Alea Iacta Est - a Worm AU Fanfic

[Boggle]

We're going at it all wrong. Obviously Leet is going to build some kind of gizmo to silence the homicidal voices in his head, that's never in question, what we should be asking is, what groanworthy videogame homage is it going to be in reference to? My money's on the Dead Space eyeball-stabbing machine…

 

[Fishyface]

I'm surprised he isn't making an attempt to revive Uber.

 

[Ack]

I'm surprised he isn't making an attempt to revive Uber.

Click to shrink...

Uber is no longer in existence. He's dust on the wind.

 

[Ack]

Alea Iacta Est

Part Twenty-Seven: Averting Doomsday

[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
[A/N 2: Apologies for this horrifically late chapter. It has been a hectic month.]



Evenstar

Kayden stepped out of the car, then leaned back in and nodded to Danny. "Thanks for the lift. I'll call Taylor as soon as I'm in the air."

"Not a problem." As soon as she closed the door, he drove off again.

For her part, she strolled around the corner before activating her powers; light flooded the street as she launched herself skyward. Once she was a few hundred feet up, she retrieved her phone and called up Taylor's number.

Taylor was on the ball; the phone didn't even ring once before she answered. "Hi. Ready to go?"

"Just point me in his direction." Despite her misgivings about expending too much energy at night, Kayden was willing to give her all for the situation. And if that meant dogging the tracks of a potentially crazy Tinker all over town, that was what she was going to do.

"Sure thing. Latest location I have for him is … three hundred ten Stanton Street. Know where that is?"

"I do, yes." Street signs weren't easy to read from the air, and stopping to ask for directions was thoroughly embarrassing at best, so Kayden had spent time carefully studying a street directory. Turning in midair, she shot out over the city.

As she flew, she could hear sirens and see the glow of fires here and there, each one topped by a plume of smoke just barely visible in the moonlight. As a villain, she'd been responsible for that sort of thing more often than she really wanted to think about. Now that she was embracing the hero role, as part of a team that actively encouraged her to follow that path, she felt distinctly uncomfortable about having done so in the past.

Her powerset was not conducive to helping extinguish fires, but she could do her bit to capture Leet before he finished whatever gadget he was trying to construct and set fire to the whole damn world, or whatever he was trying to do. And if she was willing to smack Leet around a bit beforehand, it was only because Butcher's powers would give him a lot of leeway in facing her.

She just had to last until Vicky was free to take over again.

<><>​

A Former E88 Safe House

Butcher Fifteen

The sense of imminent danger had ebbed. Rodney raided the fridge, pushing past the beers to grab some lunch meat and bread for a sandwich. He'd never had much of a head for booze, and he wanted to be on top of his game right now.

With food under his belt, he cleared a bunch of crap off the table in their main meeting room and spread his haul out to inspect it. His power kicked into high gear, and he started pulling components together. While he wasn't sure if he had everything yet, he definitely had enough to make a good start on it.

Then, just as he reached for a screwdriver, the awareness of peril flared up again. "Oh, for fuck's sake!" he whined. "Can't I just have five minutes to do my shit?"

Stop moaning about it and go do something about it! snapped one of the voices in his head.

Yeah, agreed another one. You're the fucking Butcher now! That name means something! You can kick any hero's ass you want! This 'running away' shit is not what the Butcher does!

"Well, it's what I do!" He began to shovel the components back into the bag as his sense of foreboding grew ever more intense. "I learned a long time ago that the heroes can't punch me if I'm not around when they get there."

You're fucking bulletproof now! The Butchers seemed to be getting more and more aggravated with him. Fortunately, he was used to this state of affairs, as it had been the norm ever since he'd triggered with powers. Tuning out his critics was a skill he'd long since mastered, and it made no difference now they were literally inside his head with him. You don't run away from them! They run away from you!

"Yeah, ha ha, nope." He shook his head even as he slung the bag over his shoulder. "I'm Leet. The only reason anyone runs away from me is when my tech's about to explode, and not in a good way."

You're not Leet, not anymore. This also seemed to be aggravating the various Butchers. You're Butcher now. One of us. The sooner you get that through your fucking head, the sooner you'll figure out what you should be doing.

"Nope. Nope, nope, nope." As the sense of danger mounted and light flared in through a nearby window, he triggered the teleport. "I'm Leet. I'll always be Leet. I never asked to be Butcher, and you can't make me."

The new location was the ground floor of a derelict office building; the Merchants had controlled the area for a while before the ABB moved in and took it away from them. While he'd been through the area a few times with Uber, they'd never stuck around. Lung on his own was bad enough, but Oni Lee had zero sense of humour and a total willingness to stab everyone in his way. However, now that both the Merchants and the ABB were behind bars (and the Empire was no longer a thing), Rodney had a lot more places he could go to ground.

He shoved open a few doors, dislodging some that were stuck (and one that had been locked, but was locked no longer) until he found a conference room. The lights still worked when he flicked the switch, and he started laying out the components again. Once he was finished with that, he plugged in the portable soldering kit and consulted the blueprint in his head for what needed to be done first.

Holy shit. Hope swelled in his chest as he screwed the component module into place then fitted two of the larger parts together. He wasn't sure why he suddenly had extra time up his sleeve, but he didn't intend to waste a second of it.

Lifting the soldering iron, he began to attach them without bothering with things like calibration and measurement. The most important part of the whole apparatus would be the helmet, and (like every Tinker who had ever designed headgear for themselves) he knew the exact dimensions of his own skull.

<><>​

Evenstar

Just as Kayden swooped toward the building Taylor had pointed her at, a fiery explosion blew out a few of the windows. Flames began to crackle up the walls of the run-down house, and smoke billowed into the night air. Muttering a few choice phrases she would never air within Aster's hearing, Kayden came to a hover. She pulled out her phone and called Taylor up again.

"Hi." The girl's voice was cheerful and upbeat. "Let me guess. He bugged out again?"

"Wow, it's almost as though you're a precog or something." Kayden huffed out a breath, releasing the remnants of her annoyance. "I thought I might have a chance of dropping the building on top of him, but he teleported away before I could."

"And of course it's on fire now." Taylor sounded entirely too understanding. "On the upside, this is cutting down on the number of gang safe houses out there. We'll ping the location to emergency services, let them deal with the fire when they get the chance."

Kayden eyed the growing blaze. "Yeah, this place is not gonna be salvageable. So, you got a new location for me?"

"Sure thing. Gimme just one sec." There was a pause … and in that moment, Kayden heard the scream.

It wasn't loud, and indeed the growing roar of the fire threatened to drown it out altogether, but she heard it clearly enough. A woman's voice, high-pitched and panicked, calling for help. Swooping closer to the stricken building, she stared at the upper-floor windows. Anyone on the ground floor, she figured, would've vacated the premises by now.

"Got it," Taylor said with satisfaction. "He's—"

"I'll have to get back to you." Kayden ended the call and started flying around the burning house. "Hey!" she yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth. "I'm out here! Where are you?"

And then she got around to the back of the house and saw the slender arm waving out the window. Squinting her eyes against the rising clouds of smoke, Kayden flew closer and saw it was a young woman with a shaven head, wearing what might have been Empire gang colours if they'd been cleaner and in better repair. The woman spotted her at the same time and tried to call out again, but got a lungful of smoke and started coughing violently instead.

Swooping down to the window, Kayden took hold of the woman's arm and put it over the back of her own neck. "Come on!" she urged. "Anyone else inside?" She tried to see for herself, but between the thickness of the smoke and how it stung her eyes, she couldn't tell.

The woman herself either couldn't understand the question or wasn't able to answer, because she clung to Kayden and coughed even harder. Putting both arms around her and bracing her foot against the sill, Kayden lifted her out, grunting with the effort. She desperately wanted to take a breath of air, but she knew that if she got any of that smoke into her lungs, she'd be helpless.

As it was, she still found herself coughing even when she'd gotten out of the billowing cloud and dared to inhale. Worse, as slim as the woman was, she still outweighed Kayden; even level flight was impossible. Coming in for a moderately rough landing on a stretch of lawn, she lost her balance and tumbled onto her back. Lying beside her, her rescuee coughed and wheezed and retched, though nothing came up.

"Are you okay?" Kayden managed, levering herself up on one elbow. "Can you breathe?" While she possessed no formal first-aid training, she had an idea that smoke inhalation could cause permanent damage to the lungs.

The young woman hacked out another cough. "Oh, god, oh, god," she gasped, then coughed again, staring at Kayden with red-rimmed eyes. "Thank you—" cough "—thank you."

She was talking, so she could breathe. "You're welcome. Was—" Kayden coughed, the leftover smoke still irritating her throat. "Was there anyone else in there?"

"Holy shit, you're Purity!" The woman's expression became almost worshipful. "I thought the Empire was gone!" She coughed again, several times, the effort doubling her over.

"No, not Purity. Not anymore." Kayden felt it was necessary to make that clear. "The Empire is gone. I stopped being part of it when Kaiser tried to kill me. What were you even doing in that house? What's your name?" She couldn't just keep thinking of her as 'the woman'.

The woman started to talk, then coughed again. "Name's Petra. This used to be—to be Empire. Safe house. Everyone else fucked off, I had nowhere else to go. Been squatting there. Heard someone downstairs, so I hid." She stared back at the structure, now thoroughly ablaze, and slumped. "My stuff," she groaned in a rasping whisper. "All my stuff. Shit."

Kayden's phone rang. She hesitated, wondering if she should try to comfort Petra, then took it out. "Yes?"

"Are you okay?" Taylor sounded concerned. "What happened?"

"I'm fine." Kayden stood up, wrinkling her nose at the grass stains on her costume. It couldn't be helped. "There was someone in the building. I had to get her out. She's okay, kind of, but she lost all her stuff."

"Shit. Um. Is she gonna be okay? I can call Aeglea—"

"No." Kayden knew Taylor was doing her best to be discreet with Vicky's identity, in case someone else was listening in on the call. "If I wait another couple of minutes, how much progress will he make on his thing? How much danger are we gonna be in?"

"Okay, gimme a sec." There was the sound of dice clattering on the table. "Huh. Okay. The chance of the city being in danger from Leet making an apocalypse device if you wait five more minutes is currently six point nine one three two percent."

"Seven percent?" That was pretty low. "Okay, good. He's got a while to go with it, then."

"Or he doesn't have all the parts he needs yet. It's good. Stay with her. We're calling emergency services right now. Um, is she hurt?"

"Smoke inhalation, I think." Kayden shook her head wearily. "I'm not a paramedic."

"Okay, hang on a second." More dice rolled. "The dice say she's not in any medical danger."

"Oh. Good." The weight that lifted off her shoulders almost made her feel that she could fly without using her powers. "Text me his location, and I'll start heading there in a few minutes."

"Coming at you." The call ended, then her phone pinged to signal the incoming text message.

She disregarded it for a moment, turning instead to Petra. "Look, I've got to go. Emergency services have been called. You'll be okay until they get here?"

Petra's coughing had eased somewhat. "You're not going to stay?"

Kayden shook her head gently. "Sorry. I've got to go save the city. Corny, I know, but it's true."

The next question took her by surprise. "So what you said about leaving the Empire, that was true?"

Shoot. "Ah … yes?" That, right there, was a huge can of worms. Between Max trying to kill her, then her having to kill Hookwolf to save her own life, there was no way in hell she was ever going back to that organisation, even if it did reform.

"So why'd you save me?"

"What?" It seemed to be her night for fielding queries that she hadn't expected to face.

"If you're against the Empire, how come you saved me?" Petra gestured at the fire; the heat was palpable from where they were. "Why didn't you just leave me to die, if you hate us so much?"

"I don't hate you." It was all Kayden could think to say in the moment, and it deservedly garnered her an expression of considerable suspicion. "I just don't fit in with them anymore."

"But why not?" Petra's expression suggested that she was having trouble with the concept. "You were totally in with them for ten years. What changed?"

Kayden didn't have time for this. "Look, can we do this later? Right now I'm trying to stop Leet from burning down half the city, or blowing all of it off the map, or whatever it is that he's got planned."

"Leet?" Petra gave her an incredulous look. "He's a fuckin' moron. Even I know that. No way he could do anything that big, without his tech blowing up on him."

Okay, fine. Let's go there. "He's the latest Butcher. All bets are off on what he's willing or able to do. And I've got to get after him. You going to be alright until emergency services get here?"

Petra's face paled, even under the coating of soot and grime on her skin. "Fuck. Leet killed the Butcher?"

Kayden nodded soberly. "And we're pretty sure he's building some kind of doomsday device. Which I'm trying to stop him from doing. Which is why I have to go."

"Fuuuck." Petra slumped. "We're fucked. We're all so very fucked."

As Kayden took to the air, she couldn't help but agree.

<><>​

Random

"Okay, that's weird." I frowned as I rolled the d10s again, all six of them. The same numbers came up again, and my power cheerfully informed me that the result was legitimate. Except that it couldn't be.

"What's weird?" Annette leaned over to look at the numbers. "They look normal to me."

"Yeah," agreed Dinah. "With the look on your face, I was expecting six-six-six or pi or something like that. That's just a bunch of zeroes, a four, and a one."

"Yeah, that's the weird part." I picked up the dice and rolled them from one hand to the other and back again. "I wanted to get details about Leet's device, and how long we've got before he finishes it."

"And what was the answer for that?" asked Dinah, sitting down opposite me.

"About two and a half hours." I rolled the dice again, this time telling them to end up as a straight line, showing from one to six. They did, of course. "Then I got curious, and asked how much of the state would be devastated if he had no more interruptions. Got zeroes across the board."

Lisa was now showing interest in the conversation. "Those dice can show double-zero as one hundred percent, right? So couldn't six zeroes be one hundred percent with four decimal places?"

I shook my head. "I was using five dice at the time. My power said it was zero percent, with four zeroes after the decimal point. Which is hard to accept, yeah?"

Theo looked up from where he was feeding Aster. "Unless it's like a neutron bomb, ignoring infrastructure and just killing people."

"Exactly." As the others nodded in agreement, I snapped my fingers and pointed at him. "So, I added a die and asked how many people would be killed." Scooping up the dice, I rolled them again. "And I got this."

They all leaned over and peered at the dice. The result was the same as what had been on the table when Annette asked her question. What they didn't know, and what I did know, was the order of the numbers.

"Four … hundred and ten thousand?" Annette hazarded. "Isn't that basically the whole population of Brockton Bay?"

Lisa shook her head. "It's actually over by about fifty kay. And if Taylor's dice were giving us a projected death toll, it would literally be the first time in the history of the world that such a large number would be rounded off so neatly. So, it's gotta be smaller than that. Four hundred and one, or four-ten, or one hundred and four, or something like that."

"Fourteen," I said quietly. "If he gets to build his device and activate it, there will be exactly fourteen fatalities."

Silence greeted my announcement, as everyone tried to get their heads around it. The number was ludicrously, ridiculously small. If he was building a bomb of some sort, it wasn't a nuke. It wouldn't even need to be particularly large to kill that many people.

"Wait." Dinah had her hand up, finger raised. "What if he's looking to kill off the Mayor, and maybe the leadership of the PRT and Protectorate? That would definitely inject a lot of conflict into the city."

"And it's totally something Butcher might do," I agreed. Taking a deep breath, I picked up the letter dice and asked the question out loud. "Will he be targeting specific people with this?"

The dice clattered to a stop. Y-E-S, with the last die showing a blank face.

"Alrighty, then." Lisa rubbed her hands together and leaned forward. "Name of the first victim, if you will."

I rolled the dice again, and blinked at the result. B-C-H-R.

Butcher. There was no doubt about it.

Annette shrugged. "Well, unless there's some cape around called Cherub, I'm out of ideas. Anyone?"

"Holy shit," breathed Lisa. "No fucking way. No goddamn fucking—"

"Hey!" Theo objected in a loud whisper, placing his hands over his baby sister's ears. "We all agreed. No swearing around Aster."

We had indeed agreed to that. Kayden had been insistent on the point, and we were all pretty well taken by the cute little munchkin anyway.

"What he said," added Annette, which only underlined the fact that we'd do as he'd asked. After her performance with Damsel, nobody wanted to get on her bad side.

Janet cleared her throat. "What've you picked up on, Lisa?"

"Leet's not making a doomsday device," Lisa said flatly. "He's looking to kill off the Butcher collective. Rip them out of his head for good. There were fourteen Butchers before him, and if those dice right there don't spell 'Butcher' then I'll walk the length of the Boardwalk with a 'kick me' sign on my back."

Annette looked thoughtful. "Now, where did I pack my pointy shoes …?"

"You won't be needing them," I said hastily. "She's right; the dice are saying Butcher is the victim. And it's too much of a coincidence that fourteen people are due to die."

"Check the other thirteen names," Dinah advised. "Just in case it's him and, say, thirteen random innocents."

I hadn't thought of that. "Definitely." Then I paused. "What's our course of action if he's actually trying to kill off Butcher?"

Theo raised his head. "We … leave him alone? I mean, if this is true, then he's doing a good thing, yeah?"

Dad and Andrea had come downstairs while the conversation was ongoing, and Dad weighed in on the situation. "It's definitely a good thing. But if he keeps getting disturbed, he might try to rush his work. And as I understand matters, his technology is problematic at the best of times, much less when he's cutting corners."

"Also," Andrea added dryly, "there's the whole 'setting fire to buildings' thing whenever he teleports away."

"But, like Theo said, we won't be disturbing him," Annette protested. "We'll be leaving him alone to work in peace."

Lisa sat up. "Yeah, but nobody else out there will have gotten the memo. Kayden's going for him right now. And anyone could object to him basically showing up unannounced."

"I've got Kayden." I grabbed up my phone. I hadn't forgotten about checking for the other names, but the call came first.

<><>​

Evenstar

Despite the delay, Kayden figured she wasn't far away from Leet's latest bolt-hole. Her stored energy wouldn't last forever, or even most of the night, but that didn't matter. She had to either stop Leet or keep him on the run long enough for someone else to stop him.

When her phone rang, she gritted her teeth. The bastard's ducked and bolted again, hasn't he? With her stupid luck, he was probably miles in the other direction, yanking her all over the map like a puppet on a string. When I catch up with him … Curtailing her thoughts of righteous revenge, she slowed to a hover, pulled the phone out, and answered it. "Okay, where is he now?"

"He hasn't moved." Taylor's voice was serious. "But you need to listen. He's not building a doomsday device."

"What?" Of course Leet was building a doomsday device. He was the Butcher, and the Butcher had never held back from doing the most destructive thing possible in any given circumstance. He'd never been killed by a Tinker before, so this was his first chance to spread death and chaos that way, and Kayden couldn't see him passing up the opportunity. "What's he building, then?" Whatever it was, it couldn't be good.

The answer, when it came, made no sense at all. "We think he's trying to kill off the Butcher collective. Get it out of his head."

"I don't believe it." She knew it was a knee-jerk reaction, but she saw no reason to correct it. "Did you get this off your dice, or from some other source? Because if it's Lisa, she's been known to get things spectacularly wrong if she's been given sketchy information to start with. And we both know how her power sometimes fudges the odds of something going wrong."

"Partly Lisa, partly my dice. Wait, I'm not finished."

Kayden paused, holding off on what she'd been about to say. "I'm listening."

"I asked how many people were going to die. The number is fourteen. I asked who the first victim was going to be. The answer was 'Butcher'. Lisa put it together that Leet's trying to kill off Butcher and all the other capes in the collective." In the background, Kayden heard dice rolling. "I'm just checking on the rest of the names right now."

"Okay …" She wanted to believe it, but she hadn't survived ten years as a heavy hitter of the Empire Eighty-Eight by taking everything at face value. "Fourteen's a nice low number, but what if this damn thing he's making does something else to everyone around him? Doesn't kill them, but maybe turns them all into Case Fifty-Threes?"

"Okay, that's another good question. First off, though, I've just rolled for the other thirteen names. Twelve I don't recognise, but the thirteenth is Quarrel. Or rather, Q-R-R-L. And that's who the fourteenth Butcher was."

Kayden nodded slowly. It honestly sounded like Taylor wasn't just whistling in the dark. "If I were you, I'd check the other names just in case, but that does sound like it's what he's doing. I'm kind of impressed, to tell the truth. I didn't think he had it in him."

"None of us did," Taylor agreed. "But we still have three problems. First, he's got all of Butcher's powers, plus the Butcher collective yelling at him in his head, and if he's startled or thinks he's under attack, he might lash out and hurt people. Or, you know, teleport away and leave the place on fire."

Kayden grimaced. "That's a legitimate concern, yes. What are the other two problems?"

"Problem number two is that people other than us might have a way to track him, and without our insights, they're likely to attack him. See problem number one. And problem number three is that if he's kept from working on his project for long enough, the dice say there's a chance that he'll lose it and build an actual doomsday device, just to keep everyone off his back long enough to build the Butcher killer."

"… alright. I can see how that all tracks." Kayden took a deep breath. "So the best course of action isn't to just go home and let him do what he wants. We're going to have to help him. Guard him."

"Without startling him or making him think we're trying to trick him into doing something, yeah." Taylor paused for a beat. "So, Dinah's figured out the best way to approach him, and who should be doing it."

"I hope you're going to say that's not me." Since her recruitment by Dinah, Kayden had done her best to live up to the ideals of being a hero, and that included honest self-assessment. "That sort of de-escalation isn't my forte."

"Oh, absolutely. I'm not great at it either." Taylor's admission was freely given. "Dad's heading over there now, with Andrea. What we need you to do is get up on the roof and if anyone looks like showing up with aggressive intent, ask them to go bother someone else."

"Ask, or tell?" Kayden was really good at telling people to go away.

"Whatever the situation requires. Just try not to start any fights. Vicky and Amy are still busy, so we won't have them for backup. Janet's on deck, though."

"Oh, good." Despite the hydrokinetic's standoffish nature, Kayden considered her to be a valued teammate. The way she'd literally flushed the bad guys out of Coil's base, and trapped Lung in a bubble of water, had been impressive to behold. "So who's actually going to be doing the talking?" Danny Hebert wasn't someone she would've pegged as a natural negotiator when she first met him, but he was no doubt used to exerting authority within the Dockworkers, and that might be a way to get through to Leet.

"Andrea, actually." Taylor sounded amused. "Dad's basically along for moral support, and to keep her from going over the top."

"What, really?" Kayden didn't want to speak ill of her new team members, but the petite redhead had struck her as terminally ditzy, and none of their subsequent interactions had done anything to change that. Sure, she'd killed Krieg with his own pistol, but a single lucky shot didn't do anything to change the big picture.

"Well, Dinah said she was the best person for the job. Maybe it's because she can appeal to Leet on his level, nerd to nerd. I've long since learned not to second-guess her." Taylor's amusement hadn't abated. "Anyway, when you get there, text Andrea and let her know. I gotta go. I'll totally check on the Case Fifty-Three possibility, though."

"Alright, will do." Kayden ended the call and tucked the phone away, then gathered herself and hurtled off toward her destination. But as she flew, her brain could not help turning over the new information in her mind.

Leet's trying to be a good guy, even with Butcher in his head?

Andrea's going to try to talk him into working with us?

When, exactly, is the world going to start making sense?

<><>​

Leet

This was definitely the longest time Rodney had had the opportunity to work on the device since he'd come up with the idea, and he didn't want to waste a single moment. With all the components laid out in order, he fitted them together with careful haste. Power supply, usually a contentious point, was simple this time around. He was just going to plug the damn thing into the wall.

As for the rest of it, he wasn't sure if he had all the requisite bits and pieces, but his power was already suggesting ways to adapt certain things he did have to stand in for the parts he didn't. It would make the thing bigger and clunkier, and there might be a local brownout issue, but if it got those damned voices out of his head for good, he'd live with the consequences.

And consequences there would be. He was fully aware of that. The jailbreak was the merest tip of the iceberg. His ham-handed escape had killed Uber, Butcher and all the Teeth, and any poor bastard who'd been within half a mile of ground zero. The felony murder statute probably covered that, so all those were likely to be laid right at his feet.

I'm probably going to the Birdcage after this. If they don't just decide I've earned a kill order and tell someone to shoot me right in the head.

Not that he didn't deserve it; Uber was dead, specifically because Rodney had cut corners on the escape attempt instead of recognising the risk and calling an abort. I did that. It's on me. He trusted me when he shouldn't have.

Such was his distraction that he didn't notice the sound of movement within the building until the door to the room he was in banged open and two people entered. Or rather, one person strode in like she owned the whole building and he was late with the rent, and the other one followed her in much more diffidently. Caught entirely on the back foot, wondering why the hell his danger sense hadn't so much as tingled, he gaped at the pair.

"Leet, yeah?" She strode over to the table with a broad grin, holding out her hand. "Always wanted to meet you. Got a few notes about your online stuff, but that's what feedback's all about, amirite?"

Mentally, he stumbled, unable to formulate a coherent response. His experience with this sort of thing, especially being approached by an attractive woman who didn't seem to be a supervillain, was essentially null. Uber would've known what to do, but thanks to his fuckup, Uber wasn't there to take over the interaction.

Yeah, like I needed that reminder right now. Much appreciated, brain. Really hit the spot.

"So maybe you could answer a question for me, totally off the record." She still hadn't stopped talking. "You and Uber … best buds, or was there something more there?"

Words choked in his throat as the guilt surged again. "I … no … he was … my best friend." He shook his head. "That's all. We weren't …"

"Hey, zero judgement from me, either way." She didn't seem to notice his emotional turmoil. "I've hooked up with guys and girls both, and the sex is amazing either way. I was just curious, y'know?" She ran her gaze up and down his body in the most frankly appraising way any woman had ever looked at him. His brain jolting from one track all the way over onto another one, he involuntarily straightened his back and sucked in the little pudgy gut he'd never quite managed to get rid of. "Hm, there's promise there. Pretty sure you'd be trainable, with the right incentives."

"Andrea." The tall, balding guy put his hand on the woman's shoulder and spoke in a matter-of-fact way. "We're here to talk to him, not ask about his sex life. Or hit on him." He met Leet's gaze and shrugged semi-apologetically. "Sorry about that; to Andrea, boundaries are something that happen to other people."

"Hit on him?" The woman named Andrea rolled her eyes expressively. "Danny, if I was hitting on him, he'd know it. There'd be no stupid is-she-or-isn't-she guesswork. You know me. That's not how I operate. I was just, you know, making conversation. Breaking the ice."

With an effort, Rodney forced himself to start talking again. "Wait—hold on—just—just—stop!" At the same time, he held up both hands, palms out. "Who the hell are you people, and what are you doing here?"

Andrea's face lit up with mischievous glee. Turning toward him, she actually steepled her fingers and did her best to give him a Significant Glance. At least, that was what he figured she was doing. She might've been checking him out again.

"So," she began portentously. "We belong to a highly secretive organisation that is tasked with reducing the amount of conflict—"

"Andrea, seriously?" The tall guy shook his head. "Leet. We're here to let you know that we're not going to attack you, so please stop teleporting willy-nilly around the city and making it even harder for emergency services to get the damage under control. Okay?"

"That's easy for you to say," Rodney said defensively. "The last three places I went to, some asshole showed up before I even had the chance to get properly set up. I'm the new Butcher; I know it and you know it. Nobody's gonna give me the benefit of the doubt."

"We are." Even as Andrea broke down into giggles for some unknown reason, the guy called Danny held his hands out, palms up. "I'm not interested in the whole bullshit flashy cape scene, excuse my French. So long as my city isn't burning down around my ears, I call that a win. And if the fire services aren't being distracted every five minutes by a whole new emergency, that's a whole lot easier to achieve."

"Okay, assuming all that's true." Having had time to think about it, Rodney found a few things weren't quite adding up. "How did you even know I was here, and who are you working with? Are you PRT? Am I gonna get foamed to the eyeballs as soon as I turn my back?"

"A Thinker told me you'd be here," Danny said candidly. "We're not affiliated with the PRT, Protectorate, or any other official team. I wouldn't even know where to get containment foam from. We just got told that we're the best ones to ask you to stop bouncing around town."

"So how come you didn't just tell the PRT or the capes where I am? Are you even armed?" Rodney was starting to feel more confident, though he still had a lot of questions.

"Because you'd just teleport away again as soon as they got close to you, duh." Andrea rolled her eyes. "And no, we're not armed, though this bod is always locked and loaded." She put her hands on her hips and gave a shimmy that made parts of her anatomy jiggle in ways both highly educational and thoroughly distracting.

Rodney dragged his gaze away from her cleavage and loosened his collar a little. "So, you just … came here to ask me to stop teleporting? That's it? That's all of it?"

"It's not like we could force you to do a damn thing you didn't want to," Danny pointed out. "You're the Butcher. And even if you weren't, my use-of-force options these days start and end with sternly worded memos."

"… oh." Rodney blinked. This conversation was not going the way he'd expected it to go. "And you're not worried about what I'm building?"

"Would it matter to you if we were?" Danny folded his arms. "We sure as hell couldn't stop you. We're just here to ask you—"

"—yeah, yeah, I got it. To stop teleporting around town." Rodney waved at the ceiling. "You gonna stop all the other assholes from trying to crash the party too? Because I'm damn sure they're not gonna hold back for a pretty please and a shake of your girlfriend's ass."

Andrea's head came up, the light of battle flaring in her eyes. "Challenge—" she began.

"Nope. No way." Danny scissored his hands in front of him. "Not challenge accepted. Do not accept that challenge." He threw a distracted glance toward Rodney. "Excuse us. Carry on." Even as Andrea kept trying to talk, he guided her out of the room and closed the door behind them.

Rodney blinked. During his time as a cape in Brockton Bay, he'd seen (and done) some frankly ridiculous things. But that had pretty well topped them all. "What the absolute fuck?" he muttered, wondering if they were going to burst back in and announce that it was April Fool's or something like that.

They didn't come back. All was quiet. Even the voices inside his head seemed to be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

After about a minute of just staring at the door, he got back to work. It wasn't going to build itself, after all.

<><>​

On the Street

Armsmaster

Colin gunned the throttle of his motorcycle, leaning to the side just far enough to pass by a speeding fire truck. His hearing protection cut in to dull the wailing siren and the polarisation of his visor protected his eyes from the flashing lights. This was where he was in his element: acting decisively in the middle of chaos, and getting it right.

Case in point: while emergency services ran themselves ragged responding to the fires and other crises, and other heroes ran search-and-rescue for trapped civilians, he'd been zeroing in on the cause of all the chaos.

The Butcher.

Specifically, Butcher Fifteen: previously known as Leet.

The first Tinker Butcher ever, and the proximate cause of an increasing number of fires spread around the city.

Colin didn't particularly care if Leet was intending to spread chaos or if he just didn't know about the explosive after-effect; the end result would be the same. The optimum time to go after a Butcher was just after the collective had ended up in a new body. And Colin was the best man for the job. He was prepared for everything.

In addition, he was reasonably sure nobody else in the city could have pulled off his latest stunt: adapting one of the more esoteric sensors built into his bike to track the villain's teleport signature. It had taken two jumps to get a rough ballpark, and a third to nail it down for good. So right now, he was the only person who knew where Butcher was, and it would stay that way until he had the bastard in custody.

He pulled the motorbike to a halt and stepped off it, knowing the auto-stand would deploy and the engine would shut off, all without requiring his attention. Ahead of him was the building where Butcher had teleported to. It wasn't on fire, so the villain was probably still there. Unracking his halberd and letting it unfold to its full length, he strode toward the front doors—

"Excuse me, but I'd prefer it if you didn't come any closer." An almost overpoweringly bright light flared in the sky, resolving to a vaguely human shape drifting down before him. Between the power signature and the sound of the voice, Colin knew who it was.

"Purity," he stated warningly. "Move out of the way. Don't make me take you down, too."

He'd heard that Purity was on some kind of wannabe-hero kick, and had actually been instrumental in the captures of Coil and Lung (Colin had been there for the former) so he wasn't about to directly attack her … but that didn't mean he was going to let her block his path to the Butcher, either.

Is she working with him? For him? I wouldn't have thought it, but she worked for Kaiser, after all. Her judgement is clearly flawed.

"Armsmaster, you're working on faulty information," she said hastily. "He's not making a doomsday bomb, or even trying to set fire to the whole city. He's just trying to build a device that'll get the Butchers out of his head. We need to protect him, not stop him."

"And you know this how, exactly? Did he tell you this himself?" He'd programmed enough of her moves into his combat prediction algorithm to have a good chance of beating her, especially one-on-one. All he needed was the right moment, and—

"Random told me. She's the one who sent me here." The surety in that statement made him pause momentarily. He'd been briefed about Random's apparent capabilities, and how Purity (rebranding as Evenstar, but he didn't know anyone who was actually fooled by that) was working with her.

On the one hand, Random was reportedly very good at what she did. But on the other … how could he even trust that Purity was telling the truth? All he had was her unsupported word, which he was absolutely not prepared to trust without very good reason.

Fortunately, he had the means to break the deadlock, right inside his helmet. He activated the lie-detection software and ran the conversation past it.

"You don't believe me, do you?" Purity dropped down a little way. "I've seen that posture before. You're about ten seconds away from pointing that halberd at me."

Five seconds, Colin mentally corrected her, but he was careful not to say so out loud. He was confident, not stupid.

The software came back with its result. Not only was her original statement showing up as true, but the claim that Random had told her so was apparently just as valid.

Still, that didn't mean she hadn't been fooled by someone pretending to be Random, especially over the phone. To anyone else it might've been a logical reach, but he was determined to cross every T and dot every I. "Can you give me a reason to trust what you're saying?"

She sighed, then powered down. He stared with frank disbelief; she'd never done this in his sight before. She was masked, but this still made her more vulnerable than he'd ever seen her. "Give me a second." He tensed as she reached into a pouch at her waist, then relaxed again as she pulled out her phone. With quick, precise motions, she woke the device up and tapped a button to make a call.

It went through almost immediately; she must have pressed the speaker icon, because he heard the voice clearly. "Hello? Evenstar?" It was a teenage girl.

Purity spoke clearly while keeping her eyes locked on Colin. "Hi. I'm outside Butcher's base, and I've got Armsmaster here. Mind telling him who you are, and why I'm not busting in to take Butcher down?"

"Ah. Okay. Well, this is Random. Leet's working on a device that will kill exactly fourteen people. Specifically, the other Butchers. Also, I checked; nobody else will be hurt in any way. Armsmaster, if you bust in there and interrupt his work, there's a non-zero chance that he'll go nuts and kill us all anyway. Let him work. Seriously."

It was a lot to take in, all at once. He'd never actually heard Random's voice before, but his software was pinging hard on 'truth' the whole way through. Which could only lead to one conclusion. "So Leet is actually trying to use his power to fix this?"

He could almost hear the shrug, even over the phone. "Well, wouldn't you?"

That part, at least, he couldn't argue with.



End of Part Twenty-Seven