Earning Her Stripes (Worm AU fanfic)

[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

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Thirty-Nine: The Teeth Go Marching On

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



Grue

Brian fast-walked along the pavement, then went up the stairs to the front door of the apartment building, taking the steps two at a time. He knew Butcher probably hadn't followed them to the alley where he'd gotten off Brutus, but he was also fully aware that the clock was ticking and there wasn't a huge amount of leeway before she started combing the city for the Undersiders. As Alec had said, she was clearly cray-cray, and totally struck him as the type of person to hold onto a grudge far beyond its use-by date.

He buzzed himself into the building, then dashed for the elevator. While he usually took the stairs—fitness was a way of life, not an occasional choice—there was no time right now, and he suspected in the back of his mind that he might just need to save his strength for later. It let out on his floor, and he headed down the corridor to his apartment.

The TV was blaring some kind of mindless music as he let himself in, and he allowed himself a minor sigh of relief. "Aisha!" he called out as he headed into the lounge area. "Grab your go-bag! We need to leave!"

"What?" Aisha looked around from where she was indulging in dance moves of her own invention. "Go-bag? Where are we going?"

His next sigh was a lot more aggravated. "I've told you and told you that you need to have a bag packed and ready to go at a moment's notice! And can you turn that off?"

"Yeah, but since when do I listen to you?" At his pointed glance, she reluctantly picked up the remote and turned the volume down by about half. "And what's this all about, anyway? You've totally ruined my dance video."

He followed her line of sight, and saw the phone propped up where it could record her somewhat innovative (to use a generous phrasing) dance moves. Striding over to it, he shut it off, then tossed it to her. "A go-bag's essential for if you ever have to just pick up and run. Brockton Bay's always been a dangerous city, and now it's even more dangerous. We have to go, now. Soon. Today."

"I know what a go-bag is, doofus." She put her hands on her hips. "I've totally got one. I mean, kinda got one. Mostly. Anyway, the Empire assholes have been taken down and out, so why are we running now?"

He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. "Okay, in reverse order, this is not about the Empire. It's a lot more dangerous than that. Second, what do you mean by 'kinda got one'?"

She gave him a medium-intense stare of disbelief. "What the fuck would be more dangerous than living in the same city as fuckin' Hookwolf? Especially since him and Lung got the living shit smacked out of them by the Realest Thing that ever hit this city?"

Briefly, he considered yelling at her to do as she was told, but common sense reminded him that Aisha hadn't acceded to that sort of thing since … well, ever. If raised volume had been the secret to her obedience, then their father would've done well with her. As it was, Aisha was the world's champion at digging in her heels when she figured she was being railroaded in something. And if he just went into her bedroom and grabbed her go-bag, she would rightly see it as a violation of the fragile trust he'd been working to build up between them over the last few months.

Which meant that he was going to have to do something he'd sworn he'd never do. No matter how badly this was going to turn out (and he didn't foresee any kind of good outcome) it would be worse if he didn't. He just hoped she wouldn't take the revelation as badly as he feared.

"I'm going to need to back up a little on this one," he began carefully, aware that time was passing. "You're aware that I don't always earn my money doing things on the up-and-up, right?"

"Psshhh, duh," she scoffed. "You're Grue, of the Undersiders. I figured that shit out about one day after you moved me in here with you. Coming home late at night, limping your sorry ass around on the day after a heist, pretending your ribs weren't sore? I'm bad at schoolwork an' shit, not fuckin' blind."

"Ah." Impressed despite himself, he blinked. "I knew you weren't blind, but … okay, yeah, you got me. When were you going to tell me that you knew? It would've made life a lot easier if I didn't have to sneak around in front of you all the time."

She rolled her eyes. "Why do you think I didn't tell you? Watching you tiptoe around and pretend nothing was wrong was funny as fuck."

Yup, that's Aisha all over. "Okay, then. Well, I was out with the other Undersiders—"

"Wait," she interrupted him. "Do I know the others? Have I met them?"

He shook his head, trying to keep her on track. "No, you haven't. Like I was saying, I was out with them, but not in costume—"

"So, which of them are you banging?" She gave him a wide, ingenuous stare. "Purple chick or the dog girl? I mean, purple chick doesn't leave anything to the imagination, but I bet dog girl could keep up with you in the gym."

"I'm not banging either one of them," he gritted. "It wouldn't be—"

"What, you're banging twink-boy?" Aisha took a step back and raised her eyebrows appraisingly. "Way to be inclusive, big bro. Never thought you had it in you."

"I'm not banging anyone!" he shouted. "And will you please stop saying 'banging'?"

She let out a tiny snerk of amusement. "You're the one saying it more than me."

For fuck's sake. He was normally better at this than preventing Aisha from getting under his skin, but she was on fine form today. "Okay, nothing of that sort is happening in the Undersiders. But that's not why I told you I'm Grue."

She hitched her butt on the end of the sofa. "Not that I'm interested, but sure, I'll bite. Why'd you tell me?"

He took a deep breath. "Because sometime in the last few days, a fucking psychotic called March came here from New York, and about an hour ago she tried to recruit me and the others."

From the way Aisha's gaze shifted, she figured out the rest almost immediately. "And when you said no, she decided to wreck your shit. So, what's the big deal? You and your little play group aren't exactly the Triumvirate, sure, but you can still kick ass and take names. Kick hers and drop her off at the PRT building."

"Because Butcher was also in town, and one thing led to another, and now March is the new Butcher, and she's still pissed off at us. It's not the Empire who'd like to drag us out into the street and murder us gruesomely. It's the Teeth." He gave her a hard stare, willing her to understand. "And that's why we've got to leave town today."

"Uh, that's on you, big bro, not me." Aisha held up her hands, palm out. "This March bitch don't know me from a hole in the ground. I'm staying right here."

"I'm the one who pays the rent for both of us," he reminded her. "And you aren't old enough to legally reside here alone, even if you were pulling in enough cash to keep up the payments."

"So, I'll live somewhere else." She gestured at the nearest window. "Not with Dad or Celia, that's for fuckin' sure. But there'll be places I can go."

"Even with the Empire and ABB gutted, Brockton Bay will never be a place where it's safe to just live on the street, and you know it. Get your go-bag. We're leaving." He knew that taking her with him without having gained proper legal custody of her had its own legal pitfalls, but that wasn't exactly something he was dwelling on at the moment. There were no good options, so he was working on the least bad one that he could see.

She rolled her eyes. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. I haven't got a go-bag."

Metaphorically, he skidded to a halt. "What do you mean, you haven't got a go-bag? I know I stood there while you packed it."

Her huff of irritation almost made it sound as though he was the one at fault. "Yeah, but you made me pack the stuff I liked best. So when I needed my shit, I unpacked again."

"So how much is currently packed? No, wait. Just go pack it now. Please." The last word felt like it had been dragged out of him by one of Rachel's dogs, but without it, his request would've been far more likely to elicit a raised middle finger.

As it was, she gave him a patented Aisha look. "Why? Like I said, I'm not going anywhere."

"Well, I am." He was fast running out of patience. "And like it or not, I'm the only adult you know who's willing to put up with you for more than fifteen minutes at a time without either making you do push-ups or trying to get you high to shut you up."

Finally, she seemed to stop and actually listen to what he had to say. "Well, motherfucking cocksucking shitballs."

That was basically Aisha-speak for 'okay, fine, you're right', though she'd never say those specific words to him or anyone else. Brian nodded to her. "Go-bag?"

The sigh she heaved was more resigned than aggravated. "Okay, fine, I'll go pack a damn go-bag."

His smile was very carefully calculated to not look smug or condescending, because Aisha could pick either one up at a hundred paces in the dark. "Thank you."

As she headed off toward her room, Brian pulled out his phone. His go-bag was under his bed ready to grab and bolt with, but first he had to send a warning text.

After all, he didn't want Aisha and Lisa killing each other on their first meeting.

<><>​

Butcher

May finished cutting away the bottom of the mask and neatening up the torn edges, then slipped it back on. She spun the razor-sharp knife on her finger, then deconstituted it and reformed it as her trademark rapier. The sshhhk as it slid into its scabbard was music to her ears.

While her predecessor had rocked the whole multicannon and bullshit oversized bow thing, May didn't lean in that direction. Quarrel had been the archer, not her, and stupidly big guns were for insecure guys making up for lack of dick size.

Hey! That doesn't even make sense! Quarrel sounded less pissed off with being dead than with the insinuation May was making, which was kind of funny.

Well, it does, kind of. This was another one of the internal voices, who seemed to share May's amusement with the whole situation. Is there something you've been trying to tell us, with that gun?

Oh, shut the fuck up. Quarrel wasn't seeing the joke.

Someone cleared their throat behind her. "So, uh, boss? What happens now? Whose shit do we kick in?"

Boss. I like the sound of that. She smiled as she turned to the cape who'd spoken, who turned out to be Vex. "Well, we've got several targets. The little shits on the big dogs lied to my face and said they were interested in working for me. We are gonna find them, drag them back here, and give them the choice to either get jumped-in to the Teeth or die."

She actually didn't much care either way, but nobody said no to March. And nobody especially said no to Butcher. From the rising murmur of anticipation among the Teeth, they seemed to share her attitude in that regard.

"Then there's those three heroes that showed up just before, the Real Deal or whoever they're supposed to be. I already killed Monochrome once. When I gank someone, they stay dead. So, we're gonna find them, and I'm gonna make sure it sticks this time. And then there's one more."

She looked around at the Teeth, and the minions beyond them, all just waiting for her word to go out and cause mayhem. This was where she was supposed to be, what she was supposed to be doing.

"See, there's this one Ward, called Flechette, who thinks she's all that …"

<><>​

Flechette

The itch between Lily's shoulder blades refused to go away even when she and Aegis reached the roof of the PRT building. It only started to abate once she was in through the roof doors and going down in the elevator. Flanked by Aegis, she stepped out on the top floor and headed for Director Piggot's office.

The Director raised her head when Lily entered. "Ah, good. You're here. I've been in contact with Director Wilkins, and a chopper is on the way to pick you up."

Lily had been expecting this, and even looking forward to it, so she surprised everyone including herself when she impulsively said, "No, ma'am."

"What?" blurted Aegis, then hesitated as Director Piggot gave him a sharp look. "Sorry, ma'am. I'll shut up now."

"Thank you." The Director placed her hands on the desk and leaned forward to give Lily a hard stare. "Perhaps you would like to expand on your reasons for saying that."

"Yes, ma'am." Lily took a deep breath. "Sending me back to New York wouldn't help me in the slightest. Just on her own, March kept me on the back foot without even really trying. And now that she's the Butcher, she's got even more people doing what she wants, so she can screw me over at a moment's notice with far less effort than before. And anyone getting in her way is likely to get seriously hurt."

Piggot's expression was stony. "Yes. The longer you stay here, the more chance my troopers will get hurt or killed, trying to deal with your problems."

Lily knew she had to tread carefully. "Technically that's true, ma'am, but the Real Thing is a significant aspect here as well. You've seen how Blockade's good steel ignores my power, which means it'll ignore March's. In my opinion, the Real Thing is our best chance of beating March-as-Butcher. I think we should bring them in on this, share all the insights we have with each other, and work together to bring her down once and for all. Because with March in charge, the Teeth just became a whole magnitude more dangerous, for everyone. Not just for me."

Slowly, thoughtfully, the Director leaned back in her chair again. "You raise an interesting point of view. Aegis, your thoughts on the matter?"

Put on the spot, Aegis blinked a couple of times before he answered. "I, uh, I don't have the experience with March that Flechette has, but I've read the files on her and the Butcher. March managed to be a real problem for Flechette in New York, just working with random capes and normal criminals. This latest development creates a really problematic synergy on top of that. So yeah, I agree with Flechette. This needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later, and if the Real Thing are willing to help, we should definitely bring them in on it."

"March nearly killed Monochrome," Director Piggot reminded him. "Apparently her force field isn't proof against March's power. They aren't the be-all and end-all that you might think they are."

"They don't have to be." Lily was encouraged by Aegis' support. "The Real Thing might only be able to slow her down, but that's more than most capes can do. Also, the Teeth are likely to be a real problem if we can't deal with them either first or at the same time, and the Real Thing are good against heavy hitters in general."

"Hmm." Piggot rubbed her lower lip with her thumbnail. "Alright, I'll call them in and you can talk tactics. Be aware that I will not greenlight any course of action that I consider ill-advised."

Lily nodded, feeling a rush of relief. "Thank you, ma'am."

<><>​

Monochrome

We landed on the roof of the PRT building in a roar and a rush of thruster-wash. As Madison cut the jets, I looked over at Emma. "Is it just me, or do we keep ending up here?"

"It's not just you." Emma jumped lightly down to the ground, and turned to face the two people who were waiting for us outside the roof entrance. "Director Piggot, good to see you again. And I'm guessing you're Flechette."

"That's me." The costumed girl stepped forward. "And you're the only three people I know who've managed to take March on and walk away."

I grimaced as I landed beside Emma. "I wouldn't say that I exactly walked away, the first time."

"Monochrome, right?" At my nod of confirmation, Flechette smiled slightly. "You survived the first time because your power slowed her down a little. As far as I can tell, you clashed with her again just this afternoon, and came away without a scratch."

"Director Piggot's double-layer idea worked perfectly," I admitted. "March—well, Butcher—threw an exploding blade at me that should've by rights shredded my chest and opened my ribcage up like a book. But because I had a second layer, I was fine."

The Director nodded. "I'm glad to hear something's going right, but we can't get complacent about it. Flechette, you're the person with the biggest stake in making this version of the Butcher go away, and you know the most about her. Real Thing, you've got the best chance of helping us get there. I just want them out of my city for good, and I've got the power to authorise whatever shenanigans you come up with. So, let's start figuring things out."

<><>​

Butcher

Right now, the Real Thing and the PRT will be trying to figure out how to bring me down. I mean, it's what I'd do if I was them. But they won't. They can't. If they didn't manage to pull it off before I became Butcher, there's no way in hell they can do it now.

Want to be careful about that, warned one of her internal voices. Famous last words of way too many supervillains: "there's no way they can beat me".

Yeah, agreed another one, the original Butcher. I thought that, back in the day. Doesn't matter how good you are, someone'll come up with a work-around, or just keep hitting you until you go down.

Yeah, but you aren't me. All these people who follow you because you're so fucking edgy and violent? By the time we take on the Real Thing and the rest of those assholes, I'll have them working together like a fucking Swiss watch. It's called being a force multiplier.

Yeah, yeah, we'll see.

May bit off her internal retort and looked over at the member of the Teeth who was trying to get her attention. "Yeah, what is it?"

"It's the people with the dogs," the guy reported. "We found 'em."

May grinned viciously. She'd sent out several cars full of her people to look for the four teenagers who had spat in her face. Even this early in the piece, her power was working on them, allowing her to direct and guide their actions far more efficiently and effectively than any of the other Butchers had been capable of. And now it seemed her ploy had borne fruit.

"Pass the word back," she said, coming to her feet fluidly. "Slow them down, and get me a location." The rest of her capes wouldn't be able to keep up with her teleport jumps, but that was fine. She wouldn't need them to help take down a bunch of ungrateful assholes. This was something she could handle all by herself.

<><>​

Grue

Lisa looked out the car window at the traffic going by. "We've got a problem."

Brian wanted to snap at her, but held it back. It wasn't her fault that Aisha had spent way too long packing her go-bag, then wanted to take three bags instead of one. Up until she'd spoken, he'd just been happy that they were in the car at last and heading out of the city.

"What kind of problem?" asked Alec before Brian could. "PRT? Protectorate? Rogue mime clowns?"

Well, okay, he wouldn't have asked that last one.

"None of the above." Lisa sounded tense instead of smugly confident, which told Brian there was a real problem. "There's a couple of cars that are deliberately slowing us down."

"Knew we should've taken the dogs," Rachel said predictably. "Traffic is stupid."

"I know, right?" Aisha chimed in. "I'd be happy to ride a dog out of here."

"Too conspicuous, in case Butcher came after us again," Brian pointed out, not for the first time.

"I'm pretty sure these are actually the Teeth." Lisa didn't sound happy about it, which Brian didn't blame her at all for. "Brian, we need to evade."

"Toward or away from where Rachel's got the rest of her dogs?" Brian eyed the next intersection as the ratty car jockeyed its way in front of them again.

"Toward," Rachel said immediately.

"Away from," Lisa contradicted her.

"We're not fucking leaving my dogs behind!"

"And I never said we were, but we have to lose this tail! Brian, turn right! Alec, put that driver out of position!"

"Thought you'd never ask." Alec peered out through the windshield, and the car in front of them abruptly swerved to the left, T-boning a large van. "Whoops."

Brian hauled the wheel to the right, and they passed the stricken car by. As he kept up the turn, they made it around the corner to the right, honking horns and bellowed profanity trailing behind them. "What now?" he asked tensely.

Up ahead, in the intersection they were about to enter, there was an explosion of flame and thunder; when it cleared, Butcher was standing there. Brian would've gone so far as to say that she looked pissed.

"Left!" screamed Lisa, and Brian instinctively followed her instruction.

Basic survival instinct told him to floor it; a moment later, an explosion in the road behind rocked the car. "Where to?" he yelled. "She's just going to keep chasing us!"

Lisa grimaced. "Never thought I'd be saying this, but … the PRT building. It's our only chance."

"You're nuts." Alec hung on as Brian hauled the car around another turn. "Certifiable."

Lisa gave him a raised-eyebrow look. "But am I wrong?"

His shoulders slumped. "Dammit."

<><>​

Butcher

May stood in the road and watched as the car headed for the PRT building.

That's right, you ungrateful assholes. Just keep running. You'll never get away.

All according to plan.



End of Part Thirty-Nine

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Forty: Round Three

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



Flechette

Lily watched as the PRT troopers erected a marquee over Blockade's massive powersuit. There was a certain efficiency in their movements that told her they'd done this before. "So, what's this for?" she asked. "It's not exactly a secret that there's someone inside that armour."

After a chnk-chnk-hsss noise, the armour opened up, and a petite teenage girl, maybe five feet tall, climbed out. "True, but it is a secret that I'm not some big hunky guy. Hi, nice to meet you at last." She offered her hand; as Lily shook it, the power of her grip was quite impressive.

"Okay, yeah, that is a point." Lily watched as the armour folded itself up into a solid metal box, then a holographic overlay shimmered into focus, making it look like a steel-bound wooden crate. She suppressed a snort of amusement as she read the large sticker that appeared to be plastered over one side: 'KEEP OUT. PROPERTY OF BLOCKADE. THAT MEANS YOU, DIRECTOR.'.

"Very funny," Director Piggot observed dryly. "I suggest we go downstairs to Conference Room A, while I make a call. If Butcher's not already on the move, she will be soon. I need to get a status update so we can make our plans accordingly."

Monochrome nodded. "I know the way if you want to take care of that. Come on, guys."

As Piggot got out her phone, Lily followed Monochrome and the others into the elevator. It went down a few floors while the Director exchanged a few terse words with the person on the other end of the call, then seemed to listen intently. The call ended just as Monochrome opened the door into the appropriate conference room.

"We may have a problem," the Director stated. "Operations just got a call from Tattletale of the Undersiders. Butcher is chasing them, so they're coming here."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," muttered Firebird. "They're the ones who hooked March up with Butcher in the first place. Why is nothing simple around here?"

Director Piggot snorted. "Welcome to my life."

"Okay, so what do we do?" Monochrome's costume rippled, increasing her apparent bulk one moment then lying flat to her skin the next. Lily had no idea how that worked, but it definitely seemed to be superior to her own. Except for the fact that it only worked in black and white and shades of gray, of course. "Do we intercept her while they're still on the way here, or wait until they reach the building?"

Blockade looked around at the conference room, then focused on the screen at the far end of the room. "Can you bring up a city map on there, with the locations of the Undersiders and Butcher on it, as well as the Teeth?"

Lily hadn't even thought of that. Trust the Tinker to come up with a tech solution.

Piggot seemed to have the same thought running through her head, with the way her eyebrows hitched up. "I can definitely call around, see if my people can make it happen."

"In the meantime," Firebird said, grabbing a chair and spinning it around so she could sit on it with her hands clasped around the back, "let's talk fight strategy. We know what March's powers can do. Butcher's super-strong, she teleports, and she jumps into your head if you kill her. What else can she do?"

The Director ticked off points on her fingers. "Her ranged shots never miss, she can cause pain and inflict wounds in people just by thinking about it, she can target people through walls, and she can apparently send people berserk, also just by thinking about it."

Blockade nodded at each point. "Super-strength isn't really a problem, I can deal with the teleportation, and I've got ideas for the rest of it."

Lily stared at her while Piggot got onto her phone. "What do you mean, 'ideas'? You've run into March twice. Monochrome nearly died the first time, and you retreated from her the second time. I've seen your good steel and I've been getting told how Monochrome's force field is all that, but I'm starting to wonder if you're as amazing as Director Piggot seems to think."

"I was absolutely overconfident the first time, for sure." Monochrome put her hand on Lily's shoulder. "That was my bad. I've learned from the experience, and she can't hurt me that way again." She glanced over at Firebird. "You, she can hurt. I'm thinking you deal with the other capes. Intercept them before they can get to her, and take them off the board, yeah?"

Firebird wrinkled her nose. "Much as I hate to admit you're right, you do have a point. What are you going to be doing in the meantime?"

"For the moment, we slow her down." The petite teen cracked her knuckles, the sound echoing in the room like muted gunfire. "To properly stop her, I'm going to need some workshop time. But we can definitely put a hobble on her right here and now."

"Workshop time?" Lily knew she shouldn't be pushing back, but she couldn't figure out where Blockade was going with this. "What kind of a weapon are you going to use against her? Did you want to kill her, and have her end up in your head?"

Blockade rolled her eyes. "Honey, I've already got a gun that could evaporate her, if I turned it up to its highest output. But that wouldn't help, so I'm not going to use it. I've got something else in mind. I've just got to make it first."

"You said 'for the moment, we slow her down'." Director Piggot put her phone away. "How do you intend to do that?"

Firebird pointed at Blockade. "You're thinking you and Monochrome for the main event, me and Flechette for the tail-enders?"

"That's the idea I've got," agreed Blockade. "If we're careful, we can handle whatever Butcher can throw at us, until we can put the slowdown in place."

"You grab, I apply, yeah?" Monochrome looked thoughtful. "I'll have to go triple or quad layer, just in case."

"Whoa, whoa, wait," Lily objected. "What are you guys even talking about? The tail-enders?"

Firebird nodded. "Yeah. I could probably deal with them myself, but I can always use competent backup. You in?"

Director Piggot cleared her throat. "You are aware, are you not, that you aren't the only capes in the city? You're definitely getting more backup than just Flechette."

"Not for Butcher," Blockade said hastily. "The Teeth, sure. The more the merrier. But if anyone other than Monochrome or me goes after her, she'll kill them."

The screen at the end of the room flared to life, and blinking dots showed up, superimposed on a map of the city. They were more or less in sequence, progressing toward the PRT building. Each was marked with a label, which would've been useful if all present hadn't known who they represented.

"Okay, then." Firebird stepped up off the chair and indicated the middle dot. "Butcher's close behind the Undersiders, but she's some distance ahead of the rest of the Teeth. I'll take whoever Director Piggot is okay with me having and make sure they never catch up. Blockade, Monochrome: give her hell."

Blockade nodded. "Damn right." She raised her right hand and gave Firebird a high-five on the way out of the room, while Monochrome did the same with her left hand.

Lily watched them go, then turned to the Director. The older woman nodded to her and made a quick call. Moments later, the PA system kicked into action. "All on-duty capes …"

<><>​

Butcher

May grinned savagely as she teleported yet again. A passing car was blasted away from her by the resultant explosion, but she didn't give a fuck. Nor had she ever; it was everyone else's job to stay out of her way, not hers to worry about them.

As the flames cleared, she saw the crappy ride the Undersiders were using as it vanished around yet another corner. She could've caught up with them a lot faster, but this pursuit had never been about catching them. It was about stampeding them to where her other prey awaited. Two birds, one stone, et cetera and stuff.

They probably thought they were outsmarting her by always keeping out of direct line of sight. This meant they didn't know about her ability to see their vital points even through buildings, and had likely forgotten about her ability to charge a projectile and send it through any obstacle. Really, they were dead already; she just had to pick when she pulled the trigger on them.

She teleported again, to the intersection where they'd turned. Once more, they were making a hasty right to avoid her. But this time, it was different. A twinge of danger alerted her half a second before the roar reached her ears; she looked up to see the bulky powersuit as it swept into view over the rooftops.

Any idea she might've had that it wasn't there for her was immediately dispelled as it changed course, angling downward and performing an end-over-end manoeuvre so that it could slow its descent with its leg thrusters. It was right about then that May realised the suit had a passenger, a familiar black-and-white patterned figure crouched on the suit's shoulder.

The sense of danger grew stronger, though May had no idea why. When she'd first encountered Monochrome, she'd either killed or badly injured her, and Blockade had run from her on their second meeting. Whatever they could do to her, she could do ten times as bad to them.

"Butcher." It was Blockade. "Stand down and surrender and we'll see you're treated properly."

"Haha fuck you." May hadn't spent all this time herding the Undersiders toward the PRT building just to be distracted by two heroes she could find and kill at any time. Leaning slightly to get a viewpoint on the next intersection around Blockade's bulk, she triggered the teleport. Flame erupted as she arrived, but as they subsided, she realised she was staring at Blockade's midsection from a distance of about six inches.

Her awareness of danger flared high, and she instinctively teleported a dozen feet back, just as Monochrome landed a dropping elbow strike where she'd been standing. It didn't quite reach the asphalt, but the blurred quality of the move bespoke extreme speed. Any faster, May suspected, and the strike would've generated a sonic boom.

Damn. I would've felt that for sure.

Even with the physical separation, she was still feeling a distinct sense of peril emanating from the pair, and she wasn't sure why she hadn't been able to teleport past Blockade. It was probably some Tinkertech shit built into the suit, but it didn't stop her from teleporting away, just past. And she could work around that.

"I'm gonna kill you both, you know that, right?" She scooped up two handfuls of what had previously been asphalt, and formed them into throwing blades. Blockade was easy to predict, but Monochrome seemed to drop in and out of her awareness. This didn't matter; it just meant she'd have to try harder.

Monochrome shook her head. "We had other issues to deal with then. Now we're back."

"Your funeral." The blades in her hands powered up nicely, but she held off on throwing them. Both Blockade and Monochrome were hard to target, mainly because the power that let her see the perfect place to shoot someone was glitching in and out with them. However, she had another trick up her sleeve.

It was a lot easier to hit someone if they were screaming in agony on the ground, so she unleashed a wave of pain toward the two heroes. Nothing happened for the longest time, then Blockade spoke up. "Are you actually doing something, or are you just constipated? Because this is getting a little bit awkward."

While it was technically possible for a Tinker to program a suit to not show any outward sign of what the pilot was doing, Monochrome wasn't in a battlesuit. The trouble was, like Blockade, she was giving absolutely no indication of what should have been happening.

May gritted her teeth and changed tactics. "I'll show you awkward." Being able to withstand pain was a relatively common power, especially among Brutes and the like, but actual wounds were another thing altogether. Her lips drew back to reveal a savage grin.

Neither hero so much as twitched.

"Wait," Blockade said after another few seconds. "I'm not sure if I know the rules here. Is it supposed to be our turn? Were you waiting for us?"

May dropped that power too. They were cheating somehow, but that was something she could account for. Once she spent a little more time fighting them, she'd be able to model them well enough to step past their best shots and still nail them where it hurt, cheating powers or no cheating powers.

"Okay, fine." She flexed her fingers, the blades sticking out between them, ready to throw. "So you can block my ranged stuff. Let's see how you do close-in. Monochrome, I seem to recall that you kinda suck in that regard."

Monochrome said nothing, but made a come-at-me gesture.

May obliged.

<><>​

Armsmaster

Colin guided his bike through the back streets of Brockton Bay, closing in on the currently-known location of the Teeth. Crouching on the back of the bike, in a posture Colin would've considered impossible to maintain without actually holding on, Firebird had her arms half-spread. As far as he could tell, she was using the discs clipped to her forearms as airfoils to keep herself steady and stable, and in fact seemed to be marginally improving the handling quality of the bike while she was at it.

They weren't the only heroes on the road. Flechette was riding behind Miss Militia in a somewhat more conventional fashion, and a PRT van was following along with Assault, Battery, Triumph, and Aegis on board. Colin didn't truly think they needed all those numbers to beat the Teeth, but he wanted to beat them quickly. If Butcher caught wind of the fight and doubled back, the chances of someone getting hurt would escalate dramatically.

He checked the HUD and activated his helmet radio. "Up around the next corner. We'll pull up there and intercept them."

"Copy that," the PRT trooper driving the van responded. Miss Militia simply looked across and nodded to him.

He slowed for the corner; Firebird, predictably, sustained her position on the back of his bike. The blinking dot on the HUD was just coming up on the other end of the block as he stepped off the bike, Firebird having vacated her position before he'd quite come to a halt. Flechette and Miss Militia got off the other bike as the van doors opened and the other four capes emerged.

The car holding the cape contingent of the Teeth accelerated as it approached their position. Colin readied his halberd, preparing to take out a tyre as it went past, but Flechette acted first. Her arbalest came to her shoulder and she shot a single aluminum dart into the engine block, seizing it solid and bringing the whole vehicle to a juddering, grinding halt.

The Teeth piled out of the car, ready to do battle, and Colin went to meet them.

<><>​

Monochrome

I wasn't totally sure what Butcher had been trying to do, but no punches or blades had been thrown. Something had been going on, given that my protective field had cut me off from the world totally for seconds at a time; I just didn't know what it was. Still, it hadn't affected me (apart from shutting me off from the world) or Madison, so that was a plus.

On the other hand, it seemed she was finally willing to come to grips with us. This was exactly what we wanted, so I made the classic beckoning gesture I'd seen in a dozen bad kung-fu movies, and she came at us. Or rather, she faked coming at Madison, then teleported right into my face.

Trying to maintain separate layers of force field over my skin was mentally taxing, to say the least. One, I could handle without even thinking about it, and two were still easy. Three layers were on the difficult side, and four were about all I could handle without standing dead still and concentrating on nothing else.

It was also a good thing that I'd fixed on this course of action before the fight started, because she was fast. I'd just registered that she was heading for Madison before she vanished and appeared next to me, and the blade in her left hand was already slicing at my eyes. My outer force field popped, and she stabbed me up under the ribs and tried to slash my throat before I pushed my last field out and rebuilt the ones under it.

At the same time, I tried to grab her, but between her natural speed and my distracted state of mind, she teleported away before I could lay a hand on her. The explosion of flame was on top of Madison's armour where the arms didn't reach; Butcher emerged from it with her blades already grinding and sparking at Madison's armour plates.

"Shit, what kind of metal is this?" she demanded as she gouged at the suit with the points of her knives. "I can cut anything but I'm barely scratching the finish, here."

"It's called good steel, bitch." Even through the electronic distortion, Madison's tone was heavy with derision. "I'd offer to make you a knife made out of it, but I don't accessorise losers."

"I'll show you who's a loser." Butcher stabbed her blade toward a gap in the plates. "This thing can't be totally made of that good steel shit. I get contact with that, I blow your whole little tin can apart with you inside it, asshole."

Thinking quickly, I reached out and grabbed the powersuit's leg. When I exerted my power, the suit became entirely impervious to all harm; even the rubber seals became ten times as durable as before. Up above, I heard the knife grating against the good steel, even as the rubber hoses that led from upper arm to lower arm quietly unclipped from the detachment points at the bottom end.

"Oh, come on," Butcher muttered. "Light the fuse already, goddamn it."

Madison had kept the hoses from the first iteration of her suit as a fuck-you to anyone who thought they could exploit a weakness by ripping them off during a fight. The first time, I hadn't been there, but Emma had cheerfully told me how Madison could guide them to point wherever she liked, and blast live steam through them. This was exactly what she did now.

Butcher had apparently been distracted by her attempt to disable the suit, and a double helping of steam to the face at close range did her no favours whatsoever. It was true that she was somewhat more durable than the norm, but that only goes so far. She teleported fifty feet away, clawing at her eyes, and I went after her.

She could apparently still see, even though her face was bright red and starting to swell, and my eyesight blinked out a few times. The thing was, I knew exactly where she was, and during the blackouts, I just kept running. I had to get her back to Madison, and if I gave her half a chance to think about what was happening, I'd never get her there.

As I came up to her, she lashed out at me with her rapier, again aiming at my eyes. During the sensory blackout, I grabbed at her with one hand and the rapier with the other. There were only two layers of force field on my hand, and it popped both of them and cut my hand before I reinforced the layers again. But I had hold of her with my other hand, and I slammed her into the ground with as much force as I dared.

When I picked her up again, she was still alive but she looked kind of dazed from having her face steam-cleaned just before headbutting some good solid Brockton Bay asphalt. That was good enough for me; turning on the spot, I hurled her back toward Madison. I kept hold of the rapier, though; the fewer weapons we let that bitch keep, the better.

All our teamwork had paid off; Madison fielded her like I'd tossed her a ball in the back yard. One large good-steel-plated hand closed around Butcher's arm, and she was going nowhere after that. As an external storage container opened in the side of the armour, Madison reached in and took out a collar similar to the ones we'd deployed on Shadow Stalker, Oni Lee and Crusader.

"What the fuck?" Butcher demanded. She scrabbled at the hand that held her, but her bare fingers weren't about to do much. Even so, I watched her trying to trace spirals and lines on the metal components, with exactly zero effect. "Let me go, you son of a bitch!"

"How about no." Madison held out the collar toward me as I strolled toward them. "Would you like to do the honours?"

I grinned. "Totally." Accepting the collar, I opened it up then closed it around Butcher's neck. The closure was a simple spring-clip, except that the spring itself was made of extremely high-tensile steel, unable to be reached from the outside, and requiring force comprising multiple tons per square inch to compress it. I could remove it, of course, but nobody else could. As the latch snapped into place with a noise like a gunshot, I grinned. "Enjoy walking everywhere, bitch."

<><>​

Flechette

The Teeth came out of the car looking for a fight, but Lily wasn't inclined to give them one. Neither was Firebird, apparently. Vex's razor-shards were only just starting to spread out when a hard-thrown disc bounced off her head, then caromed off Animos' before ending up back in Firebird's hand. Both slumped to the ground, out for the count.

Reaver was coming for the heroes when Flechette coldly and without a moment's hesitation put a dart through his knee. Panacea could deal with that injury later; for the moment, it wasn't lethal, and it would take him out of the fight. Hemorrhagia and Spree were the only two left, the latter popping out copies faster than the eye could count, when Battery zipped up to the incipient crowd and unleashed a widespread electrical burst. Stunned, they went down, the copies fading out of existence.

Hemorrhagia looked at the heroes arrayed against her.

Assault and Aegis cracked their knuckles and popped their necks, in unison. The latter also drifted upward into the air, just to make the point that he could.

Armsmaster's halberd blade began to glow ominously.

Miss Militia racked the slide on a very large shotgun.

Triumph cleared his throat.

Slowly, Hemorrhagia put her hands up.



End of Part Forty

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Forty-One: Long Term Solutions

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



Monochrome

"Okay," said Madison. "That's done. But …"

She looked down at Butcher, who was leaning hard to see around the suit, then sighed and wrapped her other gauntlet right around the villain's head. Butcher struggled, raking at the metal with her nails and screaming muffled obscenities, but to no avail. I was mildly impressed by her command of invective, but given that I'd grown up around Dockworkers, not overly so.

"But she's only prevented from teleporting, yeah," I agreed. "How are we going to deal with the rest of her powers without her running off and grabbing a bunch of hostages to force us to take that collar off her?"

"I'd be concerned about your sudden insight into the villainous mindset, but I was thinking exactly the same thing." Madison's tone took on a faux-thoughtful aspect. "Do you think Director Piggot would object a lot if I just pulled this one's arms and legs off and stuffed her in a crate until we're done?"

"Tempting," I allowed. I wasn't totally joking; I had actually felt like doing something similar, once I found out what March had been up to. "But she'd probably be forced to take notice."

"What if we just broke a few bones? They heal, right?" Her grasp on Butcher's arm shifted, and a large metallic thumb pressed on the elbow joint. I heard a grunt from Butcher, cut short, that may have been pain.

I rolled my eyes. "Not even that. It would be classified as 'mistreatment of a prisoner,' and they'd probably make us let her go or something." I couldn't help noticing that since Madison had gotten her Tinker abilities, her mindset had definitely shifted toward brute-force solutions, even when she was joking. I figured it was a power thing. When all you've got is a hammer, et cetera.

"Fine." I got the distinct impression that she'd just rolled her eyes. "Be a spoilsport then. See if I care. So, how are we gonna keep Miss Edgy McEdgelord from wrecking people, and things, until we can lock her down? Keep in mind before everything goes to shit, I did offer a perfectly workable solution."

That was when the idea occurred to me. I held up a finger while it was sorting itself out, then I nodded to myself once I'd roughed out the main aspects. "I think I know how." Clicking my radio button, I added, "Firebird, I'm gonna need the loan of a disc for a bit."

"Copy that. Be with you in a minute."

"Awesome." But I still needed something else. As I looked around, I saw a parking sign that looked like just the thing. It took no effort at all to pull the metal pipe up out of the concrete it was set into (the trick was to reinforce it and twist it free of its seating first), then I started to bend and shape it, using my own head as a model.

In reality, it only took about thirty seconds before Armsmaster's overbuilt cycle (and after associating with Madison, I knew what the term really meant) swept around the corner, with Emma riding on the back. They pulled up alongside us and Emma jumped off. Armsmaster climbed off the bike next, and I got the impression he was eyeing Butcher dubiously.

"First, why is she not using her powers? Second, why have you destroyed that sign?"

I took note of the fact that he'd asked the questions in a tone that was more curious than censorious. "Good steel stops dimensional shenanigans, and I'm pretty sure that includes being able to see someone's vital organs through solid matter." I'd figured that one out when Butcher called Madison a 'son of a bitch,' evidently taking her for a guy inside the suit. "And this here's for the disc I'm borrowing from Firebird."

Such was the teamwork and trust between us that Emma didn't even question me. She just unclipped the left-hand disc from her wrist and handed it over. "Okay," she said. "I'll admit that I'm definitely curious about what you need it for."

"Thanks. You'll see in a sec." I took the disc and slid it into the framework I'd made, crimping the metal to keep the good steel in place. Then I took it over to where Madison still held Butcher by the head and arm.

Butcher hadn't stopped struggling or swearing and was doing her best to pry Madison's hand off her head, one finger at a time. Unfortunately for her, even when she managed to move one finger (which was pretty damn impressive by itself) she couldn't keep it off while she worked on the next finger.

Taking hold of her free hand, I pulled it down next to her; as strong as she was, her resistance meant nothing to me. I wanted her hand to move, and it moved. Then I motioned for Emma and Armsmaster to stand behind Madison and nodded toward where Madison had Butcher's head in her hand. "Okay, you can take your hand away now."

Once her head was clear, Butcher glared at me, her hair disarranged and her eyes full of fury. "And you! As soon as I get out of this—"

The rest was cut off as my field deployed automatically, locking me away from the world. That didn't matter; I knew what I needed to do. Lifting up the frame, I slid it down over Butcher's head; my vision and hearing returned as soon as the disc cut off her view of me.

Once it was in place, I used a judicious crimping of metal to make sure it wouldn't come off any time soon, then looked at her thoughtfully. "Does that look close enough to her face to you?"

The whole idea of the frame was to pin the disc to her face so that she wouldn't be able to see anyone, and therefore be unable to harm them with her powers. It wasn't supposed to be a perfect solution, just one that would hold her long enough. I didn't want her being able to hurt innocents—or my fellow heroes—simply by swivelling her eyes sideways.

"Let me check." Armsmaster stepped to the side and waved his gauntleted hand through the space next to Butcher's head. A moment later, he jerked it back with a full-body wince. "Yes, yes, she can still use her powers."

"I will kill you all," growled Butcher from behind the disc. "Or you can kill me. I win, either way."

I spared a glance to where Armsmaster was taking his gauntlet off. The skin of the hand underneath was reddened, but not bleeding. Okay, good. Not an emergency, then.

"There's a lot we can do to you that won't kill you." Madison's tone was implacable. "I was joking before, but if you keep that shit up, you're going to take away the softer options, just saying."

I looked the disc over. It was curved back slightly on all sides, but it needed to be flat to her face for this to really block her peripheral vision. "Hold her arms."

"You got it."

"Wait," Armsmaster said as he pulled his gauntlet back on. "What are you going to do?"

"This." I grabbed the back of Butcher's head with my left hand, and put my right palm in the middle of the disc. Then I pushed, very carefully. I didn't want to crush her skull like a pomegranate, after all, no matter how much she'd earned it.

Her nose, however, was another matter altogether.

I felt the cartilage crunch just before she let out another grunt of pain, and I twisted the metal holding the disc onto her face so it was nice and tight. It was also pressing hard on her freshly broken nose, but I found that I honestly didn't give a damn.

Butcher had a different opinion on the matter. "Moth'r'fuck'r!" she managed from behind the disc. "You d'd th't 'n p'rp'se!"

"Yeah, I did." It wasn't like I cared enough to hide it. "You'd do worse to me if you could. This is me making sure you can't do it to anyone until we can work out a better counter."

"Monochrome …" Armsmaster didn't quite sound like he was warning me, but nor did he sound happy about what I was doing.

Madison stepped in before I could speak. "What the hell do you want out of us? Butcher's the equivalent of an armed IED, and she will kill as many people as she can if she gets the chance. We're your only chance to shut her down before things get worse. If you tie our hands now and she gets free, any damage she does is on you."

"I do understand." His tone was strained. "But if she can get in front of a public defender and level a charge of being tortured once in custody, that's going to make things very problematic for the Director." And, he didn't have to say, the Director would make her displeasure known to all involved; specifically, Armsmaster and us.

Emma sighed. "We both know the only reason she doesn't have a kill order is because of that bullshit power she has. I've spoken to people in the legal system who are very firmly of the opinion that if she even tries to bring a case like this, it'll get tossed with prejudice. So, with all due respect, we'll take the chance."

"So, what are you going to do?" He gestured at Butcher. "You can't exactly keep her like that forever. She'll need to have her nose set at some point, not to mention eating. And the moment her hands are free, she will be pulling that contraption off her head."

Butcher interjected with something that sounded like, "Fucking right," but I couldn't be sure. The disc interfered with her speech quite a bit; I wondered if I'd damaged her sinuses at the same time. Not that I really cared, but it was something to consider.

"Oh, we're aware," Madison agreed. "So, I'm gonna build something to fix the problem before she can do that. It won't deal with all of her powers, but it will definitely remove the worst threats."

"How are you going to do that?" Armsmaster tilted his head. "Negating several powers at once usually requires an extremely versatile device. Your creations, overall, do one thing extremely well, but are less effective on the versatility side of things."

The battlesuit tilted its head to one side. "I'd be offended if you weren't correct," Madison allowed. "But as the one thing this is going to do is 'fuck up Butcher's day', it's all good."

I could hear the frown in Armsmaster's voice. "You didn't answer my question as to how you're going to do that."

Madison chuckled, the vocal modulator transmitting the amusement across quite well. "You'll see."

She tapped her foot on the ground twice, the signal that she was about to take off. I jumped up onto one shoulder, while Emma leaped up and used Armsmaster's bike as a springboard to make it onto the other. Before Armsmaster could voice any further protest, her thrusters had cut in and we were powering skyward.

<><>​

Grue

Brian was beginning to wonder if running to the PRT to get away from Butcher had been the smartest play after all. Since entering the building, they hadn't quite been placed under arrest, but they were in a room with a guard at the door, and nobody important had dropped by to talk to them. Paranoia spiking, he looked around for gas vents or other ways the PRT could surreptitiously knock them out but couldn't find any.

Of course, that could be because the PRT were better at hiding things than he was at finding them.

Rachel had been allowed to keep her dogs with her, which was good. Someone in the PRT had probably figured that this was a non-negotiable point, so they'd just set the requirements that the canines needed to remain dog-sized and dog-shaped for the duration of their stay. It didn't stop her from being antsy about the rest of her dogs, but she hadn't gotten too aggressive about it quite yet.

Alec was also twitchy, mainly because he didn't have a gaming console to work out his excess energy on. Lisa had spent most of the time talking in muted tones to Aisha. Brian tried to focus on being happy that they were getting along instead of trying to kill each other, as opposed to being worried about what plots they were inevitably hatching, though he wasn't entirely successful.

When the huge screen at the far end of the room flared to life, it came as a relief to break the tension. Alec had already investigated it and speculated on how awesome it would make the gaming experience, but as there had been no way to make this actually happen, he'd gone back to idly spinning around and around on his chair.

The picture on the screen was just as sharp and clear as Alec had predicted, though as it showed Director Piggot's image, it still left a lot to be desired. "Good afternoon," the Director said, quite clearly looking at them via hidden cameras. The surround-sound was damn good too; she could easily have been in the room with them. "I have good news and bad news for you."

Brian was about to ask for the bad news first, on the principle of getting it out of the way, but Alec got in ahead of him. "What's the good news?"

Piggot's expression creased slightly, suggesting a potential smile. "You will be pleased to hear that your plan worked. Butcher is in custody, and the Teeth have been captured as well. I'm coordinating with the BBPD to corral the non-powered members of the gang as we speak."

"Whoa, okay." Brian had been expecting something a lot more ambiguous than that. "How did you capture Butcher? Especially with March's powers involved?"

The suggestion of amusement left Director Piggot's expression. "I didn't say she was in our custody, just that she was in custody. The Real Thing have her, and they say they're going to neutralise most of her offensive capability. Do you have any idea how that could be done?"

"Well, maybe … no. But what if … no. Crap." Lisa's shoulders slumped. From the expression on her face, she desperately wanted to be the one to answer that question, but she just didn't have enough data to come up with a workable solution. Along with Alec and Aisha, Brian was clueless and he knew it, while Rachel just didn't seem to care.

Piggot's eyes seemed to flick from point to point, as though looking at each of them in turn, before she nodded. "I see. Well, now for the bad news."

"What, that wasn't it?" blurted Aisha.

"No, it wasn't." Piggot gave another grim smile. "The bad news is that your four associates are specifically responsible for Butcher receiving a problematic power-up, and they've since willingly delivered themselves into our hands. We were indeed prepared to protect you against her if it came to that, but if the Real Thing continue to be as ridiculously effective as they have been in the past, such protection would no longer be necessary. Which, you may have already figured out, flips the entire paradigm on its head."

"Wait, what?" protested Brian. "No. We were leaving town. If Butcher hadn't come after us, we would've been gone! It's because of us that she's been captured!"

"And it's because of you that she's exponentially more dangerous than ever before." Piggot's tone was relentless. "Swings and roundabouts. One fortuitous turn of events does not excuse a whole array of criminal activity, and I'm not even counting the robbery spree on the gang stash houses over the last day or so."

Aisha chose to jump into the conversation again. "Hey, it wasn't their money anyway. Is it still robbery if you're stealing from a thief?"

The Director didn't hesitate. "Yes. It really is."

Lisa sat up straighter. "If you were going to arrest us, you would've done it already. So, you want something else from us. You just wanted us to squirm a little before you pulled the big reveal."

Piggot's expression twitched, souring slightly. "Ever the Thinker, Tattletale. Yes, I have a proposition for you."

Brian glanced at the others, then back at the screen. No troopers brandishing guns had burst into the room … yet. "We're listening."

The Director took a deep breath. "If history is any guide, Brockton Bay is facing a villain incursion to fill the gap left by the Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB. I've been applying the screws one turn at a time to make it less and less attractive for criminal gang activity, but there's still wiggle room for people to come in and try to establish themselves. Between gang clashes, going up against my troopers and Protectorate capes, and violent crime in general, people are going to get hurt. I'd really rather cut it off at the knees before any of them get properly established."

"And that's where we come in." Lisa didn't sound thrilled at having made this deduction.

"What do you mean, that's where we come in?" Rachel, unlike Lisa, was definitely not on the same page as the Director. "The fuck is she talking about?"

Brian thought he knew. "Director, it sounds to me like you want us to work for you behind the scenes, causing enough problems for these villains that they choose to leave town of their own accord."

"That's precisely what I would be asking of you." Piggot folded her hands in front of her on the desk. "It's a task to which you would be exceptionally well suited."

Now that it was out in the open, Brian wasn't quite sure which way to go on it. He glanced at Lisa, and his heart sank. The expression on her face told him that she was seriously thinking about it, which almost certainly meant they'd be going along with the idea.

"You've got to be shitting me." Rachel looked around at everyone else. "None of you is thinking about doing it … right?"

Lisa stirred, raising her head. "If we agreed to do it, there would be conditions. Guaranteed immunity to prosecution for all past crimes, for starters. A signed contract. And we'd all have to agree on it."

Brian was already thinking about security for himself and Aisha. Working directly for the PRT would have to look good on his record for CPS, right?

"I know what my condition is." Alec raised a finger (fortunately not the middle one). "And it's totally non-negotiable."

Oh, shit. Shoving his dreams aside, Brian tensed. What idiocy is he going to come out with? From the look on Lisa's face, she was similarly worried.

"I'm listening." Director Piggot may as well have been presiding over a board meeting of high-flying executives, for all the concern she showed. She hadn't even flinched at the 'guaranteed immunity to prosecution' requirement.

"I get to go head-to-head against Armsmaster in Battlemaster: In Extremis, and I get to keep a recording of the game for bragging rights." Alec sat back in his chair, looking pleased with himself.

Brian blinked. Lisa blinked. Even the Director blinked.

"I … that can be arranged." Piggot collected herself, and Brian got the impression that the game would take place if the Director had to hold Armsmaster at gunpoint to do it. "Is that your only condition?"

That broke the spell. "If we're doing this, then I totally got a condition," Rachel grunted.

"Yes, Hellhound?" The Director even managed to sound polite about it.

Rachel glared at the image on the screen. "I'm Bitch, not fuckin' Hellhound. And I want all the stray dogs in the city. And someplace to keep 'em. And money to feed 'em and keep 'em vaccinated and clean up their shit. Can you do that?"

The Director paused for a moment. "So … you want to run the dog pound, is that it?"

Lisa cleared her throat. "Not quite. Bitch would be in total control of the operation. No second-guessing or overriding her on any part of it. You'd have to get rid of anyone who might think they know more about dogs than she does, because if you don't, she definitely will. Also, no more putting dogs down just to free up room." She looked over at Rachel. "That sound about right?"

Grudgingly, Rachel nodded. "Yeah, what she said. All the dogs, and I run the show."

Now Piggot was making notes. "I believe there are a few markers I can pull in with the mayor's office. This can be achieved. Next condition?"

Brian lifted his chin. "Well, my sister and I …"

<><>​

Blockade's Workshop

Taylor

The building was large and airy, which was good, because molten metal generated a metric ton of heat. From what I could tell, it had previously been some kind of warehouse, but bore the distinctive signs of having been reinforced and secured by Madison's tech. Emma had told me about the early days when the Merchants had literally been able to force their way in through the wall; this was, in every way, a totally different proposition.

Madison, now out of the armour, finished what she was doing with the forge and turned to face Emma and me, where we held Butcher between us. "I'm going to need to take a mould of her upper face."

This was potentially the most dangerous part of the situation. Butcher's eyes weren't inherently dangerous—no laser vision or blaster beams, here—but if she got a clear line of sight on Emma or Madison, she could do them severe damage in the time it took for me to shut her down again without killing her. And if I were dealing with her eyes, someone else would have to watch her hands, which were even more deadly again.

Madison's description of her as an armed IED was nothing less than the truth. There were numerous ways she could hurt the unwary, and a single slip could allow her to cause untold damage. Worse, she wanted to kill us all, and we couldn't do the same to her.

"Okay," I said after a little thought. "I got this." I glanced at Emma. "Or rather, Blockade suits up, you got this, and I got you."

Emma's head came up as she figured out the plan. It was weird that we were more in tune than we'd ever been before we got powers. "That should work, yeah."

Madison nodded and gestured at a bowl of off-grey gunk sitting on a nearby table. "The stuff's right there. It'll set in five minutes, but it needs to be undisturbed until then." She headed for the Mark 2 suit. "Give me thirty seconds to suit up, and we'll be ready to roll."

"Gloves?" asked Emma, looking at her hands then glancing at me.

"Probably a good idea to take them off, yeah," I agreed.

Once her hands were bare—it was usually easier to wash stuff like that off skin than out of cloth—Emma took up the bowl. In the meantime, Madison had ensconced herself within the suit, and I'd carefully unbent some of the framework that held the disc in place. Emma came over to stand in front of Butcher, and I reached past the murderous teenager to take her by the arm, while maintaining a careful grasp of both Butcher's wrists in my other hand.

"Okay," Emma said. "Ready?"

"Wait." I looked at the gunk. "If she's standing upright, it'll just slide off her face, yeah?"

"Shit, yeah. It's not that sticky."

"Okay, then." I moved Butcher over next to the table, then tapped her gently behind the knees so that she fell backward with a muffled yelp. Carefully, I guided her down so her shoulders were supported by the table, and I still had a good grip on her wrists. "Blockade, can you hold her head still?"

"Sure thing." Madison tromped over and waited until I had hold of Emma's arm, using my power to reinforce her, then carefully slid the frame holding the disc off Butcher's head. Reaching down, she took hold of Butcher's head between one massive finger and thumb, effectively immobilising it.

I had made a mess of Butcher's nose, and the front of her face seemed bruised in general, but this was nothing to what she'd done to many innocents, so I figured a little turnabout was fair play. She glowered up at me—my eyesight and hearing blinked out a few times—then turned her attention to Emma when I didn't react. "I'm going to kill you," she promised. "You're gonna die screaming."

"Anything?" I asked after a moment.

"Kind of an irritating itch," Emma reported. "No … wait … now I'm really pissed off. But I can handle it." She sounded mildly annoyed, like Dad after a frustrating day at the Association.

"Why the fuck aren't you screaming and dying?" shrieked Butcher. "I know I'm using the powers right this time!"

Emma reached out and grabbed Butcher's nose; with a wrenching crack, she reset it. "Because we're just that good. Now, hold still." Holding the bowl in one arm, she scooped up a large handful of the gunk and prepared to apply it. "Oh, and you might want to close your eyes."

No matter how Butcher struggled and protested, it was to no avail; Madison's suit was in the ton-weight range as far as strength was concerned, and she had leverage on her side. Me, I was just 'strength: yes,' whether there was leverage involved or not. The gunk went onto Butcher's face, covering her from mid-forehead down to the bridge of her nose, filling her eye sockets from top to bottom and side to side.

Five minutes later, following Madison's instructions, we lifted away the now-solid cast and carefully placed it to one side. Butcher unfortunately lost her eyebrows and eyelashes in the process (for an unflinching mass murderer, she certainly put up a fuss about it), but that was a minor price to pay.

With the disc back over her face (we didn't need to re-break her nose, so long as she didn't pull anything) it was just a matter of waiting for Madison to use the cast to create a mould, which she did with expert ease. One short pour of good steel later, followed by the attachment of a much more elegant framework (so sue me, I'd been pressed for time and materials), and we had a form-fitting blindfold for Butcher to wear. Once Madison also put together a pair of good steel cuffs with hand covers, we were in business.

"Nice," Emma observed as she replaced the borrowed disc on her bracer. "Can't teleport, can't see to use her ranged powers, can't power things up to explode."

Madison nodded. "That's the general idea, yes."

The downside of refining Butcher's restraints was, of course, that she could now speak unimpeded. "You realise, you can't keep me like this forever. Once I get out of wherever you assholes put me, I'm gonna come looking for you. If you die, I win. If I die, I still win." As she spoke, she wrenched uselessly at the cuffs that secured her arms firmly behind her back. They clanked gently, but nothing else happened.

I glanced over at Madison. "Still time to make a gag for her before we take her back to Director Piggot, just saying."

She snorted. "Didn't say I wasn't thinking about it."



End of Part Forty-One

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Forty-Two: Meanwhile …

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



Uber

"Holy shit, have you heard about this?" Leet looked up from where he'd been browsing PHO. "Says here, Butcher's been sighted in the Bay."

"You're shitting me." Brendan's interest in schooling the trash-talking little shit on the other side of the screen abruptly waned. His thoughts went immediately to his bug-out bag, then he started wondering if Leet had kept his up to date. "Maybe it's time we got out of town."

"Maybe." Leet jumped up from the chair, sending it rolling backward. "Or maybe we make it so she leaves town before she fucks everything up." There was a manic energy in his voice that Brendan had heard before; it had never turned out well.

"What did you have in mind?" That was always a good question to ask when it came to Leet. Sometimes, when he heard his own ideas coming out of his mouth he would slow his roll; other times, Brendan had to do it for him. And once in a while, he needed to be reminded that he'd already done something like whatever he was proposing. "And what game are we going to be working from?"

Leet shook his head. "Nope, no game." He put up his finger before Brendan could interject. "This isn't a game thing, or even something we can put on the show. It's pure self-defence. If we can chase Butcher away before she gets settled, we're gold. Otherwise, we'd always be looking over our shoulders."

"I think it's a bad idea." Brendan weathered Leet's look of betrayal with the same ease he'd done it every other time. "Best case, you accidentally kill her and you become Butcher. Worst case, she somehow figures out that you're fucking with her, and she kills us."

"The fuck?" Leet managed to say those two words with such emphasis from his body language and hand movements that his meaning still would've been understandable by someone who was blind, deaf and entirely ignorant of the English language. "You're not listening, dude. Best case is, we chase her the fuck out of Brockton Bay. I'm not gonna, like, hit her with an eighteen-wheeler or shit like that. It'll just be small stuff, like walking into doors and tripping over her own feet."

"And how are you even going to do that?" Leet had come up with some stupid plans in the past, but they'd always been based around one of his inventions. Brendan figured that said as much about the inventions as they did about Leet himself. "Zap her with a bad-luck ray?"

"Well, yeah, actually." Leet eyed Brendan suspiciously. "Have you been reading my notes or something?"

"Yeah, like I'd even touch them. Half the time they're either radioactive or contaminated with something that doesn't exist on the periodic table, and the other half the time they're about as legible as … wait." Brendan's brain finally caught up with what he'd just heard his buddy say. "Bad luck ray? Really? How fucking stupid of an idea is that?"

"It could work. You know, maybe." When Leet was being defensive, he hunched his shoulders, almost folding in on himself, and today was no exception. "I've never done one before, that's for certain."

"Yeah, because it's a stupid idea. If it's even possible." Brendan paused; he didn't actually like yelling at Leet. Maybe it was a better idea to guide him into realising that it was a bad idea, a little bit at a time. "Okay, fine, let's assume it's possible. What made you think of it, anyway?"

Leet hesitated, then glanced at Brendan. Apparently finding some kind of encouragement there, his closed-in stance opened up a little. "Um … I was actually reading the capefics on PHO, and there was one where we were kinda heroic, and I made a bad luck gun and a good luck gun, and we wrecked the Slaughterhouse Nine with them. So, um, I was thinking that maybe I could make it work in real life …?"

Brendan ran his hands through his hair, trying to figure out exactly what to say in response to that. Capefics bear zero resemblance to how powers actually work, you colossal moron! came to mind, but he was actively trying not to sound too harsh, so he did his best to tone it down a little … or a lot. "Okay, so do you have any idea how to make this work? And will it use a principle you've already used?"

His heart sank when Leet brightened. "I'm pretty sure I do, yeah. And no, I've never done a luck effect. Plus, we'll be able to use it from right here in the base, so we don't have to go near her."

"Well, that's definitely a bonus." It was more than that. The more Brendan thought about it, the more he considered it to be the keystone aspect of the whole stupid idea. If Leet could employ his ill-conceived venture out of sight and out of mind, they could get it over and done with, and clean up the inevitable flaming wreckage afterward without anyone (especially Butcher) being the wiser.

Sometimes, he wondered if the reason Director Piggot and the local PRT had never mobilised to capture and incarcerate them was due to the entertainment value of the after-action reports of their many (many) screwups.

"Well, it's mainly because we aren't going to be targeting her now," Leet continued, warming to his theme. "She's already here, and she's probably got a base set up and everything. I want to make things inconvenient to her from the moment she gets here, so she just gives up in disgust."

"Wait." The dark foreboding that usually hung over Brendan when Leet was about to try something particularly ill-advised came back in full force, and it even brought friends along for company. "Attacking her then? Like, time manipulation? Didn't you swear to me on bended knee that you weren't going to do that anymore? Especially after what happened between Uber-3 and Leet-9?"

"Dude. We agreed never to bring that up again. Anyway, nothing's going to happen like that." Leet rolled his eyes, apparently going for carefree nonchalance, though the fact that he'd crossed his fingers for luck didn't escape Brendan. "Anyway, this isn't about generating alternate timelines. It's about directing an attack back through time. You know, using the thing I worked up for the ChronoCop episode we never actually worked out how to do."

"Yeah, well, that's because you couldn't figure out how to get the time-folder small enough to fit into a gun. Pity, though. It would've been cool." Brendan paused, pulling his mind away from his appreciation of the classic game. "Wait, you never trashed it after that, uh, thing we never talk about?"

"Like I said, it doesn't generate alternate timelines. Plus, once I make something, it's made. If I'd trashed it, I'd never be able to rebuild it. So, I just put it away." Leet headed over to a set of cupboards and started rifling through them. "Judge Dredd helmet … Spartan rifle … Ghostbusters ghost trap … come on, where is it?"

"Ghost trap? We never did a Ghostbusters episode, did we?" Brendan picked up the black and yellow striped device and examined it. It looked like some of Leet's better work, too.

"Nah, I think Leet-6 left it behind when he went back to his home alternate. He said to never open it, but wouldn't tell me why." Leet opened a different cupboard door and kept searching. "Ah-ha! There you are, you sneaky little rascal! Come to papa."

Well, shit. He found it. Brendan's initial hope, that Leet's perennial lack of organisation would kill this idea aborning, had been categorically shot in the back of the head and buried in a shallow grave. Not unlike the fate he foresaw the two of them suffering if this idiotic venture went anywhere nearly as badly as had happened in the past.

"So, uh … how exactly are we going to do this?" He knew exactly what he was letting himself in for by making the inquiry, but he had to keep himself in the loop somehow. Otherwise, the bad shit that was currently chugging down the track toward them like the juggernaut of doom—all acceleration, no brakes—was going to catch him in the back of the neck at the worst possible moment. If he could see it coming, he figured, he'd have half a chance of ducking and covering at the right moment, and maybe even dragging Leet out of the line of fire too.

Well, it was a plan, even if it wasn't a great one. Or even a good one.

"Okay, so here's the dealio." Leet gestured with the hand that wasn't holding the time-folder. "Building this into a gun is no longer necessary. Besides, I need to design the luck reservoir, as well as the filter and projector. Which reminds me. Are you okay with me tapping you for bad luck?"

"Me?" Brendan frowned, entirely unsure as to where Leet was going with this. "Why do you think I've got any bad luck? Seriously?"

"Dude. Don't play dumb." The look Leet gave Brendan said quite clearly, 'we both know what I'm talking about'. "The number of times my inventions have crashed and burned, there's got to be a serious source of bad luck in my vicinity. Process of elimination says it's you."

What? Brendan had heard the phrase 'could not believe my ears' before, but now he was living it. If either of them was afflicted with bad luck, it was Leet. How could his buddy not see that? "You're pulling my chain, dude. You honestly think it's down to me?"

"Well, who else could it be? Anyway, we're getting off track." Leet hustled over to the pile of disassembled parts that he'd salvaged from the last dozen or so fiascos. "Time to put your talent to good use for once. As soon as I build the luck siphon and the reservoir, I'll start tapping you for bad luck while I finish up the console and integrate the time-folder into it. Think you can hold still long enough to let that happen?"

"But—" Brendan cut off his own protest, and thought fast. It was totally an embarrassment, sure, to be thought of as a source of bad luck when anyone with half a brain could see what was really going on. But if he was correct, and Leet was just shit at what he did, then the bad luck projector would do exactly jack and shit once it was turned on. Which meant they would be safe from not only Butcher's wrath, but also any actual malfunction from the device. After all, if it didn't work, then it couldn't explode … right? "… okay, yeah, hook me up."

"Ar-right!" Leet set to work with a will. Sparks flew as he soldered the smaller components, then welded the larger ones. To Brendan's dubious eye, the 'luck siphon' that he assembled seemed to include a number of parts strongly reminiscent of the vacuum cleaner that had mysteriously vanished a couple of weeks ago.

Of course, when a Tinker was involved, any disappearance of electronic equipment was to be treated more as a suspicious circumstance than a mysterious event.

"How intrusive is this going to be?" Brendan asked, fully aware that it was something he probably should have checked on before agreeing to being the subject of the 'luck siphon'. "Because if it involves inserting it into a body cavity, I'm out."

"Nah, nah." Leet put the final touches on the device, then turned to him. "Here, just point the open end toward yourself. If it's within a few inches, it should suck up the bad luck just fine." He offered it to Brendan, who noted that (among other things) there were now lines of LEDs running up and down the length of the tube joining it to what he gathered (from context) was the reservoir. When Leet pressed a switch, it began to warble softly, with undertones and overtones that raised the hair on the back of Brendan's neck … or maybe that was just his presentiment of doom kicking into high gear. "Okay, get to collecting that bad luck."

Accepting it gingerly, Brendan eyed the aperture. "How will I know how much bad luck it's collected? And what happens once it's full?" He didn't believe for a second that bad luck was something that could be simply collected. However, it was evident to him that the siphon was determined to grab something, and he'd experienced enough explosions as a direct result of Leet's tech underperforming (and sometimes overperforming) that these questions were absolutely essential to ask up front. Usually from a safe distance.

Leet gestured toward a dial set in the side of the reservoir. "Oh, it'll beep and shut itself off. If it doesn't, just hit the red button there. Or was it the green one?" He frowned, looking from one to the other. "I know I was building in an emergency dump system, in case the bad luck concentration got too high. Or was that the pull-handle there?"

Peering closely at the dial, Brendan saw that the needle was quivering far to the left of the scale. Instead of numbers, there were instead words and phrases to mark (he figured) how much bad luck had been gathered.

THAT'S ODD

OH DAMN

SERIOUSLY?

YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME

WHAT THE HELL?

OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE

JESUS CHRIST, NOT AGAIN

FUUUUUUUUUCK!

Click to shrink...

It hadn't quite gotten up to 'That's odd' yet, even when he gave the siphon an experimental wave over himself, so he figured it was safe to relax for the moment. If the cockamamie contraption failed even to charge itself with whatever it considered to be bad luck, maybe Leet would give up on the idea of attacking Butcher. Not getting in her way, and keeping his head down, seemed a vastly wiser choice than pointing some of Leet's tech at her and suffering the consequences of either success or failure.

Among other things, Brendan hadn't forgotten that the Butcher had the ability to shoot around obstacles to hit her enemies dead centre, ten times out of ten. He was good at what he did—he'd be the first to admit that—but she had him beat in that regard, by a solid country mile. Not to mention the other downside of fighting her: if she was killed, her killer became the new Butcher. It was theoretically possible to beat her without killing her, but nobody had managed that yet, and he certainly had no idea how to do it.

"One of these days, you're gonna have to start writing notes for this stuff." He wasn't quite sure how many times Leet's tech had malfunctioned due to its hapless inventor pressing a bunch of buttons in precisely the wrong order, but it had to be more than a few. Of course, sometimes it just blew up because it had apparently gotten bored with being in one piece, but there wasn't much Brendan could do about that.

"Sorry, dude. No can do. If I stop to write stuff down, I lose my train of thought." Leet shrugged and went back to the construction of the other half of the bad luck contraption. This was what he'd called the filter and projector, the latter of which incorporated the time-folder. To Brendan's vague relief, it looked solid and non-portable, which meant they probably weren't going to be lugging it out of the base and going in pursuit of Butcher with it. There were lots of blinking lights on it, though, as well as a large screen.

Brendan held Leet in the highest regard—there were no bro's like gaming bro's—but he couldn't resist rolling his eyes at that. Might actually improve your stuff if you did lose your train of thought from time to time. It certainly couldn't make it worse.

"Actually," he ventured as a thought occurred to him. "Why do you never set up a camera where you could replay the footage and remind yourself what buttons did what?" It would certainly bypass a lot of the fiascos (and lost eyebrows) that they'd undergone of late.

Leet turned and gave him a long-suffering look. "Now why didn't I think of that? Hell, we've got the Snitch to watch over my shoulder and all. I could even give a colour commentary to make sure I didn't forget anything." He threw a baleful glance across the workshop to where their little hover-cam sat in its charging cradle.

Now Brendan knew he was missing something. "So why don't you?" If there was a good reason, he sure as hell didn't know what it was.

Leet sighed expressively. "Because when I do that, even if I can't see the camera, malfunction rates go way up. It's like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle or something. I even tried with cameras that turned on at random, so I didn't know they were operating. But no matter what I tried, it was always the same. If the process was recorded, something went fucky with it. So, I stopped trying." He turned back to the luck filter and set to work once more. The tension in his shoulders matched the bitterness in his tone, so Brendan decided not to pursue the matter any further.

When the device in his hand didn't seem about to blow up, short out or otherwise pose a risk to life and limb, he left off passing it over himself and waved it around in the air experimentally. Nothing much happened until he chanced to direct it Leet's way, whereupon the needle jumped and started to rise. Blinking, he pointed it back at himself, and the needle stopped again. Aimed at Leet once more, it caused the needle to rise again.

You're shitting me. Is this the reason his tech fails on the flimsiest excuse? He's actually afflicted with bad luck? It's really a thing?

By now, the needle was past 'Oh, damn' and heading for 'Seriously?', and didn't seem to be slowing down any time soon. Brendan was torn between equal and opposite urges: on the one hand, he kinda wanted to see what happened once the reservoir was filled with whatever the siphon was drawing away from Leet; on the other, he wasn't sure that he really wanted to. The third option was to tell Leet exactly who it was drawing 'bad luck' from, but that would probably just serve to piss his buddy off and cause a scene, and he didn't want to do that at all.

Self-preservation vied with the urge for entertainment, and entertainment won out.

"Uh, so what were you going to do with the bad luck anyway, once you got it? I mean, exactly?" He made sure to keep his tone light, so Leet would take it as simply making conversation, rather than an interrogation. "Hit her with a huge burst of it all at once, have a meteorite land on her or something?"

"I was thinking that at first, but then I decided to go a different way." Fully back in the groove now, Leet kept working even as he answered the question. "I'll start tuning it backward in time, hitting her with random bits of bad luck here and there."

"Right, right." Brendan kept experimenting with the gently warbling device, waving it around in the air, then at himself, then back toward Leet. Whenever it was pointed directly at the Tinker, the LEDs rippled faster and the needle rose on the dial, passing by 'You have to be kidding me' and 'What the hell?' as he watched.

"Nearly done here," Leet reported, his voice muffled as he was head and shoulders inside the cabinet enclosing the luck filter and projector. "How's it going with your bad luck?"

"Oh, it's pulling it in hand over fist." Brendan kept his tone level, while he thanked his lucky stars that there were no cameras to see him hovering the end of the siphon about two inches off Leet's butt. At this range, the needle was closing in on the red-printed 'Fuuuuuuuuuck!' at a ferocious rate of knots. "It'll be full up real soon."

"Oh, good. I knew there was a reason my stuff kept failing." Just as Leet edged backward out of the cabinet, there was a beep from the luck reservoir.

Brendan hastily turned the siphon so it stuck straight up in the air, well away from both of them, so by the time Leet turned around, there was no proof of what he'd been doing. "Yeah, totally. No idea why I didn't see it before."

"Well, you were too close to the problem, weren't you?" Leet puzzled over the luck reservoir for a few moments, then gingerly pressed the green button. The warble changed note, and Brendan got ready to duck and cover. But nothing else happened, so he allowed himself to relax a little.

"Yeah, probably. So, what happens now?" Brendan handed the siphon back to Leet, and watched as the Tinker disconnected the head from it, then plugged the hose into the side of the cabinet that housed the filter and projector. "What else do we have to do?"

Leet shrugged. "Nothing. Now we fire this bad boy up, and start inflicting bad luck on Butcher." He flipped a row of switches, and a bunch of vertical light displays lit up, starting at red but transforming to green one after the other. "Luck filtration up and running. Everything looks good."

Brendan wondered what 'luck filtration' actually did, but wasn't inclined to ask. "How are you going to actually target Butcher?" was what he said instead. That was also a valid question, as far as he was concerned.

"Oh, uh, I got a photo of her. Once I let the guidance computer have a look at it, it'll pinpoint her anywhere within twenty miles. To make it easier, I'll calibrate it so it only locks onto capes." Leet tapped buttons, turned knobs, and pushed sliders. "And there we go! It's got a lock. So I'll warm up the time-folder, turn it back just an hour or so, and zap her with a ranging shot. Just a teensy bit of bad luck."

"Sounds like a plan." Brendan moved closer, interested in seeing how this would go. He watched as Leet fiddled with the controls, and the time-date stamp on the top corner of the screen rolled backward.

"Okay, then. Let's do this thing." Leet drew a deep breath and let out a gusty sigh, revealing that he was a lot tenser than he'd been letting on. He pressed in a button, then manipulated a couple of controls; in another moment, a picture sprang up on the screen, showing Butcher pacing across a paved area, with people all around her. Brendan recognised them as unpowered members of her gang, the Teeth. "I'll just give her a touch of clumsiness …" A knob turned gently under his fingers, and the warbling of the luck reservoir ramped up slightly.

And then the view swivelled, and Brendan saw the costumed woman coming at Butcher, sword reaching out for her. "Oh shit! Cut it off! Abort!"

"Wh—" Leet began, but Brendan was already acting. He'd seen how Leet had focused the projector in on Butcher; knocking his buddy's hands aside, he twisted the knob and slammed the slider all the way to its stop. Leet pushed him back. "What are you doing? Are you nuts?" But it was too late: the image on the screen had already flickered and changed.

Brendan outweighed Leet by several dozen pounds, but the shove forced him back a step anyway, and his elbow connected with one of the buttons on the reservoir. A sharp buzzer sounded, and the warble went to ultrasonic after passing through a sonic phase that felt like it was shredding Brendan's eardrums. The next thing that happened was a sharp pop inside the console, and a very familiar plume of smoke began to rise in the air.

"I had to do it." Brendan gestured at the now-dead screen. "She was in a fight against another cape." He hadn't actually recognised the costume, but it had to be one, with a military uniform and a rabbit mask involved. "If the other cape killed her and you were responsible, you'd be Butcher now."

"Oh. Yeah." Leet grimaced as he prised off a panel. "Yup, thought so. Time-folder's screwed, and the bad luck projector's slagged as well. So much for that." He looked over at the reservoir. "And you managed to hit the emergency dump just after you broke lock on her and fixed it on some poor random asshole in Brockton Bay. So, they got all the bad luck in the world, in one big hit."

"Shit." Brendan actually felt bad about that, then he remembered what Leet had said before. "And it was calibrated to only lock onto capes?"

Leet's eyes opened wider as he processed the ramifications of that. "Yeah. Yeah, it was."

There was no way in hell they were ever going to be mentioning this on their show, not after fucking over some random cape so badly. "Any idea who it was?"

"All I know is what I saw on the screen, just before the projector blew." Leet gestured at the console, then mimed an explosion. "A fuck-off big chunk of concrete, going right through someone's house."

Brendan blinked. "Huh. How do you think it managed that?" Every way he tried to figure it out, he ran into a solid blank.

Leet shrugged, looking just as much in the dark as Brendan was. "Fucked if I know."

And not another word was spoken about it.



End of Part Forty-Two

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Forty-Three: Negotiations

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



Director Emily Piggot, PRT ENE

Emily laced her fingers together, laying her hands flat on the desk in front of her. It seemed an inadequate gesture for the situation at hand, but it was the best she could do for the moment. She was used to rapidly-developing circumstances—cape powers were an ideal means, if the word could be used in such a fashion, for making things go from bad to worse in an exceedingly short time—but this one had spun out of control faster than even she could keep a handle on.

Fortunately, the presence of the Real Thing had reeled matters in again, almost as fast. Without them, even the awareness that Butcher and the Teeth were pursuing the Undersiders toward the PRT building wouldn't have done her a damn bit of good. Fighting the Teeth was almost impossible with the Butcher running rampant across the battlefield, and fighting the Butcher herself involved a whole sheaf of problems on top of that.

Yet they'd not only engaged her without loss, but they'd stopped her and the Teeth. The latter were in PRT custody, while the Butcher had been taken away by the Real Thing, then returned just moments ago. Now, in her office, she had the three members of the independent team explaining the current situation to her, while the rooftop guards kept an eye on Blockade's suit and Butcher herself.

Still, she sat and listened to them, for the very good reason that things could've turned out a whole lot worse. Armsmaster had been on site, and had made sure that nothing got out of hand; though from his report, there hadn't been a hell of a lot he could've done to stop them if they'd decided to overstep the rules. As it was, there'd been a couple of times he'd had to speak up when it seemed they were about to go too far.

On the upside of matters, the PRT had come out of the incident with a new, deniable asset. Fleeing the Butcher, the Undersiders had come straight to the PRT building; under cover of truce, certainly, but they had still come. In the aftermath, once the threat had been categorically shut down by the Real Thing, Emily had put a proposition to them: work for her behind the scenes, discouraging new gangs from settling in the city, and she would allow them certain concessions.

Immunity for prosecution from prior criminal activity was something she'd anticipated and already decided to agree to, while the other demands (though unusual) had been surprisingly law-abiding. The most onerous was Rachel Lindt demanding oversight of all stray dogs in the city, and the funding to care for them, while the most bizarre was Regent requesting a one-on-one game challenge with Armsmaster. (As far as she was concerned, Wallis would sit down with the boy even if she had to threaten to withhold his Tinker Budget to make him do it.) All told, it was doable, and cheap at the price.

It was also well outside standard PRT practice, but the ENE department may as well have been the Wild West as far as the rest of the PRT was concerned. As with Anchorage, the only real limit on her purview was how much fallout occurred in the aftermath of her efforts to keep the cape criminal element in their place (which, in her opinion, was at least five miles outside city limits). Thus, her 'softly, softly' approach to throttling criminal activity within the city had garnered exactly zero official attention.

The activities of the Real Thing had raised a few queries, but that was mainly because they'd been quite loud in their pursuit of the gangs. They were irritating, but at least (for the moment) they solved more problems than they caused. Of course, it would be nice if they could bring the 'problems caused' meter down to zero.

To date, in her experience with capes in general, that was a pipe dream, so she wasn't going to hold it against them.

"So, you're saying she's blindfolded and manacled." She wanted to make sure she had things right. "And this is somehow preventing her from using her powers to devastate everyone in the vicinity, blow up the building, then teleport away?"

"Correct." Even outside her (admittedly formidable) suit of power armour, Blockade radiated an air of unstoppable certitude. "You're aware that good steel doesn't allow for dimensional shenanigans. The manacles and blindfold are made of it. She can't see or project her offensive powers through it, teleport out of it, teleport with it, otherwise affect it with her powers, or reach past the hand-guards to touch anything that's not good steel."

That seemed remarkably comprehensive to Emily. She tilted her head. "And this is without involving actual technology that needs to be maintained? Just the standard properties of the metal itself?"

Blockade shrugged. "In the same way that you can rely on a tank's armour to protect you against rifle fire simply by having several inches of steel between you and the rifle."

Back in the day, Emily had been in almost that exact position more than once, so she simply nodded. Then she paused; this next part would be less palatable. "We can't keep her like that forever, you understand."

Firebird took up the conversational ball. "Oh, we get it. People have rights. There are legalities to be observed. Unfortunately, the people who came up with those rights had no concept of Butcher's level of pure bullshit offensive power. What's a basic human right for anyone else is an open invitation to destroy everything around her and escape, for her."

Monochrome nodded. "So, we have a dilemma. We obviously can't kill her, both for legal and practical reasons. Simply releasing her is equally off the table. Literally cutting off her arms and legs, and gouging out her eyes, would be a horrific human rights abuse, while at the same time being perhaps the most practical way of ensuring she can't attack people willy-nilly. Likewise, leaving her blindfolded and manacled without any kind of respite is also a human rights abuse, but technically reversible." She gave Emily a level stare, as if to challenge her to somehow cut the Gordian knot.

"Why only 'technically' reversible?" Emily looked from Monochrome to Blockade.

Blockade sighed. "Because until I can design a lock using only good steel that can both fit on a set of manacles and isn't vulnerable to being picked by a five-year-old with a hairpin, the only way to secure such things against Brutes is for Monochrome to snap them into place and remove them again. She's literally the only person on Earth with the strength to make good steel even flex, let alone bend or break it."

Emily needed no time at all to figure out the connotations of what the Tinker was saying. "So if we take Butcher off your hands, we wouldn't be able to remove her restraints even if we absolutely needed to."

"And we're not equipped to keep her as a prisoner except in the extreme short term." Firebird folded her arms to make her point. "The way I see it, we have exactly two options, neither of them easy or good."

"Let me guess." Emily had been around the block more than a few times, and she could spot oncoming bad news with the best of them. "First option: we try to fast-track a Birdcage sentence, which just kicks the can down the road to the point that in three months, we've got a bunch of dead capes and a terrifying new version of Butcher facing off against Glaistig Uaine. Whoever wins that particular head-to-head, it ends badly for everyone. Second option: I try to get permission to keep her permanently in restraints, which only needs one obstructive bleeding-heart back in Washington to scupper. Did you have a third option that I hadn't thought of?"

Blockade waggled her hand from side to side. "Maybe I can Tinker up some sort of teleport portal to another Earth, where humans never evolved. Wrap her up in restraints she can break out of, kick her through, close the door behind her. That's the only other option I can think of."

"And we're back to human rights abuses," Emily noted without heat. "You're right, of course. There is no good option available to us. The least bad option is that I take her off your hands, restrained as she is, and send a request up the line for permission to lock her down in some way that'll actually stick."

Firebird grimaced. "Easier said than done. My dad's in the legal profession, and he says laws are always about thirty years behind the times. Sure, they can adapt current ones—that's why wire fraud legislation involves the term 'carriage service'—but to get comprehensive new laws into play, covering new situations, takes decades. This is why it's still nigh impossible to prosecute internet scammers operating out of foreign countries if they're paying off their local authorities."

Emily exhaled, slow and measured. "Alright. We take her as is. I'll push for emergency authorization to keep her restrained. But if Washington refuses, we may have to let her go under standard protocols."

Blockade, arms crossed, scowled. "Then you'll have to deal with the fallout when she carves her way through half the city." Despite being the smallest person in the room, she spoke with complete confidence, as if the matter had already been decided in her favour.

Firebird's lips pressed into a thin line. "And if that happens, I assume the PRT will do what it does best—cover its ass?"

Emily met her gaze without flinching. "That's not my priority. My job is making sure we don't get to that point."

Monochrome, who had keeping quiet for the moment, spoke up. "Then you'd better get that authorization moving. Before someone in Washington decides they care more about optics than public safety."

Emily didn't need the reminder. She tapped the intercom. "Get me a secure line to Washington. I need to speak to the Chief Director. Now."

Blockade shifted her weight, clearly still displeased. "If they screw this up, we're fixing it our way next time."

Emily didn't respond to that. There was no point; she already knew the truth of it. As the line connected, she leaned back, running through her arguments in her head.

Nothing in this job was ever simple.

Tell me something I don't know.

<><>​

A Few Minutes Later

PRT Department 1, Washington DC

Alexandria

Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown placed her phone on the desk and leaned back in her ergonomically perfect office chair. Closing her eyes, she let out an aggravated sigh. If it's not one thing, it's another.

She'd heard about this 'good steel' substance in Emily's reports before now, but there were many (many) Tinkers under her command, so it hadn't jumped out at her. Now, however, three different aspects of Emily's direct call had grabbed her attention and were looting its pockets for lunch money. First, good steel was apparently capable of both preventing teleportation (useful, but not world-ending) and blocking vision-based Thinker powers. Second, it was reportedly impervious even to powers that could bypass all other forms of protection. And third, none other than Butcher Fifteen (Fourteen having been killed and subsumed by that little shit March out of New York) had been captured and was being held incommunicado by way of simple restraints forged from this metal.

That wasn't the problematic aspect. She was intrigued by good steel, and indeed Emily had pledged to send the sample Armsmaster was currently studying down to DC, but right now she was facing a far bigger problem. Specifically, what the hell to do with Butcher.

Emily Piggot tended toward self-sufficiency in her department of the PRT, to the point that Rebecca could count the number of times she'd asked for outside assistance over the last ten years on the fingers of one hand, and still have a couple left over. This time, she was definitely kicking the problem upstairs for the PRT higher echelons to deal with.

Rebecca knew damn well that getting annoyed at Emily for adhering to the chain of command in this instance was more than a little hypocritical, but she didn't give a shit. Had Piggot pulled a cowboy move and been caught breaking regs in any significant way in the process of solving this, Rebecca would've made a show of coming down on her before letting everything go back to business as normal. As it was, she now had the unenviable job of finding a solution herself, instead of yelling at Emily for doing it for her. Thanks a fucking bunch.

A thought crossed her mind and she picked up her phone then sent a text away, thumbs flying over the electronic keyboard. Is it possible to move good steel through a Doormaker portal?

The answer came back a moment later. Not unless Monochrome is reinforcing it.

Reading it, she raised her eyebrows. Well, that's interesting. One type of dimensional shenanigans covering for another. The downside of that, of course, was that the only way to bring a good-steel-bound Butcher through to Cauldron and put her on ice that way would be to read Monochrome in on the existence of Cauldron itself. Which could be a problem, since the girl came across as being less than fully accepting of authority. Worse, she was one of the few capes on Earth Bet (as noted by Contessa) who could match or beat Rebecca in matters of pure brute strength, and her powerset made it virtually impossible to take her down by surprise.

Well, no use crying over missed opportunities. She cleared her phone screen, then dialled in a number from memory (mainly because she had them all memorised). Elsewhere in Washington, she knew, a phone would be ringing within the Department of Justice. Such was the influence of her position, she knew, it would not ring for long.

"Hello, Rebecca. I'm assuming this isn't a social call."

"You're correct, Charles. A hot potato has landed in my lap, and I need your help wrapping it up and putting it on ice forever." She smiled as she spoke; not because there was even one amusing thing about this situation, but because it was possible to hear the expression in the tone of voice.

"Sounds expensive." Charles was ever the opportunist.

"Perhaps not as much as you might think." She stopped smiling, because it seemed to be sending the wrong message. "When I say 'hot potato', I mean the type with a ticking timer attached to it. It's in everyone's best interests to find a viable solution."

Something in her changed tone must have gotten through to him. "I'm listening."

So she told him.

<><>​

Monochrome

"Well, that's done." Emma watched as Madison climbed back into her powersuit. Two guards, each armed with foam sprayers, had escorted Butcher into the elevator. From the nonstop stream of profanity—she had a little talent in it, but I'd heard better—she wasn't a fan of the idea, but it wasn't really her call. "What now?"

"Go do our thing, and wait to see which way the powers that be in Washington jump, I guess." I shrugged. "They've got all the information. Director Piggot gave the Chief Director chapter and verse. Whatever call they make, it's not on us."

"What about the Undersiders?" asked Madison.

I shared a glance with Emma, then looked at the suit. "What about them? They screwed around, exacerbated the situation, and now they're under PRT orders. Personally, I'd prefer they be there, doing that, than stealing shit and spreading chaos. And we get more benefit from them running interference for us than just sitting in PRT holding."

Madison seemed to consider that, or at least she didn't say anything for a moment. "Yeah, okay. Good point."

As she tromped out from under the marquee, I jumped up onto one shoulder and Emma scrambled onto the other. The handholds were there for us to grab, and I waited until Emma had a firm grip on hers before I slapped the back of Madison's helmet. "Let's do this thing."

The suit's thrusters lit off and we rose into the sky, heading out over the city.

Even though the two major gangs were now defunct, there were still supervillains left in Brockton Bay. Uber and Leet had apparently broken out of holding and hadn't been recaptured yet, and there were a few other minor villains floating around who had suddenly found themselves the only fish in a reasonably large pond.

The problem was that as a team we were great at putting the hurt on a visible opponent, but our detective skills were somewhat lacking. I considered asking Director Piggot if we could borrow Tattletale to help track the bad guys down, but decided to leave it a few days until the ex-Undersiders had settled into their new role a little more. Given the recent uproar, it was likely the remaining villains were keeping their heads down anyway.

Ideally, they'd be making plans to move out of town (like the Undersiders had been intending to do, before their Butcher encounter) so that problem might even solve itself. We could only hope.

In the meantime, we'd be doing patrols loud and proud alongside other teams such as New Wave (and the Protectorate and Wards) while the ex-Undersiders (I was going to have to find out what they were calling themselves these days) did their sneaky shit on the quiet.

It was a plan, anyway.

<><>​

Armsmaster

"And there's no other way to do this? Really?" Colin didn't want to think of what he was doing as complaining, but he hated being pushed into a corner.

"No. There is not." The Director's expression might as well have been carved out of granite. "I've already put Livsey's, Lindt's and Laborn's requests into action. Vasil's is up to you. One sit-down computer game with a teenage boy, and we get him as a deniable asset. It doesn't even matter if you win or lose. I fail to see the problem."

He recalled a conversation he'd had with Challenger early in his career, about fighting young villains. Nobody wants to fight kid capes, she'd advised him. If you win, you've just beaten up on a kid. If you lose, then you've just had your ass kicked by a kid. There's no way to come out of it looking good. Nothing in his experience since then had proven her wrong.

"What if this is just a ploy to make me look bad?" It sounded weak, but he kept talking. "If I win, I'm Armsmaster. A well-known Tinker. People will say I had an unfair advantage. And if I lose … well, there'll be all of the above, but I'll also look stupid into the bargain."

"I. Don't. Care." She tapped a nail on the desk in time with the words. "If you win, be nice about it. And if you lose, lose with grace. But you are doing this."

"I have Tinkering to do."

It was his last-ditch effort, and her expression told him how it was going to go before she ever spoke, though he wasn't prepared for what she actually said. "Not without your Tinkering budget, you don't."

Disbelief flushed through his system. "You're actually making that contingent on … this?"

"I am, yes."

He searched her face for any indication that she might be joking, but even his best body-language software came up with a null reading. "You can't be serious."

"I assure you, I am." She placed her hands flat on the desk. "We have here a chance to turn a net negative into a net positive. The Protectorate and the PRT are good at what we do, and so are New Wave and the Real Thing, but the Undersiders can do things that we can't. Or perhaps you're not familiar with the concept of the phrase 'force multiplier'?"

"Of course I'm familiar with it." The admission was jerked out of him before he could even think about it. "You're saying that four teenage criminals are a force multiplier?"

"Yes." Her tone was deadly serious. "They'll be performing intel gathering, recon and harassment on any capes sneaking into the city. The rest of us will come in with overwhelming force, but that will only be made possible by what they do first. You'll know exactly who the opposition is, where they are, and when they'll be most distracted. But in order to do this, we need the Undersiders, and in order to have the Undersiders, you need to sit down and damn well play a computer game."

He wasn't very good with subtext, but he was pretty sure there was something in there about not being such a whiny crybaby.

There wasn't much he could say that wouldn't prove her point, so he simply nodded. "Yes, ma'am. When and where?"

Her smile almost reached her eyes. "Conference Room A, right now. He's waiting on you. Everything's already set up."

"Wait … now?" His eyes widened. "I've never even played the game before!"

The dismissive gesture gave him the strong impression that she no longer cared, if she ever had. "I understand that you're a fast learner. Dismissed."

Stumbling out of her office, he closed the door behind himself. "Did you get that?" he asked, subvocalising the words.

"Sure did." Dragon's avatar popped up in his HUD. "I made popcorn. Ready when you are."

"You … ah … you couldn't give me pointers, could you? Maybe take over for me?" He didn't know she was a gamer, but she was really good with computers, so he figured that was a fair bet.

Her eyes widened. "Why, Colin Wallis! You're my best friend, but I could never help you cheat like that!" He got the impression she was enjoying this far too much. "Sorry, hon, but you're gonna have to win or lose this on your own merits. Now, get going. Your teenaged nemesis awaits."

"That's what I'm afraid of." Grumbling to himself, he headed off down the corridor.

He knew there'd been a reason he disliked the Undersiders.



End of Part Forty-Three

 

[Ack]

Earning Her Stripes

Part Forty-Four: The Shape of Things to Come

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



PRT ENE Building, Conference Room A

Regent

Alec glanced up as the conference room door opened, and a guy walked in. Moderately fit, wearing a button-up shirt and pressed khakis, the newcomer looked entirely unremarkable, right up until Alec noticed the blue-and-silver domino mask and the carefully shaped beard. "Well, hey," he said. "You actually showed. I was beginning to wonder."

"I knew he'd be here." Tattletale was leaning back in a chair with her feet up on the table, legs crossed at the ankle. "Director Piggot can't afford not to have us scoping out problem capes for her." She tossed Armsmaster a grin. "Let me guess. She threatened to pull your budget?"

While Alec was no expert at body language, the way the muscles twitched in Armsmaster's jaw confirmed Tats' supposition. "I'm here now. Let's get this over with."

"Sure thing." Alec waved grandly at the other chair, which already had a second controller resting on it. "Though I was kinda looking forward to you showing up in full armour."

Armsmaster stopped and gave him a medium scowl. "While you've been racking up your gaming hours and learning every last nuance of how to play, I've been building and rebuilding my equipment, when I'm not training hard to make sure I'm at my best for stopping crime. My armour gauntlets are good, but they provide little to no tactile feedback for controls of that size. I'm already going to be at a distinct disadvantage here; there's no good reason to make it worse for myself." That said, he took up the controller and sat down.

"Ah. Right." Alec paused, then asked the one question he hadn't thought he ever would, when it came to Armsmaster. "So … you know how to use it?"

The Protectorate hero examined the controller. "I spent the last ten minutes looking up the use of these devices before coming over. As I understand things, one of these joysticks controls movement while the other controls facing. As for the rest of the buttons, I presume they allow your on-screen avatar to perform acts such as crouching, jumping, using weapons and the like, but I suspect it's different for every game."

Alec nodded, mildly impressed. "Yeah, that's pretty well it." Deciding that it probably wouldn't look great for Armsmaster to have no idea how to play before he got a thorough ass-whipping, he held up his own controller and ran through the controls. "Left joystick for movement. Right joystick for facing. A for jumping, X for interaction with stuff, like grabbing guns and ammo. Right hand shoulder button for shooting. Left hand shoulder button for activating the scope. Accessing menu. Accessing stored items. Swapping out weapons." He paused. "There's combos you can use to do more complicated stuff, but that's enough to go on with."

Armsmaster's face took on a look of extreme concentration as, one by one, he went over the controls, touching each one and repeating Alec's words under his breath. Twice more he went through them, then he looked over at Alec. "Will you be using combos?"

Tats caught Alec's eye and grinned. Irritated at how fast she'd picked up on his discomfort—this was supposed to be a fun way to low-key stick it to the Protectorate, not a gaming tutorial—he shook his head. "Not straight away. I'll show you the combos before I start using them."

The game started off as he'd initially anticipated. Even restricting himself to the basic moves, he was streets ahead of Armsmaster, not least because he had muscle memory on his side. While the older man had to visually check his controller to use one button or another, Alec had no such limitations and could play rings around him.

And then Armsmaster started figuring things out. At one point, he actually got a kill-shot on Alec from an unexpected direction, getting his score on the board for the first time. Alec was still faster, smoother, and quicker on the draw, but Armsmaster had begun to use tactics that occasionally allowed him to get the drop on Alec.

Worse, it became harder to sneak up on him, because he was using the facing joystick more fluidly as he got used to the interface. When it came to a head-to-head fight, Alec took him down most of the time, but Armsmaster actually seemed to know what he was doing with the slow and patient stuff. The benefits of having done it in real life, Alec figured.

<><>​

Monochrome

There were three ways I could get from Downtown to Lord's Port (or vice versa) in a hurry, these days: running, either on the ground or across the rooftops; jumping and gliding the distance; or catching a lift with Madison via the Blockade suit.

Of course, I preferred the latter option. While the suit thrusters were loud as fuck, and everyone knew we were coming, it allowed us all to arrive together. Also, I was pretty good at making an entrance, but a multi-ton set of power armour coming in for a landing blew that clear out of the water.

The cops had set up a perimeter around the Brockton Bay Central Bank by the time we landed, but they'd been nice enough to leave a space clear for us. (Or rather, Madison had radioed ahead, and they'd cleared a space, because the alternative was to see how a cop car fared against a multi-ton powersuit. The general consensus was 'badly'.)

Emma and I jumped off as her thrusters cut out, landing easily on the ground. Along with the cops, there were a few other capes around; the closest was Glory Girl, who seemed to be hanging out with a couple of the Wards. I smiled and headed in that direction.

"Hey," I said. "Good to see you again. So, bank robbery?"

She returned my smile. "Likewise, and yeah, bank robbery. I'm pretty sure there's not even any capes involved. Just idiots with guns, and a really bad sense of timing."

"No kidding." Emma had joined us by now. "Nice to see you, G. G. Anyone hurt yet?"

It was a pertinent question. If the bank robbers were inclined to hurt or kill hostages, we'd have to go in now, but if they were holding off, we could afford to let the situation stew until they maybe gave up of their own accord. The money was not an issue: Dad had explained to me that financial institutions were insured against robbery. The welfare of the victims in the bank was the main thing to worry about.

"Nope." Glory Girl rolled her eyes. "Someone said they saw people wearing Teeth outfits. My guess is they're trying to raise some cash before they leave town, and they're used to having Butcher along."

Madison tromped up behind us. "And let me guess. They didn't expect this kind of response."

A worrisome idea occurred to me. "Or, they could have another aim in mind."

Glory Girl peered sideways at me. "I don't even know what you're referring to, but I still don't like the sound of it."

I opened my mouth to explain, but just then the bank doors opened. One of the Teeth, wearing full gang regalia, stepped into the opening, holding a bank teller with his gun pressed against her head. "Okay, you assholes!" he yelled. "We want Butcher an' the others back, or we kill every last fucker in here! Let 'em go, an' we let these ones go! Fuck us around, an' this shit happens!"

With his last word, he gave the woman a vicious shove, sending her staggering forward to the edge of the steps. Then, just before the bank doors closed, he levelled the pistol and shot her in the back. Red bloomed across her chest as she tumbled down the steps.

Glory Girl started moving at the same time as I did. By a minor miracle, nobody opened fire, but I was sure that every cop on the scene had just memorised that man as someone to be shot on sight. Reaching out, I grabbed her cape as she lifted off; at the same time, I cut my effective mass and wind resistance to zero, so she wasn't hampered at all by my presence.

We landed side by side on the steps, and she turned to look at me with surprise. "What the hell? I got this."

"The Teeth don't play by the rules." I put one hand on Glory Girl's arm and one on the woman who'd been shot, and exerted my power. Though badly injured, she was still alive, staring up at us pleadingly. I knew how she felt. "Where's Panacea?"

"Just around the corner." Bending down, she scooped up the woman, and that was when the Teeth opened fire on us. The bank windows starred, but didn't shatter, as bullets whipped past us. I'd placed myself between Glory Girl and the bank, so some of the shots must have hit me, but I felt nothing. It seemed that they either really wanted the woman to die, or they'd recognised me as the one who'd taken Butcher down.

Either way, the asshole move did them no good at all, because Glory Girl lifted off again with me in tow, heading for Panacea. I was pretty sure I saw bullets bouncing off both her and the woman we were rescuing; as Alan Barnes could attest to, being shot at ten times durability was still no picnic but it was definitely survivable.

Three different force fields went up as we passed over the police line. Shielder's was the strongest, but Lady Photon and Laserdream's added some protection as well. The assholes stopped firing at that point; I just had to hope they weren't going to take out their frustration on their hostages.

Panacea was waiting where Glory Girl had said she'd be, though Glory Girl hadn't mentioned the camp chair and the folding camp bed. A couple of police officers stood nearby, clearly guarding her. She stood up as we came around the corner, a novel discarded on the ground. "Ah, shit. Who did something stupid?"

"Teeth being assholes." Glory Girl carefully laid the woman down on the camp bed. "GSW in the back, through and through."

"Assholes, check." Panacea grabbed a clicker on her belt and clicked it once, then laid hands on her patient. "Okay, Vicky, I got this. You two go save the day. I'll be here to fix your mess after."

"On it." Glory Girl took hold of my arm; I allowed her to do this, of course. We took off and flew back toward the ongoing confrontation. I'd heard no more shots, but that didn't mean anything. A gang called the Teeth would absolutely have knives.

"Does she always set up like that?" I was asking more from basic curiosity than anything else.

"When we get the time, yeah." We landed next to Emma and the Blockade suit. "So, how the fuck are we going to get them out of there in a way that doesn't kill all the hostages?"

I glanced at Madison's suit, then at Emma, who looked back at me. A memory stirred in my head of reading one of Emma's dad's old comics from back before the days of actual superheroes. "I think I might have an idea …"

<><>​

Regent

When the gaming session finished, Armsmaster was still way down on the board, but that was to be expected. Nobody (except Victor or Uber) could expect to become a gaming sensation in just an hour. What had surprised and (kinda) impressed Alec was how well he'd done overall, and how many times he'd pulled off moves that Alec simply hadn't expected.

"Well, that was fun." Alec got up and stretched. "Good game. You don't totally suck."

"Hrm." Either Armsmaster hadn't heard the comment as he studied the controller, or he was deliberately ignoring it. "I hadn't quite realised how versatile these things were. It shouldn't be too hard to adapt one for use in the workshop."

"Wait, you can do that?" Alec was taken aback. Game controllers were game controllers. Using them outside that context wasn't something he'd ever thought of.

"It's a command input device." Even with the game over and the screen dead, Armsmaster was still handing the controller, working the joysticks and clicking the buttons in what could almost have been a meditative ritual. "What you're controlling with it is immaterial. I could run so many processes in my workshop with one of these."

"So that thing could really help you Tinker?" Alec peered at it, trying to visualise Armsmaster plugging it into his workshop equipment.

"With a few minor modifications for improved sensitivity, certainly." Armsmaster produced a multi-tool out of his pocket—because of course he carried a multi-tool, even out of costume—and popped the back off the controller. "It won't take that much, to be honest. All I need to do is tighten up a few of the tolerances, then program my equipment to accept the appropriate inputs."

Alec cast about for the silliest question he could ask, because why not. "So, uh, you gonna reprogram your bike to use the controller while you're riding it?"

Ignoring Tattletale's muffled snort of laughter, Armsmaster reattached the back to the controller. "Don't be ridiculous." He stood and slipped the multi-tool back in his pocket. "I'd only use one for that if I had it on remote."

With a nod to the both of them, he turned and left the room, leaving Alec blinking in his wake.

Alec turned to Tattletale as the door closed. "I was kidding."

She shrugged and smirked. "He wasn't."

<><>​

Lady Photon

"Okay, so you've got my attention." Sarah looked over the group assembled before her: Eric, Crystal, Vicky, and the members of the Real Thing. "What's this about?"

"We're going into the bank and dealing with the Teeth." That was Firebird, the nominal spokesperson for the city's newest (and most spectacularly over-achieving) super-team. "Laserdream and Shielder thought you should come along too."

Sarah glanced back toward where the rest of New Wave were discussing the matter with the police on site. "If you've got a plan, maybe you should run it past them?"

"No time." Monochrome spoke with authority. "They'll argue and come up with reasons why it won't work, because they don't know our capabilities. In the meantime, the Teeth are getting antsy."

"It's true." Blockade's voice, even muted, was deep and resonant. "I've got them mapped out on IR, and they're starting to look twitchy. If we're gonna save lives, it's gotta be real soon."

Sarah would've been the first to admit she also did not know the capabilities of the Real Thing. But they had comprehensively kicked the asses of every villain they'd gone up against, with the singular exception of March.

That oversight had been remedied when they had a rematch after she became Butcher, and they took her down in fine style. Butcher was widely known to be very hard to hold on to, but she clearly hadn't escaped yet, because here they were.

She made her decision. "Okay, fine. What's the plan?"

<><>​

Glory Girl

"Ready?" asked Monochrome. She held out her arms in front of her. Firebird grabbed her left arm, while Vicky took her right arm. Firebird had explained that it was easy to tell when Monchrome was exerting her protective power, because the protected item went black-and-white. This happened now; it was odd seeing her skin and costume in grayscale, though she didn't feel any different.

"Ready," reported Firebird.

Vicky echoed her half a second later, then added, "Let's do this."

"Okay, then. Hang on to your sphincters." Blockade reached out with one enormous metallic hand, wrapping it halfway around Monochrome's (admittedly slender) torso. Vicky felt herself being lifted up like she was weightless, even without the use of her flight power. Turning on the spot, Blockade drew his arm back like he was about to throw a paper plane, only the 'paper plane' was composed of three teenage girls.

When he whipped his arm forward, Vicky didn't feel any acceleration at all, but suddenly she was hurtling toward the bank windows a lot faster than she'd been expecting. They hit the bullet-hole-pocked glass and went straight through, though oddly enough the glass held together around them and didn't shatter altogether. Once inside, they slowed dramatically, and Vicky felt herself being pointed toward where a couple of the Teeth had a commanding view of the room. One held a submachine gun, and was just beginning to raise it.

She let go of Monochrome's arm and kicked in her flight power, arrowing toward the pair with her fists clenched. Even if she wasn't pulling whatever bullshit power stunt Monochrome had done, she still covered the distance in less than half a second and knocked the gun out of the asshole's hands before he had a chance to point it, much less pull the trigger. She considered the fact that she also broke his wrist with the same move to be a bonus, not a flaw. A muffled gunshot sounded behind her, but she was still busy with her own opponents.

A second gunshot, much louder, drew her attention; she realised that the second member of the Teeth she was facing had just tried to hastily draw the pistol he'd had shoved into the front of his pants. His shriek of agony rivalled that of his comrade as he collapsed, blood staining the front of his already-filthy pants. Vicky finished retrieving the pistol and folded it in half, then turned to see where she was needed next.

Instead, it was all under control. Aunt Sarah hovered up near the ceiling with Crystal and Eric, layering force fields over the hostages so no stray bullets were likely to hurt anyone, while Monochrome and Firebird were just polishing off the last of the twenty-some Teeth.

As she watched, Monochrome grabbed the last two and hurled them across the room. They went out through the hole in the window, where the police were presumably waiting to scrape them off the sidewalk and charge them. Firebird, on the other hand, was standing over a pile of groaning would-be hostage-takers without a hair out of place, fitting a throwing disc back on her arm.

"Uh … okay." Vicky rubbed the back of her head. "That actually worked a lot better than I thought it would."

Firebird looked around. "Oh, good. You got yours. Wait, is that guy okay?"

"Probably not." Aunt Sarah swooped down toward the crotch-shot man. "What happened to him?"

Vicky looked down at him dispassionately. "GSW. Self-inflicted. I was just making sure everything else was okay before I got distracted with helping him."

"Yes, well now you can get the idiot to Amy." Aunt Sarah raised her eyebrows expectantly. "Well, get a move on. She won't thank you if she has to spend extra time healing him."

<><>​

Monochrome

I watched as Glory Girl scooped up the stricken man and flew him out the same hole we'd come in by. The window glass hadn't shattered into a million pieces of shrapnel because I'd reinforced it on the way in, but Lady Photon and the others had enlarged the hole slightly as they followed us into the bank. "I thought Panacea worked on a strictly cash basis," I ventured. "Can't see a member of the Teeth having the money to afford her services, or being willing to pay for them."

Lady Photon sighed. "The BBPD and the PRT have her on retainer. She gets called in for things like this, and they pay her per casualty. Extra for life-threatening injuries. I'm still not sure how Brandish got them to agree to pay for the bad guys too, but I swear that girl's going to be a millionaire by the time she's twenty-one."

"Nicely done." I looked around the bank as the force fields faded away, and raised my voice. "Okay, is anyone hurt, or can you see anyone who's hurt?"

There was a general shaking of heads as people gradually climbed to their feet. They were looking around as though trying to figure out which of us to thank for saving them, which I couldn't really blame. The Real Thing had been kicking ass over the last few weeks, but New Wave had been doing it for literally years, and before that as the Brockton Bay Brigade.

"Well, that's good." Lady Photon scanned the room. "But I could've sworn I heard another shot, just before Vicky's guy. Somewhere over there."

"Ah, yeah, that one's on me." Emma sounded a little sheepish as she pulled back a fallen banner to show a dead man, flat on his back. Not only was he one of the Teeth, but he was vaguely recogniseable as the one who had shot the bank teller. The word 'vaguely' was important, because the pistol in his mouth had blown off the top of his head. It had happened so quickly that his finger was still tangled in the trigger-guard.

Laserdream flinched away. "Ew, gross!"

"Let me see!" Shielder tried to crowd closer. "I wanna see!"

A hastily-formed force field blocked him off. "Not until you're older, young man." Lady Photon raised an eyebrow in Emma's direction. "What happened, Firebird?"

"I saw him with the gun, so I bounced a disc to smack it out of his hand. But I miscalculated; it knocked the gun into his mouth just as he pulled the trigger." Emma grimaced. "My bad. I know we all wanted him for trial."

I carefully didn't respond. Emma never miscalculated with her discs. Madison and I both knew that what she hit was what she meant to hit.

Not that I was gonna say one damn word about it to her. The guy had been scum. He'd deserved exactly what he got.

I wasn't as good at reading body language as Emma was, but I fancied I spotted a tiny hesitation before Lady Photon responded. "Well, yes. Unfortunate, but accidents happen. In a way, it's almost a good thing."

I blinked. "It is?" I didn't even need to act out my honest confusion.

"Mmm-hmm." She turned and started toward the bank doors, where the police were just now starting to enter. I followed. "The rest of them will be held responsible for his death, due to the felony murder statute. But that one would've gotten all the media attention for shooting the teller, and every ambulance-chaser in the region would compete to beat his trial up into a media circus of the highest degree. The publicity would make the Teeth even bolder about getting Butcher back. But he accidentally eats his own gun during a hostage rescue? Barely a footnote. Not even a martyr. They'll fade away."

"Huh," Emma mused as we exited the bank. "I never thought about that."

Uh huh. You grew up in a household with a lawyer, you big fat liar.

Not that we could make a habit of ganking bad guys, but just once, and for this particular asshole, it was satisfying as fuck.



End of Part Forty-Four