Incense and Powdered Diamond

[Lucifra]

Birdwatching has never been this intense… or this lawless.

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Content Warning: Brief depiction of grievous injury, racial and homophobic slurs. The chapter starts with an Endbringer fight and as much as Taylor's out of view of the worst of it it's still bad, and the end part is Nazis again, sorry.

Okay, so as for the timing on this one the sirens went off at about 4:30 PM EST, which is about 6:30 AM the next day in Canberra, and sunrise on February 22, 2011 was about 6:45 AM. I don't know why I decided to put this here (that's a lie. I know exactly why) but rest assured that the timing matches up.

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If Taylor had been alone, her freezing up at seeing the winged Endbringer would have been very bad, and perhaps even ended the fight before it started. Fortunately for her, she was not, in fact, alone.

Horizon's eyes flashed with an odd not-color beyond violet as she reached up, and as her fingers came into contact with the Endbringer's feathers, a massive explosion sounded, bending the wing unnaturally and reversing its trajectory. "Get moving!" she snapped, glaring up at the Simurgh. "The farther from the med tent, the better!"

Shaken from her freeze response, Taylor instead chose flight, invoking hagalaz above her head before pushing off into a leap that became a soar, backlit by the sunrise.

With Taylor abandoning the med tent, the Simurgh did the same, leaving only a single parting strike that Horizon almost negligently slapped away with another detonation before jamming her hand down on the buttons on her armband. "Hard override" was the last thing Taylor heard out of the Thinker before she was too far away to hear.

The Simurgh, of course, didn't let Taylor get away unmolested. Even beyond her pursuit (which wasn't quite fast enough to catch Taylor), and whatever she was doing to try and slow her down with her telekinesis (which didn't work- maybe she was trying to thicken the air?), Taylor had chunks of hurled rubble and occasionally energy blasts that the winged Endbringer either dodged or deflected towards her, preventing Taylor from really accelerating thanks to her own need to dodge.

Taylor wasn't just fleeing, though. Every so often she managed to find a gap in the Simurgh's pattern and invoke a second, shorter-lived rune from her dwindling energy supply. Isa and kaunaz didn't do much, the former leaving hoarfrost on her wings and the latter scorching them (no matter which effect she visualized), so she rapidly abandoned them. Sowilo, on the other hand, let her hurl either tiny globes of sunlike plasma, which detonated on impact, or bolts of lightning, both of which physically shoved the Simurgh around and momentarily delayed her as well as pitting and scarring her hide.

That wasn't enough for Taylor, so she kept searching through her mental repository of runic knowledge. Jera would have been promising, had she had the energy to bind an Endbringer to the earth, but even before her healing spree she wasn't sure she could have pulled that off, not with her current level of mystic expertise limiting the efficiency with which she could cast the effect.

Instead, she tried laguz, summoning a wave from the relatively nearby Pacific Ocean and sending it slamming into the Simurgh.

While the energy expenditure made her vision go white briefly, wobbling in the air, as she turned back, she judged it worth it, having almost completely arrested Ziz' momentum and broken most of her wings long enough for the Triumvirate to catch up and stand against the Simurgh.

Taylor set herself down gently, releasing hagalaz momentarily to try desperately to draw in more energy before having to take to the skies again, then jumped when Glory Girl thumped down next to her. "When did you learn to fly supersonic?" the Alexandria Package asked, brushing wisps of blonde hair out of her face.

"Just now," said Taylor, still breathing deeply. She desperately cast about for something to talk about in the brief respite before her eye landed on the broad band of gold holding her cape on both shoulders as opposed to its previous one-shoulder positioning. "New accessory?" she asked, gesturing to where it would have sat on her as she bit back a hysterical laugh over the fact that she was discussing fashion, of all things, to avoid confronting the facts of the situation.

"In a way," said Glory Girl. "I had a dream where I had on a necklace at least a little like this, so I figured I might as well make a nod to it in the suit and depending on how it works I might go for a full-on redesign around it. You like?"

"Yeah, I think it works with your getup." Taylor turned to look at the battle and then hissed out an old Norse curse, leaving off from drawing in energy again to start flying.

Glory Girl spat out a "fuck" of her own before rising into the air and hurtling towards the Simurgh, slamming into the approaching Endbringer in a flash of gold and a sonic boom.

That delayed the Simurgh long enough for Legend and Eidolon to catch up, with Alexandria arriving a moment later to smash the chunk of rubble she'd been compressed into against the porcelain-pale wings of the Simurgh. Moments later, the teleporter who brought them to the fight appeared with a small crowd, which either charged into the fray or started some sort of ranged attack to target the fifteen-foot target. A significant number of them were crushed by the Simurgh, either telekinetically or by swinging limbs, but enough hits landed to keep the Simurgh occupied and not chasing her armored target.

Speaking of Taylor, the lanky cape had traded hagalaz for naudiz, to keep the Simurgh's attention off of herself, and ansuz, hoping it would give her some ability to understand the situation.

Unfortunately, it did.

Her one working eye glowed as her temporarily-enhanced mind chewed through the facts of the situation and came to the inescapable conclusion that the Simurgh was not and had never been human, and nor had the other Endbringers. Between their inscrutability, the insane level of power they displayed, and their massive, alien biology, she had no choice to understand that they were brought from the stars by the entities beyond powers, either as something similar to the Administrator or a chained god forced to fight.

By the same token, however, the magic of the runes wrested insight from the Administrator to understand the nature of the Endbringers on a wholly physical level, and Taylor understood how to win.

She reached for her own armband and clicked the button, which was evidently the wrong move seeing as how the instant her finger touched the band it fell apart.

In the distance, the Simurgh smirked slightly.

Absent the ability to call for help directly, Taylor invoked wunjo and ehwaz, the rune combination allowing her to temporarily conjure a pair of rune stones: one in her hand and one in Panacea's.

"Panacea," she said into the stone, "I need help. I'm stranded without my armband, and while I'm not susceptible to the Simurgh's scream, I need to be able to communicate with the group as a whole."

"Little busy," grumbled the healer, and the faint sound of squelching could be heard over the mystical connection.

"I have access to information that might be able to kill the Simurgh," said Taylor.

Mere minutes later, the teleporter (who had introduced himself as Strider) had handed Taylor a new armband, causing the Simurgh's smirk to vanish.

"What have you discovered, Volur?" asked Dragon, splitting her focus between Taylor and operating the mech suit that was currently hurling missiles at the Simurgh.

"The Simurgh is not, has never been, and will never be human. It's a construct of some sort, I think, and most of its body is a sort of ablative armor that doesn't actually have any biological purposes, so going after, say, the eyes to limit its visibility isn't a particularly useful proposition."

"You said most. What's the rest of it?"

"It's… some sort of core. I think. I don't know exactly what it does, per se, but what I do know is that if you crack the core it dies in a massive explosion," said Taylor.

"How massive?"

"Depends on what you get to crack it and how long it can see that coming. The Simurgh can probably set it up to be at least as strong as a nuke if she can't avoid it somehow." Taylor frowned, feeling out the Simurgh with her bugs and parsing the data through the runic enhancement. "I don't think anyone here except me and maybe Eidolon can get around that. For some reason she can't predict me properly, maybe at all."

"...understood." Dragon's voice was subdued. "We'll do what we can."

"If you have any capes with powerful offensive effects, maybe even Annihilators, on hand that you can spare, I might be able to pull something off?"

There was a moment of static as the Simurgh smashed a number of the communications arrays on the top half of Dragon's suits before being driven back by Eidolon, allowing the suit some measure of self-repair which resolved the static. "Stand by."

After a moment, Strider appeared with a pop, bringing along four capes: Horizon, a purple-clad teenager with what looked like a steel crossbow, a man she mistook for Gallant momentarily before noticing the lance in his hand, and a muscular man with a five o'clock shadow and a bear trap on his chest. Almost at the same time, Glory Girl dropped heavily to the ground, breathing harshly as the golden light of the sunrise played off her hair and costume

"This is what we can spare," said Dragon almost apologetically.

"Alright, give me a name and a quick rundown of what you can do, please."

Horizon stepped up. "Horizon. Striker ability, you saw me fight off the Simurgh earlier."

"Flechette," said the girl with the crossbow. "I can sort of imbue things with an energy that let them ignore things. Things like gravity, air resistance, defenses, that sort of thing."

"Jouster," said the armored man. "I can do a few things with my lance, but for big hits we want disintegration."

"Snaptrap," said the last man. "I can create spheres that pull things in and maybe shred them."

"Glory Girl," said the blonde, shifting slightly to put herself between Taylor and the Protectorate capes. "Alexandria package and an aura that protects me and those near me from the Simurgh's scream.

Taylor nodded. "Okay then. I can work with this. Alright, here's the plan…"

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The five minutes of setup the plan had taken had taken their toll on the capes opposing the Endbringer, with a significant number of them either being killed or forced from the field for injuries. One of those was Legend, although thankfully he had recovered from being hit by a deflected attack from Eidolon relatively quickly and had returned to harrying the winged Endbringer.

The four capes Taylor had peeled off, now each with an instance of a gebo rune glimmering on their foreheads, and stood atop Dragon's suit.

"Now," said Taylor, charging up a sowilo rune above her hand.

Jouster was the first to move, almost exploding off the suit in a parabolic arc that was, strictly speaking, faster than his strength and gravity should allow. Shortly after, Glory Girl lifted off, carrying Horizon with her as she flew towards the Simurgh.

The other three capes waited for a few moments, long enough for Jouster and Glory Girl to almost reach the Simurgh.

Then, all at once, they moved.

Snaptrap, as his name implied, started snapping his fingers, creating his signature traps in an orientation to catch the Simurgh in as many as he could.

Flechette focused her power on the bolt in her weapon, then let it fly.

Taylor released the power she had pumped into the rune, unleashing a lightning bolt that was more gold than the typical white.

At the same time, Glory Girl plunged in, flashing with golden light, while Horizon's eyes changed to the same odd not-color they had been before, and Jouster leapt up, lance plunging for the Simurgh's torso.

The Hopekiller's eyes widened as she noticed the trap she'd been caught in, then she twisted her torso.

When the flash from the lightning bolt had cleared, it was clear that the gambit had borne fruit. The Simurgh's body was cracked and damaged, and some of its limbs were hanging by threads or even wholly removed. The most important thing, at least in Taylor's eyes, was the fact that the hole her lightning bolt had burned through the Simurgh's torso revealed a kernel of something almost pulsating near the back, nearwhere one of her wings joined to her torso, before the pale flesh expanded like one of those old "just add water" dinosaur toys, slowly concealing the thing from view.

Taylor pulled up power for another lightning bolt, one to punch through the core, but was forced to abort the attack early to shatter a massive piece of her wing that the Simurgh had hurled at them.

A wet schlick accompanied a spray of blood, and Snaptrap fell to the ground in two pieces as his power winked out, a missed feather transfixed to the mech by one of Flechette's bolts as it swung back around to try and cut her in half too.

"Fuck!" Taylor gathered what power she could and pulsed it through the gebo rune still on his forehead, managing to shove his legs into his torso in time to reunite the two in a flash of magic, but by the time she had looked up, the Simurgh was but a speck in the sky, leaving Horizon with two broken legs, Jouster with a broken arm and lance, and Glory Girl forced to catch the former before she hit ground.

The battle was over, and despite Taylor's desire to collapse and sleep for approximately a week, she knew there was still work to do.

She sighed, then started drawing power in again and turned to Dragon. "So, where do you need me?"

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"So," said Gladly to his brother, "did you learn anything?"

"I did, and Othala has word of more from Canberra." Victor frowned. "It appears, from what my wife tells me, that Volur is much more powerful than we originally thought."

Gladly frowned. "How so? My power still just slides off her, so the more information I can get the better I can work her into the Plan."

"According to Othala, she cleared out the triage section in the time it took Panacea to heal two capes. Then the Simurgh apparently targeted her directly, and she flew away before putting together a plan that almost caught the Simurgh and throwing around lightning bolts capable of punching all the way through the bitch." Victor frowned. "I'm not sure how much of that is the truth, though. I know my wife believes it, but my wife is easily misled, especially if she's kept away from battle where she belongs."

Gladly frowned. "That… we may be looking at the next Eidolon, here. I don't think we're capable of holding her long enough to get her to Gesellschaft when we manage to capture her. We may have to use her father against her, or perhaps convince Krieg to ask them to lend us one of their parahumans to bind her more easily." He turned back to Victor. "What else?"

"The Protectorate in Brockton Bay has taken no losses, unfortunately, but I do know more about the newest transfers. Clay is one of New York's best investigative agents, and is likely to be leveraged against Piggot, and Flechette is at the right age and of the right temperament to make friends with Volur, assuming that the nigger drives her away from the Wards as predicted and that the Director continues to cling onto everything she can as long as she can."

"And… what of the rumors that Flechette is a dyke?" asked Gladly.

"Unconfirmed, as of yet," replied Victor. "I will dig into their files as best as I can to see if it's reflected there, as well as the rumors that Challenger will be leaving the Bay soon."

Gladly sighed. "The worst part of the planning is always the information gathering."

"Hopefully, we can move past this stage soon."

"One can always hope."

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And that's that!

So, Taylor has survived her first Endbringer. What comes next for our intrepid hero, surrounded by Protectorate capes and far from home? (Not much, she'll be fine. She's got more than enough goodwill from healing and almost killing Ziz for that)

Idk if Vicky in canon is actually immune to the Simurgh's scream, but I decided that since Fragile One is going Plus Ultra for her I might as well let her have it.

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!

 

[Lucifra]

Power brings attention, for good or for ill.

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Two chapters within a week, again! Praise Helix!

I'm not sure whether to call Horizon an actual Annihilator in this fic or not (she's considered "Striker 1-12" in canon) because her offensive ability is… inconsistent, according to the docs she's in, even if I'm writing it to the point where she can appreciably damage an Endbringer and somewhat bypass their durability. Thoughts?

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Taylor didn't manage to spend much more than five minutes in the healing tent with Panacea before someone came to drag her away to a discussion. Admittedly, it was something she expected, given that she had just put on a phenomenal showing of both power and tactics, but that didn't exactly make it feel particularly welcome.

Of course, having her childhood crush, Revel, be the one to do it did mitigate the bitterness of being called away from her work, replacing it with a tinge of embarrassment.

"I hope you don't mind if we ask to borrow you for a moment," said Revel in her low, smooth voice. "Myrddin and I had a few questions about your abilities, if that's okay?"

"Um… I guess…" said Taylor, after catching Panacea's eye and getting the nod from the more experienced healer.

"Wonderful. In that case, please follow me." The taller woman (and she stood a solid six inches over Taylor's 5'10, which in and of itself had only come as a result of a recent growth spurt) departed from the medical tent, then rose into the air, Taylor following after casting hagalaz to recover the flight she'd used during the fight against the Simurgh.

Revel led Taylor (and Odin, who was hovering behind the girl) to the burlap-robed from of Myrddin, who was floating over the medical tent and holding his signature staff of gnarled wood.

"Volur," he said, offering Taylor a deep nod. Then, he surprised her by offering a bow to Odin. "Spirit."

Odin frowned. "A mortal mage? I thought that your line had died out with Flamel."

Myrddin chuckled. "Nay, sire. Just a man with the misfortune to attract the attention of both a god and a parahuman passenger."

"And yourself?" Odin asked Revel, who was unfazed by Myrddin speaking to what was seemingly thin air.

"I have been charged by Xuannü to find her successor and granted the boon of clear sight to discharge that duty."

"I see. In that case, why have you called upon us?" asked Odin.

"To warn you of a perversion of the natural order and to beseech your aid in rectifying it," said Myrddin immediately.

"To beg your wisdom in the matter of my task," said Revel.

Odin turned to Taylor. "How would you have us handle the situation, lass?"

Taylor was briefly confused, then realized that she was the one with the body and the capacity for significant action and understood why he asked. She thought for a moment, then nodded once. "Myrddin first."

The bearded cape nodded. "My cousin is… she is controlled by the Morrigan. The Golden Man dealt Morrigan a fatal blow, decades ago, but she refuses to die, attempting to cling onto life by using my cousin as a host. Her actions have… caused my cousin's mind to deteriorate, and the Morrigan to deteriorate worse, but she still remains mostly in control of my cousin and has taken up the name Glaistig Uaine. I fear she means to consume my cousin, body and soul, and return to the living, as far gone as she is now or worse. Please, I beg of you, save Ciara from her grasp, either by ensuring the Morrigan passes on to where you gods lie in state or by granting her release from the clutches of the world."

Taylor's jaw clenched as she hardened her resolve against her fear of the Fairy Queen. "I will stand against the Morrigan once I have the strength, you have my word."

Myrddin bowed fully from the waist. "Thank you, Volur. Mine own efforts have been… stymied, and it is not lightly that I foist this burden off on you. I will stand beside you in this, and in your efforts elsewhere as well."

"I thank you for your aid and pledge myself to uphold your cause in your stead," said Taylor, reciting half-forgotten words from Odin's memory.

"Just so," said Odin, affirming the oath.

"And what about you, Revel?" asked Taylor. "What of the Allfather's wisdom do you seek?"

"I… I represent the last of the Shén, Jiutian Xuannü. Before she allowed herself to pass, she charged me with finding a successor to her mantle, one worthy of being entrusted with her bow." In a flash of brightly colored flames, the weapon appeared floating in front of Revel. It was a simple weapon, an asymmetric piece of wood taller than Revel whose ends were connected by a cable made of some sort of brightly colored feather woven together.

Vanishing the bow once again, she continued. "I had hoped to give it to a candidate here at this battle, one who proved herself courageous and skilled in battle, yet when I saw her I became certain that Vanadís' legacy has chosen her as a successor. Now, I am unsure who to choose next, and I thought to ask the one who bears the curse of wisdom for their advice."

Taylor weighed her options. She didn't really have any particular wisdom to share with her on the topic, and even if she did she would have been wary of interfering in another person's divinely ordained quest, but on the other hand she was in the business of helping people…

It didn't take very long before a solution presented itself. "I cannot offer you wisdom of my own. What I can do is offer you more of your own to better judge the situation, if you would take it."

Revel nodded. "I would."

"In that case…" Taylor closed her eye and focused on conjuring the item she had in mind as intended with gebo.

When she opened her eye again, she was holding a leather armguard in her hands, inscribed with unobtrusive ansuz and algiz runes, which she held out to Revel. "This is… a gift to Xuannü's successor that I grant you leave to use until you present it and the bow to them," she said, once again drawing on what memories of Odin's she could access to fit the act of giving a gift to a questor. "It will protect the wearer from the environment and their own archery process, sharpen their accuracy, and better enable them to choose between the options presented to them."

"Thank you for your generosity," said Revel, strapping the armguard to her left arm under her kimono.

"By all means. If there wasn't anything else…" Taylor trailed off, gesturing towards the medical tent.

"Ah, one more thing," said Myrddin, snapping his fingers and causing what looked to be a smartphone to fall out of a rift in space into his hand. "This is for you. I keep them on hand for situations like these, where I'd want to get in contact with an ally under the table, so to speak."

Taylor took the phone and slipped it into a pouch on her belt. "Thank you very much. I'll be in touch."

As the godling descended, both capes stared after her, lost in thought. Eventually, Revel turned to Myrddin. "If I may ask…"

"Why was I not putting on the airs I normally do?" Seeing his subordinate nod, he chuckled. "The theatrics are for the public, not the woman I ask to save my cousin from her fate. There were some, to be sure, but that was as much force of habit as anything."

Another moment of silence.

"Do you think she can do it?" asked Revel.

Myrddin sighed. "One way or another, yes. What I'm more concerned about is what the Morrigan will leave behind." He took in a deep breath, then let his cheeks puff out as he exhaled. "That is for then, though. Come, we have a city to put back together."

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The next interruption to Taylor's work in the med tent was slightly more expected than the previous.

Slightly, because as much as she was expecting some higher-ups to approach her about joining up, there was no feasible way for her to expect all three members of the Triumvirate to walk in led by the imposing figure of Alexandria.

"Volur, we need to speak with you," said Eidolon, arms folded over his chest.

Before Taylor could get out a word, Horizon cut in. "Make it snappy. Say what you will about a normal Simurgh fight but we're swamped in injuries today because it was so damn short, and I'd rather have all healers on deck to chew through some of the backlog sooner than later."

"Relax, Horizon," said Taylor. "They're the Triumvirate and have great respect for the relief work that goes into cleaning up fights on their scale. They wouldn't keep me for longer than strictly necessary." Even through her helmet, it was clear that she was all but challenging the trio to disagree with her.

"Of course," said Legend. "We're just hoping she can fill in some of the gaps in the timeline we have for the fight, and maybe explain some of the choices she made."

Taylor and Horizon's eyes met and they both silently agreed to not comment on the Triumvirate's blatant show of braggadocio and the potential implications thereof.

"Fine. But if it takes longer than fifteen minutes I'm going to drag her back, and damn anyone who stands in my way."

"Noted," said Alexandria.

They led Taylor out of the med tent and into an odd, vaguely mushroom-looking structure, and specifically a room containing a variety of capes. She didn't recognize most of them, but a blonde dressed in purple who blanched at the sight of her was vaguely familiar, and she knew enough about the cape scene in cities near Brockton Bay to recognize March (from the one incident involving Flechette shaving her head using a series of thrown razor blades, which had been good for a laugh back in November) and the Bostonian crime lord Accord.

"Let's make this quick," said Alexandria, causing the susurrus of whispered conversation to die out. "What new information do we have on the Simurgh based on Volur's actions?"

"The main bodies of the Endbringers aren't necessary, strictly speaking," said the blonde in purple, still pale and darting glances at Taylor. "They were… designed? something like that, to evoke a specific emotional reaction in humanity, and the core that Volur exposed is the important part. Based on the appearances and nature of the three I suspect the designer wanted to evoke some strongly Christian imagery, but I can't be sure without more information on who or what made them."

"So… what, there's some Master out there fuckin' laughing at us trying to beat his monsters?" asked a bleach-blond man with barbed wire on his leather jacket.

"We lack the information to properly make assumptions about the Master. The more important thing we should be focusing on is the direct threat that is the Endbringers. There is a significant possibility that a new Endbringer appears based on previous patterns of escalation around their battles."

The clamor that the room descended into at Accord's statement was only quieted by an explosion from the rabbit-masked March. "Let the man speak or the next one takes a life."

The room went quiet, and March turned to Accord. "Explain your statement for those of us less familiar with the history of Endbringer battles."

"The arrival of Leviathan and the Simurgh were both preceded by significant decreases in the casualty counts in the previous battles in a way that can be traced to individual capes that stymied their battle style which were killed in the immediate next attack. For example, the cape Hodr had the ability to dampen energy attacks from a single target and use some fraction of the energy they dampened, and they were killed by Leviathan in his attack on Oslo. Likewise, Strongtower was an Alexandria package swift enough to match Leviathan and with some ability to dampen his storms, and he was driven insane in the Simurgh's attack on Lausanne and only died this past year at the hands of the Thanda. We cannot afford to count on Volur's survival past the next Endbringer attack or her ability to kill them."

All eyes in the room turned to Taylor.

"Wonderful," she groused. "I'm marked for attack and death if my enemies get their hands on me. That and two bucks will buy you a coffee in the Bay."

"This is no time for irreverence," replied Accord.

"Gallows humor is always appropriate." Taylor turned to the Triumvirate. "Is there anything else for me here beyond vague warnings of targeting in the future, or can I go back to the med tent?"

Alexandria opened her mouth, but Legend beat her to the punch. "Go ahead and go," he said. "We can handle things here, as long as you're willing to offer up contact information for us to get in touch with you later?"

Taylor nodded. "Myrddin can get a hold of me." With that, she turned and left the room, raido turning her journey back to the medical tent into a single step once she was out of sight of the assorted capes.

"Welcome back," said Horizon. "How'd it go?"

"Not great," said Taylor. "Apparently the Bay is going to be an Endbringer target, there's probably going to be a new Endbringer, and I'm specifically drawing their presence for almost killing the Simurgh."

Horizon blinked. "You were gone for ten minutes."

"What can I say," said Taylor wryly. "I live a charmed life."

-----​

"How'd it go?" asked Shadow Stalker, arms crossed.

"It was… weird," replied Assault. "The newbie here in the Bay, Volur, she damaged to piss off the Simurgh but good after she cleared out the med tent early on in the fight. Then, once she had like five minutes away from the murder pigeon, she grabbed like five other capes and put together a plan that almost put the Smurf down. She actually punched through her entirely with the rest of them, too, one hell of a lightning bolt on her. She threw a bitch fit and left after that, and now thanks to the new kid on the block we've got one of the lowest casualty Simurgh attacks on the record in Canberra."

"Sounds strong. Any way I can meet her?"

"Uh… maybe? Depends on when she wants to come in. She's close with Panacea, apparently, so we're asking through her, but we're not expecting her by at any point in the next couple days. She's earned a few days off, if you ask me." Assault yawned. "'Scuse me. If there's nothing else, I'm gonna go get takeout and then pass out for about twelve hours."

Sophia let him go without remark, too lost in thought to stop him. There was the faintest possibility that it was Hebert, after all- the bitch had exerted some kind of weird energy attack that seemed to interact with her Breaker form, and that kind of ability spoke well to the kind of attack that could "punch through" the Simurgh.

Ultimately, she decided it wasn't possible for it to be Hebert. The bitch was a pushover and, while not strictly unintelligent, she tended to be bad at thinking on her feet.

"I'll hunt her down," she muttered. "Then maybe we can get Hebert and show her her place together." Secure in her decision, Shadow Stalker walked away, not noticing the eyes that watched her from the shadows.

Interesting, thought Flechette, going over her conversations with Volur and Panacea earlier that day as well as what she'd overheard, both from them and Clay's musings. What is it about Taylor Hebert that makes you so vitriolic, Sophia?

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The plot thickens! Hehehe

The first one to find the Reckoners reference gets… an internet cookie! ( :: )

I know that the reason Accord gave isn't really the reason we got more Endbringers in canon, but I like the way it works out (and also it lets me tie up a loose-ish end).

My original draft of this chapter had Myrddin as a modern incarnation of Ogma (of Celtic fame) and Revel as Ame-no-Uzume's successor, but I scrapped that because I thought that might be a little much in terms of divine side characters and this works better in terms of roping in the plot threads that I have here.

On a totally-academic note, does anyone know where I can get my hands on a list of cape characters from Wildbow's Weaverdice campaigns? I'm finding the page about Weaverdice characters to be a little light for my tastes.

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!

 

[Lucifra]

You're out of touch, I'm out of time…

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Fun Fact: Out of Touch was written by Hall and Oates, who also made the song You Made My Dreams (the one song that has the "what I want" bit at the beginning).

I realize now that the Reckoners reference last chapter was,,, shall I say, kind of obscure. As in, Strongtower is a name mentioned literally once, as an Epic with a power similar to Steelheart, and never mentioned again.

-----​

Taylor was fortunate enough that, between the grateful capes she'd put back together, Glory Girl and Flechette hovering, Horizon's gimlet stare when she wasn't triaging injuries, and the fact that she blasted through an Endbringer, most of the other capes who wanted anything from her weren't willing to risk approaching her. Those that did were mostly fishing for information, and with Odin advising her and her bugs to help her split her focus, she was able to send them away disappointed.

She spent about four or five hours in the med tent, long enough that Horizon said that most casualties recovered at that point were either considered "walking wounded" (meaning that they could mostly rely on the human body's own healing abilities to recover) or DOA (which even she couldn't heal), before she and Panacea trudged off to the teleportation point for a yawning Strider to drag them, Glory Girl, Othala, and Flechette back to Brockton Bay.

They were met with a tense standoff between Brandish and Lady Photon on one side and Victor (a man in a red shirt and tactical vest, with a domino mask to conceal his identity) and Clausewitz (who, much like Krieg, wore an imitation of a Nazi uniform in olive green) on the other. Thankfully, the four capes broke off their whispered argument once they arrived, although that brought its own issues.

Namely, when Victor turned his eyes on her, she felt something pulsating against her head before it abruptly cut off with a wince from the man as Odin turned his piercing gaze on him.

Given the public details of his power, it wasn't difficult to draw the causal link between it and the odd sensation in a thoroughly unwelcome realization that had Taylor almost unconsciously drawing in power (it was almost odd how quickly that became a habit, a small part of her said).

"I will assume," she said deliberately, "that that was not, in fact, an attempted deliberate breach of the Endbringer Truce."

Clausewitz's eyes widened in shock as Victor paled, and while the members of New Wave (and one Ward) present weren't nearly so quick to action, in short order the two members of the Empire were staring down five capes capable of turning them into memories and meat.

"Explain," said Brandish, a spear made of orange-white light clutched tight in her fists.

"Well," said Clausewitz in a tone that, while probably supposed to be reassuring, felt hollow to Taylor, "my compatriot's parahuman ability is, unfortunately, of the 'always on' variety. What that means in regards to long-term exposure is not much, since when he isn't actively using it it defaults to just scanning the brain of other capes, but I do believe that is why the young lady reacted as she did. I understand that Miss H-Volur has some form of defense against Thinker and Master effects, does she not?"

Taylor's eyes narrowed. Even if the man's voice wasn't familiar but just out of her mental reach, the slip he made that showed he almost certainly knew her name set her on edge.

Unfortunately, it looked like the only ones who were similarly wary were Flechette (a relative unknown, who seemed to be more wary for form's sake than anything else) and Glory Girl. The rest of the capes present were all making vague noises of agreement, as if the existence of an active cognitohazard near a powerful healer and independent cape that most people would kill to get their hands on wasn't a de facto breach of the Endbringer Truce just based on the potential long-term damage someone like Victor could inflict in order to recruit her.

"Be more mindful of the effects of your abilities in the future, then," said Brandish sharply. "Take your teammates with you and leave."

"Of course. For what it's worth, I apologize that this meeting has been tainted by the specter of conflict," oozed Clausewitz as he led Victor and Othala away from the courtyard in front of the PRT building they were standing in. At almost the same time, Flechette turned on her heel and walked into the building, leaving only Taylor and the members of New Wave in the courtyard.

"There's no way that was an accident," said Glory Girl. "They're far too careful not to consider the implications of Victor's power in the light of the Endbringer Truce."

"Everyone has their off days," responded Lady Photon. "I, for one, can't blame them for a little lack of caution in the wake of sending one of their teammates off to an Endbringer fight, even in a noncombative role."

"Are you seriously trying to blow this off? It's arguably a complete breach of the Truce, if he's lying about Victor's power being always on!"

"Victoria!" Brandish snapped. "Now is not the time for your grudge against the Empire! I miss Fleur too, but you can't hold the organization responsible for the actions of one boy."

"I can when they betray the principles we capes live by in welcoming him with open arms!" she shot back, glaring at her mother angrily.

Panacea frowned, massaging her temples, but didn't say anything.

"That is enough. We'll speak more about this later," said Brandish, before turning to Taylor. "I apologize for airing family business in such a manner."

"It's fine," said Taylor somewhat curtly, despite her agreement with the Alexandria package. "Have a nice evening."

Without waiting for a response, she invoked raido and strode off, letting the magic shorten and conceal her journey home.

-----​

"Taylor, I am so sorry about Monday," said Vicky, walking backwards along the Boardwalk. "I don't know what was up with Mom or Aunt Sarah that made them undersell the whole thing with Victor so hard, I tried to tell her just how bad it could be but I'm not sure she got it."

"I might have a suspicion," muttered Amy, too quietly for either of her companions to hear.

"To be fair, it's not as bad until you realize that my power is a skill-based energy manipulation-" Amy snorted at this, "- or that Clausewitz knows my civilian identity."

"Please, please tell me I didn't hear that right," said Vicky.

Taylor shook her head. "I'm like ninety five percent sure he does, he almost called me by my last name as if it's habit, which implies he's had contact with me… He might be Gladly. Maybe not, not sure given the fact that Clausewitz is a confident jackass whereas Gladly is kinda a pushover."

"And Gladly is…" Amy trailed off.

"Oh, right. He's one of the asshole teachers at my school, one of the ones who enables the Terrible Trio." Taylor made jazz hands at the epithet.

"Hm. Right, yeah that tracks."

"Speaking of those three," asked Vicky, "do you have any idea why they decided to suddenly go all in on fucking with you?"

"Search me," said Taylor. "I know, intellectually, it's not because I'm unattractive, which I am, but half the time it feels like it with how often they come after my looks, and I know it would have taken something worse to turn Emma against me."

Vicky blinked. "Taylor. Have you looked in the mirror recently?"

Taylor stopped walking, stunned by the non sequitur. "What does that have to do with the price of bread?"

Vicky sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose as she muttered invective under her breath. "Taylor. You're fucking built, now, and the only reason anyone'd call you unattractive now is your clothes, which we can fix."

"I… what?"
Amy sighed. "Just go with it. Vicky doesn't let me resist when she gets like this, so I need someone else to suffer as I have suffered." The acerbic words were offset by the gentle tone and teasing wink Amy shot Taylor.

Neither sister gave the tall brunette a chance to respond, dragging her off to a boutique that was advertised as, on alternate Saturdays, the host of the cape puppeteer Parian and her design efforts.

The first outfit the Dallons stuffed into Taylor hands was a relatively simple affair: a striped, monochromatic blouse that exposed her shoulders and little diamonds all down her arms, not quite falling low enough to meet the top of the black pair of skinny jeans that accompanied it. Figuratively dragging her feet, Taylor slowly doffed the baggy hoodie and loose jeans she had on, before freezing as her eyes swept across the mirror on the wall.

She touched her upper arm, unbelieving, and the figure in the mirror did the same, slender fingers making contact with a well-defined bicep.

The dark-haired young woman changed into the new outfit almost robotically, still reeling with the revelation.

When she emerged from the changing room, Vicky's immediate response was a wolf whistle which set Taylor to blushing fiercely. "Wow, girl!" she cheered, smirking. "I knew you'd clean up damn well."

"And you called me a useless lesbian," grumbled Amy, loud enough to set her sister to blushing but not loud enough for Taylor to hear.

Once the taller brunette returned to the changing room, Vicky turned to her sister. "Amyyy," she whined, "stop being mean!"

"No," the shorter sister replied, absently wishing she was chewing gum to pop a bubble to drive her point home. "Not until you put yourself out there."

"But then I'd have to deal with the mortifying ordeal of being known, and the possibility of rejection," Vicky replied.

"Tough."

Taylor emerged from the changing room in a flowy, pastel green sundress, once again baring her shoulders in a fashion that Victoria herself preferred to wear, to a pouting Vicky and a smug Amy. "Something happen?"
"Not particularly, Vicky just owes me five bucks. I told her you'd look good in green, but she didn't believe me," Amy lied.

Taylor's eye narrowed, but she let it slide. "If you say so."

About half an hour later, Taylor walked away from the store with a bag full of clothes, a cheery Vicky on her left, and a yawning Amy on the right, both of whom held their own, smaller bags.

"So," said Amy, "when's the court case picking back up?"

"Monday," replied Taylor. "Someone dumped a shitload of paperwork on Judge Myra this week, but he said it should all be done by then."

"Good to hear. The sooner you can get this behind you and get out of that cesspit, th-" began Vicky.

She was interrupted by the noises of something running through a side street on Taylor's right, which a moment later resolved itself when a stocky girl atop a lizard monster thing, followed by two others, came careening out of the side street, yelling "Get out of the way!"

Taylor invoked two instances of algiz, one to summon her armor and another to provide more abstract protections to her identity. Then, some instinct had her throw up a barrier between Panacea and the street using a third casting of the rune.

That precaution was borne out as she realized that there was the sound of something else coming from the alley just moments before a blur of metal slammed into Panacea, hurling the healer back but not injuring her thanks to Taylor's instinct.

"Be careful where you're running, asshole!" Taylor shouted, even as the mass of metal shifted into the recognizable form that Hookwolf preferred. "You almost just killed Panacea!"

"Get out of my way, girlie," he snarled in reply. "I got beef with Bitch behind you, you don't get involved."

"I'll get involved when you try to kill the only other healer in the Bay, you bastard. Turn back or be subdued," Taylor said, standing firm.

"So be it." Hookwolf rippled as two other capes ran out of the street behind him: one a shirtless man in a tiger mask and the other wearing a metal cage as a mask. "I warned you, brat. For what it's worth, I'll tell your family you died a warrior in the old ways."

"Shut the fuck up, Nazi," said Glory Girl, rising into the air and letting her aura expand to fill the area. "That's my sister you tried to blend."

She exploded forwards, and the battle was begun.

-----​

Lisa Wilbourne wasn't satisfied with her current arrangement with Coil.

Oh, don't get her wrong, she enjoyed the benefits of having a benefactor. Financial backing, a network of support personnel, and what was shaping up to be a pretty solid smash-and-grab team.

On the other hand, the blatant disregard for any of the rules capes nominally played by, in both her press-ganging and the threats of turning her into a drugged-up basement Thinker, was a fairly major turn-off.

She probably could have escaped within a few months, just from the resources she siphoned from his accounts and a little bit of social engineering, but at this point she was pissed enough at the man that, instead of abandoning the city (and running the risk of getting picked up by a worse boss), she'd decided to tear the man down as best she could.

That was at least partially why she'd been willing to show up to the Endbringer fight in Canberra when he asked: while gathering information on capes under the Truce was… frowned upon, especially when it was a specific cape as Coil had asked, she felt that the networking potential to find potential future coworkers was worth breaching the rules.

Of course, that was before she had laid eyes on Volur and her power started screaming at her.

Parahuman power connected to insects, based on altered insect activity nearby. Offensive abilities not connected to parahuman powers. Healing abilities not connected to parahuman powers. Additional Thinker ability not connected to parahuman powers. Additional powers preceded by invocation of Futhark runes. Volur is a god. Strength of displayed abilities suggest Volur is a God. Divine nature sugg-

Lisa shoved down both her power and the fear at remembering the breadth of power displayed by Volur, then sighed as she pulled her phone out of her pocket to report to Coil.

He picked up quickly. "What is your report, my Tattletale?"

Lisa shuddered, viscerally uncomfortable with the method address, then spoke. "Volur is… sandbagging significantly. She punched through the Simurgh with one attack, showcased an incredible healing ability, some kind of Mover ability, and at least a couple of different Thinker powers. I'd be very careful about trying to get her on side."

"I thank you for your input," Coil said. "Anything else?"

"Accord suggests, and I concur, that there is likely to be an attack by a new Endbringer on Brockton Bay at some point within the next two months or so specifically targeted at killing Volur."

"I will keep that in mind," said Coil, hanging up without anything else.

Intends to leverage Volur's civilian identity against her. Knows her civilian identity. Will not succeed in the attempt. Has tried before in alternate timelines.

She cut off her power and nodded decisively. Sorry, Volur, she thought, sparing a moment of apology for the cape for using her to deal with Coil. Then, she turned to her computer and opened it.

She needed to prepare for when Coil was gone, after all, and what better time to start than now?

-----​

And that's that!

If I had a nickel for every time I threw Hookwolf at a protagonist on the Boardwalk in civvies, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day.

 

[Lucifra]

An ant has no quarrel with a boot, but a bug-themed Nazi (or just a Nazi in general) sure fucking does.

-----​

Content Warning: Francis Krouse as POV character. He's less manipulative than other characters I've written but I felt it needed to be said.

Okay, so just to clarify (since I got a few questions about it), the Boardwalk section of last chapter, as well as this chapter, take place the Thursday after the Simurgh fight.

-----​

Despite her impressive showing at the Endbringer fight, Taylor was, strictly speaking, in no better a position against the Empire capes (and, potentially, the fourth cape riding on the odd spiky lizards, if she decided to come back) than she was against the Butcher earlier in the week. While she could, theoretically, unleash more energy through runic abilities for longer, that required her to draw in energy over a longer period of time than she'd been afforded, since she wasn't quite in the habit of maintaining her internal pool of energy with external energy around the clock like she had during the fight.

That said, despite not having any technical advantages over the version of her who had pushed the Butcher back, she had a better situation than the past version of her.

First and foremost was that, while still formidable, the trio of Hookwolf, Cricket, and Stormtiger was nowhere near the overwhelming physical threat of the Butcher, Animos, and Hemorrhagia. Even setting aside the massive advantages that were the Butcher's reincarnation and Animos' scream, Stormtiger and Cricket were nowhere as physically durable as Animos and Hemorrhagia, despite Stormtiger's defensive whirlwind that deflected most projectiles.

Furthermore, she was less limited in her energy pool, in that if she got the chance to duck behind cover for long enough, she could return to the fight almost as good as new.

But perhaps the single strongest tactical advantage they had was that, this time, Glory Girl had taken the initiative instead of her.

Aside from the immediate consequences of sending Hookwolf careening back and forcing the other two capes into evasive action, Taylor could feel an odd not-pressure against her head, which she took to mean that the blonde's aura was going full blast. That assumption was borne out by Stormtiger's shaking hands and Cricket's harsher-than-warranted-by-her-dodge breathing.

A further benefit of Glory Girl seizing the initiative was that the eyes of all three capes were primarily trained on her, an advantage that Taylor didn't hesitate to exploit.

The first warning that the two Neo-Nazis got was the chill in the air as the vertical line of isa drew itself in front of her. Stormtiger managed to launch himself up far enough that the ice that formed on the uneven ground of the Boardwalk closed around nothing, but Cricket didn't have aerokinesis augmenting her leap and as such flopped awkwardly to the ground.

To her credit, she reacted quickly, chipping away at her binding with her weapons, and Stormtiger hurled his invisible air blades at Taylor to distract and harry her.

Taylor ignored Stormtiger's attack, letting the mail of her armor turn his attacks aside, and flicked more power into the hovering rune. The ice surrounding Cricket's feet abruptly expanded, catching her weapons in midswing and leaving the woman awkwardly hunched over as it extended up to immobilize her up to her elbow.

"Secure Cricket," snapped Taylor, waiting just long enough for Panacea to nod sharply before she hurled herself into the air under hagalaz's power, flashing gebo and teiwaz to arm herself with a simple spear and become temporarily competent with the weapon.

Despite his being a Nazi, Taylor had to give him credit: even if he wasn't specialized in fighting in midair, especially in melee, he was acquitting himself decently, showing a decent ability to evade or deflect her attacks.

Unfortunately, it wasn't anywhere near enough to stand up to the combat ability Taylor could call upon.

The neo-Nazi's motion came to an abrupt halt as Taylor turned a desperately dodged thrust into a sweeping strike, shattering the man's knee and concentration both.

Before he could fall more than about three feet, Taylor was there, catching him with the haft of her spear under his arms and slowly lowering him to the floor next to an unconscious Cricket. Panacea's hand whipped out to touch the shirtless Stormtiger's chest, and he, too, was unconscious, letting Taylor release both the spear and the runes she was maintaining.

With that out of the way, Taylor turned towards the pair of Brutes still tussling.

Glory Girl was relying primarily on her enhanced mobility to launch hit-and-run attacks on the Nazi, which was admittedly the right choice despite the limited effects it was having on the more malleable cape.

"Disengage!" snapped Taylor, sowilo already charging up above her right hand, and without hesitation Glory Girl did so.

Hookwolf turned his bulk to glare at Taylor just in time to recognize the rune as some sort of attack, lunge at her to try and preempt it, and fail as a small orb of plasma shot forth, zigzagging to melt all four of his legs off.

The metallic form of Hookwolf shrunk as he rearranged his mass to recreate his limbs, only for the orb to return on its earlier trajectory, once again dismembering Hookwolf on its way back to Taylor.

A little warier, Hookwolf panned his head around, assessing the situation. The cape he had been chasing was well out of sight, and in between himself and his unconscious allies stood Panacea, whose death or even maiming would be just the excuse needed in order to unite the entire city, heroic or otherwise, against the Empire in a way that would almost certainly result in its fall, tenuous alliance with the Teeth or not. Staying to fight wasn't likely to work, between Volur (who had very nearly, according to Othala, killed the Simurgh) and Glory Girl he'd be tossed around like a ragdoll until they got bored or just blasted apart until he stopped fighting, one way or another, and so there was really only one option to take here.

"Tch," scoffed Glory Girl, watching the vaguely canid form of Hookwolf turn tail and flee, "I thought these Nazi assholes were supposed to be all 'fight to ze last, mein herren' and all that jazz."

Taylor laughed. "They have two Thinkers who are almost certainly specialized in tactics or strategy, between Victor and Clausewitz. If they were smart, or brave, they'd have taken over the damn city, and I give thanks every day that the Nazi species is naturally inclined towards cowardice, especially in the face of both dragons and Americans."

"Hear, hear," called Panacea, jolting the two as they'd forgot that she was there. "Now let's lock these assholes up and throw away the key already! I'm missing out on all the wonderful unproductive healing to counteract the effects of the gangs I could be doing," she grumped.

While they were waiting for the PRT to mobilize and collect Stormtiger and Cricket, Glory Girl turned to Taylor and frowned. "How are you so goddamn good at this? Like, it took me years to understand fighting in the way that I do, but here you are just breezing your way through combat like it's a fucking dance, and your tactical sense is incredible."

"I believe," said Odin, "that it's partially memory bleedover and partially Taylor taking on a divine aspect as the figurative god of capes, which makes Taylor supernaturally good at whatever things are associated with 'things that capes do' in the minds of the general public."

"GAH JESUS FUCK," shouted Glory Girl, starting violently enough to crack the concrete as she leapt into the air. "Who the fuck- is that fucking Odin?"

Taylor blinked. "Wait, you can see him now?" she asked.

"Hand," said Panacea, making grabby hands at her sister, who obliged and offered her hand to be an inspection point for Panacea's abilities.

"What do you mean, 'now'? Has this old man been hanging around you all the time and just been sort of invisible?"

"Uh… kinda? Your sister could see him too, if that helps," said Taylor.

"Not particularly," said Glory Girl. "I mean, what's changed with me that I can see him now?"

Panacea's other hand rose and poked Taylor in the cheek. "I mean, it could be gradual exposure, or some sort of long-term effect of him changing, or maybe even a shared hallucination, or-"

"Congratulations, Vicky," interrupted Panacea drolly, hands falling to her sides, "you're also a god. Given what you've described about your dreams and the changes to your behavior and costume, plus what Revel said… you've inherited Freyja's mantle, probably."

"What." Taylor wasn't sure who said it: her, Odin, or Glory Girl.

"Yeah, Revel was in touch with me and let me know this might be happening. You're still… I think the term Revel used was 'internalizing the divine mantle of your predecessor' which basically means that your body's getting used to the power before you get conscious access to it. I think the both of you are still going through it, since you didn't drink your god via Shard connection, but that's just conjecture based on what I know from my own experience and Revel's cryptic-ass bullshit." Panacea shrugged. "Eventually, you're going to have access to like actual godly power as well as your parahuman abilities, in Taylor's case in addition to whatever the Runes are doing, but what exactly it's going to be is anybody's guess."

Odin nodded. "As she says, your bodies are… growing, to be more capable of hosting a god's might. I believe Victoria was faster to adapt because Taylor here was… much diminished by the act of inheriting my power, whereas Victoria wasn't."

Taylor opened her mouth to cut in, but her bugs noticed something that changed her mind. "Let's table this conversation for later, and in private. PRT's incoming."

"Mark that as arrived," said the red blur that resolved itself into Velocity. Then, he surveyed the situation and sighed before pressing his finger to his ear. "Console, Velocity responding to the disturbance on the Boardwalk. Glory Girl and Panacea, in civvies, talking to Volur, with a subdued Stormtiger and Cricket and signs of Hookwolf."

Then, under his breath, he muttered "Always five minutes before my shift is over."

-----​

"What are we going to do, Krouse? Accord's probably not going to be mollified by just you running Cody off, and even if he is it's only a matter of time until someone else screws up and provokes Noelle into a rampage." Sundancer was visibly shaken, and no wonder- she'd been the one to interact with Accord, more than not, and the man was terrifying even when his rage was pointed at someone else.

He sighed, regretting the necessity of the lie that he'd run Cody off instead of letting the man sell him to the Yangban, but at least he could answer Mars' question.

"Well, Accord has seen fit to give us a… shall I say, a severance package. Namely, he handed us off to an affiliate of his named Coil in Brockton Bay."

Luke frowned. "What's Coil gonna do for us? We're already working with the best Thinker in the US and he can't help us, either with Noelle or with getting home," he asked.

"There's two particular reasons we'd want to go for Brockton Bay," said Krouse, allowing a pause for the purposes of suspense.

"Well?" asked Jess, understandably a little frustrated. She'd always been more sympathetic to Cody than him, and given the content of what he was about to say he couldn't fault her impatience. "Spit it out!"

"Brockton Bay is the home of two of the most powerful healers in the world," he said, fingers itching for a cigarette. "Those being Panacea and Volur. Coil has promised us access to both of them if we work out well enough for his particular goals, and hopefully we'd be able to use one of their powers to heal Noelle from… her condition."

Oliver and Jess exchanged a look.

"I think they should be able to heal at least Jess' legs as well, but I'm not sure how it'd interact with Oliver's power…" said Krouse.

With the spark of hope in Jess' eyes, hurriedly being buried under resignation, he knew he had another person on board with the move to Brockton Bay.

The boy in question just sighed. "As long as it helps Noelle," he said, the same kind of weary resignation in his eyes.

With the three of them on board, if not enthusiastically, Luke and Mars would at least fall in line, as long as it was for Noelle. This was something he'd leaned on a couple of times throughout the year and change they'd been in this strange new world, and he'd have to exploit it at least a few more times before the ride was done, he was sure.

In the Earth's orbit, the Simurgh didn't shift, even as she assessed the impact on her plans. Ultimately, without further data on the behavior of the-host-that-would-have-been-Khepri, she wasn't sure what the outcome of the Travelers' visit would have been, but she was more than willing to sacrifice these particular pawns on the altar of knowledge. The Eye didn't have her versatility, and she could count on other tools to unveil Cauldron if she needed to, but data on the anomaly that had obstructed Queen Administrator's host was priceless.

To that end, she turned her attention to her fellow Conflict Engines, the ones still dormant. It was a possibility, no matter how remote, that she could salvage the plan to create Khepri and destroy the Warrior Hub in accordance with High Priest's orders, but that required a certain level of forging of the host in question, and she already had the solution in mind.

She started the boot-up sequence for the Conflict Engines she had in mind, then performed what would have been an approving nod, to a human, in Shardspace. [Tower] and [Magician] would be an excellent test of Queen Administrator's host, and if she failed… well, QA could be seeded again, if need be.

-----​

And that's that!

Taylor continues to be oblivious to romantic intent, as one does.

Simmy, stop. You're making a mistake.

Me: I'm gonna finish the next chapter of There Is No Death!
Me, two new WIPs that I'm tabling for after this fic, probably, and a week and a half later: I didn't lie, I just failed. D:

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!

 

[Lucifra]

It's not as fun as Ferris Bueller's, but it's still a day off.

-----​

Disclaimer: I am not, in any sense, a legal professional. Do not take this as an accurate representation of the US legal system.

Content Warning: Coil POV. It's necessary in that we need to understand what the fuck he's doing for context and/or plot reasons, but I still feel like I need a cold shower after writing that part.

Speaking of Coil, I'm putting his perspective in the middle of the chapter, for… reasons. Timeline reasons, mostly, but in my original plan for the chapter he was a lot more directly involved at the end than he is now.

So, since it's been a few chapters and no one's noticed, I feel confident in coming out and just saying that the Hodr killed by Leviathan in Oslo is indeed the Hodr that survived Ragnarök. Rip Hodr, poor sod, he never stood a chance.

In other news, I just reread Implacable and a couple of the omakes I like more than the rest to try and match Piggot up a little better with that version. We'll see if that comes across or not.

To the people on ffn who keep complaining about the pacing of this story…feel free to stop reading this story. Like, I'm not forcing you to read this and bitch about it in the reviews.

-----​

"So. Ames. What the fuck?" asked Victoria, once the three capes had managed to escape the public eye with their shopping.

"Revel is a cryptic bitch and getting information from her is like pulling fucking teeth," replied the shorter sister, somewhat unhelpfully.

"Okay, cool," said Vicky, somewhat drolly. "What does that have to do with the price of bread?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "I'm getting there. Anyways, so Revel wanted to talk with me about the responsibility she's been given to choose a new god, and she dropped some hints about what situation you might end up in as you inherit, even though I'm not sure how well that matches up to the Norse pantheon given how my personal experience differed from yours.

"Okay," said Taylor, "start with the basics."

"Alright, so based on what Revel says about the information she's been given on the way that the Chinese pantheon chose new gods from vanilla mortals, you should have been knocked out for at least twelve hours, as a bare minimum, as you internalized the power of the god and filtered it through what makes you you to make you a unique god relative to what your predecessor was." Panacea frowned. "You could make an argument about that applying with regards to Taylor, but I'd argue that's more a consequence of the weird extra power source she's hooked into, and I haven't seen anything like that happening with Victoria."

"Hold up a sec," said Vicky. "What do you mean, weird extra power source?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Taylor's hooked into both the regular divine power that you're hooked into, albeit a different flavor, and then it feels like there's something else there too. It's like… if a regular god is a power plant, this other thing is like the entire sun."

Vicky blinked. "What."

"Aye, lass, ye have the long and short of it," said Odin. "She is connected to the power that she inherited from me, as well as a legacy older than this planet. Tell me, what do you know about the underlying structure of the universe?"

"A little," said Panacea, frowning. "I know there's something there that we latch onto in order to manipulate the world and exert our divine power, but I don't know what it is or how it works."

Odin nodded. "Better than I'd hoped. Well, that's what Taylor is hooked into. It presents for her as it did for me, as the ability to invoke the Futhark script to manipulate reality in various ways and we refer to it as the Runes. I've heard that it manifested differently for my predecessors, but I haven't been able to talk to any who had different manifestations from me, since Thoth and Gilgamesh, the first two I know were connected to reality in this way, both passed before I inherited."

"Holy shit." It wasn't clear which of the Dallon sisters said this, but given their shared expressions of shock, it didn't particularly matter.

"So… what does that mean exactly?" asked Victoria.

"She is, essentially, the most individually powerful person on this planet, or at least she will be when she fully integrates with the Runes," said Odin.

"That's… wow. It's almost intimidating," said Vicky, cheeks flushing.

"How do you handle the responsibility?" asked Amy, voice low.

"Ultimately, I acknowledge that, while I have more ability to effect change in the world than the average person, I have no more and no less responsibility to improve the world than any person does. I will work to improve the world, but at the end of the day I think you need to acknowledge the fact that you have as much responsibility, if not more, to yourself as to the rest of the world, if for no other reason than because you need to maintain yourself in order to better the world," Taylor said, changing her statement from her own philosophy to what she felt that Panacea should do to maintain her own health.

"It's that simple?" the more experienced healer asked.

Odin chuckled. "By no means, lass. The broad concept is, but the precise execution of that concept is extremely complex, and keeping to this concept is the hardest thing you'll ever do. But it is possible, and that's enough for most people."

No one commented on the wet shine of Panacea's eyes.

"Alright," she said, voice perhaps a little shakier than before, "so back to the topic at hand. So, the way that a 'normal' divine inheritance works is something like this…"

-----​

Coil wasn't quite sure what to make of the recent changes to his city.

When he'd heard the initial reports of the cape in mail, he'd written them off as a Tinker and had his men focus on catching her through the usual methods (read: watching junkyards, electronics shops, and other sources of materials). While it had led to his… recruitment of Trevor Medina, it hadn't led back to her.

He had two things to thank: firstly, the fact that Piggot was almost physically incapable of subtlety, so her awareness of Taylor Hebert's identity was entered into the computer system where his Tattletale could get to it, and the fact that the Butcher had decided to hunt her down in civvies, forcing her hand.

He never thought he'd thank either of them for their remarkable brand of gunboat bull in an antique store diplomacy, and yet here he was.

But in the brief time that Taylor Hebert had been active she had had a significant impact on the city.

Technically, the beginning wasn't her fault, seeing as how Vista's realization of the circumstances surrounding her Trigger event had been the main cause of the return of the Teeth, but the causal link was still there even setting aside Volur's cooperation with Vista and Quarrel.

Combining that with Clausewitz breaking his historical pattern of passivity and defensiveness against her (or perhaps just Hookwolf chafing under the bonds of his Master power) and Lung being suspiciously quiet of late, and the impact she'd had on the balance of power in the city was quite palpable, even ignoring the revelations that had come of the events in Canberra.

As a result of the revelations as of that event, he wasn't feeling quite so confident about his plans to press-gang her, between the attention she'd gotten as a terrifyingly powerful healer, the Blaster power strong enough to punch through an Endbringer, the keen mind that had put together a team to give her the chance to use said Blaster power, and the resistance to Thinker powers Accord had told him about.

Perhaps he could get his hands on the new Thinker his sources were suggesting had Triggered recently (the Mayor's niece, which was a bit of a mixed bag, but nothing he couldn't work around) first and leverage her power against Taylor Hebert. In combination with his Tattletale (who might need some… chemical persuasion, but nothing he couldn't provide), he would have access to the strongest Thinker backroom in the city with the possible exception of the combination of Clausewitz and Victor depending on how exactly the Alcott girl's power worked and whether whatever protection Taylor Hebert had against Thinker powers worked against hers.

Even if it didn't, it would still take the burden off of his information network to have such a Thinker who was potentially capable of pulling information out of nowhere, not to mention the chance to leverage her power against the situation less directly.

At least she had provided a lever he could use against Piggot with her revelations about Shadow Stalker's… indiscretions, as well as a potential new cape for his Undersiders, given her flight from her civilian identity and the reaction of the PRT and Protectorate. It wasn't a sure thing, given his current plans for the future of his catspaws, but a certain degree of adaptability was required in a city with the Butcher, superpowered Nazis (especially if the planner in question was black and in a position of power in their civilian identity, as he planned to become), and a somewhat-unpredictable independent cape with enough firepower to punch through an Endbringer. Regardless, the issue was one to confront later, when he had his hands on the girl.

Regardless of the circumstances of the city (and his wishes thereof), he had work to do, so he forced his focus back to the dossiers on his screen, splitting the timeline as he did so.

In one universe, he continued through the information on New Wave to see if they had any new points of leverage for him to exploit against them (and, indirectly, against Volur, given the girl's friendship with the Dallon children).

In the other, he closed the window, and triggered the intercom. "Send him in."

After a moment, the door to his office opened and in walked the suit-clad form of Trickster, known somewhat less publicly as Francis Krouse.

"Mr. Krouse, have a seat. We have much to discuss about the terms of your group's employment under me."

-----​

The crack of Judge Myra's gavel startled Taylor out of the trance that she'd fallen into. "Enough!" he boomed, turning a freezing glare onto Piggot. "The PRT and Winslow are being held jointly liable for the attempted murder of Taylor Hebert at the hands of Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess, and Madison Clements, and I award the sum in the paperwork to Taylor Hebert, for her medical bills, pain and suffering, and the damage to her reputation and educational career."

Piggot stood up. "This is outrageous! The cost of the settlement will provide a significant barrier to the PRT's law enforcement duties in this city, and the publication of this court case could destroy the national PRT and the Wards program. I order you to seal the results of this court case, under my authority as Director of the PRT ENE!"

"Madam Director," said Judge Myra, with enough cold fury in his voice that it almost felt like the room chilled a few degrees, "Sit down and be quiet before I declare you in contempt of court. I excused your paperwork submissions last week as not intended to interfere with this court case, but if you persist in this obstructionism, I will have no choice."

Piggot's face reddened, but she didn't speak.

"Good. Now, as a result of this, I believe that Shadow Stalker's probation should be considered violated, based on the evidence, and as such I charge the PRT with bringing her in to stand trial for the attempted murder of Taylor Hebert." He rapped his gavel on the bench. "Court is dismissed. You may be called as witnesses in the trials that are connected to this case, and I suspect that some of the oversight you both answer to might be interested in talking with you," this was directed at the furious Piggot and the rapidly paling Blackwell, "but you are free to go."

It appeared to take physical effort for the corpulent PRT Director to not go on some tirade against Taylor as she left, glaring at the young woman with intensity enough that, if non-capes could impose their feelings on the world with just will and emotion alone, would have had Taylor afraid for her safety. "I hope you're satisfied with yourself," Piggot spat.

"I am satisfied that I finally got the chance to get restitution for the year and a half of hell I've been put through, yes," said Taylor. "Have a nice day, Director."

Piggot stomped out in a huff, followed by the PRT's lawyer, and somewhat less closely by a silent Blackwell and her own legal representation.

"You two go ahead, I have to discuss some of the finer details with Judge Myra," said Mr. Truth.

Danny nodded. "Will do, and thank you very much for your work."

The Heberts both stood up and walked out of the courtroom, causing the Dallon sisters to stand up from the bench they were seated on. "How'd it go?" asked Vicky.

"Well, given the expressions on everyone's faces, I'm going to have to go with some variant of well, at least for Taylor," said Amy. "Then again, I doubt Piggot would have been satisfied with any outcome that went any less in her favor than letting her press-gang you directly."

"I mean… you're not wrong, on either count," said Taylor. "I may not have spent much time with Director Piggot, but from what I've seen she is a singularly driven woman who will almost categorically refuse to let go of a situation until it is resolved to her satisfaction or it is forcibly torn from her hands."

"That's a lot of words to say she's a stubborn, self-righteous bitch who thinks her shit don't stink," said Vicky.

"That too," said Taylor, chuckling as her father and Amy shared an exasperated look.

"Anyways…" Vicky said, moving a little closer to Taylor, "I was wondering if you wanted to celebrate your win at some point this week with me."

"What, like a date?" asked Taylor flippantly.

"I mean… I wouldn't say no if that's what you wanted to call it?"

Taylor blinked, having not expected that and needing to consider her own feelings before giving the Alexandria package an answer.

How did she feel about Victoria Dallon?

The blonde was undeniably attractive, from multiple perspectives given her proportions, muscles and her facial structure. She was also intelligent enough to carry on a good conversation and in the same rough line of work, adding another commonality between them.

All of that (save the attraction) was rationality, however, which wasn't the primary factor in modern romantic relationships.

Taylor hadn't done a whole lot of introspection since inheriting Odin's mantle and some of his memories, at least partially out of fear of what she'd find. For that matter, she'd avoided introspection for long before that, aside from an abstract awareness that she wasn't mentally healthy.

But now… well, she still wasn't normal, not that any cape could be called that, but she was… mostly healthy. The lack of trust for anyone and everyone that stemmed from both Emma's betrayal and the people in power abandoning her was… not gone, but mitigated by something in her connection to Odin or what memories she still had access to, and she had the raw power to deal with the situations now if by no other means than by drawing wisdom from Odin and the Runes, so there was realistically no way for the situation to ever get that bad again unless she stopped trying to change it for the better.

So, she felt at least comfortable entertaining the idea of romance.

As for Victoria… well, the girl was obviously one of the first friends she'd had in years, and somewhere along the way, she'd sort of just started assuming that Vicky'd be there, like she had been in almost all her cape fights thus far. She also felt… something else, for her, but she wasn't sure what it was yet beyond vaguely positive.

So, in short, she wasn't sure whether she was into Glory Girl holistically, but she was more than willing to find out.

"It's a date," she said, and Glory Girl broke out into a grin that lit up her face.

-----​

And that's that!

Like I said in the opening A/N, I was eyeing Coil making a move at the end of the chapter (and also potentially the Butcher) but I figured we should let the kids have a chapter or two off.

So, next week is the one year anniversary of me starting this fic. I'll see about getting the next chapter (an interlude, with more sections than I normally add) out by that day.

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!

 

[Lucifra]

Happy One Year to this fic!

-----​

Warning: Unreliable Narrator. Shadow Stalker's really fucked up.

So, for those who haven't quite picked up on things: Amy Dallon is no longer into Vicky. As far as this story is concerned, that's an unintended interaction between Fragile One yelling "love me" at everyone and Shaper keyboard smashing in Amy's brainmeats to get her to "produce [DATA], dammit!" and got cleared out once Shaper died and Amy started becoming a god.

Furthermore, I have no plans for Vicky/Taylor/Amy, since I'm really just dipping my toe in the waters of writing romance and I don't feel comfortable enough with it to delve into polyamory yet, not to mention the issues I have with writing Vicky/Amy in a world where they were raised as sisters. I might write a oneshot in an AU where that's not the case, but as far as it stands I have no plans to indulge this ship. That shouldn't stop anyone who wants to write an omake or their own story, it's just a warning that I have no plans to write it myself.

Also, I'm taking some liberties with Mouse's array of Grab-Bag powers. More at the end.

Anyone who finds the RWBY reference gets an internet cookie! ( :: )

-----​

Sophia Hess was not having a particularly good week, she thought as she was brooding on top of the Fortress Construction headquarters (a squat building not far from the Docks).

Firstly, she'd completely failed to track down Volur ever since the damn Simurgh attack. To be completely fair, that wasn't entirely on her, given that no one else had been able to find the woman except for her one stint on the Boardwalk where she took out two Empire capes, easy as breathing, and scared Hookwolf off with his tail between his legs, but it still stung that she'd failed regardless of how much (or how little) personal responsibility she held for the damn situation.

Still, the delay wasn't all bad, since it had given her time to brainstorm some of what they could do to Hebert once she'd swayed Volur to her perspective. Between Volur's impressive firepower (both literal and metaphorical) and her own infiltrative ability, she was sure that they'd be able to have at least a little fun with the bint before they were either caught or finished her off.

Thinking of the worm brought the vindictive high she was feeling down and replaced it with the bitter burn of rage. Somehow, she'd let her persecution complex get away from her and had actually fucking snitched, and more's the pity, she'd actually gotten someone important to buy into that shit.

The lawsuit she was harping on about was bullshit, plain and simple, but damn if it wasn't a pain in the ass that it had forced Sophia to all but abandon her civilian identity, an especially heavy blow after having lost her fellow predator in Emma to the damn police, of all people.

As much as she wanted to rescue her mentee, she couldn't, not given that most police officers carried Tasers and their unfortunate habit of being Empire sympathizers on the side. She'd be dead or worse, captured, before she got to Emma, let alone escaping.

Hopefully, she'd be dealt with soon, either by Sophia or by someone else, someone who had heard the rumors about Glory Girl's "prurient interest" in Hebert and decided to do something about it.

As much as she hated the Empire, she would be willing to mostly forgive them if they ended up being the ones to put Hebert down (mostly being with the caveat that she was going to shoot the one who ended up doing the deed, just a little bit). Even if the girl did have ice powers, so what? It wasn't like a little ice was going to stop Crusader, or Hookwolf, and it sure as shit wouldn't stand up to even just a gangbanger with a gun.

Still, she was feeling the pain from losing Piggy's protection. As much as she hated to admit it, she'd grown to rely on both her new mask, to know where was safe to phase through, and Armsmaster to supply her the tranqs she needed to do quiet takedowns for interrogation, and having to dodge the Protectorate and PRT patrols was a pain in the ass, even if she knew intellectually that it wasn't so much that Piggy had sent them to hunt her as the forced disavowal that that damn judge had shoved down her throat meant she was fair game again, and she couldn't afford to go away again until after she'd dealt with that damn worm.

"Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in," drawled an almost bored-sounding voice behind her.

Sophia spun, crossbow snapping up even as she cursed the loss of peripheral vision compared to her Wards mask that the older hockey mask she'd been forced to use left her with. Even so, she was more than capable of recognizing the top hat and mask of Trickster, hands clasped behind his back.

"You got five seconds to tell me what the fuck you want with me before I ventilate you, you P. T. Barnum-ass clown," she said, finger already on the finger of her hand crossbow.

"Not me, per se," he replied, "but my current employer would like to see about getting you on his side."

"Who's that?"

"If you don't mind, I'll let him introduce himself." Abruptly, her crossbow was replaced with a tablet computer, showing a black morph suit with a hissing snake on the head.

"Good evening, Shadow Stalker. I won't waste too much time on pleasantries. I am… shall we say, running a false flag operation on behalf of PRT ENE, and was hoping you'd be willing to work with me until such time as we have the opportunity to… shall I say, come in out of the cold and retake our place among the heroes."

That… honestly, it made more sense than it should. Given his relatively quiet presence in the Downtown area (mostly resisting the Empire 88), Coil hadn't really been fingered in any major crimes, and between that and the fact that she'd almost never heard Piggy launch into one of her infamous diatribes against him, nor had she heard of anyone else who had, and she could believe it.

"...Fine. I'm in, but I want two things."

"I will do my best within reason."

"I wanna work with Volur, and I want to have free reign against Taylor Hebert."

"I have operatives seeking out Volur for recruitment as we speak, and as for the second… so long as you ensure that nothing untowards falls back onto my organization, I have no issue with any indiscretions you may indulge in, so long as it is on your off time."

"Great. When do I start?"

"Whenever you feel is proper," said Coil.

"Excellent. In that case, let's talk finding Volur. I've been thinking about reaching out to Quarrel, since they've been seen fighting together, to see if…"

-----​

Mina Byron wasn't sure what, exactly, she was expecting from this particular Tuesday, aside from maybe going out for groceries (they were running low on both milk and cereal) and being a general pain in the ass for the Butcher (she knew she couldn't afford to kill him as he'd been trying to do to her, but she could annoy him by fucking with his capes and his weed).

As such, she could be forgiven for her response when motherfucking Revel dropped through an open window in the shitty one-room apartment they were using.

Namely, she nailed her in the head with the closest thing at the time (a rolled up newspaper), which caused an oddly satisfying "bonk" noise that she noticed that her power produced sometimes.

"My apologies for the impropriety," said the probably-Chinese hero, "but I needs must speak with thee."

"Call ahead next time," said Mina, flicking a surgical mask at her face in such a manner that it stuck, loops hooking around her ears as she finally turned to face the other woman. "What the fuck do you want?"

"I have been charged with finding a successor to the mighty Jiutian Xuannü, and you are the superior candidate," she said.

"Who?" asked Mina, tapping her fingers on the knife on her thigh in a not entirely subtle threat.

"The Dark Lady, mistress of war, magic, and life," said Revel. She moved the hand that wasn't holding her lantern in an arcane pattern and a bow- no, a yumi, Mina recognized it from the shape- appeared in said hand.

"That's very- hold on a moment, why the fuck are you using a Japanese weapon as a symbol for a Chinese goddess?" asked Mina, who'd had a relatively intensive education in Asian culture that wasn't just limited to the Japanese of her heritage before she had joined the Teeth from a number of old ladies who had unfortunately not survived the period before Lung's ABB stood to prevent a repeat of Kaiser's initial rampage after inheriting the Empire 88 from his deceased father.

"My role is not to speculate as to the thoughts of the gods, it is only-"

"I asked," said Quarrel, "because if I decide to go along with your… premise, I need to understand the why of things from something as close to the horse's mouth as possible, and you're currently the best I have, unless your goddess is alive and kicking."

"She is not, although Odin's heir might be more appropriate to ask given her role in the pantheon to come, or the Coyote, as despite his… disposition… he is genuinely knowledgeable about the gods." At Mina's glare, Revel continued. "But, had I to offer a guess… I would conjecture that it may be that she knew who her successor would be, and chose this symbol to distill her power into in order to better connect with you."

Mina sighed. "As good an explanation as any, I guess. So, what do I have to do to hook up with this god of yours?" She didn't really buy what Revel was selling, but at this point humoring the hero who could deal appreciable damage to Crawler wasn't particularly onerous, and if push came to shove, she was confident that she could subdue the woman without killing her.

"Merely take hold of your implement and all will be revealed to you." Revel held the yumi out to Mina.

"Fine, twist my arm," sighed the archer, who subsequently reached out and took hold of the weapon.

With no transition whatsoever, Mina abruptly found herself standing atop a structure of worn stone, vaguely resembling a battlement, clad in what looked like Mongolian-style lamellar armor. Off the sides of the structure she could see a forest, and a moment later she recognized the structure as the Great Wall of China.

"Breathtaking, isn't it?" Mina whirled on the voice to see a Chinese woman clad in a red silk dress with various colors of feathers serving as accents.

"I suppose…" Quarrel trailed off.

A long moment of silence, somewhere between contemplative and awkward, passed.

"So, Revel wasn't lying?"

"...Not directly. She did omit a number of things, both from her own ignorance and because she didn't consider it her role to tell you, but a great deal of it is related to the more intuitive aspects of our nature as gods."

Quarrel pressed her lips together. "What are the nonintuitive things I need to know that I can't find out on my own?"

"The golden man, Zion, is an existential threat to the planet. In the absence of external factors, the end of the world would come within the decade, but the fact that we gods are taking an active role in the world once again has disrupted that prediction. You have also been working with another god, since Volur is Odin's heir and likely to be… a leader among you, given what the man is likely to pass down both in power and in domain. And… Death's specter hangs over your city. Someone- or something- deranged, with domain over death, has their eye set on your city. Be wary."

"I have so many questions," said Mina.

"We have not the time for them. If Odin's heir doesn't know the answers already, they will be able to learn and share them with you."

"I suppose that's fair. What now?"

"Now? Now you become a god. My apologies, this is the… expedited version, and speed comes with pain in these things."

Mina's response was cut off by her entire body seizing up in agony as a sensation not unlike what she imagined being electrocuted while being dipped in lava crawled up her legs.

She wasn't sure how long it took before the pain passed and left her back in the run-down apartment she was sharing with Vista, still holding the yumi, with Revel's hand retreating from the weapon.

She felt… well, setting aside the lingering ache, she felt really good, to the point where she'd be concerned if she didn't know that it wasn't a result of Spree spiking the punch with morphine again.

She also felt… something, she wasn't sure what, and given what Jiutian Xuannü was known for, she thought it was a good idea to save the testing for somewhere isolated and… private.

"Was there anything else you were here for, or did you just want to drop an existential crisis on my ass and leave without leaving cab fare on the dresser?"

"The inso- ahem. No, that was all," said Revel.

"In that case, have a nice day." Mina opened the door, and Revel stalked out, quite obviously irritated at her needling.

She let the door swing shut, then jumped at Missy's call of "Mina? Who was that?"

Mina sighed. She had a decent amount of fast talking to do about why she hadn't gotten Missy an autograph from one of her favorite Protectorate heroes, after all.

-----​

"Are you ready to return to your fight?" asked Coyote.

"Inasmuch as it can be called a fight, given how we've been harrying them for the past week or so," said Mouse Protector, leaving a mark on the ground off to the side of the highway just in case.

Over the past week, between the two of them, they'd managed to kill Mannequin, Shatterbird, Winter, Hatchet Face, and Burnscar, and they'd managed to lure Crawler into a trap to the point where his adaptation had forced him to remain immobile. They'd figure something out for him later, but for now, they had the golden opportunity with only three members left (albeit the most dangerous three).

"Just remember, there can be no-"

"No victory in strength, I remember," said Mouse Protector, rolling her eyes. "You've only said it about a dozen times so far this week."

"It bears repeating," said Coyote. "I'll be ready to step in if you need it," he continued.

"Hopefully I won't need it," Mouse replied.

"Hope in one hand, spit in the other," said the ancient quadruped. "Go on, get going."

"Aye aye, cap'n!" She offered him a jaunty salute with her sword (not blunted, for once), and vanished with her signature squeaking noise.

She reappeared on top of the school bus that the three more well-known members of the Nine were riding in, then (with a little help from her clustermate's power heating up her sword) stabbed the blade straight down and through the thin sheet metal of the bus, spinning in a circle rapidly enough to carve a hole big enouth drop down into the main compartment, the cutout rapidly flaking away into nothingness as she stood and hefted her no-longer-glowing sword.

"Halt, in the name of all that is cheesy and delicious!" she cried, brandishing the no-longer-glowing blade at the three capes as she left a mark on the floor.

"You again?" asked Jack Slash, looking up at Mouse through the rearview mirror.

"Indeed, evildoer! I have come to stop your reign of terror once and for all!"

Despite her cheesy lines and focus on Jack Slash, she was acutely aware of the position of both Bonesaw and the Siberian, since the power that enhanced her coordination and proprioception also allowed her to sort of hook herself into the proprioceptive senses of people around her.

As such, when the monochromatic murderer reached out for her, she knew exactly where the deadly fingers were, and she twisted around the reaching arm to lay her finger on the Siberian's nose with a "Boop!"

As she did so, she pushed her main power, leaving a mark on both the Siberian and the asshole in the pedo-van following them. That done, she winked, and with a squeaked "Be right back, villain and villainesses!", she vanished in a squeak, reappearing kneeling on William Manton's upper legs.

Given that the man's view out his windshield was abruptly obscured by a cramped six and a half feet of armored Mover, which crashed onto his unprepared legs, he could be forgiven for his reaction being the mistake of jerking the wheel off the road.

Mouse Protector felt as the mark she had left on the Siberian disintegrated with the projection. She likewise, through her extended proprioception, felt the Siberian materialize in the passenger seat of the van, clawed nails already aimed for her head.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), the ear-marked hilt of Mouse's sword was already punching through Manton's eye, and the Siberian vanished before its fingers got within a foot of her head.

She squeaked back to the bus before the van could crash properly, not bothering to wipe the gore off her sword's hilt. Mentally, she checked the cooldown on the entropic side of her empowerment ability and winced when she realized she'd need to stall for almost twenty seconds in order to use it again. On one hand, it was very useful for a dynamic entry, but on the other she needed it to make sure Bonesaw didn't leave any nasty surprises behind.

So, she did what she did best: run her mouth. "Sorry about that, you just had this old man in a white van following you and I thought I should deal with him before he became a problem, you know? Wouldn't want to run the risk of seeing what he wants with little miss over here," she said, jerking her chin to indicate Bonesaw.

Jack Slash narrowed his eyes at her. "What do you mean, old man in a white van?"

"Well, you know, the kind of man who goes around offering unsuspecting children candy if they just come with him to his unmarked white van. I must say, I prefer cheese, but apparently it works for some people. I could never understand the appeal of all that sugary stuff, blech. Where was I?"

"Unmarked white van," chirped Bonesaw.

"Right. Unmarked white van." She felt as the cooldown ticked down to nothing, but decided to wait to take action all at once. "Well, after I saw that, I just had to take action, to protect all the little mice out there. So, I, ah… shall I say, stopped the van." She stroked the chin of her helmet in a pensive manner, eyes darting out the windshield to make sure she got the timing right. "It's weird, though. Why in the world would the Siberian try to interfere with that?"

In the split second where both capes were surprised by the implications of that, Mouse struck.

Her left hand charged a throwing dagger with lightning, and she hurled it towards the front of the bus in such a way to slam through the brake lines and also jolt the bus' steering just enough to take it off the road. Her other hand heated her sword up again, and in one long stride, she was close enough to cleave through Bonesaw's head in one firm downward swing, leaving the body to flake away in cinders and ashes.

Then, she teleported back to her mark near Coyote just in time to watch as the bus, with all the momentum of the highway speeds it was traveling at.

She didn't relax until she was close enough to the wreckage to both see Jack Slash's corpse (with his head pulped by a branch) and make sure that the two members of the Nine were gone from her proprioception.

The Slaughterhouse Nine were dead.

-----​

Victoria Dallon was not, as some people would accuse her, a person who was overly focused on fashion.

Don't get her wrong, she knew her way around fashion better than your average person, at least in her oh-so-humble estimation.

Still, it wasn't for fashion's sake.

No, she'd been living with Carol Dallon for too long to not learn from the woman's dedication to presentation, which was compounded by both the way that Carol had taught her to act ("with behavior befitting a hero- someone is always watching after all" echoed in her head for the thousandth time) and also the way that her power drew attention to her while also leaving people's perceptions theirs enough to pick out every flaw of hers.

So, presentation.

It was almost a defense mechanism, in a way, which was sad given how much she had seen fashion as a way to unwind from the pressure of being the kid of a known hero family before her Trigger.

Even if she wasn't as enthusiastic about dressing up in general anymore, the first date she was having with Taylor was an exception. Much like she had before her first date with Dean, she went a little higher end than her usual, with a burgundy asymmetrical skirt (longer in the back, with pockets) and leggings, a decent shirt under her favorite pale green sweater, and a pinkish-reddish scarf that Aunt Jess had knitted for her back in 2006.

"How do I look?" she asked Amy (since, even if her mother or father were in town instead of… whatever weird publicity event they had decided to attend in Boston with Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil, she wouldn't have trusted their judgment on fashion, given that her mother hadn't worn anything vaguely in the same ballpark that she was thinking since before the turn of the century and even before his deterioration, her father hadn't ever had an eye for fashion).

"It looks like a decent 'going out to eat' outfit," she replied, looking up from her book only briefly. "Have fun, don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"No promises," said Vicky, strolling out the door with butterflies in her stomach.

Fortunately, the drive over to Taylor's house gave her enough time to settle her own nerves before she could make too much of a fool of herself by remembering that, regardless of how competent Taylor was in a fight, she was still a teenage girl, not unlike Victoria herself.

"Have her back by ten!" were her father's parting words as Taylor walked out in a cream-colored blouse and black slacks.

Taylor's first words as she got into the car were "Did you hear that Mouse Protector called in the bounty on the entire Slaughterhouse Nine?"

Vicky blinked. "What the fuck?"

"Yeah, no, she went to PRT Detroit with video footage of her killing all of them except for Crawler, and then grabbed Horizon to blow him up and split his bounty." Taylor frowned. "Legend went on TV at two PM to announce it, it was great. You really didn't hear about it? I thought you finished school at lunch."

"I mean, on one hand, yes, but on the other hand I spent my afternoon on patrol and getting ready for our date." Vicky shrugged, pulling away from the Hebert house.

The drive to the restaurant (a decent Italian place that Clockblocker, of all people, had recommended to her as a solid date spot back when she was with Dean) was filled with light conversation mostly focused on Mouse Protector and her exploits, and Victoria found herself falling into a comfortable banter with Taylor not long before arriving.

"Look," said Vicky, standing up from inside the cramped sedan, "I don't know what to tell you except that the Tom and Jerry crossover with Mouse Protector's House of Mouse was the single best crossover in recent history!"

"Lies and slander," Taylor shot back. "The Looney Tunes crossover was clearly superior, and anyone who can't acknowledge that needs to go back and rewatch the episode."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," said Victoria flippantly. "I forgive you for your cinematic sin."

"How gracious of you," replied Taylor, sarcasm dripping off the words in such quantity it threatened to outmatch Amy's past feats of speechcraft.

The conversation stopped for a time as the potential couple were seated at a relatively isolated table for two and perused the menus.

Once the waiter was gone, Vicky leaned in. "So," she asked, "how are you doing with the lawsuit handled and all?"

"Okay, I guess?" Taylor shrugged. "I'm still waiting on a transfer to some other school, so I'm mostly working on stuff for my side job, but I'm mostly keeping busy."

"Don't keep too busy," said Vicky. "Speaking of, thanks for what you said to Amy last week. I think it really helped her, and she's been slowing down her hours at the hospital for once."

Taylor frowned. "What do you mean?"

"She's been working herself to burnout since she got her power, pretty much," replied Vicky. "Mom's had something to do with it, I think, but given her power I think she's developed a savior complex."

"I noticed that, based on how much time she spends in the hospital." Taylor paused. "Not to be rude, but she needs a hobby. Or a girlfriend."

"Hmm… You know, you have a point. Maybe if I can convince Flechette to give it a try…" Vicky trailed off.

The two incognito capes set the heavy subjects aside for the rest of dinner in favor of some of the standard "get to know you" things that had been skipped over in favor of cape combat, and when that was exhausted they transitioned to a discussion of literature.

"...not saying that Frankenstein's Monster isn't the victim, I'm just saying that after he got rejected he did some pretty abominable stuff to the people in Victor's life," said Taylor, gesticulating broadly as she led Victoria out of the restaurant.

"And what I'm trying to say is that all of that stems from how Victor made him and interacted with him afterwards," replied Vicky with no small degree of heat in her voice.

"Not getting a girlfriend isn't an acceptable reason to go on a murderous rampage," Taylor said, almost as if explaining something to a six-year-old, "and-"

Taylor's point was interrupted by a blaring alarm from Vicky's pocket, which caused the blonde to pale and she rip the seam of her pocket as she went for her phone.

"Shit," she said, looking up at Taylor. "Amy just hit her panic button."

"Go," said Taylor, flicking a rune at Vicky. "I'll catch up."

"Thanks," said the blonde, immediately pushing off the concrete hard enough that cracks spiderwebbed across the sidewalk, grateful for the speed boost Taylor had given her as she beelined for her house.

After a mere three minutes, she arrived at her house to find the front door caved in, barely paying attention to the man in the top hat pushing a girl in a wheelchair around the corner of the street.

"God damn it," she snarled, zipping upstairs to see Amy's room devastated, almost as if it had been the host of a battle between two Brutes with claws, before turning for her room. They couldn't afford to let this stand, not after the adults of New Wave had insisted on accepting that Kaiser hadn't ordered that street tough to kill Aunt Jess and that the year he had spent in prison was enough punishment.

He had been accepted into the Empire with open arms after that.

Victoria emerged from her room in the white and gold of Glory Girl, with all the righteous fury of the Norse goddess whose power she had inherited pressing out through her aura.

Whoever had decided to kidnap Panacea was about to have the worst night of their life, and possibly their last.

-----​

Genesis wasn't sure what to think of the situation she found herself in.

Ever since the Simurgh had torn them through the portal from Earth Aleph, they hadn't ever really had the chance to stop and think about… well, anything, really. First, it was getting out of Madison, then it was trying to find a place in Earth Bet, and somewhere along the way that had bled into the desperate search for a way to undo the changes Noelle's power had done to her body before it killed all of them.

The fact that Cody had been the first of them to have their restraint fail them under the stress was… expected, but him making it over a year before he let his growing disdain for Krouse overwhelm his rational thinking was honestly astounding.

She supposed she couldn't fault Krouse for taking the drastic solution after Cody's clones almost breached containment on Noelle in one of her… moods (she'd thanked her lucky stars that Luke was close enough that he could deal with them before they caused too much damage), even if she felt that letting Accord sell him to the Yangban was a little much.

Still, that didn't make it any easier to bear. The issue with Cody was just one more issue tossed on the pile, of rushed evacuations and abandoned belongings, and it just made her tired.

Now wasn't that ironic. Before… Madison, she'd been a full-on insomniac on top of being a paraplegic, showing up to the gaming club meetings bleary-eyed and strung out on caffeine to prevent her body from giving out on her because half the time she couldn't sleep until three, four in the morning, even if it hadn't always worked. Now, she could sleep any time she wanted, escaping into another body in her dreams, but when she woke up she still felt tired, as if she'd only had a two-hour nap instead of spending ten hours outside her body.

In the privacy of her own mind, she thought her power might have been the issue, but she didn't want to give up the freedom it represented, even for a night.

And now they were crossing another line, something else to weigh on their shoulders, all for the chance to save Noelle.

Normally, everyone knew not to fuck with the healers, even above and beyond the normal rules of decorum for cape conduct. When they'd been in San Diego, they did their best to work around Scapegoat's rules, even shelling out for a healing session with the boy. It didn't work, with the goat-masked Ward collapsing and screaming about stars with tentacles or some such, and only a timely intervention by Krouse prevented his death by Noelle's pissed-off lower half.

And yet they were still kidnapping Panacea for Coil.

She didn't know why their boss wanted the mousy healer, aside from in order to try and use her power to help Noelle, and the selfish part of her that wanted all of this to just be over, damn it won out, so she didn't bother to find out.

"You ready?" asked Kro- Trickster, Trickster in the field, his voice softer than it was for everyone except for Noelle.

"Ready or not," she sighed, "the show goes on regardless."

Trickster laughed bitterly at that. "Yeah, that it does."

He backed away from her slightly, to give her space to use her power, and she closed her eyes.

Using her power was… well, her brain interpreted the information from it in a character creation screen. Sliders for everything, and a whole library of prebuilt models for her to tweak and manifest.

For this, she chose one of the ones she'd used in the past: an eight-foot-tall, winged draconic creature, with enough strength to handle getting through locked doors and a soporific breath potent enough to stun most brutes.

She hit the button in the odd interface that signified doneness, and in a rush of vertigo, she was standing in front of her body, looking down at it.

That was always her least favorite part of using her power: looking at herself like this never failed to rub in how weak she was without her power, weak and tired, emphasized by the serenity she saw on her own sleeping face.

She turned back to Trickster and nodded, then leapt over the house they were sitting behind and the street separating them from their target, landing on the concrete walkway in front of the Dallon residence hard enough to shake the flowerpots on each side of said walkway.

The door didn't last very long against her enhanced strength, and soon enough she was tromping up the stairs to the bedrooms.

She slammed herself bodily into the door to the room they'd been told was Panacea's to see the healer standing ready in the middle of the room, phone flashing red on the dresser behind her.

"You made a mistake," she said, hurling herself forwards with clawed, taloned hands to gouge into Genesis' scaly flesh, exploiting the secret Master's moment of surprise for all it was worth.

Unfortunately for Panacea, the combat instincts baked into this form were more than capable of handling the attack, and two swift blows broke her arms and stunned her long enough for Genesis to activate her soporific breath.

Panacea wobbled, then fell forwards right into Genesis' arms, and as her last words before unconsciousness claimed her, she slurred out "Oh, so that's how you do it."

Genesis scooped up the sleeping hero, then booked it out of the house. As much as she'd love to rely on Coil's assurances that the parents were out of town and Glory Girl was indisposed, she'd been through enough nightmare missions to know that intel wasn't always trustworthy, and she didn't want to tally too long.

That turned out to be the right choice, as not long after she rounded the corner she saw Glory Girl flash through the air towards her house.

She didn't rush, per se, but she definitely was a little hastier than before in getting to the transport Coil had provided them.

That didn't spell the end of the mission- Panacea had stirred multiple times on the twenty-minute drive back to Coil's base, requiring a fresh dose of her sleep gas every time (and a carefully moderated one, to avoid catching the rest of the denizens of the car in it) to keep her out for the count.

They returned to Coil's base only seconds behind a second van, out of which spilled Shadow Stalker carrying a reedy man in navy blue pajamas with a receding hairline over her shoulder.

The Breaker rubbed her the wrong way- she'd heard some rumors that she was on the run after a particularly inventive form of attempted murder, and was only working with Coil for his contacts in the PRT to get her crime swept under the rug, and she was arrogant and dismissive of anyone she didn't see as "strong".

Still, she'd work with her if Coil said so, for Noelle's sake if nothing else.

Fortunately, they were going to different areas of the base- Shadow Stalker was going down to the holding cells, while they were heading to a conference room nearby the vault Noelle was being kept in.

They arrived to both Coil and the rest of the Travelers in the room.

"Any issues?" asked Mars.

"Clean op," replied Trickster. "Only complication is that Panacea's got some kinda weird Changer power that lets her grow claws, Genesis had to break her arms in order to deal with it."

"An acceptable price," said Coil. "I have it on good authority that she has had an encounter with a Trump that altered her powers recently, which among other things lets her heal herself."

"Okay, cool. So… what's the plan for her?" Krouse asked.

"First, we test her power on a smaller part of the whole." Coil lifted a steel box onto the table, then opened it to reveal a chunk of Noelle's lower body that was still pulsating slightly. "Then, we go from there."

They stood around in an awkward silence until Panacea started stirring again, and this time Genesis didn't blast her with the soporific breath again.

"Greetings, miss Dallon. I have a job for you…"

-----​

And that's that!

Come yell at me about this fic on the gay wormfic discord server: Join the Gaylor Convention Center Discord Server!

Current Horny Jail denizens: Siberian, Manton, Hemorrhagia, Quarrel, Ratnick, Revel. Manton and Siberian were killed in Horny Jail, and Quarrel was let out after she hit Revel.

For anyone curious, the Nine hadn't taken Ravager yet because they wanted to grab Mouse Protector first and then, when Ravager tried to pay them on delivery, they'd snatch her too.

I haven't put too much thought into who Mouse's clustermates are beyond like a side thought for a vague "energy weapons Tinker" for her empowerment power. Speaking of the empowerment power, it has three different options, which all have their own cooldowns: a fire-based one which enhances cutting power and disintegrates the stuff it cuts (with the shortest cooldown), the lightning one which passes through a lot of defenses on its way to its target (with a cooldown of a couple minutes), and a hard-light enhancement that works best with edged weapons by sort of projecting an additional weapons surface above the weapon which can create monomolecular edges (with the longest cooldown, to the point where it wouldn't be useful twice even in long fights, but it lasts longer than the other two).

I think that Genesis' power is really interesting, now that I've actually taken a look at it, and I might want to write something involving it in the future. We'll see.

For those wondering what Coil's other timeline looked like, Shadow Stalker switched targets with Genesis and Trickster. The Travelers picked up Danny Hebert, but Shadow Stalker couldn't handle Amelia and he closed the timeline after she disconnected Sophia's Corona Pollentia from the rest of her brain, essentially permanently shutting down her power unless Amy (or like Bonesaw or some other Trump) decides to turn it back on. Then, Glory Girl hit the transport intended for her, and from there he dropped the timeline.

I might take a bit of a step back from this fic for the next couple weeks- my muse is focusing on another idea I had so first chapter soon, maybe. We'll see.

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!

 

[Lucifra]

Snek bit off more than it could chew.

-----​

Everybody say thank you to Milarqui on Spacebattles, he made us a TV Tropes page!

So, uh… I'm not sure what else I've published between last chapter and now, between my muse getting flighty and other stuff finally ramping back up. We'll see when I write the end note, I guess.

For the people who keep asking about why Coil would move so overtly… a couple of reasons. One, he expected Trickster (known Ziz bomb and all around reckless ass) to use subtlety and make it look like she went out for a night away or something, which he didn't. Two… he's actually not as careful as you might think? Like, I get the fandom has made him out to be this memetically competent plotter who operates at three levels of remove and only Contessa can outplot him, but like,,, he's not. He goes after Dinah in both timelines with the bank robbery, and he had no reason to really expect that outing the Empire and blaming the Undersiders wouldn't push Tattletale to fucking him over. His men also got compromised by Tattletale, in presumably a manner slow enough for him not to notice. He's not that good, y'all. Also… well, you'll see.

-----​

It was perhaps uncharitable of Taylor for her first reaction to her first date being interrupted to be annoyance. However, that quickly faded away as she realized that there was a genuine emergency, and given the way that Vicky had reacted, it was almost certainly an attack on Panacea, and… well, even if New Wave's healer's powers had become vastly more suited to combat, she lacked the experience using those powers to their fullest and the instincts combat would instill in any cape.

A part of her absently wondered if it was just divine knowledge through one of her domains that let her think on all that. The rest of her was too busy with another thought, much scarier than the rest.

Was this a single attack against New Wave… or were there other targets?

A moment of travel later and Taylor discovered that no, it was not, in fact, a single attack, judging by the forced door and broken mug of coffee in the kitchen.

The sound of wood splintering had Taylor looking around for an assailant until she realized that, in her anger, her hand had closed on the doorjamb, exerting force far beyond what a normal human could, and she forced her fist to unclench.

"Odin," she said, forcing her physical reactions to her emotions away from herself, through the link to the Administrator and the insects it controlled. "Coil's work?" She eyed a small, circular scorch mark surrounding the melted lock, almost as if it had been hit with a laser weapon.

"More than likely," said the mostly-dead god.

Taylor sighed, then clenched her jaw, chainmail and helmet appearing between one heartbeat and the next before she started drawing power into herself.

"This means war, then," she said, ansuz slowly searing a permanent impression into the inside of her eye patch.

"Aye, so it does," said Odin. "Now then, lass, I suggest you meet up with miss Dallon. She's likely to be hoping for your aid in recovering Panacea."

Taylor nodded, absently flicking an instance of odal at the house as she left to repair it before she moved, raido guiding her journey.

As she passed into the Dallons' neighborhood, something impinged on the odd sense of awareness she had from the proprioception of the bugs she could control.

She'd spent far less time working with the Administrator's powers than she had the runes, but she'd spent enough time to be able to use the physical bodies of the bugs to extend her sense of touch, on a crude level. As such, she felt the paper airplane squish a gnat before landing perfectly in her hand.

Taylor paused for a moment to read the writing on the wings. On one, there was an address in the commercial area (or at least what passed for one in Brockton Bay), and on the other, three words, both in the overly perfect handwriting of a middle schooler who'd been teased about it before.

Kick his ass.

"I see the hand of a seer in this," said Odin, brow furrowed. "Act with caution."

"Perhaps… perhaps they were to be Coil's target, and our intercession would protect them from his actions?" Taylor asked. "He targeted a bystander in a way that very few villains would be willing to stoop to, so that might be something they have foreseen."

"Possible, I suppose. Regardless, verify the information before you commit your force to remove him."

"I will, but any lead is better than no lead," replied Taylor, folding the paper airplane on itself and slipping it into a belt pouch before she started running again.

Thirty seconds later, she found herself standing outside the Dallon house, staring at the gaping hole where the door had been.

"Ta- Volur!" Glory Girl came barreling out of the door. "She's gone and the door on her room was forced."

"My dad's gone too," Taylor replied.

"Fuck," said Glory Girl.

"Indeed."

"I don't have any better news. Eric's phone is off, Crystal is plastered, and all our parents are out in Boston, so we're on our own, really."

"Fuck."

"Indeed," replied Glory Girl.

Taylor sighed, then shook herself. "Alright, here's what we're gonna do. You need to call in to, like, the Protectorate, and let them know what's going on. I've got a lead, maybe, and if it pans out we can come down on them like fucking Mjölnir. If not… we'll burn that bridge when we come to it."

"Sounds like a plan."

-----​

About halfway between the Dallon house and the address Taylor had, Glory Girl hung up the phone rather angrily.

"Bad news?"

"Definitely. The Undersiders riled up the Empire, so they're running around all dick swinging, and Lung's fighting the Butcher again, so Protectorate forces are all tied up, and the Wards are benched because it's too hot to field them."

Taylor frowned. "Coil has… more resources than I thought."

"Yeah… Hey, what do you want to bet he's got the Travelers moving on someone too?"

"No bet, he's… actually, if he got the Travelers from Accord, he might be using them as a defensive measure to hold his prisoners, since they're such strong deterrents. I mean, between Sundancer and Ballistic, they've got enough firepower that anyone this side of the Butcher would at least hesitate about attacking them, and Genesis and Trickster are both a pain in the ass to handle for different reasons. So… even odds that they're holding territory or in his base," said Taylor.

Glory Girl sighed. "Of course he's got the walking sun and artillery piece in his corner."

"If I could tell you for sure I would, but we're a little outside my sen- oh, gods damn it," Taylor swore, fists clenching.

Before Glory Girl could ask what it was, a pair of figures rose from behind a row of houses, standing on a ragged shape that revealed itself to be a chunk of asphalt as it moved into the light of the downward-facing streetlamps.

One of them was a girl, relatively petite and dressed in a red and black robe that hit a great number of the trappings of a generic magic user while managing to be vaguely menacing in a nonspecific way. The other was dressed in a long gray coat, vaguely reminiscent of a SS uniform, and a gas mask that resembled the older style associated with the World Wars.

"Frau Dallon, Frau Volur," said Krieg, his voice a deep, resonant baritone. "I have heard that you are looking for someone."

"Fuck you, Nazi," snarled Taylor indignance at their stealing the Norse symbols mixing with her general negative feelings for Nazis. "Get out of our way."

Krieg tutted. "Such impoliteness, mein Fraulein." He turned to Glory Girl. "Surely you would appreciate some… aid, shall I say, in retrieving your sister?"

"Fuck off," the blonde snapped, flaring her aura. "I don't need you trying to pull a Fleur on us."

"Ah, such disrespect, for those of us who only wish to aid the community by… securing the safe return of the great healer Panacea. Unfortunate, but given your response to our… community organization… it is perhaps to be expected, if disappointing. I would have thought that such a paragon of the Aryan race to have had better judgment, but we all must have our flaws," said the Nazi, no small amount of smugness in his voice by the end.

"Listen here, níðingar," snarled Taylor, lightning crackling around her right hand. "If you don't step aside, I will go through you, and you can ask the Simurgh how that's going to go for you."

Rune paled, taking a step back, while Krieg's body language changed to be more imposing. "Are you sure you want to make such a… drastic decision? We have many resources that we could turn to the aid of our allies… or the detriment of those who spurn us."

"Anyone who tries to stand between us and the task of finding Panacea is no ally." Taylor raised five fingers. "Last chance. Five. Four," she counted.

"We will remember this," said Krieg, signaling Rune. The girl looked very relieved as the hovering platform of asphalt moved away, and it sped up once they were out of the two heroes' direct line of sight.

"Mom's gonna be pissed, she's the one who insisted that we not commit suicide by trying to get revenge for Aunt Jess by fucking with the Empire." Glory Girl paused for a moment, then chuckled. "She's not here to get pissy, so she can cope."

Taylor chuckled. "That sounds like it's very likely to piss her off."

"I mean, yeah, but on the other hand, Amy's fucking missing and she isn't here. Until I get my sister back, I don't give a shit what she does. She can ground me all she likes for pissing off a Nazi, after we get Amy back." She frowned. "You know, I get the feeling that something might be… a little bit off about her being so weird about the Nazis."

"Think about it later," said Taylor. "Unless Kaiser was dumb enough to kidnap her, but it's almost certainly Coil."

"Yeah, I can't believe that Clausewitz and Victor would be dumb enough to try it, and Kaiser wouldn't go against their strategic guidance that poorly. Even Hookwolf wouldn't do it, if only because he doesn't care about Amy enough," said Vicky.

"That's what I thought." Taylor nodded decisively. "Alright, let's go."

The duo continued, and once they arrived at the base of a skyscraper that Vicky recognized as the Fortress Construction main headquarters, Taylor sighed.

"Good news, the tip I got was right on the money. Bad news, I think there's a fairly high-powered Thinker who's royally pissed off with Coil that might want to have a conversation with us later. I'm not sure how exactly they're going to affect the power dynamics in the city but it's worth keeping in mind going forwards," said Taylor, already scouting out the underground complex that was Coil's base with the Administrator's bugs.

"Coil, then," said Vicky, cracking her knuckles. "What's the disposition of the forces in his base?"

Taylor raised an eyebrow at the language used, eliciting a faint blush from the Alexandria Package, but continued nonetheless. "He's got like twenty mercenaries spread across his base, mostly lightly armed, and a group of people in cape costumes next to a sealed vault I can't get any bugs into- wait, no, they're opening the vault now, and I think Amy's going in now."

"What's in the vault?" asked Vicky. "And, more importantly, where's the nearest entrance to the fucker's base so we can get Amy back?"

"This way," said Taylor, jogging into the parking garage. "And… not sure. I think there might be some sort of weird Case 53? Whatever it is, it's fucking with my bugs something fierce."

"I hope it doesn't hurt Amy before we get there," said Glory Girl, following Taylor approximately six feet off the ground.

"Agreed," said Taylor. Then, after a moment of jogging, she stopped in front of a featureless concrete wall, and a swarm of various bugs coalesced on the wall with a rectangular hole in the center. "Here's the door, feel free to knock as hard as you want."

"With pleasure."

The door slammed into another wall with a loud "WHAM!" and the duo continued forwards, prepared for combat.

-----​

Whatever Amy had expected from the capes that had been dumb enough to kidnap her, she wasn't expecting… this clusterfuck.

"So, let me make sure I'm understanding this correctly. You have a Case 53 friend whose power is… broken, and you need me to see if I can heal them, is that correct?" she asked, ignoring Coil entirely to face the draconic projection that had been the one to kidnap her.

"Yeah, you got that right," said the man who had introduced himself as Trickster, the leader of the Travelers.

"Okay, cool. Why the fuck should I help you with this?" she replied, surreptitiously reinforcing her muscles, ligaments, and bones in case she would need to fight her way out.

"Because," said Coil, "if you do not, I will have Mark Dallon and Danny Hebert shot. How would your sister and Volur react when they found out that you caused their fathers' death?'

Panacea pressed her lips together angrily, and she started to construct a biological dart launcher vaguely similar to an animal she hadn't seen before and yet knew intimately in her arm. She took a moment to consider what it should be using before deciding to replicate the sedative that Genesis had used on her even as she produced a counteragent for that sedative in her own body, then produced a small number of keratin-like darts covered in that sedative. After a moment, she bit the bullet and created a smaller number laced with conotoxin, possibly the deadliest naturally sourced poison known to man.

"Fine. On your own head be your choices, Coil," she spat. Then, she turned to the girl with a starburst on her helmet who had been sitting in the back of the room, looking to avoid notice, and stood up. "Lead the way, miss."

She made a sound vaguely like a startled kitten, then pushed herself up and seemed to almost flee the room. Amy followed her, and their journey ended at a large, circular vault door.

"Noelle?" asked the girl, tapping at a screen on the wall.

"Mars? What's going on? I thought you guys were out on a job?" came a tired girl's voice.

"We were," said the girl, now identified as Mars. "We just got off the job, and we managed to get Panacea here to see if she can help you."

"Really?" The exhaustion in Noelle's voice vanished behind raw, unadulterated hope.

"Yeah, really." Mars tapped the screen one last time and the vault door slowly, ponderously swung open.

Then, she turned to Panacea. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I told them not to try this, but Trickster insisted."

Panacea gave the girl another look, this time allowing her power to expand from her body and cover the other cape to better assess her. Her body language was… mostly tired and downtrodden, but there was a certain degree of apology in her eyes, under her helmet. Furthermore, her neurochemistry was all off- stress hormones indicative of chronic stress, hormones associated with fear, and an odd deformation of a number of regions in the brain that either decreased or increased their function in a way that suggested a Master effect.

"I accept your apology," said Amy, mentally recategorizing Mars from villain to Master victim in her head and abruptly un-deforming the other girl's brain. Then, she walked into the vault, the red-and-black-clad girl following behind her.
Then, she stopped, gobsmacked, as she saw the girl in the vault.

A writhing pile of heads, limbs, tentacles, and other fleshy protuberances sat in a far corner of the vault, visibly paying attention to the two new entrants. On top of the chimeric body was a relatively attractive woman with straight brown hair, who waved upon seeing her.

"Hi. I'd offer to shake your hand, but, uh… I'm not sure that touching you would be that great an idea, given what my other half does."

"Well then," Panacea said, pinching the bridge of her nose, "let's see what we can't do."

As it turned out, quite a bit. While she couldn't deal with Noelle's power mutating her body, since that was far beyond her domain, she could probably clear away the influence of whichever Master fucked with her head, and maybe deal with the ravenous hunger of the separate minds in her lower half. Ideally, she could bind the brains of the things in her lower body to those in her upper body, but that was exploring mostly-unexplored territory (while there were species with distributed brain networks, both on Earth and wherever the god her power came from had been, but never to this degree).

She took a moment to marvel at how recent events had altered her relationship with using her power on brains- even a month ago, she wouldn't have been willing to even touch half of the issues that Noelle had.

Once Panacea had relayed the information to Noelle and Mars, the pair readily agreed to allowing Panacea to use her power on her to fix things.

For the first five minutes, everything went okay. The Master influence on Noelle's human brain was easy to clear away, relatively speaking, but the hunger for flesh was abiological, and Panacea had to manage multiple different brains at the same, hardening them against interference from Noelle's corona in order to discourage the hunger from being acted upon.

Then, at almost the same time that something above went "thump", something else took over the lower half of Noelle's body, and things went to shit.

Before Panacea could freeze the body, two tentacles lashed out and wrapped around both her and Mars, paralyzing them somehow (not biologically- maybe tactile telekinesis? some small part of her mind said) and yanking them into the fleshy body.

-----​

A brief aside on why this is the timeline Coil kept.

Ordinarily, Coil would have kept a timeline where he kept Amelia Dallon from Noelle Meinhardt, and in fact he did. However, in this case, he had managed to step on the world's premier biokinetic's buttons enough that she used conotoxin instead of a sedative in the dart that she inevitably launched at Coil. As such, his other timeline collapsed, and once he split timelines again, he didn't have the chance to call Panacea away from Noelle before she was consumed.

-----​

Returning to Panacea, in any other situation, she would have brought her considerable power to bear against Noelle's lower body and paralyzed it completely.

As it stands, however, she was too busy watching Vicky bleed out in front of her, in various situations one after the other after the other, for the shard connected to the Division vial to pump out copies of Amy Dallon.

They weren't stronger than her, by any stretch of the imagination, but they were connected to her divine power in a way that would allow their own power to grow (which would in turn grow hers, which wouldn't help her now), and that was perhaps more concerning.

Either way, when the mutated clones of both Sundancer and Panacea started to exit the vault through the still-open door, it was already an A-class threat on its own merit, and Coil swiftly sounded the alarm to evacuate the base.

-----​

And that's that!

So, as it turns out, I didn't finish any of my plot bunnies. I did write an omake for Inheritance, but no plot bunnies.

Also, the last part of the chapter kinda blew up on me, lol.

Remember to check out the gay wormfic discord!

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!

 

[Lucifra]

Coil has officially lost control of the situation.

-----​

My brain is too fried to make a good intro note, rip me.

One thing is that you all should go check out Shadelight's Realignment over on SB and show it some love. It's a power copier Taylor which jumps the rails of canon right at the start, and as someone who has advance knowledge of what's coming next, it's going to be,,, inch resting. Also I've got an omake there, if you're into that sort of thing.

-----​

"This is… not what I expected," said Taylor, frowning.

"How so?" asked Glory Girl, hovering in front of Taylor as they proceeded down the corridor that the door into Coil's base had let to. "I see the flashing lights, I hear a breach siren, that's about what I'd expect from a wannabe Bond villain like Coil."

"No, it's… There's a bunch of weird bugs that I don't think I've ever seen before, and they feel… weird." Taylor frowned, then made the connection between the bugs and what was making her feel uncomfortable. "They're cape constructs, I think…" Taylor diverted one into a vent, where it was abruptly set upon by a spider. "But they persist on death."

Glory Girl frowned. "The only cape I know of who can make persistent minions like that is… Nilbog, and I really don't think he'd be able to get out and into this city without anyone knowing about it."

"Shit," said Taylor.

"Yeah," said Glory Girl. "Let's see if we can't hunt the snake down in his hole and see what capes he's released in his defense."

"In that case…" Taylor frowned, focusing on both the senses of the bugs she had throughout the base and pushing energy into the ansuz rune inside her eyepatch to allow her to better parse those senses. "He's this way," said Taylor, jogging down the corridor and turning right at the intersection of another, with the pair just narrowly dodging a small squad of mercenaries fleeing from what looked like a bear made out of solidified shadow.

The bear stopped, sniffing the air, then turned, growling, towards Taylor, and advanced menacingly.

Taylor, in turn, flicked off a bolt of lightning with Sowilo at the same time that Glory Girl's aura flared to life. The bolt seemed to pass through the bear's head, fading as it seemed to smear the shadowy stuff that the head was made of through the air, before it abruptly snapped back to the original shape.

"Shit," panted the flanged voice of the bear-cape, "Hebert?"

Taylor's eyes narrowed. "Who's asking?"
"Okay, so, full disclosure: I'm a clone of Sophia who's been made to oppose her and… huh, that's gone. Okay, introspection later. Anyways, yeah, Sophia decided to work with Coil to fuck you over, so I'm trying to fuck him up first. It's, uh… not working super great… could I come with y'all?"

Taylor frowned, drawing more on the wisdom channeled through ansuz, then turned to Glory Girl. "Am I just reading her wrong, or is she telling the truth?"

The Alexandria Package glared at the ursine form. "I'm not sure you are, but… well, we do know she isn't Sophia Hess. I guess that's good for something."

"Cool," said Taylor. "Come along, then."

"Thanks," said the bearlike cape, falling into step with Taylor as the shadows making up the ursine form vanished, revealing a well-muscled, dark-skinned young woman who looked like Sophia's slightly older cousin, wearing ill-fitting fatigues that looked similar to the ones worn by Coil's troops.

Taylor spent perhaps a moment longer than strictly necessary scrutinizing her, but in her defense the similarity to Sophia was… uncanny. Fortunately, there was something in her eyes and the set of her face that made it immediately clear that she wasn't the girl who had cost Taylor her eye.

"You okay, Hebert?" the clone of Sophia asked, genuine concern in her voice. "You're, uh… staring."

Taylor cast about for a good reason to be looking at her like that, and fortunately a good question presented itself. "What should we call you?"

"That's a fair question," came the reply, a shrug drawing Taylor's attention to the sharply defined muscles of the shoulder exposed by the poorly sized fatigues. "For now, call me Styx. I'll decide on a personal name if I walk away from this fight."

"Sounds like a plan. I'm Volur, in costume," said Taylor, turning sharply away from the well-built form of Styx and back to the corridor. "Now come on, if we hurry we can catch up to Coil before he escapes with my dad."

The trio continued down the corridor, following Taylor as she turned through a maze of corridors and featureless doors.

After a period of about five minutes, the trio turned a corner to come face to face with Coil, flanked by two parahumans in red and black, a boy in a t-shirt and jeans, a fearsome draconic creature pushing an unconscious girl in a wheelchair, and Danny Hebert.

"Stand down," snapped Taylor, even as Styx gestured and each of the other group's shadows rose up in a blade aimed at their throats except for Danny's and the boy's.

"Not now you fools," snarled Coil. "Noelle is loose and we have to evacuate the base now!"

"What the fuck is Noelle?" asked Glory Girl, frowning. "And where the hell is Amy?"

"Uh… about that," said one of the capes, a man wearing red football pad-like armor covered in red pouches.

"What did you do with my sister." Glory Girl didn't need to raise her voice, her aura blooming out to fill the corridor and cow everyone present save Taylor.

"We- we tried to get her to cure our Case 53 friend, and she got captured and cloned by her!" whimpered the cape in the top hat.

Taylor and Vicky both turned to Styx.

"Don't look at me," she replied hotly, "when I was there the only other clones I saw were of Sophia and that blonde with fire powers."

"Great," said Glory Girl. "Evil Panacea clones. That's not gonna end poorly."

"Precisely! And she's also taken Shadow Stalker and Sundancer! We must evacuate the base immediately, and call in the Protectorate to contain her! Her massive stature and regeneration prevent almost everyone in this city from killing her, but they can help!" snapped Coil.

"Evacuate, maybe," said Taylor. "But the Protectorate ain't gonna be much help. Even if you were hoping for reinforcements, from outside the city, we haven't gotten any since before I was in middle school, and the locals are all tied up with either the Empire and Lung fighting the Butcher, and they probably don't have the firepower we'd need to handle things unless you convinced Miss Militia to build, like, a pocket nuke launcher and managed to drag her away from whatever fight she's in."

Styx laughed. "As if that's gonna happen. She may be deepthroating the boot and all gung ho against the villains, so you might be able to convince her to hunt down Noelle if you spin it right, but she really hates making shit that blows up. Bad memories, I think."

Taylor sighed. "So, it's down to me to deal with her, great. What does she look like?"

"You won't live long enough to find out what Mother looks like, let alone hurt her," came a snarled voice from behind Taylor.

She turned to see three different forms, all naked and moving in such a way that, had it been less dire circumstances, would have made her blush. Two of them were visibly distorted clones of Panacea, one crawling with bugs and the other splattered with blood, and the last was a waif-thin blonde with a hellish glow in her hands.

Before Taylor could parse the new arrivals, they moved.

The blonde glared directly at her, twin energy beams blasting directly into her hard enough to bruise even if the armor she was wearing deflected them away. The beams started heating the concrete to a glow where they landed on it after scattering off the individual rings of mail on Taylor's chest.

She returned fire with isa, pumping enough power into the rune to cool the clone's eyes enough to shut off the beam at the same time that she blindfolded and bound her.

Vicky exploded forwards, slamming through the bug-covered clone hard enough to shatter her against the wall, and as the corpse fell limply to the ground, Taylor felt the bugs she was covered in snap into sharp relief, some of them crushed by Glory Girl's attack but not all.

Styx screamed in pain even as she shifted into her Breaker form, the shadows practically exploding off of her as blood ran down her face under where the blood-splattered Panacea clone was holding her. Then, the clone screamed as she was swallowed by the darkness, more blood weeping from her before she vanished within the darkness.

She didn't emerge.

"Gah Jesus fuck that hurts," Styx panted, blurred shadows around her head slowly coming back together.

"This only highlights the urgency of evacuating this base immediately," snapped Coil, who at some point had drawn a gun.

"By all means," said Taylor, "lead the way." She fixed the cape with the top hat with a glare. "What does Noelle look like?"

"Huge," he said, following after Coil. "She's a girl on top of a massive pile of… things, arms and legs and tentacles and mouths. She looked relatively normal when she first got her power, and we thought it was just a strong regeneration ability, but… it kept changing her, and half the time it's not even her in charge."

There was a pulse of concern from the link between Taylor and the Administrator, mixed in with… something else. When Taylor started to consider the possibility of using the Runes to help rein her power in, that something else came through again, strong enough for her to clock it as hope, which Taylor took to mean that the Administrator might be able to do something about the situation.

"I'll see what can't be done about that, if I get the chance," said Taylor, noting the hope that shone in his eyes that was visible through the mask he wore. "But if what you all are saying is true… she might be a full-on S-class threat, what with being able to clone Panacea. She might end up creating a clone that specializes in, like, diseases, or something like that, and that'd be pretty close to a worst case scenario. I might not have the chance to help her."

"Whatever it takes," he said in reply, killing the conversation as he lengthened his stride to get away from the taller girl.

"What do you bet that he tries to dump you on top of her and damn the consequences if you say you can't help her?" asked Styx under her breath, ursine muzzle split in a tongue-lolling grin.

"No bet," replied Vicky, equally quietly. "He gives me yandere vibes."

Taylor burst out laughing at the abrupt contrast in her head between the serious hatted man and the mental image of a schoolgirl carrying a bloodsplattered knife that she associated with the term yandere.

"What?" Vicky asked, indignant that both Taylor and Styx had burst into laughter.

"Don't worry about it," said Taylor. "Just… imagining him in that damn hat and mask, but his head's been plopped on top of a schoolgirl with a knife."

This time, it was Vicky who burst into laughter, which tapered off as she replied with an "okay, fair."

-----​

Quarrel wasn't sure what the fuck had gotten into the city tonight.

It had started with the Empire and the Teeth getting rowdy, with the Empire trying to create a beachhead in ABB territory, because of rumors that both Lung and the Oni were out of town. Unfortunately, they were not, and worse, they had managed to recruit the goddamn Cornell Bomber.

Lung had shown up to handle the Empire, who promptly fell back to let the Butcher occupy him and run wild in ABB territory, which had stalled out after the Protectorate had responded in force to both the Empire and the Teeth. Meanwhile, the Oni and the Cornell Bomber had pushed into Empire territory near the commercial district, and it was clear that Krieg and Rune, who had been sent to handle them, and it was there that they were going in order to contain the fight and protect the bystanders.

Or at least that's how Quarrel was justifying it, since she wasn't willing to bring up the odd new intuition that had been nudging her in the back of her head since she accepted the bow from Revel until she had a little more to ascribe to it than "just a hunch".

"Why," puffed Vista, hunched over with her hands on her knees, "is New Wave not doing jack shit?"

"No clue," said Quarrel, drawing an arrow and nocking it. "I heard some shit about Brandish going out to a conference out of the city with her family, but I'm not sure if that's true or not."

Below the building they were standing on, a chunk of floating concrete was blocking the roadway and more specifically an open-topped jeep, in which a short figure in a gas mask and a trench coat stood, gesticulating grandly with the grenade launcher she held in one hand.

"She's stalling," Quarrel murmured.

"What do you mean by that?" Vista asked.

"She's a Tinker who builds single-use items, and it's only been like a week since she was sprung," said Quarrel slowly, thinking through the issue slowly. "She hasn't had a whole lot of time to set up and build shit, so she's limited in what gear she made between setting up her lab and settling in here in Brockton. Except…" Quarrel looked up at a roof across the street, where a green-striped red mask was leering down on the Nazis.

"He can replicate Tinkertech," she hissed as he vanished, reappearing between Krieg and Rune.

Krieg backhanded the figure, collapsing it into a pile of ash, but the cylindrical device that he flicked upwards didn't, bursting into a sphere of concussive light not dissimilar to Purity's blasts, albeit much more diluted, that cracked the chunk of concrete and shoved both Nazi capes aside.

Rune slowed down even as half of the concrete slab moved ponderously over to catch her, and Krieg landed in a crater of his own creation, dazed but unhurt, but it was clear the tide had turned against the Empire members.

When either of the Nazi capes tried to attack the jeep, they were either distracted by the Oni or, less common, the Cornell Bomber's grenade launcher came up and spat a concussion grenade at them, smaller than the ones that the Oni was using to throw Krieg around but no less distracting.

"Come on," said a now-recovered Vista. "Let's leave them to it, and go help out somewhere else. I can see the Teeth making a mess over in the Trainyard, and if we hurry, we can keep them from starting any fires."

Quarrel frowned. There was something here, something she wasn't seeing, and-

Then she heard something crumbling on the other side of the jeep.

"Wait, something's coming."

A massive body of flesh, covered in writhing tentacles and slavering mouths, burst out of an alley, slamming into the jeep with the sound of metal tearing, and then a mouth-tipped tentacle swallowed the Cornell Bomber wholesale.

"Jesus Christ!" shouted Vista, stumbling back.

Then, the body of the thing down below spat out multiple naked bodies. Some were flaming, some were seeming to dissolve into shadows, others were seeming to twist into inhuman shapes, and the rest of the figures just writhed before getting to their feet.

"Fuck," said Quarrel, the faces of the figures coming into sharp focus. "Vista, prevent anyone from leaving now. That's a replicator, and it's got clones of Panacea and the Cornell Bomber." She stood up above the edge of the roof and started to draw the arrow back.

"What are you going to do?" asked Vista, concerned.

Quarrel smirked, lightning crackling along the shaft of her arrow. She loosed, and it detonated once it hit in the center of a cluster of Panacea clones, charring them almost beyond recognition. "I'll think of something."

-----​

And that's that!

I wasn't exactly planning on Styx being a thing, but she kind of stole the mic and ran away from me, so now I've altered my long-term plan around her. Oops.

Remember to check out the discord! (discord.gg/gaylor)

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a great day!

 

[Lucifra]

Noelle is causing problems, whether that is on purpose or not is unclear.

-----​

Content warning: non-graphic depiction of dismemberment and blood, Nazi POV at the end. Just a pre-warning: Gladly leans on his power a little too much for his understanding of human psychology and behavior, to the degree where it starts to let his biases directly harm his judgement on that front.

So, anyone who saw my post in the Inheritance thread or the gaylor discord server knows that, uh… I heard about the accusations of Nazi-ism going around.

Honestly, I expected this fic to be something of a popcorn fic where Taylor would blaze through the Nazis immediately too, and my plans just… developed in other directions. As of now, I plan to make them more long-term foes, which… apparently some people don't like.

Which… is fair, I made certain statements in the threads early on that didn't end up panning out, and if I recall correctly one of those was that the Empire would be Taylor's priority, so I get the disappointment. But at the same time, calling me a Nazi sympathizer over it is… uncalled for.

Also, as a separate thing: to the people who don't like the fact that I'm having the PRT/Protectorate as antagonistic or absentee at best: I'm a queer person of color from a red state, do the math.

Also, to jdboss1: you have been blocked. Take your Nazi apologia elsewhere.

-----​

"Well then," said Taylor, all but goggling at the trail of destruction that had been left in the wake of Coil's basement Case 53. Then, she turned to the man himself. "What the hell have you been keeping in your goddamn base?"

"Save the judgment for after the crisis," Coil snapped.

"I'm saving your beating for after the crisis, unless you've forgotten that you made the mistake of kidnapping both my father and Panacea," Taylor shot back. "You can fucking cope with the judgement."

A further response from either Coil or one of his cape lackeys (who were already getting twitchy, standing in the trail of cracked asphalt and smashed-out building detritus) was forestalled by a streak of gold and white resolving into Glory Girl, returned from reconnaissance in the general direction that Noelle had gone.

"I've got good news and bad news," she said, touching down gently. "Good news is that Vista and Quarrel are doing a decent job at keeping them contained. The bad news is that there's not nearly enough close-in capes to help them out. Krieg and Rune are there, and I think so is Oni Lee, but they're not nearly doing well enough against the clones to keep up with them, even with Vista and Quarrel running artillery. They're about to break, and hard. Best case scenario, they die or run. Worst… well, Vista and Quarrel can probably escape from where they are."

The fact that she wasn't including the incredibly mobile Oni Lee or Rune in her list of potential escapees was telling.

A flash of raido accompanied Taylor waving in the direction of Noelle's path of destruction. "Let's get moving, people, and if you can tell me what you can do that would be greatly appreciated."

"Me too?" asked Danny.

"Uh… I'm not sure where you could go that would be safe given that the city is going buck wild, but if you want to go to, like, Alexander's or Kurt and Lacey's once we get to Vista, then I won't stop you."

"Why not home?"

"Because the door got actually broken and I'm not sure if the rune I left there fixed it? Also safety in numbers."

He didn't respond before they started moving.

"Well then," said the man in the top hat, his voice taking on a pompous, almost showman-like air. "Going back to the original question, I'm Trickster, the leader of the Travelers and teleporter extraordinaire. My expertise lies in tactics, teleporting things within my line of sight with each other, and card tricks."

"Is this really the time for that?" asked the man in the red armor, seeming to almost deflate a moment. "Don't answer that. I'm Ballistic, and I can fire anything I touch like a projectile."

"I'm Genesis," said the reptilian thing pushing the wheelchair-bound woman. "I'm pushing my own wheelchair, and I can change my projection given enough time to myself."

The group lapsed into silence after that, walking through the gaping wound in the city with the tension of combat to come weighing down the group of capes to the point where not even Danny, with his perspective so divorced from the capes he was surrounded by, could stand to interrupt.

The sounds of crackling lightning and detonating attacks got louder as they approached, and mere moments saw the group standing on a roof with Vista and Quarrel, who turned out to be the source of both the lightning and explosive attacks.

Down in the street was a chaotic mess of clones, blood, chewed-off body parts, and the massive, chimeric form of the Case 53.

"What's the situation?" asked Taylor after Vista had twisted space so one step for her father had taken him to the DWA building.

"Not great," replied Quarrel. "Whatever that big fucker is, it just keeps spitting out naked clones, and-" she paused her speech to nock an arrow, which swiftly found itself embedded in the eye of a blonde clone covered in flames and detonated in a sphere of icy blue light that left hoarfrost around the body, which collapsed to the floor covered in frozen fire.

"Where was I," she continued as if nothing had happened, ignoring the gobsmacked looks all the capes save for Taylor, Victoria, and Styx were giving her. "Oh, right. Yeah, so she managed to grab one of the Oni's clones and it didn't disintegrate, plus whatever fire user and shadow cape she has in addition to Panacea, and also- fuck."

The reason for the invective, as it turned out, was the tentacle that had latched onto the figure wearing a gas mask that was standing on the jeep and holding a grenade launcher at arm's length, causing them to go limp and start twitching, and yanked him into the main mass of the cloning cape.

"On a scale of 'puppies and kittens for everyone to the world is ending' how bad is that particular person getting dragged in?" asked Styx, somehow managing to convey a frown through her power-distorted voice.

"Krieg? Not that bad, relative to who she has already. She already has the Cornell Bomber, so we have bigger issues than one Nazi." Quarrel punctuated the statement with another arrow to a clone just emerging from the main body of the cape, which burst into an expanding sphere of knives. Some of the blades slowed as they went towards a man in a long coat and a gas mask who was wrestling a version of Panacea that was twisted and swollen up, but the rest carved through clone and cape flesh alike, sending the girl on top of the Case 53 slumping forwards even as the rest of its body started to rampage.

"What have you done!" screamed Trickster, glaring hatefully at Quarrel momentarily. Then, he looked away and she vanished, replaced by a newly extruded blonde clone who looked around, a little confused, then turned to Taylor and glared, miniature orbs of flaming force appearing around her and hurtling out at all the capes on the rooftop.

Meanwhile, down in the street, Quarrel leapt up, firing an arrow that burst on impact with enough force radiating out to shove her away from the Case 53's grasping tentacles and into a roll, letting her come up running back towards the building she'd been sent off of.

Ballistic swept his hand out, returning those targeting him and Trickster to the clone with enough added velocity to break bones and splatter the semi-solid flames all over her to little effect.

Coil desperately dove for the floor, rolling to extinguish the fires that the near misses of the projectiles had set along his back and arms.

Vista took one step to the left and ended up three buildings over, the attacks targeting her slamming fruitlessly into the roof of the building.

Glory Girl shot up several feet, avoiding the projectiles completely, as Styx crossed her arms and tanked the impacts, smearing across the roof before snapping back into cohesion once the flames guttered out on the odd not-quite-matter that made up her ursine form.

Taylor was too stunned to react before the orbs of force impacted her armor with bruising force, shocking her out of the stunned state just as Ballistic's counter subdued the clone.

She stomped over to Trickster, who was still taking cover from the clone behind Ballistic, then grabbed him by his (reinforced, probably) collar and hoisted him up into the air. "Explain yourself," she snapped, glaring at him.

"Can't hurt Noelle," he ground out. Then, he turned his head to look at the fight, and Taylor abruptly and unceremoniously found herself standing, fists raised but empty (and far less imposing than when she was holding Trickster), in front of the onrushing form of the Case 53 (presumably Noelle, although she couldn't be sure).

"Fuck," she said just as a tentacle wrapped around her leg and yanked, pulling her just enough off balance for another tentacle to wrap around her unarmored throat.

-----​

Taylor wasn't entirely sure what she was expecting from the experience of getting subdued by the large case 53, but ending up back in the same stormy crystalline landscape that she had met the Administrator in was… not it.

Off in the distance, Taylor saw something that looked vaguely like a dying octopus, if that octopus had been rolled around in a pile of half dead, glue-covered clones of itself, with its tentacles wrapped around various beings that looked like they'd belong in the same general ecosystem as the Administrator's not-quite-uncanny-valley form.

"Careful," came a chittering voice, and it was only the awareness link that gave Taylor the certainty that that was the Administrator that prevented her from blasting the spiderlike being with a bolt of lightning.

"Administrator! How did that Case 53 pull me here?" Taylor relaxed a little, seeing the (slightly smaller than she remembered-had she grown that much since she'd first met Panacea?) form of the Administrator, a relaxation that only increased as Odin appeared to step out of thin air at her left.

"Her power is… I don't have the words to explain it in a language that you will understand, but the closest thing that comes is [MisconfiguredBroken]," said the Administrator, with the last two words coming out at the same time in a staticky hiss that whispered of extra information just beyond Taylor's hearing.

Odin frowned. "That is a bad thing. How long would it take to rectify?"

The Administrator shrugged, a vaguely unnerving action from an arachnoid being. "It will take as long as it takes, but I lack the raw power to disrupt [Division] long enough to [ReconfigureRepair] it."

Taylor sighed. "Great. So I have to fight a power long enough for you to perform percussive maintenance?"

"Not percussive, but yes," said the Administrator.

Taylor sighed, then clenched her fists. "Alright."

She started jogging towards the octopus creature (that the Administrator had called Division, she thought), drawing the power of the runes into herself as Odin faded from visibility, and after a moment, she snapped one hand up, hurling a bolt of lightning from a sowilo rune glowing on the back of her armored fist to strike home against Division's deathly gray flesh.

It undulated in pain, then turned too many glowing red eyes to her and screamed with over a dozen mouths and all but exploded towards her, ready to fight her instead of the other beings that it had left behind.

"Come get some!" shouted Taylor, charging up a larger bolt, and she grinned, blood pounding in her ears as she bared her teeth, ready for proper combat.

-----​

Victor Gladly ran his hand through his thinning hair and breathed out, visibly relaxing as his lungs emptied.

Even had it not been for this evening's… festivities, he would have been flagging, with his power not doing anything to keep him up and running (unlike his brother, whose vast assortment of stolen skills put him far and away ahead of Clausewitz in regards to, among other things, managing his own stamina to last as long as possible, both within a tactical context and… elsewhere).

Still, he felt he was making significant headway in accomplishing the Empire's goals.

Despite Judge Myra's strange resistance to even the short-term effects of his power, Gladly had managed to manipulate enough of the staff around him to cause a significant delay to the court case, then convinced Mr. Hebert that it was the PRT's direct fault. Not that the thing was hard- the man was a lifelong union administrator, and he also had a staggering amount of distrust built up towards the PRT, so exploiting that was child's play.

He had also… gently persuaded some of the members of Brockton's alleged Finest to allow him to get in to visit one of their… guests, albeit in civilian clothes instead of his preferred guise as Clausewitz (although given the degree to which the Brockton Police Department was filled with both members of the Empire and their sympathizers, most of what he did was actually gentle persuasion and not coercion).

"Mr. Gladly? What are you doing here?" asked Emma Barnes, looking on the whole rather deflated in the holding cell.

Before he responded, he took a moment to think over the situation at hand.

Ms. Barnes had very definitively fallen in with the wrong crowd, in a way that wasn't entirely Ms. Hess' fault- although the wayward Ward was certainly a significant factor in the situation, his understanding of her reactions in certain situations suggested that Lung and his group of Oriental thugs were involved in some way.

That said, she was by no means unsalvageable- given enough time, either he or his brother could sway her to their side, despite her stubborn unwillingness to relinquish her foolish dependence on Ms. Hess, which would in turn grant them greater insight into Taylor Hebert's mind, which was something that both he and his brother sorely needed in order to properly plan around her- the information he'd gathered of Taylor Hebert during her time in school was… inconclusive, given the severe changes to her personality and decision making process her Trigger event and subsequent power acquisition had made.

His pre-Trigger understanding of her behavior was that she would have remained very passive despite the… severe escalation that Ms. Barnes had indulged in, so given where she was intended to fit within the Plan… he needed more information, and Ms. Barnes was likely to be the best source of that information given her own longstanding history with Taylor Hebert, as well as her not insignificant understanding of manipulations (which, sadly, she hadn't brought to bear on the vilest Ward's molding of her).

To whit, a significant part of his effort tonight had gone to setting up enough uproar that no one would be able to tell it had happened, not even the freakishly well-informed Coil, which was aided by Thomas Calvert not taking nearly enough precautions against his power to prevent Gladly from pushing him into making a far more overt move against both New Wave and Taylor Hebert than he would have chosen otherwise.

"I'm here to see you, Miss Barnes," he said, eschewing his usual "hip with the kids" façade in favor of revealing some of the exhaustion he'd been feeling- a simple manipulation, but to someone in as vulnerable a state as the young redhead, the show of emotions would do almost as much to get her on his side as his power.

"Why… why would you come here?' she asked, a glimmer of suspicion in her eyes.

"Because," he replied with a sigh, nudging his power just enough to make her believe him, "I know I failed you, and I wanted to know how, and why, you arrived at the conclusion that your pattern of behavior was necessary, so that I might be able to prevent it going forwards." He had no intention of preventing similar situations, going forwards, at least when they were under his control- being able to induce Triggers independently of Gesellschaft would be a massive victory for the Empire, after all- but she didn't have to know that.

She sniffled, then begun to speak, and with every word out of her mouth, another piece of the puzzles that were her actions with regards to Taylor Hebert, as well as the girl in question's mind.

Victor Gladly left the holding area and stalked off to his brother's house, nursing a headache from running himself ragged but with a vastly more advanced understanding of the Empire's soon-to-be newest recruit. The longer hewalked, the more the plan in his head came into focus, and by the time he returned to his brother's home to begin planning, he had a solid framework for the execution of said plan.

Gladly entered the empty house and beelined for the white board they had always used for planning. He'd need his brother to help refine the plan with his more varied skillset, but there wasn't anything stopping him from starting to fet the framework down physically.

There was much planning to do, after all, and not much time to waste in doing so.

-----​

And that's that!

I wanted to actually write out the combat scene with Division, but I feel like if I tried it'd delay the chapter by another like three weeks, so… I'm not sure I'm gonna write it next chapter, either, for further delay reasons. We'll see.

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!

 

[Lucifra]

I know birthday presents are supposed to go to the birthday person, but…

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CW: a little body horror at the beginning if you squint (Echidna clones) and Max Anders' perspective. Friendly reminder that just because I write something from a character's perspective does not mean that it's right, or that I endorse that something.

So, uh… I'm not dead? In my defense I ran into a bunch of issues in my personal life, then when I actually started wanting to write again (I was hoping to get this out on my birthday, and I missed that by like four days rip) I got slammed with both being busy and also a really bad day. But I'm here now, so,,, yay?

Brockton Bay can have little a sodium vapor streetlamps, as a treat.

To those readers who were hoping for more sane clones… sorry to disappoint, that's primarily an interaction between Glory Girl's aura, the Runes cheating for author fiat nebulous reasons, and Styx's power being regenerative in nature, so none of the other clones would benefit from the same thing and be sane.

I know people were hoping to see the fight between Taylor and Division, but it was really anticlimactic when I did try to write it- it was pretty much just Taylor kiting Division until QA bonked it over the head with the reconfigure stick, mostly tedious and draining of Taylor's reserves instead of actually worth writing, so I cut it in favor of the rest of this interlude.

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When Victoria saw Trickster's eyes flicker away from Taylor under his mask, she immediately started moving to slam into him.

It was too late for her to prevent him from teleporting a different clone in, one who was moving almost superhumanly fast, but at that point she was already close enough to the both of them that she could just plow into both the clone and the cape, and then jam the hat on Trickster's head down over his eyes hard enough that it would take a Brute rating to get off without destroying it (well, any more than it had already been, at least), leaving him to fall over and complain.

The clone, however, just blurred away across the roof when she hit him, slamming first Ballistic and then Coil into the ground with the cracks of breaking bones.

That stopped when Styx gestured, dark blades erupting out of the shadows cast by the yellowish light of the streetlights, and the almost taffylike flesh of the clone split as he ran directly into the blades and fell to the floor without a sound.

More blades swept in and slashed across the back of his bare limbs as he tried to push himself up, cutting through the clone's pale flesh and sending him collapsing to the floor as he glared up, switching between Victoria and Styx with no real regard for the "conventional" notion of human speed.

"What the fuck are you doing?" snapped Victoria, glaring ineffectually at Trickster, who gingerly was prodding at his hat with the arm he wasn't holding to his chest. After a moment, she realized her glare was wasted on the blinded cape and shifted it to the clone.

"He protects mother," said the clone in a familiar voice Victoria couldn't quite place. "We protect him."

"We protect him," echoed the other clone who had been subdued by Ballistic.

"Great," groaned the semi-armored cape, holding his side gingerly. "Krouse, you got a bunch of simps on your ass that your BO can't drive off."

"Screw you, Luke," replied the other cape, letting himself fall to a supine position and leaving his hat where it was covering his eyes.

"If you're quite finished," slurred Coil through what looked to be either a dislocated or broken jaw, "we have a significant obstacle presented, in that Miss Meinhardt has escaped containment save for Vista's efforts. It would probably be wise to rectify that situation." Genesis' reptilian form gently lifted him upright, drawing murmured thanks from the morph suit-clad villain.

Ballistic groaned as he pushed himself to his feet, reaching into a pocket on his armor for a small handful of ball bearings, then inched gingerly over to the edge of the building to look out at the clones on the ground, gauging the situation.

"I have… no idea who I should be trying to hit first," he said, his sentence punctuated by another of Quarrel's arrows detonating in a flash of lightning.

"Clones of Amy or the Cornell Bomber," Victoria said, cracking her knuckles. "They do weird things with Amy's power so we don't know but they could have a bunch of weird things, including disease powers, and the Cornell Bomber's whole thing is explosions."

"And Volur?" asked Styx, charging the air with tension.

"...I'm not sure that that's something you should be worried about," said Quarrel, having literally leapt off of an exploding clone of the Cornell Bomber (who she promptly perforated) to reach the roof again. "Volur, Panacea, and I all have… nonstandard powers, and they might be strong enough in Volur to disrupt the cloning process."

"That's…" Ballistic looked out at the battlefield, then visibly made the decision not to pry. "Yeah, okay." And with that, he started firing his ball bearings with the staccato crack crack crack of them breaking the sound barrier (and, more distantly, bones).

Victoria rose into the air, then swooped down, traveling in erratic paths to slam into the odd clone here and there while remaining mobile enough to return to the rooftop if needed, but there honestly wasn't all that much for her to do- even with the rate that the Case 53 was creating clones, Quarrel and Ballistic were dealing with them almost entirely on their own, with intermittent aid from Styx weaponizing shadows, and ultimately most of the clones Victoria dealt with were the copies of (presumably- they were naked, after all, so she couldn't be sure) Oni Lee who were able to teleport away from the rapid attacks that Ballistic and Quarrel could put out.

The end of the battle, when it came, was relatively anticlimactic- the flow of new clones joining the battle abruptly stopped, and when Victoria looked up to see why, she managed to catch most of the mass of the Case 53's animalistic body splash to the ground in a wave of slightly rotten-smelling sludge, revealing seven people (one of whom promptly dissolved into the telltale ash of Oni Lee's power) in various states of dazedness.

The least dazed of the people was Taylor, who landed on her feet, armor somehow dry despite the wave of sludge that the Case 53 had released. Near Taylor was Amy, whose eyes were unfocused but she was clearly lucid enough to help a wobbly-looking girl in tight red and black to her feet.

"Hey, Vicky," said Taylor, her words slurred just slightly with exhaustion. "You got a chair or something? It's been a long… however long I spent in there, and I just wanna sit down.

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Amy was a little jealous of Taylor for being able to use Vicky's thighs as a pillow after her ordeal.

Not specifically about sleeping on her sister's thighs- that boat had well and truly sailed, since while she wasn't strictly speaking subject to the Westermarck effect with regards to Victoria, the externally-enforced obsession that had resulted from Shaper's mental manipulations combining with her sister's aura had been wiped by her apotheosis restoring her to "perfect health", the implications of which she was unwilling to really think about.

That said, it wasn't all bad- Coil was (presumably) completely dealt with, given that according to Vicky, Vista was all but sitting on the man, even beyond his broken bones, and hopefully-

Her train of thought was abruptly disrupted by the bass-heavy style that John Williams preferred for his Sith characters, immediately spiking her adrenaline at the prospect of talking to Carol.

Intellectually, she knew she probably shouldn't be so apprehensive over Carol calling, but given that in the past most of their phone conversations had been over not being home in time for her curfew and the like, long exposure had conditioned her to react a certain way, and she was still a little worked up after getting kidnapped.

"Hello?"

"Where the hell do you think you are, young lady?!"

Amy pulled the phone away from her head and looked at it incredulously. "What?"

"Where. Are. You."

"Uh… outside a cape battle's aftermath, hang on." She turned around before she found an intact street sign. "About Second and Park, with Vicky and Taylor."

"And how did you get there?"

"I don't know," said Amy, no small amount of sarcasm in her voice. "It's not as if I had a choice in the matter, what with being kidnapped and unconscious and all that."

"Watch your tone, young lady," said Carol. "There's no excuse for such impoliteness."

"Yeah, well, again, just got kidnapped, so I'm not exactly inclined to be charitable to anyone telling me to stop bitching," she shot back.

Carol's reply was interrupted by Styx, who plucked the phone out of her hands with surprisingly dexterous claws and walked over to Vicky, who took said phone and held it up to her own ear.

"Mom," she said, voice low out of consideration to the sleeping god on her lap, "it's me. Ames is okay, she got kidnapped and then stuck in a weird cape with cloning powers, but she's good now. The cape is… dealt with."

Amy glanced over to where Sundancer and Genesis were fussing over a blonde woman who she quickly looked away from upon realizing that she was lacking clothes, who was apparently the big cape? She wasn't sure, and when Taylor had tried to explain what had happened she just chalked it up to rune magic bullshit after Taylor and her sister had started going on about "vindication of passenger theory" and "holy shit how high is your Trump rating now".

Amy was abruptly jolted back to reality by a wave of Vicky's aura and the sound of her phone creaking. "I don't care about my date or your publicity event getting interrupted, damn it!" she whisper-yelled. "I care about my sister getting kidnapped by some asshole who wanted her for her power!"

Amy could all but hear the creaking of the plastic case on her phone as Victoria started to lose control of her strength, the thunderous expression on her face growing more tumultuous as Carol presumably kept speaking. "I'm not Amy's babysitter, mom. I'm allowed to have my own life, and just because you don't like Taylor is no excuse for- look, if you're going to blame me going out on a date for bad shit when you haven't done so in the past when Dean was the date, that just tells me that you're either being homophobic or don't like Taylor! Or do I have to remind you that you weren't around to prevent Amy from getting kidnapped either?"

Vicky pressed her lips together. "Look, mom, I'm not dealing with you like this and the aftermath of… whatever the hell you want to call what went on here at the same time, and I sure as shit am not gonna do it over the phone. When you get back, bring Aunt Sarah over to the house, and we can talk."

Without waiting for a response, Vicky hung up, tossing the phone to Amy who nearly dropped it, the shaky fingers of an adrenaline crash betraying her.

"Well then," she said, quietly for the sake of Taylor who had somehow not woken up after the not-exactly-quiet phone call, "looks like mom's not happy."

Vicky gave Amy a level look that spoke to her supreme lack of amusement with the level of understatement in that statement, then sighed tiredly and rubbed at her face with one hand. "Tell me something I don't know," she said without too much heat.

"You should start a team," said Styx, dropping heavily onto a piece of rubble next to Vicky.

"I… huh. I'm not gonna commit to that one way or the other but it's definitely an idea worth thinking about, once she wakes up," replied the blonde, gesturing at Taylor still sleeping on her lap.

"Fair," said Styx. "I just… it might be something that gets her the support she needs in a way she can't deny, after what Emma Barnes did to her."

That effectively killed the conversation, leaving the three conscious capes to their own thoughts.

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Max Anders was… not particularly enthusiastic about the way things had been going of late.

Don't get him wrong, he was pleased with the way that recent events had been favoring his organizations (both legal and otherwise), but there was something about things that made him feel… odd.

The feeling had started, to some degree or another, when Victor's younger brother, Clausewitz, had really started to push for his preferred strategic and tactical moves for his Empire.

It had started… well, not innocuously, per se, but it was about as close as a criminal organization such as the Empire could get, with the man's suggestions helping them to expand their recruitment, both of the overt gang members that they needed from a street warfare perspective and the "respectable sympathizers" which were spread throughout various different agencies, both law enforcement and otherwise, the kind of people who would massage situations and turn just enough of a blind eye to their activities to really keep their operations running. This was where their moles came from, the informants in the police and PRT that supplied them with insider information (well, that and Thinker intel from both Gesselschaft and the Herren clans).

Speaking of the Herren clans, he chose to believe that both Rune and Othala had decided to join the Empire of their own volition- after all, the latter had been engaged to Victor for months before the Herren clans hand sent the quartet to join his Empire, and Rune had joined the Herren clans before that.

That said, he had been privy to Clausewitz's longer-term power conditioning exactly once, and it had left him profoundly uncomfortable.

He did his best to avoid the man outside official business, after that.

Still, despite the level of separation he held from Clausewitz, the pattern of escalation he was undertaking was… worrying. The gradual subornment of the PRT and police was one thing, and in fact something that both he and his father had been attempting to accomplish, albeit with less success.

But the blatant manipulations of Director Piggot, both overt and covert, to weaken the PRT? Working with the Butcher, that mad collective willing to call in the Slaughterhouse when they failed to get their way against Marquis? Exploiting a Trigger event to recruit a cape, even if it was mostly indirect? Any one of those could spell disaster if it got out, and the latter two also had the potential to directly backfire on them if not handled delicately.

The fact that any of those ideas were what Clausewitz immediately chose to use as strategies to pursue spoke to either a disconnect from the nature of capedom or a willful disregard of the established nature of capedom, the distinction being largely arbitrary in practical terms but important in terms of predicting Clausewitz's actions.

That said, he couldn't deny that the man's methods were producing results.

Clausewitz's manipulations with regards to the Director were hampering the PRT's responses against his Empire far more than just what low-level informants they had, and as much as he hated to admit it after what the Butcher had cost him over the years, he had to admit that the mad collective's presence in his city was helping, both by their almost suicidal willingness to throw themselves at Lung (the only thing preventing it from being actually suicidal was Lung's restraint to prevent himself from becoming the next Butcher) and the disruption to PRT and otherwise heroic operations within the city, even if this latest event hadn't been directly related.

No, apparently Coil had been stupid enough to keep a monster under his base, and the situation had degenerated enough to the point where Oni Lee, Bakuda, Rune, Krieg, and even some independent capes with surprising levels of power, including Clausewitz's next recruit, had all had to intervene together to put the creature down.

He was just thankful that none of his capes were injured too permanently by the beast, and Othala's aid would have them fighting fit in no time.

Still, he needed to keep an eye on the man, for security's sake, if nothing else. There was no telling when one of his risky strategies would backfire on them, and as the stakes of said schemes rose, they needed to be ready for the consequences.

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And that's that!

I had one more segment I wanted to push through but if I keep trying to beat my head against that wall right now I'm going to end up delayed by another month. There's still a bunch of fallout from Echidna I'm going to go into, so don't worry about that.

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!