Chapter 17: Reaction
Taylor and I took a long, looping route back to the loft, partially out of paranoia and partially because we just wanted to roam, so by the time we arrived the party was in full swing. Even Brian and Rachel had made it back before us, which was impressive, since they'd had to ride all the way up to the docks to stash the stolen goods before making their way back. On the other hand, they'd had the dogs.
Several boxes of pizza were spread out on the tables behind the home theatre couches, along with stacks of napkins and paper plates. Alec and Brian were sitting on one of the couches, talking animatedly about the fight. Lisa seemed to be nursing a headache on the other couch, a laptop open but forgotten on the table in front of her. Rachel wasn't around. "We're home!" I called as we stepped into the loft. "What's the score?"
"Sixty eight grand, plus whatever we get for the information," Lisa said. Times three, divided by six—the math worked out to be really easy.
"So we're making about thirty four grand
each?" I asked, walking over to stand behind Lisa's couch. That was more than half as much as a straight cash purchase.
"Minimum." She grimaced. "Assuming the boss pays up." Aw, what's wrong, Coil? Things not going to plan?
"Wait, 'assuming'?" Taylor asked. "Why are we working for him if we can't trust him to pay?"
"He'll pay. Sorry, I got off the phone with him less than an hour ago and he wasn't happy."
Taylor raised an eyebrow. "Did we steal
too much? If we went over his budget—"
"No, that's not the problem. He's happy with our work. He just has other problems going on." Lisa glanced up at me when she said this, and I nodded. Her eyes widened slightly. I wasn't sure
exactly what I had just communicated, but I don't think it had been anything that wasn't in some way true. "You guys should help yourselves to the food. Soda's in the kitchen."
"Thanks," I said, leaving Taylor to the food as I stepped into the bathroom and shut the door. I tried to open the door to the Warehouse. It didn't work. I closed the door again, actually used the bathroom, and then tried one more time, but it still didn't work. I'd been planning to ask Jenn if she'd brewed any anti-thinker-headache potions, but it seemed there would be no miracle headache cures today.
I tried to ignore the resentment I felt over being rejected by the cosmic judge of property. For all that Lisa had told us this was our space, the Warehouse didn't agree. Maybe not having a room was the problem… or maybe it wasn't really
any of ours. I couldn't help but look over my shoulder as I exited the bathroom, wondering if Coil had cameras set up inside. He seemed the type. Maybe it was a good thing I hadn't been able to open a door.
I headed back to the fridge, saw that there was no root beer, and poured myself a glass of water from the tap instead. On the way back, I pulled a massive wedge of pizza slices onto a paper plate, then joined Lisa and Taylor on the couch perpendicular to the television. "…right into a parked car!" Alec said. "I
long for the skill to pull something like that off on purpose."
"Hey boys, ladies. What did I miss?" I shoved a piece of pizza into my mouth. Mmm, salt and grease.
"Alec was just describing Gallant's… misfortune," Taylor said. My mouth was full of pizza, so I had to ask for details by raising my eyebrows as high as they'd go.
"Okay, so, there's a bunch of setup for this." Alec said eagerly. "I got Kid Win to drop one of his pistols early on, since he was holding one in each hand. I grabbed it and tried to figure out how to use it, but before I could Browbeat crushed it. Nearly got my fingers too. I didn't have my taser out, since I was messing with the pistol, so I faked running into Grue's cloud, then doubled back while he got himself turned around.
"Then I had to deal with Gallant, who kept smacking me with these stupid orbs that felt like someone hitting you with blasts of air from a leaf-blower. I made him stumble, and he almost caught himself… but he stepped on the smashed gun! Slipped on it like a banana peel and went ass-over-teakettle right into a parked car. Got his helmet stuck in the grill! I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe." I had to cover my mouth to make sure I didn't spit any food out; maybe it was the euphoria of our first job, but I could barely stop laughing long enough to chew my food.
"That sounds like something you would do," Taylor told me.
I shook my head, finally managing to swallow the mass of pizza I'd bitten off. "I'd have used an actual banana peel."
"Oh, that reminds me." Brian said. "Lisa, show Kasey that pic you showed us." Lisa groaned and pulled the laptop towards us. She poked at the touchpad to wake the computer up and revealed the webpage for one of Brockton Bay's local newspapers. "WARDS ROUTED", read the headline, over a picture of Kid Win as I'd last seen him: standing upright with a lamppost wrapped around him like a rubber hose, looking thoroughly dejected. Brian grinned at me from the boy's couch. "That was your doing, right?"
I snickered. "Yeah. I wanted something humiliating but mostly harmless. What do you think?"
"It was probably damn uncomfortable," Lisa said, "but you didn't wrap the pole tight enough to hurt him. As for the humiliation, I think the headline speaks for itself." She had her eyes closed, face pinched in pain.
"All's good, then." I smiled at the picture, trying to ignore the niggling feeling of shame for doing that to the kid. "How did they get him out?"
"I don't know and I don't care enough to figure it out."
"Are you all right, Lisa?" Taylor asked.
She shot another veiled look at me before answering. "Yeah, just tired. Used my power too much in the bank and now I'm paying the price."
"What do you mean?"
"Kasey can explain," Lisa said. I rolled my eyes.
"Right, since I'm Miss Exposition around here…" I took another bite of pizza, small enough that I could chew it in a reasonable amount of time. "Thinkers often suffer headaches when they use their powers too much," I told Taylor. "They're often called 'Thinker headaches'—imaginative, right? Depending on the degree of overuse, it can be anything from a dull pain to a full-blown cluster headache."
"What's a cluster headache?"
"The Alexandria of migraines." Lisa barked out a short laugh, then shot me a withering glare before closing her eyes again. I don't know what she was upset about; I wasn't making fun of
her.
"And that only happens to Thinkers?" Taylor asked.
"It's associated with Thinkers to the point that if non-Thinkers start getting them, they're given a Thinker rating for it," I said. Taylor narrowed her eyes at me, probably trying to decide how much I was bullshitting. "And since I suspect your next question is going to be 'Why?': no one knows. Maybe it's like overworking a muscle. Maybe the brain is working hard interpreting data from a super-normal source, and too much takes a toll. Maybe it's a balance decision." I don't think it was ever
confirmed to be the last one, but given Shards, I wouldn't be surprised.
"A what?"
"A game thing," Alec said. "Like how…" he stopped, probably to think of a game that Taylor would have played. "Like how in Monopoly, the more expensive properties also earn more money, to make them worth buying."
"How does that make any sense?" she asked.
"Well, if they paid the same as the cheaper squares—" Taylor threw her scrunched-up napkin at him.
"She's bullshitting you," Brian said.
"I was up-front with the whole 'no one knows' thing!" I protested. "My guesses are as good as anyone's!"
"I think she actually believes that," Taylor told Brian. His face split into a wide grin at her joke, which had Taylor looking downright bashful.
I took advantage of the lull in the conversation to look over the group as I worked my way through my pizza. "Alec, are you okay? You took a bad hit at the end there."
"She just winded me," he said.
"You were flying through the air," I pointed out dubiously
"Because she used the opportunity to pick me up like a sack of potatoes and throw me across the room," he groused. "I could have been really hurt if you hadn't caught me."
"You're welcome."
"Aw, Kasey rescued a damsel," Brian said, which earned him a punch from the damsel in question. I grinned, warmth spreading through my chest at the good-natured roughhousing.
"Were any hostages hurt?" Taylor asked.
Lisa was still playing dead on the end of the couch, so I pulled the laptop over and scanned through the article. "Three people were treated for minor bruising and released," I read out, then winced; there was a good chance those had been people I'd been knocked into during the fight in the street. "Those might be my fault. Well, Glory Girl's, but I'm sure they won't admit that. Let's see what the cesspool has to say." I scrolled down to the comments and read out, "Clark says, 'Remind me why we have heroes at all?' Memsie says in response, 'The villains had two new heavy hitters no one had seen before, give them a break.' Polly responds, 'The heroes work hard to keep us safe, Clark!' 'butts' responds, 'I feel safer around the villains.'"
"PHO is probably better," Brian said.
"Lisa, do you mind?"
"Whatever," she mumbled, so I clicked on the PHO bookmark on the top bar. Lisa didn't leave herself logged in, which was probably smart, all things considered. Personally, I
still needed a verified cape account.
After about ten minutes of browsing, I sighed and closed the window. "This is less fun than I was expecting."
"Reading about yourself?" Taylor asked.
"Yeah. I mean… I don't know. I like the fact that people are shitting on Glory Girl for that stupid column thing, but…" I trailed off. I didn't know
what I'd hoped for. Fans? Praise? I'd gotten some of each. I also had creeps. That was a thing.
I scowled at the last page of my thread, scoured by the cleansing fire of moderation. It's not like the internet being a bunch of pervs was a shock or anything, but it was still gross.
I got some hate, too. That hurt more than I'd expected. I really should've been prepared for that—I'm a villain, people are
supposed to root against me—but it was what it was.
"Kasey?" Brian asked.
I glanced up from the computer. "Yeah?"
"How did you pull off that trick at the end?"
"Huh?"
"You lined Glory Girl up for a perfect hole-in-one through a wall!" He grinned as he pantomimed a punch.
I smiled, pushing the strange niggling feeling away. "It was mostly luck. I mean, I had a rough mental image of where the vault door was, but I couldn't believe I actually hit it! Throwing Glory Girl through the wall was the easy part! She's so predictable…"
———X==X==X———
I'd gotten a text from Diane which simply read "Left something for you at your base," so I swung by my lair after leaving the loft for the day. The package contained a homemade DVD with 'Interlude' written on it in sharpie. I popped it into the DVD player and hit play.
The video started with the Wards filing out of a PRT transport towards the large gray monolith of the PRT building. Aegis led the way, followed by the rest of his team in a disorganized clump behind him. They were a sorry sight. Gallant was wearing a PRT trooper helmet instead of his normal shining silver one. Clockblocker was disheveled, sporting a large number of rips in his dirt-stained while costume. Vista and Browbeat had escaped visible injury, but they were visibly beaten down, and Vista was clearly favoring her right shoulder. I noticed Kid Win wasn't there; he might have still been tied up. Shadow Stalker was also absent.
A heavy-set woman in a navy blue suit with an extremely unflattering blonde bob cut was waiting for them inside. Aegis saluted, his arms acting distinctly rubbery. "Director," he greeted her.
"Aegis," Director Piggot said."What happened to your arms?"
"Flux wrapped me in a car," he said. "I think I broke them about a hundred times pulling myself out."
"I see." They didn't say anything more until they'd left the lobby and entered a large meeting room. Piggot walked stiffly to one side of the room, while the Wards formed a group facing her. Aegis was in the front, as the leader, with Clockblocker, Gallant, Browbeat, and Vista behind him. The director took a moment to give the entire group a long, baleful look.
"This was a disaster," she said.
"We lost," Gallant admitted.
"Sometimes heroes lose," Piggot responded. "What makes this a disaster is how you lost. You lost to a group of villains who were treating you with kid gloves—"
"Kid gloves?" Clockblocker interrupted.
"Kid gloves," she repeated. "Hellhound didn't deploy any of her dogs. Flux went out of her way to avoid injuring anyone even though she can punch Glory Girl through solid rock. And despite living in a city full of black widows and brown recluse spiders, none of you were bitten by anything nastier than a yellow jacket.
Kid. Gloves.
"As I was saying: the bank is wrecked. It's going to cost more money to repair the damage from the fight than the villains managed to steal! People nearly died—would have died, if not for the villains showing more care for human life than the so-called heroes!" She paused, letting her words sink in to the assembled heroes. "Gallant. You invited Glory Girl along—"
"No, ma'am," Gallant interrupted her. His voice echoed oddly in the poorly-fitting PRT helmet.
"No?"
"Glory Girl received a message from her sister, who was in the bank. She arrived separately and refused to leave; I told her that she would be allowed to participate only if she followed the instructions of the Wards leader." He nodded towards Aegis. "She agreed at the time, only to engage on her own once the fight started."
"You shouldn't have permitted her to participate at all!"
Aegis cleared his throat. "Respectfully, ma'am: how would we have stopped her?"
"You didn't need to
stop her," Piggot said. "You just needed to
forbid her. Then, when she ignored the orders of law enforcement—as we all know she would have—we could throw her under the bus without dragging you all down with her. Instead, you're
all going to be painted with the same brush. I assume you heard about Mister Douglas?"
The Wards exchanged glances; as the leader, it fell to Aegis to respond. "We haven't been allowed to access the internet since the operation."
"And you obeyed that?" Piggot asked with a raised eyebrow. They nodded. "Will wonders never cease, you
can follow instructions. Cory Douglas is a freshman at the University who was almost crushed by the column Glory Girl knocked over, only to be saved by a
villain. Obviously, it's the thing the public cares most about." She gave the entire room another glare. "
That is exactly the sort of thing that turns a loss into a disaster. Not only did you lose, you looked bad doing it, and your performance reflects poorly on the entire PRT and Protectorate organizations."
"Director—again, respectfully—we were in a very difficult situation," Aegis said. "We were in a hostage situation against a team we had very little information on, who turned out to have two unknown heavies we had no information on at all—"
"Then you haven't been reading the reports we've been handing you," Piggot said harshly. "When Armsmaster brought Lung in, he was suffering from an abnormal number of insect bites, and had carved up the street in a manner that suggested a Brute-on-Brute fight. We
knew these people were in the city."
"But we had no way to know they were
in the bank," Aegis protested. Clockblocker and Browbeat nodded eagerly behind him.
"You weren't ready to be surprised," Piggot said. "That isn't an excuse." The Wards exchanged glances, but no one argued. "Let's move on to your individual performances." She looked at Vista, who cringed. "Aegis, why was Vista alone, with no support on standby?"
"Vista suggested that she could tie the entire area around the bank into a loop to prevent them from escaping. It was our best counter to Grue's darkness; otherwise, they might have run past us and lost us in the city."
He glanced at Vista, who picked up the explanation. "Affecting an area that large is hard, especially when it's on both sides of a building I wasn't going to modify—I didn't want to let them know I had the area wrapped up. I needed to circle around the whole bank to make sure I had everything right."
"And you were alone
because?" Piggot demanded.
"I wasn't supposed to be alone! Shadow Stalker should have been watching my back!" Vista whined. "But she charged into the bank instead, so I didn't have any help when that bitch jumped me! Yell at
her, not me!"
"Shadow Stalker has
more than paid for her mistake, I assure you. However, it was
Aegis' failure that got you hurt, because he assigned someone he
knew was unreliable to protect you." Piggot focused her glare back on Aegis. "If you ever want to lead a real team, you need to learn who you can trust to stay on task, and who you can only ever use as a wildcard. If you'd had Browbeat looking after her, or done it yourself, she likely wouldn't have been injured."
"I wanted to be sure we had the brutes on standby for the dogs—" Aegis began
"Which they did not even need to use," Piggot reminded him. "Speaking of Browbeat," she said, turning her eyes to the team's other Brute, "what, exactly, did you accomplish today?"
Browbeat swallowed. "I, um, I was able to disarm Regent when he stole one of Kid Win's pistols?" Gallant shifted slightly beside him. "Then I attempted to pursue him into the cloud, and got… turned around."
"'Turned around' indeed. You contributed nothing to the fight, and may have been responsible for stepping on one of the hostages." Piggot left it at that. "Gallant. Your helmet footage is embarrassing." He didn't argue, so she moved on. "Clockblocker. What happened?"
"She put ants in my nose!"
"You are forbidden from mentioning that to the press." She gave the entire group one last glare, then stated, "Dismissed," and left the room.
The video cut directly to the Wards already filing into the common room downstairs. Kid Win was already there, out of his armor and wearing only a temporary mask. "—the best start to your new career, huh?" Clockblocker asked Browbeat as the group made their way over to a bunch of folding chairs leaning against one wall. The two took off their masks as they walked, and I instinctively looked away before remembering that I already knew the Wards' identities.
"I wouldn't mind so much if I knew what happened," he said. "I went after the first person I saw, and then suddenly I couldn't find my way back, even though I shouldn't have been more than a few feet from the edge. It was like I'd fallen into an abyss."
"That might have been my fault," Vista said, doffing her visor. "I, uh, I was still trying to hold the loop together, even with my shoulder all fucked up, but I know I screwed it up. Sorry."
"No hard feelings," Browbeat assured her. "Would've been tased either way." He chuckled ruefully. "Should have paid more attention to the briefing. I would have stayed clear if I'd known he had a stun-gun."
"I don't think that was in the briefing, actually," Aegis said. "We went in without enough people or information, and we paid the price." He tried to pick a chair, knocked it over instead, and grumbled, "Damn it, I should have just waited for them to get me free rather than forcing it." Browbeat stepped past him and started moving the chairs into a semicircle facing the wall without being asked.
"You probably wouldn't be saying that if you had Image using you as a whipping boy," Kid Win said. He slouched into one of the chairs and pulled off his own mask. "I don't get it. I knew something was weird when they had me post that pic of myself being loaded onto a truck like an i-beam. Usually it's all, 'You must be professional,' and 'You can't let people catch you goofing off,' but now that I got humiliated in public they want to turn me into a meme. I had to give one of the PR people permission to manage my PHO account for the next few days before they'd let me head down here, and I regret looking at what they've been doing with it."
"Okay, now I have to see it," Clockblocker said, but he was interrupted by Gallant returning with a pair of whiteboards. He was also unmasked, though he was still wearing his armor.
"Ready, Aegis?" Gallant asked.
Aegis shook his head. "Arm's are all messed up. I can't write. Clock?"
"Don't suppose you want to do it?" Clockblocker asked Gallant. Gallant shrugged and grabbed a whiteboard marker.
"You still want to lead, Aegis?"
"Probably easier if you do it, since you can go at your own speed," Aegis said, sitting down in the center-most chair and struggling to take off his own mask; his dexterity was really hampered by not having bones in his arms. Clockblocker sat down next to him, with Vista on his other side; Kid Win was already seated on one end of the line, and Browbeat took the other.
"Take it away,
team leader," the team leader said with exaggerated seriousness.
Gallant grinned at Aegis. "Right, then. As your
leader, I want to stay by saying that no matter what Piggot may say, I'm proud of you guys. We were handed an incredibly difficult situation, and we still managed a win." He waited a moment as the Wards processed that. "Yes, a win. These 'Undersiders' have flown under the radar for a while, always slipping away before we can respond. This time, we got in their way, and that means we finally have some information on the group." He wrote Grue, Tattletale and Regent on one board, then drew lines between the names to form columns. He wrote Hellhound on the other, then stopped. "Do we know the other two?"
"Skitter and Flux," Kid Win said. "Eyewitnesses overheard some of their discussion before the fight kicked off."
"The girl who wrapped you up named herself 'Flex'?" Clockblocker asked. "How unimaginative can you get?"
"Flux, with a 'u'," Kid Win said.
"That's what I said—"
"Ahem!" Gallant said. He tapped the whiteboard, where he'd written Flux next to Skitter and Hellhound. "So. This is the part where we try to learn everything we can, to make sure we can win next time. What do we know?"
"Grue's power isn't just darkness," Browbeat said. "It messes with your hearing, pushes against you like you're underwater. If you're not prepared for it, it can really confuse you."
"Good." Gallant listed 'blind' 'deaf' 'resistance' 'confusion' in Grue's column. "What else?"
"He can manipulate it remotely, or at least get rid of it that way," Aegis said. "He cleared a landing spot for Flux when she grabbed me."
"That implies that Flux can't see through it either," Kid Win added.
"Excellent points," Gallant said, and 'remote clear' 'affects allies' joined Grue's column. "Anything on the others?"
"According to the hostages, Skitter claimed she could sense things through her bugs, at least enough to know if they started trying to move," Vista said.
"She also has some really fine control over them," Browbeat added. "Apparently she was showing off with some weird bug streams while they were emptying the vault, making sure everyone knew just how much control she had."
"The swarm interferes with my power, since it's alive," Vista said. "One of the reasons I couldn't get away when the purple bitch jumped me."
"Right, good. What else?" Under Skitter, Gallant wrote 'senses' 'fine control' 'vista manton limit'. When no one responded, he added, "It can be about any of them, we're not doing this in order."
"Regent's muscle spasms hurt," Kid Win said. Regent's column gained the words 'muscle spasms' 'painful'.
Gallant paused, then added a question mark after the word 'painful'. "They didn't hurt me," he said. "Well, not directly."
"Me either," Browbeat said.
"You're a brute, though," Kid Win responded.
"I'm not immune to pain."
"Let's stay on track," Gallant reminded them. "I think his muscle spasms got stronger when he used them on me multiple times." When no one commented, he wrote 'stronger with use'. "Anything on Tattletale? Vista?"
"She had a foot and forty pounds on me and I still wasn't that badly outmatched," Vista replied. "Whatever her power is, it isn't hand-to-hand." Tattletale's column gained the words 'normal strength'.
"It's a long shot," Browbeat said, "but I bet there are normals crazy enough to go caping if they can find a team that would have them."
"The long shot is finding a team that would take a normal as a fake cape," Gallant replied. "We didn't see much of Hellhound either. Kid, can you grab the eyewitness reports?"
"Sure," Kid Win said. He stood up and walked off camera, returning quickly with a laptop. "What do you want me to look for?"
"Start with Tattletale, since we know the least about her." Kid Win nodded and started clicking through the reports. "Now, what about Flux?"
"She's strong," Vista said. Gallant wrote 'brute'.
"Strong enough to 'punch Glory Girl through solid rock', according to the director," Aegis quoted. Gallant underlined 'brute'
"What else?"
"She did something weird when she got knocked into the police cars," Aegis said. "She treated one of the vehicles like a springboard." He waved one of his arms wigglingly, prompting looks of disquiet from the other kids. Gallant frowned, then wrote 'weird movement'.
"You think that was the same thing she did to the streetlight?" Clockblocker asked. "Made it rubbery, then left it in place?" Gallant erased 'weird movement' and wrote 'rubbery striker'.
"Oh, god damnit!" Kid Win said. "It was a pun!"
"What?" several of the others asked.
"When she wrapped me up in the streetlight, she said 'no hard feelings'. She'd done something weird to me when I fell off my board," Kid Win said. "I was high enough and fast enough that I should have hurt myself, but she grabbed me and did… something. When we hit the ground, my… my propio-whatsit…"
"Proprioception?" Gallant suggested.
"Yeah, that got all messed up when we hit. It felt like I wasn't in the right shape for a moment. Whatever it was, my armor didn't even get scuffed from the fall."
"Sounds like she likes you," Clockblocker teased.
"Then she put me in a joint lock and threatened to break my arm if I kept struggling."
"Sometimes girls hit the boys they like."
"Clock, this isn't the time," Aegis told him. "Save it for after the debrief."
Gallant hadn't written anything down for this point yet. "So what would you call that?"
"I dunno." Kid Win frowned when the rest of the Wards looked at him. "What? I was in midair at the time. Didn't really have a lot of time to analyze it."
"It could be the same thing she did to the streetlights, just defensive," Aegis said.
"Striker invulnerability?" Browbeat asked. Vista hummed. Gallant wrote it down.
"Okay, this is good stuff. How do we deal with her?"
"Clockblocker," Aegis said immediately. "Striker versus striker, he wins every time." Gallant wrote down 'Clockblocker wins' in my column, which I had to admit was fair, assuming I was dumb enough to let him touch me.
"Good, good. What interfered with Clockblocker most, today?"
"The fucking bugs!" Clockblocker yelled. "They were all over me! Ripping my costume, crawling through the holes, even in my nose and mouth—" he stopped and gave a full-body shudder.
"I can ask Beacon for advice on designing something to deal with that," Kid Win said. "Some kind of bug repelling field."
"I would love you forever."
"Then put a ring on it," he answered, to general laughter. "Skitter had a baton, but she didn't do anything other than menace a couple hostages with it."
"I think she hit me with it," Clockblocker complained. "Someone smacked me in the knees while I was blind."
Gallant wrote 'baton' 'tinkertech solutions?' in Skitter's column, then doubled back and wrote 'taser' in Regent's. "What other equipment have they used?"
"Who had the pepper spray?" Aegis asked. The other Wards shrugged.
"Tattletale threatened Panacea with a gun," Vista said. The word 'gun' became the second item in her column. "Flux hit her with a flyswatter, too."
"Why?" Clockblocker asked. No one offered an answer. Gallant wrote 'flyswatter?' in my column.
"Speaking of Flux: you hit her, right, Aegis?" Kid Win asked. "Before she tied me up?"
"Yeah, why?"
"'Normal' hard, or 'trying to subdue a brute' hard?"
"I just saw her throw Glory Girl like a frisbee," Aegis said. "I didn't pull my punch."
"She didn't seem injured at all when she was manhandling me, so she took a full-strength hit without a scratch."
"Or she's good at hiding injuries," Browbeat offered.
Gallant underlined 'brute' again.
"Let's see… oh, I think Regent needs to be able to see you. He didn't start messing with me until he emerged from the cloud," Kid Win said, and 'line of sight' went under his column.
"You find anything in the reports, Kid?" Gallant asked.
"On Tattletale? Not much. She was pretty brief in her conversations with the hostages, and we can't really trust eyewitnesses for details."
"Her name definitely sounds like a Thinker name," Vista said.
"Do we know how they got the vault open?" Gallant asked. When no one replied, he wrote 'cracked vault?' under Tattletale's column. "Anything else in there, Kid?"
Kid kept poking at the touchpad. "Hellhound was whistling and pointing to direct the dogs. Trained, rather than controlled?" Gallant wrote 'trained dogs' 'whistles/points' under Bitch's column. "Skitter's the opposite; no outward signs she was doing anything at all." Gallant added the words 'direct/mind' to her column, with an arrow towards 'fine control'. "If we assume those dogs have the same density as normal dogs, each of Hellhound's dogs would weigh about four thousand pounds. That's as much as a car." 'Dogs = car sized' went onto the board. "Oh, people agree that Skitter was the one with the pepper spray."
Gallant wrote 'pepper spray' next to 'baton'. "She took Stalker down hard," he said.
"No shit," Clockblocker said. He looked over at Vista.
"What?" she asked. "Stalker's a bitch, but I'm not gonna celebrate some freak kicking her ass hard enough to land her in the hospital. She's still one of us."
"Very forgiving of you," he said.
Vista sighed. "The director had a point. Stalker got herself hurt a lot worse than I was."
"Do we know how bad?" Gallant asked.
Aegis shook his head. "Just that she needed urgent care and is still in the hospital."
"That's pretty bad."
What was it Panacea had said? 'She's not getting up anytime soon'? How badly had the pepper spray messed her up?
"Do you think bug spray would work to counter Skitter?" Browbeat asked.
Gallant started to write 'pesticide', but Aegis shook his head. "Not in a hostage situation," he said. "Not unless we have some sort of Tinkertech spray that doesn't harm people."
"What about fire?" Clockblocker asked.
"How is that any better?"
I got up and made myself a bowl of popcorn, and by the time I got back they'd moved on to the backs of the whiteboards. "Oh, wait!" Vista yelled suddenly. "I know what I was thinking of!"
"What?" Gallant asked.
"Flux's Striker invulnerability. Wasn't the Siberian also a Brute/Striker with the ability to make others invulnerable?"
The Wards exchanged glances. "Now I'm not an expert in class S threats," Clockblocker said, "but I am fairly certain that there are zero circumstances in which the Siberian quits the Nine to become a hammy villain in Brockton
fucking Bay, of all places!"
"Cool it, Clock!" Gallant snapped.
"Sorry, but—"
"Don't apologize to me," he said, thrusting his chin towards Vista, who was pouting fiercely.
Clockblocker took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Vista," he said. She gave him the cold shoulder with a huff.
"What's with the attitude, man?" Kid Win asked.
"I dunno, maybe I got spooked by someone suggesting we just fought
the Siberian?"
"That's not what she said," Gallant and Kid Win said together.
"I know, I know, no need to jump down my throat!" Clockblocker threw his hands up. "I'm sorry, okay?"
"Is it really that crazy?" Aegis asked the silence that followed. "I mean, if she's a total psychopath, it's not like she would have had any attachment to the Nine as people. Maybe she just tossed the identity aside and picked a completely different one." I munched on my popcorn as the conversation grew steadily more divorced from reality.
"I don't think psychopaths work like that," Gallant said.
Vista ignored his objection. "You think she just chose a completely new personality and hopped in with the first team she found?"
"Did you get a look at her?" Kid Win asked Gallant. He shook his head.
Aegis was still talking to Vista. "It's unlikely, but I don't think it's impossible."
"Flux is a bit under six feet, right?" Kid Win asked. He tapped away at the laptop for a few moments. "Siberian was between five eight and five ten. That's dead on."
"Flux's costume has heels, though," Aegis pointed out.
"Almost dead on."
"Why were you looking at Flux's shoes?" Vista asked Aegis.
"She buried me up to my neck in the street. What else was I going to look at?"
"You're giving me nightmares, dude," Clockblocker complained to Kid Win.
"Relax," Gallant told him. "GUARD claimed the bounty on the Siberian. Flux isn't her."
"The director said Flux was probably the one who beat Lung," Kid Win reminded them.
"The flesh tone around her mouth could just be makeup," Vista added, relishing Clockblocker's discomfort.
"Decouple Theory," Browbeat said. The other Wards stopped arguing and turned to him in surprise.
"What-now theory?" Kid Win asked.
"There were a bunch of cases of parahumans triggering with a power that was unusually similar to another parahuman who had recently died," Browbeat explained. "For a while, it was held up as the big exception to the 'all powers are unique' rule."
Clockblocker asked, "And it's called 'Decouple Theory' because…?"
"Well, the theory was that powers existed independent of the parahuman, and that when the owner died, the power just sorta 'came loose' and sat around waiting to be picked up." Browbeat shrugged. "It's been widely discredited, mostly because there are a lot of capes running around now with powers that would have been considered evidence of the theory if they weren't concurrent, but it's an interesting thought."
Kid Win had been tapping away at the laptop again. "If we do assume a 'Decouple', that would mean Flux triggered sometime in February, right? The Slaughterdome was on the twelfth."
"Thirteenth to the sixteenth—twenty four to ninety six hours." Browbeat held up a hand to forestall interruption. "That's not a hard limit—and, again, discredited—but all the best studied cases were in that timeframe."
"Valentine's day heartbreak?" Clockblocker quipped.
"Use your goddamn head, Clock," Vista snapped. "There are a lot worse things that can happen to a girl on Valentine's day than a breakup." Clockblocker gulped and wisely kept his mouth shut.
"You think that makes sense, with her observed powers?" Kid Win asked her.
"Sorry guys, but I'm gonna have to ask you to save this for later," Gallant said. "It's gossip and speculation, and we still need to finish this up."
"We're not done yet?" Clockblocker asked. "How much of those boards do we need to fill?"
"This isn't a school essay, man," Kid Win said. "It's not about 'filling space', it's—" he was cut off by a loud, grating noise issuing from the front door. The Wards scrambled around putting on temporary domino masks, all arguments forgotten. Aegis tried and failed to affix his three times before Gallant grabbed it and fixed it in place a few seconds before the doors opened.
Armsmaster was the first one into the room. His blue and silver armor was polished to a mirror finish, halberd folded and clipped into place on his back. Next to him was Miss Militia, dressed in camo fatigues that were far more flattering than actual military wear, accentuated with American-Flag-patterened scarf and sash around her face and waist, respectively. She also had a rocket launcher draped across both shoulders.
"Hello sir, ma'am," Aegis said, giving another of his noodle-arm salutes. "How's Stalker?"
"Aegis," Armsmaster said with a nod. "She's… stable." Gallant and Browbeat exchanged a look at the pause in his words. "How are your arms?"
"Mostly useless, I'm afraid," Aegis admitted. "They'll heal, though."
"Indeed they will," he stated. "We brought a guest." The two adult heroes moved aside to reveal Panacea, clad in her white and red healer's robes. An ID card displaying her picture next to the word GUEST in large blue letters hung from a lanyard around her neck.
"I wanted to thank you for coming to my rescue," she said, forcing a smile. "I know you had a hard time out there."
"You and Victoria are okay?" Gallant asked.
"Yeah. Vicky's pride was hurt worse than anything else, and they didn't hurt me. I think they were actually
afraid of hurting me." Panacea's smile slipped. "Even the villains treat me like I'm made of glass," she mumbled, too quietly for anyone in the room to hear, before forcing the smile back on her face. "Aegis, may I fix your arms?"
"Vista first," Aegis said. Vista opened her mouth to protest, but he insisted, "You're not used to hand to hand fighting, and the paramedics were overworked. I want to make sure nothing was missed."
"Fine," Vista said grudgingly, before turning to Panacea with a smile. "You can heal me any time, Panacea." Panacea took Vista's hand, and the younger girl immediately relaxed as the lingering pain in her shoulder disappeared. She moved to Aegis next, and his arms twitched freakishly as the bone fragments lined back up and fused together.
"Was anyone bitten?" she asked. Just about everyone raised their hands, and she did them one after the other in quick succession.
Armsmaster had moved over to inspect the whiteboards, flipping them back and forth between their front and back. "These are good points," he told the group. "I think you may be relying on Clockblocker too much, however. You've got him marked down as the answer for three different villains."
Gallant defended his work. "
Possible answer. His power is good against targets without clear weaknesses."
Armsmaster hummed in agreement. "That's fair. This is a problem, though." He tapped the Tattletale column, which didn't reach even halfway down one side of the board. "Panacea, you interacted with her, didn't you?"
"Not really? I mean, she waved a gun at me and took my phone—which she never gave back, by the way—but mostly she sat at a computer and glared at me whenever I thought about trying to escape."
"Thought about?" Miss Militia repeated ominously.
"Let's not jump to conclusions," Armsmaster said. "There are numerous other explanations: pre-cog, for just one example."
"Intent-based precog?" Aegis suggested.
"It fits the name," Browbeat agreed. Aegis grabbed a marker and jotted down 'precog?' 'intent-based?' in the empty space. Even with working arms, his handwriting sucked.
"Did you interact with any of the others?" Armsmaster asked Panacea.
"Flux was weird. She kept trying to be all friendly with me, like she thought she could make me like her even though she was robbing a bank."
"Definitely not the Siberian," Gallant said.
Miss Militia raised an eyebrow. "Pardon?"
Aegis explained, "Vista pointed out that Flux's ability to apply invulnerability as a Striker effect was similar to the Siberian's power, since she was also a Brute/Striker who could protect other people with her invulnerability."
"Clock overreacted," Kid Win added, "so we started giving him shit about it."
Aegis nodded. "Browbeat mentioned the Detachment Theory—"
"Decouple Theory," Armsmaster corrected him. "And that theory has been widely discredited, to the point that it's unlikely to offer any useful information."
"It would put her likely trigger event on Valentines Day," Aegis pointed out.
Miss Militia and Armsmaster exchanged a long glance that contained an entire conversation. "I can spend some time digging through the police reports for February," she said. "It's a long shot, but we might get a hit."
"We can't use her civilian identity against her," Browbeat said. "Right? We wouldn't do that."
Armsmaster looked to Miss Militia to field the question. "Of course we wouldn't arrest her in her civilian identity," she explained, "but there are other options. If we can offer her help in seeking justice against her… attacker, we might be able to flip her. She's already shown heroic tendencies."
"She robbed a bank," Panacea said. "You'd just, what, ignore that? 'Let bygones be bygones'?"
"If it gets a villain off the street and a new hero on the beat, then yes," Miss Militia said. "The Protectorate has forgiven worse. In the long term, turning villains into heroes is the best possible result of any confrontation, because it's a self-perpetuating process."
"You heroism sound like a virus," Panacea muttered. In her normal voice, she asked, "What about Stalker?"
Miss Militia frowned. "Stalker's injury is… tragic, of course, but…" she trailed off, thinking. "We would ensure justice is done," she finished, with forced confidence.
"And what do you do the next time they decide they don't want to play by the rules?"
"You're not in a position to criticize, here," Armsmaster said sharply. Miss Militia jabbed him in the side with her elbow. "No, Militia, this needs to be said. Glory Girl nearly killed a hostage today because she was unwilling or unable to follow instructions."
"I could have—"
"Healed him?" Armsmaster interrupted. "Possibly.
If you'd gotten to him in time,
if he hadn't been hit in the head. Being able to undo your sister's mistake does not give her a free pass to
make those mistakes, not when they could get people killed. What if it had been you who'd been under that rock?"
Panacea cringed under the onslaught. "She wouldn't hurt me," she said weakly.
"Armsmaster, this is not the time," Miss Militia said. "Save it for the meeting with Brandish. Panacea, this has been a very stressful day, and the media circus hasn't been helping." She jabbed Armsmaster with her elbow again.
"I'm sorry," he said. "This entire situation has been incredibly stressful. That is not an excuse; just context for my poor behavior. I hope you can forgive my outburst."
"S'fine," Panacea mumbled. "Can I go now?"
"Yes," Miss Militia said. "Thank you for you time, Panacea."
"Actually, can I talk to you for a moment?" Gallant asked. When everyone turned to look at him, he coughed and mumbled, "I just have a question, that's all."
"Whatever." He nodded and lead her over to his alcove in the private section of the base. Gallant sat down on a chair, while she took a seat on the bed, lowering her hood with a scowl. "What's this about?" she asked.
"Armsmaster mentioned undoing mistakes," he said simply.
Panacea swallowed. "And?"
"And your emotions—then and now—make me thing you've actually
been undoing her mistakes." When she didn't respond, he took off his own mask and rubbed a hand over his brow. "How many times?" he asked. Panacea didn't answer. "Once? Twice? Five times? More?"
"…more," she admitted.
"Christ!" he yelled. She quailed, and he held up his hands in front of himself. "Sorry. I'm not angry at you, Amy. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have shouted. It's just… god damn it, she should know better than this!" He stood up and started pacing back and forth. "Damn, damn, damn. Has this come up before? Was she ever—stupid question, every hero is accused of unnecessary force by one asshole or another. God, I bet your mom is having a complete fit."
"Home has been… tense."
"I bet. Does your mom know about this? That you've helped…" he stumbled over the words, "…cover up her 'mistakes'?"
"No."
"You need to tell her." When she shook her head, he insisted, "Someone needs to tell her. It doesn't have to be you; if you give me permission, I can call her instead."
"No!" Panacea blurted out. "Please, don't. Don't you dare! She'll… she'll hate me."
"Amy, she needs to know. Not because it's 'right' or 'the truth', but because she needs to be prepared to deal with this when it comes out. Because it
will come out. If public opinion is against Vicky, anyone she's ever 'mistake-d' is going to have a platform on every paper and news channel in the city to start making accusations."
"I can't tell her," Amy said. "I… I know it was wrong, but it's so hard to say no to Vicky. She needed my help. What would have happened if I said no? She could have gone to jail."
"I know you were just trying to help. But by helping, you let her keep doing more damage." He stopped pacing in front of Amy, crouching down to put himself on her eye level. "Whatever you're afraid your mom's reaction is going to be, it's going to be far worse if she's surprised."
She shook her head. "I can't. She'll blame me."
"Shouldn't she? You're both responsible for what you've been doing." Amy recoiled, and I made a note to punch 'Gallant' a little harder than normal next time we met. "You can tell her yourself, or let me do it, but you can't hide this forever. Not after today."
"Fine!" she growled. "Call her. If you can't stay out of my life, you might as well start speaking for me, too!" She yanked her hood back over her face and stormed back out into the common area, brushing past the Wards and heading for the elevators without a backwards glance. Gallant watched her go with a pained expression on his face, then pulled a phone out of a drawer and started to dial. The camera cut away to an exterior shot of a random suburban home before he finished punching in the number.
Huh.
For a moment, I thought this might have been a mistake—a video left on the disk that hadn't been overwritten, or something—but then one of the second floor windows opened up and a child climbed out and dropped into the bushes below. The camera followed her as she fought free of the bushes and ran down the street, before cutting into a neighbor's yard seconds before two black vans screeched to a half in the middle of the road and disgorged a dozen heavily-armed military-looking men. This would be Coil making a play for Dinah, then.
A picture-in-picture in the bottom right of the screen tracked the Undersider's progress through the bank along with an old faux-digital watch face, since the camera cut ahead several times rather than capturing the full ten-and-a-bit minutes of flight. Dinah managed time and time again to slip through the tightening net with only a second to spare, but eventually her luck ran out. The fight at the bank was in full swing when she didn't quite get through the tightening net in time and was literally stuffed into a sack. She was either too tired to resist, or had her predictions telling her it would be alright, since she was just dead weight as the men dragged her down the block and threw her into the back of one of the vans.
I took a deep breath, frowning at the screen. Lisa had said Coil was having problems, so I'd assumed we'd gotten Dinah away, but this didn't look promising. Surely Diane wouldn't have just recorded the whole thing if they'd actually managed to kidnap her, right? Had we swapped her out for a decoy? Damn it, I should have actually helped make the plan rather than just asking for help and running off.
The other van sped off in the opposite direction, out of town, while the van with Dinah turned back towards the city center. The mercs stopped to change vehicles twice, once into an unmarked white van, then again less than a mile later into a work van with a paint job advertising a roofing repair company. The camera cut again to a wide-angle news-helicopter-style view as the picture-in-picture—currently showing a tide of darkness sweeping across town—expanded to fill the other half of the screen. I realized what was about to happen only a few seconds before the two pictures merged and Coil's mercs screeched to a halt, completely blind.
The driver spent a few seconds cursing violently before managing to find the light switch on the van's ceiling; the cabin had been sealed, so he could still see once he had a source of light. He grabbed his radio and called in, "Boss, we ran into the fuckin' Undersiders. We're fuckin' blind 'till this shit fades!"
Too bad for him the darkness blocked radio—or so I thought; the response was a few seconds in coming, but it did come. "Get out of the van and find a manhole cover—it should be in front of you. Climb down, then head eight hundred feet south-east; another van will be waiting there." I suppose it made sense that Coil would find a way to overcome Grue's power, probably with some sort of tinkertech. Where did Coil get this stuff, and why was it all so… pedestrian?
"You got it, boss," he said, before releasing the radio and yelling, "Fuckin' hell! He wants us to fuckin' walk through this shit?" He punched the dash in frustration. "You, cable yourself up and find that fuckin' manhole!" The passenger flipped him the bird before clipping a retractable spool of polymer wire on his rig to the inside of the van and hopping out the door. The first merc, who I nicknamed Driver, had to lean over and pull the door shut before too much darkness managed to creep in.
The clock in lower corner skipped ahead about ten minutes as the camera cut to the interior of the storm drain system. A few wisps of darkness drifted down as the mercs descended the latter one by one, the first one down swearing profusely as he steadied the bag containing their captive on his shoulder with one hand. One by one, all seven mercs descended the ladder, each one clicking on a flashlight as they reached the bottom. The last one down stopped to reset the manhole cover before descending the rest of the way.
The final merc—I recognized him as Driver by his voice—clicked his radio on again. "We're in the drains, boss, heading north now." The response was clipped and distorted. "Didn't hear a fuckin' thing you just said, but roger." He pulled his hand off the radio and spat. "Fuckin' piece of garbage. 'Works anywhere' my ass. Right. It's pretty roomy down here—" as if to contradict himself, he turned his flashlight to illuminate a pipe that would only barely fit a crawling man. "Aw, fuck this! We're not carrying the kid a quarter mile through that. Unwrap her." The merc who had been carrying Dinah dumped her out of the sack, and Driver loomed over her, shining the flashlight directly in her eyes. "Listen, kid. This is how this is gonna work: you ever want to see your fuckin' family again, you're going to come with us and not make a fuckin' fuss. Understand?"
Dinah winced at the question, then carefully enunciated, "Ninety nine point eight four percent chance you are all dead within the next thirty seconds."
"The fuck is up with this kid?" one of the mercs in the back asked, then died messily as Zero chopped his head apart with a zweihander. Barely ten seconds later, she and Dinah were the only two living people in the tunnel, both absolutely drenched in blood. Well, my 'help' sucked.
Fucking hell, poor kid's probably traumatized as shit now!
Zero sauntered up to Dinah and said, "Right, I'm not supposed to ask you questions, so I'm gonna say things and you're gonna agree and disagree. You understand how this is going to work."
"Agree."
"You have questions."
"Disagree."
"Huh. Alright. You probably don't want me to touch you."
"Disagree."
"As you wish, kid." Zero picked Dinah up and let her wrap her arms around her neck, supporting the girl with the hand that wasn't wielding the blood-drenched greatsword. She headed off away from the island of light cast by the dead men's flashlights, and a few seconds later, the two disappeared into the gloom.
