Hey, someone got one of the references! The other was that SV uses lots of Blue colors while SB uses Orange. Which to be honest really explains the communities of these sites.
Last edited:
Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)
- Thread starter LordRoustabout
- Start date
- Pronouns
- he
once more we gather.
it is almost time, lets see what we wake up this night?
it is almost time, lets see what we wake up this night?
Everyone got ready)
So far, all signs and omens indicate a high probability of a new chapter. In any case, LR usually notifies of the delay much earlier.
- Location
- Canada
Something something a blessing from the lord
57.1 Interlude Scrub - Leet - Rey
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
(Author's Note: I understand the pacing of the story has been a point of annoyance for some readers. I have already commented on this in an earlier note, but feel it is best to be upfront about the situation.
Somer's Rock is not this chapter. I had hoped to reach at least the start of the summit, but I was limited to what I could write in the time I could spare and in the style I could maintain. I understand people have been waiting for that meeting to start and are becoming frustrated, but the only alternative would have been to delay for a week to be able to include additional sections of the chapter.
I have already spoken about my attempts to change my writing style and schedule and how that impacted me. I do not plan to make any further attempts, but I will be open about the progress of the story. It will be very clear when the summit begins, so anyone specifically reading for that event will be informed when we reach it. Until then, as I have stated, I will be approaching the story at the pace that I know I can sustain.)
*******************
57.1 Interlude Scrub
Scrub leaned his back against the wall of the… whatever it was. Honestly, he wasn't sure where they were right now. The music was thrumming so loud he couldn't hear anything beyond the party, and this part of the Docks wasn't a place he'd frequented even before the ABB had turned the city upside down. He tried to take a breath of night air, hoping it would clear his head, but only inhaled a lungful of second hand weed smoke, diesel exhaust, and the persistent odor of unwashed bodies that hung over every Merchant event like a wet blanket.
Trying to clear his head was probably a lost cause. He'd been in a fog since he had stumbled back from that raid as a jittering mess. He'd barely been able to get the story out before they gave him something to help him relax. After that he kind of lost track of things. They had really been giving him a lot of things to help him relax. Probably too many things, considering how hard it was to follow the events of the last… two? Three days? He knew there had been a lot of meetings, and he'd been paraded in front of the gang several times.
Like tonight. That had been a stage, or that thing Squealer built that functioned as a stage when it wasn't rolling over buildings or filling the skies with clouds of lead. There had been the usual profanity filled speech from Skidmark, something about the future of the city, changing times, and plenty of insults directed to the Empire.
Not much mention of Apeiron, the Enigmatic Artificer. God, that was still weird. When it started he'd thought the drugs were getting to him, frying his brain like his dad always said they would. But, no. They had broken it down for him. The tinker had done something, something to confirm his identity. If you were talking about Apeiron, the real Apeiron, then you knew it was the Enigmatic Artificer. Use the name for anyone else or anything else and the SAT vocabulary words didn't show up.
People would be wondering why he had done something like that, what would be the point. They didn't know about tomorrow, about Somer's Rock. Where Scrub would need to see him, him and Lady Khepri, in person.
He felt his guts wrench and sweat start to bead on his forehead. Maybe he needed to talk to someone, find something else to help him relax. Or to at least get his mind off the fact that he would be in the same room with that man after bisecting his girlfriend.
People had doubted that part of the story, but Scrub had been sober for those events. Well, mostly sober. There had been some partying with the Merchants before he went out. Celebrating beating back the ABB and congratulating him on his trigger. Like it was some personal accomplishment, not some desperate panicked thing, a last-minute ass-pull that came too late to help Rick.
God, thinking about that, what happened to Rick, the look in his friend's eyes right at the end, before it looked like he would be next, like there was no way out…
And then things went black and suddenly everything was exploding. The horrible spears of green crystal blasting apart or just vanishing like they'd been carved out by an ice cream scoop. It had been too late for his friend, but he got out. Other people got out as well, including the Merchant capes, who had probably been the real target of that mess.
And then the 'celebrations'. That had been a whirlwind, and not just because of Whirlygig. Did he ever actually join the Merchants in anything close to an official capacity? Did the Merchants even have any official capacity? It seemed like he'd just been swept up in the post battle furor, folded in among people who at least understood what had happened to him.
They dubbed him Scrub before he had a chance to give any input, and that had been his name since. Nobody even asked what his real name was. In the Merchants it wasn't like you had a civilian identity anyway. Skidmark didn't take off his costume at the end of the day and go home to some suburban split level. You were your cape name, and that was it.
God, it was hard to think. The pulse from the bass worked its way through the wall and into the back of his skull, but if anything the rhythm was the steadiest thing in his mind at the moment. There were times when he thought he should get his shit together. Find some time away from the madness where he could get his head straight. But that hadn't been an option. Since the attacks it had been a continuous haze of parties, demonstrations, speeches, and what he thought were planning meetings, but that didn't really register.
Thankfully there hadn't been any other fights since that first night. Hours from triggering and out on what was supposed to be an easy run, especially for two capes with a team of unpowered support, and they run straight into New Wave and that giant cape. Well, it had actually only been Manpower, but they hadn't known that. He had been convinced that they were seconds away from drowning in lasers or explosions. Looking back, he could only wish that had been the case.
The sweat beaded on his brow once again as images from that fight came flashing through his mind. The way the giant commanded the street like a living thing and Manpower stalked towards them like an implacable lightning wreathed force of nature. Leaving him panicking and trying to figure out what the fuck he was supposed to do.
He could barely aim his blasts. It was like throwing a handful of marbles and hoping some of them ended up where you wanted. When he had been surrounded by those explosions, the flames, sprays of slime, the crystals that… God, he didn't like thinking about that. Back then it had been everything he wanted. Just a continuous stream carving away at the world. Even at some of the ABB attackers. He knew they were forced to be there, but at that moment he hadn't cared. Not with those crystals coming for him. Not after what they'd done to Rick.
Hours later, when he was trying to figure out his powers, it became clear things were going to be difficult. For big general stuff, like removing the front of a house, he was fine. For anything precise it was a nightmare.
He didn't want to kill Manpower, or whoever the earth-mover cape was. He'd never seen them before, but if that guy was working with Manpower they were probably a hero. While that didn't mean as much to him as it had before the city went to hell, he still didn't want to start his life as a cape by putting a target on his head.
The best he could do was try to drop blasts in the general area, close enough so the shockwaves would catch them, but not enough to actually carve them up. It had been hard, especially with his lack of practice and the unhelpful presence of Whirlygig.
He had almost taken her leg off. He knew that now; how bad it could have been. What if that loose shot had been one foot to the left? She'd have been short a foot, at minimum. His mind played through a version of that night where that happened. He'd have to, what? Tie off the leg to stop her from bleeding out? Then hope the other Merchants would be able to haul her out before they got scooped up by the Heroes?
He couldn't ignore it, because it could have happened. He could have maimed her, just like Lady Khepri.
The dam broke in his mind. All the details of that scene came flooding back through the haze of drugs and avoidance. He didn't want to think about this. He didn't want to think about what it would mean, or how Apeiron would react at the summit tomorrow. It was tomorrow, right?
He didn't want to think about it, but it came unbidden. A flood of skittering horror sneaking up on him, creeping right under his nose while he was transfixed by the figure on the roof. Then probably the least dignified scream of his life followed by a desperate flail of his power.
He didn't know powers worked like that. Really, he didn't know anything about powers. When you watch capes on the news or in movies you always get the sense that there's some kind of separation, that the laser blast or space warps or energy weapons come from something split off from the cape themselves. That they have to reach out and focus to use their power.
Not just swing an arm in a fit of panic and delete a section of lawn, and house, and roof, and person.
When he saw what had happened, what he had done to Lady Khepri, he could barely think. The only things going through his head were the thousand horrible futures waiting for him. It overwhelmed him to the point where he didn't even recognize what was happening. Not until that voice.
He held back a shudder, out of place in the warm, clammy atmosphere of the party. That voice, the coarse, inhuman sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. That did come from everywhere at once. The voice of the swarm, screaming at them.
Then they were all over him, crawling, biting, working their way into his mouth and nose and under his tattered clothes. The same clothes he'd been wearing when he triggered. The same clothes he was still wearing.
He pressed back into the wall, trying to banish the phantom sensations that seemed to cut through the fog in his mind in a way all of his personal efforts failed to do. As he breathed in and out the world around him flared and dimmed. The light bleeding from his mouth and nose pulsed with his breath, which bled white smoke in a continuous stream, merging with the trails spilling off from his hair and eyes.
He had power; his very existence proved that. There was no denying it, but he didn't FEEL like a cape. He felt scared, alone and confused. Trapped by circumstance and the persistent display of his own power. Even if there was somewhere for him to go back to, he couldn't. Not like this. All he could do was muddle through and hope he didn't fuck up again.
"Hey," A voice shouted through the din of the sound system. "You look like you could use this." Scrub cracked open his eyes, seeing a girl who looked to be around the same age as him. Blue/white light bloomed across her face as his eyes opened and the glow from them spread over her. She seemed to enjoy the effect and posed in the light of his power. She was wearing a bandana shirt with short jean shorts. The girl had tattoos of vines snaking along her arms and stomach and she was holding a pair of overly tall shot glasses with brightly colored liquid in them.
At this point he would have accepted a shot of drain cleaner if it would have gotten his mind off things. "Thanks." He said, taking one of the glasses. The girl clinked her own glass one against the one in his hand and smiled before they both downed the contents.
It was some kind of mix with a gummy texture, like a Jell-o shot that had melted, with a fruity flavor that had a heavily artificial edge, like candy. It was also incredibly strong. The sugar took the edge off, but it still elicited a single cough from him in contrast to the girl who just savored the taste.
Really savored it, putting on a clear display of how much she was enjoying it. Afterwards she smiled and looked at him with half lidded eyes. He took a breath. There had been girls before. The constant efforts to drive up support and the way the area was pretty much isolated from the rest of the city has resulted in a culture of celebration, and all that kind of thing attracted.
In some of his more lucid moments he had wondered if it was just because most of the people had nowhere else to go. That they were hanging around the Merchants because their lives had fallen apart and they had nothing to go back to? In the most lucid of lucid moments, he wondered if he was really talking about them, and not himself.
"My name's Ivy." The girl said, pressing in towards him. "You're Scrub, right?"
"That's what they call me." Somehow that sounded smoother in his head, but the girl didn't seem to mind. This close every flicker in the glow of his hair and eyes highlighted her body in the dark. With the amount of smoke in the air his light seemed to form an aura around them. The girl noticed it and cast a hand through the light, playing with the shadows of the glow, then the luminous smoke, then finding her way to his head.
"I love your hair." She said, running a hand through it and pressing in close. It was as much for them to hear each other over the music as anything else, but he had to wonder if that was the point of playing it at that volume.
"Thanks." He said, then struggled for anything else to add. "Uh, it just came with my power. It's nothing special."
"No, it is." She said, "Powers are special. However they express themselves, it means something. You're lucky to have a sign like this." She looked up at him and he could see the glow of his power reflected in her eyes. "You're a Leo, aren't you?"
Scrub was actually a Capricorn, but he didn't even get a chance to correct her. Frankly he didn't know if he would have bothered.
"I know, I've got a sense for these things." She said with certainty.
Scrub smiled back at her. After days with the Merchants, running into a New Age chick instead of the harder sorts that were more common in the gang events was a relief. She seemed to pick up on it and pressed closer to him.
"So, where are you from?" He asked. It could be a loaded question, but he didn't get the sense that she was some shell-shocked refugee displaced by the attacks. She didn't sound local. Probably with the tourist crowd, or a younger looking girl from the college.
"All over, really." She gave him a conspiratorial grin. "I'm visiting the city with some friends, but the guy in charge of the trip is a total narc. Was stressing about some big thing tomorrow night, so a bunch of us snuck out to have some fun while we could."
"Good place for it." He tried lamely.
"Yeah." She said, not noticing the fumbling nature of his replies. "It's beautiful, seeing people come together like this after what happened."
He didn't know if he'd describe any part of the Merchant's activities as beautiful, but Ivy was probably on a different set of drugs than him. Not that he had a problem with that. He was starting to get a sense for what someone's preferred fix was by their behavior. From what he could tell she definitely leaned more towards the party side than the harder stuff.
"Come on." She trailed a hand down from his head, then along his arm to grasp his hand. "It's too nice a night to stay cooped up. Let's dance."
Scrub let himself be led away from the comparatively quiet corner and into the press of bodies on what served as a dance floor. As Ivy began to move to the pulsing rhythm he found himself joining her. Not just in the dance, but in the moment. For that instant, at the very least, he could leave behind the worries about Somer's Rock, about the gang, about his power and what it might do if it got away from him.
He could worry later. He would worry later. Right now, he was dancing to a bass heavy song that he could feel in his bones, the glow of his power lighting up everyone around him. Though in the flickering light, he swore it looked like Ivy's tattoos were moving on their own.
*******************
57.1 Interlude Leet
Leet sighed as he pulled back from the workbench, rubbing his eyes. The modified sleep schedule was still working, but just barely. He was functional, but not much more than that. Frankly, things were probably better that way. If he was clear headed, if he could fully appreciate the weight of the situation, then he had the feeling he would end up being crushed under it.
It also helped that his power, or agent, or whatever it was, seemed to be thriving under these conditions. That was what really made him reluctant to stop, the fear of losing that edge, that triumphant return to functionality from a power that had seemed unstoppable for an all too brief period before turning into the worst aspect of his existence. It was like he was only staying above water by moving as quickly as he could, and the moment he stopped he would crash back down to mediocrity and failure.
It was the thing that drove him, the reason he and Jeff had come back to the city even after everything that happened. If there was ever a time to bail, to grab what they could and relocate to another state, or even another country, this was it. A display like that could have sent them packing even if they weren't connected to the group that had ended up on the wrong end of it.
But no, they had come back. They had finished their job and the follow up circuit of tech trades and purchases that had been set up for them, and then they came back to the city. Back to the heart of the chaos under the shadow of a man Leet couldn't believe he had ever compared himself to.
They came back because… Well, Jeff had his own reasons, his own concerns and connections. He was invested in the Game Grid, but only for what it could mean, what could be done with it, not for the sake of the project itself.
Leet had come back because it was a chance to finish the work. Probably the last and only chance he'd ever get. It was no longer about showing anyone up or making a display. That idea was laughable in the face of what had happened in the sky over the city. No, this was for him. It would prove things to himself, prove what he was capable of, what his power could really do. He had decided he would see this through if it was the last thing he ever did.
Frankly, he had accepted it might well be. Just by coming back, committing himself, it was hard to see a way out, to see a world after this project. That was something he could blame on Apeiron. The cape who had turned the city upside down, who threw out claims about three-day-old technology, and who nobody could predict.
He imagined there were a lot of capes feeling the way he did, just probably without the sense of finality that was gripping him. Jeff would make some boisterous speech about seeing things through, standing and fighting, and finding a solution. Leet didn't see things that way. After this project, after everything he put into it and after what it would do, he really didn't see a way out, a way back to themed crimes and streaming revenue. This, for better or worse, would be his life's work.
At least he had the resources to actually see it to completion. Despite all the uneasiness that the alliance with the ABB had brought, he could recognize the significance it had made to his work. From his first day, Leet had always been screwed over by the tinker conundrum. Build tools to build tools. It was a standard cycle, known even to people who had no idea how tinker powers actually worked. Only for Leet every tool he built chipped away at the possibilities available to him. The very technology needed to tinker pruned the tech trees that made his projects possible.
As a consequence, he had become accustomed to making do. To working with 'mundane' equipment. Still top of the line, or as close as they could get to it, but not the collection of master devices that you'd expect from a tinker's lab. Normal tools, normal materials, and normal processes, all to try to stretch his dying power one step further, get just one more project out of the branches of tech that were already stripped bare.
That had all changed. Not only were his older projects actually usable again, but the resources had been flowing freely. The ABB's coffers might not be bottomless, but compared to what he was used to working with they might as well have been. They had already been 'contracted' by Bakuda, a deal that May had worked to set up in their favor, but following Apeiron's attack against the gang's financial headquarters Lung had been signing off on anything that could help bring Apeiron down. A hit like that should have been a devastating financial blow, leaving only secured accounts and liquid assets, but frugality seemed to have been the furthest thing from man's mind.
Leet had everything he could need. The best equipment, materials, support, and data. Oh, the data. It was something he had missed out on through his career, and he had badly underestimated the impact it could have. The way even basic tinker collaboration could turn his world upside down.
He had always figured there must be something wrong with his power, obviously, just based on how rapidly it fell out from under him. He had never imagined that the problem could just be the consequences of working in isolation.
He had been so proud… no, that wasn't it. He had wanted to be proud. Instead, he was a defensive, insecure wreck trying to blunder his way through a career built on half-assed philosophy and overcommitment to a theme that had quickly became unsustainable. But it equated to the same thing. Pride or shame, he hadn't worked with anyone else, hadn't been willing to share what tiny gems or relevancy he'd been able to shake free of his power.
Looking back, it was clear he wasn't meant to work alone, at least as far as powers could 'mean' anything. The gaps that his earlier projects left in his power could be pasted over with trivial ease with the work of any other tinker. Even something as simple as a supply of power sources or advanced processors would have removed critical components of failure from his work. And his own work, the projects that came together from fields not yet depleted, could be both enhanced and appreciated by any other tinker in the world.
It was a cruel irony. A tinker with possibly the worst connections and social skills possible, given a power that could only reach its full potential when leading a team. No wonder he'd been at odds with his agent from day one.
But now, he had a wealth of data to support his work. Scans from local parahumans, data from Armsmaster, Bakuda's plans and equipment, information seized from Blasto's computers, including the man's scans of even more parahuman abilities, then the trades, tech exchanges with the toybox, independent brokers, and that final meeting…
It all added up to a wealth of information that was nearly incalculable. Something that would take the plans for the Game Grid to the next level, and a reason to return to the insanity of Brockton Bay.
There was an impatient hammering at the door of his workshop, indicating the other reason they had returned to Brockton Bay. The headache that had been waiting for them, and one he had somehow become responsible for managing while Jeff was busy with their other problem.
Leet moved to activate the intercom and called out. "Yes?"
The voice that replied through the speaker was petulant, whiney, and had become regrettably familiar. "You know damn well who it is. Now get this meathead to open the door. I need to talk with you."
He took his finger off the call button to let out a sigh, then pulled himself together as well as he could manage. "Let her in, Pete."
There was a buzz and the door swung open, revealing the city's most wanted tinker and the person who had become his personal burden from the moment he and Jeff had returned to their base. She stormed in, giving Pete a dirty look as she did. Bakuda detested the added security and procedures that had been implemented, but there was no way in hell they were letting her have the run of the base.
She had been cordoned off in her own section of the warehouse with the handful of ABB members she had been able to smuggle out before Apeiron turned her explosive leashes into tracking tags for every law enforcement agency in the state. The girl was more than happy to let them know what she thought of the situation, but wasn't exactly in the best bargaining position at the moment.
Bakuda hadn't been stable at the best of times and returning to find her cowering in their base while being cordoned off by their remaining henchmen hadn't helped in that respect. The best he could say about the relationship was that it was being managed. Bakuda did not like being managed, but they had bigger concerns than what she 'liked' at the moment. At least they should have bigger concerns. If Leet had considered her insufferable when they were only coordinating things remotely and working with May as an intermediary, then he'd need to come up with a new, significantly more severe word to describe their current situation.
Though seeing her walk through the door was almost enough to elicit a wave of sympathy. The sight of bandages covering her left eye and right hand, hidden as much as possible by her hair and sleeve. The way she tried to suppress a wince whenever she put weight on her left leg, or needed to move her right knee.
And what she was holding only drove that home to an even greater degree. She angrily tossed the collection of folders, samples and data drives onto one of his less cluttered workbenches.
"Fucking useless, all of it." She snarled.
Leet held back another sigh. Somehow the exhaustion that was just barely being held back by his sleep schedule seemed to press down on him ten times harder whenever Bakuda was in the room.
"You wanted to see what I had done. I told you it wouldn't be the answer." He explained, leaving the accusation of 'what did you expect?' unvoiced.
"Answer?" She scoffed. "It's not even a starting point." She started gesturing to the table with her bandaged hand, then held back, trying to avoid drawing attention to it. The image of what those growths were turning into flashed through Leet's mind and he felt his stomach churn. "You had one shot at a cancer cure and you blew it on acute lymphoblastic leukemia!" She glared at him. "Ninety percent survival rate and you decided it was worth it? Oh, and gene tailored as well, just to make sure there's nothing usable here."
Bakuda had become remarkably educated on various cancer types and their individual survival rates. Of course, ninety percent still had a ten percent chance that nobody wanted to think about, and percentages only applied to groups, not individuals. It was safe to say that once things hit Stage IV the chances of pulling through weren't anywhere near ninety percent.
It had been early in his career, and a stupid waste thrown out before he even understood the limits of his power. Well, he knew it was technically a waste, and in his darker moments he certainly thought that way. Dwelling on what would have happened if he could have taken a different route, developed a broader treatment, or found some sick billionaire who would have thrown a fortune at him for a cure, rather than responding to the request of a hopeful fan in their early days.
But there was someone alive because he had blown one of the most important branches of his power early. It wasn't something he talked about, doing so would raise too many questions and reveal too much about the way his powers had been slipping away. Sometimes it felt like the stupidest thing he had even done. Sometimes thinking about it helped him get through a bad day. Right now, the only part of it that mattered was that, because of that decision, he didn't have a magic bullet for the cancers that were eating Bakuda alive.
He could see her anger at the situation, but also the depth of hopelessness beneath it. She was struggling to find a life line, and right now he was her only chance. It was the other half of what kept him in the city.
Honestly, he and Jeff could probably bail without much consequence. They would lose the flow of cash and resources, but what they had was enough to get them set up somewhere else. They could make deals, trade for what they needed, and leave the insanity behind them. It would mean compromises, accepting that his work wouldn't be the best he could make it, but it would also guarantee he'd actually be able to see it through. And all it would require was cutting loose a dangerous, unstable bomb tinker with a finite lifespan and a vengeful streak a mile wide.
Bakuda might rage at him, might complain about her situation and the idiocy that led to it, how everything was working against her and how unfair it all was, but under all of it, she knew. She knew that he was her lifeline. He was her only hope of getting through this. She maintained the narrative of being able to fix it herself, usually while downplaying the situation or blaming everyone but herself, but in reality she was working with him.
She was frustrated by that to no end, both from the necessity of actually needing help and continued annoyance over the nature of his power. She was more than happy to explain every way he had screwed up, every project that had taken some essential technology and wasted it on a childish prank that didn't even pay off. But despite all of that there was a path, a way out of the situation.
As long as she was working to cure herself she wasn't devoting her final days towards taking revenge on Apeiron. Or the city. Or the world. Leet had found himself in the position of managing Bakuda in the worst point of her life, with the added responsibility of keeping things from going to hell in the event they took a turn for the worse.
"I told you it wasn't a cure for cancer. You can't get a single cure for 'cancer' any more than you can get a cure for 'injury' or 'disease'. You have too much variation between cancer types to get any universal treatment." He explained.
"Thank you for that high school level breakdown. Maybe if you remembered who you were dealing with we'd actually be able to make some progress on this." The insult was delivered so automatically that it barely had any weight to it. Leet could just shake his head.
"Here." He said, digging out a drive and offering it to her. "Scans and analysis of the healing bomb and related effects." Leet tried not to think about what had happened to those lab mice. Still, at least he was testing on animals, rather than Bakuda's practices. Seeing Bakuda in this state it was almost possible to forget what she had done, the damage directly tied to her and the lives still hanging in the balance. "I've cross referenced it with data from Blasto's records. There's some promising potential there."
"There'd have to be, if you could find it." Bakuda muttered, snatching the drive with her left hand. "I suppose it's lucky you didn't fuck up that part of the job."
Leet bristled and shifted his body slightly, blocking Bakuda's view of the cabinet in the corner of the workshop. "The last stop was a long shot, even May knew that. We got everything else, including the Toybox run." He glanced around them. "Be grateful for that. Without Dodge's tech Apeiron would probably have sniffed us out by now."
"Yeah, good thing we don't need to rely on you for that." She muttered, holding the drive to her chest.
He looked at the sickly murderer and hardened his gaze. "Now, did you contact the PRT?"
Her reaction was embarrassment that was covered by an air of rapidly manufactured offence. "No. Why the fuck would I bother with that?"
"Because that's how hostage situations work." He explained. "The goal of whoever you're dealing with is to get the hostages out safe. It's your job to give them a path to that goal. If you don't release at least some of the hostages they become desperate and will do anything to find that path. It's a gesture of good will." And sanity, but he didn't have high hopes on that front.
She laughed. "So, you're explaining negotiating dynamics now, like some master criminal?"
"I've been in hostage situations before." He countered.
"Don't compare those joke jobs to me." She yelled back. "I'm not holding up a jewelry store in Final Fantasy costumes. This isn't about hostages, it's about control."
"This is the only way you're going to be able to hold onto any kind of control." He yelled back. "The army you built up is contained. All you can do is either kill them or let them die. The only way either of those have any weight is if there's a chance for some of them not to die. You can't use them as bargaining chips if the only options are containment or death. There needs to be at least the possibility of some of them being released."
"I let ANY of them go and my position is worthless." She spat. "I don't have time for this. If the PRT wants any of them released they can make an offer."
Leet took a deep breath and steadied himself. Times like this, it really hit him. The fact that he was actually a veteran cape. Plenty of capes measured their careers in weeks or months. Years of active work, of functioning in a city as crazy as Brockton Bay without death or capture, it meant something. Yes, they were jokes, but at least they were running jokes. Add in the fact that his powers had been fighting him most of his career and there was some actual weight to that accomplishment.
It was a weird feeling, but Leet's experience was actually worth a damn, especially in situations like this. Because, more than anything, Leet knew how to lose. He knew how to recognize when a situation had gone FUBAR and slink off with whatever sheds of dignity he could salvage. He knew how to deal with a humiliating, public loss and come back. Not come back stronger, maybe not even wiser, but he knew how to keep going. How to deal with harsh realities and move past them.
Bakuda didn't know how to fail. That was obvious, and he had the sense that was something that tied back to her trigger. Even after everything that had happened, after what had been displayed and what she was dealing with, she was still trying to delude herself, looking for a way through rather than a way out.
The reality was she needed to cut whatever deal she could get. Giving up a handful of the hundreds of hostages was her best bet to get that ball rolling. Right now, the city hated Bakuda. They hated Lung, hated the ABB, and hated anyone associated with them. He and Jeff were as tangential to that situation as possible, but they were well aware of the reality of their situation. It was just a shame they seemed to be the only ones. Actually, given how Jeff had been acting Leet wondered if he could even include him in that category.
He looked back at Bakuda. The PRT wouldn't be reaching out. Even if they didn't have someone like Piggot in command, their position was too unstable to have any hope of getting away with offering deals to the ABB bomber.
"A one-time release would be enough to get that started." He implored. "Enough that they have to acknowledge it. You want control? This is how you get it. Make a good will gesture and they're forced to respond, or they'll look responsible if things turn ugly."
That seemed to get through to her. She ran the thumb of her healthy hand over the drive and she glanced down. "I'll think about it."
"Good." And maybe it would be enough to get some of the kids out of those camps. Maybe bring some families back together. And maybe things would weigh a little less heavily on Leet when he tried to get his carefully scheduled allotments of sleep.
"I'm going to see if there's anything worthwhile in here. Send over whatever you come up with, if you can spare any time from your vanity project, that is." She said sharply before turning to the door. With a knock Pete pulled it open for her, nodded to Leet, then shut it after the girl.
Leet let out a breath as he slunk back towards his work stool. The continued process of the Game Grid was a source of irritation for Bakuda, but not so much as its continued funding. She would no doubt have loved to have seized the purse strings of the project and dangled resources just out of grasp, contingent on any number of concessions. The problem was that, even in the ABB's current state, she didn't actually control the gang's finances.
He was still an outsider to the situation, but had picked up scraps of information as to the nature of the situation. As far as he could tell, the chain of command in the ABB was a complete mess. Lung had consolidated as much power in himself as possible and only partitioned it out as absolutely necessary. He hadn't been blind enough to leave no contingencies for his absence, it's just those contingencies didn't include Bakuda, and what was established had fallen to pieces over the past week.
Most of the actions taken after his capture had been approved by Oni Lee, and then disapproved by Lung following his break out. The situation that the bomb tinker had embroiled the ABB in was clearly a step beyond the authority Lung allotted to her. Without her being an essential part of the balance of power there might have been harsher consequences for Bakuda. Instead, Lung's irritation coupled with the girl needing to recover from her injuries, had seen a system put in place that had her broadly cut out of the loop. With her too afraid to go back in the field it was relatively easy to arrange, with actual authority falling to May and Oni Lee.
Only neither of which were available at the moment. Oni Lee was critically injured. From what Leet heard he probably wouldn't walk again and they hadn't been able to save his left arm. Worse than that, some fallout from the fight had left the man nearly catatonic. Not just stoic and silent, but barely responsive to stimuli. Certainly not enough to make any actual decisions regarding the future of the ABB.
It might have been easier if Lung was confirmed dead. Realistically speaking, a hit that was visible from two continents and threw particles into orbit should be enough evidence to make a definite conclusion, but with the lack of a body and the size Lung had reached people were only willing to assess his death as 'highly likely'.
In other words, the leader of the ABB was still presumed alive. His second in command was barely functional. The girl who had been managing things… wasn't any more. The situation with May, who wasn't really May anymore, was complicated. And it complicated the situation even more.
Bakuda was the only functional cape in the ABB, and she was still considered to be third in command. That meant their deal, the one May had arranged, went untouched. Any support they provided was paid for at an agreed rate, inclusive of expenses, and ongoing funding was being provided. Bakuda couldn't touch or modify any of that. Really, she couldn't even get into the accounts, which was what concerned Leet.
It might be a relief that Bakuda couldn't mess with their deal, but it also meant she couldn't mess with any of the other deals. And there were other deals, Leet was sure of that. May had been busy before she had been… changed. Without access to the records, they didn't even know who else was on the ABB's take, or what else had been put in place.
He tried to avoid dwelling on that as he busied himself with data analysis, working to fold in new technologies and principles that had been buzzing in his head. Thinking about the idea of his agent, of his power as an intelligent being, not an obstruction for him to beat his fists against in frustration, was an interesting experience. Sometimes he thought he could pick up on that connection, the link providing drive, direction, and, for the first time, encouragement. It only happened when he wasn't looking for it, when he was deep in a project, trying to focus, to bring his work to life.
The moment he picked up on it the sensation seemed to vanish. It was something that seemed to only be experienced in memory, not in the present. He didn't know how he felt about that connection. As enheartening as it was to feel things come together, there was a resentment going back years, a fuming hatred and frustration at the way his power slipped away. Countless embarrassments and failures, all of which could now be traced to a thinking entity that caused them as a conscious decision.
He hated his power for that, but somehow he had the sense that the feeling was mutual. That it had been as angry with him as Leet had been with it. At this point, it seemed like that didn't matter anymore. They were people who had a bad history, but they were willing to set that aside to make this work. He could almost respect that more than if there was actually some cushy affection based on the power of love and friendship. The sensation of 'Fuck you, let's get to work.' was actually refreshingly honest.
There was a knock on the door and it immediately swung open. With the current systems put in place there was only one person who could enter like that. He turned to greet Jeff as his friend walked into the workshop.
The smile that had been growing on his face vanished as he recognized the sound of discordant steps coming from the hallway. After Jeff's large frame cleared the door a much slighter figure entered, pausing to steady itself on the doorframe before easing into the room.
March was here.
After what had happened on Thursday night, Leet couldn't think of that thing as May any more. Exactly what had happened, what had caused May to go from a critically injured state to the shambling husk that had been waiting for them when they returned to the hideout, was a mystery that could have no happy answers.
Agents. Beyond the curtain. Power tinkers. Dimensional technology. It all added up to a giant mess, the result of which was stumbling into his workshop.
That might have been the hardest part. Even beyond the half-healed injuries, the way costume and flesh had blended together, or the way her body had warped into something that shouldn't still be alive. May had been light, carefree, a breath of fresh air and ray of sunshine in both of their lives. Even when things were getting out of control, when he knew they were getting out of control, she had an energy and grace that seemed to make everything make sense.
She didn't have that now. No, it was worse. She did, but in a twisted way. If this was some mindless shambling mass, just a warped accident of science or parahuman abilities that was nothing but a hollow shell, then it would have been easier to deal with. Instead, it was clear there was still something there. Some spark buried under twisted flesh, crystal growths, and places where her mask and costume had fused into her body.
Leet didn't know how to fix her. He could barely tell what was wrong. At least Bakuda's combination of cancers operated under understandable medical principles. March's body shouldn't even be able to function after what happened to her. Some of the material that had integrated into her body exhibited properties that made no physical sense. It was crystalized insanity, driven directly into her flesh.
May was still in there, but clearly wasn't all there. It was like she was playing online through a bad connection, beset by unpredictable bouts of lag, or randomly going AFK with no explanation. When she was present enough to try to interact, to try to communicate something it made things even worse.
The little things, the quirks of May's behavior that had blended seamlessly into her actions, they were now standing out as sharp, unwelcome things. It was like the filter on the scenes had changed, letting him see them in a new light. It was something that not only made the current interaction seem twisted and wrong, it reframed the perspective of every earlier interaction.
March stumbled over to one of the work benches and awkwardly clambered up, slipping off twice before positioning herself on the corner. There was a delay where it seemed like she lost touch with what she was doing, then she jerked, shifting in such a way that she drew his eyes to part of his work, deployment arrays for the Game Grid.
He replayed the scene, but imagined it with May, the way she was before. Barging into the lab with a smile and a greeting, stepping lightly like she didn't have a care in the world, then elegantly hopping onto the workbench with a joke to draw his attention, but ending up in the same position, the same pose that shambling form had taken. Would he have noticed that his attention was clearly being drawn to a detail of his work? Without the clearly artificial effort to reach that exact posture would it have slipped by as something unintentional, letting him think that it had been his own idea to suddenly notice the only part of his project ready for deployment?
"I've got news." Jeff announced. Unlike Leet, he didn't seem to have noticed anything different about March's behavior. Well, he noticed the obvious changes, you'd need to be blind and stupid not to, but he hadn't picked up on the implication, the way the veil had been pulled back from veiled manipulation.
Jeff seemed so confident that it made Leet wonder if he was imagining things, projecting his discomfort at what happened to May and using it to taint her earlier actions. He considered it, and then he looked again, and he couldn't unsee it. Jeff's power could be incredible, but it required very specific focus. Leet had wondered if it caused his friend to take a myopic view of situations, a consequence of having to examine them with highly specific techniques and patch together the results. It was the kind of thing that would explain more than a few of the situations they had found themselves in.
"What is it?" Leet asked, trying to keep his discomfort from showing. Fortunately, Jeff didn't seem to notice.
"Just got word. There's a summit. Somer's Rock. All the gangs, plus visiting capes." He leaned forward excitedly. "And Apeiron's going to be there."
Leet blinked. Well, that would explain the apparent 'verification effect' that had been distributed that afternoon. It was still unsettling having those words jump into his mind every time he thought about the tinker. Of course, he hadn't taken it half as badly as Bakuda. The girl might have been screaming about violations and insecure posturing, but he knew that she only wished she could have pulled off something on that scale.
He looked at Jeff with a concerned expression. "Tell me you're not suggesting that we go?" Technically it was neutral ground, and Apeiron had built everything on upholding those kinds of commitments, but he couldn't see their appearance ending in anything but disaster. At best they might beg their way out of associations with the ABB, but that would be beyond risky. They were still under contract to the gang and sheltering two thirds of their remaining elements. Even a half-assed thinker could blow holes in that story.
To his horror Jeff smiled. "Well, not 'go' as in attend." Slowly he turned towards the components Leet had been working on.
"No fucking way." He said sharply, and found himself shifting between his project and Jeff. And March.
"I know it's not completely ready-" Jeff began, but Leet cut him off.
"It's not close to ready. At this stage it would barely be better than a bomb, but that's not the point. You're talking about attacking a summit, under truce. If everyone in the city wasn't out to get us they would be after this." He countered. March was shifting her body in a way that seemed to be trying to attract his attention, then descending into frustration when it failed to have whatever impact she was trying to accomplish.
"Exactly, everyone in the city. This is our chance to clear the board. The Protectorate isn't going to care about us taking care of their villain problem. They'd love the chance to bury everything and move on." Jeff, Uber explained, using the voice that had talked Leet around so many times before. "We'll have every group in the same place. There's no better time to use this."
"There's nothing but better times to use this." Leet argued, pacing back and forth. "This isn't one of Bakuda's grenades. It can't just be thrown out without a care. We're going to get one shot at this. There's no backups, prototypes, or spares. Rolling out with half-finished tech is how we ended up in this situation." Leet pointed at the assembly. "This is not leaving the workshop until it is done." He stated with finality.
Uber sighed. "Cecil, if we're not going to use this against Apeiron, then when are we? What's the point of it?"
The name was a low blow. It dredged up memories of an earlier life, of a time when he and Jeff had been in a different place. And memories of the stupid game, the other self who had ruined his life through nothing but his existence and interdimensional intellectual property laws.
"You know how much this means." He said in a cool voice. "What I'm putting into it. Not just time and resources, what I'm really putting into it."
Jeff looked slightly uncomfortable. "Yes, but-"
"But nothing." He cut Jeff off. "This isn't just some weapon. It's not a single shot beat stick to make a statement and move on, it's a game changer. It's what I… what we should have been working towards all this time. And it's going to work. You know what that means to me."
"I know." Jeff agreed. "But what about the summit? What about Apeiron?"
Leet stared at him. A very real concern, one he'd been feeling for some time was beginning to surface, pushing itself through layers of exhaustion, stress, and the general insanity of the situation. That feeling of a disconnect from his friend, and the possibility that it might not be entirely due to his own deficiencies. That there might be something about the way Jeff looked at things or used his power that wasn't that healthy.
"We cannot pick a fight with Apeiron." He said as calmly as he could. A part of him, a tiny spark of his pride and stubbornness protested at the idea, screaming about strength and resurgence of power, but he squashed it. "Not with a half-finished project. Maybe not even after that."
There was a clattering sound that drew his attention as March knocked some drafting supplies and papers off the workbench. She looked over the mess with frustration evident in the one eye that worked properly, the other staying dead and glassy while framed by half of her mask. She looked over and noted the direction of his gaze, looking at her with pity and concern rather than whatever the intended effect was supposed to be. She flailed an arm, slamming it into the surface of the table and making an inarticulate noise.
Jeff moved to calm her down while the uneasiness Leet had been feeling grew to new levels. The scattered papers dealt with accounts of Apeiron's technology, the aftermath of Thursday's attacks, and comparatively minor accounts of their raid on Lost Garden. March had tried something. It didn't work, and now she was upset. The display only cast a harsher light on earlier encounters.
He felt used.
"What are we supposed to do if an alliance comes out of this meeting?" Jeff asked, helping March down from the table. "What happens if we have every gang in the city after us, on top of Apeiron?"
The situation played out in Leet's mind. All the forces of Brockton arrayed against them. Ready to roll over them like they were nothing. Like he was nothing.
It should have been a terrifying prospect, but his eyes jumped to the contents of the lab. To plans, diagrams, computers running simulations and analysis of parahuman powers. To the production of new materials, all concentrated into a project the likes of which he'd never even approached before. The culmination of a lifetime of experience, millions in resources, and the technology of some of the most powerful tinkers on the planet.
Not some hologram, or robot, or piece of technology aping at power. A fundamental expression of reality, the enforcement of a waveform across the resolution of the universe. The very fabric of reality expressed as data and bending to his control.
"Then we'll be ready for them." Leet said. "If they come, if they think we're no challenge, then we'll let them know how wrong they are." He looked at Jeff. "With a completed Game Grid, not some half assed expression of power sprung from ambush. We've always talked about this, about the importance of showmanship and engaging with the public." He gestured behind him and in that moment he could feel his power's will align with his own. "This isn't something that we use to stab in the dark and slink away. If we're using it, when we use it, we scream it from the mountain tops."
It was a good speech, probably the best Leet had ever done. It should have been a triumphant moment of affirmation, something that brought them together in a united cause. But these weren't the old days. They weren't friends just hanging out, they weren't at the studio brainstorming and dreaming up games, and they weren't running jobs from the old hideout or joking around on a stream. Things had changed, and one speech wasn't going to be enough.
Jeff protested, Leet remained adamant, and things went back and forth before ending on a sour note. March was getting worse, falling into another spell where she would stare at the wall for several hours, then frantically try to communicate something that no one could understand.
Well, no one but Jeff. Leet was concerned about how much time he was spending with her, and how finely he was focusing his powers. No doubt there was a technique for understanding dimensionally mutilated thinkers who were operating their body on zombie logic, but it didn't seem healthy having Jeff be the only line of communication. Particularly not with what Leet was beginning to suspect about her earlier actions.
The one thing they agreed on was to keep the details from Bakuda and the handful of ABB members. There was a decent chance she could see reason and not try to attack Apeiron with a half dozen men and no parahuman backup, but at the very least it would put her in a foul mood when she was hard enough to deal with already.
Leet finished clearing up the papers and supplies the March had spilled, stacking them to the side rather than looking at them. They weren't new to this. They had years of experience, and yet, when presented with an unknown thinker they had dropped every precaution they would normally have held religiously. Every basic strategy for dealing with unknown capes, tossed to the wind.
It would be easy to blame her for that. People were talking about how she had played the entire city, how she had been underestimated for her entire career, but realistically it was them. They were at the end of their rope, and March, May, she had come in like a ray of hope. It wasn't her brilliant thinker power; it was the fact that they had bought in completely for a chance to turn things around.
Well, things were certainly turned around. They were turned around, spun backwards and flipped on their head. Leet was worried about Jeff. He was worried about Bakuda, what would happen if she snapped or gave up, or even if they did manage to fix things and she decided to go back on the warpath. He was worried about the city. As much of a villain as he was, this was still his home. Everything that had been unleashed, the people who had been hurt, it ate away at him.
Skimming along the surface. That was all he could do. Keep moving, keep working and try to keep things from going from bad to worse. Or from worse to disaster. Maybe disaster to catastrophe would be the best way of putting it.
He turned back to his work. The one thing he could be sure of. Something real, significant, and powerful. He didn't know how it would be used, but he would make sure it had the impact it deserved. With one last check of the lab, he double bolted the door and moved to unlock the cabinet in the corner.
There were some things that were too dangerous to even acknowledge. Some things nobody should have. That fact that May had even been able to set up the exchange was beyond belief. The final trade, requiring copies of everything they had amassed, including all of Armsmaster's data and files. Some things couldn't be bought for any amount of money, and without something that valuable it never would have been considered.
It was the final deal, the one he had 'messed up'. A botched exchange, or so he had informed anyone. If May had still been her old self he doubted he would have been able to fool her. But then again, if May had been her old self, if he hadn't gone into the exchange after seeing everything that was happening in the city, to the city, would he even have tried, or would he have been content to muddle along, being led through whatever plan she had assembled?
He shook his head. It wasn't worth thinking about. The important thing was they believed him. They didn't know he had this. The thick book, hidden under a false bottom of a cleaning supply cabinet, rigged with a trigger that would destroy it if someone else found it.
It was the final piece, the last bit of data he needed to take his project beyond the limits of tinker work, into the realm of legends. And it scared him. The more he read, what he could read, it frightened him. Both from what he was learning, what his power was piecing together, and what it could mean, what it would have meant if Bakuda had gotten access to it.
He took the report and placed it on the workbench. On his computer he opened a translation program. None of this would be directly saved, he didn't even trust it in his system. One sentence at a time, and then wiped from memory. Not an easy task when dealing with Cyrillic characters. The title of the report he had translated so many times he could read it without assistance.
'The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation's Report on the Expression and Impact of the Entity Known as SLEEPER, Data, Analysis, and Medical Reports of Incidents 1-17. Classified Priority 1, for Ministry Eyes Only'
Leet took a breath and got to work. He might not be Apeiron, he might not be in control of the situation, but he wouldn't go down without a fight. He knew what he could do, what he was capable of, and when the time came he would be ready.
***********************
57.1 Interlude Rey
Rey watched the morning sunlight creep through the windows of the abandoned warehouse. It illuminated a scene that was somehow more chaotic than the disaster he had found in the aftermath of Uber and Leet's attack. It was probably the bodies.
Teenage capes, kids really, collapsed wherever they felt like dropping, usually after stumbling back from God knows where. Any hope of quietly setting up base in the city had fallen apart faster than even his most pessimistic estimates. Also, he could spot at least two faces who weren't part of the group, meaning any hope of the base being secret was long gone.
Setting up in the middle of the dark zone had seemed like a brilliant idea. The majority of his technology wasn't affected by Apeiron's particles and he could find work arounds for the rest of his needs. It also gave an opportunity to study the nature of the effect in all its fascinating glory.
Unfortunately, the field had meant no cell reception, no television, and no music. You'd think a group of kids devoted to an ascetic lifestyle in the woods would be used to conditions like that, but that would be expecting too much from Lost Garden. He had endured enough complaining on the trip to the city and had no patience for cries about the chosen location or lack of amenities.
So of course, they had started shedding members almost immediately. When he was first tasked with this fool's errand he had the crazy idea that he would actually need to weigh professionalism against strength of power when choosing who to bring with him. Unfortunately, the range of 'professionalism' within members of Lost Garden trended so low it was barely worth considering. In the end he just grabbed the people with the most useful powers and hoped for the best.
That hope had been badly misplaced. The only person who seemed to be even remotely aware of what they were attempting was Barrow Rose, and the girl spent so much time pining over Barrow that she was barely any help. The field blocking her regular status updated on his condition had left her too unfocused to exert any level of control over the rest of the group, and it seemed his position as leader of the mission was largely seen as a ceremonial one.
He found the girl stirring on a pile of luggage, including the cots and other supplies that nobody bothered to set up. As she blinked the sleep out of her eyes he marched over to her.
"What the hell happened here?" He asked in a voice loud enough for her to flinch and cause a handful of the other teens to stir in their sleep.
"Um…" She paused, then looked down at her phone before remembering it was off with the battery removed. She glanced at the door, no doubt planning another trip outside the field to check her messages, but shifted focus to him as he moved into her line of sight. "Right. Lark heard about a party last night and some of the group went to check it off after you went into your lab." She gestured to the loading area of the warehouse, mercifully isolated from the living area that had been… not exactly set up, more sprawled across.
She blinked again, then looked up to his shoulder. "Is that a monkey?" She asked, looking at the homunculus assistant he had grown the previous night while setting up the rest of his equipment.
"It's a construct, mostly plant matter." He said dismissively while searching across the room. "Where's Verdant Ivy?" He asked.
"Uh," Barrow Rose stammered before spotting one of the other members of Lost Garden stirring awake. "Molly, what happened to Ivy?"
The other girl suppressed a yawn before replying. "She hooked up with someone at the party. Said not to wait up for her."
"Perfect." Rey muttered under his breath, before spotting a large form collapsed by the door. Collapsed at a clearly uncomfortable angle and not looking particularly well. "And what happened to Kudzu?"
"Kud?" Molly asked, peering over the pile of duffle bags she had been sleeping on. "Damn, that stuff must have been really strong." She turned to smile at Barrow Rose. "They tried to warn him, but you know Kud. Devil Grass had to help him walk back. Kind of dumped him when we got in. He must be really out."
So, the strongest shaker in Lost Garden was missing and their top Brute was conked out on God knows what. Times like this reminded him why he decided to start growing all his help.
He grabbed some pods from his lab and handed them off to Rose. "Here. Cleansing polyps. Prop him up and shove one in his mouth. If he's still out after the first one, keep at it until he wakes up."
"Right." She looked at them, then at her cellphone and the door. "Shouldn't you…"
"I've got a meeting." He countered. "See if anyone can figure out where Ivy went, but nobody leaves until I get back."
"What?" Molly protested, sitting up. "But what about…"
"We have food and the plumbing's working." The girl gave him a defiant look and turned to Barrow Rose, who he had no doubt would fold the moment he was out of sight. "While I'm gone the monkey's in charge."
The girl shot him an incredulous look as the creature leaped down from his shoulder. "What? Blasto, You can't be serious."
Given that the homunculus at least had an impression of his neural map on a half vegetable simian brain he would trust it well ahead of the best Lost Garden could offer. As far as he was concerned the chain of command went the monkey, the pair of guard fungus, the compost battery, and then maybe some of the brighter members of the team. Maybe.
He sighed. "Look, just keep Kudzu from choking on his tongue and sleep off whatever the rest of you took. Keep the place from burning down and I'll be back with something fresh for breakfast."
The promise of food was enough to talk around most teenagers, and at least that was one area he was well supplied for. The state of Lost Garden's accounts was frankly ridiculous, to the point where he felt insulted by the original deal that had been cut for his services. It seemed that Barrow's commitment to fighting urban sprawl wasn't strong enough to avoid being influenced by various civic and corporate interests.
It made sense, really. You could keep Lost Garden from subsuming your community through dedicated assaults, stalling actions, and the efforts of entire Protectorate branches to drive them back or off course, or you could just throw a pile of money at the man and have him suddenly decide that the next town over was a bigger threat to mother nature. Rey had no idea how deep the man's pockets really were, not until he started spreading that around. No doubt he enjoyed playing the thoughtful hermit living beyond material concerns while sitting on a fortune that could buy anything he could want.
Including revenge. The entire purpose of this venture was to make a point, to show there were consequences to striking out at Lost Garden. Personally, Rey didn't care one way or the other, but he wasn't the one bankrolling things. The payments secured were already enough for him to start fresh if things went south, and the relative freedom with respect to securing assets had other benefits.
Rey left the warehouse, picking his way towards the portion of the city that still functioned. That meant going south rather than north, the further away from the Docks the better. The area had clearly been on the decline even before the attacks had left it crippled. Between the damage and the isolating effect of the blackout field nearly a quarter of the city was cut off.
The effects of that field, just from a strategic standpoint, were incredible. It was the kind of thing Barrow would pay through the nose to secure, though there was no doubt that it would put a damper on some of the revelry that his acolytes had become accustomed to. For that reason alone, Blasto hoped he could find a way to recreate it for the man.
His path took him over one of the elemental trails, more of Apeiron's major shaker effects, though those ones having cleared themselves exactly on the schedule Apeiron provided. The Protectorate had been continuously scrambling to identify the effect and analyze the material it originated from. The blue trails that could just be seen under the cracked pavement suggested some traces of the substance might remain. Given the scale and range of the effects created it seemed like a fascinating substance.
Blasto's mind buzzed with ideas on how to collect samples before the areas were cordoned off or excavated by the authorities. Given the size of the affected area and the other pressing commitments weighing on the local authorities there was no doubt most of it would go unguarded and uncollected for some time. An obvious attempt at harvesting one of the lanes would be quickly identified, so he doubted more than trace amounts would be collected by most attempts, but perhaps some burrowing structure, a root system able to propagate under the affected area?
He had toyed with the idea of botanical mining years ago, but abandoned it when it had proven overly complicated and generally unprofitable. The country wasn't exactly rife with valuable mineral resources within driving distance of major cities, and he wasn't exactly in a position to partner with any company looking for larger scale applications. Still, the principle might be ideal for this purpose, and if the substance was as powerful as it seemed there could be any number of possible uses.
Thoughts for another time. At the moment the city was enjoying the first day without trails of exotic effects streaming through it. Rey remembered the challenge of moving his equipment through damaged streets and past active effects the previous day, only for the trails to vanish once they finally got settled. That had been more than a little frustrating, but at least there would be no more detours.
Well, fewer detours. There was still damage present from the impact of the trails. Split earth hadn't closed up, eroded streets were still gone, and that section where parts of buildings and roads had been floating in the air had crashed down creating a spectacular line of rubble. It seemed even when the trails weren't energized their effect would be felt for a while.
He picked his way through with minimal difficulty. The walk wasn't easy, but it was better than trying to manage the roadways, to say nothing of operating a vehicle inside the blackout zone. The only ones they saw were the occasional truck, the youngest of which had to be at least twice as old as he was.
Diesel engines, no spark plugs and minimal electronics. It was interesting seeing the city adapt to the situation so quickly. Anywhere else an effect like that would have had the entire region evacuated with special teams called in for containment and study. Between the other insanity that had occurred alongside it, the worn out and over committed emergency services, and the apparent resilience of the average citizen of Brockton Bay they had apparently elected to work around it as well as they could and get on with their lives.
He wasn't sure if it was commendable or a sign that something was very wrong with this town. The city had certainly built up a reputation over the past week, and it seemed the closer people looked the more impressive and more concerning the situation became. It was easy to laugh and joke about it from the outside, but this city, March and the ABB, had propagated a blackout that took out the entire north east. No matter how amusing you felt the local situation was, that wasn't something to laugh about.
And maybe he was still just a little bitter about how that had turned out for him.
He put that out of his mind as he approached his destination. The coffee shop was in a sort of economic no man's land, a buffer zone that carried influences of the Docks, the Boardwalk and the Downtown area. The uncertainty of what the region was trying to be blended together to produce a number of rather nice mid-range locations. He doubted a non-chain café like this could sustain itself even two blocks further into the corporate landscape, but it would be equally out of place a similar distance into the Docks or trying to fit in amongst the overpriced nonsense of the Boardwalk.
Thoughts of civic economics or how this mess of a city fit together vanished from his head as he spotted the woman sitting at one of the outside tables. She had long brown hair and was wearing an artfully torn green sweater and tight jeans. Her eyes lit up when she spotted him and she waved him over, smiling with deep red lips. "Rey!"
As he approached she jumped up and hugged him. "Lauren. It's good to see you." He recognized her perfume. He remembered she had stopped wearing that. Had she dug it out just for this? For him? With everything that had happened since Boston, that meant more to him than he expected.
"Well, I couldn't turn down an offer like that." She said with a smile. "I'm still surprised you got the old man to open his wallet like that."
He took a seat across from her, finding a cup of coffee waiting for him, just the way he liked it. He smiled at her as he took a sip. "Injury and vendettas will do that. He's willing to pay to see this through, and I need some competent help."
"So, you came to me?" She asked with a grin. "I didn't realize you were that desperate."
"Laugh if you want, but I'm about ready to use those kids for fertilizer." He grumbled. "I never thought I'd be the responsible adult in the group. I swear this is some kind of karmic punishment for all the times I messed with Accord."
"They're not that bad." She protested. "The Garden is just kind of unfocused. It doesn't take well to direction, even inside the forest."
"Was that why you left?" He asked. It was a topic they hadn't really broached before, and considering some of the rumors about Barrow he hadn't wanted to push or imply anything.
"No, I just kind of outgrew the place. Was never a long-term member, and the culture there gets kind of stifling. Don't underestimate how restrictive a place without rules can get." She paused then looked at him. "I mean…"
"No, I get it." He had bucked conventions his entire life, but without any established structure you were only left with the dynamics between the group. That could get as hellish as any set of dictates you could end up laying down. Just a set of invisible rules that weren't applied equally or equitably.
"Right. So, just to be clear, I'm not back in the fold?" She asked.
"No." He said, taking a sip of coffee. "External contractor, hired gun, or whatever else you want to call yourself. Answer to me, not to Barrow or his inner circle." He took a breath. "And I really need you to get a handle on that group."
"How bad is it?" The look in her eyes said she probably had an idea.
"About what I should have expected." He said, shaking his head. "Never should have gone with a group that big, but Barrow was all about making a statement. We could probably have managed this with three, not a damn school trip. That's what we'll be bringing to the meeting, and hoping the rest of them don't burn down the base while we're gone."
She nodded. "You got them picked out?"
"Yeah, for the most part. Barrow's second in command, slash favorite girl." That got a knowing look from Lauren. "Also, the top shaker, providing she shows up before tonight. Wild night." He explained at her inquiring glance. "And a decent brute. He partied too hard last night, but they're cleaning out his system as we speak."
"Wait." She said, "When you say 'cleaning out' you mean…"
"The cleansing polyps." He replied.
"Jesus Rey, you still use those?" She exclaimed.
"They work." He said defensively.
"Yeah, they work. They work you over too. Did you bother explaining what they do, or is it just 'surprise facehugger' time?"
"I needed him sober." Rey explained.
"God, that's one way to scare them off drugs." She said, shaking her head. "So, just those three and the two of us?"
He nodded. "I didn't want to push my luck or tip my hand in terms of our numbers. The rest of the group probably aren't up for something like this either. Need to keep it small, and with people I can trust."
She smiled at that. "Supervillain summit. Just like the old days. Blasto and Poison Apple."
"Poison?"
"Changed it. Rotten Apple had too many bad connotations. Poison Apple works better for this kind of meeting. It's just too bad there's no Accord to troll."
"No, just Nazis, drug dealers, crime lords, mercenaries, and the cape who has everyone in the country shitting themselves." He listed.
She snorted. "Don't remind me. I was on the bus into the city when that name thing went out. People started freaking when they realized what was happening. Luckily someone had PRT alerts set up on their phone, but that could have gotten ugly."
"Did, in some places, from what I heard. And that's just the public. People in cape circles, they know what that kind of effect means." He replied.
"Yeah. Fuck, and we're going to be in the same room as him?" Lauren asked.
"We will, but everything says he'll hold the truce. Everything. It's the one thing they're all sure of." He assured her.
"Right. Fuck it. Rey, you know I'm there for you, even if the money wasn't this good. It's just, are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, getting caught up in this?" She looked around. "Generally speaking, people are kind of avoiding this city. People in the community, I mean. Nobody really wants to work here, not with Apeiron and things still being settled with the gangs."
"It's not what I would have chosen." Even with all the fascinating discoveries that could be made, he had been in the game long enough to read the writing on the wall. This was a bad scene and would need to be played carefully. "But Barrow wants this done. A show of force, a bloody nose for people who are already on the shit list of most of the local powers, then get out of the way while they sort things out."
"It's not going to be that simple." She stated. "It's never that simple. You remember the Boston Games."
He did. It wasn't the same situation, but he knew how these things could get out of hand, easily. But with Apeiron looming over everyone, with a summit that might create a meaningful resolution, there was a chance that things could find a resolution.
And on a positive note, at least this time they wouldn't have someone as crazy as Damsel of Distress running around.
Somer's Rock is not this chapter. I had hoped to reach at least the start of the summit, but I was limited to what I could write in the time I could spare and in the style I could maintain. I understand people have been waiting for that meeting to start and are becoming frustrated, but the only alternative would have been to delay for a week to be able to include additional sections of the chapter.
I have already spoken about my attempts to change my writing style and schedule and how that impacted me. I do not plan to make any further attempts, but I will be open about the progress of the story. It will be very clear when the summit begins, so anyone specifically reading for that event will be informed when we reach it. Until then, as I have stated, I will be approaching the story at the pace that I know I can sustain.)
*******************
57.1 Interlude Scrub
Scrub leaned his back against the wall of the… whatever it was. Honestly, he wasn't sure where they were right now. The music was thrumming so loud he couldn't hear anything beyond the party, and this part of the Docks wasn't a place he'd frequented even before the ABB had turned the city upside down. He tried to take a breath of night air, hoping it would clear his head, but only inhaled a lungful of second hand weed smoke, diesel exhaust, and the persistent odor of unwashed bodies that hung over every Merchant event like a wet blanket.
Trying to clear his head was probably a lost cause. He'd been in a fog since he had stumbled back from that raid as a jittering mess. He'd barely been able to get the story out before they gave him something to help him relax. After that he kind of lost track of things. They had really been giving him a lot of things to help him relax. Probably too many things, considering how hard it was to follow the events of the last… two? Three days? He knew there had been a lot of meetings, and he'd been paraded in front of the gang several times.
Like tonight. That had been a stage, or that thing Squealer built that functioned as a stage when it wasn't rolling over buildings or filling the skies with clouds of lead. There had been the usual profanity filled speech from Skidmark, something about the future of the city, changing times, and plenty of insults directed to the Empire.
Not much mention of Apeiron, the Enigmatic Artificer. God, that was still weird. When it started he'd thought the drugs were getting to him, frying his brain like his dad always said they would. But, no. They had broken it down for him. The tinker had done something, something to confirm his identity. If you were talking about Apeiron, the real Apeiron, then you knew it was the Enigmatic Artificer. Use the name for anyone else or anything else and the SAT vocabulary words didn't show up.
People would be wondering why he had done something like that, what would be the point. They didn't know about tomorrow, about Somer's Rock. Where Scrub would need to see him, him and Lady Khepri, in person.
He felt his guts wrench and sweat start to bead on his forehead. Maybe he needed to talk to someone, find something else to help him relax. Or to at least get his mind off the fact that he would be in the same room with that man after bisecting his girlfriend.
People had doubted that part of the story, but Scrub had been sober for those events. Well, mostly sober. There had been some partying with the Merchants before he went out. Celebrating beating back the ABB and congratulating him on his trigger. Like it was some personal accomplishment, not some desperate panicked thing, a last-minute ass-pull that came too late to help Rick.
God, thinking about that, what happened to Rick, the look in his friend's eyes right at the end, before it looked like he would be next, like there was no way out…
And then things went black and suddenly everything was exploding. The horrible spears of green crystal blasting apart or just vanishing like they'd been carved out by an ice cream scoop. It had been too late for his friend, but he got out. Other people got out as well, including the Merchant capes, who had probably been the real target of that mess.
And then the 'celebrations'. That had been a whirlwind, and not just because of Whirlygig. Did he ever actually join the Merchants in anything close to an official capacity? Did the Merchants even have any official capacity? It seemed like he'd just been swept up in the post battle furor, folded in among people who at least understood what had happened to him.
They dubbed him Scrub before he had a chance to give any input, and that had been his name since. Nobody even asked what his real name was. In the Merchants it wasn't like you had a civilian identity anyway. Skidmark didn't take off his costume at the end of the day and go home to some suburban split level. You were your cape name, and that was it.
God, it was hard to think. The pulse from the bass worked its way through the wall and into the back of his skull, but if anything the rhythm was the steadiest thing in his mind at the moment. There were times when he thought he should get his shit together. Find some time away from the madness where he could get his head straight. But that hadn't been an option. Since the attacks it had been a continuous haze of parties, demonstrations, speeches, and what he thought were planning meetings, but that didn't really register.
Thankfully there hadn't been any other fights since that first night. Hours from triggering and out on what was supposed to be an easy run, especially for two capes with a team of unpowered support, and they run straight into New Wave and that giant cape. Well, it had actually only been Manpower, but they hadn't known that. He had been convinced that they were seconds away from drowning in lasers or explosions. Looking back, he could only wish that had been the case.
The sweat beaded on his brow once again as images from that fight came flashing through his mind. The way the giant commanded the street like a living thing and Manpower stalked towards them like an implacable lightning wreathed force of nature. Leaving him panicking and trying to figure out what the fuck he was supposed to do.
He could barely aim his blasts. It was like throwing a handful of marbles and hoping some of them ended up where you wanted. When he had been surrounded by those explosions, the flames, sprays of slime, the crystals that… God, he didn't like thinking about that. Back then it had been everything he wanted. Just a continuous stream carving away at the world. Even at some of the ABB attackers. He knew they were forced to be there, but at that moment he hadn't cared. Not with those crystals coming for him. Not after what they'd done to Rick.
Hours later, when he was trying to figure out his powers, it became clear things were going to be difficult. For big general stuff, like removing the front of a house, he was fine. For anything precise it was a nightmare.
He didn't want to kill Manpower, or whoever the earth-mover cape was. He'd never seen them before, but if that guy was working with Manpower they were probably a hero. While that didn't mean as much to him as it had before the city went to hell, he still didn't want to start his life as a cape by putting a target on his head.
The best he could do was try to drop blasts in the general area, close enough so the shockwaves would catch them, but not enough to actually carve them up. It had been hard, especially with his lack of practice and the unhelpful presence of Whirlygig.
He had almost taken her leg off. He knew that now; how bad it could have been. What if that loose shot had been one foot to the left? She'd have been short a foot, at minimum. His mind played through a version of that night where that happened. He'd have to, what? Tie off the leg to stop her from bleeding out? Then hope the other Merchants would be able to haul her out before they got scooped up by the Heroes?
He couldn't ignore it, because it could have happened. He could have maimed her, just like Lady Khepri.
The dam broke in his mind. All the details of that scene came flooding back through the haze of drugs and avoidance. He didn't want to think about this. He didn't want to think about what it would mean, or how Apeiron would react at the summit tomorrow. It was tomorrow, right?
He didn't want to think about it, but it came unbidden. A flood of skittering horror sneaking up on him, creeping right under his nose while he was transfixed by the figure on the roof. Then probably the least dignified scream of his life followed by a desperate flail of his power.
He didn't know powers worked like that. Really, he didn't know anything about powers. When you watch capes on the news or in movies you always get the sense that there's some kind of separation, that the laser blast or space warps or energy weapons come from something split off from the cape themselves. That they have to reach out and focus to use their power.
Not just swing an arm in a fit of panic and delete a section of lawn, and house, and roof, and person.
When he saw what had happened, what he had done to Lady Khepri, he could barely think. The only things going through his head were the thousand horrible futures waiting for him. It overwhelmed him to the point where he didn't even recognize what was happening. Not until that voice.
He held back a shudder, out of place in the warm, clammy atmosphere of the party. That voice, the coarse, inhuman sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. That did come from everywhere at once. The voice of the swarm, screaming at them.
Then they were all over him, crawling, biting, working their way into his mouth and nose and under his tattered clothes. The same clothes he'd been wearing when he triggered. The same clothes he was still wearing.
He pressed back into the wall, trying to banish the phantom sensations that seemed to cut through the fog in his mind in a way all of his personal efforts failed to do. As he breathed in and out the world around him flared and dimmed. The light bleeding from his mouth and nose pulsed with his breath, which bled white smoke in a continuous stream, merging with the trails spilling off from his hair and eyes.
He had power; his very existence proved that. There was no denying it, but he didn't FEEL like a cape. He felt scared, alone and confused. Trapped by circumstance and the persistent display of his own power. Even if there was somewhere for him to go back to, he couldn't. Not like this. All he could do was muddle through and hope he didn't fuck up again.
"Hey," A voice shouted through the din of the sound system. "You look like you could use this." Scrub cracked open his eyes, seeing a girl who looked to be around the same age as him. Blue/white light bloomed across her face as his eyes opened and the glow from them spread over her. She seemed to enjoy the effect and posed in the light of his power. She was wearing a bandana shirt with short jean shorts. The girl had tattoos of vines snaking along her arms and stomach and she was holding a pair of overly tall shot glasses with brightly colored liquid in them.
At this point he would have accepted a shot of drain cleaner if it would have gotten his mind off things. "Thanks." He said, taking one of the glasses. The girl clinked her own glass one against the one in his hand and smiled before they both downed the contents.
It was some kind of mix with a gummy texture, like a Jell-o shot that had melted, with a fruity flavor that had a heavily artificial edge, like candy. It was also incredibly strong. The sugar took the edge off, but it still elicited a single cough from him in contrast to the girl who just savored the taste.
Really savored it, putting on a clear display of how much she was enjoying it. Afterwards she smiled and looked at him with half lidded eyes. He took a breath. There had been girls before. The constant efforts to drive up support and the way the area was pretty much isolated from the rest of the city has resulted in a culture of celebration, and all that kind of thing attracted.
In some of his more lucid moments he had wondered if it was just because most of the people had nowhere else to go. That they were hanging around the Merchants because their lives had fallen apart and they had nothing to go back to? In the most lucid of lucid moments, he wondered if he was really talking about them, and not himself.
"My name's Ivy." The girl said, pressing in towards him. "You're Scrub, right?"
"That's what they call me." Somehow that sounded smoother in his head, but the girl didn't seem to mind. This close every flicker in the glow of his hair and eyes highlighted her body in the dark. With the amount of smoke in the air his light seemed to form an aura around them. The girl noticed it and cast a hand through the light, playing with the shadows of the glow, then the luminous smoke, then finding her way to his head.
"I love your hair." She said, running a hand through it and pressing in close. It was as much for them to hear each other over the music as anything else, but he had to wonder if that was the point of playing it at that volume.
"Thanks." He said, then struggled for anything else to add. "Uh, it just came with my power. It's nothing special."
"No, it is." She said, "Powers are special. However they express themselves, it means something. You're lucky to have a sign like this." She looked up at him and he could see the glow of his power reflected in her eyes. "You're a Leo, aren't you?"
Scrub was actually a Capricorn, but he didn't even get a chance to correct her. Frankly he didn't know if he would have bothered.
"I know, I've got a sense for these things." She said with certainty.
Scrub smiled back at her. After days with the Merchants, running into a New Age chick instead of the harder sorts that were more common in the gang events was a relief. She seemed to pick up on it and pressed closer to him.
"So, where are you from?" He asked. It could be a loaded question, but he didn't get the sense that she was some shell-shocked refugee displaced by the attacks. She didn't sound local. Probably with the tourist crowd, or a younger looking girl from the college.
"All over, really." She gave him a conspiratorial grin. "I'm visiting the city with some friends, but the guy in charge of the trip is a total narc. Was stressing about some big thing tomorrow night, so a bunch of us snuck out to have some fun while we could."
"Good place for it." He tried lamely.
"Yeah." She said, not noticing the fumbling nature of his replies. "It's beautiful, seeing people come together like this after what happened."
He didn't know if he'd describe any part of the Merchant's activities as beautiful, but Ivy was probably on a different set of drugs than him. Not that he had a problem with that. He was starting to get a sense for what someone's preferred fix was by their behavior. From what he could tell she definitely leaned more towards the party side than the harder stuff.
"Come on." She trailed a hand down from his head, then along his arm to grasp his hand. "It's too nice a night to stay cooped up. Let's dance."
Scrub let himself be led away from the comparatively quiet corner and into the press of bodies on what served as a dance floor. As Ivy began to move to the pulsing rhythm he found himself joining her. Not just in the dance, but in the moment. For that instant, at the very least, he could leave behind the worries about Somer's Rock, about the gang, about his power and what it might do if it got away from him.
He could worry later. He would worry later. Right now, he was dancing to a bass heavy song that he could feel in his bones, the glow of his power lighting up everyone around him. Though in the flickering light, he swore it looked like Ivy's tattoos were moving on their own.
*******************
57.1 Interlude Leet
Leet sighed as he pulled back from the workbench, rubbing his eyes. The modified sleep schedule was still working, but just barely. He was functional, but not much more than that. Frankly, things were probably better that way. If he was clear headed, if he could fully appreciate the weight of the situation, then he had the feeling he would end up being crushed under it.
It also helped that his power, or agent, or whatever it was, seemed to be thriving under these conditions. That was what really made him reluctant to stop, the fear of losing that edge, that triumphant return to functionality from a power that had seemed unstoppable for an all too brief period before turning into the worst aspect of his existence. It was like he was only staying above water by moving as quickly as he could, and the moment he stopped he would crash back down to mediocrity and failure.
It was the thing that drove him, the reason he and Jeff had come back to the city even after everything that happened. If there was ever a time to bail, to grab what they could and relocate to another state, or even another country, this was it. A display like that could have sent them packing even if they weren't connected to the group that had ended up on the wrong end of it.
But no, they had come back. They had finished their job and the follow up circuit of tech trades and purchases that had been set up for them, and then they came back to the city. Back to the heart of the chaos under the shadow of a man Leet couldn't believe he had ever compared himself to.
They came back because… Well, Jeff had his own reasons, his own concerns and connections. He was invested in the Game Grid, but only for what it could mean, what could be done with it, not for the sake of the project itself.
Leet had come back because it was a chance to finish the work. Probably the last and only chance he'd ever get. It was no longer about showing anyone up or making a display. That idea was laughable in the face of what had happened in the sky over the city. No, this was for him. It would prove things to himself, prove what he was capable of, what his power could really do. He had decided he would see this through if it was the last thing he ever did.
Frankly, he had accepted it might well be. Just by coming back, committing himself, it was hard to see a way out, to see a world after this project. That was something he could blame on Apeiron. The cape who had turned the city upside down, who threw out claims about three-day-old technology, and who nobody could predict.
He imagined there were a lot of capes feeling the way he did, just probably without the sense of finality that was gripping him. Jeff would make some boisterous speech about seeing things through, standing and fighting, and finding a solution. Leet didn't see things that way. After this project, after everything he put into it and after what it would do, he really didn't see a way out, a way back to themed crimes and streaming revenue. This, for better or worse, would be his life's work.
At least he had the resources to actually see it to completion. Despite all the uneasiness that the alliance with the ABB had brought, he could recognize the significance it had made to his work. From his first day, Leet had always been screwed over by the tinker conundrum. Build tools to build tools. It was a standard cycle, known even to people who had no idea how tinker powers actually worked. Only for Leet every tool he built chipped away at the possibilities available to him. The very technology needed to tinker pruned the tech trees that made his projects possible.
As a consequence, he had become accustomed to making do. To working with 'mundane' equipment. Still top of the line, or as close as they could get to it, but not the collection of master devices that you'd expect from a tinker's lab. Normal tools, normal materials, and normal processes, all to try to stretch his dying power one step further, get just one more project out of the branches of tech that were already stripped bare.
That had all changed. Not only were his older projects actually usable again, but the resources had been flowing freely. The ABB's coffers might not be bottomless, but compared to what he was used to working with they might as well have been. They had already been 'contracted' by Bakuda, a deal that May had worked to set up in their favor, but following Apeiron's attack against the gang's financial headquarters Lung had been signing off on anything that could help bring Apeiron down. A hit like that should have been a devastating financial blow, leaving only secured accounts and liquid assets, but frugality seemed to have been the furthest thing from man's mind.
Leet had everything he could need. The best equipment, materials, support, and data. Oh, the data. It was something he had missed out on through his career, and he had badly underestimated the impact it could have. The way even basic tinker collaboration could turn his world upside down.
He had always figured there must be something wrong with his power, obviously, just based on how rapidly it fell out from under him. He had never imagined that the problem could just be the consequences of working in isolation.
He had been so proud… no, that wasn't it. He had wanted to be proud. Instead, he was a defensive, insecure wreck trying to blunder his way through a career built on half-assed philosophy and overcommitment to a theme that had quickly became unsustainable. But it equated to the same thing. Pride or shame, he hadn't worked with anyone else, hadn't been willing to share what tiny gems or relevancy he'd been able to shake free of his power.
Looking back, it was clear he wasn't meant to work alone, at least as far as powers could 'mean' anything. The gaps that his earlier projects left in his power could be pasted over with trivial ease with the work of any other tinker. Even something as simple as a supply of power sources or advanced processors would have removed critical components of failure from his work. And his own work, the projects that came together from fields not yet depleted, could be both enhanced and appreciated by any other tinker in the world.
It was a cruel irony. A tinker with possibly the worst connections and social skills possible, given a power that could only reach its full potential when leading a team. No wonder he'd been at odds with his agent from day one.
But now, he had a wealth of data to support his work. Scans from local parahumans, data from Armsmaster, Bakuda's plans and equipment, information seized from Blasto's computers, including the man's scans of even more parahuman abilities, then the trades, tech exchanges with the toybox, independent brokers, and that final meeting…
It all added up to a wealth of information that was nearly incalculable. Something that would take the plans for the Game Grid to the next level, and a reason to return to the insanity of Brockton Bay.
There was an impatient hammering at the door of his workshop, indicating the other reason they had returned to Brockton Bay. The headache that had been waiting for them, and one he had somehow become responsible for managing while Jeff was busy with their other problem.
Leet moved to activate the intercom and called out. "Yes?"
The voice that replied through the speaker was petulant, whiney, and had become regrettably familiar. "You know damn well who it is. Now get this meathead to open the door. I need to talk with you."
He took his finger off the call button to let out a sigh, then pulled himself together as well as he could manage. "Let her in, Pete."
There was a buzz and the door swung open, revealing the city's most wanted tinker and the person who had become his personal burden from the moment he and Jeff had returned to their base. She stormed in, giving Pete a dirty look as she did. Bakuda detested the added security and procedures that had been implemented, but there was no way in hell they were letting her have the run of the base.
She had been cordoned off in her own section of the warehouse with the handful of ABB members she had been able to smuggle out before Apeiron turned her explosive leashes into tracking tags for every law enforcement agency in the state. The girl was more than happy to let them know what she thought of the situation, but wasn't exactly in the best bargaining position at the moment.
Bakuda hadn't been stable at the best of times and returning to find her cowering in their base while being cordoned off by their remaining henchmen hadn't helped in that respect. The best he could say about the relationship was that it was being managed. Bakuda did not like being managed, but they had bigger concerns than what she 'liked' at the moment. At least they should have bigger concerns. If Leet had considered her insufferable when they were only coordinating things remotely and working with May as an intermediary, then he'd need to come up with a new, significantly more severe word to describe their current situation.
Though seeing her walk through the door was almost enough to elicit a wave of sympathy. The sight of bandages covering her left eye and right hand, hidden as much as possible by her hair and sleeve. The way she tried to suppress a wince whenever she put weight on her left leg, or needed to move her right knee.
And what she was holding only drove that home to an even greater degree. She angrily tossed the collection of folders, samples and data drives onto one of his less cluttered workbenches.
"Fucking useless, all of it." She snarled.
Leet held back another sigh. Somehow the exhaustion that was just barely being held back by his sleep schedule seemed to press down on him ten times harder whenever Bakuda was in the room.
"You wanted to see what I had done. I told you it wouldn't be the answer." He explained, leaving the accusation of 'what did you expect?' unvoiced.
"Answer?" She scoffed. "It's not even a starting point." She started gesturing to the table with her bandaged hand, then held back, trying to avoid drawing attention to it. The image of what those growths were turning into flashed through Leet's mind and he felt his stomach churn. "You had one shot at a cancer cure and you blew it on acute lymphoblastic leukemia!" She glared at him. "Ninety percent survival rate and you decided it was worth it? Oh, and gene tailored as well, just to make sure there's nothing usable here."
Bakuda had become remarkably educated on various cancer types and their individual survival rates. Of course, ninety percent still had a ten percent chance that nobody wanted to think about, and percentages only applied to groups, not individuals. It was safe to say that once things hit Stage IV the chances of pulling through weren't anywhere near ninety percent.
It had been early in his career, and a stupid waste thrown out before he even understood the limits of his power. Well, he knew it was technically a waste, and in his darker moments he certainly thought that way. Dwelling on what would have happened if he could have taken a different route, developed a broader treatment, or found some sick billionaire who would have thrown a fortune at him for a cure, rather than responding to the request of a hopeful fan in their early days.
But there was someone alive because he had blown one of the most important branches of his power early. It wasn't something he talked about, doing so would raise too many questions and reveal too much about the way his powers had been slipping away. Sometimes it felt like the stupidest thing he had even done. Sometimes thinking about it helped him get through a bad day. Right now, the only part of it that mattered was that, because of that decision, he didn't have a magic bullet for the cancers that were eating Bakuda alive.
He could see her anger at the situation, but also the depth of hopelessness beneath it. She was struggling to find a life line, and right now he was her only chance. It was the other half of what kept him in the city.
Honestly, he and Jeff could probably bail without much consequence. They would lose the flow of cash and resources, but what they had was enough to get them set up somewhere else. They could make deals, trade for what they needed, and leave the insanity behind them. It would mean compromises, accepting that his work wouldn't be the best he could make it, but it would also guarantee he'd actually be able to see it through. And all it would require was cutting loose a dangerous, unstable bomb tinker with a finite lifespan and a vengeful streak a mile wide.
Bakuda might rage at him, might complain about her situation and the idiocy that led to it, how everything was working against her and how unfair it all was, but under all of it, she knew. She knew that he was her lifeline. He was her only hope of getting through this. She maintained the narrative of being able to fix it herself, usually while downplaying the situation or blaming everyone but herself, but in reality she was working with him.
She was frustrated by that to no end, both from the necessity of actually needing help and continued annoyance over the nature of his power. She was more than happy to explain every way he had screwed up, every project that had taken some essential technology and wasted it on a childish prank that didn't even pay off. But despite all of that there was a path, a way out of the situation.
As long as she was working to cure herself she wasn't devoting her final days towards taking revenge on Apeiron. Or the city. Or the world. Leet had found himself in the position of managing Bakuda in the worst point of her life, with the added responsibility of keeping things from going to hell in the event they took a turn for the worse.
"I told you it wasn't a cure for cancer. You can't get a single cure for 'cancer' any more than you can get a cure for 'injury' or 'disease'. You have too much variation between cancer types to get any universal treatment." He explained.
"Thank you for that high school level breakdown. Maybe if you remembered who you were dealing with we'd actually be able to make some progress on this." The insult was delivered so automatically that it barely had any weight to it. Leet could just shake his head.
"Here." He said, digging out a drive and offering it to her. "Scans and analysis of the healing bomb and related effects." Leet tried not to think about what had happened to those lab mice. Still, at least he was testing on animals, rather than Bakuda's practices. Seeing Bakuda in this state it was almost possible to forget what she had done, the damage directly tied to her and the lives still hanging in the balance. "I've cross referenced it with data from Blasto's records. There's some promising potential there."
"There'd have to be, if you could find it." Bakuda muttered, snatching the drive with her left hand. "I suppose it's lucky you didn't fuck up that part of the job."
Leet bristled and shifted his body slightly, blocking Bakuda's view of the cabinet in the corner of the workshop. "The last stop was a long shot, even May knew that. We got everything else, including the Toybox run." He glanced around them. "Be grateful for that. Without Dodge's tech Apeiron would probably have sniffed us out by now."
"Yeah, good thing we don't need to rely on you for that." She muttered, holding the drive to her chest.
He looked at the sickly murderer and hardened his gaze. "Now, did you contact the PRT?"
Her reaction was embarrassment that was covered by an air of rapidly manufactured offence. "No. Why the fuck would I bother with that?"
"Because that's how hostage situations work." He explained. "The goal of whoever you're dealing with is to get the hostages out safe. It's your job to give them a path to that goal. If you don't release at least some of the hostages they become desperate and will do anything to find that path. It's a gesture of good will." And sanity, but he didn't have high hopes on that front.
She laughed. "So, you're explaining negotiating dynamics now, like some master criminal?"
"I've been in hostage situations before." He countered.
"Don't compare those joke jobs to me." She yelled back. "I'm not holding up a jewelry store in Final Fantasy costumes. This isn't about hostages, it's about control."
"This is the only way you're going to be able to hold onto any kind of control." He yelled back. "The army you built up is contained. All you can do is either kill them or let them die. The only way either of those have any weight is if there's a chance for some of them not to die. You can't use them as bargaining chips if the only options are containment or death. There needs to be at least the possibility of some of them being released."
"I let ANY of them go and my position is worthless." She spat. "I don't have time for this. If the PRT wants any of them released they can make an offer."
Leet took a deep breath and steadied himself. Times like this, it really hit him. The fact that he was actually a veteran cape. Plenty of capes measured their careers in weeks or months. Years of active work, of functioning in a city as crazy as Brockton Bay without death or capture, it meant something. Yes, they were jokes, but at least they were running jokes. Add in the fact that his powers had been fighting him most of his career and there was some actual weight to that accomplishment.
It was a weird feeling, but Leet's experience was actually worth a damn, especially in situations like this. Because, more than anything, Leet knew how to lose. He knew how to recognize when a situation had gone FUBAR and slink off with whatever sheds of dignity he could salvage. He knew how to deal with a humiliating, public loss and come back. Not come back stronger, maybe not even wiser, but he knew how to keep going. How to deal with harsh realities and move past them.
Bakuda didn't know how to fail. That was obvious, and he had the sense that was something that tied back to her trigger. Even after everything that had happened, after what had been displayed and what she was dealing with, she was still trying to delude herself, looking for a way through rather than a way out.
The reality was she needed to cut whatever deal she could get. Giving up a handful of the hundreds of hostages was her best bet to get that ball rolling. Right now, the city hated Bakuda. They hated Lung, hated the ABB, and hated anyone associated with them. He and Jeff were as tangential to that situation as possible, but they were well aware of the reality of their situation. It was just a shame they seemed to be the only ones. Actually, given how Jeff had been acting Leet wondered if he could even include him in that category.
He looked back at Bakuda. The PRT wouldn't be reaching out. Even if they didn't have someone like Piggot in command, their position was too unstable to have any hope of getting away with offering deals to the ABB bomber.
"A one-time release would be enough to get that started." He implored. "Enough that they have to acknowledge it. You want control? This is how you get it. Make a good will gesture and they're forced to respond, or they'll look responsible if things turn ugly."
That seemed to get through to her. She ran the thumb of her healthy hand over the drive and she glanced down. "I'll think about it."
"Good." And maybe it would be enough to get some of the kids out of those camps. Maybe bring some families back together. And maybe things would weigh a little less heavily on Leet when he tried to get his carefully scheduled allotments of sleep.
"I'm going to see if there's anything worthwhile in here. Send over whatever you come up with, if you can spare any time from your vanity project, that is." She said sharply before turning to the door. With a knock Pete pulled it open for her, nodded to Leet, then shut it after the girl.
Leet let out a breath as he slunk back towards his work stool. The continued process of the Game Grid was a source of irritation for Bakuda, but not so much as its continued funding. She would no doubt have loved to have seized the purse strings of the project and dangled resources just out of grasp, contingent on any number of concessions. The problem was that, even in the ABB's current state, she didn't actually control the gang's finances.
He was still an outsider to the situation, but had picked up scraps of information as to the nature of the situation. As far as he could tell, the chain of command in the ABB was a complete mess. Lung had consolidated as much power in himself as possible and only partitioned it out as absolutely necessary. He hadn't been blind enough to leave no contingencies for his absence, it's just those contingencies didn't include Bakuda, and what was established had fallen to pieces over the past week.
Most of the actions taken after his capture had been approved by Oni Lee, and then disapproved by Lung following his break out. The situation that the bomb tinker had embroiled the ABB in was clearly a step beyond the authority Lung allotted to her. Without her being an essential part of the balance of power there might have been harsher consequences for Bakuda. Instead, Lung's irritation coupled with the girl needing to recover from her injuries, had seen a system put in place that had her broadly cut out of the loop. With her too afraid to go back in the field it was relatively easy to arrange, with actual authority falling to May and Oni Lee.
Only neither of which were available at the moment. Oni Lee was critically injured. From what Leet heard he probably wouldn't walk again and they hadn't been able to save his left arm. Worse than that, some fallout from the fight had left the man nearly catatonic. Not just stoic and silent, but barely responsive to stimuli. Certainly not enough to make any actual decisions regarding the future of the ABB.
It might have been easier if Lung was confirmed dead. Realistically speaking, a hit that was visible from two continents and threw particles into orbit should be enough evidence to make a definite conclusion, but with the lack of a body and the size Lung had reached people were only willing to assess his death as 'highly likely'.
In other words, the leader of the ABB was still presumed alive. His second in command was barely functional. The girl who had been managing things… wasn't any more. The situation with May, who wasn't really May anymore, was complicated. And it complicated the situation even more.
Bakuda was the only functional cape in the ABB, and she was still considered to be third in command. That meant their deal, the one May had arranged, went untouched. Any support they provided was paid for at an agreed rate, inclusive of expenses, and ongoing funding was being provided. Bakuda couldn't touch or modify any of that. Really, she couldn't even get into the accounts, which was what concerned Leet.
It might be a relief that Bakuda couldn't mess with their deal, but it also meant she couldn't mess with any of the other deals. And there were other deals, Leet was sure of that. May had been busy before she had been… changed. Without access to the records, they didn't even know who else was on the ABB's take, or what else had been put in place.
He tried to avoid dwelling on that as he busied himself with data analysis, working to fold in new technologies and principles that had been buzzing in his head. Thinking about the idea of his agent, of his power as an intelligent being, not an obstruction for him to beat his fists against in frustration, was an interesting experience. Sometimes he thought he could pick up on that connection, the link providing drive, direction, and, for the first time, encouragement. It only happened when he wasn't looking for it, when he was deep in a project, trying to focus, to bring his work to life.
The moment he picked up on it the sensation seemed to vanish. It was something that seemed to only be experienced in memory, not in the present. He didn't know how he felt about that connection. As enheartening as it was to feel things come together, there was a resentment going back years, a fuming hatred and frustration at the way his power slipped away. Countless embarrassments and failures, all of which could now be traced to a thinking entity that caused them as a conscious decision.
He hated his power for that, but somehow he had the sense that the feeling was mutual. That it had been as angry with him as Leet had been with it. At this point, it seemed like that didn't matter anymore. They were people who had a bad history, but they were willing to set that aside to make this work. He could almost respect that more than if there was actually some cushy affection based on the power of love and friendship. The sensation of 'Fuck you, let's get to work.' was actually refreshingly honest.
There was a knock on the door and it immediately swung open. With the current systems put in place there was only one person who could enter like that. He turned to greet Jeff as his friend walked into the workshop.
The smile that had been growing on his face vanished as he recognized the sound of discordant steps coming from the hallway. After Jeff's large frame cleared the door a much slighter figure entered, pausing to steady itself on the doorframe before easing into the room.
March was here.
After what had happened on Thursday night, Leet couldn't think of that thing as May any more. Exactly what had happened, what had caused May to go from a critically injured state to the shambling husk that had been waiting for them when they returned to the hideout, was a mystery that could have no happy answers.
Agents. Beyond the curtain. Power tinkers. Dimensional technology. It all added up to a giant mess, the result of which was stumbling into his workshop.
That might have been the hardest part. Even beyond the half-healed injuries, the way costume and flesh had blended together, or the way her body had warped into something that shouldn't still be alive. May had been light, carefree, a breath of fresh air and ray of sunshine in both of their lives. Even when things were getting out of control, when he knew they were getting out of control, she had an energy and grace that seemed to make everything make sense.
She didn't have that now. No, it was worse. She did, but in a twisted way. If this was some mindless shambling mass, just a warped accident of science or parahuman abilities that was nothing but a hollow shell, then it would have been easier to deal with. Instead, it was clear there was still something there. Some spark buried under twisted flesh, crystal growths, and places where her mask and costume had fused into her body.
Leet didn't know how to fix her. He could barely tell what was wrong. At least Bakuda's combination of cancers operated under understandable medical principles. March's body shouldn't even be able to function after what happened to her. Some of the material that had integrated into her body exhibited properties that made no physical sense. It was crystalized insanity, driven directly into her flesh.
May was still in there, but clearly wasn't all there. It was like she was playing online through a bad connection, beset by unpredictable bouts of lag, or randomly going AFK with no explanation. When she was present enough to try to interact, to try to communicate something it made things even worse.
The little things, the quirks of May's behavior that had blended seamlessly into her actions, they were now standing out as sharp, unwelcome things. It was like the filter on the scenes had changed, letting him see them in a new light. It was something that not only made the current interaction seem twisted and wrong, it reframed the perspective of every earlier interaction.
March stumbled over to one of the work benches and awkwardly clambered up, slipping off twice before positioning herself on the corner. There was a delay where it seemed like she lost touch with what she was doing, then she jerked, shifting in such a way that she drew his eyes to part of his work, deployment arrays for the Game Grid.
He replayed the scene, but imagined it with May, the way she was before. Barging into the lab with a smile and a greeting, stepping lightly like she didn't have a care in the world, then elegantly hopping onto the workbench with a joke to draw his attention, but ending up in the same position, the same pose that shambling form had taken. Would he have noticed that his attention was clearly being drawn to a detail of his work? Without the clearly artificial effort to reach that exact posture would it have slipped by as something unintentional, letting him think that it had been his own idea to suddenly notice the only part of his project ready for deployment?
"I've got news." Jeff announced. Unlike Leet, he didn't seem to have noticed anything different about March's behavior. Well, he noticed the obvious changes, you'd need to be blind and stupid not to, but he hadn't picked up on the implication, the way the veil had been pulled back from veiled manipulation.
Jeff seemed so confident that it made Leet wonder if he was imagining things, projecting his discomfort at what happened to May and using it to taint her earlier actions. He considered it, and then he looked again, and he couldn't unsee it. Jeff's power could be incredible, but it required very specific focus. Leet had wondered if it caused his friend to take a myopic view of situations, a consequence of having to examine them with highly specific techniques and patch together the results. It was the kind of thing that would explain more than a few of the situations they had found themselves in.
"What is it?" Leet asked, trying to keep his discomfort from showing. Fortunately, Jeff didn't seem to notice.
"Just got word. There's a summit. Somer's Rock. All the gangs, plus visiting capes." He leaned forward excitedly. "And Apeiron's going to be there."
Leet blinked. Well, that would explain the apparent 'verification effect' that had been distributed that afternoon. It was still unsettling having those words jump into his mind every time he thought about the tinker. Of course, he hadn't taken it half as badly as Bakuda. The girl might have been screaming about violations and insecure posturing, but he knew that she only wished she could have pulled off something on that scale.
He looked at Jeff with a concerned expression. "Tell me you're not suggesting that we go?" Technically it was neutral ground, and Apeiron had built everything on upholding those kinds of commitments, but he couldn't see their appearance ending in anything but disaster. At best they might beg their way out of associations with the ABB, but that would be beyond risky. They were still under contract to the gang and sheltering two thirds of their remaining elements. Even a half-assed thinker could blow holes in that story.
To his horror Jeff smiled. "Well, not 'go' as in attend." Slowly he turned towards the components Leet had been working on.
"No fucking way." He said sharply, and found himself shifting between his project and Jeff. And March.
"I know it's not completely ready-" Jeff began, but Leet cut him off.
"It's not close to ready. At this stage it would barely be better than a bomb, but that's not the point. You're talking about attacking a summit, under truce. If everyone in the city wasn't out to get us they would be after this." He countered. March was shifting her body in a way that seemed to be trying to attract his attention, then descending into frustration when it failed to have whatever impact she was trying to accomplish.
"Exactly, everyone in the city. This is our chance to clear the board. The Protectorate isn't going to care about us taking care of their villain problem. They'd love the chance to bury everything and move on." Jeff, Uber explained, using the voice that had talked Leet around so many times before. "We'll have every group in the same place. There's no better time to use this."
"There's nothing but better times to use this." Leet argued, pacing back and forth. "This isn't one of Bakuda's grenades. It can't just be thrown out without a care. We're going to get one shot at this. There's no backups, prototypes, or spares. Rolling out with half-finished tech is how we ended up in this situation." Leet pointed at the assembly. "This is not leaving the workshop until it is done." He stated with finality.
Uber sighed. "Cecil, if we're not going to use this against Apeiron, then when are we? What's the point of it?"
The name was a low blow. It dredged up memories of an earlier life, of a time when he and Jeff had been in a different place. And memories of the stupid game, the other self who had ruined his life through nothing but his existence and interdimensional intellectual property laws.
"You know how much this means." He said in a cool voice. "What I'm putting into it. Not just time and resources, what I'm really putting into it."
Jeff looked slightly uncomfortable. "Yes, but-"
"But nothing." He cut Jeff off. "This isn't just some weapon. It's not a single shot beat stick to make a statement and move on, it's a game changer. It's what I… what we should have been working towards all this time. And it's going to work. You know what that means to me."
"I know." Jeff agreed. "But what about the summit? What about Apeiron?"
Leet stared at him. A very real concern, one he'd been feeling for some time was beginning to surface, pushing itself through layers of exhaustion, stress, and the general insanity of the situation. That feeling of a disconnect from his friend, and the possibility that it might not be entirely due to his own deficiencies. That there might be something about the way Jeff looked at things or used his power that wasn't that healthy.
"We cannot pick a fight with Apeiron." He said as calmly as he could. A part of him, a tiny spark of his pride and stubbornness protested at the idea, screaming about strength and resurgence of power, but he squashed it. "Not with a half-finished project. Maybe not even after that."
There was a clattering sound that drew his attention as March knocked some drafting supplies and papers off the workbench. She looked over the mess with frustration evident in the one eye that worked properly, the other staying dead and glassy while framed by half of her mask. She looked over and noted the direction of his gaze, looking at her with pity and concern rather than whatever the intended effect was supposed to be. She flailed an arm, slamming it into the surface of the table and making an inarticulate noise.
Jeff moved to calm her down while the uneasiness Leet had been feeling grew to new levels. The scattered papers dealt with accounts of Apeiron's technology, the aftermath of Thursday's attacks, and comparatively minor accounts of their raid on Lost Garden. March had tried something. It didn't work, and now she was upset. The display only cast a harsher light on earlier encounters.
He felt used.
"What are we supposed to do if an alliance comes out of this meeting?" Jeff asked, helping March down from the table. "What happens if we have every gang in the city after us, on top of Apeiron?"
The situation played out in Leet's mind. All the forces of Brockton arrayed against them. Ready to roll over them like they were nothing. Like he was nothing.
It should have been a terrifying prospect, but his eyes jumped to the contents of the lab. To plans, diagrams, computers running simulations and analysis of parahuman powers. To the production of new materials, all concentrated into a project the likes of which he'd never even approached before. The culmination of a lifetime of experience, millions in resources, and the technology of some of the most powerful tinkers on the planet.
Not some hologram, or robot, or piece of technology aping at power. A fundamental expression of reality, the enforcement of a waveform across the resolution of the universe. The very fabric of reality expressed as data and bending to his control.
"Then we'll be ready for them." Leet said. "If they come, if they think we're no challenge, then we'll let them know how wrong they are." He looked at Jeff. "With a completed Game Grid, not some half assed expression of power sprung from ambush. We've always talked about this, about the importance of showmanship and engaging with the public." He gestured behind him and in that moment he could feel his power's will align with his own. "This isn't something that we use to stab in the dark and slink away. If we're using it, when we use it, we scream it from the mountain tops."
It was a good speech, probably the best Leet had ever done. It should have been a triumphant moment of affirmation, something that brought them together in a united cause. But these weren't the old days. They weren't friends just hanging out, they weren't at the studio brainstorming and dreaming up games, and they weren't running jobs from the old hideout or joking around on a stream. Things had changed, and one speech wasn't going to be enough.
Jeff protested, Leet remained adamant, and things went back and forth before ending on a sour note. March was getting worse, falling into another spell where she would stare at the wall for several hours, then frantically try to communicate something that no one could understand.
Well, no one but Jeff. Leet was concerned about how much time he was spending with her, and how finely he was focusing his powers. No doubt there was a technique for understanding dimensionally mutilated thinkers who were operating their body on zombie logic, but it didn't seem healthy having Jeff be the only line of communication. Particularly not with what Leet was beginning to suspect about her earlier actions.
The one thing they agreed on was to keep the details from Bakuda and the handful of ABB members. There was a decent chance she could see reason and not try to attack Apeiron with a half dozen men and no parahuman backup, but at the very least it would put her in a foul mood when she was hard enough to deal with already.
Leet finished clearing up the papers and supplies the March had spilled, stacking them to the side rather than looking at them. They weren't new to this. They had years of experience, and yet, when presented with an unknown thinker they had dropped every precaution they would normally have held religiously. Every basic strategy for dealing with unknown capes, tossed to the wind.
It would be easy to blame her for that. People were talking about how she had played the entire city, how she had been underestimated for her entire career, but realistically it was them. They were at the end of their rope, and March, May, she had come in like a ray of hope. It wasn't her brilliant thinker power; it was the fact that they had bought in completely for a chance to turn things around.
Well, things were certainly turned around. They were turned around, spun backwards and flipped on their head. Leet was worried about Jeff. He was worried about Bakuda, what would happen if she snapped or gave up, or even if they did manage to fix things and she decided to go back on the warpath. He was worried about the city. As much of a villain as he was, this was still his home. Everything that had been unleashed, the people who had been hurt, it ate away at him.
Skimming along the surface. That was all he could do. Keep moving, keep working and try to keep things from going from bad to worse. Or from worse to disaster. Maybe disaster to catastrophe would be the best way of putting it.
He turned back to his work. The one thing he could be sure of. Something real, significant, and powerful. He didn't know how it would be used, but he would make sure it had the impact it deserved. With one last check of the lab, he double bolted the door and moved to unlock the cabinet in the corner.
There were some things that were too dangerous to even acknowledge. Some things nobody should have. That fact that May had even been able to set up the exchange was beyond belief. The final trade, requiring copies of everything they had amassed, including all of Armsmaster's data and files. Some things couldn't be bought for any amount of money, and without something that valuable it never would have been considered.
It was the final deal, the one he had 'messed up'. A botched exchange, or so he had informed anyone. If May had still been her old self he doubted he would have been able to fool her. But then again, if May had been her old self, if he hadn't gone into the exchange after seeing everything that was happening in the city, to the city, would he even have tried, or would he have been content to muddle along, being led through whatever plan she had assembled?
He shook his head. It wasn't worth thinking about. The important thing was they believed him. They didn't know he had this. The thick book, hidden under a false bottom of a cleaning supply cabinet, rigged with a trigger that would destroy it if someone else found it.
It was the final piece, the last bit of data he needed to take his project beyond the limits of tinker work, into the realm of legends. And it scared him. The more he read, what he could read, it frightened him. Both from what he was learning, what his power was piecing together, and what it could mean, what it would have meant if Bakuda had gotten access to it.
He took the report and placed it on the workbench. On his computer he opened a translation program. None of this would be directly saved, he didn't even trust it in his system. One sentence at a time, and then wiped from memory. Not an easy task when dealing with Cyrillic characters. The title of the report he had translated so many times he could read it without assistance.
'The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation's Report on the Expression and Impact of the Entity Known as SLEEPER, Data, Analysis, and Medical Reports of Incidents 1-17. Classified Priority 1, for Ministry Eyes Only'
Leet took a breath and got to work. He might not be Apeiron, he might not be in control of the situation, but he wouldn't go down without a fight. He knew what he could do, what he was capable of, and when the time came he would be ready.
***********************
57.1 Interlude Rey
Rey watched the morning sunlight creep through the windows of the abandoned warehouse. It illuminated a scene that was somehow more chaotic than the disaster he had found in the aftermath of Uber and Leet's attack. It was probably the bodies.
Teenage capes, kids really, collapsed wherever they felt like dropping, usually after stumbling back from God knows where. Any hope of quietly setting up base in the city had fallen apart faster than even his most pessimistic estimates. Also, he could spot at least two faces who weren't part of the group, meaning any hope of the base being secret was long gone.
Setting up in the middle of the dark zone had seemed like a brilliant idea. The majority of his technology wasn't affected by Apeiron's particles and he could find work arounds for the rest of his needs. It also gave an opportunity to study the nature of the effect in all its fascinating glory.
Unfortunately, the field had meant no cell reception, no television, and no music. You'd think a group of kids devoted to an ascetic lifestyle in the woods would be used to conditions like that, but that would be expecting too much from Lost Garden. He had endured enough complaining on the trip to the city and had no patience for cries about the chosen location or lack of amenities.
So of course, they had started shedding members almost immediately. When he was first tasked with this fool's errand he had the crazy idea that he would actually need to weigh professionalism against strength of power when choosing who to bring with him. Unfortunately, the range of 'professionalism' within members of Lost Garden trended so low it was barely worth considering. In the end he just grabbed the people with the most useful powers and hoped for the best.
That hope had been badly misplaced. The only person who seemed to be even remotely aware of what they were attempting was Barrow Rose, and the girl spent so much time pining over Barrow that she was barely any help. The field blocking her regular status updated on his condition had left her too unfocused to exert any level of control over the rest of the group, and it seemed his position as leader of the mission was largely seen as a ceremonial one.
He found the girl stirring on a pile of luggage, including the cots and other supplies that nobody bothered to set up. As she blinked the sleep out of her eyes he marched over to her.
"What the hell happened here?" He asked in a voice loud enough for her to flinch and cause a handful of the other teens to stir in their sleep.
"Um…" She paused, then looked down at her phone before remembering it was off with the battery removed. She glanced at the door, no doubt planning another trip outside the field to check her messages, but shifted focus to him as he moved into her line of sight. "Right. Lark heard about a party last night and some of the group went to check it off after you went into your lab." She gestured to the loading area of the warehouse, mercifully isolated from the living area that had been… not exactly set up, more sprawled across.
She blinked again, then looked up to his shoulder. "Is that a monkey?" She asked, looking at the homunculus assistant he had grown the previous night while setting up the rest of his equipment.
"It's a construct, mostly plant matter." He said dismissively while searching across the room. "Where's Verdant Ivy?" He asked.
"Uh," Barrow Rose stammered before spotting one of the other members of Lost Garden stirring awake. "Molly, what happened to Ivy?"
The other girl suppressed a yawn before replying. "She hooked up with someone at the party. Said not to wait up for her."
"Perfect." Rey muttered under his breath, before spotting a large form collapsed by the door. Collapsed at a clearly uncomfortable angle and not looking particularly well. "And what happened to Kudzu?"
"Kud?" Molly asked, peering over the pile of duffle bags she had been sleeping on. "Damn, that stuff must have been really strong." She turned to smile at Barrow Rose. "They tried to warn him, but you know Kud. Devil Grass had to help him walk back. Kind of dumped him when we got in. He must be really out."
So, the strongest shaker in Lost Garden was missing and their top Brute was conked out on God knows what. Times like this reminded him why he decided to start growing all his help.
He grabbed some pods from his lab and handed them off to Rose. "Here. Cleansing polyps. Prop him up and shove one in his mouth. If he's still out after the first one, keep at it until he wakes up."
"Right." She looked at them, then at her cellphone and the door. "Shouldn't you…"
"I've got a meeting." He countered. "See if anyone can figure out where Ivy went, but nobody leaves until I get back."
"What?" Molly protested, sitting up. "But what about…"
"We have food and the plumbing's working." The girl gave him a defiant look and turned to Barrow Rose, who he had no doubt would fold the moment he was out of sight. "While I'm gone the monkey's in charge."
The girl shot him an incredulous look as the creature leaped down from his shoulder. "What? Blasto, You can't be serious."
Given that the homunculus at least had an impression of his neural map on a half vegetable simian brain he would trust it well ahead of the best Lost Garden could offer. As far as he was concerned the chain of command went the monkey, the pair of guard fungus, the compost battery, and then maybe some of the brighter members of the team. Maybe.
He sighed. "Look, just keep Kudzu from choking on his tongue and sleep off whatever the rest of you took. Keep the place from burning down and I'll be back with something fresh for breakfast."
The promise of food was enough to talk around most teenagers, and at least that was one area he was well supplied for. The state of Lost Garden's accounts was frankly ridiculous, to the point where he felt insulted by the original deal that had been cut for his services. It seemed that Barrow's commitment to fighting urban sprawl wasn't strong enough to avoid being influenced by various civic and corporate interests.
It made sense, really. You could keep Lost Garden from subsuming your community through dedicated assaults, stalling actions, and the efforts of entire Protectorate branches to drive them back or off course, or you could just throw a pile of money at the man and have him suddenly decide that the next town over was a bigger threat to mother nature. Rey had no idea how deep the man's pockets really were, not until he started spreading that around. No doubt he enjoyed playing the thoughtful hermit living beyond material concerns while sitting on a fortune that could buy anything he could want.
Including revenge. The entire purpose of this venture was to make a point, to show there were consequences to striking out at Lost Garden. Personally, Rey didn't care one way or the other, but he wasn't the one bankrolling things. The payments secured were already enough for him to start fresh if things went south, and the relative freedom with respect to securing assets had other benefits.
Rey left the warehouse, picking his way towards the portion of the city that still functioned. That meant going south rather than north, the further away from the Docks the better. The area had clearly been on the decline even before the attacks had left it crippled. Between the damage and the isolating effect of the blackout field nearly a quarter of the city was cut off.
The effects of that field, just from a strategic standpoint, were incredible. It was the kind of thing Barrow would pay through the nose to secure, though there was no doubt that it would put a damper on some of the revelry that his acolytes had become accustomed to. For that reason alone, Blasto hoped he could find a way to recreate it for the man.
His path took him over one of the elemental trails, more of Apeiron's major shaker effects, though those ones having cleared themselves exactly on the schedule Apeiron provided. The Protectorate had been continuously scrambling to identify the effect and analyze the material it originated from. The blue trails that could just be seen under the cracked pavement suggested some traces of the substance might remain. Given the scale and range of the effects created it seemed like a fascinating substance.
Blasto's mind buzzed with ideas on how to collect samples before the areas were cordoned off or excavated by the authorities. Given the size of the affected area and the other pressing commitments weighing on the local authorities there was no doubt most of it would go unguarded and uncollected for some time. An obvious attempt at harvesting one of the lanes would be quickly identified, so he doubted more than trace amounts would be collected by most attempts, but perhaps some burrowing structure, a root system able to propagate under the affected area?
He had toyed with the idea of botanical mining years ago, but abandoned it when it had proven overly complicated and generally unprofitable. The country wasn't exactly rife with valuable mineral resources within driving distance of major cities, and he wasn't exactly in a position to partner with any company looking for larger scale applications. Still, the principle might be ideal for this purpose, and if the substance was as powerful as it seemed there could be any number of possible uses.
Thoughts for another time. At the moment the city was enjoying the first day without trails of exotic effects streaming through it. Rey remembered the challenge of moving his equipment through damaged streets and past active effects the previous day, only for the trails to vanish once they finally got settled. That had been more than a little frustrating, but at least there would be no more detours.
Well, fewer detours. There was still damage present from the impact of the trails. Split earth hadn't closed up, eroded streets were still gone, and that section where parts of buildings and roads had been floating in the air had crashed down creating a spectacular line of rubble. It seemed even when the trails weren't energized their effect would be felt for a while.
He picked his way through with minimal difficulty. The walk wasn't easy, but it was better than trying to manage the roadways, to say nothing of operating a vehicle inside the blackout zone. The only ones they saw were the occasional truck, the youngest of which had to be at least twice as old as he was.
Diesel engines, no spark plugs and minimal electronics. It was interesting seeing the city adapt to the situation so quickly. Anywhere else an effect like that would have had the entire region evacuated with special teams called in for containment and study. Between the other insanity that had occurred alongside it, the worn out and over committed emergency services, and the apparent resilience of the average citizen of Brockton Bay they had apparently elected to work around it as well as they could and get on with their lives.
He wasn't sure if it was commendable or a sign that something was very wrong with this town. The city had certainly built up a reputation over the past week, and it seemed the closer people looked the more impressive and more concerning the situation became. It was easy to laugh and joke about it from the outside, but this city, March and the ABB, had propagated a blackout that took out the entire north east. No matter how amusing you felt the local situation was, that wasn't something to laugh about.
And maybe he was still just a little bitter about how that had turned out for him.
He put that out of his mind as he approached his destination. The coffee shop was in a sort of economic no man's land, a buffer zone that carried influences of the Docks, the Boardwalk and the Downtown area. The uncertainty of what the region was trying to be blended together to produce a number of rather nice mid-range locations. He doubted a non-chain café like this could sustain itself even two blocks further into the corporate landscape, but it would be equally out of place a similar distance into the Docks or trying to fit in amongst the overpriced nonsense of the Boardwalk.
Thoughts of civic economics or how this mess of a city fit together vanished from his head as he spotted the woman sitting at one of the outside tables. She had long brown hair and was wearing an artfully torn green sweater and tight jeans. Her eyes lit up when she spotted him and she waved him over, smiling with deep red lips. "Rey!"
As he approached she jumped up and hugged him. "Lauren. It's good to see you." He recognized her perfume. He remembered she had stopped wearing that. Had she dug it out just for this? For him? With everything that had happened since Boston, that meant more to him than he expected.
"Well, I couldn't turn down an offer like that." She said with a smile. "I'm still surprised you got the old man to open his wallet like that."
He took a seat across from her, finding a cup of coffee waiting for him, just the way he liked it. He smiled at her as he took a sip. "Injury and vendettas will do that. He's willing to pay to see this through, and I need some competent help."
"So, you came to me?" She asked with a grin. "I didn't realize you were that desperate."
"Laugh if you want, but I'm about ready to use those kids for fertilizer." He grumbled. "I never thought I'd be the responsible adult in the group. I swear this is some kind of karmic punishment for all the times I messed with Accord."
"They're not that bad." She protested. "The Garden is just kind of unfocused. It doesn't take well to direction, even inside the forest."
"Was that why you left?" He asked. It was a topic they hadn't really broached before, and considering some of the rumors about Barrow he hadn't wanted to push or imply anything.
"No, I just kind of outgrew the place. Was never a long-term member, and the culture there gets kind of stifling. Don't underestimate how restrictive a place without rules can get." She paused then looked at him. "I mean…"
"No, I get it." He had bucked conventions his entire life, but without any established structure you were only left with the dynamics between the group. That could get as hellish as any set of dictates you could end up laying down. Just a set of invisible rules that weren't applied equally or equitably.
"Right. So, just to be clear, I'm not back in the fold?" She asked.
"No." He said, taking a sip of coffee. "External contractor, hired gun, or whatever else you want to call yourself. Answer to me, not to Barrow or his inner circle." He took a breath. "And I really need you to get a handle on that group."
"How bad is it?" The look in her eyes said she probably had an idea.
"About what I should have expected." He said, shaking his head. "Never should have gone with a group that big, but Barrow was all about making a statement. We could probably have managed this with three, not a damn school trip. That's what we'll be bringing to the meeting, and hoping the rest of them don't burn down the base while we're gone."
She nodded. "You got them picked out?"
"Yeah, for the most part. Barrow's second in command, slash favorite girl." That got a knowing look from Lauren. "Also, the top shaker, providing she shows up before tonight. Wild night." He explained at her inquiring glance. "And a decent brute. He partied too hard last night, but they're cleaning out his system as we speak."
"Wait." She said, "When you say 'cleaning out' you mean…"
"The cleansing polyps." He replied.
"Jesus Rey, you still use those?" She exclaimed.
"They work." He said defensively.
"Yeah, they work. They work you over too. Did you bother explaining what they do, or is it just 'surprise facehugger' time?"
"I needed him sober." Rey explained.
"God, that's one way to scare them off drugs." She said, shaking her head. "So, just those three and the two of us?"
He nodded. "I didn't want to push my luck or tip my hand in terms of our numbers. The rest of the group probably aren't up for something like this either. Need to keep it small, and with people I can trust."
She smiled at that. "Supervillain summit. Just like the old days. Blasto and Poison Apple."
"Poison?"
"Changed it. Rotten Apple had too many bad connotations. Poison Apple works better for this kind of meeting. It's just too bad there's no Accord to troll."
"No, just Nazis, drug dealers, crime lords, mercenaries, and the cape who has everyone in the country shitting themselves." He listed.
She snorted. "Don't remind me. I was on the bus into the city when that name thing went out. People started freaking when they realized what was happening. Luckily someone had PRT alerts set up on their phone, but that could have gotten ugly."
"Did, in some places, from what I heard. And that's just the public. People in cape circles, they know what that kind of effect means." He replied.
"Yeah. Fuck, and we're going to be in the same room as him?" Lauren asked.
"We will, but everything says he'll hold the truce. Everything. It's the one thing they're all sure of." He assured her.
"Right. Fuck it. Rey, you know I'm there for you, even if the money wasn't this good. It's just, are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, getting caught up in this?" She looked around. "Generally speaking, people are kind of avoiding this city. People in the community, I mean. Nobody really wants to work here, not with Apeiron and things still being settled with the gangs."
"It's not what I would have chosen." Even with all the fascinating discoveries that could be made, he had been in the game long enough to read the writing on the wall. This was a bad scene and would need to be played carefully. "But Barrow wants this done. A show of force, a bloody nose for people who are already on the shit list of most of the local powers, then get out of the way while they sort things out."
"It's not going to be that simple." She stated. "It's never that simple. You remember the Boston Games."
He did. It wasn't the same situation, but he knew how these things could get out of hand, easily. But with Apeiron looming over everyone, with a summit that might create a meaningful resolution, there was a chance that things could find a resolution.
And on a positive note, at least this time they wouldn't have someone as crazy as Damsel of Distress running around.
Last edited:
Dancingrage
On a crash course with the big time.
- Location
- On The Road, USA
Thanks for the chap, time to dig in! Many thanks for your hard work and sacrifice!!
EDIT: OH, stars above, Rey, you really just had to jinx yourself just then, didn't you...
The chaos continues to grow, plots slowly piling one atop the other, over a city barely standing. The center cannot hold. The center will not hold...
...however, at the center of this oncoming storm, you see, is Apeiron. This center will hold, and all else before it will bow before it or be sundered in passing.
Another fine chapter, Lord, and pay no mind to the thoughts of others oh the pacing...in the end, you are writing for yourself, and being kind enough to share with us. Remember this first and foremost!
EDIT: OH, stars above, Rey, you really just had to jinx yourself just then, didn't you...
The chaos continues to grow, plots slowly piling one atop the other, over a city barely standing. The center cannot hold. The center will not hold...
...however, at the center of this oncoming storm, you see, is Apeiron. This center will hold, and all else before it will bow before it or be sundered in passing.
Another fine chapter, Lord, and pay no mind to the thoughts of others oh the pacing...in the end, you are writing for yourself, and being kind enough to share with us. Remember this first and foremost!
Last edited:
Happerry
Bat out of Hell
- Location
- Kanto
I spy some famous last words.
I love how every villain is planing to get one over Apeiron, and we as the readers know how OP Joe has gotten in just a few chapters. Every single one will get god stomped.
IndigoPhoenix
Devourer of Citrus
- Location
- Everywehere
I think he just blew up a bug clone, it was in an fight a wile back if I'm remembering correctly.
Last edited:
SiegfriedisOP
Calamity Demon King of Time
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm sure Sleeper isn't that scary, I mean sure he's hyped up in Worm but there's no showing of him and his powers actually beating a strong opponent. I've just gotten into Ward and so far it seems like he was just forgotten.
He erased half of one of her bug clones. No actual damage was done.
Fullofholes
Riddled with bullets
Scrub was being a general danger to everyone around him. Tay-tay came and completely terrified him so much that he panickedly desintegrated the general area of her bug clone. She didn't like that, not one bit. And Scrub? He learnt to fear an angry Taylor.
Heh... heh... AHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHAHAHAAHHAHA!
Last edited:
Gumiho
Reach heaven through violence!
Oh sweet summer child, you will learn.
AntaeusTheGiant
Child of Gaea
- Location
- Lawrence, KS
Blasto is a narc! Hahahaha!
Well, at least one set of brown pants needed for the meeting...
- Location
- SomeWhereElse
Hot damn Leet's almost cool right now. That is an accomplishment and a half right there.
Frankly I almost want him to fail upwards so hard that he ends up Ciaphas Caining himself into a position of actual respected importance through sheer happenstance. All he needs now is to run into a hyper competent sidekick who can cover for his flaws.
...Like Kid Win and his specialty in modular technology. Thus allowing the failure points of Leets projects to be made irrelevant through the use of clever engineering. I doubt that this will be the direction taken but it would be funny to watch.
Frankly I almost want him to fail upwards so hard that he ends up Ciaphas Caining himself into a position of actual respected importance through sheer happenstance. All he needs now is to run into a hyper competent sidekick who can cover for his flaws.
...Like Kid Win and his specialty in modular technology. Thus allowing the failure points of Leets projects to be made irrelevant through the use of clever engineering. I doubt that this will be the direction taken but it would be funny to watch.
Last edited:
This was a great chapter with VERY worrying implications.
This is going to go downhill quickly, while it's good Leet is learning to think for himself, trying to replicate Sleeper is bad. That's reality warping anti-endbringer levels of power that no one should have access to.
Aperion should be able to shut down the effect since tinkertech is still tech and thus can be interfaced with technopathy, but this going to get dicey.
On the one hand it's good Uber and Leet aren't attacking the summit, because if we got to Summer's Rock just for it to be interrupted, people would riot. On the other hand this is March's first appearance in a few months so there might be a riot anyways.
This is going to go downhill quickly, while it's good Leet is learning to think for himself, trying to replicate Sleeper is bad. That's reality warping anti-endbringer levels of power that no one should have access to.
Aperion should be able to shut down the effect since tinkertech is still tech and thus can be interfaced with technopathy, but this going to get dicey.
On the one hand it's good Uber and Leet aren't attacking the summit, because if we got to Summer's Rock just for it to be interrupted, people would riot. On the other hand this is March's first appearance in a few months so there might be a riot anyways.
I actually prefer more interludes to build up the story than just rushing to the summit. More interactions with Capes outside Apeiron bubble, maybe more tech expositions to fully flesh out what upgrades will be brought, and possibly more PRT and/or the Heroes anticipation.
CharlieKing
Pure of Heart, Dumb of Ass
- Pronouns
- They/Them
oh god oh fuck. forget kill bill sirens, i'm hearing air raid sirens.
leet if you knock at the the devil's door long enough eventually he will anwer.
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
So, Leet having Sleeper analysis as a material for his megaproject would be extremely concerning... But Apeiron does have his Noble Phantasm's countercraft ability, which means he can probably stop Sleeper's power. Also Leet will not make something as dangerous as the actual Sleeper, he's not that crazy.
Also, Somner's Rock is going to be crowded. We've got Undersiders, Empire, Merchants, Blasto and friends, Faultline's Crew, Coil, Dragonslayers, Uppercrust, possibly Travelers, possibly some other unknowns, and of course the star guest Apeiron with his unexpected six teammates. That bar is going to be packed.
Also, Somner's Rock is going to be crowded. We've got Undersiders, Empire, Merchants, Blasto and friends, Faultline's Crew, Coil, Dragonslayers, Uppercrust, possibly Travelers, possibly some other unknowns, and of course the star guest Apeiron with his unexpected six teammates. That bar is going to be packed.
Man, Leet is really growing up and looking around with clear vision. Not enough to just dump his group (though, tbf he's not wrong to be worried about Bakuda and she's a fat anchor no matter what his plans might be. To say nothing of Jeff-the-almost-certainly-brainwashed.), but enough to draw some lines and really think about life. Rey, on the other hand...seems like he'll be in for a bad time. Mostly because, holy shit the Garden kids seem stupid (and the implication has been these are all older teens, no actual children), but also because there at least two (probably more) x-factors he hasn't accounted for in Damsel and the Dragon Slayers.
Then there's Scrub, who...seems to have been recruited on the spot of triggering because he saved Skidmark by accident? It seems like he was never really a Merchant until getting caught in the Ungodly Hour and then having to fight with them against ABB conscripts. Hopefully he'll find a way to leave once he finally manages to come down from drugs and stress hormones' (which it also seems like he's been impaired by literally this whole time) and can actually think. Shitty life or not, I know I wouldn't be too interested in staying with a group that plans on picking a fight with friggin Apeiron (as the cussing and derision did attest), especially not if I already thought there was a personal grudge on ME.
Then there's Scrub, who...seems to have been recruited on the spot of triggering because he saved Skidmark by accident? It seems like he was never really a Merchant until getting caught in the Ungodly Hour and then having to fight with them against ABB conscripts. Hopefully he'll find a way to leave once he finally manages to come down from drugs and stress hormones' (which it also seems like he's been impaired by literally this whole time) and can actually think. Shitty life or not, I know I wouldn't be too interested in staying with a group that plans on picking a fight with friggin Apeiron (as the cussing and derision did attest), especially not if I already thought there was a personal grudge on ME.
I'm honestly amazed at leet's character development here. This was really enjoyable to read.
The damsel of distress punchline nearly killed me.
Also the idea of botanic mining is super cool. I bet there's some really neat ways to make pharmaceutical products with it too.
The damsel of distress punchline nearly killed me.
Also the idea of botanic mining is super cool. I bet there's some really neat ways to make pharmaceutical products with it too.
Last edited:
He defeated the simurgh, so yeah it's terrifying he is mostly a menance to anyone that tries to fight him.