Part Twenty-Five: Assault! (No, Not Him)
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Taylor Hebert, Medhall Intern
Part Twenty-Five: Assault! (No, Not Him)
[A/N: This chapter commissioned by @GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Taylor
"One thing, before we go." Greg turned to Bitch. "Is that the size your dogs are going to be? I did say I was going to armour them up."
She looked at him and the globule of darksteel he was spinning on the tip of one finger (because that was Greg all over). "How big are the doorways down here?"
"Normal sized," I assured her. At least, they had been the last time I'd been down here, which had only been a few hours before.
"Uh huh." She concentrated, and all three dogs grew a smidgen, then stopped. "Okay, that's big enough. Don't make the armour stupid bulky."
"I assure you, they will be both svelte and sleek." He went to put armour on them, then apparently noticed her scowl. "I mean, totally. I'll keep it minimal."
"Well, why didn't you just say that from the start?" From the dirty look Bitch was giving him, she suspected he'd been mocking her.
I went to step in, but Greg spoke first. "I'm sorry. Taylor does a lot of reading, and I've been trying to match that, so I talked to you the way she does to me. That's my bad."
"Oh." Looking at his clearly sincere expression, she eased off on the anger. "Well … don't do it again."
"Holy shit," whispered Regent, just loudly enough for me to hear. "How'd he do that? By now, she's normally punched someone in the face."
I grinned. Just as I was sharing Brian's and Armsmaster's ass-kicking skills with the group, I was also giving everyone the benefit of Victor's considerable trove of skills while we were near him, including his vast swathe of diplomatic techniques. It didn't matter that he was unconscious thanks to Armsmaster's tranquilliser shot; we all still got to use his skills.
(No, the irony did not escape me. Mwahahaha.)
Not that Greg wasn't learning how to talk to people in general and girls in particular. He was a lot less derpy than he'd been when we first showed up at Medhall for our internships, and (even more ironic) it was almost certainly due to our experiences there that he'd changed so much for the better. It truly sucked that half the friends I thought I'd made at Medhall were neo-Nazi supervillains, but that was life in Brockton Bay. Shit happened, even when it wasn't happening.
From the way Tattletale nodded to me, she'd figured out at least part of what I was doing. I nodded back, then concentrated on listening. Tiny flickers of air movement conveyed sound to me with increased efficacy, allowing me to hear a lot more of what was going on.
I tuned out the breathing of the people around me, and the tiny noises of the darksteel armour settling into place on the dogs. Farther away, I could hear movement, footsteps, snatches of conversation. There was nothing I could seize on to, though; it faded in and out as people moved around.
Then I heard it. "Dad, I'm scared." The voice of a teenage girl trying to be strong, and failing. I'd been there, many times before.
"I know, honey. Me too." In his voice was the hopelessness of an adult who wanted to protect his daughter, even while the world made a mockery of his efforts. I'd seen the matching expression on Dad's face before today.
"Okay, I hear them. They're alive," I said quietly. "Nobody's alerted yet."
Armsmaster nodded. "Good. Which direction, and how far?"
I pointed left. "That way, and I'm not too sure about the distance. Echoes down here make it hard to judge. But not too far, I don't think."
"Hm." He did something to his forearm armour, and a tiny drone popped up out of a compartment, hovering in the air with a near-imperceptible whee of minuscule rotor blades. "I'll scout ahead with this."
"Bad idea." I said it at the same time as Brian, Greg, Tracey, and Tattletale.
He paused, then looked at us. "Explain."
"Stormtiger's powers are about air movement," I explained. "If he's in any way on the ball, he'll notice a tiny spot of disturbed air where there shouldn't be one."
"Cricket's the same way with sound," Brian added. "She homed in on me in complete darkness, and kicked my ass without even trying hard."
Greg shrugged. "What they said." He turned to Tattletale. "How did you know? Have you fought them?"
"No. I'm just that good." Tattletale smirked. "And I do my research."
The rhino-dogs were fully armoured by now, and they looked even more impressive than normal. It took me a second to realise Greg had given them a hint of a Triceratops profile, with a flaring shield that a rider could shelter behind, and I grinned inside my helmet. Superhero or not, Greg would always be a nerd, and I loved that about him.
"Okay," I said, as the Armsdrone (well, I had to call it something) returned to its home base. "Let's do this."
Othala
"Is it really the best idea to be sitting on our asses down here?" Hookwolf, currently unarmoured, stretched in his chair then spun halfway around on it, probably because he could. "People are going to think we're hiding, or some shit like that."
"Staying out of sight is the best idea, yes." Krieg seemed to be going through files on a tablet, from what Diane could see. "We failed to prevent the Hebert girl and her confederates from reaching the PRT building, so it is almost certain that she is giving them chapter and verse about us right at this moment. Our best option is, as Kaiser said, getting Grue's cooperation to derail her testimony. Then, once Victor's masquerade is carried out, we bring in the lawyers and bury the whole idea so deep that not even Behemoth could dig it up."
"And then we kill the Undersiders and the other irritating teenagers, yes?" Night could have been suggesting that they go to the movies. "No more problem."
Krieg nodded. "That is a very distinct possibility, yes."
Alabaster chuckled lightly, his chair tilted far back with his feet crossed on the table. "Still can't believe you got your asses handed to you by a bunch of brand-new capes."
"Shut up," Hookwolf growled. "You weren't there. You can't talk."
"Enough," snapped Krieg. "It's over. We're moving forward."
"Sucks that they got Purity, though." Rune was leaning back in her chair, rolling her head from side to side. "What happens when they interrogate her? Think she'll give us up?"
"Not in a million years." Stormtiger stood up to pop his spine back into place. "She's a true believer. Never give up, never back down, that's her."
In the silence that followed, there was a spap as Fenja laid down a card in her game of two-handed patience with Menja. Neither one said a word, which was normal for those two. Diane privately suspected they hammed up the twin thing to weird people out.
Sitting up in her chair, Diane spun idly toward the doorway. "Where's Alex, anyway? I thought he was just going with Fog to see Max about what was happening with the Grue situation."
Almost as though summoned by her words, two people appeared in the doorway. Primed by her expectations, her brain was already assuring her that her husband was back when higher functions kicked in and urgently yelled at her that that's not Alex! Half-standing, she pointed. "Who the— intruders." It came out almost as a question, so she took a quick breath and tried again. "Intruders!"
Brad came to his feet, armouring up with a long shhkshhkshhk of metal sliding out of his skin. At the same time, Menja snatched up her spear and leaped to her feet. As a continuation of the move, she hurled it at the shield carried by one of the dark armoured figures in the doorway.
It came apart halfway across the room, streaming in a semi-liquid fashion to its target, where it splashed against the shield then solidified as a layer of metal on it.
"Shit!" yelled Brad. "They're back!" In a move Diane had never seen him pull ever, he backpedalled away from the newcomers. "Krieg! Shut them down!"
As Krieg brought up his hands and basically solidified the air around that side of the room, Stormtiger launched a vicious air-blast at the kite shield that was blocking a large section of the doorway. Just before impact, the dark metal shimmered almost imperceptibly, and when the air-blade struck, it vanished altogether. Krieg was caught unaware when it came out from under the table, catching him across the ribs and smashing him into the wall.
"My spear!" protested Menja. "What the hell?"
"Forget your goddamn spear!" Fenja started growing, and headed for the doorway. "Othala! Invincibility!"
"You got it!" Diane reached up as Fenja passed her by, and bestowed absolute invulnerability on the Valkyrie. It would only last a few moments, but that was usually enough time to win a fight.
She hoped it would be enough: Menja was disarmed, Hookwolf was staying the hell away from the guy with the shield, and Stormtiger had just accidentally KO'd their other big hitter. As for Rune, this was absolutely not her preferred field of combat. Nor did it help that Cricket wasn't even in the room. And where the hell are Alex, Fog, and Kaiser?
As Fenja brought her sword down on the shield in a flurry of massive blows, sending sparks flying, Diane came to her feet to head over to Krieg. If I can get him back in the game—
A searing pain erupted in her left leg and lashed through her entire body. Letting out a scream of pure agony, she lurched sideways and fell over. As she writhed on the floor, she could see that a midnight-black tentacle had extended from the shadows under the table and latched onto her ankle. Second by second, she could feel her very life force being leeched from her body.
Suddenly, the entire table lifted into the air, turned, and came down edge-first on the black tentacle like a guillotine. The tentacle snapped, and the pain ceased almost immediately. But it was too late; her concentration had been broken, and Fenja was no longer invincible. Even as she drew back her sword for yet another smashing blow on the now-dented shield, it dissolved into globules of liquid metal and flowed forward onto the shield, followed by Fenja's actual armour.
Snarling, Fenja grabbed the shield and pulled it toward her while she drew back her fist in preparation for a tremendous blow. But before she could drive it forward, a crack reverberated through the room. The overpressure wave registered painfully on Diane's ears as Fenja was flung back across the room hard enough to slam into the far wall. Groaning, Fenja slid down to her knees then fell forward onto her face, lights out.
"Shut that fucking door!" bellowed Hookwolf and Stormtiger at the same time.
Rune levitated the table across the room, slamming the flat side over the open doorway and holding it there. It was a heavy table, but Diane had zero illusions about the people on the other side of the doorway not being able to get through if they really wanted to. She struggled to get to her feet again, her ankle throbbing with remembered pain.
Almost immediately, Hookwolf and Stormtiger threw themselves at the upturned table, putting their full weights into holding it against the doorframe. "Get Krieg up," Hookwolf grunted over his shoulder. "Then Fenja. Then someone figure out how the fuck we're supposed to win against those little shits."
As Diane headed for the fallen Krieg, she couldn't help asking herself the same question she had before. Where are the others? Why aren't they helping out here?
A Few Moments Before
Taylor
Maintaining my silence field in front of us, I led the way down the corridor, checking the storeroom numbers. There were no guards in sight, which was their good luck, as they'd barely slow us down. Nobody was going to hear us coming, despite the fact that there were eight of us plus three oversized dogs, all in varying levels of armour.
When we came to a corner, Armsmaster deployed the flexible camera from his wrist. He spent less than ten seconds surveying the corridor before he retracted it. That was either very good or very bad, and I tensed.
"They're there," Armsmaster said quietly, despite the fact that we were totally shielded from eavesdroppers. "On the left, a door guarded by two men, with Cricket talking to them. On the right, an open door to a lit-up room."
Brian nodded. "Crusader's dead, Purity's in custody, and we've taken Victor, Fog and Kaiser out of the picture. Chances are, the rest of the Empire Eighty-Eight capes are in that room. Portal?"
Taking my cue, I concentrated. The sound of squeaking chairs came to me, along with voices and what might have been playing cards being laid down. "I make it … nine people. Hookwolf, Krieg, Rune, Stormtiger, and five others." I could identify them because I'd heard their voices before.
"Dang," muttered Regent. "Tats, she just stole your schtick. You gonna stand for that?"
"The other five are Alabaster, Night, Fenja, Menja, and Othala," Tattletale said promptly. Her face was covered, but I could hear the smugness in her voice.
"We'll never have a better chance." I leaned into the accumulated knowledge of small-unit tactics within the group. "I'll go with Alloy and …" I pointed at Tracey questioningly.
"Oh, uh, we're using codenames now?" She blinked. "Um, call me Darksider. So, what are we doing?"
"Keeping the Empire bottled up while Armsmaster and the Undersiders take down Cricket and those guards." I nodded to Regent and Bitch (a name I still wasn't comfortable with). "They don't get to open that door. Okay?"
"I've got Cricket," Brian said grimly. "I owe her a rematch."
Regent shrugged. "Trust me, she's all yours." Leaning over toward me, he put his hand up next to his faceplate and stage-whispered, "She's all mine."
"Enough." Armsmaster's curt tone cut through Brian's response. "We're short on time. Let's do this."
I drew a deep breath and gave him a nod. "Three. Two. One. Go."
As I stepped out around the corner, I imposed my silence field not over myself, nor over Cricket. Instead, I put it over the doorway that we were heading to, where the Empire capes were waiting. Cricket saw me—well, us, because the others were coming out behind me—almost immediately, and let out a harsh shout.
Which had zero effect, because nobody in the other room heard a damn thing: all according to plan.
Greg, Tracey and I bolted along the corridor, and skidded to a halt more or less in the doorway as the others ran past behind us. First, and most effective, the monster dogs ploughed the guards off their feet and kept going, holding the struggling men in their jaws. That left Cricket, leaping out of their way then facing up against Grue.
Krieg used his power against us, but I'd planned for that. I was already touching Greg's shield and using the darksteel for one end of a teleport shadow portal; as I'd already noted, darksteel was really good at that. The other end of the portal was in the shadows under the table, and its aimpoint was at Krieg.
It wasn't exactly rocket science, after all. Our whole job was to keep them bottled up in the room while everyone else rescued Brian's family, so if they kept us in place, they were doing our job for us. But if they attacked us—as Stormtiger did, just a moment or two later—then they'd take each other down, which also did our jobs for us.
Win-win, really.
The slow-field fell away, and I glanced around just in time to see Brian pull off a magnificent leg-sweep on Cricket. It seemed they had that fight well in hand, so I turned my attention back to ours, just as one of the Fenja-Menja pair came at Greg with her sword. He couldn't pull her armour off her, and her sword remained irritatingly intact, even as she smashed at his shield with it.
Just standing there with my hands on his armour, I could feel the sheer brute power in her blows; the shield cracked and pieces flew off before Greg repaired it again. Worse, she was driving him back, step by step. I had to do something about this, and I had to do it fast.
Fortunately, I'd heard her exchange with Othala just before she came at Greg, so I knew what was going on and how to deal with it. Turning the back of Greg's armour into a portal and linking it to the shadows under the table, I grabbed Tracey by the shoulder. "Othala!" I shouted over the clanging of the apparently unbreakable sword on Greg's shield.
She nodded and stuck her hand into the portal. I didn't have much of a view past Greg and the nine-foot-something woman who was laying into his shield, but the scream I heard from inside the room told me that someone was having a bad day. She wasn't the only one; a moment later, Greg's armour suddenly gained some serious mass as he pulled all the metal off the Empire cape attacking him.
Either there was something about the Empire Eighty-Eight that inspired people to fight to the very last, or maybe they were just stupid. Either way, clad in just T-shirt and shorts, she grabbed Greg's shield and went to punch him. The problem with this tactic was that as he no longer had to brace with both arms against her hit-by-a-truck sword blows, he now had a hand free.
Which meant he could unleash his air-hammer.
The look on her face when he smashed her across the room and into the far wall was priceless. Briefly priceless, but still very much so.
I heard Hookwolf and Stormtiger both yell at someone to shut the fucking door; less than a second later, the doorway was blocked by a wide expanse of wood. The top of the table that I'd been placing my portal under, was my guess. (It wasn't much of a guess, given that it still sported several coffee rings.)
I shared a glance with Greg, and we both shrugged. Then he used some of his excess metal—he hadn't gotten back to the frankly ridiculous dimensions that he'd reached after the elevator, but he wasn't far off it—to fill in the doorway with an elaborate barrier composed entirely of darksteel. There was just enough of a vent for air to get in so they wouldn't suffocate, but apart from that, they'd be looking at trying to bust out through six inches of darksteel, which I couldn't see happening any time soon.
We were just stepping back to admire Greg's work when the lights went out.
Cricket
All was going well for Melody, until it wasn't.
She'd stepped out of the room where the Empire capes were all waiting, partly to stretch her legs and partly to make sure the guards were on the ball. It was also because having all those people in such a small area was starting to make her feel claustrophobic, but she was never going to admit that to anyone. Her main aim was to ensure that the Laborns didn't pull some tricky shit like the boy had done, before he did as he was told and this whole situation went away.
When the armoured girl came running around the corner, Melody thought at first that she was the target. She'd already gone toe-to-toe with the kid, and it hadn't ended well. Of course, that was mainly because Hebert had triggered with stupid fucking bullshit powers, along with her friends—oh. They're here too.
Melody was good, but she was pretty damn sure she couldn't go up against all three of them at once. However, instead of going for her, they were heading for the room where the other members of the Empire were chilling. Melody knew better than most just how effective they could be if given half a chance, so she shouted a warning before turning to face the rest of the intruders.
This turned out to be the Undersiders, all armoured, plus three of Bitch's monster dogs, likewise protected … and Armsmaster, of all people. Bitch yelled something like 'pin', and the dog-things came at Melody and the guards with jaws wide open. Melody wasn't down for that, so she easily flipped out of the way, evading the massive jaws like the thing was moving in slow motion.
Not being nearly as good as she was, the guards were scooped up on the way past, leaving her facing Armsmaster and the Undersiders. All she had to do, she knew, was hold out until the other members of the Empire responded to her warning and came out of that room over the top of Hebert and her little play-group. Her next best shot was to bust into the room where they were keeping the Laborns (she couldn't simply open the door because Kaiser had decided it was best to keep it locked, just in case) and take one of them hostage, preferably the smart-mouthed kid.
She had a new pair of kama, but Grue was armoured now and it would be a lot harder to get a telling blow on him. Still, she had her usual ploy to pull, and all she had to do was get the point of her weapon in through a gap while he was off-balance—
Her left foot went right instead of forward, and she tripped over her own feet. As she flailed for balance, she saw Regent giving her a fingertip wave. She couldn't do anything about it, because Grue's leg came around at that moment and took her feet clean out from under her.
Twisting in midair, she lit down in a roll, but Grue was already waiting for her, leading with a steel-armoured elbow. Despite all her efforts to avoid it, he got in a solid strike, knocking her sideways. He'd either been sandbagging for that first fight (unlikely) or he'd had a severe competence upgrade since then, because she was starting to feel that she was punching above her weight.
No matter how she tried to evade him, he was there, locking down her options and forcing her into bad choices. She tried again to disorient him and managed to pull it off this time, but she was focusing so hard on him that she entirely missed the fact that Armsmaster was pointing his halberd at her. There was a snap and a crackle, and electricity coursed through her body.
She was tough, probably tougher than anyone on the team aside from Hookwolf and Stormtiger, but there was only so much she could take. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell over sideways. As consciousness drifted away, she felt her arms being secured behind her back, but right then she didn't give a damn.
Grue
"I said, she was …" Brian paused and shook his head, letting the tension dissipate from his muscles. "You know what? I don't even care. She's down, and that's all that matters."
Armsmaster looked up from where he was cuffing Cricket's hands. "Good. You're learning. This isn't about claiming dibs and counting coup. It's about getting the job done and saving the innocents."
"Yeah, okay, fine." Putting the discussion from his mind, Brian focused on what was more important. "Where are my dad and sister? In there?"
Tattletale nodded. "Kaiser said there were two guards on the door, so I'd say that's a yes."
"Good." Brian tried the handle, but it refused to turn, no matter how much pressure he put on it. Pulling back, he rammed his shoulder into it; the armour spread the impact so he didn't hurt himself, but all he did was slightly mar the paintwork. "Dad!" he called out. "Aisha! Are you in there? It's me!"
There was silence for a long moment, then a thump sounded on the inside of the door. "Brian?" It was his father's voice, albeit muffled. "Is that you, son?"
Brian felt tears well up in his eyes as he grinned broadly inside his helmet. "Yeah, it's me. We're here to get you out, just as soon as we open this door." Grabbing the handle again, he tried harder to turn it, to just as little avail as before.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," growled Bitch. "Get out of the way. Brutus, break."
Brian stepped back hastily. He might have been armoured, but so was Brutus, and he didn't think a physical confrontation with the oversized pooch would go his way even if Brutus wasn't armoured. All he could think of as Brutus lumbered past him, still holding the hapless guard in his jaws like an oversized chew toy, was I am so glad she's on our side.
Lowering his head, Brutus rammed the solid metal plate (with its short stubby horns) into the metal door, literally tearing it off its hinges. Then, just as he was stepping back, shaking his head to dislodge the wreckage from his face, the lights went out.
"What the hell?" Brian wasn't actually fond of the dark. He preferred his own darkness, mainly because he could see through it and nobody else could (except for Taylor, but he was fine with that). Down in this sub-basement, far from any natural light source, the darkness was virtually palpable.
"It's the Empire capes!" Tattletale called out from somewhere nearby. "They're about to try something! Probably with Night!"
As if the universe delighted in proving her correct, there was a shattering crash in the direction of where he thought the Empire capes had been. And then a woman's voice, one Brian didn't know, sounded clearly in the darkness. "Somebody can see me! Somebody can see me!"
She sounded pissed-off enough that Brian stepped back carefully. Don't look at me. I can't see shit.
Krieg
As the pain faded, James allowed Alabaster to help him up. It was fortunate that his costume incorporated body armour, but the kind of good fortune that went with forward planning. While he hadn't anticipated having to weather an attack from one of his comrades, it had still done its job.
However, all was not plain sailing. Stormtiger's air blade hadn't done its full damage to him, but he'd still suffered a massive impact from it. The first chance he got, he was going to have strenuous words with Lars over how attacking a foe who could teleport attacks through darkness required care and precision.
As Othala's regeneration power did its job, he looked around at the contingent of capes in the room with him. "Report."
"Fenja's taken a pretty big hit," Menja said from where she was crouching beside her sister. "That asshole blasted her across the room. And he took her armour and her sword and shield, and my spear." She sounded more pissed off by that than any other part of the situation.
"We can replace those. What's happening outside? Are they trying to get in?" James strode back and forth, swinging his arms, feeling the pain in his ribs fading away.
Hookwolf hesitated for a moment. "Either the table's holding 'em, or they don't want to come in here."
James considered that. Given the forces that had so recently been arrayed against them, he was reasonably sure which one it was. "Check for me, will you?"
Hookwolf and Stormtiger met each other's eyes and nodded. "One, two, three," muttered Hookwolf. On 'three', they pulled the table away from the doorway … and stopped.
"Well, shit." Stormtiger shook his head, staring at the matte-black wall filling the opening. "They fuckin' locked us in here."
"Night." Krieg already knew what he had to do. "If Othala made you super-strong, could you break through a six-inch steel barrier?"
Night, in her Dorothy Schmidt form, held out her hands. "Not like this, I can't, dear." She gave Krieg a perfect fifties-housewife smile. "If you could turn out the lights, on the other hand, I should be able to do so much more."
"Then that's exactly what we'll do." Krieg went to the corner of the room that held the small refrigerator and microwave. Next to the microwave was a breaker box, which he opened. "Othala, wake Fenja up, then provide Night with super-strength."
Time was already ticking down, he knew. The heroes wouldn't simply lock them in there without a plan to come back with more reinforcements. Every second he delayed was a second that their adversaries could use to their own advantage.
Once Night was through the barrier, she would be able to strike at any heroes on the other side more or less at will, provided that they hadn't brought their own illumination along. Even if they had, she possessed smoke grenades that would nullify vision once more, allowing her to run rampant through their ranks.
James smiled as Fenja came awake, coughing and spluttering. Othala left her to get to her feet with Menja's assistance and crossed the room to where Night was waiting next to the black metal barrier. A single touch and some concentration, and the job was done. Othala stepped back to the middle of the room. "It's done."
"Good." James flicked the breaker switch he'd already identified, and the room fell into pitch darkness. Within a second, there was a shattering crash as Night's monster form assaulted the metal barrier with all of its inhuman strength, greatly magnified by Othala's assistance. To his discerning ear, it sounded as though the wall gave way almost immediately, allowing Night egress into the darkness beyond.
Her shout was as unwelcome as it was unexpected. "Somebody can see me! Somebody can see me!"
Taylor
I was surprised and impressed when the room fell to pitch darkness. For everyone else, of course; not me. Ever since I'd gotten my powers, I'd actually been able to see better in darkness than I could in the light. Powers were weird: news at eleven.
In any case, when the impact came against Greg's carefully constructed wall, I saw the cracks opening up before it broke all the way. Shoving him away. I jumped back myself so that the larger chunks scattered past us onto the floor. I looked around to make sure that nobody else had been hit, then I turned my gaze back to the now-open doorway, to see a confused-looking woman standing there. I didn't know who she was, but she wore a hooded cloak.
"Somebody can see me!" she shouted. "Somebody can see me!"
"Hey." As I spoke, I moved forward with all the speed and power that mainlining every ounce of fighting skill within ten yards could give me.
She pulled off her cloak and flicked it at me, but I saw it coming and brushed it aside. Hooks sewn into it scratched briefly at my armour and fell away; I suspected that with clothing, it would've been a totally different matter.
As she backed away from me, I closed with her. If this was Night—and I was reasonably sure it was—I had to keep my eyes on her or she'd do her best to kill everyone else in the area.
Suddenly, she stopped retreating and swung a punch at me. Back when I'd been mild-mannered, harmless Taylor Hebert, she would've connected solidly, mostly because I'd had no training in how to deal with a punch to the face. But now I could see in detail exactly how bad she was at basic brawling; I brushed it aside, feeling the power in it as I did so.
My return punch was almost instinctive, burying my armoured fist deep into her solar plexus. All the air whooshed out of her lungs as she bent over. I took note of this as I grabbed her arm in a compliance hold. She could almost certainly pull free of it, but she would cause herself intense pain in doing so. Super-strong didn't seem to translate to super-durable, at least in her case.
She fumbled at her belt with her free hand, and I saw her grab some kind of canister. It had a ring-pull, so I figured she was going to have a hard time activating it … right up until she put it to her mouth and yanked it out with her teeth. Smoke billowed, and I knew things were about to get problematic.
"Need some air movement!" I called out, trying to figure out how to get the smoke grenade away from her before the cloud enveloped us both.
Tracey was on the ball. Less than a second before I would've lost all sight of Night, a massive burst of air swept past us both, dissipating the smoke still pouring out of the grenade into a long stream that flowed off down the corridor. Night probably couldn't see this, but she let out an irritated grunt anyway, and dropped the canister, which promptly rolled away under the pressure of the ongoing gale.
I wondered for a second why she wasn't grabbing for another canister, until I saw that her fingers were bright red and starting to blister. Huh. Smoke grenades get hot. I didn't know that.
I was still musing over that random piece of information when the lights came back on.
Armsmaster
Colin had no problem with admitting that the combined team of the Undersiders and Portal's group were shaping up quite well. Portal, Alloy and Darksider kept the majority of the Empire Eighty-Eight bottled up very effectively indeed while the Undersiders neutralised Cricket and the guards.
Even though Grue had been taking a while to bring down Cricket, Colin could tell that he had the upper hand and would've won sooner rather than later; the only reason Colin intervened at all was the looming threat of the other Empire capes. Otherwise, he would've been happy to stand back and observe a prime beatdown of someone who (in his opinion) richly deserved it.
When the lights went out and Night burst out through the doorway, his helmet automatically went to infrared. He was about to move in on Night when he discovered that not only could Portal see in the dark, but she was just as adept at CQC as Grue, which was quite interesting. Again, their superior teamwork showed itself when Darksider called up a powerful wind to blow away the smoke from Night's grenade … but then the lights came back on.
Nobody needed any telling what that meant. The Empire capes were coming out to play.
First through the doorway was Krieg, his slow-down field rolling out over the assembled capes. His pistol came up, pointing at Darksider, and he fired several times. It was clear that he considered her the greatest threat to him and his comrades. Equally evident was the fact that any gloves the Empire had been wearing had well and truly come off.
Sparks flew as the bullets ricocheted from Darksider's armour, but Colin couldn't move. Nobody could, not even Hellhound's oversized dogs. Portal was still invested in keeping Night locked down, which fortunately didn't require her to move.
Krieg strode up to Darksider, who hadn't budged, even to fall down. Raising the weapon to head height, he held it to a gap in her helmet and fired again. Her head jerked back, and he smiled.
As Alabaster and the other Empire capes followed him out, Krieg placed one finger in the middle of Darksider's faceplate and pushed; she began to topple over backward, still in slow motion. Colin struggled futilely against the kinetic field, his armour servos whining as he pushed them to their limit. "You'll … pay … for … that …"
"Hardly." Krieg wasn't the gloating type normally, but he seemed to be taking the time to indulge now. "None of you are even going to—"
Half a dozen black tentacles sprang out from each of Darksider's hands. Each of the Empire capes found one latching onto them, except for Krieg, who was targeted by no fewer than four at once. He screamed in agony; the slow-down field abruptly popped, allowing Colin to start moving again. Darksider landed on her butt, then rolled back up onto her feet.
Colin hadn't seen her power in action before now, but it was somewhat impressive. As each of the Valkyrie twins tried to increase in height, the black tentacles pulled them straight back down to normal human size. Hookwolf (his metal blades removed in passing by Alloy) and Stormtiger each fell to their knees as the tentacles feasted on them. Even Alabaster looked like he wasn't having a good time.
When Krieg fell unconscious (it didn't take long, with four tentacles attached to him), Darksider released him from her power and stood over the rest, making sure they stayed down. Colin made his way to her side and tried to peer into her helmet to assess her injuries. "Are you alright? He shot you at point-blank range."
She turned to look at him. "Metal doesn't bother me anymore. It was like being hit by a particularly aggressive raindrop. I was deaf in that ear and blind in that eye from the muzzle flash, but I've healed that back too, so I'm good."
"Okay," said Grue cautiously, "so why didn't Othala power one of these guys up?"
"She did. Him." Darksider nodded to where Krieg lay with the abandon of someone who had been unconscious before he hit the floor. "I got her before I got him. And then I got him good." There was savage satisfaction in her voice. "Serves him right for trying to shoot me in the damn eye."
"So … that's it?" Regent looked around. "We just beat the Empire Eighty-Eight; or rather, we stood back and let Miss Scary Tentacles over there do the beating for us? By the way, word to the wise? Don't ever use those in front of news cameras, or there'll be pornographic fan-art of you hitting the interwebs before you can say 'rule thirty-four'."
"I couldn't have done it without you guys," Darksider said, sensibly ignoring the rest of what he'd said. Colin decided that he'd ask Dragon about the reference later. Or maybe not; she might get the wrong idea. "I'm just glad we came through it okay."
"Me too." As Colin and Alloy started securing the Empire capes—the boy could do a good line in wrist and ankle cuffs, it seemed—Grue turned and headed toward the room where his family had been imprisoned.
The door was no longer anything near secure, and it only needed wrestling aside, a task he was aided in by Hellhound. Colin didn't pay too much attention to the reunion, but he gathered that both father and sister were in good health, if a little shell-shocked.
All was well that ended well, he supposed. Though of course there was still a great deal to do.
Taylor
Director Piggot sat behind her desk and observed each of us in turn. We were all out of armour; Greg, Tracey and I were each unmasked, given that the PRT already knew who we were. The Undersiders had opted to remain masked, and Bitch's three dogs sat happily panting at her feet. If I had to guess, they'd thoroughly enjoyed their outing, though they hadn't liked the teleporting aspect one little bit.
"I have taken Armsmaster's verbal report and viewed the footage," she said in an uninflected tone that gave us zero clue as to how she intended to continue. "Your capabilities are impressive, and you carried out your mission with admirable restraint. The Empire Eighty-Eight capes are all now entirely in custody, and we are ready to begin proceedings against the Medhall corporation."
Greg cleared his throat, and she glanced his way. At her nod, he spoke. "Well, I guess that means our internships are well and truly terminated then?"
I mentally winced, waiting for her to tear him several brand-new orifices, but to my surprise she chuckled and shook her head. "That's a reasonable assumption, Mr Veder. As your internships were what led to the downfall of the Empire and the corporation within which they were hiding, I cannot argue with your wording."
"So … what happens now?" asked Grue. "Will you be using what you know about me against us?"
"That is very much up to you." Director Piggot raised one finger as he made to answer. "Allow me to continue."
He hesitated, then nodded. "Okay."
She laced her fingers together in front of her. "On the one hand, we do have a sizeable amount of information about your civilian identity in our possession now. On the other, your little rescue mission also assisted in the capture of the entirety of the Empire Eighty-Eight cape roster, so I am rather inclined to be lenient."
Tattletale cleared her throat. "I've read the appropriate regulations. Grue was employed by the PRT as a consultant. Legally, you're not permitted to use anything you found out about his cape identity during that time."
The Director smiled, though the expression was somewhat sharp-edged. "That's true, though if you dug deeper, you would find a positive morass of precedents and loopholes that I could use to make my case with. However, I have no intention of doing so."
"Then what do you intend?" asked Grue. "Because I'm starting to get the impression that your help wasn't purely out of the goodness of your heart, even when you didn't know we were going to take out the Empire."
He was rewarded by a single nod from the Director. "That's true. I didn't have entirely altruistic aims in mind. If it turned out well—and thanks to the efforts of all concerned, it did—I had the intention of making you all an offer. Specifically, employment by the PRT."
I blinked, not sure where she was going with this. "What, you wanted to recruit us into the Wards or Protectorate?"
Tattletale shook her head. "Can't be. They aren't directly employed by the PRT. You were thinking of something a little more covert, weren't you, Director?"
Director Piggot's smile lacked any humour. "I'd say that was a good guess, but you don't do guesses. However, you are correct. I was thinking of … call them irregulars. Capes I could call upon to deal with special cases, while remaining outside the chain of command of the Protectorate and the Wards."
Tracey got it before I did. "And entirely under the table, so nobody could accuse you of building your own personal cape team."
"Even though that's exactly what it would be," Regent concluded. He paused, then continued. "Would we get paid for this? Because we're already being paid to be villains."
"I do have a discretionary fund I can draw on, for confidential informants and the like," Piggot allowed. "However, the need for discretion would be paramount, on both sides."
"Can we talk about this and get back to you?" asked Grue. "I suspect there's going to be a very long and involved discussion before we decide one way or the other."
"Certainly." As they filed out, Director Piggot turned to look at Greg, Tracey and myself. "And you? You are of course included in the offer."
"Um." I glanced at Tracey, not sure which way she would jump. Greg, of course, would do whatever I did. He was supportive like that. "What do you think?"
"Well, heck." Tracey shrugged. "I'm currently unemployed, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if 'prior employment at Medhall' turned out to be a big black mark, as soon as the news hits the infosphere. So … sure, I guess?"
I nodded. "Yup. Me too. Greg?"
He grinned. "You have to ask? Of course I'm in."
"Excellent." I turned to the Director. "Count us in."
"Good to hear." She smiled again, this time exuding quiet satisfaction. "Welcome to the grind."
End of Part Twenty-Five
[A/N: This will be the end of Taylor Hebert, Medhall Intern. The story will continue on as Taylor Hebert, PRT Operative.]
Part Twenty-Five: Assault! (No, Not Him)
[A/N: This chapter commissioned by @GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Taylor
"One thing, before we go." Greg turned to Bitch. "Is that the size your dogs are going to be? I did say I was going to armour them up."
She looked at him and the globule of darksteel he was spinning on the tip of one finger (because that was Greg all over). "How big are the doorways down here?"
"Normal sized," I assured her. At least, they had been the last time I'd been down here, which had only been a few hours before.
"Uh huh." She concentrated, and all three dogs grew a smidgen, then stopped. "Okay, that's big enough. Don't make the armour stupid bulky."
"I assure you, they will be both svelte and sleek." He went to put armour on them, then apparently noticed her scowl. "I mean, totally. I'll keep it minimal."
"Well, why didn't you just say that from the start?" From the dirty look Bitch was giving him, she suspected he'd been mocking her.
I went to step in, but Greg spoke first. "I'm sorry. Taylor does a lot of reading, and I've been trying to match that, so I talked to you the way she does to me. That's my bad."
"Oh." Looking at his clearly sincere expression, she eased off on the anger. "Well … don't do it again."
"Holy shit," whispered Regent, just loudly enough for me to hear. "How'd he do that? By now, she's normally punched someone in the face."
I grinned. Just as I was sharing Brian's and Armsmaster's ass-kicking skills with the group, I was also giving everyone the benefit of Victor's considerable trove of skills while we were near him, including his vast swathe of diplomatic techniques. It didn't matter that he was unconscious thanks to Armsmaster's tranquilliser shot; we all still got to use his skills.
(No, the irony did not escape me. Mwahahaha.)
Not that Greg wasn't learning how to talk to people in general and girls in particular. He was a lot less derpy than he'd been when we first showed up at Medhall for our internships, and (even more ironic) it was almost certainly due to our experiences there that he'd changed so much for the better. It truly sucked that half the friends I thought I'd made at Medhall were neo-Nazi supervillains, but that was life in Brockton Bay. Shit happened, even when it wasn't happening.
From the way Tattletale nodded to me, she'd figured out at least part of what I was doing. I nodded back, then concentrated on listening. Tiny flickers of air movement conveyed sound to me with increased efficacy, allowing me to hear a lot more of what was going on.
I tuned out the breathing of the people around me, and the tiny noises of the darksteel armour settling into place on the dogs. Farther away, I could hear movement, footsteps, snatches of conversation. There was nothing I could seize on to, though; it faded in and out as people moved around.
Then I heard it. "Dad, I'm scared." The voice of a teenage girl trying to be strong, and failing. I'd been there, many times before.
"I know, honey. Me too." In his voice was the hopelessness of an adult who wanted to protect his daughter, even while the world made a mockery of his efforts. I'd seen the matching expression on Dad's face before today.
"Okay, I hear them. They're alive," I said quietly. "Nobody's alerted yet."
Armsmaster nodded. "Good. Which direction, and how far?"
I pointed left. "That way, and I'm not too sure about the distance. Echoes down here make it hard to judge. But not too far, I don't think."
"Hm." He did something to his forearm armour, and a tiny drone popped up out of a compartment, hovering in the air with a near-imperceptible whee of minuscule rotor blades. "I'll scout ahead with this."
"Bad idea." I said it at the same time as Brian, Greg, Tracey, and Tattletale.
He paused, then looked at us. "Explain."
"Stormtiger's powers are about air movement," I explained. "If he's in any way on the ball, he'll notice a tiny spot of disturbed air where there shouldn't be one."
"Cricket's the same way with sound," Brian added. "She homed in on me in complete darkness, and kicked my ass without even trying hard."
Greg shrugged. "What they said." He turned to Tattletale. "How did you know? Have you fought them?"
"No. I'm just that good." Tattletale smirked. "And I do my research."
The rhino-dogs were fully armoured by now, and they looked even more impressive than normal. It took me a second to realise Greg had given them a hint of a Triceratops profile, with a flaring shield that a rider could shelter behind, and I grinned inside my helmet. Superhero or not, Greg would always be a nerd, and I loved that about him.
"Okay," I said, as the Armsdrone (well, I had to call it something) returned to its home base. "Let's do this."
<><>
Othala
"Is it really the best idea to be sitting on our asses down here?" Hookwolf, currently unarmoured, stretched in his chair then spun halfway around on it, probably because he could. "People are going to think we're hiding, or some shit like that."
"Staying out of sight is the best idea, yes." Krieg seemed to be going through files on a tablet, from what Diane could see. "We failed to prevent the Hebert girl and her confederates from reaching the PRT building, so it is almost certain that she is giving them chapter and verse about us right at this moment. Our best option is, as Kaiser said, getting Grue's cooperation to derail her testimony. Then, once Victor's masquerade is carried out, we bring in the lawyers and bury the whole idea so deep that not even Behemoth could dig it up."
"And then we kill the Undersiders and the other irritating teenagers, yes?" Night could have been suggesting that they go to the movies. "No more problem."
Krieg nodded. "That is a very distinct possibility, yes."
Alabaster chuckled lightly, his chair tilted far back with his feet crossed on the table. "Still can't believe you got your asses handed to you by a bunch of brand-new capes."
"Shut up," Hookwolf growled. "You weren't there. You can't talk."
"Enough," snapped Krieg. "It's over. We're moving forward."
"Sucks that they got Purity, though." Rune was leaning back in her chair, rolling her head from side to side. "What happens when they interrogate her? Think she'll give us up?"
"Not in a million years." Stormtiger stood up to pop his spine back into place. "She's a true believer. Never give up, never back down, that's her."
In the silence that followed, there was a spap as Fenja laid down a card in her game of two-handed patience with Menja. Neither one said a word, which was normal for those two. Diane privately suspected they hammed up the twin thing to weird people out.
Sitting up in her chair, Diane spun idly toward the doorway. "Where's Alex, anyway? I thought he was just going with Fog to see Max about what was happening with the Grue situation."
Almost as though summoned by her words, two people appeared in the doorway. Primed by her expectations, her brain was already assuring her that her husband was back when higher functions kicked in and urgently yelled at her that that's not Alex! Half-standing, she pointed. "Who the— intruders." It came out almost as a question, so she took a quick breath and tried again. "Intruders!"
Brad came to his feet, armouring up with a long shhkshhkshhk of metal sliding out of his skin. At the same time, Menja snatched up her spear and leaped to her feet. As a continuation of the move, she hurled it at the shield carried by one of the dark armoured figures in the doorway.
It came apart halfway across the room, streaming in a semi-liquid fashion to its target, where it splashed against the shield then solidified as a layer of metal on it.
"Shit!" yelled Brad. "They're back!" In a move Diane had never seen him pull ever, he backpedalled away from the newcomers. "Krieg! Shut them down!"
As Krieg brought up his hands and basically solidified the air around that side of the room, Stormtiger launched a vicious air-blast at the kite shield that was blocking a large section of the doorway. Just before impact, the dark metal shimmered almost imperceptibly, and when the air-blade struck, it vanished altogether. Krieg was caught unaware when it came out from under the table, catching him across the ribs and smashing him into the wall.
"My spear!" protested Menja. "What the hell?"
"Forget your goddamn spear!" Fenja started growing, and headed for the doorway. "Othala! Invincibility!"
"You got it!" Diane reached up as Fenja passed her by, and bestowed absolute invulnerability on the Valkyrie. It would only last a few moments, but that was usually enough time to win a fight.
She hoped it would be enough: Menja was disarmed, Hookwolf was staying the hell away from the guy with the shield, and Stormtiger had just accidentally KO'd their other big hitter. As for Rune, this was absolutely not her preferred field of combat. Nor did it help that Cricket wasn't even in the room. And where the hell are Alex, Fog, and Kaiser?
As Fenja brought her sword down on the shield in a flurry of massive blows, sending sparks flying, Diane came to her feet to head over to Krieg. If I can get him back in the game—
A searing pain erupted in her left leg and lashed through her entire body. Letting out a scream of pure agony, she lurched sideways and fell over. As she writhed on the floor, she could see that a midnight-black tentacle had extended from the shadows under the table and latched onto her ankle. Second by second, she could feel her very life force being leeched from her body.
Suddenly, the entire table lifted into the air, turned, and came down edge-first on the black tentacle like a guillotine. The tentacle snapped, and the pain ceased almost immediately. But it was too late; her concentration had been broken, and Fenja was no longer invincible. Even as she drew back her sword for yet another smashing blow on the now-dented shield, it dissolved into globules of liquid metal and flowed forward onto the shield, followed by Fenja's actual armour.
Snarling, Fenja grabbed the shield and pulled it toward her while she drew back her fist in preparation for a tremendous blow. But before she could drive it forward, a crack reverberated through the room. The overpressure wave registered painfully on Diane's ears as Fenja was flung back across the room hard enough to slam into the far wall. Groaning, Fenja slid down to her knees then fell forward onto her face, lights out.
"Shut that fucking door!" bellowed Hookwolf and Stormtiger at the same time.
Rune levitated the table across the room, slamming the flat side over the open doorway and holding it there. It was a heavy table, but Diane had zero illusions about the people on the other side of the doorway not being able to get through if they really wanted to. She struggled to get to her feet again, her ankle throbbing with remembered pain.
Almost immediately, Hookwolf and Stormtiger threw themselves at the upturned table, putting their full weights into holding it against the doorframe. "Get Krieg up," Hookwolf grunted over his shoulder. "Then Fenja. Then someone figure out how the fuck we're supposed to win against those little shits."
As Diane headed for the fallen Krieg, she couldn't help asking herself the same question she had before. Where are the others? Why aren't they helping out here?
<><>
A Few Moments Before
Taylor
Maintaining my silence field in front of us, I led the way down the corridor, checking the storeroom numbers. There were no guards in sight, which was their good luck, as they'd barely slow us down. Nobody was going to hear us coming, despite the fact that there were eight of us plus three oversized dogs, all in varying levels of armour.
When we came to a corner, Armsmaster deployed the flexible camera from his wrist. He spent less than ten seconds surveying the corridor before he retracted it. That was either very good or very bad, and I tensed.
"They're there," Armsmaster said quietly, despite the fact that we were totally shielded from eavesdroppers. "On the left, a door guarded by two men, with Cricket talking to them. On the right, an open door to a lit-up room."
Brian nodded. "Crusader's dead, Purity's in custody, and we've taken Victor, Fog and Kaiser out of the picture. Chances are, the rest of the Empire Eighty-Eight capes are in that room. Portal?"
Taking my cue, I concentrated. The sound of squeaking chairs came to me, along with voices and what might have been playing cards being laid down. "I make it … nine people. Hookwolf, Krieg, Rune, Stormtiger, and five others." I could identify them because I'd heard their voices before.
"Dang," muttered Regent. "Tats, she just stole your schtick. You gonna stand for that?"
"The other five are Alabaster, Night, Fenja, Menja, and Othala," Tattletale said promptly. Her face was covered, but I could hear the smugness in her voice.
"We'll never have a better chance." I leaned into the accumulated knowledge of small-unit tactics within the group. "I'll go with Alloy and …" I pointed at Tracey questioningly.
"Oh, uh, we're using codenames now?" She blinked. "Um, call me Darksider. So, what are we doing?"
"Keeping the Empire bottled up while Armsmaster and the Undersiders take down Cricket and those guards." I nodded to Regent and Bitch (a name I still wasn't comfortable with). "They don't get to open that door. Okay?"
"I've got Cricket," Brian said grimly. "I owe her a rematch."
Regent shrugged. "Trust me, she's all yours." Leaning over toward me, he put his hand up next to his faceplate and stage-whispered, "She's all mine."
"Enough." Armsmaster's curt tone cut through Brian's response. "We're short on time. Let's do this."
I drew a deep breath and gave him a nod. "Three. Two. One. Go."
As I stepped out around the corner, I imposed my silence field not over myself, nor over Cricket. Instead, I put it over the doorway that we were heading to, where the Empire capes were waiting. Cricket saw me—well, us, because the others were coming out behind me—almost immediately, and let out a harsh shout.
Which had zero effect, because nobody in the other room heard a damn thing: all according to plan.
Greg, Tracey and I bolted along the corridor, and skidded to a halt more or less in the doorway as the others ran past behind us. First, and most effective, the monster dogs ploughed the guards off their feet and kept going, holding the struggling men in their jaws. That left Cricket, leaping out of their way then facing up against Grue.
Krieg used his power against us, but I'd planned for that. I was already touching Greg's shield and using the darksteel for one end of a teleport shadow portal; as I'd already noted, darksteel was really good at that. The other end of the portal was in the shadows under the table, and its aimpoint was at Krieg.
It wasn't exactly rocket science, after all. Our whole job was to keep them bottled up in the room while everyone else rescued Brian's family, so if they kept us in place, they were doing our job for us. But if they attacked us—as Stormtiger did, just a moment or two later—then they'd take each other down, which also did our jobs for us.
Win-win, really.
The slow-field fell away, and I glanced around just in time to see Brian pull off a magnificent leg-sweep on Cricket. It seemed they had that fight well in hand, so I turned my attention back to ours, just as one of the Fenja-Menja pair came at Greg with her sword. He couldn't pull her armour off her, and her sword remained irritatingly intact, even as she smashed at his shield with it.
Just standing there with my hands on his armour, I could feel the sheer brute power in her blows; the shield cracked and pieces flew off before Greg repaired it again. Worse, she was driving him back, step by step. I had to do something about this, and I had to do it fast.
Fortunately, I'd heard her exchange with Othala just before she came at Greg, so I knew what was going on and how to deal with it. Turning the back of Greg's armour into a portal and linking it to the shadows under the table, I grabbed Tracey by the shoulder. "Othala!" I shouted over the clanging of the apparently unbreakable sword on Greg's shield.
She nodded and stuck her hand into the portal. I didn't have much of a view past Greg and the nine-foot-something woman who was laying into his shield, but the scream I heard from inside the room told me that someone was having a bad day. She wasn't the only one; a moment later, Greg's armour suddenly gained some serious mass as he pulled all the metal off the Empire cape attacking him.
Either there was something about the Empire Eighty-Eight that inspired people to fight to the very last, or maybe they were just stupid. Either way, clad in just T-shirt and shorts, she grabbed Greg's shield and went to punch him. The problem with this tactic was that as he no longer had to brace with both arms against her hit-by-a-truck sword blows, he now had a hand free.
Which meant he could unleash his air-hammer.
The look on her face when he smashed her across the room and into the far wall was priceless. Briefly priceless, but still very much so.
I heard Hookwolf and Stormtiger both yell at someone to shut the fucking door; less than a second later, the doorway was blocked by a wide expanse of wood. The top of the table that I'd been placing my portal under, was my guess. (It wasn't much of a guess, given that it still sported several coffee rings.)
I shared a glance with Greg, and we both shrugged. Then he used some of his excess metal—he hadn't gotten back to the frankly ridiculous dimensions that he'd reached after the elevator, but he wasn't far off it—to fill in the doorway with an elaborate barrier composed entirely of darksteel. There was just enough of a vent for air to get in so they wouldn't suffocate, but apart from that, they'd be looking at trying to bust out through six inches of darksteel, which I couldn't see happening any time soon.
We were just stepping back to admire Greg's work when the lights went out.
<><>
Cricket
All was going well for Melody, until it wasn't.
She'd stepped out of the room where the Empire capes were all waiting, partly to stretch her legs and partly to make sure the guards were on the ball. It was also because having all those people in such a small area was starting to make her feel claustrophobic, but she was never going to admit that to anyone. Her main aim was to ensure that the Laborns didn't pull some tricky shit like the boy had done, before he did as he was told and this whole situation went away.
When the armoured girl came running around the corner, Melody thought at first that she was the target. She'd already gone toe-to-toe with the kid, and it hadn't ended well. Of course, that was mainly because Hebert had triggered with stupid fucking bullshit powers, along with her friends—oh. They're here too.
Melody was good, but she was pretty damn sure she couldn't go up against all three of them at once. However, instead of going for her, they were heading for the room where the other members of the Empire were chilling. Melody knew better than most just how effective they could be if given half a chance, so she shouted a warning before turning to face the rest of the intruders.
This turned out to be the Undersiders, all armoured, plus three of Bitch's monster dogs, likewise protected … and Armsmaster, of all people. Bitch yelled something like 'pin', and the dog-things came at Melody and the guards with jaws wide open. Melody wasn't down for that, so she easily flipped out of the way, evading the massive jaws like the thing was moving in slow motion.
Not being nearly as good as she was, the guards were scooped up on the way past, leaving her facing Armsmaster and the Undersiders. All she had to do, she knew, was hold out until the other members of the Empire responded to her warning and came out of that room over the top of Hebert and her little play-group. Her next best shot was to bust into the room where they were keeping the Laborns (she couldn't simply open the door because Kaiser had decided it was best to keep it locked, just in case) and take one of them hostage, preferably the smart-mouthed kid.
She had a new pair of kama, but Grue was armoured now and it would be a lot harder to get a telling blow on him. Still, she had her usual ploy to pull, and all she had to do was get the point of her weapon in through a gap while he was off-balance—
Her left foot went right instead of forward, and she tripped over her own feet. As she flailed for balance, she saw Regent giving her a fingertip wave. She couldn't do anything about it, because Grue's leg came around at that moment and took her feet clean out from under her.
Twisting in midair, she lit down in a roll, but Grue was already waiting for her, leading with a steel-armoured elbow. Despite all her efforts to avoid it, he got in a solid strike, knocking her sideways. He'd either been sandbagging for that first fight (unlikely) or he'd had a severe competence upgrade since then, because she was starting to feel that she was punching above her weight.
No matter how she tried to evade him, he was there, locking down her options and forcing her into bad choices. She tried again to disorient him and managed to pull it off this time, but she was focusing so hard on him that she entirely missed the fact that Armsmaster was pointing his halberd at her. There was a snap and a crackle, and electricity coursed through her body.
She was tough, probably tougher than anyone on the team aside from Hookwolf and Stormtiger, but there was only so much she could take. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell over sideways. As consciousness drifted away, she felt her arms being secured behind her back, but right then she didn't give a damn.
<><>
Grue
"I said, she was …" Brian paused and shook his head, letting the tension dissipate from his muscles. "You know what? I don't even care. She's down, and that's all that matters."
Armsmaster looked up from where he was cuffing Cricket's hands. "Good. You're learning. This isn't about claiming dibs and counting coup. It's about getting the job done and saving the innocents."
"Yeah, okay, fine." Putting the discussion from his mind, Brian focused on what was more important. "Where are my dad and sister? In there?"
Tattletale nodded. "Kaiser said there were two guards on the door, so I'd say that's a yes."
"Good." Brian tried the handle, but it refused to turn, no matter how much pressure he put on it. Pulling back, he rammed his shoulder into it; the armour spread the impact so he didn't hurt himself, but all he did was slightly mar the paintwork. "Dad!" he called out. "Aisha! Are you in there? It's me!"
There was silence for a long moment, then a thump sounded on the inside of the door. "Brian?" It was his father's voice, albeit muffled. "Is that you, son?"
Brian felt tears well up in his eyes as he grinned broadly inside his helmet. "Yeah, it's me. We're here to get you out, just as soon as we open this door." Grabbing the handle again, he tried harder to turn it, to just as little avail as before.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," growled Bitch. "Get out of the way. Brutus, break."
Brian stepped back hastily. He might have been armoured, but so was Brutus, and he didn't think a physical confrontation with the oversized pooch would go his way even if Brutus wasn't armoured. All he could think of as Brutus lumbered past him, still holding the hapless guard in his jaws like an oversized chew toy, was I am so glad she's on our side.
Lowering his head, Brutus rammed the solid metal plate (with its short stubby horns) into the metal door, literally tearing it off its hinges. Then, just as he was stepping back, shaking his head to dislodge the wreckage from his face, the lights went out.
"What the hell?" Brian wasn't actually fond of the dark. He preferred his own darkness, mainly because he could see through it and nobody else could (except for Taylor, but he was fine with that). Down in this sub-basement, far from any natural light source, the darkness was virtually palpable.
"It's the Empire capes!" Tattletale called out from somewhere nearby. "They're about to try something! Probably with Night!"
As if the universe delighted in proving her correct, there was a shattering crash in the direction of where he thought the Empire capes had been. And then a woman's voice, one Brian didn't know, sounded clearly in the darkness. "Somebody can see me! Somebody can see me!"
She sounded pissed-off enough that Brian stepped back carefully. Don't look at me. I can't see shit.
<><>
Krieg
As the pain faded, James allowed Alabaster to help him up. It was fortunate that his costume incorporated body armour, but the kind of good fortune that went with forward planning. While he hadn't anticipated having to weather an attack from one of his comrades, it had still done its job.
However, all was not plain sailing. Stormtiger's air blade hadn't done its full damage to him, but he'd still suffered a massive impact from it. The first chance he got, he was going to have strenuous words with Lars over how attacking a foe who could teleport attacks through darkness required care and precision.
As Othala's regeneration power did its job, he looked around at the contingent of capes in the room with him. "Report."
"Fenja's taken a pretty big hit," Menja said from where she was crouching beside her sister. "That asshole blasted her across the room. And he took her armour and her sword and shield, and my spear." She sounded more pissed off by that than any other part of the situation.
"We can replace those. What's happening outside? Are they trying to get in?" James strode back and forth, swinging his arms, feeling the pain in his ribs fading away.
Hookwolf hesitated for a moment. "Either the table's holding 'em, or they don't want to come in here."
James considered that. Given the forces that had so recently been arrayed against them, he was reasonably sure which one it was. "Check for me, will you?"
Hookwolf and Stormtiger met each other's eyes and nodded. "One, two, three," muttered Hookwolf. On 'three', they pulled the table away from the doorway … and stopped.
"Well, shit." Stormtiger shook his head, staring at the matte-black wall filling the opening. "They fuckin' locked us in here."
"Night." Krieg already knew what he had to do. "If Othala made you super-strong, could you break through a six-inch steel barrier?"
Night, in her Dorothy Schmidt form, held out her hands. "Not like this, I can't, dear." She gave Krieg a perfect fifties-housewife smile. "If you could turn out the lights, on the other hand, I should be able to do so much more."
"Then that's exactly what we'll do." Krieg went to the corner of the room that held the small refrigerator and microwave. Next to the microwave was a breaker box, which he opened. "Othala, wake Fenja up, then provide Night with super-strength."
Time was already ticking down, he knew. The heroes wouldn't simply lock them in there without a plan to come back with more reinforcements. Every second he delayed was a second that their adversaries could use to their own advantage.
Once Night was through the barrier, she would be able to strike at any heroes on the other side more or less at will, provided that they hadn't brought their own illumination along. Even if they had, she possessed smoke grenades that would nullify vision once more, allowing her to run rampant through their ranks.
James smiled as Fenja came awake, coughing and spluttering. Othala left her to get to her feet with Menja's assistance and crossed the room to where Night was waiting next to the black metal barrier. A single touch and some concentration, and the job was done. Othala stepped back to the middle of the room. "It's done."
"Good." James flicked the breaker switch he'd already identified, and the room fell into pitch darkness. Within a second, there was a shattering crash as Night's monster form assaulted the metal barrier with all of its inhuman strength, greatly magnified by Othala's assistance. To his discerning ear, it sounded as though the wall gave way almost immediately, allowing Night egress into the darkness beyond.
Her shout was as unwelcome as it was unexpected. "Somebody can see me! Somebody can see me!"
<><>
Taylor
I was surprised and impressed when the room fell to pitch darkness. For everyone else, of course; not me. Ever since I'd gotten my powers, I'd actually been able to see better in darkness than I could in the light. Powers were weird: news at eleven.
In any case, when the impact came against Greg's carefully constructed wall, I saw the cracks opening up before it broke all the way. Shoving him away. I jumped back myself so that the larger chunks scattered past us onto the floor. I looked around to make sure that nobody else had been hit, then I turned my gaze back to the now-open doorway, to see a confused-looking woman standing there. I didn't know who she was, but she wore a hooded cloak.
"Somebody can see me!" she shouted. "Somebody can see me!"
"Hey." As I spoke, I moved forward with all the speed and power that mainlining every ounce of fighting skill within ten yards could give me.
She pulled off her cloak and flicked it at me, but I saw it coming and brushed it aside. Hooks sewn into it scratched briefly at my armour and fell away; I suspected that with clothing, it would've been a totally different matter.
As she backed away from me, I closed with her. If this was Night—and I was reasonably sure it was—I had to keep my eyes on her or she'd do her best to kill everyone else in the area.
Suddenly, she stopped retreating and swung a punch at me. Back when I'd been mild-mannered, harmless Taylor Hebert, she would've connected solidly, mostly because I'd had no training in how to deal with a punch to the face. But now I could see in detail exactly how bad she was at basic brawling; I brushed it aside, feeling the power in it as I did so.
My return punch was almost instinctive, burying my armoured fist deep into her solar plexus. All the air whooshed out of her lungs as she bent over. I took note of this as I grabbed her arm in a compliance hold. She could almost certainly pull free of it, but she would cause herself intense pain in doing so. Super-strong didn't seem to translate to super-durable, at least in her case.
She fumbled at her belt with her free hand, and I saw her grab some kind of canister. It had a ring-pull, so I figured she was going to have a hard time activating it … right up until she put it to her mouth and yanked it out with her teeth. Smoke billowed, and I knew things were about to get problematic.
"Need some air movement!" I called out, trying to figure out how to get the smoke grenade away from her before the cloud enveloped us both.
Tracey was on the ball. Less than a second before I would've lost all sight of Night, a massive burst of air swept past us both, dissipating the smoke still pouring out of the grenade into a long stream that flowed off down the corridor. Night probably couldn't see this, but she let out an irritated grunt anyway, and dropped the canister, which promptly rolled away under the pressure of the ongoing gale.
I wondered for a second why she wasn't grabbing for another canister, until I saw that her fingers were bright red and starting to blister. Huh. Smoke grenades get hot. I didn't know that.
I was still musing over that random piece of information when the lights came back on.
<><>
Armsmaster
Colin had no problem with admitting that the combined team of the Undersiders and Portal's group were shaping up quite well. Portal, Alloy and Darksider kept the majority of the Empire Eighty-Eight bottled up very effectively indeed while the Undersiders neutralised Cricket and the guards.
Even though Grue had been taking a while to bring down Cricket, Colin could tell that he had the upper hand and would've won sooner rather than later; the only reason Colin intervened at all was the looming threat of the other Empire capes. Otherwise, he would've been happy to stand back and observe a prime beatdown of someone who (in his opinion) richly deserved it.
When the lights went out and Night burst out through the doorway, his helmet automatically went to infrared. He was about to move in on Night when he discovered that not only could Portal see in the dark, but she was just as adept at CQC as Grue, which was quite interesting. Again, their superior teamwork showed itself when Darksider called up a powerful wind to blow away the smoke from Night's grenade … but then the lights came back on.
Nobody needed any telling what that meant. The Empire capes were coming out to play.
First through the doorway was Krieg, his slow-down field rolling out over the assembled capes. His pistol came up, pointing at Darksider, and he fired several times. It was clear that he considered her the greatest threat to him and his comrades. Equally evident was the fact that any gloves the Empire had been wearing had well and truly come off.
Sparks flew as the bullets ricocheted from Darksider's armour, but Colin couldn't move. Nobody could, not even Hellhound's oversized dogs. Portal was still invested in keeping Night locked down, which fortunately didn't require her to move.
Krieg strode up to Darksider, who hadn't budged, even to fall down. Raising the weapon to head height, he held it to a gap in her helmet and fired again. Her head jerked back, and he smiled.
As Alabaster and the other Empire capes followed him out, Krieg placed one finger in the middle of Darksider's faceplate and pushed; she began to topple over backward, still in slow motion. Colin struggled futilely against the kinetic field, his armour servos whining as he pushed them to their limit. "You'll … pay … for … that …"
"Hardly." Krieg wasn't the gloating type normally, but he seemed to be taking the time to indulge now. "None of you are even going to—"
Half a dozen black tentacles sprang out from each of Darksider's hands. Each of the Empire capes found one latching onto them, except for Krieg, who was targeted by no fewer than four at once. He screamed in agony; the slow-down field abruptly popped, allowing Colin to start moving again. Darksider landed on her butt, then rolled back up onto her feet.
Colin hadn't seen her power in action before now, but it was somewhat impressive. As each of the Valkyrie twins tried to increase in height, the black tentacles pulled them straight back down to normal human size. Hookwolf (his metal blades removed in passing by Alloy) and Stormtiger each fell to their knees as the tentacles feasted on them. Even Alabaster looked like he wasn't having a good time.
When Krieg fell unconscious (it didn't take long, with four tentacles attached to him), Darksider released him from her power and stood over the rest, making sure they stayed down. Colin made his way to her side and tried to peer into her helmet to assess her injuries. "Are you alright? He shot you at point-blank range."
She turned to look at him. "Metal doesn't bother me anymore. It was like being hit by a particularly aggressive raindrop. I was deaf in that ear and blind in that eye from the muzzle flash, but I've healed that back too, so I'm good."
"Okay," said Grue cautiously, "so why didn't Othala power one of these guys up?"
"She did. Him." Darksider nodded to where Krieg lay with the abandon of someone who had been unconscious before he hit the floor. "I got her before I got him. And then I got him good." There was savage satisfaction in her voice. "Serves him right for trying to shoot me in the damn eye."
"So … that's it?" Regent looked around. "We just beat the Empire Eighty-Eight; or rather, we stood back and let Miss Scary Tentacles over there do the beating for us? By the way, word to the wise? Don't ever use those in front of news cameras, or there'll be pornographic fan-art of you hitting the interwebs before you can say 'rule thirty-four'."
"I couldn't have done it without you guys," Darksider said, sensibly ignoring the rest of what he'd said. Colin decided that he'd ask Dragon about the reference later. Or maybe not; she might get the wrong idea. "I'm just glad we came through it okay."
"Me too." As Colin and Alloy started securing the Empire capes—the boy could do a good line in wrist and ankle cuffs, it seemed—Grue turned and headed toward the room where his family had been imprisoned.
The door was no longer anything near secure, and it only needed wrestling aside, a task he was aided in by Hellhound. Colin didn't pay too much attention to the reunion, but he gathered that both father and sister were in good health, if a little shell-shocked.
All was well that ended well, he supposed. Though of course there was still a great deal to do.
<><>
Taylor
Director Piggot sat behind her desk and observed each of us in turn. We were all out of armour; Greg, Tracey and I were each unmasked, given that the PRT already knew who we were. The Undersiders had opted to remain masked, and Bitch's three dogs sat happily panting at her feet. If I had to guess, they'd thoroughly enjoyed their outing, though they hadn't liked the teleporting aspect one little bit.
"I have taken Armsmaster's verbal report and viewed the footage," she said in an uninflected tone that gave us zero clue as to how she intended to continue. "Your capabilities are impressive, and you carried out your mission with admirable restraint. The Empire Eighty-Eight capes are all now entirely in custody, and we are ready to begin proceedings against the Medhall corporation."
Greg cleared his throat, and she glanced his way. At her nod, he spoke. "Well, I guess that means our internships are well and truly terminated then?"
I mentally winced, waiting for her to tear him several brand-new orifices, but to my surprise she chuckled and shook her head. "That's a reasonable assumption, Mr Veder. As your internships were what led to the downfall of the Empire and the corporation within which they were hiding, I cannot argue with your wording."
"So … what happens now?" asked Grue. "Will you be using what you know about me against us?"
"That is very much up to you." Director Piggot raised one finger as he made to answer. "Allow me to continue."
He hesitated, then nodded. "Okay."
She laced her fingers together in front of her. "On the one hand, we do have a sizeable amount of information about your civilian identity in our possession now. On the other, your little rescue mission also assisted in the capture of the entirety of the Empire Eighty-Eight cape roster, so I am rather inclined to be lenient."
Tattletale cleared her throat. "I've read the appropriate regulations. Grue was employed by the PRT as a consultant. Legally, you're not permitted to use anything you found out about his cape identity during that time."
The Director smiled, though the expression was somewhat sharp-edged. "That's true, though if you dug deeper, you would find a positive morass of precedents and loopholes that I could use to make my case with. However, I have no intention of doing so."
"Then what do you intend?" asked Grue. "Because I'm starting to get the impression that your help wasn't purely out of the goodness of your heart, even when you didn't know we were going to take out the Empire."
He was rewarded by a single nod from the Director. "That's true. I didn't have entirely altruistic aims in mind. If it turned out well—and thanks to the efforts of all concerned, it did—I had the intention of making you all an offer. Specifically, employment by the PRT."
I blinked, not sure where she was going with this. "What, you wanted to recruit us into the Wards or Protectorate?"
Tattletale shook her head. "Can't be. They aren't directly employed by the PRT. You were thinking of something a little more covert, weren't you, Director?"
Director Piggot's smile lacked any humour. "I'd say that was a good guess, but you don't do guesses. However, you are correct. I was thinking of … call them irregulars. Capes I could call upon to deal with special cases, while remaining outside the chain of command of the Protectorate and the Wards."
Tracey got it before I did. "And entirely under the table, so nobody could accuse you of building your own personal cape team."
"Even though that's exactly what it would be," Regent concluded. He paused, then continued. "Would we get paid for this? Because we're already being paid to be villains."
"I do have a discretionary fund I can draw on, for confidential informants and the like," Piggot allowed. "However, the need for discretion would be paramount, on both sides."
"Can we talk about this and get back to you?" asked Grue. "I suspect there's going to be a very long and involved discussion before we decide one way or the other."
"Certainly." As they filed out, Director Piggot turned to look at Greg, Tracey and myself. "And you? You are of course included in the offer."
"Um." I glanced at Tracey, not sure which way she would jump. Greg, of course, would do whatever I did. He was supportive like that. "What do you think?"
"Well, heck." Tracey shrugged. "I'm currently unemployed, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if 'prior employment at Medhall' turned out to be a big black mark, as soon as the news hits the infosphere. So … sure, I guess?"
I nodded. "Yup. Me too. Greg?"
He grinned. "You have to ask? Of course I'm in."
"Excellent." I turned to the Director. "Count us in."
"Good to hear." She smiled again, this time exuding quiet satisfaction. "Welcome to the grind."
End of Part Twenty-Five
[A/N: This will be the end of Taylor Hebert, Medhall Intern. The story will continue on as Taylor Hebert, PRT Operative.]
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