There weren't any good options here for Taylor. Both charging in and waiting had potential issues. They didn't know what Bakuda had prepared, and they didn't know all of what she was capable of. That said. The Wards wield the Seven. The Gray Boy Bomb? With Clock and Vista working together, they're going to be just fine.
Since I try to make my criticism at least a little constructive and I was quite enjoying this up until that scene, it would feel wrong not to offer this.
[Bits that assume Browbeat's "clarity and certainty of ... others" from Lustre 3.6 includes lie detecting of some kind]
Perhaps a better version would have been:
-Wards bust in
-Bakuda threatens them with a time stop bomb
-"Well balls, half of our insta-takedown team got left behind, stall for time so we can get a clean capture" ["Don't worry guys, she doesn't have one anyway" "Well we still need both of them here"]
-They try to distract her by asking about the EMP bomb
-The explanation happens
-The Wards have a quick "oh shit" moment when she gets to the "basically, I'm a crazy bitch that's just going to blow you up anyway for shits and giggles" bit
-[The Wards have a BIG "oh shit" moment when she mentions waiting for it to charge (she DIDN'T have it then, but she does now)]
-Time stop bomb
Gives a good reason not to just bum-rush her, makes their worst mistake not pulling back after Vista went out of action, makes it clear WHY they didn't (they assumed she was 'just' ruthless rather than a complete fucking lunatic). ALSO, keeps the results the same and Taylor's involvement the same without having her give stupid advice.
-Wards bust in
-Bakuda threatens them with a time stop bomb
-"Well balls, half of our insta-takedown team got left behind, stall for time so we can get a clean capture" ["Don't worry guys, she doesn't have one anyway" "Well we still need both of them here"]
-They try to distract her by asking about the EMP bomb
-The explanation happens
-The Wards have a quick "oh shit" moment when she gets to the "basically, I'm a crazy bitch that's just going to blow you up anyway for shits and giggles" bit
-[The Wards have a BIG "oh shit" moment when she mentions waiting for it to charge (she DIDN'T have it then, but she does now)]
-Time stop bomb
Maybe, if I could understand what you're saying, and if this didn't make them hold an actual idiot ball as soon as they have the first 'oh shit' moment. That would be the point where they charge--and as soon as they do, they're all fucked by her countermeasures anyway. I really don't understand what the section in brackets is.
The Wards made several crippling mistakes in the last few chapters.
The first was choosing to assault Bakuda on their own. The second was splitting the party. The first didn't have immediate consequences, and the second didn't really have consequences at all.
The third was Vista showing off and using herself up in a relatively minor skirmish. As you all saw, that had devastating consequences--but there are perfectly in-character reasons for her doing it, which I'm surprised no one picked up on.
The fourth was proceeding with the assault despite the loss of Vista. That one's all on Annatar. She's made the Wards cocky, and she's cocky herself. Terrible mistake, with terrible consequences.
I'm reminded of a D&D adventure I once played. My party and I had just come out of a heist and were faced with a pair of well-known adventurers (NPCs). They demanded we give them one particular item we'd found. We refused. That fight ended with all but one of us downed, my pet mastiff--which was my character's bond--so dead it's not even funny (the enemy wizard burned an entire casting of Cone of Cold on the one dog), and the item gone anyway. We bit off way more than we could chew. The next session, my character committed suicide.
All that happened because of the illusion of invincibility. It's an illusion Taylor was still suffering under, even after the bank, and it's one the Wards started to buy into after they received their Rings of Power. This was the result.
Not charging Bakuda was not a mistake. There were any number of responses Bakuda could have had to that, for all they knew, and several that she actively had lined up. From the moment the Wards and New Wave walked into that garage without Vista, the fight was already basically over.
The Wards made several crippling mistakes in the last few chapters.
The first was choosing to assault Bakuda on their own. The second was splitting the party. The first didn't have immediate consequences, and the second didn't really have consequences at all.
The third was Vista showing off and using herself up in a relatively minor skirmish. As you all saw, that had devastating consequences--but there are perfectly in-character reasons for her doing it, which I'm surprised no one picked up on.
The fourth was proceeding with the assault despite the loss of Vista. That one's all on Annatar. She's made the Wards cocky, and she's cocky herself. Terrible mistake, with terrible consequences.
I'm reminded of a D&D adventure I once played. My party and I had just come out of a heist and were faced with a pair of well-known adventurers (NPCs). They demanded we give them one particular item we'd found. We refused. That fight ended with all but one of us downed, my pet mastiff--which was my character's bond--so dead it's not even funny (the enemy wizard burned an entire casting of Cone of Cold on the one dog), and the item gone anyway. We bit off way more than we could chew. The next session, my character committed suicide.
All that happened because of the illusion of invincibility. It's an illusion Taylor was still suffering under, even after the bank, and it's one the Wards started to buy into after they received their Rings of Power. This was the result.
Not charging Bakuda was not a mistake. There were any number of responses Bakuda could have had to that, for all they knew, and several that she actively had lined up. From the moment the Wards and New Wave walked into that garage without Vista, the fight was already basically over.
Aegis just got shot multiple times. If anyone was listening, they were made. If Bakuda had been prepared to scuttle the building and scarper, or some manually triggered trap for the building as a whole, that plan was already in process. If she had backup available, she'd be calling it. Waiting wasn't a good option.
Retreating for another day also was a pretty terrible option, since it meant hundreds or thousands of people dying.
Sheen 4.5 has been pulled, as you can see above. See here my reasons for doing it. It, and Sheen 4.6, will both be arriving on Monday after some edits.
Aegis led the charge, Shielder close behind him. They were greeted by a veritable hail of lead from a mounted minigun.
This floor, too, had lost a lot of its interior walls. Instead of a workshop, however, this one had a military-looking circular barricade around a central part of the room. Sandbags had been piled around a nailed-together wooden frame, all around a central mounted turret, which was currently firing a steady stream of heavy rounds into Aegis and Shielder. The New Wave hero quickly threw up a forcefield, but Aegis just launched himself forward, heedless of the bullets tearing into his frame.
Twelve men were on the inside of the barricade. One was on the turret, while the others were peeking out from behind the cover of the barricade. A motley assortment of rifles, submachine guns, and shotguns were in their hands.
Aegis threw himself into one wooden wall of the barricade. It splintered before him, and a moment later he was among the enemy. I couldn't make heads or tails of the footage from his camera; he was surrounded by bodies and twisting limbs in a flurry of motion, and his microphone had automatically cut its transmission under the overwhelming sound of gunfire.
Sophia glanced in after him, then opted to stay on the floor above, taking potshots into the melee with her crossbows from a position between Clockblocker and Laserdream. The New Wave Blaster did much the same, blasting at them with lasers. I couldn't blame either, Sophia especially; the room was well lit and almost without cover, save for the enemy barricade. Vista, on the other hand, leapt down after Shielder, ducking into cover behind his forcefield. Gallant and Glory Girl followed after her in quick succession.
"Aegis!" hollered Vista, her clear voice slicing through the cacophony. "Get back!"
Aegis obeyed immediately, taking a single step back which, with Vista's help, delivered him behind the forcefield. Within moments, all of the gunfire was turned back to the group.
Glory Girl made as though to charge, but Gallant put a hand on her shoulder. "Wait," he hissed. His eyes—and his camera—were trained on Vista.
The youngest of my Wards was hunched slightly, her hands held just slightly apart, palms facing one another, as though she was holding a small ball. By the tension visible in the muscles of her arms and back, it was heavy. Her eyes were closed, and her brow was furrowed in intense concentration.
"I can't hold this forever." Shielder's voice was strained, but firm.
Calmly, Aegis stepped in front of him. "Fine," he said. "I'll meat-shield it. Not much longer now."
"Not much longer until what?" Glory Girl asked, her voice rising in something like hysteria on the last word.
"This." Vista looked up as she spoke, her fists clenching in a sudden spasm, and stood straight. She made a gesture, as though throwing something at the group of men with her left hand. Histeya glittered like a violet star on her finger.
Vista could shorten or lengthen space at will. It was an incredibly potent power, one which easily deserved its rating of shaker 9. Histeya had, as with all of the Wards' Rings of Power, provided an addition to her powerset. As with each of the others, the growth was conceptual.
Sophia's power allowed her to become one with the shadows. Her new power allowed her to literally be them, and emerge from any shadow she chose.
Clockblocker's power gave him dominion over time. His new power expanded that dominion.
Kid Win's tinkertech now had a greater tendency to beauty and resplendence, even as he produced more effective gear faster. Browbeat's control over his own body, formerly restricted to biokinesis, now extended to self-control of a more traditional kind; he'd been banned from playing poker with the rest of us for the foreseeable future. Aegis's ability to survive any wound had improved to include a true healing factor—rather than just refusing to die until slow natural healing could run its course, it would now take him little more than a day to recover from anything short of decapitation. Gallant's raw ability to inject emotion had gained force, and he had also gained more control over it—he could do more than just simple blasts now.
Vista had always controlled space. Now she also controlled the idea of space—direction.
Including down.
The men were thrust backwards as their conception of gravity shifted suddenly. Instead of beneath their feet, the source of down was suddenly a point in the air about three feet above the minigun turret. The turret itself Vista picked out of the air as it rose—it dropped to her feet with a clang, half of its long belt of bullets still hanging out of her spatial warp.
"Go!" Vista screamed, visibly straining with the effort of holding twelve men in their own personal gravitational pool. Her arm shook where she held it out towards the singularity, and sweat beaded and ran down her brow in rivulets.
My other Wards didn't need to be told twice. As one they dove forward. Sophia phased into shadow and rushed forward like a shade. Aegis charged, leading Glory Girl, Shielder, and Gallant behind him, the latter already firing bursts of debilitating emotion at one target after another.
As Sophia entered the group she solidified, drew two tranquilizer bolts, and buried them into the necks of two men with her hands before reaching for another set. Gallant struck two men with blasts of emotion before even reaching the group and hit two more within moments of arriving. Aegis grabbed one and beat him into unconsciousness with his own rifle, while Glory Girl grabbed two by their heads and knocked them together. Shielder pushed another into the ground with a forcefield, and Laserdream hit him with a laser to be sure.
Then Vista fell over. The singularity failed, and the remaining two gunmen fell to the ground. Of course, Sophia had jabbed both with tranquilizers before they could stand up. Then it was over.
Gallant immediately jogged back to Vista. "Are you all right?"
Vista slowly picked herself up to her hands and knees. Her whole body shook with the very effort of holding herself up. With a heave, she forced herself back into a sitting position. "I'll be… okay," she wheezed. "Haven't held that many targets in a singularity before. Took a lot out of me. Think I'll have to make like Clockblocker, for a little while."
"Fine," said Aegis. His many wounds were leaking thin streams of blood, but they were already closing, pushing the bullets out of the regenerating flesh. He looked around. "Where's Bakuda?"
"Here." It was Glory Girl, pointing at a trapdoor half hidden under the mounting for the minigun. "I mean, unless we have the wrong building."
"We have the right building," said Aegis. "What could be down there?"
"Storage?" I suggested. "Her workshop was a floor up, but I didn't see any actual bombs."
"Which means we should expect a lot of explosives," said Aegis grimly.
"I'll go first," offered Glory Girl. "I can tank any explosions that come our way."
I tapped into the public radio on Aegis's belt and spoke to her directly. "Can you tank being turned to glass? Or frozen in time? Bakuda's a tinker. Be on guard."
"Well, who'd be better for it than me?" she asked, a faint pout touching her full lips. "Not like anyone else is invincible."
"No, you can take point," I said. "Just… be careful. I want everyone coming home tonight."
"You sound like Mom," she complained.
"Sounds like a smart woman," I said.
"I can go in through the floor," Sophia suggested. "At least scout things out."
"Even Leet punished that," I answered, shaking my head. "Bakuda would probably be more fatal, and we learn from our mistakes. No, we should keep the assault party together. Glory Girl, can you bust through the floor?" If so, they could all go in from an unexpected angle.
"Don't think so." She stomped one foot hard, and cracks spread across the ground at the thundering impact. "It's solid, probably several feet of concrete. I can break through a wall, but I'm not a drill."
That didn't quite make sense to me, but I accepted it. She knew her powers better than I. "Fair enough. Clockblocker, you feeling better?"
"Some," he replied. "Probably don't have another slow in me, but I can freeze people."
"That'll help," I said. "Vista, what about you? How long until you're fit to fight?"
Vista shook her head, breathing heavily. "Not for a while," she wheezed. "I think I'm tapped out, sorry. Stupid. I overextended."
"It'll be okay," Gallant said.
"Think we can handle one fight without you," Glory Girl laughed, rolling her eyes. "So? We moving?"
I closed my eyes. "Aegis?"
"…We need a more detailed plan of action."
"Hard to make one when we don't know what's waiting for us in detail. We definitely shouldn't just charge her, though—any kind of direct assault might be countered. We have to try to shut her down before she has a chance to stop us."
"Shit," muttered Vista. "You need me for that."
Sophia shook her head. "I can teleport around behind her and take her out," she said.
"What if the room's well lit?" Vista asked. "You need me there. Just give me, I don't know, fifteen minutes."
"She'll be gone in fifteen minutes," Glory Girl countered. "You shouldn't have run out of juice right before we went in. We can't give her time."
"Maybe we should withdraw. We really don't have the kind of information we need to be doing this." Laserdream's voice wavered hesitantly.
"We've come too far to withdraw now," I said. "We have a chance to finish this, to shut Bakuda down before she can hurt anyone else." I grimaced. "Well, that's what I'd like to say, but I'm not there—it's not my life I'm risking."
"No, you're right," Aegis said. "We can't stop now. If the room's lit, we'll split up. Glory Girl, Laserdream, and I will come at her from different angles. With luck, she won't have a counter to that. Shielder will hang back with Clockblocker and Shadow Stalker to protect them if things go south, and they'll all look for an opportunity to disable. Gallant will hang back with Vista—someone has to."
"Really?" Glory Girl asked disapprovingly. "Gallant's one of our best disablers. Why do you want him to stay back here?"
"Because if Clockblocker or Shadow Stalker get an opportunity, either of them can end the fight more easily," Aegis said. "It's not ideal, but it's what we've got."
"Nah," came another voice. I glanced up in surprise at a screen I hadn't looked at in a while. Kid Win was dropping towards the bottom floor of the apartment complex. "PRT picked up Über and Leet, so I'm here now. I can stay with Vista, keep watch on the rear."
"Shouldn't we take a tinker with us, since we have one?" Shielder said. "We're going into a tinker's lair, after all."
"I somehow doubt I'd have time to examine her tech," Kid Win chuckled. "I don't think I'd be much help. You need Gallant more."
"Fine, we're out of time," I said. "Aegis, you and Glory Girl are on point. Shielder, you're behind them. Be ready to throw up a barrier if anything looks like it might hurt them. Clockblocker, you're the next one in. Laserdream, can you be his mover? He usually works with Vista."
"That's fine."
"All right. Gallant, you're back there with them. Shadow Stalker, you're in the rear. Be ready to jump on any opportunities you spot."
"Will do."
"Okay. If the room's well lit, be ready to split up and engage, but don't attack until I give the word. We want to see what she has up her sleeves first—if she has any countermeasures, we don't want to be caught off guard." I cracked my knuckles. "Be careful, everyone. I want my explanation to Piggot to involve telling her why we went and took out Bakuda with no casualties, not why one of you is dead. Aegis, whenever you're ready."
Aegis nodded to Glory Girl. With a grin, she shoved aside the wood and metal mounting and knelt to open the trapdoor. As soon as it opened—or, rather, was ripped clean from its hinges—she leapt backward, rising into the air, holding the square of wood before her like a shield.
A good thing, too. The bomb attached to the latch lit up in a burst of fire and light. Then again, it looked like a traditional fragmentation grenade, or something similarly concussive. Glory Girl would have been fine.
"Let's get going," said Aegis, and he and Glory Girl led my Wards, and New Wave, into the depths.
The trapdoor opened onto a spiraling stairway, wide enough for two to walk abreast. Aegis and Glory Girl floated ahead of the others, orbiting the central pillar slowly, their bodies tense as coiled springs, ready to leap into action.
But no action came. The stairs led them down some twenty feet into the earth, surrounded by concrete walls, and then they came to a door. Again Glory Girl opened it and leapt back, but this time there was no explosion.
And then the tension broke. The next room was spectacular, in the technical sense—it was a spectacle. They stood on a steel mesh balcony near the ceiling of a room almost forty feet in height, lit by fluorescent lights on the ceiling and along the walls, as well as lamps at intervals on the ground—only the corners and an area in the back where a sloping ramp led up to large garage doors were dim. The whole place was walled in unadorned gray concrete. Tables on the lower level were overflowing with what were unmistakably tinkertech bombs, and the excess was strewn across the floor.
All of this was secondary to the vast contraption which dominated the center of the room. Rising ten or fifteen feet in the air, the hemisphere of metal, partially plated with scavenged steel, was a marvel of circuitry and open wiring. Digital displays poked out from under the mess in several places, and tools were still attached in more than one location along the plating and in the workings.
"Like it?"
My whole force turned to look at the speaker. She was on the lower floor, about thirty feet down and twenty feet across from the Wards, leaning against a black and red vintage motorcycle with a painted flame motif and twin black luggage holsters on the back of the chassis. The dark steel of her gas mask contrasted with the yellow highlights of her costume and with the blood-red tint of her goggles.
I'd heard Bakuda's voice before, in the recordings she'd released and in captured footage. The voice I knew was twisted and distorted by the metal mask she wore until it was totally unrecognizable as human. That wasn't the case now. Her voice modulator was apparently inactive for whatever reason, and instead of a cold robotic tone, I heard an almost startlingly human speaker—a young woman of perhaps twenty.
"Split up!" Aegis ordered, but Bakuda held up one hand. In it was what looked like a detonator.
"Ah, none of that," she said. "You stay right where you are. Unless you want to turn around and walk out. I'd recommend doing that."
"We're not leaving," growled Aegis.
I channeled my power through Nenya and forced myself to look around through the screen, detecting whatever I could. I found bombs—several of them. Beneath my friends' feet, above their heads, on the walls behind and beside them.
There were too many to point them all out—enough that I doubted even Shielder could protect the team from all of them. And I couldn't communicate with him without Bakuda hearing.
"Keep her talking," I hissed. "The whole area is trapped."
"Got it," Aegis whispered, and then spoke aloud. "What is that thing?" He gestured at the large machine in the room's center. "Looks like junk."
"Shadow Stalker," I said as Bakuda gestured lazily at the massive device. "Try to get around behind her. Withdraw into the shadow of the stairway and then teleport."
"Okay." I watched as she took a couple steps back. A moment later, her screen went dark. Good luck, Sophia.
Meanwhile, with half an ear, I was listening to Bakuda's explanation. "It was supposed to be my magnum opus. My great work. A bomb with a payload of almost 80 terajoules—but that wasn't the impressive part. On detonation it'll release an EMP with a wide enough area to knock out electronics across half the eastern United States. Suddenly, Kyushu doesn't look so impressive anymore—and Endbringers aren't so unique."
"Why?" Gallant asked. "Why would you want that?"
Bakuda shrugged, and as she continued, I spoke again. "Be ready to go airborne, everyone. She can't have planted bombs in midair."
"Partly I just really like explosions. There's not even a philosophy behind that—no bullshit about their cleansing purity or anything. They're just fucking cool. Bang! And you're gone." She chuckled.
"Vista, how much longer?" I asked.
"I'm getting there. A couple minutes."
"Then there's the bit where Lung wanted me to do it." Bakuda continued. "All the other gangs have one major thing on his—money. But money's all electronic these days, and everything you can do with it is also electronic. Take out the electricity, and suddenly none of the other gangs within half the country look anything like as powerful as they were. But the ABB? They're still fine. But you know?" She looked over at the bomb. If I could see her face, I imagined it might look almost fond. "I think the big part was just that I could. I had the power to wreak havoc on a scale that makes Endbringers look like small potatoes. That's reason enough."
"You'd kill tens of thousands of people for a power trip?" Glory Girl asked, her voice pitched less as a question and more as a bewildered exclamation.
"Yeah, basically."
"I'm in position," Sophia murmured. She was in the shadows behind Bakuda, her crossbows trained on her. "Give the word."
"It's a long shot," I whispered. "You're fucked if she notices you before you take her out. Wait for now. You'll all act at once on my mark."
"You really are a cartoon supervillain," said Aegis, shaking his head. "Evil plot without good reasons, and now you're even monologuing."
"Well, yeah," said Bakuda. "Wouldn't you monologue if you could get away with it?"
"You're not getting away with anything," hissed Laserdream.
Was this my opportunity? I opened my mouth, ready to order the attack.
"See, that's the other reason I was monologuing," said Bakuda. "Had to give her time to arm. Ciao."
She leapt onto the motorcycle and began to move even as one of the fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling cracked and shattered in a blast of light and a sound like thunder. A translucent sphere, almost like glass, started to expand from the inside.
Aegis just had time to shout "Run!" before it was on him. From the cameras of the Wards behind, I watched in horror as he was swallowed up by the expanding sphere. His camera went dark and he froze as surely as if Clockblocker had struck him.
"Vista, Kid Win, get out of there!" I screamed, but it was too late. Even as Kid Win slung Vista up onto his hoverboard, the bubble rose through the floor and claimed them.
Sophia fired off a bolt as soon as Bakuda moved, but the Tinker was going too fast, and the confusion as too great, for her to be really accurate. She made two teleports in quick succession as the garage doors opened. The motorcycle sped past her, up a ramp and out into the night, her crossbow bolt just missing Bakuda's head. A moment later, her screen went black too.
In less than thirty seconds, I was left sitting in shock, staring at eight blank rectangles against the off-white backdrop of the wall.
-x-x-x-
Please consider donating to my Patreon. Many thanks to those who have already donated.
Canonically, Bakuda's timestop bombs do not work like this. This fact will be addressed in the next chapter. I didn't fuck up, I promise.
A nice update, though I will state for the record that I liked the original. This one has a bit better believability, and I can totally see it happening in this situation. They're trapped, surrounded by bombs, and the villain has them right where she wants them, and all parties involved know it. damn good execution. ^.^
Indeed, I think this is a definite improvement. The characterizations feel more realistic, and it's interesting seeing the non-Glory Girl New Wave members acting as voices of reason compared to the over-confident Ring-Bearering Wards. Getting overridden and even persuaded, but still voicing the cautions that should be voiced.
I like that you stuck with your guns on the mistakes the kids made; they still make them. I hope that we'll see an in-story outline of where they screwed up, possibly in Piggot's dressing-down (though any number of sources could provide it), because it isn't obvious the author intends us to know they're mistakes without the OOC commentary right now. But I do like that you kept it in there.
The dynamic with Annatar giving orders when she probably shouldn't is still there, too; it's confusing from a logical point of view, but makes sense when you consider the relationship the Rings give to them all. And she seemed to notice, half-way, in this version that she shouldn't be. Aegis agreed with her pseudo-order, though, and that's also believable, and hard to tell whether it should be attributed to the Ring's influence or just his own confidence as a teen superhero with a new power.
Bakuda was playing that timing awfully close, though, if she managed to get out but the teleporter chasing her didn't.
This will become quite important tomorrow; please remember you said it.
I'm glad you thought the rewrite was an improvement. I certainly did. I was a bit worried about compromising the subtlety of the characterizations, but I think I managed to avoid doing so.
The original Sheen 4.5 has been restored for posterity in the post it was originally in. Anyone who cares to may now refer back to it for whatever reason.
This will become quite important tomorrow; please remember you said it.
I'm glad you thought the rewrite was an improvement. I certainly did. I was a bit worried about compromising the subtlety of the characterizations, but I think I managed to avoid doing so.
Information control is one of the hardest things I've found in running a TTRPG game, and is close to equally hard in writing. Characterization subtlety is a similar item. I think, in the old one, you'd made it too subtle. You knew what the characterizations were, but the readers had too low a chance of picking it up. Sometimes, it's better to risk hammering people over the head than it is to risk them missing it. Not to say that you can't go too far, either.
However, I think you hit the right note with it in the rewrite. I don't think it inappropriately blatant at all. Especially when you consider that, for New Wave, you're essentially introducing two new characters and one who is only a strong presence in fanon, given how varied they can be in characterization from fanfic to fanfic and how little they get in the original work.
The original Sheen 4.5 has been restored for posterity in the post it was originally in. Anyone who cares to may now refer back to it for whatever reason.
I personally have a great deal of difficulty reading revised updates, so I'll be making use of that to help see what changed and what didn't when I have more energy to so do. Thank you for making that available.
The thought bubbled to the surface slowly, like fetid air from the depths of a bog. It breached the surface of my thoughts first as a thick, shapeless blob. When it burst, it released horror, pain, and awe—awe at my own stupidity, my hubris, the sheer scale of my failure.
But even as the tears rose to my eyes and the bile rose to my throat, one screen lit back up.
"Taylor." Sophia's voice was choked with bone-deep exhaustion and tight with loss and pain.
"Sophia," I whispered. "Oh, God. I'm so sorry. I—"
"It's not your fault," she lied. "Taylor, listen to me. I managed to follow Bakuda out of the garage before the bomb got me, but I'm tapped out. I had to make four blinks without resting, and I hit the ground pretty hard."
"I'll get them to pick you up," I promised, wiping my eyes. She was on a roof, I could see, lying on her back. Her camera gave me a lovely view of the stars, dimmed by the Bay's smoggy haze.
"No, you don't—fucking listen." Sophia's voice rose, grew heated, but the effect was ruined as she was interrupted by a coughing fit. "She's coming, Taylor. She was headed straight down Stockton. She'll be by the PRT building in just a couple minutes. She's going to bomb you."
My mouth opened slightly. "She's coming here?"
"She's lost her megabomb. She'll want to do as much damage as she can on the way out. Taylor, move!"
I stood up. "Can you move?" I asked.
"If you need me to." But her voice was rough, exhausted.
"No, you rest." I shook my head. "I have this. I'll send someone to find you. Be careful."
"Don't worry about me. Fucking kill this bitch."
I was reaching for Narsil before she'd finished speaking. It wasn't at my belt. I could have sworn I'd had it there when I sat down.
Casting around the room, however, I saw Aeglos leaning against the wall.
You'll do.
I took it up, and it gleamed cold in the electric lighting. "That's the plan."
I picked up the Jewelry Box, lying open beside me, and slipped off Nenya. I didn't want to be protected right now, nor to be concealed.
The Ring of Sapphire found its way onto my finger. I closed my eyes as I shut the Jewelry Box and laid it back down, allowing the power to flow through me.
Vilya, the Dominant Ring, the Ring of the Healer and the King, shone like a star. It eclipsed the pale incandescent lights as the moon eclipses the reflection of rusted iron. Aeglos, the Icicle of Gil-galad, shone blue and white in its light. My armor flared around me.
I had failed, and my friends had paid the price. But I could still avenge them.
Im ná i Calimatar Hrómen. I am the Bright Lord of the East.
-x-x-x-
The single light of Bakuda's motorcycle came into my view not long after I took my position on the street outside the PRT building. I hadn't passed Triumph on my way out. I assumed he was either patrolling the rest of the building or killing time in the break room.
I hadn't told him what had happened, or asked him to join me. There would be time—time to accept Piggot's punishment, to face the fury of the Protectorate and the sympathy of my dad. There would be time to go to each set of bereaved parents in person and offer what little closure I could.
There would be time to suffer for my failure. For now, there was still work to do—and I wanted to face this alone.
I unslung Belthronding from my shoulder and drew forth the only arrow in my quiver. The shaft of black yew seemed almost too dark—as though, rather than reflecting the starlight above as one would expect of polished wood, it consumed it, pulling it in like a black hole.
The power of the Black Arrow should not work when exploited. It was not supposed to be the only arrow in my quiver. It was supposed to be my final shot, the end of the battle. It was supposed to come after I had depleted my options, after I had run out of time, choice, and hope.
But when I put it that way, it was only fitting that it should serve now.
"Arrow," I whispered as I nocked it. "Black arrow. I have saved you to the last. If I have made you true, and if my cause is just, fly now straight and sure."
I let fly. The arrow struck dead into the workings of Bakuda's motorcycle and sank deep. There was a flare as the gas canister ignited, and a screech as the back tire snapped out of alignment. The motorcycle flipped, rolling end over end, sending sparks everywhere and trailing smoke and flame. I heard Bakuda screaming as she burned and was battered by her own machine.
The bike landed on its side and slid, Bakuda's left leg trapped under it. She screamed as her flesh was flayed between the heavy motorcycle and the rough asphalt. For a moment she was was dragged along the coarse roadway, and when it came to a stop, she gave a moan of pain through gritted teeth and laid back against the tarmac.
I walked forward. Belthronding returned to its place across my back, and Aeglos came forth. "Bakuda."
She glanced up, her red reflective lenses glinting in the light of the streetlamps. "Annatar," she said, and her voice was stiff and brittle with agony. "Saw you on the news."
"You killed my friends."
She gave a short, sharp laugh. It came out almost as a cough. "Not yet."
I stopped. "What?"
"The instant timestop bomb." Her breathing was ragged. "My slow-acting ones are permanent, or near-permanent, but the instant ones aren't. Their duration scales negatively with their area. Had to freeze the whole building."
I stared at her. "So they're not dead."
"Not yet, they aren't. The timestop should go down in a few minutes. Also, don't come any closer," she warned, "or I detonate every bomb I've got left in this city—including the implanted ones. You want to be responsible for the deaths of a few hundred more people?"
Will she do that?
Vilya curled about my finger. No.
"You're lying."
"Nope. You know I can remotely detonate my bombs."
"I know," I said, "but I'm a precog."
She lay back. "Fuck."
"Since I know you can't or won't do it, mind satisfying my curiosity?"
"Sure. I do like a good monologue, and it's not like it does me any good anymore. Toe-rings on my left big and second toes; I cross them to trigger the bomb—or bombs—of my choice." She looked down ruefully at her motorcycle. "Not sure I even have a big toe down there anymore, and I sure as hell can't feel it." She glanced up at me. "You know I'm going to bleed out in a couple minutes, right?"
"Not with that fire cauterizing the injuries, and the debris and road keeping them covered and under pressure," I replied. "No, your death will be slower. First the wounds will close, sealing asphalt and gasoline under your skin. Then the scabs and internal injuries will sicken as the infection sets in, until your blood is toxic and your body fails around you." I smiled. "Your death will be slow, Bakuda. Slow and painful. And no one will lift a finger to save you."
"Lung owes me this city." Her voice was hoarse.
"Lung doesn't strike me as the type to pay his debts to a dead woman with no attachments in this world. Why should he? Who will come to collect?"
"You wouldn't leave me here," she said, but she sounded almost resigned. "You're a hero. You're supposed to be better than that."
"I didn't say I'd leave you here. I'd find the nearest abandoned building—probably one you emptied out with a bomb—and then I'd drop you there, and drop your bike on top of you. Then I'd leave. No one would ever know. If you're lucky, you'd die of thirst before the blood poisoning got you. Either way, no one would find you; not for weeks. Not until well after your body had cooled and become a nest for maggots."
"Damn, you really hate me." The hint of mirth in her voice was almost appreciative. "What'd I do to you?"
"You've been terrorizing my city for a week now. You hurt my father. You almost killed my friends."
"Almost?"
I frowned. "I know the timestop will drop, but—"
"No, you don't get it." She was smiling around the pain now; I could hear it in her voice. "Were you listening, at the garage? I guess you were on mission control, coordinating."
"I heard."
"Then you remember. The megabomb? It's not finished. The blast isn't nearly as big as I wanted it to be."
My face slackened. "But it's—"
"What do you think I was waiting to arm? The time bomb was ready from the start." She laughed—a short, hacking sound. "I did say yet. The timestop should go down in just a few more minutes now. One bomb fails, and the other succeeds."
"No," I said, in dawning horror. "No! My—"
And then there was light. I looked up, behind her, and saw the light rising in a great cloud of debris, dust, and ash. In the same instant, the streetlamps on either side flickered and died. Behind me, the lights of PRT HQ went out.
Then the shockwave hit, moments later, setting my hair billowing behind me and making the motorcycle skid about an inch on Bakuda's leg. She hissed in pain, but she was laughing, too—laughing almost hysterically. The darkness was total, save for the stars flickering overhead, and the gleaming of Aeglos, Vilya, and my armor.
"They weren't dead then," she giggled, almost choking, "but they sure are now!"
I watched the stones falling back to the earth, the dust settling. Tears pricked my eyes. I tried to blink them away, but they kept coming.
They're gone. Carlos, Dennis, Missy, Dean, Chris… they're gone. And it's my fault.
"There," said Bakuda, sounding almost satisfied, her eyes lingering on one darkened streetlamp. "That's that done. Faster than I expected, too." She smirked up at me. "Really should've held back on the grief until now."
"Why?" I asked her, and hated how my voice quavered. "Why would you do this? Why would you want to?"
Bakuda chuckled wetly. "It's like this, kid. The world's a shit place, full of shit people."
"That's no reason to—"
"I didn't finish. World's shit. People are shit. We walk around on this shitty little planet for, what, fifty, sixty years? Then we die. Nothing changes. World's still shit, people are still shit. Shakespeare couldn't change that. Einstein couldn't change that. Mozart couldn't change that."
"At least they tried to leave it better than when they arrived."
"Tried and failed." She gurgled slightly, shifting her position on the ground. A faint gasp of pain escaped her as she accidentally moved her injured leg. "I spent all my life trying to chase after great people. Trying to be remembered, to leave a legacy. Then I realized—none of it fucking matters. No one listens to Mozart anymore, except rich snobs trying to look educated. Same for Shakespeare. And Einstein? All anyone remembers him for is the bomb."
She laughed again; wet, tight, and frantic. "I want to be remembered. I don't want to be just another poor sap crawling on all fours from one edge of a plateau to another, only to fall into the dark at the end and be just—gone. And if I can't be remembered for art, or literature, or science, well," she held out both her arms, wincing as the motion jostled her wounds, gesturing to the dark city around us, "there's always the bomb."
I studied her through eyes blurred with tears. "That's it?" I asked, my voice low and soft. "That's your great reason?"
"Yep. Well, that and the whole 'I really like explosions' thing. Going to kill me now? Or make good on your threats?" She coughed and chortled.
I reached out and touched her with my left hand. Bakuda was strong-willed by nature, but weakened by pain and by serving Lung for months. The struggle was fierce, but short, and in a few moments, I had her mind in my grasp.
"Your deadman's switch," I said. "How is it activated?"
"Heart rate monitor," she told me, her voice perfectly monotonous, staring up at me with dull eyes. "I have a monitor patch on my chest, controlled through my HUD."
"Can you disable it?"
"Yes."
"Do so."
A pause. "Done."
"If I took off your goggles, would you be unable to reactivate your switch?"
"Yes."
"Good." I reached down and grabbed at the lenses, pulling hard until the strap snapped and the red lenses came free, sparking slightly as the HUD interface broke down. I held it up for a moment, staring into the red disks, before tossing it aside. "You're free."
Her eyes blinked and cleared. She stared up at me in sudden fury which slowly gave way to dawning horror. "What the fuck did you do?"
I didn't answer her. "You ever heard of Grendel?"
"No," she replied warily. "Who's that?"
"Mm. Bet you've heard of Beowulf, though."
She stiffened.
"No one will remember you, Bakuda," I told her. "You won't be more than a footnote in the history books, remembered only for the challenges you offered your betters. No one remembers Grendel—they remember Beowulf. No one remembers Claudius—they remember Hamlet. And no one will remember you." I raised Aeglos. "They'll remember me. The one who put you down like the rabid bitch you are."
"Fuck you," she hissed. "This is real life. There is no happy ending, there is no resolution. The hero doesn't always come out on top, and it's the winner that writes the history."
"Yes," I said. "Hail to the victors." And I brought the spear down.
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Bakuda, Bakuda, Bakuda. Stupid, fucking Bakuda. Haven't you ever heard of "workplace safety" before? There are some buttons that you, even as someone who likes big fucking explosions, SHOULD NOT PUSH.
The one that makes Annatar into Sauron is one of them.
Annatar, Dark Lord of Brockton Bay, Ring Maker, and Slayer of Endbringers now seeks to conquer the world and bring everything under the protective gaze of the might Red Eye. Scion has retreated, while eidolon and Alexandria were recently killed in action. President of the United States may be compromised. Thinker suggested actions are unification of all countries with thinker confirmed non-mastered leaders and world wide military mobilization as soon as possible. Calculated probability of defeating Annatar short of wide scale nuclear exchange rapidly falling below acceptable parameters. World wide evacuation may be necessary if a solution is not found. Alerts have been sent to all linked realities to go on a war footing due to the extent of Annatar's reach.
Threat level classified as S+, confirmed planetary scale threat with access to multiple mastered S rank and below subordinated. Ability to subvert national governments at the highest level and confirmed precog.
Assume all further reports and Intel from within protectorate and North American sources to be compromised and unreliable at best.
