(Author's Note: This interlude was originally intended to be the addendum for chapter 41. I didn't have time to finish it for that chapter, and decided to expand it to a full interlude. Unfortunately, other commitments had impacted my writing time and I was only able to cover half the content I intended. As such the second half of this interlude will be included next week, and will cover a lot of the points raised regarding chapter 41. Regrettably, this interlude stops just before that point is reached, but those details will be addressed next time.)
41.1 Interlude Victoria
Victoria sat at the corner table of the coffee shop, idly checking her phone. It wasn't one of the shops she typically visited, but she couldn't handle those right now. The major chains or dressed up cafés of the boardwalk were just too much.
Normally she was fine with the attention that came with being a public cape. Sure, sometimes there were the people who would get too forward with Amy, but she was always there to step in. Crowds were a lot less intimidating when you knew there was no chance of being overpowered and you could always fly off when things got too much.
Except lately there was nowhere that she could fly off to. Her mind jumped back to her house, a building that felt much too empty, more than Amy's absence would warrant. She had thought that her father's bad days were the worst their family would have to endure, but nothing prepared her for this.
Well, not nothing. She looked down as her phone buzzed, announcing a text message from Missy.
'Still being held on standby. No idea if anything's going to happen. Hanging out with the guardsmen.'
The young cape had attached some selfies taken with members of the National Guard, framing the team of Vista, Clockblocker, and Browbeat with some smiling soldiers. The guardsmen were still standing by in the event that 'something' happened. The idea of supervillains clashing with military forces wasn't a pleasant one, but it at least seemed like something was happening, something was being done to counter the madness that had taken over the city.
She quickly entered a reply.
'Good luck. Hope it doesn't come to that.'
The girl replied with a complicated emoji, a questioning eyebrow with sweat drops and half gritted teeth. Vicky grinned at it. She knew the girl was desperate for action, but couldn't exactly wish for a villain attack. The indecisive reply was the best she could do.
Missy had been a surprisingly big help since their conversation on Monday night. Victoria never really connected with the girl; the five-year age difference had proven too much of a barrier, despite them working together often enough. It had taken everything falling apart, for each of them, before they finally opened up with each other.
And for once Missy had the undeniable edge in experience. Victoria knew what was happening in her house. The disclosure of Amy's testimony had been done with the highest confidentiality, so of course the entire city knew what it contained. Still, it was unconfirmed, so everyone was politely keeping their mouths shut as they stood by and watched her family fall apart.
It was something Missy had a terrifying amount of first hand understanding with.
The girl had shared stories of when her own parents' marriage was falling apart. It was eerily similar: Missy's dad's health problems, her mother's cheating, then the horrible period where neither of them wanted to be the first one to leave, then the nightmare of a custody agreement. Suddenly Vicky understood why Missy tried to spend as much time in the Wards HQ as she could get away with.
She took another look at the shared picture and remembered that she wasn't the only one Missy had started opening up to. It was just the last person she had ever expected.
Technically the three capes in the picture constituted what would be considered the Wards second team, or B-team, or delta squad, or whatever they ended up calling it. After the gallery there had been a push to build on what worked, meaning the Wards could be split into two teams of three with one member on console, with Weld leading the first team, and Clockblocker leading the second team.
That was something she never thought she would see. Sure, academically she knew Dennis would lead the Wards sometime after Dean, but she had never been able to actually picture him in the role. Missy had to repeatedly tell her the story of Clockblocker's plan and strategy at the gallery, and she still had trouble believing it was the same person who had frozen her and stacked packing peanuts in her hair.
Looking at the way the cape held himself in the picture you would never guess he had been known as the team joker. Maybe there was some truth about hidden depths and people rising to the occasion. Dennis clearly had some leadership potential, and Vicky was shocked when Missy told her how much the loss of the Forsberg Gallery was weighing on the boy. According to Missy he was taking it as both a personal failure and an irreplaceable loss.
It was a point of common ground that had done a lot to repair the relationship between Dennis and Missy. Apparently Dennis was good at leveraging the skills and abilities of people under his command, and was giving Missy the distinction her experience warranted. Being recognized like that was a big deal for a girl with an uncontrollable home life.
Vicky had to wonder if she was headed for the same situation that Vista had gone through. Missy's parents had gone through a nightmare divorce, but they didn't have the complication of superpowers or a hero team mixed into it. She didn't actually know if her parents were headed for divorce, but she had seen the same situation play out with enough of her friends from Arcadia to know how it went down.
Somebody cheated, then there were the rounds of accusations, circling of lawyers, possible separations, then sometimes the parents stayed together and sometimes they didn't. Vicky had the sense it was mostly based on prenup agreements or some aspect of how assets would be divided. Kind of like what happened to Missy, only with a couple of extra zeros on everything, given the average income of your typical Arcadia parent.
New Wave was a mess, and an uncomfortably public mess. It was the kind of situation Aunt Sarah would have done everything she could to prevent, only she had been the one to set it off. Or would that be Amy? Her mom? Uncle Neil?
Apeiron?
She pulled back before she could get caught in that particular rabbit hole. Whatever the tinker's plans or intentions, he hadn't done anything to her family, not since his first appearance. All this, it was on them. She hated it, but that was the truth.
She turned towards the opening door of the coffee shop and smiled at the reason for her visit. Possibly the least well regarded, but apparently most stable, member of her family walked into the store.
"Uncle Mike!" She waved to him from her table. At this time of day, the coffee shop was mostly empty, and well situated for a quiet conversation. That said, they still drew a bit of attention. Mostly passive interest, but a couple of flashes of recognition from some of the older patrons. Vicky wondered if they remembered when Lightstar was still in New Wave, or if they just were able to place his face.
"Hey Vicky." He replied. The man placed a quick order at the counter and settled into the corner table with a cup of drip coffee, faster and simpler than her half fat latte. She gave him a questioning look.
"Do you have to get back soon?" She inquired.
Her uncle shook his head. "No, I'm off shift unless they have another emergency. Just got used to drinking basic coffee. I guess it comes from working with cops."
The girl nodded. "Uh, how does that work anyway? I mean, it's like half-Protectorate or something?"
"Protectorate affiliate. Also, technically a police contractor. There's less glory and more paperwork than you get as an independent or full member of the Protectorate, but it's also quieter work." He shrugged. "I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but it's a good fit for me."
She nodded again, and hoped she hadn't sounded like she was fishing for job opportunities. It was a horrible feeling, having not just your home but your future turned upside down. She had never really given it too much thought. Stay in Brockton, go to college, work with New Wave, collaborate with the Protectorate. Some vague idea about Dean taking a similar path out of the Wards and into the Protectorate proper. Them circling each other until… something happened.
No part of that ever included a contingency for New Wave not existing. It was something that had always been there, and now it was falling apart. Suddenly she had to think about what she was going to do, what she could do without that beacon of stability in her life.
"So, uh, you just deal with normal crimes? No capes?" She asked in as neutral a tone as she could manage.
"Generally. The police are always happy to get some cape help on their side. The extra firepower is actually a big deterrent. If I do end up facing a villain it's usually because the info was bad or something changed at the last minute. In those cases, it can get kind of heavy, but they'll be calling in the PRT and local Protectorate." He explained.
"So, you just go against normal humans?" Somehow it didn't seem like a proper balance to her. She remembered all the times she had gone up against unpowered members of the ABB, Merchants, or Empire. Yeah, she was more durable than most capes, but it was never even a fight. Just brutally one sided.
Too brutal. Her mind jumped back to the last time she had to make that desperate call to Amy. And then to the words that had been echoing in her head for a week.
'So, 'lack of restraint' was about right?'
She shook off those thoughts and focused on her uncle's reply. "It's not like I'm going out picking fights." She hid a shudder at the phrasing he used. "Usually I support the SWAT team, or provide additional firepower on serious raids. I've got a… um, a kind of night vision power." He made a nebulous gesture. "It helps me cover angles normal people can't, so usually I watch the back or handle vantage points, that kind of thing."
Vicky remembered the stories. Well, not her mother's stories. She hadn't really mentioned her uncle since he left. Not Aunt Sarah's stories either. Was it her father? Uncle Neil?
A horrible pit formed in her stomach when she realized she was remembering a story from her Aunt Jess. Fleur. She must have been babysitting her and Amy at the time, and shared a story about Uncle Mike using his blaster power, laying down explosive orbs to hedge in 'bad guys'. Her aunt always made Mike seem like her knight in shining armor, just the way she described things…
She held back the reaction and fought for something else to say. "Uh, what's it like? Working for the police, instead of the Protectorate?"
The man shrugged, but had a small smile on his face. "Different. I mean, really different. Capes, the PRT, all that sprang up in the last couple of decades. Cops have been cops for centuries. It's a totally different culture." A troubled look crossed his face. "Sometimes those cultures don't blend too well."
"What do you mean?" She asked, leaning forward.
She recognized the look on her uncle's face. The expression that indicated he was considering whether he should be discussing this with her, with someone her age. Whatever the topic it must have passed the checks for violence, adult content, and embarrassing or confidential details seeing how he continued after shaking his head.
"It's probably good to get a handle on this. The PRT, the Protectorate? They're basically a separate jurisdiction working alongside the police. There's a lot of overlap, and the relationship isn't always that friendly. Generally when the PRT wants jurisdiction they get it, but there's not always the impression that it's for a good reason, or is being handled properly." The her uncle explained.
Vicky nodded, following the concept, even if she couldn't place it precisely. "Do you run into that a lot?"
"Some." He admitted. "Back home it comes up occasionally." He smiled again. "I actually have to play mediator between departments every now and then. Generally petty stuff, investigations into related crimes or how to handle non-powered henchmen or gang members." His voice dropped. "Nothing as bad as what's happening here."
Vicky's eyebrows rose and she replied in the same subdued voice. "The Brockton police don't get along with the PRT?"
The look he gave her was almost painful to endure, like she had missed the most obvious thing in the world. Thinking back, when was the last time she had dealt with a police officer, rather than someone from the Protectorate or PRT? She knew they were there, but somehow they weren't part of her life as a cape. She had just kind of slotted the PRT into the role of 'local authority' and thought nothing of it.
"The PRT manages parahuman crime, which in this city is expanded to all gang activities, except they don't have the resources to manage the full extent of a gang's actions. So, you have normal cops trying to deal with the street level aspects of the Empire or the ABB, then the PRT swoops in because a cape showed up at one of the sites they were staking out. The whole thing turns into a mess of who has what authority where. Cops don't want to end up running into Hookwolf or something, but they can't actually deal with any of the problems when their investigations are being usurped."
"I never thought about it like that." Vicky kind of suspected Uncle Mike was speaking from a bit of a biased perspective, given how closely he was working with the city's police department, but she could see where he was coming from.
"It's not just the gangs. You have random investigations getting transferred across all the time, usually with barely any explanation. Sometimes it's just because a hero is connected in some way." He shook his head grimly. "I heard about some horrible case from the start of the year at one of the schools that got taken out of police hands because there was some proximity to a Ward."
Vicky didn't remember anything from Arcadia, but if it was horrible, that was probably Winslow. There was always terrible stuff being said about that school. From the gangs and the drug problems to the nightmarish urban legend about the girl in the locker that had cropped up recently. It was just a place that attracted that kind of stuff.
Her uncle must have seen her reaction, because he pulled back slightly. "Sorry if I've been laying things on a little thick." He sighed. "A lot of the officers were caught in the second wave of blasts on Saturday. It hit most of the departments pretty hard, as well as the rest of the emergency services. It's not the kind of thing people get over easily."
Vicky swallowed and nodded. "I understand." She did, and felt horrible for it. With everything that had been happening she hadn't given a second thought to the trap Bakuda had set, the second set of bombs designed to hit relief forces. The obvious effect was slowing the dispatch to a crawl until every site was examined with a fine-tooth comb, but that was on the city-wide scale. It overlooked the impact on all the people, the police, the paramedics, the firefighters, who had been caught in that disaster.
Maybe there was something to that divide between police and capes.
Her uncle sighed again. "Sorry to dump that on you. I know you're dealing with a lot, It's mostly from just coming off shift."
"It's okay." She assured him, but she could see he didn't believe her.
"How are things at home? With your mom?" He pressed. She let out a sigh before replying.
"It's not… great. Dad's still doing his night patrols…" she trailed off, not wanting to elaborate on that situation. He had been making spectacular inroads against the gangs, and when she first heard she hoped he might be doing better. Recovering. Then she saw the videos. Like a tiny sun. Reckless, irreverent, and nearly self-destructive in his boldness.
If it was a teenage cape or new member of the Protectorate in the streets she would have been impressed. Instead, seeing her father like that, it just looked wrong. He was being intentionally careless, and she was worried for him. Worried about what that could mean. Worried in a way she didn't want to think about.
She swallowed her concern and pressed on. "Mom's been dealing with something at the PRT headquarters that she won't talk about. I thought it might be about Amy, but apparently that's not it." She looked up at her uncle, pursuing the real reason she asked him to meet her. "Have you…"
"I spoke with her on Tuesday. She was doing okay, all things considered." He admitted.
"Is she…" Victoria took a moment to collect herself. "Is she alright? It's been nearly a week, and with everything that's happened… I'm really worried."
Her uncle nodded. "She's having a rough time, but she's managing well enough. I had a call with her yesterday." Vicky gave him an inquiring look. "They're moving her into off-site holding, so at least she's out of formal containment. She still has limited access, but she's not in a cell anymore."
Vicky felt a relief bubble within her. "Do you know when… If she can have visitors?"
Mike shook his head. "There's something else going on, more tests. Contact is restricted until they sort that out."
The bubble of relief popped and Vicky felt dread rush up to take its place. "It's not Apeiron, is it?"
She said the words in a small voice, but with absolute certainty. Her uncle nodded at her.
"Probably not. There's still suspicion, but the behaviors don't match up. Just from a high level, if he could influence capes he would have a dozen better uses for it than targeting Amy and sending her into a situation where she'd get caught." Vicky nodded as he continued. "There's something else, but I couldn't tell you what it is. I doubt the people inside the Protectorate are fully briefed, and I'm about three degrees separated from them." He gave her a sad look. "Sorry I can't be more help."
She nodded. It was about what she expected. She was happy to at least get some news, some update on her sister, but she had been holding out hope for something more, some chance that things could turn around.
Looking back at how she felt at the start of this mess it seemed unbelievably naive. Pushing past the initial confusion, Amy's babbled warnings about the tinker and ABB actions as they removed her cast, she had felt a level of certainty when her sister had gone to speak with Armsmaster and Director Piggot. It had felt right, things were back on track. That horrible, gaping, embarrassing loss at the bank could be put behind them. She was convinced that Amy was giving the heads of the Protectorate and PRT everything they needed to bring down the tinker, the Undersiders, and anyone else connected to this mess.
Then everything started to go wrong. At first she managed to stay positive, or at least made her best attempt. Things were worse than she thought. The tinker had hit Amy with some mysterious master effect and planted information about her family. She initially thought it was misinformation, a ploy to throw things off, but that idea died when she saw her Aunt Sarah's reaction.
She remembered the fights between her mother and aunt. Even in her room with the door closed she could hear them shouting at each other. She'd never seen an argument like that, and it was the last time she had seen her mother and Aunt Sarah together since the mess began.
The accusations were true. It was horrible, but she had managed to use it to steel her resolve. Clearly the tinker was planning something. Attacking Amy, revealing information to turn her family against each other, giving vague warnings about the ABB. All clearly some ploy.
In retrospect it had been a wonderful line of thinking to hold herself to. Everything could be blamed on some shadowy machination from the mystery tinker. If you stretched your logic far enough you could even blame him for the way the bank had turned out. Clearly without his weapons they would have triumphed. Hell, if he was planning on that level then why not assume he coordinated everything, the attack, response, and consequences.
Dean's armor? His fault. Carlos's injuries? His fault. Amy's broken wrist? His fault. Tattletale's threats? His fault. Her overreaction to them? His fault. The bad press? His fault. The PRT reprimand? His fault. Dean having to leave for New York with no notice and barely enough time to say goodbye? Entirely his fault.
Then Saturday happened. The Cape Blackout. An attack so well coordinated and widespread that New Wave would have been pressed to the limit even if they were in top form. Instead, you had individual members bumbling around putting out fires, sometimes literally, rather than acting as the precision strike team they were supposed to be.
And then she saw the video, and learned exactly what it was she had been building up in her mind. Somehow, despite assigning the tinker an amount of blame, power, and assumed influence just short of a Simurgh Bomb she had managed to come up short.
Afterwards they were calling it a textbook case for a perfect cape debut. She hated the assessment, but couldn't argue with it. Initially she had thought it was just another of his plots, another way from him to advance his schemes for the city. That was before his next appearance confirmed that he must have some style power working to support him. Too many little elements always lined up to complement his actions. A shaker power designed to look good.
That was when the worldview she had been holding since the event on Thursday night, and probably a lot longer, had started to crack. Everything, every assumption, hinged on the idea that the newly dubbed Apeiron was working from the shadows out of necessity. That he was some cowardly weakling, another Coil-type, playing puppet master from behind the scenes.
It made sense, the cape crafted super weapons, handed them out with the assistance of his thinker power or technology or whatever he used to coordinate things, and caused chaos without having to risk himself. It let everything he did be blamed on his schemes. Even healing Amy was just the start of a chain of effect. You didn't have to consider what he said, you didn't have to think of him as a person, and you could fondly imagine the day when you dragged him into the light, away from all his stupid technology, and kicked his ass all the way to the Protectorate HQ.
After the broadcast from Saturday night you couldn't think like that anymore. Apeiron wasn't someone hiding in the shadows, he wasn't a weakling, and most of all, he was a person. He was a person with concerns, standards, and an actual personality. He cared about people, maybe only through contracts, but more than any moustache twirling villain should.
There was depth there she couldn't ignore, not with the power and abilities he casually displayed. He was strong enough that the idea of him needing to hide and manipulate from the shadows was ridiculous. Before that video she figured him for a new tinker with a lucky specialization. As the video went on that shifted from 'Could give Armsmaster a run for his money.' to 'How much of the Protectorate is it going to take to bring this guy down?' to 'Apparently the city is still standing because Apeiron was feeling generous.'.
The man used something that was being compared to nuclear weaponry to cut down missiles. He seemed to pull out new powers and technology every other minute of the fight. The only reason Bakuda… she almost thought 'walked out', but that wasn't the case. The only reason Bakuda escaped was because Uber and Leet had somehow managed to reclaim the stride of their early years.
Nobody liked to talk about it anymore, but she remembered when Leet used to regularly embarrass the heroes with his stunts. The frustration that was going through New Wave back then was tangible, and apparently it was even worse at the Protectorate. If Leet had trended up instead of down she didn't even want to think about where he'd be right now. As it was, even a return to form was a terrifying reminder of something every hero in the city, and probably more than a few villains, was hoping would never come again.
But Apeiron had beat them. Three times he had come out ahead, either driving them off or destroying everything they brought to bear. And Apeiron was trending up, sharply. Some people were hoping for a crash, some were still assigning him blame for everything that went wrong in the city, and some were convinced he was responsible for every misfortune that hit Brockton over the last week of hell.
Victoria wasn't one of them. She prided herself on not being the dumb blond people assumed she was, which meant as much as she wanted to blame Apeiron for everything, she couldn't ignore the facts. Couldn't pretend the world was different just because it would make her feel better.
Vista was doing that. Vicky hadn't said anything to the girl about it, but the younger cape was harboring a well of resentment towards the tinker like nothing she had ever seen before. Apparently she didn't even like using his chosen name, instead defaulting to a more villainous PRT holding designation.
Vicky would have loved to join her in her hate, but that wouldn't help Amy. Ignoring the reality of the situation wouldn't do any good for the city, or fix her family situation, and the reality of the situation was that Apeiron was probably the least villainous villain the city had ever seen.
Beyond the first association with the Undersiders, one that still caused waves of impotent rage to course through her, he had done nothing. No theft, no assaults, none of the myriad of petty and not so petty crimes capes were known for. He fought villains, the exact villains he said he would be focused on. He took steps to limit civilian casualties, even when the 'civilians' were forced into combat against him. The worst that could be definitively pinned on him was a mountain of property damage, something the city had a surplus of, and a set of tangential injuries that, given the power he threw around, could have been horrifyingly worse.
She remembered that there were some reported deaths from the storage facility fight that might have been caused by his Final Slash, but considering how bad that could have been, and how he handled himself in the aftermath, nobody was seriously going to press charges. Nobody wanted the grim tasks of digging through remains to try to find the deaths that could possibly be blamed on Apeiron instead of Bakuda. Not after he stayed to pull bombs out of people's heads.
She really wished she could believe that it was all an elaborate trick, some inscrutable plan that only required the appearance of mercy, compassion, and careful use of power. She knew there were still people who believed that, that he was some threat waiting in the shadows for the moment to strike. But they didn't see the whole picture. They weren't there from the start.
They weren't the one responsible for everything that had happened to the city.
She had been so angry. At the time it felt like an excuse, like it justified everything. She was a hero and the villains had embarrassed her. They had torn down and injured her sister, maimed her friend, swarmed her with stinging insects, and made her efforts a laughing stock. Worse, the way it ended, with Khepri casually dismantling Carlos, told everyone the truth of the situation. They didn't have a chance from the start. They were being handled with kid gloves. That if the Undersiders were real villains, serious villains, they could have turned the Wards into a corpse pile with little effort.
It made her feel weak and powerless. That made her angry. When Amy went missing she had torn up the hospital looking for her. When she found her she was so frustrated that she just wanted something to hit, and a seemingly perfect target presented itself.
'I'm the tinker who made the Undersiders' weapons.'
Confessed villain right in front of her, she didn't think. It didn't even occur to her that she needed to think. She had an opportunity to let out all the rage that had built up since the disaster at the bank and she took it. Eagerly.
It wasn't until afterwards that she realized how hard she had tried to hit him. Nobody knew about his durability or bullshit defenses back then. To her he was just a villain tinker standing close to her sister. She wound up and swung at him with a punch that would have put him through a wall.
That should have put him through a wall.
Why had she done it? If she had grabbed him maybe everything would have been different, but she had wanted to hit something. Maybe she was counting on Amy being there. Her sister was within arm's reach, she was inside a hospital, there was no better place for him to walk off any injuries she decided to give him.
Instead, her fist had stopped dead. Not like it bounced off something, it just stopped, like something decided the attack didn't happen. Then the worst thing she could imagine.
Not anger, not fear, not even irritation. Disappointment. It was like she had confirmed something for the man, like rather than charging to the rescue she was being secretly judged for her behavior. And had failed horribly. In the end he didn't even acknowledge her. His final words were to Amy.
'So, 'lack of restraint' was about right?'
She desperately wanted every suspicion about Apeiron's plans to be true, if only because that would mean she hadn't ruined everything. She hadn't lashed out at an at-worst neutral cape and driven him away from ever helping the city's heroes again. Amy had told her what he said, his thinker power steering him away from local groups, but supposedly willing to work with other teams. Maybe even New Wave, in some capacity.
At least until she had tried to kill him.
Now he was doing God knows what in some inscrutable way while everyone in the city played catch up with either him or the ABB. Even Dragon hadn't been able to beat him, and now the world's top tinker was talking about how she needed to chase him down while also not making any actual accusations. It was a maddening mess that all traced back to that first, stupid punch.
"Vicky? Are you okay?" Her uncle's question brought her out of her rumination on past mistakes.
"Oh, yeah. Sorry, I was just thinking about how all this started." She sighed. "Maybe if I handled things better last week this wouldn't have happened."
The man sitting across from her gave her a complicated look and there was a long moment before he responded. "When your Aunt Jess died I must have gone through everything I did, every decision leading up to that moment. Every thought, every action, every incidental detail I didn't notice, or thing I could have said or done that would have kept her from being in that place at that time."
He let out a long breath and Vicky could see the weight of years on him. She waited for him to continue.
"Your mom, your aunt, and me, we don't have the easiest time dealing with things outside our control. It causes problems, but you can work around it. Sarah kind of channeled that into the team. I have to be reminded when I'm getting too rigid, usually by your Aunt Beth. Your mom…" He glanced to the side before continuing. "I think you get that from her. From us. And when you have powers it's harder to accept there are things you can't do anything about. If you see some ways you could have handled things better and want to improve, that's great, but there's nothing you could have done that would guarantee things turning out the way you wanted. The world is too big for that."
She nodded slowly, grateful for the relative privacy of the corner table. The idea of a cape family that needed control of their lives made sense, and also explained the direction they were heading. She could see the truth in her uncle's words, but that wasn't as comforting as it could have been, not with everything still falling apart.
She was relieved when the tone from her phone distracted her from that particular line of thought. Her uncle fished out his own at the same time, as did most of the other customers and more than a few of the staff.
Talk about Bizaro world. Uber and Leet Drop a video and Brockton stops at their word. Only the alert on the phone wasn't from the formerly irrelevant criminal partnership.
It was from March. From the ABB.
Her fingers shook slightly as she unlocked her phone and loaded the stream. The video showed a split screen. On one side was Bakuda, terrifying as ever and somehow completely healed from her injuries. The bomb tinker was perching on a throne in a carefully framed shot with a completely redesigned costume. Seriously redesigned. Sharp angles, elaborate ornamentation, and a military cut complimented her new gas mask, some frighteningly compact design compared to her old model. She looked like a completely different cape. A more professional cape.
On the other screen was Apeiron. Once again, he had updated his costume. The visor was now clearly tinker tech in place of its former metal slats. It complimented a looser hood on the cowl that widened his silhouette, which was framed dramatically against the late afternoon sky. The cut of the rest of his costume had been revised, now sharper in a way that forcibly dragged the eye along the contours created by the seams and the pose of his body. Brilliant white gloves created a sharp contrast with the darker hues of his outfit, and paired with a billowing white cape.
It was hard to nail down exactly which aspect of it was most striking, but the parts came together with a presence that had an almost physical weight. Everything about the framing of the scene was imposing when taken individually, but combined it was almost overwhelming.
She thought about her own costume stuffed in her backpack and largely unchanged for years. It never seemed like it needed updating, but that was before there was a cape fashion war happening on top of a city-wide crisis.
"Hello Apeiron." Bakuda's voice came with less distortion than she had previously used. It allowed the tone of her speech to leak through. The sound was echoed from at least a half dozen other devices in the coffee shop as customers and staff crowded to watch the spectacle.
"Hello Bakuda." The man replied in a stern voice. "You're looking… intact."
Vicky could see the other tinker react to the barb, and was briefly relieved, then back to terrified. Apeiron and Bakuda were squaring off. Apparently she was streaming a video call, either live or on delay. The two capes opening up on each other was the last thing the city needed, but at least this wasn't some kind of joint announcement from the two most dangerous tinkers in the city.
"This is bad." Her uncle muttered the obvious. He shifted around to watch her as he worked his own. "Something is either being planned or already in the works." He lifted his device to his ear and gestured for her to continue the broadcast. "I'm going to see what I can get from the BBPD."
Vicky nodded and turned back to the screen. For any past crisis she would have been on the phone to Aunt Sarah and New Wave would already be coordinating a response. Now she didn't know what she should do. Call Mom? Check on Dad? Honestly, tagging along with her uncle's police contacts probably had the best chance to make a difference.
"I was wondering how long it would take you to find this line. Perhaps we overestimated your abilities. Maybe I should have made things simpler for you?" The bomb tinker taunted. Apeiron shifted his body slightly, managing to convey mockery and derision with the slightest of movements and a completely covered face.
"So sorry to hold you in suspense. Had I known you were sitting by the phone desperately waiting for my call I would NEVER have kept you waiting." Vicky could see the impact the words had on Bakuda and even her uncle raised an eyebrow at the unexpected direction.
"You wish…" The bomb tinker sputtered, shifting in and out of what it was becoming apparent was an extremely rehearsed posture. "Um, you… You have no idea what you've blundered into."
"I've got a decent picture of what you're planning." Apeiron taunted. A text message popped up on her screen from Vista, partially obscuring the video.
'You seeing this? (link)'
She quickly replied with a confirmation and a question mark as the broadcast exchange continued with more derision from Apeiron.
"More hiding behind the helpless while deploying a force that is unskilled, untrained, and unwilling all in the hope of somehow carrying out your schemes." There was derision in his tone, but Vicky couldn't tell if it was out of genuine concern for the safety of the people caught in Bakuda's schemes, or just some offended sense of professional standards.
Missy's reply came up as she continued to watch the exchange.
'No clue. Kid says tracing is a lost cause, and still waiting on orders. Hate learning about it this way.'
Vicky wasn't thrilled about it either, but that was becoming more common. Any intelligence on the city's conflicts primarily came from the instigators of the conflicts in question. She bit down on her own frustration and watched the broadcast.
"And, of course, leaning on your new thinker to make up for the deficiencies in your own abilities." He continued, glaring down at the camera in a move so perfect it was hard to believe it hadn't been scripted in advance. "How is March? Tell me, did she coordinate this as closely as everything else? How much did she have to script for you to prevent a repeat of our last encounter?"
Vicky was surprised by the intensity of Apeiron's tone as he mentioned March. There were levels of emotions there that even Bakuda hadn't stirred. The ABB thinker represented an entirely new set of problems that nobody seemed to understand. Everyone accepted she was helping boost the effectiveness of the ABB's activities, but every source she had heard from was split on how deep her involvement was or how much danger she represented.
The dominant attitude seemed to be that she was a young, inexperienced cape that had gotten in over her head with the ABB. Chasing after Saturday morning dreams of playing villain nemesis and now caught in the real world. Thinkers being exploited by gangs was a common occurrence, but the same could be said about any cape whose power didn't give them overwhelming force.
Vicky had more than a few doubts about that theory. It was apparently based on her previous activities, always joining the least dangerous groups in whatever territory she found herself in, then moving on when they got too intense. But the idea that she was some exploited child didn't match what Missy and Denis had described from the Gallery. It didn't line up with Flechette's accounts of how dogged the girl had been in her pursuit, not playing villain, but actually dangerous. Breaking out devastating schemes that fit perfectly with the current disaster in Brockton Bay.
That disaster was probably the reason nobody was focusing on her. In a city with Bakuda, Lung, a nascent gang war, Dragon, and Apeiron the PRT could be forgiven for ignoring a teenage villain whose criminal record was mostly misdemeanors. Somewhat forgiven, given the potential threat that they could be overlooking.
Given the way Apeiron was referring to her, with a tone and intensity you rarely heard outside discussions of S-class threats, Victoria felt a good deal less certain about the local Protectorate's threat assessment than she previously had. A glance at her uncle showed he picked up the implication as well, and signaled his understanding before mumbling something into his phone.
Whatever the implications might suggest Bakuda was obviously not happy about them. The cape pulled herself up and gestured dramatically. "Like she matters in any of this. Logistics doesn't mean anything without power to back it up."
Vicky blinked. That might be technically true, but in her time as a hero she had seen more cases of power being present without any effective direction than she had seen effectively directed power that wasn't up to the task. It was the kind of statement that reminded her that, for all the damage the bomb tinker had wrought, the woman had triggered barely a month ago. It was an unsettling thought, made worse by the threat she followed her statement with. "Whatever you think you've seen out there, you have no idea what's waiting for you."
Vicky could almost feel the apprehension flicker through the shop. A bomb tinker making a threat on that level would chill anyone with a lick of sense to their very core.
But apparently Apeiron wasn't included in that category. "Promises, promises." He mocked, taking on a derisive stance. It was actually stunning how much the cape was able to convey with no facial expression, just from slight shifts of his body. He somehow managed to seem condescending as he continued. "But it's alright. I've seen what you can do, so I've come to expect a measure of disappointment."
"Disappoint…" The bomb tinker restrained herself and started gesturing at the camera. "You are the one who's disappointing. You're stumbling along, blind to the world around you. You think you are the only tinker who can develop, who can innovate and advance? You have no idea."
The woman was making some odd motions with her hands, and seemed to be awkwardly tapping her knee in a decidedly artificial fashion. She exchanged a glance with her uncle, but he seemed as lost as her.
"What is she…" He began, only to be cut off by Apriron.
"If you want me to ask about your limbs that badly, just go ahead and explain. I'll listen."
The bored tone he used to invite her to explain what by any standards would be considered a medical miracle was shocking. Vicky watched as Bakuda revealed a restored hand while bragging about the wonders of her technology. Any hope of putting Apeiron off his game seemed to be a lost cause as he made an inquiry on her work with genuine concern. Bakuda's sputtering explanations died with a single question from the cape.
"Can you cure cancer?"
You could have heard a pin drop in the coffee shop at those words, echoed through the speakers of a half-dozen devices. Bakuda struggled to defend herself as the other tinker tore into her over the impact of her actions.
Vicky didn't know if he could actually diagnose cancer on sight, though nothing seemed too implausible when it came to that man. What she did know was how horrible cancers could get. She'd been with Amy on more than a few of her rounds to the city's cancer wards. The image of a person slowly wasting away from destructive treatments was the most common, but she had seen worse conditions, more painful and destructive. If Bakuda really had filled herself with cancer…
Oh God, she regrew limbs. Was she looking at bone cancer as well? She didn't even want to think about her last encounter with that. Apeiron's reminder that Bakuda had probably tested her devices on captured civilians before using them on herself turned Vicky's stomach. The idea of what that technology would do in an incomplete form…
That was the nightmare everyone had been ignoring. The ABB had kidnapped and enslaved dozens of people, people they saw as expendable, and people whose lives they were willing to throw away for any advantage. There had been so many nightmares hitting the city over that past week that that particularly vibrant shade of horrible had practically slipped the public consciousness.
Or had it really 'slipped'? She knew the PRT had pull with the media. There was certainly enough disaster coverage to go around. Had they steered things away from looking into the ABB's slave soldiers? Was that because Apeiron had freed dozens of people to their, really the Wards', one? Or was she being too cynical?
When you stopped buying into the idea that Apeiron was steering the entire city a lot of elements started looking more like general incompetence and shortsighted behaviors piling on top of each other, rather than some master plan.
On the call Bakuda apparently had enough of Apeiron's needling, dismissing his 'dime store diagnosis' and covering her hand again. The ABB tinker started to mock him about his last failure, but the other cape seemed genuinely confused at the idea. Finally he seemed to realize what she was talking about.
"Are you talking about Monday?" The man asked, as if a conflict that cratered a parking lot, burned a missile barrage out of the sky, deleted one office building while cracking open another like a walnut, and peppered Downtown with bomb blasts and exotic weaponry effects, culminating in a frozen tableau, which was becoming a tourist attraction of all things, happened every day.
"Of course I am." Bakuda yelled with perfectly understandable frustration She drew a breath through her gas mask and switched back to bragging. "Unlike you, I can control the fundamental forces of the universe. That robot is trapped for the rest of eternity, and no matter what you try, you're never getting it back."
It was a good point. The ABB had taken a hit in that encounter, and apparently the impact was still being counted. Something about financial crimes on top of gang activity, but that was outside of Vicky's experience. Her mother would have been able to brief New Wave on what was happening, if New Wave was still getting briefings.
The point was, despite those losses the battle had cost Apeiron as well. He had shown up with three upgraded versions of his robot suit, and two of them had been lost. Despite the insane crafting wizardry he had demonstrated in that fight, Vicky knew how valuable materials and equipment were for tinkers, and how hard it was when they lost something critical.
The aftermath of the bank came to mind once more. Kid Win, covered in bruises and scrapes, cradling the shredded pieces of his flight board. Dean having to be cut out of his power armor, a suit iconic to his life as a cape, being treated like scrap metal. Even the relief that greeted Browbeat when he confirmed the destruction of one of those nightmare knives.
Thinking like that nearly drove Vicky back to the thoughts she'd been struggling to stay away from. The temptation to use Apeiron as an outlet for all the rage, frustration, and unfairness that had cascaded since his appearance. To ignore any details that didn't line up with that image and cling to that sense of righteousness. To fall into a comfortingly simple mindset of villains bad, heroes good, and everyone sitting in their little bubbles, and anything anyone did was fine as long as it was pointed in the right direction.
That wasn't the case. At the very least, Apeiron was more complicated than a standard villain. He might not be a hero, but, assuming he wasn't playing the entire city and most of the related departments for fools, he was far from a villain, and could possibly have been an asset if she hadn't made that stupid mistake at a critical moment.
"Why would I want it back?" The cape in question asked, playing off the loss so impressively she could almost believe he didn't care. It was certainly enough to throw Bakuda off her game.
"What?" The tinker nearly slipped off her overbuilt throne, then quickly pulled herself up again, glaring down through the red lenses of her mask. "That's what you're playing at? You want to pretend it doesn't matter? Acting like…"
Her words died at the sound of Apeiron's patient reply. "Bakuda, that's three-day-old technology. Even if I could get it back, I don't know what I would do with it at this point. I mean, maybe as a curiosity…"
Apeiron just trailed off as he made a dismissive gesture. Vicky actually pulled back from her phone, mirroring Bakuda's reaction to the man's words. The back and forth that had defined the exchange died as the bomb tinker tried to wrap her mind around what was just said.
Looking around it seemed most of the people watching the broadcast were in the same position. Even her uncle looked like he was trying to figure out if he had heard things correctly. He pulled his phone away from his ear and gave Vicky a question look.
"Did he just say three days? Three days was worthless?" She gave her uncle a helpless look. He looked jarred by the statement, and she couldn't blame him.
Actually, he looked extremely jarred, run down, and stressed. At a glance he collected himself, and she was met with the front of reassurance and support that had walked into the meeting, but she couldn't forget the look behind the mask.
Her uncle had signed up for Brockton's relief forces. He'd been working since he got to the city, while also dealing with his share of the family drama. It was something she was grateful for, but it also felt like she should apologize somehow. He had met her after coming off a full day shift and, while he wasn't in top form, was doing what he could.
And would be again. This wasn't being sent out for the purpose of showing how outmatched Bakuda was in terms of conversation skills. The ABB had something in the works. Something that meant they wanted people to see this, to know what they were planning and how it involved Apeiron.
The ABB was going to war with a tinker who thought, with apparent sincerity, that technology from a few days ago wasn't worth his time. The horrible things that said about the man's growth curve had nothing on the real concern burning in her mind.
Apparently the first time Apeiron had gone into battle he had broken Oni Lee's arm. A week later he leveled a storage yard. The time after that he was removing sections of the city and launching attacks that still weren't properly quantified. The problem of what Apeiron would be tomorrow, or next week wasn't important at the moment. The critical question was, what would he be bringing to this fight? And could the city endure it.
A light voice came from somewhere off camera, breaking Bakuda out of her stupor at the insane statement of power. "Three-day-old technology? My, isn't that precious."
March stepped into frame. Superficially she was exactly like the pictures Vicky had seen from the villain's New York career, but there was something critically different. At first she thought it was the uniform. It still had a military cut, but something more in line with a general than the conductor of a marching band. Every element had been polished, every detail tweaked. It was another step up in cape costume design.
But that wasn't enough to account for the impression. Then Victoria saw it. The reaction to March's appearance wasn't because of March. It was because of Apeiron.
The cape clearly hadn't expected the thinker to appear, but rather than seeming shocked or put off he was poised. There was a tension in his stance that hadn't been there before, but tension like a coiled serpent. The tension that made you poised to strike rather than the tension that would cause you to freeze up.
He was regarding March as a threat, but rather than backing down or expressing concern he had shifted his stance slightly and was positively radiating menace. Vicky involuntarily moved her phone back a few inches and noticed similar reactions in other people watching the broadcast. The strength of his costume, stance, and body language was being conveyed strongly enough that she could nearly feel it press down on her.
On the screen Bakuda clearly picked up on it, but the rabbit cape was completely unmoved, gossiping with the ABB tinker like schoolyard friends.
"You heard him, he doesn't want it back. That means it's just waiting there for anyone who cares to take it. Isn't that wonderful?"
Apeiron clearly wasn't amused by the threat to plunder his work. "March." His voice was deep and guarded. Suddenly there was no levity in the exchange. All the little flourishes he had used to needle Bakuda were gone, replaced with a demeanor that was deadly serious. "So, the rabbit's finally poking her head out of her warren. I had been wondering when Bakuda would finally need to pull you out of her hat. The rest of her little magic show certainly wasn't serving to impress."
March somehow ignored death staring at her from across a video call and tilted her head playfully towards the camera. "My, how flattering." The tone was so saccharine and unsettling that it sent shivers up Victoria's spine. "And such a charmer. You didn't mention that. Ah, such a shame."
Apeiron remained impassive as he leaned forward to reply. "I can't say I was overly impressed by what I saw of your work on Monday." March only twitched her head in response, just enough to make the rabbit ears of her mask dance for the camera as Apeiron continued in a tone that would have given Hookwolf pause. "Or your meager attempts to counter me in the aftermath. Impressive timing, but inexpertly applied. I'm guessing you're new to playing at this level."
It looked like Bakuda wanted to say something, but March leaned in to cut her off. "Oh?" The ABB thinker crooned. "Wouldn't people say the same about you?"
That was the million-dollar question. Was Apeiron new? Everything about him screamed experience, but he also seemed to be making rookie mistakes. It was like he had a lifetime of knowledge for combat, strategy, and even negotiations, but none of it matched up with the modern cape scene.
Popular theories had him as a mercenary, possibly from South Africa or maybe touring the worse parts of South America. A place where he would have gotten the combat experience he demonstrated, but could still find himself out of water when dealing with American heroes and villains. He could have triggered years ago and still be relatively new on the cape scene.
It also gave people the comforting idea that he wasn't actually advancing, just building back up to some previous level. So, not actually someone who would discard three-day old technology as useless, merely technology built with the resources and tools he had access to three days ago.
It was a nice theory, but Victoria had heard lots of nice theories over the past week. Nice theories that only held until Apeiron blew them out of the water. Nice theories that, in retrospect, were mostly designed for the sake of peace of mind for the person who came up with them, not their ability to accurately explain the situation.
March's follow up statement only drove that point home.
"Of course, I think we both know better. So many things that only we know."
If Apeiron had been giving off an intimidating energy before, that took him all the way to murderous. The clear reaction, the conspiratorial behavior between the most powerful cape in the city and a supposedly D-list villain, was setting off every alarm in her brain. She could see her uncle react the same way. Other watchers looked confused by the exchange, but he was becoming increasingly tense as the conversation progressed. Whatever they were alluding to, every instinct she had built as a cape was screaming that it was serious.
"Knowledge that will soon become markedly rarer." Bakuda launched herself into the exchange, either blind to the implications, or unconcerned with them. The weight of presence that Apeiron was giving off dropped as he shifted focus back to the bomb tinker.
"You seem rather confident about that threat. For a self-professed genius, I expected at least basic pattern recognition skills."
Before she could respond March jumped in ahead of her. "He wants to know about patterns. Should we tell him? Time for the big reveal."
The sheer childish glee in the voice coming from the rabbit mask was deeply disturbing. Maybe taken alone it could have been dismissed as something trivial, like the Protectorate had been doing, but not with death staring at it from the second screen. The imposing presence of that glowering visor and billowing cape set against the tilting bunny ears only served to fill Vicky with dread.
It reminded her of the time she and Amy had, stupidly, on a slumber party dare, looked up one of the few videos of the Slaughterhouse Nine and seen Bonesaw at work. Amy hadn't been able to take more than a few seconds of it, but that out of place childishness in a severe setting, it was coming back to her with this exchange.
That discomfort didn't seem to affect Bakuda in the least. Whether the tinker didn't see it, or was willfully ignorant, Vicky couldn't say as she watched the woman settle back onto the throne. "Indeed, you want patterns? You think I can't manage them? What do you think brought you here?"
Apeiron took the bait with a derisive response. "An overly wide and poorly executed communication base that was largely unsecured and imprecisely managed for the number of people it was intended to coordinate." Channeled through his new demeanor the joking attitude now seemed threatening. "If the dumpster fire of logistics that led me to this call was intentionally implemented for my benefit then I'm impressed by your commitment, if nothing else."
Vicky exchanged another glance with her uncle. They knew what that meant. What had been hinted at and confirmed by Apeiron. What this entire exchange was building to. Apeiron had found the ABB operation, and happened on a link they had set up for him. Something was in the works, something serious, and she couldn't waste time idly watching the broadcast.
She reached under the table and grabbed her bag. "I've got to get changed." She said quickly. "If something happens…" She held her phone awkwardly.
Her uncle pulled his own phone away from his ear. "Go. I'll watch on one of the other screens. Units are being deployed, but whatever they're planning it hasn't started yet."
Vicky nodded and hurried to the bathroom as the conversation continued. She wasn't watching anymore, just letting the dialogue play as she frantically changed into her costume.
"More dismissive bravado. You've seen what we have, what's in place." Bakuda's voice came from her phone. "Ten times the forces we had a week ago. Positioned, armed, and ready to strike. And there's nothing you can do about it."
Vicky bolted the door and fumbled with her bag, feeling beads of cold sweat form on her back. Assuming Bakuda was telling the truth that would be hundreds of people. Hundreds taken from their lives, operated on, and forced to fight against their will. The statement stood as both a massive threat to the entire city and a monument of horror.
All she could think was 'how'. How had this happened? How did they miss this? The PRT knew this had happened before. They were collecting people that had been freed by Apeiron. They must have gotten details of Bakuda's actions and methods. How had they let it happen again? How did they miss a repeat of the nightmare happening in their own city.
Apeiron responded with his own question, but with a very different tone. "And this is a threat to me how?"
It was a simple question, and one that cut to the heart of the matter. Conscripted slave soldiers might be a nightmare for the victims of the process and a critical threat to the city, but their chance of bringing down someone like Apeiron was laughable. The tinker expanded upon those exact sentiments as Vicky pulled the white dress of her costume over her head. "Will your collection of schoolchildren, office workers, and grandmothers be expected to succeed where your parahumans have failed? Or is it desperation because you're running out of capes that I haven't personally defeated."
Bakuda snapped a response as Vicky quickly pulled on her boots. "Posturing! I should have expected it. Claim indifference all you want, we both know you'll be rushing in. You can't help yourself, can you, 'mercenary'?"
Vicky couldn't surpress a hint of a smile at that, despite the dire nature of the situation, and her own somewhat ridiculous circumstances. Apparently she wasn't the only one who had been able to put together the obvious hints behind Apeiron's actions. The fact that the ABB had enough faith in his morality that they were willing to bet their operation on it made her feel both vindicated, and even more mortified for her earlier actions.
"Imply whatever you want. I am perfectly entitled to find your actions stupid and distasteful, though I suppose I should have come to expect that from you." The now almost-certainly-Rogue tinker deflected Bakuda's accusations while pointedly not denying them.
She wrestled her cape and tiara into place as the man's voice continued to speak from her phone. "So, is that it? Another spree of attacks meant to accomplish what exactly? Smash and grab robberies? A fight over power structures that are barely holding together? Or are you just trying to make the city completely unlivable? Chasing the honor of ruling a pile of rubble?"
Vicky shoved her civilian clothes back into her backpack as Bakuda made her onious response. "Big talk, but you know what we can do. We're poised, we're ready, and we outgun every other group in the city combined."
She hurried back to the coffee shop to catch the exchange between the two tinkers. Someone had set up a tablet on the counter and various customers were standing with her uncle watching the capes bicker. Well, watching Bakuda bicker while March looked on in irreverent amusement and Apeiron continued to command the scene with nothing more than a remote camera and a sky backdrop.
"Any GROUP, maybe. And are you that eager for a repeat of Saturday night? You do remember how that resolved, or have you elected to pretend it didn't happen, perhaps put it out of your mind in the face of your upcoming battle with what is probably a rapidly progressing form of…"
"My medical technology is perfect!" The gas-masked tinker screeched back while panting through her filters. Vicky took a place next to her uncle and barely drew a second glance from the customers, with most of them focused on the tablet or their own phones. "And you said it yourself, everything is personal. Your attempts at denial are pathetic."
"But they're so cute!" The rabbit cape cut in and leaned so close to the camera that her mask took up the entire frame. "So stern and collected, and we haven't even explained the best part." The laughter of the girl was disturbing in the extreme, but Apeiron was unfazed as dismissed their preparations, called out their pageantry, and mocked the futility of their plans.
Bakuda fired back, this time trying to match the way Apeiron was able to convey power through slight shifts of his body. She mostly ended up looking uncomfortable and petulant. March, on the other hand, seemed to be relishing the exchange, even when her opponent took the lead.
"You see, it's all in place." The thinker chittered "Little dominos ready to fall wherever we want them." She mimed flicking with one of her fingers. "One strike, one reaction, one reaction to a reaction, and it all falls down."
Her uncle had broken away from the crowd and was murmuring into his phone. Her own phone chirped, announcing a new text message from Missy.
'Guard is mobilizing. No details yet, probably precautionary. It's insane that we're learning about it this way.'
Vicky grimaced as she keyed a reply.
'W/ my uncle, BBPD. Let me know if I can help.'
On the screen March's voice took on a particularly satisfied edge. "Even if you see it there's nothing to be done. The collapse will happen."
"So it seems." Apeiron answered in a grave voice, which seemed to delight the opposing capes.
"Exactly!" Bakuda waved her arms and pressed forward. "Power and direction, already in motion." Her voice was smug under the robotic covering of the modulator.
Vicky tensed as she realized what was coming. It was cliché, something that didn't really happen. They were going to ransom the city, hold the attack against Apeiron to press him into some… how would this go? Not in the movies or cartoons, but real life? Would they make a show of it, or just try to get him somewhere where one of Bakuda's nightmare bombs would leave him dead, or worse? It was incredible. They were so confident that Apeiron was the complete opposite of everything the PRT though him to be that they were flaunting it. Building their schemes around it.
The masked tinker sat on her pseudo throne and glared down in triumph. "And if you want to have any chance of stopping it…"
"You." Apeiron cut her off abruptly.
"What?" Bakuda gasped, an action that was mirrored by more than a few of the people watching the tablet.
"Stopping you." The cape calmly explained, as if he wasn't discussing an attack that could leave the city devastated beyond belief. "Whatever you were thinking, did you really expect me to play along? Follow directions from a bomb tinker and a timing thinker?"
It was March who recovered first. "You're serious?" The thinker asked in an almost perplexed tone.
"I'm not going to chase you down this rabbit hole." He mocked, shifting posture and the placement of his cape to drive home the point. "Whatever Wonderland you've prepared, it can get by on its own."
Vicky saw her uncle finish his conversation as Bakuda leaned in and growled. "The city will burn."
The strength of the woman's conviction sent shivers up Victoria's spine and she saw worried looks being exchanged between customers. And hopeful looks being directed at her. She hid a gulp and put on her best press conference face.
"As will you." Apeiron replied glibly and made a derisive gesture. "Or have you forgotten that as well? That consequence of your last overreach? You can play with scale and position, but what convinced you that this would end any better than Saturday night?"
It was a reminder that this wasn't just bravado. Apeiron could, or believed he could, counter the ABB at the top of their game. The gang was stronger, but the tinker advanced in a way that defied all belief. 'Three day old technology.' Nobody else thought like that. Whether he was advancing, rebuilding, or even gaining new powers there was at least a chance he could back up his threats.
And he might be the only one who could. She moved out of the crowd as her uncle gestured for her. The only member of the family consistently working to help the city, and he wasn't even on the team. She had no idea what was happening with her Aunt Sarah, but from what little she had heard from Crystal and Eric it wasn't good. Uncle Neil was God knows where. Her mom was more concerned with that PRT thing than the city burning down around them. Her Dad was risking his life on a nightly basis, and Amy was still locked up. Or sort of locked up.
Really, who could manage something like this? The Protectorate would have been hard pressed with focused leadership and the team at full strength. The Wards were technically on duty, but it was a new and unstable team. Like it or not the city's fate seemed to rest on a mercenary who stated himself more devoted to bringing down his enemies than helping their victims.
When she put some space between her and the crowd she whispered to her uncle. "What did you hear?"
"Attacks started." He relayed in a low tone. "Reports of strikes at the edges of ABB territory. Some further out. Looks like Apeiron going against them, or at least his robots. Just hit a team that looked to be moving on the PRT headquarters."
Vicky's eyes widened and she looked back at what was now confirmed to be a delayed broadcast. "Should we go…?"
Her voice died as she heard March's words. "Little dominos. All that work, and for what?"
Once again it was the casual approach to brutality that made the brightly dressed cape so unsettling. Cheerfully announcing the recapture of the victims Apeiron had saved on Saturday night, mocking his attempts and victories. Against someone with Apeiron's power and arsenal it seemed foolish.
Then you looked at the tinker's response, and 'foolish' was quickly upgraded to 'suicidal'.
"So…" There were probably parts of the ninth circle of Hell less frigid than the tone the tinker used in his response. Whatever illusions she had about him being at peak intimidation in earlier portions of the exchange evaporated under the intensity of his presence. Even the ABB villains seemed taken aback. "You lashed out at those who slipped your grasp. Breaking toys that would be taken from you. And you thought this childish ploy would stay my hand against you?"
"You…" The electronic distortion couldn't cover the apprehension in Bakuda's voice. Vicky doubted she would have done much better if she was in the bomb tinker's shoes. "You say that, but can you back it up?" The woman visibly gulped and steadied herself. "Maybe I should introduce you to what you're dealing with."
The image being broadcast shifted to allow a third video frame. This showed a darkened room with a man tied to a chair. Asian, with thinning hair, and wearing a maintenance uniform of some sort. That was about all that you could be sure of, under the blood and swelling. The man had been horribly worked over. His breathing was shallow and he had numerous broken bones. She hadn't seen anything like that since…
Dumpster. Lazy rotations through the air after a kick sent it flying. A figure limping down an alley, flipping her off as he struggled to get away. Impact, skidding metal against asphalt. He didn't get up.
"Your little helper from that mop up attempt." Bakuda's taunt broke her out of the memories of the last time she needed to be bailed out by her sister. She focused on putting the thoughts out of her mind and focused on the screen, as unpleasant as it was. "Everyone was talking about what he did. How BRAVE he was. Well, I've made something special for him, and if you want to see him alive…"
"No." Apeiron managed to deliver the word like a punch from Alexandria. Bakuda looked like she had been physically struck. March seemed to snap out of her childish dream land and actually pay attention to the conversation. Confused murmurs went through the crowd until Bakuda managed to screech a response.
"Excuse me? If you don't…"
The man's cape flared as he wheeled on the camera. "What if I DON'T?" For the first time in the exchange Apeiron had raised his voice, and Vicky could feel the hairs on the back of her neck rise to meet it. She stood staring, along with the crowd, as the tinker let loose.
"He'll suffer? He'll die? And will no one else? Will it end? No. You don't get to stand in a river of blood and make deals for people's lives. Don't insult me with false offers to discount your barbarism. I keep my contracts, and if you think for a moment I would entertain this farce of an agreement then you are talking to the wrong person."
The coffee shop was silent as a church, the last vestiges of the tinker's rant seeming to hang in the air like a physical presence. Nobody seemed to know what to do. Even Vicky's knowledge that she needed to get out there, to help somehow was overridden by the intensity of the act.
"Well, hasn't this been enlightening." Unsurprisingly it was the deranged thinker who was the first to recover, though at least she seemed to have abandoned some of her levity for the situation. "Not that it matters. The dominos will fall with or without you. Do have fun watching the collapse, and we'll see how you manage. Such a shame you couldn't draw things out long enough to finish your little trace…"
The screen suddenly cut out. Abruptly, like a hasty video edit. They were covering something up. Something they didn't have enough time to manipulate, so they took a guillotine to the recording and pretended everything was normal. That whatever Apeiron had done to upset things didn't happen.
No, instead they just broadcast a video announcing their threat to the entire city, as well as Apeiron's indifference to it in the face of bringing them down. Effectively they announced to everyone that they would be in the middle of a war zone between the two forces that had defined cape news for the last week, and redefined power structures in the city.
To say there would be panic would be an understatement. If this got out of hand Bakuda wouldn't even need to burn down the city. She could already see rumblings of unrest amongst the staff and patrons. It was something she didn't know how to handle. Worse, her uncertainty seemed to be leaking through her aura, even in its reduced state.
If they were waiting for Glory Girl to float up and give a speech about the triumph of good over evil before flying off to save the day they had caught her on the wrong week. The best she could see herself manage would be something along the lines of 'things might not be quite as shitty as they appear'.
Fortunately her uncle stepped forward before she was driven to try her hand at improvised public speaking. He already towered over most of the people in the shop, and when he straightened to talk he seemed to grow an extra six inches just from his presence.
"Everyone, I know this is a serious situation, so I'll try to make this brief. Some of you might know me as Lightstar. I'm sure you know my niece as Glory Girl." Vicky gave a polite wave from his side. "I am a former member of New Wave and part of the current relief force assigned to the Brockton Bay Police Department." That got everyone's full attention. "I'm sure you understand the full magnitude of this situation. We will be doing everything we can. Until this is over I would like to ask you to stay inside and off the streets, for your own safety and the safety of those working to end this crisis."
It didn't exactly get a round of applause, but the murmuring had died down and people had shifted from anxiously eyeing the door to frantically making calls or checking their phone. Vicky fell in behind her uncle as he made his way out of the shop, leaving her bag with the barista before she departed.
"Uh, that was pretty good," she glanced back, "but I don't think it's going to be enough for the rest of the city."
"Help where you can, when you can, and build from there." He said, stepping onto the street. Mercifully it wasn't exploding around them, but they could hear the echoes of blasts from further into the city.
"Right." She took a breath and realized how lost she felt. "Uh, where do we go from here?"
Her uncle took out his phone. "Apeiron has a robot attacking what they think might be Bakuda's lab, just based on the number of explosions. There are reports of what look like five or six more of those things across the city, plus a small army of his crystal drone things. No clue as to where he really is, and the ABB is hitting ten times as many places as he can cover. Everyone else is playing catch up."
Vicky let out of breath. "So, what do we do? I mean," She looked towards the source of the echoing explosion sounds, remembering the horrible bombs from the Saturday broadcast.
Her uncle smiled at her. "What we can…"
"Where we can." She finished. "That was from the Brockton Bay Brigade, right?"
He grinned. "We shopped a lot of slogans. That one never really caught on, but I always had a soft spot for it. And it seemed appropriate for the current situation."
She nodded. The city needed all the help it could get. They couldn't just leave this to one cape, no matter how strong he seemed. They would do what they could. They would help. It was time to make a difference. It was time to be heroes.
