Chapter 10- Wandering, thinking, and meeting
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
"Question?" Swarm asked lowly, crouching in the alleyway next to the two Pokemon.
"Yeah?"
"Where the hell are we?" She looked out the end of it, still under Eon's cloak, and up and down the street. "I don't think I've ever been here before."
"Really?" Eon raised an eyebrow at her, while Shadow fumbled with the latch on the bag. "Huh. I'd've thought you would've been around a lot of the city."
"Well, ok, maybe I have been here before, but I don't remember it. I wouldn't have a reason to come here as a kid, though maybe we drove through on the way somewhere else and I just can't remember." Swarm shrugged, crouching and holding the flap of the Treasure Bag open. Shadow gave her a thankful look, reaching in to grab the Wonder Map and roll it open. Eon caught the other end in his telekinesis and took it from her, holding it flat in the air as they all watched the clouds covering the edge of the Map- including the place they were at- fade away, new lines drawing around them to show the city.
"Ok, that's fine, not like we can't use the Map." Eon smiled up at her, then went back to the paper. "So, we're here… so, we leave this alley, turn left, then go down the street for a while, then left again into the next alley."
"Somer's Rock actually isn't as far away as I thought it would be." Shadow commented, as Eon rolled the Map up again and handed it to Swarm to put in the bag. "I mean, some place for Capes to meet up neutrally to talk? I'd have expected it to be, like, on the very edge of town, or something, just in case something goes really wrong and a fight happens."
"I think they rely on the hope that no-one wants to risk a fight in case they get banned from the pub." Swarm guessed. "Like we've said, Somer's Rock is the meeting place for Capes if they want to avoid a fight, so no-one wants to be known as 'the Cape that got banned from Somer's Rock' and they keep the peace instead." Then she shrugged. "Not sure, but that's what I'm going with."
"Fair enough. Back home, there's plenty of places with weird reasoning behind them, like the underground market in Newground- that's one of the villages, by the way, kind of far away from where we live but a nice place we stopped at on one really long mission outlaw-hunting- that had no reason to be there. It wasn't illegal, nothing strange was happening, and there was plenty of room to have the market on the surface around the edge of the village or something, but they just decided they wanted it below ground."
"That was a fun place, though." Shadow put in. "The lanterns looked really sweet. And it was mostly run by Pokemon that liked the dark, so in the end it worked out well."
"Your world sounds fun." Swarm said, smiling behind her mask.
"It could be, yeah. I mean, there's times it's terrifying, but mostly it's fun." The three of them went silent as they slipped out of the alleyway and into the crowd, Eon and Swarm standing close together to keep the cloak as small as possible while Shadow held onto her own cloak a little further ahead. Ducking into the next alley along, the Vulpix sighed.
"We're gonna be doing this a lot, aren't we? Why not just give Swarm the Map and let her guide us?"
"Because that makes far too much sense, and we still have basically three hours to get there, so we could just do whatever until then since we basically know where we're going." Swarm replied sarcastically, kneeling next to Eon to take the Map out of the bag again. "Alternatively, we just weren't thinking properly."
"Either-or." Eon flicked his tails in a shrug as she unrolled the Map, waiting a moment for the clouds to move again, then nodding.
"Ok, how're we doing the cloaks, then?" She checked. "Is Shadow doing her own one still but I'm walking in front with Eon, or…?"
"We'll all just stick together and I'll cloak the three of us. I don't think it'll be too hard, and besides that we're not going to be fighting once we get there, so a small headache from holding illusions too long won't be that bad."
"If you say so." Swarm looked back at the Map for a moment, then out of the alleyway. "Are we all cloaked?"
"Yeah." He nodded, focusing. Shadow pressed herself next to Eon's side to make it easier to hold the illusion together, and Swarm carefully silenced as many of her bugs as she could before taking a step forward, leading them around a corner and through the rest of the alleyway. The Wonder Map in her hands shimmered, slowly updating itself as they walked, the clouds moving back off the edges while lines appeared, and Taylor smiled.
This does make it a lot easier to find places. Now I just hope we're not so early that we have to spend three hours doing nothing waiting for Assault and whoever else to show up.
"Ok, right here, and I think this is it." Swarm muttered lowly to the two vulpines pressed next to her legs. They were in a mostly abandoned street anyway, so if the cloak fell apart it wouldn't be too big of an issue, but Eon wanted to keep it up until they were going into the meeting, since it was better to look around that way for them all.
"That's it?" Shadow looked up that the barely-legible, tattered sign on the small building. The outside was worn and miserable- not unlike a lot of the city, she thought sadly- but it didn't look too bad. It was unassuming, which Shadow hadn't expected from a building where Capes frequently visited.
Though it made sense, given that it was a neutral zone.
"Yeah, that's it, according to the Map." Swarm nodded, holding it out to show the little fox that the two badges were almost exactly across from each other. "If you'd like, you can take the Map and run over there under cloak to check."
"No, I trust you to've read the Map right." Shadow smiled. "So, now what? We've got, like, two hours."
"Two hours twenty." The Cape corrected, looking at the phone she'd pulled from nowhere obvious. "And whatever, I guess. We could go wander around looking for things to do, or crimes to deal with, if you'd like. Or maybe see if there's any obvious gang bases around. We could mark them and come back tonight or something."
"Hey, since the Map's all different now, d'you think we could use it to mark bases we want to come back to, so we don't have to rely on finding them ourselves later?"
"That… would be cool." Eon frowned, taking the Map from Swarm. "Let's see…" Touching the corner, he focused on making a marker on Somer's Rock. The Map flashed, then the version of the badge marking where the pub was vanished, replaced by a little yellow dot. "We can mark places now, I guess."
"That's useful, but if we mark somewhere and someone else find that Map that's not in our team, they might be able to find places that we don't want them to." Taylor thought aloud, kneeling down again. Eon hummed, nodding, then tapped the Map again.
The marker vanished.
"There we go. We can hide the markers on the Map when we're not using it, then..." Touching it, the dot reappeared. "We can turn them back on when we need them."
"Sounds like a plan." Shadow grinned. "Now, let's go look around a bit, yeah?"
The trio spent exactly two hours ten minutes wandering around the local area while invisible, dropping into different buildings and having a look around them. They found three drug stashes in one area alone, and promptly marked them for later searching before getting the hell out of the place every time.
"Arceus, those're disgusting." Shadow grumbled, as they left the third one. "Why on earth do humans feel the need to use those?"
"I don't know, Shadow, but I hate them too." Swarm replied. "They make me feel nervous."
"Well, we can deal with them later on, can't we?" Eon smiled at them both over his shoulder, guiding them into an alleyway nearby so he could take the rolled up Map from Swarm and mark the building they'd left. "We'll just burn it all under cloak after raiding the place."
"Thanks, Eon. It won't do much, but it'll get some of it off the streets in a way where the gangs can't just steal it back." The bug user said, before taking out her phone and glancing at the time. "Nearly time for the meeting. Back to Somer's Rock?"
"Yup." Shadow leaned over, tapping the Map and making the marker on Somer's Rock flare red, before Swarm took it back from her team leader. "Think you can guide us ok?"
"I managed most of the way before, so I think so." She told them, looking down at it for a moment and turning to orient herself in the maze of back alleys. "The cloak's up?"
"Up and fine."
"Follow me, then."
Five minutes later, the three were standing back across the street from the entrance to the pub.
"Is anyone there?"
"I can't tell." Swarm admitted. "There's not enough bugs to get a decent picture of everything in there, especially since I don't know who's come."
"Should I go take a look?" Shadow offered, crouching down as if to dart over.
"Go ahead." Nodding, the Vulpix cloaked herself carefully, vanishing completely from view, while Eon and Swarm waited.
"If they aren't there yet, do we go in before them?" The Cape asked lowly, kneeling down to her leader's level.
"We may as well. If we're before them or after them, it's really no loss. After, and it's excusable with us being new to town and never having been here before, before and it just shows that we're willing and eager to talk with them." Eon paused. "Well, willing, at least. It could be less eagerness and more a wish to get things over with." Swarm snorted, making Eon look over. "Relax. You won't really need to say anything in the end, either. I can do most the talking, Shadow can do the rest, you might just need to mention your control over bugs and why you chose to use them as you did, but you can basically stay silent if you want. Shadow and I know how to do a report without giving away all of our abilities."
"Alright, thanks. Let me know if I'm going too far, or something?"
"That'll be Shadow's job, I still need to learn her sound displacement method, but she can feed you lines if you think it'd help."
"It… yeah, it might." She nodded. "It's just a bit nerve wracking."
"Yeah, I know. We were similar, giving our first exploration report to our Guild. They can have high standards sometimes, and you never know if you've met them or not." He sighed "In this case it's a bit worse, since while with the Guild questions are only asked to help make sure they have everything they need from the report, here they'll be fishing for information, looking to catch us off guard to learn more about us."
"That… doesn't help, but… I kinda mean more because I admired them a lot as a kid. I always wanted to be a hero, so I've looked up to people in the Wards and Protectorate for a while." Eon raised an eyebrow, chuckling.
"You don't think we were the same? The Guild had a number of fairly well known teams, Swarm, even if they were only locally known. And when we joined up with that Guild expedition, there was a really famous- as in, nationally famous- team that joined us."
"Why would a nationally famous team join up with a training guild's trip?"
"We were heading somewhere of some pretty great interest, so there were a couple of teams that wanted to come along and help out. This is also known as nicking some of the glory for the discovery we might make." Eon's dry tone made Swarm snicker. "Guildmaster Wigglytuff chose the team that he thought had the best reasons for coming along- although personal curiosity isn't the best, exactly- to come with us."
"It sounds like fun."
"It was, though at first most the Guild were horribly nervous about being around them, since they were so famous. That was just awkward. One of the other teams broke the tension kinda by accident, since they wanted to ask about how they'd gotten so good, and it all went well from there, but the first little while…"
"It does sound like it was annoying."
"Just a touch. But don't worry about this. They're people too, so you just need to focus on that. Just let us answer everything we can, and only speak when you feel comfortable, or ask Shadow to feed you lines."
"I wouldn't mind doing that." The Vulpix told them both, dropping back into visibility inside the field Eon had set up. "I'll be waiting until you're asked a question, but I can whisper stuff to you and you'll just have to repeat it."
"I think I can do that."
"Good." Shadow turned to Eon. "There's no-one in there except the bar person, so if you want to go in and pick a table for them then we can."
"Sounds like a plan to me." The grey Ninetales nodded, taking a few steps back with the pair in tow before dropping the cloak and going back, making it look as though they'd just arrived before heading over the street. Shadow easily dropped into pace behind him, standing as his second, but Swarm watched confusedly before trailing after Shadow closely.
"That's fine, Swarm," Shadow whispered through her displacement illusion. "You're the rookie, so you don't need to worry about where you are. We'll show you properly later, though."
"It was easier before." She muttered.
"That's because it wasn't 'formal.' It didn't matter exactly where you were, since no-one would know where you're supposed to stand. For more formal stuff, it's lead, second about two steps behind and slightly on the left, third on the right and a step behind the second, and the rest in the centre trailing." Nodding slightly, Swarm drifted over to where the third was apparently supposed to be, hesitating a moment. "That'll do. You're not really third, since there's only three of us, but you can have that spot anyway. Eon won't mind, and I don't think anyone on this world is gonna know formal Rescue squad etiquette anyway."
"Is there a rulebook for this or something?"
"Yeah, but I don't think we have it on us. We'll do our best to explain stuff later for you. Should've thought to do it earlier, but to be honest I don't know how often we'll need it."
"Better to know and not need it, though."
"True." Eon pushed the door open and walked in to the dim pub, looking around for a moment before continuing, Shadow and Swarm filing in after him and letting the door swing shut. At the bar, the woman seated there went to get up, but Eon shook his head, leading the two over to one of the tables on the far side with a good view of the door and seating them so that their back was to the wall. Shadow headed over to his left, edging close to his tails, and Swarm leaned over slightly.
"So now we wait." Eon murmured lowly. "Any sign of them with your bugs, Swarm?"
"Nothing so far, but they're probably on the way." She mumbled back. "I've got a lot of bugs between us and the PRT building, and again over near the Rig, so I think I'll manage to spot them when they show up."
"Good." Eon settled back carefully, twitching his tails into a more comfortable position around his paws, which prompted Shadow to brush her own over to her left, the first three around her paws while the others rested near her back.
Swarm watched them for a moment, then folded her legs and leaned back, head on the wall, looking the picture of relaxed.
Outside, a small army of bugs were running back and forth in nervousness, but it helped her feel better, at least.
Leaning back in the chair behind his desk, the newly-freed Dragon of Kyushu frowned deeply.
The Kyuubi and its kitsune youngling were once again a point of interest to him, it seemed. Not as if they hadn't been during his short time in the PRT's jail, bound for the Birdcage, but then he'd had little else to think about aside from them. Now, he was back in his place, and he had a gang to run, as well as the mess caused by Bakuda's one day rampage to deal with.
Lung growled at the thought. He'd disliked Bakuda from the beginning, once it became clear that she was merely a glory hound with an ego problem, but after all the work he'd put into recruiting her he had been loath to say he was wrong to do so and dispose of her, so the bomb Tinker had stayed and irritated him. She had provided a useful distraction the previous day, allowing Lee to attack the transport and break him out, but Lung was still rather glad that she was going into captivity in his place.
Which brought him back to his original thought, the kitsune. He was still no closer to knowing anything about their origins- not that he expected to, in honesty, having been in jail for several days starting on their debut and with no-one in the gang knowing about them to do any looking. The only thing he had was the report of the pair's official and public debut, merely two days before, where some of his ABB had been in the vicinity of the bank attacked.
Shifting forwards, he read over the report again, his frown slightly deeper than before. The Undersiders had attacked the bank, apparently a robbery, and the Wards along with Glory Girl had shown up- Glory Girl only appearing because her sister was in the bank, it seemed- and struggled to fight off the dogs owned by Bitch for a time before the fight was intruded upon by the kitsune.
The pair had recruited the bug user they had saved, it seemed, as she had arrived with them at the scene and listened to the commands of the Kyuubi, the one apparently called Eon. The six-tailed kitsune, referred to as Shadow, had taken over fighting the dog that Aegis had been trying to deal with, shouting at it before just… talking and staring.
Lung frowned further. That sounds rather like how she defeated me. A kitsune whose gift allows them to merely speak, and their opponents fall before them. I don't recall any legends of such things… but then again, they might not even be Inari kitsune at all. Shaking his head, he continued reading.
Eon had instructed the bug Cape, using the name Swarm, to assist Gallant and Kid Win with their fight, and he had joined the battle against the second dog Vista and Glory Girl were against. Tattletale had lead the Undersiders to retreat, breaking whatever spell Shadow had placed on the dog, and caused both Eon and Swarm to attack, the latter with a bug swarm and the former with some sort of purple energy, before they escaped. The kitsune had been observed speaking with the Wards for a while, then the police, before vanishing completely into thin air, as though they had never been there.
Kitsune were well known for their capabilities in illusions, though, so that was less surprising.
Sighing, Lung leaned back again, rubbing his forehead. The kitsune could be the ones from the legends; they showed a fair number of the abilities of ones, despite the little that had been seen, and they looked the part as well. But they could easily just be a pair of Case 53's that got amusingly lucky with their shapes and teamed up together, or a pair of Changers with the same condition.
Yet something told him that wasn't the case. Something, some strange instinct, told him that this wasn't some kind of Parahuman thinking it would be amusing to make links to the kitsune legends and run around Brockton Bay. Something told him that it was more than that.
Now if only he could figure out what…
With a groan, he shook his head to clear it and called for Lee. The only other Cape in his gang appeared nearly ten minutes later, time Lung used to read over some more of the reports that had accumulated in his absence. He was just reading about an incident on the edge of his territory, near the Merchants, but gladly put that aside when he saw Lee, holding another stack of papers in his hands and bowing.
"Lung-sama." He greeted. "I have a report from your spies within the PRT." Interested and curious, he took them, believing that they would likely be about Bakuda's capture.
The read took five minutes, at which point Lung turned back and read it again, then did so a third time with a pen in hand, making notes on a spare sheet of paper as he did so. Once he was satisfied that what he had read was remembered, he put the report to one side and studied his notes carefully.
Illusions, once again putting someone to sleep by talking, though in this case it was during an argument, so perhaps it does not matter how she does it as long as she is focused… but it did take much longer, maybe her own emotional state effects things as well, and her anger made it more difficult. Possible reinforcements available in the form of these illusions, although whether they can physically affect anything is yet to be seen. This Swarm appears to be a typical Master and staying back to provide backup in the form of minions, but the kitsune are likely to try and remedy that, given that she is their team mate. She seems to already have been taught how to act, too, at least to the point of knowing to shut up and let others handle the things they're better at. Which was another thing that made Lung think that the two kitsune were more than just a simple joke or prank. They had the experience in talking, which came across quite well in the police report from the bank robbery and in the report from Bakuda's capture. And Eon has some sort of pyrokinesis, at least in the way of forming fire if not necessarily controlling it at all, with those small fireballs he created for light…
"Interesting," he completed aloud, looking at Lee. "Very interesting indeed."
"What do you command, Lung-sama?" Lee asked, tilting his head slightly.
"Leave Bakuda alone. If she is able to escape, she can, but we will not attempt to break her out as well. She was dangerous, and it is too much risk for little reward to release her." He decided quickly, brushing that off. "As for her captors… leave them alone. Spread the word to the rest of the gang, if they are to encounter either of the kitsune, or their partner the insect controller, they are to retreat, or failing that, surrender. Do not engage them. Arrange for pictures to make their way around so that they know who to avoid. Make sure everyone knows. I will take no excuses."
"Yes, Lung-sama." Lee bowed, then vanished in a teleport, the clone disintegrating a few seconds later. Lung turned his head back to the reports, gazing blankly at the one about Bakuda for a minute.
He still had no idea whether this was all some elaborate prank set up by someone in the city, or if it really was legitimate like something seemed to tell him it was, but either way he wanted to keep his gang out of the way of those kitsune. Even if it hurt his business in the long run, he'd rather that than find out that there were gods in the city that he'd managed to offend.
At least he could make up for any possible harm done. Offending a god was reasonably likely to end your life.
"…so primarily, illusion work and arrogance." Eon finished, shaking his head slightly to flick his fur back. Shadow was still sitting on his left, looking perfectly fine with the fact that she'd been there for nearly an hour explaining what she'd done to Bakuda- though not in perfect detail, like the exact way Hypnosis worked- while Swarm was bolt upright, one leg folded over the other, completely uncaring that she'd been seated in silence the entire time they were there. Shadow and Eon had worked hard to field the questions sent their way, and the three Parahumans representing the Protectorate at their meeting- Assault, Battery, and Miss Militia- had gladly taken to it, leaving Swarm out of the questioning when it became clear that either of the two vulpines could answer them just as well.
Eon could vaguely hear bugs running around outside, betraying his newest recruit's nervousness, but he couldn't blame her for that. Reporting to someone more powerful and with more status than you could be terrifying the first time- and the rest, in fact, if they did it right.
From the other side of the table, Miss Militia, sitting opposite Shadow, nodded.
"I see." She said quietly, looking intrigued.
"It sounds very impressive." Battery, the only one who Eon knew hadn't been at the scene, put in. "Especially, and I mean no offence, for someone so new to the Cape scene."
"We may be new to the Cape scene, ma'am," Shadow replied respectfully, "But Eon and I are no strangers to battlegrounds, and Swarm is highly knowledgeable in the local situation, so I would say that we have at least some experience in dealing with hostile foes."
Eon carefully suppressed a smile at her answer, and the look on what could be seen of the Cape's faces, before he took over. "As Shadow said, we are no strangers to battle, and we well know our limits. At that point, it's not truly necessary to know those of your opponent aside from at least the bare minimum. Enough of a distraction and a careful application of a taunt or two and you can easily get the rest, after all. And with the attitude of Bakuda, it was far simpler than I had expected, in truth."
"At which point it was pretty simple to defeat her, just by keeping her attention focused on me with the argument, and stopping her from wanting to look elsewhere by having the illusions and bugs look hostile enough to make her feel the need to keep an eye on them." Shadow smirked, satisfied, and absently flicked one of her tails.
"It's still pretty impressive, though." Assault smiled. "Still, I think that's everything…?" He glanced sideways at his companions, inclining his head. Both of them nodded.
"I've got nothing else to ask."
"Neither do I." Miss Militia looked over the three of them, a smile in her eyes. "And Battery was certainly correct. For a new Cape team- even if you had previous combat experience in some way- it's still a very impressive victory."
"Thank you, ma'am." Eon lightly returned the smile as the three Capes on the opposite side of the table began preparing to leave, signalling subtly as they did for his team to stay seated for a moment. "I'm glad we were able to help. Bakuda was… not a particularly brilliant person, from what little I gathered about her, and I am glad we were able to get her somewhere where she won't be able to deal any more damage."
"We'll make sure she'd kept somewhere safe. I'm fairly sure she'll be going to the Birdcage at the very least." Miss Militia told them. Eon made a mental note to check with Swarm about what the Birdcage was, nodding.
"Good. She ought not be going anywhere for a very long time, I should hope."
"The Birdcage is inescapable, and with what we've seen so far of what she's done there's not a chance she won't be heading there." Battery said.
"That is good." Shadow smiled. "Well wishes for the rest of your day."
"And yours." Assault grinned at them in return before the three of them left the building. Eon listened for a moment, hearing a motorcycle start up, then relaxed, nodding to Swarm and Shadow. The Vulpix jumped down from the chair and shook herself, yawning a little as she did, while Swarm stretched.
"You girls ok?"
"I'm fine, Eon." Shadow nodded, as her leader stepped down next to her. "That was different to the Guild interviews… guess it makes sense, though, since we were arresting a criminal… but it was kinda… short."
"That was short?" Swarm asked, sounding incredulous behind the insect buzz. "Jeez. I feel bad for you two."
"To be fair, we quite often do multiple things in the same dungeon." Eon explained, leading the way to the door. With an absent use of Extrasensory, he placed a few bills from the bag onto the counter while Swarm opened the door for them, then he continued, "See, we might go to the job board one day and see three jobs in the same dungeon. Could be anything; criminal hunts, missing Pokemon, item searches… anyway, we'd take all three of those jobs to save three teams heading into the same dungeon, and do them all at once. The problem was, when we got back, we'd need to fill in three reports for the dungeon exploration, and if we did go and catch an outlaw, we had to speak to Officer Magnezone to give a report about that as well."
"Sounds like fun."
"It was worse if we did multiple outlaw missions." Shadow grinned, shaking her head. "So annoying sometimes."
"It was always fun, though." Eon decided, leading them into an alleyway and pausing to layer a cloak over them all. "Still, are you actually alright, Swarm?"
"Yeah, I'm good." She exhaled sharply, leaning against the wall as she did. "It was… nerve-racking, more than yesterday was with Assault after Bakuda, but I'm alright."
"Good. Want to go home, or would you rather we wandered and did some more criminal hunting to relieve the stress?"
The bug Cape paused for a few minutes. "I think home, if you don't mind. I'd like to talk to dad more… we have a lot to catch up on, from the last few months."
"That's fine." Eon nodded. "All together, then, and we'll head home. Shadow, the Map?"
"Got it." Shadow opened the bag, handing the Map to Swarm, who unrolled it and crouched next to her leader. Eon touched the edge, waiting a moment for the marker to appear over Swarm's house, before letting the trio move off, following the Map.
"That was interesting." Alice said over the comms, as the group of three moved back towards the PRT building.
"It was, wasn't it?" Ethan nodded, bouncing off a wall casually. "They seemed really serious and professional. I think I can see how that little one, Shadow, managed to take down Lung."
"She was rightfully proud of her part in it all." Hannah added. "And if she took down Lung in the same way… Bakuda never stood a chance against her, did she?"
"That's one team I'm definitely not going to try fighting, that's for sure." Ethan grinned. "And we should probably warn Clock off of trying to prank them when they meet next, or something."
"Never thought I'd hear you say that."
"You wound me, Puppy." Hannah sighed, and Ethan smirked at the almost-audible roll of her eyes.
"Come on, you two. Let's get back to base so we can write up this report for the Director."
"Sure thing, Militia." He landed in the street for a moment, just long enough to flash her a grin, then took off towards the PRT building, wondering quietly about the trio of apparently new Capes he'd just spoken with.
"Yeah?"
"Where the hell are we?" She looked out the end of it, still under Eon's cloak, and up and down the street. "I don't think I've ever been here before."
"Really?" Eon raised an eyebrow at her, while Shadow fumbled with the latch on the bag. "Huh. I'd've thought you would've been around a lot of the city."
"Well, ok, maybe I have been here before, but I don't remember it. I wouldn't have a reason to come here as a kid, though maybe we drove through on the way somewhere else and I just can't remember." Swarm shrugged, crouching and holding the flap of the Treasure Bag open. Shadow gave her a thankful look, reaching in to grab the Wonder Map and roll it open. Eon caught the other end in his telekinesis and took it from her, holding it flat in the air as they all watched the clouds covering the edge of the Map- including the place they were at- fade away, new lines drawing around them to show the city.
"Ok, that's fine, not like we can't use the Map." Eon smiled up at her, then went back to the paper. "So, we're here… so, we leave this alley, turn left, then go down the street for a while, then left again into the next alley."
"Somer's Rock actually isn't as far away as I thought it would be." Shadow commented, as Eon rolled the Map up again and handed it to Swarm to put in the bag. "I mean, some place for Capes to meet up neutrally to talk? I'd have expected it to be, like, on the very edge of town, or something, just in case something goes really wrong and a fight happens."
"I think they rely on the hope that no-one wants to risk a fight in case they get banned from the pub." Swarm guessed. "Like we've said, Somer's Rock is the meeting place for Capes if they want to avoid a fight, so no-one wants to be known as 'the Cape that got banned from Somer's Rock' and they keep the peace instead." Then she shrugged. "Not sure, but that's what I'm going with."
"Fair enough. Back home, there's plenty of places with weird reasoning behind them, like the underground market in Newground- that's one of the villages, by the way, kind of far away from where we live but a nice place we stopped at on one really long mission outlaw-hunting- that had no reason to be there. It wasn't illegal, nothing strange was happening, and there was plenty of room to have the market on the surface around the edge of the village or something, but they just decided they wanted it below ground."
"That was a fun place, though." Shadow put in. "The lanterns looked really sweet. And it was mostly run by Pokemon that liked the dark, so in the end it worked out well."
"Your world sounds fun." Swarm said, smiling behind her mask.
"It could be, yeah. I mean, there's times it's terrifying, but mostly it's fun." The three of them went silent as they slipped out of the alleyway and into the crowd, Eon and Swarm standing close together to keep the cloak as small as possible while Shadow held onto her own cloak a little further ahead. Ducking into the next alley along, the Vulpix sighed.
"We're gonna be doing this a lot, aren't we? Why not just give Swarm the Map and let her guide us?"
"Because that makes far too much sense, and we still have basically three hours to get there, so we could just do whatever until then since we basically know where we're going." Swarm replied sarcastically, kneeling next to Eon to take the Map out of the bag again. "Alternatively, we just weren't thinking properly."
"Either-or." Eon flicked his tails in a shrug as she unrolled the Map, waiting a moment for the clouds to move again, then nodding.
"Ok, how're we doing the cloaks, then?" She checked. "Is Shadow doing her own one still but I'm walking in front with Eon, or…?"
"We'll all just stick together and I'll cloak the three of us. I don't think it'll be too hard, and besides that we're not going to be fighting once we get there, so a small headache from holding illusions too long won't be that bad."
"If you say so." Swarm looked back at the Map for a moment, then out of the alleyway. "Are we all cloaked?"
"Yeah." He nodded, focusing. Shadow pressed herself next to Eon's side to make it easier to hold the illusion together, and Swarm carefully silenced as many of her bugs as she could before taking a step forward, leading them around a corner and through the rest of the alleyway. The Wonder Map in her hands shimmered, slowly updating itself as they walked, the clouds moving back off the edges while lines appeared, and Taylor smiled.
This does make it a lot easier to find places. Now I just hope we're not so early that we have to spend three hours doing nothing waiting for Assault and whoever else to show up.
"Ok, right here, and I think this is it." Swarm muttered lowly to the two vulpines pressed next to her legs. They were in a mostly abandoned street anyway, so if the cloak fell apart it wouldn't be too big of an issue, but Eon wanted to keep it up until they were going into the meeting, since it was better to look around that way for them all.
"That's it?" Shadow looked up that the barely-legible, tattered sign on the small building. The outside was worn and miserable- not unlike a lot of the city, she thought sadly- but it didn't look too bad. It was unassuming, which Shadow hadn't expected from a building where Capes frequently visited.
Though it made sense, given that it was a neutral zone.
"Yeah, that's it, according to the Map." Swarm nodded, holding it out to show the little fox that the two badges were almost exactly across from each other. "If you'd like, you can take the Map and run over there under cloak to check."
"No, I trust you to've read the Map right." Shadow smiled. "So, now what? We've got, like, two hours."
"Two hours twenty." The Cape corrected, looking at the phone she'd pulled from nowhere obvious. "And whatever, I guess. We could go wander around looking for things to do, or crimes to deal with, if you'd like. Or maybe see if there's any obvious gang bases around. We could mark them and come back tonight or something."
"Hey, since the Map's all different now, d'you think we could use it to mark bases we want to come back to, so we don't have to rely on finding them ourselves later?"
"That… would be cool." Eon frowned, taking the Map from Swarm. "Let's see…" Touching the corner, he focused on making a marker on Somer's Rock. The Map flashed, then the version of the badge marking where the pub was vanished, replaced by a little yellow dot. "We can mark places now, I guess."
"That's useful, but if we mark somewhere and someone else find that Map that's not in our team, they might be able to find places that we don't want them to." Taylor thought aloud, kneeling down again. Eon hummed, nodding, then tapped the Map again.
The marker vanished.
"There we go. We can hide the markers on the Map when we're not using it, then..." Touching it, the dot reappeared. "We can turn them back on when we need them."
"Sounds like a plan." Shadow grinned. "Now, let's go look around a bit, yeah?"
The trio spent exactly two hours ten minutes wandering around the local area while invisible, dropping into different buildings and having a look around them. They found three drug stashes in one area alone, and promptly marked them for later searching before getting the hell out of the place every time.
"Arceus, those're disgusting." Shadow grumbled, as they left the third one. "Why on earth do humans feel the need to use those?"
"I don't know, Shadow, but I hate them too." Swarm replied. "They make me feel nervous."
"Well, we can deal with them later on, can't we?" Eon smiled at them both over his shoulder, guiding them into an alleyway nearby so he could take the rolled up Map from Swarm and mark the building they'd left. "We'll just burn it all under cloak after raiding the place."
"Thanks, Eon. It won't do much, but it'll get some of it off the streets in a way where the gangs can't just steal it back." The bug user said, before taking out her phone and glancing at the time. "Nearly time for the meeting. Back to Somer's Rock?"
"Yup." Shadow leaned over, tapping the Map and making the marker on Somer's Rock flare red, before Swarm took it back from her team leader. "Think you can guide us ok?"
"I managed most of the way before, so I think so." She told them, looking down at it for a moment and turning to orient herself in the maze of back alleys. "The cloak's up?"
"Up and fine."
"Follow me, then."
Five minutes later, the three were standing back across the street from the entrance to the pub.
"Is anyone there?"
"I can't tell." Swarm admitted. "There's not enough bugs to get a decent picture of everything in there, especially since I don't know who's come."
"Should I go take a look?" Shadow offered, crouching down as if to dart over.
"Go ahead." Nodding, the Vulpix cloaked herself carefully, vanishing completely from view, while Eon and Swarm waited.
"If they aren't there yet, do we go in before them?" The Cape asked lowly, kneeling down to her leader's level.
"We may as well. If we're before them or after them, it's really no loss. After, and it's excusable with us being new to town and never having been here before, before and it just shows that we're willing and eager to talk with them." Eon paused. "Well, willing, at least. It could be less eagerness and more a wish to get things over with." Swarm snorted, making Eon look over. "Relax. You won't really need to say anything in the end, either. I can do most the talking, Shadow can do the rest, you might just need to mention your control over bugs and why you chose to use them as you did, but you can basically stay silent if you want. Shadow and I know how to do a report without giving away all of our abilities."
"Alright, thanks. Let me know if I'm going too far, or something?"
"That'll be Shadow's job, I still need to learn her sound displacement method, but she can feed you lines if you think it'd help."
"It… yeah, it might." She nodded. "It's just a bit nerve wracking."
"Yeah, I know. We were similar, giving our first exploration report to our Guild. They can have high standards sometimes, and you never know if you've met them or not." He sighed "In this case it's a bit worse, since while with the Guild questions are only asked to help make sure they have everything they need from the report, here they'll be fishing for information, looking to catch us off guard to learn more about us."
"That… doesn't help, but… I kinda mean more because I admired them a lot as a kid. I always wanted to be a hero, so I've looked up to people in the Wards and Protectorate for a while." Eon raised an eyebrow, chuckling.
"You don't think we were the same? The Guild had a number of fairly well known teams, Swarm, even if they were only locally known. And when we joined up with that Guild expedition, there was a really famous- as in, nationally famous- team that joined us."
"Why would a nationally famous team join up with a training guild's trip?"
"We were heading somewhere of some pretty great interest, so there were a couple of teams that wanted to come along and help out. This is also known as nicking some of the glory for the discovery we might make." Eon's dry tone made Swarm snicker. "Guildmaster Wigglytuff chose the team that he thought had the best reasons for coming along- although personal curiosity isn't the best, exactly- to come with us."
"It sounds like fun."
"It was, though at first most the Guild were horribly nervous about being around them, since they were so famous. That was just awkward. One of the other teams broke the tension kinda by accident, since they wanted to ask about how they'd gotten so good, and it all went well from there, but the first little while…"
"It does sound like it was annoying."
"Just a touch. But don't worry about this. They're people too, so you just need to focus on that. Just let us answer everything we can, and only speak when you feel comfortable, or ask Shadow to feed you lines."
"I wouldn't mind doing that." The Vulpix told them both, dropping back into visibility inside the field Eon had set up. "I'll be waiting until you're asked a question, but I can whisper stuff to you and you'll just have to repeat it."
"I think I can do that."
"Good." Shadow turned to Eon. "There's no-one in there except the bar person, so if you want to go in and pick a table for them then we can."
"Sounds like a plan to me." The grey Ninetales nodded, taking a few steps back with the pair in tow before dropping the cloak and going back, making it look as though they'd just arrived before heading over the street. Shadow easily dropped into pace behind him, standing as his second, but Swarm watched confusedly before trailing after Shadow closely.
"That's fine, Swarm," Shadow whispered through her displacement illusion. "You're the rookie, so you don't need to worry about where you are. We'll show you properly later, though."
"It was easier before." She muttered.
"That's because it wasn't 'formal.' It didn't matter exactly where you were, since no-one would know where you're supposed to stand. For more formal stuff, it's lead, second about two steps behind and slightly on the left, third on the right and a step behind the second, and the rest in the centre trailing." Nodding slightly, Swarm drifted over to where the third was apparently supposed to be, hesitating a moment. "That'll do. You're not really third, since there's only three of us, but you can have that spot anyway. Eon won't mind, and I don't think anyone on this world is gonna know formal Rescue squad etiquette anyway."
"Is there a rulebook for this or something?"
"Yeah, but I don't think we have it on us. We'll do our best to explain stuff later for you. Should've thought to do it earlier, but to be honest I don't know how often we'll need it."
"Better to know and not need it, though."
"True." Eon pushed the door open and walked in to the dim pub, looking around for a moment before continuing, Shadow and Swarm filing in after him and letting the door swing shut. At the bar, the woman seated there went to get up, but Eon shook his head, leading the two over to one of the tables on the far side with a good view of the door and seating them so that their back was to the wall. Shadow headed over to his left, edging close to his tails, and Swarm leaned over slightly.
"So now we wait." Eon murmured lowly. "Any sign of them with your bugs, Swarm?"
"Nothing so far, but they're probably on the way." She mumbled back. "I've got a lot of bugs between us and the PRT building, and again over near the Rig, so I think I'll manage to spot them when they show up."
"Good." Eon settled back carefully, twitching his tails into a more comfortable position around his paws, which prompted Shadow to brush her own over to her left, the first three around her paws while the others rested near her back.
Swarm watched them for a moment, then folded her legs and leaned back, head on the wall, looking the picture of relaxed.
Outside, a small army of bugs were running back and forth in nervousness, but it helped her feel better, at least.
Leaning back in the chair behind his desk, the newly-freed Dragon of Kyushu frowned deeply.
The Kyuubi and its kitsune youngling were once again a point of interest to him, it seemed. Not as if they hadn't been during his short time in the PRT's jail, bound for the Birdcage, but then he'd had little else to think about aside from them. Now, he was back in his place, and he had a gang to run, as well as the mess caused by Bakuda's one day rampage to deal with.
Lung growled at the thought. He'd disliked Bakuda from the beginning, once it became clear that she was merely a glory hound with an ego problem, but after all the work he'd put into recruiting her he had been loath to say he was wrong to do so and dispose of her, so the bomb Tinker had stayed and irritated him. She had provided a useful distraction the previous day, allowing Lee to attack the transport and break him out, but Lung was still rather glad that she was going into captivity in his place.
Which brought him back to his original thought, the kitsune. He was still no closer to knowing anything about their origins- not that he expected to, in honesty, having been in jail for several days starting on their debut and with no-one in the gang knowing about them to do any looking. The only thing he had was the report of the pair's official and public debut, merely two days before, where some of his ABB had been in the vicinity of the bank attacked.
Shifting forwards, he read over the report again, his frown slightly deeper than before. The Undersiders had attacked the bank, apparently a robbery, and the Wards along with Glory Girl had shown up- Glory Girl only appearing because her sister was in the bank, it seemed- and struggled to fight off the dogs owned by Bitch for a time before the fight was intruded upon by the kitsune.
The pair had recruited the bug user they had saved, it seemed, as she had arrived with them at the scene and listened to the commands of the Kyuubi, the one apparently called Eon. The six-tailed kitsune, referred to as Shadow, had taken over fighting the dog that Aegis had been trying to deal with, shouting at it before just… talking and staring.
Lung frowned further. That sounds rather like how she defeated me. A kitsune whose gift allows them to merely speak, and their opponents fall before them. I don't recall any legends of such things… but then again, they might not even be Inari kitsune at all. Shaking his head, he continued reading.
Eon had instructed the bug Cape, using the name Swarm, to assist Gallant and Kid Win with their fight, and he had joined the battle against the second dog Vista and Glory Girl were against. Tattletale had lead the Undersiders to retreat, breaking whatever spell Shadow had placed on the dog, and caused both Eon and Swarm to attack, the latter with a bug swarm and the former with some sort of purple energy, before they escaped. The kitsune had been observed speaking with the Wards for a while, then the police, before vanishing completely into thin air, as though they had never been there.
Kitsune were well known for their capabilities in illusions, though, so that was less surprising.
Sighing, Lung leaned back again, rubbing his forehead. The kitsune could be the ones from the legends; they showed a fair number of the abilities of ones, despite the little that had been seen, and they looked the part as well. But they could easily just be a pair of Case 53's that got amusingly lucky with their shapes and teamed up together, or a pair of Changers with the same condition.
Yet something told him that wasn't the case. Something, some strange instinct, told him that this wasn't some kind of Parahuman thinking it would be amusing to make links to the kitsune legends and run around Brockton Bay. Something told him that it was more than that.
Now if only he could figure out what…
With a groan, he shook his head to clear it and called for Lee. The only other Cape in his gang appeared nearly ten minutes later, time Lung used to read over some more of the reports that had accumulated in his absence. He was just reading about an incident on the edge of his territory, near the Merchants, but gladly put that aside when he saw Lee, holding another stack of papers in his hands and bowing.
"Lung-sama." He greeted. "I have a report from your spies within the PRT." Interested and curious, he took them, believing that they would likely be about Bakuda's capture.
The read took five minutes, at which point Lung turned back and read it again, then did so a third time with a pen in hand, making notes on a spare sheet of paper as he did so. Once he was satisfied that what he had read was remembered, he put the report to one side and studied his notes carefully.
Illusions, once again putting someone to sleep by talking, though in this case it was during an argument, so perhaps it does not matter how she does it as long as she is focused… but it did take much longer, maybe her own emotional state effects things as well, and her anger made it more difficult. Possible reinforcements available in the form of these illusions, although whether they can physically affect anything is yet to be seen. This Swarm appears to be a typical Master and staying back to provide backup in the form of minions, but the kitsune are likely to try and remedy that, given that she is their team mate. She seems to already have been taught how to act, too, at least to the point of knowing to shut up and let others handle the things they're better at. Which was another thing that made Lung think that the two kitsune were more than just a simple joke or prank. They had the experience in talking, which came across quite well in the police report from the bank robbery and in the report from Bakuda's capture. And Eon has some sort of pyrokinesis, at least in the way of forming fire if not necessarily controlling it at all, with those small fireballs he created for light…
"Interesting," he completed aloud, looking at Lee. "Very interesting indeed."
"What do you command, Lung-sama?" Lee asked, tilting his head slightly.
"Leave Bakuda alone. If she is able to escape, she can, but we will not attempt to break her out as well. She was dangerous, and it is too much risk for little reward to release her." He decided quickly, brushing that off. "As for her captors… leave them alone. Spread the word to the rest of the gang, if they are to encounter either of the kitsune, or their partner the insect controller, they are to retreat, or failing that, surrender. Do not engage them. Arrange for pictures to make their way around so that they know who to avoid. Make sure everyone knows. I will take no excuses."
"Yes, Lung-sama." Lee bowed, then vanished in a teleport, the clone disintegrating a few seconds later. Lung turned his head back to the reports, gazing blankly at the one about Bakuda for a minute.
He still had no idea whether this was all some elaborate prank set up by someone in the city, or if it really was legitimate like something seemed to tell him it was, but either way he wanted to keep his gang out of the way of those kitsune. Even if it hurt his business in the long run, he'd rather that than find out that there were gods in the city that he'd managed to offend.
At least he could make up for any possible harm done. Offending a god was reasonably likely to end your life.
"…so primarily, illusion work and arrogance." Eon finished, shaking his head slightly to flick his fur back. Shadow was still sitting on his left, looking perfectly fine with the fact that she'd been there for nearly an hour explaining what she'd done to Bakuda- though not in perfect detail, like the exact way Hypnosis worked- while Swarm was bolt upright, one leg folded over the other, completely uncaring that she'd been seated in silence the entire time they were there. Shadow and Eon had worked hard to field the questions sent their way, and the three Parahumans representing the Protectorate at their meeting- Assault, Battery, and Miss Militia- had gladly taken to it, leaving Swarm out of the questioning when it became clear that either of the two vulpines could answer them just as well.
Eon could vaguely hear bugs running around outside, betraying his newest recruit's nervousness, but he couldn't blame her for that. Reporting to someone more powerful and with more status than you could be terrifying the first time- and the rest, in fact, if they did it right.
From the other side of the table, Miss Militia, sitting opposite Shadow, nodded.
"I see." She said quietly, looking intrigued.
"It sounds very impressive." Battery, the only one who Eon knew hadn't been at the scene, put in. "Especially, and I mean no offence, for someone so new to the Cape scene."
"We may be new to the Cape scene, ma'am," Shadow replied respectfully, "But Eon and I are no strangers to battlegrounds, and Swarm is highly knowledgeable in the local situation, so I would say that we have at least some experience in dealing with hostile foes."
Eon carefully suppressed a smile at her answer, and the look on what could be seen of the Cape's faces, before he took over. "As Shadow said, we are no strangers to battle, and we well know our limits. At that point, it's not truly necessary to know those of your opponent aside from at least the bare minimum. Enough of a distraction and a careful application of a taunt or two and you can easily get the rest, after all. And with the attitude of Bakuda, it was far simpler than I had expected, in truth."
"At which point it was pretty simple to defeat her, just by keeping her attention focused on me with the argument, and stopping her from wanting to look elsewhere by having the illusions and bugs look hostile enough to make her feel the need to keep an eye on them." Shadow smirked, satisfied, and absently flicked one of her tails.
"It's still pretty impressive, though." Assault smiled. "Still, I think that's everything…?" He glanced sideways at his companions, inclining his head. Both of them nodded.
"I've got nothing else to ask."
"Neither do I." Miss Militia looked over the three of them, a smile in her eyes. "And Battery was certainly correct. For a new Cape team- even if you had previous combat experience in some way- it's still a very impressive victory."
"Thank you, ma'am." Eon lightly returned the smile as the three Capes on the opposite side of the table began preparing to leave, signalling subtly as they did for his team to stay seated for a moment. "I'm glad we were able to help. Bakuda was… not a particularly brilliant person, from what little I gathered about her, and I am glad we were able to get her somewhere where she won't be able to deal any more damage."
"We'll make sure she'd kept somewhere safe. I'm fairly sure she'll be going to the Birdcage at the very least." Miss Militia told them. Eon made a mental note to check with Swarm about what the Birdcage was, nodding.
"Good. She ought not be going anywhere for a very long time, I should hope."
"The Birdcage is inescapable, and with what we've seen so far of what she's done there's not a chance she won't be heading there." Battery said.
"That is good." Shadow smiled. "Well wishes for the rest of your day."
"And yours." Assault grinned at them in return before the three of them left the building. Eon listened for a moment, hearing a motorcycle start up, then relaxed, nodding to Swarm and Shadow. The Vulpix jumped down from the chair and shook herself, yawning a little as she did, while Swarm stretched.
"You girls ok?"
"I'm fine, Eon." Shadow nodded, as her leader stepped down next to her. "That was different to the Guild interviews… guess it makes sense, though, since we were arresting a criminal… but it was kinda… short."
"That was short?" Swarm asked, sounding incredulous behind the insect buzz. "Jeez. I feel bad for you two."
"To be fair, we quite often do multiple things in the same dungeon." Eon explained, leading the way to the door. With an absent use of Extrasensory, he placed a few bills from the bag onto the counter while Swarm opened the door for them, then he continued, "See, we might go to the job board one day and see three jobs in the same dungeon. Could be anything; criminal hunts, missing Pokemon, item searches… anyway, we'd take all three of those jobs to save three teams heading into the same dungeon, and do them all at once. The problem was, when we got back, we'd need to fill in three reports for the dungeon exploration, and if we did go and catch an outlaw, we had to speak to Officer Magnezone to give a report about that as well."
"Sounds like fun."
"It was worse if we did multiple outlaw missions." Shadow grinned, shaking her head. "So annoying sometimes."
"It was always fun, though." Eon decided, leading them into an alleyway and pausing to layer a cloak over them all. "Still, are you actually alright, Swarm?"
"Yeah, I'm good." She exhaled sharply, leaning against the wall as she did. "It was… nerve-racking, more than yesterday was with Assault after Bakuda, but I'm alright."
"Good. Want to go home, or would you rather we wandered and did some more criminal hunting to relieve the stress?"
The bug Cape paused for a few minutes. "I think home, if you don't mind. I'd like to talk to dad more… we have a lot to catch up on, from the last few months."
"That's fine." Eon nodded. "All together, then, and we'll head home. Shadow, the Map?"
"Got it." Shadow opened the bag, handing the Map to Swarm, who unrolled it and crouched next to her leader. Eon touched the edge, waiting a moment for the marker to appear over Swarm's house, before letting the trio move off, following the Map.
"That was interesting." Alice said over the comms, as the group of three moved back towards the PRT building.
"It was, wasn't it?" Ethan nodded, bouncing off a wall casually. "They seemed really serious and professional. I think I can see how that little one, Shadow, managed to take down Lung."
"She was rightfully proud of her part in it all." Hannah added. "And if she took down Lung in the same way… Bakuda never stood a chance against her, did she?"
"That's one team I'm definitely not going to try fighting, that's for sure." Ethan grinned. "And we should probably warn Clock off of trying to prank them when they meet next, or something."
"Never thought I'd hear you say that."
"You wound me, Puppy." Hannah sighed, and Ethan smirked at the almost-audible roll of her eyes.
"Come on, you two. Let's get back to base so we can write up this report for the Director."
"Sure thing, Militia." He landed in the street for a moment, just long enough to flash her a grin, then took off towards the PRT building, wondering quietly about the trio of apparently new Capes he'd just spoken with.