Magical Girl Escalation Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)

[Silently Watches]

[] Go with Laura to check the entrance. If this is an attack by a villain, that is likely where they are coming from.
-[] Have Perfect Storm scan the dome. What's it made of? Tech, powers or magic?
-[] Have Perfect Storm conference call Samantha and Dragon. Do they know what's going on? Can they find out what someone might be here for? Y'know, besides us.


Suntan 13.6

"Splitting up would be pretty stupid right now, don't you think?" you tell Laura, looking back the way you came once again before turning away. It grates that you are doing nothing to help them, but you also know that the people on the beach are probably far enough away from whoever is doing this to be safe if they would just get inside. "We stick together and watch each other's back."

"That sounds like a plan to me," Laura replies as her shoulders relax slightly. She was clearly no more eager to sneak up on the villains responsible for this by her lonesome than you would be. "Let's get moving."

The two of you run down the beach towards the entrance of the resort, and only when you get to the row of shrubbery creating a screen of sorts for the resort's private beach do you stop. While Laura is busy catching her breath, you turn your attention outwards. «Storm, I need whatever kind of analysis you can run on this dome as soon as possible. It looks… wrong.»

If anything, the strange roiling pattern in such insane colors reminds you of the strange place you found yourself when Perfect Storm first bound itself to you and clad you in your Barrier Jacket. You have never seen a color effect like that before until now, and that does not fill you with confidence.

The Intelligent Device chimes in acknowledgement, and you reach out to your Guardian Beast. «Sam!»

«Taylor, thank goodness. Where are you? I'm here in the cantina-restaurant thing. Vista and I are trying to get all the civilians calmed down. Do you need help?»

«I'm fine, I'm fine. Cailleach and I are moving closer to the bridge to find out who is responsible for all this. We plan on being discreet,» you add before she can demand you do just that. «We need information if we are going to make a plan for what to do about… all this.»

«Mistress,» Perfect Storm interrupts, «Analysis complete. Communication outside barrier prevented. Passage of physical objects not tested but low probability. In addition…» It trails off, and that sends a cold shiver down your spine. Your Device has only hesitated on a few rare circumstances, and as best you can recall, it never meant anything good. «Structure of barrier similar to Recursion Field. Parahuman effect not impossible, but current readings suggest magical source.»

«That's not good,» Samantha says into the ensuing silence.

"Alright, let's go—" Laura stops when she turns to look at you, and you hold up a hand for silence.

«I need you to do me a favor, Sam. I want Dragon's input on this, but if we can't contact the outside, bringing her in right now will make it obvious to Cailleach who 'Aunt Diana' really is. I know it won't be as bad as unmasking her for real, but she wanted that chassis so she could have normal experiences, and attaching her identity to it would interfere with that. Reach out to her and tell her to call me if she's willing to take that risk.»

You feel the telepathic connection go silent, and you look back at Laura to find the other girl staring at you. "What the hell was that? You looked like you were asleep or something."

That is an issue you do not feel like explaining right now, so you keep your answer to the bare minimum. "Samantha and I have a way of communicating silently. I needed to fill her in on what we are doing while she tries to round up civilians. It's a useful trick like that."

"Sure…" Laura does not look convinced, but she nonetheless starts moving again towards the bridge leading into and out of the resort.

«Dragon says she trusts your judgement. Mostly because she already realized she can't reach any of her suits or anything else. She's working on getting access to the security system right now.»

The ball is in your court again, and you nibble on your lip. Maybe it would be best to see what's going on with your own two eyes before revealing Dragon's secret. After all, if this is all the doing of one upstart villain, it should not be that hard to blast him or her to kingdom come and continue your vacation in peace.

Crossing part of the parking lot and stopping behind another hedge, you peer through the branches and feel your jaw drop.

"What the hell?" whispers Laura beside you.

"Perfect Storm, call Samantha and Dragon. Now."

"You're calling who now?"

You ignore her and keep your eyes on the bridge. What you are looking at is not a lone villain or a gang. It is practically an army. You can only guess at their numbers, but you would not place it as less than thirty and probably more like forty. They are also divided into different groups, and though some of them are mingling back and forth, it is easy to pick out who belongs to which group.

At the front is a group in thick, jagged armor. Each one is painted black and red and orange, and you cannot help the upwelling of irrational anger that these criminals are stealing your color scheme! They have the swagger of idiots who feel they are invulnerable, and you itch to prove them dreadfully wrong.

Behind them is the largest group, though not by much. These people all wear sleeker outfits primarily in blue and purple, and mixed among them are a number of shadowy figures that have to be one of the cape's powers. The more you watch, the easier it is to see that they are the ones who are primarily mingling with the other groups, and interestingly are rebuffed more often than not.

The third group look like they walked out of a weird pride parade, their costumes all pink and white and covered in feathers. No matter how flamboyant they look, they also have expressions of utmost focus, and immediately you want to peg them as the most dangerous group.

You cannot do so, however, because that honor falls to the capes in the middle. Their outfits are ghastly, red like blood and festooned with bones and spikes and blades, except for one cape who looks like a reptilian rhino. Most people would assume those bones are fake; they would be wrong. Alone out of all the approaching capes you recognize the group, and you are not ashamed of the fear that fills you. You could hardly be a Brockton Bay native and not have heard of the horrors of the goddamn Teeth.

After that fright, the other two groups are far less impressive. Several of the villains wear body armor and carry assault weapons, which really makes you curious. The last group hangs closest to the back with a couple of capes from the first and third groups, and these do not have a unifying theme, marking them as separate from all the rest.

Two screens appear in the few seconds you are looking at the threat coming for you, the left occupied by Samantha while the right shows Dragon's digital avatar. "Did you find the cape responsible for this?" Dragon asks. Her voice earns a short gasp from Laura, who ignores her lack of mask and just stares at the screen. You do not understand why she is this surprised; you told her you spend a lot of time with the world's foremost Tinker. Or did she just not believe you?

A question for another time.

"Capes. Plural." You wince. "Really plural. I'm sending you a video feed. I recognize the Teeth, but I don't know who the other gangs are or why they're working with the Teeth in the first place. Or even how they're here at all. I thought they got wiped out during the breakout from Brockton Bay."

"Only the Butcher died, and that one didn't stick," Samantha tells you. "The rest of them just up and vanished. How they managed that trick, though, I don't know."

"No one did. Not until now." You switch your gaze to Dragon's screen. Whatever is causing her to speak in such a bleak voice has to be bad, and sure enough her avatar has panic painted all over her face. "They didn't leave voluntarily. They were taken."

"Who could take them?"

"The group they're with now. Do you see the theme of their costumes? They are all modeled after something. Behemoth. Leviathan. The Simurgh." Your eyes grow wide, and she nods. "That isn't just the Teeth. It's the Fallen. The Simurgh family specifically is awash in Masters, and they have a habit of kidnapping and brainwashing other capes, even members of the Protectorate and Wards. The paramilitary individuals with them are probably their unpowered members. They tend to be used as foot soldiers."

"And the last group?" Samantha asks, her eyes focused on something off-screen.

"No telling. Perhaps capes they Mastered on the way here."

"What the flipping hell are the Fallen doing here of all places?" Laura says in a squeak. For all that she is an experienced cape, it is clear she is not eager in the slightest to tangle with some of the big dogs of the American villain scene. Not that you blame her.

You wonder the same thing as well. Your first thought is that they are coming after you, but despite the barrier around you being magical in nature, the idea that you are their sole target is too hard to believe. Maybe if Cassiel really had been a child in the Fallen's possession, you could see it, but not with how things are in reality.

"I expect they are lashing out." You look back at Dragon in confusion. "The Simurgh is dead. Leviathan was driven back not even a week ago. After their gods were battered around like that, they are going after revenge on anyone they can."

"Why would they come here, though?" repeats Laura. "There are bigger cities they could have attacked closer to where they live. New Orleans. Houston. Or if they want to do something in Florida, Orlando is just a few hours away and has a lot more vulnerable people. Kids and shit. It's a much better target."

You aim a glare in her direction for that suggestion. Attacking anywhere is bad, let alone somewhere where there are a lot of innocent children!

"Spoken like someone who has never dealt with the Disney Corporation's capes," Dragon says in a dry tone. At your raised eyebrow, she continues, "Disney has two different corporate teams. One is all flash and sparkle, essentially harmless but good for attracting positive attention from the media. The other works with their security teams. I have reason to suspect that this second team is made up of villains with murder charges that Disney is all but granting them immunity from, but we can't prove it. That's a topic for another day.
Moral of this story: Don't mess with the mouse!
"Samantha, get some people to help you barricade the restaurant. It looks like they're splitting up. They will likely go after the unlocked buildings first, so that should buy you some time. Taylor, come back here to the activities center. We need to come up with a plan for how to get everyone to safety."

"Why don't we just shoot them now instead? They're all together right now," you point out. "If we get rid of them, the problem's solved."

"Do you really think that is a good idea? With the variety of powers they have at their disposal together like this, the chances of one of them being a counter to high-rated Blasters goes up almost to certainty. All you would be doing is putting yourself in grave danger for no reward."

"I, uh, think Dragon might be right on this one," Laura agrees. "I'm more worried about Kayleigh. She said she was going to the spa this morning, so she's separated from everything else."

"Cassiel is still in the suite, too," you whisper. She does not exactly have the best spells with which to fight back and defend herself, so she will be helpless if the Fallen attack her. Or, perhaps even worse, she might try to protect herself by revealing that she is Ziz, making her an object of their devotion. You are not sure what you are more afraid of, but neither outcome is good.

"I'm turning on the security alarms and sending a message that everyone lock down whatever building they are in. It should buy them some time."

"Except if the Fallen want revenge as much as you think, they won't let a locked door stop them for long," Samantha says. "Let me see if I can organize these people, and we might be able to make a break for it. Especially if Taylor can swing by and provide cover."

"You can take care of yourself, though," Laura points out, her voice becoming shrill. "Kayleigh can't."

"We could split up," you remind her. "You find Kayleigh and get her to safety, while we do something else to stop them."

"You're the one who said splitting up was a dumb idea, remember? And that was before we found out it was the Fallen!" She takes a deep breath, then another, and then she whispers, "I can't take on a group like that on my own. My power isn't strong enough. And I don't have my team here for backup. I can't protect her from this by myself."

"I don't have backup, either," you remind her. You told her that you would watch each other's back, though, and the danger is far more real than you expected when you made that proposal.

Forty Fallen to fight, a bunch of civilians to protect, and only a scared villain at your side. You are never going on vacation again.


This should be all sorts of fun.

Apparently Ward went deep into the ins and outs of the Fallen. If you haven't read that yet and are worried about spoilers, don't be; I haven't read it either and have no plans to do so, so while I might look up their powers from the Worm Wiki, any personalities that are demonstrated will be my own creation.

Anyway, your choices for what to do next are:

[ ] Attack the Fallen now and stop the problem in its tracks
-[ ] Battle plan?
[ ] Retreat to the activity center and make a plan with Dragon
[ ] Evacuate Samantha, Missy, and civilians in the restaurant
[ ] Rescue Kayleigh at the spa
[ ] Rescue Cassiel in the suites

This is one of those situations where time is of the essence. Like with Arc 10, all these events will progress simultaneously, so whichever you pick is going to be under your control while the others are getting worse. Except obviously for attacking right now, and we would just have to see how that goes. Dice will probably be involved.

 

[Silently Watches]

[] Rescue Kayleigh at the spa
-[] Alter your costume
-[] Use Laura to slow the Fallen down


Suntan 13.7

Watching the Fallen as they start to split up into mixed groups, part of you desperately wants to go out guns blazing. Right now they are still clumped together, and you know that this is the best – possibly the only – opportunity you will have to blast them all. If you let them go, you will have to go hunting them down a few capes at a time. That will take far longer and will put all the civilians within the resort at risk.

And yet…

You look over at Dragon's screen. She knows more about your capabilities than anyone but Samantha. Even Tim knows less, either because he does not feel that he needs a full list or because he knows he can ask Dragon for whatever he needs to know at the moment. Not only is she knowledgeable about your abilities, she is a member of the Guild. Her entire job is dealing with S-class threats, the worst of the worst. She was worried about you fighting the Dragonslayers, her personal nemeses, but ever since then she has not once told you not to get in a fight with anyone specific. That even she advises caution against the Fallen is telling.

A glance back at the Endbringer cult has you gritting your teeth. "Dragon, of all the Fallen in front of me, who are the ones we need to worry about the most?"

"…All of them?" You give her a glare, but she is not apologetic about that slightly sarcastic retort. "Normal PRT procedure would say the ones in white because the Simurgh family often has Master powers, but right now we're in an enclosed space and we can't reach anyone on the outside. The weighs the scales more to the Behemoth and Leviathan capes because they can cause more direct damage. Don't rule out the capes in the back, either. Most likely they are victims, but you would be surprised how often we hear rumors about villain groups voluntarily working with monsters like the Fallen or the Slaughterhouse 9 when they were still around."

"Not exactly what I was asking," you say with a sigh. "I realize that all of them are dangerous in their own way. What I meant was which ones are the most dangerous. The biggest Blaster or Master, for instance."

Dragon looks off screen for a moment as though rechecking the feeds. "There are several we have to watch for. The Behemoth group as a whole has Brutes, Blasters, and a few Shakers. I see Eligos and Ifrit, both of whom can cause destruction in a wide area, and I think one of them might be Toro. He was a Protectorate hero, a powerful Brute, who was caught and brainwashed; the Austin branch lost half their number trying to recapture him shortly after he was taken, which is why they were folded into the Houston branch." You blink at that, but before you can say anything she continues, "In the Leviathan group are Seir and Empusa; he is the one creating the shadow people you see and can teleport between them while she can create a sphere that lets her and people near her fly and duplicate objects. I can't see anyone in the Simurgh group that I recognize, but treat all of them as dangerous. You and Samantha may be invulnerable to Masters, but that does not mean the people around you are. I don't know any of the others off the top of my head, and I can't access the Protectorate's database. They could have any power under the sun."

"Wait, wait, wait," Laura says, waving her hands as though she intends to ward off the information physically. "I know the Fallen are tough shit, but they killed half a Protectorate branch in a single fight?"

"It was more of a running battle with multiple engagements, and some of the heroes were taken rather than killed, but otherwise yes."

That is actually worse than the situation you imagined. Thanks to fighting the Dragonslayers twice, once being attacked and once being the attacker, you are familiar with how useful ambushes are. The Fallen luring the Austin Protectorate into an ambush and killing half of them? Bad. Clashing with them multiple times and being able to Master yet more members of the group in the process? Much, much worse. "Tell me it took every single member of Fallen to do that," you plead.

Dragon shakes her head.

"Fine, attacking them now is out of the question." The Fallen have five targets in mind if the way they have split up is any indication, and there seem to be members of each family within each group. Without knowing their powers, using Recursion Field is a crap shoot; you risk leaving several of them in the real world without any heroes or heroic-leaning villains around to protect them. It may still be the best chance you have of limiting casualties. «Storm, from what you figured out analyzing this dome, is Recursion Field a possibility?»

«Structure of dome similar to Recursion Field. Hypothesize spatial effect rather than dimensional. Probability of interference high.»

Fantastic. Just wonderful. «Any guesses on how to break the dome, then?»

«Assuming structural integrity of Recursion Field, requires high-power bombardment. Solar Wrath likely not sufficient. Ragnarök effective, but effect on surroundings unpredictable. Assume high lethality. Alternate option, terminate mage casting spell.»

So no. You sigh long and low. "This is just great. Really. Please tell me we got lucky and the security for this place is made up of ex-Marines or something."

"No such luck, I'm afraid." Dragon really does look apologetic about that. "Most of the security is guards with little to no prior training. They are little more than mall cops; useful for breaking up fights between drunk people, not so much against any kind of cape. From what the head of security told me, about a quarter of them have sidearms while the rest are unarmed. He claims to have a cape on call, but with how cagey he is being about it, either he is lying or it is someone on the other side of this dome. Resorts like this don't often have need to fend off villains."

"Which means we're on our own." Dragon gives you a small nod. "Okay. We'll come back to you in a minute. We have something to do first."

She looks like she is about to argue, but in the end she settles for telling you simply, "Don't do anything stupid."

She should know better than to ask for something like that. Dismissing both screens, you consider your options briefly. If you are planning to fight in close proximity with Cailleach, she will figure out aspects of your 'powers' quickly enough. More importantly, you do not want random people who do not already know you are a cape identifying you in the future. "Storm, can you seal up my clothes without making enough light that the Fallen will notice?"

"Who are you talking—"

"Affirmative."

Perfect Storm's response catches Laura by surprise. Your shirt and shorts glow a dull orange and slowly fade from sight, leaving you clad only in your bikini. You surely are not about to try saving people dressed like this, but you can not use your normal costume either. "Change my Barrier Jacket to something else. Something that isn't obvious as me."

Waves of light creep over your body. Not waves like those you can see on the beach, but more like the edge of a flame creeping over a sheet of paper. What is left in its wake is not what you would choose to wear normally, but Perfect Storm certainly cannot be accused of leaving you recognizable. Stiff boots that look like etched obsidian are pulled over the legs of a form-fitting sleeveless catsuit. You have no hat on your head, but you can feel the weight of a heavy domino mask hiding your eyes. Looking down at the plunging V-neck of the outfit, you mutter, "Maybe this could show a little less skin?"

"Recalibrating." The light moves over you again, and when it finishes you find that you are now also wearing a pair of gloves that come up to the middle of your upper arms. A blue diamond identical to Perfect Storm's normal form sits on the back of your right hand and glows as it asks, "Acceptable?"

A sigh is your first response. "Yeah, yeah. It's fine."

"That looks… different," Laura says in a strangled voice. "Do you, uh, plan to always look like that?"

You blush all the way down to the cleavage on display and cross your arms over your chest. "No, I don't. This is just so I can't be identified. And don't call me by my normal name. Either of them."

"What should I call you, then?"

You think about that for a second, the image of the consuming flame sticking in your head. "As long as we're here, call me Cinder. Storm, track down Kayleigh's phone and teleport us there."

"You can teleport, too?"

You grab Laura's hand when your casting sigil appears beneath your feet. A couple of seconds pass, and the inside of a room becomes visible. Glancing around at all the cubbies surrounding you, you blink and admit, "I have no idea where we are. We were supposed to appear close to Kayleigh."

"You've never been to a rich bitch spa before, have you?" Laura asks. "All your stuff goes in a cubby. The only thing people are going to be wearing in there is their underwear under a robe, if that."
Disclaimer: I've never been to a rich bitch spa either. Suspend your disbelief.
"That's going to make this more difficult." You had hoped to teleport in, grab Kayleigh and everyone else nearby, and get out of here to the activity center. They might resist doing that if everyone's naked. "Um. Okay, new plan. I'm the one who looks like a cape. If I walk in and say villains are attacking, that should motivate people to get moving. I need you to keep the Fallen from getting inside."

Laura stares at you with her mouth hanging slightly open. "Uh huh. And how am I supposed to do that?"

"Do you think you can freeze the door shut?" Her mouth snaps closed, and you give her a disbelieving look. "Did you think I meant for you to stand outside and fight them off single-handedly or something? That's crazy. I mean, I want them to pay for what they're trying to do, don't get me wrong," you admit after a moment, "but now's not the time. First we need to get Kayleigh and everyone else in this building out of the line of fire."

Your companion grabs a baseball cap from one of the nearby cubbies and a small towel from a stack, then throws a robe over her shoulder. "Not everyone can put on a costume and change it at will," she reminds you as she runs out the far door.

Some people cannot put on a costume at all, you tell yourself, and they are the ones you need to worry about. Putting on your best game face behind the volcanic mask, you open the door closer to you and step inside.

Thankfully for your sanity, everyone who is in your light of sight are wearing robes and not walking around in the nude. A cape barging into the spa is not enough to grab their immediate attention, but you have something that will. A single Flare Shooter shines bright enough to blind you if your Barrier Jacket did not filter out the excess light, and you let that light fill the room before snuffing it out. "Can I have your attention?!"

That earns you several panicked screams, and you roll your eyes when the nearest staff member cringes away from you. Everyone in Philadelphia has become accustomed enough to your costume that you had forgotten what it feels like to be mistaken for a villain on first sight. It was not something you wanted to relive. "My name is Cinder. I'm a hero. A group of villains is approaching this building, and we need to get out of here."

"Why should we believe you?" a bedazzled woman demands in a shrill voice. Apparently here clothes are optional but gaudy jewelry is a necessity because she clutches her massive necklace as though you were reaching out to grab it. "You could be a villain trying to trick us!"

A bunch of Endbringer cultists are headed this way, and this dumb bimbo thinks you are the enemy? In your frustration Missy's comment from yesterday feels less like a morbid joke and more like an accurate summation of the situation, and you find yourself paraphrasing it. "Lady, if I was a villain, I would have blown your head off already for talking back to me like that." She lets out a strangled gasp, and you look around. "Anyone else have any stupid accusations? No? Good. Let's get you over to the activity center before the villains who do want to hurt you show up." Panning your gaze around the room, you finally find Kayleigh sitting in a chair with her feet in a small tub, several other girls and women and one lone guy all with their own feet in their own tubs. You point to the group as a whole and call out, "All of you getting pedicures, you're up first. Get in the circle." Your sigil spreads out beneath your feet for emphasis.

«Plug in the coordinates for the activity center,» you order your Device. Better to get that necessary step over with sooner than later.

The gaggle of pamperees looks at each other for a long second, but then Kayleigh is the first to stand and start walking over. "What's going on at the activity center?" she asks.

That is actually a good question, and you realize that you might be pursuing this just slightly wrong. You are the only person here who is fully in the know, and while you are trying to evacuate everyone before the Fallen get here, no one else here knows anything other than that a dark-dressed cape is demanding they leave. Dragon told you she was broadcasting a message but not what exactly it said or what information she shared with them. It is entirely possible all she told them was that there were villains in the resort and to lock their doors. If that is the case, then they would be right not to believe the strange cape from the start.

Kayleigh being so trusting – in hindsight, perhaps overly trusting – and following your commands is in reality a second chance to make your case and put their fears to rest.

"It's where security is assembling and where the few heroes who are already here are coordinating our efforts. The Fallen are attacking the resort." That gets you the reaction you were originally expecting, and you yell over the hubbub, "They are coming from the bridge, which means this is one of the first places they will attack. I'm going to teleport all of you out of here, but we're working against the clock, people. Get a move on."

Everybody starts moving around, but most of them are doing so in panic. Several rush in your general direction only to go through a number of doors on the same wall where you came from. "I guess they're more nervous about being undressed than they are about getting killed," Kayleigh says from her new place next to you. She looks you up and down and grins. In a whisper, she asks, "And 'Cinder'? You planning on keeping this new look back home?"

You roll your eyes and shake your head. Kayleigh is not being too trusting; she just somehow has the ability to recognize you even in a different costume. "I don't really care about their embarrassment." Reaching out your hands, you grab a couple of fleeing women with telekinesis and physically drag them towards you. Moving multiple people is a strain on your spell's limits, but you get them in the circle and sit them down on the ground before catching someone else. Apparently the sight of a cape dragging people around with their powers is enough to get through to the staff, and they add their shouted orders to go to you join the din.

Two options are before you, and you look over the dozen or so people who are huddled nearby. You would rather take everyone in one trip, but a deeply cynical part of you wants to reward the people who have their priorities straight, namely that being half-naked and alive is better than dressed and dead. You also have to admit to yourself that the only person here you know and who therefore is highest on your own priority list is Kayleigh, who is already well within teleport range. Laura would surely prefer you take her out of danger as soon as possible; with your group being the only capes within this bubble you know about, you will need to keep her goodwill if you want to ensure she fights alongside you. "Jumping out in five seconds!" you shout. "Four! Three!"

The countdown draws several more people to you, and if they are all wearing the blue polos of the resort's staff, you are not about to throw stones right now. 'One' passes your lips, and you shake your head in disgust. The spa is huge, maybe with a hundred people inside, and you only have twenty of them close enough to evacuate. You stop holding the spell back and allow reality to fall away in a curtain of orange light. When the light cuts out, it reveals several security people backing away and a few reaching to their waists as though to grab their guns. "First load of evacuees from the spa!" you call out, which should hopefully be enough to spare you yet more unneeded drama. "Security will direct you to the safest location. Follow their orders to the letter." You look to the side to find another clump of guards nearby and tell them in a quieter voice, "There are another eighty or so people in the spa still. I'm bringing all of them to this location."

"O-Okay," one flustered guard answers.

Light flares around you again, this time wrapping tightly around you so that you are the only person sent hurtling through space. Your disappearance must have reinforced the idea that no, you are not kidding about this whole evacuation thing, because this time it is a horde of women wearing shirts or pants but not both and one woman who only put on her shoes who crowd around you. Even with all these people, you can still hear others hurriedly putting on clothes in the changing rooms. Or maybe they are taking photos of the approaching villains, you really cannot say for sure. "Five seconds," you tell the room again, and soon you are escorting the next group out.

When you return again, you find Laura looking ridiculous in her hasty costume and wearing a worried expression. "We have a problem," she says without preamble.

"Were you able to freeze the doors shut?"

She nods. "Yeah, but once they couldn't get through the door, they started breaking through the windows and the wall. I froze a few sections of the hall, but we have no more than a minute before they get in here and probably a lot less."

"The Fallen are right outside! Get your asses over here or I will leave you behind! Last jump, ten seconds!"

"Is Kayleigh…?" Laura asks as you anxiously count down the seconds.

"First group I 'ported out."

This set of people coming to you now are fully clothed, but at least they are finally convinced that this is a dangerous situation. They do not appear to know what to do about the cape in the shoddy costume beside you, but most of them seem to have come to the conclusion that they have wasted enough time already.

Screams come from behind you, and you turn around to see the farthest changing room door get blown off its hinges. Two men step out. The first, wearing blood-red armor with assorted human remains, you recognize as Vex, a member of the Teeth with the ability to fill a room with innumerable razor-sharp forcefields. Not someone you want nearby in a hostage situation. The second you do not know, though you doubt many capes wear blue-dyed snakeskin jackets. He looks at you, and you can just imagine the grin he wears behind his face mask. "Hey, pretty pretty. How 'bout you send the trash away and come on over here?"

The shiver of disgust that runs down your spine is apparently enough of a sign for your Device to start the teleportation process.

Whoever the creep cape is holds up his left hand to show something glinting within. That something or somethings streak toward you, cutting through the rising curtain and hitting some of the people you are trying to rescue if their shouts of pain are any hint.

Then you are gone.

You reappear in the activity center and immediately check on Laura. She is fine, but one of the women next to her is not. That woman instead has fallen to the ground, a blood stain growing on the trendy dress she was so desperate to put on, and you lean down to take a better look at something stuck within the wound. It looks—

You blink. It looks like a coin, one of those half-dollars that nobody ever uses. A glance shows several other people were injured by the Fallen's attack, and they too seem to have coins or something else of a similar size stuck within their bodies. "We need a medic over here!" you shout out.

Guards are quick to come to the aid of this last group, and Laura taps you on your shoulder. "I'm going to check on her," she tells you, leaving no doubt in your mind who the 'her' in question is. You give the villainess a nod and watch her pull off the robe she used to cover her clothes before turning away. You have something else you need to do, namely find out what other disasters have been going on.

Perfect Storm easily leads you to what you have to assume is the true security center, and pushing open a door you find Dragon still in her Diana chassis but with holographic screens surrounding her and a glowing keyboard at her fingers. More surprising is the young blonde girl sitting in another chair against the wall. "Cassie? You got out of the suites okay?"

"She did," Dragon replies instead, an angry bite to her voice for some reason. "She's also grounded." The Tinker turns around and stares. "…What are you wearing?"

"Blame Perfect Storm," you answer with a sigh. "I got most of the people out of the spa. It was like herding cats, and now the Fallen are for sure inside the building. How bad are things going everywhere else?"

"Overall? About as badly as can be expected. We've already lost several guards. I was trying to organize them where they could do the most good, but it seems some of them didn't like my suggestions and decided to do things their own way," she says with a disgruntled sigh. "It probably didn't help that it was just Diana Richter, computer engineer, giving them those orders and not Dragon. We're down ten, and there were only ninety to start with."

That is far from good.

She nods at the thought that must be painted across your face. "The restaurant where Samantha and Missy are holed up is actually fine for right now. The Fallen attacking noticed the barricaded windows and are acting cautiously, though I wouldn't count on that lasting. The big problem, though, is headed towards the suites." She turns one of the screens so you can better appreciate the group of eight capes walking through the resort, a trail of civilians in swimwear following along behind them. "Some people apparently decided they didn't want to leave the pool, and one of the Masters got to them. They are both hostages and assailants now."

"Spa, restaurant, and suites. That's three groups, but I saw them split off into five. Where are the others?"

"That I don't know. The cameras don't cover the entire resort, so I keep losing them here and there. They could be anywhere. And that," she says with a grimace, "is what worries me the most."


Was that the most efficient evacuation ever? No, but there was really little you could have done vote-wise to change that. I am a firm believer in the mind-boggling stupidity of the human race, particular when people are acting out of fear.

That's the end of round 1. You have two more before I throw another curveball at you. Where is the next fire you need to put out?

[ ] Work on how to get information through the dome
[ ] Attack the Fallen outside the spa
[ ] Evacuate the restaurant along with Samantha and Missy
[ ] Attack the Fallen outside the restaurant
[ ] Evacuate the suites before the Fallen arrive
[ ] Attack the Fallen headed towards the suites
[ ] Hunt down one of the other Fallen groups

 

[Silently Watches]

[] Attack the Fallen headed towards the suites
-[] Ask Cassiel to use Loom of Lachesis and tell us the best way to go for this fight
[] Evacuate the civilians to the activity center


Suntan 13.8

You look at the screen showing the group headed towards the suites, how the civilians are right behind them close enough to be hit by anything anyone throws at them. They are led by a woman with purple hair and a tight bodysuit with blue and copper-colored panels, and behind her two people in all-white with hoods and a man wearing tactical armor and carrying an assault rifle. They in turn are followed by two other capes you do not recognize but expect are not part of the Fallen's normal forces, the first with a motorcycle helmet and padded cloth armor and the second with an enviably large breastplate and gold armor plates running down the front and back of her shiny black costume all the way to her crotch. The last two figures between the rest of the capes and the hostages both wear red armor, one bearing spikes and the other skulls and blades. "What do we know about these capes?"

"Not as much as I'd like, but more than some of the other groups." Diana taps on her keyboard, and lines with text come off three of the capes. "These are the only ones I can give you much information on. The woman in the front is Empusa. As I mentioned earlier, she's part of the Leviathan family, and she generates a bubble around herself that lets her and anyone near her fly. It also lets her duplicate objects, and the copies last for roughly five minutes. The capes right behind her are part of the Simurgh family. One of them is presumably the Master who captured the civilians behind them, but I can't tell you which one it is or what the other one does. Next—"

Diana cuts herself off when Cassie hops out of her chair and walks closer so she can peer up at the screen. You can tell Dragon is still unhappy with her, but clearly the Tinker is just as curious what the former Endbringer is looking for. "The Master is the cape on the right, with the face mask draped down his chest. The other, wearing the chain across his chest? His power is defensive in nature." She scrunches her face up and shakes her head. "I cannot recall what it is in detail, but I do know it is a defense."

"How do you even know that?" you ask.

She looks away. "There are many things I know, if I have reason to remember them."

You turn back to Dragon, who shrugs helplessly. "Don't ask me. Moving on, I don't recognize the capes after the ones in white. Behind them, though, are Ifrit and Spree."

"Ifrit is the one you said was the pyrokinetic, right?"

"Correct. He's a very strong pyrokinetic at that, capable of releasing flames both in a large cone or a shockwave. You are immune to fire, but other people aren't," she reminds you as though you had somehow forgotten that normal people burn. "Spree you have heard of as well. One of the Teeth, he creates clones at an extremely rapid rate. The downside is that they degrade quickly, too, so they will only be intelligent enough to attack for ten to twenty seconds before they collapse."

Another screen appears next to the one you are looking at, and Samantha's face is tight with tension or anger or both. «Dragon – hey, Taylor – these people are getting antsy. Missy and I have barricaded it as well as we can, but nobody likes the idea of bunkering down while being surrounded by villains. Especially since we have a few people from Kansas City who recognized them as the Fallen, which has made everything worse. I think we need to relocate them before the Fallen try breaching the building anyway.»

"I agree with Sam," you tell Diana. "It might be for the best to bring them here. Yes, we're putting all our eggs in one basket, but at least there aren't any Fallen around here."

"Not that we know of, anyway, and that's the part that worries me." Diana sighs. "But the chance of danger is better than the certainty of it. Okay. Evacuate them over here."

"There are still people in the suites," you add, "and they won't have a chance if we can't stop the Fallen headed towards them. They're too spread out to evacuate. I just wish we had a better idea of what those other capes' powers are. I don't know what a Simurgh-themed defensive power would even look like."

"We could find out." You and Diana both look doubtfully at Cassie, though she weathers the disbelief with aplomb. "I can use my magic to simulate any number of potential futures. I have more than enough range to determine their abilities."

That would be useful, but before you can give her the go-ahead Diana cuts in, "You told me you have to recover from using that ability. Right now every second counts."

"What if I saw it, too?" The Unison Devices turn to you. You give them a shrug. "Cassiel, can you use that ability while in Unison?"

"I… should be capable of doing so, yes." She glows and shrinks back down to her normal size before phasing through your chest. Something pinches as she shifts it out of her way, and you take a deep breath. "You comfortable in there?"

«More than you might expect. I will guide you to see what I see. First,» she says, taking on a lecturing tone, «close your eyes and take easy breaths. It may help if you sit in the chair.»

You give Dragon a shrug and settle down in the chair. Closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing, you let your arms and shoulders relax. "What's next?" you ask the darkness.

«Now allow me to expand your mind.»

The darkness behind your eyelids explodes into light, and you throw yourself backwards as though to get away from it. The sudden white slowly gains definition, and you realize you are not surrounded by light at all. You are in the middle of a net of glowing thread, wrapped so tight you cannot see anything beyond it.

"Will you walk into my parlor?"

You turn around slowly to find Cassiel floating at the level of your head, a wide smile on her face. The scolding you are about to give her for using the opening line from 'The Spider and the Fly' fades away as you notice it. "You're becoming more expressive with your face." Her grin is wiped away, and you shake your head. "No, it's actually kind of cute. You don't have to hide yourself away like that."

Cassiel tilts her head away so it is covered by her fluffy hair. "We are on a time limit, yes?" she asks in a squeaky voice. "Let us focus on the Fallen."

"Okay, okay." You look around you again, searching for anything that might help explain what you are looking at. "This is the future? Or what it looks like to you, anyway?"

"Correct. These are all the possibilities of every action that can can be taken. You give your spells their own names; this I call the Loom of Lachesis. It is little surprise you cannot understand what you see." She flutters to the back of your head. "I will help."

She shoves your head forwards, and you plummet into the web. A blink, and you are in your body, though you are standing in front of Diana rather than sitting in the chair. Your left arm lifts without your assent and gives her a salute. "Storm, take me to those coordinates," your lips order. Light surrounds you, and you are teleported to an empty building.

"Security depot," Cassiel whispers into your ear as you reach for the doorknob.

The building explodes, and you are thrown backwards into a brick wall. A glance up shows Empusa floating in the air, Ifrit and the guy with the assault rifle both pointing at your. Your body jumps out of the way of the rain of bullets and the wash of flames, and you duck behind another building. A dozen Flare Shooters appear and fly their way—

Everything in your line of sight shatters like glass, and the pieces jostle against each other for a moment before coming back together. Something slams into your back, the blow throwing you into the air for a wild ride before your body starts flying again. You spin around to find a human figure no more than three inches tall flying towards you. Sliding out of its way, it hits the wall and sends cracks through the material. A loud 'pop' behind you, and you spin to block the blade of an axe from coming any nearer. The cape in the fabric armor and motorcycle helmet is not fast enough to deal with your retaliatory punch to the face—

The world shatters again, and this time it is the tiny cape who dodges your punch and smacks you on her own. Another pop sounds from above you, and immediately afterwards you are caught in a torrent of flame. You soar upwards with a snarl and flick your wrist to deploy Perfect Storm in its staff form, the glowing scythe blade already active. A swing through the air—

Shatter.

Ifrit no longer stands on the roof. Instead a dozen copies of the same cape with skulls and blades charge you, Empusa and her unpowered companion both pointing guns at you and firing.

"Stop!"

The world freezes in place. Everything around you shifts five feet to the left, leaving you floating in the air staring at your own body being dogpiled by Spree clones. Cassiel lands on your shoulder. "What the hell is going on?" you demand. "What's that whole shattering thing?"

"Interference. Another parahuman's precognition is affecting my own, and mine is doing the same to theirs. With every adjustment we make it alters the other's sense of what is to come." Her expression grows cold, and her eyes become steel. "Oriax."

"What?"

"That is the other parahuman from the Mathers family. Oriax. His ability is precognitive but reactive. A danger sense."

"How do you know all that?" you ask in shock. The hardness in her eyes fades, but you press on, "You don't just know his power. You know his name. How?!"

Cassiel hops off your shoulder and floats in the air. "I had extensive time between my attacks. Some of that time I used to plan, but for the rest, particularly after I began chafing at my chains, I needed some means of diversion. Something with which to entertain myself.

"Balam, Christine, whatever you wish to call her; she truly believes that I and my brothers are gods. She prayed to me with zealous devotion, and she taught the rest of her followers to do the same. It… amused me to reach out to them in dreams, just as I did with you, and encourage the belief that I was watching and proud of their accomplishments."

"No," you whisper.

Her wings droop, but she continues, "Nor did I restrain myself with praise. From time to time, I would answer their prayers. Secrets. Advice. On some occasions, even information that would aid them in the capture of other parahumans. It depended on my mood at the time."

"You're the reason they could Master so many heroes! Why?" you demand. "Why would you do that?"

She whirls around and drifts closer to your face. "Do you recall the power I claimed to possess? The ability to pull another's consciousness to me? I wished to produce a parahuman with an ability much like that. An ability that would manifest me in a new body, one without the restrictions inherent in my prior existence. I manipulated them for the exact reason I manipulated you: my freedom. I will not apologize for that."

"Maybe you won't apologize, but you will be punished. You're grounded."

"Dragon has already grounded me," she says slowly, blinking in confusion.

"I'm aware. This is worth an extra grounding." She does not seem to know what to say to that, and you force yourself to move on. If you think too hard about the fact that the capes you are fighting now are so dangerous because of one of your allies, you would be dearly tempted to break Cassiel over your knee. "Look at the future again. This time, a future where I teleport right above them and just blast them."

Your viewpoint shifts again so you are once more staring at Spree's clones, and time reverses itself. The enemies retreat from you, the building is un-exploded, and orange light is all you see. The light fades to show the street below your feet, but the Fallen are not in a nice, convenient cluster. Instead they have already spread out. The civilians scream in fright, distracting you, and something hits the back of your head and the top of your neck with bone-rattling force. The blow slams you to the ground, and you roll over to find the tiny cape coming down for another hit. A white-hot Flare Shooter appears in her path. Her screams of agony join the civilians'—

Shatter.

There is no one above you, but the motorcycle helmet guy appears with a puff of smoke and kicks you in the head.

"We should try something else."

Time rewinds again, and now you are flying at them at high speeds, Flare Blade already active. Empusa takes to the air as you come screaming down, and the glowing scythe tears through the Fallen cape with the chain around his chest—

Shatter.

Smoke wafts up from where Oriax stood, and now the other Simurgh cape stares at you with eyes glowing blue. You cannot feel his power failing to work, but you can imagine it as you run him through—

Shatter.

The Master is retreating, and fire and bullets pelt you in the back. The cape with the breastplate shrinks down, but not fast enough for you to drag her into the flames with your telekinesis—

Shatter.

"No, no, no."

Time rewinds.

This time you land out of sight behind a building a short distance away from the group. "Wide Area Search," you call out, a ball of red forming in your hands and spitting out red sparks. It takes thirty seconds for them to give you the complete picture, but in far less time than that people come running at you from around both sides of the building. At first you think they are running from the Fallen, but they all have the same bright blue eyes, and the ones closest to you jump up and grab you around the throat. Their strength cannot break through your Barrier Jacket, so you wait for the world to shatter again.

It does not, but fire does come raining down from above where Ifrit is no doubt being carried around by Empusa again, heedless of how the flames burn their own hostages to death.

"That's enough," you tell Cassiel, and time stops again. You sigh. "Trying to predict what this Oriax guy is going to do is impossible, isn't it?"

"It is regrettable, but I believe that is the best conclusion we can draw. Our abilities cause too much interference with the other's. What we can state with confidence is that he will know you are coming and where you will arrive before you are present."

Wonderful. You consider the fairy again. "Dragon mentioned that you need to recover from this. How long will that take?"

"Once Unison ends, it will be between sixty and ninety seconds. I cannot give you a more accurate answer. The interference has added additional strain to what is normally a simple working."

"Alright. Let's head back then."

The world around you fades to black, and you open your eyes to see Cassiel tumble out of your chest and into your hands. She is sprawled out in what is clearly an uncomfortable position, but she is too out of it to care if the little snores coming from her mouth are any indication.

"Did you learn anything useful?" Diana asks.

You shake your head. "Just that this is going to be complicated."


The following are overall tactics that were proposed in the last vote. Most of them, anyway. These – or another primary tactic if you wish to do a write-in – should be the main vote with additional details below them.

If you are the type of player who is paralyzed by fear that you're going to vote on a detailed plan that doesn't work or that makes things worse, just pick one of these by themselves. Trust me, not voting is FAR worse for the outcome of this game than a bad vote.

[ ] Fill the air with Flare Shooters like a bullet hell game
[ ] Sneak Shooters to their targets with Wide Area Search guidance
[ ] Solar Wrath to destroy everything in that general direction
[ ] Cut them down like a high-speed Grim Reaper
[ ] Surrender and convert to Endbringer worship because this is a no-win fight

 

[Silently Watches]

[] Fill the air with Flare Shooters like a bullet hell game
-[] Attempt to catch Oriax + others possible in a Temporal Sludge zone
-[] Attack from all directions

After thinking about this some more, I decided that since I am the author as well as the QM, Taylor's going to be smart enough to pick up the hints most of you guys seemed to miss from last chapter.


Suntan 13.9

You leave the sleeping Cassiel in Dragon's care and teleport to the roof of the building. Samantha and Missy are busy evacuating the restaurant, and Cailleach you want to leave here as the only other cape with any kind of combat-applicable power. You, on the other hand, are going to be headed out alone to tackle a set of villains with a precognitive power on their side.

"Did you see what Cassiel showed me?" Your Intelligent Device chimes in agreement, and you turn your gaze in the direction of the Fallen headed towards the suites. "If you have any suggestions, now's the time."

"Parahuman prophetic abilities superior to Rare Skill. No similar situation in data banks. Assume enemy Oriax will set trap."

"That's about what I figured out, yeah."

"Proposition. Spring trap. Counter with overwhelming force."

A blink, and you look down at the jewel on the back of your right hand. "Just let them attack me?"

"Simulation suggests Ifrit and unknown size-changer most consistent responses. Ifrit described as fire mage. Mistress's Barrier Jacket provides immunity. Awareness of responses disables surprise element."

That… is not the craziest idea you could come up. It is worlds better than the plan you have so far, which is nothing. "He will know where I'm coming from, but that doesn't mean I have to attack from that direction," you say, thinking your thoughts out loud. "And even if he does, if I just fill the sky with Shooters, it doesn't matter if they realize they're coming. There are more attacks than there are people to deal with them.

"The first hurdle is getting there. I can't teleport with a bunch of Flare Shooter following me, can I?"

Perfect Storm buzzes, a clear negation if there ever was one.

"So I have to fly there. On the upside, I guess that's plenty of time for them to set up a trap." Lifting off the ground, you call up two dozen Flare Shooters and let them drift along beside you. So much for keeping your powers under wraps, you think to yourself; even with the change in disguise, it would not take much effort for someone to notice the similarity. All that is left is for you to use Solar Wrath, and you might as well change back into your normal costume. "Give me directions and let's go."

Keeping three spells going at once is not a sensation you particularly like. It makes you feel like you have both stuffed wads of cotton in your head and have brain freeze from eating ice cream too fast, but despite the discomfort you feel you can still move and fight. Adding a fourth would be tipping the balance too far, though even that you have done on occasion, just never very long. That is a disappointment because keeping in mind the number of villains and hostages you need to deal with, twenty-four Shooters might not be enough.

«Approaching combat zone.»

A mental wave splits the Flare Shooters apart, half flying off to the left and the other to the right. All except for one, which you keep close at hand. If Cassiel's precognition is accurate, you already know who you plan to receive this one. Coming in at high speed, you drop onto a nearby rooftop and sweep your eyes around the intersection that is going to be your battlefield.

The most obvious question you have to ask yourself is 'where are they?'. The capes have all vanished, only the hostages and the Fallen gunman still in the street. Did Oriax's danger sense show him that the entire area was soon to become somewhere he did not want to be? Or is this part of the plan, split their capes up and force you to go inside the buildings one at a time hunting them?

If that is the trap, you are not going to fall for it. The purplish black ball of a Temporal Sludge forms in your hand, and you hurl it at the Mastered civilians as they start to scatter as well. «Once they're slowed, hit them with Shooter group B. Keep A in reserve for now.»

«Understood. Opponent incoming from left.»

You barely have time to let out the breath you had half-held in anticipation. This is what you were preparing yourself for. The time dilation spell is still falling, so you have no choice but to call up a fourth spell. "Blitz Action," you whisper. You whip around to your left, moving so quickly your eyesight cannot keep up with the rest of your body. It takes only a moment to find something you are already looking for, and the miniaturized cape does not have the reaction speed necessary to back away before your left hand lashes out and grabs her. You pull her back in, her three inches of height almost disappearing in your palm were it not for her head sticking out between two of your fingers.

Loud, slow thumps sound from the ground as the Flare Shooters you had set up specifically for the civilians blow up in slow motion, releasing far more kinetic energy than heat. You ignore them for now, your eyes instead locked on the other cape's. It is hard to see due to the differences in size, but you cannot find the same blue glow in her eyes that the hostages had in Cassiel's simulation.

Dragon was right. These capes are not Mastered the way the civilian hostages or the Teeth are. They are dumb enough that they are helping the Fallen of their own free will.

Now you are glad you kept one of the Shooters from the dozen you were calling 'group A'. It zips over, not dull and programmed for an explosion of force like the ones you hit the civilians with. It burns white-hot, and with no hesitation you shove your hand and the cape inside against the ball of mana.

It is not set to be lethal, so you have no need to fear she will die, but a five thousand degree fireball should torch the wings you can feel desperately fluttering against your fingers. She screams when the heat roasts the back of her costume, and while you do not feel satisfaction per se from doing this, it would be hard for you to come up with any guilt. She is the one who decided to get in bed with the Fallen. She brought this upon herself.

That is one cape down, and the gunman and the hostages should be out of commission for the moment. Now you can spring your own trap. «Deploy Shooter group A inside the nearby buildings. They can come out to meet me.» The remaining Flare Shooters punch through the windows of the nearby buildings and explode inside, the heat being unleashed more than enough to set the insides ablaze. There is no way you are going to dance to their precog's tune. If they want a fight, it will be on your terms.

But who will they send? Ifrit, Spree, or—?

A pop sounds behind you.

You are already spinning around, the Flare Shooter that was burning the size-changer following your fist as you move to punch him with it. It is almost a regret that you do not have your staff out, as the scythe blade would undoubtedly be a good way of cutting him down. Non-fatally, of course. You are not making it that easy for them to escape their well-deserved punishments.

The teleporter vanishes in a puff of black smoke only to reappear next to you. Then he is on your other side. Behind. In front. To the left. Ahead and to the right. He disappears as soon as he arrives, filling the air with a smokescreen and persistent noise. He is trying to hide something, but what?

Something grabs your left hand, the same hand keeping hold of the size-changer, and that is your moment to strike. The Flare Shooter moves to that hand and explodes, the now beach ball–sized fireball scorching both the teleporter and the shrinker. You toss the shrinking cape at the teleporter, and he vanishes again before you can get a good look at just how much damage you inflicted.

Not enough to keep him from escaping, but if he and the other cape he was trying to rescue volunteered to help the Fallen, perhaps it is enough to convince them to keep their heads down and their hands to themselves for the rest of this fight.

Flames leap up the side of the building on which you stand, and you walk closer to the edge to find Ifrit trying to burn the building down and you with it. You shake you head and point your finger at him as your telekinesis latches on. You have never lifted anything quite so heavy as this villain and his armor, and it strains your control, but you get him at your eye level and then higher still. He snarls something you cannot make out and explodes. The shockwave of fire washes over you like warm rain.

"Isn't that cute?" you ask him sarcastically. Calling up a segment of spell code, you use Ring Bind to lock his arms and legs into place. That will keep him out of your hair for an hour.

An explosion sounds off in the distance, which nudges you out of your complacency. There are other villains on this island, and you have not finished with your own group. You check off a mental checklist: Ifrit pinned in place, the teleporter and size-changer away, the gunman on the ground, and a glance around you shows Spree laying on the ground outside one of the buildings trying to cough up a lung. The fires may not have done much damage to him, but the smoke sure did.

That leaves Empusa, Oriax, and the Master still running around.

You hop down to the ground and stride over to gunman. This time your telekinesis is easily up to the task of picking him up, and a couple of slaps make him open his eyes and focus on you. "Where are Empusa and the others hiding?" you demand.

He spits in your face.

That was uncalled for. Conjuring another Flare Shooter, you hold the fireball up to his cheek. "I'm not afraid of burning you bit by bit until you tell me what I want to know," you bluff. You are obviously not the kind of person to torture anyone, even a member of the Fallen – you are a hero, after all – but that does not mean he has to know that. "You might as well save yourself some pain and make it easy on yourself."

"You should be afraid," he grunts, glaring at you. "You think Baphomet and Balam will forget you attacked us? You're gonna be made a breeding cow for the Families, popping out brats and spreading your legs all—"

A twitch of your hand slams him face-first into the concrete. That is enough of that. You hop back into the air and rise high enough to get a good look at the nearby area. You can not see the three missing villains, but the fact Empusa can fly and bring others with her means they likely made their escape while you were dealing with the others. As for where they are headed, your best guess is that it is the same place they were planning on attacking before you cut them off. The suites.

«Mistress, message from Dragon.»

A nod, and your Device creates a holographic screen. "How did your fight go?"

"I lost Empusa and the Simurgh capes. The others are incapacitated, for now anyway." Though whether they will stay that way is another story entirely. The Ring Bind on Ifrit has a built-in time limit, and sooner or later the gunman or Spree or both will wake up again. You are going to need some way of keeping them from rejoining the rest of the Fallen.

"Not great, but better than things were," she says after a moment. "We might need you over here sooner than later, though. I caught another of the groups on camera not far from the activity center. It does not look like they know everyone is gathering here, so it might be coincidence, but it might not be."

"I'll head over soon," you tell her before dismissing the screen. It is going to be annoying if you and Samantha evacuated people into the activity center only for it to be the next target. «How's the evacuation going?» you ask your Guardian Beast.

Silence is your only answer.

«Sam? SAM!»

«…uh…?»

You do not even need to ask for the coordinates before your sigil spins beneath you. Seconds later, you appear on top of where Samantha is supposed to be. Your worry spikes even higher when you see the devastation around you. You did not know what you expected, maybe a war zone or a swath of destruction, but it was not this. The restaurant is just gone, collapsed on top of itself as though it had been at the center of an earthquake. Something shifts under the rubble, and you drop down and start shifting away chunks of wood and tile. Dragging a section of pillar away, you step back as two large paws break through the debris and open a path for the bear-sized prehistoric raccoon that is Samantha's war form.

The beast blurs back into her normal shape, and she is barely upright before you grab onto her. "You're okay," you breathe out in relief.

"Okay might be an exaggeration," she says as she hugs you back, "but I'm not dead. Just sore all over."

"What happened? I heard an explosion earlier. Was that… all this?"

Samantha grimaces and looks around you. "Probably. I guess the Fallen figured out I was teleporting people out or something. One moment I was coming back to grab more people, and the next everything just fell on top of me."

There are people still trapped beneath your feet? You look down and then around, hoping to find some hint of where they might be. One particular victim leaps to mind, and your search becomes more hurried. "Where's Missy?"

"That's…" Samantha looks around too, but not at the rubble. She is looking at the nearby buildings. "That's a very good question. She wasn't in the restaurant. She said she was headed outside to distract them. I think she was going to make them think there was a cape in one of the nearby buildings so they would waste their time looking for her at a distance."

"She did what?!" There is heroic, and there is stupid; this is definitely the latter. "Where the hell is she now then?!"

"Like I said, I don't know. I don't think it's anywhere good, though." You look back at Samantha to find her biting her lip. "I don't see the Fallen anywhere, either."

"Do you think…?" The gunman's words echo in your head, and a shiver runs down your spine. You can not bear to finish your question.

"She might have run for cover when they brought down the restaurant. That'd be the smart thing to do." The grimace that accompanies Samantha's suggestion shows what she thinks of that. "I don't know. That's the part that scares me."

It scares you, too.


This is what your crit fail has wrought, just so you know.

We're getting near the end of this stage of the fight. But let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

What's your next move?

[ ] Work on how to get information through the dome
[ ] Attack the Fallen inside the spa
[ ] Search for survivors in the rubble
[ ] Find Missy
[ ] Evacuate the suites before the rest of the Fallen arrive
[ ] Attack the remaining Fallen headed towards the suites
[ ] Attack the Fallen getting closer to the activity center
[ ] Evacuate everyone in the activity center
[ ] Hunt down the missing Fallen group

 

[Silently Watches]

[] Samantha teleports to the activity center to recover, then attacks the Fallen group heading towards it
[] Find Missy
-[] RIP TEAR KILL


Suntan 13.10

The longer you stand here on the rubble, the higher your fear for Missy rises. The idea that the Fallen would just leave when they know there is a cape around seems laughable. If they are gone, and Missy is gone, you have to assume they are in the same place. "I'm going out to look for her."

"Alright, let's go."

"You're not coming with me, Sam," you tell her with a shake of your head. "I need you to go back to the activity center. You just got buried under rubble, and I need you recovering and waiting for the Fallen. Dragon saw several that were roaming around in that general area, and Cailleach is the only other cape who can actually fight. They need you to protect them."

You look down at the rubble beneath your feet and do your best to ignore the obvious.

In any other situation, you would like to think you and Samantha, probably along with Cassiel, would be clearing out the collapsed restaurant and helping everyone still trapped within. In any other situation, you would not be dealing with the Fallen coming for you, nor would there be a spatial or dimensional barrier cutting you off from the rest of the world. The sooner you defeat the Fallen, the earlier you can get other capes here to help save these people.

"I'll be joining you shortly once I have Missy," you add before your Guardian Beast can say anything. "Best case scenario, she's hiding somewhere or running from them. I teleport in, get her, teleport out. If not, I'll call you if I need backup."

"Which you will if you get in a fight." Samantha's face shifts through a gamut of emotion before she pulls you into a tight embrace. "Be careful. These capes don't care about you or anyone else. Do whatever you have to keep yourself safe. And after we get through with this, I think we deserve a nice long hunting trip."

A laugh is your only response to that. It would feel good to ambush the Fallen in their own house; that you cannot deny. "Get back to Dragon. We'll catch up."

Samantha steps back and teleports away. As soon as she is gone, you give the ruins another look and rise into the air. "Storm, give me whatever map you have of the area."

A holographic screen stretches out and lifts into a 3D model of the island.

"Missy basically always has her teleportation beacon on her. I know she did when we arrived yesterday." That draws you up short for a moment; have you really been here for less than a day? It seems so much longer than that. "Track that down."

"Located." A red dot appears on the map. It isn't in the suites, so it has to be on her person. That is the good news. The bad news is that it is not inside a building. It is in the street. If Missy was running, you would expect her to have moved to the rooftops. A second after it appears, it moves a much larger distance that it should have. Either Perfect Storm's tracking is lagging, or she is using her power. "Speed inconsistent. Suspect use of parahuman ability."

"My thoughts too. Get me coordinates for…" You look in the direction she is headed and poke the top of a building further down. "Here. And keep an eye on her location. Tell me if she changes directions."

The coordinates for that building slip into your head, and you wrap yourself in magic and throw yourself there. The light fades, and you lower yourself to one knee to make yourself a smaller target as you wait for her to come to you.

A moment later you see her and her entourage. Black silhouettes run into position first, forming a corridor or an honor guard. Then the Fallen come into view. A cape with a black cape and a blue oblong helmet walks in front with a second cape, this man wearing skintight spandex emblazoned with lightning bolts. A weedy figure in asymmetric armor in green, flanked by two Fallen gunmen, is in back. In the middle is the third gunman and a cape with saw blades and spikes poking out of his skin; Reaver, one of the enslaved Teeth.

Missy also stands in the middle of the group next to the gunman. Perfect Storm zooms in on her face, and it is clear she knows something is wrong, that she should be afraid of these people. Instead of running from them, though, she is tightly clutching the hand of a cape all in white with a veil draped over his or her face.

Your fist clenches. They Mastered her.

You do not know Protectorate procedure for dealing with Mastered, friendly capes. You are sure there is some detailed, by the book process with bullet points and footnotes on the best way to handle the situation and get them out of the hands of their enemies. Maybe there is even a fool-proof plan to get the Masters to surrender their victims without having to fight.

You cannot think of what they even might be. Your mind is stuck on what the group in front of you did to your friend, and your blood burns inside your veins. Your heart pounds in your chest, demanding justice for this crime. Anger and pain whirl around and around in your head.
A woman has her head smashed in by a tiny girl in red wielding a hammer.
They took control of Missy.
Weak mages, farmers just protecting their homes, are riddled with bullets.
Missy.
Bloated corpses rot in the desert, victims of the latest Belkan bioweapon.
What they plan for her, you do not want to imagine but cannot help doing so.
A pile of girls barely in their teens, stripped and raped and gutted.
This is what they have been doing for more than a decade? Making slaves of anyone unlucky enough to cross paths with them?
Little boys and girls, young enough they might forget their homes, sit in cages.
They have been allowed to live, doing what they do?
Soldiers in plate drink beer and laugh as the house's owner slowly bleeds out.
And they plan to do the same thing to Missy? To your friend?
The head of Adriano, your best friend, rolls off the platform, and the Belkans laugh.
You will not permit this atrocity.
A medic ship is blown apart by a starship's cannon.
«Taylor? Taylor, what's going on? I can feel your anger from over here.»
A wave of darkness washes over an army, reducing them all to bones.
Your hand wraps around a thick pole.
A flaming sword is swung at you by a pink-haired woman with battle lust in her eyes.
«Tell me what's wrong.»
A transport ship is destroyed. The ship the Princess is supposed to be on.
Heat washes over your back.
You look down at the sword blade that broke through your Barrier Jacket.
«Taylor, answer me!»
"Galeans do not deserve honorable deaths. Live, but never again will you fight."
Never again.

You stand straight and take a single step off the roof. You begin to fall, just for a second, and then your foot pushes off the wall of the building. Magic flings you forward, faster than the eye can see. Your feet touch down in front of the helmeted cape in front, and he has only long enough for his pupils to start widening before your scythe splits him crotch to crown.

A push off the ground, and you swing the staff behind you as you dart to the left and up. The blade trailing behind you cuts the lightning cape through his chest. You blitz up to the wall and kick off, the next instant landing behind the cape in smoky green armor. Your momentum goes into a spin, the scythe whirling around you, and he and the gunmen with him drop to the ground in multiple pieces.

The lone gunman next to Reaver starts to lift his weapon, and the saws set in Reaver's skin begin to spin up. Now, as the halves of the first cape you killed come apart, they know something is wrong.

It is the last thing they will ever see.

You throw your staff ahead of you, catching it at the very end of the pole. Their heads fall backwards while their bodies fall forwards.

Missy is between you and the last cape, the Master in white. He too sees his comrades being torn apart in the time it takes to blink, and he pulls Missy in front of him. An old-fashioned pistol comes out of his pocket to be pointed at the back her head. "Don't move!" he demands, his voice pitched high. Despite the veil covering his face, you can see his head turning to look at the seven bodies on the ground. "Fuck. Stay where you are!"

"Taylor?" Missy asks, looking at the mana scythe in your hands. "What… What are you doing? Why did you murder them?!"

"Let her go, and I might let you live," you tell the Simurgh-worshipper in a deadly whisper.

"Taylor, these are our fr… our allies," Missy says, tripping over her words as if somewhere in her mind she is trying to break out of the Master's control. "We need their help if we're going to drive off the Fallen!"

Your eyes narrow at the Master. Was this mixing of truth and lie intentional, or just the result of Missy trying to reconcile everything into something coherent? You do not know.

"She is probably under their control," he tells Missy, keeping his gun out of her line of sight. He turns his attention back to you. "Put the blade down, Taylor, and this doesn't have to get messy."

«Mistress. Telepathic intrusion deflected. Recommend elimination of target.»

That is a suggestion you can agree with, but now a plan is forming in your head. This cape is a Master, but he has no way to know that you are immune to his power. He assumes he can take control of you just like he did Missy.

A smirk wants to form on your face, but you force it away and put on a blank expression instead. Your Flare Blade powers down, and you let the staff drop onto the paved street.

«Mistress?»

«Don't worry, Storm. I have a plan. Just trust me.»

"That's better," the Master says, confidence replacing the fear in his voice. "Now come over here and take my hand." He stretches the hand not holding the pistol out towards you.

You keep your eyes on the gun as you walk the five feet between you and him. If you are not careful, he could get one last shot off as he dies, and you do not like the direction that shot would go. You need to move it, but not before you are ready to rid the world of him.

Your hand comes up to grip his, and you pull him towards you, sandwiching Missy in between. A telekinetic push forces the gun up, your friend's short height working in your favor as it means you do not have to move it far for her to be out of the line of fire. His finger is already squeezing the trigger, and as the report from the shot rings out, your right hand swings around to drill a Flare Shooter into his skull and splatter it over the wall behind him.

"Taylor!" Missy screams in horror. She thrashes to escape your grip, but you hold her tight and retrieve your Device with a telekinetic tug. "What are you doing?! David is our friend! He's been there for me for years! Why did you kill him?! Are you going to kill me next?"

Your face might as well be carved from stone for all it changes even if her accusations are like knives being driven into your chest. She needs to be snapped out of this, but you do not know how, and she would not trust you even if she did. «Take us back to Dragon,» you tell your Intelligent Device.

Light whirls around you and coalesces into the security room Dragon commandeered. "Dragon!" Missy shoots before you can say a word. "Run! Taylor's under the Fallen's control!"

Dragon's predictable response is a bewildered "What?"

"Perfect Storm, pull up the footage of Missy with the Fallen." A screen with the video clip comes up. "They had a Master with them. He got in Missy's head."

"That wasn't a Master! That was David! Taylor's the one who is acting wrong!"

"Vista!" Missy jerks at the sound of her cape name and turns wide eyes to Dragon. The gynoid's face softens. "Vista, Taylor is immune to Master effects. The Fallen can't take over her mind. It's just not possible."

"…Immune?" Missy voices the word weakly, as though she cannot or perhaps does not want to understand the meaning, and you relax your hold on her. It is good timing because your hands are starting to shake as the adrenaline fades away.

Dragon nods. "Not even the Simurgh could twist her mind. She's like Alexandria, completely invulnerable to mental attacks."

"But… But that doesn't make any sense! Why would she kill our allies if she wasn't…" Her mind catches up to everything you have said so far, and she violently shakes her head. "You think they were the Fallen? They're not! David was friends with us back in Brockton Bay! He was my babysitter when I was little, for God's sake!"

"He was, was he?" You turn your head to find Cassiel sitting with her chin propped on one fist and her eyes on your screen. "Describe his face for me."

Missy blinks at her. "What?"

"His face. In this image, he wears a mask. You say you have known him for years. If you were so close, you should be able to describe his appearance with little difficulty."

"He… has a nose? And two eyes?" You can see Missy struggling to call forth details and how distressed it is making her. "I don't know, okay?! What does it matter?!"

"You do not know the appearance of your friend for years?" Cassiel asks with a slight quirk to her mouth. "I do not require a painting. Simple details will suffice. What color are his eyes? Is his nose crooked or straight? Does he have all his front teeth, or are they missing?"

"I said I don't know! He wore his veil all the time!"

Cassiel now wears a full-blown grin, the smile of a cat with a cornered mouse. "He always wore his veil? I thought you said he was your babysitter. Do you believe your parents would hire a parahuman to watch their young daughter while they went out for romantic dinners?"

"I guess?" Even Missy can tell that is the wrong answer, and beads of sweat roll down her face. "They wouldn't. They didn't go out for dinners like that anyway. They fought too much."

"Then why did you need a babysitter at all?"

"I… They… He said…"

Finally taking pity on her, Cassiel left the desk on which she sat and floated over to Missy's hand. "I have an alternate explanation for why your memory is failing you if you care to hear it."

Slowly, hesitantly, Missy nods.

Pulling your screen closer to them, Cassiel points at the cape in white. "This is not someone you knew in Brockton Bay. His name is David Mathers, though he goes by Ose. He is a Stranger whose allegiance belongs to the Fallen. His power permits him to insert himself into another person's memories as someone they would find trustworthy. It is not a strong ability in its own right, but he has used it to great effect keeping opposing parahumans calm and quiet until they can be enslaved by Purson, a Master from the same family. I remembered his name after some minutes," she tells you. "That was the Master standing next to Oriax. Missy, you never met this man until today, and his intentions toward you were far from innocent."

"No, no, no, no," moans Missy. She grabs her head in both hands, dislodging the winged fairy in the process. "That can't be right. I remember him! He took me to see movies Mom and Dad said I wasn't old enough to watch and made me promise to keep it a secret. We would eat peanut butter fudge ice cream until we both got sick. He was the only adult I could trust to care about me when my parents were fighting all the time and getting divorced. And you're saying this, everything I remember, is a lie?!"

"I am sorry," Cassiel says, and damn you if you do not believe that she really does regret having to break this news, "but it is the truth. He was not your babysitter, nor your friend. He was your assailant."

Missy stares at her with blank eyes and tears rolling down her cheeks.

A squeeze of your shoulder has you looking to the side to find Samantha standing behind you. Her hand is coated in a layer of ash, and you raise inquisitive eyebrows. You told her to rest and recover, not play with fire.

«When you didn't answer, I came over to see what had you so enraged.» She gives you a shrug with one shoulder. «By the time I got there, you had everything under control, so I did a quick double check to make sure they were really dead. Didn't exactly take long, and I picked up the Master's gun while I was at it.» She pulls a familiar pistol from her pocket, and a shaft of light comes from the head of your staff and seals the weapon away.

The realities of what you did are sinking in as your anger leaves you. «I killed them all, Sam. They barely had a chance to see me, let alone defend themselves. I murdered them all in cold blood, and I don't regret it. If I was put in the same situation, I would do the same thing again.»

«You better,» is Samantha's immediate response. «They were monsters, so you put them down before they could do anything more than you already had. You saved Missy in the process. If you regretted doing the right thing, we would have to have a long talk about your priorities. Not to mention, I could feel your anger. That was anything but cold-blooded. You needed to see them dead at your feet, and you wanted it for all the right reasons.

«I'm heading out. Dragon lost sight of that group you were worried about just before I went to you, so I'm going to where she last saw them.» She gives you a stern glare. «Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone.»

"Taylor?" You look back at the broken sound of Missy's voice. Her pitiful gaze is no better. "You're really immune to Masters?"

A nod is all the answer you can give her.

"How?"

"Perfect Storm recognizes it as a telepathic attack and blocks it before it can get to me. He's told me that's something all Devices can do."

Your friend's expression becomes even sadder. "And only mages can use them. That's what I remember. What I think I remember, anyway. Except I don't have whatever it is I need to do magic, so I can never have one."

"I'm sorry, Missy."

Her small smile is anything but happy. "So am I."

One of the many screens Dragon has flashes red, and she waves at it to call it over. "They're coming closer. They're still a few streets away, but it won't take long, and it's clear they're coming for us, not just wandering around."

You look at the approaching Fallen. It has the fewest capes and the most foot soldiers you have seen so far, with four of each. A Behemoth cape, a Simurgh cape, and one of the Teeth though you can't remember exactly who. The reason for the strange distribution is probably because of the last cape, the giant lizard beast you know is Animos. He has a scream that nullifies capes' powers, so they probably brought more gunmen because guns will not be rendered useless by his own—

A grey blur hits the ground next to Animos and resolves into the familiar form of your Guardian Beast. She leaps away as the monstrous member of the Teeth slumps to the ground, and with her out of the way you can see the stop sign she shoved pole-first into his eye socket and out the other side.

"I suppose that's one way to stop a power nullifier," Dragon says in the ensuing silence.


I'm sorry, Missy! I didn't want to, but my muse made me do it.

Okay, shake it off. In case you were wondering, I was hoping you guys would pick RIP TEAR KILL. It let me do fun stuff that I would have had a harder time fitting in with the less lethal methods. And that's now, what, eleven combatants dead and three more incapacitated? And only eighteen actual capes left. Looks like the tables are starting to turn in your favor.

Anyway, Fallen have now reached the activity center. Time to play whack-a-cultist!

Spoiler: Fallen group

• Behemoth cape with Blaster power
• Raum, a Simurgh cape who inflames anger in an area
• Hemorrhagia, controls her own blood for attack and defense
• 4 unpowered gunmen
• Animos's dead body

It's not much to go on, but these are relatively minor members of the Fallen, so Dragon doesn't know much, and Ziz only really paid attention to 'her' branch.

And BTW, Missy is not participating in this fight. Even if she felt like her mental state could handle it, Taylor and Dragon both know it can't. I would also not recommend counting on Cailleach, either…

Other than that, you need a strategy.

[ ] Lethal
[ ] Non-lethal

[ ] The Reaper Strikes Back
[ ] Solar Wrath Reloaded
[ ] Calamity Witch and the Shooters of Doom
[ ] Wait to see if more will show up

 

[Silently Watches]

[] Lethal
[] The Reaper Strikes Back
-[] Behemoth cape first, then the Simurgh cape


Suntan 13.11

The Fallen on the screen are looking around in surprise and anger. This is the best chance you have of getting a follow up strike. «Samantha, give me your coordinates. I'll be joining you in just a moment.» Turning to the fairies, you ask, "What do we know about these capes?"

"Raum," Cassiel says, pointing at a cape in pink this time. "He can induce anger and aggression in anyone in a designated area. He does not have an impressive range, however. The Fallen in the black armor is a member of the McVeay family, but beyond possessing a Blaster ability, I do not know much about him."

"The Teeth cape looks to be Hemorrhagia," Dragon adds. "Self-biokinetic. She uses her own blood for both offense and defense."

Plus the four gunmen to add up to seven. Easy enough. Your sigil spins beneath your feet, and you look over at Missy. In her shoes, you would want to get even, but not with someone on the field who could inflame her anger beyond her ability to control. "Missy, I need you to stay here."

You expect a protest, or a mulish frown at the very least, but all Missy does is look down at the ground. "Okay."

Her quiet acquiescence is disconcerting, but maybe she recognizes as well as you do that she is not in the best mindset to get in a fight. Or maybe she is still trying to wrap her head around the idea that her memories were scrambled. You can't say you would handle it any better.

Your spell deposits you on top of a building, and the flash of light is enough to grab the Fallen's attention. You jump off the roof just as the Behemoth cape in his black armor glows a sickening yellow and unleashes a wave of energy that hits the building on which you stood. The walls do not break under the onslaught; they melt, wood and plaster running in streams to pool together on the sidewalk. Your Barrier Jacket should hold against that, you try to tell yourself, but you would rather not experiment.

Perfect Storm's staff form is still held in your hand. Flicking a mental switch and running a smidgeon of code has the glowing scythe blade sliding out, and you ready yourself for step two. If the Behemoth cape is there, and the Simurgh cape is there…

Blitz Action throws you to the side and bounces you off the empty air like an insane pinball. You hit the ground and stab your staff forwards. With the blade being energy rather than matter, the back of your scythe is just as dangerous as the edge. The scythe cuts through the Behemoth cape like a hot knife, and a swing sends the point into and through the chest of the Simurgh cape before the first cape's disembodied legs have a chance to fall all the way to the ground.

Without the modification that keeps your spell from being lethal, your blade is as hot as plasma should be. That is probably the reason why a moment after being stabbed, the Simurgh cape's long robe catches on fire.

Pulling the blade out, you let his burning corpse fall to the ground.

Something pings against your Barrier Jacket, and you tilt your head to see a crimson needle bounce off the slick fabric of your current costume. A hail of bullets follows. Still you stand there unharmed, and you take the moment without active danger to think.

Your eyes fall to the bodies on the ground before drifting to the humming mana scythe. You had not noticed while you were saving Missy and your mind was clouded with overwhelming anger, but these capes you killed with a clear head. Killing them was so easy, effortless. Between a weapon that is hot enough to cut through damn near anything and Blitz Action making you move so fast no one besides a speedster can react, it would be child's play to execute anyone in your way. There is nothing anyone short of the strongest Brutes could do about it.

That is not the kind of cape, the kind of person, you want to be.

You raise your head to find Hemorrhagia and the gunmen still attacking you, though they seem to be picking up on the fact that what they are doing has no hope of working. "Just stop," you tell them, your voice sounding so tired even to your own ears. "Drop the guns and surrender."

A bullet bounces off your left eye.

«Sam, any advice?»

«Even if the gunmen aren't capes, they still came here with the explicit intent of killing everyone. The other one is a member of the Teeth, and even before she was Mastered she was a murderous piece of shit.» Despite the language, you can detect an undercurrent of hesitation in Samantha's voice, one that only grows stronger as she continues, «I don't know if there's any hope for redemption or rehabilitation for people like this.»

That is not the most useful bit of advice you have ever received from her, mostly because it does not give you much in the way of alternatives. If you leave them alive and just arrest them, the chance of them escaping or killing other people in an attempt is too high. You can understand the logic of what you need to do…

…but that does not mean you have to like it.

«Taylor.» Samantha's voice is more somber than you think you have ever heard from her. «Go ahead and head back to Dragon. I can take care of this.»

Neither of you is under any illusion of what she means by 'take care of', and you shake your head. «No. If I'm going to be responsible for this, I should actually take responsibility for it. I can't have you killing people in my stead and pretend their blood isn't on my hands.»

You take a step forwards, ignoring the sight of the gunmen reloading their rifles. "Give up. Please," you all but beg. Hemorrhagia gives them cover by pulling more blood from several scratches in her arms and flings another volley of needles at you. "Don't make me do this. If you have any decency whatsoever, give me a reason not to kill you."

By now three of the gunmen have reloaded and resumed their fire. The last, however, has not. His hands are shaking too much for him to force the magazine in, and his progress is further hindered by the fact his head keeps looking up to look at you in obvious terror before struggling even more hastily with his weapon.

You let out a slow breath and raise your scythe to a horizontal position. Your eyes sting behind the obsidian mask.

"Blitz Action."

Skidding to a stop, you swing your arm and allow your body to return to normal speed. Four bodies hit the ground, but your eyes seek out the terrified gunman who is still standing. "Put the gun down," you whisper.

Finally, finally, he listens. He drops the gun as though it is burning him to hold it any longer and takes several steps backwards.

"I'm not going to kill you," you tell him, putting action to words and retracting the plasma blade. The entire staff breaks up into motes of orange light that are absorbed into your glove. Strangely this does little to stop his full-body tremors. "I'm not! But I can't have you running around letting the rest of your team know what's going on."

He turns as though to run away from you, but suddenly Samantha is in front of him and slams her fist into the side of his head. He drops into her arms like a sack of potatoes. She gives you a small smile before hiking him up onto her shoulder. "It was a good thing you did, Taylor."

"Doesn't really feel like it," you tell her. There is no blood at your feet, the only good thing about killing people with a ten-thousand-degree plasma blade, but you still have to pick out a path carefully so you do not step on the body parts that have been strewn about. Your feet carry you to the one cape whose death is not your fault, and a frown forms on your face. "Hey, Dragon?" you ask after calling up a screen. "Don't Changers return to normal when they die?"

"Normally yes," she says, confusion evident in her own voice. You suppose now she is wondering the same thing you are: why Animos is still in his giant scaly rhino form. "Unless they are under the effects of another cape's powers. That can cause an interaction that interferes with the normal process."

"I know he was Mastered, but that shouldn't still be in effect. Not only is he dead, his brain got scrambled." It is easier to examine Animos's decidedly non-human body than it would be to do the same with any of the people you killed yourself, and it does not take long before you notice something poking out of his back. It looks almost like an antenna or something. Creating a white-hot Flare Shooter, you cut open the hide next to the hole where the antenna comes out and peer inside. "What is that?"

The 'that' in question is a glass ball filled with a purple glow that is connected to a crude circuit board. That circuit board in turn leads to wires that seem to be implanted directly into Animos's flesh. You cannot see where they go, but you fear the answer is everywhere.

"I… don't know," the Tinker says after a moment. "If I had to take a guess, though, I would assume it is the conduit for a Trump-type effect. Ingenue, a villain in the Birdcage, could do something similar to this, altering another cape's powers to emphasize one aspect at the expense of another. It also caused severe mental side effects, though with this being Tinkertech, I would not expect that to be the case here."

You feel Samantha coming to stand at your back, and the three of you teleport back to the activity center. The guards standing around in the main lobby space are unsurprised at the extra ears and tail your Guardian Beast has sticking out. Considering the random people huddled up around the walls, you remind yourself that Samantha was evacuating people from the restaurant. They probably have gotten used to the sight of her teleporting in.

What they are not used to, however, is the sight of a thug in a ski mask. "Who the hell is that?" one of the guards demanded, his hands on the gun on his belt.

"Chill, Robards," Samantha says in a surprisingly familiar tone. "He's unconscious. He surrendered anyway, so he gets to deal with the court's tender mercies. Nobody gets to enact any personal justice," she adds with a glare around the room.

Your conscience burns at the hypocrisy.

Deciding that Samantha has everything well in hand here, you quietly make your way out of the room. You should head straight back to Dragon, but seeing the guard grab his gun brings to mind the pistol you have in your own possession. You can not do anything with it, but you know someone who does. You should check up on her anyway.

«Track Kayleigh down for me,» you tell your Device as you dismiss your Barrier Jacket.

It takes only a moment for Perfect Storm to do just that, and you follow his directions to a room off to one side. Kayleigh is not alone, thankfully. Looking around to find her in the crowd of random people who were either evacuated or found the activity center on their own, you eventually spot her in a corner sandwiched between her parents. Laura is there, too, sitting a short distance away and looking uncomfortable at being surrounded by so many people.

"Taylor!" Kayleigh says when she looks up to see who has come through the door. She squeezes out from her spot, dodging her mother's hand in the process, and dashed over to wrap you in a hug. Laura does not join the embrace but still follows along at a more sedate pace. "Thank goodness you're okay! We were worried you weren't able to get to safety!"

Her comment confuses you for a moment considering she recognized you when you came to evacuate the spa, but then you pick up what she is doing. You do not think she needs to work quite so hard at selling your completely normal identity to the room at large, but you appreciate the effort nonetheless. "How are you doing?" you ask softly.

"Me? I'm fine." She looks at you in confusion. "That new cape, Cinder I think, brought me back not half an hour ago. Nothing major has happened since."

"Half an hour?" It has only been that long? It feels like you spent all day fighting the Fallen, but it has only been a measly thirty minutes? You shake your head. "Can I talk to you two privately?"

Kayleigh nods and all but drags you out of the room. "Sorry about that," she tells you once she pulls you into the nearby women's restroom and checks that it is empty. "My parents found out the spa was the first place the Fallen attacked and freaked and got all super clingy."

You can not blame them for that. She should be glad she has parents that are capable of worrying about her like that. You really have not since your mom died, even if your dad was still around physically. "I don't know if this will help or hurt," you say as the pistol appears in your hand, "but I figured you should have some way to protect yourself. Samantha picked it off a member of the Fallen. I know the guards have guns as well, so you might be able to get some extra bullets from them—"

Kayleigh's sigh catches you by surprise. "You really know nothing about guns, do you?" You just shake your head, and she holds up the revolver. "Number one, this is a revolver. They use different kinds of bullets than semi-automatics. Number two, this is an M1917. It's 45 caliber. The guards that even have guns are all carrying SIG P226s. Their bullets are too small for me to just borrow a handful."

"Oh…" You look at the gun again. "Uh, then I guess don't try to defend yourself against more than six people?"

That gets an eye roll and a giggle out of her. "I appreciate the thought. Tell Samantha thanks for me too."

"That I can do." You look over at Laura. "Samantha and I already stopped one group of Fallen headed this way, but there are three more and some capes with real nasty powers running around. We're probably heading out after another. Can you stick around and play defense for this place?"

Something between a wince and a grimace passes across Laura's face. "That… may not be the best idea."

"Why? What's wrong?"

"I… I just don't know that it'd be a good idea to advertise my powers. If someone recognizes them or takes a video and someone else recognizes them, they could figure out that Cailleach was here and from there that I'm Cailleach."

"That is a risk," you admit. "They could do the same with me, so I understand your concern. If you stay out of sight, though, the chance of you being identified just based on your powers is a small one."

She huffs through her nose. "That's easy for you to say. Not all of us can change our costumes on a whim. Even if I throw on something like I did at the spa, anyone would be able to guess it was because I didn't have a real costume with me. It's not like lots of capes have ice powers."

You take a moment to try to put yourself in Laura's shoes. Unlike her, you have a Barrier Jacket to protect you from physical harm. You have a Guardian Beast to protect Lacey and Kurt, the closest thing you have left to family. If you are identified, it is not as much of a threat. Looked at it that way, you know her she has a basis for her logic.

Logic does not help your knowledge that Laura is one of the only people who is capable of fighting the Fallen attacking this resort and she is nonetheless coming up with reasons why she will not help.

"There are over a thousand people on this island," you remind her. "It would be nearly impossible for anyone to figure out which one of them has your powers. Not to mention you used them to fight off the Beasts during that party we went to. There were a lot fewer people there, and no one figured out it was you."

"It was simpler fighting off the Beasts. They were just dumb animals. I could hide better. I wouldn't be able to do that here, and that increases the risk of exposure." She crosses her arms, though you cannot tell whether it is out of stubbornness or if she is hugging herself. Your thoughts about which it might be are derailed by her next words. "I can only protect so many, and that's all I'm going to protect. Everyone else is just going to have to deal with it themselves."

Deal with it themselves. Like the people enslaved by Purson or buried in the rubble of the restaurant had to deal with it? Like Missy had to deal with it? Missy was mentally assaulted and almost enslaved by the Fallen, and Laura would have just let it happen because it wasn't her problem?!

"You want people to deal with it on their own, huh?" you whisper. "Big words coming from someone who's right this second relying on other people to do all her fighting for her."

"I'm not—"

"The Fallen have two goals. Enslave people to use as breeding stock and kill everyone else. They have Masters who can and have enslaved people to the point they can't even think of trying to escape. Samantha and I are fighting and killing to save you from that!" You jab her hard in the chest before pointing at Kayleigh. "And her! And everyone else! We're doing it because somebody has to, or we'll all die. Yet here you are, nice and safe thanks to me, and you refuse to lend even a single fucking finger! It has nothing to do with weak and strong. It's because you're a coward!"

You take a couple of steps closer until Laura has to back up to keep from being shoved and has to look up to keep your face in view. "You once told me that the difference between heroes and villains is that villains are too smart to overextend themselves. That's bullshit, and we both know it. The difference is much simpler. Villains are too selfish to put themselves in any risk for anyone else without someone holding a gun to their heads.

"You don't want to help anyone but yourself? Fine. Stay here while we do the work. But I want you to remember this moment." Finally you take a step back and stop crowding her space. "Remember that you had the chance of extending a hand to someone else in need. And in the future when you are at another cape's mercy and need help and everyone who could do anything about it just stands by and watches you die, remember that it's because that's all you deserve."

You shoulder-check Laura out of the way as you storm out the door, insults of all kinds whirling in your head. You had deluded yourself into thinking there was anything good and decent in that bitch's soul. Clearly she is no better a person than Emma or any of the other villains you have had to put down.

The security room arrives faster than you expected, and the door slams open before you. Dragon looks up from her screen and pales slightly at the expression on your face. "Taylor? What's wrong?"

"What's wrong is that we're stuck on this island with the Fallen, and I'm sick and tired of it," you bite out. Now is not the time to vent your anger to Dragon, but you can certainly use it as a weapon against other villains. "Who's left?"

"I'm not sure you're in a good mindset—"

"Dragon, right now the only thing I'm sure of is that I need someone to shoot!" You take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Who. Is. Left?"

She searches your face for something for several seconds before looking back at her holographic workspace. An image from the video feed you sent her at the start of all this appears, depicting the Fallen just as they were splitting up into their groups. Next to it is the very same picture you saw before flying after the suites group. "With the groups attacking the restaurant and here defeated, there are three left. The group attacking the suites is first. I saw you take down Ifrit and Spree, but I lost the others. I assume they continued heading towards the suites."

"I hurt the flying changer pretty good before the teleporter took both of them away."

Dragon nods at that information. "It looked like Spree woke up a couple of minutes ago and wandered off. The camera failed shortly after, so if anything else happened, I don't know. If you go after them, you could be fighting just Empusa, Purson, and Oriax, or you could be fighting all of them. That's not including however many hostages they have in their hands now.

"The second group is the one that attacked the spa. If I had to guess, I would say the Tinker who built whatever that was implanted in Animos is holed up there. It was the first place attacked," she explains before you can ask for her reasoning, "which would give him the most time possible to convert it into an impromptu workshop. That also makes attacking the spa dangerous, especially as we don't know how much he can alter other capes' powers or if that is even is specialty in the first place.

"Finally, the third group is the one we have seen neither hide nor hair of." The image you sent her fades to greyscale except for one cluster of people. "I would put money on them having the source of the dome. I don't see them carrying anything, so either it is remote controlled that they set up ahead of time or it is the result of a parahuman power."

"Magical power, actually." She looks back at you, and you shrug. "Perfect Storm analyzed the dome. That was his best conclusion."

"Very well. A spell it is, then." Dragon glances at the image again. "If that is the case, they really are an unknown. You know best of all of us how versatile magic is. If one of them is a mage, there is no telling what else they can do, and that is without dealing with the other capes with them.

"You want to shoot someone? Those are your options."


And 7 more combatants bite the dust.

The hunt begins! Who are you going after first?

[ ] The spa group. The Tinker is someone you want out of the fight, but you'll be attacking him in his current workshop.
[ ] The suites group. Has a Master and more than likely additional hostages, as well as Oriax with his danger sense.
[ ] The last group. You don't know where they are, so that means a search, but this is the best way to bring down the barrier.

Once we know where we're going, a second vote to discuss tactics will be held.

 

[Silently Watches]

[] The spa group
[] Non-lethal
[] Calamity Witch and the Last Volley


Suntan 13.12

"What do we know about the group that set up shop in the spa?" you ask, watching as the image showing all forty Fallen regains color and then turns grey again, shifting the focus from the missing group to the one you mentioned. "Besides that they have the Tinker?"

"A bit." Dragon hits a couple of holographic keys and pulls up a few more screens. One of them is another Behemoth cape in white and red armor. Another shows the same creepy cape in the blue snakeskin jacket who tried hitting on you before killing you. "The cape on the left is Eligos. Aerokinetic, similar in fighting style to Ifrit. The cape on the right is Zagam. I know he's here because you brought back victims of his attacks. He duplicates and hurls small objects at high speeds. Most commonly he uses coins as a weapon, but he is not limited to them. I've seen pictures of what he can do with nails." She shakes her head. "It isn't pretty. The middle screen shows Vex. Teeth cape, can make razor-sharp forcefields.

"Besides them, I don't recognize anyone. I see two gunmen in that group, so with these three and the Tinker accounted for, there should only be two other combat-capable capes you'll need to deal with." The world's preeminent Tinker dismisses the screens and leans back in her chair. "I'm somewhat glad that we're here, if only because otherwise these people would have no one to protect them, but I really feel like we're going to need a vacation from our vacation."

Her comment pierces through the fog of anger still roiling around in your head, and you snort almost against your own volition. "Let's just give the beach a pass, okay? And between this and hearing that Disney apparently has its own black ops crew, I'm just writing Florida off entirely."

That gets a chuckle from the gynoid.

Strangely, the little bit of laughter helps your mood immensely, and you roll your shoulders. The issue with Cailleach's utter selfishness is something to be dealt with later, of course, but it can wait until you do not have murderous cultists bearing down on you. Since you know where the spa is, it should be a fairly short trip. «Sam!» you call out. «Meet me on the roof. It's time to go hunting.»

Your Guardian Beast finds you sitting on the edge of the roof, your thoughts sorting through the tactics available. Go in slashing with your scythe like you have been doing? It has certainly proven its worth, but you do not know if they might have hostages to use as human shields. You are pretty sure you did not manage to evacuate everyone before Zagam interrupted you. Solar Wrath, even on non-lethal, is ill-advised for the same reasons. You already need to dig people out of the restaurant's rubble. You would rather not have to do that twice.

No, an attack like this requires more than just overwhelming speed or force. You will need near surgical precision.

"We moving out?"

You hum in affirmation and drop off the roof to start the short flight to the spa. "Six capes, two gunmen, and an unknown number of hostages who are worth a lot more to us than they are to them. This has the potential to get messy."

"Yeah, it does," Samantha agrees, "but from the tone of your voice, it sounds like you have a plan."

"Something like that. Once we get to the spa, I need you to drop a Wide Area Search field onto the building. I need to know everything that's going on in there, and more importantly where everybody is."

"Okay. What will you be doing?"

You shoot her a crooked, cruel grin. "Setting up to make use of it."

There is a convenient roof just across the street from the spa, and you land on top of it while Samantha flies over the spa itself and unleashes the bright red sparks that will give you a perfect map of the building. While she is coming back, you fit action to words and start manifesting fireballs.

You can probably give up this whole 'disguising your identity' thing up as a bad job.

Still, now is not the time for self-recriminations. It is the time for spellcasting. Eight fat Flare Shooters appear in a ring in front of you, and then a second ring pops up next to it. You have used this variant of your classic spell only a few times in Perfect Storm's simulator and for sure never in the real world, but if there was ever a time to give it a try, this is it.

The Fallen want a war? You will remind them that war is hell.

Specifically, a war with you is a hell filled with fire and pain.

A screen opens in front of Samantha, and she spreads her hands as though she plans to enlarge it to the size of chalkboard. It does not grow that big, thankfully, but instead slides out multiple additional screens that show video feeds from the perspective of the individual sparks. It is clear that the Fallen do not know what to do about the sudden nonviolent intrusion, and that is worrying them.

That's okay. You can give them something they are more familiar with.

The rings of Flare Shooters start spinning, going faster and faster until they are nothing more than rings of light. "Mark the Fallen for me. I want to make sure I don't traumatize any of the hostages any more than necessary."

"Done. Model's 3D too. Whenever you're ready."

Your grin grows wider. "Storm? You want to do the honors?"

"With great excitement. Flare Shooter, Multishot. Fire!"

The two rings start spitting out bullets faster than the eye can follow, as fast as a machine gun. You can feel the spells draining your remaining mana at a wicked rate, but that does not matter. What matters is that the air has been filled with attacks, and all of them are flying into the building to carry your fury to those who truly deserve it.

"Sucks to be them," Samantha mutters at the sight of all the Flare Shooters soaring through the air.

Pulling your attention from the now more than a hundred bullets careening towards the spa, you focus your efforts as well as a circle bearing multiple lines on three red dots on the map that are close together. You are curious just how well this is going to work—

Thanks to the camera angles from the Wide Area Search field, you have a perfect view as the bullets punch through the walls and slam into the trio. You are pretty sure the first few bullets are enough to knock them out, but even once they are on the ground the hits just keep coming.

So that is the downside of this Flare Shooter variant, you tell yourself while switching the target to another red dot. The linked image shows Zagam flicking coins into a man and woman, both of them still alive but in obvious agony from all the coins already lodged in their bodies. Torture is just a way to pass time for him, is it? This time when the streams of bullets come from everywhere and pummel him, you intentionally leave the focus on him for a few more seconds than absolutely necessary.

"Taylor, don't lose focus," you Guardian Beast reminds you. She taps a video screen that shows a man in jeans and t-shirt hurriedly hooking something onto another cape in bloodstained armor. "That must be the Tinker."

An easy problem to solve. A simple shift of the targeting reticle has your bullets abandoning Zagam to hit the Tinker and who you can only assume is Vex. They go down as easily as the others, and then you send more bullets to absolutely demolish the table bearing all the Tinker's tech. No more power enhancements for the Fallen.

"Two more. Gunman is on that end of the complex. Eligos is running."

Your mind is already following her words and shifting the bullets' wrath onto the gunman. He stupidly tries shooting your bullets, but not only is his aim less than perfect, the few times he does get lucky he just causes them to explode in gouts of flame that set the interior to burning. Which… might be less than grand. "We're going to have to put that out, aren't we?" you ask.

"Probably should."

The front door of the spa is flung open, and the spiky costume of Eligos runs out. He looks behind him, no doubt expecting more bullets to follow him. Turning around, he looks up and sees the two of you standing there like judges preparing to decide his fate. He raises his hand as if to attack, but all he has done is put himself closer to the source of the bullets, and he is pounded into the ground before he can get a single shot off. Too bad.

You cut off the flow of magic to the rings of fire in front of you and let the remaining bullets hit Eligos. A wave of fatigue hits you, and you almost stumble off the rooftop if not for Samantha catching you. "You okay?" the raccoon woman demands.

"I'm okay. Just tired." You shake your head. "That spell is exhausting."

"Apologies, Mistress," Perfect Storm says. "Multishot variant significantly increases rate of fire, but efficiency decreased as result."

You give the Intelligent Device a pat. "It's fine. It did what it was supposed to. And did it like whoa," you add when you look at the building. Now that you are focusing on what your eyes are showing you instead of Wide Area Search, you cannot help but marvel at all the holes you put in the side of the building. You did not demolish it the way you would have with Solar Wrath, but considering how the walls look to be more hole than wood, it was a close thing. "Might as well put out those fires now before they burn up anyone we don't want them to."

"Alright." Samantha kneels slightly and pats herself on the shoulder. "Climb on."

That startles a laugh out of you. "I can fly on my own, Sam."

"Not right now you can't. Or shouldn't," she amends. "You're running on fumes, Taylor. I can fly us both over there, and that way you can conserve your power."

You are not running on fumes, exactly, but you have to admit that right now you are not at your best. You normally do not spend a solid half hour engaged in high level combat. The last time you did, in fact, was fighting Leviathan, and you leaned heavily on your cartridges for that fight to keep up with the grueling pace.

"Fine, but just this once," you tell her in resignation.

Climbing onto her back, you have to hold on tight at the sudden acceleration. She carries you into the spa, and you drop back down onto the ground and look around the inside with a tiny bit of regret welling up inside. You might have made a rather big mess with your assault, and your boots slide unsteadily on the splinters from the walls that litter the floor. The couple Zagam was torturing you already know about, so you move down the hallway looking for others.

You eventually find them. Splayed out on the floor of one of the storage rooms with eyes staring blankly at the ceiling and wounds that have already stopped leaking blood. Spas are meant for people to enjoy themselves, but looking around at the bodies that have been tossed inside here without care, you cannot imagine it as anything but a mausoleum.

"Calamity, Samantha," Dragon's voice comes from a new screen, "I need you to get back here."

You pull your gaze from the bodies. "What's wrong now?"

"Remember how I lost track of the group that had been heading towards the suites? I found them."

She found them? Why is that a reason for you to come back to her then rather than taking off after them? Your heart sinks as the obvious explanation comes to mind. "They're attacking the activity center, aren't they?"

"They're certainly trying to. Missy is stretching things out to make it harder for them to approach, but she's having difficulties with all the hostages they brought with them. I'm still coordinating security as best I can, and I sent Cassiel to hide with the rest of the noncombatants. We do not want the Fallen getting their hands on the Simurgh."

"How many attackers are we talking about?"

Dragon gives you a humorless expression. "Somewhere north of a hundred. And those are just the ones I can see. They Mastered everyone in the suites."

"Sam!"

Your Guardian Beast is instantly at your side and all but pulling you onto her back again. She can fly as fast as you can, so it takes only seconds before you have crossed half the length of the island and can see what Dragon is talking about.

"Is it just me," Samantha says in the ensuing silence, "or does this look like a scene out of a zombie movie?"

You really, really want to argue against that, but you just can't. The Mastered hostages are a thick crowd rushing the building, and as you watch they seem to slide backwards as Missy applies her power to the space in between. Even with that, though, the hostages are steadily gaining ground. Her power does not work well with a large human presence, and this certainly counts as large.

"Let me off," you order Samantha, and you take to the sky under your own power.

"What are you planning?"

Her question is quickly answered when Perfect Storm's staff forms in your hand and you level it at the group. At the head gathers a ball of flame that grows steadily larger.

"Do you have enough juice for that?" she asks worriedly.

"I better," you reply as the fireball grows slowly, so slowly, into a miniature sun. At long last it reaches full size, and not a moment too soon. The crowd of hostages are at the walls and the door on that side of the building leading into the activity center. "Solar Wrath!"

The beam from your Buster is narrow, focused, and you drag it to carve a swath through the crowd of hostages. When the attack ends, everyone in its path is on the ground unconscious and the walls have been melted and smeared together. No one is getting in or out through that door, of that you can be certain.

Samantha catches you as you wobble in the air. "Okay, now I'm running on fumes," you admit.

"Really, you think?!" The Guardian Beast shakes her head. "Let's get you inside, and you can rest while I work on taking out the Fallen."

Just as she is finished detailing her plan, a chipper yellow light flashes inside the building. It looks almost like the light of a fireplace seen through a window.

"Ifrit," you guess, and it is telling that Samantha does not argue with you. "They're inside."

A low rumble vibrates against your chest. "Storm," Samantha demands, her growl audible in her voice, "what's the most efficient attack spell Taylor has in her repertoire?"

"Programmed non-lethal, Flare Blade highly contained. Little mana requirement for upkeep."

"Then I'll rely on Flare Blade," you say before your Guardian Beast can order you to do just that. "Now let's stop quibbling over the details and get in there before someone gets hurt!"

Rather than find the next closest door, which undoubtedly will also be under assault by the enslaved horde, Samantha zips towards the nearest skylight and drops through. The sudden crash and falling glass distracts the red-armored cape spraying fire from his hands and makes him look up at you.

You did just promise to use Flare Blade, but you are sure Samantha will not mind if you toss out a Ring Bind just this once.

Circles of orange magic lock around the cape's wrists and ankles, and Ifrit grunts and struggles against being caught in the same spell once again. "You bitch!"

Instead of flying and using up your remaining mana, you simply run towards the main room in the activity center and raise your middle finger as you pass the captured cape. One of the security guards who had been pinned in place by Ifrit's flames raises his pistol, closes one eye, and squeezes off a single round. You do not look behind you at the end result, and while you would rather not have to kill anyone else for the foreseeable future, you can not muster up any tears for the loss of that villain.

Turning the corner, you can only stare in horror at the chaos that has taken over the activity center.

It has become impossible to tell from a distance who is Mastered and who has not. Everyone is engaged in fisticuffs with everyone else. The guards have pulled nightsticks and are beating anyone who jumps at them with demented howls, of which there are surprisingly many. You do not hear any more gunshots, for which you are thankful, but that does not mean the air is not being filled with screams and shouts and the sound of fists violently hitting flesh.

Two more screams join the din, and a man and woman with unnaturally bright blue eyes rush towards you. They are quickly dropped with a swing of your now-blunt scythe blade.

"This is madness," Samantha says, stealing a length of pipe from one of the attacking hostages and hitting him upside the head with it.

You do not have time or inclination to argue with that, so rather than try you jump into the fray. It becomes easier for you to sort through who is who when you do, as the people who are possessed of their own mind take one look at you and your weapon and either get out of the way or return their focus to whoever is hitting them. Those who are not their own men and women see you instead as a greatest threat and turn their aggression on you. You are not sure whether this desire to attack the most dangerous person in the room is a bug in Purson's ability or a feature, but whichever it is seems to be playing in your favor.

Glass shatters above you, and you look up to see a figure wrapped in white fall out of an upstairs window and land on the ground. She rolls and springs back up to her feet before unrolling more of the fabric around her body.

Sheets, you realize with no little shock. This girl has covered herself completely in clean sheets and is using them as unusually effective weapons. The long lengths of cloth flick out with each movement of her hands, cracking like bullwhips and catching the attention of several hostages. They run at her only for the sheets to unfold themselves as though they were extensions of her body and wrap around their heads before clonking them together at speeds that make you wince.

A new Trigger. That is the only explanation. Not that somebody Triggering as a parahuman in the midst of an attack by the Fallen is unexpected. If you were powerless and at their mercy, this would probably be among the worst days of your life, too. An ugly part of your mind cannot help but note that this new cape, working without a name or a costume or even any experience with their powers, is more willing to help than a certain other individual you could name.

"They're Mastered!" you yell at the telekinetic cape. "Take them down, but don't hurt them too much!"

"I know!"

Her words stagger you, and you stare at her in confusion for several seconds, averting your eyes only to swing your scythe at a knot of hostages attempting to tackle you. The other cape's voice is familiar. Suspiciously so. With your most recent attackers knocked down and knocked out, you look back at the new cape.

As she continues to fight, she has weaponized more and more of the sheets around her and in the process has revealed a head full of fluffy white hair. Hair that you know you have seen not too much earlier in the day on a much smaller head. She spins around and hurls a hostage across the room as though she is competing in an Olympic hammer throw competition, and the movement brings with it a flash of blue just above her face. Paint, probably.

Or hair dye.

There could be any number of teenagers with blue hair in this resort, but no matter how hard you try to convince yourself of that, the most obvious explanation refuses to leave your mind. The cape raises one hand towards you and clenches her fist.

The sound of something exploding comes from right behind you, and you spin around to find a cape all in white with a long mask pierced through by javelins of ice. Purson, the Fallen's Master, stares at you as eyes flashing blue, then his head slumps in death.

«Telepathic intrusion ineffective.»

It is impossible to ignore what is right in front of you now. That is Laura. Laura is a mage.

And a mage can join forces with a Unison Device to become something greater.

You force your eyes away from the whirling dervish and back to the task at hand. There will be a time to talk to Laura and Cassiel about this in the future, once you are no longer being attacked by all and sundry. Not that the hostages are that much of a danger except to themselves. You take a moment to look at the battlefield again. Maybe it is the addition of two mages and a Guardian Beast, maybe it is just the natural course of the fight, or maybe it is the result of Purson's death. Regardless, the hostages are fighting more clumsily and are becoming easier for the other civilians and guards to take down. The tide is turning against the Fallen.

Gunshots ring out from one corner of the room, and the sheets around Laura thrash wildly in the split second before the hostages next to her fall to the ground with red stains on their bodies.

The Fallen's foot soldier.

You jump into the air and over the crowd, your energy blade failing as you divert your magic into a different spell. Not the gunman, you realize as the shooter looks up at you. It was Empusa firing into the crowd. She likewise leaps into the air at an angle, dodging you swing as you fall into the space where she was standing. The hostages who had been surrounding her jump on top of you in a dog pile.

«Stop the other cape in white!» you scream in your mind at both Samantha and the Laura-Cassiel duo. Your scythe reignites with an angry hiss, and you spin yourself and the hostages holding on to you as you slash at them. The heat coming off the scythe causes several of them to scream, but nevertheless you are free and on the hunt for your own target.

Empusa, hovering in the middle of the room near the ceiling, wears the expression of someone who is coming to realize that they might have screwed up.

You take off after her like a gunshot. She tries to dodge, but while she is fast, you are faster. You slam into her and drive both her and you into the floor. Her gun would in some other circumstances act like an effective club, but between the lack of leverage and your Barrier Jacket, all she can do is flail it around and scream hateful invectives at you.

That leaves an opening that is just too tempting to pass up. A single fireball forms in your palm, and you shove it into her screaming mouth and detonate it.

Non-lethal is not the same as non-crippling, and your stomach squirms when her bottom jaw shatters and rips itself off her face.

The world lights up, and you whirl around prepared to put what is left of your magic into your Strong Shield. It is not a massive attack, however. It is simply the light of day, light that you had not even realized had been blocked out as much as it was, shining through the windows.

The dome must have fallen.

Above you the ceiling shatters, and five capes in costume drop into the building. "Tampa Protectorate! Everyone down on the ground!"

You sigh and flop down on top of the – hopefully unconscious – Leviathan-themed flier.

Finally. The cavalry has arrived.


In case you were wondering, this is how Laura gets off Taylor's Shit List™.

I thought it would be cruel to make you wait for the interlude considering the impact of this chapter, so just keep scrolling down.

 

[Silently Watches]

Suntan 13.x

Saturday, July 30

The bathroom rang with the echoes of Taylor's accusation.

"Um," Kayleigh said, breaking the disturbing silence. That was apparently all she had to say because she fell quiet again immediately afterwards.

Laura sighed and leaned against the sink. "Well. That went… badly."

"I, um, I'm sure she didn't mean that. About leaving you to die."

It was hard to hold back the snort that wanted to escape, but Laura managed it. Kayleigh had not seen the look in Taylor's eyes as she made that threat. The anger, the disgust. In the heroine's mind, by refusing to come to the aid of the normal people stuck on this island, Laura had lowered herself to somewhere around or below the level of pond scum.

And she could not exactly argue against that opinion.

That was not what Kayleigh needed to hear, though. She did not need to know how close Taylor had been to trying to melt Laura's face off. Kayleigh, even after years of knowing her, still had a slightly romanticized view of cape life. It was a view Laura had gone to great lengths to preserve. Her friend, her sister in all but blood, was an optimist and an idealist who somehow thought that everyone had a spark of good somewhere inside them. She did not need to see the dark and brutal underbelly of humanity.

So instead of disagreeing and disabusing Kayleigh of the notion that this was something that could be patched up, she simply said, "Maybe. Hey, can I get a little privacy? Just for a few minutes."

Kayleigh looked at her with narrowed eyes. "You want me to go away so you can mope, don't you?"

"I don't mope!" Laura immediately denied. She didn't! "I just… need some time to think, okay? And I bet your parents are going to start looking for you soon if you don't head back."

The other girl sighed in exasperation but walked out the door, flicking a knowing glance at her as she passed. "If you're not back in ten minutes, I'm dragging you out of here."

Ten minutes. Ha. As if ten minutes would be enough time for her to figure out what in the world she was going to do about all this.

Taylor – Calamity Witch – thought she was too selfish and too cowardly to help out defending the resort. That was not the case at all, though Laura could see why Taylor thought that was what was going on. It was not that she did not want to help. She did!

She just couldn't.

The Fallen were among the largest villain organizations in the United States. They had, apparently, beaten back an entire branch of the Protectorate and kidnapped its members as they tried to escape. This was the kind of group that was suicide for someone to fight all on their own. And Taylor expected her to hold them off by herself?

She shook her head. Taylor had a dangerous blind spot, one she did not think the taller girl even knew about. It was obvious from the way she had talked on the beach. Taylor made social calls to the Triumvirate. She collaborated with Dragon to Tinker. She had the raw strength to make an Endbringer hurt.

Laura would be the first to agree that Calamity Witch was a powerful cape, easily in the top tier. She deserved to be on such casual terms with the big name capes. The problem was that she saw her power and the power of those she associated with and had convinced herself that it was the norm, that all capes had this much power at their fingertips.

She was wrong.

Wrapping her arms around herself, Laura thought about trying to fight a team of the Fallen like she had seen breaking into the spa and could not help the shiver that ran down her spine. It was impossible. Her powers were not so strong that she could hold them off, not if her life depended on it and definitely not as casually as Taylor seemed to think she could.

It was one of the first things Jotunn had pounded into her head when she joined up. Could her ice blasts cause property damage? Sure. Could they stop a Brute from breaking her in half? Keep a speedster from slipping behind her and stabbing her in the back? Stop a Master from taking over her mind and turning her into nothing more than a puppet?

Hell no.

Her ice was on the weak side of powers. That had been proven in the ring time and time again by Jotunn and Pounce and Solaire. The only cape she could regularly beat was Angel Dust, who as a Tinker should not be fighting in the first place anyway. She was no Alexandria, no matter how much she had wanted to be when she was little. If anyone shrugged off her attacks and got close, she was nothing more than a regular teenaged girl. She would be defenseless.

At least against Leviathan, there were much more tempting targets he could go after, especially since her powers had done absolutely nothing other than give the flying bricks something to hit him with besides their fists. She would be the only cape here for the Fallen to focus on.

Those were just the immediate dangers, too! Taylor was an independent cape. If someone figured out who she was, who were they going to attack to get back at her? Samantha? An image of the animalistic woman covered in the blood of the Maras came to mind, and Laura shook her head. If anyone tried attacking Samantha to get at Taylor, that would not be a fight. It would just be natural selection in action.

Her? She had a team. If she revealed her powers in such a public display, it opened up all of Winter Hill to reprisals. Any dumb normie who took a picture or video and posted it to the Internet would be painting a target on her back for the Fallen to take a shot at, and that shot would come at Winter Hill's expense. They would know it, too. They would know that she was putting herself and her own interests, even if those interests were to protect other people, in front of the gang's. It would be seen as a betrayal.

Winter Hill did not treat traitors kindly. She had not yet had her powers when Malachite tried breaking off from the gang and taking part of their territory for himself, but she had heard what happened. They would not butcher her for this, of that much she could be sure, but they would still cast her out so any revenge was her own to deal with. The other members of Winter Hill were not her friends, she had been honest to Taylor about that, but they were still all she had. She did not like her chances if she was thrown out in the streets to watch her own back.

She had no delusions that Jotunn would step in, either. He cared for her, loved her, but if he had to choose between his gang and his daughter, everybody who knew him knew which one he would pick.

No matter what Taylor thought of her choices, she had good reasons for them, Laura told herself with a sniff. Nor was it just self-interest. If she died, which was too possible not to consider when fighting the blasted Fallen of all capes, who was going to stand guard over the people who paid Winter Hill to provide them with protection? None of the other capes were interested. Pounce had actually laughed at her when it came out that she routinely spent her free time patrolling their territory and making sure things were calm and safe, that there were no muggers or rapists lying in wait down dark alleys. Jotunn, once he heard, had never told her to stop, but he never told anyone to help out either. Between nobody else caring and them making it clear that the Protectorate were not welcome on their turf, she was the only protector those people had.

Laura took a deep breath and held it for a moment. She was doing the right thing. She knew it. Taylor and Samantha would have to deal with this themselves. It was not as if they did not already have everything well in hand, not if Taylor's comment about killing some of the Fallen was anything to go by. All they had to do was overpower a group of villains who no one smart was willing to fight head on because they were so strong that nobody could stop them.

All they had to do was keep dancing one step ahead of certain death or worse.

She punched the door, then again and again. Only when her hand ached from the abuse did she stop and curl up on herself. She would not cry. She did not deserve to cry.

Because Taylor was right. The bitch was one hundred percent on the nose. She wanted to help, wanted to help out the only person Kayleigh had ever forced on her who might actually get it and understand her life, but instead she was standing here in a bathroom coming up with every flimsy excuse under the sun why she should not when the reality was so much simpler.

She was just too much of a weakling and a coward.

"Everyone seek shelter," a voice came from the speakers outside. "The Fallen are approaching this building. I repeat, everyone seek shelter. All guards assemble in the main lobby."

Laura tried to laugh, but the sound was quickly choked out by a sob. How fucking perfect! Here she was, trying to save her own hide, and as a result she had just killed them all. Taylor's prediction was about to come true sooner than either of them expected.

Someone knocked on the door, and she forced her face into an expressionless mask. Thankfully it was not Kayleigh who walked through the door, but a little kid. It took a minute for her to recognize the blonde girl as Taylor's cousin. Something that started with a 'c'. Cassie, that was it! It took a moment for the reality of her situation to sink in, and Laura almost laughed.

Great. If the Fallen did anything to Taylor's cousin and did not kill Laura in the process, Taylor sure as hell would finish the job for them. "I don't think this is the best hiding spot, kid," she told the girl in a gruff voice.

"Hiding from the Fallen is not my primary concern," Cassie said in that weird way of speaking she had. Seriously, did her mother shove a dictionary down her throat when she was born or something? "Even if it were, I have alternate options." The girl scanned her with baby blue eyes and frowned. "You are distressed, but not just about the Fallen attacking us. Something else. What is it?"

"I'm not upset," she muttered petulantly.

"Of course you are not." At least the girl had sarcasm down pat. Cassie grabbed her hand, and her eyes grew wide.

Laura pulled away from the creepy nine-year-old and scowled. "What the hell? You don't just go grabbing people and shit like that—"

"How much do you wish to assist Taylor?"

She blinked at the strange question. "What?"

"You wish to assist Taylor in fighting against the Fallen. I can see that." Cassie put her hands behind her back and swayed back and forth. "You also would prefer not to reveal your powers or your identity. What would you be willing to do if I said I could turn that desire into a reality?"

Creepy. Crazy. Both those words crossed Laura's mind, but what finally stuck was 'scary'. "What the fuck? How do you know that?"

"I know much. You have yet to answer my question."

"Well, it's a weird question, isn't it? I've got some little girl talking about fighting the Fallen and acting like I'm a cape or some shit."

A smirk settled on Cassie's face. "I am no little girl."

Laura opened her mouth to argue that was exactly what she was when she started glowing. That glow turned her entire body into white light, and Laura had to shield her face. Once the light showed ended, she lowered her hand to find a tiny person with pure white hair and wings drifting in front of her. "As I said," the fairy-like creature said with Cassie's voice, "I am no girl. I am the intelligence forged by Dragon from the remains of the Simurgh. I am the angel who sees the past and the future. I… am Cassiel."

She was insane. That was the only explanation that made sense. She had some kind of nervous breakdown when the Fallen attacked and was now totally bug-fucking nuts.

"Be not afraid," the fairy said with another smirk, "for I come with glad tidings. You wish to fight against the Fallen. I can aid you in this endeavor."

Laura bit her lip. If she was insane, which was definitely the case… then did it really matter if she listened to whatever offer this was? It was all in her head anyway, right? "How?"

"We would merge for a short time. You would have access to my abilities and my knowledge, abilities that would serve as your weapons."

…Was it bad that she wished this was real, if only because it sounded like the answer to all her current problems. Still, the idea that a little creature, fairy, Ziz-baby, whatever would be capable of doing something like this was hard to swallow. "And this would make me strong enough to fight off the Fallen?" she asked in a cautious voice.

Cassiel giggled darkly, the sound putting to rest any doubts Laura had about her relation to the Hopekiller. "Have no concerns about that, Cailleach. If it is power you seek, then power shall be given to you."

Warnings about making deals with devils ran through her head. This was the kind of thing her common sense yelled at her was a terrible idea. She should run out of this bathroom screaming at the top of her lungs because everything about this situation should scare the living daylights out of anyone with two brain cells to rub together.

…And she was so tired of being scared.

"Ah, fuck it. You know what? Let's do this." She stretched her hand out and let Cassiel land on her palm. After a moment, she frowned. "How, uh, how do we do this?"

"Open your mind to me. It is as simple as that." The mini-angel started glowing again. "Also, you should brace yourself. This will feel a little weird."

"What do you mean, weird?"

Cassiel shot into her chest in a streak of light, and Laura fell to the ground as something suddenly coursed through her body. It was something comfortable and soothing, like her mother's bedtime songs when she was just a little kid. And yet, it also felt like new strength surging into her limbs. It felt like a piece of herself being opened up and revealed for the first time, a piece she did not know was missing.

«This is your magic,» Cassiel's voice said from inside her own head. «Few people have the capacity to use it. It is the same power that makes Taylor such a formidable fighter. It is within you as well.

«You will have time to luxuriate in this feeling later. Right now, we must find you a weapon with which to fight. Something you can manipulate through my telekinesis with ease.» The angel laughed. «In fact, I have the perfect idea.»

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

"This is a bad idea."

«It will be fine.»

"No, seriously, it's an awful idea."

«Laura, you underestimate me and yourself. Both these actions irritate me, but the former in particular. Everything will be fine.»

"I don't think you're—"

«Just throw the weight!»

Laura looked down at the twenty pound weight they had borrowed from the gym in the process of assembling her disguise. If a dozen sheets could even be considered a disguise. She looked out through the window again at the absolute mess that had filled the lobby, regular people fighting against Mastered people in a no-holds-barred melee. Even if the 'good guys' won, this was going to be ugly.

A flash of orange caught her attention, and she looked to the left to find none other than Taylor, still in her Cinder disguise, and Samantha charging into the fray. The orange turned out to be some kind of odd Tinkertech energy blade Cinder was using to drop people like flies.

«I suppose if you have elected not to fight, we should end Unison,» Cassiel said in a bored voice, her mood a 180-degree turn from her previous impatience. «Taylor is here, after all. You can go back to pitying yourself and wallowing in your fears—»

"Shut. Up!" Reaching out with the power – the magic – Cassiel was channeling through her, Laura picked the weight off the ground and hurled it at the window. The metal disc hit the glass and shattered it into thousands of shards.

«Good. Now jump through!»

Laura forced herself not to think about what she was doing and sprinted at the opening. "If I die, it's your fault!" she snapped at the little devil nestled somewhere inside of her. Jumping up and curling into a ball to make sure her shoes cleared the broken glass, she brought her arms up in front of her face and did her best not to scream as she fell.

Her body moved without her control, and when her feet hit the ground she pushed off to turn her fall into a roll. «You will not die from this,» Cassiel promised her. «Now. Just as we practiced.»

The girl did her best not to roll her eyes. Taking her eyes off the enemies rushing at her was a dumb idea, something she had been trained not to do, but Cassiel really needed to learn not to call one single attempt at snapping sheets with telekinesis 'practice'. Still, now was not the time to gripe. She unraveled the sheets wrapped around her arms and flung her hands out, the movement helping her guide the telekinesis she was using to throw the sheets at the Mastered people and pulling back at just the right time snap the ends in their faces. She muttered to her passenger, "You're sure this is going to work?"

«I am. Purson's Master ability takes time to settle. When it is fresh, sufficient trauma to the head to render someone unconscious will end his control.»

So she had to knock all these people out. Simple enough. Untwisting the sheets she had hit them with, she wrapped the ends around their heads and smacked them together. If she had to hit their heads hard, she might as well make it a two for one kind of deal.

"They're Mastered!" Cinder yelled at her as if she had somehow missed that little fact. "Take them down, but don't hurt them too much!"

"I know!" she yelled back. Quieter, she asked, "Any chance you can use that precog of yours to help me out?"

The fairy snickered at her, and the world abruptly slowed down. «If I might borrow terminology from you, I am the fucking Simurgh. The future is my bitch.»

Returning her attention to the people trying to hurt her, she blinked as they kept moving at half speed. They also had echoes or something similar in front of them that they looked like they were chasing down. She asked for this, Laura reminded herself, and pulling off more of the sheets wrapped around her chest and head she cast them out to wind around the ankles that were going to be where she was aiming. A tug dropped several of them onto the hard tile floor.

The sheets streaming from her hands lashed themselves around the shoulders of a big guy barreling towards her, and she spun on her heels to get enough momentum to throw him across the room. Was there an easier way to do this? Targeting the Master himself, maybe?

«It is worth an attempt,» Cassiel said, catching her by surprise. Laura then felt a flash of exasperation, though she knew it was not her own. «I am inside you. I can hear your thoughts, as could all mages should you wish them to do so. Regardless of whether incapacitating Purson would stop his victims, it would prevent him from making more. He is… Oh. Sneaking up on Taylor.»

He was what?! She turned her head to find the shadow echo of a cape dressed all in white running at Cinder's back. Oh, no. Taylor getting Mastered? That would be bad. He was too far away for her to hit with her sheets. The only power she had that could stop him was something Cassiel could not provide.

To hell with it, Laura decided as she stretched out her power to latch onto the patch of floor where his echo was running. If he managed to snag Taylor, they were all dead anyway. Purson's real body stepped on the trapped spot, and she clenched her hand closed.

Spikes of ice longer than she was tall burst out of nowhere and punched through him like needles fixing bugs to a pinboard. It looked for a moment as though he was still giving it a go of ensnaring Taylor, but then his head drooped and the other cape went back to somehow nonlethally whacking people with a scythe blade.

«Behold, the world did not end because you used your powers.»

«Shut up,» she thought at Cassiel, somehow sure the winged brat had heard her. A spin sent the edges of her sheets circling her to wrap around the heads and hands of the Mastered people and throwing them onto the ground where another flick knocked their heads against the floor.

«All I have done is point out— Be careful!» Once more her hands – her whole body, really – moved against her will and turned her to the left. A cloud of something or other was coming towards her at a decent speed for this slowed down world, and Cassiel moved the ends of the sheets in a bizarre dance.

Laura was about to ask just what she was doing and why it required taking control of her body with an assault rifle started firing. She winced, preparing herself for the worst, only for the ends of the simple sheets around her to deflect the bullets into the bodies surrounding her. «Thanks.»

«You are welcome to mention your gratitude again at your leisure.»

«…You do know the phrase is 'don't mention it', right?»

She could almost feel Cassiel blink. «Where would be the fun in that?»

Before she could offer any kind of retort, yet another voice, this one sounding like Taylor, barged into her head. «Stop the other cape in white!»

Hearing all these voices was not helping to convince her she was not crazy, but she passed her next question to the angel on her proverbial shoulder. «Any idea where he is?»

Cassiel gave her a mental head shake, however strange that was to feel, so Laura had little choice but to get a better vantage point. Finding that point involved jumping up and onto the shoulders of one of the Mastered vacationers and from there hopping onto a column before before wrapping a sheet around it to hold herself tight. Was increasing her physical abilities part of this bargain, she had to wonder, because if so she might be willing to let the little Barbie doll stick around.

«I am worth far more than some simple child's play thing,» Cassiel protested, «and I am not enhancing your body. I can, however, use my telekinesis to negate part of the pull of gravity on you to enhance your jumps and slow your fall. Also, I see our quarry.»

The cape in question was in the back of the room, looking around himself as though he was seeing or hearing something terrifying that only he knew about. He was not actively engaged in the fight, which normally would mean he was all but a noncombatant.

Or, considering he was a member of the Fallen, just meant he was stupid.

Once more he was too far away for Laura to hit him with her sheets, but her eyes landed on something laying on the ground. It would be a good experiment if nothing else.

«Oh, yes. Laura? Do it. Please. You have to do it.»

That was all the temptation she really needed. A wave of her hand launched the twenty pound weight at high speed to collide with the cape's face. Down he went, out cold and apparently covered in blood. Was he supposed to be that much of a wimp?

«Not in the slightest. He gave Taylor substantial difficulty due to his danger sense. I can only presume that due to us focusing my precognition like this, it created enough psychic interference that he could not predict from where the threat was to come.»

Something exploded in the middle of the room, and Laura had just enough time to glance over and see that Taylor had mutilated another cape in blue when the ceiling collapsed to let in a bunch flying lawmen.

«Not a moment too soon,» chimed in Cassiel. «They can handle the clean up. We need to rid you of the evidence so you will not be questioned as a cape. Trust me, you will be in Master/Stranger lockup pretending to be a civilian for long enough already.»

Not dealing with the Protectorate any longer than absolutely necessary? That was a plan she could get behind.


Cassiel's character sheet updated.
Cailleach added to Magical Potentiates.

In many ways, Laura is in the same situation Theo would have been in had he Triggered while Kaiser was still running the Empire.

Considering how few skills Taylor has left to purchase, I'm going to expand things a little. This arc earned you a new spell, but you can use it to teach Taylor something new like normal…

…OR you can use it on Lacey. Your choice.

Go ahead and talk it out amongst yourselves.

 

[Silently Watches]

After-Action Report for Arc 13: Suntan

Vacay

• The very first vote of this arc was by far the most important.
  • First, it determined which combatants you had available for the fights later on in the arc. You chose Vista, Dragon, and Cassiel.
  • Second, it determined if you could get that bit of information I hinted at in the last AAR out of Standstill. Instead, she learned that she could stop some simple Master effects (and that several of her colleagues are not mages).
  • Third… well, let's just say I'm gonna have a ton of fun with Vista next arc. 😈
• Speaking of Cassiel, if you hadn't voted to bring her along, she would have snuck along instead. I actually had a really cute scene in mind where Dragon (if you didn't bring her with you) or Tim called in a panic because they couldn't find her, and then Taylor heard someone zipping her luggage back up.
• Tim wouldn't have been able to contribute anything directly to the fighting that occurred later on. Realistically the only reason to bring him would be to have his Guardian Beasts accompany him so they could go full Jurassic Park on the Fallen.
• Lacey would have been great for healing up the people who were injured in the fighting, and having no choice but to protect people would have been a good time for some more practice with her Ring Bind. Plus, you know, new spell.
  • Kurt… hmm. I was still undecided what to do with him should he come, so it helps that absolutely no one voted for him. Redemption story for sure, possibly with a side of paraplegia after defending somebody from one of the villains.
• Epoch and Maclibuin would have been interesting, and like I mentioned at one point, from the social side of things now was a good time to have him chat with Lacey about magical healing.
• Standstill and Cat Sith had two benefits. One of them was that, like I said above, she has something to tell you. The other was that since they only counted as one person, it would have given you a "free" combatant.
• Just be glad you didn't pick the trio of Tim, Dragon, and Cassiel. That was what I was calling "Hard Mode" in my head since none of them are direct combatants, leaving all the fighting to you, Samantha, and Cailleach. Not that Missy wound up doing much.

Beach Play

• There were three social events to start this arc and lull you into a false sense of security. And because, you know, they were fun. I just didn't want an entire week's worth of them.
• While on the beach, you talked with Missy and then invited her to make the volleyball game a 4-on-4. This was the objectively best choice, since it was obvious Missy was disturbed by her realizations AND you got to social all three girls at the same time.
  • Mrs. Stevens was grilling Samantha and Dragon on their relationship to you. Samantha used the now-familiar excuse that she was Danny's girlfriend before he had a bad car accident, and "Diana" just kept on with the maternal aunt story.
  • Mr. Stevens's phone call was just work stuff.
  • Some kids who were Cassiel's apparent age found her walking along the beach and dragged her into a Frisbee game. Dragon was so nonchalant about the missing Endbringer because Cassiel called her in a panic asking what she was supposed to do.
  • Without you, Kayleigh and Laura would have narrowly lost the volleyball game.
• Later that night, you sought out Kayleigh when you couldn't sleep. You spent some time gaming with her and got some advice on how not to lose yourself in your mask.
  • Outside the main building, Laura was chilling in the hot tub. Having Kayleigh spot the two of you through a window would have been SO tempting.
  • Missy was perched on the rooftop brooding about everything she and Taylor talked about. She's not Batgirl, but not for lack of trying.
  • Cassiel was watching cartoons, and Dragon was also present doing maintenance on her gynoid body.
• The next morning, you hung out with Laura and went for a run on the beach. It turns out she has as few friends as you, so you offered to accompany her on one of her patrols back in Philly.
  • Kayleigh went to the resort's spa for some pampering.
  • Missy decided to start the day off with a big breakfast. She needs the fuel for her implanted generator. You would have noticed that she looked more relaxed and peaceful than she did during your conversation with her at the beach.
• And that was the end of the social side of the arc. It was fun while it lasted. Kayleigh now has five events to her name, Laura revealed herself to be a guaranteed Linker Core (I got tired of waiting for you guys to get on the ball), and Missy is just waiting for a Linker Core mutation.

Melee

• Forty villains, four combat capable "heroes", and a spatial barrier. Fun times.
• When the siege started, you chose to check out the situation with Laura first, though you also were immediately passing on information to Samantha and Dragon. Because you were limited to a ground angle, you didn't everyone.
  • Had you prioritized evacing all the non-capes, you wouldn't have gotten the information about the Fallen until Laura got back. That being said, it would have made it easier to get some of the vacationers to listen to you later on had you chosen that route.
  • Flying to do the surveillance would have shown you everything, but it also would have made you much more obvious and forced you into a fight with the entire Fallen at once.
• After that, you had several choices laid in front of you, from attacking outright to falling back and planning to rushing out to rescue an important character (and the assorted civilians around them).
• Your first choice was to rescue Kayleigh at the spa. This was the target closest to the big group of the Fallen, and it was the one where bad things would have happened if you hadn't gone there first. I actually planned to have a die roll to see if Kayleigh Triggered from everything going on (because I'm terrible like that). Instead you were able to get everybody out with minimal casualties.
  • Initially it looked like you were leaning towards attacking the Fallen. That was, uh… let's just say it wouldn't have been the brightest collective decision you ever made. The Fallen wouldn't send out so many of their capes without bringing a few capes with more of a defensive power. As you saw later on, they had two: an anti-Blaster and a precog with danger sense.
  • Retreating and regrouping with Dragon would have let you get more information from her and Cassiel, specifically that Cassiel had more information about the Fallen than anyone else at the resort. She just panicked the civilians unnecessarily to throw up a smokescreen for her own retreat, which Dragon took exception to. Dragon was coordinating security, but some of them just didn't want to listen to her. Telling them that she was Diana Richter, computer engineer, rather than Dragon, Tinker extraordinaire, might have had something to do with that.
  • Going to Samantha and Missy would have gotten them and the other people with them out of danger, but they had time to prepare and defend themselves.
  • Had you gone to the suites first, you would have been able to evacuate Cassiel more quickly than her flying to the activity center.
  • The idea to teleport just your friends and allies out of danger would have come back to bite you hard. Numero uno, Dragon would have been unhappy that you intentionally left all those defenseless civilians to die. Numero dos, keep in mind the existence of cell phone cameras and PHO. All it would take is one person taking a photo and surviving to put it on the web, and suddenly a) Calamity Witch and allies are getting slammed and b) more importantly, people ask why Kayleigh is so important to a bunch of capes. There's a gang in Philly who would be especially eager to hurt your friend in revenge for the Privateers hurting one of their capes.
• Your next choice was to run around like chickens with your heads cut off attack the Fallen headed towards the suites. And apparently a different villain broke the fourth wall because goddamn the paranoia and hopelessness you people were trying to peddle was annoying. After consulting with Cassiel and looking into the future, you finally tried overwhelming them with sheer numbers. It… could have gone worse?
  • Attempting to teleport out would have been fascinating. And painful. Barriers aren't exactly good things to try to slip through like that.
  • Attacking one of the Fallen groups now that they've split up would have worked out better than attacking them all at once. You could have seen Andras the anti-Blaster at work since he was part of the group attacking the restaurant. Oh, and the Ingenue-like Tinker in the spa.
  • Evacuating the restaurant or attacking the Fallen attacking it probably would have been the smartest choices because you could collect all your combat assets in one place. Not to mention you wouldn't have had to deal with the crit fail.
• Your final choice was to find and save Missy. Good choice. Because of your crit fail during the previous phase, she was Strangered by Ose. Maybe Cassiel should get some of her grounding reduced in thanks for logic-ing Missy out of it.
  • Had you not chosen to evacuate the restaurant before this (and assuming it was still standing), it would have been a default option unless you were trying to use the restaurant as a fallback position. This required eliminating the Fallen attacking it, though.
  • Or you could have attacked the Fallen in the spa or still headed towards the suites.
  • Attacking the Fallen near the activity center was one of those choices that I hoping you DIDN'T pick because it would have thrown my plans for the next chapter completely out of whack. Thankfully you had Samantha go to the activity center first to recover, so I only had to kill one enemy cape.
• Thus ended the rescue phases, and those were followed by the "siege" of the activity center. Not that it at all went in the Fallen's favor when you went grim reaper on them. In doing so, you also found out that they had a Tinker on their side who could alter a cape's powers.
  • Had you waited to see if reinforcements would show up or used lethal Solar Wrath on them, you would have missed that bit of info.
  • Going nonlethal wouldn't have made the fight impossible, but you would have had a harder time dealing with Leraje, the Behemoth cape.
• With that done, it was time to hunt. You and Sam went after the spa group in a nonlethal manner. W.A.S. certainly proved its worth in this fight.
  • The suites group was just a bad idea. You had already seen that fighting somebody with a precognitive type of power is tricky, and they had many more hostages they could throw your way to slow you down.
  • The hiding group would have been interesting. You would have learned in-character that the source of the spatial barrier was none other than known mage and villain Lilliput. Somebody, I forget who, actually guessed it was his doing over the course of the arc.
  • If you're wondering why Taylor didn't have time to grab any of the Tinker's tech to bring back to Tim, there's a very good reason for that. I just couldn't figure out a good Exotic Skill for him that would both be unique and wouldn't be overpowered.
• And of course, while you busy with that, Empusa's group decided to attack the activity center with their army of Mastered hostages. Dragon got you back fast enough it didn't end in a slaughter, and Laura entering Unison with Cassiel helped to deal with Oriax's annoying danger sense.

Pay Day

• Since there was a fight (one really, really long one), you had another opportunity to learn a spell. You chose Reforge Armor, and since that earned you your second cross training, you decided to go after the defensive Undaunted specialization.

And DONE! Give me a little time to recover from all the arguments that cropped up over this arc, and we'll get started on Arc 14 soon enough.

 

[Silently Watches]

Realign 14.1

Monday, August 1

You look to your right at 'Diana', who looks back with a pleasant smile. To your left, Samantha stares at the small screen with an opaque back floating in front of her. She will be no help to you here. Finally you stare straight ahead at the winged devil with her innocent mein. "Cassiel."

She looks at you with a placid expression.

"Do you… have any threes?"

The feathered fairy glances at her own screen and shakes her head. "Go fish."

You snarl quietly and hit the draw button on your screen. A worthless five of coins appears in your lineup, matching exactly nothing you have in your hand.

"Hey, Taylor?" asks Samantha without looking at you. "Got any threes?"

This time your growl is much more audible as you slide both your threes off your screen in her direction, and a glowing numeral 3 lights up along with the 7, 11, and capital E for the Empress rank. Yet another book collected for the Guardian Beast.

Despite all your attempts for the last two days, Perfect Storm has stubbornly refused to create a normal deck of cards. Galean culture had its own deck with five suits and fifteen ranks, one through twelve and then the Sinner, Prophet, and Empress. Two Death cards, which are apparently essential in some card games and seem to be analogous to the Joker, complete the 77-card set. Your Device initially tried to teach the four of you games from Galea, but the actual rules were in the memory files that had been corrupted beyond recovery. Instead you were forced to adapt Earth games to these cards, with Go Fish being the most recent attempt at passing the time.

A game that, despite being a regular raccoon prior to you finding her dying in the street, Samantha is utterly spanking you at. You cannot remember being beaten this badly at cards since your mother was alive.

"How long have we been stuck here?" you ask no one in particular. The 'here' in question is the featureless room the Tampa PRT stuck the four of you within once some semblance of order had descended upon the island.

"Fifty-eight hours, thirty-six minutes," Perfect Storm chimes.

Samantha groans. "How long did you say we were going to be treated like rats in a cage, Dragon?"

"If the PRT is using standard Master/Stranger protocols, which they undoubtedly are considering who it was who attacked the island, anywhere between forty-eight and seventy-two hours." She shrugs and points at the digital mask she was projecting onto her face. "They will undoubtedly be extra cautious with us considering we are capes."

The capes the PRT knows about, that is. Missy, not being in costume, you saw being shepherded along with several other normal people, and when Cassiel came fluttering over without her prior Unison partner, you knew Laura was planning to vanish into the crowd of civilians as well. You have not seen them or anyone else since the four of you were shoved into this room.

"They better let us out soon," you say into the ensuing silence. "I've never noticed it before, but the longer I'm stuck here in my Barrier Jacket, the more I can't help but remember that I'm running around naked except for a forcefield."

You are tempted to post that on the Internet just to have something to do, but 'Cinder' has enough new threads on PHO as it is. Someone took photos of the aftermath of your fights with the Fallen and uploaded them, and the collective nerds of the 'Net went crazy soon after. Dragon had not overestimated the threat the cultists posed, and then in the course of an hour ten of their capes were dead and another nine were captured, not to mention the unpowered gunmen who do not appear to warrant mention on the forum. It attracted attention.

You know it had to be a member of the PRT who released the photos, both because the only people who were present in the dome who have access to the Internet are the four of you thanks to Perfect Storm and because one of the photos shows a row of ten bodies covered by sheets. It is still up in the air whether that was done to compliment or denigrate you, and the forum-goers cannot seem to decide either. Some of them are praising you for taking care of the Fallen while others worry who you will go on a killing spree against next. A few even called for you to do the same to the rest of the Fallen, an idea Samantha is fully in favor of and which you cannot help but find tempting as well.

Almost as though your less than charitable thoughts have summoned them, the door opens to reveal a full team of PRT agents backed up by one of the flying Brutes from earlier. "Come on. You're free to go."

"Finally," Samantha mutters. Cassiel nods in agreement and drifts upwards to settle herself on the Guardian Beast's head. That earns an eye-roll and a huff but nothing more.

"I'm glad you finally realized we aren't thralls of the Fallen," you add, because really? You would be a pretty terrible slave if you went around and defeated all your masters and supposed allies. If anyone could have been cleared of Master influence without a second thought, it would be you.

Your comment was made half in jest and half in frustration, but even with as light a delivery as it was you still notice the troopers grip their guns tighter. Clearly somebody or somebodies have been reading PHO.

"Just get moving," the lone cape says. "Yours is the last group. Your belongings are in the suites where you left them. Once you have them, we will escort you to the Tampa Protectorate office so you can change back into civilian clothes and can catch a ride to the airport."

Dragon frowns lightly. "You only need us to come to the Protectorate office as a waypoint? It is not for an official statement?"

"No ma'am. Your… friend's actions," he says with no little disgust, "are enough of a statement on their own."

Your fist clenches. It would be satisfying to let him know just what you think of the statement made by his actions, but assaulting a member of the Protectorate is unlikely to let you get home faster, no matter how satisfying it would be.

The voice Dragon uses is so sickeningly sweet that it is obvious she is as unimpressed with his attitude as you are. "Then thank you for the offer, but we will have to decline. We are perfectly capable of teleporting home on our own."

"Wait, what?" one of the troopers says.

She just nods. "Yes, we arrived via teleportation, and we shall leave the same way. You do not have to go out of your way to accommodate us." Left unsaid but clearly heard by all was the underlying message that you could have escaped this quarantine any time you wanted, and that is more effective than anything you can think of to set the troopers and the cape quivering in their boots.

You smile at that, and the display of your teeth does not help their nerves any. You actually suggested doing just that, teleporting to your stuff, grabbing Missy, and getting out, but Dragon shot that idea down by pointing out that doing so would put a target on the backs of everyone involved. Cinder is just a temporary disguise, but Samantha and Cassiel cannot change their appearance so easily.

Despite being the voice of cooperation, you now wonder just why she pushed for that only to lash out at the Protectorate member who came to retrieve all of you. Not that you mind, of course, but you are curious. «If that was meant to put them at ease, I don't think it worked,» you send her teasingly.

«It wasn't. I just wanted to remind him which of you has the bigger stick.» You blink in surprise at that, and she gives you a small smile. «There is a reason why unlike many in the Guild, I am not also a member of the Protectorate. It was not solely due to being an A.I.»

That revelation leaves you reeling.

Fate must have enjoyed spiting your expectations because the suite you were supposed to stay in and where your belongings are is not empty as you assumed. Laying on her bed and watching television, Missy turns her head to look at you when you enter the room. "Hey. Finally get let out?"

You nod and look around the room. It will be quick work to throw all your things back in your suitcase, though you are also considering being lazy and just sealing them inside Perfect Storm. In contrast, Missy's bright yellow suitcase is standing beside her bed already packed. "When did you get out?"

"First group." You raise your eyebrows as that means nothing to you, and a grimace sweeps across her face. "About noon."

"Noon." A glance at the clock tells you no, you have not gone crazy. "It's eight o'clock. You've been sitting here for eight hours?"

"I— Yeah." She shrugs. "I was in the same group as Kayleigh and her folks and Laura. They all took the PRT's offer to get them to the airport, but I told them I was going to wait for the rest of our party. I didn't expect the PRT to keep you in containment so long."

"I'm sorry we kept you waiting." And you are. You understand her desire to leave as one group, but this is beyond excessive. "Samantha! Dragon and Cassiel are teleporting back to Vancouver on their own?"

"Uh huh," comes the response from the living area. Samantha pokes her head into the room and sees Missy. "Ah. You're taking her home?"

"She's been stuck here long enough. I'll meet up with you back at the house." A thought has your Cinder disguise falling apart to be replaced by your normal costume, and you sigh as the magically created fabric fits you more normally. That is better. Pointing your staff at her suitcase, you suck it up into Perfect Storm's storage space and do the same to your own. "All packed. Let's get out of here."

Missy rolls off the bed and takes your offered hand, and you whisk the two of you away.

The sun is setting over the cityscape of Philadelphia, and you look around to find your destination. You did not want to appear directly on top of the base, due in part to the last several times you showed up unexpectedly at a PRT location. You were tired of being called a villain a long time ago, and the same accusations being leveled against Cinder have not helped.

The short trip over to the base is a quiet one but not uncomfortable. You doubt Missy had any more fun being stuck in Master/Stranger quarantine than you did. "Did you ever have to go through that in Bro—"

Missy cuts you off with a raised hand and a quiet "Shh". She points to the base of the PRT building and asks, "Do you see them?"

You don't, but your friend fixes that by shrinking the distance between you and them. Eleven people are gathered at the entrance to one of the garage doors. All of them seem to be wearing the normal body armor of the PRT, but none of them carry containment foam sprayers or rifles. Instead they carry a strange assortment of weapons and tools, including pistols, a book, and a gauntlet, but it is the staff in the hand of one of them that tips you off.

These must be some of the mages you found, now armed with their very own Devices.

"Do they… have… ears?" Missy mutters in surprise.

You want to slap yourself. The dog ears poking out of the helmets some of them wear is another good hint as to their identities, yes. In your defense, you have become so used to Samantha's own ears that animal features on a human figure just do not strike you as strange anymore.

Your revelation does nothing for Missy's own confusion, but you worry about just what kind of feelings enlightening her will engender. Particularly when the last time you two really spoke, she was lamenting the mental protection a Device could provide her if only she had a Linker Core.

No matter how much it could hurt her, she does not deserve a lie.

"They're mages." Her head whips around to look at you, but you keep your eyes focused on them so you do not have to look back. "Legend approached me to help locate mages within the PRT here and teach them how to use magic. The spell I taught them was the same ritual I used to create Samantha. It looks like they've gone beyond just that."

She looks away. "Oh. How… How many did you find?"

"Thirty. Most of them had relatively weak Linker Cores," you add in a weak voice. "They were all in the PRT proper, too. No one in the Protectorate or Wards had one."

Missy is silent for several seconds, and then the close-up of the mages snaps back to reality. "That shouldn't make me feel better."

"But it does?"

"…But it does."


This arc is going to be so much fun for me, I can just tell.

Next week is the start of the new school year, and the arc-specific quests will become available at that time. For now, though, you still have a week of vacation left. Pick out two social events to mourn the end of summer.

• Hang out with another character(s). This is by definition a non-combat activity.
• Go on patrol. You can vote for one non-Samantha character to join you if you want.
• Explore somewhere on Earth Bet. A location must be included. You may bring 1-3 other characters with you.
• Explore another world. If you do not select a world where Taylor has been or already knows about, one will be selected randomly.
• Train, either in the real world or in Perfect Storm's simulator. SPECIFY which spell to work on.
• Write-in (subject to my approval)

Take 24 HOURS to get back in the groove of normal life and figure out what you are going to do.

And before anyone asks, Missy will be with Taylor to check out Tim's mutagenics lab on Wednesday, so if you're thinking about burning a social event on that, don't.