[] Flip him. The Protectorate is always looking for more capes, and it doesn't seem like he's done anything too bad yet.
-[] Let the Protectorate do what they want with him.
Realign 14.25
You give him a smile that is all teeth and watch him squirm harder. "Good evening, Gestalt."
The Nazi cape keeps his eyes locked on yours. You would think him a statue except for the shudders that are running up and down his spine. The longer you watch, the stronger they get, and… You peer closer, and sure enough, you think you can see some kind of thin brown liquid pooling in the corners of his eyes. It looks like sap, which makes you wonder.
Is sap what you get when you make a boy who is made out of wood cry?
Footsteps behind you tell you that the members of Operation Pentagram have walked up, but Gestalt's terrified attention never leaves you. With a sigh, you swing your staff upwards to lay across your shoulders. "You want to fight some more, or do you want to go ahead and surrender?"
He mutely shakes his head, his eyes falling towards the floor before jerking back up to keep watching you.
"Smart choice." You wave your hand for him to stand, and after several seconds where his eyes finally leave yours so he can look at the others standing behind you, he complies. "You really should have thought twice about signing up with a bunch of Nazis."
"…want to."
"What was that?" asks Charlie.
Gestalt's voice is still weak, but he is nonetheless louder as he repeats, "I didn't want to. I just didn't have any other choice."
"Why wouldn't you have any—" Your mind flips back to the last stand of the Empire Eighty-Eight. When you came back from roasting their capes, you learned that Cricket had been the single Empire cape to get away, but that was in part because somebody Triggered as a new cape during the assault. And as an escapee from a Simurgh containment zone, he would want to stay with the only person he could be sure would not run away screaming. Which leaves just one of the big questions that is coming to mind. "How were you involved in the Empire in the first place?"
"My… My dad was high up in the group. I tried to stay away from it all as much as I could, but he wouldn't let me say no."
You nod. If he already had a connection with the group even before running away from Brockton Bay, that would just reinforce the desire to stay with Cricket despite not agreeing with either their actions or ideology. Better the devil he knew than the devil he didn't. It even does a decent job explaining why both times you dealt with him, he was so quick to run. His behavior was strange because you are used to fighting villains who want to be villains.
And if he does not want to be a villain, maybe all he needs is some other road to walk. You look up and down him again. If you do not miss your guess, you expect him to be around your age.
"What are you thinking, Calamity Witch?" Alpha asks.
"The Protectorate is always looking for capes. They've flipped villains before." Including Purity and Crusader. "A villain who claims he never wanted to be a villain in the first place should be child's play to work with. He looks like the right age to be in the Wards, so there would be plenty of people to keep an eye on him."
It would also have the advantage of putting Gestalt somewhere he might not want to immediately run away from. He is not comfortable at all around you, but maybe if he went down to New Orleans he would appreciate having a couple of familiar faces. You just are not sure how much New Orleans wants to play host to a third Nazi.
Either way, the important part is still getting him away from here. The Protectorate can figure out the fine details. This is, after all, literally their job.
"…So you aren't going to kill me?"
That shakes you out of your contemplation, and you stare at him in near-incomprehension. You cannot claim that you have never killed anyone, but you certainly have not done it enough for anyone to think that is your default answer to everything. "We didn't kill the actual German Nazis out there. Why would I kill you?"
He does not appear to have an answer to that, or at least does not want to give one that he does have. Instead he follows along meekly as all of you leave the room to collect your captives. Barbar floats along, held aloft by your telekinesis, while Alpha picks up Flimmern in the same way. That leaves only Schütze to be physically carried by Cat Sith after transforming into a truly massive tiger and having the villain placed on her back. As your group finally leaves the office buildings, you see that you have a group of familiar faces waiting for you and tying up their own successful captures.
To the left, the PRT mage with the sword is watching Gespenst, glowing emerald chains stretching out from his hands and wrapping around the captured villain. The skull-masked Brute, Wahrheit, is splayed out on the ground along with a man in an octopus-like mask, although you can see Kayleigh paying very close attention to the latter with her black and gold gun pointed unerringly at his back. To the right, Missy sits on the ground, her small form absolutely dwarfed by the broad-shouldered dog-headed figure standing guard behind her. Her hands pet one puppy while several others are circling a pair of capes in billowing white and black costumes and a third who wears a feathered black cloak and a plague doctor's mask. She does not seem to have been massively inconvenienced by being the only member of your team to go into the sports store. Not that you expected her to have a problem, but it is nice to have verification.
"I've been meaning to ask this, but how did Night and Fog get here?" you ask your own group. "Last I had heard, the Protectorate was planning on putting them in a parahuman asylum."
"Break-out a couple of months ago," Charlie told you with a grunt.
"They're loyal to Gesellschaft above all else." You turn around to glance at Gestalt, who is still following along but keeping his eyes fixated on the ground. "As soon as agents reached them with new orders, they were out. It's hard to keep them contained, especially Fog."
"Interesting, but not my main concern at the moment," Alpha says before walking towards the mage with the chains. Shrugging, you follow along as she points to the cape with the octopus mask. "Who's this? We have one hostile more than we accounted for."
"No idea, Captain. Guy grew a bunch of tentacles out of his back and from the ground around him. Pain in the ass to deal with."
Once again Gestalt pipes up with information. Because he sees no point in keeping quiet, or because he's trying to be as helpful as he can to better his own chances of going to the Wards instead of prison? "Flimmern knew him, but I never caught his name. He got here just two days ago."
"Did she have a computer she generally worked from?" demands Alpha, turning back to Gestalt.
"She had a laptop, yeah. She mostly kept it in her room. I only saw it a few times. Second floor, take a right when you get off the stairs, and it's the second door on the left."
Alpha looks over at Charlie, who sighs before turning around and jogging back towards the office building. "You want to convince me to put in a good word for you?" the PRT's team leader asks Gestalt. She does not wait for him to get a word in before pointing at the ground next to her concrete hyena. "Sit there, and no funny business. Stay in your normal form, too. You try turning into a tree and teleporting away, you won't like what happens next."
"Doesn't work like that," he mutters, but he does so while dropping onto the ground and pulling his knees up to his chest.
"Thank you for the assist, Calamity Witch. If you and the rest of your team want to head out, you're welcome to do so. We're just waiting for the PRT transport to arrive."
You give the woman a nod before broadcasting to the rest of the Arcana, «We're good to go. Let's head back to Dragon's workshop.»
When the orange light from your teleport spell fades, you dismiss your Barrier Jacket and claim a nearby chair. "Good job, everyone," you tell them before focusing on Sarah. "You and Cat especially. For the first time fighting with new powers, you seemed to take to it like a fish to water."
"Thanks," she says with an embarrassed smile. "I thought it was going to be harder, too, but it was almost like… like my body remembered how to do it. I've never swung a sword around before, but suddenly I felt like I had been doing it for years."
"Template contains recorded memories of previous mages," Perfect Storm chimes in. "Increases combat capabilities with each iteration."
"Whatever it was, I won't turn it down. It made everything a lot easier." Her costume disappears, but she keeps the sword in her hands and whirls it around at the side. "I think I've figured out what to name my Device, too. It seems like it's only appropriate considering the first thing I did with it was helping to wipe out a gang.
"Terminus Est. 'This is the end'."
Le sigh. Give me a minute to tear up the preliminary character sheet I made for Theo. I offer you a Breaker/Trump with five different power sets, and you turn it down. *shakes head*
Anyway, that's a wrap for the Wolfheads. All the girls earn 1 XP as do the members of Operation Pentagram, and Taylor gets to learn a new spell.
[ ] Sabotage Shift – Create dozens of bullets surrounding you and fire them in all directions. Can be used with Homing Bullet but not other Shooter variants.
[ ] Barrage – Upgrade for Rust Shooter. Fire four bullets at one time. Can be used with Homing Bullet but not other Shooter variants.
[ ] Vampiric Ray – Forcibly drain another's mana to refill up to 25% of your own pool. If target is not a mage, they are left permanently weakened and somewhat more frail.
[ ] Lion's Pelt – Coat yourself in an additional defensive forcefield three times as strong as your Knight Armor for 10 seconds.
[ ] Turn your spell point into 1 XP for
-[ ] Missy
-[ ] Laura
-[ ] Kayleigh
-[ ] Sarah
-[ ] Lacey
The other question has nothing to do with this fight but is probably even more important for all that. What are you going to do about Dragon's offer to hire the Arcana as a corporate team?
[ ] Accept – This solves so many problems, it would be foolish to turn it down.
[ ] Defer – Hold off on the decision as you aren't sure one way or the other yet.
[ ] Refuse – Thanks, but no thanks. You can't bear losing your independence.
Should shop it around. Faintly reminds me of MS (which I haven't finished), in that QA or a bud would probably be part of making a new entity.
