Earning Her Stripes (Worm AU fanfic)

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-Three: Escalation Central

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



Friday Afternoon, September 17, 2010

Monochrome

I stood on the deck of the half-sunken bulk carrier, angling my weight to adjust for the fact that it was listing by several degrees. From where I was standing, I could easily see what was left of the Boat Graveyard, and the city beyond. The ship's original name was lost to posterity, but it was known as the Gatekeeper. This was mainly because it had blockaded the entrance to the port for years until Alexandria made a flying visit (literally) and shouldered it around ninety degrees, allowing the gradual clearing of the Graveyard to begin. It would be awhile before Lord's Port was fully open for trade again, but at least that was a promise for the future.

The Gatekeeper was the only one that couldn't be moved by normal means, mainly because it was full of water and solidly aground. As such, it was the one piece of real estate I knew of that was big enough and flat enough (though with physical and visual obstacles) for us to have this sparring session, while not risking accidental bystanders or official attention if we broke any bits off it. The Real Thing was on thin enough ice with the PRT as it was, so there we were.

Or rather, there I was.

I held in my hands the staff Madison had forged for me. Made of good steel (of course), it was six feet long and was (in my inexpert opinion) nicely balanced. Emma also seemed to think so, though she also considered it too heavy for her to use in serious combat. For most of its length, the staff was oval in cross-section rather than perfectly round, but there was a purpose to that. There was a solid cylindrical section about the size of a Coke can at each end, and grooved hand grips right where I might want to hold it, but apart from that it was a length of basically unbreakable metal.

I quite liked it. Madison had put thought and effort into its construction, and it showed. The solid ends gave a wider strike area, while the speed I could swing it meant that the strike would hit hard. Theoretically, I could also throw it, though it would be more likely to go through things rather than bounce back like Emma's throwing discs.

The rules for our training-slash-sparring session were simple. If Emma or Madison tagged me, they scored a point. The same went for Emma; if I got a solid hit in on her, I scored one. With Madison, however, it was more stringent. Her suit was powerful enough to take a simple hit, so tagging her properly meant I had to knock her off the boat. At the same time, I had to be careful with my strikes, to make sure I didn't inadvertently splatter Emma with a blow intended for Madison.

This would be a good test of my powers and my reflexes. I wasn't at all practised in martial arts, though Emma had been giving me some valuable pointers in staff fighting over the past few days. There was no way I could match any but the simplest manoeuvres she'd demonstrated for me, but at least I had the basics of how to swing it without tangling my own legs up or thwacking myself in the back of the head (both of which I'd done, to Madison's vast amusement).

I didn't have to wait long before the exercise began. Emma hadn't yet shown herself, but one of her discs whipped out from behind a derelict winch, arcing in the air on a path that would intersect where I stood if I didn't move my force-field-clad ass pronto. I almost leaped up toward the drunkenly sagging superstructure but at the last instant, I dropped low instead, warned by some obscure instinct.

The disc flashed over my head, then hit a nearby shipping container and rebounded from it with a hollow boom. I watched, suddenly pleased with my decision, as the disc passed through the spot I would've been in if I had done the leap as I'd originally planned. Jeez, she almost caught me napping with that one.

Well, at least I knew where she was now. Keeping a careful eye on the winch as the disc dropped down behind it again, I began to circle around, holding my staff ready to deflect any random flying pieces of good steel. I'd known Emma was good, but her opening moves had raised my estimation of her capabilities by a considerable amount.

Only the faintest scrape of metal on metal behind me warned me in time. I whirled, bringing up the staff, and only just managed to knock aside Blockade's reaching hand; the power armour had unfolded itself from what I'd thought was a weather-worn wooden crate lying on the deck. That holo-disguise was terrifyingly effective, under the right circumstances.

"Nice moves," Madison observed, continuing to advance on me. I backed up, unwilling to commit myself to knocking her over the side when I couldn't see Emma or what she was up to. "Thought I had you there for a minute."

"So did I." I knew damn well what she was trying to do—distracting me so that Emma could pull some other sneaky shit—but it was almost impossible to not engage with her. Besides, I could keep an eye out all around even while I spoke to her. "You two really planned this out."

"That's the general idea." She took another ponderous step toward me, the footstep shaking the deck. Was she trying to herd me toward the winch, so Emma could jump out and tag me?

It felt like an obvious plan. Too obvious. They were coordinating on the sly with their radios so I wouldn't know what they were planning, but I already knew Emma was behind there. Madison was in the open, doing her best to draw my attention, which meant that Emma was doing something that needed the attention drawn away from her.

Right now, I was alongside another shipping container and the winch was only a few yards away. What seemed obvious about this situation, but wasn't?

Realising my mistake almost too late, I hooked the end of my staff under the side of the shipping container and flicked upward. It lurched over and fell on its side with a resounding crash; at the same time, Emma leaped off the top of it where she'd been almost in position to reach down and tag me, landing lightly several yards away.

"Good," she complimented me. "You're really starting to think on your feet. I like that."

This time, I didn't answer back. I was starting to learn. Instead, I prowled closer, keeping half an eye on Madison. Remaining at distance with Emma was a losing strategy; she'd already proven herself way too good with those damn throwing discs, so she had the ranged game all sewn up.

Almost negligently, she flicked one out at me now. I brought the staff up and around like she'd taught me, and managed to intercept it in midair; with a clang, the disc ricocheted back across the space between us, where she caught it out of the air like she'd meant to do it that way all along.

Which, of course, she had. Because she was that much of a smartass.

"Heads up!" boomed Madison. "Deadly poison gas incoming!" At the same time, I heard a hissing sound, and saw one of the hoses attached to her armour spewing a cloud of steam in my direction. This was one of the other ways she could tag me.

We all knew my force field would (probably) protect me from airborne hazards, but it would do nothing for any civilians that I was trying to protect. Which was why Madison had designed the staff like she had. I grasped the staff so that the oval cross-section faced one way in the upper section and the other way in the lower section, then began to spin the whole thing like an airplane propeller … or a fan. We'd theorised that if I spun it fast enough, the oval shape would act like an air-foil.

As the steam rolled toward me, I continued spinning the staff. Soon it was moving as fast as I could get my hands to respond, but I didn't know if that was fast enough. So I concentrated and tried to make it go faster.

That was when my vision blanked unexpectedly. It had done this a few times before, when I was about to do something that might actually hurt me. We'd figured that this was my power's way of protecting me, though I wasn't sure why it was doing it now.

Besides, being blind was a good way to get snuck up on, so I relaxed the need to spin the staff quite so fast. Right on cue, I could see again; the staff was still spinning in a blur in front of me, which was good. I would've hated for it to go propellering off into the harbour or something. Hastily looking around to see where the others were, I spotted Emma down on one knee, holding her hands over her ears. Madison wasn't going that far, but she was definitely enveloped in the same steam cloud she'd sent my way.

"What?" I asked, bringing the staff to a halt. "What did I just do?" Even as I asked the question, I heard a distant drawn-out k-kk-kkrakk-kk-k echoing from the buildings of Brockton Bay. It sounded like thunder, but the sky was clear of all but a few innocent white fluffballs of clouds. "What was that?"

"Sonic boom," Madison supplied helpfully. "You spun the staff so hard the ends broke the sound barrier."

"Loudly," added Emma, coming fluidly to her feet and taking her hands away from her ears. "Let's not forget the loudly aspect." She was talking a little nasally. "I think my eardrums just met in the middle of my head."

"Whoa, shit, sorry." I looked at the staff with concern. Just spinning it had hurt Emma, and I hadn't even touched her with it. "I did not know that would happen."

"I kind of thought it might, but not to that extent." Madison shrugged. "My bad. Should've warned you. Sorry."

"I'll be fine." Emma wiggled her pinky finger in her ear. "I recover real fast from this sort of shit. Five-minute break, and then we start again?"

"Sounds good to me." I found a bench-like section of the winch to sit down on. "I never saw you curve your discs like that before."

"Simple aerodynamics." She took a seat next to me. "Figuring out the rebound direction was harder. I really thought you'd go for high ground."

I wasn't at all surprised to have my 'trap' supposition confirmed. "Nearly did, but it felt too much like the obvious thing to do. And if it's obvious …"

"Then the other side's thought of it, too." Madison nodded. "Sun Tzu goes into this sort of thing a bit. I guess you could call it managing the expectations of your opponent. Don't just anticipate what he's going to do. Figure out what he thinks you're going to do, then use that to draw him into a trap of his own making."

"Yeah," Emma agreed. "If you can make the other guy think he's got you where he wants you, then he'll walk straight into the pit-trap and still be confident on the way down."

I raised an eyebrow. "I'm guessing it's not as easy as you're making it sound."

"Haha, hell no." Madison's booming chuckle rattled the deck slightly. "But it's worth studying books on strategy and tactics. Wellington's good for that."

"I've been reading up on Hannibal," Emma countered. "He had some good ideas, too. In fact—"

Whatever her 'in fact' was leading to would be forever lost to posterity, because just then another rumbling booooom echoed over the bay. I shared a glance with Emma, then stared out at the city. In the distance, literally miles away, I thought I saw something. "That wasn't another sonic boom, was it?"

"No. It wasn't." Madison was all business now. "That's a fireball from an explosion. I'm guessing a cape fight. One second, I'm going to check the scanner."

Emma vaulted to the top of the winch, then grabbed a dangling cable and went up it almost as fast as I could run on level ground. When she gained the top of the tower in the middle of the deck—I had no idea what it was called—she pulled a small pair of binoculars from a pouch and aimed them over toward the city.

"Cape fight, alright," she called down. "Something's on fire. Can't see who, but I can make a guess."

So could I. "Lung. ABB."

"And you win the prize." Madison nodded. "Some sort of boundary clash. The ABB's probably trying for a turf grab because the Empire's down a couple more members."

That made sense. The gangs sometimes tried to break their fellow capes out of holding but it rarely worked, so anytime anyone got captured, it altered the whole dynamic of the cape villain scene. Hookwolf was one of about three who had managed to escape once, and the only one who'd pulled it off twice. There were rumours on PHO that Armsmaster was trying to figure out how to pull off the Star Wars trick of freezing someone in carbonite for the next time they captured the homicidal cape. If it was true, I didn't blame him.

Lung, on the other hand, had never been captured. He was also the only cape who was known to escalate even harder than Hookwolf, until everything (and everyone) around him was in peril of catching fire due to his intense flames. Nor could he be worn down, because of his level of regeneration. The policy for dealing with a Lung fight was, after a certain point, to withdraw and let him go his way before he burned down everything.

The Real Thing had run into Hookwolf on the night Sophia had gone nuts and decided to murder Dad. Madison had curbstomped him and Stormtiger so badly that Hookwolf had fled rather than face her one-on-one after the aerokinetic went down for the count. They—that is, we—hadn't gone up against Lung yet, but that had only been for lack of opportunity.

Oh, look. Opportunity.

"So, what do you say, fearless leader?" Madison looked down at me. "Do we engage, or stay out of it?"

"If I said 'stay out of it', would you accept that?" I asked as Emma came down the cable, even faster than she'd gone up it.

"We would," Emma assured me. "You're the leader so if you make a call like that, we'll back you up all the way."

"But you want to engage, don't you?" I looked from Emma to Madison.

"Oh, hell yes." Madison chuckled and smacked her metal fist into her palm with a loud clack. "A fight that big, chances are Hooksy will be there, and I'm not finished beating his whiny little ass yet."

That was exactly what I wanted to hear. "Well, far be it from me to keep you from smacking Nazis around."

"We're doing this?" asked Emma.

I nodded. "We're totally doing this."

"Awesome."

<><>​

Thirty Seconds Later

Armsmaster

This is a disaster.

The roiling flames from the gas station weren't getting any smaller; between that and the heat radiating off Lung, Colin could hear the cooling fans in his helmet and armour working overtime to keep the temperature down. This was one of the worst cape battles he'd ever had the misfortune to attend—aside from Endbringer battles, of course—and it didn't look like easing up any time soon.

Lung and the ABB had evidently decided that the loss of Stormtiger and Cricket meant the Empire was weak enough to be leaned on. Over the last few days, they'd escalated gradually with minor probes here and there, but never protracted enough for the Empire to mount a serious response. For some reason, Lung had apparently chosen to believe this meant he could just walk in and take an entire neighbourhood away from the Empire and Kaiser would do nothing.

This had not, in fact, been the case.

Right now, it was a stalemate, the normals sniping at each other from cover while Oni Lee teleported around the battlefield, sowing chaos (and grenades) wherever he went. Lung was going toe to toe with the remaining Empire big hitters, the less durable members hanging back and watching each other's backs.

Stalemate or not, Lung showed no signs of wanting to retreat or surrender. Already twelve feet tall, he was going hard at Fenja, Menja and Hookwolf, clearly seeking to kill at least one of them before the fight was done. For the Empire's part, Rune was doing overwatch with Crusader on the same block of concrete, with a cloud of rubble orbiting them. It seemed that people on both sides had decided that today, someone was going to die.

Colin had been the first on the scene, just before the gas station went up in a towering pillar of flame, but he'd wisely stayed back. While he rated his chances against any one (or two, in some cases) of these capes as pretty good, jumping in alone was just asking to be dogpiled and mobbed from all sides. So he'd done the smart thing: hung back and called for reinforcements.

"Blockade to Armsmaster," he heard over the channel reserved for affiliated teams. "Be advised, the Real Thing is inbound. We are coming in hot. Are there any friendlies in the combat zone, over?"

His eyes opened wide. He still hadn't fully assimilated the revelations about Blockade's true identity, and the thought of a petite teenage girl dropping into the middle of that meatgrinder was not one he wanted to entertain. "Negative, negative," he stated urgently. "Stay clear. I say again, stay clear. No civilians in immediate danger." He'd seen the gas station attendant bail out moments before the underground tanks went up, and the fire didn't appear to be spreading.

"Blockade here. Your warning has been taken under advisement. Incoming ETA zero-five seconds. Blockade, out."

As the signal cut out, he heard a vaguely familiar roaring sound. It became a lot more familiar when he looked up and saw Blockade's power armour passing overhead, travelling feet first with massive thruster plumes flaring down from the metal boots. As it plunged downward toward the battleground, two smaller figures detached from it.

The first, displaying the black bodysuit and flaring red hair of Firebird, leaped for a nearby rooftop that was currently populated with ABB footsoldiers. Her two throwing discs, tiny at this distance, flashed out while she was still in the air. He couldn't see what one of them did—it went out of sight over the rooftop she was heading for—but the other ricocheted its way into the middle of the cloud of debris around Rune's block of concrete.

The block lurched and began to meander downwards out of the sky; at the same time, all of Crusader's ghosts vanished. Firebird landed on the roof and Colin lost track of her. However, there were still two other members of the Real Thing in view.

He already knew Blockade, but he'd only seen imagery of the girl who'd replaced Shadow Stalker. Assault's report had called her Monochrome. Colin's best guess placed her as Taylor Hebert, bullying victim and daughter of Stalker's attempted murder victim. Her exact powers were still not very well known, though there was definitely a Brute and Shaker effect to them. Brute effects only counted for so much against Lung; after enough ramping up, his strength overcame almost anything. She was also carrying a staff, for all the good it would do her.

Blockade landed on top of Lung, cutting her thrusters and free-dropping the last twenty feet to drive him face-first into the destroyed roadway. By contrast, Monochrome came down between the currently twenty-foot-tall valkyrie twins (Colin only knew which was which because his HUD was keeping track) and smacked them each in the face with her staff in a blindingly fast move: first left and then right.

To his sheer astonishment, they both crumpled to the ground. No non-flier should be able to hit that hard and that fast without any leverage to speak of even once, and she'd done it twice. That they'd gone down hard didn't surprise him in the slightest; he'd felt the impacts from where he was. But how she'd done it didn't make sense.

He decided to puzzle over it later. Right now, despite the intrusion of the Real Thing, the battle was still ongoing. Or at least, Lung seemed ready to get up and keep fighting, unlike Fenja and Menja.

He fully expected Blockade to keep beating on Lung. After all, encased in her 'good steel', she was perhaps the most ideally situated to going mano-a-mano with the ABB leader. But a silent agreement seemed to pass between herself and Monochrome, and the two swapped opponents. Hookwolf, suddenly finding himself bereft of immediate support, ended up facing off against Blockade, while Lung clambered to his feet with Monochrome in front of him.

Or rather, Lung tried to clamber to his feet. Spinning the staff like it weighed nothing at all (and if it was made of good steel, that certainly wasn't the case) she smashed it down on his head then reversed the movement an instant later to strike him up under the chin. As with the double strike on Fenja and Menja, Colin felt the impacts from where he was.

The remainder of the Empire seemed to be backing off now, probably because four of their capes on site had been taken down in just a moment or two. It was also entirely possible that Hookwolf had told them just how dangerous Blockade was, and nobody wanted to tangle with 'him'. Certainly, Hookwolf himself was also trying to back off ... but Blockade wasn't letting him.

Lung wasn't down and out yet, though his fire seemed to be flickering. Even as he struggled to get to his feet again (Colin had no idea how many broken bones the man might be trying to heal at once there, but he was going with 'lots'), Monochrome got behind him and snaked her slim arm around his neck. She could barely reach, and should have had zero leverage, but he immediately began to choke and claw uselessly at her arm. Despite the fact that his muscular neck was plated with metal scales, Colin could see that she was depressing the scales and squeezing his throat until his eyes bulged out.

Hookwolf was faring little better. Every time he tried to break away, Blockade literally picked him up and smashed him overarm into the ground. No matter what metallic extensions he tried to grow, every ruthless, brutal impact shattered more and more of the hooks and blades from him. Watching the ongoing curbstomp, Colin felt sympathy for the Empire cape ... almost.

And then, Oni Lee landed on the ground in front of Colin. Bloody and battered, half his mask broken away, his right arm lying limp and useless on the ground, he lay there panting. Around his neck was locked a very familiar-looking cuff, near-twin to the one Colin had last seen decorating Shadow Stalker's ankle. Firebird, also looking a little the worse for wear, scaled down the side of the building and dropped to the ground next to the ABB assassin. "Hey. Present for you."

Colin stared. To his personal knowledge, nobody had ever landed a significant hit on Oni Lee, much less taken him down so thoroughly. Firebird bore marks of battle and from the way she was moving would be bruised tomorrow, but she had definitely gotten the better of the engagement.

"... how?" he demanded. "Why isn't he teleporting?"

Firebird shrugged. "According to Blockade, good steel doesn't allow dimensional shenanigans."

That made no sense whatsoever. But as Colin looked over the recent battlefield, deserted on one side by the normal members of the ABB and on the other side by the Empire Eighty-Eight, he had to admit that it still wasn't the strangest thing he'd experienced that day.

As the PRT sirens got closer, he looked over at where a pair of teenage girls had just beaten the absolute crap out of two of Brockton Bay's most feared capes (well, choked out in Lung's case), and shook his head.

With the advent of this new version of the Real Thing, life was getting interesting in Brockton Bay.



End of Part Twenty -Three

 

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-Four: Other Pieces on the Board

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

[A/N 2: I apologise for how late this chapter is coming out. The month has been horrendous.]



The Undersiders' Hideout

Grue

Brian was in the middle of a workout when his phone rang, sitting on the coffee table nearby. "Somebody get that, please?" he grunted.

"On it." Lisa leaned past her laptop and scooped up the phone. "Coil," she reported, her nose wrinkling. "Are we accepting jobs from him these days, or have we finally put him on the no-call list?"

Coil wasn't exactly Brian's favourite person either—the man gave the impression of someone who would absolutely play fast and loose with the rules if given even the slightest excuse to do so—but money was still money. "See what he wants," he grunted, pulling another curl.

"Gotcha." Lisa swiped the Accept icon and held the phone to her ear. "You've reached the Undersiders," she intoned sweetly. "If you're representing the PRT or Protectorate, we don't exist. If you're anyone but Coil, we're open for business. If you're Coil, please deposit a fee of one thousand dollars to continue this call."

Brian couldn't hear the exact words of Coil's response to Lisa's joke, but his tone didn't sound impressed. He spoke for a few moments, with Lisa interjecting "Mm-hmm" and "Uh huh" from time to time. Finally, he stopped, apparently awaiting a response.

"Well, it's definitely an interesting offer," she said neutrally. "I can't speak for the others, though. We'll talk it over and get back to you." Before he could answer, she cut the call.

Pausing his game, Alec turned to face them. "So, what'd that snake want?"

Brian set his weights down, frowning as he did so. "I thought you didn't care about the jobs, just the money."

"I don't," Alec said. "But I also don't like dealing with snakes like Coil. He reminds me too much of someone I came here to get away from."

Grabbing his towel, Brian wiped his face and the back of his neck. "Well, before we decide one way or the other, what did he want us to do?"

A smirk creased the corner of Lisa's mouth. "He tried to dress it up a little, but what it boils down to is this: he'll pay us ten K each and give us two shot-calls, in return for solid info on the Real Thing. Names if possible, weak points in the team, and power weaknesses."

Shot-calls were the only reason any of the villains in Brockton Bay did business with Coil at all. As Alec had noted, he was an odious man at best. But his power let him call the shots on any venture depending on pure luck, and be right every time.

The Undersiders had made use of his abilities before, paying him a cut of the take, and every move had been dead on the money. But no matter what he offered, no capes they knew were actually willing to work for him. Because he was also a total asshole.

From what Brian had heard on the underworld grapevine, Coil had come into Brockton Bay a few years back, supremely arrogant and flaunting the attitude of an old-time mob boss. Between the PRT knowing their business and the local villains refusing to play along with his self-importance, every attempt he'd made to expand his operations had fallen flat. When capes chose not to accept employment with him, he'd tried to hire international mercenaries, only for them to be intercepted by the authorities and deported again.

"Twenty K each, four shot-calls, plus one for the job against the Real Thing," Alec retorted, apparently by reflex. "We all know he's undercutting when he makes an offer like that."

"Why are we even considering doing any work for him?" demanded Rachel, not looking up as she brushed down Brutus. "He treats people worse than people treat dogs." For her, that was the ultimate insult.

"Because he does get results," Brian reminded her. "Like him or hate him, he's good at what he does."

Good, but not infallible. Coil's powers had failed him on a few occasions, but they'd managed to get him far enough away that he wasn't caught up in the fallout. The most spectacular of these flops, as far as Brian was aware, was the time he'd bribed a construction company head to build him a complete underground base in the format of an Endbringer shelter, only for his own personal use.

The local PRT analysts had figured out what was going on, allowing a dawn raid to nip the entire plan in the bud. While the construction guy went down hard, Coil had barely escaped capture. The word on the street was, he was still pissed about that.

Lisa turned back to her laptop and clicked open a few more tabs. "There's something more to this than him wanting to know about the new players in town. Let me see …"

"Hey, Brian," jibed Alec. "You've seen the footage of Firebird kicking ass. Think you can take her?"

"She's good," Brian allowed. "Scratch that: she's very good. But she doesn't have my reach, and a good big guy can beat a good small guy more often than not."

"Forget it," Lisa said absently, still clicking through links and typing the odd command. "She'd clean your clock. It wouldn't even be a contest. She automatically adapts to counter whoever she's fighting. Whatever the weak points of your style are, she'd use them against you."

Brian frowned. "Is that actually her main power?" 'Kicking ass' wasn't a legitimate power … was it?

"Yes and no. It's … whoa." Lisa sat up straight, staring at the screen. "I fuckin' knew there was something hinky about how badly he wanted us to take this job."

"Why?" Alec leaned over and began to blatantly read off the screen. He actually stopped a couple of lines in and did a double-take. "The fuck?"

"What?" asked Brian, coming over to the sofa. "What did you find out? Have they joined the Wards, or accepted a contract on his head, or something?"

"No." Lisa was staring at the screen as though mesmerised. "There was a fight on the Empire/ABB border about half an hour ago. The PRT is trying to keep it under wraps, but Coil must've gotten a whisper. Hookwolf, Menja, Fenja, Crusader and Rune, versus Lung and Oni Lee."

Brian couldn't see the screen, but he could juggle the odds in his head. "So, about even then."

"Something like that," Lisa agreed with a nod. "Then the Real Thing showed up. Blockade did a 'death from above' on Lung, then waled on Hookwolf like a fat kid looking for the last bit of candy from a piñata. Monochrome KO'd Menja and Fenja on the way down, then beat up Lung and choked him out. And Firebird neutralised Rune and Crusader, kicked the snot out of a dozen ABB goons, then did the same with Oni Lee before dropping him at Armsmaster's feet."

"Uh." Brian's thought processes locked up and skidded to a halt as they utterly failed to make sense of the concise description of events. "Firebird … beat … Oni Lee?"

"Beat the ever-loving crap out of," Alec corrected him. "Says here that Lee's got a mild concussion, a broken arm, and multiple contusions. Firebird owned him like he was bought and paid for."

"And Hookwolf …?" The Empire Changer was one of Kaiser's big hitters. He was one of two capes in Brockton Bay who'd been tried in absentia and sentenced to the Birdcage. The other was Lung. Brian had trouble equating Hookwolf with someone who got 'waled on', in Lisa's phrasing.

"In PRT custody, not looking too healthy," Lisa reported. "Blockade was pissed that he got away last time, and wasn't going to let it happen again. That's directly from the PRT report of the handover."

"Good." Rachel didn't look around this time, but there was a fierce approval in her tone. "Hookwolf likes to make dogs hurt each other. He deserves all the hurt he gets."

"Yeah, so, Lisa?" Alec gestured at the phone. "If we tell Coil we're going to take the job, we're gonna need a hundred K each, up front. Because I'll be leaving town. I'm not staying in the same state as some girl who can one-shot the Nazi Playgirl twins and choke out Lung like that's a thing that can happen. Not after we out them, anyway."

"Don't want to do it anyway," Rachel added. "They stopped a dogfight and beat up Hookwolf." She went back to brushing.

"Well, that's two against," Lisa noted. "What say you, o fearless leader?"

Brian blinked, not liking the fact that he was suddenly on the spot. "If Firebird took down Oni Lee unaided, then you're right. I probably can't take her." Lisa let out a fake cough that sounded suspiciously like 'she'd cream you', but he loftily ignored her. "More to the point, we can't take them. They're powerhouses."

"I'm not saying we should do the job," Lisa said carefully. "But as you just said, they're definitely a step up from the usual independents who come into Brockton Bay. I suspect they could give New Wave a run for their money. Some might say it's in our best interests to weaken them as much as possible, so they don't just steamroll over the top of us."

"Others might say it's not a great idea to give Coil any sort of leverage over them," Brian countered. "Heroes gonna hero, and we've gotten along so far by not sticking our heads up and drawing attention. I'd like to keep it that way. Tell him no."

Lisa shrugged. "Okay, but he's not going to be happy." The grin on her face belied her words.

"Ask me if I care." Brian went back to working out. The money would've been nice, but some risks just weren't worth it.

<><>​

Director's Office, PRT ENE

Emily watched the footage from Armsmaster's helmet cam for the third time. The first viewing had been just to get an overall idea of what had happened. When she watched it a second time, it had been to observe the tactics of the attack; who did what and where. Now she was pausing the action to take in specific details, and the only part of it that was making her any happier was the fact that four villains were in custody, two of whom were already destined for the Birdcage.

Not that she was unreservedly thrilled about that aspect, either. Having such notorious capes under lock and key was almost begging for something to go wrong; either an attack from outside to free one or the other, or a failure of the systems that kept them where they were supposed to be. As far as she knew, the ABB had no other capes, but their intel on the gangs had been wrong before. And of course, the Empire Eighty-Eight still had powered members, despite the whittling-down of their numbers over the years.

The clip came to an end, and she looked up at Armsmaster. "There's no footage from the rooftop?"

He evidently understood what she was referring to. No footage of the fight between Firebird and Oni Lee. "No, ma'am," he admitted. "I would've given half my Tinker budget for the year to see how she handled him."

"I'm not about to disagree." Clasping her fingers together on her desk, she frowned thoughtfully. "Have they been deliberately sandbagging until now, do you think? Or have they just been coasting because they couldn't be bothered to pull out the big guns until an appropriate target came along?"

Either way, it was a concern. The Real Thing had shown themselves to be very much the real thing, and they were in Emily's city. She liked to think that the PRT had been keeping the villains securely in check while the city gradually dealt with its problems—crime had been down again for the third year running—but these new young heroes had decided to flex hard, throwing off the carefully managed balancing act.

If the Real Thing cleared out the villains altogether—the PRT were obliged to arrest said villains once captured, after all—she feared a reprise of the Boston Games, with a whole new influx of villains who didn't know how the cape scene worked in her city. Civilians would get hurt or killed, the infrastructure would suffer, and she'd have to clamp down again.

Nobody liked it when she stopped playing Ms Nice Director.

She didn't blame the Real Thing, exactly. They'd only been capes for a relatively short time. Shadow Stalker hadn't filled them in because either she didn't know or didn't care about the unspoken agreement between capes.

Some likened it to playing 'cops and robbers', but Emily discouraged that kind of talk. Far from being a game, it was a deadly serious ploy to minimise the issues created when villains outnumbered the heroes. And it had worked.

Mostly, anyway. Lung and Hookwolf had been a perennial thorn in her side; Lung because he was too powerful to capture easily without serious property damage (and he knew it), and Hookwolf because he'd been broken out of more than one Birdcage transport, and gone straight back to being a neo-Nazi asshole. This time, if she had anything to do with it, they'd both get there.

Her problem with the Real Thing wasn't that they'd captured villains. It was more or less what they were expected to at least try to do, after all. The trouble was that they'd done it so brutally and effectively. The footage hadn't gotten out yet, and she hoped to maintain that state of affairs for as long as possible; when it did, it would likely spook more than one villain. And spooked villains were unpredictable.

She hated unpredictable.

But her needs and wants were so often neglected in the grand scheme of things. It was the way of the world. And there were other matters to address. "How are we restraining Crusader?"

Armsmaster actually chuckled, the sound a little out of character for him. "You're probably not going to believe this, but Blockade supplied us with another one of those cuffs. She's apparently made a bunch of them. With it secured around Crusader's neck, he can generate his ghosts but they can't actually leave him. He looks like an upside-down bouquet."

Emily blinked. "You're shitting me." Then she recalled who she was talking to. "You're not shitting me. That actually works?"

He spread his gauntlets. "Just as well as it stops Shadow Stalker from going anywhere once she goes to shadow. I'm not even questioning it anymore."

Which reminded her. "Do you have any answers out of the piece of 'good steel' Blockade gave you?"

"Not yet, but I have a cold-beam that I patterned after Legend's lasers trained on it. Let's see what a week at just above absolute zero does for its structural integrity."

Just as Emily was thinking that this sounded exactly like what a Tinker would do, her intercom buzzed, routed through from Renick's office. "Ma'am, do you have a moment?"

She pressed the button. "Certainly. Come right in." Looking up at Armsmaster, she nodded. "Keep me posted. Dismissed."

"Ma'am." He turned and walked out; the door closed behind him.

A moment later, the connecting door between her office and Renick's opened, and she swivelled her chair to face him. "What's the situation?"

He stepped through and closed the door. "You've seen the latest footage of the Real Thing?"

"Armsmaster just got through showing me," she confirmed. "Have you got something new on them?"

"Possibly." He frowned, apparently unsure. "One of our outside consultants has made a claim that they're directly responsible for the destruction of Winslow High School. I haven't seen the evidence yet to make a judgement call one way or the other."

Even without evidence, it was a serious allegation. And if Emily was being honest with herself, their show of force against Lung and Hookwolf made her even more likely to accept that it could be true. "Who made the claim?"

He didn't need to check any notes. "Calvert. As I recall, he's actually ex-PRT."

Emily grimaced. "He is. We met, briefly, after Ellisburg. Around about the time Hero and Legend and Eidolon were scorching the whole town down to bedrock. He said he'd shot his captain when the man didn't climb the ladder to the chopper fast enough. I'm still surprised he didn't end up behind bars."

"It was a rough time," Renick observed; a rare understatement for the man. "He knows capes, I'll say that much. But is he on the money about the Real Thing?"

Emily was tempted to just take the report at face value. The Wards could use every cape they could get, and the Real Thing at least pretended to try to be heroes. Two things stopped her from doing just that: there was no actual proof (yet) … and she didn't actually trust Calvert.

"I have no idea," she prevaricated. "Wasn't Calvert on the short-list of consultants we thought might be trading info to the villains, a few months back?" They'd had to shelve the investigation when all the leads (and leaks) dried up, but they'd narrowed down the list of possibles to half a dozen. Unfortunately, all the evidence had been circumstantial, which meant the whole thing could've been sheer bad luck on the PRT's part … but Emily didn't believe in bad luck.

"I seem to recall that being the case, yes." Renick frowned. "You suspect that he's not on the level with this?"

"I suspect that someone like Calvert will do what is best for Calvert first, and the PRT a very distant second." She tapped her desk with a fingertip, thinking. "Get back to him. Tell him that any evidence of wrongdoing by the Real Thing is high priority. Even if it's flimsy. Anything's better than nothing, and so forth. Let him think that we're eager to go after them."

He looked puzzled for a second, then his expression cleared. "Ah. I see. I think I see. You want to find out if he's willing to fabricate evidence to bring them down?"

Emily nodded. "If he's our leak, then he's probably got a stake in villains being able to do their thing. The Real Thing threatens that." It made sense in her head, anyway.

"Understood." From the look on his face, Renick seemed to think so as well. "I'll get right on it."

He hustled back through the door and shut it behind him. Breathing deeply, Emily leaned back in her chair and stretched. Brockton Bay was a long way from being perfect, but it was her city, dammit.

I pull the strings around here, Calvert. Not you.

<><>​

Coil

Thomas Calvert stood up from the laptop and walked to the window. The safehouse that he'd acquired wasn't nearly as big and secure as the base he'd failed to get, but at least it was four walls and a roof over his head. Looking out over the street, he watched people go by on their business and his palms itched with the need for control. Control over his own career, control over those little people, to use and discard as he saw fit on his inexorable rise to the top. Control over everything he surveyed.

His own rise to power had yet to start. He'd come to Brockton Bay thinking that Cauldron would at least give him a little assistance in setting up as a mastermind villain, but … nothing. Worse, the local PRT were sharp. Nothing he couldn't handle, of course, but it was … problematic.

The one time he'd tried to assemble a team of patsies, they'd split off on their own before he had time to really cement his hold over them, and now they were doing well on their own as an independent villain team. Was that honestly fair? In his view, they owed him for the impetus of getting them together, but at the very most, all they were willing to do was pay him for the use of his power. And they'd even refused this last job from him.

He'd gotten sick and tired of Tattletale's smart mouth once upon a time, and he'd tried tracking her down. He'd intended to either beat her bloody or even abduct her to use as a pet oracle, he couldn't remember which now, but she'd out-thought him and he'd been intercepted by Grue and Bitch. That had been one timeline he'd been glad to discard.

But now the Real Thing were encroaching on crime in Brockton Bay. He didn't want to be next, so he'd told the PRT that they were behind the Winslow incident. There was no evidence, of course, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that they were looking at the Real Thing rather than at him; he hadn't forgotten the scrutiny after the idiot villains he'd sold information to got a little clumsy with it.

And after that, once they inevitably screwed up, he'd be the man of the hour. He was well able to parlay that into more and more influence as he went along. All he needed was a starting point.

He'd rule this city yet. He could feel it.

<><>​

Taylor

"Well," I said, looking out over the city from the deck of the Gatekeeper. Perched on a derelict winch, I had a pita wrap in my hand. "I think that definitely went okay."

"It did," Madison agreed. Her armour was partly folded up, on standby, and she'd set it to sweeping the area in case anyone came too close. She was currently sitting cross-legged on top of it, with a sandwich and a juice popper. "Thanks for giving me a proper chance at Hookwolf."

I shrugged. "Thanks for softening up Lung for me."

Emma, sitting at the far end of the same winch—it was a big winch—turned toward me. "Thanks for trusting us, and okaying the fight. We totally kicked ass."

I eyed the bruises and bandages on her arms; I knew there were more on her legs. "Oni Lee tagged you a few times. I didn't think that was possible."

"Sometimes you've got to take the hit," she said off-handedly. "When you're going up against a teleport-spammer, you either play defense or you play offense. Playing offense meant I had to take a few glancing blows, but I got the collar on him before he could realise how badly it was going and make a run for it. And after that … well, he's actually fairly crap at fighting once you take away the teleport schtick."

"And you'll be okay for school on Monday." It wasn't a question; I already knew how fast she mended from cuts and bruises.

She grinned, her teeth very white in the dimness, and toasted me with her iced coffee. "Totally."

We fell silent, then, looking out at the city. There would be obstacles in the future, I had no doubt. But we were coming together as a team.

So far, so good.



End of Part Twenty-Four

 

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-Five: Fame and Notoriety

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

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♦ Topic: The Real Thing Just Got Real
In: Boards ► News ► Events ► America ► Brockton Bay

Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On Sep 17th 2010:

Hey, y'all.

If you, like me, have been following the news on the cape scene from Brockton Bay recently, you probably would've heard about this new group calling themselves the Real Thing (actually, can anyone help me out? Is the 'the' supposed to be capitalized, or left as lower case? It's just that I've seen both.)

It's common knowledge that new cape teams start up all the time. Statistics show that about 75% of them fold in the first six months due to: irreconcilable differences, creepy crushes, one or more members turning villain (I shit you not, I've seen that happen on at least two occasions), someone getting pregnant, someone being transferred out of town, incompatible work schedules, members being recruited into bigger teams, members joining the Protectorate or Wards, members being arrested by the PRT, accidentally outing themselves on live TV, the team screwing up and being sued, a key member being injured or killed, or bringing on a new member who totally dismantles the team dynamic (take your pick). And don't even get me started about obsessed villainous stalkers.

Suffice to say, if you don't have powers out there and you think your life is hectic, imagine it with a whole other level of chaos introduced by having the ability to generate rocket flight via extreme amounts of flatulence, or some other shade of weirdness. Then imagine four or five people, each of whom has their own personal brand of fuck-my-life looming over them, trying to make it all work as a team.

Let's just say, I have nothing but respect for the ones who do make it work, and even more admiration for the ones who have one (or more) of the above things happen and *still* manage to make it work. I mean, it's true that New Wave rode out the whole 'Panacea healing for money' thing pretty smoothly, but it could've gone a lot worse.

But anyway, we were talking about the Real Thing.

They first hit the news with a membership consisting of Shadow Stalker (Breaker/Stranger/Mover edgelord with crossbows), Firebird (extremely athletic combat Thinker with bouncy throwing discs) and Blockade (Tinker with the apparent specialization "Bulky and tough". He apparently makes and uses a nigh-unbreakable metal called--get this--'good steel'.)

For their first outing, they engaged and took down the Merchants, a sort-of gang of drug-dealing capes and other misfits who only hold (or rather, held) the territory nobody else wanted. They managed this without getting hurt or seriously hurting any of the Merchants, which brought them to the attention of the PRT.

The next time they really got the PRT's attention was when Shadow Stalker (who was reportedly never too stable at the best of times) went nuts and tried to murder a random civilian, literally invading his home in the middle of the night. Firebird and Blockade saved him and chased her off, possibly with the assistance of a new cape called Monochrome (details are sketchy). The next time they clashed with Shadow Stalker, she was successfully captured. Monochrome appears to have since taken over leadership of the group.

Despite its tumultuous beginning, this new incarnation of the Real Thing absolutely seems to be THE Real Thing. Just this afternoon, in an encounter that was as swift as it was brutal, the Real Thing intervened in an ABB vs Empire 88 free for all. Teamwork makes the dream work, and they showed that in spades. Blockade smashed Lung into the dirt, then beat on Hookwolf like Hooky owed him money. Monochrome KO'd Fenja and Menja, then choked Lung into unconsciousness. And Firebird took Crusader and Rune out of the fight, then went toe-to-toe with Oni Lee and handily defeated him.

There's no footage of the Firebird/Oni Lee bout, but the official PRT release of the Lung and Hookwolf takedowns can be found [here]. Be aware: there are NO punches pulled. None.

So what's next for our up and coming team? With a showing like that, the PRT and Protectorate have *got* to be trying to figure out how to recruit them into the Wards (for Monochrome and Firebird) and the Protectorate (for Blockade). Firebird and Blockade have made their mark in no uncertain terms, and Monochrome kinda pulled off the impossible when she choked out Lung, just saying.

I will absolutely be watching their respective careers with interest.


(Showing page 1 of 73)

►74Hyper
Replied On Sep 17th 2010:
Looks like Lung and Hookwolf fucked around and found out.

►ChaosGhost
Replied On Sep 17th 2010:
*contented sigh* It's far more cathartic than I'd expected to see Lung getting his ass beat by a twig of a girl.

►RobertTheBarbarian
Replied On Sep 17th 2010:
After seeing this 'good steel' in action, I'm not actually going to argue with the name.

►OakRidgeEnergyGuy
Replied On Sep 17th 2010:
Well. *That* happened.
Curbstomp song, anyone?

►AuthorialInterjection
Replied On Sep 17th 2010:
@ChaosGhost - From the visible shockwaves on that footage, I think Lung might dispute the 'twig of a girl' comment. Just saying.

►BurningSpikyBush
Replied On Sep 17th 2010:
There's three of them, and they're pretty damn effective. Next gen Triumvirate, maybe?

►OminousKitten
Replied On Sep 17th 2010:
@ChaosGhost - For me it was Hookwolf getting ragdolled by Blockade. I will buy that guy a drink any day of the week.

►RabidVader
Replied On Sep 17th 2010:
This is both good and bad. Good because they have curtailed both the Empire and the ABB but now the ABB is capeless and the Empire will definitely take advantage of the situation and will also be gunning for The Real Thing as payback for loosing four (or five? couldn't tell) capes.

►BrickFrog
Replied On Sep 17th 2010:
So, did nobody else notice the way they glossed over how Shadow Stalker just 'went nuts' and attacked a civilian? I mean, she's always been a bit rough around the edges, but theres a long step between tthat and attacking some rando in his house. So Im thinking theres more to this story.
Also, I heard a rumor online that the Real Thing are the ones who totaled Winslow. Is anyone even looking into that?
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End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 71, 72, 73

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<><>​

Tattletale

Lisa sighed and leaned back from the laptop. With a groan, she closed her eyes and rubbed her thumb and forefinger over them. She didn't have a huge baseline to work with regarding the Real Thing, but her power seemed to think that both of BrickFrog's allegations had merit. Which was hilariously ironic, because she was also sure that the guy was just being a concern troll.

A meme she'd read awhile ago popped up in her mind.

Remember, before the internet, how people thought the cause of stupidity was not having access to information?

Yeah. It wasn't that.

The meme was all too accurate. Idiots with access to the internet were still idiots. They just had the opportunity to spread their stupidity around. Lisa didn't know if any members of the Real Thing were computer experts, though if anyone was, the combat Thinker and the Tinker were the two best bets.

However, she was reasonably certain that if anyone started harassing them online (because idiots did that sort of thing, especially to new heroes who'd just pulled off major coups) they might just end up regretting it. She was also quite aware of the reasoning behind the PRT's current softly-softly attitude toward the villains of Brockton Bay. So long as everyone played by the rules (mainly unwritten) and pretended it was a big game of cops and robbers, Director Piggot wouldn't have to bring out the heavy artillery.

The last time the Empire had gone too far and she'd had to put her foot down, Purity, Night and Fog had been caught up in the sweep when the Triumvirate came to town (this had been just after Legend stepped down from active membership with the original Protectorate). Since then, everyone had kept their heads down and played nice … for the most part.

However, tensions had been bubbling under the surface, as evidenced by Lung's push following the capture of Cricket and Stormtiger by the Real Thing, and the daytime battle royale between the ABB and the Empire when the latter pushed back. While the loss of four more capes would hurt the Empire badly, the ABB had been totally cleaned out of cape leadership, leaving it in an extremely precarious position.

Lisa was pretty sure she had the world's smallest violin around somewhere, if she ever felt the need to play "Cry Me a River" on it.

None of this made her any more likely to take up Coil's job offer. The fact that the Undersiders stood little chance of actually defeating the Real Thing in a toe-to-toe brawl was immaterial: they didn't do fights like that if they could help it. Sneaking out the back door ten minutes before the heroes kicked in the front door, that was more their style.

Brian was good, but he wasn't as good as Firebird's power allowed her to be. Lisa mentally dubbed the redhead's fighting style 'Hollywood Martial Arts' and left it at that. The only member of the Undersiders who had a reasonable chance of standing up to any of the Real Thing was Alec, and that was only because he could manipulate their nervous systems (not that he'd last long with all three of them on his case). He certainly wouldn't retain his sceptre more than two seconds after Firebird decided it was dangerous; her mastery of those thrown discs was the best Lisa had ever seen for someone who wasn't using powers to guide them.

Long story short, if the Real Thing ever set their sights on the Undersiders, there was only one possible outcome, and it wouldn't be the Undersiders walking free. However, Lisa figured that they had a potential way out. So far, the Real Thing had targeted groups (she wouldn't go so far as to call the Merchants an actual gang) that preyed on innocent civilians. The Merchants, the Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB had all hurt people in one way or another. Protection money, drugs, car theft and so on.

In direct contrast, the Undersiders had never even considered dealing drugs. (Well, Alec had suggested it once, but she was pretty sure he was joking). Their strengths lay in smash-and-grab robberies, and daring escapes from the heroes. They were almost popular, as villains went, to the point that there was an (unofficial) fan website about them.

All of which meant that if they kept their heads down and played their cards right, there was no reason for the Real Thing to come down on them like Blockade had come down on Lung. In any case, Lisa fully expected Director Piggot to call the Real Thing in at some point, to explain the facts of life in Brockton Bay. If that meant the Undersiders had to hold off operations for a week or two, Lisa was perfectly willing to sit back and do nothing for that time. Brian would probably appreciate the chance to spent quality time with Aisha (when he wasn't working out; that boy redefined 'gym rat'), Rachel would care for her dogs, and Alec … would probably play his console games and snark at his fans on the website.

The hidden upside of the advent of the Real Thing, she mused, was that the asshole villains were drawing fire and being cleared out. She had no doubt that Kaiser would take offence at being deprived of four more of his capes, but there were few real powerhouses among the ones he had left. If he was smart, he'd hold back, consolidate and make plans.

His two big strengths were his charisma and the fact that there were always more racist asshole capes out there. Most of the members of the Empire Eighty-Eight had been invited to Brockton Bay from outside; some stayed, some were captured, and some left again after finding out how much of a controlling asshole he was in person. But the pool of potential recruits was deep; just a little patience would allow him to rebuild his forces and pose more of a deterrent to the Real Thing.

It was honestly the smart thing to do, but Lisa had her doubts.

<><>​

Kaiser

Max Anders held the heavy lead-crystal glass in a white-knuckled grip. Had it been any more fragile, it would've splintered within his grasp. His red-rimmed eyes stared at the other five capes in the room. "What do you mean, we can't break them out?"

Victor fielded that one. "We're lacking the inside men. The last time we broke Hookwolf out of a transport, the PRT went through their own ranks with a fine-tooth comb. I'm not sure if they brought in Thinkers from out of town or if Armsmaster built something, but either way they blew the cover clear off every one of our moles. We're blind in there. Our only consolation is that they got the ABB moles as well, so Lung's going to the Birdcage for good."

"And so is Hookwolf," Kaiser gritted. "It used to be a point of pride that we'd never let him go to the Birdcage. But because of two teenage girls and whoever Blockade is inside that damn suit, we've lost half our number for the duration, and one of our best is going away for good."

"I still think you should've sent me in," Alabaster interjected. "I could've taken Firebird, easy."

Victor shook his head. "No, you couldn't. I tried pulling her skills, but they didn't go down. It was like she was re-learning them instantly. And they were perfect. The best possible application of strength and leverage for her height and weight. No hesitation, no tells, no holes in her style, perfect timing. The way she bounced that disc in through Rune's debris field—"

"That was just pure bullshit!" Rune had a cold compress held to the back of her head, where the disc had bounced off after knocking Crusader cold. She'd been dazed, but had retained just enough of her faculties to get the piece of sidewalk to the ground and stagger off. "I can't believe that bitch caught it again!"

"As I said," Victor explained imperturbably. "Perfect skills. Firebird has the capabilities of someone who's spent a lifetime learning every possible martial art and acrobatic skill to perfection, in the body of someone who's just coming into their physical prime. She's only going to get better at it. Beating her skills in hand to hand is simply impossible."

"So fuckin' what?" Alabaster possibly rolled his eyes, though with his physiology, it was hard to tell. "She punches me or kicks me, I get straight back up. She'll get tired. I won't."

"It takes you four point three seconds to reset." Victor raised his eyebrows. "She will have that timing down pat in the first fifteen seconds, and she'll have a strategy to beat you in the first thirty. If, for instance, she punches your brain out through the other side of your skull just after you reset, I cannot guarantee your survival."

This was going nowhere. Max waved his glass irritably. "Yes, we get it. She's very good. What about the other two?" Taking up the bottle of bourbon, he poured himself some and took a sip.

Victor shrugged. "Blockade's tech is extremely durable. The first time he encountered Hookwolf and Stormtiger, he fought them both at the same time, beat Stormtiger, and Hookwolf retreated in disorder. He was apparently irritated at Hookwolf being a 'pussy little coward', as he told the PRT troopers who showed up, and he was determined to not let him get away again. Thus, the beating."

Alabaster sneered. "Every battlesuit's got a weak point. The tougher they look, the faster they come apart when you stick a screwdriver in the right spot, and twist."

"Hookwolf has fought people in power armour before," Victor replied patiently. "He knows how to go up against battlesuits. He said that nothing he tried the first time worked, and that was with Stormtiger running interference. Even the things that look like weak points—those hoses on the arms and legs—just shoot out steam but don't slow it down."

"And we know it can fly and packs a punch, yes." Max took another sip. "And Monochrome?"

Victor hesitated for a moment. "We actually know the least about her. All I can really nail down is that she's an Alexandria-scale Brute, at least for strength and possibly for durability as well. Nobody else can hit that hard, or get that close to Lung while he's still on fire. I strongly suggest that nobody here gets within arm's reach of her."

Max nodded. He agreed with the analysis: as satisfying as it had been to see Lung get choked out by someone Rune's age, the sheer strength required to compress that tree-trunk neck with absolutely zero available leverage was more than slightly chilling. "Ways to take her down?"

"No idea." Victor shrugged. "She had to have been inhaling superheated air, that close to Lung, so I doubt gas is going to do much to her." He gave Alabaster a severe look. "And no, you can't take her either. That girl could crush your skull like a grape by accident."

Krieg stirred for the first time. "So, what is our strategy to be? Hold back and allow the heat to die down, then move into ABB turf? Attempt to break out Hookwolf and the others before they are transported out of town? Punitive strike on the Real Thing? Build our numbers up again by recruiting from out of town?"

"I'm not comfortable with a punitive strike," Othala said. "The only one of the three we're likely to be able to hurt is Firebird, and then we'd have Blockade and Monochrome gunning for us, and I personally don't want to be the target of someone who could slap Hookwolf around like a street bum or squeeze Lung's neck until his eyes pop out."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Alabaster growled. "They put one of ours in the Birdcage, we put one of theirs in the hospital. It sends a message. Don't fuck with the Empire."

Victor was already shaking his head. "A month ago, we could've sent that message with a reasonable level of impunity. Right now, we're down to six capes. That's nowhere near enough muscle to make it stick."

"We're down to six capes because of them!" Alabaster shouted. "A month ago, we didn't need to send the message!"

Max finished the glass then put it down. He clapped his hands once, drawing the attention of both Victor and Alabaster. "I agree with both of you."

Both capes stared at him, along with the rest of the depleted Empire Eighty-Eight. Victor was the first to find his voice. "… what?"

"The Real Thing, no matter what else they've done, are a clear and present danger to the Empire Eighty-Eight," Max decreed. "Taking down everyone they have may have been more a matter of opportunity than design, but there's nothing to stop them from setting their sights on the rest of us, here in this room. Does anyone disagree?"

He knew that people found it easier to say 'yes' than 'no', especially to an authority figure, so it wasn't much of a surprise when they all stayed quiet. After a moment, Rune put her hand up as though she were in class. "This is starting to sound like you wanna go after them."

As Victor began to open his mouth—both to agree and to object, most likely—Max nodded. "Very perceptive. We need to do that. But we must be smart about it. A head-to-head challenge? Not smart. Forewarned, any of them could beat any of us in a straight fight, or at least avoid us and bring in a heavier hitter."

Krieg frowned. "I'm not sure where you're going with this. You wish to challenge them without challenging them?"

"No." Max shook his head. "We don't attack them directly. We find out who they are. We find out their secrets. And we neutralise them that way."

Othala's expression was extremely dubious. "Are you saying 'neutralise' as in murdering them out of costume, or as in using the information to blackmail them into standing down?"

Max knew where she was coming from. Years before, a teenage prospect had murdered Fleur of New Wave, then spent a few years in the juvenile system before being released at eighteen and joining the Empire Eighty-Eight. Some had apparently expected him to condemn the little punk for attacking her out of costume, but Fleur had revealed her own identity to the world; what had she honestly expected would happen?

"That depends on what kind of information we find," he decided. "If it lends itself more toward directing their attention away from us, then of course we'll do that." It wasn't nearly as cut and dry as he made it sound; should the opportunity arise to dispose of one or more of the irritating heroes, then he would probably take it. "But if things go the other way … we'll do what we need to, in order to protect the Empire. Am I making myself clear?" For her sake, she needed to understand. He wasn't about to let anyone—cape or otherwise, hero or otherwise—stand in the way of saving his team.

Victor took her hand and murmured to her. She nodded; reluctantly, if he was any kind of judge. But now he had her agreement, which was good enough for the moment.

"I'm guessing you'll be wanting me to tail them," Victor said to Max. It wasn't exactly a brilliant deduction.

Max nodded. "We're going to be slowing down activities until I can bring more people in, but in the meantime it won't hurt to let them think they're winning. So when we locate them out and about, you move in and see what information you can gather."

Victor nodded. "Got it."

Max leaned back in his chair, reaching for the bottle once more. It was time for another drink; this time, a celebratory one. The Empire had fallen on hard times, but they'd pull through. As always.

<><>​

Monday morning, September 20, 2010

Taylor

I wasn't used to the bus line that took me to Arcadia, but it was far better than the Winslow line, wholly and solely because it didn't go to Winslow. The paperwork to get the Winslow students shuffled into other schools had gone through in its usual timely fashion (that is, not) but I'd gotten my application approved faster than most. So had Emma and Madison, which was good; this way, I got to keep an eye on them in school as well as out.

Not that I actually expected them to backslide at this point. Both of them had impressed me with their dedication in undoing all the crap they'd ever pulled on me at Winslow (and occasionally outside it). But I'd said that I was going to keep an eye on them, so that was what I was going to do.

"So, have you seen the PHO boards since the Lung and Hookwolf takedown?" asked Madison, who was wearing jeans, a sensible top and blue jacket instead of the cutesy sleeveless blouse and short denim skirt she'd affected at Winslow. She'd even had her hair cut relatively short, possibly because droplets of molten metal weren't kind to long hair.

While she no longer radiated the level of cuteness that had once made everyone want to pick her up and squeeze her, I appreciated her new air of dependability. People still wouldn't suspect her of being Blockade, but I suspected she'd be taken a lot more seriously than she had been before.

Emma grinned, and I could tell that (like me) she'd noted Madison's choice of words. There was nothing there to make anyone suspect us in the matter. "Hell, yeah," she agreed. "That whole thread is insane. People love the Real Thing, alright." She paused for a moment in thought. "Well, they'll be loved until they put a foot wrong. People also love dumping on a disgraced hero."

Like Madison, she was less flamboyant than she had been before. She hadn't gone so far as to get her hair cut, but gone were the upmarket blouses and notice-me jewellery. Her jacket and top were just loose enough to hide her newfound ripped status, and her jeans would allow her to put her foot above her head without noticeable effort. I knew this because I'd seen her do it. She was less vain these days and more centred, with an air of quiet competence.

I leaned back in my seat. Arcadia was visible out the window now; we'd be disembarking from the bus in the next few minutes, and it was unlikely that we'd get much chance to speak freely until lunchtime. "Well, then," I said. "They'd probably better make sure they don't then."

Emma and Madison met my gaze, and nodded in unison.



End of Part Twenty-Five

 

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-Six: In the Crosshairs

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

Taylor

We met for lunch out in the courtyard, between two wings of the main building. The cafeteria had seemed very clean and orderly when I saw it, but I wasn't quite ready to go in there yet. Emma and Madison were willing to take my lead on the matter, so we found a picnic-style table under a shade tree.

Emma looked around after we'd sat down. "Wow, this is nice. Good call coming out here, Taylor."

I wasn't quite sure if she was being one hundred percent genuine or if she was just trying to pay off some small part of the unpleasantness she'd visited on me before Sophia acquired the vials, but I decided not to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. "Thanks. It is kind of pretty out here. And I haven't seen one bit of graffiti."

Madison nodded. "I know, right? And the soda vending machines actually work. So do the security cameras."

Neither of which we'd had at Winslow, at least in a working state. Soda machines had been relentlessly vandalised to get at the drinks or the coin storage, and security cameras were invariably wrecked within days (or hours) of being installed. To be attending a school with both was a whole new experience.

"Y'know," drawled Emma, "I'm beginning to think of how Winslow got totalled less and less as matter of destruction of property, and more as a public service to everyone who was attending there."

"It was still a criminal act, of course." I said that as deadpan as I knew how, mainly to reassure the others that I wasn't going to be jumping directly into supervillainy and dragging them with me.

"Oh, totes," Madison agreed, in that same inflection-free tone. At the same time, she rolled her eyes expressively. "Mind you, there's a Faraday cage around the whole building; did you know that?"

"So nobody can browse their phone during class?" I mimed shock, spreading my hand over my heart. "I am thoroughly mortified at the utter lack of respect for teenage rights."

Emma smirked. "Says the girl who doesn't own a phone."

I wrinkled my nose at her. "And you not being able to look up PHO when you're bored in class is my fault how?"

All three of us grinned. The joke was that we all knew damn well how it was my fault, but not one of us was actually going to put a name to the elephant in the room.

"Y'know," Madison mused. "I bet Blockade could build a phone capable of getting through a Faraday cage."

"Ah, yes," Emma countered, "but would it be man-portable?"

She had an extremely valid point. I could totally see any communications device Madison constructed being able to defeat a Faraday cage, quite possibly by melting the wires forming the barrier. However, while such a phone would probably be able to be carried by one person, it would likely need to be lugged around in a backpack.

The thing was, I didn't need a device that could that. If I ended up acquiring a cell phone for use as Monochrome, I just wanted one that made calls and accepted them. Also, text messages.

"For a given definition of the phrase, yes," Madison retorted, confirming my inner suspicions. Loftily ignoring our knowing smirks, she pulled out her own phone and started it up. "But out here, we're good … huh."

Emma paused in the act of taking a bite out of her sandwich. "That didn't sound like a casual 'huh', Mads. What's up?"

Glancing from side to side discreetly, Madison lowered her voice and leaned in toward us. "There's a private message on PHO from the guy with Emma's favourite pointy stick, asking me if we can attend a sit-down meeting with his boss sometime in the next few days."

It took me a few seconds to parse that out. 'The guy with Emma's favourite pointy stick' had to be Armsmaster, and thus his boss was Director Piggot of the PRT. "Does he say why? Is there some sort of problem?"

Madison shook her head. "He does not. But that guy doesn't do subtle or misleading. If there was a problem, he wouldn't be asking. He'd be strongly advising."

"I agree," Emma said. "There's something going that she wants to talk to us about, and maybe clear up, before it gets to the status of 'official problem'."

"And the big question is, what could it be?" I frowned, trying to figure it out. "Sophia would've totally told them everything she knows about us. Think she went ahead and made up some lies, too?"

Emma and Madison glanced at each other, then they both nodded in unison. "Totally," Madison confirmed.

"In a heartbeat," Emma agreed. "Though she's not stupid. She'd spill everything she knew about us, then try to make up something that was at least mildly believable. To anyone who didn't know us now, anyway."

"Which means we've got to go in there and nip whatever plan she's got in the bud, doesn't it?" I grimaced. "I thought that once we put her away, she wouldn't be a problem anymore."

Madison raised her eyebrows. "You have met Sophia, right?"

She had a point, and I knew it. "Oh, ha ha," I grumbled. "You guys okay with going in after school?"

Emma flicked an almost imperceptible salute in my direction. "You're the boss."

And here I'd been thinking that was a good thing.

<><>​

Victor

It was a good restaurant in the nice part of town. The waitstaff knew their roles, and were appropriately grateful for a generous tip. While they weren't celebrating any particular occasion, he'd decided that taking Othala out for an early dinner would be a nice thing to do.

Just as he was starting on the main course, his phone buzzed. Ignoring the look of irritation on her face, he took the phone out and checked the screen. It was Kaminsky, one of his more dependable men. Swiping the 'answer' icon, he held the phone to his ear. "Speak."

"We just saw them, sir." Kaminsky didn't have to elaborate on who 'they' were. "Flying in to land on the roof of the PRT building. All three of them."

He loved it when a plan came together. "Good. As we discussed. Inform me of any issues." Ending the call, he slipped the phone away again.

The plan, once anyone saw them in the air or on the ground, was not to engage them. Instead, his men had been given orders to set up a cordon around the location where they had been seen, and then follow them as far as possible once they went on the move again. Each car had a driver, a spotter, and a coordinator; that way, nobody would be overwhelmed with what they had to do.

Whatever the Real Thing were doing at the PRT building, it surely would not be over in five minutes, or even fifteen. Therefore, he saw no need to rush. He smiled at Othala, who looked only slightly mollified that the call had been so short and the phone was back in his pocket. "So, you were saying?"

She didn't return the smile. "I wasn't saying anything, but I thought this was going to be 'us' time."

"I'm sorry." Dealing with unhappy women was more an art than a skill, but he knew enough to start apologising immediately. "It was that thing we were talking about before."

"I know what it was." Her tone had not yet thawed. "Couldn't you have let them pass it on to James or Max instead?"

He tried to go for 'conciliatory'. "Sweetheart, they've got their own things they're doing. This is what I'm handling. We've still got time to enjoy ourselves; I can't see anything happening for a while."

"Well … alright." She applied herself to her meal, but with a slight hitch to her eyebrow and flare of her nostrils that said he hadn't heard the last of this.

He sighed and took the first forkful of his own meal. I'll be so happy when we've got this sorted out and everything's back to normal.

<><>​

Coil

Thomas Calvert was not a happy man.

First, the Undersiders had turned down his job offer to get blackmail-worthy dirt on the Real Thing. It wouldn't have been cheap, but he'd learned long ago that genuine mud stuck far more thoroughly and did more damage than fake accusations. Unfortunately, it seemed every freelancer in the city had either seen the footage of the Lung/Hookwolf takedown, or had heard about it. All he had to do was merely mention the concept of gathering information on the Real Thing, and the call was as good as over.

It would also have been good if Piggot had just accepted his word that the Real Thing had had something to do with the destruction of Winslow High School. But she'd done the worst thing she could: she'd asked for evidence. If she'd just decided not to believe it, that would've been something he could roll with. "Okay, yeah, I was wrong." Then he could find something they'd actually done, and his plans would be on track again. But now he was stuck trying to make Tab A fit into Slot B, and they were totally different shapes.

Not helping in the slightest was the fact that Piggot's Internal Affairs department was actually on the damn ball. He'd thus far managed to escape their concentrated scrutiny, though he'd had a few close calls, such as when he nearly got caught selling sensitive information to both the Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB. Only his powers had prevented him from walking straight into no fewer than three separate sting operations; even though he'd avoided direct accusations, they'd been further up his ass than his proctologist for the next six months. The chances of setting up any moles in the building for getting him back-channel information had been slim to fuck-all.

In the absence of actual dirt, he was going to have to manufacture some. This wasn't something his powers were particularly useful for, though they made it relatively easy to present such dirt, changing tracks to most readily present it in a way that Piggot would swallow the story. He was just going to have to figure out how they could've done it, then 'find' some witnesses willing to say whatever he would pay them to say.

Firebird, he dismissed almost immediately. As athletic and hard-hitting as she evidently was—she'd made a mess of Oni Lee—punching out a school was unlikely to be her forte.

Monochrome was actually a more likely candidate; while he didn't necessarily subscribe to the popular theory that she was stronger than Alexandria, she was definitely no weakling. The sheer power with which she swung that staff, not to mention how she squeezed Lung's neck until he passed out, had a lot of people making a lot of wild-ass guesses online. But still, Thomas didn't really see it.

Winslow had been an entire high school, four stories high with a footprint covering several thousand square yards. To utterly demolish the structure as it was would've required her to repeatedly run through the entire building, punching support structures as she went. And it wouldn't have created the double booom that he (and half of Brockton Bay) had heard that night.

He wasn't trying to find reasons to excuse her, but he knew damn well that whatever story he came up with would be scrutinised to a fare-thee-well, so it needed to be internally consistent with the facts. So, while he had no doubt she was capable of punching through a brick wall, he didn't think anyone would believe that she'd demolished an entire school in a matter of seconds.

Which left Blockade as his fall guy.

Blockade was a Tinker, which was a point in his favour; Tinkers built the darnedest things. Even better, Blockade's tech was demonstrably bulky (which wasn't overly important), hard to break (a little more important) and powerful (absolutely important). A bomb might have been one way to do it (or rather, two bombs), except that Thomas had trouble envisaging a bomb that Blockade might build.

Instead of a bomb, he was thinking of a mechanical shockwave generator that, when activated, destroyed everything around it, but was itself left pristine. The first pulse to destabilise everything, and the second to shatter the entire school. It was actually (insofar as he was no expert on Tinkers and what they could build) quite feasible, and he took a moment to enjoy the amusement value of 'what if this is what actually happened?'

Moment over, he went back to being professional. Method, motive and opportunity: those were the three cornerstones of any criminal investigation. Blockade would've had method and opportunity nailed down, but what Thomas needed to establish was some kind of motive.

It would've helped to know who the guy was outside the suit, but he had zilch in that regard. However, he thought he knew how he could find out.

Shadow Stalker, the original third member of the Real Thing, had been arrested for attempted murder, and handed over to the authorities by her own teammates. Rumour had it that she was blabbing every secret they possessed—including, presumably, their secret identities—in order to try to get a more lenient deal from Piggot.

Thomas could've told her that she was betting on a dead horse there; as a measure of Director Emily Piggot's susceptibility to blandishments, the woman may as well have had a heart made of tungsten carbide and blood of liquid nitrogen. But if he could just get access to Shadow Stalker, he was sure she would tell all to a sympathetic ear.

Unfortunately, said access was being very tightly controlled, almost certainly because of her attempts to betray her ex-teammates' secrets. The consequences for sneaking in were bound to be extreme.

Thomas smiled. Evading extreme consequences were his very bread and butter.

<><>​

Taylor

I could've let go the handle on the back of Madison's power armour and dropped to the roof of the PRT building from basically any height, but I decided not to. Showboating was probably not the best way to start off this meeting with Director Piggot. And so, Emma and I waited until Madison was dropping the last foot or so, then stepped off in unison. Our feet hit the rooftop at the same time as the suit's boots did; dramatic and coordinated, but not showboating as such.

At least, I hoped it wouldn't be seen that way.

I saw Director Piggot standing under the shelter of a pavilion that had been set up in front of the roof entry, flanked by Armsmaster and a couple of PRT troopers. The latter were probably just there for show, but that was fine. Armsmaster appeared to be his usual stolid self, and Director Piggot just looked like a soldier in a business suit. The discreet medal ribbons merely added to the impression; although she was solidly built and might not have been quite as fit as when she last wore a uniform, I suspected there was more muscle than fat under there.

"Hello again, Director," I said, approaching them. "You wanted to meet?"

"I did, yes." If her steel-grey eyes had been any more penetrating, I would've suspected her of having powers. "I appreciate the timely response. We have three options from here, as Blockade's armour is manifestly incapable of taking either the elevator or the stairs to my office. The first is to hold the meeting right here. The second is for Blockade to participate remotely." She paused expectantly, evidently waiting for us to fill in the third option for ourselves.

"And the third option is for me to step out of my armour and come on down to your office without it." Madison didn't sound surprised. "I'm guessing Shadow Stalker already blabbed who I am to all and sundry?"

"She attempted to do so, yes," Armsmaster confirmed. "She's currently under secure holding, and everyone who will be coming within earshot of her signs an NDA first. No uncleared personnel in that area."

"So you know, and the Director knows. How about these two faceless minions here?" Madison gestured to the troopers.

"Lieutenant Harvey and Captain Rogan have both been hand-picked by me, and have signed the NDA," Director Piggot said. "If you choose to vacate your armour, they will guard it until you return."

"You've put a lot of prep into this meeting," Emma observed. "Do you bend over this far backward for every hero who shows up for a chat?"

"No, but the way you handled Hookwolf, Lung and Oni Lee got my attention." Director Piggot's tone was as deadpan as her expression. "Antagonising you would not be in the best interests of the PRT, and I do believe we need to have this meeting."

"Well, you've convinced me." Madison's suit tromped inside the pavilion then went to a kneeling position. As the troopers pulled the cover across the opening, the front of the suit opened up and she climbed out. Director Piggot handed me a domino mask, but when I turned toward Madison, she was already wearing one. She grinned at whatever expression she saw on our faces. "What? I figured this might happen, so I came prepared."

As she stepped away from the suit, it folded up into its compact metal-box form, shimmered slightly, and took on the appearance of a wooden crate with metal bands padlocked around it. A black and yellow sticker with the words TOP SECRET KEEP OUT was plastered across the front.

"So I see." Director Piggot nodded to the two PRT men, and gestured toward the elevator. "If you would come this way?"

<><>​

Armsmaster

Finding out that Blockade was indeed a petite teenage girl was still something Colin was having trouble getting his head around. Certainly, Shadow Stalker had told the Director (and thus, him) everything she could in an attempt to mitigate her own punishment, but there was knowing something and then there was knowing. His mental image of the Tinker, right up until the front of the suit opened and she stepped out, had been of a brother in arms, perhaps of a similar age, one with similar life experiences. Alas, it was not to be; while he could still collaborate with her, it would never quite be the same.

He was still working on regaining his mental equilibrium when they entered the Director's office. Three chairs had been set up in a row; by wordless agreement, Firebird and Monochrome took the outer chairs, flanking the now-vulnerable Blockade. Piggot herself sat down behind her desk, leaving Colin to take up his customary place alongside the desk.

Piggot laced her hands together and looked at the three teenage heroes. "To risk a cliché, you're probably wondering why I requested your presence here today."

Monochrome nodded. "We were, kind of. Is it something we've done, or something you'd like us to do or not do in the future?"

"It's all of the above, but not in the way you think." Director Piggot paused for a beat, perhaps to gather her thoughts. Colin knew what was going on, of course, but this was the Director's show. He was merely there to emphasise that the Protectorate was in the loop about what was happening.

"So, what is it that we're supposed to have done?" asked Firebird. "And who's levelled the accusation? Because if it's any kind of legal issue, we are going to get a lawyer in on this before we say anything else."

Director Piggot shook her head. "There have been no credible allegations of wrongdoing. I've asked you here to speak about the gang situation. Specifically, how you very convincingly took down three extremely dangerous cape villains and made it look easy."

The three girls shared a look of confusion, then Monochrome spoke. "I don't follow."

"And here's where it gets problematic." The Director sighed. "Understand that this is not a dressing-down. I am not yelling at you for being heroes and defeating villains. It's more or less your function in society, while in costume. However, there are issues at stake that you would not—could not—have been aware of before you did this."

There was a pause, then Firebird spoke up cautiously. "What kind of issues?"

"Underworld issues. Crime issues. City issues." Director Piggot half-turned and gestured at the polarised window behind her. "When I stepped into this position ten years ago, cape gangs were on the rise, and general crime with them. It wasn't entirely a failing of the city; outside pressures were mounting, and it was bad everywhere. However, in the interim, I've made progress. The Empire Eighty-Eight, even before your encounters with them, were at the lowest ebb of membership they'd been for my entire tenure. Their non-cape membership is down, as is that of the ABB."

Blockade spoke for the first time. "But they still exist, and so did the Merchants and ABB until we took them down."

"This is true. They do." The Director nodded to acknowledge the point. "However, I have been working to starve them of willing recruits, hitting their stash houses, and in general making it harder to turn an easy profit. And each time the gangs—well, in this case, the Empire—have tried to push back, I've gotten assistance from out of town. The Triumvirate are very useful in that regard."

Firebird's expression and tone were that of enlightenment. "You're throttling crime in Brockton Bay. Making it so that cape villains can't make a dishonest living here."

Director Piggot's expression became a very brief smile, showing more teeth than the average. "Precisely."

"But where do we come into this?" asked Monochrome. "We just captured a bunch of villains. Doesn't that help you out?"

"As I have mentioned, the act itself was laudable." The Director tilted her head toward them. "But in the bigger picture, especially if you went after other high-profile villains, it could end up being disruptive. I've been boiling the frog, making it more and more difficult by degrees, so that one day they look around and it's no longer viable to be a villain in my city. You just shook everything up, and villains who are shaken up are unpredictable."

"But in the meantime with your softly-softly approach, people are still suffering from crime," Blockade protested. "Why shouldn't we just capture all the villains we can?"

"There are two very good reasons." Director Piggot held up two fingers. "First, there is a shared illusion which I am carefully fostering, that the cape scene in this city is not unlike a game of 'cops and robbers'. There are rules, or so they think. A cape is captured, he goes away, breaks out of holding, and ends up back on the streets. But he also doesn't go after the civilian identities of heroes, and we don't do the same with villains. Everyone plays nice with each other, which also means that civilians on the street are safer overall."

"They weren't being very safe with that fight," Monochrome observed.

"No, you're right. They were pushing too hard. Note that we will not be letting them get broken out of holding. All three are Birdcage bound." The Director's expression was one of harsh satisfaction. "However, with three major villains captured all at once, the others may well be wondering if the 'rules' are still in effect. And some may just decide to drop them altogether."

"Understood," said Firebird. "So, what's the second reason?"

Director Piggot leaned back in her chair. "Tell me something: have you ever heard of the Boston Games?"

Again, the three girls shared a look of mutual incomprehension. Monochrome spoke for all three. "I haven't, and don't think they have either."

"Not totally surprising. It was a few years ago, and only really got a lot of attention in cape and cape-adjacent circles." The Director steepled her fingers before her. "The heroes and PRT in Boston managed to capture or chase away essentially all cape villains, leaving a vacuum behind. Other villains came in to take their places almost immediately, and there was a lot of upheaval. People got hurt. People died. I don't want that happening in my city."

Firebird nodded. "Which is what's going to happen if we clear them out before they're ready to go themselves."

"Correct." Director Piggot gave her an approving nod. "If the last villains to leave or get captured do so because the underworld here is no longer receptive to supervillain gangs, I will have succeeded. If I try to rush matters, I'll just be sending out an invitation to every villain without a city to come on in, the water's fine. I don't want that happening."

"And so, you're telling us that you'd like us to do … what? Back off a little?" Monochrome tilted her head. "Not to push so hard?"

"Essentially, yes." The Director narrowed her eyes slightly. "You're not Protectorate, or even PRT affiliated, unless you choose to apply for either status. As such, I can't give you orders. However, I am perfectly allowed to make suggestions. Going after civilian crime is good. Stopping cape crime is also good; if they happen to get away, the inference will be that you're now playing by the 'rules'."

"But we shouldn't be capturing them?" Firebird's lips pressed together tightly. "I'm not sure I like the idea of just letting them escape."

"Oh, capture them by all means, if they're asking for it." Director Piggot gave a—for her—expansive wave of her hand. "Some, we'll hold on to. The harmless ones, we won't be so careful with. But not all of them will get away. As Blockade said: softly, softly."

"And like I said, people are still getting hurt while you're playing patty-cake." Blockade didn't sound angry, but she was definitely determined to get her point across.

"They would be getting hurt regardless," the Director reminded her. "If I weren't doing this the way I am, more people would be getting hurt and dying. Crime stats are the lowest they've been in years. It's working. We just need to avoid pushing too hard and upsetting the whole applecart at this juncture." She looked at the three teen heroes. "Do you understand now?"

Slowly, Monochrome nodded. "I think I do, yeah." She stood up. "Thanks for letting us know what's going on. We'll be in touch."

Firebird and Blockade also stood. "I am going to keep catching villains, just so you know," Blockade advised the Director.

"I would expect nothing less. Good day to you."

"I'll walk you to the roof," Armsmaster offered. Together, the four of them walked out.

<><>​

Director Emily Piggot, PRT

Emily leaned back in her chair after the door closed.

That went about as well as I'd hoped, she mused. I wonder which way they'll jump. Blockade seems very task-oriented, which doesn't surprise me.

Time, she figured, would tell.



End of Part Twenty-Six

 

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-Seven: Idiot's Gambit

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


Victor

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

"Speak," he ordered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Monochrome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Coil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Victor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Taylor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good."

<><>​

Coil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Muttering a curse, he dropped that timeline.

Okay, so a slightly different approach is required.

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

I'll try again tomorrow. Dammit.

<><>​

■

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


Hi, Director.

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

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

- Monochrome

■

<><>​

Deputy Director Renick

PRT Building ENE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, joy.



End of Part Twenty-Seven

 

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-Eight: Stupid Prizes

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


Later That Evening

Monochrome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Over Brockton Bay

Rune

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But still, she was bored. Bored. Booooooored.

<><>​

Coil

Suburbs, Safe Timeline

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

PRT Building, Throwaway Timeline

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

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

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

<><>​

Firebird

An Hour Later

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Stage two."

<><>​

Monochrome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Pfft. As if you can scare me by—"

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Rune

"What was that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Victor frowned, searching the skyline. "No."

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

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

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

<><>​

Throwaway Timeline

Coil

At last.

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Vince Foley, Empire Eighty-Eight Minion

"Hey, Vince."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Rune

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Throwaway Timeline

Coil

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

"Can I help you with something, sir?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Monochrome

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Victor

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Alabaster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Rune

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That didn't sound good. "Uh—"

"Pull it up! NOW!"

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

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

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

"Oh." Tammi didn't feel lucky.

<><>​

Coil

Throwaway Timeline

"Hello, Shadow Stalker."

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

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

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

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

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

Safe Timeline

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

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

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

Ex-Throwaway Timeline

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

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

This was supposed to be the throwaway timeline!

<><>​

Firebird

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Monochrome

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

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

Taylor jumped.

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

This was gonna be fun.



End of Part Twenty-Eight

 

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-Nine: Wake-Up Call

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


Director Emily Piggot, PRT

brrt brrt

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"Oh, for fuck's sake."

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"Renick, I swear to God …"

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beep

"Piggot."

"Emily, we have a situation."

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

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

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

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

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

"Master-stranger?"

"Affirmative."

"Understood."

<><>​

Monochrome

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Director Piggot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She nodded curtly. "Brief me."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Firebird

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<><>​

Director Piggot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



End of Part Twenty-Nine

 

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