed, adrenaline flushing away the fatigue. "That's a hard negative. Did he say I gave him verbal permission?"

"Worse. He faked his clearance. When the alarms went off, he was in there, interrogating her. We've foamed him and got him in holding, but he keeps claiming that you gave permission then rescinded it. Some of the men are starting to wonder."

"Fuck. That is a situation. I'll be there in twenty. Monitor him, but zero communications until I get there. Lock down all non-essential traffic in or out of the building."

"Master-stranger?"

"Affirmative."

"Understood."

<><>​

Monochrome

I lay flat on the car's roof, extending my outer protective field to break up my silhouette and shading it as best I could to camouflage myself. Alabaster's car and the two in front of it weren't swerving around the corners quite so dangerously as before, so I figured they thought I wasn't chasing them anymore. Technically, it was even true; they were carrying me along with them. I didn't have to do a thing except hang on.

I could've ripped open the roof of the car at any time to get to Alabaster (and get a repeat of that classic look on his face), but I was choosing not to for the time being. The reason was simple: I wanted to get to more than Alabaster.

If our plan was working right, Emma would be kicking Victor's ass and Madison would be chasing down Rune right at that moment. If we just stopped there, Kaiser would turtle up and go quiet.

With just Krieg and Othala at his disposal, I doubted that he'd make a move until he was able to shore up his cape numbers via calling in out-of-towners or (maybe) freeing some of his people from PRT holding. Lacking the big hitters, he probably wouldn't be able to pull off a jailbreak, so my money was on reinforcements.

While the others took down their opponents, I was seeing where Alabaster ran to, in the hope that we could roll up more of the Empire than we'd already gotten. Krieg or Othala would be good; Kaiser would be perfect. The harder we hit the Empire, the more of its strength we ripped away with each new capture, the easier it would be for the PRT and the cops to squash it altogether when the time came.

And if he was running to some safe house to pour himself a drink and console himself that he could've totally taken me, then I'd just grab him and drag him in to the PRT building by the left leg. At the end of the day, I wasn't all that fussy. Every Empire capture was a good Empire capture.

<><>​

Director Piggot

To Emily's satisfaction, Renick was taking the situation seriously. By the time she pulled up to the entrance of the underground parking lot, there were two armed guards posted up there, each with the full complement of confoam sprayer and assault rifle. One kept a lookout while the other scanned her ID and her face. Even when the scanner beeped for a positive match, she had to supply the password of the day before she was allowed to drive inside.

Climbing out of her car, she crossed to the elevator. She was certain she was being scanned again as she rode up to the top floor, but she didn't give a damn. If she'd been sensitive about being under constant surveillance, she wouldn't have taken the job in the first place.

The troopers guarding every floor had evidently been notified that she was on the way up, because they didn't react to her stepping out of the elevator. It was only when she was halfway along the corridor to Renick's office that she heard the roar from overhead and paused, looking up. The troopers did the same, but she was certain they were querying the troopers covering the roof entrance about the situation.

Continuing on her way, she nodded to the trooper standing guard outside Renick's office. He checked her ID again, then nodded. "You can go in, ma'am."

When she opened the door and stepped inside, Renick was just putting the phone down. "Oh, good, you're here." His voice was entirely devoid of anything resembling sarcasm.

"Oh, good," she echoed dryly. "I'm here. What was that noise just before? It sounded like the last time Blockade landed up there."

"It was Blockade again, with Firebird along for the ride." He sounded unsurprised at her deduction. "They were dropping off Victor and Rune. I told the troopers to foam the prisoners for the moment, until we have time to deal with them."

"Condition?" It was a question she was duty-bound to ask, especially after the intense beatings the independent heroes had handed out to Hookwolf, Lung and Oni Lee.

"Rune was very vocal about her wrenched shoulder, otherwise unharmed. Victor, according to Sergeant Calhoun, has had the snot royally kicked out of him but is otherwise healthy."

Emily was acquainted with Sergeant Calhoun, and trusted the man's judgement when it came to matters like that. "That's impressive work. Victor's a slippery customer at the best of times. I suppose this also answers a few questions about how agile that suit is in the air."

He grimaced. "There is a downside. When Blockade grabbed Rune, she threatened to flatten a house with the concrete slab she was riding at the time. He talked her out of it, but she still accidentally hit one. He said there was nobody home but passed on the address anyway. Figured we'd want to know."

"Hmm." It could've been a lot worse, she decided. Some villains went for the fuck-you the moment it looked like their plans were being dismantled, while others took it in good grace. The ones that decided that hurting or killing a bunch of innocents was better than going to jail, she considered almost as low as the ones who liked to hurt people for fun. Which also described the Empire, come to think of it. "Get it checked out. Sure as hell, someone'll try to blame us for it somehow. It'll look better if we're on top of it from the word go."

"Understood." Without hesitation, he pivoted to the reason she'd been pulled out of bed at this late hour. "So, about Calvert."

She nodded curtly. "Brief me."

"Okay. I'm not sure how he pulled it off, but once he sent in a request to see Shadow Stalker, he managed to fool the system into thinking he actually had the clearance. I've got people looking into the data trail right now. When it bounced off your terminal and popped up in mine, I denied it. About ten seconds later, the alarms started going off. We foamed him and got him into a cell, but he's been leaning hard on blaming you for a paperwork screwup."

Emily considered that. "He submitted two requests earlier, claiming she'd be able to assist him in a case. I refused both, mainly because he hadn't specified any particular case that she'd be able to help with. Also, because of the Real Thing security issue. Any indication of what he was grilling her about?"

He shook his head. "We tried asking. She's trying to leverage this into a lighter sentence before she says a word."

"God knows, she was always a stubborn little shit." She ran her thumbnail over her lower lip. "Worst case, what did he want to know, and what did she tell him?"

He had to know what she was thinking, but he came at it in a roundabout manner anyway. "There's only one thing she knows about that's of any value to anyone. But then why would they throw away all their backdoor knowledge—because they had to be using backdoors—to interrogate an ex-hero in a high-security area? Up until the request hit my inbox, the operation was perfect. Afterward, it was a shambles. What was their exit strategy, and why did it fail?"

"We don't yet know that it failed," she warned him. "Calvert could still be a disposable pawn in all this. I personally don't think so, but he could be. Still, you make good points. There's only one thing they could have wanted from her, but the sheer mess they've made of the aftermath has badly degraded the value of the information."

"You're talking about the identities of the Real Thing," Renick said, finally acknowledging the elephant in the room. "She must be the only one he knows for sure has that information. And because we now know about the data-heist, we can warn them. Which should give them time to warn their family members and take protective measures, ahead of anything that the presumed thieves can do."

"That's assuming Calvert's not the beginning and end of all this," Emily agreed. "What I'm personally curious about is, if he's doing this all himself, why does he want that specific information so badly?"

"Another question we're going to have to ask him," Renick observed. "One of many."

Emily nodded to acknowledge the point. "Okay, let's double-team this. Have Calvert checked over for any signs of being a projection or duplicate, or any other overt signs of Mastery or Stranger status, including an MRI." If the problematic Commander turned out to be a cape, it would simplify matters in some directions and raise more questions in others; if he wasn't, that too would be a data point of some importance. "In the meantime, I'm going to be contacting the Real Thing and letting them know about this."

Renick didn't bother asking her if she was sure it was the right course of action. They knew each other well enough by now to not ask questions like that. Giving her a nod, he sat down again and picked up the phone.

Turning on her heel, she went to the connecting door that led through to her office. This was going to be a difficult conversation, and she intended to be sitting down for it.

<><>​

Firebird

"So, how cool was that?" asked Emma from atop the battlesuit's shoulder. They were waiting in a section of overgrown parkland between Empire territory and what technically still belonged to the ABB. Or would, until the cops cleared out the last of the gang activity there. "It worked like a dream." Taking on Victor and cleaning his clock like that had been a little like facing off against her past bitchy self and getting some payback in for Taylor. And just like she'd deserved it back then, Victor definitely deserved it now.

"Mostly, yeah," agreed Madison. "Still a bit bummed about the house, though. Poor bastard was working late or gone out for a fast-food run, and he's gonna come back and find his place wrecked. That's gonna ruin his whole year."

"Yeah, true." Emma tried to reach for any positives in all that. "But his home-and-contents ought to be able to cover it though, right? We reported that it was Rune who did it, and Dad says villain damage has been part of the boilerplate for insurance contracts for years now."

"Well, that's true, I guess. I just hope he hasn't lost anything too important. Big-ass chunks of concrete tend to fuck up anything they hit."

"Well, it could've been worse. He could've been home, and—" Emma's phone, in a pouch at her hip, rang. "Hold that thought." Reaching up, she tapped the earpiece. "Hello?"

Instead of her father, the voice was someone else she recognised. "Firebird. It's Director Piggot."

"Director, hey." Emma tried to figure out a good reason for this call, and came up blank. "Is this about Victor and Rune?" Please don't tell me they've escaped already.

"No." The Director's voice was blunt and to the point. "I'm calling to let you know we've had an information breach. Someone got to Shadow Stalker."

A chill traced her way down Emma's spine. "Got to her? Did she escape?"

"No, thank God. One of our officers finagled his way past the security, but we discovered him before he could get out again. He's currently in custody, awaiting interrogation. We're assuming he had time to ask her about the most damaging things she could tell him about you."

"So, a mole." This was bad, but just how bad was yet to be seen. "Do you know if he managed to pass it on to anyone? What else can you tell me?" Does anyone else know what he knows, she desperately wanted to ask.

"There's no indication either way." Piggot was being purely factual, something Emma appreciated. "The lower levels are blocked against phone signals, so he couldn't have simply made a call or sent a text. Shadow Stalker is being uncooperative and evasive about what he asked and what she said, so we have to assume the worst on both sides there."

Which came as exactly zero surprise to Emma. "So, what can you tell me about the officer? Who's he working for, and how did you not already know about him?" In her own mind, she made a bet that the guy was a secret Empire sympathiser who'd been activated by Kaiser following the Hookwolf beatdown.

The Director hesitated for a moment. "He's … someone I've had my doubts about, but who's proved almost impossible to nail down up until now. If my suspicions are correct, he's an opportunist who works alone, rather than as a mole for someone else. Best case, you just helped flush out someone who's been causing the department headaches for the last six months. Worst case … well, worst case is why I'm warning you. So you can warn your families."

Well, there went that bet. "Thanks. I appreciate the heads-up. What happens now? What can you tell me?"

"Shadow Stalker will remain in lockdown, and we're going to be going through both our procedures and the guy who broke them with a fine-tooth comb." Director Piggot sounded pissed-off enough that she may well have meant that literally. "Once we have any details that specifically relate to your personal security situation, we'll be filling you in on what you need to know."

"Thanks." Emma paused. "You know, I'm actually impressed here."

"What about? God knows, I don't see much to be impressed about right now."

"We've managed to get through this entire conversation so far without you dangling the idea of us joining the Wards and/or Protectorate as a way of guaranteeing safety for our families." Emma raised her eyebrows. "Just gonna say, your self-control must be phenomenal."

There was a snort of what sounded like amusement. "In all honesty, I considered the idea and rejected it. The best way to convince someone of a particular course of action is to make them think it's their idea in the first place. If you're not interested, you're not interested. But just out of curiosity, is Monochrome okay? The troopers on the roof said she wasn't along tonight."

"Oh, she's just fine." Emma looked around as Madison raised one large metallic hand with her thumb in the air. "While we took Victor and Rune in, she's been following Alabaster back to the rest of the Empire. See you soon." Ending the call, she tucked the phone away. "She's back online?"

"Nice steady signal." Madison's tone, even with the synthesiser adding masculine depth, sounded eager. "Hold tight. Liftoff in ten."

Emma grinned as she rose to a crouching position, gripping a handhold. Taylor's phone hadn't been showing a signal up until now because it had been inside her infinitely adjustable yet bizarrely impermeable force field. The fact that she was letting it show up now meant that she'd found the bad guys' lair, or had somehow lost the trail. Either way, she was saying 'come meet up with me'.

With anyone else, even herself, Emma would've been dubious about having just one of their own following Alabaster home. The chances of being discovered and dogpiled were just too high. But with Taylor, she had no such worries.

She's the strongest one of us all. Always was, even before we got powers.

<><>​

Director Piggot

After the call ended, Emily sat there, gathering her thoughts. Everything's happening at once. Could Calvert be working for the Empire? It would make sense, but she'd seen no indication so far.

Grateful for the quiet, she stilled her racing thoughts and began teasing through the information she had for anything that might jump out at her.

Shadow Stalker was almost certainly lying. If Calvert had offered a way to hurt the Real Thing, she would've pounced on it in a heartbeat.

If Calvert had indeed been the one behind the information peddling, then trying to snag this information would be right up his alley. But the previous investigations hadn't been able to pin him down on anything. Why had he stumbled so badly this time? What was different?

She spent a moment of thought on the idea that the Real Thing had sent just Monochrome to chase down Alabaster. It was kind of fitting; the man who never stopped, opposed by the girl who couldn't be stopped.

Finally, she heaved a sigh and got up from her chair. It was time to see how Renick was doing with his side of the investigation.

When she stepped into his office, he looked up and waved her over. "Got an odd coincidence for you."

Her interest perked up. In her experiences, coincidences were rarely that simple. "I'm listening."

"You may recall that Rune wrecked a house with her concrete slab." He waited for her nod, then kept going. "I had someone check that out. It belongs to Commander Calvert."

She blinked, twice. "Well, I will be sincerely damned. That is definitely a gold-plated coincidence, and no mistake. Do you have a timeline for that?"

Renick nodded, patently pleased that she'd asked. "Only a rough cut, but our best estimate puts the wrecking of the house at exactly the same time as the alarms went off, plus or minus ten seconds."

Emily snapped her fingers as the epiphany burst behind her eyes. "That's got to be it. Our missing link. The reason why his intel gathering mission went so badly FUBAR on the back end, especially since all the other data he gathered and sold never even raised a peep until after the buyers used it." She'd decided that he was guilty of everything she already suspected of him; this was just more of the same.

"I … don't get it." Renick frowned. "How can his house being wrecked dismantle his exit strategy?"

"Powers," she said concisely. "Somehow, some way, he's got a powers-related bolt-hole that requires his house to be intact. Which means he's either a cape, or he's got one on speed-dial. I'm thinking he bought a teleporter from a Tinker, one that can pull him to it. Probably carries some kind of otherwise-innocuous gear that acts like a beacon."

Renick's expression showed that he absolutely got it. "And the slab broke it, cutting him off from his instant getaway point." A moment later, his excitement faded. "But Shadow Stalker could still ID him and talk about it. Plus, we've got security footage of him in the building, including going down into that section. If he tried to claim being home as an alibi, especially with his car in the building parking lot, there would be a lot of questions asked. And the security backdoors he used would still be found. Every other time, he's never even been in the building."

"Mm. Dammit." Emily chewed on her thumbnail. "There's something there. He's a cape, and the slab wrecked his plans somehow. I'd put money on it." What it was, she still didn't know, but it was there.

Deputy Director Renick nodded. "For what it's worth, I agree with you. How did it go with the Real Thing?"

Emily chuckled, her sour mood momentarily alleviated. "They took it a lot better than I expected. Didn't even yell at me. Oh, and they're not done with going after the Empire tonight. You might want to warm up a few more cells."

"Is it just me or is it downright intimidating how enthusiastic they are about going after the bad guys?" Renick sounded plaintive. "The last time we brought in more than two villains at once was when the Triumvirate came to town and took Purity, Night and Fog out of the picture, and even that was a brawl. These three are going after Kaiser, Krieg, Alabaster and Othala; I don't know about you, but I think they've got a better than even chance of pulling it off."

"Intimidating's one word for it." Emily smiled slightly. "I might not be thrilled that they're being less than subtle about it, but when the villains pull out the stops, then heroes have to either back right off or match force with force. And nothing I've ever seen about the Real Thing says to me that they're the type to back off." She headed for his office door. "I'm going down to sit in on his interrogation. Ping me if anything else pops."

He gave her a distracted nod, his eyes already back on his screen. "Will do."

As she rode down in the elevator, Emily considered how she was going to have to adjust her city-wide strategy. With the last of the big-name villain gangs captured or nearly so, she was going to need to discourage others from moving into town.

Zero tolerance, she mused. I figure we can pull it off. Especially once the last information leak has been plugged.

She was positively looking forward to uncovering Commander Thomas Calvert's secrets. They promised to be fascinating.



End of Part Twenty-Nine

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Thirty: Payoff

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



Director Emily Piggot, PRT

While Emily absolutely wanted to speak to Calvert and figure out his deal, she decided there was another stop she needed to make first. Thus, she turned left instead of right after leaving the elevator, and headed for the section where Shadow Stalker was being kept in solitary. The guard on duty straightened to attention when he saw her; he looked nervous as hell, which she understood all too well. Screwing up, or even being seen to screw up, is never good for the career.

"Director Piggot, here to see Shadow Stalker," she announced.

"Understood, ma'am." The guard took a deep breath. "I'm going to need to see your ID and get the code of the day from you." The 'if it's not too much trouble' wasn't quite vocalised, but she heard it loud and clear all the same.

"That's quite alright." She produced the required ID and held it up to the Perspex for him to verify. "Code zeta Legend Eagleton four."

He ran a hand-held scanner over the ID to pick up the non-visible components, then nodded when it beeped agreeably. "Thank you, ma'am. You are clear to proceed."

She nodded in return and put the ID away. Normally she would've been buzzed straight through, but she didn't blame them for being careful after a security breach of this magnitude. The only reason the guard wasn't calling through to Renick's office to ensure she had clearance was that she was the one who issued clearances here.

The door unlocked for her, and she stepped through. It was a short walk to where Shadow Stalker was being kept incommunicado, and she used that time to mentally refine the questions she already wanted to ask. There were only a few of them, because there was just one thing she needed to know above all else before going on to Calvert.

Shadow Stalker looked up sullenly when Emily came to a halt outside her cell. She said nothing, which was slightly more preferable than screaming profanities. Emily wondered briefly if she knew what was going on, or if she was too submerged in her own problems to care.

"Shadow Stalker," Emily said. "You had a visitor earlier." It was neither a question nor an accusation. She presented it as a simple statement of fact, and left it there.

After a few moments, Stalker glowered up at her. "Yeah? So what if I did?"

"Did he give you his name?" Again, it was presented as simply as possible.

Emily watched the teenager wrestle over the problem, trying to see the pros and cons of staying silent or speaking up, then finally she shook her head jerkily. "Nope. Just started talking. Said Mon—" She cut herself off and shut up again.

Already, Emily was seeing the shape of this. "He told you Monochrome and the rest of the Real Thing were doing something that needed to be stopped, didn't he? And if he was going to stop them, he needed all the information you could give him about them." Emily wondered what Calvert could've led with that would loosen Stalker's tongue.

If anything, Shadow Stalker's glower intensified, along with a healthy dash of indignation. "Said they were going after my family! They can't do that!"

Ah. Yes, that would do it. "Well, I'm pleased to be able to say that he was lying through his teeth. Your family is safe, and always was." Emily raised her eyebrows fractionally. "So, how much did you tell him?"

Shadow Stalker just set her jaw stubbornly. "I want my lawyer."

Emily nodded, as though the girl had just outlined everything she'd spilled; and in a way, she basically had. "Now that's the first smart thing you've said all night. We're still arranging for the lawyer. Maybe sometime tomorrow. Have a good rest." Turning, she walked away from the cell.

So she told him everything, she mused as she let herself out through the guard post. Spilled chapter and verse. Not totally surprising.

Which meant that Calvert almost certainly knew everything Shadow Stalker did about the Real Thing. It was something to keep in mind.

<><>​

Alabaster

Paul was unwilling to admit even to himself how often he'd looked out the back window after the car drove away from the disastrous ambush. The dawning realisation that the Real Thing had anticipated Victor's plan and turned it around on them was only surpassed in suckiness by the fact that neither Victor nor Rune were answering their phones. He could buy that maybe one or the other was unable to reach their cell right at that moment, but not both at once.

Kaiser is going to be so goddamn pissed.

Even worse: while Victor was trained in every counter-interrogation skill known to mankind, Rune was basically a bratty teenager. If they offered her any sort of plea deal, Paul could not guarantee that she wouldn't go for it. From what he understood, she'd triggered while in juvey, so she'd be willing to jump through a fuck-ton of hoops to ensure she didn't go back.

With this screwup, if they'd both been captured, the Empire Eighty-Eight would be whittled down to just four cape members: Kaiser, Krieg, Othala and himself. Kaiser wouldn't be the only one to be angry; Othala would want to get Victor back, while Krieg would want to know why Paul hadn't been there to back the other two up. Citing Monochrome as the reason he'd retreated might give him a pass, but they'd probably still be hacked off at him.

The car pulled up into the driveway of a perfectly normal suburban house, continuing on until it pulled to a halt inside the garage. The engine didn't shut off until the door had swung down, blocking off any view from the street. "Kaiser?" he asked as he opened the door and got out.

"Waiting inside, sir," reported the driver of the car.

Yeah, I just bet he is. As impervious to ongoing harm as he was, Paul still felt a quiver of unease as he opened the door that connected through to the house proper.

This was not going to be fun.

<><>​

Director Emily Piggot, PRT

Containment foam didn't do anyone any favours, and Thomas Calvert was no exception. His uniform was stained and creased, and it looked like he still had half-melted streaks of it in his hair. From the expression on his face, it hadn't done his temper any good either.

Or perhaps that was down to either the fact that she'd imposed the no-communications rule (taking away any chance of him talking his way out of captivity) or that he'd been caught at all. Some people, she understood, took that sort of thing personally.

Not that she gave a shit about his happiness, or lack thereof. The only person whose happiness Emily Piggot cared about was Emily Piggot. Not by coincidence, she was also the only person whose happiness she had any control over.

His head came up and he tensed when the door to the interrogation room opened, but the manacles fastening him to the table ensured that he couldn't do much more than that. "Director!" he said, reaching out to her with his cuffed hands. "Why are you doing this?"

She ignored his attempt to draw her out, and shut the door behind her. Then she pulled the chair out and sat opposite him.

"This isn't like you," he implored. "You're acting erratically. You need to get yourself checked out." Raising his voice, he addressed the mirrored window behind her. "She issued my clearance, then rescinded it! This isn't on me, it's on her!"

"Save your breath," she advised him. "There's nobody back there. And we both know I rejected every request you made to see Shadow Stalker. I just want to know the answer to three questions. First, who are you working for? And second, how did you think you were going to get away?"

She leaned back in her chair, watching his face and letting her words hang in the air.

Finally, he broke, as she'd known he would. "You said three questions."

She gave him a brief half-smile. "Oh, the MRI machine will be giving me the answer to the third one."

"You can't do that," he said almost automatically. "That's unreasonable search and seizure."

"Really?" Emily tilted her head. "I have reason to believe that you're a cape, which clashes with your employment within the PRT in a highly illegal manner. Convince me you're not a cape, and we don't have to go there."

"I can't prove a negative!" His voice echoed off all four walls.

"So tell me how you intended to not end up in this very room once you'd finished talking to Shadow Stalker. Because I know you, Calvert. You never fuck up." She leaned forward across the table. "So, how did a chunk of concrete smashing through your house put you in the shit from across town?"

For the first time since she'd entered the interrogation room, he shut up. Watching him carefully, Emily picked up on two things. First, whatever the answer to her question was, it would simply open Pandora's box to more queries, and Calvert did not want that. Second, he hadn't yet done what Stalker had done within thirty seconds, which was ask for his lawyer.

Sitting back in her seat, she rubbed her thumbnail across her lips. Those two things were related somehow. In the Stalker instance, he'd done something he shouldn't have done with the expectation that somehow he'd skate from all consequences, while here and now he hadn't done something that someone with his experience should've been doing from the beginning, and shutting down the line of questioning. Again with the expectation that … whatever she learned, she wouldn't be able to use?

Assuming he's a cape, what power could let him do both of those things, and walk at the end of the day if his house was still intact? Because I can't see simply having inside information on the Real Thing being a good enough justification for throwing away his entire PRT career, even if he did get away somehow. They're good, but they're not that good.

"You're a cape." She knew it for a certainty. They'd still do the MRI scan, but that was merely a formality at this point in time. "It's not just teleportation with a base station in your house. It's something a lot more devious, a lot more insidious." Both adjectives which were entirely applicable to the man sitting before her.

Calvert glared at her. He still wasn't saying a word, which was interesting. Back when he'd been trying to frame Emily as being a Master or a Stranger, he wouldn't shut up. But now it looked like she'd need forceps to get anything out of him.

It was also odd that he hadn't tried the 'Master victim' angle himself. It wouldn't have gotten him out of it, but there was a chance it would've raised doubts in anyone who didn't have the information she had. And besides, Mastery or no Mastery, a positive MRI scan would drop him in the shit.

Another tick in the 'not doing something that might have helped' box. Maybe because he knows it wouldn't work? But how could he know that unless he already tried and failed?

She was close to something, she knew it. It was on the tip of her tongue, metaphorically speaking. Tried, and failed. Tried, and failed. Why does that sound like something I should be thinking harder about?

There was a knock on the door of the interrogation room. She rose and went to open it. Outside was a med-tech with a gurney, the IV bag already set up. "The MRI's ready now, ma'am," the tech said.

Calvert twisted around and looked out the door. The expression on his face was worth a thousand words, about nine hundred and ninety of them being profanity. "I do not consent to this."

Emily smiled slightly. "I didn't expect you to." They wouldn't be putting him all the way under, just far enough that he wouldn't make any untoward movements while in the MRI tunnel. And while they were doing that, she'd be able to pursue her thoughts down the rabbit hole she'd found herself in. Tried, and failed.

She wasn't sure where that phrase would lead, and she knew damn well she'd regret it in the morning, but this was far too important to delegate.

<><>​

Kaiser

Max had put some thought into his posture, so when Alabaster opened the door from the garage, he was standing in the middle of the living room, feet shoulder-width apart, hands clasped behind his back. For extra impact, he was fully armoured and flanked by Krieg and Othala. Alabaster paused momentarily when he saw the reception he was walking into, then came ahead anyway.

"Shut the door," Max ordered. There were only the four of them there. He didn't need any of the rank and file to hear what he was about to say to Alabaster. No matter what passed between him and his subordinates, it was essential that the non-cape members of the gang saw them as all being on the same page.

Alabaster obeyed, then stepped forward. "I can explain," he began.

"I certainly hope so." Krieg's tone was menacing in its steadiness. "You abandoned your comrades and ran away from a fight. I thought you were supposed to be Alabaster, the unstoppable man?"

"Monochrome happened, that's what!" Alabaster's voice raised in return.

"Fuck Monochrome! Where's Victor? And Rune?" Othala's fists were clenched.

"I haven't been able to contact them," Alabaster admitted. "The ambush … the Real Thing must have figured it out, and set a trap."

"Bullshit!" Othala burst out. "Victor's plans never fail!"

Max raised his hand, and she subsided. "What happened, exactly?"

Alabaster took a deep breath; Max watched him reset in the middle of exhaling again. "We had lookouts posted in the area where Blockade landed his suit, and we were orbiting at a distance so we didn't draw attention. A couple of the lookouts spotted a guy carrying a toolbox into the park. We figured it was Blockade, so Rune dropped me off, then I'm pretty sure she put Victor on a high building nearby with his sniper rifle and went to provide air cover."

"All of which was the plan, yes." Max nodded. "Did anyone get a good look at Blockade? I'm presuming this was Blockade?"

"It wasn't. It was Monochrome." Alabaster grimaced. "She looked like a guy in a hoodie wearing glasses, and none of us picked it up in time. The suit was right there in the park, but I've got no idea how we didn't find it before. Monochrome was pretending to work on it when I came up. She said something like 'go' and the suit woke up. I shot her, figuring that if Blockade had a few bullets in him, he wouldn't be able to use the suit. But then the suit took off and when I looked at Monochrome I could see who she really was. Blockade must have already been in the suit."

Max considered that. It was a classic bait-and-switch, and Alabaster and the others had been neatly suckered into the trap. "Do you know what happened then with the suit? And what about Firebird?"

"No." Alabaster shook his head. "Victor already told me that there's nothing I can do to beat Monochrome, and she can probably figure out how to kill me if she fights me long enough, so I ran for it."

"You said Rune would have placed Victor on a high rooftop." Krieg tapped the backs of his fingers into the opposite palm. "How many tall buildings were there in the area?"

"Just the one. Why?" Alabaster frowned, not getting the point of the question.

Max figured it out easily enough. "It was the obvious place to put a sniper. Firebird was likely waiting up there for him." What came next was as unpalatable as it was inevitable. "We haven't heard back, so she must have beaten him."

"What? No!" Othala shook her head. "Nobody beats Victor. You know that."

"Victor himself said she had no holes in her fighting style, and that he couldn't pull her skills down," Max reminded her. "On a level playing field, with those throwing discs of hers for offence and defence, I strongly suspect that she really could beat him."

"And Rune?" Krieg's question was, as far as Max could tell, mostly rhetorical. "If Blockade went after her, could he catch her?"

Max hated to agree with everyone else's suspicions, but there was nothing for it. "She hasn't contacted us either, so we're going to have to …" He broke off at the sound of muted thunder coming closer. "Is that Blockade now?"

"It certainly sounds like it." Krieg went to a window and peered out through the curtains. "There's no way he could've tracked us here, is there?"

All eyes went to Alabaster, who hastily shook his head. "No, not a hope. Monochrome didn't even touch me, and from the way Blockade builds stuff, one of his tracking bugs would have to be the size of a cell-phone." He turned all the way around with his arms out to the sides; Max had to admit that he wasn't carrying anything that could be construed as a tracking beacon.

Othala pointed toward the ceiling. "Then why is that getting louder? It sounds like he's right overhead."

"It does, doesn't it?" Max was liking this less and less all the time. "Othala, give Alabaster super-speed so he can do a perimeter check."

"On it." Othala stepped forward and slapped Alabaster on the shoulder. "Okay, you're good for the next two minutes."

"Thanks." Alabaster blurred toward the back door; Max heard it open and close in less than a second.

The thunder overhead seemed to be moving on, which was a good sign. Whatever Blockade was looking for in this section of town, he wasn't going to find it.

The back door opened and closed again, somewhat more slowly. Overhead, the sound of Blockade's thrusters seemed to cut out. "That was quick," Krieg called out.

Monochrome stepped into view. "Aww, thanks. It's nice to be recognised."

"Shit!" screamed Othala; the word was drowned out halfway through by a thunderous roar that shook the whole house, while orange light glared in through the front windows. A solid THUMP rattled the windows.

Krieg went to back away from the window, but he was too late; a massive metallic hand burst in through the glass and grabbed him. He vanished a second later, dragged out through the same hole. Max was irresistibly reminded of a horror movie monster, appearing from nowhere to claim its latest victim.

Othala slapped Max on the shoulder then bolted for the stairs, taking them two at a time. Max glanced at the floor between himself and Monochrome, causing a wall of interlinked blades to shoot up and bar the way. He could feel the super-strength that Othala had granted him flaring within his body. It wouldn't last long, but perhaps it would let him defeat—

The blades creaked and snapped aside as Monochrome casually stepped through the barrier. She didn't even seem to notice they were there; they certainly didn't seem to impede her in any way. "So hey," she said casually. "I hear you were trying to catch Blockade out. That's not very nice. We were gonna give you a miss for a while, but—"

Lunging forward, he threw everything he had into a stab with the sharpest blade he could manufacture. It hit her chest and bent, the tip curling around like a question mark. The metal creaked, then snapped off short.

"And then there was one." Firebird came strolling down the stairs, with an unconscious Othala slung over her shoulder. "So, Kaiser. Serious question here. Do you want to surrender before or after Monochrome here beats nine shades of shit out of you, and makes a good try for ten?"

"Aww," Monochrome observed playfully. "And here I was gonna see if I could hit him hard enough to knock him clear out of his armour."

Firebird rummaged around in a belt pouch with her free hand. "I've got fifty here that says his boots stay on."

Max was good at reading the room. He'd been doing it most of his adult life, after all. And what his gut told him was that these two weren't actually joking. Firebird honestly thought Monochrome could hit that hard. And given the mess she'd made of Lung, as well as Menja and Fenja, who was he to argue?

Hastily, he put his hands up. "I surrender."

Whatever else happened from this moment on, the moment that Kaiser was outed as Max Anders, the Empire's connection with Medhall would be exposed. And that would be the beginning of the end of the Empire Eighty-Eight.

God damn it.

<><>​

Director Emily Piggot, PRT

Well, this is interesting." Emily tapped her finger on the glossy image that had been printed out for her. "Deputy Director Renick, would you say this looks like an active corona pollentia to you? Complete with gemma?"

"I would indeed, Director Piggot." Renick had to know they were playing this up for Calvert's benefit, but he went along with her little act anyway. "It seems to me that Commander Calvert has been working for the PRT without informing us that he has cape powers. I believe that's highly illegal."

"And I believe you are correct." Emily looked over at Calvert, who had been administered the antagonist for the sedative once the MRI session was over. "Mr Calvert. Over and above the Shadow Stalker thing, we now have a couple more charges to put on your sheet. Is there anything, anything at all, that you'd like to tell us that might serve to reduce the penalties you're going to be suffering?"

Whatever Calvert's powers were, it was a good thing they didn't involve Blaster beams of any kind, or Emily would've died then and there. "I refuse to say any more until I have a lawyer to speak to," he gritted out.

"As is your right." Emily handed the image back to Renick. "But you're going to listen, because I've figured it out. I know what your cape power is, and how you've been doing what you've been doing."

"Really?" asked Renick. She hadn't run this past him, so he was hearing it for the first time. "Even if he isn't interested, I am."

"Oh, he's interested." She seated herself opposite Calvert and looked into the man's eyes. "The clue for me was 'tried, but failed'. You see, there's several things you should've been trying to do—asking for your lawyer, pretending to have been Mastered—that you just didn't do. Adding that to the fact that there were things you did that would've had obvious consequences no matter how you tried to avoid them, when you're not a stupid man, made me wonder."

She paused to stifle a yawn, and Renick frowned. "I must be getting slow in my old age. I'm not making the connection."

Calvert's face may as well have been carved from stone, but Emily didn't look away. "Remember what I was saying about 'tried, but failed'? What if he was trying—and failing—those things I talked about, at the same time as he wasn't?"

"But … he wasn't trying them. He didn't." Renick hadn't quite made the connection yet, not the way Emily had.

"But he did." Emily let her teeth show in a grin that had nothing to do with humour and everything to do with savage triumph. "At the same time as he was interrogating Shadow Stalker … he was relaxing at home. And the moment he got caught, it would never have happened. He would always have been relaxing at home. And that was why he took the chance."

"Ah." The metaphorical lightbulb finally clicked on over Renick's head. "A parallel timeline? Two versions of him?"

Emily nodded. "That's my take, yes. When things get difficult, he can keep trying different things to get out of trouble, but when he's got elbow room, he uses one timeline as the fallback. When the concrete block went through his house, it did so in both timelines and killed the version of him that was there, cutting off his escape route."

"And thus, he was stuck in the one where he got foamed." Renick frowned. "So, your theory is that he can only go into two different timelines, but he can share information between them?"

"It's the only one that makes any sense." Emily stood; eyes still locked on Calvert's. "If he'd had access to a third one, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because we never would've been able to trap him after Shadow Stalker. And if he couldn't share information between timelines, it wouldn't be much use to him. He's probably got a second timeline running right now, but given that both versions of him are chained to the table, it's not getting him anywhere."

"I can't argue with any of that." Renick looked Calvert over, then turned back to Emily. "So, what's our plan going forward?"

She frowned. "I doubt we'll be able to pin the other data thefts on him unless we can get a really good prosecutor, but we've got him for hacking the system and for the unauthorised access to Shadow Stalker. And of course, for being a secret cape in the PRT."

"Huh." Renick shook his head. "I wonder what he's doing in the other timeline?"

Emily chuckled darkly. "Given that we're still looking at him in this one, the other version of me probably figured all this out sooner."

Calvert's glare followed her out of the room.



End of Part Thirty

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Thirty-One: Sealing the Deal

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



Recap: Monochrome

As the car approached the garage of the two-storey house, I crouched and then leaped onto the sloping roof. Tiny claws protruding from the soles of my feet gave me all the traction I needed, and I went up to the roof-ridge and down the other side like a startled cat. Hanging from the gutter by my feet (I loved my powers) I peered in through the window to see what was going on. To my satisfaction, Kaiser was there, as were the other two remaining members of the Empire Eighty-Eight.

Excellent. Clean sweep time. Getting my phone out, I waited for the interior door to open and Alabaster to appear before I sent the text confirming the location. It wouldn't do for the villains to simply pack up and leave now that Whitey McWhiterson had shown up, after all.

Relaxing my feet, I dropped down into the back yard and set my protective cover to 'mottled gray' to blend in with the shadows. When they got to the house, Emma and Madison would have the front door covered. If anyone came out the back door, they were mine.

My preparation was rewarded when the back door suddenly opened and closed. It was Alabaster, and he was moving fast. I went totally immobile until he blurred toward the corner of the house, then went after him.

He was fast, but when I wanted my power to go faster, it could. What felt like the next ten seconds or so went by in flickering moments, which blended together into a single stream of consciousness. As far as I could tell, I caught up to him, swung him around, and punched him out. Each time his body reset, I punched him again.

The weird thing was, I felt like I was moving at normal speed; while I knew damn well he was moving at super-speed, my reactions to whatever he tried actually worked, in between the flickers in my vision. When my protective field closed over, I guessed, time worked differently on the inside, giving me time to react and think about what I was doing.

However it worked, I was happy with the results. Though I was less happy with the way he just kept resetting like he did, so I jammed him feet-first into the dirt, all the way up to the top of his head, then put a bucket over him. I was pretty sure that would hold him until we were done with the others. As Madison cut her thrusters overhead, I opened the back door and stepped inside.

<><>​

Recap: Firebird

Emma crouched on the battlesuit's shoulder, waiting for her cue. Lower and lower they dropped, aiming for the front yard of the house that Taylor had given them the address for. The text had indicated that Kaiser, Krieg and Othala were inside the house, while Alabaster was just joining them.

"Ready?" asked Madison over the radio link.

Emma didn't answer verbally, but she double-clicked the radio button for an affirmative.

"Copy that. One of them's near a window. You can go in through the top floor."

Again, Emma double-clicked.

"Three, two, one, go!"

As she ran through the countdown, Madison applied more deceleration; Emma launched off the suit's shoulder and hit the roof running. A moment later, the THUMP of the suit touching down shook the entire house. There was a window in front of Emma and she dived through it, using her discs to shelter herself from the worst of the shards. Landing and rolling, she came to her feet in someone's bedroom.

Another window shattered downstairs. A moment later, someone came running up the stairs. From the sound of the footsteps, it wasn't either of the men, which left Othala.

Emma came out of the bedroom just as the female supervillain got to the top of the steps. Othala spotted her far too late; holding out her hands in useless supplication, she didn't even try to defend against the heel to the solar plexus that folded her over, or the jab to the chin that dropped her to the floor.

It was readily apparent, Emma mused as she hefted Othala onto her shoulder, that Victor had never bothered to train his partner in even the rudiments of self-defence. Not that it would've changed anything, but at the very least it would've felt less like smacking around a defenceless kitten.

<><>​

Deputy Director Renick

PRT ENE

Emily paused outside Paul's office and yawned capaciously. "Okay, that's it for me," she decided. "I'll let you handle the rest of the night yourself. Try not to get into too much trouble."

"Copy that." He gave her a nod of appreciation. "Thanks again for coming in. I honestly don't think I would've gotten to the bottom of all that as fast as you did, or at all."

"You would've gotten there in the end." He suspected she was just being kind, but that was the sort of working relationship they had. "Doesn't matter, though. You called me in, and we figured it out. Calvert's under comms lockdown, and we use anti-Thinker precautions on him from now on."

"He came so close to getting away with it …" He grimaced. "Thanks again. See you in the morning. Take an extra hour or two if you need to. I can handle it."

She snorted. "I might just take you up on that." Turning, she headed down the corridor toward the elevators.

Paul went back into his office and closed the door. Settling himself into his chair, he heaved a sigh, more of relief than anything else, at the way matters had turned out. Not only had the Calvert leak been nipped in the bud—or crushed under a concrete slab, to coin a totally original phrase—but they also had Rune and Victor in custody, to go along with the other Empire and ABB capes.

That's going to draw the Empire all the way down, he decided. Kaiser, Krieg, Othala, and Alabaster. No real heavy hitters like Purity was, or even Menja and Fenja. If the ABB hadn't already jumped the gun, Lung would be strongly thinking about it as soon as he found out about this debacle.

His desk phone rang, and he picked it up. The caller ID noted that it was coming from Operations. "Go for Renick."

"Sir, this is Sergeant Michaels. We just got a call from Firebird, about the Empire. They got them, sir."

Paul blinked, then frowned. "When you say 'they' got 'them' …"

"The Real Thing, sir. They just took down the last four Empire capes." There was real satisfaction in the sergeant's voice. "Firebird has requested a PRT pickup."

"Well, now." Paul smiled. "That is good news. I presume a van has already been dispatched?"

"Four vans, sir. One for each of them. We'll let you know when they get back."

"That would be appreciated." Paul put the phone down and leaned back in his chair. It seemed the Real Thing were as good as their word; they'd told Emily they were going to take down the Empire, and that was exactly what they'd done.

Emily's going to be annoyed that she missed out on this moment. But hey, why should she get to have all the fun?

<><>​

Lt Lassiter Reeves, PRT

"Pull over just up there." Lassiter pointed out through the windshield of the van at where the eight-foot-tall suit of power armour was standing in the roadway. Arrayed on the footpath were the four supervillains they'd been sent to take into custody; each was bound hand and foot as well as blindfolded.

The precautions were well-founded, Lassiter decided as the van rolled to a halt. The Real Thing had evidently done their homework when it came to the Empire villains. He appreciated working with capes like that, whether in the Protectorate or otherwise.

The other three vans pulled up in turn behind his vehicle. One per villain might have seemed like overkill, but he knew quite well that capes of this calibre were best separated in this way during transit, so they couldn't collude or assist each other in escaping. It helped that they had no powered allies on the outside, but he couldn't count on that remaining the case forever.

"Check them over and get them loaded up," he ordered. "Appropriate restraints. All due precautions."

"Sir," his sergeant responded, then went off to relay his orders to the troopers.

He knew the situation was well in hand—his people knew their job—so he turned his attention to the heroes responsible for this little coup. They turned to look at him as he approached, and Firebird gave him a polite nod. "Good evening, Lieutenant."

"It's definitely a good evening," he agreed. "Nobody hurt?"

"Krieg's got a broken arm and leg from when I pulled him through the window," Blockade offered. "But he should live."

Lassiter's eyebrows rose and he turned his head to study the front of the house more closely. Now that it had been pointed out to him, he could see the curtain wafting out through the shattered front window. "Whose house is that, anyway?"

Monochrome's shrug was a masterpiece of indifference. "I have no idea, but whoever does own it had no problem with four prominent members of the Empire Eighty-Eight holding a meeting in their living room. Not to tell you how to do your job, but I'd suggest you get someone to ask the owners some stringent questions about their affiliations."

"That sounds like a good starting point, yes," agreed Lassiter. He suspected that there wouldn't be much opposition to getting a search warrant for the property, given that supervillains had been captured on site. "You guys took down Victor and Rune earlier tonight, correct?"

"They did, I didn't." Monochrome leaned nonchalantly against Blockade, crossing one ankle over the other. "I was following Alabaster … well, to here, actually."

"Actually, I wanted to ask you about that," Blockade said. "When I got Rune, she totalled someone's house with the chunk of concrete she'd been flying around on. Has the homeowner been contacted? What's going to happen with that?"

"Ah." Lassiter knew some of what was going on there, but not all the details. "That's something I haven't been read in on. You're going to have to speak to the Director about that one."

"About a busted house?" Firebird leaned forward, curiosity strong in her tone. "What's so top-secret about that?"

Lassiter shook his head. "Like I said, that's above my pay grade."

"Hm." Firebird nodded slowly. "Okay, thanks. We might just do that."

"So, did you need us for anything else?" asked Monochrome.

"No, no, you're good to go." Lassiter knew he was going to be busy for a little while longer. Making sure the villains were properly secured was something he needed to do in person, and then some troopers would have to be detailed to guard the house until the search warrant came through.

A PRT officer's work was never done, but sometimes it was made a whole lot easier by the heroes.

<><>​

The Next Morning

Director Emily Piggot, PRT

"I know, I know, I could've taken more time getting in." Emily paused and gave Renick a suspicious glance. The man could do deadpan in ways that classic English butlers only wished they could pull off. Right now, she had the suspicion he was laughing his head off without so much as cracking a smile. She sighed and gave up the incipient staring contest, then continued on down the corridor. "But when I read the précis of last night's events, I decided that rest was for the weak. How quickly can we get Anders into an interrogation room?"

"He's already in Interrogation One, ma'am. I had him put there as soon as you notified us that you were on the way in."

Renick, Emily decided, took after those English butlers far too closely for comfort. But there were other topics she wanted to discuss. "So, how exactly did he manage to slip through the cracks when we unmasked Purity as his wife?" She shook her head in disbelief. "His wife, goddamn it!" Mentally, she made a bet with herself that he'd been just as curious when he found out.

"I checked up on that, ma'am. He had a whole list of impeccable alibis for the times of Kaiser's most public crimes at the time. Lunching at the Augustus Country Club with local luminaries such as Commissioner Norton, Mayor Christner, and even Dawson Stansfield."

The latter of whom just happened to be the father of Gallant, she knew. While Anders may have tempted the others with campaign contributions, Stansfield wasn't strongly into politics (any more than any other local mover and shaker, she amended) and his personal worth was comparable to that of Anders, so bribes were not on the table. "Okay, so how did he get to Stansfield?"

"I don't think he did, ma'am." Renick frowned. "I think everyone saw Max Anders at those lunches. But what nobody thought to check at the time was … did anyone see Victor at those widely publicised heists?"

Emily blinked. "That's … actually a very good point," she conceded. "Everyone knows Max Anders, so nobody thinks twice when he shows up late. He's relatively young to be so rich, which means people automatically give him the benefit of the doubt if he seems a little off in a public situation. And Victor is of course a world-class actor." She gave him a side-glance. "So, did anyone see Victor at those heists?"

He smiled slightly, proving that he was indeed on top of the situation. "I had some people run the reports down. While a few of the eyewitnesses claimed to have seen him, none of the footage or photos show him on site during the robberies when 'Max Anders' was at the Augustus."

"I'd be interested in seeing the bank accounts of these so-called eyewitnesses," Emily mused. She was fully aware that eyewitness accounts were possibly the least reliable type of evidence available. People's memories were easily skewed by assumptions, prejudice, and literally hearing someone say something to the contrary of what they'd just seen with their own eyes. And that didn't even begin to cover people being paid to say they'd seen something, or someone.

"We can call them back and interview them again," Renick suggested, not overly seriously. "If they're still insistent on that story, we'll know they've been paid to tell it that way." It was a minor paradox that people who were trying to be accurate eyewitnesses would often change their stories when new details were suggested, while those who were lying would stick to their version through thick and thin.

Emily sighed. "Not much point now. It's done, and Kaiser's actually in custody. In any case, the statute of limitations has probably run out." She grimaced. "I'm more pissed at myself than them, anyway. That happened on my watch. I signed off on it without even digging deeper or checking into Victor's whereabouts. They showed me what I wanted to see, and I took it at face value."

"Don't beat yourself up too badly," he said. "That bill of goods was masterfully presented, and we all signed off on it. And at the end of the day, like you said, Kaiser is actually in custody. We have him, and we know exactly who he is. The Empire Eighty-Eight just lost their primary revenue stream, which means Gesellschaft just lost a good chunk of the reason they've got their tentacles into the region. The bad guys may have been dancing around us up until now, but this is a huge win."

"Thanks to the Real Thing," Emily reminded him. "If they'd asked me permission to go after Kaiser, I would've told them not to. I still haven't made it untenable for villains to come back into the city."

Renick tilted his head. "So, are you in favour of this or not? I'm getting mixed messages right now."

"When I figure it out, I'll let you know." Emily opened the door to Interrogation One and stepped inside.

<><>​

Grue

Lisa could be irritating, but usually she kept it quiet. This morning, however, her whoops of laughter brought Brian out into the living room far earlier than he really wanted to. He found her positively cackling on the sofa, in a way that reminded him all too readily of Aisha.

"Okay," he grumbled, "what the hell is going on, and what's got you so happy?"

Lisa leaned back on the sofa in her fluffy pink dressing gown and propped her equally fluffy (and equally pink) slippers on the coffee table. She grinned up at him, then turned her laptop screen so he could see the picture on it. "A lot of assholes got what was coming to them, last night. And we didn't, mainly because I saw shit on the horizon that nobody else did." The amount of smug radiating off her should've set off the smoke detectors.

Brian frowned at the image; it looked like a car-sized chunk of concrete had partially demolished a suburban cookie-cutter house, ending up in the backyard. An electricity pole in the foreground had been partially snapped off, and was sagging against the wires holding it up. "Okay, that's kind of impressive, but what's the big deal?"

Lisa rolled her eyes. "The big deal is this. That was Rune's doing. Last night, as far as I can figure out, she was part of a concerted Empire effort to track down the Real Thing and make them pay for the Hookwolf-Menja-Fenja-Crusader capture. This did not go as planned."

After considering her words for a moment, Brian finally figured it out. "The Real Thing captured her?"

"Them. The Real Thing captured them." Lisa ticked off points on her fingers. "Blockade is the only member of that team who can fly, as far as I know. He can apparently outfly Rune, so she's in custody. Of the rest of the team, Kaiser probably wouldn't show up in the field until it's a done deal and Othala isn't a front-liner, so they likely had Krieg, Victor and Alabaster on the ground against Monochrome and Firebird. And you know what isn't anywhere online, even on the sites that the Empire think only like-minded people visit?"

It took less time for Brian to work that one out. "Any news that the Real Thing has been taken down."

Lisa touched her fingertip to her nose, then pointed at Brian with it. "Got it in one. If they'd gotten even one member of the team that beat the living fuck out of Hookwolf—no easy feat, that—and captured three other members, they'd be crowing it from the rooftops. But not a single word. Not from any of them. About anything. And after Victor left a 'watch this space' on these sites last night … that's very telling indeed."

"Wait." Brian felt like he was suddenly on the back foot. "Are you saying … none of the Empire capes at all are posting? About anything?"

"I'm saying more than that, Watson." Lisa's grin became a mischievous smirk. "I'm saying they're not because they can't. I'm saying that the PRT are investigating a totally innocuous house in the suburbs, which has a couple of broken windows and a spectacularly trampled flower bed, but nothing else wrong with it that would suggest villain involvement. But if a few subtle dots get connected, that's where the Real Thing tracked the Empire down to, and the final capture was made. They're all in custody. That's the only possible conclusion."

"But … how?" Brian was getting more out of his depth by the second. "Even discounting Othala as a combat cape, the rest of the Empire has people I do not want to tangle with. If there'd been a fight there, more than a couple of windows would be broken, trust me."

"There wasn't a fight, that's how." Lisa shrugged, though the smirk was still in evidence. "The Real Thing came at them so hard and fast that the Empire was beaten before they realised there was a problem."

"… oh." Brian was inclined to scoff at this until he recalled just how abruptly Monochrome and Blockade had ended the battle royale between the Empire and the ABB. "Well, that sucks. For them, anyway."

Lisa's expression morphed back to a grin. "There's more, but I'm still figuring that out. Right now, you know what we've got the chance to do?"

Brian frowned suspiciously. "No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me."

"Stash houses. Empire and ABB both. We can hit a whole bunch of them in a short time before anyone's the wiser." Lisa spread her arms wide. "Fuck the drugs, we'll take the cash. All that lovely, filthy lucre. Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth. Maybe millions. All ours for the taking."

Alec chose this moment to peer around the corner of the corridor. "Did someone say something about millions, and ours for the taking?"

"She sure did." Brian turned and headed toward his bedroom. "Suit up. Get Rachel up. We're doing this."

Behind him, Lisa closed her laptop with a clack. "Mwahahaha."

Right then, he agreed with the sentiment.

<><>​

Director Emily Piggot

Interrogation Room One

Renick had not been idle in the time between Kaiser's capture and her own arrival back at the PRT building. Every potential hard surface in the interrogation room had been padded to a fare-thee-well, and Kaiser himself had been blindfolded. Even the handcuffs with which he was secured to the (padded) table were themselves covered with fluffy felt, from which Kaiser could grow no metal spikes.

"I have to say, this is shaping up to be a really good week for me," Emily said as she sat down. "First, Hookwolf and Lung and your twin nuisances get taken off the board, and now you and the rest of your merry little band of fuckups have joined them. I'm going to have to put some serious thought into the size of the fruit basket I owe the Real Thing." She chose not to say anything about Coil as yet. There was no sense in giving Kaiser any more information than necessary.

"I presume I'm talking to Director Emily Piggot." Kaiser wasn't begging or pleading. Instead, he was speaking with all the cultured diction she'd learned to expect from Max Anders. "You need to listen to me. There's been a terrible mistake."

"Ah, yes," Emily mused. "Let me guess. The real Kaiser mugged you and dressed you in his armour just before the Real Thing showed up and arrested you?"

"Not precisely like that, but you have the gist, yes," Anders insisted. "It's what happened, I swear. I'm not Kaiser. And this automatic disbelief is precisely what he's counting on. If you keep focusing on me and don't start looking for the real Kaiser, then who knows what he'll do to free the rest of his gang!"

She had to admit, he was really convincing. The way he'd skated out of the prior incident with Purity was becoming more understandable all the time. Kaiser had made a career out of making a lie look like the truth and the truth look like a lie, all under the nose of the PRT.

"Hmm. You know what, I think we'll keep you here for the moment," she said, dragging it out because god this was fun after all the years of these bastards rubbing her face in the dirt. "We'll keep our eyes and ears open because that's basically our job, but just to cross all the T's and dot all the I's, I'm thinking we'll put you through the MRI machine and see if you're sporting a corona pollentia with an active gemma in your brain. Because if you are, that'll simplify matters dramatically."

"Seriously, Director Piggot? An MRI?" Kaiser was good at this. Even now, when most men would be shitting bricks, he was playing the role of the misunderstood businessman to the very hilt. "Do we really have to go this far? Because I can guarantee you, I do not consent to illegal procedures like that, and once I'm cleared of this ridiculous allegation, I will be suing your entire department into the bedrock."

"Well, no, not illegal." Emily slapped a piece of paper on the table. "Oh, sorry, you can't read this. But you'll have to take my word for it that this is a search warrant. One of several I've had prepped today. This one right here literally allows us to search your brain for evidence that you have active powers. So put your mind at ease. You won't have to go through all the aggravation and cost of a lawsuit, because you have no grounds for one."

Kaiser paused for a long moment. "I'm invoking my Sixth Amendment rights to a lawyer. Contact my office. They'll know who to send in. I'm not saying another word until he gets here."

"Absolutely." Emily smiled. "But in case you were under the impression this would delay the MRI, think again. We're totally going ahead with that. We just won't be asking you any more questions until the legal eagle gets here."

Kaiser was tough nut to crack. "I will make one statement, just to show you how badly you're going wrong here. Remember when Purity was arrested, and a big deal was made about how she was my wife? It was suggested then that I was Kaiser, too. I proved I wasn't then, and that proof still holds true." He sat back as far as the cuffs would let him, a satisfied expression written all over the part of his face she could see.

"Well, no." Emily would've said something about being sorry about bursting his bubble, but she really wasn't. "You provided an alibi at the time, which we unfortunately swallowed: hook, line and sinker. Too bad Victor isn't out and about in the city to provide a convenient sighting of Kaiser on a rooftop, hmm?"

His shoulders didn't slump; he was made of far sterner stuff than that. But they did twitch downward just a little. "I'm saying nothing more until my lawyer gets here."

She nodded. "Probably wise."

Getting up, she went to the door and signalled the crew with the gurney. Like the interrogation room, it was padded wherever possible. The MRI was, in the end, a mere formality. As she'd said, a crossing of the T's and dotting of the I's.

But it was on such things that solid cases were built.



End of Part Thirty-One

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Thirty-Two: Taking Advantage

[A/N 1: This chapter commissioned by Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

[A/N 2: The first few paragraphs have been lifted out of another fic of mine, because why the hell not.]



Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Outside an Empire Stash House

Frankie "Hard" Knox had just one job, and he was good at it.

He'd played college ball once upon a time (before he was kicked out of college) and he was still a big husky guy. With his shaved head and tattoos (neither of which he'd had in college) he could scare the absolute fuck out of anyone who came too close to the stash house when he was on watch. For those who were too stoned to scare, he had a stun-gun. Unlike a lot of his buddies, he didn't get bored easily, so he could relax all day without falling asleep on watch.

His buddy Brett'd been in the habit of having a toke or two when it was quiet, and sneaking off for a little shut-eye. He'd warned Brett that one day someone was gonna catch him at it, and then there'd be hell to pay. That 'someone' turned out to be Hookwolf. Brett was still around, but he had a few new scars and he didn't do guard duty anymore.

So Frankie took his job real serious. He never stayed in the same position for more than fifteen minutes, and he took a little stroll every hour or two. Never out of sight of the steps he was guarding, but far enough to get the blood flowing again.

Mitch, his usual partner on this shift, was less full-on about the whole thing. But then, Frankie didn't like him. To be fair, Mitch was a bit of an asshole. He was also fifty pounds heavier than Frankie and a fuck-ton dumber, and Frankie was almost sure he'd once seen Mitch coming out of one of the brothels the ABB used to operate. In any case, Mitch hadn't been there to see Hookwolf drag Brett into the alleyway behind the stash house and beat him bloody. Frankie could still remember the look in his buddy's eyes when he realised just how fucked he was.

Which was why, when the Undersiders came riding along the street, Frankie was the first one on his feet. They might have been lost or going someplace else, but it was a hell of a coincidence for them to come straight to the wrong innocent-looking house that had two shaven-headed guys sitting out front. He'd heard Tattletale was a psychic, or the next best thing to one, and the smug aura she was emanating as the dinosaur-rhino dogs clumped closer didn't make him any happier about the whole situation.

Bitch's monsters came to a halt in front of the stash house, confirming his worst fears. On the upside, the creatures were merely eyeing him off like a tasty meat snack, not actually going for him, but he had no faith in that lasting for long. While he'd only attended a few of Hookwolf's dogfights—he honestly had better things to do with his time—he was fully aware that Bitch didn't like them, and probably considered (with some justification) every member of the Empire responsible for them.

Still, he was there and if he didn't say something then he'd be branded as a chickenshit or worse. So he cleared his throat and said the first thing that came to mind. "Uh, you folks want to be riding along now, before shit gets serious."

While he was still berating himself over how much it sounded like a line out of a Western, Tattletale smirked. "Oh, honey," she said. "Haven't you heard? It's already serious. Your bosses are in lockup. Every last one of them."

Mitch finally roused himself, staring at the assembled Undersiders. "The fuck you talkin' about, bitch?"

Tattletale's smirk intensified to razor sharpness. "No, I'm Tattletale. That's Bitch over there. I'm saying that Kaiser, Krieg, Victor, Othala, Alabaster and Rune all got themselves captured last night, by the Real Thing." She gestured at the stash house. "Now, I know you're here to guard this place. But ask yourselves this. Without capes to back you up, how much of a chance do you think you'll stand against us?"

That was, Frankie decided, a fucking good question. The capture of Hookwolf, Crusader, and the Viking twins had already sent shockwaves through the rank and file of the Empire Eighty-Eight, but there had always been the underlying expectation that Kaiser was working on a plan to bust them loose. While she could've been lying about the capture of Kaiser and the others, he couldn't exactly rule it out either.

Not a hell of a lot, he privately admitted.

"Fuck off!" scoffed Mitch. "We'll fuckin' wreck your shit, you stupid little—"

Frankie wasn't exactly a gentleman, and the concept of chivalry had never really resonated with him. The main reason he pulled out his stun-gun and jammed it into Mitch's ribs was pure self-preservation; there was no way in fuck he wanted to be in the way of the retribution for whatever ill-advised insult the moron had been about to hurl Tattletale's way. He kept it going for as long as he could, mainly because the longer Mitch was down and unable to talk, the better.

When Mitch finally fell over, Frankie could almost swear he smelled smoke, but that wasn't his problem. His biggest problem was right in front of him, but he hoped like hell he'd gone some way toward making it not a problem. "Ignore him. Moron can't tell his ass from his elbow. Not that I can stop you from comin' in anyway, but you got any proof of what you're sayin'?"

Tattletale, whose eyes had narrowed behind her mask at the opening words of Mitch's tirade, smiled sunnily at him. "Totes," she assured him. "PRT scooped them up last night, after the Real Thing took them down. Safe house in Brentwood."

That sealed the deal for Frankie. The Empire indeed maintained a safe house in the upscale residential suburb of Brentwood, but the only people who knew about it were the capes and the ones who were trusted to guard stash houses. He'd never even been there himself, but he knew it existed. The fact that Tattletale tossed out its location so casually told him that it wasn't even an important bit of information for her.

"Well, shit," he said, the words more a sigh of resignation than anything else. "How are we gonna do this?"

Tattletale's smile widened.

<><>​

Grue

"We could've taken it all," whined Alec as they rode away, the saddlebags bulging noticeably with the take from the stash house. "Why'd you leave any for those bottom-feeders?"

Brian figured he knew. "As soon as they agreed to take some, they were complicit. And we left all the drugs for them to divide up between themselves. If we'd taken the lot and left them nothing, some of them might've done something stupid, and maybe gotten lucky. But as soon as Tattletale said they'd be getting a share, you could see the cogs turning in their heads. They went from fight-or-flight mode to 'how much is my share?' in about two seconds flat."

"Got it in one," Lisa confirmed. "With the added incentive that if a higher-up does come by, all they have to say is that we took it all."

"So, uh, how sure are you that the Empire capes won't be escaping?" Alec suddenly sounded a little unsure about the situation. Brian could understand why: the spectre of Kaiser and Hookwolf coming after them for all the vanished money and drugs would be a daunting one.

"Very." Lisa sounded certain of herself, but that was her ground state. He'd seen her be confidently wrong before; fortunately, it hadn't been all that often. "From the cross-chatter I was able to dig up, the Director's not taking any chances with the Empire Eighty-Eight or the ABB capes. Hookwolf and Lung are Birdcage bound as soon as she can expedite it. Kaiser and the others are off to whatever supermax she can stuff them into."

"That's not exactly a guarantee, you know," Alec said. "Hookwolf's been busted out before."

"That was with Empire capes on the loose, and Coil giving out shot-calls to make it happen," Lisa riposted. "Without access to cape powers or the big Empire stashes, they've got no easy way to bust their bosses out. Piggot's in the best possible position she could be in right now, and she knows it. She's going to wring every last shred of advantage she can out of it."

"Which is why we're hitting gang stashes instead of jewellery stores, right?" Brian meant it as a rhetorical question. "The longer we can stay off her radar, the better."

"Oh, we're totally on her radar." Lisa sent him a flashing grin. "We're just making sure we're not a priority for her."

"Ah." It would've been nice, Brian reflected, if Lisa had explained that a little more clearly earlier.

Still, the nest egg he was gathering was going to take care of his money problems for a long time to come.

<><>​

Director Emily Piggot, PRT ENE

"I'm not entirely sure I see the problem, Emily." On the screen, Hearthrow leaned back in his chair, flicking a pen between his fingers. "You currently have fewer active villains in your city than at any time in the last twenty years. The only gangs left are small fry. Why do you think you need more PRT personnel or capes now?"

"Because this is very much the calm before the storm," she gritted. "Talk to Armstrong if you don't believe me. This is a perfect setup for a repeat of the Boston Games, one that I was working hard to avoid. As soon as word gets out that the local underworld is open for the taking, they will be coming here. I don't feel like hosting a free-for-all just when I'd got this city working properly again."

He frowned. "I feel that you might be overstating your case a little. Sure, one or two displaced villains might decide to relocate, but the era of events like the Boston Games is over and done. It couldn't happen again."

"Why?" she asked bluntly. "Just because it hasn't happened recently doesn't mean it can't or won't. We haven't had a big city like this cleared of major villains in years, so there's no telling how it'll turn out."

"Exactly my point." He sounded pleased with himself. "There's no reason at all to think your doom-and-gloom prediction is at all accurate. Personally, I think you're jumping at shadows. Besides, you're already well-staffed as it is. If anything, now that the ABB and the Empire Eighty-Eight are no longer a going concern, we should be looking at drawing down some of your personnel and sending them to where they're really needed." He didn't quite say 'like here', but Emily heard the words loud and clear all the same.

"Seriously?" She shook her head, irritated that he was even trying to pull that shit. "Are you forgetting that I still have a city full of very recently ex-gang members, who are likely to either try to bust their bosses loose or jump on the bandwagon with the next villain who happens to wander into town and set up shop? This city might not be a powder keg anymore, but it's only one step down from being one."

"Well, why aren't you doing something about it? If your own people aren't up to the task of dealing with new villains in town, why don't you sic this Real Thing team I've been hearing so much about on the bad guys? In fact, why don't you set them to finding out who destroyed that school?"

It was clear by now that Hearthrow was determined not to even admit that Emily needed any assistance, but she forged on anyway. "That only works if you can locate the villains and get the heroes to them in good time. The Real Thing aren't under my command, so even if I knew where any potential new villains were, I couldn't order them to take care of the matter." She refused to rise to his bait regarding Winslow. There were still far too many questions and not enough answers surrounding that particular incident.

"I'm honestly sorry to hear that, Emily." He could even have been serious, though she sincerely doubted it. "Keep me updated on the Real Thing. They sound like an interesting team."

"Will do." She ended the call, then sat back in her chair and muttered a few choice epithets, aimed in Hearthrow's general direction.

It was true that the Brockton Bay branch of the PRT enjoyed a relatively generous budget for manpower and equipment, mainly due to the higher-than-normal incidence of criminal capes that seemed intent on infesting the ENE area. However, there was a distinct difference between keeping said villains in check with the intent of gradually forcing them out of the region, and discouraging an enterprising new influx of villains from taking up where the previous crop had left off.

The trouble was, all she had to back up her personal belief regarding the incoming problem was the single data point of the Boston Games, and the nagging feeling that it could happen again. She suspected that the Chief Director would need more than that before approving a budget increase for the ENE department, especially since (as Hearthrow had pointed out) the majority of the gang activity in the city had just been given a good swift boot in the head. If Costa-Brown couldn't see what she could, then all the arguing in the world would do not a damn bit of good. Which was why she was asking her fellow Directors to spare her personnel rather than going hat in hand to Washington.

The downside of this approach was that they could just as easily say no, as Hearthrow had just done. Still, he was just one person. There were more Directors she could talk to; hopefully, at least one of them would be willing to listen.

<><>​

Later

New York PRT Building

Hero

"I really think she's got a point about a potential repeat of the Boston Games," Director Wilkins said thoughtfully. "The city would be wide open for it. I'm going to send a couple of strike teams up on detached duty until it's settled, one way or the other. Do you have any ideas for capes to back them up?"

Graham considered his response. New York had no serious threats in the offing at the moment. It wouldn't cost the city much to support Brockton Bay, and keeping the region stable did everyone a favour. "Absolutely. Prism could do with stretching her legs out from under my umbrella, and Cache will be a good backup for her. Also, one of our Wards, Flechette. You may have seen my report about how she's being targeted by a particularly irritating villain called March. Until we can pin March down, sending Flechette out of town will probably do her the world of good too."

Wilkins nodded slowly. "I concur. Good calls on all three. I'll have the paperwork expedited to your office so you can sign off on it."

He gave her his trademark grin and tapped the side of his goggles in a mock salute. "Copy that, Director."

<><>​

A Little Later Again

Taylor

I had to admit, Hero had a gift for being charismatic, even when standing back while Director Wilkins of New York opened the press conference. It wasn't just his prestige for being what some called the world's greatest Tinker (which he totally was) but something more than that. Back when Legend first quit the Protectorate, some had wondered about Hero's ability to fill his predecessor's shoes as head of the team. He'd blown the doubters clear out of the water (so to speak) and gone on to lead the team from strength to strength.

Not only was he good looking (from what the public could see under his goggles) but he was also just plain nice. Capes tended to clash, especially when they were jockeying for good ratings, but Hero never bothered with stuff like that. He always gave his fellow heroes the credit they were due, and never tried to hog the limelight.

Not that there was much chance of doing that during a press conference, but he handled those with style and aplomb as well. Emma, Madison and I were watching this latest one, mainly because there'd been a mention in the news that there was going to be something about Brockton Bay in it.

Before we got powers, we might've watched it because cape stuff was occasionally interesting. Now, we were watching it because any cape events that involved Brockton Bay were by definition very interesting.

"I have to admit," Emma said in an offhand manner, "for a Tinker, he's very fit."

I'd made that observation myself but I hadn't voiced it out loud, mainly because I didn't want the others thinking that I was ogling Hero's manly muscles. Which I had been doing, just a little, but I was still paying attention to what the Director was saying.

"I'm pretty damn fit, and I'm a Tinker," Madison reminded her. "Maybe you might want to leave off trying to pigeonhole us all as losers who spend all their time hunched over a bench in the basement."

"Yeah, but you're different," I said. "You Tinker with heavy stuff. If you hadn't gotten fit, you'd be flat on your back, gasping for breath after five minutes."

Emma nodded. "It's true. Before we got powers, you weren't exactly the most athletic person in Winslow. Now, you're ripped."

"Yeah, well, you weren't either," Madison pointed out accurately. "It took your power to make you into Jackie Chan on steroids."

"Guys! Guys!" I hissed. "The Director's finished talking!"

They turned their attention back to the screen, just as Hero stepped up to the microphones. "Thank you, Director Wilkins," he said smoothly. "Good evening to you all. Thank you for attending this conference. Some of you may be wondering why we're making a big deal about the temporary transfer of some of our heroes to Brockton Bay, but honestly, we're not."

One of the news guys raised his hand. "Ben Portland, New York Post. If you're not making a big deal of it, why are we even having this press conference about it?"

Hero paused to chuckle briefly. "You make a good point. The truth of the matter is, it's a perfectly routine training exercise between us and Brockton Bay that's been blown out of all proportion. Prism, as my second in command, will be benefiting from exercising her own judgement in an unfamiliar environment, and Cache and Flechette will be accompanying her. However, a rumour seems to be getting around that our heroes are going up there to assist the East-North-East Protectorate in apprehending the new cape team The Real Thing. While they've been making quite the waves in the region, I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. The Protectorate will continue to integrate and work with local heroes, as it always has."

"That's us he's talking about," I said as another reporter asked an equally inane question. "We're the 'local heroes'."

"Yup." Emma looked quietly pleased. "But the Director didn't say anything about bringing in capes to integrate and work with us. Why are they really coming here?" None of us actually believed the line about the 'perfectly routine training exercise'.

"It must be the other thing," Madison decided. "The part she mentioned about moving too fast, and not giving other villains the message that it's unsafe to come here. She's bringing in reinforcements to help stop any of these villains in their tracks before they can get settled, the way Kaiser and Lung were."

Emma and I looked at her, then at each other. "That's got to be it." It made total sense to me. "Since when have you been a cape analyst, Mads?"

Madison rolled her eyes. "Did it never occur to either of you that the cute ditzy act was just that, an act? Sure, I put most of my mental effort before into looking and acting so adorable that the teachers would never suspect me of anything, but these days I've got different priorities. So, I've started paying attention to shit like that."

"Good point." Emma nodded approvingly. "Though you were smart not to do that while we were hanging with Sophia. She never trusted anyone with more brains than her." She gave me a sly glance. "Probably why she hated Taylor so much."

I wrinkled my nose at her. "I notice she never hated on you for your intellect."

The scuffle that started then involved a lot of tickling, but no powers whatsoever. By the time it was done, we were all helpless with laughter and ready to move on with the rest of the evening.

<><>​

New York

March

May leaned back in her chair as the press conference ended and a commercial came on. "So, she thinks she can escape me by going on a training exercise, hmm?" A cruel smile spread across her face. "I think it's time to show her the error of her ways. And if any of these so-called heroes get in my way, they'll get the same treatment."

She didn't often laugh out loud as part of her monologue, but this time it seemed appropriate.

March was going to Brockton Bay, and nobody—and nothing—was going to stop her from getting what she wanted.



End of Part Thirty-Two

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Thirty-Three: New Perspectives

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



Arcadia High School, the Next Day

Monochrome

Emma caught up with me as I strolled outside to enjoy the lunch break under one of the trees. Although I knew that the destruction of Winslow (I preferred to think of it as 'dropping my classes') had been an illegal act, any angst I might have felt over it was entirely overwhelmed by the very real awareness that I was in a far better situation now. It also didn't hurt in the slightest that Emma and Madison had performed an almost flawless one-eighty in their treatment of me. Having them as actual friends was still weird as fuck, but I was good with having that kind of weirdness in my life.

"Hey, Taylor," she said, falling into step beside me. "How's your day going?"

"Pop quiz in English. Pretty sure I aced it. Apart from that, school is boring, news at eleven." I headed toward a vacant table. "Wonder why they never had this sort of thing at Winslow. Would've made lunchtime a ton more bearable."

"You did attend Winslow, right?" She shook her head as she sat down, then reached out to run her fingers over the rough bark of the tree that overshadowed us. "The gangs would've marked out the trees as their territory, then there would've been gang tags, carving, idiots poisoning the trees belonging to other gangs, setting fire to them, the works."

"True." I sighed as I looked up at the tree. The occasional tiny shaft of sunlight filtered through the leaves, creating a soft green glow. Insects buzzed here and there. "Winslow: the very definition of 'why we can't have nice things'."

"Well, it's gone now, and we're here." Emma laced her fingers together and rested her chin on them, then looked over at me. "Any idea who the PRT thinks actually wrecked the place? Mads has a good alibi, because we were down at the Boardwalk when it happened. And none of the other villains in town had that kind of throw weight."

"Leet could've done it, I bet," I reminded her. Glancing around, I made sure nobody was close enough to listen in on our conversation. "He's done weirder things. That first time I got called in for an interview, they asked me if I can teleport building-sized masses, which I was able to say I can't. And your dad stopped them from asking me outright if I'd done it some other way."

"True, true." Emma moved her hands up and down, making herself nod. "You're saying they think Leet did it, then?"

I opened up my pita wrap. "Like I said, he's done weirder things." Then I took a bite, enjoying the flavour of the seasonings that had gone into it.

"Yeah, but …" She broke off as Madison emerged from the front doors of the school, and waved her arm to get the petite brunette's attention. "Yup, she's seen us."

"Good." I took another bite of the wrap. It was actually pretty good, better than Winslow had ever produced. Then again, that was a pretty low bar.

Emma looked back to me. "But they have to be asking the question: assuming Leet could wreck Winslow, why would he? Destroying a school doesn't fit any video game theme I ever heard of. Also, he was in custody—after running into you, or so I hear—the night before Winslow went boom. Why even set up a delayed explosion?"

"Hi, guys." Madison strode up to the table—for a girl who barely topped five feet, she could certainly put out a certain air of unstoppability—and sat down. "What are we talking about?"

"Eh, the PRT and Leet," I said. "What's new with you?"

"Not much, to be honest. Metal shop would be a lot more fun if I thought they'd let me improve a few of the machines. They're barely up to the purpose as it is." She opened her lunchbox and unwrapped a solid sandwich that looked like about half a cow between two pieces of bread. Ever since she'd started the heavy Tinker work, light salads had been off the menu for her. These days, it was bulk protein all the way.

"I hope you didn't even suggest it." I was pretty sure she hadn't, but it was always a good idea to check. "Or do some modification on the quiet." That was a little more likely. Again, I did a quick check for potential eavesdroppers. There was nobody sitting close enough to hear, nor anyone walking toward us.

She made a rude noise. "Give me some credit. I might not be the ditz I used to be, but cute little Madison Clements isn't supposed to be pulling apart heavy equipment and putting it back together better. If there's a more effective way of fucking up my secret identity, I can't think of it right now."

I smirked. "Also, if I know you, by the time you finished with them, they'd be twice the size and capable of carving through armour plate." I stabbed the straw into my juice box and took a drink. The reconstituted fruit juice was chilled and pleasantly tart.

"Well, duh. What use would they be, otherwise?" Madison rolled her eyes. "These people who design and build so-called heavy equipment need to crack a dictionary sometime. Their saws struggle with anything over an eighth of an inch thick. That's not 'heavy'. That's 'just getting started'. Geez." She took a decisive bite out of her sandwich to underline her statement.

Emma's eyes were alight with amusement at the banter between Madison and me. This wasn't quite teasing: sometimes, Madison just needed to vent about how poorly constructed everything around her was, and our leading statements gave her that outlet.

However, it seemed Emma was still intent on her earlier line of thought. "So, Mads; Taylor and I were just talking about how Winslow went from being a building to a pile of rubble, and who the PRT thinks might've done it."

"Well, they know it wasn't me," Madison said, as soon as she'd chewed and swallowed the bite. Then she looked at both of us. "I mean, I can think of three ways I could've done it, but I haven't actually built any of those devices except the big gun, and that would've left a crater, not a pile of rubble. Plus, I can prove I was on the Boardwalk at the time. I'm pretty sure Purity's still in PRT custody, and Leet was arrested the night before it happened. Which leaves …" She frowned. "Not a lot of people who could've done it, actually. Apart from Taylor, I mean."

Emma nodded, eating apple slices out of a zip-lock bag. "Technically, Leet could've set up something on a timer before he went speed racing through the suburbs and ran into Taylor, but I honestly can't think of any reason he might do that."

"Unless he attended the place back in the day, and hated it so much he finally decided to erase it from the face of the earth?" I suggested helpfully. It was bullshit, I knew it was bullshit, but it was the best I could do for a potential excuse. As they thought about it, I finished off my pita wrap.

"Somehow, I don't think so." One of Emma's new talents was apparently to keep talking while she ate. "I grant that it was a shitheap that other shitheaps only aspire to be as bad as, but like I said, that pair never does anything without some kind of video game connection. Also, the PRT has to have interrogated him on the subject. If he really did it, can you see him holding out? They're keeping quiet about it, which means they know he didn't do it."

Madison put her sandwich down for a second. "So, what you're saying is … what? They're bound to point the finger at Taylor any day now?"

"That's a distinct possibility." Emma crunched one more apple slice, then turned toward me. "If you've got a better direction to point them toward, we need to know it now. Do you have one?"

She was right. I knew she was right. But the trouble was, I didn't have one.

Crap.

<><>​

Flechette

Lily hefted her arbalest and waited for Prism to step down out of the helicopter, then followed her out when Cache gestured for her to go ahead of him. Weirdly, it felt warmer in Brockton Bay than it had in New York, but that could've just been a quirk of the weather. The view was definitely different, with fewer tall buildings and what she guessed was the Protectorate base out in the harbour, covered by a force field.

Waiting for them away from the arc of the rotor blades were three people: two capes and one normal. Armsmaster she'd already met in passing once upon a time, and she was reasonably sure the solidly built woman in the blue suit was Director Piggot. By process of elimination, that made the teenager with the lion-face helmet Triumph. He was the leader of the Wards East-North-East, so she'd be reporting to him while she was here.

"Welcome to Brockton Bay," the Director said, offering her hand. She didn't bother to raise her voice as the chopper started powering down behind Lily. "It's good to see you. How much have you been told of the current situation?"

"Only the basics." Prism shook her hand. "Any extra briefing you can give us will be good."

"Uh …" began Lily, half-raising her hand. "Can I say something, please?"

"Certainly." The Director looked her over. "In case you hadn't been told, the Wards are quartered in the PRT building. In addition, I have an open-door policy; if you have something you think I need to hear, I want to hear it yesterday."

"Uh, right." Lily took a deep breath. March probably wasn't in the city yet, and the top of the PRT building was about as secure as she was going to be when not actually indoors. "So, I've got a nemesis, called March. We got powers at the same time, from the same incident. Her powers are similar to mine, but she's very definitely a villain. And she's got a … a thing for me. Kind of cat and mouse."

Prism and Cache didn't react; they knew all this. Armsmaster's lips thinned, which was about the only visible reaction she could see from him. Triumph tilted his head slightly, as though he was trying to figure out what she was saying.

"I've been told a little about this," the Director confirmed. "Hero seemed to think that it would do you good to get away from her for a while."

Lily shook her head. "That's what I'm trying to say." The arbalest was getting heavy, so she rested the end of it on the roof. "This won't get me away from her. She'll totally follow me. I don't know how you run the Wards here, but we've got sub-teams in New York. No matter what sub-team I'm in, she locates me and attacks us with a bunch of minions she's trained up to counter our tactics. Nobody's died yet, but people have gotten hurt. She sees it as a game, but one that she's allowed to change the rules on any time she likes."

Director Piggot smiled briefly, then nodded as though Lily had confirmed something for her. "Somehow, that doesn't surprise me. Well, she's never operated in Brockton Bay before. Our newest up-and-coming independent team has managed to clear the board almost entirely, so if she sticks her head up, there's an old saying about grass and lawnmowers." Her tone indicated that she would be interested in observing the clash, from a safe distance, perhaps with an instant-replay button.

"Then they'll get hurt, or killed, depending on how hard they make her work for it," Lily objected. She didn't know these new heroes, but she didn't want them to suffer for March's obsession over her. "I've got a power that lets me cut through anything, and she's got a similar one. She's really good at hurting the people she's fighting, even when she's outnumbered. Armour just doesn't work against her."

"Anything?" Armsmaster's head came up at that. "Not most things? You can cut through anything at all?"

"Well, yes. Everything I've tried so far." Lily frowned, unsure where he was going with this. "Why?"

The Tinker smiled. "I have something in the lab I want you to look at for me."

<><>​

Monochrome

"Um," I said. "This could be problematic. I mean, Dad said never to do a heavy lift like that again, but what if I have to? Or if someone in that building makes a wild-ass guess and comes up with my name? They already know my secret identity."

"No shit." Madison's grimaced. "Okay, so how do we fix this? Because in my experience, anything can be fixed."

Emma shot her a mildly peeved glare. "In your experience, 'anything' is technology. This is going to take more than some percussive maintenance and a line of solder."

Madison brandished her sandwich, then took a bite out of it. "Bsshhht." She chewed and swallowed, then repeated herself. "Bullshit. We can fix this. We've got the resources. Taylor's good at breaking things on the quiet. I'm good at breaking things on the loud. You're good at talking."

"That doesn't actually help," Emma objected. "Once the PRT hit the right chain of logic, they're going to follow it to its natural conclusion. Director Piggot is extremely fucking switched on. She's not about to do a Blackwell and throw it in the 'too hard' basket."

"Okay, just wait just a moment." According to Emma, the cat was on the verge of escaping from the bag, and once it did, it would commence birthing litters of kittens by the second. I had to get ahead of this before events rolled over the top of me. Again, I checked our surroundings; we were still unobserved as far as I could see. Nobody was paying us any particular attention, anyway. "What chain of logic, exactly?"

Once the PRT came up to me and asked me directly, it would be because they had serious reason to ask. Lying to them, only to be found out, would utterly fuck over my credibility, and that of the team, and Emma's and Madison's if they backed me up. Which they would, because that was how they rolled these days. No matter my heroics to date, I was gloomily sure, the authorities wouldn't take it well.

Emma ate another piece of apple, then gestured between herself and Madison. "Well, we've seen how crazy strong you can be. The PRT has only seen a little of it, but once it comes out in full—especially if you have to reinforce something to pick it up from one end—then people are going to add two and two, and come up with a number between three and five. You've filled them in on exactly when we fed you the vial and gave you the powers, so they have a timeline for that too. And you hated Winslow. Method, motive, opportunity. As the saying goes: elementary, my dear Hebert."

"Well, duh, we all hated Winslow." Madison wrinkled her nose at Emma, then pulled a can of soda from her lunch and saluted me and Emma with it before popping the tab and taking a long drink. A moment later, she was rewarded with a deep rolling belch that her pre-powers self would've been mortified to produce. "Well, how exactly are we going to deal with this?"

Emma considered this, while shaking up a plastic bottle of orange juice prior to twisting the cap off. "Hmm. Not totally sure as yet. I've got a few ideas, but I brought it up now because better now than later. Either of you got a winning strategy tucked into your back pocket?"

"Wait." I looked at them both. "This would be your best chance to get out from under me. I mean, I'm only leader because you two fucked up so egregiously back in the day. But now you're established heroes. You wouldn't even have to drop a dime on me. I couldn't stop you from walking away now, or deciding that Emma was leader, even if I wanted to try."

"Yeah, and?" Emma flicked the plastic cap over her shoulder; it spun in the air and landed neatly in the trash can five yards away. "You're saying that like it's something we'd want to do. Remember, we asked you to be the leader. You're our best bet of never backsliding to the way we were before."

"Besides, when it comes down to it, we're as guilty as you are." Madison drained the can of soda, then crumpled it flat between her palms. "We're literally the ones who gave you the means and the motive. If we decided to walk because we could, then we'd be the biggest hypocrites in the world, and that's taking our previous 'let's be heroes while forcing you into the Birdcage' efforts into account. Because now we don't even have whatever the fuck was wrong with us before, pushing us to be total bitches."

That reminded me of something. I mentally put a pin into that thought while I finished off my juice box, then laced my fingers over it. "Okay, so what are your ideas?"

Emma leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice. "This might seem a little counter-intuitive, but hear me out. We tie in with the PRT and get word on every villain that the Director was worried would be coming into town, and we go after them hard and fast. Show her that we're willing to fix our mistake, such as it was. Basically, a show of strength, and a show of good faith."

I nodded slowly. "So, by the time they start wondering about Winslow again, we've built up a big enough rep that they're willing to cut us some slack." It felt a little thin, but it was better than nothing. "Madison, do you have any ideas?"

"Just one." She set her jaw grimly. "Next Endbringer attack, we line up to kick their ass. Nobody second-guesses someone who's fought an Endbringer."

It was true. I didn't like it, but it was true. Besides, I was pretty tough, and the Blockade suit was damn tough. "It's definitely worth a try, yeah."

"And one more thing," Emma added. "I tell Dad."

"What? Why?" I liked Mr Barnes, but keeping that secret was pretty near and dear to me.

She looked me dead in the eye. "So if it looks like they're sniffing a little too close for comfort, you turn yourself in and he's already got a case of mental anguish prepped to roll. Madison and I will testify to exactly how bad we made it for you, Sophia can get thrown to the wolves for all I care, and we'll have any number of people willing to say how bad Winslow was. By the time he's finished, he'll make it look like you did a public service to the city."

I had my doubts about that last bit, but she'd made some good points. "Okay, yeah. It's kind of a last-ditch thing, but I'm willing to trust him to get it right."

Emma nodded. "Only if we have to."

"Right." Reassured on that count, I started peeling my banana. "Um, talking about the Director, I had an idea when she called me in that time. Did your dad ever mention it to you, Emma?"

"Uh … not that I can recall." Emma looked at me with interest. "What idea is this?"

"Sophia," I said, then took a bite of banana. "What if her shadow form was actually a psychotropic gas that only affected non-capes, and it caused other people she hung around with to think like she did?"

"Like an absolute fuckin' maniac, you mean?" Madison had started peeling an orange with quick, sharp motions of her thumbnails, tearing through the thick rind and ripping it away from the fruit underneath. If I'd needed a reminder of how much strength she had in her hands now, that would've done it. "Actually, that makes a scary kind of sense. So what you're saying is, she's not just a Changer-Mover, she's also a Master too."

"Hypothetically," Emma corrected her. "Theoretically. Me, I don't buy it."

"Why not?" Madison stared at her. "It explains everything. Why we were such assholes to Taylor. Why everyone else went along with it. Even why Blackwell couldn't be bothered to do a damn thing to stop us."

"You know what else explains that?" Emma didn't bother waiting for Madison to answer. "People are dicks. People follow other people who seem to have a good idea. And too many people in authority are lazy and scared of other authority."

She turned to look at me, and I shrugged as I ate my banana. There was nothing she was saying that I could argue with. "I said it was an idea, not that I totally believed in it."

"Yeah." Emma nodded. "It's a nice, compelling idea. And it absolves me and Mads of any blame for what we did. Ties a neat bow on top of everything. Except that it's too neat for me. The world's a messy place. Shit happens. Not everything's got a good reason."

"Fair point." But then Madison grinned anyway, an expression of pure schadenfreude. "But you know what this means? If Taylor said it to the Director, she'd be obliged to treat it like it's legitimate. Right now, Sophia's probably locked away in Master-specific holding, over and above the normal precautions."

I slowly nodded, the truth of her statement sinking in. "And the funny thing? We can use the idea in the case, she can't disprove it, and it'll help us even if it's total bullshit."

"Dad always says the truth takes a back seat in the courtroom. Doesn't matter how you win, just so long as you do win." Emma offered her hand for a high-five. I reciprocated, then did the same with Madison.

I wasn't feeling totally secure about my future, but with my friends backing me up, it was a hell of a lot better than nothing.

<><>​

Flechette

Dink.

Lily frowned, staring at the shimmering grey metal block on the bench in front of her. Armsmaster had been remarkably close-mouthed about what it was, even as he turned off the ray he'd had playing on it, allowed it to warm up (the frost that had formed on it when he exposed it to air had been fairly impressive) and put it on the bench in front of her. "Cut it," he'd invited her, gesturing to the block.

So she'd taken one of her two-foot-long aluminum slivers, treated it to slice through any material, and prodded the block with it. Everything else she'd ever done this to had given way; steel, brick, titanium, concrete, tungsten. Nothing had even begun to offer resistance.

Yet all she got this time was a dull dink and the sliver stopped. The block was entirely unmarked.

Running her hand along the sliver, she reapplied the treatment just in case, then brought it down on top of the block, attempting to slice it in half without harming Armsmaster's bench. Tinkers were kind of sensitive about stuff like that.

Dink. Again, the block was entirely unmarked.

"What …?" She wanted to say the phrase that's impossible, but she was standing in a Tinker's lab. For them, the impossible usually meant a few extra days of figuring out the new parameters. "What's that made of?"

"I'm … not entirely certain." Armsmaster sounded almost embarrassed. Past his shoulder, Lily saw Director Piggot wearing an expression that said she wouldn't have missed this for the world. Cache and Prism, both fully aware of how her power worked, were exchanging bemused glances. "I didn't make it. Blockade calls it 'good steel' and says it doesn't allow dimensional shenanigans. Their words, not mine."

"What, really?" She shook her head. Armsmaster had a reputation for never joking about serious matters. "May I?"

"Be my guest." He gestured magnanimously toward the block. "Absolutely nothing I've been able to do has even scratched it. What I was doing to it before was a cold beam, holding it to just above absolute zero. There was no measurable contraction or expansion due to temperature change."

"Okay, then." Sheathing the sliver, she picked the block up. It was heavy, but not insanely so; about right for a piece of steel that size, she figured. "Let's see what happens when I do … this." Running her hand over it, she applied her power to it.

Or rather, tried to. It seemed to run off like water off an oiled rock.

She tried again, concentrating on infusing it with her ability, and make it light as a feather.

Absolutely nothing happened.

"Everything okay, Flechette?" asked Prism.

"Sure, peachy." Lily glowered at the innocuous piece of metal in her hand. "Except that this thing doesn't want to cooperate. I can't even empower it."

"Can I try something?" Prism held her hand out. "Maybe if I clone it, the cloned piece will be more amenable to doing stuff with."

"Sure, let's do this." Lily handed it over, then dusted her hands off theatrically. "Stupid thing doesn't even know what the rules are."

"Let's see." Prism shimmered, and there were suddenly three of her standing there. But only one of them held the block of metal; the other two, though they had their hands in the appropriate location, held nothing. "What? No. That's not how it works."

"I know, right? That's what I said." Lily pointed at the block. "That thing is impossible."

"Give me a try," said Cache. "Dimensional shenanigans are my bread and butter, and I've never failed to put anything away yet."

"Be my guest," Prism said, reabsorbing her clones and dropping the metal block into his hands.

"Just so you're aware," Armsmaster noted, "I've already had Clockblocker use his power on it. It remained as impervious as ever, yet could be picked up and moved with no difficulty."

"Clockblocker? Really?" Prism shook her head.

Lily looked around, wondering if Armsmaster was expressing a deeply hidden sense of humour, but the Tinker's bearded visage bore not even the slightest hint of a smile. "Did he lose a bet or something?"

"He chose the name himself," explained the Director. "That tells you all you really need to know about him."

Cache shook his head, then concentrated on the block. "Okay, doing this." Black lines and planes started forming around his hands, folding around the block and hiding it from view. He took his hands away as the shape enclosed by the planes got smaller and smaller. "Annnd …"

Suddenly, the black planes popped, and the metal block fell to the floor. It lay there as they stared at it, as untouched as ever. Lily had never before entertained the idea that an inanimate object could show emotions, but the block looked as smug as a piece of metal could.

"Very well." Armsmaster leaned down and scooped up the metal block. "This is what Blockade's power armour is composed of, as well as Firebird's throwing discs and Monochrome's staff. Firebird isn't fully armoured and Monochrome doesn't wear armour at all, but Firebird has beaten up at least two highly trained martial artists and made it seem easy, and I watched Monochrome choke out Lung while he was actually on fire. Flechette, do you believe that March has any more chance of getting through good steel than you do?"

Lily still had her reservations—it was never a good idea to be complacent around March—but this was the best news she'd had in some time. "I honestly don't know, but I'd love to see her try."

Armsmaster nodded approvingly. "Good answer."



End of Part Thirty-Three

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Thirty-Four: Stealing a March

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

Thursday Morning, September 23, 2010

March

The car could have used a good clean-out but May figured it would defeat the purpose of stealing one if she then turned around and took it to be detailed. She wanted to get to Brockton Bay today, not tomorrow or next week. Anyway, the trash in the footwell and the back seat didn't detract from its handling qualities, which she'd grudgingly accepted as adequate.

There weren't a lot of cars on Interstate 95, which was good because May had a destination in mind, and she wasn't interested in letting minor things like other cars or speed limit laws get in her way. So, as she whipped past the other vehicles at speeds the poor unfortunates that weren't her would call unsafe, she turned the radio to the jauntiest channel she could find and sang along with the songs at the top of her voice. Her mask was on the seat beside her as she drove, of course; she didn't want to damage the ears by creasing them against the roof of the car.

Also, she supposed it might not be the best idea to give Flechette advance warning by having people report seeing a rabbit driving a car down the interstate. The whiny bitch might decide to fuck her over by going back to New York, and then she would've wasted an entire trip. May had a constitutional aversion to letting Flechette win any of their encounters; it would only give her unrealistic ideas about where she came in the grand scheme of things.

Talking about people with unrealistic goals, she mused as she eyed the flashing red and blue lights in her rearview. The cop car had attached itself to her tail about two minutes back, just after she blasted through the I-495 overpass, and was gamely working to catch up to her. He probably didn't have a proper read on her license plate though, which was his good luck. That meant she didn't have to kill him, merely stop him.

Without taking her eyes off the road, she used her rapier to flick a piece of trash—a fast-food drink cup, long bereft of its contents—up toward her from the passenger-side footwell. She dropped the rapier on the seat and caught the cup, then swapped hands on the wheel and buzzed the window down. Flicking her gaze toward the cop car, she let the sequence of actions settle into her mind, then used her fingertip to emblazon a spiral trail of power into the side of the cup.

As the fuse began to burn down, she stuck her hand out the window and tossed the cup up and back. It flew through the air on the calculated trajectory, passed over the car that was between her and the cop car, and was sucked down into its downdraft. Although she lost sight of it then, she knew it would hit the ground and go under the police cruiser's driver's side front wheel at the exact instant that the explosive charge she'd instilled in the cup went off.

Which it did.

The detonation was muted by distance and wind-rush, but she caught a glimpse of the car tumbling end over end off the road into the ditch, rubber flaying off the stricken wheel. The cop might survive and he might not, but she didn't care either way. As far as she was concerned, he should've been smart enough not to chase after her when she had business to attend to. Anyone driving as flawlessly as she was, was clearly a cape; thus, someone to steer clear of.

She used the rapier to flick up another piece of trash, just in case, then settled back to keeping the car on the road and the speedometer in the triple figures. Nobody was going to stop her from messing with Flechette: not the PRT, not the Protectorate, and certainly not some underpaid county-mountie. The sooner people understood that, the better.

<><>​

Director Piggot, PRT ENE

Emily sighed and leaned back in her chair, then clicked the mouse to call up the confidential report that her best analysts had submitted regarding the Winslow destruction. She'd read it through more than a dozen times, looking over the arguments and finding no flaw in them. There were a few minor logical leaps—necessary, because the powers involved had never been tested under laboratory conditions—but the conclusions it reached were hard to refute.

Emily considered Taylor Hebert—Monochrome—to be one of the physically strongest capes she'd ever seen. She'd borne witness to Alexandria opening the entrance to Lord's Port again, and that display of raw power had both awed and disturbed her. Monochrome's double KO of Fenja and Menja, followed by choking out Lung, had to be on or near that level.

When considering the means/motive/opportunity triangle, the history of bullying that the girl had endured made for an ironclad motive. In a way, it was laudable that she'd chosen the site of the bullying rather than the bullies themselves for her retribution; Emily doubted that any of them would've survived if Monochrome had decided they needed to die. Opportunity was also a gimme: while Emily didn't know the full capability of Monochrome's powers, the girl was considered to have at least a minor Mover rating. Getting across the city and back again in less than an hour wouldn't be a problem for her.

The only sticking point in the whole affair was 'means'. Monochrome's powers seemed to involve a full-body force field that protected her utterly and gave her the strength to perform her deeds. Study of the limited footage available also seemed to indicate that she treated physics as an optional extra. If she could, for instance, extend that force field beyond her body, her strength might just be sufficient to pick the whole damn school up and toss it in the air, as Armsmaster had determined.

Emily would be the first to concede that it was a pretty big 'if'; the chain of logic was admittedly thin. However, the only other viable suspects she had in the matter were Leet (who had vehemently denied setting up anything of the sort, even when offered leniency) and Blockade (who'd had minimal motive to do so). While Blockade had been in the area with the rest of the Real Thing when Armsmaster showed up, Emily was disinclined to believe that she'd done it, mainly because Shadow Stalker would absolutely have dropped a dime on her former teammate without even needing to be asked.

The latter hadn't happened, so it was back to Monochrome as the primary suspect, assuming that the speculation about her powers was actually correct. However, not only was the aforementioned speculation unsupported by anything more than vaguely circumstantial evidence (much less the rock-solid proof Alan Barnes would demand if the PRT came at his youthful client again) but Emily wasn't even particularly inclined to go after her for it.

The basic truth of the matter was, the Real Thing were an unmistakeable force for good in the city. If they'd had to, the PRT and Protectorate could have taken down the Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB capes, she had no doubt. But it would've been long and drawn out, there would've been unavoidable property damage and civilians getting hurt, and far too many of her troopers and capes would have suffered casualties as well, fatal and otherwise.

Likewise, the villains would not have surrendered easily, as proven by Kaiser's last-ditch effort to identify and either murder or co-opt Blockade. There would've been a target a mile wide on Emily's back, as well as on Paul Renick's and Armsmaster's; either to murder them outright or hold them hostage, depending on how well the PRT and Protectorate were doing at the time. Worse, while her sister lived out of state, Gesellschaft had a long reach when it needed to.

But all that hadn't happened. The cape contingent of the Empire Eighty-Eight was officially behind bars, as were Lung and Oni Lee. While both gangs had non-powered members (the Empire more than the ABB) they were fraying at the edges as the heroes and cops alike closed in on their bases of operation. It was a lot easier to dismantle something like that without villains getting in the way, a state of affairs she could definitely attribute to the actions of the Real Thing.

Beyond all that, the main reason that she was making zero moves on Monochrome (and had no immediate plans to do so) wasn't that she thought the girl's actions were reasonable. Yes, Taylor Hebert had been under extreme provocation, but that wasn't what stayed Emily's hand. Her core motive was pure pragmatism: if what she feared came about and outside villains arrived to claim their pound of flesh from the defunct Brockton Bay underworld, the PRT would need all hands on deck to squash any incipient resurgence of the Games.

And whatever else they were, the Real Thing were good at what they did.

With another sigh, she closed the file and clicked on the first unanswered email in her inbox. This had also been sourced in her overworked analytical department, though several grades less sensitive than the file she'd just been looking at. It was the latest of a series of reports covering cape activity within the city limits of Brockton Bay.

The Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB had not been the only capes in the city by a long shot, merely the most troublesome. Aside from Uber and Leet and Coil (she still found the downfall of the latter to be hugely amusing) and ignoring the rogues, there were the Undersiders, Faultline's Crew and a few independent capes on both sides of the law. The report noted that the Undersiders were happily knocking over stash houses owned by the Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB alike, stealing the money and leaving the drugs behind, while the Crew were apparently hunkering down and staying very quiet indeed.

In a way, she could admire the entrepreneurial spirit shown by the Undersiders; they'd seen an opportunity and were grabbing it with both hands. On a totally different level, while they were technically committing a crime, they were also locating stash houses that neither the BBPD nor the PRT had even suspected the location of, and removing money that the non-powered members of the gangs could have used to buy drugs or guns with. While legal confiscation would have suited her better, Emily was savvy enough to appreciate that they were wrecking the finances of both gangs, thus accelerating their ongoing disintegration.

This wasn't to say that they wouldn't be on the PRT's radar sooner or later, but they certainly weren't as much of a problem as some of the Empire Eighty-Eight capes had been, or the inevitable influx of new capes was likely to be.

Similarly, the PRT wasn't going to be focusing on Faultline's Crew for the moment. The Crew was extremely careful about not shitting in their own nest; they never committed Federal crimes, and made sure that all their activity happened on the other side of the state line. Inside Brockton Bay, they were the epitome of good neighbours, adhering to all the rules and regulations of running a nightclub, mostly making damn sure their bar attendants didn't serve alcohol to minors and that nobody sold drugs on the premises. Emily knew of at least four attempted stings where the ATF and other governmental bodies had tried infiltrating ringers to catch them out in one violation or another, but they'd all come to naught; Faultline was apparently very much on the ball.

Nothing in the report gave proof positive of any new capes within the city, but Emily knew they were out there, either sliding into the fetid pool that was her city's underworld or getting near to doing so. She hated that there was fuck-all she could do to stop them from just driving into the city or taking the bus, but until she got clearance to put up PRT roadblocks on every incoming highway (and she had considered it, however briefly) it was definitely going to be a case of playing catch-up.

Closing the report, she went onto the next email, which she belatedly realised was from Firebird.

---

Good morning, Director.

We've talked it over, and we think the best thing for all concerned is for us to make up for past misjudgments by cooperating with you as much as possible regarding the incoming villains.

Give us locations and names, and we'll go there and give them their marching orders. If an ass-kicking followed by a sojourn in the PRT's cells seems to be required instead, we can assist you in facilitating that as well.

Cheers,

Firebird (speaking for the Real Thing)

---

Emily read it through twice, noting the careful wording. Nowhere did Firebird actually admit to crimes, or even serious mistakes. 'Misjudgments' was a word that allowed for a lot of leeway.

Overall, it seemed, the Real Thing wanted to make amends in the most effective way: by taking action against a mutual problem. Given their previous track record, she was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. And having their prodigious throw weight on the side of the PRT was entirely preferable to having them standing off to the side, choosing not to participate.

She spent a moment typing up a brief reply agreeing to the proposal, then went on with her day.

Villains or no villains, the PRT ENE department wouldn't run itself.

<><>​

Lunchtime at Arcadia

Taylor

This time, I'd met up with Madison before Emma came out. We were seated under the shade of a tree, relaxing in companionable conversation, when I spotted her and waved. She waved back and came on over.

"Hey, guys." She grinned, waving her phone. "Guess what? She went for it."

"Well, there's a surprise," Madison drawled, unwrapping her hefty sandwich. "She'd have to be blind, deaf and brain-dead not to take us up on it, and I'm pretty sure she's none of the above."

"I dunno." I took a sip from my juice box before I continued. "If we'd managed to piss her off enough that she was more interested in fucking us over than getting the job done, I figure she'd say no."

Madison rolled her eyes. "In what possible universe would she feel justified in knocking back our assistance? I mean, shit, we handed the Empire and the ABB to her on a silver platter. We get the job done." She bit into the sandwich to emphasise her point.

"Well, not this one, obviously," Emma agreed. "But technically, I guess it's possible. Say, if Taylor was really a villain and we weren't there to make her look good." She gave me a cheeky grin.

I wrinkled my nose at her. "Oh, ha ha. I'm the one who makes you two look good, and you know it."

"Yeah, but we don't just look good." Emma struck a pose. "We look amazing."

<><>​

Flechette

As Lily strolled out casually through the Arcadia courtyard, she heard a burst of laughter from the three girls having their lunch under a nearby tree. They looked like they were a year below her; a pretty redhead and two brunettes, all clearly amused about something. It was nice to know some people didn't have anything more to worry about than grades and possible boy(or girl)friends. She moved on.

"Hey." Carlos met her at the gate as they slipped out. "You know those girls? I thought you hadn't been here before."

So he'd noticed her glancing in their direction. The guy was definitely observant. "No, I just looked that way when I heard them laughing. It's nice to know we can make a difference, you know? Because while we're out there, kids like that can enjoy life to the fullest."

"Wow, look who's the adult all of a sudden," he jibed with a smirk as they headed for the unmarked PRT van. "They aren't that much younger than us, you know. Year, maybe eighteen months, tops."

She snorted at him, then climbed into the back of the van. "Doesn't matter, and you know it. When you've got what we've got" —she meant powers— "the whole 'being a kid' thing doesn't mean much anymore. I've spent my entire cape life shuttling between duty posts, never having a chance to settle down in one place and put down roots. Add having your very own fucking nemesis on top of that, and a normal life's got even less chance of happening than usual." Sitting down in one of the seats, she reached for the seat-belt straps.

"Yeah, I heard something about that." Carlos frowned. "If this … what's her name, again? If she's so fixated on you, have you tried setting a trap for her? Once she's in custody, no more problem." He began fastening himself in as well.

Lily shook her head hastily. "No, bad idea. Her name's March, and she's really fucking switched on. Director Wilkins tried to trap her once. She sent half a dozen PRT guys, plus me and Adamant, to the hospital. I only took her rapier through the calf muscle, but for him she exploded half his armour and put him in a coma for a week."

"I think she'll find I'm a lot harder to put down than that," he said, apparently trying to be reassuring.

"What happens to you if she explodes your head?" she asked bluntly. "Not your helmet, your actual head. Nothing left from the neck up. I know you've got redundant biology, but exactly how redundant is it? Because I can promise you, she'll find a way to blow past those limits. Pun totally intended."

"Murdering Wards?" He frowned, apparently having difficulty with the concept. "She'll go that far?"

"She sees this whole thing as a game, and the name of the game is 'fuck with Flechette'," Lily explained. "No rules, except the ones she makes up on the spot. I'm the only one who can almost tag her in a fight. And everyone else, she dances around like it's been choreographed ahead of time. If anyone actually hits her and draws blood, she's likely to go full murderblender on them, just saying. And armour won't work, not against her."

"That's seriously wrong." He shook his head. "She won't get everything her way. Armsmaster's pretty good, for one. Kid Win says he's working on some kind of combat analysis software for his armour, though it isn't up and running yet. And Assault's nearly untouchable when he gets going. Also, Velocity should be able to literally run circles around her."

"You're still not getting it." She sighed, then tried again. "Combat is one of her powers. My Thinker ability gives me perfect rhythm, but with her it lets her predict and direct the movements of other people. That's what her name's all about. Marching in step. If her sword's charged up, she'll be able to anticipate where people are gonna be and intercept them. And when it's charged up, her sword goes through anything, just like my arbalest bolts do."

"Oh." To his credit, he didn't keep pushing. "So, um, what's she got against you? Or does she have something for you? Some sort of misdirected crush, I mean?"

"You tell me." She rolled her eyes. "We got our powers in the same cluster trigger, and she's been obsessed with me ever since. If she does just want to be my girlfriend, she's been going about it in the exact wrong way. She's toxic as fuck, and she's hurt too many people for me to be even slightly interested in her." Frowning, she cast about for a change of topic. "So, um, this new team, the Real Thing. Reading between the lines, Armsmaster and the Director are really impressed by them. Are they all that?"

She recalled the block of 'good steel', and its apparent impervious nature. If that was all they had going for them, March would surely figure out a way to get to them if they opposed her.

"They're still really new, like you said." Carlos tilted his head thoughtfully. "We don't have a lot of footage of them using their powers. Monochrome's even newer than the other two; she only showed up after Winslow got flattened."

"Actually, about that." Lily had been curious about the incident he'd referenced. "What really happened with Winslow, anyway? Was it a villain fight? Did it just fall down of its own accord? Someone cause an earthquake? Everything I've looked up says there's no official answer, but I was wondering if there was an unofficial answer that nobody was talking about."

Carlos chuckled dryly. "Throw a rock inside the PRT building on any given day and you'll hit someone with a brand-new theory. So far I've heard that it's an insurance scam, that Blockade did it with some kind of bullshit non-exploding bomb tech, that Leet was trying to teleport the building away but his teleporter malfunctioned and only sent it twenty feet up, that Shadow Stalker turned the foundations of the school to shadow, and that's all just skimming the surface. The truth is, nobody really knows. One day it was a technically intact high school, and the next it was a pile of rubble. Not even a ransom demand for any other buildings in the city."

"Huh." Lily went back to her previous line of thought. "Didn't Monochrome beat up on Lung or something, though? She's supposed to be really strong or something."

"Strong and fireproof," Carlos amended. "You're gonna need to see Armsmaster's helmet footage. Lung was on fire like everywhere, and she choked him out like it was a training exercise. I dunno how strong she is, but I know she's stronger than me. Blockade, too. I haven't seen what Firebird can do yet, but I'm not betting against her either, just saying."

"Right." Lily fell silent then, leaning back in her seat as the van rolled through Brockton Bay. Although she suspected she hadn't left all her problems behind in New York, there were more than a few enigmas that could do with unravelling while she was here.

One way or another, it looked like she was going to have her hands full.



End of Part Thirty-Four

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Thirty-Five: First Contact

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



A No-Tell Motel on the Outskirts of Brockton Bay

March

May waited until darkness had fallen before she headed out to prowl the night. She'd purposely chosen the motel for its lack of security cameras—the people who frequented a venue like that rarely wanted video proof of their indiscretions—and the incuriosity of its staff. This meant she could stroll out to her stolen car in full costume, though again minus the full-head mask, and nobody would pay the slightest bit of attention.

The parking lot was just as discreet, tucked in behind the main building to make it harder for suspicious spouses and nosy private investigators to spot guilty license plates. As she got in the car and started the engine, she wondered how many other supervillains used places like this as ad hoc bases of operation. It was certainly something to think about.

Once she'd cruised out onto the main drag, she applied thought to the next part of her plan. I need to start acquiring minions. While she was very goddamn effective on her own, having a bunch of people marching to her beat was a potent force multiplier. This worked even for non-capes, which was good, because the villains in town she could potentially recruit to her cause were very few and far between at the moment.

Fortunately, the two biggest gangs in town had literally just had their cape leadership stripped away from them, meaning there were two pools of potential recruits waiting for her to show up and claim them. It was true that the larger of these groups had been members of a white-supremacist gang, but she was an equal-opportunity employer; if they were willing to forget about that part of their lives, so was she.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Step one: find a cop car.

<><>​

Monochrome

"Okay, so the Empire Eighty-Eight and ABB are falling apart by the day, but there's still a lot to do," Emma noted as Madison strode along the Boardwalk with me riding on one shoulder of the Blockade armour and Emma on the other. "We have ordinary crime, and there's always the chance of new villains coming to town."

"Yeah, Director Piggot seemed pretty sure that was going to happen," agreed Madison. "She's been doing this a lot longer than we have, so I'm not gonna second-guess her on that."

"Absolutely." I hitched myself a little higher and scanned up and down the Boardwalk; despite the fact that only the last fading glow of the sunset was showing over the hills to the west, the overhead street lighting was giving pretty good illumination. The only movement I saw was from people, mostly looking in our direction. "Seems like we've got enough respect around here that nobody's willing to pull any stunts while we're looking."

"That'll be down to you and Firebird." Even with the voice modulator, Madison sounded amused. "When you dragged that one purse-snatcher along the Boardwalk by his ankle, you got everyone's attention."

"Well, it was either that or by the scruff of his neck, and he was taller than me." I shrugged. "Besides, he called me some pretty nasty names when I stopped him. He needed to learn not to do that."

"I think that lesson was well and truly learned." Emma tossed one of her throwing discs in the air, then caught it again and snapped it back onto her arm bracer in one fluid motion. "Are we gonna patrol back along the Boardwalk when we get to the other end, or go somewhere else?"

I considered that for a moment. "The Boardwalk is pretty well covered by the cops and Wards as it is. We don't want them getting complacent elsewhere in town, so we'll move along and check out the Trainyards before we finish up tonight." It was a school night after all, which meant it'd be a good idea to get home before midnight, at least for me and Madison. Emma could get by on just a couple of hours of sleep, the big cheating cheater.

"I'm down with that." Madison's voice was full of satisfaction. They'd told me about the encounters they'd had with the Merchants while they were still building their reputation as heroes. Madison in particular had issues with drug dealers hanging around and harassing people. "If we can clean that area up and keep it that way, it'll make it easier to get the Port back up and running when the time comes."

"Absolutely." Emma waved to a couple of people who'd stopped to take a photo of us. "And if any of these villains do stick their heads up, we'll smack 'em down again. Because that's what we do."

That was my view too. "Damn right."

<><>​

March

Before she set out to acquire a cop car, March decided to modify her own ride to make matters more convenient. First and foremost, she needed to be wearing her mask when she encountered them, and the roof of the car made that problematic. With this in mind, she used her empowered rapier to slice away the roof, door pillars, window frames, and rear window, in chunks small enough for her to handle. After smoothing off the rough edges, she got back into her newly-converted roadster and began the hunt.

As far as she was concerned, a poor hunter went looking for the prey, a mediocre hunter waited for them, and a good hunter drew the prey to them. So she set out breaking the law in the most flashy and egregious way possible: by blatantly exceeding the speed limit, all the way through town. A speeding car combined an obviously illegal act, a chance to drive fast with the siren on, and the opportunity to yell at someone in the name of the law; by her understanding, it was catnip to the average police officer.

She picked up her expected tail just a few minutes later, after her third four-wheel-drift around a random corner. He was still a ways back, though, so she decided to make him work to catch up with her. From what she remembered of the map, the waterfront was just up ahead: a boardwalk along the shore, paralleled by a long boulevard called Lord Street.

She'd let him chase her until she found a nice quiet place to conduct business, then the chase would be over and the next stage in the plan would take place. This would possibly entail the cop dying, depending on how stupid he wanted to be. It would absolutely end with her driving off with her very own cop car, slightly used, one previous owner.

The reason she wanted a cop car was simple: police-band radio, with wheels attached. At some point, the remnants of the Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB would try to supplement their current savings with some crime, petty or otherwise. Without their super-powered protectors, they would almost certainly fall afoul of the law.

Whichever cops responded would call it in, and she'd hear about it. Whereupon she would turn up and save the mooks from the cops, then make them the strongly worded offer to work for her. They would almost certainly accept; while she'd never worked for another cape in her life, she understood that the minion mindset never really went away.

And then, once she had her ducks in a row, she would start learning Flechette's roster times and patrol routes. Brockton Bay was smaller than New York, which meant it would be harder than ever for Flechette to hide from her.

She couldn't wait.

But in the meantime, she was in the process of actuating the first stages in her plan. It was never a good idea to look too far ahead and lose sight of the here and now. As the cop car closed in from behind, she threw the car into a howling, smoking drift that left four distinct black trails on the asphalt and took her around the corner onto Lord Street.

With a nice long straightaway ahead of her, she gunned the engine. The car began to accelerate again, just as she noticed the three capes off to the side, on the boardwalk itself. She whipped past them, leaving her with the image of a large blocky set of power armour carrying a costumed teenage girl on each shoulder, all three turning to look at her.

Unless one of them is a speedster, they'll never—

<><>​

Taylor

The car came around the corner behind us, rubber shrieking on asphalt, the burning smell borne to us on the wind. Just as we turned to look, it roared past us, already dangerously fast. Behind it, a police car screeched around the corner with siren wailing and lightbar flashing.

"Was that—" Emma began.

"—a rabbit driving?" I finished. It had certainly looked like it, with white fur, long ears, and a cute little round cap.

"Cape," Madison filled in grimly. "Database says March, out of New York. Also says she's dangerous."

"Got it." I gathered my feet under me and leaped.

I might have been inclined to allow the cops to deal with a speeder, but a cape doing the speeding was a whole other thing. For starters, capes were a lot less likely to tamely allow themselves to be pulled over and arrested. Plus, we'd just finished telling Director Piggot that we'd help deal with any new villains in town. March definitely qualified.

And if she thought she was dangerous? She hadn't seen dangerous yet.

She was doing twice the speed limit when I passed over her, but that was no big deal. I was going faster than her, and all I needed to do was get in front of her. She looked up at me as I rotated laterally in the air, going from head-first to feet-first, utterly ignoring minor matters such as wind resistance and aerodynamics.

The next bit was going to be a little tricky. I hadn't even had my powers for a day when Uber and Leet had hit me with a car, utterly wrecking it when I didn't give way in the slightest. This time, I wanted to do better.

Allowing gravity to notice me again, then telling it to notice me, I dropped out of the sky. The idea was to land on the hood of the car, envelop the entire vehicle (and her) in my personal protective field, then put my feet down on the road. Any amount of friction from my feet meant I could stop instantly; nothing within my protective field suffered from inertia or gravity unless I wanted it to. The car would stop on the instant, allowing us to take the unharmed perpetrator into custody, hand her over to the PRT and go on our way.

At least, that was the plan.

As I fell toward the hood of the car, March anticipated my move and swerved to get clear of me before I could drop that far. (She was, I would learn, very good at anticipating moves). What she didn't seem to expect was how fast I was accelerating downward. Increasing the value of g for myself was a somewhat niche trick, but it came in handy occasionally.

As it was, she peeled around me with more than a foot to spare, but not quite out of my reach. I made a hasty grab, and my fingers closed over the top of the front passenger-side door. The instant I made contact, I layered my protective field over the car and all its contents, and it stopped.

Unfortunately, her foot was still on the accelerator, so the engine was roaring and rubber was howling against asphalt. Using just the pressure of my fingers and thumb on the door, I gently lifted the entire vehicle until the back tyres were no longer in contact with the road. That got rid of part of the noise, but not all of it.

"Turn the ignition off and exit the vehicle, March!" I shouted over the bellow of the engine. "You're under arrest!" I didn't actually have the power of arrest, but I could sure as hell hold her until the people who did showed up.

The rabbit head was turned my way. I had to admire the workmanship that had gone into it. The thing could've been cartoonish but it actually looked realistic, if a six-foot rabbit could look realistic.

The rest of her costume was … hyper-militaristic, if that was a thing. Bright colours, fringed epaulettes, polished brass buttons, with the cap on top between the ears. It looked like a crossover between Alice in Wonderland and Gilbert & Sullivan.

"And which one are you supposed to be?" she asked. She eased off on the accelerator, but then I saw her pick up a long skinny sword from the passenger seat.

"I'm Monochrome," I informed her. "You need to put that down right now. It won't hurt me. Nothing can hurt me. And if you try, I'll take it away from you and tie it in a bow."

"Really." Then she stabbed me.

I was kind of expecting it (in a ha ha, what's she going to do with that, stab me? way) but mostly not, because I was holding the car a foot off the ground with one hand, and that sort of thing tends to breed caution in others. What I wasn't expecting was for it to actually fucking work.

Her lunge was faster than my eye could follow; Emma probably could've seen it coming in time to do something about it, but all I knew about it was a flash of silver straight at my chest. I fully expected it to attempt to hit me in the chest, but I did not expect my force field to simply pop like a soap bubble, nor did I expect the skinny blade with a very pointy end to be driven deep into my chest cavity.

I stared down at the embedded weapon, stunned.

This … this was actually happening.

I wasn't prepared for this.

Before I could do anything, she whipped the sword back out of my chest. I took one stumbling step back, then I was tumbling. I fell hard, but I didn't feel the ground. I simply … stopped falling. Staring up at the sky for a second, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and remembering the weather forecast, I coughed around the wetness that filled my throat.

Rain, my ass.

I heard shots being fired, though they were muffled … like a long way away. My fingers were starting to get sticky, and I lifted my hand, staring for a few seconds at the red liquid that covered it. It took me a second to remember it was blood.

My hand got really heavy and I closed my eyes, but on an up note, my chest didn't hurt any more. In fact … nothing hurt…

I felt the shadow of someone or something falling across me, and then there were people screaming.

I just really wanted them to shut up so I could sleep.

The last thing I remember was the sound of fabric tearing, and thinking that a bandage wasn't quite gonna cut it …

<><>​

Firebird

Emma knelt tensely on the sidewalk, knowing her gloves were covered in blood but not giving a shit, as Panacea laid her hands on Taylor's unconscious body. Glory Girl stood back out of the way, apparently unconcerned regarding the outcome. With the assistance of the first-aid kit from the patrol car, Emma had managed to keep Taylor alive up until this point, but her vital signs had been really bad toward the end.

Madison had overridden Emma's demand for an ambulance, instead directing a call to New Wave, requesting Panacea's assistance. The call-out would cost four hundred dollars—her usual rate, plus double time for short notice and outside working hours—but Emma considered it cheap at twice the price. Glory Girl was apparently used to ferrying her sister around, and had gotten Panacea to them in less than five minutes (though to Emma, it had felt like much longer).

"Done," Panacea announced, settling back on her heels. "I've fixed the damage, and she'll be waking up in about ten seconds. She's going to need to have a full meal and rehydrate, to replace the blood she lost, but otherwise she'll be okay. What was it, some sort of bladed weapon?"

Emma stared as Taylor's eyelids fluttered open, a warmth spreading through her chest. Oh god, thank you. She's going to live. "Uh, yeah," she managed, trying not to ignore Panacea. "March carries a rapier. According to the database, she can cut through anything with it, and make things explode." It would've been good if Taylor had waited for Madison to reach that part of the entry.

"Hmm." Panacea frowned. "Well, from what I can see, whatever cutting power she had wasn't working. The blade scraped off a rib before it went into Monochrome's chest, which saved her from a much worse wound, possibly even a fatal one. Thanks to you, she didn't even suffer from anoxia." She gave Emma a brief smile. "When people do first aid properly, it makes my job so much easier."

"Ugh …" groaned Taylor. "What happened? How did she even do that?" Between one instant and the next, her force field came back, covering her from head to foot.

"Her blade can cut through anything," Emma informed her. "How do you feel?"

"Like I got stabbed with a blade that can cut through anything," was the tart reply. Taylor sat up, then finally registered Panacea. "Oh, hey. I'm guessing you're the reason I'm feeling a lot better right now?"

"Good guess." Panacea stood up, then dusted her knees off. "Looks like Crystal wins the pool."

"Pool?" asked Emma as she helped Taylor up; it wasn't like Taylor actually needed the assistance with her force field on, but there was a psychological element there.

"Yeah." Glory Girl rolled her eyes. "On which of you three was going to need Panacea's assistance first, the way you've been tearing through the local bad guys. I had my money on you."

"Did anyone have anything on me?" asked Madison curiously.

"Just Manpower." Panacea smirked. "He was so sure he was gonna win too, given how easy Tinkers are to hurt once they're out of their armour."

"Who'd you have your money on?" Taylor asked her. "And thanks, by the way. I really appreciate it."

"Oh, I wasn't allowed to be in on the pool." Panacea shook her head and snorted. "Something about a conflict of interest. Anyway, you're welcome. Glory Girl has your billing information?"

"I've already transferred the four hundred to your account," Madison assured her. "I'd apologise for dragging you out on a school night, but you don't seem particularly upset over it."

Panacea grinned. "Hah, no. Thanks to jobs like this, my college fund is really healthy, these days."

"And I get five percent for flying her here," Glory Girl added. "We'll probably get takeout on the way back. Win-win."

"Well, thanks anyway." Emma waved her hands vaguely, aware of the blood on her gloves. "See you around." She watched as Glory Girl expertly gathered Panacea into a bridal carry, then rocketed into the sky. "Okay," she said. "That happened."

"March's sword popped my force field," Taylor said, in an 'I want to speak to the manager' tone. "Nothing's supposed to touch my force field. How did she get a power like that?"

"I'm getting the impression that your power and her power cancelled each other out, but she was still holding a sharp piece of steel and you were soft squishy meat," Madison offered helpfully. Emma couldn't help noting that Madison's good steel would very likely protect her from any sword March wanted to point in her direction.

"Ugh, okay, fine." Taylor huffed in irritation. "How bad was it?"

"Pretty bad," Emma said candidly. "I had to give you CPR, before Panacea got here." She still recalled the taste of Taylor's blood in her mouth. It would likely be with her forever.

Taylor nodded slowly. "Got it. Thanks. Remind me to save your life sometime."

"Anytime." Emma tilted her head. "Go ahead, ask the question you want to ask."

"Okay, fine. Did you get her?" From the tone of Taylor's voice, she already knew the answer.

Madison shook the head of her power armour ponderously. "No. We were all concentrating on you. After you dropped the car, she got away in the confusion. But don't worry. We'll catch up with her again."

"And when we do," Emma stated with conviction, "she's gonna learn why she shouldn't mess with the Real Thing."

<><>​

Some Way Out of Brockton Bay

The party was dying down as Butcher leaned back in her chosen seat, watching her followers stumble about in search of booze, a bed partner, or somewhere to throw up. Hemorrhagia staggered up and flopped down next to her, holding a bottle by the neck. "Spree'ss so drunk, hee'ss havin', havin' a drink'n c'ntest with, with hisself," she announced out of nowhere.

"Wouldn't fuckin' surprise me." Nothing surprised Butcher anymore about the Teeth. So many members had come and gone, among the powered and non-powered members alike, that if she hadn't seen basically everything there was to see, one of her predecessors would have.

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) the layered powers that came with being the Butcher meant that she couldn't get drunk easily and she couldn't stay drunk at all. Which meant she was just drinking for the taste and the mild buzz.

"So where're we goin'nex'?" Hemorrhagia went to take a drink from her bottle, but it was empty. She looked drunkenly disappointed.

Butcher had been thinking about that. "Heard that Brockton Bay's been nearly cleared out of villains. Empire's gone, ABB's gone. Sounds ripe for us to go take a cruise back through our old stomping grounds."

Hemorrhagia blinked owlishly at her. "I nev'r been."

Butcher smiled; it wasn't a pleasant expression. "It's gonna be fun."



End of Part Thirty-Five

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Thirty-Six: Breaking Step

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


March

Fully aware that the car she was driving was more than a little conspicuous, and not wanting Monochrome's battlesuited buddy to land on it—and her—with both feet, or turn her into a crater from a thousand feet up, May ditched it at the first opportunity. All the same, she argued to herself as she ducked through the alleyways of Brockton Bay with one eye on her backtrail, Monochrome had totally been asking for it. What kind of idiot just stood there after saying something like 'you can't hurt me with that'?

Especially if it turned out that yes, May could hurt her with that?

The look on her face when her force field popped? That was amazing. Though it was nothing compared to her expression when she actually got stabbed.

May's wrist twinged slightly, and she rubbed at it. There'd been a bit of a jar, a resistance, when she'd been expecting none at all, and her wrist had been set just a little off for the lunge. Must have been the force field, she decided. It held out for a split second before it popped. That's actually pretty impressive.

Still, Monochrome had taken May's blade through the chest despite her stupid force field, so that team was down to the powersuit Tinker and the chick in black with the funky arm-shields. May still wasn't sure of their names, despite the fact that Monochrome had known hers. It didn't really matter; if they came after her to capture her or avenge their fallen teammate (or both) she'd take them down just as easily. As far as she was concerned, battlesuits only provided visual cover.

Still, it was probably a good idea to lay low until the next night. They'd undoubtedly be scouring the city for her tonight, along with everyone who was willing to help. Tomorrow night, it would just be them, and Monochrome would still be dead.

May grinned as an idea came to her. If they give her a public funeral, I'll sneak in after and put 'Whoops' on her tombstone. I mean, how stupid can you get?

<><>​

Hebert Household

Taylor

Danny grimaced as he shook his head. "I'm not going to say that was a stupid thing to do, mainly because nothing else has been able to get through your force field. However, standing there and letting her stab you was remarkably short-sighted; just because nothing you've encountered can affect you inside the field doesn't mean there's nothing that will."

"Hear, hear," Rod Clements agreed. "As my Logic professor used to say, 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. He looked Taylor over carefully. "Are you sure you're okay now?"

"Perfectly." Taylor felt confident enough to reply in the positive. "Panacea fixed me up just fine."

"She does good work, it seems," Alan Barnes agreed. "Well worth the four hundred I wired through to Madison."

"Yeah, she does." Taylor frowned. "Not to change the subject exactly, but with her quality of work, how the hell is she not snowed under, every hour of every day?"

Mr Barnes rubbed his chin with forefinger and thumb. "I don't know the full details, but I've heard any calls to Panacea for healing go through a smart semi-AI filter system, provided by some computer Tinker or other. She prioritises life-threatening situations and charges more for frivolous calls, like getting a splinter removed. Anyone who tries to swamp the system by calling multiple times gets dropped clear out of the queue; it can even tell if the same person is calling from different phones. And capes automatically get jumped to the front of the line."

"Don't you mean heroes, not just capes?" asked Emma curiously.

"No." Mr Barnes shook his head. "If a villain calls up and has the cash, she'll fix him up too. So long as he pays in good faith, he gets healed in good faith."

"But surely there would be a constant number of clients, even taking frivolous calls out of the equation," Taylor insisted. "I mean, there's always people in the hospital."

"That's because most hospital stays are multi-day affairs," Danny explained. "From what I heard, she dealt with a metric ton of chronic conditions, from asthma to allergies to emphysema, early on. Those were one-and-done. Cancer as well. Once you get the conditions that normally get handled rather than cured out of the way, the workload drops way off."

"Yeah," agreed Mr Clements. "The number of people actually going into the hospital on any given day is actually fairly low."

Mr Barnes chuckled. "The pharmaceutical companies hate her. She doesn't prescribe any drugs that they can jack the price on, and she reduces the need for people to take the ongoing maintenance drugs that they make a lot of their profit on. They tried threatening a lawsuit to bar her from healing people on some bullshit technicality, and Carol said, 'Bring it.' Our whole company was gearing up to go balls-to-the-wall for her. That went away pretty fast, especially after we started talking to the news services about it."

"Well, I'm just glad she was ready to come fix me at a moment's notice," Taylor said. "The question is, how do we fight March, if she can just pop my force field like that, and cut through anything?"

"I think we need to talk to the PRT again," Madison decided. "See if they've got anyone with any insights on going up against her. Until then, I'd suggest you stay at range, and either poke her with your staff or throw stuff."

"Well, I can definitely throw stuff at her." Cars, Taylor decided. I can throw cars at her.

Emma nodded. "I'll make that phone call."

<><>​

Flechette

Lily was working up a good sweat on the treadmill—just because her powers gave her perfect timing and good balance didn't mean she could coast on the fitness aspect—when Triumph stepped into view in front of her and waved to get her attention. Hitting the button to let it roll to a stop, she pulled out one of her earpieces. "What's going on?" she asked. "The gangs acting up?"

"No, actually." She was struck once more by the deep resonant quality of his voice. "The Director wants to see you about that cape who keeps giving you a hard time."

"What, March?" Just saying the name gave her a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "Is she in town? Who's she hurt?"

"Yeah, she is, and it seems she ran into the Real Thing about an hour ago. Nearly killed Monochrome." He tilted his head toward the ceiling. "But you need to be having this conversation with Director Piggot, not me."

"Shit." She took a deep breath. "Okay, yeah, good point." Grabbing her towel, she stepped off the treadmill. "Do me a favour and let her know I'll be five minutes?"

"I can do that."

<><>​

Five Minutes Later

Director Piggot

Emily looked up at the tap on the door. "Enter."

The door opened, to reveal Flechette on the other side. Clad in civvies, the girl wore her tinted visor as a way to indicate who she was and hide her identity at the same time. "You wanted to see me, ma'am?"

"Yes." She waited until the door had closed behind the girl, then gestured to a chair. "Have a seat. Just so you're aware, this conversation will be recorded, as per PRT regulations." It was a warning she gave to every Ward, once. If they forgot thereafter, it was not her problem. "Now, you gave us some stringent warnings about March, as I recall."

"Yes, ma'am. Triumph said she nearly killed someone?" Flechette sat down, her shoulders hunched, as though she was expecting to be blamed for the incident.

"That is correct. Monochrome. Fortunately, her aim was a little off and Panacea is available at short notice, so she survived. As of ten minutes ago, the Real Thing contacted us for pointers on fighting her." She paused as Flechette opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. "What?"

"Excuse me, ma'am, but March's aim is never 'a little off'. I've never known her to miss what she was aiming at because of random chance. Or even because someone dodged; she's stupidly good at anticipating which way someone's going to try to go to evade her."

"Hmm." Emily didn't doubt Flechette's word. She had more experience against March than anyone in Brockton Bay, as a matter of course, and second-guessing the experts was a sure-fire route to disaster. "I may have mis-heard what Firebird said. In any case, they fully intend to go after her again, so any suggestions for doing this would be well-received."

"Speaking frankly, ma'am, my first suggestion would be 'don't', but I suppose that's not going to fly."

"You are correct." Emily smiled thinly. "The Real Thing have shown themselves to be remarkably persistent, not to mention effective. Up until today, I wouldn't have bet against them when it came to dealing with a single cape. It appears that I—and they—miscalculated."

Just for a second, Flechette's expression clearly said 'no shit', but the girl was evidently too smart to express that sentiment out loud. "Can I talk to them? If I know what happened, I can maybe figure out where to go from there."

"That's something I can arrange, yes." Emily took up her phone, accessed Firebird's number, and pressed the icon to call it. While the call was still going through, she put it on speaker, then placed the phone on the desk between them.

The phone rang twice, then Firebird's voice came through. "Hello, Director Piggot. What's up?"

"I have Flechette here," Emily said. "She wants to talk to you about your encounter with March."

"Yeah, hi," Flechette added. "So, um, what actually happened? Because March doesn't miss. If she's going for the kill, you're dead. If she's really going for the kill, you explode."

"I'll let Monochrome explain it. All Blockade and I saw was the aftermath."

There was a pause, then Monochrome spoke. "She was in a car and I stopped her by picking it up. There was a sword, and I told her to put it down, but she just kind of leaned across the seat and stabbed me with it. It popped my force field and went through my lung. Firebird was able to keep me alive until Panacea showed up. What should I have done differently?"

Flechette frowned. "Well, as I told the Director, the best way to not get stabbed by March is not to get close to her. But that aside, you say it 'popped' your force field, as opposed to punching through it? Also, a lung shot is a bit sloppy for someone like March. If she goes for the chest, it'll be a heart shot."

"Yeah. My force field automatically comes on when something's likely to hurt me, and I've found nothing that can get through it, until now. As soon as her sword hit it, it vanished. Panacea says she might've been aiming for my heart, but her sword scraped off my rib before it went into my chest." Monochrome sounded distinctly aggrieved about this.

"Wait, that's not right." Flechette shook her head. "For her sword to disrupt a high-end force field, she had to have been empowering it, but if she was empowering it, it would've gone straight through your rib like a hot knife through butter. Zero resistance. I know this, because it's how my power works."

"I don't know what to say. That's what happened. One second I was fully protected, and the next there was a sword sticking in me. And if Panacea says it scraped off my rib, then I'm going to take her word for it."

Flechette sat back in her chair, rubbing her thumbnail across her lips. "Okay, that's … the only way I can see that happening is if there was some kind of weird interaction between her power and your force field."

"What do you mean, exactly?" Monochrome sounded interested, at least.

"Okay, look at it like this. My power—our power—goes through anything. From the sounds of it, your force field stops everything. So, what happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object?"

"But she stabbed me anyway." Monochrome had clearly been looking ahead to the obvious conclusion. "So the unstoppable force wins?"

"No, they cancel each other out," Flechette said patiently. "Her blade wasn't empowered anymore, but it was still sharp."

"I said that!" exclaimed a voice Emily recognised as belonging to the petite teen inside the Blockade armour. "Didn't I say that?"

"Yes, okay, you called it." Firebird's sigh was audible. "Sorry about that. Blockade dislikes being ignored when she's right about something."

"Wait." Flechette sounded startled. "That's a girl in the Blockade armour? I thought for sure it was a guy inside there."

"That's the general idea of having a voice modulator, yes." Firebird cleared her throat. "So, back to the topic of March. Thanks for verifying Blockade's theory. Now, how can we use that information to wreck March? Also, is her power likely to be able to damage good steel? I'd really rather not go into a fight against her, and find out I'm trying to hide behind the equivalent of a marshmallow."

"Hey, my force field is not a marshmallow!"

"True," agreed Blockade. "From the way it popped, it was more like a soap bubble."

"What?"

"Monochrome, hush. Blockade, stop baiting her. We don't know if your suit will even stand up to March yet. Flechette?"

"I can give you good news on that front at least." Flechette sounded pleased. "We tested the piece Blockade gave to Armsmaster. My power couldn't so much as get a grip on it. I've cut through tungsten carbide like so much fairy floss, and that 'good steel' just flat-out ignored me."

"Hah! Yes! I knew it!"

"Okay," Monochrome said. "So Firebird and Blockade will be protected against her. Got anything for me?"

Emily coughed into her fist to get their attention. "Actually, I just had an idea. Monochrome, have you considered the idea of defence in depth?"

"Um … not really? What does that mean?"

"From the footage I've seen of you in action, your force field doesn't have to be skin-level, correct?"

"Well, no. I can shape it out to an inch or so. Why?"

"Can you generate two separate force fields, one under the other? Because if her power is expended when she pops the first layer, it'll just be an ordinary sword when she hits the second one." Knowing they couldn't see her, Emily still gestured to illustrate the concept.

Flechette's eyes widened and she sat up. "That … could actually work. It takes a second or so to empower a weapon. Even if she keeps her sword in contact with you while she charges it up again—and trust me, she can totally do that—you can move the field outward and form another one under it, right?"

"Well, yeah." Monochrome sounded doubtful. "So it's as simple as that? Two force fields, one inside the other?"

"Oh, it'll be anything but simple." Flechette shook her head. "Once she figures out what you're doing, and she totally will, she'll go for your eyes or anywhere else she thinks you might not have total coverage. And she will keep trying."

"But she won't just be fighting Monochrome next time." There was steel in Firebird's tone.

"Damn right." Blockade sounded just as determined.

Flechette didn't look entirely convinced, but neither did she voice any concerns. "Okay, then. Just … be really careful, okay? She plays by her own rules, and those rules change whenever she feels like it. If she can bully you, she'll absolutely do it."

Firebird's chuckle forebode dire consequences for March. "We're thoroughly acquainted with that mindset, trust me."

"Well, if there was nothing else?" prompted Emily after a few seconds of silence.

"That's all we had, Director," answered Firebird. "Thanks for letting us talk to Flechette."

"And Flechette, thanks for the advice," added Monochrome.

"You're totally welcome. Glad I could help." Flechette nodded to Emily.

"Good luck. Ending call … now." Emily hit the red icon, then laced her fingers together and looked over her desk at Flechette. "Thoughts?"

"Well, they listened, I guess. To a point, anyway." Now that the call was over, Flechette was letting her doubts show in her voice. "I just … nobody's ever gotten the better of March. The best we've ever done is chase her off with overwhelming force, and she still got a few good hits in. Monochrome nearly died the last time because she was overconfident. What if what I told them isn't enough to beat her?"

Emily had seen exactly what the Real Thing could do when they had the upper hand. Now she was about to see how they went against a foe who had already beaten them once.

"I suppose we'll find out when the time comes."

<><>​

The Next Afternoon

Butcher

The convoy of vehicles trailed its way into Brockton Bay. They didn't draw a great deal of attention, being in relatively good condition and bearing legitimate license plates. This was because while the majority of the vehicles were stolen (the Teeth were not the sort of people to walk into a car showroom and actually pay money for their rides, don't be ridiculous) the plates had been swapped over for ones that had been taken off cars on the street. It wouldn't pass muster for an in-depth check on a given plate, but a simple check for license plates of stolen cars wouldn't show up either.

Seated in the passenger seat of the lead van, with most of her paraphernalia concealed in the back, Butcher looked around with interest. She'd never been here before in person, but one or two of her predecessors had, so she had their memories to tap into. In their professional opinion, despite a few new buildings, the place had gone downhill since Butcher and the Teeth had last graced the city with their presence.

Along with the capes, there were about forty mundane followers in the Teeth. She didn't have an exact number; every now and again they recruited new blood, or some idiot got shanked or left of their own accord. Although they could likely commandeer enough motel rooms to accommodate everyone, the Teeth didn't do motels. Like the 'travellers' of Europe and the UK, they tended to find a spot that nobody was looking too closely at, circle the wagons, and set up camp. If they could steal electricity (or anything else) while they were at it, all the better.

Following instructions from one of the past Butchers, she guided the convoy to the northern part of the city, rolling through mostly-abandoned suburbs toward their goal. Covetous eyes took note of boarded-up stores and strip malls; businesses that closed down due to bankruptcy or whatever often had stock left behind if there was no new place to take it to. Among their numerous talents, the Teeth were expert scavengers of things left unattended, whether it be for fifteen years or fifteen seconds.

"There," she said, pointing ahead through the windshield. "We'll set up there."

Spree, who was driving at the time, peered at the building. It was well-kept, though the signs saying 'temporarily out of service' and 'coming soon' were weathered and worn, which was what had gotten Butcher's attention. The important part was that it was roomy enough for the Teeth to all find somewhere to crash, and make the place their own (mainly involving breaking stuff and tagging all available surfaces, because this was the Teeth).

"What about the boat?" he asked, indicating the ferry that was tied up at the dock.

"Oh." Butcher grinned lazily. "We'll take that too."

<><>​

March

Operation: Find A Gang was now on its second day with no appreciable progress, which irked May slightly. By this time she'd usually at least made some connections and was moving into the active recruitment phase, but teaching Monochrome the essential lesson of 'yes I can hurt you, you idiot' and then evading pursuit had cost her the night. She hadn't seen or heard anything about the moron's death on the news, but they were probably just trying to figure out how to spin it in a positive light.

To change things up, she'd boosted a motorbike this time and started cruising the streets, looking for trouble. It wasn't like she was being especially subtle, riding around in full costume and all. Just one cop car was all she wanted; surely they'd pull her over and try to arrest her, and then she'd have a cop car.

Rich end of town or poor end of town? Mentally, she flipped a coin. Causing problems in the affluent areas tended to draw more than one unit, whereas she was likely to only get one cop car at a time in the low to middle class suburbs.

Despite the fact that she could take down any number of cops, they might delay her long enough for the heroes to show up, and they'd probably still be holding a grudge over Monochrome. So while she was fully aware that it might take a bit longer, the coin came down on 'poor end of town'.

It took her less time than she'd thought to leave the nice side of town and hit the shitty region. Half the street-lights were smashed, there were areas where potholes outnumbered normal sections of street, and the general air of decrepitude made her want to gag. But she reminded herself that she'd made this choice, and she never made bad choices.

So she kept going, taking corners almost at random, gradually working her way farther north. Sooner or later, she figured, she would run into either a cop car or someone she could recruit as the first member of her Brockton Bay gang. Either one would be good.

<><>​

Grue

"I gotta ask, are there any that we haven't hit?" As they strolled along the sidewalk toward Lord Street, Alec seemed to be inquiring more out of mild curiosity than from actual greed. "Because we've made bank over the last few days."

"Oh, there's a few," Lisa admitted. "But they're the low-end ones. Not worth our time."

"Need to think about moving on anyway," Rachel threw in.

"What's the rush?" asked Brian, concerned. He was still working on getting full custody of Aisha so that when he left town, she could legally come with. Failure to cross the t's and dot the i's on this could see her dragged back to Celia and him being charged with kidnapping. "I thought the PRT wasn't focusing on us yet."

"They aren't." Lisa looked at Rachel, frowning slightly. "You know something we don't."

"Yeah. I was out walking my dogs earlier, and I saw a bunch of assholes setting up camp in the ferry terminal. They were dressed like the worst type of bikers and had a cape walking around with a stupid big gun, with spikes and skulls and shit hanging off her." Rachel shook her head. "Too close to the loft. They'd find us sooner or later, then they'd harass us because assholes love to do that sort of shit."

Lisa stared at her. "Spikes and skulls and a big gun? Are you sure?"

Rachel glared back. "Of course I'm fucking sure. I'm not fucking blind."

"Motorbike," Alec warned them, stepping away from the edge of the sidewalk. So did Brian; some bikers loved to clip pedestrians, or do even more stupid shit. Then he turned to look, and did a double-take.

The girl in the rabbit mask and the gloriously overdone militaristic costume pulled up alongside them. Brian noted the rapier hanging off her belt, but didn't see any ranged weapons. He also picked up on the fact that the ignition lock of the bike was busted, which meant she had not acquired it in any kind of legal fashion.

"Hi," said the newcomer brightly. "My name's March. How would you like to be part of the newest, most kickass gang in Brockton Bay?"



End of Part Thirty-Six

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Thirty-Seven: Escalation Marches Onward

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



Friday Afternoon, 24 September 2010

Grue

"That's an interesting offer," Lisa said chirpily before Brian could put in his demurral. "Totally sorry, usually not this much of a ditz, but what exactly have you done before? I don't think I've seen you in the news or anything."

Brian froze in his tracks. Lisa never, ever admitted to not knowing anything, and he wouldn't have thought she would call herself a ditz even with a gun to her head. This wasn't just a red flag, it was Victory Day celebrations in Palace Square in St Petersburg. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rachel begin to open her mouth, and he smacked her hand with his. She gave him a confused look, but kept quiet.

"Me? I've kicked ass, is what I've done." The woman in the rabbit-head mask sounded far too pleased with herself. "Seems to me you're suffering from a sudden lack of talent in the supervillain sector, so I've come in from New York to take the job. Of course, supervillains need minions, and you four look like you could handle that for me just fine. What do you say?"

Alec's head came up, but Brian nudged him and he shut up too. There was something going on here, and Brian was happy to let Lisa handle it until shit went sideways.

Lisa never lost her chirpy demeanour. "Oh, yeah? Whose ass have you kicked? Anyone famous?"

"Flechette's, any number of times." March seemed to figure out that they didn't know who she was talking about. "Oh, and you know Monochrome? The one who took down Lung? I put her in the morgue yesterday. Just in case you're wondering if I'm all that. 'Cause I am."

"Hmm." Lisa still didn't sound like herself. Brian paid very close attention to what she was saying. "I was just thinking that Monochrome was kind of popular. Due to, you know, taking down Lung. It might get a bit dangerous for us if we started working for you. I mean, not that I'm averse to the money. What sort of benefits would we get?"

"Well, apart from having a kickass boss—that is, me—who'll never steer you wrong, and the money, not a lot," March admitted. "But that's a shitload more than you'd ever get from any other villain. Tell me I'm wrong."

"Well, no, you're not wrong," Lisa said, so enthusiastically that Brian was almost taken in. "Me and the guys, we're all in on the idea of working for another supervillain, especially one as badass as you." With her left hand, out of March's sight, she wrapped her thumb over her pinky, leaving three fingers sticking out.

"What, really? You've worked for other villains?" March sounded a little surprised at that. "How many have you got in this town, anyway?"

Lisa grinned. "More than you'd expect. Anyway, we were just now talking about how great it was to work for Coil, and how we'd love to work for someone just like him. You've heard of Coil, right?" One of her fingers folded in. Two.

Brian controlled his breathing, trying not to let his tension show. He wasn't sure what kind of vibe Lisa had picked up from March, but whatever it was, it had to be bad. Even Alec and Rachel had picked up on it by now, and were waiting for his move.

"Not really." March's tone was dismissive. "Small-timer, is he?"

"Well, he's not one of the high rollers, and he's behind bars right now so there's that," Lisa pretended to admit. "But working for him was as easy as three two one, go!"

Brian already had darkness building in his palms, and Lisa's final countdown gave him his signal. On 'go', he unleashed a torrent of it all over March, yanking Lisa back out of it as the cloud built up. Then, just to make sure, he stepped into the cloud and side-kicked the motorcycle to knock it over.

It didn't go over at first, but then March's knee spasmed and it fell over on top of her. He distantly heard her screaming obscenities as he bolted for it.

Lisa was already running; Brian caught up after twenty seconds or so. Alec and Rachel were pacing her, the former laughing under his breath.

"She's batshit cray-cray, isn't she?" he asked between panting breaths. "Reminds me of some of my family."

"Totally cuckoo," Lisa agreed. "Rachel, she's likely to come after us. We're going to need the dogs."

"Don't tell me what to do," Rachel snapped back. "Anyway, I'm already doing it."

"Think she really killed Monochrome?" asked Brian. "I mean, what sort of asshole just comes to town and starts killing off heroes?"

"The Slaughterhouse Nine or Butcher and the Teeth type of asshole," Alec said immediately.

Lisa glanced over at Brian. "She believes she did," she said soberly. "Whether she actually managed it or not is immaterial. The Real Thing will absolutely want to come down on her like a ton of bricks."

Brian had seen footage online of what happened when Blockade came down on someone like a ton of bricks. It hadn't been pretty. Up until now, the Real Thing had acted with unfailing restraint, when they could easily have permanently maimed their adversaries or even simply killed them. If Monochrome was dead, or even badly injured, this was likely to change.

He strongly suspected that March and any of her associates would be wise to leave town immediately, before the vengeful heroes caught up with them. From the way the Real Thing had mopped the floor with the Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB, March would stand no chance at all.

Right now, the trick appeared to be convincing her to look elsewhere for minions.

They slowed to a stop at the corner, looking back at the gradually dissipating cloud of darkness. Rachel was still growing the dogs, which were about waist-high by now. Alec began to ask something, but Brian shushed him. "She's got the bike off her," he reported, watching as the masked woman picked the motorcycle up—no mean feat, that—then swung her leg astride and kicked over the engine.

A moment later, it emerged from the last of the darkness, and the rabbit mask turned to zero in on them. "Shit," said Lisa. "We gotta go. Now."

As if to underline her words, the rapier came out of its sheath to point at them, and March's words echoed down the street. "You cocksuckers! I'm gonna—"

The rising engine note of the motorbike drowned out her voice, but Brian wasn't listening anymore. Hustling around the corner with the others, he clambered onto Brutus and grabbed hold of a couple of convenient bone spurs. The dogs, jolted into action, galloped across the street, still growing as they went, then leaped up and started climbing the wall.

Seconds later, the bike swept around the corner, the tyres howling as she pushed it past its operational limits, yet still managing to hold the road anyway. Leaning down without slowing the motorcycle, March scooped up something from the roadway and hurled it with a flick of the wrist. A second later, the wall above Angelica erupted outward with an explosion, gouging a crater from the brickwork and blasting shrapnel in all directions.

Shrapnel blasted in all directions. Rachel was shielded from most of it by Angelica's body, but Brian was fairly sure she caught a hit on the knee. He was equally unlucky; a razor-sharp shard of brick ripped into his left shoulder, sending a wave of agony through his body and rendering the arm useless. Desperately, he clutched the bone spike with his right hand, knowing that if he fell, his darkness would not cushion his fall in the slightest.

Cracks radiated ominously outward from the blast point, and a piece of the wall came away in Angelica's claws. If they tried going any farther upward, Brian knew, it might just give way altogether.

"Get back down here, or the next one takes your head off!" Seated on her now-idling bike and brandishing her sword, March's entire posture indicated that she was remarkably pissed off; her tone of voice merely underlined the matter.

"The fuck was that?" yelped Alec.

"She empowers things with explosive energy." Lisa sounded unhappy about this. "And yeah, she's accurate enough to do it."

"Ideas?" asked Brian, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out with the pain. "If we move sideways, with darkness …" It would be difficult, but even a little bit of cover could go a long way.

Lisa grimaced. "She'll keep track of us anyway. She's got a Thinker power, too."

"Fucking grab bag capes." Alec sounded as pissed off as Brian had ever heard him; that is, not very.

"So, what do we do?" Rachel was also pissed off. "We can't go up, we can't go sideways, and I'm not surrendering to that assmunch."

"Only one option," Lisa decided. "We go down, but Brian covers the street with what darkness he can, Alec slows her down, and we bolt for it as soon as we hit street level."

"You got three seconds!" yelled March, clearly losing patience. "Three! Two!"

"Go!" Lisa snapped. She turned Brutus's head and he jumped back down to the street, missing March by a few yards. Angelica went next, the jolt as she landed nearly causing Brian to pass out from the pain. As March revved the motorbike's engine, they galloped off, with Brian doing his best to trail a swathe of darkness behind them. With the injury to his arm, he was less than successful at this, and March was able to hold fast to them.

"Slow her down!" he shouted at Alec.

"I'm trying! She's compensating!"

"How is she compensating for your power?"

"She just is! You want to go back and ask her?"

Brian gave up on that discussion as being pointless and turned his attention to Lisa. "What's the plan? How do we lose her?"

"Keep running!" Lisa pointed northeast. "That way!"

"Dogs can't run forever!" Rachel butted in.

"She's right!" Brian hung on tight, trying to ease the jolting on his shoulder. "Running's just a stopgap! We need to lose her somehow!"

"Don't worry! I've got a plan!"

As the dogs galloped onward and the psycho on the motorbike clung stubbornly to their tail, Brian could only hope that the plan was a good one.

<><>​

Taylor

There wasn't anyone nearby in the park, but I stood watch anyway while Madison accessed the Blockade armour. Emma waited on a rooftop nearby, out of sight, already in costume. Using the tiny pair of binoculars she carried on her utility belt, she was scanning the area, making sure nobody was sneaking up on the two of us.

"You know," I said conversationally, "it would make life a lot easier for all of us if you could make that thing stealthy, so you could take off and land without scaring every bird in a one-mile radius. Like with, I don't know, anti-gravity."

Madison paused in the act of climbing into the half-open suit, and looked back over her shoulder at me. "Quick question. At what point did I ever give the impression that I build stuff that can go stealthy?"

I shrugged. "The camouflage when it's all closed up?"

"That's not stealth. That's just sitting there and pretending to be something else. Stealth is looking like it's not there at all." She finished climbing into the suit and it closed up around her then stood up. Her next words came out via the external speakers. "And even if I could do stuff like anti-gravity, it would still be loud. Just like I can't miniaturise stuff like Armsmaster can. It's how my power works. I can do many things, but subtle isn't one of them."

"Okay, yeah, you have a point." I let my force field flow over me, practicing with the double-layered idea—for a non-cape, Director Piggot certainly had some useful ideas for powers—so that if (when) ran into March again, she wouldn't be able to just drop my force field willy-nilly. Then I jumped lightly onto the suit's shoulder and grabbed the handhold that was waiting for me there. "Ready."

"Copy that. Three, two, one, ignition." As she spoke the last word, the suit's thrusters came on and it blasted skyward, Madison easily compensating for my (admittedly negligible) weight on the suit's shoulder. We angled over toward the building where Emma was waiting for us. As she climbed across, I jumped over to grab my staff from where she'd been keeping an eye on it for me. Jumping back, I took hold of the handgrip again.

The radio earpiece was already in place, so I tucked the staff under my arm and moved a little bit of force field aside to turn on the radio itself. "Okay, guys," I said. "So, how do we find March so I can pummel her into the ground for stabbing me?"

"This might be a red herring," Madison reported, "but there's a report that's just come in about a maniac on a motorbike with a rabbit mask and a sword chasing a bunch of teens on giant dogs."

I shared a puzzled glance with Emma. "That sounds like March, alright. But why would she be chasing the Undersiders?" There weren't so many capes in the city that a report of 'giant dogs' would cause confusion, after all.

"I have a suggestion." Emma grinned. "How about we add that question to all the others, after we've kicked her ass but before we hand her over to the PRT?"

I grinned back, opening a hole in the force field so she could see it. "That sounds like an excellent plan. Where is this?"

"The report said up near the old ferry terminal."

"Let's go kick some bunny butt, then."

"Way ahead of you."

<><>​

Grue

Brian didn't figure out Lisa's plan until it was way too late to pull the ripcord and abort it, which was almost certainly why she hadn't explained it to them in detail. Of course, they had no idea how good March's senses were, so talking about it risked giving her a crucial heads-up. It was just that he would've preferred some kind of advance warning.

The plan, as far as he was aware, was simple in essence: bore right through the middle of the camp that Butcher and the Teeth had set up, and scrape off March along the way. If she wanted minions, she could poach them off of Butcher. There were undoubtedly nuances of which he was unaware, but that was the gist of it.

Overall, it wasn't a bad plan. It held the distinct downside of pissing off Butcher and the Teeth (who were infamous for their total lack of self-control when angry, and for being angry all the time) and March (who was already gunning for them). However, with any luck, one of their problems would take care of the other, and they were reasonably adept at evading those enemies irritated enough at them to come after them personally.

If Butcher killed March and then decided to be angry at the Undersiders for leading her to the Teeth, it would probably be a good time to leave town, or at least keep their heads down until the feral gang decided Brockton Bay was boring, and left town of their own accord. It wasn't like they were lacking in spending money, after all. Brian's bank account was looking quite healthy right about now.

"Ready!" called out Lisa. She turned Brutus's head so he changed course, and gave him the signal to speed up. Brian and the others followed suit, pulling away from March. She didn't waste time opening the throttle to regain the ground she'd lost, but by then it was too late.

They thundered down a narrow side-street, then burst out into the parking lot surrounding the ferry terminal. A bunch of cars and SUVs, most of them showing signs of hard use, were set up here, with camp chairs, mobile barbecues, and a general 'moving in for the duration' atmosphere. It would've been a lot more wholesome if he hadn't also seen the Teeth, with their post-apocalyptic chic and multitude of weapons.

"Bitch!" yelled Lisa, pointing at where two cars were set up almost nose to nose, at an angle to each other. "Make that a barrier!"

Rachel didn't argue or ask for clarification, instead slowing Angelica so that the others surged ahead. They barrelled through the ad hoc campsite—it looked like they'd started to colonise the terminal itself, which meant someone would have to be cleaning up quite a mess, later—and leaped over the two cars. Angelica spun around as she touched down, claws tearing up chunks of asphalt; under Rachel's expert command, she head-butted the closer car, skidding it sideways to close the gap between it and the next one.

Brian glanced over his shoulder to see Rachel turn Angelica again and power after them, even as the Teeth yelled and milled around, reaching for weapons. Behind her, March spotted the problem far too late. She'd been accelerating, which made it a lot harder to turn, and even hitting the brakes merely meant that the collision wouldn't be as damaging.

The crash as the bike hit the cars was audible all the way over where they were; now that they were safely past the Teeth (and able to see if any of the capes decided to aggress on them) Lisa pulled them to a halt. It seemed March had been thrown from the bike, but from the way she got up, the worst she'd suffered was bruising. Of course, she was now surrounded by a pissed-off supervillain gang, so things were likely to get a whole lot worse for her.

"Fuck," Brian muttered. "Are we going to have to rescue her?"

"Shit, no." Lisa shook her head. "She was literally going to murder us for not doing what she said. And you heard her: she's already attacked and maybe killed Monochrome."

"Fuck her," Rachel growled. "She blew up the wall right in front of Angelica. Might've hurt her." She massaged her leg, where a little blood was showing through her jeans.

"So what happens now?" asked Alec. "Do we wait around or just ride off into the sunset?"

"We wait," decided Lisa. "Whoever wins, I want to know about it. I especially don't want to assume she's out of the picture, and have her kick in the door tonight."

Brian nodded. "Good point."

<><>​

March

Those motherfuckers are going to pay for this. Them and their little doggies both.

May climbed to her feet, pleased that she'd managed to maintain a hold on her rapier. "Okay," she announced. "I'm gonna be taking one of your cars, so—"

"Unless you're Alexandria in disguise," a woman said from behind her, "that's not fuckin' happening. And if you are Alexandria in disguise, fuckin' excellent. I've been wanting to kick your ass for years."

May turned, taking in for the first time the theme of the clothing that those around her were wearing. These were not, she belatedly realised, the basic vagrants or travellers she'd first assumed them to be. There was far too much leather, chainwork and spikes for that.

The woman who'd stepped up to challenge her either carried on the theme or was the inspiration for it. Tall and imposing, she wore spikes and skulls—that actually looked real, not plastic—and carried both a fucking great minigun and a bow slung across her back. It all clashed horribly, but looking at her, May wasn't totally sure it was a good idea to call her on it.

"I'm not Alexandria," May stated boldly, deciding that what the fuck, she'd gotten into this while looking for a gang to recruit, and here was one ready for the taking. "I'm better than her. My name's March, and if you all come to work for me, I'll show you how a gang really operates."

The general roar of laughter pissed her off, but she didn't kill anyone quite yet. If this bitch in front of her was running the show, then she was the primary target on May's hit list. If not … she'd keep. Or she'd bend the knee, one or the other.

"Is that fucking so?" The woman took a few steps closer. "We've got a fairly liberal approach to leadership around here. You want to run the show, you just have to kill me." Holding out her hand, she made the classic 'come at me' gesture.

"Yeah, right." May kept an eye out as far as she could with her peripheral vision. She was getting an idea of this bunch, and she was pretty sure she could predict their movements, but there was a lot of them. "I gank you, the rest of your assbitches dogpile me on the spot. Try again."

"Not how it happens." Goddamn it, the woman was confident. "You kill me, you're in charge here. Of course, that's not how it's gonna happen. You come at me, I'll rip you apart and we all get a good show."

"You?" May started moving, pacing out the perimeter of an invisible circle. Her adversary mimicked her, so they maintained the same distance, slowly circling each other. "Not on your best day. Nobody's even come close to beating me one-on-one."

The woman smiled viciously. "Well, then. It looks like this is your day to learn something new."

<><>​

Grue

"Um," muttered Lisa. "This may have been a mistake."

"Mistake?" Alec snorted. "This is gonna be better than pay per view."

"Explain," Brian ordered.

Lisa took a deep breath. "That's Butcher she's facing, and it looks like they're about to get into it, one on one. If Butcher wins … well, there's a mess to clean up, and that's about it. But if March wins …"

Brian got it then. "She becomes the new Butcher, with her own damn gang, and still pissed at us. Oh, shit." A chill chased up his spine. "How likely is that to happen?"

Lisa shook her head. "So close I can't call it."

Alec summed up the situation succinctly. "Well, fuck."

"Yeah."



End of Part Thirty-Seven

[A/N: Yes, evil cliffhanger is evil. Mwahahaha.]

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Thirty-Eight: Fight!

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



Monochrome

If anyone had told me before all this started that I'd ever get used to roaring through the air on the shoulder of a massive powersuit piloted by one of my ex-worst-enemies, alongside my other ex-worst-enemy, I would've told them that they'd gotten a bad deal out of the Merchants.

(Sophia didn't count as an ex-worst-enemy. She was still very much a current enemy, though incarcerated and exceedingly unlikely to escape. Which was good, since she'd already gone after Dad once, and I didn't want to have to kill her if she tried again.)

As it was, holding onto the grab-handle with one hand and the good-steel staff with the other, this kind of transport seemed almost normal to me now. Emma was less comfortable with it than I was, I figured due to the fact that I could fall that distance and not worry about it, whereas she would have some issues. Not deal-breakers, exactly—I recalled how she'd dive-bombed in through my bedroom window—but it would certainly be problematic for her.

"That's weird." Madison's modulated voice came over my radio earpiece. "There's a bunch of people camped near the ferry terminal."

"Camped?" I asked. "Who's camping there?"

The massive headpiece shook from side to side. "Sorry, I can't pick out many other details. Though the Undersiders are on site. I can see the dogs."

"How about March?" asked Emma over her own radio link. "Can you see her?"

"Nobody on a motorcycle. I guess we'll figure it out when we get closer."

"Or we could ask Tattletale," Emma suggested. "I've heard she has all the answers."

I wrinkled my nose. Tattletale did have that rep, but while I'd never actually met her, or even seen her in action, she also had the rep of being smug as fuck. I had a congenital dislike for smug people, mainly due to my experiences with Emma and Madison before they'd had their change of heart. "Maybe."

"Oh, shit."

"What?" I asked, at the same time as Emma did.

"I just got a better view. It's Butcher and the Teeth, and March is going head-to-head with Butcher."

I met Emma's eyes. Again, we said the same thing at the same time.

"Oh, shit."

<><>​

Grue

Brian didn't have Lisa's ability to pick out someone's entire life story and motivations after talking to them for thirty seconds, but he was good at fighting. Reading someone's moves and what they were likely to try was second nature to him now, and both Butcher and March were giving him plenty to go on with.

To cut a long and involved story woefully short, it wasn't looking good for March.

While she was faster than Butcher and she had greater reach overall with that rapier of hers, they were each apparently able to anticipate the other's moves enough that neither could tag the other properly. Except that March was smaller and couldn't take any kind of solid hit, Butcher had a few dirty tricks up her sleeve that it seemed March hadn't learned yet (which Brian filed away for future use) and of course, Butcher didn't need to touch March to inflict pain on her, when and where she felt like it.

Oh, and they were both sandbagging to make it look good before the inevitable takedown: Butcher more than March, but it was still a mutual thing. March believed that not only she could win but that she would win. All she had to do was stop holding back at just the right moment.

Unfortunately for her ambitions, he was reasonably sure Butcher was going to get bored with this and lower the boom on her first. It wouldn't be as dramatic or impressive as March was intending to be when she made her move, but it would be thoroughly lethal.

And that was when he heard the thunder.

<><>​

March

May saw the punch coming long before it connected, and went to pirouette out of the way. The rapier was charged up enough to take Butcher's hand off at the wrist, but the colossal bitch sent a spasm of agony through her arm, causing it to fly off target. Instead of missing altogether, Butcher's fist grazed May's face and ripped away part of the rabbit mask, sending her off-balance and unable to twist away from the follow-up boot. The hard-shell toe took her solidly in the ribs, and she felt several of them break as she sprawled on the filthy, cracked asphalt. Her rapier skittered out of her grasp, gouging chunks out of the asphalt.

She tried to use her momentum to roll to her feet, but the damage to her body prevented her from getting farther up than one knee. Shaking her head, she did her best to dispel the dizziness from the hit to her face. Butcher packed a punch like a freight train; May knew she was going to have one hell of a bruise on her cheekbone, and that was the least of her injuries. Blood dripped from her nose and she swiped it away with the back of her hand as she eyed where her rapier had ended up. She tasted more blood in the back of her throat.

"Go ahead," Butcher invited her with a vicious grin. "Pick it up. I dare you."

May could tell from every line in her body, from her power's analysis of Butcher's style, that the leader of the Teeth would never allow her to reach the rapier. I should've blown her head off earlier. But she'd have time to yell at herself later. Right now she needed to focus, if she was going to get out of this alive.

With a thunder of thrusters and a tremendous impact of metal on asphalt, the party was well and truly crashed; May was bowled over by the jetwash as the massive battlesuit came in for a landing close enough to be actually intruding on the fight. But she didn't care about that. Even as Butcher reacted to the sudden entrance, May found her footing and kicked off toward where her rapier rested in a groove of its own making.

Butcher definitely had some kind of Thinker power going on, because she reacted to May's move, far faster than she should have. But even as agony flared through her body, May's hand found the rapier and she gave it the full treatment. Her roll continued and she ended up on her back … and threw the rapier, point first.

She could have targeted Blockade, or Firebird, or even the black-and-white figure her disbelieving eyes made out on the shoulder of the powered armour. But May didn't play; she knew who she had to take down, and the rapier flew straight and true. For her part, Butcher was a fraction of a second too late in realising the true extent of the danger, because May hadn't thrown her weapon up until now, and the rapier wasn't burdened with the usual limitations due to gravity or air resistance.

It crossed the intervening distance in a fraction of a second, then Butcher teleported with her usual fiery detonation, ending up a dozen yards away. She stood there, swaying, the blade of May's rapier punched in through her right eye and out through the back of her head. "Th'nk … th's'll … k'll … me?" she slurred. "G'nna … sh'v … th's … up … y'r—"

Her hand had been slowly, cautiously reaching up to the protruding hilt of the weapon; just as she got a good grip on it, the fuse finally ran down. The entire rapier, plus everything it was in contact with … exploded.

It was a good solid detonation, one that relieved Butcher of everything from her clavicles on upward, and showered everyone within twenty yards with bits of gore. Her body, remarkably, remained standing for a few more seconds, swaying back and forth until May almost expected her to pop a new head out of the gaping, grisly hole at the top of her torso. Then it crumpled to the ground like the proverbial puppet with strings cut.

Fuck, yeah. I win.

<><>​

Monochrome

Madison was in the middle of yelling for Butcher to stand down—even as the woman had a sword through her head—when matters took a turn for the worse. The sword exploded, as did the head, removing the woman who'd once been known as Quarrel from the position of 'current Butcher' and relegating her name to the list of previous holders of that title. I hadn't expected that to happen, or anything like it. Neither, apparently, had she.

I figured I'd hold the 'splitting headache' jokes for later, if ever.

"Eww," Madison said over the speakers. "Ew, ew, ewww."

It wasn't hard to see the reason for her disquiet. When Butcher had lost her head, a thoroughly organic spray had gone out in all directions. Emma had had the presence of mind to use the suit for cover; I hadn't, but it was possible to use my outer covering field to discard the … stuff … that had hit me, and generate another one under it. Madison had no such options, and good steel had no particular bio-organic repellent qualities.

I could totally see her building some in for the next iteration of the suit, though. And I was pretty sure she was going to be steam-cleaning this one. For someone who could chug an entire can of soda then belch the first few lines of the national anthem, Madison was oddly fastidious about some things.

"March!" Emma warned, and I tore my eyes away from the crumpled remains of the former Butcher. Because I was under no illusions as to who was the current one.

Through the hole in her mask, I saw March smile as she got to her feet. She showed no signs of the beating she'd been taking just moments before, and I saw her hand scrape the asphalt, gathering a bunch of material. By the time she got to her feet, it was already forming itself into another rapier.

"Not March," I said. "Butcher."

The new Butcher's head turned as I said this, and I saw her concentrate on me. My view of her flickered a few times as my field cut in for full protective coverage; from what, I wasn't sure. She hadn't actually moved, but from what I understood, Butcher didn't need to lift a finger in order to hurt someone.

"O …" she said. "I ha … … mit tha … … pressed. Mo … … ple I kill tend to stay dead." My hearing blanked out at the same intervals as my vision, chopping away parts of her words.

"Meh," I retorted, carefully making sure that my protective field was indeed double layered everywhere I could make it so, even down to a finely-gridded double layer over my eyes and ears. "I got better."

She tilted her head to look more closely at me. "Well, that's irritating." I was pretty sure she wasn't talking about me not being dead, or at least not just that. "And why can't I see whoever's in that damn suit? Do you have someone remotely controlling it?"

"Why don't you come over here and find out?" Madison had evidently gotten over her upset about the mess on her suit. Or maybe she just wanted to use Butcher's rabbit mask to clean off her suit. I could never really tell with her.

"Okay," murmured Emma over the radio link. "This is really bad. We can't risk killing her, because if we do, one of us becomes the next Butcher."

I looked over at where Butcher stood with her rapier at the ready, and kept my voice down. "And in the meantime, she's already tried killing me once, and I doubt having all the other Butchers in her head is actually improving her mental stability."

"Haha, yeah, no," Madison agreed over the link. "So what do we do? Pull back, or go all-in?"

Emma was looking around. "Undersiders are bugging out. We need to plan and prep."

I hated the idea of retreating. Since I'd gotten my powers, I hadn't taken one step back from a challenge. Deep down, I knew that if I vetoed the idea, Emma and Madison would back me up all the way. I didn't know how we were going to beat March/Butcher plus the rest of the Teeth, but I'd been playing a lot of things by ear and coming out on top. And I really wanted to beat her face in (why yes, I did bear a grudge for her sticking a sword in me).

But if Madison had learned how to be pretty damn inflexible herself when she had to, and Emma could read every aspect of a potential fight before it ever happened. If they both thought we should perform a tactical retreat, especially since the only potential near-innocents in the area were already leaving on dog-back, then it was probably a good idea to at least consider it.

"Ugh, dammit," I muttered. It still didn't feel right, but I was learning that going with my gut was not infallible. "Go. Let's get out of here."

<><>​

Butcher

May grinned inside her damaged mask. She wasn't quite sure what she was going to replace it with, but the whole new selection of powers she now had access to definitely gave her a bunch of options. The ability to always hit vital areas definitely looked useful.

Well, fuck. That sounded like Butcher's voice, inside her head. I didn't see that coming.

Nicely done, kid, agreed another voice. Is it just me, or are they getting younger?

Meh, don't give a shit, a third interjected. Hey, kid, those heroes are about to get away. You gonna do something about it, or you just gonna stand there like a fucking moron?

If you just shut up, I might be able to concentrate. Belatedly aware that she was talking to all the previous Butchers, May focused on collapsing her freshly manufactured rapier into undifferentiated matter then making three throwing blades out of it. She infused all three blades with energy and threw them. Even though she was hampered by Monochrome simply vanishing off her special senses as soon as she did this, and the overly-chunky battlesuit just not showing up with any life at all, she did it all the same. She'd taken down Monochrome before, and she would totally do it again.

The blade destined for Monochrome hit her and exploded; the force field popped, only to reveal another one inside the first. Monochrome didn't seem to have any problem weathering the explosion.

If anything, the blade aimed at the powersuit did even less. It hit the metal armour, but instead of carving through or setting it up to explode, the blade was just … ignored. There was a sharp detonation that didn't even leave a charred spot, and that was it.

May still wasn't sure of the name of the red-headed girl, but neither did she care all that much. There was no weird force field or bullshit powered armour, so she was fair game. The blade curved in, aiming straight for the redhead's carotid arteries, nice big targets that basically guaranteed the target bleeding out catastrophically in front of everyone.

It was a good first kill as Butcher.

Or it would have been, if the girl hadn't blocked the knife, bringing up a wrist-mounted shield almost faster than the eye could register and literally knocking the thrown knife away. Before she could curve it back around, it exploded in midair, well away from anything it could actually do damage to.

Before May could grab more material, the thrusters kicked in at full strength, accelerating the battlesuit upward, along with its two passengers. May tried to hold where she was and do something else—maybe broadcast pain, maybe inflict wounds—but the blast of hot air knocked her ass over teakettle, sending her sprawling on the ground. She could feel her busted ribs grating together, though the pain had gone away; she could, she knew, ignore it selectively.

Getting to her feet, she shaded her eyes as she watched the powersuit accelerating up and away. Would've been nice to kill them, but making them run with their tails between their legs is almost as good.

"Well, then," she announced, dusting her hands off as she turned to the capes and minions watching her. "It seems I'm the new boss around here. Anyone got any objections about that?"

"Fuck, no," asserted a woman with tiny force-field shards dancing around her. "That was badass as fuck. Vex, by the way."

"Animos," offered an ordinary-looking guy.

"Spree."

"Hemorrhagia."

"Reaver."

May's smile widened as she looked around at the small army that she'd just inherited. Mine. They're all mine.

Ours, you mean. One of the voices in her head interjected. You aren't shit without us, kid, and don't you forget it.

May laughed out loud. "Trust me," she said to both the previous Butchers and the Teeth surrounding her, "you ain't seen nothing yet."

<><>​

Grue

"Fuck," muttered Lisa as the dogs bolted down the street. Nobody was chasing them, which Brian considered to be a minor miracle. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

"What are we gonna do, Tats?" asked Alec, sounding actually worried for once. "Because that didn't look good at all."

"No shit it didn't look good." Rachel's tone was blunt as ever. "That fucker is the new Butcher, and she's got a grudge against us."

"We're leaving town," Brian decided. "Now. Today. This afternoon. We're going back to our places, grabbing everything we can stuff into the back of a car, and fucking off."

"But my console," whined Alec. "My games. Can't we get, you know, a moving van or something?"

"Those things take time to arrange," Lisa snapped. "And do you really want one of the Teeth to see it coming in, and follow it right to the loft? Fighting our way out of town, especially with March leading the charge against us, is a losing proposition. We would die."

Her response didn't shut Alec up—that would've required a major miracle—but it did reduce his objections to a mild grumble.

Brian was left to consider one other problem.

What am I going to do with Aisha?

<><>​

PRT Building

Director's Office

When Emily's phone rang, she picked it up before looking at the caller ID. Firebird.

She frowned. They'd already contacted the PRT to do with Flechette; her understanding had been that they were going to be locating March and coming down on her with all the considerable throw weight at their disposal. Considering their previous track record, she fully expected them to be successful, which was why she was expecting them to appear in person and drop off the young miscreant into the PRT's custody.

Maybe they're too busy to make the trip in?

Whatever the reason, she knew she wouldn't learn it until she answered the damn phone. Thumbing the Accept icon, she held the phone to her ear. "You've got Piggot."

"Director, I've got problematic news." Despite audible wind-rush, Firebird spoke clearly, with no wasted words. "Butcher and the Teeth are in town, up near the ferry terminal. March challenged Butcher and killed her."

"March is the new Butcher?" Emily's eyes went wide at this news. It was bad enough that Butcher had come back to Brockton Bay, but for her to get mixed up with March? That girl had been problematic as it was, especially given her obsession with Flechette. Now, if this report was correct, she had command over a whole bunch of psychotic capes, and ten times as many unpowered mooks eager to perform whatever atrocities she ordered them to carry out. "What are your plans now?"

Firebird ignored the rhetorical question and focused on the legitimate one. "Right this second, we're pulling back to regroup and reconsider. The Teeth should be no real challenge, but we need to figure out how to lock down Butcher and take her out of the game. I'll let you know when we've got that sorted."

Slowly, Emily nodded. "Understood. Keep me posted." She ended the call and carefully put the phone down. Then she turned to her computer and clicked the email icon. Setting the message to deliver to all department heads, and all members of the Protectorate and Wards, she began to type.

URGENT. READ IMMEDIATELY. URGENT.

<><>​

Flechette

Lily's phone beeped with an incoming email at the same time as Aegis' did. She paused, lowering her arbalest instead of shooting a chain-line across to the next rooftop, and pulled out the phone. Aegis dropped to the rooftop next to her and did the same. "Wonder what's going on?" he mused as he woke the device up. "They only send out mass-mails when … whoa, shit."

Whoa, shit, indeed. Lily felt the breath catch in her throat as she saw the name March, then carried on to where it said what she'd done. Dropping to sit on the building parapet, she read the email through twice more, hoping desperately that she'd misinterpreted what it was saying.

"Oh, my god," she whispered. "No way. She couldn't. Could she?" But she knew she was just shouting at the darkness. March could have, and evidently had, done what the email bluntly spelled out.

"Okay," Aegis said once he'd assimilated the contents of the mail. "I'm calling it. They'll be contacting you soon enough to get back to the PRT building, so we're cutting the patrol short and heading back right now."

"They … might not?" she ventured.

"Hah, yeah, as if." He snorted. "You, out here right now, when we have no idea where the Teeth are? The Director might be a hardass, but she's not going to risk you getting hurt like that. And even if she is, I'm not. Let's go."

Lily nodded. His logic was sound, and the Wards had standing orders to cut short any patrols that felt unsafe anyway.

As they headed back over the rooftops, she couldn't help but worry. Is she going to be March with the powers of Butcher, or Butcher with the powers of March?

She knew which one she'd prefer. Unfortunately, what she preferred and what she got were quite often two different things.



End of Part Thirty-Eight