[] Tickets to Gangland
Heatwave 9.3
Thursday, June 2
"…That's when we took off. It was way too awkward to stick around."
"I can imagine," says Shipwright, setting down his welder for a moment to wipe the sweat off his forehead. "What are you going to do about it?"
"I have no idea." You drop into a nearby chair and dismiss Perfect Storm's staff back into a gem around your neck, though you keep your Barrier Jacket up for appearance more than any defensive reason. You have nothing to fear in Tim's lab. "Just when I thought I had a handle on what to do about the Adepts, I accidentally upend the table. Most of them are going to run out like rats off a sinking ship. Lilliput is in the wind, and as a definite villain – he used to be a member of a Floridian gang, at least according to Storm – I say good riddance to bad rubbish. Thirteenth Hour, or more appropriately Standstill, said she would rejoin the Protectorate. Epoch and Maclibuin…
"They're the sticking point, I guess. They both have magic, and Epoch's is pretty strong. He sounded like he was a villain because it was easier to fit into his ambitions than being a hero would have been, and Maclibuin was a hero before he helped Epoch found the group. Neither sound like they're that bad of people."
Tim again stops in his work, and he turns his head to look at you through his goggles. "You sound almost like you plan to recruit them."
"I haven't decided one way or another. What do you think?" You spin to face him fully. "You're a friend, you're a teammate, and you're a fellow mage. What would you say to recruiting a pair of maybe-former villains?"
"Personally? I haven't met them, so I can't say one way or another. I'll trust your judgment on this. You're almost sixteen, you're a powerful cape all on your own, and you're the one who knows these powers best. If you think they deserve magic, go for it." You turn away to hide your smile. Compliments have been becoming more familiar ever since you left Winslow, but trust like this? It still warms your heart. "The only warnings I feel the need to give are one, let me know if you don't want to give them templates so I can talk to them about designing their Devices, and two, don't recruit them as members of the Privateers."
You whip your head back towards him. "What? Why?"
"Adding a couple of capes to the mix? Now's not a good time for that. Terrible one, in fact. I underestimated how bad this power struggle is going to be. I think, anyway," he says with a slight shrug. "I can't say for sure, but my gut says things are heading south with a quickness." Anticipating your request for clarification, he raises the half-completed project in front of him. "Back when Danny was in charge, everyone was good with sticking with nonlethal measures. Even though we had guns, nobody wanted to use them. Ramirez texted me earlier today, said some of the guys wanted to know if I could replicate the laser rifle we bought from Coil back in Brockton Bay."
"Wasn't our big problem with that gun that it didn't have much of a nonlethal setting?"
"Yup. I'm working on this one mostly to see if I can, but if they start asking for multiple copies? I'm going to have to put my foot down until I get a good answer as to why. Not to mention," he says with a half-amused huff, "If they really want lasers, I could probably make my own quicker, easier, and better. I haven't done much reading about them because there wasn't any need, but there are records floating in Sextant's databanks showing all sorts of useful things that can be done with hardlight generators."
Uh-huh. And those are…?
He rolls his eyes at your look of confusion. "Energy projections. Common sci-fi stuff. Think an armguard on one arm that projects one of your shields and in your other hand a lightsaber."
Oh. "Don't tell Samantha about the last one," you joke after a moment's thought. "She'd pout at you until you gave her one."
You share a laugh at the image of her begging for a toy like a child for a moment before Perfect Storm kills the mood. "Mistress, Protectorate communication. Combat downtown. Sere deployed. Unclear opponents, not local origin."
You sigh. "I hoped she was mistaken. Looks like that isn't the case."
"What's going on?"
"Remember how I told you Cailleach had warned me there might be villains from other cities coming here now that MS-13 was out of commission?" He nods, and you continue, "I told Storm to keep an ear out in case the PRT or Protectorate or even the regular cops reported any sightings of foreign villains. That seemed like the shortest and simplest way to find out if she was right. There were a few alerts here and there the last couple of days, but no definitive response. Now there is."
"What are you going to do?"
That is the million-dollar question, isn't it? And yet, you know there is only one option. "I don't know a lot about Sere. The one time he and I were part of the same fight, he didn't have much impact. I think Samantha and I had better swing by just to make sure everything's going okay, maybe introduce ourselves once he's done. We'd just have to pretend that we ran across the fight on a random patrol," you add with a faint grimace. "Storm, send Sam the location and tell her to meet us there. We've got a party to crash."
Your Guardian Beast is already floating in the air when you arrive at the supposed location of the fight, probably because it turned out that the intersection in question was at the other end of the city from Tim's lab. "Find anything?" you ask.
"Nope, nothing. I checked this intersection and a few streets in the other directions, and nothing, at least not obvious at high speed." A gush of fire flies into the sky maybe ten or fifteen blocks away. "But my intuition says that might be important."
"Oh, you think?"
The pair of you take off for the obvious fight, and peering down you have to whistle. It's a good thing you showed up, because Sere is horribly outnumbered.
Contrary to your previous impression of him, he does carry weapons, specifically a pair of electrified batons, and he is intent on using them to knock somebody's head in. Too bad his opponents are making that difficult. One of them throws a punch, his shiny purple fist stretching the twenty feet between them to slam into Sere's chin. The fist then grabs the collar of his shirt and whips him around into the grasp of a vaguely humanoid clump of rocks. He manages to keep one arm out of the pin and pulls a silvery device out of his costume that he tosses into the air. It explodes into a cloud of containment foam, and when the rock man lets him go to try pulling the foam off his face, Sere drops to the ground. A little of the rapidly expanding foam landed on his other hand, but a glare from the hero turns out to be literally withering as the foam deflates and disintegrates. He grabs his fallen baton but then has to jump out of the way of a fireball that swirls around and around the rock man. Not even the normally fire-resistant containment foam can withstand the heat you can feel all the way from your perch, and the rock man flicks the molten foam off himself.
Sere is back on his feet by now, but while all this was going on, the only non-Breaker cape on this team was creating a hemispherical forcefield around herself and then shrinking into to fit into her hand. She pitches the softball-sized sphere of static at Sere, and when it hits the ground it expands into its full size and flings him into the air.
"Did they send him alone because they underestimated the threat, or because he is normally good enough to handle four capes on his own?" Samantha can't help but wonder.
"Either way, I think he'll appreciate the help." You size up the opponents again and ponder for a moment before making a decision. "Alright, Sam, here's what we're going to do…"
No, that totally isn't the evil Fantastic Four down there, why would you think that?
Anyway, battle plan time! Rather than give an overall strategy, the base votes will instead be on whom Taylor focuses first. After that, go nuts with the details.
[ ] Rubber man
[ ] Forcefield girl
[ ] Fire man
[ ] Rock man… thing
