Wyvern
Part Twenty-One: Dealing With the Wyvern in the Room
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
PRT Building ENE
Director Emily Piggot
The Next Morning
"... court in the morning."
Emily hit Pause on the remote, so as to allow everyone present—Protectorate and Wards alike—to fully appreciate the gravity of the scene before them.
The screen in the conference room displayed two separate views of the summit of Captain's Hill. The angles were slightly different, and one was a little clearer than the other, but what each of them showed was unmistakeable. A draconic figure, red and gold markings identical to those in every photo ever taken of her,
loomed over the parking area on top of the hill in a way that should have been frankly impossible at that range.
Providing even more evidence as to the scale involved, a tiny bright-coloured human form hovered next to the gargantuan muzzle. Everyone present knew who it was: Lady Photon. She appeared so tiny next to the immense creature that she would be able to stand on its lower eyelid and peer directly into its pupil.
Emily pressed the Play button again. Both images started rolling. Lady Photon clearly said something to Wyvern, because the immense reptilian eyeball rolled toward her. There was a chuckle in reply, clearly audible over the speakers, even from halfway across the city.
"Maybe."
This time, Emily hit Stop, and the screens blanked.
"As we all know," she said, her voice carrying clearly to everyone in the room, "that happened last night."
"Oh, we know," Assault agreed readily enough. "So does everyone in Brockton Bay. There's a whole thread on PHO devoted to appeasing our new draconic overlord. Overlady. Whatever."
"Clock here applied for the position of her high priest," Kid Win added, hooking his thumb at his buddy.
"Hey!" protested the white-clad Ward. "I wasn't the only one!"
"Nicely done, kid." Assault turned to Armsmaster, lacing his fingers together and resting his chin on them. "So, tell us again about your plan to take Wyvern under your wing and teach her how to find her true strengths."
"Found 'em," muttered Clockblocker, not quite softly enough to not be heard. Kid Win and Vista snickered quietly, along with Assault.
Armsmaster's jaw hardened, but he didn't respond to either Assault's smartass comment or Clockblocker's response. "We've been fortunate three times over," he stated. "First, Wyvern has expressed no interest in actually conquering the city by force. Second, she reduced in size back to regular human form shortly after the footage which we've just viewed. Third, all the hostages taken by the Nine were able to escape due to her assistance. Only one was harmed, and his injury has since been dealt with by Panacea."
"So, uh … does anyone have any idea of how big she actually got at the end there?" asked Velocity. "Because she looked pretty damn big to me."
Emily glanced at Armsmaster, and he took up the ball. "After consultation with Dragon, the consensus seems to be between six hundred fifty to seven hundred fifty feet, from tip of nose to tip of tail. The wings were never fully spread while in that form, but if the proportions were the same as when she is in her basic Wyvern form, her wingspan would be in excess of a thousand feet."
Kid Win made a choking noise. "Wait … so you're saying she was
three times as long as a seven-four-seven?"
"And her wingspan was five times that of an airliner, yes," Armsmaster confirmed. "However, that brings up another issue. An empty seven-four-seven weighs a little in excess of two hundred fifty tons. I strongly suspect her body would be denser than that of an aluminum aircraft, so she would've massed perhaps forty to fifty times as much as the average Boeing jetliner, instead of merely twenty-seven times. For reference, blue whales are about a hundred feet long, and weigh about two hundred tons."
"So, at full size she would weigh somewhere between ten and twelve thousand tons," Emily retorted, after doing a little mental math. "Let's hope she doesn't choose to perch on any buildings we happen to want, once she gets that large again."
"I'm more hoping that nothing happens to
get her to that size again," Miss Militia said. "Because if she does, and goes on a rampage, I'm not sure anything short of a nuke would suffice to subdue her. In fact, considering what we've seen of her durability against fire and explosions, that's not exactly a guarantee either."
"Yay," Assault interjected, deadpan. "So, the only way to save the city would be to destroy the city."
Battery didn't even bother elbowing him for that one. "I hope we're not planning on a pre-emptive strike? Especially on someone who literally
destroyed the Slaughterhouse Nine in about ten minutes?"
Emily folded her hands together on the table. "It's something we must at least consider the possibility of. Wyvern has
specifically chosen not to join the Wards, and has shown that she can escalate far beyond our capacity to easily respond. I'm sure everyone here has paid attention to the fact that each time she gets pushed to a higher level, she can reach that level again much more easily."
"Wait, wait," Gallant interjected. "It might not be my place to say this, but let's just keep in mind that the only people who have pushed Wyvern to excessive level of violence so far have been Inago, Shadow Stalker, and the Slaughterhouse Nine, all of whom tried to hurt people she obviously cared for. Why are we even talking about taking her down for something she
might be capable of doing?"
"Kid's got a point," Assault noted idly. "Sure, Wyvern's got the potential to level the city. But the thing is, most of us in this room have that to a greater or lesser degree, given enough prep time and a damn good reason. You don't see the PRT hanging over
our shoulders, ready to pull the trigger just in case we suddenly decide to snap one fine day. Who are you going to aim this '
capable of causing great damage' BS at next? The Triumvirate? Because I want a ringside seat when you do."
Emily twitched. Assault was almost certainly exaggerating, but she was never comfortable when even heroic capes spoke in this way. In her mind, it was all too easy for braggadocio to become hard reality, especially when powers were involved.
Battery seemed to be thinking that way as well. "Not funny," she muttered to her husband.
"Wasn't joking. And I wasn't finished. Like I said, sure, she could do it. But has she given us any reason to believe she wants to? I haven't seen it. She's happy in New Wave, and they're pleased to have her. They care. And she cares about them."
"That doesn't reduce her capacity to cause immense destruction, should she choose to do so," Emily argued. Couldn't he
see the point she was trying to get across?
"Exactly." Assault sat up from his habitual slump. "
Choice. She's choosing to be very careful about the destruction she causes. Oni Lee and the Nine are the only people she's actually killed, and do you blame her for a single one of them? Because I certainly don't."
Emily sat forward, determined to regain the initiative. "When she first showed up, I wasn't overly worried because she was at best a B-rank cape. After Inago, it became a concern, because she'd jumped straight to A-rank status. Now, she's gone all the way to S-rank, capable of causing
Endbringer-scale damage. Her potential for escalation is frankly worrying—"
Assault slapped the table, hard. From the way the sound boomed and echoed through the room, it was evident that he'd used his powers to amplify the impact. Slowly, he stood up and turned his head to take in everyone in the room.
"Wards. Out. What I've got to say isn't for you guys to hear."
Such was the authority in his tone—normally he went for '
cool uncle' but now his voice was hard and sharp—that even Clockblocker didn't register more than a token protest as he got up and left. The last one out was Triumph, who closed the door behind him.
Emily stared up at Assault. Once in a while, she'd seen his Madcap persona on display. It was only on rare occasions, and never boded well for whoever he was aiming it at. This was the first time he'd directed it her way, and she found she didn't like it.
"You can
be worried," he growled. "But you do
not get to let that translate into an excuse for an unofficial kill order on Taylor Hebert when she's not being Wyvern, or even when she is. She's a sweet kid, and she's done nothing to deserve that."
Emily felt anger surge through her, along with a tinge of guilt. "I was going to order no such thing—"
"Oh,
bullshit." He hadn't sat down, and his tone was as cutting as before. "You were just going to express
concern, and suggest a potential need for
precautions. Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more. When Militia said a nuke might or might not take her down, you never turned a hair. Not a kill order, my well-toned left butt cheek. Since when are nukes the
non-lethal option?"
"So, what would
your solution be if Wyvern decided to go on a rampage at full power?" snapped Emily, stung into replying. "Wave pompoms?"
"Well, that would depend entirely on
why," he said. "Endbringer attack? You can goddamn
bet I'd be waving pompoms. Some
other brain-dead fuckwit villain tries to force her to work for them by kidnapping her loved ones? I'd help her
end them. But if it turned out that someone with more brass than brains decided that her very existence was too much of an existential threat for their tiny little minds, and tried to remove her from the running
just because, and they'd miscalculated and hurt the people she loved, and thus triggered the rampage that way
..." He flicked his visor up and leaned forward on his knuckles, his eyes fixed on Emily's. "Refer to previous answer."
He meant every word; she could tell that much, at least. She forced herself to breathe steadily. This was not the first time she'd felt threatened by a cape, and it probably wouldn't be the last.
When she spoke, her voice sounded alien to her ears. "So noted. Now sit down, before I have Armsmaster put you on report for insubordination." She wasn't about to do it—for all his freewheeling nature, he was a damn good hero—but her authority needed to be maintained.
Slowly, he sat down, the grim set of his mouth gradually relaxing. With one finger, he flicked his visor down again. "Sure, you can do that. And I can repeat this conversation
verbatim to whoever wants to know why I'm on report
this time."
Which neither of them wanted. It was a mutually assured fuck-you, and they both knew it.
"We'll continue to monitor the Wyvern situation at a distance," she observed neutrally. "If New Wave gets worried, that's when
we'll get worried. Armsmaster, did you have anything else to add, regarding the Slaughterhouse Nine incident?"
Armsmaster glanced from Assault to Emily, then cleared his throat. "There
is something that has me concerned. At lower size levels, she deals exclusively in fire, though the power is expressed in a few different ways. However, per the witness statements, when fighting Burnscar she manifested a differently patterned wyvern form that had the same mastery over ice and cold as her standard form does over fire."
"That's something I've been thinking about," Dauntless said. "Could it be that her Changer form is integrated with an adaptive Trump power of some type? She's locked into the wyvern pattern, but when she encounters an out of context problem, her powerset literally figures out a way to counter it, and forces her through an upgrade that lets her beat it?"
Emily considered that. It would certainly fit the events as she understood them. "And so when she was fighting Crawler, her power had to literally evolve direct disintegration of matter to the subatomic level in order to beat him."
"Which would mean her
breath would likely have the same effect," Armsmaster agreed. "I studied the crater she left behind when she disintegrated Jack Slash and Bonesaw. The ground was
smooth. All I could find, even with the most delicate of instrumentation, was that there'd been some kind of destructive event that left no trace materials behind; no excess heat, no acid, nothing. There's a good chance she only has access to the disintegration effect when she's at that size; anything smaller, and her body wouldn't be able to sustain it."
That was both good news and bad news. Good, in that the human-sized version of Wyvern would not be able to casually disintegrate muggers. Bad, in that she would easily be able to regain the immense form, now that she had attained it once. She briefly envisaged Wyvern disintegrating half a building by accident and knocking over the other half with a body-check, then shut down the mental image with a well-concealed shudder.
Just one more thing that I've got to worry about.
"Was that everything?" she asked. "I seem to recall a mention of a stray bystander killed during the fight, but I didn't get any details then."
Miss Militia nodded. "Yes. He was apparently camping in a van a little way down the hill. Wyvern's statement, passed on by Lady Photon, says she didn't see him until she accidentally threw Crawler on top of him. She blames herself."
Armsmaster lifted his head slightly, in the pose that said he was reading off his helmet HUD. Emily disliked when he did that; he could at least wait until he wasn't in a conversation with other people in the room. His words, however, arrested her attention. "They've since confirmed the identity of the civilian DOA. Doctor William Manton's been missing for years, believed dead. What are the odds that he would show up now,
camping literally one hundred yards away from the Slaughterhouse Nine?"
Emily blinked, her irritation following the clash with Assault vanishing in an instant. "Manton? As in,
the Doctor William Manton? You're right; that's not something I would personally call a coincidence, especially where capes of that calibre are concerned. Do they have any ideas?"
"Nothing concrete," Armsmaster replied. "The updated report, and everything they've got appended to it, has been sent to everyone's inboxes."
"Good." Assault leaned back again. "This doesn't change much. At worst, he was a regrettable casualty of the conflict, but I really don't think so. Much more likely, he was somehow connected to the Nine and got what he deserved. Either way, there's no way I'm going to be Monday-morning-quarterbacking the girl who took on the Nine and quite literally wiped them off the face of the Earth, when the best Protectorate and PRT efforts came up zip."
And you'd better not try it either, he didn't say.
Emily nodded to acknowledge his points, both spoken and unspoken. At the very least, Wyvern had earned the reward for
ending the Nine once and for all, even if the Siberian had escaped the clean sweep. "Understood. Did anyone have anything else?"
Nobody did. Assault stood up with Battery alongside him, and nodded to Armsmaster. "I'll brief the Wards on what they missed."
Which meant, Emily knew, he'd tone it down to just the right level. He'd always been good with the youngsters. Better than her or Armsmaster, at any rate.
She'd stick with the unspoken agreement she'd formed with Assault, her own feelings on the subject notwithstanding. Teenage girl or no teenage girl, Wyvern was
dangerous. But Assault couldn't or wouldn't see that, which meant that no precautionary actions would be taken for the time being, not until they had official permission from above.
She just hoped they wouldn't end up regretting it.
Also, that nobody
else would do anything stupid.
<><>
Kaiser
"What. The.
Fuck?" Max Anders pointed at the widescreen image that showed the clearest PHO image available of Wyvern perched on top of Captain's Hill. "Did anyone know she could grow that big?"
Hookwolf shook his head. "Uh, no. After Inago, she could get as big as a moving van, but that was about it. What you've got there's a whole new level of fuck-that."
Stormtiger elbowed him in the ribs. "C'mon, man. You're always talking up how tough you are. You could take her."
"Fuck you." Hookwolf elbowed him in return, twice as hard. "She ate Crawler alive.
Crawler. Then she toasted Jack Slash with that weird purple fire. They said there's nothing left of him. Hard pass."
Max banged on the table with a metal-clad fist. "I'm not asking who
can't take her. That list basically includes everyone in Brockton Bay. I'm asking for any ideas about
dealing with her, if she decides to come after us."
"We're going to have to be very careful about it," Krieg advised. "She's reportedly durable, even at normal size. At that scale, her ability to absorb damage is probably greater that Fenja's and Menja's combined. And her destructive capability is greater than everyone present
combined. If we struck at her while she was in that form, she would almost certainly survive, and her retaliation would probably prove fatal to whoever the idiot was, plus everyone behind them."
"I'm not scared of fire," boasted Alabaster. "Gimme a big enough MANPAD, and I'll put a hole right through her."
"First, she is impressively agile in the air, and could probably dodge it altogether," Krieg replied. "Second, her durability versus explosions is a matter of record. Third, I am dubious as to whether your vaunted reset ability would survive being reduced to subatomic particles, which is what I suspect that 'weird purple fire' actually does."
Max knew the Empire could probably source the man-portable air-defence missiles Alabaster was talking about, but those things were very expensive and would likely draw Federal attention. If the Empire had a Tinker of their own, that would've made things a lot easier—the ABB and Roadhog's Crew both had Tinkers, which he considered to be the
height of unfairness—but they didn't, so there was no sense bitching about it.
"I could make Purity invulnerable," Othala offered. "She could probably do a lot of damage before it wore off."
It was a tempting suggestion, and Max wished he didn't have to shoot it down. "Good idea but like Krieg said, Wyvern's insanely agile in the air. Also, durable even at low levels. If she didn't kill Wyvern immediately, she'd be facing something that could damn near rip the Medhall building out of the ground and fly off with it. At that level, chances are that Wyvern could tank the hits until Purity ran out of invulnerability. And finally, my beloved wife is still out there playing hero, trying to hunt down Geonchugga and round up the last of the ABB before Inago gets out of lockup. If he ever does. So she's not likely to even want to take on Wyvern until that's done with, if ever."
Crusader had stayed quiet all this time—it hadn't even needed to be said that his ghosts were unlikely to be overly effective on someone like Wyvern—but now he roused himself. "So nobody else is gonna say it, huh?"
Max looked at him. He knew the brash youngster reasonably well, and had an idea of what Crusader was referring to, but there was such as thing as plausible deniability. "Nobody is going to say what, exactly?"
"Oh, for
fuck's sake." Crusader rolled his eyes. "We pull a Fleur on her. Find out her real name and where she lives, then put someone on her. When she least expects it, they gank her. Make it look like a mugging gone wrong or something. They don't even have to know it's Wyvern. Just someone we wanted dead."
Max stayed quiet, watching the others as they reacted to Crusader's words. He could see the appeal in the idea, and indeed he'd given the go-ahead for Fleur's killer to be inducted into the Empire Eighty-Eight after the young lout served his prison term. But it had ever been his way to read the room and go with the majority opinion, acting as though it had been his intention all along.
Not everyone would like it, he was sure. It just remained to be seen whether or not the dissenters managed to win enough people over to their point of view.
"You're shitting me, right?" Hookwolf's tone was full of disgust. "Just like that? Stab her and slab her? What the fuck's wrong with you?"
Crusader recoiled at Hookwolf's tone. "What? What are you talking about? You've killed people before. Last month, I watched you skin a cop alive."
Hookwolf bunched his fists, metal blades sliding into place to cover his forearms. "Yeah, but every asshole I ever offed, they saw me coming. I don't stab anyone in the back from the get-go. It's a fucking coward's act. Never have, never will."
"Well, maybe some of us don't have powers always protecting us!" The 'coward' comment had scored on Crusader, Max could tell. "Sometimes it's just the smart move!"
"I'm with Hook." That was Stormtiger. "I expected better of you, Crusader. Maybe the squishies can gank someone from surprise and feel good about themselves after, but we're better than them. More powerful. We don't
need that edge. I go out to kill some motherfucker, I'm gonna look 'em in the eye first."
"Like Crusader said, some of us don't have that option," Rune objected. "I've
seen her in action. If I went up against her at her
normal size, she'd outfly me, then scorch me down to a cinder. I'd never win if I didn't get the drop on her first."
"From where I'm sitting, that's a
you problem," Cricket interjected, idly spinning one of her kama around her hand. "Have you tried not being a whiny bitch?"
"Now, now, that's not fair." But Victor's voice held a tinge of amusement. "I know
I wouldn't go up against her without one of Othala's enhancements. But maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. She might not even care about us. Someone with that kind of power-up? That's major Protectorate material. Hell, that's
Triumvirate material."
Slowly, Max nodded. "True. And the reverse is also a factor."
Krieg frowned and looked over at him. "The reverse?"
"Last night's little show would
absolutely have put her on the Triumvirate's radar," Max explained. "Someone who could ramp up hard enough to turn Crawler into a tasty meat snack, and Jack Slash into individual atoms drifting on the breeze? They
have to be paying attention to Brockton Bay right now. If nothing else, they'd have little Endbringer-shaped dollar signs in their eyes. So, I'm guessing they're drawing straws right at this moment to see who comes to town to ask her pretty please would she join in the next fight. And if we happened to remove her from consideration before they got here …
I'm not willing to bet on their kind and forgiving natures. Are you?"
An extremely thoughtful silence fell across the gathered villains. Hookwolf broke it first. "A grand on Hero."
"What?" asked Crusader, totally blindsided by the non-sequitur.
"I'm betting a thousand bucks that it's Hero who comes to town," Hookwolf said patiently. "Who wants some of this action?"
"Two grand on Alexandria, for me," Cricket replied. "They'll send a girl, duh."
Max sat back and smiled secretly to himself as the battle lines were drawn. It seemed money would change hands no matter which member of the Triumvirate showed up, though it was telling that nobody had any faith in Eidolon to be the one. Not that he blamed them; since Legend quit the Protectorate, the man had hardly appeared in public at all.
Whatever happened from this point on, he would wait and see.
It was a sound course of action, one that had worked for him so far.
<><>
Taylor
When court convened the next morning, I was wearing one of Vicky's dresses, the Nine having successfully managed to destroy all of my clothing that I hadn't wrecked so far. Dad had been wearing his glasses when he was kidnapped, and I could get by with fake frames thanks to Amy's fix job on my eyes, so we weren't having to squint to see anything. We'd been put up in PRT accommodation overnight, ostensibly for observation, and I for one had had a good night's sleep.
Which I had desperately needed. Getting that big had somehow left me with phantom muscle strains all over, to the point that I was horribly cramped the next morning. It took me about twenty minutes under a steaming hot shower (in Taylor Hebert form, not Wyvern form) to loosen up to the point that it didn't hurt when I moved anymore. Even then, I was still creaky as an old door as I got in the car (with a PRT driver; our actual car was in the shop, getting the window replaced and the side panels repainted) to go to court.
Getting out at the courthouse, I felt a little better. Then I spotted Emma and her dad with their lawyer. She saw me, I raised an eyebrow, and she literally hid behind him.
"Danny, Taylor, it's good to see you." Carol Dallon was looking very pleased with herself. "How are you doing after last night?"
Dad held up his hand and wriggled his fingers; Amy had fixed it completely after what Burnscar had done to it. "Better than I was, thanks to Amy. Ready to get this done."
I nodded in agreement. "What he said. Tell Sarah thanks for her pep-talk. It really helped." With other people present, of course, we had to watch what we said.
Carol beamed at me. "You can tell her yourself when you see her. How are you feeling, after what you ate last night?"
Was I suffering from having eaten Crawler, she meant.
"No problems at all," I assured her. "Sometimes, my stomach is just a bottomless pit. I had bacon and eggs this morning. Not too bad, actually."
"Good, good. Well, we should be getting inside. Time and court appearances wait for no man or woman."
"Well,
you're having a good morning," I observed with a grin.
Carol nodded. "It helps when our newest and flashiest member destroys a notorious team of villains. New Wave is very definitely the flavour of the month."
We headed on in. Every time I saw Emma, she did her best to keep her father between us. That was mildly amusing, especially when he saw what she was doing and made her put a stop to it.
As soon as we got inside, their lawyer headed over to speak to one of the court officials. Carol went to have a word with another one. While she ws doing that, Alan Barnes sat Emma down in her seat, then came over toward us.
Ms. Castle, the county prosecutor, intercepted him before he reached us. "Mr. Barnes, it's not a good idea for you to speak to the witnesses for the prosecution without prior permission."
"I don't care." He was neatly dressed but this close, he did not look well rested. The bags under his eyes could've held enough luggage for a round-the-world trip. "I need to talk to Danny and Taylor."
"That depends on them." Ms. Castle looked back at us. "Mr. Hebert, Ms. Hebert?"
Dad glanced at me; I shrugged. "Sure. Let's hear it."
"Thank you." He came up to us, glanced at Ms. Castle, and grimaced. There was evidently a great deal he wanted to say, most of which was constrained by our lawyer's presence. Dad and I just waited; it wasn't our job to make his life easier. "I … I, uh, did a lot of thinking last night. After the thing … with the Nine … and Wyvern."
So far, he was colouring inside the lines, so Dad threw him a bone. Tilting his head, he gave Mr. Barnes a look of interest. "I was there too, you know. What exactly were
you thinking about?"
More grimacing. "Jack Slash tried to get Wyvern to burn me and Emma alive, just because he could. She refused, and took on those monsters instead. She saved our lives."
When we've done nothing to deserve it, his tone said loud and clear.
"She did." Dad's tone was noncommittal. "Saved mine, too, and Kurt's, and Lacey's. What's your point?"
"Life's too short for things like this to waste time on." Alan Barnes looked from Dad to me. "I've sent Richardson to pass on a message to the judge, that Emma and I have spoken about it, and we're changing her plea to guilty. The Clementses already know about this, and they're doing the same with Madison. Whatever Sophia wants to do is her own business. I wash my hands of her."
Ms. Castle blinked. "Well, that's definitely going to streamline matters today," she observed. "Mr. Hebert, Ms. Hebert, do you have a problem with this?"
Dad and I shared another glance; again, I shrugged. "Not especially," I said. "I was already over this whole thing anyway. But thanks for putting in the hard work for us."
She favoured me with a professional smile. "This case is one of the easier ones I've had to work for in quite some time. There's a certain amount of satisfaction to be found in fighting the opposition down to the wire, but it's also nice when they just throw in the towel."
Dad fronted up to Mr. Barnes. "Alan," he said quietly, "I say this as one father to another. Get Emma some professional help. She needs it."
"Yeah." It was clear Mr. Barnes didn't like the idea, but he was coming around to it. "Me too, probably."
We watched as he headed back to Emma and sat down beside her, then Ms. Castle looked at Dad and me. "Time to take your seats," she advised. "Even though he's entering a guilty plea, we've still got to do this by the book. Though that was likely the most exciting part of the case, right there."
Dad nodded. "I can't argue with that."
I had to agree. Life was so much easier when people did the smart thing.
<><>
Coil
Well, I definitely didn't expect that.
Thomas Calvert looked over his steepled fingers at the enlarged image of Wyvern looming over Captain's Hill. His plan to set up the PRT to look bad and/or push Wyvern closer to criminal activity (and thus separate her from New Wave, leaving her open to recruitment by himself) by railroading her back into the school she despised … had somehow fizzled. Wyvern
and the PRT had come out of it smelling like roses, and the real villain of the piece had been exposed and captured. Winslow had indeed burned, but it wasn't Wyvern's doing.
And now … this.
He hadn't anticipated the Nine coming to town, but people rarely did. Every time someone got a tip they were on their way and the local capes got ready for them, they never showed. It had been part of their mystique. Well, not anymore. Their mystique was well and truly dead, just like them.
Wyvern's mystique, on the other hand, had acquired whole new volumes. What she could do, and how she could do it, was now very much in the forefront of his mind. He knew who she was, where she lived, and her entire scholastic record back to first grade. That part was no mystery to him.
The six-hundred-forty-million-dollar question currently consuming his every thought process was this:
How do I get her to work for me?
It was very simple. She was
far and away the most powerful cape in Brockton Bay, and indeed everywhere north of New York. Which gave him three choices for dealing with her. As a member of New Wave, he couldn't ignore her; sooner or later, they'd turn their attention to him. Which meant he had to make preparations to either leave town, suborn her to his cause, or remove her from the board altogether.
Fleeing Brockton Bay was the least palatable of the options. It would mean abandoning his entire operation, endangering his standing within the local PRT, and most likely leaving behind the cape teams he had under his sway. He could start again elsewhere, but it would be tedious at best.
On the other hand, bringing her into his stable of capes would catapult him into a position head and shoulders above every other mover and shaker in Brockton Bay and the surrounding region. By contrast, it was the best of all possible options, but he had no idea how to pull it off. When the Slaughterhouse Nine bounty payout came in, she'd be more financially well-off than
he was, so offering her money would not be an option. She'd managed to avoid committing any egregious crimes, so blackmail was off the table as well.
Killing her was the simplest means of removing her from consideration as a threat. Which was why half a dozen of his men were sitting in a parked van not far from the out-of-the-way motel the PRT maintained for just this sort of purpose. His men were wearing PRT uniforms and had current IDs, which would serve to get them close enough to the Heberts for whatever needed to be done. Removing the bodies and setting fire to the premises would sufficiently muddy the waters thereafter.
Still, he always liked to have a second option. Taking up his phone, he dialled a specific number. Tattletale answered promptly, of course. She knew better than to keep him waiting.
"Yeah, boss?"
"Wyvern. Best approach for getting her away from New Wave and into my pocket."
There was a brief pause, during which time she no doubt accessed her power. It was useful, but he couldn't help thinking he'd do better with an actual precognitive. But he had to make do with what he had; it wasn't like one was going to just fall into his lap.
"Sorry, boss. Not gonna happen. She'll have more money than God in a few days, and even if you kidnapped her old man, she would keep trying to get him back until you either let him go or killed him. And killing him would drive her into a rage like you wouldn't believe. She would find you, and she would eat you alive."
The surety in her voice shook him to his core. "She wouldn't necessarily find me." He hadn't told her the exact capabilities of his power, but he knew she could make educated guesses, even without data.
"Yeah. She would. Her power adapts to the threat. If you were the threat, and she wanted to find you badly enough, she would evolve an ability to beat yours. Maybe it would shut you down, or maybe it would let her see what you're doing. Either way, she'd beat you."
The message was loud and clear.
Well, shit. "Understood."
He went to say more but stopped, because the cold muzzle of a pistol had made contact with his temple, just in front of his left ear. Very slowly, he turned his head, to see a woman in a fedora. She gestured at the phone, and he ended the call.
He knew who she was, and more or less what she could do.
Anything she chooses to. What she wanted with him, why she was here, he was rapidly starting to figure out. "Is this about Wyvern?"
"Yes." The pistol, now about one inch from his left eye, didn't waver. "You will leave her alone. You will not attempt to harm or coerce either her or her father. You will call your men off. Is this perfectly understood?"
There was only one answer he could give that he knew would not get him shot. "Yes. It's understood."
"Good. Doorway."
She turned away, but only an idiot would've thought her vulnerable at that moment. Thomas Calvert did not consider himself an idiot. A portal opened up before her, and she stepped through. It closed again, leaving him alone in his office.
But what about me?
When do I get what I want?
The answer was simple. He wouldn't.
Well, fuck.
<><>
Dallon Household
Taylor
Vicky picked up the three dice and rolled them. "Aww,
man," she complained, looking at the result. "The barbarian's almost back again. I'm gonna have to activate my knights
again."
"Serves you right for blocking my roads," Amy told her, checking the other two dice and drawing her cards. "Ooh, lots of wheat."
I grinned as I drew my resources as well. This was a really fun game, and when it came my turn I figured I'd be able to trade for the commodities I needed.
"I'll trade you for some of that wood you just drew," Dad offered Vicky. "What would you like? Ore or wheat?"
"Wheat, definitely wheat." Vicky side-eyed her sister, who was conspicuously not offering to trade any of
her wheat. "How much can you spare?"
There was a knock on the door, and Dad looked around. "Were you expecting someone?"
"Not really," Vicky said. "Unless Crystal and Eric have decided to come over."
Amy shook her head. "They wouldn't bother knocking."
Carol was at the door by now. I turned to look as she opened it. There was a surprised tone in her voice as she greeted the visitor, but she didn't power up and she didn't sound worried. Then the visitor stepped inside, and I saw him properly for the first time.
Hero had been a founding member of the original Protectorate, back when it was just the four of them. The Tinker of the group, he was still considered one of the foremost proponents of that powerset in the world. He'd reluctantly taken up leadership of the entire Protectorate when Legend had split from the team for reasons still unknown, but he'd acquitted himself well in the role.
While not as naturally charismatic as the iconic flying Blaster, he was still friendly and outgoing, and everyone liked him. His gold and blue power armour, sporting the PRT logo on the shoulder-plate, would've been recognisable anywhere.
I stood up without even realising what I was doing. Concluding his handshake with Carol, Hero moved farther into the house, to where we stood around the dining room table. "Hello, there," he greeted us. "I was told I'd find Taylor Hebert here?"
"That's me," I said, more or less unnecessarily. It wasn't like he was going to mistake either Amy or Vicky for me, after all. Then the reality of the situation caught up with me.
Hero was here to see me.
Hero was here to see me.
Hero was here to see
me.
"Um," I concluded.
"Good, good." He held out his gauntleted hand. "It's an honour and a pleasure to meet you, young lady. You've done the nation a great service."
Somehow, he managed to make it sound not at all cheesy; I shook his hand with a decided sense of unrealism. "Um, thanks?"
He chuckled warmly. "I get it. This is a huge surprise, and you're still trying to figure out what's going on. That's basically my fault, sorry. I tried to keep this trip on the down-low, so only
half of America knew where I was going. But I really did want to meet you, and find out how you did what you did."
I blinked.
He wants to get tips off me? "I'm sorry, but I haven't really looked into
how I do it. I just …
do it, you know? It's ninety percent pure instinct, ten percent panicked flailing."
I hadn't meant to put that last bit in, but he smiled easily when I did. "Well, all I can say is that your instincts are very much on point. I'd make a recruitment play to get you to join the Protectorate—we would very much like to have you on board—but as I understand things, you're happy here in New Wave, correct?"
I nodded. "That's correct." Then my treacherous inner thoughts had to spoil things by blurting out what was on my mind all over again. "I have to ask though, what is it with Tinkers showing up and wanting to recruit me? You're the second one to do it."
This time, he laughed out loud. "That's a good one. I'm going to see if I can get Alexandria to crack a smile when I tell her. The other Tinker would be Armsmaster, correct? Has he been a problem for you?"
"Not since Winslow," I admitted. "Some Thinker or other told him I'd be involved in a fire there, and he took that to mean that I was going to
set the fire, so he literally busted in through the wall all Kool-Aid Man style. But once he realised it was Shadow Stalker, he calmed right down."
"Ah, yes, Shadow Stalker." I got the impression he'd just raised an eyebrow behind his gold tinted visor. "She's the one you nailed with an exploding fireball at a range of three hundred seven yards, correct? That's some good shooting, right there."
I shrugged. "Like I said, ninety percent instinct."
"No matter how you achieve your results, they're good results." He tilted his head slightly. "I'm very interested in the mechanics of your powers. How you can fire such high intensity flames with little heat loss, or ensure that the fireballs explode at exactly the right range. Also, the cold blast you got Burnscar with, and the disintegration effect you used on Jack Slash and Bonesaw. Would you be willing to demonstrate these for me?"
"Um." I tried to think fast. "I don't think doing it inside the PRT building is a good idea. I get kinda large, and I think they want to keep their outside walls where they are."
Again, he laughed out loud; this time, he shook his head as well. "No, that's a definite pass. I strongly suspect that whatever they're using for a backplate would not survive your powers. My idea was that we'd go up into the open air and I'd throw out holographic targets for you to hit with your various power effects, while I analyse them from off to the side. But only if you're interested."
Carol folded her arms. "And meanwhile, you get Taylor more and more at ease with you, so that when you ask about fighting Endbringers, she's more likely to say yes …
correct?"
"Well, it's not intended to be as underhanded as all that," he said, then turned back to me. "I
was going to bring it up at some point, yes, but I wanted to analyse the potential impact of your powers
first, so I knew whether or not it was a good idea to make the offer at all."
"Right, right." He made a few good points, though Carol did too. "If I turned out to be stupidly powerful but said no to fighting Endbringers, what then?"
He shrugged. "I can't force you, and I'm not going to try. After all, the last person who tried to make you do something against your will is currently drifting around Brockton Bay as subatomic particles. Not a great idea, all told. But if you
did show up as being powerful enough to make a significant difference, and were willing to step up, we'd be willing to put you through an accelerated training program to improve your chances of surviving against an Endbringer."
I was pretty sure I could figure out what he meant by that. "Translation: You'd kick the crap out of me."
He chuckled warmly and held out his hand. "I knew you were a bright kid. So, what do you say?"
It took me a moment to make my mind up. First, I glanced at Dad, who looked worried but proud that I was being given this opportunity. Then at Vicky, who was nodding repeatedly. Amy didn't show a preference one way or the other. Carol merely raised an eyebrow, as if to say,
make sure you know what you're getting into.
I reached out and shook Hero's hand. "Let's do this."
[A/N: The board game they're playing is Settlers of Catan, with the Cities and Knights expansion. So much fun.]
End of Part Twenty-One
