... Far as "Reasons You Suck" speeches go, I would rate that one a solid eight outta ten. Good start, nice build-up, a steady flow of straight facts, but Jackie fumbled the landing a bit, which cost her the straight ten.
Still, a very good opening by our tiny heroine! Now, for the mass murderer's rebuttal? The audience is practically on the edges of their seats!
... Admittedly, mostly in the vain hope of being able to escape before the glowy bitch starts blasting, but still!
This speech certainly put me at the edge of my seat.
Come on, Purity, there is exactly one winning move for you in this situation. One thing you can do to regain some moral high ground (over rock bottom.) Every law enforcement officer probably shouts it at you before they start to escalate.
The audience is practically on the edges of their seats!
... Admittedly, mostly in the vain hope of being able to escape before the glowy bitch starts blasting, but still!
This speech certainly put me at the edge of my seat.
Come on, Purity, there is exactly one winning move for you in this situation. One thing you can do to regain some moral high ground (over rock bottom.) Every law enforcement officer probably shouts it at you before they start to escalate.
Very few law enforcement officers have the nerve to shout at a mass-murdering Blaster 8, and a good chunk of the ones who do also have the sense to realise it's a bad idea.
Thanks, that's been fixed. Always harder when the mispelling is a word in its own right, especially one that starts and ends with the same letters and superficially makes sense.
Generally speaking, it's rather inadvisable to turn one's back on a conversation partner and walk away without warning. But Purity and I were never partners in any meaningful sense of the word, not the ones that involve cooperation, and there wasn't anything I wanted to say to her that I hadn't said already.
Well, there was a lot more I wanted to say, but it would have lost impact if I dragged it out too long. Honestly, I'd already started to lose steam before I actually stopped talking, probably because I hadn't actually planned my speech in any real way. Speaking from the heart without any preparation has its own charm, but it's not exactly great for giving long speeches proper flow. What I had left was mostly just repetition, unconfirmed speculation, and crude profanity that wouldn't have helped matters anyway. Plus rather a lot of violence, which was a really bad idea.
Violence doesn't solve problems when you're basically guaranteed to lose the fight. And I would have. Hard. Probably fatally. No matter how tempting it is, starting fights you won't win is almost always a bad idea. Especially when there's a lot of collateral damage waiting to happen. Not to mention this whole thing started with Purity sparking a stupid fight without regard for the consequences, and even in my anger I had a strong desire to not be that much of a hypocrite.
So I walked away.
It was rude, to be sure, but probably less so than kicking her in the genitalia would have been, and considerably safer for all involved and around to boot. And I had more pressing concerns to be dealing with anyway.
Or, at least, that was the impression I verymuch wanted to give. Weakness was not something I could afford to show, both because I wanted my message to sink in and because if she scented it she might do something stupid.
Like murdering me with her rather puissant parahuman abilities in front of dozens of witnesses and three not-me heroes. That wouldn't end well for her, not that I minded, but, despite the impression I may have given in my last report, I didn't actually want to get murdered.
"Here's your water, Mrs. Presscott. Sorry 'bout the delay, I got accosted by a miscreant."
I said it breezily and cheerfully, as if I hadn't had a care in the world besides making sure she (and all the other patients) was/were properly taken care of. Like everything was okay, and we weren't all in this room because of an atrocity beyond even Purity's (any of her individual massacres, anyway. Bad as she was, she could only be a nightmare in one place at a time). Like there weren't Nazi supervillains in the room with us. Like I wasn't shaking in my cute little steel-toed boots.
Like I hadn't just flicked a mass-murdering Blaster 8 on the nose and walked away.
Naturally, what I got in response would best be described as "stunned silence". Not the best response for my purposes, but workable nonetheless. All I had to do was press blithely onward, blissfully ignorant. Or, at least, apparently blissfully ignorant.
"I know it's hard, but you need to stay hydrated. You said you were thirsty, remember? The effects of dehydration start before you actually feel thirsty, and if you leave it too long it really hinders recovery."
There was probably only so far one could recover from having one's leg blown off just above the knee without the kind of magic sparkly parahuman nonsense that made minor hydration delays irrelevant, even if one didn't turn seventy for another three weeks, but I will note that everything I said was true, and it did get her to take the glass and drink. Even if I did have to help her quite a bit. I was doing good work.
And I was still doing good work when I moved on to the next patient who needed a little help.
Everything was fine, and there was no reason to be alarmed. After all, if there was a reason to be alarmed, wouldn't the little helpful clockwork girl be afraid?
Yes, she would be. But only on the inside. On the outside, she'd be the perfect picture of calm and grace and carefully measured concern for the injured and the sick around her. Which she was. On the outside.
On the inside, I was trying very, very hard to not show any weakness. Any reasonable and remotely unbiased person would have understood, of course, at least after a bit of explanation, but I didn't trust Purity to be either.
There were two, possibly three, things keeping me alive at the moment. The possible third was Purity's (maybe extant) conscience.
Given just how impersonal most of her massacres had been, it was just possible that she wouldn't murder a cute little innocent girl for simply airing legitimate grievances and laying out some very much deserved criticism. Not likely, to my eye, but possible.
After all, it's harder to kill people when you know what you're doing, when you've met the eyes of the person whose life you are ending. And maybe, just maybe, she was sane enough to realise that bloody annihilation wasn't an appropriate response to criticism. Maybe she couldn't bring herself to cause so much collateral damage now that she'd had the facts rubbed in her face, or when she could actually see the victims. It was, in theory, possible that, despite everything, she didn't have the sheer callous malignity to open fire.
But I wasn't about to count on it. I wasn't that stupid.
The real things keeping me me-shaped and unexploded were uncertainty and fear. Not my uncertainty and fear, sadly, because I had enough of both to ward off the whole Empire if that was how it worked, but Purity's.
After all, she didn't know what my power was. She'd probably made the connection between my obviously-parahuman clockwork-girl appearance and the way the room was ticking and full of shiny gears, but beyond that she had no way of knowing what it did or how it worked beyond what she could see and hear.
And what Purity saw and heard was an entire hospital ward obviously under a Shaker effect. One that kept up with no apparent effort while the Shaker in question, obviously not just a Shaker from her metallic appearance, delivered a scathing and obviously heartfelt lecture on her many failings and atrocities, then walked away evidently utterly unconcerned with the possibility of retaliation.
I could have been completely vulnerable. I could have simply been cocky, or just plain incorrectly thought my powers would save me when they actually wouldn't. I could have been overly confident in Assault, who in reality wouldn't have been able to do much more than avenge me, and then only if he got lucky. I could have thought she wouldn't dare do anything in a crowded hospital room, though given my previous speech that would have been incredibly foolish of me. I could have been completely delusional, or just plain suicidal.
I could even, in theory, have been bluffing my terrified little rear off.
But I also could have been entirely correct that my power trumped hers, literally or otherwise, probably via some unknown specific detail or her being inside my field. Even if I hadn't acted as I did, it'd look a bit chancy, but with me completely and utterly ignoring her? Hopefully, she wouldn't want to risk it.
And maybe, just maybe, she'd realise just how much ire would be upon her if she tried. Even if she dialled it down enough to not hurt anybody else, and I wasn't sure if she even could do that, even if I wasn't actually hurt, even if it turned out I wasn't a Ward; attacking an obviously-underage heroic cape with a power that could blow through over a foot of concrete on a bad day over a dressing down, even a severe one, would still bring a lot of wrath down on her head. There was no plausible deniability to be had here: whatever she did, people would know. And, if she succeeded, or if I was a Ward, or maybe a member of New Wave, or even if I just had a few connections or she got unlucky, there would be no escape.
And, of course, every moment she didn't turn me into chunky hot salsa would make those facts all the more apparent, including those spent boggling over the sheer cheek of me just casually turning my back on a Blaster 8 and cheerfully helping a random patient with maintaining proper hydration.
I don't have an explanation for calling her a miscreant though. Just a spur of the moment thing I guess, although in hindsight it is rather amusing. At the time, I was a little too busy carefully ignoring the way the room was getting brighter and the shadows facing away from my previous point of attention were getting longer to see the humour in it, but it did keep my potential murderess off-balance. Maybe.
Either way, when the light returned to normal, I very carefully did not notice, and by the time my caregiving finally required me to look at where Purity had floated again there was not a single luminescent lawbreaker to be seen.
I took a moment to sigh in relief. But only a moment. I really did have more pressing concerns to deal with.
Mr. Tosset's bedpan wasn't going to replace itself after all.
And we're done with Arc 31. Arc 32 will be another all-interlude arc. We'll finally catch up with Lisa next chapter, but the arc will also have at least one perspective on all this thisness at the hospital. Suggestions and comments are appreciated.
I wish that Purity - no, Kayden - would spontaneously develop telepathy just for a split-second, so that she could completely absorb and understand the fact that she literally ranks below a plate of shit in Jacqueline's mind.
If the previous smackdown failed to stick the landing, this internal thought train just took what little dignity miss mass murderer had left and crushed it like a rotten egg beneath a midnight express.
I wish that Purity - no, Kayden - would spontaneously develop telepathy just for a split-second, so that she could completely absorb and understand the fact that she literally ranks below a plate of shit in Jacqueline's mind.
If the previous smackdown failed to stick the landing, this internal thought train just took what little dignity miss mass murderer had left and crushed it like a rotten egg beneath a midnight express.
Changing bedpans is important. Lying there with a full one is a deeply unpleasant experience, and if left too long it's unhygienic as well. Replacing them quickly when needed is a fairly big thing. Surely that's more productive than worrying about some random supervillain who (probably) isn't even in the room?
Changing bedpans is important. Lying there with a full one is a deeply unpleasant experience, and if left too long it's unhygienic as well. Replacing them quickly when needed is a fairly big thing. Surely that's more productive than worrying about some random supervillain who (probably) isn't even in the room?
Oh, absolutely. In fact, since she can't really do much of anything about Purity's presence (other than what she just did), just about anything else is more productive.
Doesn't mean Purity's ego will recover any faster...
The Master/Stranger cell was boring. Excruciatingly boring. More boring than Lisa had ever known was possible, and she'd once been forced to spend an hour literally watching paint dry. It was far better for her long-term prospects than what she'd expected, and it was undeniably secure, but it was so boring she almost wished she hadn't spilled the beans about her "employer".
It had been an act of spite more than anything else. She knew the PRT probably wouldn't believe it, they'd been primed in a great many ways not to believe. Tattletale was a villain, after all, as the PRT well knew, and a Thinker to boot, which the PRT probably at least suspected. They weren't exactly organisationally inclined to listen to people like her uncritically. The "contraband" they'd found in her cell probably hadn't helped either, especially the gun. Coil had almost definitely poisoned the well further using his mysterious sources inside the "good guys", but that was probably just making absolutely sure of what was already going to happen.
Except it didn't.
Her little eleventh-hour defiance was actually taken seriously.
Very seriously.
As in, Armsmaster himself was there in the interrogation room within fiveminutes seriously. Given how it took literally a million years for them to get her into the interrogation room in the first place, even after she indicated she was willing to talk, that said something.
As did the very pointed way he introduced the lie detector in his helmet. If she was screwing with them, it wouldn't end well for her. Honestly, that just confirmed what she'd known when he'd brought his famous halberd in the room with him, not that he'd drawn any attention to it. Its presence said enough.
And he'd pumped her for information for hours. She'd spilled everything she was willing to spill and more than a few things she hadn't been. Half of which she hadn't even realised she'd let slip until after the fact. The man may have been about as likeable as Alec, in the opposite direction, but he was undeniably a very efficient interviewer.
And also a supremely punchable one, except for the fact that there wasn't a square inch of his skin left unarmored for her to do that. And the fact that he'd take her apart without any actual effort if she tried, even without the copious amount of Tinkertech he had on him. And the way she was absolutely at the mercy of his organization.
It was still pretty tempting, that was how punchable he was, but she managed to control herself. Mostly. She didn't attack him physically, anyway, and the barbs and insults were kept to a minimum. On her part. Lisa still didn't know whether Armsmaster was trying to be civil and failing at it or just plain didn't care. She strongly suspected the latter, but it was possible she was just being uncharitable. Or he'd played Lisa like a fiddle, knowing anger would make her sloppy.
Either way, the feeling of screwing over her "master" in a big way was the only thing that kept her going by the end of it. As much as she disliked the PRT, as much as she disliked Armsmaster, it was nothing compared to how much she hated Coil.
Even after they gave a flimsy excuse and shoved her in M/S jail. It made sense, after all, loath though Lisa was to admit it. Somebody had already gotten to her once, in the normal cells, and while The Rig was a lot more secure in a lot of ways than PRT headquarters in the city, it was still vulnerable to internal corruption: most PRT members could access it if their jobs required it.
It'd be harder for Coil to sneak someone in than her previous cell, but it was by no means beyond him. It probably wasn't even beyond the gangs, although they probably wouldn't be able to get away with it afterward. The Rig was built to resist assault more than infiltration, especially if the infiltrators had legitimate authorizations and reasons to be aboard.
Not so for M/S screening. Lisa didn't know all the details, and it would have been very concerning if they'd been sloppy enough for her to learn all the details, but they were the dedicated counterintelligence wing of the PRT. She should be safe with them, right?
Well, safe from Coil, anyway. To some extent. Since they knew exactly what the problem was. Assuming Coil didn't have somebody on the inside of the department. And that they weren't themselves a danger to her. Being safe with them sort of required being safe from them, which she wasn't entirely sure of, but for keeping her safe from Coil it was as good a move as any. Besides moving her out of the city entirely.
Lisa would have preferred if they'd moved her out of the city entirely, but that'd require letting her out of their power at least a little, which obviously made it out of the question. So there she was.
Chanting the word "bored" over and over and over probably wasn't the nicest thing Lisa could have done to whoever had to go over the recordings, but screw them. Lisa was bored. So very, very bored. And she'd been bored for a very long time.
A very long time that ended in an instant when a huge chunk of the cell suddenly wasn't there anymore. Where there'd been the toilet, sink, very limited shower, walls, corner, floor and ceiling, there was thin air, something that clearly extended beyond the cell itself into the rig proper, given the missing floor.
Dimensional displacement. Dimension swapped with has no construction in this area.
If Lisa had been using the bathroom, or pacing the cell, or basically anything but lying on the cell's bed being annoying, she would have plummeted to her death, assuming she didn't bash her skull in on the way down. Even if she'd somehow survived the landing, she probably would have drowned, and even if she'd somehow survived that she wouldn't have lasted long. Assuming she even survived the transition itself. This wasn't a rescue.
Something that was confirmed when something small and metallic flew into the hole left behind, bouncing off both the intact walls before smashing into her foot.
Grenade
Lisa dove out of the cell so fast she almost gave herself whiplash. She did, in fact, cut herself on the edge of the dimensionally displaced area, but she managed to pull herself up and over rather than plummet down.
When she looked back, her cell was on fire. What was left of it, anyway. Even though nothing in it was flammable, something her power had confirmed when she'd idly considered the possibility of a little arson to relieve the monotony. And standing right there was a man festooned with more bags in more varieties than Lisa really wanted to keep track of shaking in his too-big boots. And, more pertinently, holding a grenade launcher.
Launcher mundane, good-quality but obsolete. Grenades Tinkertech
Suddenly, Lisa wished she could go back to being bored.
It really doesn't matter all that much. Sophia's "at base" is PRT headquarters, in the city, while Lisa and our currently unnamed grenadier are at Protectorate headquarters, The Rig, out in the middle of the bay Brockton is named for.
In all honesty, Ethan had thought Jacqueline Colere was something of a coward. Most children were, in the end. Ignorance could substitute for courage to some extent, but when real consequences came calling the average kid was terrified out of their tiny little mind.
Most of the Wards were ignorant.
Oh, sure, they'd seen violence. Muggings and the like, plus the occasional low level villain like the Undersiders, Uber and Leet, or whatever local counterparts they had across the nation. And they were required to be a lot better read on the reality of parahuman violence than the average kid. But fewer than one in ten of them knew. Mostly the reformed villains and ex-independents.
All for the better, really. It occasionally led to bad calls from them, but it was better if they were young, innocent, and enthusiastic instead of bitter, broken, and traumatized.
Colere wasn't bitter, at least not on the outside, but she definitely knew. She was afraid of parahumans, even heroes. Not the ones she knew personally, and Ethan had done his best to get on that list, but with everyone else she was definitely aware of the level of carnage powers could reap.
It was sad, but understandable. Most capes went through a stage like that. Triumph was barely out of his, probably to relapse later, and he'd been a grown adult with superpowers of his own when it hit him. If he was being honest, Ethan wasn't exactly over his.
If he was being completely honest, no one was ever really "over it". Even the ones who handled it relatively well mostly just narrowed the focus of their fear onto the actually dangerous capes.
Like Purity.
Purity was a very dangerous cape indeed. Not unbeatable, certainly not S-class, but far more powerful and ruthless than Ethan was comfortable sharing a room with. Or even a city, though she wasn't quite the worst in Brockton Bay. Honestly, that said far more about Brockton Bay than it did about Purity. Even post-Scion, few cities had enough mass-murderers that that kind of distinction was necessary.
If he was continuing to be honest, and he would never where Purity or any other member of the Empire Eighty Eight could hear him, Assault was terrified of the glowing woman. Deeply and unashamedly. Anyone sensible would be, if they knew what he knew about what she was capable of. Even those lucky few who didn't need to fear what she could do to them, among whose number Assault did not count even if he could take far more than most, feared just how many other people would be hurt if Purity cut loose. If they had a conscience, anyway.
A disturbingly large number of them didn't. Like Lung. But that was something to think about later.
Jacqueline Colere was not a coward. That much was clear now.
It wasn't that the girl had antagonized an A-class supervillain. Not that Ethan wasn't surprised when it happened, but it didn't prove anything. Anger could overwhelm anybody when they had a grievance that serious.
Ethan understood the girl's fury, he even shared more than a little of it, but he wasn't impressed that she lashed out in rage. He didn't blame her, he couldn't even bring himself to disapprove despite how risky it was, but he wasn't impressed by it. It would have been like being impressed that the kid kicked out when the doctor tapped her patellar tendon: an unmerited overreaction to a perfectly normal human reflex.
Nobody took a parent's unprovoked murder well enough to not lash out at the killer when forced into the same room six months later, let alone a child.
It was perfectly natural and entirely understandable, but it wasn't impressive.
The kid's self control in her lashing out, however, was. Seriously, even Ethan had found it hard to refrain from decking the supervillain after she'd had the gall to question why the kid wasn't happy with her presence and he'd never known any of the woman's victims by so much as (real) name before she killed them. Colere hadn't even so much as raised her fist.
Mastering one's anger wasn't courage, exactly, but it was certainly praiseworthy. Ethan probably couldn't have done it. He definitely couldn't have done it when he was the kid's age. He didn't think any of his coworkers could have either. Certainly, none of them could have been so cutting at the same time.
The chewing out, too, was impressive. Ethan wasn't exactly an expert on the subject of speechcraft, even with everything Jackson and his fellow PR weasels had crammed into him over the years, but he knew a great speech when he heard one. This… wasn't that. Not on its own merits, at least. It was, however, remarkably well put-together for something obviously made up on the spot. None of it was really bad, and the sheer impact of her opening and the obvious sincerity behind her words covered for a lot of sins, as did the weight of raw, entirely verifiable, fact.
Everything Jacqueline Colere said was the truth, and it wasn't hard to check most of it. And she didn't need to swear or exaggerate to be terrifying.
Honestly, Ethan wouldn't have expected someone so friendly and nice to be capable of that level of biting disapproval. Then again, his mom was the same way. And so was his partner. Puppy was scary when she was mad. So was Hannah, actually, although that wasn't as bad as her disappointment. And even if it took a lot to make Ben mad the one time Ethan had seen it he was very glad the momentum dampener hadn't been mad at him.
…Actually, come to think of it, every single genuinely nice person Ethan knew was a terror when somebody actually managed to enrage them. Granted, most of those people were capes, but so was Jacqueline Colere. She was Adjuvant, even if she'd never introduced herself as such.
Maybe Ethan shouldn't have been so surprised after all. It wasn't like the kid didn't have plenty of motivation. And there had been hints that she had steel under all that fluff before. She'd stood up to Shadow Stalker after all, even if she'd comprehensively lost the ensuing fight. She'd gone back to business one day after being grabbed by a Merchant, even if she'd been with a PRT agent the whole time, and she hadn't stopped after that had been interrupted by the Undersiders either. And signing up with the PRT had been her decision, above and beyond anyone else's.
Most Wards were brought into the program by their parents.
Which Jacqueline Colere didn't have. No living relatives, either, not that anyone knew of, and no help from CPS. And yet she was… not fine; she was a parahuman after all. But she was alive and mostly healthy. She'd taken care of herself. Ethan really shouldn't have been so surprised that there was steel to the girl. Although even then he hadn't been entirely convinced by her chewing out. Not until he saw what Adjuvant did afterward.
The kid was scared, Ethan could see that. Literally quaking in those great big stompy boots of hers. (And it probably was another sign that there was more than a sweet little terrified innocent to her, the way she wore steel-toed boots for seemingly no reason other than her potential need to kick people.) But she didn't let it stop her. Instead, she did the only thing she could have done to de-escalate things: she played it off like nothing of importance had happened.
The act wasn't perfect. Anyone who knew the kid would have seen through it, or any decently skilled reader of people. But there was only one person who Colere really needed to fool, and Purity very obviously had no idea who was behind the mask and all the tact and sensitivity of a drunken bull in an overcrowded china shop. It was still risky: the woman could have easily taken offense and done something everybody would regret.
But it worked. Purity had left, and without a single dead body. And Ethan hadn't thought of a single better plan that could have actually been done. Not until afterward, anyway.
(Ethan didn't think Jacqueline could have apologized or made nice. Not with her mother's murderer. Ethan couldn't have. It might have been safer, if Jacqueline somehow managed to sound sincere, but nobody was that good an actor.)
It wasn't the best plan, Ethan would acknowledge that. It was hasty and in all likelihood not particularly well thought through. In hindsight, there were a lot of things that could have been better. But it was a plan, conceived of and executed remarkably well under particularly extreme pressure. The kid knew exactly what Purity was capable of, and still had her temerity to turn her back on the floating promise of murder. To go straight back to cheerfully helping a little old lady with half her leg gone drink her water like there wasn't a murderous supervillain staring at them in shock.
(And wasn't that fairly bold in and of itself? Even without a mass-murdering supervillain watching, not a whole lot of kids could even look at somebody that hurt, let alone remain that calm and composed, even if it was just on the outside.)
No, Jacqueline Colere wasn't a coward. Not when she couldn't afford to show her fear. Apparently she trusted them more than Ethan had realized, if she didn't bother using her obviously-practiced brave (and sweet, kind, innocent, and adorable, but mostly brave) face around them. And she was a lot sharper than any of them had realized to boot.
The kid would be a great leader for the Protectorate one day. Officially or otherwise. Even without a combat power, she had the nerve and the charisma for it, and a remarkable ability to think on her feet for a newbie.
Assuming she lived that long, anyway. Ethan would do his best, he did for all the Wards, but he couldn't even guarantee he'd live to see any of them graduate.
That was the price of heroism, powers or no powers. And Ethan was willing to pay it. So were his colleagues. Even the jerks. Ethan could live with that.
He just wished the world didn't need kids paying it too. Even ones as surprisingly well suited for the job as Jacqueline Colere.
In my personal opinion, when you find somebody benefiting from a situation without paying any cost at all, those tend to be the ones responsible for the mess.
Then again I may just be a little bit pessimistic.
In my personal opinion, when you find somebody benefiting from a situation without paying any cost at all, those tend to be the ones responsible for the mess.
Then again I may just be a little bit pessimistic.
Maybe. Although on Earth Bet the only ones who seem to be benefiting are the supervillains, and they're not exactly hiding that they're ultimately responsible.
Aside from all the secrety spoiler stuff, but Ethan has, at most, a very limited amount of information about that.
In my personal opinion, when you find somebody benefiting from a situation without paying any cost at all, those tend to be the ones responsible for the mess.
Then again I may just be a little bit pessimistic.
Lisa honestly wasn't sure which of them was more surprised. It should have been her. He hadn't had his revelry of perfectly endurable boredom interrupted by Tinkertech grenades, nor was he suffering from a rather painful laceration on his stomach area from diving out of the way, not to mention all the other cuts she'd picked up scrambling up the impromptu ledge.
Lisa was sure which of them was more afraid. And it wasn't her. She was scared, yes. She wasn't crazy. But he was terrified. Completely and utterly. And it probably wasn't the skinny unarmed teenager in prison rags that had him scared completely out of his wits.
On the plus side, he was scared completely out of his wits, including those portions of his wits that would have let him remember where his ammunition was. The grenade launcher may have been clean and shiny -
Professional maintenance. Maintainer unfamiliar with grenade launchers. Primarily maintains handguns, rifles, and shotguns.
Right, that made sense. And was also completely useless. Like the grenade launcher itself, so long as he didn't remember where its ammunition was. Lisa didn't need her power to tell her that if he had another shot ready he would have fired it instead of scrambling for wherever he put his explosives, and until he found them the launcher itself was almost harmless.
Grenades are in the smaller satchel.
Well, as long as he didn't know that. For the moment, the information was almost entirely useless itself.
Pistol on hip, holstered improperly. Easy to grab. Forgotten. Focused entirely on grenade launcher.
And that wasn't.
Risky, certainly. Rushing an armed man always was, if you weren't so lucky as to have a power that made it irrelevant, but it seemed as good a plan as anything she was likely to come up with before he wised up and just shot her normally. Or calmed down enough to remember which of the many bags he carried had the Tinkertech in it.
Here went everything.
Closing the distance was easier than Lisa had expected. Must have been the adrenaline. The guy tried to back away while searching, but he only managed to drop half his bags in the process. Including the one with the grenades, which fortunately didn't go off. No sane Tinker would make something that dangerous able to go off that easily, but sane Tinkers didn't send untrained civilians to attack superhero bases.
Not trusted with anything delicate.
Honestly, Lisa wouldn't have trusted the guy with anything delicate or valuable either. And at the moment there was nothing more delicate and valuable than her life, so she lifted his pistol with the ease of a seasoned pickpocket.
Which she was. The PRT couldn't prove it, at least not any specific incidents, unlike her involuntary stint as a costumed do-badder, but the skills still came in handy. Even if she'd always made a point of avoiding the kind of situation where she'd need to use them in this fashion.
Mostly successfully. If one didn't count the times where she'd desperately wanted to but realised it would be futile.
There were a lot more of those than she'd like.
Her time as a supervillain, however, was what let Lisa rush back to the satchel, slide it as far down the corridor as she could without taking either hand off the gun, and turn said gun on the man faster than he could react.
"Drop it. Now."
Lisa's voice was as shaky as her legs, but she managed to keep a decent bead on the now somewhat less bag-festooned man anyway. It wasn't like he was in any state of mind to notice. Or to provide an explanation that anyone who didn't have Lisa's intuition to help them out could have understood, but that was what Lisa's power was for.
Well, actually, it was a massive waste of her talents, but it was a necessary waste of her talents. She didn't have time to wait for him to calm down, and she definitely didn't have any appropriate sedatives.
"Who are you, and who are you working for?"
Not Coil, that was for sure. The PRT taking Lisa seriously might be enough for him to do something this desperate, but he had entire squads of mostly ex-military mercenaries. Nobody he sent on a blatant assault like this would be alone, unless they were a major-league Cape, and they'd actually know what they were doing. Lisa definitely wouldn't have been able to turn the situation around so easily if this had been one of Coil's men.
They certainly wouldn't be blubbering so much.
Chris Hoàng, Asian Bad Boyz associate. Forced to be here by Bakuda. Bakuda bomb Tinker, crazy, ruthless, extremely violent.
"How many others came with you?"
Five ABB remaining plus Bakuda. One killed for questioning the mission. One taken down by friendly fire.
"Where are the others?"
Downstairs, main cells. Trying to free Lung.
"Why are you up here then?"
Sent to check M/S cells, just in case Lung was there.
Lung downstairs, in main cells.
"Why…"
Unaware which grenades do what, unable to open cell normally. Startled when cell had a different occupant.
"Nevermind. Give me your shirt, then tie yourself up."
Confused
"Because I have the gun, and you're lucky I'm not just shooting you out of hand."
The man looked absolutely disgusting with his shirt off, only part of which was the crying, but he complied. He didn't do a very good job on the ropes, and he was planning on running away as soon as she turned her back on him, but Lisa knew he wouldn't dare come after her afterwards. And his shirt made a decent enough bandage for the moment.
"Anything else you think I should know?"
Ordered to scatter devices from bags everywhere. Unaware of purpose.
Devices for resonance repetition amplification. Once the mother device triggered, daughter devices will repeat signal/destruction wave. Devices in bags sufficient to destroy significant portion of structure. All minions identical orders.
And Lisa was in the Rig. Great.
Mother device unique, held by Bakuda. Minions not trusted.
A normal person with lots of explosives can do a heck of a lot of damage, even slightly altered grenades from a tinker can do unspeakable horrors... But Bakuda specializes in one-time use explosions of any type of nature. Emp, black holes, time stop, convert matter to other matter...
They were very lucky she didn't accidentally destroy the planet. Didn't one of the villains attempt to put out the Sun or something? Or blow up the Moon? Bakuda can do that. All she has to do is make the teleportation grenades from that one video game and give it a payload of impossible quality.
A normal person with lots of explosives can do a heck of a lot of damage, even slightly altered grenades from a tinker can do unspeakable horrors... But Bakuda specializes in one-time use explosions of any type of nature. Emp, black holes, time stop, convert matter to other matter...
They were very lucky she didn't accidentally destroy the planet. Didn't one of the villains attempt to put out the Sun or something? Or blow up the Moon? Bakuda can do that. All she has to do is make the teleportation grenades from that one video game and give it a payload of impossible quality.
Bakuda is a nightmare, but she's not that destructive. None of the in-story Tinkers have shown any sort of capacity to blow up entire planets, or even the moon. The Tinker you're thinking of, String Theory, is the very apex of sheer destructive potential shown (by human Tinkers), and even she "just" threatened to knock the moon out of orbit.
Bakuda also has major limiting factors: she can only build what she's given access to by her Shard that she has the tools and materials for. Anything likely to destroy the planet, or even "oopsy" human life on it, would likely be both hideously expensive to build and terrrible experimentally. You don't learn anything by carelessly wiping out all your test subjects in a way they can't see coming or fight against, which is probably why Bakuda's biggest theoretical project in canon was a continent-wide EMP, something that, while devastating, wouldn't kill many parahumans directly and would probably cause a massive increase in triggers and parahuman conflict as society collapsed.
And then there's Cauldron: Bakuda isn't precognition proof. If she was going to do anything that would have harmed Cauldron's goals even a tiny fraction as much as blowing up their main pool of Parahumans would, Contessa would have paid her a visit.
Finally, for whatever it's worth, Bakuda does seem to actually know what she's doing with her Tinkering. She clearly knows what each of her bombs does, and she never manages to blow herself up or even injure herself with them, despite working with extremely dangerous Tinkertech with minimal safety precautions and no trained help whatsoever. Either on her own merits or through the help of her power, she knows how to keep herself safe from her creations (as long as they aren't being actively and intelligently used against her, at least). She probably even could make everything she did safe and easy to use for her minions, she just doesn't bother. She's not careless enough to blow up the world. At least not while she's still on it.
"What are the odds that Bakuda will use her bombing spree as a distraction for an attempt to breach containment on Lung?"
"97.847%"
"If we attempt to trap her, what are the odds that her plan will be successful?"
"0.136%"
"And the odds she'll attack the people in the M/S containment cells?"
"3.261%"
"Chances the bombing spree will be abated by this course of action?"
"77.739%"
Good enough. He wouldn't stress the girl further, it was obvious she was nearing her limit.
It'd be a scramble, getting everyone out and scraping up what resources he could to ambush Bakuda before she arrived, but it'd be worth it if they could take her down on his chosen terrain instead of having to find and assault her lair. Armsmaster was far better prepared for such an eventuality than most, but even for him attacking a Tinker in their lab was never something to take lightly, especially one as powerful and ruthless as Bakuda.
Far better to face her where she was limited to what she and her minions could carry, and far away from any civilians. That sounded like a plan he could work with.
Yes, there was much to be done. And the whole thing had to be done without her catching on…
Well, it was a good thing there were already reinforcements aboard. Reinforcements intended for dealing with Coil and the Merchants, admittedly, but heroes had to be adaptable.
Hjalmar:
Hjalmar Mårtensson was a man who loved his family. Perhaps a little too much, actually. You could threaten him all day and he'd just report you up his chain of command, but his wife and son were something of a weakspot for him. An unfortunate thing to have, if one was the second seniormost of the numerous non-parahuman mechanics entrusted with the maintenance of a high-tech Protectorate headquarters. After all, one never knew when some supervillain might grab one's loved ones off the street and implant bombs in their heads.
Hjalmar's brother was already dead. He'd been sent the footage. There was a superhero right there and said superhero hadn't been able to do the slightest thing to help poor Ingvar. Hjalmar could not let the same thing happen to Nora and little Oscar.
And so, with great regret, he did as he was told.
God forgive him.
Then he left. He considered letting his extortionist know the Rig was being evacuated, but he'd paid more attention to the rumors than he usually did these past few days, he knew what Bakuda did to the bearers of bad news.
And, at the end of the day, it wasn't like he actually liked the [bear].
Lisa:
Lisa was getting really tired of the sound of recorded screaming. Sure, it beat the sound of real screaming, which there was suspiciously little of -
Rig evacuated, non-essential personnel removed
Right, the building was under attack. Guess they saw it coming in time. And didn't think to tell Lisa. Typical. And she just bet there wouldn't be anybody to listen to her if she shouted out about the Tinkertech about to bring the whole building down.
She shouted out anyway. She'd feel really stupid if she didn't and there was. Not that she actually shouted, that would be insanely reckless under the circumstance, but she said it into the closest screaming PA device.
There was no response.
Typical.
Well, she had her own ideas. Not necessarily great ideas, all told, but ideas. Chris had been so very generous to her, after all.
Shame the PRT would never let her keep Mister Grenade Launcher long-term, but they hadn't taken him away yet. And, unlike poor Chris, Lisa could mostly tell which grenades did what.
Now which way was it…
Left
Br'er Rabbit:
A lot of things went into making the perfect ambush. The basic concept was simple: do violence at somebody while they didn't know you were there and hopefully finish the fight before it started.
Of course, actually pulling it off was trickier.
This time, it should have been easy. They were on the Rig, a Protectorate headquarters even more heavily fortified and (deliberately) internally confusing than most, and there was only one cape among the potential ambushees, one who was not only not a Thinker to any degree but who was even less observant than the average frightened civilian because of her sheer arrogance.
Unfortunately, she seemed to know exactly where she was going, and exactly how best to get there, and she was entirely willing to make any inconvenient walls disappear and bomb any convenient ambush points, most of which she obviously knew about.
Which meant they couldn't use any of the ambush points, because they weren't sure which ones she knew about (and would bomb) and which ones she didn't. Half of which one of her minions would bomb once they noticed. Even if the ambush group had any Brutes, and the closest they had was Armsmaster's armor, some of the effects the Bomb Tinker created were exotic enough that Br'er Rabbit wasn't sure the Triumvirate would survive them. A low-level if rather clever Stranger certainly wouldn't.
And, of course, the automated defenses were a mess. If they were lucky, a few of them would be able to help out when Bakuda finally stayed still long enough for them to sneak up on her, but Br'er Rabbit wouldn't count on it. It probably wouldn't be until after the battle that they had time to sort out whatever sabotage had happened. Even the PA system was wonky, with half the boxes not responding and the other half unable to be tuned to separate channels.
At least the recorded screaming still managed to convince the mad bomber that she was being not-entirely successfully avoided by cowardly PRT personnel rather than being lured into an already-evacuated Tinker trap. Br'er Rabbit just hoped that when the snap came, it'd be Bakuda's neck instead of his.
Something that became a lot less likely when Armsmaster's voice in his ear announced that Bakuda had breached the perimeter around the holding cells.
This would have been so much easier if they could have just foamed the woman.
hope he lives up to his name